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 »

The Office: “Diwali” and “Branch Closing”

Well, this is late and not late.

Late because it includes two episodes, but not late because I have no damn schedule you fool! No… it is late because “Diwali” sucked, and no, not the holiday, the episode… I’m sure it is just like an “Indian Halloween” Kelly.

I talked to Ed at one point after the episode and asked if it sucked as hard for him as it did for me. I told him I laughed out loud twice, told him what scenes/lines and he pointed out several others, which I agreed were okay, but still… I didn’t really enjoy this episode. That caused me to delay, delay, delay in writing about it.

Anyway, all I had was Jim falling off his bike and declaring, “I’m a drunk driver” and Pam giving Michael a ride home after getting dissed by both Gail and Pam. His revelation that “these aren’t my shoes” was good, but what got me was:

Michael: [Sitting in backseat] This is just like that show Taxi Cab Confessions Pam: If you say one more word I am stopping the car

Two that I remember Ed pointing out were Creed identifying “That’s th... 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 »

Heroes: Collision

Since this is two weeks in a row, maybe I should just plan on getting this out on Wednesday night and if I should have it done on Tuesday night, bonus for you. Before I jump in to my thoughts on the episode, make sure you check out this week’s mini-comic, from which the image above is borrowed. I happened to accidentally click on the first panel and lo and behold, a Claire Bennet MySpace page loads up. Has Google bought it yet?

I have watched this episode twice and it turns out I didn’t really need to do it, but it was still enjoyable the second time around. Speaking of which, and this is the last aside, they are running three episodes this Sunday (10/22) starting at 8pm. Looks like they’ll start with episode 2 instead of the Pilot, but if you missed any of them, check it out. Looks like they are also repeating the current epsiode on Sci-Fi channel too, so if you miss one on a Monday night, you can probably catch it later in the week there.

Okay, so the reason I say I didn’t need to watch again was because there wasn’t much that needed extra scrutiny. The only new symbol I picked up was probably obvious to anyone who watched Nik... 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 »

Tellyman: Week One

For most of us, this week kicked off the first week of the new television season. Sorry, I don’t watch any of the crap on FOX, although that will change when 24 starts up until they kill off Eddie.

Oops, check that… I have watched the first two episodes of ‘Til Death. The giant from Ray doesn’t nothing for me, but I was interested to see what Eddie Kaye Thomas would do on the show and that Kat Foster, who plays his wife, is a little cutie. Thomas is playing it too straight as an assistant principal at the school in which the giant next door neighbor teaches. Of course, the show sucks much ass and I wasted 44 minutes — thank you Media Center — of my life. I knew it would, but I had to make sure. I’m still bitter that Off Centre was cancelled over on UPN, but whatever.

So, I was right the first time, I don’t watch any of the crap on FOX. This week I took in two new shows (Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Jericho) and three returning shows (How I Met Your Mother, My Name is Earl, The Office). I suppose before I get to those though, I should layout what I think this year’s schedule is going to be for me:

• Mo... Continue reading »