His Dark Materials: Betrayal (1x08)

Dafne Keen is going places. She's phenomenal. This show... just... wow.

Cons:

I liked the way the daemons were integrated into this episode; they definitely got better about that as the season went on. But now I have to register a related, yet slightly different complaint...Pan is always in the same damn form. I mean, not always, but enough that it's distracting. I think in the book that was definitely his preferred form, but since it's a very important plot point that Lyra's daemon hasn't "settled" yet, I think some more variety would have been nice, just to emphasize that. Is this a nitpick? Yes.

Also... I missed Lee. A lot. I wish we could have seen more of him, although I understand why time constraints would limit his role towards the end of the season.

Pros:

While I'm not sure I'd ever recommend this show to someone on the basis of its effects/action sequences, I will admit that the final battle scene was pretty cool, with all the moving pieces of the bears, the Magesterium, etc. coming together in one bombastic final confrontation. Bodies are flying around, lights and noise and chaos... and Lyra, running through it all, just trying to get to Roger. I really felt the tension and urgency here.

His Dark Materials: The Fight to the Death (1x07)

Lyra Silvertongue! Oh man, this was a good, good episode.

Cons:

My main and really my only complaint is something that I think the budget is responsible for. It's been a while since I've read the books, but I remember the fight between Iorek and Iofur being outdoors, in this big arena with all the other bears watching. I've been mostly very impressed with the CGI in this show, and the bears in particular look great - the fight is truly impressive. But it doesn't have the grandness of scale I was maybe hoping for, in my ideal universe.

I'll just lodge my regular complaint that daemons need to be more ubiquitous. The man in the prison cell with Lyra didn't have any significant interactions with his daemon, for example. I don't mean to nitpick, but come on.

Pros:

This is the best episode of the show thus far, though. I really, really liked it. I think I'll start with Will, before we get in to the main story of the week. Boreal is getting impatient, and tries to talk his way into the Parry household. He tells Elaine that John might still be alive. She freaks out and runs to Will, and it looks like Will is ready to believe that there's something more going on here, besides his mother's paranoia. He takes her to a trusted neighbor and then hides out in the dark in his own house, awaiting Boreal's men. They break in, looking for his father's belongings and notes, and Will pushes one of them over the banister, killing him, and then runs off.

Supernatural: Our Father, Who Aren't in Heaven (15x08)

I'm screaming.

Cons:

Buckleming episodes usually piss me off, but this one was actually really great. It was still plagued with the same pacing problems I always see in their episodes, though. A lot of great stuff happened here, but it didn't necessarily have a ton of room to breathe. Some of it did - the Cas and Dean stuff, the Michael and Adam stuff. And maybe that's the most important. But it might have been nice to have a longer beat with Rowena, or a bit more buildup with Eileen and the case. For an episode written by these two chuckle-fucks, though, I'm honestly really, really impressed.

Donatello is an okay-ish character, but his presence here felt mostly unnecessary. Didn't we have enough to juggle, without introducing him into the mix? Eileen, Cas, Rowena, Chuck, Michael, Adam... there's a lot going on here. It probably could have been done without him.

Pros:

I really don't know where to start, so let's start with Eileen. Just the fact that she's in this episode warms me from head to toe. She's... actually in the show. She's here, in the mid-season finale, where important Plot Stuff is happening. She's a real player in events, and after she came back from the dead, she stuck around in the bunker. Like she's... really in the show, you guys. Three episodes in a row!

Modern Family: The Last Christmas (11x09)

Yeah, this was a pretty decent installment, even if one or two things still had me rolling my eyes.

Cons:

Manny is so annoying. I actually liked the idea of Luke having genuine feelings for Sherry, and how that might affect the whole family. There was this idea of Manny's parents and Luke's parents defending their sons, and Luke developing emotionally, and Manny having to learn to be more mature as well, and get over his heartbreak in an adult way... but no. We get some setup and promise in that direction, and then it all blows up immediately. I'm just so exhausted by Manny as a character.

I like it when Modern Family does big ensemble stories like this, because it means even if every plot thread doesn't it the mark, there's enough going on that it doesn't matter. That said, I didn't care about Jay trying to get Claire to work with him in his dog bed company. It was just entirely shrug-worthy for me.

Pros:

Haley was actually my favorite part of this episode, even though she didn't really have a story-line of her own. Essentially, she is done breastfeeding and so she's drinking wine and meddling in other people's drama. She had the two best jokes. One, when she compared Joe to a "sad ham" and then apologized because she's drunk and upset. Her line delivery really cracked me up. The second is when she talks to Mitchell about Cam's family being poor because they "eat plants and animals they find in their backyard." Ha!

His Dark Materials: The Daemon-Cages (1x06)

Dang, a ton of stuff happens in this one episode!

Cons:

In theory, I'm glad we've got a fast pace. There's a lot to cover in just eight episodes. There was plenty of great material in this episode, and for the most part the resonant moments really landed. But I have some complaints.

So, first of all, the fast pace felt kind of awkward when we had these really brief cut-aways from what was happening with Lyra. We've got a scene of the Gyptians on their travels, and a scene of Will watching a video of his father. These scenes cut through the main action and were pretty awkward and unnecessary.

I know I've said this before, but it's really annoying that the daemons are not more ubiquitous in this world. In this episode, we are meant to understand the visceral, painful horror of children being separated from their daemons. So then why are daemons so much an afterthought in the filming and atmosphere? Why can I remember the girl that helped Lyra hide from Mrs. Coulter, but not the presence of her daemon? Why don't we see the children snuggling and petting their daemons in the cafeteria scenes? Where's Pan when Lyra falls out of the balloon at the end? It bothers the heck out of me that the daemons aren't a bigger part of the visual storytelling.

Supernatural: Last Call (15x07)

My heart is so full, y'all. Damn.

Cons:

Will you just let Eileen and Sam kiss, though? The slow-burn is charming to a point, but we're running out of episodes, here. Let's get this show on the road. They are so freakin' cute.

I love Christian Kane so much and I loved his performance. I do think it's a little silly to shoe-horn this awesome friend into Dean's past like this. I get it - this was someone he used to hunt with on occasion when he was younger. That part I'm fine with. But they talked like John was a father-figure in this guy's life, that he took them both out on hunts together, played them music, etc. That's not the kind of friend I thought Dean had in his life. It feels like too much of a retcon, in some ways, to introduce that idea now.

Also... this is a small thing, but it was hilarious to me how easy it was for Dean to break out of his bonds when Lee had him trapped. Come on, guys. The Winchesters are always getting in to trouble, and it's always dumb luck or mistakes from the bad guys that let them escape with their lives. Isn't Lee supposed to be a former hunter?

Modern Family: Tree's A Crowd (11x08)

This episode sure does... exist. It's not strictly speaking terrible, for any specific reason... but it slipped out of my brain pretty much the second I watched it. Just... bland.

Cons:

The blandest and yet somehow still the most annoying plot thread goes to... Jay, Gloria, and Manny. Big shocker there. Apparently Manny has been dumped by Sherry Shaker, and Gloria wants Luke to go to Sherry and talk Manny up so she'll take him back. Instead, Luke is charmed by her improv comedy skills and ends up kissing her. This is paired with a plot where Gloria accuses Jay of being unfeeling, so Jay tries to find Manny a new girlfriend. The climax of this thread comes when Jay tells Luke to get out, that he's disappointed in him, because Luke kissed Sherry. This is supposed to prove that Jay does have empathy.

First of all, I made myself bored just writing out that plot thread. Second of all, Manny is truly insufferable as a character. I mean it. Whenever he's onscreen I'm just prepared to cringe. I also hate it when they take something stupid and try to make it poignant. I think we were supposed to feel genuine emotion about Luke betraying Manny and Jay standing up for him, but it just did not work for me. If I thought they were going to spend some real time on it, explore Luke and Manny's relationship from this point forward, I'd be more on board. But it's not going to happen. Any amount of connection I felt to Manny's character died long ago.

Arrow: Purgatory (8x07)

Arrow has decided to lean firmly into the nostalgia camp for this final season, and I for one am all for it!

Cons:

I'm going to say this one more time, just because I want to have it on the record. I'm not letting the CW pull me in to their fun crossover shenanigans. I like Arrow just fine, but I don't have the time or the bandwidth to watch all of the other shows in this extended universe. It's a good marketing technique, sure, but I am not going to be watching all of the crossover episodes. This means that I will next check in with Oliver in January, and be super confused as I'll be coming in to part... 4? 5? of the Crisis on Infinite Earths story. This isn't really a "con" of this episode in particular, but I just wanted to make my stance on this crystal clear. If you're in to all the other shows, cool. But I can't be fussed. And it annoys me slightly that this final season of Arrow, with only three episodes remaining, is using one of those episodes to tell a story that's not really about Oliver and his gang, but is instead about all of these other shows and their characters as well. After that, the penultimate episode is the backdoor pilot one, and then the finale... it really feels like a lot of real estate is being used for things that are tangential to Oliver's journey, but not central to it. And that's a bummer, even if the other content is good.

I was happy that we got some explanation about Lyla last week, but I have to admit the relationship between her and Diggle is kind of baffling. Why did Lyla have to be so circumspect about everything? She kidnapped William, Mia, Connor, Oliver, John, and Laurel. She straight up kidnapped them. She seemed perfectly able to convince Dinah, Rene, and Roy to come under their own power, so what is with the drugging? They've justified it somewhat by saying that it's all part of the effort to make Oliver understand his role in the coming Crisis. But even that doesn't quite do it for me, especially now that Lyla has been taken over and has become "the Harbinger," whatever the hell that is. It's just a little too wonky for my taste.

His Dark Materials: The Lost Boy (1x05)

Will?! What the heck! Let's discuss.

Cons:

I am not at all unhappy with the introduction for Will and his mother. I think both actors did a good job, and the story is intriguing and feels natural here. It makes perfect sense that Will would be introduced so early, given that they've already revealed the existence of multiple worlds, and Lord Boreal is already hanging out in Will's world, looking for info about John Parry (aka Grumman). All that said... I do have some worries. Is introducing Will here going to diminish some of the most powerful parts of the story, that don't come up until much later in the books? Well... inevitably. I still think this could work alright. I'm not willing to say they've made some big huge mistake by making such a big change. It makes sense to expand the world and add in these details, but there is definitely something lost by doing so.

I've brought this up before, but is bears repeating here in this episode specifically. The daemons need to be ubiquitous. They need to be there always, a part of the environment, always around. There are so many moments when we see a human without their daemon clearly visible. It's not breaking the rules - their daemon could be something small, hiding in their clothing. That's fine. But the problem is, we get moments like when Ma Costa runs up to Billy and immediately starts asking where his daemon is. She clearly noticed the daemon was missing immediately. Can people sense that? It just doesn't work unless the absence of a daemon is immediately apparent to a viewer, not just the characters.

Arrow: Reset (8x06)

Oh, I have feelings about this. Oliver my sweet precious hero friend.

Cons:

The idea that the Monitor has just been testing Oliver to get him ready for his final mission is... kind of silly? I don't know. Is this just me? It feels like what's really going on here is that they had to fill out a whole season, but needed to tread water until the actual "Crisis" plot thread could take over.

Pros:

This episode felt like old-school Arrow in a way I really admired. Oliver having to balance his public image as an important figure in his community, with his vigilante identity. Oliver going to a glitzy event and then having to don the suit to stop some bad guys. Oliver getting advice and help from his trusty side-kicks, but also learning a humbling lesson about his own limits. All very early-season vibes, in a way I really appreciated.

This is a Groundhog Day episode, where Oliver is stuck in a time loop that seems to reset when Quentin Lance is killed. Turns out, Laurel is also in the same loop. This is a pretty standard setup, but one thing I really liked about it is that first Lance, and then Diggle, both believe Oliver right away when they're told what's going on. As they both point out, their lives are crazy, and include time travel and resurrections and all sorts of bizarre crap. Why shouldn't they believe Oliver in this situation? They both have reason to trust him on something like this.

His Dark Materials: Armour (1x04)

Yessss. I loved this episode so much. Lots of stuff going on, a fast pace, world-building, new characters, a mission introduced and completed all in a single hour.

Cons:

I love our new characters so very much. I do wish we could have been a little more clear on Lee Scoresby's motivations. He feels he owes something to Iorek, but we are not told what, and we are not told why he has chosen now of all times to seek him out. It's a small thing, but it's the kind of plotting issue that seems like they just needed to get all the chess pieces on the board, so they forced it to happen.

Pros:

But whatever, that's such a small thing. Before we dive in to our new characters and all that noise, I'll briefly touch on what our villains are up to. We don't get a ton of movement here, just some small shifts. We learn that Mrs. Coulter has managed, with the assistance of some armoured bears, to capture Lord Asriel. She is using Asriel as leverage with the Magisterium to maintain her position as the head of the General Oblation Board. She is also leveraging Iofur's desire for baptism in order to keep him in line. Mrs. Coulter is so expertly playing everyone else in this episode, as we see her negotiating and threatening and manipulating various important people in order to position herself in the best possible placement. I love it. I love how evil she is.

In the main story, we've got a quest. Basically, Lyra and the Gyptians are looking for the assistance of an armoured bear named Iorek Byrnison. Also looking for Iorek is Lee Scoresby, a Texan aeronaut. We also hear talk of a witch who might be able to help our heroes on their quest, named Serafina Pekkala. This is essentially an "ally gathering" episode, and it does a lot of work in a short amount of time, invigorating the story with fun new faces and planting seeds for lots of future exciting stuff.

The Walking Dead: The World Before (10x08)

I hate it when smart characters have to act like morons for the sake of the plot.

Cons:

So, Carol has this crazy trigger of running off into danger because of her need to kill Alpha. She's so intent on this goal that she risks her own life and lots of other peoples' lives more than once, and seems completely unrepentant about it. In this case, she ran after Alpha and into an obvious trap. And then Daryl sends in everyone else after her, and then follows himself. So now they're all trapped in an underground cavern filled with the Whisperers' hoard. And this is the big mid-season cliffhanger we are left with. How... lame. How uninspired. How stupid of Daryl and the others to let this happen. I was cool with them scouting for the hoard, but to run blindly into danger like that was just so uncalled for.

We learn Dante's backstory a little bit, but I'm still not totally happy with it. He was brand new to the Whisperers, and went in as a valuable spy because Lydia wouldn't recognize him. But what ties him to Alpha, then? Clearly, their philosophies line up, somewhat. Dante believes that communities like Alexandria are giving their people false hope. But Alpha is supposed to be a cult of personality, and Dante has no reason to be so loyal to her that he'd risk his own life in this way. We needed more to understand why he was so die-hard for the Whisperers. If he's new, he hasn't been indoctrinated. It's also annoying that he was able to infiltrate so easily, because it just makes Alpha and the Whisperers seem all-powerful in a way that reminds me of the Saviors.

Grey's Anatomy: Let's All Go to the Bar (16x09)

No. NO. Negatory. Nopity nope nope. Yoikes. Cannot do it. I cannot go through this again.

Cons:

I'm talking about Amelia's baby. I will nottttt. Apparently Amelia got pregnant four weeks before she thought she did, which means it might not be Link's baby. Meaning it might be Owen's. We didn't get to see any more of this revelation play out, but it's going to cause drama and my brain is going to explode if we stretch this out any longer. Why can't Amelia and Link just have a kid together and be happy? I am UPSET. Owen doesn't deserve to have another baby! He has enough babies, okay?!

In fact, almost all of the relationship drama this week was just irritating in the extreme. There's an exception, but I'll get to that in a moment. You've got the "who got Amelia pregnant" nonsense. And then you've got Tom telling Teddy that he loves her and wants to marry her, and that Owen hasn't even popped the question yet. You all know my feelings about the way they've navigated Tom's character this season, but the thing is... the dude is right. Owen doesn't deserve Teddy. Owen is annoying as hell.

And then you've got Richard and Catherine's nonsense. My feelings about Catherine have always been less than positive, so it's a hard sell to get me to care about her. And now I'm in a situation where I'm annoyed with her for not giving Richard the benefit of the doubt, and I'm also annoyed with Richard for not putting a hard boundary between himself and his friend. Even if they aren't technically crossing any lines, Richard knows there's something there. He needs to get a grip. The marriage between Richard and Catherine is a mess.

The Good Place: The Answer (4x09)

Holy mother of God. I am - emotional.

Cons:

Literally the only thing I can think to complain about is that this episode went by too quickly. Because it was so good. I feel like I blinked at it was over. Just... wow.

Pros:

This incredible half hour of television takes place in the snap of a finger. Michael wakes Chidi up, and as he does so, we get a glimpse of Chidi's life, of the moments that shaped him, as he searches for "the answer" over the many long and confusing years of his life(s) and afterlife(s). We are brilliantly shown key conversations with people that helped him to understand that there is no answer, even as he fights against this truth.

From Jason, he learns that sometimes you just need to act, that weighing all of your options isn't always going to work.

From Tahani he learns that it's okay to make mistakes, that you'll learn from them.

Supernatural: Golden Time (15x06)

This episode has made my soul ascend to heaven!

Cons:

Could have used more sign language. This is totally a nitpick, totally a personal preference thing. I love ASL and I love the idea of Sam learning it for Eileen, and I wanted more, more, more. Also a personal preference thing, but I totally wanted them to kiss? Can Eileen just like... be in the rest of the show and go on hunts with the Winchesters and start dating Sam and... yeah. More Eileen please and thank you.

Pros:

See, I couldn't even properly complain about anything before jumping straight in to the Eileen of it all. We all know Supernatural has a crappy track record with its female characters. So many of them have been fridged, or even at best killed off in a less fridge-y way, but the end result is that there is a dearth of ladies in the Supernatural universe. Eileen was a particularly difficult and senseless death, as there was no reason why she had to die to prove the point that things were getting rough. And then here we have a mission - find a way to help Eileen, who is a ghost that doesn't want to go back to Hell. Sam finds a compromise solution, but it's not ideal, and then he discovers that Rowena was working on a way to make a spirit corporeal. They can bring Eileen back! Cue some witches who come in as obstacles, some reminiscing about Rowena, and then bam! Sam gets a win. Eileen is alive once again.

Modern Family: The Last Thanksgiving (11x07)

This was pretty fun. If Modern Family wants me to feel feelings, it needs to lean heavy on nostalgia. Holiday episodes are a good way of doing that!

Cons:

Manny is insufferable. I know that's supposed to be the joke, that he's annoying everyone by talking about a girl that is giving him trouble. But just because he's supposed to be irritating doesn't stop him from being really freakin' irritating. Also, the jokes about his super tall and strong basketball girlfriend felt vaguely sexist, like the joke is that she's so desperate for a boyfriend that she won't let Manny leave. Yeesh.

At the beginning, there was the setup of Haley, Luke, and Alex making Thanksgiving dinner for everyone. Haley talks about how she wants to do something nice because of everything Claire has done for her with Dylan and the babies. But then this part of the episode ended up being about Alex's weird chef boyfriend. This stuff wasn't strictly bad, but I was expecting something else and wanted Haley to have more to do here.

Also... where was Lily?!

Arrow: Prochnost (8x05)

If there is one character on this show that I love as much as Tommy Merlyn, it's Roy Harper. Looks like the boy is back!

Cons:

We've only got five episodes left of this show. And one of them is a backdoor pilot, and one of them is the gigantic crossover event that I really don't care about... and all I keep thinking is that there's not time to wrap everything up in a way that's going to feel satisfying to me. It also still doesn't make any sense that Oliver doesn't go and see Felicity. There is actually not a good reason for staying away at this point.

There was one moment when Mia and Oliver got captured, and someone said Oliver's name, and Mia said "how do they know who you are?" and it was such a stupid thing to do that I kept waiting for a reveal where this was all part of some bigger plan. But no, apparently Mia just didn't realize it was a bad idea to confirm her father's identity when he was keeping his mouth shut. Maybe this is a nitpick, but it really bothered me.

Diggle and Roy have a subplot that was honestly pretty boring. A standard mission where they're looking for some plutonium, and Roy has to learn to not give in to his blood lust. I loved seeing Roy, but the actual mission was very blah.

His Dark Materials: The Spies (1x03)

This was a great episode, and gave me high hopes for where the rest of this season is going to go.

Cons:

I think this might be a legacy problem from the book, although it's been so long since I read it that I'm not sure. But isn't it a little odd to set Lyra up as an orphan in the first episode, and by episode three she already knows that her parents are both alive, and she knows who they are? I feel like she didn't discover the full truth until later in the narrative, in the books. Maybe I'm wrong.

The stuff with Boreal in our world is just not as exciting or atmospheric or cool as the stuff with Lyra in her world. It doesn't help that he made no real progress on his goals. He's still looking for Grumann, we don't have any new answers, and very little new information. Maybe knowing that this stuff is added and isn't in the books is making me judge it more harshly, but thus far I'm just not gripped.

Pros:

The thing that made me happiest about this episode is that it slowed down. There were multiple scenes contemplating the nature of daemons. We saw Lyra start to work out how to use the alethiometer. She learned more about her past, about the rules of the world. We got to spend time getting to know the psychology of certain characters. When you've got a show like this one, where there are so few episodes to get through the plot, there's always a tension between getting to all the important details, and letting stuff sink in and linger for a while. This was a lingering episode, and I think it came at the perfect time.

The Walking Dead: Open Your Eyes (10x07)

So obviously a really shocking thing happened in this episode, and I wanted to be totally impressed and on board and all that, but I have some problems.

Cons:

Siddiq was actually a super interesting character and I really wanted to explore his PTSD and get in to his role in the community. So, predictably, he now must die. I'm going to praise some aspects of his death in the "Pros" section, but for the most part it just doesn't track for me. There are so few genuinely interesting characters left on this show, why kill this one?

Also, Dante being a secret Whisperer doesn't make any sense at all. I wanted to be pleased with the twist, because it was certainly unexpected and that can be refreshing, but here's the problem: I thought one of the big tensions going on here is that Alpha's cult of personality would be ruined if anyone knew that Lydia was still alive. Dante knows, and is still loyal to the Whisperers. Who is this guy? We have no investment in him as one of Alpha's loyal followers. I liked Dante and found him interesting on his own merits, but now I'm having to deal with the fact that he was just there to be a setup for a twist!

Grey's Anatomy: My Shot (16x08)

Oh, Grey's Anatomy. You wouldn't be you if you didn't have manufactured coincidences popping up around every corner. I loved this episode, for the most part! Let's take a look.

Cons:

So, the thing about doing a medical drama/soap opera is that a lot of really unrealistic stuff has to happen in order to keep the drama quotient up. The characters in this show have been through more trauma than is remotely realistic for any group of people, and over the sixteen seasons of this show, every single character has done stuff that's super illegal and messed up and bad. When you have an episode like this, where Meredith's past gets dredged up, you're forced to realize how completely improbable it is that Meredith would still be allowed to practice medicine in the first place. Or frankly, how Richard and Alex would be allowed to continue, what with committing assault, breaking the law, the list goes on. And that's fine, it doesn't matter most of the time on this show. But when a spotlight is shone on all of the things that have happened over the years, it starts to feel a bit more shark-jumpy than I'm comfortable with.

Also, I can take some cheesiness, but all the patients rushing in to testify for Meredith, and the letter from Cristina, and letters from Addison, Callie, Arizona, April... come on. That's a little much, don't you think? I wanted this to be more grounded in reality. Meredith probably should be taken to task for a lot of what she's done. There could have been a better balance there, with some of her bad behavior actually being condemned. I think they tried to do that with Bailey, but for me it didn't quite stick the landing.