Kat with a K

The Gates 1.3: "Breach"

Overall, this episode was . . . enh. The show continues to be not quite bad enough for me to stop watching it. And I've said this before, but the fact that I can never seem to remember any of the characters' names can't be a good thing. Some observations, after the jump!

The cop (Marcus?) and the girl (Teresa?) moved in awfully quickly, so of course I continue to suspect Teresa's motivations. A week? Really? Who DOES that? And you'd think such an exclusive community would have some sort of long background-checking procedure and not let just anyone move in, even if they're moving in with a current resident. Leigh seems to be the more interesting of the young cops - she's clearly something supernatural, and given her reaction to Teresa it's looking like she might have a thing for Marcus.

Why does Claire leave The Gates to go grocery shopping? Would a community with a school and a salon and an ice cream place and all those other shops we kind of saw really not have a grocery store? Hmmm. In other circumstances, I would say that they had one of those fancy downtowns that's really all expensive specialty stuff for tourists and nothing actually useful for residents, but it's a gated community! So obviously that's not it.

Memo to Brett: Don't said "I love you" to a girl and then tell her to forget about it the next day. Sigh. On the other hand, Charlie's really pretty perfect. This triangle would be more believable if Charlie were more obviously flawed, or Brett had more redeeming qualities. Obviously, Andie has history with him, and there's stuff we haven't seen, but still! Make me believe that the characters like each other, show!

Speaking of the triangle: I really liked what Andie's friend (who has a name, I'm sure . . . Mia? Maybe?) said about the situation being not a triangle but instead an equation, with Andie's current boyfriend as a constant and the new guy as a variable, and that Andie had to figure out how she felt about the constant before she could solve for the variable, basically. I think that metaphor may be useful when discussing situations on other shows, so I will hereby name it the Gates Equation and start invoking it whenever possible. And I bet that will be the one element of this show that lasts past the summer.

At some point, someone says "There's obviously a glitch in the matrix." Really? Really? I honestly couldn't tell whether the character was making a Matrix joke to other other characters, or the show was making a winking Matrix joke to the audience, or if someone just wrote it without really thinking about it and no one caught it. Opinions?

Finally, I was delighted to see Paul Blackthorne (Dresden from The Dresden Files), and I hope he'll be sticking around. His very presence makes the show feel smarter and more charming. And God knows it needs it.