2008 fall tv season – second pass
why yes, i posted that creative writing assignment because i knew this was coming. why do you ask?
heroes: the show barely survived a 3 hour marathon catch-up. it’s sticking around only because the idea of the story is interesting enough to keep watching. we will have to be diligent to make sure we don’t let episodes stack up. there are so many holes, so many obvious solutions that the super-power set chooses to ignore. it’s frustrating.
it’s basically a time-killer on weekends when the baby-thing is napping. she seems to do better with a bit of ambient noise in the background, but so much that she’ll wake up (like vacuuming . see also: my name is earl, fringe
the ex list: rolling stone says no.
valentine: i blame watching this right after i forced myself to finish the first episode of the ex list. 10 minutes in, i noticed that i was wandering around doing chores instead of watching. so i turned it off and unsubscribed.
terminator: after the 4th unwatched episode showed up last night (for a total of *all* episodes unwatched) it got cut. even though there is plenty of space on the DVR, i cannot abide the clutter.
life: starting to pile up as well, and like the terminator, we missed the first episode. this is being captured largely for ryan (i’m not a big fan, personally), so unless we have a few more sleepy afternoons, soon, this will probably drop off, too.
lost in austen: something else i found. it’s a bbc series (4 episodes long-does that make it a miniseries?) about a modern english woman who stumbles into the story of Pride & Prejudice, breaks everything and then has to repair it. i know, i know, it sounds awful. i only picked it up because it was recommended on a few random blogs i read. also, it’s p&p, which, i confess is starting to replace s&s as my favorite austen novel. …some day i’ll actually read it.
anyway, back to the show. it could be awful. it should be awful. if a mormon housewife from arizona wrote it in her spare time, it would be awful. but it’s from the bbc and they, quite frankly, do not do awful when it comes to english period dramas, and thusly, lost in austen is so much better than it has any right to be. in the first 25 minutes i went from “yawn, could you *be* more mary sue?” to “omg! i want to write this story my way only i don’t need to because this is made of awesome!”.
…i finished it while this post languished in draft-land. it’s got some serious holes (besides the whole “the book is real” thing) and was a bit frustrating, but was worthy enough if you’re enough like me. be warned, if you’re anything remotely close to an austen scholar, you’ll likely throw things at the teevee.
eleventh hour: speaking of things that happened while this post languished. i don’t get this show. maybe it’s because it didn’t grab me enough to pay attention well enough. i thought it was going to be mystical in some fashion, but in a season full of shows about quirky main (male) characters who have some sort of gift that makes them special and their potentially equally quirky (female) sidekicks, this one make me yaaaaawn. i gave it a second chance, but then killed it. see also: my own worst enemy, the mentalist, chuck (although that was last season and just didn’t get re-tivoed this season).
one theme i forgot: the gross-out factor: perhaps it’s just that the majority of shows i watch are crime/hospital related (then again, most are anyway), but it seems like more and more of a tv show’s budget is going towards special effects that are largely intended to make the audience squirm. whether it’s the cg zoom in shots in house, bones and crime shows that demonstrate how an illness or a weapon attacked the body, blood and guts of a surgery patient, or in the absolutely tasteless extreme of private practice’s baby born at 27 weeks being resuscitated, these are things we shouldn’t need to see. yes, i’m sure the zoom in helps quickly explain technical concepts, but it’s gone too far. it reminds me of when candy went through this stage. gummy bugs, fingers you could chew the “flesh” from, sugary blood that squirted out of heads (okay, i maybe made that up, but i know there was “blood” at one point). i guess the kids that bought that have all grown up and started watching/creating television shows.
okay…maybe not grown up exactly.
this will likely be the last tv pass until something new comes out, or i just start posting about individual shows. hrm…maybe a weekly wrap-up? you don’t care. you didn’t even read this far ;)
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