If I coulda voted for more than one I woulda.
The Box,
Grounds For Deception,
Past, Present and Murder were the top three for me. There was a long list of others that grated for various reasons, but that also seemed to have a few more redeeming elements than the trio above. There's a difference between being challenged by material or positions taken in an ep that ya might not happen to agree with, and the ep just being a waste of time for being poorly done.
Some eps were completely mediocre this season, in fact most of them were, and some, in looking at the list at the top here, I don't even remember enough to have a lasting dislike for. The ones I chose crossed over being forgettable to being an absolute grind to sit thru. The two I really wanted to vote for simultaneously were
the Box and
Grounds.
Grounds for Deception was... was... *sigh* ...it wuz bad. Baaad. Something I'd prefer to be able to deny is now canon for the show and Stella's character. I love you Melina, but I did not love the ep. I'd dare to call it CSI: Providence or something, if I thought I could run fast enough, or if I had ever watched Providence to know what it was about. No, I never did, never even registered it was on the air at the time. Nighttime soap realm I always guessed? And that's what I felt infiltrated our reputed procedural crime drama. It certainly didn't feel like I was watching CSINY to me.
Art theft and antiquities shoulda made great fodder for an ep, but it wasn't really about that at all, after a season's worth of chasing, it was about Stella finding her roots. Fair enough. I'm all for character depth. Just wish it'd done better for the show and had made for more enthralling teevee. I've increasingly grown to like Stella, I've been won over from indifference to a certain fondness for the character, and Melina seems like such a fun, gregarious person; I
wanna like the projects she works on and what she does. But I didn't. I really just didn't, bottom line.
The intent in the clash and conflicts between Stella and Mac, testing and revealing the depth of their friendship and all was quite unsubtle. What had started out as an intriguing storyline with the coins and a villain in Kolovos kinda fritzed and fizzled after having him wind up dead. The story was at loose ends, and Prof. P and the residual elements weren't enough to drive my interest. We also get to the greatest mystery of all time? Really. Wish we woulda had just a little more time devoted to it then
. The cafe MacGuyver stuff was fun but hardly a smoking gun, and the abstract knowledge of pesticides indicates they both really need a hobby of some sort.
The ending was beyond cheeze, and only a half step from emocycle montages and the like. And there are no jurisdictional boundaries for Justice I guess, nor paperwork to worry about, not even for reinstatement, since coffee grinds simply spell it all out and don't need to be filed. Having teh DL bairn in the labs was just
, and the whole hour was not time well spent. No, not a fantastic ep, though I can understand all the same how it is the one splitting opinions to lead as both best and worst ep of the season
All that said.
The Box is the one that got my vote in the end. It's damage is far more lasting to the franchise. The field trip to Fake Plastic Greece will eventually fade, and the badge will be returned with next to no memory of what ever happened. DL is a boggy legacy that just keeps on giving.
It was a frankeneppie cobbled together to begin the incorporation of Anna's pregnancy into the series, and the bolts in the neck most definitely showed. The whole ep really felt like it's purpose was to push viewer buttons and slide the whole development into the mix like it had always been intended. It blatantly featured the stronger half of the pairing and shuffled the weaker into the lockerroom; that was prudent and smart, but also kinda snortable in trying to casually pass it off. A show-altering pregnancy and the mother's got next to nothing to say or do? In any other show... What does that tell ya. And man, Danny gestured a lot while speaking, I think his hands got more screentime than Lindsay did altogether.
Yeah, Danny's the more popular of the two, but the ep was basically a retro-fit monologue to stuff preceding seasons under the rug. It was spackling, it was not a great hour of tv.
The case that was the vehicle and catalyst for all this certainly wasn't original or particularly engaging. It didn't even seem to matter. The rest of the ep went about it's business in the background. So much for all that CSI stuff. What we did see of DL together, in an ep wholly devoted to them, was less than scintillaing. Even seen thru Danny's eyes, Carmine couldn't elevate things much.
The format premise started out well, Danny talking, and us not knowing to whom. But finding out it was the parents of the dead girl he was unloading onto...??? Not a pshrink, not a friend, not Flack say, not even Mac nor Hawkes, not even someone he maybe sees daily in a diner or coffeeshop something. ...But the parents of the victim, who had suffered a gruesome death, while they were sitting in the precinct awaiting news of their stolen newborn grandson. :wtf: No, that's not cyclical writing to evoke deep thought and wonder and appreciation for how it all profoundly weaves together. And Lindsay recalling seeing the girl in the clinic weeks ago? That's all just :wtf:... I mean, c'mon. :censored:
Pregnant teen, who was carrying a child for an infertile couple, tumbles down some stairs, they cut her open, take the baby, stash the body in the trunk. Dump the car. That's never been done before. And of course, the girl was actually gonna change her mind and keep the child and ...geez, freakin yada yada I can't even be arsed here to go thru it all again. Bleh predictability the whole ep thru. Baby finally safely retrieved, it's given to the grandparents while Danny's and Lindsay's hands graze each other. Jeezuz. I'm feeling associative nausea all over again.
I'd love to say that Carmine managed his usual magic with his material but I honestly felt that in a rare instance, he fell flat and his scenes were without a great deal of interest or levels for me. I didn't believe Carmine so much as accept Danny as he's come to be, and didn't feel anything at all for either Danny or Lindsay aside from the general notion of an unexpected pregnancy.
I honestly did my best to come to the ep open-minded if also resigned to the season's path, simply just hoping it would be handled well in it's integration, but I wasn't in the least mollified by this ep, and moreover just wanted to shake Danny outta the PTB induced haze he was under.
What was irritating was also the sense of Carmine being made the apologist speakerbox for DL, how else could they get everyone on board again after the ambiguous S4 with the pairing. It's a role related to translator of god's support thru Mac in later eps. And yes, the emocycle montage was 'orrible. Bad. Bad bad bad. Couldn't believe they put in in the ep.
The ep was just lacklustre and predictable and felt like only the mostly thinly veneered way to introduce the wonderful and organic new path for S5. After a really pretty decent and strong start to the season, this ep was a rude awakening to the season's true mediocrity. It really didn't get better after that, it only had pleasant surprises instead.
Grounds for Deception and The Box, two I wish could be taken back for a do-over, or not at all.
I voted The Box, as there was no proper case, just an excuse to have Danny babbling inanely to the camera, made worse by the fact he was supposed to be babbling at the victim's family. The lame riding off into the sunset on his bike and of course the giant leap of a once credible programme into the realms of fan fiction, never to return.
This episode was the 'deal breaker' for me. The season began with a lot of promise and right around the time it was announced that Anna Belknap was pregnant and her pregnancy was going to be written into the show, things got off track. From that point, it was no substance and all Danny and Lindsay and baby and marriage all the time.
Since this was the episode that started it all, along with that dumb motorcycle ride, I'm voting for this as the worst.
Seconded.
