THE RETURN OF THE PODCAST IS HERE!

Episode 9 of the All Things From My Brain Podcast is here.

In this weeks massive, DOUBLE SIZED, MAXI-PODCAST, I am joined by a special guest on his very first podcast [...]]]> I said I’d do it, I warned you – you didn’t listen, did you? Well, now it’s TOO LATE!

THE RETURN OF THE PODCAST IS HERE!

Episode 9 of the All Things From My Brain Podcast is here.

In this weeks massive, DOUBLE SIZED, MAXI-PODCAST, I am joined by a special guest on his very first podcast appearance as we discuss the iPad, about Apple, Google, Blizzard, Doctor Who, Dollhouse, Torchwood – and the fact that his youngest son may be stalking me via iPhone.

With Episode 9 I am dumping Podbean and everything is going to be hosted here on atfmb.com. If you’ve subscribed to the podcast via iTunes, that link is in the process of being changed and you’ll have to resubscribe – I’ll let you know as soon as that’s ready and available.

In the meantime, click below and stream to your hearts content or you can download via this link by right clicking and choosing ’save as’.

~P

[podcast]http://www.atfmb.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/AllThingsFromMyBrain009.mp3[/podcast]

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When Lost first hit the airwaves, I thought for sure it was going to be stupid.  I had visions of people running around making coconut radios and concocting impossible silly schemes for rescue.  Yes.  I’m saying that I thought it was going to be a modern day Giligan’s Island.

Boy, I could not have been more [...]]]> So.

When Lost first hit the airwaves, I thought for sure it was going to be stupid.  I had visions of people running around making coconut radios and concocting impossible silly schemes for rescue.  Yes.  I’m saying that I thought it was going to be a modern day Giligan’s Island.

Boy, I could not have been more wrong.

Unfortunately (or, fortunately, depending on your point of view (thank you very much, Obi-Wan)), I only watched the 1st season, and not any of the subsequent seasons.  This was due to a lot of things.

The World of Warcraft. I was heavy into this at the time, I mean really, really heavy.  Played every night after work for hours, played on weekends – you name it, I was playing.

Self-imposed television hiatus. I decided I was watching too much of the old boob tube and needed to break from it.  I picked a handful of shows – like 4, to watch every week and that was it.  When one of those shows was on, the tv was on, but other than that, the tv was off.  Lost wasn’t on the list.

Writing again.  I’d started writing again – simple enough.  I was inspired by several things, so I wanted to write and I didn’t want to be distracted by tv.

Anyway, with the final season of Lost looming, I’d been thinking that now might be a good time to get caught up on the series.

As is my habit, I’ve been watching for the Lost DVD’s to come down in price for quite some time.  I enjoy buying a full season of a show and watching as many or as few episodes as I want when I want.  Honestly, if I could get new shows on demand I would (not 1 episode at a time – 1 SEASON at a time) because I just prefer it.  Unfortunately for me, the more popular the show, the less likely that show’s DVD’s will be reasonably priced.

I consider $20-30 for a full season of a show (22-24 episodes) to be reasonable.  I will wait out a show for those prices to drop, and that’s what I’ve been doing with Lost.  But Lost hasn’t been coming down – at least not at the retailers (the instant gratification monster inside of me hates waiting for mail orders to come) that I frequent.

Then, along comes Netflix.  I tried it as a lark, really.  Moved into the new house, I don’t know yet where I am going to put my DVD collection, nor my books, for that matter, so I haven’t setup any book shelves or the curio cabinet I have for DVD’s.  So when I wanted something to watch, I tried Netflix and found Lost on there.  I’ve been slowly streaming episodes ever since, direct to my tv thanks to TiVo.

So, what do I think?

I think they’ve done an excellent job with the show.  It’s better than I thought it would ever be, obviously.  I like that the island isn’t just an island, and it keeps throwing them (and us, as viewers), curve balls.

After the 1st season, I was firmly entrenched in the belief that there were 3 factions: survivors, Others & Monsters.  Since then, we’ve learned that there’s the Dharma Initiative, and this British guy, and these other people, and divisions within the Survivors, and divisions within the Others and the island itself has divisions.  It’s all very complex, but not so much that you can’t follow it and enjoy it.

I was upset (as I’m sure many others were) when Kate apparently chose Sawyer.  Then I was happy that Jack and Kate looked like they were going to get it together only for Jack to screw it all up (at which point I groaned).  When some people got off the island, it was bittersweet.  When people started flashing back and forth in time, I was just as confused as I was mesmerized.

Questions I’d like to see get answers:

Who or what is Jaycob?

Why did Claire just walk away from her son?

Who or what is Richard Alpert?  How old is he?

Why was Jack’s dad’s coffin empty?  Why is he walking around talking to people?

Why was Locke’s coffin occupied when he is up and around walking and talking to people?  What’s the difference here?

Just a few questions I have.  I’m sure there’s more I haven’t thought of.  Yet.

I think the writers do a fantastic job with this show and the actors give it their all.  I’m impressed and looking forward to this final season, and that’s what scares the living hell out of me.

You see, I was just as impressed and enamored with the writers, producers & actors involved with Battlestar Galactica.

…and look what that got me in the end.

~P

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If you’re a fan, you remember that the opening of Battlestar Galactica’s first and second seasons always ended with: “AND THEY HAVE A PLAN”. ‘They’ were the Cylons and ‘The Plan’ wasn’t necessarily apparent beyond ‘Frakking kill all the humans’. Which, if you’re a cybernetic lifeform bent on [...]]]> A review: Battlestar Galactica: The Plan

If you’re a fan, you remember that the opening of Battlestar Galactica’s first and second seasons always ended with: “AND THEY HAVE A PLAN”. ‘They’ were the Cylons and ‘The Plan’ wasn’t necessarily apparent beyond ‘Frakking kill all the humans’. Which, if you’re a cybernetic lifeform bent on destroying your creators, isn’t such a bad plan, really.

I forget when that but of text went away, I’m sorry, I do. I don’t know if it was the third or fourth season, but it did go away. I DO remember thinking at the time, “Huh. What happened to ‘they have a plan’?” Never did find out cuz the show had it’s finale and the plan was never revealed.

Somewhere, sometime, I remember reading or listening to an interview or something wherein Ronald Moore said that the whole thing had been forced on them by the suits at the channel formerly known as ‘SciFi’. Some suit thought that the Cylons needed a plan and that we had to be told each week that there was a plan so it would make sense to us (Probably the same person who told Kevin Sorbo, “You know – you’re right. Thinking is hard. Scripts should be less about thinking and more about boobs. People like boobs.”. First chance he got, Moore pulled that line from the opening credits.

Still, it was one of those things that was left hanging and the fans wondered, “But – what about The Plan?”

Tuesday, there was an attempt at explaining it to us.

It failed.

The Plan is a feature length flick with old and new shots cobbled together to try and form a coherent story, I think it falls short of it’s ambitious intentions. You have new scenes blended with old shots from the show and they do that very cleverly despite actors having aged – I give them credit for that, but having watched the whole thing – I still have no idea what the hell it’s supposed to be about.

Some spoilers abound from this point on so, fair warning!

Returning are several characters – mostly the ’skin job’ Cylons including Caprica, Boomer, Leoben, Cavil and the rest. We relive the destruction of the colonies and the retreat of the human fleet through the eyes of the human Cylons. If there is any focus in the movie, I would say that it’s on Cavil, who has copies that move through the film and see things from different points of view. One version is with Anderson and the rebels on Caprica, another on Picon with Ellen Tigh, then on a ship with her and I think he then moves to Galactica where he tries to ‘run’ the others within the fleet and finish the destruction of the colonies.

It’s hard to find the point and the plot here, but I think they were trying to show how the two Cavil’s journey brings them to the same basic conclusions about the Final Five and their love of the human race and how, through their separate journey’s, they find that truth in completely different ways and take away from it different assumptions and plans for the future. But I feel it’s poorly executed.

While the blending of old and new is clever, it’s also confusing at times and feels forced at others.

There is that fantastic scene from the first season when Boomer wakes up in her flight suit, covered in water, dripping all over the floor. She has no idea how she got there and is freaking out. We know that she’s a Cylon – we saw her copy in the final moment of the mini-series, but she has no clue that she’s a sleeper. It’s creepy and intense – a wonderful moment.

In The Plan, they reveal that Cavil ‘woke her up’ to talk to her, to give her an assignment and then he keeps waking her up to talk some more from time to time. I feel that this took away from the original moment. I didn’t want to know that – I think it was a better moment on its own with a little mystery left to it. Sometimes, it’s better not to explain everything.

Sadly, the things we want explained aren’t, which just makes it worse.

Leoben is obsessed with Starbuck – we already knew this. Did we need to see the moment he became obsessed? Probably not. It felt like they jammed that piece in so they could show some Starbuck footage because she wasn’t really in the movie and they knew she had to be in it somehow. Same with Apollo – let’s show him helping people off a shuttle – why? No reason! It had nothing to do with anything! Just an excuse to show him and somehow make it seem more legitimate.

…as you can tell, not my favorite movie.

Overall, the movie felt like a miss-mash of disjointed moments. I think the only thing I truly loved about it was the music/soundtrack. I don’t think it answered any questions.

Sadly, I think that when you base a movie on something that was forced on you by someone in a suit, and summarily tossed the moment you thought you could get away with tossing it, that movie is going to suck.

And that’s what happened with The Plan, a poor epilogue to an otherwise outstanding television show.

~P

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With this in mind, and since the powers that be obviously don’t [...]]]> So. There’s lot’s of talk out on the web about how there are plans in motion to reboot Battlestar Galactica as a movie franchise completely separate from the recent series that ran 4 seasons and 22 years on the channel formerly known as SciFi.

With this in mind, and since the powers that be obviously don’t think this will offend the fans of the popular show – fans like me and probably you – given that the show only JUST ended its run, I offer some suggestions on some other popular shows that they could reboot just as soon as they go off the air or, heck, while they’re still on the air!  I mean, why not?

First up: Lost.

Look, this is the last season for Lost, right?  So why not start developing the movie version right now?  Heck – you go throw a little environmentalism into the mix what with the polar bear from season 1 and all.  And, you could think younger with the cast, which we all know you like to do out there in Hollywood.  Shia Labeouf could play Jack, Megan Fox could be Kate – I’m sure you can figure it out from there.  Of course, you’ll have to change it to make it appeal to a ‘larger audience’ then the mere millions who watch the show right now.  Maybe add a dog and a little kid – wait, that was already in the show for a bit…

Second: Fringe.

We all know Fringe is cool and slick and doing really well – heck, it got renewed for another season, right?  But why bother with writing show after show after show with those long, boring story arcs that the powers that be just hate because they’re so confusing and involved!  Gawd!  Just let Kevin Sorbo write up a movie for this thing, something really simple that anyone can follow.  Since you’re committed to the second season, you could plan the movie for next summer.  Of course, you’ll have to put young, fresh faces in the roles and maybe set the whole thing in high school instead of as an FBI drama.  Maybe put a tortured vampire in there as an extra little hook…

Lastly: Supernatural

The boys have said they’re done after this season (without having actually read their contracts, btw), so the time is ripe to reboot this sucker on the big screen!  Two brothers, traveling the country solving mysteries involving ghosts and urban legends…it’s GOLD Jerry!  GOLD!  Add a hot girl and a dog and you have a pg-13 family friendly goldmine that will keep churning out crap-shaped gold nuggets summer after summer!  Well, you’ll have to take out the sex – but not too much of the sex, and don’t show any blood or demons or magic – and for godsakes, whatever you do – don’t make the story scary!  Have them trying to get from point A to point B with some adventures in between, maybe a little slapstick comedy – something with a rake in the nads, that’s always funny, right?  And have Dwayne Johnson or Vin Diesel be the random, tough but caring guy who befriends the boys and sees them safely to their destination – like Bobby!  Oh, and do it all in 3-D.  And maybe animated.  But not by Pixar – try Dreamworks cuz they’re cheaper.  Christmas release, 2010?  I’M TELLING YOU – IT’S GOLD JERRY!  PURE GOLD!

*tongue planted firmly in cheek*

~P

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With the ‘reboot’ (I am really coming to hate that word now) of the ‘Star Trek’ franchise and the elimination to all references Roddenberry, Holywood has a new [...]]]> If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then surely Hollywood duplication, rehashing, rebooting and out right copying must be the key to big box office bank, right?

With the ‘reboot’ (I am really coming to hate that word now) of the ‘Star Trek’ franchise and the elimination to all references Roddenberry, Holywood has a new way of redoing stuff we’ve already seen but making it legitimate in their eyes.  It’s not a sequel!  It’s a -reboot-!  They’re breathing new life into something old and dated!  They are, in short, out of or afraid of new ideas and since something worked once, it will probably work again if they throw enough CGI and lens flares at it!

So, because I can, I’ve come up with my list of 10 things Hollywood should absolutely not remake, rehash & reboot.  Will they listen to me?  No.  But it’s still on my brain and therefore must come out!

10.  The Pink Panther (I know they did, but they shouldn’t have)

9.  Star Wars (I’ve read rumors)

8.  Battlestar Galactica (A movie?  Now?  Really?  And nothing to do with the SciFi show?!?!)

7.  Land of the Lost (see #10 above)

6.  Predator (I’m sorry but… No.)

5.  A Nightmare on Elm Street (Oh god…)

4.  Scream (…)

3. Robocop (Kill me now.)

2. Aliens (AGAIN?!)

1.  Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Absolute stupidity)

~P

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Does Dollhouse suck?

As I’m getting caught up on podcasts (Slice of SciFi, Geeks On for example), everybody seems to be talking [...]]]> Took a couple of days off from the blog while the DNS reset (I gave it a dedicated IP address), but I’m back now and ready to get back into stuff, so here I go:

Does Dollhouse suck?

As I’m getting caught up on podcasts (Slice of SciFi, Geeks On for example), everybody seems to be talking about Dollhouse, Sarah Connor and the finale of Battlestar.  I’ve got thoughts on all three, and I’ve already spoken a bit about all three, but I had a new thought about Dollhouse that I hadn’t considered before and I want to share.

Everyone should remember a little show that Joss did a few years ago, it was called Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Critically acclaimed show, tons of fans, books, comics, two networks and spawned a spin off that had its own acclaim and fan base.  Ring a bell?

But here’s the thing – and I might actually piss some fans off by saying this, but, the first season of Buffy?  It wasn’t great (Computer virus demon ring a bell? See the photo…).  I’d go so far as to say it sucked.  I’ve tried to turn people onto the show in the past and I always preface it by saying, “Check out the first season, but take it with a grain of salt because it’s bad.  Season two is where it really gets good.”

I know it’s not ‘normal’ for a first season to suck (Heroes, Lost), but I’d argue that Joss has had slow starts in the past, so maybe that’s what’s ‘wrong’ with Dollhouse (if you’re of the opinion that there is something wrong with it) – it’s still trying to get going.

I’ve been watching it from the start and I believe it’s getting better.  Last nights episode (spoiler alert!) with the central Actives we’ve been watching (Echo, Victor, Sierra, November) actually waking up and breaking out was a much better episode versus what’s come before it, and last weeks episode was better than the one before that, and so on – which means there is hope for the show as the actors and writers get into the groove and find the sweet zone.

Will the network give us and them the chance for that to happen, for the show to grow into the kind of second season that Buffy enjoyed?  That’s the big question on a lot of peoples minds.  And we probably won’t know until we know.  Given the massive vacuum of SciFi and Fantasy out there in television land, and the singularity left to be filled by the finale of Battlestar, I really hope that they do give it a chance, because there’s precious little out there to fill the void.

~P

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I don’t know if this answered all the questions or not – it seemed to, it felt like it did, but then, I also felt myself going, “but [...]]]> Well, Friday was the series finale of Battlestar Galactica – if you haven’t seen it yet, or intend to, fair warning – spoilers abound from this point on.

I don’t know if this answered all the questions or not – it seemed to, it felt like it did, but then, I also felt myself going, “but – what about…?”

In the episode, the Galactica and her skeleton crew go after Hera, the Cylon/human hybrid child of Helo and Athena, who has been stolen by the Cylon’s and taken to their colony which sits on top of a singularity (black hole).  Galactica gets the crap kicked out of her in the battle.

Stuff happens, they get Hera back.  This is where it comes back to the opera house visions that so many of the characters have shared.  In the end, we see that the ‘opera house’ is the command center and this is where ‘peace’ is worked out; let Galactica go with the Cylon’s who want to go with her, and Hera, and in return the final five will give the remaining Cylon’s resurrection technology.  Again.

I think the best part of this was when the Chief learns that his wife was murdered by one of his fellow Final Five.  He doesn’t even hesitate – he snaps her neck in a fit of rage.  It was violent, yes, but it felt to me like it brought him full circle again.  He was always a very human character, and his troubles with his wife, it was sort of laid out that maybe he didn’t even really love her after all.  But when he found out what had happened, all of that doubt was thrown aside and he acted in a very human way and avenged his slain wife (who I believe he loved very much).

In the end, the ‘peace’ gets interrupted by this act of the Chief’s, and the Cylons?  Well, they decide it was all a trick and decide to blow everyone away.  This is when Starbuck has her moment and leads the fleet to Earth once and for all.  The song, “All along the watchtower”?  Well, she’d converted the notes to numbers, remember?  And now she enters those numbers into the FTL drive and takes them to Earth.  A pristine Earth; pre-industrial, pre-verbal, ancient Earth.  The survivors decide to live simple lives, sending their ships into the sun.  They don’t build cities or space ships; they abandon technology in the hopes of breaking the cycle.

Looking out on the native, nomadic tribal peoples they find, Apollo decides to pitch this concept to the others.  He tells them all to let humanity start all over again, leave their technology behind, which has almost always gotten them into trouble. Let the Colonials enter Earth with just their basic possessions.  Of the native peoples he says, “We can give them the best of us.”  They agree.  We watch as the fleet moves off on course for the sun.

Which brings us back to one of the core concepts of the old show, reimagined like so many other concepts for the new show:  There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans…

*cue music*

~P

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First off, The Big Bang Theory – what?! This is SciFi?! [...]]]> Thought I’d do a quick review of SciFi on TV from this last week – at least, the stuff that I actually watch. Maybe throw a little Fantasy in as well. Spoilers abound so don’t read if you intend to watch.

First off, The Big Bang Theory – what?! This is SciFi?! Well, no – but it’s still amusing, and this past week they had Summer Glau (Firefly/Serenity, Sarah Conner) as a guest star and the nerd boys were drooling all over her. Trapped on a train, she had to put up with both Raj and Wolowitz hitting on her incessantly. “Can I take a photo of us together for my Facebook page?” Wolowitz asks. “Sure,” she replies. *he takes the photo with his phone* “Can I take another that looks like we’re making out?”

On another not so SciFi and yet is worthy of a mention note – Captain Malcom Reynolds returned to tv screens this week in Castle. As the title character, Nathan Fillion plays an author bored with his most successful character, so he kills him off. With nothing new on the horizon, he gets sucked into a homicide investigation and a string of murders based on scenes from his books. He finds himself enamored with a tough detective, Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) and decides that she’s going to be his new heroine. This is a much better show for Fillion, who’s sense of humor and wit comes through. Well worth a watch.

Heroes – The Puppet Master is back and he needs Claire’s help to disappear cuz the Agents are on his trail. Parkman has a bomb strapped to his body and has been dumped in D.C. to do some damage and Nathan is about to be exposed as having powers of his own. Danko is pushing things further and further and soon, something’s going to happen that no one is going to like. Meanwhile, Sylar’s ‘daddy hunt’ finds Smallville’s Lionel Luther breathing through a nose tube and welcoming death even if it’s at Sylar’s own hand. I notice little things, I can’t help it. Like Claire’s hair – it looks fake and it bugs me… This whole storyline reminds me of the Genosha stuff from X-Men, where mutants living there were the ‘property of the state’ and treated accordingly. We’ll see how this unfolds in the Heroes universe but at least we know it’s nothing new. Gosh, go figure.

Smallville – More WB soap opera drama cloaked in comic book pseudo-history as Clark reveals to Lois who and what he is. She writes a story and he becomes a hero to everyone – the ‘blue and red’ blur that’s been saving people all over Metropolis. Only, not everyone is happy. Guest star Tori Spelling (…couldn’t she just do the 90210 thing) publishes a story implicating Clark in the death of Lex Luther and says that he’s the vanguard of an alien invasion. Once his friends come in harms way because the government is now hunting him and anyone who knows anything about him, Clark uses the Legion ring he has to travel back in time and never reveal who he is in the first place. And, oh yeah – Doomsday kills Tori Spelling. Yay! …well, her character anyway.

Battlestar Galactica – holy frak!  Several flashbacks show us snippets of life in the colonies – the cynical part of my mind thought that this was done in order to prepare us for the new ‘Caprica’ spin-off or at the least, to make us wonder about it and be more curious to watch it.  Anyway.  We see Roslin losing her family, Baltar fighting with his ill and aged father and Lee meeting Starbuck for the first time at a dinner with his brother – they show us defining moments for the characters.  There was also something with Adama that didn’t really make sense – maybe it’ll be better flushed out in the next episode.  Starbuck tries to figure out what the song means, the cylons begin their examination of Hera and Baltar asks Lee for representation for his followers within the government (Lee says no).

The big moment comes when Adama sees, amongst the stripping of Galactica (she’s dying so they’re moving to the rebel Basestar and taking everything that isn’t nailed down (and some stuff that is) with them), that the memorial wall of those who’ve been lost is being stripped as well as people remove the photos to take them with them.  “These are pilots from the memorial wall,” says Hotdog.  “We wanted to take them with us, ya know, so we wouldn’t leave them behind like the others.”  This spurs Adama to realize that Hera is being left behind, and she’s a member of his crew, and she was stolen right out from under him, by Boomer, who shot him, and that pisses him the frak off because, ya know – she shot him.  Frak letting Galactica die a slow death with her crew gone off to live on some frakking basestar, oh no – he wants to take Galactica and anyone who is willing to crew her, to find the Cylon colony and rescue the child.  He calls for volunteers and they step up – next week, they attack the Cylon colony.  The one sitting on top of a black hole.  Galactica will die in battle, as she lived – oh yes.

Dollhouse – what can I say? I want to believe that it’s getting better. We’re seeing more into the Dollhouse and what makes it tick, and about the internal little political struggles that go on. the Doc (Fred from Angel only all cut up and serious looking) and the tech geek guy… I don’t know his name – does he have one? Let’s call him ‘Andrew’ because he’s mostly that same character from Buffy only smarter and computer geeky – anyway, The Doc and Andrew discover that all is not right in the Dollhouse, oh no – see, Victor, one of the ‘dolls’, he’s been havin some naught naugty thoughts and ‘man reactions’ to another Doll, which is a no no. And the head security guy wants Echo gone, so when she is sent out to infiltrate a cult and act as an unwitting spy, he denies the request to extract her before the ATF go in guns a blazin to take everyone out and seize the stockpile of guns these folks have locked up in the basement.

…as a side note, where do these tv cults get all these guns?!?! I mean – I wouldn’t know the first thing about getting one gun let alone a ’stockpile’ of them! Are cults rich? Do they have tons of money to spend on guns and ammunition and stuff? I just don’t get it.

Anyway, the head security guy actually goes in and tried to take Echo out, but her handler rescues her at the last minute, takes her back to the Dollhouse where she’s wiped again and all is well in the universe. OR IS IT? “How is your vision, Echo?” *eyes the head security guy in a certain way* “I can see perfectly.” DUN DUN DUN?!?!

Sarah Conner – this got better this week, as we weren’t focused on Sarah Conner going nuts anymore and actually had some decent character interactions. John has to deal with Riley being ‘executed’ and dumped in the river (thanks to Derek’s GF from the future, but no one knows that yet), something everybody thinks Cameron must’ve done. Cameron says she didn’t do it, but no one believes her – not even John and he usually does believe her. Meanwhile, we get a smidgeon of back story on Derek’s GF from the future and a submarine trip she took. Unfortunately, that’s really all we get about that for now. Sarah finds out about the spare parts Cameron’s been stockpiling and she destroys em, John and Cameron deceive Rilye’s foster dad into believing she’s still alive. Over all, a decent episode, much better than what they’ve been doing the past few weeks.

Legend of the Seeker – this show, I don’t know – it’s like a Renaissance Faire, all boobs about to burst out of blouses, if you know what I mean. It kinda follows the story of Richard and Kahlan as written by Terry Goodkind, and it kinda doesn’t. One week you see something that really follows the books and the next week you’re scratching your head and wondering what they hell that was all about. This week was sort of like the latter and not the former.

Zed left Richard and Kahlan when they discovered a tracer cloud had been attached to the Box of Orden, so this weeks episode left Richard and Kahlan on their own with Chase. In search of his family, they’re looking to help him break into some keep that no one wants any part of because it’s a bad place. They soon learn that the Wizard traitor, Giller, is working some bad mojo on the prisoners there and they come up with a plan to get in, get the prisoners out and make a run for it – works too, until Chase’s wife sucks his face a little and suddenly he’s sick. Turns out, Giller’s trying to make his very own Confessor so he can take her magic and give it to Lord Rahl, who’s due to turn up at the keep that night. Richard and Kahlan see a chance to kill him and they take it – merryment ensues: Kahlan is captured, her magic doesn’t work on Giller, Lord Rahl shows up, he and Richard fight a little, Richard loses and is captured (Mord Sith help), more merryment – then Kahlan lets loose with the blood rage and saves the day. Lord Rahl escapes before Richard can kill him.

Over all, not a bad episode, but still doesn’t really feel like it has anything whatsoever to do with the books. I could be wrong, been a while since I read em, but I thought Richard and Rahl don’t even meet face to face until the end and that’s when Kahlan’s Blood Rage kicks in – when she believes that Richard is dead. Could be that way, maybe not – I honestly don’t remember at this point.

~P

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