Sarah Gilbert
Portland, Ore. - http://www.cafemama.com
Sarah Gilbert used to work as an investment banker but it really conflicted with Ally McBeal. Now she's a work-from-home mama of two night owl boys who can only watch shows that are a little scary, like Law & Order, Medium, NCIS and Grey's Anatomy. That is, when she's not dancing along with the Backyardigans and brushing up on her Spanish with Dora. And she has somehow managed to convince her preschooler that the Food Network is really called the "yum yum channel" so she can watch all of Rachael Ray's shows and some late-night Iron Chef.
Sarah Gilbert
Portland, Ore. - http://www.cafemama.com
Sarah Gilbert used to work as an investment banker but it really conflicted with Ally McBeal. Now she's a work-from-home mama of two night owl boys who can only watch shows that are a little scary, like Law & Order, Medium, NCIS and Grey's Anatomy. That is, when she's not dancing along with the Backyardigans and brushing up on her Spanish with Dora. And she has somehow managed to convince her preschooler that the Food Network is really called the "yum yum channel" so she can watch all of Rachael Ray's shows and some late-night Iron Chef.
Posted Jul 24th 2006 1:35PM by Sarah Gilbert
Filed under: Other Sci-Fi/Supernatural Shows, OpEd, The 4400, USA
(S03E08) A friend and I were talking about a third woman, one who's involved with a volunteer organization. "I want my donation to be therapy for her!" said the friend. This week's episode of The 4400 opens that delicious possibility: the ability to force therapy onto someone. Oh, were it only true! I totally would have stolen that lady's herbs, too.
As it turns out, the therapy isn't always beneficent. Three people commit suicide at the opening of the show, haunted too cruelly by figures from their past. This sends Tom and Diana into a quest to find the source of the hallucinations -- a brand-new street drug called "Blink" -- and quash their own demons, personified by Tom's dead father and Diana's old fiancé.
Speaking of fiancés. The plot took its most delicious turn yet.
Continue reading The 4400: Blink
Posted Jul 17th 2006 1:14PM by Sarah Gilbert
Filed under: Other Sci-Fi/Supernatural Shows, OpEd, The 4400, USA
(S03E07) After Dennis Ryland's several near-death experiences in the third season premiere, and the peaks we see into Isabelle's cooperation with him in this episode, I'll admit I was beginning to feel hopeless. Ryland seemed all-powerful, able to fend off any manner of 4400 attacks and unstoppably diabolical. The perfect enemy and doppelganger archfiend for Tom.
That feeling kept cropping up throughout the episode, sometimes dully thudding as an undercurrent, sometimes spiking into a painful crescendo. Tom and Alanna were spinning out of control. First she was accused of being a Nova Group member, then we learned she had betrayed Tom's trust (but we all knew she was doing good the whole time, right?). Then it seemed she was headed for several years behind bars ... and Tom and Diana, how would they live with themselves if they gave up Gary Navarro to Mr. Perfect Evil himself?
Continue reading The 4400: The Home Front
Posted Jul 10th 2006 1:18PM by Sarah Gilbert
Filed under: Other Sci-Fi/Supernatural Shows, OpEd, The 4400, USA
(S03E06) Last week there were arguments. I said the wrapup was too neat. Some of you said no, I just didn't get it -- there was complexity. Things might not be as they seemed. And I'm happy to ring the bell of correct-ness. Ding ding ding! az1324 called it: Matthew was sent back from the future to work for the "other side." Whatever the other side, is.
Indeed, much to my delight we're given ever more conundrums in The 4400. It does seem as if Isabelle has redressed her "angel of death" moniker, although she is causing quite a bit of murder and mayhem as she turns the gifts of the Nova Group members against them. Perhaps we should replace the "of death" in her title, in fact, with "avenging."
Add Alana -- who through her work with students in the 4400 school, finds the man who killed her first husband and son -- to the list of AA members. And when we're talking 4400, AA stands for Avenging Angel.
Continue reading The 4400: Graduation Day
Posted Jul 3rd 2006 3:15PM by Sarah Gilbert
Filed under: Other Sci-Fi/Supernatural Shows, OpEd, The 4400, USA
(S03E05) As if the writers were pumping promicin themselves and reading the viewers' minds, Maia is neither gone nor forgotten in the second part of "Gone." And she comes back with explosive force, erupting into Tom and Alanna's fantasy worlds, radiating through Diana's frantic subconscious. I'm rapt as I watch Diana making a frightening collage of little girls' faces, as I see her sink into desperation when she learns that Maia has been sent back to the 1800s -- and died, at 25, only having left diaries behind as she expired on the Oregon Trail.
While I'm rapt by Tom and Diana emerging from the distinct wooden quality of the past several episodes, I'm thrown by the seemingly random details skittering about the edges of the plot. The 4400 we meet this week, an investment banker, can smell pheremones. It's a cool party trick and, you'd think, useful in the plot of a drama starring Alicia Silverstone. But it's a sideshow, just like the valiant efforts made (and subsequently erased) in the far past by the other children: synthetic fuel, colonies on the moon. Lovely, but ... why do these very interesting details feel as if they were picked out of a science fiction grab bag?
Continue reading The 4400: Gone, part II
Posted Jun 26th 2006 12:48PM by Sarah Gilbert
Filed under: Other Sci-Fi/Supernatural Shows, OpEd, The 4400, USA
(S03E04) 'Gone' is an appropriate title for last night's episode. Gone is Lily, dead at the feet of her gorgeous and precocious (in sex, and in everything) daughter. Gone is Jordan Collier (even though he is tantalizingly alive according to last season's finale). Gone -- from the storyine line this season so far -- are Kyle and any number of tantalizing minor characters. Gone are Shawn's confidence, Matthew Ross' wisdom and principles, Diana's interestingness, Tom's keen relevance to the plot, all Diana's good dialogue.
And, at the end of the episode, gone is Maia, at least in the incarnation we know. Certainly, she'll be back, but not as Diana's daughter.Her absence creates a huge hole, most notably in Diana's deep connection to the 4400 through their close relationship.
Continue reading The 4400: Gone (part one)
Posted Jun 13th 2006 1:47PM by Sarah Gilbert
Filed under: Other Sci-Fi/Supernatural Shows, OpEd, The 4400, USA
(S03E01/S03E02) I had so many questions in the weeks leading up to last night's third season premiere of The 4400. Two, however, were keenest: Jordan Collier is alive!?! And, Isabelle went from baby to young woman in the space of a minute? (and, did she do it on purpose? and, is she really evil?)
Surprisingly, we saw absolutely nothing of Jordan Collier (not even a hint, really). Instead, the episode was largely centered on Isabelle's instant aging which was, literally, sapping the lifeblood of her mother, and on the rise of a dark subset of the 4400 who were using their powers for a bloody fight against evil: evil, that is, as personified by the NTAC elite whose fear of those very powers led to so much illness and death at the end of season two.
Chief among their targets is E-vil himself, Dennis Ryland. When he proves to be indestructible (just how many times can one man escape death, anyway? Does he have special powers we don't know about yet?), the Nova Group announces their plans to show the world their true power, on October 19.
Continue reading The 4400: The New World (season premiere)
Posted Apr 17th 2006 12:11PM by Sarah Gilbert
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, ABC, OpEd, Desperate Housewives
(S02E19) I don't watch this show any more for the plot. I watch it for the fan-frickin-tastic
guest stars, and the awesome one-liners.
I mean, you know that Susan is going to get in some ridiculous
situation with one of the many men she's dating / in love with / sleeping with / pretending to date. You know that
Andrew is going to think he finally pulled one over on his mom, only to get slammed by the vastly more experienced
scheme-stering of Bree. You know that Karl is going to be a dog and Gabby is going to be a little bit heartless and
Lynette is going to (once again) get conflicted about her role as mom or wife.
You watch for the fun. The
fun that includes
Kyle Maclachlan as a
random man in the movie theatre that Susan picks to pretend she's dating, then use as a confessor. And
Carol Burnett as Bree's step-mother. Not to
mention Gabrielle and Carlos appearing in court to defend their (essentially) kidnapping of their to-be-adopted
daughter.
Continue reading Desperate Housewives: Don't Look at Me
Posted Mar 27th 2006 2:54AM by Sarah Gilbert
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, ABC, OpEd, Desperate Housewives

Snip.
From umbilical cord to family ties, there's a lot of
cutting going on tonight. While it's all deliciously dramatic, devious and diabolical, boy was this episode
predictable. From the five-year-old breastfeeder (saw it a mile away) to Dr. Ron's inevitable discovery that Mike was
not just a figment of Susan's laughing gas high, to Bree realizing that she
does have a problem - if you
couldn't see it happening just by the previews, well... you ain't the sharpest pair of scissors in the bundle.
Not that the writers didn't manage some funny - and even surprising - moments in an otherwise ho-hum plot. While I
didn't love the breastfeeding part, it
did allow for some excellent scenes. The one where Lynette and her boss
are craning their neck to peek at the hungrily suckling five-year-old was delightful physical comedy. The meeting (and
who's that hilarious new colleague?) where the advertising execs all agree that her behavior is "bizarre" is
just the right balance of funny and uncomfortable. Best of all, the mom's breakdown at the end...
Continue reading Desperate Housewives: Could I Ever Leave You?
Posted Mar 20th 2006 2:26AM by Sarah Gilbert
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, ABC, OpEd, Grey's Anatomy

It's all her fault, you know. It's all because of
Meredith.
She threw away the juju.
Or maybe it's Cristina. After all, she said the "q"
word. (That's "quiet," if you missed it, and it lasted exactly 1/2 second.)
Whoever's fault it is:
all is chaos, death and destruction at Seattle Grace this week. And no amount of knocking on wood is going to remedy
matters. It's not all just in the fictional lives of Meredith & team, either: it's also gotten all mixed up in the
writing. This episode didn't cross a line, it jumped over a chasm from
awesome to
cringe-worthy. My
face hurt from grimacing after the chief went to that dumb AA meeting.
Please. I don't believe in 12-step
programs any more than I believe in rabbit's feet or horoscopes or juju-filled hot cocoa.
Continue reading Grey's Anatomy: Superstition
Posted Mar 13th 2006 6:40PM by Sarah Gilbert
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, ABC, OpEd, Grey's Anatomy

Most episodes of
Grey's Anatomy have me wrapped up in the love
lives of everyone's favorite dysfunctional surgeons, but not so much their patients. But this week's episode had me on
the edge of my seat, from commercial break to commercial break, wondering,
will she go for surgery? will he decide
to play hockey after all? will they go to Paris? will she survive to see the Champs-Elysées? and, oh
yeah,
caring. (It's worth noting, as well: the woman of the "she" in the preceding questions is
Natalie Cole, Ms. Unforgettable herself.)
As the
last episode
left us wondering whether it was possible, indeed, for Meredith and McDreamy to be friends, that's where we pick up
with this episode. They're wandering around a park, throwing a stick for the troublesome pup, making moony-eyes at one
another all the while insisting that they
are, let's not forget, just friends. While I don't believe it, and I
don't even know if I
want it to be true, it seems that the just-friends thing can hold on... for at least the
duration of this episode.
Continue reading Grey's Anatomy: Band-Aid Covers the Bullet Hole
Posted Mar 6th 2006 2:03AM by Sarah Gilbert
Filed under: ABC, Programming, OpEd

Even though I rarely watch movies (until they hit On
Demand, that is), I love to watch the awards shows. I aspire to be a movie watcher, but I have children, and I'd rather
spend my babysitting money drinking wine and talking to
adults. Call me crazy. So I read all the reviews, and I
pretend like I know
so much about the movies.
"Memoirs of a
Geisha is sure to win Best Costume!" I say, and I'm right. I totally called Best Song for
It's Hard to be
a Pimp. The only nominated movie I've seen:
March of the Penguins. And while I again called the win for
Documentary Feature, I never would have expected them to bring out stuffed penguins. I mean, come on! This is a
documentary! I didn't get it.
But what everyone surely wants to know: was Jon
Stewart funny? Someone
wrote about how Stewart was an odd choice, given that he's all about New York, and news, whereas Hollywood is about
Los Angeles, and fiction. I didn't see the disconnect - don't most of today's stars have homes both in LA and NYC? -
but, still, I was worried. Jon seemed pretty nervous on his Daily Show performances leading up to the Oscars.
Jon's the sort of guy who (despite his ever-present sarcasm) wears his heart on his sleeve. He uses the comedic device
of truth, and geekiness. And that's what is oddest about having him at the Academy Awards. Self-effacing
truthful geekiness is so out of place next to Jessica Alba (who, to follow a tangent Stewart started me upon, I
definitely would not pick to repopulate the earth).
Continue reading The 78th Annual Academy Awards
Posted Feb 28th 2006 3:16AM by Sarah Gilbert
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, NBC, Programming, OpEd, Medium

Everyone deals with miscarriage in their own way -
and very, very many of us have dealt with it. When I had a miscarriage, my grief was swift and overwhelming. I mourned
deeply the child with whom I'd already fallen in love, and with my next pregnancy I was detached, never quite believing
he was real until the 20-week ultrasound. Now, less than two years later, I've accepted the loss as something that just
happens, and remember the pain only distantly. Allison Dubois, on the other hand, has grief that remains
terribly present. Every year around the time of her miscarriage, she has visions of "Brian," who would be
about 15. She's a sensitive soul. The dreams keep her up, mourning what could have been.
"I need coffee,"
she tells her husband at 6 a.m. when he realizes she's awake. He calls her bluff, telling her to just drink tea, and
she insists. "I'll be gone a few hours, I'll cry without anyone hearing me, and I will come back with a
bag of coffee," she says. Soon, she's discovering the body of the Coffee Palace's manager. And we're thrust into
the mystery; is it a robbery gone bad? An easy way out for the victim's husband? Or something else? Where's the
twist?
Before we talk twists, though, I'd like everyone to say "hi" to my friend Kristi, who
said she stood next to Patricia Arquette during the filming of this episode! Hi Kristi!
Continue reading Medium: Sweet Child o' Mine
Posted Feb 27th 2006 1:18PM by Sarah Gilbert
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, ABC, Programming, OpEd, Grey's Anatomy

Last night on
Grey's Anatomy, karma was
biting everyone back. And I know most of you feel so badly for George, because Meredith used him, because he's the
victim. And you're feeling bad for Izzie. She's the one who walked in on Alex with Olivia, so she deserves the
sympathy, right? And Addison. Everyone loves to hate Addison, who cheated on her husband, who's been approached by Sexy
McSteamy, her old love interest, and you know what we're all thinking:
is she going to sleep with him
again?
You've got all this righteous anger, against Meredith over her treatment of George, Alex over his romp
in the hospital bed with the hottie nurse, and Addison for just being there. And if you're anything like me: your anger
pulled a switcheroo on you, diffusing, spreading out over the whole cast until it wasn't anger any more, really, but
sympathy and sorrow and this little, sad hope.
But before we continue on with the major themes of the show I
have to send out a hearty, loud, mama-rific cheer to the writers for their portrayal of Bailey. Oh how I love you,
writers. You made her leak. As I'm deep in the throes of my second experience with breastfeeding, I've had
those twin milky spots on my nice work shirt oh, so many times. And the way she plays it is priceless, in an especially
emotional conversation with Addison: "Please don't cry! You're going to make me... (holds breasts in a motion to
which I totally relate) lactate!" I would have jumped off the couch and done a little dance of
joy over this realistic and funny portrayal... but I was breastfeeding my 10-month-old.
Continue reading Grey's Anatomy: What Have I Done to Deserve This?
Posted Feb 20th 2006 2:10AM by Sarah Gilbert
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, ABC, Programming, OpEd, Grey's Anatomy

Yesterday..ooh, doesn't seem
so far away with tonight's
Grey's Anatomy. Hard on the
heels of an emotional, long-held-secret-revealing
Desperate Housewives, I
thought I would burst from the sheer amount of raw emotion thrown at us. It's all laid out, there on the table tonight,
and, wow, we're really opening up old wounds (and I'm laying on the double entendre a little thick, hmm?).
I feel
like a total heel for saying so, but McSteamy - a.k.a. Mark, Dr. Shepherd's best friend and wife's lover - he's totally
hotter than Derek. I am so not surprised that Addison fell for him! And his introduction, just one of a series
of witty yet emotionally charged scenes, shows that the Grey's writers aren't taking a pass after last week's awesome episode. Was this one
better? Nah. But it wasn't at all a disappointment, with a little surprise around every corner and a shocker
at the end. Let's just say, all you George fans out there? You got a little bit of yours today.
Continue reading Grey's Anatomy: Yesterday
Posted Feb 13th 2006 2:31AM by Sarah Gilbert
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, ABC, OpEd, Grey's Anatomy

When this episode ended, I just wanted to turn off my TV. I knew that nothing coming after it could
possibly approach my now-heightened television standards. This show now ranks in my top-five list,
greatest hours of TV ever. Seriously.
And it wasn't just the dramatic circumstances - the bomb inside a patient, the impending birth of Bailey's son, the
threatened death of her husband, the sexual tension between Alex and Izzie, the looove tension between Shepherd
and Meredith, Burke and Cristina. It was the film work, the emotion, the music, the heart-stopping fear and love and
agony and ... just wow. And the shower scene, my lord, that was truly great stuff. Every bit of dirt that sullied my
conscience after loving the shower scene that opened last week's episode was [yes I'm
conscious of my double entendre] washed away.
Thanks, ABC, for advertising the Season 1 DVD at the end of this episode! Great. 'cause all I want is the DVD of
this season now.
Continue reading Grey's Anatomy: (As We Know It)
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