Category: Television Page 5 of 19

Desperate Housewives Confusion

Okay, so I didn’t watch any of the Desperate Housewives episodes after the writer’s strike last year. I did read some overarching recaps, but I’m still a little confused after watching the premiere last week. Could someone who did watch the end of last season help me out a little?

1) Where is Julie? Susan’s son shows up a time or two, but there’s no mention at all of Julie. Did she leave somewhere last season? College or something?

2) Where are Tom and Lynette’s other kids? I think we only saw the twins in the premiere episode – what about the other son and daughter?

3) In the flashback when Danielle came to take Benjamin from Bree, Bree mentioned Orson being gone – but he’s not gone in the premiere. Did he leave her last season and then come back, or is that flashback taking place between seasons and we just don’t know what went on with that?

4) Did Carlos lose his sight in the tornado, or sometime after that?

It’s That Season Again…

The new season of Bones premieres tonight, marking the beginning of this year’s TV season for me. Yay! My DVR is bigger than the one I had last year, which is a good thing. Here’s a little preview of everything I’m going to try to watch. Until I inevitably can’t keep up and have to drop some. Let me know what all you’re excited about!

There may be spoilers for previous seasons throughout this post.

Must-Watches

The Office

The Office

How long has it been since a half-hour comedy topped my must-watch list? It’s probably never happened. But The Office manages to be funny, real, fake, and heartwarming all at the same time. Going for three months in the summer without Jim and Pam and Michael and the rest of the crew is…not fun. I’m not sure what I want to happen this year – they kept the Jim-Pam storyline from getting too stale last season by having lots of other stuff going on, but I’m not sure how much longer they can do that. On the other hand, we’ve got the Dwight-Amanda-Andy triangle getting more convoluted all the time, not to mention Jan’s pregnancy. So we’re chock full of drama. Which will be handled most comedically, I’m sure.

30 Rock

30 Rock

How long has it been since TWO half-hour comedies topped my must-watch list? But I honestly look forward to 30 Rock every week at least as much as any other show. Sometimes even more than The Office, I’ll admit. The continuing adventures of Liz Lemon, producer of an SNL-like sketch comedy show, her boss Jack Donaghy, Jack’s assistant Kenneth, and others manages to stay fresh, funny, and wonderfully self-referential. (My favorite moment last year? After taking a conversation about a cellphone to an obvious extreme of product placement, Tina Fey turns to the camera and asks if they can have their money now.) My #1 request for this year: Give Jane Krakowski more to do.

Pushing Daisies 

Pushing Daisies

The most enchanting new show last year made it through the network’s quirk-factor gatekeepers and somehow got renewed. And we all breathed a sigh of relief that it’s on ABC, not FOX, because I doubt FOX would’ve been so generous. Ned is a humble piemaker with a special gift – he can bring dead things back to life with a touch. But a second touch returns them to death forever; and if he lets them live for longer than one minute, someone else dies. Pretty much a catch-22, especially when he brings back Chuck, the girl who lived next door and who he now loves. As cutesy as the concept is, it’s also the only show on TV that continually greets me with a sense of wonder. Plus, the art direction and cinematography is delectable. My fear for Season Two is that it won’t be able to figure out how to keep the “they love each other but they can’t touch” premise from getting old.

The Amazing Race 

Yeah, I’m putting a reality show fourth on my list of twenty shows I want to watch. You wanna make something of it? I love, love, love The Amazing Race. Why it took me until, like, Season 7 to figure this out, I couldn’t tell you. Seriously, racing around the world, to awesome places, doing awesome things (and some not-so-awesome things)…I’d do that even without a potential million dollars at the end of it. And watching it is the next best thing.

Chuck 

Another sophomore show, Chuck blends the things I like best in TV shows all together: geeks, spies, kick-ass women, action, comedy, awkward romances, etc. And it does it well. I almost literally can’t wait for it to come back. Will Chuck and Sarah move from fake dating to real romance? (I honestly can’t remember if they sort of did last year, or not…anyone remember?) And I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Julie Cooper in previews. Er, that is, Melinda Clarke – she played Julie Cooper on The O.C. (and became pretty much my sole reason for watching the show near the end, before I quit watching completely). So that’s very exciting.

How I Met Your Mother 

How I Met Your Mother

What’s this? ANOTHER half-hour comedy? That’s right. And if Arrested Development were still on, we could have a nice set of comedy tennis doubles. But it’s not. Boo. Anyway, How I Met Your Mother isn’t quite as innovative as The Office and 30 Rock, but it makes up for it by having characters I love to pieces. If Ted were real, I’d marry him in a heartbeat. And if Robin were real, well, I’d be her. In my dreams. And Alyson Hannigan. And Jason Segal (who I like much better on TV than in Judd Apatow films). And of course, Neil Patrick Harris, who is GOLD. What about this year, though? I miss Ted-Robin as a couple, but I’m starting to be curious as to who the mother is – the last few episodes of last season seemed to be moving closer and closer to revealing her, or at least dropping strong hints about her. On the other hand, the premise of the show sort of dictates that once Ted meets her, show’s over, right? And I’m fairly sure it isn’t Stella, as much as I like having Sarah Chalke on the show. And I’m not at all sure about Barney-Robin. But that could just be because I’m still, two years later, so attached to Ted-Robin. We’ll see.

Ugly Betty

Ugly Betty

Oh, Betty. I don’t care for the world of fashion (oh, right, except for Project Runway), and you keep dragging me back in. When a show has so many characters you love to hate, or hate to love, or love to love, how can you resist? Mark and Amanda are easily among my favorite supporting characters ever, even when I spend entire shows wanting to smack some sense into them. And there’s plenty of drama to go around…Wilhemina’s blackmail baby, Christina’s involvement in that, Gio vs. Henry…suddenly hoping all that didn’t get resolved last season and I forgot. What with the writers strike and trying to graduate, I got a little lost even on some of my favorite shows.

House 

House

House and Wilson are on the outs because of a little thing like House killing Wilson’s girlfriend, Heinous Bitch. Gotta admit, though, Heinous Bitch did bring a lot of interest to the show last year, so I think it’s going to miss her. But House seems to be able to come up with something (like the American Idol approach to hospital hiring) to keep me involved, so I’m trusting them. I wish Thirteen were a little less Cameron2. Even though I like Cameron. Oh, and Felicia Day, of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, The Guild and BtVS S7, and general all-around acting/internet/tech cool person, is going to be in episode 2, so watch for that.

Bones 

Bones

Zach!!! I’m still angry about that. I didn’t believe it, I didn’t like it, and I don’t like that Zach won’t be on the show as much this year. Yet I’ll still be watching, because I need my Boreanaz-Deschanel-fake forensics fix.

Dirty Sexy Money 

My favorite guilty pleasure show of last year. I honestly don’t remember much about the plot part, and I could really care less about the overarching thing with Peter Krause’s father. I’m all about the twins and whatever shenanigans they’re getting up to.

NCIS and Numb3rs 

NCISNumb3rs

 

These both fall into my “episodic procedurals that I love to watch but don’t obsess over.” They usually stick around on my DVR until I’ve watched everything else, or when I need something comforting to watch. Yeah, I find procedurals about murders comforting. I’m weird like that.

Will Watch

These shows I’m still interested in (or am checking out for the first time and expecting to be good), but I’m not wholly invested in anymore. Some of these may be surprising to those of you who’ve known me over multiple TV seasons.

Fringe 

Fringe

I’m actually pretty excited about this one; it’s only down here because it’s new and hence an unknown quantity. Even being from JJ Abrams – I fear he’s spreading himself a little thin, what with this new show, and Lost (which I guess isn’t coming back until spring?), and the Star Trek movie, and I think there’s another movie he’s working on, too. But the concept sounds cool, and I’m hoping it’ll be awesome.

Grey’s Anatomy 

Grey\'s Anatomy

Two years ago I was a huge Grey’s addict. Then the debacle of S3 happened, and S4 didn’t pick up the pieces quite enough. So I’m there out of loyalty (although I don’t think I ever actually watched the post-strike episodes last year, so I’m a little out of the loop), but I don’t have the same blind hope that I did last year. Unless they turn it around quickly, I may have to regretfully let it go.

Desperate Housewives 

Desperate Housewives

I think I missed the last episode of this, too, because I thought they stopped at the tornado one, but then I later heard they aired the next episode (where you find out that Tom and the kids aren’t dead, I guess). Anyway, this year they’re apparently jumping several years ahead, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. I guess they wanted something of a fresh start for the show, which admittedly stagnated a bit last year. We’ll see how it works out.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles 

Sarah Connor Chronicles

I want to move this into the top section, but it never grabbed me last year as much as it did some people. Honestly, I think being busy with school and thrown by having a show start right when all the others were ending (off-season shows really throw me for a loop, unless they’re reality shows) might’ve contributed. But again, I’m always up for kick-ass women shows, and if Summer Glau is involved, even better, so my hopes are high that this will soon become a must-watch.

Heroes 

Heroes

What…even happened last year? I really don’t remember. I remember thinking what a blessing it was that the season was cut short by the strike. Not a great sign, honestly. And from what I’ve seen, I’m not alone in my ambivalence toward S2, so hopefully the writers will find some new direction that will be awesome. If not…

Family Guy 

Family Guy

I actually love Family Guy and have no beef with it. I just tend not to care whether I catch every episode or not, so it’ll get saved up on the DVR or I’ll watch it on hulu.com when I feel in the mood.

Private Practice 

Private Practice

Addison was one of my favorite Grey’s characters, but I never got beyond casual like for her spin-off. I’ll keep it on the DVR for now, but it’s probably one of the first to go if I start getting behind. Unless it suddenly becomes awesome. But my hopes aren’t particularly high.

Tentatively Trying

Knight Rider 

Knight Rider

This could be pretty cool, or it could CRASH AND BURN. Chances about 30-70. Plus, it’s against two other shows I’m not missing (Pushing Daisies and Bones), so it’ll have to be really darn good for me to expend the effort to find and watch it.

Crusoe

(I can’t even find a promo pic for this; that doesn’t bode well)

An 18th-century period piece on primetime network TV? When has that ever happened and been successful? Don’t get me wrong, it’d be cool if it does work and does well, but I’m not scheduling my life around it just yet.

Kath & Kim 

Kath & Kim

I wanna give this a shot because a) it’s Australian, b) Molly Shannon, and c) Selma Blair. But if the tone in the ads is actually indicative of the tone of the show, I might not be able to take it for long.

So You Think You Can Dance 4×01: LA Auditions

I LOVE SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE!!! I have missed it. You may have been able to discern a creeping apathy towards American Idol over the past few months, what with the lack of posting and all. Some of that was due to busyness, yes, but some of it was also I didn’t feel like putting up with it when it was actually on. But I feel nothing but excitement for SYTYCD. Let’s hope it keeps up. There is one note of apprehension about this season, and that is that apparently Wade Robson is no longer doing the show (perhaps he’s doing a group number, but not being a judge?), and neither is Shane Sparks. That pretty much leaves Mia Michaels as the only choreographer who consistently wows me. But we’ll see.

Here’s a handy list I made watching tonight for why SYTYCD is better than AI. And this is just from the auditions:

  • The audition section isn’t a joke. Yes, they have their share of terrible and funny dancers, but the humor is not as mean as on AI. The focus is always on the audition itself rather than backstage shenanigans/sob stories, which means you get a good sense of individual auditions rather than just a montage of clips separated by three or four longer numbers. And the ratio of good auditions to bad ones is much higher.
  • Cat Deeley. She’s beautiful, she’s British, she’s genuine, and she knows how to host without hogging all the screen time. I swear, she was on-screen tonight for a total of about four minutes, in a two-hour time slot. Ryan is on-screen probably 1/3 of the show, taking time away from the people we’re supposed to be watching.
  • The human interest stories aren’t played as much for sobs and feel more sincere. One auditioner tonight was visually impaired, and while she didn’t get through, the judges all struck a sincere note of gratitude for her attempt and inspiration while being honest that she didn’t have a chance in the competition.
  • I’ve said it twice: sincerity. I believe the judges, especially Mia, when they say things, or when they’re moved to tears. I do not believe Randy, Paula, and Simon anymore. They aren’t sincere anymore.
  • Relatedly, the judges care about this, and they’re having fun with it, too. Especially this year, the AI judges don’t seem to be having fun anymore. If you look back at earlier AI seasons, even Simon seemed to be enjoying many of the auditions, good and bad. Now he’s just bored and frustrated most of the time. I love Simon, I really do, but something’s gone wrong…maybe just time for a judge switch or something. (Interestingly, he seems to have far more fun on the British version, The X-Factor, than he does on AI.)
  • The judges are critical without being mean. Most of the time. They can be mean, and were more so a couple of years ago, but generally they’re good at actually giving constructive criticism.
  • Continuity with previous seasons. Of the auditioners featured tonight, five of them had auditioned previous years, and I remembered all but one of them. And the judges brought up the criticisms and encouragements they’d made in previous years and noted how the dancer had improved or not in those areas. These repeat auditioners (with notable exceptions) are serious about improving their dancing to get on the show, which says a lot both about them and about the show – it’s seen as a place to test yourself, to try new things and learn to become a better dancer rather than as only a showcase for your existing talent. This year American Idol tried to emphasize the singers’ growth and treat it as an avenue to better performing, but it’s not that (Australian Idol is to a greater degree, just sayin’).
  • Continuity with previous seasons, part 2. Not only are the auditioners repeats, but former contestants show back up. Travis Wall, runner-up in Season Two, was running the choreography segments tonight. Last year’s b-boys Dominic and Hok were in attendance, checking out the auditions from the side boxes. Last year, Season Two winner Benji choreographed one of the best routines of the season, and Season Three contestant Lauren had worked as an assistant on the show earlier. Where American Idol relies on outside celebrity talent as guest coaches and performers, So You Think You Can Dance relies on internal talent and thus is much more meaningful to repeat viewers. It has to, to some degree, because dance is a less celebrity-driven profession than singing, but it makes the show feel much more homey and familiar.

Is it next week yet?

American Idol Top 2

Is it just me, or were they REALLY pushing Archuleta for the win? I pretty much picked Cook over Archuleta every round, and then Simon did the opposite. Not that the judges and I usually agree, it just seemed like both Simon and Randy were giving Archuleta more praise than he deserved. His first song was not flawless, and the songwriters’ song he chose was not better.

So here’s the question. Are they pushing Archuleta for the win because they really think he’s better? Because he’s more marketable? Because they secretly want Cook to come in second because he’ll have more creative freedom without Idol’s contract? Because they secretly want Cook to win and they’re using reverse psychology hoping to motivate Cook’s voters? I’m totally overthinking this aren’t I?

And then the question for me, and how/whether I vote. I want Cook to win because I think he’s ten times better than Archuleta. On the other hand, I don’t want him to win because I don’t want him to make Idol’s record, I want him to make HIS record. Maybe I’ll just let it alone and save my cell phone bill. :)

In unrelated life news, I’m all moved out of Waco and am back in St. Louis for a couple of weeks before I drive out to LA and find an apartment. And a job. Hopefully will have leads on that before I go out there. So that’s what’s going on, for those of you wondering.

American Idol Top 5

Random Thoughts.

1) I’m getting a little annoyed that pretty much all the themes are a person rather than a genre. Okay, so each person sort of represents a genre (Mariah Carey = pop, Dolly Parton = country, Beatles = classic rock, Andrew Lloyd Webber = Broadway, Neil Diamond = rock), but limiting it to that person’s songs is so…limiting. How are the contestants supposed to pick a song that fits them when nothing in the person’s catalog, you know, fits them? It seems to become little more than an exercise in promoting not the contestants but the celebrity performers/songwriters. Plus, I’m sorry, but it gets really boring to watch at times. I’ve been clamoring for a Broadway/showtunes night for two years now, and I only get Webber? Nothing against him, he’s got some great shows, but it’s such a teeny slice of Broadway – what about some Larson (RENT), some Kander & Ebb (Cabaret), some Bernstein (West Side Story), some Miss Saigon or Les Mis, some Wicked or for goodness sake, some SONDHEIM? (Sondheim might be hard to do in 90 seconds, but I’m sure something could be figured out.) The other themes, of course, have similar issues, I just know more about Broadway.

2) The results shows are just getting insanely packed with stupid filler. There is no earthly reason for it to have an hour-long slot instead of a half-hour. The calls from viewers? Stupid. Guest singers with no relation to the show? Stupid. Thank God for DVRs. On the opposite side, how rushed was that performance show? Geez. I’m surprised Ryan didn’t make them all sing in double-time. And Paula had notes from rehearsal, clearly, and got flustered. Let’s not make it more than it is.

3) Okay, performances. Jason’s back to pleasant but not outstanding for me. Ready for him to go not because I dislike him, but because he’s clearly out of his league at this point. Syesha is stepping it up for me a LOT lately. She’s got the most Idol-ready voice at this point, and though she’s still not the person whose record I would buy, I’ve got to admit that she’s probably the strongest vocalist, and has been for a while, even though I tend to ignore her because of my love for David C. and Brooke. David C., incredible, incredible, incredible. I’d buy his record NOW. Brooke, seriously bad choice on the first song, and didn’t even get a good key for herself. Much better on the second – that’s her niche, and I love her in that mode. David A., good vocals, but yeah, I’m sort of bored by him now.

4) Results. I’m not really surprised. I take that back, I’m surprised that Jason is still sailing through. But once he was on the couch, I wasn’t surprised. Brooke’s first song was REALLY rough, and I knew she wouldn’t win anyway. She’s great at what she does, but what she does is not really Idol’s thing. I’m glad she was around as long as she was, and I’m sure she’ll be fine, singing songs that fit her much better than what Idol’s been throwing her lately.

5) Hopefully Jason will go next week. After that, it’s a toss-up. Will it be David C., the most clearly talented singer/musician with the best chance of actually making a hit record, but whose demographic doesn’t traditionally jive with Idol completely? Remember Daughtry went home in fourth place. Will it be Syesha, who’s peaking at just the right time and would be a near-perfect fit for Idol’s niche, but who hasn’t seemed to gather the fanbase she might need to bring it home? Will it be David A., who has the teen girl vote locked up tight, but is starting to bore a lot of the rest of us? Who can say?

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