Crimimal Minds S08E01

First of all, I’m really glad to have a weekly show back.

Secondly, I’m not going to complain and be overly nitpicky due to that.
So Alex Blake is the new team member, as especially Garcia keeps reminding us. Every five minutes. Well, yes, I noticed that person is not Emily nor any other known team member, so I kinda assumed she’s the new one. Though it’s annoying, the bright side is that the show at least actually deals with and follows up on Emily’s departure instead of pretending she never existed. I even think Garcia says out loud what many viewers were thinking; concerns if they can get along with the new person, if she’s nice and not just super-duper qualified on paper and that saying goodbye to Emily isn’t so easy. Thing is, for us viewers, the entire spring/summer passed and gave us the time to deal with the latter. I doubt I’m the only one who made peace with the cast change in that time. In the show, however, only a few weeks passed since Emily left – and Garcia permanently talking about it sounds like a broken record to me because it’s all the stuff I already put behind me by now.

Alex Blake. What can I say? I loved Emily and I especially loved the team up of her and David Rossi. Now, we have Alex Blake, seemingly getting into a team up of her own with Reid. I should be the first in line to complain. But I’m not. I actually like Blake and I also like her in combination with Reid. He was on the losing side of attention all through season 7; it’s his turn to be a bit more in the spotlight. And it makes perfect sense to combine his skills with Blake’s.

I forgive the unbelievable coincidence that the first case with linguist Blake deals with an unsub and his relation to words and languages. Yes, of course it’s constructed like hell; only rivaled by DS9 in season 7 when Garak suddenly became claustrophobic outta nowhere to justify the existance of Ezri Dax. In CM, it’s not so bad. All other team members had cases where they had to use their specific skills in the past and there were earlier cases where the team could really have used a linguist (and Reid played the part). So I don’t mind this obvious show off because it makes sense on all accounts.

In short, this was a decent season pilot. It could have been better, yes. But it could also have been a lot worse. The focus was clearly less on the unsub and more on the introduction of Blake as a new character and that’s understandable. What earned some extra points: the teaser for the future in the end; photos of all team members being developed by a mysterious stranger.

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Dear Diary…

…it’s been a while. I had the flu, which made me miss my appointment and hence my ADD is still unmedicated and still raging at full force. So I naturally forgot to post any updates and am certain I won’t even scratch the surface now.
So, in my quest “Being Late On Lost”, I have watched all but the last 2 episodes and deep inside, I decided to just never do that. So many people are saying the finale sucks, and I kinda lost track of what the hell the show is about in mid-season 3 anyway. It won’t make a difference. The last thing I remember is Jin and Sun drowning in the submarine and the pilot and Sayid being dead, too. Which left me with the united forces of daddy issues; Jack and Sawyer, and that annoying brat Kate. And, umm, whoever was still somewhere on the island. Or in another time.

I conclude: Lost did a great job of overloading my mind with senseless information, other than that, I was permanently torn between interested and annoyed. I just can’t see how it is praised as the outstanding achievement of pop culture people seem to see in it. It was okay most of the time, but not more.

I also watched more Sons of Anarchy, but didn’t make it through the entire first season yet. While that Jacks guy is still completely and utterly annoying, some of the other characters picked up a bit and the story seems compelling enough to make me watch more at a later point.

What I watched with a greed only rivaled by the Ferengi was Oz; first five seasons in a week. At first, I was slightly confused because every time I thought I figured out the main characters, all of them died shortly after. And I was a bit skeptical about the very confined options a prison drama has. Season finale: Riot. Yeah, I expected as much, what now? But I must say, the show really surprised me on many levels. There is more of my beloved political plotting than in anything else I recently watched and that makes a damn strong point for Oz. None of the many characters stays too flat and some are even exceptionally well written and played. And though short of an Elvis impersonator, there is always Chucky Pancamo’s hair.

The one thing I find highly irritating is the combination of prisoners in Oz. While I can somehow accept that Augustus Hill ends up in this place despite being in a wheelchair – he’s a cop killer, after all – I have a hard time to believe Cyril O’Reily would be sent to the same prison as the rest of the bunch. Sure, he killed a man, but he also has an IQ of 51 and is officially retarded with the mind and ability to understand the world of a 5 years old. That is different than, let’s say the cannibal from season 1. While batshit insane, he still had a normal IQ, so yeah, okay, I can see him in a regular prison. But if a real court would send a mentally disabled guy to a maximum security prison and then wonder why he gets more insane in there… it’s a bit of a stretch. Anyway, I will go through season 6 and look forward to it.

Tomorrow, Criminal Minds returns with season 8, and as I said earlier (I think), I’m not in a doomsday mood about it anymore since I know the new team member is a linguist. Having a show to dissect weekly again should help to update with my old frequency again.

Dirty Black Summer – On The Finishing Line

The TV summer hiatus is almost over. Sadly, only almost, hence I still have a hard time to keep myself sufficiently entertained. Criminal Minds returns this month and I have meanwhile made potential peace with Emily Prentiss being replaced. The new lady on the team is a linguist, from what I read. (And I’m a sucker for that specialization, though it is not quite as awesome as characters speaking made up or ancient languages.) So she might actually become the season’s saving grace and make up for yet another shitty romance subplot, this time involving Reid getting a girlfriend. Seriously, guys, it’s supposed to be a damn crime show. Do we really need romance crap there? Especially after the drawn out “Hotch is dating again” and “Garcia almost gets married” archs from last season? Can’t we just, y’know, have a show about solving crimes?

Anyway. What I did get back as of yesterday is the lowest of the low reality TV coupling show. It is a shame there is no English word for “Fremdschämen” (definition: to witness another person embarrass themself without any shame and hence feeling the shame for them), a term coined by shows like this. Imagine a crossover of the worst aspects of “Farmer Wants A Wife” and the MTV show “Date My Mom” and you have an accurate idea. It doesn’t even pretend to really care about 40 years old virgins and basement dwellers finding their big love, an adventure initiated by their parents for the sole purpose of finally getting those guys out of the house. The show actively makes fun of them with silly aliteration nicknames (“the charming chauvinist from Chemnitz”) and hilariously overdramatized soundtracks (expect at least two occassions per episode to hear “One Moment In Time” and “Some Hearts Are Diamonds”, mixed with theme park jingles).

With this being my sole entertainment until Criminal Minds returns, I decided to also feed my raging, untreated ADD some more critically acclaimed shows and watch the pilot episodes of several recent/current shows to see what catches my attention.

To make a start, I watched the pilot of “Sons of Anarchy” today. Jacks, who appears to be the main character of the narrative, already pisses me off. I also did not need the implication of his mom going down on Ron Perlman. However, in the defense of the show, it remained an implication and was the only scene that remotely implied sex at all. The gracious violence, drugs, crime and nazi symbols are reason to hope that the MA rating results from all that and Mr. Perlman will keep his pants on.

So what’s the show about anyway? The everyday life of a biker gang called “Sons of Anarchy”, their crimes and likely their gang war against one of the various other organized crime groups. Doesn’t sound too bad as a premise and besides pretty boy Jacks and his newborn cripple and batshit insane crackhead ex, there are some appealing things. For once, Ron Perlman as gang leader seems a good choice. Then, we also had a brief appearance by Mitch Pileggi as the leader of a rivaling nazi gang. And most of all, this show has a freaking Elvis impersonator in the pilot. And two big explosions.

Famous last words will be spoken later, when I had a chance to compare to my other options – Hell on Wheels, Oz, Broadwalk Empire and possibly even the hyped Breaking Bad. For now, I consider this a solid hour of entertainment, despite it taking the combined efforts of two gang leaders and an Elvis impersonator to make up for the whiny pretty boy lead. His mom seems kinda cool, too.