Week in Review, Jan 18 to 24

When will it stop snowing? Fuck, you can no longer distinguish between my driveway and the huge piles of snow on my grass from three months of shoveling. That's not fair. I'm pretty sure my car is going nowhere tomorrow morning. The wind is blowing all the snow right up against my garage door.

The Week in Video Games

This was a good week for video gaming. Relief! I finally completed Dragon Age: Origins after 65 hours of play and Assassin's Creed II after 20 hours of play. Both games had satisfying conclusions; and both games need sequels stat. There is DLC coming very soon for both games, which: yay! I also made major progress on Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box and will likely finish that off within a few hours. Getting all of these games off my plate was important for this coming week, because Mass Effect 2 is coming...

Now that I've completed Dragon Age and experienced only one of the many available endings, I am feeling the temptation to try another playthrough. Maybe after Mass Effect 2. Dragon Age, like many of my favourite games from recent years (Fable II, Mass Effect), offers a lot of flexibility in moral decisions throughout the game. I mostly played Dragon Age as a goody two-shoes character this first playthrough, although on two occasions I made deals with devils (that will hopefully come back to bite me in the ass in Dragon Age II) to avoid life-threatening confrontations. Entering into the final battle, I made a third deal with a devil to avoid having to sacrifice the character I had spent 65 hours developing. So, basically I was a bit of a weasel, pretending to be goody two-shoes to get into Leliana's pants. (What does the way I play a game like this say about me as a person? Sounds like a blog post--but I need to stop saying that and not following through...)

I've mentioned it before, but Dragon Age's conversation system was a bit of a letdown for me after Mass Effect's brilliant wheel (the same awesome developer, Bioware, makes both game series). One of the best parts of Mass Effect's conversation system was that it let me play Scott Shepard (who may or may not bear a striking resemblance to my fantasy image of myself) as a snarky, sarcastic asshole whom was still a goody two-shoes in moral choices. It was awesome. I have high hopes that this will continue in Mass Effect 2.

The Week in Television

Monday, January 18th
Liked: Chuck (3x4), How I Met Your Mother (5x13)
Meh: The Big Bang Theory (3x13), Heroes (4x16)

Chuck had another strong Awesome-centric episode this week with "Chuck Versus Operation Awesome." The episode lost a little of its momentum with the introduction of Agent Shaw and the shifting of Awesome to the background, but it was still very good throughout.

I didn't really like The Big Bang Theory's "The Bozeman Reaction." I tend to get annoyed when the show takes Sheldon way over the top, and that's what this episode was all about. How I Met Your Mother's "Jenkins" was a much funnier and entertaining 30 minutes. I didn't even care that it had nothing to do with Ted meeting his future wife.

Oh, Heroes writers, why? "Pass/Fail" was not good. There may have been some plot momentum at the end of last week's episode, but that went nowhere this week. Instead, Sylar had a heart to heart with Claire for some reason. And Hiro got stuck in his own imaginary time travel court. And Samuel got pissed when his girl wouldn't stay with him and destroyed an entire town. I can't wait until the gang takes Samuel down in some laughably contrived way like Hiro stabbing Sylar way back in the first season.

Tuesday, January 19th
Loved: Better Off Ted (2x10)

Only one Better Off Ted this week. Sad. But "Lust in Translation" was another great episode, maybe even the best of this second season. Using Phil's voice on the translator was a stroke of genius.

Wednesday, January 20th
Loved: Modern Family (1x13)

Modern Family's "Fifteen Percent" was another excellent episode. Phil and Claire's battle over the user-friendliness of the universal remote control was great--I've been there. The highlight for me, though, was seeing Flight of the Conchords' Kristen Schaal as Manny's date.

Thursday, January 21st
Loved: Parks and Recreation (2x14)
Liked: 30 Rock (4x11), Fringe (2x13), The Office (6x14)

So, it's come to this: an Office clip show. "The Banker" had approximately 50% content and 50% clips from previous episodes. The new content was pretty good, mostly because of Toby's stonewalling, and the clips were obviously funny, because, hey, The Office has had a lot of funny moments.

The best show this Thursday was easily Parks and Recreation. "Leslie's House" was actually quite brilliant, a very smartly plotted episode with numerous hilarious moments, including notably our first glimpse of said house. It's impressive how this show's writers have managed to take a main character that was abrasive and annoying only one year ago and make her funny and relatable now. 30 Rock also had a good week with the aptly titled "Winter Madness."

Fringe stuck to standalone territory again this week with "What Lies Below," a good dramatic episode built on a rather overused story concept. As is always the case, Walter and Astrid stole the show again.

Friday, January 22nd
Meh: Spartacus (1x1)

New show! Spartacus: Blood and Sand. Gladiator by way of 300. Created by Steven S. DeKnight of Buffy and Angel fame. Although only the pilot aired on this particular Friday, I had an opportunity to see the second episode this week as well. Seeing the second episode helped me forgive the major flaws of the first. In the pilot, which was basically one slo-mo fight scene after another, the CGI blood was overused to ridiculous extremes. The second episode slowed things down and let characters talk, thus letting us get to know them, and was therefore much better. Neither episode was great, but the series has potential.

I forgot to watch the two-hour pilot of Battlestar Galactica prequel series Caprica this week, so I will have to cover that one next week.

Saturday, January 23rd
Liked: Legend of the Seeker (2x9)

"Dark" was Legend of the Seeker's attempt to tell the main storyline of the 1000 page Stone of Tears novel in 42 minutes. It was about as successful as you would think. To be fair, it was an above average Seeker episode. It was enjoyable and interesting, dealt with Richard's headache problem efficiently, and provided plenty of the WTFness I expect from this series with the Zedd, Kahlan, and Cara B-plot. We were also introduced to Jolene Blalock as Sister Nicci, who goes on in the book series to be one of the most important and interesting characters. Next week also continues this storyline somewhat, so that's cool.