Stephanie Jacobsen and Brian Austin Green in 'Ourselves Alone'
The latest episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, ‘Ourselves Alone’, slipped 14% in ratings with less than 3 million viewers. Perhaps that’s not so surprising considering the previous episode, ‘Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep’, which was so bad it surely must have lost a few interested viewers. I’m sure some of that if not all will be clawed back when the final post-premiere DVR numbers are in. In fact, I’d go as far as to say post DVR viewings of this week’s episode will lead to an increase in viewship for next weeks episode. Ratings drop when episodes are poor, and they increase when they’re not. It’s not rocket science in that respect.
The general buzz about the latest episode is positive, and in line with the buzz my pick this week for the fairest review goes to Doug Norrie at Blend Television.
Could it be the writers for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles heard my complaints, took them to heart, had a writers’ meeting, rewrote their remaining season, filmed it, edited it and put it out for viewing in less than a week? They must have because tonight Terminator: TSCC returned with an absolute vengeance. ‘Ourselves Alone’ was, by far, the best episode of the year; possibly the best hour of the show to date.
And finally there is a petition online devoted to getting fans to join forces to push for producers to green-light a third Terminator season. Personally, I think the series is going to get its third season. But just in case it isn’t, the petition has 1,381 signatures when I checked. It certainly can’t hurt to go add yours to it:
http://www.petitiononline.com/scc2009/petition.html
I generally don’t write reviews – I scour the web for them and find the one I think is the best at any given time. In the case of this week’s episode of Heroes, ‘Exposed’, I’ve picked io9’s review ‘Sylar wants his mommy’ by Annalee Newitz. Her opening paragraph really says it all:
Last week I polled you guys about whether I should keep punishing myself and the world by continuing to watch Heroes. And you voted for punishment. Which is exactly what the episode “Exposed” was.
Whilst I agree with Newitz on most counts (although she is a little harsh), personally I was quite happy to see the return of David H. Lawrence’s ‘Puppet Master’. The plot twist could probably have been done better, but Lawrence’s character is by far one of the most creepy/scary/twisted in the series. He hasn’t had a lot of air time yet, but as far as villains go, he’s the one I want to see more of. I also don’t share the same level of harshness that Newitz has injected into her tone, but her article is nonetheless my pick for this week – perhaps next week I’ll scour the web for a review from the other side of the fence.
BSG SE4EP17: Could anyone have guessed who was playing the Piano?
I didn’t need to look beyond Kevin Carr’s review at Film School Rejects to find a review of this weeks episode of Battlestar Galactica that mirrored my own thoughts. In a nutshell, ‘Someone to watch of me’ was an average episode and given how there are so few episodes left, it was really a disappointing time filler more than anything else. It was still a great episode, but it just seems there is so much story yet to be told, and so little time to do it whilst this episode seemed to waste some of that time. Read Kevin Carr’s review at Film School Rejects here.
Spoiler warnings…
The only thing Kevin Carr didn’t comment on in his review that I feel was noteworthy (forget the pun) was Bear McCreary’s involvement in setting up the link between the paintings of Hera, Starbuck’s visions, and the music in the head’s of the Final Five. To understand this, you would need to have a read of Bear McCreary’s mini-memoirs.
I also think Boomer’s plan to rescue Ellen Tigh as a smoke-screen for her true intention to capture Hera was an intelligent part of the script, one I wouldn’t have seen coming if not for reading about it all week and seeing hints of it in the previews…
But if this episode didn’t really grab you either, next week’s looks like it will. Here’s the trailer for 3rd last Battlestar Galactica episode ever titled ”Islanded in a Stream of Stars’. Note that this is the final episode before the two part finale ‘Daybreak’ kicks off, and it looks heavy as hell:
I’ve scoured the net reading many reviews of Joss Whedon’s latest Dollhouse episode, ‘Stage Fright’. There were many, many mixed opinions on this one. Yet whether or not the review was negative or positive, there was an underlying theme to the majority of them, and this was summed up no better anywhere than in this comic strip from the Penny Arcade titled ‘The Whedonite’s Dilemma’:
The Whedonite’s Dilemma
Click on the image to see a larger version
That said, in the interests of balanced reporting, it’s only fair I place a couple of links to these ‘mixed’ reviews.
Graeme McMillan over at io9 suggests that the core problem is the limited lifespan of the show’s core idea in: What if a show shouldn’t be a show?
And Den of Geek sees the promise in Dollhouse and feels Stage Fright has shown more of that promise than any episode so far: Dollhouse episode 3 review
I generally don’t write reviews, preferring to scour the web for reviews that mirror my own thoughts. They’re usually out there somewhere (if not, then I write one).
With regards to all the reviews I’ve seen on the latest episode of Lost, ‘The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham’, Adam Sweeney’s review over at Film School Rejects is my pick. If you’ve seen the episode, head on over to read his review here.
Before you do, you might want to refresh your mind with these clips from the episode:
Film School Rejects have written a review of the latest episode of Heroes, ‘Cold Wars’ (Season 3, Episode 17) which I think sums up the episode and the present direction of the series quite nicely. Most of all their review has saved me wasting another hour of my time on what is rapidly descending from arguably the best series on television (season 1) to arguably the worst (everything since season 1).
I’d read a few reviews of Babylon A.D. that turned me off going to see it at the cinema. I can’t really remember what was said back then, but that’s probably because so much was said about how poor a movie it was that I was overwhelmed with the need to escape the cinema before I’d even tried to enter it.
By the time I finally braved the DVD the movie had become a recognized international flop. It cost $60M to make and even as I write this it has only recouped 2/3 of its budget in gross takings. It only just breaks a 50% vote on the IMDB and, well, let’s just say if you surf the web now and take in a few different reviews, odds are they’ll turn you off wanting to see it.
And so I am at odds with the masses it would seem, because although I went in expecting the worst, I came out of my viewing experience quite pleased that I had watched it. Read the rest of this entry »
