The Week in Review

The first full week of the February sweep period was bookended by major sporting events: the Super Bowl last Sunday and the Opening Ceremony of the XXI Olympic Winter Games last night (more on that later). The football game was decent enough, but can we please get over our alleged love affair with the commercials? In this DVR era, product pitches are normally something we fast-forward through; why should that be any different on Super Bowl Sunday? Is a house made of beer any funnier or easier to sit through than the excrutiating ad in which Megan Mullally sings “Turn the Tub Around?” And while I'm at it, the cute factor on that E-Trade baby has definitely reached its nadir, too. The only ad that resonated with me was Google’s, which charted the arc of a relationship from the first date to the birth of a child. It was captivating in its simplicity.

Here are some other highlights from this busy week:

House: The series broke with tradition once again, this time taking us into the workaday life of Dr. Lisa Cuddy, and giving the estimable Lisa Edelstein a chance to shine. We watched her try to hash out a deal with an insurance company (loved the scene where she confronted the CEO during his fancy business lunch), deal with an employee caught stealing drugs, worry about her baby, and wonder why her boyfriend is making bets with House about their sex life. Brief appearances by House and his team showed just how small a part they play in Cuddy’s stressful, predominantly administrative career. And if Cuddy’s world doesn’t always provide the dramatic backbone that House's or Wilson’s does, it’s still always nice to get a breather from all the (mostly incorrect) diagnoses laid out in a typical episode.

Lost: ABC’s promos promise that “the time for questions is over.” So why do I feel like the first few episodes of the show’s final season seem to disagree? There’s a whole new tribe of Others, we still don’t know how anybody was able to survive the hydrogen bomb blast, and Jacob was killed before we ever found out what the Man in Black’s (a.k.a. the Smoke Monster) beef with him was. Now I know we’ll get all the answers we want eventually. I was just hoping for more to be revealed early on, doling out bits of information slowly instead of hammering us with it all at once at the end. I still have complete faith that the writers know what they’re doing, even if this week’s Kate-centric episode felt more like wheel-spinning than story progression.

Nip/Tuck: With only four episodes left, the writers took the opportunity to really get inside the heads of their extremely damaged lead characters. Sean and Christian sat down with a therapist and, over the course of several sessions, tried to figure out why they’ve maintained their toxic relationship for as long as they have. For once in its outrageous existence, the show finally seemed like it was ready to get real, and for forty-five minutes it did. The last quarter hour, though, spoiled everything, with the docs' therapist getting shot in the face and the episode veering into the unnecessarily eccentric territory it knows so well. Who do these two think they’re kidding? There’s no chance of a happily-ever-after for lives as debauched as theirs.

Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains: The 20th season got underway and, having already seen how everybody plays the game, the twenty returning contestants had a greater camaraderie off the bat than any previous season, even ones that have featured all-stars. When you assemble the best players, you get balls-to-the-wall commitment, as evidenced in the very first challenge, wherein Stephenie dislocated her shoulder (medical staff popped it back in and she continued as if it were nothing) and Rupert broke a toe. Arriving at the Heroes camp, the tribe quickly caught four chickens, led by past winner Tom, most famous for slaying a small shark in his original season. Good ol’ boy J.T. is willing to trade on his hero designation if it helps get ahead in the game, while Russell—a quick turnaround from the last edition—is still trying to prove that he’s Survivor’s GOAT (Greatest of All Time). The Heroes ended up losing the first immunity challenge, undone by a puzzle, and Sugar was the first one sent packing. Not wanting the Heroes to get too down on themselves, host Jeff Probst spurred them on with thoughts of “getting even.” As if there’s any other way to play this game.

XXI Olympic Winter Games: Last night’s Opening Ceremony of the Vancouver Games was dedicated to Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, who died Friday morning when, during a training run, he flew off the track and hit a pole. In a sad reality, Kumaritashvili, ranked 44th in the world, will undoubtedly receive more notoriety in death than he ever would have participating in the sport he loved. (Ironically, the country of Georgia also made grim headlines on the first day of the Beijing Games in 2008, the day it launched a military attack against Russia.)

With the bar set so high by the sheer majesty and minute precision of the Beijing opening, what could the city of Vancouver do to compete? Their ceremony was understated and beautiful in its own right, with a wonderful use of light effects, rich colors, and projection technology combining to take spectators on a tour of Canada’s provinces. An ice block cast on the stadium floor broke apart to reveal a pod of spouting whales below. A troupe of dancers frolicked through a forest of trees made of tapestry while Sarah McLachlan sang. There was a rousing fiddle-and-tap-dance routine inspired by a night out in Newfoundland spent under the influence of a grain alcohol called screech. A lone aerial acrobat movingly flipped and twirled through the prairies, set to Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now.” A slam poet provided a look at what truly defines Canada. And k.d. lang delivered a stirring rendition of “Hallelujah.”

The evening was capped off by the only noticeable malfunction of the entire ceremony. When it came time to light the cauldron, four pillars were to rise from the center of the stadium; only three cooperated. It did nothing to mar what had come before as hockey great Wayne Gretzky, NBA baller Steve Nash, and skier Nancy Greene lit the torch. (Speed skating gold medalist Catriona Lemay Doan was to have lit the fourth section but was left standing with nothing to do.) All in all, a terrific start to what should be an exciting two weeks. Let the Games begin!

Caprica: Wouldn't Want to Live There

I had mixed feelings about the recently departed Battlestar Galactica remake for much of its run. With few exceptions (Boomer shooting Adama, President Roslin’s cancer, the final five realizing they’re Cylons), I oftentimes felt like the show was purposely trying to keep me at arm’s length. So dense, so complex were the story lines that at some point I simply gave up trying to understand what was going on. Unlike a show like Lost, where even if you’re confused by the mythology you can still get involved in the characters’ backstories, BSG spent so much time nattering inside its spaceships that the whole enterprise was an exercise in claustrophobia.

Watching the two-hour pilot of Syfy’s new prequel Caprica (Fridays, 9pm), I was relieved to find that the show was going to be allowed to breathe… kind of. Plenty of scenes are set in the bustle of the titular city, but an equal amount take place within a boxed-in virtual world, thereby recreating the cloistered feeling that BSG seemed to revel in. Fortunately, the story—Daniel Graystone (Eric Stoltz), Caprica’s version of Steve Jobs, harnesses his dead daughter’s virtual spirit and puts it inside the body of an early Cylon model—makes the show more accessible than BSG, at least when it stays with this part of the story. True to form, though, Caprica is not content to merely focus on its technology, introducing mafia elements, terrorist subplots, and theological debate that are more distracting than illuminating.

The pilot dealt quite effectively and uniquely with themes of love and loss, searing emotion seemingly setting the tone for what was to come next. But subsequent episodes have waylaid that emotion in favor of the aforementioned plot strands, rendering the show inert. Stoltz and Esai Morales (whose daughter also died in the same blast that killed Graystone's girl) share a great energy in their scenes together, with Stoltz especially strong as a man blind to what his technological advances are actually doing to society.

One thing the writers of both BSG and Caprica have never really incorporated in their work is a sense of humor. They fail to recognize humanity’s ability to find something to smile about even in the darkest hours, instead choosing to depict a dour world where everything is deadly serious. I guess that only makes sense when, given the self-importance of the subject matter, both shows are also guilty of taking themselves way too seriously.

24: Time to Call It a Day

It pains me to say it, but 24, one of the most influential shows of the past decade, has lost its mojo, to the point where last night I gave serious thought to never watching it again. Really, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. By the time a show gets to season eight, it’s usually on its last legs creatively anyway, a fact that is even more understandable with a show like 24, so structured yet so narrow in its storytelling capabilities.

This season, in an attempt to breathe new life into the series, it’s changed locations again (to New York from D.C. last year) and has added some familiar faces to the cast (Freddie Prinze, Jr., Mykelti Williamson, Battlestar Galactica’s Katee Sackhoff). None of this has done much to energize the show, though. Prinze, Jr. and Williamson have made virtually no impression on me yet, while Sackhoff is saddled with this season’s obligatory ridiculous subplot. It seems her character, Dana, isn’t who her CTU co-workers think she is. A fresh-out-of-prison ex is threatening to expose her secret, all the while leaving viewers rolling their eyes and waiting for the next scene featuring our hero, Jack Bauer. (With so many moles in CTU over the years, you'd think someone would do a better job vetting these people.)

Jack himself, played with all the right fits and starts by the reliable Kiefer Sutherland, is given far too little screen time this year. Sucked into a plot wherein a visiting foreign president (he’s from a fictional Middle Eastern country whose name I can’t recall, but I know it ends in “stan”) is being targeted for death in the middle of a peace accord with the U.S., Jack just can’t so no when he thinks the world needs him. Of course, in typical 24 fashion, it turns out that the president (Anil Kapoor, the game show host from Slumdog Millionaire) is being set up by his own nefarious brother. And it doesn’t end there: there’s a nuclear weapons trade involving some Russian baddies, leading to a whole subset of characters we don’t care about, despite their bad accents.

There’s just too much inconsequential filler in this season of 24 to keep me interested. The scenes without Jack seem, more than ever, blatantly designed to kill time so that he can travel from one location to another. At least in past seasons, the subplots were generally interesting, Kim’s infamous run-in with a cougar notwithstanding. No such luck this time around. (On a side note: can someone please explain the appeal of Mary Lynn Rajskub's eternally peeved Chloe? After so many seasons, her one-note act has gone from tiresome to intolerable, yet she continues to be popluar among fans.)

Aside from a few nifty explosions in the opening hours and the shock of seeing Renee (Annie Wersching), undercover with the Russians, saw off a man’s thumb, this season has been nothing but lackluster, no longer delivering the intensity that used to be innate. The writers have obviously grown complacent and I, unfortunately, have grown bored.