The A.V. Club - TV Club

The Goodwin Games

David Sims — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:00:00 -0500

The Goodwin Games debuts tonight on Fox at 8:30 p.m. Eastern.

The Goodwin Games is the first series from Carter Bays and Craig Thomas to make it to air since How I Met Your Mother launched in 2005 (they wrote the pilot with HIMYM writer Chris Harris). Its late-May premiere suggests instant doom for the show despite an impressive pedigree—along with Bays and Thomas, the talented Becki Newton, Scott Foley and TJ Miller topline the show and Beau Bridges appears via videotape as their wacky deceased dad. There’s a generous soupcon of heart and whimsy, as any HIMYM fan might expect, and hints of breezy chemistry from its ensemble.

So what went wrong? Well, the most glaring fault in The Goodwin Games is exactly what has plagued How I Met Your Mother, especially in recent years—it’s always at risk of being swallowed up in ...

Batman: The Animated Series, The Batman/Superman Movie: World's Finest

Oliver Sava — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:00:00 -0500

As two of the most internationally recognizable superheroes, “World’s Finest” is a fitting name for the pairing of Batman and Superman. World’s Finest Comics was published from 1941 to 1986, bringing DC’s most popular characters together in one book where they starred in separate stories until they were finally partnered in the mid-’50s. Yet while the World’s Finest have often teamed up in comics and animation, they have yet to fully intersect in live action. Efforts to incorporate Batman in Smallville never came to fruition (although he’s appeared in the Smallville Season 11 comic) and Warner Bros. hasn’t been able to get a Batman/Superman film off the ground, despite it being a hell of a lot easier of a story to tell than a Justice League film.

Originally produced as a three-part episode of Superman: The Animated Series under the title “World ...

Peep Show, “Holiday”/“Marriage”

Phil Dyess-Nugent — Mon, 20 May 2013 10:00:00 -0500

If, as Lenny Bruce might have told you, especially if he’d had a couple of beers and you were a cute graduate student working on her thesis about transgressive humor, sick comedy is a healthy way of dealing with anxieties and guilty feelings that we’re not comfortable addressing head-on, then the concluding episodes of the fourth season of Peep Show add up to one of the healthiest hours in the history of television comedy. This is especially true of “Holiday,” which begins with Jez offering an unusually honest description of the terms of his and Mark’s relationship, and ends with Jez, who has tried to conceal the fact that he accidentally killed the dog of a woman he likes by burning the evidence, taking a bite out of the animal’s charred corpse, trying to pass it off as the badly barbecued drumstick of a very hairy ...

Veep, “Andrew”

Robert David Sullivan — Mon, 20 May 2013 03:30:00 -0500

Selina Meyer might as well pull a David Blaine and live in a glass box hanging over the Potomac. She’d get as much privacy and respect as she does in her capacity as vice-president, and she wouldn’t have to listen to anything anyone says in Washington.

“Andrew,” named after Selina’s weaselly ex-husband (David Pasquesi), is a study in the drawbacks of being able to tough it out. This season, Julia Louis-Dreyfus has nicely conveyed her character’s ability to keep plowing ahead, no matter what the obstacles. By the end of “Andrew,” it seems to be dawning on her that a reputation as someone who can take a punch only inspires more people to come at her.

The president has already put Selina on the spot by keeping her in the dark about a CIA spy being among the American hostages rescued from a Persian country, even ...

Mad Men, “The Crash”

Todd VanDerWerff — Mon, 20 May 2013 02:55:00 -0500

What the ever-loving merciful fuck?

Look: Here’s how I review an episode of Mad Men. I watch the episode. I take a half-hour or so to turn it over in my head. Usually, I find a couple of stray strings around the edges, and I start to pull on one of those. If it starts to lead somewhere, great. If it doesn’t, I pull on another. Eventually, I get to something that sounds vaguely review-like, and then I vomit out 2,000-some words on paper, because the people demand their Mad Men reviews in a timely manner. Sometimes, I think I get to what makes the episode special. Sometimes, I miss the mark entirely. But that’s just the game. That’s how it works, and I’m more or less used to that.

“The Crash,” however, doesn’t have strings I can start tugging on to unravel ...

Family Guy, “Road To Vegas/No Country Club For Old Men”

Kevin McFarland — Mon, 20 May 2013 01:45:00 -0500

Nine summers ago, I saw my first play at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, a production of The Comedy Of Errors directed by future artistic director Bill Rausch. In that production, the play turned Syracuse into a glitzy neon city like Las Vegas, the Duke and his men into gangsters, and both sets of twins into Rat Pack-esque showmen. The slapstick mistaken identity jokes clicked right into place, and the show was fantastic. I’ve never seen a better version of the show, and the quality of that performance significantly improved my esteem for the play, so much so that I’m always intrigued when any other entertainment reminds me of it.

“Roads To Vegas” puts a bit of a dark Comedy Of Errors spin on the “Road To” structure, splitting into Sliding Doors-type split-screen effects, and even bringing in some of the same plot elements as “Back ...

The Simpsons, “The Saga Of Carl/Dangers On A Train”

Robert David Sullivan — Sun, 19 May 2013 23:05:00 -0500

No one associates Homer Simpson with a strong work ethic, but at this point, the most impressive thing about The Simpsons is its diligence in carrying out the same job year after year. Tonight’s pair of episodes ends the series' 24th season, making it the longest-running American TV series with continuing characters outside of daytime soaps. In the second, “Dangers On A Train,” Homer saves a kiddie train from the scrapyard, repainting it and running it in circles in his front yard, and the show couldn’t be clearer in sending the message “We’re not going anywhere.”

I’ve been consistently critical of The Simpsons this past season, and the last two episodes do not represent a late rally. “Dangers On A Train” is notable for guest star Seth MacFarlane, the creator of fellow Fox show Family Guy and other animated series that emphasize quick cutaway gags over ...

Family Tree, “Treading The Boards”

Erik Adams — Sun, 19 May 2013 22:00:00 -0500

Tom Chadwick starts Family Tree as a man in search of identity, but the inheritance that gives the first episode its title can also be reshaped and reformed depending on what the latest installment calls for. This week, it’s a costume chest: In spite of the information that serves as the cliffhanger ending of “The Box,” Harry Chadwick wasn’t “a Chinese person”—he’s not even supposed to be a Chinese person in that photo. After a little bit more digging, it’s revealed that the picture comes from Great Grandpa Chadwick’s turn as Nanki-Poo in Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado, one of the many faces and he wore in his time as an actor, an occupation he took up after his time as a photographer. It’s fitting that Harry was an actor; if Tom doesn’t know what his role in life is, why not ...

The Borgias, “Relics”

Les Chappell — Sun, 19 May 2013 22:00:00 -0500

With The Borgias possibly coming to an end sooner than expected—as I mentioned in last week’s review—I’ve spent some time over the last week looking back over the life and growth of the series. And while I’ve talked many times about the concrete improvements the show made as time went on, it’s clear that the most remarkable development between the first few episodes and the current state of affairs is how definitively François Arnaud has taken over the show. Leading up to the show’s premiere Jeremy Irons was the biggest draw for name recognition, and during the first season attention was directed largely to Sean Harris for his charismatic yet soulless portrayal of Micheletto. Arnaud wasn’t bad, but his performance of a Cesare Borgia caught between what he wanted and what his father wanted was largely unremarkable starting out.

As the ...

Game Of Thrones (newbies), “Second Sons” (for newbies)

David Sims — Sun, 19 May 2013 21:45:00 -0500

This Game Of Thrones post is written from the point of view of someone who has not read the books the series is based on. As such, spoilers are strictly forbidden. Any spoilers in comments will be deleted on sight. If you see spoilers, please mark them as best you can and email toddvdw at gmail dot com or contact Todd on Twitter at tvoti, and he’ll take care of them as soon as possible. Remember: Discussions of things that were different in the books or confirmations of things that won’t happen count as spoilers, too. Have you read the books and want to discuss what’s coming? That’s what our experts reviews are for.

Alright, dudes. It’s time to get things moving. I know I’m going to write this slightly frustrated, toe-tapping review this week and then next week something insane will happen—Tywin ...

Game Of Thrones (experts), “Second Sons” (for experts)

Todd VanDerWerff — Sun, 19 May 2013 21:30:00 -0500

This Game Of Thrones post is for people who have read at least the first three books in the book series. It is written from the point-of-view of someone who has read those books and for the benefit of fans of the books. All discussion points are valid, up to and including the events of the fifth book. However, we would ask that you clearly mark spoilers from the fourth and fifth books. The review itself will be non-spoilery, and talk of how events here portend future events will be clearly marked with a spoiler warning in the section following Stray Observations. If you would still like to read the review but haven’t read the book, thus, you can, but you should proceed with caution after the spoiler warning and in comments. Those of you who haven’t read the books can also check out our reviews for newbies ...

North America

Rowan Kaiser — Sun, 19 May 2013 16:00:00 -0500

North America debuts tonight on Discovery at 9 p.m. Eastern.

“What ties this together?” has become the most interesting question for distinguishing prestige nature documentaries from one another. The post-Planet Earth form has three guarantees: dazzling, perhaps unprecedented shots of wild plants and animals; and a survey of wide expanses of geography with only mild levels of education. Each individual episode will have a structure that keeps a variety of different forms: comedy, tragedy, action, inspiration, etc.. How those awesome pictures are structured to fit together becomes the biggest challenge of changing footage into a documentary.

At the overarching level, it's what makes the theme of the episode. Planet Earth focused on styles of terrain, like ice or rainforest, which was extremely effective at allowing a variety of different animals and scenes, but could give a geographical whiplash as you bounced from Siberia to South America. Still ...

Farscape, “Bone To Be Wild”/“Family Ties”

Alasdair Wilkins — Sun, 19 May 2013 10:00:00 -0500

“Bone To Be Wild” (season 1, episode 21; originally aired 1/21/2000)

(Available on Hulu and Amazon Instant Video.)

“There is much cruelty in the universe.” “Yeah, we seem to have a treasure map to it.”

At first glance, “Bone To Be Wild” is a strange bridge between last week’s climactic, game-changing two-parter and the first season finale. Farscape has been tilting in this direction for a while, but with “Nerve” and “The Hidden Memory” the show finally seemed to embrace its serialized potential, with the return of Crais and the introductions of intriguing new characters like Scorpius, Stark, and Moya’s Peacekeeper hybrid son. And, to be sure, we do see the return of most of those characters (minus Stark, whose abrupt departure from Moya was mentioned in a line deleted from the finished episode), but Scorpius and Crais never interact with the main cast members, and ...

Saturday Night Live, “Ben Affleck; Kayne West”

David Sims — Sun, 19 May 2013 10:00:00 -0500

This is the second year in a row that SNL has had major goodbyes to address in its season finale (Kristen Wiig last time, Bill Hader and Fred Armisen here) and it’s the second year in a row they’ve absolutely nailed it. Sure, this was pretty much a typical season finale otherwise, with a better-than-usual mix of good sketches and clunkers, a very competent host in Ben Affleck (joining the five-timers club) and a friendly drop-in from Amy Poehler. But, as frustrated as I can get with these guys, it’s crazy how emotionally invested I am in these big farewells. Stefon’s wedding got me choked up. Armisen’s lovely, subdued Ian Rubbish song was exactly how he should sign off. It’s just a sketch show, but if you’re deep in your SNL fandom, it’s like a family member moving away.

We’re approaching ...

Orphan Black, “Entangled Bank”

Dennis Perkins — Sat, 18 May 2013 21:00:00 -0500

As much as I appreciate genre fiction, I have to confess a definite ebb and flow in my appreciation for Orphan Black. Buoyed by pre-broadcast praise (from Todd, among others), I was suitably impressed with the tantalizingly enigmatic setup: Street-smart British hustler steals the identity of a lookalike she witnesses committing suicide by train and inventively brazens out her scam even when she discovers that her doppelganger was a cop. Especially when said hustler was portrayed by the unknown (to me) Tatiana Maslany who, in the lead role of Sarah, possessed a startlingly alive presence, even before the plot’s machinations allowed her to reveal the versatility she brought along as well. As multiple lookalikes appeared, the wealth of Maslany’s gifts multiplied with them, the plot and her talent seeming to gain in loony, exciting momentum. As the mysteries of those first episodes increased, I marveled at the execution ...

Doctor Who, “The Name Of The Doctor”

Alasdair Wilkins — Sat, 18 May 2013 20:00:00 -0500

The cleverest moment in “The Name Of The Doctor” is, of all things, a grammar lesson. A mysterious criminal relays the following message to the Doctor’s friends: “The Doctor has a secret, you know, one he will take to the grave, and it is discovered.” Madame Vastra, Clara, and likely a decent chunk of the audience assume the “it” refers to the secret, because “secret” is the intriguing word there, the one that promises the latest incredible revelation about the Doctor’s true nature. The whole bit about the Doctor’s grave sounds like a rhetorical flourish, and so everyone except the Doctor and River Song misses the pronoun’s real antecedent. The secret isn’t the important bit, because secrets and their explanations are never the important things in Doctor Who. The fact that “The Name Of The Doctor” so often forgets this is its fundamental weakness.

This ...

The Twilight Zone, “The Fugitive”/“Little Girl Lost”

Zack Handlen — Sat, 18 May 2013 12:00:00 -0500

“The Fugitive” (season 3, episode 25; originally aired 3/9/1962)
In which Old Ben has a wonderful, sexy secret...

(Available on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and CBS.com)

Sometimes I over think fiction because I enjoy parsing out the possibilities; sometimes I do it because that’s just the way my brain works and I can’t help myself; and sometimes, the work makes it impossible not to over think it. For most of its running time, “The Fugitive” is a charming, good-natured story about a little girl and her magical friend, who turns out to be an alien, but come on it’s not like you didn’t see that one coming. The little girl’s aunt is a bit of a drag, but the script does attempt to give her some depth by the end, and it’s necessary to have some kind of a scold character in ...

Shark Tank — “Week 25”/“Week 26”

Phil Dyess-Nugent — Sat, 18 May 2013 01:30:00 -0500

When Shark Tank, which gives small-timers a chance to present their products or businesses to a panel of five high-toned hustlers who may or may not choose to invest their own money in them, premiered on ABC in the fall of 2009, some critics, such as Tom Shales of the Washington Post, reacted with disdain and revulsion toward what they saw as a post-economic-meltdown geek show, where desperate people trying to cobble together a life raft where made to dance for the amusement of cruel, heckling millionaires. (Shales wrote that it’s “the moments of misery [that] make it memorable,” while conceding that some heartless bastards might find the show “entertainingly sadistic.”) Maybe we’ve all calmed down a little since then, or maybe the producer, Mark Burnett, has tightened up the product. Shark Tank—an Americanized version of a Japanese show that has also inspired offshoots in England, Canada ...

Borgen, “Decency In The Middle”

Todd VanDerWerff — Fri, 17 May 2013 22:00:00 -0500

Before we begin, a number of you have asked me how you can watch Borgen in the U.S. legally. And I’m happy to inform you that you can right now! If you’re in the Los Angeles area, you have two options. You can watch the episodes every Friday night at 10 p.m. (or DVR them) on the local station KCET. Or you can watch the episodes on DirecTV, Dish Network, or the LinkTV website. Everybody else in the United States can currently watch the show on DirecTV (channel 357), Dish Network (channel 9410), or LinkTV’s website. Since it’s so unusual for a foreign-language TV series to air in the U.S., if you’re at all interested in this becoming a trend, supporting Borgen is your best shot. Plus, from everything I’ve heard, it turns out to be pretty amazing. Let’s see ...

Nikita, “Til Death Do Us Part”

Phil Dyess-Nugent — Fri, 17 May 2013 21:45:00 -0500

No one can say that Nikita didn’t have a full plate this season. In addition to trying to hunt down the “Dirty Thirty”—the former Division agents who had gone rogue and were peddling their lethal services to the highest bidder—she also had to chop off the hand of her true love, Michael, in order to save his life. Then, when having only one hand made him even moodier than usual, she had to track down the secret technology that would enable him to grow a new one. Last week, Nikita was informed by her enemy, Amanda, that Michael’s new hand contains a nanotoxin that will kill him unless he received an antidote, which Amanda will provide in exchange for a small favor: Nikita has to assassinate the President. “Even if I do this,” said Nikita, showing an admirably form grasp on the stakes involved, “even if ...

Maron, “Marc's Dad”

Kyle Ryan — Fri, 17 May 2013 21:30:00 -0500

As Marc Maron recently discussed on Comedy Bang! Bang!, doing Maron has forced him to step outside of himself a bit more and see his issues more plainly. Prominent among those issues are the ones he has with his father. Maron has talked extensively about his father in his act, on WTF, and his new book, which has a hilarious chapter that transcribes the insane message his dad left on a Mother’s Day card for Maron’s sister-in-law. On Maron, Marc is estranged from his father (played by the great Judd Hirsch), who’s a former doctor with bipolar disorder and a huckster’s drive. In real life, Mr. Maron is a bipolar doctor—who can still legally practice—prone to fleeting obsessions, like raising show dogs (as detailed in Attempting Normal).

In the original 2011 pilot for Maron, Marc’s dad was played by Ed Asner, but by ...

Babylon 5, “Confessions And Lamentations”/“Divided Loyalties”

Rowan Kaiser — Fri, 17 May 2013 10:00:00 -0500

“Confessions And Lamentations” (season two, episode 18; originally aired 5/25/1995)

They failed.

I've described Babylon 5 as a transitional series many times over the course of these reviews, usually to help explain why it's relatively old-fashioned. For example, last week, Sheridan had the opportunity to turn into an anti-hero, that most notable construct of the “Quality TV” era, but he pulled back by the end of the episode. But here, in “Confessions And Lamentations,” the good guys fail, and it's an utterly irreversible failure. “The Markab are, for all intents and purposes, a dead race.”

The frequency and scope of the main characters' failure aligns Babylon 5 with several of the prime examples of recent Quality TV. The most famous of those, The Wire, depended on constant, repetitive failure to hammer home its themes. Or there's Angel, which was built on the idea that ...

The Office, “Finale”

Erik Adams — Fri, 17 May 2013 00:30:00 -0500

“It’s like a long book that you never want to end and are fine with that because you never ever want to leave it”—Pam Halpert

“Like Harry Potter”—Q&A partcipant

“Finale” is not a great piece of television. I enjoyed it immensely in the moment, yet I imagine that when I return to it down the line, it will appear too long, overly mawkish, and self-congratulatory in ways that will make me feel like a lazy critic for having smiled so widely and stupidly through my first viewing. The episode gets sloppy with the details of the documentary—If the crew is just returning to film the reunion, why would they know about Jim’s fake lap-band surgeries?—and massively undercuts one of the basic themes of the series as a whole.

Yet in spite of these and other critically lensed misgivings, this is the finale The ...

Elementary, “The Woman”/“Heroine”

Myles McNutt — Thu, 16 May 2013 23:50:00 -0500

Last week, Elementary concluded on a powerful final sequence in which Sherlock Holmes was sent by Moriarty to a mysterious, empty mansion and appeared to discover that his presumed-dead lover Irene Adler was alive. However, it wasn’t exactly the most surprising conclusion to an episode of television, given that Natalie Dormer’s casting had been fairly public earlier this spring and her name had appeared in the opening credits at the beginning of the episode.

Nonetheless, it was a striking sequence both visually and aurally, to the point where I went out on a limb and presented a grand theory that Irene was actually a hallucination. There was some suggestion that the validity of this theory would in some way alter my impression of the episode, that the episode and the sequence would be lessened should my theory—which I was pretty convinced of—prove untrue. This surprised me ...

Scandal, “White Hat's Back On”

Ryan McGee — Thu, 16 May 2013 23:30:00 -0500

This show, you guys. This fucking show.

“White Hat’s Back On” doesn’t just put a period on this triumphant second season of the show. It put about a half-dozen exclamation points followed by a few dozen emojis on it. I’ve tried to articulate over the past few weeks what makes this show work so well, but let me try and sum it up one last time. Plenty of great shows get by through sheer technical execution. These programs are well-cast, rigorously plotted, and professionally executed on every level. There are also plenty of great shows get by through messy, emotion-based character work. These shows maybe don’t hold up to intense scrutiny, but swing for the fences in terms of making their audiences feel something and connect more often than miss. Scandal stands apart from most shows right now because it steals the best of both types ...

Hannibal, “Fromage”

Molly Eichel — Thu, 16 May 2013 23:00:00 -0500

Call this one “Serial Killer Death Match.”

“Fromage” is Hannibal’s most-action packed episode. It’s not a difficult distinction to attain for a series that largely relies on atmospherics and aftermath to illicit the same scares other shows demonstrate through onscreen brutality and tension. There’s hand-to-hand combat! Romance! And bromantic love! It’s interesting to watch a show like Hannibal ramp it up, and maybe more people would watch it if Lecter took down a foe or two himself every episode, but that is not what makes it good. Still, the upped ante of physical violence played for thrills rather than poetry (as was demonstrated when Tobias made strings out of the subpar trombonist) did not detract from the quality, and the shift in pace was well-thought-out and naturally placed within the context of the episode. In fact, what bothered me most about “Fromage” were the smaller character ...

The Big Bang Theory, “The Bon Voyage Reaction”

Oliver Sava — Thu, 16 May 2013 22:45:00 -0500

The second half of The Big Bang Theory’s sixth season has featured the show at its very best, addressing nearly every character problem to create a fantastic block of three-camera comedy. I’ve been predicting an end to Raj’s sober silence around women for the finale, and it arrives in “The Bon Voyage Reaction,” putting a stop to a joke that stopped being funny a long time ago. This is all thanks to Lucy, but not in the way you’d expect. Despite the fact that he considers staring at Lucy on a frozen video chat one of his top three dates ever, Raj thinks their relationship is at a level where she should meet his friends. Raj is at the point in his life where he’s aching for a serious relationship, and he’s adjusting to romance much faster than Lucy, whose anxiety is far more ...

The Vampire Diaries, “Graduation”

Carrie Raisler — Thu, 16 May 2013 22:25:00 -0500

When season four began, Bonnie Bennett was The Vampire Diaries’ least likely tragic hero. Mostly neglected for the whole of the series run, Bonnie was notable mostly as a pawn in everyone else’s storyline, a literal magical panacea trotted out when the show got itself in a jam and needed to pull a solution out of thin air. Can’t figure out how to solve a problem? Don’t worry! Bonnie’s got magic!

But this season was a bit different. Bonnie’s role in the big season-long arc started out as par for the course, with Professor Shane manipulating her into learning expressionism in order to help him bring back Silas, but somewhere along the way, the story started to change. Bonnie (despite the show’s continued, desperate attempts to wrestle her agency away from her) started making her own decisions, and what she wanted to do was ...

Gilmore Girls, “Love, Daisies And Troubadours”

David Sims — Thu, 16 May 2013 12:00:00 -0500

“Love, Daisies And Troubadours” (season one, episode 21, originally aired 5/10/01)

Gilmore Girls was never a blockbuster show (it was on The WB and all that) but it’s important to remember that as its first season drew to a close, it was still seriously under the radar. It had been airing in a tough Thursday 8pm timeslot, against Friends, Survivor and, uh, Whose Line Is It Anyway? (those were the days, right?) and only really came into its own next year when it got moved to Tuesdays and saw a huge ratings bump.

I mention this just because the season one finale feels like the show trying to make an effort to make some waves. Gilmore Girls is always very watchable, of course, but the drama is usually small-scale and emotional, surprising plot twists are few and far between—things just move at a very human pace ...

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, “By Inferno’s Light”/“Doctor Bashir, I Presume?”

Zack Handlen — Thu, 16 May 2013 10:00:00 -0500

“By Inferno’s Light” (season 5, episode 15; originally 2/17/1997)

In which Gul Dukat is a son of a…

(Available on Netflix and Amazon.)

Turning Bashir into a Changeling—not the real Bashir, of course, just the one we’d been seeing on the station for the past few episodes—was a great twist. It used information that was readily available to us, and didn’t cheat to make the plot work; while you can argue over some aspects of the fake-Bashir’s behavior, the fundamental truth is, we knew the Changelings were capable of this sort of behavior, and there’s every reason to believe they’d want someone on DS9, even before we learn what their ultimate plan is at the end of this episode. It’s smart, engaging writing. But it also has a limited impact. By the end of “By Inferno’s Light,” the ...