First Impressions: Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains

Being an anniversary season, Survivor’s twentieth, it is time to bring back some familiar faces even if Survivor All-Stars goes down as the worst season ever (well, either that or Thailand) and Fans vs. Favorites isn’t that far behind. Yet when Heroes vs. Villains was announced I was cautiously optimistic. The four tribe approach of All-Stars hurt strategic play and strong alliance building as everyone just voted out the winners first. And the season had more quitters that the previous seasons combined.

Looking over the rosters of the new seasons, it looks to be filled with contestants that would have to be voted off or dragged off by the medical team to get them off the island as shown by the first challenge with doctors being called in twice to set the shoulder of Stephenie LaGrossa and splint the toe of Rupert Boneham which was broke in multiple places. Those Villains sure lived up to their name. Although you have to wonder about how Jessica “Sugar” Kiper made it onto the Heroes after giving a topless two finger salute to the other team after winning her round.

What makes Heroes vs. Villains on paper better than the first All-Star season is the splitting tribes into two specific groups with all the schemers and backstabbers who would do anything to win on one side. On the other, you have the contestants that mostly got asked back by hard work and perseverance and not stepping on people’s backs to get them there. So on the Heroes side, who will be the first to make that first strategic move that will blindside a tribe mate (as no one was last night because for all the talk from Tom Westman and Cirie Fields of making that move at the first tribal council, the tribe still went with the easy choice of Sugar).

Then on the Villains side, who can adapt because everyone else has seen them before and know their trick. Although, did Samoa not air before Heroes vs. Villains because Russell pulled the same align with ever girl he did on his season, except this season looks to be trading brunettes for blondes this time around. Another problem with the Villains, whereas every guy on the Heroes wants to be the Alpha Male, it looks like no one wants to step up and assume that leadership role on the Villains, with “Boston” Rob Mariano only stepping up to make fire, but from the promo, it doesn’t look like he may stay on the island very long.

With all that said, it is extremely hard to give anyone the edge to win it all which should make for an interesting season so I will stick with my preseason pick of Stephenie LaGrossa. But I will be rooting for the Heroes all the way as well as Danielle DiLorenzo, who topped my list of The Hottest Token Hot Chicks of Survivor Ever, individually. And while talking about list, also check out The 25 Greatest Survivor Contestants Ever.

Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains airs Thursdays at 8:00 on CBS. You can stream recent episodes over at cbs.com. You can also download Survivor on iTunes.

First Impressions: Lost the Final Season

I call foul. The promo monkeys said The Time for Questions Are Over and though we got some long awaited answers (five years later we finally know what, or who the Smoke Monster is) but they still set up plenty of questions in the season premiere of Lost most notably, how was Faraday both right and wrong about what happened after they set off a hydrogen bomb (they passengers would find themselves back on the plane as if their plane didn’t crash and ending back in real time respectively).

Speaking of that plane ride, did the writers really try to slip in that Shannon didn’t actually get on the plane and stayed with her boyfriend? Again, I call foul. I really hate it when the writers think we are stupid. Seriously, if you couldn’t get Maggie Grace to come back, you could be a little more creative that to change history to get around the fact she isn’t there. And I wouldn’t be so made if I didn’t assume we will never know why this happened. And I could have done without all the cheesy tongue and cheek lines like Charlie saying he was supposed to die, or Boone telling Locke he was pulling his leg. At least Arntz didn’t make any explosion jokes.

That is not to say none of the revisionist history was bad. I am eager to see just how they explain how Desmond ended up on the plane, where is Christian Sheppard’s body (but do not care at all what happened to Locke’s knives). And of course, if the island if 20,000 leagues under the sea, where is Ben, Juliet, Zeke, Richard Alpert (who has to be presumed dead without that healing spring at the temple) and those hired by Whitmore: Faraday, Miles, Charlotte.

Oh, yeah, and there was the healing spring we could always assumed existed since it miraculously saved Ben from Sayid shooting him and ironically saved Sayid after being shot by Ben’s father. Which begs the question, if Smokey needed Locke dying for his loophole, is Sayid Jacob’s loophole to come back to the land of the living? And at the Temple, we finally get a four year question answered in that we finally know what happened to the children, but still no word why The Others took who they did. Not that I really care anymore.

A few question answer in the season finale but I uncovered the biggest question of them all last night: how Lost ends which I am going to explain in the paragraphs below this one. So if you do not want to know how Lost ends, stop reading now (Scooter’s Note: This is not a spoiler per say as I do not have any insider information, but if I were a betting man, I would put a small fee on this being how the show concludes).

Faraday was right, you can reboot time, but he was wrong with the event. The bomb was always “The Incident” and was fated to happen (like I predicted). To use Faraday’s skipping record analogy, when Ben pushed the frozen donkey wheel, it created time to skip, it kept skipping until Locke made it stop, but they were left where Locke made the skipping stop, in the seventies. What the bomb accomplished was the blow the needle back to present day (well, back where Ben is, which I think is 2008).

So the ending of Lost will come when they figure out what that event that will start time will be which is when Jacob finds a loophole that will kill his buddy / Not-Locke / Smokie and in the ruckus, Jack gets decapitated explaining the cut on his neck back on the plane. Then when that happens “The Flashbacks” that we see of the plane are the result of happens from that event. But that just doesn’t reset back to the events of the plane, but the whole history of the island and that is why it is underwater and why Desmond can be on the plane, because he never crashed on the island because it was there. Or to put it in laymen’s term, remember the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode where Cordelia wished Buffy never came to Sunnydale? Everyone but Giles died, and time was reset when he crushed Anya’s medallion. That is what the series finale of Lost will be. Bazinga.

First Impressions: The Deep End

There are shows that are so bad they are entertaining (see Mercy or some of VH1’s Celebreality) and then there are ones that are just plain bad. The Deep End falls clearly into the latter category. It is hard to tell if the writers are morons are they expect the viewing public to be so. For instance there is plot point where a legal assistant is having problems with her boyfriend while simultaneously the boss’ wife thinks he is cheating on her. Then there is a “duh, duh, duh” moment at the end that the boss and the assistant were the couple even though anyone with a double digit IQ could have figured that out in the first act. Writing this bad is usually reserved for shows on The CW.

The bad writing is exasperated by the writers don’t seem to know if they want to be a drama or comedy and cannot to either very well and have horrible pacing trying to combine the two. Just the pacing in general was painful to watch as there are more than a few moments where I sit there wondering if I missed a scene or two as the plots just jump weirdly. But the most egregious writing problem was they made Dr. Harold Abbott completely unlikeable. That is something I never want to happen (please note he was also on the far superior Eli Stone which ABC dumped to air this crap).

The shame of it is, most of the cast is likeable headlined by Tina Majorino (Water World) as the push over of the new first year lawyers. Matt Long (Sydney White) is your Captain American of the group, Ben Lawson is your horny British dude, and the moderately attractive Leah Pipes (Sorority Row) as, well, the writers really didn’t define her character very well. All of them managed to almost get fired in the first episode and there was a fifth first year that showed up for half a minute and disappeared. And in the span of their first week four of them managed to sleep with each other (but not at the same time). But really, Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains cannot start soon enough.

The Deep Ends airs Thursdays at 8:00 on ABC. You can stream episodes on Hulu.

First (Second and Third) Impressions: Chuck

When the Intercet 2.0 was unveiled I had flashes of sharks jumping, but in the nine months since the Chuck finale I talked myself into everything being okay and even gave the chance of the that happening at 10 % during the latest round of Playing the Percentages. Then the first half of the two hour premiere happened and something was missing, the spark that made Chuck the second Best Show of 2009. Chuck was too mopey, there was little Jeffster, and Morgan returned from Hawaii. Sure there were some classic moments like Casey continually calling Chuck a lemon and the Token Hot Chick climbing out of the pool like a Bond Girl.




But the episode just didn’t come together. That was until Casey descended on Mexico with a big grin on his face because he got to use his massive gun. That was I finally realized Chuck was back. And not only was Team Bartowski was back, so was Carina who brought Vinnie Jones along for the ride (who kicks off the long line of guest stars Chuck will face off against this season). And as great a scene the engagement party was with Uncle Casey’s toast, Jeffter trying to drink Vinnie and his boys under the table during the housewarming party took the cake for the episode especially with Casey and his “Beware of Grumpy Neighbor” sign spraying down the festivities.



By the third episode in twenty-four hours, I was fully back on board thanks to some Casey fun and the inclusion of Captain Awesome to the team. Of course Casey would have tried to assassinate a communist dictator for his hero Ronald Regan in the eighties (and failed! Three times!) and naturally he get the nickname Angel of Death by the locals. The episode seemed very similar to the best Firefly episode Jayetown where they both go back to a place they are not welcome only to turn out to be a hero. Then The Ring strikes again kidnapping Captain Awesome which should led to another Awesome episode next week which cannot come too soon after getting three episodes in two days. And we still haven’t even gotten to the Lana Lang who showed up for a half a second in the season promo on Sunday which made me all giddy. Now if you excuse me, I have to pour out some bubbly in the memory of Buster Bluth.



Chuck airs Mondays at 8:00 on NBC. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can download Chuck on iTunes or Amazon Video on Demand (see below along with the first two seasons on Blu-Ray and DVD):

First Impressions: Trauma

When the new shows were announced last May, one show stood out from the rest for me: Trauma. This says something as I stay away from medical shows due to my dislike of the sight of blood. But the show came from Peter Berg, the guy who gave us the second greatest television show of the 00’s, Friday Night Lights. Berg even pulled Herc from his wheelchair for the new show as one of the paramedics on the show. A finger-less Buddy Garrity even makes an appearance in the premiere.

Trauma also produced the best promo of the season with its mid-air helicopter collision that was even more jaw-droppingly looking in its entirety. That accident sets up the rest of the show as the plot then goes forward a year and everyone still seems shaken up. Anastasia Griffith (Damages) lost her partner / lover and naturally she is struggling with the fact she was supposed to be on the chopper that crashed. She was kept off from the flight by Cliff Curtis (10,000 B.C.) who may or may not also had a relationship with Griffith and somehow survived the crash when he was thrown from the cockpit onto a rooftop.

After some time in a coma Curtis return to the job just son happens to be the one year anniversary. His first day back is also the first day coincides with the first day on the job Aimee Garcia (George Lopez) who had been flying in Iraq because what show these days wouldn’t be complete without a war veteran in its cast? Filling out the cast are Derek Luke (Notorious) as Herc’s partner who can’t get over that day a year ago and Jamey Sheridan (Chicago Hope) who seems to be in charge of the paramedics. While Griffith’s new partner may or masy not be the long lost Jonas Brother.

Verdict: The crashes were visually stunning but one has to wonder how a show could keep that up in this economy. And aside from a few scenes like the Garrity car crash, the show wouldn’t have been that special without those crashes. But then again, if you check out my First Impressions of Friday Night Lights, I was not keen on the first episode and just look how that show turned out. And since they have graduated and Berg is fond of nepotism, I would not mind seeing, Smash Williams, Jason Street, Lyla Garrity and / or Tyra Collette make an appearance on Trauma.

Trauma airs Mondays at 9:00 on NBC. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Trauma on iTunes (as I write this, you can download the Pilot for free).

First Impressions: Mercy

It is a good thing that I declared Modern Family (see my preview of the show) the funniest new show of the Fall season before I watched Mercy because I may have had a hard decision of what show truly deserved that title. The difference though is that for Modern Family, being called the funniest is a compliment on account that it is a sitcom, Mercy on the other hands is a drama. Yet with scenes like the lead grabbing a screaming girlfriend of a car accident victim by the nose to get her to shut up and fighting gang members still going at it were side-splittingly funny. And watching Dawn Summers try to emote is always the highest of high comedy.

But Mercy is supposed to be a serious medical drama to be a fill in for ER now that it has left the Peacock after fifteen seasons. Although with some hanky-panky going on inside the hospital, it may sooner conjure up images of an ABC medical show. The show follows Veronica Callahan (Taylor Schilling in only her second job on her resume) as an Iraq vet now working in a civilian hospital and living with her long line of Irish alcoholic. Bonus points for having a boyfriend / ex-husband / fiancé (actually I am not sure what was going on with that relationship) for calling her Ronnie.

Her best friend on the ward is Sonia Jimenez (Jamie Lee Kircher whose resume may be more extensive than Schilling’s but still nothing worth mentioning) who is tired with broke dudes but still goes home with a cop while blowing off a seven figure lawyer. Yep, Mercy is one of those shows that have not met a cliché it doesn’t want to beat into the ground. Speaking of clichés, naturally there is the doe-eyed newbie (Summers) who is just happy to be there in her Hello Kitty scrubs.

But back to the hospital hanky-panky cliché, it just so happens once Ronnie puts back on her engagement ring, she is whisked into a closet by a new doctor who just so happened to be a fling from her time in Iraq. Rounding out the cast is Delroy Lindo (Romeo Must Die) as the boss at the hospital who naturally has already threatened to fire Veronica. Also there is Guillermo Diaz (Weeds) as your token male nurse. Fun times.

Verdict: The pilot was a tale of two shows. The first half was cheesy fun while the second half lost all its charm with the show taking itself too serious side. If the show goes in the route of the first half it may become watchable. On the flipside it may get into the its so bad its good territory.

Mercy airs Wedensdays at 8:00 on NBC. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Mercy on iTunes.

First Impressions: How I Met Your Mother / The Big Bang Theory

Even though I have known for four months, it didn’t hit me that I would have to wait an hour after the end of How I Met Your Mother for the start of The Big Bang Theory. More specifically five seconds and one bad joke into Accidentally on Purpose, which it was all I lasted before turning off the television and stare at the blank screen pondering what to do for the hour before the new episode The Big Bang Theory. Apparently the big wigs at CBS don’t watch Sheldon and his idiosyncrasies otherwise they wouldn’t know what trauma they would cause by changing its timeslot.

But before my obsessive compulsionisms kicked in, we had the fifth season premiere of How I Met Your Mother which is really showing its age. Right off the bat we are reminded of the creepiness of Ted meeting the mother in his classroom to the soundtrack of the clever Oxford Comma by Vampire Weekend. Naturally we still don’t get to meet her although it is alluded to that the mother was in the economics class not his architecture class. But even if this is true, still creepy.

The other storyline is a potential jump the shark moment with Barney and Robin becoming an official couple. Barney and his Barneyisms is the heart of the show and if he is too busy tied down to one girl, and one in the group, just screams disaster if he starts becoming more human. The last thing I ever need to see is Barney suiting up to go on a date with a girlfriend.

How I Met Your Mother airs Mondays at 8:00 on CBS. You can stream recent episodes over at CBS.com. You can also download How I Met Your Mother on iTunes. How I Met Your Mother came in at #40 on The 100 Greatest Television Shows of the 00’s.


Here’s hoping that the writers of The Big Bang Theory by its fifth seasons don’t run out of ideas and just puts Sheldon and Penny in a relationship. Although a drunken one night stand would be hilarious. Instead to start the third season we get the re-coupling of Penny and Sheldon so sudden I thought it was a dream sequence. Kaley Cuoco laughing during the kiss didn’t help things much either. Although the epilogue to the episode suggest another one and done episode with some weird post-coitus talk. Granted not as weird as the pre- coitus talk that derailed the act altogether.

But of course Sheldon remained the center point of the episode with another of his classic hissy fits. And this is one of the ones where he had legitimate reasons to throw one when his buddies tampered with his experiments to make their lives at the arctic better with a happier Sheldon. Granted I was a bit disappointed we didn’t get an explanation as to why Sheldon had time to groom down to a goatee. But you could tell the writers had some Sheldomisms lined up from their summer break. It almost made sitting through the last three minutes of Two and a Halg Men worth it. Almost.

The Big Bang Theory airs Mondays at 9:30 on CBS. You can download The Big Bang Theory on iTunes. The Big Bang Theory came in at #14 on The 100 Greatest Television show of the 00’s. Both shows are available on Amazon Video on Demand (see below):

First Impressions: Survivor: Samoa

Without any bells, whistles or catches of recent seasons, not even an Exile Island, the one thing Survivor: Samoa promised leading up to the season the “Biggest villain in Survivor history.” Really? A bigger tool than last season’s Coach Ben Wade? More facetious than Johnny “Fairplay” Dalton? More annoying than Boston Rob Mariano? More calculating than Lex van den Burghe? More pompous than the original Survivor villain Richard Hatch? It is hard to considering someone the biggest anything after one episode, but Russell Hantz might very well be.

Let’s rundown everything Russell did in the first episode. He poured out everyone’s water, put Jaison Robinson’s socks in the fire, made up a story of living in New Orleans as a fireman during Katrina in which his fake dog got swept away, created what he calls the “Dumb Blonde” alliance with three separate girls as well as well as another secret alliance with another then conspired to get one of them kicked off, Marisa Calihan, when she dared to say she is going to have to keep an eye on him who was as close to tears as anyone has gotten on their exit to the show. Yeah, it may be safe to say he is the biggest villain in Survivor history even if he gets voted off next week after being an angel all episode. But by the preview, at least the preview part won’t be happening.

Russell even overshadowed who should have been the breakout star of Samoa: Shambo, the forty something ex-marine that derived her nickname by mashing her God given name Shannon Waters and Rambo all the while sporting a greater mullet than Sylvester Stallone ever had. Other include the other Russell, Russell Swan who another contestant called a more attractive Lennox Lewis. Alrighty. Then there is personal chef Mike Borassi who has so much weird facial hair one has to wonder who would let him touch their food? And what would Survivor without hot chicks in bathing suits, and there are a plenty this time around even with the departure Marisa. But above all, Spa Salesman (huh?) Ashley Trainer takes home this season Chick Who I Would Have Dirty, Dirty Sex with Even if They Haven’t Bathed in 30 Days Award.

Swan was also a part of the small twist in that each tribe would pick, without actually talking to each other, their “leader.” Then the leader then in turn pick had to choose who they thought was the best swimmer, strongest, most agile, and smartest. Pretty cool twist with the winner taking back to their camp fire. With the evilness of Hantz running around the island, it is even harder to try and pick a winner this season. My preseason pick of rocket scientist John Fincher doesn’t look very wise after he botched his swimming leg of the relay. So I will put my fake money behind the moderately attractive law student Monica Padilla.

Survivor: Samoa airs Thursdays at 8:00 on CBS. You can stream recent episode on Innertube. You can also download Survivor on iTunes. Survivor came in at #10 on The 100 Greatest Television Shows of the 00's.

First Impressions: Tool Academy 2

When a reality show has an absurdly entertaining first season like Tool Academy did, there are really only two routes it can take. One can hope that it ends up like Survivor, a decent concept that along with the right casting can still be watchable nineteen seasons later. Then there are the reality shows that end up like Beauty and the Geek, a great concept, but one the cat is out of the bag, not even great casting can salvage subsequent season from being as great.

After the first season ended I was pretty sure Tool Academy would take the Beauty and Geek route, but after the first episode it is clear that there are plenty of tools that are stupid enough to think they have been chosen to compete to be a party king to be entertaining for years to come. Personally I would have been tipped off by the Her energy drink sponsorship which I was shocked to turn out to be an actually drink.

They even found some new kinds of Tools including the Old Tool, Tat-Tool, Hillbilly Tool, and my personal favorite “Special” Tool (their quotation marks, not mine) who may also win this season’s hottest girlfriend contest in Shannon. Although there are Guy-liner Tool, Manscaping Tool, and Spray Tan Tool which basically all of them are all already. And, well, they are all tatted up too, but Tat-Tool still overdoes it more than the rest. But there is still a high probability that this cast gets the Tool Academy logo tattooed at some point this season like the previous cast.

With a show like Tool Academy, it is hard to predict a winner because their rules for elimination seems to change from episode to episode, but I will be rooting for Ohio’s own Dre P., the B-Ball Wannabe Tool to win, who may have had the best line of the night, “Leah was so pissed to the highest pissisity.” Although the Giant Tool blaming his behavior on a “Schick coma” maybe the greatest excuse ever in the history of excuses.

The first challenge may have been better than any of the inaugural season where they had to bail water from a sinking ship. But it was amazing that of the twelve Tools competing; only one of them had the brain power to think, hey maybe I should stick a finger and/or toe in this hole. Then we had an elimination show expositive, the host flipped his lid and just started yelling at the Tool to leave. Luckily this wasn’t the Guy-liner Tool because he almost came to tears and that would have not been pretty.

If there was one complaint of the first season of Tool Academy it would be there were just too many chicks who took their Tools back after being eliminated. And much like last season, the first to go was taken back by his girl despite his huge hissy fit he threw. And not to mention she was already slumming with the guy who was way out of her league. But considering the preview for next week that promises a shocking ending that may finally change this season. Of course in true VH1 fashion, they ended up giving away that shocking ending two seconds later. I really need to stop watching VH1 promos.

Muck like last season, all these guys are definitely Tools, but not all the girls are squeaky clean again like last season which begs the question, when will we get a female version of the show? The biggest obstacle most likely is a name because not of the female equivalent of Tool are really television appropriate. But how about B-Girl Academy? And if you don't know what “B” means, let us explain: “B” stands for Broncos, Benzes, BMWs, bass, bangles, and a pair of bars. We see you pulling up down the alley; you all act like we are stars. We're not trying to make a joke, we’re just trying to make it known that people in the world that we call B-Girls like bars on a Cadillac Brougham.

Tool Academy airs Sundays at 9:00. You can stream current episode on VH1.com. You can also download Tool Academy on iTunes. Tool Academy ranked in at 36 on The 100 Greatest Television Shows of the 00’s.

First Impressions: Defying Gravity

I was on the fence on whether to watch Defying Gravity. On one hand it stars Peter Gibbons and Daisy Adair. But on the other one, it has been described as “Grey's Anatomy in space”, the crappy flagship show that amplifies that ABC stands for the All Broads Channel since shipping off Monday Night Football to ESPN. Although Defying Gravity ended up relying the lone bastion of male watching block on the channel by utilizing some of Lost’s storytelling with plenty of flashbacks, many of which are pretty worthless.

The show focuses on a six year mission around the solar system taking the crew to seven different planets to the tune of ten trillion dollars. Hopefully in forty years all of Earth’s ills have been cured because that is a hefty sum. Although it seems as the conservatives will have won the abortion debate in the future as one of the astronauts seeks out an illegal abortion. The law goes as far that they don’t even sell home pregnancy tests anymore for some unknown reason. Yet for some reason abortion is outlawed yet they are allowed to destroy embryos aboard the spaceship.

The cast is expansive, but seems to currently only focus on two formal couples, Ron Livingston (Office Space) as your token loose cannon who will break with protocol if he thinks what he is right with the lone exception of leaving two fellow astronauts on Mars ten years prior. He had a one night stand with Laura Harris (Dead Like Me) which presumably resulted in the needed abortion but the flashbacks are ambiguous in their timeline. Also no conformation on the abortion but one can assume here inclusion in the crew means she went through with it and is now haunted by baby cries.

The other former couple that was only hinted at so far are Malik Yoba (Cool Runnings), the current commander who happens to be currently wed to the boss and Christina Cox (who I thought was much younger, blonder and Britisher) who is married the former commander who was kicked off of the mission last minute for some reason and replaced by Yoba. The other crew members have yet to be fleshed out including some dude with massive scars on his back (I sense an upcoming flashback), a horny German, some dude searching for porn and the moderately attractive Paula Garces (Man of the House) who films everything.

The main drawback to Defying Gravity is that it is slow. Excruciatingly slow. And the meaningless flashbacks just make it seems slower. The lone interesting plot point (that has a high potential for the plot point to be disappointing) is that there is something(one?) called Beta that apparently is pulling the strings, booting two crew members at the last minute and apparently “allows” things to happen. If I were a betting man, I would put my money on Beta being akin to HAL 9000. The other big mystery being knowledge being withheld from the astronaut that they won’t be privy to until they reach Venus. Again, I would put my money on they are not expected to make it back to Earth. Either that or that viewers won’t be returning back to the show.

Defying Gravity airs Sundays at 10:00 on ABC. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Defying Gravity on iTunes (as I write this you can download the two part season premiere for free and in HD).