Review: Bones – The Signs in the Silence

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Chuck Tomasi

A deaf mute girl is found covered in blood wielding a large knife. Dr. Brennan is perplexed that her skills are needed on this case because they have no victim and the girl is “still alive”. All signs point to the fact that she’s killed someone, but the team has their work cut out because she’s terrified and uncooperative.

No spoilers, but be sure to have the tissues ready at the end! See if you can hold it together past “the bunny” – I didn’t.

Dr. Brennan starts out as her usual dispassionate self – trying only to get the facts as quickly as possible until Sweets reminds her how frightened she was when she was in the foster care system as a child. Slowly the story unwraps and they determine where she is from among other things. To add to the story, she’s not just afraid of the Jeffersonian team; her parents aren’t what they seem either.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Caroline Julian makes another “charming” appearance. Her comments to Booth as he puts together pieces are always enjoyed.

We’re also given some tender insight to Brennan’s past as she starts to relate to this girl, thus opening up the communications and solving the mystery of what happened. On a lower note, Booth looses it in the interrogation room and regrets it, giving thoughts about how he was treated by his father and that he wants to be better to Parker.

Sideline story – Angela is getting closer and Hodgins looses his cool and forgets his training at the onset of false labor. It made for some good laughs (particularly if you’re a parent.)

The writers really left the playbook on the table this time – and did a spectacular job with this show. This show was a bit darker than most, which is rather difficult when you’re dealing with a show about death/murder every week. McKenzie Applegate does a great acting job as the mysterious Jane Doe throughout the show. The story was quite a bit different than most as it centered around the girl and we’re left to the end of the show to find out until the end what happened to the victim and why. Normally those facts are brought out pretty early. It had me scratching my head a few times, but I found the change of pace refreshing.

Rating: 10/10

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Bones 7th Season is Go!

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Chuck Tomasi

Good news Bones fans! Fox has announced that they are bringing back the show for a seventh season. This news came from Kevin Reilly, President of Entertainment, Fox Broadcasting Company.

“Bones’ is creatively fresh, it’s a rock-solid player every time it airs and this season it has helped us win on Thursday nights for the first time in our history,” said Reilly. “Hart Hanson and the fantastic cast and crew, as well as the millions of loyal ‘Bones’ fans, make this show really special, and I’m excited to have it on our air for another stellar season.”

Julie and I are just happy the show will continue.

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Technorama Ep 307 – The Dork Side of the 4th

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Kreg Steppe

Coming up in this episode…

  • Are social network devices going too far?
  • Klingon Monopoly could be the last game you’ll ever lose
  • You won’t believe what Grandma is selling on the Internet now

Listen below with the audio player or Click Here for complete show notes and video from the show.

Continue reading →

Podcast: Download

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Review: Doctor Who – Day of the Moon

Posted on May 1, 2011 by Chuck Tomasi

The Doctor must rise to the challenge to drive the stealth aliens away. We join our intrepid trio (plus one Canton Everett Delware III and Dr. River Song) being chased down one by one. The Doctor is locked up in Area 51, slowly being sealed inside the perfect prison, while Rory, Amy, and River are being hunted down by Canton. What?!

No spoilers this time. All I’m going to tell you is the aliens are very old and as mentioned in the first episode, you don’t remember them once you don’t see them. Well, the Doctor has a way around that – no spoilers.

We’re still trying to piece together who the little girl is that keeps calling the President and why. She’s traced to an orphanage run by a Mr. Renfru who looks like he just came out of the 60’s horror movies. The aliens are among him, but of course, he doesn’t know it. We learn a little more about the girl which only adds more questions than answers at this point.

Thanks to some clever writing (and editing) we know the aliens are called the Silence. The editing is to help us, the viewers, remember that the Doctor has heard that term before. Talk about great ways to latch on to previous hooks! How many more are sitting back there just waiting to be pulled in to a major story line? They’re worse than these aliens, me thinks.

Major likes: How they latched on to the “glitch” in the audio from the moon landing right between “…one small step for man pfft, one giant leap for mankind…” BRILLIANT. This is where DVRs come in really handy so I can pause and explain that to Julie. Now she’ll never forget it, when she hears the clip. Just like the “Family of Blood” where the little girl is hiding in the bevel of the mirror.

I also loved the scene where Nixon comes in to rescue the President and Rory, looking totally 60’s dorked out with horn-rimmed glasses, breaks the lunar landing module model.

The final scene is also great when Nixon asks about the future, but the Doctor refuses to provide any information. “Will I be remembered?” and the Doctor responds affirmatively and tells him to say hello to Robert Frost. Classic!

So what about these “aliens”. Why does the Doctor want to get rid of them? Just because they’ve been influencing us for a very long time (minor spoiler, sorry.) If we drive them away, then what happens? Do we suddenly stagnate to another dark ages? Maybe that’s what happened during the dark ages, no influence from intelligent beings providing us with post-hypnotic suggestions. Hmmmm.

The writers certainly are messing with us about Amy’s relationship between Rory and the Doctor. What she says is highly directed toward the Doctor and while Rory is listening in remotely, he finds out that Amy hasn’t been more open with the Doctor about personal matters. IMHO, Rory caves in a little too quickly on both accounts. Maybe he’s ultra-non-jealous or something. NOT! He waited 2000 years for the woman. What would you do if you waited that long and found out she has feelings for another man. Perhaps his rage will come out in a future episode. Wish wish wish.

And what about this little girl. The final scene in the alley way will leave you scratching your head. The Doctor’s scan of Amy certainly was suspicious positive/negative/positive/negative – just have her pee in a cup like we do now. Forget the TARDIS – you can hardly drive the dang thing. The last scene will certainly make you suspicious about what happened before Rory joined the TARDIS crew.

Damn you writers – leaving us with questions and more hooks!

Rating: 9.5/10

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Review: Fringe – The Last Sam Weiss (spoilers)

Posted on April 30, 2011 by Chuck Tomasi

This week’s Fringe had some crazy stuff going on (well that goes without saying, right?) After last week when Peter tries to go inside the machine and gets zapped, Walter stays by his side only to wine and complain to Astrid that he’s done all he can when she prods him to get back to the lab and try to help solve the problem of freakishly random dry lightning strikes between New York and Boston.

Sam, the bowling alley guy, states that “things should have happened like this” which indicates he knows some kind of prophecy about the machine. Later in the show in tells Olivia that he’s from a long line of “Sam Weiss” who dug up an ancient document, found a box that looks like a piece of the machine, and a “key” to possibly turn off the machine that was started on the other side. Hmmm… a whole lot of educated guesses in this show that turn out to somehow be more-or-less correct. Seems like the writers may have been sliding a bit on this one when it came to the story line, but when all you have is three main characters – how many oddities can you really expect.

Well that’s where things take another turn – when Sam and Oliva put the pieces together, they find that SHE is part of the solution to get Peter back in to the machine. In order to do that, she has to use her mental telepathy (remember how she turned off some lights to diffuse a bomb?) Only this time she needs to reach through to the other universe and turn off the shield to the “other machine”. BTW, there’s a great little clip of Sam’s bowling skills while they retrieve the key!

While Sam and Olivia are chasing down parts to bring down the machine’s force field, Peter wakes up in the hospital a little dazed. He wanders off practically unnoticed because the hospital is so busy with burn victims from all the lightning strikes. He gets in a cab and tells the cabbie he wants to go to an address in NY while he’s still in MA! $800 later he’s there and finds his way to a pawn shop to pick up an old silver half dollar (for luck.) He’s still a bit dazed as he makes his way to Liberty Island and asks to see Walter Bishop, the Secretary of Defense. ???!!!! He must have hit his head harder than we thought.

Unknown to Peter, Walter has convinced Broyles that Walternate’s machine must be operating out of Liberty Island and does nice 3rd grade science experiment with magnets and iron filings to convince him that he should bring our machine to the same location to mitigate the damage. How convenient that everyone arrives at the same time – that could be a Fringe event of it’s own. 🙂

So all these things tie together at the end of the show when Olivia succeeds in telepathically turning off the machine in the other universe, Peter hooks into the machine, and we’re bombarded with a montage of Peter remembering Olivia, Walter, and then getting zapped 15 years in to a post-apocalyptic future where he sees the complete Freedom tower and a plaque memorializing the victims of 9/11. That leads us to believe this is our universe, but one of the uniformed people who helps him has a patch on his jacket that says “Fringe Division”.

They’re going to leave us with another cliff hanger for the season and I haven’t got a clue how they’re going wrap up any of this – or they’re building to a big whopping “NOOOOOOO!” and we’ll have to wait all summer to get resolution.

There were some good moments in this show like the scene when Astrid gives Walter a kick in the pants to get back to work, or Walter telling Olivia he believes in her abilities. However, there were a few “random and odd story bits” that I thought fit to bit a little scattered. Perhaps I won’t understand those for another episode or two because they are part of a larger over arcing story line.

Rating: 8/10

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Review: South Park – HumanCentipad

Posted on April 29, 2011 by Chuck Tomasi

Last night’s South Park reminds me just how funny and disturbing that show can be. One thing is for sure, I’ll always remember to read the license agreement on every install/upgrade from now on, no matter how long it is – lest I end up like poor Kyle. (shudder)

The show pokes fun at Apple on a number of different issues, not least of which is the timely secret observance of location of everyone (see picture at left noting where everyone in the world is right now.) This show had to have been made before the iPhone debacle  broke a week ago. Nice timing SP! If you’ve ever been to an Apple store, then you likely got a laugh out of the Genius sequence. They nailed them – right now to the energy beams shooting out of their mouth.

While there were funny parts, I found the whole three-people-sewn-together (HumanCentipad) thing quite disturbing. Maybe I’m showing my age, but that was just over the top. Perhaps that’s why I prefer Futurama and rarely watch SP. Futurama pokes fun, but don’t get gross (well, not AS gross anyway.)

Rating: 5/10

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Review: Bones – The Pinocchio in the Planter

Posted on April 28, 2011 by Chuck Tomasi

A (teenage) peeping tom discovers a body in the flower bed outside the girls locker room.

After the opening scene, Sweets is having lunch with Angela who gets a call from Hodgins at the crime scene. She tells sweets he’s being a little overbearing and sends him to voice mail. He picks up on this an is a bit put-off.

The victim, Dixon, is in advertising. Booth and Sweets go to his house looking for clues. Wendel determines that Dixon, the victim, had his face broken several times in the past… and one of them was caught on film.

Wendel also gets refused for a bartender job and Dr. B tells him that Cam might have some extra hours for him. Cam tells Wendel that she’s going to divide the hours equally among the interns. He tries to push the issue to give him all the hours, but it doesn’t appear to be working (at first).

My favorite scenes:

  • The car ride with Sweets in the back and the discussion about telling the truth. Nice plug for the Prius too!
  • Booth at the “Telling the Truth” group. And yes, there’s a clown – I’m not going to spoil that scene, but remember – Booth has a clown-phobia. 😉

The rest of the lab gets in to the truth thing and it leads to some comedic moments and a tender one between Hodgins and Angela regarding their baby. The honesty also ends up helping Wendel, but at what cost?

Good story/mystery. Good character interaction. Good writing. Nothing exceptional, but overall very good.

Rating: 8.0/10

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CCT#306: WIRELESS WIZARD!

Posted on April 27, 2011 by Kreg Steppe

Coming up in this episode…

  • Very big things
  • Very small things
  • Very cool things that will make you want to take out your credit card and say “I don’t care how much, I want one!”

Listen below with the audio player or Click Here for complete show notes and video from the show.

Continue reading →

Podcast: Download

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Review: Stargate Universe – Epilogue

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Chuck Tomasi

Destiny finds planet Novus isn’t quite what they expected when they drop off their descendants. There are no people to be found anywhere and one of the elder passengers directs them to an underground bunker. After an amazing shot from Destiny to the doors of this bunker (with the crew dangerously nearby) they go in to discover it’s an archive of the civilization’s history since Destiny arrived 2000 years ago all stored on keno-cam.

At first I thought it was a nice diversion to watch the video diaries, but then I started thinking “Seriously? You’re wasting HOW much time watching this stuff?” It’s like reading a book and your name happens to be one of the characters. I could understand a mild fascination, but they seemed to be going WAY to deep in to “what the other Eli/Chloe/Matt/Young/etc did.” Why? Don’t you have supplies to gather?

While they are in this underground archive, earthquakes strike. They determine it is because a black hole is passing by the system and causing terrific tidal stresses on the planet (as they suspected) and they don’t have long. Nothing like a sense of urgency to get the plot moving.

As the earthquakes intensify, Eli has the idea to start uploading all these archives to Destiny (wow, and WE thought reality TV was pointless.)  While watching some of the archives, TJ discovers that the “other her” has ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). She figures it set in about five years after she arrived and she died a couple years after that. When Varro tries to reassure her that “Just because the other TJ got it…” she tells him it’s not something you contract. She’s already headed down that path. OK, now I see the value in watching these other people live their lives.

The earthquakes get worse and they realize they likely don’t have time to upload all the data before they have to leave or the entire place will come down on them. One of the local elders who came along says “We cured that disease 200 years ago.” Will they have time to download enough of the database to save TJ? I won’t spoil it. All I can say is – too bad this show isn’t going a few more seasons. They just set another hook they cannot follow up on.

Funniest scene in the show – the look on Greer’s face as they are going down the elevator to the archive with the soft music playing in the background. I thought he was going to shoot the speaker system. FINE ACTING MY MAN!

There were some saving moments IMHO, like when Volker makes takes a verbal jab at Rush near the end. “It bugs you that we got along just fine without you.” OUCH! How’s Rush going to respond to that?

Despite that, I’m rating this one a little lower. While it was great for character development (watching the alternate people get married, have babies, etc.) I thought it a bit unrealistic. They arrive on Novus with hardly anything. They have to make shelters and tools from scratch yet somehow the men stay clean shaven and always have nice haircuts. I can see after 20 years when they get themselves some tools, but a few months in? Couldn’t the costume department slap some whiskers on those guys for a few scenes? C’mon. They took the time to do lots of aging makeup on Camille, Young, and some of the others. I also thought they spent a bit too much time watching videos of the alternate people. Watching alternate Young help suffering TJ was sad, and knowing that Volker dies from apparent kidney failure – I’ll be he’s thanking Greer now – but how does that move the Destiny story along? A bit too sappy for me on this one. Granted, they don’t all have to be shoot-em up stories. Here’s an idea the writers missed – how about exploring more about the conflict between Brody’s faction and Young’s group on the fledgling planet? Why did they diverge? What happened to the other group? Could there be seeds of descent festering today? (aside from him telling kids to get the hell of his lawn – that was funny.) That makes more sense to me than “could Eli get hooked up with corporal whats-her-face like he did in the video diary.”

Rating: 6/10

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Interview: Dr. Michio Kaku

Posted on April 24, 2011 by Chuck Tomasi

We’re thrilled as Dr. Michio Kaku returns to talk about his new book “Physics of the Future“.

Will robots take over the planet a la SkyNet? What’s the definition of “smart”? How ethical is it for scientists to manipulate DNA of an unborn baby? Can they regrow an organ or a limb? We discuss this and more.

Podcast: Download

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