And So The White Hat Moves Into The White House #Scandal #ABC #TGITAwakens

And So The White Hat Moves Into The White House #Scandal #ABC #TGITAwakens

All pictures courtesy of ABC

Well, the stuff hit the fan or nearly hit the fan... sort of. With Scandal moving ever so close to its winter finale, last night finally put some heat back into the otherwise lackluster couple of weeks.

The latest episode of Scandal (#Scandal) began with the framing device of a treaty or accord or whatever they call it when two countries that have been feuding non-militarily finally come together and open their borders to each other, singing and holding hands as they skip through that yellow-flowered field of love. Holding a dinner for the leaders of the Middle Eastern Muslim country, Cyrus is shocked when they accept Liv instead of shunning her as the president's full-time hoe. As she and the President dine with the leader, his interpreter slyly sneaks a plea for asylum in between the otherwise frivolous banter.

The man wants to come to America at first for reasons unknown other than the fact that the leader has become obsessively violent, killing anyone who so much as breathes incorrectly in his presence. Kept under lock and key by his country's security, Olivia tells him that he better have really good leverage/intel on something dirty his country is doing in order to risk the history-making signing. The intel he gives her is of the nuclear variety, expressing how he knows of a factory where they are making and housing nuclear weapons. Not wanting to risk the treaty, the President says he wants nothing to do with this and hands it off to Liv.

Meanwhile, as she puts her team on figuring out if the coordinates the man gave to this secret site reveal anything worthwhile, she also has to deal with the slow-rise of the aftermath of her releasing her father from prison, or rather, playing a part in his release. Never one to stray too far away from his baby girl, Eli comes to visit her office and expresses a true sense of fear. Someone is trying to kill him and he's afraid they'll succeed. What? The devil's afraid of going to hell? I'm shocked! Dear God, no. Somebody stop him from being killed. What has he done to deserve such a fate!?

Anyway, having compassion for some reason unknown to me, she tells all of her current "men"--Jake, the president--that her father is in danger. Knowing the man's a world-class criminal who has tried to kill them before, of course both men swell with sympathy deep in their hearts for the man. The truth is that the president can't wait to see Eli dead and even sicks Jake on the hunt to find him. Always one step behind, Jake comes too late to the hideaway he tracked Eli to, finding instead the former secret service man that killed the President's son. But apparently Fitz ordered Jake not to kill the man just bring him back in because ever since he's been gettin' sex on the reg' from Liv, he's become a cuddly teddy bear.

Back to the guy seeking asylum, when the team manages to find the listed coordinates on satellite, they do see a building there with huge trucks entering and exiting. A scan for nuclear activity reveals zip! The guy must have lied--anything to get out of his country and to the land of the free. Denying his asylum, Liv focuses her efforts on trying to figure out how to tell Fitz about her father and what she did there. But Huck spots a discrepancy in the satellite pictures over the course of weeks. While tons of trucks come in and out of the facility, the 18-wheelers sitting in the back of the supposed soda facility never move. What does come in and out are the water tankers. Why the need for so much water? To cool mega servers. Turns out the factory is a cover for a cyber warfare division that has been responsible for countless digital attacks on western targets. The guy was partially right.

Running back to the man, Liv finds him with a slit wrist in the bathroom of his hospital room (her team had to poison him just to get him away from his country's own detail). The doctors manage to save his life after which he reveals the reason he wanted asylum. He's gay. And not to stereotype or be insensitive but gays in the Middle East don't fair well no matter how important they are to their leaders.

The day saved, Liv can go back to her place happy, right? Wrong! The side story of finding her father got Cyrus up to his old tricks of manipulating at a doctorate-level and using USADA David to dig through the prison files and figure out who got Eli released. Though Mellie actually did the act, the paperwork somehow points back to Liv. She is then detained and brought to that creepy interrogation cell with the poor lighting and walls that look dungeon-esque.\

Epic Cry Face! 

Now forced to tell Fitz, Liv comes clean about everything in a beautifully artful scene in which none of the dialogue is heard as the song "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" plays in the background. Disgusted, Fitz only needed time to cool off before making another power play of his own and releasing her without charges. But she is released right into the White House, the place she didn't want to be living in because it felt like a cage. Her face telling it all, she is not the least thrilled to be living with her love-of-her-life boyfriend as she watches the servants move all of her clothes into their closet. Smooth move, Fitz. The episode ended on Eli being roped to a chair in a factory and who else but Huck coming to "ask him some questions."

I loved this episode and I will be referring back to it in a few weeks when every show starts going on that long winter/holiday hiatus and the Christmas carols start playing and nothing is on to watch, but for now I'll keep my secret but interesting topic under wraps.

What do you think? Should Fitz have been so forgiving of Olivia so quickly? Do you like how he made the silent power play to get what he wants, knowing that she can't make a real objection to her new digs? Do you think Huck will actually kill Eli or will the writers/producers find a way to keep their big villain around? Let me know in the comments below (hint: click the no comments button if you see no comments).

Check out my new comedy novel Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend. #AhStalking

If you’re looking for a scare check #AFuriousWind, #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or  #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic, check out #TheWriter. The full first season is out now NOW exclusively on Amazon. If you like fast action crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.

Until next time, "will you still love me... in the morning? 'Wait, you're still gonna be here in the morning? Because I kinda like to sleep alone."

P.S. For all you comedy fans out there, Amy Schumer's Trainwreck is out for the Holiday season. I thought it was an OK comedy, but nothing to write home about. But hey, if you like it, good for you.

P.P.S. After a late-night viewing of NBC's The Blacklist, I might have to make that my DVRRewind as I see the Provocateurs are hard at work trying to fluster people. The same guy seeking asylum on Scandal was also doing the exact same thing on The Blacklist in the same time slot. Blowing your mind yet?

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Halloween Is The Grimm-est Holiday #Grimm #NBC

Halloween Is The Grimm-est Holiday #Grimm #NBC

All pictures courtesy of NBC 

  

NBC's Grimm (#Grimm) is back after last year's craziest season ever. With so much going on last season, it was difficult to figure out where they'd go with the story after exploding a few plots into oblivion. For those that can't remember what happened, let's recap.

Nick, for a while at the beginning of last season, wasn't a Grimm anymore. He lost his powers due to a spell cast on him by Adalind who also slept with him while disguised with her witch powers to be his wife Juliette. Through another potion, Juliette was able to literally sex the Grimm back into Nick but not without turning into a Hexenbeast herself. Trubel, the other Grimm girl, came back into town talking about some secret organization and the royals who control all of these monsters. Adalind wound up pregnant with Nick's baby, Juliette hated him for that even though it was explained countless times that it wasn't his fault, everyone was searching for Adalind's first child that Nick's mom was supposed to be keeping safe and the royals sent multiple guards to find the baby as the baby was also a royal by blood. The season ended with the baby being taken, Nick's mom's head being cut off and gifted in a box to him a la Seven, the Asian cop finally finding out about Nick, Juliette losing her mind and burning down Nick's trailer with all the Grimm history inside, and Trubel shooting Juliette with a bow and arrow twice in the back to stop her from killing Nick.

Fast forward to this season, as Nick is lamenting his wife's dying breath, some other organization shows up and starts taking people. The same group that took Trubel before and informed her of the shadow organization that wanted to know if she was a Grimm or not (still haven't a clue about what they do), some FBI lady came in with the group and instructed them to take everyone. The next day Nick awakes to find Trubel gone, his dying wife Juliette gone, his mother's head-in-a-box gone and the house cleaned. Not only is he confused about why they'd take all the ladies and lady heads, but he can't remember what happened after they came into the room.

The Grimm Identity (the name of this season's premiere episode) played similar to the Blindspot or Bourne Identity--what they were going for. The whole episode sees Nick running around from his police station with his partners and the captain, to Monroe, to the FBI field office where the lady works. No one knows if they should believe him or not and the only one who does know what happened that night is the lady who isn't too forthcoming with information. Like any law-abiding cop would do, he kidnaps the woman and demands to know where she took Trubel.

Meanwhile, his partner Hank and his captain along with the Asian cop all question his story. They do some digging to find that the woman does work for the FBI and they find where she lives for Nick. While they're trying to help him out in as correct of a way as possible, he pushes forward like a bull, stomping from one place to the next and making himself look like a fool. In the midst of all of this back and forth of "is Nick telling the truth or making it up" (he doesn't halfway know himself), Adalind finally births their baby boy. Again, just like any man who was tricked into having sex with one of his mortal enemies who has tried to kill him and the people around him multiple times before, Nick is ecstatic about the birth. They've potentially just given life to a HexenGrimm (#HexenGrimm).

Oddly enough, though the episode moves exceedingly fast, very little actually happens.

After Nick kidnaps and holds hostage the FBI woman, she tells Hank and the others that she has a meeting with her people scheduled for later that night. She and Nick go to the meeting only to find it already ambushed by another group. Her people are dead and the new monsters have a knack for leaving huge calling cards that resemble something Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' villain The Shredder might leave. Four slash marks across the side of the empty warehouse where they get the best of the FBI agent and they are off into the night, leaving Nick the clue to what comes next. With her dying breath, the agent says horsemen and tells Nick that it's four (or at least I think that's what she said. It could have been Norsemen too). I'm assuming this refers to the book of Revelation's four horsemen prophecy that signals the end of days (everyone loves mixing in Biblical references these days).

What any of this means, we currently don't know. But from the season preview, we know that Trubel will return at some point and that war is coming. I think there's also potential for Juliette to re-surface somehow too, but I don't know if the actress has moved on or not as she was always underutilized. I have a feeling the show might be better without her.

What do you think? Do you watch Grimm? How did you like last night's premiere episode? Do you think that Nick will get a new love interest in either Adalind or Trubel or someone else? And what do you think happened that night the group took Trubel? Let me know in the comments below (hint: click the no comments button if you see no comments).

Check out my new comedy novel Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend. #AhStalking

If you’re looking for Halloween scares check #AFuriousWind, #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or  #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic, check out #TheWriter. The full first season is OUT NOW exclusively on Amazon. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right side.

Until next time, “Just because I am a wolf doesn't make me a big bad wolf."

P.S. That is probably from a movie or a show or something having to do with wolves, but I can't remember if it is or not. It might not be from anything but it is now. I'll think of something better next time.

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Dark Swan is in the town, there’s some evil goin’ down, The Wicked Witch is wearin’ a frown and, uh... you know, some other rhyming stuff. #OnceUponATime #DarkSwan #PremiereWeek

Dark Swan is in the town, there’s some evil goin’ down, The Wicked Witch is wearin’ a frown and, uh... you know, some other rhyming stuff. #OnceUponATime #DarkSwan #PremiereWeek

All pictures courtesy of ABC.

OK, it’s taken me a while to come down off the Once Upon A Time (#OUAT) high I’ve been on and that’s not counting out the rush that I got from Blood and Oil (get it! Because it’s black gold. Gold rush?) and the mind freaking I got from Quantico (again, I’ll be doing a review of the first three episodes together for new shows but they had to kill the Mormon guy? Really?). No, OUAT made its triumphant return in a big way, and giving us plenty of flair and mysteries to solve for the first half of the season or longer. So let’s rewind the tape and figure out where we left off last.

For viewers that remember (and here’s a refresher post I did last year), we left off with the apprentice—not Donald Trump’s latest chosen celebrity minion but the sorcerer’s—lying in bed after a tussle with the dark one/Rumplestiltskin and the writer along with the other three villains of the season. Rumple didn’t come out of that too well as he was already dying because of the blackness in his own heart finally catching up with him. He subsequently fell into a coma. A little bit of shifting back and forth with Regina caused Emma Swan to have to take on the gravity of the infamous dagger of the Dark One. She was then magically consumed by a dark smoke and disappeared as her name emblazoned onto the blade as the new dark one equal in evil with Rumple. Dun! Dun! Dunnnnnnn!

OK, we all set? That wasn’t everything but it was enough of a jumping off point. In the land of fairy tales and make-believe crafted by OUAT, everything has a past, a story by which it came to be what we see it as. The dagger is no different as it was revealed that back in the day it served as the tip of the legendary sword in the stone. That’s right, the magical blade that only the chosen one could touch had its tip broken off before being plunged into the stone, and somehow wound up as the only controlling string to puppet the most malevolent force on the face of the earth. Questions? Hells yeah, but we’ll move on for now.

We found out that Emma wound up in the other realm of the fairy tales, somewhere very near to Camelot but in the middle of the woods. It’s the enchanted forest. Everything is woods. She runs into that redheaded girl from the movie Brave a few years back. Merida or Mereda—don’t really know as I didn’t care much for the movie. Just know that her name sounds like somebody started to say Meredith but then added a duh on the end to make it sound like some cool high school cliquish diss from the late 80s early 90s, which, frankly makes me wanna gag on a spoon but I’m getting off track. She says some stuff about a war amongst the kingdoms, her brothers have been kidnapped, her father’s dead and people don’t like it when women rule in her land. Then she grabs hold of this magical wisp thing that will show her the way to whatever her heart most desires if she whispers into it what she wants at what looks like a makeshift Stonehenge (it was in the Brave movie. Don’t worry about it). Problem is, you can only use this thing once and Emma needed to use it to find Merlin to free her from the curse of being the dark one. Still keeping up? Good.

As Emma weighs her options of if to kill the girl and steal the blue wish smoke or not, back in Storybrooke her clan of goody-two-shoes followers plot on how to find her and help her. Not as good as they think they are, Hook (her love) and her son Henry (she has a thing for guy’s with names that start with H) plot to make the wicked witch of the west (yeah, Dorothy’s witch) open a portal to another realm they can Stargate into and end up back in fairy tale land. Foolishly, they let her escape where she gets the wand given to the do-gooders by the apprentice to open the realm, because opening portals to other worlds isn’t easy.

Tricking the wicked witch, they get her to open the portal, re-capture her, jump through and stop Emma from making her second terrible mistake as the dark one as she decided to kill redhead. Regina the evil queen who is no longer evil nor a queen along with Snow White and Prince Charming, a few dwarves granny Robin Hood—everybody, really—wind up invited to Camelot when King Arthur rides up on his horse and goes all Bill and Ted talking about some prophecy Merlin made and how they had been waiting for them to arrive. Merlin there? Nope. And so the quest begins, right? You’re wrong again. That’s two for two. As would be expected with any show that is clearly already confusing enough, they jumped ahead six weeks to reveal the gang had returned to Storybrooke wearing Camelot garb and Emma had embraced her role as dark one. She showed up all Neo from the Matrix-like with tightly bunned hair and lines like, “I’m the dark one.” Honestly, it made me a little hot. It’s also 75 degrees in my house right now so... yeah.

Loaded episode? You bet, buddy! And I didn’t even mention the fact that Regina had charge of Emma’s dagger for two seconds, Snow White and Charming took the baby with them into the forest (because that’s the perfect place for a baby), Emma’s dark side manifests itself as Rumple to make her look crazy talking to herself and Black Lancelot is back (#BlackLancelot). It’s going to be a crazy season and just like everything else I get excited for, I can’t wait. If only the Super Blood Moon had been this satisfying rather than the cloudy sky blocking it out for me. Sigh!

What did you think? Did you expect the six week jump? Are you excited to see Dark Swan? Do you think she should have killed Mere-duh? And what’s with that whole Excalibur’s tip being the dagger’s blade thing? Mind-bottling, right? My mind was literally put into a bottle. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

As always, check out my books on Amazon (if you’re looking for Halloween scares check #AFuriousWind, #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or #ThePowerOfTen). For those interested in something a little more dramatic, check out #TheWriter. The final episode of season one of The Writer is OUT NOW. Ahh! That’s right, all 15 episodes are out now available exclusively on Amazon. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to my blog.

Until next time, don’t hate Emma. As we all learned from Joe on Bachelor In Paradise, Villain’s gotta Vill, man. Villain’s gotta Vill. ”

P.S. Alright, admittedly I used up just about all of my cleverness quota for the week on that Empire recap, but that sign-off totally works here. I’ll keep working on it.

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