Will SLEEPY HOLLOW Rue the Day?

When SLEEPY HOLLOW returns to Fox Nov. 4 after World Series coverage, FRINGE veteran John Noble will make his first guest appearance,  and then on Nov. 25, the cast will grow again, when Jill Marie Jones and Amandla Stenberg begin recurring as Lt. Frank Irving’s wife and daughter.

Jones will play Cynthia, the ex-wife of Irving, who is portrayed by Orlando Jones. Stenberg will play their teen daughter, Macey. You will probably remember Stenberg as the adorable Rue in last year’s The Hunger Games movie — but no word on whether her character on SH will also be adorable. Early indications are that she feels “disconnected” from her father since he started working in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.

Noble — beloved by fans as FRINGE’s loopy Walter Bishop — will recur on SH as Henry Parrish, a man with supernatural powers who may hold the key to severing Ichabod’s blood connection to the Headless Horseman.

FRINGE 3.22: The Day We Died

In the immediate aftermath of the third-season finale of FRINGE, I couldn’t help thinking how distraught we fans would have been if the series had been canceled, and we were left with the cliff-hanger of “The Day We Died” as the last word on the series. But after some reflection, I realized that the story really could have worked as a series-capper, because it ends on a note of hope: The survivors have all the tools they need to save our world and the Other Side, thanks to Peter learning what the future holds. Sure, Peter blinked out of existence, but there is always a price for knowledge, and besides, as the Observer…uh, observed, Peter had served his purpose.

FRINGE 2.20: Brown Betty – what are you smoking?

Olivia Dunham, P.I.

FRINGE took some chances this week by using one of those oddball “tell me a story” plotlines. In this case, Olivia’s niece Emma begged for a tale from Walter, who had just indulged in a custom-blended pot smoking binge. That combined with his grief over Peter’s disappearance to produce a strange noir that was equal parts Dashiell Hammett, Broadway, The Princess Bride and a pinch of The Wizard of Oz.

Olivia was cast as a hard-boiled private eye, hired by a woman named Rachel to find her missing fiancé, Peter Bishop, who has absconded with an artificial heart. The fun came from seeing the twisted versions of familiar faces. The period dress and hairstyles were great. Even stuffy Broyles (Lance Reddick) got in on the fun. I loved the mixture of old cars with cell phones. Walter cast himself as a crippled scientist who invented all the wonderful things in the world (chocolate bars and teddy bears), as well as singing corpses (“Why not bring a little life to the dead?”) – and an artificial, glass heart. Kudos to John Noble and Anna Torv for bravely warbling a couple of tunes – especially after Jasika Nicole (Astrid) showed off her trained pipes.

FRINGE 2.18: Gotta get back in time

Walter

FRINGE always does strange and off-the-wall pretty well, but this week’s episode excelled at creating a sense of melancholy that hung over the story like low cloud cover.

Genre demigod Peter Weller – RoboCop himself, who will always be known as the eponymous hero of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension – guested as Alistair Peck, a scientist who discovered a way to travel back in time. While his mission was selfless – he wanted a chance to stop his fiancée from being killed in a car crash 10 months ago – his methods were selfish: His technology consumed huge quantities of energy; energy that was sucked out of electrical devices and human beings alike, killing them. Mad scientists like Peck are usually played with eye-rolling mania or loopy enthusiasm, but Weller played Peck with quiet determination. He was undermining his own humanity by replacing his own body with mechanical parts, so matter if were to lose something as ephemeral as a soul? Peck said it himself, that science itself is God; technology is the only higher power he needs. (And no, the irony was not lost on me that Weller was playing yet another tragic character that was more machine than man – and this time it was his own doing.)

Soap Opera Weekly: Night Shift 5/13/09

“People never do that,” gushed a breathless Kara DioGuardi after Kris performed on AMERICAN IDOL. What did he do that was so amazing? He played guitar while singing. Apparently, professional songwriter DioGuardi has never seen that before. Who’da thunk it? But it is kinda fitting for KARAOKE IDOL, after all, since the entire phenomenon seems to exist in its own little insular world where the wedding singer contestants bestride the globe like modern gods. Me, I thought Adam was completely overpowered by his backup singer as he shrieked and squeaked his way through the Aerosmith classic “Cryin’.” It could have been the atrocious sound mix, but I don’t think so. Still, I cannot understand why the judges competed with each other to proclaim Adam greater than every other contestant ever and sliced bread combined. I can only conclude that the sound system in the theater is much different than what we hear at home. Or else Simon and friends exist on another planet.

Speaking of other worlds, FRINGE’s first-season finale hinged on bioterrorist Mr. Jones trying to open a portal to another dimension. No, he wasn’t trying to pull Randy Jackson off the IDOL stage — he was (apparently) trying to contact missing industrialist William Bell. And he wasn’t the only one: Olivia wanted to arrest Bell for financing the Z.F.T. organization. Meanwhile, Walter was compelled by the Observer to unearth one of his old inventions: a device that closes dimensional rifts. It all came together at a lake in upstate New York, where Peter plugged Jones’ interdimensional escape hatch — literally chopping Jones in half in the process. Even though the episode ended with two giant reveals — Leonard Nimoy playing Bell living in a still-standing World Trade Center on an alternate Earth, and Peter’s gravestone — I was still disappointed. The story felt anti-climactic. After building up Jones as the Big Bad all season long, he was dispatched in mere moments. And the great shocking visual of half his body being sucked into another dimension was ruined because viewers already saw an anonymous soccer played suffer the same fate 20 minutes earlier. Way to bankrupt one of your big moments, FRINGE. Another silly moment: Liv collated all the evidence of the Pattern on a single map and in five minutes produced a literal pattern — one that Massive Dynamics’ best minds could not see? Really?

But of course it wasn’t all disappointing. My favorite part was when Peter tracked Walter to the family beach house and recounted one of his few happy memories of childhood: Walter making pancakes. We also learned what exactly Walter and “Belly” had in mind all those years ago: They believed that the things they saw while under the influence of hallucinogens represented a real place, one that children have a natural ability to see. Cortexiphan was an attempt to augment that ability to the point where children could cross over to the alternate reality. Walter created the plug to seal the breach after crossing over.

•Best line honors go to Walter: “We’re trying to plug a hole in the universe. What are you doing here?”

And, finally, there was the truly shocking reveal that Walter was not visiting the grave of his late wife — it was Peter’s! The tombstone read “Peter Bishop 1978-1985.” This means one of two things: Peter is a clone (which is why he has such huge gaps in his memories of childhood), or this Peter was brought over from an alternate dimension. I vote for the latter.

Some major emotional stuff went down on RESCUE ME, including Tommy and Lou having a gigantic knock-down, drag-out fight over Genevieve, the boys of 62 truck getting into a literal brawl with other firefighters over Franco’s crazy 9/11 conspiracy talk, and Tommy finally revealing what he did on 9/11. He admitted that he feels guilty for letting cousin Jimmy die, and sometimes wishes he had died instead. Well, it’s about time! That sad fact was obvious to us viewers back in season one, but it was a relief to finally hear Tommy admit it to himself. Let’s hope this epiphany doesn’t make Tommy any less reckless and self-loathing. I like my antiheroes!

Soap Opera Weekly: Night Shift 5/6/09

Anyone who watched last night’s installment of RESCUE ME witnessed Michael J. Fox‘s Emmy reel — and perhaps the series’ bid for writing and best drama. It was that good — ironically, because it was so difficult to watch. It began with a horrifying dream sequence depicting suitcase bombs exacting a terrible toll on the city, then followed up with Sean receiving a diagnosis of kidney cancer, Colleen and blackSean ruining their relationship by having sex, and finished up with Sheila’s extended monologue about the uniquely personal horror of 9/11. By the time it was over, I didn’t know whether to stand and applaud or throw my TV out of the nearest window. Yep, that’s TV you can get behind. TV that draws you in, grabs you by the [CENSORED] and twists. That’s why the best dramas are on cable.

As ATROCIOUS IDOL ate into my precious FRINGE time, the phone-number recap revealed that Allison and Kris didn’t completely suck, like Danny, and Adam was only pretty bad instead of awful as usual.

“A myth is just an unverified fact.”
— Walter Bishop

Yep, that was AS THE WORLD TURNS’ former Jennifer, Jennifer Ferrin, playing Nancy Lewis and her barbecued twin, Susan Pratt, on FRINGE. Only this wasn’t a case of of spontaneous human combustion, it was pyrokinesis. Nancy and her sister were given the ability to start fires with their mind but, lacking training, had trouble directing the heat outward. Olivia makes a connection between the experimentation on Nancy and the Cortexiphan trials she herself underwent.

Remember that video of a young Olive cowering in a burned-out room? We can now assume the younger Liv was a firestarter, after all! Nancy put her power to good use when she torched the scuzzy Sanford Harris. (Were you as disappointed as I was that Sanford turned out to be part of the conspiracy? It was all too neat and convenient. I wanted him to just be a garden variety jerk with an axe to grind playing office politics.) Speaking of the Z.F.T., Walter revealed that the typewriter responsible for the Z.F.T. Manifesto belonged to “Belly” — William Bell. However, Walter maintained that the founder of Massive Dynamic would never do the bad things attributed to Z.F.T., and blamed others for twisting its ideals. This episode was a treasure trove of meta references (even more than usual):

•While investigating Susan’s death on the street, Walter was toting a Slusho drink — a recurring in-joke seen in many J.J. Abrams productions, from ALIAS to LOST to the movie Cloverfield, and even slipped into other shows, like HEROES. Slusho — “You can’t drink just six!”
•The entire interlude with Emmanuel Grayson was one big wink at STAR TREK fandom. “Grayson” is taken from “Amanda Grayson,” Spock’s human mother (hence his “I am the son of Sarek” line). The conspiracy by renegade Romulans from the future to alter the timeline is the plotline of the new Star Trek movie, written by FRINGE co-creators Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci and directed by Abrams! And, of course, the actor playing Grayson, Clint Howard, appeared in several TV incarnations of the series. Oh, and look for Slusho in the movie! (Hint: It appears in a bar scene.)

Next week is FRINGE’s season finale, so we will find out if Ms. Sharp survived being shot, and (hopefully) exactly where the Observer is taking Walter. Also, be in the lookout for an cameo by Star Trek’s Leonard Nimoy as William Bell. And I am happy to note that FRINGE has been renewed for a second season, so we can look forward to a few more appearances by Nimoy.

Soap Opera Weekly: Night Shift 4/29/09

I knew I could expect something fun when this week’s episode of FRINGE opened with the strains of Bauhaus’ goth classic “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” in a clear homage to Tony Scott’s 1983 vampire movie, The Hunger. But the show also set viewers up for a clever inversion — we were led to believe that lady killer Bob was an actual serial killer of ladies (and maybe he was), but Bob got his neck graphically snapped by this week’s menace, a gorgeous bar pick-up with preternaturally blue eyes and an insatiable thirst for spinal fluid. (her Hunger, right?) The woman turned out to be juiced with an experimental drug that turned her into a spinal-fluid-drinking monster as punishment for her husband, Dr. Nicholas Boone, trying to leave the Z.F.T. organization. Irony alert: Boone worked on the XT-43 substance that transformed his wife into a monster. Boone was also the guy who developed the rapid-skin-growth toxin seen in a previous episode, “Ability.” Boone revealed that Z.F.T. wanted him to create the toxins “to show off” for other scientists. Well, so much for The Pattern being some grand design, eh? Unless Boone was lying. But he was certainly a part of Z.F.T. as his exchange with Walter indicated: “I know very well who you are,” Boone said. “That makes one of us,” Walter replied. And, in the video that Boone made, he revealed the movement is being funded by none other than Massive Dynamic founder William Bell.

Meanwhile, on the home front, Olivia had to comfort sister Rachel, whose husband has filed for divorce and sole custody of little Ella. (What do you want to bet that we see that matchmaking service for mismatched people, “Two Singles Together,” again? And in a bad way?) Liv actually asked her boss, Broyles, if he was “satisfied” with his divorce lawyer. Speaking of grumpy Broyles, he actually got off the line of the night (possibly the week): “I can just about remember when a suspect being human was a given, not an option.” That even topped Walter’s “Where would the fun be if we already knew all there is to know?” And now we know Walter has the entire lab hooked up to the Clapper. Hilarious.

The horror of Sept. 11, 2001 continues to be a soul-crushing weight on RESCUE ME, but it also serves to ground the series, in contrast to wacky plots like the boys opening a bar and Tommy and Janet encouraging daughter Colleen to have sex with her boyfriend to derail her marriage plans. This week, Tommy was convinced he saw dead cousin Jimmy on video footage recorded after Jimmy was believed killed. Tommy began to wonder if he really knew the truth about his cousin’s death. Lou finally blasted Tommy for behaving like he was the only one at Ground Zero. I’m finding the scenes in which the normally-flippant Lou releases his pent-up rage and sadness to be quite moving, and the weekly mixture of the sacred and the profane makes this basic-cable series one of the best shows on TV.

Soap Opera Weekly: Night Shift 4/22/09

This is definitely one of those seasons on AMERICAN IDOL where just about everyone sitting at home claiming, “I could sing better than that,” is most likely right. I’ll bet even you rabid IDOL fans would admit to yourselves, in secret, that there is no Kelly Clarkson or David Cook in the competition this year. This is just like that season when what’s-his-name won. Yeah, that season. My jaw hit the floor when I heard Randy wax poetic about the top-to-bottom quality of the group of seven. Does he really have such a low opinion of all the previous seasons? The proof was in the karaoke: Take screechy Adam, who followed the old rule “If you can’t be good, be loud.” It was sad to watch Randy trying to convince his “dawg” that he would step right to the top of the charts. At least voice-of-reason Simon was on hand to slap down Anoop and co.

FRINGE actually took advantage of its New York City production location this week. Instead of trying to make the Big Apple look like Boston, the creepy series got to use Grand Central Terminal as Grand Central for a story set there. The story was written and directed by Oscar winner Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind), and it got off to a bit of a rough start. Olivia was remotely viewing murders in her dreams, and when she told her boss, Broyles actually growled, “You know how this sounds?” Dude! What has your office been doing all season? Why does your entire section exist? To investigate stuff that sounds really frakkin’ weird, like the Pattern! Why did you recruit Liv? To look into strange phenomena! In Goldsman’s defense, effective sci-fi writing is an art — but I had hoped he worked out the kinks after his horrible screenplay for the 1998 theatrical version of Lost in Space. Turned out Goldsman just needed a little time to build up momentum. In short order, we got scenes in which Peter gained a little insight into his father’s experience with madness. We also got another piece of the puzzle that is Olivia’s background, when it was revealed that this week’s killer, Nick Jane, was part of the Cortexiphan drug experiments on children in Liv’s hometown of Jacksonville, Fla. In fact, Nick was partnered with little “Olive” for the experiments, so his mind was calling out to her as an adult, allowing her to view his crimes in he dreams. Nick lost control of his abilities to make others feel his emotions — abilities honed by the recruitment training connected to the ZFT Manifesto. Which Walter wrote! See how it’s all coming together? The final rooftop sequence was harrowing, with Nick’s mind-controlled slaves perched limply at the edge, waiting for Nick to mentally push them to their deaths (which he did to one woman!). I like that Olivia actually shot Nick in order to stop him instead of trying to wrestle him into submission. The episode ended with Walter digging out an old videotape of one of the Cortexiphan experiments, in which a frightened young Olive can be seen sitting in the corner of what appears to be a burned-out room. Interestingly, the voice of the legendary Spock himself, Leonard Nimoy, can clearly be heard as William Bell! Nimoy is rumored to appear onscreen in the very last scene of the season finale on May 12. But what I really want to know is, did the Cortexiphan treatments give Liv a power?

RESCUE ME presented another side of Tommy this week. Of course he would have no problem with his daughter sleeping with another member of his fire crew — but Tommy flipped out at the idea that the couple is putting off sex until they get married! Turned out Tommy didn’t want his daughter getting hitched at a young age like her mother, so Tommy was in the unusual position of trying to talk his daughter into having premarital sex in hopes of souring the relationship and forestalling the nuptials. Also controversial: Franco continued to spout his 9/11 conspiracy theories; however, Mike got in his face and told him to stop because his suspicions cast the fallen heroes of 9/11 as dupes. Mike revealed that he became a fireman because he wanted to fight the bad guys and become a real-life superhero, and if Franco is right, Mike’s decision was based on lies. That’s a lot to think about. On a much lighter note, Garrity and Franco went to female doctors to receive hilariously “unorthodox” treatments for back pain that I can’t even hint at in this blog. And Lou mentioned his post-9/11 poetry to Genevieve, the French writer. That was a nice callback to season one.

Soap Opera Weekly: Night Shift 4/15/09

“Monsters aren’t real, right?”
— Ella, FRINGE

Tuesday night means horror on a nearly unprecedented scale. And then, after AMERICAN IDOL is over, I can relax with a nice, comforting monster on FRINGE. This old-fashioned “bug hunt” was one of the more overt X-FILES homages, with our friendly feds called in to investigate a “monster of the week” that turns out to be…a monster. The creature (freed by animal-rights activists from a research lab) was described as having the body of a lion, claws of an eagle, fangs of a viper, skin of a rhinoceros and tail of a rattlesnake, but of course, budget constraints meant the monster was only revealed at the very end. Mostly we just saw the menacing tail rattle. And while the reveal proved to be even briefer than I’d hoped, it looked pretty good. For a dead griffin. Once again, Walter suspected that his old research was the springboard for this threat, but I enjoyed seeing his newly matured reactions. Earlier in the season he was so divorced from society (and reality) that he paid no mind to the repercussions of his research. However, this week he was shown to have some recognizably human emotions and appropriate responses. Not everything he said was about food and using the facilities (although those themes continued — and will you ever look at an omelet the same way again?); he seemed genuinely anguished. Before he could bring himself to confess his guilt, he warned Olivia to be careful. Walter learned a lesson about consequences: He’s never thought of them before, and while he doesn’t think he can start now, at least he knows that about himself. I like seeing that growth in the character. It makes the mad scientist more relatable. Then again, he also drank a bottle of poison to kill the monster just in case he got eaten in one-on-one combat. Speaking of which, what’s up with “Walter, the action hero”?! The scientist with the blazing 50-caliber incendiary rounds! Walter was motivated to self-sacrifice when the creature attacked Charlie, but this gave us the opportunity for a glimpse at Charlie’s personal life. Turns out he has a wife, and when he lay dying, he called her and told her he loves her (giving Kirk Acevedo a chance to do some subtle acting). Olivia could barely hide being non-plussed when Peter called her place looking for Rachel, who in turn got all flirty on the phone. Liv definitely is feeling some rivalry with her sister. In the end, Olivia was bothered by the howling wind (which sounds a little like the monster), so she slept with the light on. Because monsters really do exist.

RESCUE ME was capped by a great special-effects moment, when a propane bottle exploded under a car, shattering plate-glass windows and throwing Tommy for a loop. Just seconds earlier the off-duty fireman dragged the driver from the out-of-control car that ran over the tank. That heroism was the capper on an episode that saw Tommy continue to lash out at those closest to him. He visited ex-wife Janet again, and awkwardly discovered that Dwight uses a wheelchair — but that didn’t slow down Tommy. He laced into Dwight with a very un-PC rant. Then he went to the new bar Sean, Mike and Franco were opening, and laid into the boys searing personalized insults. The firehouse crew met Genevieve (Karina Lombard), the French journalist writing a book on 9/11, and the show didn’t back away from controversy when Franco told her that he believes 9/11 was an “inside job” pulled off by neoconservatives. Lou told an emotional story about how even fragments of body parts retrieved from Ground Zero were treated with honor. He tearfully confessed about using up all his emotions in those days, leaving him nothing left to feel. Tommy was cynical about Genevieve’s motives for doing a “comprehensive” book — how can it help those left behind? Fans of this series know how deeply the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001 has affected these characters, so expect the horror to be revisited for the rest of the season.

Soap Opera Weekly: Night Shift 4/8/09

I haven’t seen a full episode of RESCUE ME since the fourth season concluded in September 2007. The nine mini-episodes broadcast last summer were fun, but only served to remind me what I was missing: an acid-tongued series packed with witty dialogue, outrageous storylines and thrilling fire sequences. Well, my friends, our wait is over. RESCUE ME has returned for a full-fledged fifth season, and star/co-creator Denis Leary was in top form as fractured firefighter Tommy Gavin. What makes Tommy such an intriguing character is the depths of his emotions. He loves and hates (but especially hates) with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. His burning rage is barely contained at the best of times — and Tommy rarely has good times. It seems like each episode of RESCUE ME brings him a fresh hell (complete with literal flames). What Tommy hates most is himself, but he expresses it as hatred for everything and everyone else. What other TV character could have a fantasy about attacking his own father’s casket with an ax and then setting it afire at the funeral? Not even THE SHIELD’s Vic Mackey could get away with that. But this series has always had a particularly vicious dark side. I was not surprised to see Franco and Sean talk Mikey out of donating his $150,000 inheritance to the cancer society so the boys can open a bar instead. (Franco’s rationalization the the cancer society would only use the dough for postage to beg other people for more cash almost made it sound like a public service! Almost.) As usual, the boys at the 62 were thinking only of themselves. Yet, the search for redemption is a constant theme: Tommy’s love/hate relationship with Alcoholics Anonymous clashes with his romance with booze on a daily basis. Take last night: Tommy has been sober for almost a solid year, but his AA sponsor, cousin Mickey, went on a bender! And not just any bender — he rampaged into a church and told a family that instead of baptizing their baby, they would be better off taking the kid home and drowning it! And he drank booze out of the communion chalice!

Of course there are huge problems in the interpersonal relationships. Tommy met ex-wife Janet’s newest beau, a former “extreme sports” guy portrayed by Michael J. Fox. Ultimate nice guy Fox plays brilliantly against type as the smug Dwight; just wait until Tommy discovers why Dwight didn’t stand up to shake hands with him! As if that wasn’t bad enough, Tommy’s daughter Colleen is sleeping with (but not having sex with) blackSean; wait until Tommy finds out about that! Leary capped the episode with Tommy’s absolutely hilarious rant about how dead people (like his father) are reclassified as saints just because they died — even if they were a—holes in life (like his father).

The first thing I noticed about the first new episode of FRINGE since February was that it wasn’t on! Instead, I had to sit through the end of an extended episode of AMERICAN IDOL. Worse, I heard Adam Lambert mangle “Mad World.” He was attempting to riff on Gary Jules’ version of the Tears for Fears tune recorded for the soundtrack of Donnie Darko, a film I adore. (If you’ve never seen it, rent it!) Simon gave the squealer a standing ovation, which could only mean Simon didn’t like the movie. The phone number montage indicated that every performance last night was wretched. My hatred of “KARAOKE IDOL” now knows no bounds because the runover caused me to miss the end of FRINGE, because my recording stopped when it was supposed to. Is this hate irrational? Sure. But is this my blog? Yup. The second thing I noticed about the return of FRINGE was that the new promos trumpeted “six new episodes in a row.” Sounds good — unless you remember that back in February, Fox promised us seven episodes in a row.

Anyway, FRINGE was eventually allowed on the air, and concerned the case of a mysterious boy discovered alone in a locked underground chamber. Only he might not be a “young” boy. For one thing, he seemed to be an empath of low-level telepath, which allowed him to plug into Olivia’s mind and help her with a serial killer case. And for another, he looked like the Observer’s Mini-Me: pale and hairless. (How funny was it that they dressed the boy in a “Northwestern” sweatshirt and took him to the Harvard campus?) Erik Palladino (late of the late ER) was introduced as Elliot Michaels, who claimed to be from the Department of Social Services, but was really from the Department of Creepiness. After seeing the boy, made a mysterious call and told someone, “We may have found another one.” Is there some organization out there monitoring/collecting Observers?

•Line of the week honors go to Walter: “Unless you have an IQ higher than mine, I’m not interested in what you think.”

HEROES is still managing to hold my interest, thanks to giving HRG stuff to do. I like that the-powers-that-be continue to write him as intelligent. He was the only one who was skeptical that Danko really bagged Sylar, and even used the shapeshifter’s powers against him by pretending to be Sylar pretending to be him. Of course Sylar really is alive, and has set out to destroy Noah’s life. The baddie morphed into the likeness of Sandra and served Noah with divorce papers, then pretended to be a field commander and let HRG “kill” him to make Noah a fugitive. I know I just complained about Fox’s promos, but NBC did something even more unsavory: After a week of teasing/promising to reveal the origins of the Petrelli family, HEROES waited until literally the last minutes to set the stage for big revelations about something called Project: Icarus at a place called Coyote Sands. Next week. D’oh!

CASTLE was another agreeable story, but nothing extraordinary. And nothing really set it apart from last week’s chapter, either, which actually is not a good thing. Is it settling into a rut already?