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marguerite_kruxLife x 2.03. The Business of Miracles.
I love Charlie, I really do, and I watch the show for him- which is unusual for me because usually I find a strong female character to worship and live vicariously through- but he needs to stop being such an ass. His quirkiness, flightiness, his odd habits, the non sequiturs, the meditation mumbo jumbo…all part of his charm. I find it amusing.
That scene where he asked his ex-wife’s husband for permission to sleep with Jennifer? Wrong, wrong, so utterly horribly WRONG. I actually sympathized with the guy when he hauled back and punched Charlie. He had it coming. It’s not that I don’t think Charlie has the right to be a jerk after all he’s been through, I’m just saying it’s not an appealing quality in the show’s main character, the dude we’re supposed to cheer for, you know?
This whole ep sucked, really. The writers wrote badly, people were acting badly, and when these factors coincide, it creates a big fat lot of blah.
* Charlie breaking the dead guy? Stupid, so stupid, it made him look incompetent and immature and I’d think some sort of penalty would be in order for dumbassery of that magnitude.
* I liked Reese confronting her father, but her ‘despair’ and ‘angst’ immediately after sucked like a horrible sucky thing. ‘No, no, no, no’. How hard is it to act that? Yet it came across as painfully contrived. And then when she shuts the door on her hair? It looked like she DELIBERATELY set out to do that- I thought for a moment she was trying to seduce her boss by setting up a damsel-in-distress scene where he had to come rescue her. The acting was so bad I’m not sure whether maybe that WAS her intent. Shahi, you fail, too.
* Speaking of the new boss, where’s the old boss? I liked her. She was funny when she was exasperated with Charlie and putting him in his place. What’s with the demotion? >_<
* The intrigue on whether Jennifer would succumb to Charlie’s charms? GIVE ME A BREAK. I’m so over characters that cheat, for god’s sake.
* Ted needing drugged!Charlie to be his reference. *headdesk* Poor poor Ted. Why did this happen to him? I know he’s the comic relief, but he doesn’t need to be the butt of the joke in such a humiliating fashion.
Otoh, I did like the part where the cleaner gets ‘misplaced evidence’- pills that could save his son’s life. Very heartwarming, that.
And the line of Charlie’s, ‘You two work together, when you have sex, who gets to kill whom?’ Heh. <3
The ickiness of animal rights activists wearing shoes made of people’s skin? So disgusting, it’s rather cool. Those types tend to value animals more than humans, so it makes sense. How Buffalo Bill of them.
One thing nagging at me- secretary chicks #1 and #2 look so very familiar but I can’t place them. I’m thinking the white chick was on another law show, like SVU, maybe? And I keep thinking the black chick was on a show where she had a British accent. It’s driving me nuts. So many little things, gnawing on my brain…
They need to figure out what they’re doing with Rachel and fast. So far, all she’s been good for is lying docilely in Charlie’s arms. What is it with shows and guys carrying chicks in their arms, all manly like? Point to Charlie for carrying her and a conversation at the same time without the slightest evidence of fatigue- Shep, in Echoes, seemed to be breathing hard and worn out by carrying
Life x 2.04- Not For Nothing
The show got its mojo back! I adore this episode, such a damn cool idea- I was baffled and intrigued the whole way through. Also? My wish from the last ep came true! The universe sensed my need and ANSWERED ME. *dances*
‘That was your partner. She says there’s a dead guy. She wants to know if you’d, uh, like to catch who killed him…’
Heh, I love it when a character is so well-developed that you can hear their voice delivering a line when they’re not even present. Ted conveying Reese’s message to Charlie was bursting with her impatience and snarkiness. I could just see her with a pained smile on her face wanting to know if her partner would deign to come to work to get the bad guys in which case he should move his ass right now or if he’s off in his own world doing god-knows-what and she should just get on with it and count him out. And being the aggressive female that she is, he better not come near her for a week or she will shoot him where he stands.
I have to say, the fact it took an ENTIRE EPISODE to figure out that the line ‘there were six, there is five, there could just as easily be four’ was a THREAT…*headdesks* Jeez, Ted isn’t that dense, is he? Really?
I like that the conspiracy isn’t over. I like that it’s branched out beyond Jack Reese, that there are other shadowy figures lurking in the background and we don’t know their names or their motives or what they’ll do next. The first season revealed the killer; the second has so far yielded the girl, Rachel- though they NEED TO DO SOMETHING WITH HER- and expanded the conspiracy…it’s all so fascinating right now. I enjoy normal cases but enhancing the eps with Charlie piecing together the cover-up and the framing and all is just icing on the cake. Mmm, cake.
This show has the coolest songs. I love the songs they use.
I didn’t realize at first that it was a psychology experiment *facepalm* and was like, wtf? Why are the guards and prisoners sitting on opposite sides of the corridor? Why aren’t the prisoners in restraints? What’s going on? Wow, they’re so young! And still I didn’t figure it out- even when Reese and Charlie emerged from the ‘prison’ to the school grounds!- til they spelled it out for me. *sighs* As a Psych student, I find the idea of this experiment ultra cool but as that same Psych student, I’d never participate in it myself because I know what people are capable of doing during these things and there’s no way I’d expose myself to that. *shudders* I don’t get mob mentality, how individual identities get subsumed under the group mind and they can be so vicious and destructive and inhuman. Or maybe I do and it would be so easy to slip into and that’s why I make sure I don’t face too much temptation. Better to be alone than lose oneself in a group, right? For some reason, I find my identity always stutters and flickers out when I’m with more than two or three people, it’s depressing how I fade away. Anyway.
Bobby’s kinda funny with his ridiculous gossipy-ness and realization of ‘oh! I need to WORK right now! ‘k, bye then!’ He’s such a teenage girl.
Reese: Freaking gooey head?
Charlie: He was just asking if I was okay. [wtf? Non-sequitur, much?] And I am. This is a crime scene.
Reese: And we are detectives.
Charlie: Then let us detect.
Reese is so cool with her understated sarcasm. Like, she’s in between mocking him and playing along with him just to kickstart him back to normal when he’s a little off his game being in a prison setup. I love that she’s figured out how to handle him.
‘He said he was a soldier, I said, where’s your gun? He said, I don’t got no weapon and I don’t need one…’
Have I mentioned how much I like this show’s songs? The way they relate to the subject matter at hand [missing murder weapon] and they’re so funky and set the mood. 
Office.
It is so lame that there are no cops available to help find out who killed someone because of frakking PARADES. Serious business, much?
YAY BLONDE BOSS CHICK IS BAAACK! THE WRITERS LOVE MEEEE!
Prison.
Reese is really adorable with her whole 'sitting on table' thing. No wonder none of the kids take her seriously, lol. She's all laidback and relaxed and casually cute.
Charlie: You were in the same frat?
Kid: It’s fraternity, whole word, you wouldn’t call your country a- [cut off by Reese]
Me: *dies laughing* Wise guy. Heh. I quite like that snarky little comment. :D
Charlie is so hardcore. I love him and his habit of slamming people into walls. I love that his experience in prisons gives him an edge over Reese because she’s all ‘omg let the kid go, wtf is wrong you?’ and he’s the one keeping a riot from breaking loose by shutting up this kid before he sets the dogs on them.
In retrospect, I find this scene additionally cool because the kid was just playing a part to fit in- the way he speaks to Reese [loud and obnoxious- ‘oh, you know what, sweetie, I’d like you to show my boy the respect he deserves’] here is in contrast to how he behaves later on when they figure out he’s not part of the fraternity, that’s he faked it to give himself an identity because he wanted to belong so badly [meek and defeated- ‘like you said, I’m weak’].
The kids here remind me of my high school class. In this ep, the phrase is ‘there’s us and there’s them’ over and over, rising in volume, stamping, pumping fists, rising to a crescendo where anything could happen once they’ve all tipped over the edge as an entity. My class used the word ‘trob’- a corruption of ‘tribe’ was one explanation, or maybe it was just a random word that meant nothing- as well as ‘Chewbacca’, which I find hysterical because I was picked on for being a Star Trek geek and yet, Star Wars is cool? What? [Though I redeemed myself with an oral presentation on X-files, heh] They’d yell one word over and over, drumming their fists on the table and just freak the hell out of the teacher who could do nothing but sit there til it subsided. I could taste the addictive feeling of power in the face of the authority figure’s helplessness, I wanted to join in because if all of us were together in this, the adults couldn’t control us. But my contrariness kept me apart, lol. I took pleasure in rubbing in their faces how teachers liked me and gave me special privileges. That was way more satisfying.
Campus.
Charlie: I am about three seconds from deciding I just do not like you.
[Kid goes weak and trembly]
I wish I could say that line and scare the crap out of people. Although if being in prison is a pre-req…maybe not so much.
Ugh, Charlie is so sick with his habit of PICKING UP STUFF AND TASTING IT. *grimaces* [Though it’s funny to see how Reese and Bobby bond over their experience as Charlie’s partner, the way they finish each other’s sentences in admonishment of his disgusting behavior] I have to admit, I thought that stain on Bobby’s uniform was more, uh, like what Clarice endured in Silence of the Lambs than tasteless nuti-what that’s used to ‘punish people who already had everything else taken away from them…deprives them of flavor’. I think this is when the professor warden figured out Reese was a prisoner, with his knowledge of prison food.
Davis
New boss: That’s how I know you.
New boss: I know something that dulls the pain…many, many, many strippers.
Henry: Shut the hell up!
New boss: We’re taking a sidebar.
[a little later]
New boss: You think you hurt worse than
New boss: So why don’t you just do it?
Ah, these scenes back at the office warm my heart. I didn’t realize how much I liked
I quite like the new boss now. I thought he was a crude, rude, unsympathetic jerk- then he went to Reese’s aid when she was distressed and now he acts as a therapist to this emotionally deranged cop. There were no bullets in that gun. This whole charade of talking him down was just a way to exorcise his demons, let him confide in someone and get his issues out in the open. I never would have credited the new cop with this sensitivity. Huh. He just won me over.
The professor warden is a dumbass. ‘Oh, let me review the tapes, oh, let me question people, let me be part of your investigation!’. Whatever.
That chick with the belief in cartoons and kittens and random acts of kindness is messing with my head so bad. What is her damage? No one real can be that chirpy and giddy and happy and content in life. Ugh. [And harsh reality breaks on her later when she discovers her bf cheated on her, poor baby] 
The roomie who describes her as being like ‘Hello Kitty ate the Disney Channel and threw it up on that side of the room’ wins my heart. Heh.
Yay for tech-support!Ted! He needs to give up the idea of teaching for a living and go into law enforcement, lol. He can be this show's Garcia!
I want to smack Reese for her dumbassery. 'What is that?' What does it LOOK LIKE, sweetheart? The bloody murder weapon? Wow, who'd've guessed? *headdesk* Between this and Ted's inability to figure out the not-so-veiled threat on the recording, this episode has way exceeded its idiotic quotient.
I like Charlie and Ted double-teaming the professor warden.
‘You studied Charlie’s case so you must know what happened to that guard when he was in there. You must also know that they never found out who did it. sometimes in prison, people get hurt, no one knows how it happened…’
Ted is so squishable and adorable I forget sometime that he is a criminal and can be menacing when he wants, in his own white-collar way.
And Charlie? When he gets that cold intense look in his eyes? Holy crap, I want to run and hide. Ok, not really, maybe just slam my laptop shut because ohhh, menacing.
That professor is one sick bastard for encouraging the kids to break another student. He deserves to spend his life in prison, but- really? He could actually face a penalty that severe? Because KILLING PEOPLE doesn’t get one that sort of sentence all too often.
Charlie at the end, supporting that student killer, offering him a few words of advice…tugs at my heart. ‘Just because you’re in there…you don’t have to be there…you can go somewhere else…’ These moments make me realize that his character quirks are not just there to be cute and funny, there’s something seriously messed up in his head and he’s trying to get through it and do his job and save people but at the same time, it’s got to have an outlet and that’s why he acts so weird and sometimes like a major jerk and I GET IT. Like an epiphany. And I forgive him for the last ep. That line when he was speaking to Jen- ‘he punched me, then you slapped me, maybe we’re even?’ LOL, how can you deny such logic? *squishes him*
I just adore the light and the shade, the moments where he’s endearing and adorable, the moments where the rage and darkness surges to the fore and he gives it form, if only for a second or two. That animal inside him, straining at the leash. Where he can be truly terrifying and you wonder what brings him back down to his mild, charming self. If it will always keep him tethered to reality.
