BLOGS
November 2008 Archives
We spend a lot of time griping about all the things that are wrong with TV. However, it is sort of our favorite thing, so we figured that for Thanksgiving it would be appropriate to reflect on some of the wonderful tasty treats this fall.
Yesterday I watched the Battlestar Galactica trailer and started counting down the days until this show returns on January 16th. Today NBC unveiled their winter schedule, and while there was some other information in there that I'm sure I'll examine more closely later on, one bit stuck out like a bright beacon of hope. Friday Night Lights is returning to network TV on that very same evening. My cup and DVR runneth over.
So after watching the trailer for the last half of the (final) season of Battlestar Galactica, I'm starting an official countdown to the January 16 premiere. That's 51 more days of not-so patiently waiting. It looks really good. I know these jump cuts with snippets of dialogue make it a bit hard to tell what the hell is going on, but when Saul whispers "There must be some kind of way out of here" and they start playing the Watchtower/Cylon theme, I got giddy goosebumps.
First Jean Claude Van Damme came back on the scene and lassoed major indie cred playing a version of himself in the cult hit JCVD. And now his arch nemesis Steven Seagal (that's right, Mister My Little Ponytail himself!) will star in an A&E reality show called Steven Seagal: Lawman that chronicles his life as a deputy sheriff of
The good people at Fox let us animals (well, this animal) on the red carpet at the NYC premiere of 24: Redemption last week, and gave us a couple minutes with executive producer Jon Cassar to discuss important 24 matters such as why Zombie Tony isn't a stupid idea, what Jack Bauer really thinks of those candy ass Senate sub-committees, the possibility of re-employing Kim Raver and more. Also, I did catch a glimpse of the dashing Kiefer on the red carpet while he was briefly chatting up "legitimate publications," and he is as charming and adorable in person as he is when he's on TV electrocuting folks and attacking Christmas trees. Oh, and Jon Voight's silver mane is so luminous I bet you can see it from space. Anyway, read on for the Season 7 dish!
Growing up in the 1980s, I didn't watch a lot of traditional "holiday specials." No special guests coming over, no singing songs by the fire, nothing like that -- just Charlie Brown, the Grinch and little Ralphie for me. So all I know about the golden age of holiday specials is what I've seen parodied on Saturday Night Live ("I'm Gumby, dammit!"). But from what I've seen, Stephen Colbert really nailed it in A Colbert Christmas, his Comedy Central Christmas special, which aired last night, although I can only imagine that his was a million times funnier, and that this time the humor was intentional. I would even go out on a limb and call it a new holiday staple, like A Christmas Story, although I don't know if I'd want it to play 24 hours in a row. Here are the five funniest moments from last night's airing.
Every year I say that I'm not going to watch this show anymore. But then I do. This time around I got suckered into watching because of the adorable Lance Bass (I never noticed he was the worst dancer in the boy band, I just thought he was cute!), who was teamed new pro Lacey Schwimmer, whom I loved on So You Think You Can Dance. I was fully prepared to stop watching once the N'Sync boy got ousted, which, judging by his early performances, should have been right about the time Cloris got the boot. However, he's stepped up his game and now he's in the finals. While I'm slightly miffed that I've wasted countless hours on this show, I think he stands a shot at actually winning this season. Go figure.
OK. I've finally stopped weeping and think I can handle writing this post. After lots of speculation, and a whole freakin' heap of denial on my part, ABC officially decided not to pick up Pushing Daisies. To be fair, two other sophomore series, Dirty Sexy Money and Eli Stone, also got axed by the alphabet network. They refuse to actually say cancelled, which just ticks me off more. Why give people the false hope (no matter how minuscule that may be) that there's a chance they could change their minds. It's just mean. Maybe they just want people to send them free pies.
We tend to ignore this military formulaic cop/crime show, and so does everyone else in the critical world. The only time it comes up is when we annually wonder how it is still on. However, people are watching it. And lots of them. It had a record high last week. And we don't even know anyone who regularly tunes in. But somehow there are 18 million people who like this show. We examine a few of the possible reasons why the show has had such a sudden surge in viewers.
There're more Office webisodes available... to keep you busy at work. It's a short series of four two-minute segments (they sent us a preview copy so I already watched all of it...) doled out every Thursday. Basically, Oscar has a screaming cell-phone conversation and gets all angry at someone. The rest of the gang (aside from Michael, Jim, Pam, Dwight and Ryan) get all excited and try and figure out what caused the irate outburst. Is Oscar having man troubles? There's a betting pool going on about it.