- The Cartwrights didn’t have a banner night on Greek tonight, but I guess every episode can’t be all happy and all laughs. For Rusty, his decision to kiss his crush (and the girlfriend of his fraternity little brother Andy) Jordan when they attended a wedding together proved to be a huge problem. Andy could tell something had happened at the wedding because Jordan was acting weird around him, but she wouldn’t tell him anything. Jordan and Rusty talked about their problem before their art history class together and agreed to pretend like the kiss never happened, but when Andy presses Rusty as to what happened at the wedding, Rusty tells him the truth. Andy is livid and feels betrayed and Jordan is pissed at him for not continuing to lie and say that nothing happened. She explains to Rusty that they simply can’t be friends anymore. The tension between Rusty and Andy causes problems at the Kappa Tau house, which is experiencing an emergency of its own. When an Omega Chi pledge breaks into the KT basement on some sort of dare and spots a stolen Omega Chi artifact - the bust of the fraternity’s founder - in the room, the KT’s discover a cache of stolen artifacts pilfered from all over campus over the past several decades. Omega Chi president Evan Chambers stops by to demand the return of the bust and gives the KT’s 24 hours to comply, which spurs KT president Cappie to come up with an alternative plan - after he and several brothers finish playing with a couple of stolen swords belonging to the archaeology department. The plan was to return all of the stolen items - some dating back 50 years - to their rightful owners in case Evan decided to rat them out to the cops, leading to a search of the entire KT house. Brothers were sent all over campus to return the items - the athletic department, archaeology, a professor’s home, etc. - and for the most part, the errands were successful. However, things turned for the worst when Andy was assigned to return a historical football to the athletic department and Rusty volunteered to go with him, seemingly to try and begin mending their strained friendship. The plan backfires when Rusty tries to get Andy to let his frustration out and without thinking, Andy slings his arm forward, chucking the football through a glass display case in the main hallway of the athletic department. Both of them run for it when the alarm goes off, but campus police snag them and they’re taken into custody. Rusty gets 50 hours of community service for his troubles, while the football coach is able to help Andy get out of any further punishment. Still, the incident gets him thinking about his status with KT. Realizing that he’s been partying too much, struggling with classes and lagging in his responsibilities with the football team, Andy decides that being in a fraternity just isn’t worth it - oh, and his frat big brother kissing his lady friend may have been a factor too. Regardless, Andy turns in his pledge pin and quits KT, forcing Rusty to explain to Cappie the reasons why. A disappointed Cappie admits he expected better from the guy he calls Spitter. As for Casey, she’s still trying to digest the reality that boyfriend Max gave up a great graduate assistant opportunity at Cal Tech to stay at Cyprus Rhodes with her. When she drops by to see him in his office, she finds that the grumpy professor he works for has relegated him to a broom closet and has Max swamped under a pile of papers to grade. Later that day, Max is finally able to shake free from work and meets Casey for a date. He wants to see his favorite movie, Weird Science, but she wants to go to Dobler’s. As they engage in a cute back-and-forth debate on things each of them has done to compromise with the other, Max slips up and jokingly mentions the sore spot about giving up the position at Cal Tech. He means it as a joke, but Casey takes it more seriously. As they hang out at Dobler’s, she brings the topic up again and suggests that Max try to land another prestigious research opportunity that a famous professor is on campus interviewing candidates for. Max explains that he can’t even interview for the position, which entails spending a month in Oxford researching some cutting-edge polymer technology, because his boorish professor won't give him the recommendation he needs ot get a meeting with Professor Stephanopoulos, who is doing the interviews. Casey suggests an alternate plan: crashing a reception that Max’s professor is hosting for Stephanopoulos at his house the next night. Because Max isn’t on the guest list, Casey must scheme with Rusty’s roommate Dale, of all people. Dale works as a student assistant for the same professor that Max is a grad assistant under and Dale is in charge of the guest list for the reception. Despite his new love interest (cougar landlady for he and Rusty’s apartment complex, Sheila), Dale agrees to help Casey and takes her as his guest to the event. She then sneaks Max in and plans to chat up Professor Stephanopoulos, hand her Max’s resume and find a way to get him that research position. Stephanopoulos sees right through the plan because she’s gotten the same treatment from many students seeking the position, so Casey changes her tact. She pretends to be a professor that Max works for who doesn’t want him to get the Oxford research position. She realizes that Stephanopoulos is the sort of person who wants what she can’t have and when she thinks Max is off limits to her, she wants him. The plan works when Stephanopoulos sees Max talking to his real professor, asks about him and finally gets some face time. She offers Max the gig at Oxford, good news he then shares with Casey. She suggests that maybe the time apart will do them both some good since she’s been feeling a bit behind in their relationship. Still, when Max leaves the next day, Casey is extremely sad to see him go and leans on Rusty for consoling. He’s dealing with his own love troubles, but manages to be there for his sister. Elsewhere, Casey’s ZBZ sis Ashleigh is trying to figure out how to keep her secret relationship with ZBZ “hasher” (basically, errand boy/cook) Fisher working. He wants to go public and have a normal relationship, but Ashleigh has her doubts. For one, she worries what her ZBZ sisters will think of their president dating a sorority employee. Second, she worries that once their relationship becomes public and more normal, it might get boring. At first, she agrees to a public date but cheats by going on the date to Gentleman’s Choice, the local gay bar that is having it’s Ladies Night, meaning an entire crowd of lesbians, all so no ZBZ sisters will be there to see the date. Fisher sees through the ploy and leaves, saying he wants more than to be just Ashleigh’s “boy toy.” As he leaves, in walks ZBZ sister Rebecca Logan. She’s there with Omega Chi brother Calvin because she’s having questions about her sexuality (i.e. is she a lesbian after kissing a girl last week and liking it) and as the show’s resident gay guy, he can give her advice. He suggests going to Gentleman’s Choice on Ladies’ Night and surprisingly enough, they meet Ashleigh there. The trio talks about their issues and Ashleigh and Rebecca learn one another’s secrets. Rebecca realizes that she is into girls and decides to call Robin Wiley, the former ZBZ sister she kissed last week. Ashleigh has an epiphany of her own, realizing it’s time to go public about her relationship with Fisher rather than risk losing him. The next day, both girls announce trheir decisions in front of their ZBZ sisters during breakfast, but much to their surprise, the sisters are okay with both revelations. Oh, and as for the KT quest to return all of the stolen items….the plan goes awry when the campus police catch Rusty and Andy and also an off-duty campus cop spots KT brother Wade trying to return two stolen disco balls to Gentleman’s Choice. The officer arrives at the KT house with Wade just in time to find the Omega Chi’s showing up to reclaim their founder’s bust and questions Cappie about the suspicious rash of returned items, specifically about the KT’s being found returning at least two of them. He threatens to dig into what’s going on, expose their misdeeds, shut down their house and see to it that every KT brother is expelled. Evan Chambers has the chance to bury the KT’s by telling what he knows, but surprisingly elects to keep quiet. The Omega Chi’s leave and the officer exits as well, leaving the KT’s to fight another day. Like I said, not a laugh-filled episode and a little heartbreak to deal with, but it’s been a really great season of Greek and this episode kept that going…….
- At least French tennis player Richard Gasquet didn’t test positive for steroids. Of course, Gasquet has admitted to testing positive for cocaine, so I’ll allow you to judge for yourself if that’s better or worse. Not sure what impact blow has on someone’s ability to play tennis, but I have a hard time seeing how it could be categorized as a performance-enhancing drug. Of course, Gasquet is telling anyone who will listen that
he's innocent. “I am gathering together proof of my innocence and I will choose an appropriate moment to express myself,” Gasquet said in a statement Sunday. Great, but you’re urine samples have already express themselves in the lab - twice. And both times, those samples turned up a positive result for Colombian nose candy. The "B" sample from the tournament in Key Biscayne, Fla., confirmed the result of the "A" sample taken the same day. As you might expect, the French tennis federation is playing it safe and not taking any real stance on the issue. The organization called the report "very surprising" and said Sunday it would wait for official confirmation before taking any action against him. Gasquet doesn’t appear to be handling the situation very well, not unless you believe that he was being truthful when he cited a right shoulder injury when he withdrew before his second-round match against Albert Montanes at the Sony Ericsson Open. Looks an awful lot like someone who knows the crap is about to hit the fan and doesn’t want to have to answer any questions about his alleged coke habit. He could face a two-year ban or a three-month ban if the tests conclude the product was consumed out of competition. No worries though, R. There have been elite players banned for snorting Bolivian marching power before, even former world No. 1 women’s tennis Martina Hingis. She was banned for two years early last year after testing positive for cocaine at Wimbledon. Before Hingis, Lourdes Dominguez Lino of Spain was banned for three months in 2002 for snorting blow. Gasquet isn’t some hack who’s barely hanging onto his spot on the tour, either; he reached the semifinals at Wimbledon in 2007 and has developed a backhand widely considered as among the best in the game. He’s
currently ranked 23rd in the world, although at this point he’s not even the French No. 1, dropping behind Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Gael Monfils and Gilles Simon. Perhaps a few too many eight balls of coke and not enough practice time? Best of luck in fighting your positive test, Richie. I just have a sneaking suspicion that you’re going to fare about as well in the appeals process as good ol’ Floyd Landis did………
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Those of you who have read this blog for some time know how much I a) love riots and b) despise law enforcement, so what better combination can there be than a prison riot. Allow me to answer that question for you: there isn’t one. So I’d like to salute the inmates at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility who staged a nice riot Friday. The festivities kicked off at 5:45, the normal lock-in time for inmates at the facility, which is located on State Road in northeast Philadelphia. When lock-in time came, about 25 of the 100 inmates in one unit of the D building refused to lock in. Way to go, cell block D. Don’t let The Man hold you down and tell you when you have to be locked in your cell…..even though the guards telling inmates what to do and when is pretty much the fundamental concept that the entire prison system is founded upon. It’s not clear who struck the first blow and which brave inmate kicked things up a notch, but what we do know is that when the dust cleared and the beautiful sounds of a riot had died down inside the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility died down, three inmates had suffered minor injuries and the inmates damaged a computer at the guard station and phones used by inmates. As a result of the riot, the entire facility was placed on lock-down and guards were searching for weapons possibly hidden by inmates. In other words, a win-win situation. I don’t know or need to know the names of any of the involved inmates; by the mere fact that they rioted, they are all heroes in my book. Well done, inmates of cell block D at Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility, well done………
- Tonight’s 24 was the prototypical 24 in that it offered up what appeared to be a great moment of triumph for Jack Bauer and Co., only to pull back the curtain and reveal another ginormous problem lurking. As the hour kicked off, Tony Almeida and his team of conspirators were in a van on the streets of D.C., preparing their scapegoat, Jibraan Al-Jazarian, to take the fall for the massive terrorist attack they were about to unleash using the city’s metro system. Jibraan was told to get on the metro’s red line and take it to Washington Central station. He wasn’t given any other details on what the plan was, but after heading below street level to board, he tried to tip off the clerk at the ticket counter to call the police and alert them to the plot he was being forced to participate in. Unfortunately for Jibraan, Tony had a) fitted him with an earpiece that functioned as a GPS tracker and a communication device and b) anticipated that he would try to do just what he was doing. When the clerk motioned over a metro policeman, the officer turned out to be part of Tony’s conspiracy and ordered Jibraan to put his earpiece back in and get on the train. Jibraan complied and headed off on what was supposed to be a suicide mission. Meanwhile, Jack and Renee Walker were at Jibraan’s apartment with a team of FBI agents, securing the scene after storming the building last episode to rescue Jibraan’s brother Hamin and capture Harbinson, the member of Tony’s crew who was holding Hamin hostage. After questioning Hamin and determining that he didn’t know anything, Jack presses Harbinson for information even though he was in a very weakened state after being stabbed in the neck by Hamin during the rescue in last week’s episode. After ordering the medic to withhold morphine from Harbinson and telling everyone else to turn away so he could do whatever was necessary to get the information he needed, Jack exploited the man’s wound and inflicted even more pain to make him talk. Finally, Harbinson admitted he didn’t know what the plan was but did have an emergency number to reach Tony. Jack allowed him to then receive enough morphine to talk to Tony with out allowing his pain to seep into his voice before pressing the phone to his ear. Harbinson followed Jack’s orders and lied to Tony, saying one of the phony bank transfers they had created to Jibraan’s account had been rejected by the bank and that he was calling for the authorization to re-post it. Tony took the bait and stayed on the phone long enough for Chloe O’Brian and Janis Gould to track the call back at the FBI field office. In spite of some tech dork squabbling in which Janis expressed resentment for Chloe’s attitude of superiority and Chloe was her usual prickly self, they managed to fight through Tony’s encryption block on his phone and pin his location down to the Adams Morgan district. She directs Jack and Renee there and they soon spot the van Tony is traveling in. Realizing that there is no time for a high-speed chase, Jack decides to end things quickly by twice ramming the van and disabling it. He leaps from the car rips open the side door of the van, putting him face to face with Tony, who is hurriedly trying to destroy some sort of small handheld computer. Jack pulls him off of it and hands the computer over to Renee, then chokes out Tony and renders him unconscious. Back at the FBI, Chloe receives the data from the handheld computer and explains to Jack that it is likely too damaged to pull anything off of its hard drive. That’s Janis’ chance to jump in and show that she can one-up Chloe by pulling data off remote sectors of the hard drive, data Chloe thought wasn’t retrievable. Using the recovered data, Janis is able to access the GPS tracker Tony forced Jibraan to wear and patch Jack through to talk to Jibraan through the comm channel in Jibraan’s earpiece. With the tracker, Jack and Renee figure out that Jibraan is on the metro and Jack explains what is going on. He assures Jibraan that his brother is all right and asks him where the bioweapon canister is. Jibraan has no idea about the canister, but he does remember seeing Cara, one of Tony’s accomplices, exiting the train at the previous stop. From there, Jack deduces that she must have left the canister on the train in some sort of bag or package. Once the train stops at Washington Central station, Jack instructs Jibraan to wait until all the passengers have exited and then search for the package. Jibraan scours the entire car and finds the bag under a seat. With some coaxing from Jack, he opens the bag and finds the canister inside, its timer ticking down to 1 minute, 20 seconds. Knowing that there isn’t enough time to get to the station, get down to the train and diffuse the bomb, Jack tells Jibraan he needs to run to street level and meet the HAZMAT team that will be arriving momentarily. Jibraan sprints through the subway tunnel, only to be stopped after several flights of stairs by a metro policeman. Knowing that the most important thing is getting the canister out of the subway, Jibraan screams that he has a bomb and will set it off. That causes everyone to give him some space and allows him to continue his sprint to the street. Upon arrival, he is met by Jack, who jumps out of his car almost before it stops and takes the canister from Jibraan. Jack then sprints to the HAZMAT truck, leaps inside and tosses the canister into a containment chamber, where it goes off and releases the Preon toxin gas inside of it. The day is saved - or so it seems. Jibraan is reunited with his brother, Jack has saved the world one more time and Renee embraces him and tells him that he can finally rest. Heck, Tony Almeida is even in custody, so it’s a win-win-win, right? Not exactly. As the race for the canister has been going on, Jack’s daughter Kim has been stuck at the airport, waiting to head back to L.A. after coming to town to see her father. Kim’s flight is delayed and after speaking to her husband back in L.A. and turning down his advice to see her delayed flight as a sign to stay in town and spend time with Jack in his final hours, she sits down to wait for her flight to be rescheduled. While she waits, Kim spots a suspicious-looking man in a dark suit lurking down a nearby corridor. Moments later, the same man is sitting in the food court not far away. Now unnerved, Kim moves to a different seat closer to a couple of her fellow passengers. She asks Sarah, the woman next to her, to see if the man in the food court is staring at her, but the woman passes it off as a guy simply checking out a pretty girl and doesn’t make much of it. Moments later, the Sarah’s husband Bob offers to go on a coffee run. Kim also gets up to make a run to the restroom, but she doesn’t see the same mysterious man in a suit lurking in the hallway behind her. As it turns out, the man is FBI Agent Franks, asked by Jack to watch over Kim and make sure she’s safe while she waits on her flight. Agent Franks uses Kim’s restroom break to make one of his own, but that turns out to be a fatal decision. Bob is not who he seems to be and he’s definitely not on a coffee run. He follows Agent Franks into the restroom, jumps him and strangles him. Bob then picks up a couple of cups of coffee and returns to the gate area, where he positions his laptop and its built-in camera to show Kim. That image is relayed to Cara, who has been lurking near the scene where Tony was apprehended and promises Alan Wilson, one of the members of the shadowy conspiracy that has been behind the day’s terrorist attacks, that even though the canister attack has failed, they still have a play left to make. She assures him that Tony won't be in custody long either, which seems cryptic and strangely arrogant. Yet once Cara has confirmation that Kim is being watched by Bob and Sarah at the airport, the plan becomes clear. She calls Jack’s cell phone and demands that he access a link to the video feed of Kim. Cara then explains that unless Jack follows her every instruction and helps Tony escape FBI custody, Kim will be killed (hmm, she hasn’t been in danger of being offed since Season 1, how very old school). Speaking of people being killed…..remember that whole assassination of Jonas Hodges that presidential chief of staff Olivia Taylor arranged last week? After the assassination went through despite her not wiring the funds to the hit man, Olivia called her contact, Martin Collier, to find out what happened. After refusing to discuss the matter over the phone, Collier demanded a meeting at Pershing Park. Olivia sneaks out of the White House without telling her Secret Service detail, leading to an angry call from Agent Aaron Pierce, demanding to know where she is. She lies and says she needed to run a person errand, but will be back within 10 minutes. Agent Pierce isn’t happy, but reluctantly agrees to cover for her. The meeting with Collier is short and sweet. He explains that he told the hit man to go through with the killing even though Olivia didn’t wire the funds because a) she was good for the money and b) he believed that she was absolutely set on killing Jonas Hodges, even if she got cold feet at the last minute. He chides her that the time for having a conscience about this was before she put the plan into motion and that now, she needed to wire that money and stay calm. Collier also promises ot send Olivia a computer program to erase all electronic records from their little transaction and sends her back to the White House. There, she meets Agent Pierce and again lies by saying she just needed to get away for a few minutes to clear her head after the day’s stressful events. She then steps into her office to wire the money and begin erasing her tracks, but there is one factor she didn’t count on. While waiting in the hall, Agent Pierce places a call to the man Olivia replaced as chief of staff, Ethan Kanin. Pierce asks if the automated recording system that was installed in the chief of staff’s office during President David Palmer’s administration was still in place. Kanin says that the system still exists and that when he resigned, he did not turn it off or disable it. That means it has been recording everything that has gone on in Olivia’s office since she took over as chief of staff. Agent Pierce asks how to access the recordings and Kanin tells him that he is the only one who can do so with his thumbprint. Kanin asks what this is all about and when Agent Pierce refuses to discuss it over the phone, Kanin promises to be at the White House within 30 minutes. The sh*t may be about to hit the fan for Olivia, all of which we’ll see in next week’s two-hour season finale, don’t miss it……
- If only the late Ike Turner had been Saudi Arabian. Not to make a point of ripping people who have passed away, but Ike was pretty much the quintessential spousal abuser of his time, so I know that if he were still alive, he would love the latest legal opinion by Saudi Judge Hamad Al-Razine. The judge states that husbands are allowed to slap their wives if they spend lavishly. Al-Razine made this point, and this is the beautiful part….at a freaking seminar on domestic violence. According to this brilliant legal mind, "if a person gives SR 1,200 [$320] to his wife and she spends 900 riyals [$240] to purchase an abaya [the black cover that women in Saudi Arabia must wear] from a brand shop and if her husband slaps her on the face as a reaction to her action, she deserves that punishment.” Well said, judge. What makes his remarks even more amazing is that he wasn’t speaking to an exclusively male audience. There were women in the crowd and the immediately took issue with Al-Razine's statement. Imagine their shock when they learned the remarks came from a judge. How did the conversation get off on this tangent anyhow? Apparently Al-Razine was attempting to explain why incidents of domestic violence had increased in Saudi Arabia. He said that women and men shared responsibility, but added that "nobody puts even a fraction of blame" on women. At this point, I’m tempted to step in and protect the judge from himself. He’s digging an even bigger hole with every word that flies out of his pie hole, but what say we give him a little more rope with which to hang himself? Sounds good. “Women's indecent behavior and use of offensive words against their husbands were some of the reasons for domestic violence in the country," he added. So women say things their husbands don’t like and that gives the men the right to physically abuse them? Hmm, sounds an awful lot like something I’d hear offered up by someone in handcuffs on Cops, not from someone who is supposed to be applying the law to protect the rights of Saudi Arabian citizens. The one lesson I think we can all take from this very enlightening experience: If you are a guy who likes smacking around his woman whenever the urge strikes, Saudi Arabia might be just the place for you…….
No comments:
Post a Comment