The Season So Far

Okay...let's get the admission out of the way first.

I have officially ended my boycott of CBS. I'm slowly adding new shows into my viewing patterns (so don't expect me to pick up on watching anything other than stuff entering it's 1st season...and even there it's going to be very few shows that I even have an interest in). But you'll have to wait until later in this piece to read the actual review...

So...after the premiere of Prison Break, a week later we got Reunion. This show's novelty is that each episode over the course of the season represents one year in the lives of a group of friends. We get to know them through flashbacks as a present day mystery involving the death of one of them is being looked into (and no we don't know who's dead after the first episode). It's interesting, but a bit on the bland side. The concept is what gets a three episode tryout before re-evaluation.

FOX's Sunday night lineup has been infilitrated by a live sitcom entitled The War At Home. This show stars Michael Rapaport and is at best a low rent and unfunny version of Married With Children. It doesn't deserve the slot and ruins what could have been a perfect lineup (Malcolm In The Middle being moved back to Sundays would fix this). The old shows are back and both The Simpsons and American Dad seem to be showing improvement (the former seems to have found itself again and the latter seems to have found itself after a wobbly start).

FOX's Tuesday night lineup may be the perfect pairing of shows. New show Bones stars David Boreanaz and Emily Deschannel in what is essentially something of a mix between CSI and The X-Files minus the supernatural. While that may sound derivative, it is the chemistry between the leads that keeps the energy flowing...which makes it a natural pairing with House M.D. which returns for a second season. This is a wonderfully witty show that crackles mostly because of Hugh Laurie's performance, but his interaction with his co-stars helps amp things up.

Then we come to Head Cases. I'm not sure what to make of this show. It was kind of blah. The only thing right now that gives it a second episode is the appearance of Richard Kind in episode two (plus the premiere of Criminal Minds is actually on a Thursday and Vernoica Mars has an extra week before season two starts). So right now this bizarre show starring Chris O'Donnell and Adam Goldberg as crazy lawyers is getting watched on an episode by episode basis.

Which finally brings us to CBS and Threshold. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with this show until the day it aired, but the cast (Carla Gugino, Peter Dinklage, Charles S. Dutton and Brent Spiner), creators (David Goyer and Brannon Braga) and concept (special team investigating possible first contact with aliens on massive scale) intrigued me. The two hour premiere had a more interesting alien conspiracy arc than all nine seasons of The X-Files combined and I can't wait to see where this goes.

So as it stands right now on new shows:

I'm officially in for all of Prison Break and Threshold.

Reunion and Bones are on a three episode tryout.

Head Cases is hanging in for one more episode, but I don't expect anything beyond that.

The War At Home is over for me.

This week is essentially the official premiere week, so expect more reviews of new shows throughout the week. By month's end I should know exactly what I'm watching for the season.

Meanwhile, off network...

HBO's Rome bored me until the last 5 minutes of episode one and then it got really interesting...but I expect my interest to die off as it seems to have on almost every other HBO series except The Sopranos (and even that has been gone so long I don't know what I'll do when it starts up again).

The Sci-Fi Channel's Battlestar Galactica remains the best show on that channel hands down and there's only one more episode before it retires until early next year. The cool thing is that they keep imagining storylines from the classic series that just rock (the Kobol story and it seems like the next episode involves the return of the Pegasus).

And Cartoon Network has just started it's 3rd season of Justice League Unlimited (or 5th season of Justice League depending on how you want to look at it). With the last two seasons seeing major numbers of heroes joining the League, it was only a matter of time before the villains formed their own group to protect themselves. The premiere (which saw a now schizophrenic Lex Luthor being busted out of jail by Gorilla Grodd and forced to join the Legion of Doom against his will) showed promise but ultimately didn't quite deliver (Luthor being sent with Doctor Polaris and The Key to retrieve the Spear of Destiny from Blackhawk Island just didn't feel epic enough...and the hero team of Flash, Hawkgirl, Fire and the last surviving Blackhawk didn't help). The second episode (since they're airing two episodes back to back) was much better as we finally got an animated version of Hawkman (with a coherent background that makes perfect sense...unlike any of his comic counterparts right now). Hopefully we'll see him again. Two more episodes air before the show disappears until 2006. Luckily, Teen Titans kicks off it's 5th Season next week with a two parter featuring The Doom Patrol and will continue to run new episodes for at least a month.

I'll be back in a day or two with more TV reviews and maybe a movie review or two.

Be seeing you.