DOA On TV

Monday

Manifest 

The episode "Connecting Flights" explored what it was like for the people left behind when Flight 828 disappeared.

6 months after the event,  Grace isn't coping, and goes to grief counseling where she was immediately leached onto by Danny.    Not the time, not the place, guy.    Jared and Lourdes are sharing memories of Michaela.

Two years after, Danny's over for dinner (I guess his smooth moves didn't pan out so quickly), and Lourdes congratulates Jared for making detective with a smooch at a bar.

Everyone's all settled into their new lives at the 5 1/2 year mark when unexpectedly the flight returns, upending the lives they've made.

It turns out that icky Danny was essentially living with Grace and Olive, and had taken on a role of a father to Olive, and had to awkwardly back out of his cozy nest once Ben, the actual husband and father came home.  We can see I don't like Danny.

As of this episode, it has only been two weeks since the return of the flight.  It seems longer, but given that timeline maybe some things are a bit more understandable.

Except Danny the slimeball wails that he can lose Grace, just as (sniff) he lost his wife, but (sniff) don't take Olive away.  Just back out that door, creepy guy.

In today's timeline Ben and Cal have a day out at Coney Island, flipping a coin to decide what they'll do, what they'll eat, etc.   As they're heading home on the subway, Cal, who has seemed like a nice little kid, suddenly hops off the subway at a stop that isn't home, and he runs away from his father, leading him on a hectic chase into the bowels of the station, where he somehow finds Thomas, the stowaway, in his lair.   This is such odd behavior for any kid, let this one.   Then he has a seemingly clairvoyant knowledge that someone is coming down the hall to the room where they're hiding.

For the first time, he's exhibiting powers of some sort that aren't like those experienced by any of the others.   A final scene back in the aircraft has everyone sleeping but Cal, who sees something in a bright light outside the plane window.  He intones "it's all Connected."

No episode tonight, the 29th, but back next week.



Tuesday


Flash The Death of Vibe

Cisco didn't die at all, though he was attacked by Cicada (chirp, chirp).   Any episode with lots of Cisco is a good one.



A new version of Wells enters the scene, a "brilliant detective" who has tracked Cicada in numerous incarnations named Sherloque Wells.    He's a seedy Poirot clone with a supposed French accent.   Luckily I always end up liking Wells in all his alternate Earth forms.   Predictably, Cisco pretends to hate the new Wells and wants nothing to do with him, but of course they'll end up fast friends.

I like a side mystery with Caitlin and Ralph trying to find Caitlin's father who may not be dead after all.


This Is Us


A packed episode that showed Toby's childhood and lifelong battle with depression.   He's trying to get back on his anti-depression pills without Kate knowing he went off them, but his behavior is becoming erratic.

Kate had a gig dressed as Adele, and belted out a song.  She looked and sounded amazing.   And she's pregnant!

Teen Kate had a glowering episode as Miguel brought in a piano for the Peason's apartment.  Her dress made her look pregnant...eerily mirroring adult Kate's story.

Kevin and Zoe traveled to see an old war buddy of Jack's to try to unravel Jack's war time story.  Kevin did not notice a clerk's rude treatment of Zoe at all, so absorbed was he.   Kevin has improved greatly, but I don't think he's good enough for Zoe.

Randall's prom was ruined when his date's father couldn't tolerate his daughter dating a young black man.  His sweet face, poor Randall.

A bit of softening toward Miguel, who is shown promising Jack he'll look after his family if anything ever happens to him.   So, Miguel bringing over the used piano and fixing the Pearson's fridge was him honoring Jack.

Jack's war buddy shows up at Kevin's hotel as he's checking out to hand him several letters he received from Jack while Jack was still in Vietnam.

In one is a picture of Jack and the woman from the Vietnamese village talking to one another.  The woman is wearing Jack's necklace, which Kevin now has.

The woman was wearing the necklace in the first episode she was in, while Jack's troop was just moving into the village.  So somewhere along the line, Jack befriended her, and I think just friends, and he ended up with the necklace.

My theory is the woman was previously involved with either one of the Viet Cong tied to the village, or another serviceman.   I think Viet Cong is most likely and somehow Jack saves him, let's him escape, or tries to help in some way as he is prone to doing.   Perhaps she gives Jack the necklace to honor his assistance to the ones she loves.  That sounds like Jack.




Survivor


Breathe a sigh of relief, Natalie got ousted at tribal.   I've never seen anyone try harder to be disliked, yet be more impervious to everything around them than Natalie.   She's fascinating, yet painful to watch.

Meet the Brochachos!   Swat cop Dan and wrestler John take Christian the robotics scientist into the fold and call themselves the Brochachos.   May be spelled differently.

This worries Gabby of course who is once again shown moaning off to the side.   Dan and John do indeed thinks she's a weak link and want to boot her when the chance arrives.   SwatDan found his second idol of the game.   Lots of folk know he has the first one, but hopefully he'll not tell anyone about the second, particularly with Carl's game advantage in play.

Dirt Move of the Day:   Angelina decides she's cold and wants Lyrsa's jacket.  She decides to talk Natalie into getting it for her, so she doesn't have to get her hands dirty.  What?  Unbelievably, Natalie goes right for it and asks for it, when turned down, she tries to bully attorney Nick into giving her his.

Possible Tribal Targets Gabby, Kara, Natalie    Natalie was voted, both because she was painful to be around, but she took a lot of bad pub for trying to get the jackets.   It must have appeared to the others that she'd gone mad.  She never said Angelina put her up to trying to get the jackets, and Angelina never confessed.

Unbelievably, Angelina kept asking Natalie for her jacket as she was heading out, in increasing louder and whinier tones.   So much for the thin veneer of civilization.



Thursday

The Good Place   The Ballad of Donkey Doug

It appears the crew is going to try to save those they know best first.  So we meet at last Donkey Doug and Pillboi.   OMG.  Donkey Doug turns out to be Jason's father.  Pillboi dispenses meds in a nursing home.   The two are planning to steal the ingredients to make some odd concoction they think will make them rich.

The Team tries to get Donkey to go back to Electrician's school to save his soul, but Douggie Daddy is having none of it.

Not a great episode.  Jason's character needs to be dispensed in tiny doses.  Having three of him---oh, the horrors!



Murphy Brown

Murphy had a line on a whistle blower, but had to wait for approval from above to fly the guy in for the show.

Although this was all supposed to be super secret,  everyone from the copier guy to the group at Phil's seemed savvy to the story.

When the Wolf Network had the man on their show the very next morning, a round of finger pointing made for hard feelings.



It turned out a piece of tech that was Murphy's new assistant was misinterpreting voice commands and was sending all the info from the newsroom right over to Wolf.


Friday

Van Helsing

After the two great episodes the previous weeks, the show returned to the "current day" and a painful to watch story line with Sam (awful serial killer turned vampire) hunting down victims and trying to teach Mohamed to be a nasty serial killing vampire like himself.

Sam was a good character early on when you didn't realize he was a serial killer since childhood.  Horribly, the episode showed some of Sam's early days.   He was never anything but a real monster.




I actually turned the sound down and browsed the Net in the scenes with Sam, of which there were quite a few.

Looking up reviews after the show, as I do, I saw there was a big Twitter campaign to encourage people to watch Friday's episode because the show is struggling in the ratings.   And then it's the worst episode ever for the series.


Sunday


Doctor Who   Arachnids In the UK


Why did it have to be spiders?   After getting the companions home to Sheffield, The Doctor is reluctant to say goodbye, so she takes the invite to tea at Yaz's place in a flash.

There's a neighbor encased in spider's webbing.

There's a newly built luxury hotel Yaz's mom was going to manage before being summarily fired by the big ugly American businessman who owns the place.

It's turns out the place is Spider Central, with literally the Mother Of All Spider's nesting below the building.

Despite the fact that the big momma had encased at least two, maybe more people in the underground mines beneath the hotel, the Doctor was sympathetic with it's situation and wanted to offer some solution where it could live peaceably.  Eeww, eeww.


In the end, Ryan, Yaz, and Graham decided they'd like to keep traveling with the Doctor, because, who wouldn't?