It’s kind of funny that this week’s Breaking Bad episode photos are mostly of people sitting on a couch or a bed or in a chair staring blankly, which is pretty much what everyone is doing on Breaking Bad lately, and pretty much what everyone watching Breaking Bad is doing while they watch everyone on Breaking Bad do that.

This week’s show wasn’t as much of a new episode as a part two of last week’s episode: Skyler continues to try to buy the car wash for money laundering purposes, Jesse continues to bury his thoughts with an unending drug party, Walt scuttles around demonstrating that he’s wrong about everything, Hank mopes in bed, and Marie deals with Hank.

Still, I guess we can go into some detail as the plot inches forward.

Skyler comes up with a non-violent plan to buy the car wash from the reluctant owner. With the help of Saul, she hires an actor to pretend the car wash is contaminating the groundwater, a fake problem which will fake-cost $200,000 to fix, thus giving the owner a reason to sell to Skyler. Walt doesn’t think Skyler’s plan will work, but it does, thus continuing Walt’s two-episode arc demonstrating that he really doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.

On the other hand, there’s a lot that Skyler doesn’t know as well. Seeing bruises on Walt’s face, she worries that he might be in trouble, which is adorable since Hitman Mike’s beating is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the horrific violence and danger Walt has been embroiled in.

Skyler also scolds Walt for buying some expensive champagne, because they’re supposed to be hiding their money, which is a little weird because she’s about to spend $800,000 on a car wash. I don’t know why a huge public cash deal for a car wash is okay while spending a little money on bubbly is a big no-no.

Jesse tries to reach out to Walt, inviting him hang out one evening, a small cry for help that Walt ignores. Jesse drives go-carts in a manic way, demonstrating that his mental state is fragile, something we already know from the last episode. He returns home, where his party has turned into an orgy of violence and vandalism and, well, an orgy. When things quiet down too much for his liking, he just starts throwing wads of money at the assorted scumbags in his house, I guess because he has no idea what else to do with it. We’ve got it, Breaking Bad: Jesse is an unhappy mess. Can we move on?

Meanwhile, Marie, at the end of her rope with the abusive and depressed Hank, attends open houses for expensive homes, inventing stories about who she is while stealing things until she gets caught and arrested. Hank has a cop buddy bail her out, and this buddy, out of pity, throws Hank a bone by asking him to examine Gale’s lab notes found at the scene of his murder. So, while still bed-ridden and scarfing Cheetos, we’re led to believe Hank may be on the verge of breaking out of his funk, doing some police work, and pick up Walt’s meth trail once again.

Not a bad episode, not a great episode, just a slow series of events that most shows would probably cram into a single episode, and the reiteration of information that we already know. This is the show treading water, but Breaking Bad still treads water better than most shows do anything else.

Case in point: on to Falling Skies! This episode had plenty of requisite annoyances: more personal discussions set to tender piano music, more annoying children, more general stupidity from the characters, more Pope being a filthy bore, but it added something new to the mix that made me sort of forgive it a little.

The survivors are planning an assault on the main alien structure, so Gruff Army Guy, Professor History, and Dreamy Teen go to take a closer look. They run into a woman living comfortably downtown in the shadow of the alien base. She says she was captured by the aliens but they let her go. So, here’s an idea: let’s trust her completely, because it’s not like we’ve ever encountered anyone else who made an evil deal with the aliens before, except for that guy last week who tried to kill us and turn over all our children to them.

Gruff Army Guy visits his former home because he feels responsible for the death of his family, and decides he’s so sad that he wants to stop fighting aliens, until a minute later when he decides he does want to fight aliens. Yay, I guess. Surprising nobody except the people on the show, the lady living downtown is working with the aliens, and the aliens send out a single Mech robot to kill Professor History, which is a great alien plan despite the fact that they’ve sent out a single Mech robot to kill Professor History like twenty times now and it always fails.

On the plus side, we get a look at a brand new alien! Which I have to admit is cool and interesting and makes me want to keep watching the show. We have the Mechs, who are pretty ineffective as sentries because they’re so easily heard and spotted and bamboozled and exploded. We have the Skitters, who we’ve suspected for some time aren’t really running the show, and now we have proof: while dissecting a dead Skitter, Doctor Lady and Religious Girl discover a harness inside it, implying the Skitters are slaves just like the Earth kids are, and that harnesses may actually turn other living creatures into Skitters, which is bad news for Professor History’s son and the other kid.

And now, the new alien. I don’t think they have a name on the show yet, but I’ll go ahead and call them Stalkers: they’re tall, skinny, and gray, and appear to be higher up on the chain of command. One of the Stalkers peers through the peephole of the lady’s apartment, which is pretty creepy. Moments later, the survivors give the traitor lady false information, then walk out of the apartment without even checking the peephole again even though a WEIRD SCARY ALIEN STALKER BOSS WAS JUST OUT THERE TRYING TO LOOK IN WITH HIS SCARY ALIEN FACE. Jesus, these people are dumb. But hey, new alien! That’s all it takes to make me happy. I’m a sucker.

Meanwhile, back at the school that the survivors are perpetually hanging around in, Pope is ugly and gross and saying angry things that are supposed to be funny, and has teamed up with Professor History’s youngest and most annoying son, and together they figure out that the best way to defeat Mechs is to shoot them with bullets made of Mech metal. Everyone at the school is excited about this and they cheer and make a lot of noise outdoors, because why not: it’s not like aliens have invaded the planet or anything, so there’s no reason to keep quiet and hidden during the daytime.

We’ve got a two-hour (sigh) season finale next week. I’m not sure what I’m hoping for: a good episode that will make this somewhat crappy season worth watching, or a terrible episode that will mean I don’t have to bother watching when it returns.

Finally, I sat down to watch the second episode of Alphas, but fell asleep in the middle. And then I forgot to record the third episode, and apparently the fourth episode aired and it didn’t seem worth recording that one since I’d missed the third and fell asleep during the second. So endeth my extensive, detailed recaps of Alphas. If anyone else is watching and it starts getting good, let me know.

Every week I think I’m finally done with Falling Skies, but my DVR keeps stubbornly recording it, and to tell my DVR to not record it means I have to push, like, three buttons, so I keep watching it, hoping it will get a little better. It hasn’t, really.

The recent storyline has a lone army guy showing up and saying, essentially, “I need to take all the children away from the camp because of ALIENS. And you parents can’t come for SOME REASON.” And the parents are all “No way!” And he’s all, “But, ALIENS! And, SOME REASON!” And the parents are all, “Okay, then. Good luck with taking our children away, I guess.”

To the shock of no one watching, this army guy has an evil plan to trade the kids to the aliens in exchange for the aliens letting the adults live in peace, and then the people from the camp find out this plan, and find the kids, and everything is resolved in a completely long and unexciting way in the course of two episodes. Also, some people we don’t care about get killed. We’ve also got that guy Pope back, and he continues to be gross and suck and talk about cooking, which is supposed to be funny because he’s a hardass, and hardasses shouldn’t know about cooking, you guys! There’s only two episodes left, so I’ll probably stick around for them, but if it doesn’t improve, I’m probably done with this show. I will summon the energy to push those buttons before next season, so help me.

The second episode of Breaking Bad aired this Sunday as well, and while nothing gruesome happened, it was still good in a number of ways (that number is one).

So. Walter knows Gus will have him whacked as soon as he finds a replacement chemist, and he plans to beat him to the punch. He buys an illegal gun (there is apparently such a thing in this country) and practices killing Gus for the first half of the episode, then requests a meeting. Hitman Mike informs Walt that there’s absolutely no way Gus is ever going to meet with him. Walt then approaches Gus’ home in the dead of night, but gets a phone call that lets him know that Gus is totally aware of his plan and that he should just go home. Still determined to gain the upper hand, he goes to visit Mike in a bar. Walt, in all his wisdom (he has none, we’re learning this week), thinks he can talk Hitman Mike over to his side, but Gus is Mike’s boss, and Mike, no matter that Gus coldly killed another employee right in front of him, isn’t going to cross his boss. And why? Because Mike is a professional. Gus is a professional. Walt, with all his planning and calculations, is a rank amateur.

This is really, really great stuff: Walt trying to be a criminal mastermind, even donning his badass Heisenberg hat, and getting essentially nowhere, because he’s not a mastermind, he’s a scared chemistry teacher who has survived to this point mostly on luck. And as a viewer, I’m an amateur as well. I see Walt planning his cold-as-ice assassination, and donning his black hat, and I think, “Yeah, go get him, Walt. Get gangsta. Clip his ass. ” And Walt, of course, can’t, because he’s way out of his league, and his plan to kill Gus and recruit Mike were incredibly naive. I loved the Walt stuff in this episode, as I almost always do. A great touch was giving Walt a cool soundtrack as he approached Gus’ house, only to have the music quickly dribble away as his plan was interrupted by the phone call.

Now to the stuff I generally don’t love. Jesse, for his part, spends the entire episode surrounding himself with people and noise, trying to keep a meth-fueled party going at his house for three days to avoid being alone with his thoughts. After appearing to toughen at the end of the first episode, it looks like he’s back to cracking again. Once more, he spends the entire show on the same set, doing very little. His scenes weren’t bad, but I just don’t much care for Jesse or the actor playing him, so his struggles don’t really have much of an impact on me.

Skyler has her own careful plans to become a crime lord, and they’re rebuffed as Walt’s were: after making an offer to buy the car wash she plans to use as a front for their drug money, she’s turned down by the owner who is still smarting from when Walt quit the car wash way back when. Hank, meanwhile, continues to rehab from his injuries while being a complete dick to his wife. And, in an exciting twist, Walter Jr. comes out of his room and has some breakfast, which is apparently all he does this season.

This is Breaking Bad. It inches along with flashes of brilliance and occasional bursts of extreme violence, just enough to keep the slow pace from becoming interminable. There’s always something great buried in it. It’s not always a lot, sometimes it’s just a little moment or turn in the plot, such as in this episode, where Walt’s seemingly badass and brilliant plan of bumping off Gus turns pathetic as Mike quietly beats the shit out of him and leaves him gasping on the barroom floor. But the little collection of great scenes every week, amid long bouts of not much else happening, keep the show worth watching.

I also watched Alphas. Oh wait, I didn’t. I meant to watch it. But I keep forgetting. That’s probably not a good sign.

I’ve gotten a little behind on my TV watching (gasp!) but I caught up this weekend. No, I’m no hero. Just a guy who can bravely sit on a couch for hours on end.

There have been a couple of new shows popping up lately, and the return of a couple of my favorites. Here’s what I’ve been watching:

Louie: I don’t know how to put into words how great I think this show is. It’s an oddity in that when you start to watch you really have no idea what you’re going to get: something funny, something depressing, something touching, something rude, and often, all of the above.

Take the first episode of the season. We start with Louie’s daughter casually mentioning that she enjoys being with her mother (Louie’s ex-wife) more than she enjoys being with him. It’s just one of those brutally honest statements kids make that don’t contain any malice but can plunge a burning dagger into your very soul. Depressing. Louie’s reaction is to give his daughter the finger when she’s not looking. Funny. Then his extremely pregnant sister shows up, and in the middle of the night she has a medical emergency. Louie is frozen with panic, and his neighbors come to the rescue, one helping Louie to get to the hospital while the other watches his kids. The emergency is defused (in a manner both rude and funny). Finally, Louie, is near tears with guilt for not knowing his neighbors even existed, and overwhelmed with gratitude at receiving help from kind strangers. Touching.

This is a great show.

Wilfred: This premiered on FX two weeks ago, the American remake of an Australian show. I don’t know how it’ll do: it’s sort of strange, not incredibly funny, and has an unusual premise. Elijah Wood plays Frodo (not his character name, but I can’t remember his character name), a depressed ex-lawyer whose plans to kill himself don’t come to fruition, much to his dismay. One noticeable side-effect: Frodo suddenly sees his neighbor’s dog, Wilfred, as a big Australian guy in a cruddy dog costume. Wilfred tries to snap Frodo out of his doldrums by encouraging his more animal instincts, such as stealing pot from his jerk neighbor and pooping in his boots. I enjoyed the pilot, but the second episode was pretty dull and more of a standard sitcom. We’ll see where it goes from here.

Falling Skies: We’re four episodes in and, I dunno. It’s okay? It’s not really doing anything spectacular or new, but it’s not really doing anything to really annoy me, either. I think the main problem is that I don’t care about anyone on the show. Noah Wyle is doing a fine job as Professor History, but his character is so good, kind, thoughtful, and reasonable it’s hard to have any real interest in him. I like flaws, and he hasn’t shown any yet. His rough-and-tumble teenager is pretty dull. Will Patton is a one-note gruff leader type. The women are all basically interchangeable. They introduced Pope, who I think is supposed to be a charming rogue like Sawyer from Lost but he’s not charming, just an ugly annoying scenery-chewing cartoon. Most of the story-lines come from missions that go awry because someone does something unforgivably stupid.

Still. It has aliens so I keep watching, hoping it will get better instead of worse.

Futurama: I’m happy Futurama is back but the first three episodes haven’t been particularly good. In one, Bender creates a bunch of replicas of himself, and they do stuff I can’t really remember. In another, the crew have their genders swapped, which is a promising concept that they didn’t do much with, other than make a bunch of incredibly obvious gender jokes. The third episode featured the death of Bender and his ghost trying to do I dunno what. Meh, times three. Hopefully, there will be at least a couple decent episodes this season.

With The Killing done for the season, I’m looking for a new TV show to write about weekly. I decided to check out the two-hour premiere of Falling Skies on TNT. Falling Skies is about a group of survivors six months after the earth has been invaded by hostile alien forces. It’s based on an idea by Stephen Spielberg.

I kind of love the implication of a show based on an idea by Stephen Spielberg. It paints a little picture in my mind. Like, there’s a bunch of guys who work for Spielberg, and they’re all sitting around a conference table talking about whatever projects they’re all involved with or whatever, and Spielberg has been real quiet for a couple minutes, and then he says suddenly: “Hey, what if aliens invaded earth, and instead of a show about the invasion, the show takes places months later when the resistance is already underway?”

And everyone sort of nods, and says, “Yeah, that sounds cool. That would be cool, Stephen.” And Spielberg just sits there staring at them, and it’s completely silent, and finally someone is forced to say, “Okay. Um. I guess… I guess I’ll go spend, um… the next couple years… working on that… that show. That show you just had an idea for.” And then he walks out, thinking, “Shit! I had a bunch of plans for the next couple years, too! Well, better call the wife and tell her I’ll be a couple years late for dinner.”

(There was a LucasArts adventure game called The Dig that was also based on an “idea” by Spielberg. I feel like kind of the same thing happened. And it sort of showed. The Dig was okay, but not nearly as great as the other LucasArts games.)

Anyway. Guess I should talk about the show itself at some point. The two-hour premiere was actually the first two episodes shown back-to-back. With a pack of survivors wandering around, scavenging for food and weapons, it’s a little bit like The Walking Dead, and with the aliens stomping around and looking for them it’s a little bit like Battlestar Galactica.

The show centers around Noah Wyle’s character, Professor History. I call him that because I can’t remember his name, and also he’s a history professor, a fact that is brought up by this scene that takes place every ten minutes or so:

Professor History: “History has shown us that weaker forces can overcome more powerful ones. Just think of Sparta, or the Revolutionary War, or the Red Sox, or Minutemen, or porcupines, or the water balloon fight episode of The Simpsons, or –”

Someone: “Man. You sure know your history, professor!”

Professor History: “Heh, well, yeah. I am a professor of history.”

Professor History’s wife was killed by aliens, one of his sons was captured by them, and he’s struggling to take care of the remaining two: a cute mop-top little boy (I don’t remember his name) and a rebellious teenager (I don’t remember his name either). This seems like it would be incredibly annoying: we know from television that little kids are a drag, always asking stupid things innocently, like “Where’s Mommy?” and “Why do the aliens want to hurt us?” and having to have simple shit explained to them, and teenagers always hate their single dads and shout stuff like “I’m not a kid anymore, Dad! You don’t control me!”

Thing is, these kids are actually okay. The little kid is portrayed as, well, a little kid. Sure, he misses his mom, and wonders why he can’t have a birthday party, but he’s not really that annoying. And the teenager, while definitely trying to walk his own path, actually listens to and respects his dad. They do have their differences, and I’m sure they’ll be butting heads, but it’s not overdone. Good job, Falling Skies, for exceeding my expectations!

Angry Army Guy, played by Will Patton, does pretty much meet my expectations. He’s in charge of the ragtag army that’s overseeing the 200 or so civilians, he barks orders, and he expects everyone to defer to him at all times. Professor History wants to go look for his missing son, who was spotted wearing a “harness”, a weird device that the aliens attach to the spinal cords of children to enslave them. Angry Army Guy doesn’t want to expend the resources needed for a dangerous rescue mission, however, and Professor History argues with him pretty much every time they talk. While this gets old quickly, we do see some signs that Angry Army Guy does have a bit of a heart.

Rounding out the cast are a number of slender, attractive young women with perfect makeup. There’s a doctor (Doctor Lady), a teenage girl smitten with Professor History’s teenage son (Teenage Lady), and another teenage girl smitten with the same son (Other Teenage Lady). Other characters include Very Young Kid Who Is A Surprisingly Good Soldier, Black Guy Who Yells A Lot And Dances, Yellow Labrador Dog Who Barks At Aliens, And Likeable Old Man And His Likeable Old Wife Who Seem To Take The Alien Invasion In Stride.

As far as the aliens themselves, they’re shown early, if not often. They come in two types: Skitters, which are bug like things with many legs, and Mechs, which are large metallic bipedal constructs with a lot of firepower. They look pretty good, especially for TV, and there’s some mystery about them. Professor History wonders why the Mechs are bipedal instead of looking like robot versions of the multi-legged Skitters. Which is a good question. Are the Skitters even in charge, or are the Mechs actually their masters? Are the Mechs actually robots, or is there an as-yet unseen alien inside them? What about the children that they’re enslaving? Maybe they’re inside the Mechs, being forced to hunt down the rest of the humans? There are also some large alien structures on the surface of the planet: who or what lives inside them? I suspect there’s more going on then they’ve shown so far, and if the show is going to really draw us in, they need to explore who the aliens are, what they want, and who is actually running the show.

The first episode of Falling Skies is decent, but the second episode, unfortunately, falters quite a bit. Professor History and his kid are scavenging a warehouse for weapons on the orders of Angry Army Guy, who won’t let the professor look for his enslaved son until he finishes this questionable mission. Things go awry, and they’re ambushed and captured by Comically Evil Crazy Flamboyant Racist Scene-Chewing Outlaw Leader (I’ll shorten that to Crazy Guy) and his clan of Evil Jerks. Crazy Guy is supremely annoying and ridiculous, and the show quickly devolves into him spouting crap and acting eccentric for an hour, while trying to coerce Army Guy into giving him weapons in exchange for returning Professor History unharmed.

It does get better toward the end as the bullets start flying, we meet yet another attractive slender young woman with perfect makeup, and Angry Army Guy agrees to let the professor go look for his son.

We’ll see how the show shapes up. There are plenty of little niggles, like the habit of people walking around in broad daylight and talking loudly despite aliens being everywhere: Old Man actually teaches a class about biology to a bunch of kids sitting out in the open during the day. This seems pointless and dangerous. The first two episodes ended with that thing where they play music and people smile fondly at each other while watching children frolic, reminding us that we haven’t lost our humanity. But the effects are good, and while the show doesn’t entirely avoid a lot of common cliches it at least sort of sidesteps them. Plus, it has a few pretty badass fights. I assume these two episodes will air again before next weekend, so you might want to take a look.