Bates Motel – S4xEp03 – ’Til Death Do You Part
’Til Death Do You Part is about two men who go to extreme measures to play savior to the women in their lives. In one case, Sheriff Alex Romero has decided to marry Norma Bates, just so her son Norman can get the medical help he so clearly needs. In another, Dylan sees a future with Emma now that she has successfully received a lung transplant, but he’ll have to go straight first. While Dylan and Norma inch toward happiness, Norman finds himself alone.
Dylan finally makes it back from Portland, ready to fire Gunner and give up his life in the drug trade. Before he can do so, Gunner quits to head off to Cali, and Chick shows up at the door, badly hurt and gaunt. He’s a threat, but he’s mostly looking for Caleb, who beat him within an inch of his life and left him for dead last season. He tells Dylan, “I thought you ought to know what your father is capable of,” and I wonder if that means that Dylan’s uncle/father will be back soon.
Making the parallels even clearer, just as Dylan is confronted by someone from his past, Alex returns home to find his own visitor, Rebecca. It turns out that Alex has a girlfriend, or at least a friend with benefits. He drops the marriage bomb, and she’s not too happy about it. She works at the bank, and people have been asking questions about Bob Paris, the man Alex killed at the end of last season. Is she in trouble? Will she get him in trouble? She gives him back his key, but this is clearly foreshadowing for future problems. And I’m not sure burying his money in the Bates basement is the best strategy.
And of course, the episode deliberately contrasts their private wedding dinner with Norman’s first institutional day. I appreciate that the episode doesn’t make a caricature of mental institutions, and neither does it flinch from the the reality that being in one strips you of so much control. Norman reacts exactly how you’d expect; great stuff from Freddie Highmore, who plays this entire episode so ill-at-ease that he looks like an angry marionette being operated from offstage. And because he’s his mother’s son, he exerts control at the earliest opportunity by lashing out as hard as he possibly can. When Mother comes to see him? “You’ve painted me into a corner I cannot get out of and I’ve never been so disappointed in anyone.” It’s the worst thing someone could level at her, of course, and he wields it like a scalpel. Several people this episode assure Norma she’s done the right thing for Norman; she seems, moment to moment, to believe that herself. But her heart is a pit, and while she’s afraid it will bury him, she’s equally afraid he’ll climb out.
The most telling and tense scenes of the lot involve Norman’s sessions with his in-center therapist, Dr. Edwards. As you might imagine, putting Norman’s motivations under the microscope, watching him tic away, slowly letting out his inner self is constantly engaging. This whole season seems like it’s going to be a game of chicken with Norman’s psyche, with Dr. Edwards helping push those buttons early on. He’s exactly the sort of person that I’d say would have a huge bullseye on him if I didn’t think Norman was fairly pacified in his care here.
However, the biggest pin of all being Norman’s confession to Dr. Edwards that he believes his mother is killing people, and that might just be the one that sends them all crashing down. The future doesn’t look bright for Norma at all. But she has a bright spot now, in her husband, Alex. They’ve finally made love, too, which I can only imagine was a wonderful scene.
Here’s hoping she embraces the happiness while it lasts.
Bates Motel – S4xEp02 – “Goodnight, Mother”
Norman was preparing for a murder suicide when Romero saved the day. What occurred prior to that was one of the most entertaining and suspenseful hours of television I’ve seen in ages. If Norma hadn’t gone out on a limb by asking Romero to marry her, she’d be dead right now. By the end of this hour, she had used every trick in her book to get her son under control and failed.
They’re interrupted by Romero, who takes Norman away while a distraught Norma apologizes. In a last fit of desperation, after hearing Romero will take him back to County (that terrible psych ward), Norma grabs the papers and forces Norman to sign them. And, shockingly, a resigned Norman actually does. Something tells me this won’t be as easy as getting Norman admitted to Pineview and getting him help. And personally, I fear for anyone that has to work with Norman Bates and try to figure out his psyche.
But let’s recap to the beginning of the episode, Norman claims that the only thing he remembers is waking up to find that Norma locked him in the room. However, memories of him dragging Audrey’s body into the basement starts to flash before him. It turns out that she was still alive after getting strangled by the scarf. Another flashback shows him struggling to close the door as Audrey fights to escape. But, of course, she didn’t manage to. The interesting thing about these flashback memories is that while Norman is initially the one disposing of Audrey’s body, he sees Norma as the guilty party. He begins to get paranoid, believing that his mother murdered their motel guest.
Dylan is still at the hospital watching Emma recover. She’s going to try and breathe on her own. They take out the ventilator and suction. She coughs a lot. She struggles to gasp for air. Maybe it didn’t work? Dylan panics. She finally breathes. She’s going to be fine.
This isn’t to say there can’t be moments of intimacy and love in the Bates family, going forward. It’s easy to imagine upcoming episodes in which Norman gets his hallucinations under control with medication, and returns home, apologetic and caring. But even if that’s the case, nothing can ever be the same. Norma can never rest easy again, or avoid the fact that there’s a part of her son that would kill them both, if given the opportunity. It’s a stressful and significant episode, to be sure, but that’s not to say it’s an enjoyable one. The first half of the episode is jarring, and inconsistent, and for awhile it looks as though we’re in for another installment of Norma and Norman sniping at each other and not saying what they mean, which is never fun to watch. But those last 10 minutes, good God: We’re used to watching in uncomfortable silence as this series puts its characters through the wringer, but this was the best sequence of the audience being the ones getting the screws put to them instead, and rightly so, since the series began.
Bates Motel – S4xEp01 – “A Danger To Himself And Others”
The Norman Bates we meet in “A Danger To Himself And Others” is no longer the Norman Bates of the first three seasons. Last year ended with a definitive shift, into a world where his unbreakable bond with his mother ceased to be a connection to Norma, the flesh-and-blood woman, and transitioned to Norma/n, the maternal figure conjured up by his mind. This murderous matriarch bubbles to the surface in times of stress. Sometimes it’s as an imaginary relation speaking to him, and sometimes—as the final section of this episode reminds us—taking over Norman entirely. The good-hearted kid still lives on, but he’s been almost entirely shunted aside in favor of the tormented young man who continually reacts to a mother who’s not really there.
What Emma’s mother said to Norma basically summed up Norma’s life. She knows exactly what it was like. But instead of physically running away, she just mentally closed the door on Norman’s problems. When Norman was in the hospital, the administrator told Norma she could be held as negligent for not getting Norman the help he needed before he was an adult, knowing fully well he had been blacking out and in need of some sort of treatment. She finally told the doctor outside of Pineview the truth: she never got him care because she was afraid the doctors would take him away from her. Well, that’s part of it, anyway. But that’s not a good reason to keep your child from receiving something he desperately needs.
Dylan is heading up to Portland. Emma’s getting a lung transplant and he has to be there for her. He uses this moment to tell Norma that he and Emma are a thing. A beautiful thing that needs to be protected and cared for.
Emma’s lung transplant was successful. So now it’ll be interesting to see where they take her and Dylan. I’m just assuming everyone on this show, except Norman, will die by the end so I’m very curious to see what they do with Emma now that she’s, essentially, survived this heath scare. Will she rise from the ashes just to get murdered or is has she always been destined to die from health complications?
Pretty Little Liars – S6xEp20 – Hush…Hush, Sweet Liars
Obviously the big question after the finale is about the fate of Hanna Marin. It sure looked like her fate was sealed in those final moments as she got set to face a similar death to Charlotte. Hanna is a great character, so taking her out would cause a meltdown on social media, but on the other hand, we really need something significant to happen to show just how much the stakes have been raised.
Jessica Dilaurentis has a twin. Although I didn’t read the books, the “twin theory” is a big deal in our source material. I kind of laughed out loud when I saw J.D. in her Walking Dead makeup — and holy eye roll for the idea that there is yet another female Radley patient whose backstory we are going to have to learn, R.I.P. Bethany; if A held a gun-emoji to my temple, I probably still wouldn’t be able to list three important things about you. But when creepster Elliot peeled off his Wilden mask and, with a straight face, talked to “Mary Drake” (ooookay) about his devotion to her daughter, which was so complete he could “marry her cousin,” I was all about it. And finally, praise be, Elliot is about to be interesting!
But the episode, despite the sudsy ending, was not without value. Sure, Alison escalating herself to a mental hospital mere hours before her husband was to return seemed a little weird, but it was also amazingly twisted in the manner that she was tortured. If Charlotte and Alison had, in fact, buried the hatchet and were bonding as sisters (or cousins, I guess), how cruel was it to fry the mind of your daughter’s best friend by making her think she’s going to be dragged straight to hell? How about how Elliott honeymooned with Alison loud enough that he was certain everyone else in that sleepy B&B could hear them? How about this show making us feel sorry for Alison DiLaurentis?
Ezra and Aria are not over. Liam was right to worry about the implications of these two working together, because all it took was one enthusiastic compliment from their editor for Aria to decide it was time to kiss her old flame. This led to Ezra lifting her up on the counter, which in turn led to them sharing what must be one of the most explicit sex scenes committed to PLL film (explicit here meaning only that you saw feet and light thrusting — don’t get too excited).
Hanna never stopped loving Caleb. Duh, but she finally confirmed it by confessing to him that she realized she’d made the wrong choice in the Boyfriend vs. Career cage match almost as soon as she left their apartment back in their NYC days. Caleb then proceeded to give her an extremely slow kiss, so even though he was ogling Spencer’s butt earlier that morning, you know he still feels something.
But Spencer loves Caleb. She told him as much on his way out the door to execute the Liars’ insane plan to trap A-moji (which I could not explain under pain of death so please don’t ask), but was met with silence. She seemed fine with this because he was in a hurry, though now that he’s rekindled things with Hanna, who knows? Toby and Yvonne are on the rocks now too, thanks to Toby choosing to help Spencer, so maybe Spoby will also have their reunion moment.
Pretty Little Liars – S6xEp19 – Did you miss me ?
There was tension almost all across the board in this story as the threat of the stalker was weighing on everyone’s head, That’s why they teamed up for an elaborate new plan in an effort to try to stop this monster before they could do anything else.
Hanna would proclaim to be the one responsible for Charlotte’s death, So, she and Caleb hatched a plan to get close to taking down the stalker once and for all, but why am I getting the feeling that A isn’t going to take this lightly, and Hanna is going to be in mortal danger?
It was nice of Lucas to offer Hanna her own design company in his soon-to-be-renovated factory, but did anyone else detect a layer of creepiness ‘neath his proposal?
Then there’s the fact that Sara Harvey can freaking drive. Who needs a driver when she can drive herself? I thought her hands were pretty busted. If she’s independent enough to take the reins of a vehicle, then she’s sure as hell able to turn to murder were necessary.
Okay, so Mona essentially says that she wanted to kill Charlotte, but never got the opportunity. I don’t understand why all the Liars are so rude about this fact. Charlotte kept Mona locked in an underground bunker and made her pretend to be Ali as part of some bizarro, sadistic experiment that combined the all-American pastimes of kidnapping, psychological torture, and prom night. I would be way more impressed with our fearful foursome if they’d teamed up to off Charlotte in the season premiere and spent the rest of the season trying to get away with murder. Instead, we get yet another season of these girls chasing their tails all over town to prove their innocence.
I must bring up that scene with Spencer and Emily tricking her driver. Why would he not turn round when Spencer grabbed the tube off him? That was just ludicrous and had me questioning whether you need a low IQ to live in Rosewood. And does anyone think Emily is a good enough actress to distract someone long enough for Spencer to look through all his things?
After a tumble down some stairs—during her honeymoon with her therapist, Dr. Rollins—Ali ends up with a concussion, flowers, and a not-so-subtle hint from A that this is all part of a master plan. We didn’t actually see anything to prove that the fall wasn’t an accident, but A implied that it wasn’t, thanks to a card made of construction paper that looked like it was made by my 3-year-old cousin.
Didn’t Aria suffer second-degree burns last week? How did that fireplace only manage to hit her forearm? It EXPLODED. Also, talkng about Aria, Are Liam and her officially dunzo? Not only is Aria staying in Rosewood to work on the book with Ezra, but Liam has asked for some “distance” from the project. Personally, I’d be OK with that; Liam and Aria’s relationship was barely established this season.
Grey’s Anatomy – S12xEp14 – ‘Odd Man Out’
“Odd Man Out” will see Richard making some changes into the workings of Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. He will switch the resident and attending pairings and this change won’t go down well with everyone.
So, the highly advertised “showdown” between Jo and Mer was…a bit of a let down. The best part of Jo’s rant was Meredith’s non-reaction reaction. Her (partially) valid points about Mer not taking her seriously at work were completely obliterated by the way she devolved into the personal.
One story line that did have me a little worried was Miranda and Ben. Okay, so the stuff with the accountant was really adorable. And Ben going into pediatrics or neo-natal seems like it could be a good fit. But the last scene between the two of them has me a little paranoid. They are the last stable couple left, and between Courtney mentioning divorce for “tax reasons,” Ben’s wounded pride over the taxes, and Miranda’s distraction…I’m feeling nervous.
Grey’s Anatomy – S12xEp13 – “All Eyez on Me”
Meredith, Jackson, Callie, Bailey and Jo were recruited by a Colonel Miller to visit Bauer Medical, a military hospital, to save the life of a veteran with a monster of a tumor. There was just one problem (well, besides the tumor, obviously).
Though Owen had forewarned the Grey Sloan docs to be on their best behavior, no one had given the same instruction to the patient’s regular oncologist, Major Will Thorpe. Mind you, it was hard to blame him for being pissed: Not only hadn’t he gotten the memo that outsiders were being brought in, he also wasn’t in the slightest inclined to let “the dream team” use poor Sgt. Carson as “a guinea pig.”
“We are miracle workers,” Callie bragged-slash-assured. But were she and her colleagues able to do the impossible for Will’s patient, especially after only one (horrific-looking) run-through of the surgery?
Callie’s surgery was, quite frankly, bad ass. And bizarre. And I’m not sure how realistic it really was. I have questions. And I’ll be Googling it. But this is the kind of crazy, edge of reality surgery that makes Grey’s interesting for a lot of us. With new primetime medical dramas nipping at the standard bearer’s heels, the writers have got to step up their medical game.
As for Mer’s role in this escapade, the question is when she (and we) will see Thorpe again. How long her first post-widow relationship will last is anybody’s guess. It seems like it would be hard for her to date outside of SG, logistically speaking. I doubt this will be a long-term thing, but she’s got to start somewhere.
Meanwhile, back at the hospital, Ben goes to consult on a patient who’s in the intake area of the psychiatric ward but starts going into cardiac arrest. Ben asks for a scalpel to cut his chest open, but the psychiatrist says there’s nothing sharp on the ward. I was semi-annoyed by the gimmick (yes, there are sharp things on psychiatric wards, they’re just locked up), but that faded really quickly because the sight of Ben CUTTING A GUY OPEN WITH A METAL SHARD OF CLIPBOARD was all I could think about. This catapulted us into a pretty standard “I don’t care how good you think you are, there are rules about what you can and can’t do” storyline — so standard that it feels almost identical to the storyline that played out between Webber and Shane Ross several seasons ago. Repetition is inevitable on a show that’s run for 12 years, but this was a bit much.
In the on-call room, Maggie wants to keep her hookups with DeLuca a secret, but he’s not happy with being on the DL anymore. The show kind of backs up why Maggie, personally, wouldn’t want to come clean about dating someone under her (all puns intended), but it’s such a norm at the hospital of sex and despair that it’s hard to see it as an issue.
Maggie finally goes public with her relationship with DeLuca in a predictably awkward speech to Riggs.
How to get away with murder / S2xEp15 / Anna Mae
Anna Mae went home to Memphis to get away from her life and could you really blame her? Annalise has been through hell and back lately (you can debate about how much of it was her own doing another time) and when you feel like you have nowhere else to go, you go home.
And it was wonderful to see Ophelia back, dishing out insults and advice at every turn. Annalise and her mother have a terribly complicated relationship, but when Analise needed to get away, there was only one person to turn to.
Viola Davis gives the best performance on television, week after week. In “Anna Mae,” she’s especially spectacular because of the subtlety in what she’s given. There is a lot of weight to the material, but it isn’t excessive, it isn’t melodramatic. How To Get Away With Murder almost always gets carried away, doing too much and then doing even more. But it’s telling that in that moment in her mother’s backyard, the show never once does too much. It does just enough—just enough to make us see Annalise’s pain, see her first steps toward healing.
The one person Annalise didn’t really need to see was her father. I have to assume that this storyline will make its way into next season, because there was no real closure here. It’s hard to be mad at either Annalise or Ophelia in this situation.
The Best Flashback was the one who got us some of the real answers when Frank calls up all his courage and tells Sam about his part in the loss of Annalise’s child. Considering all the secrets that are kept on this show, it was really refreshing to see Frank of the past taking responsibility for his actions. He may not have ordered the hit on Annalise, but he was instrumental in giving her opposition the tools to do the job. It was a great scene for Charlie Weber (who plays Frank), and a touching moment for an enforcer we’ve seen do many horrible things.
We now know why Frank killed Lila, why he owed Sam, why he kept it a secret all this time. We know the truth about Caleb and Catherine Hapstall, about Philip. But these twists, especially the non-Hapstall ones, are grounded in the emotional backbone of the episode. They’re not even necessarily the focus. So much of the episode unfolds in Annalise’s childhood home in Memphis, between Annalise, her mother, her sister, and the life she left behind, a life that still informs who she is no matter how hard she tries to make herself believe it doesn’t.
Caleb is a serial killer! Just when we thought that the Hapstall portion of this season was all but wrapped up, a major bombshell cracks the case wide open. Our suspicion may have jumped around all season, but something never sat right with us about Caleb. We learned that Caleb killed Philip Jessup’s mother when she could provide evidence against Caleb. He also killed his parents, and Catherine lied about his alibi because she had more than just sisterly love for her adopted brother.
Other than all of the stuff in Memphis, the scene that stood out the most to me was the once between Annalise and Bonnie at episode’s end, when Bonnie tries to have Frank’s back. “Why do you do that?” Annalise asks Bonnie. “What?” she replies, earnestly. “Believe what men tell you.” It’s a sad and striking statement, especially since we know so much more about Bonnie and her past than we did last season. The scene is written with a lot of ambiguity, which I assume was purposeful. Annalise tells Bonnie that Frank needs to be taken care of, and even though it’s generally safe to assume that everyone on this show is always talking about murder, nothing about the scene is too clearly defined. But that’s what makes it great.
I mean, obviously, it’s not funny that Wallace was murdered. But whoever shot him (Frank, probably) could have waited until Wes was not, like, three inches from his dad. Also, Wes probably should have kept his ass home. Maybe then Wallace would not have been killed in front of him. Either way, Wes’s life is trash. His mom killed herself, his girlfriend Rebecca got killed, and his father (who raped his mother) got killed in front of him. Pray for him, pray for Frank, and pray that Masher decides to bone again.
SUITS – S05xEp16 – 25th Hour
From the moment audiences witnessed Mike’s arrest in the closing moments of “Faith,” they knew things would never be the same on Suits. No matter what happened next, come the end of the season, it would no longer resemble the show it’s been since 2011.
In the final scene of last week’s episode, after realizing that Gibbs would go after everyone in the firm either way, we saw Mike run to Gibbs’ office to try to sacrifice himself and take two years of jail time to save all his friends from going to prison.
It sure looks like the firm is no more. There’s pretty much no way you can come back from having all of your staff walk out. Can you really blame them though? Who would want to work for a firm who hired a fraud and notoriously tried to cover their asses?
As seen in the final moments of the finale, the firm has been gutted, leaving no man standing beyond the name partners, and that’s where the show will now live. At least for the course of season six, the next phase of Suits is watching its world be re-built brick by brick into something stronger than it ever was previously.
Mike and Harvey’s weepy, bloody, violent arguments over who gets to sacrifice himself for the other came off as pretty heavy-handed. I mean, Mike walked out of his wedding to hitch a ride to jail with his well-dressed mentor/idol/BFF. The moral of the story was that Mike will always choose Harvey and Harvey will always choose Mike.
We’re left at a very interesting time for the show. The central plot is over, but there’s the whole thing with whether the firm can survive with skeleton staff. Did anyone else expect a time jump?
How to Get Away with Murder / S2xEp14 / There’s My Baby
Annalise lost her baby and we knew that this was coming, but it didn’t make it any easier watching her hold her dead baby while Eve, who wasn’t technically family, had to stand around outside and wait. Soul-crushing. We know Viola can do the big scenes with power, but her subtle work is somehow even better.
In the 2005 flashbacks, it’s clear the Mahoney murder trial has her grappling with the question of conscience. Does she have one? Should she? Can she afford to if she wants to keep her job? It seems Annalise’s fatal flaw was going against her more human instincts — to admit her true feelings for Eve, to do right by Rose — and brazenly operating within the system instead: marrying Sam and proving herself professionally at any cost. Since her own actions technically drove her where she got, she’ll always feel like she killed her own baby.
Poor Wes. It’s really no wonder he and Annalise have this twisted relationship, as they’re both extremely damaged individuals. I’m very curious to see what Wes does with this information going forward. Wes isn’t exactly one to just let things go, so I have a feeling we’ll be seeing Mr. Mahoney in the future.
Meanwhile, all the little lawyer children (they are still in law school, right? They never study anymore, so it’s a little unclear) have to go to Denver and give statements on the 5 W’s of their existence on the night of Emily Sinclair’s death. This gives each of them a brief moment of welcome levity — from Connor’s admission to having a resting bitch face to Laurel’s rejection of the DA’s “Latino besties schtick.” Even Bonnie has to flash a rare smile. But there’s immunity on the line, so will someone crack?
Wait, I almost forgot about Bonnie on the warpath. Having recorded Frank and Laurel’s laundry room breakup last week, she confronts Frank about killing Lila for Sam, but he’s all, “Sorry, Bonbon, you’re a killer too, remember?” Crap. Bonnie does. “We’re all bad people here,” she reminded all the household pests earlier that day.
Asher and Michaela were both sloppy, sloppy drunk, so I fully expected this to be a one and done drunken mistake.
While drinking led to bathroom antics for two of the Keating 5, it led one of them to make a dumb, dumb confession. Annalise now knows Frank killed Lila. And worse than that, she believes Frank is telling people it was on her behalf. Sure this advances the plot forward, but I just didn’t like the way it came out. Plus, Laurel didn’t even get the story right.
Season of Bloom 