By John Keegan
This episode is an effective follow-up to the previous installment, ramping up the final endgame with David Robert Jones and pointing towards the identity of the true Big Bag for the season. It’s been hinted since the fourth season premiere, but now there is much more evidence that the Observers are up to no good.
This episode is an effective follow-up to the previous installment, ramping up the final endgame with David Robert Jones and pointing towards the identity of the true Big Bag for the season. It’s been hinted since the fourth season premiere, but now there is much more evidence that the Observers are up to no good.
Continuing with Michael's increasing mental breakdown, the show has ventured into auditory hallucinations. Listening to instructions from a drive-thru ordering machine may be unorthodox, but that's par for the course with a show like this. It leads to a subplot that doesn't really go anywhere, and exposes the weakest part of the plot (the conspiracy) as well.
In this episode, Jake tosses out a random number, demonstrating his superior otherworldly intelligence, while his father Martin is sent on a bizarre quest to determine the number’s meaning, strangers’ lives intersect in super-convenient ways, and foreigners who embrace Western values are saved by high speed internet. Sound familiar?
All of the focus this season on "Justified" has drifted from three main villains in Boyd, Limehouse, and Quarles. The ignored small-time criminals were Johnny Crowder and Arlo. Being loyal lackeys for Boyd through the season can do that. One figures very much in this episode and the other sets up things for future stories in the next season. For now, Raylan goes hunting for both Quarles, who is suspected of shooting and killing his State Trooper friend. It's an exciting, often tense, dangerous journey through many parts of Harlan. The episode pays off a lot of the little subplots that were presented through the season, some in rather shocking ways.
Eureka, which is currently Syfy's longest running scripted series, will be returning for its fifth and final season Monday, April 16 at 9:00 PM ET/PT.
I’ll be completely honest: I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the first season of “The Borgias”. I think that came through fairly clear in my reviews. Part of the problem is the distressing sameness of the episodes; since all bear the heavy-handed stylistic mark of Neil Jordan, there’s less of the creative variety that allows a show like “Game of Thrones”, for example, to play on expectation.
Nightmares are inherently scary. When people have them, it's usually in bed, at home, both places that are considered sanctuaries. This episode of "Mad Men" was about what happens when those sanctuaries are violated, intruded upon, and how we deal with such things. We invite strangers into our homes and beds sometimes. It usually turns out well, but every so often, the risk of having strangers in a place of comfort can yield horrible results.
It really had to take until the very near end of the season for this show to get good? There has been a marked improvement in the show's quality over the past few episodes, and it continues here. The writers have somehow pulled themselves out of the muck and come up with a more streamlined story that can be built on.