Las Vegas used to be a really good show.  We tuned in as a nice light alternative to the usual lineups of crime shows and dramas.  But this season, wow, they’ve just gone too far.  Ed is flying around the world looking for a terrorist (and James Caan hasn’t looked convincing in a fight scene for several years).  Another chunk of the cast is in Hawaii at the newly invented “Montecito Hawaii” hotel.  I thought it was getting a little corny last year when Lara Flynn Boyle blew off of the roof, but it’s now official.  This show has jumped the shark, good bye Las Vegas.

You’re right, I’m not shocked but happy to see that this is becoming a reality.  I’ve been wanting a good way to download movies for a long time, and this looks like it’s likely to be a winner.  Microsoft will be offering HD movie rentals via its XBox Live service that will play on your big-screen TV in the living room via the XBox 360. 
While a good part of me is excited about this, the other part of me knows that like so many other services that tried this in the past there will be next to zero content available in the Canadian market.  I could be wrong, oh how I hope to be wrong, but whether it be cable VOD, CinemaNow, MovieLink, or any other service you sign in expecting to see all the great content that they have in their banner ads only to find a “Ohhhhh… you’re from Canada.  I think we might have some independent films you can watch.  No?  How about this one - it has subtitles!  Everyone loves subtitles!”.

Jericho is bad television.  There are so many reasons why I hate the show and every time I watch it I just keep shaking my head at its badness.  But I keep coming back, and it’s because they manage to get me hooked on the story.  It’s a very poorly told story, but I still want to know what happens.  I was talking about it the other night with Jodie because she doesn’t understand why I keep watching it if it’s so bad and I used this analogy:  imagine your favorite book and how much you love the story, then imagine your favorite book being read to you by someone with a serious speech impedement.  You’d be frustrated having to read the book that way but the story is still intriguing.
Jericho is just like good television only with a dialog, acting, directing, and writing impedement.

So I just stumbled across a web site that is holding a contest to guess which new TV show gets canceled each week.  They also let you know which ones have already been canceled (which so far is Smith, Kidnapped, and Happy Hour).  I personally am looking forward to the weekly newsletter.

He’s doing a fine job, but Ross Hull has been an anchor on the Weather Network here in Canada for a little while now and his presence always seems distracting.  Ross was an actor on the Saturday-morning highschool show “Student Bodies” where he played one of the main characters.  I can’t help but see him as the doodling adolescent from that show and it’s weird seeing him as a weather man.

In stark contrast to Jericho, Heroes is a new series that I think I’m really going to like.  The pilot was on last night and while it felt more like a teaser than the first episode, I was pleasantly teased.  The stage was set as to why these people might exist, who some of them are, and what they can do but we still have no clue what they’re going to do with their newly discovered “superpowers”.  When describing the concept of Heroes to my wife, the closest analogy I could think of was Spiderman - regular people who discover special abilities through no fault of their own and have to figure out how that will change their lives.
Of course I’m not sure yet if that description is accurate or not, we have to wait another week to figure out what exactly these people are going to do.  It looks like they’re converging on New York, and that’s about all we know right now.
Of interesting note was the money that was apparently wasted by Nissan to bring us the Heroes premiere with limited commercial interruption.  I didn’t notice any less commercials than normal and I don’t particularly remember Nissan’s contribution to my life on this front (they must have taken out like 90 seconds of the normal commercial time or something).  To prove the point though, I do remember a couple of years ago when Ford ran the 24 season premiere commercial free and I really enjoyed that investment.  Now bear in mind that I’m someone who skips the commercials with my PVR so for me to remember the Ford/24 association two years later is a pretty big deal that advertisers should pay attention to.  And also pay attention to the fact that I will remember the Nissan contribution to Heroes negatively and it will leave a bad impression of the brand on my demographically delicious brain.

I watched Jericho last night, I had to wait until Jodie was out at Yoga to try out a new scifi series (she is pretty much by default not a fan of anything that smells like science fiction).  I really wanted to like this show because it’s an interesting concept of a nuclear attack on the United States and how a small town in Kansas deals with the aftermath.  Red Dawn is one of my favorite movies and I thought this could be an opportunity to re-tell that story. 
Unfortunately, like so many other good scifi concepts this one was just poorly executed.  The pilot felt like a poorly-done miniseries, which in my books is one step up in production values from an after-school special.  What do I mean?

• Everything is just a little too hyperbolic - the camera angles, the dialog, the dramatic pauses, everything
• The good characters are all spoon-fed good characters, the bad characters are all spoon-fed bad characters, and the ones you’re not sure of have a big “we’re not sure about this guy yet” sign on their foreheads.
• Character development is incredibly forced and predictable
• The writing is just terrbile
• Money was obviously spent on the effects, the equipment and even somewhat on the talent but someone skimped on the basics

I see this every season, and it’s frustrating.  I wonder if maybe the guy who comes up with an original scifi concept makes the mistake of thinking he can write it too.  I don’t know what it is, but it just feels fake.

It’s early on of course, but I had a “new TV season epiphany” last night while watching a recording of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.  You see, I really really liked Studio 60.  It was fast-paced, had good writing, good acting, and surprisingly well done characters.  In fact I liked it so much that I realized the other shows that I thought were going to be keepers are now looking very much like stinkers.  Here’s the winners and losers in our household so far this season:

Winners:

• Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
• ‘Til Death (cheesy, but I really like the two leading men)

Thought they were good, but probably going to be losers soon:

• Justice (it’s a cool show, but after 3 weeks I feel like I’ve seen the same thing every time)
• Vanished (I was hooked, but now it’s just not pulling me back in every week.  Plus I read that they’re going to put it on hold once 24 is back on the air.  We really got into another serial called “Reunion” last year and when they canceled it without tying up any loose ends I was unhappy.  I fear the same thing with Vanished)
• Standoff (I like most of the action but c’mon that dating partners subplot is just dumb)

Losers:

• New Adventures of Old Christine (not a new show, but we decided to give it a shot this season and blech)
• Happy Hour (the definition of suck)
• Men In Trees (still have to watch episode 2 so it might get better but unlikely)

Anxiously awaiting:

• Heros (it just looks neat, and yes I’m a geek)
• 30 Rock (although given how much I like Studio 60 this is unlikely to work for me)
• Ugly Betty (it just looks interesting but also high risk of suckage)
• Smith (it’s recorded, just haven’t seen it yet.  I love Heist flicks but Ray Liotta is going to be a tough sell)

And the returning shows:

• Likely to stay in the watching lineup:  CSI:LV, CSI:Miami, Prison Break, Family Guy, Desperate Housewives, Amazing Race, Survivor (not me, but Jodie still loves the show), Everybody Hates Chris, Two and a half men, NCIS, Veronica Mars, House, Grey’s Anatomy (Jodie’s again, I’m not a fan), My Name is Earl, NUMB3RS, Las Vegas
• Likely to drop:  Law & Order:Everything, Without a Trace, Simpsons, American Dad, The War at Home (that made it to season 2?), Criminal Minds, The Unit,
• And the rest we gave up on a long time ago

Doing up this list it’s clear that we watch way too much TV, but to be fair it’s not all at the same time.  I record all of this on Media Center and watch when convenient, including for many shows taking them with me on the plane and watching them them while traveling.  That’s what I’ll tell my sponsor when I go to my first TV-Anonymous meeting and start the 12-step program.

I was in Regina this week meeting with one of my customers, and I had an opportunity to visit the set of one of my favorite TV shows - Corner Gas.  Most of you have probably never heard of Corner Gas, but it’s the #1 rated sitcom in Canada.  Jodie doesn’t understand how it can make me laugh out loud when we’re watching it, the main character Brett has a very odd sense of humour that I just can’t help but laugh at.  Perry was my host, and I think he got a kick out of how much I was enjoying visiting the set. 

Dog River is a fictional tiny town in Saskatchewan, but it really is the town of Rouleau.  The main gas station and restaurant are sets, but the rest of the buildings in town are actually part of the town itself.  They were filming as we drove by, but they shuffled us along when they were getting ready to shoot a scene.
At dinner back in Regina, the actor who plays Officer Davis sat down at the next table to have a beer and we chatted for a little bit.  It was a full Corner Gas visit (oh, and we got lots of business done as well).  My pictures can be found here (didn’t get a pic with Davis). 

This is a very cool set of animated characters based on the Battlestar Galactica series. I just get a kick out of the drawings so thought I’d share with you.

pantsketch: Battlestar Galacticsimpsons