Watching The CW

So, finally, the time has come. The time when I only have to sit through two more hours of Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles. This Monday, March 3, marks the two-hour season finale on Fox at 8 pm ET. I haven’t seen anything that says that the show is absolutely coming back in the Fall, but if it does, I probably won’t be watching. I committed myself to watch this season, and I’ve watched each and every episode. I feel like I’ve seen enough and I’m pretty sure that I can’t take any more.

I was so excited for this show, not only because I love the Terminator movies, but also because I’m a fan of Summer Glau. Unfortunately, at least in my opinion, the show has never lived up to what I had hoped for it. I’ve tried to like it. Really, really I have. But somehow the eps always seem to move too slowly or be full of lots of running around and getting nowhere. I’m not a huge Brian Austin Green fan either, or maybe his addition to the cast, as John’s uncle, would make me care more. Actually, the most interesting cast member to me is Dean Winters, cause he’s such a doll.

Who knows, things can change. Maybe when and if the show comes back in the Fall for a second season, I’ll give in and watch it again. I’m gullible and I love to live in hope. So I might give it another chance. But probably not.

I was watching an ep of Angel today on TNT. I realize Angel isn’t on the CW, and actually isn’t on anymore, except in repeats. But I’m using that same logic that allows to write about shows like Firefly on this blog. Angel was on the WB, which merged with UPN to make the CW. Therefore, I consider it fair game.

In any case, I was watching this episode, “Peace Out,” from the end of the fourth season. As I watched, for the first time, I felt sorry for Angel’s son, Connor (Vincent Kartheiser). I never really liked Connor much. I always felt that his story line messed up the show. Honestly. I used to think that somewhere in the middle of the third season aliens had taken over at Angel and I wasn’t happy with what they were doing. (Don’t even get me started on how miserable I am about what they did to Cordelia!) I just didn’t like the direction they took the show and I guess I kinda blamed Connor. Maybe I’m too old to just appreciate Vincent as being cute or whatever as well, but I just wanted him gone. I rejoiced when he finally left and we could have the fifth season mostly without him.

But today, for the first time, I really felt sorry for Connor. I stopped to think about his life for just a moment and see how he was constantly being manipulated by people he chose, unwisely, to trust. He’s stolen from his father, when just a baby, by Holtz, who raises him in a hell dimension. Holtz’s sole motivation is vengeance. He doesn’t care at all about Connor, but he is using him. Holtz even set up and uses his own death to manipulate Connor.

He is then manipulated by the Beast Master, parading around in Cordelia’s body, in as personal and intimate a way as possible. I mean he’s still just a young kid and he’s never had anyone close to him who just loved him and protected him. Angel would have, of course, but Connor never gave him a chance.

Finally, Connor is taken in by Jasmine. Of course, everyone is originally taken in by her, but it’s almost worst for Connor, because he knows what she is all along, but he was responsible for creating her and he feels bound to her in a way the others can’t. In the end, even through all that, he does the right thing in destroying Jasmine, but that basically drives him over the edge. He realizes that he can’t trust anyone and that there is no one who really cares for him.

For the first time, I’m glad he got to go live with a real family, and have all his bad memories wipe away so he could live a normal life. And not just glad that he was gone from the show.

One thing it was good to see on America’s Next Top Model is that lots of these people really are deserving. They discussed being homeless, living in shelters. I’m no bleeding heart, so that’s only gonna take is so far for me, but its still good to know that they aren’t all people who were failures as models already. I get enough of that on American Idol this year. The year of the has-been.

I know it’s only the second week, but I am already tired of hearing about the genital mutilation. I mean, I’d be OK if they never mentioned it again, but it seems pretty doubtful.

Surprisingly, more of them did well on the initial runway show than I thought would. Of course, some of them were really bad.

As for the fashion shoot, I thought they also did OK, but it really showed who could follow direction and who couldn’t. I still don’t have a good idea which one of these chicks is which, but I’ve already figured out which ones I don’t like. I’m pretty tired of the little blond annoying chick, Kim, who won’t support the purchase of expensive clothing. Um, did someone explain to her about modeling?

I think I’ve also had enough babble from Amis and lack of entire personality from Fatima.

I was surprised that they replaced Twiggy with Paulina Porizkova. I guess I shouldn’t have been when they all met with her at the beginning. But what can I say, I’m slow.

My further impressions:

Lauren is pretty, but just too sloppy and awkward.

Anya is also pretty, but her nose looks a little big in her photo.

Amis is friendly, but just too over the top for me.

Aimee looks very different in her picture than she does in person.

Fatima is getting on my nerves. She’s so robotic. She did take a good picture, though.

Dominique was told she looked like a drag queen. I don’t get that.

Allison didn’t take a good picture at all. But I don’t really know much about her yet.

Whitney is just beautiful. She took a great pic, too. I hope they keep her around for a while.

Marvina just seems to have some issues dealing with others, but she’s pretty.

Katarzyna has already been on my nerves for the way she keeps telling people how to say her name. You have an unusual name, get over it.

Claire reminds of Julia Stiles, only taller and darker.

Atalya hasn’t made any impression yet, which can’t be good.

Stacy-Ann is cute, but a little too perky.

Kim is annoying me with her ‘tude. It wasn’t even a shock when she said she didn’t want to be there. Actually, it gave me a happy.

I assumed there would have to be another elimination since they started out with one too many people, but I thought it might happen later in the season. In any case, I guess I called it. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who didn’t remember Atalya.

Get ready for makeovers next week.

I hate that Bela on Supernatural. I really do, and it’s sad, cause my puppy is named Bella. She’s just so evil. The Bela on the show, not my puppy. it’s just that you can’t trust her, no matter how cute she looks. Actually, that is a lot like my puppy, now that I come to think about it. Oh, and as a side note, Peter DeLuise looks so different, doesn’t he? I almost didn’t recognize him all grown up. I guess I still think of him as a little boy, like he was back on 21 Jump Street. I just wish there could have been more of him in the ep, cause I always loved him. Maybe I should look him up and see what else he’s been doing.

But back to the Supernatural boys, I mean, come on, just how stupid are they? They know Bela. Why in the world would they trust her, and then, having foolishly trusted her, put themselves right where she wanted them? At least it ended up helping them rather than hurting them, but still she’s a real nasty piece of work. If you didn’t see last week’s episode of Supernatural, “Jus In Bello,” you should. It was probably one of the best of the season. You can watch it on the site, here. As I’ve mentioned before, there won’t be any new episodes of Supernatural until April 24, when we get 4 more new eps to end up the season. This ep left me wanting more, so I’m sad and excited all at the same time.

I’m still torn trying to decide which was Dean’s best line of the ep:

DEAN: I’ll live. You know, if we get out of here alive.

DEAN: It’s like they’ve got a contract on us. You think it’s because we’re so awesome? I think it’s because we’re so awesome.

AGENT HENRICKSEN: I shot the sheriff.
DEAN: But you didn’t shoot the deputy.

Reaper will be in the place of Supernatural for the next several weeks, with new eps starting on March 27, so at least that something to look forward to while we wait for more Supernatural.

America’s Next Top Model kicked off Cycle 10 last night with a gaggle of pretty little princesses. Most of them seemed pretty wild this time. Not the same tame but boringly weepy little girls as usual. But maybe its too soon to comment on that yet. I’m not gonna waste a lot of time on the people who didn’t make it. I want to just give my initial impressions of the top 13, wait, make that 14, girls who will now be in the competition:

Allison - she seems like she thinks she knows more than she really does, but she’s really, really pretty.
Fatima - she has a bit of an attitude, although I thought she had the right of it with those “ghetto” chicks. I can just see that causing trouble.
Katarzyna - just seems very foreign, which makes me wonder, why is she on America’s Next Top Model.
Kimberly - she comes across as way too young. I’ll bet she’s a crier.
Stacy Ann - I just have a vague feeling that she’s gonna be kind of annoying. But we’ll see.
Amis - (one of the changed-name Amy’s) she’s beautiful and very classic looking.
Aimee - seems like she’s cute, but not too polished yet.
Claire - she’s a little weird. I mean the whole baby and breast milk thing. Ewwww.
Whitney - she’s a plus sized model and I thought her looks were arresting from the first moment I saw her on the show. I hope she lasts longer than other plus sized models have on this show.
Marvita - this is a second chance for her, and I think she seems much more together than last time. We’ll see.
Lauren - she’s just seems sloppy and not well put together. Like she’ll be this year’s Heather.
Atalya - I don’t really have any clue about her.
Anya - she was a little annoying, but sometimes people are just hyper. I’ll give her a chance.
Dominique - was kinda too domineering for me. They may have made a mistake adding an extra spot for her. But we’ll see.

I’m not making any guesses at this point. Let’s wait and see how they do next week.

I’m sitting here today watching a marathon of back to back episodes of Firefly on SciFi. How do I love this show, let me count the ways. It always makes me cry when I think of all the stuff that could have happened, all the questions I would have liked answered, all the things I wanted to learn about the characters as time went on. It makes me hate Fox more and more, as well. It’s so sad when a show with this much potential just isn’t given enough of a chance. Tears did come to my eyes, more than once, as I watched a particular scene, one I’d probably seen close to a dozen times before, but that still has the power to move.

I loved all these characters. I mean, really, really loved them. Also, I was in love with them, which is vastly different and much more intense. Like, I wanted to have their babies. You know what I mean? Dong ma? I even love that ship. It was as much a character on the show as the actors. There’s not another man anywhere like Malcolm Reynolds, or Jayne Cobb, for that matter. There aren’t other people on TV today that are as perfectly right as Kaylee, River, Simon, Zoe, Wash, Book and Inara. There’s no other ship as alive and real as Serenity. I just miss this show so much. Today was great, cause I was home and could just sit here, for the most part, able to watch and enjoy.

If you haven’t seen this show yet, you have to. I mean it. Right now. Go get the DVDs. Also, you need to find these actors and watch whatever they are doing now. They deserve it. They, along with the most wonderful and mighty Joss Whedon, gave us 15 hours of amazing television and a lovely, lovely movie, Serenity, to boot.

“Take my love, take my land, take me where I cannot stand. I don’t care I’m still free, you can’t take the sky from me. Take me out to the black, tell them I ain’t coming back. Burn the land and boil the sea, you can’t take the sky from me. There’s no place I can be since I found Serenity, you can’t take the sky from me.”

Supernatural has been pretty good the last couple of weeks. I do like all the Dean action. I love Dean. He’s the reason I started watching the show in the first place.

According to Ausiello’s strike chart (his list of when shows will return now that the strike is over - which is awesome by the way and continually updated), Supernatural’s final pre-strike episode airs on February 21 and they are expected to shoot 4 additional episodes which will begin airing on April 24. Which means 8 weeks without Supernatural. It makes me wonder, since April 24 is a Thursday, and I thought Reaper was moving into the spot. According to Ausiello, Reaper has three pre-strike episodes remaining, the last of which airs on March 27 (which is also a Thursday), and they expect to shoot 5 additional episodes to begin airing on April 22, which puts us back on Tuesday.

Maybe I was wrong about the CW. Maybe they are just moving Reaper away from American Idol and using it to fill in the time between new Supernatural eps. Then they are using Smallville as a lead in to bring a wider audience to Reaper. Here’s the story for Smallville, per Ausiello. Three remaining pre-strike episodes will air March 13, 20 and 27 (most likely lining up with the three new eps of Reaper), and they are expected to shoot 5 additional episodes to begin airing on April 17.

Apparently, the CW did actually have a plan. That makes me a little happier about the fate of Supernatural.

I finally saw the first half of the two week’s ago ep of Smallville. And I managed to do it before this past week’s ep aired, too, which I thought was a positive. That way I saw them in order. But no matter how much I try to like this show, I just can’t do it.

I’m interested in the lore of the show, I even like most of the actors, but there’s just something about it that’s wrong. The writing seems so flat somehow, and most of the acting is just over the top. So dramatic and angsty. Don’t get me wrong, I love angst as much as the next guy, but there just has to be a limit to how much is acceptable.

I guess, in one way, they are attempting to be like the comic book (excuse me, graphic novel) version of Superman, which can take itself so seriously and be very affected and intense. But that doesn’t really pardon the show for having such poor acting. Or maybe its not he actual acting, but just the characterization by each actor. The character who annoys me the most is Lana (played by an absolutely adorable Kristin Kreuk), cause she’s always so irritating and whiny. I know that people are gonna throw things at me for staying stuff like this, but its just the way I feel and I can’t help it.

I keep watching and I keep hoping that it will grow on me. It’s not working yet, but I keep trying.

I’m just not liking Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles yet. I should have liked last week’s ep. It had both Andy Umberger and Brian Bloom in it and I like both of them. I wanted to be happy with it, I wanted it to be amazing. I want to like this show, but it’s not happening. I’m not exactly sure why, but for some reason, I never can seem to actually follow the show each week. It seems pretty scattered and plotless to me. Like the basic point of the entire series is to just keep running around.

It makes me wonder why they wouldn’t have based the show on events that happened after Terminator 3, the Adventures of John Connor, or something. It just seems like you’re wide open to do whatever you want if you start there, instead of having to deal with stuff that already happened and trying to make your story fit.

Or maybe, if they were stuck on having Sarah, they could have shown her between the first Terminator movie and Terminator 2. Of course, you can’t have a woman be pregnant forever so you’d eventually have to have a baby, and I guess a baby boy isn’t nearly as big of a ratings draw as a cute teenage boy, so maybe that would be a problem.

It looks like there are five more episodes in the works right now and just maybe they will be better. I think another thing that just makes me mad is that Fox kills off so many good shows, and then keeps shows that kinda aren’t so good. As for instance, Drive, which was really interesting and fun was killed off after only like two episodes, and so far this show, which is no where near as good, has lasted for four. I guess we’ll see.

Reaper is back in repeats. But it’s opposite American Idol and I don’t get that. Does the CW want the show to die? I’m not saying everybody watches American Idol, but everybody watches American Idol. Reaper is definitely a niche show, so I just don’t see how anyone, just because they don’t watch AI, is just gonna stumble on it by mistake or anything. It should be somewhere more better.

I realize its just repeats, but this is the perfect opportunity for them to find the people out there who would like the show and want to watch it, but missed it the first time around. Most of them are watching American Idol. I’d bet on it. Then the plan, as of February 28, is to move Reaper to Thursdays, right into Supernatural’s spot, which I like even less. Plus, I don’t see how that will help. I guess Smallville is a good lead in show, but it obviously hasn’t helped Supernatural, since it’s disappearing from the schedule altogether. I don’t want them messing with Supernatural.

As far as what else is happening on the CW, America’s Next Top Model is starting up cycle 10 on February 20 at 8 pm, which is good. But also, they starting a new season of Pussycat Dolls Present: Girlicious on February 18 at 9 pm. Yuck! I mean, what is that??

Anyway, they have moved a few other things around, too, so here is the schedule for The CW’s midseason:

Monday
8:00 pm - Gossip Girl (Beginning January 28)
9:00 pm - Pussycat Dolls Present: Girlicious (Beginning February 18)

Tuesday
8:00 pm - Reaper (From January 15 - January 28)
8:00 pm - Beauty and the Geek (Beginning March 11)
9:00 pm - One Tree Hill

Wednesday (Beginning February 20)
8:00 pm - America’s Next Top Model
9:00 pm - Pussycat Dolls Present: Girlicious - Encore

Thursday
8:00 pm - Smallville
9:00 pm - Reaper (Beginning February 28)

Sunday (Beginning February 10)
7:00 pm - CW Now
7:30 pm - Everybody Hates Chris -Encores
8:00 pm - Everybody Hates Chris
8:30 pm - Aliens in America
9:00 pm - Girlfriends
9:30 pm - The Game

So there you have it. The new line up. Tell me, where is Supernatural?

I didn’t like Torchwood as much this week as last, but then you have to have a bigger, splashier ep to begin a season than you do for a follow up, so I guess it’s just to be expected.

I really did like Ianto this week. He’s changed so much from the shy, quiet, subservient guy he was in the first season. He had most of the funniest lines of the episode, too, and generally seemed more like he knew what was going on than any of the others. He was like the comic relief. I hope it continues into the season. I want to just put in a couple of the what I thought were Ianto’s best quotes, but there are so many . . . . well here are a few (which, by my definition, is way more than a couple):

Owen: How’d you know that?
Ianto: I know everything! And it says so on the bottom of the screen.

Jack: It’s just a mind probe.
Ianto: Remember what happened last time you used it?
Jack: That was different, and that species has extremely high blood pressure.
Ianto: Oh, right. Their heads must explode all the time.
Gwen: Jack, you can’t do this. What if you’re wrong? If she is human, it’ll kill her.
Jack: I’m not wrong. We have to find out what she is.
Toshiko: Take it easy, Jack. Stop at the first sign of trouble.
Ianto: Or the first sign of exploding.

Ianto: Just us, in this room. For as long as it takes. Terrifying.
Jack: Really?
Ianto: Absolutely. Shivers down my spine.
Jack: You don’t look scared.
Ianto: It passed.

Owen: And what if they can’t stop it.
Toshiko: They’ll stop it,
Owen: Yeah, but if they can’t.
Ianto: Then it’s all over
Owen: (pause) Let’s all have sex.
Ianto: And I thought the end of the world couldn’t get any worse.

One part that was very fun, at least for me, was when the aliens had knocked out all the phone system and they had to use a CB radio. Strangely enough, we just saw Live Free or Die Hard and pretty much the same thing happened, the phones were all out and they had to use the CB to communicate. I mean what’s up with that? When was the last time you saw or even thought of a CB radio and here it was on two different shows that I watched pretty much right in a row.

In any case, I really love this show. I’m super excited to see what else happens this season. So stay tuned.

So, new Smallville and Supernatural last week. Due to a small disagreement with my husband over what we were going to watch, since I wanted to DVR both Smallville/Supernatural and Lost, which were on at the same time on Thursday, and he wanted to watch neither, but when you DVR two things at once, you have to watch one, I had to - just moments before Smallville started - cancel the DVR recording, find a blank tape and then pop it into a working VCR and hit “record.” It was traumatic. And, since we don’t have a VCR connected to our big TV upstairs, where I always watch TV, I can’t watch the tape anyway.

Around 8:30 Thursday, I lost my patience with my husband and went downstairs to the TV that was recording and watched Smallville from that point on. I’ll have to find a way to watch the rest of it and I’ll comment then. You know, I can’t possibly give in again and sit downstairs to watch TV. The more I give in, the more my husband gets control of the TV. Can’t have that.

Supernatural was good. I’m looking forward more to the ep coming up this Thursday, which looks really cool. But last week had its moments. Witches are always fun, for one thing. I wasn’t happy with the fact that the witch was actually a demon in disguise, nor did I care for the fact that those other women had to die, but I guess it made it better for neither Sam nor Dean to have to kill a human woman. I enjoyed learning a little more about Ruby. I wonder how she gets away with being a good guy demon. Why don’t the other demons come after her and kill her? Especially since she’s helping Sam.

I’d like to think that the CW is going to be kinder to this show. There are too many unanswered questions and things that still need to happen for it to be allowed to die.