Dexter 5x03

Dexter is dealing with an immense sense of grief and guilt over the loss of Rita. But there is more important business at hand. Dex and Deb are drilling candidates for a nanny position to look after Prince Harry (baby Harrison). Obviously they are going for the Irish woman, Sonya, with a nursing degree (Maria Doyle Kennedy). Dex’ crisis counselor tells him that Harrison will be fine – he’s too young to have processed what happened to Rita – and advices Dex to release his energy by doing something for himself. So he chats up Boyd Fowler, the sick serial killer he happened to stumble upon, introducing himself as “Daryl Tucker.” Before you know it Boyd offers him to ride along on his “dead animal pickup” job. He already prepares his kill-room. But, yikes, when Dexter wants to take Boyd out with his usual injection, Boyd accidentally shoots him with his tranquilizer gun before falling to the ground. They both come to in an ambulance and pretend it was an accident – only to get out of the hospital as fast as they can. Now they are after one another! Dex is ahead of the game and has already prepared a make-shift kill room in Boyd’s basement. But after he performs his ritual, he discovers a feral looking woman (Julia Stiles) trapped in the basement, who saw it all!

There is much tension at Miami Homicide. Det. Quinn received composite sketches of “Kyle Butler” which the Mitchells provided the FBI. None of the drawings looks the same, but Quinn’s smart enough to piece elements together. In one of his tries puzzling facial features together from different drawings, Vince Mazuka quips it looks like Justin Bieber. Quinn calls the FBI requesting a meeting with the Mitchells. He tells them he has a hunch, but it may cost him his job if he’s wrong. For his part, Quinn is also still unsure how to handle Deb after their “little indiscretion” on the kitchen floor in Dexter’s old home. Even though she is crashing on his couch to give Dex some space, Deb brushes him off with her usual impatience. Sgt. Batista is under investigation for assaulting a fellow officer who bad-mouthed his wife Lt. LaGuerta. Meanwhile Miami Homicide is looking into the Santa Muerte machete murder. Quinn just opts for the easy solution: husband killed wife, then shot himself. Deb believes there is more to it, especially because of all the religious attributes. Her Spanish is so poor, she pronounces it “Santa Mierda.” Reluctantly she teams up with Cira, the local Hispanic police officer who lived all her life in the Venezuelan neighborhood where the woman’s decapitated head was found. She brings in a clue from a man selling Santa Muerta objects. But when they check back up on him, they find him lying dead on the ground, his head decapitated, with the eyes and tongue cut out and the mouth cut open, just like the woman’s head.

Clearly, the audience was thrown off purposefully several times already – and it’s only the third episode of the season! Angel Batista’s bar fight became much more significant after the assaulted officer suffers internal bleeding and files for an internal investigation. Cira is clearly going to be an important asset solving the machete murders. (Incidentally, the actress April Hernández went to Hunter College.) Here we were thinking the Boyd Fowler plot was going to last several episodes – and now he’s dead already. As a pay off, Dex is faced with Boyd’s last would-be victim – and since it’s Julia Stiles, that’s sure to become an interesting story arc. And what to make of the “practically perfect” nanny Sonya? Is she too good to be true? Then we have Quinn, is he going to become the next Sgt. Doakes trying to out Dexter? The heat is definitely on!

Burn Notice 4x14

In their ongoing search to discover who is responsible for Michael’s burn notice, Sam and Michael break into a police station and steal some information in the hopes of tracking down the man who is now in possession of the information that decodes Simon’s coded bible. They get their hands on a series of anonymous e-mails which indicates that the list is up for auction. Now they need help from an insider and lure Jesse’s former handler Marv back to Miami. Reluctantly he agrees and arranges they can get in on the auction in Santo Domingo in two weeks.

Meanwhile, Fiona has taken on a client who claims his sister has been kidnapped by some Venezuelan diplomat. Fiona and Jesse soon learn that the dirty diplomat’s house is much too protected just for holding someone hostage. Just when they are confronting their client he gets shot. Natalie, an old enemy, returns to the scene and tells them that the diplomat is in league with some South American revolutionaries and is holding a chemical weapon on his compound that is so lethal it makes mustard gas smell like cologne. The whole team joins in to save innocent people from dying. Plan A falls through, of course; and even after Plan B succeeds, Natalie still steels the weapon from Sam and is about to sell to some shady suits. Naturally, Michael saves the day and they force Natalie to turn the weapon in with the FBI.

In the end Madeline forces Michael and Jesse to shut it and sit down, to start trusting each other again before one of them ends up dead. She tells Jesse get over the fact that Michael ruined his life, and tells Michael to deal with the fact that Jesse was trying to save his life when he shot him in the chest. She’s not talking about closure, but about good old-fashioned gutting it out. It’s what families do when the lie and betray each other – they suck it up. They shake on it – and then it’s back to business as usual. In all, the episode felt contrived and formulaic, and not as much exciting fun as usual. Even the sit-down at the end was not as gratifying as Madeline’s scenes usually are. It seemed more like a convenient way to get past the guys’ mutual distrust and resentment, instead of dragging it on for too long. Let’s hope the show gets its groove back soon. Over and out.

Weeds 6x13

Nancy and her family have been on the road, off the grid, on the run from Esteban – not to mention the FBI – for the death of his PR manager Pilar. Now Esteban, with the help of Guillermo, has finally caught up. All Esteban seems to care about is his son and he will do whatever it takes to get him back. We all know Nancy will do all and everything to keep him from hurting her children. With Doug still in Regrestic, Andy is in charge to take Silas and Shane to the airport and board for Europe, Warren in tow. Silas, however, prefers to stay with his newfound bio dad, his sperm father – as he calls it. Shane keeps up his I’m-so-cool-I don’t-care attitude. “I’m going to Europe, you’re sitting here in Dearshit, Michigan, in a garage” he replies when Silas asks if he’s going to miss him. “Please, please, choose to not be a dick,” are Silas’ parting words. when Esteban and Guillermo arrive with Nancy at the airport Andy, Shane, Stevie and Warren have already checked in. She is able to get away from them, when airport security asks Esteban a few questions. She signals Andy by cell phone it’s time for Plan C. She meets them in the waiting area, takes little Stevie, and says goodbye as they board the plane. Silas had a change of heart and shows up at the airport. Esteban and Guillermo trade him for Nancy and Stevie. While Silas boards, too, Warren gets arrested for robbing the post office, but he leaves his pillow with Shane – which is filled with wads of the stolen cash! And then, as the plane takes off, Nancy walks out of the terminal – with Esteban and Guillermo watching her every move – straight into Plan C: the FBI is all over the place. She is arrested for the murder of Pilar! What a turn of events – this whole season actually! It has been at times touching, at times bizarre, but most of all it has been a fun ride. The tone was lighter than the previous season, even if the driving factor has been Pilar’s death, and Nancy was finally trying to get a grasp of her life, even if ultimately she failed to escape from her estranged husband’s clutches. It’s a nice little show. I wonder what will happen next season.

Gossip Girl 4x09

There’s another ball. Chuck is throwing a party hoping to get his Empire Hotel back on top. It’s a Black & White, Saints & Sinners masquerade. His business manager, though, advises him that it won’t be good for his image if he’s seen with Blair. Meanwhile Blair is desperate to become spokesperson for a philanthropic organization. And she is told that it won’t be good for her image if she’s seen with Chuck. Columbia Dean Rutherford yet again calls Serena into her office, with Lily in attendance. The whole Colin scandal is costing the university too much. Lily offers an endowment, which the Dean refuses. Then Lily threatens she will send in an article to the NY Times about Columbia professors taking advantage of female students. If that’s not enough drama for Serena, she is still unable to choose between Nate and Dan. Meanwhile, Jenny is back on the block again (remarkably staying off Blair’s radar), intriguing with Juliet and Vanessa. Jenny convinces Lily to talk to Juliet, and then Juliet blackmails Lily to keep her from spreading more ugly gossip about Serena. The trifling trio also intrigues between Serena, Nate and Dan. It all comes to a head, of course, at the ball. Alright, it’s true, the Cricket don’t care no more. Just three more episodes before the season’s over.

Modern Family 1x07

After the previous episode, this one felt a little lame – back to the awkwardness, the incongruous couch talk in between scenes, and especially the ham-fisted “coolness” fail of son-in-law Phil. The main story revolves around Manny’s sudden brush with success at fencing. Everyone is cheering until he’s faced with a girl in the finals. He wants to bow out gracefully, but Gloria and Jay want none of it, until they hear the girl is an orphan, her father died in Afghanistan, she lives in a children’s hospital, and has diabetes... Meanwhile, Mitchell and Claire are on ice, bummed that Jay was never this proud of them – and of course Clair’s kids aren’t particularly excellent at anything, certainly not airhead Haley or lumbering Luke. Mitch blames his sister for quitting their figure skating duo back in the day. She claims she did it to keep him from disgracing himself, but he remembers it was the last time he felt like part of her team. Honestly, I can’t say I enjoyed this much.

In Treatment 3x03

On Wednesdays, Paul’s patient is Jesse, a precociously nervous teenager, who likes to toss about vocab items and talk about Facebook with attention-deficit disorderly panache, rebelliously throwing his angst about while trying to hide his insecurities. He doesn’t like to be corrected when he mispronounces Miriam Webster for the Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. Jesse has been adopted, and apparently his behavior at home has become too much to handle. He has been seeing Paul for some time. In his mind his birth mother is a crack whore, but Paul notices that every time he speaks about his biological father he comes up with a different profession – and probably the one he likes to see himself in. He lashes out against everything and has turned his sense of betrayal and rejection into promiscuous encounters with older men. Then he wants to show Paul something crazy on his iPhone, but Paul tells him no. He finds it distracting. Jesse still plays him a voice-mail message. It’s from his birth mother who has somehow traced his number and would like to talk to him. Her number’s area code is from Westchester. Definitely not a crack whore. More likely, rich WASP. But Jesse has no idea what to do and hasn’t spoken with anyone about it until now. Another interesting session, with lots of promise, and a phenomenal performance by newcomer Dane DeHaan.

Danger After Dark II

Noriko’s Dinner Table (2006) by Sion Sono is a companion piece to Suicide Club (2002). However, it’s neither a prequel nor a sequel. Noriko is an awkwardly shy town girl, desperate to break away from her boredom. Her only friends she meets online. In voice-over narrations she tells us how it is she came to Tokyo. When she first meets her online pal (about half an hour into the movie), you just know things are going to get seriously weird. The pal introduces herself as Kumiko. And just so you know we’re talking seriously messed up we flash forward straight away to half a year later when fifty four girls cheerfully jump in front of the 7:30 train at Shinjuku Station. Meanwhile, Noriko’s family has no clue where she is. Her sister Yuka is still in Yokohama, too, happily telling her boyfriend how her sister may have been one of the suicide girls, and that she knows how all the girls arranged to meet at the station. She shows him the screen with the red and white dots: red for female suicides, white for male. Suddenly the screen turns black with the text, “Am I connected with myself, Sis?” She leaves home, too, but leaving her father clues that he manages to put together: the Suicide Club does exist. For her part, Noriko idealized Kumiko’s happy family: they are connected and share their love at all times. She learns to connect with herself – and empathize with others. Kumiko works in “family rental” pretending to be some client’s family member for money. In his own search to find his daughters, Noriko’s father learns that he really is in search of himself. Like its predecessor, this film thus explores computer-age alienation, the loss of connectedness, and emotional isolation in modern urban society. If you were expecting another splatterfest, though, you will be disappointed as the movie is more of a psychological drama. It is also one of the rare occasions where the cinematographic effects (fast editing, dangling cameras, etc.) actually work well to convey the emotional landscape of the characters.

Aragami (2003) by Ryuhei Kitamura is the counterpart of Yukihiko Tsutsumi’s 2LDK (2002). This film, too, features mainly two actors battling, set within a single set, and was produced within one week. But that is where the similarities end. Interestingly, while the cinematography (as well as the continuous electronic pop rock synthesizer soundtrack) is decidedly modern, the story is set in a once-upon-a-time far-faraway, reminiscent of a traditional Japanese tale. A samurai regains consciousness in a remote mountain temple after falling at the entrance with life-threatening wounds. He learns that his companion did not survive, but the inhabitant of the temple invites him to stay and entertains him with a luscious meal, French wine and Russian vodka. He regales the samurai with frightful stories about Tengu (long-nosed mountain goblins) and Aragami, the Raging God of Battle. The samurai soon discovers that his wounds have all healed, but how? His host explains he gave him his friend’s flesh! But who is this host? He was once the legendary Miyamoto Musashi, the greatest warrior ever known, but now has become none other than Aragami himself! They duel, but even when Aragami runs his blade through the samurai’s stomach, it leaves only a scratch. His wounds heal due to the cannibalistic meal, but he is not immortal, as the head or the heart will kill him dead. Aragami has become weary of his existence and hopes this samurai will be the one to kill him honorably. Although the sword-fighting acrobatics are worth the watch alone, it’s the increasing psychological tension that makes this film a satisfying experience. Quite a feat considering the constrained conditions of two actors in a single set!

Before we get to The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai (2003) by Mitsuru Meike, it might be useful to first discuss (however briefly) the pinku eiga genre. Pinku eiga emerged in the 60s as a genre evading Japanese censorship laws by blocking or blurring genitals while maintaining a required minimum quota of sex scenes (some four or five per hour). Terms such as “soft-core” or “sexploitation” are somewhat misleading, as the genre often contains elements of action, thriller, violence, horror, and/or political commentary. In this case, the titular Sachiko Hanai is a role-play call girl specialized in playing home-tutoring. What sets the narrative is that Sachiko next gets hit by a bullet in the forehead while trying to take a picture of a shady business transaction running foul between a North Korean and Middle Eastern in a cafeteria. Miraculously, she survives, but the bullet lodged in her brain spurts her intelligence to ponder the abstract universe and subjective truth in mathematical equations. Plus, she can foresee future events, which involve sex and violence – and she finds she has a much delayed taste sensation. We are bombarded with musings about situationalism, rationalism and the Platonist view on Christianity, objective reality and Japan’s lack of a nuclear military strategy to match that of Russia or the U.S, all combined with sex (not the sensual erotic or even graphic pornographic kind, but of the prosaic, romping, five-minute sort – including six gallon ejaculations). Sachiko also discovers a silver cylinder containing a clone of George W’s finger. He appears to her in a reflection urging her to defend world peace and democracy. I’m sure you can guess where that finger is going. While she is climaxing, we are shown images of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue, and of Bush inspecting his fleet. Meanwhile, the North Korean who shot her in the cafeteria hopes to retrieve Bush’s finger, for it controls nuclear Armageddon. In the end, after abstract infinity, cogito ergo sum, beef stew, dues ex machina, and more sex, Sachiko walks out of a primordial cave straight into nuclear obliteration. A must see!