Reviews

Red K hasn't affected anyone else on the show, why is it affecting Lois? That makes absolutely no sense. And it makes her coming so hard onto Clark make no sense, either. I think they just wanted an excuse to have Lois and Clark kiss, and a reason for Clark to be a bit of a jerk to everyone else. It was probably also to give Tom Welling something to do more than just burst into other people's houses without notice and be the good guy all the time, but it was so bdly written, I don't understand why anyone would bother watching it more than once.

Also, Chloe's new hair is awful.

Watching this episode because it's in order for the rest of the episodes, but I won't go out of my way to ever see it again.

I watched this show many years ago, and I think I probably got to S5, maybe 6. I had to give up. I tried it again because it's on Prime and I was a bit bored, so I tried watching it again.

I'm currently at end of S3, and honestly, it's an okay job. It's not my favourite, but it's fine. Michael Rosenbaum and John Glover are definitely the best parts of this show. Tom Welling is fine-- he's certainly not up to par with Chris Reeves, but he's fine. They have some decent guest stars and co-stars- Annette O'Toole, John Schneider, Terence Stamp, Callum Blue, etc. So it's a decent show.

The biggest issue I have is Allison Mack. I have kept going with the show-- mainly because of Rosenbaum-- but Mack is just an *awful* actor, and has shown no signs of improving. I've seen clicps from later seasons with her, and I am struggling with continuing this show because every scene she is in drops the quality.

When she is not in the scenes, this show is a 6/7- not the best show I've ever watched, but watchable, and with some good moments. But every scene with Mack drags the quality down to a 3/4.

It is a frustrating show because, at least so far, I feel like Clark is slowly helping mobilise Lex against him by not trusting him and telling him the truth-- something Lex repeatedly asks for. But as I assume that's the point of the show-- (we make our own enemies)-- so I can deal with it, for now. If it weren't for Rosenbaum and Glover, I would have definitely bailed a long time ago.

I'll watch for a bit longer, but right now, I just don't understand how she ever got this role (especially over Kristen Bell, if IMDb trivia is correct)-- and how she ever kept this role because she's just so bad it makes a watchable show unwatchable.

(And I had these opinions before the NXIVM scandal came out, so tis isn't to do with that).

Most of the first season is well-written, cleverly plotted and generally great. If I were to rate the show just based off the first season, it would probably be a solid 7/8. Carter trying to interact with her birth family, and Carter, Max and Bird are interesting friend group. They did a good job showing carter getting torn between all of these relationships and trying to figure out who is the villain and who isn't. You really felt for Carter in the whole situation, but you also felt for those around her and understood their motivations and pressures, even if you didn't like them.

The storyline with Crash really didn't work for me, and it felt like it was shoved in to make extra drama that didn't need to be there. The season 1 finale ended in a completely expected way but it made sense with the storyline to end where it did.

But season 2, I don't know what went wrong, or why it became so terrible. It felt like they were throwing darts at a dartboard with every cliche soap opera shock moments all over them to see which one to use next. It didn't really make sense, the drama between all the characters felt forced and contrived, and the characters all started acting out of character and just... it was awful.

It's really a shame-- the first season, for the exception of Crash storyline, was generally good. But I don't know what they were thinking with season 2. Probably 'add action to get the ratings higher,' but all it made me want to do is turn it off and forget the show existed. Which actually I have until I randomly came across a youtube video with a scene from the show. Rewatched it, and definitely still felt the same way.

If you watch this show, stop at the end of season 1. Season 2 goes off the rails and no one does anything that makes any sense.

The whole second season has felt really off, and the show has really struggled with a lack of Aldis Hodge, who was certainly the best actor in the original show.

The plot doesn't really make sense, the bad guys' plan doesn't really make sense.

But this episode in particular, several of the characters really feel wrong. Parker always has been a bit autistic, which was great. Now she's just awkward. And I think they've established by now that Parker has learned to talk to Hardison when she's struggling. Parker has felt wrong for this whole revival series, but this episode in particular feels really off. Parker is just acting weird-- and not in a fun way, just in a 'has the person who wrote this ever watched even more than a single episode of the previous show?'

They established in season 1 that Parker was fine when Hardison left. She missed him, but she didn't turn weird over it. She carried on in the way that Parker does. Suddenly when Hardison says he's leaving again (to Space? Really? That's the best they could come up with? 🙄), Parker is acting controlling and weird. Like... licking a T-Rex head. Okay, it's mildly funny the first time, but not the many times they kept riding that joke-- and that never felt like something Parker would do.

And Eliot has always had a short fuse, but throwing a knife at a coworker? No. That doesn't make sense, either.

And it's a bit criminal to have Aldis Hodge for the episode and waste him the way they did. He's barely in it, and when he is he's got no personality.

I like Paul Reiser, I am exhausted with the constant flood of reboots, and I've worked in Hollywood. So this was something of interest, but I've not managed to get to this until now.

This show managed to make fun of constant reboots, play with the old style of comedy and the new style, older generations and new generations.

The cast is great, and the actors are all fabulous. Judy Greer was delightful, Paul managed to be antagonistic without being aggressive or mean.

It's such a shame that this show was cancelled. It's funny and unique, clever without being condescending and generally just a fun show.

I really hope they manage to find this show a new home. It deserves it.

Script-wise, this is a predictable, two-dimensional mess. The characters are all tropes with little development. It tries to pretend it is self-aware with references to previous high school comedies, but mentioning things is not enough to count as meta or self-aware. The villain has no depth or reason for what she does, and neither does anyone else, really. By the script alone, this is probably a 3/10- it definitely should have had at least two more passes with script doctors. It has the depth of a piece of paper.

Sam Jackson's great, Jessica Alba plays with what tiny shreds she's given, and Rachel Harris does not have enough scenes. However, two of the adults are so horribly written that they actually made me uncomfortable- far more uncomfortable than I think they were supposed to.

One of the character's father is a Gen X try-too-hard helicopter dad who uses outdated slogans from D. A. R. E to tell his kid to avoid drugs and tries to tell his kid about his first time having sex. It's written as intentionally cringe, but it's so cringe it's distracting and gross.

The other character that was really just awful was the over-familiar teacher who seems overly obsessed with the 'cool' kid in the class. He informs the cool kid they they're going to meet after school for a music session, he slaps the kid's butt, and he seems to go out of his way to touch the kids as often as possible, and always trying to talk to him or watch him. Again, they're trying to go with the cringe out of touch adult for comedy purposes, but it's so overdone, it's almost predatory and it makes me wince every time he's on the screen.

Neither of these characters were necessary, and a better script writer would have cut those characters after the first draft.

Okay, all that said, it's fine. It's fluffy fun, and it's saved by the cast. Hailee Steinfeld is adorable in anything. Sam Jackson is, as always, fun. The rest of the cast are charming enough to watch, and they all manage to bend the piece of paper just enough that it appears to have depth for a few minutes- if only just a hair's thickness.

Generally, this is a fluffy movie that you can put in when you're doing the dishes and cooking- it's not great, you know it's not great, but it passes the time for a couple hours. The lead actors are charismatic enough, and you know exactly how it's going to end (and pretty much all the other important beats of the story) but it's fine. You know you're not going to get an Oscar-worthy film, but a fluffy film that's distracting enough for two hours. Fine to watch once, probably won't put out on again.

They really should have not kept the two creepy adults, though. That automatically pulls the whole movie down.

I don't dislike Sanctuary as a show, I just honestly don't think it's a very good show. In general it's a rip-off of Torchwood, and although I quite like Amanda Tapping (despite the terrible accent), the show generally does not have very strong episodes.

All that said, every once in a while there is a gem. This episode is well written, and although it has a predictable ending, the episode is largely saved by the performances of Agam Darshi and Michael Shanks. It was smart of them to keep Amanda Tapping and Michael Shanks separate for most of the episode-- they have wonderful chemistry, but with them together, it would be too easy for the audience to expect the story to feel like Stargate SG1 and Carter/Daniel. Keeping them separate allowed the story and audience to disassociate from these characters and accept them as different characters.

The story-line is strong enough, and does some good character building for Kate. The ending of the episode and Michael Shanks' character, though predictable, is well-done and earned. In general, the episode isn't one of the best of television history, but it is one of the stronger episodes of the show.

As a whole, Sanctuary is a generally mediocre sci fi show. Relatively inoffensive. But this episode is actually quite offensive.

I don't understand why genre tv so often plays into the 'all autistic people are savants with magic powers but barely verbal and prone to meltdowns because they see monsters' trope. And this is what they call 'high functioning.'

This is a dangerous, horrible and cruel trope. I am disgusted but not surprised when this trope is in older genre shows, but 2008, they absolutely knew better by then. A little bit of actual research, talking to people who are autistic, treating neurodivergent people as, you know, people is not a lot to expect.

I hope everyone involved in making this episode have become more educated on this in the past 15 years, andI hope they feel ashamed of this episode.

I really enjoy this film. There's a great twist, and the villain does such a good job of pulling Columbo by the tail and tormenting him at every move. It's a bit more complex than most of the Columbo episodes, which generally follow the same formula and the same steps over and over. This one is a refreshing spin on the formula, and although it's somewhat predictable, it's still one of the few Columbo episodes that makes an effort to change things up and isn't afraid to make a fool out of Columbo. In addition to a more interesting script and villain, this also gives Peter Falk a bit more to play with- it's nice to see Columbo so frustrated and manipulated.

Really recommend this one, it's a lot of fun.

I love Bob Newhart Show, I think it's one of the great comedies of the 70s. This episode was a risk- it's a fantasy episode with no real plot, just silliness. I can appreciate that- sometimes it works well. In a similar 2-part episode of Mad About You ('Up in Smoke'), where Jamie and Paul have never met, it actually works out beautifully.

But in this case, it just doesn't work for me at all- and it's the first episode in the show that I find unwatchable. The fantasies Bob and Emily come up with are ridiculous- Jerry has awful accents, the acting is terrible (intentional? I don't know). None of the fantasies make any sense. Whenever I rewatch this show, I always skip this episode, as it is, in my opinion, definitely the worst of the series. It is what I would consider the 'shark jump,' ie, the episode of the series that marks the downhill direction of the show, where you feel like something has changed about the show (maybe they're out of ideas, maybe they're burnt out, maybe the network or show runner interfered, etc). But something feels wrong and you don't feel the same way about the show anymore. That is this episode.

If you're a completist, it's fine to watch once just so you have seen all the episodes, but if you prefer to just watch the best of the show, definitely skip this one.

Laughing at another reviewer's (momsar) complaint that a character had said, as they recall, 'a cigarette weighs about a pound'- just turn on the captions, it says 'SEWER RAT.' Captions are free, mate.

Anyway this episode is about as mediocre as the rest of the show. There's very little tension, very little story development, very little story progress. Every episode is the same: a character jolts as if getting a vision whilst other characters looking at random things and trying to speak with excitement as if they matter.

It's like someone said 'what if 4400 but one single plane and much, much less watchable.'

This is such a bad show, I don't understand why anyone bothers watching it.

I really loved the first movie and I don't hate the sequel, but it wasn't great.

Pros-

-More Selma.

-Morgan Freeman was great, and it was so nice to see him and Ryan and Sam Jackson.

Cons- -plot made no sense -they turned Bryce into a neurotic idiot. In the first he was a normal guy trying to get his life together, and in this he's just ridiculous. I can't believe he'd have a nervous breakdown over what happened in the first film- the point of the first film was that he was getting his life under control.

Overall, it's watchable but it's definitely not good.

I cannot comprehend how they ever thought they could get away with casting someone like Nicole Kidman as the astounding talent of Lucille Ball. Lucy moved her face more than Jim Carrey and they cast someone who is so botoxed, she can't move her face? Javier Bardem is a large man- Desi was about the same size as Lucy. His physicality is completely different than Desi. Neither of them are physically convincing, and that throws the entire believability out the window.

But it's not just the visuals. Desi and Lucy were crucial people to television history. As someone who grew up with Desi and Lucy on my screens, who has researched Ball and written articles about her, it makes me feel physically sick that they would cast these people- but most especially Kidman, who has no comedic timing, no ability to hold her own as Lucy Ricardo or Lucy Ball. Lucille Ball was incredibly intelligent- Desi himself has said that the power between the couple was 90% Lucy and 10% everyone else, including himself. Lucy was the star power, and her talent for comedy, business and her intelligence were astonishing. Bardem and Kidman couldn't be worse casting, I cannot comprehend what they were thinking.

All I can figure is that they sent trucks of money to Lucie Desi's house to get them to agree to this and to praise it. There is NO shadow of the Lucy and Desi, or the Lucy and Ricky, that we all loved so much.

To make matters wore, the story is contrived and boring, and this is someone who has been obsessed with Lucy for decades. I couldn't care at all about the characters or the story, and every minute was sheer torture.

It's a disgrace and insult to their memory, and I will honestly never forgive Kidman for daring to try to step into Ball's shoes. I genuinely feel that Lucy would be horrified that this is how she's remembered.

The plot is clearly ripped directly from Last Action Hero and then adapted to deal with witches and whatnot. Absolutely terrible.

I've seen a lot of Canadian sci-fi, and quite frankly, it's not often great. I'm used to mediocre sci-fi shows. This show is ... it's bad even for Canadian sci-fi.

This is one of the worst shows I've ever seen. The character development is as thin as tissue paper. The writing is repetitive- half the dialogue is 'you have a duty to the pack,' and 'we have to go back to Stone Haven.'

The main werewolf love interest has the sexual appeal of a paperclip. He's abusive, he's toxic, and there's absolutely no reason to want him alive. ALL of the men in this show are, really. I've seen two and a half years worth and I still can't remember which character is which because they have no character whatsoever. I'd want them all dead but that would mean having some emotional interest in the show, which I have none.

The main actress, Laura Vandervoort, has been okay in other things. She's pretty awful in this, probably down to the writing and directing.

There's absolutely nothing redeemable about this. There's nothing good to say, there's no positive anything to this, it's just unwatchable.

I really enjoy the clever stitching of various timelines. I liked the current Chakotay working with the first year Janeway, I thought it added an interesting layer on the whole thing.

It could have easily been a clip show, but what was even more clever is that the different time periods still had impact on what was happening. The way they had to work together with different time periods was really interesting. I never liked Seska much, but I do think her presence works.

Kate Mulgrew was particularly amazing in the Captain Proton sequence, she looked like she was having an absolute ball in that scene.

I don't understand the bad user review from MartinHafer, I really enjoyed this episode.

Everyone likes to talk about TNG's Inner Light and Darmok and Frame of Mind, which are all fantastic. But no Trek episode has ever made me absolutely ball like a child but this episode. This is, hands down, not just one of the best DS9, but one of the best of Trek and some the finest tv I've ever seen.

Tony Todd is amazing. He perfectly captures the sadness and heartbreak of the character, and you absolutely buy the love he had for his father. When he and Avery Brooks are together in the scenes, there's such a beautiful chemistry between them.

The directing, writing and acting is all spot on. It's a heartbreaking and beautiful episode that shouldn't be missed. Jake was never a character I had any connection with, but this episode really made me connect to him. And the final sacrifice at the end was beautiful but sad.

Avery and Tony were amazing. Please watch this episode, but keep a handkerchief with you if you can.

I understand the concept of this episode - Secret Life of Walter Mitty and all that. It could have been a decent episode, but it's tragically bad. It comes out of nowhere - the Doctor has always been a relatively grounded figure, so having him suddenly daydreaming out of control is just stupid.

First, the Doctor's daydreams of half the women on the ship sexually attracted to him. No one acts like this, and the fact that he interprets everyone to act like this is just ridiculous.

The Emergency Command Hologram is an interesting idea, but again, his daydreams of all of this is just stupid - it's worse than the worst fanfic I've read. Especially with turning all of the intelligent and capable women in the show suddenly fighting over him.

The potato people (very similar looking to the Sontaran in Dr Who) are kind of a fun change from all the baddies who want to kill everyone all the time, but it's just exhausting watching this episode.

In short, this episode is something that probably sounded good in the writer's room, but in practice it's an absolute failure. Especially the bit where he's painting Seven.

These are all cheesier and worse than those Captain Proton stories - at least in the Captain Proton stories, they knew it was absurd, and everyone was in on the joke. This is just grating and idiotic.

And the singing - look, I like Robert Picardo, I like him a lot. But he's gotta stop singing.

I always skip this episode in rewatches - because it's unwatchable.

I enjoyed this episode, and appreciated the multiple layers with the stories. However, Jason Alexander is laughably bad as the alien. I know he was at height of popularity in the 90s and this was, for them, seen as a good move to get other people watching. But he's truly terrible in this role, and it brings the momentum and excitement of the episode down.

It's not a bad episode, it's enjoyable. But a very bad mis-step with the casting, he was so awful.

In my opinion, Romulans were under-utilised in this show - and this episode is certainly proof of that.

The script is beautiful and crisp, and even good enough to have been rewritten as a Battlstar Galactica episode.

The acting - especially James Sloyan as the defecting Romulan trying to keep peace - was just spot on. He could have played it over the top, he could have played it as a villain, but he played it perfectly. One cannot help but come very attached to Sloyan's character Jarok - a man who chose peace and suffered the greatest consequences for trying to do the right thing.

I know there are more famous Star Trek episodes that come to mind in terms of quality - Inner Light, Frame of Mind, etc. But at the end of the day, I'd put this episode up there as one of the best.

The basic plot made little to no sense, the story felt contrived and forced, and the actors looked uncomfortable as if they'd forgotten how to play the characters. There was only one scene that made me smile at all, and that's when she's in the tent and upset about a spider, sending Jack out to shoot the spider for her. Everything else felt contrived and as if it were written by someone who'd only seen the show once and played by actors who had amnesia and were told they used to play the roles.

It was as if someone who had seen The Mummy and Indiana Jones was told about the show and then asked to write it without having any idea of the characters and how the original show worked.

Everything about this was off- the cinematography, the dialogue, the acting, the writing, the pace. Nothing worked. This isn't Miss Fisher, and it would have been better to have never had it made at all, let alone watched.

I don't really understand another reviewer's commentary on how this episode is a 'parallel to the Holocaust,' - I think that's quite a grand statement to make, as most of the episode really doesn't focus on mass murder.

If I think if anyone else has seen the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode 'Violations' (1992) with a group of aliens who have telepathic abilities and who are entering the minds of various crewmembers without consent and damaging them. Eve Brenner stars as one of the aliens.

This episode of Voyager has a group of aliens who have telepathic abilities and who are entering the minds of one crew member without consent and damaging them. Eve Brenner stars as one of the aliens.

Honestly, I don't know what they were thinking with this episode. The 'story by' is Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky, who were both working on TNG at the same time, so they must have known they were re-using their own plots for the show.

The difference between 'Violations' and 'Remember' is the ending. Rather than being a sociopath who gets off on violating the minds of others (parallels to rape is clearly drawn within the episode), 'Remember' has an elderly woman who is trying to tell someone (B'Elanna) about the past horrors of her ow past and her society. This is where another reviewer feels this is a parallel to the Holocaust. However, I would argue strongly against this - the horrors are really only barely alluded to, and only in the last fifteen minutes. Most of the memories are more focused on the romance between a man and the woman giving B'Elanna the memories.

I would happily argue - and have, in various papers, that DS9 can easily be treated as a parallel to the post-war Holocaust, as seen with the Bajorans trying to recover from the Cardassian occupation. I would happily argue that this is something that Star Trek actually did very well - there's a wonderful episode, 'Duet,' that highlights this. In fact, years ago, I wrote a blog entry on just this:

Anyway, back to the Voyager episode. In this episode, the 'violation' that B'Elanna is experiencing - which is causing brain damage - is easily forgotten, unlike the TNG episode that directly addresses the fact that someone's mind is being entered and altered by someone else without consent.

There is an attempt to distinguish the ending, to make a statement about ignoring dark pasts, about reconciling wrong decisions, etc., but if that was really what they were trying to do, it could have been done in a way where that wasn't tacked on the end in the last 1/3 of the show, and could have been done in a way that didn't include rewriting a previous episode of a show they are technically spin-offs of.

In short, this is a poor re-write of a relatively forgetful episode of TNG - one that only tries to half-heartedly to distinguish itself 2/3 of the way in with vague and poorly executed fluff. Don't waste the 45 minutes, there's nothing redeeming in this episode at all.

I'm generally not an X Files fan - there are some episodes I like, most I don't, but I do definitely enjoy this one. It's a good balance between humour and action, suspense and entertainment.

Aside from the hokey entertainment of seeing Mulder and Scully attempt and fail at domestics and complain about toilet sets and toothpaste, the prize definitely goes to Gillian Anderson, who manages to give an understated yet perfect performance of rolled eyes, disdainful glares, awkward sighs whenever Mulder puts his arm around her, and annoyed smiles as he says ridiculous things like 'we just spooned up like little baby cats.' Gillian definitely steals the show without saying a word.

And who doesn't love a call out to Dick Van Dyke Show, one of the best sitcoms ever?

One of my many problems with Dark Matter is that it pinches so much from other shows, rewriting old plot lines that I've seen a dozen times.

This might have been the last straw for me. I'm generally okay with Groundhog Day time loop episodes, but this episode plagiarised far too much of SG1's Groundhog Day episode - but without the campy fun of RDA to keep it entertaining.

Basically, all this episode did was prove to me that 1) the show is not creative enough to deliver interesting plots, and 2) convince me that I should stop watching.

There's not really that much to say about this film.

The highlights: Marisa Tomei is adorable, as is Bonnie Hunt. RDJ is his charming self, and he picks out some flowers and picks out accessories and shoes for Marisa.

The lowlights: pretty much everything else.