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All posts by Hugh Allen

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What a way to open a season!!! Finally we get to see Roy suit up as Aresnal, and the whole gang working together like a machine. I think the reason for this is to show they are all in a good place, before everything gets really bad. Really, really bad.
So in the past few months no one has seen Thea who took off with her father and Dark Archer, Malcom Merlynn, at the end of last year. Diggle and his ex wife are expecting a baby. Oliver and Felicity are apparently an obvious thing to everyone but Oliver. Laurel has been working hard with the DA’s office and her dad is now a captain in the police force.
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One of his first actions being to announce the end of the task force assigned to capture The Arrow and thank him for his help saving the city. Nice stuff. Everyone is happy happy. Oliver and Felicity go on a date. Then get blown up.
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By this guy, the new Count Vertigo. Who may not matter because he is caught by the end, saying there will always be someone to take up the mantle of Vertigo. Or some other silliness, I’m not sure.

Bigger thing here is the addition of Ray Palmer, A.K.A The Atom. Played by former Superman, Brandon Routh.
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He is taking over Queen Industries. That’s going to be fun.
Diggle’s baby is born and Sarah Lance returns as Black Canary. Everyone is happy. Then Sarah takes three arrows to the gut and falls like five stories to her death. All on screen. No cutaway or doubt or anything. Super dead. Unless they roll out Lazarus Pits or clones to this show, her bird is cooked.

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Was a good one. Can’t wait for next weeks episode, “Sara”.

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I woke up this morning to find a glowing review of the pilot episode of The Flash, written by our fearless G33kpod leader Paul. I agreed with almost everything he said, but one thing stood out and made me choke on my coffee.

“It has already surpassed Arrow”

Paul, did you take a fanboy pill last night? I have to know because I cannot agree with or let that comment go. Have you even seen Arrow? I am sure this new Flash series is going to be good, maybe even better someday than Arrow. Maybe we will even get to see this:

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Ok, maybe not. Here is the thing. I am not going to get in a row about which superhero is better, because we all have opinions and we are all right. To say in one episode The Flash has out done two years of world building is ridiculous. Arrow has proven again and again to be an incredibly well done show. In fact the only issues any one ever has is generally is the girl who plays Laurel, and Stephen Amell’s acting. I have heard he is wooden and not very good. What I see is one man playing three different parts, The Arrow, the public face of Oliver Queen, and his true self. The true self certainly is wooden because he is a damaged person who can’t quite bring himself back in to the world he left when he was marooned on the island. That’s three parts, all different from each other. That is pretty good for CW show.
But this is not a review of Arrow, this is a statement. SOMEDAY The Flash may be better than Arrow. SOMEDAY we might be talking about how The Flash is the high point of comic based television. But I believe it is wrong and premature to make that statement right now. This year we have Ra’s Al’Ghul and Firestorm and The Atom coming to Arrow. This year we will have The Flash having his powers sputter out on him due to his confidence. You watch, bet ya ten bucks we get that in the first season. That is because that happens on every super hero show in the first year. The Flash will be great I think and hope. Just not yet. But that’s okay because this is how you build a world. You want an example of how good The Flash can be? Check out the last few seasons of Arrow…

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As an aside, just so all the fanboys out there know, we will not be getting the Green Arrow and Flash team you all are expecting from the comics. This is the fault of both shows, but primarily Arrow because that is where the seeds were sown. In the comics they are good friends and ball busters. In these two shows I cannot see Grant Gustin’s Barry Allen ever having the confidence to riff on his mentor and all around scary guy Arrow. I also don’t see Stephen Amell’s Arrow ever being unbroody enough to make a joke or crack a real smile. Just the way they are written. It could be worse though, we could be getting this next week.

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I am glad we got Amish zombies right out of the way.  When I saw these I’m the promo last week I was worried.  This is not a show I expect to take the high road often so I am glad they did not go for the low hanging fruit.
This week Z Nation went to a a CDC like outpost to acquire a helicopter.  They wetter given this info by Garth from Supernatural after somehow hooking the drive through camera at a fast food joint to the magic of satellite communication.  This was done by red head bat girl who I now know is Addy.  Because Garth has a crush on her and throughout the episode he creepily uses her Facebook page to have pretend conversations with himself.  Yeah.  That’s unsettling.
We also are given some backstory for 10K.  Which accounts to this caption.

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So cleary things at the at the bar are weird.  The general is nuts and shoves Doc down an elevator shaft where he is trapped with this for an hour and gets to smoke a joint with a dead guy.

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I’m not making this shit up.

Also, here is Big Fucker.

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He takes multiple shots to the head and had to be blown up by a grenade.
A few big take aways from this episode is acknowledgment that “Romero” had it right and everyone is infected.  They reference the movie “Night of The Living Dead” so we know now this is a world which has zombie fiction.
We also got our first big guest star.  Bill Mosley.  He plays the crazy general and was very under used.  Like he showed up for an afternoon looking for lunch money.  I hope this is not how they are going to use guest stars.

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He fell off a building shooting back up at the zombies who tackled him.  Bad sfx.  My wife said “Oh SYFY…”
Next week looks fun with a tornado coming and over references to at least it isn’t sharks.  It’s like the show gets worse but we are enjoying it more and more.  They might be on to something here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=aiY7gKTJF6Y

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Three eps in a row now AOS is doing a good job not sucking. It is evident that unshackled from the movies they actually know how to craft an interesting and compelling narrative.
Simmons is in Hydra, or correctly undercover for Coulson in Hydra. We open the episode with Hydra bad guys doing some brainwashing on a former SHIELD agent and discover that is what they are doing. Recruiting the good guys, and the ones that don’t play nice, programming them too. Interesting stuff and opens up lots of possibilities for the future.
They seem to be in pursuit of the kid from last year who was going to SHIELD training and received freezing powers from a weather machine… sometimes I feel stupid typing this stuff. Anyway, Simmons is debriefed by Coulson at home in a very cute scene over dinner which shows us she did not abandon Fitz, but is on assignment.
In the meantime, Skye is trying to turn in to super bad ass agent, and is doing a not half bad job. Her and May have a discussion about what it is like to “take someone out”, meaning that later this episode she will take someone out.
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The highlight for me was when Fitz found that former Agent Ward is being held in the facility, and confronts him about the damage that he did to him when he ejected them from the Bus last year. Really strong stuff, and the actor who plays Fitz(Iain De Caestecker) is knocking it out of the park this year. Is it me, or is Ward getting both less creepy and more creepy at the same time? I look forward to seeing what his arc is this year.
The rest was standard action stuff that was both satisfying and exciting. Simmons protects her cover and Skye takes out freezy man.
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I suppose we are going to see her stress out about this during the rest of the year. In fact I wonder if she might not be more like Ward by the end of the year as that would make dramatic sense.
There is not much else to say with out spoiling all the small moments, but is was a worthy episode, and next weeks looks good too. Here is the promo for “I Will Face My Enemy”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=e-rdDkmkYgU

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The CW stalwart, Supernatural, began it’s tenth season last night. That in itself is a great achievement for a show many people say should have ended after season five. The fact that they have found a fresh an interesting new way to go this season is even greater as I would still watch if the show wasn’t getting better every year.
Dean Winchester is a demon now. Not an evil spirit wearing a meatsuit demon, but his own soul in his own body turned in to a demon by the Mark Of Cain(long story). His road trip buddy and spiritual adviser being none other than the King Of Hell himself, Crowley. That is hilarity enough, and they quickly get out of the way the biggest question from the end of last year. Is it still Dean?

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Drunken karaoke? Yup, that’s Dean alright. He just seems like normal Dean but angrier, until a particularly brutal exchange with a young women he had been spending time with:

Dean: “I seem like the kind of guy to sleep with a skank in every town I come through.”

Girl: “I’m just messed up enough inside to leave here thinking I deserve that.”

It was an incredibly cruel exchange, and one that leaves no doubt there is something broken inside him.

Then there is Sam, searching for his brother and getting himself kidnapped by a hunter whose name I don’t think we learned last night. He seems to have an old issue with Dean and thinks he can use Sam as leverage to get Dean to show for a confrontation.

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No luck there. Dean tells the guy Sam is on his own and we are left with more questions than answers. There is also a side story featuring Castiel which looks like more angel garbage. It isn’t bad, but I had hoped when it was announced Misha Collins was getting bumped to series regular that he wouldn’t be off on his own all season. Hopefully there is a plan here and it won’t just be script filler. We also have the addition of Mark Sheppard to series regular which means Crowley every week if we are lucky. The only thing that concerns me about both of these additions is the last time we had a fan favorite added to the regular cast it was Jim Beaver, the year his character Bobby Singer was killed.

This was not a bad kickoff. It almost seems like it is fashionable to complain that Supernatural should have ended by now, but I think if you never watched past season five, you can’t really judge it. It is funny, because I can no longer remember a time when this show wasn’t on the air. If it continues last years trend of gaining viewers, we could be in for a long road ahead still. It is great to see a ten year old show still come up with something new to base a season around, and I for one cannot wait until next Tuesday.
Here is an extended promo for that episode, “Reichenbach”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=G_DjSOEXaHE

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So the big season one finale came and went as if it was an episode from halfway through the season. There finally was some movement on the black ops vamps, and a glaring fuck up in the main story.
The good guys finally trace the Master back to a theater where he is being protected by a den of vamps. They attempt to infiltrate the theater through the sewer tunnels and head toward a confrontation.
While all of this is going on there are some pointless parts where they set up conflict for season two. Replacing the person in charge of the CDC, and discovering that the other group of vampires are apparently pissed at the Master for waging this war in the open. They have three “ancient ones”, vampires so old they cannot move. I am not sure if they are better or worse than the Master, but they apparently do not have any love for the Master.

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Also we learn that even the Ancient ones have no junk.

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The largest problem with the episode is not the lack of resolution, but the lack of action by the main characters. The crew rolls in to the theater owner by Bolivar armed for bear. I question the choice of bringing a child in to battle, but the fight was pretty cool. Abraham and Ephraim head up to the attic to confront the Master and here lies the problem. I was sure Abraham was going to die here. Through clever thinking and breaking of windows they smash the Master out the window and on to the roof in direct sunlight. He is smoking and burning. Both Eph and Abe standing over him. Thirty seconds goes by while they stare like a teenager seeing boobs for the first time. Then the Master gets up and runs down the wall.

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WTF!!! Even my wife was yelling at the TV! They didn’t stab him or cut him or do anything. They just stared then let him get away! I was astounded that the people making this show thought this was an acceptable conclusion to the season. I knew they wouldn’t kill him because we have more of The Strain ahead of us, but I just can’t buy that level of dumb-fuckery.

Finally before the end credit, Eph’s wife pops back in to scare her son and run away. Because we are on a roll of wrapping up no storylines here, let’s not break the chain right? Ugh. All in all this is a good show. I can’t wait for the next season, I just wish they had rewarded us for putting up with the slow pace. It was as if the characters reaction times are as slow as the plot this year.

Since there is no promo of next year, I will instead post a funny Batman picture.

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If you can forgive the use of a socially unacceptable term, my exact words to my wife after watching this episode were “Well, that was not the least retarded episode of Doctor Who I have ever seen.”
It was an interesting concept. A desperate mission to the moon to find out why it has been gaining mass and causing havoc on Earth. The moon’s new found gravity was destroying the Earth and if they could not find the problem, then blow it up. There were creepy moon spiders and loads of potential for a scary, old school episode of Doctor Who.
Then the wheels come off. Problem number one: The moon is an egg. With a giant space thingy in the center and no one knows what it will do when it hatches. I suppose with the right writing this could have been pulled off, but as it was it just feels dumb. This is not a believable show to begin with. When you stretch even that credibility then you are in trouble.
Problem number two: The Doctor is a dick. I don’t mean is difficult or tetchy or quirky. I mean a complete jerk. I know they are building towards something with Peter Capaldi’s Doctor being harsher and darker. Up until now it just seemed like he had a more Tom Baker attitude. This past week though, he was just a jerk. No redeeming quality, no reason behind his abandonment of Clara except he seemed to want to see what she would do in a bad situation. It reminded me of Supernatural when Sam didn’t have a soul. He would let bad things happen because he was curious about the outcome. That is what I got here. The Doctor wanted to see what the stupid little apes would do without his help.

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Visually I thought it was a strong episode. The moon surface looked great and there was a narrative reason for there to be gravity at the time. The spiders were well done as well.

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Interestingly enough, I took a look at the reactions from fandom on the internet and half of them say that was the best episode yet, and these last seven are the strongest of the revived series. I do not usually find myself at odds with the general consensus on Doctor Who, but I just do not like where they are going now. I know last week I thought I got it, but this week they have undone all the goodwill I had toward this new Doctor. No matter what the endgame is, I cannot imagine a satisfying reason for him to be so cruel to someone who has traveled his entire time stream and saved him from death. I think we sometimes forget that Clara is no ordinary companion. She was split in to fragments and scattered all along his life, intervening and guiding him toward becoming the man we knew. This just does not work on so many levels.
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Let’s hope next week can redeem something, anything. Here is the promo.

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Sleepy Hollow continues to barrel along with it’s unique style of nuttiness the week with “The Kindred”. The central main plot being that Ben Franklin and the witches of his time conspired to make a Frankenstein’s Monster of sorts capable of matching the power of the Headless Horseman. They were unable to complete the spell as it required a part of the Horseman’s body. Of course our heroes have his head and they decide to use this “Kindred” as a distraction in an attempt to rescue Ichabod’s wife from captivity.
Here is where thye hit us over the head with the other main theme of the story. Abby several times brings up that she feels Ichabod’s quest to save his wife is getting in the way of them moving on to stopping Henry the Horseman of War(that made me chuckle). Now that is a legitimate argument to make, but somehow in the context of the episode it felt forced. I don’t know why. I just felt that if it was her sister being held captive there would be no question this would be the right thing to do. And by the end of the episode when Katrina has chosen to stay a captive so she can glean intel from the bad guys, it is clear this whole “bigger picture” thing was to prepare Ichabod for leaving his wife behind, again.
Notable in this episode we finally get to see Henry release the Horseman of War.
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That was pretty cool. Also, Captain Irving played by Orlando Jones makes his return. In prison for murders he did not commit last season, he is being pressured by the new administration to tell the truth about what happened. He is transferred to a mental hospital, and right before his first round of extreme shock therapy he is saved by his new lawyer… Henry Parrish! Parrish has him sign a contract he assumes is for legal services as he has no knowledge of Henry’s true identity. However, the pen is designed to prick his finger and cause blood to fall on to the contract. I can only surmise he has just signed a contract with a demon in blood, and that his soul is in peril. This show just never lets up with the loony.

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All in all another strong outing for the show. Best line ever refering to “Franklinstein’s Monster.” Here is next weeks promo “The Root of All Evil”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHcrZIPTICQ&feature=player_detailpage

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I sincerely hope all the hullabaloo about this seasons Agents Of Shield ratings turns out to be nothing because so far it is far more promising than the first season.
“Heavy Is The Head” is the second episode of AOS’ second season and continues to show that without their hands tied by the release of a movie(Captain America:The Winter Soldier), these guys can make great tv. It picked up where last weeks left off with The Absorbing Man in possession of the mysterious object and on the run. Standard stuff really, but within all the action you can see what is really important.
One of the surviving mercs would seem to be on a path to redemption. Seemingly joining the team at the expense of an expense account. Simmons also has a breakthrough where we find when he can’t figure a problem out, it may be because he did it in the past. Evidenced by when they need a solution to negate The Absorbing Man’s power, he keeps saying “I didn’t solve this today!” As it turned out he did solve it in a previous day, but due to his condition cannot recall when or how.
We also see the return of Rainna. She is no longer in the employ of Hydra and is working for a new character played by… wait for it… Kyle MacLachlan!!! Is it weird that I am so happy to see him back on tv? Man I loved Twin Peaks. Anyway, if the spoilers are to be believed he is Skye’s father. I am certain that he will steal every scene he is in, and I cannot wait to see him face off with Agent Coulson.
Also the new comer Mac seems to be finding his place in the group. When asked about his proficiency with technology he replies “Ya know how some people can play a song by ear? I need the sheet music.” Seems he may be able to help Fitz get some work done finally.
Near the end we again see Coulson face off with General Talbot. In a field by himself it seems, offering the captured Carl Creel as a peace offering. Then with the decloaking of a Quinjet and the Bus showing that Shield is still doing all right in the armament department. I hope we get to see Talbot finally come around to the group and at least tolerate them. Right now it’s fine but I don’t want to watch him trying to convince himself they are the bad guys for twenty more episodes this year. The man is not an idiot.
Again, the show delivers this week. If they keep this up we may still have the show around for Avengers 3. Get out there and watch it people. It would be sad to let such a great vehicle for the Marvel Universe die because it took them a year to get their footing.
Here is a preview of next weeks episode, “Making Friends And Influencing People”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=mOSo5TRb-y0