57 Channels and Only This Is On: 10/21/2018

Supergirl: Oh, hey, The Real Eleanor! Well, fork. They killed her off already. Shirtballs. And is it too late to have Saturn Girl be the token Legionnaire to stay behind because Braniac 5 may actually be more annoying than Toyman Jr.?
Supergirl on iTunes.

Shameless: Peg Bundy? Monica Geller? Danny Tanner? What nineties era sitcom star will be on next, Uerkel? But is that it for Ian? The actor announced he was leaving the show too. Seriously, can people just leave without announcing iy first? Once it is announced it is just a long slog until they are off the show. At least Ian just announced last week so it was not a long wait. Assuming he just rides off into the sunset with Micky. Kind of sad that is his big love. Is Jimmy going to come back for Fiona to take her away for her to leave?

Fear the Walking Dead: Is the preacher really going to hook up with the creepy Trash Lady? And what happened to his eye? I remember he was really sick last season, but I do not remember anything happening to his eye.
You can download Fear the Walking Dead on iTunes.

The Last Ship: Wait, the lesbian traitor is really an American mother of one from Orlando? I just assumed she was an ambiguous Latina who could pass as Caucasian. Being an actual turncoat makes her a much more compelling character. So just how and when was she turned? And I know in the post-pandemic world, they might be low on soldiers, but how do you not keep eyes on that house. At least pay a local.
You can download The Last Ship on iTunes.

You: So the Pretty Little Liar gets her head bashed in with a rock last week and looks none worse the wear the next day? Oh, but she is apparently dead now? It was quite absurd that Joe tossed the rock not far away from the body last week and I does not seem like anyone bother to canvas more than two feet from the attack, but c’mon, Joe had to have left plenty of DNA at the house, including a forking jar of urine. But Joe hallucinating his ex-girlfriend is giving me the sinking suspicion that the big twist at the end of the season will be that Joe was hallucinating some, if not all of what happened this season.
You can download You on iTunes.

Manifest: So now they passengers can see inanimate objects instead of just hearing voices tell them to do things? Meh.
You can download Manifest on iTunes.

The Challenge: Final Reckoning: Yeah, I laughed pretty hardily at Natalie in the ball pit. Big old shocker she actually won. Even bigger shocker Zach got the boot for medical reason. Always sucks when someone leaves for medical reasons. But had he stupidly not voluntarily put himself into that elimination that injured him, he would still be in the game uninjured.
You can download The Challenge: Final Reckoning on iTunes.

Survivor: David vs. Goliath: So we got a brand new advantage, the Idol Nullifier where someone can play it and would wipe out the Idol that is played. But only if they play it for someone who actually plays their Idol. I will be quite shocked if this actually gets played correctly.

Then at Tribal you had the battle of the dumb moves. First you get the Black Dude David with the Idol who decides to try to get the Tribe to vote out the other David so he would not have to play the Idol even though he would still be in the minority for any future Tribals with this group. I never understand the hold on the Idol for later strategy. If you think there is more than ten percent chance you are going home, play it now. Then tomorrow, go out and look for another one. I am too lazy to do the research, but I am pretty sure more people have been booted with an Idol in their pocket than have played one correctly. In Survivor you should worry about getting to tomorrow and then worry about tomorrow then.

But Black David was bailed out by the White Dude Goliath who had a dumber move of his own when he decided to turn on his majority for what appeared to me for no apparent reason. So now he is in the minority and why would anyone trust him? It is just amazing to me how whenever these Tribe swaps happen that the majority seemed to vote one of their own more often than the easy vote. I would be interested to go back and see how many of these early Tribe Swap turncoats actually make it very far. I would be shocked to see either of these two morons in the finals. I would be surprised if either get to the merge.
You can download Survivor: David vs. Goliath on iTunes.

The Good Place: Isn’t Michael telling the group about The Good Place point system kind of a backdoor to still get them in? Since they know about the points, any points they accumulate would be void, but now they think there is no way to get to The Good Place, actually they can get those points for doing good because they are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, not because it will get them moral deserts of an decent afterlife. Right? I think I hurt my brain coming up with that theory. But hey, of course Jason has his own infectious disease named after him in Jacksonville.
The Good Place on iTunes.

Blindspot: Oh no, Jane got caught with a syringe. Oh wait, the promo for next week sees the team working together with no tension. I guess she is easily able to explain this like she did taking photos of Patterson’s board. I really need to stop watching promos.
You can download Blindspot on iTunes.

57 Channels and Only This Is On: 10/14/2018

Shameless: Oh Frank, of all your stupid ideas, electroshock therapy to your own junk has to be the worst. But getting conned by Peg Bundy in pursuit of drugs does totally seem on brand.

The Walking Dead: I feel like I missed something. A dangerous mission to DC for a plow and a wagon? And what exactly were you expecting pulling those things over a glass ceiling? And is It really that hard to make your own plow?

The Last Ship: Oh yeah, Tom Chandler still has children, that was the first sighting of the season. And right during the episode Chandler said he was back full time. And what a weird juxtaposition of a siege with a fight with the daughter.
You can download The Last Ship on iTunes.

You: So Peaches is just the female Joe? I can work with that. So when does Peaches get a POV episode? Is it a flashback to when Peaches met Beck? Although we are already seem to be done with Beck monologing. But of course Peaches is not dead, she just got interesting. And how exactly does Joe get out of this? He stupidly threw the weapon nor far from where he attacked her? Shouldn’t there be enough DNA on it?
You can download You on iTunes.

Manifest: So now the people on the show can solve crimes by following the voices in other people’s head? And kind of lame that the big cliffhanger of the person who went on television being murdered ended up being the maid.
You can download Manifest on iTunes.

The Challenge: Final Reckoning: You know what Marie, if you did not want the Lavender ladies to turn on you, maybe you should not have voted with Banana’s last week creating that tie.
You can download The Challenge: Final Reckoning on iTunes.

Blindspot: So Jane and Tasha are bad guys now? Alrighty. Not that I think that Tasha will do anything to hurt her old team. I guess something had to change to make the show more interesting.
You can download Blindspot on iTunes.

57 Channels and Only This Is On: 10/7/2018

Shameless: About half way through the episode I thought to myself, for the hundredth episode, this week was fairly tame for such a milestone. Then Frank went and started a race riot. That is more like it.

The Last Ship: I always found the lesbian relationship completely weird, out of place, and just randomly popped out of nowhere at the start of this season. It really just screamed something shady was going on. And apparently I was right. Too bad Alicia did not figure it out before me because she is yet another character to die this season. Is anyone going to get out of this final season alive?
You can download The Last Ship on iTunes.

You: Ooo, a change in format. But maybe I was too harsh on Joe monologing because Beck is not that more compelling at it. I actually assumed the Captain was her father the moment he offered money (I guess I forgot she mentioned he was dead). Though does Peach actually think he is dead with her dead dog an analogy for her father or does she just think the father is just dead to Beck? Really weird to tell everyone, even your best friend, your dad is dead when he is not. But did Joe really leave Beck alone in his apartment with her panties, shirt, and phone when returning the book or did h take that stuff with him. Joe is kind of sloppy for a meticulous stalker.
You can download You on iTunes.

Manifest: So this show is just going to be miracle of the week format? Meh. I am much more interested in the shadow figure who may be going around and killing passengers from the plane. My prediction: it is someone who was on the plane.
You can download Manifest on iTunes.

The Challenge: Final Reckoning: Do these people seriously forget they are playing for a million dollars? I am not risking a chance at a million dollars to play chicken with my partner. And Zach is clearly in the wrong because Amanda’s alliance is clearly stronger and easier to be one on one. And how did they lose that elimination? C’mon, at one point how do you not realize that Zach needs to climb across and shake that last flag off? I was thinking that after the third try failed.
You can download The Challenge: Final Reckoning on iTunes.

Survivor: David vs. Goliath: The promo monkey really was trolling us last week. It seemed like both tribes were targeting a woman of color, which would have been another in a long list of women of color being voted out first. Unfortunately, the show reverted back to an older trope of voting out the most attractive females early. Meh.
You can download Survivor: David vs. Goliath on iTunes.

The Good Place: Oh my goodness, the American Café was just offensively brilliant. Maybe even better was the explanation of how the Jacksonville Jaguars and Blake Bortles got suddenly good.
The Good Place on iTunes.

57 Channels and Only This Is On: 9/30/2018

Shameless: You would think Frank supporting a pedophile foe Congress would be the most shameless moment of the season, but it was not even the most shameless part of the episode. No, Lip pulling the plug of someone on a ventilator so he could kidnap a kid was really bad.

The Last Ship: Well that was a novel way to blow up a bridge.
You can download The Last Ship on iTunes.

You: Call me old fashion, but seeing who I thought I was dating forking some other dude she just met would be a huge deal breaker for me. Doing that seems more psychopathic than killing your crush’s boyfriend. Although leaving the body in your car while putting together the girl’s bed is probably up there. But really, trying to get a child to buy that stuff should be child endangerment that should come with some jail time. And I hope that ending was intentionally funny.
You can download You on iTunes.

Manifest: Going into the show I kind of expected it to knock off Lost, but I was not expected the show to also knock off another mid-nineties show, Wonderfalls. And really poorly because being told to do ambiguous things that turn out to be for the better is much more entertaining when it is done by inanimate objects rather than your voice in your head.
You can download Manifest on iTunes.

The Gifted: And I though the kid’s Beiber haircut was laughable. But other than him, I really wish they would just get rid of the Mutant Underground and spend all the time with the inner Circle, all of the more interesting character are there.
You can download The Gifted on iTunes.

The Challenge: Final Reckoning: Oh snap, someone on this show went with the strongest team to meet in elimination. And then actually defeated them.
You can download The Challenge: Final Reckoning on iTunes.

Survivor: David vs. Goliath: What a horrible way to end an episode. Definitely should have done a double episode on that. And why were they making such a big deal of Christian solving that first puzzle, which was the easiest one in the show’s history. A child could have done that in a minute or two.
You can download Survivor: David vs. Goliath on iTunes.

The Good Place: Kind of a meh start to the season. I guess having the characters all being on Earth kind of eliminates some of the zanier aspects of the show. Hopefully Trevor spices things up next week (but thanks to the promo right before the last segment and Adam Scott’s name appearing in the credits before he was actually on screen, that surprised was kind of ruined). Granted, if the demons are sending up their own to taint this experiment, it really should have been Real Eleanor. Hopefully Trevor fails and she is next.
The Good Place on iTunes.

The Most (and Least) Anticipated Questions of 2018-19 Television

Here we are a week after Labor Day and already fall television is starting to ramp up before the network start their new seasons. Four shows I am watch just lauched last night.
o here are some questions I am looking to be answered by the time we hit next summer.

1. What the Fork Is Going On in The Good Place? – The Good Place blew our forking mind when the ended the first season with Eleanor figuring out that they were, in fact, in The Bad Place. The show did their big twist a bit early in season two when The Judge sent Team Cockroach back to Earth to live out their lives to see if they would end up being worthy of The Good Place at the start of the list episode so we did get a sneak peak of what season three may be like. It may be a bit precocious to think this will be the whole season considering Michael’s second try only lasted two episodes of season two. All I know about the third season is that Jason better enjoy the Jacksonville Jaguars’ run through the playoffs last year.

2. Will DC Universe Succeed? – We have finally reached streaming saturation where we have to ask of every new service, can it survive? Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu seem to have their foothold with the big pockets of Disney, Youtube, Facebook Watch, and Apple TV lurking (granted deep pockets does not necessarily mean success, remember Ping?). Which begs the question is there a place for niche services? Seriously, who is paying six buck a month to get AMC or FX ad free? Do you at least get their movies uncensored? The latest to put their hat in the ring is DC which is offering a vague number of their comic book movies, shows, and actual comic books along with one exclusive series airing at a time released with weekly episode for eight bucks a month (or seventy-five for a yearly subscription). Does not seem enough to me for a permanent subscription, but I will likely sign up once a year or so for a month just so I can see Lyla Garrity in a superhero costume. Now if only they would greenlight a Saturn Girl spin-off.

3. How Will Homeland End? – How apropos that a show with a bi-polar lead would be the most uneven show in the history of television. As great as the first season was, the third season was equally bad. Since killing off Brody, the show has evened out (though the long slow death of Quinn was excruciating). Two seasons ago, the show backed itself into a Russian hacking storyline before it turned out to really be happening. The show recently announced next will be its last. We left off with Carrie completely off her meds for a lengthy amount of time. Kind of a shame the drama of freeing Carrie wasn’t itself the final season.

4. Will Manifest Be the Next Lost? – Lost launched thirteen years ago and during it six year run, every network tried to replicate its deep seeded mythology with sprawling cast to no avail. Very few got a second season and none I believe got a third. Since they all failed, it has been awhile since a network has tried something so ambitious. Can Manifest, about a plane (how Lostian) lands fire years with the passengers thinking it was a normal flight, capture the magic that Lost did or will it just go the way of The Event?

5. Will the Veronica Mars Reboot Be Any Good? – Veronica Mars has long been the holy grail of gone too soon television shows. We did get a movie thanks to Kickstarter but it was too fan servicey to be great itself. Four years later it looks like we may get a full television revival on Hulu (no official announcement yet but creator Rob Thomas has tweeted out multiple acticles on the subject without actually commenting on it himself). So will the reboot be any good? The movie was good enough and with Thomas and Kristen Bell back, I am definitely optimistic. And free of network constraints, just how dark and gritty will the show get? Can we expect a full frontal Dick Casablancas?


As the great philosopher Butt-Head once pondered, how would we know if something was cool if there weren't things that sucked; here are the five least antedated questions:

1. Who Will Get Roseanne’d Next? - A wise man once said, “Twitter is stupid and Instagram is Twitter for people who can't read.” Twitter has long been a cesspool for the angriest people to shout at each other and earlier this year Roseanne got axed from her highly rated show for being racist. Then about a month later Guardians of the Galaxy writer / director James Gunn was fired, also by Disney for making poor pedophile jokes on Twitter (or so some claimed were jokes; pictures at him at a pedophile themed party did not help his cause). Which begs the question, who will get fired because of Twitter next? Can I put money on Alec Baldwin, who has an upcoming ABC show and surprisingly has never been blacklisted for his very inappropriate tirades including calling his eleven year old daughter a “rude thoughtless pig.” I know it will not be Rian Johnson, another Disney employee and director of an upcoming Star Wars film, who recently deleted all of his tweets older than a year which is probably the wisest thing anyone can do besides never even going on Twitter.

2. What Will Be the Next Crappy Reboot? – Sure there are some reboots to be extremely excited about that may be coming soon like the previously mentioned Veronica Mars as well Alf, and a Deadwood movie. But for every worthy reboot, there seems to be ten crappy ones. Joining Will and Grace and Roseanne The Connors this fall include Murphy Brown, Magnum P.I. Last Man Standing, and Charmed. We will also be getting soon The Hills, Roswell. And also in the works are Bewitched, Designing Women, The Facts of Life, The Muppet Show, Party of Five, The Twilight Show, The Animaniacs, and a double dose of Melissa Joan Hart reboots in Clarrisa Explains it All and Sabrina the Teenage Witch (though she will only appear on the former).

3. Where Did the Runaways Runaway To? – It took an entire season for the titular runaways to actually runaway, to the point I do not really care at this point. I am still kind of rooting for the parents.

4. Will FX Continue to Let Kurt Sutter Overindulge? - The first couple seasons of Sons of Anarchy were pretty good. Then the gang went to Ireland and things dragged on a bit. When they got back to California, it did not get much better because FX’s laisse faire attitude let creator Kurt Sutter make longer and long episode that got more and more excruciating to watch. I think there was even a two hour plus episode that included three musical montages in the final season, one sung by Sutter’s wife who was also a star of the show. Aw, nepotism. So his follow-up was a hard pass for me and apparently most of Sons’ viewers because it was canceled after one season. Sutter is back in the motorcycle game with the spin-off with Mayans MC. But if FX continues to give him carte blanche, I think I will pass. And my cable guide has the first episode at over an hour and thirty-eight minutes and episode two at an hour and a half, so definitely hard pass. Seriously FX, notes are good sometimes.
5. Can CW Succeed Going to Six Nights a Week?: The CW was launched twelve years ago and two years later it was outsourcing its Sunday schedule before abandoning the night a year later. A decade later the CW is reviving the night.

And here are the shows I will be watching this fall and when they begin.

Mondays
8:00 – The Neighborhood (CBS, October 1)
10:00 – Manifest (NBC, September 24)

Tuesdays
8:00 – The Gifted (FOX, September 25)
9:00 – Blackish (ABC, October 16)
10:00 – The Purge (USA, September 4)

Wednesdays
8:00 – Survivor (CBS, September, 26)
8:00 – The Goldbergs (ABC, September 26)
9:00 – Modern Family (ABC, September 26)
9:00 – Vikings (History, November 28)

Thursdays
8:00 – The Good Place (NBC, September 27)
8:00 – The Big Bang Theory (CBS, September 27)
8:30 – Superstore (NBC, October 4)

Fridays
The First (Hulu, all episodes September 14)
Into the Dark (Hulu, new episodes on first Friday of the month starting in October)
Marvel’s Runaways (Hulu, all episodes December 21)
8:00 – Blindspot (October 12)
9:00 – Midnight, Texas (October 26)

Sundays
8:00 – Supergirl (The CW, October 14)
9:00 – Shameless (Showtime, September 9)
9:00 – The Last Ship (TNT, September 9)
9:00 - The Walking Dead (AMC, October 7)
9:00 - Ray Donovan (Showtime, October 28)
10:00 – Kidding (Showtime, September 9)
10:00 – You (Lifetime, September 9)
10:00 - Escape at Dannemora (Showtime, November 18)