At the beginning of the television season you were bombarded with a bunch of “Best Of” and “Must Watch” shows even though it is a little unfair to judge a show by one episode. For instance last year had you asked me at the beginning of the season, Friday Night Lights wasn’t even on my radar, yet a month later it was my favorite show of the new season. With that in thought I brought together some TV Bloggers to see what are the best new shows of the season now that we are a good month into the new season. Here is the list that I came up with after placing the votes into an algorithm that would make the dudes from The Big Bang Theory blush. You can catch up by streaming the shows, or downloading them on iTunes and/or Amazon Unbox:
(numbers in parentheses denote first place votes)
Also receiving votes: Life, Woman’s Murder Club, Private Practice, Bionic Woman, Cane
Voters: Dan, Ducky, Kath, Jo, Liz, Rae, Sandie, Scooter McGavin, Tube Talk Girl, TVFan, Vance
Not surprising that Pushing Daises took the top spot as it lived up to the preseason hype, the show and Chuck were easily the top two shows on the list. On the other hand, the shows 3-10 were fairly bunched together with very little separating them. There was a good mix from all the networks this year (sans Fox who didn’t even have one of their shows get a pity vote) unlike last year (see Best New Shows of 2006) that was dominated by NBC with the top three positions, and ABC taking the next four spots. In a measure of full discloser, here was my ballot:
1. Pushing Daises
2. The Big Bang Theory
3. Chuck
4. Journeyman
5. Bionic Woman
And for all the TV fans out there, you may want to check out your local Best Buy, Target, or store of that ilk because I saw ads in this weekends newspaper for both stores selling many Warner Brothers produced TV on DVD shows like Veronica Mars, Nip/Tuck, and Smallville for around $15.00 per season. So you can get the whole West Wing series for just over $100. In most cases the most recent seasons are not on sale, but with Christmas certainly you can find a show for someone on your list or even yourself.
Scooter Update: It looks like the sale has hit the Amazon store. Below are just some of the select seasons you can get for under $20 (note: if the price is above 20, you are too late):
In a story I broke this weekend, tonight sees the debut of two nerd oriented shows. Of the two, The Big Bang Theory (see my First Impressions) by far handled the nerd culture better than tonight’s other debut, Chuck. But if we want to get technical, the guys from The Big Bang Theory are actual nerds while Chuck and his co-workers, despite working for something called the Nerd Herd, definitely fall under the label of nerds. And if you have to ask what is the difference between a nerd and a geek, you are definitely not either.
What’s worse Chuck even calls himself a nerd in the pilot. Seriously whoever is Chuck’s nerd advisor needs to fired (or possibly they need to find one if they don’t already have one) because Chuck and his best buddy Morgan are completely one note and clichéd and it was almost like the writers got the inspiration for their jokes out of a Nerds for Dummies guidebook. And while they are firing people, the cinematographer and all his uber-close up shots need to go. It is not often I am thankful for not having a high definition television, but this would be one of those cases because I bet anyone who does could count the number of nose hairs the actors had in those shots. I also have to question the musical adviser too, yeah Jet’s Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is was a great choice for the seen with the Token Hot Chick getting dressed, but they didn’t even feature the best line in the song, “You’ll be the sinner and I’ll be the sin.” Then the big emotional scene at the end features a song by The Shins; how Zach Braff of them.
But all that is knick picking, my biggest problem with the first episode has to do with the main plot. So Chuck is e-mailed sensitive government information which is downloaded to his brain. That isn’t as close to being as farfetched to how they portray our government employees so ruthlessly. We have in one episode we witness an NSA agent kill an unarmed CIA agent (albeit a rouge one), then give the okay to kill another CIA agent, which he almost does with his car, who is just following order from the superior. Then we have a CIA agent stabbing multiple NSA agents. Really, if I wanted to hear how inept and corrupt our government is I’d listen to Air America.
That is not to say the whole show is flawed. The two saving graces are the two government agents sent to look after Chuck. First for the NSA there is Adam Baldwin (My Bodyguard) who steals every movie or television show he has ever been in and the plot twist with his character at the end shows that the series has much potential after the Pilot. But more importantly the show could possible feature the hottest Token Hot Chick ever in the history of television in the form of a CIA agent. Her dance sequence could be the sexiest thing you will ever see on network television. Her twist at the end can also put a major monkey wretch in the future of the show.
Even though Morris is extremely annoying, the background geeks of the Nerd Herd could prove to be more entertaining, led by archenemies Harry, who was also a great source of comic relief as horny forensic guy on Dexter. Surprisingly even though the easiest scene stealer to write, the geek, turned out extremely annoying in the form of Morris, the breakout scene steal is token perfect dude (who typically is the most annoying character), Chuck’s sister’s boyfriend Captain Awesome.
Verdict: A pretty lackluster Pilot but they do set up things nicely for the show to improve considering the two twists at the end. But I still a little worried because for something labeled a dramady, the laughs were not all that funny. Really the only thing that got more than a chuckle out of me was Chuck’s choice of ringtones. So they may want to add a comedy writer to the already long list of people I said they need to bring on. Chuck airs Mondays at 8:00 on NBC. You can also download the Pilot for free on Amazon Unbox.
Also I would like to mention with premiere week in full swing for the credible networks, the good people over at Tapeworthy and The TV Addict round up a group television blogger and myself to rate this year’s new shows and you can find a grid of all our responses here. For those that find graphs too complicated, below I took the averages of all the show and put them in order below as well as the rubric and the list of who participated:
1. Pushing Daisies: 5.00
2. Chuck: 4.67
3. Dirty Sexy Money: 4.56
4. Reaper: 4.31
5. Gossip Girl: 3.92
6. Aliens in America: 3.75
7. Journeyman: 3.67
8. Bionic Woman: 3.54
9. Private Practice: 3.33
10. Cane: 3.20
11. Samantha Who?: 3.17
12. Sarah Connor Chronicles: 3.00
New Amsterdam: 3.00
K-Ville: 3.00
15. Life Is Wild: 2.75
Life: 2.75
17. Back to You: 2.70
18. Women's Murder Club: 2.50
Big Bang Theory: 2.50
20. Carpoolers: 2.43
21. Viva Laughlin: 2.00
Big Shots: 2.00
23. Cavemen: 1.63
1 - Don't waste your time unless you find ACCORDING TO JIM 'funny'
2 - Not great but at least doesn't offend me.
3 - Fun to watch if nothing else is on.
4 - Has potential. Worth a second look.
5 - Set your TiVo to Season's Pass!
N/A - Haven't watched yet.
I was a little surprised of how high people ranked Reaper and I am beginning to think either everyone else saw something different than I did or I am the only one not on the CW payroll. It weird that everyone “in the know” thinks the show is great yet not actually saying what is so great about it yet every normal person I talk to say it would be kind to call it mediocre. The best description I have heard about the show was that it was in a word underwhelming. My only other theory is that everyone else is grading on a curve because lets face it, if you take Pushing Daisies out of the equation, none of the other shows would have even ranked in the top five of last year’s list.
Now if happened upon the 9th Green from one other other TV blogs, you may want to check out my contest where I am giving away the fourth season of Nip/Tuck on DVD. Click the banner on the top of the sidebar for details.
And I would be remised if I didn’t mention that I am up for an award for Best TV Blogger. Yeah so technically I shouldn’t win this award because I’m not a TV Blogger. And really I don’t want to win. I just want to come in third, fourth or fifth because they win t-shirts, and winning a t-shirt means one more day I can procrastinate doing laundry. So if you have too much time on your hands (you do have to sign up to the site), please click the badge below and vote for me. Well unless of course I am in first or second then vote someone else to bump me down to third.
There have been a couple of videos that have caught my eye lately so I though I’d give them some love since the death of Musical Television left a void for a forum on the art form so here they are courtesy of YouTube. I advise you to watch them before you read my reviews if you don’t want me to spoil things. If you are interested in buying the video through iTunes, click the title link (where available, if not the link goes to YouTube where you can watch the video in full screen). If you are interested in buying the song, look for a link in the analysis.
Yesterday I mentioned you could download this video for free on iTunes but I didn’t actually watch it because I was too loopy on drugs to do so (currently I’m just down to Day and NyQuil, or as I like to call it: my Elvis regiment). Wow was this creepy, in a bad way. It is like U2’s Numb but without the unintentional comedy. The video was directed by Dave Matthews himself, who also played all the instruments too. Let’s hope he keeps the rest of his band around so he doesn’t do something like this again.
Your token Bruce Springsteen video, the song rocks but the video is pretty standard. Can’t they call Courtney Cox to make another cameo? Hopefully you picked up this song on iTunes last week when it was free, if not you can still pre-order the album.
This is a new track from Santana’s upcoming greatest hits package. The dude from Nickelback had already show up on one of Santana’s previous all-star albums (a song much better than this one) but for some reason the song was released to the radio with the dude from The Calling singing. And like most new songs added to a greatest hits album, the song doesn’t live up to the being part of the greatest hits. And if any of you out their actually know the dude from Nickelback, please tell him never to straighten his hair ever again. He’s scaring the children.
In a story I broke this weekend, starting yesterday you could rent through Blockbuster a DVD that featured the first episodes of NBC’s Chuck, Journeyman, and Life. For those without a Blockbuster card, starting September 10 (next Monday) you can download all three of those shows, as well as Bionic Woman, from Amazon Unbox for free. And for you pretentious types that have Tivo’s, you can transfer any Unbox download to your Tivo so you can watch it on your televisions. In other television news, The CW sent me more exclusive videos of Reaper except I have been too lazy to watch them. But they also mentioned that they started up an Official Reaper YouTube Channel although I’m not sure if the “exclusive” videos they send me are the same anyone can regularly get in the YouTube channel. And they even started up special toll free number (1-877-IN 4 HELL) to call for further information about the show from Lucifer himself. Or at least the dude who plays the devil on the show.
Reaper has been one of those shows that the more I learn about it the less interested I become. Hearing that Kevin Smith was directing the pilot first got excited for it. Then when I saw a picture of the lead characters in those silly outfits made me hesitate. Then when they switched out the Token Hot Girl with the shape shifter from Heroes I was starting to get discouraged. Then last week I mentioned that I saw a five minute synopsis of Reaper I lost all interest in see the show in its entirety.
Of course whoever saw that post just had to take my word for it, but since then and today Blogger has added the ability to upload video, so here now, courtesy of The CW, is that five minutes I saw so you can see for yourself if I was correct in saying the show, "looks like it has not decided if it wants to rip off Ghostbusters or Army of Darkness more (but fails to do either very well)." Be warned, major plot points from the first episode are revealed within the promo below so watch at your own risk of being spoiled. Reaper premieres Tuesday September 25 at 9:00 on The CW.
I wonder if the dog abuse scene will be cut by the time the episode airs.
Big News of the Week: ABC Is Starting to Get on My Bad Side: So last week I was overjoyed to finally see the final four episodes of the funniest new show of last year, Knights of Prosperity, only for the channel to squeeze an episode of According to Jim in-between two installments. Then ABC quietly pulled the show (for those keeping track for the third time as well as an unannounced time change) due to ratings along with The Nine. Seriously ABC, did you think that putting these two shows back on the air with no announcement after they were both already canceled in the dead of summer and they would all the sudden start pulling in ten million viewers?
ABC is starting to get down to the last straw and really only have one chance left (i.e. not yanking Pushing Daisies before Thanksgiving) before it goes on the list next to Fox as channels that are blocked on my television. Just to show you how long I hold a grudge, the Fox channel has not graced my television since the series finale of Arrested Development. But luckily ABC didn’t pull a Fox and make you get the DVD set to watch the unaired episodes because the final two episodes, one where the gang tries to recruit an actual criminal and the other with a cameo from Ed Burns over at ABC.com. In fact you can watch all thirteen episodes there. So if you have four to five hours of free time, it will make for a good marathon session.
Jim Rome Is Burning: When all the late night host were on vacation this week with repeats, Jim Rome instead pulled a Carson and had guest host fill in for him all week. After seeing Adam Carolla fill in for him he may rethink the guest host thing in the future. The guy may Dan LeBatard seem competent. But luckily for us viewers Carolla was so bad it became entertaining. You’d think a guy who hosted the Man Show would be more comfortable talking sports. Below are two segments from the show although no one uploaded the best segment where he interviewed a baseball player where Carolla obviously ran out of questions out half way threw and just starting the most inane questions:
While I am on the subject of sport, if there is anyone interested in getting beaten like a red-headed step-child participating in my fantasy football league shoot me an e-mail (see sidebar). Anyone is welcome from fanatics to those that just started watching football because of Friday Night Lights.
Also another off note topic for those with blogs of your own, there is a new start up feed reader fav.or.it that sounds promising as it says it will fix one of the big problems with current feed readers in that you will able to comment from the reader. It will be interesting to see if they can actually deliver, but currently they are blog submissions for when they launch, so if you have a blog of your own, you may want to head over there and submit yours to fav.or.it. If your are looking for a feed reader to use until then, I highly recommend Bloglines.
Greek: That was just like three sitcom episodes wrapped into one hour long show. The slumber party was easiest the best of them but I was surprised to learn that it was Lonelygirl15 that sent the sex tape to Casey. Didn’t see that coming. The other two segments were pretty cheesy, Rusty’s thanks to some bad casting of the crazy hot chick. She certainly was able to pull off the hot part but went way overboard on the crazy. Download the current season of Greek on iTunes.
Slacker Cats: I got a sense half way threw the episode that you pretty much have be a cat lover, or at the very least know a cat to enjoy this show, neither of which apply to me. There were a couple good laughs though. Download the current season of Slacker Cats on iTunes.
Rescue Me: Just when I started to wonder if I forgot if Tommy’s dad died, he finally made his first appearance of the year. I get a sense that the actor may be having some heath problems as he never appeared with the other actors and was absent from wide shots. Hopefully everything is all well. And hopefully we get more intervention scenes because that ranked pretty high on the best scenes of this season. Then we end with yet another surreal scene with Tommy and Mike on his roof and Tommy jumping over the edge to make a point.
Trapped in the Closet: Wow was that disappointing. The first couple chapters spent too long with Sylvester and Twan, one chapter was barely a minute long, some of the twists were just not interesting or rehashes of past reveals, and seven chapters in and still no midget sighting. There were some glimmers of hope so far with some classic lines and Chuck being in the hospital was an actual shocker so hopefully Kells can turn it around in the last three. And I am going to go out on a limb and say that the pimp in the church is who the midget was scared of ealier. Check out all the aired chapters of Trapped in the Closet at ifc.com.
Pick of the Week: Umm, any suggestions?
And since there really anything to talk about coming up next week, I received some information about the new CW show Reaper, you know, the one show that is taking over the Veronica Mars time slot (strike one). It is also the show that repeatedly hypes being directed by Kevin Smith as if he actually has any involvement past the first episode and some dude behind Grey's Anatomy (strike two). And it seems like I hear or see something new about the show it makes me less interested like when they swapped out the token hot chick for the chick from Heroes which was a total downgrade (and strike three). And from the five minute promo they sent along I am less intrigued as the show looks like it has not decided if it wants to rip off Ghostbusters or Army of Darkness more (but fails to do either very well). But I guess I should hold off final judgement until I see the whole thing in its entirety (that is not to assume I will even bother watching it though).
REAPER
Day and time: Tuesdays, 9:00-10:00 p.m. ET
Network debut: September 25, 2007
Format: Blending suspense and humor, “Reaper” follows Sam, a slacker whose world turns upside down on his 21st birthday when he learns that his parents sold his soul to the devil before he was born. Now, charged by the devil himself to be Hell’s bounty hunter, Sam, with the aid of his goofball friends, must track down evil-doers and send them back where they belong.
Cast: Bret Harrison as Sam Oliver Tyler Labine as Bert “Sock” Wysocki Ray Wise as the Devil Missy Peregrym as Andi Rick Gonzalez as Ben Valarie Rae Miller as Josie Donavon Stinson as Ted Andrew Airlie as Mr. Oliver Executive Producers: Michelle Fazekas, Tara Butters, Mark Gordon, Deb Spera and Tom Spezialy
of them.
) who steals every movie or television show he has ever been in and the plot twist with his character at the end shows that the series has much potential after the Pilot. But more importantly the show could possible feature the hottest Token Hot Chick ever in the history of television in the form of a CIA agent. Her dance sequence could be the sexiest thing you will ever see on network television. Her twist at the end can also put a major monkey wretch in the future of the show.
