Outlander: The Deep Heart's Core (4x10)

I know that I need to talk about this week's episode, but I'm already just so pumped to see John Grey next week. I'm predictable like that. Also, this episode was really not my favorite, and I've got a lot of things to say about it, so buckle in.

Cons:

I always admire stories where everyone is a little bit wrong and a little bit right, where you can see and sympathize with all sides of the story even if you know that various people should have handled things differently. I think that's what this episode is going for - Jamie is wrong, but his motivations are understandable. Brianna should have been more honest, but her reticence also makes sense. I want to like this story - I want to believe they did justice to this bizarre scenario, but I think there are a lot of things here that just fall flat.

For one, let's look at Jamie's story here. He is the survivor if a truly horrific rape, and that is discussed at the start of this episode with a great amount of candor. And yet when Bree and Claire realize that Jamie beat Roger, the man he believed raped his daughter, they both condemn his actions full-force. Let's take a second and think about how things would have been different if Jamie had beat up Stephen Bonnet. Claire and Brianna might have been a bit horrified at the brutality, and concerned that Jamie would go off the handle like that, but I doubt they would have turned on him for it. Sure, maybe Jamie shouldn't have trusted Lizzie's word, but are we supposed to blame Jamie for being a little bit irrational when it comes to the subject of rape? He just found his daughter, he's just forming a relationship with her, and now he's confronted with the fact that she has suffered through something enormously traumatic - an experience he can relate to first hand - and we're supposed to be pissed off that he's not acting rationally?

The Big Bang Theory: The Paintball Scattering (12x11)

This episode is a good study in one of this show's most persistent problems. It's not a terrible episode, not particularly offensive in any way, it's just... boring. Let's talk about that.

Cons:

This is often true of this show, but I found it especially noticeable in this episode: everything that you think is going to happen, happens. Every plot point introduced leads to the most obvious conclusion. Amy gets attention without Sheldon? Well, clearly Sheldon is going to get jealous, and then later apologize or realize Amy was right. Check. Denise wants to move in with Stuart? He's going to freak out and almost ruin things, but then they'll make up. What's the least interesting, most predictable, thing you can do with Raj and Anu? How about have them doubt their relationship? What's the most predictable thing you can do with the setup that Raj has access to an app that shows his fiancee's front door? Have him be jealous of a strange man who turns up, of course! Everything follows the exact predictable beats that we can all see coming a mile away. Jokes are about breaking expectations... and my expectations were not subverted even once in this whole episode. Even Howard shooting Bernadette during the paintball game. The instant Bernie started getting upset, I knew the punchline would be that she was actually turned on.

Speaking of the paintball game, I feel like this episode is yet another example of wasted opportunities. I'm glad they got the whole gang together and actually showed some of the game, but think about what you can do with a paintball episode! This show is never going to be Community, obviously, but couldn't it put a bit more effort into its set-piece episodes? Sigh.

Doctor Who: Resolution (2019 New Years Special)

Yeah okay, that was a lot of fun!

Cons:

I'm not upset on principle that we didn't get a Christmas Special. That's totally fine. But I will admit, there's a lot less you can do with New Year's Day. It just doesn't have as many iconic elements. Ultimately, the time of the year didn't really influence the plot in any major way. There was some dialogue peppered in throughout, but it didn't really match the fun Christmas spirit that some of the past specials have managed to capture. It's a small point, but one I thought I'd mention.

I love seeing the Daleks return, I really do, but I do have to admit that I chuckled when the classic Dalek design finally appeared. The Dalek had been legitimately threatening as a squid thing, but I wasn't feeling properly scared of it in the big dramatic scene where it first appears in its traditional form. They really amped up the music and clearly wanted to make that a big moment, and I thought it fell a tiny bit flat.

Pros:

So much! This was a fun episode that kept me gripped from beginning to end.

Outlander: The Birds & The Bees (4x09)

Finally! Bree and Jamie have met!

Cons:

Something happens when you take these behemoth books and adapt them into a TV show, something I like to call the Les Miserables effect. See the fact that Lizzie sees Roger and Brianna leave together, then later sees that Bree has been hurt, that Bree asks Claire not to tell anyone about Bonnet, that Lizzie sees Roger and tells Jamie and Ian about it... all of these things are from the book, pretty much. But these series of coincidences are cushioned by a lot of other moments, and spread out over several hundred pages of story. But here, all of these plot points have to happen one right after the other, and it starts to seem a little bit... silly. Brianna has sex with a man for the first time, and later that same night is raped, and then finds out she's pregnant. This is some soap-opera stuff, let me tell ya. I guess this isn't a flaw with the episode, more just a consequence of the story being what it is.

I like the actress playing Lizzie just fine, but I still don't really understand why they chose to go this route with the casting. Lizzie should be a tiny little wisp of a girl, one that Bree feels protective over. The change still seems like it's not really adding or enhancing anything, even though the actress is doing a perfectly fine job.

Outlander: Wilmington (4x08)

Ultimately, I liked this episode, but I wouldn't be me if I didn't have some complaints.

Cons:

George Washington was a slave owner, y'all. Like, I get that it's fun when Claire runs in to real historical figures and geeks out over them, but this episode portrayed George Washington as a very kind, intelligent, honorable man, which... well... mileage may vary on how much emphasis you put on the "customs of the day," but the man was a plantation owner. There was an episode earlier this season focused on Claire's hatred for slavery, and yet in this episode she is just giddy and excited to meet such a famous historical figure, and doesn't even portray the slightest hint of disgust over the slavery aspect. Annoying.

Speaking of Claire's time-travel-y sensibilities, it occurs to me that Murtagh knows that Claire is from the future, and yet we have seen no evidence as of yet that Claire has told Murtagh about the revolution and what will happen. Seeing as how Murtagh is a somewhat prominent part of the Regulators, you'd think Claire would clue Murtagh in on the war to come, and perhaps caution him on how to behave. This is the first time that I've felt Murtagh's continued existence in the story didn't quite gel with the facts as we know them.

Outlander: Down the Rabbit Hole (4x07)

I'm actually quite torn... see, the problem is, I really don't like a lot of what this episode chose to focus on. But the performances and the way these scenes were written and shot were quite good, so it's like I'm looking at the best possible version of something that I disagree with at its core. Sort of. I don't know. Like I said... torn.

Cons:

Let's start with the element I'm the most clearly displeased with: Laoghaire. I don't have a problem with Bree being found by Laoghaire, and I liked the moments with her and little Joan well enough, but there are a couple of big issues here. One is that they play the "misunderstanding" and "dramatic irony" card way too heavily. Laoghaire is apparently so bitter about Jamie that she is willing to unburden herself to a random sassenach stranger. Brianna and Laoghaire discuss Jamie abandoning the family, being bewitched by another woman, all while Laoghaire doesn't know Bree is Jamie and Claire's daughter, and Bree doesn't know that she's hearing about her dad. This might have worked for a bit, but the pacing is pretty sluggish, and it takes way too long into the episode to get past this basic comprehension hurdle.

Also, Laoghaire is just... a weird character. They've never quite been able to balance her villainy with the sympathy we're clearly supposed to feel for her. I could understand Laoghaire becoming cold upon finding out that Bree is Jamie's daughter, but I thought we were going to go down a more sensible route, and have Laoghaire wordlessly usher Brianna out of her home, or even tell her the truth about Jamie and demand that she leave. That would make sense. But screaming at her, locking her up, threatening her with an accusation of witchcraft? Jeez, Laoghaire. Calm the heck down.

Supernatural: The Spear (14x09)

I mean, I'm not surprised, but it still hurts!

Cons:

It bothers me that nobody put together that Dean was vulnerable to Michael. It makes sense that Dean would push through and not share his weird shaky-vision stuff with his family, but Sam puts together that Michael's grace made Garth vulnerable to possession, so why wouldn't he then make the logical leap to Dean's vulnerability? I think this could have been fixed if Sam didn't figure out the Garth thing until maybe right before they enact their plan on Michael. It would be a domino effect, where Sam would put the pieces together but not fast enough to stop the inevitable. Instead, this feels like a huge oversight for Sam not to figure it out.

Also... did we really go to a mid-season hiatus on a Thanos snap? That had to be an intentional reference, right? Kind of annoying.

I liked seeing Dark!Kaia again, but every time she comes up as a plot point it just reminds me that Wayward Sisters didn't get picked up. I bet whatever they had planned for her would have been way cooler than what we're getting here.

Modern Family: Stuck in a Moment (10x10)

I'm still really liking Haley's pregnancy story thread. Let's jump in.

Cons:

Jay and Gloria's plot thread wasn't funny or interesting. Imagine that. A banana spider infestation sends them all running from their home, but Jay sends Manny back in to get his elbow grease for his dry elbows. That's... the whole story. At no point does Jay suggest that he might be able to buy more elbow grease instead of sending Manny into danger. At no point does the family discuss what they're going to do about their spider infestation. At no point did I laugh or even crack a smile.

There's this through-line about Cam's Christmas card never being appreciated by the family enough, and how Cam is really sensitive about it. This was a small little joke, but it didn't work for me because the punch line was just Cam getting slightly offended that his card got ruined. It felt like a lot of setup for a lackluster punchline.

Arrow: Elseworlds, Part 2 (7x09)

I have a confession to make. I refuse to watch the crossover DC events. When I was binging Arrow, I just watched the "previously on" and jumped right in. And I did the same thing here. Some day I'll get around to watching The Flash and maybe some of the other shows, but for now I'm not dipping in to these other wells. So just keep that in mind. I didn't watch part one, I won't be watching part three.

Cons:

The thing about these crossover events is that Arrow and The Flash are tonally different shows. Whenever Barry and Oliver are onscreen together, the tone bends heavily Flash-wards. That would be fine, if it weren't for the fact that things like Felicity and Oliver's relationship troubles are being resolved in the context of a much goofier episode that honestly doesn't feel like a continuation of the same story. There are moments when we get jokes about Oliver cheating on Laurel with Sarah, for example, and it felt very unlike Oliver to react with comedic indignation at the mention of one of the most traumatic elements of his life.

Because I don't watch the other shows, I'm not really connected or interested to a lot of what's going on in the other character's stories. So when Ruby Rose (Batwoman) has a conversation with Kara, I'm not connected to Kara, so she's not helping me connect with the new character. Or when there are scenes with the girl who can freeze things, whose name I never remember, I don't really care about what's going on. When Barry and Oliver confront each other's villains, I gasped out loud when Malcolm Merlyn appeared, but I don't know who that other dude is. This isn't really a fair critique. This is obviously not a crossover event designed for me, a person who stubbornly only watches one of the shows. But I'm just being honest about how I reacted to the episode.

Doctor Who: The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos (11x10)

This wasn't a bad episode, but it wasn't super great either. Kind of disappointing for a finale.

Cons:

Tim Shaw is back with a frankly confusing plan, and I wanted to care about this more than I did. Sure, it's tying back in to this Doctor's first adventure, and the way she met her companions. Obviously the stakes are very personal for Graham and Ryan, because Tim Shaw murdered Grace. That said, this was not some sort of epic personal show-down like I think the show wanted it to be. Also, while the stakes were personal for the guys, and while Tim Shaw made it personal with the Doctor by telling her it was all about revenge, Yaz once again got the short end of the stick in this adventure.

I feel like this episode had a ton of interesting ideas, and only a few of them really got explored. There were so many missed opportunities. I think the one that gets to me the most is that there's this setup where the energy of the planet is messing with people's minds and making them forget things. The Doctor and her friends all have these neural inhibitor things to help protect them from the effect. As the climax approaches, Yaz and the Doctor have to take their neural inhibitors off and give them to other people to help save the world. You would expect that this sacrifice would involve difficult challenges for Yaz and the Doctor, that they would start succumbing to the negative effects. But other than a few looks of pain, and the Doctor having a hard time coming up with a plan for a couple of seconds, nothing really happened. Their sacrifice didn't hurt them much at all, and they were able to stabilize themselves very quickly.

Outlander: Blood of My Blood (4x06)

I AM BLESSED. THIS WAS SO MUCH MORE THAN I HAD EVER HOPED FOR.

Cons:

I've been trying to be nice about the wigs, but I really noticed Claire's wig this week. It just does not look like her real hair. It's distracting.

I understand that this is a love story between Jamie and Claire, but their sex scenes have always been pretty uninteresting to me. That's a personal preference thing, and not an actual fault with the show or the books either. I just find myself uninterested whenever things get steamy. It feels like a narrative waste of time when there are so many characters and moments I want to see.

Pros:

That said, I do like the detail of the ring that Jamie gives to Claire. Obviously they're deviating from the books, but I like that we're getting back to something important from the books, but in a different way. The ring is gorgeous!

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: I'm Not The Person I Used To Be (4x08)

I'll admit it, I was skeptical that they could pull this off. And... wow. They pulled it off.

Cons:

I don't know. Honestly, this episode was pretty perfect. Maybe I would have liked to see the four core bros spend time together. We got lots of Hector, WhiJo, and Josh, but when Greg shows up he and Josh don't so much as share a hello. I get that this was an episode about Greg and Rebecca, so maybe Josh and Greg stuff will come later.

Pros:

Josh's subplot is comedic, but it's also part of his character growth and his transformation into a proper adult. He spends the episode reliving the glory days from high school, only to realize that he's missed out on so much. George breaks it down for Josh in a great song, showing him that there was other stuff going on in high school outside of the popular kids' understanding. What I love about Josh as a character is that he's honestly such a big dork. The fact that he was a jock wasn't because he didn't think magic was cool, but because he just fit the dumb jock stereotype so well. He doesn't have any judgment for the "nerds," he just didn't think about them at all. Now, he's got a chance to broaden his horizons!

The Good Place: Janet(s) (3x10)

Wow. That was brilliant. Probably the best episode of the season thus far, and that's saying something, since there haven't exactly been any duds.

Cons:

Okay. The only thing I have to say in the "cons" section might arguably not be a con, but I do want to mention it. Throughout the history of this show, there have been so many great surprises and plot twists and rule-changing reveals, and each and every one of them has kept me on my toes and surprised me in the best way. This week, the big reveal is that nobody has been sent to the Good Place in over 500 years. Honestly, I was expecting this. Or something similar. I wondered if anyone had ever been to the Good Place, or if the Good Place even existed, but I had definitely already worked out that the points system was faulty. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing to figure out a plot twist ahead of time once in a while, but I just wanted to mention that this was the first and only time in this show's whole history that a new development didn't completely blow me away. I figured out the whole "this is the Bad Place" twist in Season One, sure, but I hadn't realized that the whole neighborhood was part of the trick. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop with this twist, I guess. I'm sure I'm going to love whatever comes next.

Pros:

Where to even start? D'Arcy Carden was incredible. She plays Janet, but also Chidi, Eleanor, Jason, and Tahani for the bulk of this episode, and she does an amazing job. So much so that when I think of the important conversations that Chidi and Eleanor had this week, I see Chidi and Eleanor having them, not Janet dressed up in their clothes. Really good stuff.

The Big Bang Theory: The VCR Illumination (12x10)

I felt like I was supposed to be emotional about some things in this episode, but it did not work for me.

Cons:

The minute we see that Sheldon's motivational speech to himself was recorded over, I knew that something about the football game was going to inspire Sheldon. Sure enough, that's exactly what we got. Sheldon's father gives a speech to his losing team at halftime, and it makes Sheldon realize that the game isn't over. Even if he's been losing so far, he still has time to make a comeback. I imagine that this scene might have been emotionally resonant for some people if a) they cared about these characters, and/or b) they watched Young Sheldon and felt a connection to Sheldon's father. Neither of those things apply to me, and ultimately the scene felt too emotionally manipulative.

Howard and Bernadette's plot thread had some promise, but I don't think it went quite far enough. If we're going to see Bernadette be a pageant mom, then I want to see her go all out.

Supernatural: Byzantium (14x08)

Oh boy. Cas... you're such a Winchester, man.

Cons:

There were some moments, especially early on in the episode, where the pacing and the framing of events felt off. It's a bit hard to describe, but the best example I have is when Sam leaves the bunker, and Dean and Cas rush after him and find him sitting on the ground, leaning against the impala. Dean rushes out and demands to know if Sam made a deal, but Sam says no, he was just trying to build a pyre. These few minutes of screen-time hit a bunch of emotional beats right in a row, and it's pretty confusing. Sam leaves the bunker looking determined and distraught. Dean is frantic with worry that Sam may have made a deal. Sam is crushed that he couldn't even build a pyre for Jack. But why? We see him struggling to fell a tree, and then he just gives up? The whole sequence of shots gave me whiplash, and it felt like a poor way of setting up a really important fact, that being that Sam and Dean are not willing to repeat old mistakes to save Jack, no matter how much they might miss him.

Is Heaven really just people being stuck in old happy memories, a timeless loop where they don't even realize they're dead? I know we've seen and heard versions of this before, but it doesn't feel like an appropriate reward for our heroes. If Sam and Dean die at the end of this show, and go to Heaven, that will feel very strange to me, given the setup we've seen.

Modern Family: Putting Down Roots (10x09)

A good episode! I'm pleasantly surprised with how much focus we are getting on Haley's pregnancy.

Cons:

Is it just me, or do Gloria and Jay seem like they hate each other a little bit? Their whole relationship is supposed to be a subversion of the trope where a rich older man marries a sexy younger woman, because Gloria and Jay are supposed to really love and treasure each other. But in this episode, and indeed often throughout recent seasons, we see Gloria being incredibly shrewish, and Jay being completely unreasonable right back at her. The fact that Jay fakes an apology to manipulate her, and that it then works, is really icky, especially since Jay takes a totally incorrect lesson from the experience.

I'll talk in a minute about Cam and Mitchell's plot thread, which I think was over all quite strong, but I can't help but notice that this is the first we're hearing of this plan to move back to the farm. Are they setting up an endgame for the show, here? Why was this introduced out of the clear blue sky?

Pros:

I did like seeing Dede's widower, Jerry. Although Jay's plot thread was very weak, the punchline at the end where he finally breaks and admits that their relationship wasn't always perfect, felt earned. I like that Jay and Jerry have this strange bond, and Jay is willing to commiserate alongside him.

Arrow: Unmasked (7x08)

Really? Is this what we're doing?

Cons:

I knew that there would be some tension and heartache between Oliver and Felicity, given everything that's happened in the seven months they were apart. But on their anniversary, they're having talks that sound like they're considering separation? Please. The fact is, both of them were annoying me with this argument. I was ready to acknowledge that they both had some stuff to work on, but Oliver's judgmental attitude was really unwarranted, and Felicity jumping to extremes feels like a retread of every breakup or uncertainty they've been through in the past. Felicity didn't murder someone in cold blood or anything. She armed herself with a gun for self defense, and shot to slow down, not kill. It feels like Oliver is valuing Felicity for what she can do for him, in terms of being a shining beacon of purity and light, instead of loving her for the complex, fully developed person that she is. That annoys me a great deal.

We see briefly that Diggle and Lyla have Diaz locked up and they're going to ask him for help with something. Just... can we not? Diaz is a boring villain. I'm ready to close that chapter for a while.

I don't hate the flash-forwards completely, but I still find the reticence a little frustrating. The fact that we don't know several basic facts about this future is really frustrating. We keep getting allusions to some terrible thing that happened, but we don't know what that is yet. We still don't know when/if/how Oliver died, we don't know where Thea or Diggle are... it's all beyond frustrating, because I want to connect to older William and to these other new/returning characters, but I can't get my head around what happened enough to really sink in to the story. Flash-forward stuff always suffers from trying to keep the truth a secret from the audience, but the characters know what happened, so it makes things feel a little stiff and unnatural that they never just come out and say it.

Doctor Who: It Takes You Away (11x09)

I liked many of the individual aspects of this episode, but felt that when taken as a whole, it got a little muddled.

Cons:

There are just so many subverted expectations in this episode, such that just as I started to understand the story, it turns out that it was about something else all along. It's about a monster in the woods? No. It's about a creepy cave world? No. It's about an alternate dimension? Yes, but also it's sentient, and this is a story about letting people go. None of these ideas are bad or uninteresting, but I got whiplash a little bit trying to figure out where the story was going. That can be a good thing on occasion, but I wish we could have picked one idea and spent more time on it.

There's a moment in the episode where the Doctor puts together the truth of this alternate world because of a story one of her grandmothers used to tell her. Later, when it came time for the Doctor to confront this sentient world, I was really hoping we would be presented with the Doctor's grandmother, or some other person from her past. Instead it was a really fake looking frog, with Grace's voice, which felt totally random and disconnected to the Doctor herself. Graham and Erik were both confronted with people they loved and missed, so why didn't this entity do the same for the Doctor? I feel like this was a real missed opportunity to add some nuance and backstory to this iteration of the Doctor.

Outlander: Savages (4x05)

I'm deceased because Murtagh.

Cons:

I get that Claire and Jamie are our protagonists, and that the Cherokee characters are obviously unfamiliar and strange to them, so in that sense it makes sense why the story frames them as "other." But this week's story features a real tragedy involving a family of German settlers crossing paths with some Cherokee people, and in the end the whole situation is lose-lose. While watching the final scene, where we see a man who has lost his children and grandchild get shot down by a distant and unseen Cherokee, it occurred to me that we're supposed to view this story as a tragedy for all involved. And, I mean, sure. But I feel like even when Claire acknowledges that the Cherokee are more in the right, we're still putting these two groups of people on equal footing, and ignoring the fact that every white person on this land, including Claire and Jamie, are thieves. I don't mean to be harsh, here, but the situations are not equal. The German settlers are more wrong than the Cherokee, even if they both do bad things.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: I Will Help You (4x07)

Guess what? I liked this episode.

Cons:

There were great things about the songs this week, for sure. I liked Naomi's song, I liked the joke start to a song that Darryl and Josh had, and I liked Naomi and Elayne Boosler's camp song. All that said, though, this season has not delivered with quite as many winning songs as seasons past. In all of the first three seasons, I can only think of a handful of songs that didn't interest me enough to go back to several re-listens. This season, there are already quite a few that I thought were just... fine, but not really worth repeating. I think this is a product of the longer episode order. Maybe they only have the budget for one full production number per episode.

I've seen another reviewer complain about this in the past, and it's always bothered me a little bit too, so I thought I'd say something: everybody being on Josh's case about moving out of Hector's mom's house feels a little strange to me. Clearly their relationship is meant to be comedic and inappropriate, but whenever the rest of the gang starts telling him to move out, I always think about the money question. Nobody ever seems to put together the idea that Josh might not be able to afford a change in circumstance. That feels like an odd misstep on this show, and it highlights the degree to which money is not really examined as a moving force in people's lives. Sure, we all know Nathaniel is rich and he is judged for that because it enhances his privilege. But other than the necessity of having roommates as adults, we don't see the characters ever struggling or worrying about paying the bills. Remember when Rebecca was totally broke? Well, since then, she hasn't exactly been bringing in a steady income, and yet she seems to have no trouble staying afloat.