Tag: episode 12

Son of Zorn: The Quest for Craig – Road Trip (Review)

Edie_Craig_Zorn_and_Linda_in_school_stands_hires1

Son of Zorn “The Quest for Craig” picks up where last week’s episode ended. Linda, Edie and Zorn decide to search for Craig. The Zephyrian hero is now, apparently, living with Linda and Edie appears to still have some feelings for Zorn. Meanwhile, Alangulon shows of his Zephyrian legs and becomes instantly popular, sort of like “Teen Wolf” without the hair and fangs.

Alan shows off remarkable sports skills with those legs and is recruited by the school’s football coach. Layla is somewhat bemused by all this and later, when Alan gets a bit too carried away with his newfound popularity, leaves her new boyfriend.

On the road trip, Edie and Zorn re-live some old times, some of which does not go over well with Linda. In the car it is clear that there is still some chemistry between the two. They share memories and even work together to get Linda out of a “rolling stop” violation.

Zorn pulls out his Zorn road trip mix tape while he and Edie talk about old experiences. “No one runs faster than a naked Edie,” Zorn boasts and Linda seems less than pleased at his and Edie’s memories.

Later, when they have to share a hotel room with one bed, things fall apart. Zorn goes to get a roll-a-way bed and Linda asks if Edie still has feelings for her ex. She hesitates that bit too long and Linda leaves.

Zorn returns to find Linda gone and he and Edie have a talk.

Meanwhile, Craig has been staying with his brother Robert and his wife Diana.  We learn that Craig has always been about other people’s happiness. He even left Diana, who was his girlfriend, when Robert asked her to dance.

Diana brings up this character flaw after Robert has fleeced Craig out of $10 thousand. Realizing that his sister-in-law is right, Craig leaves to get Edie back. He finds the two of them in the hotel room in the middle of a hug.

He demands Edie return and she does. Zorn is pleased at the turn of events even though Linda has left him. Later, at Alan’s first football game, Linda turns up, Edie pleaded Zorn’s case and she has returned.

Zorn gives her a pair of cursed earrings and Alan’s first punt as a team member puts another player in the hospital.

This penultimate episode managed to set things up nicely for the upcoming season finale and the next season, if the network Gods give the show the go ahead. Craig and Edie are now past their “Zorn obstacle,” Linda and Zorn are now an item and all that remains is for Alan to patch things up with Layla.

Son of Zorn has managed to allow its characters to have some satisfactory arcs. Zorn has become less Zephyrian, Craig more demanding, Alan less nebbish and Edie more interesting as more of her Zorn backstory is tantalizingly revealed in each episode.

This mix of animation and live action is proving to be very entertaining. The show is dropping in popularity although it has averaged 3.127 million viewers throughout its first season. It suffered significant drops in numbers over the last two Sundays. The latest drop, of over 30 percent, was no doubt caused by it going up against the Grammys.

Son of Zorn airs Sundays on FOX. Tune in for the season finale next week.

CAST:

Guest starring Pete Gardner as football coach, Isiah Whitlock Jr. as Robert and Tymberlee Hill as Diana

Superstore: Ladies Lunch – Winner Gets Amy (Review)

Superstore - Season 2

Superstore “Ladies Lunch” takes the Amy marriage problem storyline up another notch.  The episode starts with the Cloud 9 morning meeting learning about Amy’s counseling sessions and that Adam is living in the basement.  We learn, along with the staff, that this is “cash day” as the computer systems are down.

Taking only cash keeps the store pretty much deserted for the entire episode. (Apart from one woman who asks where the paper towels are. A distracted Glen tells her they do not carry them…) As a result of the reduced workload the employees basically run amok.

Dina kidnaps (or as she puts it, abducts) Amy “since you’re pushing 40” and takes her out for a ladies lunch. Jonah and Garrett start playing games with a muffin wrapped in clingfilm and before long they have created a male game zone with nearly everyone playing with the muffin.

At Dina’s favorite bar and grill, the ladies start having lunch. What begins as an awkward moment turns into a drunken day out for the women. The luncheon sheds light on a couple of peripheral characters and ends in heartache for Sandra who bumps into her soulmate at the bar.

Carol, a heretofore unseen character, turns out to be the Cloud 9 tramp. She calls Adam’s cell phone repeatedly offering to ease his pain and when Sandra meets the man who clearly is her spiritual mate, reminds her co-worker that she has a boyfriend and moves in on the man.

Back at the store the men, and the games, are getting more competitive. Marcus, getting into the spirit of the games and the idea that Amy is now “available” calls dibs on the supervisor. Jonah is not impressed and he gets quite worked up at Marcus’ “dib” calling.

Glenn is injured with what appears to be a concussion and Jonah loses to Marcus. The women return and all, with the exception of the blonde worker who substituted diet soda for Long Island ice tea, are smashed.

At the end of the episode a drunken Amy cuts her hair off; chin length, as a horrified Cheyenne looks on. Marcus tells Amy he is there for her and Dina manages to hide her insobriety from a concussed Glenn.

Superstore also took the fake relationship story of Sandra a bit deeper. This was comedy with heart and a touch of poignancy. Mateo’s continued jealousy of his co-worker’s fictitious affair was funny. However, meeting the man who would be perfect for her and missing out, because of Carol, and that look on Sandra’s face when she added to the tale was just brilliant.

So too was Jonah’s reaction to Marcus’ schoolboy attitude towards Amy. His discomfort at the idea of the whole thing was at war with his own attraction to his “married with problems” supervisor.

NBC have a real winner in this comic exercise and it is an ensemble piece that delivers each and every week. Superstore airs Thursdays just before the network’s new comedy Powerless.

Cast:

Guest starring Irene White as Carol and Jon Barinholtz as Marcus.

Agents of SHIELD: Hot Potato Soup – Raising Koenig (Review)

MING-NA WEN

At long last Agents of SHIELD in “Hot Potato Soup” bring back the Koenig’s and allows the agents to work out that May has been replaced with a Life Model Decoy, aka LMD. It took Simmons to remember that Radcliffe did a complete brain scan of May when she was affected by the Darkhold “ghosts” earlier in the season.

Last week, Phil revealed that he gave the book to Billy as he is good at making things disappear. This week sees three of the Koenig’s who were all “raised” with LT Koenig (played by the brilliant Artemis Pebdani) who rules them all.

(It is all too tempting to paraphrase Tolkien here: One Koenig to rule them all, One Koenig to find them, One Koenig to bring them all, and in SHIELD  bind them. Sorry…)

The Koenig storyline was interesting and the introduction of LT gave the show a strong, and powerful, female slant. Simmons, who works out the May issue, May the LMD, Aida, Quake and finally LT are all uber capable.

ARTEMIS PEBDANI
LT Koenig ruling and binding them all…

On a sidenote: Pebdani must be super busy right now. Playing Linda on FOX’s Son of Zorn and nipping in quickly to play the “leader of the Koenig’s” on ABC. She manages to pull off both roles effortlessly and has become  a personal favorite.

This episode of Agents of SHIELD was impressive in terms of the LMD intricacy of plot and how each one empathizes with their original host. May, commiserating with Coulson while simultaneously trying to shoot him, and Radcliffe’s baiting of Fitz where the LMD tries to pull a Holden on him were highlights of the season.

The Koenig’s manage to help out to a degree but then blow it by giving the Darkhold to the wrong person. By the end of the episode the book has been lost, May is still MIA and The Superior believes, mistakenly, that Phil Coulson is behind all the issues in the Marvel-verse.

“Hot Potato Soup” had its fair share of laughs. The whole “who took my puppy” gag which prefaced Radcliffe’s realization that the Koenig they had in custody was the wrong one was truly funny.

Patton Oswalt killed it in this episode. Playing three versions of his character effortlessly and making each one funny, tough and “special.” The Quake crush was hysterical and it was fun to see Oswalt raising a little Koenig.

CHLOE BENNET
Agent Quake

(Sidenote: Loved the opening scene in the arcade and the self balancing hoverboards. The sequence then turning into a brief shoot em up with the Russian baddies being confused about their target was the perfect followup.)

The May LMD storyline actually had us feeling sad for the fake May and the LMD Radcliffe was revealing, unlike’s Agent May’s “clone,” it knew it was not the “real deal.” This storyline just gets better and better. The fake Holden even knows about Fitz’s problems with daddy…

Agents of SHIELD airs Tuesdays on ABC.

CAST:

Guest starring Patton Oswalt as Sam/Billy/Thurston Koenig, Artemis Pebdani as LT Koenig, John Pyper-Ferguson as Terence Shockley and Zach McGowan as The Superior.

Con Man: Season Two Finale – Shock-A-Con Shocker (Review)

Ep 11 Alan and Laura

The hilarity continues right up till the last moments of the season two finale of Con Man. Episode 11 sees Wray struggling to meet with Finley and Bobbie’s increasingly desperate attempts to take the final Hemsworth out of the picture.

Wray’s agent is not the only person dead set on removing Girth, Stutter is still creeping around with his camouflaged guns.  Later, he shows Wray that his adapted sniper rifle shoots bean bags.

Nerely spends a good bit of time “saving” Tiffany from drinking. He ends up imbibing a good bit of alcohol before going over to speak with Finley. After Tiffany orders Wray a tequila, she reorganizes his shirt. After pulling out the tail of the garment she advises him to “show your tits.”

Yanking open the top buttons of Wray’s shirt reveals a hairy chest. Tiffany is shocked and confused. “What is that?” she asks and upon being told it is chest hair, remarks wonderingly “it grows there?” “Put it away,” she says, “I don’t like it.”

Wray replies that he could if she had not ripped off his buttons. He then goes to speak with Finley only to find Girth there already. As the two men start to compete for Farrow’s attention, Bobbie shows up in an ethnic costume to divert Hemsworth.

Ep 11 Mindy Sterling
MINDY STERLING AS BOBBIE

The diversion turns into a billabong attack which wounds the actor over his right eye. Bobbie flees and Girth goes to give himself a “stitcheridoo” with some dental floss and a stick.

Wray talks to Finley and Brenda comes up to support him for the lead role in “Doctor Cop Lawyer.” She then attacks a woman serving cocktails dressed in black. Finley gets drink spilt on her back and leaves. Wray is startled by a camouflaged Stutter, whose sniper rifle cleared the room when it went off accidentally earlier.

Episode 12 starts off brilliantly with Wray talking to John the bartender. Nerely believes that he is really Casper Van Dien, after he tells of a boy who dares to dream big.  The entire interaction turn out to be a dream which ends with Wray screaming.

(Kudos to Tudyk and his team for getting Van Dien’s Starship Trooper co-star Dina Meyer for that split second cameo.)

Realizing that he is missing the “Spectrum” board Wray rushes across the comic con floor. He stumbles across Girth, who has stitched up his wound with cinnamon dental floss, and the two almost have a fight.

Ep 12 Liam and Alan
Garth Hemsworth and Wray Nerely

Nerely rushes off before things get physical and Hemsworth chases after Wray.  The two enter the recently closed down “Obstacle Corpse,” following closely behind Brenda who rushes through without a scratch, and Stutter shoots Nerely with a beanbag round.

Girth saves Wray but loses out on the lead in “Doctor Cop Lawyer.” Wray gets the part and learns that shooting on the new series starts on September 15. He gets cast because Finley Farrow believes he is “broken” a quality that she insists is crucial to the character.

Wray makes it to the panel and while struggling to control his contempt for his former cast mates he pays lip service to the idea of the movie. He then goes about the long process of insulting everyone, including fans of the show.

Jack reveals that shooting on the movie will start on September 15 and Wray somewhat spectacularly undergoes a meltdown on stage. He tells the world that he will not be doing the film and his old pal Jack Moore is hurt and a little bit angry.

Ep 12 Nathan
Jack Moore

Tiffany sobers up long enough to recommend moving the start date of the movie to allow Wray to do both projects. Before Jack moves things on to the Q&A portion of the panel, he texts his agent telling him he now wants the lead role in “Doctor Cop Lawyer.”

The last two episodes of Con Man brought everything together perfectly. The long build up to the chase through the deadly obstacle course, that mic drop moment and Wray’s decision to drop the “Spectrum” movie role left Nerely right back where he started. Still unhappy with where his career has  headed since “Spectrum” the television show was cancelled.

A lot of comedy moments were scattered throughout the two episodes. The Shock-a-Con/Talk-a-Thon battle between the hosts, Bobbie’s attack on Girth, that long drawn out fart from Tiffany and the interaction between Wray and the “child star” earlier were hysterically funny.

The sight-gag of Brenda rushing pell mell through those blades of death was also a brilliant comic touch.

Con Man ends on a flat note for Wray.  Somewhat tellingly, it reveals that the actor, whose best friend really was Jack Moore (emphasis on the was), really is his own worst enemy.

With season two ending on an audience member asking Wray about dumping on his old cast and refusing the role it looks like there may well be a third season on the cards.

There are certainly enough actors to keep up a never ending stream of uber cool cameos, think Dina Meyer here, and this fact alone is a good reason to bring the show back again.

For fans of the series, Comic Con HQ have set up a binge session where both seasons can be seen for free over the first seven days. Once the week is up, viewers will have to pay $5 a month, or $50 for an annual pass.


Cast:

Guest stars Ricki Lindhome as Janey Carney, Josh Dean as Rico Java, Liam McIntyre as Girth Hemsworth, Laura Vandervoort as Finley Farrow and Dina Meyer as other bartender.

Lucifer: Love Handles – Moral Dilemma (Review)

Lucifer-212_SCN33pt1_MC0043_hires1

The women in Lucifer’s life are all out of sorts in this episode. “Love Handles” does not follow any presumed path as Chloe and Morningstar try to stop a killer who practices a “Saw” type of cause and effect experiment.

This episode does follow on from the final moments of last week’s segment where Andy Kleinburg died after spilling some of that special package on himself. The dead man’s body turns up as evidence this week that helps Ella move the current investigation along.

Professor Carlisle is killing people to prove a point. He chose to save his dissertation paperwork rather then a student. The innocent student died and as a result the academic was vilified and fired from the university where he taught.

While the police rush to save the latest potential victims of Carlisle, Charlotte, aka Lucifer’s mum, tries to find someone to deliver her “devastating” news.  She tries Linda, who flatly refuses and then asks Mazikeen.

Initially the demon agrees but on the night, she backs out. Lucifer learns the truth anyway. He finds out that his father put Chloe in his path. Amenadiel arranged for the girl to be born by blessing her mother.

Clearly Charlotte hopes that Lucifer’s rage at this father’s “betrayal” will work in her favor. When Morningstar confronts Chloe she is, like the college girl they saved earlier, bleeding from the nose and it will not stop.

The designer poisons, introduced last week, are still a plot point in this episode and now that Chloe’s life is threatened, Lucifer will, no doubt, re-think his annoyance that what he and the detective have is “not real.”

Lucifer is rapidly moving toward their mid-winter finale.  The next episode is slated to air February 6 and the series will then not return until 1 May. Clearly the next installment, titled “A Good Day to Die,” is meant to be even more of a cliffhanger than Monday’s episode.

Now that Lucifer now knows about Amenadiel’s “interference” and Charlotte’s knowledge, it seems pretty certain that he will be confronting his brother in the next episode. This, on top of the professor killing himself in this episode, will no doubt exacerbate relations with the angel and God’s “wife.” It will also make Chloe’s fate uncertain.

This was an odd episode. Chloe acts strangely out of character throughout the story line. So much so that Lucifer feels that someone is controlling her movements.  It made for some amusing moments as Lucifer reacts uncomfortably when Decker comes over all coquettish.

The entire Chloe falling in love with Lucifer feels rushed at this point. In a short three episode story arc, we learn that Morningstar’s father orchestrated Decker’s birth and appears to have orchestrated their meeting and Lucifer’s attraction to the miracle girl.

Lucifer “Love Handles” really was all about more than one moral dilemma.  The women in Morningstar’s life all have qualms about getting involved with the issue at hand. As do the people that Carlisle picks in his little experiment.

The series airs in a fortnight’s time with their “mid-winter” finale.

Cast:

Guest starring Jamie Kennedy as Andy Kleinburg, Mike Doyle as Johnny Kane, April Grace as Dr. Scott and Tim DeKay as Professor Carlisle

%d bloggers like this: