Tag Archives: cia

Homeland Season One…not sure if I liked it or not

Television, , , , , ,

Over the weekend, I finished watching the first season of Homeland, the series about an obsessive, medically (kind of insane) CIA analyst/operative who suspects a returning POW of being with Al Qaeda. The show itself is kind of ho hum, although it does have great performances from the main actress and the former Indigo Montoya of Princess Bride fame (much older and still a great actor). The show really goes off the rails with its attempts to be “accurate” in intelligence work, which to put it simply is MASSIVELY inaccurate. But having said that, one of the things it does REALLY well is to showcase a person who is medically compulsive to the point of insanity. And THAT it does really, really well.

They are into the Second Season now, which makes me sort of wonder as the end of Season One kind of put the main actress in a position that shouldn’t EVER give her an opportunity to be doing what she was doing in the first season. But knowing Hollywood, they’ll write themselves around that one in a really corny way, kind of like 24 used to do over and over again.

So, I’d advise watching it for the drama, the surprise turns and for one of the best performances of someone acting crazier than me.

When did softdrink bottlers begin smuggling out CIA messages to its agents?

Bizarre, Business, , , , , , ,

This afternoon, I opened up a nice, cool, refreshing bottle of diet Dr Pepper and was about to drink it down when I noticed that there were printed alphanumeric characters under the cap. The actual characters were YR6P4E 7HH4E6. I know that in the olden days, they used to have contests and you would try to get the lucky bottle cap, but this is something different.

Something sinister.

As I ran the alphanumeric characters through my Bat decoder ring, I suspected there was something seriously wrong here. These were in fact code symbols that are probably used by the CIA to communicate with secret agents working in super secret locations. I figure the only way they know how to keep in contact is by transmitting these numbers through diet Dr Pepper bottles.

So, this got me thinking that perhaps I accidentally bought a soda that was originally intended for a super secret spy who is now desperate to find out super secret information that can only be decoded from this particular bottle of soda. So, if anyone comes across a wayward super secret CIA spy hanging out at the local Quickie Mart on Main Street (right next door to the strip joint where that black-haired girl works…you know the one that called the cops on me and went all psycho with the restraining order?), then please let that secret agent know that the instructions YR6P4E 7HH4E6 have been successfully relayed to him as intended.

And thank him for keeping America safe. And drinking diet Dr Pepper as well.

The Final Season of Chuck (Season 5)

Television, Writing, , , , , , , ,

The final season of Chuck released a few weeks ago, and I picked it up on Blu Ray when it did. I finally managed to watch through it, as this was one of my favorite shows when it first aired. The last few seasons of it I kind of missed, mainly because it was difficult to figure out when it was on, and then other things took over as more important, so it took me some time to get to it.

In case you aren’t aware, Chuck is a one-hour long show that involves a friendly, yet nerdy, computer repair professional who works for the Nerd Herd crew of the local Buy More store (definitely patterned after the Geek Squad of the Best Buy stores). In the first episode of the series, an old friend of his from Stanford (where Chuck dropped out) mails him an activation virus that ends up installing the CIA’s entire database into Chuck’s brain, thus turning him into somewhat of  a walking super computer. Thus, the CIA sends a crack team to watch over Chuck, which becomes Sarah Walker (the hot blonde played by Yvonne Strahovski) and Colonel John Casey (played by Firefly’s Adam Baldwin). Sarah becomes his handler, and as you can probably suspect would happen, she ends up falling in love with the nerdy Chuck. As the series goes forward, the “intersect”, the device placed in his brain, becomes even more complicated so that it ends up giving him special skills he can draw upon at will, like the ability to learn Kung Fu instantly, and all sorts of other fun stuff.

Anyway, lots of intrigue, and four seasons later, the last season was the finale of the adventure as Chuck and Sarah continue their adventures and see if they can somehow find some kind of life together post-CIA.

The problem with the show is that the wonderful writing that is filled with comedic fun has gotten really stale over the years, and as the season began, I started to suspect that they definitely needed to end this thing. The first half of the season was atrociously bad in both writing and ideas. And then, almost as if they realized it, it kicked into second gear for the second half of the season and actually became quite enjoyable. At one point, it actually became unpredictable, which after the first couple of episodes, I was beginning to think we had a show that had seriously overjumped the shark.

In all, the 5th season was worth it, and let’s just say that there are a couple of episodes that were comedy gold, including one that included Bo Derek playing none other than, well, Bo Derek. At some point, the show became a meta-comedy, where it started even poking fun at itself, and when it hit those moments, it was brilliant. The whole episde with Bo Derek was genius level of comedy for the show, and for the first time in a long time, I found myself seriously laughing out loud.

Shortly after, the season ended, and the journey of Chuck was over. In all, it was a decent journey.