Spring TV Viewing Plan

I've got 5 episodes of Crusoe on my Tivo. I'm never going to watch them. They're being deleted.

I'm going to have to make some sacrifices this year. I think the remainder of the season of Heroes, The Office, and 30 Rock are going to be recorded and saved on the Tivo for watching during the summer. Sorry NBC. Ah, Scrubs is also going to be held until summer.

So that leaves me with the following schedule:

Monday
8:00PM: The Big Bang Theory, Gossip Girl
8:30PM: How I Met Your Mother

Wednesday
9:00PM: Lost

Thursday
8:00PM: Bones

Friday
8:ooPM: Sarah Connor Chronicles
9:00PM: Dollhouse
10:00PM: Battlestar Galactica

I know there are some midseason shows starting at various points over the next few months. Basically just Kings, Cupid and Castle as far as I can recall. Nothing other than Dollhouse looks absolutely unmissable for me right now so everything new is going to be evaluated on a case by case basis. And once BSG ends and Dollhouse gets canceled I may be able to rotate some of the other stuff back into the viewing schedule.

Wow, only 7 hours of TV a week and 3 of them on Fridays. I might actually get things done this year. Ah, who am I kidding? Of course I won't get anything done.

Long live the Cylon Nation!

4.12 "A Disquiet Follows My Soul"

I liked Chief in this episode. Probably more than I've liked him since season 2. The issue with the pronouns was fun. "Their technology...our technology is way ahead of ours...yours." Very Espenson-esque. His fight with Hot Dog and then his weird parenting "advice" was also entertaining.

I'm generally weirded out by the fact that Tigh and Six are acting all couple-y. Wasn't he only sleeping with her because he kept projecting that she was Ellen? Is he still doing that?

There wasn't enough Helo & Athena in this episode. And Starbuck is so sad.

I've fallen out of love with most of these people. I'm really just watching for an answer now.

Ode to Frogurt

5.01 & 5.02 "Because You Left" & "The Lie"

I was going to post thoughts on the premiere episodes of Lost but because I've been sick all weekend I've lost interest. So instead, a haiku in honor of Neil, the annoying red shirt who got a flaming arrow through the chest:

Oh red shirt Frogurt
I knew you as Aaron Burr
Peanut Butter guy

Body parts flying!

Day 3 9:00am-1:00pm

So the whole season was pretty fun, except for Disc 3 which was kind of boring.

I never was at all engaged by the President's whole story, and yet I was immensely satisfied with how it ended. I didn't see that (my satisfaction) coming. I certainly don't understand how or why his brother Wayne shows up in later seasons. I also didn't like having to watch Gina Torres play such a weak, needy woman. She's Zoe Washburne, gorramit.

I was really glad that Michelle was able to escape her captors, Jack style, all by herself. I was also really happy that she and Tony were back on good terms by the end. I was also pleased to see that Carlos Bernard is the only actor who actually constantly keeps his eyes on the fake road while fake driving on TV.

Chase getting his hand axed off was exciting and gross. I realize they always advertise seasons of 24 by referring to the fact that Jack Bauer has bad days, but honestly, Tony was shot in the neck, Michelle had to sit in fear that she was going to die of a horrible virus and then got kidnapped, Kim was taken captive and later had to shoot a guy, and Chase was tortured and then had his hand chopped off, plus half of the people related to the President died. Relative to just about everyone he knows, it seems like Jack had a pretty good day despite the whole heroin addiction thing.

So my watching of this was really just an attempt to satisfy my need to see more of Zachary Quinto, but, all in all, seeing him in this wasn't that exciting. I obviously just want him to be Sylar. Except I want him to be the Sylar I want, not the crappy Sylar on the show. But this did kind of make me want to watch more 24. Maybe I'll get around to some other days eventually.

Rock on Grover Cleveland!

I just watched the Presidential Inauguration. Except for the poem, which I thought was stupid (Go Yale!), it was all perfectly lovely. But I do have to nitpick just one thing. He said that 44 people have now held the office of President. Doesn't he mean 43? Although, I guess it probably would have been incomprehensibly annoying for him to have said 43, then have all the media running stories explaining to America why he said 43 if he's the 44th President. Stupid America.

Um, okay...

4.11 "Sometimes a Great Notion"

I think we're just deep into the territory where all judgment should be reserved until all of the answers have been revealed....maybe.

I did not like EJO in this episode. He was creeping me out. Tigh, however, was pretty awesome. It was clear within the first five minutes that Dee was going to die because she was just inexplicably around so much. The last time we cared so much about her random activities was when she started dating Lee.

I wanted more random shots following Starbuck around. I need more of her all the time. Why is she not the whole show? Anyway, if she's not a Cylon, then what's going on? I know that Tigh seems to think that Ellen is the fifth, but I'm still pretty sure it's the entire human race. Which is a pretty crappy "fifth person", but it seems to make the most sense, to me at least.

At this point I just hope the future episodes hold some more fighting and flying. And less sitar.

Dick Casablancas spinoff!

It's the Dick Casablancas series I've been dreaming of! Not really, but Ryan Hansen is in this new web series and he's playing a character nicknamed "The Douche", so effectively it's Dick Casablancas. Anyway, the club in the show looks just like The OC's The Bait Shop and the whole setup basically looks like the portions of The OC where bands played at The Bait Shop, which I always considered to be time wasters during the episodes (yes, Josh Schwartz, we know you have good taste in music but if I want to listen to Rooney, The Killers, or Deathcab I'd prefer to do it without them being interupted by Mischa Barton's mood swings every couple of minutes), so under normal circumstances I'm not sure I'd be so into the show. However, I am the person who watched every episode of Hidden Palms and enjoyed it. Plus, did I mention Dick Casablancas!

Bleeding from the nose is awesome!

Day 3 5:00am-9:00am

So, first of all from now on I'll have to remember in the future to not eat when watching things that have to do with viruses that manifest gory physical symptoms. That was kind of an unpleasant moment with peanut butter.

I have to ask, why do the main characters never wear any protective gear that would prevent them from being shot in the head?

In general this four hour chunk was awesome. I guess it's just because it's towards the end of the season so everything is happening more rapidly, but this was a very intense portion of show. It helps that there was nothing dealing with the President's wife or other squabbles with his brother or other people. It was all virus and terrorist stuff. And hilarious Chloe moments.

Also, brief glimpses of Daniel Dae Kim! And a major Adam situation in which somehow Zachary Quinto's eyes went entirely black! And Michelle lives (at least doesn't die from the virus)!

Twilight High School Musical

I love this and I wish it were an actual movie.

Can't wait for the DVD

I just watched the last episode of Pushing Daisies that aired before Christmas. Now I'm even more sad than I was before that it's been canceled. It was a really good one. And I love Olive. Anyway, according to various news sources, the last several episodes that were filmed before the show was canceled aren't going to air. This is disappointing. Hopefully, given that season 1 was released on DVD, season 2 will be released on DVD in the near future and will include the unaired episodes. I will, of course, have to Netflix it post haste and hope that Bryan Fuller managed to craft some sort of series finale type resolution into the last few episodes, because this last one to air was a cliffhangery sort.

This show was so ridiculously good. I'm incredibly frustrated that it was canceled. Argh.

Way more exciting than Disc 3

Day 3 1:00am-5:00am

Wow. This was a really intense disc. 

Even though the President story, with the ex wife and the Milligan guy and that guy's wife and Wayne, is all more interesting than the Anne story, I'm still not that interested in it. I just don't really care about the President's personal issues when there's a fun virus story going on with CTU. I do enjoy the fact that there are now scenes with Robin Wood and Zoe/Jasmine.

I liked all of the Nina Myers stuff, but I'm wondering if that would have meant more to me emotionally if I'd watched whatever season she was in before, when she killed Jack's wife. In general I was really amused by the fact that she seemed practically immortal, managing to sustain a number of really serious injuries and still functioning and killing people before being killed herself. I'm still kind of expecting her to show up again. That would be fun.

The virus in the hotel thing is really distressing. I'm upset that Gael is going to die and Michelle seems likely to die too. I really like Michelle. More than I like Tony. And I'm definitely more invested in their relationship than I am in any relationship in the President storyline or Kim and Chase. 

This disc started out pretty amusing by wrapping up the mystery of the baby Chloe was taking care of. The whole part where Chase was on the phone with Chloe asking how Kim reacted when she found out the baby was Chase's was all very high school drama-y and Chloe was hilarious in that bit. It does make me think though, for a group of people who appear to never ever leave work, they manage to have amazingly screwed up personal lives. 

Pointless post

Day 3 9:00pm-1:00am

Yeah, I don't have a tremendous amount to say about these episodes. I've watched them. I still like the show. I still have to resist the urge to fast forward through anything that involves the President. It's not that he's not great. I just don't see the point of that part of the story. Also, I'm weirded out by this whole "not Chloe's baby" situation. And I don't hate Kim quite as much as I used to because she's not around as often but when she is around she keeps doing annoying things like tattling on people unnecessarily. I wish she would get fired. And I think I liked things better when Michelle was in charge. Tony is very stressful.

That's all.

Steampunk Doctor

2008 Christmas Special "The Next Doctor"

Well, this was fun. I have to say, now that all of the ridiculous plots and excessive baggage of series 4 are out of the way, this show is back to its old lighthearted self and quite easily enjoyable. There wasn't even much of RTD's clunky, obvious, message-y writing. It was all good fun with just a tiny hint of misogyny.

And the best part was that it wasn't really a Cybermen story, even though the Cybermen were there. It was basically more of a crazy person (lady, why is it always a crazy lady?) story, so it didn't feel like a retread of all of the previous (and future) Cybermen stories. Of course, as usual, the Doctor just sent the CyberKing thing elsewhere instead of destroying it, guaranteeing that it'll eventually show up somewhere else for him to fight again. He really does that with everything, so the destruction of worlds and lives lost and time and effort expended whenever the things show up elsewhere and he has to fight them again are basically all his own fault. I'm sure the general idea that RTD is getting at is that even though the Doctor's compassion gets him into trouble, it's that compassion that motivates him to help people in the first place. But he never chooses to deal with the fact that if the Doctor wasn't always "helping" people to begin with, he also wouldn't be causing the problems that make people require his "help". (It's possible that Davros pointed that out in the last series finale, but I've blocked all of that out.)

I liked David Morrisey as the pseudo-Doctor. There was a point at the beginning where I wondered if we would find out that he was just a younger version of the William Hartnell Doctor and that whatever had happened had actually messed with 10's memory so he didn't remember himself. That maybe would have been a little too complex to deal with in 60 minutes. I was a little disappointed that Jackson Lake couldn't rescue his own son in the end. It would have been nicer for him to have been inspired enough by being the Doctor for a while to truly empower himself. Oh well. I also liked Rosita a lot more than I thought I would based on the description, even though there wasn't much to her. It was kind of fun that she was already in "seasoned companion" mode so nothing had to be explained, she was already self sufficient, and she could save the Doctors asses pretty easily when needed. For a while I was wondering if we were going to find out that she'd come from some other time, and by the end I was hoping she (and/or the balloon guy, Jed) would go with the Doctor when he left. Maybe that'll still happen if the next special picks up right where this one left off. 

Yep, still watching this show...

3.12 "Dual"

So obviously it was a long time before I got around to watching this one, but here we go.

Why was there a Sylar monologue?

Well, at least a few more people died in this episode. Meredith, Knox, Puppet Guy, new PTSD Marine Guy and possibly Sylar. I think that was all of them. Although I'm pretty much not convinced about Sylar. There's no way the show is going to get rid of Zachary Quinto until he's asking to leave. I was excited for a minute there that they had really killed Mohinder. Clearly that was too much to ask for. And even in death his ridiculous monologues probably would have lived on.

As for the plot of this episode, if I'd wanted to see Saw (or Saw II-V), I'd have watched it already. I didn't need the Heroes version of it. Plus, Sylar wasn't really very committed to the task. That's what happens when villains have agendas that they need to constantly monologue about. They get distracted and stabbed in the head before they can follow through with manipulating their hostages into killing each other. And speaking of manipulating, I'm glad that Angela finally admitted that that's just what she does. I wish someone else had been around to hear it. Like maybe Peter or Nathan so they would stop taking orders from her and grow their own brains. Doesn't look like that'll be happening anytime soon though. Of course, even if they had heard her they probably wouldn't have managed to remember for more than 10 minutes.

I'm not going to discuss the "saving Hiro" and "destroying the formula" plots that were going on at the same time. They were both just as dumb as Saw Heroes. Daphne moving so fast she travels back in time? Really show? One thing I will say about the whole episode: terrible dialogue all around. That's one thing I'm hoping will improve with Bryan Fuller around again. I mean some of the crap that Sylar and Claire had to say was so completly inane that I almost stopped watching. That does remind me that part where Angela says something about Sylar being a bratty child and Claire responds with "I'd like to give him a spanking"! What the hell? Are they stealing dialogue straight from the fanfiction these days? 

The episode had at least a couple of good moments. Try as I might to not enjoy it, I did think the scene where Daphne and Matt watched while Ando tried to time travel was pretty funny. I also tended to enjoy the hits and/or punches to faces. Peter punching Nathan: Good. Hiro punching Tracy: Good. Nathan hitting Knox in the face with a paperweight: Good. 

Um, I know there was something else I wanted to talk about in terms of this episode, but I really can't think of what it was anymore. I guess I shouldn't stress about making a blog post about this show perfect when the makers of the show aren't making that kind of effort for the show itself. 

Why do I feel like Robert Pattinson is the 11th Doctor?

So...new Doctor. He's a looker, that's for sure. The thing is, I'm worried they're going to get even deeper into the "sexual tension and genuine relationship possibilities with the companion issue" than they did with 10...and after the whole Rose situation, that's clearly not a good thing. Maybe it's time for more than one companion at a time. Then there could be sexual tension between the two of them, like Sarah Jane and Harry (but not like Rose and Mickey). 

Well, I'll try to enjoy the Tennant days that are left and worry about making a judgment about this new kid when he starts next year.