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We catch you up on this week’s episodes of your favorite programs!
By Wade Gum |
Posted July 27, 2007 2:00 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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Eureka—“Unpredictable”
The Recap
It’s Zoe’s 16th birthday and she’s eager to celebrate it with her friends. However, her father Jack kind of wants to have some father-daughter time and bond with Zoe. He lets Zoe know that she’ll have to cancel her plans and spend her birthday with dear old dad, which she isn’t very happy about. Actually, he’s just being a jerk on purpose to make sure Zoe doesn’t find out about the big surprise party he’s planning for her.
Jack’s well-laid plans are thrown for a loop when his ex-wife Abby shows up for Zoe’s birthday. Jack isn’t too happy to see her and is especially distressed to learn that Abby intends to take Zoe with her back to Los Angeles. He doesn’t have long to discuss the matter with Abby because the weather in Eureka is going crazy and a man was flash-frozen into a Popsicle at the Eureka hot springs. While Jack and Deputy Lupo investigate the freezing incident, Abby picks Zoe up from school.
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With Henry Deacon’s help, Jack identifies the frozen man as Neil Baxter, a man who researched the mating habits of primates and was the office Casanova down at Section 5. Before he can dig further into the matter, Jack finds out that Abby is with Zoe and tracks the two of them down. The entire family gets into a big argument about the custody battle but gets forced into the house by a freak dust storm.
Jack questions his house computer, Sarah, on how she has such accurate weather forecasts with all the freak occurrences going on. Sarah tells Jack that she gets updates every 30 minutes from Eureka’s resident meteorologist, Pete Pullman. Jack decides to pay Pete a visit. Pete shows off the Accumulator 2100, the most accurate weather forecast system ever devised. Pete uses the Accumulator 2100 to show Jack the first occurrence of the freak weather that ultimately caused the hot springs to get flash-frozen.
Jack discovers that a doctor named Steven owns a cabin in the area where the crazy weather first began. Abby gives Jack a frantic phone call telling him that Zoe has run away, so Jack picks her up in his car and does some multitasking. When Jack and Abby arrive at the cabin, the weather goes crazy once again. Jack does some investigating and finds a sophisticated weather machine and satellite dish at the cabin. He sees this as ample evidence that Steven is the man responsible for altering the weather.
Deputy Lupo interrogates Steven’s wife and discovers that she was having an affair with Baxter. Jack and Lupo figure that Steven found out the affair was going on and used his weather machine to kill Baxter, but that isn’t the case. Steven knew about the affair and was just glad that someone was making his wife happy. Besides, he has a debilitating condition that renders him totally blind when exposed to natural light. There’s no way he could have messed with the weather.
Naturally, the weatherman is the man behind all of this. He was threatened by the weather machine because in a world where the weather can be determined, a weatherman is useless. Jack discovered his footprints by the machine and gets Pete to confess to messing up the weather. Unfortunately, the weather has been messed up so much that Eureka will probably be wiped off the map in the span of an hour.
Henry, Allison and Steven devise a plan to use the weather machine to superheat the lake to 1,000 degrees in order to counteract the crazy weather system that’s about to destroy Eureka. It’s up to Jack to manually aim the satellite dish and fire it, which proves to be a difficult task when hurricane winds are blowing so strongly. He eventually manages to activate the machine and the lake is heated, saving Eureka from certain destruction.
As the episode ends, Zoe is delighted to see her surprise party and Abby is still insistent on taking her daughter back to Los Angeles. Allison discovers that her son, Kevin, has an unusual connection to “the artifact” and Henry finishes his psychological evaluation. Allison decides to declassify all the work that Kim was doing before the artifact killed her, much to the delight of Henry.
The Review
It was another open-and-shut case this week for Jack, but a few little details were slipped in to advance the larger plot. No one would probably be very upset if Zoe does end up leaving the show, but that just seems unlikely. Instead, we’ll probably get a drawn-out custody-battle plot that eventually ends with Abby learning the true nature of Eureka and letting Zoe stick around.
The plotline about the artifact continues to move forward as well. Allison now knows that her son has a connection to it and Henry is free to continue Kim’s research. However, there are people within Section 5 who aren’t very thrilled to see Henry coming back to work and will definitely be keeping an eye on him. These self-contained episodes are fine just as long as they move the overall plot forward an inch at a time.
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John From Cincinnati—“His Visit: Day 6”
The Recap
Last week’s episode featured tons of mystical sermonizing by John, but this week is back to the character development. John excuses himself from Cass’ hotel room in the early morning, saying that he has to go talk with his father about big things. He ends up going back to the same empty elephant cage he often walks to and stands there all day, presumably communicating with his father in some manner.
Since John has shown up in Imperial Beach, Butchie Yost hasn’t shot up with any drugs. In fact, he doesn’t even want to anymore. He suits up and does some surfing in the early morning while Kai secretly watches. Butchie is cleaning up and appears ready to get back in the game and start surfing professionally again. Kai decides to push him along in his redemption by rescuing his old surfboards from storage.
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Dwayne, a nerd who maintains a website dedicated to the Yost family, stops by Butchie’s room at the motel and tells him that the website is pulling in a lot of hits ever since Shaun had his accident. He’s really psyched about the opportunity to make a website devoted to Shaun and help catapult the kid’s popularity skyward. Butchie humors Dwayne and takes him to meet with Shaun, but Shaun isn’t really in the mood to talk at the moment and ends up annoying both his father and Dwayne.
Shaun makes his way over to Bill’s house and admits that he wishes he had died in the accident instead of being brought back to life by Zippy. Bill is forced to comfort Shaun and actually open up for a change, something he hasn’t done since his wife’s death. Bill gives Shaun a little speech about love and loss and calms the kid down a bit.
Over at the Yosts’ surf shop, a lawyer from the hospital arrives with papers in tow. He wants Cissy to sign them. They absolve the hospital of any wrongdoing in the case of Shaun Yost. Cissy is wise enough to not sign the papers yet, intending to let Dickstein have a look at them. Another guest comes inside the surf shop when Palaka arrives. He received a tattoo earlier that day and the needle must have been dirty, because he has a very bad infection. Cissy begrudgingly takes him over to the motel, where Dr. Smith takes care of him.
Dr. Smith, Freddy, Barry and Cissy all show concern for Palaka and help him recover. Dr. Smith puts him in a bathtub full of ice and gets some antibiotics from a nearby pharmacy. As he attempts to nurse Palaka back to health, Dr. Smith wonders aloud whether he helps Palaka out of goodness or out of embarrassment over the fact that he resigned his position at the hospital to protect Shaun Yost. When Dickstein arrives, Cissy has him take a look at the papers sent by the hospital and is concerned that they offer no protection to Dr. Smith. It looks like the hospital might be gunning for him.
Butchie comes back to the motel and scores some dope on the way over. However, once he looks at it he decides he really doesn’t want it after all. Kai arrives with Butchie’s boards and tells him that it’s time for him to make something out of himself once again. Even Cissy can recognize that whatever is happening to Butchie is probably really good, so she refrains from yelling like a harpy.
Kai gives Butchie a ride over to Bill’s so he can pick up Shaun. They have a father-and-son conversation where Shaun wishes things could go back to normal. Butchie tells Shaun that the world doesn’t work that way and he’ll have to learn to embrace change instead of fighting it. Butchie and Shaun leave but thank Bill for his assistance before doing so. Bill is perched at the top of the stairs, something he hasn’t done in a very long time since his wife somehow died on those stairs.
While all of this has been going on, Linc Stark has been the victim of a mutiny within his company Stinkwood Inc. and ends up getting bought out for $65 million. That’s not a bad take for a day’s work. He forms a partnership with Tina and the two seem intent on somehow using Shaun Yost to make even more money.
John finishes his conversation with his father and ends up in a wet suit. He does his astral projection trick again and pays a little visit to Cissy, Cass, Bill and all the folks over at the hotel. As John watches, Dickstein traces the little symbol John always does with his feet into wet cement at the motel. He visits Cass as she’s watching the footage she filmed from two days ago and finally finds what she’s looking for. As she hugs John, he tells her once again that Shaun will soon be gone.
As the day ends, Butchie and Shaun walk into the water to surf and John joins them. Linc and Tina watch this occur and Linc offers Tina one of his millions if she can explain anything that’s going on around Imperial Beach. Amen.
The Review
After last week’s episode full of revelations and crazy stuff of all sorts, anything was going to be a letdown, but this episode was a real kick to the stomach. All the character interaction was nice, and it’s great to see the positive influence that John is starting to have on all the people around him, but a little more mystical stuff would have helped out greatly.
It’s interesting to discover that John’s “Shaun will soon be gone” proclamation he made in episode one apparently didn’t mean that Shaun would die and come back to life. Shaun will be gone for good soon and that should be welcome news to the large amount of people who despise the kid’s acting skills.
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ECW—Extreme Championship Wrestling
The Recap
John Morrison survived his second match with CM Punk and retained his title at the Great American Bash on Sunday. However, Morrison is a fighting champion and not one to rest on his laurels. To prove what a great champion he is, Morrison decided to invite a local superstar out to the ring for a contest. If the challenger can beat Morrison or survive 15 minutes in the ring with him, he’ll receive a shot at the ECW title. Of course, the challenger is a nobody who weighs 50 pounds less than Morrison and quickly gets defeated.
The second contest of the night saw Stevie Richards take on the vampire wannabe, Kevin Thorn. In one of the biggest shockers in ECW history, Stevie Richards actually won with a quick roll-up out of nowhere! This is probably the first time in the span of a year that Stevie Richards has won. He’s on the right track now! It’s only a matter of time before Stevie wins the ECW title and defends it against CM Punk in yet another rematch.
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The Miz took on Nunzio in the third match of the evening and invited Extreme Expose out to the ring to see him take out the Italian cruiserweight. His time spent on millions of “Real World/Road Rules Challenges” has obviously given the Miz the training necessary to defeat wrestlers from a much smaller division. After taking out Nunzio, the Miz invited Extreme Expose into the ring for a post-match celebration and surprised the world by dancing much better than any of them.
Big Daddy V decided to thrill the audience with his supple bosom in the fourth match. He used his considerable bulk to defeat yet another nameless opponent who will never be seen again. Matt Striker accompanied Big Daddy V to ringside and sat in on commentary, telling Tazz and Joey Styles how great his new prized protégé really is. Naturally, Big Daddy V prevailed and then celebrated with a post-match feast of deep-fried Twinkies and corndogs.
In the final match of the evening, CM Punk teamed up with ECW original Tommy Dreamer to take on John Morrison and Elijah Burke. The match began with CM Punk demanding to face off against John Morrison and receiving his wish, although the beating wasn’t as one-sided as Punk might have hoped. The two teams valiantly battled back and forth, but ultimately CM Punk once again prevailed by pinning Elijah Burke. Someday Burke will win. Someday.
The Review
Stevie Richards won a match. That’s about all it takes to make this one of the best episodes of “ECW” in a very long time. The undercard matches are usually a complete waste of time because guys like Kevin Thorn never lose, but letting guys like Stevie steal a victory every once in a while keeps things fresh and interesting. Thorn has been winning for months and no one cares about him at all, so why not give Stevie Richards a chance?
John Morrison isn’t very good on the microphone, but he’s doing a decent job as a heel and a foil for CM Punk. If only they’d let CM Punk use a microphone as well, maybe this feud would really go somewhere. Maybe they just don’t want Morrison to look bad when CM Punk dominates him on the microphone.
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