In which “Charmed” gives some charming answers while raising questions, and “Alias” seeks the help of a bad mother (watch your mouth)…
With “Smallville,” “West Wing,” and “Tru Calling” MIA, this’ll be a pretty short edition. Boy, remember the days when there were, like, over 30 episodes in a season, and reruns were isolated into the summer months?
So…
“Charmed”–Although watching the sisters’ hormones go into overdrive was entertaining enough, we finally get some answers as to what’s up with Chris. So we now find ourselves in the midst of the old “If you could strangle Hitler in his crib, would you?” debate as we discover the great evil of the future is Wyatt, and Chris has some sort of connection to him. Brothers, perhaps? After all, we know Piper is going to be pregnant again. I’d always figured Chris was grown-up Wyatt, but perhaps he’s grown-up Wyatt’s sibling. At this point, though, I’m suspecting that the writers are doing some fast reshuffling, especially when one considers that we still have zero explanation as to why Chris blasted Leo into the land of the Amazons (man, I love writing sentences like that.) And then a most unexpected development: The sisters decide to go their separate ways. It’d be interesting if they decided to jump ahead months or even years and pick up on the next chapter of their story. Sure would be a convenient way of aging Wyatt a few years.
“Alias”–I think it’s becoming reasonably clear that Jack Bristow is just about the baddest Mofo on television. The guy you absolutely, positively, don’t want to screw with. So I thought it some of the most brilliant casting ever that, when the baddest Mofo on television needs help, there’s only one man he can turn to: Shaft. Yes, in the best casting on the series since Lena Olin, Richard Roundtree joins the party as Jack and Vaughan mount a rescue mission to rescue her from that most dreaded of enemies: The US government. It occurs to me that, at this point, with personnel consisting of the Bristows, Vaughan, Lauren (for whom the dime has finally dropped), and Shaft, Sloane could put together a freelance counterintelligence agency that would make SD6 look like Romper Room.
PAD
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“Charmed”‘s writers reshuffling and changing things at the last minute (details be dámņëd!) isn’t a surprise. However, I thought Chris blasted Leo to Amazonland to keep him from finding out he wasn’t actually the girls’ new White Lighter.
Of course, it never made sense to be that if Leo’s an Elder how that fact could escape him in the first place.
I’m kind of ashamed to admit that I initially mistook Richard Roundtree for Louis Gosset, Jr. In that hat, they’re dead ringers for one another.
That aside, I had much the same thought, PAD, about the team of double agents working both within and without the CIA (which is pretty much Jack’s M.O., anyway). It would be something of a latter-day A-Team, and I can’t say I disapprove of that.
Whenever Jack does something underhanded, I’m reminded of something Weiss said to Vaughn near the end of season 2 when he was helping Sydney avoid her father: “Jack is going to shoot you in the face”; it just summed up Jack’s morally ambiguous methods so well.
On a side note, Pruitt Taylor Vince (the actor who played Sydney’s cell-neighbor at the NSC facility) has a small role in a movie I watched again last night, Identity, with John Cusack and Ray Liotta. It’s a little bit predictable, but it’s a good movie. His creepy look (contributed to by nystagmus, a condition that makes his eyes jiggle all crazy-like) just works.
Ah, Pruiit Tayor Vince! Knew I’d seen him before, but couldn’t place him through the bars. I always remember him in a really good performance as the guy that Gene Hackman uses as bait in “Mississippi Burning.”
I thought that Watt was a pretty obvious choice for the “BIG BAD” and was hoping that someone else would be it. I’m just wondering how the future “King Aurthor” went bad in the first place? Who messed with destiny and how? Chris could be Wyatts cousan but at this point he would have to be Pages son.
Just for my own information, am I the only one watching “Enterprise”?
It is not scheduled against anything that even requires you to record one or the other so wathcing it should be a no brainer.
Great to see Richard Roundtree show up in Alias – yep, perfect casting. I’m digging this season, though I hope Lauren isn’t able to weasel out of aiding and abetting too easily…
Isn’t Enterprise up against Smallville?
Amusingly, one of the eps on the Kim Possible marathon Friday, which featured Kim’s retired adventurer grandmother Nana Possible, had the following dialogue:
Villain: “She’s a *bad* grandmother!”
Kim: “Shut your mouth!”
Villain: “I’m just talkin’ ’bout Nana.”
Which I’m assuming went completely over the heads of the show’s target audience.
For some reason (JLA/Avengers maybe?) I’ve been thinking of a lot of cross-universe/show crossovers I’d like to see lately. So, how about Jack^2, as Jacks Bristow and Bauer go up against each other. Bonus points for Sydney dropkicking Kim into the next century.
What I really want to see is Jack Bristow vs. Wesley Wyndham-Pryce. I consider them Bad Mofos #1 and #2, respectively, on TV.
Eric
I’d just like to say that Jack Bristow is one of the biggest mo fo’s and that that episode of Alias was one of the best, ever. How can you not love the exchange between Vaughn and Jack?
“I want in on rescuing Sydney.”
“Rescuing Sydney would break about 10 different federal laws.”
“Just you saying that tells me that you have already have a plan.”
or how about the armory with the safe with the stacks and stacks of cash? Or Vaughn’s reaction to it?
“Just the fact that you’re letting me see this tells me that this isn’t the only stash that you have.”
Of course, those are just paraphrases, but they were hilarious!
Can’t wait to see what Lindsey is really up to and is Lauren’s change of heart really genuine. Based on this week’s ep with David Cronenberg, I’m not really sure.
CHARMED
The impression I get from the hints (which they may get change as Charmed isn’t known for its consistancy), is that Chris probably is a reincarnation of PRU and his girlfriend is a re-incarncation of ANDY (the police detective boyfriend who was killed played by TJ King)… and the two of them are aware of who they were in past lives.
The Charmed sisters have visted the past by jumping into their past lives before… in the 1920/30s they were cousins instead of sisters.