TV this week:
- Sarah Jane Adventures: "The Mark Of The Berserker" - Yay, Maria's back! Sort of. A nice story, but the ending didn't work entirely for me. What Clyde did with the object was... disturbing. Like Jumanji or something, it's bound to show up again.
- Numb3rs: "Thirty-Six Hours" - Every bit of suspense you could want from an episode of this show, with lives hanging in the balance. And the math doesn't get left out, either. The final math problem is one so simple that anyone can understand it.
- Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives: "Best of..." - A surprisingly fun retrospective of Guy's journeys. The party at Guy's place, with lots of the cool folks he's met visiting him instead of the other way around is slightly jarring. Some of the people seem to be out-of-context when they aren't in their kitchens! I loved the bloopers and behind-the-scenes, too. Guy is clearly a riot to hang around with.
- Heroes: "The Eclipse, Part 1" - Yay, everyone loses their powers! End of show! Uh, right?
- Battlestar Galactica: "You Can't Go Home Again" - I'm not going to pretend to understand the title of this one, the second part of the cliffhanger. But it was a strong episode. No wonder this series was so popular!
Comics this week:
- Green Lantern Corps #30 - I haven't got much interest in the Star Sapphire Corp, and the other plotline is depressing and sick. So, still not interested in this book. But hubby seems to like it.
- Justice League of America #26 - YAY! In-continuity Elseworld! With Aquaman (sort of)! YAY!
This week's movie was The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A Veggie Tales Movie. I've seen one other Veggie Tales, The Wonderful Wizard of Ha's (for obvious reasons), and was mostly pleased that it didn't get too preachy. I wasn't sure if the full-blown movie would be the same. To my delight, it was. And, better, it was hilarious through and through. I'm still not sure how I managed to identify with vegetables, but somehow it works. The end result was a fun movie that kids can watch and enjoy along with adults (who will get more of the jokes). Yes, there is a preachy moment near the end, but it doesn't go too far and doesn't detract from the rest of the movie, which is pure fun. Don't be afraid of the veggies!
My library book this week was The Sharing Knife: Legacy by Lois McMaster Bujold. This is not a standalone book, it continues right on from the first book of the Sharing Knife, and would not make any sense if you hadn't read the first book. It's also a weaker book, in my opinion. It is still stronger than a great many books I've read, but it seemed like this one never quite gelled. Some passages seem to drag on, while other bits of action happen too quickly and confusingly. It seems to be just a bit uneven, like it needed one more edit before publishing. I want to emphasize that these are minor complaints, only noticable to me because I expect a lot from Bujold now. I'll continue reading this series, but I'm not nearly as interested in the fate of the characters as I've been with the Vorkosigan books.
Agatha Christie this week was Giant's Bread written in 1930 under the pen name Mary Westmacott. This is not a mystery story, although some of the hallmarks of Christie's thinking are there. This is rather a love story, or maybe an un-love story. There is nothing truly romantic about the tale, only a crushing depression. The main character is deeply flawed... we might even call him autistic savant nowadays. The descriptions of the suffragettes and free love sounded like this book could have been written in the 1960s. The end of the story is in the prologue, with the rest of the words just leading up to it. I'll call it interesting, and leave it at that. I don't think I'd generally recommend it.
