She Married a Dead Man and Boy, Was He Stiff! But Seriously, Folks...

Cornell Woolrich was one of the most memorable mystery writers I ever read, but I would hardly argue that he is the Frank Capra of American mystery writers. He tended to write about people who were either doomed or trapped, and only a few of his novels had anything close to a happy ending. His novel I Married a Dead Man was very easily one of his darkest books. So naturally when it came time for HBO to make a movie out of it back in 1996, they made it into a romantic comedy.

Stop and think about that. A dark mystery novel with a downbeat ending...gets turned into a romantic comedy. Mrs. Winterbourne, to be exact. (At least they had the good grace to change the title.)

The result was not quite as bad as I feared, but it's nothing to write home about, either. Ricki Lake played Connie Doyle, a teenage runaway who got impregnated out of wedlock by the wrong guy and then discovered that the guy did not love her as much as she thought. She ended up alone and homeless and spent her last dime on a train trip to her father's house. The train had an accident, two people who befriended her got killed, and the movie was off on its way to the perfect feel-good ending.

To be fair, it is hard to expect rom-com audiences to put up with the sort of dark plot twists that Woolrich liked to put in his novels. But then that is why they were not meant to be rom-coms.

Oh, well. At least Shirley MacLaine and Brendan Fraser got to earn a paycheck.

I eagerly await the inevitable musical comedy adaptation of The Bride Wore Black...

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30 Rock: “Stone Mountain”

People on the Net keep talking like 30 Rock is the one sitcom worth watching on TV today and so far I can't see it.

Perhaps because every time I break down and watch the show, the results are at best okay. Not spectacular but okay.

Perhaps it's because I'm at the age where I no longer feel the need to devote myself to a particular sitcom the way I devoted myself to All in the Family or The Mary Tyler Moore Show. But more likely it's because the show is just not that memorable.

It's not a bad show, I'll admit. But it has yet to inspire me to wait eagerly until the next episode.

Anyway, even if I did like the show better, I probably would have hated this particular episode which tries very hard to be funny but which also proves that 21th century sitcom jokes contrasting blue states and red states are every bit as unfunny as the jokes contrasting New York and Los Angeles that one used to see in movies like California Suite and Annie Hall.

Okay, Tina Fey can be funny and Alec Baldwin has a way with a line. And it's always nice to see Jane Krakowski.

But for me, it's just not enough. And I'm usually easy to please.

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The Office (U.S.): “Niagara”

For some reason, it's not fashionable to like traditional wedding scenes in TV shows which is a shame because traditional weddings can be just as much fun to see on TV as they are in real life.

Anyway, this was not exactly a traditional wedding episode and I thought the writers did an excellent job of combining cynicism and sentiment in that special way that we have come to expect from this series. Plus I got to see a bit of Niagara Falls, which is always nice, though for some reason, the Falls never seem as impressive on TV as they do in real life.

I must confess that I would have gladly forgone the inevitable shout-out to a recent YouTube video but to be fair, even that part was true to the show's characters. Michael Scott -- the boss of the happy couple Pam and Jim -- has an established history of stealing the thunder from other people's special occasions and of course, he also has a history of borrowing ideas from the Internet, regardless of whether they make any sense or not. So it was rather inevitable that he would do that yet again, regardless of whether Pam and Jim wanted him to do so.

That said, I am glad he is a fictional character because my own real-life wedding plans had enough problems...

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Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “Hush”

One of my favorite episodes of this show. I could say more but I suspect the most apt comment I could make would be something like

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The X-Files: “Ghost in the Machine”

As the son of a computer programmer, I should hate this episode if for no other reason than that there has been so many movies and TV shows promoting the myth of the “evil” computer that it is hard to see the reason for yet one more. And yet I am kinda fond of this episode. Perhaps it is because it is one of the first episodes I saw after The X-Files was released on an affordable DVD, or the fact that I liked the irony of watching an episode about evil computers after working all day on a job that required me to work with computers. Or maybe I am just saying I like it because I am afraid my own PC will not take it too kindly if I show too much contempt for the idea of a computer that can successfully defy the commands of a human master.

It is not a perfect episode -- I must confess I was a bit puzzled as to how one character escaped from a situation that promised almost certain death* -- but it lingers in the memory in a pleasing manner.

Plus it seems like a prelude to one of my favorite X-Files episodes. But more about that at a future date.

* And no, I'm not disappointed that said character wasn't killed. I just wish the escape from death wasn't depicted in such an arbitrary “oh, no, she's in trouble -- no, wait, she's not” manner.

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The X-Files: “Space”

The eeriest thing about watching first season X-Files episodes: seeing how young Gillian Anderson looked back then. Granted, she looks a bit older toward the end of the season when her hair was longer. But still... Where does the time go?

This episode is hardly one of the better episodes if for no other reason that it solves its main problem (a heroic astronaut is possessed by an alien who is intent on sabotaging the U.S. space program) way too easily. After all, the episode spends half its time establishing that the alien has superhuman abilities yet it is destroyed in a surprisingly simple fashion -- almost as if writer Chris Carter could not think of anything else to do. Plus there is a rather tasteless attempt to connect this episode's fictional plot with real-life space disasters like the Challenger explosion. Granted, conspiracy theories are always fun, but it is hard to imagine today's viewers being all that patient with a show that depicted, say, the 9/11 attack as being the work of alien saboteurs.

But David Duchovny (the guy who plays FBI agent Fox Mulder) has a cool way with a line and Ms. Anderson (the woman who plays his partner Dana Scully) is always nice to look at. Plus there are far better episodes yet to come -- which is why the show lasted as long as it did.

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The Office (U.S.): “Company Picnic”

Boss man Michael Scott proves to be the very last person one would want to announce a company layoff and Pam and Jim (the Dawn and Tim of the American version of The Office) get to act out a more positive version of a scene from the movie Up.

As much as I love the Pam and Jim characters on this show, I must admit that I have a hard time rewatching this episode in light of recent events.

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Pushing Daisies: “Dummy”

Yet another show in which Kristen Chenoweth sings. Only this time she sings a song from the movie Grease.

Plus actress Ellen Greene is in the cast too and I'm willing to bet she sings on this show too. Only not on this episode.

The series itself is unfortunately over now but it's still fondly remembered even by people like me who did not expect to get all that attached to it. And no, Ms. Chenoweth is not the only reason I fell in love with this series, but her presence most definitely does not hurt.

And oh, yes, the show revolves around a guy who can bring the dead back to life and who uses that power to help solve mysteries. Plus, he revives his dead girlfriend. The premise, incidentally, comes across a lot better on screen than it sounds on the printed page.

Gee, I miss this show.

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Glee: “The Rhodes Not Taken”

Kristin Chenoweth sings.

Not only that, but she also sings one of my favorite songs from Cabaret.

That alone is reason enough to watch this episode.

Also, some other stuff happens but I don't really want to get into that right now.

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Scrubs: “My Jerks”

I was all set to give up on this show after the seventh season since it seemed to be repeating itself more and more. Nor did I like how the show's writers kept treating a main character's love interests (especially a lady doctor played by Elizabeth Banks, who seemed to be treated especially unfairly).

However, I was convinced by an essay on Byzantium's Shores to give it another try and so far I have been quite impressed.

One of the reasons I started becoming disenchanted with the series was its refusal to show growth in the main character, John “J.D.” Dorian, a former medical intern whose constant pursuit of women who were always wrong for him and just plain refusal to grow up were becoming more and more pathetic.

In this season, Dorian actually seemed to be maturing -- or at least trying to -- and doing his damnedest to follow in the footsteps of his mentor, Dr. Perry Cox. Dr. Cox in turn seemed likely to follow in the footsteps of his former nemesis Bob Kelso, the former Chief of Medicine.

The season also introduced a new set of interns for Dorian to teach: Katie, a enthusiastic brownnoser, Denise, a callous tomboy, and Ben, a lazy Indian who seemed intent on singlemindedly undermining the usual hard-working model minority stereotype. The season also showed the usual characters (Dorian's surgeon friend Turk, Dorian's former girlfriend Elliot, and Dorian's nurse/mentor Carla) but with more emphasis on the interns and their problems than usual.

This was supposed to be actor Zach Braff's last season on the show and indeed, there was a rumor that this was supposed to be the show's last season as well. However, a ninth season has already been announced and as far as I know, Braff -- the actor who played Dorian -- will not be returning.

Will the rest of the eighth season be as good as Jaquandor suggested? That remains to be seen, but so far, it has promise.

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The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.: “Pilot”

I always seem to be discovering new TV shows either two seasons after everyone else has discovered them or else after they're gone off the air.

This show is one of the latter examples, and the sad part is that I had plenty of opportunities to see it on TV during its first run. I just chose not to see it because it didn't seem like something that would appeal to me. Perhaps I was fed up with mediocre Indiana Jones imitations and thought that this would be just another one of those. Or maybe I thought the title was just too gimmicky to describe a TV show that was worth watching.

Whatever was the problem, I'm certainly over it now. Bruce Campbell has long been one of my favorite actors and this is definitely one of his better TV series. Add in a sci-fi gimmick that is actually intriguing and supporting characters that are genuinely memorable and I could just kick myself for not discovering this show earlier.

The whole show revolves around the title character, the Harvard-educated son of a Western marshal who is hired to capture the twelve criminals who murdered his father on his last mission. Along the way, he tangles with a rival bounty hunter named Lord Bowler and a sexy entertainer named Dixie Cousins. His would-be sidekick is a lawyer named Socrates Poole and he also finds time to run into a mad scientist and his beautiful daughter.

As you might guess, he doesn't catch all the criminals on his first outing but he does bring a few wrongdoers to justice, and he also comes across a mysterious golden orb that has been discovered by Chinese railroad workers. At the end of the episode, the mysterious orb is being washed away in a river but rest assured that it will return.

If only the same could be said of this series.

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True Blood: “Strange Love”

This show is all about the South and how weird it is down there. (Sounds almost Freudian, doesn't it?) Okay, actually it's about Louisiana -- or to be more accurate, a Hollywood screenwriter's version of Louisiana -- and how weird it is down there. At least, that's the impression one gets from the show's opening credits.

To be fair, the show is also based on a series of novels written by Southern author Charlaine Harris about a telepathic waitress named Sookie Stackhouse and her various supernatural acquaintances. Not the easiest type of material to depict in a believable fashion and it's to the show's credit that the lead character looks more sympathetic than ridiculous. However, producer Alan Ball of Six Feet Under fame can't resist taking a more sensationalistic approach to the material than Ms. Harris did -- for example, he never resists the opportunity to show off yet another unclad female body -- and I'm not quite sure I appreciate the “improvement.”

However, Anna Paquin makes for a believable Sookie Stackhouse and Stephen Moyer does a fair job of depicting her vampiric future novio, Bill Compton. Moreover, as a fan of Ms. Harris's work, I'd like to think that the TV series has as much potential as the book version has had thus far.

So for now, I'm keeping my fingers -- ahem -- crossed.

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Torchwood: “Everything Changes”

It's the episode that started it all. The one that introduced us to Welsh police officer Gwen Cooper and the whole Torchwood crew. The episode that first introduced us to the idea that Captain Jack Harkness could be a lead character in his own right instead of just a supporting one in various Doctor Who episodes.

I'm not quite satisfied with every element of this episode. Indeed, I found the scene in which one character uses an alien substance to change another character's mind about sex to be especially disturbing. (And yet the show's writers try to depict that incident as just another wacky sex stunt and not a thinly veiled form of date rape.)

However, I can see why the show has so many fans. And thus far I managed to make it to the second season without getting so impatient with the series that I stopped watching altogether.

If only the show didn't try so hard to convince us all how different it was from the Doctor Who series it spun off from. After all, the harder -- no pun intended -- the show tried to convince me that it was more adult, the more adolescent it seemed. Almost as if it aspired to be the type of science fiction show that Boston Legal creator David E. Kelly would write if he ever decided to write a science fiction show.

And that's not a good thing.

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House M.D.: “Under My Skin”

Best use of a Specials song since "Ghost Town" was used in Shaun of the Dead.

And that's all I have to say about that.

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The Office (U.S.): “Cafe Disco”

I'm a sucker for scenes of cute girls dancing. Especially the way they're done in this episode. And I especially like how the writers show the same scenes viewed from the perspective of a young delivery man, who is quite naturally intrigued by the sight. When I was his age, I would have been intrigued, too, for the same reasons.

There are other reasons to like this episode, but those are the main ones.

I must confess that this series is the one show currently on the air that I keep going back to most often whenever I need a break from worrying about work. And yes, I am aware of the irony of that.

But, hey, we can't all be into 30 Rock.

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Dollhouse: “Briar Rose” and “Omega”

Todd VanDerWerff makes a better case for Dollhouse in a recent post on The House Next Door site than I could have ever come up with on my own. Among other things, he explains the reasons why so many people like me have such a love-hate relationship with a series that has been so exasperating this season that by all rights it should be provoking little more than strong indifference.

On one hand, it's hard to pretend the ideas employed by the series and the questions posed (What is a human? What is free will? If you download a copy of a person's mind into another body, is the resulting person really real?) aren't intriguing.

On the other, it's hard to ignore the frequency with which such ideas and questions are squared off with predictable plots and characterization.

And whom do you root for on a series in which the good guys seem almost indistinguishable from the bad guys? Isn't there enough evil in the world without giving us yet more depravity to deal with?

It doesn't help matters that both Caroline (the original personality of the character played by Eliza Dushku in this series) and Echo (the personality that has evolved in Caroline's body since the original personality was evicted) are all too often written as thinly disguised versions of Faith, the bad girl character Ms. Dushku played on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As much as I liked Faith on her original series, I'd just as soon not see her again in another series. And yet the show's writers keep bringing her back again and again.

Oh,well. At least the show's two-part finale was satisfying. It answered some questions and posed some more. At least one character -- apart from Caroline and Echo, of course -- should be returning if the series gets a second season and I pray that this particular character doesn't turn into Dollhouse's equivalent of Sylar, the exasperating supervillain on Heroes of whom even my middle brother -- who used to be the definite Heroes fan -- has grown tired.

We'll see.

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Torchwood: “Out of Time”

On the brighter side, the Brits appear to be doing their best to give us some dependable storytelling.

I must confess that up until this episode, I've generally had a lukewarm attitude toward Russell T. Davies's Doctor Who's spinoff, Torchwood. Yes, it was good for a Doctor Who fan like me to see Captain Jack Harkness again, and yes, it's good that he is very good at delivering snappy lines, and yes, his employee Gwen Cooper is a most excellent female character--for the most part. But all too often, this show seems so bound and determined to prove that it's an adult show and NOT DOCTOR WHO that it actually gets quite irritating.

I suppose if your idea of the ideal sci-fi show was a cross between Men in Black and The X-Files that was co-written by David E. Kelley, then this would be your perfect show. But for those of us who get our notions of adult science fiction from the Holy Trinity of Ellison, Heinlein and Farmer, it's... not quite as interesting as it could be. And this from someone who actually liked Men in Black and The X-Files.

This episode, however, was different. It starts off with a deceptively simple premise: three people depart from a newly landed plane and when Jack speaks to them, he discovers they departed from the year 1953. Which, of course, raises the question: what does Captain Jack and his Torchwood staff do with them now?

Since the trio first came to our present time via a time rift that may or may not re-appear in the same place, going back isn't really a realistic option for them. However, integrating the temporal refugees into present-day society isn't that easy an option either. Almost every one of the trio suffers from some form of culture shock. Sometimes in a good way. (The trio came from a time of rationing into a time of materialistic plenty.) Sometimes in a bad. (The trio were originally believed to have been lost at sea in the 1950s and almost all their kinfolk are dead or senile.)

It's not giving anything away to note that of the three refugees -- a middle-aged veteran, a thirtysomething female pilot and an eighteen-year-old girl -- each end up coming to terms with the present in a different fashion. And for a change, there is no big bad alien arbitrarily inserted into the episode to distract from the way things play out.

I guess I should find it ironic that the one episode out of Torchwood's first ten episodes that I really, really, liked was a show dealing with people from the 1950s. After all, Torchwood is a show that prides itself on being a twenty-first century show in its very intro. And yet I liked that the show managed to take a genuinely scientific premise -- time travel -- and deal with it in a very mature fashion without feeling the need to use the characters from the 1950s for cheap laughs. And when I think how few modern science fiction movies in the US would have resisted a similar temptation, I find that especially amazing.

Of course, the episode does make me wonder what would happen if the shoe was ever on the other foot and one of us here in the present was stranded in the Britain of the 1950s. But perhaps that premise will be explored on a future episode.

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Heroes: “An Invisible Thread”

I was going to post something about every Heroes episode that aired this season, but I kinda lost interest after the season finale and it's not like the episodes were inspiring my best thoughts anyway.

I wish I could say that the third season of this series was an improvement over the second, but no, not really. If anything, it seemed even more disappointing than the last season because neither the writers nor the characters seem to have learned anything. And the entire show seemed to have lost direction altogether.

Moreover, the writers appeared to have lost interest in any character on the show who is not Sylar or Noah Bennett. Even Claire Bennett -- whom I had thought to be a popular character -- is not getting all that much decent dialogue and don't get me started on the increasingly tiresome Petrelli brothers, Peter and Nathan.

While I had liked to think that former writer Bryan Fuller's return to the show was going to improve things, all it really appeared to have changed was to produce yet more emphasis on everyone's favorite supervillain Sylar. Indeed, even when the show has an inspired idea, it appears to refute said idea by the next episode. Has Sylar reformed? No, he didn't. Does Angela Petrelli tell all? No, she doesn't. Does Hiro get his powers back? No, not quite.

And most insulting of all, so-and-so is killed. But wait, another character -- who just happens to have shape-shifting powers -- is being hypnotized to take his place. Never mind that such a twist doesn't make any sense to anyone who's not a staff writer desperate to prevent the loss of a single cast member. (And, btw, just where were these staff writers when they killed off one of my favorite supporting characters earlier this season?) That's what the writers decided and that's what we're going to get.

I would be so surprised if this show had much of an audience next season. And, sorry, trying to bribe me with the image of a naked blonde at the end of this episode is not going to make me change my mind about this show, guys.

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Heroes: “The Eclipse -- Part 1” and “The Eclipse -- Part 2”

The eclipse is a lonely child. It's waiting by the door...

Okay, that last paragraph doesn't really mean anything but it makes about as much sense as anything that happens in this episode.

This time out, a solar eclipse takes away every super-powered person's powers and gives Noah Bennet his first real chance to kill Sylar since the show began. However, you know what they say about things that are too good to be true...

And yes, it's not much of a spoiler to guess that everyone eventually gets their powers back.

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Heroes: “Eris Quod Sum”

Should I consider it evil of me that the first thought that came to mine when I saw this episode's title was the old Xena character Discord -- whose name in Greek is, of course, Eris?

And what the hell happened to Janice, the original spouse of everyone's favorite telepathic ex-cop, Matt Parkman? Is she not going to appear on the show anymore or did the producers decide that blonde supersprinter Daphne is more photogenic?

And speaking of Parkman, anyone else get the feeling that “Didn't I throw you out a window” is going to become a running gag for this show? Apparently it's now The Defenestration Show. Tune in next week to see who else gets thrown out a window...

And anyone else wonder if the producers have a same-sex subplot in mind for Claire the ex-cheerleader and Elle the electric girl? Of course, it could just be wishful thinking on my part but stranger things have happened. However, I doubt they're going to go in that direction.

However, it does seem like someone on the production staff has a thing for blondes almost as serious as Nathan Petrelli's. And incidentally, his wife appears to be seriously AWOL as well. (Maybe she's sharing a timeshare with Janice Parkman.)

And given that Matt Parkman has already proven capable of involuntarily reading someone's thoughts (look what happened with his wife in the show's first season), the decision to have Daphne pretend to go along with Matt at Arthur Petrelli's request seems really, really stupid.

Anyway, the most shocking thing I found about this episode was the Viagra ads that were being shown during the show on the NBC site. Apparently they're trying to vanquish whatever family audience that still remains after first season's stripper mom subplot. Good thing we live in such a Puritanical society...