I’ve left it way too late to give you a proper recap of last Thursday’s The Vampire Diaries, “The Sun Also Rises,” but feel I must write something, so here goes: relentlessly advertizing it as the episode before the season finale, even though it focused on the season-long obsession (the sacrifice) made it pretty clear to me FROM THE JUMP that we haven’t seen the last of Klaus. If I were a betting woman, I would have split my monies thusly: the sacrifice goes according to plan (for Klaus, obvs), and he spends the next episode terrorizing everyone who tried to stop him OR the sacrifice doesn’t go according to plan, and he spends the next episode terrorizing everyone who stopped him. Instead, Klaus gets everything he wants, and we’re going to spend the next episode dealing with . . . Damon’s feelings? (More on this in a minute).

Alright, so there’s some other stuff in between. Stuff like Jenna totally dying. As much as I liked Jenna, Sara Canning was wildly underused for most of the series’ run, so it’s better for the show (and the actress, I hope) to cut its losses. A lot of her scenes in this ep, outside of the serious emotional stuff with Elena, were Vampire 101, and we’ve already been through that with Vicki and Caroline (come to think of it, why no new male vampires, show?). Again, as much as I like Jenna and Canning as Jenna, we’ve done this. Let’s move on to the good stuff, like Klaus totally ripping out Jules’ heart. Admit it: you cheered. No one liked Jules, did they?

Right, Jenna. Jenna, heartbreakingly, realizes that she’s failed Elena as her guardian (it was really more of a fail by omission, in that she never knew enough about what was happening to do a better job), so she gives protecting her ward one last effort: she sinks those brand-new vampire fangs into Greta’s neck. Unfortunately, Klaus pulls her off before she can finish the job and stakes Jenna. She dies. It’s both a devastating blow and not much of one, all things considered.

OH SHIT! If you watched last week’s The Vampire Dairies, “The Dinner Party,” and didn’t yell “OH SHIT!” at least once, something is wrong with you. Can you kill an Original is the question on everyone’s mind tonight, and, boy, does that question get answered. Spectacularly.  I don’t even want to say anything else, lest I give too much away before the jump, so let’s say this: Nobody, and I mean NO BODY, does sweeps like The Vampire Diaries. Show, marry me.

Jeremy and Bonnie’s Plot is Short, So Let’s Hit It

Jeremy and Bonnie are, mysteriously, in public and not off having sex after their way hot kiss last week. I don’t understand Bonnie’s resolve when it comes to that boy. Last week one of my viewing companions pointed out that something Steven R. McQueen excels at is acting just completely thunderstruck by whoever Jeremy is into that week. I concur. Luka’s all, “Hey, what did you do to me?” And Bonnie can’t very well be like, “Tapped your brain for secrets. Sorry about your sister!”, so she plays dumb. It goes over like a lead balloon, so Jeremy jumps in all, “Stay away from my woman!”

Boardwalk Empire's first season ended last night. I start watching the show because a regular dose of Steve Buscemi and Michael Shannon sounded pretty good to me (something about the way Shannon said of Buscemi, "He's the country treasurer, but he lives like a pharaoh," got me). If you're waiting for a full season to get caught up, allow me to tell you that although slow, it's a solidly built period piece with shocking bursts of violence and a star making turn from Michael Pitt.

But that's not what I'm here to talk to you about. I'm here to say goodbye (for the season) to who I consider my favourite new character on this or any other show this year (yes, even above monstrously delightful Franklin). I'm talking about Richard "Half-Face" Harrow, Jimmy's (that's Pitt) fellow WWI vet as portrayed by Jack Huston. Half-Face, as my viewing companion and I affectionately refer to him, was a sniper in the war who lost, literally, half his face. He wears a bizarre, tragic wooden mask painted with the rest of his face, including moustache. We met him sad, sweet, virginal. He'll spend the rest of his life missing out because of the way he looks. But there's also something deeply scary not about how he looks but in how he operates. Tasked with tracking down the D'Alessio brothers after they take a shot at Nucky (Buscemi), he finds only their family (the sole brother who's not a gangster went into dentistry). When Jimmy muses about what to do, Half-Face is matter of fact, "I would kill the mother. The sisters. And the dentist. That would make them stick their heads up."

Jimmy, perhaps as father and husband, doesn't take Half-Face up on this offer, but that's okay. Next episode they learn the D'Alessios locations, and the only Half-Face we get is Richard badassedly blowing one of the brothers in half. So here's to getting what you want, Half-Face! The new era was designed for men like you. Hope we see even more of you next fall.

On the one hand, “Caged Heat” is a perfectly acceptable episode of Supernatural. Given the season we’ve had so far, I would happy to let perfectly acceptable see me through the season. On the other hand, it raises a couple of confusing questions. Metaphysical ones, to be sure, given Soulless Sammy, but also other, less spiritual questions like, “Can someone wash Dean’s mouth out with soap?”

Iridium Does an Alpha Bad

Crowley’s chained to a chair, being interrogating by . . . Soulless Sammy and Dean? Nope, Crowley. Seems he bagged himself an alpha. Alpha Shifter doesn’t know where purgatory is and doesn’t care if Crowley flays a nursery of his children to get the information he doesn’t have. Though iridium (not silver) works on him, even that’s not getting Crowley anywhere. So Crowley chops the alpha’s head off with a machete. Bye, Alpha!

If every episode of Season 6 were like "Weekend at Bobby's," I'd want to see the show go on for another six seasons. Too bad it looks like things will be more like last night's Supernatural, "Live Free or Twihard." It's a solid premise, and it goes pretty well at first: Pretty young vampires are using teen girls' Twilight fantasies to lure them out. Robert and Kristen meet twice at some club set up exclusively for these fantasies, repeating dialogue and scene-lets directly from the movies. Robert's even doing a credible Robert Pattinson. I am highly amused by the whole thing, including how massively stupid Kristen is. Soon enough, he's got her down a dark alley and those fangs he pointed to were real. Whoops! Bye, Kristen!

As monster of the week sets ups go, it's excellent. Even after that, as sleuthing begins, it's a pretty good episode. Whereas Dean calls Bobby when they need intel, Sam leans on and takes his marching orders from Grandpa Samuel. He thinks six missing girls and a jacked blood donor truck means serious business.  The camera, btw, spends about one hundred hours making sure you understand that this is a blood delivery truck. My viewing companion wonders why they need the blood bags if they've got the fresh stuff, and I reply, "Making babies," which I then further clarify as "for newborn vampires."

The Winchesters lie to some highly uninterested and never seen again dad to gain access to Kristen's hilarious goth room, littered with vampire romance novels and cardboard cutouts and bad poetry. The show doesn't even bother showing us which lie the boys used to get in the door. They crack Kristen's laptop and hit the bar where she met Robert, pegging two guys as possible vamps. Sam cruises one into a basement storage room and slices off his head. We sigh, remembering how awesome it was when he sliced Gordon's head off with razor wire. Dean learns that his young squire is just trying to get laid and remarks, "I'll be damned," when he learns that putting glitter on really can help you get laid. Since we've all seen Buffy, we know what saying, "I'll be damned," in a dark alley means. Vampired! Yup, the big guy Robert handed Kristen off to in the opening appears, calls Dean pretty, beats him up, and forces blood down his throat while Sam watches with an evil little smirk on his face.

Last week’s The Vampire Diaries, “Memory Lane,” was hard for me to digest. I’ve been sitting on it all week. At first I thought that the A Plot didn’t work for me because it involved a lot of sitting around and talking. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I just didn’t like “Memory Lane.” It had all the elements of a good Vampire Diaries episode: loads of action, great acting, good tension. It even boasted Katherine and Elena coming face-to-face and a hint of shirtless Salvatore. So why didn’t it work? Because suddenly everyone’s a moron.

“I could rip you to shreds and do my nails at the same time."

Katherine’s invading Stefan’s dreams. Nice touch, we haven’t seen that particular trick in a while. She’s forcing him to remember when they were terrible dancers and whipping up scenarios in which he has to suffer the sight of Elena and Damon the same way that the sight of Stefan and Elena is suffering for her. Because that’s a solid tactic? What’s her argument there? He should come back to her to make her feel better about the fact that he’s moved on? Well, okay then.

Fortuitous coincidence alert: the New Yorker's books blog, The Book Bench, posted an interview last week with Peter Richmond, the author of Badasses: The Legend of Snake, Foo, Dr. Death and John Madden's Oakland Raiders. The book is Richmond's take on "the last great football team that played the sport for love and camaraderie, not money or fame."

The Raiders of the 1970s (they won the Super Bowl XI, in 1976) gained a reputation for their ferocious, hard-hitting intensity on the field, and their shaggy-haired, hard-partying habits off it. The team's veterans, Richmond notes, would actually show up for training camp early, to spend time socializing with each other, something that is inconceivable today.

When asked to explain how this rebelliousness and strength of character was able to arise (and has since died out), Richmond points to the administration of owner Al Davis and head coach John Madden, who both believed in a light disciplinary hand - so long as the players gave their all for the team on the weekend, they were free to do as they pleased during the week. But Richmond also points to the 1970s as being a particularly rebellious era in all of sports:

[Ed. Note: technical issues delayed this post.]

Last night’s season two The Vampire Diaries opener, “The Return,” gave us so much of the good stuff we’ve been missing the last two months: someone gets stabbed, two people get vampire blood, and someone gets vampired! Is there any other show as plot-tastic as this one?

If you only have three minutes to spend on American Psycho, Mary Harron's brilliant adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' brutal satire of 80s excess, make it the Business Card Scene (caps required). It's a prefect synecdoche for the movie: Patrick Bateman's calculated exterior, the hyper-competitive atmosphere, the way one character pulls his card from the running at the mere mention of Paul Allen's card (he looks like he just got pantsed after a cold swim), Patrick's near-orgasmic reaction to the watermark followed almost instantly by a murderous rage. Packing that much into one scene is plenty badass to me. See for yourself:

We all love latter day Alec Baldwin: narrating The Royal Tenenbaums, poking fun at his own image in State and Main, being the best of a very good thing on 30 Rock. But, man, if there is a scene that should follow Baldwin to his grave (and I mean that in the very best way), it's his lone scene in the film adaptation of Glengarry Glen Ross. Written especially by David Mamet for the adaption, it sets up story and the tone but somehow manages not to be an exposition dump. It's so oddly quotable: "Coffee is for closers," "Second place is a set of steak knives," "I'd wish you good luck, but you wouldn't know what to do with it if you got it." Let's watch:

It's hard to know exactly where to start in our Badass chronicles. As it only natural, Putin came along to remind us exactly what a badass looks like. In Foreign Policy's slide show about how Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin spent their summer vacations, Putin does plenty of badass things: ride a motorcycle, fly a helicopter, visit a new mother in the hospital (badassedly, of course). But this image takes the cake:

You need no further explanation than the one FP's already got on tap: Putin stares down a bear. He's staring down a damn bear because, hey, bears should be afraid of Putin people. I submit to you Vladimir Putin, Badass for Life.

What makes a badass badass? Is it a motorcycle and leather jacket, à Marlon Brando in The Wild One? Is it sensitive Holden Caulfield's escape from all the phonies in The Catcher in the Rye? Is it the complete opposite of selling J.D. Salinger's toilet on eBay? (We're gonna go with yes on that last one).

Badass is a lot of different things to a lot of different people, so definitions naturally vary. Mostly, badassery isn't just action, it's an attitude. It's a confidence that permeates every action combined with intolerance for bullshit and a certain level of apathy toward things that don't concern the badass. It's Maslow's self actualization by way of The Most Interesting Man in the World.

There is no badass uniform, no secret handshake or easy identifier. Badasses simply are. They're trail blazers without calling too much attention to themselves, so we're here to do it for them. For this, the third anniversary issue of (Cult)ure, we've gathered together badasses from politics and pop culture, so you don't have to. Welcome to the Badass issue.

[Ed. note: Technical difficulties prevented this post from going up sooner.]

In last night's True Blood, "Beautifully Broken," several amazing things happened: the king of Mississippi rode a horse, someone finally made eyes at Lafayette, Godric was back, Sam met his parents, Bill killed Lorena, and Sookie invited Eric in. All that and sexy James Frain? Damn, show. There really is nothing like it on television.

Bill's on a Horse

Even though Fridays make everyone happy because it's finally the end of the week, they can also be totally depressing because 1) you still have to make 'til the end of the work day and 2) it's the end of the week. That's okay, friends. I have two pieces of news that ought to bring you cheer.

1. Sticky
   There is a Canadian goose evading the capture attempts of park authorities in Prospect Park, NYC. Why are they trying to capture Sticky? Because he's got an arrow through his neck. He has had for three weeks now. Apparently an arrow through the neck is no big deal to Sticky, who keeps on running, flying, and swimming away. That's some serious badassery, Sticky. No wonder we love those geese.
2. Tim Riggins and Eric Northman, Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together
   Yes, there is going to be a movie based on Battleship, the board game, and that's a real shame. But it stars Taylor Kitsch (a.k.a Tim Riggins) and Alexander Skarsgård (a.k.a. Eric Northman), so how bad could it be, really? Just so you understand, we're talking about these guys:
   

Hey, have you been decrying the lack of 80s nostalgia at the movie theatre lately? Hollywood is bound and determined to put an end to that by releasing both The Karate Kid and The A-Team this weekend. You may wonder which to choose, so let me break it down.

Choose The Karate Kid if you think 1) all martial arts are the same (as they are surely and explicitly practicing kung fu in this remake, and karate practitioners are likely to be appalled) and 2) it's great when kids beat the snot out of each other. Do yourself a favour and rent the original The Karate Kid where actual karate is practiced, the kid in question is 15, and Pat Morita is rad from start to finish.

Choose The A-Team if you think adding explosions to a mediocre '80s show will make it better. Actually, if you ask me, a bunch of explosions plus Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, and Sharlto Copley does make things better. Sorry, Rampage: you're only excluded because I don't follow UFC.

Just like you always knew it would. Yes, one of the most important props in the history of television, Supernatural's third main character, saved the world in "Swan Song." It's about time that car got its props instead of a girly dreamcatcher in the trunk and Sam sticking a knife in her upholstery two weeks ago. 'Bout time she got some respect.

And that's about all that happened last Thursday. I know 'cause I watched the episode twice. Now, I feel kind of bad for beating up on the show, especially since a) I heard this was how the show's finale was supposed to go down, sixth season renewal be damned, b) endings are indeed difficult, and c) they have a lot of live up to, finale-wise. I mean, CRASH!, Sam dies/Dean sells his soul, Dean goes to Hell, Sam unleashes Lucifer? This show never pulls its punches in a finale. The latter no doubt plays a role in why this finale was such a let down. That, and it was boring as fuck.

I love the Ackles, I love Padalecki, I love the Ackles and Padalecki together (dirty!). But let me tell you something: I would not have built a finale around 18 million conversations between the two of them, punctuated by Padalecki making faces at himself in the mirror. That's just not the way I would have gone. 

"Holy Shit!" was pretty much the theme of last night The Vampire Diaries episode "Founder's Day" (also, thank goodness that stupid Founder's gimmick is over. At least I hope it is). Notably, Katherine has finally returned, as we've been waiting for her since we found out she was never in the tomb. Also, I heard that two characters were going to die, but it's worse: three characters die plus a boatload of extras, two lives hang in the balance, and Katherine's back. Oh, did I mention that? Just wanted to make sure you knew.

Death, Death, Death

The tomb refugees that weren't already staked have chosen the Founder's Day festivities for their little founding families massacre. They're even smart enough to know not to try to feed (in case of vervain), just kill. John gets wind of this plan, so he decides to follow through with Original Recipe Jonathan's plan: use the device to expose the vampires, round them up, and burn the lot. In fact, John decides that his brother's empty medical practice is the perfect location for the bonfire. Exactly when the tomb refugees plan to attack, John sets off the device: essentially, it's like the headache inducer we've seen Grams and Bonnie use against Damon and Stefan, respectively, only much more powerful and with a far wider reach. Anna tries to warn Damon, who tries to warn Stefan, but they all go down anyway. The way Damon grabbed Elena's hand, who never let go of Stefan's hand, so they were all walking along hand-in-hand, was really sweet, though (pictured). Anna falls in the Grill's Ladies' Room while trying to warn Jeremy about the impending death to founders and gets carted off by some deputies, despite Jeremy's screaming and fighting. Stefan falls while he and Elena are trying to get away, but Alaric convinces the deputy that he's got this one before the deputy can pump Stefan with vervain. Poor Damon falls with no one to protect him, so off he goes.

Last night's episode of Supernatural, "Two Minutes to Midnight" featured Sam, Dean, Bobby, Crowley, and Castiel together in one room, so I may have missed something while begging the director for a wide shot to show them all in the same place at the same time. I'm sure you want to hear about the Winchesters got the remaining two rings, though, so let's focus on those for right now. 

Pestilence

Our buddy is hanging out at an old folks home a retirement community, cooking up various disease combinations for his amusement. The boys get the tip that that's where they can find him, so they're off to slice off his finger. When Pestilence's aide de camp notices the Winchesters, she suggests they book it before Pestilence loses his ring, but, oh no. Pestilence (Matt Frewer) is ticked that they've offed his brothers, so he wants to take it out of their asses. Nice work, Sera Gamble, on continuing the verbal symmetry two weeks in a row! Anyway, they're rolling around on the ground dying of syphilis and whatnot (at least in Dean's case, I doubt Pestilence put it there, and also, that's the second time this season a beastie gave one of them an STI) when Castiel busts in. Castiel's kind of human at the moment (more in this in a minute), so he's initially floored by the disease wave as well. He pulls it together enough to cut off Pestilence's finger in a nice through the glass table shot. Pestilence cryptically tells them "it's too late" before evaporating into the ether.

N.B. Extreme delay in publication due to technical issues.

Since “99 Problems” let us know that Dean was off to say yes to Michael, I spent the next week wondering when, how, and for what reason Dean would end up saying no in “Point of No Return.” And since I’m kind of sick of Dean lately anyway and I’ve always loved Castiel, imagine my delight in discovering that mainly, Cass was not having it.

Dean’s writing suicide notes and drinking iced tea off in some isolated motel when Sam finds him. Dean, hilariously, is not as crafty as he thinks he is. Since Dean’s not about to abandon his plan, he suggests that he and Sam throw down over it, further adding that Sam’s unlikely to win this time without the help of demon blood (note: this is the first of many verbal slaps between the brothers, so, if genuine animosity between the two of them is like an knife in your heart as it is mine, this episode must have hurt). Fortunately, Sam remembered that he sucks at hand-to-hand, so he has Castiel zap Dean back to Bobby’s place.

The word is that someone, somewhere finally got around to greenlighting Hobo With A Shotgun as a feature, which is pretty much the best news ever if you've seen the trailer (a (Canadian!) contest winner that was including in the full-length Grindhouse). Actually, let's watch it right now, shall we: