Thursday, October 26, 2006

This week in TV

Need some help with your TV watching? Here are some of my latest reviews.

This weekend I caught the Heroes marathon. I must say that this was some good marketing. They let the show run for a couple weeks and get some good reviews. Then they go back and show all the episodes over again in one night so those that are now interested can catch up. Way to go ABC. There are many reasons to watch this show. First and foremost, it has Weiss from Alias. Any show with Weiss is worth watching. It also has people with superpowers, which is just cool. They do a reasonably good job of making these superpeople fit into our world, with the notable exception of the flying brothers. I can suspend my disbelief to allow telepathy, precognizance, increased healing etc. But flying? The story is interesting, the actors are good, it’s definitely a good watch. Honestly it seems more like a miniseries to me, but we’ll see if they can sustain it.

I gave 30 Rock three weeks to catch my fancy. The first two weeks fell quite flat. I really wanted to like this show, but it was making it very hard on me. I find Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin very likable, and was willing to ignore Tracey Morgan. Finally this third week it lit up. I can now recommend this show.

I admit that I only gave Twenty Good Years one week to impress me, and it failed. The other comedies that I watch (Scrubs, The Office etc) have no laugh tracks because they know that the material is funny. I think laugh tracks are a crutch. TGY relies on this crutch quite heavily. John Lithgow is amusing, but this should would have us believe he is hilarious. Perhaps it got better after the premiere but I haven’t had time to spend on it.

Lost is keeping up appearances. I can’t say that much happened in this week’s episode, but it kept me interested the whole time. I discovered that watching Lost is more fun with a group and a Tivo. Bryce and I kept stopping the episode and spouting mad hypotheses about what was happening. I called both plot twists with Sawyer, but got one way wrong with Jack. Next weeks we’re going to place bets.

3 comments:

Catherine Elizabeth said...

I saw a few minutes of Twenty Good Years, and was shocked by the laugh track. I thought they were totally passe, and if they're not, they should be.

Amy-Alisa said...

I'm glad you like 'Heroes', I was hoping you would. The laugh track scared me away it was SO annoying.

Anonymous said...

Yea for 'Heroes' (on NBC)! I am pretty hooked. I also find it hard to believe you think the flying is so much crazier than bending space/time and healing from just about anything and everything.