Community and Fringe were perhaps the highlights of this rather uninspired week of television. I hope things pick up for these other shows in the weeks to come. No new Fringe until November. That means this post will be shorter next week. *frowns*
Boardwalk Empire: S1 x 04 – Anastasia ★★★☆☆
This episode was a bit of a step down from the previous in that there wasn’t a whole lot that happened and there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot of character development. There was a bunch of setup, so I imagine that things established here will be resolved later. Still, they could have at least done more to make it interesting.
Community: S2 x 04 – Basic Rocket Science ★★★★★
Community is my favorite show on television right now. Not many are able to balance the comedy and pop culture references with the heart and character development like this show does. And this episode is right up there among my favorites for this series, being a smart parody of Apollo 13 and most other space mission films in existence. Kudos.
Fringe: S3 x 04 – Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep ★★★★☆
Another strong episode of the best sci-fi show out now. We’re back to the regular universe as “Fauxlivia” finds herself under a bit of scrutiny for being different since the season finale. Considering she’s not the real Olivia, it makes sense that she would have some problems portraying her original counterpart. It’s nice that they haven’t outed her as the fake yet. If this were in anyone else’s hands, we might have them guessing right away and her running off into the distance firing her weapon and swearing. Thankfully, everyone is still convinced that she’s the real deal. Great title. It plays well into the story and reminds me of a good book I read awhile back. Heh.
No Ordinary Family S1 x 03 – No Ordinary Ring ★★★★☆
This show is getting better with each episode and I much enjoyed this step back to develop the characters rather than focus on the bad guys. Granted, there were still bad guys in the episode, but they weren’t the focus. The crux of this arc seems to be the Powell family coming to grips with their powers. I wouldn’t mind keeping the bad guy quotient low if it meant fleshing these characters out even more. I’ll admit in the beginning that I was skeptical of the super powers that were chosen for these characters, but it works and makes sense by this episode. I say it’s worth sticking with for now.
Terriers: S1 x 06 – Ring-a-Ding-Ding ★★★☆☆
An episode about a ring with predictable twists and turns and a bit of a melodramatic ending. Not my favorite in the bunch and if the previous episodes hadn’t been as good as they were, I’d probably put the show on notice. Still, the characters are compelling. Basically, a light and fluffy episode when I expected a little more meat.
Weeds: S6 x 08 – Gentle Puppies ★★★☆☆
Nancy finally gets it on after a few episodes of frustration and everything going completely wrong. Andy, meanwhile, is up to his usual hilarious antics and everyone else plays along. It’s a pretty straightforward episode, and still a fun ride for the most part. I’m kind of curious if they have some kind of payoff in mind this season or if it’s just going to end. They’ve brought in the feds, but we’ve only seen them in the opener of an episode.
