Tuesday October 19, 2010

SPOILERS: NCIS and Stargate Universe

No Glee last week. BUMMER. But we get Rocky Horror Picture Show this week, so hang in there!

Episode of the Day: Not that I have huge diversity to pick from, but I'll give it to SGU episode "Pathogen" for making me feel emotions during an episode about Chloe. Well, they weren't about her. But still, baby steps.

Stargate Universe, "Pathogen"
Three parts to this episode: Chloe/Scott/Rush, Wray/Girlfriend, Eli/Mom.

Chloe's story left a little to be desired. Yes, sleep walking and alien mind takeover is disturbing and scary to the person. Yet I really have such a difficult time bringing myself to care about Chloe. She's had heavy storylines with her father's death, yet I've never been able to see more than eye candy. This story was more telling of Scott (who show's a vulnerable sign we haven't really seen before) and Rush (who is turning into a cold hearted, puzzle obsessed, hallucinating bastard). Also, anyone notice that the highly complicated mathematical problems [above] Chloe's alien mind-buddy solves seems to involve the use of spherical coordinates and calculus - she's very clearly writing r-double-dot (notation for acceleration) and sine and cosine formulas are on the board.

Wray and her girlfriend were in the background for most of this story, but their scenes were subtle and rather chilling. Their conversations are simple, tense, and as her girlfriend keeps getting the bottles of wine you start to see why this relationship is in the same episode as Eli and his mother. The distance is starting to take its toll on the people at home as much as those on the ship. It's heart-wrenching when you realize it. And in the end, when Wray says "I need you to stay sane" - it's such a selfish thing to say, and that's what makes it so realistic.

And finally, Eli and his mother. I'm so glad they returned to her story, it's a tragic one, and it's obviously a story that shapes the basic foundations of Eli as a character. Their scenes together were wonderfully acted, and the pained way in which the mother denies he is her son reminds us that just because we see the actors we're familiar with, we need to remember that their loved ones see a stranger. In the end, she learns the truth the same way Eli did - brute force. But before that moment, the strained way she demanded to know why her son had abandoned her as he sat by her bedside left me with more sadness than I ever expected to feel given that the main focus of the episode was supposed to be Chloe.

NCIS, "Dead Air"

Ok, I have to admit, a lot of the stuff from this episode must've been very "in context" things as half of my notes no longer make sense/seem very funny. I thought this was a good episode, and it definitely nodded to just how long it's been since Ziva joined the team in Season 3. (Many recent fans don't even realize she replaced Sasha Alexander's character Kate when she was killed in the Season 2 finale) It also touched on the rather scary topic of terrorists who start out as average suburb living Americans.

• Wow, Abby gets perfect identification of riffle from sound of the attack
• Ooh, an Alexis knock-off (my opinion of the guy's oblivious red headed daughter)
• Where's the ring Tony? (Tony interviewing everyone = hilarious and it leads to...)
• Tony loses his voice [below], and everyone taunts him with movie quotes
• Finally, my favorite quote of the episode is from Tony: "If this turns blue you've been handling some very bad things...Oh, congratulations, I think you're pregnant!"

So, do you care more than me about Chloe? Or less about Eli? And did you even know that there was a pre-Ziva time for NCIS?

~ Sarah