If you’ve seen a Christmas movie made in the last 30 or 40 years, then you’ve seen A Merry Friggin’ Christmas. It’s a Gatling gun of holiday movie clichés played out by a cast of characters that almost do a disservice to the term “broad stereotype.”
Is it strange that in six episodes there's not been a single mention of Ralph's dad? Perhaps, but if you're one of those Scorpion fans that have felt this is a key component necessary to getting the full Scorpion experience, then this week you overactive mind's been calmed by the introduction of he who fathered everyone's favorite kid genius.
It's such a pertinent question to the ongoing storyline of The Walking Dead yet it's barely been addressed in nearly three episodes: What the heck happened to Beth? Even Beth's half-sister Maggie went off with Abraham and Co. on the mission to Washington last week without so much as saying to anyone, "Hey, if anyone finds Beth tell her..."
In medias res: a dramatic device in which you begin in the middle of the action. A number of shows have used this to tremendous effect, perhaps none so frequently and successfully as J.J. Abrams' Alias, which often began somewhere in the middle, and come to think of it also involved fancy parties and the recovery of some stolen object.
What about Bob? That was the question we were left with at the end of last week's The Walking Dead. The question could be scanned purely on the basis that several of the former residents of Terminus captured Bob, cut off his leg and were now eating it in front of him, but there was also the small matter of what happened at the food bank. Was Bob bit? Is that why he decided to take a weepy moonlight stroll outside the church? I postulated that possibility in last week's recap, and while I love being right, in this instance, I hate it too. Unfortunately for Gareth and Co., their fresh roast Bob leg was indeed tainted meat. But that was only the beginning for the troubles for everyone's favorite cannibals this week.
We've already sat through the premieres of Gotham and The Flash, and new seasons of Arrow and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and we've still got the premiere of iZombie and Netflix's Daredevil to get through before the TV year is over. But now, it's time for Constantine, NBC's highly anticipated series which debuted tonight.
Sometimes on super-teams, things just don't work out. For instance, did you know that the Hulk was only on The Avengers for the first couple of issues of the comic. In this week's Scorpion, we meet Mark Collins, who seems to have a lot in common with the Hulk: he's mean, he's angry, he's kind of a jerk, and he made kind of a big mess that our heroes have to clean up. Collins is clearly unbalanced, and we know this because all the team members - save Walter - tell Paige that he's pretty unbalanced. Worse still, his proximity to Walter makes Scorpion's fearless leader unbalanced as well. So, we have all these inter-personal conflicts in team dynamics, and a nuclear core in meltdown. What can possibly go wrong?
I didn't get a chance to address it in last week's review, but let's consider for a minute Eugene's weak explanation of this "cure." This is The Walking Dead, and as Rick reminded Carl and the audience this week, everything and everybody needs to be handled suspiciously. So last week, when Eugene was asked about his cure, he started with "You wouldn't understand," and went to "You wouldn't have the resources to do anything with it," before saying, "We're going to fight 'fire with fire,' and adjust some superbugs slightly to kill the dead." Not helping the fact is that Eugene (and his portrayer Josh McDermitt) sort of reminds me of Danny McBride, thus making it even more unlikely I can take what he has to say at face value, but the whether or not the survivors would follow Eugene to Washington and a New New World Order was the question of the week. But first, what's the story of this priest left all alone in the woods?
Of all the contentious issues that have plagued Barack Obama in his two terms as U.S. President, and there have been many, perhaps none are more simplistic and complicated in equal measure than the question of what to do with the detainee camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A facility that’s outlived its usefulness but remains politically sensitive for the implications of shutting it down, it still sits on the south-eastern shore of Cuba, with 149 men in custody, 76 of whom will never leave, but down from the original nearly 800 men who were held there. Camp X-Ray, the feature film debut of Robert Sattler, doesn’t have an answer, and even though the crux is film is to unnecessarily remind us that detainees are people too, it is regardless, a well-acted and compelling reminder.
If TV has taught me one thing, it's that unless you live in Las Vegas, no time spent in Las Vegas will ever end well. So it was with Scorpion's trek this week to Sin City, an energetic outing that pushed the nerd herd out of their comfort zone as they tried to prove to Agent Gallo, and themselves, that they're success battling threats to the Homeland can extend to solving the relatively minor problems of the private sector. The Scorpion gang quite nearly succeeds in impressing their rich tycoon client, but there's only one problem: they're framed for a casino heist. It's like Ocean's 11 only the team gets caught. And they didn't do it.
