Monday, September 27, 2010

SPOILERS: House, Chuck, and Castle

Note to self: Lenovo ATI bug is bad. It's worse if you use Notepad and you never save. Soooo....No notes.

I think I always have an excuse when I post; I swear, I'm not that scatter brained. Maybe I subconsciously become scatter brained so that I do something dumb such that I have something to write in this space above the "Read More" lines......

Meh, so much for psychoanalysis, onto the reviews!

Episode of the Week: "Chuck versus the Suitcase" [That's right, Chuck wins 2 weeks in a row!]

House, "Selfish": So, great case, great personal issues, but the main thing for me this week was - House brought on the meta jokes! What is with shows getting all meta? Chuck and Glee to some extent last week, Glee again this week, and now House and even a little in Castle? If you're not sure what I'm referring to, there were two scenes:

1) Taub calls House and updates him on the patient, House responds "So this call was, what, just for exposition?"

2) House gets into an argument with the brother and says something along the lines of "and now your emotional damage is causing me to get into a philosophical debate instead of doing my job of diagnosing your sister"

Ok, the second one, not so funny, but just as meta. As I said above, I really liked the case for this episode. Deciding between two children's lives is not a new concept to House, but the actors for the two children were really spectacular. And by spectacular I mean I didn't hate them by the end of the episode. I usually have issues with excessively selfless people. 

Also, the House/Cuddy interactions were wonderful. Cuddy's way of proving she is dating House to Wilson was absolutely hilarious - the best part is the dead silence that occurs for half a minute where Wilson is just....shocked. Taub really ripped into House, and for good reason - he changed quite a lot. Of course, House really likes having sex with Cuddy. One of my favorite lines has got to be "People who haven't seen Cuddy naked should not throw stones."

The interesting thing was, though the change in House was obvious, we wouldn't have known Cuddy was acting differently if House hadn't made a point of discussing her body language. That's because Cuddy may constantly oppose House, but she doesn't shoot him down every episode. She sometimes agrees, but as we aren't doctors, we need House to tell us when she agrees when she shouldn't have. Like I said, interesting.

Finally, the explosion at the end. Excellent. True House/Cuddy [above] at their best, and the reason we love both of them. Also, Cuddy's "well-formed ass". He did say "well formed."

Chuck, "Chuck versus the Suitcase": First off, excellent episode aside, I need to put in one complaint because of the serious lack of Bronson Pinchot [below] in this episode. If you don't know him (you probably don't), he's a hilarious actor who was supposed to play a character in this episode. I didn't see him, and as far as I can tell from heavy web searching, he popped up for all of 1 second, so there aren't even clips to be found on the web. I guess his scenes got cut, which is a terrible terrible loss for us. I highly recommend fixing this by watching him in Stephen Sondheim's Putting it Together especially in the songs Invocation and Instructions (here), Everybody Ought to Have a Maid (here), and Buddy's Blues (but I couldn't find that clip on YouTube).

Lack of Bronson Pinchot aside, this episode was spectacular because of the combination of Morgan comedy, Sarah/Chuck issues, and guest star awesomeness.

Morgan: Morgan finally got made manager of the Buy More! And for good reason! Diane...I mean General Beckman was totally going to blow the operation by filling the Buy More with highly efficient, beautiful people. Even Devon figured it out. Now Jeff and Lester are back in all their creepiness (ahhh, unbuttoned shirt, baaaad). Also, it seems Morgan and Alex (Jayne Casey's daughter) have been keeping in touch. Hmmmm...

Sarah/Chuck [above]: I love that life and death secret spy missions aside, Chuck and Sarah go through simple relationship issues all the time. This one was great, and perfectly combined with the scene of Chuck being held hostage by a naked supermodel after accidentally grabbing her ass at a party. Sarah finally unpacks, only to become totally terrified at the end by Chuck's brief mention of marriage and children. Foreshadowing! Also, wow, Chuck really is the girl in the relationship. Also, saw the Spiderman kiss line coming from a mile away.

Guest Stars: Old Spice guy + Lou Ferrigno + some supermodel I've never heard = excellent line up of guest stars that could only have been improved by the addition of Bronson Pinchot. Isaiah Mustafa (Mr. Old Spice)  was absolutely hilarious and badass and I totally believe he's secretly CIA/NSA. Now all they need is him in a scene with Alyssa Milano and Rose McGowan. And if you didn't know who he was, get to the YouTube and find out. Plus, my day was made by seeing Lou Ferrigno slap Zachary Levi in the girliest way possible after hearing him confess his love to "Sofia".

Castle, "He's Dead, She's Dead": Another excellent episode, pitting Castle against Beckett [below] on the grounds of psychics/mediums/magic/double rainbows versus logic. I loved the double rainbows shout out! Interesting case, with an excellently twisty result. I find it amusing that cases always start with "my [victim relationship] was such a nice person, who would possibly want to kill him/her?" and by the end we've got four suspects who all have good reason to hate that person's guts.

Loved Castle's poke at the value of Beckett's gut. Anyone else think NCIS? As for Chet's death...Well, we never really met him, did we? So I'm not that sad. I feel bad for Martha though, and it was a good, if once again heavy-handed tie in with the plot.

Since my notes are missing, I have to admit that this was the least memorable of Monday episodes, so I don't have much else. But my two favorite moments were:
1) Castle walking face first into the comment about him not being as sensitive as other people
2) We now know Richard Edgar Castle's real name - Richard Alexander Rodgers

Phew. That was a lot of writing. Onto Tuesday and Thursday!
~ Sarah