Let's see, in no particular order:

Heroes -- getting dumber every day. Damn near "midichlorians" levels of dumb.

Dollhouse -- just the moment after it was canceled, it has become beyond awesome. Damn you Fox!

BSG spin-off Caprica -- oy vey! I bought the direct-to-DVD pilot and was sorely disappointed in ways that would require serious spoilers. Suffice to say that the whole plot revolved around the most ridiculous series of MacGuffin-like ideas. Well, now it seems that SyFy has picked it up as a series. Ron Moore started off BSG so well, then it descended deep into the bowels of WTF and Caprica is just more WTF piled on top.

Chuck -- so far, it's still working for me. They went to great story-writing lengths to bring everybody back to the Buy More, but it works. The B-story elements are as compelling as ever. I'm glad that Chuck didn't just become a super-badass, despite his new abilities.

FlashForward -- coming back soon. I'll keep watching. Not deeply enthusiastic, but maybe they actually know where they're going, unlike, say...

V -- also coming back soon. I'll let the TiVo keep grabbing it but I won't watch it for a while. Somebody please wake me up if it gets interesting.

Burn Notice -- new season starting soon. I kinda like this one, but I'm not really sure why.

Top Gear -- at least something is still brilliant. (I also downloaded some TG:Australia, and haven't been impressed at all.)


Is there some genius TV that I'm missing?

Fringe can be very good but you can't be picky about the "science" it tries to pretend is real.

Bones it has a few bad episodes but the overall story has been very good.

Supernatural seems like it is just a monster of the week show but it has one of the best story arcs on TV.

Friday Night Lights a really excellent drama about a small Texas football town.

Castle is about a writer who decides to shadow a homicide detective as inspiration for his next book.

White Collar has been amazing and the second half of season one starts tonight.

Dude, way to break the naming convention of these TV threads Just joking :p


Um...because it's super awesome? Burn Notice is probably in my top 5 shows on TV.

Dollhouse: I disagree with you. Dollhouse has been fantastic since around episode 7. The first six eps were garbage, nearly everything afterwards has been brilliant.

Chuck: I agree, I find it interesting how they're limiting his abilities. I'm sure, though, that they'll make the key to unlocking them be something like Chuck's innate goodness or something like that. It's getting a little ridiculous, however, to see how long they can stretch the will they won't they thing, though.

Heroes: ready for something hilarious? It seems like everyone who once loved this show and defended it to me is now joining me in thinking it sucks. The funny part? I think this is the strongest season by far. It still has a ton of the same issues it always had, but at least this season there's some freaking continuity to the story. But thing has remained the same: I still don't find Hayden Panettiere attractive.

As for the other stuff I watch, wow, just too much to name. But I'm happy the season has started up again. The only reason I don't like it is that over the winter my wife was suddenly interested in watching all of Buffy and Angel, and now there are fewer viewing hours in the week to do that We're up to season 5 of Buffy and season 2 of Angel, though, so she's hooked enough to keep going.


Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Off the top of my head, I will be watching the following shows airing this season:

Chuck
Castle
Dollhouse
Heroes
Big Bang Theory
Two and a Half Men (my wife watches it, and I find it pretty funny)
House
Bones
Fringe
Community
Parks and Recreation
The Office
30 Rock
Supernatural (last season of one of my top 2 currently airing shows)
Lost (last season of the other of my top 2 )
Numb3rs
Psych
Burn Notice
Medium
Ghost Whisperer (the first 3 seasons, I'm shocked to admit, were really good - the last two have been awful)
Smallville

That's all I can remember at the moment. Have I mentioned I watch a lot of TV? And that's just the shows on this winter/spring. And it doesn't include shows like:

This Old House
Dream House
Pardon the Interruption
Mythbusters
Various episodes of cooking shows
Various other stuff like football games and live events like the Oscars.

The above is why I don't think ditching FIOS TV and going with iTunes for TV would work for someone like me

Better Off Ted - one I've got into recently

The IT Crowd - only has short 6 episode seasons though

And a few repeated from above:

Mythbusters - although my interest is waning a little bit.

30 Rock - Still going strong in it's fourth season. Love the GE references

Top Gear UK - As an Australian I only lasted about 2 episodes on the Australian version. Maybe I should have tried for longer, but it seemed to try way too hard to be like the UK version.

House

Flashfoward - waiting for it to restart although wouldn't be surprised if it didn't make it far

It did get better during the first season, the last eps were pretty good. I haven't seen any of the second season though, I will watch them sometime. Nine Network has the rights from now on, the presenters aren't confirmed but I'm sure they will be throwing money at it.

Speaking of which.. CTV aired all six episodes over New Years, and I just finished re-watching episodes II & III late last night.

Man the original three were so much better than the final(?) three!

-ml

I can't agree I'm afraid, it seems to be to have become a confused, jumbled mess. I'm having trouble following the plot.

No doubt partly caused by panicking about the likelihood of being cancelled and rushing to cram stuff in.

Good.. perhaps I'll watch the rest of them someday, then. All of the episodes of seasons one and two are in the Myth box here.

Cheers

I still love Lie to Me. I also watched the premiere of Human Target, it seems like it will be OK but nothing special.

There are a few odd shows that I catch that seem like they could be cool. Things like Ultimate Factories or World's Deadliest Aircraft. Occasionally, Modern Marvels has an interesting topic.

Human Target was watchable but I worry for subsequent episodes in terms of VFX and set construction. The pilot, which may have had a higher budget than future episodes already looked a little cheap and dated in some scenes. Apart from that, this is the first show in a long time that I can link directly to the action shows of the 80's like the A-Team and MacGuyver. It doesn't necessarily have the schtick of those shows, but something about Human Target just makes me feel like I'm watching a blast from the past.

It's watchable, but not high on my list of favorites (which is quite small anyway). I'm not sure it's going to last.

I think Flash forward is going to get cancelled sooner rather than later along with V. Taking them off the air for so long was a huge nail in their coffins since I don't believe they had yet built critical mass in terms of audience/attention. The networks have also not been promoting them at all while they've been off. In contrast, ABC has done quite a bit of promotion for Lost's last season.

Heroes is near terrible. But I still watch it for some inexplicable reason. It's just shit writing on top of more shit writing. Little to no continuity or characterization and definitely absolutely no character development over the course of the whole series. Seems like every week there is just more mundane crap. It just isn't believable that for a huge number of people with these powers to waste so much time just sitting around drinking coffee and talking about the weather (essentially the main plot of every episode).

I just started watching the new season of 24 and it's also watchable but sometimes painful in its obvious plot devices. I wish they would abandon the 24-hour concept and bullshit "real-time" tag. It's clearly not anything remotely close to real-time like the first season was. A good reboot could be had with 24x24 where the season took place over 24 days with one day per episode. There are also way (way!) too many story lines going at the same time. One of the same things that made the Star Wars prequels absolutely crap.

Cable/premium still rules and Dexter, True Blood and Californication were the highlights of the season. Weeds was pretty good and I'm currently watching Men of a Certain Age which is growing on me - Ray Romano's new show, which is as far from his previous as you can imagine (I didn't like his sitcom).

Best comedy on network right now comes from ABC IMO. Cougar Town and Modern Family. I still very much like the Office and Parks and Rec. 30 Rock looks good but I'll have to watch it from the start since I skipped it when it originally premiered.

As predicted, the Jay Leno show is a total and complete failure and NBC is deep in the shit because of it. Seriously, who didn't see this train-wreck coming? Apparently the executive team at NBC. The same tards responsible for killing some good programming and giving the boot to Medium, which is still doing quite well (on CBS), IMO.

Scrubs (also ABC) rebooted this year which I found difficult to get into. I was lamenting the loss of Zack Braff the lead, but the current rebooted format works better without him there. I still prefer the old format however. Another comedy still doing very well is How I Met Your Mother, though I wish they'd lose the laugh track.

House is still one of my favorite shows along with Fringe, which unfortunately has had just a few too many close-calls with X-Files episodes (storylines/format ) for my liking. I can't for the life of me understand how NBC has kept Chuck alive. Even the commercials/previews for it look dull and make me want to change the channel.

I'm waaaaay behind on a lot of stuff, but I've mostly been keeping up with the sitcoms.

So, on that front, I'd say that you should definitely be watching 30 Rock, Community, and Better Off Ted.

I think we're probably all familiar with 30 Rock, so I won't say anything about it beyond the fact that its quality has not fallen off.

Better Off Ted is basically yet another Dilbert/Office Space type thing, but it's really well done and quite funny. It centers on the life of Ted, a project manager at "Veridian Dynamics", a multinational conglomerate that goes from making consumer products to fulfilling defense contracts. The other main characters are two dweebish scientists, a naïve QA person, and a company-obsessed senior manager. It also frequently features fake ads for Veridian Dynamics, that "unintentionally" demonstrate how they treat people like consumable resources. ABC is currently running two episodes every Friday, so smart money is on them canceling it pretty soon.

Community is about a lawyer who has returned to community college after he was disbarred when his law degree from Columbia University was discovered to be a degree from a Colombia university. The rest of the cast is his Spanish class study group, featuring an Asperger-ish savant, an incompetent yet successful entrepreneur of retiree age, a former high-school football star, a middle-aged recent divorcee, a high-school overachiever who failed to graduate with her class after she became addicted to Ritalin, and a (less well defined) stereotypically liberal feminist young woman, plus their megalomaniacal Spanish teacher, Señor Chang, who happens to be Chinese, and the dean of the college, who is delusional about the quality of his school.

On the surface, it sounds like a generic ensemble comedy, but there's a lot of fairly subtle breaking-the-fourth-wall humor, which I tend to enjoy, and they actually are spending a good amount of time exploring all of the characters in the study group. It's a really good show. It won't make a dime.

Oh. My. God.

One of my (soon to be former) friends convinced me to watch that show. I got through about 2.5 episodes before I was pretty sure I was on the verge of killing myself. Not a single laugh in the entire 50 minutes or so. Truly awful.

It's one of the highest rated new comedies, though, so that makes sense. People will watch anything as long as it doesn't make them think.

Wow, I actually find that surprising. Most US audiences like things like that Charlie Sheen show and of course the aforementioned Ray Romano sitcom.



You know you're talking about sitcoms right? I don't know of any sitcom that makes one think. The ones you mentioned previously included.

Better Off Ted is another one I missed the first season of so I won't watch any new episodes until I've had a chance to see the first ones.

TV seems to be even more subjective today than I ever remember it in the past. Not sure if it's the ability to record and place shift or what. But I don't know any 2 people that like mostly the same group of shows. And that includes everyone. Family, friends, neighbors and the lot here on the board. There's a ton of disparity even when a couple of shows do overlap.

You mean divorced middle-aged people with sons making lame sex jokes?

No, I mean a slice so wide of the population that it encompasses all age groups and genders. Damn, what's the name of that show anyway? I honestly can't remember. Something about Two Men. I'd have to look it up.

Oh, speaking of no-laughs however... That's what I got when I watched the pilot for the latest Kelsey Grammer show - I'm assuming it's been cancelled already though since I haven't seen any promotion for it.

Really with the crowd here on Dollhouse, Supernatural and Flashforward

also enjoying Being Human and loved True Blood (SWMBO endued up getting all 10 books for Christmas)

Aside from that, Mythbusters and Ice Road Truckers are good late night drunk watching, and for serious brain dead TV - One Way Out, which purports to be an escape artist show, but degenerates amusingly into a man getting hurt a lot

I no longer watch television.

This is an unusual state of affairs coming from someone who three months ago was watching an average of 30-40 hours a week. (Retired, remember?) And you know what? It is incredibly liberating to have severed the ties that kept me glued to that idiot box.

Why this change of heart?

TiVo does not work in Mexico, other than in Mexico City. And after 10 years of watching TiVo, "television" (defined by having to search out the few grains of wheat among the bushels of chaff in 200+ cable channels, those grains constantly interrupted by commercials) is absolutely and totally unwatchable.

Add to that the fact that only about a half dozen of those channels are in English (it is disquieting to see Mythbusters overdubbed in español) and the only reason that the TV set is even in the house is my DVD player. (At the moment I am just starting season three of Buffy, spending about 45 minutes a day at it.)

I am on a one-month free trial of the local cable company's premium service, and in another 10 days or so I will give their cable box back to them and keep only the basic non-HD service which I need for my internet connection. (I am paying top dollar for the fastest possible internet, and my download speed is less than one-third of what I had in California.) That basic service includes exactly ONE English language channel: CNN News. I've never watched CNN before, is it always so badly programmed? There has been nothing but 24-hour continuous coverage of the Haiti earthquake since it happened, and after the first hour or so all they have done is repeat what they already said. I suspect that there may have been other newsworthy events in the past week, but I have no way of finding out.

So, I will continue to watch this thread, but my interest will be purely academic.

tanstaafl.

These threads are always helpful for me to know what I'll be picking up on DVD a few years down the road. I've been PVR/subscription free for nearly 4 years, and it's nice to be able to watch as much or as little of a show as I want in one sitting. The one exception I made was for Battlestar Galactica, but beyond that, shows like Lost are still on my "waiting for it to end" list before I pick it up.

I'm not paying any recurring fees for TV right now and I'm loving it. The PVR is working overtime as everything network is now recorded in HD (OTA).

I guess I really could do that myself. I watch far fewer cable shows than stuff I could get OTA. But I don't think the Series 3 Tivo can do dual tuner OTA, can it?


Bitt, I totally agree about Community. I think it's hilarious and very clever. I particularly like the episode enders over the credits with Troy and Abed. I just found out that the guy who plays Troy wrote for 30 Rock, so that gives me more respect for him, as I think that show has some of the best comedy writing on TV.

I'm thrilled to see that there are several people on here who like Supernatural. That show has always been FAR better than it ought to be, and never gets any publicity at all (and, sadly, the ratings have been so low I'm stunned it's still on the air). I had zero expectations going into it, based on every single person involved having done stuff I hated: Jensen Ackles was awful on Smallville, Jared Padelecki was on Gilmore Girls and I wasn't a fan, and McG...well...he's friggin' McG need I say more?

But the show surprised me like none other that I can think of. It's the best horror that primetime networks have ever produced, the relationship between the two brothers drives the show, and the entire production and story writing are all top notch. And to top it all off, I'm amazed at how hilarious the show can get. Every season there are 2 or 3 episodes that are flat out hysterical, mostly playing off previous events and characters in the show.

For those of you in this thread who wait until shows have run their course, definitely check this one out soon. All signs point to this being the last season, mostly because they've kicked the story up to the highest notch it can logically go to. From what I've heard, the actors have contracts that go through next season, but they probably won't go past this one.


While I'm at it, if it's finished shows on DVD that you're after, here's my favorites, pretty much in my order of preference:

6- Arrested Development [sitcoms don't make you think, Bruno? you really have to pay attention when you watch this one if you want to get all the phenomenally good jokes and season-old call-backs]
5- Freaks & Geeks [this show is so unbelievably great it pains me to put this so far down the list]
4- Veronica Mars [the third season wasn't great, but the first couple are fantastic - best father-daughter relationship on TV I've ever seen (though sadly you don't see that many)]
3- Buffy/Angel/Firefly [three-way tie]
2- Carnivale [easily the best cinematography of any show I've ever seen on TV (also the best intro) - extremely slow to develop but worth every minute]
1- Avatar: The Last Airbender [the true Avatar - it's a Nick cartoon, but DO NOT let that stop you - try to get at least 6 episodes in]

Seriously though, check out Avatar. It starts out a bit too childish, but after that I think the show creators found their footing and got full control of the show, and it's simply wonderful. I also give them credit for setting out with an episode number limit. They wanted to make a three-season epic story, and succeeded on every level. The heart of the show, though, lies in its character development and warmth of spirit. The show just makes me happy, and I love spending time with those characters. That's what has made me watch it three times through.

Yeah, they're, for some reason, making a live-action movie of Avatar: The Last Airbender, which they now can't call "Avatar", so it's just "The Last Airbender". I have no notion that it will be any good, though.

Huh. I didn't notice until just now that it's "written" and directed by M. Night Shama-lama-ding-dong. Maybe it will be good. (He's already got the story, and he's an excellent director, despite the story flaws in his last several movies.)

I agree on your above list. I would also add The Wire, Babylon 5, Farscape and Rome.

I do, too! They're the perfect 21st-century Odd Couple.

Biblioteca

For sure, they hurried up the big story arc so we could see that there was something more than the whore-du-jour going on. Now, if they'd only dropped season 1 and started the show at season 2, they probably would have gotten much farther down the road.

(In hindsight, it's amazing that Babylon 5 survived its first season to actually get rolling. B5 didn't really hit its stride until the third season, and then there was the hurry-up-and-finish of season 4, followed by the "well, I guess we can keep going" of season 5. Sigh.)

That's definitely a show I will check out. Again, something I didn't catch right from the start, but liked what I saw.

I don't call quickly picking up in-jokes or references "thinking" though. A lot of people will miss them, but for the most part there's not much thinking involved to picking them up and "getting" them. No more than driving straight down the freeway, it's almost all instinct.

Yes, as far as I know, it CAN record dual tuner OTA. It's got four tuners: Two cable and two OTA, so you can record a mix of any two programs (cable or OTA) at once.

https://www3.tivo.com/store/boxes.do?Wt.ac=shophome_whichDvr_boxeslist_img#tab_dvrquestions

That is correct.

Btw.. did you ever configure an auto comm-skip add-on into that SageTV system of yours? Curious.

Cheers

Actually I haven't. I've been avoiding playing with a number of add-ons in fact, even though the machine has enough CPU to handle it all. I'm going to look at it again once Sage release their next update, version 7. At least once I know it's stable.

The default installation offers 10 second and 2:30 skip forward and back commands, so commercials are usually no big deal to pass over. Probably the main reason I haven't done anything with comskip (which needs to transcode the full recording afaik).

Oh, and speaking of free TV... I can't believe it but I just downloaded last night's episode of Bitches Love Money. Err, The Bachelor. Obviously (obviously I said!) for the wife.

For some reason Sage always schedules things to record off the Canadian OTA channels when it can unless I restrict the favorite to specific channels. And last night, my City-TV (51-1) seems to have disappeared. Though instead of "no-signal" sage seems to just tune some other channel instead. So we ended up with one hour of the CTS (Christian Television).

Oh boy you've gotten me started You can imagine, being the fan I am (it's my absolute favorite TV show of all time, if you can believe that), how concerned I am about that adaptation. I believe he is hoping to do a trilogy, but I suppose it depends on how well the first one does. From what I've read about his thoughts on his take on the story, my concerns haven't been eased. And don't get me wrong, I'm a pretty big fan. I LOVE Unbreakable, but I've had issues with his other "twist" films, and The Happening was the worst movie I've seen in theaters in the past five years (barely beating out The Whole Ten Yards).

I'm even only about 50/50 on the teaser trailer that's been out for some time now.

I think I have to prepare myself for something VERY different. There are simply things you can do in animation that you can't do in film, even with CG. I guess I'll just have to get myself ready for the film whenever it comes out.

Hopefully not. MythTV just flags the start/end point for each detected commercial, in its database, and the playback can then auto-skip over those points, and the remote can be used to manually skip to the next flagged (start or end) point as desired.

Cheers

This feels like some sort of confessional.
Here goes nuthin-

I don't watch shows. When the TV gets turned on, certain channels get cycled through and if nothing good is on, the TV gets turned off. Typically, the channels are Comedy Central, History, and Discovery. Very rarely will I venture out into any others.
That said, some of my favorites are
Dirty Jobs
Any Live Stand-up (if it's good)
Dimitri Martin
Tosh.0
Southpark/Family Guy/Adult Swim
Mythbusters
Daily Show/Colbert Report
Pawn Stars

My housemate is hooked on Sons of Anarchy, so I follow along with that, but it's not something I'd tune in to on my own.
I like shows like Modern Marvels and How It's Made, but I don't pay attention to 'the new season' or which are repeats- it's pretty much all new to me since I don't watch that much.

I think the concept of a 'reality show' is glorifying some real idiots these days. It saddens me to see how far down 'The History Channel' has fallen from the original intent. I laughed when I heard about their new show- Madhouse. I used to race dirt oval in the 80's and, yah, lots of drama in the pits with the rednecks.

I'm a Dimitri Martin fan. I watched his CC standup special again yesterday and it was just as funny as the first time.

I had similar functionality documented in my PVR app design for ATI in 2004. I don't know if Sage supports its own chapterization or marking of points on the timeline of its recorded content. Comskip handles detection and output of data noting the location of the commercials. When integrating with Sage the information is passed to something else, but I haven't looked enough into it to get the full picture, so maybe it doesn't need to transcode after all. It would be nice to be able to just cut and concatenate.

Ok, I just did a little digging and it turns out Sage *can* support section markers. Another tool is used along with Comskip to modify Sage's DB with the data. I may give this a shot if the analysis is fairly quick.

EDIT: Ok, I've installed Comskip, a utility (service) called Dirmon2 which monitors the creation of files in specified folders and then the Comskip plugin for SageTV. My whole library of recorded programming is now having commercials marked.

I've tested playback on the pilot episode of Fringe and it's working well. The plugin supports auto-skipping which I haven't tested, but the remapping of the left and right buttons on the remote to jump around the episode are very nice. No more need to skip 2:30 and then a few presses of 10 seconds. Cool.

Thanks for bringing this up and prompting me to give it a shot Mark. It was pretty painless and in retrospect I wouldn't haven't gained anything by waiting until the next update. The plugin integrated fairly well and shouldn't break with any minor updates either.

Has anyone seen the series Leverage? I just caught a brief commercial for it (inserted into another show) and wanted to know if it's any good? Apparently in its second season, it's a TNT show. I suppose I've never heard of it because I don't have TNT up here and I don't think it's being carried by any Canadian stations that I do get.

Likewise, any comments on the series Hung? This one I did previously know about, just haven't seen any of it.

Excellent!

I use auto-skip with MythTV, and when it misjudges a commercial (about one in ten on CBC, and far less on all others) things are easily adjusted with a quick tap of the next/prev track buttons on the remote.

Cheers

I've watched the first few episodes of Hung. It's not bad, not great. It's far more about the main characters' lives than it is about the gigoloing. Thomas Jane does a good job playing a sad sack, and I've always liked Jane Adams.

Okay, I'm getting caught up on some of my backlog.

I just got to the episode of Fringe with the organ donation girl.

That episode you're talking about of Fringe is a season one episode they decided not to air originally. Probably to tighten up the overall story-arc, since it was another one of the episodes that didn't relate to it. The strange thing I found was that the episodes that did air aren't missing an episode number (at least if the number listed on TV.com are the real production numbers).

It was shown this season as a "special" and wasn't intended to try and fit in. They advertised it as a special event but didn't put enough emphasis on it by calling out something like "special lost episode from season one." I believe they used it both as filler and to test audience on that other time slot. It was on a Tuesday, right? Maybe they're planning on trying to put a Fringe/American Idol combo up against Lost next month.

The items mentioned aren't spoilers, since that episode is clearly a season one episode when both the things you mentioned were obviously true.

I have no idea when it was shown; I have a TiVo. Nothing in the episode called it out as a special.

The airing was advertised as a special prior to it airing. And I believe some days before because we saw the promo clip in the recording for something else. It's a fluke I saw the mention because I'm normally quick about skipping over commercial breaks.

I still enjoy the show, but I wish they'd do more with the larger story arc. It's one of the things that bugged me about X-Files as well. During the first season they built up this good back story with the ZFT, "the Pattern," Massive Dynamic, etc... This season they're letting it all go to waste. And even the very few episodes that contributed to the longer arc weren't as tightly integrated with the issues/points they set up last season as they could have been.

It seems like they're catering too much to the ability to show episodes out of order for possible syndication.

I disagree. I think they're doing an excellent job at playing with the larger story while doing the regular episodic stuff. It sounds like you're upset that they haven't mentioned stuff like the ZFT and other things you mentioned, but they're still dealing with the larger picture. It's all related, we just haven't seen how yet. Heck, I'd say at least half the episodes this season have dealt with nothing but the larger picture. The frozen heads, Walter's "missing pieces," etc. If anything, I like this stuff better. I found the ZFT stuff boring, and there's only so many times you can have Olivia storm in to Massive Dynamic and Nina say they don't know anything about the thing they obviously know about That gets super boring.

I think the show is doing just fine.

Well, except for the "special," which I saw no mention of as being a special, but then again I don't watch ads anymore, and there were no Fox shows that I watch that were airing before Fringe came back where I might have seen promos.


On a side note, Bitt, thanks for recommending Better Off Ted. I've plowed through the first season already, and it's simply hilarious. I love the nearly cartoonish reality it's set in, I love how likable they're able to make the lead (considering how annoyingly attractive and charismatic he is), I love that they cast Byron from Andy Richter Controls the Universe, and it took me a while to realize that there are only about two scenes that take place outside the company. It's a fantastic show, and you're right, it'll probably be canceled in no time, which is strange because I can't imagine it costs all that much. It seems like they must have about 4 different sets, and most of the actors I've never seen before, so they can't make all that much.


And on a final note, I was in TV heaven last night, as I was completely unaware that both Burn Notice and Supernatural were starting back up again. Supernatural had one of its weaker episodes, but that's meaningless for the show as even its worst episodes are still great.

Matt, the issue with one-off episodes, is like on the X-Files, they can easily get boring. And repetitive. And when the characters are isolated from the over-all arc they're no longer believable. At least in Fringe they'll still often make reference to the past and previously shared/disclosed/watched events. The characters need to keep growing and every episode should add to their "history" and persona. That's the saving grace and where the X-Files completely faltered. IMO, it's what started to damage it and eventually made it a complete POS (even before the larger completely dumb-ass mistakes).

Some of the best episodes of The X-Files were one-off episodes. Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose and Jose Chung's From Outer Space both come to mind. In honesty, the recent episode of Fringe that dealt with the Watcher reminded me of those. A little more heavy-handed, but similar in feeling. (The writer responsible for like 75% of the really good episodes of The X-Files, Darin Morgan, is now a consulting producer on Fringe.)

On the other hand, since The X-Files had no idea where they were going with their major plotline, the single episodes generally stand out as being better anyway.

I'd argue that the only good ones were the one-off episodes. I hated the mythology episodes.

Exactly what I was going to say. The problem with that show had nothing to do with the one-off episodes. If anything they saved the show. The problem with the X-Files was that Chris Carter clearly didn't have a single clue where he wanted his show to end up.

X-Files' worst crime, IMO, was the resolution of what happened to Mulder's sister. The end of that episode was beautiful and touching, but once it was over I realized that it completely demolished the entire motivation of the show's main character.



Bitt, we have extremely similar taste in TV. It's eerie. I frequently cite Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose as my absolute favorite episode of that show. I kept a VHS tape around of it for years, and now I simply keep that one episode on my hard drive at all times. Love it.

Another of my favorites was from one of the last two seasons. It's the episode starring Joe Morton (Terminator 2, Eureka), where he wakes up in prison not knowing why he's there, and each day he wakes up one day earlier.

A while ago I made a DVD with those to episodes and the one with Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin as ghosts.

Re: Spoiler: Not according to the Wikipedia article on her.

Ok, the last three seasons of the X-FIles were all but unwatchable, every single episode.

Chris Carter not knowing where the show was going is exactly my point. The over-all arc was shot. He kept changing his mind. The characters would grow and then backtrack in every way.

I don't want to see that happen to Fringe. BUt if you think anyone plans out a series years in advance... Well that simple doesn't happen. Any showrunner/creator that claims that is just blowing smoke up our asses. A show has to have some headroom and be dynamic enough to adapt to external pressures, so it can't all be carved in stone. I can live with that. But what the X-FIles did was inexcusable.

With Fringe, the most useless and boring episodes have always been the stand-alone ones. Not necessarily all of them mind you, but the only ones I've felt dissatisfied with have aways been stand-alone. I don't mind and actually appreciate side-cases, but they have to keep advancing the larger story arc. The whole Fringe division is supposed to be in place because of "The Pattern." This isn't the X-Files and frankly some of the cases they get brought in on, including the last one, are irrelevant enough that they should never have been called in the first place.

That said, I did like the last episode however.

Anyway, pushing the overall storyline isn't what necessarily makes a show good, so don't assume that's what I'm advocating blindly. If your overall story sucks or you have no clue how to actually develop a story, like say Kring from Heroes, then the show is going to suck crap even if every episode is directly linked to the previous. That guy might have a lot going for him, but TV is not one of those things. Seriously, he needs to find another line of work.

Well, it was one of your points. I was targeting the specific claim that the one-off episodes somehow hurt the show, when I think it was the opposite with that show.


I certainly believe that they can have a framework in place, and at the very least can plot out logical endpoints for their story.


Meh, I suppose I understand, but I never found them boring. They might not be as good as the rest, but I can't remember an episode I disliked so much.


No no, I wasn't assuming that. I certainly appreciate shows that find a great balance between the serial and the episodic, or at least don't pretend at one or the other. For everything I love about Lost, the one thing that leaves me a tad dissatisfied with the show is a slight lack of episodic structures. They're there sometimes, but it doesn't feel like it. But that's okay, because it makes up for it with a fantastic serial storyline.


Wow, I must have really misread that episode, or it simply became fuzzy in my head. My apologies, then. I still argue, however, that pretty much every single plotline in the entire show's run is muddled. I couldn't really tell you what happened in the show now. Maybe that's partly due to my age when the show was running, but I'm not sure I could entirely follow it while it was on.

A plan is not immutable. A plan is a plan. There are TV shows that clearly show that the ... author ... had a particular vision in mind. That doesn't mean he had 110 episodes written and blocked, and none of us (besides you, anyway) think that's what that means.

The X-Files didn't have a plan to take it into multiple seasons. They were flying by the seat of their pants and too many episodes were written with what appears to have been no oversight, leading to the same actors playing different versions of their characters.

You don't have to have the story blocked out into specific episodes, but with the type of series we're talking about (one with a serial element) you need to have some conception of an overall story.

How many show creators have said in interviews that they have the entire series carefully crafted out already in advance? A number of them, including Kring from Heroes as I recall. Even when they come up with an idea for a single season it's always gone to crap. Even for series such as 24 where the season's story is likely very well developed prior to shooting, they seem to have an easy time letting it go to crap.

Some writers and creators are better than others and can keep a series going as if it were all crafted out ahead of time. They take a look at past episodes and factor them in to future ones. Keeping a show cohesive and continuity in check is important and some people just don't have what it takes, even if only to manage this in the hands of others.

Um...that's what we've been saying. That was my example of an unplanned show. I don't know who you're arguing with here...


Again, exactly what we're saying, but something you specifically claimed never happens.


It's not my fault that you believed Kring when he said that. I could tell from 5 or 6 episodes in that this wouldn't be the case. Everyone was touting Heroes as being everything Lost wasn't (when it comes to reveals and plot development), and I was shocked by that. It was clear that this show had no clue what it was doing.


I do think that there are shows that don't have a clear end point, and some that don't even have a direction, but have writing teams that can make it seem like they do.

But what I'm arguing is that there are plenty of shows that have their endpoint in place. They have a framework upon which they hang many plotlines that can help them reach their ultimate goal of telling that story, even if they don't know what those plotlines will be when they're 3 seasons out. That doesn't mean that there will be a set number of seasons, because that decision is usually up to the studio execs and the ratings, but having that framework means they can shorten and extend the series if need be to get the story they want to tell in (though sometimes the networks don't give them the chance).

I didn't disagree with those points you made. I'm not arguing with anyone, what I was expressing was that I believed that this lack of direction and continuity in the X-Files is what made the show start to stink. I was a fan from day one of that show. Not too many later fans actually started watching the night of the original pilot broadcast. I even participated in usenet groups about the show, including a fan-fiction group.



That's not what I claimed never happens. What I claimed was that more than that doesn't happen, despite the claims of many creators/producers/showrunners. And not to say that anyone specific in this thread thought otherwise, but that a great many people (in general) do. Many times they have only an idea of the start, a couple of elements in the middle and how it should end. That's not even an overall story arc, but as you've noted, some people can make that work very well. IMO, this is what the creators of Lost had at most.



I didn't believe Kring. That's what I've been trying to say, is that generally speaking I don't put much faith in what the creators say. BUt what I did like about the show was that in the beginning it did seem quite well planned out and well serialized. I haven't really felt terribly happy since the last episode of season 1, however there have been a couple of highlights here and there.

I believe this whole sub-thread started with my desire to NOT see Fringe follow in the footsteps of the X-Files. Like Chris Carter, I don't have this whole thread planed out in advance, so it's not something I think would be very entertaining to someone catching up and re-reading at some point in the future.

Fringe has managed to do what X-Files couldn't do even within the first half dozen episodes of its first season. Develop and maintain a character arc that helps hold the series together. The characters are constantly being built up and don't generally (for lack of any apparent reason, such as a memory wipe) forget past events. I would like to see some additional back-references where appropriate as sometimes I think they're a little light on this. They're always referencing Walter's old work, but they also need to keep referencing facts/discoveries and elements of past episodes that can help with current cases, etc.

A counter example, of a show that I don't think has done this terribly well in some respects, but that I still quite enjoy, is Medium. How many times are Allison's friends going to doubt her and treat her like a pariah when she comes to them with a wacky dream? Really, this woman is *always* right, time to start putting some faith in her.

And B5.

Oh. My. God. That annoys me more than anything else on television. Really, that entire show is intensely frustrating. Everything you said is true, but I would add that Allison herself seems entirely clueless when she gets her visions. It's like "I had the strangest dream, I have no idea if it's at all related to this case that seems exactly like what I dreamed about."

Furthermore, the writers on that show seem to now have a clue how to write the visions she gets. In every episode, it seems like Allison is given one of two things:

1) So much information right off the bat that anyone watching, presumably seeing the exact same thing she does, can easily make the connections she needs to, but for some reason she's oblivious.

2) So little information - or misinformation - and she only gets everything she needs to at the very last minute. Whoever/whatever is giving her these visions is very unhelpful.

Really, I've been very disappointed at how little character and overall plot development that show has. In any other show, the public revelation of her abilities would have been a major point in the show, but after it happened on Medium, it's like nobody cares. And they could be doing some really interesting things with her kids' apparent abilities, but they only bring them up when it's convenient or if they have no idea what to do for a B-plot.


In contrast, I give you the first few seasons of Ghost Whisperer. I expected it to be a truly awful touchy-feely show and much worse than Medium. It was a bit gooey, but I was also amazed at how well they crafted a decent mythology and solid storyline. There were few plot holes, and the show had a great direction. Then they completely pissed it away in the fourth season when Hewitt took more control of the show, and seemingly kicked the very entertaining Jay Mohr off the show abruptly so that her honey, the horrible Jamie Kennedy, could take his place. Ugh.

Anyway, nevermind about the argument, Bruno. I think we're violently agreeing. I do know that some creators say they have everything planned out, and I agree that many don't. I, on the other hand, think some do. I think Lost was planned out, and I pretty much know that Supernatural was planned out. I also know that my favorite show, Avatar, was planned from the beginning to be a 22-episode-a-season, 3 season epic. Pretty impressive for a "kids show."

With regards to Avatar I wish it had been planned as a 4 season show so they could have dedicated one season to Air as well.

True, though it would have been a little difficult considering all the Air Nomads were dead.

Which, by the way, brings up the only flaw in the series, IMO. There's a lot of talk about balance, but they never consider what will happen to the world with all the Air Nomads and Air Benders gone. It's a little bleak, so maybe they didn't want to mention it in a kids show. Then again, maybe Aang and Katara will work on that...

So, no one's seen the show Leverage yet?

How about the new Starz series, Spartacus? Or White Collar on USA Network? This last one seems to be a take-off of the ending of the movie Catch Me If You Can - at least as far as the limited synopsis I've read portrays it.

Apparently Jeremy Kyle wants to make a US show. You lucky people!

Dammit!

I watched Leverage last season. I started losing interest when Nathan Ford's story line dipped into alcoholism.

I might just have to check out the pilot to see if I'm interested in Leverage.

Why is it that every US station seems to broadcast things like the State of the Union? There aren't any commercials to earn money from it, are there? Why not let it ride and show your regular programming while your competitor is showing the presidential address? I have my thoughts on which way the ratings would swing...

Besides, didn't the president know that Steve Jobs has his own announcement scheduled tomorrow?

Is everyone ready for Lost? I've been making jokes for the past 1.5 weeks about tonight's season premiere. Mostly to my wife. The type of jokes that imply I'm some crazed Lost junky.

Like last night when she asked if I would bathe our daughter, I told her it was going to have to wait while I synchronized myself and meditated for a little while to prepare for the night's sleep ahead of me where my mind and fantasies would be filled with dreams of Lost. And unicorns.

But seriously, I'm like mega super so looking forward to it. I even skipped Heroes and 24 last night just so I wouldn't dull my senses in preparation for tonight.

I am also super excited. At this point I don't even care if they answer all the questions (has anyone seen that song set to "Downtown" where they sum up many of the unanswered questions?). I'm just going to enjoy it.

The reason I'm posting so much today is because basically I'm just wasting time until Lost comes on. Customers and work be damned.

Somehow I managed to be too busy to watch Lost Season 1, and now I don't want to jump in and be behind. Should I just get the DVDs and work my way forward?

Dan... Or something like that. How much of Lost is available on Hulu?

It had a weak period, but that weak period is still vastly superior to the strong periods of many other shows.

Yeah, I really think you need to start from the beginning. I believe the first few seasons at the very least are available for Netflix streaming, too, if you have Netflix.

Frankly, I think you can tell whether you're going to be into the show by the first episode. It really grabbed me and I was hooked.

And Bruno is right, there's a bit of a lul (I think most of season 2 and the first several episodes of season 3, but after that I don't have a single complaint.

Damm, I'd not consider nor recommend to anyone watching any of Lost out of order. I'd also recommend strongly against attempting to jump in anywhere but at the start. Even if you like what you see, you're doing yourself a disservice by not following the whole story arc.

*continues to try and resist watching Lost until it's done*

You people aren't helping. I do not need to be sucked into it right now. :-P

I guess I'll save Lost for the summer lull, when all the world's in reruns. Then I'll do Hulu or whatever...

The season premiere wasn't what I was expecting (in terms of the difference in how they presented their usual dual time-line), but it hints at a possible story line I did discuss with someone last year. Needless to say, it didn't disappoint, even though I'm not sure I'd actually like to see the direction previously discussed.

I'm trying not to give anything away about the episode nor this season in the form of spoilers, but it's basic knowledge about Lost and how their episodes are structured. Each episode generally has two complimentary time lines and you're treated to flashes of the second time line mixed within the episode. That's been the case since episode one.

A number of my hypothesis played out in this double episode as well. It was a good way to tie a few answers/plots points together and they weren't answers that were especially difficult to see coming.

The most glaring point had nothing to do with the plot of Lost, but it's something we've touched on here. It was actually comparing Lost to Heroes which I watched later last night. Putting them back to back firmly nailed down what I've been thinking for a little while.

Where one can say that Lost is molded in the fashion of a quality hollywood level series of films (good dramas, mysteries and action adventures), Heroes has been stuck emulating (to a T) daytime soap operas in every way. It's a dull convoluted mess where absolutely nothing happens in any episode. I dare to say that more happens in one single episode of Lost than over the course of an entire season of Heroes.

The other prime time TV show firmly molded around what daytime soaps have been doing for over 30 years? 24. Snore-fest.

Yeah, oddly enough I found myself kinda digging this season of Heroes, despite hating the others. Yes, I kept watching - I can be sucked into any story if super powers are involved. Of course, that's one of the things I always hated about the show: they almost never freaking use their powers.

But I digress. This week's episode was a low point for me. Here are some reasons why (spoiler if you haven't seen the latest episode):


Ugh, the show is crap again. I'll still maintain that this season has had the strongest story arc of the series, but the writing is still terrible, especially the dialog.

It's a huge problem I have with Heroes and 24. Too many story lines. In Heroes they try to link them together, but they don't succeed. In 24 they mostly go all over the place as filler. That show, even without any other changes, would be so much better if they just focused on a single story line (the "Jack" story line). The main character is barely in any scenes. He could probably get all his shooting done in a couple of weeks.

Someone may argue that there are many story lines in Lost, but there really aren't. The characters in this show are all weaved together nicely to make one nice line, even if it in the form of a braid.

For similar criticism, see the 7-part Phantom Menace review from that slow-speaking dude on YouTube you don't like.

I had all the same complaints as your 1-3 points. But I'll further say that #2 was just completely useless. Plus, it was done in such a cliche/cheap way. Black and white? Really? This is just more made up on the spot, definitely not planned ahead of time, back-story that we don't need.

It's a daytime soap only with fewer episodes. Nothing but people sitting around talking all the time, never getting anything done and never aspiring to anything. It's a real comment on how dull the creator and writers must be in real life. And proof of what Kring mentioned when the show premiered, that he wasn't a big comic book fan/guy. At least I recall that being said.

If you could find proof of that quote I'd be very pleased. I can't believe he might have said that, but it certainly shows. My issue with it is that if he's not a comic book fan, then what is he in it for? The entire reason I watch the show is for the brief glimpses of comic book type stuff (you know, the 10 to 15 seconds out of 45 minutes an episode where powers are used). If he's more interested in the character development, there's far more of that in comics than in his show.

Perhaps he doesn't realize that I could rattle off at least 5 superhero comics this second with better writing than anything on Heroes, and that doesn't count the non-superhero stuff. There's a reason that Brian K Vaughn is working on Lost now - because he's an incredible writer. Kring wishes he had someone of Vaughn's caliber working on Heroes. Though, even Bryan Fuller could only marginally improve an episode or two of Heroes.

I can't recall where I read that about Kring, but it would have been around the time the show premiered. Maybe an interview with TV-Guide or similar.

Lost came in second place last night for every time slot. It lost out to both CSI NCIS LA and The Good Wife. I suppose that's to be expected, certain shows really command the ratings these days, especially derivative ones.

You wouldn't know that however trying to find any Lost news on the net however. There are probably at least a dozen Lost forums and sites, and practically every one of them is next to impossible to reach today. Servers are busy with too many people causing long page load times or load failures. Forums that shut down non-menber viewing for a day or more after each episode airing, forums that are registration-only, forums that you have to pay to access and forums that only let you read a certain number of messages before you're forced to register.

These are clearly people who aren't being polled by Nielson. Clearly there are also some crazed and rabid fans out there. Many of them too difficult to comprehend in written expression.

Damn, that was easier than I thought. This isn't the original interview I read, so it must be mentioned numerous times and you should be able to find additional references.

Interview from 2006 with Tim Kring:

http://www.ifmagazine.com/feature.asp?article=1757

He also worked on Misfits of Science back in the day, which was also a superhero show, even if not quite named that way.

Courtney Cox was lucky to get out of that with a career still on the horizon. I watched that show in its original run back in 1985.

BTW, IMDB claims Kring's involvement with that show was limited to writing a single episode.

Anyone interested in entertaining/discussing a few Lost points about this and past seasons?

I'll come back and post some thoughts in spoiler tags. The points I'm most curious about may well get answered as the show goes on, but the creators did say that a number of questions posed by the show won't be.

If we were going to discuss Lost here, I think it would necessitate a separate thread. Though, I'm wary of such discussions, because I'm the type of person who likes to analyze what I've seen already, rather than speculate what will happen, particularly when it comes to bringing in things the creators have said. For some reason it feels a little spoiler-y to me

Perfect! That's exactly what I want to discuss, not what may happen later - I can wait for that.

The latest trailer for the real Avatar movie.

Naturally, nothing will appease my concerns over character treatment and faithfulness to the spirit of the series, but one thing is clear: this film looks like it will have some wicked special effects. I'd worried how they would handle the bending of the elements, and it looks pretty amazing.

Let's hope the movie doesn't disappoint. I'm a fan of Shyamalan (including The Happening) and I'm a huge fan of Avatar, hope two positives don't make a negative in this case.

BTW, the linked video is still what I'd call a "teaser."

Yeah, I agree. Lots of extremely quick cuts so it's hard to really see anything.

The Happening? Seriously? That movie was awful.

Here's what I'd consider to be a typical trailer.

Apparently in one of these you can spot Appa, but I haven't been able to see him. This latest one gives a glimpse of the glider, though, in a scene that looks like the one that takes place on Zuko's ship in the first few episodes of the series. And most of these make it looks like the trio will end up in the north pole, and lead the epic battle there.

I think I need to keep my expectations for this really low, though. One of my absolute favorite aspects of the show is the spectacular character development, and there just isn't enough time to do much of that when you condense an entire season into a two hour movie, even if you cut out all the "extra" stuff (I put that in quotes because I believe there is little if any "filler" in Avatar - I cherish every episode).

When I think about it, there are only two characters from the show that I would have a hard time being seen played by actors. Iroh is one, so we'll see how well he's done in this film. The other is Toph, who I'm assuming will be in the second one (if there is one).

IMO, there was plenty of filler in the Avatar series. It's probably the only thing, apart from a shorter series than I'd hoped, that I had a problem with.



I agree about Toph, easily my favorite character of the whole series, BTW. But Iroh shouldn't have been too hard to cast better than the actor I saw in the trailer. They really should have had a more portly actor in the role.

As far as Zuko goes, they could have hired Dante Basco, the same guy who did the voice work in the animated series. I think I would have preferred his look in that role.

Has it been confirmed that they're doing three movies, one per book?

Well, if they're doing that epic battle at the north pole, I'd imagine that will be the climax of the film. I'm pretty sure the hope is for a trilogy, but of course there's no guarantee of it so they're just seeing how well the first movie does. After all, you can see how well those sequels to the Golden Compass did

Well, I guess we disagree on the filler. It's true that there are plenty of episodes that are inessential to the main story, but I can't really think of any bad ones. IMO, there isn't a bad episode in the three seasons. That's what I would call filler. I just meant that I cherish every minute I could spend with those characters.

And yeah, Toph is a bad-ass. Another example of why I love the show so much. When they introduced her, I expected her to be pretty annoying, basically a Poochie, but she turned out to be my favorite character.

I suppose the only reason I think it's hard to cast Iroh is because Mako was just so brilliant in that role. I get a little teary-eyed when I watch "Iroh's Story." Sure, they could cast someone who looked more like him, but that has nothing to do with whether they'll be good in the role. Maybe this guy will have the chops to pull off the part. It's pretty complex emotionally though.

*edit*
Dude! I just looked up Dante Basco, because I couldn't picture what he looked like (I know his voice, of course), and I can't imagine why the didn't cast him! Sure, he doesn't look much like Zuko, but that doesn't matter! RU! FI! -- OOOOOHHHHH!

Oh, I didn't think any were bad. I guess we aren't on the same page as far as what we consider filler in this series. Some were definitely weaker than others and some of the ones I consider filler are the ones where you can move them around in the story line and they don't seem out of place. I'm sure they were there for the ease of syndication and being able to air repeats when necessary.

Like I said, I wished the series had had a longer run with possibly some additional episodes per season as well as a fourth season. It would have necessitated changing up the existing three seasons of course. I felt they rushed a few things and I would have loved to see a few more two or three part mini arcs.

I don't know anything at all about the fiction, but the movie appears to be about a four year old who can throw tornadoes. That about right?

If by "four year old" you mean 10 year old, then yup, that's about right. But what he can throw around are actually the elements, air, water, earth and fire.

I totally read that as "throw tomatoes" at first.

Naturally, this being my favorite show, I could have stood to watch more of it, but this is the program I hold up as an example of storytelling through the medium of television. I have a great amount of respect for the creators of the show for setting out to do exactly what they did, which was tell a perfectly crafted trilogy, while creating a unique and original world, inhabited by great characters.


Well of course, that's simplifying it a bit, but essentially yes. I believe the main character is a little older than that, though. I think in the series he was supposed to be around 11 or 12 at the start of the series, though technically he's about 111 or 112 when the story starts. I apologize, but I'm about to get very geeky about the show here, in case anyone is interested. None of what follows contains spoilers, as it's all information about stuff that happens before the show even starts.

I think, actually, that the best possible synopsis of the show is the one that the character Katara gives over the intro to each show:



That's the most basic summary, but from there the idea is that Aang, who can control the element of air, needs to learn how to control the other three elements in order to defeat the Fire Lord.

To expand: in this world, the Avatar is a being who is reincarnated into each tribe of the world in the succession mentioned at the start of the intro. The ruler of the Fire Nation wished to rule the world, but couldn't as long as there was an Avatar to stand in his way, even though that Avatar was born to the Fire Nation. Once that Avatar passed away, the Fire Lord, knowing the next Avatar would be an Air Nomad, ordered his army to wipe out the Air Nomads before the new Avatar could master all the elements (I can't think of any other Nick cartoons that deal with complete genocide).

So yeah, the show starts off on genocide and war, and takes off from there to be, IMO, one of the greatest epic stories I've ever experienced, with a fully realized world that's unlike any others I can think of.

Again, sorry for geeking out and gushing about this thing, but I truly adore this show. With all this talk about it, I think I'm going to start it again for the fourth time now...

Tamara's Avatar takes center stage in this episode.

I just started watching Being Human and so far I'm enjoying it. I'm part-way through episode two right now, having watched both the premiere and episode one last weekend.

What rubbed me totally the wrong way however were the changes made to the cast between the pilot and the series main production run. Two of the three main characters were recast and re-typed. It's unfortunate, because the original actors were better in pretty much every respect. The pilot also had a slightly darker feel to it and I've been thinking all week that the show went from being "Fringe" to being "Friends" - both good shows in my opinion, but a different flavour. Not the best analogy, but the feel is just more comedy/polished.

The two main replacement cast are far more "pretty" than their predecessors, so at first I thought they were trying to pretty up the whole show. But the character of Herrick went from an attractive black male to a rather pudgy ordinary looking white guy, so that theory isn't necessarily the motivation. Anyway, I do feel that the those two main characters lost a lot of depth and personality in the change-over. Much more clichéd caricatures now.

Keeping my fingers crossed that the cast grows on me, but so far the vampire character Mitchell just comes off as somewhat of a douche bag. Unlike in the pilot.

Perfect, found that someone else wrote precisely what I was feeling about Being Human Pilot versus Series. Even though I'm still enjoying the series after 2 episodes, I would have infinitely preferred to have it directly follow the pilot versus the re-imagining we're left with.



Source: Ishmoo It's amusing to read some of the opinions of a few folks who actually prefer the series to the pilot... Especially the reply directly after the one I quoted. Doh. Twat.

I just started White Collar about a week ago. I'm enjoying it. It is 100% taking off where Catch Me If You Can left off. No question. But it's entertaining and the con man lead is charismatic (as he'd have to be). I also like Tim Dekay, though at this point I have a hard time seeing him as anything other than Jonesy from Carnivale. That's still one of my favorite shows of all time, and it kills me that there's no bluray release, as it was also one of the most beautifully shot shows I've ever seen.

I didn't see the pilot first. Only once they stuck it on iPlayer mid way through the first series did I bother watching it.

I much prefer Turner to Flanagan who just came across as some brooding emo/goth tw*t and I just couldn't stand Riseborough. They also made the right choice regarding the recasting of Herrick.

Who knows, maybe if I'd seen the pilot first then my opinion would be different.

White Collar is still on my "to check out" list. Like Leverage, it's not being broadcast in Canada that I'm aware of. Which isn't an issue I suppose, since the benefit is I don't have to fast-forward over commercials or remove them myself - someone else has already done it for me.

BTW, I finished watching the first two seasons of Leverage and quite enjoyed them. Can't recall if I had mentioned that yet. Very much looking forward to season three - this is one of my favorite "light" shows.

Sons of Tucson, premiered on Fox tonight. It's silly, but I'm liking it. 30 minute sitcom, no laugh track.


I'm also liking Being Human quite a bit. I've managed to move on from the differences in the pilot. While the pilot was interesting for a number of reasons already mentioned, it would have been a completely different show. I like what they've done, even though it took a couple of episodes to really get into it. There were some weak spots, but it's held together well. Season 2 is a lot darker than the first and so far excellent. However, I'm usually not a fan of such a drastic/abrupt change in "feel" of a program from one season to another. That said, season 2 seems better than the first at this point. Hope it comes back for at least a couple more seasons. And hopefully a longer episode run (season 2 was already one episode longer than 1)

Small update... Finished watching Series 2 of Being Human. I liked it all. But it was somewhat inconsistent, maybe having to do with the input of different directors, I don't know.

I've deleted 24 and Heroes from my recording list. Neither has been any good since season 1 and I've given up all hope that will ever change. Having watched all the Heroes episodes this season, I didn't even know the last one was the season finale. Hopefully they don't renew the series.

I just find it hilarious that I seem to be the only person who liked this last season, but disliked all the other seasons. The show still had it's fundamental problems, but there was a cohesive plot (well, relative to previous years), a decent villain with a complicated personality (more of a personality than any of the other characters), and a somewhat frequent display of peoples' powers.


Fun tidbit: apparently an upcoming episode of Fringe will be a musical episode. They'll pass it off as Walter's subconscious mind working things out. I have no idea how this will play out. I think the character I have the hardest time seeing doing song and dance is Olivia. I could even see Broyles doing a number.

Only because I had recalled the season being 22 to 25 episodes long and that it would be split into multiple books. I don't think you can call what happened at the end a worldly revelation. That's an easy clean-up job compared to all the other crap they've explained away.

Heroes sucked because they didn't develop a single character. Everyone just went around in a little random circles and it seems each season (actually multiple times per season) character bios/histories were abandoned and ignored. It was a series of endless little reboots which made it a pain to watch and eventually led people like me to simply not give a damn about any character. The first season being a 10, every other season was sub-4, including this last one which was so contrived and cliché it was painful to watch most of the time.

Both Heroes and 24 are in the end, just too much daytime soap for me. 24, for an action series, is extremely boring. Less action, suspense or thrill than House or Grey's Anatomy. Actually, same goes for Heroes. Simply no action.

Fringe is actually going to burn an episode with a musical? I didn't think the series was hurting, why pause to do a "special" episode? I hate "special" episodes in all shows. Like the "patient's perspective" they did in House. Don't fix what isn't broken.

I'm not trying to be argumentative when I ask this, I'm really curious, but how was the first season different from all the others when it comes to the points you just made? Like I said, I agree with those, and they're what make the show a failure to me as well.

Perhaps I should have said that I thought the last season was good compared to the others. I know we'd still disagree, because I disliked the first season too, but I'd never claim the last season was better than other shows.

At the end of the day, Heroes has absolutely nothing to say. I thinks it does, as is evidenced by all the pretentious narrations we get from it, but in the end it's empty. Perhaps they know that once they actually touch any real meaning, they'll just be mining territory that's already been covered.

Anyway, it is funny that we're having a heated agreement. In the end, I think we'll both be dropping the show. I recognize my own weakness is that I think the show is bad but I keep watching it because it's about superheroes (except that nobody does anything heroic except for Peter for a few episodes).

It's the same with Smallville. That show is just plain bad, and has been for a long time. But I watch because it's Superman. Nevermind that watching the show is like...well...you know that feeling before you sneeze, that sometimes doesn't result in a sneeze, and you're like "crap, I really wanted to sneeze there." Watching Smallville is like that feeling all the time. The show has done everything in their power to keep Clark from becoming Superman, but they're running out of ways/reasons to hold him back.

Heh, sorry for the tortured analogy

Oh dear, the one with Mos Def? That was one of my favourites. And at least IMO not the same thing at all as doing a musical, which soaps round here sometimes fall prey to at Christmas and is pure projection, the actors and producers wilfully conflating how much fun it is to do with how much fun it isn't to watch.

Peter

I like Mos Def. But I just found that gimmick took away too much from the show. No, it's not the same thing as a musical. But nonetheless it's an "oddity" episode. A "special" of sorts and usually advertised as such. Likewise when some shows do a "Live" episode.

These episodes are usually going against what makes the show good in the first place. If the special is "better," then why not have all episodes following that theme?

It's like putting steak sauce on a good steak. You might as well be dragging it on the floor from the kitchen to the table. Now if you're talking about hamburger....

I liked that House episode as well, and I disagree that it messes with what makes a show like that good. It's taking a break to look at what you like from a different angle. All the elements of the show were there, you just see it from a different perspective. It's not like that show hasn't done that stuff other times as well. There was an episode where Dr Cuddy (sp?) was the focus, and all we got of the case was that House constantly wanted to give the patient Malaria as a diagnostic tool. It was fun to see her perspective on everything. Sadly, we didn't discover why a hospital administrator would wear the world's most low-neck tops.

What annoys me is when shows do these things for no reason. I don't see why Fringe would do this. On Buffy, the musical episode was so very well done, fit in with the universe, and didn't feel forced. Plus the music was fun, with perfect lyrics.

I guess we disagree. If I wanted to watch a show about the hospital administrator, I wouldn't be watching House. I really disliked that episode, as did my wife.

Actually, its adherence to formula is the major thing that holds House back from being great. As it is, it's merely very good, but its quality is not due to: "patient gets sick, House dismisses patient, patient gets worse, House recants, House incorrectly guesses at illness three times, then has an epiphany while talking to Wilson".

It's not even really because of the character interaction, which can occasionally also be a thing that holds it back, when people treat House as if he's going to change, despite all evidence to the contrary. But that's the nature of serial drama: the appearance of change while everything actually remains exactly the same.

What makes it a good show is the exploration of House's psyche: how he finds himself in others, and others find themselves in him.

Heroes S1 had mystery, awe, and wonder. It also had all kinds of coincidences. These characters were all discovering one another and discovering themselves. It was pretty damn cool. Heroes S3 didn't have anybody discovering anything, unless you want to talk about Claire's love life.

On other topics in this thread, I don't watch Fringe, but I did watch Buffy, and the musical episode of Buffy was absolutely brilliant, as was the "silent" episode. Certainly, Southpark brings in musical numbers every one in a while to much good effect. Suffice to say that it can work.

South Park is still the most brilliant show on TV. And it's even more amazing now that they broadcast in HD.

I agree with Bitt's comments on House, and it's why I found the "special" episodes dull.

And which is why I tended to find them interesting. Having a different point of view on what makes House tick, and the effects that he has on those people is beyond relevant to the show.

I might be able to agree with South Park being great if it weren't for all the libertarian claptrap.

Matt, did you go back and add a ton of content to one of your previous episodes? When I replied (a few posts back) I don't remember seeing any of the content I just saw now. Weird. BTW, I think we're in agreement mostly.

Um...I don't think so. I was posting up a storm this afternoon, so maybe it slipped by.

That particular episode hadn't shown in the UK at the time, so I didn't know which one you were talking about. Now it has, and I completely agree with you. There was nothing wrong with it as financial drama, but that's not what I watch House for. Plus I think it was an egregious example of the thing I mentioned in the last TV thread, where having different writers per episode causes characters to lurch wildly in motivation -- in particular, in this episode

whereas just last week

It's as if the episodes got shown out of sequence, but Wikipedia lists them in the same order.

Peter

There's nothing to indicate that that episode of House took place between the events of the episode before and the episode after.

In reality, I imagine it has far more to do with scheduling than writing.

I dunno, I think that in the absence of explicit flashback or flashforward framing, one's entitled to assume that the arrow of time from episode to episode, if uneven, is at least monotonic. Perhaps Lost doesn't work like that (I haven't seen it), but that'd be because its timeline is part of its gimmick, and other House storylines --

-- only make sense if episode order is timelike in the internal worldline.

Scheduling is, at least in the gross sense, part of the script editor's job, which is part of the writing job. But whatever you want to call that job, it's being done lazily and compromising the otherwise excellent programme.

Peter

I suppose it really is all about expectations. I, for example, expect as much from House as I'm getting, which is to say a purely episodic show with little to no ongoing story. I mean really, it was quite clear by the end of the first season that this show had either no interest (or, perhaps, ability), to develop a really interesting serial story. If someone I knew had never seen an episode of House before, I really could tell them to go watch ANY episode. Yes, even the ones we're discussing.

Because this is what I expect from House, I quite enjoy the occasional flights of fancy like the Cuddy or Mos Def episodes. If you don't like them, there are usually 23 other episodes in a season to keep you happy.

This goes back to the long discussion we had about US TV programming. When you have 22-24 hours in a season to fill, occasionally you get episodes that don't fit the "mold" of the show. Sometimes these fall a bit flat, but other times it's a really fun momentary departure from the norm. In a show that has no ongoing story to drive momentum, there's even less reason to stick to the forumula.

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy House, but it's far from one of my favorites. As I said before, it has zero serial value, I really could care less about any of the supporting characters, and it truly does follow the formula Bitt posted earlier, which made me chuckle from its accuracy:

My wife and I call out "Bing!" when he has those epiphanies. We tend to also do that during Medium, when Allison figures out the thing that the audience worked out 20-50 minutes beforehand.

Impressive, considering that it's a 44-minute show.

Not that you're wrong. She really is stupid.

Well, I was counting the full 60 minutes. And yes, she is. In every single episode, it's gotten to the point where she's either really stupid, or her visions seem to give her 20% more information each time she has them throughout the show, and she acts impulsively on early/incomplete info, which is still stupid of her. That show is frustrating.

It's not being episodic per se that annoyed me about that episode, it's being episodic badly. Episodic programmes have their own discipline; if Sulu and Chekhov hate each other one week, and are best friends the next, and there's no in-world explanation or even mention of that character lurch, then that's undisciplined writing.

Peter

Sure, I get that. Sorry, I wasn't really addressing that complaint when I wrote that post, just the complaints about doing a different kind of episode. I definitely agree that there should be consistency and continuity. I didn't see it as being as egregious as you did, but I can see what you meant.

High marks, IMO, for Spartacus: Blood and Sand - And it's not its duality of gore-fest action movie and soft-core porn that makes it good either. The actors are terrific, and very well cast.

Oh, and no one's mentioned it yet, but Breaking Bad remains the best drama on TV.

Breaking Bad is working very well. Very creepy. On a lighter note, I seem to have gotten sucked into Modern Family. All the characters are dorky stereotypes of one sort or another, but they're remarkably funny.

I noticed Sons of Tucson wasn't on this Sunday.... And it's because Fox has cancelled it after airing only 4 episodes. I think the cancellation may have been ordered after only 3 however. I guess the FOx executives couldn't imagine that a live action show sandwiched between Sunday night cartoons might not do so hot in the ratings. Idiots.

On a brighter note, it looks like my favorite 30-minute spy program will be back for a second season. Archer is excellent.

More cancellation news. From the Axe network itself, ABC. They consistently have a greater number of decent shows than any other network, only to cut most of them short.

Flashforward which, IMO has gotten better in the past 6 episodes, has been canned. Happy Town, which has only aired 3 episodes has also been pulled - the remaining 4 episodes to be shown next month. I was rather enjoying both of them, but I did expect that Happy Town would eventually get canned. Apart from Lost, I don't think ABC can handle a serialized mystery, especially one that may deal with the occult and death. It was ABC that also canned Twin Peaks.

V seems to have been picked up, but I'm sure it will be cancelled next season.

What amazes me the most about TV this season however is that people actually watch Glee. Which they must, since Fox renewed it. Wow, what a total POS.

Happy Town was a critical failure, and sounded like a Twin Peaks rip-off. To be honest, I didn't watch it (I had no interest), but it certainly didn't win many people over other than you.

Flashforward, I'm sorry to say, was just boring to me. My wife and I simply gave up on it, and I simply don't give up on shows after 6 or 8 episodes (after all, I'm still watching the awful Smallville). I think we got a week behind, and the idea of watching two episodes of that show in a row basically turned us off the show entirely. It might have gotten better but we put a lot of time into it and it not only bored us but we were actively pissed off at some of the people on it. Like the main couple who was supposed to split up? They knew they were supposed to split up in the future, knew they could prevent it, and then proceeded to still go down that path. So why would I root for them? Ugh, whatever, I just don't care about that show.

There's two other cancellations you didn't mention:

Scrubs - this was mercy. My wife and I watched the first episode of the "new" show, and it was just awful and forced. The showrunner had moved on to another show, and even when the old cast showed up the jokes were recycled, the call-backs were forced, and the new cast was annoying.

Better Off Ted - THIS one I'm sad about. I hadn't tried it out until Bitt mentioned it to me. The first season of this show is fantastic. I felt the second season was trying a little too hard, but it was still funnier than any of those boring sitcoms they keep trotting out, and far more original.


My favorite show, Supernatural, had its season finale. As much as it pains me to say this, I kind of wish they'd wrapped up the story this season. They could have done it easily, and it would have made for a great close to the story. Perhaps I can't see where they're headed next season, but I'd be surprised if it didn't feel like they were stretching it out. Of course, I can't be upset about getting more of my current favorite show. But frankly, I could even see the show ending right where it did, and it would be one of the saddest endings to a show I've ever seen.

I've never seen it, but I have a lot of friends that love Glee. They said the humor in it is awesome. I can't bring myself to even try to watch it to see if they are correct though.

My wife has watched a few episodes, so I've sat through about 2.5 episodes worth of content. There are some good diatribes, but there are too many aspects that make me want to pull my hair out. The cheerleading coach character is well done and the actress pulls it off with her gruff and callous attitude.

The whole musical genre thing is the initial big turn off. But there are also a lot of cliche juvenile plot lines. Sure, some of the stuff is supposed to be tongue in cheek, but I just find it annoying.

For Matt. I was starting to find Flashforward boring, but as I said, it picked up in the second half of the season in a big way. Things fit better together where previously I thought they were about to pull a Heroes on us and just spread the story everywhere.

Scrubs sucked in the first couple of episodes. But it too hit a stride. The original showrunner (and creator) Bill Lawrence, also had his hands in this new season (which is essentially a spin-off) as far as I know. That's what I gathered from an interview he gave. I have no idea to what level he was involved compared to past seasons, since he's also involved with his other show, Cougar Town.

I did get a couple of Twin Peaks vibes from Happy Town, but there's really not much in common with the two to call it a rip-off. But this type of show just has very little chance of going forward on Network TV and it certainly won't capture the minds of the CSI audience who want to watch essentially the same episode week after week. With only three episodes in, I thought this one was unfolding pretty well and was looking forward to see where they'd take it in another 5 episodes.

There's a ton I didn't mention, such as the long overdue cancellation of 24 and Heroes. TV.com has a good list of cancellations and renewals up at the moment. They've also got a fall TV preview that I haven't looked at.

I believe ABC has also cancelled The Deep End, though no official word had come out as of yesterday on it.

Parenthood, a show I've been recording since the pilot, also got picked up for a second season. I thought I'd pull an experiment with this one and record but not watch any of it. Now I can watch the first season knowing ahead of time there will be more episodes in the second. Of course if it turns out I don't like it, it's all just been a temporary waste of hard drive space over the past few months.

The one show I watch that was canceled was Legend of the Seeker. It really isn't that great of a show, but I watched it to see just how off from the books it really was. There were some interesting things going on, but I'm not surprised that it was canceled. Perhaps the best people involved in that show were the casting director and the costume designer. Yowzah.

Oh yeah, I forgot about Heroes. I'm a tiny bit surprised that got cancelled, but to be honest I'm happy about it. It forces me to stop watching a show I only partially enjoy. Now they just need to cancel Smallville and I'll be saved from watching shows I dislike

The season (series) finale of Flashforward was quite good. It's real shame they decided to cancel this and keep V. Apparently, the word I've heard is that when they premiered both shows they knew/thought they would only be renewing one of them. ABC definitely has the lion's share of good network TV, but they're complete ass-clowns with their show-pulling shenanigans.

They're premiering 3 new shows next month and I suspect that all three will be cancelled before they finish a proper complete first season. Or at the very least will not be renewed. All of them look interesting enough to watch at least the first episode based on commercials.

I think V is pretty good. That and Justified are the two main shows that I'm watching right now.

I like and watch V as well, and I would have liked ABC to have kept both shows. I'm just saying that if they absolutely had to have only one, it should have been Flashforward. A much better replacement for Lost if nothing else.

I've read that some people thought Flashforward was too slow and lost interest. It picked up in the second half however, where I don't think V has picked up much steam at all. It's moving along at a much slower pace than I had thought and with no sign that the main characters are actually going to be able to do anything significant. I hope the beef up the second season a bit. And also improve some of their compositing and keying.

I haven't seen Justified yet, but I'd like to. It airs originally on FX and I'm not sure who, if anyone broadcasts it in Canada at this point. It will likely have to come off the net like a number of other no-shows here.

EDIT: Typo. I accidentally wrote "NBC" when I have meant to write "ABC" - fin thing is I had done this during the day and now I'm correcting it after about a full bottle of wine.

Some shows seem to hold back, pacing the story, keeping something back for later. Except they forget, there may be no later. The writers/producers of action shows ought to go at it like their hair is on fire. This was something the producers of 24 had figured out.
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I saw V the first time around, this one lost me after only a couple of episodes.
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The finale of Flashforward was pretty good. To bad we will never discover the fate of Benford.

Exactly. The people working on Flashforward probably figured that if Lost got to keep going, they would too. But they seem to have missed the part where Lost was a hell of a lot more compelling, and the first season was, IMO, perfect.

I found Flashforward to be pretty boring. I was in it, but then the characters were infuriating and never reacted to anything naturally. It was like Heroes that way, and we see how that turned out.

I have yet to watch the finale of FlashForward due to TiVo equipment failure. (New one on its way... grr...), but I was wondering how they could possibly manage a second season of FlashForward, but I guess the answer is that they left a bunch of stuff unresolved.

I gave up on V after the break. Just completely couldn't buy it.