Telefizzled

Kind of burned out on television a little bit last year. I don’t know if it was the WGA strike, the inconsistent quality in shows I watch or just getting over watching a ton of telly. I suspect, now that I typed that out, it is a little bit of all those things.

So, I guess it comes as no surprise that my schedule this year is pretty light, which is a good thing. I deliberately decided not to glom on to any new hour long shows this year. I am going to try a couple out, but other than that, I am just saying no. I am also going to try out a new 1/2 comedy and re-adopt one that fell to the wayside last year. Finally, I am going to try and write a little bit about shows each week just to judge my interest, and yours, in them. That means comments people!

That said, here’s my fall schedule (new shows in bold):

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Friday Night Lights

The Best Show I Am Not Now Watching!

Back in October, Ed posted about FNL at The Ed Zone. It was a call to arms that everyone watch one of the best shows on television that, unfortunately, not enough people watch. It is one of those shows with a lot of critical praise, but low viewership. Yup… almost assured cancellation or non-renewal at the hands of some idiot network exec. (See Arrested Development, Veronica Mars.)

I’m sure the heat could be on again this Spring to renew the show, but then, the WGA strike has thrown the proverbial monkey in the wrench with respect to next year’s schedule. It is my belief that NBC will do the right thing and renew the show for at least half a season next year. (They aren’t being as kind to Las Vegas so far though.)

So, to do my part, I have started watching again. Yup, it started accidentally with me catching the last two episodes (shown to date) from this year as I happened to be visiting Noelle on both those Friday nights. She, like her brother, is a rabid fan of the show. In fact, I dare say she loves it more than him. In any case, she’s bummed to have to wait for post WGA strike filmed show... Continue reading »

Tellyman returns

Not really, no.

Well, not in so much a way as before?

Ah, who cares, it is just a post about some televisionic observations I have had of late (and maybe later…).

So, I was watching Heroes last night, which has been so very good the past three epsiodes, and NBC is running ads for their newest show sure to fail, Raines. Now, was the pitch for this show something along the lines of “let’s put Medium, Tru Calling and The Ghost Whisperer in the blender and sprinkle with a little bit of Monk… oh, and we’ll get Jeff Goldblum!” Really?

Anyone else watching The Black Donnelly’s? I feel compelled to watch, you know, as an Irishman… yeah. Well, if you are, do we really need Joey Ice Cream as a narrator? The sudden insertion of himself into a scene, with subsequent character reaction, is unnecessary and seems forced as a way to try and distinguish the storytelling as unique or different. The story being told does the job just fine… which is to say, mediocre at best. Not sure this one is going to fair much better than Studio 60.

Speaking of which, I’ll be sorry to see Studio 60 go. It was good enough t... Continue reading »

Heroes: Seven Minutes to Midnight

For Chapter 8, we don’t see the Petrelli boys (thank you Geez-us), Niki, D.L. or Micah. I also happened to notice that creator Tim Kring wrote this chapter, so does that mean we get more reveals than usual? No… not that I could tell. Well, on to my lightbulb moments and queries.

Activating Evolution has the original picture of Chandra Suresh (Erick Avari) on it as he finally makes an appearance. It would seem the picture swap I noted in Collision was a continuity error. I did a quick Google search and hit upon a Heroes Wiki that tells the tale. Unfortunately, I can’t read the Wiki since that will lead me down the path to knowledge I shouldn’t have yet or things I didn’t think of on my own.

Mohinder’s first dream made me wonder if it was him, but then we see the boy twice and you figure it has to be him. He leads Mohinder to his file locked in his father’s desk with the key he recovered in New York. Could the boy be Patient Zero then? Mohinder also learns via the dream and a conversation with his mother that he had a sister who died at the age of five, which was when Mohinder was two. His mother says she was special, so ma... Continue reading »

Tellyman 10.4

I had a brilliant post written for last week’s shows, but Firefox 2.0 just took a big dump on me and it is all gone. I didn’t save a draft in WordPress either; gone means totally gone. I was trying to load up cbs.com and an episode of How I Met Your Mother so I could get a vidcap for the lead picture, but when it started loading their InnerTube — which came first, Inner or You? — page, it locked up because I was missing the RealPlayer plug-in. I tried IE first, but same issue except it wouldn’t set Windows Media Player as my preference there (it gave me a choice between the two). I hated RealPlayer before, which is why I didn’t have it installed, and now I doubly hate it. I’ll never install it again. Ever.

Of course, it is not like I just lost a term paper or novel or something like that. I didn’t even shout, snap a remote in half, smash a keyboard or punch a door. The post was mostly the same old usual garbage spew about shows most of you readers don’t even watch. In fact, that was the whole point of the start of the post, but I eventually got to the usual boring snippits, which were actually shorter this time. Ho... Continue reading »

Tellyman 10.3

I am quite a few days late with this, but my excuse is I didn’t want to be a total dork and blog on my *vacation.* I guess I could have blogged this stuff on Monday or Tuesday, since technically, they were work days, but I figured I would rather get out into the city and do my best to get mugged or something. It didn’t happen.

I did meet a real nice girl in the Red Light District though. She was tall and had a deep voice and a hint of five o’clock shadow under her caked on foundation. Wait a minute, did I say RLD? I meant Ghirardelli Square. She was working the candy checkout counter. I suspect she was a he, but she/he/it sure did look purrdy from a distance. I’m not even kidding.

Well, on to the regular scheduled programming. I actually caught up on my flight out to Oakland by watching the previous night’s Earl, Office and Smallville on my iPod. It worked out pretty well, except I think I scared the guy sitting across the aisle from me with a few sudden outbursts of laughter during The Office.

I should start with How I Met Your Mother, but I forget what happened. Oh, wait a minute, Lilly and Barney became engaged in some strange relationship, which wa... Continue reading »

Tellyman 10.2

It was a rough week for television viewing for me. While I was able to watch everything, it was only thanks to Media Center dutifully fulfilling its, err… duties. I had to work late pretty much every night this week, so I was playing catch up all week and now that I am caught up, I can bore you with my thoughts.

This week’s How I Met Your Mother was weak, until the end. The end made it worth it because you thought for the entire episode that Ted Moesby, Architect was dogging Robin after their first fight. Barney started off the episode by telling Ted that he should advertise the fact that he is an architect since chicks think it is hot. Ted tests it out by chatting up a girl at the bar and Barney is actually right. The episode then follows Ted, Marshall and this girl for the rest of the night with Robin and Lily hot on their trail.

Come to find out at the end that it was Barney passing himself off as Ted for the night. Another classic Barney moment that regular viewers were sure to appreciate and further reason you need to watch this show. It would seem that Ted and Robin aren’t zooming as close to Splitsville as the previous episode would lea... Continue reading »

Tellyman 10.1

At the start of this, it wasn’t necessarily my intention to do this as an ongoing series under the heading of “Tellyman,” but it would seem to have stuck. I was going to change up titles on a post-by-post basis, but since Ed also came up with “Tele Mundo,” and I got nothing else, I’m going to stick with “Tellyman.” I’ll adjust to use my month-dot-week nomenclature like “Fanboy Fodder” since during repeats, I may not post. I do find it odd that we both thought up the same name though. Spooky…

Week three of the new television season is complete and three shows made their way into my schedule. Kidnapped made its exit due to cancellation, or at least the news that it would not continue past its original 13 episode order. I wasn’t sure it would last, so the news wasn’t much a surprise. I’m not going to finish it out because I already have too much to watch as it is.

That said, I’ll also take a page out of Ed’s book and not talk about every show in depth, but I’ll at least mention each one, even if to just say I liked it or didn’t. I think I am also go... Continue reading »

Tellyman: Week Two

So, continuing a new theme of talking about shows on the telly every week, this is week two. In case you don’t get it, my title this week and last is trying to play on the Batman: Year One and Year Two comic stories. I’m not Tellyman and I don’t know who is. Maybe he has utility belt, but not a slightly-too-young-sidekick.

Yeah, I know…

I don’t know how much longer I will really keep this up, but I at least planned on doing it for the first three weeks since debuts are spread out over that time. Anyway, here’s what I think of week two…

This past week saw the series debut of Heroes and season premiere of Smallville, so I guess an extra dose of comic book type viewing. The image above is from a web comic on the nbc.com site to promote Heroes. The book is penciled by Michael Turner and Koi Turnbull of Aspen Comics, so it is good stuff. The first part mostly follows Mohinder Suresh and fills in a few little tidbits we didn’t get in the show. If you are already a fan, I suggest you check it out. There’s also a blog written by Hiro.

If you didn’t check out the first episode, you should do so on-line an... Continue reading »