The Amazing Race ~ Waterslide melt-down

Let’s not beat around the bush. The thing that everyone is or should be talking about today is what I’m going to go ahead and dub “The Great Water-slide Melt-down of ’09.” If there anyone else is planning to top this melt-down on a waterslide within this calendar year, you’d better get on that. Time is ticking and this one was a doozie.

So Canaan . . . what exactly about Mika screamed “Amazing Race material” to you? Was it her paralyzing fear of heights, or was it her deathly fear of water? Oh I get it, it was the COMBO! They should totally cancel each other out, right? Like double negatives? No?

The last challenge of the day required both team members to go down a steep water slide, though a really cool tube where you could see sharks swimming around you, and reach the bottom for your last clue directing you to run down the beach and meet up with Phil. No biggie, right? Well, that’s what most of teams thought. Then came Mika and Canaan, in second to last place with a healthy lead on the Globe Trotters. Mika is petrified. She’s wearing swimmies (or floaties if you prefer, to each his own) which is an absolutely ridiculous concept considering that it is a WATER SLIDE where the water by necessity is never more than two inches deep. At the bottom it is maybe a whopping 3 feet. Those things would do nothing but make you less aerodynamic and be way uncomfortable on this type of slide. So she’s freaking out. Canaan tries to coax her to sit down and as soon as she is near the opening he tries to FORCE HER down the slide. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh dude. Bad bad bad bad bad call. Way to make a bad situation worse. Now she’s terrified of the slide AND Canaan. He’s trying to push her down, while she’s begging to slide attendant to intervene. “Help me! Help me!” Man, he was not loving his job that day. Cross your arms and feet. That is all he is required to tell you. He didn’t sign up for any damsel in distress business, and he in fact does not help her, help her.

So there’s Canaan, running around telling her “'I'm begging you. You are breaking my heart. You will regret it,” which isn’t helping at all. Despite him being a jerk by trying to force her down the slide (which, by the way, could have resulted in some serious physical damage if she went flailing down unprepared), I can’t blame him. She’s ridiculous. The Globe Trotters manage to catch up, which enacts a 2 minute move it or lose it rule. The normally congenial Big Easy tries to psych her out, “''Don't do it. I wouldn’t do it. It's high. It's a long way up here…. If you're scared, come on back and we'll walk back down with you.” Some people may have found this a little low (Canaan certainly did), but it only amused us. I mean, come on – she wasn’t going anywhere! Finally their 2 minutes are up and the Globe Trotters fly by them down the slide. Canaan goes too with some vain hope that Mika might follow. Not so much. Mike cries a little bit and then makes her way back down the stairs to find Canaan, who tells us in their exit interview that he doesn’t hate her. Sure dude. One million dollars lost because of a waterslide. What’s to be mad about.

So the question that everyone is asking:

Would you rather lose the Amazing Race because of a waterslide or a porta potty? (I’m looking at you, Jen and Kisha).

Over to NBC for the comedies!

Community


Another great episode this week! Lots of funny moments, including the creep-tastic Human Beings mascot. That culturally neutral thing is going to haunt my dreams. It was nice to learn a little more about Troy and see him do more than a couple of one liners in an episode. As it turns out this episode was actually supposed to air earlier in the season, which would have made perfect sense – but it worked here alright as well.

The best exchange of the night had to have been the following between Jeff and Troy:

Jeff: I’m saying you’re a football player! It’s in your blood.
Troy: That’s racist.
Jeff: Your soul?
Troy: That’s racist.
Jeff: Your… eyes?
Troy: That’s gay.
Jeff: That’s homophobic.
Troy: That’s black.
Jeff: That’s racist.
Troy: Damn!

This one came in at a close second for me:

Jeff: I'm not having a conversation with someone who emerges from a bush.
Britta: Because I'm right?
Jeff: No. Because I'm not in a commercial for breakfast cereal.

30 Rock

Any time Will Arnett shows up on our TV we know we’re in for something awesome, and this was no disappointment. In this weeks episode Jack sets out to design a better microwave and ends up turning it into a car by accident, Tracy (and everyone other man in NYC) is made at Liz for her Dealbreaker book, and Jenna disappears to Iceland to film a werewolf movie (to punish Liz for looking for a new cast member) – perfect plan except for the fact that Iceland only has 1 minute of darkness this time of year. Oh and loved that the porn actress from Nalin' Palin played Liz's porn alter ego.

Best quotes of the night:

“Blammo! Another successful interaction with a man!” – Liz

“I have mercury poisoning. From obsessively taking my rectal temperature.” – Jenna (nice burn to the Pivs.)

"A book hasn't caused me this much trouble since Where's Waldo went to that barber pole factory.” – Tracy

"The only headline will be 'Donaghy Saves GE, comma, Marries Your Mom." – Jack

Devon: You'd have to take it. I'd make you. I'd make you take it all.
Jack: I'd roll over and let you give it to me.
Devon: I'm honestly not trying to make this sound gay.
Jack: No one is, it's just happening.

 
PS: We are half-way through Parks and Recreations. We'll be finishing that one off tonight!

Getting Dramatic with ABC's Thursday lineup

Grey’s Anatomy

It was a very different Grey’s this week. A hotel fire caused a hot mess in the emergency room (or as Callie said last season, “we’ve got trauma coming out of our butts!”), and in the crazy confusion, one patient died. Truthfully, I’m willing to bet that several people died, but the death in question is of interest because of the massive neglect surrounding her care. The chief interviews everyone who had any interaction with the patient, which included almost everyone. So what we ended up with was multiple views of the same story, each illuminating a little more about what went down. In the end it was April who neglected to look at the patients throat when she did her initial exam (she got distracted for a moment and skipped that step). If she had done this then she would have noticed soot in the throat and prevented the entire mess that followed and the patient would certainly have survived. She got the axe (not to be confused with the axe in another patient’s chest). Poor April, fired from Grey’s and married to a gay man on Mad Men. She just can’t catch a break. The chief is satisfied that he’s found the responsible party and taken care of the situation. He thinks he’s doing a swell job with this whole merger thing. Derek points out what we are all thinking – that the chief is totally sucking:

''Maybe it's not one doctor, maybe it's too many doctors who don't know each other and who don't trust each other.'' - Derek

Although not involved with the dead patient in question, we got to Arizona lay down an awesome speech on Lexie telling her to stop crying, turn off her feelings, and do her job. She’s hardcore and is easily one of the most level headed and mature doctors at Seattle Grace. Seeing Arizona be so awesome kind of makes me angry that she hasn’t been around since the first season. BTW, is anyone else the tiniest bit concerned that they all treat Lexie like a resident instead of an intern? There weren’t any other interns running around, and Christina certainly wasn’t paying any attention to or caring about what she was doing.

Also, who is chief resident now that Bailey is an attending? Shouldn’t they have one of those?


Flash Forward

ABC is really racking up points on the gay front this year. Thursday is the night of the lesbians – meaning it is now home to the only lesbian characters on network TV. So that’s fun! Their date was a little awkward for me – maybe it was the image that Janis planted in our heads of a three way on the space station with her, Hillary Clinton, and Sarah Palin. Got to give FlashForward credit here, though. We saw Janis and Maya kiss three times, which is three more times than Callie and Arizona this season.

Also:

Dear ABC,

Please don’t show me commercials with Joseph Fiennes speaking with his natural accent right before returning to the show and his American accent. It weirds us out.

Thanks,
The Shapusens

The bread on our Glee sandwich - SYTYCD and Modern Family

So You Think You Can Dance

We’ve finally got our top 20, y’all! We’ve got a few surprises, a few early favorites, and a few “who the hell are you”s – so basically the usual. I’m not going to go through each person, because there’s 20 of them and that’s a lot of people, but I will point out a few highlights. We are so excited that we have been granted with not one, not two, but THREE TAP DANCERS this season! Our of the tappers we are most excited for Bianca – you finally made it, girl! We were really into Phillip when we first saw him at the LA auditions. We got worried that he’s been cut since we didn’t see him at all during Vegas week. Turns out that he was being a cocky douche to the judges and they saved up all of their footage to show just before they let him into the top 20. Major attitude. Hopefully he’s had that adjusted, because we liked his dancing. The other tapper who don’t remember at all, and the tiny bit of his audition that they showed wasn’t super impressive. Lucky for him the judges were really excited to make this the “Year of the Tap”, so he snuck on in.


We were disappointed to see that Paula got in but had to self-eliminate because she got a movie contract somewhere between Vegas week and when this was filmed. We were big fans of hers from the little we saw. Blurg to scary ballroom wife getting her spot. Was there really no one else more talented that you wanted to pick? What if their next choice was sent home like two people before they get to Paula and they were like “CRAP, is she still in the building? No? Okay fine, Ashleigh it is.” Luckily we still have Ellenore who we are also really pumped about (based on the small amount we’ve seen – hey, it was enough to make us remember her, which is more than we can say for some people).

Our early favorite is Russel, the crumper. He’s pure joy. Love him. Hope he doesn’t let us down!

Also, Mia – that is a hair choice! On a side note, is anyone else a little worried about Mia? What with the whole “things haven’t been going my way” reference she made, and with her not being on the show anymore (even though she’s totally welcome back). Courtney and I are worried she might be sick. Anyone else? We hope not!


Modern Family

Man, this show can’t lose. Not only is it hilarious, but it’s also kicking some ratings ass, so well done completely surprisingly awesome comedy! There isn’t one character that I don’t find hilarious in some way. Keep on rocking and delivering awesome quotes and GIFs!

“You’re really close to ruining gay for me.” Mitchell to Jay, when Jay asks if they would check him out in a gay bar.

“For the record, you’re smokin’ hot. One hundred percent. You’re totally my type. You’re dangerous. You’re gettable. You have a little cashola in your pocket….the whole kit and kaboodle.” – Cameron’s response to Jay

Glee ~ Mash-up

I’ve seen a lot of negative energy on the internet today about last night’s episode of Glee, and I just don’t get it! We loved it, so there. I enjoyed the Puck/Rachel romance, but I’m glad it was a one episode deal. We’ll see if it pops up again, but they are just both too hung up on Quinn and Finn to make that work out. Like Rachel said, their relationship was built on a fantasy. We loved loved loved Emma’s rendition of “I Could Have Danced All Night.” Our little fan girl hearts squee so much for this coupling. It was great, and a little scary, to see the softer side of Sue – but I am ever so glad that she was back in full swing bitch mode by the end of the episode. And their jive was cramazing. Loved the slushie wars, and wish I had better GIFs to show off – I’m sure some will appear eventually.

I can’t speak for Courtney, but I think I’m ready to jump on the “Stop Mr. Schuester from Rapping” bandwagon. I mean, I’m not going to run out and sign the petition (which exists, by the way), but I’d really ready to hear him do some real songs again every once and a while (OH SNAP to rap music! – sorry, not my original intention, but there it is).

And now, quotes and GIFs!

“It was a message from God: Rachel was a hot Jew and the good lord wanted me to get into her pants.” – Puck

“Ken has convinced me we need to at least be in the same room when the marriage is certified.” – Emma
“What can I say? I'm a traditionalist.” – Ken

“You sunk my battleship, Rod. And you sunk it hard.” – Sue

''I, for one, think intimacy has no place in a marriage. Walked in on my parents once, and it was like seeing two walruses wrestling'' – Sue

"I’ll need to see the set list for sections, after all. I want them on my desk warm from the laminator at 5pm. If it is one minute late, I will go to the animal shelter and get you a kitty cat. I will let you fall in love with that kitty cat. And then on some dark, cold night I will steal away into your home and punch you in the face." – Sue

(this one goes out to that kid in the blue shirt who slips and falls in the slushie)

Quickies - Amazing Race, Mad Men, DH, HIMYM, Castle

Here's a quick sampling platter of our recent TV veiwing:

Amazing Race

Dammit Keri! Headed home this week were Lance and Keri. Thank god. They had gotten to the point of annoyance where I couldn’t even be amused by them any more. Ok, I laughed a little (maybe a lot) at the fact that they spent 90% of their time driving the wrong way up and down the highway. But then they were all too quick to remind us of why we hated them so much when Lance finished the water finding challenge and practically threw their stuff at the local clue giver while saying ''Have a spoon, have a ladle, have a nice life'' in a way that made my skin crawl. Peace out.

Side note to Ericka and Brian: you two are the only ones who care that you are an interracial couple. Enough with the “Ebony and Ivory” business!


Mad Men

Betty found Don’s box of super secrets. Not they best hiding spot in the world, Don – and a little careless with the keys! She sat up all night with the box ready to confront him about it, but he was too busy doing Sally’s former teacher. So she simply put the box away and pretended like nothing happened. That can’t be good. We don’t even know how she processed the information. There’s the divorce certificate from the real Don Draper’s wife and the deed to that house – so she’s pretty sure that he was married before and never told her. But what about all of the pictures of him labeled Dick?!?!?! Could she possibly be able to put that together too? Only time will tell.

Props to Sally for delivering a great “Geez Louise” to some of Betty’s awesome parenting, and to Paul Kinsey for kind of realizing that Peggy is advertising magic.

Desperate Housewives

Oh Julie, we called that you were sleeping with the Bolen dad on the first episode – I mean, you DO like your older men. When Susan find her diary and she only referred to her lover as “D.” we were like, “What the hell is the Bolen guy’s first name? The son is Danny, but it can’t be him . . .” and then when his wife called him “Nick” we were like, “So the ‘D’ is for . . . Dad . . . . Bolen?” It wasn’t until the shocking  entirely predictable ending that he showed up to her hospital bed and called himself “Dominic” that we knew it was him for sure. Whatever, I’m calling him “Dad Bolen” from now on.

Also in this episode, Katherine done gone crazy and Lynette’s pregnancy boobs are out of control!


How I Met Your Mother

Robin is in danger of getting deported because she hurt someone with a chair at the Hoser Hutt, so Barney helps her cram for an American citizenship exam. This goes pretty well until she ends up back at the Canadian bar that night and finds herself in Toronto in the morning. Despite Barney’s attempts to Americanize her, she is still a Canadian at heart. Sadly, she finds that she isn’t the same Canadian girl she used to be when a woman at Tim Horton’s mistakes her for an American when she doesn’t say please or thank you and didn’t watch the last night’s game. Alas she is a woman without a Country. Barney yells at Canada for being stupid enough to let women like Robin leave, and then gets the crap beaten out of him by a bunch of burley Canadian men (and possible children, and Robin a little).

Meanwhile Ted and Marshall embark upon a road trip like to used to in College. One snag – Lilly. She’s coming along to put a damper on their fun. There were some excellent moments over into his plot line as well, including the results of too much Tantrum, Kenny Roger’s narration of “Goodbye, Sparky”, and a flashback to the Fiero in full “And I would walk 500 miles” glory.

Top Quotes:

“There's kids playing hockey on the back. It's like you want us to make fun of you!” - Barney about Canada’s $5 bill.

“How do you know the Canadian citizenship test is easy?” – Robin
“It's Canada. Question one, do you want to be Canadian? Question two, really?” – Barney

“We were like Lewis and Clark, if Lewis and Clark peed in water bottles and had a bong made out of a cantaloupe.” – Ted

Castle

Just read that ABC picked it up for a full season! Woo hoo! Much like Becket and Castle learned that they were going to be stuck with eachother for a while in this weeks episode, we can rest assured that we have at least one more full season of Nathan Fillion on our TV. We realized watching this week’s episode that one of the reasons that they are so amusing together is that they are both so completely lacking in subtlety. They are blunt and emotional and competitive, and we love that. Keep on keeping on, Castle! Also, we are pretty sure that next week Castle dresses up like Captain Reynolds for Halloween (or at least it looked a lot like that in the quick preview). Nice. Then again, the promo pictures show him in a different outfit, so maybe out imaginations are just getting away from us. I prefer the first option.

And because I have no GIFs particularly relevant to any of these episodes yet, let's just take a moment to be excited for Wednesday night's shows, including Glee and Modern Family!

Fringe ~ Dream Logic

The most recent episode of Fringe had a particularly X-Files-ish feel to it, which we don’t mind one bit. It was a solid stand alone episode, with a little nod to Charlie’s death for good measure.


The guest star of the week was bugging we because I couldn’t quite place him. Ravi Kappor played a sleep doctor who had implanted chips in people’s brains and basically stole their dreams and got off on the feeling (essentially – I’m paraphrasing here). What he didn’t realize was that it was killing his patients (they were literally dying of exhaustion, and murdering people as they went). In the end he felt bad and killed himself, basically O.D.-ing on the dreams. He was very familiar but I couldn’t quite place him. It was the beard throwing me off. Turns out he was on Crossing Jordon (which I watched sporadically back in the day) and he had was what probably the longest character name in the history of television: Dr. Mahesh 'Bug' Vijayaraghavensatanaryanamurthy. That’s not me being saracastic – all of those letters are actually supposed to be there.


Anywho, here is your observer sighting for the week:

and your glyph decipher:

Since were lazy bloggers last week, here are the ones from Of Human Action as well:

Hey Nerds, 30 Rock is back!

30 Rock finally made its triumphant return to our TVs last week, and not a moment too soon! From Liz and Pete’s affair-like behavior, to Tracy’s quest to relate to the common man, it was all win. The moment that made me laugh most though was probably the most random moment of the whole episode. Jack mentions that they’ve had to make cut backs all over. The payroll department has been cut down to one guy and an envelope stuffing machine. Cut to a random guy sitting in a tiny room eagerly whispering it’s “my birthday” to the machine seated next to him.

I. Died. Laughing.

And now some top quotes from the episode:

"We'll trick those race car-loving wide loads into loving your, watching your lefty homoerotic propaganda hour yet!" ~ Jack

“Pete’s stealing money.”/”Liz’s uterus fell out.” ~ Liz and Pete simultaneously

“What do we want?"
"To get your sandwiches!"
"When do we want it?"
"Whenever would be convenient for you!” ~ Kenneth and the Pages on strike

“Can I guess your name? Is it Pedro? Is it Crackford? Is it swimming?” ~ Tracy

“Pete and I are intercourseing each other.” ~ Liz

I am ashamed to say that I haven't found any new 30 Rock GIFs yet, so please accept this shameful Jack Donaghy for now:

Grey's Anatomy ~ Invasion

Seattle Grace has been taken over by orange people! Okay, fine, people dressed in orange. Whatevs. The residents from Mercy West have landed, and are conveniently wearing their orange scrubs while the blue ones are backordered - just incase you couldn't tell who we were supposed to be hating. The new kids include Kitty from Mad Men, some girl who we vaguely recognize from season 1 of Heroes, the nude model from Sister Hood of the Traveling Pants 2, and some other guy who is a total j-hole to Izzie (which means we automatically like him better than her). Also, they don't eat lunch - so that's just creepy.

I'm going to take this time to say that hospitalized Meredith is my favorite kind of Meredith. While she was having an excellent Aliens inspired rant about how "this is our ship!", I momentarily forgot that we used to hate her. Right now she's down right pleasing. You go girl!

The most relevant parts of the episode to us were everything related to Callie and Arizona. Callie's dad is back in town to make ammends  pray away the gay. Some great moments from both Sara Ramirez and Jessica Capshaw here. Someone conveniently put together all of their scenes together:





Oh yeah, and Izzie got fired and left Alex. Blah blah blah, whatevs. She'll be back, no matter how much we may wish otherwise.

Glee ~ Throwdown

Glee continues to be fabulous, as expected. This week we got even more Sue, which equals hilarity. No Emma this episode, but that’s okay – she’ll be back next week telling the kids cool people wear sunglasses – so it’s all good.

And for the record, Canada delivered a much more exciting promo for next weeks episode, as captured by this shaky handheld camera. Thanks Canada!





Now on to this week’s quotable moments, and some GIFs for good measure:

''Look at me, even in the heat of battle, I am so elegant, regal. I am Ajax, mighty Greek warrior. God it feels so good to pop that zit Will Schuester.'' – Sue

''We're even fighting in our voice-over.'' – Will

While being forced to hug it out:
''I will destroy you'' - Will
''I am about to vomit down your back.'' - Sue

''I am going to create an environment so toxic no one will want to be part of that club. Like the time I sold my house to a nice young couple and salted the earth in the backyard so that nothing could grow there for 100 years. Know why I did that? Because they tried to get me to pay their closing costs.'' – Sue

''Santana. Wheels. Gay Kid. Asian. Other Asian. Aretha. Shaft.'' – Sue, while selecting the members of Sue’s Kids.

''The independent polling company in my Dockers has determined you're the hottest girl in school.'' – Jacob to Rachel

“I don't trust a man with curly hair. I can't help but picture little birds laying sulfurous eggs in there, and it disgusts me.” – Sue

“I empower my Cheerios to be champions. Do they go to college? I don't know. I don't care. Should they learn Spanish? Sure, if they wanna become dishwashers and gardeners.” – Sue

“I came up with the best baby name of all-time: Drizzle.” - Finn

(Love Artie and Mercedes in this one)


Outstanding!




Shalom.

Catching-up is hard to do-oo.

It's been a rough time for TV watching, and an even roughing time for blogging about it - but as of right now we are 100% caught up on our shows. We're going to go ahead and call it a wash on trying to blog about everything from last week - so we'll just drop off these couple of GIFs and say we'll try to do better this week :)

You-twit-face

Completely random, and only vaguely related to this blog, but these two tweets made me unreasonably happy today.

Quickies - HIMYM, Castle, Eastwick, House, DH

And now, some randomly ordered quickies:


How I Met Your Mother

Another great HIMYM, and it was super Barney/Robin-centric. We loved Barney’s classroom ADD – “Can we have class outside?” And as an added bonus Lilly totally said she has sex dreams about Robin. What what? I am very disappointed in the GIF-creating community that I don’t have anything to share from this episode yet. But, I can share with you this link to Barney’s blog to see his notes from class.


Castle

Not only do we love this show, but it turns out that the Neilson Families out there are starting to catch on too! The ratings are way up for this season, which is awesome and totally deserved. Now if only all of these people could start watching Dollhouse too while they’re at it. Another great episode, and next week’s episode looks hilarious, so keep an eye out!


Eastwick

We’re still really liking it. The plot is starting to pick-up in pace and we’re get a sense of the town’s past, which turns out to be chock full of Darryl. As a very special bonus, Cybil Shepherd showed up as someone we most certainly will be seeing again. Score!

House

House is back on the job – kind of. He basically just there to give input, but has no real authority since he doesn’t have his license back yet. Taub seems to have stuck his his word about quitting, since he was no where to be seen. 13, however, is still bouncing around in Foreman’s personal life. *Spoiler Alert* - she’ll definitely be back on the team once Cameron leaves later on in the season. James Earl Jones guest starred as an Evil dictator, who ends up basically being murdered by Chase. Our Geeky selves couldn’t stop giggling when he said “rebel”. I can’t believe Chase killed Darth Vader. On the home front, House has clearly been watching too much Dexter during his recovery. He broke into his Vietnam vet neighbor’s apartment, shot him up with drugs, duct taped him to a chair, and . . . cured the guy of his phantom arm pain? Ummm, thanks?

Desperate Housewives

Well Julie looks like she’s going to pull through, and she’s not pregnant (which apparently was a worry?), so that’s good. They’ve already arrested the new kid for her strangling, which of course means he didn’t do it – that’s way too obvious, right? I’m seriously loving Bree and the fact that she’s basically hoping for Julie to wake up with brain damage or memory loss (so that she doesn’t remember seeing Bree and Carl making out hardcore next to her coma bed). Also, I take this is a sign that Gabby should be paying a little more attention to her actual children – especially this one that we never see:

Mad Men - Hells Bells, Pete

Mad Men


We were horrible people and didn’t get around to blogging about Mad Men last week. So to review, last week Betty bought herself a swooning couch, Don got himself beaten up by a couple of drug toting, sex loving drifter kids, and Peggy deliberately ignored our screams through the TV and slept with Duck. Ewwwww. Eww. Ew.

This week we were completely lacking Peggy, so I am led to believe that she is still stranded in Duck’s bedroom, surrounded by turtle necks and Hermes scarves.

Pete’s story line was uber creepy, so we’re just going to get it over with. He basically raped the German Au Pair next door. But first he was kind enough to replace a dress of her employer’s which the girl had accidentally stained. He went to the designer store and asked to speak to a manager, and I immediately yelled out “JOAN!” before she even made it onto the screen. So that’s where she’s been hiding. She’ll find her way back to Sterling Cooper eventually, I’m sure – especially now that Pete knows she is there. So yes, fast forwarding creepy Pete and the Au Pair, Hells-Bells-Trudy comes come from vacationing with her parents, and things are weird for a little bit. She basically knows that he cheated on her, but neither have said anything about it. He tells her that he doesn’t want her going away without him anymore.

Over in the Draper household, Betty’s friendly pregnant-belly-touching-man-friend-with-authority gets the reservoir put on hold for her, and kisses her in her car. She is not phased, because she’s gotten what she wanted.

Connie Hilton has been sending Don all over the place visiting his hotels, and this week he’s being sent to Rome for a couple of days. Betty decides that this is a perfectly good excuse to abandon her children with Carla and head off of their European second honeymoon. Poor Carla. Doesn’t she have a family to get home to? Anyway, Rome is good to Betty – she gets her hair did up something fierce (and a little frightening), and she and Don play a game of “hey stranger” before have some fierce Don Draper affair-worthy sex. Also, Betty speaks surprisingly good Italian.

I’m torn on what my favorite part of this picture is – Betty hair, Don's GQ MotherF-iness, or the dude on the Vespa in the background.

Back at home, Sally’s temper is out of control again, and I genuinely thought she was going to kill Bobby for a second there. (Sally kissed Cut-throat’s son, and Bobby was teasing her about it). When Betty and Don get home, Betty has a chat about first kisses with her which included “You don’t kiss boys, boys kiss you” (didn’t we all agree that Sally was a little lesbian?) and then something about having a lot of first kisses, which gave of the distinct feeling that she was telling her daughter to be a slut – but at least to not be the slut making the first move.

And finally, post Rome Betty is rocking the multicolored 60’s ensembles now. Work.

Fringe - Exploding Watermelons, not just for Gallagher anymore

Fringe


This week’s Fringe delivered on a lot of things we’ve been waiting for: more Astrid, more Gene (Jean? – the cow), more Peter (including some cryptic insights into his past), a glimpse of the other side, hardcore Olivia Dunham, and some full on Observer action.

Still not entirely sure what’s up with Olivia’s bowling alley Yoda, but whatever he’s doing seems to work, because her sheer frustration with him and willingness to put a bullet in his brain from wasting her time managed to get her up and moving sans cane.

Olivia is getting closer and closer to remembering what happened to her when she was on the other side (or in the “Walternate universe” as we like to call it). This week she received some vomit inducing flash backs, which included a very red Leonard Nimoy as William Bell. The previews for next week promise a whole lot more where that came from.

No fake-Charlie this episode, or annoying new girl, but we DID get to see our old pal the Observer receiving some very stalker-ish looking pictures of Walter. Hmmmmmm.

Here is the glyph decipher of the week, which is a little more cryptic than the last two episodes.

Dollhouse ~ Season 2 so Far!

Warning warning, we will be incredibly behind on TV all week! Since we’re mostly up to date (still need to finish last night’s Mad Men), we’ll try to cover what we can and see how it goes from there. First up: Dollhouse.
Dollhouse

To start off, we must apologize to Dollhouse because it has been getting the blogging shaft. We’ve been watching and loving, to be sure! I think it feels like there is so much to discuss, that any attempt to blog about it simply won’t be able to cover everything we’d like. So, with lowered blogging expectations, we’ll keep it brief  still be way too long, but not try to cover every second of the episodes.

As for the first episode, we loved Whiskey/Dr. Saunders going all sorts of crazy on Topher. Their scene together was awesome. For now she has fled the Dollhouse. Anyone else kind of amazed she was able to make it out of the building? I mean, I know she’s “the doctor” but she’s also an active – does this means he has a handler? Who’s not doing their job there? In the meantime, I eagerly await the inevitable moment when Fred and Wesley are reunited – it has to happen, right? Her path is destined to cross with Alexis Denisof’s character. Disgruntled active with too much information, meet over ambitious Senator with an eye for bringing down the Rossum Corporation.

And now, a brief detour back to the past to make sure we all caught what happened there. While Whiskey/Saunders was examining Echo after a particularly intimate engagement (meaning she was having a whole bunch of sex, so they need to make sure she’s ok down there), Echo flashes back to an engagement she had been on with Whiskey back in the day. During this flashback we saw the two of them about to make out. So just to be clear, she flashed to that while Whiskey/Saunders had her hands up Echo’s you know where. That happened.

Also, Sierra’s brief appearance in the premiere pre-wipe and hating Asians slayed us – hope no one showed her a mirror during her engagement. We were happy to see the beginning of the Boyd/Whiskey relationship we were teased with in Epitaph One – Courtney is all squees when it comes to them. Oh, and did we mention that Paul is Echo’s new handler, and that they are totally in cahoots! Echo is much more aware than she should be for an active, and she can remember the personalities that have been implanted in her. Paul is withholding this from Topher and the higher-ups (of course) and promises her to help find the real her – Caroline.

Oh and sidenote to Topher - try working on your sneaking around programming - she's failing on that front:

In the second episode we saw Echo go all sorts of crazy protective Mamma bear when Topher actually manipulates her physiology enough to induce breast feeding. While imprinted, Echo becomes connived that her “husband” is trying to have her killed (to be fair, a black van has been parked outside the house and he’s been acting all sorts of sketchy, so can you blame her?), so makes a run for it with the baby. Eventually they catch her and sedate her, and are able to wipe her. Unfortunately for Topher, the maternal instinct is fully intact and she punches him in the face post-wipe and makes a run for it. Again with the questionable security! So now Echo, only half aware of what she is doing, makes her way back to the baby and gets all creepy with a knife too close to comfort. The husband is able to talk her down somewhat, and the team arrives to wrap things up. Paul and an increasingly coherent Echo talk on a bench about how she can still feel all her imprints, and that it’s all real to her. Paul says that she doesn’t have to do this – they can tell Topher what is going on and then he can probably correct what is going on in her brain – do some deeper wipes or something. Medically speaking, yeah that would probably be wise, but I know Paul is supposed to be our Hero so we’ll see where this is going. Frankly, at times, he comes off as more of a villain to me, but maybe it’s just because I’m more attached to the Dollhouse team despite their moral and ethical discrepancies.

Also in this episode, Senator Alexis Denisof gets some info sent to him that seems to be really Dollhouse specific – almost as if it is coming from an inside source. Whiskey? Alpha? Also his wife weird me out. I would say that she’s an active, but they already pulled that with Novemeber. Speaking of Novemeber aka Mellie aka Madeline, she got summoned for her check-up which she had been avoiding. She’s looking pretty well off – fancy apartment, rich clothes, only a little dead inside. She ran into Paul, whom she only recognized from when she was released. We got a little more info on how she came to volunteer herself to the Dollhouse – Adelle tracked her down after her daughter had died and offered to free her of the pain, which is exactly how it worked out. As far as Madeline is concerned, everything went pretty spiffy, although she’s a little curious as to why she was released years early.

And that should just about catch us up on the Dollhouse front!

This post was brought to you by Season 1 Adelle and Topher, high as kites.