Gotham S1 E2: Selina Kyle

Here it is, another Monday and we taking a mean trip down to the dirty corrupt streets of Gotham City.      It has been a few weeks since the pilot episode and things might appear to be settled but they aren’t.  Bruce is trying to conquer his ‘fear’ by placing his head over an open flame and burning it, only stopping when Alfred comes in.  As of right now, I’m not a big fan of Alfred because he’s very rough around the edges and completely out of character for the Alfred that everyone knows from the various cartoons, comics and movies. He’s a mixture of anger and caring and probably has never taken care of a child on his own, which is evident when he first yells at Bruce for burning himself and then grabbing him and hugging him.

The girl that I am 99.99% sure is Selina Kyle, the future Catwoman, is in an alley with other homeless teens, playing with a necklace when a delivery truck comes up and a couple, Patty and Doug, come out that are rather odd, offering food to the teens as part of the Mayor’s Homeless Outreach Program.  As the teens rush forward, one of them turns to her and asks if she’s hungry, calling her Cat.  “Cat” shakes her head no all the while watching the kids eat, and the lady stabbing them with a needle of some kind in the neck. She freaks out and starts to hide in the shadows while one of the kids makes a break for it and Doug shoots the homeless guy trying to stop them.  Doug goes after the teen that made a break for but ends up throwing him through a window instead.  Have I mentioned that Patty and Doug are extremely creepy, probably something to do with how they are talking but still.

Next day Gordon is examining the body of the homeless guy while ‘Cat’ watches from a rooftop across the way.  The officer who is suppose to be first responder wasn’t at his post and when he gets back, Gordon off on him. The officer tells Gordon and Bullock that he had been called to a restaurant down the way where a kid had gone through a window.  Gordon and the officer get into it while Bullock tries to break it up.  Back at PD, Gordon and Bullock are talking to the teen.  Bullock is trying to intimidate the teen into confessing the murder of the homeless man but he keeps telling him that two people came and stabbed the other kids with a long needle before taking them away.   Bullock of course doesn’t believe him.  The kid, Macky, keeps telling them that Cat saw the whole thing but Bullock keeps telling him to tell him the truth or he is going to beat him.  Gordon pulls Bullock off to the side to have a conversation; telling Bullock he can’t beat him because he’s 16.  The two of them get into what is legal and what isn’t, and Bullock keeps egging him on about what he did and Gordon can’t say damn shit because he’s protecting himself and Barbara.

Oswald is walking down the highway, awkwardly due to his injuries when an SVU with 2 college guys pulls up.  They do a stop and start on him a few times before letting him in and Oswald is his normal polite self until one of them makes a crack about him walking like a penguin and he ends up using his beer bottle to kill him.  Every time I see Oswald, he looks more and more like his future villain self, The Penguin.

Back at the station, Bullock complains to the Captain about Gordon and his self righteousness.  It definitely sounds like the Captain is as dirty as Bullock, what with her comment about thinking Gordon was with the program as well.  She asks for an update and Gordon tells her that if the kid is telling the truth then they have a couple of kidnappers that lure the kids with a food truck from the mayor’s outreach program and then drug them and take them.  Bullock doesn’t know why anyone would want to take a bunch of homeless kids since there isn’t a market for them whereas he could believe it if they were taking cute girls.  Skulking around outside is Edward Ngyma with results from Macky’s blood test.  He has found high levels of ATP which is a high level knock out drug that was once used at Arkham Asylum.  The captain wants them to keep their mouths shut to the press since its department policy because it can cause panic (no shit?!) and Gordon is still surprised when shit like this happens. The captain tells them to work the Arkham angle and Bullock is surprised since its has been closed for over a decade.  He also wants to know if they should get in touch with Fish Mooney since it happened on her territory or if she’s still mad at them.

At Fish Mooney’s club, Don Falcone shows up and observes as a young bartender exchange a look with Fish while pouring them wine and leaves.  Falcone tells Mooney about talking to Cobblepot before he ‘died’ and how trouble times were coming to them in Gotham. Mooney scoffs at this but Falcone tells her that he’s right because the Waynes and the Falcones are pillars in the community and understood each other (is he trying to imply that the Waynes were dirty too?) and now with the Waynes died, everything is out of balance.  Falcone tells Fish how Cobblepot said she had implied that he was old and soft and ready to be taken out and she will be the one to do it.  Fish denies this completely and she pledges her loyalty to him.  He is glad to hear this and then asks about her lover, which she denies having except for having a boy that she keeps around for ‘exercise’.   He summons the bartender over and asks about his name and tells him not to break her heart because it will break his before he has his men beat the bartender up. After Falcone leaves, Mooney kicks everyone out.

Renee and her partner are interviewing Oswald’s mother about whether or not something could have happened to him.  She of course says he will be back because all of his clothes are there and he would never leave all of his clothes.  Montoya’s partner figures the cops must have killed him because he was a snitch and Montoya.  Montoya asks his mom if someone could have hurt him and his mother says some painted slut has him in her clutches…if she only knew.  Speaking of Cobblepot, he has stolen the clothes of one of boys as well as the SUV and is renting the trailer on some guys property.

Harvey and Gordon go to see Fish Mooney and Bullock asks if she’s still mad at them and she tells them of course not. Gordon asks if she knows anything about missing kids and it really seems like Fish is either trying to get under his skin or is hitting on him because she doesn’t answer him right away.  He gives her the profile of it being a couple, middle aged, targeting kids under 16 and Bullock chimes in to tell her that they are using a giant pin.  Fish tells him that once the market was for young girls but now there is a new buyer overseas that is willing to take anyone young and healthy.  Gordon wants information and Mooney tells him nobody knows and nobody cares to know.

That night Gordon is telling Barbara what has been happening on the case and how they can’t tell the press because of bad PR.  Barbara wants him to call in an anonymous tip and he won’t, so she does it herself and he gets, not mad at her but frustrated because he’s concerned for her and her safety but he can’t tell her what’s really going on.

Next day at work, Captain Essen throws down the paper that has the story of the missing children and wants to know the papers got the story.  Both Bullock and Gordon deny leaking it. Gordon tells the captain about how they have a thin lead, where only 3 companies still sell the drug and she authorizes them to get warrants to search all three. Bullock thinks Gordon was the one to spill and he denies it.

Meanwhile at one of the three drug companies, a man is talking to the two creepy kidnappers about wanting more money because of the trouble he could get from the cops in regards to the missing kids. He wants more money for the drugs and kids or he’s going to kill them. The creepy woman mentions how someone called the Dollmaker needs those kids…which begs the question of who the Dollmaker is.  The creepy woman stabs the dealer’s hired muscle with a pin but before she can do anything to the dealer, Gordon and Bullock have arrived to question him.  Bullock asks Gordon if it was his girl, and Gordon admits that it was.

The creepy lady is in front of the store acting as if she is there and Bullock starts questioning the owner, Mr. Quillian, about his stock.  He makes a reference to the Wayne Foundation thinking of reopening Arkham Asylum which makes me wonder if this is in reference to something that will happen later this season.

After a shootout that has the creepy couple escaping, a brief conversation with Mr. Quillian, Gordon finds his cleaning guy about to shoot the kids in the basement and shoots him first. The mayor calls a press conference congratulating Bullock and Gordon for finding the missing kids but that the perpetrators were still out there.  He plans to have all the home kids either put into foster homes or juvenile detention centers.   Let’s hear it for crooked government officials!

After leaving the captain’s office, where Gordon basically accused the mayor of putting children into prison without a trial, Gordon is told that a man is waiting for him upstairs and it’s Alfred.  Alfred wants to know if Gordon can come visit them at the house tomorrow because he needs help with Bruce and Bruce respects Alfred.

The children are being loaded on to buses and Selina is trying to tell the lady that there’s been a mistake because she’s meant to talk to James Gordon, a cop.  This might be the most I have heard her speak in 2 episodes. The lady refuses to help and Selina storms on to the bus and takes a seat next to a crying little boy.  She tries to help him by telling him not to make friends with anyone too friendly and to go for their eyes.  The door to the bus is closed and it’s the creepy child-napping couple. Selina tries to escape but the creepy lady pulls out a gun and tells her to sit down and the next person to stand up gets shot in the head.  Of course none of the cops notice anything going on and off the bus goes.

The mayor comes storming in to the captain’s office about the missing bus full of children and needs to know that the people who took it wasn’t the snatchers. The captain tells him it is very probable that it was.  Meanwhile Bullock is beating the shit out of Mr. Quillian and tells him that usually Gordon doesn’t like him beating people up but for him he isn’t stopping him because the lives of 30 children are worth more than him.  Mr. Qullian gives them information on the truck and Gordon realizes that it’s a transportation company.

At a factory the creepy couple are unloading the bus when they realize that they only have 29 children instead of 30.  She goes to look on the bus and Selina is able to successfully hide from her and get off the bus. As they shut the shipping container full of children up, one of the guys comes screaming in about his eyes.  Selina has gouged his eyes out and has caused the rest of the people to go searching for her.  She when it looks like she is going to get caught (her necklace has fallen, alerting creepy lady of where she is) Gordon is able to knock her out while Bullock has gotten her partner.

At Wayne Manor Alfred is telling Gordon what has been going on with Bruce; he isn’t sleeping, he’s burning himself, he’s cutting, having terrible nightmares. Gordon asks if he’s getting help from a psychiatrist and Alfred says no because that’s a rule.  This confuses Gordon because now Alfred is the guardian, he makes the rules. Alfred tells Gordon that Bruce’s father left very strict instructions on how Bruce was to be raised if his parents died and that is how Alfred is going to raise him, which is basically to trust him to choose his own course (which in all honesty sounds like a complete disaster). Gordon wants to know why Alfred needs his help when Bruce pipes up that it’s because Alfred wants Gordon to talk some sense into Bruce.    Gordon asks Bruce what’s wrong and he should talk to someone about what he went through.  Bruce asks if talking helped Gordon with the terrible things he saw and when Gordon says yes, Bruce calls him on his lie.  Bruce wants to help the children and after talking to Gordon about how money won’t help them and they need someone to care for them, Bruce decides he will help but getting the children new clothes.

At the police station, Selina is upset that she is still being sent upstate.  Her social worker tells her that even if she didn’t have outstanding warrants, she is only 13 and they can’t have her on the street.  She demands to speak to Gordon or she is going to scream that the social worker has touched her inappropriately.   He gets Gordon who asks Selina who she is.  Selina tells him that she goes by Cat and she can help him because she knows that Mario Pepper didn’t kill the Waynes and she knows who did because she was there.

The episode ends with Oswald making a ransom call to one college boy still left alive but his parents don’t believe Oswald and think it’s all a prank. As the episode ends, I’m pretty confident in saying something bad is going to happen to that kid.

I have to say that I definitely liked this episode more than the first.  It had a much more slower pace and wasn’t inundated with new characters.  We continue to get more background on other characters and the realization that Gotham is a very dirty and corrupt town.  I loved learning more about Selina aka Cat and I can’t wait to see how it continues to unfold.

Once Upon A Time S4 E1: A Tale of Two Sisters

The excitement of a new season of Once Upon a Time is making me jump up and down on my bed.  I know this show can be completely ridiculous at times but I don’t care, I love this show.  I love the characters, I love the nonsense, I love the drama and I love the characters.  This season is starting off with introducing some new but recognizable characters from Disney’s hit Frozen.  It is also picking up pretty much where the season ended as in it is the very next day.

The episode starts with a ship in the middle of a terrible storm and waves crashing onto it. A woman is at a desk writing a letter when her husband tells her that they must leave because the ship is going down and she says not till she has finishes her letter to Anna and Elsa….it’s their parents and basically we are seeing the Once Upon a Time take of how they died from the movie.  Whatever their mother had written to them in the letter in the bottle, it was suppose to tell them the truth and save them.  The ship ends up being crushed by waves and then it is 5 years later and Anna (Elizabeth Lail) and Elsa (Georgina Haig) are at their parents’ graves.  As they leave the graves, Elsa tells Anna she has a surprise for her and that it is for her wedding.  So this is supposed to take place after the movie Frozen.

Meanwhile back in our world in present time, Elsa is coming out of the barn and makes her way down the road when she encounters the sign stating that she is in Storybrooke.  Which of course makes her completely confused because she doesn’t know where that is but then again as an audience member, we have no idea what she has been up to that caused to get locked in that bottle.  We also get to see the fall out of what happened when Emma brought Marian back from the dead.  Regina is obviously upset because she thought she was going to get her chance at love, Emma is feeling incredibly guilty about bringing her back and hurting Regina, and Robin is at a loss as to handle the fact that the woman he current loves (Regina) and the woman he thought he had loved and lost (Marian) are confronted for the first time.  I have to say I feel completely terrible for Regina because she has the worst luck ever when it comes to happiness but I also really like the fact that everyone who gathers around outside (Emma, Henry, Snow, Charming, and Killian) are basically there to support Regina while Marian kind of goes ‘WTF?!’ because to her Regina is still the monster known as the Evil Queen.  Granted sometimes I really want to shake Charming and Snow for how they treat Regina like she can’t change.

Elsa is getting her first taste of Storybrooke but almost getting hit by a car driven by Sleepy, who had fallen asleep, and Grumpy.  Then when she is in the town itself, she almost gets hit by a man on a motorcycle.  As she glances around, she sees a wedding dress and it takes her back to a memory of her and Anna.

Anna is trying to guess what Elsa’s surprise and is a little put out that it is just an attic.  Elsa takes her to a cupboard and opens it to reveal that it’s their mother’s wedding dress.  She wants Anna to wear the dress for her wedding and she also gives her a snowflake necklace.  While Anna is trying on the dress, Elsa is going through the room and they have this cute sisterly exchange.  Elsa finds her mother’s diary and believes that her parents death is all her fault.

Back in our world, Rumple is at Baefire/Neal’s grave and he has a very touching, emotional scene talking to his grave about becoming the man that Neal had died for.  Though when he pulls out the dagger from his coat pocket I’m surprised that no one has seen the outline of it, but let’s just chalk that up to magic ;).  Speaking of heartache, the next day Robin goes to see Regina and basically tells her that ‘while yes I do love and care for you, I made a pledge and vow to Marian’ and then he leaves her.  The scene is made even worse because she is sitting there and looking like there is hope for them before he starts talking about his pledge and then as he breaks her heart, a lone tear is falling from her eye. In her anger a mirror behind her breaks and as she picks up a chard she gets an evil look and makes her way to the psych ward of the hospital to where her ‘mirror’ is, telling him that she needs his help again.  Poor Sidney is under the assumption that she was just keeping him around till she needs him, always a thought in her mind when in actually she completely forgot about [like most viewers probably did as well].

I have no idea whose house that is, that Belle found but I fucking love it.  The house is gorgeous.  Belle wants to use the house for their honeymoon and Rumple seems to be in agreement.  As she shows him the house, he quickly freezes her to replace the fake dagger with the real one before unfreezing her.  As she goes to show him her favorite place, he sees a knickknack on the table that makes him pause, which as a viewer makes me want to know how he recognizes it.  Belle takes him to the library/ballroom and I have to admit 2 things here; one I want a room like that but probably less windows and more bookcases and two, I love Belle’s style and I wish I could wear half of what she does.  And like a true Romantic, Rumple transforms her Belle into a beautiful [and iconic] yellow/gold ball gown, himself into a blue suit [also rather iconic], with a gramophone playing an instrumental version of “Beauty and the Beast”…and I may or may not have completely squealed in joy, jealously, and in the adorable romanticism of it all.

The Charming family (or is it the White family? What is Charmings’ last name?) strolls down the street, Emma keeps trying to reach Regina while David and Snow stare at their adorable baby son. Henry decides to give it a try in trying to contact Regina with David going with him while Emma and Snow have this cute mother/daughter/former roommates/bff scene.  Emma is sort of at a loss in how to handle her…thing…with Hook/Killian because its something completely new and different for her.  And of course that is when he shows up, and like the epic schoolgirl that I apparently channel at times, can’t help but cheer and root for him to get his woman…also I completely adore Killian.  Killian calls Emma out on trying to avoid him and she says that they are in the middle of a crisis and he tells her that she should start living her life during them or she might miss it.  You can totally tell that he is a little annoyed about how one step forward, three steps back their relationship is.  And just before she can respond, Leroy and Sleepy come rushing up to tell her about how they are under attack by something that had frozen their van over.  Leroy wants to know who has that kind of magic and Emma suggests maybe the person who made the ice trail.

Back in the past with Anna and Elsa, Elsa is having her own pity party with snowflakes falling around her.  Anna finds her and finds out why Elsa was so upset is because what is written in their mother’s diary.  Elsa says that their parents because they thought her a monster and Anna refuses to believe it, and drags her to her future in-laws to prove it.

Emma and Killian follow the trail of ice and end up finding a giant snow monster (MARSHMALLOW!!!) and Killian of course states that, that was a new one.

Anna and Elsa go to see the trolls, and Elsa keeps trying to get Anna to go back and do planning for the wedding. Can I just say how awesome it was to see the trolls on OUAT, especially since I didn’t think that would be something we would get to see since there won’t be any Olaf.  Grand pappi tells them that he doesn’t know what they were doing but he knew that they were going to Misthaven.  Anna is the ever optimist and tells Elsa that they have answers now and Elsa tells her that they have more questions.  Anna wants to go to Misthaven but Elsa tells her that she, Elsa, can’t leave because Hans and his 12 angry brothers are out there just waiting to attack. So Anna tries to convince Elsa to let her go and how she will be right back and Elsa visibly gets upset because that is exactly what their parents said as well.

Back in our world, Emma and Killian start running from Marshmallow who just keeps following them.  Leory see’s Marshmallow and shouts about an evil snowman and Emma just has this complete putout look on her face.  As Elsa continues to hid, she picks up a newspaper at her feet and sees and image of Rumple and Belle in his shop with Anna’s necklace on the counter.  Marshmallow meanwhile is scared of the loud sounds and turns to make his way towards the forest.

Regina is filling Sidney in on Marian and how she is standing in the way of her happiness by fulfilling the happily ever after that the book has given her.  Sidney wants to know how Regina wants him to kill her, and Regina says she doesn’t want Sidney to kill her but rather she has to go back in time and undo Emma’s mistake by killing Marian before she can be saved. Sidney of course is confused as to how he can help Regina do this. Regina needs Sidney’s help in knowing when she had first captured Marian because she can’t remember her (love the comment about Marian being awfully vanilla, especially if you decided to take it to a dirty place it gives it that line a whole new meaning) but Sidney still doesn’t know how he can help since he isn’t the magic mirror anymore.  Of course that’s when Regina puts him back in the mirror and he flips his lid but Regina tells him that its only temporary.  Sidney as the mirror shows Regina the scene of how she captured Marian.

While Storybrooke is going crazy over Marshmallow, Elsa is slowly making her way to Mr. Gold’s shop.  This leads to a flashback of her looking for Anna and decides to ask Sven and Kristoff if they have seen her. The relationship between Elsa and Kristoff is kinda hilarious because they are trying to get along for Anna’s sake but it just doesn’t seem to be working.  Kristoff is trying distract Elsa from where Anna is because Anna has decided to go to Misthaven to get the answers for Elsa….it obviously doesn’t work and Elsa rushes off to stop her.

In our world Emma, Killian, and David are in the woods lets Robin and his men (plus Marian) know about Marshmallow. Emma tries to tell Little John not to shoot because he only attacks when he feels threaten.  Killian and David tell Emma to use her magic to try and stop him and this only aggravates Marshmallow and knocks them out.  Marian tries to attack him but that doesn’t work except for putting her in his line of sight.  Regina comes out from behind a tree and looks between Marshmallow and Marian, who is pleading with her to save her life (Bitch calls her a monster less than 24 hours earlier but now wants her to save her life) when Regina disappears.  Right when Marian thinks she is going to die, Regina uses her magic to kill Marshmallow, which completely shocks Marian.  Marian tells Regina that maybe she isn’t a monster (bitch needs to shut her mouth), Regina welcomes her to Storybrooke and before Emma can talk to her, she disappears. Emma and Killian have a quiet moment to themselves (Hey Adam and Eddie, can we please get a scene of them cuddling together?!) and when everyone and Killian thinks she is going to kiss him, she steps back.  He calls her on her avoidance and she tells him that she feels guilty but before she leaves, she gives him a kiss and tells him to be patient and all I want to do is shake her, kiss him and lock the two in a closet together…but that’s just me.

One of the best scenes in the entire episode is when Emma is trying to talk to Regina and it zooms out so we can see both sides of the wall; with Regina in her office in the dark on the floor and Emma on the other side of the door where its bright and telling her that she is going to help her find her Happy Ending because that’s why Henry brought her to Storybrooke. Side note: I WANT Regina’s shoes.   Emma’s speech makes Regina think of how it’s the books fault not Marian and now she wants to find the writer of the book so that she can force them to give her, her happy ending.

At their honeymoon location Rumple can’t sleep and goes to look at the knickknack that caught his eye earlier and uses his dagger (which he took from Belle) to open it and it seems to have transformed into a magician’s hat.

Elsa is breaking into Mr. Gold’s shop to get Anna’s necklace which leads to a flashback to Elsa just getting to the harbor as the ship that Anna is on leaves.  Kristoff tells her that she has to let Anna do this and the reason he didn’t go with Anna is because she wanted him to stay so that Elsa wouldn’t be alone.  Elsa is worried about Anna going to Misthaven and wants to know why she has never heard of it and Kristoff tells her that she has probably heard it by the name the inhabitants know it as, the Enchanted Forest.  This part of the conversation is going on as Anna on the boat looks out to sea while touching her necklace.  Making a jump back to the present, Elsa swears she will find Anna while holding up the necklace.

I have to say that I’m really looking forward to seeing what happens next this season because Elsa isn’t trying to be a villain but she will do everything in her power to find her sister.  Also I am super intrigued to find out who actually wrote the book because that is definitely something that hasn’t been discussed in the last 3 seasons.  I have to say that I think they cast both Elsa and Anna perfectly but I’m on the fence about Kristoff.  Of course the episode has left us with tons of questions: What happened to Anna? Whose house is Rumple and Belle staying at? Who wrote the book?  Will Killian and Emma finally work it out?  How the hell is Robin gonna make it work with Marian when everyone knows he is suppose to be with Regina? Is Regina gonna be a villain again or while she just toe the line?

How to get away with Murder S1 E1: Pilot

Let’s talk about Shonda Rhimes newest show How to get away with Murder.  From the moment I saw the teaser trailer I was hooked, granted it was mainly due to the ever wonderful and amazingly talented Viola Davis but still I was hooked.  I already watch one of Shonda Rhimes’ shows in Scandal so I’m familiar with how out there the plots can be, how the characters can be and the drama.  I’m not expecting it to be the best show on television and I’m not expecting it to be terrible but I’m going open minded and curious.  Probably also a bit fascinated to see if I pick up any legal jargon since I work at a law office currently.

The episode starts at some kind of pep rally and out in the woods is a group of students talking about a murder that has happened and they are somehow involved in the death of this person.  2 students are for hiding the body while the other 2 are for leaving it where it is.  One of the students tells them that they have to flip a coin to make the decision and while they are all looking the coin in the air flipping, it jumps back to 3 months earlier.

There is a student riding his bike to a classroom making his way into a brick building of the law school and makes his way into a filled of students, listening into the conversations.  He sits in the front of the class only to have the student next to him that she’s engaged and the seating chart is in the front of the room.  He barely glances at the seating chart before another student tells him he is going to want to be sitting before she comes in, and he looks completely confused about what he means.  Before the conversation can continue the professor walks in and introduces herself as Professor Annalise Keating (Viola Davis) and the class is criminal law 100 or as she likes to call it ‘how to get away with murder’.

She tells her students that she will not be teaching them the law or how to theorize it but rather how to practice it in the courtroom like a real lawyer.  She brings up their first ‘case’ about the Aspirin Assassin aka Gina Sadowski and calls on a student, Connor Walsh (Jack Falahee), for the facts. Connor gives out the facts and she runs through the case while the student from the bike (who is still nameless at the moment) watches on in amazement.  After asking a general question and most students raising their hands, the girl he had sat next to, stands up to answer and introduces herself as Michaela Pratt (Aja Naomi King). Keating asks another question and ends up calling on the boy on the bike, whose name we finally learn is Wesley Gibbins (Alfred Enoch (and as a side note he played Dean Thomas in the Harry Potter series.)) and he has no idea what she is talking about because he only got accepted into the class two days prior from the wait list.  She simplifies the question for him and asks him again but he still has the deer in the headlights look and doesn’t respond. Instead another student answers it, a Laurel Castillo (Karla Souza), and gets flack for answering it when it wasn’t directed towards her.  Keating tells her never to take a learning opportunity from another student no matter how smart she thinks she is.  Connor Walsh asks Keating if she did it and Keating tells them to ask Gina herself because it isn’t an old case but rather one she took the previous week when Gina fired her former attorney.

At Keating’s office all the students are crowded around listening to Gina talk about how she became involved with supposed victim, her former boss Arthur Kaufman, and then on the last day at her job she was coming back from lunch to see Arthur being taken away by the paramedics.  She is crying as she tells them that she loved him and wouldn’t have wanted to hurt him.  Keating tells them that tomorrow they have one minute to present the best defense possible for the case and see if they can beat her current plan.  She informs Wesley that he will be going last, a terrible spot because no two students can put forth the same idea.  She is going to let them use the books in her office and talk to the people who know her well, her associates, Frank (Charlie Webber) and Bonnie (Liza Weil (Hey its Paris Gellar from Gilmore Girls and Amanda Tanner from Scandal)).  Keating tells the class as a final note that every year she invites the top four students to work for her and the top student get a statue of lady justice and they can turn it in at any time to get out of an exam.  During the speech about the statue we get little jumps to present day where Wesley had pulled it out of his bag covered in blood.

Wes is in his apartment trying to figure out a defense for the client and can’t think of anything because he thinks she’s guilty.  We get jumped back to the present and the coin has decided that they are going to move the body.  Connor and Wes are wrapping the body up in a carpet in Keating’s office, Michaela is standing not looking because she doesn’t agree to what is going on and Laurel has washed the statue and bleached the sink. The four students grab the carpet wrapped body and are about to leave when they see a cop outside asking about a car parked outside and they slowly drop the carpet wrapped body and step out. [You know they aren’t going to get caught so early on because that would defeat the purpose of the show.]  Connor says he can move the car since it’s his and the cop is asking them why they are in the law professor’s office/house.  Michaela quickly comes up with a story of how they were asked to take the old carpet to the bonfire and if the cop wants they can call her to prove their story granted she is out of town and had to go to a funeral.  This story along with some disturbance off scene convinces the cop to let them go and warns them to be careful because there are lots of crazies out tonight.

It’s back to 3 months earlier and the next day in class.  Michaela is up giving up idea for a defense by offering up the wife, Agnes, as a suspect. It goes on to show snippets of all the other students’ ideas while Wes is crossing out the list he had done for himself. Finally it is Wes’s turn and you can totally tell he is trying to pull something out of his ass and comes up with self-defense by saying she was suffering from Stockholm syndrome and the affair is proof of that.  Most of the class is treating his idea like a joke and when he moves to go stand with those that haven’t kept their seats Keating tells him to sit down.  She congratulates those that are able to keep their seats but that none of them have beat her approach which is to discredit the witness, introduce a new suspect and then bury the evidence by overwhelming the jury with so much information that they can’t help but rule it as not guilty.

The next day is the trial for the client and Michaela is running late.  It is Ms. Keating’s turn to question the witness, the first assistant. Michaela comes in, whispers something to Frank which leads her to whisper something to Ms Keating which she uses against the witness.  That being SPOILERS the witness is color blind so she can’t actually see what color the pill on Gina’s desk was. END SPOILER.  That night Wes is doing research when he comes across something and rides his bike over to Keating’s office/house.  He knocks on the door and when no one answers, he opens it and starts walking through when he hears a noise and it’s the professor getting it on with a guy.  She asks Wes what he is doing there and he says the door was open and tells her his idea but she disregards it because it’s a bad idea before kicking him out.

In the present time, the students are at a gas station while Connor is singing along to some Christmas carols because it’s annoying Michaela.  Wes comes back with a bag full of stuff and says it’s so that it looks like he was buying other stuff on camera.  We flash to 3 months in the past and Connor is a bar talking to another guy after bringing over a drink for him.  Connor is making moves on the guy by telling him he thinks he’s hot and lying to him by saying he works at the bank. He is using the guy he was hitting on, that happened to work at the Kaufman Company and in IT, to get information for the case before sleeping with him.  He gives the email to the professor who fudges to the court on how they got it.

As they break for the day, Laurel goes into the bathroom and sees the client Gina there with her face down and quietly makes her to a stall and watches as Agnes Kaufman comes into the bathroom.  You would expect a blow up between the wife and the mistress but nothing happened, instead Agnes just places a hand on Gina’s shoulder and Gina lightly puts her hand on top of it before leaving.  That night at what looks to be a mixer, Wes joins Michaela, Connor and some other students talking to another professor but one in psychology named Sam (Tom Verica).  Sam it turns out is Professor Keating’s husband and Wes is looking very confused because Sam was not the man he saw the professor with when he stopped by the other night.

Back in the present the students are trying to hid the body when they hear voices and quickly have to hid. Just when they think they are safe from the two students, Laurel’s phone begins to ring and its Frank calling her.  Michaela wants to know why Frank is calling Laurel which is when it jumps back to the past.  Laurel is talking to Frank about what she saw in the bathroom. Laurel realizes that Frank already knew that Gina probably did attempt to kill Arthur but to say it out loud would mean admitting that they are defending a guilty client.  Frank sort of goes off on her about young idealistic girls that never really make it because they end up at a corporate, pregnant and would rather stay home with the baby.  Laurel storms out and Bonnie tells Frank to stop screwing the students. Wes meanwhile can’t completely handle what is going on and goes to the bathroom where he is followed in by Professor Keating.  Wes says he’s not going to say anything and she tells Wes that she needs to apologize to him and tells him that she and her husband are trying to have a baby and its putting pressure on their marriage.  She stops again and then thanks him for keeping it between them and while it looks like she might be making a move on him, Wes hightails it out of there while Keating stops to compose herself and wipe her tears away.

At Keating’s office/house Bonnie and Frank are doing work on the case while the tv is on showing about the missing student Lila.  Sam and Annalise come home and Bonnie goes over to him, all smiles and sunshine and you can tell she has a thing for him.  Wes back at his place finds a bottle of alcohol from his neighbor Rebecca and asks if she wants to drink with him.  She tells him she can’t tonight and goes in.  Something is going on there because she is connected to the missing student’s boyfriend Griffin.

The next day in court the prosecution has a detective on the stand and showing video surveillance from a convenience store of Gina buying some aspirin. Keating gets pissed at Gina, Bonnie, and Frank for not sharing the information and not doing their jobs respectively.  The next day in court Keating calls her first witness, which is another detective and it happens to be the man she is having the affair with. Can we just get a holy fucking shit batman reaction…especially from Wes who recognizes him as the guy he saw.

Keating asks the detective where he was 2 nights ago when his partner got the tape.  He looks confused and she asks where he was, offering a suggestion of maybe he had been at home.  He says he had been at a friend’s house and she says its odd because his partner got the tape at 8 pm but it wasn’t logged in till 2 am.  She asks him if in the 12 years he has worked for the city of Philadelphia if he has ever known the cops to alter evidence/doctor surveillance to help the prosecution with a case and he says yes. You can tell that both Keating and the detective know their fling is over.

Gina is found innocent and Laurel watches as she and Agnes share a look before Agnes gets in the car with her husband.  Back in the classroom Keating is announcing who is joining the firm, first being the one that gets the prize statue, Connor.  She then calls Asher Millstone (Matt McGorry (he’s rather annoying and pompous)), Michaela, Laurel (who looks completely surprised but then looks at Frank), and because of the workload that has grown (as her excuse), Wes, who is as equally as shocked.

Wes talks to Keating after class and asks about the detective, who she says is her boyfriend.  Wes tells Keating that he doesn’t want the job after watching her get her boyfriend to lie on the stand and Keating says that the reason she gave him the job was because he can think quickly on his feet as seen by his self defense argument. She tells him to think hard about whether or not he wants the job.

The episode ends with the body of a woman being found at a sorority house water tank and the possibility that the student might be the missing girl, Lila.  Griffin, Lila’s boyfriend, storms into Rebecca’s apartment to show her the news while Sam is watching it while drinking and Keating comes in asking what is wrong. After being told, Keating tells her husband that she bet the boyfriend did it, and Sam responds with we shall see.

Back in the present in the wood; Connor, Michaela, Wes and Laurel, unroll the body before stacking wood and covering it in fluid. Wes says they need to all be in agreement before he strikes the match and waits for Michaela to add her agreement to the other two.  She says it’s the only way to destroy the evidence and so Wes strikes the match and throws it on the wood pile and we see it’s the body of Sam Keating.

What a way to end an episode.  The episode brought up some interesting questions that I hope we don’t have to wait too long for an answer.  Questions like what is going on between Rebecca and Griffin?  Why did Sam get killed and how does it involve the students? I have to say I’m looking forward to the next episode to see if it lives up to this first one.  It also shows what an amazing actress Viola Davis is when you watch her as Annalise Keating.

Forever S1 E2: Look Before You Leap

I have grown to accept that 90% of the time pilot episodes just plain suck. They are there to whet your appetite and make you keep coming back.  The second episode of Forever is probably 75% better than the first which means the third episode should be even better.

The episode begins with a girl in a taxi cab crying, freaking out and trying to reach someone on her cell phone but who isn’t answering. As starts go, this one is extremely vague and makes you wonder what the hell is going on.  She demands that the taxi driver stops the car and runs to the side of the bridge before climbing over the edge.  Next thing you know, you hear her scream as she falls and then see her body wash up.

In the morgue Henry is telling Detective Martinez and her partner that the guy with the ax in his head was an accidental death where as the woman found in the river was murdered.  The woman from the river being the young girl that we previously saw in the cab freaking out that had washed ashore.  Of course Martinez and her partner don’t believe him because the evidence at the moment is showing that she jumped and was not pushed. Jo is willing to look into it from what Henry has told her but her partner is still skeptical.

Back at the police department the Lt. (Lorraine Toussaint) asks Martinez why she is saying the jumper was a homicide when they have witnesses saying she jumped.  Martinez says it is because of Henry that she is looking at it as a homicide.  The Lt. tells her that they’ve got a whole board full of real homicides to investigate.

Lucas tells Henry that the police want to rule the jumper as a suicide but Henry refuses to do that.  Lucas also tells him that the girl’s parents want to talk to him but he doesn’t like talking to the families but before the discussion can go any further, he notices her parents coming through the morgue. Lucas quickly covers her up so that the parents don’t see her.  Her parents ask Henry what happens and he tells them that it looks like she has fallen from the bridge but they refuse to believe she would have killed herself.  Henry tells them he understand the pain they are going through and the girl’s father asks if he has any children and Henry hesitates before saying no, and her father tells him than he has no idea what they are going through.

In a flashback Henry and Abigail are talking about the baby they found in one of the camps and how they haven’t found any of his family yet.  He holds the baby and how the baby is attached himself to Henry and Abigail tells him that he’s in trouble because the baby isn’t going to let him go.

Back in the present Henry and Abe have this great interaction about feelings and emotions and getting involved with people’s lives.  Abe tells Henry he needs to make himself scarce for a few hours because he has a date coming over from e-harmony.  They have this great father son interaction that is sort of mind boggling since in reality Judd Hirsch is older than Ioan Gruffudd but on the show its suppose to be reverse.

Henry goes to the bridge where Vicky died to try and get some answers and he realizes that there was someone else on the bridge as well as what looks like the kind of ring one would use for mountain climbing.  As Henry gets back over the ledge of the bridge, after almost falling, he drops the metal rig and as he bends down to pick it up, he gets hit by a truck.  When the driver goes out to check on him, Henry has died and is now back in the river.

Henry has to call Abe to pick him up interrupting his date.  He tells Abe that being hit by the truck that way is the 22^nd most terrible way to die but he can prove that Vicky was killed now. The next morning at the office Lucas tells Henry that he was right about the paint chips under Vicky’s nails as well as finding skin particles.  Lucas also tells Henry that someone left a gift for him on his desk. Henry opens it to find a letter written to him from his ‘fan’ offering his condolences about his painful way of ‘dying’ the previous night.

Henry tells Martinez he can prove that there was someone else on the bridge with Vicky previous before hurries out to talk to Abe.  He tells Abe about the letter and showing it to him and goes on a mini rant about how he knows nothing about this man but he seems to know everything about Henry and how he is taunting him.  Abe tells him that he should be able to track where the paper the note was written on for him.  Martinez shows up at the shop to tell him that Vicky had checked into her flight which seems odd for someone that was planning on killing themselves.

Martinez and Henry go to Vicky’s school to do some digging and run into her parents in her dorm room.  Vicky’s parents tell them that she didn’t have a boyfriend at the time, that she was an outdoor enthusiast and how she had been busy working on a paper about a codex that her professor and a few other students had been working on.  Henry tells the mom not to worry because they would solve the case of who did this to Vicky.  As they leave the dorms, Martinez gets on his case about promising that even though they aren’t suppose to be working on it officially.  It’s a nice change to see Henry so gun ho about trying to solve it after denying wanting anything to do with the case previously.

Martinez and Henry go to met with her professor/advisor about the codex they are working on.  The student that takes them to meet the professor tells them that professor Browning is somewhat of a genius. Professor Browning tells them that Vicky was one of his brightest students and they were set to publish a paper about their findings when Vicky ‘died’.  After Martinez and Henry leave the professor, Henry tells her that they were having an affair. He knows this because she was wearing the professor’s scarf in the picture that was taken in her room and because of the cigarette stains on her sheets and since she wasn’t a smoker it figured that her lover must be.  The professor had admitted to him that every now and then he gave into his vices i.e. smoking. Martinez and Henry go to talk to the Professor’s wife about his alibi and it comes out from his wife that her husband never actually showed up to the opera. They test the DNA from the pen he was chewing on to the skin samples under Vicky’s nails and find a match.

As Martinez is questioning the Professor, Henry realizes that the Professor couldn’t have killed Vicky due to a skin condition and even though all the evidence points to him, Henry is sure he didn’t do it. Henry asks Abe why he made him get involved with this case because now an innocent man sits in prison and Henry put him there.  Abe asks how he knows his innocent because of all the lies he told but Henry doesn’t believe that because of how meticulous the crime was planned out.  If the professor had done it, it would have been a crime of passion not so thoughtfully planned.

Abe shows Henry what he has found out about the letter.  The paper was for a mill in Milan that got destroyed in World War II and the crest at the top of the page from a local hotel in the area, the Hotel Montoliogne, which has been closed for the last 60 years.  While the hotel’s name means nothing to Abe, it does to Henry.  In a flashback to 1945 Henry is writing a letter on the hotel paper (the same of his ‘fan’ letter) to Abigail as she sleeps in bed.  As he is leaving, she chases after him and tries to stop him from leaving.  She tells him that she doesn’t care how it ends, its about the journey and she won’t let him leave her so fast.  He grabs her and kisses her, which a truck full of soldiers passing by starting yelling and cheering them on.

Back in the morgue, Henry and Lucas look at Vicky’s body again to try and find out what signs might show she fault back against her attacker.  Henry finds some skin in her teeth (I know that as a self defense measure you should bite your attacker but ick) and wants Lucas to run it against the Professor’s DNA.  Martinez comes in and tells him not too because they’ve got another body.  The Professor is lying dead on his desk and while the cops believe he killed himself, Henry tells them his was murdered.

Martinez and her partner want to know how Henry came to that conclusion.  So Henry walks them through how the professor could have been murdered.  Thus convinced Martinez declares it a crime scene and goes to look at the video surveillance of the last two hours. Henry stays behind and looks at the desk only to find the paper that was to be published missing its title page.  Martinez and her partner Hanson see the professor’s wife on the video surveillance and send cops to pick her up while Henry is in the codex room talking to the student who had first brought them there.

Henry has figured out that the student was the one to have killed both Vicky and the professor because he wanted to add his name as co-author of a paper even though he got credit for the research.  He made Vicky think he was going to kill himself because he wasn’t going to get the co-authorship and instead he killed her.  It was slightly harder to “fake” the professor’s suicide but it all came down to a missed spelling of the word ‘amor’.  The student takes Henry hostage with a box knife and Martinez sees that on the cameras and they rush off to save Henry.  Henry knows that if he were to die in front of the cops and the cameras too many people would see him disappear so he knows he needs to do everything in his power to get away from the student without dying.  During the standoff, Hanson is able to shoot the student thus throwing Henry to the side with only a slight cut on his neck.

The episode ends with a sort of closure for Vicky’s parents, Martinez looking at a picture of her husband and Henry looking at a picture of Abigail.  Abe comes down and tells him that he misses her too sometimes.  Abigail would have been 94 that year and the way Abe and Henry talk about it, it sounds like she didn’t die but rather she left Henry.  Henry asks Abe if he’s enjoyed his life, and Abe tells him that it’s a little late to ask him but that they’ve had interesting times haven’t they.  As the episode closes, Henry receives a call from his ‘fan’ and he finds out that the man is older than Henry, has lived for about 2000 years and tells Henry that if he wants to call him something to call him Adam.

I have to admit I do like this second episode so much more than the first but I’m still not a fan of Martinez.  I like watching the relationship between Abe and Henry as well as watching Henry slowly shifts away from the life he was living before to a more interactive one.  I’m curious to know more about what happened to Abigail but I’ve got to admit I don’t particularly care about learning about his ‘fan’ or as he will be known as Adam.

Ways Henry has died in an episode:
* Bent over picking something up and getting hit by a truck

Forever S1 E1: Pilot

Is it weird that the sole reason I want to see this show is because Ioan Gruffudd is the star?  I remember when I use to watch him in Horatio Hornblower as a child and thinking he was cute then, but now? Now, like a fine wine or very good bourbon or brandy, he has gotten even more attractive but I digress.

Forever is one of the new shows in ABC’s line up for the fall and its looks to be the child of Sherlock Holmes and a cancelled television show called New Amsterdam. For those of you who don’t what New Amsterdam was, it was a short lived television show about a Dutch soldier that saves a young Indian girl from being killed in battle. For saving her, she ‘saves’ him by bringing him back to life and telling him that he will remain immortal till he finds his one true love. It was an interesting and sadly short lived show that Forever definitely made me think of when I was watching the pilot.

The main character, Henry Morgan (Ioan Gruffudd), can’t seem to stay dead and has spent the last 200 years trying to figure out why that is. 200 years (give or take some) earlier, he had been a doctor on a ship and was trying to prevent the crew from tossing a man overboard for no reason.  They shot him in the chest and threw him overboard as well, but instead of dying he woke up and now every time he dies he wakes up in the nearest body of water (river, lake, ocean).

The episode starts with him boarding a subway and chatting up a woman next to him, first in Russian and then in English.  He deducts how she is Russian (chocolate) and her career (a musician) and they make a date to see each other after her performance when all of a sudden the subway crashes into a stopped car in front of them and everyone in that car appears to have died or is dying like Doctor Morgan.

He wakes up revived in a river and leaves it completely naked in the middle of the day in New York.  He is bailed out of jail by an older man, Abraham (Judd Hirsch) or Abe, and he seems to be the only one that knows the truth about Henry.  From there we see a woman leaving an apartment building and ends up having a mini discussion with her one night stand, and its only when we see her pull away do we find out she is a cop.  I do have to say that while I like seeing female cops on television shows, can we get some that actually look like an average woman instead of a supermodel?

She makes her way to the subway to investigate the collision of the subway and ends up finding Henry’s pocket watch.  She is sent to the M.E.’s office to get it signed off on and they all hope that it won’t turn out to be a murder investigation.  Meanwhile Henry and Abe are making their way to Abe’s shop discussing how Henry has never died in a train accident before and it’s something new for him. As Abe goes upstairs, Henry goes down to a basement and his basement is just a bit morbid.  He has become a student of death so to speak, writing out how he dies, the pain level and any other relevant information as a way to study his deaths.  He is trying to find a way for him to die permanently.

Henry works for the New York medical examiner’s office as a medical examiner.  One of his co-workers, Lucas (Joel David Moore), is telling him that the police are asking about cause of death for the subway conductor.   On a side note, for those who watch cop dramas on TV, you might recognize Lucas as the morbid intern from Bones. The female detective, Jo Martinez (Alana De La Garza), stops by to get a sign off on the cause of death when Henry tells her that it was homicide not a heart attack. That it looked like he had died from being poisoned. As they are talking, a phone call comes in from a man that tells Henry that he knows that Henry had survived the subway crash this morning.

Henry is freaking out about the phone call and wants to leave but Abe is able to talk him out of it.  We find out that Henry hasn’t let anyone in since a woman named Abigail, a beautiful blonde woman that he has a picture of.  Jo Martinez on the other hand is busy looking at footage from the subway when she spots Henry on the platform of the train that crashed. The next day when Henry arrives at work, he finds an envelope from ‘his fan’ and inside it is a picture of Henry and Abigail (his wife) from 1955.

In the flashback memory we find out that Abigail knew that Henry couldn’t die and she accepted it.  When he comes out of the flashback its from Lucas startling him and they find a newspaper clipping about the subway crash.  Henry goes and withdraws a vial of blood from the conductor and decides he’s going to inject himself with it to find out what the poison was.  When Henry comes back alive and Abe has retrieved him from the river, he tells Abe that the poison was aconite. When they return back to the shop, they see the police outside of it.

Henry is brought in for questioning where he and Detective Martinez exchange banter about whether or not Henry could have poisoned the conductor where Henry lets it be known that he is pretty sure the poison is aconite. He leaves the station because he knows they don’t have enough to hold him.  Back at the morgue, he and Lucas look for an injection site which they find behind the conductors ear as well as a fingerprint which Henry takes back to the police.

The fingerprint leads to a Hans Koehler.  Detective Morgan and Henry go to his house and find a greenhouse full of monkshood aka aconite. They go to the garage where Detective Martinez catches Koehler doing something but before she can stop him, he throws a beaker full of aconite at her and makes a run for it.  Henry tells her that they have less than a minute to neutralize the poison or she will die.

The police find out that Koehler use to be a chemist until his wife was killed from falling off the subway tracks by the same conductor that he killed that caused the subway accident.  Henry and Martinez end up going to a bar and start discussing their past; how Henry “got” the watch and how Martinez’s husband died.  Martinez gets a call that they found vats of aconite and they realize that Koehler was trying to make the poison soluble so that he can use it at Grand Central.

At Grand Central Henry realizes that Koehler made it soluble so that he can put it in the air conditioning.  They get to the roof when Koehler shoots Martinez in the shoulder and he forces Henry to help him.  Henry refuses and they struggle for the gun before Henry is shot.  In a last ditch effort to prevent him from attaching the poison, Henry rushes at him and they both fall off the roof, killing Koehler.

At the hospital Henry tells Martinez the sanitized version of what happens and while at the hospital he gets a call from his ‘fan’ who lets it be known that he suffers from the same affliction at Henry in that he can never die.

We get a flashback to World War II where Henry was working as a doctor and we get to see how he first met Abigail as a nurse.  She is holding an baby that was recovered from one of the camps and they bond over the baby and as it flashes forward again we see that the baby is Abe.  Martinez stops by and gives Henry back his pocket watch and Abe wants her to come in but she is on the job and actually invites Henry to her most recent crime scene.

Overall I’m on the fence about this show. I love Ioan Gruffudd and he has ages amazingly but I’m just not sure about the show.  I have no love for the female lead detective at the moment and I really want it to veer away from the Sherlock Holmes had an affair with New Amsterdam and this is the result.  I may just stick with it to watch Ioan Gruffudd and I may just thrown in the towel in annoyance…its too soon to tell.

Scorpion S1 E1: Pilot

I’m not sure exactly how I feel about this show in general.  I’m watching it because it sounds interesting and the fact its inspired by a true story but I’m not actually sure how I feel about it even after watching the first episode.

It begins with a group of soldiers in helicopters landing in an open field in Callen, Ireland.  They storm the house and it’s a young boy with an immunity agreement and extradition waiver.  He tells them to sign it and the will tell them how he hacked into NASA.  As the soldiers lead him away, he tells his family he just wanted the shuttle blueprints for his wall.  As he stands there, a man in a uniform bends down and asks him his name, and you hear a woman calling for ‘Walter’. The show flashes forward to present day, showing that what we had just seen was a memory or a flashback.

Walter (Elyes Gabel) is sitting in a diner breaking up with a woman who can’t believe he is breaking up with her. Granted if you tell the man you were dating that he’s not easy to get along with or can’t connect with him emotionally, why are you surprised that he is breaking up with you?  He apparently has scheduled their break up while he is working on a job installing wireless at a diner.  The former girlfriend is rather annoyed and putout…I say she got what she deserved but that’s just me.  While on the job he observes one of the waitresses, Paige (Katherine McPhee) and her son who has shakers, creamers, and sugar packets arranged in a certain way.  Walter goes over and moves them around which the young boy, Ralph, counter moves and he seems to know what is going on with the young boy.  He leaves the diner with a note to the owner to not yell at the boy.

Walter goes to a warehouse where there is a guy in glasses doing math, Sylvester (Ari Stidham), a young Asian woman, Happy (Jayden Wong), doing something with the electricity and another guy, Toby (Eddie Kaye Thomas), who runs in from being chased.  It appears that the four of them are all geniuses that work together in some kind of consultation company. As two men are trying to break in to the warehouse, a group of black SUVs belonging to the government pull up.  It is Agent Cabe Gallo (Robert Patrick) and he had worked with Walter years early when things didn’t work well for either of them.  He tells Walter he needs him because almost an hour earlier an automatic software update at LAX had a bug and now all communications between LAX, Long Beach, and Burbank are gone.  Most of the planes have been diverted except 56 planes that had begun descent are unreachable.  Walter wants nothing to do with him and tells him to find someone else but Gallo tells him that they are willing to give them all certified checks for $50,000 each and he had run checks on them, Happy, a mechanically prodigy, Sylvester, a human calculator, and Toby, a world class shrink.  Gallo asks if they want to do something meaningful or not because people are gonna start falling out of the sky soon.  Happy is able to convince Walter to take the job but Walter tells Gallo that if he crosses him on this he will go online and erase him.

On the way to LAX they are told that the 405 is shut down and LAX isn’t reachable (as a native Californian from the Los Angeles area I can tell you that I am not surprised at all).  Walter tells them they don’t need to go to LAX but to a wireless internet that has no chance of going down and he just fixed one about a mile from there.  They redirect to go to the diner he had been at earlier. Gallo gets the diner cleared out with the exception of Paige and her son Ralph who will be closing the diner up when they are done there.

Walter hacks into LAX and tells them that they need to get the old uncorrupted data and upload it to overwrite the new corrupted data.  It is stored in a backup facility in Ventura and they only have 20 minutes before the old data is gone. Meanwhile Walter and Paige are talking and Walter tells Paige that her son isn’t challenged, he’s a genius.

So I can keep going on a play by play but the social interaction on this show is so fast and so multi-layered.  You have the interaction between the geniuses, between Walter and Paige, between Walter and Agent Gallo.  It’s interesting to watch and yet at the same time completely unbelievable.  I’m not a big fan of Katherine McPhee normally but so far I really like her in this show and its nice seeing her in a non-singing role.  Granted her character rather annoyed me at times but I can’t fault a woman for doing everything in her power to help and protect her child by showing him what is right and wrong.

The show was interesting to watch, it brought up some interesting ideas and also kind of terrifying one in regards to planes (I sort of really hate flying) and flying.  I need to talk to my dad about some of the stuff on the show because my dad is a math whiz but I’m willing to give this show at least another episode or two before I decide whether or not I’m gonna keep watching.

Gotham S1 E1: Pilot

I have to say that I’ve got mixed feelings when it comes to FOX’s new show Gotham.  One reason is because I’m more curious about other DC superheroes over Batman, but also because I’m tired of so much Batman and Superman stuff.  Though I do have to admit I’m curious as to how they are going to play out an origin story of Jim Gordon.

The show begins with a young girl running along the rooftops, who drops down, steals a container of milk and pickpockets a wallet off of a guy before hiding in an alleyway, feeding some of the milk to a cat.  I’m almost positive that this young girl is supposed to be a young Selina Kyle (Carmen Bicondova).  When she hears a noise, she quickly scales a fire escape as a couple and a young boy enter the alley way.  A guy comes up to them, demanding the guy’s wallet and the woman’s pearl necklace before he shoots both of them.  He turns his gun on the boy but just stares at him for a moment before he runs out of the alleyway. The boy looks at the bodies of his parents before he screams out his loss and pain (which was completely over the top and just a shade ridiculous), and all the while Selina watches on in shock.

Meanwhile at the Gotham city police station, we get our first introduction to Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie).  He is able to talk a guy down that was holding a police woman hostage while all the other cops had their guns out willing to open fire.  After his partner, Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue), is not happy with him, telling him that they had the guy and next time a guy has a cop’s gun they should shoot the guy.  The two of them are called out to a double shooting in the alleyway and it is the crime scene of the two parents and the only witness, the young boy.  Bullock is able to identify the couple as Thomas and Martha Wayne which makes the young boy Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz). Bullock wants to hand the case off but he can’t because Gordon has gotten the only witness, Bruce, to talk.  Bruce tells Gordon that the man who shot his parents was wearing a mask, gloves and had shiny shoes.  Gordon promises that they are going to find out who did this and before they can say anything else to each other pulls up and a man comes out, and Bruce goes running to him calling him Alfred (Sean Pertwee).

At a diner Bullock and Gordon are talking about the case when two other cops come up to them, including one Renne Montoya (Victoria Cartagena), talking to both Gordon and Bullock about the Wayne case.  Back at PD, a Edward Nygma (Cory Michael Smith) working for crime scene talks to Bullock and Gordon about what was found.  Bullock says its time for them to go talk to Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith), who has her hand in a lot of what is going on and might be able to give them idea.  At Fish Mooney’s place, we get our first look at Oswald Cobblepot (Robin Lord Taylor), who everyone can’t help but call the penguin. Mooney tells Bullock about a Mario Pepper and that is the direction that he and Gordon go to.

At Mario Pepper’s place, we see a little girl who is introduced as Ivy Pepper.  As soon as they mention they are cops, Mario takes off running and Gordon goes in pursuit of him.  When it looks like he is about to be killed by Mario, Bullock comes out of nowhere and shoots him.  When they go through the Pepper apartment, they find Martha Wayne’s pearl necklace.   Everyone is happy that have closed the case on the Wayne murders.  The Wayne’s are finally buried and Gordon goes to tell Bruce he had kept his promise and he was sorry that he wasn’t able to bring the guy in so that he could go to trial.  Watching over the funeral and everyone leaving, is Selina Kyle.

Except that not all is what it seems.  A few days later Renee Montoya goes up to Barbara Kean (Erin Richards), Gordon’s fiancée, and tells her that Gotham PD framed Mario Pepper and Gordon was going to be going to be arrested for it and the only reason she is telling her is because of their past history. Barbara goes to Gordon and tells him what Montoya had told her about it being a set up to get a killer for the Wayne murders. It turns out that Oswald is playing a snitch to Montoya and her partner by saying that Fish Mooney had the necklace that was found at Pepper’s place. That Fish Mooney and the Gotham police were working together to frame Mario Pepper.  Gordon goes to talk to Montoya, who tells him that his time as a dirty cop is over and he and his partner are going to prison.

Gordon does some digging and finds out that it looks like Montoya is right.  When Gordon goes to talk to Fish Mooney, he is ended up knocked out by some of her men. When he doesn’t return home, Barbara calls Bullock who tells her that he was out on a stakeout.  Bullock goes looking for Gordon and finds him in a meat factory about to be wacked.  He calls up Fish Mooney to try and get Gordon off but instead ends up right next to him hanging upside down.  Before either man is killed, a group of ‘mobsters’ come and shoot the guys.  It is Carmine Falcone and his men putting a stop to the hit on Bullock and Gordon.  Because he stopped the hit, he wants to make sure he can ‘trust’ Gordon and wants Gordon to kill Oswald.  Bullock tells him that he has to kill Oswald or Bullock is going to kill them both and probably his fiancée too. Gordon walks Oswald to the end of the pier and tells him to never come back to Gotham and makes it look like he killed Oswald and his body fell into the river.

Gordon goes to Wayne Manor and tells Bruce and Alfred that Mario Pepper was framed for the murder of his parents and that the real killer is still out there.  Gordon tells Bruce that he promises to find the man who killed his parents but to do that he needs Bruce to keep quiet about the fact that Mario Pepper wasn’t the real killer.  That Gordon is going to do everything in his power to clean up the Gotham PD as well.  Alfred doesn’t have much confidence in Gordon but Bruce does and agrees to go along with Gordon’s plan.  The episode ends with Oswald coming out of the river, freezing, killing a man that happened to be fishing there and stealing is food.

It wasn’t a great episode, in fact it was kinda over the top too much.  It definitely had the feel of a show trying to put too much information in a 45 minute window as possible and thus giving the viewers overload. I do like Ben McKenzie as Jim Gordon but I’m not sure about the rest yet.  This is definitely a show that probably could have been so much more if it was on a cable channel.  But its only the first episode so I will hold off on my negative comments for now and wait and see what happens next.

Sleepy Hollow S2 E1: This is War

Sleepy Hollow is back for its second season and how better to start an episode than with lots and lots of confusion.  A quick recap for those who have forgotten, last season ended with Ichabod trapped in a wooden coffin in the middle of the woods, the sin eater Henry Parish has turned out to be his son Jeremy as well as in league with Moloch as the Horseman of War, Abby is trapped in puragatory, Katrina was taken by the Headless Horseman and Jenny was in a car crash caused by the Headless Horseman.  Now that we are all caught up, let’s talk about that season opener shall we. Warning there will be spoilers so read at your own risk.

The episode opens with Ichabod having a flashback to being trapped in the box except that when he opens his eyes it’s to Abby holding a cupcake with a candle (both having the flag on them) telling him to make a wish and blow out the candle for his birthday. During the first 5 minutes we learn that it has been a year since the end of season 1, that both Jenny and Katrina are dead, and they have been training to fight the headless horseman for a year.

Before the surprise party can continue they get a call out to go to the historical society because a professor seems to have found something to do with Benjamin Franklin.  They rush over and find the police officer out front without a head.  They know that means the horseman is there and go back to the car to pull out weapons.  Have to say that getting a look at their arsenal and what they are carrying makes me think of Supernatural and the Winchester brothers’ trunk arsenal.   They go into the historical society building and find it completely ransacked.  Ichabod remembers being an apprentice under Franklin and you can tell how much he isn’t a fan of Franklin. As Abby and Ichabod try and find what it is that the horseman and the professor were trying to tell them about, who shows up but the horseman himself with his shotgun.

They finding the hiding files of Franklin, they return to their research room trying to find out more about the Hellfire Club and this key that Franklin was trying to destroy that could open purgatory.  This key apparently changes one of the rules of purgatory; that being for one soul to leave there has to be another in its place.  This key would be how Moloch plans to escape purgatory.

Abby and Ichabod go through all of their resources and can’t find anything about the key or how to destroy it.  They know they have to talk to Henry, who they happen to have imprisoned in their underground lair where they once held the Horseman.  As they question him about it, Abby remembers that Jenny had been sent out on a trip by Corbin.  While Abby is talking to Ichabod, he mentions to that he knows it’s been a year but he can’t actually remember anything beyond Henry burying him and this moment.  They both realize that they are still trapped underground and in purgatory respectively.  Henry had created the illusion so that he could find out information about the key from them.

So we are back in the real world now with Abby running from Moloch in purgatory and Ichabod trapped in his wooden box. Jenny is taken into a room and tied down by two hessians and Henry comes in to read her ‘sins’ to get information about the key.  He tells the hessians to keep her alive till they have found the key.  Meanwhile Katrina is alive as well and tied to the chair and a captive of the Headless Horseman.

Ichabod realizes that the ground he is buried in smells of sulfur, he decides to try and blow his way out and for the second time Ichabod rises from him grave.  He starts heading into town and attempts to call Jenny, who uses his callas a distraction to kick some Hessian ass.   Ichabod reveals to Jenny after they make their escape that they may have found away to free Abby from purgatory.  Speaking of Abby in purgatory, we see her have a run in with John Cho’s Deputy Andy Brooks who leads her to the mirror that Katrina used to communicate with Ichabod, she sends him a message to forget about the key and to leave her in purgatory.  Ichabod refuses to leave her behind and tells her that he is coming to get her.

Jenny and Ichabod find the hessians digging in one location for the key but Ichabod realized that Franklin would have never buried where the Hessians are digging and find the key in another location after Ichabod remembered something that Franklin had told him before.  Meanwhile Katrina is still tied to a chair in the Horseman’s house when he puts a necklace around her neck.  It is the necklace he had gifted her before when they were still ‘together’ and somehow the necklace allows her to see the Horseman as Abraham, head and all.  He tells her soon Ichabod will die and she will start her new life with him.

As Ichabod makes his way into Purgatory, Jenny reminds him that he can’t eat or drink anything there or he will be trapped there forever.  At the same time Abby seems to have found Ichabod and they have a great union scene, hugging each other and he hands her a bottle of water because she sounds so parched.  As she is about to take a drink when over the ridge comes another Ichabod yelling at her not to drink.  This leads to an epic fight between Ichabod 1 and Ichabod 2, which ends with Ichabod 1 running with the key and Abby to the spot to open the gate.   Abby cuts off the head of Ichabod 1 when he calls her ‘lieutenant’ but doesn’t pronounce it the way that Ichabod does. The real Ichabod runs up to her and the beheaded fake Ichabod and ask how she knew, and she told him it all came down to pronunciation.  Ichabod and Abby quickly use the key and the gateway closes just before Moloch can cross it.  The key dissolves in Abby’s hand and they all hope they won’t need it again.  The episode ends with Moloch giving Henry a flaming set of armor as the Horseman of War.

Have to say that I’m definitely looking forward to seeing how this season progresses.  Abby, Jenny and Ichabod seem to have the cards stacked against them so far.  Especially poor Ichabod whose wife is in the possession of the Headless Horseman and his son Jeremy aka Henry is the Horseman of War.  I’m also curious to see if a new horseman is going to be introduced.

Fun Bits from this episode:

* Ichabod not knowing what a birthday party is
* Ichabod stating he needs to learn how to drive
* Ichabod recording a message to Abby on his phone in case his attempt at escaping doesn’t work and it doesn’t save.
* Weird moment: The Headless Horseman starts to take his shirt off and his got a hot body but its just weird not seeing a head on top of said body.
* Franklin apparently invented his own alphabet
* Franklin liked to be nude (gross)

The Mysteries of Laura S1 E1: The Pilot

If there is an actress on TV that I have a mixed relationship about it is Debra Messing. Which is weird because I love her but I don’t always love the shows she is on :cough cough SMASH cough cough::.  So that being said, I wasn’t sure how I was going to like her new show The Mysteries of Laura because it seemed sort of out of character from the other roles I’ve seen her in.  That being said, let me tell you this….I LOVE this show so far.  I mean you have Debra Messing who is a fantastic actress in the lead role as a strong, smart, working mom that juggles being a full time parent with an ex-husband who acts like he wants to be the best friend instead of a parent and still works full time as a homicide detective. It’s not even what I would call a normal cop drama, in that everything has a very dark feel to it.  This has a lot more humor and color and life so to speak than something like Law and Order or NYPD.

Like I mentioned earlier, Laura (Debra Messing), is a homicide detective but also a ‘single’ mother to her twin boys.  She is in the process of divorcing her husband Jake (Josh Lucas), who is also a cop, because she was tired of his philandering ways.  Jake though doesn’t want to divorce her because he loves her and yet he doesn’t seem willing to help in the raising or discipline of their boys. On the job she is partners with Billy (Laz Alonso), there is Max (Max Jenkins), the information gatherer for the division, and Meredith (Janina Gavankar), a stickler for the rules. The show is witty, funny with a slight predictability to it, and full of shenanigans that no cop could probably get away with in the real world.  But you know what? I don’t care because we need more female roles like this on TV so that young girls can see how badass women can be no matter what.

For a pilot episode it wasn’t all that bad either.  You get the understanding right off the bat that this isn’t going to be your typical cop drama and you see a blend of the cop and mom.  She is taking down criminals, she is trying to wrangle her sons into behavior (especially since they got expelled from preschool), and all the while trying to solve a murder.  The mystery itself isn’t one that I could solve right away because the show is good at keeping the cards close to its chest till they want to reveal everything.  It gives you a good idea of who all the cast of characters are and you start to get to know them and figure out how you feel about them.  I’m definitely looking forward to see what else this show has to offer and I really hope that it will last.

Red Band Society

The new season of television is about to start which means there will be a slew of new shows and of returning shows.  There is usually a handful of news that catch my eye but by the end of the third episode I’m over it. Whether because it never lives up to the expectations set in the 1^st episode or because I just lose interest in the characters, plot and so forth. Sometimes though there is that show that I end up sticking with through the rest of the season and on to the next and I’m hoping that Red Band Society becomes one of those shows.

I was on Hulu this morning, as I am most mornings at work, looking for something to listen/watch while I’m doing work. I had already seen two episodes in my queue on television last night so they were out but then I noticed that pilot episodes for a few new shows were available to watch and I figured why not?

The first one I watched was the Red Band Society, a show I knew very little about prior but had piqued my interest.  Offhand the best way to describe this show is The Breakfast Club meets a medical drama meets something else.  The something else it reminds me of is actually a group of teens that are closer to being adults living in a hospice together.  It really isn’t like anything else on television at the moment and I hope that it doesn’t get cancelled too soon.

The show is about a group of teens living at a hospital and the adults that help them and mentor them during their stay there.  The two main adults that really try to be there for the kids are Nurse Jackson aka the scary bitch played the incredible Octavia Spencer and Doctor Jack McAndrew aka the hot doctor played by Dave Annable. There is also Ruben, a hypochondriac that lives at the hospital that plans to leave his entire fortune to it, that helps encourage some rebellion in some of the teens. Of the teens, we have Charlie (Griffin Gluck), a coma patient that also narrates the show while adding his own commentary at times, Dash (Astro), a teen with CF that thinks he’s the next Casanova, Emma (Ciara Bravo), a girl who could pretty much go anywhere if she could overcome her anorexia, Leo (Charlie Rowe) a cancer patient that likes to try and rebel as much as he can while pushing everyone away for fear of losing his battle with cancer, and the two new comers to the wards, Jordi (Nolan Sotillo), a teen without any family that came specifically for Doctor McAndrew’s to do his amputation and Kara (Zoe Levin) the mean girl that has no heart only to find out her enlarged heart might kill her one day.

It’s a pilot episode, a hello really. It’s an episode that invites you in to meet these kids and the adults that look after them. It introduces you to a unique group of teens that not only struggle with being a teenager, but struggle with being a teenager with a unique circumstance that means they have to live in a hospital as well.  And by the end of the episode, not only do you want to know more about Kara, Charlie, Leo, Jordi, Emma, and Dash, you also want to know more about Doctor McAndrews and Nurse Jackson and even about Ruben.  You want to see how they handle things like going through chemo while having a crush on a girl with an eating disorder or the mean girl trying to be a better person or if the coma boy is ever gonna wake up. It makes you want to cheer and laugh and cry and hug the people closest to you tight.

If there is a show to watch this fall season that isn’t what you expect I would definitely recommend this show. Yes in some ways its completely unrealistic but that shouldn’t matter. The show isn’t about the medicine or rules and regulations of a hospital but about a group of teens that are sick, that band together, that become the Red Band Society.