Terra Nova 111 Review- No Hope Plaza

Zoe- "Lieutenant Washington was a nice lady."

The largest issue I have with the Terra Nova season finale is that there were many nice moments in "Occupation/Resistance" that could have been great if they weren't part of a show that - in general - is just not good.

For example, the early scene at the bar was nice. Lucas making a big deal about his pseudo brother/sister relationship with Skye was funny, and then after he tried to go a bit too far with his fake sister, Josh coming to the rescue was admirable. Lucas again proved to be a viable villain as he took a number of free shots on the teenager, before Big Jim Shannon came storming into the bar to save the day.

For as smart as Elizabeth is supposed to be, this was the first time she really did anything to prove her intelligence. Her ruse on Weaver, which got him to give up Jim, was bright, hilarious, and moved the plot exactly where it needed to go. It took 12 episodes, but Elizabeth finally did something worthwhile.

Unlike a number of the times that Terra Nova has attempt to pull at the heart strings of its viewers, the sweet moment between Zoe and Commander Taylor worked like gangbusters. It worked because it was an honest moment between two characters that we have had a chance to get to know over the season's run, and two characters that we've seen have a history (Zoe playing Taylor at the festival). It didn't hurt that the girl's "If you need another hug, just ask" was the cutest darn thing I've ever seen.

To read the rest of my review of last night's Terra Nova season finale, head over to TV Fanatic.

Terra Nova 111 - "Occupation/Resistance"
Review
Recap
Quotes

Survivor Finale- Explain Yourself

It never ceases to amaze me that the contestants on this show don't know who are the right people to bring to the end. Well, other than Boston Rob, because he did a fine job of bringing the correct people to the end last year. Not bringing Rick to the end was the worst idea any of these people had. The same is true of kicking Brandon to the curb.

The problem lies at the root of Coach's strategy and all around goal in life. You never want to surround yourself with the best in this game. At the end, you want to be sitting next those players that did absolutely nothing, nobody liked, and have no way of convincing the jury they deserve to win.

If Coach had sat next to any combination of Albert, Rick, Brandon, and Edna in the finale, he would have left with the million dollars. After all, he didn't play a bad game. Like Edna explained in her fantastic speech at final tribal, he used religion to create a bond within his tribe. That bond, and the fact that he was at the head of it, propelled him to the very end of Survivor.

The problem lied in the fact that Sophie did something things here and there to warrant herself a victory. In the end, her ability to put her strategy and what she accomplished into words in front of the jury, won her this game.

That is what I love about Survivor. Each and every season it is something different that wins the contestant the prize. Sometimes it's being the nicest person in camp (Bob from Maine). Sometimes it's riding coat tails and not being hated as much as who you're sitting next to (Russell's Natalie). Sometimes it's playing a great strategic game and bringing pitiful candidates to the end (Boston Rob).

And sometimes, as was the case with Sophie this time around, it is doing just enough in every facet of the game to warrant a win, but then explaining yourself with so much more eloquence than anyone else that it's hard not to believe you deserve to win the whole darn thing.

Whether Sophie really did as good of a job figuring out what the tribe was all about and finding her place in it as she said or not, she convinced enough people of that to win the prize. Good for her.

Did Coach deserve to win? Maybe a little bit more than Sophie, but he also deserved to lose way more than Sophie. He did some outright dumb things in this game, and when he actually thought about bringing Ozzy with him to the end, I absolutely lost it!

Between Coach, Brandon, and Cochran, I enjoyed this season a bunch. I grew to hate Ozzy a lot of the course of the fall, so I have no idea why he won the Fan Vote by such a gigantic margin. Why does America love this guy? Well I guess they also like themselves some Rupert, so America is just dumb.

...

Can we now talk for a second about how awesome Russell's cameo was? This dude will never get over the fact that he was the GOAT but nobody will ever admit it. He is astonished that Brandon wanted to change the Hantz name on Survivor, because he made this game what it is today! I love that he took all of his 45 seconds to trash his nephew's play and state once again that he is the GOAT. Well done sir.

...

And on to fantasy. Let me first say how embarrassed I am of our league that the Champions failed to pick the winner. 16 players drafted, two left out to dry, and one of those two was Sophie. The Developmental League wasn't that much better, as Tippy selected the eventual winner in the final round of their draft. This goes to show you that is always difficult to pick which random girl is going to make if far in this game. It's much easier to pick which alpha males are going to go far, which is why they're always first off of the board.

Congratulations to Larry for hanging on and winning his first ever Quiet Pool Fantasy Survivor Championship! He is the last of the four originals to win this Survivor Game. Let's take a look at the history...

Fall 2011: Larry
Spring 2011: Jaydon
Fall 2010: Dan
Spring 2010: Jaydon
Fall 2009: Jaydon
Spring 2009: Jaydon
Fall 2008: Mags

Mags, who has not won since the first ever season of Fantasy Survivor, came in last this time around and will be relegated to the Developmental League come spring time. Jack, in his first ever Fantasy Survivor appearance, won the "B" League and will join Larry, Jaydon and myself in the Champions League in 2012.

Champions League

Larry

Brandon +468: Duel Loss (-10)= +458
Rick +529: Votes (-12)= +517
Christine +13
Dawn +151

Last Week +1,057: Team Total= +1,139

Jaydon

Ozzy +52: Duel Win (+10), Immunity (+20), W16 (+121), Votes (-12)= +191
Whitney +165
Cochran +242
Edna +327

Last Week +786: Team Total= +925

Dan

Albert +565: W16 (+121), Votes (-4), W17 (+137)= +819
Mikayla -7
Jim +69
Semhar -43

Last Week +584: Team Total= +838

Mags

Coach +591: W16 (+121), W17 (+137)= +849
Elyse -142
Keith -89
Mark -173

Last Week +187: Team Total= +445



Free Agents
Sophie +643: Votes (-8), W16 (+121), Immunity (+20), W17 (+137), Sole Survivor (+154)= +1,067
Stacey -27

Developmental League

Jack

Albert: W16 (+121), Votes (-4), W17 (+137)= +254
Whitney
Coach: W16 (+121), W17 (+137)= +258
Edna

Finale= +512, Team Total= +2,384

Tippy

Ozzy: Duel Win (+10), Immunity (+20), W16 (+121), Votes (-12)= +139
Cochran
Elyse
Sophie: Votes (-8), W16 (+121), Immunity (+20), W17 (+137), Sole Survivor (+154)= +424

Finale= +563, Team Total= +1,628

Marsh

Mikayla
Rick: Votes (-12)= -12
Dawn
Christine

Finale= -12, Team Total= +808

Rizzo

Keith
Mark
Brandon
Jim

Finale= 0, Team Total= +680



Free Agents
Stacey
Semhar

Homeland 112 Review- Bomb In A Bunker

Carrie- "The world is about to end and we're standing around talking!"

With an extended Homeland season finale comes an extended Homeland season finale review here at TV Fanatic. I will attempt to keep my thoughts contained, but since "Marine One" was such a tremendous end to this almost perfect first season, I make no promises.

No show in recent memory has combined such interesting character studies with such amazing storytelling as well as Homeland has done over its first 12 episodes.

This season finale had me on the edge of my seat for the entire 90 minutes. A number of series can pull that off on finale night, but Homeland managed to do it every single hour over the course of an entire season. Bravo.

It started with Dana walking in on her dad praying in the garage, a moment I was so glad that Brody was somewhat upfront about. For obvious reasons he couldn't be honest with his daughter when she almost walked in on him again, this time with a bomb strapped to his chest.

To read the rest of my review of last night's Homeland season finale, head over to TV Fanatic.

Homeland 112 - "Marine One"
Review
Recap
Quotes

The Office Midseason Report Card

With so many shows either on hiatus or having just wrapped up their most recent seasons, TV Fanatic is taking a look back... along with a slight look forward.

We've already handed out grades to 2 Broke Girls, Supernatural and Covert Affairs, among other shows. Now, critic Dan Forcella takes us through the highs and lows of the first half of the first season of The Office without Steve Carell...

Funniest Line: There are plenty of worthy nominations, but for me it's a tie between Nate's "You had me at clookies" and Dwight's "I'm gonna make you the buffest dude Val Kilmer has ever seen." What was your favorite quote of the first half of the season?

Best Prank: It has to be Jim writing a book entitled The Ultimate Guide to Throwing a Garden Party for the sole purpose of Dwight buying the lone copy and following the book's crazy orders to the "t." It made for one heck of an episode, which brings us to...

Best Episode: "Garden Party" Dwight following along with all of James Trickington's chapters gave the episode brilliant focus, as well as a ton of laughs. The half hour also gave us Mose's valet stunt, Andy's family acting like jerks, and everyone else sucking up to Robert through multiple toasts.

To read the rest of my The Office midseason report card, head over to TV Fanatic.

Chuck 506 Review- Awesome Short Cunnings

Sarah- "Ellie must have used your open table account."

Chuck- "She always does. She knows I love the points!"

Mr. and Mrs. Awesome, as I affectionately refer to Devon and Ellie Woodcomb, were responsible for a majority of what worked so well for "Chuck Versus the Curse."

The episode was good on the whole, but if you were to take out everything dealing with the Awesomes, most of the hour would have felt either lacking or repetitive.

Nothing Chuck, Sarah, Casey or Morgan did ever materialized into something interesting or even all that entertaining. Each one had its moments, of course, like Beckman drinking straight from the bottle, or Casey and Sarah killing every bad guy in the place once they got the power off for good, but none of it ever came together for a moment that was worth pulling the camera off of Ryan McPartlin and Sarah Lancaster.

As for the new antagonist, I just have to shake my head. I thought it was awesome that Chuck was willing to kill off what I figured to be the big bad of the final season in episode five. If I had known Decker was just going to be replaced in the next episode by a female version of himself doing the exact same job, I would have thought it better to just keep Decker around.

To read the rest of my review of last night's Chuck, head over to TV Fanatic.

Chuck 506 - "Chuck vs. the Curse"
Review
Recap
Quotes

Covert Affairs Season Two Report Card

With so many shows either on hiatus or having just wrapped up their most recent seasons, TV Fanatic is taking a look back... along with a slight look forward.

We've already handed out grades to 2 Broke Girls, Supernatural and The Walking Dead, among other shows. Now, critic Dan Forcella takes us through the highs and lows of season two of Covert Affairs...

Best Episode: "Half a World Away." This was the best of episode of the second season, and the greatest in Covert Affairs' history. Finally learning how Auggie lost his sight, and getting more of a back story on this lovable character, was a long time coming for fans. The hour did not disappoint.

Worst Episode: "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" Covert Affairs has yet to swing for the fences and miss, but occasionally the series will just spit out a less than interesting episode. "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" was a bit too boring to keep our interest as we waited for the second season to come to a conclusion.

Best Character: Auggie. His talent, his charisma, and, let's face it, the way he looks with his shirt off, combine to make Auggie Anderson the most fun character to watch on Covert Affairs. None of that changed during this second season, as Christopher Gorham continued to help Annie, and even had time to begin a serious relationship of his own.

To read the rest of my report card for the second season of Covert Affairs, head over to TV Fanatic.

Survivor Week 15- Are You At Peace?

Probst- "Brandon, are you at piece?"

Brandon- "No sir."

That moment - that sullen, emotional moment - was exactly the type of behavior that turned Brandon Hantz from a loathsome, irritating contestant, into an interesting character that became really fun to watch.

The kid is genuine, and that is difficult to find on reality some times. He's genuinely emotional. He's genuinely religious. And he's genuinely stupid. That last fact made for an extremely exciting tribal council.

He's loyal. I get that. And like his former "gang" members, Albert used Brandon's loyalty to get ahead, taking his immunity necklace and not giving it back when it was ever so apparent that the kid was in trouble at council.

Bravo to Albert, who acknowledged earlier in the episode that loyalty and honor meant nothing to him in the game of Survivor. He did what he had to in order to survive out here. He played up his religious beliefs, which I assume were exaggerated by a million so that Brandon would save him.

While all of the religious aspects of this season have had their way of wearing on me at times, they have also been a constant source of laughter. Coach told Brandon that he was going to pray, and that whoever God told him to vote for, would be the name he would write down. That is all well and good, but Coach Wade is such a phony that I don't believe a word he's saying.

He was never this religious before this season, which only makes it more apparent that he's playing a new character for the cameras. I'm still enjoying this character, but sometimes the genuine foolishness of Brandon is more entertaining than the artificial foolishness of Coach.

I don't know what any of these contestants are thinking anyway. God does not have the time to tell them who to vote for in this silly game of Survivor. Don't they know he has too much on his plate in making sure little Timmy Tebow and the Broncos win every NFL football game for the rest of time.

Having said that, Brandon did have himself a bit of a Tebow moment in the immunity challenge. The chips were down, he had won nearly no competitions to this point in the season, but when it counted he came through in the clutch. If God helped him win that challenge, it's a shame he made Brandon look so foolish when he gave up his immunity and got voted the eff off the island.

That was just a crazy tribal. I only started watching Survivor in 2008 so I'm not sure if this was a first, but he gave up his individual immunity to save another and got sent home?!?! Unheard of. I can see it with a hidden idol, but not the immunity necklace. When you win that thing, you hang onto it.

A Few Other Notes

- When will Survivor get rid of Redemption Island Duels...because they are no longer duels. Even though Ozzy won again this week, he was playing one against six in that challenge. That's not fair at all.

- Coach is losing it. Brandon came up to talk to him and Albert, and Ben Wade freaked out. He started calling out Brandon for bullying!?! How dare you talk to him like that, comparing him to the evil Russell Hantz. Interrupting conversations is what Survivor is about. I would like taking him to the end, he's going to blow up in front of the jury.

- When will people learn that you don't keep the lie going once people find out about it. When Brandon called Albert out for what he said to Rick, he should have quietly said "Of course I told Rick that. What am I supposed to tell him that we're voting him out soon? I have to let him think he's okay so that you and me can go to the end." Boom. Done and done.

Champions League

Larry

Brandon +470: Immunity (+20), Idol Misuse (-10), Votes (-12)= +468
Rick +423: W15 (+106)= +529
Christine +13
Dawn +151

Last Week +1,057: Team Total= +1,161

Jaydon

Ozzy +42: Duel Win (+10)= +52
Whitney +165
Cochran +242
Edna +337: Duel Loss (-10)= +327

Last Week +786: Team Total= +786

Dan

Albert +459: W15 (+106)= +565
Mikayla -7
Jim +69
Semhar -43

Last Week +478: Team Total= +584

Mags

Coach +485: W15 (+106)= +591
Elyse -142
Keith -89
Mark -173

Last Week +81: Team Total= +187



Free Agents
Sophie +545: Votes (-8), W15 (+106)= +643
Stacey -27

Developmental League

Jack

Albert: W15 (+106)= +106
Whitney
Coach: W15 (+106)= +106
Edna: Duel Loss (-10)= -10

Week 15= +202, Team Total= +1,872

Tippy

Ozzy: Duel Win (+10)= +10
Cochran
Elyse
Sophie: Votes (-8), W15 (+106)= +98

Weeks 15= +108, Team Total= +1,065

Marsh

Mikayla
Rick: W15 (+106)= +106
Dawn
Christine

Weeks 15= +106, Team Total= +820

Rizzo

Keith
Mark
Brandon: Immunity (+20), Idol Misuse (-10), Votes (-12)= -2
Jim

Weeks 15= -2, Team Total= +680



Free Agents
Stacey
Semhar

The X Factor Semifinals Review- Who's Feeling Good?

In the semifinals of The X Factor's first season, we - you guessed it - faced the music. The final four contestants sang two songs for America's vote, and they did a pretty darn good job competing for the final three spots in next week's finale.

The best part of the night might have been when Steve Jones read some random fans Tweet that stated, "L.A. Reid...more like L.A. Rude." Then again, maybe the best part might have been one of the performances. Let's see how the final four did...

Round one was the Pepsi Challenge with songs picked by America.

Marcus Canty "I'll Make Love To You" - This song seems ridiculously inappropriate for this setting. He absolutely murdered the vocal, though. Like I've said a thousand times already, he belongs in the mid-90s, and this Boyz II Men performance proved that. One question, who was that random girl in a red dressing dancing in the background? Simon makes a good point that the song wasn't changed at all from the original.
My Score: 7/10

Chris Rene "Fly" - This is really the song America picked? I'm sorry, Chris. It's nice to see all of his friends joined him on stage, but he's really not getting to do much with this chorus. He kills the original verse within this madness. There is such great originality from him every single time.
My Score: 7/10

To read the rest of my review of last night's The X Factor, head over to TV Fanatic.