If there are those of yout hat have been waiting for a time where I sit down to write this column and finally stop talking about DOCTOR WHO than I’ve got some really good news for you: next week will finally be that column. This week, however, I’m still bubbling over having re-lived THE BIG BANG and just dying to speak about it in full now that it has finally aired in here in the US of A.
Unlike season finale’s of the past this whacky bit of timey-whimey goodness did something that I wasn’t expecting at all in becoming a fairy tale by the episode’s end. It kicked off rather fast paced from the moment that young AMELIA gets up from praying to Santa and doesn’t really stop until we finally learn how the DOCTOR plans on un-doing the event that caused all of reality to cease to exist.
The structure of the episode was executed in a near perfect fashion by ensuring that it provided payoff to it’s core audience first. After the initial set up where we learn that the Earth is still there and the sky has no stars the timey-whimey bit kicks in with secret messages left for AMELIA POND that lead to the big reveal that inside the PANDORICA is none other than her older self. Then we see RORY cradling the recently killed AMY for a few ticks before the DOCTOR pops in, wielding a broom in one hand and a fez on his head, giving RORY his sonic screwdriver to free him from the PANDORICA. See? Time travel goodness handed off in a bit of mind-bending sci-fi for the audience to revel in. This bit is very important because what happens next is nothing but pure romance.
There were two moments last week where I wrote that the performance of ARTHUR DARVILL as RORY really endeared me to the character. The first is when the now self-aware Nestene duplicate RORY decides not to join the DOCTOR in his jump to the future to stay behind and guard the Pandorica to ensure AMY will be kept safe. He does so knowing that any damage to himself will be permanent, he will never sleep the whole time and he’s got 2000 years to act as her protector. The impact of this is then revealed as AMY watches the museum description of the iconic soldier that guarded the Pandorica through the ages, the ultimate act of love. This moment is only overshadowed by the reunion of the two minutes later when it’s revealed RORY is now a guard at the museum housing the Pandorica. Both of these moments are greater than any the actor was asked to do before on the show and he did so with believable emotion and dedication.
The near perfect structure once again turns back when we finally see the other side of all the time jumping bits from the beginning from the other perspective. This amusing bit plays out very well but comes with it a very heavy hand when after all is said and done the DOCTOR from 12 minutes in the future comes back to deliver a message to himself prior to appearing to die. On they go to disover the sun for this Earth is actually the burning and exploding TARDIS, that also has RIVER SONG trapped in a safety time loop. The DOCTOR pops in to save her and after she, with AMY’s help, destroys the fez we see how the DOCTOR becomes injured before popping back in time 12 minutes. Solid sci-fi, right?
After ALEX KINGSTON as RIVER SONG faces down a DALEK (and fanboys around the world squee in delight) we begin to move into the hands down two best performances that MATT SMITH has given all season. The first is as he’s seated in the PANDORICA, preparing to fly it into the exploding TARDIS to save all of reality (again). This wounded and weary DOCTOR asks to speak to AMY prior to take off and MATT SMITH, for such a young actor, taps into something ancient and wise beyond his years. He suddenly transforms himself into a grandfather like character in tone and he really sells it.
After his plan to save reality works we see the DOCTOR going backwards on his own time line as his existence is being undone. He quickly discovers that AMY, having grown up by one of these cracks, has the ability to hear him but not see him. This leads to that moment I wrote wondering about weeks ago from FLESH AND STONE where he is once again in his jacket when he should be jacket-less and he tells AMY the importance of remembering what he told her when she was seven. The very next scene leads us to what it was he told her, which is a wonderful tale of a man who seems to be accepting his fate and he speaks of himself and the life he’s lived to a sleeping AMELIA POND before he walks into the crack and saves everything (again).
The moment the DOCTOR started going back on his timeline the story quietly transitioned to that fairy tale I was talking about. The wonderful speaches lead to AMY waking up to a world where
her entire family and life was restored in ways we hadn’t even know it was fractured by the crack’s in time/space. As we see her wedding day events transpire and we slowly discover that the DOCTOR wasn’t being reflective at all on his life but he was in fact planting himself into AMY’s mind to try to bring himself back. “Nothing’s ever forgotten, not really,” the DOCTOR had said before and once remembered it can be brought back. The DOCTOR chose his words carefully so that the TARDIS becomes the “something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blew” for AMY and her memory and belief in the DOCTOR, much like the clapping for Tinkerbell, brings him back. This revelation could have potentially been one of the hokier scenes of the show however KAREN GILLAN as AMY delivers her lines with such conviction and emotion that belief, for me, gets completely suspended and a near eye-watering moment occurs.
As I also wrote about last week there were hints of what is to come next season. RIVER tells the DOCTOR that very soon he will know who she is and she’s sorry because that’s when everything changes. That’s a pretty good indicator that she’ll be back next season. The DOCTOR himself even mentions how the SILENCE or whatever it was that took control of the TARDIS is still out there. Could this be what next year’s arc story will be (and will we find out why the voice that said “SILENCE WILL FALL” sounded so much like DAVROS)? All really good questions that we won’d find out for another nine or 10 month’s I’m sure but we do at least have a Christmas special to look forward too!
Now that we’ve gotten down to my final WHAT on WHO let’s find out what what I’ll say to watch this week, shall we?
MONDAY
ABC – 8:00 PM: A bunch of guys clearly don’t know the man code as they talk all about how they were rejected on THE BACHELORETTE: THE MEN TELL ALL.
NBC – 9:00 PM: With less finalists on tonight’s LAST COMIC STANDING maybe the laugh-to-minute ratio will be back on track tonight.
HBO – 9:00 PM: Considering how much I was destroyed by what I saw in THE BLIND SIDE the harsh reality depicted in the documentary HOMELESS: MOTEL KIDS OF ORANGE COUNTY.
ABC – 10:00 PM: What, two hours of whining dudes not enough for you? Go behind the scenes of all the BACHELOR/ETTE stuff in tonight’s 20/20 SPECIAL: BEHIND THE ROSE.
TUESDAY
NBC – 8:00 PM: Having seen not a single frame yet I have to wonder how much of BREAKTHROUGH WITH TONY ROBBINS will be life changing and how much will ask me to buy his life changing program (again).
DISC – 9:00 PM: While still coping with the loss of CAPTAIN PHIL the DEADLIEST CATCH crew has to deal with a stormy and difficult Bergin Sea in tonight’s season finale.
FOX – 9:00 PM: CHEF GORDON RAMSAY continues his televised take-over with tonight’s premiere of his new show MASTER CHEF.
A&E – 10:00 PM: Hoping for some FAMILY JEWELS magic A&E follows the family of former TWISTED SISTER front man DEE SNIDER in GROWING UP TWISTED. Will we like it or are we not going to take it?
DISC – 10:00 PM: There’s reality TV and then there’s REALITY TV when it comes to THE COLONY. It’s dirty, gritty, and there’s no creature comforts at all. I love it.
WEDNESDAY
THE CW – 9:00 PM: The CW premieres their make-over/dating help show titled PLAIN JANE.
ANIMAL PLANET – 9:00 PM: You know there really is a building hoarding problem in America when a show like ANIMAL HOARDERS is even possible. Tonight’s episode features a husband finally putting his foot down with his wife’s 87 dogs. Yeah, 87.
THURSDAY
ABC – 11:00 AM: I don’t watch THE VIEW but I’d love to tune in today to see ELISABETH HASSELBECK getting violently ill when PRESIDENT OBAMA is life in the studio.
CBS – 8:00 PM: Will it be KATHY or ANDREW making the walk of shame out of the BIG BROTHER house tonight? Hopefully, after this, we’re one exit away from them trying to put someone previously booted back in the house.
MTV – 10:00 PM: That sound you are hearing are the embarrassed groans of millions of NEW JERSEY natives as by tonight’s return of JERSEY SHORE.
FRIDAY
TLC – 8:00 PM: A three episode mini-marathon of SAY YES TO THE DRESS leads up to the 9:30 premiere of the newest annex SAY YES TO THE DRESS:ATLANTA.
ABC – 8:00 PM: Seems WIFE SWAP is really scraping the bottom of the barrel as one wife is dedicated to helping her son’s hip-hop career where as the other is a neglectful step-mom that would rather hunt the elusive Swamp Ape in Florida. Yes, you read that right.
SATURDAY
ABC FAMILY – 12:30 PM: First there’s all three BACK TO THE FUTURE movies and they’re followed up by GREASE and GREASE 2? Oh man, if the channel didn’t have commercials I’d have no reason to move.
USA – 1:00 PM: OK, so DOC BROWN isn’t up your alley? How about all three PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movies?
FX – 2:00 PM: WOW! This Saturday is MARATHON-TASTIC! How about five hours of the FOX summer show THE GOOD GUYS?
NBC – 8:00 PM: This week’s winner of the “I stopped giving a crap” award goes to PERSONS UNKNOWN.
SYFY – 9:00 PM: This week’s most obvious rip-off of an INDIANA JONES movie award goes to JACK HUNTER: THE LOST TREASURE OF UGARIT.
SUNDAY
FOX – 7:00 PM: I enjoyed the pilot but the swiftness that FOX ushered TYLER LABINE‘s show SONS OF TUCSON off the air made me miss most of the rest of the run. Tonight they limply air the series finale.
AMC – 8:00 PM: I’ve heard so much about RUBICON that I have to tune in even if I don’t want to.
CBS – 8:00 PM: It’s that time of the week again where we find out who the new HoH puts up on the chopping block on BIG BROTHER. Hopefully it will be RACHEL because I just can’t stand people that yell talk at the camera.
AMC – 10:00 PM: With the new agency landing a big client it’s time for a party on MAD MEN.
To say that I’m looking forward to this Saturday is probably an extreme understatement. The family has absolutely nothing on the calendar, I’m going to get all my chores caught up on Friday and I plan on firmly planting myself in front of the TV on SATURDAY because there’s a DOCTOR WHO marathon all day on BBC AMERICA that kicks off at 9 AM E / 6 AM P.
Usually saying that there is a DOCTOR WHO marathon on BBC AMERICA isn’t a very special commentary since they do happen from time to time. This Saturday however they are re-airing the entire run of the most recent series of DOCTOR WHO that will culminate with the season finale titled THE BIG BANG. US audiences will finally find out how the PANDORICA will be re-opened, how all of existence will be restored and how a fez is just as cool as a bow tie. THE BIG BANG is filled with all kinds of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey goodness that draws you in from the get go with a big reveal right before the opening credits that dropped my jaw.
Before I get too much into THE BIG BANG I’d be remiss not to mention the incredible gem that this entire series of DOCTOR WHO has been. I know that prior to it’s debut there was some trepidation about the casting of MATT SMITH as THE DOCTOR. I think most people would agree that this was dispelled within the first 10 minutes of the season’s opening episode THE ELEVENTH HOUR. SMITH brings a natural energy and quirkiness to the role that fans are able to gobble up almost every moment that he’s on screen. He’s able to do all this but also still provide a grounded and in some cases contained performance, bringing out the natural cockiness that we’ve come to expect from THE DOCTOR without being over-the-top.
In all fairness I admit I’m not just a hopeless devotee that’s been watching this season through rose colored glasses. I freely admit that I was somewhat under-impressed with episodes like VICTORY OF THE DALEKS, THE VAMPIRES OF VENICE and the two-parter THE HUNGRY EARTH / COLD BLOOD, but even in not being some of the better episodes of the season they were better than, say, anything that HEROES did in it’s last three seasons. Those four episodes only suffer from not being as strong in quality for me as the other episodes this season. THE BEAST BELOW let us get a better idea about who our new DOCTOR is, gave us more insight into our new companion and told a good tale. The WEEPING ANGELS two-part episode was everything you would expect from those creepy stone creatures as well as brining us back the mysterious RIVER SONG (who has had some of the best scenes in her first appearances both in TIME OF ANGELS and THE PANDORICA OPENS). VINCENT AND THE DOCTOR didn’t have the strongest alien story but it did have a very emotionally powerful tale to tell in the last fifteen minutes spent with VINCENT VAN GOGH. I still have to say that THE LODGER is one of my favorite episodes of the season since it was an excellent light-hearted tale where we get to see THE DOCTOR trying to deal with living a normal human life while still being THE DOCTOR. It’s humor was the perfect pallet cleanser right before the two-part season finale. Which brings us back to…
THE BIG BANG, which can be seen at 9 PM E / 6 PM P, was probably the finest hour of this season and it’s the season finale I’ve been wanting to see for a while. The cliffhanger from the preceding episode isn’t almost immediately dismissed and as the rest of the episode unveils what we see is still germane to the story we’ve been watching from the episode before. Every single member of the cast turns in a great performance and one of the standouts has to be ARTHUR DORVILL as RORY. He transitions from a character that I was willing to put up with into a character that I can’t wait to see more of. KAREN GILLAN’s AMY POND does an excellent job as well in this episode as she, early on, brings some of THE DOCTOR’s quirky delivery into her own. MATT SMITH, of course, knocks it out of the park.
There’s not really much more I can say without getting spoiler-ish so I should probably contain myself out of respect to my fellow US watchers who may not have been as ambitious as I was to already see THE BIG BANG. I will warn you to brace yourself for a surprising and wonderfully emotional performance by MATT SMITH near the end of the episode. I was also very pleased to see a part of this season clearly carrying on into the next season as THE DOCTOR himself names a mystery that is still unsolved.
There you have it folks. There’s very little else on television that I really care about this week so my one big recommendation for the week is to either introduce yourself, or say hello again, to THE DOCTOR and watch the DOCTOR WHO marathon on BBC AMERICA.
Oh, did I mention that BEING HUMAN’s second season also premieres right after? It’s a win-win for sure.
With the summer days completely underway I have to admit that writing a column about all the television out there that I am not actually watching is a bit of a stretch. Rather than put out a disingenuous column I’d rather write this week about the things that I actually have been watching (or plan to). I hope you don’t mind bearing with me during this interlude before the return of my regular prattle and daily TV bread down.
Big Brother’s Back
Every year I have a guilty pleasure during the summer season and it is CBS’s BIG BROTHER. It isn’t because the TV show is creative and done well, it isn’t for the blatant attempts that they do to make the players on the show (known as HOUSE GUESTS) visually appealing, and it isn’t for the diversity they also decide to plunk into the house to drum up friction. I simply love watching the show to see the way that regular social graces and group dynamics break down so quickly.
If you aren’t aware of the concept of BIG BROTHER in its US incarnation the idea is very simple: a sound stage is turned into a house, complete with an outdoor backyard, where there are over 50 cameras and microphones following around a group of contestants as they try to make it through SURVIVOR like internal voting eliminations while also competing for the things we take for granted every day: hot water, food, etc. Throughout all of this the House is not allowed any contact with the outside world. For 75 days this micro-community is all there is for these people and usually this means that they all go a little nuts.
The producers of the show also know exactly what to do in order to create artificial drama or on-camera romance in order to fill time with the three weekly airings of the show: the provide plenty of alcohol to the HOUSE GUESTS. This helps lubricate arguments, conflict and romance. It helps increase paranoia, bad choices and helps the HOUSE GUESTS to blunder things up.
This early on, with the show just starting, it’s very always very hard for me to get into the show because with 13 people living in a house at the same time it is hard for me to get all of these people straight. Each year they’ve tried to do something in the very beginning to help avoid this problem (at least for me) by introducing an early twist or idea. One season it was that the house was stocked with people and their ex-boyfriend/girlfriends. Another season they had twins playing secretly as one person (trading places in the special confessional/interview area known as THE DIARY ROOM), and another season they had people secretly playing as partners (each thinking they were the only ones). One of the better gimicss was the use of AMERICA’S PLAYER, a person that was playing to win but also had to do the things that we, the home viewer, voted for them to do. They would have to vote how we wanted them to vote, do stunts we told them to do which brought a new level of interactivity to the viewing experience.
Seeing as how this is the 12th season of BIG BROTHER, however, I think the idea well is running a little dry because they’ve flat out lifted a concept straight out of another reality show by putting THE MOLE into the house, only BIG BROTHER calls this person THE SABOTEUR. The SABOTEUR has one goal in the show: undermine the other players and get to the half-way point without being discovered for a clean $50,000. Considering BIG BROTHER only has two winners and second place gets you the same amount as the SABOTEUR will win it’s a pretty solid plan considering the odds of winning are only two in 13.
In an early smart move the show hasn’t revealed to us, the audience, who this SABOTEUR is. In an early dumb move they are going to reveal the person during this Thursday’s live eviction show. I say this is a dumb move because I enjoy not knowing who the SABOTEUR is and would rather enjoy their undermining antics while trying to determine who they are. This puts me in the same frame of mind as the HOUSE GUESTS and allows me to experience a bit of what they are going through first hand. Instead we’ll just be seeing them play out their antics much in the same way we already have from watching AMERICA’S PLAYER do their dirty work.
If you are interested in watching BIG BROTHER you can catch it on CBS weekly on Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday at 8 PM.
Are you PSYCH’d
Summer always brings plenty of original programming on the USA NETWORK and July is no exception with the premiere of PSYCH this Wednesday, July 14 @ 10/9c. PSYCH is one of those shows that I enjoy watching every season solely for the performances of JAMES RODAY and DULE HILL. Their characters are entertainingly written, well performed and the actors portray an excellent chemistry. The one thing that is disappointing for me when it comes to PSYCH, however, is how far the show has really stretched away from its original concept.
The original PILOT of PSYCH had JAMES RODAY’s SHAWN SPENCER having an incredibly well crafted and honed sense of perception who picked up on finer details that others would overlook that was matched with a very good deductive reasoning (if you saw the recent SHERLOCK HOLMES movie you know exactly what I’m talking about). The first few episodes of the first season were able to carry this concept but near the end of that initial run it began to erode. Now there are very few things that I feel like SHAWN observes that anyone else could pick up on, very few deductions made that anyone else couldn’t also come to. Considering I keep watching you can tell that this change hasn’t pushed me away.
… and finally, EUREKA (and others)
Even though the baffling name change happened the majority of the programming on SYFY really hasn’t. This past week on the network we saw the premieres of WAREHOUSE 13, EUREKA and the new show HAVEN. Of the three my favorite has to be EUREKA. The show is just silly science fiction fun set in the fictional town of Eureka, OR where a secretly funded brain trust of scientists push the boundaries of what we know in the name of progress.
The show, now in it’s fourth season, has had an interesting evolution and it’s once again played with time travel. At the end of the first season, a glimpse into the future five years from where the show started, had SHERIFF JOHN CARTER had to travel back in time to the present in order to undo someone else’s meddling. In doing so he undid the very future we saw, something that I’ve been wondering if they would ever come back to. This season opener didn’t exactly take us back there but instead displaced many characters back to the 1940′s. In getting back, just as they always do, they inadvertently brought back one of the town founders, played by BATTLESTAR GALACTICA’s JAMES CALLIS (BALTAR) and now things are different. I’m hoping the changes won’t be permanent and will instead just be a plot line that plays across a few episodes. Seeing as how JAMES CALLIS is a brilliant actor I’m hoping he’ll be the one thing that they are able to keep around for a while.
That’s it for this column. Come back next week and I’m sure I’ll have a mouthful of other things to say as well as some of the listings all of you (hopefully) enjoy.
