Sundays Viewing.
Sunday. Day of rest. Even God has the day off so what has TV to offer us?
ABC offers Revenge and Betrayal. I will be upfront from the start: I did watch two episodes of Betrayal but it seemed to be about an affair and offered nothing much in the way of complications. Or anything interesting, so I ditched it. As for Revenge, I have to admit that I sit through this rather than watch it but my wife likes it so I have to endure it or she'll start complaining about having to sit through Marvels S.H.I.E.L.D.
My first comment on Revenge is that it is taking Emily a long time to actually get it. The show is in to season three now. Mind you, the infinity sign in the shows titles gives a bit of a hint that seeking revenge can go on for eternity - and saves the producers from having to set an end date for the series.
Anyway, Emily's latest plan is to have Victoria (her evil mother in law ) framed for her murder on the day of her and Daniels nuptials. This, of course requires an elaborate plan to stage her death, not helped by the fact that Victoria has had a hissy fit and is not going to the wedding.Nolan ropes Patrick into coming back and persuading his moody mom to go to the wedding. When everyone is on the boat (did I mention it was a wedding reception at sea? Nothing but the best for the Hamptons crowd). Emily plays a slide show, spills a drink on Victoria to get her to go and change so that Aiden can temporarily lock her up. She is followed by Lydia (who would like to be Victoria even down to stealing her husband), confronts her with a picture of Emily as a waitress at a Greyson do many years before. This is confirmation for Victoria that she has been right all along, that Emily is a lying little gold digger.
"You are as worthless to me as this bracelet" (a big, chunky diamond laden thing) and she throws the bracelet overboard. That takes Emily aback, as she had "borrowed" the bracelet without Victorias knowledge and worn it at a firing range to coat it in gunpowder residue. Aiden arrives and whisks Victoria away. She prepares herself again only to be confronted by Daniel who tells her he heard the conversation between her and his mom, that Emily is not really pregnant and just said that so Daniel would go through with the wedding. In a fit of temper he grabs the gun and shoots her twice in the stomach. Finally she gets to fall in to the water, but not quite in the way that she planned. Daniel throws the gun in the water and goes inside. There is no sign of Emily except for her wedding dress which washes ashore. Next episode is January 5th and is called Homecoming.
CBS next for The Mentalist. Having spent five full seasons hunting for Red John, Patrick Jane had worked out that RJ is one of seven people. Season six is about whittling down the suspects. It reached a climax in episode eight when Red John is found and, as promised, Jane kills him.
I must say that I found it to be a bit of an anti climax. It was Sherriff McAllister in the end and it wasn't made easy for the viewer to work it out. You couldn't look back to a series of events and say "oh, yeah, of course its him!" It left me feeling kind of "Oh, well, that's that then." Mission accomplished for Jane. Surely this is the end? No.
There were two more episodes before the Christmas break.It is two years since Red Johns death. Jane is on the run. I thought that perhaps the team would be tasked with finding Jane, but they were already disbanded and were not being put back together in a unit. Going forward it appears that Jane will not be tried for murder if he agrees to work for the FBI. Patrick being the man that he is tries to get everything done on his terms. Cho is now FBI and Lisbon is in the sticks somewhere. Rigsby and Van Pelt, now married are no longer in the force. I have read somewhere that they are not in the next series. It looks like the new team is going to be made up of Jane, Lisbon, Cho, FBI agent abbot, who looks like he will lead the team and finally FBI agent Fischer, the young lady who had approached Jane in Cuba.
So where does the show go from here? Is the program going to be just like any other detective series with the team chasing different criminals each week or will there be a new arch enemy to hunt down? There is a danger that The Mentalist will be reduced to a repetitive loop of Jane breaking all the rules but being indulged because of his success rate. Lets face it, no one else in the show has ever had much success at detecting, they are just Janes backup squad. If this is the case it could become dull and lose its edge. I hope the writers have something good lined up for us.
Over at amc is The Walking Dead, up against Revenge in the 8.00 to 9.00 pm slot. Now in its fourth season Walking dead endeavors to breathe life (ho ho) into the Zombie genre. Following their battle with the colonel we find that Rick is now a pacifist. He has swapped his gun for a spade and he got himself an allotment. Needless to say, he has banned son Karl (a trigger happy prepubescent) from shooting.
As well as the allotments they are keeping pigs, one of which is very ill. Immediately I thought that we are going to have a swine flu epidemic with the people catching the virus from the sick swine. I suppose it will give them something other than zombies to worry about for a while - unless the pigs turn into zombies, that would be a new twist!
There are new people in the prison camp from the colonels defunct town. Just as well because there is a growing number of zombies pushing against the fences. Carol and Daryl (that has a nice ring to it - they should rhyme the names of all the pairs) are concerned about it. Right at the end of episode one there is a dead pig and one sick kid. Oh, dear! The zombies are amassing again and the reason why turns out to be that someone is feeding them dead Rats. Inside the sick kid dies and of course comes back as one of the undead and promptly starts biting people. The attack is quelled but the group find that cell block D where the newcomers are housed is subject to an outbreak of some kind of virus. The block is put into isolation. Later Rick finds two of the flu victims have been taken out to the yard and set on fire. It turns out to be Carol that did it so Rick takes her out on a supply run and tells her not to come back. I'm sure we will run in to her again in the future as she has been a strong character.
The zombies eventually get through the fence. As they do the old enemy, the colonel appears at the edge of the woods near the prison. There follow some Colonel heavy episodes for a couple of weeks, showing us what he's been up to. This culminates in the Colonel duping another load of gullible numpties into attacking the prison. At the end of the battle the attackers are defeated but the prison is overrun with zombies. Next episode is scheduled for feb 9th. What will be left of Rick and his camp?
My final Sunday choice, I'm not entirely sure why, is Witches of East End. No this is not a Gothic Eastenders but a story about a family of witches living under a curse and not being allowed back to Oz, or wherever their home world is - the magical witch realm, anyway. There is a mother, a powerful witch who is being terrorized by a shape shifter. Her two daughters are destined to live up to adulthood and die. This happens over and over throughout history. There is also an aunt, who turns in to a cat and has nine lives.
Basically the story is this: Mom is under attack by another witch who wants to destroy her and her family because they killed her lover back in their previous life, the one before the present incarnation. Various calamities occur, like the shape shifter impersonating mom ( Joanna Beauchamp played by Julia Ormond) and committing a murder in front of witnesses, daughter Freya (Jenna Dewan-Tatum) gets trapped in a picture then later, on release she loses her powers. Freya (Rachel Boston) has a stalker who has learned of her secret identity and her aunt Wendy (Madchen Amick) gets captured by the shape shifter and also becomes possessed by a bracelet she puts on.
Still, its good clean fun, unless you are a right wing Christian that thinks this sort of program will turn people into devil worshipers, in which case it is evil satanic propaganda.
Having cast my eye over the fall schedule I will next analyze the content while I am waiting for the TV schedule to return to normal.
So its goodbye from me to the six or so people that will actually read this. Bye!
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