Category Archives: horror

Oct24

October 23, 2015 — A Hospital, Zombies & Something Sinister

Posted on by
Standard

What I Watched Today

(random, rambling thoughts on today’s TV)

General Hospital – Thursday

Spinelli tells “Jake” and Sam that he’s in the process of vanquishing a firewall, but it’s like tissue paper to the Assassin of the Internet.

Julian demands Olivia hand over Leo, and says, “Give me! Give Me!” like a 2-year-old. This dude is getting on my nerves.

Carly and Sonny argue over him leaving the hospital. Morgan goes catatonic, so Sonny, who is also a big baby, tries to walk by himself and falls. Oh, please, how old is this guy? He yells for everyone to leave him alone and refuses to get back in the wheelchair. Patrick comes to babysit.

Spinelli comes up against a blank screen. The file has been deleted, but that won’t stop The Jackal from getting it back.

Nicholas tells Elizabeth not to worry about the DNA test, since he deleted the file right after he looked at it. She’s still concerned the lab has it on file. Nicholas tells her to figure out a way to stop “Jake” from searching for who he is, and adds good luck with that. Thanks for the help, Nicholas! All of these scenes, with the exception of Spinelli, are taking place in the hospital. I know the name of the show is General Hospital, but that doesn’t mean everyone has to congregate there.

Commercial break. Wicked City looks wicked good! But what am I supposed to do? Watch TV 24/7? Dammit! Why do things cost money, so we need jobs? It’s just not fair.

“Jake” babbles to Spinelli about “the cloud,” which he obviously knows nothing about. Spinelli says it could take months to retrieve the file. “Jake”starts whining about how can the greatest hacker who ever lived not be able to snap his fingers and get the deleted file? Well, “Jake,” we know one thing. You weren’t in the computer business. “Jake” takes his marbles and leaves.

The cops show up at the hospital and tell Julian to back off. Alexis shows up and tells him that he needs to do this the right way, through the court. I swear, almost every adult in this show needs a binkie and a diaper today.

Patrick interrupts Nicholas hassling Elizabeth. Oddly enough, Patrick is looking like the only mature one right now. “Jake” shows up and Elizabeth says she wants to talk to him at home. I don’t suppose it’s to tell him the truth. God forbid.

Alexis tells Julian he can’t win Leo by playing tug-o-war. She tells him the court is going to look at the best interest of the child, and he needs to start playing nice. He tries to talk calmly to Olivia. Olivia says she wants to shield Leo from mob doings the same way she kept Dante from Sonny. She’s sorry she caused him pain, but she felt it was the right thing to do. She says she doesn’t really know Julian, and isn’t sure he can put Leo’s needs before his own. Julian says she hasn’t given him a chance, and I have to admit he has a point there.

Laura is having lunch with Lulu, and they’re talking babies. Lulu says that she and Dante are ready for another child, which flips Laura’s grandma switch. Nicholas drops by. He says Spencer has narrowed his Halloween costume down to five, and I can’t wait to see what the end result will be. Laura has a worried face that a total stranger would notice.

Spinelli asks Sam if they should really abandon the project, but Sam says “Jake” is just frustrated. She says they should let him take a step back and continue on themselves. The Jackal tells her it could take forever to get the deleted file, and she says they should try it from another angle. Spinelli suggests they try and get “Jake’s” medical records. Um…yeah. Wouldn’t they have his DNA on file?

Carly tells Sonny he can either fold up like a cheap suit or fight. He makes more infant noises. He’s all like, sniff…I’m no good to anyone anymore. I start knitting a baby blanket for him. Honestly, what is up with this today? Oh Lord, help me. Sonny is going on and on about what kind of husband he can (or can’t) be in a wheelchair. I don’t know. How about waiting five minutes and finding out? Maybe he can become a hairdresser and fix those grey-hair highlights of Carly’s.

Elizabeth asks “Jake” why he broke into Nicholas’s house because she’s an idiot. He says if there was an inconclusive result to the DNA test, why would the file have been deleted? Elizabeth says Nicholas was just covering his illegal activity tracks. Elizabeth tells Jake that she wants him to stop torturing himself, when what she really means is she wants him to stop torturing her. She says it’s been a year and no one is looking for him. Ouch! She asks him to stop searching and he says he’s come up against a dead end anyway, although he didn’t exactly say he’d stop.

Patrick comes home to find Spinelli and Sam on the laptop in the living room. She fills him in on what they’re doing, and he says a bunch of rhetoric about patient/doctor confidentiality. He says he’s taking a shower, basically so he doesn’t know what’s going on.

After having some time out, Sonny is feeling better, and apologizes to Morgan and Michael. He says he’ll act like a grown-up now, and follow the doctor’s orders. He says “Max” will handle things with the business while he’s out of commission. I take it Max must be Fat Dude. He tells his sons they’d better stay out of it.

Julian says blah-blah-blah to Olivia about how he’s turned over a new leaf. He promises Leo will never be in danger because of him, and wants to work out a custody arrangement without going to court. Mushy stuff with Julian, Olivia and the baby.

Spinelli is looking at X-rays of Jake’s face and suggests they might be able to find out what he looked like before the car accident that brought him to the hospital. Good idea!

Sonny says he has a hard time asking for help because it seems like weakness. He says he needs his family to believe in him, and then asks everyone to clap if they believe in mob bosses.

General Hospital – Friday

Spinelli gives Sonny a bocce ball set as a wedding gift. He says you can play standing up or sitting down, and that bends Sonny out of shape. He says it’s just a temporary condition.

Epiphany! I love her and always wish she’d have a real story line. It almost happened once.

Sam is staring at “Jake’s” X-rays, while Patrick drinks coffee. He asks what she hopes to find and I wonder if he really graduated medical school. Actually, you’d think Sam would be on top of this by now. Even I’ve seen those programs where they can “age” someone, so it makes sense they’d have something where you could “build” a face onto a skeletal structure.

Commercial break. 20/20 looks like a good one tonight – somebody thinks their kids have demons – but  Z Nation.

Danny interrupts “Jake” and Elizabeth basking in the afterglow. He tells them grandma (i.e. Laura) has arrived. She’s babysitting while “Jake” and Elizabeth go out to…do something.

Spinelli apologizes 10 times to Carly, and she says no worries, but they have no way of knowing whether Sonny will walk again and he’s being a huge baby about it. Spinelli explains what he’s trying to do for “Jake” and Sam. Carly says if anyone can crack the case, it’s The Jackal.

Sabrrrina visits Paul’s office. She wants to send Carrrlos’s body back to Puerto Rico, as she promised his parents, but she keeps coming up against roadblocks. Anna, at the hospital morgue, wants to see Carrrlos’s body “for closure.” What the blip that means I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter, since his body is gone. A tech comes in and says the body has been cremated. Paul tells Sabrrrina the same thing, and she freaks because she doesn’t know what she’s going to tell his parents. He claims they tried their best to contact someone, but obviously didn’t call her or Carrrlos’s parents, so nice try.

Patrick says he’s a modern man who cleans the house and cooks. I wish he lived here, even if he does wear too much lip gloss. Even better, he gives Sam a huge engagement rock. Then he goes to work. Way to celebrate.

Michael tells Sonny that he was questioned about Carrrlos, and that the police think Sonny had something to do with his death. Sonny tells Michael to stay the blip away from the business.

Sabrrrina gets the box with Carrrlos’s remains. She sees Anna who says she’s sorry, but Sabrrrina isn’t buying it. Sabrrina says that Carrrlos deserved prison for what he’d done, but he didn’t deserve to die. When she leaves, Anna takes a handful of anxiety meds. Jordan busts into Paul’s office and wants to know why he broke protocol in an ongoing investigation. She says he could have possibly destroyed evidence. Anna wants a copy of something, but I didn’t hear what since they’re repaving the street out front and it got loud all of a sudden.

Someone is hiding in Sam’s house and approaches young Jake, but we only see a shaky cam. Jake makes sounds and Laura comes running downstairs. Surprise! It’s only Cameron (?) in a mask. Halloween hijinks!  Cameron is on the floor with canaries twirling around his head though. Jake goes back upstairs, and Cameron makes excuses for him to Laura, saying he doesn’t know much about Halloween since he was with Helena during his formative years. I refrain from making a comment. Mostly because I don’t know whether to make one about Halloween and Helena, or that you don’t need to know anything about Halloween to get the bejesus scared out of you by someone wearing a mask and knock them out.

Obrecht (yay!) tells Liz some baloney about her performance review, but it’s just a ruse to get her to the surprise shower they’re throwing for her. Epiphany makes a lovely toast, and there are congratulations all around. Patrick arrives at the last minute, and Elizabeth asks him to “stand up for [her]” at the wedding. I don’t know if this means she wants him to walk her down the aisle or be her maid of honor.

Carly sees “Jake” and says he doesn’t seem too excited about being the next to get married. He says he’d rather have a real last name to give Elizabeth, and that he’s hit a dead end. Carly says he should cut his losses and if he’s going ahead and getting married, maybe he should just move on and forget he was once someone else. “Jake” asks Carly to be his “best person.” She runs off to plan his bachelor party.

Paul says he did nothing wrong and it was a “budgetary concern.” Nice. He says they have the autopsy and that should be enough. Anna tries to pump the tech for more info. She wants to see the autopsy report – again for “closure.” Who looks at an autopsy report for closure? The tech says he’ll see what he can do.

Yep, Spinelli is going to put the X-ray pics into a program he designed himself. Please, let this storyline be over soon. My heart can’t take it. Please, Spinelli, stop talking about it and just run the program. In the meantime, Obrecht gets the information that someone hacked into the hospital’s system. I’m kind of surprised they noticed someone hacking into one file. Noticed immediately.

Sabrrrina misses the shower. When she gets there, Felix is cleaning up and she tells him that she told Michael about the baby. Felix knows she’s not telling him something, but Michael shows up before she can say anything else.

The tech gets the autopsy report to Anna. She looks at it and says something isn’t right. It says that Carrrlos was shot twice, when she knows he was shot 4 times. She then wonders if it was really Carrrlos’s body.

Epiphany tells Patrick he’s next in line for a shower. She doesn’t mean he smells bad, she means he’ll be getting married next. I know he wears lip gloss, but isn’t the shower usually thrown for the woman?

Oh crap! Jordan shows up at Sam’s and arrests Spinelli. I am not buying this at all. First of all, I highly doubt Spinelli would have left a trail they could find so quickly. And they did all this in like 3 minutes? It would take longer than that to find a tech.

We end with young Jake telling big “Jake” that he knows big “Jake” is his real father. Elizabeth walks in and looks like she just swallowed a cockroach,

Z Nation

Because I have on life, I’m so excited to watch this show!

A couple of dudes are strolling through the forest, when a truck with a giant smile on it comes up behind them. The pair present themselves as a traveling dentists. Immediately, these guys get in the dental chairs and put masks for laughing gas on. They were carrying guns. How can they be this gullible? Of course once they’re under, they’re shoved into the truck.

Operation Bite Mark is going to take the Mississippi River route. They clear a boat of zombies, and find the boat owner still alive. Roberta asks him to take them south to Memphis. Geez, for a bunch of people who need a favor, they’re being kind of nasty. The boat owner is a bit chatty, but hey, it’s his boat. I see people haven’t lost their sense of entitlement. <heaving huge sigh>

They see two guys, Sketchy and Skeezy, who they know from a previous episode. Skeezy is semi tarred and feathered – he fell in with the wrong crowd – and Sketchy is wearing a bowler hat. They’ve been using Murphy’s name to get by and Murphy isn’t too pleased about that.

Zombie jam!

No, not like with instruments, but like a log jam. There are tons of zombies in the water, and quite a few trying to get on board. The boat overturns. 10K gets to shore and Sketchy says his partner is gone, along with the boat owner, and he doesn’t know what happened to anyone else. They see Skeezy’s upper half and think he’s a zombie, but he really just fell in a hole. The three decide to travel together.

The rest of OBM is down river. Doc wants to look for 10K, but Vasquez wants to get going on to California. Roberta says they’ll give it 24 hours.

Some Deliverance guys pop out of nowhere and tell 10K and the two S’s that they’re either lost or trespassing. Sketchy tells them that Skeezy is “The Murphy,” and he can offer them eternal life. He says a bite from The Murphy is all they need. Four of the guys hold down another one to test the theory.

Like The Emperor’s New Clothes, the guy who gets bitten says he feels great, and they all get in line. Sketchy tells them they have to rest for 24 hours in order for the venom to take affect properly, and the three make their exit.

Doc says he sees a signal from 10K, but no one else does. Vasquez and Doc continue to argue about waiting for 10K and moving on. Roberta says nothing is happening tonight, so everyone settle down. Doc says he’s getting tired of this mission.

10K and the flimflam men drive away. There’s a trailer park down the road a piece where Sketchy and Skeezy have…friends? It sounds like they’ve burned some of the people, but the mayor (or whatever he is) doesn’t seems to buy Sketchy’s song and dance. Sketchy tells him that 10K was dropped on his head as a baby and that he’s a deaf/mute. The mayor gives them a mini tour of the town, and tells them to enjoy some moonshine and some women. I wouldn’t relax if I were them.

Doc sees a canoe and tells the others to do what they need to do, but he’s going to look for 10K. Murphy, who’s still pissed about Cassandra’s death, acts like he’s all about the mission now. Murphy says everyone is expendable and he’s the only precious cargo. Roberta says they’ll head south for a little more, but if Doc isn’t at some bridge in a certain amount of time, they’re moving on. Doc leaves in the canoe and I’m worried for him.

10K is recognized by a girl at the trailer park. She remembers them from when OBM stole a truck and isn’t trusting 10K, but 10K explains the mission and she seems cool with that. They have some kind of mill that zombies are turning, and the girl’s husband is one of them. The dentist guys have also been capturing people to turn into zombies for town labor. She says the town is all kinds of evil. Great.

Uh-oh. It’s Escorpion from earlier in the season. This has been a set up. There’s a really quick trial where he accuses Sketchy, Skeezy and 10K of stealing from the town and him personally. Sketchy takes on the role of legal counsel, and he does a whole riff like he’s Harold Hill in The Music Man. I’m expecting 76 Trombones to start any second. It gets to the point where I can’t even follow what he’s saying, which is undoubtedly what he wants. He says it all boils down to that they’re wonderful people and he knows they’re all geniuses. He ends with the “words of Clarence Thomas, if it don’t fit, you must acquit.”  Escorpion says it was beautiful, but they’re still guilty. The sentence is death by hanging.

OBM meet Doc at the bridge. There’s been no sign of 10K. Addy tells him that not many people look out for one another anymore, but he’s that person. She says they have to leave, that she needs him on the trip, and 10K will know he tried. Doc makes an eloquent speech to the absent 10K, and joins the group. Just as they’re about to leave, the girl who called the town evil comes running toward them.

The mayor gives a sermon, ending with his hopes that they don’t cause as much trouble in hell as they have in this world. Escorpion asks if they have any last words, and Sketchy tries to give another summation, but Escorpion stops him. He says it’s hangin’ time, but the hanging is foiled by OBM, who have shown up to save the day. The zombies are also on the loose. Girlfriend gives mercy to her zombie husband.

The truck plays music like an ice cream truck (maybe it originally was), & only attracts zombies. Sketchy and Skeezy are staying with the truck. 10K bids them farewell, and joins OBM in their own car. Sketchy and Skeezy arm themselves amid some banter.

The episode ends with a freeze frame of Sketchy and Skeezy (I almost typed Itchy and Scratchy) similar to the ending of Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid. They break out of the truck, ready to do battle, even though they’re totally outnumbered. Thinking about it, it’s been a while since I saw Butch and Sundance, but I think the dialogue between them just prior to the end might have been from the film too.

Sinister

I got caught up in watching this after Z Nation. It’s on rotation on the Chiller channel.

This is the sort of horror movie I like, more creepy than anything else. I don’t believe in ghosts, vampires and the like, so horror films are never truly scary for me. Probably the last one that really scared me was The Exorcist in 1973. It really scared me. For a while, I had the family dog sleep in my room, until one night, I was awakened by an “oooohhhh” sound. Sure that the devil was there to possess me, I reached for the light. There was Ginger, sitting in the middle of my room, howling at the moon or whatever dogs howl at in the middle of the night. My father, having had enough of this nonsense, told me that it was the live ones I needed to be scared of. Having grown since then, I’ve come to agree with him. So creepy is the best I can hope for.

Ethan Hawke is a writer who moves his family into a house where the previous owners and their children were murdered. The story is going to be his next book. He finds a box of home movies that also feature several murders, all of them having things in common. Creepy stuff starts to happen, and while the ending isn’t a total surprise, it’s worth the price of admission. I always find things with electronics – movies or TV – have a special kind of creepiness. Maybe because these things are so tied to our lives.

Great film for the Halloween season!

Oct19

October 18, 2015 — A Sword, Some Wolfs & Two Joes

Posted on by
Standard

What I Watched Today

(random, rambling thoughts on today’s TV)

 

Once Upon A Time

In old Camelot, young Arthur tells young Guinevere that Merlin (who is trapped inside a tree) gave him a prophecy that he would pull a sword from a stone and they would become king and queen.  Fast forward to Arthur as an adult. When he takes the sword from the stone, the bottom of it is gone, taken to make Dark Emma’s dagger. Arthur hides it in a sheath when he returns to the people, acting like nothing is wrong.  Arthur tells David he can re-forge the sword so that it will again be able to defeat the powers of darkness.

Rumpelstiltskin tells Emma since she’s the savior, she needs to save herself before it’s too late. Good point.

David wants to take the dagger and use it to put the sword back together. Snow doesn’t trust Arthur, and even though David thinks it will save Emma, she wants to wait. David approaches Arthur and tells him Lancelot is alive. Guinevere overhears and tells David he doesn’t know the whole story of her and Lance. David goes into his bag to get the dagger, but it’s gone.

In old Camelot, it’s Guinevere’s birthday party. Arthur is late and Lancelot dances with the queen. Guinevere has taken a magic gauntlet that she believes will help find the missing piece of the sword. Lancelot joins her in the quest and the gauntlet leads them to a weird circle that looks like a giant sewer cap with mystical symbols on it. When it opens, there’s a staircase to a place that looks kind of like a mine. All kinds of black crazy stuff comes out of nowhere and surrounds Lancelot. Guinevere makes it go away and they kiss. She says it won’t happen again, but I dunno about that.

Henry takes Emma and Hook to a stable where he wants to show them something, but they’re interrupted by Henry’s crush, Violet. Emma and Hook hide, and Henry and Violet go riding.

Lance and Gwen come to a forest where the dagger is on display. When they try to take it, they’re thrown back and Rumpel appears.  Rumpel offers them a compromise – a pinch of enchanted sand will fix the sword without the dagger. He asks for the gauntlet in exchange for a vial of it. He tells Gwen that when a woman’s heart is torn between duty and desire, it never ends well. She agrees to the exchange, and he adds that she needs to worry about a broken heart more than a broken sword.

Lance and Snow go underground and on to the forest. Snow says she’s seen this place in a vision before, and Dark Emma crushed her heart there. Arthur has followed them. He’s led David on a wild goose chase to look for Snow, and says that if Snow knows what’s good for her, she’ll hand over the dagger.

Gwen gets back to Camelot and tells Arthur about the sand that will make something broken seem whole again. Maybe she should use it on their relationship. He still wants the dagger, but she tells him that if he doesn’t get with the program, she’s leaving him for Lance. Bizarrely, Arthur takes my advice and throws some of the sand at Gwen. It makes her cool with Arthur going on his quest for the dagger, and he tosses a load of the sand out of the tower window and over the kingdom.

Arthur says he’ll kill Lance if Snow doesn’t give him the dagger and she hands it over. He says he can now command Dark Emma to put the sword back together and free Merlin. He orders her to appear and nothing happens. Snow tells him the dagger isn’t real and voila! here’s David. He says he knew something was up with Arthur who “tried to trick [him] with a catchy title and a comfy chair.” (Another Monty Python reference.)

Hook tells Emma to quit talking to Rumpel in her head and get on the horse. They ride off, but Emma is still seeing Rumpel watching them.

Arthur looks like someone took his last piece of Halloween candy, and Snow thinks he’s unusually quiet. That’s because Gwen and a whole lot of knights show up to set him free. Gwen, still under the sand’s spell, tells the knights to take Lance to the dungeon, and uses the last of the sand on Snow and David. Meanwhile, Merida from Brave shows up at Lance’s cell.

Snow and David tell Regina to bring the dagger out of hiding and give it to Arthur, as it’s their best chance to help Emma. Emma and Hook frolic in the forest, and Rumpel is nowhere to be seen, even by Emma. Nice crane shot of Hook and Emma embracing in a field of roses.

Dark Emma has Mr. Gold (Storybrook Rumpel) held prisoner. She also has Merida handcuffed to a Volkswagen. (Didn’t seem all that weird up until now, right?) Dark Emma steals Merida’s heart and tells her to take her bow and make Mr. Gold the brave guy she needs.

The Walking Dead

We begin by seeing how Enid got to Alexandra. We see her in a car, writing “JSS” on the window; escaping to a forest, where she writes “JSS” in the dirt; and then eating a turtle. I’m not kidding, I’m watching her eat a turtle right now. She makes another “JSS” out of its bones. She gets to the gate at Alexandria, writes it in the dirt on the back of her hand, someone opens the gate, and she enters. Okay, I give up already. (BTW, no turtles were harmed in the making of this episode – it didn’t just taste like chicken, it was chicken.)

Maggie wants Deanna to help plant a garden in the safe zone and finish the wall. Eugene and Tara meet the new doctor, Denise, who is really a psychiatrist and scared out of her wits. Tara says she’s been feeling dizzy, so Denise takes a look at her for an easy start to her new profession.

Carl (where’s he been?) is pushing baby Judith in a stroller. Father Gabriel interrupts his walk, telling him that he was wrong and wants to learn how to fight the zombies. Carl tells him to come by later and they’ll start with the machete.

Carol is busy cooking, and probably cooking something up in her head, when she sees Shelly having a smoke out on the lawn. Suddenly, a guy comes out of nowhere and kills Shelly with a machete. Is Carl prophetic? Maggie and Deanna see that part of the wall is on fire and someone is climbing over it to the outside. They come across a body that’s been set on fire. A load of crazies start to wreak havoc, chopping people up and writing “W” (for Wolf) on their foreheads in the blood. I don’t know what’s going on. Civil unrest or something else? A gigantic truck drives right into the church and if that truck horn doesn’t stop in about 5 seconds, I’m going out of my mind and joining the Wolfs. Thank you, Morgan, for poking that zombie in the head who’s leaning on the horn.

Chaos is everywhere in Alexandria. A guy who looks like he’s from Deliverance tries to attack Morgan with an axe, but Carol comes from behind and gets him first. She puts a “W” on her forehead too, and disguises herself as one of them.

Holly has been badly injured, but Denise is afraid to try and operate on her. Eugene tells her she doesn’t want to be a coward. And he oughtta know. Denise bucks up and asks for the supplies she needs. Ron is almost attacked by a Wolf, but Carl shoots him (the guy, not Ron). The guy acts all feeble, but when Carl gets closer, he tries to grab Carl’s gun. Bad move because Carl is a serious badass and finishes him off. A Wolf gets into Jessie’s house and knocks her down, but not out. Jessie stabs the sh*t out of her with a pair of scissors as Ron walks in. If he’s not traumatized for life and beyond by now, he never will be.

A Wolf, who obviously knows Gabriel, tries to kill him, but Morgan intervenes. Carol gets to the armory and grabs as many weapons as she can. She also finds Lydia hiding in a closet and tells her to arm herself. Just as the dude who knows Gabriel is about to explain things, Carol shoots him in the head. Thanks, Carol, since it might have been a good idea to find out what’s going on.

Some Wolfs surround Morgan and he fends every one of them off with a stick. I’d definitely want him on my team. He seems to understand more than he’s letting on. Certainly more than I do. He tells the remaining Wolf that if he keeps choosing this kind of life, he’ll end up dead, and the Wolf says he has no choice and takes off.

Commercial break. Into the Badlands looks awesome!

Carol sits on the steps, pondering a pack of cigarettes. I’m pondering if we’re ever going to find out what was up with that truckload of top-half zombies from last season. Aaron takes a pack of photos off the body of a Wolf and it looks like pictures of the Alexandria wall.

Holly flatlines. Tara tells Denise she tried, but Denise is pretty dejected. She wants everyone to leave, and Tara tells her not to forget to give Holly mercy. No, wait, that’s the other show. She tells Denise to make sure to stab Holly in the brain.

Now everyone is pondering what the blip just happened.

Enid has left Carl a note that says “just survive somehow.” JSS, which is coincidentally the name of tonight’s episode. Carol’s kitchen timer goes off and Carl takes the brownies out of the oven. Morgan seems to be on clean-up detail, and is finding straggling Wolfs who are now un-dead.  Oh no! Another Deliverance Guy is hiding and attacks Morgan He says “You can’t, can you? You should have.” Whatever that means. Apparently, he’s wrong about it though, and Morgan finishes him off. He does, however, apologize first.

Morgan and Carol pass like ships in the night. The streets are clear and quiet. Geez, Rick can’t leave these people alone for five minutes.

The Real Housewives of New Jersey: Teresa Checks In

Teresa controls the Giudice family from the inside like a mob boss, but Joe is definitely stepping up as Mr. Mom.

Melissa picks up the kids for a girl’s day out, while the two Joes get together for a guy’s day. I don’t know if it’s going to be GTL (gym, tan, laundry), but it’s definitely G.  We see the girls getting mani/pedis, while the guys work out. Melissa tells Gia that if she needs a woman to talk to about anything, she’s there for her. In her individual interview, Melissa says that Gia is most like Teresa. She also says God never gives you more than you can handle. Although sometimes I wonder about that one. Joe and Joe give us TMI about what Joe is doing at night without Teresa. ♫ LA-LA-LA! ♫

Joe has had his license suspended for two years (this guy is really bad at breaking the law), and this is a real hassle right now. Teresa’s lawyer brings her diary. Teresa wants Joe to read it, and also the girls when they’re old enough. Teresa sounds like a real broad, breaking up prison fights and such. You go, girl! If you can’t beat the system, boss it around.

Teresa’s parents, along with Melissa and Joe Gorga, come by for Teresa’s phone call. I feel badly for her parents, who are probably mortified over this whole thing and no doubt want to throttle their son-in-law. Gia says Teresa actually looks better now.  I understand she’s gotten into yoga, so that’s probably a big factor. After the call, the family sits down to dinner and discusses plans for the 4th of July. Both Melissa and Joe Gorga have applied to be visitors at the prison, but apparently, this is a pretty long process. It’s taken Joe six months, and Melissa has yet to be approved. The thought crosses my mind that maybe Teresa doesn’t want her approved.

Teresa’s lawyer (who is getting a lot of air time) comes by to discuss Joe’s possible deportation. It seems outrageous. He’s lived here for 44 years and his parents are citizens for Pete’s sake.  He does say that Teresa and the girls would go with him should that happen. I know there are plenty of people who are like, good, but IMO, that would be tremendous overkill. The Giudices might be a pair of idiots, but I certainly don’t think they’re evil, and they probably didn’t do anything a million other people haven’t. Their real crime was getting caught.

This show should be subtitled “Teresa Checks In Repeatedly.” She says that there’s more drama in prison than on The Real Housewives. She also had to change up her gym routine because low flying planes kept coming by trying to take her picture. That is seriously crazy.

The family is going “down the shore” for the 4th. The girls go in Melissa’s car and the two Joes go together. Joe Gorga asks Joe Giudice if he thinks about the time when he has to take his turn in prison. He says he just doesn’t think about that stuff because it’s not happening yet. That’s one thing I admire about him and Teresa, their ability to not think about something. I will never have this talent as long as I live.

Gia is an amazingly mature kid. She seems more like a young adult than a moody teenager. Everybody is bugging her about future dating and she’s taking it in stride. Teresa checks in yet again while they’re at the shore house, but she gets cut off because her minutes ran out. A small discussion happens between Joe and the girls about daddy having to “go to work” when mommy gets home. While Gia has said that Milania knows what’s going on, Audriana is too young yet.

Milania makes some coffee for herself, but Joe says that’s a no. Teresa checks in one more time. The girls pass the phone down, each say a little something, and when it gets to Joe, Teresa asks him to take the phone into another room. Because Gia sent out a tweet for her, Teresa’s room got shaken down. They thought she might have a cell phone and they even checked in places that most people can’t put a cell phone. Thug life!

Joe’s gotten pretty good on his bicycle. Who knows? Maybe he’ll get in shape yet. He bikes over to Angelo’s, a restaurant managed by cousin Reno. Some guy, probably another cousin, talks about going to prison himself for running numbers or something. Joe says he had that opportunity, chose not to do it, but is still going to jail. Ah, the little ironies of life. Numbers Guy talks about what it’s like on the inside. He said the hard part for him was after he got out and came home to nothing. Oh Lord. He just said the old adage that whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Then how come I’m not dead or bench pressing 500 pounds? Angelo. The guy’s name is Angelo. I guess he owns the restaurant. You could probably yell, “Hey, Angelo!” in that restaurant and half the heads would turn.

The text at the end tells us that two months later, the shore house was repossessed.

I’m not what you would call a softie, but I feel sorry for this whole family. They ripped off a bank. Banks have been ripping us off for years. I honestly think they’re being made an example of because they’re reality “stars” and it just doesn’t seem right to me. They were certainly stupid, but if stupidity were a crime, we’d all be in the slammer. I hope Teresa makes a million bucks from her book just for spite.

Oct17

October 16, 2015 — Two GHs & a Whole Lotta Zs

Posted on by
Standard

What I Watched Today

(random, rambling thoughts on today’s TV)

General Hospital – Thursday

Hayden had an MRI and fell asleep. I’ve never had one, but it looks like a good place to take a nap to me. Nobody to bother you.

Nathan gets the evening off because of the Carrrlos discovery, and he wants to pamper Maxie. How come she gets all the good ones?

Dante acts stupid toward Dillon, telling him to stay away from Lucy. They’re going to “settle it once and for all,” which makes us think they’re going to duke it out, but I’ll bet they play a round of checkers or something.

Commercial break already. I love those Snickers ads. The horseless headsman is good, but my favorite is Danny Trejo (Machete) and Steve Buscemi  in TheBrady Bunch.

Hayden doesn’t want Nicholas going with her for the MRI results; she wants to be more independent, reminding me of Herby in Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

Patrick is treating Sam’s sprained ankle, and she doesn’t want to tell him how she did it. I guess not, since she shouldn’t have been lurking around Windermere. It doesn’t take her long to spill that she and “Jake” are trying to find out his real identity, but she doesn’t give Patrick the details. Kissy, kissy on the examining table. Patrick, get back to work! Is Obrecht on vacation? Where has she been? Besides working on that web series.

Maxie tells Nathan about how she pissed off Valerie over the pregnancy test, and adds that Valerie and Dillon are a no. For whatever reason, Nathan thinks Dillon is hung up on Maxie. She says he’s hung up on someone, but not her.

Lucy is in the chapel giving thanks for Dante. When she finds out what really went on, she’ll be taking that thanks back. Dante doesn’t like that Dillon kissed Lucy, but Dillon says it’s no worse than what Dante did with Valerie. Touché! He says at least he has feelings for Lucy and wasn’t using her like Dante did with Valerie. Ouch! all over the place. Dillon lets fly that he knows they did more than kiss.

Nicholas walks in on Lucy, and after insulting him, she tells him that their mother, Laura, isn’t too happy about Hayden staying at Windermere. Lucy wants to know why “Jake” wants to be involved with Hayden after it didn’t work out before, especially since she doesn’t remember anything. He says she’s different now, and to be honest, he doesn’t want her to remember. That’s a first. Nicholas being honest. Lucy says he should keep his eyes open though, just in case Hayden is conning him. As she’s leaving, she tells Nicholas that nothing can bring her down. A sure sign that she’s going to be brought down pretty soon.

Elizabeth brings in Hayden’s MRI results. After apologizing for the upsetting phone call, Hayden asks Elizabeth for help with her memory. Hayden says she just gets flashes, and wonders if she’ll ever fully recover. Patrick says that the MRI doesn’t show much damage and she should have recovered her memory by now. From what I’ve read, people with amnesia usually recover pretty quickly or not at all.

Sam and “Jake” find out the files on Nicholas’s computer are encrypted. I’m not sure why they’d be surprised at that, since he’s always doing secret stuff. Sam says she has a secret weapon and knock-knock, it’s Spinelli! Or rather, The Jackal.  Spinelli says “Jake” resembles Jason. Since Sonny mistook him for Jason, is he supposed to look kind of like Jason? I don’t see it.

Patrick says he’s surprised Hayden hasn’t recovered more. Elizabeth’s eyes dart all around the room, and I laugh. Patrick says it’s dissociative amnesia, caused by trauma. He gives Hayden the name of a shrink who might be able to help. He says hypnotism might be the answer, but Hayden feels weird about that. After Patrick leaves, Elizabeth closes the door to face Hayden and act all badass.

Maxie says Nathan should tell his secret, since she told him about Dillon. Nathan says he loves and trusts her, but occasionally her good intentions get the better of her. Nathan manages to distract her with his hot self.

Dante tells Dillon that he regrets the whole Valerie thing, but he’d thought his marriage was over. This makes him sound even worse IMO, since he just reminded me how quickly he jumped to that conclusion for basically no reason. Instead of being nice about Dillon keeping his secret, no surprise, Dante acts like a jerk. Dillon says that someday Lucy will find out, even if it’s not from him. I think that day is right around the corner.

Spinelli wastes time congratulating Sam on her engagement. Spinelli breaks the code pretty easily, and they start searching for “Jake Doe.” If I were Nicholas, I wouldn’t be putting that kind of info on my computer, but I’m not Nicholas. I’m also expecting Elizabeth to walk in any second because people in Port Charles use a Star Trek transporter to get from place to place.

Dante is following Dillon around now, which probably isn’t the best idea. Lucy arrives at the police station, sees the two of them and wonders what’s up. Dillon says he’ll let Dante do the honors. Dante tells Lucy it was just an altercation about Dillon kissing her and Lucy tells him they have the green light to try for another baby.

Elizabeth says she thinks Hayden is lying about her memory, and asks her outright if she is.

Spinelli gets distracted by a favorite quote, but then finds the email trail they’re looking for.

General Hospital – Friday

Jordan is questioning Anna about Carrrlos, even though she says it’s not an interrogation.

Elizabeth stamps her foot and insists that Hayden remembers everything. Hayden responds by telling her if she wants Elizabeth’s expertise, she’ll ask for a bed pan. Snap! Elizabeth whines about how if the secret Hayden knows gets out, it will ruin her life with “Jake” and Hayden tells her she’s pretty insecure.

Spinelli finds that Nicholas was interested in “Jake’s” DNA around the time “Jake” planted the bomb on the Haunted Star and everyone found out he was working for Helena. There’s no more information other than Nicholas was comparing the DNA to someone else’s. Sam says that The Jackal, the assassin of the internet, will have to hack into the lab’s computer.

Paul says the body has been ID’d as Carrrlos, and that he’s been dead two weeks, which is right around when Duke was killed. What kind of time clock are these people going by? Two weeks? Really? More like two months. As a matter-of-fact , after being in the water this long, he should be nothing but a skeleton. We do get a Carrrlos flashback and I’m hoping for some more later. Actually, I’m hoping Ghost Carrrlos follows Anna around again. Paul tells Anna he doesn’t believe a thing Sloane said, with his fingers crossed behind his back.

Spinelli says it’s unethical to hack into the lab’s computer and he wants to set a good example for his daughter, Georgie. Sam counters by telling him it’s for justice and the greater good.

Both Michael and Tracy give Sabrrrina flowers. Michael gets all pissed at Tracy for talking to Paul. Do he and Morgan have any other emotions? Jordan calls Michael because she has some questions and wants him to come to the station. Good. Go. Sabrrrina apologizes for Michael being a d-bag and Tracy says that what he said passes for cordial in their family. When Sabrrrina doesn’t want to go for a drunk at 10 a.m., Tracy immediately guesses she’s pregnant. Because that’s the only reason a woman wouldn’t want a drink. What is wrong with these people??? Tracy says that being blunt saves a lot of time and I concur.

Sabrrina admits she’s pregnant and Tracy gets all excited about a new Quartermaine heir. She asks if Michael is excited, but Sabrrrina says she hasn’t told him yet. Tracy wants to know what she’s waiting for. Sabrrrina says she’s afraid it won’t be good news for Michael, but Tracy thinks she’s holding back. Sabrrrina says it’s because she lost baby Gabriel, but I think it’s something else.

Jordan asks Michael what he knows about Carrrlos’s murder and Patrick asks Anna to come over for pizza tonight. Anna wants something to help her sleep. She says she dreams about Duke and it’s actually comforting, but then she wakes up and feels even worse than she did before. Patrick gets this because he went through it with Robin, and thinks she should talk to someone. I don’t know if Patrick is getting kickbacks from the shrink, but this is the second time he’s promoted his “colleague” in as many days.

Hayden tells Nicholas she’s sick of Elizabeth, Jake and Sam insisting she knows some secret, and no one can give two flyings about her own sanity. Nicholas makes excuses for Elizabeth and Hayden says she wants to get a job. Does she remember what she can do? She doesn’t.

Spinelli is on board with the hacking plan. We should all know a Spinelli. I love him and wish he was still on the show full time. Spinelli says he’ll have to bring in “bigger guns.” I’m not sure what that means in nerd talk. He explains that he wants to be alone when he does it because it requires a specialized hack.

Michael says the standard “either charge me with something or let me go” and that he’s not answering squat unless his attorney’s there.

Man, I hate those ads that pop up at the bottom of the screen. It’s not bad enough we have to deal with them online. I thought the police station was on fire, since flames were suddenly in the corner.

Tracy tells Sabrrrina that the baby is a new beginning and she needs to let go of Carrrlos. When Tracy leaves, Sabrrrina flashes back to when Carrrlos stayed with her. Oooh, they’re kissing and we never saw that before. I’m right. I just know it.

Patrick asks Elizabeth what’s up with her bugging Hayden. Elizabeth says she thinks Hayden is lying about her memory and she’s afraid “Jake “ will be taken away from her. Patrick astutely suggests that eventually someone will find out who “Jake” really is and it could even be “Jake.”

Since Hayden doesn’t even know what the blip she does, Nicholas hires her to…I don’t know what.

“Jake” gets pissed off all over again at Nicholas and wants to shake him down for answers.

Oooh! Anna is down at the docks (what did I say about those docks?) and she sees Carrrlos.

Why is Sabrrrina even interested in Michael? He comes back and says, is something wrong? She tells him she’s pregnant.

Now Sam and Spinelli are down at the docks. They admit to each other that “Jake” reminds them of Jason. Yeah, there’s a big reason for that. One of my problems is that he doesn’t remind me of Jason. I like him a million times better than I did Jason. Sam and Spinelli reminisce about Jason. Spinelli has a 5 o’clock shadow, but he still looks 14. Sam says she still “feels” Jason and Spinelli suggests he might still be out there somewhere. Yep.

We end with Hayden making a mystery phone call and saying she’s “in.” I assume she means in Nicholas’s company, and “Jake” shows up, telling Nicholas he knows about the DNA test. Which I hope doesn’t screw up Spinelli’s efforts.

Z Nation

Springfield, Illinois. We open with Operation Bite Mark kicking ass and not even taking names. The zombies are way too interested in Murphy’s baby, so he tosses her to Doc, who boards a bus. Unfortunately, it’s filled with zombies who are dressed like Abe Lincoln. (It’s a look-alike festival.) Doc thinks he’s having a flashback.  He manages to escape the bus and Operation Bite Mark turns into Operation John Wilkes Booth.

Murphy kootchy-koos his baby and makes a bad Lincoln joke. Roberta says she doesn’t know whether to be worried about the baby or afraid of it. I’m guessing, like the Starchild in V, she will be the one who brings everyone together. Or at least that will be the hope. Those things never work out in practice.

10K catches a mess of trout, and while Murphy is still obsessing over his little one, the others take the opportunity to discuss getting the baby away from him. Vasquez has disappeared again, and there’s concern about that too. He’s in the woods on his walkie-talkie. What is that guy up to? At first, I thought he might be contacting Citizen Z (who we haven’t seen enough of this season) for the greater good and all that, but now I think he’s up to no good. Roberta follows him

Murphy is letting baby Lucy nurse on a finger. Not his finger, a finger he found somewhere. Doc says she needs a once-over to see if she’s healthy, but Murphy isn’t having any. He says he’s going for a walk, and tells Cassandra to make sure the others don’t follow.

Vasquez meets up with some dudes in skull masks on motorcycles. Although since he shoots one of them and now they’re beating the crap out of him, I don’t think this is who he went to meet. Now Roberta has to decide if she’s going to step in or not.

Commercial break. Poor Subway sandwiches. Now when I see them, I think about Jared, but not in a good way. Well, Tylenol recovered, maybe they can too.

The skull guys are about to execute Vasquez, but Roberta gets some shots in, Vasquez grabs a gun, and they’re able to escape, leaving the remaining skulls to be eaten by zombies. Both Vasquez and Roberta have been shot, and they find an abandoned hospital where all kinds of bodies are suddenly coming to life. They get things under control. But Vasquez isn’t looking too good. They go in search of “sutures, bandages and antibacterial anything.”

Murphy can’t catch a break because of all the zombies following the baby. The others think they should find him because they’re concerned for both his and the baby’s safety. They make a plan to allow one of them to get caught by Cassandra while the others search for Murphy.  They all run in different directions. Cassandra jumps Addy and twists her arm, making Addy scream, and making the others return.

“Of all the horrible things I’ve had to do in the apocalypse, this is probably the horriblest,” says Murphy while changing Lucy’s diaper, giving us the quote of the night.

Vasquez and Roberta try to sneak past a zombie that has no eyes, but when Roberta opens the door, the zombie hears it. Dammit! There was a commercial, I went to get some seltzer, and missed what happened with that zombie. The one time in the history of the world when there was only one commercial during the break. Vasquez is stitching up Roberta. He says she’s “being a man about it,” and she smacks him, telling him it’s a scientific fact that women can take more pain than men. Truth!

OBM seems to think that Murphy might harm Lucy, although that’s highly doubtful since he’s changing her diaper. 10K tells Doc and Addy to get ready to run. Addy wants to know why, but Doc says when someone tells him that, he just gets ready. 10K tries to reason with Cassandra, telling her she hurt Addy and blah-blah-blah, while the other two take off. 10K blocks Cassandra from running after them, and it looks like they’re going to duke it out or at least chest bump one another.

Roberta is now stitching up Vasquez. I’d be stealing myself for pain if I was him. He tells her that he was once a DEA agent. A guy tried to bribe him, he said no, and his family was kidnapped and shot in front of him. His wife was the first person he saw turned. Apparently, the group Vasquez met up with were involved with this.

Murphy finds a house where he intends to hide with Lucy. A guy comes out with a rifle, and before Murphy can say, “Excuse me, can we,” the guy shoots. No! We can’t lose Murphy!

Thank goodness. After the commercial break, it turns out the guy was shooting at the zombies behind Murphy. I guess this guy didn’t notice one of these things is not like the others. Okay, he does notice and asks Murphy why he’s “so blue.” Murphy tells him he has a vitamin deficiency. Murphy tells him he was in a group that he thought wanted to take the baby because her crying attracted zombies. It sounds like he’s going to ask them to take Lucy. Aren’t they going to notice she’s not normal???  She’s a weird color and has wonky eyes. Uh-oh, she has little pointy teeth too. The wife throws the baby back like a football. Not really, but I would have. They tell Murphy to get lost and take the baby with him

Oh man, Vasquez has died and Roberta has to give him mercy. Wait! He wasn’t dead. Geez, good thing she wasn’t any quicker with the mercy.

10K has taken a nasty blow from Cassandra, and she’s beating the ever-lovin hell out of him. They wrestle for a while, and she’s about to squash his head like a grape – like that guy in Game of Thrones – and he kills her. We can tell he isn’t happy about it, but it looked like she was going to kill him and we need more people than zombies. Or half-zombies.

Commercial break. Rock the Casbah looks awesome! I love Bill Murray! I wish he’d crash one of my parties, or at least photobomb me.

Vasquez and Roberta make it back to Doc, Addy and 10K. Addy is a little pissed that 10K killed Cassandra, but 10K says he did what he had to. He doesn’t want to feel better about it though. Murphy returns and Roberta stops him from going after 10K. Murphy says they don’t have to worry about the baby anymore and we think he killed Lucy, but she’s with the couple who Murphy has now made into half-zombies like him.

Cool.

Oct12

October 11, 2015 — Once Upon the Dead in New Jersey

Posted on by
Standard

What I Watched Today

(random, rambling thoughts on today’s TV)

 

Once Upon A Time

The dwarfs, who are really just short guys with names like Leroy, are whistling while they work and Dark Emma steals one of their pickaxes. They report it at the police department where Prince Charming, otherwise known as David, works as sheriff.  King Arthur arrives next. Apparently his magic beans have gone missing.

Dark Emma tries to remove Excalibur from the stone by hitting it with the ax, which sounds more ridiculous than the previous paragraph. Of course it doesn’t work and Rumpelstiltskin has to explain things to her all over again.

Back in Camelot, Regina is working on some magic to release Merlin, the Wicked Witch of the West is working on being an annoyance, and Prince Charming is checking out the round table. Contrary to the original Camelot story, King Arthur got back together with Guinevere after the Lancelot scandal. David tells him that he and Snow had met Lancelot, but alas, Lance is dead. A page delivers a chest with “the eternal flame” in it, but in Storybrook, the chest has been pilfered. Captain Hook and Robin Hood are chatting in the diner. When Hook’s takeout order comes, there’s a note from Dark Emma attached to it, asking him to meet her on his ship.

Magic comes in handy, as Dark Emma sets the table for lunch in under a second. She also makes herself appear like Good Emma, so Hook is more comfortable. She tells him he can trust her, which really means he’d better keep his mouth shut about everything.

The prince and the king go to Rumpel’s pawn shop where Belle is behind the desk. Rumpel is ill and she needs one more thing for a healing spell. The prince buys a chalice left over from Doc’s birthday party and passes it off as the Chalice of Something-or-Other to the Camelot people who are stuck in Storybrook. He tells them if they drink from it, it will reveal the thief. A guy In a Red Riding Hood cape takes off like a rocket. In the real Camelot, it makes me think of Monty Python again when the prince and king have a sword fight with a couple of phantom knights.

Dark Emma says “trust me” to Hook again, so you know now he definitely shouldn’t trust her. She claims she’s a better Emma now and wants to move forward with their relationship. Hook isn’t having any, and wants to know what it is she’s really after. Dark Emma disappears, poof! in a puff of dark smoke.

David and Arthur catch up to the thief, who claims there were no magic beans in the chest. They do find a magic mushroom (no, not that kind) that Regina thinks can help Merlin. In the real Camelot, David is knighted by Arthur and given Lancelot’s old chair. It has something hanging off of it that looks like this thing we had to wear over our robes at my high school graduation. Whoops! Lancelot isn’t dead after all and approaches Snow on the castle porch. He tells her there’s a villain in town, and Snow thinks he’s talking about Dark Emma, but he tells her it’s Arthur.

Commercial break. Why does there have to be so much good TV? Blood & Oil looks great, but it’s on during The Walking Dead time slot.

Guinevere, dazzling in an incredible dress and jewelry, ponders the magic mushroom with Arthur. In Storybrook, the thief is in jail, but it turns out he was working for Arthur and there were never any magic beans. Arthur made It up to get his people stuck in Storybrook, to trust him. Although I don’t know how that was supposed to work. He gives the thief some poison to drink because he’s afraid the non-magic beans will be spilled. He says it’s for the greater good, the thief drinks it, and poof! he disappears in a puff of green smoke.

Storybrook Rumpel has vanished and is with Fantasyland Rumple and Dark Emma. She tells him he’s not dark or light; he’s nothing. Ouch! Because his heart is a “blank slate,” she says he’ll be useful and she has a job for him. I don’t suppose it’s pulling out Excalibur either.

The Walking Dead

While I’m glad to see this show back again, it’s really good of them to make it an hour and a half tonight, so that it messes up my schedule.

When we last left Rick and company, they were in Alexandria and Rick was going bonkers after questionably shooting one of the residents. Outside of the town, a zombie horde is growing in a canyon. Some of the zombies are looking mighty raggedy since they’ve been wandering around for six seasons now.

Daryl!

Morgan admits he was an idiot and that Rick was right. Rick, Daryl and Morgan make a plan to take care of the zombie horde. Apparently, in order to confuse me, half of this episode is in flashbacks and also in black and white. I thought there was something wrong with my TV.

Of all people, Eugene is guarding the gate at Alexandria. Oh, okay, he’s doing it while the real guard is taking a pee or something. A guy named Heath shows up with a group of people and says they live in Alexandria, but they’ve been away on a run. Morgan and Rick are burying the guy Rick shot last season in the woods when they get a load of the zombie horde from the top of a cliff. It’s a seriously freaking huge amount of zombies. Ron (the son of the guy they’re burying) followed them and is being chased by some zombies. Just as he’s about to run off the cliff, Rick shoves him aside and in an uncharacteristically funny moment, the zombies who were chasing him keep going and fall off the cliff. Rick tells Morgan that the reason Alexandria doesn’t have too many zombies showing up is because they’re all in this canyon.

Glenn (who looks like he had a nose job) and Heath go with another guy to a tractor supply place where there are a bunch of zombies inside

Commercial break. OMG, it’s Obrecht from GH in an ad for…I don’t know what. Dammit! The one commercial I want to see again and they’ll probably never rerun it. This was followed by the best anti-smoking commercial yet, focused on the monetary expense. I guess Better Call Saul got renewed too. I kind of lost track of it after the first few episodes, but it was a lot better, and funnier, than I expected it to be.

There’s a big meeting about how they’re going to deal with the zombies. I guess Rick is in charge now because Deanna keeps saying he’s right about everything. Father Gabriel offers to help and Rick be like, no way, padre. That gets my vote too. That guy cannot be trusted. I don’t trust Carter either, who questions everything Rick says.

Daryl leads the horde to where there’s a makeshift wall made out of metal. Maybe they won’t have to do anything since the zombies are banging their own heads against it and stepping all over each other. Kind of like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. I guess the black and white thing is to differentiate between the flashbacks and what’s happening now. I would have titled this episode “We’re Not in Kansas Anymore,” but it’s titled “First Time Again.”

Glenn, Heath and Other Guy kill all the zombies at the tractor place. Abraham, in a car with Sasha, notices some walkers who are off track and jumps out to point them in the right direction. He’s covered with blood when he gets back in the car, talking about the possibility of brains getting in his ear, and I’m wondering if he’s going to be the “surprise” guest on The Talking Dead.

Rick tells Deanna that they need to train and arm everyone inside Alexandria. I think they’d better train someone in the art of bullet making before they run out. It’s not like they can drive over to Walmart.

Carter is making plans to get rid of Rick, and Eugene overhears him. Carter is thisclose to shooting Eugene, but Rick comes in just in time. He spares Carter after giving him a mini lecture. Rick tells Morgan he wanted to kill Carter, but figures Carter is stupid enough to get killed on his own.

And he’s right! Carter gets bit in the face when he veers from the zombie horde plan. Now I figure he’s the surprise guest. Rick also gets his wish, and breaks Carter’s neck. Shouldn’t somebody shoot him in the head?

Commercial break. They showed another installment of the Obrecht ad. It’s a web series companion to Fear the Walking Dead called Flight 462. I’ll have to check that out. Jurassic World is also coming out on blue ray. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. Just make sure to forget anything you know about real dinosaurs or science while you’re watching it.

WTF? Something that sounds like a fog horn is going off and the zombies are changing course. Carter is dead, so what idiot is doing this? Gabriel? It wouldn’t be the first time someone named Gabriel blew a horn. Ha-ha! Great. Ten billion zombies are now headed to Alexandria.

The Real Housewives of New Jersey

This episode revolves around the Guidice family and how they’re coping with Teresa in prison. Joe’s father has passed away and Gia, who is turning out to be a beautiful young lady, has a big dance coming up. The latter might not seem like a huge deal, but it’s one of those times where she’s going to miss her mom.

Teresa gets 300 minutes a month for phone calls, but can send unlimited emails. The inmates don’t have access to the internet, so I’m guessing it must go into a “waiting to be sent” file until it can be approved.

During one of Teresa’s phone calls home, her parents are there as well. I wonder how hard it is for them not to wring Joe’s neck. It’s tough for Gia to talk to her mom without crying and this upsets her grandfather greatly. The whole thing is really sad. I know Joe and Teresa aren’t the brightest or nicest bulbs in the box, and they did commit a crime (although I roll my eyes at the level of it), but I honestly think the judge wanted to make an example out of them because they’re C-list celebrities. That rubs me the wrong way. After spending so many years with them too, I feel the same way I’d feel about annoying cousins that you have to invite to Thanksgiving. You love them, but at a distance.

The youngest daughter was told that Teresa is working, which Gia says isn’t totally a lie because she’s keeping a diary that she’ll turn into a book later. I’ll definitely want to read that. What’s really funny is that Teresa is still running the show at home by giving everyone instructions. I hope she realizes that, although she doesn’t get any preferential treatment, the prison in Danbury isn’t considered all that bad. I have a friend who’s been in federal prison in New Jersey, and it’s a nasty place to be.

Joe says something about how it’s part of a father’s job to embarrass their teenage daughter and that reminds me of my father. Don’t get me wrong, he was the greatest man on the planet, but if I let him know something was embarrassing, he’d work harder at it.

Gia looks absolutely gorgeous and has almost ruined her makeup ten times because she wants to cry.

Joe and his brother visit their father’s grave site and it makes me want to cry. Despite Joe being an idiot, I know what he’s feeling.

Rosie comes over! I love Rosie. They joke about Joe getting a boyfriend in prison, but that’s not really very funny. He’s only allowed to visit Teresa every other weekend because he’s a felon. She’ll be getting out before Christmas and in March it’s his turn. Joe and Rosie laugh a lot, and I have to hand it to Joe for being able to laugh at all.

Next it’s Gia’s graduation from 8th grade and a family party afterward. In her individual interview, Melissa talks about the stupid fights they’ve all had and how this has brought them all closer together as a family. Joe Gorga says pretty much the same thing, but also that it’s humbled Joe Guidice. I think so too.

Aww, Joe sleeps on the couch because he doesn’t want to be in the bed without her.

In the preview for next week, the subject of Joe’s possible deportation comes up. I hope that doesn’t happen. It just wouldn’t be right. It’s not like he’s a serial killer and his children are American citizens. It would be awful for them to either lose their father or be forced to leave their mother country.

Oct10

October 9, 2015 – Double the GH, Barely a Hop & a Zombie Baby

Posted on by
Standard

What I Watched Today

(random, rambling thoughts on today’s TV)

 

General Hospital — Thursday

Did Julian literally lose his shirt? He never seems to wear one anymore.

Sabrrrina tells Felix she’s been too busy to take the pregnancy test she bought. Yes, too busy to pee, she says. Welcome to the world of most women. Maybe they’re doing it differently now, but I also could have sworn you’re supposed to do that test first thing in the morning. And nobody’s that busy.

Suddenly Dante wants another baby. Because that’s a good way to save your marriage in advance. It’s only a matter of time before the wrong person sees the video of Valerie telling Dillon that she slept with Dante. It’s probably any minute now, since Dillon told the PA to do what he wants with the footage. And how can I even take Dillon seriously as a director when he’s not being a control freak? Not only that, Dillon is starting to feel guilty about having the knowledge that Dante is a cheat.

Nathan shows up at the movie set and acts like a bit of a jerk, telling Dillon he’s there to investigate the conditions on the set when he’s really there to investigate what Maxie is doing.

Paul and Tracy have a discussion about Michael, ELQ and the mob. Are these two getting back together again? NuPaul has grown on me quickly, and I’d like to see Tracy have some fun. It won’t be much fun when she finds out his game, but in the meantime, why not? Tracy leaves and Michael arrives.

Alexis asks Julian to move in with her. Aren’t these two a little old to be playing house? Isn’t he ever going to have his own place? The ten years I lived alone was the best ten years of my life.

Ha-ha! Maxie tells Dillon that Nathan was just being ridiculous over their sex scene and he even believes pro-wrestling is real. Maxie has to cry during a scene and is clueless about method acting, but doesn’t want to fake it with glycerin. Lulu walks in with groceries while they’re filming. Are they filming in her living toom? What the what? She says she wanted to provide a craft services table for them, and Dillon goes ballistic under the guise of her interrupting the scene.

Olivia is back and wants to come clean about baby Leo. Dante tells her this would be a bad idea, since they don’t know for sure if Julian is out of the mob, and her whole point in hiding the baby was because she wants to keep Leo away from all that.

Oh, this is good! Sabrrrina gets home with her bag from the drugstore and finds the GH equivalent of Twizzlers in it. Nathan smacks into Valerie outside the diner and she drops her drugstore purchase without realizing. After she wanders off, Nathan finds the pregnancy test. Since Nathan is hip to the fact that Valerie and Dante slept together, we all know what he’s thinking. I’m guessing that, although this is amusing right now, Valerie probably will end up pregnant, especially since Dante and Lulu are gearing up to have another baby. Wrenches in the works all around.

Paul tells Michael he needs to step away from the mob. Michael thinks Tracy is behind his lecture and tells him to take a hike. Since Paul’s office has a revolving door, as soon as Michael leaves, Dillon shows up complaining about Nathan, although Paul managed to squeeze in a phone call to Alexis, telling her he’s not going to prosecute Julian. Well, that worked out.

Sabrrrina miraculously gets another pregnancy test without even leaving the house.

Tracy shows up at Sabrrrina’s, where she’s now taken 47 pregnancy tests and is eating the Twizzlers. Apparently, they were supposed to have breakfast together and Sabrrrina never showed. Michael shows up and blasts Tracy about Paul’s lecture. Does no one have to go to work today?

Only Alexis. She leaves for work, and Olivia shows up with baby Leo.

Of course Nathan can’t keep anything to himself, and before even checking with Valerie to see what’s up, tells Dante that Valerie has, or rather had, a pregnancy test. Before anyone has a chance to breathe, Dante is shoving the test at Valerie, while Dillon lurks in the background.

Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood

In the 20 minutes I watched this, two women got into a cat fight over a man, and one hip hop guy said, “That’s all I’m sayin’. You know what I’m sayin’?”

I think that’s probably as high as the bar is set for this show.

General Hospital – Friday

If Elizabeth keeps talking out loud to herself about how she’s finally marrying Jason, she won’t have to worry about the secret getting out. Laura tells Elizabeth she’s out of her mind, marrying “Jake” under false pretenses. Elizabeth acts like the selfish idiot that she is, and doesn’t want to listen. She says everyone is happy right now and it would be devastating for several people, like Patrick. Laura tells her it’s going to be worse if the truth comes out later. No kidding.

Lulu wonders why Dillon is acting linsane, and Maxie tells her it’s because he’s in love with her. After Dillon is done lurking at the police station, he comes in wanting to talk to Lulu. He gives her some baloney about being stressed over the film, and then tells her that he wants to come clean about everything. She says she already knows what he’s going to say. This is usually where a mix-up occurs.

Dante demands an explanation from Valerie about the pregnancy test, and she demands to know where her Twizzlers went. Valerie gets seriously pissed about Dante jumping her ass (and not in a good way) and stomps off. I don’t blame her. Dante jumping to conclusions was what got them into this mess in the first place.

Hayden wants to go out on the town with Nicholas, but she needs him to buy her a hot outfit first. Because women always make a guy buy the outfit for the first date.

“Jake” has a confab with Sam about finding out who he is before the wedding. He wants to give his true identity to Elizabeth as a wedding gift. That will be some gift. I can’t wait. Sam wants to start with Hayden, which means starting with Nicholas. “Jake” wonders why Nicholas would give a flying, and I’ve forgotten why, so I wonder too.

Commercial break. Is that Puddy from Seinfeld in the ad for Yoplait Whips? What happened to him? He looks like a pro-wrestler.

Olivia tells Julian that she adopted the baby she’s carrying around. Because adoptions happen just that quickly. She makes up something stupid that no one in their right mind would believe. Julian takes the baby, who starts crying his head off. Is Olivia sure this is his kid? Not much happens here, and Olivia leaves as quickly as she came.

Lulu tells Dillon that everything is cool and that he’ll find someone else. He asks her what on earth she’s talking about. Told you. She tells him that they had a lot of loose ends from way back when, and that they represent each other’s missed chances. Good point. She also makes it clear that she’s happily married, making Dillon thisclose to telling her about Valerie and Dante. Lulu tells Dillon that she and Dante want to have another baby and there’s no hope for them. Uh-oh, here it comes.

Dante follows Valerie around, apologizing and acting like an idiot in general. She says even if she was pregnant, she wouldn’t keep it. Ouch! He begs her forgiveness and she says he’s made it impossible to hate him.

Laura suggests that Elizabeth tell “Jake” the truth before someone else, like Hayden, does. Young Jake comes in with an injury over his eye. I guess he got in a fight in school? Laura thinks maybe young Jake should see a shrink, since he spent the first 4 years of his life isolated on Spoon Island with Helena.

“Jake” suggests that he and Sam take a look at Nicholas’s computer. Nicholas and Hayden walk in with ten thousand shopping bags, making that idea very convenient. Sam insults the both of them and leaves with “Jake.” Nicholas wants to know what Hayden bought and so do I. She says it’s a surprise, but gives him a sneak preview of her teddy or corset or whatever she’s got on under her clothes. He wants to know why she’s being so seductive. It must have been a while since he’s gone on a date. She claims Nicholas is “blushing,” but I don’t see it. As a matter-of-fact, that’s the last thing I’d think he’d do. Hayden says he’s almost acting like he cares about her, and she wants to talk about where the relationship is going, and he says he’s suddenly not hungry…for food. Woo woo!

Just as Sam and “Jake” get to Windermere, they hear Nicholas and Hayden coming back in. This place is on an island. Does everyone have private helicopters or what? Sam and Jake scoot out the back door, and Nicholas says he wants Hayden to put on a fashion show of all the stuff she bought on his dime. “Jake” and Sam scale a wall and get in the castle another way. Sam downloads all of the info on Nicholas’s computer onto a flash drive, but before she’s finished, even though there are 5000 rooms, Hayden and Nicholas decide to use this one for the fashion show.

Dante tells big mouth Nathan that the pregnancy test wasn’t Valerie’s, and he feels like an idiot. But then Maxie sees the test and no doubt jumps to the same conclusion.

Dillon grabs Lulu for a kiss, young Jake hears Elizabeth saying that “Jake” is his father, Nicholas and Hayden start going at it with Sam and Jake teetering on a balcony or ledge or something outside, and I’m eternally grateful that the news didn’t break in at the last second.

Z Nation

Operation Bite Mark has picked up Murphy’s groupie, Serena, who looks about two 24 months pregnant. The group is traveling through a Wisconsin town that was having some kind of cheese festival, making for some amusing zombies. Doc sees the world’s biggest wheel of cheese and stops to take a slice. They use the wheel to mow down a whole lot of zombies.

Serena is going through a lot of changes – morning, daytime and evening sickness, and hormonal weirdness. While they stop for her getting sick, a group starts shooting at them. Hormones can be a good thing sometimes, as Serena knocks them all out with a machine gun tirade about a baby being on board.

The cheese wheel continues on.

They get to a Mennonite farm. Vasquez slips away and takes out his radio. Is he contacting someone? Citizen Z perhaps?

10K comes across some farmers, some zombies and a zombie sheep. He takes care of the latter two, and the farmers leave without so much as a thank you.

Commercial break. It’s a new one from Subaru with the dogs Teenage lab is dating a boxer (a boxer dog, not a pugilist) and she chases his car after he drops her off. Very cute! They knew what they were doing when they created this ad series. Some other new show called The Expanse looks good, but I watch too many shows as it is. Childhood’s End is another intriguing one. Must. Stop. Looking.

10K follows the farmers, who have holed up in a barn, but they close the door on him. He’s covered with some kind of powder that he says came out of a zombie’s head when he shot it. That can’t be good. Roberta doesn’t think so either, and tells him to wash up.

Vasqyez reunites with the others (we never get back to the radio business), but the conversation is cut short by a family of zombies that they have to deal with. They explode with the powdery stuff. The living emerge and it turns out the powder is anthrax. Was this a result of the nuclear fallout? They don’t explain. 10K keels over and is running a high fever.  Serena is about to have her baby. There are tons of sick people in the makeshift infirmary, but whether from the anthrax or zombies, I don’t know.

Serena  is about to give birth in the barn, and can’t seem to stop talking, which she’s been doing since they picked her up. Addy tells one of the women they need Doc. English is not her first language, but she gets it when Addy makes a gesture like she’s inhaling a joint. I’m pretty sure Doc has never delivered a baby before. Let alone a half-zombie baby.

The Mennonite elder, who is young because there’s no one else left, tells OBM about a pharmacy in another town. The Mennonites haven’t gone there because it’s too dangerous, but they decide to set off. Mennonite Elder Guy in tow.

Murphy and Serena make insane noises at each other, which I guess is supposed to be the half-zombie Lamaze method.

Addy, Vazquez and Mennonite Elder Guy crash the drugstore. Addy feels the need to tell Mennonite Elder Guy what condoms are for. Um, he’s a Mennonite, not a Martian. They find a guy shooting up In the back of the store. Well, there go all the drugs. Yep, there are none left. Drug Addict Guy wants to die and rushes Vasquez, who shoots him.

Murphy asks Doc for a cigar, but all Doc can come up with is a piece of nicotine gum. Things are not looking good for 10K, who is spitting up blood. I feel sad about that. This show isn’t known for sparing even its main characters. Roberta says they have Cipro at the farm. She justifies taking it from them, saying there isn’t enough for the whole place, but there is enough to save 10K. She and Vasquez are going to rob the farm’s pharm, while Doc stays behind with Murphy and Serena.

Mennonite Elder Guy knows Roberta is there for the medicine. She explains that their mission is to create the vaccine that will help everyone. Mennonite Elder Guy shares their credo of non-violence and loving their enemies. Roberta takes what they came for and she and Mennonite Elder Guy wish each other peace.

OBM is reunited and the baby is pulling itself out of the womb. Yikes! Here come 3 wise guy zombies with a zombie camel and a bunch of other zombie animals. This is apparently the zombie messiah. Some zombie cowboys (?)  join in too, and zombies start accumulating. The baby is a girl and it’s actually kind of cute. The zombie pack breaks through to where they are, and Murphy can’t hypnotize them like usual because they’re drawn to the baby. Serena gets loud and hormonal and stops them in their zombie tracks, calling them damn dirty zombies like in Planet of the Apes. She gets caught amongst the zombies and gets eaten as Murphy watches helplessly. She emerges as a zombie faster than any turning I’ve ever seen, and Roberta gives her mercy. Sacrificial lamb character for tonight, but how are these people going to travel with a half-zombie baby? I’m betting it’s going to be an adult in two weeks’ time.

If I see that final countdown Geico ad one more time, I’m going to go out of my mind. It’s been an ear worm on and off for weeks.

Commercial break. Strange. It’s an ad for The Walking Dead.

10K has survived and Murphy needs to name the baby. Addy gives 10K the condoms, which seems odd to me, since you’d think they’d be wanting to repopulate the earth. If she was going to give them to anyone, it should be Murphy. Murphy names the baby Lucille, the first of her kind.

Ha-ha-ha! The cheese wheel picks up a cow at the end.

Oct6

October 5, 2015 — GH, the OC, London & a Stink

Posted on by
Standard

What I Watched Today

(random, rambling thoughts on today’s TV)

 

General Hospital

Franco and Nina are out to celebrate their conscious coupling, and see Kiki doing shots at the bar. Nina says it’s a funny place for an investment job. I might agree, but I worked in investments in the 80s.The dude she’s doing shots with apparently wants payment for those shots with some nookie, and Kiki fights off his advances until Franco steps in, saying she’s his daughter. After the guy backs off, half-in-the-bag Kiki tells Franco he’s not her father, that her father was killed by Nina’s lunatic of a mother (like that’s his fault), and to get lost. Instead, he drags her sorry ass out of the bar.

Anna and Emma are having an after school snack at a table outside a restaurat. Emma says she wants to write about her grandma for a school assignment because she’s the best person in the world. Ouch! Knife to Anna’s heart. Anna tries to talk Emma into writing about her dad, but Emma basically says he’s a real bore and she’d rather write about Anna, who’s a hero and can do no wrong. Another stab. Sabrrrina shows up  and tells Emma to go in and buy some cookies, which I already know must be a ploy to talk to Anna alone.

Laura’s back! I’ve been hoping against hope that she’ll be the one who reveal’s “Jake’s” true identity. Maybe I’ll get my wish. She shows up at Patrick’s house and has flashbacks of talking to Elizabeth before she left. She notices Sam’s engagement ring. DUN-DUN-DUNNN!

Hayden is looking up old news on the laptop to try and put the pieces of her life together. Nicholas tells her that she’s looking at tabloid crap and he’s already told her everything. Nicholas thinks Hayden is up to something, but she says she’s honestly just trying to figure her past out, while she’s rocking a great new haircut. Nicholas gets kind of pissed off and leaves. I still can’t decide whether I believe her or not.

Elizabeth is out with “Jake.” It must be date night or something. These two are so unexciting as a couple, I can’t wait until this is over. “Jake” is still unnerved about Sonny calling him “Jason.” Elizabeth gets a call from Hayden, who is wondering why she broke a vase in anger at Nicholas’s castle or mansion or fiefdom or whatever it is he lives in. It’s one of the few memories that she has and Elizabeth was there. Before Elizabeth can say anything, Nicholas takes the phone from Hayden.

Paul says blah-blah-blah to Michael about getting justice for Sonny, which Tracy isn’t too thrilled about, since Sonny shot AJ. She apologizes to Michael for her outburst, but when he leaves, she tells Paul that she’s not really sorry because Sonny is a lowlife.

No surprise, Sabrrrina wants to talk to Anna about Carrrlos. While she doesn’t know he’s dead, she’s not buying that he would have shot Sonny. She thinks she would have heard from him by now, and thinks she should tell the police, but Anna says that would be a bad idea because she would have to admit to aiding and abetting after Duke’s murder. Nice save.

Laura says the reason she came to Patrick’s first is that she has a condition that needs to be monitored and asks Patrick to be her neurologist. It’s highly doubtful that’s why it was her first stop, but when she saw how cozy Patrick and Sam were, I think she hesitated to tell them about “Jake.” Dammit!

Michael has boomeranged back, and Tracy gives him a mini lecture on how he’s never been a Corinthos and should behave like the Quartermaine he is.

Kiki tells Franco that she lied so he wouldn’t feel sorry for her, and that since Silas died, she has no direction. Franco says that when he thought she was his daughter, it was some of the best time of his life, and I wonder if he’s thinking about Todd and Starr and the good old One Life To Live days.

Uh-oh, Tracy just said she’s going off to pray for patience. Don’t do it. Your patience will only get tested as a result. Sabrrrina has shown up and tells Michael she doesn’t think it’s Carrrlos who shot Sonny.

When Anna and Emma get back to Patrick’s, he and Sam tell them about the engagement. Sam says she feels like the luckiest woman in the world. Just wait, Sam.

Hayden wants to know whose secret she’s keeping, hers or Nicholas’s. She says he’s trying to control her and that every time she’s making any headway, he either gets all control freakish or flirty, which she tells him is “enjoyable and effective,” but she’s not someone who can be controlled. To prove this point, she gives in to his amorous advances as Laura walks in.

It stinks that Dr. Phil is on at the same time. Today’s show said it was about a homeless guy who thinks he’s a famous songwriter, which sounds totally delusional, but interesting.

The Real Housewives of the OC

All right, here we go. I’m already hating on Meghan when they show scenes from the previous episodes. She said she thought all children were raised the same. That’s a huge part of her problem. She thinks everything should be the way it is/was for her.

Of course when the show starts, because I stupidly watched First Look again, I had that moment where I thought I saw it before and wonder how that can be.

Brianna starts off with saying idiotic things. Brooks is away, and she, Ryan and children are staying with Vicki. Brianna and Ryan are whispering in the kitchen about how the house feels weird and smells strange. WTF is wrong with these people? Brianna is a married woman with her own family and I just don’t get how she feels she can dictate what her mother does. I still say there’s a reason why they’ve been in Oklahoma a year and have no friends.

Tamra is getting baptized. Look out for lightning storms in the OC.

Shannon and David are seeing their counselor who makes house calls. I have to admit, I wasn’t that crazy about either one of them, especially him, when they first joined the cast, but Shannon has grown to be one of my favorite wives. I have to give David props too, for getting his act together and letting us in on it. And it makes sense now why he was such a creep last season. It’s good of them to air their counseling sessions as well.

Heather, Tamra and Shannon meet for lunch. Tamra wastes no time in pointing out that Heather’s new skin products “also cure cancer.” She says this because one of the ingredients is the same as what Brooks is using to combat his cancer. But aren’t antioxidants used for more than one thing? Again, continuing from last week, there’s a big whoop-de-do about why they chose Tamra to look at Brook’s medical report. Vicki was clear that her reason for doing it was because Tamra started this whole thing with the psychotic…I mean, psychic. I recently read that the so-called psychic is sorry he ever met them, and how much do you want a bet it was a set up by Andy Cohen anyway? Maybe not Andy personally, but he is the pitchfork that prods these shows. Shannon tells them about David’s affair and to her credit, Heather had already known, but has kept her mouth shut this whole time. In Orange County, there’s a 72% divorce rate. Holy! I honestly think these two are going to make it and I’m proud of them.

Brianna says that Vicki works to make something work that shouldn’t work, because she doesn’t want to be alone. Isn’t that her business? I’ve said this before. I don’t care for Brooks, but I never see him treat Vicki like anything but a queen, so who cares if he’s lying his ass off? Brianna has had it out for him ever since (a billion seasons ago) when he was drunk and told Brianna’s husband he should smack her one. Not so nice, but I’ve wanted to smack her one several times, so I get where he was coming from. To top it off, Brianna’s husband, Ryan, doesn’t seem like much of a prize to me. He seems to have calmed down some, but he was a nasty piece of work for a while. Geez, and I thought I could hold a grudge.

Tamra is now meeting Brianna for lunch. No good is going to come from this. Brianna needs to comb her hair. She says she likes Tamra because she’s so honest. Puh-leeze. She’s nasty and uses the word “honest” to justify it. I’m hoping to God (literally) that her finding Jesus changes her personality. In her individual interview segment, Brianna says there’s nothing Brooks can do to get her to like him. Of course Tamra has to tell her about the PET scan business. Because I have no life, I’d Googled he place myself and it said they do them, so….?

Brianna talks about how Vicki has suffered because of her relationship with Brooks. Well, yeah, but that’s not because of Brooks. It’s because of you. I’m heaving huge sighs through this whole episode so far. I don’t get why everyone just doesn’t drop it.

Oh ho! Tamra says Vicki is using her to do her dirty work and “spread the news.” No comment. No, I take that back. Why is it okay for her to spread all kinds of other news – Meghan’s “research” news, the psychic’s news, any nasty news that comes into her stupid head? There was a point where I’d thought she changed and I was starting to like her, but no. Apparently, she thinks being baptized is also a beauty contest and buys an expensive dress and has her makeup done. She’s an idiot.

Holy! Shannon was doing an at home colonic and got a piece of plastic stuck inside her. She’s going to use an enema to fix this? Damn, woman, go to the ER. It turns out that nothing was there and it must have…um…come out in another way.

Whenever I see Heather and Terry, I think it must be nice to be absolutely loaded.

Everyone keeps talking about how much Tamra has changed. Are we just skipping over the bad parts? Is it me? Both Vicki and Shannon are taking separate limos to the baptism, and something doesn’t seem right about that.

In the preview, Tamra says Vicki could be going to hell for lying. Apparently, she hasn’t been paying attention in Jesus class.

Ladies of London

I love the Baroness’s (otherwise known as Caroline #2) relationship with her two Dachshunds. Her decorating skills are awesome too. She’s got a new relationship going on and she’s pretty excited about it. Her counselor also makes house calls.

Juliet stops by to see Caroline #1 and explains that she told Julie about Caroline’s mini tirade against her, and Julie had to run to Annabelle with it. Caroline #1 says Juliet must be a moron if she thinks anything she says to any of them isn’t going to be broadcast. I agree.

Marissa, who hasn’t taken the gigantic stick out of her butt yet, is discussing her new business venture with her husband. She’s whining about how it’s taking her away from her family. It’s not like she has no concept of working outside the home; what did she think was going to happen?

Annabelle and Julie go to a juice bar. Julie says that Juliet had a “look of horror,” when she passed along the info to Annabelle about Caroline #1. I don’t know what Brits consider a look of horror (even though Julie is American), but that wasn’t it IMO. I think Julie is a little unhinged actually. Everything seems to make her nervous and she’s afraid of making Caroline #1 angry. Caroline #1 has her own set of problems right now with her business (Gift Library) and I highly doubt she gives a flying about any of this. Julie claims to have some gene that makes her extra sensitive. I think maybe she reads too much. I had to take the medical dictionary away from my husband once, since he thought he had every single issue he was reading about. Annabelle tells Julie that she needs to own her feelings and confront Caroline #1, but Julie is askard of her.

Caroline and her sister-in-law, Alexis Carrington Sophie, are having a confab about the New Year’s Eve party. If all this stuff is as unimportant as they say it is, why are they still talking about it?

Marissa is meeting with some brand expert. She’s all startled that things are more expensive than she thought they would be. Welcome to the world. Julie is also trying to get some funding for her JUG balls, which are similar to energy bars. She’s sweating bullets over it, which is no surprise, since she seems to get nervous over just about everything. She’s so nervous, she makes me nervous just watching her. She’s been distributing her Scweddy JUG balls herself, but it’s time to branch out. More ball jokes, but she gets the investors on board.

It’s Joan Collins’s Sophie’s birthday, so all the girls are paying tribute. Julie is “petrified” over seeing Caroline #1 for the first time since the New Year’s Eve debacle. What a shock. Where’s Ramona when you need her to scream, “Take a Xanax!”  What do they call not being able to leave high school in the UK? OMG. Julie looks like such a suck up. Annabelle isn’t impressed and says the only way to deal with Caroline #1 is to stand up to her, but instead, Julie gives her a present. And seriously, she looks like a panting puppy while waiting for Caroline #1’s approval.  It seems like more of a bachelorette party than a birthday. They stab at piñatas that have sex toys in them.  Because she’s really mad at Caroline #1, Julie picks a fight with Juliet. I’m starting not to like Julie. Why am I fighting with Juliet about fighting with Caroline when I’m not fighting about Caroline? says Juliet. Why indeed.

And I don’t think Caroline #1 is scary at all. I quite like her. She’s says after an issue with someone, she moves on and gets over it, because life is too short to do otherwise. She, Victoria Gotti Sophie and Juliet have a nice talk and hugs all around.

Next week looks interesting. They’re going bowling in wigs. And Caroline #1 is going to have to deal with New Yorkers. Ha-ha!

Reeker

Because Halloween is coming up and this is one of my favorite horror films and it’s on Showtime rotation.

The title of this film is somewhat off-putting and I almost didn’t watch it the first time because of that. When I saw Michael Ironside was in it though, I decided to give it a look. He’s a wonderful actor (loved him in V) and also a lovely human being.

I don’t want to say too much about this film, since it has a surprise ending. It’s actually one of those films you might want to watch more than once to catch the clues. It’s no The Usual Suspects, but it’s pretty clever.

A group of kids (not kid kids, but young people) are lost and stumble upon what looks like the Halfway Tourist Oasis, a deserted motel, diner and gas station. It looks like it was inhabited not long before, as all the lights are still on and it looks like everyone left in a hurry. It also stinks to high heaven, hence the film title. When one of them tries to go down the road to find help, he runs into Michael Ironside, who’s driving around in circles in an RV, looking for his missing wife.

Throughout the film, strange characters show up, like a dude whose bottom half is chopped off, along with a hooded figure that keeps making a periodic appearance. Bad things start happening and that’s all I’m going to say.

While this isn’t exactly a classic, it’s well worth taking the time to watch. The pace is good, the story is intelligent and a little different, the gore is nicely done, and the ending is satisfying.

Oct5

October 4, 2015 — King Arthur’s Court & the Dead

Posted on by
Standard

What I Watched Today

(random, rambling thoughts on today’s TV)

 

Once Upon a Time

I’ve always thought it was funny how, in fantasy or horror stories, they’ll believe in one thing, but not another. Like on Dark Shadows, they would be okay with witches, but a vampire is preposterous. Or vampires are totally plausible, but not a werewolf. In tonight’s episode, when King Arthur is thrown into present day Storybrook, he has a magician who’s been imprisoned, but scoffs that a curse could be involved. A magician who once turned him into a fish, so really?

In order to get Merlin released, dark magic will have to be used, so Regina (otherwise known as the Evil Queen) wants to take Emma’s place, even though Emma (otherwise known as The Savior) is supposed to be the one to save the day. Meanwhile, Emma’s counterpart has gone completely darkside and Captain Hook breaks up with her. Yes, I know, it sounds like the writers are on drugs; that’s not my fault. It’s actually easier to follow than it sounds, but you do have to pay attention or you’ll wonder where The Cat in the Hat suddenly came from.

In Storybrook, some weird ass dark fairy comes down from the sky and carries off Regina’s boyfriend, Robin Hood. It turns out it’s in some kind of payment for some magic where a life is required. Hmm…we’ve got seven dwarves, so I’d pick one of them. Who needs Grumpy anyway?

Back at Camelot, Regina gets an awesome necklace from King Arthur to wear at the ball. It’s really nice, but it doesn’t look like it was foraged during the Middle Ages. Not even close. No surprise, it’s really a hidden camera, or cauldron, or whatever it is they use for candid snaps there.

There’s a cutesy part with finding Regina the proper dress and teaching her to dance. I ignore the dialogue, but lust after the clothes.

Apparently it’s okay to bring your iPod to the parallel medieval world. Uh-oh, someone has realized that Regina is not so much savior as evil queen and pulls a sword on her. In the following melee, parallel world Robin Hood gets stabbed. Regina asks Emma to save Robin. As magic always comes with a price, Rumpelstiltskin pops in and tells her that he doesn’t make the rules and Regina will have to pay up. Emma says screw you, I can do it myself and does.

Rumpelstiltskin is another reason I watch this show. Robert Carlyle is a lot of fun to watch in this role. While most people know him from Trainspotting or The Full Monty, my favorite film of his is the lesser known Ravenous, where he plays cannibal Colonel Ives, a soldier during the Civil War. If you can take great acting, smart dialogue, and a bloody mess, put it on your Netflix list or however you view films.

The dark fairy, who is some kind of demon, is really cool. I’m surprised this show has never won an Emmy for special effects, although they’ve been nominated. The demon starts zapping Robin Hood, but the whole group steps in to take the zap, and shows us that we can succeed if we work together. This show is pretty corny, but the corn is tolerable because of the context.

Rumpel gives Dark Emma a huge cornball speech about love and friendship, but says she can fix all that with Excalibur. Of course she can’t take it out of the stone, so they’ll have to kidnap find someone who can.

Fear the Walking Dead

Travis and Madison start packing supplies and are going to find Nick and Griselda. Daniel wants to kill Andrew because they don’t need him anymore, but even I think that’s a bad idea. He seems to be on their side, they outnumber him anyway and if they’re going break into the hospital, or whatever it is, they’ll need him. Andrew makes sense in telling them he’s only been nice to them, even before Daniel skinned his arm. They leave him alive and behind because he’s an expendable character and the car is at capacity anyway.

They drive through the gate at the Army base. The troops in the watchtower tell Daniel to halt or they’ll shoot, but he tells them to save their ammunition. Right behind him is a Times Square on New Year’s Eve level hoard of zombies. This distracts them while they walk right in, although I’m not sure how Daniel avoided getting eaten between the gate and the watchtower.

Nick and the Allstate guy are still in confinement.  There’s a huge commotion outside and Nick shows Allstate that he has the key. It looks like the zombies are getting in, the troops are evacuating and they’re leaving the sick behind. Travis, Madison and Daniel have gone inside to look for Nick and Griselda while Alicia and Chris are left in the parking garage with the car. Do their parents really think this is safe???

Nick walks out with Allstate, leaving everyone behind who’s begging for them to let them out. I expect this from Allstate, who seems like a grifter, but would have thought better of Nick. Some Army guys want the car from Chris and Alicia. Even though she gives them the keys, they act like a-holes and punch Chris out when he protests their a-holeness. More disappointment. Mostly because why does a random group of men always end up being misogynistic and violent on these shows?

There’s a lot of chaos with the zombies and the soldiers and the helicopters. Some guy gets his head chopped off by some helicopter blades. Nice. Also reminiscent of both Dawn of the Dead and Planet Terror. I’m never sure if something is an homage or there are just so many ways you can kill someone.

Part of the zombie hoard is after Nick and Allstate. Travis and company have made it into the quarantine area. The people in confinement tell them that Nick is a bastard who left them there to die, but at least these guys have the decency to break them free. Nick and Allstate are stuck between a locked door and a zombie crowd (karma), with Travis and the rest (here, on Gilligan’s Isle!) on the other side of the door.This is a pretty good scene. Very exciting and intense. Liza comes along and is able to open the door with her keycard at the very last millisecond. After which they’re promptly attacked by zombies in the hospital kitchen. Lots of fun props like meat tenderizers to kill zombies with.

Did Nick just say Allstate’s name was Rand or…it’s Strand, but I think I’ll stick with Allstate. I kind of like it. Dr. Exner is staying behind with the sick, which is pretty noble. Especially since she seemed like a real tool. Allstate suggests they go West where he has some property. They come across a mass funeral pyre, no doubt composed (no pun intended) of whoever died at the infirmary. The soldiers took the SUV, but Chris and Alicia are okay. See? That was a gratuitous nasty moment with those guys. Andrew shows up and shoots Ofelia. WTF? I take back all the nice stuff I said about him. On the bright side, pacifist Travis finally waves his aggression flag and beats the ever-lovin’ crap out of Andrew.

They get a truck and a car somehow and head on down the highway, where they see the occasional straggler zombie. (How come it isn’t zomby anyway?) They get to Allstate’s house that looks more like a compound. Nice spread. Nick tries to be a philosopher and I go to sleep.

Commercial Break. Sometimes I wish I played video games. They’ll show a clip from what I think looks like a really awesome movie, and then I find out it’s a video game. This one was for HALO5. Just what I’d need though. Another electronic device that I’m attached to.

Allstate says they can’t stay and that “the only way to survive a mad world is to embrace the madness.” He has a yacht out back and methinks they will be boarding it. Uh-oh, Liza has a bite. Liza (who is also Travis’s ex and Chris’s mother) asks Madison to shoot her. Just when we think she will, Travis shows up. His optimism is back and he thinks she can just take something for it, but that’s a no. Madison gives Travis the gun and another expendable character bites the dust.

Oh no. Don’t let it end this way. With some poetic song playing loudly in the background as Travis goes through angst on the beach and Madison joins him while the waves crash over their knees. No, no, no, no. It was just getting good.

Only 6 episodes? They saved the best for last, but I’m not sure if it’s enough to save the show and get it another season.

BTW, Frank Dillane, the actor who plays Nick, is the son of Stephen Dillane, Stannis on Game of Thrones.

Oct3

October 2, 2015 — Twice the GH & Zombie Plants

Posted on by
Standard

What I Watched Today

(random, rambling thoughts on today’s TV)

General Hospital – Thursday

Morgan tries to physically restrain Ava from taking Avery, but a cop shows up. Court order, dude. And Judge Judy doesn’t care about your feelings or what you think. Valerie makes up something to cover for what Lulu overheard.

Anna is recruiting Sam to help with the Sonny shooting since she knows it can’t be Carrrlos, and Nathan is discussing Ava with Paul. Apparently, Sloane has a first name, but I missed it and they’ll probably never repeat it again. Sam tries to argue the Carrrlos point, and Anna says she has “information” that it’s not him. That’s an understatement.

Some college kid that Dillon has hired to be a production assistant is filming a “behind the scenes” documentary. Like anyone would care about this film. Dillon sees Lulu instead of Maxie when they film the love scene. He spaces out and they take a break. Whoa. Maxie really looked half naked there.

Morgan continues to act like an idiot, but Sonny’s surgery is over, so it’s time to take the idiocy back to the hospital where they can upset the staff and patients. Patrick says that the embolism already did its damage by the time they got to it, but it’s too early to tell what the prognosis is (say that 3 times real fast).

Paul shows up at Ava’s. Ha-ha! Baby Avery is playing with Ava’s earrings again. Seriously, she’s going to have to switch to studs for a while. Paul says Anna is wise to the fact that Carrrlos didn’t shoot Sonny, but doesn’t exactly say why. They then move on to more important things, like Patrick’s proposal to Sam.

It’s funny how the characters on GH call it GH.

Valerie is such a jerk. Someone set her up with Morgan. Now he did it. Dillon said “Lulu” instead of Maxie’s character name in his film. He tells Maxie about his love for Lulu, who says she’ll keep it to herself, and gives him a mini pep talk. Oddly enough, Nathan is having the same conversaion with Valerie about Dante.

ROFL! Valerie shows up at Dillon’s set and he says “something came up,” so he sent everyone home for the day. No comment. Valerie kisses him because she can’t have Dante.

Yay! Looks like Franco is on next time.

General Hospital – Friday

Lulu says she’s staying home to oversee Dante. She doesn’t know the half of it.

My favorites! Franco and Nina! Kiki is apparently trying to sell Silas’s old place and they walk in when the realtor is going on about how she should lower the price because a murder was committed there and it will be hard to sell. Really? Highly doubtful, especially in Port Charles where a murder is committed every other day.

Sam has created a romantic atmosphere in Patrick’s living room using many candles. You can tell these people don’t have pets. She holds up a “Yes, I’ll marry you sign.” Why doesn’t she just tell him?

The PA walks in on Dillon and Valerie making out. After he leaves, stupid Valerie spills the beans that she’s just been using Dillon and is in love with someone else. Dillon asks if it’s Dante. Dillon says it’s ok, he loves someone else too. Suddenly, Valerie is extremely smart and perceptive, and guesses that it’s Lulu. Valerie is also rocking a very nice tit-dyed trapeze top.

Honestly, I need some kind of family tree chart to keep who’s related to whom straight. Dante tells Lulu he’s worried about his brother, Morgan, but I think he’s worried about more than that. Lulu says it will all work out. I wasn’t crazy about this actress at first, but she’s grown on me and I like her.

Franco is worried about Kiki because she hasn’t returned his calls and she’s in her PJs is in the middle of the afternoon. She gives him a song and dance about having gotten a job in Japanese investments, so she works at night. I don’t believe it and I don’t think Franco does either.

Maxie is able to convince Nathan that nothing is going on between her and Dillon, but says she’ll have to keep what she and Dillon talked about to herself. Nathan isn’t thrilled with that, but says he has a secret too that he’s keeping to himself.

Hmm…Kiki says she has to get ready for work and Franco says they’ll wait and can all go out together. I’m guessing, unless she’s commuting to NYC, you would do that sort of job online.

Ugh! The “just one kiss” phrase is back. Dillon tells Valerie that the “spark” with Lulu is still there and she says ditto about Dante. This confuses me about their definition of spark. Whenever I’ve heard that word used in that context, it’s a reciprocal thing. Are they just sparking by themselves?  Valerie says at least Dillon didn’t act on his spark. Then Dillon says that phrase I’ve come to hate, and Valerie is all humana-humana. She’s going to tell him, isn’t she? What is wrong with these people that they can’t keep a damn thing to themselves? I’m guessing Maxie and Nathan are going to tell their secrets to each other too.

Nina wants to move in with Franco, but he’s hesitant because he’s broke. Nina isn’t and says she’d like to use the money for good, since so much bad has come from it. Lovey dovey stuff, which is okay with me because I really like them. Kiki shows back up, but IMO, still not dressed appropriately for a job in investments. I used to work in investments, but maybe things have changed or it’s casual Friday.

Ha-ha! Lulu is giving Dante a back massage and tells him to just think about nothing. That should be pretty easy for him. Dillon isn’t buying that Valerie and Dante just had…you know. O…M…G. Valerie just told him that she slept with Dante. Take my advice, people, if you want to keep something a secret, don’t tell everyone. I’d check her Facebook status if I could. If she really cared that much about him, I don’t think she’d be blabbing about this. Oooh, I wonder if she’ll end up pregnant. Now that she opened her big mouth, she’s worried because Dillon is friends with Lulu. She couldn’t have thought about that 3 minutes ago?

Oh wow! Their whole conversation was just filmed by the stray camera that got left on.

Obama hates me. Once again, they broke in at the last second. I don’t even know if that was the end of the show or what. Bush hated me too. It seems like whenever these guys have something to say, it’s always at the tail end of the show I’m watching. Heaving huge sigh. At least Z Nation is on tonight.

Z Nation

Weirdest. Greenhouse. Ever. When they said there were zombies in the z-weed, I thought they were ground up or something, but the zombies are part of the plants. (I’d also thought they said “seaweed.) It’s part zombie, part plant. It’s also kind of tough to harvest the seed pods, since everyone who goes in gets bit and turned into another zombie. There’s also a huge zombie plant that’s bigger and tougher than your normal zombie plant.

Murphy and Cassandra are at the lab where a scientist, who’s probably just a smart guy in a lab coat, is using various zombie parts for tests. Weirdest. Lab. Ever. Too. And that includes the one in The Brain That Wouldn’t Die. The dude realizes Murphy is Murphy.  Some woman volunteers to go in for the seed pods. She doesn’t make it too far before she’s being accosted by a zombie plant. Operation Bite Mark steps in and saves her. They’ve shown up looking for Murphy. She’s scratched up though, so I don’t know how good that is. She has a bond with a little girl who isn’t hers, but both of their families are dead. The girl isn’t doing so well; she has a fever of some kind.

The scientist came along after the place had been overrun by zombies. They had been working on a vaccine and found z-weed in the meantime, which turned out to be a lucrative endeavor. Via the notes left behind, the scientist believes the latest batch, #47, will be what they’re looking for. All of the previous batches have gone awry. Murphy goes with him into the greenhouse where he’s able to hypnotize the zombie plants.  This greenhouse is pretty creepy.

Citizen Z is learning Spanish on his iPad. Pup is okay! The woman harvester has a truck with a radio and Addy calls in. Citizen Z is using solar power and he’s losing the light, so they get cut off, but not before Addy tells Citizen Z that Murphy’s alive and he gives her the coordinates of the lab in California where they’re supposed to be taking him.

The first dose of batch 47 on a zombie head causes it to explode; the second, lower dosage does nothing; but the third gets the result they’re looking for – a cognizant zombie head. While OBM is discussing how they’re going to get Murphy back, he comes in behind them and tells them they don’t need to go to California, that the cure is right there, if they can only harvest it. Since bullets don’t kill plants, they bring garden tools. Doc takes the garden weasel.

Murphy has some kind of special connection to the plants and can feel what they do. He says all the zombie plants are interconnected and you can’t kill one without killing all of them. Murphy and Roberta will do the harvesting while Doc has déjà vu. The big ass zombie plant is part of batch 47 and gets really, really pissed when they pick his pods. And thus comes the ohshitohshitohshit moment of the night. Murphy gets entangled in the plant, Roberta cuts him free and all zombie plant hell breaks loose.

Running away from the greenhouse, Murphy runs into Dr. Kurian, whose search for immortality started the whole mess. Apparently, a cartel had funded him and is now after him. Oops! Here they are.

Hector, Escorpion to his friends, shows up with his posse.  He apparently buys z-weed on a regular basis. He’s not all that keen on the sideline of finding a cure, especially since they keep losing employees and it costs him money. He decides to test the last of the 47, using the scientist as a guinea pig and it doesn’t go well. He turns into a zombie and Hector shoots him. One of Hector’s henchmen drags in Dr. Kurian out from wherever he’s hiding and throws him in the car trunk.

Before they leave, the cartel guys are going to burn the place down. Murphy runs to save the zombie plants, who he claims have feelings, but only ends up entangled in the giant zombie plant, who doesn’t have as many feelings as Murphy thinks,and we get another free-for-all with OBM trying to save Murphy and themselves. The roots of the plant get entangled in an industrial fan and bye-bye giant zombie plant. Before they get the hell out of Dodge, Doc gives the little girl some plant leaves to chew, thinking it might help her. I’d like to think something might come of that later, but this was such an insignificant part of the plot, I’d be surprised if it did.

On their way out of town, OBM and Murphy see a blonde in the road. It turns out to be Serina, who was a Murphy groupie last season. She’s pregnant and guess who the daddy is?

Best quote of the night: “And to think we were worried about genetically modified tomatoes.” Murphy

Second best quote of the night: “Marijuana,  zombies & GMOs. What could go wrong?” Doc

Sep28

September 27, 2015 — Fairy Tales, Zombies & Kim, Oh My!

Posted on by
Standard

What I Watched Today

(random, rambling thoughts on today’s TV)

 

Once Upon A Time

This show seems like it’s written by a bunch of ex-Disney employees on cocaine. Or as Mr. Hand would say, “on dope.” And I mean that in a good way. You never know who is going to show up – Cinderella, King Arthur, the Wicked Witch of whatever direction is in vogue. I’m waiting for the Peanuts gang to stop by any second.

I’d watched some of the show before the season premiere, where the cast and writers answered fan’s questions. Apparently, this show has achieved mini cultlike status. I didn’t think I was the only one watching it, because it keeps getting renewed, but I hadn’t realized how attached many people are to it. They continually said that it’s a “story about hope.” I can’t say I read a lot into it myself, although I do have shows and movies I feel that way about, so I’m impressed. My reasons for watching are much more shallow. The fabulous sets and costumes, and Captain Hook. He ain’t Walt Disney’s Captain Hook. It is also a lot of fun, characters from every favorite childhood story, living normal lives in a parallel world, while they wield their magic in whatever world they came from, be it Neverland or an enchanted forest. Bet you never knew Snow White and Prince Charming had a daughter. Frankly, I never thought about it much either, but that was the crux of the story and it blossomed from there.

Note to whoever does blonde hair on television shows – stop giving the women those silver highlights. They look like they have grey hair. Unless that’s the look you’re going for. That being said, I want to know who designed Emma’s coat in tonight’s episode. It is beyond.

Commercial break. Shouldn’t the “Little People Big Animal Zoo” be called the “Little People Big Animal Habitat?” Just sayin’.

This season, they’re adding Camelot to the mix and I’m wondering if Monty Python’s Flying Circus will come along? The special effects are also a lot of fun, and tonight Sneezy got turned into stone and crumbled into dust. He never did get any respect.

And whatever happened to Pongo?

Fear the Walking Dead

I got confused for a second with it starting off with some guy talking about being a closer, saying he can sell anything but insurance, like he’s a leftover from an Allstate commercial. We’re in some kind of holding tank, which I assume is the quarantine area. Nick is also there.

All right! The Walking Dead is coming back October  11 – Daryl & zombies!

Daniel’s daughter, Ofelia, is hopping up and down and creating a scene at the fence. She wants to see her mother. She tries to get others to go along with her complaining, but no one wants to get involved. Andrew, a soldier she befriended earlier, intervenes. Some guy in the background has had enough and is quitting the soldier business.

In the infirmary, Liza has been recruited to help with the sick. Dr. Exner says they’re short staffed and doesn’t explain where some of the staff went. I’ll bet I can guess.

Meanwhile, back at Madison’s place Chris basically tells Travis he’s a pacifist tool and storms off. Madison finds that Daniel has captured Andrew, who I assume he’s going to pump for information. Andrew gives him a bunch of rhetoric, telling them everything is cool. We all know everything is not cool, except for Travis who lives in Dream Valley with the My Little Ponies. He’s gone off to reason with his buddy, Lt. Moyers, and more rhetoric is given. Travis tells him that if the people who were taken don’t come back soon, the town is not going to be happy. This was really a stupid move, since he gets taken to “see the doctor,” which I think is a euphemism for “you’re not coming back.”

Lieutenant Dickweed will be lucky if his own men don’t end up killing him.

Oh look! It’s a zombie! I’d almost forgotten that’s what this show is about. Moyers wants Travis to kill it – I guess to make some kind of point. IMO this is akin to the Mafia guys in movies who always want to recruit civilians to be hit men. Probably not a good idea if you really want to get the job done. Travis can’t do it, so Moyers does, proving that Travis is willing to let someone else do the dirty work.

Commercial break. Into the Badlands looks amazing. It’s some kind of samurai drama. I don’t need another show to watch though. TV has got to stop being so good. Love those beer ads about “the most interesting man in the world.” IRL, he’s an animal activist. I read this in an article titled, The Most Interesting Man in the World Just Got More Interesting.

Back at the infirmary, a soldier has come in with bite marks and everyone gets real busy real quickly. Travis and the soldiers drive through an evacuated area that’s not so evacuated, since it’s crawling with zombies. When the soldiers are done doing whatever, Travis is told they’re taking him a few blocks away from home and he has to walk the rest of the way. What?!  Thanks a lot!

Apparently, Daniel knows a thing or two about torture and is skinning one of Andrew’s arms. Whoa.  Chris and Alicia have broken into a rich person’s house, play with their expensive toys and try on their expensive clothes. (An homage to the original Dawn of the Dead perhaps?) In the quarantine area, the soldiers are taking everyone’s temperature with a device that they can use from a distance. Cool! Nick’s temp is high (probably from withdrawal), but the Allstate guy keeps him from getting hauled away.

Ofelia is not too happy about Daniel’s means of getting information and walks out of the house. Lots of storming off tonight, even though there’s nowhere to storm off to. Daniel explains to Madison that he had told his daughter about the war he’s been through, but not what part he played in it. He says that sometimes it’s necessary to be evil in order to eradicate evil. He didn’t use those exact words, but I paraphrased. Not bad, eh?

Liza is combing the place for Griselda. She finds her among other “patients” in a locked area where all the people are wrapped up in what look like cocoons. Dr. Exner comes up behind her, and tells her that they have “septic shock” and there isn’t anything anyone can do. I’m guessing these are the people closest to death and they’re being kept far away and confined.

Chris and Alicia trash the rich people’s house just like normal teenagers. Travis makes it home and sees Ofelia practically catatonic.  He is totally appalled at Daniel’s behavior, but hey, it worked. Andrew is spilling everything. It turns out the soldiers are all going to book and the civilians are going to be “humanely terminated.”

The Allstate guy is amused that the people who have everything are now being looked at as lunch. He knows what’s happening with the evacuation, and wants Nick’s help. I’m pretty sure that this guy doesn’t do anything without wanting a favor in return.

Griselda is babbling in Spanish about the past which means I have to read subtitles. Afterward, she promptly dies. Why they have un-cocooned her, I have no clue. That seems kind of dangerous, and the doctor has just said they all come back and to shoot her in the head with some kind of gun used for livestock, which Liza does.

Why the blip is Daniel roaming about alone at night? He wanders all the way to the Los Angeles Arena, where the soldiers have chained a whole load of zombies inside. He watches as the doors begin to shake, reminiscent of when Rick finds the chained doors in the first episode of The Walking Dead. The only thing missing is the warning DO NOT OPEN – DEAD INSIDE.

It looks like next week, we will get full on zombies.

Best quote by Lt. D-bag: I can do anything I want. I got guns.

Don’t Be Tardy

This is one of those shows that I can take or leave, but really enjoy it when I take it. Despite her recent airport tantrum (who hasn’t at least thrown one in their head?), Kim and the rest of the Biermanns seem like lovely, normal (albeit rich) people.

Tonight, Kim made a speech and she got my vote for best real quote of the night. Maybe the year. While addressing a group of women, she said, “Can you imagine if [women] truly shared what they know with each other, how successful they would be?” She said this after talking about how some women will resent others doing well. Brava, Kim! I’ve thought that for a long time.

Don’t Be Tardy also got the award of the millennium for being a true glimpse of reality. Their dog took a poop and promptly ate it, causing Troy to convulse in laughter, and the girls to screech at the top of their lungs. It doesn’t get more real than that.

Sep27

Extra! Extra! I Started the Rocky Horror Show Cult

Posted on by
Standard

While these aren’t exactly random, rambling thoughts on what I watched today, in honor of the 40th anniversary, HBO is having a midnight showing. Not quite the same as seeing it in the theatre, but an homage all the same.

Gather around, children, and you shall hear of the midnight show called Rocky Horror. I’ve often thought that I should write about it, and the time is now. Since I was just totally ignored by the new generation.

It was my first week in NYC. I was young, headed to acting school and the world was my oyster. A friend of mine had come along on the moving trip to get in a little R&R. My family was staying a couple of days and he was staying two weeks, but I was there permanently.  We were hanging out at a gay bar called The Ninth Circle in Greenwich Village, getting our drink on and meeting people. One of the people hanging out with us was the manager at the New Yorker movie theatre uptown. The Rocky Horror Picture Show had recently started its midnight run. He asked if we would like to go, tickets on him. I didn’t know much about it, but knew it was a musical, as I had seen the soundtrack for the L.A. production.

“Is it a horror film?” I asked.

“That depends on what you’re scared of,” he answered.

I was definitely intrigued and game for anything, so he told us to pick up the tickets at the box office that Friday night. He also handed us a joint. Smoke a joint? In a movie theatre? I wasn’t exactly naïve, but I had never heard of such a thing. Apparently, I wasn’t in Kansas Ohio anymore.

There weren’t too many people there, and my friend was pretty exhausted. He promptly fell asleep, leaving me to my own deductions, and an entire joint. At first, I didn’t know what to make of it, and it wasn’t because of the pot. When I saw Brad Majors (Barry Bostwick) dancing backward in a graveyard, I thought, Is this a joke? But by the end of the film, I thought if it was a joke, it was a well-written one.

A few weeks went by, my friend went back to Ohio, and I was already meeting loads of new people. The RHPS had stuck in my mind though, and I really wanted to see it again. I got together a few new friends, and we decided we would go to the Waverly in Greenwich Village, rather than schlep all the way uptown.

It was a totally different atmosphere there, crowded, the crowd brimming with excitement. We staked our claim on some balcony seats. At the time, there were no fans dressing up or yelling things, but there were a lot of joints being passed.

Rocky Horror had a highly addictive property, and it wasn’t the weed. It was a well-crafted film, to be sure. (Although, don’t shoot me, I actually think Richard O’Brien’s Shock Treatment is better and more relevant in a lot of ways.) The music is excellent, no stone left unturned in detail, and it couldn’t have been cast any better. But there was more to it than that. In 1976, the idea of “don’t dream it, be it” had found its perfect home in New York City. It was the right time at the right place.

At the time, I had also found the perfect home. While NYC will always be one of the greatest cities in the world, in the late 70s and early 80s, it was still affordable, and I’d landed there like Columbus discovering the New World. I was attending morning classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (less impressive than it sounds) and living in the Webster Apartments, a women’s residence on West 34th Street. It was a cross between a dormitory and a Tennessee Williams play. Rooms with sinks, shared bathrooms on each floor, two meals a day included, and no men above the first floor (unless you were my dad, who insisted on inspecting it when I first arrived). If a guy showed up, you received a phone call from the front desk telling you that you had a “gentleman caller” and there were rooms on the first floor called “beau parlors” where you could receive your male company. You could also have a guy over for dinner, but he had to wear a jacket between October and May. If he didn’t have one, it could be provided for him at the desk, and that orange jacket got a lot of play from my friends. If you missed a meal, you could get a voucher for a friend, and broke friends need to eat. The meals were surprisingly good, cafeteria style, and there was often a sundae bar. Women weren’t excluded from the dress code either. While you were free to wear what you liked during the week, there were rules for the early Sunday dinner and you had to wear either a skirt or a pants suit. My grandmother had given me a polyester pants suit that I’m sure she thought was very chic (it wasn’t) and I can’t count the times I rolled out of bed on Sunday and into that suit and downstairs for the meal. It wasn’t always the most convenient place to live, but it was great for starting out and a good place to meet other women. I met my eventual roommate, Anna, there, who also became my cohort in Rocky Horror crime.

We started going downtown to the Waverly every Friday and Saturday. The line was long, the excitement was high (no pun intended), and I’m sure every merchant on West 4th Street hated us. Since the movie had originally bombed and been shelved, there was no soundtrack for the film, but the soundtrack for the LA Roxy cast was still available, so I immediately got a copy. We would often act out the musical numbers in our rooms after coming home. It wasn’t long before our private shows translated into audience participation.

The first person to dress up has never been mentioned in any of the books. I don’t know his name; otherwise, I’d totally give him props. One night, when it got to the part where Frankie asks if Janet heard “a bell ring,” someone in the balcony rang a bell, causing us all to convulse into laughter. I noticed the guy was dressed up like Eddie, the motorcyclist jazz musician played by Meat Loaf in the film. Afterwards, I sought him out and complimented him on his costume, which included the LOVE/HATE tattoos on Eddie’s knuckles. I asked him if they were real. “I’m a psychiatrist,” he told me. “If they were, my patients might get a little disconcerted.” Good point.

RHPS was a little like therapy, a way to let off some steam, without waking up with a hangover. At least I didn’t. I don’t know what other people were doing. Ironically, it was both therapeutic and addictive; both the rehab and the habit. We had made our home in the balcony, and made friends we saw week after week. The party started in the line that stretched down the block, where we waited to get in. We were always early, getting ready by nine and out by ten.

Louis, who sat in our row, was the first one to shout back at the screen. As Janet holds a newspaper over her head in the pouring rain, he yelled out, “Buy an umbrella, you cheap bitch!” A line that lives on to this day.

I went home for Christmas break, and it wasn’t long after my return that I got my first apartment, on West 27th Street, not far from where I was already. We walked most of my stuff over. I had a roommate for a while, a woman I had met at Webster, but it didn’t last very long. She had trouble adjusting to the city and decided to move back home. By then, I had my first job at Chargit. They took ticket orders for Broadway shows before Ticketmaster was the place to go. I’m sure it got absorbed by them at some point. Anna moved in with me, making it easier for us to be Rocky Horror fangirls together.

Our place was even decorated in early Rocky Horror. We purchased everything we could get our hands on. There wasn’t much merchandising , and certainly nothing like there is now. The only T-shirt you could get was one being sold at the record store near the Waverly.  It was black with the dripping words The Rocky Horror Show, sans Picture because it was from a stage play. My guess is that the store bought out someone’s stock and made a nice buck.  There were a couple of tchotchkes that had come with the Roxy soundtrack, but the Mecca of Rocky Horror movie stills, lobby cards and posters was Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store. We bought practically everything they had.

We also knew a couple who lived out in Queens, but attended the midnight show at the Waverly. He was a photographer and often took stills of the screen during the movie that he made into 8 x 10s.  I still have those stills (ha-ha). The best part was that no one else had those same pictures. When fans started selling buttons and T-shirts, we got those too.

People were starting to dress up, and found glitter platforms, fishnet gloves and stockings, and feather boas at the hooker stores in Times Square. NYC has everything, so costumes were not that difficult to put together. While Anna and I always dressed fabulously, we didn’t wear costumes and Rocky makeup as a general rule. Speaking of which, it’s so much easier today to find black lipstick and eye shadow. Back then, it was nearly impossible. We found it, but it took some work. We did do the full Rocky regalia one night when we were having an after party. I wasn’t about to wear a garter belt and fishnets on the subway, but I had this incredible 1940s black velvet coat with a beaver fur collar that I’d gotten for ten bucks at Trash & Vaudville on St. Mark’s Place and I wore it over my outfit.

Our apartment wasn’t big – a railroad flat, two rooms and a bathroom – but mostly college and acting students lived there, so no one cared about the late night noise, guests spilling out into the hall, or the funny smelling cigarettes some people were smoking. At one point, there was a banging on the door with the shout, “Open up! Police!” but it was only our upstairs neighbor, Jeff, wanting in on the fun. Later on, he became known as “Naked Jeff.”

After a night of such fine partying that someone drank the bong water (no, it was neither one of us), we had the brilliant idea to watch the sun rise from the apartment rooftop. What we forgot to think about was the height of our building, which was considerably shorter than those surrounding it. No sun rise for us, but we still enjoyed ourselves, chatting, smoking and wandering around. Until Jeff scared us half to death. All of a sudden, his head was peeking over the edge of the roof, which none of us had expected. He actually had every right to scare us, since we’d woke him up. As he came up the fire escape, we realized he wasn’t wearing anything. He wasn’t about to put on any clothes either, but at least he wasn’t mad, and hung out (literally) with us for a while as we watched the sun not rise.

Oh yeah, how it started. The first row of the balcony put you more on the level of the screen, and without seeing other audience members, gave you a certain intimacy with the film. One night, after Frankie sings I’m Going Home, several of us spontaneously stood up and applauded, along with the audience in the movie. It felt like we were in the movie. And that’s how the thought started. How fun it would be, I told Anna, if we tossed confetti during the Frankie/Rocky wedding scene, at the same time they do it on screen. It will fall on the audience below us and they’ll really feel like they’re a part of the movie. I was going back to Ohio for vacation and I’d also wanted to do something special, since I wouldn’t be at the Waverly for a while.

The audience was thrilled and, although it wasn’t the intention, the confetti throwing took off. Anna calls it a “private joke gone public,” and I tend to agree. When I got a letter (yes! we actually put pen to paper and wrote letters back then!) from my sister, who lived near a midnight showing in Cleveland Heights, telling me they were throwing confetti in the theatre there, I was astonished. Imagine my surprise that this even exists 40 years later, all over the world.

The confetti birthed holding newspapers over our heads when Janet did. The paper they hold in the film is the Plain Dealer and I was able to get copies from my father, and I gave them out. I recently sold the last one on eBay for $19.76, in honor of the first year I saw RHPS. Although several people tried it (not me!), it was a no-no to be holding candles so close to newspapers in a movie theatre (that pesky fire code), so that gave way to flashlights. Costumes started coming out, and a mini floor show. Lines were consistently being thrown back at the dialogue on screen. Some stuck and some didn’t. Luckily I got out of there before throwing toast and hotdogs started happening.

One night, after discussing how ridiculous it was that this was our entire social life, Anna and I decided to see another film. Had it been better – I believe it was The Excorcist 2; the title says it all – maybe we wouldn’t have still ended up at RHPS, but we did. By this time, we were getting in for free, although I have a ribbon with hundreds of ticket stubs attached to it. The film was already in progress, and as we approached the balcony stairs, there was a literal wall of smoke. We sat on the steps (breaking another fire code, I’m sure), spending another Saturday night the way we always did.

Probably about a year in, the floor show started to gain more prominence. The film itself started to gain more prominence. It had also lost a certain amount of spontaneity. It became kind of how socialism is good in theory, but someone always wants more and turns it into communism. A few people wanted to take charge of something that had taken flight from a genuine want to make the audience equal with the film. Individuality — don’t dream it, be it – was what the movie was all about for me, and it was time to move along.

Anna and I did attend one of the anniversaries, where our picture was also taken for Sal Piro’s book, Creatures of the Night. A great read – I highly recommend it, as well as his sequel.  Although our perspectives differ somewhat, it’s a wonderful depiction of the phenomenon that RHPS became. He certainly doesn’t mention weed – and for all I know, he was squeaky clean back then; we didn’t really hang out together – and that was a big part of it. Hey, it was a big part of the 70s.

I’ve had a bootleg copy since the first one was made, but there’s nothing like seeing it on the big screen with those who are like-minded. Before I moved away from the city, Sal called and asked me to come to an anniversary event (the 20th?). Since my husband was a “virgin,” I thought it would be fun. And it was, but in some ways, it had already become homogenized. Little bags of props were being sold, along with rice for the wedding in the beginning. The audience also seemed to have a comeback for every line in the film. To me, this lessened the experience of the movie itself. If everyone was just waiting for their cue, how could they be comprehending what was on screen?

I can assure you, I’ve never once introduced myself like I need a 12-step program. Hello. I’m Theresa and I started the Rocky Horror Show cult. Although it has bumped into me along the way. Like the night at karaoke when it came up in conversation. This led to someone thinking I was making it up. Now there was a surprise. Who in their right mind would make something like that up? If I was going to choose my 15 minutes, it wouldn’t have been that. But to save my reputation, I brought  Sal’s book with me the next time I was there. Even after all these years, it’s obvious that’s me. The even weirder thing was, someone mentioned it to the KJ who was working the sound. It turned out he was there at the Waverly back in the day. Talk about a small world.

I was almost at the 40th anniversary in Manhattan this weekend, but decided to write this instead and save my money for Halloween. Seeing it was sold out, I shot an email to the person in charge, asking for them to take pity on a RHPS “pioneer” (Sal’s term), and writing a little anecdote, along with a copy of the picture from the book. I could have heard an internet pin drop. They replied, but what they said was it was sold out, but I could get tickets for the midnight show at the Ziegfeld and sent me a link to the movie theatre. Ouch! Not even a nice-to-meet-you.

I got a follow up email, telling me someone was looking to sell their weekend pass, but I decided to take a pass, telling them thanks, but no thanks.

And with that, I officially retire my corset.