Amy Vernon

I had the distinct pleasure of speaking at the #140Montreal this week. My topic? “A Declaration of Interdependence,” cribbed from Tiffany Shlain‘s film, “Connected.”

We are more connected than ever before, and we are both able and, I believe, obligated to help each other out. Here’s what I had to say:

Creative Commons image by Robert Hruzek on Flickr.

Thanks, Visual.ly!

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The greatest moderator ever, Emily Miethner, put together this great storify of our South by Southwest panel, “Branded Content: We’re All Publishers Now.” (Other Storify stories with tweets from the panel can be found here, here and here. You can also see comments about the panel from the fabulous Amanda Quarishi in her Mega-Recap.)

Folks from PRNewswire attended Monday’s panel on branded journalism and wrote a piece on the topic, including a … colorful quote from yours truly.

Then, the lovely and talented Courtney Boyd Meyers from The Next Web attended our Friday panel on Tumblr and had this writeup.

Finally, the fabulous Nonishanay Cavaliere, in a piece for Black Enterprise, did a great piece on 6 Ways Female Execs Can Master Social Media, inspired by our She Shall Lead panel on Tuesday night.

And here’s the Livestream video of an impromptu session at Social Media Action camp I sat on, helping fill the void left when the keynote speaker fell ill and was unable to attend.

The great Mo Krochmal of Social Media News NY put together a fabulous panel for Social Media Week NYC on women leaders in social media. Half-panel, half-workshop, it was great fun.

Yep, Storified it:

By Stu Robinson,

Like last year’s season finale, this year’s season-ending episode of CBS’ Hawaii Five-0 began with the death of a secondary character. But the resemblance ended there. Whereas the Season 1 finale put the unit in peril in pursuit of the year’s main plot line – unraveling the conspiracy behind the deaths of McGarrett’s parents – the Season 2 cliffhangers involved each team member’s individual backstories. Only McGarrett remained hung up on the Season 1 story line.

The episode begins with somebody snapping surveillance of the series regulars, before Honolulu Police Capt. Vince Fryer (Tom Sizemore) is dispatched to an alley on a report of a dead body. He arrives to find himself alone but for a figure sprawled face down a third of the way down the alley. He radios dispatch, asking where is backup is, but is told there is no record of the original call he received. Pulling his gun, he approaches the prone figure and flips it over. It’s a mannequin with the word “goodbye” on a sign taped to its chest.

Fryer reacts to a sound in the alley but is shot in the back before he can turn. A hooded figure approaches the fallen cop to finish him off, but he’s not dead yet. He rolls over and puts a bullet into his attacker before succumbing to two more bullets himself. (Bummer. Fryer was growing on me, and it was nice to see Sizemore getting some steady work. Alas, he’s unlikely to rise from the dead as he seemingly did in this year’s indie horror film Slumber Party Slaughter.)

When the call comes in to Five-0, McGarrett is verbally jousting with Joe White (Terry O’Quinn) about Steve’s recent trip to Japan, on which he tracked the elusive Shelbourne and arrested Wo Fat. Joe admits he lied before, but says he’s ready to take McGarrett to Shelbourne.

The Five-0 team converges in the alley, where coroner Max Bergman (Masi Oka) is waiting with the body. From the shell casings and Fryer’s bullet wounds, they quickly deduce much of what happened. Max steps away and starts to follow a trail of blood down the alley. As he passes a dumpster, he turns and starts yelling something, only to be shot from behind the trash bin.

The hooded figure appears from behind the dumpster, flees through a warehouse and jumps into one the HPD patrol cars idling at the scene. A high-speed chase ensues.

• During the pursuit, McGarrett says to Danno: “Why would somebody shoot Fryer and then wait for other cops to show up?”
• Danno: “Maybe he’s looking to check out; maybe he’s a complete idiot. I have no idea. The bigger question is: ‘Why is he headed straight for the HPD?’”
• McGarrett: “Seriously?”

The answer becomes obvious when they enter the parking garage, where every HPD cruiser looks like the one they were chasing.

“Perfect,” Danno says. “I’m pretty sure it’s the white one.”

The pursuit continues on foot through the police station, but the hooded figure eludes capture. Cut to the inside of an ambulance where Max whispers to White that the shooter was a brown-haired woman. McGarrett receives the news from White via cell phone and remembers a woman matching the description with whom he’d spoken minutes earlier. Down the hallway from where that encounter took place, Kono finds the hoodie in a trash can. Moving further in that direction, the team members find a severed gas line – forcing them to abandon the search in order to clear the building. They get out seconds before the building explodes.

By now Max is in the hospital, White still at his side, when Kamekona (Taylor Wily) enters the room with balloons and boxes of shrimp – tofu for Max and spicy for Joe. “Tofu shrimp for our fallen hero,” he says. While they eat, Max tells Joe how he was following the assailant’s blood trail when he was shot. Realizing that is the first mention of the shooter being wounded, Joe phones McGarrett with the update.

Chin Ho makes a separate trip to the hospital. He’s giving an orderly the “just a scratch. Let me leave” act when his wife, Dr. Malia Waincroft (Reiko Aylesworth), turns up and tells him he’s going nowhere fast. Still, seems like an odd moment for the writers to bring her back. Hmmm …

Back at the office, McGarrett and the team map out places where the shooter could get a wound sewn up. Dismissing the hospitals and clinics as too obvious, they hone in on a veterinary hospital six blocks from HPD. Sure enough, the shooter has broken in, killed the receptionist and forced the vet to stitch up her wound. She then kills the vet, but by then the Five-0 team members are approaching the building. She pulls out a rifle, which looks way too bulky and heavy for her to have been carrying throughout the earlier pursuit, and takes a few shots at the cops out front. Return fire forces her away from the window, and the pursuers enter through the waiting room and find the dead receptionist.

When they move toward the back office, the assassin releases a large dog to throw them off and fires off several pistol shots, hitting McGarrett in his body armor. That, of course, just pisses him off. He creates his own diversion by rolling the receptionist’s chair into the rear office; when hit woman emerges to shoot, McGarrett dives in from the side and shoots her dead. Danno appears annoyed that their most likely source of information has been eliminated, but McGarrett says he did it for Fryer. Still, even he seems to realize that killing her wasn’t the smartest move.

At this point, about 50 minutes in, the episode stops for a breath before setting up each character’s cliffhangers.

Guest stars

The hot-chick assassin is played by actress Taylor Cole, who played Jesse McCartney’s hot surfing instructor on Summerland and the hot neighbor on Comedy Central’s short-lived My Secret Girlfriend. But this time out, the hot actress plays such a stone-cold killer that I didn’t even recognize her at first. According to IMDB, Cole also appeared in several episodes of Heroes’ third season. I don’t remember her from that and don’t know if she shared screen time with Oka, who starred in Heroes. But this is the second case of a Heroes actor guest starring on H50; Greg Grunberg played a Customs agent in Season 2, Episode 8.

Cole’s assassin character, Hillary Chaver, had an accomplice – the guy who’d been taking surveillance photos earlier in the episode. He refused to come to her rescue when she was cornered in the animal hospital. Turns out, they’d been accomplices in a string of bank robberies investigated by Fryer and Frank Delano (William Baldwin), a crooked cop who was taken down by Fryer and Kono earlier this season. They were thought to have been killed back then when their getaway car crashed and burned, a fact attested to by Delano when he is questioned in prison.

Cliffhangers

The last 10 minutes of the season finale bring a cliffhanger for each team member.

Danno‘s is by far the lamest. Early in the episode, the first McGarrett-Danno cargument since Alex O’Loughlin’s return from drug treatment involves Danno’s reluctance to take a private phone call while Steve is in the car with him. In explaining the call, Danno, who moved to Hawaii only because his ex-wife brought their daughter, Grace, there, reveals that the ex now wants to move with the daughter to Las Vegas for her new husband’s job.

This is just dumb. Suddenly, the ex, Rachel, is back to being an uncaring shrew at the other end of a phone call, with Danno sputtering and exploring his legal options. This after the writers spent a year and a half humanizing Rachel and reheating her relationship with Danno, to the point that she believed Danno had impregnated her. She even planned to leave “the Stan” and return to New Jersey with Grace and Danno. Then, suddenly, the baby wasn’t Danno’s; it was Stan’s, and for that reason she was going to try and make the second marriage work. So now we’re supposed to believe Rachel is so insensitive that she’s going to rip Grace away from Danno a second time? The cliffhanger, such as it is, comes when Danno decides to reopen the court case for custody of Grace.

And what about Danno’s other love interest: museum curator Gabrielle Asano (Autumn Reeser)? It was a big deal when Danno introduced her to Grace in Season 2, Episode 17. But we haven’t seen her since.

Chin Ho is back at the state prison, using his position with Five-0 to spring Delano. We then see them arrive at a harbor. “I did everything you asked,” Chin Ho says. “I got you out. You said on the phone that if I did it, you’d let my cousin go.”

Huh? Say what?

Delano opens up a laptop computer with a split screen showing Malia and Kono gagged in different locations.

• Chin Ho: “Why? Why are you doing this to me.”
• Delano: “Because you got away with it.”
• Chin Ho: “Got away with what? What are you talking about?!?”
• Delano: “Everybody knows you’re a dirty cop, Chin. But instead of having your life ruined like the rest of us, you got your badge back.”
• Chin Ho: “Hey, I didn’t take any of that damn drug money.”
• Delano: “No, but you knew who did. And you didn’t say a word.”

He tells Chin Ho that there is time to rescue either Malia or Kono, but the other will die.

• Chin Ho protests: “You got what you wanted. You’re out of jail. You got your revenge. Fryer is dead.”
• Delano: “Your cousin set me up and then sent me to prison.”

Delano tells Chin Ho that he can find Kono on a boat two miles offshore, while Malia is at home waiting for him. Chin Ho jumps behind the wheel and races home, where he finds Malia sprawled on the floor, bleeding but alive.

The last we see of Kono, she is being dumped into the ocean. She’s alive, but bound and gagged. It’s hard to see how she escapes this one, since Chin Ho has made his Sophie’s choice to rescue Malia. She’s still with her yakuza boyfriend, Adam, but it’s hard figure how even the island’s de facto top gangster could mobilize forces to rescue her in time. And yet … there haven’t be any reports of Grace Park leaving the show. And, if Kono were to die, who would bring the estrogen to the team? I suppose they could bring back Lauren German’s Lori Weston. Yet that could be awkward: Before departing, Lori admitted her feelings for McGarrett. And it’s been reported that McGarrett’s girlfriend, Navy Lt. Catherine Rollins (Michelle Borth), will be a regular character next season. So that would be a nasty love triangle.

McGarrett‘s cliffhanger is learning the identity of the mysterious Shelbourne. Joe takes him to the stoop of a house in Japan. “You want answers? They’re all in there,” Joe says, then he departs. McGarrett knocks on the door and looks back over his shoulder to see that Joe is gone. The door opens. McGarrett looks in, freezes for a moment, then utters one word: “Mom?”

Didn’t see that coming.

###

Stuart J. Robinson, a college friend of the TV Tyrant, is a writer, editor, media-relations practitioner and social-media guy based in Phoenix.

It is not uncommon for me to rewatch an episode while writing my recap, just to make sure I catch the nuance and get favorite quotes right and such, but this episode… I had to rewatch just to remember what the damn thing was about! That’s not a good sign. And kind of sad, considering how wonderful the previous episode was. Okay, let’s get to this, the penultimate eppy of the season.

THEN reminds us of the Alphas, GhostBobby and the recipe for eliminating the leviathan.

NOW gives us an interview with Dick and his evil plan to make all us sugar-lovin’ humans into tasty leviathan treats. SucraCorp being an obvious comment on the invasion of high fructose corn syrup into our lives. Edgar (That’s his name!) and Dick harass ProphetKevin to translate The Word for them, including the old standby of Mom being held hostage to get him to comply. Poor Kevin, his lifeplan has totally gone to shit.

Sam and Dean gripe about their hopeless sitch, and GhostBobby becomes the most annoying Exposition Fairy ever. I used to love Bobby. Not looking forward to where this is going. So, once those beautiful boys figure out the deal, they summon Crowley to make a deal for another ingredient of the leviathan poison, his blood! Crowley makes a typically dubious deal and drops the info that the AlphaVamp is still around, which is convenient, seeing as his blood is also necessary for this little concoction.

We end up at an appropriately enormous mansion where the boys find a secret lever in a bookcase (hidden by a copy of “How To Serve Man” – hee!), revealing what will turn out to be yet another evil little girl who fills Sam and Dean and Bobby in on the sudden falling of vampires after feeding. Seems as though Mr. AlphaVamp made a deal with Mr. Dick Roman to live together in peace, but of course, Dick is actually poisoning the vamps. Once our AlphaVamp figures this to be true, he goes all subtle menace (Rick Worthy is wonderful, BTW) with Edgar, a monster throwdown ensues, and those wonderful Winchesters show up in the nick of time to behead Dick’s number two.

As a reward, AlphaVamp bleeds a chalice full of his blood for the boys and sends them on their merry way (“See you next season” – I hope). But not before Sam and Dean rescue one of the Alpha’s children (ick). The End. But not really, as we get an end tag of Dick summoning Crowley into a demon’s trap in his slick office. DUN.

Oh yeah, in the midst of all of this, GhostBobby jumps into an innocent motel maid, grabs the flask, and heads out to do God only knows what!

Needless to say I was underwhelmed by this episode. Which is too bad, because we got some good tidbits, visits from great characters, and an entire episode with those lovely boys working together. *sigh* Hopefully the season finale will bring it. If not, I’ve got a Jeremy Carver run season 7 to look forward to!

Post-mortem is especially appropriate, given the events of the season (fortunately not series) finale.

The episode was very nearly perfect, tying up so many loose ends:

• What Bell did to Olivia
• What September meant when he told Olivia in every foreseeable future, she had to die
• Why & how September was shot
• Why Walter had part of his brain cut out
• How kickass Olivia’s cortexiphan-enhanced abilities really were

I still feel as if the LSD episode of last season where Olivia calmly eats toast while saying the guy in the blimp was the man who kills her is somewhat unresolved, and we don’t really know where Bell has gone to now, but with 13 more episodes to come next season, we know we’ll at least get the answer to the latter.

They’ve been so excellent at following all the threads that I know we’ll get all the answers with this chance to wrap it all up properly.

Can’t help but think that if there hadn’t been the renewal, Olivia would have remained dead, but somehow secretly pregnant enough that the baby would have been born extremely premature or something like that.

The biggest crime of the series is how John Noble has not won the Emmy every single year, however. The range that man shows in any given episode of Fringe is broader than most actors ever exhibit in their entire career.

From the quote of the night:

Walter: Excuse me Miss, is that lemon Jell-O?
Nurse: These are urine samples.
Walter: Well in that case, no thank you. I’m more peckish than thirsty.

To his all-business attitude in trying to rescue Olivia from the death he’d dealt her, including slapping Peter back into reality.

To his sheer joy at seeing the Red Vines presented to him by Astrid – who he called by the right name, finally! (Definitely added because it was unknown if the series would be renewed when it was filmed.)

Nevermind his portrayal of Walternate and the two Walters he portrayed in “our” universe. And the previous scene he played against himself as Walternate comforting Walter – how can it be possible the man has not yet even been nominated?

I digress, though.

Few shows have managed to bring such a convoluted storyline through to such a satisfying conclusion, while still having more than enough ground to cover in the bonus, short season they’re getting. We’ll get to see how the Observer Future happens. And I’d wager we’ll get to see how Olivia & Peter’s daughter brings it to an end, with help from dad and gramps.

And, of course, Astrid.

Whether Olivia will be part of that team remains to be seen.

We’ve already seen at least one other future in which Olivia is killed.

Maybe September was right, and Olivia still must die.

And maybe Bell isn’t finished with her yet.

One other thing: WHAT THE WHAT was that thing Nina used on NotCharlotte?

By Stu Robinson,

He’s BA-ack! We could be talking about Steve McGarrett, as actor Alex O’Loughlin returned to CBS’ Hawaii Five-0 this week after missing two episodes to undergo rehab from prescription painkillers. Or we could mean Wo Fat (Mark Dacascos), the mysterious villain who takes any episode up a notch.

Season 2, Episode 22 begins with a double whammy and doesn’t let up from there.

It starts with McGarrett leading an Interpol SWAT team into an Asian hotel room, where Wo Fat sits on a couch waiting. In the bathroom, the SWAT team finds a gory, blood-spattered mess. Could it be … Shelbourne?

[Cut to the boffo Hawaii Five-0 theme song.]

Kono (Grace Park) wakes in a suite at the Hilton Hawaiian Village following a tryst with her new mystery man. She puts on a robe and goes the door to get breakfast from the room service guy. Then she heads into the bathroom, where her man is showering. She drops the robe, opens the shower door and joins … Adam Noshimuri (Ian Anthony Dale), the yakuza prince?!? Ruh roh!

The episode that develops isn’t so much a crime to be unraveled as a puzzle to be solved. A puzzle on steroids. Heck, what we really have here is a four-way cage match pitting Five-O, Wo Fat, the yakuza and the CIA against one another. Oh what a tangled web we weave.

It seems that Wo Fat has murdered Hiro Noshimori and mailed pieces of him back to Adam. With Hiro dead, Adam is leader of the Hawaiian yakuza, and he’s really pissed. So let’s review:

• McGarrett wants to bring in Wo Fat alive.
• Wo Fat would rather die than be brought in, but would prefer to escape.
• The Japanase gangsters want Wo Fat dead. Adam assures Kono that he wants to take the yakuza business empire legit, but he can’t escape the urge to avenge his father’s death by torturing and killing Wo Fat.
• And the CIA – remember that dead “foreign service” officer – wants … hmmm. Apparently the agency had used Wo Fat to broker arms deals in the past and would like to wipe out any evidence of that collaboration.

Meanwhile, Kono’s loyalties are torn and the CIA has taken Danno prisoner. Boy, is this complicated.

Eventually, McGarrett and Wo Fat get the drop on the gangsters and escape in their helicopter. McGarrett flies it back to Honolulu where it’s met by Adam and more yakuza gunmen. (C’mon, Steve, it never occurred to you to check the helicopter for a tracking device?) Danno arrives moments later after escaping with the help of a disobedient CIA agent, as do Chin Ho and Kono, who tracked Adam’s cell phone. So it’s a Mexican/Hawaiian/Japanese standoff, which the characters manage to resolve with only one additional death.

Notes

• A haole lawyer playing puppet master within the Hawaiian branch of the Japanese mafia? Go figure.
• Du-oh! Failing to check the chopper for a tracking device wasn’t McGarrett’s only goof. Moments earlier, he uncuffed Wo Fat to help him overcome the yakuza goons. Of course, Wo Fat takes the first opportunity to grab a gun and try to get the drop on McGarrett, and our hero has to subdue him again.
• Product placement: Not only does Kono’s secret tryst take place at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, but Danno’s helper within the CIA conveniently provides a Chevy Impala as an escape vehicle.
• We all know that Steve McGarrett was played on the original Hawaii Five-0 by Jack Lord. Well, in this episode the hot shooting-range chick who helps identify a gold-flecked bullet is played by actress/model/singer Jacqueline Lord. After a cursory Internet search, I don’t think she is a descendant. The casting director must simply have a sense of humor.
• You’d think that after killing Jenna Kaye (Larisa Oleynik) in this season’s Episode 10 and banishing Lori Weston (Lauren German) in Episode 16, you’d think they’d give us a break from the “FIVE-0 WILL LOSE ONE OF ITS OWN” teases. But no. The promo for the next episode showed Max Bergman (Masi Oka) getting shot and implied that other members of the team will be imperiled as well.

###

Stuart J. Robinson, a college friend of the TV Tyrant, is a writer, editor, media-relations practitioner and social-media guy based in Phoenix.

I was not expecting much, if any, Castiel this season, so yet another episode with him makes me very, very happy. Maybe we’ll see him one more time?

We open with an over achieving high school student, Kevin, who is very regimented about his cello playing and studying for his exams to get into Princeton. He seems to be deficient in the essay part of applying to college, so there’s that (no one’s perfect).

Meanwhile, our intrepid Winchesters begin chip, chip chippin’ away at the Very Important chunk of rock they shenanigan-ed out from under Dick in the previous episode, only to bring on a violent thunderstorm, which happens to attack our high schooler Kevin just as he is getting down to studying. A smooth, square rock covered in ancient scribblings pops out of the lump of hardened clay after a few whacks. Also, this storm awakens our sweet little angel Castiel from his loony bin slumber while he is being watched by good ol’ Meg. Yay! Seems the storm has affected everything from arrogant weather men to women in their last month of pregnancy.

The boys get a call from good ol’ Meg, and they take their new black indecipherable rock to Indiana and Cas, while Kevin steals his mom’s car and is driving like an obsessive freak, flashing us some goony eyeballs. Oh Kevin… suddenly breaking all the rules. Castiel is all zen, wearing his trenchcoat over his booby hatch pj’s, and suddenly fond of silly jokes. (“He’s been like the naked guy who wakes up at the rave and is totally useless.” – Meg)

Of course Cas knows what the black rock is, The Word, which is the notes of Metatron, not the transformer Megatron (hee Sam), but the scribe of God who dictated history as God was making this damn world. Cas bails after another Winchester/Meg spat, breaking The Word as he goes. And I gotta say, the beautiful boys are being awfully harsh to Meg here. She stuck around and kept an eye on Cas so they should stop being such bitches towards her. Sheesh.

While the boys are busy being cranky with Meg, Kevin shows up and steals The Word, and it seems he can’t let go of it, even after gigantic Sam uses his massive arms to try and pry it from him. Hmm.

Cas tries to apologize to Dean by playing an awesome game of SORRY with him. I loved that game. But Cas is not willing to jump back into the fight, no matter how hard Dean tries, while pining about the Neanderthals poetry and how he was betting on them over the homo sapiens. Kevin knows The Word is for him, and even when he magically repairs the pieces he still isn’t sure what he is. Dean is obviously still mad at Cas for his releasing of the leviathan, and finds Cas’ apology insincere.

Turns out Kevin can read The Word, but before he can get very far a couple of Cas’ old angel buddies show up to take away Kevin, who is a prophet! Castiel nick-of-times into the room and makes amends with his old garrison buddies Hester and Anias.  Poor, sweet Castiel is having a hard time dealing with reality, and after Dean sends the angels away with a handy sigil Kevin totally freaks the eff out. Like you do. (“That’s Kevin. He’s in Advanced Placement.” – Sam)

Anyway, Sam and Dean fill ol’ Kev in on the deal, and get him to decipher The Word, and everyone agrees that he doesn’t want to be a prophet. Unfortunately, he ain’t got no choice, yo. Learning that Kevin is Amber Alerted all over the place, Meg spots some of Crowley’s demons tailing them. Cas calls Meg and gets their location, freaking poor Kev out all over again as he pops in the back seat between good ol’ Meg and ProphetKev. That poor kid. Apparently, Cas thinks we are all very boring, repetitive sex and war and all, and Castiel is the sweetest little angel with Kevin and Dean and everyone. He would prefer to watch the bees, and doesn’t want to fight anymore. So.Cute.

At the cabin Kevin is worried that he is in a sex torture dungeon (hee) and Sam and Cas make up. (“You seem troubled. Of course that is a primary aspect of your personality, so I sometimes ignore it.” – Cas) Cas is so ZEN. Then Meg heads out to stop the trailing Crowley demons (She has The Knife? I keep losing track of who has that thing), proving yet again she is on their side and OMG I hope I am right about her. For realz.

Prophet Kevin was not prepared to factor in the supernatural in his plan, and has his third freak out. Dean gives him a sort of pep talk, and Kev finally rallies and translates The Word, seemingly accepting his place as a prophet instead of becoming the first Asian POTUS. Hester and her friends show up after some shoddy angel proofing, but even after some weak pleading and some revenge bashing of Castiel, Hester gets ganked by Meg because she is Cas’ BFF these days.

The remaining angels take Prophet Kevin back home to keep an eye on him after he hands the Winchesters his translation of The Word, and they are met by what was supposedly a lawman but is really a leviathan who apparently trumps angel. Boo.

Our beautiful boys get their angel blood for the anti-leviathan spell from Cas right before he takes off to who knows where, and Prophet Kevin is apparently taken by our old leviathan friend, Raoul? Whew!

Next week: blood gathering, Crowley and other shenanigans, I’m sure.

Once again, my laziness means I have to recap many episodes in one post. Sorry ’bout that…

Since I am so far behind, there will be shenanigans in three parts. ‘Cause there were some serious shenanigans going on in some of these episodes.

Shenanigans Part One: “Party On, Garth”

We open with some kids out at a campfire telling ghost stories. None of them are drinking, which I find vaguely implausible, until their drunken friend shows up (That’s more like it!) and proceeds to get himself slaughtered by an invisible something. This terrible event brings in Garth, who seems to have been gaining lots of hunting experience on his own, and he heads out to burn some bones.

Unfortunately, the problem obviously isn’t a ghost after another body turns up, which leads Garth to give our lovely Winchesters a call, who are still worried about Cas in the loony bin (seriously, I am so far behind!). At the coroner’s we find out the invisi-monster is killing family members, and they head off to a local brewery to track the rest of the fam.

After a kid accidentally drinks her mom’s afternoon screwdriver we find out this monster can only be seen when drunk. Which is awesome and horrible, because who wants to see monsters when they’re drunk? This is when my stupid DVR craps out, and we come back with the Garth sock puppet harassing the kid about how her mom died. Heh. Also, yet another anvil that those boys are being haunted by Bobby.

Anyhoo, after much ta-dahs, the boys find out that they are dealing with a Shojo, a spirit harboring in booze, that has been released from a bottle of saki.  Which leads to a lovely scene of our boys drinking themselves silly so they can find this Shojo. It’s nice seeing those two bonding. (“Can you even get drunk anymore? It’s kind of a vitamin for you.” – Sam) The hunt culminates in a kooky fight in the brewery’s warehouse with a drunk Sam and Garth, and where the sword Dean had a local sushi chef bless (hee!) to kill the Shojo magically slides across the floor to Dean just in the nick of time! Hmmm, I wonder who did that? Might it be Bobby, who we see right at the end, hangin’ in the boys motel room?! D’oh! (and, duh!)

Shenanigans Part Two: “Of Grave Importance”

The show opens with the introduction of another new hunter, Annie, who invites the wonderful Winchesters to town for a pow-wow. She heads out to a teenage lovers infested, what is sure to be haunted, house, just missing the teens brutal murders. Apparently, she is not that great of a hunter, as she gets ganked by the same haunters moments later. We also find out she liked the gents, including Bobby, Sam and Dean in her conquests, IfYouKnowWhatIMean. (Good for her!)

After a little digging, the boys figure out where Annie was hunting, and they head on out to the haunted abode. Bobby is along for the ride (hitchin’ on his flask that Dean has been carrying around), and he sees the house is thick with spirits. Very dramatical spirits, BTW. Annie proves once more what a bad hunter she is, as she didn’t even realize she was dead, even though Bobby tells her some silly story about how it took him awhile to figure out he was still in this realm.

We get to see Annie and Bobby get a little tutorial in the ghosting ways from an evil ghostie, and they suck at it. Heh. Not much good news about how ghosties devolve, either. Creee-py. They meet Victoria, a good ghost, who asks for some help in ending the horrors of the house.

This episode it pretty rote as far as the Winchesters go, research, brotherly rescues, last minute ganking and such. It’s mostly about how Bobby finally figures out how to appear to the boys. There is plenty of creep to go around, even though our beautiful boys are relegated to supporting characters. There is one potentially awesome scene when Dean gets out of the shower, but we fangirls are DENIED, as the scene cuts to a wet Dean already with shirt. So.Mean. (Regardless, any version of wet Dean is insanely hot.) Everyone saves the day, and the boys lecture Bobby about how stupid he is, even though he insists he is sticking around to help. It’s very sad, as Bobby should know better, and the boys are obviously torn by having their second Daddy stick around after they had grieved his death. As a viewer, I am torn as well, because having Bobby around is kinda cheesy, but I love him, so okay, I will suck it up and get on board.

Shenanigans Part Three: “The Girl With the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo”

Felicia Day!!!

We are finally back to the leviathan storyline, which I am assuming is the ramp up to the season finale beat down. Bobby and his ghostly pallor fills the boys in on ‘The Plan’, which I’m not sure how he knows all this, but let’s go!

An email from a maybe dead Frank tells the boys that they need to get his hard drive, leading us to the lovely and sorta innocent, be-bopping Charlie (Felicia!) who happens to be working at Roman Enterprises, aka The Death Star a la Dean. She is recruited by Dick himself, asking her brilliant hacking self to bust into Frank’s hard drive. Dick is quite taken with her uniqueness, which saves her butt more than once. (The actor playing Dick is still over-the-top awesome.)

After a wonderful nod to “Wargames”, the beautiful boys track her down and head on out to recruit her for their own leviathan killing needs. Charlie can’t help to snoop around the newly hacked drive, and finds the rantings of our lost Frank, not believing the monster stories she is uncovering. Until she sees a parking garage leviathan munch and then Sam and Dean show up and fill her in on the skinny.

Charlie, who should have taken that job at Google, summons her inner Hermoine and sashays her way into Dick’s office for his private email stash, and gets the wonderful Winchesters the deets to a secret package arrival that the boys head on out to snag. Somehow, they know exactly what the package arrives in so they can do the old switcheroo at the private airport, and end up with the Very Important Package that Dick covets. They also manage to set off a Borax bomb barely incapacitating Dick, and Bobby pulls a ghostly revenge move on him letting our heroes escape.

Felicia Day is awesome, as usual, and we get one baby step closer to the end game. Bobby seems to be unhinging a little quicker than anticipated, and the boys have themselves a hunk of rock that will turn out to be very important, indeed! Good stuff, and the latest episode recap will follow soon. With the return of our sweet little angel, Castiel!

By Stu Robinson,

CBS presented its much-hyped “crossover” episodes of Hawaii Five-0 and NCIS: Los Angeles this week.

Meh.

The biggest accomplishment of the exercise was to paper over the continued absence of Five-0 leader Steve McGarrett while actor Alex O’Loughlin underwent drug treatment. Filling the gap was the marvelous rapper-turned-actor LL Cool J (Ladies Love Cool James) who, as NCIS agent Sam Hanna, brings the special-forces swagger and lets H50 actor Scott Caan get back to being Danno. Hanna gamely needles Danno for being uptight, ridicules his driving and picks the sort of McGarrett/Danno arguments that have become a hallmark of the series. Freed from having to be the alpha male, as in the previous episode, Danno can go back to being Danno – the bitchy, neurotic hypochondriac we know and love.

Crossovers pose a challenge to viewers who are big fans of one show but don’t watch the other. I don’t watch NCIS: Los Angeles – or any of the NCIS series’ for that matter. I don’t even know what NCIS stand for. (This must bother me because I am dangling prepositions.) The crossover began Monday night on Hawaii Five-0 and concluded the next night on NCIS: Los Angeles.

The plot was of the thrill-ride variety; viewers had no chance of solving the mystery themselves. A new suspect surfaces near the end of the H50 episode, and even he isn’t the person behind the conspiracy. He just leads the action back to LA for Tuesday night’s conclusion. The real baddie isn’t introduced until halfway through the NCIS: Los Angeles episode, and appears in only one scene.

Race to Stop Epidemic

Passengers already have disembarked by the time NCIS gets to the gate, but they lean that a woman traveling with the suspect was found dead in one of the plane’s bathrooms, blood having gushed from her eyes and nose. The body was not covered with pustules like the ones in Hawaii; guess less time had passed since she was exposed to the small pox. The flight attendants look sensibly nervous, and the writers never really explain how the victim could have been the only person on the packed flight to be exposed.

Anyway, the chase resumes and the would-be Dr. Mengele is nabbed at Venice Beach. (Where else!) He, in turn, fingers another doctor – a female epidemiologist – as the so-called mastermind. She believes that population is overwhelming the Earth’s environment and that a smallpox epidemic, like a forest fire, could purify the ecosystem. Her plan: Hand out smallpox-infected T-shirts to teenagers attending an international gathering of high school student leaders. You suspected that from the beginning, right?

Notes

• During the H50 episode, Kono receives a phone call that Chin Ho believes is from a new love interest. Yet Charlie Fong (Brian Yang) already had appeared twice in the episode absent any flirting with her. Hmmm …
• During the NCIS: Los Angeles hour, Kensi flirts obviously with Danno. But he has that hot museum curator played by Autumn Reeser back on Oahu, not to mention unresolved feelings for ex-wife Rachel (Claire van der Boom).
• Another episode, an other goofy outfit for coroner Max Bergman (Masi Oka). This time it’s a hazmat suit, which he describes as “itchy.” But at least he wore one; the rest of our heroes mad due with gloves.
• On the product-placement front, Chevy still is hanging around but Hawaiian Airlines has been AWOL for several episodes, some of which involved air travel.
• According to the tease for the next episode, McGarrett will be back along with Wo Fat (Mark Dacascos) and lots of big guns. Woohoo!

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Stuart J. Robinson, a college friend of the TV Tyrant, is a writer, editor, media-relations practitioner and social-media guy based in Phoenix.

Whew. That was a long headline, I know.

But it needed to be said. Again.

See, Fringe is a scant few episodes away from having the 100 necessary for syndication.

And syndication is where the money really is in TV. Even the changes wrought to the TV landscape by Hulu, Netflix, Boxee and other set-top boxes and streaming services have only increased the value of syndication.

So we’re super-close to syndication for Fringe. The only thing standing between a fifth season – even a short fifth season – is the licensing fee that Warner Brothers charges Fox, according to reports. Ratings matter little at this point (though, of course, better ratings might make a more convincing argument to WB to forgo the fees). If WB waives those fees, Fox will put that puppy on the air.

With Season 4 wrapped with multiple options for an ending, time is of the essence.

By Stu Robinson,

Season 2, Episode 20 of CBS’ Hawaii Five-0 was the first to reflect the absence of star Alex O’Loughlin, who took a leave from the show last month to undergo treatment for an addiction to pain killers.

Early on, Danno (Scott Caan) finds a letter on his desk from McGarrett (O’Loughlin) informing him that the Five-0 commander has gone to look for Joe White (Terry O’Quinn) because McGarrett believes White lied to him about being the mysterious Shelbourne in Season 2, Episode 14. In the meantime, it’s up to Danno to hold down the fort at Five-0 headquarters.

It’s a cliche to say that you don’t know what you have until it’s gone, but I found it to be true with this episode. It just seemed to lack some gravitas without McGarrett. On top of that, I found Danno less likable as as the guy in charge. There was no place for his usual comic irony, as he had to keep charging ahead to keep the plot moving. Attempts at witty repartee fell to Chin Ho (Daniel Dae Kim) and weren’t worth me quoting.

The episode begins with a reminder not to judge a book by its cover. A young woman with a flat tire on a dark stretch of road rebuffs a rough-looking good samaritan and is relieved to see another vehicle, a small pick-up truck, pull up to the scene. She rushes to the door of the pick-up hoping to find a rescuer, but instead she is grabbed and brutally pulled through the driver’s window into the cab. [Cut to the boffo Hawaii Five-0 theme song.]

When the woman’s body is found by the side of a road, coroner Max Bergman (Masi Oka) recognizes the signs of a serial killer, known as “The Trash Man,” thought to be imprisoned. Max seems to know a lot about this killer and implies that the guy in prison is innocent.

So, what is the “shocking information” about Max that the previews have teased? Turns out Max was adopted by the Bergmans and, as an adult, found out that his birth mother was one of The Trash Man’s victims. He studied the case, went to visit the man imprisoned and concluded that the real killer remained free. The suspense comes in learning how the slayings are tied together and watching Max in a life-or-death confrontation with the killer. To survive, Max goes all McGarrett/MacGyver: Tied to a chair, he tips himself over to grab a shard of broken glass, which he uses to free his hands and, ultimately, stab the serial killer to death.

Notes

• At the end of the episode, McGarrett is shown (supposedly in Tokyo) declining a call on his cell phone from Danno. Really, though, the footage could have been from about any episode in the last two years.
• The episode had a fairly dumb secondary plot driven by Kamekona (Taylor Wily), who demands that Five-0 find his missing shrimp truck. Danno believes the job is beneath them, and sloughs it off on Chino Ho and Kono. In the end, Kono finds that the city impounded the truck because Kamekona forgot to renew his vending license.
• Kono (Grace Park) has a very brief scene with lab technician Charlie Fong (Brian Yang) at the Honolulu Police garage, but there is no hint at potential romance between the two.

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Stuart J. Robinson, a college friend of the TV Tyrant, is a writer, editor, media-relations practitioner and social-media guy based in Phoenix.

Remember way back in season 3 or 4 when Jeremy Carver’s name showed up in the credits you would get all excited, knowing you were in for a fun ride? Well, ramp up your Supernatual fan squeals because not only is Mr. Carver back, he is co-running the show! Hooray!

Seems as though Sera Gamble has finally had enough, and is off to develop new shows. This is something I am sure will make lots of the hardcore fans happy, as they loved to bitch about what she’s done to the show. Personally, I think she’s done a pretty good job considering she was handed a show that was only supposed to be 5 seasons, according to Kripke, and asked to pull new stories out of what was pretty well worn territory. Was she perfect? No. But after a shaky season 6, she brought in a whole slew of new writers and has done a pretty good job this season of getting our lovely brothers back on track.

So, now that we are staffed with writers who are clearly fans (or at least know the mythology of the show), we get a showrunner who was a part of the early awesomeness of it. Mr. Carver has been off running the US version of Being Human with his wife (I prefer the original recipe), so he will likely have some fresh eyes for our Winchesters.

Of course, Supernatural hasn’t officially been renewed, a little fact that always makes me nervous, but I think this news makes a season 8 pretty much inevitable. So YAY for us!