Sunday, September 30, 2007

The New Fall Line-Up (and loves it!)- Pt. 1

So I'm procrastinating on an actual, paying writing assignment and squeeing about the new TV season instead.

Fall TV Round Up
Monday: I DVRed the better of Josh Schwartz's two new shows, Chuck (on NBC) and really enjoyed it. Likable cast including the always awesome Adam Baldwin and the usually heinous Sarah Lancaster. And Chuck himself is not too Seth Cohen-y (my biggest fear for the show.) Funny and action packed and the conclusion hit just the right emotional note which is what Schwartz does best. I'm in. Bonus: my former girl crush, Rachel Bilson, is set to guest star in a multi-episode arc beginning soonish. Sweet.

In real time, I watched the third season premiere of CBS's How I Met Your Mother guest starring the adorable and sadly underused, Mandy Moore. I have no real use for Robin anymore, and Ted has only recently grown on me, but Barney, Lily, and Marshall are arguably the best "friends" on TV right now. Everybody is watching this show for NPH. I'm watching for Jason Segel. Maybe this'll be the year that HIMYM finally gets its due.

Highlight: The Heroes season premiered at 9 PM and not surprisingly, was utterly fantastic. We caught up with Matt, Molly, and Mohinder (now livin' it up My Two Dads style in NYC) and met some new heroes, Maya and Alejandro (pretty, Latino Wonder Twins with inappropriate sibling chemistry.) And they totally killed off George Takei. But as was hinted at in S1, the S2 premiere solidified that- ensemble, shmensemble- Hiro, Peter, and Claire are truly the stars of the show.

I'm not a huge Hiro Nakamura fan but pairing him with sexy Sark doing Monty Python schtick was genius. All of their scenes were light and funny.
Funny in a totally different way were the Bennet (now Butler) moments. Hayden P. and Jack Coleman do some of the very best work on this show and seeing them onscreen again was the highlight of the premiere. Their (literally) painfully ordinary days in the new So Cal locale culminated in the standout hilariously deadpan family dinner sequence that frankly, looked like it belonged on another show but hopefully indicates a tonal shift for Heroes in its new season. Another standout- Claire's heartbreaking phone call to now, boozy, delusional, recluse Nathan. Claire wants to talk about how much she misses Peter. Nathan hangs up on her. Worst dad ever.
Peter is presumed dead but in reality, not so much. He (finally) appears in the last two minutes, shirtless, chained, powerful as ever, and suffering a serious bout of amnesia. I won't tsk, tsk the show yet because I have faith they can do something interesting and original with it but, amnesia? Really?

All in all, a fairly awesome premiere. Here's hoping J.J. Philbin doesn't find some way to fuck it up (as is her wont.)


Tuesday- I only watched one show and only marginally enjoyed it so Tuesday might be my day off. As I mentioned in my inaugural post, Bret Harrison and I are occasionally thisclose so I felt somewhat obligated to check out his new show on The CW, Reaper. The premise does not appeal to me, the other cast members do not appeal to me, Kevin Smith EP-ing only slightly appeals to me but, Bret Harrison. It was okay. It gains points for being darker than expected and loses points for not being as funny as it promised to be. And the production quality is horrible. Seriously, S6 Buffy levels of bad. But, Bret Harrison. I set the DVR for next week's episode, but no series setting. Yet.


I've decided to make Wednesday its own entry because damn, there's a lot of programming Wednesday night.

2 comments:

RookieMom Whitney said...

As usual, no idea what you're talking about, but looking forward to watching some tv with you soon :-)

I'm watching Curb your Enthusiasm, Tell Me You Love Me, Californication (can you tell I have shitloads of free cable?).

Guilty pleasure: Singing Bee
Daily senseless habit due to current profession as a SAHM: What Not To Wear

Anonymous said...

Keep up the good work.