Chuck 4x18 "...vs. the A-Team"

For the first twenty minutes of this episode, I was preeeetty bored, much like Sarah. But things picked up around the halfway mark, delightfully so. Thank goodness, because I really couldn't take those two fakeouts in the opening scenes. I can smell a fakeout coming from a mile away, and while they may have been clues to later scenes, still. I am desensitized. It comes from too much TV, I'm sure.
So what was causing Chuck and Sarah to be so bored they had to keep themselves entertained with board games? It was all thanks to Casey's new secret team, which Chuck and Sarah finally found out about when they stumbled upon the gigantic hallway that they had apparently been blind to before. They decide they've got to find out what Casey is up to, and follow him on his next mission. There, they discover that he's got two new team members in Rick and Vicky, formerly both known as Greta.

Now that there are two teams taking up residence in Castle, Chuck and Sarah are left wondering whether they are the A team or the B team. There is little doubt about their status when they are sent across the world to retrieve Jana, someone very important to a dude called The Turk (reminds me of Sarah Connor Chronicles, as does some of the 'danger' music on this show), who has information on some other guy named something like Dragan. But it turns out this Jana is not a person but, rather, a dog. Yeah, they're the B team.

Not content to be left to the sidelines, Chuck and Sarah decide they've got to get into the secret backstage area, and MacGuyver Casey's handprint. Once inside, they find out that their whole operation has been made possible thanks to Papa Bartowski's old laptop, which I entirely forgot about until they brought it up in the "previously" segment. Chuck wants to take it, because his dad would not have wanted it used in this manner, but the other team finds them, and they do some kung fu fighting. That's when they discover that Rick and Vicky aren't just good agents - they're new intersects! The director of their team, Bentley, takes back the laptop and sends Chuck and Sarah packing.

But, when the mission to capture the Dragan dude comes up, they realize that he's carrying a bomb, and it will be more than a three person job. Thus, Chuck and Sarah get to come along. And it's a good thing, too. Because once Dragan gets off the plane and they kill all of his other people, they realize the bomb he's carrying is a suitcase nuclear bomb aka very bad news. Dragan takes off with the detonator, and Sarah and Vicky go after him. Sarah corners him, and finds out that the detonator is linked up to his vitals. Thus, if he dies, the bomb gets turned on. Vicky, however, comes guns a'blazing and kills him, setting the clock ticking on the bomb. Uh oh.

Rick thinks their best option is to take the bomb and fly as far away as they can before it goes off. It'd still kill some people, but not as many. Chuck, however, is sure he can find a way to defuse the bomb before it goes off, despite the Intersect initially not knowing how. He's able to use information from the intersect about another part of the bomb to infer that if it comes into contact with salt water, it'll be turned off. Some sort of fail safe. But they're in the middle of the city! Where will they find salt water? Why, it just so happens that Casey gave Chuck an apple juice box earlier - and it has sodium! A nuclear bomb defused by apple juice! Who would've thunk?

Seeing that Team Bartowski is really the A team in this joint, Beckman puts Chuck in charge of anything intersect-related going forward. And that also means that Rick and Vicky get de-intersected, which they are both relieved to do. The original recipe team is back together again, or are they? Bentley seems to have more plans for Casey up her sleeve in relation to the secrets of the laptop.

Ellie has been going stir crazy being a stay at home mom with baby Clara. She wants to delve back into her dad's laptop to occupy her mind, but Devon gave the laptop to Chuck (and we all know where it went). They deflect her by saying that they turned it into the Buy More and blame Jeff and Lester for losing it, but by the end of the episode, Bentley gives the laptop to Ellie, in hopes that with her Bartowski mind, she can crack its secrets. I'm really not sure what other secrets are on that thing, but who knows.

Standout song:
Tricky - Murder Weapon

Quotes:

"Morgan Grimes, you are a badass. ... Oh no, I peed a little." - Morgan

"All we gotta do is get through four inches of solid steel." - Chuck
"Or we could cut off Casey's hand." - Sarah
"...Let's keep that as our backup plan, shall we?" - Chuck

"Clever girl." - Morgan (awesome Jurassic Park reference)

"These have a camera inside of them that scan for any bioresidue." - Sarah
"Ugh. Sounds like a CBS show." - Chuck

"I wonder if they have that fancy Greek yogurt in their kitchen." - Chuck

Previous Episode -- Next Episode

Supernatural Paley Festival 2011

People, I have come full circle. Back in 2006, I was one of the fans who went to the first Supernatural Paley Fest panel, which was the very first congregation of fans of the show, ever. I feel like I get my geek cred just for that alone, but now I've completed the package with a return trip today! And it was just as great as the last time, though it felt shorter. Maybe because I had a ridiculous grin on my face the entire time. It's just like you've heard, and maybe some of you have experienced. The guys? They are just as charismatic and funny in person. More so.

 Sorry, I don't have the money to be buying these images. If anyone needs me to take it down, just tell me!

Today, the guests included: Eric Kripke, Sera Gamble, Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles, Misha Collins, Jim Beaver and Ben Edlund. That's also the order they sat on stage, for anyone who needs to know that business.

Highlights from the panel:

- The reel Sera introduced before everyone came out. It was a great compilation of everything that has been happening in season six so far, with a couple extra treats at the end. The first treat was an extended scene from The French Mistake (the acting scene) plus some outtakes from other bits in that episode. The other treat was a brief couple of scenes for the upcoming Western episode!! Sera said she didn't want to give away what they were going to show, but that a lot of fans were pretty excited about it. I knew immediately that's what it would be. Perhaps I'm a fan, no?

- When asked if they had anything they would change, Eric and Misha both had good answers. Misha's we've heard before - he wouldn't do the Castiel gravel voice, as he's totally regretting it now and worried he may well permanently damage his throat. But Eric's was pretty great. He was saying that he has something he'd change in every episode, but one thing that he was reminded of the other day was all the way back in the pilot, when Sam and Dean are walking to the Impala and spouting all sorts of exposition. He cringes every time he hears that, because the other guy would be like "I know! Why are you telling me stuff I already know?!" Ha. I totally get that as a writer myself. Exposition is tough. Jensen then commented how he hates delivering exposition, and that he was happy once the guest stars started having to do it more often.

- When Misha was talking about the Cas voice, it segued into Jensen telling a little anecdote of when Misha first appeared on set doing the voice. Apparently everyone thought he was super weird - Jensen even asked the camera guys what he was doing. And later, on set, Jared and Jensen saw him reading or eating or something, and they were like, "He looks like he's in character." and let him be. Asking him then whether he was in character, he was like - nope! And apparently they just all thought he was strange. Haha, it was much funnier in person, trust me.

- An interesting tidbit that I've never heard before... someone asked whether Missouri would ever be back on the show again. Personally, I think it's been too long by this point, but anyway. Eric told this story of how she was originally supposed to be in the season one finale. The boys were going to go find her and do the devil's trap stuff with Meg at her place, but in the end Loretta Devine couldn't do it, so they ended up having to come up with a new character... one Bobby Singer! Just think, we never would've had Bobby!

- That story made way for another story of how Bobby got his name. As you should know, Robert Singer is one of the exec producers on the show. When they were coming up with this character, Eric wanted to name him after both Bob and Kim Manners, so he was originally supposed to be named Bobby Manners, since Eric looked up to the both of them. But, it turned out that there was a Bobby Manners who lived in South Dakota, so they couldn't do that. And because Bob wasn't in the office that day, Eric named him Bobby Singer!

- Jared making fun of Eric's bad guy voice was pretty hilarious. Eric apparently always does the same voice whenever he's acting like he's whatever bad guy is around. You really had to be there for this one, but it was super funny.

- For those wondering whether we will ever get a Castiel-centric episode similar to how Bobby got one earlier this season, wonder no longer. Ben Edlund confirmed that he had just finished directing his first episode, and it happened to be a Cas-centric one. I believe it's episode 20.

- Eric emailed the director/producers after seeing his death scene from French Mistake, thanking them for killing him in such a badass way, as that was not how it was originally written. Speaking of French Mistake, Misha really wanted the version of himself to be a total douche. Jensen commented that he laughed a lot at Misha's death scene, and then commented that that was sort of weird. Haha.

- Eric has a specific coda in mind for when the show comes to an end - where everyone would end up.

Now with a special video highlight from the Paley Center:



There was more than that, of course, but I assume they're going to have it all on DVD soon enough. I'm really glad I went, even though I was up in the nosebleed section. Oh well, they had a huge video screen. I just love that everyone seems to get along so well, they all seem to genuinely like each other. If you have any questions about the panel, feel free to ask away in the comments!!

Glee 2x15 "Sexy"

Can I confess something? I know I write these recaps every week and all, and that should mean that I'm a fan of the show I'm recapping, but... I'm kind of over Glee. I got so into it during the first season, and while there are certainly still moments now, for me the magic is pretty much gone. Poof! I know a lot of people have felt this way, but it's making me want to scrap recapping it altogether. And when nobody comments, I'm inclined to believe no one else would care either. Feel free to tell me I'm wrong in the, gasp, comments.

Until I am pushed off the proverbial ledge, let's talk about this week's episode. It was all about sex. Sort of. It was supposed to be about educating the kids on sex because they had some wacky views (for example, Brittany thought a baby would be delivered to her by a stork). Of course, much like the episode on alcohol, it mostly involved the kids (and returning guest star Gwyneth Paltrow as Holly Holiday) singing sexy songs instead.

But what did actually happen story-wise? Emma had resurrected the celibacy club, mostly because she and Carl, who have been married for four months now, still haven't done it, because she won't. She thinks this is entirely okay, but Carl gets her to sit down with Holly to figure out the problem, and it turns out that she still has feelings for Will (der). They decide to take a break for a while. Wah wah.

After hearing that the New Directions crew are going to be sexing up their image from a misinformed Sue, Blaine decides the Warblers need to do the same. So they perform for their sister school, and apparently think that a bunch of bubbles are sexy. Okay.... Blaine also comes to realize that Kurt is totally uncomfortable with the sex stuff too, and when he won't let Blaine try to help him through it, Blaine recruits Burt to talk to Kurt. They have what is quickly becoming a patented father-son chat-for-the-ages and *yawn.* What? I should still care? Pardon me.

Will has an obvious crush on Holly, and tries to act on it, but she shuts him down, not wanting to open herself up. In the end, she decides she should actually try having a real relationship, and they kiss.

The biggest and closest-as-this-show-can-come-to-heartening-anymore storyline of the night involved Santana and Brittany. Santana wants to get back to their lady loving ways, but Brittany is tired of doing that without talking about their feelings about it all. They go to Holly for some advice, and she says they should try explaining their feelings in song. Through the song she chooses, Santana basically tells Brittany that she loves her, but she's afraid to go down that road. She also tells her that point blank later on, but since Brittany is still with Artie, and loves him too, she shoots her down. For now, anyway.

In other relationship news, Lauren and Puck contemplate making a sex tape until Holly informs them it would be child pornography, so they end up both joining the celibacy club together. Quinn and Finn have been secretly spending time together, and it appears they will continue to do so at least until next week when it looks like Rachel might make a further play for him.

Oh, and next week is Regionals, with original songs. A miracle or a disaster? Only time shall tell, I guess.

Songs:

Do You Wanna Touch Me - Holly
Animal - Warblers
Kiss - Will & Holly
Landslide - Holly, Santana & Brittany
Afternoon Delight - Puck, Emma, Quinn, Rachel & Carl

Quotes:

"How about you and I pop in some Sweet Valley High this evening, get our cuddle on?" - Santana
"Look, I'd really like to get my sweet lady kisses on, but I haven't been feeling very sexy lately." - Brittany

"Mmm. That's a waste of some fine man butt." - Holly

"So, just remember, whenever you have sex with someone, you're having sex with everyone they've ever had sex with. And everybody's got a random." - Holly

"I have as much sexual appeal and knowledge as a baby penguin." - Kurt

"Let's be clear here, I'm not interested in any labels, unless it's on something I shoplift." - Santana

"I made out with a mannequin. I even had a sex dream about a shrub that was just in the shape of a person." - Santana

"Oh, I know hickeys. I'm a frickin' connoisseur. I can make them into shapes like balloon animals." - Puck

Previous Episode -- Next Episode

Pear Spice Cake with Pecan Praline Topping

Pears pears pears! I made a pear crisp only a couple weeks ago, and here I'm at it again with a pear spice cake! That's what happens when you buy a Costco-sized bag of gigantor pears and you are but one little person. Next time I should try roasting them, right? But I've used them all up for now, so this will have to sate the other pear lovers out there.

I found this recipe over at Joy the Baker, only she used walnuts instead of pecans. She also included chopped walnuts in the cake itself, which is just something I don't approve of generally speaking. That's like brownies with nuts. Gross. I'm sure a lot of you out there loooove walnuts, but you know what? Blegh. Walnuts are right up there with onions and pineapple and coconut for me. Hmm. Maybe I've said too much. You've lost all respect for my palate, haven't you?

Oh well! More for me, then! But in all seriousness, this cake is super moist and delicious, and if you don't make some kind of brown sugar amazingness topping, you will be seriously missing out.


Pear Spice Cake
Adapted from Joy the Baker

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground allspice
• 1 1/2 teaspoons freshly grated nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 large eggs, separated
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1  cups buttermilk
• 3 pears, peeled, cored and diced into roughly 1/2-inch pieces (about 1 to 1 1/4 cups of fruit)

Make cake:

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour bundt pan.

Sift together flour,  baking soda, baking powder, and salt into a bowl. Beat together butter, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg in another bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until fluffy, about 3 minutes in a standing mixer or 4 with a handheld. Add yolks 1 at a time, beating well after each addition, then beat in vanilla. Reduce speed to low, then add flour mixture and buttermilk alternately in batches, mixing well after each addition.  Fold in pear pieces.

Beat egg whites in another bowl with cleaned beaters until they just hold stiff peaks, then fold whites into batter gently but thoroughly.

Spoon batter into pan, smoothing top, and bake until a wooden pick or skewer comes out clean, 40 to 50 minutes. Cool cake in pan on a rack 10 minutes, then invert onto rack and cool completely.

Pecan Praline Topping

• 3/4 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/4 cup whipping cream
• 1 cups pecans, roughly chopped, toasted

Stir golden brown sugar, whipping cream and  1/2 cup butter in heavy medium saucepan over medium-high heat until smooth. Boil 3 minutes, stirring often. Stir in pecan pieces. Spoon warm topping over warm cake. Serve warm or at room temperature.

In pictures:

Sugar and spice and everything nice. Incidentally, I didn't have any all spice, and the cake still tasted great, but I think the all spice would've given it that extra oomph, so I recommend you use it if you have it.

Flour mixture added in. Look at how fluffy it's getting!

With the pears and egg whites mixed in. I didn't beat my egg whites as long as I should've, but I was doing it by hand and I was impatient.

It's ready to go into the oven!

Out of the oven!

 I forgot to take photos of the process of making the topping. Whoops. My topping is runny. I should've let it sit out a little bit and it would've thickened up.

Mmmm.

Delicious!

Supernatural 6x16 "And Then There Were None"

Wow. What an appropriate episode title for this one, right? I'm still a little in shock at how many people they just killed off. I had a feeling that Rufus was going to bite the big one after reading a couple of hints about upcoming episodes, but I didn't know they were also going to kill off ole Grandpa Campbell too! Spoiler alert, obviously, but if you're reading this, I assume you've already watched the episode. If not, um. Whoops?

The episode started off with a random trucker dude meeting our newest big bad - the Mother of All (Evil Creatures). She puts something in his ear that makes him go berserk and kill everyone in his path, including his family, though he has no recollection of doing any such thing. When Sam, Dean and Bobby come to investigate, they get their first look at big mama Eve, as she likes to call herself, and have no idea how they are supposed to battle her. No time to figure that out quite yet, though, because someone else has gone crazy.
Bobby heads off to investigate while the boys apparently watch some more videos instead of going with him, even though they've seen nearly everything they need to see on the video, so it makes little sense. But, in any event, when Bobby arrives at the place, he encounters Rufus, who has also arrived in town to investigate. They join forces and figure out that both the people who went crazy had some sort of goo coming out of their ears, and were both connected to the cannery. Off to the cannery!

They meet up with Dean and Sam and head inside, only to find that someone else is in town too! This is becoming a hunter party! Except that these other people in question happen to be Samuel and Gwen Campbell. And last Dean saw his Grandaddy, he told him he'd kill him. He wants to make good on his promise, but the others stall him and tell him to go cool off. Gwen gets up in Samuel's face, because she didn't know that he had tried to sell Sam and Dean down the river, and goes to ask Dean about it. And what does Dean do? He SHOOTS her! What! That was unexpected.

But not entirely, because he was infected with some kind of parasite thingy that goes in through the ears. Once they find him, he doesn't have it in him any more, but now everyone else is a suspect. It could be in anyone. Bobby suggests they all forfeit their weapons so they can't kill each other as easily, which they do for a time, until Samuel reveals himself to be the newest infected member. They re-acquire their weapons to hunt him down, only Sam gets trapped alone with him. Though Samuel tries to convince him that the parasite is no longer inside of him, guess what? Sam SHOOTS him! OMG!

Bobby, having "of course" brought his cranium drill thing along, gets to work with Rufus on sawing open Samuel's brain while Sam and Dean wait outside. He was their grandpa, after all. Bobby tries to apologize to Rufus for something bad that went down in Omaha years ago, but Rufus is not having it. And it doesn't much matter anyway, because just as the drill/saw thing hits Samuel's head, he goes nuts, because he's not entirely dead! There's some scuffling between the three while Sam and Dean struggle to get inside. Luckily, though, Samuel ends up getting electrocuted, which causes the parasite thing to vacate his body.  Only they didn't see where it went.

How do they figure out that none of them have it in them? By electrocuting each other in turn, of course. That's healthy. Dean, Sam and Rufus all pass the test, but when it's Bobby's turn, he balks. Rufus advances on him, but it turns out he shouldn't have gotten too close, because Bobby whips out a machete and STABS him! Hunter number three down. And too bad, too. Rufus was funny. Sigh.

The boys manage to subdue not-Bobby and duct tape him to a chair to interrogate the creature inside. And the creature inside is more than willing to have a chat. It tells them that the Mother is back, and she's pissed, and she's going to be creating all kinds of new creatures to take over the Earth and outnumber humans. You know, just your typical evil villain plan, really.

But now the boys are faced with a quandary. How do they kill the thing inside Bobby without killing him too? They decide they've got to electrocute him long enough to kill it, and hope that Bobby survives. We're left to wonder through a commercial break, but they tried to fake us out by having the boys standing over a fresh grave once it came back from commercial, but I knew it was just going to be Rufus' grave and that Bobby would be okay. He confesses that Rufus was the one who helped him get started in the hunting life after his wife was possessed, and that they used to be sort of like Sam and Dean until whatever he did in Omaha.

Aaaand that's it for over a month! The preview for the upcoming episodes was so all over the place, too. Oh well.

Random thoughts:

- Dean had one of the biggest smiles we've seen on him in ages when he saw Rufus. Seriously, when was the last time he had a genuine smile like that?

- Every time Dean shouted "It's not in me!" I was reminded of the season two episode Croatoan where that dude was yelling that at Dean. Anyone else?

- I for some reason really loved it when Samuel brought up the fact that Sam was named after him.

- Whoa, Jim Beaver! Super creepy as the parasite worm dude. Did they ADR his voice, or did he just make it sound weird like that?

- I knew they weren't going to actually kill Bobby, because there'd be fan mutiny, but can you imagine if they actually had? I would've been totally flabbergasted, completely taken by surprise. As it is, I'm still surprised at how many people were killed. Though it does seem to be a trend that they kill people in bunches. Ellen and Jo, anyone?

- Was it just me or was Dean a little bit preachy in this episode about family? More than once he was going on and on. Particularly at the end. It just felt a little bit overkill.

Quotes:

"He's our grandfather." - Dean
"Oh, somebody needs a hug." - Rufus

"Why don't you buy me a drink first..." - Dean
"Second date." - Rufus

"Oh yeah, we're goo positive." - Rufus

"Well, I got a dump truck full of bupkis." - Bobby

"Just 'cause you're blood, doesn't make you family." - Dean

"Why do you keep talking about Herpes?" - Sam
"What? I don't. Shut up. Shut up!" - Dean

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