Monday, February 15, 2010

What's in a title?

I think this is a first for this blog: I'm going to nitpick a title. The tenth season of JAG begins with an episode titled "Hail and Farewell, Part II." That makes sense given that the ninth season ended with an episode titled "Hail and Farewell," which felt a little bit like a cliffhanger, at least in that we were left not knowing who'd replace Admiral Chegwidden nor what Mac told Harm about her medical condition. (Notice that "Part 1" was not labeled "Part I" nor was there a "To Be Continued" title card at the end).

In the so-called "Part 2," we are told that Sturgis is the Acting JAG and that Captain Krennick is being considered as the permanent replacement. But most of the rest of the episode is occupied with a bunch of cloak-and-dagger stuff about Clayton Webb not really being dead. It seems that the writers ran out of cute puns on the spook's name (like "Webb of Lies" and "A Tangled Webb"). But would it have been that hard to come up with something more appropriate to the episode's plot than "Hail and Farewell, Part II," like "Laying Low" or "Mercenary" or "The Hawk"? It's a worse rip-off than the Star Trek: The Next Generation two-parter in which Part 2 completely ignored the Data dreaming storyline presented in Part 1 to focus completely on some boring Klingons.

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