Fall 2007 TV Season

OMG, I can hardly find time to post on this blog any more! :(

Anyway, the new Fall TV season is here, and there are a few shows to catch up on. I spent the weekend watching most of season 3 of Battlestar Galactica. I have about four episodes left.

Man, did that season suck. I stopped watching in November and I didn't miss much. More on that later.

I see that they're remaking the Bionic Woman. I have a bad feeling about that show (that it will be sleazy), but I will watch the pilot.

As for Heroes, I hated the season finale, but I will continue watching just to see if it gets better.

There's a new vampire show, I think on CBS. How can that NOT be terrible?

Looks like a wasteland for fantasy and sci-fi TV this season...

Primatech Paper Company - Heroes Fans

For the Heroes fans out there, I invite you to visit the very nondescript website of Primatech Paper Company.

Find the helix hidden in the logo on the 'About us' page.
Log in with :

id: bennet
pw: claire

Enjoy!

Drive: The Next Big Thing

Yo, I may regret saying this, but I'm getting a vibe about this upcoming new show called Drive that's going to drop on Fox on April 15-16. I think this could be the next Prison Break.

Here's the teaser from the official site:

The next time you’re cut off by crazed drivers on your way to work, give them a little slack. They could be racing for their lives.

DRIVE is an action-fueled drama following a diverse group of Americans competing for their lives (or the lives of their loved ones) in an illegal, underground cross-country road race. Some of them have been coerced into joining “The Race”; others have sought out The Race themselves, hearing rumors of the $32-million prize. Each has a reason to compete. And each must win.

This could be the shit. Or it could be Cannonball Run. Or that cartoon with Muttley in it.

Learn more...

In Praise of Science Fiction

You never know where you'll find someone praising Science Fiction, but here's a little gem from, of all places, the Huffinton Post blog:

The first step to enjoying science fiction is - well, the first step is getting used to the worst writing on earth -- but the second step to enjoying science fiction is getting past the titles.

And it's worth doing. Because we're living in a science fiction world.

We should have seen China's anti-satellite program coming, but the only venue where it was being discussed was You Only Live Twice.

There was this boring movie where this sonorous blowhard said the ice caps were melting, but it was called Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, so no one paid any attention.

What if a cowardly dickweed with a messiah complex got to be President and started World War Three? Don't say The Dead Zone didn't warn you.

In On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Q is experimenting with radioactive lint. Now spies are running around London, killing each other with teeny tiny polonium specks.

I could go on, but I'm late for the convention and my mom's still sewing my costume.

And this isn't about me, anyway. This is about you. Snooty.

Battlestar Galactica is the best show on television, but you're not watching it just because it has robots in it. Yet you'll still watch Desperate Housewives. Like Nicollette Sheridan isn't more machine than man.

LOL!

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"Tweener" Involved in Fatal Accident

From TMZ.com:

Law enforcement sources from the Beverly Hills Police Department tell TMZ "Prison Break" star Lane Garrison was behind the wheel when his SUV crashed into a tree, killing one of the occupants.The accident occurred Saturday night in Beverly Hills. Sources say one of the passengers, a 15-year-old girl, was in critical condition and has a relative who works for the city of Beverly Hills. One source says the 17-year-old boy who was killed went to the local high school which is presumably Beverly Hills High.

We're told Garrison was not arrested or booked after the accident. Typically, after a "K" car crash injury -- police jargon when someone is killed -- cops will ask the driver to submit to a voluntary blood-alcohol test.

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The Nine

Despite the lack of interesting TV shows in my preferred genre this fall season, I’ve still got a few new shows to watch. One is Heroes, which I expect will be cancelled before the end of the year. Another promising show is The Nine, which follows Lost on ABC on Wednesdays. I like Friday Night Lights on Tuesdays on NBC as well.

The Nine takes elements of Prison Break, Lost and 24, three shows that have been my favorites at one time or another. Similar to 24, The Nine is focused on a brief window of time, but unlike 24, the story of what happened in the critical time period is unfolding in flashbacks, not “realtime.”

The Nine is the story of – you guessed it – nine people, mostly from different walks of life, who happen to be caught in a bank at closing time and it’s just their bad luck that two gun-toting chuckleheads decide to stick the place up. From what has been revealed in the three episodes that have aired so far, what was supposed to be a simple armed robbery turns into a hostage situation that lasts over 52 hours. The drama of the show is all about how these ex-hostages reintegrate into the real world. The tension for the audience is the big tease of “Come on already! What really happened in the bank?”

The titular nine are an insurance adjuster, a black bank branch manager and his daughter, a Hispanic teller, a detective with a gambling addiction, a female assistant DA, a surgeon and his hospital social worker girlfriend, and one of the would-be bank robbers. There is also a tenth person – the Hispanic teller’s sister who dies shortly after the SWAT team swoops in on the bank. And there is an eleventh person—the second bank robber who was also shot and whose life hangs in the balance in the hospital. So far I find the female DA to be a stereotypical icy career chick, so there’s zero appeal there. The black bank manager seems okay, but as the story unfolds it looks like his daughter has a touch of Stockholm Syndrome and amnesia about what she did in there. The most appealing character is the quirky number cruncher whom flashbacks reveal to be the hero of the siege. I guess he tackled one of the bank robbers or something.

The first two episodes were okay, but the third episode was boring. It’s too early in the show’s run for that, so they need to be careful. I don’t think this show will make it, but since it has Lost as a lead in, you never know. Invasion sucked but it lasted a full season on the strength of its placement in the schedule.

Heroes

Around this time last year I was very excited about the new fall TV season. There were an unprecedented number of Sci-Fi and Horror genre shows debuting – Surface, Threshold, Supernatural, Invasion and The Night Stalker – and I was interested in seeing all of them.

Well, a year later all have been canceled but Supernatural. This year the crop of new genre shows is far more modest. Sci-Fi channel debuted Eureka at the end of the summer. It’s light fare about a small town filled with geniuses. I find it boring. The only other genre show is NBC’s Heroes, which ostensibly is a superhero genre show, but they’re trying hard not to embrace that theme and possibly alienate the Joe Sixpack viewer who stumbles across the show by accident.

Though the show is obviously trying to capitalize off of the success of the X-Men movies, the show reminds me of Surface in many ways. I’m too lazy to see if the same people are involved in the writing. Like Surface, the story is split into the points of view of multiple characters, all of whom have clues about the umbrella story -- where did all these mutants come from and what are they here for? As in Surface, we know that the main characters will all hook up and take on some evil secret government agency.

The Professor X of Heroes is a young Indian professor, but the analogy is a little off, since he doesn’t have any super powers (as far as we know). There’s a nerdy Japanese office worker who can teleport and slow down time who’s the most likeable character so far. My second favorite character is the invulnerable cheerleader. Brutal things keep happening to her body to the point where she’s like a living Mr. Bill. It’s an interesting choice of powers for a female. Usually female supers have powers that are helpful to others or are defensive or are “elemental.”

The other characters are less interesting. There’s a Hispanic junkie artist guy that paints the future. Ho hum. His light-skinned black girlfriend is interested in a white male nurse who has the power to levitate and fly. The male nurse has a brother running for Congress who can also fly, but the politician brother is a shithead who held a press conference and told everyone his brother is suicidal to cover for the accident that happened when the nurse was trying to find out if he could really fly. The last character is a white woman who runs an online peep show and has a precocious biracial son and a so far unseen black husband who’s (big surprise) a criminal. The peep show chick has some violent power we don’t get to see since she has blackouts. We only get to see the aftermath – mutilated bodies of the loan sharks who come after her. Maybe she’s a shapeshifter.

Most of the characters don’t know each other, but presumably they’ll find each other in the coming episodes. Hopefully that won’t take too long. That was one of the problems with Surface.

Do I think this show will last? No, not on a mainstream network like NBC. Is it worth watching? Sure. It’s not so bad.

Life on Mars

I’ve found another little TV gem to tide me over until Lost, Battlestar Galactica and Prison Break (new season starts Monday!) return to the tube.

Life on Mars, a fantasy on BBC America is a cop show set in 1973. Only, the main character, Sam Tyler, is really from 2006. While investigating a serial murder case, Sam was hit by a car and when he woke up, he was stuck in 1973, complete with flared-leg pants and wide collared shirts.

Sam believes that in “reality,” he’s in a coma. So he acts funky towards people and doesn’t try that hard to get along because they’re all figments of his imagination, right? However, he’s not completely convinced of that fact. The detail in this dream he’s having is too specific, right down to feeling sand on the hands of the policewoman who convinces him not to fling himself from the top of HQ to prove that everything going on is one big hallucination.

Occasionally Sam gets close to waking up, but either he does something to stay in the dream or something in the “real” world keeps him under and the dream continues on. I haven’t seen all the episodes, but I get the feeling that at some point in the “real” world, one of his loved ones may have to make the decision to pull the plug on him a la Terri Schiavo, since he may be in a persistent vegetative state.

Creepy.

A good show, though I know that I miss all of the in-jokes a Brit would get and I need subtitles to understand what the hell they’re saying. I have to catch up on the episodes I’ve TiVoed.

Take this quiz to see if you’d be able to survive in 1973.

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Technorati tags: Life on Mars | BBC

Abby Cadabby: New Sesame Street Female

Somehow I never noticed back in the day that all of the Sesame Street characters I was watching were male. This is especially funny because I distinctly remember that I liked Ernie because I assumed he was supposed to be a black child. Does this mean that race and ethnicity have always been a greater part of my identity than my gender? Probably.

Anyway, someone must’ve noticed, ‘cause the folks at Sesame Street finally have a female character on the show. Her name is Abby Cadabby. She is pink and lavender-colored, full of sparkles, and she’s a fairy. The creators of the show have made a point of having her be very vulnerable. She can’t fly unless she’s happy, or something.

Is this what girls want? Is this good for them? I wouldn’t have identified with this character at all.

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'Superman Returns' director signs TV deal

From Digital Spy:

Superman Returns director Bryan Singer has secured a massive contract to develop new shows for television channel ABC.

In a deal reported to have reached the seven-figures mark, Singer will work on three new scripts, one of which is assured to be a pilot that he will helm.

Talking about his newfound enthusiasm for medium of television, the director explained to The Hollywood Reporter: "You put something together in a quick time frame and get to create something that could have a long-lasting effect. [Also] television has an organic quality to it. Movies are pretty set. TV shows are open-ended, they can evolve over time."

His previous television experience includes developing sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica and also directed and produced episodes of the hit show House.

Interesting. With the success of Lost, maybe ABC has an appetite for pseudo fantasy fare, but mainstream TV has yet to show me that it’s really willing to give straight-up Sci-Fi and Fantasy a chance to build a fanbase unless it masquerades as a drama (as Lost does). The X-Files would’ve been pulled after half a season if it hadn’t been on Fox. Let’s see what Bryan is able to come up with and develop for the small screen.

Technorati tags: Bryan Singer | Superman Returns

'Eureka' Debut Sets SciFi Channel Record

From SyFy Portal:

(July 20 2006) - More than 4 million viewers tuned into the Tuesday night premiere of the new SciFi Channel original series "Eureka," setting a new ratings record for the cable outlet, according to several online news reports.

The July 18 two-hour debut got a 3.2 household rating, including 1.9 million aged 25-54 and 1.7 million aged 18-49, SciFi Wire said. "Eureka" was the No. 1 cable program on July 18 in household ratings, in total viewers and in the 25-54 and 18-49 demographics. It was also the highest-rated and most-watched premiere telecast of a cable original series in Tuesday prime time this year, the report said.

Ratings for "Eureka" put it ahead of the debuts of sister SciFi Channel series' "Stargate SG-1," "Stargate: Atlantis" and "Battlestar Galactica."

"Eureka" follows a U.S. marshal who stumbles on a small Pacific Northwest town that's actually a secret government research facility populated by the best minds in the nation, Zap2It said. Their research, however, makes the town a place where a lot of odd things tend to occur.

Wow, I can't believe this did so well! It was so boring. I mentally tuned out 15 minutes into the pilot.

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Technorati tags: scifichannel | eureka | tv | scifi | science-fiction

Galactica/TV Guide Promotion

Dynamite Entertainment announced today that TV Guide is offering an exclusive sneak peak of their all-new Battlestar Galactica comic book series.

In cooperation with SCIFI, Universal and TV Guide, Dynamite’s Battlestar Galactica #0 will be featured in the May 22nd issue, with subscriptions begin being mailed on May 15, 2006. The exposure of the comic is expected to reach millions of TV Guides weekly readers, and through it the fans of SCI-FI’s hit TV series, Battlestar Galactica. An interview with series writer Greg Pak will be included to bring awareness of the comic to the potential untapped readers that TV Guide has to offer.

Interesting promotion. But the timing is weird. They should've dropped this at the beginning of the new season.

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City of Men

I occasionally find some interesting programs to watch on the Sundance channel and City of Men (Cidade dos Homens), a mini-series about two boys living in the slums (favelas) of Rio de Janeiro was a gem that left me wanting more.

The series is a sequel of sorts to 2002's City of God (Cidade de Deus) which shows the rise of the drug trade in Rio in the 60's and 70's. City of God is gansta movie with a bunch of black kids running around doing wrong, but it feels very different than the typical urban American fare we've been seeing for the past twenty years. Besides the fact that the characters in the movie are speaking Portuguese, these kids are really poor. They put the "p" in poverty. Not "I only got basic cable and one pair of sneakers" poor. These kids from the favelas are "I gotta bathe in a public fountain because we have no plumbing in my entire neighborhood" poor. That's a reality check for some folks.

The protagonists of City of Men are two cute 13 year-old boys, Acerola and Laranjinha, who seem really small for their age. Perhaps they're small because, unlike their American counterparts, they can't simply walk to the local McDonalds and say, "Super size me" whenever they get hunger pangs. A 99 cents extra value meal is beyond their reach.

We never see their parents, though Laranjinha's mother works somewhere that takes her away from home for long periods of time. Maybe she's a domestic. Maybe she's a whore. Both boys are apparently being raised by their grandmothers.

We follow the boys on their adventures in their ghetto. The things they want and need are so simple it seems alien. In the premier episode the boys want to go on a field trip to a museum, but they can't scrape together the measly $6 (!) fee. In another episode Acerola's sister becomes the girlfriend of the neighborhood's chief drug dealer and Acerola is ecstatic when the drug lord gives him a used pair of sneakers. In a Tom Sawyer-ish endeavor in another episode the boys make a map of the favela and name the streets to solve the problem of getting the post office to deliver mail to everyone. In an episode that steps outside of the favela, Laranjinha's life is contrasted with that of a middle class white kid who also lives with his single mom and worries about his disintegrating friendships.

Sundance only showed the first four episodes of City of Men, but according to the BBC site there are nine episodes. I hope they air the rest soon.

Thief

I stumbled upon a new series on FX called Thief a few weeks ago. It's pretty interesting. Nick Atwater (played by Andre Braugher) leads a small group of black and Latino professional thieves operating out of New Orleans. In the first episode the team botches a heist of a bank and runs afoul of the Chinese mafia. This snafu ultimately leads to the death of Nick's fence and forces Nick to kill Izzy, one of his own guys. Things get further complicate for Nick when his wife unexpectedly dies in a car accident leaving him with a white stepdaughter who hates him and who is a witness to the murder of Izzy.

The writing is tight and I like how the thieves are neither outrageously high-tech Mission: Impossible types, nor bumbling hoods. The series is set to end in a few episodes (talk about a really short run), but if it's re-broadcast this summer or renewed for the Fall, be sure to catch it.

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Sleeper Cell

I like this new series Sleeper Cell on Showtime. The pacing and strong writing reminds me of the first season of 24.

The (admittedly improbable) plot centers around Darwyn Al-Sayeed, an African-American deep-cover FBI agent who does a stint in prison in order to gain entry into an Islamic terrorist group’s sleeper cell.

Darwyn is an interesting character for TV. He seems to be primarily motivated to oppose the Muslim extremists because he’s offended by their perversion of his religion. He has chivalrous tendencies towards females and children in distress, but though he says his religion forbids sex outside of marriage, he’s quick to fall into a sexual relationship with a white single mom who works at a nail salon.

As is the case in most of the best TV shows, the surrounding cast is what takes the show to another level. I appreciate the way that the show features a variety of Muslims. Darwyn, as an African-American Muslim, is not considered a “real” Muslim by an Egyptian in episode one. Christian, a Frenchman, converted to Islam because of his Moroccan wife, but he is estranged from her and he’s evidently more of a believer than she is. Tommy, a blond haired, blue-eyed boy from a rich liberal family, seems to have turned to Islam as a rejection of his privileged childhood. Ilija is a Bosnian Muslim who blames the West for allowing Orthodox Serbs to kill his people in the early 90’s. Lastly, the mysterious Farik, leader of the sleeper cell, has the ultimate cover -- he works in a security company and he’s passing as an Israeli.

The only problem with the show? They’re showing the episodes on consecutive nights in December! I think this show is flying under the radar, and that’s a shame.

The Boondocks

I figured I’d give The Boondocks two episodes before I blogged about it. For those who don’t know, The Boondocks is a new half-hour series on Cartoon Network based on the comic strip of the same name by Aaron McGruder. It features Huey and Riley Freeman, two small but precocious African-American boys who live with their grandfather.

I can’t say that I read the strip that often, but occasionally I do. The two boys bitch a lot and they never miss an opportunity to tear Condoleezza Rice’s ass at the slightest provocation, and that’s always funny. But I know that a lot of (majority) folks have a huge problem with the strip, so I was curious to see if McGruder would be forced to tone things down when bringing this into another media.

Silly me! He amped it up. And frankly, it’s crude.

The problem is, since the show’s on cable, I guess he felt that he could cut loose and have the boys speak the way they “really” would. This means that every other word is the “N” word. Now, there’s a time and a place for the “N” word. Coming from a gifted speaker or writer, it can be used to powerful effect (but you better know who your audience is, or don’t even go there). Coming from the mouth of a skilled comedian, it can be funny. But when flying non-stop out of the mouths of cartoon eight-year-olds, it can’t be anything but crass and completely gratuitous. All throughout episode one it was n*****, n*****, n*****, n*****.

Whatever.

With or without that distraction, the first episode was poor. It consisted of the boys misbehaving at a garden party and bad mouthing white people who somehow failed to understand that they were being insulted. Maybe that would’ve been remotely plausible fifty years ago, but neither side thinks the other side is stupid now, hence, there’s no humor in this scenario.

Episode two starts out with Huey giving a “n*****s are crazy” speech while the boys watch the news. They learn that pedophile R. Kelly is being tried in their town and they decide they want to go to the courthouse to support him. Again, there’s no humor here, because no one wants their teenage daughter around R. Kelly. The only thing vaguely funny about the episode was the defense lawyer for R. Kelly, who looked suspiciously like William Kunstler.

I’m dropping this cartoon. I suspect that Cartoon Network will be dropping it soon too.

The Night Stalker

Observations:

• From the narration it is immediately apparent that this incarnation of Carl Kolchak is a much better writer. The character from the original show was a bit of a melodramatic hack. But it worked fine for his subject matter.

• The opening sequence was much more effective and tense than that of Supernatural, the other new show this one will be compared to.

• The paper this Kolchak works at is much more mainstream than the paper the original Kolchak worked at.

• There is immediate and predictable sniping between Kolchak and Perri Reed (Gabrielle Union) as they fight over whose story it is. Ho hum.

• The story begins with the murder of a pregnant woman. Her body is found with the fetus torn from it. We are obviously supposed to be reminded of the death of Lacy Peterson. Tacky, tacky choice of subject matter.

• Kolchak is smug. He's shown to have better gut instincts than the black chick who is the senior crime reporter. Of course she needs this white guy's help to write a story. She’s only been doing that on this paper for the last four years without his ass to tell her what an angle is. Amazingly, she isn't terribly hostile about him invading her territory, though she does initiate a background check on him that temporarily lands him in jail.
  

• The cinematography reminds one of The X-Files. Obviously it’s no accident, but it’s a good move. The story feels more mature than the episodes of Supernatural, and part of that is camera work.

• The easiest way to set up a story of horror is to show women and children in danger. In the first 15 minutes of Night Stalker, a woman and her unborn child are killed, then another woman is attacked and her ten-year-old girl is abducted. Off to a great start.

• There’s a brief cameo of Darren McGavin, the original Kolchak, in a newsroom scene, but it looked superimposed. I thought he was dead, but he’s apparently still among the living.

• This new Kolchak has a dark secret. He's suspected of killing his wife. In the original made-for-TV movie, Kolchak's stripper girlfriend was killed by a vampire, but I don't believe he was actually a suspect.

• This new Kolchak has the same joyless driven nature as Fox Mulder. But Mulder was occasionally amusing in his a deadpan way. It remains to be seen if Kolchak will develop a sense of humor.

• Surprisingly, like the original Kolchak, this one doesn't use a gun. I am wrong (so far) on one of my hunches. For some ridiculous reason, when going in to the monsters' lair, he arms himself and his companions with electric cattle prods, of all things.

• The Perri Reed character isn't a black version of Scully (so far), which is good. It's been done. She's not ultra-skeptical or science-oriented. Betcha she turns out to be a church-gal, though.

• The first episode ends with no real resolution of what the monsters were. They seem to be werecoyotes that target pregnant women. Why? Who knows? Surprisingly, Kolchak chooses to not to report the supernatural angle of the story and writes it up as a simple unsolved kidnapping. It is Reed that argues that the public has the right to know the truth. A little role reversal there just to let the X-Files fans know they are going to try not to be exactly the same, I guess.

The Verdict:

• It didn’t suck, and it has potential, but I think it’s on the wrong network. I don’t think ABC will stick with the show and give it time it will need to grow an audience the way that UPN or WB would.

“Surface” Episode 2

Okay, I can see why the kid kept the baby sea monster. It actually is cute. He thinks it’s an iguana, but it looks more like a baby sea dragon.

I should qualify this by saying the creature looks cute now. It’s gonna get BIG, as we all know. I cracked up at the end of the episode when a fishing boat of shark-hunting Aussies was swallowed whole.

The picture on the right is dark, so go here to see more photos and a video clip from the show.

Invasion

Surprisingly, Invasion turned out to be the most disappointing of the three network Sci-Fi shows I mentioned last week. Because it was placed after the premiere of Lost in the schedule, I suppose I was expecting some of Lost’s creepiness, diverse, strongly written characters and sense of mystery.

Instead, I was given the umpteenth iteration of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Come on, people. Break some new ground.

It’s Science-Fiction -- you’re supposed to take chances, get it?

Surface

I watched the premiere of NBC’s Surface last night. The pilot centered on four characters -- a young boy, a woman and two men -- who separately encounter mysterious sea creatures of apparently extraterrestrial origin. They’ll eventually come together to fight the aliens, I guess.

What I Liked:

• The idea of extraterrestrial sea creatures certainly hasn’t been done to death -- outside of The Abyss and Seaquest, I can’t think of any other examples where that was the main focus of the plot.

What I Didn’t Like:

• The sense of tension that was being nicely built was shot to hell when one of the scientists gave a briefing about the growing threat and unveiled a freaking molar that was about 7 feet tall. ROFL!

• None of the main characters are likeable. The woman seemed bitchy and self-centered.

• The show tries to evoke a Spielberg-like sense of wonder, but that’s played out and so 80’s.

• The kid who took the alien egg into his house really didn’t strike me as stupid enough to do such a thing. That wasn’t like taking in a cute mammal. We’re talking slime, you know? Who the hell would do that?

The Verdict:

• It won’t last unless the characters get more interesting. I am curious enough to want to get a good look at one of the creatures to see if they’re hideous or cute.