Sons Of Anarchy S02 E07 Overview

The Sons of Anarchy are imprisoned after raiding a church and must seek protection as the prison is stacked with white supremacists who intend to kill them. Meanwhile, Gemma works on getting bail for their release and ATF Agent June Stahl, a past enemy of the club, comes back to town. In return for protection, Clay has a member get pimped out to set up an untouchable inmate to be killed and Opie set up a lady snitch for drug charges. Opie’s mother gives him his children just as has to do the job, so Gemma takes care of them. The untouchable inmate is taken care of successfully, but a member gets stabbed right after by the white supremacists. Opie goes to a porn actress he knows to get drugs from her dealer, and he gets them and places them in the snitches car, but the cop he sends to bust the snitch gets shot by her instead. Agent Stahl pays a visit to Clay and Jax in prison to try and get them give up their IRA partners for immunity, and even riles Clay into brawling with Jax. In the end, neither Clay nor Jax accept her proposal and end up being released because Gemma convinced a generous benefactor to post bail. The episode ends with club members heading to the club house while Jax goes in another direction, signaling the rift between Jax, Clay, and the club members.

Destination Truth: A Paranormal Reality Show That Can Laugh At Itself

There are many reality shows currently on television but few have combined the fun of hunting monsters and ghosts with a travel show. That is what you get when you watch Destination Truth, a Sy-Fy original series. In it the host Josh Gates travels around the world to find proof of some local monster legends, or that is the obligatory ‘serious’ premise for the show. The fact is this show in all of its high ambitions is more about how different people around the world create and maintain myths. Whether it is in Tai Land or deep in the jungles of Africa the first thing Josh and his crew look for is people. The people provide the story and the camera crew goes out and tries to find it, even if it is a giant raping bat. That is right in one episode. This crew of monster hunters came across a story of a giant bat creature that raped a man in the night, or so the story went. As unlikely as it is that these intrepid adventurers will ever find a Yeti or Sea monster does not seem to matter. It’s all about the journey, and with the mostly funny, sometimes snarky comments made by Josh, the host/producer of the show, the entertainment is always there.

In some more serious supernatural shows where they look for things that any rational person would dismiss, you find the source of the entertainment. Making comments about the nonsense that you are seeing on the screen. ‘Maybe that noise you heard was the wind?’ or ‘Isn’t it more likely that you are seeing dust particles on your cameras then some disembodied spirit?’. Moments like this are filled in for the most part by the host of Destination Truth. And what is better TV watching? Seeing a bunch of people lurk around a small ‘hunted’ inn somewhere in nowhere USA or watching a group of people running around a jungle in the middle of Africa looking for an Ape Man, which even the investigators’ would be surprised to find. However, some of the better episodes of Destination Truth do actually revolve around looking for ghosts… but they are looking for ghosts. The thing is, the crew of Destination Truth does not seem to have the nerves of steel that other ghost hunters’ do that have a TV show. During one of their investigations’ that the Truth-ers were on, the team members took turns staying inside of a shack where paranormal activity was said to have taken place. That did not last long though, at the height of the investigation one of the male members of the team when girlishly screaming from the spooky shack after hearing what could best be described as… a noise, albeit a loud one. Also, during the search for a giant anaconda, yes like the one from the movie Anaconda, one of the crew members has a bit of a melt down over his fear of snakes. He begins to tell a story about some childhood trauma revolving around snakes only to be interrupted by the host of the show, where Josh the host said that because of the childhood trauma ‘you now dress as a snake and fight crime’. Or the time the crew was in Africa and tried to talk a local land owner into not sacrificing a chicken to appease the spirits that live in his woods. Luckily, the chicken did not die that night, but it is in these situations that the best parts of the show are revealed. While other pseudo-investigatory shows try and legitimize themselves through seriousness, Destination Truth in its own way has found a solid middle ground where they can have an adventure and look for something they will never find, but in the end entertainment is still had.

Essentially, Destination Truth has what many other paranormal realty shows lack, simplicity and adventure. Other shows such as UFO Hunter, Ghost Hunters and even Monster Hunters (all of these shows really exist) fall short in terms of entertainment. They become dull and some of the investigations are conducted in an unprofessional manner. This unprofessional behavior would be fine if the cast of the show itself were not so serious… they are looking for space ships and boogiemen, how serious can you be when conducting such an investigation? Destination Truth may have its occasional dull episodes, for the most part though it’s entertaining. Even though the other shows mentioned like to focus on particular areas the crew, ghosts or monsters and UFOs, Destination Truth takes on both, ghouls and monsters alike and investigate them in a more interesting way than the shows that have made those particular things the focus of their shows. It is hard to put your finger on what makes Destination Truth better than other paranormal shows but one thing is for certain it is one of the best shows on the Sy-Fy channel, partly because of the lightheartedness of the show and of course the wild locations that the crew visits.

SGU The First Episodes | Thoughts and Highlights and Low Points

Our introduction to the new Stargate crew consists of three episodes that make up the pilot, all entitled Air. Air part one takes place on the Icarus base and earth. Part two takes place mainly on the ancient ship Destiny and part three is where the meat of the story is laid bare. In the show Civilians and Military people are collected for an important mission on another planet. On it there is a power source that can engage the ninth chevron on the Stargate, which takes a Stargate traveler to a location never before discovered. The story unfolds in a fractured manner for the first two parts with the scenes switching between past and present, possibly to hide the fact that what is going on is rather dull. After the Icarus base is populated with its characters it is not long until they have to rush through the Stargate and onto the ancient ship Destiny. About 80 people make it through the Stargate onto the ship, and from then on the show turns into one about survival. The rest of part two is taken up by the pressing matter of air abroad the ship or lack there of, (this issue persists through the third episode as well). All of the ancient systems have been taxed beyond their designed life span and have begun to break down. Most importantly the air filters are poisoning the atmosphere due to corrosion. With time running out, the new crew of the Destiny has to make some tough choices costing them a crew member. In a lackluster moment where a California politician makes the ultimate sacrifice, locking himself into an area of the ship which is the main cause of air lose on the ship. Maybe they had Arnold in mind when they wrote that scene.
What separates this show from the former Stargate shows, SG1 and SGA is that there was almost no action in the pilot episode. In both of these former shows the pilot sort of set the tone for what highlights are to come. However, in SGU’s pilot the action is trivial and consists of a battle between the Icarus base and a Stargate Command ship in orbit fighting off some sort of random enemy attacking above the base. Later, in the third part of the pilot, members of the crew travel to a desert world where they need to find material to fix their Air problem. This is where the show starts to get interesting. During this mission to the desert planet which looked amazing, the ‘away team’ fights about almost every decision that is made and there is even a bit of a mutiny ending in someone being shot in the arm while trying to go through the Stargate. Meanwhile on board the ship, two crew members trade places with other people back on Earth by using these crazy little ancient stones; that allow you to do such a thing. Then a revelation, it seems that by having this technology to trade places the writers of the show have created a story telling device that will allow for characters who should not be able to interact with the Destiny crew to take over another persons body and engaged with the crew. This is a great idea, this way there can be a number of people who can come to this lost ship and visit with the crew simply by using one of these little magic stones.

There are few highlights in these two episodes. The character that plays the gamer turned
ancient technical consultant was the least boring followed closely by Rush, the crazy scientist. The rest of the characters that populate the show are quite transparent but have some Lost like connections that are sure to be revealed over the season. But who cares? What this show is trying to do is combine Battlestar Galactica with Stargate. What made Battlestar Galactic so good though was that the actors were engaging and the story was fascinating; the end of the human race and all of the drama that comes with it. That is what BSG was all about. SGU reminds me of Star Trek Voyager, there is little urgency and the drama seems to fall flat when it is supposed to be at its height. In the end, only time will tell if this new addition to the syfy universe will amount to anything more than a run of the mill space ship show.

Highlights:

§ Here is a fun fact. Something that separates this show from the other ones is a sex scene to make it more gritty and mature and like Battlestar Galactica.

§ One member of the team is recruited for being able to crack an ancient code that was planted in an online game similar to World of Warcraft. Is anyone else thinking Starfighter right now?

§ Lou Diamond Philips ends up not being dead and will make periodic returns to the Destiny in someone else’s body.

§ The incorporation of a floating camera that is used both as a way to check what is on the other side of an unknown Stargate Address and as a new way to shoot the show itself, through floating camera ball angles.

§ Fun Fact: For the two hour premier we learn that the Destiny is an ancient ship that began its journey in the Milky Way only to progress unmanned trough an unknown amount of others. This ship followed another unmanned ship that creates Stargates and plants them onto recently located planets. Other features of this ship are: it has many areas that are partly exposed to space and it stops at the previously mentioned newly located plants for twelve hours stints.

The Low Points:

The shows pace is slower than that of the older SG shows. Making it hard to get too excited about watching the next installment.

The attempts at tension leaves the viewer simply board.

It comes off as a poor man’s version of Battlestar Galactica.

Did not get to see Lou Diamond Philips die, because he is still alive in the show .

Before seeing the pilot we here at Keep Up TV Tome had a few unfounded and a few rightfully assumed plot points that we thought we ascertained from the clips offered in the middle of the summer as a sort of tease.
1) We were under the impression that the Icarus base was powered by the sun. Wrong. It was powered by an unstable planetary core and that is why the bases’ team has to flee to Destiny because the planet is going to explode.
2) We thought that Lou Diamond Philips was going to die tragically saving either the Destiny or fighting for the Icarus base. Didn’t happen, he just kind of disappeared after the firefight with the hostile ships.
3) It was not the testing of the ninth chevron that made the planet explode it just kind of blew up.

Sons of Anarchy | Season Two | Episode Three Recap

Main Plot:
The White Supremacists have come to the town of Charming and they brought meth. More accurately, the leader of the White Supremacist who masks his agenda in a nice suit in his yet to be opened cigar shop has provided the funds to the local Nords; another white power group that has a history of cooking meth in and around Charming. The ‘No Drugs in Charming’ position of the SOA is in part why they are tolerated and some what praised in the town among the locals. The club then goes to work in nipping the meth problem in the bud, by first interrogating the dealer who set up shop out side of the town’s mill. After a short and painful encounter with the SOA the dealer tells them where the cook house is. In true form, the SOA assemble in a military style assault of the Nords’ Meth house, resulting in a bloodless encounter but ending in a boom.
Subplot(s):
Gemma and Clay: Gemma is still dealing with her rape. Tensions mount with Clay and Gemma. Because Clay is still unaware of the attack, he is beginning to lose his patience with Gemma, who he thinks is just shaken from a car accident.

Jax and Doctor Tera: Terra worries about about porn actress after Jax, and Gemma suggest a throw down to claim her territory. Instead, Terra just has her way with him in front of her in a public bathroom.

Opie: During the raid on the Nords’ Opie nearly blows himself up with the meth house in a risky manner of setting the charges. A similar thing happened during a firefight with the Mayans earlier in the season where Opie tried taking on the Mayans in a kind of kamikaze run at the other gang members.

The Adult Film Industry in Charming: The newly acquired partnership between the SOA and a local adult film production company starts to get rocky when Clay gives one of his guys, Bobby A.K.A. Elvis (impersonator), the bookkeeper position for the production company. It turns out that Lou-Anne, owner of the production company has been keeping two books in order to keep the SOA from digging to deeply into her pockets. Bobby lets Luanne know that he is going to have to bring this up in a Club meeting and Luanne, the classy woman that she is, reminds Bobby, in hope of clemency, what her specialty was while she still worked in front of the camera… in the clearest way possible.
Note: The latest adult film to come out of the new partnership between the SOA and Luanne’s production company wrapped during this episode. The fictional adult film was a wink and a nod to a popular AMC show, Mad Men. During the shooting of this fictional adult film, one adult film actors addressing the other a Mr. Draper, along with the 50’s era set and costumes it was clearly referring to Mad Men.

The would-be Sheriff Hale and the White Supremacists: With lines being drawn between White Hate and the SOA in Charming the club concocts a plan to see where Deputy Sheriff Hale’s loyalties lie. Before the SOA blew up the meth house they gave the law a chance to do its job. Jax approached Deputy Hale and informed him of the meth house’s location asking him to check it out. If the Deputy did nothing then he is in concert with White Hate; if he raids the house then he is still uncompromised. Deputy Hale shows up at the cook house and has an informative confrontation with the Nord’s local leader (Skinner from the X-Files). The Skin-Man hands the Deputy a coupon for the grand opening of a new cigar shop opening in downtown Charming, the one owned by Ethan Zobelle (White Collar + White Hate = Ethan Zobelle). This is news to the Deputy and he has a meeting with Zobelle about the use of meth to increase his control over the town. In the end though, Deputy Hale becomes complicit and allows Zobelle to continue his meth venture in order to bring down the SOA once and for all. All that Hale did though is affirm to the SOA that he can not be trusted and is in concert with the White Supremacists.

FlashForward Pilot Review

A great concept can’t save this lacklustre version of Lost. FlashForward has been the most anticipate series of fall 2009. Critics have been buzzing about the pilot episode for a while now, and they have proclaimed it the new Lost. Some people may expect that mean it’s as good as Lost, or the pilot episode was as surprisingly as Lost was when it surprisingly debuted with a great pilot and lots of followers. But when you see the first episode of FlashForward, you realize it’s not the new Lost, it was just meant to copy it. The very first scene is a flat out copy of Lost’s. Stunned people awaken in a daze to find a catastrophe around them and rush to help those in trouble. I thought: very familiar, if only they had a plane crash, a polar bear, and a dinosaur (there was a dinosaur in that first episode of Lost, believe that). Then there is the mystery of the flashforward, a world-wide event where every person on the planet blacks out for 2 minutes and 17 second, during which they see their futures, set at the same date and time, April 29th, 2010 10pm. . When it’s all over, a group of people, FBI agents in this case, investigate this mystery. On top of that, there is a strange person, probably a part of a larger group, who is captured on camera awake during the event and curiously calm about it. So there is this mysterious event, a similar opener, a mysterious group they also call the others. You see by the end of the episode, you realize that Flash forward was meant to have all the elements of Lost that made it popular, but their version falls short. It has the details but lacks the essence, so to say.

So what is wrong with it, you might ask? Well, for a show centered on a mystery, there is nothing that makes you excited about solving it. It’s not very exciting to watch people discuss calmly what’s happening in the episode instead of doing something, which is what a TV series is supposed to be all about, if I’m not mistaken. There is a feeling that the producers of this show failed to make the show as interesting as it could be with such a great concept. When something as big as a global black out happens, the importance of that needs to be shown. However, what they did produce was, let’s just say, anti-climactic. Basically, they show various people pass out during their activities and wake to find the inevitable chaos and harm a global blackout would obviously cause. It turned out a little tamer than the sublime chaos there should be in such an extreme circumstance.

FlashForward Pilot Episode Recap

The episode opens with the lead character (officer Mark Benford) awaking in his crashed upside down vehicle. He exits to find chaos in the street, every car stopped or crashed, fires, burning buildings, injured people, and everyone experiencing the same wonder and surprise. Cut to the beginning of the day, before the events of the opening sequence. The lead and the rest of the main cast begin the day. Bedford says goodbye to his wife and daughter as he heads off, greeting the family babysitter on his way out. Another man stands on the dock of a beach that seems intent on killing himself with a visible gun. Bedford attends his AA meeting while listening to another member speak of his daughter who was killed in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Bedford’s the babysitter fools around with her boyfriend. Bedford and his partner tail a suspected terrorist on her way to supposedly detonate a dirty bomb in the capital. A car chase ensues during which the agents’ car slides toward an oncoming truck, but suddenly they and everyone on the planet blackout. A multitude of fragmented and hazy flashes appear depicting each person’s future. At this point, time catches up to the point of the intro scene.

Awaking from the blackout, one man finds himself stuck hanging precariously from atop of a power pole, the babysitter finds herself on the ground and rushes to see if Bedford’s daughter is fine only to find her saying all good days are gone, and (as it was shown before) Bedford emerges from his flipped car. Bedford has a vision of himself looking at a board of leads and drinking right before a group with guns storms in with the seeming intent to kill him.

Upon finding that his family is fine, Bedford returns to FBI headquarters and has a meeting with his peers. They discuss what happened to them and reveal the visions they saw, which they conclude are visions of the future which lasted exactly 2 minutes and 17 seconds and were set at the same date and time, six months from now, April 29th, 2010 10pm. (And it happened to every person on the planet, or so they think.) Each character contemplates the meaning of what they saw in their vision. Bedford thinks his vision relates to whoever was behind the event and believes it is the key to finding them. His partner saw nothing during his blackout and believes he must be dead in the future. Bedford then meets with his sponsor to discuss his apparent future drinking and death and how much he does not want that to happen; however, his sponsor goes on to tell him he saw himself finding his presumed dead daughter and says he wishes his future will come true. Our protagonist returns home to wife. She tells him that her vision was her with another man. He tells her what they saw is not necessarily going to happen. Later he goes outside and is visited by his daughter, who gives him a homemade bracelet to wear (the very same bracelet he saw himself wearing in his vision). Meanwhile, Demetri (partner of Bedford’s character) is back at their office looking at videos of the blackout and finds one where there is a man awake walking through a stadium of unconscious people.

Sons of Anarchy: Recap of Season 2 Episode 2

After the rape and assault of Gemma by the white supremacists in the previous episode, she is found by the sheriff but refuses to go to a hospital because then people will know what happened to her. Instead they go to Jax’s girl friend for treatment. Back at the SOA club house, passed out members and strippers are strewn about the bar (of course, this is a regular morning). Clay is called by the Mayan leader looking for some guns to take out the One-Niners for killing a member (the one Clay actually had killed), but he refuses because he says there is too much heat from the ATF. You see, Jax posed the body of the Mayans’ murdered man showing the One-Niners sign, instead of the SOA A that was originally carved into the gang members chest by a SOA member looking for some payback. Jax did all of this without the rest of the clubs knowledge or approval. Meanwhile, the sheriff crashing Gemma’s car to help cover up her assault with a car accident. Later as Clay sells some guns to the One-Niners to “mend some fences”, the sheriff tells him of Gemma’s “car accident”, so the entire club heads to the hospital to see her. At the same time, Gemma goes to the hospital under the pretences of bringing Jax’s baby there for tests. The sheriff then tells her about the car crash he staged as a cover up and that the entire club is waiting for her. She tells him that they can never know about what really happened to her because it was only meant to hurt Clay and Jax and will have failed if she keeps it secret.


At the hospital, the sheriff tells the Sons of Anarchy that the ATF raided Luanne’s studio and ceased her assets (she is the local porn producer, wife of a jailed SAMCRO member, and friend to Gemma). Jax goes to handle it while Clay stays with Gemma, and the white supremacists realize that she did not talk when they see Clay playing with the baby at the hospital. Jax finds out that a porn director named Georgie (Tom Arnold) is bullying Luanne’s actors into working for him and stealing her business, so Jax tells him back off or there will be trouble. But Georgie, as an act of defiance against the warning of the SOA, beats up one of Luanne’s girls, so Jax and the gang thrash Georgie and his people with bats until he “convinces” Georgie to back off. SAMCRO then decides to become partners with Luanne: she gets protection from the club and the use of their warehouse as a studio, and they get 50 percent of the business. While Clay is doing a gun drop with the One-Niners, they are ambushed by the Mayans. One member of SAMCRO gets shot in the shoulder and the Mayans get away with the guns. It is revealed to the audience that the Mayans were tipped off by the leader of the white supremacists. Back at the club house, Clay confronts Jax and warns him that he will lose the respect of his peers if he does things for himself instead of the club. It ends with Jax sitting on the roof with his mother, smoking up.

Highlights Of The Episode

War was not waged with the Supremacists. It might have been expect after Gemma was brutally attacked by the White Supremacists that Clay and Jax would retaliate with bloody results. But keeping with the shows character of not being predictable, Gemma stays silent for the good of Clay, Jax, and SAMCRO.

SAMCRO gets into the adult film industry. It seems like the club is going to find new work every episode until the heat from the ATF dies down. The latest just happens to be in the adult film industry. I guess they are trying to class up this show.

The Neo-Nazi’s get hypocritical. Although the Neo-Nazi’s/White Supremacists came to the town and threatened SAMCRO because they wanted to stop them from dealings with the non-white gangs, the leader secretly helped the Mayans steal weapons from the Sons of Anarchy, and seem to have a secret business relationship. Neo-Nazi’s, cant you even stick to your word?
Clay knocks Jax off his high horse. Jax has always seemed like the guy who wants to achieve the ideal of the Sons of Anarchy that the club forgot about. But in his decision to frame the One-Niners for the death of a Mayan member to get back at Clay, Jax actually seems like the petty guy rather than the guy with high ideals. Clay makes the clear cut argument that he always looks out for the well being of the club ahead of himself while Jax did something for the reason of pissing off Clay.

Awesome Quote

Jax holding Georgie down with a bat: “If you so much as send a friendly text to any of Luanne’s girls, your next movie...Conseco does Georgie.”