Lost Finale Tonight

I have been an on-and-off-again fan of Lost, the television series. I watched one early season (not the first) somewhat regularly, and then it all got too suspenseful for me so I stopped. The last two seasons, though, I've been a regular and eager fan, without the obsessive side that many have for Lost or that I have exhibited for other shows (Farscape, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, et al.). That lack of obsession has meant have been able to sit back and uncritically enjoy anything Lost has thrown at me. I think I've liked it as a Hawaiian island travelogue as much as anything.

But tonight it all ends, with an evening of Lost-devoted television (interviews with stars, alternate endings, reviews of everything that has gone before, -- and the two hour series finale, which promises not to answer all the questions the show has raised). After this two-plus week period of series and season finales, I'll be relieved, mostly, to have no more weekly shows to feel I have to keep up with -- but I wonder if I'll miss Lost's particular flavor of mystery, pop-philosophy, mysticism and gorgeous Hawaiian landscapes next fall.

(from Joy of Tech)

Updated Youtube link

For some reason, the youtube.com video in my earlier post has stopped working. Here's another that works, today at least.





HomoDommi and I spent all day in the garden today (and yesterday, as it happens) and our conversations run,

"Should I put the dahlias, here, do you think? Or back over there? Do you agree with Salon's assessment that Obama represents the Spock of the 2000s?".

"Here, hold this post while I cement it in. Although it seems like Bush best represents the Kirk of old (cowboy politics), what was different about this movie that the new Kirk seems so liberal and hopeful, rather than cocksure and over-confident? Can we be turning into Republicans? "

"The young man who played Pavel Chekhov so charmingly also plays Kyle Reese in the new Terminator movie. Now that makes me more interested in Terminator: Salvation."

And so on.

Sorry, Joss: J.J. Abrams is my master now

My first love was Captain Kirk. I mean, Dad was way up there, but frankly, when I was four years old, I wasn't quite sure that the guy on the television wasn't Dad, or that the guy weeding the garden on Sunday hadn't spent the week before hanging out with alien princesses and shooting monsters. I've always walked a thin line between fiction and reality.

When the show was in nightly syndication in the 1970s, the family would play, "Name that Episode". The winner could name the Star Trek episode -- by title, not by "you know, the one where the invisible aliens are just super speeded up so they sound like buzzing flies" -- in the fewest seconds of the pre-credit sequence. I was usually the winner. I wore a miniature U.S.S. Enterprise pendant on a little silver chain around my neck in my senior year of high school, and I took it to college with me as a talisman. The scorn I held for the 1970s Battlestar Galactica, a mere shadow of a show in comparison, could not be contained in words.

Even so, my interest in the Star Trek universe waned over time. Captain Kirk became synonymous with the cowboy arrogance and unthinking conceit of the American establishment. I was embarrassed ever to have loved him, unsophisticated and hayseed as he was. Han Solo (and then Indiana Jones) shouldered Kirk to one side, and was in turn displaced by others. The heroes of more recent mainstream science fiction have been too dark and sophisticated to love -- Kyle Reese (or should it be the Terminator himself), the shocking cynism of Neo in The Matrix, the brilliant coward Baltar in Battlestar Galactica.

I watched a year or two of the Next Generation; virtually none of any of the later franchise series. I stopped seeing the movies after the wretched fifth one. Most recently, I have been enthralled by Battlestar Galactica, the dark, frakking anti-matter to the bright, optimistic Star Trek universe. When I heard they were making this prequel, I was amused, impressed by the announcements of casting choices, but not overly interested.

And then the reviews came out, and even HomoDommi expressed an interest in seeing it on the big screen, and I started getting excited. So a group of us saw it yesterday.

What can I say? This movie gets it right. Gets it all exactly right. The casting is perfect -- all the main characters are there (embodied now in actors a decade younger than the original cast was, originally) retaining the mannerisms and essential personalities of the original, while allowing for new shadings. Through very clever use of time travel paradoxes, the movie establishes that we are now in an alternative reality to the one our old Kirk and all the rest lived -- so the Star Trek universe has been reset: the prequel doesn't have to lead to the stories we watched in the the tv series. Talk about brilliantly starting a new franchise!

But mostly, it is the attitude of the original show that has been returned, honored, and updated. Each character gets his (or her) duly appropriate introduction. The loving shots of the Enterprise in space don't go on too long. The dorky skin tight uniforms now look more like a light Tevlar-like chain mail sweater over a comfortable cat suit. Plotting shows some thin spots here and there, but there's lots of it. Coincidences abound, but only when they are for the good, and there's always some backup plan that falls into action at the exact last perfect moment, saving the day. A very Star Trek experience.

One review I've read felt that the new film "desecrates" Roddenberry's original stricture that there should be complete peace on earth, no whisper of disunity. Yawn, I say. Yeah, the new Kirk would ignore the Prime Directive, given a chance, but that's not the point. The point is that we made it. It is, like, the 24th century, dude, and the Earth is still around! (Even so, the cities are pretty ugly, and Iowa looks rather like southern Utah.) There is true multi-cultural diversity, aliens and humans working, and loving, together. Those who want to be challenged and admired, go to college. Physics is revered, linguistics is sexy. This is the way the world should be. Thinking that everyone will be happy all the time in that good world, and that ambition can exist without discontent, is naive.

So, I won't recommend you go see the movie, because you can't enjoy it as I did, returned to the arms of my first love, good ol' James T. But I intend to see it again (in the cheap theatres, with pizza and beer).



Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film as "Fun, Watchable"

Corporate Skanks

From 30 Rock:

Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) has come upon hard times -- after almost being granted the CEO-ship of GE, he is being demoted (to the 12th floor!) by his evil nemesis. Someone suggests to him that he get a job somewhere else.

Jack: No! I could never leave the company. After being wedded to the corporate Cindy Crawford for 22 years, I could never lie in bed with a skank -- like 3M.

TV Monday TV Review TV Spring TV

Well, April showers have given over to May flowers. The sun is shining all shinily, the birds are nesting noisily, and the cats are trolling hungrily -- what better to do with your time than read your computer about the television I am watching?

We are now in the lacuna between the Writer's Guild Strike and the Actor's Guild Strike. Woe to the writing actors, such as Ben Browder or Tina Fey, who may get a double whammy in one seven-month period. Several of the shows that I was recommending last fall and winter are back on the air, and several have been pushed until next fall. Some I've given up on, some I've started watching for the first time. Some I have watched throughout, but never mentioned.

Doctor Who. I'm actually writing this entry because of Doctor Who. We watched this week's episode last night, and I always continue in a little hum of pleasure for a day or two following.

I don't recommend Doctor Who to anyone who hasn't seen it before -- I think it's rather an acquired taste. However, for those of you who watched and enjoyed the Tom Baker Doctor in the mid-70's but haven't tried the latest incarnation (you know who you are), I want to encourage you to check out the new show. The creator, Russell T. Davies, is drawing from lessons learned from Buffy -- e.g., It's All About the Pain, Character is Paramount But Story is More So, using season-long arcs, and not least, using comedy to counterpoint the horror. That said, it's not as tightly woven as Buffy, but it's a good thing -- I am growing almost as fond of the marvelous inconsistencies and off the wall hops and skips of Doctor Who as I ever was of BtVS.

We watch them with Boy-Child, who then has nightmares all night afterwards, and gleefully looks forward to the next episode. Which is to say, the show still manages to be aimed for children, while having a broader appeal (it doesn't talk down at all). There is a new spin-off, The Sarah Jane Adventures, which is aimed at younger children yet -- we have TiVo'd this, but haven't watched any episodes yet.

It airs Friday nights on SciFi Channel (in the USA). I would recommend starting with the DVDs of the preceding three seasons (they're on Netflix) -- the first with the incomparable Christopher Eccleston, and the other two with the irrepressible David Tennant. Each season is arguably better than the last (although some fans still prefer the Eccleston doctor to Tennant). Last season had a couple of episodes that were little gems of science fiction short stories, as good as anything I've ever seen on television, almost completely devoid of the Doctor Who mythology.

For other current fans, what do you think of the new companion, Donna Noble? I like that I don't like her, IYKWIM, and it seems obvious that they are playing with that tension between the Doctor and her. She reminds me of Tegan, one of the 80's companions.

Battlestar Galactica. Okay, another reinvented show from the time of my youth. BSG, as it's known, is in its fourth and last season -- remarkably, the creators are doing the right thing and bringing a show to a natural end before it peters out into repetition and boredom.

I have been a fickle fan of BSG -- avidly watched the mini-series that started it off and most of the first season, until I got worn down by the relentless negativity and doom of the show. (I mean - the Big Bad are superhuman robots, looking like humans, smarter and stronger than humans, who are cloned by the thousands at need! It's a Big Bad with no vulnerabilities, and virtually no hope that our human heroes will win.) I saw none of the second season, but coincidentally happened across two of the three pivotal shows of the third season, and now I'm back in the fold watching diligently to the end.

To counter the gloom and doom of the show is intriguing commentary on current politics and military practices, good production values, acting and writing, and the feeling that the story is actually going somewhere new for SciFi on television. It just might be possible that there can be a happy ending -- can they pull things around so that we want the robots to win? Or that there is a future where the robots and the humans can coexist in harmony?

30 Rock. I only started watching this because TiVo recorded it for me as a suggestion. Now I am a faithful fan. I can't say much different from the critical acclaim-- Alec Baldwin is hysterical as the Vice President of Programming and Microwave Ovens; Tina Fey expertly updates the Mary Tyler Moore stereotype of "single working woman" to the new century. I love the supporting cast, although I don't know any of the actor's names.

Guilty Pleasures
I don't want to talk about these shows, except to say that somehow my TiVo is recording them and so, well, I guess I need to watch them. Yes, that's it, I need to please the machine.

Moonlight. If I don't start an episode of this vampire romance, I don't miss it, but once I press that Play button, I'm lost for 40 minutes. The writing is so bad! The story is so soap-operaish hokey! But the stars are so sincere! And pretty! Just to update you, Mick the broody vampire has found a way to be "temporarily" human (I don't know how long it lasts). So now he can eat real food, and I guess consummate his love with his beloved Beth. Unfortunately the course of true love is always at least 22 episodes long, and she's in a bad state right now, grieving for the boyfriend she had been thinking of leaving for Mick -- who was murdered (the boyfriend, not the vampire). It turns out, awwww! he was about to ask her to marry him, so his memory is haunting her (not literally, at least, not yet so far as I know) and that puts a damper on her responsiveness during Mick's temporary humanity.

Bones. I've only actually seen two episodes of Bones -- the premiere, three seasons ago, and last week's episode. I don't like the woman ("Bones") particularly, but she and Boreanaz have a really nice chemistry. And it's a surprising pleasure to watch Boreanaz act. I mean, he was always improving throughout Buffy and Angel, but that boy has developed some chops.

Gossip Girl. This is another show I've watched a couple of episodes due to Buffy alums. Michelle Trachtenburg, who played Buffy's sister Dawn, has just joined this "Sex in the City meets Dawson's Creek" show as a Big Bad. The show won't hold my interest for long -- it's about very very rich teenagers at a private school in New York, and therefore has nothing of interest to capture my attention (it's humbling when you realize you're so old the fathers of the gorgeous hunks are more attractive to you than the protagonists). But I've been surprised at how much I've enjoyed the two episodes I've seen.

Lost. I'm not such a fan that I worry about the mythology of the show. I'm just enjoying the ride, not thinking about it much when I'm not watching. For that matter, I don't think I've seen last week's episode yet.

Gray's Anatomy. The Writer's Strike was good for GA -- they've got their groove back. I kinda wish they would do a Battlestar Galactica and close out the story -- maybe not this season, but next or the year following. Some of the stories they've told have arced nicely, and it would be good to see them brought to a pleasant close, not dragged out for as long as the advertisers will pay for it.

Off the air at present
These favorites are all on hiatus right now, but they have all been renewed, but won't show for some time. Pushing Daisies, starring the ever-more present Lee Pace (he's in about three movies this spring, all performances well-received). Life, which is the show I most miss (aside from Doctor Who between seasons). It has not shown in any reruns, but it will return in the fall, I hope as strong as ever. Chuck. What can I say, but "Chuck."

And you have entirely missed out on....
New Amsterdam. If this gets renewed (seven episodes aired this spring) I'll write about it next fall.

TV Monday urr... TV Thursday TV

Okay, pretty much the whole fall season is completed, and we're on hiatus across the holidays. With few exceptions, all the episodes that have been written have now been broadcast, and the networks are promising new shows "in 2008" -- a nice broad target to aim for when there is currently no end in sight for the writer's strike.

I wonder what the writers do, to stay true to the strike. You can't just turn off the switch and stop working through situations your protagonist could go through, possible mysteries, or jokes, or romantic possibilities. Do you ignore the ideas and hope they recur to you six months hence when the union says you can work again? Do you write them down, but in briefest notes so that technically it's not written? I'll bet there will be a lot of novels written this winter, or at least started, with characters who just happen to resemble this or that guy on television.

Anyway, the chips are kinda in, at least for which shows are going to make it through a whole season and which ones won't (though getting the go-ahead for a full 22 episode season is rather a moot point right now). The shows I liked all got a thumbs-up, and whenever the writers come back, these will finish out a season.

Chuck. My favorite new show this fall, at least when I'm watching it. This is the nerdy-spy comedy-drama. It is shallower than skin-deep, but the characters are delightful and the show does wonderful sendups of Bond and LeCarré and all spy tropes. The tone appears to be darkening (previews for 2008 say that the spies will determine that Chuck needs to be terminated), and I don't know where they could take the story without losing its wonderful frothiness. If you want to catch up, they will be rebroadcasting it in order from the pilot (where Zork is mentioned, twice!) on Saturday nights, starting 12/8.

Pushing Daisies. Not my favorite show, but so strong and unique that I appreciate the flavor -- like anchovies in caesar salad, or salt-and-pepper squid. This is that technicolor, Tim-Burtonesque show about a man who brings the dead to life by touching them once. The story has gone in directions I would never have predicted, and each week I wait to see how I'll be surprised again. Pushing Daisies has one more episode in the can, next Wednesday, 12/12. I'd be curious to hear from anyone else who's seen it, what they think.

Life. This show has grown on me, and is the show I'm most excited about. Life is Buffy for people who don't like paranormal, or Gray's Anatomy for people who don't like all that sex. Beautifully written and acted, it is full of visual and narrative metaphors, using Buddhist teachings in the way that Buffy used demons. The summary isn't so exciting: a cop was framed for a brutal series of murders many years ago, and spent 12 years in prison before he was proved innocent. He has been given a huge settlement, so he's fabulously wealthy, and has chosen to return to the police force in order to figure out who framed him. The force isn't so hepped up about his return, for complex reasons, the simplest being that many think he really was guilty, and some others are the ones who framed him. In order to survive, sane, among convicts who hated him for being a cop, he has adopted Zen Buddhism -- but imperfectly. The relationships (none romantic, yet), the plots, the stories are really excellent. The double-header episode that rounded off this half season was a metaphoric exploration (according to my internet sources who know more about Buddhism than I) of the path to enlightenment, or of falling off of it. Even without knowing that, I could see it was a many-layered episode, any layer of which was intriguing.

I'm not generally that interested in cop shows -- I watched a season of NYPD Blue, and a few seasons of Hill Street Blues, and don't hunger for more (aside from an early obsession with Starsky and Hutch which we can just stay quiet about). So hey, Life must be something special, eh? All episodes of it are available at NBC.com.

Pretty much, those three are it, after all my hoping for a good show last September. I do watch 30 Rock, but not religiously, and My Name is Earl has faltered this season so I don't go out of my way to see it. Gray's Anatomy is still on my Season Pass list; as is Blood Ties, but while I enjoy them, I don't feel the urge to get others to watch them. Saving Grace (which has new episodes coming out this week or next) and Mad Men are still saved on my humongous DVR, but I am saving them for viewing in the low season coming.

TV Monday urr... TV Wednesday TV Updates

Ummm, our Internet access has been down, let's say, for the last several, umm, days. Yeah, that's it. So I haven't been able to blog. Yup, that's my story. Here's some catch-up:

I'm sorta kinda almost liking Moonlight these days, even though I wince (and winge) during every episode. Someone on my online lists pointed out that it is a romance -- and reframing it from "adventure/horror/Buffy rip-off" to "romance" changes my expectations in the right direction. It is still really badly written, and I can't decide if the lead, Alex O'Laughlin, is a barely passable actor, or quite capable but not good enough to overcome the writing. I rather like Sophia Myles. In any case, the show has become kind of a guilty pleasure for me, and I even find myself looking forward to Friday night television. (Blood Ties is on Fridays, too -- unfortunately, because when the two vampire shows are seen side by side, Moonlight fares quite badly.)

Heroes is the opposite: I don't feel guilty, and I don't find it a pleasure. There have been only two semi-good moments this season -- an episode a couple of weeks ago, and the end of this most recent one. It really feels like they are trying too hard. Last season featured at least four winsome, whimsical heroes -- primarily Hiro and Peter, but Mohinder and Matt as well -- all Righteous men trying to do their best. When things went wrong it was due to events beyond their control, and they would struggle to make it Right. This season their stories are dark or boring, all of them are making mistakes (and rather obvious mistakes), and so far they aren't working very hard to fix things. I don't want any of them to "win" -- and they are the good guys, not the baddies, like Sylar and others. Hard to believe that I'm writing that Heroes is too dark and too ambiguous -- I'm usually all for the Dark and Ambiguous.


Chuck has that winsome hero, as does Pushing Daisies, although the former settles for rather ho-hum plots and the latter is frantically weird. I still recommend them, however. Chuck is now up to three references to Zork; the most recent even gave the sense that the writer had played the game. I'll watch every episode in exchange for that acknowledgment of true nerdiness.

The hero of Life, on the other hand, is decidedly not winsome, but the show has superior Dark and Ambiguous. Apparently it's getting low ratings and may be cancelled. I won't recommend it, because a deep underlying story arc is building, and you might get hooked just before the plug is pulled -- and out of the goodness of my heart I want to save you that angst.

Continuing further out on the spectrum of non-winsome, but watchable, heroes, I watched the pilot episode of the critically well-reviewed Mad Men, a cable show that just finished its first season. (AMC is re-airing the episodes, out of order for mysterious reasons.) Mad Men is a drama about advertising executives on Madison Avenue in the late 50's or early 60's. Like Saving Grace, the episode I saw had a numinous quality about it, exquisitely photographed and written, accurately capturing the feel of the times. It's one of those shows where no one is sympathetic, and it made me very glad to be a woman a generation later. For Whedon fans, Vincent Kartheiser (who played Angel's son Conner) and Christina Hendrix (who played the devilish Saffron on Firefly) both have major roles in the show.

In any case, it will all end soon, when the writer's strike takes effect. (It has started, but the shows have been preparing, several episodes of all are already filmed.) Maybe Moonlight will get better with no writers!

TV Monday TV Review TV Fall TV Update

Last week, I gave the lowdown on the television programs that seemed to have promise for the fall, and the programs that I had yet to evaluate. This week, I'm kind of tv'd out, but I'll give an update for those who want to be saved the trouble of watching any television themselves.

Continuing Series:
Saving Grace. I'm still TiVoing it, but I still haven't watched any more episodes than the first. Does that mean it wasn't gripping? Or that I've been too busy watching other things? As with library books (which I read in a fairly timely fashion) over purchased books (which, if I don't read them the evening of the day they were purchased, sit on my shelves indefinitely, unread), I don't watch them now because I can always watch them later.

Heroes. Still watching it, still caught up in it. Still get unpleasant shivers when I see Sylar, now called Gabriel. Still don't care at all about the Nicaraguan twins. Still find the Cheerleader whiny, but don't trust her new beau further than I could fly. Still want Molly Walker to get killed off early in the season. More Matt and Mohinder! More Monica! More Peter (but let him not have lost his sense of Right along with his loss of self). Did everyone in The Photo have Abilities, or just some of them? And what is Bob's last name?

My Name is Earl and Gray's Anatomy. What can I say? One is sexy and involving, and the other is hysterical. Guess which is which? (Here's a hint: Ethan Suplee is not sexy.)

New Series
Despite other intentions, I gave up on Journeyman and Bionic Woman after only two episodes. (Which is not fair, because I don't like the first two episodes of Buffy.) I've read that the protagonist in Journeyman is tempted to have an affair with the love of his life, who died before he married his current wife (don't you just love time travel?). This might make the show more interesting, but I think I'll live a long, full, chronologically monotonic life without exploring that particular story.

Moonlight: I am still TiVoing this, and I haven't given up on it, because the star is (blush giggle) so pretty -- I just want this show to work. But it's overly serious and too obviously written, so I doubt I'll last more than another week.

Life. Like Saving Grace, episodes of this are collecting on my TiVo, but I haven't gotten back to any since the first. People who like the tv I like, like this show, so I expect it's pretty good. I just don't watch many cop shows. Wednesday nights.

New shows I really like.
Chuck. A computer nerd has all the secrets of the government accidentally fed into his brain, so now the CIA and the NSA are dogging his steps (because he's the only one who knows everything). A wildly improbably premise, but entirely enjoyable series. How could you dislike a comic spy thriller that references Zork, by name, twice in the first episode? With a protagonist who is genuinely smart, and also kind? With Adam Baldwin (of Firefly) as the tough NSA agent undercover in a minimum wage job at a Best Buy, irony lodged in his every line-delivery? The critical reviews are reasonably good, but there is joking about the Firefly curse, so watch it soon before it's canceled. Monday nights before Heroes.

Pushing Daisies. The second episode was as bizarre and technicolor as the first. Someone in the lists decided the show is a metaphor for sexual relations in a time of AIDS, but I think that's hokum. I still like it, but it's just too weird, like a comic version of Twin Peaks, so I don't think it'll be around long. Wednesday nights.

Blood Ties. Now here's a vampire series worth watching. It is based on the Tanya Huff books about a Toronto P.I. who works with a 450-year-old vampire, the son of Henry VIII (Henry Fitzroy). I like the characters (she's believably tough, the vampire looks 23, but acts believably old, they have an interesting tension between them -- that comes from literary, rather than television, tropes). I like that it is a show about the woman, not about the vampire (thank you, Lifetime Channel. I take back all the sneery things I've ever thought about a woman's tv channel in the past). I like that it is filmed in Toronto (and looks genuinely cold) with mostly Canadian actors. It's not perfect, but it is good enough to remind you how bad other shows are (cf. Moonlight).

Blood Ties actually started last spring -- the first series (of 12 episodes) is available on iTunes or for free at the Lifetime Channel (streamed, so you have to watch it on your computer). I've been catching up. Friday nights, late, on Lifetime.

Other shows
I watched Aliens in America, (Mondays) which is getting good reviews, and it was good. But I have my half-hour comedy slot filled (and I'm not interested anymore in coming-of-age stories). Still haven't watched any 30 Rock, but since I have my quota for comedy, I probably won't. And I've read a couple recent bad reviews of Friday Night Lights, so I may save myself the couch-potato-ness and skip it, as well.

Gabriel Mallett? (for Dunnett readers)

Kevin McKidd (a photo lifted from imdb.com). He's a bit worse for wear in this photo (I don't know what movie it's from) but can't you see Gabriel in there?

TV Monday TV Review TV Fall TV

The Fall 2007 television season is packed with shows about cyborgs (Bionic Woman), vampires and immortals (Moonlight, New Amsterdam, scheduled for mid-season), the devil (Reaper), time travel (Journeyman) and geeks-mistaken-for-spies (Chuck). After years of having to go to cable or secondary networks to get my escapist fix (USA, SciFi or the defunct WB), this mainstream deluge must be due to the recent successes of Heroes and Lost. Or maybe it is something about the real world going to pot that is driving networks to think that viewers want unreal worlds.

I, of course, prefer unreal worlds. Television doesn't often do them well, however. But what if some of these new shows are actually good? I don't adore anything these days -- I'm looking for the next Buffy, the next Farscape, for some show I can really care about, that will last longer than a few episodes (cf. Firefly, Wonderfalls, or Dead Like Me -- which did last two years, but that was on Showtime, so it's different).

So I've been TiVoing everything and systematically working my way through the schedule. I haven't seen all the new series yet, but I'm catching up.

Continuing Series:
Saving Grace (Touched by an Angel meets Deadwood). Holly Hunter as a cigarette-smoking, adulteress alcoholic cop, who is visited by an Angel and told to clean up her act. I've only seen one episode (I've got the rest awaiting me on TiVo), but it was kind of luminously good -- beautifully filmed and acted, and far from preachy (she's not a friend of the Angel). Mondays on TNT.

Heroes -- I sigh to realize we have to start all over this season with new mysteries and new fingernail-biting suspense. It is nice to see some old friends (Hiro, Peter, Nathan, Matt Parkman), and to know I'm in competent story-telling hands. But I'm dreading the re-introduction of Sylar, because he was the creepiest, scariest villain I've encountered for years and I would be happier with him out of the picture. And I'm also not enjoying the story of the Nicaraguan twins, the Cheerleader is whiny, and I'd rather eat glass than watch any scene with the actress playing the child "Molly Walker". Mondays on NBC. Repeats Friday on SciFi Channel.

My Name is Earl -- Consistently funny, if you like to laugh at trailer trash (I guess I do), but with surprising character development and genuinely unsappy feel-good stories. Thursdays on NBC.

Gray's Anatomy - Yeah, it's a hospital show using illness, injury and disease as metaphors for unhealthy personal relationships, but at least the writing is good enough that they know what a metaphor is, and most of the actors are cute. I don't at all like the current story developing on Izzy and George, and I miss Addison (see Private Practice below). Thursdays on NBC.


New Series I like:
Pushing Daisies (Wonderfalls meets Dead Like Me meets Big Fish)
Trying to get everyone to see this series may be the reason I'm writing this whole entry. This is a pixilated story of saturated colors and jokes in dark moments. A pie-maker can bring the dead back to life with a single touch (but if he touches them again, they die again, and if he doesn't touch them again within a minute, a random other person dies). He works with a private investigator by touching murder victims and simply asking who killed them. I cannot imagine what they have in mind for a whole series, and it might end up a one-trick pony, but the first episode was light and funny and weird and affected (but in a good way). I liked it a lot, so I expect it will be canceled within a few episodes -- so try to catch it soon. Wednesday nights on ABC. Repeats Friday on SciFi (I think).


New series that are disappointments, but I hope they will surprise me (I'm giving them three chances):

Journeyman (aka. Quantum Leap). A journalist inexplicably starts jumping back and forth in time and apparently he has to help people he meets there. I was hopeful about this because it stars Kevin McKidd, most recently seen in Rome, but who I first saw in Topsy-Turvy as the rather dim handsome tenor opera star. (He is my choice to play Gabriel in the movie of the Lymond Chronicles for those readers who care.) The actor is Scottish, although he plays a flawless American accent in this so-far boring series. The hope here resides in a tangled and dark back story on the main characters -- if the creators of the series could come up with such rich back stories, then maybe the episode stories will get better.

Bionic Woman (The love child of Jamie Sommers and the Season 6 incarnation of Buffy Summers. Can Whedon have been making a textual reference when he named Buffy?). Another British actor playing American (the lead, Michelle Ryan). I thought this show was vaguely interesting until Isaiah Washington entered. Then I discovered I'm so put off by his celebrity persona (just Google "isaiah washington gossip" if you have been out of the country for several months) that I don't want to watch any more. Too bad for him, but I don't think it's a great loss for my television viewing. (Gave up after two episodes.)

Moonlight (Angel meets Forever Knight) My midwestern television correspondent thought this show was really boring and bad. That prepared me, but I didn't think it was that bad. In fact, while the editing is horrid, and the direction tepid, I kind of liked the energy (very different from Angel, much more tamped down), and what's not to love with the possibility for twisted incestuous romance (I mean, with the child who turned him "good", grown-up, after she survived an attack by his own vampire mother/sire? That could get interestingly dark, not to mention -- eeeuuuuwww.) By the way, starring another Brit with an American accent, "Beth", the pretty blonde child-savior-potential lover.

Life (NYPD Blue meets House). This series, about an upstanding cop who spent 12 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, and who is now back on the force, twisted and broken and desperately into Zen, but gunning to figure out who framed him, is not the sort of show I generally watch. But the SunnydaleU Group (People who love Buffy and Dorothy Dunnett) are excited by it, so I gave it a chance. And there is something undefinably intriguing about it -- maybe just because it is the fourth in this particular list with a major character played by a British actor with an American accent (Damien Lewis). Wednesdays on NBC.

New series I'm not watching after the first episode:
Reaper (Dead Like Me meets Bedazzled) A slacker finds out on his 21st birthday that his parents sold his soul to the devil, so now he has to collect evil souls and deliver them. Despite good media reviews, it's just not funny. Or interesting.

Private Practice. I'll be honest, I couldn't even make it through the first episode. All the characteristics I liked about Addison in Gray's Anatomy (one of the main reasons I liked Gray's Anatomy) are missing, and the first episode was just too cringingly embarrassingly Hollywood-cute to bear.

Haven't seen yet: Chuck, Aliens in America, 30 Rock and Friday Night Lights (all recommended by Salon.com).

Because I don't actually like to spend all my spare time watching television, I predict that by the end of this month I'll be watching only Heroes and My Name is Earl (because Pushing Daisies will be canceled, and Saving Grace will have ended). And Gray's Anatomy, to continue with sisterly bonding. That will be a relief. And leave me more time to blog.