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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?

Thank God for Fringe on FOX

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Hey everyone – I just wanted to add a quick note saying thank God that Fringe is back on FOX! This show is the only one on network television that is presented with limited commercial interruptions and it really is a great little show. I hope for two things with this show – first, that the limited commercial interruption thing stays intact because it’s awesome; second – that FOX keeps this show going because it really is one of the best shows on television!

The other channels – especially those morons at NBC – could learn a thing or two from FOX about how to put on a good show and (more importantly) how to reduce the amount of commercials during their broadcasts. For example, I find it extremely hard to get into NBC’s new show, Kings, when there are so many awful commercials scattered throughout the broadcast (incidentally, I think that this is what did in NBC’s Crusoe earlier this year, too).

Some Thoughts on Last Night’s Lost Premiere

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Last night saw the return of ABC’s Lost and a return for ABC to good Wednesday night ratings (though FOX came out on top last night). After watching last night’s two-hour season premiere, though, I think something is very wrong with Lost…and I think it’s the creativity factor.

Part of this problem lies in the fact that Lost creator, JJ Abrams, is no longer working on the show. This is typical of Abrams who is getting a reputation for starting a project and then leaving before the project is completed. I hope he doesn’t do that with Fringe on FOX because that’s becoming one of my favorite shows, too, but I digress.

My main problem with last night’s episode was that the creativity factor seems to be gone (or drastically reduced). For example, Benjamin Linus is plotting to get everyone back on the island and in the midst of his plan he walks into a butcher shop and, miraculously, the butcher lady knows everything and starts talking to Ben about his plan. What? Then Ben runs into a problem when Hurley gets himself arrested and it seems that he cannot return to the island. What does he do then? He walks into a temple of some sort which happens to be where some old lady appears to be marking the movement of the island. What?

Hardcore Lost fans would argue that finding out the answers to these questions is what this season will bring to the table. I disagree. Lost has proven that it won’t answer as many questions as it asks and with a set time frame on how many episodes are left in the series, I don’t think that the writers are creative enough to bring satisfactory conclusions to all of the open questions. As I was texting a friend of mine last night, I’ll begin to be pleased when I know the full story of the original Hostiles who eventually became the Others. Once we get that out of the way, I’d probably be less harsh on a random butcher lady being a key to Ben’s puzzle.

The writers need to be careful with the whole moving through time thing because it becomes very tiresome, very quickly. Nobody is interested in watching a show that you have to struggle to keep up with on a variety of levels. I’m not saying the show shouldn’t be for intelligent, quick witted audiences like Arrested Development used to be, but I am saying that the more aggravating thought you have to put into watching each episode, the less enjoyable watching becomes.

In the next episode, I need to see more about Daniel Faraday and more about how that secret room at the bottom of the island was accessed if the Asian guy who seems to be leading the Dharma Initiative didn’t instruct his team to get into the hole. I also want to know why Faraday was at the digging site so many years before Lost takes place. Has this guy been time traveling for a while? Putting that out there, I have to admit that it’s getting a bit repetitive to have an abundance of questions coming out of each episode of Lost.

The first season of Lost has to go down as one of the best seasons of television in history. It was dramatic, thought-provoking, interesting, and it kept you glued to your seat. The second season dragged a little bit and the third and fourth seasons were duds for a lot of fans. Last night’s opening episode for season five really tried to get back some of that aura that the first season had, but I don’t think it accomplished its goals.

Anyway, check out Jersey City Locksmith for the best locksmith service in the Garden State!

Some Thoughts on This Season’s TV Shows (Part 2)

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After yesterday’s comments on some NBC shows, I thought I’d share some thoughts on this season’s FOX shows. Hopefully, I won’t have to be as hard on the FOX Broadcasting company as I was on NBC!

Fringe
This is the best new show of the season, bar none. The show is from J. J. Abrams (the guy who created Lost) and has a distinct “Lost” feel to it (more on that later). The use of John Noble as Dr. Walter Bishop was a great casting decision. Noble plays the sometimes crazy, but always intelligent Dr. Bishop better than anyone else could. He has that unique range in his acting where he can be completely serious or an absolute nut job. Good casting.

What is less pleasing about the show is the interplay between Dr. Bishop and his son Peter Bishop, played by Joshua Jackson. Peter Bishop is supposed to be this low-level playboy turned into entrepreneur turned into businessman or something. His character is supposed to have an air of arrogance about him and Jackson does a good job of bringing that out in his acting. But the writers have Peter constantly annoyed and aggravated at his father and it gets very old, very quick. In fact, I think it got old around the second or third episode.

Anna Torv is Agent Olivia Dunham, a member of the FBI who is charged with investigating events that may be part of “The Pattern.” Sound cryptic yet? Thank you, Mr. Abrams, for bringing some of your Lost thoughts over to Fringe! But that’s part of the problem with this show. And this is definitely an unfair statement, but knowing that J. J. Abrams is behind this show is scary because Abrams has a history of leaving shows and projects half finished. Case in point – Lost. As soon as he left Lost, it began to go downhill. I hope he sticks with Fringe because if he leaves, then this complex show might be doomed.

For now, though, I recommend checking out Fringe or at least DVR’ing it for future viewing. Oh, and BIG kudos go out to the FOX team for bringing us this show with limited commercial interruptions. As the show cuts to commercial, the viewers are told “Fringe will return in __ seconds.” The blank space is either 60 or 90. Imagine that – a great television show with limited commercial interruptions!

House
If Fringe is the best new show on television, the House has to be the best returning show on television. Since I started watching this show last year I’ve been hooked. It’s awesome! So far this season Dr. House, played by Hugh Laurie, has had to face his step father’s death and almost losing his best friend Dr. Wilson. The writers for this show are doing a great job of pushing along the basic storyline of Dr. House being a complete asshole to his co-workers and his patients, yet maintaining a certain air of super intelligence and coolness while doing so.

The latest episode saw “Thirteen” getting fired and rehired by House (and some explicit, yet enjoyable, scenes of Thirteen hooking up with another lady). The games that House plays with his employees and co-workers has been given a nice kick in the ass this season by the introduction of Lucas Douglas (played by Michael Weston) – a private investigator hired by House to spy on everyone.

Douglas does a good job of matching wits with House in the early episodes of this season. He and House become friends and Douglas becomes the doctor’s “on-call” personal investigator. The interaction between the two is fun to watch because it is written very much like a big brother/little brother relationship.

If you haven’t yet gotten hooked on House, then now would be a good time to start. This show is great!

Even more television reviews coming soon!