Monday night TV

Trailer Park Boys: What In The @#*% Happened To Our Trailer Park? and Jim Lahey Is A Drunk Bastard
Highlights include: Ricky's knock-knock jokes ("Knock-knock" "Who's there?" "Get the fuck out of here!"); Jim Lahey's touching reunion with Randy, his assistant trailer park supervisor and secret lover; and Freedom 35, a plan whereby Ricky and Julian will raise a mammoth amount of dope and sell it to the prison guards, who'll distribute it to prisons across Canada, thus making enough money for them to retire from crime. This show is so brilliant.

X-Files: Young At Heart aka The One With The Salamander Hand
Not TXF's strongest outing by any means. But it was vintage self-absorbed Mulder, angsting over a mistake he made years ago which claimed the lives of an agent and a truck driver. We're told that Mulder has never forgiven himself, but we wonder just how Mulder can shoe-horn in any more guilt feelings. Maybe he has a schedule.

Highlights include: Reggie Purdue, Mulder's former partner (who dies, of course -- Mulder makes a mental note to fit that guilt in on Saturday afternoons); the near-obscene phone calls of the Mulder-obsessed villain; truly weird vocal music; a cello recital; Scully.

X-Files: E.B.E.
Ah, a great ep. There's an extraterrestrial biological entity out there and Mulder has to find it. This really moved the series forward while keeping Mulder and Scully standing still. I have a great love for episodes that tease and taunt them and take them right back to where they started, proof-wise, but leave them sadder and wiser, knowledge-wise.

Highlights include: Deep Throat and the shark tank talk; the first appearance of the Lone Gunmen (oh, Frohike!); Mulder and Scully's elaborate road trip; Vancouver.

Much of our X-Files watching is taken up with either sexual innuendo about Mulder and Scully or whining about how the show sucked when they moved it to LA.

Buffy: Helpless
The only man a girl can count on is her daddy. God, this episode is wrenching. On Buffy's eighteenth birthday, she learns the hardest lesson of all: you can't trust anybody. First, her dad bails on the Ice Capades. Then there's this archaic Council tradition -- the Cruciamentem -- whereby the Slayer is temporarily drained of her powers and locked in with a vampire.

It's heartrending to watch Giles betray Buffy by secretly drugging her, watching her disintegrate, and then, when he reveals this to her, face her entirely reasonable rejection. Their relationship can never be the same. And while Buffy needs to learn that Giles is fallible, this is a hell of a way to do it.

There were these scenes with Buffy and Angel where they talk about Buffy's last birthday and I thought: shouldn't they be awkwardly not mentioning that? You know, the birthday where they had sex and then Angel went evil and spent the rest of the school year killing people? (Hmm, I imagine Angel's guilt schedule is even fuller than Mulder's. He must have a yearly plan rather than a weekly one.)

The vampire in this ep is très cool -- the same actor who played the demon Rak (sp?) later on. He was a psycho murdering headcase before he was made and he's got to take medication to be able to function. Frank Black should have been hunting this vampire, not Buffy.

I love TV!

Church and state

To wax political, or perhaps patriotic for a moment, I was heartened by this article in the Globe and Mail.

The federal government will not water down legislation allowing same-sex marriage, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien insisted Tuesday, admitting that he is praying for his soul but has to act on behalf of all Canadians.

"We want to legalize the union of homosexuals," he said after a meeting of his cabinet, which has shown signs of the dissent reflected in the wider Liberal caucus.

He said that he has heard accusations from Roman Catholic leaders that he risks eternal damnation but feels that the division between church and state is necessary and that he must act in the best interests of all Canadians, not just his fellow Catholics.

Now I don't know just how devout a Catholic Chrétien is, but his public statement that his faith is separate from his role as our leader makes me proud.

Yay Canada!