Week in Review, Apr 19 to 25

Friday's weather did not cooperate with my birthday plan of sitting outside and reading a book, and Sunday was even worse, so instead I sat inside and wrapped Chuck season two. Love that season finale! In the next couple of days I will have to pick another show to kill time with, and I'm leaning towards finally watching the critically acclaimed Breaking Bad.

I have a lot of downloaded video game content for Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age and Assassin's Creed II that I've yet to play, mostly to avoid getting sucked back into those worlds and not have any time left for the real world. Instead, I've put a few hours into The Longest Journey, a recent Good Old Games purchase. Tales of Monkey Island got me back into the point and click adventure gaming mood, and I have been curious about The Longest Journey for nearly 10 years, so it's interesting to finally play it.

And that's about it for this week. Except for the multiple hours of TV I watched, of course...

The Week in Television

Monday, April 19th
Liked: How I Met Your Mother (5x20)

"Home Wreckers" was the most consequential episode of How I Met Your Mother since episode 100 way back in January, so that was nice to see, but unfortunately the jokes were extremely hit or miss. Ultimately, thanks to the return of the series' heart, and a great final scene, I consider it a winner overall.

Tuesday, April 20th
Loved: Lost (6x13)
Liked: Glee (1x15)

With "The Last Recruit," Lost successfully and seamlessly dropped the single-character focus of most of this season, and began tying up the various characters' flash-sideways storylines while also significantly forwarding the action on-island. The episode was completely enjoyable from beginning to end and it sucks that we have to wait two weeks for the next ...

I'm not a Madonna fan, so Glee's "The Power of Madonna" was never going to appeal to me as much as some. But I have to admit that the episode was well written (although rather heavy-handed in its misogynistic themes) and very well directed by series creator Ryan Murphy. Standout moments included an awesome parody of the "Vogue" video and the best all-time use of fucking awful song "Like a Virgin."

Wednesday, April 21st
Loved: South Park (14x6)

"Scott Tenorman Must Die" is one of my favourite episodes of South Park, so how could I not love "201," the Scott Tenorman enhanced continuation of the 200th episode extravaganza? It wasn't all good, however, as the line between censorship to make a humorous point and actual Comedy Central censorship is very unclear with this episode. I am very interested in seeing what bleeps remain in the DVD release of this episode.

Thursday, April 22nd
Loved: Fringe (2x19), Survivor (20x11)
Liked: 30 Rock (4x17/18), The Office (6x22)

Fringe is on a roll since its return from hiatus. "The Man From the Other Side" was a terrific mythology/arc episode, introducing a promising new villain with the yet unseen (but if you don't know who it is, you haven't been paying attention) Secretary. The impact this episode will have on the best relationship of the series, Peter and Walter of course, is yet to be felt, but I'm more excited about this series right now than I've ever been.

This week's Survivor was absolutely fantastic, as merge episodes often are, featuring the gutsiest tribal council move I can recall. If Parvati's decision to spread her two immunity idols out to her Villains tribe mates had not worked out so well, it could have fallen into the dumbest Survivor moves of all time territory, but she correctly read her opposition, specifically Amanda. JT cemented his idiot persona with his unflinching trust in good ol' boy Russell, and, shockingly, fucking Rupert was the only voice of reason on the Heroes side. With the balance of power now securely on the Villains side, the next few episodes will probably be boring as shit, but that's life with unscripted TV.

Once again, for the second time in two months, I posted this Week in Review without the Thursday comedies. So, The Office's "Secretary's Day" and 30 Rock's double shot of "Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter" and "Khonani" must have been forgettable, right? Actually, no, they were three pretty good episodes. (When I write these blog posts, I rely pretty heavily on what I wrote last week to remind me what shows I watch, and none of these shows were on last week.) In the case of The Office, I enjoyed Cookie Monster Kevin, but I wasn't a big fan of crazy Erin. And, as per usual, 30 Rock made me laugh repeatedly, but I'm at a loss to explain why.

Friday, April 23rd
Loved: Stargate Universe (1x14)
Liked: Party Down (2x1), The Ricky Gervais Show (1x9)

Stargate Universe's "Human" finally provided some backstory on the enigmatic Rush, humanizing him significantly with clever use of his memories. I could have done without the cave-in storyline, but I liked seeing Eli and Chloe together again and I appreciated the fact that the crew was not amazingly saved in the last second.

Along with Better Off Ted, Party Down was one of the best new comedies last year. Airing on Starz, like the also awesome Spartacus, Party Down is not well known, and I only know about it because of its significant production connections to the series Veronica Mars. The second season premiere, "Jackal Onassis Backstage Party," had some hilarious moments but was not one of the better episodes. Because this series relies rather heavily on improvisation in the same way as Curb Your Enthusiasm (ie. the writers propose scenarios and certain beats that must be hit, and then the actors go at it), it can be much more inconsistent than a cleverly written show like Better Off Ted, but there's room on TV for both types of comedy.

Saturday, April 24th
Loved: Doctor Who (5x4)
Liked: Legend of the Seeker (2x18)

"The Time of Angels" was an awesome episode of Doctor Who, bringing two of Steven Moffat's best creations, River Song and the Weeping Angels, back in fantastic ways. Matt Smith still rocks, and the rest of the cast hit all the right notes. Dialogue was fantastic throughout, set design and CGI was above par for Doctor Who, and it was part one of a two-parter, thus giving the story some time to breathe. There's a reason that most of the best new Whos are the two-parters.

"Walter" was a strange episode of Legend of the Seeker, to say the least. If Craig Parker wasn't so awesome, it probably would have crashed and burned, but other than wondering what the writers were thinking when they proposed this storyline as a part of the season's arc, I enjoyed this episode's goofiness. Next week's payoff of this silly nonsense will hopefully be much better.

Sunday, April 25th
Liked: The Amazing Race (16x10)

This week's Amazing Race featured the last of the non-elimination legs, saving the puzzle-challenged detectives this time, leaving (I think) only two legs left to the finish line. I'm still cheering for the cowboys and was happy to see them back on top of their game with this leg.

Brewblog and some other stuff

It's been nearly a month since this post, so it's that time again for some updates on the other stuff in my life. Mostly beer.

Brewblog, Entry One

In the month of April so far, we have had two brew days. Due to ugly weather and other commitments, we did not brew on the weekend of the 9th. We can afford to take some weekends off now, though, because we have developed a fairly sizable stockpile of beer in the first three months of this year.

On Friday, April 2nd, we brewed an Oud Bruin aka Flanders Brown ale. This beer will be aged in a glass carboy for one year with some crazy yeasts and bacteria, souring the beer and hopefully giving it complex flavour and aroma. Normally we like to start drinking our beers within a month and a bit of making them, so it'll be strange to let this batch do its thing for so long. Writing this blog entry right now reminds me that I need to rack this thing into that carboy and soon.

On Saturday, April 17th, we took a second crack at brewing an English Pale Ale aka Bitter. Our first Bitter was a drinkable, low alcohol, mostly unmemorable malty beer, so with this second batch, we upped the hop quantity and slightly adjusted the malt recipe. The end result will not be to style at all, with hop bitterness well above recommended, but this beer won't last until a competition anyway, so we might as well create beers that we will enjoy. I will have more to say on this topic of homebrew competitions in the next section.

The most interesting element of the last brew day was that we successfully implemented a major process improvement. While talking with Dave Rudge, guru of Half Pints Brewery in Winnipeg, this week (while drunk on his Pothole Porter at an ALES Club volunteer appreciation night), he suggested that with Regina water we should have no problems completing our mash starch conversion within 30 minutes.

When we started all-grain brewing, we began with a 60 minute mash. (I'm not going to bother explaining here what the mash is. You can Google it, if curious.) As time went on, we extended this to 75 minutes, and on rare occasions when recipes called for it, 90 minutes. The thought was that the longer we let the mash do its thing, the more sugars we'd get in our wort. It made rookie brewer sense.

On Saturday we tried the 30 minute mash that Dave Rudge recommended, and we didn't seem to lose any efficiency, where efficiency is the percent of available sugars extracted in the mash. Thanks to that 45 minutes of time savings, we completed the entire brew day easily in four hours, including a 90 minute boil. (90 minute boils are also a recent process change, although in this case we have lengthened our day by 30 minutes. In theory, the extra boiling time gives you better hop utilization and possibly wort caramelization.)

The longer mashes were rarely a waste of time, because we tried to take advantage of that 75 minutes of sitting around waiting to do miscellaneous important tasks like bottling previous batches. But I suspect that it will be a long time before we do another mash that is longer than 30 minutes.

We hit 84% efficiency on this last brew day, which is excellent and well above our average of 72%. With our first Bitter, we hit 79%, so we have had above average results in the past with smaller grain bills (ie. less grains in the mash). I'm not going to attribute the 5% better efficiency with this second batch to the shorter mash, as that is nonsense, but it is solid evidence that we didn't lose anything. There are likely more efficiency gains to be found in the running off and sparging processes, so we are always experimenting with those tasks as well.

We are brewing again on the coming Saturday. We have not picked a recipe yet, but Blonde Ale has been suggested.

Competition Results

We entered 11 beers and 1 mead in the ALES Homebrew Open 2010 competition. We were mostly seeking feedback and constructive criticism, if not a little validation. We believe we make good beers, but were any of them competition quality beers? The answer to that question was mostly "No," sadly.

Our average score was a solid if unspectacular 27.6 out of 50. That score sounds worse than it is (it's more C+ than D), because it is incredibly hard to score above 35. But at the same time, unless your beer is the worst thing a judge has ever tasted, you will rarely score below 20. So, yeah, we are halfway between really good and really terrible. We didn't win any medals, which you earn if a beer places in 1st to 3rd place in one of the 20ish categories.

Our Biere de Garde rebounded from its poor showing in Calgary in February, where the judges thought the beer may have been infected and slammed it with an average of 24.5, to be our top scoring beer here with a 38.7 average (impressive scores of 40, 40, and 36). I'm sure glad we gave the Biere de Garde another chance. It didn't win a medal, but I have it on good authority that it was very close. It was competing in its category against Saisons and other Belgian beers, so it was tough.

Scott's Stout 2, my favourite of our 2009 brews, scored a very respectable 37.5 (39 and 36) in Calgary. Unfortunately, with Biere de Garde doing so well at the ALES competition, the universe insisted on balancing that result out by turning Scott's Stout 2 into a bottle bomb that yielded our second lowest score ever with a 20.7. Because the bottle gushed for a couple of minutes into a pitcher, it was completely flat by the time the judges drank it. The judges were not fans and also detected off-flavours that had not previously been present. Shitty.

Here's a quick rundown of how the other ten entries performed: Winter Wheat 2 (32.7), Raspberry Mead 3 (31.5), Sour Cherry Ale (30.7), Vanilla Porter (29.0), Matrimonial Ale 2 (27.3), Scottish Ale (27.3), Pilsner (25.3), Paul's Tripel (25.3), Punk IPA (22.0), Anniversary Bitter (20.3).

The biggest disappointments for me, other than Scott's Stout 2, were: the Sour Cherry Ale, which tastes like delicious cherry pie, but unfortunately doesn't really fit the BJCP guidelines for a Fruit Beer; Raspberry Mead 3, which is very raspberry-y, but is apparently not meady enough; and the Vanilla Porter, which wasn't quite ready for this competition, but might be my new favourite of our beers. Winter Wheat 2 did better than expected, validating me at least amongst our little group, as I was the only one that thought it was good. We didn't expect much from the Pilsner nor Paul's Tripel nor the Scottish Ale, entering them just to get feedback. Punk IPA is great, but not an IPA. Matrimonial Ale 2 was entered as an American Pale Ale, despite its 9% abv, just to fuck around. Anniversary Bitter, our lowest scoring beer, had a skunky bottle apparently; I have a hard time believing that it deserved the 18 that it received.

It's a little depressing to see all those mid-20s scores. I have been extremely happy with the beers we have been making lately, so much so that I have only purchased one six-pack of beer in the last few months. But we still clearly have a long way to go before we are making excellent beers. We are all driven to improve our process, improve our recipes, and improve our scores for next year's competition.

Novice Beer Judge Extraordinaire

I skipped the March meeting of ALES Club due to sickness, so I missed out on the volunteer sign-up sheet for stewarding (ie. serving beer to the judges) at the 2010 ALES Homebrew Open competition. At the April meeting, I asked the competition coordinator if there was anywhere he could fit me in, and he suggested that Monday night could probably use me.

So I showed up at Bushwakker on last Monday evening at 6:45 to steward for the first night of the competition. As I arrived downstairs, the competition coordinator informed me that I was judging this night instead of stewarding. I thought he was joking and laughed it off. I'm not a beer judge; I've never judged beer. It took a good minute of him trying to reassure me that it would be okay for me to agree. I even emphatically said no at one point, but he didn't let it go. When he led me to my table, where I was to be judging with him and the manager of Bushwakker, I saw that he had printed labels with my name on them already.

We were judging category 19, Strong Ales. Strong Ales includes three subcategories: 19A, Old Ale; 19B, English Barleywine; and 19C, American Barleywine. There were 11 entries, 3 Old Ales, 5 English Barleywines, and 3 American Barleywines.

I can only recall drinking one Barleywine previous to this night. I'm not sure what the brand or source was, but I think it fit into the English Barleywine category. I note this to establish the fact that I was not familiar with the style at all going into judging.

On the table in front of each judge was the 2008 BJCP Style Guide and a stack of score sheets. To prepare for judging, I quickly read through category 19. I am pretty familiar with some of the other categories, having had to read them to ensure I was submitting our beers into the correct categories for competitions, but 19 was new. We have never made a Strong Ale.

I don't want to bore you with too many details. But here's a quick summary of the process. One by one the beers are brought out in three sample glasses. Each judge individually and silently assesses the beer in the five areas on the score sheet [aroma (12 points), appearance (3 points), flavour (20 points), mouthfeel (5 points), overall impression (10 points)], writing comments as they go, and then adds up their score. The scores are compared and the difference between the highest and lowest judge must be 7 or less to reach a consensus. The outliers will then discuss their reasoning and adjust their scores if necessary.

Even knowing very little about the category, and accepting that my sense of smell is not really up to snuff, I followed the BJCP Guide carefully and was able to score nine of the eleven beers entirely in line with the other two judges (ie. within 7 points). On one beer, I penalized it heavier than the other two judges and ended up relenting and raising my score. On another beer, I was too high, and I adjusted down a few points while another judge adjusted up. The rather brilliant English Barleywine that won the category got a 41 from me and one other judge, and a 40 from the third, which was amazingly consistent.

If scoring the beers was all you had to do, I would have had a great night. I repeatedly proved that I had a good feel for what a beer should get as a score. Unfortunately, you can't just award a score; you have to provide comments and notes to support your score. And this was the part of this evening that I disliked. My comments were so inane and dumb and unhelpful that I felt embarrassed to hand the score sheets in to the head judge. Ultimately, I have a hard time recognizing and describing the complexities of beer. (This extends to basically everything I eat or drink. I know what I like, and I know generally why, but my senses of taste and smell struggle to detect subtleties.)

The entries were quite solid throughout the night, very few scoring below the upper 20s. There was only one sample glass that I did not finish, because I found the beer to be borderline awful. One clear indication of my lack of judging experience was the fact that my judging partners did not finish any of their sample glasses. That was amazing to me, because I felt like I needed every millilitre of liquid in those cups to make my assessments.

At the end of the evening, I was quite drunk. Eleven samples of 10% beers will do that to me. And after judging, we were permitted to sample the victors of the evening's other categories. I found a couple Bitters that I really liked, but was ultimately not in the mood to do much extra drinking.

I was asked a couple times that evening (and many times later in the week) if I enjoyed judging and if I would do it again. I always answered yes to both questions.

Shaping Up?

I took Daisy for a walk yesterday. Does that count?

33...

...is how old I will be on Friday. Fuck me.

I'm taking Friday off to sit outside, drink, and read my book. If the weather does not cooperate, I will still partake in the drinking part of that plan.

Week in Review, Apr 12 to 18

The Week in Books

With the very welcome arrival of 20+ C sunny days, my desire to sit outside in the backyard and read a book returned with a vengeance this weekend. So, on Sunday, I finally jumped back into Steven Erikson's epic fantasy series Malazan Book of the Fallen, reading the first quarter (200+ pages) of House of Chains, the fourth book in the series. I will wait until I finish the entire book (which will be a few weeks yet) before I do any reviewing.

It is actually a bit of an understatement to call the Malazan Book of the Fallen epic. I have never read anything with the depth of detail in world-building and storytelling as this series. (You could argue for Tolkien's Middle-Earth, but Erikson takes it to the next level in my opinion.) And no other author that I have ever read has so dared to confuse the fuck out of his readers with random shit happening at random times without explanation. When I read Gardens of the Moon, the first book in the series, a couple years back, I had no idea what the fuck was going on on most of the pages. But I kept reading because it was fascinating in its details, thoroughly well-written, and many of the characters were quite interesting.

I read both Deadhouse Gates and Memories of Ice last summer in numerous marathon backyard reading sessions, and I appreciated that both of those books were much more coherent. There were still many moments of confusion and random gods doing random shit, but I was better able to follow the through-stories this time. Memories of Ice, the best book of the first three, also did a fantastic job of explaining retroactively many of the most confusing moments from Gardens of the Moon, so I found myself jumping back and forth between the two books, trying to get a better understanding of this world and its rules. I have never done that with any book series previously, because I haven't had to.

The Malazan Book of the Fallen also features a staggering number of characters, and I often have a hard time remembering who is who. I can't even imagine how many characters I'll have to keep straight by book ten. (Thankfully, each book includes a handy "cast of characters" list!) If I have one complaint with the series, it is that I sometimes feel like an outsider watching these characters go through their motions, rarely knowing their motivations. The reader does not spend as much time inside the characters' heads as I am used to from other similar fiction. This sounds like a big complaint, but it's actually a minor quibble, because the scope of the action that surrounds these characters generally dwarfs their individual significance. This series is telling a truly epic story about a unique world and its powerful gods and vengeful demons and diverse peoples and endless wars.

The Week in Television

Monday, April 12th
Liked: The Big Bang Theory (3x19), How I Met Your Mother (5x19)
Meh: House (6x16)

The Big Bang Theory's "The Wheaton Recurrence" was a solid episode, reuniting Sheldon with his newest nemesis, Evil Wil Wheaton, for (of all things) competitive bowling. The important storyline in this episode, tightly interlinked with the bowling games, was a rift in Leonard and Penny's relationship due to a mismatch in depth of feelings.

"Zoo or False" was an unapologetically silly episode of How I Met Your Mother, but I laughed at many of the dumb jokes, so I guess it gets a pass. I imagine that Ted's children in 2030 were as confused as I about what any of this had to do with how he met their mother.

I recently caught up on the multiple weeks of House that I was behind on, so I was able to watch this week's episode, "Lockdown," in a timely fashion. And it was okay. Wilson and Thirteen's game of Truth or Dare provided most of the episode's entertainment. House's storyline was a snoozer, Cameron and Chase were depressing, and Foreman and Taub took drugs and did a bunch of silly nonsense.

Tuesday, April 13th
Loved: Lost (6x12)
Liked: Glee (1x14)

While it wasn't as revelatory as last week's episode, "Everybody Loves Hugo" continued the trend of using the alternate reality to do awesome things, such as reuniting Hurley with Libby (!) and having Desmond be all cool and mysterious and then murderous. On island, there was all kinds of crazy shit going down, including another hilariously shocking death due to unstable dynamite, Hurley taking over as leader, and Not!Locke throwing Desmond down a well. Is it next Tuesday yet?

Glee made its long awaited return (okay, not really--it's a good show, but omigod the hype!) with "Hell-o," an episode that did a great job of crapping all over the supposedly happy endings from the mid-season finale. The musical highlights were (unexpectedly) Rachel rocking out with The All-American Rejects' "Gives You Hell," a duet between Rachel and new guy Jesse on Lionel Richie's "Hello," and the whole gang taking on The Beatles' "Hello, Goodbye."

Wednesday, April 14th
Loved: South Park (14x5)

I adored South Park's love letter to long time fans, "200," so titled because it was the 200th episode of this long running series. This was an episode that relied entirely on call-backs to previous episodes, and for me, it was brilliantly done. Also, it ended with a hilarious redo of the first season's cliffhanger, "Who is Eric Cartman's father?"

Thursday, April 15th
Loved: Fringe (2x18)
Liked: Survivor (20x10)

This week's Survivor was marketed as featuring the dumbest move in Survivor history. While JT giving Russell his immunity idol was certainly a dumb move, he at least thought he had sound strategic reasons for doing so (and he seemingly had his tribe's support, except for possibly Amanda), which is better than James not playing one of his two idols and getting voted off or Eric giving his idol away and getting voted off. So, no, not the dumbest move in Survivor history... but if Russell somehow uses that specific idol to engineer JT's elimination, maybe I'll come back to this point. With the merge coming up next, it is tough to say where this game is going to go, but with two idols in their hands, Russell and Parvati (and the rest of the Villains?) are in good shape.

"White Tulip" was an excellent standalone episode of Fringe, making extremely good use of time travel. The heart of the episode was in Walter's sympathy with the time traveler's motivation, and his and Olivia's continued struggle with whether Peter should know the truth of his origins.

Friday, April 16th
Loved: Spartacus (1x13)
Liked: Stargate Universe (1x13), The Ricky Gervais Show (1x8)

Spartacus' "Kill Them All" was a thoroughly satisfying season finale, brutally setting up a second season that will (by necessity) barely resemble the first. My early season concerns that this series would grow stale and boring with the same old, same old every week were completely eradicated by a blood bath of unimaginable proportions. There was nothing on TV this winter that I enjoyed more than Spartacus Blood and Sand.

"Faith" was a welcome return to the entirely character driven Stargate Universe of the first half of this season, but with the added plus of no fucking communication stones. As you can guess from the title, this episode was concerned with issues of spirituality and fate, which I am okay with in my sci-fi. I appreciated that the story offered no easy answers and that the resolution was not tidy.

I find it fascinating, or maybe it's more accurate to say disbelieving, that Karl would so willingly hand over his hilarious diary for Ricky and Stephen to read on their podcast. What is the fucking deal with that guy?

Saturday, April 17th
Liked: Doctor Who (5x3), Legend of the Seeker (2x17)

Doctor Who's "Victory of the Daleks" was the weakest episode of this season so far, but it was still enjoyable for its character moments. Making the ultra-cheesy Daleks seem like a threat is often challenging, and the introduction of a new breed of super (colourful!) Daleks was particularly silly. I'm sure they'll be back later this season, and I hope they bring a better story with them.

I had high hopes for Legend of the Seeker's "Vengeance," seeing as it guest starred John Rhys-Davies as Panis Rahl, but it was a bit disappointing. The episode featured a number of interesting flashbacks to Zedd's past, providing suitable back story, included one hell of a Zedd-on-a-rampage sequence, and I appreciated the return to the Stone of Tears storyline, but the ending of the episode didn't pack the punch it should have.

Week in Review, Apr 5 to 11

Just got back from pretending to be a beer judge tonight (future blog post there, for sure!--for now, see Facebook), and now I need to finish off this fucking Week in Review post while drunk and tired. Awesome!

This was one of those "all TV, all the time" weeks, except for the new task of spring yardwork. Yay! In my spare moments, I've been enjoying revisiting the second season of Chuck. Next week I will hopefully have time for the new Mass Effect 2 DLC, and maybe I'll dive into Dragon Age Awakenings. I'd also like to start READING A BOOK, for fuck's sake.

The Week in Television

Monday, April 5th
Loved: Chuck (3x13)

"Chuck Versus the Other Guy" wrapped up season 3.0 very nicely. As expected, there was some reset button action, but there were also a couple major changes that should make season 3.5 rather interesting. The writers have now given the fans exactly what they wanted, but they have also written themselves into a corner that few series can escape from.

Tuesday, April 6th
Loved: Lost (6x11)

Lost was back on top of its game with "Happily Ever After," a Desmond story that almost entirely took place in the alternate timeline, but never felt like a waste of time. For those that were worried about the time wasted in this final season with the flash-sideways, this episode almost single-handedly redeemed them, confirming that the flash-sideways have a mysterious purpose beyond just simply being an alternate timeline.

Wednesday, April 7th
Loved: South Park (14x4)

South Park took on Facebook this week with "You Have 0 Friends," easily the best episode of this new season so far. Randy's obsession with Facebook friends, Stan's reluctance to join, and Kyle's new "friend" were the highlights for me. The episode lost a little of its momentum and charm when Stan was literally sucked into Facebook, amusingly depicted with Tron graphics, but everything else was so good that the episode as a whole still worked.

Thursday, April 8th
Liked: Fringe (2x17), Survivor (20x9)

Fringe's ridiculously titled "Olivia. In The Lab. With The Revolver." (the episode only marginally involved the game of Clue) was a solid standalone episode that ended up tying into the series mythology in a satisfying way.

Up to this point in Survivor Heroes & Villains, Sandra has been doing nothing, flying under the radar, apparently hoping to win the game again with the same lame play style. But in this week's episode, without Boston Rob to hide under, Sandra had to make a move, and she deviously turned Russell against Coach. Even though Courtney is more skeletal and useless than ever, the smarter members of the Villains tribe couldn't sway Russell from his mission to boot "the Dragonslayer." Bravo, Sandra!

Friday, April 9th
Loved: Spartacus (1x12)
Liked: Stargate Universe (1x12)

As the penultimate episode of this first season of Spartacus Blood and Sand, "Revelations" promised a lot of changes to come for this series in next week's season finale. The titular revelations didn't come until the latter half of the episode, but when they started coming, hoo boy... Almost every secret from this first season was revealed in a series of tightly plotted scenes, some expected, some startling, and some extremely satisfying.

In Stargate Universe's "Divided," the civilians took advantage of various military distractions to attempt mutiny, with relatively mild consequences to their inevitable failure. The alien threat from last week also returned to throw a wrench into the works. The character work this week was stronger than last, reminding us viewers who some of these people are and why we should care.

Saturday, April 10th
Loved: Doctor Who (5x2)
Liked: Legend of the Seeker (2x16)

"The Beast Below" was a rather silly episode of Doctor Who, but I still enjoyed it a hell of a lot. Matt Smith continued to be terrific as the new doctor, Amy Pond (the super cute Karen Gillan) continued to be a great companion, and Steven Moffat continued to be a great writer. The dialogue elevated this episode above other similar themed episodes from the Davies era.

Legend of the Seeker's "Desecrated" was decent, introducing crazy new mummy mythology to the series, borrowing some of its premise from awesome 80s movie Dragonslayer, and pairing up Kahlan and Cara (always a good idea) for some fun, albeit cliche, bonding. Somehow I didn't even notice (until the pretty promising preview for next week) that the Stone of Tears storyline was completely ignored.

Sunday, April 11th
Liked: The Amazing Race (16x9)

Good riddance to Carol and Brandy. Hopefully Brent and Caite are next. Now for a brief treatise on Amazing Race gameplay and the morality of the U-Turn. It always amazes me when teams describe using the U-Turn as a dirty move. Sure, if you are U-Turned, you have every right to be pissed off, but it's not dirty. It's a smart move to U-Turn a team, to ensure your continued survival in the hunt for one million fucking dollars, and possibly eliminate a team that is challenging you for that one million fucking dollars. I always shake my head when teams elect not to U-Turn anyone. Are you fucking retarded? This is a game that you are trying to win. To win ONE MILLION FUCKING DOLLARS. Why wouldn't you do anything you could to help your team win. You don't need to be popular. There is no vote at the end. There is no social game. It's your team against the rest of the teams. Be unpopular. Be assholes. Use the fucking U-Turn so you have a better chance of winning one million fucking dollars. Okay? Okay.

Week in Review, Mar 29 to Apr 4

The Week in Video Games

The only gaming I did this week outside of a little Rockband 2 was the few hours it took me to complete Tales of Monkey Island Chapter Five, "Rise of the Pirate God." This final chapter was as good as everything that came before it in most respects, especially the clever puzzles resulting from being able to switch between Zombie Guybrush and Ghost Guybrush in the latter half. Insult sword fighting made a far too brief appearance, all of the major characters played into the storyline in effective ways, and I really enjoyed the fact that you could never die in any of these games, instead entering sometimes hilarious endless loops of combat. My only complaint with this final chapter is that the ending cinematic was too abrupt and rather unsatisfying. I'll assume that the brief scene after the credits is the setup for Tales of Monkey Island 2, which: awesome!

The Week in Television

Monday, March 29th
Loved: Chuck (3x12)

"Chuck Versus the American Hero" was originally planned to be the penultimate episode for season three, until NBC extended the season with six more episodes, so it makes sense that it felt so much like part one of a season finale. Other than being slightly hampered by a low budget, everything about this episode was excellent, including Morgan, Awesome, and Casey teaming up to help Chuck win Sarah back, Chuck laying it all on the line with Sarah, and Shaw's turn to the dark side. The reset button is still looming, because the show can obviously never follow through with Chuck transferring to Rome, but I hope there are at least some changes that are permanent.

Tuesday, March 30th
Loved: Lost (6x10)

"The Package" was a good episode of Lost, moving pieces strategically around the board in the island storyline and answering some minor questions in the alternate universe storyline. Although their episodes have never had the twists and turns of some of the other major characters, I have always enjoyed the Jin and Sun episodes of past seasons, and this one was no different in that respect. And, most importantly, Desmond!

Wednesday, March 31st
Liked: Modern Family (1x19), South Park (14x3)

A few days after watching this week's South Park, "Medicinal Fried Chicken," my brother asked me what I thought about it, and I honestly couldn't remember what the episode was even about. I knew I had found it quite funny at the time, but my mind had blocked it out, possibly due to alcohol consumption prior to the viewing. As I remembered bits and pieces of it, slowly, I remembered certain elements pretty fondly, such as the sight gag of Randy bouncing around on his enlarged balls. The rest of the episode? Forgettable.

It would be easy to look at Modern Family's "Game Changer" as a pretty damn funny 30-minute iPad commercial. I didn't really see it that way, because I was glad they had Phil be obsessed with an actual product rather than make some gizmo up, and because Phil's interest in a product is the opposite of an endorsement to me. The non-iPad elements to the episode were also solid.

Thursday, April 1st
Loved: Fringe (2x16)
Liked: Survivor (20x8)

"Peter" was a terrific episode of Fringe, completely unique to the series, consisting almost entirely of flashbacks to Walter's past when Peter was a sick child. It may not have provided many new answers, instead simply confirming suspected answers, but complaining about that would be missing the point. This was an undeniably important episode for the series, arguably the best one to date, and I am excited for the rest of this season.

Son of a bitch! I knew Rob was going to be in trouble when Tyson voted himself out last week, but I hoped it would be a few more weeks before the shit would hit the fan. I fucking hate Russell so much. On the Heroes side, Colby's redemption arc felt almost like it was scripted by a Hollywood hack.

Friday, April 2nd
Loved: Spartacus (1x11)
Liked: Stargate Universe (1x11)

Spartacus's "Old Wounds" didn't quite have the wow factor of the previous few episodes, but it still had plenty of goodness, including some surprising plot developments involving Batiatus and Ashur, Crixus' return to glory, and Spartacus learning the truth about his wife's death. The next two weeks will be very interesting.

Stargate Universe returned for the second half of its first season with "Space," an episode that finally introduced a mysterious external threat to the crew with mostly positive results. I liked seeing the communication stones used for something other than repeatedly visiting Earth, and the resolution to the mid-season finale's cliffhanger was reasonable. This episode only really suffered because it's been so long since I've spent any time with these characters that I have sort of lost interest in them, and there weren't enough good character moments here to remind me what I liked about them originally.

Saturday, April 3rd
Loved: Doctor Who (5x1)

This was a strong week for TV, but the triumphant series return of Doctor Who trumped everything. "The Eleventh Hour" was my favourite Doctor Who episode in ages. There were some iffy plot mechanics (cell-phone viruses?), but the episode zipped along at such an amazing pace that none of that even mattered. This was all about the characters, establishing the new doctor and his new digs, and his new companion and her world, and it rocked in all of those regards. Matt Smith completely won me over within minutes, but then somehow still managed to get better and better throughout the episode. The doctor's roof top showdown with the alien threat was awesome, especially the unexpected acknowledgment of his ten previous incarnations. And I'm going out on a limb and proclaiming after only one episode that Amy Pond is the best companion of the rebooted series. This episode and the season preview that followed left me giddy with excitement for what new showrunner Steven Moffat has planned.

Sunday, April 4th
Liked: The Amazing Race (16x8)

This week's leg in Malaysia was a classic example of Amazing Race "taxi trouble." A good taxi driver helped the cowboys regain first place, despite the extra Speed Bump challenge, and bad taxi drivers plus bad decisions finished off Steve and Allie. No big loss there. I'm cheering for those damn lucky cowboys, the cops, or the brothers to win.