I totally paused!

I had quite the difficult time picking a song this week, because there are quite a few that are chasing me at the moment. And I’m opposed to nominating repeats, even though I am still totally obsessed with Bad Romance.

So this week, even though I like the remix better, I bring you Already Gone by Kelly Clarkson:

Generally speaking, I don’t listen to a whole lot of American Idol alumni, but Kelly Clarkson is absolutely my exception to this.  Basically, if she sings it, I love it!  After all, when I got laid off from my job in May, I did sing I Do Not Hook Up while I packed up my desk.  Which, in case you were wondering, was written by one of my other favorites, Katy Perry.

The Blur is messing up!  Oh, cept it’s not him, it’s some imitators.  Kind of like how in Batman all those dudes wore hockey pads and then Batman got pissed at them.  Only Clark doesn’t get mad at these guys, who are the Wonder Twins.  Truthfully, I know almost nothing about them, but it seems there can’t be a superhero from the DC universe that doesn’t go through Smallville anymore.

So the twins are doing heroic ish stuff and branding it as The Blur.  I have no idea why they wouldn’t want to take credit for their own saves, or build their own identity, but what do I know?

Also, Chloe has been monitoring cell phones across the town, and one of the twins messes with the computer.  So Clark’s all talking to Lois as The Blur, but the voice disguisy thing messes up and his real voice comes through.  Weeeee, accidental reveal!  Cept in the end Lois becomes convinced that it wasn’t Clark after all, which in my opinion is kind of disappointing.

See, I feel like Lois is going down the same path as Lana.  All these mysterious saves and omg! almost finding out Clark’s secret, even sometimes finding it out, and then getting told otherwise.  It’s just so done!

Whoever is writing these days is getting better at it, because Clark has been funny like two episodes in a row!  Lois says they should get to know each other better, and Clark says, “You tell me the color of your underwear every day, what else is there to know?“  Love it!  And even I, the queen of over sharing, don’t do that, so props to Lois for being even more arbitrarily sharey than me.

At the end of the episode, Lois kisses Clark.  And immediately goes into a little coma, with another flash to the future that she witnessed.

I’m actually getting more and more curious about this future, so I am glad they’re getting more into it.  Although I will say again that I do not like this vision of Chloe laying dead on the road.  I know that Allison Mack’s contract is up after this year, but I wish they wouldn’t kill her off!

Before I say anything about this episode in particular, I am going to say that this show has really grown on me.  I don’t view it as throw away TV anymore, it’s actually kind of interesting.  The writing has gotten better, and while I still don’t like the casting for Elena, it’s good overall.  I don’t really know when I started to like the show, if it happened between Damon saving Stefan and turning Vicky, or if it just started the last couple of weeks, but there you have it.

In this episode, Bonnie is being haunted by her ancestor Emily, who keeps taking her in her dreams to where the old church used to be.  Although at the time I thought it was the old Salvatore house, it was later explained it was the church.  Anyway, I assumed from pretty much the start that Emily had a connection to the Salvatore’s, and she did – she was Katherine’s maid back in the day.  And a witch.

Damon seems to have turned a slightly new leaf, he feels somewhat bad about killing Lexi, and disappointed that Stefan wants to leave Mystic Falls.  He tries to apologize with

I’m not going to feed on a human for…at least a…week

I really like Damon quite a bit, he is hilarious.  And Stefan pretends a little bit to be Damon, trying to get Damon’s evil scheme out of him.  I like Stefan much better when he’s pretending to be Damon too.  But honestly, Stefan isn’t quite as bad as he used to be either.  And he’s way less annoying than Edward Cullen.

There’s also a new teacher in town, and did any of you notice the ring he’s wearing?  If memory serves me correctly, it looks an awful lot like the ring Katherine wore so she could stay out in the day.  Basically from the moment I saw him and heard his name was Alaric, I was wondering if he was a vampire.  And since seeing the whole episode, I suspect he may be, since he sure acted like he couldn’t get into the Gilbert house.  Did y’all notice that?

The big reveal is Damon finally saying why he’s back in town, and how Bonnie’s crystal fits into it.  See, it turns out Emily gave the crystal to Katherine the night she died, and it has the power to bring Katherine back.  Emily possesses Bonnie and goes to destroy the crystal rather than fulfill her promise to Damon about Katherine.  Apparently, the spell worked that to save Katherine, Emily had to put all the vampires in a mystic prison thingie, so getting Katherine out would mean getting them all out.  She’s not willing to do it, so she destroys the crystal and therefore the way to get them back.

Damon is pissed about this, natch, so he bites Bonnie and the only way to save her is to have her drink vamp blood.  In this vampire world, she would have to die with Stefan’s blood in her system, so she is apparently safe as long as she doesn’t die.  I was going to give the show big props if they did kill Bonnie off, but they didn’t.  Which I’m kind of glad about honestly, cuz I like her.

At the end of the episode, Logan shows back up.  My question: Who turned him?

Abhed makes movies, which we all knew already, but apparently they can tell the future.  He says he’s just an observer of human nature, Shirley says he’s a witch!  The video we see is of the scene from the last episode, where Jeff is living out of his car, except Abhed posted it two weeks before it happened!  It was a pretty funny rendition of what happened.

Annie’s debate partner drops out of their tournament, and for some reason they want Jeff and only Jeff to step in!  I don’t know if they try this because he used to be a lawyer or what, but one of the teachers says he could do it instead of “Romancing your nether regions in front of the E! channel.“  Which I find hilarious because I love any reference to the E! channel where Jeff is concerned.

Britta is trying to stop smoking, so Pierce offers to hypnotize her.  It doesn’t work, but to avoid hurting his feelings, she pretends she’s hypnotized anyway.  Pierce falls and needs help, but she stays “under” so he says “Damn my talent!“  Oh Pierce…

Who is pretty funny himself this go around.  He makes fun of Jeff’s clothes because his socks match his shirt.  He says, “By the way Jeff, I think your shirt’s trying to get out of your pants.”

Jeff agrees to do the debate tournament for a parking space promised by the dean, so he goes and the debate team basically sucks.  Their topic is debating whether man is inherently good or evil, Jeff and Annie get the evil side, and he does nothing to prepare.  But does end up singing for some reason, to which the debate judge says, “It’s debate, not American Idol!“  Again, a veiled Seacrest reference, aka my favorite thing ever.

In the meantime, Jeff and Annie also kind of develop feelings for each other, but try to avoid anything and end up leaving awkwardly.  But they end up winning the debate by kissing!  Which Abhed also predicted.

I had seen the very end of the episode with the debate win the night the show aired, and the end seemed kind of dumb at the time.  After watching the whole episode, I loved it!

What a shock, this show made me cry again.  Seriously, if you want to just get upset and cry for a bit, watch Mercy.  If it doesn’t make you cry, you are made of stone.

Chris, aka Dr. Sands, is apparently over Veronica.  Or something.  Because he sleeps with one of the other doctors at the beginning of this episode.  He kind of moved on fast, in my opinion.  I don’t expect him to stay into Veronica forever, but he shares dinner with this lady once and they are in bed?  He’s so not devoted!

Despite the fact that, as mentioned above, the episode upset me, there were some pretty funny lines.  One of the patients on the episode is a girl that Veronica and Sonia went to high school with, I think her name was Dana, but she was played by Erika Christensen.  And unrelated, but am I the only person who can’t keep Erika Christensen and Julia Stiles separate?  I confuse them regularly.

Okay, so Erika Christensen was the Homecoming Queen at their high school, beating out Sonia, who is kind of upset about it still.  Veronica is totally shocked by how great Erika still looks and says, “She’s totally rockin’ that hospital gown, I feel like such a nerd!”

Turns out that even though Erika is married to some rich dude and is still pretty, her husband is a domestic abuser.  Sonia discovers a bunch of previous fractures aside from the broken arm Erika’s in the hospital for, and tries to convince Erika to report her husband and leave him.  I shouldn’t laugh at any of these lines, because domestic abuse is a serious issue that I take to heart, but Erika was funny so I’ll give her credit.  She apparently is still holding a grudge against Sonia too, so she gets all nasty: “You’re tacky – nice nurse shoes.“  And then she collapses.  For the record, Sonia called her “tacky” first, but in a medical way.

I dunno who carries a grudge this long, it’s kind of silly, but ultimately Erika stabs her husband in the neck with a card holder.  You know, the kind that comes with flowers.  She’s gonna get in trouble for assault, but Sonia comes to her rescue and says she witnessed the altercation and that Erika was just defending herself.  So they get over their grudges I guess.

In the meantime, Veronica’s dad had collapsed at a party, so he’s in the hospital and they discover he has Alzheimer’s.  This is the part that upset me, it’s just so hard to see people aging when you can tell they are really too young for the kind of fate they now have.  Mike also comes to the hospital to see Veronica’s dad, and ends up getting in a fight with Chris.  Pretty much the whole Flanagan clan gets into it, and Veronica’s dad says my favorite quote of the episode:

You know, it never really hit me until this moment, but we’re basically white trash

At least he can see it!

Mike also seems to have decided he doesn’t want to work on the marriage anymore, and essentially proposes a divorce to Veronica, who is not into it.  It’s interesting to me that he felt his indiscretions weren’t so bad, and wouldn’t leave Veronica alone when she wanted to end things, but doesn’t extend her the same courtesy.  Granted, I’m sure it hurts to be cheated on, but if you’re guilty as well and your partner was forgiving, don’t you at least owe an explanation?

Chloe continued her sort of relationship with Fireman Petey, who we learn has a wife.  But Chloe doesn’t know this yet, and is undoubtedly in for a world of hurt.

In the end, I’m left wondering what’s going to happen in the next episode.  And crossing my fingers that I won’t cry.

While this episode was still interesting, I don’t think it was as good as the first one.  Honestly, it was a decent premiere and it’s kind of hard to rival that with your second episode.  It’s a question I ask sometimes: is it better to have an okay premiere and a killer second episode, or a fantastic premiere and a slightly less good second episode?  Guess only the ratings can answer that!

This one picks up pretty much where the last one left off.  The weird thing about this show so far is that in the middle of the episode, it just jumps weeks at a time.  Anyway, Erica and Jack almost die again, because they try to call the police about the V attack and the V’s snatch the call, then send another attack bomb.  Which honestly, that was not a good way to try and convince these survivors that they were wrong.  Maybe it’s just easier to kill everyone who disagrees with you.

At the end of the first episode, we learned that Ryan was actually a V himself, and hadn’t told any humans until he was cut.  Through him, we learn that there are other non-conformist V’s on Earth, but they don’t know what the V plan is for humans.  I guess we don’t know all the plans of our own government, but it seems weird that they would all just come get deeply hidden in human society, yet not ask why at all.  It’s just a question of how much do you trust your government, and do you go along with them when they’re killing another race.

Also, what have the V’s on earth done in the past if they get cut?  Ryan goes to some other V traitor dude to get fixed up.  Is he just out of his special skin creating kit?  Or did he genuinely just go there to try and convince the guy to help?

Naturally, I was somewhat disappointed to see the US government grant Visa’s to several of the V’s at the end of the episode.  Again, they are just too trusting!  I know the V’s are curing diseases and stuff, but wouldn’t you want to know at the beginning what this “abundant mineral” is?  I’d sure be asking!  And probably get killed by the V’s.

Another question – we find at the end that Dale, the V who was Erica’s FBI partner, is not actually dead.  If stabbing them through the heart is not effective, how exactly do you kill the V’s?  The resistance or whatever is going to have to figure this out fast!

So, a decent second episode, and I don’t think this one needs a trial run with me.

I think for the first time ever, we actually witness the murder!  A bike messenger is intentionally slammed into by some dude in a mysterious black car.  His messenger package is stolen and the driver takes off.  Weird!

Beckett naturally calls Castle about the murder, and he says:

Either there’s a dead body, or you just want to hear my sultry voice

I’m sure she answered dead body, but don’t you just want to say it’s the sultry voice!  Remember, Nathan Fillion is on the Would Marry List…

Each week, the murders and investigations on this show are pretty intricate and I love it, it keeps me engaged and dying to watch the next episode.  We will forget about the fact that I am at least a week behind on every show I watch.

Anyway, this one quickly leads to one of the richest most well known families in New York.  Possibly fictional.  I’ve never heard of the Wellsley’s, other than it was a prep school to teach women how to become perfect wives.

There are actually three separate murders in this episode, one of which is from ten years earlier, and each linked to the Wellsley family.  Pretty much any time there is a rich family involved, there are rich skeletons as well, so that makes for some fun.  And this episode made me wonder what you get charged with if you just say “take care of it” and don’t actually do anything yourself.  I know this is criminal, I’m just curious what the official crime is.

One thing I am curious about is that all the people questioned for the murder from a decade ago seem to recall the details pretty easily.  Am I the only person who is totally astonished?  I can barely remember the first names of people I went to three years of school with, let alone one incident one night.  Honestly, there are things I remember that may have just been dreams, I can’t promise they were actual events I experienced!  I would be a terrible murder witness, apparently.

Also, do all rich people talk like the Wellsley family in this episode?  They’re so…stiff!

I think this song is possibly stuck in everyone’s heads right now. And imagine how happy I am that it’s the first single off a new album!

Dying to know what I speak of? It is the always amusing, infinitely strange, Lady Gaga singing Bad Romance.

What do I love about this song? Well, it’s Gaga, first off. I adore her. I think her music is fantastic and though I will admit she is super bizarre, I am drawn to her. If you see her in interviews, she keeps up the weird persona all the time, and I think it’s great!

Aside from that, the song has a fun beat and a catchy chorus. What more could I ask for out of a pop tune? You know I’ll be buying the new album when it comes out on November 24!

Finally, the season finale.  And a boring one at that.  Nice that the show lived up to its title.

The big fight is here!  Johnathan does not seem that impressive in his practice, but he ends up winning!  I was pretty surprised by that.

But before that, he gets a couple of threateningish phone calls from someone telling him to throw the fight.  He does the funniest thing of the episode: finds the guy, picks the lock, and gets the thing the guy is blackmailing him with.  Well, blackmailing George.  For once I liked the detective case of the episode!

Since this is the season finale, I have a story of my own.  Some dude called Jonathan Ames is a writer, he’s got one novel out and he’s struggling with his second.  He’s freelancing a bit, but mostly just doesn’t write his novel.  He gets bored and wants to be a private detective, but knows that’s a lot of work!  He’s read detective novels!

Instead of becoming a private detective, Jonathan starts writing a story where he is one, but is also still a writer.  There isn’t enough for his second novel, which has a quickly approaching deadline, but wow would it make a clever TV show.  The likes of a Charlie Kaufman script!  People will be comparing him to Wes Anderson!  The show eventually gets picked up, he writes a detective novel, and bores everyone to death.

I read a review of the series somewhere online recently, in which someone compared the show to a Wes Anderson movie with a little bit of Kevin Smith thrown in.  Is that really what you want your show to be?  I love Wes Anderson, although I will say this show is nothing close to the caliber of The Royal Tenenbaums, and I’d be proud to have something I did compared to his work.  But do people *really* want to be like Kevin Smith?  Isn’t he a little over?  Or maybe it’s just that I’ve never been a fan.

Anyway, this will probably be the last episode of this series I’ll watch.  There won’t be any new episodes for like a year, and my guess is I’ll fill the void in my TV schedule with something else.  Mind you, I didn’t say something better, I said something else.

Ah, we open on the ocean.  I love that Dexter takes the whole family out in his boat, especially since we have seen little of the boat this season.

A body is found, ish.  Some dude cuts open an alligator and finds an arm in it.  Cept the alligator didn’t eat the girl alive, she was dead already, so we have a homicide!  Which leads to Dexter killing his first innocent person.  But we’ll get to that.

Deb is moving into Dexter’s old apartment, which seems hard on Dexter.  Quinn is helping her move in, I guess he’s a nice guy all of a sudden?  He and Dexter exchange words outside the door, and I hate to criticize Dex, but he should really avoid confrontation with Quinn.  Didn’t he learn anything from the issues with Sgt. Doakes!

The dead girl was a sometimes model, and the photographer likes to take pretty weird pictures, like gets the girls naked and all beat up.  Dexter says “Even I’m disturbed by this“, and I would have to agree.  It’s difficult as a woman to see these pictures, the vulnerability of women glamorized.  I always worry that images like this will reinforce the idea in some people’s heads that abuse is okay, simply because it’s shown in the form of beauty.

Dexter goes on a tree cutting trip with Arthur, who seems really grumpy for no reason, and accidentally hits a deer.  He freaks out at the idea of killing it.  Weird.

Another great Dexter line from this episode is “I’m not a young sailor, Cody is.  I’m a 30 something sailor.“  See, he gets the idea from Arthur that you should encourage your kids to go do stuff, explore themselves, so he introduces Cody to the young sailors program.  And then gets roped into taking some of the kids out camping/sailing.

One of their activities is telling scary stories, which Dexter is hilariously not good at.  He starts telling the story of Trinity…and gets interrupted by the other dad there cuz it’s toooooooo much!

Back to the innocent person death…Dexter, and the Miami PD, think the photographer guy killed the alligator lady.  They can’t get a warrant to search his place, though, so they’re kind of at a dead end.  This doesn’t stop Dexter, natch, so he nabs the guy and kills him.  While he’s talking with the guy, he protests that he didn’t kill anyone, and I thought “Maybe he really didn’t.”  But Dexter is so spot on that I didn’t think much more of it.  Turns out it was the assistant!  Ruh roh!

I’m interested to see how this affects Dexter in the future, and since I’m behind a week anyway, I’m sure the answer is partially on my DVR already.  But I am patiently waiting until I catch up on my other shows.

Also, Arthur was building a coffin.  For who?

*****

If this seems totally disjointed, I apologize.  I am sleep deprived.  Jobs will do that.