mercoledì 18 ottobre 2017

The closer season 1

missing ep 1-pilot

The fun thing about Brenda is how she sings ‘thank youuuu’ to dismiss a person or an argument :-p I like that, I’d like to learn that trick/skill :-p
Fav ep: 12

2-About face
Brenda couldn’t find the right road to go to the crime scene, so she follows the first police car she sees :-p Heather, a model, is dead, and everyone thinks she slipped in the shower but Brenda thinks it’s a homocide because she can’t find the woman’s razor.
Lt Provenza finds her city map in her bag so Sgt Gabriel offers to drive her but she refuses, so she arrives late for the autopsy. She calls her ‘FBI friend’ for help :-p
She gets angry when Pope lets Sanchez start interviewing the husband without her. Brenda and captain Taylor complain to Pope: she’s unhappy about her squad, so Taylor says he’ll give her one of his best man :p Flynn, and he knows Brenda already (from ep 1??)
Brenda and Gabriel can’t talk to the husband anymore because he’s an actor protected by his lawyers, so they go where Heather used to go: hairdresser, boutique, make up.. all very expensive, and also the restaurant where they meet the actor’s new girl. 
Brenda dines with Fritz, tells him she can’t afford to always look like that :-p and also complains to him about how can women fall for that man’s act, and he tells her that it’s exactly what happened to her : “ain’t that what you did with Will Pope? You had an affair with him in Washington, told you he loved you, wanted to divorce his wife, marry you, then he dumped you, left his wife for somebody else, now you’re in LA and you’re working for him”. 
Fritz is not drinking anymore and helps her by giving her her test results much faster. 
Flynn is openly against her; she tells him to arrest the movie star so Flynn and Taylor go talking to Pope who sides with them.. only Sgt Gabriel informs her and follows her and helps her.
She does not believe that the actor killed his wife anymore, but needs people to believe it and also needs him to give her the names of the women who thought they’d live happily ever after with him if his wife was out of the picture. Brenda arrests the hairdresser and plays her easily. 
Ending: Brenda packs up all the expensive things she’s going to return, but keeps the cream because her dad on the phone tells her she looked younger on tv, and keeps the red dress because her birthday is next month so he’ll send her some money :-p well, she did look good in that dress :-p
3-The big picture
Brenda is looking for a body at the morgue and has Gabriel help her. She ‘accuses’ Taylor’s team of having done nothing with the case: a prostitute whose client book recently popped up making her case more important :-/
Fritz comes to her house early so she hides everything she has around in drawers and wardrobes :-p She also has little sweets everywhere :-p
A likely suspect, Nick, has an alibi, he was with the FBI at the moment :-/  ( I kinda liked the way the guy talked. Not what he said, just the way the actor talked)
Brenda’s usually tough but now she hugs Zoya’s friend Nadja to comfort her :-)
The FBI comes in to take everything they have on Zoya, but they make no word about the other victims, so Brenda keeps investigating :-)
The murderer is killed very soon because of Brenda, but she doesn’t care about him. She wants to buy the pretty house where the girl was killed. 
4-Show yourself
Provenza calls her ‘Scarlet O’Hara’ :-p
Three gang members are shot in a park by a sniper. A colonel says his son is the shooter, that he wants to kill the gang members that killed his wife some time before. Brenda asks for captain Taylor’s help, and Pope is angry at her for not telling him about the colonel: he accuses her of becoming all weak in front of a military figure like her father was. 
Brenda calls Fritz to help her follow the colonel and she hides in his car. He makes a joke about that not being what he had in mind when he imagined her in his back seat :-p
At least she runs with running shoes and not heels!! Good!
At the end they stop the shooter but someone shoots him, maybe the colonel, but who was it? Where’s the colonel now? I missed something here. Was the shooter really his son? Why did he kill him?  Well, the guy had another gun so it was not going to end well anyway.
5-Flashpoint
A doctor is killed, a psychiatrist. Brenda is late because she had her phone on mute and didn’t hear it (as it always happens in tv-shows! *rolling-eyes* How absurd and stupid, ringtones are useful!)
We learn that Brenda went through an Ethics Enquiry in Atlanta. Flynn speaks about her to Chief Pope, and Pope asks him to keep the information on the inquiry between the two of them, but Flynn tells all the others. He also mails another article on Brenda to a friend reporter: “police captain caught in sex scandal”, and the reporter writes a new article “charges of misconduct resurface against new LAPD Deputy Chief”. She’s angry about that. Obviously. Gabriel is upset too, he knows very well that Flynn is behind it; Pope tells her he has no idea on how it happened, but then he complaints to Flynn about splitting the squad and leaking to the press…
The cofounder and director of a drug company is John DeLancie.
Brenda forgot she had a date with Fritz, but when he starts saying that he doesn’t want to pressure her and that they can just be friends she kisses him to clear things up :-p but then Gabriel comes to pick her up for work. 
The doctor’s colleague killed him because he had found out he was sleeping with a sixteen-year-old girl. Brenda wears a wire to bust him and then she forgets she has it still on while she talks to Fritz about her past scandal. Provenza listens to every word: her crazy ex-husband reported her to her superiors and she got investigated for sex scandal but the charges were dropped. They start kissing but fortunately she realizes she still has a wire and takes it off :-p
Flynn was a real jerk here.
6-Fantasy date
Carla, daughter of a former DA, is murdered. Investigating her home, Brenda is assaulted; she tries to fight and finally she manages to get hold of her weapon so she can stop him. 
The man had seen an online ad from Carla asking for S&M rape. Another guy did rape her, thinking she wanted it, but afterwards she attacked him, they fought and she died. She fought back because she never posted anything of the sort, it was her ex-boyfriend, he put it online, and it was real shit listening to that guy saying “it was only supposed to be rape..” it made me sick, how would he like it I wonder huh???
After the attack Brenda calls Fritz without really saying anything but he goes to her immediately and then spends the night on the couch.
At the end, she calls him to have breakfast together: he names a place and she asks for “really good directions” :lol: she’s as bad as me in this :-p
7-You are here
Brenda and Fritz are kissing in his car when she gets a work call: a judge is dead. His autistic son is missing, and later he’s found in the trunk of a car. He keeps saying a series of numbers and the words “where am I?” . When Brenda touches him he gives her a black eye. After this, when she describes his character and temper, Flynn makes a joke : “does he have a Georgian accent?” which was rather funny :lol: 
She’s not yet told anyone about her and Fritz, but later she will announce it from an interrogation room, while handing him the high-jacker/murderer. 
She takes Keith in for a while; his numbers were latitude and longitude of where he was taken to. The judge’s ex-wife had paid a man who had already threatened him, to kill him because he took away her son from her. 
8-Batter up
Taylor’s case is given to Brenda because of politics and pressure. A man walked into a gay bar with his boyfriend in his arms, both covered in blood. The poor guy was robbed and beaten to death. Brenda comes to the crime scene with a sick cat, that is not even her cat, just living in her house :-p and she gives it to an officer to take it to the vet. It turns out that it wasn’t sick, just very pregnant: six kittens :-D
Flynn gives an important piece of information to Taylor instead of Brenda, so while she’s explaining how carefully she plans her arrests Taylor goes and arrests the suspect Blade. He admits to robbing gay people but not to murder. Soon everybody learns what Andy did :-/
Fritz has turned up tickets to a game to go out with Brenda but she has to go to see Pope for a drink, and he gives her earrings. Brenda tells him the case is not closed yet, so Pope gives her suspect to Taylor who’s very happy to get him for murder too, even taking advantage of his conditions to get a forced confession. Blade is an addict and is feeling very sick and clearly he would say anything to get some help. While looking for evidence, Provenza and Buzz find Blade an alibi for the murder. 
Solution: the usual, old motives love&money: he was cheating on his boyfriend and wanted to leave him; his boyfriend killed him so he wouldn’t leave him and wouldn’t take with him half his assets.
At the end there’s a face-to-face Brenda/Taylor “it’s not the Department you’ve been treating like crap, it’s me” & “I don’t want an apology from you, I want an acknowledgement of my rank, I want an understanding that you are beneath me in the chain of command and I want you to be officially warned that if you make any further attempt to undermine my investigations Chief Pope will recommend an inquiry by Internal Affairs, which is I believe the established procedure when investigating an insubordinate officer” and Pope at that: “I see nothing improper in that request” at which Taylor makes such a face!! like he was being betrayed, and a moment later we learn why when he tells Pope he “got the confession that you ordered me to get!” & Pope: “on the other hand we may have accomplished more than I expected” because the squad is more close now :-)
There are seven kittens now in Brenda’s house, and Fritz comes to her door and says he understands how difficult it is to give the kittens away because “they’re so cute” :-) Fritz is lovely, Pope is a jerk. I so don’t like him (the character of course. I do like the actor)
9-Good housekeeping
A young girl is found dead in a river. Now, I like the doc (James Avery) but I have to disagree with him: he said “no sign of torture” after he said that she had been raped!!! and that she was a virgin before that!! THAT is torture, people, That is TORTURE!
A boy identifies a suspect but when they go to him he shoots himself. This ‘registered sex offender’ only took pictures of flowers and stuff and did not murder the poor girl. The boy who accused him escapes to Mexico with his mother, while his father confesses to the murder to give him time to get away. Brenda has Fritz take her to Mexico, and tells the little shit how long mom and dad will stay in prison for helping him escape but he’s not too touched. He confesses thinking he’s got nothing to be afraid of; he refuses to leave, very arrogantly, so she shows her last card: Martha was Mexican, not American, and Mexicans “don’t take too kindly to their citizens being murdered no matter where in the world it happens” so he’ll be tried there for his crime, and she replies “it’s too late” when he shouts to take him with her. The little shit who was so arrogant before now is calling for his mom, all frightened!
Brenda is feeling very low so Fritz suggests staying the night there. Brenda asks detective Gabriel to take care of the cats at her house :-p Fritz was right, they’re so cute :-D
Brenda has Flynn transferred to robbery/homicide 
10-The butler did it
Brenda drives to the crime scene but can’t park and hits a police car. Since nobody can quickly figure out the gate’s code, she climbs up helping herself with the patrol car:p she stands on it and climbs over. “I don’t climb” says Provenza :-p
Inside the house they find a hanged man. He was Albert the butler, and a defendant on a murder case trial. Albert was accused of murdering a woman, Angelina. The DA comes to Brenda’s house to talk to her about the case: she’s washing dishes, the kitchen is a mess, she doesn’t know where to put the dishes :p she’s worse than I am :p He helps her dry the dishes while he speaks to her about the case. It seems suicide, as if Albert hanged himself, but he doesn’t believe it because he believes he was innocent, so Brenda has the doctor call it a homicide. 
She has the rich owners of the house arrested, so she can talk to them :p Daniels arrests the sister for possession, an undercover Julio arrests Devlin for solicitation, while DA Yates arrested Dennis. 
Devlin keeps hitting on Julio during the interview, and given his temper he acted very well :-) 
“Uncle James” the family lawyer provides answers and alibis for the brothers and Brenda lets them go, remaining just with him. He took Diana’s drugs, he could move money on the accounts, he knew the gate’s code. Angelina was their stepmother and she wanted to fire him. He killed both Angelina and Albert. 
Dennis has the face to hit on Brenda afterwards :-/
Very sorry it wasn’t him, after seeing the pictures of his ex-girlfriend, beaten to death :-/ Despicable guy.
11-L.A. woman
Gabriel is driving Brenda to the crime scene, and she’s being her usual annoying self :-p and so Gabriel buys her sunglasses :-D
An Iranian guy and his driver were murdered, and the wife (Marina Sirtis) says the Government is behind it… her son won’t let her speak to Fritz because women can’t talk to men :-/ (how absurd, are they so afraid of women? thinking and speaking freely? ) but at least she insists on talking to Brenda.  
Two FBI men approach “we’re not gonna get in anybody’s way, trust me” - “I stopped believing boys who said trust me when I was 16” :-p She asks Provenza to escort them outside the crime scene but they won’t move, and give him the smallest chest-to-chest push, and Provenza puts up a little ‘pretending’ : he sort of falls backwards saying he broke something, and Brenda: “I am shocked! that you would assault an old man without provocation!” :-p
The FBI threatens to stop any cooperation, damaging six of Taylor’s cases, so Pope makes peace with a sort of joined-operation. Fritz is the liaison officer :-p While she investigates the murder he’s actually trying to retrieve the missing two million dollars that the FBI gave the guy. (they both say out loud that they have strong feelings for each other :-D nice)
Brenda wants Gabriel to check ‘a lot’ of cars, and tells him to ask for someone in Taylor’s team: Flynn of course. Flynn then tries to cause turmoil between Gabriel and Brenda :-p but later she calls him “one of the best cop she’s ever worked with” during the interview with the wife. She and dr Graham were not stranger witnesses, he had treated her daughter’s ashma and they had started an affair. Her husband wanted to send her back to Iran, a sort of prison she couldn’t accept anymore. They were in it together, the doctor shoot them to free her, to save her. Brenda would have been a bit more sympathetic if they hadn’t also killed the innocent bodyguard. 
The FBI takes over and arrests them both. 
At the end, Brenda and Fritz go out together, to dinner. 
12-Fatal retraction
A man was convicted three years ago for burning to death a woman, Lisa, who is found dead of overdose now. Brenda works that old case again now, to find out who she was, the girl that was killed back then and believed to be Lisa. She asks Fritz’s help in identifying the victim, and they finally identify her. Flynn and the shrink worked her case too, when she was raped, and when she disappeared they thought she had killed herself because of it.
Brenda keeps eating sweets :-D She has an interview with Crowley, the creep that was convicted for her murder, and since she’s just his type she tries to use that while talking to him but he’s not falling for that.  Crowley is set free, and Taylor keeps complaining about her to Pope, for treating Flynn and everyone who worked the case the first time like they were the criminals. Once free, Crowley starts intimidating Flynn and the doctors that testified against him, then he shows up at Brenda’s house, on the porch. 
When they start suspecting that the poor girl (Samantha Jones) really did commit suicide and that ‘someone’ (meaning Flynn) might have planted evidence to frame Crowley who had walked free from another murder trial, Taylor suggests Internal Affairs should look into it, but Brenda wants to talk to him first. He tells her “you must be so happy now, can’t wait to see me ripped apart”; she asks him if he planted Lisa’s driver license, tampering with the evidence to get a promotion. He says no and she believes him. She’s never easy to deal with but honestly it’s him who’s always given her a hard time!
It turns out that the psychiatrist killed Samantha! and planted the evidence. 
After this ‘betrayal’ Flynn applies to “permanent transfer to her squad” :-)
This was a good episode, I liked it :-D
13-Standards and practices
A man is found dead, naked in his little pool. He was a film producer. His abused wife’s father  killed him and his wife helped him with the alibi. He confesses to have done it all by himself. 
Provenza mimicking Brenda’s accent and way of speaking was hilarious :lol:
Pope talks to Taylor about a complaint against Brenda he found on his desk, but Taylor doesn’t take it back. “unbecoming conduct” :-/ When the squad learns about it they turn to look at Flynn :lol: but he says he had thought about it time ago, but he backed out. 
Gabriel tells Taylor that he’ll say to Internal Affairs that he thinks “the charges against her are small-minded, petty and malicious” and that he is “ashamed of whoever may have filed them”.
Pope tells Brenda that she could just apologize to the DA’s office and the FBI and promise to be more cooperative, and it would all be fine. She asks Gabriel if she’s been a difficult boss :lol: (where to start? :-P still, not a bad one) than she tells the squad they’re all good people and she liked working with them. She talks about it to Fritz (she still hasn’t told her parents about him) and he tells her that if she wants to resign he has some money put away and they could move in together to cut expenses… 
 Brenda sort-of-apologizes, but in a sort of disagreeable way :-p sort of ‘I’m I had to point out the mess you made’… she couldn’t help herself, she doesn’t believe she did wrong.
Every single member of her squad files resignation papers if she’s transferred or put on leave because of the “anonymous” complaint. Pope offers Taylor a promotion to make it all go away, only one rank below Brenda. :-/

Brenda throws away their resignation papers in front of them; she’s most surprised about Lt Flynn’s paper, saying he never said a nice thing to her ever, so he tells her “you have really nice legs” :lol: then she smiles, she thanks them all, then she goes into her office and eats a little cake from her drawer :-p

Ghost whisperer season 4

(missing . episode 19)

I like Melinda’s look here, and  that sometimes we even see her in jeans or anyway something simple :-)  I’d like this to be her new trend, I like it better. 

1-Firestarter
Eli is a man who died in a fire for a few instants, but was saved and since then he has the gift of hearing ghosts. He doesn’t realize it until Melinda tells him that the girl he’s been talking to while his eyes were covered actually died in the fire. This is all new for him so Melinda helps him. 
The scenes when she sends away all the ghosts that were talking to him all at once by shouting loudly was very funny :lol: one of my favourite scenes of GW ever! :lol:
Eli was Fiona’s therapist, and at first they believe that she started the fire but she was covering for a foster-brother or something. Eli and Fiona had fallen for each other, but she was his patient so he broke it off and she went home crying so the guy saw her and started the fire to scare him off. 
When he also starts a fire at the archives with Mel trapped in there, a ghost helps her find shelter and tells her that there’s a price for what she does. 
At the end of the episode Payne leaves, and Melinda is worried and cries, and tells him that he’s one of her best friends.. but I guess she’s something different for him…  :-/
2-Big chills
Melinda is invited to a funeral of a guy she knew in school. Eli and Melinda work the case together.
Ten years ago, Lucas was driving a bit drunk, and with friends Grace and Ryan they killed a man… somehow; I didn’t understand clearly what they did from the scene I watched. Only that when he died they didn’t call anyone. The guy went off road by himself , still Ryan didn’t want to say anything to protect the three of them. He felt guilty because Lucas had been drinking after seeing him kiss Grace. Ryan and Grace confess to the dead man’s widow and I guess to the police too, who knows. 
Melinda and Jim are trying to have a baby :-)   She’s also worried because of what that ghost said, about there being a price for what she does, touching death (it almost sounded like she could cause death to someone she touches).
3- Ghost in the machine
Eli talks to Melinda as if to a therapist :-p Ned fixed her computer and uses it to play an online game. He creates an avatar for her too, just for fun, to show her how it’s done,and she says “I would never wear my hair like that” and then “could you make me taller?” :lol: that was nice :lol:
Then Melinda draws a ghost out of the game :p To interact with him she touches the computer and becomes part of the game in her vision. Felix smashes her around in anger, until she reacts and kicks him a bit :-p 
The guy played by Raphael Sbarge had been dead a few days and he wanted to protect his daughter. There’s an online predator that might have targeted her, so Melinda enters the game again in a sort of Trinity-style-look, but can’t reach him. The perv convinces the girl to enter the car, but the ghost interferes with the car computer and saves her. 
Now, I understand that the actors can’t look at the ‘ghost’ directly because they’re not supposed to see them, but still at least Eli should look in the right direction since he can hear them! Anyway, he had a cop that owed him a favor so he called her and got her help. They had been  looking for this guy for a year. Eli tells her that he got the information from a ghost but she doesn’t believe him.
Melinda tells him to stop telling people about it, which is fun given the fact that she tells everyone each and every episode :-p
( Did people really die playing video-games? Seriously? I don’t think so, it’s just a movie thing I’m sure. They said here that people played for so long they didn’t even stop to drink or eat or sleep, which is kind of impossible)
4-Save our souls
Melinda and Jim go on a three-day cruise, and the ship’s full of ghosts :-p but Melinda only works the case of a girl that kisses a man on his honeymoon leaving him tired all the time. Many ghosts ask her help in relaying messages to relatives, so she calls Eli and has the ghosts talk to him on the phone :-p
The ship’s owner is played by William R. Moses :-) He had fallen in love with this girl Lorelei in Rio then he got on the ship and never saw her again. She secretly got on board too, but she saw him kissing another girl and ran away upset; running away she had an accident and died, and he never knew she was there. He wasn’t cheating, he was saying goodbye to the fiancée his family wanted him to marry; they broke it off that same night. 
A man who has now written a historical book on the ship was part of the crew in the 70s and he met Lorelei when she was a stowaway.
At the end Melinda and Jim wonder if she might be pregnant because she feels sick.
5-Bloodline
Melinda is not pregnant. At the end she asks Jim if he would consider adoption, in case they could not have a baby of their own, but Jim tells her that all she needs is to take some hormones and they’ll be able to have their own baby.
Ned was playing tennis with a friend when an old friend of hers collapses and dies later at the hospital. Diana was only 16; Olivia and Diana were switched at birth, and Diana only found out after her death. The woman who raised Diana always knew, and years ago she tried to tell her friend Lisa but she wouldn’t listen; Lisa got angry and moved away with Olivia. Lisa was afraid that both girls would have left her, choosing her friend over her. They make peace of course.
6-Imaginary friends and enemies
Jim and Melinda are staying at some friends’ house because they are getting married; Trish’s daughter Natalie is seeing and talking to a ghost and at first Melinda thinks it might be her dead father, but it’s a boy, the same boy Trish used to play with when she was little. She met him when he was alive, but then he drown because of a cruel joke of some kids. Owen now wants to help Trish because she was nice to him, she was his friend. Trish’s fiancée was lying to her, Hunter’s not even his real name. They break up and everybody thinks Hunter’s gone, but Owen tells Melinda he’s not gone at all. She tries to warn Jim but he left his phone in the car with no sound :-/ (they always do that in the movies, it makes me crazy). Melinda then calls detective Neely for help; Hunter tries to kill Jim and they fight, and even after hearing shots fired, Neely does not go in, instead he shoots from outside! :-/ Result, he shot Jim! not Hunter! 
Hunter is arrested of course, but really, what help was that??Jim would have done better if left by himself. It ends with a sad scene: Melinda doesn’t leave Jim’s bedside at the hospital, waiting for him to wake up, and she thinks he has when she sees him talking to her, but actually it’s his ghost!! She cries, repeating “not you, not you!!”
7-Threshold
It’s been two days since Jim died and she can’t see him or any other ghosts now. Grief is blocking her gift. Another ghost is breaking things and scaring her. Jim keeps talking to her but she doesn’t see him or hear him. At his funeral they all dance to commemorate him and she finally sees him. He doesn’t want to cross over, he wants to stay with her, and he’s also worried about the ghost of the girl that’s been haunting her, so he asks Eli’s help. Melinda says she doesn’t care about ghosts crossing over now, but the ghost-girl comes again and says “I’m the reason your husband’s dead” !
And in a way she is, poor girl. Her stepfather was detective Neely, and he went back to work right after her death (she died of anorexia). Now it’s a little more understandable what happened!
After talking to Neely the girl goes into the light, but Jim doesn’t. 
Later on, they see there’s been an accident, a guy is dead and his soul crosses over right away, so Jim looks at Melinda and then enters his body. Melinda yells No! but then she runs to him saying “Jim, you’re back!” but he replies “do I know you?”
8-Heart and soul
Sam Lucas is the name of the man who died, but now it’s also Jim’s name. Sam doesn’t remember anybody, not Melinda or Sam’s sister Jordan..  Melinda speaks about what Jim did (moving into Sam’s vacant body) to Eli, to Ned, but doesn’t go on and on about it with Delia because as always she has a problem with this. At some point she gets really angry and raises her voice with her because Delia keeps thinking/saying that this is just denial, it’s not real, and they kind of end their friendship because of it, but then later she sees Sam where Jim used to meet Ned and she finally sees him as Jim, and she brings him back to Melinda, telling her how lucky she is to have a second chance with her one true love. 
Sam’s parents want to take him home with them, 800 miles away, but he escapes and goes to Melinda’s shop to see her, eat something together and talk. He moves his stuff into her garage, to stay and help her around. Since she’s so kind to him Sam thinks they had an affair and tells her that he doesn’t want to be the same person he was, the kind of man who has an affair with a married woman, and she can’t tell him the whole truth, but tells him she’d had never cheated on her husband! True. 
The ghost of the driver who caused the accident , who feels guilty about it, saw Sam going into the light and Jim ‘stealing’ his body and he haunts them now. He hears when she speaks to Sam’s parents and “talk some sense into them”; later they apologize to Jordan and she goes home with them. Now he understands that she’s helping people, so he talks with her and crosses over.
9-Pieces of you
Sam has little flashbacks of Jim’s shooting. 
Melinda sees a dead girl near a wishing well. The little girl had wished for her brother to get hurt because he was mean to her, but then she fell off trying to take her wish back from the well. 
Sam wished for a piece of his life back and he finds a ring that Sam bought and now he wonders who did he buy it for…
10-Ball & chain
Melinda is very curious about Sam’s ring obviously, but he keeps dodging her questions and she’s getting crazy not knowing.
Melinda meets the ghost of Tammy at the market, she doesn’t even realize she’s dead. She disappeared two years ago and her ‘husband’ remarried. Tammy, real name Sara, didn’t leave her husband and children like everyone believed when she disappeared, she was kidnapped. Roger locked her up for a long time then started caring after her, and she couldn’t leave him because he threatened her children. After a while she was under his complete control, a sort of Stockholm Syndrome they say, but I don’t agree. She was brainwashed to believe that she had to obey him, but she never cared for him. She kept doing it because the thought she had no choice, not because she wanted to help him. 
Eventually Roger killed her, when he thought he was losing his power over her, and found another woman, Elizabeth, and he’s done the same thing to her. Melinda finds Elizabeth locked up under the house, but Roger comes back and tries to kill Melinda for freeing her, but Elizabeth helps her. The police finally arrest him so Elizabeth can go back to her family, while Tammy says her last goodbye to hers. 
11-Life on the line
Delia wants to sell a big house ( so I guess she’s still doing that job too, other than working with/for Melinda) and no surprise-there is a ghost there. A child had died there, an accident with the lawnmower : his mother (Sharon Lawrence) blames her husband completely, because he let the child drive the lawnmower and Josh died. The father actually covered the truth up, because he was not at all responsible, his older son Devon was with Josh, not him. Devon was driving the lawnmower and allowed Josh to stay behind him, while their father was in the house. When Devon called 911, his father took action and covered it up, trying to protect his son or maybe his wife from such a news. Still, that lie has been killing Devon ever since, and it also took the family apart, since the parents are about to divorce. Devon tries to kill himself, but luckily Sam is there and is able to help him thanks to Jim’s memories. Josh talks to them and brings the family together again.  
Jim/Sam finds a email that Sam had sent to Nicole, saying he was ready to marry her. Sam/Jim says he’ll leave to go talk to this Nicole, the one person that really knows him, he thinks! 
12-This joint’s haunted
Delia hosts a dinner party for two old school friends (one played by Bitty ‘Sharona’ Schram) and invites Eli for support :-p Delia gets mad at Ned, believing he threw a party and smoked pot, and her house is now haunted by the ghost of a girl that died when she was in school. Back then both Angie and Delia were party girls, and when Angie died Delia changed. Eli helps Angie explain to Delia, and to her own parents. He’s really sweet :-)
Sam wants to go and see Nicole, and Melinda wants to go with him because she wants him to “remember Jim”, so she convinces him to take her along for a road trip. Obviously she meets many ghosts on this trip - two easily crossed over, one gets Sam in a fight (it’s not safe to repeat foreign words if you don’t know what they mean) . Sam starts remembering things about Jim, and seeing Melinda doing random acts of kindness (she can’t tell him she’s helping ghosts), and when they get home he tries to ask her out, but is interrupted when Nicole shows up…
13-Body of water
Nicole asks Melinda to stay at her house with her to be closer to Sam and of course she says yes. Eli takes her mind off it with a case. A lake with lots, lots of ghosts. During a search many bodies are found at the bottom of this lake. The funeral home owner had money troubles, so he saved the money of the cremations by throwing the bodies in the lake. 
Sam goes to his session with Eli with Nicole, and almost kisses her, but Eli wants him to remember someone else rather than Nicole. Sam remembers wanting to have kids, but he thinks he wanted them with Nicole, of course. Nicole talks to Melinda, tells her she doesn’t want to let him go. You know, Nicole is actually very nice, which was a surprise, and she likes this new Sam, and her last talk with Melinda makes her think they’re going away together, but then Nicole hugs her, walks out, gets in the car, says “be happy” to Sam, and drives away alone!
14-Slow burn
Sam talks to Eli about him having feelings for Melinda, you know, like: that he barely knows her but also it feels like he’s known her a long time, and doesn’t know where to even start now. 
Melinda talks to Delia about having been married to Jim for years and how can she start it all over again now, falling in love with Jim/Sam…
Melinda has to chaperon Ned at a school dance and asks Sam to go too, and he likes the idea, to avoid the awkwardness of the first date, and they go together and dance and laugh and it’s lovely until she sees a ghost. Deborah’s ghost interrupts Melinda’s almost-kiss with Sam.
Deborah, dead lawyer and mother, wanted to help troubled kids, and with that excuse she cared for Tim, the son she had secretly given away for adoption. Tim had found out but kept the secret to protect his ‘sister’. To help them Melinda misses her date with Sam. He thinks it’s an excuse because she’s not ready, so she finally kisses him, and they go out together :-) and hold hands :-)
15-Greek tragedy
Eli gives Melinda a copy of the book he wrote. She has another date with Sam but a ghost comes.
Melinda sees a girl with a bag over her head, and thinks at first that it’s Courtney, that she died during a stupid sisterhood initiation, but it was Rebecca, dead 40 years now. 
Courtney has been alone in the woods all night, and at first Rebecca plans on letting her die to make this ritual stop, once and for all, but Melinda convinces her to help Courtney, the same way she tried to help another girl the night she died. 
Sam can’t understand why Melinda lies to him so much. He saw her on tv, on the news when Courtney was found, but evidently she didn’t notice the cameras because she lied to Sam about where she was and what she was doing. She’s so bad at keeping secrets that it’s unbelievable!
16-Ghost busted
Delia tells Melinda to talk to Sam about her seeing ghosts, and adds that she always tells everyone she can see them :-p Before she can do it, they meet “Linus Van Horn, Supernatural Paranormal Investigator” and Sam says he’s so sure ghosts don’t exists, them he talks to Eli about all the bodies that Melinda seems to find. Melinda lies to him all the time, and so Eli tells him that she’s undercover for the Feds :-p then Melinda tells him the truth in front of Linus and Eli. 
Linus finds ghosts everywhere with his machines because the dead father of his girlfriend was following him to help him. Melinda has them all talk to each other and then crosses him over. 
Sam simply tells her he needs time to get used to the idea, then hugs her.
17-Delusions of Grandview
Sam tells Melinda that he wants to believe her because he’s crazy about her :-) so he sticks around and is with her when she sees three ghosts at a playground. The school was once a sanitarium. Sam tries to help her and to understand: he sees her talking to a ghost, goes with her in the tunnels, sees her shaking while she has a vision of a ‘ghost’ being electrocuted. When it seems it is too much for him, Melinda tells him he has to try “to get back what he lost”, then tells him that Sam is gone, that his memories belong to a ghost who went into Sam’s body, and that he’s Jim. Sam says: “I’m not Jim, I’m not your husband” and leaves. 
Melinda helps the ghosts of the patients, but the ghost of the bad doctor stays. After the electroshock some patients could see the ghost of this doctor Bird who told them not to go into the light and kept them afraid. 
Sam tells her that it’s all a fantasy, that she needs help. After that she tells him that she can’t take it anymore, and to get his things and leave.
18-Leap of faith
Melinda tells Delia that the real Jim had faith in her, but not Sam. Sam actually thinks that Melinda put Jim’s memories in his head, but then he remembers something that Jim did as a surprise for her, that she knew nothing about.
Dr Bird is haunting Melinda. When she gets trapped, Bird calls Eli who meets Sam. Eli can’t really swim well, so Sam takes his place to go save her. Being near another near-death-experience brings his memory back. Now he remembers everything about Jim but nothing about Sam. Melinda shows him his new face and explains what happened.
Bird crosses over too, he wasn’t evil, just very afraid. 
19-

20-Stage fright
A soap-opera crew wants to film in Grandview and in Melinda’s store. The ghost of a guy that was shot and killed on stage shows up at the show conference. He keeps interfering with the show shootings, because he wants his old friends to make things right. His death was his own fault, but he wants them to stop lying to each other. The director lied to the soap’s lead actor so he wouldn’t go away and get back with his old girlfriend, she tried to control his life. The actors were afraid of following their true dreams. 
The nicest scene was when Melinda and Jim were watching the show together :-)
The end: Melinda is at the hospital for her injured wrist, and it turns out she’s pregnant, and the baby’s father is Jim, real Jim, before he died, not Sam (meaning not Sam’s body).
21-Cursed
Since Emma’s whole family died, she went to live with her dad’s sister Lucy and her daughter Drew. Her family has been trapped in a dollhouse, and Drew has been talking to them. They were scared for Emma, believing Lucy had killed them for the money and planned now to kill Emma too, but she didn’t kill anyone. She was scared of them, but she cares for Emma and Drew. 
Melinda was going crazy because she believed she had lost her wedding ring, but Sam had took it to have it engraved with the word ‘forever’. Then he proposes to her. 
22-Endless love
Teenage Serena is haunted by the ghost of a friend. She was into vampires, and he says he wants her to be with him. He leads her to her death, but then he tells Melinda where to find her when she confronts him saying that if he really loved her he wouldn’t want her to die. Serena felt lonely and thought he understood her. They save her, and the ghost goes away. 
Eli asked the help of a teacher friend, Zoe, about the ‘vampire thing’.
23-The book of changes
Eli sees Zoe having lunch with a man and he’s jealous. They broke up some time ago but he has trouble being just friends. 
One night he goes to her house and they talk through the door; she wants him to go but he goes in anyway, and finds her dead. (!!!)
There’s a book that was stolen from the library; one of the Watchers tells Eli to keep the book safe and that Melinda can’t touch it: it’s the book of changes of the title. Inside the book, Eli finds his own name, plus the names of Andrea and Zoe and Jim and Sam, and the phrase “she helps the listener join the dead” and he thinks he’s going to die. Melinda insists on seeing it. She touches it: those are the names of people that died and came back, one way or another (… how did Andrea and Zoe come back? in what way?)
There’s also Melinda’s date, her future date of death. Well, day and month, but no year. 
The vision of a girl without face is scaring Melinda, telling her “you can’t save her”, and she freaks out thinking she won’t be able to protect her baby, but Jim tells her that they’re having a boy. Carl the watcher tells her that her baby will be able to do much more than her. 
Melinda’s mom hired a guy to plan a big wedding for her :-/ he doesn’t listen to her at all :-/ 

 At the end, Sam takes Melinda, Delia and Eli to the street where Melinda and Jim first met, where a priest is waiting for them, and they get married right there and then.

martedì 3 ottobre 2017

Norman: the moderate rise and tragic fall of a New York fixer

Weeell, it was interesting…kind of boring, let’s face it, but sort of interesting too… it could have been a good movie had they known the characters better… I explain, the movie follows Norman everywhere but there is no outside comment, so we see what he does but have nobody to tell us why he does it, because we only hear what he says but have no idea what he’s thinking about. The reason I often feel so much about fictional characters is because I can get to know them; about them I know much more than what I could ever gather about a real person from what I see, because of a fictional character I can know much more, what they think or feel, when they lie and when they suffer and basically what they really are… the main problem with this movie is that we don’t get to fully understand Norman, and the little we see… well, it’s not totally compelling.
We see that Norman is a middle-aged man who lies his way around trying to close deals but failing, trying to get in touch with certain important people but failing. 
First mild Spoiler alert, going a little into detail. Be warned.
I had read about this movie that he tries to have recognition in life, aspiring at a higher level in society, that he does little favours to people hoping to make useful connections, and that one day he does a favour to a man that years later will become important and change his life… I expected to see Norman do lots of little favours to people, but I saw none, I didn’t even recognize the one that was to change his life… we see him chase after Bill to talk about some financial matter but Bill sends him away, then he gives up altogether the idea of speaking to the unreachable Israeli’s Prime Minister and goes after a young politician, part of the PM’s staff, Micha Eshel. He follows him for a while then approaches him in front of a shop’s window, and they talk but we don’t hear what they say, so we’ll never know how Norman got his attention because they decided to cover it with music. Anyway, Eshel and Norman sympathize and enter together; Norman’s sweet talk is so out there it’s unbelievable that a politician won’t recognize it for what it is. Eshel gives up on buying a new suit because it is reeeally expensive and his people would not approve (good) so Norman insists on buying him the shoes at least, he insists on buying them for him as a gift. 1200 dollars for a pair of shoes… anyway, he insisted on giving him this gift, so I didn’t realize for a while that this was the favour I had read about! I mean, what favour!?!
This Eshel seems really too naive considering he’s an Israeli politician! 
Three years later Eshel is Israeli’s new Prime Minister, and everything changes, and I thought things would get more interesting now…  *sigh*
Spoiler Alert Spoiler Alert Spoiler Alert
Being this a new movie I want to warn anyone who might accidentally see this post and read it. I’m not a critic, I just write down what I think about movies, and to do that I go into details, like I’m about to do now; all the details, up to the ending, so go away if you don’t want to know everything.
First part of Norman’s life, we saw Bill sending him away, Eshel stood him up (after the gift-thing had happened already) and therefore he got thrown out of the house of some important business that Norman claimed to know very well in one of his usual lies. 
Switch to Eshel new Prime Minister, and Norman’s nephew Phillip convincing him to go meet him. It was one of the best moments, when Norman was near him, next in line to see him, and I could read on his face the doubt and maybe torment, the fear he might be rejected, not recognized and sent away, something like that. Short moment but good. When Eshel hears his name he hugs him as an old friend and supposedly his life changes… I didn’t see much of these changes actually, only a boring long line of faces into bubbles talking boringly, probably signifying that lots of important people now talk to him instead of having someone walk him to the door. Just that. What did he do actually? I don’t know. 
Then I saw Norman trying many times to reach Eshel but his secretary and pr chief avoiding him, and even Eshel not returning his call, and his wife telling him that he uses Norman when he wants and then ignores him when he doesn’t need him.. which seemed empty words because I didn’t see Norman doing anything useful for anyone. I saw Norman walking a lot, though :-/
Last part of the movie is Norman with his last ‘mission’: a rabbi asks him to help them raise millions of dollars to help them buy their place but everyone is again dodging him, so eventually Norman lies to the rabbi saying he found an anonymous benefactor ready to give 7 million dollars! When the rabbi express his gratitude and wants to do something in return Norman asks for a favour for his nephew who wants to get married, to a Korean girl!
Right after, we learn from newspapers that Eshel is about to face trouble: he’s about to be charged with corruption, and a mysterious American businessman would be the key witness against him. It was obvious to the viewer who that mystery man might be, but I had seen everything less than an hour before, while for the characters three years had passed so nobody had any idea who that man might be.
Still meddling trying to help, Norman goes to talk to a woman he met on a train (Charlotte Gainsbourg). He wants to help Eshel’s people by finding out something about this whole matter, but is very surprised and shocked when she tells him that it’s him (of course it is!). He had told her that he had met him when he bought him the most expensive pair of shoes in New York and that it had been his best investment ever, or something like that, and of course she tells him that that’s corruption! I mean, in a way it is, and he did it with that very intention, hoping that after that Eshel would go with him to a man’s house.
He would be forced to testify, so it was obvious he had only one way out.
I guess he didn’t want to disappoint anyone, and he did not want to create trouble to Eshel, so he planned another scheme. He asked Bill if Joe would be able to find a way to make lots of money with the information that the mysterious witness would never show up to testify, and we know from the news that they accepted and acted accordingly (something like buying shares, investments that would be good only in the event of Eshel staying in his position, while everybody else was working on the opposite direction, assuming Eshel would be out of the picture soon). Thanks to that I guess Joe becomes the rabbi anonymous benefactor, so the happy rabbi marries a happy Phillip to his Korean girlfriend. 
Only Eshel remains, how to save him? By disappearing of course, for real. Suicide. Being terribly allergic, he does it by eating a bag of nuts in the park.
A bizarre scene is when he’s approached by a man doing exactly what he used to do years before, approaching him now the same way he approached Eshel three years back.  He offers his ‘services’, and curiously we see him in the park with him in the last scene (playing some music??), so what, did Norman call him asking him to be there?With what excuse, assuming he did not tell him ‘to watch me die’ ? I guess he needed a witness of course, someone that could say that nobody killed him, that nothing suspicious happened, just a man eating nuts and getting sick.
I mean, without witnesses someone might have suspected Eshel..
I don’t know, there are so many assumptions and guesses. The movie wastes so much time on Norman walking here and there and boring conversations, but many important bits are missing. They tell us he had a little inheritance, so at least we know he doesn’t have to earn a living, since he definitely wasn’t. Why did he do it? To feel needed? Had he always done it, or was it a recent thing? Because he didn’t seem to be any good at it, honestly :-/ Was he ever actually married, or was the whole widow-speech a lie too? Did anyone actually ask him to do something for them? Did he ever succeed in any of his schemes? Watching this movie, the way I saw it, it looked like the only plan that actually worked was the one that involved his death :-/
I don’t know, personally the only character  I liked was Phillip, but he had little space just like everybody else, since the movie was all about Norman. 
Richard Gere was good, but the character was not well defined, so many things about him were never confronted. Less walking, more depth could be a good slogan here. 
Michael Sheen as Phillip was good, my fav part, and of course Steve Buscemi was good too as the rabbi, but he’s just one of those actors, you know, that are always the same. I mean it in a good way, they may not be room-fillers like other names, but they never disappoint, they do their work as they know how to do it every time without fail. 
The acting is what saves the movie, I’d say. Good actors in it, good performances from everyone. 

ITA l’incredibile vita di Norman