How Your Mother Got Her Band (Review)

Series: How I Met Your Mother
Episode Title: "Bass Player Wanted"
Episode Grade: B+

It's easy when talking about How I Met Your Mother to focus on love and romance. The show has long had a strong, confident voice on those topics, and those are obviously the show's driving themes.

But How I Met Your Mother is also, to a very real extent, about friendship. The platonic relationships between these five people have carried the show when its broader romance arc lurched and started started straining under the weight of eight seasons. Put simply, it's been fun to watch these guys hang out, and that was always enough to see the show throw the darkness.

"Bass Player Wanted" is essentially a celebration of these friendships, a chance for How I Met Your Mother to toast its characters and their relationships with each other. So, yeah, it's a little easy and self-congratulatory at points, but the show has earned that at this point in its life.

Plus, we get a nifty little storyline for The Mother!

"Bass Player" revolves around the antics of guest star Andrew Rannells, who I've never heard of before in my life but who apparently does quite a lot of voice work for cartoons. Rannells plays Darren, who The Mother labels a "fire-starter" for his ability to ingratiate himself with a couple friends, find out their deepest secrets, then immediately spill them and ruin the friendships. He's also the lead singer of The Mother's band, which comes up later.

We know all of this because The Mother, in one of those bullshit plot devices we're willing to forgive a beloved show in its ninth and final season, drives by Marshall trying to walk the five miles to the Farhampton Inn and picks him up.

The early scenes where Darren manages to utterly charm Robin and Lilly and then Ted and Barney are charming for the contemptuous ease of his approach; Robin is immediately won over when Darren recognizes how "hilarious and adorable" she and Lily are. Barney and Ted, meanwhile, lose their objectivity when Darren breaks out a story about losing his mother in a hunting trip that was inspired by Bambi (he later tells the bartender that his mother was eaten by a barracuda, which The Mother angrily points out is just from Finding Nemo).

There's an element of the 80's sitcom to the resulting conflicts: the friends all have their little spats over relatively minor issues (Robin sort of sides with Marshall in the whole "Judge vs. Italy" debate, but mainly because she's afraid of losing her best friend, while Barney is outraged to learn that Ted is moving to Chicago and hasn't told anyone besides Lily), there's a commercial break, a couple friends make big gestures and all is forgiven and everything is fine.

But again, this is the kind of thing you can get away with when you have nine seasons of character equity build up. We understand the depth of the connection these friends have with each other, and at this late point in the show's run we're willing to accept a certain amount of short-hand from characters we've grown to know so well.

And besides, the big gestures are pretty cute and character appropriate. Robin holds the arms of Lily's "Marsh-pillow" so Lily can beat it up, and Ted steals an extraordinarily expensive bottle of scotch for Barney, who notes approvingly that it could have gotten Ted thrown in jail (Barney thinks going to jail for your best friend is "living the dream").

And hey, The Mother! Cristin Milioti has integrated into the show really well, and "Bass Player Wanted" actually gives her a little plot of her own. It doesn't really add up to much; she used to be the lead singer of her band "Super Freakonomics" (she started it with a bunch of her business school friends), only to be gradually pushed out by Darren. She's trying to work up the courage to confront him, but simply can't.

This is all pretty feather-light stuff, though it gets a reasonably funny conclusion when Darren accidentally breaks the $600 bottle of scotch Ted stole for Barney (the third such bottle to get broken over the weekend) and gets punched out as a result. But Milioti does a really good, really funny job of selling the character's righteous, utterly impotent rage, and, not to overshare, I can certainly appreciate a character struggling with confrontation.

As I've written before, I'm acutely vulnerable to the "awwww...." moments, and How I Met Your Mother has always specialized in them. But it has worked for them over nine years of excellent character work and solid writing that establishes the gang as a group of people worth watching and rooting for. I'm OK with a little bit of reflection in this final season.

Notes:

• I am a little worried about Ted's eventual breakdown, which we've been lead to think occurs as a result of a final, failed attempt to win Robin back. Ted and Barney share a nice moment where Barney recognizes that Ted has trouble hanging around Robin and doesn't say anything, and this season has done such a nice job exploring the bond between Robin and Barney. It would be a shame to lose some of that for the sake of cheap drama.
• Marshall realizes he's hallucinating on the walk to the inn because he saw Bigfoot smoking by the side of the road, and everyone realizes Bigfoot quit smoking years ago.
• The Mother is wearing driving gloves, which is a wonderful little callback to the first episode of the season.
• Barney just wants Marshall to be a judge so he can get all of his public urination citations dismissed. Robin seems really, really proud of all those citations.
• Milioti does a nice job selling a bit where she pretends to be a psychic who knows all of Marshall's history before revealing that she met Lily on the train.
• Barney doesn't think Chicago is a real place. It's just a style of pizza. "You can't live in a pizza, Ted!"

And My Partner, Silly Funshow (Review)

Series: Psych
Episode Title: "Psych: The Musical"
Episode Grade: A-

A show has to reach a certain point and achieve a certain position in order to justify a musical episode. It takes a secure position and a heaping helping of confidence to successfully sell your network on such a risky and potentially silly experiment. That or a complete lack of ideas.

Fortunately, it's the former with Psych.

There's something rather extraordinary about the fact that Psych has been on the air for seven years and has reached a point where it can pull off a musical episode. This is a series that, at its most self-important and self-serious, is about as substantial as a bowl of sugary cereal. It's a silly, frankly stupid affair that mines a formula established in its earliest episode and relies on a lead performance that is always just this side of insufferable.

It's also one of the most consistently entertaining shows on television, and it has more than earned the indulgence of a musical episode.

And here's the best part: the musical episode is really good. It's a little bloated, to be sure; Psych rarely has enough material to really justify its one-hour runtime, and two hours is a bit much for a show with so little ambition. The case of the week (kind of a misnomer, as the show hasn't aired an episode since May) is one of the more compelling investigations I can remember, but it's wrapped up in a fairly standard and boring fashion, as the culprits turn out to be a couple dudes we barely spoke to earlier in the episode.

But damn, this was fun. Everyone involved with the production clearly had a blast, and it's also obvious that the show's writers are passionate fans of musicals. The songs are clever, catchy, well-crafted numbers, and, perhaps most impressively, the episode is confident enough to let large stretches of time pass without a forced musical number.

Psych episodes derive a lot of their quality from the strength of their guest stars, and tonight's as a good one in Rent's Anthony Rapp, bringing a little bit of professionalism to the show as "Z," a playwright locked up in a mental institution after he apparently set a fire in his old playhouse upon learning that his beloved Jack the Ripper play would die an early death.

When Z, seven years after his imprisonment, escapes from his institution and the director of a new, purportedly unique Ripper musical ends up dead, the Santa Barbara police department swings into action, aided by our old friends Shawn and Gus.

As I said earlier, this is actually pretty enjoyable stuff. The investigation itself is basically a jumbo-sized version of the usual procedural work we see on Psych; there are a lot of red herrings, Shawn and Lassiter (an always-delightful Timothy Omundson) disagree on most things, Shawn fingers a suspect who ends up dying in the middle of the investigation, etc.

Still, this is a big, sprawling affair, and I found myself enjoying all the little twists more than I usually do. A lot of this can be chalked up to Ally Sheedy, making her fourth (and, sadly, final) appearance as "Yang," the serial killer from an earlier story arc. Sheedy has always brought a really impressive, deranged charisma to her role, and it was clever plotting to tie her into the big event.

Yang even gets a death that is, of all things, heroic and more than a little heartbreaking. There's a surprisingly touching little musical number with Jimmi Simpson's Mary Lightly, who shows up to welcome Yang into the afterlife. She's probably going to Hell, but Mary will ask around, see if he can get Heaven to lighten up and let her in. He's not optimistic.

It would be silly and pointless to run through all the developments in the case, most of which, again, hit the expected Psych beats. Z, it turns out, didn't actually kill anyone, which Shawn figures out relatively early and thus must be true and only proven at the very end of the episode. The producer and director of the original show had accidentally killed the critic who was going to ruin their Ripper musical, then framed Z and, seven years later, found his original, awesome script for the play and revived it under a new title.

The resolution is a little unsatisfying, simply because one of the killers (the producer) is dead, and the other (the director) got about a minute and a half of screentime. The motives ascribed to them make sense, and I certainly buy the overall story, but it would have been nice to see just a little more of these guys; I don't even remember the characters' names, and I'm drawing a blank in trying to remember anything about the producer. It's not like this episode lacked time.

Still, this is nit-picking. "Psych: The Musical" is a big, fury ball of joy, much like the series as a whole. There's precious little to complain about, and so much to enjoy.

Notes

• I'm not sure if any of the cast had their voices dubbed over with professional singers (Jenna Fisher's voice was replaced during the musical numbers in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story), but assuming those were the natural voices, that was an impressive display of talent. I particularly enjoyed Maggie Lawson's voice.
• I want to single out Dule Hill for some special praise in this section. He's been wonderful during his entire run on Psych, and I say that as someone who really didn't care for his performance on The West Wing. Here, he shows off his exceptional dancing skills (according to IMDB he got his start as a tap-dancer on Broadway) and generally lights up the screen.
• "I see a light." "Do you see fire and brimstone?"
• The Skype product placement tonight was a little blatant.
• "Z crushed you? With a piano? Like in the Roadrunner?"
• "He was the Phantom." "Billy Zane!" "The other Phantom." "There is no other Phantom."
• "It's set in London in 1888." "So what are you saying? Black people hadn't been invented yet?"
• "Just jam in as many syllables as you can before the break/It's literally impossible to make a mistake."

Inevitability (Review)

Series: Rome

Episode Title: "The Kalends of February"

Original Air Date: November 20, 2005

Episode Grade: B

Caesar's assassination has loomed large over Rome's first season. I wasn't watching the show during its original run, so I can't say if it did the same back in 2005. I imagine, however, that the show's viewers had been anticipating the extraordinary moment throughout the first season, and it wouldn't be surprising to learn that HBO's executives were looking forward to it from the moment they green-lit the show.

So how does "The Kalends of February" handle the whole affair? Well enough, I suppose. The actual assassination scene is more workmanlike than inspired. But considering Rome's somewhat rocky history with big moments, they pulled this one off well enough.

The assassination scene does a good job showing the brutality and the messiness of the whole affair; a dozen guys stabbing another guy is going to be unpleasant, and depictions of Caesar's assassination can gloss over that in an effort to get at the grand historical drama of the moment. There's a particularly good shot here looking down on the scrum, as the Senators weave around Caesar, their white and red robes swirling, knives plunging into Caesar. 

The most powerful moments, however, come after the assassination, when the Senators look on their work. Tobias Menzies has done an excellent job these last few episodes, and it continues in "Kalends," though he only gets a couple scenes. Though Brutus organized the whole affair and urged the Senators to do the killing themselves, he falters in the moment, and has to be persuaded into delivering the final blow to Caesar. 

And in the near-silent aftermath, as Brutus sits on a bench looking at the dead body of his slain friend, he lets out a wordless, animalistic howl that's more effective than it has any right to be. A viewer might reasonably quibble about the believability of Brutus' sudden spasm of conscience, but I'm willing to accept it as a fair response to the brutality of what he's seeing.

"Kalends" also does solid work when laying the groundwork for the assassination, though a lot of that labor was already completed in previous episodes. There's a kind of "on the one hand, on the other hand" approach here that does grate a bit; Caesar is given a rather ham-handed bit of symbolism when he walks on a large map of Rome laid out on the Senate floor, while the conspiring Senators are as elitist and arrogant as they are patriotic, arguably more concerned with Caesar's introduction of low men (including Lucius Vorenus) into the Senate than they are with Caesar's supposedly "tyrannical" actions. 

Stories can get in trouble when they try to take the "everyone sucks equally" path between two opposing points of views. It was one of my view complaints about BioShock Infinite, for example. But again, Menzies salvages the set-up with his obvious sincerity and patriotic concern. Brutus isn't entirely above his colleagues' elitism, but he is genuinely worried about the direction Rome is taking under Caesar. And Rome has displayed a nuanced enough understanding of Caesar throughout this season that one can accept a few loaded moments like the map scene.

But, of course, "Kalends" isn't just about Caesar's assassination. It's also concerned with Lucius Vorenus and his relationship with Niobe. This is normally fertile soil for the show, and it works again here. Most of "Kalends" is taken up with showing the full evolution of this marriage, and it's a truly beautiful, truly earned set of scenes.

Even in its weakest episodes Rome was able to exploit Kevin McKidd's excellent work and explore the dynamic between Vorenus and Niobe. Their chemistry in "Kalends" is truly extraordinary, and watching the two simply interact is a joy. Vorenus has been the consistent strong point in this first season, and his evolution from a strict, traditionalist Roman into a loving and caring husband has been both dramatic and natural. 

But things don't end there. Vorenus' elevation to the Senate brings his plotlines with Niobe and Caesar together. Caesar's decision to give Vorenus a Senatorial posting is not really about recognizing Vorenus' merit, of course. Nor is it just about appeasing the Roman mob, which loves Vorenus after his stunt with Pullo in the arena.

Instead, Caesar sees Vorenus as a kind of bodyguard and wants Lucius by his side should anyone try anything. Once Brutus figures this out, his mother takes over. Servilia sends a servant to whisper the truth about his "grandson's" parentage in his ear. Vorenus storms off, leaving Caesar alone. And since Antony is also detained...knife time.

There's something kind of ironic about the fact that Julius Caesar's assassination is only the second-most jarring death of this episode. Of course, we knew to expect it. We didn't know the same thing about Niobe.

Again, there's nothing particularly innovative about the moment when Vorenus confronts Niobe. He's throwing the expected rage fit, and Niobe cringes and cries appropriately. McKidd and Indira Varma both play their roles well in this scene, and it's always good to be reminded of the kind of physical presence McKidd can be when the situation calls for it. 

Still, it's a measure of the painstaking character work both actors have turned in over the course of the season that it's genuinely shocking to see Niobe push herself off the balcony of her house and onto the stone courtyard below, saying only, "The boy is blameless."

I have been rather harsh on Rome at various points over the course of the first season. The first several episodes of the show's run were, by and large, weak episodes that failed to achieve much of anything when McKidd wasn't on-screen.

Still, it's impossible to deny the uptick in quality that Rome displayed over the last four episodes or so. Nothing here reached true greatness, and not much really approached it. But Ray Stevenson reached deep, impressive levels of emotion with Titus Pullo, Vorenus' storyline ended in a skillful if heartbreaking fashion and the show didn't botch Caesar's end. 

Season Grade: B-

Notes

• I knocked this episode grade down a notch because of Pullo's storyline, which reached its true climax in "The Spoils." That he's genuinely remorseful about killing Eirene's fiancee is believable, and Pullo sells it. I'm far, far less willing to accept that she ends this hour holding his hand as they walk away from a religious shrine.
• Part of the reason that annoys me so much is that there's a great moment early in the episode where Eirene seethes outside listening to Pullo and Vorenus laugh. It's a wonderful, quiet commentary on the Roman social system, where Pullo can brutally kill a slave and still end up laughing with an old friend (remember, he only got in trouble for killing an important man). Eirene's anger is futile and righteous and thus compelling. It's also completely neutered by the end of the episode.
• Atia: She hates me. Antony: So do I. That's no bar to friendship.
• Antony's slow, silent retreat from the Senate chamber into the darkness after seeing Caesar's body is somehow quite threatening.
• A sad goodbye to Ciaran Hinds, who was wonderful to the end. He's particularly good at playing Caesar's shock and disbelief, even while bleeding out.
• Housekeeping note: We're going to take a brief break from Rome reviews. Look for a review of the Psych musical episode instead next week. 

Satellite of Hate

Due to issues with DirecTV reception, there will be no review of American Horror Story: Coven tonight.

Rhyme Time (Review)

Series: How I Met Your Mother
Episode Title: "Bedtime Stories"
Episode Grade: B

One of the themes most prevalent in discussions about How I Met Your Mother's final season has been creative exhaustion. Nine seasons is just a long damn run for a sitcom, and it's easy to exhaust most of your compelling plots and character beats. How, then, would the show fare in its last season, especially with the curious choice to set it over the course of a weekend?

The answer has generally been a positive one. There has been an energy to this season that has been lacking from the last few years of the show. It's as if Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, so close to the finish line, have finally found the themes they dreamed about when they first pitched How I Met Your Mother.

That said, if anyone wants to argue that "Bedtime Stories" is an example of creative exhaustion, it would be hard to disagree. It's a classic gimmick episode, a half-hour divided into three rhyming stories, set within the framing device of Marshall trying to talk young Marvin to sleep. It's the kind of idea one can imagine being tossed out in frustration in an exhausted writer's room after several hours of futile attempts to think up new stories.

And let's be clear about what "Bedtime Stories" is and is not. It's not a meaningful or substantive episode of the show. It's not a classic half-hour of television. It's not going to stick in the memory for long.

It is a gimmick episode. But it is also fun and funny and it's evidence of a mind at work. Sometimes desperation is the spark of genius, and sometimes it's the spark of inanity. This week, however, it's the spark of a light-hearted romp that everyone involved clearly enjoyed.

Look, there's only so much you can say about "Bedtime Stories." It doesn't explore any new territory. In the first story, "Mosby at the Bat," Ted wonders whether his dinner with a beautiful young professor is a date or a business meeting. In the second story, "Robin Takes the Cake," Robin steals the wedding cake belonging to her old Canadian high school flame James Van Der Beek (back for a lovely cameo, and looking sharp), only to turn the day into something triumphant by eating the whole thing. In the third, "Barney Stinson: Player King of New York City," Barney has sex with a dumb woman.

The bigger problem is that this is even a hard episode to do the "here are some funny quotes" thing for, as the language is precise enough that it punishes those of us trying to watch live and take notes at the same time. So it's hard to point at concrete examples of why I enjoyed this episode as much as I did.

I would only say this: I kicked off this blog with a defense of Aaron Sorkin centered around the idea that I place more weight on the quality of language than most critics. It's fun for me to watch skilled writers play around with language, explore its limits and shape it into something unique or interesting.

And that's what "Bedtime Stories" is all about: a bunch of sitcom writers letting their hair down for a bit and getting back to the sheer joy of playing with words. Yes, it's basically the television equivalent of eating popcorn for dinner. But we're all allowed to indulge from time-to-time.

Notes

• Barney's story is basically just an excuse to let Neil Patrick Harris ham it up as six different characters on the "Players' Council." Long Island Lou is a particular favorite.
• Cobie Smoulders has that wonderfully useful television quality of looking beautiful even when she looks awful. 
• Ted's date is played by Camille Guaty. I mention this only because I used to watch Las Vegas when I was un-employed and it was syndicated on TBS. She played a concierge named Piper in that show's final season, aka "The Tom Selleck Season." A beautiful woman, no doubt.
• Here, she plays a physics professor who slept with Derek Jeter (Barney in a t-shirt that says "Jeter"). There's also a funny little moment where she claims that architecture is boring and Ted takes great offense. 

The Memory of Honor (Review)

Series: Rome
Episode Title: "The Spoils"
Original Air Date: November 13, 2005
Episode Grade: B+

That Rome was a rather honor-obsessed society is no great insight. That men are often torn between their sense of honor and the reality of the world in which they live is not an original observation. And that politics can trample all of our principles and lead us to places we never thought we'd step is nothing more than a cliche.

But it's said that there are really only seven stories to tell, and the quality of a story is probably not best measured by its originality. "The Spoils" is about all of the well-worn tropes listed in the opening paragraph, and it doesn't offer any real penetrating insights into any of them.

What it does is effectively exploit some of its stronger performances and weave together themes of honor and self-doubt across a number of characters in disparate circumstances. It's a solid episode of television, and helps Rome to what is really its first true winning streak of this initial season.

The motivating dynamic in "The Spoils" is the yawning abyss between Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo; the former, now an honored magistrate, the latter, a murderer-for-hire who opens the episode tracking and killing some anonymous victim through a deserted street.

Pullo's problems are many, and go beyond his utter lack of honor. He's not actually a good assassin; his targets die well enough, but Pullo never really got the hang of subtlety, and that's a problem for a crime boss with certain pretensions of respectability. And, ultimately, Pullo doesn't have the make-up of a hired killer: he botches another job when he's unwilling to kill the lone witness to his murder, and he ends up in jail as a result.

Vorenus' problems are somewhat different. He's now Caesar's man, which is an uncomfortable position, and when Mascius, a former comrade from the 13th Legion, comes by to demand Italian land for Caesar's veterans, Vorenus is forced to put him off.

I feel like I spend a lot of time in these reviews starting sentences by saying "Kevin McKidd does a good job...," so forgive me a little more of that praise here. What's fascinating about McKidd's performance in the early portions of this episode is that his conflict is conveyed without any dialogue; he is, at all points, Caesar's loyal magistrate. He doesn't express any overt sympathy with Mascius, and he doesn't berate Caesar behind closed doors.

There's not even a scene where Vorenus pours his heart out to Niobe. Instead, McKidd manages through his tone and facial expressions to make clear that he is riven by the memories of his service with the 13th and his loyalty to Caesar. And when he "persuades" Mascius into supporting Caesar's offer of land in Pannonia with a bribe of some 12,000 denarii, there's no tearing of hair or gnashing of teeth, no flashing neon sign that says "COMPROMISED PRINCIPLES." Instead, there's just the simple reality of what he has done, and where he is as a man.

"The Spoils" plays this note out a little bit further when it brings Pullo and Vorenus together by the latter's attendance at the former's "trial." Caesar has made clear that he can't help Pullo; the man Titus killed was an important member of the "Nailmakers' Association" and an enemy of Caesar. He cannot have it look as if he is killing his enemies and protecting the murderers.

Vorenus again serves as Caesar's champion when he makes that exact point to Mascius, who has brought together some former members of the 13th Legion to rescue Pullo after the trial (his conviction is never in doubt, despite the best efforts of his youthful, desperate lawyer). Lucius has to take another step down the political chasm by threatening Mascius with the revelation of his bribe and then watches as Pullo is sentenced to death in the arena.

It is in the arena that "The Spoils" moves from workmanlike to genuinely excellent. Rome has often struggled with the large-scale battles that shaped its world, but the fight in the arena is at a scale it can truly master. It's a spectacular, brutal piece of work, one that finally makes clear what a genuine bad-ass Pullo is.

Watching Pullo, roused from his apathy by his gladiatorial executioners' ill-considered taunts of the 13th Legion, brutally slice up all comers is a hell of an experience. The scene is cruel and unsparing, and it's handled skillfully.

Is it a little much to have the scene inspire Vorenus to jump into the arena and save Pullo as he's about to be killed by the final gladiator? Maybe. But the strength and brutality of the scene does a lot of the work here, and McKidd, as usual, manages to sell the emotions of watching his brother fight for nothing but the honor of their former legion.

Rome has long been at its best when exploring the limitations of Vorenus' honor and traditionalism. This little arc, which sees him succumb through a series of reasonable, understandable decisions to the temptations of a political career, while Pullo falls to new lows as a result of disenchantment with his life and decisions, has been triumphant.

Brutus has his own problems with honor. He was Caesar's friend, then Caesar's enemy, and now he's in a torturously awkward position. Connected to Caesar through the bonds of genuine friendship, he's also disgusted by Caesar's apparent tyranny and by his own cowardice and indecisiveness.

Tobias Menzies does his best with the couple of scenes he's given here, and it's easy enough to understand his conflict. It's less easy to understand how he can go from telling Cassius to fuck off when the latter approaches him with a plot to kill Caesar in the opening scenes to ending the episode by telling his mother he's finally willing to take that step.

The crucial moment, supposedly, is his scene with Caesar, where the newly minted dictator-for-life asks his old friend to govern Macedonia for a year or so. Brutus sees this as the ploy to get him out of Rome that it is, and is, apparently, offended to learn that he hadn't even bought Caesar's trust by selling his honor.

Again, it's easy to see how that could be troublesome. It's not so easy to get from there to, "Well, gotta kill him now."

Still, "The Spoils" manages to do right by its characters in exploring their conflicts and doubts. Heading into the season finale next week, there's reason to be optimistic about the direction Rome has taken.

Notes

• It's Octavian who broaches the idea of helping Pullo. Still hard to understand why he cares at all.
• Atia and Antony are back to having sex! Always nice to see those crazy kids making it work.
• "Men with swords never starve." "But they do die, captains first."
• Pullo should have known that you don't mess with Big Nail.
• Turns out that Caesar actually did pay the crime boss to assassinate the nailmaker. 
• There's a painful gut punch of a scene where Pullo asks his boss for work, gets paid some small pittance in advance, goes to the bar to buy a drink and is ordered out by the boss, as the place is "respectable" and only caters to law-abiding citizens. 

All That Jazz (Review)

Series: American Horror Story: Coven
Episode Title: "The Dead"
Episode Grade: B+

Tonight's edition of American Horror Story features Zoe having a threesome with the dead guy she resurrected and stitched together out of the body parts of her fraternity brothers and the dead actress Lily Rabe resurrected last week.

So, yeah, "The Dead" is kind of about sex.

More precisely, it's about sex, connection and feeling, and the way those things are all tied together. It's about a desperate longing for some sort of companionship at difficult times in our lives. This being American Horror Story, those difficult times include trying to find one's bearings after being resurrected from the dead.

Fiona isn't dead, of course, but chemotherapy's a bitch, even when it works. Her hair's falling out, and for a woman who has largely defined herself by her beauty (as dictated in large part by the society around her), this is a particularly devastating moment.

So along comes The Axeman, and damn, is Danny Huston enjoying this role. What he's offering, and what Fiona accepts in spite of her obvious reluctance and better judgement, is not just great sex, it's that sense of connection, that feeling of being desired that she so strongly values.

She values it so highly, in fact, that she ignores the dead body in the bathtub of Axeman's apartment. She values it so highly that she spends the night after first trying to leave. And she values it so highly that she shows up once more at the end of the episode, even after he tells her that he had spent decades watching her in the coven's house (he was trapped there, you'll recall).

I'll admit, there were no moments during this whole elaborate seduction routine that made me wary. At one point I even wrote in my notes, "Why can't she 'smell the bullshit' on this guy?" But by the end of "The Dead" I had fallen on the thumbs-up side for this particular storyline. Part of that is just the fun of seeing Lange and Huston go round-and-round in a small room.

But in a larger sense, examining Fiona's vulnerabilities and the understandable resulting weaknesses makes for more compelling television. It is, of course, tremendously gratifying to see Lange glide through rooms insulting people, and I certainly don't want to see that element of the show disappear. But a strong character is a character with some weakness, and I enjoy seeing Lange act the hell out of Fiona's desperate longing for some sort of bond at this late point in her life.

That search for a connection is Madama LaLaurie's downfall in this episode. Her plot takes on a different form than Fiona's and Zoe's, of course, but everything is tied together with the same thematic threads. For LaLaurie, her connection with Queenie is her lifeline in an unfamiliar age. But more importantly, it's her shot at redemption for the blood in her past, a way of re-connecting with some basic level of humanity.

Queenie's sudden decision that she's isolated from the other witches is...well, just that: sudden. She thinks it's because of her size, while LaLaurie (not unkindly) attributes it to her race. Introducing that particular dynamic now is a little convenient, and doesn't jive with what we've seen so far; the witches in this coven are fucked up, but there's no hint of racism in them. Hell, Fiona even got a big speech proclaiming her hatred for racists.

All of this is basically an excuse to drive Queenie to Marie Laveau, and, as expected, Angela Bassett is compelling and persuasive. She plays on Queenie's (new-found) sense of isolation and offers her a home where she can experience a true connection with those around her, and all for the low, low price of one Kathy Bates.

It's a price Queenie decides to pay once Bates admits a particularly grievous sin (killing the bastard child of her slave and her husband and using the child's blood for a beauty product). The episode ends with Queenie leading LaLaurie to Laveau, exploiting the former's hunger for friendship in order to deliver her into the hands of her greatest enemy.

As for Madison, FrankenKyle and Zoe...well, this plotline is a wee bit less subtle. The resurrected Madison just wants to feel something, anything, even if it's pain. And as much as Zoe might try to help Kyle recover some humanity, she's not having much success.

Of course, Zoe's not exactly covering herself in glory this season. This week, she leaves Kyle alone with Madison, only to return to find them having sex. Some credit to FrankenKyle, who managed to recover his fine motor skills awfully fast once sex with Emma Roberts was on the table.

I actually don't hate this. Based on what little we see in this episode, the connection Madison is trying to forge with FrankenKyle seems real, and it's about as reasonable a development as we can hope in a story that involves two resurrected dead people having sex. Roberts does solid work here conveying the quiet misery of her new existence, and in an odd, fucked up kind of way it's actually sort of touching watching these two confused, miserable creatures find each other.

Bringing Zoe into it for a threesome...that's less touching (or more, I guess, depending on one's usage of "touching"). Still, the thematic logic to that particular development is sound: Zoe has her own issues with connection, what with the whole "killer vagina" handicap. Finding two people who aren't in danger from simply being with her is meaningful for Zoe.

What I like even more about this episode is how it seems to instigate what one suspects will be the central plot going forward: the splintering of the coven. Queenie has defected to Laveau (though previews indicate she might have seconds thought already). Cordelia discovers tonight that her mother killed Madison, and she ropes Zoe into a conspiracy against Fiona.

We've sort of worked around the edges of that so far this season, but for the first time it's possible to see the outline of a larger arc. A battle between mother and daughter for the future of the coven, a reluctant potential supreme forced to fight for survival, all while a powerful and immortal voodoo priestess plots their destruction.

Oh, and dead people having sex.

Notes

• Zoe kills Spalding tonight. Normally I'd advise you to say goodbye to Denis O'Hare, but Lily Rabe's character is still hanging around, so hold off on that for a bit.
• Fiona tells Axeman that "I don't believe in ghosts," which seems to be one of the most hilariously on-point examples of arbitrary skepticism that I can recall. 
• Speaking of on-point, American Horror Story would like you to know there are similarities between playing music and having sex. You're welcome for the insight. 
• Madison is given a cringe-worthy voiceover at the start of the episode, comparing her inability to feel anything (what with being a walking corpse) with her generation's supposed similar handicap. This section of AHS brought to you by David Brooks. 
• I actually really like the cold open, which features Kyle in better days hanging around with his frat brother in a tattoo parlor. The line "I only have one life" is rather on-the-nose, but showing his friends' tattoos, then cutting to the present day and revealing that he has those body parts...creepy and effective. 

Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light...(Review)

Series: Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Episode Title: "The Well"
Episode Grade: B

Agent Drywall displayed an emotion!

Granted, the emotion was "inchoate rage" and it was only brought out by the presence of an Asgardian rage staff left behind by Peter MacNicol a thousand years ago, but congratulations to Brett Dalton for getting a chance to do something besides look damn good in a suit (damn good). In honor of this august occasion, I'll refer to Dalton's character by his real name in this review. Checking IMDB, that appears to be "Grant Ward," which is only slightly less boring than the character himself.

OK, OK, this is a little unfair. In fact, Dalton got a chance to flash a little emotion and even humor in "F.Z.Z.T.," one of two consecutive episodes I was unable to review in this space as a result of other commitments.

Ward has been something of a cipher throughout the early run of Agents of SHIELD, a character type who would be more appropriate in a setting full of heroes instead of other non-supers. But "The Well" is very much a Ward episode, our first such phenomenon, and it works well enough. So far, "works well enough" qualifies as pretty high praise for this show.

The plot here borders on the hackneyed: a thousand years ago, an Asgardian warrior fell in love with life on Earth and broke his staff into three pieces, hiding them across the globe. The staff gives its holder great power, but at the cost of summoning his or her inner rage and consuming them with hatred. Bad guys (Norwegian white supremacists in this case) find part of the staff and go searching for the other two parts, while SHIELD tries to stop them.

So, yeah, this is the plot of basically every action movie ever.

It works for two reasons. First, Peter MacNicol is always a treat, and there's something undeniably awesome about casting this famously nebbishy actor as an all-powerful Norse god, even if we never actually see him kick ass (missed opportunity, Agents of SHIELD). MacNicol's enthusiasm and dorky charm help sell his character's backstory; it's easy to believe that this guy fell in love with life, as it's apparent that MacNicol loves life just by looking at him.

 When Ward grabs part of the staff (MacNicol, posing as an expert on Norse mythology, having tracked it down in an effort to keep it away from the bad guys), he's filled with the rage and hatred of a Viking berserker, which takes "The Well" to interesting places.

The staff, according to MacNicol, "shines a light on your dark places," presumably meaning that it doesn't so much change Ward as it does discover and intensify the anger within him. So the frustrations he reveals here, lashing out at Skye and Fitzsimmons for their talkativeness and general physical uselessness, ring true, as does Ward's recognition of what's going on.

The Ward in "The Well" is a man of discipline faced with the uncomfortable surfacing of emotions he makes a point of smothering (he rather baldly spells this out to Coulson). There's an interesting parallel here between Ward and the superheroes who exist on the periphery of Agents of SHIELD, in that it can be hard for him not to look down on the other members of his team, none of whom share his physical gifts and outlook.

Except for Melinda May. Ming-Na Wen has been one of the stronger elements of Agents of SHIELD, providing a kind of steadying force for the viewers to turn to in the face of Fitzsimmons' oft-insufferable banter and Skye's hacker babbling. As such, she's a good fit with Ward, and I like both the decision to have them end up together at the end of the episode and the execution of that decision (an open door, a bottle of high-end booze and a knowing look).

"The Well" does an excellent job of smoothly using the events of an episode to tie together larger, multi-episode elements. May ends up joining the three parts of the berserker staff in the final battle with the white supremacists and uses it to finish them off; the shared experience of holding the staff brings Ward and May together, but it also reflects a larger attraction that's defined by their underlying character dynamics.

Agents of SHIELD has earned a healthy measure of skepticism from its viewers, and I'm not going out on a limb to predict a dramatic uptick in quality and longer, serialized story arcs. In fact, I'm pretty confident predicting that May and Ward's hook-up will be efficiently disposed of in the next episode.

But a quality episode is a quality episode, and considered on its own "The Well" certainly qualifies.

Notes

• The episode's title refers to the flashbacks Ward experiences after grabbing the staff, which involve a young boy trapped in a well. We're meant to think it's either Ward or his brother, and it turns out to be the latter. The "twist" is that a young, somewhat pudgy Ward is outside the well, debating whether to help his brother, only to be threatened into submission by another kid. The revelation that Ward was something of a loser and a coward as a kid is interesting.
• The episode ends with Coulson waking with a start from a dream of Tahiti. Would really like to know what's going on there.
• The villains here are really lame, undefined and meaningless.
• Coulson recommends MacNicol try living in Portland, Oregon for a while. 
• "The Well" takes place in the aftermath of the events of Thor: The Dark World, which I won't spoil here (though if you're the type to watch Agents of SHIELD every week you're probably the type to see the new Thor movie pretty soon after release).  Aside from an opening scene in the rubble of Greenwich University, this doesn't play a huge role in the episode. 
• "It would be nice if, just once, Thor and his people sent down the god of cleaning up staff. Probably has a magic broom."
• As mentioned in the text, I was unable to review "F.Z.Z.T." and "The Hub," the previous two episodes. Both were decent, unexceptional episodes that resided on the border between a B- and a B.  Some nice character work for Elizabeth Henstridge in "F.Z.Z.T." and some interesting questions of secrecy and duty in "The Hub." 

Don't Tell Richard Cohen (Review)

Series: How I Met Your Mother
Episode Title: "Mom and Dad"
Episode Grade: B-

This final season of How I Met Your Mother has had a few themes. One of them has been family and the lengths to which these characters will go to find one. Barney's getting some of that with his marriage to Robin, but there's still something lacking: parents.

"Mom and Dad" is mainly a filler episode, a half-hour that exists to get some guest stars some screen time, give Billy Zabka a plot and take up some time while the season-long arcs percolate. It's a reasonably entertaining episode, but it's basically the Three Musketeers bar of television: delicious air.

"Mom and Dad" is primarily concerned with...well, mom and dad. Barney's brother James brings his biological father, a minister, to the wedding, thus solving the whole "dead Edward Hermann" plot from earlier. Meanwhile, Barney's dad, the always-delightful John Lithgow, arrives with his wife in tow.

Part of the fun of Barney's character for the show's writers is that he's occupied enough different emotional states over nine years that they can do pretty much anything they want with him and Neil Patrick Harris will make it work. So when "Mom and Dad" calls for him to act like an obsessed child trying to get his mother and father back together after three decades, well, it's not as big a stretch as it sounds.

His antics here are entertaining enough, in part for their total transparency and ineffectiveness. He hatches a scheme that involves fooling his biological parents into thinking the stairs are broken; he achieves this by erecting a sign that says "The stairs are wet. No, broken. The stairs are broken."

Having driven the two into the elevator, which he sabotages, he proceeds to lower them supplies: wine, champagne, an iPod playing romantic music and "a television showing pretty graphic 70's pornography."

The highlight of the episode probably comes after, once Barney's mom and dad figure out what's going on and James admits that he's trying to get their mom together with his dad. Barney and James come up with dueling musical numbers to express their fantasy of a traditional, white picket fence family; amusingly, both brothers are wearing beanies and short pants in these fantasies. And Barney interrupts James' number to claim that their mom is totally cheating on James' dad with Barney's.

As it turns out, their mom actually is dating James' dad, a fact that Robin convinces Barney to accept by pointing out that James needs this a lot more than Barney does. It's a fairly standard, yawn-inducing ending, and not quite as touching as the show thinks it is.

The B-plot here is more fun, because it involves Ted acting like a self-important douchebag and a heist plot centering around Billy Zabka. Barney gives Ted an autographed photo of Wayne Gretzky for safekeeping, as it's going to be Barney's gift to Robin (she sometimes says Wayne's name in bed. Barney's accepted it). Ted gets out of the shower to discover that the photo is covered with his calligraphy ink.

Ted unleashes "Detective Moseby," even though Lily points out that Ted couldn't figure out the pineapple incident from season three. There's some funny business in this plot with Ted accusing three different people, including Zabka, a bell boy and Robin's cousin Claude. Claude seems the best bet once Ted finds him with his hands covered in ink, but it turns out Claude was just saving an elderly Rastafarian paraglider who crashed into the ocean and was attacked by an octopus.

It turns out that Zabka, the villain of Karate Kid and Barney's long-time hero, is just tired of being a bad guy. People have been throwing popcorn at him his whole life. Even his Mom boos him. So he stole the photo and covered one of his own autographed head shots in ink (he always carries around 2,000 in his trunk), planning to give the photo to Barney and earn back the best man title.

This is all feather-light and wafer-thin, and if you're not terribly concerned with Billy Zabka at this point in the show's run, well, I can't blame you. But it's the kind of enjoyably random side plot that HIMYM has long specialized in, and if you're going to stretch a weekend over 20+ episodes, they aren't all going to be crucial to the central plot.

Notes

• Barney arranges for his dad's wife to be out of the hotel, then leaves a suicide note with lines like "I'm going to kill my-wait for it-self" and "so to summarize, I'm super dead and you should totally bone Loretta."
• "Oh no, my calligraphy ink! I mean, oh no, the photo!"
• Even Zabka has heard about Ted's failure with the pineapple incident.
• The musical numbers really are funny. Hopefully CBS will post them online at some point; it's hard to take notes while watching live. 

Consequences and Repercussions (Review)

Series: American Horror Story: Coven
Episode Title: "The Axeman Cometh"
Episode Grade: B-

Let's start with the truth: I'm not entirely sure what to say about "The Axeman Cometh," aside from the fact that I hate that title. It's more a collection of moments than a coherent whole. Or, perhaps put more accurately, the moments don't really cohere for me. A couple of moments are compelling, a couple of them are confusing.

But none of them are awful, and to the extent they promise some fun in the future, I'm willing to cut them some slack.

Before getting to that, however, I want to do a little touchdown dance, because I so rarely get to say:

Last week, I expressed some concern about the way the show was using Misty Day, the resurrectionist witch played by Lily Rabe. Giving a character the power to raise the dead is dangerous, insofar as she's a deus ex machina waiting to happen in just about every episode. When the witches burned Myrtle Snow last week, only to have Day resurrect her at the end of the episode, the effect of the proceeding plotline was significantly blunted.

Unfortunately, American Horror Story went back to that well this week. Yep, Emma Roberts is back, courtesy of Ms. Day. At least she got to play a corpse for a couple of weeks.

This is all sparked by yet another thoroughly unwise Zoe decision. Having come across a "spirit board" (which is clearly just a Ouija board someone with the show bought from a local Target), Zoe decides to use it to track down Madison. She doesn't get Madison, but she does get the spirit of a famous New Orleans serial killer, The Axeman.

Danny Huston, who plays Axeman, is one of the highlights of this episode, and I look forward to seeing him over the next couple weeks. Back in 1919, he sneaked into the coven's house with the intent of killing a few women (they refused to play jazz, as he demanded), only to be killed himself. 

This being a horror story (see the show's title if you doubt me), the Axeman's spirit is trapped in the house, and he wants release. Zoe, being pretty stupid, doesn't listen when Queenie urges her to leave well enough alone, and makes a deal with Axeman's spirit: the location of Madison's body in exchange for his release.

To Zoe's credit, she's lying at the time, so she's not completely stupid. Just a little stupid. And petty. 

Fast forward a bit through an overly long scene of Zoe searching through Spalding's room and finding Madison's body, then a torture scene that seems to involve a spatula and a hot plate, FrankenKyle showing up at Misty's house, and bam, we have a resurrected niece of Julia Roberts.

It might be harsh for me to claim that Misty represents some sort of existential threat to the show. But at the moment, it seems hard to overstate exactly how troublesome I find this character. So long as Misty Day is hanging around, there are no consequences. Death isn't permanent, but even worse, it's not particularly dramatic. 

The other major development this week is the revelation that Cordelia's husband Hank is actually a witch-hunter hired by Marie Laveau to track down and kill all the "descendants of Salem." That's the explanation for his little murder tryst with Kaylee, the adorable redhead played by Alexandra Breckenridge. She was a developing witch as well, a fact he discovered thanks to his marriage to Cordelia.

The end of "Axeman Cometh" is a little confusing. Laveau's pretty pissed that the witches still exist, and demand that Hank get his ass in gear and start killing them. Meanwhile, a blinded Cordelia, gifted with second sight thanks to the acid attack, is confronted by the Axeman's spirit: he was killed in her room, so he's trapped there.

Despite being a spirit, Axeman can still swing a mean axe, and threatens Cordelia, while mumbling something about a contract (was he also a witch-hunter?).The witches cast a spell...and then Axeman leaves and runs into Fiona at a bar.

The causality here is confusing. Is there a link between Hank and the Axeman? What was the point of the spell if the spirit can just leave anyway? Is it as simple as the girls opening the door and Axeman just invisibly sliding out? 

More importantly, you can see the thematic links between Axeman and Hank, who both represent forms of male brutality against women. The witches taking a stand against Axeman back in 1919 is a reflection of their newfound power; his escape in 2013 is, equally, a reflection of the Coven's diminished strength. AHS is concerned this season with the ways in which women are oppressed and the ways in which they strike back against their oppressors. 

Anyway, I don't know. But we get a new character played by an actor who clearly enjoys the role, so I'm OK for now. 

Notes

• Not much Jessica Lange bitchiness this week, unfortunately.
• "When I plant a fat-ass cracker bitch in the ground, I expect her to stay planted!" Angela Bassett, on the other hand, does get a moment.
• Yet another cold open this week with some remarkably lame dialogue. "If we embody our feminine might..."
• Grace Gummer is the speaker of that particular line. You'll remember her as Hallie from The Newsroom.
• Misty's initially reluctant to revive Madison, pointing out, "She's missing an arm." But Zoe's got that covered: "I have it!"

Winning (Review)

Series: How I Met Your Mother
Episode Title: "Platonish"
Episode Grade: B+

How you feel about How I Met Your Mother's insistence on repeatedly returning to the Ted-Robin well probably informs how you feel about "Platonish" and the last few seasons of the show in general. I know there are a lot of fans who look at these storylines as tiresome and pointless, and not just because we know Ted and Robin don't end up together. You can only watch a man run headlong into a wall so many times before you want to stop, and Ted's persistent yearning for a woman he broke up with five years ago is the character at his most pathetic and least entertaining.

I get this point of view, really. I understand it. But to me, the relationship between Ted and Robin has always represented one of the show's emotional cores. This is a reflection of the strength of their bond, as shown way back in season two. Put simply, the two were good together, and How I Met Your Mother handled their break-up with a rationality and maturity that's rare for sitcom relationships.

"Platonish" starts rolling one of the significant plotlines for this final season: Ted's last, desperate, doomed attempt to win back Robin at her wedding. Its flashback structure raises some questions, and for the first time in the season The Mother is used in a less-than-optimal fashion. But taken as a whole, it's another solid entry in a season that, so far at least, has been brimming with quality.

"Platonish" isn't shy about addressing some of the complaints I mentioned in the first paragraph. The decision to structure this episode around Ted and Marshall at a Harlem Globetrotters game isn't just an excuse to give the two some hilarious dialogue ("That's not a pregnant lady, that's a basketball under his jersey! Blow the freaking whistle!"). It's about acknowledging the way Ted views himself when the context is romantic relationship; he and Marshall are rooting for the doomed Washington Generals, of course, and throughout the series Ted has often seemed like nothing so much as a fool on a doomed journey.

And Robin's a reminder of that. Even compared to being left at the altar, Robin is Ted's great romantic failure. And she's also one of his best friends, which means every day he has to see the ghost of what might have been.

So when he spends the episode insisting to Marshall that he's not interested in Robin, it's (obviously) not sincere. Instead, it's the wary pessimism of a man who's been bitten so many times by the same snake that he's afraid to take a step.

Barney? Well, Barney's a winner, of course. He spends most of the episode accepting and completing various challenges from Robin and Lily, including convincing a girl he's Ryan Gosling after plastic surgery, getting a girl's phone number while speaking like a dolphin and wooing a woman while unable to use the letter "E" (a task which clearly entertained the show's writers).

But Barney doesn't really want to "win." He wants to play. The challenge is the thing. It's noteworthy that Barney doesn't actually sleep with any of the women he talks to in "Platonish;" he just gets their numbers so he can check the challenge off the list.

That stops when he runs into his last challenge, having been dispatched by Lily and Robin to pick up diapers and a smoothie...oh, and also a woman. That woman turns out to be The Mother.

There were a lot of challenges associated with integrating The Mother into the show, and How I Met Your Mother has generally avoided them. This is mainly thanks to Cristin Milioti, who does a lot with her limited screen time. But the show's writers have also used her reasonably well, giving her chances to interact with individual characters and writing her in a way that makes her genuinely appealing.

"Platonish," however, does commit a sin that always tempts writers in this situation by making Milioti just a bit too awesome. It's a venal sin, and I don't want to overstate the extent of the problem here, but it does ring a little false when she diagnoses Barney as lovelorn and miserable after a sentence worth of interaction.

It's the conversation that ends Barney's game-playing and puts him on his collision course with Robin. Again, this is a bit much: retconning the series to give Milioti such an out-sized role in this final story strains credulity, and it's a plot point that seems to exist just to convince us that The Mother is really special.

But the show knocks its ending sequence out of the park: Ted telling Marshall that he's willing to wait for something to happen with Robin, while Barney writes out the play that will win her over.

It's a triumphant moment for Barney, of course, but to the audience, with our hindsight, it's also a brutal, devastating moment for Ted. At the moment when his former urgency and willingness to throw himself off a cliff in the name of love could actually win the day, he instead steps back, content to wait. Instead, it's Barney who exhibits the passion, dedication and urgency we've always associated with Ted.

Everything ends well for Ted, of course. We know as much. But How I Met Your Mother has always been as concerned with the pain of the journey as the triumph of the destination. Winning requires a lot of losing.

Notes

• The show has some fun playing with the fact that Marshall and Robin rarely spend much time together, as Barney imagines them unwilling to make out even if it results in the entire bar being blown up by a madman with odd demands.
• Barney, introducing himself without using the letter "E:" "My word for this guy is Barn...O."
• Bryan Cranston shows up as Ted's old douchebag boss, making the offer to move to Chicago that Ted will eventually accept. He's in a bit of a pickle, as the concave glass tower he built raised the temperature of the water in the city aquarium to 190 degrees, killing several species of rare fish. 
• "Hey ref, you should check your voicemail. You've missed a lot of calls!"

Mothers and Daughters (Review)

Series: American Horror Story: Coven
Episode Title: "Burn, Witch. Burn!"
Episode Grade: B+

Up until the last minute or so of "Burn, Witch. Burn!," I was very much on board with this episode. And even with that minute, it still represents this season's best episode. However, that last minute is groan-worthy enough to drop this episode a notch or two in my estimation, and it can be read as a dangerous sign for the show going forward.

Lily Rabe's Misty Day is, at this point, more of a get-out-of-jail-free card for the writers than an actual character. Giving her the ability to raise the dead means that no character is truly out of the show. She's a human reset button.

You can have a character like that hanging around, but you need to use her carefully, with a measure of discipline. "Discipline" has never been a strength of Ryan Murphy's, however, and using Misty to wipe away the crucial result of your episode's most essential plotline is disappointing.

And it was such an awesome plotline! Jessica Lange got to sneer and shout and then burn a witch. It was awesome!

The fallout from last week's acid attack on Cordelia is tonight's primary concern, which is nice because it gives us a lot of Lange in self-loathing mode. There are long, lingering, creepy shots in the hospital where Cordelia was taken, and they're masterpieces of composition and camera work. There's a vague haze over the lens as Lange wonders through the corridors of the hospital, and the viewers are made to share Lange's disorientation.

We see these scenes from a new perspective later in the episode. Lange, hauled before the witches' council to answer for all the nonsense that's gone on at the coven, pulls her trump card: it was Myrtle Snow (Frances Conroy, you'll remember) who threw acid in Cordelia's face, and Lange has proof.

How did she know? She (and we) dimly saw a hooded figure pacing through the hospital, which is fair enough and appropriately creepy: of course Lange would see her daughter's attacker at the moment.

What we don't see until Lange tells the council, however, is that she followed the hooded figure into the elevator and caught a glimpse of Snow in the mirror. She then tracked Snow down to a hotel, found her little stash of defaced Fiona pictures and, whammo, proof.

If we're being honest, this is all kind of bullshit. As I wrote, we don't actually see any of this when it happens. The hotel investigation can be forgiven (it happened at some indeterminate time, and it's OK for things to happen off-screen), but we were with Lange in the hospital throughout. When did she tail Snow in the hospital? When did she have that opportunity? Cutting out that particular moment without letting us know you're doing is, again, bullshit.

But...ah, screw it, this is all too much fun. Lange is exceptional throughout all of this, running the gamut from self-loathing in the hospital corridors to righteous fury in the scenes where she confronts Myrtle Snow. And when Snow is taken to the stake to be burned alive for her crimes, Lange's seething contempt is perfectly expressed when she sparks the fire with a lit cigarette.

And then Misty Day comes along and revives Myrtle's corpse, and one wonders what the point is.

Look, this can work out. As we learn more about Misty Day and we discover what her agenda is (making everyone listen to Fleetwood Mac, perhaps), this might turn out to be an interesting development. And maybe we'll learn some of the rules that govern Misty's powers, bringing some limitations to the god-like being. At the moment, however, it's hard to see beyond Misty's status as Plot Eraser.

But this little twist doesn't erase the fun that came before, and for now I'll grudgingly accept it.

If there's a theme to "Burn...," it's the regrets of motherhood. Marie Laveau's zombie attack ultimately peters out without killing anyone, though we do get the admittedly awesome sight of Taissa Farmiga wiping out a horde of zombies with a chainsaw, which marks the first interesting thing Zoe has done in this season. However, this does give Kathy Bates a chance to re-connect with her daughters.

(Full disclosure: after posting last week's review, which made no mention of the presence of Bates' daughters among the zombie horde, I discovered that a bunch of viewers...OK, every viewer, had noticed them where I hadn't. My apologies.)

The episode began with a flashback to 1830's New Orleans, and it turns out Bates was a monster to her daughters as well as her slave, condemning them to spend a year in her horror attic after overhearing them plotting against her. Seeing them return as part of a zombie attack is, as comeuppances go, pretty effective.

A century and a half in a coffin will mellow anyone out, however, and Bates sells her evolution. A lesser actress probably wouldn't be as convincing here, but Bates' regret and horror at the realization of her own cruelty is effective and compelling.

"Burn..." is a little too overt about the parallels between Bates' and Lange's characters, but it earns some credit for pointing that out and having Lange shoot it down immediately:

Bates: Perhaps this shared tragedy will bring us closer together.
Lange: I doubt it. After all, you're the maid.

These regrets and resentments and disappointments drive "Burn...,"which asks a question that has obsessed artists for centuries: how much is a mother to blame when her daughters come back as murderous undead slaves of a voodoo priestess?

Notes:

• So, Zoe has a new power: she stops the zombie attack with a command. Yes, she's probably the next supreme.
• Awesome Jessica Lange Manipulation, Part One: Fiona proves Myrtle threw acid in Cordelia's face by showing the burns on Snow's hand. We find out later that, just off-screen, Gabourey Sidibe was dunking her hand in acid.
• Awesome Jessica Lange Manipulation, Part Two: This troubles Sidibe's conscience, but Lange talks her down with some expert manipulation in a great scene where she dangles the possibility that Sidibe might be the supreme.
• Cordelia's husband shows up at the hospital and seems to genuinely care about her (remember last week: cheated on her, shot the lady he slept with). But when he takes the hand of a permanently blinded Cordelia, she gets a sudden mental vision of his affair.

The Light of the Future (Review)

Series: How I Met Your Mother
Episode Title: "The Lighthouse"
Episode Grade: A

It might be a good idea at some point in the future to sit down and write a post about the difficulty of separating one's emotional reaction to art from a reasonable evaluation of the work's merits. Emotion is a key element to that evaluation, of course, but it's not difficult for a moderately skilled artist to create something that is both mediocre and capable of plucking the audience's heartstrings.

All of this is a long way of saying that I don't know if I enjoyed "The Lighthouse" as much as I did because it was a genuinely moving, well-written episode or because I'm soft-hearted enough to be easily bowled over by its sentimentality.

Maybe trying to answer that is an exercise in futility and pointless navel-gazing. And in fairness, I'm pretty good at both of those things. But whatever the cause, watching Ted propose to The Mother in a flash forward at the end of the episode was a thrilling moment, and it won me over completely.

One of the advantages that comes with nine seasons of television is that it's difficult to have an un-earned character moment. Ted proposing to an adorable Cristin Milioti isn't just the climax of an episode, it's the climax to nine years of character work. Maybe the connection viewers have to television characters is silly (OK, it definitely is), but that connection is there. And we've seen enough skillfully constructed heartbreak that witnessing a moment of sheer triumph resonates in a way it wouldn't on a shorter-lived sitcom.

One of the themes How I Met Your Mother has consistently hit on throughout its run has been the reality that, even if The One actually exists and we're actually capable of finding him or her, that still means every relationship we have along the way is going to end in disappointment. The show's writers have taken pains at times to demonstrate that the disappointment at the end doesn't negate what came before, that a relationship that ends isn't a relationship that failed and that life is the beautiful disappointments that come before the messy successes. But there's always that hint of sadness, even in the knowledge of Ted's inevitable happy ending.

We some of this idea in "The Lighthouse," which ends by contrasting Ted's moment with The Mother in the titular lighthouse with the earlier moment in the same lighthouse he shared with Anna Camp's Cassie. Cassie's basically a decent girl; beautiful, of "normal height," as Lily points out. She's just in the middle of an awful weekend, and she's not really a good match for Ted.

So when Ted hauls Cassie up to the top of the lighthouse (she sprained her ankle on a kid's toy car), only to end up vomiting over the edge of the thing, it seems like another place that he's ruined with his desperate search for Mrs. Right.

But "The Lighthouse's" theory is simple: you're not history's prisoner. The failures of your past don't dictate the course of your future. A setting isn't ruined simply because you once shared it with someone who wasn't right for you; instead, you can discover the beauty of a place and a moment by finding someone who is.

Robin and Barney's plot ties into that theme, at least at its conclusion. This is a fairly light plot through most of the episode's running time, as Robin and Barney's mom play out their hostility through the time-honored art form of scrambled eggs. It's occasionally amusing, and Cobie Smoulders continues to give an MVP-caliber comedic performance this season.

Once the comedic table setting is cleared away, however, and Robin lets slip to Barney's mom that she can't have kids, the plot takes a different turn. Part of the reason "Symphony of Illumination," an episode in the show's seventh season, was such a masterpiece was that it allowed Robin to experience genuine despair at the revelation that she was medically incapable of bearing children without implying that she would have done so if she could. Robin never wanted kids, but having a road barred to you can be heartbreaking even if you don't think you're going to take it.

When her aerophobic mother calls to say she can't get on the plane to come to the wedding, it's a reminder that there are things Robin has never had and things she never can have. Her relationship with her parents has always been distant, at best, and she's unable to forge a new family in the usual way.

So her final embrace with Barney's mom is a recognition that there are other ways of doing so. There are things Robin has never had, and there are things she can never have, but that doesn't mean family is a ruined lighthouse.

Notes

• "A scramble-off to the death! Watch out for the cops!" "We really should have checked up on this town before booking our wedding here."
• Marshall and Daphne spend the night at Ted's old house in Cleveland. Ted imagines a highway sign saying "Welcome to Cleveland, Home of Ted Moseby," then admits that was unlikely.
• Ted's mom has an Old West-style photo Ted took with his best friend when he was a kid. Ted's best friend was a balloon.
• "I've always liked children. I've always wanted a Lamborghini with a hot tub in it."
• Turns out, ZZ Top's hit "Legs" was actually about Loretta's eggs. Robin's not impressed by this revelation about "Zed Zed Top."
• Ted's future wife doesn't have to share his love of coins, but it'd be nice if he didn't have to go stag to CoinCon.
• Lily being handed a glass of booze by Linus the bartender is never not funny.  

New Heights (Review)

Series: Rome
Episode Title: "Triumph"
Original Air Date: November 6, 2005
Episode Grade: A-

"Triumph" is putatively about the loud, massive, drunken party Julius Caesar throws to celebrate his victory in Rome's civil war. The "triumph" was the greatest honor a Roman general could be given; half-parade, half-orgy, the triumph was the general's opportunity to display the spoils of conquest and revel in the praise of the crowd.

But "Triumph" excels instead at finding the quiet and desperate moments. It's Rome's best episode yet, and if I said that a few weeks ago about "Caesarion," well, this episode is clearly a step above that one. Its stories are almost all compelling, and the characters in the spotlight justify the attention given them.

"Triumph," in short, is the episode that best delivers on the promise of what Rome can be: character-focused, without losing sight of the larger historical context.

The good work begins with the first scene, which takes place in the Senate on the eve of Caesar's elevation to dictatorial powers. The conversation Brutus and Cicero here is a little on-the-nose and expository, but Tobias Menzies (Brutus) and David Bamber (Cicero) both do excellent work in conveying their despair and bitterness in a wry tone. And when Bamber starts speaking of "honor," and Menzies quickly points out that if the two of them had any of it they would have killed themselves like Cato and Scipio, there's a genuine edge of sadness to the exchange that's brought across without excess emoting.

I've had some fun pointing out where Rome has noticeably cut corners as a result of its budget; see, for example, the entire "Pharsalus" debacle. But "Triumph" actually does justice to its titular event; not, it must be acknowledged, in the fashion of Cleopatra and other sword and sandal Hollywood epics of the past, where the parade is given a long, luxurious look.

Instead, "Triumph" focuses on the details of the planning and one particularly intense scene during the event itself. There are some memorable shots of the planning stages, including a particularly beautiful scene shot looking straight up toward the sky while red banners are unfurled toward the camera.

If there's a particularly eloquent character in "Triumph," it's a silent Vercingetorix, the Gaul chieftain who surrendered to Caesar in the pilot. His final days are placed in sharp, if obvious, contrast with Caesar's moment of victory. From the time Vercingetorix is pulled out of his dungeon, looking emaciated and disheveled, to be examined by Caesar one final time, his fate is obvious.

And when he's dragged out on the day of the triumph, dressed in a mocking simulacrum of what he wore as a proud warrior, it's impossible not to feel the crushing weight of the moment on his shoulders. His day ends as it must, strangled to death (in a slow, agonizing scene) in front of Rome at Caesar's orders.

Vercingetorix's body is unceremoniously dumped onto the side of the road, though the episode ends with some anonymous folks (presumably Gauls) retrieving it and giving the chieftain a proper funeral pyre. None of this is particularly subtle, but it works based in no small part on the strength of Giovanni Calcagno's silent, terrified performance as Vercingetorix. And as a kind of subtle foreshadowing of Caesar's eventual end, it's got some resonance.

It's hard in watching "Triumph" not to think of a couple famous lines from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once."

That's the reality facing Brutus in this episode: he is alive and well, and Caesar allowed him his to return to the prestige of a Senatorial posting. But as played by Menzies, Brutus is more a ghost than a man. His is not just an honorable name, it is a name that almost means honor in Rome, and Brutus sullied it. First by turning on his friend, then by crawling back to him for mercy.

This is most apparent and most compelling when baldly stated by his mother, Servilia. She has her own reasons for anger, of course, and they have less to do with honor and patriotism than fury at being set aside by Caesar (oh, and the whole "attacked and stripped naked in the streets" thing from last week). But she can use honor and patriotism as psychological weapons against her son, and she does so with brutal effectiveness.

When Brutus acknowledges that he has failed her, Servilia responds, "You have not failed me. I'm your mother, you cannot fail me. You have failed the Republic." It's a cruel, cutting remark, and Lindsay Duncan delivers it with just the right amount of contempt and motherly solicitude.

It brings to mind yet another quote, the farewell Spartan mothers were reputed to give their sons as they left for war: "Come home with your shield, or on it."

And Servilia's not above taking advantage of Brutus' name either, affixing it to the anti-Caesar propaganda she writes with the help of Cassius and Pompey's son Quintus. This doesn't really present much of a danger to Brutus, though he's appropriately horrified; Caesar readily believes that Brutus had nothing to do with the propaganda, though he's not above making Brutus squirm a little bit.

The other storyline of note in "Triumph" is Titus Pullo's collapse. As a private citizen he's not allowed to march in the triumph with the 13th Legion, and he has no real trade to fall back on. More devastatingly, when he buys the freedom of Eirene, the slave he has fallen in love with, he finds out that she's in love with another slave (based on an IMBD search, I believe his name is "Oedipus") and intends to marry him.

Pullo takes this badly.

This is a brutal scene for a number of reasons that go beyond watching Pullo slam Oedipus' head into a wooden pillar so often that he pretty much obliterates the poor kid's face. He committed this crime in Vorenus' home, and Lucius is so appalled that he sends Pullo away for good. This partly a reaction to the murder itself, partly a reaction to the fact that it took place in Vorenus' home and partly a reaction to it happening in front of Vorenus' children. Frankly, those are all pretty reasonable causes for an angry reaction.

These last two episodes have allowed Ray Stevenson to explore the sadness and desperation at the heart of Pullo's character, giving him a chance to bring some depth and color to a previously one-dimensional character. Pullo ends "Triumph" drunk and despondent among the revelry, and vulnerable to the approaches of Erestes, the local crime boss Vorenus has repeatedly angered.

"Triumph" is outstanding. It gets great performances from its core cast and explores inter-personal dynamics in a way that is both compelling and subtle. This first season of "Rome" has been a disappointment, but "Triumph" provides some reason to hope that it will end on a high note.

Notes

• I don't usually relegate Vorenus' plot to the notes, but he has a fairly basic and predictable arc where he becomes disillusioned by the corrupt nature of the election he is running in. Pullo later points out how hypocritical Vorenus has been, and it clearly stings.
• Polly Walker is wonderfully insulting in an early scene where she visits Servilia and offers unctuous sympathies for the latter's attack. 
• "I have never seen a bad case so well-put."
• Most of the history I've read indicates that Vercingetorix was probably killed in prison after the triumph, not in front of screaming crowds.

War of the Witches (Review)

Series: American Horror Story: Coven
Episode Title: "Fearful Pranks Ensue"
Episode Grade: B

I wasn't terribly thrilled with last week's episode of American Horror Story, which I felt relied far too much on blatant, out-of-character stupidity. Objectively, however, a lot of stuff happened, most notably Fiona slashing Madison's throat in an effort to stave off her inevitable death and replacement as Supreme.

"Fearful Pranks Ensue," by contrast, is concerned more with reacting to last week's events, setting up future craziness and letting Jessica Lange chew some scenery. There's not a ton of plot advancement, though there is the usual amount of creepiness.

But it's a fun, tense episode, and damn, do I enjoy watching Jessica Lange do her thing.

As indicated in the second paragraph, "Fearful Pranks Ensue" spends much of its running time dealing with the fallout from Fiona's...pointed disciplinary style. This doesn't really go anywhere, in terms of plot advancement or repercussions; Fiona gets away with her murder.

But it does expose us to part of the larger witch universe, which is something I've been looking forward to since the season premier. The Witches' Council dispatches three representatives to investigate Madison's death, a group headed by one Myrtle Snow, who has a long-lasting feud with Fiona. She also understands quite well what Fiona has done, both to Madison and to the previous Supreme (throat-slashing, in case you forgot).

This particular plot is mainly just a chance to get Frances Conroy (playing Myrtle) and Fiona in a room together and let Conroy's righteous rage bounce off Lange's stony contempt. And it is utterly successful in that goal; there's something undeniably enjoyable about watching Conroy desperately interrogating Lange and coming up short again and again.

The investigation ultimately turns on the butler, Spalding, a greasy-haired chap we've only seen in the background before this episode. He saw Fiona kill the original supreme, then witnessed the aftermath of her murder of Madison. He lost his tongue shortly after Fiona's original murder, and there's every reason to think that Fiona was responsible for this. Myrtle Snow certainly thinks so, as he lost his tongue shortly after Myrtle placed a spell on him requiring him to tell the truth (it's a show with witches, they all went to school together, just go with it).

The reveal that Spalding actually took his own tongue, presumably aware of Myrtle's spell and unwilling to rat on Fiona (he loves her), is deftly handled, and speaks to one of AHS' themes: the depth and desperation of obsession, and the ways in which love and passion can twist into something horrific.

It's a theme that synchronizes well with Conroy's character and her reaction to Spalding's refusal to give up Fiona even when he has the chance: it's a hysterical, over-the-top explosion, the reaction of someone who has been driven for years by a seething desire for vengeance.

In the case of the Coven season, this is a desperation primarily aimed toward some form of preservation. This has taken the form of Fiona's obsession with immortality and Cordelia's quest for a child, not to mention Kathy Bates' unwilling immortality. The characters on this show want to be preserved for the future, whether literally (in Fiona's case) or in a more traditional sense, through the birth of children.

And then there's Spalding, who takes the preservation theme to a new level. Turns out, the butler is holding onto Madison's corpse and turning it into a human doll so she can join the tea party he's been holding with his more traditional dolls.

The other significant plot in "Fearful Pranks Ensue" is also about an explosion of rage, this time from Angela Bassett's Marie Laveau. It turns out, Jessica Lange isn't particularly scared of minotaurs, and after coming across Gabourey Sidibe recovering from her sexual encounter with said minotaur, she dispatches the creature (off-screen, unfortunately) and sends its head to Bassett.

Bassett responds in the only reasonable way: by summoning an army of zombies.

Yes, American Horror Story is engaging in the zombie craze. The context makes this reasonable enough, and the episode ends in nicely creepy fashion, with Laveau's undead host knocking on the witches' door (loudly, but not un-politely). And, hey, zombies are their own form of preservation.

THEMES!

"Fearful Pranks" is fun. That's the takeaway. And after last week's catastrophe, "fun" is a pleasant development. It gives Jessica Lange and Frances Conroy room to work, and it sets the stage for storylines that might actually be worth pursuing.

Notes

• Cordelia's husband, Luke, is cheating on her, which is awful and...oh, wait, he just shot and killed the woman he slept with. OK?
• The episode ends with a black-hooded figure throwing acid in Cordelia's face in a women's room. It's obviously a major development, but I'll be damned if I have coherent thoughts on it right now. One supposes it'll play into Fiona's obsession with eternal beauty in some way.
• FrankenKyle repeatedly slams his head on a toilet, then flees (with impressive stealth) when Zoe leaves to make him lunch. Again, Zoe: not too bright.
• "I've always enjoyed our little talks together, [Spalding]. Especially since you lost your tongue."
• "If [Madison]'s dead, it's probably because she got wasted and offered the Grim Reaper a hand job or something."

Texts and Sub-Text (Review)

Series: How I Met Your Mother
Episode Title: "No Questions Asked"
Episode Grade: A-

How I Met Your Mother has always been fond of the running gag. At the series' best, the show's writers take that age-old concept and turn it into something more than a frequently repeated joke. As in "No Questions Asked," tonight's stellar episode, the gag is both episodic glue and thematic through line.

"No Questions Asked" eschews a traditional multi-plot structure for a single narrative that ropes in the entire core cast. It does so with skill and humor, and it does so in a way that pays off with surprising emotion at the end of the episode.

"No Questions" asked picks up right after the end of last week's episode, which ended with Marshall's phone ringing with a call from Lily. And since Sherri Shepherd had admitted to texting Lily with the news that Marshall had accepted a judgeship in New York, there was every reason to think she was calling about that bit of news.

This turns out to be a fairly predictable fake-out, and instead Lily is scared to learn she's staying in the room haunted by the ghost of Deerdorf the Hooker, who murdered people with his hook hand (or, alternatively, was a popular male prostitute who killed no one and died of syphilis). Marshall's pretty stoked about this, of course, being a huge fan of ghosts.

The show's writers have some fun with the ghost story element (this is HIMYM's Halloween episode, presumably), but it's there to instigate the episode's plot: Marshall's realization that Lily hasn't checked her text messages yet and hasn't seen Shepherd's text.

He then starts calling in favors, which presents some amusing vignettes. These are "no questions asked" favors, and Ted, Barney and Robin all owe him one. Ted, because Marshall got him out of the mailbox in which he was stuck. Barney, because Marshall agreed to sign him out of the hospital when Barney had been rushed there after winning $50 from an Irish guy by swallowing large versions of all the items in Lucky Charms cereal. And Robin, who Marshall rescued from a horde of unitard-clad ninjas when she herself was mysteriously wearing her own purple unitard and calling herself "Night Falcon."

The way all three friends take to the task of deleting the text from Lily's phone with over-the-top bravado is good for some easy laughs. Ted climbs the drain pipe outside of Lily's room in a driving rain storm. Barney crawls through the air ducts "like the bad guy in Die Hard" (Bruce Willis). And Robin, who orders obscenely expensive room service and hides in the food cart. None of them are the least bit concerned with the fact that Lily's room is unlocked.

This is all really, really funny, and that's quite enough for me. But "No Questions Asked" takes a step into something more with the way it nods at questions of love and marriage. There's a little sideplot here where Barney and Robin start worrying about the long-term viability of their marriage when they realize they're both "lone wolves" who don't consult each other before making decisions.

Is this a little sudden and on-the-nose, a bit of tossed off material mainly there to advance the plot? Sure. This isn't something that's been discussed before. But this is also where our familiarity with the show's characters, build up over nine seasons, comes in handy. Yes, the particulars Barney and Robin are talking about are new, but they reflect broader truths we've long recognized about these characters. In fact, the dynamic explored in this episode is part of what makes the Barney-Robin (Bobin? Rorney?) pairing so much fun.

And it's reflected back nicely at the end of the episode, when Ted calls in his own "no questions asked" favor with Lily (he brought cupcakes to her kindergarten classroom and rescued her from homicidal children) and gets her to destroy her own phone.

After Marshall gets the news, he realizes that he never did the "no questions asked" thing with Lily. He tells Lily that he's been arrested for tackling Russell Brand because he thought Brand was Bigfoot. He tells her that he was mauled by a raccoon he tried to hug. He tells her that he took apart the television and made a robot from its parts. And he tells her that he's been arrested for tackling Russell Brand because he thought Brand was Bigfoot. Again.

Marshall doesn't want to play "no questions asked" with Lily, because she's the love of his life, and that means sharing that life with her. So he ends up just telling her about the judgeship, the reaction to which we're going to see next week.

Yeah, this is a little saccharine. But, again, it fits with the character dynamics that have been so painstakingly established over nine years. Marshall's a little saccharine, and I'm prepared to accept a resolution that turns on him acting according to his nature.

"No Questions Asked" probably falls short of true greatness. Despite some of its thematic richness, it's still a pretty light and inconsequential episode. But for all that, it shows How I Met Your Mother at its best: funny, structurally innovative and built on a long-established foundation of outstanding character work.

Notes

• "You were a...priority male." "You said you'd stop telling that joke after the editor of Bazooka Joe comics rejected it." "That man is a comedy snob!"
• "So, you didn't order room service and 'Prison Sluts 9?'" "I'm telling you, I didn't order room service." Lily likes her lesbian porn.
• Barney and Robin begin questioning the long-term viability of their marriage when they realize Barney arranged to have a flight of doves released after the wedding while Robin's relatives plan a 21-gun salute. 
• "Can't your guys just fire blanks?" "Blanks? At a wedding? Yeah, that's romantic."
• Barney and Robin gain confidence in the long-term viability of their marriage by concocting a plot to retrieve Lily's phone that involves a unitard-glad Robin creating a distraction by shooting a priceless vase and Barney dispatching a trained dove to pick up the phone. "Sometimes it's best to go simple."
• "It's absolutely insane...how foolproof this plan is!"
• "Why do you have a gun? Why do you always have a gun?"

The Existential Question at the Heart of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

A few weeks ago, in my review of "Eye Spy," the worst episode yet of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, I explained that I expected more fun and crazy from a show set in the Marvel universe. We've already been conditioned by a series of hideously expensive, skillfully put together movies to accept a world with superheroes.

That is, it seems to me, a tremendous advantage for Agents of SHIELD. And yet it's an advantage the show has yet to leverage, much to my disappointment. Agents of SHIELD has been many things, but chief among those traits it has been boring. And that's unfortunate.

I was talking about this same issue on another forum, and a friend of mine made a point I hadn't considered (because I'm usually incapable of thinking more than an inch deep about things). To paraphrase his question, isn't the presence of superheroes in the show's universe actually a significant disadvantage? Don't Thor and Iron Man and Captain America present serious questions about the importance of the show's plot? Can't all these super beings just solve the problems?

You know this is a reasonable point, because it involves multiple questions in a row. And in a world with an active Norse god, Skye's hurried typing is only so interesting.

There are, I think, three ways Agents of SHIELD can answer this question:

• Embrace it: Go big. Become "the superhero show." Sure, you can't really use any of the A-level heroes from the movies, but the Marvel universe is a big place. There are a lot of other heroes, both super and mundane, and they don't come with baggage. Alternatively, you can make up new heroes and villains, give the comic books some fresh material. Make your show a big, grandiose spectacle, the sort of thing viewers know will be consistently entertaining.
• Shun it: Go small. Alternatively...you know you can't live up the movies. You don't have the resources or the freedom. What you do have is time; a full season of 20+ episodes in which to develop characters and themes. Make Agents of SHIELD a character-focused show and let us learn to care deeply about the people involved. This approach has the added advantage of addressing the "why can't the superheroes handle this" question: when the scale and stakes are apparently small, it's reasonable that Iron Man and Thor can't be bothered.

Of course, these approaches both have their issues.

The problem with "go big" is that...well, put simply, you can't do it. As noted, the big-time superheroes and villains are out of the picture. Robert Downey Jr seems a good-natured sort, but I doubt he's going to agree to show up regularly on your network television show. 

Still, even if you try to be the superhero show with lesser or original heroes and villains, this still requires more resources than Marvel and ABC appear willing to invest in Agents of SHIELD. Superheroes and super villains require special effects, and special effects require money. And if you want compelling heroes and antagonists, you have to invest in compelling actors. 

But the problems with Approach One go beyond the budget. Agents of SHIELD is less a work of fiction than another province in the Marvel empire or a tentacle in the undulating, grasping squid that is Marvel entertainment. It's more of a support structure than a standalone enterprise.

This means that the show's ambitions almost have to be limited. We've got Avengers 2 coming out in 2015, and that's going to make enough money to enable Marvel and Paramount to buy Poland. It's an investment you can't put at risk, not for the sake of one ABC drama. So Agents of SHIELD can play in the Marvel sandbox, but it can't disturb the terrain, either by introducing new elements or screwing too severely with what's already there.

"Go small," by contrast, is eminently doable. It doesn't require a huge budget and it doesn't mean you have to muck around with the established dynamics of the Marvel universe. And it seems to be the approach Agents of SHIELD is taking so far.

What it does require, however, is a level of writing skill, character development and thematic resonance that the show has not displayed as yet. The "small" approach demands a core of characters we can care about, and a set of stories that grab our attention.

And, no, we're not there yet. It's difficult to care about a group of characters when one of them is Agent Beige Drywall, another is Generic Hacker Girl With a Dark Past and the other two are Bumbling Scientist Mark I and Bumbling Scientist Mark II.

(Clark Gregg and Ming-Na Wen...you're cool)

One can be too harsh in evaluating the quality of the show's stories so far. After all, we're just five episodes into its run, and we've only just begun to see the vague outlines of a season-long arc. But a smaller, character-focused drama isn't just dependent on the larger stories. Individual, standalone episodes can be fertile soil, and Agents of SHIELD hasn't shown any ability to use these episodes to its advantages.

Instead, we've gotten a series of forgettable antagonists, boring plots, meaningless MacGuffins and vaguely portentous looks. 

So, if going big is impossible, and going small seems beyond the capabilities of the show's writers, where does that leave us?

With option three: steer into the skid.

You have a universe full of superheroes you can't use, and these entities present serious challenges to the stakes of your show. But don't ignore them: acknowledge them. Make these questions the core of your narrative. 

What does the existence of superheroes do to the morale of Coulson's team? How does the knowledge that there are beings of infinite power and ability just around the corner affect a person's self-esteem and sense of self-worth? It would seem to make everything you do seem small and petty by comparison. When you've busted your ass to reach the pinnacle of your field, only to find others floating effortlessly above the peak you've spent your life staring at longingly, that would seem a shattering moment. 

Beige Drywall has honed his skills and physical abilities over years of training and endured god knows how much to get to that point. What does it do to his psyche when Thor flies in and destroys all the bad guys with one swing of his hammer? Or to discover that Captain America out-paces him in all physical tests simply as a result of being injected with a serum?

Fitz and Simmons spent years studying to become world-class scientists. Isn't it disheartening to see Tony Stark walk into a room and solve problems of mind-boggling complexity with a glance? 

These issues go on and on and affect every member of the team. Their struggle to define themselves as extraordinary while standing among gods can make for truly compelling drama.

And, in fact, Agents of SHIELD has shown some inclination toward this road. One of the reasons I enjoyed the pilot as much as I did was the way it put those precise questions in the mouth of Mike, the engineered superhero the SHIELD team is trying to neutralize. His feelings of worthlessness, brought on by a combination of economic deprivation and the presence of The Avengers in the popular consciousness, were powerful and well-articulated.

Unfortunately, these themes were largely dropped after the pilot. It's easy and cliched for someone like me to suggest that they would be compellingly developed if Joss Whedon was actually running this show, instead of serving as a kind of honorary executive producer (Whedon wrote the pilot). But that's a meaningless thought; Whedon has The Avengers to look after, and he's beyond weekly television dramas at this point.

I certainly don't expect Agents of SHIELD to choose option three. That version of the series doesn't have to be dark, and it can make eloquent statements about the power of humanity and the everyday greatness of these characters. But it would undoubtedly require going to dark places, and I don't think those are places on which Agents of SHIELD wants to shine a light.

Regardless, the show as it stands now is barely worth watching. It is a largely boring drama salvaged by a few solid performances and an occasional flash of wit in the dialogue. Agents of SHIELD can be more, but only when it decides what it wants to be.