Category — TV Love

Here’s the massive list of episodes I watched this weekend in my pathetic effort to free up some much needed space on my DVR box:

The final four episodes of “Doctor Who”. The season finale was rewarding since the Torchwood gang, Rose, Martha, and Sarah Jane Smith all made appearances. The poor Doctor, he’s all alone again.

Robin Tunney and Simon Baker in"The Mentalist"

The first two episodes of “The Mentalist”. Simon Baker is cute and does a good job on the show, but somehow I feel it’s too darkly themed for the CBS crowd.

The “Personae Non Grata” episode of “Law and Order” from last season. Yeah, I keep shows forever and they re-run L/O all the time. But this time it was worth it and not just for the Jeremy Sisto scenes.

Law & Order (2008)

A mother poses as her daughter on the girl’s Bspace (i.e. myspace) page to con a guy into giving her $60,000…oh and getting said guy to commit murder later on. And then turns out, she’s more than just a sociopathic manipulator (well, duh). She’s a bonafide murderer! She killed the daughter she was impersonating like two years before! And buried her in her unsuspecting boyfriend’s cellar. That’s just plain demented, L/O.

The first three episodes of this season of “Lipstick Jungle”. Boy is that dialogue terrible. But that Kirby (Nico’s boy toy) is cute and the fashion designer character, Victory Ford, is actually funny and realistic.

Victory Ford

And can you believe Wendy got fired over insurance fraud?! Oh well, I never liked Brooke Shields character all that much. It was a bit over the top with the “world is falling down around me” camera effects on Wendy. She’s all melodramatically standing in the street alone (in NYC?), looking up at the sky as she realizes her life is pretty much screwed.

“Eleventh Hour”, cloned babies, Rufus Sewell as quirky scientist, tough FBI agent Marley Shelton…zzzzzz.

I like to give my undivided attention to “It’s Always Sunny”, so I finally got to watch the “Mac and Dennis: Manhunters” episode. It was crude beyond belief - gorilla mask/teabag pranks, cannibal jokes, and Frank confusing his life with the plot of Rambo:First Blood. Oh, how I missed the “Sunny” gang so much. I plan to watch the rest of the season tonight.

Col. Shepherd and Dr. McKay in "Stargate Atlantis"

Next, I watched the latest eps of “Adventures of New Christine”, “Heroes”, “Stargate Atlantis”, and “Sanctuary”, which is actually way better in the second episode. That pilot was redundant, but once the show focused on a specific story and no exposition, I liked it.

Gee whiz! How the heck is my DVR still at 69%?! Oh wait, because I still have entire seasons of “Burn Notice”, “Psych” and “New Amsterdam” on there!

“Kath & Kim” with Molly Shannon and Selma Blair. A US version of the Austrialian series (haven’t they figured out they usually don’t work out?) - 8:30/7:30 on NBC

The original Las Vegas version of “CSI” premieres at 9pm followed by the premiere of “Eleventh Hour” with Rufus Sewell in the role originally played by Patrick Stewart on the BBC version.

On ABC, after new episodes of “Ugly Betty” and “Grey’s Anatomy”, we’ve got the series premiere of David E. Kelley’s take on the original BBC show “Life on Mars”. This remake wins the award of the stuffing as many talented film actors as possible into one show (after firing 90% of the actors from the original pilot) to make it look good: Harvey Keitel, Michael Imperioli, Gretchen Mol, Lisa Bonet, and Jason O’Mara as the time-traveling cop Sam Tyler.

If you haven’t visited ABC today, check out the 1970s computer terminal re-design they put up in honor of the new show. Or if you’re lazy, just look at the screenshot on TV Squad. Watch the “Life on Mars” promo below to get the gist of the show.

I have no idea how I’m gonna watch (or even DVR record) all these shows tonight!

I just remembered that Amy Poehler made a joke about a 150 inch plasma television on “Weekend Update”! She cracked that they were released just in time for no one to afford them (since we’re in a financial crisis). Turns out, she is absolutely correct. Panasonic’s 150″ plasma screen television is rumored to cost over $150,000 bucks!

The tv aka “Life Wall” is less than one inch thick. It boasts that the plasma screen uses 50% LESS power with the new double luminance efficiency feature. It has a resolution of 2160×4096 pixels, which is 4x the resolution of a typical 1080i flat screen television. And apparently it uses 220 volts, which means you probably can’t run it in your home without owning a small portion of your city’s power grid!

Panasonic now holds the record for “world’s largest plasma display”. You can find more screenshots of the 150″ TV on Gizmodo. They got to take an up-close and personal tour of these sets at CSE 2008 in January.

Luckily, there are still normal sized (and priced) plasma televisions available on the market for the rest of us.

If you saw the Emmys a couple of weeks ago, I hope you and your cats enjoyed it, because you were the only ones watching. However, you and the cats also bore witness to Bryan Cranston winning for Best Actor in a Dramatic Series for his role in a really cool show, “Breaking Bad.”

Indeed, the dad from “Malcolm in the Middle” beat out Don Draper at the lowest rated ever Emmys, television’s highest honor, wherein television people celebrate themselves for like seven hours. On television. My feelings are torn, since I like both “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad,” but I figure Jon Hamm will get ‘em next time.

Anyway, AMC has been rerunning the first season of “Breaking Bad” after the “encore” airings of “Mad Men” every Sunday, and you can even pre-order the first season DVD if it turns out you love it, so check it out. The show is about a high school chemistry teacher (Cranston), who turns to cooking meth for extra cash, after he learns he is dying of cancer. He’s got a pregnant wife and a “special needs” son, so I can’t say I blame him. Desperate times, and all that.

Meth lab hijinks and drug dealings provide a nice chaser to the rampant alcoholism and womanizing of “Mad Men,” so kudos to AMC on nailing their first two forays into original programming. I, for one, can’t wait to see more.

Sunday nights are fast becoming my busiest TV night of the week. My DVR’s red “recording” light was already winking at me for a good chunk of the evening before, thanks to my old love “Mad Men,” my new love “True Blood,” plus all the old standbys like “60 Minutes” and “American Dad.” But as of last week, “Dexter” has returned to Showtime with new episodes. Consider the ante upped.

I’ve been a fan of this show since its beginning two seasons ago. It doesn’t spare on the high concept premises and story lines, but is still written elegantly enough to avoid becoming a joke. Michael C. Hall has proven his acting mettle beyond my expectations in his portrayal of Dexter Morgan, considering how hard it is to believe that this is the same man who played David Fisher all those years not so long ago.

Tune in to Showtime Sunday nights at 9pm to check out “Dexter.” I like the show so much it’s actually inspired me to read the book on which this series is based, called “Darkly Dreaming Dexter,” by Jeff Lindsay. I know right? I’m going to read an actual book! With pages and everything!

I fear I may have blasphemed by daring to mention the “B” word– book– on the interweb, and on a blog about teevee, at that. As an act of contrition, I’ll subject myself to a new reality show, get drunk and rant about it on here, later.

Oh, dear. “Paris Hilton Is My New BFF” started this week. Sounds like a fresh batch of hate stew a-brewin’.

As I was setting the dvr to record “Sanctuary” this morning, I saw that SciFi Channel* was showing Reign of Fire beforehand.

I thought to myself that was weird, where’s the usual Stargate re-runs? Turns out it’s October already (funny how it creeps up on ya) and they’re showing horror movies and tv series all month in honor of Halloween.

The Halloween marathon ends with a special live episode of “Ghost Hunters”, a show I found dreadfully boring. The wannabe ghostbusting duo will investigate ghost sighting at Fort Delaware in Delaware City, Delaware. I probably won’t be tuning for that special, but I’m sure I’ll wind up watching a few of these horror flicks. Put on Night of the Demons 2 and I’m glued to the screen. No lie.

B-movie horror at its best.

Source: Pop Candy
*I swear this blog is not a commercial for the SciFi Channel. The television remote just always seems to land there when nothing else is on tv.

“Venture Bros” is a hilarious action comedy spoof of “Johnny Quest” created from the minds of Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer. Cartoon Network just aired its third season on its adult swim programming block.

The show follows the trials and tribulations of Dr. Rusty Venture, a hack scientist still living in the shadow of his genius inventor/astronaut/scientist dad, his bodyguard Brock Sampson - a true killing machine, and his forever young twin sons - Hank and Dean. Each episode the Venture clan finds itself in meandering and sometimes nonsensical adventures as they try fend off the attack’s from Venture’s arch enemy, The Monarch.

And there’s more pop culture references tucked away in each episode than you can shake a stick at!

Fun fact: James Urbaniak, who played the internet cafe owner on “Terminator:The Sarah Connor Chronicles” is the voice of Dr. Venture. You can peruse his thoughts on politics, character acting, and “Venture Bros” at Voucher Ankles.

Doc Hammer on myspace
Venture Bros on adultswim
Youtube video of Monarch and Dr. Girlfriend talking to Venture Bros panel at NY Comic Con

Current TV and Twitter have teamed together to present you, Hack the Debate!

If you’re not on twitter, you’re probably thinking right now wtf is Twitter? And how does that somehow relate to television, TVRevival? Basically, we’re all gonna watch the debate, right? Right. Current is gonna broadcast the debate with live comments (or “tweets” as the twitter aficionados say) scrolling at the bottom of the screen. Don’t agree with what Palin or Biden is rambling on about? Tell them, hell, tell the world by entering your two cents on the #current feed. So if you’re mildly curious to know what actual people and not broadcast tv talking heads think about the debate, by all means join in the discussion!

Al Gore thinks this is awesome btw.

And since I’m pluggin hack the debate, I guess I should join twitter for real. TV Revival on Twitter, if you’re so inclined to follow my infrequent tweets…

“Dancing with the Stars” started this week, and I watched it for the first time. I would never watch such a show in my real life, but I figure I ought to expose myself to new and terrible things. Hey, it’s in the interest of finding television blog fodder. Nevertheless, rather than unleash my tirade over everything wrong with that show today, I’d rather keep spirits high. It is a Friday, after all. So, I’ll save it for another day, allow the hate stew to simmer, and tell you about something I do like: Carnivàle.

I remember this show when it first began airing on HBO back in 2003, but it looked weird. Too weird. So, I never bothered trying to get into it; plus, the only person I knew who did watch it was an imbecile. Years later, a non-imbecile friend swore up and down that it was his favorite show, and I began to reconsider it.

Long story less long, I put the first disc of Season 1 at the top of my Netflix queue, and wound up watching the entire series within a two week span, slowed down only by the sluggish pace of the United States Postal Service.

It even got to the point where I would bring some of the discs to work to watch at my computer. Granted, I was trying to get fired, but that’s neither here nor there. The moral of the story is, Carnivàle is indeed weird, but it’s a good weird, not “John from Cinncinnati” weird.

The show only lasted two seasons because it was too expensive to produce, considering it wasn’t getting “Sopranos” ratings. But, it is certainly one of the most unique shows I’ve seen, above all, and I watch loads of television. Even if you don’t love it as much as, say “The Wire” (and who could?), it’s worth a look. So, check it out. Go. Go do it now.

DVD shopping links:
Carnivale - The Complete First Season
Carnivale - The Complete Second Season

In an uncharacteristic bout of good judgement, I’ve decided to continue avoiding the wasteland of bad television this weekend, taking refuge in some old favorites from the “TV– No Wait, DVD” genre.  Last weekend, I got my cartoon fix with some “Clerks” The Animated Series,” but today is going to be all about “Freaks and Geeks.”

The most cursory internet search of “Freaks and Geeks” will undoubtedly provide a bounty of blogs praising this show– and likely some pornography too, so make sure you have “Safe Search” turned on, kiddies.

Where was I? Oh, yes. “Freaks and Geeks” is about high school kids in Michigan during the 80s, centering around a sister and brother who fall respectively into the social castes of– you guessed it– freaks and geeks. They laugh, they live, they love. This series was on NBC in 1999, and like so many other great shows, simply didn’t catch on quickly enough for the network suits. So, they yanked it. Good job, guys.

“F&G” was one of Judd Apatow’s greatest creations though, so it herewith gets the official Television Revival thumbs up. Plus, it’s got Seth Rogen, James Franco AND Jason Segel, so if you liked Pineapple Express and/or Forgetting Sarah Marshall, you’re going to lurve this. So rent it, or buy it, or do whatever it is you do to watch new stuff that is actually old stuff that is good. End of dispatch. I’m off to buy another box of wine.

[Picture source: NBC]