The Walking Dead - 3x01 - Seed

    Rick's group finds the prison, and decides to camp there for the night.
    I had originally decided to wait on watching the third season until the Blu-ray version was released.  The things I've been hearing suggested that the third season was doing much better than the first two seasons.  So I decided to give it a chance.
    This episode picks up with the same level of quality that we saw at the end of the second season.  This episode is a little more action-heavy, which is a serious benefit.  I find that I have an aversion to most of the dialogue in this show.  Everyone is overly dramatic, and there's too much that stems from people being unreasonable.
    The opening sequence is very satisfying.  The group raids an abandoned house, looking for supplies.  They are mostly silent, and they work in a coordinated way.  They're a team.  They've also moved into a method that is both careful, but very calm and collected.
    When they clear out the prison yard, they handle the situation wonderfully.  They plan out their steps in advance, and everyone comes out alive.  It's so pleasing to see them behaving rationally.
    And I don't think that anyone screams during the episode!  Screaming is appropriate as an alarm, but I think most of them would realize that screaming when you see a dead isn't going to help.

    They even handled the character building moments a little better than they have in the past.
    Of course, we get a nice contrast to the effective teamwork a little later, when their efforts to work together fall apart.  Still, Hershel's injury was his own fault.

The Big Bang Theory - 6x17 - The Monster Isolation

    Raj's date with a girl from the comic shop doesn't go well.  Sheldon learns a little about acting from Penny in his efforts to improve his Fun With Flags show.
    This has been possibly one of the most important episodes of this show.  There was an episode earlier this season which had a very important sequence, in which Sheldon acknowledged that he has problems with physical contact, but specified that he has been working on it.  In this episode, we get a few similar confessions, from Raj, and one from a new girl to the cast.
    The difficulty she has with interactions is palpable, but it's endearing, and relatable.
    There's a broad spectrum of emotional disorders, and this kind of anxiety can range from being mildly nervous, but mostly fine with certain social situations, to being unable to handle the slightest interactions.  The truth of the matter is that most people are going to identify with her.
    And the fact that this scene encouraged Raj to acknowledge his reliance on alcohol - and to recognize that it was a serious problem - is a huge step forward for the show.

    I know I shouldn't get my hopes up, but this was a strangely uplifting episode in comparison to the recent ones.

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - 3x13 - Magical Mystery Cure

    Through an incomplete magic spell, all of the main characters have their cutie marks swapped, and forget what it is they were good at.  Twilight is safe from this, and goes about putting things right.
    This was a short season - only 13 episodes - so this is the season finale.  And it has an appropriate scope, even if there isn't a specific villain.
    There's a big development in this episode - Twilight gets wings, turning her into an alicorn, and she is crowned a princess.  Then they move her into a castle.  This is the sort of drastic movement that would be likely in a dream sequence, but this is an intentional development.  I still have no sense of how they're going to handle this next season.
    I found the episode oddly touching.  I don't identify with Twilight that much, but I can see how Cathy does.  This kind of development could potentially derail the show, but I trust the writers to handle this kind of change without destroying the balance.

The Twilight Zone - 2x10 - Time and Teresa Golowitz/Voices in the Earth

     This is from the 1985 Twilight Zone series.
     Many of the episodes of this series are a little uneven.  Far too many stories deal with the same themes.  The writing is all over the place, and most of the fun comes from seeing familiar faces.  In this case, I liked the first story quite a bit.
     An established showtune writer dies, and the devil (not as evil as the devil usually is) offers to strike him a deal - letting him go back in time to fix a regret of his, in exchange for Hell getting to have him as part of their ranks for a limited time.
     Interestingly, the story doesn't focus on the "deal with the devil" angle that much.  That's just a vehicle for getting to the meat of the story.
     The musician decides that he wants to have the chance to sleep with a girl he was especially into, but never made a move on.  The devil puts him into his 16-year-old body (at least, I think they reference him being 16) and places him at the party he remembers.  With the hindsight that comes as an adult, the musician alters his past in a different way, by preventing a tragedy from happening.  This affects the rest of his life.

     I wish I could give a little more of it away.  Loneliness, and isolation have been a pretty consistent theme in The Twilight Zone, but they had more difficulty tackling it during the 80s.  This was a story that rang true.

     The second story, Voices in the Earth, was actually a little annoying.  I didn't care for it, and I didn't even realize it was part of the same episode.