What have I been missing?

When Battlestar Galactica wrapped up a few weeks ago, part of me was glad that my list of shows to watch had gone down.  There was one less show I was caught up in to keep track of.  Instead I picked up a few new shows via Hulu over lunch breaks at work.  And two of them were shows I used to watch that got lost in the shuffle.

• Life – I watched quite a bit of the first season of Life.  Following the exploits of Charlie Crews as he tries to remain calm and “zen” in the world outside prison provided a good detective story each week, and kept you hooked trying to figure out who framed him.  I missed most of season 2 (I can only tape one thing at a time and Lost wins out at our place), but I caught the last few episodes (including last night’s season finale) and I regret missing the rest of the season.
• Terminator: Sarah Conner Chronicles – I was so busy with other shows during the first season that while I watched it, I didn’t really get into it.  Then when season 2 rolled around, I never picked it back up.  In hindsight, I wish I’d watched TSCC instead of wasting all that time with Heroes.  Real issues of trust, betrayal, and grief are played out well in this show.  Now I have to catch the season finale this week and hope it comes back for a third season.
• Dollhouse – I love Firefly, so this show should’ve been a shoe-in.  But after the first episode, I didn’t keep up.  It’s not that it wasn’t interesting.  Friday just isn’t the best time for me.  Thankfully I had the sanity to go back and catch up on Hulu. It still feels a little rough around the edges, but I’m definitely intrigued, and I think the show asks some difficult questions intentionally (and perhaps unintentionally) about the human soul and what it means to be a human being.  Hopefully it’s given the chance to come back next year as well.

2009 in Preview

It’s almost here: 2009!  After a short drought of nothing new but NBC holiday specials rehashing other shows or showing a mixed bag of holiday videos, it’s finally time for 2009 television season to kick off.  I decided I wanted to put together a list of shows I’m looking forward to in 2009 (that I know about so far). I think the best way to look ahead to 2009 is chronologically, so here goes…

Sunday January 4th – The Unit – I don’t talk about The Unit much on the blog (if I have ever), but my wife and I have gotten into this season, which I hear is the last.  For now, we’re just enjoying the ride, and after it’s all over we’ll have to go back and catch up.  We both enjoy the action, and I just wish there were less scenes with the wives getting themselves into preposterous situations.  The only one this season I’ve found plausible/somewhat enjoyable was Jonas’s wife’s stress when their daughter was  captured in the Middle East.  I can’t wait to see how they wrap this season up.  Hopefully with a very large bang.

Sunday and Monday January 11th and 12th -24 – Jack Bauer makes his return over two days and four hours.  I expect good things from the opening, since last season’s 2-day 4-hour extravaganza involved a nuke going off in California.  It’s everything afterwards that I”m worried about.  The real task this year for 24, in my opinion, is to freshen up the characters and the formula.  We’ve seen the same 24 for a while now.  A different threat each year isn’t good enough anymore, we need something else.  And please, keep the same focus the whole season, don’t wrap one up and then switch everything up during the last 8 episodes like last season.

Friday January 16th – Battlestar Galactica – I’ll be the first to admit that I was a late-comer to this show as well.  I didn’t start watching until just into season 3 after catching with Seasons 1 and 2 on DVD.  I was drawn to this show due to the fact that it’s sci-fi.  I’m still here because the action is good, the plots are intriguing, and most importantly, the characters are amazing.  The ensemble cast puts out excellent performances, and I’m always left wondering what’s going to happen next.  Additionally, you feel like everything they struggle with within the fleet would be a realistic struggle in a society with it’s civilization ripped out from under them.  Plus, while you like many of the main characters, there’s at least one episode for each of them where you absolutely despise them.  In my opinion, that’s good writing.  Hopefully the last half of season 4 is a deserving end for this great show.

Monday January 19th – House - The general consensus seems to be, even at my place, that House is not quite what it once was.  My wife usually mentions her desire for the old three doctors to come back.  I have to admit that I like the new doctors as characters, but I know where my wife is coming from.  There’s no real chemistry or good back-and-forth with the new guys.  However, there is one excellent reason to keep watching every week: Hugh Laurie.  The real tragedy for House during the new year is that it’s been moved from Tuesday to Monday (a night already packed with good shows) due to American Idol.  I hope Fox uses its HD channels to air some of it’s better shows for those of us who can’t stand A.I.

Tuesday January 20th – Fringe – I didn’t actually expect a midseason cliffhanger on this one, but that’s what I got.  It definitely has me looking forward to the return of the latest J.J. Abrahms brain-child.  The interaction between Walter and Peter Bishop makes the show worth watching alone, and the creepy sci-fi science engages me even more.  I just hope this show keeps going strong and then knows when to wrap it up, as opposed to what happened to The X-Files.

Wednesday January 21st – Lost – This show was the reason it was necessary for us to have a TV after I graduated from college and got married.  I didn’t watch any TV to speak of during college and reality tv had basically made me lose all hope that good television would ever return.  Then one summer, I sat down at my parents’ and watched  a rerun of Lost.  I was hooked.  And while it’s had it’s ups and downs, last season was a triumphant return for the show.  It knows where it’s going and how it ends, and the rest of us have to wait in suspense to find out.

Thursday January 22nd – Burn Notice – This show is one of USA’s hidden gems.  There’s no cable at my place, so I started watching this one on Hulu, and it’s been more than worth it.  The action is fun, the MacGuyver-like aspects put  a smile on your face, and the writing is awesome.  The underlying storyline is good, but it’s well balanced with each weeks job for Michael.  You can watch both seasons on Hulu here.

Monday February 4th – Heroes – I’ll be honest.  There’s still some work to be done here.  I was apparently one of the few that thought that conflicted Sylar was cool.  At least it allowed the actor to do something besides be angry and smile evilly.  Other than that, it was an odd season with people getting powers, losing powers, getting them back (or not), dying, and sometimes being useful for a total of one episode.  The one thing I liked was making story arc a half season.  The downside to Season 1 was how much filler there was.

Chuck – The real reason to watch TV on Monday night is Chuck.  Maybe if they’d used Chuck as a lead-in for My Own Worst Enemy, it’d still be on.  Or maybe DVRs have just made lead-ins useless.  Regardless, Chuck has clever writing, lots of geek, and Adam Baldwin.  Chuck may be the funny geek who gets the girl, but John Casey is the man who has Ronald Reagan in a frame in his apartment.

Well that’s the look at 2009.  There’s a lot of shows to be watching.  If I had a DVR, this would be a whole lot easier.

So what are you looking forward to in 2009?  Anything I’m missing?  Anything I listed that you can’t stand?  Let me know in the comments.

You didn’t really think he was leaving…

When they announced 5 years ago that in 2009, Leno would be leaving the Tonight Show and replaced by Conan O’Brien, I thought, “Well, that’s interesting.”  Despite my enjoyment of Conan, as it gets near to May of 2009, I keep finding myself thinking, “Man, I’m going to miss Jay.” But the contract was signed, so what do you do?

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one; the NBC execs felt the same way.  In what I can only describe as an original move, NBC is going to put Leno in prime-time.  Conan will still take over the Tonight Show, but Leno is moving to the 1-hour slot before local news.  In my neck of the woods that 9-10pm.

Of course this also means that there won’t be dramas on NBC during those times.  ER ends this season, My Own Worst Enemy and Lipstick Jungle are being cancelled, and the Law and Orders can be easily moved with no problems.

The first question I come to is, what do I watch now that would conflict with it? Well, Monday’s are pretty much out, only because I’m watching DVRed episodes of Heroes and Chuck, plus 24 when it returns, and then squeezing in BSG as we can for the end of it’s wonderful run.

Tuesdays are House and Fringe, which ends by 9.  I don’t watch anything on Wednesday’s really, or Thursday except The Office and 30 Rock, both NBC shows.  Friday is the other actual conflict with Numb3rs on CBS.  The Unit on Sundays doesn’t count because, well, it’s Sunday.

So Jay, even though I enjoy your comedy, it sounds like at least 2 and maybe 3 nights a week, I just won’t be able to make it.  I wish you the best, but unless I inherit enough money to build a DVR, you’re on your own on those days.

So what do you think?  Will a Jay Leno format work for an hour before local news?  And more importantly, will you watch it?

Social Networks

A weird thought struck me today:  lately when it comes to my entertainment choices of video games and TV, watching TV tends to be the more social of the two.  I have to admit this strikes me as odd.  One of the reasons I enjoy video games is due to the social nature of many of them.

Part of the reason for this may be that the current game I’m invested in is single player only: there is no other interaction with a human being.  Another big part of the reason is a new baby in the house.  At the end of the day, watching TV is the easiest thing to do to relax.

But I think it’s more than both of those things.  Instead, due in part to the internet and in part to quality programs, TV has become something we can commonly connect about.  You don’t need to cable (though soon you’ll need a converter box) to watch Lost, Heroes, 24, Chuck, and a number of other shows.  And if you don’t have cable, you can catch shows like Burn Notice and Battlestar Galactica online through the network’s websites of Hulu.

That’s one way in which the internet has been responsible for the connection through TV: television is moving off of our televisions.  I don’t even need a DVR to catch up on shows I missed for the week. (Though in the case of House it would be nice since episodes don’t go online until the next episode airs.  Fox, this is very annoying in the case of two part season finales!)  Plus in comment sections beneath those shows, blogs like this one, and message boards, we can share our thoughts.

Pair that up with quality programming.  It seems to me there are a lot of shows on TV that require you to talk about them if you watch them.  If you can watch Lost without feeling the need to find someone else who watches and ask them what in the world they thought happened last week, I shed a tear for you.

All this to say I missed (but taped) House and Fringe last night.  My wife went out to hang out with a friend, and it’s our Tuesday night tradition to watch those shows together.  I suppose I could’ve watched them myself while taping them for her and just let her catch up later, but it’s just not the same.  It’s the same way that if I miss Monday night with the guys, I have a hard time watching Chuck and Heroes online.  It’s partially because I have other stuff I need to get done, but it’s also because it’s just not the same watching with the gang.

So what do you think?  Do you find TV to be a social experience or am I just crazy and we all just stare at the tube and go on with our lives?  And if you do find it to be a social experience, which show do you have the most discussion about?

The top of my discussion list is Lost.  If you haven’t seen this trailer/Fray music video, please enjoy.  And thanks to Kristin Dos Santos over at “Watch with Kristin” for posting it.

Heroes is tonight and it’s on notice

So tonight brings the season 3 premiere of Heroes on NBC.  It’s a three hour season kick-off extravaganza.  For those of you keeping score at home, that’s one hour of interviews and recaps you don’t care about unless you’ve forgotten the entire show and/or are the type of person to buy the show on DVD and watch all the special features, and two hours of actual premiere.  And by two hours and I mean 1 hour and 20 minutes interrupted commercials.

However, I’m also placing Heroes on notice.   Chances are I will watch the whole season, and chances are that I’ll give the show a few episodes to prove itself, because that’s exactly what Heroes needs to do this season: prove itself.

I’m being honest when I say that Season one was some pretty cool introduction and then action strung together by some ho-hum plot movement/character drama.  And season 2 was a cool beginning/continuation from season 1 with a kind of dry/nothing’s happening/can we hurry this up please middle cut short to meet an action packed season ending.  There are two lessons I think the writers/producers can take from this.

First, this is a show about heroes, and the main thing that draws people to heroes is that they fight the bad guys.  We enjoy action.  So far the action has been good.  No one will complain if there’s more.

Second, I don’t want to watch a show about Heroes just because there’s cool action, which for the most part feels like I’ve been watching to this point.  I want real characters who I care about that draw me back to the show.  I don’t watch Lost because I want to see if the smoke monster eats someone.  I watch Lost because the characters are worth watching.  Shoot, the reason people come back to House week after week (myself included) isn’t to see cool medical mysteries.  You watch House because of House, Wilson, Cuddy, etc.

So Hereos, you’re on notice.  The people in charge of the show have said they learned from their mistakes over Season 1 and Season 2.  It’s time to prove it.

An Open Letter to J.J. Abrams

Dear Mr. Abrams,

I watched the premiere of Fringe the other night on Fox, and I’ll admit I enjoyed it.  I’m excited to see where you take the show, and I hope the show evolves and improves as it continues so I can continue enjoying.

I have to admit I haven’t always been a huge fan of yours.  I’ve never watched an episode of Felicity.  I’ve heard some good things about Alias, and I’ve seen the first few episodes and I watched the last season online (I know that’s a terrible way to do it, but I had to sit in front of computer all night long for that job and I needed something to do.  I’d love to watch the whole series sometime, but I just haven’t gotten my hands on the DVDs.

When it comes to Lost, I’m an addict.  My wife and I watch the show almost religiously, and I’m happy to see you left the show in great hands with Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse.  The hype for Cloverfield was amazing, but I haven’t seen that either due to a cashflow issue at my home (the cash flows from bank account out to pay my bills) though I hear it wasn’t too bad.  I’m excited for the new Star Trek film you’re working on, and as I said, I enjoyed Fringe and actually watched the pilot because I saw your name attached the program.  And that’s why I’m writing.  I’m concerned.

Let’s be honest: as one of my friends put it, everything you touch turns to gold.  This could be a problem.  Look at your track record.  Alias started out genius, but most people would agree it wasn’t as great at the end.  Cloverfield had a lot of hype, but from what I understand didn’t do as awesome as the studio would have liked.  But then you’ve got Star Trek coming up, which I hope will be incredible, Fringe starting now which looks promising, and of course the legacy of Lost, which I blame and thank profusely for the return of good serialized programs.

I want to like what you make, but I’m just not sure if you can keep it up.  You’ve got a lot of pressure riding on your shoulders.  I don’t want to see you crushed under it.  None of your fans want to look at you as a tattered man saying “O how the mighty have fallen” as a promising project blows up in your face.  It’s possible the hype has become bigger than the man.  I think it’s time to step away.

I didn’t want to say that, but I think it’s true.  Before the J.J. hype becomes so huge you can do nothing but disappoint, you should take a break.  Maybe develop ideas under a pseudonym for a while, lie low, and then recatapult your career by returning from seclusion and claiming credit for all those projects.  Your fans will eat it up as just another great conspiracy from the mind of J.J. Abrams.  Some might even blame your disappearance on the Dharma Foundation or perhaps Whidmore.  I would probably blame it on Lance Reddick.

Any way it goes you can’t lose.  Sure, you might continue to make awesome projects that allow people like Kristin Dos Santos at E! Entertainment to continue to worship the ground you walk on.  But you also might slip up, and suddenly everything you touch won’t be gold.  And rather than remember your Lost’s, people will just talk about how horrible the end of your Alias’s were.

Or you could take a break after you’ve wrapped up your current projects (please see Star Trek and Fringe through first) and come back to create the television series that unites America and the world to the point where we all turn on our televisions and laugh, cry, scream, and lean forward on our seats at the exact same time.  We won’t know, unless you take the risk.  Don’t worry about us.  We’ll be ok.  I’ll put on all 6 seasons of Lost on loop until you get back.

Mike

Some Real Talent Here

I admit it.  Who am I kidding, you’ve noticed.  I fell off the face of the blog o’sphere after the Lost season finale.  You may have assumed that this was because like Lost, most other shows ended at the same time.  This is partially true, though it’s also not a good excuse.  The reason it’s not a good excuse is because this summer I have been watching some television including back seasons of House, the first season of the show Life, and an amazing show on USA called Burn Notice. Seriously, if you’re not watching Burn Notice, you should be.  If you’re wondering, hopefully I’ll put together another post soon to explain why.  For now I leave you with two words: Bruce Campbell.

But that’s not why I’m popping in on my own blog.  No the reason I’m here is because of a quality link I received today.  This link was to a YouTube video from the band MercyMe.  And that video hooked me on what they refer to as the “Cover Tune Grab Bag”.  I will readily admit that they’re hit and miss.  Some are amazing, some are laughable, and some are like a train wreck.  Below, I’ve included my favorite.  If you want more, you can find them here. Enjoy!

7 More Months? Arrgh!

WARNING: This blog post is spoiler heavy for the season finale of LOST.  if you haven’t watched it or want to watch it without being spoiled, turn back now.

Ok, so I can’t confirm that it’s actually 7 more months, but I’m assuming the next Lost season will start up again in January.  So that’s about right.

Well what can I say really?  A ridiculous amount of stuff happened tonight: soldiers died, boats exploded, islands disappeared, helicopters crashed, people escaped, lovers were united, and in the future everything on and off the island went to crap and John Locke took on an alternate name and died.  And all that in 1 hr and 20 minutes (with 40 minutes of commercials).  In short, this was the season finale of all season finales to conclude what I think I’m safe to call the best season of Lost yet.  You can disagree if you want.  It’s your right.

So, I guess I should cover my preposterous predictions to recap and wrap up and talk about how accurate I was.

1.  As far as John Locke gaining access to the Orchid, I am correct.  As far as he and his future self meeting, well, I guess the writers decided not to blatantly steal from Back to the Future 2, which is totally ok with me.  The 80’s (and a future based on the 80’s) were a very scary time.

2. Jin was not the only person to die in the explosion. And he didn’t really sacrifice himself either.  I guess I’ll admit out loud that he is dead, but in my heart, I’ll always hold out and hope that he survived somehow.  Also, it seems that Michael was the person to sacrifice himself actually.  Kind of fitting full circle for his character.  The appearance of Christian was interesting.  Does that mean Michael gets to be a permanent, creepy Island member now too?

3. Ok, this one I was actually pretty excited to be mostly accurate on.  The others did show up and kill them all.  Thought I totally called while watching that Keamy wasn’t dead.  Even the guy next to me said, “He was wearing kevlar, that wouldn’t kill him!”  So he didn’t get whispered to death.  And not to bash the writers (ok, maybe a little) but everyone I was watching with wondered why in the world John didn’t just try to tranfer it to his arm really quick.  It might’ve worked…

4. Yeah, the island didn’t really forget them.  I mean it kind of did.  Because as I told Amy tonight, I think Daniel Farady and his crew of nameless extras got caught up with the island moving.  So really the only people left behind were the crew in the chopper.  But no, the Island didn’t forget, they jsut weren’t close enough.  Or they were airborne.  I’m not sure what the parameters of travel by Island Purple Glow is…

5. I’ll still admit that I cheated on this one since the producers said we would find out.  I’ve changed my opinion on this one the whole season.  When we first saw the coffin, my wife and I guessed John Locke, because who else would it be the most ironic for Jack to be weeping for, particularly if no one else came or cared.  So, though I did doubt that opinion many times, it’s nice to be vindicated on this one.

6.  Sawyer is not yet King of the Island.  But we do know that for some reason things go downhill, Locke leaves, and then he dies.  So there’s still a good chance Sawyer could be crowned before the end of the show.  I’ll hold out on this one.

There are still a lot of unanswered questions (it wouldn’t be LOST if there weren’t) like why did John Locke die?  Why is Sun helping Widmore, or is she?  Why was Charlotte on the Island before?  Did Daniel get sucked up on the move and is he now trapped on the island?  What is everything that Richard Alpert is going to explain to Locke? (Seriously, I want to know it all.) And finally, how in the world did everything go bad on the Island when all that was left were the people wanted to stay there, except maybe Daniel and Juliet? I mean seriously, how can anything go wrong?? All these and more questions will just have to wait…seven more months.  Who am I kidding, they won’t answer them all in next season’s premier.  I should say 2 more years.

Can You Really Even Guess?

My wife suggested I post some predictions about what will happen in tomorrow night’s eagerly anticipated season finale of LOST.  I’m usually not big on predictions, particularly with this show.  If I make them, I make them in an exaggerated, I-could-be-serious-or-I-might-not sense.  That way if I’m wrong, I don’t look stupid.  I will probably tackle these predictions with the same sense.  So here goes:

1. John Locke will gain entrance to the Orchid:  In the process he might meet a future version of himself and nearly cause a temporal paradox.  Instead, both versions will only faint.  We’ll have to wait til next season to see how that works out.

2. Only Jin will die in an explosion of C4:  Jin will sacrifice himself to save his wife and child, as well as everyone else by strapping the C4 to himself and jumping overboard.  When Daniel Faraday returns to the ship, he’ll ask the obvious question: “Why didn’t you just remove all the detonators from the C4 blocks?”

3.  All commando dudes will die:  Realizing that the smoke monster didn’t really do that good of a job last time (only one guy? Come on!)  Richard Alpert will take matters into his own hands and along with all the Others and their numerous machine guns, will kill all the soldiers.  Except for the head guy.  He’ll be whispered to death instead.

4. The Island will move, but will forget to bring the Oceanic 6 along:  That’s right, I don’t think there’s a reason for them leaving the Island; it’s like when 30 of my extended family went to get ice cream while on vacation and left my sister at the campground.  It was just an accident.  Unlike my family, the Island doesn’t immediately rush back to get them.

5. We will find out who’s in the coffin:  Ok, this prediction stinks because I think the producers have already said we’ll find out in this episode.  This way, at least one of my predictions will come true.  Unless of course I heard wrong, in which case this is a shameful list.

6. Sawyer will be crowned King of the Island:  Richard Alpert will tell both John and Ben that they haven’t done a very good job and that Sawyer is the only character that’s really developed and realized that the Island’s purpose is really to just a get a new shot at life and escape life in a cubicle crunching numbers will nerd glasses on.  Plus, he’s waiting for Polar Bear to come back into season.

Ok, that’s all I’ve got for now.  If you have a prediction, post it in the comments and if I see it before the show tomorrow night and I like it, I’ll post it.  After I’ve watched, I’ll hopefully post again on the accuracy of my predictions.

Is Bill Pullman that big?

For the last week, last night’s episode of Law and Order: SVU was advertised as having guest star Bill Pullman. In my experience with a television show, when someone is the guest star, the show revolves raound them, partially because they’re the guest and not on that often so they get screen time, and partially because of the star part.

According to the commercial, Olivia was dating Bill Pullman’s character, who happened to be a newspaper editor.  This is, of course, controversial.  It also causes people to throw bricks through windows at Olivia.  Yes, that is how big of a deal being a cop who’s dating a newspaper editor is.  Or at least according to the commercial that’s how big of a deal it is.

In the show, it’s kind of a big deal for about 10 minutes.  5 of those minutes contain Bill Pullman.  Then he fades into obscurity for the rest of the show, only to mentioned in passing at the end because Olivia broke up with him.  And that wasn’t even the reason the brick went through the window.  That actually had to the do with the person the episode was about.  So tell me NBC, is Bill Pullman really that big that you make an entire ad campaign for a show about his controversial appearance when it turns out that situation isn’t that controversial and he’s only on for 5 whole minutes?  I’m just curious.

In other news, I saw this video on Jeff Green’s blog today, and since my wife and I love the channel it promotes, I figured I would pass it on to you.  Enjoy!