Here it is… again…

Firstly, I’m still alive, and this blog does exist.

Secondly, I haven’t paid enough attention to TV in recent… months? Years? Whatever.  New season means time to pick a few shows and see how they do.

Firstly, House.  I’ve been out of the House loop for a few seasons now, but apparently House and Cuddy are now official.  Or, trying to be at least.  This, of course, means that the series is doomed.  If Jump The Shark was still an active site (and not a property sold off to tvguide.com and made into a blog), I’d tell you that “They Did It” is one of those primary shark jumping moments.  But instead, I’ll just have to ask you to take my word for it since the Wayback Machine didn’t index jumptheshark.com, which is a grave injustice.  BUT I’M GETTING OFF TRACK HERE.  House and Cuddy are now doing it, and Olivia Wilde and Peter Jacobsen are now officially part of the main cast (maybe they were last season, but I wouldn’t know.)  It was getting kinda weird seeing these 2 in every episode (back when I watched regularly) and still not see their names in the credits (but see them as “guest starring.”)

The season premiere was a nice ease-in to what I can expect this season;  it basically looks like Huddy relationship drama in addition to standard House medical drama. I guess I can live with this.  As long as it stays mostly about the medicine and the patients and House, I’m ok with it.  As soon as the relationship starts dominating the plot, the show moves into Grey’s Anatomy territory, and since I have absolutely no interest in Grey’s Anatomy, I certainly hope House doesn’t become it.  (Full disclosure: I did watch the first 2 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy way-back-when, but that was only because of a girl I knew in college.  We shall not speak of this again.)  I’ll be watching next week.

At 10, I flipped to NBC to see what The Event was going to be like.  Based on its advertising, I made the guess that they were going for a Lost-like show.  “Oooo, there’s this EVENT! But it’s not this, this or this… WHAT IS THE EVENT????!!!”  So the show starts, and it looks like shit is going down.  People are freaking the fuck out because a passenger aircraft is on a collision course for the President’s press conference in Miami, Florida.  (He’s on retreat of course.  He’s the president after all.)  Then we get a flashback.  Then we flash FURTHER back.  Then we get back to the action in present time.  Then a commercial.  Then we see the action from another perspective. Then ANOTHER FLASHBACK, THEN I TOOK A NAP.   By the time 9:55 rolled around, I was like “ok, I’ve sat through enough exposition and title cards, can the damn plane just crash?”

And then it didn’t.  The plane just disappeared in a flash of light.  For those that remember The 4400 (all 3 of you), if you recall the flash of light that The 4400 came back in? Yeah, it looked exactly like that.  Except this made a plane (and all its passengers) disappear into what I can only imagine is another dimension,  or a sound stage in Burbank.  Definitely one of the two.  The previews then try to hint as to what just happened, who has what answers, etc, but to be perfectly honest, there was 10 minutes of good television, 12 minutes of commercials, and the rest was very boring backstory.  See, Lost did it right.  Their first episode was almost all present-day action.  There was some flashbacks in episode 1, but it directly related to what was going on at the time.  If Lost tried to fit in everyone’s backstory as soon as it could, I would’ve gotten bored really quick.   The backstory in The Event seemed to take priority over the action in the present, which is unfortunate because the backstory was really, really boring.

For instance: the Sean Walker story: dude wants to propose to his girlfriend, and through a series of unfortunate events, doesn’t get to, and then his girlfriend disappears and he’s stranded on a cruise ship… that summary took about 20 minutes of time, most of it me saying to myself “this is incredibly boring.  Also, I’m talking to myself about how a TV show sucks. I’m pretty sure this is why I’m single. Do I have any ice cream in the freezer?”  The president’s story was interesting, if only because presidential and government secrecy usually works for dramas (whereas “oh, he didn’t get to pop the question! awwwwww…” does not work.)

I may watch this next week, but I’ll probably flip to the Hawaii Five-O remake.  We shall see.

P.S. This is the most amount of words I’ve written about anything in a long time.  If this is terribly uninteresting… well… then I guess nothing’s changed then… eh? EH? :’(

… is currently available, for free, on YouTube…

And, most noteworthy, is being provided by CBS, which makes this offering 100% legal.

Jericho: Season 1

Wipeout: This isn’t the late 80′s syndicated show hosted by Peter Tomarken.  It’s much, much different.

For anyone who’s seen Spike TV’s Most Extreme Elimination Challenge (a.k.a. Takeshi’s Castle from Japan), Wipeout is pretty much exactly like MxC, except American.  Every event involves a pool and contestants falling in said pool.  The draw of the show is pretty much the same as MxC; people falling into water and getting hit in uncomfortable places is a never ending source of entertainment.  The commentators (ESPN’s John Anderson and Talk Soup‘s John Henson) use the same comedic style of ridiculing contestants that Vic Romano and Kenny Blankenship do.  Recommended if you like MxC.

I Survived a Japanese Gameshow!: I thought this show was going to be standalone episodes, but it’s actually an episodic, reality-style game show (a la Survivor, Amazing Race, etc.)  The format is disappointingly formulaic; 2 teams compete on Majide, a Japanese game show (created just for ISaJG? Not sure.) and play in a Japanese-gameshow-type challenge (in the first episode, the challenge was for one team member to eat ball-shaped Japanese food (if I was taking notes, I’d say specifically what food it was) delivered to them on pans attached to other team member’s hats.  The players wearing the hats, however, have to run down a treadmill to get to the ball eater.  And the ball eater can’t use his hands.  And once the eater gets the ball in his mouth, he hits a button to signal the runner that he/she has to fall, taking him/her down the treadmill into a sand pit. Get all that?).  The losing must complete a punishment while the winning team gets a reward (Hell’s Kitchen wants their format back). and afterwards, the losing team nominates two people within their team (Hell’s Kitchen called again, it’s still kinda pissed) to play in an elimination game where the loser leaves the game.  Also shown are the contestant’s living space and their apartment… manager (?) Mama-san.  She bosses them around, telling them about the “no-shoes-in-the-house” rule prevalent in Japan, among other things.

I don’t see this series lasting a season.  The only thing that sets this show apart from others is the Japanese elements.  Not recommended for casual viewers.

I don’t care if barely anyone watches this show, it’s fantastic.

I’ve never felt more angry at evil henchmen than I do for Ravenwood.  And it’s not often I’m genuinely sad for characters’ deaths and injuries on TV shows, but this episode was really powerful.

So, of course, the show’s gonna get canceled again after the next 3 episodes air.   But, hey, at least we can see people singing songs next week! Everyone LOVES singing shows!!!!!!111