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The Dick Van Dyke Show: “It May Look Like a Walnut”

This is one of the creepiest TV episodes I ever saw as a child. Indeed, as a child I found it to be way creepier because I was too young to realize how much of it was supposed to be a joke.

If nothing else, it is worth seeing just to see actor Danny Thomas dressed up like John Steed in 1963 -- long before most people in America ever heard of The Avengers.

Plus actress Mary Tyler Moore (who plays Laurie Petrie) gets to have one of the most memorable entrances that any TV character has ever had. You'll know it when you see it.

As for the actual plot... Rob and Laurie Petrie stay up and watch a bad horror movie about a race of alien invaders obsessed with walnuts. The obsession proves contagious -- even with people who did not see the same movie. Is it all a joke? Or something far more sinister...

The episode was made so long ago that its writers still considered it a novelty to reference the then-popular anthology series The Twilight Zone. Indeed, part of the fun of this episode lies in seeing how often they reference that show without actually referring to it by name.

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Mockingbird Lane: “Pilot”

I did not think it was possible, but the new Munsters reboot that goes by the name of Mockingbird Lane actually proved to be more watchable than I had imagined it would be when I first heard about the project. Of course, time will tell whether it will make a successful series as well -- especially since it seems more interested in catering to the type of people who watch cable shows like Dexter and True Blood and less to the hardcore fans of the original Munsters.

However, unlike the recent Night Stalker reboot that debuted a few years back, this show appears to have been made by people who have a healthy affection for the original series. True, they can't resist teasing the TV audience by, say, showing us a brief glimpse of an image that looked like a silhouette of the original Herman Munster's head, but for the most part, the show's producers show more respect for the original show than I expected.

Of course, they did a bit of updating the show as well. The current Herman and Lily Munster look more like normal human beings than the originals and even their son Eddie (played by Mason Cook) looks more like an average kid than the original Eddie Munster. Portia de Rossi's Lily has easily one of the most memorable character entrances I've seen on any TV show in a long while -- apparently episode writer Bryan Fuller is not shy about having the Munsters do things on this show that the TV censors of the 1960s would have never allowed on the original series -- and Jerry O'Connell makes for a likable -- if seemingly unlikely -- Herman Munster, who is a lot more physically affectionate with his wife than the original ever had the opportunity to be.

The new Marilyn (played by Charity Wakefield) seems a lot more odder than the original Marilyn Munster -- almost as if the writers were trying to compensate for the lack of ghoulish makeup in the rest of the cast. She whistles at ravens and shows no qualms about making a bid on a house once owned by a serial killer. For that matter, the new Grandpa (played by Eddie Izzard) is a lot more aggressive about his vampirism, at one point actually devouring a wild beast before the eyes of his own grandson.

However, the main difference between the new Munsters and the old is that the old Munsters made little if any effort to assimilate with the rest of the world. As far as they were concerned, they were the normal ones, and it was outsiders who looked like Marilyn who were deserving of pity. The new Munsters are more obsessed with appearance's sake. For example, when they find out that Eddie is a werewolf, they seem more worried about how it would look to the neighbors than about the more obvious downside of having a lycanthropic son. Only Grandpa doesn't worry about fitting in but then Grandpa is hardly an apt role model for any generation. Why his behavior doesn't have a legion of Van Helsing wannabes pursuing him is a question the episode never quite answers.

In any event, I can't help hoping that Mockingbird Lane will indeed become a series, if only to answer all the questions the pilot episode conjures up. And while my inner teenager can probably go on and on about Lily Munster's big entrance, I must confess that the one part of the show that really excited my inner Munsters geek -- a part of me that I had presumed dead for years, if not decades -- was the entrance of a very special Munsters character in the episode's last five minutes.

Apparently Mockingbird Lane creator/producer/writer Bryan Fuller really is a fan of the original series. Either that or he knows us Munster geeks better than we know ourselves.

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Night Gallery: “Pickman's Model”

Well, you know how it is. You think you're going to have a nice quiet evening at home and then company drops by unexpectedly. Not just any company but that crazy girl you met in art class who seemed to be flirting with you earlier in the day. No sooner than you realize this but you get a second shock. It turns out that some of your no-account kinfolk have taken it upon themselves to drop by as well and you just know that if they ever meet your lady visitor, things will turn out badly for everyone. For you in particular.

Of course, a lot more than this happens in the Night Gallery episode entitled “Pickman's Model” and yet that above paragraph sums up the whole episode better than anything else I can think of. It certainly can't be summed up by the H. P. Lovecraft short story of the same name. As much as I would like to bla -- er -- give credit to the late Mr. Lovecraft for this episode, it owes a lot more to screenwriter Alvin Sapinsley's invention than to Lovecraft's work. And perhaps that's a good thing. Rest assured that Lovecraft had no room for romances in his version of the Pickman story -- he barely had room for plot and character. And yet this episode managed to be memorable despite all that.

Of course, the first time I saw this episode, I was still in grade school -- and thus easily impressed by tales of ghosts, ghouls and monsters. Despite what Rod Serling once said in an interview, I did not tune into Night Gallery expecting Mannix in a shroud -- or even Peyton Place in a crypt. In fact, it was my late father who originally introduced me to the show -- and what he saw in it, I'll never know. Then again, he was a big fan of the original Twilight Zone and it was his influence, no doubt, that got me hooked on the work of Rod Serling to begin with. And through Rod Serling, I eventually got introduced to the work of other writers such as Fritz Leiber, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, Manley Wade Wellman and eventually... H. P. Lovecraft.

In any event, when I first discovered Night Gallery, I was still into late night creature features so I tended to like the scary episodes (which were rarely written by Mr. Serling) far more than the intellectual think-pieces (which were more often than not Mr. Serling's work) -- and of course, “Pickman's Model” was one of my favorites. It didn't hurt that when I first saw this episode, it seemed a lot more scary to me than it does today. I was not yet burnt out on umpteen hundred horror movies and horror shows. Nor was I was so blase that I automatically looked for the zipper on the back of the poor monster's suit. The revelation concerning actor Bradford Dillman's Richard Upton Pickman character--an eccentric artist prone to painting weird and morbid subjects -- seemed a lot more surprising to my young eyes than it probably would be to today's pre-teen viewers. And of course, the twist ending seemed a lot more ominous to my young self -- ominous enough to make for quite a few sleepless nights.

And yet even today I still continue to be fascinated by those aspects of the Pickman story which the screenwriter did not explain. Why exactly did an unmarried artist like Pickman live in a big old house by himself? What did the poor guy do on Mother's Day? For that matter, what did he do on Father's Day? If he hated human company so much, why was he hanging around them so much? Why didn't he just give up his residence and move in with his relatives?

Alas, none of these questions will ever be answered and I wonder if I might not be the only viewer of this episode who really cares. I am especially appalled that screenwriter Alvin Sapinsley chose to end the episode with hints about Pickman's mysterious disappearance because it would have been more interesting if the episode had had a less conventional ending.

Perhaps Miss Goldsmith (Pickman's would-be love interest) could have persuaded Pickman to paint more commercial subjects like, say, soup cans. True, her family and his might have had a few conflicts when she and Pickman became a couple, but on the other hand, true love has survived more daunting obstacles. Besides, Louise Sorel -- the actress who played Miss Goldsmith -- was so sweet that she probably could have charmed the dead right out of their graves. And surely Pickman's kinfolk would have had no problem with that.

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Masters of Horror: "The Black Cat"

Director Stuart Gordon tries to do for Edgar Allan Poe what he did for H.P. Lovecraft with his Reanimator series. The result is not quite as memorable as I would have liked but at least I can tell Gordon tried. If nothing else, it will be interesting to compare cult icon Jeffrey Combs' performance as Poe with that of a more conventional actor when John Cusack plays the same character in the upcoming mystery flick The Raven.

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Masters of Horror: "The V Word"

After seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and five seasons of Angel -- not to mention the various vampire shows that have aired since then -- it must be very hard for TV screenwriters to come up with yet another new angle on the vampire theme. However, this episode does not even try to come up with anything new to say about vampires and the most imagination it displays is in the title. Once you have figured out what that means, the rest of the episode is all downhill.

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Masters of Horror: "Valerie on the Stairs"

If nothing else, this episode was a nice flashback to the days when horror movies did not feel obliged to explain everything at the end. Indeed, without the DVD commentary, some of you might feel a bit confused as to what actually happened at the end of this story -- and perhaps that's a good thing.

The story is about a would-be writer who checks into a special hotel intended to house other would-be writers. Unfortunately, the writer's literary efforts are interrupted by visions of a ghostly damsel in distress who is being pursued by a monstrous demon. The writer takes it upon himself to investigate and finds himself involved in a bigger mystery than he would have ever imagined. Unfortunately, his efforts to save the girl and make himself the hero of this story inevitably backfire in a way few would have guessed...

In any event, this episode deserves credit for having one of the most original endings I ever saw in this series. It just might take some of you a while to figure it out.

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Masters of Horror: “The Washingtonians”

Forty years ago, the premise of this episode would have been considered quite scandalous. Today it barely merits a mention in the local TV guide.

Indeed, it says something about the number of historical controversies Americans have been deluged with over the years that the episode manages to make a remarkably tasteless premise seem remarkably old hat. Even the ending seemed a bit more lame than one would expect from such a premise.

Oh, well. I really doubt that the world is ready for more splatterpunk versions of alternative history, anyway. However, this episode would make an interesting counterpart to the National Treasure series for those of you who have a pitch-dark sense of humor. Just don't watch it on February 22, please. Poor George has been through enough.

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Night Gallery: “The House”

Dreams. We all have them. And every now and then, some of us have special dreams. The dreams so real that you do not even realize that they are dreams till you wake up. Dreams in which you are basically powerless to control your actions because the minute you try to do just that, the dreams stop.

Elaine Latimer -- the character that actress Joanna Pettet plays in “The House” -- has such a dream. Over and over again, she dreams of taking a long drive in the country, only to come across a mysterious house out in the middle of nowhere. She has no idea who or what lives there yet she is always compelled by the dream to stop and knock on the door. But then she always turns and drives away before anyone answers the door, only to start the whole process all over again the next time she dreams.

Why does Ms. Latimer dream so much about a house she’s never seen before? How come she never sticks around to see who answers the door? The episode never quite answers these questions but then it isn’t quite meant to. Instead we get clues throughout the episode which may or may not be correct.

For example, we learn early on that Ms. Latimer has been seeing a psychiatrist named Dr. Mitchell. During part of the period she has been having her recurring dreams, she has been staying at a sanitarium and has been treated for depression. Although she comes across as a rather likable woman, another patient at the sanitarium describes her as being too dreamy. Almost as if Ms. Latimer was so out of touch that she even made other mental patients feel uncomfortable.

As the episode opens, Ms. Latimer is preparing to leave the sanitarium and return to the outside world. She worries that the dream may be a sign of some recurring mental condition but Dr. Mitchell does not seem too worried by it.

Then Ms. Latimer goes out driving during her first week out and comes across a house which looks just like the one in her dreams. The house is for sale because it is supposedly haunted but the really weird part about it is the way Ms. Latimer seems able to describe every detail of the interior without ever having been there before.

Is she psychic? Or just particularly lucky?

She ends up buying the house on a whim and then she moves in. Shortly afterwards, the dreams start up again. She is driving again and still stopping at the house but she still does not wait around for an answer.

One day she takes a quick catnap in an upstairs bedroom and gets awakened by what sounds like a knock on the front door. But there is no one there when she gets to the front door. The realtor who sold her the house comes by shortly afterwards but he claims to have seen no one on the road.

After the realtor leaves, Ms. Latimer calls Dr. Mitchell. But in the midst of her phone call, she hears yet another knock on the front door. She puts down the phone to go investigate and then...

What happens next?

Ah, that would be telling.

I will say this: the final emotion I saw on Ms. Latimer’s face seemed to be not so much fear or elation but rather disappointment. Why it seemed to be disappointment, I can’t really say. However, dream analysts do like to say that when you dream about a house, you’re usually dreaming about your body. So perhaps that explains Ms. Latimer’s mystery.

Perhaps.

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Angel: “The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco”

I never really got into the show Angel while it was still on the air because it always seemed like a dumping ground for all the ideas that were not quite good enough for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the show from which it spun off. Nor did it help that Angel was never one of my favorite characters on BtVS. He was more a character I tolerated for the sake of the other characters.

I finally broke down and watched the DVD for the fifth season a while back and found myself quite pleased with the result. Not every episode in the fifth season was a classic and not every plot twist a welcome one (for example, I believe what they did with the Fred character later in the season was a mistake but I can see why they did it) but as a whole, the season was a lot better than I expected.

One of my favorite episodes is “The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco” which introduced a whole group of Mexican wrestlers into a show -- and genre -- that had been notably short of Hispanic characters. The wrestlers in question moonlighted as demon-fighters and had a history of battling both the natural and supernatural evils faced by the local Mexican-American population until all but one wrestler -- the “Numero Cinco”* of the title -- were killed. Fortunately, the wrestlers did not stay dead but came back for one last battle with their old comrade-in-arms Numero Cinco -- who, prior to this episode, had been working for Angel as a mail carrier. (Yes, it probably would have seemed unrealistic to see a former wrestler working as a paralegal or a file clerk. But a mail carrier? I guess we should all be happy that they did not make him a janitor.)

It would have been nice if the wrestlers had stayed around longer because I found the concept of Hispanic characters battling the supernatural quite intriguing. After all, it was not like you ever saw a whole lot of Hispanics on BtVS, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, etc., and apart from Numero Cinco, you rarely saw a Hispanic character on Angel as well. But it was not to be. They only lasted for a single episode -- after which they returned to the dead. And I suspect they were only introduced because the title character Angel was at a loss as to how to stop an ancient Aztec demon who was on the loose. (In short, some PC screenwriter figured it was not cool to portray Angel as the Great White Hope of Los Angeles by having him defeat an nonwhite demon so they brought in a group of token Mexicans to do his dirty work.)

Most of the show's fans criticized the wrestlers for being ethnic Mary Sues and indeed, I would have been nice to have seen more believable qualities displayed during their brief appearance. I do find it troublesome that a show set in Los Angeles (a city with one of the largest populations of Mexican descent on Earth) could not be bothered to find even one Hispanic character to show up on a regular basis prior to Numero Cinco's appearance at the beginning of the fifth season -- even if said character was a bothersome cop or a nosy journalist. Nor am I fond of the fact that when said characters did appear, the show's writers promptly wrote them off as soon as possible. (Okay, long-running character Cordelia Chase lasted about four seasons on this series despite being played by a Hispanic actress. But Cordelia does not really count as a Hispanic character.)

I realize that no one expects social realism from a show named Angel and that adding token ethnic characters to appease audience demographics would not necessarily have improved it. On the other hand, I get so tired of the notion that writers who put Hispanic characters on their shows are somehow doing us Hispanics a favor. That we have no stories to tell that are as interesting as the ones white non-Hispanics tell about themselves. That having a TV series whose characters never interact with Hispanics despite residing in a city with a large Latino population is somehow realistic because Latinos to the average screenwriter seem even more mythical than werewolves and vampires.

Oh, well. I suppose I could have more important issues to kvetch about than the characters on one TV show. And to tell the truth, I am not all that fond of the masked wrestler character in either American or Mexican culture.

But I did relish the chance to see a group of Mexican characters fight their own battles for a change -- and to actually save the day for the title character instead of waiting to be rescued like the Mexicans in Giant. And I'm kinda sorry that they never got the chance to have their own spin-off. At least it would have been interesting to see what the writers would do if they had to contend with a Hispanic character every week. And to see how such a show would compare with Angel.

* “Numero Cinco” is, of course, Spanish for “Number Five.”

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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “Vampires of Venice”

Oh my. I finally got my memory back.

Anyway, this episode was one of my favorites of this season despite a ton of goofy plot logic.

Somebody on this show's writing staff is definitely up on their Hammer movies. Paging Kate Bush! Paging Kate Bush!

I am starting to get sick of how every other alien tries to give the good Doctor a guilt trip. I know it is an easy way for them to get away with pulling his chain but it is also a hoary plot device.

Nor do I care too much for how the good Doctor humiliated Amy's friend and husband-to-be Rory Williams in the pre-credit sequence. Maybe I am just sentimental because a friend of mine has a grandson who habitually mispronounces the name “Roy” to sound like “Rory” -- and I have more than a few relatives named Roy -- but I always thought poor Rory got the short end of the stick in this episode -- and that the Doctor proved himself to be a twit.

Oh, well. It is not like they killed off poor Rory, right?

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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “Blink”

This is very easily one of the creepiest episodes of the second series -- apart from maybe “Midnight” -- to air thus far.

It was so good it could very easily have produced a spin-off involving its main character (the one who is not the Doctor). But it never got one.

It was also so good that it did not really need a sequel. But it got one anyway.

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She-Wolf of London: “She-Wolf of London”

Once upon a time, a snarky young American girl got together with a stodgy British gent to fight supernatural beasties, all the while cursing the fates which gifted her with an unwanted supernatural power. Sound familiar? Of course, it does. But the show in question is not Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer; it's She-Wolf of London, a short-lived syndicated show which aired briefly in the early 1990s and then vanished. And while it would be nice to imagine that such a show inspired Buffy, I suspect that only Joss Whedon and his lawyers would know if that was really true.

Anyway, I thought it a pity that SWoL never really took off since the two main characters -- Kate Hodge's Randi Wallace and Neil Dickson's Dr. Ian Matheson -- had a lot of chemistry together and I must admit that there were times that I wish the show had not felt compelled to throw in the whole supernatural angle since the personal interactions of Randi and Ian seemed a lot more interesting than any of the show's insights on lycanthropy. Hodge especially had a way of saying her lines in a way which made even the clunkiest line -- and sadly there were many -- seem interesting.

Perhaps the highlight of the first episode was a scene in which Ms. Wallace was alone in a tent on the British moors, typing an essay about the supernatural on her laptop and absorbing the noises of the wilderness around her. Wallace came across as a smart young woman whose writing unfortunately ended way too soon when she was attacked by a wild animal. Later on, she discovered that no wolf in his right mind would have jumped her at the fir -- er -- attacked her in the tent. And when the full moon rose, she found that she was cursed to become the title character of the episode.

She enlisted Matheson's help in finding a cure for the curse but unfortunately, there was no cure to be found in this episode. An attempt to end the curse by severing the bloodline of Wallace's original attacker ended in futility when her assailant died in an accident -- and she stayed cursed. In the last few scenes, Matheson was preparing Ms. Wallace to undergo yet another lupine transformation by chaining her up in the basement of his parents' house, promising her that they would eventually find her a cure. Eventually...

If I had to pick the most obvious drawback to the series -- and the most probable reason it never caught on -- it would be the fact that the show never came up with a convincing reason why the death of Wallace's attacker did not end the curse. Indeed, the show itself suffered from a rather odd paradox -- if you liked the title character, you really did not want her to stay a werewolf, and yet if she ever stopped being a werewolf, the show would end. Of course, other shows -- for example, The Fugitive and The Incredible Hulk -- managed to survive similar no-win premises. But this show did not. Add to that some not quite convincing special effects and the fact that the show was on an obvious low budget and it is a wonder the show lasted as long as it did.

And yet I do not consider it a bad show. I liked the two main characters, I liked the supporting cast and I genuinely enjoyed many lines in the otherwise uneven script. At worst, the show stands out as part of the obvious transition between campy horror shows like the 80s series Tales from the Darkside -- which did not even pretend to resist indulging in the campier side of their subject matter -- and more sophisticated shows like the 90s series The X-Files -- which proved you could write such shows on a more serious level and still get a large audience.

Of course, it is still kinda hard for me to believe that my beloved Buffy Summers would have ever hit the small screen if Miss Randi Wallace had not been there to pave the way. After all, TV executives may show no shame in blocking the way to a petite blonde -- but how many have the cojones to stand up to a female werewolf?

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The Twilight Zone (1985): “Button, Button”

From the Reagan-era version of the classic series comes an episode based on a classic short story by author Richard Matheson, a key contributor to the original Twilight Zone. This episode is about a young couple with money problems who are presented with a mysterious box. If they open up the box and push a button, they end up killing someone they don't know. But they also get a lot of money.

But they do not really want to kill anybody.

Yet they can really use the money.

But they do not really want to kill anybody...

As you might guess, this episode was inspired by the same short story that inspired the recent Cameron Diaz movie The Box. And though the episode is not that long, it seems to stretch things out to the point I am almost scared to see what the movie adds to the storyline because even the short version seems way longer than it really needs to be.

It does not help that the show portrays its two main characters more unsympathetically than the short story does -- thus removing a key element of suspense from the ending. Thus, instead of wondering if the young couple will resist the urge to give in to temptation, I could not help but wonder what was taking them so long. And since they were so unlikable in the first place, it was a bit hard to worry too much about what would happen to them -- and that is not really the type of reaction I should have been having if the episode had been made correctly.

Gee, I miss Rod Serling. He may have been a bit heavy-handed at times when he was writing the original Twilight Zone, but at least he knew how to hire writers who knew something about storytelling.

And think that this episode was part of the same anthology series writer Harlan Ellison was involved with. What happened?

Edited to add:

Apparently Richard Matheson wrote the screenplay for this episode but was so dissatisfied with the version that eventually aired -- especially its new ending -- that he had his name in the screenwriting credits changed to Logan Swanson. After seeing this episode, I can understand why.

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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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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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The X-Files: “The Rain King”

Anyone else get the feeling that this should have been the last episode of the series? True, it helps on an atypical happy note -- something rarely seen in a X-Files episode. But it ends on a note of ambiguity too. True, two characters have their romantic problems resolved, but the romantic problems of the show's two lead characters -- FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully -- seem destined to continue.

And though I would like to be able to argue that the show continued to improve after this, it’s difficult to think of few episodes -- apart from an occasional exception like the Groundhog Day tribute “Monday” -- that were really all that great.

Indeed, the whole series starts going downhill after Season Six. In fact, some X-Files fans would argue that I was being excessively Pollyannaish at including Season Six in the list of good seasons.

Anyway, this is not exactly a classic episode, and in many ways, one might consider it quite forgettable. After all, the episode tells us nothing about UFOs or extraterrestrials or government conspiracies or even the whereabouts of Mulder’s missing sister. It could be argued that the morale of the story is borderline creepy -- act out in a psychotic fashion and you too can get the girl of your dreams -- and if the writer had not been so intent on creating a “comic” episode, he could very well have put a darker spin on this same material. But he doesn’t.

And yet I like this episode precisely because the writer resists the pull of his dark side. So many episodes in this series seem to toss in an unhappy ending just for the heck of it. And after a while, one gets tired of the constant reminders that yes, mankind is bad and the fight against evil is not so easily won. Most people don’t have to watch a TV show to know all that. They’ve learned it from personal experience.

And while one could argue that at this point we hardly needed yet another episode alluding to the unspoken romantic relationship between Mulder and Scully, it was nice to see an episode allude to that fact without hitting us over the head with it.

I found genuine humor in the scenes in which Mulder had to give dating advice to a guy who was even more emotionally repressed than he was. And, of course, Scully’s big soliloquy on the evolution of platonic love into romantic love was quite touching.

So should I feel happy about an episode that seems to argue in favor of a possibly lethal romantic obsession? Not really. But then one could argue that the episode is not about that at all. After all, the one guy who receives the most punishment in this episode -- the fraudulent “rain king” of the title -- is a guy who tries to be something he’s not. He pursues relationships for his own selfish reasons, and he ends up paying a price because of it.

For that matter, the emotionally obsessive weatherman who proves to be the true culprit of the episode also pays a price for not being himself. By repressing his true feelings for fear of rejection, he ends up ensuring his own loneliness. It’s only when he is encouraged by Mulder and Scully to conquer his fear that his romantic problems resolve themselves.

And if there’s hope for a guy so repressed that his very emotions can cause thunderstorms, then there just has to be hope for Mulder and Scully -- and by extension, the rest of us.

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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “Midnight”

My, this was one creepy episode.

My, this was one creepy episode.

No, seriously, it was creepy.

No, seriously, it was creepy.

I've come to have very low expectations when it comes to the episodes of this series that were written by Russell T. Davies, but this one actually manages to be creepier than last week's episode (and last week's was very creepy, indeed.)

I've come to have very low expectations when it comes to the episodes of this series that were written by Russell T. Davies, but this one actually manages to be creepier than last week's episode (and last week's was very creepy, indeed.)

It's not often you see an episode that seems to have been inspired not only by The Twilight Zone but by a recent House episode. Moreover, it's not often that you see such an episode pull off such a plot.

It's not often you see an episode that seems to have been inspired not only by The Twilight Zone but by a recent House episode. Moreover, it's not often that you see such an episode pull off such a plot.

And to think mi mejor amiga has been trying to get me to go on a pleasure cruise.

And to think mi mejor amiga has been trying to get me to go on a pleasure cruise.

Okay, I'll stop.

Okay, I'll st--

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Supernatural: “Pilot”

If subplots involving a missing relative could work for Fox Mulder of X Files fame, why not a similar subplot for the two main characters of the Supernatural series. Better yet, why not toss in a murder mystery involving yet another relative?

Heck, let's start off the series with a charming flashback involving the mother of the two main characters Dean and Sammy. Poor mom doesn't last too long. Just long enough to catch sight of a mysterious stranger -- no reference to Mark Twain intended -- in her infant son's bedroom and then die a very nasty death in a fire that nearly destroys the whole house.

Dean and Sammy survive, of course. Which is a good thing because, after all, they are the two main characters I mentioned earlier. And the boys' father also survives, only to become obsessed with finding out what caused their mother's death. For that matter, the boys become a bit obsessed with finding out what happened to dear old mom for rather obvious reasons.

They never do solve the mystery -- no doubt because then there would be no series -- and eventually the two brothers go their separate ways. Younger brother Sammy chooses to go to college to become a lawyer and old brother Dean chooses to follow in his dad's footsteps as a ghostbuster.

Then one day Dean shows up in Sammy's place with the Mystery of the Missing Dad. Poor Dad didn't die in flames like their mom, but he hasn't been heard from in a while either, and Dean fears the worst.

Sammy, on the other hand, is more worried about an upcoming job interview and his live-in girlfriend. He eventually agrees to help Dean hunt for dear old Dad, but he's not too happy about it.

But first our guys have to solve the Mystery of the Phantom Hitchhiker. Or better yet, the Killer Phantom Hitchhiker. Apparently the last place Dad was heard from is being haunted by an enigmatic Woman in White who appears by the roadside and lures not-so-innocent young men to their doom. The WiW (Woman in White) continually frets about not being able to go home -- not because she's a member of the Shangri-Las -- but because there's a mystery in her house that can't be solved until just after the last commercial break.

In any event, the two brothers eventually solve the Mystery of the Killer Phantom Hitchhiker, only to find -- surprise! -- that the solution brings them no closer to finding out what happened to dear old Dad. However, they do have a clue to yet another mystery involving the vanishing patriarch which will be conveniently explored on next week's episode. And unfortunately, they also have to solve yet another murder mystery involving yet another of their loved ones. However, this particular murder mystery is going to take a while.

Some guys just can't catch a break...