The Legend of Vox Machina: A Deadly Bargain (3x01)

We're so back!!!!

Cons:

Okay, it feels too early to be making any comments on bigger structural/adaptation changes, but I'm just noting things as I experience them. The biggest moment I questioned in this episode was Vax and Keyleth's moment at the tree. They kiss, which is so sweet! And then Vax has a vision of Keyleth being old and alone as all of her friends are dead. That moment had a kind of cognitive dissonance to it, because... shouldn't that be Keyleth's baggage, not Vax's? Or, at the very least, shouldn't they both be thinking about it? I get it, a champion of a death god and a druid who's going to live for centuries, there's inherent angst here. I love that shit. But I really thought the image of Keyleth living on while her friends all die was going to be something Keyleth experienced as part of her hesitation, rather than Vax getting that vision? I'm willing to see where they're going with this. It makes sense they need to tighten up some of the back and forth and nuance of the romance, it's just a little strange to me so far.

Bob's Burgers: The Tina Table: The Tables Have Tina-ed (15x01)

Fun to be back to school with the kids! This was a great episode to open up our fifteenth season.

Cons:

This isn't really a flaw of this episode, but a general note... one of the things I love about Louise is that she's an agent of chaos but she always comes through when it matters. I've noticed a trend recently of her being a little more... responsible, end of the day, than you would expect? It was interesting to me that her role in this episode was to convince Tina to do the right thing, even though the wrong thing was causing so much chaos and making people act so wacky. You'd think maybe Louise would be into that, at least at first? And then maybe have a turn a little later? But she immediately was against all these shenanigans, which I thought was a little odd. 

Grey's Anatomy: If Walls Could Talk (21x01)

Wow, I hate Catherine Fox so much! Kind of an uneven premiere in terms of the things I care about.

Cons:

Honestly there's kind of a cognitive dissonance to how much Catherine sucks as a character, and her marriage to Richard. How exactly is he managing to thread the line with all of his friends who his wife just fired? It's bizarre and it's irritating. She's so entitled and such a bully and she's so unambiguously wrong in this situation that it's hard to see the complexity of the situation. And I hate Jackson being on his mom's side here, against Meredith! No no no! I didn't hate the Meredith and Catherine scene about her health, but I just keep coming back to Catherine literally being the Big Business Baddie who is restricting access to life-saving knowledge. Yuck!

Lucas Adams is still the most uninteresting intern by a large measure, and I hate that so much of our time is wasted on his angst. When he shows up at the end to Simone's door and declares that he's not going to Chicago, I'm thinking... boooo. I wish you'd go, and I wish Yasuda would stay instead. She's a better character in every way.

Bob's Burgers: To Catch a Beef (14x16)

Delightfully chaotic!

Cons:

I honestly can't think of anything on this one I would have wanted to change? I guess as a very, very small note, I'll say that Teddy mentions Mort sitting in his seat, and it made me realize that we don't really see Mort anymore as a character on this show? They should have him swing by the restaurant more often.

Bob's Burgers: The Right Tough Stuff (14x15)

A cute episode!

Cons:

The meat grinder plot thread felt a little... half baked for me? Not to get too serious about it, but I don't know if I like the messaging that a new, more efficient method of doing work is actually somehow spiritually worse for Bob and the restaurant. It's kind of a luddite argument, if you think about it. Maybe a more nuanced version of this story is that Bob's obsession with the meat grinder eventually fades and it turns into another mundane tool of his job. He has a new flash of excitement and then it becomes a routine, and one day that electric meat grinder will seem as unremarkable as the old hand crank.  And now another part of his job is a little easier because he has more time, or something. Innovation isn't magical, but it often can be a good thing!

Bob's Burgers: The Big Stieblitzki (14x14)

A cute episode! It's nice to be back with these characters.

Cons:

Can't really think of anything to complain about... I guess the chaos level with the adults bowling was pretty low, I would have liked to see more from that. It feels like even more bowling shenanigans might have been possible.

Pros:

I really love Rudy episodes, and I love when Louise gets time to shine as a good person always looking to help others out, albeit in a chaotic and crazy way. She wants to cause maximum mayhem, but when she gets additional information about the relationship dynamic between Rudy's divorced parents, and the new guy his mom is dating, she does everything she can to put a stop to it for the good of all. That's our Louise!

Doctor Who: Empire of Death (14x08)

This season flew by so quickly, I can't believe we have to wait until the end of the year for more of Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor! Let's dive in.

Cons:

Unfortunately, my big complaint from last week's episode does still hold true for me here. Sutekh as our villain to finish off the season doesn't really do anything for me. I don't know him, I don't know the lore, and "death" is kind of a generic villain, is he not? I mean, sure, I love that the Doctor takes on the mantle of Life, and defeats Death by turning Death on himself, that's a cool enough concept. But really this is some Marvel-esque drama, isn't it? Everyone in the world gets turned to dust, then the Doctor fixes it and everyone comes back. It's just sort of a generic bad guy to cap off the season.

And look - I liked the stuff with Ruby and finding her mom, I really did, but I do feel like several questions remained unanswered that had to do with Ruby specifically. Namely, what did old Ruby say to people to get them to run away in "73 Yards"? I really thought we'd get the answer here, but we didn't, really. Also, Ruby made it snow with the power of memories or something, so like... was that a Sutekh thing, or is there something more going on with Ruby? I don't need this show to "make sense", honestly, but when they seed little hints of things and they don't pay off, it does sort of chafe.

Doctor Who: The Legend of Ruby Sunday (14x07)

This is an undeniably excellent season of this show, wow!

Cons:

So, the big thing is, I don't know who Sutekh is within the lore of this show. I went and did a google, and he's a figure who appeared in one episode and then a bunch of tie-in stuff. There was a lot about this "reveal" that was effective, and I'm not saying knowing the deep lore is a requirement to get the significance of the twist, but it's like... I don't know. Ideally, you spend all season with the mystery of this recurring woman, and you hear people talking about "The One Who Waits," and then the moment of truth hits and you go "oh shit! I can't believe it was [blank] the whole time!" Sutekh could have been "Bob the Scary Demon Man" and it would have made no difference to me or, I would wager, to the majority of the audience.

I also think I could have used a bit more buildup of "The One Who Waits" just as a concept. Could have used one or two additional drops of that phrase. There's something a little clunky about the reveal being a god of Death, because it's like... hmm. Isn't the saying "time waits for no man," like, Death is going to get you, you can't run from it? So the idea of a death god "waiting" and then deciding to "stop waiting" is a little off for me. My favorite depictions of Death in fiction are always Death as Inevitability. Not cruel, not actively violent, just... it's coming for us all. This dude by contrast seems to be more of a god of destruction, an active force that wants to kill the universe. I'm down for it, I'm just saying maybe the "waiting" aspect is a little muddy.

Doctor Who: Rogue (14x06)

Mr. Groff! Sir! Excuse you!

Cons:

Honestly, I don't know if I can think of anything I'd change! Just that I wish Groff was coming on the show to stay, no matter how unrealistic that is.

Also - this isn't really a "con" so much as it is a "concern" or even just a question: last week's episode ending on such a stark scene of the Doctor forced to confront racism, it felt strange to set the next episode in the 19th century and have the Doctor's race entirely unremarked upon. Not bad, honestly, I kind of prefer just hand-waving that kind of thing for the sake of the story here, but it had the phantom bad taste of a show like Bridgerton that decided to do racial diversity by painting on a historical reason that racism isn't a thing anymore in Regency England and then just trotting along with a story entrenched in the restrictive systems that allowed for racism to exist in the first place. I'm being too serious here, but I just wanted to mention it.

Doctor Who: Dot and Bubble (14x05)

Wow, holy shit. This season keeps getting better and better.

Cons:

I really only have one tiny complaint, and it's that I wish the walking thing had been done a little differently? I think, allegorically, the idea that they all need arrows and instruction to be able to walk around when they have their bubbles up all the time is a good idea. Like, often when I'm driving somewhere I should know how to get to on my own, I still pull up the map on my phone just as an extra sense of security, or because I never bothered to fully memorize which side street to turn down or what have you. So it makes sense on that level. But the part where Lindy is literally running into poles and desks and stuff read as a little too ridiculous. I wish it had been a little less literal? Like what if instead of running into stuff, it's that Lindy is overwhelmed by the variety of things she's looking at around her, constantly distracted and overwhelmed, and she needs to mutter instructions to herself in order to force herself to walk, and she still takes the sharp 90 degree turns everywhere because that's what she's used to. And then when faced with a monster right in front of her that's blocking her most natural path towards the exit, she freezes up and can't figure out how to make herself find an alternative route right away. That would work better than the scene where she's literally just running into a pole multiple times.

Grey's Anatomy: Burn It Down (20x10)

Ughhhh. Wow. That was not a good finale for me, for a lot of reasons.

Cons:

Gosh, where to even start, my list of grievances is so long. I guess let's go with a couple of the smaller irritants first: Jo being pregnant is such a no from me. And her not telling Link about it? What? Yeesh. I guess I'm glad that her dramatic passing out was just exhaustion and that she's fine, just pregnant, but I'm also very grumbly about the whole thing. It does seem like this show prioritizes storylines that I'm less interested in, and pushes aside the things that would really compel me.

Case in point number two, Lucas and his future fate. I wanted to be moved by everyone showing up to plead his case in front of Catherine, and in a way I was: good on Bailey and the interns for standing up to Catherine Fox, she badly needs to be told she's overstepping, honestly. But Lucas is just so fundamentally uninteresting to me, that the idea that the cliffhanger of the whole season is "but what about Lucas's career" just... sucks, from an investment perspective. Yasuda and Kwan and Jules are at this point far more interesting to me, and I like Simone a lot when she's not tied up in Lucas's drama. I'm just bummed about where the story investment is going, is I guess what I'm saying.

Doctor Who: 73 Yards (14x04)

I categorically refuse to call this "season one" of Doctor Who (2023) so just jot that down, Disney.

Anyway. I think I really liked this episode but also... huh? What is happening here?

Cons:

This is maybe the epitome of amazing setup, disappointing payoff. I was riveted the whole way through the run-time trying to figure out what was going to happen. I was scared of the creepy lady, I was intrigued by the Mad Jack story, I was waiting with baited breath for the big reveal. And then, the second the episode was over, I sat there thinking...

But wait. What? Does any of this make any sense at all? So, as far as I can tell, creepy old woman was Ruby as an old lady getting sent back and stuck in time somehow, sent to warn young Ruby to stop the Doctor from stepping on the fairy circle and breaking it, thus preventing her lifetime of loneliness as everyone she ever meets leaves her.

But... okay, what? What did the old Ruby say to everyone who came close to her to talk to her, that made them all run away in fear? And it wasn't just fear in the moment: Ruby's mother ran and then shunned her entirely and wouldn't ever speak to her again for the rest of her life. Why? What was said? We get no answer about this whatsoever. And was the Mad Jack thing just a coincidence? Did the circle that the Doctor broke actually have something to do with it? Why would that name be on the scrolls if it was something from the future? Did older Ruby... leave that message there? But that doesn't make any sense either, does it? How much agency did older Ruby have over what she was doing? Not much, it seems, since she just stood there and repeated the same series of gestures again and again. What was the circle, actually? Magically speaking? Did it send the Doctor somewhere specific? Just blip him out of existence?

Grey's Anatomy: I Carry Your Heart (20x09)

Nick is so annoyingggg. This episode was full of multiple little irritants, to be honest.

Cons:

Like, look, I understand that Meredith is being a bad girlfriend to him, I do understand that. But Nick is still the most boring man ever invented for TV so it's hard for me to be invested in Meredith's love life with him. So when she's being dismissive and not prioritizing him, I'm like... so? Good for you. Leave his ass, Meredith, he's so generic I couldn't pick him out of a line-up. So I'm not invested on whether Nick decides to stick it out or not. I don't even know if I buy that Meredith would care that much if he suddenly vanished in a puff of smoke.

Link and Jo also suck in this episode! Their petty little fight over a patient just re-emphasized how uninteresting I find their romance. When they're happy, they're bland and forced. When they're snipping at each other, I just wish Alex Karev would barge into the room and take Jo back to run off with him so they can be happy. I've loved Jo for so long as a character but to be honest, with the news of Schmitt and Yasuda leaving next season, I'd swap Jo and Link for them in a heartbeat.

Bob's Burgers: Butt Sweat and Fears (14x13)

This has nothing to do with anything at all, but I should tell you that right now there are only a couple of shows I'm actively reviewing, and another one of them is Grey's Anatomy. Their most recent episode was called "Blood, Sweat and Tears" so when I saw the title of this episode I did do a double take.

Anyway. Let's dive in! This is the finale of the season, looks like, given the shorter episode order due to the strikes last year.

Cons:

I don't have any big giant complaints, more just... I could have used a bit more with the subplot back at the restaurant? The secret restaurant idea was very funny, I could have used a whole episode about that concept. More and more people learning about it, Bob getting overwhelmed, maybe a gag about someone coming into the upstairs part of the restaurant and failing to get served because everyone's in the basement... could have been a fun opportunity for even more shenanigans. I liked what we got, but it felt a little half-baked.

Tammy and Jocelyn felt oddly utilized in this episode. Instead of being antagonistic to Tina, they seemed to be not only her friend, but also actively pursuing that friendship, wanting to find her on the dancefloor and everything. It felt like a shift of how that relationship is normally portrayed, and I could have used a little more clarity on that.

Doctor Who: Boom (14x03)

I regret to inform you that this was a very good episode of Doctor Who. Fucking Moffat, knock it off with being an occasionally very good writer. I hate this dude.

Cons:

I thought the romance arc between Mundy and the random dude whose name I can't remember was probably the least memorable part of the episode? It just felt a little flat and proscribed, and it fell into some cliche writing tropes. Why is it always that an oblivious woman is being pined after by her long-suffering martyr of a best friend? It's giving Rory and Amy, it's giving... Joss Whedon. I don't know. I didn't hate this, but it didn't add a ton to the story, it almost felt like more of a distraction to the core relationships that we should have been focusing on.

This was the most I've enjoyed Ruby and the Doctor's relationship on the show yet, but there was this one moment that I had a problem with in the writing. The Doctor is calling out to a dying Ruby and basically says "I need to talk out loud in order to think, and you're the only person I can talk to." I think I get what the goal was here, but it read a little strange to me. Because the point of the Doctor is kind of that he can make friends with most people, isn't it? He finds the connection, and the adventurous spirit, and the bravery, in all sorts of people he comes across. We even see him forming connections with the other people he's meeting in this very episode. So I do wish the sentiment had been adjusted just slightly. Ruby shouldn't be valued and loved simply because she is uniquely able to provide the Doctor with companionship. You know?

Grey's Anatomy: Blood, Sweat and Tears (20x08)

Full disclosure, I watched this episode with constant interruptions so my brain is even more scattered than usual as I try and remember everything that happened.

Cons:

Simone and Lucas just really isn't doing a lot for me. I wanted to be moved by Simone's speech at the end: "I'm a better Doctor because of you." I think the two of them have just caused each other too much pain, and not like... juicy, interesting, dramatic pain, just... two people acting really poorly, kind of boring and yet somehow simultaneously stressful to watch. So they hook up, and then the next day at the test, Lucas is avoiding Simone's eyes... come on. How many more rounds of pointless hesitation are we going to be on with these two?

Pros:

This Amelia and Monica thing is pretty fun. Nothing much has actually happened so far, but I'm excited for it to start happening. "I've seen your hands" is such a delightfully bonkers thing to say to a professional colleague, I don't think Amelia was at all off base with the vibe she was picking up. At least we get the (scarcely needed) confirmation that Monica is queer, as she drops the news that she's going through a messy divorce with her wife. I like what they're doing with Monica's character, she has a sort of no-nonsense attitude but she's so wonderful and affirming with her patients. I think it's that thing where if you talk to kids like they're human beings capable of knowing their own minds, they'll really respond to that. And the story about the young trans girl was really moving. When she revealed she was anxious about surgery because of people seeing her naked body, I teared up a little!

Doctor Who: The Devil's Chord (14x02)

Maybe I'm just a hater? I don't know. I liked this one better than the last in some ways, but I still... hmmm.

Cons:

So, I want to narrow in on what I was noticing about the Doctor and Ruby. There are plenty of moments when they play off of each other just fine, but they become pretty difficult to watch, for me, whenever they enter a mode I'm going to call "dynamic duo putting together the clues". It's that classic beat in many episodes of this show where the weirdness is happening, and the Doctor and his companion are riffing off each other, putting the pieces together, throwing out theories. The way these two do it is just... god, it's like, this weird manic energy where they don't actually riff, one of them just says something and the other one just repeats it in a high-pitched tone with a bunch of exclamation points. It's like they trying to manufacture the proper energy of invigoration by force, instead of their energies naturally feeding off of each other. I can't explain it any better than that.

I also feel like their affection for each other isn't earned; there are a couple of Ruby/Doctor hugs in this episode, the two of them reaching for each other when scared or in danger, that felt so proscribed to me. And there's this moment where Ruby is insisting, worriedly, "but you always have the answer!" and the Doctor has to give her the dire news that he doesn't know the way out of this one, and it just... I don't know. For one thing, this is only Ruby's third adventure with the Doctor, and he didn't have the answers the other two times either. For another, I think it comes a little too early in the episode to be this moment of despair before the turn to triumph, so it just kind of lands flat.

Doctor Who: Space Babies (14x01)

Huh. Based on what I'm seeing online, I might be in a minority opinion on this episode, because I thought it was pretty middling at best?

Cons:

So, I'll start by saying I think a couple of my complaints are going to be "too soon to judge" sorts of things. This is only our second episode seeing Ruby and the Doctor interact, so I'm totally willing, and excited, to see how their dynamic is going to evolve as we go on. But in this episode specifically, I felt like both of them were sort of... over-acting in order to artificially charge up their chemistry on screen? There were a lot of really loud line deliveries and kind of awkward pacing within the lines, eyes getting big, just like... really oversized reactions in the midst of conversations that didn't need to be played so... theatrically, I guess? This is a little hard to explain because I'm not criticizing like, the overall direction that Ncuti Gatwa is taking the character, I think there's a lot of great stuff there, it was just... it felt like both actors were playing up this great connection and affection they had for each other in a way that felt unearned. It's strange, because I liked them together a lot in the Christmas Special, but here it felt like they were trying to speed run the degree to which they'd have such a connection.

Grey's Anatomy: She Used to Be Mine (20x07)

Man, Lucas needs to take several seats, I fear.

Cons:

Of all the new intern characters, Lucas is the one on thinnest ice with me. I've done some flip-flopping over this season, because it's not like I don't understand the pain he's experiencing... but he's making his own rough time everybody else's problem in a way that I just don't find sympathetic. Going off on the patient, Dorian's, friends was just... wow. He was projecting hard about something that had nothing to do with him. While I love Yasuda, I also didn't buy the vibe of the two of them bickering like siblings, and this being a comfort to both of them. She's right: Adams moved out, and Simone was the one who invited Kwan to move in. It's not something Adams has the right to be legitimately pissed off about, to be honest!

The Teddy and Owen stuff... come on. Yawn. Any time someone on this show evokes the long history these two have had, I keep thinking back to when I used to like Teddy as a character and it just sort of bums me out. When she was yapping away in the OR with Richard, I was trying to figure out what angle they were going to take, with Owen being kind of "off" with her... was it just that she was being super annoying after being cooped up during recovery? That could be kind of funny, and played for laughs, if it was just a "oh my god, Teddy, get out of the house and hang out with some friends, you're driving me bonkers." But instead it was this thing of Owen being afraid to lose her, because their lives are settled into such complicated routines? I don't know. It just felt lazy and uninspired, and then they immediately had sex about it which we're supposed to celebrate as them coming back together and feeling connected? I don't know. This whole thing didn't do a lot for me.

Grey's Anatomy: The Marathon Continues (20x06)

Alright, let's dive in!

Cons:

A recurring and somewhat befuddling theme of more recent seasons of Grey's Anatomy is the attempt to address the completely horrifying way the medical education system operates. The fact that interns work eighty hour weeks and don't have time to eat or sleep has been part of the show from the beginning. But I struggle to understand what the show's... thesis is, here, if that makes sense. Is it a "back in my day we didn't complain about a little hard work" thing? Because I don't think so, that would be pretty out of character for this show. But then you've got Bailey giving everyone wellness bags that are full of band-aid solutions, and then later she sends Simone and Kwan home for griping about their low pay and long hours? But then I guess it's about how Bailey also needs a break or whatever. She says a thing about how the system is designed poorly and there's not a lot that can be done in the individual level. So is that the point? I don't know. It's just a little muddy.

Richard having a moment of fuzziness where he hesitates to step in... I really do feel like I'm on a merry-go-round with Richard as a character at this point. This one was kind of a fake-out, where it looked like Richard was going to choke up at the finish line but then he stepped in and was fine and saved a life. Are we going to keep dragging this out where he's unsure if he should still be actively practicing, so he takes an admin role? Have I not seen him go through that process more than once already? This man was talking about retirement towards the beginning of this show's runtime!