Sunday, April 21, 2013

57 Channels and Only This Is On: 4/21/13



Mad Men: Maybe it was because there was only one hour this week or it featured the triumphant return of Trudy Campbell, but this episode was much more entertaining. Can we please, instead of continue to pop into the life of Fat Betty, just use all that screen time to see what Trudy is up to? Actually I wish the show would feature more Trudy and less Pete.
You can download Mad Men on iTunes.

The Voice: As I have stated multiple times, Blake is clearly the best coach on the show and I have agree with him more than any other judge when it comes to picking Battles and other decisions, but letting go of Caroline Glaser was a colossal mistake on his part. I actually do like Danielle Bradbery and glad she advanced (she was number 9 on my Blind Auditions Power Rankings) but there is just something special (or dare I say diaphanous) about Caroline’s voice where you just cannot dump her this soon in the competition. Thankfully Adam (and Usher) wisely went for the Steal. Hopefully she will turn into this year’s Amanda Brown for Adam.

What exactly is Blake doing this season? I remember last season he flat out said that he only want to take one country artist to the Live Shows (and did the same the previous two seasons) yet this season he placed a non-country artist with a country one and each time, the more country artist advanced, and considering Savannah Berry, his best country artist is yet to come he will at least have five country singers going to the Knockout Round (montage contestant Justin Rivers could make it a clean sweep). Maybe after two straight wins, he is going country or going bust this season. Too bad he did not tell Caroline and his other non-country contestants his plan when he was fighting for them in the Blind Auditions. So do not get comfortable Taylor Beckham and whoever he steals next, you probably will not be spending too much time on Team Blake.

Really the only other thing that stuck out to me this week is how dramatic the makeovers were. At her Blind Audition, Caroline was dressed like my grandmother but transformed into some hippie chic model (note to Caroline: wear your glasses more often, and by more often I mean always). But the most dramatic change was Amber Carrington who looked like she was dressed for a PTA meeting at her audition but looked significantly better when they put her hair up and a more fitting dress on her. And she won, and rightfully so. Sasha Allen just over sang the song and her flaws were very apparent while singing with Amber.


You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download songs from The Voice with the widget at right.

How I Met Your Mother: How disappointing that we did not get to see the wedding planner’s “redonkulous” body. But there again, there is always the internet where you can do an image search of Mircea Monroe. Ted was complete right.
You can stream recent episodes over at CBS.com. You can also download How I Met Your Mother on iTunes.

Dallas: The writers deserve a pass considering the conditions they were under while writing this season, but that was a really odd plot twist at the end. Essentially J.R. committed suicide just to frame Cliff Barnes for that murder. And it was a little weird that no one seemed to care that his henchmen killed him. You would think they would be a little mad that he let think J.R. was murdered and not tell them that J.R. was dying so they could at least say goodbye. But anyway. Now with Cliff and Rylan in jail (I do have a feeling the latter will be getting out by the second episode next season) apparently the big bad next season will be Elena. Alrighty. So all this time she grew up with some dude who would end up running a drug cartel?
You can download Dallas on iTunes.

Castle: My favorite part of the episode is they put handcuffs on Bigfoot without bothering to take off his costume. If Beckett was so skeptical about the existence of Bigfoot, then why did she have oversized handcuffs on her?
You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Castle on iTunes.

Survivor: Caramoan: All shows are guilty of hyperbole when it comes to promos, but Survivor may be the worst of them all. Finally the show lived up to the hype with “one of the craziest Tribal Councils EVER” (not so much with Dawn losing her mind over a lost retainer) with Malcolm pulling out his two Idols, then telling the dominate alliance that they have to turn on themselves. And who would have guessed that Erik, the Dumbest Survivor Contestant Ever, would be smart enough to point out it would wise to not play the Idol because no one would be stupid enough to vote for someone who says they are going to play it (keep in mind this season was filmed before Malcolm successfully pulled that same bluff last season). So even though Special Agent Sheppard ended up going home, it still was an entertaining Tribal.

That was until I went to sleep that night and thought about the episode and the history of Survivor. I racked my brains and could not think of a time when the producers of the show put a second Hidden Immunity back into the game post merge. Come to think of it, I could not remember a season when they put any more Hidden Immunity Idols back in play after they were used after the merge. So the episode started out with the Stealth R Us alliance having the numbers to easily vote out a member of the Douchebag even with a Hidden Immunity Idol because they had enough people to split the votes. Then during the episode, there is an Immunity Challenge that clearly favors athletic guys that Douchebag #1 wins fairly easily with Douchebag #3 in a close second (Douchebag #2 stupidly got eliminated) and then Douchebag #3 just happens to find a Hidden Immunity Idol even though none have been put back into the game after the merge before making them bullet proof at Tribal? That just does not pass the sniff test. I call shenanigans. That does not pass the sniff test
You can stream recent episodes over at CBS.com. You can also download Survivor: Philippines on iTunes.

Subugatory: I have been down on this season because they focused too much time on the adults, put Tessa in a boring relationship with a jock, and neutered Dalia. The last hour seemed like a reboot back to what I loved about the first season, even with an action film quality fight inn the halls of a high school. And I am not sure if I should be proud or embarrassed that I easily recognized the song on Lisa’s cat mix as It Must Have Been Love by Roxette. But that makes me wonder if you have to pay a licensing fee for a song if you recreate it with cat sounds? On a side note, if the show gets renewed, they need to figure out how to get Tessa to dance more next season.
You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Suburgatory on iTunes.

The Americans: I was reading a couple weeks ago how someone complained about this show saying that the show could go nowhere because we know how it ends (the Jennings will be on the losing side) which means the show will lose most of its tension. And though I doubt the Russians will end up winning the Cold War on the show, it is clear we are living in an alternative timeline where anything can happen, live a scientist and multiple FBI agents can be blown up (image if that happened today) or a Russian General being killed in the Mother Land. But the most fascinating part of this episode was that Elizabeth had some good old fashion American fun for the very first time.
You can download The Americans on iTunes.

Community: After a very long single shot opening, I thought they would not have a cut in the entire episode (sans the commercial breaks of course) and would have been much more interesting if they did. And goodness was Evil Annie extremely attractive. And despite airing the Christmas episode almost a month after Easter, the delay did have a timely Hannibal Lecter reference that now airs the same night.
You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Community on iTunes.

Hannibal: After the premiere, I was trolling the message board and came upon an interesting theory that Dr. Lecter was feeding human meat to Will in that dinner he prepared for him. I bring this up because this week Abigail asked, “He was feeding them (the girls her father killed) to us” to witch Dr. Lecter responded, “Very likely.” That pretty much confirms to me that he was feeding human remains to Will, and basically everyone he cooks a meal for.

Another basically confirmed mystery this episode is the Hannibal is the copycat killer. It certainly was not a coincidence that he heard Will’s lecture on how the copycat would never kill like that again, and as soon as the team returned Minnesota, another girl was hung up by antlers in a place Hannibal knew everyone would be the next day.

It is also surprising how great a character Abigail is (okay it should not be that surprising considering Bryan Fuller is involved and the guy knows how to make you feel something about bit characters). Who would of guess a teen girl could go toe to toe with Hannibal Lecter but I do hope they find ways to work her into the rest of the season. Those if she remains a key figure in the show, I have a feeling she will be dead or in jail by the end of the season.
You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Hannibal on iTunes.

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