Z Nation, Season 1, Episode 12: Murphy's Law

The group, now minus Mack and Addy, drives on through Colorado and Murphy, a little revoltingly and certainly grossly, pulls off a chunk of his own skin. They’re forced off road onto a golf course by a road block and, after a brief check in with Citizen Z, they run into some zombies just as they run out of ammo.

They run to the clubhouse chased by zombies and get separated from Murphy (they’re past worrying about Murphy now, his zombie immunity is well known). They’re trapped in a cupboard with a hoard of zombies outside until they hear gunfire – and all the zombies go quiet. They’ve been rescued by 3 people

Outside, Murphy is playing golf, completely ignored by the zombies. Introductions – new people are Fred, Henry and Janice. They’re understandably intrigued and wary of Murphy’s zombie taming abilities as they all have BBQ and booze. Murphy has reached a point where he’s willing to boast about surviving the zombie bites and the vaccine and their whole mission to California. Fred offers their help getting them all to California.

At which point everyone starts getting all drowsy – possibly from the booze but since this hits Warren as well, I’m going to go for drugs. The gang all collapses, except Murphy. The three new people leave with Murphy held at gunpoint – and are very unwilling to share what they want him for.

They leave the rest of the gang handcuffed together – and to a zombie which they dispatch with an umbrella. They manage to escape and Warren contacts Citizen Z who manages to track where Murphy’s kidnappers were heading before being cut off. Murphy himself makes sure he is seen by CCTV and, therefore, Citizen Z. He passes on the message through illuminated road signs

And what do Murphy’s kidnappers want? Him to go into a medical facility swarming with zombies and grab a big haul of oxycontin which they can trade with anyone (drugs have a high value in the apocalypse). Also, Meth zombies which means they have to go on foot because they’re very very sensitive to sound. No, really. While they’re distracted disabling their truck, Murphy drools into their water bottle… I have no idea why beyond to be super disgusting. Janice drinks from it (uckies uckies).

This seems to give Murphy the power of mind control. No, really. After asking lots of questions about her dead husband he manages to move her arm like she’s a puppet on a string and make her fire her gun. Mind control? Ok, this is when you just say “Z Nation” and run with it.

Warren & co arrive at their van which sets off an alarm. They kill the zombies that are attracted to the noise (they just found guns. Somewhere) but Murphy’s kidnappers now know they’re being followed.

Grimm, Season 4, Episode 6: Highway of Tears

We join the gang where we left off with everyone all upset and worried about the burning Wesen symbol in Rosalie and Monroe’s garden. Just in case we missed the gross appropriation, Hank helpfully points out that it’s just like a burning cross. Y’know, in case you thought Grimm  was being too subtle about it or anything.

In between Rosalie and Monroe being upset and angry (Rosalie upset, Monroe angry because GENDER) they exposition about pure-Wesen groups that exist that are technically illegal but who may have sympathetic members of the Wesen council, basically saying they can’t guarantee the authorities to intervene. And they can hardly rely on the human authorities and Nick can’t really do anything because he’s no longer a Grimm.

The attack does give Nick and Juliette the final impetus to re-Grimming Nick.

To Nick and Juliette’s house where the whole gang gathers so the upcoming awkward sexing can have even more awkward than we imagined! Elizabeth (Renard’s mother) arrives to cast the spell and Juliette turns into Adalind. Everyone files out in super awkwardness to leave Nick and Adalind/Juliette to get it on. It starts every bit as awkward as you’d expect before Juliette throws caution to the wind (after all, she doesn’t have to have sex with someone who looks like a sworn enemy) and they get down to business. They also get one of those L-sheets you get in Hollywood – y’know long enough on one side to cover a woman’s breasts while still showing the man’s chest?

Nick proves himself to be wiser than the average man when he decides not to answer Juliette’s question “how was it?” because there is no good answer there. For a tense moment, Juliette has some intense, debilitating stabbing stomach pains and it looks like everything is going wrong – but when Nick gets her to the bed she turns back to Juliette and seems to recover. I doubt that’s the last we’ve heard of it.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth has coffee with her son, Renard, to make her goodbyes because she intends to leave soon (which will be a shame because she’s kind of awesome). First she expositions about the hat Adalind had which is apparently super powerful, super special, super old and super rare – she leaves it with Renard so everyone remember he has the magic hat. She also intends to go hunt down Kelly to see her granddaughter which means my dream of a Kelly & Elizabeth spin off could still happen (I can dream).

Truble stays at Rosalie and Monroe’s both of whom hit the beer to avoid the whole incredible awkwardness of having to imagine your best friends having sex because wrong wrong wrong. They go back to Nick’s house the next day, checking to see if the coast is clear (which is cute and awkward). Alas, Nick still can’t see Monroe’s woge – but Elizabeth did say that it would take some time to kick in.

Haven, Season 5, Episode 12: Chemistry

So, to carry on from last week – NO DUKE NOOOOO! Post sex talk between Duke and Mara discussing finding the Aethur, fixing Duke and Mara trying to convince him she cares.

Nathan and Vince meet, Vince is still super suspicious of the very suspicious Charlotte while Nathan is now softening in her because Audrey is sick and in Nathan’s world, Audrey > everything else. Nathan also tells Vince about the Aethur being stolen by one of the Guard.

After investigating, Nathan and Dwight conclude the Aethur thief is Kirk (finally confirmed his name) who has the suffocation Trouble (I saw it was him from the CCTV pictures. I’d be smug but that would just make me more competent than Nathan and Dwight but that’s hardly something to be proud of).

Dwight goes to see Charlotte and tells her all about Duke’s Trouble because he loves to share.

Speaking of, Suspicious Charlotte warns Audrey she’s getting worse and asks more questions about Audrey’s uniqueness (to go with her creepy stalker file). Charlotte continues to be concerned about how very bad Audrey is and Audrey grows more upset and angsty. Vince arrives to rifle through Charlotte’s things and tell Audrey his suspicions – and finds and shows Audrey Charlotte’s Audrey/Mara/Lucy/Sarah stalker file. Might want to hide that a bit better Charlotte. Vince takes hurried copies on his phone. Back to Vince’s office where they discuss what Charlotte could possibly want and Vince points out that the photos suggests Audrey doesn’t age – definitely a plus.

Audrey tells Nathan about Charlotte’s suspiciousness (what will he do now? On the one hand he’s healing Audrey, the centre of his existence, but now Audrey, blessed be her name, is having doubts!) Nathan realises Charlotte is studying her, and Audrey then confesses just how sick she is. Nathan overcomes his quandary by getting mad at Duke instead. Nathan decides to get the Aethur from Kirk and use it to lure Mara out (risking Mara getting Aethur for the sake of Audrey? Of course!)

Which is when Duke gets a call from Mara telling him someone is breaking in – he hears her scream and fight on the phone. When he gets there, the room is trashed, there’s some dramatic blood staining and Mara is gone. I’m going to bet on a secret Mara ploy, personally. Duke does find a button in the wreckage.

Dwight goes to a bar to talk to some guy about how he’s falling for Charlotte – what, in case we missed it?

And Duke goes to see Gloria who is surprisingly gentle in telling him how wrong he is. Anyway she uses her computer to identify Mara’s kidnapper – Kirk. How did Kirk even know where Duke and Mara were? Anyway Duke arrives at Kirk’s at the same time as Nathan so they both get to snarl at each other. Nathan can’t believe Duke is trusting Mara (nor can I), Duke thinks Mara will help him save the town (which I don’t believe Nathan cares about). The two struggle – and find a pair of clippers with blood and hair on them: it looks like Mara’s hair. Nathan doesn’t care if Mara has been tortured (so long as she can help Audrey – note the town is not mentioned). Duke knocks Nathan unconscious and steals the Clue he found.

Constantine, Season 1, Episode 6: Rage of Caliban

So we have a house all trimmed for the holidays and the sound of fighting within. Definitely the holiday spirit. Inside is very very messy, with lots of blood, a collapsed wall (and a woman underneath it) and a man floating on the ceiling. And a little girl. Ah hell, a little girl – horror trope no.36 little girls are the creepiest

The police arrive to comfort the poor girl (everyone in the house dead except for a dead eyed little girl? RUN! RUN AND DO NOT STOP!) and when the police argue (because the actual decent police officer thinks someone should sit with and comfort a girl) she shatters a cup of coffee and her eyes turn black (this demon just wasted coffee… truly this is evil beyond compare).

Cut to John Constantine (who wakes up ungracefully) being rousted out of bed by a woman who needs him gone now since her boyfriend’s coming home.

Back to the Mill where John is trying to eat his belated breakfast and Chas is playing nursemaid (Zed is in “art class” which I think is show talk for “has been clumsily removed from this scene”). Anyway this week they’re off to Birmingham, Alabama

To the house where John breaks in (“if I need you I will give a little whistle that suddenly chokes into silence” may be the best line ever), sees the damage, licks up some slime (as you do) and is surprised by Manny’s appearance. He’s here to say John isn’t special but they kind of need him to step up against the Rising Darkness which they still have no knowledge about. He also ominously talks about how everything is more powerful than it used to be. But he can’t actually do anything useful or tell John anything useful because Free Will (so he just shows up, is ominous then disappears). With a little spell, John sees what happened and that the evil little girl is possessed.

Next possession victim! A nervous kid (whose parents put in a ground floor bed room and leave the window and curtains open – kid has reason to be nervous!) who turns into  creepy kid who starts creepily tormenting his parents, strangling dogs and smooshing pumpkins (though since the kid’s favourite snack was apparently pumpkin seeds, he was pretty creepily odd before).

Back to John who meets a paralegal contact willing to break some rules (who John helped in the past) and reveals that there’s been a string of murdered parents who only had one kid who managed to survive the attacks – and they’re escalating. John decides he needs the name of the possessing spirit so he needs to speak to a survivor – and though no authority is going to let him near traumatised kids, the oldest survivor, Marcello, is now in his 40s – and in a mental hospital.

At the hospital a helpfully chatty employee tells John all about Marcello apparently killing his parents with an axe – and that he was abused as a child (at least show John pulling out a fake id to justify this flagrant breach of patient confidentiality) – which may be linked to Marcello missing several fingers. He’s also completely catatonic so that wasn’t much of a lead.

The Originals, Season 2, Episode 8: The Brother That Care Forgot

A brief montage of Rebecca with baby Hope while Klaus extolls the duties of parenthood and how monumentally bad theirs were to Kol and Finn. Yes he wants his brothers to switch sides which strikes me as a monumentally bad idea since Finn doesn’t breathe without his mother’s position and Kol is so randomly violent that the only thing worse than him as an enemy is him as an ally. In a bit of a switch, Klaus is playing the friendly brother while Elijah would much rather be slicing and dicing his kin. Finn wants to know where Rebekah is because he’s sure she’ll be much more amenable to Esther’s offer of being human again. While he tells them Esther is hunting Rebekah, we cut to her starring in her own little Hitchcock movie with ominous, gathering birds.

Elijah bites Finn. Really Elijah, that’s shocking – it’s the fish course!

Klaus rather hilariously urges his big brother to get a grip when Rebekah calls to say she has a little bird problem. Klaus has to send Elijah to help Rebekah because he doesn’t trust the new, blood thirsty Elijah not to slice and dice their brothers into tasty bite-sized chunks.

Cut to Hayley, Jackson and Aiden and Aiden all concerned because unless they come up with a plan soon he’s going to be figured out as a mole and royally squished. Hayley is sure sweet reason will convince the pack, Aiden points out that moonlight rings are actually a bit better than rousing speeches and points out they have actually gone from swamp living exiles to now actually being able to live in the city – Jackson speaks over this tide of reason and orders Aiden to set up their sweet reason speech in a complete “how dare you question!” tone.

The peon dismissed, Hayley complains about Jackson’s day drinking (what does he think this is, Mystic Falls?). She goes through the now dead Ansel’s notes to give us some werewolf exposition: turns out every werewolf didn’t have every ability they all do now. Each pack had a separate power but then their alphas married and by the power of leader-humping, their packs shared the gifts. As more and more marriages happened, all werewolves got all the powers like some kind of fuzzy planeteers, but with more wolf humping; until the marriages became merely political for alliances since everyone already has all the shiny toys. She theorises that if she (alpha hybrid) marries Jackson (hybrid) she will give everyone the hybrid power of changing whenever they want – making them super-powerful (with their vamp killing bite) and not suffering all that moon agony (wouldn’t it technically make them all hybrids? As in vampires? This isn’t explained). Jackson points out that sham Vegas marriages won’t work here – Hayley and Jackson will have to be really properly married forever and ever. Hayley cancels the Elvis wolf.

Over to Camille who seems a little hungover after her little Esther experience. Clearly they hit the town, had a few tequila shots and now everything’s cool. Hayley calls her to meet up so they can check up on the by-your-powers-combined wolf-humping ritual and mainly so she can have relationship talk over whether she should marry Jackson. They also find some spooky black spots on her Camille’s back which isn’t very reassuring.

Sleepy Hollow, Season 2, Episode 10: Magnum Opus

To get their brains in gear, Abbie and Ichabod are playing a game while trying to interpret Grace’s (Abbie’s ancestor) journal. I think it’s more a convoluted way of making them be cute and amusing together and I’m totally ok with that. Katrina has also figured out how to communicate with them through a mirror (I know, she’s actually learned how to do something useful. I was shocked as well). Of course she’s contacting to tell them that she failed to kill baby!Moloch. Ichabod, hilariously, says they could use her input but Katrina has to shut down communication before she’s forced to do something that’s actually useful. Abbie’s facial expression says it all.

So she’s learned to communicate, but it’s only to say “Ichabod! I have failed to do anything useful!” Oh Katrina, we kind of assumed that already (Abbie certainly did).

As an extra bonus, after Katrina magicked the mirror, Henry can now use it to spy on Abbie and Ichabod. Oh Katrina, please stop helping which means he gets to listen in to Abbie and Ichabod coming up with Enoch’s Sword as a weapon to use against Moloch.

Abbie also gets a note that Reyes is co-ordinating the search for the newly escaped Frank – who Jenny is driving to Canada. Abbie sends a warning to Jenny: cut to them driving and having a moment about safety, Frank’s soul and his family. They run into a checkpoint and Frank gets out the car and arranges to go round on foot – refusing to get Jenny into further trouble. But once he is out he doesn’t meet up with jenny and instead sends her a message saying he intends to hide and fight back – he refuses to run.

Anyway back to the sword, by sheer coincidence this Sword of Enoch (aka the Sword of Methuselah) has made its way to the local area (because just about every Biblical artefact was shipped from the Middle East to New England at some point) and through a few deductive steps and clues, Ichabod and Abbie discover where it is buried. Also they have the cryptic warning that they will die if they don’t know themselves completely.

Of course all of this is now known to Henry (thanks Katrina!) who dispatches Abraham to find the sword (though he worries about the coming dawn). Abraham is also all stroppy with Katrina since she’s reached out to Ichabod and proven that her newly declared love to him is all false. Well done, Katrina, your deception lasted 2 episodes. You tried.

Abbie and Ichabod make it to the location and Abbie recognises it from one of the dreams she had of her mother –her mother trying to guide her. Abraham arrives and they both watch him going for the sword, Ichabod wants to wait for the dawn but Abbie thinks he could get the sword before that and charges in. The horseman nearly finds Abbie but Ichabod distracts him – and the sun comes up. Toasty horseman has to run.

Supernatural, Season 10, Episode 7: Girls, Girls, Girls

Time for the opening murder – a woman, Tiana, runs through some dark allies (woman, alleys, night, high heels – they just put out a casting call for a stereotypical victim) and runs into a sinister Raul (still keeping those stereotypes rolling). Their conversation suggests she is a sex worker trying to escape from him, an abusive pimp. He is sticking to that abusive part so she puts a high heel in his eye – nice shot, Tiana. Of course, being supernatural this doesn’t bother him that much and he snaps her neck

To the Winchesters and Sam teasing Dean for setting up an online dating profile and a woman who is interested in him (have I fallen in an alternate universe where Dean WOULDN’T have a large number of attractive women interested in him), raising the apparently horrifying possibility that the woman he’s emailing could actually be *gasp* A MAN! (quick get your smelling salts!). Shaylene then arrives and is, indeed, a very attractive woman and she and Dean leave together.

But when Dean and Shaylene are alone she starts discussing fees which is a road block for Dean since he doesn’t pay for sex. Especially since she doesn’t want money – she wants his soul. He also seems to realise Shaylene isn’t exactly enjoying her job.

When her boss arrives he finds Sam and Dean waiting for him with a demon trap– and he recognises them. Shaylene tells them she’s being exploited, held prisoner and controlled along with other women. The demon briefly tries to claim innocence before shaming Shaylene – so she stabs him with the Angel Blade.

+10 points Shaylene. Though the Winchesters would have liked to question him more. He does have business cards though.

To that brothel where we see a now 1-eyed Raul and his minion Gerald about to hurt another sex worker when a woman walks in. Hey, I recognise her – she was randomly floating hotel employees. She hands Raul a little package which causes him to vomit black goo and Gerald to de-possess and flee. She also does it with class and a Scottish accent and frees Raul’s enslaved sex workers.

I don’t care if she floats random employees, she’s kind of awesome

Sam and Dean arrive at the brothel in the aftermath and accurately diagnose a case of witchcraft. Going through some research they do find information about a spell that can kill demons – but only known by one witch, Rowena.

Rowena takes the two women to a fancy restaurant and spells the waiter when he tries to kick them out because of the dress code – ensuring they get to stay and get free booze. Naturally the women are interested in magic and Rowena expositions the three ways to become a witch 1) make a demonic pact, 2) be born with magic (like her) and 3) study, training and a mentor. She also talks about a Grand Coven that kicked Rowena out for being “too extreme”.  We get a clue as to how “extreme” that magic is by the waiter she spelled collapsing rather unpleasantly

Gerald ghosts his way back to hell in a new body to report to Crowley who isn’t pleased. He demanded an uptick in soul acquisition but finds the idea of a demonic brothel to be tacky. Gerald also notes that Crowley has been… distracted again.

This Week in Book Covers 10th November - 14th November

Under Suspicion (Underworld Detection Agency #3) by Hannah Jayne

Shenanigans! I call shenanigans on this book cover! This is a flagrant case of false advertising! This book presents something resembling a dangerous, competent protagonist - it builds on an entire genre of weapon-wielding, sexy leather be-decked, scantily-clad, arse presenting heroines (and well done getting ALL of those problems in there) who storm through their respective books kicking arse and not even bothering to take names

Sophie is not one of them. I can’t imagine Sophie owning leather trousers, let alone being able to pull on any item of clothing that tight without either help or someone thinking she’s recreating the three stooges. And as to weapons? Not only does she not wield weapons, but she should not wield weapons! This woman is so lacking in basic competence that allowing her near a butter knife gives me a bad case of the dreads - an actual short sword? She would kill herself, no doubt about it

Of course, maybe the artist realises this and that is why she is depicted stabbing herself in the buttock.

I am annoyed by this cover - and not just because of the usual silliness. I am annoyed because what is depicted is so very far from what Sophie is that it feels like a cynical lie to trick readers

Archangel's Consort (Guildhunter #3) by Nalini Singh