Mad Men, Smash, The Good Wife, Game of Thrones, The Voice, Make It Or Break It

Game of Thrones- Garden of Bones

Catelyn tries to get Renly and Stannis Baratheon to band together against the Lannisters. Then she has to see Ned Stark’s remains in a box. GROSS, LITTLEFINGER. She should have just stuck with the mental image of him alive. Now she has the mental image of him rotting, and a nice smell to go along with it. Joffrey becomes even more of a jerk than usual, but at least this leads to the best line ever (“There’s no cure for being a ****). Daenerys finds a city to take her in, and Tyrion continues to be awesome. Arya ends up a cupbearer for Tywin Lannister who hilariously realized she was a good as soon as he saw her. Gendry barely escaped with his life. We’ve heard of that rat torture before, and we have to say, that must be one of the top ten worst ways to die. GROSS. We ship Robb Stark and random healer girl. Melisandre gives birth to a smoke thing. She’s so eccentric.

Episode grade: A-

Smash- Publicity

Rebecca Duvall starts inviting Karen out. Paparazzi follow. Jerry and Nick meet, and Jerry is not happy about it. You know, Nick is way too cute for Eileen. We just have to throw that out there, because we are shallow. But we love the way he handled Jerry. Leo thinks his parents splitting up gives him a blank check to just be a dick. He runs away from home and allows his parents and the cops to worry about him for days. Turns out, he’s sleeping on his friend’s floor. He comes home and apologizes, but seriously dude? Plenty of parents split up and many kids think about running away just to get away from it all and build a wall between yourself and parents who hurt you, but you don’t do it, because it’s mean and it helps nothing. Except in this case, it brought Leo’s parents close enough for a hug, because it’s this show and it’s unrealistic. Hear that kids? Just run away and your parents will unite to look for you. The emotion will bond them!

The Bollywood number was weird. And isn’t A Thousand and One Nights an Arabic story? The show seems to be saying, “Hey, they are all brown and exotic, so what’s the difference?” It was pretty fun though. We like this show a little ridiculous rather than just boring. It’s time for Dev to go, and we are glad that Ellis got stuck on smoothie duty, where he belongs. Ivy’s plot to steal Karen’s dull solo was pretty clever, but she has to know that she will be found out. It’s on again. We like Rebecca Duvall. She tells it like it is and wants some control over her projects. Yeah, she can’t sing, but she’s not going to end up an empty puppet like Marilyn Monroe. Uma Thurman brought life back to this show.

Episode grade: B+

Make It Or Break It- Dream On

It’s semi-qualifications time, so there are cuts. The main cuts victim is Kelly Parker. Fortunately, Kelly is now strong enough to tell her mom to get out of her life. She has a room waiting for her at her dad’s, knows that she will be ok, was strengthened by Kaylie’s friendship, and is ready to discover that there is more to herself than gymnastics. She even admitted that she peaked at World’s and her progress has been stagnant. So yeah, she took it well. It made us like KP more. We’re sad to see her go, but we know that someone important had to be cut this episode. Lauren Tanner’s dreams have been halted since Payson told Coach McIntire about her health problems. Lauren hates Payson now, but we suspect that Lauren will be right back at the training center in a few episodes. Also, Wendy is the mole. Meh. Why do all the girls on this show except for Payson, Kaylie, and Emily have to turn out to be secretly underhanded and bitchy? Come up with a new plotline, show. We’ve decided that the actress playing Jordan is not very good. Leeard hates Jordan with a  fiery passion, but Ern kind of likes her. This episode was really touching with the KP stuff. It felt like old MIOBI. 

Episode grade: A-

The Good Wife- The Penalty Box

Cary is back! CARY IS BACK! Yeeee! Also, Kalinda and Alicia are hanging out in bars again! Friends! Friends forever! Those things are awesome. The rest of the episode was ok. Alicia defends a judge who is in hot water for actions during his time as a prosecutor. We liked her questioning her role and the law at the end of the episode. We couldn’t care less about Kalinda’s FBI business or Will’s new fling. If we could only take two famous people to a desert island? Ern would probably take Tim Keller and Stephen King. Leeard would probably take Donald Glover and Jenna Marbles.

Episode grade: B

The Voice- We are sad to lose Pip and Mathai this week. Pip was versatile and had a genuinely good voice. He just hadn’t found his niche yet. The loss of James Massone was fine. We don’t know what Adam sees in Katrina Parker over Mathai. We don’t need a less good ADELE, and Mathai’s singing was consistently good. Cee Lo continues to make mostly excellent choices. Keeping Juliet Simms over Cheesa was a good call. We didn’t like either of the songs Juliet sang this week, but we liked her voice so much during the first live show last week that we think she needs to stay around so that we can hear more of that. Tony Lucca’s Baby One More Time was a great cover and an even better idea, so he deserved to stay. We think Jamar Rogers was voted saved by the American public partly due to sob story factor, but he has a good voice. Contestants we are rooting for now: Juliet Simms, Lindsey Pavao, Chris Mann, Erin Willett, and Tony Lucca.

Mad Men- Far Away Places

This show finally gave us someone to love. Yeah, Peggy is a nice person, but she started out so timid and she occasionally shows that she has no self-respect. Peggy gave a handjob to a stranger in this episode as a way to forget work and her relationship problems. Megan, on the other hand, is not only interesting but incapable of taking crap from Don Draper lying down. Scenes with her are never boring, and we love the way she’s not afraid to tell Don when he’s being a chauvinist pig, even if it devolves into a melodramatic fight. These two are hilarious. We actually laughed when Don was chasing Megan around the room. Don really loves Megan and we think she’s the best thing for him (at least for now). We used to think that was Faye, but it looks like it’s Megan. As for Roger’s tripping balls, we just kept thinking, “Take those big earrings out before you take LSD.” Try couples therapy with drugs! 

Or not. It just gave Roger permission to leave his wife even if it also gave him some clarity and courage to be honest. That guy is a 15-year-old wreck. At least Don shows a little growth sometimes. But get back to work, Don. This was one of the more entertaining episodes so far this season. The LSD sequence was inspired. We loved the lack of Pete and the format of three short stories with a common theme. It wasn’t your average Mad Men episode. Sometimes the jumping around between characters in this show causes us to be unable to engage with one particular story. This episode stayed with characters until their story was told and it really sucked us in. On a more technical note, this was visually great. We liked the camerawork and many of the shots.

Episode grade: A