- Who doesn’t enjoy a good love triangle? If you don’t, then tonight’s Greek wasn’t the show for you. The first triangle involved Cappie, his ex Casey and her current boyfriend Max. After finding herself in a women’s studies/politics class with Cappie and having conflict resolution as a topic of discussion, Casey was inspired to quell the hostilities between Cappie and Max, who clearly don’t like each other (as evidenced by Cappie twice calling Max a douche bag). After trading barbs most of the episode, Casey tries to talk both into settling their feud for her sake, as per advice from her women’s studies teacher (Janeane Garofolo, making the rounds as a guest star this TV season). Casey inadvertently makes the situation worse by tricking both guys into meeting her at the same time at Dobler’s so they can talk, but both leave in a huff. Later, Max agrees to settle the dispute because he loves Casey and would do anything for her and Cappie does the same to keep her as a friend. Yet as they have it out in the basement of the Kappa Tau house at a party, Max and Cappie realize they have too many issues with one another to ever be friends. They settle for the next best thing: faking it. They pretend to be fast friends to fool Casey, who pretends to buy their act even though she sees right through it. Her little brother Rusty finds himself in a love triangle of his own after meeting Jordan, a new girl who has just transferred to Cyprus Rhodes, in his art history class. Rusty, Dale and Calvin are all taking the class to meet their liberal arts requirement, but when Rusty spots Jordan and offers to get her a syllabus from the front of the room because she arrived late, he trips and falls down the stairs scattering the projector and slides the professor had been using. After class, Jordan runs to catch up to Rusty to make sure he’s okay after his fall. He’s bleeding slightly from the head and seems to score some sympathy points. Jordan confesses that he’s the first friend she’s met at CRU and asks for direction to the social sciences building. Rusty directs her to the right place and clearly believes he’s met the successor to his previous girlfriend, the notorious Jen K. Two days later Rusty is excited to see Jordan in class again but when the hour passes and she doesn’t show up, he’s disappointed. She bursts into the room as everyone else is leaving and asks the professor if she can watch his lecture online so she doesn’t fall behind in the class. The professors scoffs at the suggestion, lamenting that the Internet is where art goes to die. With a technologically backwards prof, Jordan appears screwed until Rusty volunteers to stay behind and run through the slides with her using his notes. “You’re awesome,” she exclaims. “I’m awesome,” Rusty repeats to his disinterested professor. The two go over the slides together and seem to forge a connection, at which point Rusty asks if he can ask Jordan a question. She expects him to ask her out, but instead he asks if she’s interested in joining a sorority. Rusty poses this question because after learning about his new crush, Casey and BFF/ZBZ president Ashleigh press Rusty to invite Jordan to pledge ZBZ because they are still short on pledges. Jordan agrees to attend the ZBZ-KT party to check things out and when she shows up, Rusty links her up with Casey and Ashleigh. He doesn’t see her for a while and when Rusty goes to track down his new crush, he’s devastated to see her making out with KT pledge Andy, the same Andy that Rusty vouched for as a pledge and brought into the ZBZ house. A crushed Rusty proceeds to down multiple Jell-O shots to wash away the pain - or at least dull it. As for Calvin, he finds himself in two tough spots, none of which are as part of a triangle. First, he finds out that his new roommate at the Omega Chi house is basically a sex addict and has a girl over every night to hook up, meaning Calvin is trapped in the same room as the two and can’t get any sleep. He pleads with Omega Chi president and fraternity big brother Evan for help, but Evan appears preoccupied and tells him to buy some ear plugs. Desperate for sleep, Calvin asks to crash on the couch at Rusty and Dale’s new off-campus apartment. He’s welcome there (where Dale is busy becoming a mini-Martha Stewart in the kitchen, cooking up all manner of odd Southern cuisine), but just as he settles in a phone call from Evan sends him out in the middle of the night to a small motel in nearby. Evan comes stumbling out of the motel and into the SUV, where Calvin asks what the heck is going on. Evan doesn’t give a straight answer, makes up a story about his car being stolen and then is tracked down by some random girl who comes out of the same room he just left. He promises to call her the next day before ordering Calvin to “just drive” and get them out of there ASAP. Things are no less strange at the ZBZ house, where a new “hasher” has been hired to do chores around the house, cook, clean, etc. The hasher turns out to be a cute guy who every girl in the house immediately begins hitting on. The overwhelmed guy turns to Ashleigh for help in fending off the sisters, as he’s been fired from the same gig at three previous sororities because of the same problem and the resulting catfights between sisters. She obliges and makes up a lie about him having a) a girlfriend and b) an STD, but clearly there is a connection between the two of them. Eventually Ashleigh admits she doesn’t want to keep protecting him by lying about him having a girlfriend and the two end up making out in the kitchen. Overall, a pretty fun episode and more than a few fun Cappie moments, including him squaring off with the women’s studies professor and also Rusty trying to stomach Dale’s awful cooking. So until next week…….
- You must be verrrry excited about your team’s offseason so far, Buffalo Bills fans. When your team signing Terrell Owens is the least dramatic and most ho-hum thing that’s gone down personnel-wise, you just might be in a bit of trouble. First, star running back Marshawn Lynch was suspended for the first three games of the upcoming season by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell after a conviction on a gun charge. Now, Bills safety Donte Whitner has been arrested in downtown Cleveland after police tried to break up a "near riot" in front of the House of Blues. Now I know what you’re asking….famous athlete, involved in a near riot and was arrested…and the answer is yes. Of course Whitner was Tased! He’s a pro athlete who had a run-in with the cops, of course they had to use the Taser on him. Cleveland Police officers used a Taser to subdue Whitner, who was arrested for aggravated disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. No charges have been filed yet and Whitner was released Saturday afternoon, but that’s secondary at this point. “I regret the incident that occurred last evening," Whitner said in a statement. “It's not how I wish to conduct myself. And I apologize to all those involved.” Your words say one thing, but you actions say another Donte. Whitner was actually in the area of Cleveland known as the Flats, where he was attending a birthday party for his Glenville High teammate Ted Ginn Jr., a receiver for the Miami Dolphins. According to a statement from the Cleveland Police Department, a brawl erupted outside the club at about 3 a.m. Off-duty officers tried to quell the unrest, but Whitner allegedly forced his way into an area where he was told not to go. When officers temporarily restrained him, he resisted, he broke free and squared off to fight. “Whitner began swinging his arms in a violent manner and, when restrained by officers, he broke free and took a fighting stance,” the statement read. “An officer then deployed his Taser on Whitner, debilitating him enough that officers were able to place him in handcuffs."” Swinging his arms wildly…..are we sure he wasn’t just doing his impression of Will Ferrell as Jackie Moon in the classic basketball comedy Semi-Pro? Then again, D. Whitner does have a history of being an ass in a violent sense. In 2006, he was arrested for non-criminal harassment of his live-in girlfriend in suburban Buffalo. So enough with the apologies, Donte. Step your game up, stop acting like an idiot and looking to throw down with the cops and maybe you won't find yourself in these predicaments……
- Raise your hand if you’re surprised to hear that a pilot who flew for rocker Tommy Lee had his pilot’s license stripped by a Gardena, Calif. judge because he videotaped a sex act while flying over San Diego? Anyone? No one? Didn’t think so. The shocker would have been if someone rolling with Tommy Lee hadn’t made a sex tape of themselves. National Transportation Safety Board administrative law Judge William R. Mullins clearly didn’t find the act by pilot David Martz amusing and backed up a Federal Aviation Administration order revoking Martz's license due to gross negligence. As always, always happens with sex tapes, the footage somehow surfaced showing Martz allowing a porn star to perform a sex act while he was flying over San Diego. A porn star on a Tommy Lee flight? No way. Martz tried to go the contrite route and told the judge during a special NTSB hearing Tuesday that he's 'sorry' and he's 'learned his lesson'. He also promised never to do it again, which may not be a problem he has to cope with because I doubt dude ever gets his license back. The FAA is clearly livid at what he did, so much so that an FAA attorney testified that the act was so 'reckless and irresponsible' it doesn't matter if he's changed. Not that Martz agrees with any of this - he plans to appeal the ruling. Perhaps he’s forgotten about that little incident in 1986 when his license was revoked after the FAA discovered he had a fraudulent medical certificate. It was eventually reinstated, but suspended again in 2002 for 30 days for flying in a "careless or reckless manner." Same thing happened the very next year when the FAA revoked his license for the same offense -- "careless and reckless," and ditto for June 2005, when, his license was suspended -- for the fourth time -- 230 days for "careless and reckless" behavior. My man, I’m not a lawyer but I’ll go out on a limb here and say that a) you’re not a very safe pilot and b) you don’t have much of a case……….
- Ladies out there, if you want to learn how to be a good mom, pay close attention to this next story. Sherri L. Turner, 46, of Kearney, Mo. has some important lessons to teach you. When Turner’s teenage daughter and one of the girl’s friend were having trouble with some kids in their neighborhood, Turner could have done what most of you would have done, namely tell their kid to walk away, tell the teacher if it happened at school or perhaps even call the parents of the other kids and try to resolve things. She could have done that, but instead Turner elected to pound three beers and then drive her daughter and her daughter’s friend to a fight with several other teenagers and encourage the fight as it happened. According to court documents, Turner admitted to drinking three beers Tuesday around 5:30 p.m. before allowing another teenage girl to drive her and her 16-year-old daughter to meet several other girls at an abandoned bridge at 172nd and Bishop Road in Kearney. For some reason, someone videotaped the fight and that video proved to be damning enough evidence for police to arrest Turner and charge her with endangering the welfare of a child in the first degree. According to police, a video of the incident shows Turner encouraging her daughter and another girl while they continually hit and punched a different girl, who at times was on the ground being held by her attackers. She didn’t just watch either; Turner could be heard on the video coaching the girls, all age 16 and 17, while the fight continued. Of course, that’s not the story she told the cops. She claimed to them that she asked the girls to move away from her car at one point in the fight and that she tried to break up the fight after the camera was turned off. Riiiiight. Very convenient. You just happened to step in to stop the fight that you drove two of the participants to right after the camera was turned off. Don’t bother claiming that you were too scared to break up the fight any earlier, because no one’s buying it. I don’t know if this was some weird spin-off of “Bum Fights” videos, kinda like “Teen Girl Fights,” but whatever your reasoning for your role in this (cough….ahem….cough…..alcohol), you f’d up and now you have to pay the price……
- Heroes managed to do two things very well tonight: 1) explain a lot of back stories and history that brings a lot of what has happened in the show’s first three seasons into focus and 2) continue to keep a whole lot of key characters off the screen yet again, continuing the disjointed, irregular and erratic flow the series has managed to maintain the past two seasons. Nothing can be done about the second point, so let’s stick with the first. As members of the Petrelli family continue digging up bodies at the Coyote Sands camp in New Mexico, the story of what happened there emerges via flashbacks to Angela Petrelli’s childhood. In 1961, she and her family came to the camp along with other people with powers (PWP) because the government promised it could cure them. The camp was run by Dr. Chandra Suresh, Mohinder’s father. Suresh put the PWP through tests and tried out experimental treatments on them, but things didn’t go as planned. For one, Angela’s younger sister Alice had an unknown power of her own, to control the weather. Also, Angela joined forces with several other teens at the camp who didn’t trust Suresh or the government. Among the group were two faces we’ve known previously on the series and who have died, Charles Linderman and Charles Deveaux. Along with another teen PWP named Bobby Bishop, those two and Angela hatched a plan to escape, figure out where they were and find a way to come back to the camp and liberate everyone there. Deveaux likened it to the concentration camps the Nazis used in World War II or the internment campus the U.S. used for Japanese people around the same time. The night of the planned escape, Angela lied and told Alice that she’d be safe in the camp and that her big sister would come back for her. Yet as Angela and her cohorts sat inside the Coyote Sands Diner plotting their next move and enjoying a return to society, a report of a massive storm and flooding at the camp came over the radio and Angela knew Alice was responsible. Before they fled, two key things happened: first, the foundations of the group known as the Company were laid to do whatever was necessary - kill, erase memories, destroy files and information - to prevent anything like the camp at Coyote Sands from happening again, and second Charles revealed his own power to use his speech to make people do anything he wanted. He did so to make the diner’s cook forget about seeing Charles and Angela dancing, which was forbidden because Charles was black. But the fun evening came to a stop when the emergency bulletin came in. Back at the camp, Dr. Suresh had tried to inject Alice with some sort of experimental drug and she freaked out, unleashing the massive storm. In the chaos, Alice ran out of the building and her father came out to help her. When Suresh slapped the girl Alice’s father unveiled his own power to emit an electrical wave from his hand and knocked Suresh to the ground. One of the camp’s guards then opened fire on him and from there everything went down the crapper. People were killed either by the storm or the gunfire and in the end, all of the bodies that were uncovered in 2007 met their end. Being back at Coyote Sands brought back those memories for Angela, who admitted that she had been dreaming about her sister. When a similar storm hit the abandoned camp in the present, Angela confessed that she believed Alice was still alive and behind this storm as well. She ventured out of the building she and Claire had been in and wandered out into the storm, after which the winds ceased and calm skies returned. While Angela was gone, everyone else at the camp had plenty of issues to deal with on their own. Peter still wasn’t over his problems with his family and when he learned that Angela had withheld the truth about her sister from him, he flew away and ended up at the same diner his mother had fled to from the same camp nearly 50 years ago. Nathan followed and pleaded with Peter to forgive him for his ill-fated efforts to create the government agency to round up PWP and send them off to camps not so dissimilar to Coyote Sands. Peter explained that he was trying to forgive Nathan but hadn’t found a way to yet. By the time Nathan talked his brother into going back to the camp, Angela had disappeared. Nathan also had to have a tough, awkward conversation with Claire and her adopted father H.R.G. With both of her dads in the same place, Claire lamented the life she was now living and not being able to be a normal teenager. She wistfully spoke of once dreaming to be a doctor, not an agent tracking dangerous PWP like she had become. Around the same time, Mohinder arrived at Coyote Sands from New York and was eager to figure out what role his father had played at the camp. When H.R.G. filled in a few of the blanks, a horrified Mohinder began to paint himself in the same dark light as his father for experimenting on PWP just like Papa Suresh. Peter and H.R.G. both tried to talk him out of the pity party, but Mohinder couldn’t shake the guilt. That guilt turned out to be nothing compared with what Angela felt when she woke up inside some bizarre bunker/bomb shelter filled with books, canned goods and other junk. She roused herself in time to hear footsteps coming down the stairs and couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw a woman about her age who strongly resembled her sister Alice. The sisters had an emotional reunion in which Alice explained that she had stayed near the camp all these years because of Angela’s promise that she’d be safe there. She’d stole what she needed to survive and felt that by staying there, she was also protecting the world from her power. Angela coaxed Alice into telling her what happened at the camp the night of the escape and the truth horrified her. She tried to console Alice and seemed on the verge of getting her to come with the rest of the family to leave the camp when one false move blew a hole in the plan. Angela admitted to lying to Alice bacj in 1961 about having a dream that Alice would be safe at the camp and that revelation set Alice off. She unleashed her power to create a violent storm, a storm that engulfed Peter and Mohinder as they came inside the bunker. Mohinder was struck by lightning and Peter took a hit as well, but when he tried to protect Angela she insisted on trying to talk to Alice and calm her down. The attempt succeeds, but when Angela again asks Alice to leave the camp with her, Alice refuses and disappears. Having gotten what they came for, the Petrelli family leaves camp. Mohinder decides that he needs to stay behind and figure out all the thoughts and guilt running through his mind, but everyone else heads to the diner for a meal and a strategy session. Peter takes the lead and explains that they can’t form a new Company, but rather need to function as a family as they attempt to put the lid back on their secret, their powers and their lives so they can go back to a normal existence. Nathan steps up to say that he’s going to go back to Washington to take responsibility for his PWP-apprehension program run amok, but as he makes that promise, someone looking exactly like him appears on the TV in the diner at a D.C. press conference. H.R.G. recognizes it as Sylar using his new shape-shifting power, then everyone watches in disbelief as Sylar/Nathan fields questions and makes promises about how he plans to revolutionize the nation. With only two episodes left this season, should be interesting to see how this all comes together. Hopefully the next two episodes won’t totally omit characters like Hiro, Ando, Matt Parkman, Emile Danko and Sylar, but the way Heroes has gone this season, you just never know…..
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