thoughts on TV and some other crap

I've had it with this yak carcass.

2011-09-25T23:25:00.002-04:00

Which is to say I'm done with this blog. Now I'm gonna go watch TV.

1) Take a shot whenever Cassie looks confused.

2011-09-19T11:14:00.007-04:00

Pilot review: The Secret Circle

I'm going to start by saying that I saw the second half of this pilot at Comic Con. At the time, I had very low expectations, and I still thought it was god awful. It actually turned out to be better when I watched the pilot from the beginning the other night, but it's still not good. It might make a good drinking game show.

What it has going for it:

It's on the CW. This show is the epitome of the CW wheelhouse. TWoP laid it out recently. It's teenagers who have supernatural powers and dead parents. So naturally it's compelling in the way all CW supernatural teen soaps are compelling. (As a devoted watcher of Supernatural, I probably shouldn't be so judgmental about this.)
It has the potential to become what I always wanted Vampire Diaries to be: The Covenant.
It comes on right after Vampire Diaries. It's going to have to work really hard to get cancelled this season.

And against it:

It's pretty awful in terms of writing and acting. There were actually some okay special effects, so it could have been worse.
Lack of a likable villain. There was one thing about Vampire Diaries that made me overlook the predictability of the show and tune in for episodes two through eight-ish: Damon. He's a great character to love to hate, and also just to love, as it goes with these bad boy vampire types. So far the closest this show has is Faye, and she is not going to cut it. Right now the only real villain is Diana's dad and nothing about him is lovable.
Natasha Henstridge's face. Seriously, I don't know what she did to it, but I didn't even recognize her. I think she od'd on Botox.

Crap. I can already tell I'm totally going to watch this show. I'm always disappointed that I didn't keep watching Vampire Diaries and I keep telling myself I'll catch up on that one.

This would play better on FX.

2011-09-19T10:49:00.003-04:00

Pilot review: Free Agents

Kathryn Hahn and Hank Azaria play co-workers, whose names I didn't catch, who are both too messed up for relationships, have fun banter with each other, and keep accidentally having sex. I thought it was funny. No one else seemed to.

What it has going for it:

Kathryn Hahn: I really liked her in Anchorman and really, really liked her in How Do You Know. She's even better in this. The bit where she's buying a frozen dinner and six bottles of wine and then freaks out at the grocery store guy is the best.
Banter: This show is full of banter. That pretty much seems to be the point of it. And Kathryn Hahn and Hank Azaria are good at it. I cracked up over the bit where they argue about whether or not Sarah Michelle Gellar was in the Scooby Doo sequel. She was. This is the kind of thing I enjoy.
John Enbom: One of the guys behind Veronica Mars and Party Down. So that explains the top notch banter. It also makes me hope this show could get better. Maybe they could steal Adam Scott from Parks & Recreation. And possibly Martin Starr from NTSF:SD:SUV. Really if the cast of Party Down could have just been the supporting cast for this show, it would be so much better.

And against it:

The supporting characters are absolute crap. The bitchy executive assistant is kind of funny for a moment, then just grating. Everyone else starts out terrible and only gets worse. And that includes Tony Head. It was pretty much intolerable whenever the main characters were in scenes with anyone but each other.
Both main characters are kind of pathetic to a ridiculous degree and I see that getting old really fast.

I wanted to say something about the vague Aaron Sorkin-ness of it all, what with the walking and fast talking, but that isn't really a good or bad thing. Just odd.

"We really, really need normal cheese."

2011-09-19T09:48:00.008-04:00

Pilot review: Up All Night

I found this show really funny and my house guest did not and I suspect that has to do with two things that make the show particularly appealing to me:

I'm pretty sure I'm one of few people in a demographic that would be interested in a show that features a baby this heavily (I feel like Raising Hope is a lot less baby centric).
There have been a lot of people on SNL over the years whose schtick I've eventually gotten sick of. Maya Rudolph was never one of them. I still think her crazy Oprah yelling is hilarious. And now I'm nostalgic for that middle school girl character who's in love with Justin Timberlake.

So with that said:

What it has going for it:

Christina Applegate and Will Arnett playing real people instead of whatever you call what they do in Anchorman and Arrested Development respectively. Over-the-top caricatures, I guess. It was pretty much the kiss of death for Running Wilde. Whatever it's called, they're not doing it, and it's great in this context.
Maya Rudolph: Like I said, I think she's hilarious. I may be the only one.
The tiny disasters: Them waiting on the pregnancy test; Chris trying to find the normal cheese in the grocery store; them trying to change the baby's diaper while hungover. These little bits were the best thing about the show.

And against it:

It's a show that prominently features a baby. I know Raising Hope is doing great, and the baby doesn't seem to hinder the show at all, but I just feel weird about this. Although now that I think about, I guess there are a couple other shows I don't watch, Modern Family and Parenthood, that feature babies and small children and seem to be going fine. But this is basically a show about raising a baby, and I'm not sure how long that can stay funny.
There are only three characters and the baby in this show. Which would be fine if there were a lot of supporting characters in the show for them to interact with, but there was basically just Ava's other assistant girl and a half second of Nick Cannon. It seems kind of sparse.

This is a show I may follow up post on if/when I'm able to get any feedback from my husband. I don't think he has the same fondness for babies or Maya Rudolph that I do, so I'll be interested to see if he finds it funny.

The Socialite & the Stripper

2011-09-14T11:55:00.005-04:00

Pilot review: Ringer

Sarah Michelle Gellar's return to TV. It's on the CW. She plays twins. It's a big, soapy, mystery-thriller thing. And it's actually pretty good.

What it has going for it:

SMG: Disregarding my Buffy fanatacism, she's a good actor. I'd kind of forgotten that. For the most part, the show hinges on her making the Bridget/Siobhan thing believable, and she does.
Twists: I'd read the premise of this show a while back. I knew she played twins. I knew Siobhan disappeared and Bridget pretended to be her. I even knew that it was likely that Siobhan wasn't dead. What I did not see coming was that Siobhan was counting on Bridget to impersonate her so she could have "herself" killed. That's some quality intrigue.
Ioan Gruffudd & Nestor Carbonell: Because this show was originally intended for CBS instead of the CW, the cast is majorly outclassing the network.
Bridget & Andrew: This is probably just me being sappy, but the idea that Bridget might bring love back to Andrew and Siobhan's loveless marriage was one of the most compelling parts of the show for me.

And against it:

It's on the CW. Although I thought that would hurt Nikita last year and I was completely wrong. Maybe this is just what people watching 90210 at 8pm want to be watching at 9pm.
Juliet: I'm not sure if the problem is the actress or just the way Andrew's daughter is written, but all the scenes this girl was in seemed to drag the show back down into true CW quality territory.
It wasn't the fastest paced show out there, and this was the pilot. It has the potential to get slower, and that'll pretty much mean boring.
On the other hand, it's pretty complex to start with and it has the potential to become so convoluted that it's impossible to follow.

Technical change important to no one but me.

2011-09-14T10:50:00.005-04:00

So I said I was going to do a scorecard, but I've been totally unable to come up with a good, general set of criteria on which to score shows without making the whole thing totally boring. I read through some of my posts from last year and actually liked the For It and Against It plan I had going back then, so I'm just going to do that again.

Breaking In was cancelled.

2011-09-07T12:15:00.005-04:00

(So I'm just going to cruise on by the fact that I haven't written a single post in 4 1/2 months. As usual, I'm taking the path of ignoring that stuff and moving on.)

Once again, I'm going to try the "watch every new show" thing this fall. It worked out pretty poorly last year, but I'm going to try it at least a few more times before I declare myself mentally unstable. This year's plan is to fill out a generic scorecard for each show instead of trying to write funny and/or meaningful stuff about each one. That took way too long, got in the way of me watching half the shows, and was rarely funny and/or meaningful.

Before that all starts next week, here are my carryover shows from last year that are relevant to this fall season:

How I Met Your Mother
Glee
Raising Hope
Nikita
Supernatural
The League
Bones

Wow. I really don't watch much anymore. Anyway, I'm behind on The Walking Dead and Community, but I'm going to try to catch up before the new seasons start this year. The Walking Dead is more likely to happen than Community as I'm only two episodes behind rather than 24. And as always, I also have a list of things I wish I was watching and may eventually go back to catch up on:

Fringe
The Vampire Diaries
Justified
Mad Men
Chuck
and pretty much everything on TNT, USA, and FX

One final note. This pretty much carries over from any previous year I've done this and should be obvious but: I won't be watching anything unscripted/reality-like. I think the only two new one's are The X Factor and H8R and I will be resolutely ignoring both of them in addition to the wide array of reality shows that will be returning.

Alrighty. I'll be back next week with a scorecard for Ringer.

So very.

2011-04-16T23:19:00.002-04:00

1.02 "'Tis Better to Have Loved and Flossed"

The second episode was funnier than the pilot. The addition of Alyssa Milano seems fun. She's basically Jordan to Cam's JD. So that should be amusing. Christian Slater seemed to go oddly blonde in this episode, but the lip reading thing that made everyone talk with their hands in front of their mouths was entertaining. Odette Annable is still pretty bland. The other two guys had their moments. There's still not enough Michael Rosenbaum. He seems much funnier than probably three of the five main characters, plus he's super attractive now that he has hair, so I'm really hoping he becomes more of a main character at some point.

I still don't think this show will last past this season, which will probably only be a total of eight episodes, but it entertained me well enough so I'll keep watching. Plus, I just can't resist a good Heathers reference.

I'm back to finish this thought days later...

2011-04-14T17:20:00.001-04:00

Leverage. It's called Leverage.

Pilot review: Breaking In

2011-04-07T16:53:00.004-04:00

Rating: Meh...

with potential. (Which I qualify by saying that it's really just because I like Bret Harrison. I mean really like. So much so that despite the fact that I haven't seen him on anything since I stopped watching Reaper 4 years ago, I knew his name without having to look him up on imdb. And this makes me wonder if what I should do in this situation, rather than watching any remaining episodes of this unquestionably-not-lasting-past-the-first-season show, is go back and watch the two seasons of Reaper. Because Bret Harrison. And Ray Wise. And it's about the devil's son which is so much more up my alley than this show about...whatever it's about. Stealing things. As a legitimate business. I'm pretty sure that's what it is. Basically it's that show on TNT with Timothy Hutton, the one with the former criminals who use their unique criminal talents to help people, but with Christian Slater. What the hell is that show called? I can name four of the five actors on it but can't think of the name. That's ridiculous. I refuse to imdb it. It'll come to me right before I fall asleep tonight.)

The Duncan M'nuts joke was funny. I think that about covers it.

It seems I should leave the snarking to someone who does their research.

2011-04-05T21:05:00.004-04:00

So a while back I posted about the Supernatural episode "The French Mistake". It appears that my exact words in that post were: "FOR GOD'S SAKE, LEAVE THE META TO BEN EDLUND!".

Weeeeellll...it turns out Ben Edlund actually wrote that episode. Umm, oops.

Apparently I actually should have been telling Ben Edlund to leave the meta to Julie Siege and Nancy Weiner. Except for the fact that Julie Siege is responsible for the presence of Paris Hilton on the show, soooo....yeah.

I guess what I really have to ask myself is "Is 'The French Mistake' so bad that it negates Ben Edlund's previous work on the show ?" Previous work being:

"Simon Said"
"Nightshifter"
"Hollywood Babylon"
"Bad Day at Black Rock"
"Malleus Maleficarum"
"Ghostfacers"
"Monster Movie"
"Wishful Thinking"
"On the Head of a Pin"
"The End"
"My Bloody Valentine"
"The Devil You Know"
"The Third Man"
"Clap Your Hands If You Believe..."

And now that I've listed them out, the answer is a resounding 'No'. At least a third of these probably rank in my top 20 episodes of the show, and one of them is very possibly on my list of top 20 episodes of TV ever. If I were taking a wild guess, I'd say it'd fall somewhere around #12. But I could be wrong.

Regardless, when I really think about it, Ben Edlund has a nut guard for life just for inventing Bad Horse.

Please pronounce it DIE-rections. Thanks.

2011-03-18T10:37:00.004-04:00

2.16 "Original Song"

Despite watching Glee since it's very first episode, I have never noticed anything unusual when anyone referred to the name of the glee club, New Directions (except for it just generally being a dumb name). But for whatever reason, in this week's episode when the announcer at regionals introduced the group I finally heard it in a new way and was astonished I'd never noticed it before:

Nude Erections.

And, of course, now that I've heard it I can't unhear it and will never be able to not think it. Thanks for that, show!

And on a note that I could make related with a crass segue if I were so inclined but I'm going to call unrelated because it's safer that way, is it just me or does Santana just get hotter and funnier every single episode? That "Trouty Mouth" performance was truly inspired.

2011-03-02T21:20:00.002-05:00

(This has to go titleless because it's been days and I just can't think of one.)

I saw Drive Angry this past weekend, and due to the prominent role of Bill Fitchner, it got me thinking about an old website I used to read. Fametracker was kind of a precursor (or maybe companion piece) to Television Without Pity, before it was discontinued in early 2007. It's most popular features seemed to be Hey, It's That Guy, which highlighted popular character actors whose names most people don't know (which is how I learned Bill Fitchner's name years ago), and 2 Stars 1 Slot, which compares stars that seem to fill the same pop culture niche.

As I was reading through a random selection of entries from these two features, I was wondering if the creators ever feel like revisiting any of them to comment on their original opinions or to make updates based on significant changes. For example, I'd say that Jane Lynch no longer qualifies as a Hey, It's That Guy. Really old entries for HITGs include Paul Giamatti and Philip Seymour Hoffman. There's a 2 Stars 1 Slot battle between Kirsten Dunst and Reese Witherspoon declaring Kirsten Dunst the winner. Clearly there's some room for revision here.

So there I was, like an hour ago, clicking around and I came across a particularly interesting entry that I'm pretty sure they'd love to go back and change if they could:

Leelee Sobieski vs. Natalie Portman: Battle of the Bankable Jailbait

For those who want the punchline without clicking on the link, here was their verdict:

Advantage: Leelee Sobieski.

Oops.

"The French Mistake" Mistake

2011-03-02T19:12:00.003-05:00

It seems that my lack of blogging this past year may be caused by the fact that I have less time to devote to TV watching and, as a result, limit my TV watching to shows that I actually think are "good" and satisfy my unique TV needs. If my blogging histories of Heroes and Lost should have taught me anything, it's that I use this blog as a place to snark and complain about the kind of crap a show is pulling. Maybe I should have spent the past 6 months watching The Cape.

But what I'm really getting at with this is "Thanks Supernatural, for giving me a reason to blog again!" And I'm feeling like it's a good time to return to the 5 things structure so I don't rant too much.

6.15 "The French Mistake"

There was a time last spring when I suggested that the show should leave the meta to Ben Edlund. After watching this episode I've amended that suggestion to "FOR GOD'S SAKE, LEAVE THE META TO BEN EDLUND!"
Other than them being stuck someplace they didn't want to be and Virgil the Powerless trying to kill them, this show didn't have much plot. It was basically filler with only two relevant pieces of information. Raphael is trying to kill pretty much everyone and Castiel now has an arsenal (which I assume will come in handy when they finally meet Mother). So with the exception of those two minutes, it was pretty boring. (It was also basically RPF, but I won't get into that.)
I guess, since Virgil followed them, this was supposed to be an actual alternate universe that they went to and not just an angel constructed world like Fake Future Detroit and everything Gabriel ever did. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
Also, because there was no magic in the alternate universe, wouldn't the wall in Sam's brain have ceased to exist? Or did it mean that the soul crushing hell coma affects of his memories didn't exist there either so he didn't need the brain wall?
Jared's house. The paintings of Jared and Genevieve, the painting of Jared as a cowboy, the picture of the alpaca on the mantel next to the Padalecki's wedding picture. That stuff was all pretty funny. Well done, set designers!

It appears as though I used to watch something called...TV?

2011-01-07T15:47:00.004-05:00

So it's been a while. And the mere thought of attempting to catch up is enough to make me quit this thing entirely. So I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to start fresh from here.

And I am going to make this fresh start by posting this trailer for the upcoming Supernatural: The Animation DVD, which will apparently only be released in Japan. It's kind of the most amazing thing ever.

Is the dude that looks like Lenin supposed to be their dad? Or Bobby? I can't really figure it out.

This one's a Cornballer.

2010-09-25T17:56:00.002-04:00

Pilot review: Running Wilde

So I could go through and point out all the ways that this sucks in comparison to Arrested Development, but that would be tiring, and has already been done elsewhere, so I will not do that. Instead I will just say that this needs to transform itself into another show very quickly, or be put out of it's misery. I won't be watching it again.

What this show has going for it:

Fa'ad: The crazy neighbor was amusing with his tiny little horse. Also, the rich moron thing plays much better as supporting character than it does as the main character.
The tiny horse jokes.

And against it:

All the other characters.
The writing.
Keri Russell: I really wanted her to be good at this, but she is just not funny. Or, I don't know, I guess she kind of is because she was good in Waitress, but she's not Mitch Hurwitz writing kind of funny. She's no Portia de Rossi.

Common elements:

Voice over narration by Puddle. Although after watching multiple episodes it appears that Hellcats and Nikita both just had voice over introductions at the beginning of their pilots but it's not a regular part of either show. So this is the first voice over narration of the season.
Oil tycoon in common with Lone Star.
And I guess single parent in common with Raising Hope.

I didn't catch this family's last name, but I'm going to assume it's Conner.

2010-09-25T16:49:00.004-04:00

Pilot review: Raising Hope

This was a good show. Not the funniest show I've ever seen, although it's certainly ridiculous and outside the realm of truly believable. But it was definitely enjoyable to watch and I get the feeling it's endearing enough that it'll make me cry at least once every few weeks. The characters are stupid and they do a bunch of stupid crap, but they care about each other and it makes them likable. I'm definitely watching next week.

What it's got going for it:

Martha Plimpton & Garret Dillahunt: They're really great as Jimmy's parents. They straddle the weird collection of lines this show is walking perfectly. They're weird, lazy, and not too bright, but they're also cute, caring, and amusingly self-deprecating. Them singing to the baby at the end had me close to tears.
Lucas Neff: This show does kind of depend on Jimmy being likable, and like the actors playing his parents, he manages that strange line between stupid and endearing quite well. It was the part where he was up all night trying to get the baby to fall asleep that I realized this was a show I wanted to keep watching.

And against it:

The current TV landscape?: This is maybe a show that should have been on cable. It's too unconventional for CBS, it's a little too depressing to fit in with either the NBC or ABC comedy line-ups, plus it's a different type of quirky than either of those networks. FOX is basically the right place for it, but they just don't have anything to pair it with. I'm not sure after Glee is the right audience, and it's paired with Running Wilde, which I have yet to review but have already watched so I know that it's terrible. This show would really fit best with something like The Simpsons or Family Guy, so I just don't know that floating pretty much by itself on a Tuesday night is get it an audience.

Common elements:

I was calling Marti from Hellcats and Carly Pope's character from Outlaw both something like "hip alternative girl" but I think they're both actually closer to the Manic Pixie Dream Girl model. So I feel like Sabrina fits into that category too. She reads David Sedaris, she draws funny faces on cantaloupe, she inexplicably likes Jimmy. MPDG.
Incompetent parents in common with Hellcats, Mike & Molly, and Lone Star.

Some day all TV will be made by Chuck Lorre.

2010-09-25T15:49:00.002-04:00

Pilot review: Mike & Molly

This is an old school multicam sitcom with a laugh track. Basically the kind of show that only exists on CBS these days. And that's exactly what it feels like. Like maybe it was made about 15 years too late. Lucky for it, it has a cherry time slot and the leads are charming and likable so the whole thing is actually surprisingly watchable.

What it has going for it:

Melissa McCarthy: My god I wish this woman had a better show than this. She is awesome. I loved her on Gilmore Girls and I loved her in her first scene on this show. She is way better than the material, she's really selling the character and not making her a cartoon, and she's one of the main reasons the show works.
Billy Gardell: He's the other reason the show works. I'm not going to say he's way above the material. I don't really know anything about him so I can't tell, but he definitely makes it likable. He's believable despite the sitcom-y-ness of it all, and his character is really charming.
The timeslot: It comes on between HIMYM and Two & a half Men. If The Big Bang Theory hadn't moved and it was between that and Two & a half Men, it'd practically guarantee this thing to run for a good five years. As it is, I definitely see a second season.

And against it:

The supporting cast: The sister and the partner are both ridiculous characters. They're both gratingly over-the-top and it detracts from Mike and Molly and McCarthy and Gardell's attempts to play them as real, genuine people. Swoosie Kurtz plays Molly's mom, and while she is generally quite awesome (I miss you, Pushing Daisies!), she's really hamming it up in this thing and I kind of wish she weren't.
It's a multicam sitcom with a laugh track: With the rise of stuff like Modern Family and 30 Rock I think the old school sitcom, unless it is absolutely stellar (Big Bang Theory, pun intended), is on it's way out. There's a reason this is the only one that was made this year.

Common elements:

Cops. This isn't even a cop show and still there are cops in it.
It has a flaky, unhelpful mother in common with Hellcats.
Takes place in Chicago, which is not New York or LA.

Vampire vs. Vampire

2010-09-25T14:12:00.003-04:00

Pilot review: Hawaii Five-0

After some discussion with my parents, it seems that this show was not as enjoyable as I had originally believed. I suspect part of this may be due to the fact that I was familiar with (and fond of) all of the actors in this show, whereas they were only familiar with Scott Caan. Also, according to my mother, the whole human trafficking of Asian people is pretty played out in the cop procedural circuit. As I only watch one standard procedural (which has never dealt with human trafficking) I was unaware of this so the plot didn't seem as stale and obvious to me as it did to them. So I liked this show but, as usual, my opinion is just my opinion.

What it has going for it:

Scott Caan: He seems to be universally likable. In this show, he's no different.
The special permission from the governor to do whatever the hell they want: Basically there are no warrants, there is no red tape, there is no legal procedure whatsoever. They show up, they shoot people, they catch bad guys. That's all. It's like a show from a simpler time. A time before people wanted a touch of reality in their TV shows. Perhaps the 1970s.
Vamp vs. Vamp: This really only applies to this episode unless someone like Stephen Moyer or Robert Pattinson guest stars as a bad guy later in the season, but it was fun to see Alex O'Loughlin and James Marsters beating the crap out of each other. Too bad it was in broad daylight and there were no fangs involved.

And against it:

Alex O'Loughlin, Daniel Dae Kim, and Grace Park have all previously been supported by the charismatic performances of others (well, O'Loughlin wasn't really, which probably explains why his shows haven't lasted long). Each of them is a tiny bit bland on their own. The show is really going to have to strike the right balance to make them engaging as a team. Scott Caan can't do it all by himself.
Hawaii wasn't really a character: Unless the show integrates a little more of the uniqueness of Oahu, then it'll be just like every other cop show on TV, just with more palm trees.

Common elements:

I'm going to call it the second cop show after Chase.
There's a dead father as a motivating force in common with Outlaw.
And I guess vengeance as a motivating factor as in Nikita.

I'll watch one more time to see if I still like it, but I don't really need a cop show in my life, so it may not be permanent.

If ever I'm bored at 10pm on a Monday.

2010-09-21T20:07:00.002-04:00

Pilot review: Chase

This is about a female U.S. Marshall with a shitty childhood. She and her team of a white guy, stereotypical Latino guy, black girl, and preppy Latino new guy, operate out of Houston and hunt bad guys around Texas. It was the kind of background entertaining where you can kind of walk in and out of the room without pausing the show and not be concerned that you've missed anything.

What it has going for it:

Jerry Bruckheimer: I'm pretty sure his name attached to something draws an audience of CSI fans.
Timeslot: It comes on after The Event. It'll be able to limp along for at least a season if that manages to give it a fair lead in.
Action-y and easy to watch.

Against it:

It's your run of the mill, dime a dozen, procedural.
The lead, Kelli Giddish, is a little one note. I would say maybe she's trying too hard to get the accent, but she's from Georgia so that's not it.

Common elements:

I think I'm going to have to call Female Lead a common element, since this is the third of seven.
Black SUVs also seem to be a thing, but maybe they're a thing every year.
Set in Texas in common with Lone Star.

2010-09-21T18:57:00.002-04:00

Well crap.

Harvey Dent has nothing on Bob Allen.

2010-09-21T17:03:00.003-04:00

Pilot review: Lone Star

Bob Allen lives in a mansion in Houston with his wife Cat. Cat's father gives him a job in his giant family run oil company. Bob has a girlfriend in Midland. Bob and his father are con men. Bob is in love with his wife and his girlfriend, feels bad about being a con man, and wants to go straight and live a normal life. And then, for some reason, Bob decides to marry his girlfriend. Also, this show has a very enjoyable indie rock soundtrack.

What it has going for it:

James Wolk: Seriously, this guy is the next big thing. I heard someone compare him to George Clooney, but I think he's just as endearingly charming and a better actor on top of that. I'm not sure I've ever been so in love with a person after a matter of seconds. If this show works, he is the reason. He is amazing.
The wives: Cat (Adrianne Palicki) and Lindsay (Eloise Mumford) are both cute and really likable. I guess that's the idea. We won't believe he loves both his wives unless both of them are lovable. They definitely help make you believe that he's sick with the idea of letting either one of them down.
Cat's brothers: Their names are Trammell and Drew. Trammell is the mean one, Drew is the dumb one. I'm assuming they'll cause various types of trouble for Bob.
Texas: It could just be my nostalgia talking, but I thought the Texas backdrop was fun. And it actually films in Texas (Houston & Dallas), so it's not like they're just filming in LA and calling it Texas. It really feels like Texas.
Music: I loved the soundtrack. The first song was Snow Patrol's "Open Your Eyes". Other songs seem to be from a band called Mumford & Sons. Anyway, I really enjoyed the music. I'd want the soundtrack from this show.
Uncle Roy: Many mentions were made about Clint Thatcher's dead brother Roy. It really sounds like Clint killed him. I'm curious to hear that story.

And against it:

Sustainability: Considering some of his cons are already starting to fall apart in the first episode, it's hard to imagine that he can keep these cons going indefinitely without things starting to feel unbelievable.
It's a soap?: I'm not sure how well a non-doctor, non-lawyer, non-cop drama is going to manage. The only thing similar that I can think of right now is Parenthood and it struggled through last year. This might struggle too.
Stress: I mentioned this about Terriers too. I have a hard time dealing with a lot of stress and angst in shows. I stress out for the characters and it just wears me out. So I'm not sure how long I'll be able to deal with the fear that the people Bob loves will find him out.

Common elements:

Dirtbag parent in common with Hellcats, maybe?
Fake identities in common with Nikita, I guess.

Lost > The Event > FlashForward

2010-09-21T13:31:00.003-04:00

Pilot review: The Event

I did not expect to like this show at all. It seemed a lot like FlashForward which I didn't enjoy. It's being toted as the new "Lost meets 24", both of which managed to be pretty annoying a lot of the time. And it's been advertised like crazy so I was already sick of hearing about it. I was basically prepared to hate it. So it was surprising when I didn't hate it as much as I'd expected. I'm not sure how long I'll stick with it, but I'll probably watch again next week.

What's interesting to me:

Sean and Mike: Sean (Jason Ritter) came off a little twitchy and weird, but I did like the idea of him and his girlfriend's dad, Mike (Scott Patterson), possibly working together to find out what's going on. This relationship was barely evident in the pilot so I'm basically just interested in where I think it's going, but the possibility of it is keeping me interested.
Where did the plane go?: I'm guessing the plane disappearing was "The Event", and while I'm not super intrigued by whatever is behind the plane disappearing, I am curious about where the plane went. This is probably a question that'll be answered next week, though, so my interest might wane significantly after that.

What's not:

Everything else. Apparently vague intrigue doesn't do it for me. I didn't care about that prison or what was going on there. I didn't care about Sophie. I didn't care about the President caring about the prison. I didn't care about the conspiracy to keep the thing the viewer doesn't know about a secret.
Lost at least gave the characters enough downtime to have some fun, get to know each other, establish love triangles, play golf, etc., so that some of the characters actually became likable and the entire watchability of the show didn't hinge on "What's going on?". I'm not sure this show has set up a situation that will allow for that.

Unimportant lingering questions:

How did Sean get the gun on that plane?
How is the President the President if he's Cuban?
How can I learn to drive like Simon?

Common elements:

People in unmarked cars watching other people. Until this show I hadn't realized that I've seen that in Nikita, Terriers, Outlaw, and this. So that's a thing.
It has both covert operations of unknown origins and an engagement gone wrong in common with Nikita.
Latino in government in common with Outlaw.

The Good Wife 2.0

2010-09-20T12:26:00.003-04:00

Pilot review: Outlaw

This is a show about a notoriously conservative Supreme Court Justice, Cyrus Garza, who decides to resign and become an extremely liberal pro bono lawyer. So pretty much completely ludicrous. However, it stars Jimmy Smits so it's basically candy for all the old people mourning the loss of regular Law & Order. He also has a team of two lawyers that were his aides at the Supreme Court, a public defender, and a "hip outsider girl" P.I. The public defender is also super-ACLU-ish, one of the aides is openly in love with Garza, and the P.I. and the other aide have a "banter" that consists of her saying things that would only be considered scandalous by the aforementioned Law & Order fans and him being completely aghast at her brazenness. Also, some unidentified people seem to be keeping tabs of Garza. And Melora Hardin (Jan!) shows up inexplicably for about a second.

This is a procedural and one that's not particularly interesting to me as it is excessively lawyer-y, so I won't be watching it again. But in terms of how it might fair for the network...well, I really have very few thoughts.

What it has going for it:

Jimmy Smits: Like I said, bait for old people.
Carly Pope and Jesse Bradford: They're the P.I. and the aide, respectively, with the banter I mentioned before. I felt like it got old practically before it started, but also seems like the kind of thing that'll be appealing to the L&O folks.
RZA!: Okay, so he was only in the first episode and his presence might not really be appealing to the target audience, but I was amused.

And against it:

The title is way more exciting than the show.
It's basically The Good Wife. Public figure. Scandal. Lawyering.
The courtroom stuff was pretty boring, not to mention preachy, and I can see where it would get monotonous quickly.

Possible common elements:

It has that "hip", snarky, outsider girl thing in common with Hellcats.
And shady people spying on the main character like in Nikita.
Older guy with a gambling problem, or who sleeps around, or maybe just middle aged bachelor might come up again this season.
He has a fancy Philadelphia brownstone, but unlike characters in other shows so far, it seems like he could reasonably afford his.

I think that's kind of it.

The "la femme" is silent.

2010-09-16T23:41:00.006-04:00

Pilot review: Nikita

Remember Dollhouse and the remake of Bionic Woman? Not really? I don't blame you (Sorry Joss, I love you, but it wasn't your best work). Both of them were shows about hot women who kicked ass but were being controlled by shady pseudo-government organizations. Seems pretty cool right? The problem was, in both cases, neither show could quite figure out what it wanted to be. Both had issues where the showrunners and the networks couldn't agree on how things should go, so both shows kind of flailed wildly between a variety of extremes. Sometimes they were funny, sometimes gritty, sometimes one-shot stories, sometimes serials, sometimes depressing, sometimes uplifting, and sometimes downright misogynistic. Neither of them ever managed to strike quite the right balance to be a satisfying, entertaining show.

I hope all of the people involved in both of those shows are slapping their foreheads right about now. Nikita is what they wanted to be. This show managed to be fun, exciting, dark, depressing, adventurous, intriguing, sexy, and a bit sassy all in one episode. And it all worked. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like this show is WAY too good for The CW. Hopefully it's clear that I love this show so far and I plan to continue watching.

What it has going for it:

Maggie Q: The show basically lives or dies based on her ability to carry it, and she does carry it. I'm amazed this woman wasn't already a star in the US and I'm not at all surprised she's a star in Asia. At first I was worried she was going to come off a little cold, but she played the little bits of humor and the bits of romance just as well as she did the calculating, vengeful bits. Basically I think I'm in love.
Shane West: Admittedly I wasn't expecting much from him. I didn't watch him during his ER days, so I really only knew him from A Walk to Remember, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (LXG), and apparently an episode of Buffy in which he was upstaged by Wentworth Miller. So not particularly strong recommendations. (Ironically, he was in LXG with Peta Wilson, who played a previous incarnation of Nikita.) Anyway, he's believable as a shady government spy type dude and he's believable as a possible turncoat. He's doing better than I expected.
The spy thing: Spy shows are fun. This one seems to be doing a good job of it. Nikita is believable as a spy and her entrance and exit from the big party in D.C. were great.
The story: Nikita's story is pretty straight forward. She's out for revenge and some semblance of justice. The bigger story is dealing with the organization and it's ambiguous place within the US government. So it's complicated enough to not be one note and repetitive, and simple enough to not be bogged down by it's own complexity.

And against it:

The CW: That's about it. It'll get the short end of the stick in terms of casting and budget. Plus, I'm not sure if this is the kind of stuff that the standard CW crowd is looking for. It seems a little too grown up for the kids watching Vampire Diaries. But who knows. I'm terrible at judging what'll be popular and what won't.
Birkhoff: This is just a nitpicky thing on my part. He's the token tech guy and I didn't really like him. He's kind of a dick. And really, no tech guy will ever be as good as Topher.

As far as common elements go it had a little voiceover narration at the beginning, but I couldn't tell if that was going to be a regular thing or if it was just a quick way to get the audience up to speed on a complicated backstory. Other than that I didn't really see much in this that I'd seen in Hellcats or Terriers. Well, maybe it has the 'loft apartment way beyond the realistic budget of the main character' in common with Hellcats. But I think that's about it. Although I guess it'll at least have the spy element in common with Undercovers once that starts.

One final thing I have to mention is that I spent the whole episode trying to remember where I'd seen Alex (Lyndsy Fonseca). Finally I had to look it up and she's the daughter on HIMYM!

Why are there no YouTube clips of Rene yelling about the doilies?

2010-09-10T13:34:00.005-04:00

Pilot review: Terriers

So first of all, I have no idea why this show is called Terriers. It's about a former alcoholic former cop named Hank and some dipshit named Britt that he's friend's with and they're maybe unlicensed P.I.s. Or something. It wasn't super clear but I'm just grateful there was no voice over narration laying it out for me. Anyway, Hank has an ex wife he's still in love with, Britt has a girlfriend who wants to have a baby, and they just made themselves enemies of some powerful real estate mogul guy in their little California seaside town. And that's the set up for the season.

What it has going for it:

Donal Logue. I've always really liked him. This is no exception. I used to think of him as a comedic actor, but it turns out he's just a damned good actor. He had me on the verge of tears with just a look. Plus he's playing a good guy that you want to root for.
Michael Raymond-Jones. He's Rene! Unfortunately he doesn't have the crazy Cajun accent in this show. He is, however, very likable. And he and Donal Logue are fun together.

What it has going against it:

It's very serious. Hank and Britt make little cracks and snarky comments every once in a while, but basically it's a drama. Their lives kind of suck. I stress out for them. It's tiring for me.
The story arc. I guess this thing with Lindus, the real estate guy, is going to go on for a while. It's unclear if he's really a bad guy, it's unclear what shady thing he's trying to hide, and I kind of just don't really care about the situation.
It's a crime show. The husband and I just started watching Burn Notice and are enjoying it. We kind of forgot about Justified but we may get back to it. I still watch Bones. Basically, if I want to watch people solve crimes, I have other places I'd rather go. Honestly, I'd probably rather go back and watch the first two seasons of Veronica Mars before any of these options. So this isn't anything new and exciting.

The "this season on" thing looked like the whole Lindus thing was going to be turned on it's head a bit and Hank was going to get caught up in a tangled web of whatever's going on. So it could be interesting in the future. The problem, for me at least, is that what it really has going for it is the characters and while they're good, I didn't love them enough that I'm desperate to keep watching them. I'm pretty sure that's my final verdict on this one.

As far as common elements go, this is an FX show so it doesn't follow quite the same rules as a big 5 network show. There was no voice over narration, no one was riding a bike, there were no au courant pop songs. Maybe the dog is a thing. Maybe a lot of shows this year will have dogs...or ex wives. Mention the shitty real estate market? Who knows.

Oh it's already been broughten!

2010-09-10T10:20:00.006-04:00

Pilot review: Hellcats

I'm going to be honest, I expected this to be the first in a long line of shows that I wouldn't watch past the pilot. I didn't expect to hate it so much as to be bored and uninterested. Based on the TWoP review, I also expected the main character to be downright intolerable due to appallingly bad acting. But the thing is, I liked this. It was fun to watch, I want to see the next episode, and Aly Michalka isn't good but she isn't really any worse than Eliza Dushku (and she's definitely not the charisma sucking black hole that is Nina Dobrev). So here's a quick breakdown.

What it has going for it:

Cheerleading. It's generally fun to watch and I like that they're portraying these cheerleaders as actual athletes. And unlike wafer-thin Kirsten Dunst or Dianna Agron (sorry Dianna, I love you, but you're a twig), these girls actually look like they've got the bodies for it.
Ashley Tisdale. 1) She looks great as a brunette. 2) She's way cuter than I ever gave her credit for on HSM (probably because she was overshadowed by Vanessa Hudgens' button-nosed adorableness). 3) And her character, Savannah, is just incredibly likable.
Lewis. He's a hot guy who stands around shirtless. Honestly, I've said this before but I don't understand why the CW won't apply their male shirtlessness quotient to all their shows.

What i has going against it:

Marti. It's not just that Aly Michalka is bad. It's also that she's written so annoyingly. I hate the TV version of an outsider. Of course she has a guitar. And what's with the knit finger glove things? It's like she's living in a totally different climate than the rest of the show. And that hip hop dancing stuff she does is what she's learned in the townie clubs? Does she live on the set of Step Up?
Dan. Marti's townie guy friend: 1) looks more like a Malibu Ken than a blue collar Memphis kid, 2) is bland and that 80s camcorder he's hauling around doesn't help, and 3) will inevitably be the angst keeping Marti and Lewis apart.
The adults. Apparently Marti's mom is so incompetent she can't even function as a human being without her daughter's help. I am really not looking forward to the angst that's obviously going to result from the cheerleading coach/football coach/Robin Wood (or Wayne Palmer, if you'd prefer) love triangle being set up. And why is Aaron Douglas even in this show?

So those are my thoughts. Since this is the first show of the year, I don't have a good sense of what the common elements might be, but I'll note a few things that seem noteworthy:

voice over narration (seriously, again?)
Memphis (or possibly just quirky, previously underrepresented city)
main character who rides a bike (I just feel like this might be a thing)
"1901" by Phoenix
"Hey Soul Sister" by Train (or maybe it should just be a ukulele song category)

Okay, I've said a surprising amount about this little CW number and all without mentioning Bring It On, so I'm going to finish this up by saying that it's definitely no Bring It On, but it's still fun so I might watch next week.

So it's been a while...

2010-09-09T12:48:00.002-04:00

I guess I kind of unintentionally took the summer off. But the Fall TV season is starting up again, basically as of last night, and I am determined to watch and comment on every pilot this year, so I am back with a vengeance! (And I can tell that that enthusiasm is probably only going to last me through about tomorrow.)

Anyway, because I have a few things to say and no good way to tie them all together in this post, here's a list:

I still need to write about last year's Supernatural season finale and the past season of Doctor Who. I plan to get those done before Monday.
EW's Fall TV Preview issue comes out tomorrow. I doubt it has anything to tell me that I don't already know, but it's my tradition so I'll be buying it anyway.
The only returning shows that I'm caught up on are: Bones, Glee, HIMYM, Supernatural and Venture Bros. (I realize Bones and HIMYM have sucked for a while but I don't care.)
I'm probably not going back to catch up on anything I quit last year, except maybe Vampire Diaries. And maybe I'll pick 30 Rock back up without going back to catch up.
I'm going to try to keep a tally of all the common elements in this year's pilots because it was fun last time I did it.

Um, that's all. I should be back soon with reviews of Hellcats and Terriers. (And this makes me desperately wish that instead of either of these shows there were a show called Hellcats and Terriers, because that sounds amazing.)

DVRing is the first sign of addiction.

2010-06-17T00:36:00.003-04:00

I've developed an irrational love for the Comedy Central show tosh.0. It's basically like The Soup except making fun of web videos instead of crappy TV and the host is some kind of deranged bastard child of Joel McHale and Dane Cook. I can see where this would generally raise two questions:

1. Why would anyone watch a show about things on the internet? I don't really have an answer to that one, but it comes on after South Park so I saw it the first time and now I'm hooked and unable to be pulled away by things like logic.

2. Doesn't adding an abomination like Dane Cook to anything automatically make it intolerably bad? One would think so, but while I hate Dane Cook, I find this other dude's spastic yelling so amusing that I'm actually considering going to see his stand up.

I love that I never bothered to watch the premieres of summer shows that I was interested in (Colin Hanks and Bradley Whitford's mustache in The Good Guys!) or keep up with shows I love (Justified!) and yet this I make the effort to DVR. Is this the first sign of the loss of touch with reality that comes with crippling old age? Or just another sign of my rapidly deteriorating good taste?

So apparently Lost ended.

2010-06-10T21:36:00.002-04:00

I never posted about "What They Died For", but I didn't really care about that episode much beyond Zoe getting killed, so I'm just going to blow right past that.

6.17 & 6.18 "The End"

So the whole process of me watching this was amusing to me. First of all, I watched it two and a half weeks after it aired. I also watched the first 53 minutes only to have it stop with everyone running around in the rain and falling a lot. Turns out I'd only downloaded the first half. So after the first hour I took a break to read the internet for a bit while I downloaded the second half. Then I watched the second half. And I did it all on the 10" screen of my netbook. For some reason this just doesn't seem like the way one of the most anticipated series finale's of the past decade is meant to be watched. Whatever. I have three things to say about it.

1. I still think the life giving light water, or whatever it is, that was introduced three episodes ago is bullshit. Didn't Jacob's mom imply that it was the source of all life or humanity or something? So the source of all whatever is a rock with carvings in it plugging a hole in the ground? And if the rock is removed things become lava/earthquake-y and the island sinks? But it doesn't really affect the life of anyone not on the island? And someone just has to plug it back in for things to go back to normal? Basically I just wish things had been less specific. Because when it got down to it, the myth wasn't what was important about the episode. The important part was all those alternaverse people remembering each other and being all happy and whatnot. So I guess the glowy life water was a good enough reason for them to all stumble around on the island and hug.

2. I did not expect to cry. For one thing I don't cry much during genre shows. I'm not sure why. And for another thing, I don't care about this show all that much anymore so I wasn't sure it would get to me. And it really, really didn't. And then Vincent ran out of the jungle and laid down next to Jack while he died. Dogs never fail to make me cry. So that was my two minutes of sobbing for the finale of Lost. (The first time the show has made me cry since Boone died.)

3. Where the fuck was Walt?

Oh snap, he destroyed the blanket and the loom!

2010-05-19T16:02:00.003-04:00

I posted about last week's episode without bothering to read over the notes I took while watching it. I just went back to reread them now before deleting the file and I found them kind of hilarious. Way more amusing than my actual post about the episode. So here they are:

Is this Allison Janney? That's kind of weird.
Why can they both suddenly speak English?
Ha. Jacob and Not Jacob!
Who didn't see that murder coming?
That lady's children really look nothing like her.
Does NotJacob seriously not have a name?
Is NotJacob related to Zac Efron? He sure looks like him.
Is there any possible way that this is what the creators originally intended when this show started?
What the hell is this golden cave thing? It looks like crap.
I'm not really understanding what's going on here. This still isn't any kind of explanation for what the island is, how this lady knows so much, why the island can move. Really it's not explaining anything. And the fact that it's Allison Janney is still really offputting to me.
Also, what is this shows obsession with fake hair? Why must everyone have weird, kind of gross, fake hair?
So a dead lady telling all of this stuff to her kid essentially created evil?
Also, I'm very confused about the idea that things and people and whatnot existed before Jacob and NotJacob did.
Or maybe NotJacob's really not evil. And Jacob's just been misinformed all along. Interesting.
Lucifer and War, together again!
Was Jacob just born naive and NotJacob born smart and cynical?
Really, she's been on this island for more than 30 years and hasn't found a better way to spin yarn than rubbing it against her leg?
What time period is this supposed to be?
I don't even understand the point of any of this stuff.
Also, it's really weird to me that NotJacob was just born with this sense of compulsive wanderlust and it wasn't really caused by anything.
By the way, any "ancient structure" sets on this show always look like styrofoam crap. They really shouldn't even try.
Okay, this light bullshit is bizarre. And I kind of think it's way more specific mythology than this show needs.
Is this lady a witch or something? How does she do these things?
Um. I don't even know what to do with this anymore.
Oh snap, he destroyed the blanket and the loom!
Who didn't also see that murder company? These are really obviously projected murders happening here.
Wow, Jacob really has a hair trigger temper.
Sweet, he's going to throw NotJacob in the light water and it's totally going to turn him into the smoke monster.
Okay. So as far as I can tell, both Jacob and NotJacob are extremely fucked up individuals, neither of which should really be allowed to mess with people the way they do. Hopefully this show will end with both of them dying.

We can dance if we want to...

2010-05-18T23:57:00.004-04:00

I'm seriously never going to get that song out of my head.

1.19 "Dream On"

Contrary to what I was expecting, in tonight's episode of Glee, which was directed by Joss Whedon and guest starred NPH, sweet, innocent, adorable, red head Emma Pillsbury, was not unexpectedly, brutally killed. Go figure.

Also, I watched both last night's HIMYM and tonight's Glee tonight, which means I got to hear NPH refer to both porn and angry sex twice in the span of an hour and a half. Sweet.

Greatest thing about this episode: Artie's Safety Dance!

Worst thing: Brittany had no lines! (Close second was the over abundance of Will and his earnest heart-to-heart crap.)

Jacob vs. NotJacob

2010-05-18T23:34:00.002-04:00

6.15 "Across the Sea"

So, first of all show, way to add midichlorians. Really, show? Eleventh hour glow-y life force inside the island? Really?

And second, I really like NotJacob. The thing I enjoyed about this episode is that we got to see that Jacob and NotJacob weren't always as certain about things as they are now. And, from what I made of the episode, neither of them is really good or bad. It wasn't hard to see the "Man of Science, Man of Faith" theme with these two. Just because Jacob is the man of faith, it doesn't necessarily make him "Good", because he was just as susceptible to anger and vengeance as anyone else. NotJacob wasn't bad, he was just born with serious wanderlust (of which I am possibly overly sympathetic). And considering it's been however many hundreds of years now that he's been wanting to leave the island and Jacob seems to have found a way to come and go as he pleases, I can understand where he'd be kind of pissed and Jacob would be the focus of his anger.

Initially I was pretty annoyed with this episode because it felt like the writers had put together a myth story for the sole purpose of answering some of the lingering random questions. Like they thought to themselves "How can we explain the skeletons in the cave, the black and white rocks, the well with the wheel, and Smokey all in one story?" and then they wrote this. I might still feel that way. And I maintain that there is no possible way that this story is what JJ Abrams and The Darlton have known to be true since they first started writing the show.

Despite all that, and after a week of ruminating, I've realized that I basically enjoyed this episode. It's fun myth. It's not so serious that it's intolerable. With the exception of the glowing life force crap, it also stayed pretty vague, which is good. The best way to make the show terrible and piss off everyone would have been to start laying out extensive mythology in incredible detail. Instead they just gave us a glimpse of a story and so little context that we're able to understand it just about as well as we can understand anything going on on the show. Overall I was satisfied.

I hope Dean's good at chess.

2010-05-13T11:21:00.003-04:00

5.21 "Two Minutes to Midnight"

Yes, show! This! Exactly this! Be this, all the time, from now on! This is one of those cases where I really need the 5 things to limit my crazy gleeful ravings.

1. Dean's phone call from Cas. I think Castiel using a cell phone is probably one of the greatest regular occurrences of this season. I'm pretty sure every one of his conversations is hilarious. This one was no exception. It's the suddenly hanging up when Dean doesn't know if the conversation is finished that really makes it.

2. Crowley: a) I finally figured out that he's a Good Omens reference. Yay! b) I have determined that there is nothing in existence that isn't made better by the presence of Mark Sheppard. c) "You two are lucky you have your looks." He's the best at bringing the unspoken truthiness.

3. Pestilence: I'm disappointed that we didn't get more of him. I would have been perfectly happy to watch him be the big bad of the season. The eerie calm punctuated by bouts of crazy shouting was weirdly enjoyable. The exotic illnesses were also pleasing. Always love it when people get mystical syphilis. Also, the plan to spread Croatoan using the Swine flu vaccine was a good one. I'm really hoping there was more than one distribution warehouse and the virus gets out despite the guys' effort. Gotta love a villain with a big master plan.

4. Death: Way to direct your Emmy submission episode, Phil Sgriccia! It may not have been the most original thing ever, but that Death introduction was kind of stirringly beautiful. The car. The song. The cane. The slow-mo death of the Blackberry douchebag. Awesome. And then Death gave Dean pizza, said he'd reap God one day, called Lucifer an annoying brat, and made Dean swear to let his brother die. Death kicks so much ass. And Dean lied to him! Good plan, Dean.

(4.1 Given all the Neil Gaiman love from this show lately, I'd almost expected Death to be a goth chick.)

5. Bobby can walk again! Bobby is definitely about to die. But tell me show, who will be grizzled and call the boys idjits next year?

So in terms of the list of important stuff, and whatnot:
- Adam is Michael's new vessel, so they're both still in
- The boys now have Pestilence and Death's rings, with instructions
- I'm not ruling Croatoan out just yet
- Castiel may be human now, but I'll leave him on the Angel list until I'm certain

Brontësaurus!

2010-05-12T16:16:00.001-04:00

This is so amazing I might die:

And yet Kate lives.

2010-05-11T20:05:00.006-04:00

I'm finally caught up again, just barely in time for the next episode. I already posted about "Happily Ever After". That was pleasing, then the show kind of went back to its normal, totally confusing, ways. At least a lot of people died. That's exciting.

6.12 "Everybody Loves Hugo" ...except Ilana because she exploded quite hilariously. Did Arzt explode in a Hurley episode too? Does Hurley have some kind of psychic power over the hundred and fifty year old dynamite?

6.13 "The Last Recruit" I don't understand why this is the name of the episode. I haven't been this confused by an episode title from this show since "The Little Prince". Seriously, who are they talking about? Also, no one died in this episode, which was weirdly disappointing. I wish someone had killed Zoe.

6.14 "The Candidate" Really show? Sun and Jin? You couldn't let them go back to their daughter and be happy? I think I would have preferred any other character to die. In fact I would have been fine with every single character except them dying. Which reminds me...you shoot Kate and she's still fine? Really show? (Also, I found it amusing that Lapidus died and no one else seemed to notice or care.)

Interdimensional Lovesick Blues

2010-05-06T16:53:00.004-04:00

6.11 "Happily Ever After"

Yeah, so I'm finally catching back up again and wanted to comment even though this episode is now many weeks old.

Charlie, Desmond, and Faraday all in one episode! Yay! This is begging for a spinoff. Not quite as much as Sawyer and Miles as cops, but close. Three drastically different men thrown together by fate must work together to find love through inter-dimensional travel. How could that not be a hit?

Other than that, this idea that some people can see between the Island-verse and the alterna-verse and that Daniel seems to have figured out that who they are isn't who they're supposed to be makes me hopeful that this show won't do the Sliding Doors ending after all. What I couldn't figure out was why Desmond didn't try to contact Charlie and tell him about Daniel. They could have had a little meeting to moon over their alterna-verse girlfriends, and, you know, to try to figure out what's going on, or whatever.

Manwhore!

2010-05-06T00:02:00.001-04:00

1.17 "Bad Reputation"

This is what I'm talking about show. Emma being badass! Will getting his comeuppance! Quinn being gorgeous! Rachel being told off by multiple people! Puck! Crappy ass songs! Tons of Brittany! This was the show that I want to be watching every week. My only complaint: even after being appropriately told off by Emma, Will still managed to be a self righteous preachy ass to both Emma and Quinn. I hate him and his Fozzy Bear hair.

Also, I think Heather Morris has become my favorite person alive! She's so amazing. Her little monologue about not remembering how to leave the room and rant about how she should be higher on the glist was brilliant. "I don't know how to turn on a computer." was also great. I think the very best, though, was when Artie said something about having cold feet and Brittany goes "Can you feel your feet?". Amazing.

And finally, should I be completely embarrassed that I really enjoyed Rachel and Jesse singing "Total Eclipse of the Heart"?

But where's Romo Lampkin's cat in this Apocalypse?

2010-04-30T21:57:00.005-04:00

5.20 "The Devil You Know"

So Crowley's still in the game. I'm assuming he's got to be on the level with his desire to help, because otherwise this whole situation would pretty much just be a Ruby rehash. Of course this plan of Bobby selling his soul to Crowley in order to find Death and then Crowley promising to give it back right away pretty much seems like the worst idea ever.

Um, I like the idea of Sam being the vicious attack dog that Dean sics on demons? Yeah, that's pretty much all I have to say about this episode.

This episode didn't really feel like the build up to an exciting finale. Given that there are only two episodes left, I'm starting to feel like it's less likely that we're going to see God in the finale. I'm also doubting that we're going to see John Winchester again. Don't disappoint me now, show!

"I'm pretty sure my cat's been reading my diary."

2010-04-30T14:47:00.004-04:00

You and me both, Brittany. You and me both.

So, I've felt from the very beginning that Glee is generally a little inconsistent in quality. This has not changed. There were a few episodes at the beginning of the season where that "Terri's fake pregnancy" storyline was driving me so insane that I thought about quitting the show. Since it's been back after the long hiatus, though, it's the message crap that's been driving me crazy.

I thought the whole Madonna episode might kill me. The "girl power" crap was done pretty poorly, and at some points I felt like the message became so twisted around that it was offensive. Luckily the "Like a Prayer" bit at the end was good enough that it kind of made up for the rest of it. This past week's episode, "Home", was also a little preachy, but in a whole lot of random directions. My main problem with that one (other than Kristin Chenoweth, who I loved on Pushing Daisies, but whose character on this show is horribly annoying and unfunny) is that I didn't know a single song except "I Am Beautiful" and all the songs were ballads. There wasn't a single upbeat thing about any of it. Plus this episode was doing a lot to make me dislike Kurt, which is disappointing. I was glad that Quinn at least had some dialog again. I feel like she hasn't spoken in weeks.

In general, I feel a little bit like I'm watching Heroes all over again (and not just because of Dianna Agron, Jessalyn Gilsig, and Jayma Mays). It's like the show has a whole lot of potential that it's not meeting, but I have to keep watching because if it does get there I certainly don't want to miss it. The problem might be that the show really should be all camp, but more and more often they've been going for this earnest thing (that always involves Mr. Shue being self righteous and preachy) and it's just not working for me. It would help if there was a hell of a lot more Brittany.

One other thought that I had while watching this past episode: How is this show really different from Viva Laughlin? I realize that in this case these people are a glee club so it makes sense for them to sing some of the time, but no one can deny that at other points characters just burst into song to convey their emotions, just like in a standard musical. I didn't ever watch Viva Laughlin, but I did watch Blackpool, the original British version, and enjoyed it quite a bit. So what was so different that Glee is successful and Viva Laughlin is a joke? High school students? American Idol lead in? Absence of Hugh Jackman? I don't get it.

A scene from American Gods

2010-04-22T22:40:00.002-04:00

5.19 "Hammer of the Gods"

I was a little concerned that this episode was going to give away the plot of American Gods, which I'm only about 1/4 of the way through reading. The room full of deities is remarkably similar to a scene I just read. At least Kripke has always been up front about the fact that American Gods and Sandman are big influences on the show.

Anyway, Gabriel's dead. I'm super disappointed because he's always a lot of fun, but the show's kind of going through a whole cleansing thing, I guess. Killing off anyone who's ever been important. Makes sense if they're planning to start relatively fresh at the beginning of next season. I do like how he went out basically on Sam and Dean's side. I also wonder if those angel sword things are really permanent deaths for the angels or if God can resurrect them if he wants to. If so, it definitely seems like Gabriel deserves resurrection.

However, now Kali might be a person in play. Now that Lucifer has killed the rest of the non-Judeo-Christian gods it's unclear whether she's just going to disappear into hiding, or if she'll show up to try to face Lucifer again. It's also just fun to see Rekha Sharma again. I kept wanting to yell "Don't trust her! She's a Cylon! A particularly bitchy one!" at the other gods in the room. Speaking of the gods, Zao Shen yelling "Don't mock my world turtle" was kind of incredibly hilarious.

Also, Pestilence! He's Max Headroom! He's also grosser than Famine! Like, seriously, magnitudes grosser. Although it looks like he's spreading a deadly flu and not the Croatoan virus. But I could be wrong.

And finally, the Horsemen's rings! I was almost right about the horcrux thing. Apparently the boys can use the rings of the Horsemen to unlock Hell and put Lucifer back in it...or something like that. And they've already got War and Famine, so now they're looking for Pestilence and Death. Open a door to Hell with the rings of the Horsemen! Collect all 4!

Well show, if you want to give me a handjob, I guess I'll take it.

2010-04-21T14:58:00.005-04:00

5.18 "Point of No Return"

100th episode 5 things:

1. The Fanservice:

"Blow me, Cas.",
"Cas, not for nothing, but the last person who looked at me like that, I got laid.",
"... Sam and Dean Winchester are psychotically, irrationally, erotically codependent...".

Damn, show. I know you love us fans, and I know you've accepted that we're all a bunch of crazy slash obsessed freaks and that you don't hold it against us, and I love me some meta even more than the next crazy girl, but this was a little bit nuts. I mean, the Wincest remark was at least made by the most lying, manipulative, untrustworthy character on the show so it can be dismissed with a little handwavium. But you practically made Dean/Cas canon! (And with a strong D/s subtext, too!)

2. The Rehashing:

Sam ran away and Dean is still bitter about it.
Dean's tired and hates his life and is willing to sacrifice himself at the drop of a hat.
Family is all that counts for anything.
Sam and Dean get everyone killed.
Dean doesn't trust Sam.
Cas gave up everything for Dean and Dean isn't properly appreciative.

All themes that have been covered multiple times in the show and all came up in this episode. The family thing is a given, I guess. It's pretty much the theme of the show and they bring it up like every other episode. But the rest was like piling all of their issues on top of each other just to make sure we know how much they hate each other and themselves and life in general. Maybe the idea was to bring them all up so they could all be hashed out and dealt with. Like intensive psychotherapy in 42 minutes. Unfortunately it all felt a little tired. I love angst, so I can't believe I'm going to say this, but it might be time for some of their issues to get resolved.

That being said, there were a few things that were also rehashes, but in a good way. Like an homage to the 99 episodes that have come before. "'...no shot in hell, Hail Mary kind of thing.' 'So the usual.'" for one. Also, Dean being "the only game in town", the fact that the "beautiful room" is in an abandoned muffler factory in Van Nuys (although hardly Middle America, but maybe that's the point), and that Sam dropped the weapon at the first opportunity. All pretty much "classic" Supernatural.

3. The Game Changers:

I posted before about what I saw to be the state of things so far. And this definitely screwed with that a bit.

Adam: I did not see that coming. I figured he was dead when we met him and he was going to stay dead because he wasn't supposed to be real. I am actually kind of impressed that they dragged their shark out of the grave to be significant. I also love the fact that stubborn and belligerent appear to be the dominant Winchester traits.
Zachariah: I expected him to be in this to the end. I really thought he was the face of the Big Bad for the season. As it turns out, he's more like The Beast, and we just haven't met Jasmine yet (I'm feeling weird about the fact that season 4 of Angel is the best analogy I can come up with for this). That gives these last few episodes a whole new level of intrigue...but possibly a lot less douchebaggery now that Zachariah's dead.

And I don't quite even understand the Michael situation as it stands now so I'm not going to comment.

4. The Reunion:

Dean: "Hell, if you're grown up enough to find faith in me, least I can do is return the favor."

Is that it? Are they good now? Back to normal, two against the world, die for each other, Bitch. Jerk. good now? Because on one hand that seems too easy. And on the other it seems underplayed enough to be real. Despite the fact that they haven't adhered to it for years now, "No chick flick moments" is their mantra.

5. The John Winchester bashing:

Seriously? They were crazy with the insults. Crazy. There is no way John Winchester isn't coming back at the end of this season. No way.

P.S. I was going to list The Buffy Move as number 5. As in at the end of this episode Dean had this little speech: "So screw destiny. Right in the face. I say we take the fight to them, do it our way." Basically what Buffy said towards the end of every season, or at least the end of season 7. But the newest episode kind of canceled that out now that the boys have a different and more specific plan of attack.

P.P.S. Other random things about this episode:

Dean decided he needed to look hot to say Yes to Michael. I'm all for that.
For some reason Dean and Adam seemed to be wearing the same outfit.
Bobby is, as usual, awesome.
Bobby's panic room is also awesome.
Sam is retarded and it is beyond me that a George and Lenny joke hasn't come up in this show yet.

Live from Detroit - Michael vs. Lucifer - Apocalyptic Throwdown!

2010-04-14T15:16:00.012-04:00

Kripke has mentioned that this was really a five season story and Sera Gamble has said that season 6 is like starting a sequel, so I figure everything over the last five seasons is fair game for this finale. This is my list of important factors that are still in play and could be relevant:

Humans:
- Dean
- Sam
- John (Seriously, why isn't he in Heaven?)
- Mary (I know she's dead, but she's still around all the time.)
- Jess (Same deal as Mary.)
- Bobby
- Jesse, the 11-year-old Antichrist
- Chuck and Becky
- Lisa and Ben Braeden (Was Lisa's appearance last week random or a sign that they're important?)
- The Ghostfacers
- Missouri Mosley
- Young Sam (This show loves it some Colin Ford.)
- Adam

Angels:
- Michael
- Lucifer
- ~~Gabriel~~
- Raphael
- Castiel
- ~~Zachariah~~

Demons:
- Pestilence ~~and/or Conquest (Or did they just skip that one?~~ The husband thinks it'll be Pestilence and it'll bring back the Croatoan virus. The husband is right.)
- Death
- Crowley ~~(Was he just around to give the boys back the Colt?)~~

Other people:
- God
- Shapeshifters (The fact that this apocalypse is all about what body you're in seems to make them relevant.)
- Tessa the Reaper (She likes Dean a lot. She might show up.)
- Kali

Things: (I feel like they've been collecting horcruxes. And I'm kind of right.)
- The amulet
- The Colt
- Metallicar
- Ruby's knife
- War's ring
- Famine's ring
- Pestilence's ring
- Death's ring

Places:
- Heaven
- Hell
- Earth
- Detroit

Those are my thoughts for now. I will probably append it in upcoming weeks. And I have. Everything in italics was added after the original post. Same with links.

And a whore ain't one...as long as you have a servant of Heaven and a stake made of Babylonian Cypress. Top that, Jay-Z.

2010-04-14T14:29:00.008-04:00

5.17 "99 Problems"

5 awesome things about this episode:

1. Armed demon-fighting Christian militia. A motel with a marquee that reads "Stay 2 Nites Get a Free Bible." It finally feels like the Apocalypse!

2. The Whore of Babylon! "On a good day you get to kill a whore." Exactly, Dean. Stop being so dead inside. Today is a good day.

3. Drunk Castiel and absolutely everything that that entails. Seriously, that should happen every week.

4. "Sam, of course, is an abomination." I realize that's basically like me listing Drunk Castiel as 2 of my 5 things, but I don't care. The line is just that good.

5. Apparently the love of Dean's life is a yoga instructor he had awesome sex with for a weekend 10 years ago and then who's life he saved two and a half years ago and whose kid he thought might be his, but isn't. But the weirdest part is that he seems to be the love of her life too.

This one goes to maybe seven and a half-ish.

2010-04-10T16:00:00.005-04:00

5.01 "The Eleventh Hour"

I kind of figured there was no way I'd dislike him. I mean he had a hell of a mantle to pick up and undoubtedly BBC and Steven Moffat and everyone responsible for the situation made damn sure he was capable of it before hiring him. I don't know if I love him. It's hard to get over David Tennant. But I like him. I don't have a real feel for his personality yet. What'll make him new and unique and not just a hybrid of Nine and Ten (he doesn't even have a catch phrase yet), but he's fun. Although I'm a little disappointed that he dresses like a kind of boring old college professor. I liked him better in Ten's old clothes. Ten at least had the trench coat and the glasses to give him kind of a quirky distinction. The boring bowtie isn't really doing it for me. I'm not saying he needs to dress like a clown or even be as weird as Four, but a little something fun would be nice.

And I like her. She's crazy hot, for one, and she didn't require any big explanation or go through any period of disbelief because she met him as a child so that went a long way in making her pleasant. Also she has a cute but snarky way about her. They're good together. That being said, I am a little weirded out by the romance potential. I thought after the whole Ten/Rose issue they were trying to get away from the Doctor being in love with his companion. Maybe Eleven won't ever be in love with Amelia (or are we officially calling her Amy?), but with them both at least looking young and attractive and seeming to share the carefree, adventurous attitude, there's definitely the potential for attraction. I realize she's getting married "tomorrow" (think it's to Rory or Jeff?), but we know how well those relationships usually work out once a girl's met the Doctor.

So the story was...okay. I mean, I guess it was a Steven Moffat episode:
- 20 something cute girl? Check
- Excessive repetition of a single phrase? Check
- Not-quite-seeable threat? Check
- The Doctor saving the day in a single act of cleverness? Nope, and that was disappointing. That communicating with major world organizations to make the whole world broadcast Zero thing was very RTD and felt like filler. If the whole solution had just been making Amy dream about the multiform it would have been better. Maybe not quite fantastic enough for a season opener with a new Doctor, though. Also, if he was going to do all of that talking to powerful people thing, why didn't he call UNIT? Were they disbanded or destroyed or something and I just forgot? Anyway, the story was fine, but I was hoping for something a little more Empty Child/Doctor Dances or Blink - ish. Darker, I guess.

In the preview for the upcoming season I'm a little disappointed to see Daleks and Cybermen again. One of the best parts about the Martha season was that the season-arc-Big Bad wasn't the Daleks. I hope they just make a cameo this year.

All in all, I'm not just absolutely quivering with anticipation, but I am pleased with the start and I will happily watch the whole season. If for no other reason than to see if he ever wears better clothes.

You got your good things...and Dean's got jack shit.

2010-04-06T16:10:00.005-04:00

5.16 "Dark Side of the Moon"

The message of this episode seemed to be that Dean Winchester can't catch a break. His life sucks. He goes to hell. Hell sucks. He comes back to life and his life sucks even more. He goes to heaven. Heaven sucks. And then he comes back to life again and it's certainly going to continue to suck. Seriously, his few hours in heaven were possibly worse torture than his 40 years in hell. His dead mom told him how she never loved him and how everyone else hates him too. And that was after he'd realized that all of his brother's happiest memories were when he was away from him. At the beginning of the episode I kept wondering why he didn't try to stay dead. His life sucks and he's tired. Stay in heaven! But the answer became obvious pretty quickly. It probably would have been better for a little longer if Sam hadn't been there with him causing trouble with all his Sam-related angst. But I guess when angels are out to manipulate you, you don't stand a very good chance of getting any rest in heaven, angsty brother or not.

So Dean's whole sphere of existence, whether he's dead or alive, sucks pretty hard. I'm starting to get the feeling, though, that this season...and the last...maybe the whole series up to this point, has been about forcibly dragging Dean down to rock bottom. Which makes me think there's a reward coming in his future. Or some retribution. Something. The fact that he prayed for help and then he got to go to heaven and talk to Joshua and get his direct message from God implies that God's listening to him. It pretty much sucked that God's message for him was basically "Stop bugging me and go home. I'm not going to help you.", but I'm kind of doubting that God really meant it. Because that's a pretty pointless message. Why bother sending that message at all? Just ignore Dean. But since he did send that message, and he sent Dean back to life remembering that message, that message is probably supposed to motivate Dean to do...something. Unfortunately that something started with him throwing away the God-radar amulet that Sam gave him for Christmas. :(

If Ash's heaven is The Road House, why is it empty? It seems weird and lonely. But I guess if he's figured out how to jump around to his friends' heavens too, then he's got company? Maybe? Anyway, I have a big question about this part. Ash said he'd been looking for John Winchester in heaven and hadn't found him. I can think of a few reasons he might have said that: 1) After John dragged himself out of hell to help the boys kill the YED, he just got sent right back to hell. 2) The writers needed a reason for the boys to not spend their time in heaven running around trying to find their dad. 3) John's on Earth riding shotgun in his own body while God uses him as a vessel. They've thrown that God=Dad thing around so much this season that I wouldn't even be surprised. I'm going to be more surprised if they were actually able to get JDM back on the show. And by surprised I definitely mean REALLY FREAKIN' EXCITED by this possibility.

And finally: How awesome is it that io9 paraphrased a David Lynch movie/Pixies song for the title of this week's Supernatural recap? So awesome that I decided to copy them, that's how!

Subtitles do not automatically make things interesting. Shirtless Daniel Dae Kim, however...eh, still iffy.

2010-03-30T22:09:00.006-04:00

6.10 "The Package"

1. Like always, Sun is the only sensible person on this island. She's the only one who runs from the dead guy instead of letting him coerce her into doing stuff for him. And I'm so jealous of her island outfit in this episode.

2. I kind of like Keamy in the alternaverse. Is that wrong?

3. Sweet! Mikhail! Is Mikhail way thinner than he was a couple seasons back when he was alive, or does he just look drastically different without the eye patch? And of course he got shot in the eye. Awesome!

4. I don't like to comment on the plot, but I've just had a thought. My thought is that this show is going to end like the movie Sliding Doors. That will be very disappointing. Very, very disappointing.

5. Of course it's Desmond. Hi Desmond!

The dead have risen. Must be Thursday.

2010-03-30T12:30:00.005-04:00

5.15 "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid"

1. In the previous few episodes I'd been thinking that Dean was looking crazy tired and this was possibly just make-up being unable to disguise the fact that Jensen is starting to look old. I could not have been more wrong. In this episode he looked downright beautiful. Behold:

2. "Awesome. Another horseman. Must be Thursday." Really, Jeremy Carver? Really? 1) The "this show airs on Thursday" joke was already done better in "Wishful Thinking" and 2) this is a straight up ripoff of "Dawn's in trouble. Must be Tuesday." Maybe next time leave the meta to Ben Edlund.

3. Zombies! Zombie kid holding his dad's entrails, FTW!

4. No, Sam, Bobby's not okay. Dean's not okay. Castiel isn't even okay. You're really going to have to figure out how to make yourself okay because nobody around you has the energy to take care of you anymore. Suck it up and deal before Lucifer makes you his bitch.

5. Where the hell is Castiel?

Let's marathon this shit!

2010-03-24T14:20:00.002-04:00

Yes, I just watched five episodes of Lost in a row. I am caught up. Here are my five things:

1. 6.05 "Lighthouse": Way to bring back the caves, show.

2. 6.06 "Sundown": I don't know what's going on with Sayid, but I'm pleased that he killed Dogen. I was getting seriously tired of that guy.

3. 6.07 "Dr. Linus": William Atherton always plays a dick. This was no exception.

4. 6.08 "Recon": OMG. Why can't Sawyer and Miles as buddy cops be a real show? I want that show so bad I'm now going to go a little bit insane for it. I am not kidding. I will pay for the Jim & Miles cop show. Please universe, please!

5. 6.09 "Ab Aeterno": This episode was so awesome that I can't even manage to be snarky about it. I love Richard Alpert and Nestor Carbonell is amazing. I want to watch him in a Spanish period piece all the time. I'm a little disappointed that Jacob isn't really The Devil. If Mark Pellegrino were actually playing The Devil on two different shows at the same time, that would just be fuckin' amazing.

Pilot review: Ugly Americans

2010-03-21T23:19:00.004-04:00

This is a cartoon about how New York City is a hell hole. It reminds me of Daria filtered through Scrubs. And there are demons. (Of course there are. I don't watch or read anything anymore that doesn't involve demons. On HIMYM Ted's probably going to date a demon next.) I will watch this show because it fills the void in my life where Venture Bros. should be.

Pilot review: Justified

2010-03-21T23:06:00.004-04:00

I think I watched this show because there was a lot of hype about Timothy Olyphant being awesome in a cowboy hat. I really like Timothy Olyphant. For one thing, he was the film geek/killer in Scream 2. For another thing, he used to do the sports report on the radio station that I listened to while driving to work every morning in LA. He would occasionally be interrupted from reporting because he was trying to get his daughters ready for school at the same time. He referred to every sports team as the City Team Name "of Anaheim" (e.g. the Dallas Mavericks of Anaheim). He loved Borat. He was just generally endearing. So I opted to watch the show.

This show is Timothy Olyphant being awesome in a cowboy hat. He shoots people because he enjoys it. He's Southern. He breaks into his ex-wife's house at night to freak out her new husband and then wax philosophical about his life. His name sounds a lot like Waylon Jennings. He's really, really Southern. He is enjoyable to watch and I will watch him again this week.

5 Things about The Substitute

2010-03-11T20:43:00.004-05:00

Yeah, I'm finally making a bit of effort to catch up on Lost. I've watched one so I'm back to being only three episodes behind.

6.04 "The Substitute"

Without making any attempt to work out what's going on with the plot, here are my 5 things:

1. The idea of Smoke Monster-vision is cool. Actual Smoke Monster-vision, not really that exciting.

2. Drunk, sad, guilty, belligerent, dead-inside Sawyer who's still more observant than everyone else considering he can immediately tell that Locke isn't Locke and who better put on some pants is like the most Dean Winchester Sawyer has ever been. And it is the Best. Sawyer. Ever. And then he tells MIB/Smokey/Locke about Of Mice and Men and it makes him even better.

3. I'm confused by this sporadic retcon alternaverse thing. So far Jack, Kate, Claire and Rose seem to be in the same places in the alternaverse that they were in the crashverse. Jack's dad is still dead, Kate's still killed a guy and been arrested, Claire's still pregnant and giving up her baby, and Rose still has terminal cancer. But so far at least Boone, Hurley, and Locke have different pasts. Boone didn't bring Shannon back from Australia with him, Hurley has amazingly good luck instead of bad luck, and Locke is engaged to Helen instead of having driven her away by helping his kidney-stealing dad. It's very confusing.

4. I may not always like Ben Linus, but that was an awesome eulogy!

5. Were the flashbacks to Jacob touching all of the Losties really necessary? Has this show ever used flashbacks in an attempt to clarify something that's happened earlier in the show? I really don't think so. And it seems really stupid for them to start now.

Pilot review: Parenthood

2010-03-11T18:19:00.002-05:00

I know it was on a week and a half ago, and I really did watch it within a day of it airing, but I'm just getting around to the commenting on it now. It'll be brief.

I have vague memories of the movie Parenthood. I don't have any memory of the first TV series Parenthood (but hey, look at that, Joss was one of the writers). This isn't actually significant accept to say that I'm acknowledging that those two things exist. I really only have two other things to say:

1) I never watched Sports Night, Six Feet Under, or anything other than the pilot of Dirty Sexy Money and yet, for some reason, I am sick of seeing Peter Krause's face. I don't know why. He's not unpleasant to look at. He's a good enough actor. He did his job in this show as well as could be expected. I just have this weird feeling like I've been staring at him for a decade and I'd rather not do it anymore.

2) If I had any desire to watch a family drama, I'd probably watch this one. I love Lauren Graham. Her chemistry with Mae Whitman (Her?) was great and seemed like it could be an enjoyable relationship to watch. Monica Potter made me cry. Erika Christensen was pulling off making me like her and hate her at the same time, which I think was exactly what she was supposed to be doing. I also really enjoyed her trying to come to grips with her daughter liking her husband better and saying "So, she will be like a relative of mine." Anyway, I could probably enjoy this show if I wanted to watch it.

That's all.

What's TV again?

2010-03-05T11:49:00.003-05:00

I feel like I'm not watching any TV these days. And I'm probably feeling that way because it's pretty close to true.

Shows I've quit this fall:
- 30 Rock (It didn't start back until November and I kind of just forgot.)
- Gossip Girl (I watched the first episode of the season and decided it had all become a little too angst, schmoop, repeat for my taste)
- The Office (I'm a little bit sick of it.)

Shows I'm behind on:
- Big Bang Theory (DVR didn't get an episode one week and then I let like the last three go by after that. I'm going to have to catch up for the reappearance of Wil Wheaton, though.)
- Lost (I've explained this before. I went on vacation and it all fell apart from there. I'm, what?, three episodes behind now. Yeah.)
- Vampire Diaries (I've watched at least two since Christmas. I think I missed a few after that. I saw something about David Anders joining so I might have to catch up for that.)

Shows on hiatus until forever from now:
- Bones (April)
- Doctor Who (April)
- Glee (April)
- Supernatural (March 25th)
- Venture Bros. (July?)

Shows currently airing new episodes that I am caught up on:
- How I Met Your Mother

Shows I intended to watch this year but didn't:
- 24 (I really do want to see Katee Sackhoff and Freddie Prinze, Jr., but I missed the first episode and never went back.)
- Caprica (I've heard good-ish things. If this lasts, I might have to get back to it.)
- Community (I really meant to watch this. I really, really did. Maybe I'll catch up this summer while I'm going back to this season of 30 Rock.)
- FlashForward (I never saw more than the pilot, but it looks like it's practically canceled now anyway, so maybe it doesn't matter.)
- V (I never even watched the pilot. Based on what I've heard since, I don't need to bother.)

This fall I'm totally going to be on the ball again. I won't have a bazillion weddings to go to so I'll be able to watch and review all the pilots. I'll do the research in advance so I'll actually know what's coming. And I'll make a point to simply mentally let go of the stuff that started before but that I'm not watching. I won't spend time fretting about things like "What if Parks & Recreation is really worth it?", "Other people seem to really like White Collar", and "If Heroes is going to end, maybe I should go back and watch all of it." Dammit. Now I've got myself thinking all of those things. I'm going to stop writing before I convince myself that I need to spend the entire month catching up on TV.

Lost Lost

2010-02-24T10:15:00.003-05:00

I was on vacation last week and didn't watch. And I still haven't watched last week's episode so I didn't watch last night either. So now I'm behind by two episodes and, unsurprisingly at this point, I really have no desire to catch up. The urge to quit watching altogether is so strong. On the other hand, there are very few episodes left at this point so I should probably just suck it up and keep watching.

Also, I read this OverthinkingIt post about the fate versus free will issue on Lost and it made me think of Supernatural's fate versus free will thing and now I kind of want to write a direct comparison of the shows. Which probably means I ought to actually watch Lost. If only I could get Supernatural to motivate me to do other things, like laundry.

Happy Unattached Drifter Christmas!

2010-02-12T16:09:00.006-05:00

5.14 "My Bloody Valentine"

Yay! I actually got to watch this episode live because the husband and I are all caught up. (Well, technically off the DVR and delayed by an hour, but close enough.)

I feel like this episode is what's great about this show. Ben Edlund. I'm kidding, mostly. Ben Edlund certainly helps with the awesomeness, but this one felt like a group effort. This episode started out looking like a cutesy (as cutesy as monsters and demons can be) Valentine's Day one-shot, with practically a full on vaudeville routine between Sam, Dean, Castiel, and the cupid, and by the end it was dark, painful, angsty, depressing and completely arc significant. Very much like "Monster at the End of This Book" which is definitely one of my favorite episodes. I guess I appreciate a good fake out.

It probably needs a few more watchings, but I can definitely see this episode being up there among my favorites. It has a lot of great dialog (tons of which I want to quote, but I'll refrain), hilariously deadpan Castiel, Sam in bondage, demon-blood-drinking-evil-Sam, Sam and Dean in suits, and Dean crying. The only thing really holding it back is how intolerably disgusting Famine is to look at. But even that works in the episode's favor, as he wouldn't be near as scary if he wasn't so gross. Plus it pretty much goes along with the grossness of people shoveling food into their mouths through the whole episode.

Okay, I can't resist just one quote: "Is this a fight? Are we in a fight?" That line is so straight up Whedon that I can actually hear it in Sarah Michelle Gellar's voice. Guess Dean really is Buffy Summers.

5 things about Lost

2010-02-09T21:12:00.007-05:00

6.03 "What Kate Does"

Before I mention my 5 things, I'm first going to point out that I did not, do not, and will not ever give a damn about what Kate does. I'm also not even going to try to care about the plot of this show anymore.

1. "As you can see, Hugo here has assumed the leadership position, so that's...pretty great." This show needs about 50% more Miles.

2. I feel like the bearded Asian guy who doesn't enjoy English (and whose name may or may not be Dogen) is the new Ben Linus. He thinks he knows more than everyone else, he's cryptic, vague, and manipulative. Because this show definitely needs more of that.

3. Rob McElhenney!

4. Ethan!

5. Why are we not done with this Jack/Kate/Sawyer/Juliet thing yet? Can't they all just leave Sawyer to mourn Juliet in peace?

Some people are stuck on an island and...

2010-02-03T14:18:00.002-05:00

I was going to write a "Why I Hate Lost" post before the premiere, but I didn't get around to it. Turns out that's a good thing. After watching last night I realized that I don't hate Lost. I just don't like it. And I finally figured out why. I'd previously been under the impression that I didn't connect with any of the characters so I didn't care what was happening to them. I didn't feel one hundred percent certain about that as the cause because I've always liked Sawyer and have at times liked a random assortment of the other characters, but that was the best answer I could come up with. Until now. After watching two hours of a group of characters, some of whom I actually like, go through some pretty crazy and interesting situations and developments on the island, in addition to their similarly crazy and interesting situations in the flash-alterna-verse, I finally realized why I'm so bothered by Lost:

I don't know what the show is about.

Obviously I understand what's happening in the show, on a literal level, at least. I know that in the beginning a bunch of people crashed on an island. I know what they've been doing since then. I know what I've been shown in the flashbacks and flashforwards and flash-alternative-pasts. But I don't know the point of the show.

I feel like I should illustrate. Below are my interpretations of what an assortment of hour long "dramas" that I watch(ed) are about.
Battelstar Galactica: A group of humans travel through space looking for a new planet.
Veronica Mars: A teenage girl solves mysteries.
Bones: An FBI agent and a group of scientists solve crimes.
Supernatural: Two brothers hunt demons.
Doctor Who: An alien travels through space and time "helping" people.
The Sarah Connor Chronicles: A woman fights the oncoming apocalypse.
Dollhouse: A woman tries to recover her lost identity.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: A teenage girl fights demons.
Glee: A group of high school students sing to cope with the problems in their lives.

And so it's not just skewed towards my taste I'll throw in some shows I don't regularly watch.
24: A government agent hunts terrorists.
Castle: Amusingly mismatched people solve crimes.
NCIS: Amusingly mismatched people solve crimes.
The Mentalist: Amusingly mismatched people solve crimes.
Lie to Me: Amusingly mismatched people solve crimes.

And when I try to describe Lost in the same manner this is what I get:
Lost: A group of (amusingly mismatched) people are stranded on an island.

There's no action. If you want to be more descriptive of the show you can amend it to "A group of people are stranded on an island and weird shit happens". But even then, the weird shit is happening to them. There's no action on the part of the main characters. Stuff happens to them and they react and then more stuff happens and they react again. And the reason that this stuff is interesting is because the situation the people are in is particularly unusual. Usually that's called a sitcom. But, in case it's escaped anyone's attention, Lost is not a comedy.

It's possible that it's not really important for a show to actually be about something active. After all, it does work for sitcoms. Maybe it's just an unconventional way to tell a dramatic story. But aside from having no clear activity, there's another way that I don't know what this about. I feel like all of the shows I listed say something to me. I'm able to interpret a deeper meaning from what I'm watching. In the case of the procedurals it's usually just the idea that with perseverance the truth will be revealed, wrongs will be righted, and there is such a thing as justice. In the genre shows it's something more like the idea that humans possess an inner strength that allows them to keep fighting for what they believe in, fighting to save the world, or fighting to save themselves.

Individually, the not-so-procedural shows can even be thought of as experiments in the human condition. Sarah Connor Chronicles shows you what might happen to a person who knows and has to fight against a future that no one else understands. BSG shows you what might happen when the survivors of a catastrophe have to move forward and rebuild after the loss of everything they knew. Veronica Mars shows what might happen to a young person who's world view is jarringly upended. Etc.

My point in all that is that I don't feel any of those things about Lost. It's certainly not indicating that wrongs will be righted and justice will prevail. I don't feel like it's telling me about the strength of humanity in the face of adversity. If it were an experiment in the human condition it would basically be showing me what happens when people are trapped on an island and weird shit happens to them over and over and over again. When I watch Lost I don't feel anything except frustration that the show isn't satisfying me the way it seems to be satisfying everyone else.

So that's it. That is my problem with Lost. I don't know what it's about. That certainly won't stop me from watching it. But apparently it means that I won't enjoy it.

Um...Gabriel's masquerading as a man with a reason, Chuck Shurley's Supernatural Con is the event of the season?

2010-01-28T22:46:00.010-05:00

It's a good thing I'm done with this because I've clearly wrung "Carry on Wayward Son" for all the post titles it's worth.

So, both what I thought would happen and what actually did happen in the episodes "Changing Channels" and "The Real Ghostbusters":

The Trickster from the episode "Tall Tales" is actually the Archangel Gabriel
The prophet from "The Monster at the End of This Book" returns at some point towards the beginning of season 5 and the boys meet him at a fan convention

And that's it! I'm all out of spoilers and I'm now only three episodes behind being completely caught up on this show which means I won't have any idea what's going to happen until I watch it happening. What a truly novel way to watch a TV show.

My Pointless Waste of Time

2010-01-27T17:12:00.004-05:00

I was in the shower earlier today and for some reason was thinking about something related to Zach Braff, but at the time, I couldn't remember Zach Braff's name (and was referring to him in my head as Dr. John Dorian). I listed off all of the stuff he's been in, the names of the other actors from Scrubs, the people he's dated, random things from Garden State, and I couldn't come up with it. After a while of just thinking about common men's names it occurred to me that his first name was Zach, probably immediately after I ruled out Jack. But then I had no idea about the last name. I listed off all the other famous people named Zach I could think of and it just wasn't coming to me. Eventually I just started going through the alphabet pairing letters together and trying to come up with something that sounded right. Finally I came up with Braff. So basically I spent an extra 15 minutes, at least, standing around in the shower trying to remember Zach Braff's name when I just as easily (although not so warmly) could have gotten out of the shower and looked it up. It's one of those things where I can't decide if it was a good brain exercise, one of those things that helps reroute neural pathways, or whatever, or just a big waste of time and water. And what's worse is that I no longer have any idea why I was even thinking about Zach Braff.

Dean rose above the noise and confusion and it sucked.

2010-01-21T12:23:00.004-05:00

I'm really down to the end of what I've been spoiled for at this point. What I was expecting:

Dean jumps five years into the future at the beginning of season 5; this may or may not last for more than one episode
At some point, Sam is the vessel for Lucifer

And it turns out these things were both true and related. Zachariah (dick that he is) sends Dean five years into the future to follow his future self while he attempts to kill Lucifer, who by that point is using Sam as his vessel. He's also making Sam dress like a sketchy pimp, but I hadn't been aware of that prior to watching "The End."

45 years of mythos is too much for one show.

2010-01-19T22:19:00.002-05:00

2009 Christmas & New Years Specials "The End of Time"

Part 1 of this series did not make one spec of sense. Also, with the exception of the resurrection of the Master, nothing happened. io9 summed it up well. What The Hell Was That? indeed.

Part 2, on the other hand, actually had things that happened. Lots and lots of things. Those things all had to do with the elaborate history of the Time Lords and the Time War and the Doctor's history with the Master. Stuff I basically knew nothing about because I didn't watch the show through the first eight Doctors. So I can't even gauge whether anything that happened even made any sense or not, because I could barely follow what was going on.

That being said, the whole thing was pretty much worthwhile for David Tennant's last big scene. When the Doctor realizes he'll have to go into the radiation booth thing and die he basically has a giant angry/sad outburst and it is awesome. Tennant at his best. I really only needed those 5 minutes of show. Of course after those minutes of awesome, the ending kind of dragged on as Ten said goodbye to everyone he's ever hung out with in this regeneration. The Rose bit at the end was nice, though.

All in all my appreciation of this show has fallen steadily since the end of the second series. I really thought I might be done with Doctor Who with the passing of Ten, but the end bit with Matt Smith as Eleven had me a little bit intrigued about how he'll do and what Stephen Moffat will do with the show now that RTD is out of the picture. I don't know why I'm even kidding myself. I'll definitely be watching when the show starts back in...whenever Spring 2010 is. His companion is cute and Scottish! Cute and Scottish!

This is not our fate.

2010-01-18T13:02:00.008-05:00

I never posted about the end of BSG because I didn't want to think about it. It was bad. Really bad. And I was just willing to forget about it and remember the earlier parts of the show that had been so great. But for some reason, with Lost starting back soon, I'm feeling compelled to post about why I hate Lost so much and it's weirdly tied up in my mind with the end of BSG, so I'm going to try to get this out first.

I know that I absolutely do not need to go into all the reasons that the finale sucked. TWoP breaks it down pretty well, as does io9. And for a more detailed breakdown of the suckage, the TWoP recap by Jacob is pretty brilliant. The parenthetical on page 17 is probably the best part.

So I'm not going to talk about the suck. I'm going to talk about the two parts that I actually liked.

One is the Kara and Lee flashback where they get drunk and almost have sex on the table at Kara and Zach's apartment paired with the flashback of the morning after where Lee tries to shoo a bird out of his apartment. It made me think about their relationship in a newish way. A way in which, for better or worse, I actually had to accept some of the divine plan/destiny stuff the last season was peddling. If you can accept the idea that whatever deity or deities might exist were specifically crafting a situation in which the humans and Cylons made it to a colonizable planet, then the fact that Kara and Lee's relationship was nothing but a long series of "near misses" actually seems purposeful rather than just superfluous relationship drama. Kara was created to lead the humans and Cylons to "Earth". Her crazy combination of parents and her horrible upbringing crafted that personality that made her a soldier who wanted direction but also a dreamer who was always searching for something, which basically combined to make her a pilot. And she had to be both parts because if she was just a soldier she wouldn't be searching, and if she was just searching, she would take off and never come back. She needed something that would keep her tied to humanity such that she would always come back and something that didn't satisfy her enough that she would stop moving forward. Hence Lee Adama. She ricocheted off of him in a way that made her fly off and find new paths and new answers, but she always brought the new stuff back to the fleet to keep leading them in the right direction. There are so many points where she could have left for good or stopped moving for good that would have prevented the fleet from ever getting to "Earth", but Lee was always around to inadvertently push her in the right direction. Even the love triangle between Lee, Kara, and Sam furthered their path towards Earth. If Kara had been able to settle with Lee she never would have found Sam. If Lee hadn't been around to screw up her marriage to Sam she probably wouldn't have flown off to her "death", where she found Earth. Anyway, maybe I just like the idea that their entire relationship wasn't pointless and was actually crucial in the salvation of human and Cylon-kind.

The other part I actually liked:

This one moment completely redeemed Gaius Baltar in my eyes. Throughout the entire series there were points where the show tried to convince us that the Baltar we were seeing was the actual, genuine Gaius. I hated those moments because I never thought they were earned. I never felt like I had any reason to believe that those moments were real, that Baltar wasn't just putting on another mask, playing whatever part was necessary to get him through the given situation. Particularly his sudden devout religiosity in the last season. It never seemed genuine to me. And this scene proved to me that I was right. After his years and years of piling bullshit upon bullshit to hide his emotions, it all fell away in that moment and there was the remnants of a real person under there.

So that's it. The two things I actually liked about the end of Battlestar Galactica. But the real reason I wanted to write this post was to say that the crappy ending doesn't matter. In the end, whether or not the conclusion was satisfying, or even made any sense, wasn't important. At least not to me. Because I cared about the world and I cared about the characters in it and that's why I enjoyed watching the series. All of the characters could've sprouted wings and flown away or decided on ritual group suicide in the end and it wouldn't have changed the fact that for several years I loved those people and I just wanted to see what they were doing, to know how they were feeling, to watch them be.

And that is how this post is actually about Lost.

Heaven doesn't so much wait for as it waits on Dean Winchester.

2010-01-17T23:49:00.003-05:00

The husband and I have watched through the first episode of season 5. What I thought I knew:

Lucifer shows up at the end of season 4 and is played by Jacob from Lost
Bobby becomes paralyzed
Dean is very important in the grand scheme of good and evil (Based on recently being spoiled again, I'm amending this one to: Dean is the human embodiment of the Archangel Michael...and after some thought on the subject, I'm amending it to Dean at some point being the vessel for the Archangel Michael)

And in actuality:

Lucifer shows up at the beginning of season 5 and enters a vessel played by Jacob from Lost
Bobby becomes paralyzed either due to stabbing himself with Ruby's knife so that the demon possessing him wouldn't kill Dean, or because the angel Zachariah is a dick
Dean is the Sword of Michael, meaning he would be Michael's vessel if he would ever accept being so (this is not a euphemism)

Unrelated to what I did or did not know in advance: Ruby's dead! Castiel is not! Yay!

I miss Hidden Palms.

2010-01-16T23:53:00.002-05:00

So I'm posting this quite a while after the fact, but wanted to at least comment before new episodes start back. I caught up on Vampire Diaries before the holidays while the CW was airing two episodes per night for a week. I had high (or low) hopes for this show, and it's not living up. Basically it's not amazing and it's not so horrible it's amusing. It's pretty much just okay.

The good:

The black vein-y eyes. Possibly my favorite ever version of "vamping". Way better than bumpy foreheads, mouths full of fangs, and your garden variety descending canines.
Stefan and Damon seem to stand around their house shirtless a lot. Other CW shows should take note.
I am vaguely intrigued by who and/or what the new teacher might be.
Damon. Though he could really go either way. He could be the anti-hero like Spike, or he could become the villain without a purpose, like Sylar.
Steven R. McQueen reminds me of a combination of Kyle Gallner and Connor Paolo. He's like the epitome of the CW Younger Brother.
Caroline. Don't know why, but I like her.

The bad:

When I watched the pilot I found it so predictable that I was saying the characters dialog before they did.
Nina Dobrev and Paul Wesley are like black holes of charisma so the whole Stefan & Elena thing is really not working for me.
Having dead parents does not inherently make a person interesting. Other people thinking someone is interesting does not make them interesting. Elena is not interesting.
The whole Bonnie is a witch story started out amusing to me and then Bianca Lawson got involved and it all went downhill from there.
I'm pretty sure Elena and Stefan have already broken up and gotten back together at least once per episode. It's already tedious.
Vicki. Thankfully she's dead and presumably gone.

The things I don't give a crap about:

Aunt Jenna and her constant dating of people who might be trouble.
Elena's ex-boyfriend Matt, though I could start to care more about him now that he and Caroline are a pseudo-thing.
The group of townsfolk who know about vampires.
Katherine. Yeah, I said it. I don't give a crap about her. Nina Dobrev can barely do morose. She really, really can't do whimsically evil and manipulative.

That's it. I may post more about it when new episodes start.

"The best parts are when they cry."

2010-01-16T21:43:00.005-05:00

This show is nothing if not self aware.

So this is basically just to report that I watched an episode that I'd seen before. Here's what I thought I knew:

Everything revealed in the season 4 episode "The Monster at the End of This Book"
Lilith sometimes appears as a young woman

And what happened:

Well obviously everything that happened in "The Monster at the End of This Book", which pretty much breaks down to the presence of Archangels, Lilith trying to seduce Sam with a deal, Chuck being a Prophet of the Lord (in addition to being awesome), and the existence of Supernatural fanfic within the Supernatural universe
Despite normally appearing as a little girl, in this instance Lilith appears as "a comely dental hygienist from Bloomington, Indiana"

That's all. Oh, I guess that and the fact that this was the original episode that made me realize that I would love this show with a passion rivaling my love for Buffy (blasphemous as that may be), and that upon viewing again now that I actually understand everything that's going on it is EVEN MORE AWESOME!

Don't take your love to town.

2010-01-11T23:39:00.003-05:00

I was waiting for confirmation on one more spoiler before I did this post. It just took quite a long way into season 4 to finally get it. So, at 16 episodes in, the stuff I thought was going to happen:

There's a demon named Ruby who's played by a blonde actress for a while, then by a brunette; it's possible that Sam sleeps with her
Dean comes back from hell at the beginning of season 4
An angel named Castiel shows up and seems to be around to advise Dean; this may happen before season 4
Sam starts intentionally drinking demon blood to gain strength; Dean doesn't know about it
Lilith is opening some seals of some kind to try to raise Lucifer; the boys are trying to prevent her from doing so; Lilith sometimes appears as a little girl, sometimes as a young woman

And what actually happened:

There's a demon named Ruby who's played by a blonde actress for a while, then by a brunette, named Genevieve Cortese; Sam is indeed sleeping with her
Dean comes back from hell at the beginning of season 4
An angel named Castiel "gripped [Dean] tight and raised [him] from Perdition" because God commanded it and now shows up every once in a while to tell Dean what to do/crush on him
Sam has been drinking Ruby's blood to gain power to control and exorcise demons; Dean doesn't know about it, but basically everybody else does
Lilith is opening 66 seals to try to raise Lucifer; a group of angels is helping her; the boys and Castiel are trying to prevent the seals from being broken; Lilith seems to often inhabit the body of a little girl

I have one important thought at this point in season 4: Despite the fact that she's been "helping" them for over a year, Ruby is definitely evil.

I did not just get slapped.

2010-01-11T21:13:00.002-05:00

5.12 "Girls Versus Suits"

I just watched the 100th episode of How I Met Your Mother, and in the words of Marshall describing the degree of hotness of MacLaren's new bartender, "Eh."

It was the so-called musical episode. "So-called" because it was not a musical episode. It was an episode with one musical number. Barney sang a song about suits in an elaborate JD from Scrubs kind of hallucination. It ended very similarly to "The Mustard" in the Buffy musical episode, with the triangle of people swinging the clothes around and spinning and with the timpani reminiscent of Also sprach Zarathustra. So yeah. I didn't enjoy it as much as "Let's go to the Mall" or "Sandcastles in the Sand". I won't be singing the weird suit song for days to come. Honestly, I'm not even sure it was as entertaining as tedmosbyisajerk.com. So, nice try show, but you may be losing your touch.

That being said, the episode was relatively entertaining. The other portions of Barney's desuitification plan and its effects on him were amusing. The Tim Gunn cameo was kind of funny. Ted dating Cindy was kind of nice. I definitely laughed out loud a number of times. Thinking back, I can't actually remember any of the reasons I laughed, which isn't really a great sign, but I did laugh which is more than I've done for some episodes this year.

I am wondering, now that we've gotten so close to a glimpse of The Mother, if the plan is to end the show either this year or at the latest next year. I feel like the ongoing story has gotten a little tedious and they really hit their stride with the funny in seasons 2 and 3 and have gone downhill to some degree since then (though this year's "The Scuba Diver" was pretty great). But despite all of that, I still enjoy the show, I still want Barney and Robin to be together, I still wonder what happened to Robin's dogs, I'm still looking forward to the last slap, I still hope someday Sandy Rivers will return, and I will most certainly watch this show to the very end (mainly because I suspect that's when the final slap will happen).

I just watched Bear Grylls give himself an enema...

2010-01-06T21:57:00.000-05:00

...TV is awesome!

Kansas is definitely lying to the Winchesters.

2010-01-03T14:53:00.002-05:00

These are the things I thought I knew:

The boys keep Ruby in a Devil's Trap for a while during season 3
As a result of the crossroads deal, Dean gets dragged to hell by hell hounds at the end of season 3

And in reality:

The boys trapped Ruby in a Devil's Trap for about 10 minutes worth of airtime (roughly a few hours of actual time, I guess) during "No Rest for the Wicked"
As a result of the crossroads deal, Dean gets dragged to hell by hell hounds at the end of season 3. Not surprisingly, there doesn't seem to be any peace now that he's gone.

There are a couple of other things related to spoilers that have come up already, but the actual spoilers have yet to be confirmed so I won't list them. I'll just say that Lilith is around already and the Trickster is still around and for some reason was focused on preparing Sam for life without Dean.

Seriously, this is why I married him.

2009-12-31T22:55:00.003-05:00

A while back I posted this question: What's a good euphemism for having sex with someone and then killing them? As it turns out, I should have asked my husband at the time. For some reason I just asked him now and his response was brilliant: "To mantis."

Way to pull a George Lucas, RTD!

2009-12-31T22:31:00.003-05:00

2009 Thanksgiving Special "The Waters of Mars"

I finally got around to watching the Thanksgiving special. I don't have much to say. I spent the first 40 minutes or so trying not to fall asleep. I spent the rest of it screaming "What the fuck?" at the TV. I do kind of like the callback to the idea that he needs someone to tell him when to stop (Hi Donna!). But seriously RTD, three episodes left and this is what you give us? REALLY? You are a crazy person who has lost...

...wait, I just had a thought. Maybe RTD has made the Doctor all power mad (it certainly seemed to be there in that last special with everyone gushing about how awesome he is) so that we'll start to dislike him and be ready for the new guy when he dies instead of mourning the loss of David Tennant. There's no way RTD is that smart though, is he? There's no way. There's no way the man who purposely plotted that Davros/Donna/everyone the Doctor's ever met shitstorm could ever be that clever. And if he was that clever, you'd think he'd at least be making the stories interesting as he's making us hate the Doctor.

Whatever. I am not looking forward to The End of Time. Gee RTD, thanks for ruining my childhood (and by childhood I mean two years ago when I started watching Doctor Who)!

There's not near enough shirtlessness on this show.

2009-12-31T13:05:00.005-05:00

I only have one spoiler to confirm at this point (two episodes from the end of season 3), but it pleases me tremendously:

The boys get matching chest tattoos (and this time I found a picture!):

Although, I must say, I'm more than a little disappointed that we didn't actually get to see them getting the tattoos. They couldn't have fought a tattoo parlor ghost and then gotten this clever idea while they were there? I imagine they'd be making pretty much the same faces they're making in this picture.

You can't always get what you want....but sometimes you get Glee!

2009-12-16T19:36:00.005-05:00

I watched the premiere of Glee back in May when it aired the first time and I enjoyed it.

Then I started watching it when it started regularly this fall and I enjoyed it...slightly less. It was mainly the whole deal with Will's wife and her hysterical pregnancy that was bugging me. It was so annoying and completely beyond reasonable suspension of disbelief (and this on a show where people spontaneously burst into song!) and it involved her horrible sister and I could just barely stand it. There were some episodes that didn't deal with the kids at all and there just wasn't nearly enough "Don't Stop Believin'". I stopped watching sometime in October and considered letting it go.

I had the last several episodes sitting on the DVR, but finally caught up today. And I'm glad I did. Now that all of the pregnancy related secrets have been spilled and Will has potentially left his stupid, annoying wife (who, despite the character's terribleness, is excellently played by Jessalyn Gilsig) it seems like the show could maintain a pretty high level of entertaining-ness from here on out.

There's still nothing quite as awesome as Sue Sylvester at her craziest. I love it when she makes fun of Will's hair. Quinn, despite seeming like a villain early on in the series, has become one of the most likable, not to mention sweetest, characters. Emma is super adorable and has a to-die-for wardrobe. Puck is both super-hot, hilarious, and weirdly endearing with his bad boy charm. Mercedes, Tina, Kurt and Artie are all very enjoyable. But I think my absolute favorite character, for the moment, is Brittany, the cheerleader who's stupidity absolutely defies comprehension. I believe another character referred to her as being so dumb that "she thinks the square root of 4 is rainbows." I don't think there's a line of dialog that comes out of her mouth that isn't completely hilarious. Plus, she's always the one doing the most bizarre things while standing in the background. I love her.

So I guess the show's not on again until April. Oh well. More time for me to watch Supernatural.

Summer Glau is definitely a robot in real life.

2009-12-07T23:50:00.004-05:00

2.05 "The Public Eye" & 2.06 "The Left Hand"

I have three thoughts on these two episodes:

I feel like at some point after it was announced that Summer Glau was going to be on Dollhouse Joss commented that he was going to let her play a normal person for once in her career. (Ah yes, here it is.) Maybe he was referring to some future project. Don't get me wrong, she was completely awesome with the dead arm and the OCD and the using her job to carry out her own vicious revenge plots, but I wouldn't call her character "normal".
Victor as Topher was hilarious and wonderful. Enver Gjokaj is seriously amazing. I hope he gets good jobs out of this and doesn't just have to keep circling back around to Joss' projects. He might be the best actor on this show. Although that's not terribly difficult with this group. Olivia Williams and Amy Acker might be his only competition. And maybe Alan Tudyk. And sadly only one of those three is a series regular.
I don't even feel like I have a clue what's going on in this show anymore. What's more is that I'm not even sure that what's going on is supposed to be followable. I can't tell if that's on purpose or it's a product of the writers working with no definitive time frame of any kind, or if Joss has simply checked out, moved on to other things and left Jed & Maurissa running the show. Joss isn't even writing the series finale!

I'm starting to feel like this entire series should have just been a two hour TV movie that was some combination of "Echo" and "Epitaph One" and then called it good on this idea. Or possibly the whole show could have taken place in flashbacks from the "Epitaph One" future. Then we'd only have to watch the interesting and relevant parts. Although I guess then we'd never have gotten to see Victor as Topher...or Victor as Mr. Dominic...or Victor as that crazy party girl. So we would have missed a lot of Victor, but that's about it.

Destination unknown...

2009-12-06T22:55:00.005-05:00

What I thought I knew:

There's a demon named Ruby who's played by a blonde actress...
Sam may be the Antichrist

What's actually happened as of 3.05 "Bedtime Stories":

There's a demon ("fallen angel" in her words) named Ruby who's played by a blonde actress named Katie Cassidy
According to Ruby and the random demon in a body named Casey in 3.04 "Sin City", Sam was chosen by Azazel (Yellow Eyes) to be the second in command when he brought forth the demon army from the Devil's Gate. Ruby used the word Antichrist. Casey said Sam was supposed to lead the demons after Azazel was killed and that she had faith and would have followed him. So I'm going to say in this case that Sam was intended to be the Antichrist, and lost that position when Jake killed him. And maybe it remains to be seen what he is now.

So...that Antichrist thing is pretty awesome. And I'm already digging the idea of this war between Heaven and Hell with humans stuck in the middle.

I'm also pretty gung ho on this idea of Sam as something other than human. So far we know that Yellow Eyes was feeding baby Sam his blood and that Mary Winchester recognized Yellow Eyes the night he killed her. Also, Yellow Eyes systematically killed off all of Mary's friends and acquaintances after she died. What was going on with her and Yellow Eyes? Poor Dean and Sam. It seems like their parents were a seriously messed up pair. Those boys never stood a chance at normal.

According to Kansas, Dean shouldn't be crying anymore. Apparently he's not listening.

2009-12-02T18:36:00.014-05:00

Although I am seriously starting to wonder if Kripke has based the entire series on "Carry On Wayward Son".

2.21 & 2.22 "All Hell Breaks Loose" Parts I & II

So now that I've already moved on to watching season 3 I'm not really going to say anything about the season 2 finale other than this. Dean cries like three or four times just in the two part finale. I'm pretty sure that's more than he's cried in the rest of the series so far. And due to all the crying scenes, I noticed something:

This is a regular Dean Winchester scene:

This is a scene in which Dean is emotional and crying and it's pretty representative of any scene I've watched so far in which Dean is emotional and crying:

This has me wondering whether the thick Texan accent is an acting choice by Jensen Ackles or whether the accent thickness is just a natural product of him being on the verge of tears. He is from Dallas, after all. But that accent is thick. I'm thinking it's most likely an acting choice, but regardless, I enjoy it. Probably just because I enjoy Dean crying. I hope Sam dies a few more times over the course of the series. And then just keeps undying. I guess he's not listening to Kansas either.

Shit went down only partially as I'd expected.

2009-11-30T09:18:00.003-05:00

Okay, so relevant through the end of season 2, here were the things I thought would happen:

Jess appears again at some point during the series, but probably only as a manifestation of some sort or in Sam's mind
Season 2 ends with some sort of showdown that involves some hunters, and some of the "abled" people we've met so far (Andy & Ava, at least)
Ash dies at some point
Sam gets shot and dies at the end of season 2
Dean brings Sam back to life by making a crossroads deal with a demon (although I don't know if this happens at the end of season 2 or the beginning of season 3)
John Winchester may come back from the dead

The thing about Jess was relatively accurate in 2.20 "What Is and What Should Never Be" except she's still alive in Dean's wish-verse, as opposed to something cause by Sam.

And here's what actually happened over the course of episodes 2.21 & 2.22 "All Hell Breaks Loose" Parts I & II:

Old Yellow Eyes puts the "abled" people we've met so far (Sam, Andy & Ava), plus two new ones, together and coerces them into killing each other
Ash dies in the fire at The Roadhouse (side note: It's a wonder no demon had ever thought to take out The Roadhouse before. Seems like an obvious way to kill a lot of hunters in one fell swoop.)
Sam gets stabbed in the spine (and likely some vital organs) and dies at the end of Part I
At the beginning of Part II, Dean makes a deal with a crossroads demon to get Sam back in exchange for his own soul in one year
John Winchester doesn't come back to life, but his spirit does crawl out of hell long enough to help Dean kill Yellow Eyes; he then disappears in a puff of light, presumably off to heaven now that the deal he made with Yellow Eyes that sent him to hell is null and void

There's one other unsubstantiated spoiler that may be relevant to what was explained in this finale, but there's a key word that I'm waiting to be mentioned before I evaluate whether or not that spoiler is accurate.

I feel like I'm also going to write an actual post about the two finale episodes. Amazingly, things happened that I did not know about in advance and some of those things were pretty damn cool. Plus, so many instances of crying to point out and gush over!

What's a good euphemism for having sex with someone and then killing them?

2009-11-25T21:02:00.009-05:00

I feel pretty stupid posting about a specific episode that aired three years ago, but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to help myself when it comes to this show. I feel this could be a repeat of the Great Heroes Brain Loop of '08. Or possibly worse. At least this is a show I actually like.

But I do at least feel like I can justify this post by it's being a follow up to my Great Supernatural Spoilers Post of Yesterday.

2.17 "Heart"

So, Sam did, in fact, bang a werewolf. Unfortunately it was while she was in human form. Though, to be honest, the werewolf form wouldn't have been that different. The Supernatural version of werewolf seems to just be a person with a lot of extra long teeth, long, sharp fingernails, super strength, and the desire to slash people's chests open and eat their hearts. Pretty similar to their version of vampires. Which seemed odd, but it did spare us and them the embarrassment of the crappy costumes that usually go along with TV werewolves.

Also, in regards to Sam banging the werewolf, I am reminded of the fact that sex scenes on TV that is not HBO (and probably Showtime), by and large, suck. The idea of it was certainly hot, but the reality...was less so. The whole scene basically consisted of a lot of close up shots of shoulders, necks and forearms, some very chaste kissing, and a lot of quick edits. Aside from the occasional shot of Padalecki's freakin' incredible biceps, it was pretty unexciting.

More exciting, however, was the last scene. For some freaky reason I love it when the boys (or boys in general) cry, and this episode had SO. MUCH. CRYING! The werewolf cried. Sam cried. Dean cried. Sam shot the werewolf. So awesome.

On being sketchy on a plane:

2009-11-24T10:11:00.002-05:00

I needed a little extra dose of Jared Padalecki's shoulders this past weekend and I happened to be traveling on a plane, so I Netflixed the remake of Friday the 13th, which he happens to star in, and took it with me to watch on my netbook on the plane. This was generally a successful plan, as it featured Padalecki in a snug t-shirt that nicely showed off his torso and arms, and it was amusing enough to keep me entertained for almost 2 hours. It did, however, raise an interesting question that hadn't occurred to me before.

Obviously any remake of Friday the 13th is going to be rated R because that's just the nature of horror movies. The reality, though, was that this was rated R for gratuitous nudity, drug use, and violence. There was more than one scene that very clearly featured people having sex. There were many, many scenes of topless women and one with full frontal female nudity. There were also a couple of scenes with people smoking from a very elaborate bong. On top of all that, there were tons of truly creative murders. Honestly a couple of them made me feel a little sick.

I became so concerned after the first few minutes that I literally had to tip the screen down to an awkward angle in an attempt to make sure the people around me couldn't see what was happening. Maybe the issue was that I was in the middle seat and couldn't tilt the whole screen towards the wall the way I could in a window seat. If I'd been sitting next to kids or elderly people I certainly would have stopped watching. As it was, I was sitting between two kind of youngish to maybe middle aged guys who were both watching movies on their own laptops. But it still makes me question whether or not it's ever appropriate to watch that kind of thing in relative public.

Right, anyway, I'm kind of leaning towards it having been inappropriate. I may choose to be more careful about this kind of thing in the future. Anyone reading this should feel free to weigh in.

The other question, though, is whether or not me watching an inappropriate movie is better or worse than the teenage girl who sat in front of me and talked so incredibly loudly through the entire flight that I could hear her through my fancy, sound blocking, earbuds.

Beware! Crazy Supernatural Spoilers!

2009-11-23T17:12:00.014-05:00

* I've linked each spoiler to the post the future post that addresses it. I've also amended a few and added a few since the initial posting.

I didn't want to write about this in my previous post because I'm going to reveal all of the things I know and I don't want to risk my watching partners reading this and being spoiled themselves. Husband and roommate, if you're reading this, stop now.

So I already knew a few things from watching random episodes from seasons 3 & 4. But most of my knowledge comes from reading random stuff about the show. I always try to avoid spoilers but I am really, really bad at it. I have that fanfiction problem, and that, along with imdb searches of guest actors and a conversation with a friend who has no aversion to spoiling, has basically clued me in to a lot of upcoming events in the show. And because I basically watch every episode waiting for the things I already know are coming, I'm going to write them down in the hope of alleviating that anxiety.

So here they are...The things I accidentally already know about Supernatural, in roughly the chronological order that I understand them to happen:

Things I've seen alluded to more than once but are unsubstantiated:

Okay, I think that's all. And, Wow, it would hardy seem worth watching the show at this point if I were just in it for the plot. Luckily I'm not. Maybe as I continue to watch I'll periodically report back on whether or not these things that I think I know turn out to be correct.

Turns out I'm a sucker for hot demon hunters who cry. Big surprise.

2009-11-23T14:46:00.005-05:00

So, Supernatural...has eaten my brain. I think the recap before the season 1 finale shows how awesome this show is better than any words I could put together.

Obviously I knew in advance that I'd love this show, but my god, I love this show. From the very start there was nothing not to love. Two smokin' hot guys driving around in a hot car, listening to classic rock, killing demons and crying about their daddy. Pretty much everything I could ever want in a show.

So far my watching partners (husband & roommate) and I are about 2/3 of the way through season 2. I'd say that, on average, the episodes dealing with the series arc (usually written by Kripke) are pretty solidly good. The oneshots in between can kind of vary wildly from awesome ("Scarecrow") to entertaining in their craptasticness ("Hell House") to just downright boring ("Houses of the Holy"). I'm hoping that the further into the series we get, the less frequent oneshots there'll be, which should theoretically up their overall quality.

I have a lot of random thoughts about what I've watched so far, but they're kind of all over the place so maybe I'll spread them out over many posts. One thing I did find particularly amusing when I started watching was that I had a really hard time remembering that Jared Padalecki was Sam and Jensen Ackles was Dean. Years ago I watched a fair bit of Gilmore Girls with one of my best friends and Padalecki played a character named Dean. So I basically spent the first half season of Supernatural calling both of the guys Dean. That issue has since been corrected. Similarly, whenever Jeffrey Dean Morgan is on screen my roommate continues to call him "Denny" while my husband calls him "The Comedian."

Ah. One other thing I love about this show is that it doesn't take itself too seriously. I already knew this from the random episode of season 4 I'd watched last year, but it's good to know that that one episode wasn't a singular occurrence. It makes it easier to forgive any inconsistencies in quality. And it's much more pleasant than watching Lost*.

So that's my take on the adventures of the Winchester brothers. Pretty much the only thing that would make this show more enjoyable for me would be if they occasionally made out with each other. The UST between those two is CRAZY. Given society's general displeasure with incest (except when it occurs between opposite gendered twins in Europe in movies released in 2004: #1, #2), I'm pretty sure I'm out of luck on that one. But then that's what fanfic is for.

*Lost actually has a reasonable sense of humor about itself (and by that I mean everything ever said by Hurley). I just don't enjoy watching it. It was a pretty terrible comparison but I couldn't resist the opportunity to Lost-bash.

My best ideas are always a few minutes too late.

2009-11-12T01:24:00.001-05:00

I should have titled the last post "Paul Ballard succeeds!". Oh well.

Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo*

2009-11-12T00:22:00.003-05:00

Yep, it's over.

I know I shouldn't be this weirdly sentimental towards a person I don't know, but Joss' little post nearly made me shed a tear. I'm probably more disappointed for him than I am that the show is done. Although there are a lot of lingering questions that I would have loved to have learned answers to. And I have a weird obsession with the relationship between Adelle and Topher as of late. I would have loved to see how that developed. Anyway, at least there's Epitaph One. Maybe every show should start out by showing the endpoint to give people cool stuff to look forward to. Oh...wait...that's FlashForward. Nevermind. Bad idea.

Also, does this officially make Summer Glau a show killer? Her episodes haven't aired yet. Does it still count?

*I really wanted to title this post something like "Curse Fox's sudden but inevitable betrayal", but it had already been said several times in the Whedonesque comments thread and it didn't seem right to steal it.

This falls under the category of "some other crap", and the subcategory "nostalgic crap".

2009-11-04T17:42:00.003-05:00

I've lived in 9 cities and towns in my life. Lived in 6 different houses, 4 apartments, and 4 dorm rooms. On top of that there are several cities and a number of houses that my various friends and family members have lived in over the course of my life that have felt like my homes away from home. And yet whenever I'm feeling really deeply nostalgic, it's always for the same place. And I'm pretty sure that that one place is the only place I've ever truly despised.

Or at least I thought I did at the time. Because damn do I miss it sometimes. While I was there I would've said that the only thing I liked was the house. And I do miss the house. I miss my bedroom, the random room next to my bedroom, the kitchen, the dining room, the laundry room, the yard, the garage. I even miss my closet. I haven't officially lived there for 9 years, and it's possible I can describe that house better than the one I live in now. But it's not just about the house.

I miss the depressing nursing home across the street. I miss the weird park back behind the house where there might have always been fire ant piles and dog poop in the grass. But it was the best place to watch the thunderstorms roll in. And the old high school that had been turned into a museum loomed over the park like something out of a horror movie. A crappy horror movie, but still. I miss the train tracks nearby and the trains that would rattle the windows in my room and would sound their horns every few seconds for 5 minutes at least once an hour all night long. I miss the little, tiny library on the random side street off the loop that I probably only went to four times. I miss the "downtown" with the package store, the bizarre and pretty unhelpful general store, and a whole lot of boarded up, possibly condemned, buildings.

I miss the three mediocre mexican food restaurants that my family rotated through every couple of weeks. I miss the Movie Gallery in the grocery store strip mall, with the warped and practically unplayable VHS copy of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. And the Whataburger in the parking lot in front of the Movie Gallery. I miss the weird mall with nothing in it but a Dollar Store and an Army recruiting office, and there may have been a JCPenneys, but not one anyone would ever want to go in. And the movie theater on the opposite side of town, a full 3 1/2 minutes away, with the coyotes in the parking lot. And the gas station with the tanning beds. And the vet's office that always had random animals like wolves and hedgehogs in the waiting room. I miss the goddam Walmart Supercenter. And the fucking dogwood trees.

I miss the one classic rock radio station.

And I miss the drive to school. Possibly the worst thing ever while I was there, and I'm pretty sure I miss it the most. Ten minutes from my house to the town that, in my mind, consisted of nothing but one old gutted Victorian house with a double wide and a barn in the front yard. I think another few until the place where the old man pulled out of his driveway and hit an oncoming car and killed the woman and child inside. Another few minutes to the house that was just a shack with a landfills worth of junk in the yard. And a few more to the town with the one stoplight and a Dairy Queen and some sort of mini-mart that was possibly named after Superman's father. And then the road was four lanes instead of two, and there were farms on either side, with cows and the huge round bales of hay. And there was the place that used to be a Dairy Queen, but had become independently owned. They served Dairy Queen food and the sign had words like "chicken" and "burgers" and possibly "catfish", but no distinguishable restaurant name. I can't remember any more if that place came before or after the county line, but now that I've put it before I'm feeling like maybe it was after. And at the county line there were the giant liquor stores with the drive-thru windows. And at certain times of year that area always smelled like skunk. And then there was the bridge over the man made lake where the bugs were so thick at night that it sounded like rain on the windshield. And a little past that were the farm stands that only sold vidalia onions. Then the grocery store with the attached gas station and the cheapest gas I've ever seen and probably ever will ($0.79 a gallon). And then the loop, with the place on the corner that sold a bunch of different types of stone. And then the school, which I don't quite miss with the fervor that I miss the rest of it all.

And I feel like somewhere along that route there was a church that had previously been a grocery store, but that may have been on a different road. Possibly the road that had the house with the dead chickens hanging from clotheslines in the front yard. I miss that road too, but not quite so much.

I'm not sure why I needed to write all of this down. I don't know if those are the kinds of things I'll tell my kids about my childhood, or the things I'll reminisce about when I'm really old. I'm not even sure if I ever want to go back to that place, because surely some of those things won't be there any more and I'll be disappointed. But now I think I'll go listen to Pink Floyd's The Wall...and the soundtrack to Can't Hardly Wait...and possibly some Ben Folds' Five. Maybe I'll text my sister to say Hi.

God help me, I like that crazy bitch.

2009-10-29T09:16:00.005-04:00

I know I haven't posted in forever with the exception of the one Wil Wheaton bit, but I'm starting back up and it's going to be a totally random jumble of summer and early fall stuff mixed in with new stuff. Anyway...

...Just read about the new version of Scrubs that's starting on Dec. 1. Scrubs had a series finale at the end of last year and then, for some reason, got renewed despite the fact that many of the actors had already moved on to other things. Janitor is on the ABC sitcom The Middle, which I haven't watched yet, and Jordan (who I realize was only a supporting character but a highly enjoyable one) is on Bill Lawrence's new, quite funny show Cougartown. Plus Sarah Chalke seems to be busy starring in everything on Lifetime or marketed to women (seriously, it's like she's the Brooke Shields of the hipster generation).

Point is, those people are busy. So the show is coming back with just Turk and Dr. Cox and they seem to be teaching at a medical school. I was totally willing to write this off and never watch Scrubs again, despite the fact that I do love Turk and Dr. Cox (but without people like Eliot, Kelso, Ted, Jordan, Janitor, Snoop Doctor, that doctor who killed his wife, Colonel Doctor, etc. around, it just won't be the same), until I read that my favorite intern from last season, Denise (aka Jo), played by Eliza Coupe, is going to be on it as well. Dammit!

Here's some awesome Jo:

You're really pissed that you just had to watch that whole damn video of random sub par Scrubs clips just to understand this post title, aren't you? Yeah, I try.

Wil Wheaton on The Big Bang Theory!

2009-10-20T22:46:00.003-04:00

3.05 "The Creepy Candy Coating Corollary"

Yay! That is all.

P.S. I haven't watched TNG in months but this makes me want to start watching again. Which is weird, because I stopped watching after Wesley Crusher had left for Starfleet Academy so when I start watching again there will be no Wil Wheaton. But even more than this makes me want to watch TNG, it makes me want to watch that episode of Family Guy with the whole TNG cast.

Eric is my new Spike.

2009-08-18T23:36:00.003-04:00

2.09 "I Will Rise Up"

I really just need to point out how completely and utterly amazing this week's True Blood was. So many good bits. Jason's thumbs up to Sookie after the explosion and his admittance that people in Bon Temps only like him for his "sex abilities" were brilliant. Sookie was rocking some of her best hair ever. Hoyt and Jessica continue to be cuter, more endearing, more well adjusted and mature than anyone else on the show...and probably real life. Lafayette kicking some Eggs ass was definitely pleasing.

But most importantly Eric was all kinds of awesome! The bit at the beginning where he pretended to be injured so that Sookie would drink some of his blood while trying to save him and then shrugging off her anger when she realized what had happened was funny. Constantly jumping to Godric's defense and leaning in so close while talking to him that their foreheads were almost touching was cute. Weeping when he realized Godric was planning to meet the sun and wouldn't let Eric join him was sad and moving. And of course naked Eric co-starring in Sookie's sex dream was amazingly hot. Basically all I could ever need in a show.

I'm not sure why I made this a True Blood post. I really just wanted to talk about the fact that I'm now completely obsessed with Alexander Skarsgard. I'm already watching Swedish TV shows on youtube, for god's sake. Damn, I wish I knew Swedish. I wonder how long I'll resist the urge to Netflix Generation Kill.

I've already gone back to watch him in Zoolander. That's right, Zoolander:

And I thought I was disappointed about missing Comic Con before...

2009-08-18T14:51:00.002-04:00

...knowing I missed this is just downright depressing.

Apparently he has a large penis.

2009-07-04T11:32:00.002-04:00

After seeing the previews for the new HBO series Hung my thought was pretty much "looks like Weeds except with prostitution instead of drugs".

Unfortunately it wasn't quite that. Weeds managed to get the background explanations across and still be pretty funny and introduce a number of its quirky supporting characters all in the first episode. For some reason Hung was so caught up expositing Ray's unfortunate circumstances over and over again that it didn't have much time left to be funny or to make us care about the few quirky supporting characters. Seriously, did they really need to explain to us how great he was in high school 3 times? And how many times did we really have to dwell on the charred remains of his house? It's like the writers (or HBO execs) didn't think an audience would accept his choice to be a gigolo unless it was overwhelmingly convinced about how terrible his life had become. And not only did they repeatedly show us how much his life was sucking, but there was also a voiceover so that he could tell us how much his life sucked even when the visual evidence of it wasn't on the screen. There's no way Showtime would ever be this apologetic.

Apart from all of that repeating of his dire circumstances and crappy life, the show really only had one joke and, just like the exposition, it was repeated over and over again. He's got a big dick. We get it. And to be honest, it's really not that funny. Neither is hearing the various women in the show talk about it. And in this episode it was really just his ex-wife and his poet/pimp lady. I'm concerned that in future episodes, when more women become involved in the "he has a big dick" discussion, it will become even more tedious and unfunny.

So that's it. Basically I found the show tedious and not near as funny as it could be. I mean, it has a cast full of people who know how to be funny. At least Thomas Jane, Jane Adams and Anne Heche are funny. So far their comedic skills are being grossly underused. Maybe I'll watch again this week to see if it gets any better, but so far it's no Weeds.

Cajun Accent for Actors!

2009-06-25T23:26:00.002-04:00

I've just finished watching season 1 of HBO's True Blood. I have enjoyed it. I will now start enjoying season 2.

I read the first three books in Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series on which the show is based. I know I enjoyed the books at the time. I even suggested them to a friend of mine who has now read all of the books in the series. For some reason, though, I doubted that I would actually like the show. I don't know why. It has vampires, other magical/mystical things, melodrama and sex. Basically my favorite things (throw in pirates and it'll become my favorite show ever). But the real key to the show's entertainment value, I believe, is that it doesn't take itself too seriously. It allows itself to be as deliciously campy as a southern vampire sexy melodrama murder mystery series would inevitably be. And, as a result, it is enjoyable to watch. I wish some other shows would start following this model (*cough*Heroes*cough*; this also reminds me that I really need to start watching Supernatural).

The unfortunate thing about the end of season 1 is that Lafayette, Amy, Eddie, Gran and Rene are all dead now. But on the plus side for season 2: Admiral Cain! And religious fervor!

This couldn't possibly be better and/or worse.

2009-06-16T18:14:00.006-04:00

Once again, summer means no new TV and no new TV means I blog very little. But alas...here's a preview for the upcoming CW show The Vampire Diaries, by Kevin Williamson (of Dawson's Creek and Scream fame, and of Hidden Palms infamy):

So after that I am super excited about this show. Not because it looks good in any possible sense of the word. It basically looks like a crappy story with crappy actors (excepting Ian Somerhalder) and Kevin Williamson's famously inane dialogue. Nor because it appears to be in any way an original take on the vampire genre, the high school genre, or the high school vampire genre, because it basically looks like Twilight for TV. I'm excited because of how amazingly bad it has the potential to be. This is a show about vampires in high school by Kevin Williamson! In my wildest dreams it will be like combining The Covenant and Hidden Palms. Meaning so incredibly horribly bad that it is both hilarious and freakishly engaging. I can only hope that the cancellation of Privileged allows for the cast addition of Michael Cassidy as the exact character he was playing in Hidden Palms for no reason whatsoever. Come to think of it, I'd be pretty pleased with appearances by Taylor Handley as well. And maybe some Amber Heard and her infuriatingly slow blinking. Sadly, I'm sure the version of the show I'm crafting in my head is way more entertaining than what will actually be produced. Regardless, I can't wait.

You can't do that. It's wrong.

2009-05-26T16:45:00.003-04:00

Buffy movie remake without Joss.

Don't Stop Believin', indeed.

2009-05-22T00:19:00.003-04:00

There's not much that can't be sold by a great song. I was won over by the show, but I did spend most of the episode waiting in expectation for them to sing "Don't Stop Believin'". And when they did, it was enjoyable. Plus, who doesn't want to watch Jane Lynch playing an insane cheerleading coach?

The Goat Returns!

2009-05-19T14:34:00.003-04:00

4.24 "The Leap"

Hey show. Sorry I gave you a hard time two weeks ago about not including the goat. You definitely made up for it with the finale. The awesomeness of this episode can be broken down into four parts:

The return of Lily and her brilliant friend manipulating ways!
The creation of a new term: The Mosby!
Ted wrestling the Goat!
Everything Barney & Robin! ("I love you" "Let's get married" "No, you're smothering me"!)

Also, bonus points for the return of the Sven Collective. So funny. I love this show. It's like the anti-Lost.

What's done is done.

2009-05-18T19:48:00.003-04:00

The Lost finale has been watched and cannot be unwatched.

If that hydrogen bomb exploding in the electromagnetic whatever really is some kind of reset button for the events of the series, I am going to be pissed. And if it's not a reset button that means that Juliet, Daniel, Charlotte, Charlie, Alex, Karl, Rousseau and Jacob are all still dead so I'm still going to be pissed.

I hate this show.

Still haven't watched the Lost finale.

2009-05-18T16:59:00.002-04:00

The show is there and a part of me wants to know what happens and yet there are so many things I'd rather be doing right now than watching 2 hours of Lost. These things include, but are not limited to:

Making a grilled cheese sandwich (actually doing this now)
Going to the movie theater to watch Star Trek again
Packing up my apartment
Watching last week's Gossip Girl
Eating a burned grilled cheese sandwich (the result of making while blogging)
Catching up on Heroes
Doing laundry

Very possibly the only thing that I could do right now that I would be less interested in than Lost is the dishes...and possibly filing old paperwork.

I've already said this, but College Humor says it better.

2009-05-17T20:39:00.001-04:00

And as I mentioned before, it doesn't make either of them any less entertaining.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

What is wrong with me and this show?

2009-05-17T19:18:00.004-04:00

I have the two part season finale of Lost on my Tivo. I'm staring at the info screen. I can't seem to press play. I don't know what the problem is with me and this show. I want to watch it, and yet I don't. Part of it is the time commitment, I think. I've become increasingly ADD over the years and it's really hard to commit 2 hours to something, even if it is only more like 86 minutes. And the weirdest part is that I only have this problem with one other show, Gossip Girl. How is it that both shows inspire me to want to know what happens, but not enough to actually spend the time watching to find out?

Anyway, I'm hoping I get around to the finale at some point this evening. It just occurred to me what would make Lost a lot more palatable to me. Zachary Quinto. Although, as far as I can tell, there's pretty much nothing that wouldn't be improved by his presence. Seriously. He's being wasted on Heroes (at least I assume, since I haven't watched since December) and he really needs to move on to a better show. Or maybe just focus on that promising film career. That reminds me. I do want to watch the rest of the past season of Heroes, no matter how disappointing it may be. But I'm telling myself I can't start that until I've watched the finale of Lost.

A Bromance for the Ages

2009-05-11T11:51:00.003-04:00

Star Trek was awesome. It was fun, action-y, didn't take itself too seriously, was well cast, and was just generally enjoyable to watch. I have a little more than that to say so I'm going to break my thoughts down into three points:

1) I've only ever watched bits and pieces of the original series and the only previous movie I've seen is The Wrath of Khan, which is to say that before this my knowledge of the relationship between Kirk and Spock* didn't go much beyond general pop culture references. If this movie is at all a reasonable interpretation of how that relationship has been portrayed over the last 43 years, then I can now say that I understand what people are talking about. I thought Chris Pine and Zach Quinto played off each other really well and by the end of the movie I was disappointed that they hadn't had more scenes together. So yeah, I get it. It's a bromance. And it's a good one.

2) As soon as the movie ended my first thought was "I wish this was a TV show." And I was only half joking. The movie did a really good job of presenting the characters as easily likeable and I felt like I wanted to get to know them better and to watch them interact with each other some more, regardless of the circumstance. Guess I'll be watching TOS sometime in the near future. But part of it really was a desire to see more of these actors playing these characters. I really did think the casting was great. Particularly Karl Urban. I never would have thought that a New Zealander who at times during his career has definitely resembled a cross between Brad Pitt and Colin Farrell could so easily walk the fine line between serious and ridiculous that is Bones.

And this final point I don't mean as criticism, simply as amusing observation...

3) It was the plot of Star Wars. A bored and reckless kid lives someplace unreasonably dusty. Random comments about his dead father are enough to convince him to go do something better with his life. He finds a mission somewhat related to his father's death (it's amazing that those of us with living fathers can manage to accomplish anything these days). An old guy in a cave tells him he has a destiny. He starts hanging out with a guy who's overly logical and likes to state the odds of things. He meets another guy (with a sidekick who doesn't speak) who knows how to MacGyver stuff into flying faster. There's a smart girl. He and his new friends blow up a giant thing in space that destroys planets. Star Wars. Didn't make it any less entertaining.

All of that being said, I want to see it again.

* I originally wrote "Kirk/Spock relationship", but then I couldn't manage to not think about slash fic, which, while it has its place and is very understandable in this case, was not where I was intending to go with the paragraph so I reworded.