Television Reviews

NCIS: Origins – Cecilia

  • Title: NCIS: Origins – Cecilia
  • wiki: link

The First Season finale is a turning point for NCIS: Origins but not for the main story involving a an ambitious MP (Claire Berger) attempting to prove Gibbs (Austin Stowell) killed Pedro Hernandez. We plenty of Gibbs, Franks (Kyle Schmid), Lala (Mariel Molino), and even Randy (Caleb Foote) strategizing how to keep Gibbs out of jail. Eventually Lala puts her own career on the line to keep Gibbs out of danger (and also lays a path for Mace‘s introduction int NIS). While also teasing a potential full-blown love affair between Gibbs and Lala, the episode teases us with a young girl and her dog which will change the fates of both characters in the season’s tragic closing scene.

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Doctor Who – The Well

  • Title: Doctor Who – The Well
  • wiki: link

An unexpected callback to a David Tennant episode, “The Well” deposits The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) takes Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu) on a foreign world in the far future where a group of soldiers is investigating what went wrong with all the workers who appear to have gone mad leaving only one hearing-impaired miner (Rose Ayling-Ellis) left alive. Easily the creepiest episode of Who‘s run on Disney+, “The Well” plays on several classic tropes involving gun-totting soliders jumping to the wrong conclusion while The Doctor slowly works through  what is hiding behind Aliss (Ayling-Ellis) and how it ties back to his first visit to the world in “Midnight.”

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Scarecrow and Mrs. King – Always Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth

  • Title: Scarecrow and Mrs. King – Always Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth
  • IMDb: link

Wayback Wednesday takes us to 80s Washington, D.C. and the unusual partnership between a housewife and a spy. When the American wife (Jane Kaczmarek) of a Middle Eastern Prince (Andres Aybar) returns to the United States on a tour with her husband, and needs someone local to show her around, the Agency taps Amanda (Kate Jackson) while Lee (Bruce Boxleitner), in head of security for the couple, works on uncovering who is behind the recent assassination attempts. The truth that oil baron, and longtime friend of the prince’s father, Bo Johnson (Morgan Woodward), who dislikes the modern thinking Penelope is filling her husband’s mind with, is the target of the attacks comes out at his ranch that weekend.

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Daredevil – Straight to Hell

  • Title: Daredevil: Born Again – Straight to Hell
  • wiki: link

“Straight to Hell” ends rather than concludes the first season revival of Daredevil. Using both Bullseye (Wilson Bethel) being at large and Matt Murdock‘s (Charlie Cox) heroically saving his life as an excuse, Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) cracks down on the city giving him a chance to silent his detractors and impose his order on the city. Murdock escapes the hospital before the assassin (Arty Froushan) comes for him, and joins a (suddenly motivated) Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) on the streets. We also get the return of Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) which, like the Punisher’s involvement, feels more like a setup to Season Two than a big moment in and of itself (although the pair’s snooping does lead to a revelation concerning the motive for Foggy‘s death).

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Leverage: Redemption – The Scared Stiff Job

  • Title: Leverage: Redemption – The Scared Stiff Job
  • IMDb: link

In “The Scared Stiff Job” the crew tackles a greedy businessman (Sam Witwer) targeting dying patients offer cryonics which bankrupts the families they leave behind, and, when the bills can’t be paid, sells off the body parts for an even larger profit. The solution to their problem is a bit goofy, running a form of A Christmas Carol in attempting to make him believe he is waking up in the future to new owners of the business even less scrupulous than him. A bit of gaslighting later, and proving to his over-the-moon secretary he doesn’t care for her at all, and the team racks up another win for the little guy. The episode is similar to, although not as effective nor memorable as, “The First Contact Job.”

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