Weekly TV Thoughts: 04/05 - 04/11

Best thing that happened for the Reds this week? Getting rained out Friday night so they could end the week 1-3 instead of 1-4. How's that "pitching and defense" approach working out for everyone? Yeah, not so much right now. The team's young, and that's great for projecting what they could do in the future, but it means nothing if it never materializes. Gonna watch them again this afternoon, though, because its what I do. Gonna catch some golf, too, because there's not a whole lot better than Sunday at a major, especially at the Masters. Tiger's not in the lead, so he's not going to win (that fact's so money in the bank that it even survived the curse of this blog), but he is paired with Phil, which should make for some good theater, even if they're not in contention.

-Kings, Sunday: So even the King's top general is positioning to overthrow him. We knew that the King's brother-in-law wanted Silas out, but now, the opposition is building fast. I am still curious about Reverend Samuel, though. How does he fit into all of this. He knows that Silas's time is coming to an end, but he not all that willing to join the coup. Will he start to push David to the foreground? Or will he just bide his time and wait? Clearly they're setting up Jack to oppose his father, but Silas just gave him a ministry position and it looks like Jack's swung back to the side of supporting Silas (or, at the very least, not opposing him). Again, the political drama of the show (dealing with the uprising in David's hometown) wasn't all that interesting to me, but the characters again draw me in. Kings is getting dumped to Saturday nights starting April 18, I believe, which means all signs point to it not coming back next year. They'll get to finish out the season, which is good, but I hope they can manage so sort of an ending instead of leaving on a cliffhanger that'll never get resolved.

-Chuck, Monday: This show REALLY needs to be renewed for next season. Of all the shows I watch that are on the bubble for pick up, Chuck is my #1 choice to save. I've said before how much I enjoy this show, and I still think it's consistently the most entertaining show on the TV. But after this week's episode, I think the show's hit a whole new level. As they barrel toward the season finale, they've set things in motion (with Chuck's dad being Orion and the creator of the Intersect, and having him being captured by Ted Roark and Fulcrum) that look to send the show into an awesome new direction. Season 3 of Chuck needs to happen!

-Heroes, Monday: As I said last week, it only matter of time before Bennett found out the truth about Sylar. I didn't quite expect it to happen this week, but now that I look at it, I'm glad that it wasn't drawn out. The best thing they could have done with Bennett was to burn him and get him out from under the guise of working with Danko. He's now on his own and by him showing up at Coyote Sands, we now know exactly where his allegiances lie. And speaking of Coyote Sands, it was only a matter of time before this comic-staple ret-con showed up in Heroes. "Remember that time when I told you about where all this started, when I told you about the beginning? Well, that wasn't really the beginning because this here is the beginning, That other beginning, not the beginning; this is the real one." Cliche, yes, but not totally unexpected. Giving the show a new origin story wouldn't even crack the top 10 of crazy things Heroes has done, so I can live with it.

-24, Monday: So the FBI raid on Starkwood didn't quite go as planned, but don't worry, Tony's still there and will have to neutralize the threat on his own. Funny how it always seems to come down to just one man on this show. Of course, that man is usually Jack, but he's currently infected with a deadly pathogen that quickly ending his life. And while there's no cure, there is, amazingly enough, an experimental procedure that uses stem cells from a biologically compatible donor (like, say, a direct family member) that could do the trick. And this is how they wrangle Kim back into the show. Although Jack's not to keen on calling her, prefering rather to die than talk to his daughter, so I'm thinking that it'll be Renee who contacts Kim, going behind Jack's back. Because Jack can't die; they've still got to shoot Season 8! We finally get a converstation between President Taylor and Jonas Hodges, and while Hodges doesn't reveal what his demands are, he does imply that the impetus for all this was the fact that he felt that the US Government betrayed Starkwood by asking them to "get the job done" without asking any questions only to put them on trial in front of Congress for doing just that. So he's a little disgruntled. It happens. I am curious to see how the face-to-face meeting in the White House goes next episode.

-Lost, Wednesday: Once again, Ben proves that we can't trust a single thing that comes out of his mouth. Take Locke being alive again. First, he tells Locke to his face that he thought the island might resurrect him, but he wasn't certain until he saw it actually happen. Then, he tells Caesar that he thinks Locke might have never been on the plane in the first place (this one's the obvious lie, but a lie none the less) and that maybe he's been on the island this whole time. And then, he tells Sun that "dead is dead" and that he has no idea what John Locke is now. So which is it? Did he know what the island would resurrect Locke or was that complete shock to him (you know, since Ben murdered him and all)? You never know with Ben, and we as the audience may never know. And then there's this whole business about whether or not Ben remembers being shot and then saved by the Others. We get a scene where Young Ben wakes up in the Other's camp and he seems to have no idea why he's there or how he was injured. But then Ben says later that the temple where he, Locke, and Sun are going to is where he was taken as a child and healed. How does he remember the fact that he was healed at the temple, but not the facts surrounding why he needed to be healed in the first place? Unlike the previous query, I think we will get an answer to this question. It should be really interesting to see how Ben handles having to follow Locke's lead now; from the look on his face after his encounter with the Smoke Monster, it looks like he might be a changed man. Who knows if his reason for coming back was the be judged (again, can't ever trust what Ben says), but that fact is he was judged, and the island let him live, contingient on him following Locke and not trying to kill him. Again. Now its time for Locke, Ben, and Sun to figure out a what to meet up with the rest of the O6 back in 1977. Locke's in the lead, wonder how he's going to handle it. I was really bummed out when Lapidus left to go back to the plane because I really wanted to see him invovled in the story. And then they dropped the "what lies in the shadow of the statue?" bombshell when he got back. So some of the passengers, including bounty hunter Ilana, have another agenda, and they knew they were going to land on the island. Questions abound- how did they know, who sent them, what's in the box? Can we assume that maybe it was these people who were shooting at Sawyer, Juliet and Co. in the boat while they flashed into the future for a bit? I think so. Finally, a quick note about Desmond and Penny- very glad that neither one of them is dead. Guess if Ben has one soft spot, its not killing mothers. He never got to know his, and he apparently can't inflict that sort of pain on someone.

-Dollhouse, Friday: Good episode, with a great storytelling device; I love the jumping back and forth through the story, so that you get the whole story from everyone's veiwpoint. I don't quite know what the think about Mr. Dominic being the mole; he said somethings in the episode, specifically to Ms. DeWitt, that would seem to contradict his actions as a mole. But if you assume that he was lying to DeWitt in a final effort to save his life, then things seem to fit together nicely. He was trying to bring down the Dollhouse and he was setting up Echo and Agent Ballard to do so. He knows that Echo will eventually take down the Dollhouse, so he did things specifically to trigger her towards that path. I like how Echo became somewhat self aware and understood, on the most basic level, what Topher does in the chair; he makes people different. And she understood enough to volunteer for an engagement. This sets up Echo to be used more by the Dollhouse, which in turn, we are to assume, will lead to her having an "Alpha" moment and become complete self aware and destroy the Dollhouse. And speaking of Ballard, how shitty is his life right now? He's suspended from the FBI, he's gone completely paranoid and become totally obsessed with the Dollhouse (more so than before), and he's just found out that his neighbor/girlfriend in actually an Active. But he still has to pretend that he doesn't know Mellie's a Doll. Without a mole inside the Dollhouse, where will Ballard's investigation go? Again, he was told to focus less on where the Dollhouse is and more on the Dollhouse's true purpose. "Follow the money," I guess. He figures out the why, and that will lead him to the where (and possibly a whole lot more).