Gareth Williams: The Outsider

Chuck 2.06: Chuck vs. The Ex

OK, so here’s the thing: TV geeks annoy me. The reason they annoy me is because they are generally a) Hollywood-handsome; and b) have a tendency to date/have dated extremely hot women. I’m a geek (I know, it’s difficult to believe, but it’s true), and I’ve never dated anyone who looked like Yvonne Strahovski or Jordana Brewster.

In this week’s episode we finally meet Chuck’s oft-mentioned ex, Jill, and she’s played by the never-looked-hotter Jordana Brewster. It’s kind of hard to buy into the idea of Chuck as a typical geek when he can count those two women as notches on his bed post. Oh, and not forgetting that Rachel Bilson was briefly there too in the first season! Yeah, what a nerd…

Despite that, there’s no denying that Chuck (both the character and the show) are incredibly likeable, and this was another winning episode. Highlights included: Casey’s disguise in the restaurant (another scene-stealer from Adam Baldwin, with his comment to Chuck about falling for any good-looking woman who smiled at him coming a close second); seeing Awesome interact with the Buy More gang, even in a small way; Morgan and Lester’s plan for passing the Heimlich Manoeuvre part of their first aid test was inspired; and the looks on Sarah’s face anytime Chuck talked about Jill was a nice way to keep their relationship simmering in the background.

Jordana Brewster was good in her role, but am I the only one who finds Jill just a little bit too good to be true? Maybe it’s just the result of the problem I described in the first paragraph, and I do hope I’m wrong. There’s a tendency in Chuck for every character from the principals’ pasts to be a spy/traitor/villain of some kind, but the final scene of Sarah spying of Jill & Chuck without his knowledge opens some nice dramatic possibilities for the next couple of episodes - but only if Jill is actually, you know, ordinary. All in all though, another cracking episode. I am so loving this show right now.

Dollhouse 1.09: Spy in the House of Love

The reservations I have about this show that I mentioned last week still haven’t completely gone away, but the increasing quality of the show is making them easier to live with. This was another rock-solid episode that added to the ongoing mystery of a mole in the Dollhouse. The reveal of Dominic as an NSA agent was a nice twist, but was he really the one slipping info to Ballard through the Actives? It seems unlikely.

The most interesting thing this week for me was the character of Echo. I’ve said before that the more we see of Caroline, the less sympathetic she seems to me, but as Echo begins to develop a personality of her own (such as it is) you finally feel like there’s someone to root for. Echo came across as very endearing this week, which was refreshing. I’ve managed to avoid spoilers for the rest of the season, so I don’t know how things pan out. But I would find it a shame if Caroline’s personality is restored, or if she’s somehow host to any other(s). Of all of them, Echo is the innocent, and it would be interesting to see he continue to develop her own personality. Of course, that raises questions about how fair that is to Caroline… but really, who cares about her?

Dollhouse is still a show with certain issues, as I’ve said before. But the quality is improving with every episode, and I’m glad the show was renewed for a second season. One last thing, though: If the Dollhouse is underground (they do seem to go up in the lift before going on assignment) then why, when the window was broken in De Witt’s office and Echo was holding Dominic out of it, did they appear to be several storeys up?

Torchwood: Children of Earth

Wow. What can you say? I’ve always had a slightly indifferent attitude to the Doctor Who spin-off. I liked it well enough, but it never blew me away; I never loved it the way I love the parent show. The announcement of a mini-series instead of a regular 13-episode season seemed like an admission that the show hadn’t really lived up to its potential.

I take it all back. This - this - was one of the best things I’ve seen on British TV is forever. The layers, the complexities, the choices… if this is really the last we’ve seen of the Torchwood team (and ratings would suggest it very much is not), then they went out with their best story yet. The mini-series format suited the show better than anyone could have expected, the actors went above and beyond with their performances (Barrowman will probably never better his work here), and the writing finally lived up to the potential we all felt an adult-aimed Doctor Who spin-off should have.

Others, I’m sure, will review the show with greater eloquence than I manage. It would probably take a second viewing to better absorb everything that went down, but all I really need to say is: This. Was. Awesome.

OK so, like Dollhouse, maybe there’s one little thing that niggled me. Why didn’t anyone at UNIT or in Government, at any point, think to ask: “Why don’t we try and contact the Doctor? We’ve done it before, and OK, he might not answer… but isn’t at least worth trying?” I can’t emphasise just how much it bugged that the writers didn’t pay lip service to the idea. One line! That’s all it would have taken. One line about UNIT couldn’t contact the Doctor, and that would have been fine. I would have bought it - happily. But in the parent show, whenever the shit sytarts to fly, contacting the Doctor is something they do almost as a matter of course. But here? Doesn’t even occur to them. Like I said, it bugged me.

But it was still bloody good, though.