Odd Job of the Week: Michael needs some money to track down Derek Poole, so Fiona sets him up with a job she heard about. It’s for an art dealer named Scott Chandler, who’s convinced that someone is trying to breach his gallery’s security in order to find info about something. Michael poses as a security expert named Miles, and goes to work finding the culprit.

Of course, since Chandler is referred to by his last name and seems like a pretty slimy guy, I got the feeling that there was more to him than met the eye. I was right, as Chandler’s receptionist turned out to be the one bugging his office and keyboard. Her name is Melanie (hey, it’s the receptionist from The Practice!), and she has a good reason for going after Chandler. He basically stole a painting from her father (who was an artist). Melanie is trying to recover the $7 million piece and bring Chandler to justice.

After verifying Melanie’s story, Mike and Sam set up a neat little double-cross that ends up getting Chandler killed by one of his own associates (there we go with Michael being indirectly responsible for murder), who in turn gets nabbed by the cops while trying to dump Chandler’s body in a river. Convenient.

Burn Notice Progress: Michael works with Seymour the arms dealer to track down Derek Poole, the bomber who tried to kill him. Seymour first finds Derek’s girlfriend Bianca, who leads them to Derek’s secluded place. From there, Michael and Fi move in, capture Derek, and force him to talk. It turns out Derek was paid $100k to rig Michael’s door, but he doesn’t know who ordered the hit. He just got the order and a wire transfer, that was it. He gives Michael the account number. Mike will now try to track down the person behind the number.

Character Development: As I said, not much went down in the way of personal stuff. Michael and Fi mostly avoided talking about sleeping together, while Sam figured out what was going on because of how strange they were acting around each other. No Sharon Gless in this ep, which sucked, but I guess there really wasn’t any way to fit her in.

Looking forward to the next ep!

I had watched 2 1/2 seasons of the show before dumping it because my viewing schedule was too full. But I’ve been catching up on the CBS website, and am now into Season 4. Even though Christine is nowhere near as funny as Elaine Benes, I still love JLD’s special brand of neurosis. Seriously, that woman could sit there on a couch rattling off diet pill reviews or reading a phone book and I would probably find it entertaining!

Anyway, I’m not sure where the whole Christine-Barb fake marriage thing is going, but I don’t really care at this point. I’m watching for Christine alone!

Lucy heads to New Ulm, where she’s met by Blanche (Siobhan Fallon), a scrapbooking, tapioca-loving woman who will serve as Lucy’s secretary. Blanche does her best to make Lucy feel welcome, but it’s clear that they are just from completely different worlds. Nevertheless, Lucy accepts a dinner invitation to Blanche’s house on her first night in New Ulm. There she meets Ted Mitchell (Harry Connick, Jr.), whom Blanche clearly intended to set her up with. The only problem with that is Lucy and Ted disagree about nearly every subject that comes up during dinner, and Ted ends up leaving in disgust — over Lucy’s feelings about how successful Fergie is.

The next day, Lucy heads to the plant, where most of the workers, including foreman Stu Kopenhafer (JK Simmons), view her with complete distrust. They do their best to humiliate her, and manage to convince her that the plant will be closed the next day to celebrate Beaver Day (or some kind of made-up holiday like that). When Lucy finds out the truth, she actually takes it rather well and goes to a bar where most of the workers are hanging out to talk to them some more. But they engage in more juvenile behavior intended to show their intense dislike, so she gives up on them.

Meanwhile, Lucy learns to her horror that Ted is the head of the union, so she must negotiate with him about all the upcoming changes. Neither of them are particularly happy about the arrangement, but they can’t get around spending time with each other. Their relationship heats up considerably when Ted’s teenage daughter has a Valentine’s Day emergency requiring a woman’s help. Lucy swoops in to save the day with a shopping spree and trip to a hair salon, and she and Ted end up getting to know each other on his couch.

As Ted and Lucy’s relationship develops, the imminent layoffs hang over Lucy’s head. Once the workers find out what’s going to happen, everyone blames Lucy, including Blanche and Ted. But Lucy, who has grown to like these people, comes up with a plan (involving Blanche’s tapioca pudding) to save the plant. This being a romantic comedy, the plan works out perfectly. Jobs are saved, Lucy becomes a hero, and she and Ted end up together.

My Reaction: Even though she hasn’t had a hit in quite some time, I like Renée Zellweger. She reminds me of one of my favorite high school teachers, and I just can’t get past that. So I try to watch and enjoy her films despite all the negative reviews from professional critics.

The problem is, there’s sometimes very little to like — which was the case with New in Town. Right from the beginning, the entire premise seemed completely familiar and staggeringly unoriginal. Anyone who has ever watched movies before could figure out the entire plot after 15 minutes, making the rest of the film boring. The writer took zero chances and offered zero surprises. It was a paint-by-numbers script that felt completely lifeless and generic.

Furthermore, I didn’t like how so many of the supporting cast chose to adopt Fargo-like accents for their characters. Yes, I know both movies take place in Minnesota, but still. That was just another way in which the film hammered home its unoriginality.

Nevertheless, I thought New in Town was watchable — just barely. Thanks to Zellweger and an almost unrecognizable Harry Connick Jr., I found myself sort of interested in what was happening on screen. But that just helped bring the rating up to 5 stars out of 10.

– I find it kind of odd — in an interesting way — that Jackie and her husband seem to have such a good relationship. I mean, he actually seems to contribute a hell of a lot to the household. He takes care of the girls, does some cooking and cleaning, and runs a bar as well. Plus, he’s pretty nice to Jackie. So why is she cheating on him? Is it just for the drugs?

– Dr. O’Hara is growing on me. She’s so opposite to Jackie that their interactions are invariably amusing. I particularly liked the aversion to children she displayed in this ep, and had to LOL when she said that she was grossed out after having been touched by “sullied midget digits”.

– Oh, poor Zoey, losing her first patient like that. This character is still my favorite. I have to find out who this actress is. She’s awesome!

– And who would’ve thought that Coop could have such a good bedside manner. I’m a bit of a sucker for men who are kind to the elderly, so his nice interactions with that patient led to an “Awww” moment for me.

I am much more optimistic about Nurse Jackie after watching 1×04. Let’s hope the good eps continue!

And what kind of bank ATM codes do they have in New York? My ATM code is a 4-digit number. I’ve never had the option to use a word as my code, and I’ve never heard of anybody else being able to use a word either. It’s supposed to be a number. That’s why it’s called a PIN (personal identification number), right?

The Kramer stuff was kind of dumb. He was always my least favorite character, though, so it’s not surprising that his storylines still fail to interest me. He thought he could give better directions to the fire department than the ones they’d been using? That’s pretty silly — though I guess in the days before gps systems were so common, taking shortcuts might have been a bigger issue.

I thought it was totally weird that J. Peterman would want to stick around and have dinner with Jerry and George even after Elaine, their only common bond, bailed. I would never do that if I were in the same situation. Just too awkward!

I think there are like 5 more episodes that I haven’t seen. After that, I’ll start digging into the bonus features and some of my favorites. Can’t wait!

Meanwhile, Sam Witwicky (played by Shia LaBeouf) is preparing to head off to college. He’s looking forward to a chance at leading a normal life now that his Autobot adventures are behind him. To be sure, he still keeps Bumblebee in his garage, but freshman aren’t allowed to have cars on campus, so he’ll be entirely on his own. He’s still with Mikaela (Megan Fox), though the two will have to attempt a long-distance relationship during the first year.

Of course, nothing goes as planned. The problem begins when Sam finds a piece of the AllSpark at his house. He’s not really sure what it is, but he hands it over to Mikaela for safekeeping after a bunch of hidden Decepticons try to attack him for it. After that, Sam starts having seizures and writes strange characters everywhere — most likely as a result of having come into direct contact with the AllSpark. This freaks out new roommate Leo Spitz (Ramon Rodriguez), who is all about aliens, government cover-ups, and conspiracy theories.

It turns out that Sam’s mind has been injected with all the knowledge from the All-Spark, making him a valuable commodity to the Decepticons. They’re sent on a mission to capture him. Once they get their hands on him, however, Bumblebee and Optimus arrive in the nick of time to save Sam. Unfortunately, Prime is killed during the battle, giving Megatron the opening he needs to order an all-out Decepticon assault on Earth.

From there, Sam, Mikaela, and Leo discover that there’s a chance to revive Prime and thwart the Decepticon attack. With the help of Agent Simmons (John Turturro) and a few Autobots, the group race off to Egypt to find a secret tomb of the Primes, where a magic Matrix can bring Prime back to life. The group succeeds in their hunt, Sam resurrects Optimus, and the Decepticons are defeated again.

My Reaction: Even though I just got back from seeing the film, I had to read the summary on Wikipedia to sort out the details of what happened. It was damn near impossible for me to keep track of all that while I was watching! Admittedly, I’m not any sort of fangirl, so I don’t know the whole Transformers lore, which might have something to do with why I was kind of clueless about what was going on in the film. But seriously — it seemed like the movie was just a series of loooong action sequences with no plot in sight.

The lack of a genuine plot was just one of the problems with this film. Another was the fact that the robots dominated far too much of the screen time. I know this is called Transformers, which would lead you to believe that they’re the main characters, but it’s just not all that interesting watching robots battle each other. The human-robot interactions helped make the first film as fun as it was. But the fun was definitely lacking in this installment.

Also, the action sequences were often undecipherable as well. There were so many close-ups and tight shots that it was hard to tell what was going on. And they just went on and on and on, with plenty of loud noises, but not much else of note. I ended up with a headache from all that crap.

And there were just so many other cheesy, cringe-worthy moments in this film that I couldn’t believe it. For instance, that first shot of Megan Fox, where she’s sprawled out on top of a motorcycle, practically dry-humping it… OMG, that was so incredibly stupid!! I never notice these types of stupid poses, but Michael Bay was just so obvious with this one that I couldn’t help it. Who the hell lies on top of a bike to do detail work like that??? Utterly ridiculous! Yeah, Megan Fox is amazingly hot, but there are more natural ways to showcase her body.

Overall, I was quite disappointed with Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. The first one was a surprise hit for me, as I ended up enjoying it far more than I ever expected. I was hoping this one would be just as much fun, but that wasn’t the case at all. What a waste of time and money. I give it 4 stars out of 10.

Second place went to the Sandra Bullock-Ryan Reynolds romantic comedy The Proposal, which earned another $18.5 million to bring its 10-day total to a very respectable $69 million. I’m actually surprised at how well this movie is doing at the box office and might end up checking it out.

The only other new release besides Transformers 2 to crack the top 10 was something called My Sister’s Keeper, which stars Abigail Breslin and Cameron Diaz. Breslin is one of the few child stars I can stomach, and this looks like a decent movie, so I’m going to put this on my To Watch list as well. The film earned $12 million in its debut.

Here’s the complete Top 10 at the box office for the weekend ending 6/29/09:

1. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, $112 million
2. The Proposal, $18.5 million
3. The Hangover, $17.2 million
4. Up, $13 million
5. My Sister’s Keeper, $12 million
6. Year One, $5.8 million
7. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, $5.4 million
8. Star Trek, $3.61 million
9. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, $3.5 million
10. Away We Go, $1.68 million

I’ve never lived in an apartment building long enough to develop close relationships with my neighbors, nor did I ever feel the need to give a spare set of keys to a friend for safekeeping, so I didn’t really relate to what was happening in this ep. Yes, I could see Jerry getting fed up with Kramer barging in all the time and therefore asking for his keys back, but all the back and forth swapping between the gang was a bit out there.

But as is usual with a majority of Seinfeld eps I still found things to laugh at even though I didn’t particularly like the main plot. For instance, I loved how Jerry sometimes pretends that a crazed killer is chasing him and he has to try to open his door as quickly as possible. I swear, I’ve done that sometimes too! Also, I had to LOL at Kramer’s humongous key ring with a hundred and fifty keys on it! That looks like it would belong someone with a house in the Hamptons, Wilmington NC real estate, and other properties all over the place, not some unemployed mooch who doesn’t even have a car!

My favorite part of the ep was finding out that Elaine was writing a Murphy Brown spec script! That was awesome because it was unexpected, and yet something that Elaine would totally try to do. Brilliant!

Anyway, from the newscasts I’ve seen, fans are treating this as a pretty huge deal. They’re doing the whole, “Where were you when you heard?” thing — as if MJ was on par with Kennedy, Challenger, 9/11, or any other major event. Seriously?

Well, if you must know, I was weaving my way through all the exercise equipment at my gym on my way to the locker room when the TV monitors started flashing the news. Will I remember this detail forever? Probably not.

At any rate, I can only hope that Michael Jackson is at peace now. He was clearly a very troubled individual, who, deprived of a real childhood by a demanding father and overwhelming work schedule as a youngster, tried to recapture his lost youth by buying into the whole Neverland-Peter Pan thing. Very sad.

Odd Job of the Week: Sam’s friend is a high school football coach who notices that one of his players is in trouble. It’s Corey, a standout both on the field and off. Corey has been having problems with a local gang-banger named Felix, who lured Corey’s sister Tanya into his car and tried to attack her. Tanya escaped and told Corey, who then went after Felix with a baseball bat. That ruined Felix’s rep, so now he’s after Corey to even the score.

Fiona is absolutely livid about the situation, and tells Michael that they must take the case no matter what. So she, Mike, and Sam impersonate a rival gang of car thieves, and go to work on making Felix look stupid with his boss Tony. The three succeed, mostly by making it appear that Felix put a hit out on Tony. Felix has to leave town, and Corey and Tanya are free to resume their lives.

Burn Notice Progress: Michael spends a lot of time viewing surveillance footage from businesses near his loft because he and Fiona figure that the guy who rigged his door to explode might have been caught on tape. Michael does indeed spot a likely suspect, a guy who works at a local demolition company. Fiona poses as a beefcake calendar creator, and gets employee names and phone numbers that way. She comes up with the suspect’s name — Derrick Poole — and then decides to head to his house to see what’s what. The place was rigged to blow, and Fiona is caught in a fire trap. Michael rushes to the address, and, unable to reach Fiona on her cell phone, fears for the worst. Fortunately, she’s safe and sound back at his place. She just needs a new phone.

Character Development: I guess it was inevitable that Michael and Fiona got back together. I have to say that I didn’t like them much as a couple when the series first started, but Fiona has really grown on me, so I don’t mind seeing them together now. Oh, and I loved how we learned that she and Mike met in Dublin while he was undercover as Michael McBride. I can totally picture it!

My Reaction: I liked this episode. There was a lot of forward progress in all areas, and that’s always a good thing. The OJotW was interesting (how cool was that tidbit about the phone books??) , particularly because of Fiona’s reaction to it. The way she got so angry, it made me think that perhaps there’s a similar sexual assault incident in her own background. I would love for the writers to explore that angle. It’s cool that Fiona’s all tough or whatever, but I want to see a more vulnerable side, too. And not just when it comes to Mike.