Grid Effect

We are extraordinarily busy this week trying to preempt everything for a trip to North Carolina for Thanksgiving, so we didn’t have time to rewatch this episode, nor did we have time this morning to get the post out before noon. So, we apologize, again, for our disregard.

This episode was highly forgettable. Remember when I said all we need to just have a transplanted carbon copy season of this series was to have Matt make a reappearance? Well, he did. And he’s smoking crack. But not only is he smoking crack, he’s guilt-tripping and manipulating Sean and Christian into giving him money to feed his habit that they don’t know about. It’s good to see Scientology has steered him and Kimber (whom Sean and Christian think left him and gave all his money to the church, but in actuality she’s strung out on her kitchen floor) on the road to salvation.

Really, what was the point of moving the series to LA? They could have found a generic head case model girlfriend for Sean, and Julia still could have gone to New York to discover she is a lesbian, only to come back and sleep with Christian to “get it out of her system”. See what I mean? It’s the same exact plot lines, just taking place in a different time zone. All of these characters are tired sans Christian and Matt who seem to have a bit of complexity to them, as opposed to the rest of Sean’s family, who does nothing but bitch, moan and deceive.

Crack will make you do some craaaazzzy things.

In all fairness, they did offer us one new subplot involving Olivia’s (Julia’s girlfriend) daughter: Eden. Oooh, subtle biblical reference. She is clearly a demonic little witch attending catholic school (I don’t have a problem with it or anything, but is it exactly commonplace for openly lesbian couples to send their kids to catholic school?) and now has Annie under her wing. Eden is already seen making discouraging remarks to Annie, has attempted to seduce Sean (which he can’t seem to shake), and yet Julia and Olivia both defend her. It’s writing like this that makes this series indefensible. On what planet does Sean not tell Olivia and Julia about Eden’s misdeeds? And in what stratosphere is someone like Olivia defending her daughter after she went behind her back for elective surgery (I’m not even going to get into details)?

Christian is having a rough go about things. After being used by Julia (again), he decides to turn into a male escort after a case of mistaken identity. I guess it’s this series’ way of saying that Christian has low self-esteem, but he’s had low self-esteem for over four seasons now, and its been rehashed, retold and redistributed a hundred times over. I can’t really remember who this episode is named after, but my best guess is that Everett Poe is Christian’s gigolo alias.

This seems like a decent place to stop. And to be honest, this isn’t exactly scoring high marks in the series’ chance at longevity on this site. It has amazingly become even more repetitive with the move to LA. One down, two to go.

Tonight: Rosie O’Donnell makes her triumphant return as Dawn Budge.

We’ll try to get some links up tomorrow before we head South, but we’re making no promises.