(S02E09) "These bloody days have broken my heart. My lust, my youth do them depart. And blind desire of ambitious souls who haste to climb, seeks to revert. And about the throne, the thunder rolls." --Sir Thomas Wyatt (voiceover) This was a dark episode. As much as I disliked Anne during her ascension to the throne and sided with the steadfast and pious Queen Catherine, I hated seeing Anne's demise come to a head this episode. Somewhere along the way, Anne became the victim on this show. The Tudors, in my opinion, has done a good job of creating a multi-faceted character on the part of Anne Boleyn. Once a villain, she ended up a sacrifice to male-dominated political power play.
(S01E21) I have to admit it. Dorky as it is, I love the titles they come up with. "Grapes of Wrath." Very funny. These episodes, in which the Walkers all end up at a gathering making a scene, are getting better as the series goes along. The stories are well-conceived, and the characters are all so well-developed. It just shows that the actors feel so comfortable with each other now in a way that they didn't early in the show. Well, in all fairness to the actors, perhaps it is just that I am more comfortable with the characters. But this continues to be one of my favorite viewing pleasures.
(S01E20) Ow. Watching this episode of Brothers and Sisters hurt. It hurt in that really good way that results from really good writing. The writing was so good tonight that I really believed every character. And that is the really interesting thing about this show so far: the writing is the changing nominator. The actors stay the same, but sometimes the writing is really uneven, and other times, like tonight, it just crackles.
(S01E17) Brothers and Sisters continues to give good episode, and good story. I particularly enjoyed how they used Nora's writing class and the story she was writing to give structure to the episode. She wrote a narrative about all of the crazy threads of her family and all of the story lines.
(S01E16) Oh, Kevin, how can you be so stupid! Threatening to bury that little jerk in litigation was a total lack of denial about Chad being gay. Jeez! The way to approach it would have been to say you're going to sue him for ruining YOUR reputation. Then, it would have seemed more like neither of you are gay. And you call yourself a lawyer?
(S01E15) Did you catch it? If you were playing the Brothers and Sisters drinking game tonight, tonight's inside joke was from Kitty this time. When she was yelling at McAllister about her poll results, she said that people might think she is too thin.
(S03E13) Well, it seems that setting Mike free had a symbolic meaning for Susan as well as a literal one. When Susan was embracing a distraught Ian at the end of the episode, she had her eyes closed. There was no lingering glance, no eye rolling, nothing to indicate that she was anything less than sincere in her love for Ian.
(S01E10) As obligatory holiday episodes go, can I just say Thank God for a Jewish family? For crying out loud, it's such a relief not to have a Christmas miracle on this show. I have studied Judaism in depth and observe most Jewish holidays with friends. I have seriously considered converting. So, even though I am not Jewish, having studied and talked about it so intimately, it was a pleasure to watch this episode.
(S01E09) If you are looking for the post the correlates to Part I, it isn't there. We have just begun covering Brothers & Sisters, so, I am going to attempt to do two things with this review: Summarize my impressions of the season thus far, and talk about the most recent episode. There will likely be a lot of overlap. I am going to do a brief introduction of all of the main characters here, as well, because there are a lot of them, and it will help us all if we have a reference guide, especially new viewers.
(S03E05) Did you notice that there were multiple closeups of people stirring bowls or cups of food in this episode? I love that because this episode was all about stirring things up. Oh, boy. Did I actually say that I liked Nora? Wow. I totally got sucked in. She did some master manipulation this week, eh? She is playing Lynette and Tom like a violin (which may change next week). Boy, could she have made Lynette dance any better than she has in the past few weeks? But seriously? Whether or not Nora is being a totally manipulative bitch, should Lynette really support Tom in his dream of opening a pizza place?
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