'Castle Rock' Season 2, Episode 5: 'The Laughing Place'

This episode takes us back to the past; not to play bad video games, but instead to show us how this iteration of Annie Wilkes came to be.

Her upbringing was less than ideal, but not quite as dire as one might think.  Her parents are lower income, and they clearly resent the hell out of each other, but they do both seem to be on good terms with Annie and want what's best for her. I was a bit worried when her dad started complaining about political correctness in schools. I was certain he was going to end up a strawman, but the episode did a good job of fleshing him out.

It's true, he does take her out of school to teach her himself.  It doesn't work too well, mostly because he's using his own (in fairness, well written) novel in progress as a guide.  It makes for a great bonding tool for the two and their relationship is quite heartwarming.  It also makes the collapse that much more tragic.

This does allow for another subtle call back to the book, where Annie is able to provide cogent criticism of a work and how its plot flows.  It's a small, but welcome touch to this depiction of the character. 

Interestingly enough, Annie's psychological issues are downplayed for a majority of the episode.  There's one scene where she attacks a girl at school, who to be fair was one of many who picked on her.  Other than that, though she comes off as a sweet kid, especially when she gets a tutor who helps her get her development back on track.  She's happy and pretty well adjusted and it just makes the fall that much harder.

We do, again, see Annie's psyche spiraling downward.  Oddly enough, it doesn't feel like a rehash.  The circumstances are different enough and, given what we see, we can certainly understand why Annie is as off as she is.

Being the survivor of an attempted murder-suicide by your own mother (who actually did die) is bad enough, but finding out soon after that your father had an affair with your tutor and now has a new child.  Yeah, it's no wonder that Annie went to dark (very dark) places soon after.

There wasn't too much plot progression as far as the present goes.  Joy does attempt to get some information from Annie to no avail and finds a new information source after reading Annie's father's manuscript.  Annie herself is approached by Ace, though she hasn't noticed it yet.  It's not that big a fault, all things considered, as the flashbacks were more than compelling enough to carry the episode.

This was another very strong episode.  The writing was strong, it was well paced, and the acting was also on point.  It doesn't top "Ties That Bind", but I'd rank it as a very close second.  It's a very good hour of television.  

We're coming into the second half of the season, it'll definitely be interesting to see how things play out.

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'Legends of Tomorrow' Season 4, Episode 8: 'Legends of To-Meow-Meow'

 While the last episode was fairly weak and the title is...well, stupid, this episode is a blast.  

Not surprisingly, the episode focuses on Charlie's and John's efforts to restore the timeline after John broke it.  Interestingly enough, neither of these two characters really want to restore the status quo. As such, rather than just undo what they did, they try to "patch things" to a point where the Legends are restored to the way they were.

It turns out that the timeline change turned the somewhat idealistic team into stone cold killers of magical creatures and it is this, more than anything else, that sets Charlie on the path to restore things.  Yeah, she was willing to leave Zari as a cat (though to be fair, that turned out to be a surprisingly easy fix all things considered.)

The task turns out to be more difficult than one would think, as the butterfly effect kicks in hard here.  It was interesting to see how things could have gone very differently for the team with a slight change of circumstance.  Team members die at the hands (or horns) of previous foes and Mick even partners up with the fairy godmother.  It also gives the episode a chance to revisit some scenes from earlier in the season.  Combine this with some bizarre, but not out of place, TV show parodies, and you have a pretty bonkers episode to say the least.

After having several episodes try to juggle several subplots, it was nice to have an episode focus on just one.  There's a lot of crazy stuff going on, but keeping the narrative on Charlie and John keeps you engaged and grounded...for the most part.

The humor was on point.  The episode goes off the wall and revels in the craziness that the plot allows it to.  There are times when I miss this being a more straight forward super-hero team show, but this shows you why the later tone is so loved and revered.    

The big cliffhanger reveal is a bit lackluster. It does tie John's Neron big bad with the whole Time Bureau gathering magical creatures sub-plot that has been on the back-burner lately, but it didn't really have the sort of kick that a mid-season finale ending should theoretically have.

Still, though, the episode is on such a constant high that one small con is really not that much of a hindrance.  It's good to see the show rebound and regain its footing. It'll be interesting to see how the second half of the season plays out.

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