NBC announced today that it has renewed daytime soap-opera stalwart Days of Our Lives for 2 more seasons. The announcement comes on the show’s 45th anniversary. Fans of the genre (their numbers ever dwindling) should be especially pleased with this news, as the climate for daytime soaps has been anything but certain in the last few years.
Despite Kaley Cuoco’s return from a horseback riding accident, The Apology Insufficiency marks a new season-4 low. In fact, the opening sequence, wherein our four favorite ‘so-smart-their-dumb’ geek’s discuss capybara’s (a rodent the size of a baby hippo), Leonard’s new approach to dating and Howard’s impending FBI background check, is as humorless as any I’ve seen in the show’s 4-year run.
Everything Is Illumenated marks both season 5’s halfway point and the season’s best episode to date. It’s not a perfect episode—certain plot points come across as badly contrived—but the faults are easily overlooked (including the title’s corny pun).
Leonard’s dry spell with women ends in The Irish Pub Formulation, but the woman he scores with makes for an awkward state of affairs within his geeky, ‘so-smart-their-dumb’ peer group; it also forces Sheldon into the position of keeping a secret, and, even worse, it forces him to serve as Leonard’s voice of reason. Wow; that can’t end well.
Season 5’s measured pacing continues in First Blood, an episode that works almost as well as a stand-alone outing as it does as a piece of season 5’s overarching story.
Even an appearance by Amy Farrah Fowler couldn’t stop The Desperation Emanation from largely falling flat. This wasn’t a terrible episode, but it’s certainly season 4’s least amusing to date. The opening segment, in fact, is a decent preview of the episode that follows; Leonard and Sheldon’s banter regarding girlfriends and “Hulk” movies and jealousy was typical “Bang” stuff, minus any true laugh-out-loud moments.
Despite little tension or suspense, “Beauty and the Beast,” is nonetheless season 5’s most entertaining, emotionally satisfying episode to date, with Julia Stiles giving a knockout performance. Playing Lumen Pierce, the final victim of deceased serial killer Boyd Fowler, Stiles is animalistic and raw, vulnerable and utterly convincing.
The love of Howard’s life, Bernadette (Melissa Rauch), returns in 'The Hot Troll Deviation'. In the episode’s opening, Howard’s having lunch at The Cheesecake Factory with Sheldon, Leonard and Raj, when Bernadette—who waitresses there—passes by. He hasn’t seen her since breaking up; unsure how to act—sophisticated and relaxed, friendly, noncommittal or cold and distant—he opts for pathetic and frightened, hitting the floor hard enough to break something and hiding under the table.
“Practically Perfect” opens on a funny note, with Deb questioning a young woman as if performing a police interrogation. “I wasn’t expecting these kinds of questions,” the young woman says and we learn she’s interviewing to become Harrison’s nanny. With Deb’s unrelenting assistance, Dexter eventually settles on Sonya (Maria Doyle Kennedy), an Irish woman with a nursing degree who seems to have a magic touch.
In his almost 40-year Hollywood career, Wes Craven has been responsible for some of horror’s best-known titles. Some of those have become genre classics (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream), while others are remembered—or forgotten—for more notorious reasons (Deadly Friend, Shocker). Unfortunately, My Soul to Take falls into the latter category—and not by a little bit either; this may be the most poorly-written, convoluted, confusing, contradictory film I’ve seen this year; it’s without doubt the worst horror film I’ve seen in 2010.
