Change Your Image
junk-63375
Reviews
The X Files: The Jersey Devil (1993)
Worst Episode Ever
I should point out that the Jersey Devil has nothing to do with Big Foot. It is NOT an Eastern version of the Yeti. It is, if the stories are to be believed, a creature with the head of a horse, bat-like wings, and talons as would be found on a dragon. There are numerous illustrations on the internet. It supposedly inhabits the New Jersey Pine Barrens, where it has existed in folklore since before the American Revolution. That it would invade Atlantic City is just silly. It was supposedly born of a woman that committed some kind of sin against God. How the writers of the X-Files came to think that pretending it is some kind of hairy human throwback to prehistoric times is beyond me. I can certainly sympathize with the notion that the city fathers of Atlantic City would want to suppress such sightings, but that is no excuse for completely distorting the narrative. Sometimes the research put into these episodes is severely lacking. I am reminded of the episode where they reference the "Catonsville PD," which, of course, does not exist, since there are no incorporated cities in Baltimore County.
Castle: Setup (2011)
Seriously?
This episode rivals the second Angelina Jolie _Tomb Raider_ for utter absurdity. The logical discrepancies.are far beyond anything that can be covered by suspension of disbelief. From the location where the bomb was supposedly constructed to lack of even a hit at where the raw materials came from, it just doesn't make any logical sense. The lapses in logic are too many to list. Even a nightmare doesn't stray this far from reality. This entire series is more about the human interactions than a police procedural, but the episodes generally intersect reality at some point. This one does not.
Monk (2002)
Sometimes Actually Watchable
Come on fellahs, you guys think this is a good show? It spends 20 minutes on the plot and the rest on his ridiculous OCD, not normal OCD but some Hollywood exaggerated version of OCD. I worked with a guy who had that--he even saved his junk mail in Xerox boxes--but he didn't write things 19 times to get them perfect. He wrote perfectly the first time. That's the entire point of OCD. It has no room for imperfection. Nor did he waste resources by throwing everything away that he thought was imperfect. The man was so tight he squeaked. His favorite word was "free!" And he certainly wasn't a coward the way Monk is portrayed. Are the writers suggesting that one of the symptoms of OCD is abject cowardice and fear? And the worst part is that they pretend that there's something funny about all of this. Mental illness isn't funny. It never has been and it never will be. At the end of the day, the "funny" OCD is simply a way of padding what would normally be a rather thin half hour show into a supposed laugh fest for an entire aggravating hour.