TV News and Reviews

Wow. NBC outdid themselves tonight with three compelling episodes of our favorite series: Chuck, Heroes, and Medium.

*SPOILER ALERT* Chuck really threw me for a loop on this episode, “Chuck Versus the Dream Job”. After last week’s cliffhanger of Sarah and Chuck finding Chuck’s dad, we discover in this episode that his dad is none other than Scott Bakula (Star Trek: Enterprise, Quantum Leap). Chuck manages to talk his apparently eccentric and slightly crazy dad into returning for Ellie’s wedding.  At the same time, Chuck has to go undercover working for Ted Roark (Chevy Chase), his dad’s old partner who supposedly stole all of his dad’s computing work. Roark’s new software reportedly has a virus in it that could compromise important systems worldwide, and Chuck, Casey, and Sarah need to stop the activation.

When that mission fails, Chuck returns home and notices that the Intersect paperwork Orion sent him matches up with the floorplan of Roark’s headquarters. He attempts to enlist Casey and Sarah’s help, but without knowing his inside source, they refuse to believe him. Chuck sets out on his own to infiltrate Roark’s stronghold, only to find his father there, supposedly trying to get Chuck’s cover job back for him. Chuck stuns all of the guards who started to rough his dad up and confesses to his dad that he’s not who he appears to be. Turns out Chuck’s dad isn’t as he appears to be either–he’s Orion. The reason he left all those years ago was to protect the family, not abandon it.

When Chuck and his dad get caught trying to get the Intersect out of Chuck’s brain, Chuck’s dad trades his computing services to Roark and Fulcrum in exchange for setting Chuck free. Chuck vows to get him back, however, and he, Casey, and Sarah are granted the assignment of trying to get his dad back before Fulcrum gets their own Intersect. This is an exciting twist for Chuck and gives the show a nice arc to pursue again. I’m just hoping that at some point they can tell poor Ellie something. It seems extraordinarily cruel to have her suffer from rejection time and again and never be told the truth.

The Heroes episode “Turn and Face the Strange” also threw a lot at us tonight, as Bennett got tangled up with Sylar’s shapechanging and Danko’s evil plotting. He’s no match for the deadly duo and ends up fleeing for his life, his marriage on the rocks due to Sylar’s shapechanging manipulation. Danko doesn’t get off light, however, as Matt Parkman returns to poison the love Danko has for a former Russian escort he’s been seeing. Parkman lets the woman in on all of Danko’s dirty secrets, using his mind control to force Danko to tell her the truth. Parkman tries to kill her, as revenge for Daphne, but he can’t do it. Feeling he has nothing to live for, he throws down his gun and allows Danko to shoot him.

Enter Hiro, who stops time and saves Parkman–in more ways than one. Ando and Hiro introduce him to his son, and once again Parkman has something to live for. Meanwhile, Angela Petrelli brings her family together to a secret location in the desert where she says everything began. Peter, Claire, and Nathan all dig near some abandoned buildings only to find several buried bodies–one with a gunshot wound to the forehead. It’s a secret she says can no longer be hidden, but we don’t find out yet what it’s all about and have to tune in next week!

Medium’s “All in the Family” gives us an ultra twisted plot scenario this time, as Allison first has a dream where she sees a woman encouraging Allison’s youngest daughter to take a gun into Allison and Joe’s room to kill them. Allison writes this off as a simple, not prophetic, bad dream. But she’s startled to see the woman in the elevator the next day–she’s there with her brother to ask for Devalos’ help in finding their mother. Allison continues to have disturbing dreams of the brother, including one where he kills his sister and enlists the help of his fiancee–a woman Allison comes to find left the brother four years ago, thus confusing her interpretation. (Side note: The sister is played by Firefly’s Morena Baccarin, who is way too skinny with way too short hair. She was exquisite as Inara; I hate to think Hollywood has pressured her to try and look like everyone else.)

A subplot involves Joe’s troubled sister, who’s left her husband because of his cheating and stays with the Dubois family. Ariel gets evicted from her room, adding to her already substantial teen angst over not being allowed to go on an overnight ski trip with a group of her friends and some 18 year old boys. Joe’s ghost father visits Allison, trying to help Joe get his sister back with her husband. Turns out the sister is pregnant, though even she doesn’t know it yet.

The brother/sister murder plot comes to a startling conclusion when it turns out the fiancee was in a near fatal accident while attempting to ditch the dead sister’s car. Since she was in the sister’s car, the hospital assumed she was the sister, and did reconstructive surgery to make her look that way. With this disguise, the two got away with the sister’s murder and then were able to pin the mother’s murder on the “missing” fiancee. With Allison’s help and DNA results, the D.A. was finally able to charge the couple.

Got all that? But the cliffhanger of the episode is after all of this, when Joe and Allison are getting Ariel’s room ready for her again after Joe’s sister has left to go back to her husband. They call for Ariel, only to find out from Bridgette that Ariel never came home from school. Assuming she’s gone off on the ski trip without permission, we see Joe and Allison rush out of the room. We won’t know until next week what’s really happened to her.

So there you have it, an action-packed night on NBC and three very good reasons to tune in next week. Watch Chuck, Heroes, and Medium on Monday nights, beginning at 8/7c on NBC.

PHOTOS:  Zachary Levi as Chuck, Zachary Quinto as Sylar, and Patricia Arquette as Allison Dubois, screencaps c2009 NBC.

Well, NBC posted a tiny peek at Amy Poehler’s new mockumentary Parks and Recreation. I did get a small giggle out of it, but it’s not really enough of a clip to tell if this is going to be a show I want to watch. I’m willing to give Amy Poehler the benefit of the doubt, but I hope we can see some more substantial clips to better judge Parks and Recreation. I’m not a fan of The Office, so this one will have to do something a little bit different in order to win my viewership.

As for TV in the near future, we’re up to our first Manic Monday. Other days of the week are completely useless as far as programming, but Monday is overpacked with interesting TV.

7-8pm (Central): Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother on CBS. Two of the few remaining true comedy sitcoms left on television, these shows are always good for a laugh. Neil Patrick Harris often steals the show on How I Met Your Mother, but the rest of the cast have their moments of pure silliness too. Big Bang Theory offers the biggest laughs I’ve had from TV in years, but you may need to be a little bit Geek to get the best jokes.

7-8pm: Chuck on NBC. In the worst conflicting programming decision ever, we have another Geek!love comedy/spy show. The same audience that enjoys the sitcoms on CBS would watch this show fervently if they weren’t too busy watching, you know, the sitcoms on CBS. The good news is that you can watch full episodes of Chuck online. This Monday’s episode is in 3D and includes guest star Dom Monaghan (Lost, Lord of the Rings) being his delightfully nutty self.

8-9pm: Heroes on NBC. Yes, it’s true, Heroes hasn’t been living up to its first season, but there are still moments to enjoy with our favorite characters like Peter, Parkman, and Hiro. Next season is going to be revamped in an attempt to bring back the Heroes love, so I’m hanging on till then to see how it all plays out.

8-9pm: The Closer on TNT. Brenda’s back, but only for a limited engagement as a teaser for the full summer season, so this won’t be a conflict for too long. And the good news is that TNT replays the show at 11pm so you can watch Heroes and catch The Closer later in the evening.

9-10pm: Finally, Medium is back! Our favorite lady who sees dead people has returned to TV to make up slightly for the unfortunate cancellation of Christian Slater’s My Own Worste Enemy. Medium offers consistent quality, great mysteries, engaging characters, and heartwrenching stories of bad things happening to good people–and sometimes to bad people.

It’s not so bad with Heroes ending on a cliffhanger…it’s kind of the show’s m.o. at this point, and we only have to wait until February for some sort of closure. With My Own Worst Enemy, however, NBC has left us twisting in the wind, once again canceling a show mid-plot-line and leaving us to fend for ourselves. Tonight’s episode was the swan song for Christian Slater, Saffron Burrows, and Alfre Woodard’s talented turns in My Own Worst Enemy, and the finale ended with a shocking murder and tons of questions without answers. NBC also continued to act as if nothing was amiss, telling viewers on commercial breaks to visit the My Own Worst Enemy website and play our own little dual life game. From what I can tell on the messageboards, it seems NBC may be trying to appease fans by offering a few tidbits of what might pass for closure in Edward and Henry’s dual lives. Gee, thanks. The only thing that would settle the score for me right now would be a My Own Worst Enemy movie, for which there is plenty of material and acting chops to make it work. And no, NBC, adding a few secret dossiers online after canceling a perfectly good and entertaining series will not entice me in any way to watch Momma’s Boys.

Heroes December 15 recap clip:

(SPOILER WARNING) With Pushing Daisies creator Bryan Fuller coming back to Heroes (he penned a few of the Series One episodes), here’s hoping the show will capitalize on the cliffhanger it’s left us with. Although I have to say I’m really not happy with the Heroes Evil Nathan storyline. Nathan’s always been borderline, and easily manipulated/deluded, but the underlying theme was consistently that he truly did care about and love his brother. When he told Peter he wouldn’t have made the same decision to save his brother, that seemed uncharacteristic and just plain wrong. After all, Nathan risked his own life to save the world and Peter in season one. Why would he suddenly become a different person? I’d like to see some psychological back-up to this personality shift to help me buy it. Sure, the brother vs. brother Heroes plotline is nice, and meshes with the horrible future they’ve been trying to prevent all season, but it falls apart if we don’t see where Nathan is coming from. Maybe they have a plan in this regard. We’ll see.

And yes, as I hoped for last week , our Hero Peter showed up again at the same time his bangs fell down and gave him more of that Emo hair look we knew and loved so well. Yeahy! Here’s hoping he won’t show up in February with another short haircut. Like Samson, Hero Peter needs his sexy long hair.