The Big Bang Theory 10.3

Working under the intense pressure of a two month deadline,the guys put in late hours and lots of coffee. At least, Howard and Leonard do. Sheldon refuses to touch the stuff until the Flash convinces him to try an energy drink. Once it wears off, the guys are even more annoyed by a very distracted Sheldon.

Amy and Penny attend a geologist;s party and are the only ones to show up while Raj helps a worried Bernadette try to set up her nursery while battling hormonal mood swings and concerns over whether she'll be a good mom or not.

The Big Bang Theory 10.2

The guys meet with the scary military Colonel who, an engineer himself, is impressed with Howard being the brains behind the project. Sheldon was told not to speak but at this insult to his chosen career, he can't take it and promises to deliver the prototype in two months and smaller than they currently have it. This annoys Leonard and Howard till they see their new work space.

Meanwhile Bernadette is angry that word slipped out at work concerning her pregnancy and is worried that she'll lose her big promotion. Penny and Amy do their best to cheer her up.

The Big Bang Theory 10:1

The Big Bang Theory season 10 picks up whee season 9 left off - more precisely, the day after the gang gets together at dinner with Leonard's estranged parents. Leonard's father and Sheldon's mother left the restaurant together and turned off their phones, causing stress and drama for their sons and amusement for Penny. The next morning there is an awkward breakfast gathering wherein Sheldon asks some pointed questions, as is fitting his character. Meanwhile, Penny goes off to the airport and picks up her parents and brother. This lets us meet her mother and brother for the first time and they are quite entertaining.

And while all that family wedding drama is going on, Howard {still freaked out about the Air Force emailing him} gets a mysterious visitor.

All in all, a very fun start to the tenth season. I'm kinda surprised they did it this way, giving Penny and Leonard two weddings and not fast-forwarding through Bernadette's pregnancy to when she has the baby but we'll see how this all plays out.

Chuck TV Review

Title: Chuck

Starring: Zachery Levi {Chuck Bartowski}, Yvonne Strahovski {Sarah Walker}, Adam Baldwin {John Casey}, Joshua Gomez {Morgan Grimes}, Sarah Lancaster {Elli Bartowski Woodcomb}, and Ryan MacPartlin {Devon Woodcomb}.

Release Date: 2007

Genre: Spy, Action/Adventure, Drama, Comedy

Plot: Your average computer whiz, stuck at a dead-end job at the local Buy More, is Chuck Bartowski. Nothing adventurous or mysterious here, just a really smart guy with shattered dreams of graduating college, a nerdy best friend and a sweet older sister who took care of him when their parents split. However, all of that changes when Chuck receives an email from an old friend and accidentally gets all the CIA's spy secrets downloaded into his brain. Now a target and a potential asset, Chuck is assigned two handlers {NSA John Casey who is rather trigger happy and CIA Sarah Walker who stuns everyone with her good looks, apparently}, Chuck must rapidly adjust to his new life circumstances or die.

Spanning five action packed seasons, Chuck goes on dangerous missions with his new friends and adds old friends to his new spy life, even his sister learns about his secrets after awhile and gets roped into his new spy life. But even as he achieves his dream and becomes a spy, wins the girl and saves his family, Chuck never loses sight of his roots or his good character.

Likes/Dislikes: A friend recommended this show to us and we've slowly been watching it episode by episode. I think we're somewhere in the third or fourth season right now, but since I read spoilers and all the episodes are almost exactly the same, I feel safe enough to review the whole show here. During the first season, watching this lanky guy try to process his new abilities was rather intriguing, but once he becomes a spy and gets a handle on it, things settled into a rhythm that mostly involve a lot of whining about/fighting with Sarah, missions that usually go wrong and girls in short skirts fighting each other. That last bit is particularly annoying to me; I don't want to watch a bunch of dumb girls fight each other in "sexy" outfits. Casey is the smartest down-to-earth character in the whole show {it's a riot to watch him after seeing Firefly} and Chuck's friend Morgan shows the most growth, changing from a weird annoying nerd to a funny responsible man. Ellie and Devon add the domestic side to the cast while the secondary characters of Jeff and Lester are completely disgusting and serve no purpose to the story at all.

Rating: PG-17 and up, mainly for content {sexy girls, very suggestive scenes, underwear scenes, etc.}. Not recommended for teenage boys.

Date Review Written: December 15th, 2015

Doctor Who Christmas Special 2015

Just how many husbands does River Song actually have? In this exciting Christmas special, we can safely say at least three, including the Doctor. While on a snowy far away planet, the Doctor is mistaken for the local surgeon and is brought to the mysterious River Song who, surprisingly, doesn't recognize him in this regeneration. She brings the "surgeon" in to see the dying King Hydroflax and begs the Doctor to save her husband. The Doctor scoffs and gets annoyed by all of River's attention toward Hydroflax but the tables have finally turned and he has his chance to one up her because she doesn't know what's next for him. When they leave Hydroflax, River bluntly explains that she wants the diamond lodged in his head and asks the "surgeon" to remove the whole head, thinking this would make the operation much easier. The Doctor is obviously surprised and wonders if she's always like this when he isn't around.

Of course, Hydroflax overhears them, removes his own head as a show of strength and sets his robot body to destroy River and the Doctor. Thinking quickly, River grabs the head and off the twosome go, on the run from a deadly robot body and River still has no idea who she is with. That all changes when her attempt to sell the diamond still in the head goes south. And that's when the story picks up and goes all epic and terribly bittersweet at the same time, tying in beautifully with River's first appearance in the library.

With a little bit of a slow start, this special was epic and I loved having River back with a Doctor who is finally close to her age. It was a lovely wrap-up to her whole story.

The Big Bang Theory 9.11

With the new Star Wars movie finally out, the guys are all excited to get tickets and go see it on opening night. There's one small hitch for Sheldon; the movie premieres on Amy's birthday. Penny points out that now that they are back together, Sheldon should spend her birthday with Amy. After a dream in which Arthur Jeffries' ghost appears to him, Sheldon calls Amy and tells her he'll spend her birthday with her. Of course, now he isn't sure what to get her as a gift so he consults Penny and Bernadette. The results are unexpected, hilarious and long awaited.

Meanwhile, with an extra ticket on hand, the guys pass up Stuart and invite Will Wheaten to attend the movie with them. They only slightly regret this when Will shows up dressed like Spock. But apparently they really enjoyed the movie.

I'm totally on Penny's side; now that the movie is out, can everybody please stop talking about it? Seriously.

Firefly TV Review

Title: Firefly

Starring: Nathan Fillion {Captain Malcolm Reynolds}, Gina Torres {Zoe Washburne}, Alan Tudyk {Wash Washburne}, Morena Baccarin {Inara Serra}, Adam Baldwin {Jayne Cobb}, Jewel Staite {Kaylee Frye}, Sean Maher {Dr. Simon Tam}, Summer Glau {River Tam} and Ron Glass {Shepherd Book}.

Release Date: 2002

Genre: TV show, Science Fiction, Action/Adventure, Drama, Space Adventure

Plot: Set five hundred years in the future, space is tamed by adventuring people in spaceships and struggling colonies on recently terraformed planets. A small group of people in a little Firefly-class ship called Serenity are struggling to make a living in smuggling and stay off the government's radar. Captain Malcolm Reynolds heads up the gang and has served in the recent war, favoring the losing side of the independence against the might of the Alliance government. This past experience makes him wary of the shiny Alliance ships, the richy-rich kids of the core planets and anything that just looks suspicious, but he makes up for it by being extremely loyal and protective of his crew. His first mate, Zoë, served alongside him in the war and keeps him pretty balanced, while her husband, Wash, is the goofy talented pilot. Manning the engine room is sweet cheerful Kaylee and in charge of "Public Relations" is trigger-happy Jayne, a big beefy guy who shoots first and asks questions later. Balancing this whole rag-tag group of renegades is Inara, a registered Companion who is up to par with the government and provides a certain amount of "respectability" to the crew.

When this core group completes a job and arrives on a lovely little planet to sell the goods, they pick up a handful of passengers and through an interesting turn of fate, end up with three new shipmates. Shepherd Book is something of a missionary, traveling around and looking for folk who need to hear the good word. Doctor Simon was once a very promising trauma surgeon on one of the main central planets, until his genius sister River needed his help. Now they're on the run with some very high prices on their heads and dangerous people on the look-out for them. Thrown together, the crew get to know each other and test their strengths and weaknesses in close quarters in space, sometimes in combat and sometimes not. They go through ambushes, kidnappings, failed missions, successful missions, the occasional brush with the Alliance and even more terrifying, with the roving bands of dreaded Reavers. And through it all, they learn who to trust and who to shoot on sight.

Likes/Dislikes: This is a very creative high energy adventure with a story that easily spans each episode while still making each unique and giving plenty of attention to the world and characters. I have no idea why this show was ever canceled. The dialogue is hilarious and wonderful, the characters written beautifully and the world they live in is so much fun to explore, though it might be a good idea not to poke around the darker spots too much. However, this isn't exactly a family-friendly show. A registered companion in this world is someone akin to a prostitute but better paid. Rather like old time concubines but able to pick and chose their benefactors. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing in the development of the story's world, it does get very annoying and uncomfortable when you actually are shown some of those intimate business scenes. I don't mind the scene with the married couple {though I'd much prefer if there were no sex scenes at all}. Also, the Reavers are incredibly nasty creatures with rumors about what horrors they do to people but thankfully all of this is off camera. How creatures like that could exist is beyond me. But all the space travel is lovely and I love how the characters interact with each other.

Rating: PG-18 and up, mainly for content {could safely be viewed with parent armed with remote}.

Date Review Written: November 9th, 2015.

The Big Bang Theory 9.10

In a wonderfully exciting episode that starts out in a rather mundane fashion, Sheldon is randomly humming a tune while working. Despite his eidetic memory, he can't figure out what song he's humming. After obsessing over it for days and annoying his long suffering roommates with video recordings to future crazy Sheldon, he finally figures it out. That scene was pretty fun to watch.

Meanwhile, Howard and Raj have one fan for their band and stalk him, thinking he's cool till they discover the horrible truth. And Amy confides in Bernadette that she's having Dave over to dinner at her place, even though their last date didn't go so well. This one does and things have potential till an excited Sheldon bursts in and declares his love for Amy. With Dave translating, Amy figures out what Sheldon is trying to say and responds passionately, giving the audience that warm gooey happy feeling of "Awwwww."

This was such a funny and sweet episode. It's nice to have those tow back together again and they'll have a much stronger relationship now. Onto next week's even more adventurous episode!!

Doctor Who 9.12

Seemingly hell bent on destruction and reclaiming his home planet, the Doctor sets off the alarm bells all over Gallifrey by returning the long way around to his old home, going straight for the drafty barn where so much of his past took place. Silent in the face of certain death, the Doctor waits for the evil Lord Rassilon to arrive with his armed soldiers. Drawing a line in the sand, the Doctor makes his stand, silent, alone and determined to make Rassilon leave his planet. Of course it's his planet, he's the man who ended the Time War and saved Gallifrey. One by one the guards throw down their weapons and cross the line, joining the Doctor and placing the might of Gallifrey at his back.

That little battle effortlessly won, the Doctor returns to the city and uses a Time Lord extraction chamber to pull Clara from her past, freezing her in a half life between heart beats and trying to whisk her away to the far end of the universe in the hopes of breaking the connection and bringing her completely back to life. But death can't be so easily tricked and the Doctor decides the only way is to wipe Clara's memories of him to save her and give her one last chance. There's a catch though; Clara is just as smart as he is and tampers with the device. Now it's a game of chance to see who loses their memory.

My overall conclusions on the ninth season is that it was pretty unimpressive. I loved having the Doctor go all rock n' roll bad boy on everyone with his sonic sunglasses and his electric guitar. Clara was just really annoying the whole time but peaked up a little as Bonnie with the rocket launcher. She had a death wish throughout the season that was finally, happily fulfilled and then she was brought back to life! Sure that made all the fans happy and admittedly, I'm curious to see a Clara/Ashildr spin off with maybe Jack Harkness, Vastra and the others featured, but she should have stayed dead. And Ashildr was an odd character; I didn't really like her all that much. The whole conclusion of the big bad Hybrid was a huge disappointment. It's seriously the Doctor and Clara? Really? And what happened to Missy? I know she's in the Christmas special, but with all the hints of evil stalking them, a Hybrid and Missy back with the Daleks going, "I have an idea," you'd think she'd come back with a bang. Really rather disappointing with that. But the Doctor's new sonic screwdriver should be fun, and the Christmas special with River will be really fun. I hope he sticks with the rock n' roll thing.

Doctor Who 9.11

Fresh from the death of his companion, the Doctor is teleported to a strange island prison with a monster always on view as it slowly searches the castle for him, waiting to catch and kill him. The Doctor can escape by telling a truth - confessing his secrets one by one as it seems, but some of his secrets he prefers to keep very close. Exploring each room, he soon learns that the rooms revert to their original state after he leaves them and they never change. He can buy himself eighty-two minutes to eat, sleep and explore the castle, searching for room twelve and looking for a way out by luring the monster to one side of the castle and then sprinting to the other.

But there are things that just don't add up. Clothes all dry and waiting for him after he dives out of a window into the water below, a buried piece of wood with a clue on it, skulls littering the bottom of the sea and the stars are all wrong. The Doctor eventually finds his TARDIS but a twenty foot wall of TARDIS material, harder than diamond, stands in the way. Beginning to break it down with his fist rather than give up that last secret, the monster comes up and kills the Doctor. Because Time Lords take so long to die, he crawls back to the teleport room and burns himself up to send down a new copy, beginning the process all over again.

When two billion years pass, the wall is finally weakened and the Doctor escapes, stepping out onto a world he thought he would never see again and telling that last great secret to his confession dial, nestled safely in his hand. He was heaven sent and is now hell bent on destruction.

This was a surprisingly pretty cool episode and had a wonderful twist at the end. I can't wait for the final episode now!

Doctor Who 9.10

On a high after their latest adventure, Clara gleefully prances around the TARDIS control room while the Doctor looks on. But their momentary elation is short lived; the phone rings and good old Rigsby from the Boneless adventure is on the other end with a peculiar problem. He has a tattoo that is counting down and he never got a tattoo. Intrigued, the Doctor examines him and takes Rigsby into the TARDIS for further research, asking him to bring his daughter and then changing his mind because the Doctor would get "distracted." I thought that was the best line!

Piecing together Rigsby's story of what happened and making an aerial map of London, the team splits up and begins searching for a mysterious alleyway hidden from normal people by a clever perception filter. When they find it, they encounter a whole colony of strange aliens governed brutally but fairly by the immortal Ashildr. Convinced that Rigsby had killed an alien woman, Ashildr set a shade on him that will kill him when the last minute ticks down. Knowing that he has a family to care for and trying to be overly clever like the Doctor, Clara secretly takes the mark from Rigsby to save his life. But when the mystery unravels, revealing a trap for the Doctor instead of a simple murder mystery, Clara learns that she has doomed herself.

While not nearly as heartbreakingly sad as when Ten lost Rose, Clara is the first companion in the reboot to die and it was still pretty sad. I would've liked it if she'd said her old line of "Run, you clever boy, and remember me." That would've fit pretty well. I think killing her off was long overdue and the only logical thing to be done with poor Clara's character. She really didn't have much left to live for since Danny Pink is dead.

The Big Bang Theory 9.9

Thanksgiving comes early with The Big Bang Theory this week and it's quite a treat. Now that they're no longer dating, Sheldon tries to give Amy the tickets to an aquarium they were going to spend Thanksgiving at together and, in a surprising turn of events, she offers to go with him as a friend. Spending the day together soon eases Sheldon's discomfort while Amy is reminded of all the good times they used to have.

Meanwhile, Raj, Bernadette and Emily take a reluctant Howard along with them to volunteer at a local soup kitchen, soon leaving him to wash dishes solo. But not for long. And Penny discovers that Leonard knows a suspicious amount of information about her in comparison to how much she knows about him and she isn't happy to learn how he knows all her secrets. His attempt at making up for it was… painful to watch, to say the least. But also incredibly funny at the same time!

Next week is actually Thanksgiving so no new Big Bang, but given the final twist, we can expect some interesting events in the next new episode. Or at least lots of drama.

Doctor Who 9.9

Told from the unique perspective of salvaged footage from helmet and security cameras, a group of futuristic rescuers arrive on an abandoned ship and encounter strange things - menacing beings made from sand, a fidgety lone survivor and a time traveler and his companion who mysteriously showed up on the ship as well.

Finding things fairly normal and as expected, the group tracks down the lone survivor nestled in a Morpheous sleep pod. When one of the sleep pods grabs Clara, this excites the Doctor and makes him want to investigate. But the results could be far more terrifying than anyone expected. As the group is picked off one by one, the Doctor must try to save the day.

While intriguing over the prospect of sleep dust becoming animated, this episode was otherwise pretty bland and unexciting. I don't like movies and shows with the footage all clipped together in jagged segments and from people's perspective's. It's unique but I just don't like it. Too much shaky camera stuff. Next week should be more interesting.

The Big Bang Theory 9.8

On this week's episode of The Big Bang Theory, dating is the theme. Penny and Bernadette help Amy get ready for her third date with tall British Dave, the mysterious man she's been seeing recently. When Amy is out of earshot, Bernadette proposes that they stop by the restaurant later to catch a glimpse of Dave. Taking Leonard along, Penny learns that Bernadette has a dark stalker side that no knows about. Meanwhile, poor Amy's date does not end well when Dave learns who her former boyfriend is.

And Sheldon turns to Howard and Raj to find him a new girlfriend, considering that it was they who had set him up with Amy in the first place. They devise a hilarious serious of tests and place an ad on Craigslist. The result is a beautiful young woman who would fit perfectly with the group but, due to being just a  few seconds late on the deadline, Sheldon rejects.

This episode was so funny! I was really bummed that Sheldon rejected the girl because she seemed like a neat character. Oh please, can we bring her back? Please?

Doctor Who 9.8

Waking up in a surreal room, Clara quickly assesses the situation and begins to take control of her body back from the Zygon running around posing as her. The Doctor and Osgood, having parachuted to safety, find themselves in dangerous territory as they begin to piece the puzzle together and try to locate Clara. The Doctor hopes she's still alive.

The majority of the Zygons would much rather live in peace while a small group of rebels, led by Bonnie {Clara's double} have other plans. They know of the Osgood box and go hunting for it. A battle of wits between Bonnie and Clara ensues with amusing dialogue but ultimately, the Doctor has layer upon layer of tricks up his sleeve with this little treaty and talks down the tantrum-throwing child. He's seen the devastation of war, herd the cries of children and seen death in so many forms. He's pressed the button and destroyed his own people. With such a heartache of pain constantly with him, why would he let Bonnie carry the same burden?

This was a very interesting episode, filled with fun little twists {though not necessarily unpredictable} and his big speech at the end was great, except for the very annoying fact that taking great gasps of breath in between each word really took the thunder out of it for us. Please don't try that one again.

The Big Bang Theory 9.7

In last night's Big Bang Theory, we had quite a lot going on. Sheldon gets super excited when Will Wheaton contacts him, asking to interview him for a documentary on Spock that he is working on with Leonard Nimoy's son. The guest star of the show was brilliant and it was nice to finally see an episode paying tribute to Nimoy. I'd been wondering if they were gonna get around to doing something like this for awhile now and I quite enjoyed the results. During the interview, Penny and Leonard learn that Sheldon was intending to propose to Amy. While this shocks them, it forces Sheldon to come to the painful conclusion that he isn't over Amy at all and stick deep down wants to marry her, even though by all appearances, she's moving on with her life.

Meanwhile, Howard recruits Raj in a last ditch attempt to convince Bernadette not to redecorate his mother's house. His classic guilt-trip lines of "My dad left when I was little and my mom died" have lost their magic on his feisty bride who brings in her dad to help with the remodel. While crawling around underneath the house, Howard and his father-in-law unearth a much more interesting sore spot than redoing the house and this leaves Howard and Bernadette with some serious thinking to do. This was another issue I've been wondering about for awhile and while it wasn't satisfactorily solved, at least it was mentioned.

This was fun episode and I especially enjoyed Bernadette's little earthquake scene, but I really enjoyed it because it was more thoughtful and held promises of character growth which, as a writer, is something I like in stories. Can't wait for next week's episode!

Doctor Who 9.7

Looking back to when there were three Doctors, the Zygons and humans made a peace treaty that benefited both parties very well. Lovable Osgood and her Zygon {or human} double were put in charge of it by the Doctor and given special instructions for what to do in the event of the Nightmare Scenario and when this event actually takes place, despite all hopes that it never would, the surviving Osgood knows exactly who to contact.

Hurtling back to Earth to take care of this, the Doctor leaves Clara an astonishing 172 calls, trying to get a hold of his companion. When she finally does call him back, asking why he called himself Doctor Disco, Clara is swept off to help UNIT investigate. Breaking off into three teams, they try to use their limited manpower to figure out who is behind the surge in Zygon aggression, where they all are hiding and what exactly they're planning to do. But the truth could be so much worse than they anticipated.

Admittedly, I really enjoyed this episode. It was intriguing, well-written, tied in with a previous episode, kept up with the thread of an alien hybrid and was fast-paced. Plus, the Doctor played Amazing Grace on his electric guitar which was awesome!! Loved it. And badass Clara was a nice change for once. And I enjoyed having Kate and Osgood back; they're such cool characters.

The Big Bang Theory 9.6

When the Swedish are about to steal Leonard and Sheldon's thunder on their experiment, they drop everything and start tracking down some helium, with hilarious results. With a choice between Kripke and a shady dealer in a car garage, the two have some deep thinking to do.

Meanwhile, Bernadette tells Penny that Stuart has gone on two dates with the help of a dating app on his phone. They put it on Amy's phone {much to her dismay} and gather around with Raj and Howard to mock the results. Amy gets the last word however.

While this episode was funny, it wasn't a huge hit with me. Probably because I was busy with the baby and didn't pay attention. Still, the two moving on and dating other people is fun.

Doctor Who 9.6

The Doctor {for unclear reasons} pops up in merry old England without Clara and is tracking something with a device that goes ding {not really} when he interrupts a robbery. Distracted from his search by the discovery of Ashildr and how dark the years have turned her. She has had to endure much of the same heartbreak he has had to endure - the loss of friends, family and, most painfully, the loss of babies you try so desperately to save. Pain has turned her into a hard creature and the Doctor wonders if he made the right decision.

But then her own plans backfire on her, jarring her back to life and the Doctor triumphs once more!

I didn't like this episode. Partly because the actress looked too young to be so hard and jaded, and partly because it was just boring. The Zygons next week don't look too much better but there is still some potential there. Much more than in this episode. I can't wait till Clara is gone. It was so nice not having her in this adventure.

The Big Bang Theory 9.5

And after waiting an entire week, we finally have the fencing episode of The Big Bang Theory! It began quite humorously, of course, with Howard explaining that Bernadette got him a fitbit to track his exercise and he ran away from her when she tried to put it on him. The guys then decide that exercising would be a good idea and join Kripke's fencing club. My husband was a fencer for ten years so he sat up during this episode and started critiquing it. Apparently they were doing everything wrong. I thought that was funny.

Meanwhile the girls are all trying to help Stuart bring in more female customers with little results. I loved this episode!! But having the brain I do, I can't remember what the previews for next week hinted at so I'll just pretend like it's gonna be a great episode and re-watch it later to confirm my theory. I do hope Amy and Sheldon get back together just cause they're cute together and I want a really nice non-elopement wedding! But not with Raj and Emily; she's too weird.