Review - SUITS 3.6: 'The Other Time'

This is the case that never ends, it just goes on and on my friends ...

Some people starting caring about it (not knowing what it was), and they'll continue watching it forever just because ...

THIS GOD DAMN CASE NEVER ENDS!

Hell, even when episodes are set 10 years ago, the case is still prevalent. There's just no end in sight here.

Despite my annoyance of the Ava Hessington case's refusal to go away, this was a solid episode. Basically, it comes down to this: Flash forwards = stupid and Flash backs = useful and interesting (even if they did a poor job of making them all look 10 minutes younger, let alone 10 years)

But the main criticism I had with this one was that we didn't really learn anything new by going back in time. We already knew why Harvey left the DA's office and we pretty much already knew that him and Donna hooked up one time and one time only. And there was no big revelation regarding Mike and his douchebag friend Trevor. I mean, how crazy is it that 10 years prior Trevor was getting Mike into trouble?

I really don't want this show to try to humanize that piece of crap. Not going to work. But any episode that brings back Mike's grandmother is good in my book.

And what a tease ... I thought we were going to learn the full extent of the can opener and the only thing we learned was that they were looking for a new ritual and a waitress happened to walk by as Harvey stole her can opener. I should have known better and not gotten my hopes up.

And yet another shock ... Harvey appears to be going back on his word on taking over the firm and things are on the verge of going back to status-quo. That's USA Network for you!

One last note: Sorry for not posting a review last week. I started writing it, but needed to take a break and just never got back to it. This isn't exactly a groundbreaking take, but reviewing a show can really sap your enjoyment of it. That's definitely at play with me and Suits right now.

QUOTES OF NOTE:

--DONNA: "I'm not into you, I'm Donna."

--EVERYONE: "I'm here, you're here -- do your job."

--HARVEY: "I don't want to find out what kind of lawyer I'd be without you."

--DONNA: "You really do need me to stop doing things like this ... in the future."

--DONNA: "OK, listen Rainman -- you wear lifts in your shoes, you want braces but you don't have the balls and you have a cat ... that you love more than it loves than you.

RANDOM RAMBLINGS:

--Louis is the creepiest dude ever and a complete snake, but it's hard not to love him anyway.

--I'm starting to think Donna is more valuable to a law firm than Harvey would be.

--HAHA, I love that the random dude in the elevator called Louis an asshole. Who doesn't hate that guy?

--At first, I was thinking that Dean could go *$#% himself, but then I realized that he pretty much had every right to be furious and take it out on Mike.

--Cameron is a terrible lawyer. How does he still have a job?

THE GRADE: B

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The Plopper Reviews - COVERT AFFAIRS 4.06: 'Space (I Believe In)'

Oh god.

Look ... I mean ... I had a feeling I was going to come out of this episode feeling extremely uncomfortable.  Let me first start by asking – Do you watch 'It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’?  If not, and if you enjoy demented humor, you’re missing out.  I spent 99.9% of this Covert Affairs episode, “Space (I Believe In),” in a pretty decent frame of mind, and then the last 30 seconds suddenly sent me into feeling exactly like the YouTube supercut of every single utterance of the phrase “GODDAMNIT!!” in the entire ‘It’s Always Sunny’ series.  Google “always sunny goddamnit supercut” and you’ll find it.  That is me, right now.

If you’ve read my previous reviews, you’ll know that I’ve been dead set against this “Helen is really alive!!” twist since the second we found out Helen ever existed to begin with.  And that is all while knowing it was 99% likely to happen, due to Bionic Woman constantly lurking in the background the entire season.  Why do I feel so uncomfy with this?  It’s two reasons, really.  First, it gives me horrible flashbacks to ‘Alias’.  There’s GOTTA be some ex 'Alias' superfans who watch CA, right??  Well, if you live in my head, which is not at *all* something I’d recommend, you’ll know (remember, this is pure fact because you’re hypothetically living in my brain), that the first two seasons of 'Alias' were amazing and seasons 3 through 5 were an ever-increasing pile of steaming shite.  Maybe I’m exaggerating, but it was a STEEP slope into season 5.  :shudder:  Anyway.  The turning point was the last scene of the season 2 finale, when Sydney wakes up confused and disoriented in Hong Kong, meets up with Vaughn, and Vaughn tells her, “Syd, you’ve been missing for 2 years, we thought you were dead.”  Syd then looks at Vaughn's left ring finger and is like, WTF dude, is that a WEDDING RING!?  Then we got to spend the ENTIRE 3rd season with some random blonde being MARRIED to Sydney’s new boyfriend.  What a nightmare.  In all fairness, JJ Abrams leaving the show to focus on ‘Lost’ was really the larger issue at hand; the overall quality of the show took a major dive at the same time.

But point being, one of the major suckage points was the fact that the writers purposely threw in this love triangle so as to *manufacture* drama and put a wedge between Syd and Vaughn.  It FELT contrived, and caused nothing but lameness the entire season.  I don’t know what the angle of the CA writers is with this Helen thing, but if it’s to set up a manufactured love triangle, then no.  No thank you.  It’s been done on many other shows, and it has always been lame.  If, on the other hand, it’s to INFORM our lead characters and give them insights on next steps to deal with Henry, or to help them to grow as characters even, then maybe it’s something that can be of value.  We shall see.  There’s another reason I feel uncomfy with this though, as well - The whole “OMGWHUUT she’s still alive!!” thing is a liiiittle on the wacky side for this show.  It would feel right at home on many other spy shows, but one thing I’ve always liked about CA is that it usually tries to keep its head a little closer to reality and away from soapy town.  Now, to be fair, the Lena storyline also veered a bit close to soapy town, but I loved that storyline so much that I was able to get past that.  Likewise, IF this “Helesa” (the Twitter fans came up with this nickname: a Helen/Theresa hybrid) thing is done well, I’ll be forgiving.  We just won’t know what this is about until we get there.  Fingers crossed.  BIG time.

Have I seriously just spent THREE paragraphs on the LAST 30 SECONDS of this damn episode!?  Lord.  Writing the rest of this is going to be a rough ride.  Let’s get to *everything* else now, shall we?  Outside of my uncomfortable feelings about Helesa, I actually enjoyed this ep.  I’ve gotten a big kick out of the whole “Annie killed Seth” storyline this season in general, and I’ve had to really sit and think about why that is.  I’m a HUGE sucker for spy shows.  A running theme on these shows is that bodies tend to pile up at the hands of the lead characters pretty regularly, and as far as I can think of, it’s pretty damn rare for the characters to ever face REAL consequences for that.  Think about ‘Homeland’ - Brody has killed several people, from Tom Walker to that tailor who made the suicide bomb vest, to the damn VICE PRESIDENT of the United States, and has he really had to face consequences for ANY of these??  I don’t think so, not yet anyway.  He dumped that tailor’s body in the woods and I don’t think we ever heard another peep about it.  Did we, or is my memory failing me?  OH my cousin Katie just reminded me – “Well he WAS a no-show at his wife’s fundraiser event that night, which was NOT COOL.”  True.  Maj consequences.

Now take ‘The Americans’ ... the bodies piled up all season, including the damn PARTNER of the FBI dude/neighbor investigating the KGB.  There’s constantly the threat on that show of any one of these killings coming to light, but that hasn’t happened ... yet.  Granted, it’s only been one season, so there’s plenty of time.  But you see where I’m going with this.  On CA, again keeping itself somewhat in the realm of the “real world,” when Annie accidentally kills someone, she has to face REAL consequences for it.  She has to sit in the hot seat for an entire in-depth murder investigation.  Yes, Henry saved her ass in the end, but her going against him now means she’s in even hotter water now than she was to begin with.  She doesn’t just get to wipe her brow in relief and go on her merry way.  She’s now even more screwed than she was when this ep started.  Like I said, the effort to stay within the realm of logic and reality is one of the things I’ve always loved about this show.  And the tense and suspenseful way they played out each bit of Seth’s murder investigation in this ep was great.  I’ve always loved Rossabi as a character, and Noam Jenkins was awesome in that final scene with Annie, after he had been “broken” and turned by Henry.  You could really feel his pain.  Poor Rossabi has been the CIA’s punching bag throughout this entire series, so I’m glad Annie defended him against Henry in the end.  The poor guy deserves someone on his side.  Marlon, on the other hand, is f*cked.

Here’s my random thoughts before I get to my summary and grade:

• The exposition spent re-introducing Rossabi to the audience every single time he shows up again on CA drives me insane.  Wouldn’t a new viewer be able to figure it out from less obvious comments here and there??
• Hahaha poor Tim Griffin – how would you like to be killed off of a TV show, only to be forced to return for one more episode to play your own dead body?  Oh well, part of the job of an actor I suppose.  ;-)
• I recall recently saying, either in one of these reviews or to my friend Shelby, “Joan’s goddamn abandoned pill addiction storyline will haunt me to my grave.”  FINALLY it reared its hazy drugged-out head again tonight!!  We still have zero background on it, but at least it’s something I guess.  Oh and Annie jumping in to stop Rossabi’s line of questioning in defense of Joan gave me the warm fuzzies.
• Calder, seriously, continues to be ... THE WORST.  It’s frankly kind of annoying me, because he really didn’t seem THAT terrible in eps 401 or 403.  I could at least identify with where he was coming from in those eps.  But in 405 and 406 he’s just been downright insufferable.  I hope they put a little humanity back into his character soon.
• “Now Rossabi thinks there’s a conspiracy to cover up Seth’s murder.”  Auggie: “Well there kinda is!!”
• Bwahaa when Annie secretly calls the FBI chick in the evidence room to distract her – I love that she keeps the sound on her damn cell phone turned ON.  Great spycraft there – “Swipe click click dial!!”  Very inconspicuous.  Hahhaa I do like that her trick didn’t work here though.  Rossabi caught her.  That woulda been way too easy.
• They can’t possibly have much of a budget on this show for fancy stunts, I’m assuming, but they still managed to make Rossabi and Marlon’s fall from that balcony look pretty cool.  Didn’t feel fake at all – props to the director and stunt coordinators for that one.
• Annie/Auggie HAD to realize that Annie’s number would be all over Henry’s call history.  But Rossabi’s initial investigation was focused on Seth’s call history, not Henry’s.  I suppose they simply had no better option at that point than to put Rossabi on that goose chase, to buy themselves some time to get Henry’s GPS data.
• I already called out Noam Jenkins for his awesome performance this ep, and holy SHIT Gregory Itzin in that final scene with Annie?!  The recurring guest actors they have on this show really are top notch.  What a great scene.  I liked his line too: “You haven’t lost nearly enough yet.”  YET.  And we’ve never seen him that out of control.

This was one of those transitional episodes that I always find extremely difficult to assign a grade to.  The main purpose of it is to set up the next few eps, and depending on how those go, my opinion of this one could change significantly.  But if I’m taking this solely on its own, and mostly ignoring Helesa since it only took up 30 seconds here, I actually quite liked this one.  I thought it was smartly written, it kept me on my toes at every turn, surprised me in several places (e.g. whoops Auggie couldn’t hack into the FBI database after all, amongst many other moments), and all the actors gave great performances.  It wasn’t snazzy like last week with Vienna, and it wasn’t action-packed, but it was very solid, clever and entertaining.  It also set up the rest of the summer season, it seems, with Henry now on the complete warpath against Annie (along with the rest of Team Campbell).  I guess I’d give this a grade of …

GRADE: 91 out of 100

Dang, I feel like a zork giving so many eps B+ and A- grades other than 4.02, which I thought was a solid A.  But that’s just how these have been for me.  And believe me, if you were to read my old reviews of eps 3.13 and 3.14 you’d see that I have NO problem giving episodes “eh, not awesome” reviews just after watching them in real time.  I just luckily have not run across any of those in season 4 YET (knock on wood).  Am I lame??  Tell me in the comments.

The Plopper

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The Plopper Reviews - COVERT AFFAIRS 4.05: 'Here Comes Your Man'

Random fact: My husband loves “Here Comes Your Man” by the Pixies so much that he was careful to ensure it was played at our wedding reception.  The DJ played the song and people on the dance floor kind of halfway froze in a state of awkward confusion as to exactly what to do with it, but we were happy.  We and like, the 4 or 5 other people who knew what the hell the song was.  I wasn’t entirely sure what this title would mean for tonight’s ep of Covert Affairs, especially since the preview made it clear that our heroes A&A would be purposely separated during this episode.

  Turns out, it didn’t refer to our boy Auggie at all, but to my sweet, sweet illegitimate baby puma cub Teo.  Puuuurrrrr.  Well o.k., to be fair, I guess it referred to both of them since Auggie sent Teo there to begin with.  I mean whatever, fine Auggie, I’ll give you a LITTLE credit.

I kid, I kid.  I love Auggie as much as the next red-blooded gal of the dude-loving persuasion, but I’ve always been an equal opportunity appreciator of the fine male characters on this show.  And this storyline went down pretty much exactly like “Rock ‘n Roll Suicide,” didn’t it?  With Eyal?  Oh god how I LOVED THAT rescue scene, despite having to flinch and groan my way through Annie’s hair being down, then up in a bun, then down, then up in a bun again.  In a Russian prison, where she would have been very worried about the state of her hairdo.  Whoops, I digress.  Anyway I’ve seen this show take a lot of shit on the internets in the past from people who claim that Annie is a terrible spy because she always has to be saved by Auggie et al. (sidenote: I just had to google “et al.” to make sure I was using it properly here).  But I would claim that first off, this is not factually accurate.  Auggie HELPS Annie because he’s her handler, but she does just fine on her own in plenty of other instances as well.  I’m ok with the fact that she occasionally needs to be saved, because that’s how it would happen in REAL LIFE.  IF real life were this amazing, of course.  But point being, this mission was way too risky thanks to DPD Head Calder McJerkOff, so it went bad.  Was it convenient that Teo swooped in JUST at the right moment to rescue Annie?  Well yes, but I’m willing to accept some of the unrealistic stuff if they at least make an effort to make other aspects a bit more real.

OH!!  Record scratch sound!  Speaking of Calder McJerkWad, can we please go back to the first scene of the ep again for a second here?  The flash forward.  Can I get a WTF????  We’re in the elevator again, and I just have to ask, is it just going to be a theme on this show now that EVERY season involves Annie getting shot nearly dead by her boss??   Remember on ‘Chuck’ when Casey used to get shot practically more often than we saw Big Mike eating a donut??  I seem to recall him getting shot three separate times & getting thrown off a building once.  But at least those were all shots to the leg and foot.  Annie apparently is going to be taking KILLshots in every season now, I guess.  Of COURSE there are many things we don’t know yet about that scene, so we’re probably just being misled to think that’s what’s happening, when it’s really something else.  Still, my reaction to it was to physically pause the TV and yell, “Haha WHAT the F#$%!?” when I saw it (response from my husband from the back room: dead silence).  Hell, at least Annie made progress in this one by actually shooting BACK??  Maybe NEXT season she’ll actually win the gunfight.  Baby steps.

HAHA sidenote #2: Just now as I was finishing the above paragraph, my cousin Katie texted me, “Oh WTF. Annie gets shot AGAIN AND she’s wearing booties!!??”  Then we wasted several minutes trying to recall if she was also wearing booties when she got capped by Lena.  I don’t have time to check.  Someone’s gotta remember.

Whew ok so ... Lord I can’t touch on even half of what happened in this ep because it was DENSE.  Almost more so than last week, AND with more action.  My Twitter friend Shelby usually sums up the ep for me in a non-spoilery few words after she sees it on East Coast time.  Tonight she was 15 mins late, and as I was ALL CAPS yelling at her on DM to give me her reaction, she *finally* responded with, “Hang on, eating a Payday.  Trying to gather my thoughts.”  Uhhhh, yeah.  I did the same thing for about 15 mins after watching it.  I had to pause this ep every 5 seconds to re-listen to lines because SO much information was being dumped on us at once.  If there’s one major thing I take issue with in this ep, it’s the back-and-forth between Annie and Stavros.  She charms him in the beginning and that’s fun, but then it gets weird.  We go from a deal being made for his art collection, to Stavros calling Annie a fraud and coming within an inch of killing her by the river, to him suddenly trusting her enough to find him a buyer for 25 MISSILE LAUNCHERS.  I suppose that’s simply because he’s so desperate to find a buyer and get his Paul Klee back that he's willing to try anything at that point?  I just watched it again; I guueessss I can buy it because I suppose, what does he have to lose at that point?  He might as well give her a day or so to see what she can work up.  HAHA the location of those white vans with the missile launchers at the end though, just in the middle of the ... shopping area or something??  With all the people around, pretty ridiculous.

I’m going to sum up my overall take on this ep after my random thoughts:

• So Senator Pierson is in cahoots with Henry, eh?  I guess that explains all the mustache-twirling in ep 403.
• “Amy Jacobs is an LD on the Intelligence Committee for Senator Pierson.”  What the heck is an LD?  Lame Duck?  Lady Doctor?  Living Dead?  Legal District?
• HAHA Barber.  “I’m angry.  And SAD!!  And you know what??  I’m slightly annoyed, too ...”
• Seriously though, Calder Michaels is THE WORST, right!!??  He can’t even manage to charm Auggie properly with the promise of approving Project Hummingbird, which should have been SO EASY.  He has to completely f*ck it up 5 seconds later with his threat about Auggie’s call to Annie!!  He just oozes “dickhead” from every pore.
• Is it bad that I’m attributing a good 10 points of my score for this ep to the look and feel of the Vienna scenes alone??  I love the music they used on those too.  On point.
• In my ep 401 review, I made a crack about Annie being CA’s version of Claire Bennet, due to her uncanny ability to get shot twice in the chest & have no physical aftereffects or even scars from that.  I later watched 401 in HD (rather than the shitty low-def hotel TV I first watched it on) and realized I was wrong about the scars.  They were much more clear in the hotel scene here too, so I have to give the CA peeps their due credit for attention to detail and continuity.  Still no surgery scar though.  ;-)
• My my, Annie managed to take her habit of disregarding Auggie’s advice to new levels in this ep, didn’t she?  That Tarel Birkin conversation was intense.  Glad Auggie really gave it to Crapper McDoucheFace after that.
• “What I don’t understand, is how you got to Vienna so fast!?”  Hahah yeah, good question.  Spy shows are constantly guilty of these crazy globetrotting feats; it’s kinda funny that the writers called themselves out on this one.  It doesn’t necessarily forgive the contrivance of it, but at least they’re admitting it.
• “Welcome to my home, Annie.”  “Hello, Dion.”  Bwahaha oh Annie, you are becoming quite the lil’ sassafras these days, and I approve wholeheartedly.
• You don’t bring the Bionic Woman onto this show as a guest star simply to waste her on what we’ve seen so far.  That had to have been her trailing Henry at the end, right?  She’d BETTER NOT BE HELEN back from the dead!!  Grr.

So, If I’m looking at the big picture right now, the Powerful Big Bad Henry storyline needs to fully play out before I can really form a valid opinion on it.  And the Calder stuff in this ep was obviously contrived to create hurdles for our characters, especially his mandate that Annie cut off ALL contact with Auggie.  But, I’m willing to buy it for now to see where it all leads.  I’ll tell you what I appreciated about this ep though – It’s one of the things I’ve always liked about this show – When things go wrong on missions, they’re not always things you expect to go wrong, and the REASONS they go wrong tend to be quite logical.  You’re not always going to be able to make the deal with your target without hitting some major bumps.  You have to bring in another agent at the last second to deal with those bumps, you might get someone who’s green.  You get someone who’s green, you might run into issues with them not being 100% on their cover.  You trust someone like Puma Cub to save your ass, and shit may go sideways later when he suddenly decides he’s going to kill your assets & smash your only method of communication with him.  You kill someone and dump their body in the Potomac, that shit is going to wash up somewhere eventually.  And thank GOD they made Seth really for real dead.  Having him turn up alive would’ve been too hokey for this show.

I’d say I liked this ep better than the last couple.  None of them have been a total knock out of the park for me like 402 yet, but I liked this one.

GRADE: 90

Depending on what happens later with Calder and Henry I may decide I graded this one too high, but based on what I know now, I enjoyed it overall.  What do you guys think?  Am I being too hard on Calder?  Did I grade this too high or low?  Tell me I suck in the comments.

The Plopper

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TOP 10 Stupid Things TV and Film Makers Do

Not necessarily in any order. Though, it’s in a specific order so I'm lying.

10. People just hang up when a phone conversation ends. No one ever says “bye” and no one ever calls up the other person asking them “What the fuck, Bob?! You just hung up on me!”

9. Lovers call each other by their first names instead of “baby” or “honey” or “titty sprinkles”.

8. Characters constantly refer to each other by name as if they're trying to remember it, because that's how we all do it, right?

Bob? Right, Bob? Hey, Bob. What's up, Bob? Bob? Let's go do that thing, Bob.

7. A discussion that starts at one location will continue to its next logical step in a follow-up scene in a completely different location, even though the characters would have taken minutes to hours to arrive there and would have finished the conversation already.

Obviously this is based on those times when you're like "Hey, Bob, how about we finish this conversation when we arrive where the cameras are filming the next scene? Okay, Bob?"

6. I supposed this started with BATTLESTAR GALACTICA but it has caught on with writers all over the place: Military and police personnel referring to female superiors as “sir”. NOPE. INACCURATE. It’s still “ma’am”. Don’t believe me? Try calling a female officer “sir” and see what happens.

Seriously, don't fuckin' do that.

5. Arm and leg bullet wounds are shrugged off even though they can be extremely painful, result in broken bones, and cause severe blood-loss that can kill just as easily as any other wound.

4. People dial phone numbers from memory. No one is ever like "Fuuuuuck! I should have put that number in my phone!"

3. Characters don’t say “ummm” or “ahhh” or “uhhh” like real people do. They are all expert public speakers that never lean on auxiliaries.

2. No one can see what is happening within anything greater than a 5 degree field of view. They’re always really surprised by someone not directly 2 feet in front of them. People just pop up on them like ninjas.

1. Characters speak at a normal conversation level in a non-secure location where anyone can hear them say something super important that should be kept secret.

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BREAKING BAD - It's really quiet over here, guys!

It was nice to see the BREAKING BAD crew back in action last night, giving it their all and acting the shit out of the scenery. The episode was a good launching point for the remainder of the series, if a tad bit much on the setup side (since this is supposed to be episode 5.09 and not 6.01, shouldn't there be a bit more going on?).

However, the thing that I walked away from in this episode was the quiet.

I know this show is fond of its quiet moments to build up tension and allow the actors to play around with their reactions. And I'm a fan of that. Not enough shows utilize quiet. There's often way too much talking in scenes. In the real world, people who know each other well have a lot less to say a lot of the time.

No one pulled off the quiet better than Hank (Dean Norris, in the role of his career), who only now realizes that his buddy Walt is the Darth Vader of this universe. If there is an Emmy for projecting the conflict, suffering, anger, and feelings of betrayal without ever saying a word, then Norris should get it. Hell, give it to him anyway.

Unfortunately, the scene between Jesse and Walt had a bit too much quiet and it's not the first time, or even close to it. I've noticed over the length of the series, and specifically since Jesse started becoming the strict moral compass, the quiet between them is used to convey manipulation, distrust, and sometimes acceptance. It's just that in a show that tries to live within the believable real world, that much quiet is rarely seen as a sign of trust. And for a character like Walt, who we are to believe is a wolf of perception, for him to miss that Jesse's quiet is about distrust and disbelief, as opposed to acceptance, is difficult to swallow.

Therefor the only reason for the quiet is to manipulate us into thinking the scene has more weight, when it doesn't. That's when I get pulled out of the moment. That's why that scene didn't work as well for me.

Still, shows need more quiet. Let the actors do that thing they do with their eyes. Unless of course it's an eyeless actor, then give them lots of dialogue.

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CFBWMR Episode 8 - Solo

GeekFurious talks about almost very little in a raspy voice thingy. Then talks briefly about BEFORE MIDNIGHT, and Erin McGathy's "This Feels Terrible" episode with Dan Harmon (CLICK HERE FOR THAT). Also the devastating news that Erin is not a real redhead.

It's 7 minutes long. Though, only like 5 of those minutes have any talking.

Press play below to listen:


Or RIGHT CLICK AND SAVE the mp3 to your hard drive.

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Need Money, Please Donate

Hello all my lovely readers!

I need money.

Desperately.

[insert reason here]

Please donate below.

Thanks! Love you!

UPDATE: I think I corrected the problem with getting an error when you clicked the button (sorry about the big space... no clue what's going on).

DONATIONS (tell me in the notes section if you don't want me to make the amount public):

Daryl M $15.00.
Nacho L $100.00.
Ploppalicious $50.00.

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