It's a holiday and, per tradition, we clean out Herc's Strong Box:
Angel
In 4.5, titled “Supersymmetry,” Winifred visits her old physics professor and learns more of how she wound up in Pylea. It turns out that she’s not the only gifted physics student who’s found herself the victim of transdimensional transport in recent years.
In addition, Angel learns from a comic-book geek that his adventures haven’t exactly been flying under the radar. “There’s whole forums on you in the chatrooms, man. But who knew you actually, like, existed.” Wesley, meanwhile, continues to operate well apart from Angel Investigations.
Birds of Prey
The big news is that parts of the pilot are getting reshot, and not just because Mia Sara has replaced Sherilyn Fenn as the season-one “big bad.” There’s a new clocktower set, and some of the scenes between leads Barbara Gordon and Helena Kyle have been reshot, reportedly to add more humor to the mix and make the two lead birds seem less adversarial.
An upcoming episode, likely the third, is titled “Prey For The Hunter.” We’ll discover that Helena frequents a secret “speakeasy” where superpowered metahumans gather for cocktails. It’s even got a bartender, presumably not Mr. Freeze, who can put ice in drinks by just thinking about it. The guy who runs it, Helena’s high-school pal Gibson, has the superhuman ability to remember with vivid detail everything that’s ever happened to him.
Most interestingly, when commenting on the speakeasy’s “metahuman only” policy, Helena reminds Gibson (who requires no reminding): “I’m half meta, Gibson. The other half is human.” So in this version of the DC Universe, Catwoman had superpowers?
It turns out the Huntress might be investigating a Rogue-like supervillain who can assume the superpowers of others – perhaps by killing them.
Firefly
Details have emerged on the fourth regular episode of “Firefly,” written by “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” scribe Drew Greenberg. Titled “Safe,” it deals with what happens when the Serenity’s supergenius doctor Simon chases after his severely traumatized, supersupergenius sister River and they get separated from the rest of the crew. They’re soon captured and dragged into the woods by backward, superstitious hillbillies who proclaim: “Got ourselves a doctor!”
This episode seems to definitively answer the question, “Is young River Tam in possession of bona fide pyschic powers?”
The rest of the Serenity crew, meanwhile, seek out the help of an Alliance cruiser when the holy man, Book, is badly injured. The ship’s commander seems ready to tell Mal and Zoe to get lost – until a wincing Book unexpectedly hands the Alliance officers a scrap of “electronic paper.” Upon reading it, the Alliance commander orders: “Get this man to the infirmary at once.” The Serenity crew looks on, dumbfounded, as the wounded preacher is spirited away.
Gilmore Girls
Lorelai will be recruited by the Stars Hollow High PTA to give a class career talk. Trouble is, all the high school kids want to talk about is how Lorelai managed to achieve so much success even though she got pregnant at 16 and dropped out of high school. Caught off guard, Lorelai downplays this part of her life, and doesn’t recommend the timing of her pregnancy, but the parents and teachers only hear this: “It’s okay to get pregnant at 16 and drop out of high school.” Before the young innkeeper is done with her presentation, parents and teachers alike look ready to set fire to her.
As a bonus, we learn that Rory’s pal Lane has joined a rock band, but there are creative differences. The kids are forced to play Clash songs very quietly as a condition of getting to use Sophie’s Music Store as a rehearsal space. It’s all part of an episode called “One’s Got Class and the Other One Dyes.”
Smallville
In an upcoming episode titled “Nocturne,” likely the sixth episode of the second season, Martha Kent will take a job as executive assistant to Lionel Luthor, now blind thanks to the mishap that befell him at the end of last season. It turns out to be bad timing.
A kid named Byron was the subject of drug trials set up by LuthorCorp eight years ago. Because Byron turns into a superstrong freak every time he ventures into daylight, his parents decided long ago to confine him to a locked basement cell. But Byron just discovered a way out of the cell, and decides to pay a vengeful visit to Old Man Luthor.
In other "Smallville" news, we're told that "Red," the red kryptonite episode we reported on last week, was written by Jeph Loeb, the comic book scribe who penned "Superman For All Seasons." This is not the first brush Loeb has had with filmed entertainment: in the mid-1980s, he penned the movies "Teen Wolf" and "Burglar," as well as the 1994 Famke Janssen TV-movie "Model by Day," with writing partner Matthew Weisman.
24
The Los Angeles Times on Saturday covered last week’s sold-out Museum of Television and Radio event featuring the cast and creators of “24.” No big news emerged with regard to what we’ll be seeing this fall (though it was confirmed that both Nina Myers and Sherry Palmer will reappear at some point this season, and that the second season takes place 16 or 17 months after the first).
Series masterminds Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran were more forthcoming about we didn’t – and won’t – see. They reveal that Fox Entertainment President Gail Berman "almost hung up" during the conference call in which they pitched the idea of killing off pregnant Teri Bauer in the first season’s final minutes.
The creators also revealed that they actually penned the first of planned a series of “stand alone” season-two episodes that broke with the show’s established format – but later abandoned it.
Read the whole Los Angeles Times story here.
