I got Shotime right before this season started so I've mostly only seen season 2 episodes. It seems like I'm completely opposite viewwise as everyone else on this subject.

I thought the first episode was ok, some good gore, but pretty boring overall.

The second one was my favorite of the season, a bit creepy and Norm is cool so I dug it. Good twist at the end too, I had no idea it was coming.

I thought The V Word was decent, except the lead actor sucked and way annoying. Totally knew that the V Word was too.

Sounds Like just plain sucked ass. It was not creepy, only boring.

Pro-life was bad except

Pelts, gory, so it was good. Even though the story line lacked a lot.

And the recent one about the chicks, ran too long.

I appreciated Pelts because it was pretty gory and I am a big fan of Dario Agento.

No new episode the 15th?

I just finished watching all of season one (plus Pro-Life and Sounds Like), and I wanted to leave my impressions somewhere. The letter grades are pretty subjective, and largely based on what I was feeling as I wrote each blurb, so they might not match up perfectly with how I'd rank the episodes numerically, but they basically capture my opinions, I guess. They certainly illustrate my top five.

Incident On and Off a Mountain Road - I liked this one a lot. The survivalist stuff made for a pretty lame script, but it also provided an excuse for action not befitting a slasher story. Angus Scrimm's comic relief was also nice. B

Dreams in the Witch House - It's been probably 14 years since I read the original story, so my memory is fuzzy, but this seemed to be at least more faithful than most Lovecraft adaptations. It's one of my least favorite Lovecraft stories though, and in general this was pretty mediocre (but still watchable). C-

Dance of the Dead - I didn't care much for this. It tried too hard to be "hip" with its quick cutting, varying camera speeds, and those annoying high-pitched scratchy sounds. D+

Jenifer - Gross. To me, this was the most disturbing entry in the first season (more so than Imprint, but I'll get to that). Something about that face (actually, everything about that face, haha), that voice, and the cutesy, Nausicaa-esque music just made me a little sick. I guess that means it succeeded on some level then. B-

Chocolate - Outstanding. I'm not sure this really qualifies as horror, but the script and execution of this episode were both mostly flawless. The only thing I didn't like was the hand near the end. But oh well, they had a limited budget. A

Homecoming - Terrible. I hate the Bush administration, the Iraq war, Ann Coulter, and so on , but this thing was just too heavy-handed. The Ann Coulter thing made me laugh at first, but she was far too central to the plot for my tastes. All in all, the lack of subtlety means it fails as a political statement, and the lack of any shocks or ominous atmosphere means it fails as horror. F

Deer Woman - This was great. I especially liked when the detective is sitting in bed thinking up scenarios. One of my favorite kinds of horror is the kind that doesn't take itself too seriously (Evil Dead series, Dead Alive, Wild Zero, etc.), so I was very satisfied with this one. A

Cigarette Burns - Not the strongest out of the bunch, but not bad either. The angel was awesome, plus I like "MacGuffin-chasing" stories, and it didn't really bother me that they showed La Absolut Fin du le Monde, as they had already established a fantastic premise about the film earlier on, so we, the real-life audience, can hardly expect to be affected. B

Fair Haired Child - This had a really weak, farfetched script, but the effects shot sequences (the bike at the beginning, and the monster) were cool. Overall decent. B-

Sick Girl - I really enjoyed the performances here, but the way it transitioned from a quirky romantic comedy to a big gross-out and (sort of) back again didn't sit too well with me. Still one of my favorites though. B+

Pick Me Up - This might have worked with commercials, but it felt a bit too long here, plus the ending was both silly and somewhat predictable. I did like many of the performances, but they didn't save this one. C

Haeckel's Tale - The other total stinker in the first season. While the sets and costumes looked pretty good, the story was stupid, plus the "surprise" ending was easily guessed about thirty minutes into the show. Boring. D-

Imprint - This is only the second Miike production I've seen, but he comes off to me as a guy who just likes empty shocks and mindf*cks. Audition had its hallucination scene that didn't make any logical sense, but which was very disorienting. Then, with hardly any time to breathe, he followed it up with a huge shock scene, and then an anticlimactic ending. The end result for me was something like, "Wow, that was gross, but it didn't make any sense, and it was stupid. I hate you, Takashi Miike!" This was similar, but the order of events changed a bit. First you get shocks, but this time they build pretty deliberately, then you get stupidity (in the form of a ridiculous special effect involving the girl's head in the last fifteen minutes or so), and finally confusion in the last couple minutes. All in all, the net effect this time was little more than numbness. I didn't even care enough to hate you, Takashi Miike. It was pretty stylish though. D+

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And as for the two I've seen in the latest season:

Sounds Like - Cool premise, nifty sound design, good lead performance, WAY too long. I get the feeling this one would work at 30 minutes. C

Pro-Life - I really liked Ron Perlman in this, and the baby looked cool, but pretty much everything else was lame. D

I agree with almost everything you wrote except Chocolate which I thought was absolutely terrible

"Girl on The Stairs" started out great. Very creepy and atmosphiric (made great use of the surrounds in my home theatre system) Then it just fell apart and became quite lame. The first half earns an A the second a C making the episode a B on average.

Yeah, but Jenifer had one smoking hot body! She was a dirty, dirty girl!

Above average episode this week, IMO with Right to Die. I was pleasantly surprised.

Wow, that sucked balls. At least he hid his agenda "slightly better". Since when does making Gremlins make you a Master of Horror? I would grade this season a bit better than Season 1, with this being the worst of the lot.

I still have the last two DVR'd, so I hope it picks up.

Anyone catch this week's installment yet, We Scream for Ice Cream?

I saw it and thought it was probably the worst episode of the 2nd season so far. It is truly bad all around...the acting, script, effects, atmosphere. One of the worst so far.

I didn't hate it as much as brianluvdvd, but I'll agree that it certainly wasn't a high point of the series. I thought there were some good bits (creepy clowns, some effective shots), once you got by some bad acting, stupid plot turns, and derivative story. Of all the great horror stories out there, I wonder why they felt the need to adapt this one (which I thought was kind of a stupid throw-away story the first time I read it in Farris's short story collection)?

I caught this week's installment over the weekend and I agree with the two assessment's so far --

I expected much more from the director of Fright Night and Child's Play.

I totally agree...I was really excited for this one. Fright Night is one of my favorites. So far, I think I like Pro-Life the best this season....though I havn't watched Pelts yet.

I would have to say that "Family" was my favorite of the 2nd season and possibly my favorite episode so far over the entire series. The acting was good, lots of dark humor, a couple of surprising twists and was very creepy.

I thought "Pelts" was terrible. Some good gore but the story was dreadful.
"The Damned Thing" could have been good but just fell apart the longer it went on.
I hated "The V Word." Sleep-inducing.
I really liked "Sounds Like." Once again...good acting with an eerie and sad performance by the main actor.
"Pro-life" was good and gory but was also a little silly to me.
"The Screwfly Solution" - another one that seemingly had potential but fell apart.
I liked "Right To Die." It was worth seeing for the massive boobies in the bathtub scene alone. Good gore with some decent atmosphere.

I somehow missed "Valerie on the Stairs." I wish Showtime On Demand was also in HD. They run these in letterbox but the quality is pretty poor when you get used to seeing these episodes in HD.

"Family" has been my favorite thus far as well. The rest have been average at best with "We Scream for Ice Cream" being the worst of the season, IMO.

Anyone watch this week's installment, Black Cat (dir. Stuart Gordon)? If so, how was it?

it was pretty good, better than many of the episodes this season.

I really loved the Black Cat episode. Jeffrey Combs transformed into Edgar very well. A nice episode.

I too liked Black Cat. An effective, moody period piece.

"Black Cat" I thought was OK ... at least a clear effort was made to try something different.

Although ... ever find yourself watching something, have a certain reaction to it? Then when you read what others thought, everyone else's opinion is so different from yours that you wonder if you saw the same thing, or if there's just something wrong with you? I'm feeling something like that about BC. Like I said, overall it was OK. The biggest problem for me was that the performances of the 2 leads completely failed to engage me. The woman just didn't seem to be very good ... she looked pretty, but didn't deliver lines well. Jeffrey Combs, as Poe, is fun to watch as always. However, I would have prefered the performance to be more toned down. Especially in the 3rd act, he was in overblown "Re-Animator" mode, which seemed at odds with what the episode was trying to do. Not believing in the characters, the first half of the ep dragged for me. They took an interesting approach in the latter part of the movie, although it was one I was able to guess pretty easily. The production is top-notch, and it's very refreshing to see a different approach to horror. There's more to good horror than a body count (with gratuitous nudity thrown in for flavor, and maybe tongue-in-cheek humor). Maybe MoH's core audience doesn't appreciate it. Certainly people who consider F13th movies to be the epitome of great horror don't appreciate it. But I do, with eps like this one and "Sounds Like" (which I had some problems with as well, but like the effort). In fact, I think "Black Cat" is unique among MoH episodes in that:

Reviews of this episode that I've read on different forums and horror sites have all been unqualified raves. Perfect in all respects, best MoH ever, best Poe story ever, best Stuart Gordon movie ever, one of the greatest achievements in horror history, etc. And people get hostile when you don't agree with that. I wish I could've experienced something like those reviews, but I just didn't "Black Cat" is still worth your time, and worth sticking with to the end even if you find the start slow and/or unconvincing. And some things that initially may seem like poor storytelling actually get resolved well into the big picture by the end.

What'd you guys think of this week's installment, The Washingtonians?

Billed as being from the director of The Changeling (which is true). Had they chose to use Species II (which Medak also directed), it would have been more telling.

After last week's above average installment, this series again goes down the unfulfilling path of unsatisfying horror stories. I'm glad to see they were using well-founded source material -- it was based on a Bentley Little short story -- its execution was rather inept, IMO.

Well, just finished watching The Washingtonians. Thought it was rather silly but still held my interest.

Black Cat was decent but a little too dull for my tastes...and I have always been fascinated with Poe's life as well as his literature since I was a kid. (why hasn't a great movie been made about him...ala Amadeus?)

I thought Jeffrey Combs did a wonderful job. He was pretty much unrecognizable and I never felt he went into his usual over-acting that he does im most of his films. Cat lovers had to hate this episode though.

I think that Jeffrey Combs should definately be in a big budget or indie movie about Poe. He really lives and breathes the part. "The Washingtonians" definitely had some humor in it's underlaying foundation but it was a nice change. There are different forms of horror just as there are different forms of music. I appreciate all depths or kinds of horror. It was nice to laugh a bit for a change. Johnathan Schaech, one of the writers of the episode also protrayed Mike Franks in this latest installment for the series.

"The Washingtonians" was a fun off-the-wall idea. But probably one that worked a lot better in print than on the tv screen. If they were going to go the comedy route, they should've gone all the way with it, rather than to expect the audience to care/fear for the characters during the suspenseful bits. The story has a bit of different ending: