Two Mac episodes in a row which begin with his car breaking down. Mac, sweetheart, darling, snookums, I know your beloved grandpa left it to you, and it's a pretty awesome shade of turquoise that matches that hideous shirt you seem to love, but maybe you should buy a vehicle built after 1955? Don't give me that crap about aliens being responsible for the second breakdown, the X-Files won't come out for another three years. Besides which, the front end might be pretty, but from the back it looks like you should have five bratty kids and a dog.

'Bitter Harvest' is the run-of-the-mill plotline as mentioned previously (Wealthy Evil doing down Virtuous Poor, etc etc). I know I was wishing for that, but it's... very unexciting. Mac just can't help getting involved, can he? All part of his charm.

'The Visitor' is a very shark-jumpy sort of scene (although the plasma thing was cool). Alien tours the midwest in disguise as vacuum cleaner salesman, fighting con artists? WTF, show? I thought you weren't going to go there, but... oh, you did. You did. Giant alien spaceship. Yes, Mac, I do "gotta wonder", but not about the existence of aliens. I gotta wonder what possessed anyone to make this episode. No, don't give me that face. I don't care if you tip your head to one side like a confused puppy, it's not going to fall for... I'm not... I won't...

...Okay, you're still cute. I'm going to pretend this one never happened.

I hear tell there's a former sweetheart episode coming up shortly. Those are always good for a laugh. Mac's exes are often mind-bogglingly wet, which leaves one to wonder whether they started out that way (Amy Austin), or turned that way after they parted ways with Mac (Kate Connolly – oh Kate, you were so cool, what happened?).

Speaking of Amy Austin. One thing about that ep ('Flame's End') which distracts me - in the scene where she's walk-running away down a hallway, being followed by a bad guy, she always reminds me of the female Martian in Mars Attacks! - you know, with the weird slinky walk because under the dress are a bunch of little legs, or rollers, or whatever it was? I think Amy Austin was a Martian in disguise. It explains... okay, it doesn't explain anything. But Mac would be great at rigging up impromptu audio devices to defeat Martians, don't you think?

ETA: RDA enthusing about French Impressionist painters. *swoons*