Watching The CW

OK, I have to say something about Heroes. I know I mentioned the show at some point in the past, but I’m not sure what I said anymore.

My nephew had asked me several times if I had ever seen the show and, at that time, I had not. So back in October, I literally sat down and watched every ep (39 episodes in 11 days) to get caught up. It was amazing. Heroes was what was missing from my life.

Or at least I thought so then. But lately, it’s falling flat. Not only can the audience not tell where its headed, we’re left feeling like no one else knows either. It’s almost like they don’t really have a plan or a direction for the show anymore.

At this point, they are basically just re-hashing the same (more…)

Have I mentioned how much I love Psych? Lately? The final episode of the season, ” An Evening with Mr. Yang,” was just awesome.

I think one of the things I like the most about the show, just aside from the great writing and acting, (which should go without saying, although I just said it), is that they seem to have a general 80’s theme running through every week. I imagine that the guys in charge, writers, producers, directors, are probably all about my age. They all remember the things I remember from growing up in the 80’s and then they capitalize on that to draw in others like us.

Even more fun is that Shawn’s (James Roday) dad is Corbin Bernsen and his mom is Cybill Shepherd, and Gus’s (Dule Hill) parents are Phylicia Rashad and Ernie Hudson. (Can you say LA Law, Moonlighting, The Cosby Show and Ghostbusters?) Pop icons of the 80s, each one of them.

Added to that are all the 80s references. Shawn often (and for often, read constantly) refers to happenings from the 80s. Like the whole running gag through one episode, “Murder?… Anyone?… Anyone?… Bueller?” about murder and mayhem at Shawn and Gus’s reunion, which was Shawn mentioning different 80’s movies in his conversations with everyone. His name tag was not a picture of him from high school, like everyone else’s, but a picture of Judd Nelson.

Best yet, in this final episode of the season, it turns out that the killer they are seeking is played by another famous 80’s face. You’ll have to watch the ep to see who, cause I don’t want to spoil it.

If you haven’t seen Psych before, I would highly, highly recommend watching it. You can find eps at Hulu and at USA.

The final three beauties on True Beauty are about to get down to the end. The challenge today is to have an interview and photo shoot for People magazine. The interviewer, Jess Cagle, the Executive Editor of People, is secretly judging them on their answers and personalities. Joel failed the interview test, but that was almost a given, cause he’s so very vain and competitive. Julia shares a story about having to give up the title of Miss Teen Texas at 17 because she was ticketed for public intoxication. It was terrible and embarrassing for her and it messed up a great opportunity all because of a stupid mistake.

Jess calls it this way. Joel is authentic, but has no modesty whatsoever. Julia is incredible but her delivery during an interview sounds like she is still up on the beauty paegant stage. Billy somtimes sounds too rehearsed, but he gave a good interview.

Next they have a Matthew Rolston photo shoot. They are nude and wrapped with a towel, and all wet with thick oils poured all over them. Julia is a little concerned because a nude shoot is not a good role model for someone who wants to be Miss America. I have to say I don’t get all the dripping oil, but then I haven’t seen the final pics yet.

OK, now I have seen them. Interesting. But I still don’t get the oil thing. So they get judged on the pics and then they each get to tell the judges why they should be the True Beauty. Billy says he’s done all he can and if he doesn’t win, he still hasn’t lost because of the experience. Joel says he didn’t come there to be second place. Julia says that this was the most fantastic opportunity that she’s ever had and that she blew one chance and doesn’t want to blow this one. (You realize that I am paraphrasing, right?) Then she cries for a while about it. Well, you know, cries and talks at the same time.

The winner of the photo challenge is all three of them. They could not pick a winner from the three photos. But now they will all meet in the Hall of Beauty and two of them will go home.

The final three get a note that says this is their chance to see things through the judges eyes. It’s a plate with several pieces of chocolate. Five in a pile in the middle and one on each side of that pile. The back side of the note says, “head downstairs.” So they go down and into the room that they have been told not to enter before. This is the room with all the TV monitors, where the judges have been sitting and watching them for all these weeks.

Then they get to see themselves in action. It’s not pretty. But honestly the worst they show about Julia is her being pageanty. The first week, I picked Billy as the winner. Or at least as the one I wanted to win, but I think it might be Julia. I’d be surprised if it was Joel, but maybe that’s what they want, to surprise us.

The judges deliberate and Vanessa says, “one of them has more inner beauty, one of them has more outer beauty, and one of them is the whole package.” Hmmmm. Maybe I was right from the beginning after all.

So they all head off in the limo to the Hall of Beauty. Vanessa tells them that for the past eight weeks they have been watching their every move and that there is some good and some bad in each of them. They then ask them why they should win over the other two. Julia says she may not be the most beautiful, but she found the person behind the wall that she had been behind her entire life and she thanked everyone. Joel said he’s the best mix of looks, personality and positive energy and has said so from the beginning, and he now owns his flaws. He then thanks them for helping him to become the definition of the most beautiful person in America. Billy said that they have been telling him this entire competition that he was doing great but he was missing something. That was his confidence which he has now found (little bit of teary eyes) and that he can continue his quest to help people find the beauty in themselves.

The winner gets $100,000 cash and their photo in People Magazine. Third place is Billy. Awww. I’m really sad about that, even though I saw it coming.

The winner is Julia! Joel smiles and seems happy for her, but it’s got to kill him, since he said he wasn’t going to be second place. He actually handled it well. They tell Julia that she was the only person who passed every one of the secret challenges. That is true. She is very pretty, but I think she does wear a little too much makeup.

I’ve been wondering what’s going on with the CW. It seems like there’s been a lot of repeats lately, so I have nothing new to talk about. So I went through the next two weeks to see what’s happening. This is what I found out.

This week, Monday’s shows, Gossip Girl and One Tree Hill are repeats. On Tuesday, 90210 is also a repeat, but Privileged is a new ep, the first season finale.

Wednesday is (more…)

This is it, the end of the Hulu Awards polls. I’m lumping these last two categories in together, just cause I can. Don’t forget to check my other blog, Watching Sitcoms, to see my recent post with several other polls. I understand that there are still about two weeks left to vote on all these polls. I’m not exactly sure what happens after this, but I imagine that once all the results are tallied, we’ll have a little party. Or more probably an awards ceremony, but you know what I mean.

So, here we go. The first of the final two categories is Best Non Comedy Clip. The nominees are Field of Dreams: Ray and his Dad Play Catch, My Cousin Vinny: Expert Witness, NBC News Time Capsule: Martin Luther King Speech, Presidential Inaugurations: Obama’s Inauguration, Psycho: Shower Scene, Scarface: Say Hello to My Little Friend and The Usual Suspects: Interrogation.

These are all really amazing and classic scene, aside the Inauguration, which just happened. But I had to go with my personal favorite, the Psycho Shower Scene. Here’s the poll:

The second of the final categories is Best Comedic Clip. The nominees are 30 Rock: Jenna on Hardball, Animal House: Toga Guitar Smash, Arrested Development: Making Fun of Michael, The Big Lebowski: Don’t Fuck With Jesus, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Spin Class, Office Space: Peter’s Interview, The Office: Goodbye, Toby, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Shaun of the Dead: Throwing Records and SNL: Dick in a Box.

Once again, there are several funny clips here. I had to go with the one I think of as the most classic, once again, that is Animal House: Toga Guitar Smash. I’ve always loved that scene, the way Bluto just grabs the guitar away from the guy who’s singing, smashes it to pieces and then calmly hands it back. But if I was making a second choice, it would probably be Office Space: Peter’s Interview. Here’s the poll:

This week on True Beauty, the first challenge is for the beauties to go to a high society party. They get all made over and have to go with a date that has been chosen for them. The fun part is their mystery dates are their moms, except for Billy, who’s mom couldn’t make it. His dad came instead. Their parents get to choose their outfit. That can get scary.

They are assisted in this makeove by Jordan, a celebrity stylist/actor. He has a private consultation with each one, and tries to get them to spill the beans on the other contestants. Billy does great, he passes as does Julia. Joel and Laura don’t do so well. Although, Joel does have a sweet little teary moment when he talks about seeing his mom there for him.

Poor Billy’s dad seems like he’s totally out of his element, but in a very sweet way. He’s a real doll.

Then the parents pick the clothes and (more…)

Alright, I know it was a couple of days ago now, but I needed to wait a bit, watch the episode a few times, digest it all. Now I’m ready to give my review of Dollhouse. (It is fun to say, Dollhouse, Dollhouse, Dollhouse.) If you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks, then you might not have heard of Joss Whedon’s new show on Fox, which premiered Friday at 9:00 pm. The premise is people who volunteer (or perhaps they are drafted) to become Actives for a certain time period. They have their personality and memories wiped clean and are then imprinted with other personalities and abilities and are hired out to very wealthy people to perform tasks for them. (OK, I’m not telling it right. You should watch it to see what I mean.)

First off, I admit that I do see everything through Joss colored glasses, but that doesn’t change the fact that Dollhouse is a good show. Actually, its the least Jossy of all his shows and, in my opinion, has the strongest pilot episode. There were some definite This-Is-Joss moments (and yes, that is all in capitals) but then there were also some parts where you just knew the network had its grubby little fingers (more…)

This week on True Beauty, the first challenge is a physical fitness challenge. They have to go through a series of fitness challenges, inclduing being weighed on a scale that adds around 10 lbs to their weight. The other part of the challenge that they don’t know about is that the teenages who are assiting them are also judging them. Laura is the most whiny because she is not into working out. She’s also mad cause she weighs in at 118 lbs. I only wish.

Then when the beauties come into eat, they set up the kids all at one table, except for one poor kid who sits all alone. Billy joins the group and ignores the lonely kid; Julia talks to the lonely kid and asks after him; Joel talks to the group but ignores the loner; Laura doesn’t talk to anyone; Ray talks to the group but not only does he ignore the loner, he comments that he is going to grow up to be a sniper.

When it comes to judgment time, (more…)

It’s Valentine’s Day on 90210. The ep opens with Naomi living in her amazingly swanky hotel and being waited on hand and foot by all the staff. There is a new guy working at the coffee bar, and she watches him put a loud drunk with an I’m-Important compex, in his place.

Silver is stressing about what to do that will make for a special valentine for Dixon. She’s a little weird to watch now, cause she’s acting all lovey dovey and ooey gooey. Silver overhears Naomi saying how amazing the food is at the restaurant in her hotel and decides that is where she and Dixon should go to eat. The place is completely booked and Silver tries everything, including bribes to get a table. When she finds out that hotel guests can get a table, she approaches Naomi. At first Naomi doesn’t want to help her, but when Silver tells Naomi that she is in love, Naomi gets her the table.

Naomi and Silver go to the bar to have a drink and the cute coffee bar guy is there. Naomi asks his name - its Liam. He’s just moved to LA and they find out he doens’t have a girlfriend. Silver talks in this weird Cockney accent, cause she says it makes you sound older.

Annie and Ethan are (more…)

It’s Sunday, the day of the Dollhouse panel at NY Comic Con. Anne was in line by 9:20 am and still ended up in the third row. The panel wasn’t starting until 12:45 pm. The people next to us had gotten in the line to get autograph tickets at 5:30 am and they still didn’t get any. It validated my decision to just get a good night’s sleep. I got there just before 10 am and had to cut in line. No one seemed to mind, thank goodness. Lots of people commented on my “Joss is my Hero” shirt. It really did look amazingly awesome. Someone looked at me and said, “He really is, isn’t he?”

I have to thank some people who were in line with us, because they had a plan to get good seats and it worked. As soon as the doors opened, we weaved to the left and ran up the aisle. If not for the guy who was with them running ahead of us with his long legs and then throwing his body over the five seats we needed, we probably wouldn’t be as far up front as we were. Thank you, guy who’s name I never thought to ask. I do know that one of the girls was named Tracy and that she reads stuff over at Whedonesque. So maybe they will read this, too. Here’s a video of the room before the start of the panel. I know they let us in around noon and I took this just after we got settled in our seats. You can’t really tell, but the balcony is also full.

I’m not really even going to try to give a play-by-play of what was discussed at the panel. For one thing, I was so busy hanging on to Joss’s every word, that I’m not exactly clear what he was talking about anyway. Besides, Buffyfest did a great review of the panel, including videos you can actually see and hear, quite unlike the videos I took. So go check it out here.

I will make mention of one of the things Joss said that I can actually remember him saying. Joss speaking about the character of Topher, said, “You won’t be surprised to find a little bit of me in him, he creates characters and has no morals.” He also said something about someday making a period piece, in Elizabethan dress. Could I love this man more?

Oh, and one final note. Something that is just as annoying as people calling Joss Whedon “Josh” is people calling Tahmoh Penikett “Toma.”

Reminder: If you care, you should check out my other blog at Watching Sitcoms, where I’m also blogging about different Comic Con stuff.

Anne and I were walking around the floor at NY Comic Con, and as we walked towards the Sega booth, I saw Mark Sheppard (the lovely, lovely Badger from Firefly). He was standing talking to another guy by one of the games. Turns out that Mark is the lead character in a new Wii game called The Conduit. He saw us standing there, me in my Serenity hoodie, and he said to me, “great jacket.” Which it is. Then he told the guy with him something about how there’s this whole universe that he’s a part of and how “she’s in it, too!” Yes, that is true. We stood and chatted for a bit and he told us about the new Sega game. Then I asked about his dad and he told me that his dad was still over in the booth. I think he was going for lunch when we ran into him, cause as I was leaving to go talk to his dad, he said they would be back and we should come over to the booth later. Sadly, I didn’t get back there, cause I would have liked to have gotten his autograph or a picture.

But I did get to see Mark’s dad, William Morgan Sheppard. For me he is and will always and forever be Blank Reg from Max Headroom, but he has actually been in a gazillion different shows and movies. Most recently, he is in the new Star Trek movie. He was completely adorable. I was really syked to meet him, cause I’m just geeky that way. Morgan was so genuinely nice and friendly. He keept holding my hand and he even kissed my hand at one point. He signed my autograph book, “Toni - Best wishes and thank you for all those evenings - Morgan Sheppard.” Awesome!

Reminder: If you care, you should check out my other blog at Watching Sitcoms, where I’m also blogging about different Comic Con stuff.

On our first trip around the floor at NY Comic Con, Anne and I fought our way through the crowds, trying to find stuff. We sort of knew what we wanted to see, but we didn’t really know where those things were, and we also wanted to take it all in. So we wandered at random. We came to the area called Artist Alley. I had a vague recollection from reviewing the information that there was something in there that I wanted to see.

We came around a corner and along the wall were tables where people were meeting fans and signing autographs. At the end closest to us I saw William Katt. I loved that show, The Greatest American Hero was I was younger. As a matter of fact, a few months ago, my husband and I were in a grocery store when the theme song came on and I was unconsciously singing along. My husband turned to me and said, “I can’t believe you know every word of that song.” And it occured to me that I did. So when we met Mr. Katt, I told him that story. He said he didn’t know if he should be happy or scared for me.

He was a really wonderful guy, very normal, natural and friendly. I mentioned that I had just seen the episode of House where he starred with Thomas Dekker (Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles). We then chatted for a bit about his friendship with Thomas Dekker. He also mentioned that Thomas was a musician, which I already knew, since I have the CD. (It’s available at iTunes, so you should check it out.)

It was great to meet William Katt . He had a sort of self-deprecating manner, putting himself in the past, and so I hope that he understood that I really was excited to meet him and it was an honor.

Reminder: If you care, you should check out my other blog at Watching Sitcoms, where I’m also blogging about different Comic Con stuff.

One of the fun things I got to do at NY Comic Con was attend the Torchwood panel. At first I didn’t think I was getting in, even though I got in the line about an hour before the event started. At that point, we were told that only the people in the first loop of the line against the wall would make it in. We were in the third loop and the line was growing. I think it eventually got to be five loops back. (What I mean by loops is that they had to keep bending the line back on itself, back and forth, down the hallway in order to fit everyone in.) I’m not even sure how many people got in, but if I had to guess, I’d say the room fit about 1000 people. I think if the Con organizers had realized how big a deal Torchwood was going to be they would have put them in the big IGN Theatre that seats over 3000.

I got lucky (more…)

The first panel I attended at NY Comic Con was the Watchmen, Friday the 13th and Terminator Salvation panel. It was in the big IGN Theater and was well attended.

I really hadn’t read anything about Watchmen so I didn’t know what to expect. We were treated to a long movie clip. Maybe 15 minutes. It was really good. I definitely want to see it. My nephew told me later that he’ll get me the comic books to read first, which is probably a good idea. I was happy to see so many people I like in the movie, like Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Carla Gugino, Jackie Earl Haley (who was amazingly terrifying in a great way in the clip), and Matt Frewer. I’m sure there were others, too, but those are the ones I remember.

We then saw a longish clip of the new Friday the 13th movie. I hated it. Well, see, I don’t mind scary or even terrifying, but I draw the line at icky. I just saw some stuff I can’t erase and I’ll have nightmares for a long time. After the first gory part I witnessed, I closed my eyes and (more…)

Here’s the Hulu Award poll for the category of Worst Scripted Television Show. The nominees are Heroes, Knight Rider, The Munsters Today, One Tree Hill, Team Knight Rider and Testees.

Are they just kidding me about Heroes? I mean, its clearly not Shakespeare, but Worst Scripted Television Show?? Whatever.

To be honest with you, Heroes is the only one of those shows that I watch. The only one I’ve ever actually even seen. I wanted to watch an ep of the others, just to get a feel for each of them, but I didn’t. I’m just too busy now that I’m back to working full-time to waste time watching bad shows.

I found it interesting that both Knight Rider and Team Knight Rider made the list. I know they can’t be talking about the original show with David Hasselhoff, because who doesn’t love the Hoff. I mean, really?

One Tree Hill got a safe pass because its on the CW and I can’t vote against anything on the CW now, can I?

So my bottom line is, I knew I wasn’t voting for Heroes to be the worst, or anything that might possibly have the Hoff in it, or anything on the CW, so that only left The Munsters Today and something called Testees.

Well, mostly just cause I didn’t like the name, Testees got my vote for the Worst Scripted Television Show on the Hulu Awards. You can feel free to vote for it, too.

Here’s the poll: