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TV Review: The Series Finale of 24

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Last night we saw the end of the television phenomenon known as LOST and tonight we were treated to the end of FOX’s smash hit 24. Both of these shows were incredible in their ability to draw in a sustained, rabid fan base and both will be missed incredibly by their faithful fans. And, thankfully, both of these shows were wrapped up the right way. Tonight, at the end of the 24 series, we witnessed the set up that we knew was coming – for the coming 24 movie.

The series finale of 24 had a lot of good points. Here are some my thoughts, in bullet point format:

  • How great is Cherry Jones as President Allison Taylor? That woman can show emotion and the pains of being a national and global leader better than any other President that they’ve had on 24 to date. If they make a movie, I hope that she makes the cut to play the President.
  • The confrontation between President Taylor and Dalia Hassan (played expertly, brilliantly even by Necar Zadegan) was one of the most emotion-packed, skillfully performed scenes on television during the entire spring season on any channel. This was the scene where President Taylor threatened to bomb the IRK into the stone age if Hassan didn’t sign the peace treaty later in the afternoon. Amazing, amazing work by these two extremely talented actresses. Brilliant.
  • Oh, by the way, can anyone play the hateful, scorned woman better than Zadegan? Absolutely amazing performance. When she snapped at President Taylor that there was nothing else to say after the Russian President arrived, you could almost feel the thought of, “You filthy bitch,” ingrained in her words. That’s hatred right there!
  • And what can you say about Kiefer Sutherland’s performance as Jack Bauer? Not only was be great on tonight’s series finale, but he played the most convincing anti-terrorist, patriotic American that I’ve ever seen on television. Sutherland should rest easy knowing that he has single-handedly created and dominated the anti-terrorist character that all future anti-terrorist characters will be measured up against.
  • How surreal was the end of the first hour of the finale when Jack put a sleeper hold on Chloe O’Brian (performed by Mary Lynn Rajskub) and knocked her out? Of course, Chloe got her revenge by blasting Bauer in the upper chest before the CTU team came in.
  • And I don’t know about you, but how great is Gregory Itzin at playing the weasel of the show, former President Charles Logan? That’s some good, scumbag acting right there!
  • If I had to choose one person that made tonight’s series finale better than could have been expected, it has to be Cherry Jones. She slightly beats out the great performances put on by Necar Zadegan and Gregory Itzin. Absolutely wonderful job tonight. The way that you could see every emotion on President Taylor’s face throughout the show was a marvelous job.

Talk about a powerful final half hour of television. Between President Taylor’s withdrawal from the peace agreement, Charles Logan killing his assistant and then popping himself in the head, and Jack Bauer getting ambushed and kidnapped and then ultimately set free by President Taylor and Chloe – what more could you have asked for in an action-packed finale?! In fact, this finale was so packed full of storyline arcs and action that the two hours seemed to fly by in no time whatsoever.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that FOX deserves kudos for not piling on billions of commercials during tonight’s finale like ABC Television did with the LOST finale last night. Putting aside any differences that I have with the FOX Broadcasting Company (like the fact that they cancel shows too quickly – Family Guy or Arrested Development, anyone?), they do know how to create a good and proper send off for their shows once they’ve reached the end of their road. And part of that proper send off is not insulting the fans of the show with an inordinate amount of commercials.

Good job, FOX.

One of the last things that I want to say about this, the final season of 24, is how great of an impact the secondary characters had on this season’s show. Not only were regulars like Itzen and Rajskub excellent at their roles, but the introduction of Katee Sackhoff of Battlestar Galactica fame and Freddie Prinze, Jr. of preteen movies fame made great additions to the regular cast. And so did John Boyd as Arlo Glass. The one thing that you can always say about the folks at FOX is that when they’re looking for a computer nerd to fill in a seat at CTU, they know how to find the people with the right look for the job!

Another parting thought – as I said after last night’s LOST finale, I’m glad that this show is over because now I get an hour back in my life each week! Amen! Finally, any coincidence that 24 ended on May…twenty-fourth?! Ah, maybe that’s just the leftovers of last night’s LOST series finale! Anyway, what did you think of tonight’s series finale of 24? Good? Bad? Indifferent? Feel free to post your comments on the show!

Some Notes on Winter/Spring 2010 Television Season… Thus Far

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While I was fast forwarding through the commercials as I cleaned out my DVR the other day, I remembered that it had been quite some time since I wrote an entry on the blog with some of my random thoughts on television shows. So, without further adieu (since I know you’re all waiting to read my opinions), here are my thoughts on the winter/spring 2010 television season… thus far!

Smallville
I’m a big Smallville fan, but I’m not a fan of how they break up the seasons each year. This year they went from January to the end of February, took off for March, and then started up again in April. What’s the point in doing that? It doesn’t make any sense? Anyway, I like the way that Smallville is trying to focus more on the actual comic book relationship to the series and less on the stupid, cheesy storylines. The more that they move in that direction, then the better and brighter this show’s ratings future becomes. Speaking of ratings, Smallville is one of those shows that gets a big bump each week thanks to people who DVR the show and watch within 7 days of the recording. Just goes to show you how new technology helps to keep good shows on the air!

Lost
I was talking to my Mom the other day and I said that the first season of Lost will probably go down as the best single season of a show in the history of television. That show had people riveted to its every move and plot twist – watching the show was actually fun! These days, though, while I like that we’re only a few episodes away from the grand finale, I’m annoyed that there is no possible way for the writers to address every single storyline and loose end before the show goes off the air.

So, while the first season of this show will probably go down in history as the best season of television ever, the last few seasons have to go down in history as a major disappointment. And how do you kill off Sun, Jin, and Sayeed? Good grief…

Fringe
I love it. This show is amazing. The idea that there is another universe that parallels our own should be enough to make any science fiction nerd happy. But showing that alternate universe and the relationship that it has with our own is what Fringe does best. Anna Torv, Joshua Jackson, and John Noble are out of this world (pardon the pun) in terms of their performances. A better cast couldn’t have been assembled for this show. My only concern about the future of this show is that it was created by and is currently executive produced by J.J. Abrams. Why might this be a problem? Well, Abrams created Lost and, well, see my review above…

24
On the one hand, it’s sad to see Jack Bauer and Chloe Sullivan canceled after this season, but on the other hand I think that this is the best thing for the show. In reality, there is only so much that you can do in terms of terror plots that have to cover 24 separate episodes. If I’m not mistaken it has already been confirmed that there is a 24 movie in the works, so that’s good news.

This season, I was shocked that they showed the aftermath of the assassination of Omar Hassan (played by the guy who was the game show host in Slumdog Millionaire). That made for some shocking entertainment television. I was also surprised that they killed off Renee Walker right after she and Bauer began a romantic relationship – I didn’t see that coming. However, I was glad to see good old Kara Thrace (the character’s name in Battlestar Galactica) a.k.a. Dana Walsh (real name Katee Sackhoff) added as a member of the cast. Okay, sure, she winds up being a bad guy and a mole for the Russians, but she’s one hell of an actress.

TNA iMPACT!
Well, if you know me then you know that I’m a wrestling fan. Sure, I’m not as big of a fan as I used to be and I don’t regularly watch the shows (thank God for DVRs), but I still get some enjoyment out of the “male soap operas” that are professional wrestling shows. For a variety of reasons, I’m not really interested in watching WWE any more. Not only has the show fallen to a PG rating (and thus puts out a product a bit below my age group), but I’m sick and tired of seeing some of the same people over and over again (Triple H comes to mind).

TNA, on the other hand, is showcasing some pretty great talent in Abyss and A.J. Styles. They’re also bringing us Desmond Wolfe, D’Angelo Dinero, Rob Van Dam, Jeff Hardy, and any other number of great performers that are getting to rub elbows with wrestling legends Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair in on-camera appearances. For that reason alone I enjoy watching TNA’s flagship show iMPACT! However, if you actually sit down and watch the show for what it is – as a fan of sports entertainment – you really see how entertaining the overall product can be. TNA recently decided to retreat to Thursday nights after trying to take on WWE’s Monday Night RAW head-to-head. TNA is really still pretty young and the move to Monday nights was pretty ill-conceived, but I’m glad that they listened to their fans and moved the show back where they wanted it – on Thursday nights on Spike TV!

V
I like this show. In fact, sitting through Lost is made more palatable because I know that after the show is over I get to see the actress who played Juliet as one of the main characters on V. The concept behind this show is interesting – aliens that look and talk like humans have come to earth in these spaceships and they are offering all of these great technological advances in the name of peace. Sounds great, right? Meanwhile, the aliens are really these reptile creatures that have the sole intent of invading the earth and destroy its people. In fact, a fleet of enemy ships are on their way to earth and no one knows about it!

There is a certain overall feeling of hopelessness with sporadic glimmers of hope throughout this show that reminds me a lot of the Battlestar Galactica series. All of the actors on this show put out great performances and it really is a good show to watch if you’re into the science fiction stuff.

Caprica
This is another show that was stopped mid-season by the SyFy Channel for a break. Why do these channels do this to upstart shows? What’s the purpose? Caprica aired its mid-season finale on March 23rd and the word going around is that there won’t be any more new episodes until the fall. The fall?! Really? What’s the point in that?!

Other than the dumb break in the season, this show is actually pretty good. I think that it needed some time to find itself after the first few episodes and it did. The only carryover character (not counting the Cylons) from the Battlestar Galactica series is Admiral William Adama, though Adama is a young boy in Caprica. At one point, Battlestar Galactica was the best show on television, bar none. I think that if Caprica is given the right room to grow into itself, it can easily become one of the top shows on cable television and probably compete with the network stations for audience.

The story thus far is pretty compelling. A genius scientist and a rugged attorney each lose their daughters in a train explosion set off by a religious separatist group claiming that there is only one God and not many Gods as most people believe. As the first half of the season progresses, we find out that not only are one of the daughters actually involved in the separatist group, but that she (being a genius herself) created an avatar of herself and has it stored in an online world that her father created for entertainment purposes. In fact, once her father finds this out he is able to create an avatar of the other girl that died in the bombing and he shares that avatar with her father – the lawyer – who then becomes obsessed with finding his daughter in this online world.

That’s a trivial explanation of what’s going on and I’m obviously leaving out major plot points, but this is a good show and I hope SyFy gives it a chance.

The Biggest Loser
This is one of the best reality shows on television, if not the best reality show, period. What makes this show so great is that not only do you learn the back stories of each of the contestants, but you actually get to watch them transform themselves into a new person. Anyone who is watching this season has to be impressed with Sam and Koli’s transformations. The same for Michael.

Actually, Michael is an interesting case. He’s the biggest contestant in Biggest Loser history starting the show weighing in at 526 pounds. And here he is a full 16 weeks into the show and he’s lost 192 pounds and is weighing in at 334 pounds. Yet, that’s the weight that most people start at on the show! Quite frankly, Michael can still lose another 130 – 150 pounds before his weight loss journey is over. Imagine that for a moment. Here’s this guy on this weight loss show and he’s lost nearly 200 pounds and yet he’s only a little past the halfway point in his transformation.

Amazing.

For this reason alone, Michael is my pick to win the whole thing this season, although I think his stiffest competition may come from Ashley.

House
You want to talk about great shows? House is the best medical drama on television. Hugh Laurie plays the best crazy doctor that anyone could ask for and he really makes the show complete. Whenever I flip over to my DVR and see what I have stored up to watch, I’m always glad when there is an episode or two of House waiting for me. This is one of those shows that you can watch one time and wind up getting hooked. In fact, I even began watching some of the first season episodes online so I can catch up with all of the storylines.

This season has been good and I think I find myself enjoying the individual episodes and the individual patient storylines more than the overarching stories behind all of the main characters. Maybe I like medical dramas, I guess.

Anyway, there’s my report on what I think of this season’s television shows and how they’re progressing. What do you think about these shows?

TV Review: Battlestar Galactica, Seasons 1 – 4

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Last July I wrote a review the Battlestar Galactica miniseries (which I actually watched in May 2008). The miniseries was a pretty decent production, though I couldn’t follow most of the “inside” lingo. In any event, after I watched the miniseries I began watching the first season. Unfortunately, I stopped watching the first season before the summer ended and I didn’t have a chance to finish the season until this past week.

My apologies for the boring introduction to the review!

Some History for the Series
The first season of Battlestar Galactica follows the survivors of a Cylon (robot) attack on the Twelve Colonies. The survivors are living in what is known as the “Fleet” – which is the logical name that they give to all of the spaceships that survived the attack and are carrying human passengers. The show stars Edward James Olmos as Commander Adama (and thus Commander of the Fleet) and Mary McDonnell as Laura Roslin (President of the Colonies/Fleet). Jamie Bamber also stars as Olmos’ son, Captain Lee Adama (a fighter pilot) and Katie Sackhoff stars as Starbuck (another fighter pilot).

The first season follows right after the miniseries ends with the surviving humans (slightly less than 50,000) are on the search for a mythical place they know as Earth (yes, our Earth). The bulk of the series takes place on a ship called Battlestar Galactica which is an older type of warship that wasn’t affected by the robot attack due to its age. Commander Adama is prepping for retirement and getting his ship ready to become a museum.

Then the attacks hit and the series begins.

My Review
Now, lets get down to some business in terms of what I thought of the television series. I really enjoyed the first season. The best part of the first season was that when watching the episodes it seemed more like watching a prolonged movie and not your traditional television series. I like that. Of course you get all of the history talked about above in the first season, but you also get the progression of the main storyline – that the humans are running from the cylons and trying to find this mythical place called earth.

By the end of the season, the refugees haven’t found earth, but they have found a planet known as Kobol (or the place where humanity was said to have begun). It’s sort of an interesting twist on what one would expect as the payoff for the first season – look for earth, find a different planet, get attacked by the bad guys anyway.

The second season and third seasons become a little bit too episodic for my liking. I understand that this is a weird criticism for someone to report about a television series, but when one of the biggest draws of the first season is the feeling that you’re watching a prolonged movie, it’s a bit of a bummer when the following seasons begin to feel more like your traditional TV show. The other criticism that I have with the second and third seasons of the show is that many of the plots are retreads of earlier pieces of the series.

For example, how many times is there a mutiny (or mutiny-like event) declared where Admiral Adama has to retake control of the battlestar? Or how many times does Lee Adama have to reconcile with his father? Same deal with Starbuck and the Admiral. Then you have the constant battles for power in the colonial government where President Roslin is in charge, then unseated, then she becomes President again – I mean she even gets rid of her cancer before it comes back again! It began to wear on me as someone who was so impressed with the first season.

Then you have the occupation of the “New Caprica” planet first by the refugees and then by the cylons as invaders. I watched that part of the end of season two, the intervening webisodes, and the beginning of season three with a sort of “ehhh” attitude. I don’t know – it was just a bit tedious to watch when you consider that the first season was so well put together and that this is one of those traditional television series where the “good guys” are always going to win in the end (in fact, isn’t that the way with all TV shows?).

And although it began to make sense toward the end of the fourth season, I really didn’t like how the last five cylons wound up being such major players in the series (Col. Tigh? Really?). However, the fourth season really did a great job of tying up loose ends and the series finale was very well done.

If you get a chance to watch the miniseries or first few episodes of the first season, I would suggest giving it a shot. There’s probably not much value in watching a random episode in the second, third, or fourth seasons if you don’t really know anything about the series, but I reiterate that the series is definitely worth watching and the series finale is worth the time investment.

And for those of you who are a little down now that Battlestar Galactica is over, don’t worry. The spin-off series, Caprica, is coming soon!

Quick Review: Battlestar Galactica Series Finale

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Tonight was the last Battlestar Galactica episode in the four-season series and I was pleased with the way the writers ended the show. One of the biggest problems that television fans generally run into with niche shows like Battlestar Galactica is that they don’t often last too long (in this case, only four seasons) and when they are canceled, the show generally doesn’t have a chance to write a decent ending for the fans. Thankfully, that was not the case with Battlestar Galactica.

I’ll put up a more thorough review of the entire series in the next few days, but I wanted to offer some quick comments on the finale itself.

  • Endings: It was nice that all of the fans of the show were allowed to see the respective stories of each of the main characters come to a reasonable end. It can be assumed that General Adama spent the rest of his life living near to the grave of President Roslin, who we also saw enjoying her last few minutes of life. The sudden disappearance of Kara “Starbuck” Thrace was a little weird, but it speaks to the nature of her being nothing more than a ghost for the last season. Still weird.
  • Connections to Today: I thought the writers added a nice touch by having the planet which the refugees finally landed on be our earth, but 150,000 years ago. And making Hera the “mitochondrial Eve” that made so many headlines a few years back was a nice spin, too. Also, it was a nice touch to have the angel versions of Caprica Six and Gaius Baltar walking around modern day earth with early versions of what could grow to be cylons as part of the backdrop.
  • The End of the Cylon/Human War: The final battle between the Battlestar Galactica and the cylon colony base ship was well done and it looked great in high definition. Also, the way the “war” ended between the two civilizations (complete with the cylon leader blowing his head off) was a good way to end the constant conflict.

So that’s the quick and dirty review of tonight’s Battlestar Galactica series finale. All in all, a great show which answered all of the right questions. Sure, some people will want to know more about how the human refugees went from an extremely advanced civilization to essentially nomads and there might be an opportunity in the future to tell some of that story via a made-for-TV movie or maybe through some quick webisodes shorts or something. However, I think that most people will be content with what they saw and will be eager enough to see the coming made-for-TV movie “Battlestar Galactica: The Plan” this summer!

And for those of you who are a little down now that Battlestar Galactica is over, don’t worry. The spin-off series, Caprica, is coming soon!

TV Review: Battlestar Galactica Miniseries

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Let me begin by saying that I watched the Battlestar Galactica miniseries about two months ago so my memory isn’t as sharp as it could be on this topic. I didn’t have strong feelings one way or another one the miniseries and I only watched it because for some odd reason it kept popping up on different mediums that I frequent (online, radio, television). The premise of the miniseries seems compelling and if I have it down right it goes something like this: humans created these robots called Cylons to help them out with everyday “stuff” (think the Jetsons). As in all good science fiction stories, the Cylons got smarter and began to kill the humans which led to the obvious war between humans and robots and the obligatory ceasefire when the robots chose to get up and live somewhere else.

The miniseries begins with the robots essentially going back on that promise and blowing up all of the humans (some 20 billion) except those who are in the Battlestar Galactica (which, incidentally, was about to be retired from the fleet) and other spaceships. The total number of humans up in the air during the attack and thus alive? A little less than 50,000. Going from 20 billion to less than 50,000 in one day is a pretty bad day on the battlefield, don’t you think?

Get that? The only humans remaining are those who are on the spaceships, which have now formed their own fleet and are desperately trying to avoid the robots so they can save our species. To avoid the robots, the humans use an FTL (faster than light) jump.

In order to form some type of respectable government, the politicians that are in space look to the senior-most official to assume the role of President. This happens to be the Secretary of Education which causes a great deal of angst among the hardened military officials who were literally minutes away from retirement before the robot attack. They don’t want to take orders from a glorified school teacher and can you blame them? The writers of the miniseries added a twist in this particular area by making President Roslin both the last remaining figure of governmental authority and diagnosing her with breast cancer. She, like the rest of the human species, is in literal race against the clock.

There are some interesting back-and-forth scenes between President Roslin (played by Mary McDonnell) and Commander Adama (played by Edward James Olmos). The first victory for the President is convincing the Commander that with almost the entire human race wiped out, the war is over and Battlestar Galactica needs to head into “save our asses!” mode. I made that phrase up, obviously.

The miniseries also has three other intriguing aspects. First, the robots have figured out how to look and act just like humans and they have spies planted on the ships. In fact, some of these spies may not even realize that they are robots until they are remotely activated. Second, these humans are not Earthlings. These people hail from an “earth” called Caprica and are part of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol (of which Earth is not a member). And the third, and related, intriguing aspect of this show is that some of the people up in space know about our Earth and think it is a legend. Nonetheless, the crew dedicates itself to finding Earth as the last hope to preserve the human species (though I assume that we’re all living pretty fine on Earth without these people).

The show was kind of fun to watch, but it had too much inside-speak for my liking. Maybe if I get a chance to watch it again I’ll understand more of what is going on during the show. If you’re into this sort of thing, then I would recommend giving this miniseries a shot; if not then I don’t think you’re missing too much in terms of pop culture by not watching! This miniseries served as the basis for the Battlestar Galactica show that is on the Sci Fi Channel now so you may want to catch a few episodes before you decide whether or not this is something that you’re interested in watching.