"Dead in the Water" Supernatural S1: Ep 3

This episode has a much more in-depth look at Dean's character and what makes him tick. He is also more personable for most of the episode, although he does do some eyeballing and failed pick-up lines near the beginning of the show. It focuses more on the mystery element of the show than on the horror, although the horror element is not missing, it is simply toned down. For these reasons, I particularly liked this episode and would rate it a surprising 9/10, higher than either of the two previous shows, despite the fact that the monster is similar (a vengeful spirit) to what we encountered in the first episode.

Now let's get to the meat of what makes this show so good in comparison to the others. First, the characters. The show gets off to a rocky start as a grown brother teases his sister that "guys don't like buff girls" as she's headed out to the lake to swim. She cuts back with a comment about girls not liking guys who still live at home and we're set with the gender stereotypes for the show. Then the girl goes swimming and something in the water is obviously watching her. She stops, glances to the shore, then starts swimming again. Whatever drags her under is not seen and we're not even showed her struggle, just the bubbles that rise to the surface when she doesn't. This ups the suspense but it's not as big of a horror element as some of the things on previous episodes.

The scene cuts to Sam and Dean discussing the disappearance as being one of three such "accidental" drownings this year where the body was never recovered. Dean flirts with the waitress and gives her a lecherous look telling Sam that they're "allowed to have fun". Then, the two of them argue about why they're hunting monsters instead of searching more diligently for their missing father. Sam finds their father's disappearance to be more pressing, but Dean argues back that he is just as worried since he has been the one fighting at their father's side for the past two years while Sam was off getting an education. Dean belittles the college experience (another thing that does not bode well for my feelings about his character). Then the two of them set off for the town.

When they show up to talk to the victim's brother (introducing themselves as wildlife specialists), he tells them what he saw, which wasn't much of anything. They ask to speak to the father (Ben), but they're given the brush off. The son says he's "been through hell" and he didn't see anything anyway. Then they talk to the sheriff, who insists that there's nothing in the lake, and they even brought in sonar equipment to prove it. There, they meet the sheriff's beautiful young daughter Andrea who catches Dean's eye, and her son Lucas. The sheriff tells the boys that his grandson has been through a lot. Dean tries to hit on Andrea, but she gives him the brush off and the boys head to their hotel room for a little research. It is there they they find out Andrea is the widow of one of the victims and that her son Lucas saw his father's death. 

They head to the park where Andrea is watching Lucas from one of the benches. She tells Dean he is wasting his time, but he goes to talk to Lucas anyway. Andrea obviously thinks Dean is still trying to put the moves on her and she tells Sam that his "Jerry MacGuire" routine isn't going to work. The scene leaves the two of them and focuses instead on Dean talking to the mute Lucas. Dean can't seem to get Lucas to say anything but he suggests that Lucas could draw what he needs to say about his father's death. Dean draws some stick figures that he says are his father, his mother (he chokes on this word) himself, and his dumbass brother. Finally, he seems to give up and wanders back over to Andrea and Sam just as Andrea is explaining to Sam how Lucas has not spoken a word since his father's death. Just then, Lucas runs up and hands a drawing to Dean. It is of a house. Dean folds the drawing and pockets it.

Next we find a mournful Ben being attended by his son who is trying to convince him he needs to eat. The boy is fixing dinner when the sink starts filling up with a dark liquid which looks like lake water. Even after the guy pulls the plug it will not drain, so he sticks his hand in to try to plunge it or catch whatever is clogging it. Here the horror element comes in at the unseen force which pulls him beneath the water and holds him there long enough to drown before the sink drains itself and leaves his body in the sink. Sam and Dean find out about the drowning and go to follow up. Ben is beside himself as he sits in a chair by the lake. He tells Dean that both of his children are dead and that it is worse than dying. The boys go to leave and they agree that Ben is hiding something. That is when they notice, Ben's house is the same as the one in the picture Lucas gave Dean, down to the very last detail.

They go to question Lucas, but Andrea tells them they're wasting their time. Dean tells her if she really thinks these are all just coincidental drownings that they'll leave, but if she thinks that there's even a chance something else is going on, she needs to let them talk to Lucas. Dean is the one to talk to Lucas. This is the part where Dean really opens up. He tells Lucas that when he was a boy, he saw something "bad" happen to his mom and that he didn't want to talk after it happened either. He says that he knew his mom wanted him to be brave and suggests that Lucas' dad might want the same thing. Lucas hasn't looked up from his drawing this whole time, but he gives Dean another house drawing. This one is of a yellow house near a church with a red bike and a little boy standing out front. Sam and Dean hunt the house down and the inhabitant tells them that the boy "has not lived here in a very long time" she tells them of her son's disappearance and says that losing him 35 years ago was "worse than dying". There is a connection. That is when the lake disappearances started. Sam or Dean finds a picture of two boys, one of them is the boy that disappeared, the other is Ben.

Sam and Dean go to confront Ben, just as he has decided he knows what the vengeful spirit wants from him. It is too late to stop him from propelling his boat out onto the lake where it is promptly upended by an unseen entity and he is pulled beneath the surface.

Next they are in the sheriff's office where Andrea calls them by their first names and the sheriff seems angry about this. Before Andrea takes Lucas away, Lucas seems frightened and clings onto Dean. The sheriff tells them he knows they aren't who they were pretending to be and gives them two options. He can arrest them for impersonating federal officers, or they can leave town and never be seen again. They pick option 2, but as they are in the car, headed for the interstate, Dean hesitates. He turns in the wrong direction. He has a bad feeling about Lucas' fearful clinging earlier that day. If the vengeful spirit has been satiated by Ben's death as Sam thinks, then why was Lucas so afraid.

The scene cuts to Andrea running bathwater. We all see the attack coming before the water even begins to run out muddy, we just don't know if Sam and Dean will be there on time. She has time to scream before she gets pulled under and a frantic Lucas answers the door and leads the boys into the bathroom where Sam is able to pull Andrea from the clutches of whatever is trying to drown her, albeit with some difficulty. They ask Andrea to tell them what happened and Andrea begins to tell Sam a tale of hearing someone say "come play with me" just before being pulled under. Dean finds a picture which links the sheriff to the boy who went missing. Now we know why this family is under attack. Lucas then leads Dean to a spot where they begin to dig and unearth the red bike the missing kid used to ride.

The sheriff shows up and has a gun on Dean and Sam while Andrea comes out from the house to find out what's going on. Dean explains that he knows that the sheriff and Ben killed the boy 35 years ago and that the spirit is going to take everyone he loves away until he knows what the boy's mom felt and then it will take him too. He tells the man that if he wants to have a chance, they have to destroy the remains. As this scene plays out, we see Lucas, we hear the voice "come play with me" an eerie faraway child's voice, and we see him leave the safety of the house. Andrea confronts her father telling him to look her in the eyes and say he didn't murder anyone, but he can't and so his confession is heard. He and Ben were both bigger than the missing boy. They used to bully him. That is what they were doing that day, holding his head under water, only this time, they held it too long and the boy drowned. They let the body go and it sank to the bottom. This part does take away some from my suspension of disbelief because the body was never found and it is pretty well known that decomposing bodies fill with gas and become more buoyant. That is why gangsters would give their victims "cement shoes" before sending them to "sleep with the fishes". Okay, but I can get past that. Maybe some algae grew over the body before it became buoyant.

Anyway, just in time to watch Lucas get pulled into the water Sam, Dean, Andrea and the sheriff notice that Lucas is near the edge of the pier. Then the sheriff sees what he's been denying. The ghost of the boy he drowned. As Sam and Dean desperately search the water for Lucas, the sheriff wades in and begs the ghost to take him instead and leave the boy alone. The ghost obliges, and Dean surfaces with Lucas, but he's limp. The next scene shows Sam consoling Dean that "we can't save everyone" and for a moment the audience believes that Lucas drowned as well. Lucas and his mom, however, show up moments later. Lucas has even begun to talk. They say goodbye, Dean seems especially sad to leave because of the bond he's formed with this kid and then Andrea kisses him. Dean seems to linger before they get in the car and drive off, indicating that he'd much rather stay and explore a relationship with Andrea and Lucas.

A few notes -- I loved the mystery element to this episode. Most of them have at least some mystery to be solved, but this one really took it to the next level. It was on par with "What lies Beneath" down to the vengeful spirit punishing its murderer(s). I didn't even mind that the monster was another ghost. We will meet other kinds of monsters down the road. 

I also loved the vulnerability Dean showed in this episode. If there were more moments like this throughout the show, instead of portraying him as the picture of toxic masculinity, I might be more prone to like his character. I'm not entirely certain, but this mom and son might be the same ones that feature in Season 5, if that is true, this is good foreshadowing of what is to come. I have not decided if I will continue these reviews past season 5 (where I believe the show should have ended) even though I have watched the more recent seasons (to a point).

Andrea is a good character, despite eventually falling into the category of "damsel in distress". Lucas is also an interesting character, although it is never explicitly explained why he suddenly became able to speak after the ghost got its vengeance. Perhaps what was stopping him was fear because he knew the thing that killed his father was still out there. I do also wonder about the 7 drowning victims which were never named and what their relationship to Ben and the sheriff might have been. Still, I rate this episode high because it did a good job with character development and execution.

Supernatural: S1, Ep2: Wendigo

I gave this episode a 8 out of 10, a little higher than the first because there is less leachery (although it is not altogether missing) and there are quite a few good brother moments. The suspense and horror are also on point. I took off for a few things that might be considered continuity errors. I'll get into that in my review.

This episode starts out at a campsite at night. Three men are camping and something is obviously stalking their campsite. We hear rustling and growling as we're given the monster's vantage point before zeroing in on the campers. Two are playing a game, the other is sending a video message to his sister telling her not to worry, that he's safe, and that he'll call the next day. The two playing a game are arguing and one tosses his handheld device down in frustration before exiting the tent. The other protests that he's being a sore loser, but the first just says that nature is calling. He goes to relieve himself a few feet from camp and it focuses once more on the winner as you hear the scream. Once more it is a good use of the violence off camera affect. We don't see what happened to the first camper, so our terror is heightened. So each of the campers is attacked until we zero in the last one. He puts out his light, hoping to protect himself and he hears the creature circling outside his tent before his tent is slashed open by sharp claws.

The next scene shows Sam visiting Jessica's grave to bring her an assortment of flowers because she "always said roses were lame" and apologizing for not protecting her. He goes to lay the flowers on her grave and a hand reaches out of the ground and grabs his wrist. This is when he wakes up. It was a nightmare. Dean asks if he's okay, and Sam lies and says that he is. Dean shows obvious concern here. They are discussing the coordinates their dad left them while driving in the car towards said coordinates. They are wondering why it is a spot in the middle of nowhere, in the forest. Next we see them at a ranger station talking about the spot when a Ranger asks them if they are planning to go there. They tell him no, that they're students doing a paper, but he doesn't believe them. He thinks they are friends of a girl named Hailey who has been inquiring after her brother. He tells them the brother is not missing since the time he requisitioned has not expired yet. Dean asks for a copy of his permit, so they can convince Hailey, and then they leave. On the way to the car, Sam berates Dean thinking he is only looking to hook up with this Hailey girl. Then Dean asks since when Sam was the kind to shoot first and ask questions later and Sam says "Since now." This is a good exchange because it spells their characters out so well. Sam is acting out of character and Dean is pointing it out, but Dean is acting just the way Sam expects him to act. 

The next scene shows the brothers on Hailey's doorstep introducing themselves as rangers. Hailey asks to see ID and Dean shows her a laminated card which seems to appease her. She invites the boys in. She tells them she is worried about her brother because he was checking in every day and they haven't heard from him in three days. She shows them her video and Sam asks her to send it to him to which she agrees. She tells them that she has hired a guide and she'll be going to get her brother the next day.

Now it shows the brother, hung from the ceiling of a creepily dark room as a creature prowls just out of sight. His hands are tied and he is hung like a slab of meat from the ceiling in an upright position with his arms above him. He is still alive. He watches in horror as the monster bites into another person (presumably one of his fellow campers) and we hear the man scream. I want you to remember this for later, because this is the possible continuity or plot issue that I was talking about.

The brothers are researching the disappearance and they find out that, every 23 years, like clockwork, eight campers have gone missing. There is one survivor from one of the attacks, but he was a child at the time. The go to see the man. At first the man insists it was a bear (which is the official story) but upon prodding the man admits that the monster, whatever it was, unlocked the door to their cabin, and was too fast to be seen. He shows them a scar the monster left him with and they leave. They still don't know exactly what they're dealing with, but it is corporeal since it needed to unlock the door, so they decide it can be killed. Dean says they've got to protect Hailey but Sam objects. He wants to find his father not "babysit". 

The next scene is Hailey arguing with the guide to allow her other brother Ben to come with her in search of the missing one Tommy. Sam and Dean pull up and Hailey introduces them as rangers. They say they came to assist in the search and they all head out into the forest. The guide is prickly and takes and instant dislike to Sam and Dean. Then they come upon the campsite. It has been ransacked and there is blood. One of the two follows a trail until it mysteriously vanishes. The campers were dragged away. Then they hear someone calling out in distress and they follow the call just to find... nothing. It was a trick. Their supplies have been taken. They are cut off from the outside world. Sam and Dean realize they are dealing with a wendigo (a man who turned to cannibalism in order to survive and consume too much human flesh and gained supernatural powers like heightened speed, agility and immortality), and that their weapons are useless. They try to get the others to leave, but the guide mocks them and Hailey refuses to leave without finding Tommy. Sam and Dean set up a campsite perimeter that the wendigo can't cross as the guide continues to mock them for it, calling them crazy. When the wendigo shows up, the guide shoots at it and then chases it leaving the protection of the circle. He is grabbed from something in a tree just after calling out that he has found the monster. Before the monster shows up, however, Sam and Dean have a moment where Dean again asks if Sam is okay, and tells him it is not healthy to bottle it up like this. Sam wonders why they're here instead of out looking for their dad. He has obviously not been here. Dean tells Sam he thinks their dad wants them to continue to hunt monsters for him. Sam says he needs to find his dad and "the monster that killed Jessica" before breaking down.

The next scene is the following morning. Dean tells Hailey that her brother might still be alive because wendigos keep their victims alive and eat them slowly to get by in times of famine. This is where I feel there is a possible plot hole, because Tommy is the only one still alive when they get to the wendigo's lair and it has only been five days. If the wendigo keeps its victims alive as long as possible, how are the other two campers already dead and gone at five days max? Also, Tommy doesn't express any concern for his fellow campers or their fates. It seems the wendigo keeping its victims alive was a plot device used to keep Tommy alive long enough for the brothers to show up. Dean goes on to say that guns and knives will not kill the wendigo, but fire will. 

Another blood dripping from above trope is used before they discover the guide's body. Then Dean and Hailey are taken. Ben asks Sam if the wendigo keeps its victims alive then why did it kill the guide, and Sam postulates that it was because the guide shot at it which made it mad. Ben finds the candy Dean brought with him to snack on. Dean has left them a trail of breadcrumbs. They follow it to an old abandoned mine. They are in the mine when they hear something and hide. They see the wendigo leave. Then, while exploring, they fall through the floor and end up in the room where the wendigo is keeping Dean and Hailey. Ben runs to Hailey and Sam runs to Dean. They cut the two of them down. After they get their bearings, Hailey notices Tommy, he looks lifeless and she cries out and rushes to him. But he starts awake. He is alive. They cut him down and they all go to leave but the wendigo has returned. Dean and Sam find flare guns, which will work against the wendigo because of fire. Dean tries to lure the wendigo to chase him so the others can escape, but the wendigo goes after them instead and Sam wastes his flare. As the wendigo closes in on him, (slowly, because if it went as fast as possible there's no way they'd stand a chance) Sam protects the others by sheltering them behind his back. Then, in the nick of time, Dean shoots the monster with the flare gun, and it bursts into flames and dies.

The episode closes with the survivors concocting a tale of a bear mauling and saying goodbye. Dean gives Hailey a suggestive look when she asks if there's anything she can do to thank him and she chastises him before giving him a chaste peck on the cheek goodbye. Dean then tells Sam that they will find their father, and Sam says "I know, but in the meantime, I'm driving." Dean looks at Sam as if he's about to argue before tossing him the keys and they drive off.

A few notes -- I liked the brother dynamic in this episode. It really showed how much Sam and Dean look out for one another, something that will become a common theme throughout the show. Obviously, I didn't like the moments when Dean was hitting on Hailey, but those were surprisingly few in this episode. I liked the secluded forest setting. Very good territory for a monster that hunts it's victims. I'm not sure about the lore. I guess they're going off the ancient practice of some tribes indigenous to the Americas of eating the flesh of their enemies to gain their strength. I haven't really studied up on Native America lore as much, so that is less familiar to me than Judeo-Christian lore and mythical creatures associated with it, like vampires. 

Of the side characters, I liked Hailey the most and the guide the least. The guide is meant to be an abrasive character so his death is less impactful, I think. I was sad that they didn't include some amount of grieving for Tommy's fellow campers. It was as if they hadn't been there at all when the show concluded. I did find it a little unbelievable that they were able to just find their way back without a guide. I mean, that forest was dense. Perhaps there is some kind of wilderness survival training that was included in their upbringing, or maybe the guide's GPS was recovered and they were able to find their way back with that. It is never really explained.

T.V. Show Review -- Supernatural: Season 1: Episode 1

Okay, for those of you who have not seen Supernatural, it is a dark suspense/horror show about two brothers who hunt monsters after their mother was killed when one of them was a baby. The show opens when the oldest (Dean) is 26 and the younger (Sam) has just passed the test to go to law school so probably about 22. I'll be reviewing the show episode by episode, and I'll try to do as many as I can within a week, but it all depends on time and energy so I doubt I'll be cranking a new one out every day.

Okay, so to get to the meat of my review. I gave this episode an 8 out of 10. It's up pretty high because I think it's a good kicking off episode but I took away for a couple of things which I found distracting. I'll get to that in a minute.

The episode starts with the event that catapulted the boys into the hunting biz in the first place, their mother's murder. The suspense and horror are on point in this scene as she sees a flickering light (one of the horror tropes I think actually works really well without the use of jump scare tactics) then realizes the man standing over her baby in his crib was not her husband. It is well acted when she runs to her baby and the scream is realistic enough to make you startle right along with her husband, who rushes to find his baby in the crib seemingly fine. Then the blood drips from the ceiling (another trope that works well in this scene) and he looks up to find his wife pinned right before she spontaneously combusts along with his house. He frantically removes the boys and then tries to save his wife to no avail. The scene then cuts to the present day as Sam celebrates his test results with his girlfriend and best friend. There was a line in this scene I didn't really like. Sam says "we're not exactly the Brady Bunch" talking about his dysfunctional family and his friend says "Well we're not the Huxtables" which I felt might be a bit of a micro-aggression but I couldn't be sure. Anyway, back to the script. Jess and Sam go home and Sam is attacked by an intruder and they fight. Before long, however, Sam realizes that the intruder is his brother Dean. Sam introduces Dean to Jess and the way Dean eyeballs her in her pajamas is kind of painful to watch, but it sets the mood for what his character is going to be like throughout the show. Dean tells Sam that their father is hunting and hasn't come back for a couple of days, and Sam sends Jess away to discuss the private family matter with his brother.

Here is where they do the exposition, in the form of an argument, on what has gone on in the past 18-20 years or however long it has been (I'm sure it had a caption at the very start but I'm not re-watching just for that). I didn't really like this route to exposition because it felt a little bit forced. People don't really argue like that. If I were to write it, I might go about it a bit different even if I were going to keep it in the dialog, but I feel like a better exposition might have been to have Sam say something about how they were raised and then show a flashback scene of the things he was talking about instead of him going into explicit detail about it. It just felt awkward. Maybe if Sam were telling someone else, but for an inside argument, naw. It doesn't work. 

Sam finally agrees to go with Dean to find their missing father and the scene cuts to show the monster at work. The monster this episode is definitely some kind of ghost who preys on men driving along a stretch of highway. She is a good looking woman, dressed all in white, tattered garments, the picture of a damsel in distress. The guy picks her up, she asks him to take her home. He drives her there only to find out it is abandoned some years ago. Something spooks him and he goes to leave but she appears in his back seat as he's driving away. He freaks out and crashes into the guardrail of a bridge. Then it cuts to the outside of the car and you see blood spatter across the windows indicating that the man has met a gruesome fate. The blood spatter without showing the actual massacre is another trope I think works really well to build suspense.

Then the boys show up. They come upon the abandoned car on the bridge surrounded by police cars and Dean pulls out a fake badge from a box in the glove compartment filled with such stuff. They go to have a look and Dean flashes the badge to the detective before asking him some questions. The detective observes "Aren't you a little young to be U.S. Marshals?" to which Dean responds by playing it off as a compliment that he looks younger than his actual age. Dean then says something derogatory to the detective for which Sam not so subtly stomps his foot. Having gotten their information they go to leave just as two FBI agents walk up and Dean makes an x-files reference (he calls them agents Scully and Mulder). They go to research the case on a public computer and find out that a woman jumped off that very bridge and committed suicide.

The boys go to get a hotel room just to find that their father has a room already paid for a full month. When they break into their dad's hotel room, they find out that their father had already solved the case, but are puzzled as to why he has not yet vanquished the monster (a lady in white, which is to say a woman who found out her husband was unfaithful, murdered her own children and then committed suicide). They are about to go dig up info on where the body is buried so they can salt and burn it, when Dean is arrested by the local cops who have by now realized that he is not a U.S. Marshal and that he is using a fake credit card. The cops grill him while Sam goes to talk to the husband of the woman suspected of being the lady in white.

While being questioned by the detective, Dean finds an important clue in their father's journal which the police are using to interrogate him. He then escapes custody by unlocking his handcuffs with a paper clip (a trope which I do not enjoy seeing as I think it is overused and implausible) when the detective has to rush off because they got a 911 call about shots fired. Turns out the call came from Sam which Dean jokingly admonishes him for. Sam is heading out to the burial site to dispose of the lady in white by salting her bones and burning them.

As Sam drives he passes through the ghost who stood in the road to block his car. Then she appears in his back seat and demands that he "take her home" he refuses. She takes control of the car and drives to her house anyway. He tells her she can't hurt him because he's never been unfaithful. She tells him he will be and proceeds to sexually assault him then try to rip out his heart. Just in time, Dean shows up and shoots at the ghost, which chases it away just long enough for Sam to drive the car into the farmhouse. There, the woman picks up a photograph of herself with her two children. Then she starts attacking the boys, but the children are there. They run to her and I can only assume what happens is that they've drug her down to hell because they disappear into a puddle in the floor with a fiery fury.

As they drive away, Dean tells Sam where their father's coordinates are and says if they book it they can be there by the next day. Sam says he has to get back for his Law School interview and Dean agrees to drop him off. The show ends as Sam, having just entered his apartment lays down on his bed. The same blood dripping from the ceiling makes him look up and see his girlfriend Jess trapped just as his mother had been before combusting in the exact same manner. As the firefighters douse the flames, Sam is at the back of his brother's car looking at weapons. Dean approaches and Sam tells him, "We'd better get a move on." an indication that he has changed his mind about going to law school in the wake of this tragedy. This is where the show ends.

Some final notes: I didn't really like the way Sam's character starts off. He comes off as a bit of a snob. Understandably, it is because he wants to get away from his childhood and the way he was raised, but I really like his character later in the show and was disappointed that he came off as a bit of a prick in this one. Dean comes off much better, even if he is that kind of character that just exudes toxic masculinity. I did like the way, even at this early stage, the Impala was treated almost like a character all to itself. This is an important detail as the show progresses and especially going into the 5th season finale, so I thought this was an especially nice touch. 

When they read the newspaper article about the woman's suicide it said that she left her two young children in the bathtub unattended for too long and they drowned, then the woman was so distraught that she took her own life. However, seeing the ages of the children when their ghosts showed up to drag their mom to hell, there's no way anyone would buy that story. A child of three or under might drown, but there's no way a child three years older than that would. Not in a bathtub at any rate. I also noticed that the husband while being questioned became aggressive when Sam suggested that the wife had murdered the children, I think this indicates that he knows his wife murdered their kids.  

MIA

So I've been gone a couple weeks. Not literally, just not blogging. I know that's bad for a blog and I really want to try to do reviews regularly, but I haven't been watching movies. I have watched a few shows, mostly anime. I'd love to do a specifically anime-related blog, but I feel that would have a different audience than live-action (even though I enjoy both). I did recently watch this Netflix show called Manifest which was intriguing. Another show I've been watching, which I just recently finished, is Atypical. I think Atypical is a better show than Manifest (better characters, better development, more realistic character arcs) but they are altogether different genres. While Manifest tends towards the supernatural and even the spiritual in some ways, Atypical is more about the humanity and presents a realistic depiction of realistic people with real flaws. I also just started a show called "Feel Good" which is intriguing at the offset. It's about a comedian named Mae who falls in love with a girl named George and the move in together without really knowing much about each other. In the first episode George finds out Mae is an ex-addict (from a skype call with Mae's mom in Canada) and refuses to introduce Mae to her friends (presumably because Mae is a girl, since George lies to her male friend about the gender and name of the person she's seeing). I haven't really watched past that point, but it has the potential to be an interesting show. As I watch, I'll keep you posted. Maybe I'll even select it for a review.

One show I might review is Supernatural. I haven't seen all the early episodes and I'm still catching up on the more recent season, but I definitely have strong opinions about that show. Perhaps it is my religious upbringing (since the show relies heavily on Judeo-Christian mythology), or perhaps it is my love for dark cult type shows. Another one I should do a review on is Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. In fact, perhaps it would be better for me to start off with shows, both because they're shorter (episodes are typically less than an hour) and because they have more time to flush out the story and characters. I was doing a re-watch of The X-files with my Facebook group, but I didn't keep up and got desperately far behind, but that's another show I could definitely write a review on. Frasier is another one. I think this will be a good practice for movie reviews too, because I'll get used to figuring out exactly what worked and what didn't and if it was good or not so good. Episodic shows tend to have episodes that are stellar and ones that lack substance as well. 

At any rate, this is simply a filler blog post to let you know I haven't given up on the review thing yet. (oh and I haven't started reading anything yet, although a co-worker suggested what I assume is a YA novel which I might start reading.