The Strange World of Thomas P. Coombe

Fringe: Inglourious Walter

  How grateful do Fringe's producers have to be to John Noble?

 No matter how weak or uneven an episode is, Noble elevates it, either through humor, gravity, or both.

 Take this week's installment, the third in a string of fairly disposable self-contained episodes.

 It actually started off with a very unsettling opening, in which half the guests at a Jewish wedding are killed by suffocation.

 And it featured an interesting villain: a super-polite Nazi who may or may not have been over 100 years old. (Politeness and charm aside, he was still no Hans Landa). 

Damages Season Premiere: Patty Don't Lose That Number

 Let's just hope we're not in a Charlie Brown lining up to kick the football situation here.

 Last season, Damages held so much promise: an amazing supporting cast in a suspenseful, twisty story, with enough little idiosyncrasies to move it beyond just a standard thriller.

 (Case in point: a scene in the fifth episode of last season in which a CEO -- dressed in drag -- beats the crap out of another executive in a bathroom. It did little to further the plot, but it was so imaginatively staged and set up that it's stuck with me.)

 But by the end, it all sort of fell apart. The elaborate storyline just didn't hold together, and a lot of good actors weren't given enough to do.

 And here we are, at the start of the third season, with a whole new crop of top notch actors joining the cast (Campbell Scott, Martin Short, Keith Carradine and Lily Tomlin) and whole new Byzantine conspiracy to unravel. (This season, like the previous two, features a flashforward mystery, although this year's is the most promising). 

 Ready for the kick-off, Charlie Brown?

Big Love: Capitol Offense

  Big Love is at its best when it takes its characters as far away from their comfort zones as possible, something we saw last season during "Come Ye Saints." 

That was an episode that featured very little of the show's normal intrigue -- no Roman, no Alby, no compound -- yet managed to be riveting as the Henricksons embarked on a cross-country vacation that daughter Sara likened to -- not that inaccurately -- a "death march." Secrets were revealed, buttons were pushed, and a miserable time was had by all. It was great.

 And while it wasn't really feasible to have the entire family away on a roadtrip, "Strange Bedfellows" featured enough traveling and transgression to give this season the forward momentum it needs.

Supernatural Movies and the Curse of "Supernatural"

 Given the choice, I'd pick a bad movie over a mediocre one any day. If you see a movie that warrants nothing more than a "meh" after the credits roll, you haven't been given a lot to digest. 

 But if a movie does a lot of things wrong, it gives you a lot to think about and discuss when it's over.

 Take the new horror/action movie Legion. Watching it yesterday, I thought about a lot of things:

•  How many of the actors in it -- Dennis Quaid, Lucas Black, Adrianne Palicki of Friday Night Lights, Charles S. Dutton and Paul Bettany -- deserved better.
• How it had two screenwriters, but didn't feel like something two people collaborated on. Rather, it felt more like one person wrote the (better, promising) first half of the movie, while someone else came along and hammered out the (ridiculous, boring) second.
• How it contained some fairly horrific imagery (like the ice cream man, pictured) which belonged in a better movie. 
• How wasted the ice cream man scene was. It starts off well-enough: We hear the chimes of an ice cream truck coming out of the darkness. The driver gets out, contorts his body into a weird spider shape...and gets gunned down almost immediately.
• How any of the scariness or tension the movie might have built up early on was washed away by the appearance of winged angels in armor.

 Mainly, I just thought how Sam and Dean Winchester would have handled things a lot better than anyone in this movie.

The Office: Michael Scott's Greatest Hits

 Not a good way to begin 2010, Office, especially after being off the air for over a month. As TIME's James Poniewozik pointed out, clips shows seem like something that from an earlier, forgotten sitcom age.

 Yeah, it was fun seeing the parade of disasters that have befallen Dunder-Mifflin over the course of six seasons (including the fire drill and Michael, Dwight and Andy's parkour attempts). And despite devoting a lot of its running time to clips of old episodes, "The Banker" actually gave the underused Toby more screen time than he's had in awhile.

 All the same, in the era of YouTube, Hulu and mass DVD ownership, I don't know that I need to see all of Jim's pranks on Dwight, or a lengthy valentine to his relationship with Pam.

 Worst of all, the framing device (a banker visits Dunder Mifflin to assess its value) had a lot of promising start. Michael's version of a hip, cutting edge company was pretty hilarious: the younger, thinner "Fake Stanley," Dwight serving as Computron, Pam as the multi-lingual international liaison, and Andy landing the NFL as a client. 

 Plus, you had David Costabile (who played the creepy Det. Messer on Damages, and will soon join the cast of Breaking Bad) as the banker. Too bad it was all stuck in the middle of an outdated cliche.

 Tom Coombe

  

24's First Four Hours

 There was a time when I had to argue that 24 wasn't a conservative show.

 I'd point out that in the months leading up to the start of the Iraq war, 24's entire plot centered around Jack trying to stop a war based on faulty intelligence. 

 Or I'd note that the show's villains were likely to be white male industrialists (or in the case of one flat-out awesome season, THE PRESIDENT) rather than Middle Easterners.

 But it's pointless to think about 24's politics anymore, at least not in any serious fashion. It's not liberal or conservative. They practice Bauerism, the belief that in any given situation, Jack Bauer will make the right call. 

 And when CTU and (with luck) the White House are peopled with devot Bauerists, then 24 rocks. When they're not, the show lags, and that's been one of the only real problems so far this season (which is actually one-sixth of the way over just as it's starting). We know by now that Jack is always right, yet we have to suffer through people doubting him, while time and lives are lost. Why give him dull bureaucrats for enemies when the Russian mob is out there?

 Still, it's nice to have Jack back in action, even if the actual action was in short supply these first few hours. (Although he did dispatch two machine gun wielding bad guys with a fire axe in the first hour, so it's hard to complain too much.) And it's neat to see a lot of interesting actors in the cast: 

 Doug Hutchison (he was on Lost this past season, but will forever be remembered as Eugene Tooms, the guy who could squeeze himself into any space on The X-Files) shows up early on as an assassin. Anil Kapoor, who played the game show host in Slumdog Millionaire, has a fairly large role as the president of a fictional Middle Eastern country which we'll call Fakeistan. And Katee Sackhoff, who was so, so good as Starbuck on Battlestar Galactica, has sort of a thankless role as a CTU analyst with a secret past. It's doubly unfortunate that this storyline is relentlessly dull, and pretty much slams the brakes on the show whenever it pops up.

 On the plus side, 24 isn't a show with a great attention span. It's 8 p.m. now in Jackland. By midnight, new threats and new stories are sure to have emerged.

 Other thoughts:

•  I should mention the return of Annie Werschling (pictured) as Renne Walker, the FBI agent introduced last season and perhaps the only character as ruthless as Jack who wasn't also a criminal or terrorist. Of course, she makes her big entrance into this season by hacking a guy's hand off. Sort of like the time Jack beheaded a guy to protect his cover. (Way back in season 2, folks). He's clearly taught her a little too well.
• The new CTU set looks like a high-end coffee shop.
• This will be the first time since day one of 24 that most of the action in the first half of the season takes place at night. I remember reading that going into the second season, one of the things the producers did to make the show more accessible was to set the first part of it during the day. At this point, 24 has won its audience.
• I was glad to see Kim encourage Jack to stay at CTU, rather than subject us to a tiresome "you've chosen work over your family" argument.
• And that's it for, well, most of the season. Damages returns to TV next week, and that will take up much of my Monday night blog time. But you can follow my 24-related thoughts over on Twitter.

 Tom Coombe

Big Love: (Not) Going to the Chapel

 I have to compress four hours of 24 (that's 1/6 of the season) into a single blog entry late tonight, which means I need to skimp on this week's Big Love and write about it in the lazy, bullet-points style. Spoilers are ahead:

•  First off, I thought this week was a significant improvement over last week's premiere, in part because we spent as little time with Juniper Creek as possible, and Bill's parents didn't appear at all.
• Also keeping a somewhat low-profile was Chloe Sevigny's Nicki, but what little we got of her showed us why she deserved that Golden Globe last night.
• With Roman dead and Alby part of a plot line that paints in a far more sympathetic light, it falls to Zeljko Ivanek's J.J. to serve as this season's villain. So far, great job by him, and by the writers, who added the very creepy touch of J.J. having no fingernails. Of course, Ivanek might have yanked them out for real in an extreme bit of method acting.
• Speaking of good acting, let's hear it for Aaron Paul as Scott. Actually, it's only an impressive performance if you've seen him on Breaking Bad. The perpetually frantic meth dealer Jesse is nothing like Scott, who's almost a saint (and not just by comparison).
• It's nice to see Margene growing up, asserting her independence. Of course, making $134,000 a year will allow you to do that.
• That was a pretty lengthy, public kiss between Alby and Dale, huh?
• The thing about Bill a prophet: he'd actually be good at it, and it would be just a much a nightmare as when Roman was in charge, only a different kind of nightmare. Roman ran things out of cynical self-interest. Bill would rule thinking he had God on his side, allowing him to put his every whim into practice. Hell, he does that now. 
• Gotta say, I'm not interested in the casino, or in the fact that Barb is gonna hook up with Adam Beach.
• Next week: Sissy Spacek puts Bill in his place (and hopefully uses telekinesis to do so!).

 Tom Coombe

Fringe: The Camera Doesn't Lie

  At first glance, "Johari Window" seemed like a descendant of the classic X-Files episode "Home," in which Mulder and Scully investigate a family of inbred mutants.

 Fortunately and unfortunately, Fringe chose not to go that route.

 I say unfortunately because "Home" was a pretty creepy hour of TV, and this episode could have used more creepiness. On the whole, it felt almost as expendable as Monday's lost episode from last season.

 But on the plus side, "Johari Window" wound up having a rather thoughtful premise, with monsters who were more victims than villains.

Fringe: An Excellent Day For An Exorcism

  If you spend enough time in the mystery sections of bookstores these days, you'll find a lot of books based on different TV shows: 24, Monk, Psych, Burn Notice, Criminal Minds and the CSIs. They feature the characters from those shows, but take place in between episodes.

 The lost episode of Fringe that aired tonight -- the appropriately titled "Unearthed" -- felt like it could have been one of those books. The story was solid enough, all the familiar characters were there, but it was in no way essential to our overall understanding or enjoyment of the show.

 It didn't help that the episode was 1.) shown out of sequence, which meant the slightly jarring return of Charlie Francis and 2.) almost completely removed from the show's mythology, (a brief Observer appearance aside)..

Chuck: The Best Show I Probably Won't Be Blogging About

 I really like Chuck. Maybe not as much as some folks who write about TV, but it's really funny, exciting, fun, smart show.

 It's also a pain to write about. I tried last year, and felt like I was repeating myself every week. There's only so many times I can say what a funny, exciting, fun, smart show it is.

 That said, it's worth marking its return to TV, and noting how it's changed, and how it's stayed the same.

  At the end of season two, the computer in Chuck's head upgraded, allowing him to pick up random skills, like, say, kung fu. It was a plot line that allowed Chuck to finally become a "real spy," rather than an analyst constantly warned to stay out of danger. 

 At the same time, it didn't automatically turn Chuck into 007, meaning he's still somewhat awkward, just with better skills. One of the best things about Monday's episode was the new skills Chuck "downloaded": he taught himself how to dance, and learned to dig a bullet out of Casey's leg.

 Actually, it's a tough balance for the show's writers right now. No one would want to watch a show where Chuck turned into an ice-cold assassin, yet I'm hoping he can master his new abilities soon, because his conversations with his handlers about how he needs to focus are already getting old three episodes in.

 (Even older: Sarah and Chuck protesting that they're "just friends/just colleagues.")

 And Chuck's new powers haven't prevented the show to sticking to its roots. Chuck still has an exasperated sister, a job at the Buy More, and inept, crazy co-workers. (Although they were noticeably absent from Monday's episode, possibly because budget constraints have forced the show to use its supporting cast sparingly.) 

This isn't to say I'm never going to mention the show here on the blog. And it really seems to lend itself to Twitter. But I don't think I'll be doing the show, myself, or any readers any favors by doing one of these posts from week to week.

 Tom Coombe