Page And Monarch Forth They Went Grimm S3E08 Twelve Days of Krampus

From the first ep straight into the second! Or at least that's how it was put out and how I'm choosing to interpret it, given the conspiracy goings-on. Which puts last ep taking place a day ago, unless Portland time and Austria time are running on two separate tracks right now. Who knows? NOT US. Isn't it great? We open on a Christmas shopping scene with O Tannenbaum lyrics which are more focused on the original steadfast/faithful aspects of the German folk song than on the Christmassy themes it's been coopted for. Yes, I said it. You wanna get in an argument with a cranky, tired blogger about folk music? I didn't think so.

We have a couple teenage boys breaking into a car to steal presents and looking, frankly, like they've done this before. They're not completely inept at avoiding detection, is what I'm saying, though they could stand to move a little slower and look like they belong. Also, there's a Santa. And apparently this takes place in the Northwest Christmas Village, which a quick google does not inform me is an actual thing in Portland. It does look like a standard shopping district/affluent neighborhood, though I question the word "normal" in relation to anything in Portland. Anyway. Kids, stealing. Kids under a bridge, emphasizing that they're total jackasses. One of them hears something. One of them is gearing up to smash a snowglobe. I continue to be unimpressed, both with the length of this setup and with the kids themselves, though okay, they do not deserve to be switched and stolen and eaten. Tossed in juvie and taught to be productive members of society, sure. I'd be more inclined to interpret them as broke homeless teens if they weren't obviously well-clothed and well-fed, and if this ep weren't all about Krampus coming to take the naughty children away.

When Life Gives You Gators, Make Gatorade Grimm S3E07 Cold Blooded

This week's previouslies are a) full of conspiracy but b) start out with Renard delivering part of his lecture to Nick. So we know what our big themes are going in, then! Alright then. The title quote is out of Dryden, who was a Restoration-era poet and I find it very interesting that the better part of the non-fairytale quotes actually come out of British authors. That's probably just personal bias from the writers, though, since that's the sort of Western canon most frequently taught to overeducated fuckers like ourselves. You can hit up Wiki for a rough summation of his influence and work, but let's just leave it at incredibly influential for his time, to the point of being credited with the invention of the heroic couplet, and move on to some sewers. Otherwise I'm going to spend an hour dissertating on the implications of this poem to the conspiracy plot and nobody actually wants that, right? Of course right.

And The Silver Eyes That See The Wind: Haven S4E13 The Lighthouse

Previously, on Haven: There was a lighthouse! And Dave freaking out about an otherworldly door some more. (That explanation's not going to bite anyone in the ass at all.) And really bad Uncharted jokes, really, you guys? William made horrible puns and kept trying to get Audrey's attention like a particularly obnoxious middle-schooler. Death truffles ruled the day, and Audrey started coming in touch with her inner original because she and William are so connected. Also a screaming baby became a mass murderer. Just another day in Haven!

Now on Haven, it still looks like a twisted, fucked up wedding. Audrey still isn't nearly as sure of herself as we'd like her to be. And, really, no one likes this solution. This time when she puts her hand on Duke she does remember something, if only a flash of what appears to be a fun time with nakedness, water, and William. Also kissing. (Which was apparently filmed in Halifax in October. Ouch.) I'm sure you can imagine what they're doing that the network won't let them show. The memory makes someone in there smile, hard to say whether that's Audrey or the person William remembers. Since most of you have seen the episode already we'll go ahead and say, yeah, her name was Mara, we suspected that ever since A Certain Someone let it slip in the livechat after Haven last week. Nathan says her name to try to get her attention, but it doesn't seem to work. She is getting someone else's attention, too. William and his henchbeasts are fucking fishing. Because of course they are. That, too, is a theme among the works of Stephen King, the human-shaped villains that are way more than human are always doing or wearing or both, something very ordinary, very human. Very folksy. I imagine he/they think it makes them creepier. They're right.

PSA: Triple Eps

We love you. We also love our wrists, which is why we have no idea when the Grimm eps for this week are going to be posted. For those of you who don't know, Haven's season (series? we really hope not, and don't forget that you can write SyFy to tell them to renew Haven, sample letters and assorted addresses here) finale is this weekend, which will undoubtedly result in at least another 15k worth of recapalypse. Grimm is airing two eps because they love us and want us to have content and also hate us and want our wrists to fall off. NBC will pay for bionic replacements, right?

Anyway, all of that is to say: our current plan is to get the usual two Saturday recapalypses out on time, but we make no promises about when the second Grimm post will be out, other than sometime before the Friday following. You can, as always, follow us on Twitter and listen to all our shrieks of Oh You Fucking Fuckers before the post goes out, if you want a timeline on how far we are.

Thanks for understanding, and we'll try to get you some extra content over the holidays so you can all escape your families.

Cradle Will Fall Haven S4E12 When The Bough Breaks

Previously, on Haven: There was a creepy book with a creepy symbol and a creepy saying that creepyass William somehow knew and thus wanted to kill Jennifer. Also William and Audrey were so connected, and together they had made the Troubles, as Audrey told Vince. Many fucks were given, not all of them in English.

This week on Haven! There's a creepyass canned baby scream on the air, and a guy mowing his lawn drops dead! For comedic effect the lawnmower keeps going without him, I guess because it's one of those models? The Rule of Darkly Funny model. A guy playing tennis concludes his game, hears the sound, and also drops dead, although this time we get confirmation that the other person around him doesn't hear it, so only people who hear the sound drop dead. Perhaps it's time to invest in earplugs? A girl is washing a bright red sporty looking car with a guy, and, yep, drops dead. This is pretty right out of the gate! Also quick and lethal. That doesn't bode well.

Triumph Over It Grimm S3E06 Stories We Tell Our Young

Oh, god, okay, fine, I make absolutely no apologies for the amount of anthropology in this recapalypse since apparently someone out there is playing to our strengths. (Thank you. I think.) Starting with the very opening quote! Which on the Wiki list o' Grimm eps (which is a very useful and usually accurate source for the opening quotes) is attributed to, generically, Inuit mythology. This is… a complicated issue at best, and while the quote itself, "We do not believe; we only fear," is eminently appropriate for the themes of this ep. I have to assume whoever picked it basically just Wikiquotesurfed into something that worked. Or didn't care about doing the research. At any rate, when I Googled the damn thing I got led first to this book, about dispelling the myth of the Noble Savage and pointing out that all societies have fucked up and unhelpful traits. While I wouldn't argue with that premise, a quick skim of the reviews at various places makes me think either the author took it too far to indicate that he believes that there's nothing of value in so-called primitive cultures or that your average layperson is an idiot. No points for guessing which I'm leaning toward! (K: I'm going to go with both. Can we go with both?) (A: We can always go with both. It's not like anthropologists aren't an egotistical lot. Ask us how we know.) At any rate, the implication here is that Wesen society is actually closer to Inuit culture or another indigenous group, probably emphasis on being colonized/ruled by an outside group. (We're setting aside the question of if the Royals really are or started out as an outside group for now; the Wesen we've seen treat them as such in present day, which is what matters for these purposes.) That's. An interesting assertion and probably more data than we were meant to take from one title card, but still. Guys, if you're not thinking about what your source for those quotes is suggesting to an educated and/or nitpicky audience, you really don't know fandom very well.

It's Too Late (Person of Interest S2E19 Trojan Horse)

Things are heating up and AUGH IT'S JOANNE HI JOANNE. From Rent. Look, these are the associations I have, okay? We can just be glad that she's not bringing Maureen into this show. Can you even imagine Finch and Reese's reaction to the entire Alphabet City group? Because I can. Am. And now my brain hurts. Our first bits of data after seeing not!Joanne as the number of the week are to tell us that she's the victim this time. Or at least, that's definitely what that phone call sounds like, one exec's death is mysterious and being covered up and she's digging into it and people want to ensure that she stops? Sounds like victim and not perp to me. Interestingly, the Machine's been giving away more and more of these tidbits in the first few seconds of the show this season, making it all about the discovery of how and why rather than the who. Which is about par for the course, now that Finch and Reese have more or less self-identified themselves.

PSA: Person of Interest posts ending

It is with regret that I have come to tell you that tomorrow's Person of Interest post - which will not be 2x18, but 2x19, as I'm not asking Kitty to blog a show about which we now have zero fucks to give - will be our last. We've been watching the current season while trying to clear the s2 backlog of eps so that we could catch up by February sweeps, at least in theory, and with the conclusion of the HR arc we find that we don't even have enough interest to watch, let alone to spend eight hours an ep blogging it. Life's too goddamn short to hateblog things, and Murderboarding has always been a labor of love, even when a show puts out a weak episode.

The creators have made it very clear that this is not intended to be a weak arc of episodes, however, but the direction they intended the show to go all along, and that they consider themselves innovative and exciting because of it. We firmly and disrespectfully disagree; we feel it's lazy, cheap writing and a complete cop-out (pardon the pun) of an ending, and we're pissed off that they felt they could do that and call it clever, innovative, shocking, and not suffer consequences. It's neither clever nor shocking. It's a sign of a want of creativity to not have anything further to be able to do with a character so they kill that character off so everyone else can grieve/go on a vengeance spree in their various ways. We did see the episode after that and with two minor exceptions, were neither surprised nor gave a damn about any of it. Characters which we previously loved did not stir us. About the only thing that pleased us was the ending, and not because this was a new and interesting place to take that character. In fact, it was so predictable it was almost inevitable. But we enjoyed it because we enjoyed the actor's performance.

In the end, I suppose it's only appropriate that we're ending our recaplyses of PoI with the episode that fridged the character that began this arc.

As this is not up for debate, and neither of us has the spare cycles for moderating comments this week, I'm turning comments on this post off.

In happier news, we're considering adding Sleepy Hollow to our rotation instead. If that happens, look for recapalypses (given the show, I think we can consider them all apocalyptic) to start up sometime in February after the season finale airs. We also intend to get back to the far more entertaining work of writing essays and profiles for Grimm and Haven; with a topic list currently standing around a double dozen, I don't think we're in danger of a lack of content anytime soon.