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We catch you up on this week’s episodes of your favorite programs!
By Wade Gum |
Posted July 20, 2007 1:05 PM |
EDITOR’S NOTE: There’s a lot of good programming out there these days, and here at Wizard Universe, we want to make sure you don’t miss a moment of any of it. In the interest of keeping you up to speed with your favorite series, we’ve recruited our resident pop culture critic, Wade Gum, to run down the past week’s slate of programming and tell us what went down and, in some cases, what blew up in each episode of the hottest shows this week. Check back every Friday for a new installment of our TV roundup.—RM
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Traveler—“The Exchange”
The Recap
At the end of last week’s episode, Will Traveler reunited with Jay and Tyler to save them from Agent Marlow’s clutches. The two begrudgingly follow Traveler only because he promises to clear their names and reveal who was really behind the Drexler bombing. In order to do so, Traveler needs to get something out of Tyler’s car, but it’s at the FBI impound. Jay volunteers to sneak into the impound and gets inside the car.
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Hidden inside the car is an old painting that Traveler stole from the Drexler before it exploded. Traveler doesn’t know why the painting is important; he just knows that Jack Freed desperately wants it. With the painting in their possession, the three amigos have a bargaining chip and can lure Freed out into the open. Traveler wants to kill Freed for ordering the death of his girlfriend, but Jay and Tyler are dead set against that. If Freed dies, then any hope of clearing their names dies with him. The three cook up a new plan to expose Freed’s conspiracy to the rest of the world.
Meanwhile, Agent Marlow is in deep trouble after her maverick police work. She’s confined to paperwork duty by Agent Fred Chambers while Agent Borjes continues to hunt for Tyler and Jay. Of course, Marlow doesn’t stay put and starts investigating some of the clues that Tyler gave her in the nightclub the previous night.
One lead takes her to the home of Joseph Langdon, but the man claims to have no connection to the Drexler. Langdon receives a call on his cell phone and then immediately afterwards he pulls a gun and fires at Marlow. After an intense firefight, Marlow manages to shoot through a wall and kill Langdon. The cops arrive on the scene and Marlow takes the cell phone, hoping to figure out who Langdon was speaking to and who gave the order to kill her.
Agent Borjes uses surveillance footage to discover that Tyler had a meeting with his father, Carlton, the day before that went unreported. He uses this as justification to arrest Carlton. As Carlton is being transported into a police vehicle, Otis Whaley reappears and shoots him. Carlton isn’t fatally injured, so Borjes runs off in pursuit of Otis. He corners him at the top of a building and attempts to take him into custody, but Agent Chambers appears and puts a stop to that. In the weakest shocker of all time, Chambers is revealed to be in on the conspiracy. Chambers kills Borjes and allows Otis to escape.
Traveler calls Jack Freed and lets him know that he’s ready to exchange the painting. He sets a meeting place in a park in one hour, but that’s just a ruse. When Freed arrives at his limo, Traveler abducts him at gunpoint and forces him into a boiler room. Traveler, Jay and Tyler try to coax Freed into spilling the beans about the conspiracy. Traveler feigns that he’s on Freed’s side and is willing to exchange the painting, Tyler and Jay in return for his own freedom, but it’s just that old gag where the good guys hide a tape recorder somewhere and trick the villain into revealing his entire evil plan.
With a tape recording of Freed talking about why he bombed the Drexler, the boys figure they’re finally safe. They drive Freed to a local newspaper with plans to make him spill the beans to the press and possibly clear their names. They call the news desk and let the reporter know that the man behind the Drexler bombing is sitting in a limo downstairs. The three of them are happy for a bit, thinking they’ve won, but then the limo explodes into a ball of flame and takes Freed with it. Shocked, the three amigos flee before the cops arrive.
Back at the FBI office, Marlow finally hits the redial feature on the cell phone she took from Langdon’s corpse. When she does so, Agent Chambers’ cell phone rings in the opposite room. Dun dun dun! Now Marlow knows Chambers was in on the conspiracy. Will she be able to bring him to justice? Will Traveler, Tyler and Jay clear their names? No, because this show is canceled.
The Review
That was about the best ending one could expect from an eight-episode summer television series. It advanced the plotline and answered a few questions while setting up the plot for further episodes. Unfortunately, those episodes probably won’t be coming. As far as episodic television goes, “Traveler” was fast-paced, tightly edited and never boring. It’s a shame that it wasn’t really given a chance to succeed while far more boring shows like “The Nine” were put in prime position to do well.
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John From Cincinnati—“His Visit: Day Five”
The Recap
Not much happened in last week’s episode, so the writers more than made up for it by crafting an episode with tons of revelations and mysteries. As the show begins, Cissy is still upset after Shaun’s mother, Tina, visited the previous night. She yells at Mitch over the phone (surprise, surprise) about how worthless Tina is. Since Cissy can never speak in a normal tone, Shaun overhears all of it and gets his panties in a bunch. He’s more than a little upset that his grandmother wouldn’t even let him look or speak to his birth mother, so he storms out of the house on his skateboard.
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 John decides to pay Vietnam Joe a visit in his booby-trapped campsite where he grows “herbs.” John wants to track down the guy who stabbed him a couple episodes ago and make sure that justice is done. Joe isn’t too keen on the idea, but John literally reads his mind and eventually persuades Joe to help. John suggests that the two of them pick up Bill as well. Once they arrive at Bill’s home, John channels the spirit of Bill’s dead wife in order to persuade Bill to help. Bill is angry and shocked at this turn of events, but eventually goes along with John and Joe.
Everyone continues to gather at the ratty motel. Freddy and Palaka are still camping out there, Butchie lives there, Ramon, Dickstein and Barry continue to clean the place up and Dr. Smith keeps riding by on his bike to check up on all of them. With a little bit of persuading by Freddy, Dr. Smith finally gets Palaka to put aside his fear of doctors for just a day and get his broken hand fixed at a clinic.
Cissy drives down to the motel to have a chat with Butchie. She already got in touch with Kai and persuaded her to go look for Shaun. Now she wants Butchie to call Tina on the phone and persuade her to come meet Shaun. Butchie is incredulous, but no one can withstand Cissy’s harpy-like shrieking and he finally breaks down. The stress of the affair has him more dope-sick than ever and he gives Tina a few frantic phone calls before finally convincing her to return to Imperial Beach. Cissy retrieves her gun from Kai’s trailer and returns to the Yost home.
John, Joe and Bill are in the middle of a stakeout as they search for the stabber. John launches into his human parrot routine for quite a while until Joe pulls out a joint to ease the tension. Bill’s dislike of John is so strong that he agrees to partake. Out of the blue, John says that it’s better for her to try to kill him and fail than to kill herself. With that proclamation, he promptly passes out and goes unconscious.
What appears to be an astral projection of John appears at the Yost household and confronts Cissy. John speaks much more normally than he ever has before and forces Cissy to come face to face with the horrible things she has done in the past and her true nature. Apparently, Cissy was high on acid once during Butchie’s formative teenage years and may have touched him in places she definitely shouldn’t have. John knows Cissy would rather kill herself than live with all the pain she has now, but he tells her that “we” would prefer you didn’t. He tells her to baptize the pistol under the water and keep living her miserable existence, if only for Shaun’s sake.
Butchie gets Cissy to host a little lunch date for Tina and Shaun at the Yost house. Once mother and son arrive, Cissy retreats to Mitch’s little meditation room. What follows is an incredibly awkward silence as Tina dutifully prepares lunch while Shaun sits at the table. What do you say to the mother you’ve never met before, especially when she’s a porn star?
John’s astral self continues his mystifying work, appearing to Linc and Cass, persuading them to come down to the motel. More people begin to congregate there. Dickstein’s fiancée, Daphne, forces her husband-to-be to take her to the motel so she can see where he spends all his time these days. Bill and Joe appear at the hotel, but they’re not really there either. They’re actually sound asleep in the van with John. Perhaps John has brought them there on the astral plane as well.
John goes into the haunted room 24 of the motel and brings out a corpse that no one else seems to notice. He places it down in the parking lot and then launches into a sermon that no one responds to, almost as if they’re in a trance. John begins talking about his “father,” the secret lives of the people at the motel, a better reality that could have been if things had gone better for the Yosts, what will happen in the future and the importance of listening to his father’s word. John tells everyone there that they will not remember his words, but they will remember the feelings.
With that, John vanishes. The people from the motel disperse, awoken from their dazed states. Bill and Joe awake in the van and don’t remember a thing. However, Bill rubs his jaw and notes that it feels like he’s been playing his harmonica. In the “dream,” Bill had been jamming on his harmonica while Freddy played on his saxophone. Eerie!
The Review
Wow. There was certainly a lot to digest in this episode. The revelation of the inappropriate relationship between Butchie and Cissy would have been enough, but John’s entire sermon in the parking lot went into information overload. Some of the snippets from his sermon can be deciphered, such as the stuff about the Yosts’ lives being better in a world with his father’s word, but the stuff about the words on the wall and a new 9-11 just creates tons of new questions.
The biggest question is where the show goes from here. Will next week’s episode be completely character-centric like last week’s, or will the crazy mystical elements and John’s prophecies become the new focus? Whichever way the show proceeds, it will probably be good if it doesn’t involve Mitch, just like tonight’s episode. The head of the Yost family is the most unbearable of them all.
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ECW—Extreme Championship Wrestling
The Recap
The extreme feud between CM Punk and Johnny Nitro continued this week. CM Punk was the only one of the two in competitive action, but Johnny Nitro gave a rousing press conference at the end of the night. The first match saw CM Punk take on Elijah Burke for what has to be the hundredth time. Just like every single other time these two faced off, CM Punk took the victory with the Go 2 Sleep.
Matt Striker made his way to the ring to properly introduce ECW’s newest “superstar,” Big Daddy V, formerly known as Viscera. Big Daddy V laid out the Boogeyman last week and follows up that dominating performance by defeating…Tim Storm? Oh man, Big Daddy V has taken out a guy who eats worms and a no-name jobber from Texas. Look out, John Cena. Big Daddy V is coming for you next!
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The Miz made his way to the ring to the delight of millions of Mizfits worldwide. The Miz related his problems with women, namely that they can’t keep their hands off him. That’s a very inconvenient problem at times, like at a funeral or a job interview. Just to prove his point, the Miz invited the crowd to watch as Extreme Expose came out and performed their little dance numbers for him. Delightful.
The third match of the evening saw ECW original Tommy Dreamer go toe to toe with Kevin Thorne, a former member of the New Breed. Just for the record, Tommy was rocking a Great American Bash promotional shirt. His closet must be full of every wrestling shirt ever made. Can you guess who won this match? Considering the fact that Tommy Dreamer never wins, if you guessed that Kevin Thorne lost, you’re pretty stupid.
The night ended with Johnny Nitro’s electrifying press conference. Nitro’s personal assistant started the conference off by informing everyone that Johnny Nitro has officially changed his name to John Morrison. Well, he sort of has a Jim Morrison look going on now, so that works. “John Morrison” made his way to the ring and rattled off a list of his awesome accomplishments as champion. He also made fun of CM Punk’s name, questioning exactly what the CM stands for. Odds are good on “Cookie Monster.”
CM Punk is not one to tolerate the besmirching of his name, so he strolled to the ring for a little confrontation. Morrison faked like he was offering Punk the microphone, but then decked him with a sucker punch and beat the stuffing out of the straight edge superstar. Wrestling logic dictates that since Punk took the beating on the episode before the pay-per-view, he will undoubtedly be winning the title. The laws of wrestling are rigid and may not be broken.
The Review
It’s becoming distressingly apparent that the ECW roster is just way too small. Every match-up these days is one we’ve seen a million times before. The first match was supposed to be CM Punk versus Marcus Cor Von, but Marcus no-showed the event. It’s irrelevant. If he had shown, we would have simply seen CM Punk versus Marcus for the 10th time instead of CM Punk versus Elijah Burke for the 20th.
This situation is made worse by the fact that the same people win every single time. There’s never any question that guys like CM Punk and Kevin Thorne are going to win every match they’re in. The roster isn’t just low on depth; it’s critically low on wrestlers that anyone believes are capable of winning. The draft just happened and it’s unlikely that ECW will receive an influx of talent, but it desperately needs it.
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