Last night I finally got around to watching Terra Nova, which had the cop actually do some detecting. The producers had the perfect opportunity to get the annoying teenager and his girlfriend eaten but screwed it up again. I'm hoping they don't wait for the season (series?) finale to make him dino-chow.
Also watched the start of Glee. This is a show I love so much, or loved. They had one of the winners of The Glee Project finally show, but the part of the episode I watched was just painfully unfunny stuff about Sue Sylvester trying to kill all the arts programs in Ohio while Elphaba and Mercedes are trying to recruit the girls from the Glee club to form a rival club. This show may have lost its core of friendship and good humor forever. Well, it was a good two years.
My favorite shows this year? Alphas, surprisingly, which manages to tread the same mythology as Heroes before it, but without getting bogged down in story and excitement-killing crap.
Also just started watching Spy on Hulu+, a British import. It bears no little relation to "Chuck" — a bored computer technician in a warehouse-type electronics store becomes a spy — but goes off in an entirely different direction. The hero won custody of his son from his wife after their divorce because his wife was addicted to prescription drugs. His son hates him and is about ten times smarter than the hero, but it becomes clear once you meet the ex-wife that the son is basically a copy of his equally bitter mom. The wife follows him around taking note of all the times he hasn't been a perfect dad to his son in hopes of winning custody back.
When his son points out he's been working as a minion at the electronics store for seven years (the hero thought it was only five), he decides to quit and take a test for a government clerk's job. He accidentally goes to the wrong exam room and takes a test for a MI-5 agent, which by wild coincidence isn't full of tests about data entry and stuff (which he is poor at) but it full of mind puzzles like Sudoku, which he is great at.
Anyway, it's SOUNDS like a thin plot, but the hero's bitterly sarcastic and nihilistic friends (and enemies) elevate this to a new level.
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I'll have to tell my wife about these shows. Spy sounds particularly good. If you use Netflix streaming, you might want to check out MI-5, if you haven't already seen it.
I'll check it out, thanks!
I have MI-5 in my Netflix queue, but never got around to it.
I haven't watched this week's Glee yet, but from what I've seen so far this year I'd concur with your assessment that ~something~ has been lost in that formula. I'd ditch it but Angela still likes it.
We watched #2 of Once Upon a Time last night and we're still enjoying it in that family-friendly, feel-good kind of way. The most startling thing to me is that the precocious kid actually doesn't annoy me, and in fact I kind of like him. Usually that stereotype grates on my nerves but somehow this actor pulls off being kind of a charming wise-ass without driving me nutty.
Oh yeah, saw the second ep of that, too. I'm liking the fairy-tale backstory more than the modern bit. I am hoping they have the guts to actually end the storyline and resolve the curse this season. If they try to stretch it out, Lost-like, I guarantee I will lose interest.
Yeah it doesn't feel like the kind of story that can go on for more than a season, and not even a long season. Like a 13 episode season should be plenty.
Maybe shows SHOULD be focusing more on a single season, instead of coming up with stories that just go on and on. If there's only a commitment of one season, maybe things wouldn't get cancelled so often.
If you can't tell a story in 13 hours…
You mean 7 hours + 6 hours of commercials! 🙂
Okay, but still.
I have to agree re: Glee. It was one of the very few "current" shows that I actually watched, and I am just not enjoying this season at all. It has lost something.
I'm not a big TV watcher, but I've made an effort to watch Boardwalk Empire, I really love the time period it takes place in. Aside from that I've been using Netflix to watch Monk which I seem oddly addicted to, and old episodes of Buffy and Xena.
I really love hearing about what everyone else is watching, most of the time I've never heard of the shows before.
+Stephanie Morrow If you want a great show that no one has ever heard of, watch QI. One of the best and most interesting shows ever… but outside of the UK no one seems to have heard of it.
TBH, a lot of shows I watch because they were on Hulu and sounded interesting. Castle, Bones, Spy and numerous others were found this way.
I don't have much luck looking for shows, because usually neither Netflix nor Hulu have the specific shows I'm looking for. I've learned to be open to new shows to some extent. Never seen all those new doctor and lawyer and CSI shows. The one CSI show episode I saw was amazingly technically wrong and couldn't enjoy it. Shows like House seem to require watching from the beginning to appreciate.
I wish Netflix in Canada had a better selection of tv shows to watch – I think one of the major reasons I've just never gotten into anything is that it requires (unless you have some sort of recording device, which I do not) you being in front of the tv at a specific time to watch it. I can't do that, especially not in the fall or the winter when the tv is otherwise occupied by numerous football and hockey games. My "tv time" is 2-5 pm, and the stuff actually on tv at those times is… well. dismal to say the least.
+Stephanie Morrow I use a proxy from http://hidemyass.com/ to get US netflix content, and play stuff on the BBC iPlayer. totally worth it for me…
Thanks +Brad Leclerc, I was using a proxy for a while but hulu kept finding a way around it.
We watch 40 minutes of TV with dinner every night. We don't have a dining room or a kitchen big enough for a kitchen table, so we eat on the couch. Terrible I know. So we'll either watch 1 1-hour show or 2 30-minute shows every night. Once in a while if we're feeling really lazy or if the DVR is filling up, we'll double that, but the dog (who gets taken out for a walk after dinner) rarely puts up with it. 🙂
We're a lot less discriminating than most folks are, though. We find plenty of stuff to enjoy. One show that's starting this weekend is Hell on Wheels, about a Confederate soldier who heads west after the war to work on the railroad. At least that's what I glean from the previews.
I'm really looking forward to HBO Go hitting Xbox and/or Roku so I can catch up on Boardwalk Empire, as well as a few other HBO shows. I was going to cancel the service until I heard Go was headed to devices.
Grumbles something about HBO Go also not being available in Canada Even though I have (and love) HBO.
+Pete Smith My wife and I do something similar. We HAVE a dining room table, but it serves mostly as a workbench of computer repair/etc, so we sit in front of the biggest computer monitor we have and watch something while we eat dinner.
Same here! When I got home, I start dinner and then watch The Daily Show and any other show in my Hulu queue. So last night was Castle and Once Upon A Time. I watched Terra Nova on my iPad in bed later. Glee was glitchy live because reception is iffy in my area and it looked horrid anyway. After that I did other stuff for the rest of the evening.
yeah we're big dinner time tv watchers. Sometimes I'm on the laptop while watching, turning in quests or checking my auctions. It's why I can't wait until my new Kindle arrives.. more fun things to do while plopped on the couch in front of the tv, muah hah hah.
I totally forgot about Terra Nova this week. Probably not a good sign.. >.>
Well Terra Nova was 'on the bubble' with the network and, it seems, many viewers to begin with. Them skipping a week certainly didn't help the cause.
Annoying characters are the bread and butter of most shows. Best example is Wesley crusher and Ryker from Next Gen. They were horribly annoying characters and who do they kill? The cool security officer. Annoying people keep bringing viewers back each week hoping they will die.
You mean Tasha Yar? They killed her because Denise Crosby wanted off the show… don't think that was a writer's decision. Stupid tar pool creature thingie!
I think Paul just explained why I game with him.
Your expecting my demise? Well it could be worse, you could be plotting it.
OK caught up with Terra Nova. And yeah, I'm really on the fence. [SPOILERS] As soon as that kid saw the dinosaur egg I yelled "God damn it, don't even tell me this kid is going to wind up with a pet dinosaur!!" sigh My other on-going question is… why are these people ALWAYS in the jungle at night? Yet they're constantly saying something like "I just don't want to be out in that jungle when the sun goes down!" And when they are out in the jungle, they're always so casual about it. "Hey buddy in the hut! I noticed you're suspiciously quiet. This world is filled with hungry predators that'd love to make a snack out of both of us, but I'm just going to assume you're just drunk and I'm gonna prance right in like I haven't a care in the world." CHOMP!
Yeah, I think the kid has to learn that stuff dies in the dangerous past. I mean, she's going to have to deal with her older brother being eaten at some point (I hope). She needs to be prepared.
I wonder if the dinosaurs were really all that active at night. I'd think daytime would be far more dangerous.
If I were in charge of Terra Nova, that place would be clear-cut a hundred miles in every direction. There'd be houses everywhere and constant dinosaur hunts. Some industry going on. TN is the hope of the future world and you have maybe a couple hundred people there out of what, 10 billion? I don't want my tax dollars being spent so we can send a bunch of idiots into the past to be fed to dinosaurs for no return, though of course we understand that there will miraculously be a way to return to the future at some point.
I just don't understand why they aren't killing all the dinosaurs. They are a clear threat. Conservation isn't an issue because an asteroid clears the slate after a million years or so. If they really cared about the biosphere of the ancient world, they wouldn't have come in the first place.
I've been watching Spy, with the usual low expectations that come from original programming made by Sky. First episode was pretty painful, but the last one was really enjoyable.
+Brenda Holloway Yeah, when they were tracking that one dinosaur… I mean come on! They actually drugged it and operated on it to get to the contents of it's stomach?!!
If we learned nothing else from The Flintstones, we learned that bronto-burgers are delicious.
Heeeeyyyy…There's a point I think think isn't addressed: The extinction of the dinosaurs is going to take out the humans too.
"Uh, Dave…we sent the Terra Novans back to the time of the dinosaurs, right?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"Well…didn't an asteroid kill the dinosaurs around the world."
"…! Oh shi…."
Does anyone really think that colony will survive a million years? Anyway, we could move an asteroid today if we had enough warning.
Well, they keep moving people back in time, so maybe they'll get millions of people to head back and then Adam and Eve the place up or something.
But don't forget that Terra Nova as a "dark purpose" that has yet to be revealed (or so they say. I suspect it's just a new factory to manufacture iPods)
No no no Chris! You mis-heard. They said they had dark porpoises… it's a new genetically modified species that can survive an asteroid impact!
GAH! Where's the SPOILERS tag! I haven't seen it this week yet!
I hope I get power before the Hell on Wheels debut, though. And I caught the One Upon A Time premiere, which I liked. Have to see that latest show as well…
Nonono NO! It was DORK PORPOISES. Amphibious mammals with poor social skills.
Anyway many dinosaurs did survive, especially the smaller sort. Also, the die-off after the asteroid strike took like ten thousand years, so it was hardly something you couldn't live through in the short term if you were far enough away. The long term climate change afterward was the real killer.
Well, considering all their hippy-huts are made of rice-paper, they're going to have to winterize that colony.
Actually I was noticing how nice some of those buildings are. The med center has highly polished hardwood floors, the bar has all kinds of super lava lamp gizmos on the wall… I wish I lived in so nice a place!
Seriously! You mean to tell me that with all of this technology they couldn't clean up the environment of Earth? Or even send colonists into space?
I'm sure there's some convenient reason that they had to send people back MILLIONS of years, and not just 100 years to smack people around to clean up their act.
Never seen the show never plan too either. I watched land for the list as a kid, no need to watch it again
Sorry Land of the Lost not list
Land of the Lost was hilarious 🙂 Granted I didn't see the Will Ferrel remake, but I loved the show when I was a kid.
I saw the Terra Nova episode just now… just terrible. I hope the dinos eat the bunch of them.
Re: Tasha Yar: I always thought she asked for more money or something, and thus got thrown into the tar pit. I know she was the fan favorite in that otherwise lackluster first season.
Hmm, I could be wrong. Sure you're not thinking of Claudia Christian on B5? I know she got caught up in some kind of contract dispute and wound up off the show, much to my dismay.
Power seems to have knocked out our OnDemand service, so I can't watch anything 🙁
Do you at least have power back?
Yep