The 4400: Voices CarryBefore I launch into my usual ranting and raving about the episode, I have to say this. One thing that strikes me as funny every week is that in the scenes at the NTAC headquarters everyone other male character has their shirt buttoned all the way up and wears a tie except for Tom, who always goes around with the GQ model, no tie, top two buttons undone look. And Diana's outfits aren't exactly what I'd call blending in with the overall fashion of the rest of the office as well.
That just cracks me up every week.
But onto this week's epiosde. Boy, this one was heavy in the exposition, wasn't it? Was it just me or did there seem like there was a whole lot of plot and information crammed into 42 minutes of screen time?
We had Kyle enrolling in classes and sticking his foot in his mouth with the new 19th Century novella professor (gee, who didn't see that little plot twist coming a mile away?). We had the continuing mystery of Isabelle--this week she opens the cash register for Lily to steal some much needed cash and causes Richard to have some type of heart attack or something (which got me thinking--are the ills that Richard is having because of Isabelle?) We had Diana's sister showing up in town and attempting to follow the stereotypical black sheep aunt plotline in spoiling Maia.
And then, we had the story of Guy Navarro, one of the 4400 whose returned and can read minds. Which, if you watched season three of
Buffy and saw the (at the time) controversial epiosde "Earshot" you've seen this plot done a whole lot better. Navarro washes out of baseball becuase he can hear the thoughts of everyone around him. He finds medication that will control it for a while and agrees to help NTAC find out what Collier is up to. He goes in, loses the medication, finds out Colier is helping some extremist buy an island and...well, he has to be extracted at this point. By Tom and Diana. Which makes me wonder--did it make sense to have them go into Collier's HQ and thus blow some of their cover? Collier may know he's under investigation but now with the leads on the case--or at least your most effective investigators, as established last week--have had their cover blown completely out of the water. Wouldn't it make sense to send in some lower level agents to get Guy out of harms way?
The Dead Zone: Broken CircleAbout ten minutes into the season premiere of
The Dead Zone, I found myself wishing that I'd found the chance to re-watch last year's season finale before I started watching "Broken Circle." Of course, if USA had aired this episode last year when it should have aired (they held the final episode of season three for the first episode of season four) this wouldn't have been as big a problem. You could tell that this episode was designed to air right after the events of "Tipping Point."
But once I got back into the grove of things, I have to admit I liked what we got. It was a fairly effective end of the storyline the season-three arc of who killed Rachel. Finding out the Stillson lackee who did it was Stillson's father was a nice little twist in the storyline and one that actually works in the overall context of what we've seen developing back story-wise in the series, so far. And there was a lot of running about, finding out clues and piecing them all together. I loved Walt punching the guy to get blood on his hand so Johnny could touch it and get a vision (how much would it stink if that had not worked?) And while we did get a bit of touching in on the long-term consequences of Johnny's vision on his health, I felt like this was swept aside a bit too quickly. Of course, we do have an entire season left to explore this now and if there's one thing Michael Piller is good at it, it's bringing up plotlines and following through on them.
Of course, it should be interesting to see where the series goes now that Johnny is trying to sever ties with his future self. Johnny seems to want to forge his own way now, even if he no longer has Rebecca in his life. (Though I did find it a bit odd that once her sister's killer is brought to light and she no longer needs Johnny, she finds it less desirable to have a long distance relationship with him. I wonder if Johnny might not feel a bit used after this?) Also, Stillson is free of the person controlling his future and it should be interesting to see where he goes. Will he continue down the path that leads to the visions of armageddon (not the movie, thankfully) or will he be able to be redeemed somehow?
Either way, season four should interesting.
posted by Michael Hickerson at 6/13/2005 02:47:00 PM |
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