Tuesday Night Television Review: January 13th, 2009

Welcome back! A week has past since I’ve started doing this and I haven’t post a single new review yet. Fortunately I’m willing to at least keep my word and try to review the shows I’ve started reviewing so far; so that brings us to yet another Tuesday night of television! The same exact shows were on this week, so I’ll be reviewing two more episodes of Scrubs, The Mentalist and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Onto the reviews!

=================================================================================

Scrubs: Season 8 Episode 3: “My Saving Grace”

The first half of Scrubs tonight dealt with the staff continuing to deal with tyranical overbearing presense of the new chief of staff, Dr. Maddox (Courteney Cox). We were only graced with the presense of one of the new interns, Katie, in this episode. It seems Katie’s just a suck up who lies and cheats her way through her tasks in order to get on top and no one at the hospital seemed to like her very much. J.D. and Elliot were trying to treat a patient with M.S. through her Father (who had insurance) and Dr. Cox was trying to get a patient into a drug trial although he was too old; both of which were being thwarted by Dr. Maddox. Kelso and Janitor even made appearances in this episode!

To start off with my thoughts of this episode, I must say that it made me laugh more than both of the premiere episodes combined. There were too many gags to count; whether it was Cox’s wife getting turned on by seeing Kelso share a scone with Janitor, Elliot flirting for free candy, J.D. making bad jokes about interferon (it sounds like a robot who interrupts people), or Turk’s shopping list which consisted of “Sausages, Sausages and more Sausages”. Janitor was given some fantastic and classic moments that I won’t be forgetting any time soon. One of them involving a list of worthless ideas for getting rid of Dr. Maddox (it involves photo shop and/or an astronaut attack) and another was an expository heavy scene where he explained creating a persona for himself that gets scared about breaking and entering for fear of going back to prison.

There was even a bit of heart thrown into the episode with Dr. Cox admitting to Kelso that he did miss him as the Chief Of Medicine. All of this lead of up to *SPOILER ALERT* Dr. Maddox getting fired due to Kelso blackmailing the Board of Directors. I’m not sure how I feel about this, being that we just met Dr. Maddox; but however they did make her a fairly one-dimensional all-evil character, so I suppose she had served her purpose. I did however find myself enjoying her scenes, there’s just something I like about characters who just love being evil…

In line with the previous two episodes, I could really care less about the actually story that was going on but as for delivery this episode paid off in spades. It’s been a while since I’ve really found Scrubs this entertaining but it is starting to feel like Scrubs is getting back to the top of it’s game. Bring on the rest of the season.

Rating: 8.0 (out of 10)

=================================================================================

Scrubs: Season 8 Episode 4: “My Happy Place”

All I can say is it was bound to happen. The second half of tonight’s episode focused on Kelso trying to deal with his retirement, the Janitor getting his job back and Dr. Cox not trusting surgeons. Oh, and J.D. and Elliot’s relationship resumes.

The Janitor’s storyline was business as usual, filled with pranks and schemes galore. Seeing how he disposed of the janitor who replaced him made me laugh and then made me really sad. There weren’t much surprises to found in Dr. Cox and Turk’s storyline… except for The Tod of course! I almost forgot he was a character on the show. Rest assured, he drops a couple of good lines.

The main focus here wound up being on Kelso coming to terms with the fact that he’s retired but still finds himself spending all his free time at the hospital. When trying to talk to Kelso, it turned into J.D. and Elliot re-examining their relationship. For the record, I will say that I don’t really care who gets with who, but as long as J.D. and Elliot resuming their relationship doesn’t turn into a whiny emotional fest of misery, I’m OK with it. I felt that this episode handled it very well with showing how much time they’ve been spending together and the discussion they had about their past mistakes with their relationship almost seemed like the show was going out of its way to assure me (the viewer) that this isn’t just going to be another round of drama. Hooray!

All in all, this episode was a little lighter on the laughs but a little heavier in the heart. Keep ’em coming, season 8.

Rating: 8.0 (out of 10).

=================================================================================

The Mentalist: Season 1 Episode 13: “Red Rum”

Man, I must be in a great mood if I’m thoroughly enjoying an episode of The Mentalist. Tonight’s episode shockingly returned straight to the “Murder-of-the-week” grind for which I adore crime dramas for. Without any prestory, the show jumped straight into the detectives investigating the disappearance of a boy, only to find him… MURDERED!

This episode spiced things up a little by including a witch in the episode, who happened to be the prime suspect. For a show that’s CLEARLY a ripoff of Psych (see last week’s post if you think I’m serious), this show is much more willing to put Patrick Jane up against other supernatural fakes more than Psych ever has. Both The Mentalist and Psych has already had their “psychics” battle other “real psychics” (and I actually think The Mentalist did a damn fine job of that one), but continuing the trend and putting our main character up against someone who thinks they can cast spells makes for alot of fun.

What stood out to me this episode was how laid back it was. For a crime procedural, this episode seemed very light hearted. Even the side characters I care nothing about were mildly amusing. Everyone was interacting very playfully in this episode and as childish and cheesy as most of it was, it allowed for everyone to stop looking like cardboard cutout clones from other detective shows. Two detectives threw around a football in a school locker room instead of searching the lockers, Patrick Jane continuously teased and pranked one of his fellow detectives, Kimble, who believed that the witch was actually a witch, and yes, there was even a stakeout bicker about carrots and junk food.

As for the case, it wasn’t exactly unpredictable, but it did have a pretty strong ending. It actually feels like this show might be able to live up to the potential set by its pilot. Time will tell, I suppose.

Rating: 7.5 (out of 10)

=================================================================================

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Season 10 Episode 12: “Hothouse”

Oh my god. This show is a bucket of smiles. That’s all I have to say. Tonight’s episode follows the road of starting off in one direction and then ending in a completely different one. Huge props to the crew of SVU for finding whoever they did to play the killer in this episode, because the scene where they confess is delivered in an extremely intense, gripping, and chilling way. I wasn’t horribly shocked by anything in particular about the crime, but just the nature of the confession and the delivery had my jaw on the floor.

The whole episode tried to spin some moral lesson on raising children by offering up a few different examples of bad parenting and how it turns out. For the most part, everything before the confession and after fell mostly flat. I would give this episode a dead center 5.0, but due to the scarcity of Detective Munch (shame on you SVU!), my law indicates they be penalized an extra point.

Rating: 4.0 (out of 10).

=================================================================================

You’ve made it! Welcome to the end! I tried to be a little more brief this time around, but it’s hard due to the fact that it’s four shows and I have several things to complain about in each one. Once again, thanks for checking this out and your comments are always welcome. Feel free to let me know what you think about rape, witchcraft, scones or anything else on your mind. Until the next time I feel like posting…

– Kyle

~ by axknel on January 14, 2009.