Off-Season Week 3

3/14

Week 3 of the off-season is upon us, so let's just tuck right into the roundup!

(NOTE: Any episode descriptions preceded by a * are sourced from Wikipedia.)

DEADBEAT - 3x03 "Bong Pong"

"Pac and Clyde's new business venture gets underway when Pac takes a job getting rid of a ghost who keeps leaving all the lights on overnight at a department store. It turns out the ghost in question wants to win the annual Bong Pong-a-thon, but that means recruiting his old friend Nugget - and Nugget isn't in a position to compete anymore."

This was another hilarious episode. Nugget is now a forty-year-old brain surgeon under the thumb of an insanely domineering wife and Pac and Clyde have to break him out of his own home to compete in a bong pong tournament with teenagers. To do so, Clyde had to distract Nugget's wife by demonstrating his new super-effective hoover/vacuum - but it fails to work just after he finishes spreading peanut butter and dog shit all over her carpet. In the end, Pac and Nugget lose the tournament to the Tamp-Bongs team, but the ghost suddenly remembers he won it already in 1987.

VERDICT: The hilarity continues, even in an episode as tamed down as this. Season 3 continues to delight! 9/10

HELL ON WHEELS - 5x09 "61 Degrees"

"Cullen's plan to get the Central Pacific through the mountainside is to blow through with nitroglycerine, but complications ensue when the railroad's chemical expert refuses to help and the unstable explosive detonates prematurely. In the middle of this, he continues his sexual relationship with Fong. Durant schemes with Mickey to con the Union Pacific board members into sending $250,000, in order to pay off the railroad workers he robbed and keep his life, but it invariably goes wrong."

Another Hell on Wheels episode that just does its job. It raises the stakes quite drastically, putting nitroglycerine in the mix for the Central Pacific and a kidnap scheme for Durant for the Union Pacific, both of which go wrong (though Cullen amanges to break through the mountain in the end), but it never really feels like much is happening with either. There's a lot of talking about scheming on Durant's side, building to the cliffhanger, and a lot of slow, careful movement of explosive on Cullen's side. The stakes were raised but it didn't feel as if I was watching anything life-threatening happen to our characters.

   Elsewhere, Cullen's relationship with Fong remains the most interesting and dangerous part of this second half of the final season (stop having sex on a table with nitroglycerine, guys, it's not healthy) but with the amoral Chinese labour contractor, Tao, suspecting they're growing close I expect to see sparks fly between the three characters.

VERDICT: I can't decide if season 5 is setting up for a big finale or just carrying me on a slow wind-down. Either way, this doesn't build to anything. 6/10

THE NIGHT SHIFT - 3x04 "Three-Two-One"

"Race riots are fuelled by the nearing conclusion of a race murder case, and exacerbated when the defendant collapses in court and has to go to hospital. Opinions over guilt or innocence split the staff, but out in the field things go from bad to worse when a decision has to be made over which riot shooting victim goes to the hospital first: the white cop or the black suspect."

The Night Shift's exploration of its main characters in season 3 has been a bit dull, but its forays into plot in the last two episodes have seen it improve drastically in watchability and indeed memorability. In "Three-Two-One", the details of the murder of a black man by a white man unfold to a shocking conclusion: we'll never know if he's guilty or not, because he is murdered leaving the hospital. This deliberate ambiguity is great: we know all the details of the murder, so it's left up to us and our biases to decide if he was guilty or innocent.

   And biases are the overall theme of this episode. No matter what, as Nurse Kenny says (and Kenny is the character most affected by the murder case due to suffering racial stereotyping for his skin colour), we all have our own unintended biases. We view each individual person we see through how we have been affected by things in our lives, through our perceived privileges or lack thereof, and through our environments. They can be right, they can be wrong, but the message here, I think, is that whatever the bias is, bias is wrong.

   This episode was intense, some of the scenes were fantastic (look at Kenny explaining to Dr Alexander how he has suffered for his skin colour as the best of the bunch) and the plots were just nailbiting.

   A great standalone episode and for its message it's a must-see for everyone. It really, really is.

   Viewers: 4.30m

VERDICT: A hot topic in modern America gets explored across multiple relevant avenues. Intense, deep and insightful from the start. The best Night Shift episode yet. 9.5/10

ORANGE IS THE NEW BACK - 3x02 "Powersuit"

* "The inmates struggle with overcrowding of the prison. Healy gets Judy King a new roommate, Yoga Jones. Black Cindy battles with her new roommate, Alison Abdullah over shared space. Red attempts to stop her bunkmate’s snoring but to no avail. Piper befriends her bunkmate and she becomes her bodyguard. Doggett is worried that Maritza is being raped by Officer Coates, although he is shown to only have feelings for Doggett. Sophia’s wife tries to talk to Caputo about letting Sophia out of SHU but he does not listen. Caputo meets with MCC and they decide to hire veterans as CO’s who will be housed at cabins on campus. Caputo befriends Linda at the meeting. Daya is worried about her baby being placed in foster care since Cesar is going to jail for a long time for conspiracy to commit murder and assaulting a police officer. Racial tension arises as the Dominicans realise that they are the majority. Maria tries to stop it but ends up leading an attack on a white inmate in defense of Blanca."

The episode description makes it seem like more happened in this episode than actually did. But everything was really centred around our characters dealing with the new overpopulation problem and therefore individual plotlines didn't move forward very much. And that's OK: it's only episode two after all. But it made it a little dull in all honesty.

   Red taught Piper about the vulnerability of being top dog (a much-needed lesson) but Piper reacted by getting herself a bodyguard and continuing to act insufferably arrogant. Eurgh, we need Vause to come knock her down a peg, but unfortunately she's too busy having no scenes where she worries about having killed, chopped up and buried someone in the fucking prison.

   The new prison celebrity gets a room of her own much to the chagrin of Yoga Jones who has to move from the dorms into a room with her - and Yoga hides her displeasure at the favourable treatment.

   Black Cindy and her new Muslim bunkmate Allison are in the early stages of a bunk war - which was admittedly quite a funny plot - and Red's trouble with her own bunkmate's snoring was just brilliant comedy.

   But on a more serious note, Pennsatucky (Doggett)'s concerns over Maritza being raped by the same guard who raped her are going to make for a great storyline, and I really do fear for Maritza's character. It's terrible how this rape arc has become the biggest will they won't they on the show? No, for heaven's sake! They won't!

   Sophia's wife makes a plea for her to get out of SHU, but to be honest Sophia's a bit boring, so they should just keep her there. There's enough bad blood between the Dominicans, the Puerto Ricans and the new white inmates without reintroducing Sophia into the mould. Keep her where she is - permanently.

   And the private company who own the prison prove once again that a cent spent is a cent lost, in the end deciding to hire out-of-work veterans as prison guards for the tax breaks. Arseholes. I can't wait for Caputo to tell them to shove it.

VERDICT: All in all, this episode was mostly about the integration of the new inmates and how that affects everyone. It wasn't particularly interesting, but it did a necessary job. 6/10

FINAL THOUGHTS

OK, that's it for week 3. See you all next time and thanks for reading!

Sam