Doctor Who - new season 8

1-2 needs expanding.


I'm watching this on italian tv, so I don't have the exact lines or titles, but I'll take the episode titles from IMDB.


ep 1 - Deep breath
The new Doctor's first words are "shut up" :lol: It always takes a moment to get used to a new Doctor, but then the love for the character has the best of you, and when Twelve tells Clara "you can't see me, can you? It's still me!" he's really telling us, of course, and my brain and my heart collide, like in Clara's soul, and the love wins. So I was even moved when she trusted him to help her and he was there and there was a close-up on his hand closing on her, which was the first thing we saw of Nine, taking Rose's hand. Then the story: the Marie Antoinette, ship from the future, twin of the M.me de Pompadour ship that of course reminds me of my Doctor, Ten, although Twelve apparently can't remember, but he's probably still confused, it can't be long since he regenerated.
After reminding us of Nine and Ten, they show us Eleven, making a phone call to Clara before regenerating, and she listens to him while at the same time looking at the 'new him'. Eleven tells her that he's gonna need her, and Twelve tells her the same. He also says "I'm not your boyfriend" and "it wasn't you who thought that" or something like that. When the Dvd will be available, at an affordable price, I'll watch it in English and find out the exact words. Anyway, this might be the reason why he regenerated older :-)
Conclusion, Twelve appears so fragile and needy that I totally understood Clara when she hugged him. "I'm not the hugging type" - "you don't really have a say" Oh sister, you really speak to my heart! :-)
EDIT: Clara is afraid she won't like the new Doctor,  she thinks he's changed and puzzled because he looks old and grey. Vastra tells her that he wore a young face before to be liked, accepted, to flirt with the universe, I guess. Tells her that he dropped the veil because he trusted her.
The Doctor waltzes on the roof in his nightgown shouting at the dinosaur that he'll keep her safe and bring her home, but 'someone' burns her down and he's very sorry: "she was scared and alone.."
ep 2 - Into the Dalek - In the future there's a battle against the Daleks. The Doctor saves a soldier's life and they ask him to help them with something. They have a Dalek that keeps saying that Daleks must be exterminated, so they think it might be a good one, that it might help them. When they open the door and the Doctor sees a Dalek held with chains, who did not think of Nine??? I did.
The Doctor goes to Clara's school to pick her up because he needs her, but he'll drop her off in the same place, in time for her date with new entry Danny Pink, who appears to have a secret (more or less, because apparently everybody knows it except for Clara and us,or at least me) but also seems to be kind and good. The Doctor, Clara and some soldiers are miniaturized and put inside a malfuncioning Dalek to repair it, hoping it's a good Dalek and can help them. The Doctor knows there's no such thing as a good Dalek, but the Doctor I know can't ignore the possibility, he has to give him a chance, as Ten did that new human-Dalek and with the Sontaran...
I'd really like to know if in English the Dalek said "resistance is useless" or did it really use the words "resistance is futile" like the Borg? Again later Twelve connects with Rusty the Dalek, and he goes all Spock on me : "my mind is in your mind..." Did he watch Star Trek too?? :-)
It was an intense scene when Rusty looks in his mind and finds hate, big hate, and Twelve is all "No, not hate, there must be something else, something more" or something like that. Twelve has a psychologival dilemma, he can't really say if he's a good man or not. Actually it's not the first time.
"you try to be, and that's what's important" Clara will tell him. For a moment when they said Clara would be inside a Dalek I remembered a sad episode... but that was with Eleven and she's the impossible girl, after all.
ep 3 - Robot of Sherwood - It's Twelve's turn now to say to his companion "you choose where you want to go, everywhere in space and time" and Clara chooses to meet Robin Hood! Well, I loved his story too when I was younger, but it's still Donna who had the best enounter, with Agatha Christie :-)
The Doctor goes back to 1190 circa but really he thinks that Robin Hood's just a legend, not a real person, so he's very surprised when he meets him :-p I didn't like this Robin much, or the story for that matter. Not my favourite episode, for sure. The best thing was Clara's look, she was beautiful with that red dress and that thing on her forehead :-) Very very pretty.
I know Doctor Who was born as a show for children, so they have to make it funny for them, but for adults all that bickering between the Doctor and Robin was too much, annoying even, too loud and without purpose. Why, I ask? Why the Doctor disliked him? Just because he thought he couldn't be real? So what, that wouldn't have meant that he was one of the bad guys!! Why was he so hostile? Was he jealous because Robin was Clara's hero? Nonsense.
I didn't like those bickering scenes, or all the swordfights, or the spoon-part, or the fact that it was not explained who those robots really were. Not exactly. Not that it really matters, but he's the Doctor, and these things usually matter to him. I miss the times when Ten would see beauty in everything new, like when he stopped running to look at the werewolf... I know many things have happened to him, but I think they spent not enough time with the new Doctor, explaining who he is now, what kind of Doctor he is. What have we learned about him today? That he is a bickering child? And can I ask why they keep telling him he's Scottish? I mean, I know Capaldi is, although the name sounds very much Italian, but the Doctor isn't!!! It's all very well that "every planet has a north" but so what, Gallifrey has its own Scotland???  It doesn't make sense.
I really hope for best episodes in the future because this one was boring.
ep 4 - Listen - This episode was not bad, certainly better than the last two, but that's not saying much.
There's a lot of talking from the Doctor, and Clara finally going out with Danny. More in detail, the Doctor wonders if there's "something" in the dark, under the beds, always with us but that can't be seen. He wonders why we speak aloud when there's nobody there, and why, since there's perfect evolution, perfect hunting skill, perfect defense, "why is there no such thing as perfect hiding?" but of course if a creature had perfect hiding skills, nobody would know.. and "what would such a creature want? what would it do?" and the word Listen appears on his chalkboard.
Clara's date is not exactly perfect, she touched a sensitive argument and he started talking about his war days, than she said he was making assumptions about her when he said that "people like her" get the wrong ideas, and she left... to find the Tardis in her bedroom. The Doctor has a theory "I think that everybody at some point in their lives has the exact same nightmare: you wake up, or you think you do, and there's someone in the dark, someone close, or you think there might be, so you sit up, turn on the lights and the room looks different at night..." you think there's nobody there and then suddenly someone touches your ankle...
He asks Clara if she's had that dream, she says yes but he doesn't answer.
He takes Clara with him, he wants to go to her past, when she was a child and had the same dream, so he connects her to the Tardis neurally, or something; whatever it is, I think Nine should have told Rose about it...
anyway, it connects telepatically to Clara, he tells her to think of her dream and the Tardis will take them there, but the phone rings and she thinks of Danny, can't help it.
At first they think they arrived in her past, and she asks if it might be bad if she met herself and he says "potentially catastrophic" (well, Amy did..).
Actually the Tardis took them to a little Danny Pink, real name at the time: Rupert, living in a children's home, and she starts the whole "Danny the soldier" thing when they go to his room. There's a presence on his bed and the Doctor tells him that scared is good, fear is a superpower. They don't look and it goes away. Clara puts little soldiers around his bed to protect him, and a special one he calls Dan, then the Doctor touches him and he falls asleep. Twelve says "Dad skills". The Doctor manipulated his memories so he won't remember her; Clara has Twelve take her back to her date with Danny but then she mentions the name Rupert.. and he goes away because he doesn't like people lying to him...
then the Tardis takes him to a future Danny, or better to his great-grandson "Colonel Orson Pink from about 100 years in your future", who has the same soldier toy little Rupert  had and says there's a story in his family about his great-grandparents being time travellers... this means Clara and Danny are going to have a future together, and it will see them both in the Tardis, like Amy and Rory?
When he wants to give Dan-the-soldier to her she says "it's a family heirloom" - "yeah" does this mean he knows she's somehow family?
Then the Doctor is knocked out and to escape a difficult situation Clara connects to the Tardis again and brings her away from there - the end of the universe is 'where', but mostly 'when' they were - six months stranded alone, poor colonel Pink, he wants to be taken back to his timeline, afraid of spending another night there. The Doctor opens the door to see what's outside ordering her to stay in the Tardis "you're an idiot" - "I know". Orson saves him and Clara flights the Tardis "apparently I can do a thing" - Orson "that's your plan?" - "it's not a plan, it's a thing" because Twelve is unconscious.
Maybe because she's worried about him, she's probably thinking about the Doctor, the Tardis brings her to a barn where a child is crying on his bed. A little Doctor not yet Timelord. She hides under the bed when people come in saying that he's too afraid to join the army and "he'll never make a Timelord" ! He's in a children's home too. The child says "who's there? Hello?" and sits up and she grabs his ankle! then she says "it's okay, this is just a dream" and "it'll all be okay if you just lie down and go to sleep". He lies down but keeps crying so she goes to him and whispers that being afraid is okay, fear is a superpower.... She gives him the little toy-soldier and leaves. It was a good scene when she was under his bed and grabbed his ankle. It wasn't a dream after all, it was her, but he never knew it. They also show the War Doctor, going back to that same barn in "the day of the Doctor".
In the Tardis she says that maybe there's nothing out there and he's just afraid of the dark, she orders him to leave, looks at him with hearts in her eyes and hugs him "no no no I'm against the hugging"
:-p They bring Orson home and then Clara goes to Danny's place to make up.
The date had not gone really well, but now she goes to him and they kiss :-)
EDIT It could have/should have been a good episode, and it is the first time you see it, but it messes up the whole DW timeline.
ep 5 - Time Heist - Finally a good episode, I liked this. I could really see "The Doctor" again, and it was a good, interesting story. The Doctor goes to get Clara when she's about to go out with Danny, then the Tardis' phone rings, he answers and they wake up in a room with no memory of how they got there, with two other people. I liked them, both of them, and was really sorry when I thought they were going to die. That would be what usually happens, but this is not the usual series :-D  I'm glad they didn't. :-)
They are all touching memory-worms and when they play a recording they hear their own voices saying that they agreed to have their memories wiped out of their own free will. Sy is an augmented human, and Saber can replicate any living thing she touches.
It turns out they are in the most secure (terrible) bank of the galaxy, and a misterious figure calling himself "the architect" gives them a mission to rob it. In the bank there's a creature who can read minds and find the guilt in there (and then it wipes the mind turning it into "soup"), so to avoid being found they agreed to have their memories altered.
Saber has the dna of a personnel man and she assumes his appearance. They follow the architect's plan, finding more clues along the way. There's something each of them wants more than anything: Sy deleted all the memories of his family and friends while being interrogated in prison, to protect them, all those he loved... Saber is alone because nobody can touch her without ending up looking at themselves.
When the creature gets Saber she uses one of those exit-strategy-injections they were given, thinking that she'll die, but she'd rather die than being turned into soup. When the creature finds Clara, Sy saves her by attracting it to him and then he uses the injection too.
There is a bad solar storm which interferes with the locks and the vault opens. Clara retrieves the objects they all wanted: a thing that can reboot Sy's memories, something to make Saber "normal". They are found out but are left to two guards, not to the creature... and the guards turn out to be Saber and Sy :-) Into the private vault is what the Doctor is looking for, the solution: director Karabrax has a clone to run each one of her facilities and when they let her down she 'fires' them, kills them, because she hates her clones as the Doctor hates the Architect. he's overbearing, manipulative, likes the fact that he's very clever... of course the Architect is the Doctor.
When they finally get to the bank director, the Doctor understands. He gives her his phone number, so that in the future, when she'll be old and full of regrets, she'll be able to call him to send him there to organize the whole robbery, for a very important reason. The last two members of a race had been left there to die, but now the Doctor saves them :-) The creature obeyed her because she kept prisoner its mate, they were the last two of their kind.
When it scans the Doctor's brain, we hear him saying: "big scarf, bowtie.. embarrassing" and "I was hoping for minimalism but I think I came out with magician" :lol: So,  they save the two creatures and bring them back to their world, then he takes Saber and Sy home, and then Clara to her date :-)
When he finally understood that she had made the call, and that he himself was the architect, it was a real Doctor-moment, I liked that a lot.
A very good episode, I loved it. Finally Twelve appeared to be the same Doctor! :-)
Smart and good, manipulative and giving orders, doing the right thing and saving everybody... this is our Doctor, finally, not the one blabbing nonsense or acting like a stupid child. This was again the real Doctor :-)

ep 6 - The caretaker

It starts really funny, with Clara always running away with the doctor and then back dating Danny :lol: It was the best part of the episode. Then the doctor detects a threat and goes undercover… as a caretaker in Clara’s school! Every doctor must have his own “John Smith” episode.
Clara wants to know what's going on and asks him "is there an alien in this school?" - "yes, me!" :-p
Twelve meets a student. She says "you're weird" - "yes I am, what about you?" - "I'm a disruptive influence" - "good to meet you!" - "and you!" - "now get lost" :-p
Twelve to Clara "why do I keep you?" - "because the alternative would be developing a conscience of your own".
He acts very suspiciously, so Danny follows him and takes all the devices the Doctor hid in the school, and then comes in to witness him getting rid of a dangerous alien, but only temporarily because of what Danny did.
Danny to Clara "you're a spacewoman, you said you were from Blackpool" :-p and he thinks the Doctor is her dad :-p

Clara is constantly worried about him, and he doesn’t understand that Danny’s the one she’s seeing until she yells at him “because I love him!”

The doctor doesn’t like soldiers, and doesn’t understand her choice. She has to explain everything to Danny, Twelve says "you've explained me to him, you haven't explained him to me". Danny asks her "why do you do it? why do you fly off with him?" - "because he's amazing, because I see wonders".
She gives Danny the invisibility watch so he can enter the Tardis and see for himself, but of course the Doctor finds out. Twelve calls him soldier, Danny calls him officer.
The alien comes back earlier than he expected, during parents night :-p they both try to help, then Twelve takes Courtney for a ride in the Tardis :-)
At the end we see the cop that was killed by the alien going to the same place that non-cyborg went in the first episode, with Missy.
Danny was very worried for Clara because he says he knows guys like the Doctor. He’s like an army officer, giving orders, with that something about him that makes people want to do anything for him. Clara obeyed him blindly, without fear nor concern for her safety because she trusts him. She says this to Danny, that she trusts him because he never disappointed her… okay, so this probably means that he’s about to… I wonder how that will happen, she already knows his “charming” personality, and he won’t abandon her in danger… but if they had her say something like that it means that her trust is about to be shaken, for sure…

ep 7 - Kill the moon

I like this episode. It’s a bit weird and it goes too far in many ways, but it has its fun :-)  Until now is second in my favs list, right after “time heist”. Clara is angry because the doctor told Courtney Woods that she’s not special, so to make amends he takes them both to the moon, in the year 2049. There’s a crisis there. They meet the shuttle crew, they say there's something wrong with the moon.
The Doctor says he might go on regenerating forever :-D
The moon’s mass has increased so much it’s causing disasters on Earth, so three people are there with nuclear bombs!

… Why exactly I’m not sure. What did they plan to blow up? The moon itself, thinking with no moon at all it would be better?? Or maybe to blow up just a part of it… to be honest this nuclear-bombs plan is not very clear to me, maybe they thought to reduce its mass by blowing up a part of it… not a “great” plan but maybe the only one they had… or maybe there was a way to blow up the thing 'inside' it without destroying the whole thing... 

The Doctor takes hold of the situation when two of them are killed by some spider-like huge creatures, and explains that the Moon is an egg, and a creature is about to come out of it… yeah, an egg. Courtney killed one of those things with a spray that kills germs.

The surviving woman, the captain, wants to kill it to save the Earth, but Clara and Courtney disagree.
Clara asks the Doctor about the future, and he says "there are moments in time that I simply cannot see" and "whatever happens to the moon, hasn't been decided yet". The moon is breaking apart, those things are bacteria, there's a living thing growing in it: the egg is hatching, and it's the only one of its kind. The captain asks "how do we kill it?" and Courtney:"it's a little baby!". The captain says that it's killing people and destroying the Earth, Clara replies that you can't blame a baby for kicking.
The Doctor tells Courtney to put the dvd in and the Tardis will bring her back to him :-D yep :D
At this moment, when Clara expects the Doctor to find a way to save both, he leaves, telling her that he can't help, that they must decide humanity's future, that it’s a human problem concerning only humans, that the three of them must decide for Earth’s future without his help, because he can’t see what will happen; Clara can’t believe he’s leaving them there, but he really goes away!

Contacted by Earth, Clara gives them a choice: whoever wants them to kill the creature must switch off the lights. Soon, all of Earth’s lights go off: the people of Earth have spoken: kill the moon! 

When they’re at it, though, Clara and Courtney can’t do it and jump on the Abort button. Only then the Doctor reappears to save them, taking them down to Earth to watch the gigantic dragon-like creature come out of its egg, and immediately laying a new egg in its place, thus again leaving the Earth with its regular moon. Just like that. Nothing happens on the beach where they’re standing while the moon disintegrates, while there’s no moon up there… well, I don’t know about this things, but they could have said a word about it at least, because even if it’s for a short period of time it seems to me that the Earth should notice it anyway, or not? I don't know...

Anyway, all is well that ends well, you might say, but when they’re back home Clara takes out all the anger that’s inside her. She yells at him while crying. He tells her that he trusted her to make the right choice and that it wasn't his decision to make, but she’s hurt and angry, it’s been a really difficult and painful situation, and she goes out yelling at him to go away and leave her alone. Back at her school, she tells Danny how she ended it with the Doctor, but he replies that it’s not over until she’s so angry. She needs to end it while she’s calm and no more angry. Which she clearly won’t do so soon, right? She can’t leave him now, he still needs her! Anyway, I have a hard time imagining Ten or Eleven doing something like that. Maybe Nine, but with a different attitude and in a different way. I can’t imagine any of them leaving, leaving them alone to decide if they should kill an innocent creature, maybe one of a kind… I can easily imagine Ten look at it with wonder and excitement, smiling his what-a-wonderful-world-smile, though :-D

Anyway, the confrontation between Clara and the Doctor at the end was great, Jenna Coleman was great, really the whole scene was good, and her words were important, and understandable. “how? by leaving?” - “yes” - “then leave. go away” . Great.

ep 8 - Mummy on the Orient-Express

Clara and the Doctor are on their last trip together, to end it in peace, without anger, and he chooses to take her to an Orient-Express travelling through space. 

I liked how he noticed and remarked how her smile is not a happy smile, but rather a sad one… you know, you’re smiling but you’re sad, in real life it happens all the time, I’ve done it some much in my life…

She tells him that she hated him for what he did, really hated him, for weeks; now she doesn’t hate him anymore, she just can’t take it anymore. 

Understandable, but then the Doctor tells her that they won’t see each other again, and she’s surprised, she says she thought he’d come to dinner sometimes, and it was touching somehow, because the idea of never see him again now is disturbing to her, but that’s what the Doctor does. When he stops travelling with the companion of the moment, he never goes back for them, never. He just leaves. 

How adorable was when later Clara calls him on the phone and he’s all talking as his usual without letting her say a word, until she manages a few words, that she’s trapped, and right away he starts running :-) If his Clara is in danger he runs!

He can’t free her now but she’s in no immediate danger, so he keeps working on the strange mummy that is killing people on the flying train. It’s quite hard though because only the person that’s about to die can see it… I think it's "the foretold mummy", whoever sees it only has 66seconds left..
Some passengers are just holograms, some are scientists, grouped by someone to figure out the foretold mummy mystery. The expert should give him every detail now that he can see it, but he becomes too afraid, tries to bargain and dies. The mysterious Gus that brought them there kills the kitchen staff to get the Doctor off the phone with Clara and back to work. The foretold targets the weakest first, and the train conductor who has PTSD is next. Twelve says that if he could see it a minute would be enough for him to figure it out and Perkins says "you know Doctor, I can't tell if you're a genius or just incredibly arrogant" - "well on a good day I'm both".
Clara accuses him of lying to her again because he knew there would be troubles on that train and also because he made her lie to the girl with her...

he figured out that the next victim was probably going to be Macy, the girl who is now with Clara, so the doctor told Clara to bring her to him, without telling her anything, although he won’t be able to save her, and it’s hard for Clara because she’s lying to Macy, and she’s bringing her to her death.

Once they arrive, the Doctor takes on himself all the pain and the emotions of Macy to switch upon himself the attention of the mummy. Now that he can see it, he does stop it just like he said. The mummy  was a soldier thousands of years ago. The Doctor shouts "we surrender" and it stops. You're relieved soldier, and it goes into dust....Gus now tries to kill them all but the Doctor  uses the Tardis to save everyone.
When she wakes up he tells her that he couldn't risk Gus knowing his plan "so you were pretending to be heartless?" - "would you like to think that about me, would that make it easier? I didn't know if I could save her" and "sometimes all the choices you have are bad ones but you still have to choose".
Clara changes her mind and tells him she wants to keep traveling with him. A quick change of mind, I must say, but I’m glad. She’s cool, and she looked very well with this Charleston-look :-)
She tells Danny that it's done and over with, and then she tells Twelve that Danny is fine with it and she wants to go on, so they leave again... I didn't like all this lying on her part, although maybe I would have done the same..

ep 9 - Flatline

The Doctor takes her to Bristol instead of home, and the Tardis has become smaller... and then very very little, a tiny little thing. People are disappearing all over, there are aliens messing with the dimensions...
Clara puts the Tardis in her bag (a big bag, but still a small Tardis :p ); she takes his screwdriver and his papers, and a earplug to communicate with him. She says "I'm the Doctor, Doctor Oswald, but you can call me Clara" to a kid: "what are you a doctor of?" - Twelve says "of lies", she says "I'm usually quite vague about that, I think I just picked the title because it makes me sound important".
Some creatures from a bi-dimensional world are trying to understand humans. At first the Doctor wonders if they know they're killing people and tries to communicate with them, but they take another one. He makes a 'deflattener', and calls it 2dis..
They are becoming 3d now. The old stupid bitter man throws away the Tardis and later she picks it up, now a blue cube because in siege-mode, and with life support failing. She manages to get him power by making the creatures activate a painting of a door. They recharge the Tardis and he goes all Doctor on them! : "if you do survive remember this, you are not welcome here, this plane is protected, I am the Doctor" and he defeats them :-)
When he was suffocating he said "I don't know if you'll ever hear this Clara (...) but you're good and you made a mighty fine doctor".
When it's over, she says "we saved the world, right?" - "we did, you did.." - "I was you today, I was the Doctor, and apparently was quite good at it" - "you heard that, didn't you?" - Yeah. The power was going off so I suppose you were delirious, you didn't know what you were saying" - "yes".
When she insists that she was a good Doctor, he says "you were an exceptional Doctor, Clara, goodness had nothing to do with it".
In this episode the Doctor finds out that she didn't tell Danny about her going with him, that she lied to both of them...

ep 10 - In the forest of the night

The Doctor thinks the Tardis doesn't work because it says that they are in the middle of London, but there's a forest outside the door...
A little girl asks for his help, Clara sent her, and says that it's true, it is London. Suddenly the world has become green :-)
When they all meet up, Twelve and little Maeve with Danny and Clara and the bunch of children in their care, Danny understands that it's not true that she hasn't seen him in months.
The trees grew up overnight and won't catch fire.
Twelve and Clara run after Maeve because she can communicate with the trees: they are saved from the wolves by a tiger, and from the tiger by Danny :-)
The world might be ending, big solar flare, but Clara tells him that he can't take them away because the kids will want their parents and Danny will never leave the kids, and she... well, she doesn't want to be the last of her kind... she says "you know what, Doctor, this time the human race is saving you" and "now go, save the next one". He goes, then he figures out the obvious truth :-D The trees are not the enemy, they are their shield! The trees save the Earth and then disappear. 

ep 11 - Dark water
I didn't like all those bits with Danny and the child. Are they dead or not? How can they walk around in their own bodies if they're dead??

Clara calls Danny to tell him that she loves him, really, and feels awkward when he says nothing... until a woman tells her he was ran over by a car, and she picked up the phone to answer..

Danny Pink's dead... (weren't the two of them supposed to become both time travelers? What about Orson Pink, now??).
Clara steals all the Tardis keys and asks Twelve to get her to see an active volcano, then she blackmails him: she'll destroy all the seven keys unless he can fix it, change it, bring him back...
He can't but she doesn't care about the rules, "I don't give a damn about paradoxes; save Danny, bring him back or I swear you will never step inside your Tardis again" (what about when Ten opened the door clapping his hands?)  but he can't and she throws them all down.
"I'm sorry but I'd do it again" and "why are you just standing there, do you understand what I have just done?" but it was all just in her imagination, the Doctor wanted to know how far she would go.. then he tells her they'll go to hell or wherever he is and they'll find Danny (which makes no sense at all, though, if he's supposed to be really dead, how can Twelve know that this time it's possible to communicate with him? Shouldn't he think him dead and gone?)
Clara asks him:  "You're going to help me?" - "why wouldn't I help you? You betrayed me, you betrayed my trust, you betrayed our friendship, you betrayed everything that I've ever stood for, you let me down"  and "you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?" ...
Clara navigates the Tardis asking 'her': "where is Danny?". They end up in a strange place, 3w where they care for the deceased... they meet Missy, who kisses the Doctor as a welcome and says the name stands for "mobile interactive system interface" and "I am a multi functioned interactive welcome droid helping you to help me to help you" and "my heart is maintained by the Doctor" and Twelve says "doctor who?" :-p Dr Chen of course :-p
Danny: "you have iPads in the afterlife?"and the guy "iPads? mph, we have Steve Jobs" :-p and then he has Danny meet the young boy he killed during the war...
Clara talks to Danny, tells him she'll do whatever it takes to be with him again, so he makes her close the connection.. of course, he knows he's dead, doesn't want her to be dead too...
Missy uploaded the minds to cybermen, upgraded their bodies.. She's a Timelady, the one he left for dead... "try to keep up, short for mistress, couldn't very well keep calling myself the Master, now, could I?" and she releases the Cybermen over London

ep 12 - Death in heaven

Clara finds herself in a locked room with a cyberman, and says that she's the Doctor, to stay alive.
The cybermen are now everywhere in the world. Kate Steward, chief scientific officer of Unified Intelligent Taskforce, Unit, comes to arrest Missy and stop them but they fly away. One cyberman over each city: a strange rain makes all dead bodies rise up as cybermen.
The new international protocol in case of alien invasion: the Doctor is elected President of Earth, commanding officer of every army in the world.
CyberDanny saves Clara. The Doctor tells Missy "Gallifrey is lost in another dimension" but she says she knows where it is - the Doctor spent 300 years trying to stop Gallifrey from coming back but he's still searching for it?
That cyber-rain transformed the corpses into cybermen. Missy frees herself and kills the smart girl :'( I liked her :'( was hoping to see her again, maybe as companion now and then...
Cyber-Danny is suffering because he can still feel everything and he begs Clara to delete his emotions. There's a lot of drama and conflict here, but even though deleting his emotion might mean activating the full cyberman mode, she can't refuse him because he's in pain...  but she doesn't know how so she calls the Doctor for help. He warns her not to do it because Danny will kill her afterward. She insists, she can't bear to watch him suffer.
The Doctor needs informations, he needs Danny to tell him Missy's plan, but he can't because he's not yet 'activated'... what to do now? The Doctor is like "I need to know" and reluctantly he now gives Clara his screwdriver so she can turn off his emotions and stop his pain. As soon as she's done that, she runs into his cyber-arms and the Doctor gets his answer: "the rain will fall again, all of humanity will die".
Clara has deleted Cyber-Danny's emotions and he's a cyberman now, and yet he doesn't respond to Missy's orders. After the others stop moving Clara is still hugging cyberDanny.
Twelve discovers that it was Missy to give Clara his phone number, she says "you'd go to hell if she asked" and he sort of did... then she gives him an army of cybermen, telling his Happy Birthday and calling him Mr President.
Missy says "I need my friend back" and "don't you trust yourself?" and here he is, sort of like Gandalf refusing the ring but with way too many more words, his big speech: he thanks her for helping him understand: "I'm not a good man, I'm not a bad man, I am not a hero, I'm definitely not the President, and no, I'm not an officer, you know what I am? I am an idiot with a box and a screwdriver, passing thru, helping out, learning. I don't need an army, I never have, because I've got them, always them, because love is not an emotion, love is a promise and he will never hurt her".
This was a beautiful phrase, very much so, and yet isn't it rather wrong, in the way that it doesn't agree with what we know of the cyber-men? All cyber-men were once people who were killed and transformed, and afterwards they were no more themselves and they killed, or tried to kill everybody, even their loved ones. Are these cybermen different because they were corpses instead of alive when they were transformed? Anyway.
The Doctor gives the army to the cybermen, they all fly high, explode and burn the dark clouds. One cyberman didn't explode because he had to save Kate, her father! The Doctor salutes him and he flies now.
Two weeks later: Danny uses the bracelet to bring the little boy to life.....
Twelve thinks that Danny came back when he sees the bracelet on her arm. He tells her that he found Gallifrey, but we see it's a lie. He tried the coordinates Missy gave him, hoping, but there was nothing there... and now Clara tells him to go home, that she'll be fine with Danny...
for once he agrees to a hug and says that he doesn't trust hugs because they're ways to hide the face. She thanks him for making her feel special, and they separate... and the Tardis disappears, without anyone paying the least attention to it...

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 1

(only episodes 1to4)
I'm watching this on italian tv so I don't have the exact lines and I'm taking the episode titles from IMDB. I'm also watching an episode a week, currently I've watched four of them.
I like this series, Agent Coulson has his own show!! :-D I always liked Coulson too, must be Clark Gregg's face :-) Shield means Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division, and I don't think I'll ever be able to remember all that :-/
ep 1 - Pilot - Coulson puts a new team together, with Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen) who apparently is like a great warrior who doesn't want to fight anymore; Ward(Brett Dalton) who is some kind of super agent who likes to work alone; a couple of scientists who need get used to: Leo Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) and Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge); and a new girl who is an hacker fighting for freedom, to uncover conspiracies and all that kind of things. This episode was nice, with a good guy with a strange substance inside him that made him superstrong, but also unstable, and they stopped him before he exploded... by shooting him in the head, or something like it.  :-) He's safe though :-)
I like Coulson, and it was a nice scene when he was in front of the guy talking to him before he was shot... In this episode he also explained that it is a secret that he's not dead after "The Avengers", although I thought it was clear already, but maybe only to someone, not to everybody :-)
ep 2 - 0-8-4 - This episode was more boring than the first one. They fly to Peru to retrieve a strange object, meet the local army whose commander is Camilla, ex 'partner' of Phil .-) and they run away together when attacked by rebels, only it was not the safe thing to do because on the plane she turns on them when her soldiers take control of the plane. There was conflict inside the team, because man-of-action Ward thinks those three are not qualified to be on the team, and they think he acts before thinking, which of course are all good points, really. Now they have a common enemy, so with Mei they cooperate to retake control of the plane and possess of the artifact. I don't know why Coulson keeps talking about his 'death', we know okay?
Anyway, they win but since they are the good guys they still try to save the others.
It ends with all the team finally together, and with Mei and Ward deciding that he should be Sky's personal trainer... which I really, really hope won't be a prelude to a future love-story between them! It would be so boring.
After having won, worked together against a common enemy now they do feel like a team, but Sky receives a strange message from Rising Tide and she secretly replies "I'm in" which is kind of ridiculous because Coulson was near her and she holds the phone for a long time, and nobody noticed or cared? Well, she might have her personal life, but still, they probably will say that her calls were monitored for safety, or that she tried to appear normal to Rising Tide to gain information for the team, although this last one wouldn't make sense at this early stage. And by the way, what does "I'm in" mean? That they are planning something and she wants in on that, or that "she's in" meaning inside the Shield, part of the team, maybe the fact that they find her was planned beforehand? After all, she's described as a genius hacker, so maybe she wanted to be found and be part of the team for some hidden purpose... Well, we'll see.
ep 3 - The asset - This episode is still not as nice as the first one. There's a very, very powerful object that can alter gravity and do a lot of damage. Dr Hall is kidnapped to work on it, and Sky offers to infiltrate this powerful Ian's party to help save him, not knowing that being kidnapped is exactly what Dr Hall wanted, to destroy it for good, no matter how many lives he has to take with his in order to do so.
Since May said from the start she doesn't want to fight anymore, Coulson goes himself, with Ward, and he has to stop Dr Hall while Ward saves Sky. I think we can say that she definitely made her choice to stay with them, here. I hope. I'm very glad she didn't shoot, because sometimes in this series they tend to make things too easy too quickly. She worked with computer, and personally I think it's already too much that she could get his weapon, but we may justify that with the thought that he was as surprised as we were, he wasn't expecting her to try anything, and that's why she could do it. But she could not shoot him. Good. She's not a soldier.
At the end, May says that she wants to be operative again, to watch Phil's back, since he's a bit rusty :-D
It seems she was worried about him :-D
ep 4 - Eye spy - I like this episode. There's a girl, Akela Amador, who is a former agent, trained by Coulson, that now steals diamonds. Coulson wants this operation because he wants to help her. May would like to hunt her down as the enemy, but he doesn't. He wants to find her and understand why she's doing it, so they find out that someone gave her a fake, sort-of-bionic eye with a bomb inside. They are controlling her, ordering her to do what they want. May goes to her alone but Coulson gets there in time and they take her and remove the bomb. He wants to give her a second chance.
I liked Sky in this episode because she was all on his side, backing his decisions, saying that he believed in her so that means he can judge people :-) so she trusts his decisions. I liked that.
I wonder, May was just worried for Phil or was she jealous? Well, I understand, anyway, I like him too. :-D
ep 5 - Girl in the flower dress -

ep 6 - Fzzt -

ep 7 - The hub -

ep 8 - The well -

ep 9 - Repairs -

ep 10 - The bridge -

ep 11 - The magical place -

ep 12 - Seeds -

ep 13 - T.R.A.C.K.S. -

ep 14 - T.A.H.I.T.I. -

ep 15 - Yes men -

ep 16 - End of the beginning -

ep 17 - Turn, turn, turn -

ep 18 - Providence -

ep 19 - The only light in the darkness -

ep 20 - Nothing personal -

ep 21 - Ragtag -

ep 22 - Beginning of the end -

Unleashed - 2005

I like this movie a lot. I understand it's no colossal, no blockbuster maybe, but I've always liked it a lot. First, I like Jet Li. Second, Freeman is always an added pleasure. Third, I find it so sweet and poetic... yeah, really!
It's the story of Danny (Jet Li), whose mother was killed by Bart (Bob Hoskins) when he was very little. Bart then took him and raised him to obey him like a dog and fight for him anytime he wants. Danny always wears a dog collar, and 'uncle Bart' takes him along when he goes to collect from people who owe him money.
The rule is 'you take his collar off, he beats us to death'. One day, Danny gets distracted by the sight of a piano in the room. He's drawn to it, and there he meets Sam (Morgan Freeman), a blind man whose job is to tune pianos. Sam is very kind to him, and Danny is not used to it.
One day, Bart's car is trapped and shot by people he had Danny beat, and Danny thinks both Bart and his man are dead, so he runs away to the only place that comes to mind: where he saw Sam and the pianos. When he arrives, he faints. Sam takes him home to heal and rest. Danny spends all his days with him and his stepdaughter Victoria. Both her parents were Sam's best friends, so when the father died he married her mother, and when she died too, Victoria stayed with him, of course. "Funny how families get made, isn't it?" Now she's 18, and they are there in Glasgow so she can study music, to be a pianist.
They treat him like a kid, because Bart never taught him or showed him anything. Everything's new to him. Sam doesn't ask him questions about his life, but he's a bit troubled when, at a supermarket, two guys fight causing a bit of turmoil amongst the people shopping, but Danny was totally indifferent. Sam asks him "didn't bother you, you weren't afraid?" and he simply replies "No, they weren't fighting me"
It took them a long time to get him to let her take off his collar; he was terrified, because up until now it had always meant bad things, but when it's finally done, he's like reborn. So cute, too. I love the scene when Sam tells him that as soon as Victoria finishes her study and her recital, they're going back to New York, and he asks Danny if he wants to go with them, because "we think of you as family". awww, he's so happy he hugs him.
Unfortunately, when it seems he has found a new home, a happy life, one of Bart's men sees him and tells Danny he'd better go back with him if he doesn't want to endanger the family that took him in. So Danny goes back to Bart and his old life, to the fight club, but he's changed now and refuses to kill. He doesn't want to hurt people anymore, but after being throwned in there, four people against him, he's forced to defend himself. All four gets hurt, it's unavoidable, but he refuses to kill them. Bart kills one himself with a gun. Later, Bart has the idea of telling Danny that "families should be together, no matter what" , but hearing this Danny doesn't think of his 'uncle Bart', he thinks of Sam and Victoria, so he causes another car accident and this time he takes off his collar himself. He goes back to Sam, and tells them all the lies Bart told him about his mother, but Sam and Victoria help him discover the truth. His mother was a musician, she studyed piano, and when Victoria plays for him the music that his mother played, hearing it he remembers the day she stopped playing to tell him to hide before Bart could see him, then Bart killed her and when he tried to fight him Bart took him. Now Bart and his men are coming to get him, and he tries to protect them as his mother tried to protect him. He tells Sam and Victoria to hide, then fights with all the men Bart sends against him.
When Bart goes to get him himself, yelling "you're a dog, you're my dog" and then telling him to 'come back home', Danny replies "I am home", but Bart wouldn't shut up, he kept talking, provoking him, and Danny is at his throat. Victoria sees this so with Sam she rushes to stop him before he kills him. Since Bart wouldn't stop blabbing, Sam breaks a vase on his head: "shut the hell up. That man could talk some serious shit"
At the end, Sam and Danny are together at Victoria's recital, a lovely, united family, finally happy.

In Italy: Danny the dog

Criminal minds - season 4

I'm glad I'm watching this on dvd so I didn't have to wait months to see who got killed. I never believed it could be Hotch, Rossi or Derek, but what about JJ? What if they were planning a change, a tragedy that would touch all of them? And what about Will? He's not even part of the team, and yet he's important. My fear of a moment was, of course, him because I had forgotten one person, the most likely, actually.
ep 1 - Mayhem - It was Hotchner's car, but he wasn't inside. He's hurt, but it's Kate the one badly injured, and now that it's personal he doesn't agree any more with his policy of "not intervene, because it's probably a trap".
Garcia knows that Rossi and Reid are safe, but doesn't know about the others. First, she calls Derek. Emily calls her, then contacts go down before she can call JJ. Finally they all know. Derek makes a speech "you don't leave a man behind" not caring about the fact that it was him and his team who gave the order... they are good words only when it doesn't touch you, right? So because of them some secret service guys get killed, but we don't know them, they don't even have a name, so it shouldn't matter, that's the deal right? Yeah, I get it, but I don't like it. What he did was wrong.
At the end Derek plays hero driving the bomb far away so it won't kill anyone. Garcia is worried-sick for him. "Garcia, you're my God-given solace" :-) and "woman, you promise me one thing. Whatever happens, don't you ever stop talking to me" :-) You're good, Derek, deep down you're a really good one, huh?
Kate dies. They broke all procedures, causing the deaths of the ss guys and she died anyway. :-/
At least Cooper is alive :-)
Hotch was badly hurt at his ears, so he can't fly, and Derek wants to drive him, and they talk and Hotch tells him he didn't work with the team but for himself. "Quantico requested you transfer to run the New York office" but Hotch didn't give any recommendation. "your actions, as incredibly brave as they were, were still the actions of an agent who doesn't truly trust anyone" also "my life matters to me and I have and always will entrust you with it. Would you do the same for me?" but Morgan doesn't answer.
 - Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ernest Hemingway
ep 2 - The angel maker - Reid has a new haircut :-) Hotch still has trouble with his ears, but he flies anyway. Needless to say there are loud noises that hurt him, even a gunshot next to him, so at the end he doesn't fly with them, he drives the 7hours journey back to Quantico.
It's funny how Emily looks at Reid and touches his face after he explained how he cracked the code :lol: yes, it was a bit too much for a human :lol:
A woman was raped and killed, apparently by a known serial killer executed exactly one year ago.
This copycat is a fan of the dead serial killer, because there are people like that.
Garcia: "a murdering paedophile paints clowns and people hang them on their walls. It's creepy on so many levels, I mean, clowns.."
Emily: "Coulrophobia. Abnormal fear of clowns"
Garcia: "oh no there is nothing abnormal about it. When I was 12 a hobo clown groped my breasts at a birthday party and made this old-timey honking noise when he did it. Apparently making it funny makes it okay" Oh God, that is so disturbing and sick. I guess there was no adult watching them, seeing the scene.
Anyway, our dead bastard autographed a lot of things, from photos to panties and made origami. He had not just fans, but groupies as well: women in love with him, as sick as it may sound.
 - We all die. The goal isn't to live forever. The goal is to create something that will. Chuck Palahniuk
 - Wendell Berry said: the past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape it or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it.
ep 3 - Minimal loss - Benjamin Cyrus (Luke Perry) is the church leader of a isolated community. Emily and Reid go there to interview the children, be sure they're not abused, after they received a phone call for help.
They are devoted to him, and this 15 years old girl is married to him. If they are so close to God, why are they so full of guns and rifles? Nobody ever asking that?
Anyway, while they're there the place is assaulted by cops shooting. In Colorado, they are " a fringe religious group known as the Separatarian Sect". The team learns about the situation on the news, and go there to save them. Wow, Hotch saying to the Attorney General of that state: "I'm Aaron Hotchner unit chief. I'm the guy who's going to tell the Attorney General of the United States whether to charge you with obstructing a federal investigation or negligent homocide" - "you can't talk to me like that" - "get off my crime scene!" :-D yeah Hotch, tell him, nobody can mess with Aaron Hotchner :lol: even when he's angry he talks like that :lol:
They work with Dan (Connor Trinneer) and his men. Tv news announces there is one Fbi agent inside, and Emily says it's her, and Cyrus beats her but knowing that they're listening, or at least strongly suspecting it, she says "I can take it", apparently to Cyrus but really to the team, a message for them not to rush in for her. Tough Emily! Hotch all worried for her and for Reid was touching. "if something happens to Prentiss or Reid, I don't... I don't know..." which is worth more than a thousand words somehow, at least coming from him.
At the end it's a success in a way, because most of the  people are safe, and so are Prentiss and Reid, but the girl Jesse is dead. Her mother had started it all calling 911 to save her daugheter but Jesse was so devoted to him that after seeing him dead she blows herself up.
 - To follow by faith alone is to follow blindly. Benjamin Franklin
 - Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Ayn Rand
ep 4 - Paradise - Couples stop in a motel and are killed after being tortured. This is a psycho-type of episode, and the torturer is played by Wil Wheaton. They stop him before he could kill the last couple. I'm glad, I liked them. Sadly, we also see he's killed much more couples than they knew of. At the end Hotch is troubled "I was here. I talked to him and I didn't see it." Yeah, that surprised me too, but he's human, it can happen to him too. It was good for the story and the character and the show, because this way they are more real. Even Hotch the hero.
Hotch says "remind me to have her drug-tested" talking about Garcia :lol: I love him.
JJ puts headphones on her belly so the baby can listen to Beethoven...
 - Thomas Fuller wrote: a fool's paradise is a wise man's hell
 - Roman poet Phaedrus wrote: things are not always what they seem. The first appearance deceives many. The intelligencce of a few perceives what has been carefully hidden
ep 5 - Catching out - Morgan meets a pretty girl in the coffee shop, but is surprised when she calls him by name and he doesn't remember ever meeting her! Is it possible he forgot her name? She's very pretty.
"This has never happened to me before" - Reid:"it hasn't happened to me before either" - Emily:"well, it can't happen to you. You have an eidetic memory" (My bad memory works as badly with faces as with names or anything else) - Morgan:"and besides, you've only got one name to remember" ..ehm, what is he talking about? It's just a joke or is he talking about someone in particular? Maybe that blonde actress that kissed him?
It ends with JJ introducing them all to the pretty girl: Agent Jordan Todd, she'll be taking over while JJ will be on maternity leave, after seven years on counterterrorism.
Case: a guy goes home to home in different cities moving by train, killing the people inside and living in their houses for a while, and sniffing glue. Morgan and Rossi go talking to the homeless people, and Hotch removes the name Highway 99 Killer from the board. At last they find him and Hotch shoots him from the car.
 - Plenty sits still. Hunger is a wanderer. Zulu proverb
 - Beyond the east the sunrise, beyond the west the sea, and the east and west the wander-thirst that will not let me be. Gerald Gould
ep 6 - The instincts - A little kid, Michael, is kidnapped; the mother is detached, blames her husband.
Reid has nightmares, one on the jet, one inside Michael's parents house. I liked how the woman kept looking at him, kinda feeling sympathy for him, as if she liked him more, felt him more human and close because he had nightmares. You know, I understand that, I liked that scene with that woman very much, the actress did very good, very well shot, very effective.
Reid:"Freud's been discredited, but Jung still has his merits" :-) Morgan finds out that when Reid was four, a six years old boy was killed and he went to his funeral.
Reid: "Hotch, do you think it'd be possible to wait until tomorrow to return home?"
Hotch to Morgan: "Do you think you could find something to do in Vegas for the night?" and he could even keep a straight face while saying that :lol:
Reid gets permission to sleep on the couch in his mother's room, and she goes: "if anyone tries to keep him in here any longer, I'll scratch your eyes out" :lol: "it helps if they think you're crazy. They don't argue.":lol:
So Reid stops here with her, while JJ, Rossi, Morgan, Hotch and Emily eat chinese together: it always gets me to see Hotchner smiling or laughing, because I think of the character, not the actor. The actor smiled a lot in other roles, but Hotch is something else.
In the last scene, Reid dreams and in his dream he sees his dad with the dead kid.
Case: this mentally-ill woman, she had a baby but it was taken away from her, and now she abducts children seeing them as her own.
It was funny Emily's comment on the messy crime scene: "it's the crime scene investigators. They all want to play cop instead of just being scientists and they end up trampling on everything" :lol: what I thought of Csi: funny, sure, I liked it, but it doesn't make sense. In every other show you barely see the Csi people, but here they do everything: they do the interviews, they investigate, they follow the case from start to finish. No sense in that, there are no cops in Las Vegas?
 - Amos Bronson Alcott said: who speaks to the instincts speaks to the deepest in mankind, and finds the readiest response.
 - Bob Dylan once said: I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay
ep 7 - Memoriam - They are still in Vegas, it is the next morning. Emily's hangover makes her say she hates Vegas. They go but Reid wants to stay to investigate the Riley case, but back to his room he finds Morgan and Rossi and tells them he thinks his father did it. Mr Reid is in Vegas too, always been, and they go to see him at work, but Reid can't talk, at first he's too emotional. Then they meet him but Reid's still angry and half-accuses him. Garcia goes through his files: nothing bad or illecit, only everything about him :-)
Reid is so determined to nail his father for the murder of the boy, he just won't stop; they find out the truth with the help of his mother, and arrest the father of Riley, because he killed the bastard that killed his son.
Reid uncovers the whole truth; that Gary Michaels had approached Spencer too, to play chess, and his mother understood everything as soon as she saw the way Michaels looked at him: "a mother knows". She told Riley's father, he found him and killed him with a baseball bat, then Diana Reid saw the body so her husband burned her bloody clothes to protect her, but the burden was too much he couldn't take it.
"you could have come back" awww Reid, sounding like a baby "I was wrong about everything, I'm sorry" yes, you were, at least you admit it.
JJ goes into labour and they are all there for her  :-)  Her baby is so cute :-) Will of course is there too. JJ and him want Spencer and Garcia to be Henry's godfather and godmother. Sweet, he was touched.
I love that in this series there are some friendships and a lot of respect, but they don't stress us with useless love stories. I mean, there's Penelope and Kevin, and JJ and Will, but that's the point, just those two and it took some time, but not between the main characters. I'm glad about that. Unfortunately they so often have the tendency to turn every show into "the bold and the beautiful".
At last, can we spend a second for "how is it that I just went through 15 hours of labour and you look worse than I do?" (JJ to Reid) - Reid replies:"Don't be ridiculous. You look beautiful" How nice are they? I like how they kept their friendship.
P.S. Reid calls Yale his "safety school" :lol:
 - What was silent in the father speaks in the son, and often I found in the son the unveiled secret of the father. Friedrich Nietzsche
 - There is no refuge from memory and remorse in this world. The spirits of our foolish deeds haunt us, with or without repentance. Gilbert Parker
ep 8 - Masterpiece - Reid and Rossi are talking in front of a full class, and Reid makes a joke... embarassing. Prof Rothchild approaches him and tells them that he killed seven women but there is still time to save the next five, that they'll be dead in 9 hours. Kevin is there with Garcia :-) They rush to find them, a girl and her little students. Hotch wonders if he should send Reid to talk to him, but Rossi insists that what he wants, his game, so Rossi wants to conduct the interview himself, and gets pretty sensitive about it, like wondering if Hotch doesn't believe him intelligent enough. Come to think about it, when Rossi said "you think he's smarter than me?" he was referring to Reid or Rothchild? At first I thought he meant Reid, but that would make him sound a little like a child. Maybe he was referring to Rothchild, in that case no, he's not smarter than you, Rossi. In the end, the evil mastermind turns out to be just a man seeking revenge for his brother, a murderer that Rossi caught years ago. Rossi outsmarts him though, because Rothchild was too arrogant and too keen on his vengeance, so Rossi tricked him into a videotaped confession, after sending his team to free the prisoners, warning them of the probable trap Rothchild had prepared for them. This will make a good lesson, since Rossi teaches interrogation :-) He says so.
I don't like this agent Todd, here. JJ was much more sensitive and sweet. She's very pretty though.
 - Let us consider that we are all insane. It will explain us to each other. It will unriddle many riddles. Mark Twain 
 - Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. Martin Luther King, Jr.
ep 9 - Pickup - This episode's psycho-bastard kills girls: he cuts them open and forces them to clean their own blood. Talking to the mother of a victim, Agent Todd says she lost her sister to induce her to cooperate, but Hotch knows she's an only child and is angry at her: "I don't know how you did things in counterterrorism, but we don't make it a habit to lie to get the job done".
This guy killed prostitutes first, then a rich girl he picked up in a club, after following a self-confidence "how to pick up chicks" class, teached by Viper...yeah.
Garcia talking to Hotch:
"sir, does this stuff actually work? On real, breathing girls?"
"why are you asking me?"
"I abhor the whole 'chicks dig jerks' thing"
"Well, fortunately Garcia, you're one of the exceptions"
"well, be still my bespeckled heart, so are you, sir"
"thanks" and I smiled when Hotch smiled. I love how he says that 'thanks', his voice is more sweet, more human than usual.  :-)
Prentiss and Jordan study Viper in a club while Morgan and Reid give out fliers in another club, only Reid isn't doing too well. Morgan gives him advice: "take control of the conversation. When you talk, what makes you feel like an espert?
"statistics"
"no. Trust me, no. Something else"
"When I do magic"
"See, see, that's perfect. Chicks dig magic" which actually is very true, although I don't like that 'chicks'.
So Reid tries magic with the bartender girl, and yes, it is cool, I thought so too, I would have reacted the same way as her. He warns her to call him if he sees the suspect. "and if I don't see him? Can I still call you?" :lol: and Reid:"yeah, yeah, you could call me. If you... yeah" :lol: oh Reid :lol:
Then that same bartender sees the guy and saves his victim, but then he takes her. They save her, though. Good, she was a good one,
At the end, Jordan has a nice word from Hotch :-) and Reid opens up a package with a red kiss stamped on his card while on the phone with the cute bartender. :-)
 - Author Harlan Ellison wrote: the minute people fall in love, they become liars.
 - P.J. O'Rourke wrote: cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.
ep 10 - Brothers in arms - Phoenix, Arizona. Cops are killed. Morgan says he understands the cops because he was a cop and saw cops get shot, and before that his father was a cop who got killed on duty. Cops think gangs did it, but it was some other guy, who tried to prove to be a 'real man' in a fight club, but failed, so took up a gun... yeah, in other words, a real loser. They catch him when he tries to kill Hotch! Tsk!
 - We are all brothers under the skin, and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it. Ayn Rand
 - For he today who sheds his blood with me shall be my brother. William Shakespeare.
ep 11 - Normal - Orange County, CA. Norman (Mitch Pileggi) is a serial shooter; he's suffering from some kind of psychotic break, he's role-playing, he's breaking from reality, finally losing it after the terrible tragedy he suffered, six months ago when his youngest daughter was killed by a car while he was changing a tire. Jordan is troubled, after seeing that he killed right after her press release, and also that he had killed his family. "did I do that? Is this my fault?" thinking he did it after watching her press conference, which is true actually, only he's not her fault, she did what she had to do and because of it they caught him and stopped him, but it's tough on her. "I don't... I'm not sure I can do this job" - Rossi:"That's okay. There's nothing wrong with that" - Back at the office, JJ is waiting for them with her little child. Derek holds him and says "he is smiling at Derek Morgan". Prentiss and Garcia reply "gas", and everybody watches him with the baby, smiling, even Hotchner. A little bit, not a real happy one, of course, but JJ tells him "you're smiling". "gas" he replies, and then "we miss you" and I like the way his eyes keep going from the baby to her and vice versa.
 - Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and begin to slit throats. H. L. Mencken
 - There's no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were. President Dwight Eisenhower.
ep 12 - Soul mates - Black and white girls are being taken, raped and killed, and the episode starts with the team arresting a black man; the Bau was already there and the point now is to break him and find the last girl. This bastard has a partner, a soulmate, a white man, explaining why they alternate them. When the team realises about the partner, they talk to the family and the daughter Andrea suspects their neighbour and folllows him, and is taken. When her father comes to get her and the two partner have a fight, because one thinks 'he talked to the police about me' and the other thinks 'he wanted to hurt my daughter', (funny enough they were both wrong), she was really touching. The poor girl had believed in her father all this time, right up to this point when she realises the truth , hearing his own words.
Funny Rossi, when a policeman, after talking with Reid, asked him "where'd you find this kid?", and he said:"he was left in a basket on the steps of the Fbi" :lol:
 - No mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips. Betrayal oozes out of him at every pore. Sigmund Freud
 - British historian C. Northcote Parkinson said: delay is the deadliest form of denial
ep 13 - Bloodline - The team is involved in a case when a ten years old girl goes missing after her mother and stepfather were murdered in their bed. Her father warns them she has epilepsy and they find her. Two parents teach their son to steal, abduct and murder, and they abduct a girl for him. The first girl was sick, had epilepsy, so she wasn't good for them, and now they're looking for another one. "you see one you like?" oh God. This has been going on for generations, the boy's mother was abducted when she was a little girl herself, but now she is part of that family and believes in their same traditions and helps abducting other girls.
They catch them, but there are others like them out there. It's not clear though, what they would do if they had girls, daughters. I mean, they showed that they always abduct girls for their sons whey they become ten, and this kid also has brothers, but do they all have just sons? Never daughters?
The father to Hotch, feeling really bad: "yesterday would have been the first time I'd seen her in a month and a half" and Hotch, really understanding, replies:"a collegue of mine asked me the other day how my son was enjoying the Christmas present they got for him, and I had to make up an answer because I didn't know" oh my heart, Hotch...
Jordan says JJ will be back to work three weeks earlier, and shes'll go back to counterterrorism.
 - Winston Churchill said: there is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues of human society are created, strenghthened and mantained.
 - Mario Puzo wrote: the strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other.
ep 14 - Cold comfort - Olimpia, Washington. Girls are missing, dying, and a man says he is a psychic, he can 'see' things, and Rossi is upset by this. He has a history with working with psychic. It happened to him too, once, to think that since at the moment they had no other leads, there was no harm in listening to what a psychic said, but this brought them on a false track and they were not able to save the victim.
This unsub cuts the girls' hair, pierce their ears, then kills them, embalms them (not in this order), then he has sex with them: a necrophiliac, yeuch. This Roderick guy is more than troubled, he's totally sick; sure his past is traumatic, I admit it. rich but raised by a nanny girl because his parents were never there, so when she died suddenly he was alone with her for days.
You know, this Usher could actually be the real thing, only it's not and he can't be a  reliable source: he said he could see water, the sea, and it turns out that out of the window of the sicko there was a big commercial poster of some beer, showing a nice view of the sea and a lighthouse. He was right, but Rossi was right too. If they had gone for his words, they would have searched that house by the sea portrayed in a picture, and they would not have been in time to save her.
Rossi is right "when people are vulnerable, they'll believe a lot of things", but the psychic tells him "there are people out there that don't believe in what you do, either" well, that's a good reply, Usher...
 - And so, all the night-tide, I lay down by the side, of my darling, my darling, my life and my  bride, in the sepulchre there by the sea, in her tomb by the sounding sea. Edgar Allan Poe
 - For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible. Stuart Chase
ep 15 - Zoe's reprise - Rossi is at a book reading and signing in Cleveland, Ohio, and he meets a girl telling him she believes there's a serial killer there, but Rossi has nothing to make him believe it true, so he goes away telling her to keep studying and 'don't stop until you find all the answers you're looking for'. "I won't" she says, then she immediately goes investigating by herself, and is murdered. He had given her his card, so police calls him. She was called Zoe Hawkes. "I just talked to her last night. I never asked her name"...
Rossi gets his team involved and together they find a connection: "he's a serial killer studying serial killers".
Rossi and Hotch talking: "it's because of what I said that she was encouraged to go there last night"
"Dave, what are you doing?"
"She came to me and I dismissed her"
"try not to personalise it" ... which is a stupid thing to say, sorry Hotch but it is.
"I was the last one she talked to before she was murdered. How is this not personal, Aaron?"
"okay, it's personal"  duh! yeah, it is!
Rossi wanted to pay for Zoe's funeral, but her mother is not pleased "I don't need or want your money. I have taken care of my daughter for 22 years and she is still my responsibility. I don't need any help from you. You didn't even know her" which is true but he felt really bad about what happened and wanted to do something, and did what every wealthy man does, but money can't fix everything.
They find the guy, believing he's strangling another girl, but she's his girlfriend! She doesn't know this, but he took her to have sex to all his murder scenes. At the end, Rossi's wondering if his books aren't doing more harm than good, and JJ tells him of when she was at her senior year in Georgetown and met him in the campus bookstore: he was promoting his second book, and she sat through his whole talk, and it was then, because of him, that she decided to follow that career.
JJ is showing pictures of Henry: "this is him wearing the customised leather jacket auntie Penelope got him" oh God :lol: she gave him a leather jacket... :lol:
 - I never teach my pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn. Albert Einstein
 - Australian novelist Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach wrote: in youth we learn, in age we understand
ep 16 - Pleasure is my business - Hotch is watching a video on his computer about his son learning to ride a bike when he receives a call. A prostitute is killing rich, important people. On the plane, they talk about how women serial killer are rare and different, they don't take trophies, there's no torture, because there's no sexual gratification when a woman kills, murder is the goal.
Dallas. This woman kills only men who walked out completely of their families. Learning that Hotch is on the case, she looks him up on youtube finding a video of the speech he made during that case of the loser killing cops, but then a new client talks to her about how they "handle the Fbi" and she thinks he's like all the others, protecting the powerful. She calls him: "for a moment, I actually thought there were still good people in the world" she tells him.
"But I've disappointed you, haven't I? Just like all the other men in your life who've walked out on their families, who deserve to be punished"
"Did you walk out on your family?"
"No. My wife left me".
"Do you have kids?"
"I have a son"
"How often do you see him?"
"I try to see him every week"
"tsk! Do you see him every week?"
"No, I don't get there as often as I want"
"I believe you, but don't compare yourself to the men I see. You are nothing like them. You're just another whore."
"How am I a whore?"
"You come when called. You do their bidding. In hotels, you take the side elevator to avoid crowds while the men who pay your salary walks across the ivory marble foyer into their cars...I won't let you cover this up" and she's crying.
They discover her name, and contact her father, so he has a meeting with her. When she meets him, he's all 'my little girl, I love you, I will protect you" and she hugs him crying, like any girl she wants to believe him badly, but then he asks for her client list, the bastard, because that's all he wanted. She doesn't kill him, but she gives him an empty phone then simply waits for Hotch to find her, to give him the real list.
"Who was it that said: You don't pay a prostitute for sex, you pay her to leave afterwards?"
"It was Dashiell Hammett"
"That doesn't make sense. The men always leave first"
She has poisoned herself, but unlike the other men in her life Hotch keeps his word and stays with her, holding her hand till the end... this was a sad episode, I kind of felt for her. Of course she had to be stopped, yes I know this...but still, I liked her a lot.
 - The prostitute is not, as feminists claim, the victim of men, but rather their conqueror, an outlaw, who controls the sexual channels between nature and culture. Camille Paglia
ep 17 - Demonology - Emily is brought into a case by her friend Johnny, telling her how their friend Matthew died. Matthew was important to her.  Rossi hears Prentiss' story: she said before she had met Matthew in Rome when she was 15. Now she explains how he helped her when she got pregnant.
Sometimes I wonder how can they find time to follow their personal cases: JJ always says she's full of cases to choose from, so why don't they? Anyway, men with drug problems or mental illnesses are considered possessed by the devil by their own families, who requested an exorcism for them. When they find the excorcist priest, he has immunity. It's impressive how well Prentiss pronounces Italian words, it's not common. It's right for her character, since she lived here for some time, having a mother ambassador, but it's not so common for American actors.
At the end they stop him from doing the same to her friend John.
Prentiss: "it's like the end of the Dead, when Gretta remembers the boy she loved when she was younger, and she says 'I think he died for me' "
Rossi: "you know James Joyce also said: 'there is no heresy or philosophy so abhorrent to the church as a human being' "
Apparently the team or the office talked to the Vatican who intervened, so the Italian government revoked his immunity, so now they are sending him back to Italy. Oh , good, thank... :-/
 - Leonardo Da Vinci said: he who does not punish evil commands it to be done.
ep 18 - Omnivore - At night, Hotch pays a visit to Tom, an old partner: ten years ago they worked together the Reaper case, then Tom closed the case without an arrest and sent Hotch away. Now, before he dies, he tells him why: he made a deal with the murderer: "if you stop hunting me I'll stop hunting them. For as long as we both shall live. Till death do us part". Tom agreed, and the killings stopped, but now he's dying. Hitch doesn't approve "we don't let them get away with it".
It was 1998, Hotch's first case as lead profiler.  (Btw, Hotch looks good without a tie, doesn't he? :-) )
Now the Boston Reaper starts killing again. Apparently the ninth victim of the reaper survived, and they think he might be in danger now, but at the end he turns out to be the reaper himself. He tried to make the same deal with Hotch, but he refuses: "I don't make deals. I'm the guy who hunts guys like you". Go Hotch, tell him! But after he hangs up the reaper kills again and Hotch feels guilty.  Rossi:"if you want to end up like Shaunessy, like Gideon, blaming yourself for everything, you go ahead. But that voice in your head, it's not your conscience, it's your ego This isn't about us, Aaron, it's about the bad guys. That's why we profile them. It's their fault. We're just guys doing a job. And when we stop doing it, someone else will. Trust me. I know." then Hotch tells him to put away the gun he had offered to give him to end it: "it's a little dramatic, don't you think ?"
"My wife always said I had a flair for the dramatic"
"Which one?"
"All of them" :-) It was a great scene, Thomas Gibson was great, with his eyes almost wet, it was intense , and Mantegna was great too.
The ep ends with Foyet escaping from prison!
 - Fate is not satisfied with inflicting one calamity. Roman author Publilius Syrus.
 - Men heap together the mistakes of their lives and create a monster they call destiny. John Hobbes.
ep 19 - House on fire - Royal, Indiana. A cinema on fire, all doors closed, 19 people killed. Not the first fire. Usually arsonists don't kill, but now a guy does He was sent away years ago, to take him away from his sister because of town's rumours.
"I want to see the good in people, I choose to see the good in people" oh, Garcia is so good.
Getting into someone's mind and trying to find the God-awful thing that happened to them that made them do the God-awful thing to somebody else has seriously impaired my ability to giggle, and it makes my brain all wonky, and I don't like it" and Hotch thanks her for her great job, tells her she helped them a lot, and that he'd never want her to change... I totally understand her when she remains open-mouth after this! A compliment like this from Hotch is something special, somehow...
 - Tennessee Williams said: we all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call, no way out.
 - I have loved to the point of madness. That which is called madness, that which to me is the only sensible way to love. Francoise Sagan . 
ep 20 - Conflicted - Guys are killed during spring break in South Padre. The team thinks it's the work of a team, a man and a woman working together, but eventually Reid realizes it might be just one guy with Dissociative Identity Disorder. His friend Julie tries to help him, but his alter personality Amanda throws her off the roof. Prentiss and Hotch stay with her while Morgan and Reid run after Adam/Amanda. Reid remembers Tobias and feels guilty.  "None of us could have noticed" - "I could have. Tobias Hankel"  He remembers how the personality of the father had killed him, but the real Tobias saved his life, so now he'd like to save Adam.
To protect Adam for the last time, Amanda takes control of him, doesn't let him come out anymore.
It ends showing Reid periodically visiting Amanda in the mental hospital where she's kept, trying to convince her to let Adam free. Now, they make it look like he's determined to keep doing this as long as it's necessary to free Adam, but I wonder, will the show talk about this again? Or it'll be one of those things they do sometimes, when they say that he'll keep doing it but then they forget about it and never talk about it ever again??
 - Light thinks it travels faster than anything, but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always gotten there first, and is waiting for it. Terry Pratchett.
A quote from Terry Pratchett, when I saw this I was thrilled! I love Terry Pratchett, his genius!
 -Stephen King wrote: monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.
ep 21 - A shade of gray - The case: little kids abducted and killed. Now Kyle appears to be missing. He would be the third victim. "99% of abducted children are killed in the first 24 hours" oh thanks Rossi, to remind me how such this world is.  After ten minutes they find their bastard, but they can connect him only to the first two boys, not to the third. Rollins (John Billingsley) says he didn't want to do these things, he can't help himself, like we should feel sorry for him! You know what I think? If ever in his life he had thought it was wrong to do those things, he'd have done anything on Earth to prevent it, no matter what! I'd kill myself before doing that to a child, for the love of God! Pity him, tsk, no way, loathe him, yes!
They realize that, while being guilty for the first two boys, Rollins had nothing to do with Kyle. They press Detective Lancaster with questions, until he confesses. It was a hard scene, I liked this Lancaster a lot, I knew he was lying. Good acting.
Later on, alone with Kyle's brother Danny, Prentiss realizes he "has a bad temper" and asking hi questions she learns that Danny killed him because Kyle had broken his toy. Danny's a complete sociopath, feels nothing for the people.
 - Dr Burton Grebin once said: to lose a child is to lose a piece of yourself.
 - André Maurois wrote: without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold.
ep 22 - The big wheel - A man with severe OCD murders a woman and films it, then writes "help me" and sends the video to the police. He has killed twelve women in the last ten years. He changed when two years ago he met the blind son of one of his victims; he secretly kept in touch, they became friends... Vincent gets shot when he stabs a mugger, but he takes young Stan to the Ferris Wheel at a theme park. The team rushes in, but when they come down from the wheel, he's already dead.
 - In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present. Francis Bacon.
 - No matter how dark the moment, love and hope are always possible. George Chakiris.
ep 23 - Roadkill - Kevin has a job interview, but it's an overseas position..
Bend, Oregon. A guy kills with his car people with red cars. I always wonder why in films, in a similar situation, the victim runs straight ahead, making it easy for those in the car. Maybe it's just panic, I don't think they believed they could outrun a car...
This guy had a car accident. A red car crushed into his, leaving him paralyzed and killing his wife. A cop, Gil Bonner, thinks it might be his fault. He had an accident, well not exactly, nothing happened to him, but he thinks he caused one.
Hotch: Why didn't you stop?
Gil: It didn't seem real.
JJ: You're saying you just pretended it didn't happen?
Gil: I guess if you tell yourself something for long enough, you can make anything true.
But the truth is that Ian the murderer was driving a red car. There was no other car that night, he was the one responsible for the accident. JJ can tell Gill that he didn't kill anyone: he caused a man to drive off the road, just a bit of damage to the car, nothing more. I liked this Gil a lot, great scenes.
Kevin doesn't get the job because the position just "went away" because of a security breach: "someone hacked the project database so the whole project was put on hold" and Garcia knows the place. She hacked it :-) to know more about it. So they stay here together. :-)
 - I'm not sure about automobiles. With all their speed forward they may be a step backward in civilization . Booth Tarkington.
 - The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience. Mahatma Gandhi.
ep 24 - Amplification - Someone kills a whole lot of people at a park.
They find the right name and Derek goes with Reid to check his house, but while he's on the phone Reid goes in alone and gets exposed to the Anthrax. Reid rushes to close the door, locking Derek out, safe.
Reid: Hotch, I really messed up this time.
If it wasn't so tragic it'd be funny: Reid should lose his habit of going on on his own.
He then calls Garcia:
-Hey Reid
-Reid? Wow, no witty Garcia greeting for me?
-I can't be my sparkly self when you are where you are.
-Garcia, do you think you can do something for me? I know I can't call my mom without alerting everyone at her hospital.
-What do you need? - Just like Molly Hooper, same thing. No useless words, just whatever it is that he needs, she'll do it for him. That's love, but it's also absolute trust.
-I need you to record a message for her in case anything happens to me.
Awwww.
He keeps investigating in there, and as soon as possible he's rushed to the hospital in a bad shape, the aphasia-fase almost starting.
JJ was worried sick about his son, because she couldn't warn them. She calls her family when it's all over, and Hotch calls to talk to his son. :-)
Derek is at the hospital when Reid wakes up.
 - It will become fine dust over all the land of Egypt and will become boils breaking out with sores on man and beast through all the land of Egypt. Exodus 9:9.
 - Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Helen Keller.
ep 25 - To hell... and back - Detroit, Michigan. A man crosses the border to Canada but then deliberately crashes into it and confesses he's killed ten people and wants them to call the Fbi. He's an ex-soldier, even received a Purple Heart.
They meet with Jeff Bedwell, trained by Dave. :-) Hotch interrogates him: he's not a killer, he wanted to make sure those deaths were investigated seriously. He had gone to Detroit police three times already, but they didn't care. "people disappear. That's how life on the streets works"
He kept looking for his sister every night and noticed many people missing. He also didn't want his mother to know about the investigation. "I don't want her living off hope. Bad news stop us for a while, but then you move on. Hope is paralyzing."
I agree on this. They always say hope is better, but it's so very important when it's real, not just an illusion.
A guy abducts people pretending to be a drug dealer, and then smuggles them to Canada. The team arrives to his name, but he's paralyzed .
 - Flannery O'Connor said: If there were no hell, we would be like the animals. No hell, no dignity. 
ep 26 - This is the second part of the last episode.
At that man's farm, they find lots of shoes, belonging to much much more than ten victims. They were 89!
The bodies were fed to the pigs. Yeuch, I don't like this double episode. Somehow, it seems to me worse than anyone else.
Mason Turner is quadriplegic, paralyzed from the neck down. There's another man who has abducted another girl, but they don't know about him. Hotch calls Garcia down there. Mason tries to blame it on his brother Lucas, but Garcia discovers on his computer that he was doing experiments, trying to fix himself. I really don't like this double episode, for some reason, though I kinda like that Kelly talking to Lucas. At the end the brothers both die, Mason shot by our grieving ex-soldier, Lucas by policemen.
"Sometimes there are no words, no clever quotes to neatly sum up what's happened that day. Sometimes you do everything right, everything exactly right and still you feel like you've failed. Did it need to end that way? Could something have been done to prevent the tragedy in the first place?" Long thought by Hotch.
Back home Hotch finds a man inside, who points a gun at him : "you should have made the deal" then the screen goes black and we hear a shot. He's the Boston Reaper. The situation is tragic but I'm not really worried for Hotch, because he sure can't die, this show wouldn't be the same without him.

End of season 4.

Ordeal by innocence by Agatha Christie

I like it very much, even if it doesn't have anyone known inside. There's no Poirot and no Miss Marple, no known names are mentioned. Still, it's a great book, a big drama that concentrates on a subject that it was clearly dear to the writer, since I've read about it in many other books. There are cases in which, more than catching the murderer, the important part is to clear the innocent's position, to avoid their life being ruined by suspicions and rumours. This book is all about it. It's a very interesting story: two years ago a woman was killed and one of her adopted sons was arrested and imprisoned, and there he died of some illness, I don't remember exactly which one, and I've just read it :-/
The kid Jack kept saying he had an alibi but nobody came forward for him so he wasn't believed. Fact is, that day he really did have an alibi, but Doctor Calgary could not tell anyone because he had an accident and forgot about it, then left on an expedition so read nothing about the case. Only now he realises what had happened, and thinks it his duty to tell everyone that Jack was innocent. He personally informs the family, believing that they'll be relieved to know that the son didn't kill the mother. Little he knows, though, because it turns out nobody is glad to hear what he has to say, on the contrary they are all troubled by his words. He will soon understand why. Given the circumstances, it is unthinkable that a stranger could have done it, therefore someone in that house must be a murderer. Rachel Argyle was a rich woman but she had disposed of her money for all of them so money doesn't seem to be a motive. She was a good woman, but she wasn't much loved. She had adopted two sons: Jack, the black sheep, always in trouble, who has been a little criminal all his life; Micky, who hated her because when he was a little kid he wanted to stay with his poor drunken mother, instead she left him with Rachel in exchange for a hundred pounds; and three daughters: Mary, the first one, wanted to be adopted to have all the comforts Rachel could give her, and then married the man she loved even if Rachel didn't approve her choice, and wanted to live with him away from the rest of the family; Hester, abandoned by her real mother, who always resented Rachel's invasive presence and always remained an insecure child inside; Tina, the daughter of a prostitute and a southamerican sailor, the only one that truly loved Rachel and was grateful for the life she had given her. They all lived in the same house with Leo, Rachel's husband; Kirsten Lindstrom, a swedish nurse working for them; and Gwenda Vaughan, Leo's assistant, in love with him.
Jack was the perfect suspect for everybody, and now that he's declared innocent, the lives of the others are thrown into a circle of troubles and suspicions. Realising the consequences of what he did, Doctor Calgary is determined to find the right murderer in order to clear the positions of all the innocents. To do so, he'll start studying the characters of the victims: Agatha Christie was really the one that invented the BAU; as Hotchner (from "Criminal Minds", of course) always says: we study the victims to profile the unsub. :-) Doctor Calgary does the same thing, studying Rachel and Jack to uncover the real murderer. Unfortunately he'll be too late to avoid another victim, but I'm glad to say that Christie is the usual romantic one and saves a girl, only wounded, concluding the book with a bit of romance :-)

ITA Le due verità

The expendables 3

They went too far this time, caring only to put as much big names in it as possible. With Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) and Lee Christmas (Jason Statham) there are Doc (Wesley Snipes), Gunner (Dolph Lundgren), Toll Road (Randy Couture) and Caesar (Terry Crews) as their old team. Finding out that ex-expendable now dangerous arms-dealer Stonebanks (Mel Gibson) is still alive while he thought he was dead, Barney breaks the team and with the help of Bonaparte (Kelsey Grammer) he finds young new people: Thorn (Glen Powell), Mars (Victor Ortiz), Luna (Ronda Rousey) and Smilee (Kellan Lutz). During his boring search for these recruits, we see that his old men have no life outside the team to go back to, not even Christmas, who seems to not have his girlfriend anymore.
At the end Barney will need everybody's help, though. This time around there was no Bruce Willis. His role was taken by Harrison Ford, who honestly looks totally out of place, with no real purpose or role.
Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jet Li have roles so little they shouldn't even figure in the big poster.
Robert Davi has a little role too, buying weapons from Stonebanks. It turns out that the best-played character was him, Stonebanks. Gibson was good, I liked him, but the whole thing was kind of ruined because after such big mess of bullets, explosions and even tanks firing, when there's the final duel between Barney and Stonebanks, it ends really too quickly. All that useless firing before was excessive, and I was getting really really bored, than their duel was much too short, they should have let Stonebanks fight more. Maybe Stallone was afraid of making a Rocky-scene, when he's almost beaten but rises up and surprises everyone by winning the match. Well, I'm not saying I wanted that either, no, but it should have been difficult for Barney, instead it was over in no time. How disappointing.
Do I have to mention that they couldn't resist from the joke "Christmas is coming" "but it's July.." ? ... yeah. Still, Banderas is so charming he actually makes it funny :)
The best thing of all for me was Galgo (Antonio Banderas), so funny and adorable. At first Barney didn't want him because... well, he's not all that young anymore, for those who care, but in the end he needed all the help he could get, even his.Galgo always talks a lot, to Barney's annoyance, but it was a very nice scene when later Barney asks him about his past, how he came to be without a team. They were killed on a mission in which he was the only survivor. Barney guesses their names and Galgo is surprised: "you were listening" - "yeah, I was listening" - "thank you". We realises now he wasn't just blabbing gossip, he was remembering his team, his friends that are now dead, even if he believed nobody was listening to him.
That yes and that thank you are the best part of the whole movie.

EDIT I watched it again because I learned that Ronda Rousey was a real fighter, not an actress, and was curious to see her. She has a few fight scenes at the end, but there are so many of them there isn't really time to show more.
Also, a few things I noticed that I didn't write above:
Why did Barney's new team switch off the lights when they had Stonebanks right there, they had not been detected and had anyone on sight? In the darkness they lost all the advantage, didn't they?
Also, Stonebanks was always followed by a lot of guards... which was cool to see but rather absurd that they were all 'following' him, nobody was in front of him ever, he was always the first to enter any place... how could they protect him??
Did I see right, Barney uses a revolver? One of those with six bullets inside?? What is that? Towards the end I mean.
The funniest lines were of Stonebanks, when during the big battle he complains about the Armenian army, saying something like 'is it so hard to kill 10 people? Can you at least injure a couple of them?' :lol:



ITA i mercenari 3

Random hearts - 1999

I liked it, very much. It's a strange movie, all psychological, all about dealing with difficult emotions. We have Kay (Kristin Scott Thomas), a congresswoman or something; she has a husband, a teenage daughter, friends, and she thinks she knows where she stands. We have Dutch (Harrison Ford), a policeman of internal affairs, huntind down dirty cops, who has a beautiful wife and is happy with her. Right at the beginning we have a plane crash, and realise that Kay's husband Cullen and Dutch's wife Peyton were both on it, and died in the crash. At first none of them is worried. Cullen had told Kay that he was going to New York and she's shocked to learn that he was on the plane to Miami. Dutch finds out that Peyton lied to him, and wasn't travelling for work, so he starts investigating. Guessing that she was going with a man, he checks the passengers list and is convinced that she was having an affair with the man sitting next to her: Cullen. Dutch wants to talk to Kay to learn more about it. How long was it going on, and everything else he can find. He becomes obsessed by them. At first Kay doesn't want to talk about it: she doesn't want her daughter or the journalists to learn about it, but soon she joins him when he goes to Miami. He wants to know where they went, where they stayed, what they did, imagining them together in that place. He finds it very difficult to accept that he never knew, never noticed anything, never suspected, when in his line of work sorting out the lies from the truth is key. They are both in great pain, of course, but they deal with it differently. He's deep in his obsession, while she suffers in silence, trying to go on living, somehow.
Back from Miami they almost do it in the car, which is not as absurd as it may seem. Shortly after, he leaves her a map to get to his cabin, if she wants him. She goes, they have sex. Many things bring them to this: they're both attractive, of course, but there's more. I think sex might be a natural response for them who have been touched by death, as a sort of call-to-life thing, a I'm-alive-living-and-feeling yell. Anger at the cheating spouses, maybe, but most importantly they are the only people on earth with whom they can be honest with, right now, the only ones that understand what they are going through, that really know. This could be a new beginning for both of them, but it would be too easy, right? It wouldn't be right, either. She wants to be with him because she feels free to be herself but also a new woman that comes out only when they are alone together. She would like to forget Cullen and Peyton with him, but he can't, his obsession doesn't let him free.
He's looking for an explanation that he can't find, and she realises they can't be together now, and goes her separate way. She spends time with her daughter during the Christmas holidays, she loses the election and now, a not-specified number of weeks after they last met, while she's about to catch a plane to go back home, she finds him waiting for her. She wouldn't agree on catching a later flight to be with him now: good, better not to rush things this time, but she accepts when he asks her to see each other again, watch a movie together, things like that. She keeps smiling, and I love the way she can't keep her distance. She touches him in a way that shows all her feelings. She can't avoid touching him. I love that scene, that right ending. It's a lovely, delicate, emotional movie.

Bad teacher

I don't like this film much, and it's all about the plot. I don't like this screenplay. There's Elizabeth (Cameron Diaz of course) who is a teacher but left the school to marry a rich guy. When the engagement is broken by his wise mother, she's forced to go back to work. She cares nothing about her students, her school or anything else actually. She's only interested in men with money to get one for herself. She turns down Russell (Jason Segel) because he's only a gym teacher, and she focuses herself on the new teacher Scott (Justin Timberlake) who apparently comes from a rich family. I don't remember how.
She makes herself an antagonist out of Amy Squirrel (funny, she looks just like a cute little squirrel - played by Lucy Punch). Amy is her complete opposite, and she's interested in Scott too.
Elizabeth thinks that to catch a rich husband she needs bigger breasts, but the surgery would cost a lot of money, so she goes frenzy doing anything to get her hands on some money, and every bit of it she puts into a big jar with New Tits written on it.
She washes cars wearing little and moving like a porn fantasy. She takes bribes from parents, promising them to take particular care of their kid, while actually she doesn't even know their names, and is too bored or tired from a wild night to waste her time teaching them anything. She simply puts a dvd on, but at least I had to give her this: she only chooses movies related, in some way, to school, like Scream for example.
Still, after knowing that the best class to score at the state exams will receive a money prize, she starts teaching them wanting them to learn fast, and when she realises they'll never be number one she steals a copy of the test in order to cheat!  She's not a good example, she comes to school with a  hangover, uses drugs just outside and even steals an ornament at a student's house to give it to the principal and make her look good in his eyes. Amy is totally against her because she knows she kept for herself money she should have given to the school, and that she uses drugs. When she learns that Elizabeth cheated at the exams (because she did, and she won) Amy tries to have her thrown out but Elizabeth manages to turn the events in her favor and against Amy. Of course she's funnier than petulant Amy, but still Amy was right all along, so it doesn't seem really right that Elizabeth should win so completely. At the end, Elizabeth is a respected teacher in a relationship with Russell (of course, there were no doubts about this from the start), while Amy breaks up with Scott because Elizabeth made her believe he betrayed her, while truth is there was something between them that took place in the same hotel room, but they never unzipped... it was all a stupid, embarassing scene, not funny just boring. Amy also loses her job and will get transferred to a difficult school.
What's more, things are very badly developed because one scene she doesn't care if a boy is humiliated in front of everybody at school, next thing you know she's helping him. Why? What changed? Apparently nothing, it's nonsense. Apparently she realises she's been really superficial, and this too is nonsense. What does this mean, that she didn't know? Come on, that's stupid, there is no reason in this film why she should change her mind and stop going after rich men. It wouldn't have been difficult to create some reason for that and for her sudden interest in the students, but thing is there was no reason at all in here. It was utter nonsense and to me not even all that funny. Cameron Diaz also looked much better at the end without all that fire-red lipstick on: I guess that represented her rich-men-hunter persona, so at the end with Russell she didn't need it anymore. Good, it didn't suit her at all, she doesn't need any masks.

Centurion - 2010

Well, it's nothing special, but it's not bad, not bad. It might be worth other views because there's Michael Fassbender in it :-) It's the story of a roman centurion, Quintus Dias (Michael Fassbender..). Against the Picts all his comrades die; he doesn't and joins General Virilus (Dominic West) 's legion. Among them there's Macros (Noah Clark) who is all talk, like "I will think of myself first" and then he's betrayed and left to die by a comrade who he was trying to help; Bothos, who apparently is played by David Morrissey. I say apparently because I haven't been able to recognise him. I saw his name in the opening credits, didn't find him in the film, so looked at the ending credits and saw he was Bothos... so I had him in front of me the whole time and didn't realise it. Well done, me, you just keep getting worse don't you...
Virilus and his men are ordered to attack the Picts, with a special guide: Etain (Olga Kurylenko), one of the picts, now with the romans. She guides them well for some time, then she brings them into a trap. They are all killed but for a few men. Virilus is taken prisoner; I disagreed with him when he called her a traitor, because if you think about it she just proved that she's Not a traitor. She would have been a traitor if she had helped the romans against her own people. But at the same time I found very lame and unfair the duel he had with Etain. He was hurt and suffering from having been tied up, while she is at the top of her condition, so of course she wins. In a fair fight he would have beaten her. Anyway, at least he died fighting like a soldier, not tied up, maybe that's the point.
Quintus and the survivors try to save him but fail. One of them, same scumbag that killed Macros, kills a Pict child, so the Picts hunt them to kill them. They try to run away and get separated. They all die one by one. Quintus, Bothos and another one are helped by Arianne (Imogen Potts), a kind woman who lives alone because she's believed to be a witch. When they can't escape anymore, they stop and fight, and only Quintus and Bothos survive. They reach a roman camp and Bothos, without his roman clothes, stupidly runs towards it, so obviously he's killed with an arrow. How could they know he was  a roman??Quintus is more clever.
He'll have to fight the scumbag, then finally survived all, he can get into the camp and tell his story, finally safe... but he is dangerous to the romans because he's living proof of a bad bad failure so they try to kill him but he stops them and leaves, going back to Arianne, the only place where he's welcome. He's hurt, and we can guess that she'ss cure him and they'll live there together :-) His narrating voice says both at the beginning and at the end that "this is neither the beginning nor the end of my story". First time, he had survived his own legion, but hadn't joined Virilus yet. The second time they don't show us what comes next, but we can guess, can't we? He had survived both the picts and the romans, and now he's with Arianne, and with her will be the rest of his story till the end of it :-)

De vrais mensonges - 2010

At first I thought it was a nice comedy, then it became too... I don't know, the word perverse comes to mind. Let me explain, it starts nicely, with hairdresser Emilie (Audrey Tautou) that receives an anonimous love letter, but she's not moved by it much. On the contrary, what does she do with it? She gives it to her mother Maddy ( Nathalie Baye), a beautiful lady who is kind of depressed because her husband left her. Emilie makes her believe that it was written for her, hoping this would cheer her up, and then she starts writing new letters to her herself. She asks Jean ( Sami Bouajila), a guy working at her shop, to deliver them. When Maddy sees him, she convinces herself that he's her secret admirer, and funnily enough he did write the first letter, because he's secretly in love with Emilie! Not knowing this, Emilie wants him to play along, pretending to be her mother's admirer and date her. In a way she meant well, because her mother was feeling lonely and not herself, so she gave her something to cheer her up. It stopped being nice fun when they turned this film into a soap-opera TheBoldAndTheBeautiful-style, with mom and daughter with the same guy. I may be old school, but I don't like this kind of things. Making him sleep with the mother and then end up with the daughter.. no sorry but I don't like it. What's more, he's the victim in all this, because the two women decided everything themselves! The poor guy was in love with Emilie the whole time, wrote her that nice love letter, and was treated like a gigolò, forced to be one.
I know it's a French film, so they probably have a different way of looking at this things, a "who cares? let's do it" kind of attitude towards sex, but still the fact that the mother would sleep with Jean to get back at them both, after knowing that it was all a lie, was sick. I see no reason for ever watching this again.