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We catch you up on this week’s episodes of your favorite programs!
By Wade Gum |
Posted June 22, 2007 10:40 AM |
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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John From Cincinnati—“His Visit: Day 2”
The Recap
In last week’s episode, Shaun missed out on the surfing competition because of family troubles, but unscrupulous surfing sponsor Linc isn’t about to let his latest can’t-miss prospect fade away so easily. He visits the Yost family at their home and gives them his sales pitch. He promises that he won’t make the same mistakes with Shaun that he made with his father Butchie. With his connections, he can’t get Shaun back into the competition even though he missed the first day. Mitch agrees to go with the devil he knows and gives Linc permission to enter Shaun into the competition.
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As for Butchie, he’s still having fun with the mysterious John and trying to figure out just what is up with this guy. John continues to merely parrot back everything that is said to him and has to be led around by the hand constantly. Butchie takes John to meet Vietnam Joe, but the two have already met. Butchie tries to ask John questions about his past, but John only replies, “What do you want, Butchie Yost?” Butchie decides to take advantage of that platinum card John carries and buys a cornucopia of liquor at the local gas station. Since John has no idea how to even walk around traffic, Butchie guesses that John is from a smaller town. He asks John if he’s from Cincinnati, which John enthusiastically parrots back.
Butchie and John head back to the Snug Harbor Motel. Barry Cunningham returns there after his blowup the previous day and tries to make good with Ramon and Meyer. Barry claims he had a vision last night and will no longer tear down the hotel. He also thinks he needs to take up surfing. Feeling confident, he decides to check out Room 24, which we know has a shady history thanks to John’s prophecies. Barry can only manage to open the door before he runs away from the room and claims it’s haunted.
When Butchie and John arrive at the motel, Freddy is waiting for them. Freddy is Butchie’s dealer from Hawaii and is ready to beat him up for the unflattering messages Butchie left him yesterday. After hitting Butchie, Freddy asks if John wants some too. John parrots back that he does, so Freddy hits him in the face. Immediately afterwards, a small earthquake occurs throughout the area.
Shaun, who was handily winning the surfing competition, is knocked off his board during the earthquake and fails to resurface. Mitch and Cissy rush to rescue their grandson. Shaun breaks his neck in the accident and has to be airlifted to the hospital. Mitch gives Butchie a call and yells at him for not being there for Shaun, informing him of the accident. Freddy may be a jerk, but he’s still human. He gives Butchie and John a ride to the hospital. That’s the type of caring service you don’t get from most drug dealers.
The doctors inform Mitch and Cissy that Shaun is paralyzed. Also, the amount of time he spent underwater resulted in catastrophic brain damage. Shaun is effectively brain dead. The doctor says that more tests will have to be done, but an agonized Mitch doesn’t see the point in prolonging Shaun’s suffering. Mitch wants to go ahead and pull the plug, but Cissy refuses to. Mitch leaves the hospital just as Butchie and John arrive.
Also making his way to the hospital is Bill, whose bird was seemingly resurrected by Shaun yesterday. Bill smuggles Zippy the bird into the hospital. Bill knows that what he’s thinking is insane and out of this world, but it’s worth a shot. He has Zippy give Shaun a little kiss just like on the previous day and afterwards Shaun’s eyes open. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” exclaims Bill. Indeed.
The Review
The mystery deepens! This week’s episode featured a lot more mystical elements than last week. There was no levitation, but we did see the healing power of a bird and the earthshaking powers of John. It’s interesting to note that the healing powers involved with Zippy and Shaun don’t involve John. In fact, none of the powers exhibited by the Yost clan seem to be that connected to John. Perhaps John merely acts as a catalyst for triggering their powers. The show isn’t exactly subtle in pointing out that Butchie isn’t suffering from withdrawal symptoms now that John is here.
So what does that make John? Is he an alien? A prophet? A magical wood nymph? He’s like a child dropped into a strange world in the way that he’s picking up the language and observing the movements of others in order to function. The only thing we know about him for sure is that he has magical pockets and an obsession with the Yost clan.
It was fun to see some familiar “Deadwood” actors this week on another David Milch show. It’s hard to imagine Dayton Callie playing anyone but Charlie Utter, but he did a great job as the profanity-spewing drug dealer from Butchie’s past. Maybe if we cross our fingers we’ll get to see appearances by Robin Weigert (Calamity Jane) and Keone Young (Mr. Wu).
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Traveler—“The Tells”
The Recap
It’s been 54 hours since the Drexler Building was bombed. Last week, Jay and Tyler finally ran into Will Traveler, but everyone else who’s been looking for him did as well. Some mysterious thugs in a white van pulled up and kidnapped Will, but not before the Porter shot him in the leg with a tracking device. Jay and Tyler force Porter to take them along in a high-speed pursuit of Will, but the thugs find the tracking device and cut it out of Will’s leg with a knife, allowing them to get away.
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Jay and Tyler are forced to separate from Porter when they come under fire. The only lead they have is the key that Maya gave them, so Jay follows up on it by taking the key to an antiques dealer. The only thing he learns is that the key is over a hundred years old. Tyler searches Will’s van and finds a boat reservation receipt for the next day. The two figure that Will might have been taking that boat to wherever the key belongs and head toward the harbor.
After talking to a few people in Boston, Jay discovers that the key belongs to one of the research lockers down at the Boston library. Inside the locker, Tyler finds tons of Will’s passports with different identities on each of them and a pistol. He piles all the stuff in a black garbage bag and leaves. After pouring through some of Will’s records from the locker, they discover that all his expenses were paid by a certain company. They research the company on the Internet to try and learn more about them, but there isn’t much information to find outside of an insider trading scandal.
The FBI seems to be smartening up in the meantime. Fred Chambers is still gung-ho about apprehending Jay and Tyler, but Agents Jan and Borjes are following up the Will Traveler lead. They discover that the dead body thought to be Traveler that was recovered in the Drexler was actually dead before the explosion. Whoever Will Traveler is, he’s not the smoldering corpse. Inside Will’s apartment, the two agents find a cleanup man destroying evidence. They take him into custody, but he isn’t talking. Later, the prisoner finds a way to vanish from his cell like Houdini and kill a guard in the process.
As for Will, he is taken to a hotel room by the people he did the job for. A woman named Kate interrogates him about what went wrong on the job. Jay and Tyler were supposed to die as part of the assignment, but she has proof that Will pulled the fire alarm and helped them get to safety. Will is also responsible for that charred corpse that the FBI was investigating. The agency didn’t think Will would be able to pull off the job, so they sent someone else to activate the bomb in the Drexler. Will used his secret agent kung-fu powers to kill the other operative, breaking his neck.
Kate needs Will to talk about the painting that he stole from the gallery, but he denies doing so. Will refuses to talk, so the agency takes his girlfriend Maya into custody and begins some Jack Bauer-style torture on her to loosen Will’s lips. In a flashback we learn that Will tried to deactivate the bomb before stealing the painting. Will tells Kate that he stole the painting as collateral to save himself should the agency come after him. He reveals that he stashed the painting in a car at LaGuardia Airport, but that doesn’t save Maya’s life—she died two hours ago. Will had been listening to a recording the whole time.
An angry Will uses his awesome fighting skills to break the chair he’s tied to, jump his cuffs and attack Kate. She may have a Taser, but he has a broken piece of a chair and that’s enough for him. The two wrestle back and forth for a bit before Will stabs her in the chest. He takes the Taser for himself and leaves the room. He discovers that he wasn’t in a hotel at all, but in a warehouse with a fake hotel room construct. Also, when one of the agency’s goons opens the car trunk in LaGuardia, he finds a bomb instead of a painting and goes up in flames. Oh, the layers of deception!
The Review
We got a very strong episode this week. Up until now, Will Traveler has been a faceless antagonist with no real character development or background. We didn’t know if he really cared about Jay and Tyler or if he was just a ruthless mastermind. Now we’ve learned about his training, what he did on the day of the bombing and what he’s capable of now. We just need to learn a bit more about the agency he’s working for and the Porter for things to make better sense.
Since so much time was spent on Will, Jay and Tyler didn’t do much this episode besides spin their wheels. It was nice that at the end of the episode, they vowed to show Will that he framed the wrong two men. It would be best if this was the last time the pair stumbled onto yet another stash of items that Will left behind. The guy certainly left a lot of clues behind for a guy looking to flee the country.
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WWE Monday Night Raw
The Recap
Last week, we lost our beloved chairman when Vince McMahon perished after a horrendous limo explosion. We took the time to mourn; now it’s time to point fingers of accusation and figure out who killed Mr. McMahon! The show begins with Mick Foley, Randy Orton, King Booker, Bobby Lashley and John Cena all confronting each other in the ring. Of the five, Lashley had the motive and training to take out McMahon, but any of the men involved could have done it. Coincidentally, all five of these men will also take part in the WWE championship match at Vengeance this Sunday. Coach declares that we’ll get a Vengeance preview as Lashley and Cena will take on King Booker and Orton in tag-team action later in the night.
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The first match of the night sees former “Smackdown” tag champions Brian Kendrick and Paul London face off against the World’s Greatest Tag Team, Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haas. Eh, they’re not that great because they lose in less than five minutes. Can we go ahead and consolidate all the tag teams on one brand already, or at least have only one set of titles?
Carlito makes his way down to the ring to brag about his recent exploits. He beat up on both Torrie Wilson and Ric Flair. Now, both of them are on “Smackdown.” Carlito reigns supreme! One of “Raw’s” newest acquisitions, the Sandman, doesn’t take kindly to braggarts and makes his way through the crowd with a beer and a cane in his hand. Carlito turns tail and runs because he’s not stupid enough to do battle with a grown man who cuts his forehead to shreds by banging beer cans against it.
Another new “Raw” recruit makes his debut in the second match, as Daivari wrestles against Jeff Hardy. “Raw” tag champions Lance Cade and Trevor Murdoch come to ringside for commentary as they talk trash about the Hardy brothers. Jeff easily wins the match, after which the tag champions take a microphone and rip on the Hardys for their lack of sportsmanship. Jeff gives them a plancha over the ropes for their troubles. At Vengeance, the Hardy Boys (who are on separate brands, but it doesn’t matter for some reason) will face Cade and Murdoch for the titles.
A federal investigator is backstage, looking into the mysterious death of Mr. McMahon. Vince’s limo driver is interviewed about his experience. According to the driver, he received a call from his wife and left the limo unattended. After he heard the explosion, he rushed back to the scene to witness the carnage. Just think, an innocent limo driver could have perished in that explosion!
Mick Foley’s punishment for disrespecting Vince is a match against the Samoan wrecking machine, Umaga. Mick Foley may want to go back into retirement after this one, as Umaga beats the stuffing out of him with any foreign object he can find. After getting brutalized with the ring steps, Foley goes woozy and the referee calls off the match. Hey, Randy Orton is the only guy supposed to be dishing out concussions on “Raw”!
One of “Raw’s” biggest draftees, Mr. Kennedy, makes his way down to the ring. He insults the “Raw” crowd by calling them even more dreadful than the people who watch “Smackdown.” Kennedy says he’s insulted to have to perform in front of people who don’t appreciate the greatness of Vince McMahon and honor him for his actions. From this moment forward, Kennedy says he will dedicate all his matches to the memory of Vincent Kennedy McMahon.
The quality of the matches thus far isn’t that good, so why not throw in a women’s tag match to make it even worse? Women’s champion Melina teams up with Jillian Hall to take on Mickie James and Candice Michelle. Mickie gets a very big reaction from her hometown crowd, but that momentum isn’t enough for the good girls to prevail over Melina and Jillian.
The main event begins, and it seems there’s no way Cena and Lashley can lose. Both of them triumph over all odds in a Hulk Hogan manner and destroy everyone in their path. Then again, there’s a pay-per-view this week and the WWE needs to make it look like Cena actually has a chance of losing. Therefore, Orton and King Booker take the win with some innovative teamwork. Of course, this means Cena will retain his title on Sunday. Women and children will cheer and men will boo. This is the way things must always go.
The Review
With the death of Vince McMahon angle, it looks like every week will be Mr. McMahon appreciation week. Stephanie McMahon announced that we’ll have yet another three-hour “Raw” next week with superstars from all three brands. It really devalues the idea of the draft when you have every superstar on “Raw” week in and week out, but it also increases ratings, so there’s no way the WWE is going to stop doing it.
Everything seems to be in holding mode until Vengeance, so nothing much happened this week. The “who killed Vince McMahon?” angle will dominate the show for weeks to come, but these types of storylines never have satisfactory endings. For evidence of that, go watch the “ultimate power” angle where Vince McMahon was revealed as the mastermind, the “who ran over Stone Cold?” angle where Rikishi was revealed as the culprit and the “who drove the Hummer?” angle where, uh, no one was ever revealed as the culprit.
There are enough talented wrestlers on “Raw” now to give John Cena a decent opponent instead of matching him up against mute monsters like Umaga and the Great Khali. Then again, they could just have him wrestle Snitsky. Let’s hope they get that angle out of the way before they switch over to HD cameras, because no one needs to see Snitsky’s back acne in high definition.
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