Now & Again
"The Bugmeister"

Airdate: April 21, 2000

Powerful, corporate-type men are being killed in the New York area. Modus operandi? Bug.

In keeping with its genre nature, Now and Again tends to have odd villains with a scientific bent. First there was The Eggman, who terrorized major metropolitan areas with eggs filled with poisonous gas. Then there was The Pharmacist, who sought to endanger the world by removing people's natural sense of fear. And now we have The Bugmeister, who seeks to promote his agenda by attacking those who attack his creepy little friends.

Unlike The Eggman and The Pharmacist, however, The Bugmeister actually has a method to his madness. As a student of bugs and their place in the ecosystem that we live in, Dr. Bing, aka The Bugmeister, realizes that the radical changes in farming which make it easier to keep crops bug free is destroying the fragile ecological equilibrium of the planet. His "bug assaults" on the heads of large food conglomerations and pesticide CEOs are therefore merely attempts to wake up the public at large to the great crimes against nature that these people are performing.

Pretty neat idea for a villain, eh?

Too bad the story doesn't live up to his potential.

While not bad per se, "The Bugmeister", the first of a two-parter, seems to be plot-light even for a show notorious for focusing on character development rather than story elements. And while the character interaction was well done, there still wasn't enough there to carry an entire episode.

Heather's ugly phase was understandable, given her age, and although the metaphor of the caterpillars and butterflies was nicely done, it seemed like too much time was spent on what felt like filler. It felt like the entire episode could have been cut to almost half and still had the same effect with the rest of the time being used for more interaction between the rest of the main cast.

What little screen time Michael and Theo do get, however, they put to good use. Attending meetings together, reading the paper, doing the crossword... It's even amusing to see that the more tabloid-esque paper that Michael reads is closer to the truth than what the informed Dr. Morris believes. It's nice to see that Theo isn't always right.

-- Linda M. Najera

Now and Again airs at 9pm EST, Fridays on CBS.

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