Change of Plans....

Ok, there is a slight change of plans for my reviews.  While I will still be writing reviews for both therogersrevue.com and pop-topia.com, I will be continuing to put reviews for The Vampire Diaries and The Originals on this blog as well.  My reviews for therogersrevue.com will be slightly different than the reviews on here, so it would be well worth checking both out.

So, starting next Thursday, look for new reviews to start coming up here.  See y'all then!

TV Review Sites

I will no longer be putting new reviews during the regular season on this site unless Teen Wolf comes on during the regular season.  Tonight I finalized plans to put my new reviews of The Vampire Diaries and The Originals on therogersrevue.com.  My reviews of Arrow will continue to be on pop-topia.com as will my reviews of The Flash.  All of my reviews already here will stay here unless something major changes.  So keep an eye on those two sites and I will update this blog as needed.

Thanks and love y'all!

My Review of Teen Wolf 4.12- Smoke and Mirrors

We have a face-off that has been 4 years in the making, Derek has a surprise for us, and everyone gets involved in the battle....

Let's start with Derek.  He managed to morph into the full black wolf that seems to be indicative of the Alpha of the Hale pack.  Both his mother and sister were able to become full wolves, but Peter was not, which tells me that Scott was right when he said that Peter was never truly an Alpha.  Derek also managed to single handedly destroy a Berserker, which in and of itself indicates a fair amount of power.  Derek went to Mexico ready to sacrifice himself to save Scott. I wonder if that is what finally enabled him to manage the final transformation.

Scott spent most of the episode as a Berserker until Liam managed to break through to him by reminding Scott of what he told Liam when Liam was first turned: "You're not a monster,  You're a werewolf, like me!"  I can only assume that because Scott is a True Alpha, he was able to break the hold that the ceremony Kate performed (to transform him into a Berserker) had on him.  And Peter was right, Scott is incorruptible.  All season, Scott has been fighting with his animalistic side to maintain control and this week he showed that he could definitely do it when things were at their worst.  Could he have killed Peter?  Sure, but Scott will not kill.  Well, he won't kill unless a life depends on it and then he might be willing to save the life if he has no other option.  So far, he has not been put in that position, so if he would kill is merely speculative.

I was happy to see Liam get his wolf side under control.  While Derek's chant didn't work, the chant from Satomi that Stiles had him use did.  It worked so well that Liam was able to summon the claws at will.  And as Scott's Beta, he managed (as noted above) to get through to Scott so that Scott could break free from being a Berserker.  He has come far from where he started and has even improved over the past few episodes seeing how he managed to stand and fight BerserkerScott when he has spent the last few episodes petrified of the Berserkers.

Kira managed to get her first tail and figured out how to trigger her healing abilities.  I am not sure where that sword came from (don't think it's a tail!), but I was glad she had it so that she could save Scott from Malia and Liam.  She needs to work on continuing to control her abilities, but she is doing a decent job with just that sword so far.

Poor Mason got a serious case of being thrown in the deep end of the pool.  He has known that something weird is going on with Liam, but now he has seen a Berserker and I suspect that he will be skirting the periphery of Scott's pack next season.  While he may become the second human in Scott's pack, I would be a little surprised.  I was impressed that he was willing to attack that Berserker with a baseball bat.  That took some serious guts for someone who is brand new to the whole supernatural thing.

Lydia also gets kudos.  I do get keeping her away from Mexico in order to prevent her from realizing that Scott was the Berserker.  While I was impressed that she was willing to attack the Berserker, I was less so than with Mason because Lydia has been dealing with the supernatural for a while now.  And here's looking forward to her and Parrish working together to find out what the hell he is.  I still say phoenix, but nothing is sure yet.

Stiles is rapidly becoming the wise man in the group.  Along with Scott, he seems to be acting as the balance for everyone.  He got Liam to get control of the wolf, working with Kira he managed to stop Scott from being killed, he is helping Malia look for her mother (who was apparently being hunted by Braeden), and he helps plan things.  He just needs to get through to his dad that he does know what he's doing, not that I expect the Sheriff to worry any less or anything.

When Peter is scared of someone, it is bad.  I am glad that Peter is locked up now (even if it means we'll see less of him) because he is very, very dangerous.  He isn't going to get out of Eichen House anytime soon, so the pack is safe for now.  Unfortunately, Kate is still out there blaming Scott and his pack for Alison's death, so that is not good.

I believe that Teen Wolf is coming back in January or February for the first part of Season 5, and I will (of course) be back with my reviews then.  I'll be on break until the beginning of October when TVD and The Originals come back.  I will also be reviewing Arrow and The Flash for Pop-topia.com, so I hope you'll read those there.  I may write something in the next week or two with some thoughts about what I hope for in Season 5, but that will depend on how much time I have and if I have enough to say.

So, I 'll see you when I see you!

My Review of Teen Wolf 4.11- A Promise to the Dead

Liam is having major issues, Deaton shows a new side to himself, Peter and Kate ratchet up their plans big time, and Scott gets in some major trouble....

Liam is having some serious PTSD or something.  He is seeing Berserkers all over the place and every time he sees one, he freezes up.  This is having the undesirable side effect of causing him to push Mason away rather than accept any help.  While I understand not cluing Mason into what is actually going on (Liam is still sorting this out himself), Liam does need Mason as a friend to help him stay balanced.  He is pushing everyone away and for any werewolf (particularly one with anger issues!) this cannot be a good thing.  Scott had Stiles to help him through the first few months, and while Liam has Scott, he isn't letting Scott help him.  Fortunately Brett is trying to help Liam, not the least by making sure Liam knows how rare and special Scott truly is.  Unfortunately, Scott's absence isn't helping Brett's case.

And Scott isn't absent by choice.  Being kidnapped by Kate and her Berserkers is not a good thing.  Scott actually did a pretty good job holding his own against Kate.  Unfortunately, he doesn't have anywhere near the amount of training she does nor does he let his wolf side take control the way she does with her cougar side.  He was also handicapped by the fact that the Berserker had Kira and he acted to preserve her.  Can I just say how annoyed I was by the fact that Kate and the Berserker interrupted a totally cute date?

Scott's conversations with his mom and Derek about the money went a whole lot better than I could have imagined.  Melissa was very understanding about why Scott kept the money, and let's face it, he did have some good points.  Unfortunately, the money was stolen and does need to be returned.  But as Derek pointed out, the money is Peter's which makes the return less urgent in Derek's eyes.  Fortunately, Stiles and his father no longer need the money since Eichen House decided to forgive their bills.

Who knew Deaton was such a badass?  He fought that wendigo with some serious skill.  The fact that Eichen House keeps a floor for supernatural creatures is seriously disturbing.  I have the awful feeling that we are going to revisit that floor at some point, quite possibly by having the various creatures escape.  And what exactly did Deaton see when he was in the comatose state and how exactly did Lydia wake him up?  I assume (given what she said) that she did her banshee scream or something.  And how exactly did she know where to find Deaton?  Is a comatose state close enough to death to trigger her banshee abilities?

Parrish apparently possesses normal human strength given the fact that he couldn't unbend the rebar Peter stuck in Chris.  But his eyes did glow an orangish color which would seem to indicate that he was doing something with whatever his supernatural abilities are.  I am going to guess that Parrish is a phoenix.  How that will play out in the Teen Wolf universe is up for anyone's guess.

Peter and Kate are definitely not playing out of the same book given that Kate kidnapped Scott and is turning him into a Berserker and the fact that Peter wants Malia to kill Kate.  These two are going to be each other's undoing unless they are very careful.  Both of them want power, but both of them cannot have it.  Kate is also trying to figure out how Scott could cause the downfall of the Argent's.  The problem is that she doesn't get that Scott did not cause their downfall, they did it themselves.  Allison and Chris chose to change the focus of the family's efforts to protect those who needed to be protected and this seems to have caused other hunter's to desert them.  And Kate herself played no small part in the downfall by her perversion of the hunter's code.  Same with Gerard.

How incredibly cute was it to watch Malia try and wake up Stiles?  I loved her ultimate method to just start making out with him.  That definitely got him to wake up.  :-)

Next week is the finale.  I think I saw that it was 75 minutes, so plan on that.  I expect that BerserkerScott will face off against Liam or Kira and that either Peter or Kate will kill the other one.  Until then!

My Review of Falling Skies 4.11 and 4,12- "Space Oddity" and "Shoot the Moon"

Tom deals with the Lexi situation and the Espheni power core, the Espheni unveil a new weapon, and we deal with some serious deus ex machina....

All in all, not Falling Skies greatest season finale.  While not awful, the episodes were awfully predictable for the most part.  I made some predictions last week which all came true, which (I think) says less about my predictive abilities than the predictability of this season.

The first hour dealt mainly with Tom coming to terms with the fact that he needed Lexi on the mission and that he ultimately had to work with her and help her.  I cannot blame him or Anne for the way they treated Lexi.  She did some horrible things and betrayed both of them, which makes it doubly hard to work with her.  But, as Weaver said, Tom and Anne had to lay aside their anger and pain and think about the mission.  Would having Lexi along increase the mission's chances of success?  The answer was yes.  While there was the risk that Lexi was playing some sort of game with them and would betray them to the Espheni, the potential benefits to having her along more than made up for the risks.

If anyone actually believed for more than a second that the dream sequence was real, I will come and smack you upside the head.  It was so incredibly obvious that Tom was dreaming, even before all of the little things about how perfect it was.  Did anyone seriously think that the show would skip over an event they spent several episodes building towards?  Didn't think so.  I did like that it was used to expose just how unnerved Lexi was by everything that was going on.  Like any kid, she wants her parents approval and love.  She was also vividly aware of everything that she had done wrong and couldn't forgive herself for what she did.  I was glad that she admitted that she knew what she did was all her and that she didn't try to deflect any of the blame.

The second hour dealt with the new bomb the Espheni developed and Tom and Lexi getting to the power core on the moon.  This is where things really went off the rails.

First off, the explanation of why Lexi's powers wouldn't work made no sense.  While there is not a lot of gravity in space, there is still some, not to mention the fact that the power station itself would have potential energy in it that she should have been able to harness to destroy it.  It's almost like they realized that they made her too powerful and came up with spur-of-the-moment limitations on her powers for (supposed) dramatic effect.  Sorry, so don't buy it.  Since she can harness any basic form of energy and manipulate it, she should have been able to do something.

Second, the appearances of both Sara and the Volm was just too convenient.  They both show up at exactly the right time to save everyone?  That was stretching credulity more than a little bit.  While it was nice to see them, it felt like a serious case of deus ex machina.

I did think that the bomb was an interesting idea.  The fact that the Espheni figured out a way to skitterize humans with a weapon is sort of terrifying.  Just drop these near any suspected human outposts and let them do what they will.  I'm not entirely sure how the fog (smoke?) did what it did and I didn't completely understand what it did.  It seemed to not allow people to move from where they were on their own, but (like Hal or Ben) they could be moved by an outside force.  It didn't paralyze anything that it touched; witness Pope biting the tube (hilarious!), or Matt throwing the knife, or other peoples actions.  So that didn't make a lot of sense.  The idea was cool, but there seemed to be some flaws in how it operated.

Lexi's suicide to destroy the power core was obviously meant to get rid of her before next season.  As I said before, her powers supposed limitations made no sense.  If she had her full powers the suicide would have been unnecessary and she would have been around next season, which could have potentially been problematic given her godlike abilities.  So they wrote nonsensical limitations on her powers in order to get rid of her.  Sigh....

Where exactly is Tom?  That figure in the mirror didn't look particularly pretty to me, so I assume there was a camouflage of some sort going on.

Until next season!

My Review of Falling Skies 4.10- Drawing Straws

Tom's plan to go to the Moon hits a small snag, tension continues between Hal and Ben, Matt continues to assert himself, and Lexi makes a surprising move....

So, we finally find out how Lexi does the things she does.  Somehow she has been engineered so that she can control the basic forces of the universe as she demonstrated vividly on several occasions tonight.  First, she used gravity to turn a tree into a pile of matchsticks.  Basically, instead of having gravity keep the tree together, she reversed gravity and hid it cause the tree to fly apart.  Then, after overhearing a conversation between her Espheni "father" and the Espheni Tom attacked where her death was ordered, she glew the Espheni apart.  Finally, she took out 5 or 6 Beamers which were attacking the 2nd Mass.  Considering how much easier it is getting for her each time she uses her abilities, I shudder to think what she can be capable of when she reaches her full potential.  Honestly, I suspect that she is going to die next week, probably sacrificing herself to save Tom and/or Ben.  If she does survive, she has to be stripped of her powers or else she will become too powerful to keep around (storywise).

Hal and Ben had some more trouble tonight.  Fortunately, they worked it all out.  Hal has recognized that there is attraction between Ben and Maggie and that Hal himself is partly responsible for what is going on because he is the one who insisted on putting the spikes in Maggie to save her life.  I must admit that when I saw Hal on the ship at the end, I half expected him to either take off with Ben to keep Tom on the ground or somehow knock Ben out and take his place.  He didn't do either, for which I am grateful.

I was very surprised that after Cochise said that the ship may recognize him as a Volm, no one immediately thought of using Ben or Maggie.  Since they both have Espheni spikes in them, the ship would be more likely to recognize and follow one of them.  Since Lexi is now with the 2nd Mass, she should definitely go along, both as protection and because the ship will definitely recognize her as Espheni.  She is honestly their best chance of getting to the Moon and back in one piece.

Was I surprised that Tom rigged the name draw?  No.  Was it planned from the beginning?  Maybe.  I would like to think that Tom only used his name from his sleeve because Ben's name was drawn, but it is entirely possible that he planned on rigging the thing the entire time.  And regardless of what Pope says, Tom is not doing this because he is a gloryhound.  Tom has an immense sense of responsibility for everyone and will never ask anyone else to do what he cannot/will not do himself.  Pope's problem (as always!) is that he sees his own personal motives reflected in everyone else's actions.  Since Pope would only do this for selfish reasons, Tom must be doing it for the same selfish reasons.  Pope cannot seem to comprehend that Tom does things for reasons that Pope does not think of.  While Tom ain't perfect, he is a good leader.

I was surprised that Pope admitted to Weaver that he felt like he needed to go to the Moon because he wouldn't be missed by people here and that he took Weaver's name out of the hat because Weaver was needed.  I do think Pope is right (to a degree), but he misses the fact that; despite his many flaws; he is a good fighter and could be a decent leader if he let himself grow just a little bit.

And Matt continues his march into adulthood by learning all the wrong lessons from last week.  He figures that he needs to keep all of his emotions completely bottled up and he overcompensates for his behavior last week by rebelling.  While his experimentation was vital to figuring out how to fly the Beamer (was anyone else having flashbacks to Starbuck learning how to fly the Cylon Raider?), he does need to learn to use his passion more constructively.  Tom was wrong when he denied Matt he opportunity to take part in the mission.  I totally get where Tom is coming from, but Matt has done a lot of growing up very quickly and Tom does need to recognize that.

Next week, the 2 hour finale.  Until then!

My Review of Teen Wolf 4.10- Monstrous

A slight twist is thrown into the case of the Benefactor courtesy of Lydia and Peter; Scott, Derek, Kira, and Chris take steps to protect Satomi's pack; and Stiles and Malia work together to find out how to stop the assassins.

Wow, I was not exactly expecting Meredith to have been influenced by comaPeter to start the killings.  She was in the hospital at the same time as him (right after the fire) and he was apparently broadcasting his rage at what was going on and decided to wipe out all of the supernatural creatures in Beacon Hills in order to remake everything in his own image.  So Meredith used a list of creatures put together by Lydia's grandmother and used Peter's money to hire the assassins because she believed that all of the "monsters" in Beacon Hills (herself included) needed to be wiped out.  Given Peter's reaction, I have no doubt that what happened was the ranting and raving of a mind that was hovering on the edge of madness out of revenge, anger, and sorrow at what happened to his family.  Meredith didn't put her plan into action until she heard Lydia scream around the time that Allison was killed last season.

In a way, this makes a lot of sense.  Meredith is not cold and calculating.  Crazy?  Absolutely, but not as cold and calculating as needed to pull off what happened this season.  But if she was carrying out what she thought was Peter's plan, that would explain how she could be so calculating.    Given the fact that Stiles and Malia managed to shut the machines that were distributing the dead pool and money down, I don't think Meredith is a danger anymore.

I am finding it hard to be mad at Liam.  Should he have been there with Scott, Kira, Derek, and Chris?  Absolutely.  But he just came into this supernatural world and he is still adjusting.  The reason that the whole gang continues to do what they do is because of Scott.  He is so focused on doing the right thing and protecting people.  Stiles sticks by his side out of loyalty and friendship; Lydia has come to trust that Scott will do what needs to be done; and Derek, Chris, and Deaton have come to respect Scott's power of belief and value him.  It's what Derek said last season to Aiden and Ethan.  If you want to be in Scott's pack, put others before yourself and protect the innocent.  As I've been saying for years, this is Scott's pack and his purpose animates them all.  To make an analogy to Buffy, Scott is the heart; Stiles and Lydia are the brain; Kira, Derek, and Chris are the claws of the pack.  Without Scott, the whole pack would fall apart, and not just because he is a True Alpha.  They follow him because of who he is.  Malia is along for the ride because of Stiles and Peter is trying to take his power back.  Liam just needs to find his place and find his reason for staying.  Scott has lost Allison, Aiden, Erica, and Boyd to death and lost Ethan, Cora, Isaac, and Jackson to leaving. All of this has made him even more determined to save as many people as he possibly can.  He has taken the Hale's place as the Protector of Beacon Hills and takes this very seriously.

Peter's plan is to kill Scott?  Out of everyone currently alive, I think he is the one best equipped to pull a plan like that off.  He is close to Scott and is burning with an almost unholy desire to get his power back from the Beta he himself turned.  To take a True Alpha's power would probably be a serious power trip and for someone like Peter, that is a dangerous thing.  Throw Kate into the mix and I worry for Scott over the next few episodes.

Calling everyone in to protect Satomi's pack was smart.  Even though Derek no longer has claws, he has been learning how to shoot and that is helpful.  Throw in Chris and Braeden who are incredible with guns and Kira who can use a katana very nicely, and you have a formidable group of protectors.  Scott was scaring me.  He really let the wolf out when he was fighting.  I don't think I have ever seen him quite that vicious.  I swear he was on the verge of ripping that guy's throat out before the guy took his mask off and the fact that he was a human penetrated Scott's brain.  This is what really worries me if Peter attacks Scott.  If Scott were to completely let go and let the wolf out, that could be more dangerous than anything.  If Peter gets that power....<shudder>

I love that Stiles and Malia managed to talk out their issues.  Melissa (presumably) locking them into Stiles' room at the hospital was a good idea.  Stiles made a mistake and knew it.  Fortunately, Malia chose not to hold a grudge and decided to work with Stiles in the end.  Without her, Stiles would never have found the machines behind the wall and the fight at Chris' hideout would have been much bloodier.

A little later tonight, I'll review Falling Skies and then next Monday, Teen Wolf at its normal time.  Until then!