Category Archives: Television

BSG Tonight

Just a reminder that the final season of Battlestar Galactica starts tonight at 10PM. In case you forgot over the one year break, last season ended with some sort of conflict between spaceships and robots and people. Or something. It’s been so long…

NBC Fall Schedule

Some big news from NBC:

  • Knight Rider returns as a series. It’ll air Wednesdays at 8PM. No word on whether Val Kilmer will still play KITT.
  • Merlin, a new series about Camelot, will air Sundays at 8PM. Better have a two-tuner DVR to grab that and The Simpsons, Family Guy, et al.
  • Matthew Broderick will be in the season finale of 30 Rock. The show, of course, has been renewed.
  • The Office is getting a… well, they’re calling it a spinoff, but I don’t see how you can have a spinoff when supposedly none of the current cast will be in the new show, and it will be in a different location. Sounds more like a copycat show to me. A special Office episode and the copycat pilot will air right after the Superbowl. Like last year, the first episodes of the season will be an hour long.
  • SNL will have a spinoff called Thursday Night Live. It will consist of a half-hour of political sketches leading up to the election.
  • Heroes is of course coming back. The new season will start with a 2-hour episode on Sept. 15th, following one of those lame hour-long clip episodes that Lost is always doing.
  • Life is coming back! Annoyingly it will air Fridays at 10PM, but that’s what DVRs are for. I never watched this on TV, but caught them all online (you can, too – the whole season). Now I’m hooked. I really like the main character, and the supporting cast is great. Sara Shahi looks gorgeous when she’s not in butch cop mode, and I’ve always liked Adam Arkin. My big hope is that Christina Hendricks will return. She’s a beautiful redhead with a body that would make Barbie jealous. Seriously, one of the best bodies in the history of bodies… Where was I? Oh yeah, to top it off they’re getting Donal Logue as the new boss. If you’ve never seen The Tao of Steve, in which he stars, rent it now. A great guy movie.
  • Scrubs is not coming back! Well, not on NBC – it’s expected to move to ABC. Looks like it’s getting replaced by the Office copycat and Last Comic Standing. Whatever.
  • Over the summer, NBC is creating a bunch of webisodes for Chuck, Heroes, and The Office. Hopefully they’ll be in HD; Yvonne Strahovski and Hayden Panettiere deserve nothing less.

More at Variety.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

When I recently read about a Clone Wars cartoon, I thought I might have accidentally stumbled on an old article. I remembered the Emmy winning 2003 Clone Wars cartoon. Now Lucas has created another Clone Wars cartoon. Stupid mistake on my part; the original was called Star Wars: Clone Wars, while the new show as a completely different name – Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Both take place between episodes II and III.

The official site has a trailer and a video intro to the series.

Overall, the animation looks like they did it with a video game rendering engine, embellished in parts. Perhaps they’re borrowing technology from The Force Unleashed. Of course, it sure sounds like Star Wars.

New Comedy Central Shows

Comedy Central is getting some new shows that might be good:

Andy Richter is getting a sketch comedy show. If it’s anywhere near as good as Andy Richter Controls the Universe – one of the top 10 American sitcoms – I’ll be very happy. The sadly short lived Andy Barker, P.I. was also great.

Snoop Dogg is getting an animated show based on his teenage years in Long Beach. I live about 20 minutes from Long Beach, but I’m guessing it’s not set in any of the parts I’ve been to, except, perhaps, by accident.

Nick Swardson, best known as Terry from Reno: 911, will be voicing the lead character in a new animated show called Gay Robot. No further commentary necessary.

Cool Events at the Paley Center

So I hadn’t heard of The Paley Center for Media1 before today, and- This just in: The Museum of Television & Radio apparently changed their name to the Paley Center for Media. Nobody tells me anything…

Anyway, the Beverly Hills branch is hosting talks with some cool people, including the casts of some great shows:

Bones
Wednesday, April 9, 2008; 7:00 pm
David Boreanaz, Emily Deschanel, and “cast and creative team” appearing.
I don’t know why they don’t list the supporting cast; it has a much bigger part than it did on The X Files, which I think Bones is meant to replace. Except, of course, for The Lone Gunmen.

The Riches
Friday, April 18, 2008; 7:00 pm
Eddie Izzard, Minnie Driver, and “cast and creative team” appearing.
I haven’t seen this show, but Eddie Izzard’s stand-up is hilarious.

The Sarah Silverman Program
Monday, April 21, 2008; 7:00 pm

George Carlin
Thursday, May 8, 2008; 7:00 pm
I always wanted to see George do stand-up at Club Bene in NJ. We’d always see him in the coming attractions when we caught Adrian Belew concerts there. As I’m pretty sure Club Bene is no more, maybe this is my chance.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Charlie Day, Glenn Howerton, Rob McElhenney, Kaitlin Olson, and Danny DeVito appearing.
Monday, June 30, 2008; 7:00 pm
This is the talk I most want to see – why the fuck is it scheduled for Monday? To get to Beverly Hills from OC by 7pm, I pretty much have to take a vacation day to avoid the traffic. Sux 2 b me.

  1. For some unfathomable reason, they have disabled linking to any sub-pages. Word of advice to their webmaster: read Jakob Nielsen. []

Joss Whedon Borrows from William Gibson for Dollhouse

Joss Whedon is launching a new show called Dollhouse. It’s about people who have their minds wiped, and then have new personalities and skill sets imprinted on them for various activities.

This sounds strikingly similar to William Gibson‘s take on prostitution in the Sprawl Trilogy1. The character Molly Millions once worked as a prostitute, but brothels temporarily imprint a new consciousness on working girls and wipe the memories when it’s over. This very neatly allows all parties to go about guiltless, unless you wake up in the middle of a bad session like Molly does. Then things are not so good.

Ok, that’s just speculation on my part, but tons of people have borrowed from William Gibson. I mean, he coined the terms matrix and cyberspace – the man is a legend.

In Dollhouse, the people (victims?) are given a child-like personality in between gigs. That sounds a lot like Michael Bay’s The Island. Let’s hope Dollhouse is a lot more like the works of William Gibson and less like those of Michael Bay.

Either way, I’m happy it will star the lovely Eliza Dushku.

Eliza Dushku

  1. Which comprises Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive, and is preceded by the short story collection Burning Chrome. My memory is a little fuzzy, so it may be from Buring Chrome, which includes Johnny Mnemonic. []

Aftermath of the Writer’s Strike

So you’ve probably heard by now that the writer’s strike is over. Variety has some interesting articles on the subject:

  • History and results of the strike. Long term could be better for writers, but it depends a lot on “new media” like streaming TV shows. Short term they’ll lose money, esp. writer/producers who will lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. In addition, a lot of deals were broken, studios invested more heavily in reality, etc. So it’s hard to say how much better off they are long term.
  • Impact on TV. For the most part, we won’t start seeing new episodes of suspended shows like The Office until late March. They might try to extend the season into June, but a lot is up in the air. Most likely we’ll just get gypped several episodes.

The voice of Kitt is… Val Kilmer?

Ok, this is just weird to me. In the new Knight Rider TV movie, the voice of KITT will be played by Val Kilmer. He is replace Will Arnett – yes, the guy who played Gob on Arrested Development. Turns out Arnett is already the “voice of GMC Trucks” in all the commercials, so GM wasn’t too happy about him voicing a Mustang. Considering their recent all-time record yearly loss of $38.7B, they must have been devastated. So Val Kilmer is filling in.

Kilmer’s voice is so different from William Daniels (the original KITT) that I have to assume there’s a major personality change in the car.

The Internet TV Survival Guide

So the writer’s strike is raging and there’s less and less scripted TV to watch. And the cable bill is past due, and the TV is broke, or at the very least, it’s all the way in the other room. Too much damn walking. What to do, nephew?

I have cataloged here all best the ways to legally obtain video entertainment on the Internet. So no jackbooted stormtroopers from the MPAA will kick down your door and haul away your computer. And your children.

Note: As much as I love Firefox, I find most embedded video players perform far better on IE. Many won’t work at all in Firefox, even with IE Tab.

Crack TV!
The Crack Team has been pointing you to great videos since this site was launched. Through the miracle of tagging (and the back-breaking labor of back-tagging over 400 posts), you can now see an archive of all video posts on TCT. Try to find good stuff sites like YouTube and you’ll end up slogging through one mediocre video after another – even when you stick to the popular and highly rated ones. Save your time and watch Crack TV!

Netflix
Netflix is awesome. Without a doubt the biggest DVD selection anywhere, including HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.1 They also have a streaming service. While the selection of downloads is limited, it’s still good. I just finished season 1 of Dexter and next is Dead Like Me. They also have several NBC shows and a bunch of crap shows from the 70’s and 80’s. Best of all, they now allow you to download as much as you want! The quality is high, too. I’ve had no problems since signing up several years ago and they even give me an early adopter discount.

Broadcast
If you can, you’re probably best served by getting a good TV tuner card2 and using DVR software like Windows Media Center. This way you can get everything and skip all the commercials.3

All major broadcast networks have some video content online, but vary widely in the quality, selection, and commercial content. It’s a great way to try new shows now that so little new stuff is produced. Journeyman would be a great example, if you didn’t watch it before it was canceled.4 You can now watch the entire series. Similarly, I recently discovered Life at the suggestion of a friend and now I’m all caught up.

Cable networks are much more conservative, choosing to only offer video clips like you might see on YouTube. Full episodes (for the cable channels I watch) are nonexistent.

Fox
Most TV shows I watch are on Fox, and they’ve done an awesome job with Fox On Demand. The selection is great:

New shows appear 1-8 days after airing; it depends on the show. The videos are high quality; some are even in HD. I find that cranking up the resolution to 1280 x 1024 on my 21″ monitor gives a great HD image for shows like Terminator.5 And most shows are commercial free! Rupert Murdoch is my homeboy.

NBC
NBC is the #2 network for online viewing. The video quality is excellent. The bad news is that all their shows run commercials during the normal spots for commercial breaks. The good news is that they only run one 15-30 second spot. The bad news is that it’s the same commercial, over and over. Better than watching it live, but not as good as a DVR. Like Fox, NBC also has a great selection:

ABC
The only ABC show I really watch is Lost, but they seem to do a great job with it. Amazingly, they have all 4 seasons online in HD (1280 x 720), and when I boosted my resolution, full screen looked fantastic. Lost is easily the best looking show on the Internet. I thought I might try Pushing Daisies, as I heard that was good, but I found they only offer a few episodes of their other series.

CW
Smallville is one of my longtime faves, due in no small part to Kristin Kreuk. And Reaper is great. But CW’s online video offering is weak sauce. Very few full episodes and what they have is low quality. I have to admit, I am surprised they put online the director’s cut of the next new Smallville episode before it even aired. But it still wasn’t enough to get me to watch.

CBS
It sucks. First, I didn’t watch it when I had a TV. CBS has picked up Dexter, which is an awesome show, but they’re just airing censored versions of the Showtime series. When it’s all on Netflix, what’s the point? The only current CBS show I’m interested in is Jericho, as it was recently suggested to me by a few friends. When I went to watch past episodes, however, I found the video quality sucked. Full screen is almost unwatchable; it’s just stretching the original size, which is only 9″ diagonal on my monitor.

Headline News
I used to watch this more often to get a quick feed of major stories. This is still possible online through their Prime News segments. Personally, I can’t stand Nancy Grace, and don’t often bother with their other shows.

Discovery, TLC, Animal Planet
Decent quality full episodes, but very few shows (3 total at this time, none of which I watch), and only a couple episodes per show.

Comedy Central
More of a video clip outlet with no full episodes. Do you really need to see every second of The Daily Show or Colbert Report? Maybe not, especially now that the strike is affecting them. But I would like to see full episodes of South Park, Reno 911, and, should they ever return: Chapelle’s Show, Dr. Katz, Stella, Strangers With Candy, and Upright Citizen’s Brigade. I won’t be holding my breath.

Cartoon Network
They’ve produced some fantastic animated series, especially their superhero adaptations (Justice League Unlimited) and Adult Swim (Harvey Birdman, Sealab 2021). But the site seems very much geared towards kids, and only provides video clips. Nothing to see here.

  1. If you tell them you have either player, they just automatically send you those. []
  2. Make sure it’s ATSC for HD []
  3. Except for the upcoming Agent Mystery-produced So You Think You Can Dance. Be sure to watch it live and soak in all the commercials. []
  4. Thanks for killing a great show. []
  5. They do force you to download a proprietary video player, but it seems harmless. And yes, I know it’s a tragedy to watch Terminator on anything less than a 50″ 1080P screen. []

Journeyman Canceled

As a long time couch potato and fan of brilliant but short lived series, my spidey senses are well honed to detect cancellation. I knew it wasn’t a good sign when two new episodes of Journeyman were being aired two days apart. I just finished it watching the latest (now last 🙁 ) episode, which had all sorts of closure points, and then did the dreaded web search for the words in this post’s title. Sadly, I came across this confirmation at the Journeyman blog.

If you didn’t watch it1, you can catch several episodes free online at NBC. It was a great show, especially with Kevin McKidd leading the charge. I hope he gets a new show soon.

  1. and I hear I’m to blame as well, since the rumor is that NBC was looking only at live viewings, not those from DVR/Tivo or online. []