True Blood, Falling Skies, Curb Your Enthusiasm (July 31, 2011)

Posted by The TV Critic on 31 July 2011 | 0 Comments

Tags: True Blood, Falling Skies, Curb Your Enthusiasm

True Blood - 406 - I Wish I Was The Moon
I enjoyed parts of this. A better show would actually do something with these stories but for one episode I thought there were some good ideas on display.

First off I thought Sam was tremendous playing Tommy playing him. The way he adjusted his voice, his posture and his facial expressions was excellent. The plot was just more misery porn of course. Sam's new relationship gets pissed all over and Sookie won't forgive her firing easily. Tommy is a horrible person and I still can't see anything but suffering in Sam's future.

I'm still annoyed by the lack of explanation for why Eric woke up acting nicer than even a human would. With Bill and Jessica showing us the good side of vampires it's even more annoying that we have no fuller understanding of what a vampire really is in this universe. Why is it that Bill and Jessica can act good and yet Pam and others have no time for it? Anyway, for fans of Sookie and Eric this was a rewarding episode where his genuine affection for her is rewarded with a good old romp in the woods.

The real hero is of course poor Bill. Again the show is vague about the whole King business and you wonder if he will get in trouble now for letting Eric go. However for a moment we are left to marvel once more at what a lovely guy he is and ponder if his life would be a lot more peaceful if he hadn't run into Sookie.

The necromancy story as with most of True Blood's big concepts is full of promise. It won't get fulfilled, I can tell you that for sure, but right now it's a great story. The spirit of a witch from the middle ages has possessed Marnie and now seeks vengeance on the vampires who hurt her. Someone else possessed Lafayette but I wasn't sure who that was. To finally have a character who can bring vampires to heel ought to present a lot of fun scenarios. However I'm not sure it will work out so well considering how mixed up the world of Bon Temps is. Vampires ought to be hated and killed for all that they've done and yet most of the vampires we know are now the good guys. I'm sure it will head somewhere fairly unsatisfying before too long.

Jason and Jessica had a good scene together where they shared intimate details and she reminded everyone why she is one of the best characters\actresses on the show. Again though I couldn't help but feel their interaction was more misery-bait. A scenario designed to make Hoyt miserable, destroy his friendship with Jason and make the two Js feel lustful and guilty at the same time.

Final comment this week goes to Sookie wandering around the forest cracking jokes about how its hard to keep track of all the were-wolves and panthers out there. It seemed ironic that a telepath would be rolling her eyes at other people for being a little strange but then again Sookie is the most unlikeable main character I've seen so it was no surprise. I'm also aware that it was an attempt by the writers to poke fun at their own out-of-control cast of weird characters. Well there is a solution to that problem - stop casting new people! Focus for five minutes on one story and get some real emotion out of it.

Falling Skies - 108 - What Hides Beneath
I liked this as a setup episode. It all remains predictable and family friendly but for what it was it was solid. The plan is to attack the Skitter platform in Boston and Pope provides them with the firepower to be more effective. We learn a bit more about Weaver and his motivations and get some good action and mystery thrown in.

It's that mystery that is the best part of the show right now. The four revelations about the alien threat made this one of the more intriguing episodes.

1) First we see that there are other aliens as two bi-pedal creatures walk up to some skitters to give them orders. They looked like a cross between the Silver Surfer and the liquid metal terminator from Terminator 2.

2) Then we discover that the Skitters may not be hostile creatures after all. Inside of one of them Anne finds the harness which is on the back of the kids. Is it possible that the Skitters are just another conquered race and that they have been brought to Earth as soldiers for another race's army? Or is it just that the harness allows for better central control of each skitter?

3) The strange behavior and physiology of Ben and Rick begins to suggest that they have in some way become something different already.

4) The discovery that the Skitters have been using mentally unstable humans as informants was a cunning story.

I thought each of those revelations was interesting and definitely keeps me sticking around for more than just TV Critic reasons.

Curb Your Enthusiasm - 804 - The Smiley Face
This was one of those stories where the pieces all seemed to pay off well in the end. The voice going up at the end, the smiley face, the restaurant, the receptionist, the dermatologist and so on. Yet somehow I didn't enjoy this a lot. There never seemed to be a moment when the comedy settled and I actually had something to laugh at.

I suppose some of the arguments were on the wrong side of serious. The Big Dog took two cabinets when he had only been promised one. It was a simple cut and dry argument and yet we had to sit through the Dog ignoring this obvious wrong and lots of petty yelling. Then you had the poor dermatologist losing business because Larry was too chicken to tell Richard the truth about why he was late. Also, death is obviously a sensitive subject and so Larry's failure to show adequate sympathy also felt a bit annoying.