Much much better this week. AND back to the Kate/Plane Crash arc, which further convinces me that last week was originally meant for the first season. Mozzie is much better randomly drinking wine and making Grease references. (I’ll bet Matt did play Danny Zucko at some point. Given his age and theater back-ground it’s nearly impossible for him not to have done at least one production of Grease somewhere along the line.)
The intro of the Sara was less than subtle, and there are definitely falling anvils for some future Neal/Sara, but as with Alex, I don’t dislike her and I loved that she didn’t need rescuing during either attempt on her life.
Neal’s discomfort during the “assassin” scene was so well played. “Somebody please stop me," in conjunction with the whole slicked hair and leather jacket. GUH. (I also liked the opportunity to get in a jab at Ayn Rand.)
This episode had wonderful examples of how to feed the slash-girls without going over-the-top or dropping anvils. My single favorite thing in the whole episode was the two bets that showed how well Peter and Neal know each other, followed by the fact that I’m sure Neal was deliberately imitating Peter’s mannerisms, when they were conning the guy at the airplane hangar.
Another bad process shot to keep El on the canvas. (You’re not fooling anyone guys.)
I’m very excited about the next episode: JOHN LAROQUETTE…who I believe will be our first duplicate guest star from House, although we’ve now had two duplicate episode titles. And no I’m NOT one of those “Oh Peter and Neal are just like House/Wilson, cause they’re not.” It’s just interesting to me.
Sendhil’s non-Mohinder accent continues to bug me. So I popped over to IMDB trying to figure out whether his American or British accent was more “real” and discovered that he’s married to Olga Sosnovska, who has double cool points for both MI-5 and lesbian snogging on All My Children. Unfortunately, Jai Wilcox still annoys me and his daddy issues aren’t terribly compelling. Not that I like Blind Guy much either, and if that’s what they’re setting up as a triangle, all I can say is ZZZZZZZ
However I will throw out some Kudos to Peter Gallagher. I can’t think of any actor who can exude smarm the way he does, and he’s been doing it brilliantly in three consecutive decades from Sex, Lies and Videotape to American Beauty and now this part. YOU GO PETER. Ooze away.
The bad news is that 5 episodes in and they’re already dealing with the same issues that essentially killed the “spy tv” genre in the early 70’s with the revelations of exactly what kind of shit our CIA had been up to during the Viet Nam era.
You can’t do a fun, snarky spy show, while angsting over the fact that being a spy means betraying people and that your agency does shitty stuff in the name of the “greater good.”
So either she’s going to harden up and accept that or keep whinging about it, and neither one makes for a very appealing character.
That was fun at the time, especially the bits with Sheriff Andy mooning over Jo, but in retrospect the Jack/Trevor “fight” over Allison is very retro and kind of nauseating, and I’m still hoping it’s basically a set-up for both of them to get blown out of the water when Nathan comes back.
Naturally Henry ends up buying himself a one-way ticket back to Woobie-ville. YUCK.
Also-STFU KEVIN!
Nice to see Tia Carrere, but other than that, this was just extremely unpleasant and mostly uninteresting. Best scene was Claudia telling Artie she got dumped and him being just a little too interested. (MY OTP WILL COME TO BE.)