In addition to the fact that The Runaways will have begin a limited release in Canada and the U.S. this Friday, it's been well publicized for some time now that it stars Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett and Dakota Fanning as Cherrie Currie. Nothing new here, obviously. But I actually watched the trailer this weekend, and you know what? It totally stars Gossip Girl's Taylor Momsen. See for yourself:

I'd try come up with something more erudite than that, something with trenchant insight into Mad Men as cultural phenomenon, the commodification of culture, or the final sell-out straw, but who are we kidding? I own a Dylan McKay Barbie and proudly take him out in public. I so want Mad Men Barbies. Or I would if they weren't $300 US collector's items. Also, that's a really poor Don. I mean, my Dylan McKay Barbie really looks like Dylan McKay. They put some serious effort into that nine-head. These things are generic-looking.  I still kind of want the Roger one though I will hold out hope that someone one day makes a Roger string-pulley doll since Roger has all the best lines.

Wait, is there an Sterling Cooper Barbie-office for sale as well? That would be sweet.

Now that Gossip Girl is finally, finally back (unlike, say, Glee), we can hopefully staunch our rivers of tears and let the show get back to the things it does best: scheming, complicated sexual dynamics, and dire stupidity. Though "The Hurt Locket" wasn't GG at its best, it was a nice warm up for the full tilt run toward the season finale (don't leave me again, show! I mean . . . ).

Scheming

Chuck's running around all over town (even missing out on Anna Karenina-role play with Blair) in search of mystery lady from his father's grave (the last ep was about two weeks ago for the UES). Or, as Chuck puts it, "I think that whore might be my mother." In an episode that was actually kind of boring, you know Ed Westwick's exquisitely expressive face* made me choke up a little over that one. We finally meet her, and Elizabeth's got the right weird face (sadly lacking in expression), a weird accent, and half a locket containing a picture of her holding baby Chuck. Or maybe some other Bart baby. I am going to be très disappointed in this show if she turns out to be Chuck's mom after all. I will be happy if this means Chuck gets more to do, though. When was the last time we saw him menace anyone?

TWoP has a photo gallery up about why The Vampire Diaries is so addictive (don't they know I already wrote all those posts for you in pursuit of what makes the show awesome?), but let me save you the trouble of clicking through with these three words: the Brothers Salvatore. I like Elena, I love Bonnie, Caroline's cool, and mad props go out to my dearly (sexistly) departed ladies Vicki, Lexi, Bree, and Grams. But the Brothers Salvatore make the show. Thanks to the writing and the wily performances of Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder, Stefan and Damon are never who you think they are.

At first blush, Stefan's the earnest, brooding good guy and Damon's his dangerous, bad boy older brother. While Stefan can be earnest and does brood (specifically with his forehead,  Damon would tell you), he's also far more dangerous than Damon could ever hope to be. Damon kills to feed or to protect himself: he's motivated entirely by his emotions. He views humans as a lesser life form, and it comes across in his every action.

Stefan, on the hand, tries to simultaneously embrace the benefits of being a vampire (longevity, super speed/hearing/strength) while rejecting that which sustains him (human blood). The wistful way he spoke of all the different jobs he's held for as long as he could didn't betray a longing to return to his human form: it spoke of someone determined to get as much as he could out of the life he chose. He's not self-loathing like Edward or Bill. He accepts, and he moves on. But you know what it takes to do as much accepting and moving on as he has? Motherfuckin' sangfroid, which he has in spades. Unlike Damon, Stefan readily forms human attachments, and his determination to protect them (not himself) from things that go bump in the night (although sadly not from Bumpits) leads him to some pretty dark places. We've seen him stake and flame-throw other vampires without hesitation. What will he do if another human ever threatens Elena? How far would he go? He's smart, funny, passionately in love, and loyal to both people and place. He's also an icy dispatcher of foes and not above poisoning his own brother. He's a study in contrasts.

The New York Post's NYPD March 3 blotter includes the following little gem:

Brooklyn

He just wigged out.

I haven't blogged about the last few episodes of Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures because my initial supposition, that the interweaving timelines would rob the show of any real dramatic tension, turned out to be true. For example, the question wasn't if Ming would have a miscarriage but when. The show seems to be getting that as the last three episodes haven't addressed the present day in the slightest.

Last night's episode, which dealt with the 2003 SARS crisis, put Fitz then Chen in isolation and Ming in quarantine in her apartment. Gee, I wonder if any of them will die? Even after Fitz signs a DNR, it's not a question of if he'll survive. It was cool to see Chen break down the glass barrier between their rooms after a hallucinating Fitz barricaded his door and started ripping off his equipment, but, yeah, Chen will get him back. 

Since Chen and Fitz seem to retain their status quo in the present, I've realized that the only interesting character is Ming. We know next to nothing about Chen's past and Fitz is only concerned with his past with Ming, but Ming's the fascinating one. The potential villain I pointed out? He's Ming's older cousin who raped her when she was 13. Remember how we've only met Ming's dad? Her mom wasn't around growing up, and last night we learned that she was a married woman who wouldn't leave her husband for love. Somehow, she was able to carry to term and leave Ming with her father to be raised. (And then returned to her husband? How does that work?) I do know some of what will happen next with Ming, but her inner world, in part because it's Fitz and Chen's fantasy sequences that we're regularly treated to, remains a mystery. Fitz and Chen can posture and joke and write all they want. Ming's the real deal. 

I don't mean to trivialize what happened, but that's exactly what he said. Watch:

EW's Michael Auseillo, King of Scoops (or Two Scoops Magoo if you're feeling it), has revealed that the CW has renewed Supernatural for a sixth season, along with The Vampire Diaries, Gossip Girl, 90210, and America's Next Top Model. 

I watch three of those shows (quick, guess which ones!), so that's good news for me. Not so good news for the bitchy Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki of this feature from April of last year, wherein Ackles claims that they'd have to back up a Brinks truck to get him to do a sixth season and Padalecki whines about having to do photo shoots and getting famous. Alright, that's tough love from me, but, since most of my Supernatural tough love is reserved for the writers, I can stand to spread the wealth a little. 

Meanwhile, that leads me back to trying to figure out where the show is going to go with a sixth season. Again, I encourage the writers to take me up on a "Sam and Dean fix the world" season. It could be just the uplift the show needs. Besides, who is reading the Winchester Gospels after Armageddon? Is there reading in New Jerusalem along with all the farming (as Jehovah's Witness pamphlet covers have long foretold)? I mean, probably, but I still want the writers to follow up on the idea from "The Real Ghostbusters": reading the books will help raise up a new generation of hunters who choose the life rather than get sucked into it by tragedy. Wouldn't that be nice? 

Excellent news, fang-bangers: TwiCon got booted from its location in downtown Toronto thanks to this little thing called the G20 summit, so they relocated to Landsdowne Park. Say, what? Yup, Ottawa was on the radar, and now it's the place to be June 25 to 27 for TwiHards, TwiMoms, and people who like Sam from True Blood. He's going to be here, and, as your ace vampire reporter, I'm going to have to be there. It's the least I can do. Just like showing you this photo from Eclipse.  You're welcome.

Damon gets to utter last night's The Vampire Diaries episode title, "Fool Me Once," and, since he went for an over the top sotto voce delivery to the tail end of that aphorism, I'm down with that. Actually, I'm down with pretty much everything Damon does in this episode. Elena's a Little Miss Me-ffet for some of it, Bonnie and Grams team up to use super-witchy powers, and Stefan once again proves that he's the most dangerous vampire on the show. See for yourself!

Damon

Damon informs Stefan in no uncertain terms that he won't be helping Stefan track Elena down, telling him first that he hopes Elena dies and, if she still has Damon's blood in her system when she does, at least Stefan knows he'll see her again. Man, is Damon hurting. Anna tries to get Damon to work with her, which backfires because Stefan frees Elena and Bonnie (more on that in a minute) without Damon's help. Newly freed Elena convinces Damon that they all need to work together, and Damon heads down to the tomb with a blood bag for his beloved Katherine (adorable). All his searching is for naught, however, when it turns out that Katerine isn't even in there. He confronts Anna and newly-freed Pearl, who tells him that Katherine compelled a guard into letting her escape and never looked back. To add insult to injury, Anna ran into Katherine in Chicago in 1983, who knew where Damon was and didn't even care. Ouch. By episode's close, Damon's staring numbly in the fire at the Salvatore mansion with Stefan taking up quiet residence next to him. 

As shows go, Supernatural requires greater suspension of disbelief than most. So long as you can pass muster, Supernatural is also a rewarding viewing experience. All we ask in return is that the show follows its own internal logic.

Unfortunately, it hasn't always done so. In the fourth episode of season one, Sam and Dean encounter a demon for the first time, but much of what we learned then about demons and how they operate didn't apply to Meg, her brother, or Azazel toward the end of the season. It was early days, so we could chalk it up to the writers figuring exactly where they were going with this whole "demon" thing (answer: down the rabbit hole).

Since those early bumps in the road, though, the show has been pretty careful to only deviate from its established rules when it's within reason, like when we learned that the Trickster is really the archangel Gabriel in the excellent episode "Changing Channels." Last night's episode, "My Bloody Valentine," however, decided to bite its thumb at us. 

I was checking out the Vulture, and I came across a post that involved Jeremy Renner singing an apparently hilarious original song on The View. Cube protocol be damned, I need to watch that right now! When I clicked on it, YouTube told me this:

This video contains content from ABC Soapnet, who has decided to block it in your country. 

Finally, a little truth. None of the "sorry unavailable in your country at this time" crap I get from Hulu and the like. ABC Soapnet just doesn't want Canadians to see Jeremy Renner singing and possibly hurting his Oscar chances (hope not, btw). 

MSNBC, however, has no problems with Canadians, so you can watch Renner share a bear hug with should-have-been-nominated Hurt Locker co-star Anthony Mackie.

Everyone didn't die in Thursday's Supernatural entry, "The Song Remains the Same," wherein Anna told Castiel her big plan to kill Sam and spread his atoms all over the universe, so Lucifer couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again (not sure what becomes of Lucifer once Nick finally burns out. He . . . evaporates? Remains incorporeal until the end of time?). Castiel put the kibosh on this because "Sam is [his] friend" (AWWWW), so Anna opted for Terminator-approach: she hoped back to 1978, planning to kill John and Mary Winchester before they could have either of our Intrepid Heroes. Unfortunately, Anna apparently never watched a Terminator movie during her human days (which is hard to believe a) given that they're always on and b) it's not like she was spending the time on hot oil treatments), so she didn't realize that this plan never works.

It was nice to see the show get back to dealing with the Apocalypse directly (even though Death's movements remain unknown. Perhaps the earthquake in Haiti made the writers feel bad about portraying Death as a natural disaster?). It's too bad that the more wheel spinning we see from this season, the clearer it becomes that the balls-out writing manoeuvre of Sam accidentally unleashing Lucifer was a mistake. Despite the fact that show seems to have been building toward it all along, they certainly don't know how to play the long game. 

Though there were great moments in the episode, like Sam and Dean trying to convince Mary to leave John because they would be better off if they never existed, the only real tension in the episode came not from the possibility of ending things before they could get so fucked up but from how this tiny spark of hope would be snuffed out. Michael makes his long overdue appearance in Young John's meat suit (a nice callback to "The Rapture," wherein we learned that angel-human matches are both genetic and hereditary), burns Anna to a crisp with a single touch (very nice), and has a long talk with Dean about how free will is a hoax, blah blah pre-determination cakes.  He then hits the reset button, erasing John and Mary's memories of angel-violence, reviving Sam, and sending Sam, Dean, and comatose Castiel back to the present. 

Last night's The Vampire Diaries episode, "Children of the Damned," featured the show, once again, at its best: equal parts doom and gloom, romance, and madness. If the ladies were featured heavily in last week's episode, it was the boys turn to shine this time around.

Damon

Damon, as you would suspect, is thrilled to be working with Elena and Stefan toward a common goal (not unlike Veronica Mars' Logan, he's at his most honest when he's at his most sarcastic). He even gets Jenna drunk and makes the family dinner (why? Don't ask. We'll never know). He also, thanks to a series of flashbacks, figures out that Jeremy's new friend Anna is Annabel, the daughter of a vampire he knew back in his human days. He grabs Jonathan Gilbert's diary (endless, endless journalling on this show), declines her offer to work together, and heads off to dig up his dad, who took Emily's grimoire to his grave. Of course, that's where he finds Stefan and Elena, who already accomplished that task (not using vampire speed for reasons unknown) and are just about to open the grimoire (why? To check for an "if found, please return to Emily the Witch. P.S. That last part is a secret" inscription?). Damon, not doubt thankful since he didn't bring a shovel anyway but definitely feeling betrayed, (unbelievably) forced his blood down Elena's throat, so Stefan handed over the grimoire. Guess it's time to crack that puppy open!

Gossip Girl's return is still more than a month away (still March 8), so naturally a certain emptiness and listlessness has started to take over your everyday life (particularly Mondays at 9 p.m.). To that end, I've decided to lift your spirits by reminding you about the Southern Mothers ft. Matt Pearson rap.

Last night's Supernatural, "Swap Meat," was a nice little one up from last week's procedural in terms of fitting into the larger myth arc. Seems that the little nerd from the previews didn't put himself into Sam's meat suit just cause, you know, it looks like Sam (though he does take some time to admire the biceps in the mirror, sensibly and hilariously): Hell's got a bounty out for Dean's head, which our nerd trio discovers during one of their Satanic séances (kids these days!). Actually bright Gary figures the easiest way to get to Dean would be via Sam, so he hops on in there. He also orders a banana daiquiri, picks up a cougar, and backs the Metallicar into dumpster, but that's neither here nor there. In the end, he's not much of a killer and opts for saving Dean from a demon instead of letting him die (and correcting Dean's Latin pronunciation in the process).

As much as I like Sam-centric episodes (it seems like everything's Dean-centric lately) and love opportunities for Padalecki to show off his considerable comedic talent, "Swap Meat" also highlights one of the show's main writing weaknesses: Dean and Sam are exactly as bright or as dim as the plot needs them to be. For the life of me, I could not figure out why Sam even so much as got in the police car when he was walking down the highway back to their motel (we have been told many times over that hunters, not to mention the FBI's most wanted, don't jive with the po-po), nevermind stayed there for the rest of the night and went to school in Gary's stead. Eventually it became clear that he was looking for Gary's grimoire (grimoires should be an app, they're so popular nowadays) or other evidence of how the switch took place,  but 38 messages on Dean's phone? In Sam's voice (nice continuity, show)? No. Sam would have called Bobby or Castiel (who would have known what was up immediately just like he knew Dean was from the past in Zechariah's "future"), and they would have gotten him the hell out of there. But they didn't pay Jim Beaver or Mischa Collins to be in the episode, so Sam just slogs it out on his own. 

This week, much like last week, ending with nothing new: Dean longs to leave hunting behind for a normal life but can't, whereas Sam has given up on ever having anything normal again and settled into hunting as a career choice (we discussed all of this, and better, in last season's "Jump the Shark.") Now, I suppose, the question is whether Sam's situation (had it and lost it, spectacularly) or Dean's situation (never had it) is sadder. Actually, scratch that. Let's just watch this and laugh:

In grand The Vampire Diaries tradition, things were topsy-turvy for our ladies in "Unpleasantville," but I have to say, I love the way the show keeps all of our major plots moving at a good clip. I also love that the show puts female characters who are smart, capable, and likable front and centre, so I'm going to follow suit.

Bonnie

Yeah, I'm starting with Bonnie 'cause I love her so. Deal with that. Anyway, Damon's trying to charm Bonnie to get to Emily's grimoire (not that B knows that), but Bonnie is having none of it: "I can set things on fire with my mind. Fire kills vampires, doesn' it?" Aw, yeah. Later, Bonnie tries to prove a point to Caroline by taking charge with a guy (Ben), and it works. No sooner does a "Go, Bonnie!" escape than we find out Ben the Bartender's not just interested in inappropriate-for-him high school girls: he's also a vampire in league with Jeremy's home-schooled stalker girl, Anna. So much for my vampire hunter theory, but it at least this makes her hard sell on poor Jeremy slightly more acceptable. Anna, you see, is somehow connected to Katherine and also after the grimoire (and, presumably, Bonnie to work the mojo). Damn. Bonnie's hot, y'all. Are there really no acceptable humans interested in that?

We're just learning that famously reclusive American author J.D. Salinger died yesterday at 91. Ninety-one is a good, long run, so there's nothing to be said here along the lines of "so young" or "too soon" (though, in some ways, it's always too soon). Because he stopped writing and hid from the public eye for so long, Salinger was more myth than man during my lifetime. He came to stand in for his most famous creation, Holden Caufield, and Holden came to stand in for sad, lost outsiders in pop culture in a way that eventually came to do the character and his novel a disservice (I remember thinking, while re-watching  (500) Days of Summer recently, that the movie wore is allegiance to The Catcher in the Rye a little too on its sleeve). 

Anyway, I've never been one for eloquence in the face of death, so I've gathered instead a few pop culture influenced thoughts:

• Franny and Zooey was Judy's favourite book on Once and Again when she added herself to her Book Lovers wall.
• The "Fuck You" monologue from 25th Hour is probably my favourite reference to The Catcher in the Rye in anything I've ever seen, in no small part because it references my favourite passage of the book.
• Pretty much the only thing about the late 90s Fred Savage-starring sitcom Working that I remember is the episode where Fred finds out his boss never read Catcher and recommends it, only for it to convince the boss that he should run away in order to be more like Holden. Specifically, he wanted to ride the rails, hobo-style, and I was disappointed when I read the book, and Holden didn't do that. Holden takes the train like a regular passenger and is depressed crumby luggage. I think the point was that eventually you get too old to read The Catcher in the Rye for the first time, the same way I was told that I would outgrow Ferris Buller's Day Off after I finished school. Neither of these things are true.

Goodbye, J.D. Hope no one writes "fuck you" on your tombstone.

Last week on Castle, we unexpectedly got a clue about Beckett's mother's killer: we met him. Unfortunately, he was a hired gun (hired knife?). Who was behind hiring the assassin remains a mystery as that man is now dead, but we did learn that the hirer is a) a man who is b) powerful ("You'll never touch him," being the exact words the killer used). Also, knowing that it was a hired hit means that her mother must have had power over this powerful man for whatever reason (probably damaging information of some kind). I was taken aback by the positioning of this episode. I always knew we would come back to this murder, but it's not sweeps, and I don't remember the episode as being heavily advertised. How odd that the show just dropped this one our laps out of nowhere. Nonetheless, the Captain gave Beckett permission to pick her mother's case back up if she felt up to it, and, in the end, that's exactly what Beckett decided to do. 

Imagine how surprising it was this week when nothing at all was mentioned about Beckett's mom's case. No reference to forensic accountants digging through the assassin's Camayan account, no files dusted off, no suspect list of powerful men to which Momma B was connected. Just . . . nothing. Instead we get another murder of the week, and, good though it was, it was so strange not to give us even a throwaway line to let us know that last week wasn't a mass hallucination. What's going on here? ABC lists the next episode as a rerun, and IMDb claims that the next two episodes will air on February 8th and March 8th. The show will always be a procedural first and foremost (one in which the audience generally picks up on important clues about 10 minutes before the characters do), but it wouldn't hurt to throw us a bone.

I haven't yet written about Supernatural's winter return, "Sam, Interrupted," because I can't think of anything to say. As episodes go, it was alright, but retuning to the Monster of the Week formula made the show seems like it was . . . biding its time? in a mid-season rut? unsure how to handle the myth arc as we head toward the season/series finale?

The first season of the show was entirely formulaic, and it's really grown since then, deepening both the show's overarching mythos and the characters. For the most part, the developments have been great: Sam edging away from student on a revenge quest to fully committed hunter and Dean cracking under the weight of the world (as the episode was sure to remind us) to reveal a functionally alcoholic narcissist beneath (and props to the episode for putting the alcoholism into words); opening a Hell gate; Dean going to Hell; Dean coming back from Hell; unleashing Lucifer.

The episode had certainly had great moments: checking themselves into the hospital by telling the truth was brilliant, Sam drunk/stoned is always good for a laugh (remember when he made fun of Dean for being short?), and Dean trying to follow through on the job while thoroughly freaked out was excellent.