Greetings Zayniacs! Well congratulations you lazy bums. Looks like Unknown wins a fabulous prize…because no one else even tried to answer. He’s not even right!!!
Let’s get to the TV.
Fringe: Great way to kick off the final season. I think it was really ballsy for us to just jump right back to 2036 but hey, the only people still watching at this point are the fans.
Doctor Who: Yup, I teared up, just as expected. Curse you Stephen Moffat.
The Amazing Race: A solid start to the season. No team came off as completely insufferable like several of the teams last year, most of whom ended up in the finale somehow.
The Good Wife: Wow, what a way to kick off the new season.
Once Upon a Time: Rocked my freaking face off.
Family Guy: Eh, an okay episode. Not too many laugh out loud moments
Revenge: Didn’t disappoint.
There’s only two people that read this that I know of that watch Fringe and I’ll probably be discussing it with them individually so unless someone speaks out in the comments (not likely, I can’t even tempt you people with prizes), I’m just going to pass on a more detailed review.
Ditto Doctor Who.
Over the past couple years, I’ve realized that I do like some reality TV, but it has to have some kind of competition involved and have minimal “reality drama”. One of the reasons I disliked last season of The Amazing Race was because a team from Big Brother caused so much unnecessary drama that it became tiresome to watch. However, in the premiere, I don’t see any teams that will cause it on the level that those two did. There will of course be the same level of screaming and mental breakdowns that we all know and love on the show but there’s a fine line for me.
The Good Wife is a show I’ve been pushing for a long time now. I watched the premiere 3 years ago out of curiosity and liking Josh Charles (Sports Night) and Matt Czuchry (Gilmore Girls). What I stumbled into was an extremely well acted legal show that focused more on plot and character arcs while maintaining a secondary, yet still entertaining case of the week. The cast continues to impress me and the guest stars of this show have been nothing but stellar. This year will be no exception. Nathan Lane, Kristen Chenoweth, Maura Tierney, and Amanda Peet are just a few of the actors who have signed on this year, most for recurring roles. I cannot stress how much I love this show. Most of the problems I had with the pacing of last season were solved when I re-watched the season on DVD. Apparently, it was CBS’s moronic airing schedule and not the actual show at fault for not pulling me in as much as previous years. Hopefully, the show will have a more consistent airing schedule this year and we can enjoy another well-written and expertly-acted year.
Once Upon a Time had every reason in the world to fail. It was about fairy tale characters that got moved to the real world with no memory of who they used to be. However, we would still flashback to their fairy tale lives where the world was largely created as CGI environments. Despite all that, the first season became the #1 new show of last season. The show did stumble around a little bit in the middle of the season but I thought they really finished strong. The other concern I had about the show was that, being run by LOST writers, they would fall into a similar trap of building mysteries and plotlines without ever resolving things. I thought the curse would last for a long time. Thankfully, I was very wrong and the curse was broken in the finale. They all remember and in the final scene of the season, Rumplestiltskin brought magic to our world. I couldn’t wait to see where the show would take us.
Warning: Full Spoilers for last night’s episode follow. You have been warned.
So we start off with a regular guy in New York City going about his day. It starts raining and his window is still open. He can’t get it closed and then a bird flies in and drops a postcard from Storybrooke with one word written on it, “Broken”. My theory is that this is Rumple’s lost son Baelfire and he just had to wait for the curse to break before he could send a message out. Back in Storybrooke, we get the reunion we’ve waited a year for. Snow White, Prince Charming, Emma, and Henry are united all knowing who they are. Ginnifer Goodwin acted the crap out of that scene and I had watery eyes 5 minutes into the episode. (I appear to have been very emotional this weekend. Perhaps because I can’t get a simple comment out of 95% of my readers…but I’m not bitter) I’m glad that we didn’t drag this reunion out because there was plenty of tension to be had with Emma having a really hard time getting past the fact that she’s spent her entire life searching for them and they’ve been here the whole time. Granted, it’s been against their will but that emotional baggage doesn’t just disappear. Later, I liked when Charming and Snow were watching Emma walk up and Charming mutters, “don’t push it Snow”. Snow acknowledges this only to then immediately tell Emma that they “need to talk”. I think there is nothing but greatness to come out of all these interactions now that they know who they are.
In our fairty tale story this time, we get the awakening of Sleeping Beauty by Prince Phillip and his odd companion. She’s told she’s been asleep for a year. Their kingdom looks in shambles and why prince and princess suck face for 10 minutes, the companion takes a look around and is blown back by some kind of creature emerging from the ground in a blast and attacking. After the prince fends it off, the companion is revealed to be Mulan and the prince is marked for death by the wraith. In Storybrooke, we get to the parallel story of Mr. Gold using the newly restored magic to summon the wraith to suck the Evil Queen’s soul, effectively killing her but still leaving her technically alive to fulfill his promise to Belle.
Seeing Regina team up with The Swans (the Whites, the Charmings? I don’t know what to call them) was really entertaining. What I found really interesting was Emma apparently having the magic, no pun intended, touch when it came to getting the Mad Hatter’s hat to work. Apparently, an unpleasant side effect was Regina getting her, seemingly, full powers back. Emma and Snow fall through the portal to oblivion for some long overdue mother/daughter bonding. Back in fairy tale land, Phillip tried to be heroic and go to his death to protect Aurora and Mulan. They followed him however, only to watch him die. They returned to the place where Aurora was awakened and the truth comes out. While she was technically asleep for a year, their portion of the kingdom was somehow unaffected but frozen in time when Regina cast the curse 28 years ago. However, about a year ago, around the time Emma showed up in Storybrooke, time started up again in their kingdom. There’s apparently a safe haven with more people that they’ll be heading to together. First though, they hear a rustling in the rubble where the wraith came from. It’s Emma and Snow!
This premiere gave me everything on a character and plot level I could have wanted. We got the family reunion, we got new twists, and new mysteries. When news of the new characters this season started trickling in, I was curious how they would all come into play. When we met Aurora and Mulan, I assumed that we would meet their counterparts in Storybrooke during the episode and they would become recurring character there where Snow White would form an elite task force of ass-kicking princesses like in Shrek. However, they have no counterparts because they’re still in fairy tale land! I really liked this twist and then pairing Snow and Emma up with them should lead to some interesting stuff, particularly, the title of this post. I like that magic works differently in our world and seeing Regina try to use her powers and nothing coming out was awesome.
So who was the guy in New York? Who is Dr. Whale’s fairy tale counterpart, because Charming doesn’t recognize him? How will Emma and Snow get back? Will Regina take over the town by force now that she has her powers back? Personally, I can’t wait to watch and see the answers to all of these questions. Best of all, I have confidence that they will be answered in a timely fashion!
Unfortunately, Revenge is going to get the short end due to my extended review of Once. The premiere was very good. We picked up pretty much every plot thread at its logical next step. Our big flash forward mystery this year is “who is the dead body on Jack’s boat?” I’ll be curious to see how the season is plotted out this year. Due to the initial 13 episode order of Revenge, that was when they initially planned the Fire and Ice party to happen. However, they were popular so they got their full 22 pickup early and they pushed the reveal back a couple episodes and then moved the plot for the rest of the season forward from there. Since they know they have 22 episodes to work with, will that mystery last all season or will we get a similar setup with the big mystery serving as a closing of the summer and a jumping off point for the rest of the season? Future weeks may have a longer look at Revenge as opposed to Once. It will depend on the level of crazy of the episodes.
Alright, we’re starting to wind down a little bit on premieres. This week, there are only 4. On Tuesday, Raising Hope, which I’m considering not watching this year and Hart of Dixie, which I do not and will never watch. On Wednesday, Supernatural premieres and I couldn’t be more excited. Despite a lackluster finale to a decidedly mediocre season, the more I hear about what’s coming, the more excited I am. On Thursday, 30 Rock premieres its final season. It’s time for it to go. I just hope in can go out on a higher note than last season. Why am I telling you about the whole week right now? I’m not sure how much I’ll be writing this week. Starting now, this will probably be a weekly to semi-weekly blog. If an episode of something melts faces, I may come on and write a blurb, but there will not be daily rundowns of everything I’ve watched. If you’re disappointed, angry, joyous, or slipping into a depression spiral over this news, let me know in the comments (right…) and I would be happy to continue.
I hope you have all enjoyed a more extended look at premiere season this fall and I may be back for something similar in the winter. We’ll see.
Have a Great Day and Happy TV Watching!
Fringe was great. UnknownWife's concern that essentially most of the first 4 seasons is irrelevant with no more connection to the other universe and those events seemingly being mostly ignored remains.
ReplyDeleteWhen does psych come back?
Instead of some of your horrible selections above, I watched the rest of season 2 of sherlock and the premiere of the mentalist this weekend.
Sherlock was *insanely good*.
The mentalist I am holding judgement on, because it depends what happens in episode 2. If they go the route of "they stopped watching someone really important for 5 minutes and red john killed them", i'm going to be very disappointed, because they've used that "out" before, twice.
I watched some of the special features on season 4 of Fringe and they talked a little about their motivation behind season 4 and it made a lot of sense. I don't remember enough to write about it, I just know that I felt satisfied by the explanation. However, I also still wish they'd found a way to restore the memories of Walter and Astrid about the old universe. I choose to believe that they discovered how and did it between the last time we saw them and them being frozen in amber waiting for 2036.
ReplyDeletePsych's premiere has been pushed back to January 2013.
What horrible selections are you referring to?
I refuse to acknowledge The Mentalist as a show until they acknowledge they took a portion of their premise from Psych.