TV from 11/11 - 11/17

Sunday (11/11)

Dexter

A whole lot of stuff went down this week. I would say that the best point of the episode was Dexter playing Doakes like a fiddle and getting him suspended from the force. Of course this isn’t going to stop Doakes from digging into his life, but watching Dexter antagonize Doakes into attacking him the middle of the office was a thing of beauty. On the other end for Dexter is Lila going into full-on crazy girlfriend mode which was great in that she was naked again but not so great in that the more you screw with Dexter the better chance he is going to kill you. And since Dexter is a complete psychopath he has already seen through her manipulations. I’m still not comfortable with what is going on with Deb and Lundy. Thankfully Rita booted her lunatic mother. All of those character moments were going on along with some nice movement on the Bay Harbor Butcher investigation. It was just another great episode.

8 out of 10

Monday (11/12)

Prison Break

What a surprise! Lots and lots of stuff was teased but in the end barely anything has changed. The formula of Prison Break drives me insane. The evil shadow company assaults Sona and nothing happens. Michael stops Whistler from escaping and then the helicopters leave. The big change is Michael is taken out of Sona and the end of the episode … ooooh what could that mean? All the other characters are still in Sona, do you think we’ll never see them again? I don’t care. Lincoln and Sucre do stuff but since no one escapes it doesn’t really amount to much. They did buy a shack so maybe they will live happily ever after together. Thankfully Prison Break is going on hiatus but sadly it will come back before 24 so I won’t get my Fox Mondays back for many more months.

5 out of 10

Chuck

Marshall is an evil ex-gymnast who now poisons people for a living? Well if that’s what it takes to get Kevin Weisman some work, fine. He was the threat of the week which existed merely to give everybody truth serum so that the revelations could commence. In the end all that will matter is that Sarah was able to lie to Chuck and hide her feelings for him so that he will now get a real girlfriend. Or something like that, I was fast-forwarding without fear. Harry Tang looks to have been written off the show, which was weird even if he is a part of the Dexter cast. He’s better on Dexter so I’ll take it. It was another ho-hum episode.

6 out of 10

Heroes

What a surprise this episode did not live up to all of its hype. I am shocked. The problem for me is that when it wasn’t about the Petrelli family the whole thing lost steam. There was too much time spent on the bleeding eyes siblings and what happened to D.L. Who cares about either of those things? Maya and her brother have been the absolute worst storyline in the show’s history and that includes Parkman’s marital problems last season. And the D.L. arc just annoyed me because he survived a shot to the gut in order to die later by being shot in the gut. But the whole episode wasn’t a waste because there was plenty of good stuff with Peter and Nathan. That was a nice twist to have the burnt face Nathan kept seeing early in the season be his own face instead of him thinking about Peter. But still if he was healed magically like that why has he turned to the bottle over the fate of his brother? Wouldn’t Peter be the first person he thought of after he is mysteriously cured? Peter in company prison with Adam was fantastic. David Anders is great in this role and Kristen Bell finally returns and kills it with her interactions with Peter. And the Haitian pops up again and even speaks! There is always enough to keep me interested and this week had more good than bad.

7 out of 10

Weeds

Weeds keeps on rolling to another crazy finale. I don’t even know where to start. Should I go with Conrad and Vaneeta dealing with an annoying neighbor blaming Jews and talking about how cute little black babies are? Or maybe Celia turning to Heylia in order to use her new drug money? Or better yet Nancy turning to Guillermo for protection and keeping up her drug business-negotiating tactic of drinking an iced coffee during the meetings? There was also Silas stealing Conrad’s gun, Shane still talking to his dead dad, Heylia finding out about Nancy and Conrad, and Andy actually showing some backbone for his family. And the episode ends with Guillermo setting fire to the biker’s crops causing a wildfire. Awesome.

9 out of 10

Tuesday (11/13)

Bones

Alright, an episode full of 80s jokes. That is about it; some funny jokes and cute moments with Booth and Bones in therapy but nothing groundbreaking. It is really hard to review this show since I have nothing to say about it. I enjoy it then I forget it.

6 out of 10

House

Well that was encouraging. Michael Michele doesn’t join the show instead she pops up for another episode to destroy House’s mind before getting fired at the end. House having to depend on Foreman because he doesn’t trust himself when she makes suggestions was sweet. It is still obvious that all of the new faces will be slowly eliminated throughout the season but at least it looks to be a season-long storyline. This week we got the spotlight on the plastic surgeon and there are revelations aplenty before he impresses House by constantly disagreeing and working against him. They all get some funny moments when being filmed by the documentary crew and even that has a great conclusion with all of the House footage edited to make him look like a nice guy. They were somehow able to fit in Cuddy, Wilson, Chase and Cameron around the edges of the main storyline. Who the hell knows where Cameron’s admittance of love towards House will lead if it leads to anything at all. Not the best of the season but still another good episode.

8 out of 10

The Unit

This was probably the best episode of The Unit that I have seen. They actually made Williams’ death mean something. And it wasn’t even having Jonas go after the man whose soldiers kill Williams; it was the last segment of the episode where each character was shown preparing for his funeral then showing the funeral itself. This was all very well done. I have to take some points off for Jonas turning into a one-man A-Team by building a super truck to invade the enemy’s compound. Really? This was balanced with solid storylines for Mack and Bob, one dealing with William’s autopsy and one breaking through a journalist’s Stockholm syndrome. It would be nice if all The Unit episodes were this good.

8 out of 10

Reaper

This is one of the better episodes of Reaper just because of the Sock/Gladys storyline. This allowed for plenty of great Sock moments but culminated with the hilarious dream of them going at it on her couch that Gladys put in his head. His reaction to find this out at the DMV was perfect. There was more Sam and Andi nonsense that is just more stalling before putting them together. The main storyline was good because it lead to a nice moment where the Devil shows Sam what happens at the end of a deal with the devil. Not good for Sam’s future.

7 out of 10

Wednesday (11/14)

Bionic Woman

Well that was just completely unexpected. On one hand this was the first good episode without Sarah Corvus but it ended with the death of Antonio. And that sucks because Isaiah Washington was creating one of the best characters on the show. Maybe he isn’t dead or maybe he’ll become bionic or maybe he is moving on to a different show. Who knows? Jaime and her CIA boyfriend is still dragging down the show but it didn’t kill this episode and even had a couple of nice moments where she whips on some CIA folks who were spying on her. It was nice to see Curtis Manning show up even if only for an episode. So it looks like I won’t be abandoning Bionic Woman yet.

7 out of 10

Life

Well that was a bit of a disappointment. With the way that the episode was previewed I thought the whole thing would be about the murder of the detective who arrested Charlie, but instead we got half of that and half investigation of the week. The usual was the usual and I don’t have much to say about it. While the other half of the episode was as good as I hoped it would be. There were great scene after scene with Charlie and Calamity Jane, Charlie being questioned by IAD, Charlie meeting Reese’s dad, Ted clearing out Charlie’s closet of paranoia before it was searched, and Charlie finding out how bad the DA wants to take him down. Damn this episode could have been great if it was only about Charlie.

7 out of 10

Thursday (11/15)

Smallville

It is nice to see that Smallville can suck even without concentrating on Lana. Clark is an idiot and resurrects his mother even though he knows its going to lead to something bad and even after it starts turning to shit he is blind to it because he has his fake mother back. Zor-El was decent but not good enough to carry the episode. Lionel only got a scene and a half so that’s a disappointment. There was also some extended nonsense with Lois and the editor, which leads to Lois taking her job seriously and Lex hiding his brother from Lionel. Yeah okay fine. And worse of all Clark takes his mom to Oliver Queens’ old place and all it does is remind us of another decent character who is not around anymore.

4 out of 10

This will be the last big week until the writer's strike ends. Next week is Thanksgiving so half the week is shot. This week saw the end of Prison Break and the Weeds ends next week. These are all good things. I'll give Weeds the top slot and put Dexter in right behind it.