MagneticMediaFed

Last night I had the rare opportunity of watching all of my Monday night television actually on Monday night. This was great for many reasons, not the least of which being I could finally go to sleep at night without my Sensory Deprivator 5000 covered in stickers reading NO SPOILERS! (because, really, the last thing you want while trying to get a good night sleep is ’spoilers’).

I have the full rundown after the break…

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Well the wait is over (assuming anyone, anywhere has actually been waiting with nervous glee for Lost to return this year). Tonight at 10 (that’s an hour later for those of you who only know American Idol) Lost comes back for 16 straight episodes. The best thing you can say about the series at this stage in the game is the show has so alienated its fans since last October its return tonight will be met with few expectations. Really, as long as an actual episode is broadcast and as long as no one gets caught in a bear trap I’m wagering most people will be pleased.

Personally, I feel I may have been a a little rough in hindsight on the fall finale. Yes, it sucked, but there have been Heroes episodes this season that have been far worse (and more maddening). Lost’s curse is being a show that has the potential every week of not only being great, but elevating the medium. It has the ideas. It has the creative talent to pull it off. It has the acting. So when these forces don’t pull you aren’t just disappointed, you’re pissed off.

Now that some of the steam has been let off, and now that the nations attention has been redirected to other ensemble sci-fi-drama-adventures, Lost might have the room it needs to surprise us — which is about all you can ask for at this point.

Have fun watching.

Not only is Monday night one of the busiest night of television for me, but it’s also one of the most uneven. Tuesday mornings when I check out my DVR, I’m usually quite reluctant about diving in. Heroes, 24, Studio 60… not exactly a crop of sure-fire crowd pleasers (How I Met Your Mother and Everybody Hates Chris* are rock solid, but they also aren’t hour-long dramas that look quite menacing while sitting in a queue).

Luckily for us, one of those shows will deliver the goods, and by “the goods” I mean, “a scene or two of unbridled awesomeness.” Either Jack Bauer will do something completely off-the-wall crazy or Hiro will do something magically adorable yet thought-provoking or Matt Albie will tell his writing staff… um… yeah, 24 and Heroes will bring something to the table! Unless, of course, they don’t. Then Monday night (or Tuesday morning) slowly morphs into this endurance challenge, where a regular Joe sits in his easy chair staring at moving pictures while his mind is completely and utterly empty.

Last night’s selections were so boring there was a point where I started to try to breakdown the individual smell components of the fabric softener sheets I used on the sweatshirt I’m currently wearing (it’s like flowers with cotton candy and wood… or something).

Jack was absent from a good portion of 24 making the single episode feel like an entire day. I ended up fast forwarding through a good chunk of the CTU/White House nonsense, and even then the episode ended with me thinking, “All this for James Cromwell?” The same could be said for Mr. George Takei on Heroes, whose brief appearance at the end of the episode was suppose to make for the fact that nothing happened during the previous 57 minutes.

Thank god Veronica Mars is on tonight.

Last week at the winter TCA Press Tour the creators of Lost declared that they will be ending the series around the 100 episode mark. This was suppose to quell the restlessness amongst the fans that feel the show’s writers have absolutely no idea what they’re doing. It’s the type of announcement that doesn’t exactly solve this problem, but it does give everyone a timetable to figure out an answer. Lost will end, and hopefully that motivation will spark some decent plotting for these last two seasons.

Similarly, Heroes was rumored from the start to have stand-alone seasons. Whether or not this is still the case is up for argument. Personally, as someone who has had a love/hate relationship with the show, I hope season one ends with some solid resolution (i.e. New York City either blows up or doesn’t). Unlike Lost, Heroes has the advantage (like Veronica Mars) of telling one story over 22 episodes and then starting fresh and doing it again the next season. I go on after the break…

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First off, sorry for the lack of post yesterday, but it is December and there just isn’t all that much happening. I’m sure we’ll all make it through… together. And speaking of being together…

Have you heard about this crazy show Heroes? I HAVE! Last night’s episode was the last for 2006, and it was mostly a good one. Again I have to say “mostly” because it’s impossible for a Heroes episode to be completely solid all the way through. This was especially evident tonight with the Nicki/Micah/D.L.(?) storyline, which seems to have completely severed itself from the rest of the show. In fact, with each passing episode every character gets closer to the others except Nicki/Micah/D.L.(?) who are apparently under the impression that they’re actually on a series called, Amazing Adventures in Domestic Violence.

All that being said, the overall mystery had some excellent developments, including the self-inflicted death of that pixie-girl with the eyes– but how is it that Sylar could all of a sudden use his powers? Basically, I’m glad I stuck around. The past six episodes have been exponentially better than the first five. The cast, though, is still a little bloated. Here’s all you really need: Claire the cheerleader, Peter, Horn Rimmed Glasses, Hiro. That’s a show you can knock out of the park. The rest is supposed to be icing, but it really just comes off as sugared lard.

It’s usually pretty fun to watch, though. You’ve got to give it that.

Oh, and A DINOSAUR!

Studio 60… talk, and other stuff, after the jump…

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I seem to be writing about NBC a lot lately, though the network is in such disastrous shape it begs discussion. Here’s what we all know: NBC is in last-place. Because of this, and because parent company G.E. is responsible to its shareholders for increasing the value of its stock, NBC recently had to fire 750 employees in a massive restructuring move that included moving MSNBC from its current home in New Jersey to Rockefeller Center with the rest of NBC news. With hindsight we’re able to ask the always important question, “Jersey?”

Additionally, NBC has decided to remove all scripted comedies and dramas from the 8 o’clock hour in lieu of cheaper game shows and reality fare. This will affect the bottom line initially, but one has to wonder if Howie Mandel is really the best choice for a lead-in (over and over and over again).

This restructuring is suppose to put more of a focus on NBC’s digital properties, because, if you haven’t heard, this ‘digital’ thing might really take off. The problem is that even if this is true, someone still has to program at least 21 hours worth of prime-time television each week. After the jump, I think I’ve figured out how to do it…

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Who? The cheerleader. Why? To save the world. Oh, OK… Who again?

Heroes is as good a show as it is a disaster, and after nine episodes I’ve decided that I’m OK with that. The show has strengths. Those strengths should be marketed to the American public to get them interested in tuning in. Unfortunately, the NBC promotions department seems to be run by a pack of super-smart, drug-addled chimps. “Save the Cheerleader Save the World” is Heroes tag line. This is fine. But there gets to be a point where you have to say, “OK, I get it,” and move onto something else– or at the very least pull back a little. In last night’s TERRIFIC episode various characters must have used the phrase at least five different times. This, in addition to the endless barrage of promos and publicity materials beating us to death with the message.

The easiest comparison would be the Lost numbers. Both represent an unanswerable plot force, but with “the numbers” the work is always on the side of the audience. The sometimes excessiveness of “the numbers” was for the most part fan fueled. Sure, they play a critical role in the show, but in terms of marketing, ABC has always left the mystery of “the numbers” to the fans.

As for ‘Saving the Cheerleader,’ I’m all for it. She’s way cute. Just quit beating me to death with it. Not just during the show, but after, and in between acts, and in Chyrons on the lower third of the screen, and on bus benches, and inside the back of my eyelids, and…

Last night’s episode of Heroes proved that you can both have a serialized drama with an endless barrage of questions and still pay off your audience for sticking with it. Between “Horn-Rimmed Glasses,” that girl who looks like an elf, the cop, and Hiro (who seems to be the only character name anyone remembers on this show) we walked away from that episode feeling like we knew what the hell was happening. Of course HRG (Horn-Rimmed Glasses) could have been lying, which would be frustrating, but the way he laid out his motivations seemed entirely realistic given what we had all ready known. If I like anything about the show it’s the fact that the characters we perceive to be good-guys and bad-guys can flip like a plastic cup at a frat house. It keeps you on your toes, and that is a good thing.
I’ve made no bones about the fact that this show is seriously flawed, but last night’s episode was enough to lock me in for the season.

Last night’s episode of Heroes proved that I would rather Syler cut off the top of my head and steal my brain than ever watch a scene with Mohinder ever again. I fast-forwarded through 90% of his scenes last night, and you know what? I missed nothing. The fact that his voice is the narrator troubles me to no end. Maybe it’s the accent, maybe it’s his bland screen presence, maybe it’s the fact that whenever the story shifts to him I feel like the show gets stuck in quicksand and sinks lower and lower the harder it tries to free itself. Thank god the cast is larger than most NFL teams. Maybe his presence will be limited from here on out.

And while I’m griping, here’s some other problems: I hate that the font they use for the credits is the same font they use for the subtitles. Not knowing everyone’s name, I can never tell in those opening minutes if they’re telling me the name of an actor or of a character. Also, the soundtrack has the feel of a bad action movie from 1987. Okay. Now I’m done.

I don’t really have a lot to say, except for the fact that I love the “new” Lost. Last week was the “old” Lost. Last week was all about confusing, whats-the-point, circular storylines where you’re dropped off a few steps behind the point where you started. This week was good, and almost exclusively due to the sheer number of times in the episode some one was brutally punched in the face. I like Lost when its less about these huge unanswerable questions, and more about punching someone in the face. You can tell a lot about a character by how they try to punch someone in the face, or how they handle having someone else punch them in the face, and frankly, when you’re fifty-one episodes into a series sometimes you just need the show to punch you in the face a couple times and wake you the hell up. Or maybe I’m just regressing back to my savage state.

Elsewhere in the episode, Jack seems to be making friends, and not getting punched in the face. The biggest problem (and a problem that seems to be showing itself at shorter and shorter intervals) is the backstories really haven’t had much of a sting lately. When you see a Sawyer flashback, you expect to be wowed by the tripple-double-double-crosses. This week, eh, not so much. The Lost writing machine where all of the good story ideas come out of, must have exploded last February for the episode when Sawyer took the guns. Since then things haven’t been all that — with the exception of last season’s finale. That was all that.

And while I can’t write a post without comparing the two, I should state for the record that I mostly enjoyed this past week’s episode of Heroes and only found myself fast-forwarding through a couple scenes of the show. It definitely isn’t the soul-crushing experience it was three weeks ago, and dare I say I look forward to this coming Monday.

Oh, and was anyone else disappointed that Sawyer didn’t have the pacemaker after all. The “your heart/brain is going to explode if you go below 50 miles an hour” seems to be the J.J. Abrams equivalent of showing a car trunk open from the inside, but damn if it doesn’t create some tension.

Previews suck. They used to not suck, but then something happened. Unfortunately, that something isn’t the easiest to pinpoint. Here’s what we do know: for the longest time, the only thing more exciting than the last three minutes of your favorite serial drama was sticking it out through the last commercial break to find out what *might* happen next week. Next Week is very important in television. Next Week is, perhaps, more important than this week. If Next Week looks like it’ll be awesome, people will tune in, and they might even tell people. Next Week promises everything that didn’t happen this week, even if deep down we know that there is no way on God’s green earth that Next Week could possibly deliver the way we want it to.

When you tune into any given episode of 24 — especially if that episode happens to be during the first half of the season — you watch the preview for the next installment and get the idea into your head that Jack just might get to the bad guys. Sure, while you’re watching you remember that Jack is, in fact, trapped under a filing cabinet in Dayton, and the bomb is suppose to go off in downtown L.A., but goddammit, this preview really makes it look like he could pull this off a good fourteen hours ahead of schedule, and I’d love to tune in and see that. Of course, the next week Jack is no closer (this time the episode ends with him trapped inside a refrigerator in Boca) but you’re still glad you tuned in because even if the bad guys are still on the loose, you did get to see three henchmen shot in the head and one guy tortured with a soldering iron. And just wait until the preview for NEXT week! There’s more by clicking below…

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All week at work, people have been coming up to me asking, “SO! Didja see Heroes this week? Didja, didja, didja!?” See, my work is what I would consider a network-television-executive’s wetdream, as we have text-book “water-cooler talk.” Its seems that the ultimate goal in this day and age of serialized super-dramas is the hope that people will talk about your show the next day. Ratings? Well, that’s important too, but really what everyone seems to be after is buzz, which conveniently enough, can lead to ratings. Heroes, for all of its missteps, definitely has buzz. It also, unfortunately for NBC, seems to be the only new show people are watching. Either way, I had extremely high hopes for this week’s episode, especially given the fact that two weeks ago I swore I was done with the show altogether. My thoughts are available in convenience “word form” after the jump…

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I’m done with Heroes. Done. As in, “I’m not going to watch Heroes anymore.” Nothing happens, and when when it appears like something is happening it’s usually cloaked in so many layers of pseudo-mysterious nonsense that you walk away wondering why it is you decided to watch television that night in the first place. There’s too many characters. When we follow the good ones, things seem promising but then we leave and start following around the professor’s son and that girl who looks like a low-rent Ginnifer Goodwin and I’m simultaneously infuriated because they couldn’t be more boring, even if they are trying to save the universe, and because every word that comes out of their mouths sounds like it was written by George Lucas when he was nine. And is it just me or does anyone else want Greg Grunberg to just be funny?

Of course, it couldn’t just all end there, allowing myself to wash my hands of the whole mess. No, the last two minutes had to include a reveal of Claire (man, they’re even ripping the names off from Lost), the cheerleader who owns no other clothes, awaking on a surgery table after getting a stick jammed through her head, pulling the stick out and then realizing that her entire chest had been removed during some sort of autopsy. That, my friends, was god-damn awesome, and even though I’m DONE with Heroes I might check back in next week to see what happens. Y’know, just to make sure she’s OK.

Studio 60… wasn’t as infuriating. The show is still week-to-week with me, but I found myself entertained enough to want to see another episode. Others, it seems, are a little more on the verge of jumping ship, but they also seem to know much more about Mr. Sorkin’s past than I. Though if you find yourself bored with this version of a fake SNL, here’s a fun game to play: in all of the scenes with “Ricky and Ron,” the two hacky writers, just stare at Carlos Jacott (the one with hair) and his almost freakish absence of lines. I think he has maybe said two things since the show started a month ago.

Whatever. 30 Rock starts tomorrow. Let’s focus on that.

Heroes — The last minute and a half of Heroes was so awesome it was infuriating. Infuriating, because it made me wait through 45-minutes of ho-hum setup and seemingly unanswerable questions. Infuriating, because it also will make me wait through 45 more minutes of ho-hum seemingly never-ending setup and, of course, more questions.

AND WOW, was it violent! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman nailed to the side of a stairwell with ice picks before. THANKS NBC!!

See, what all of these new super-secret-serials have failed to learn from Lost is that people want to see a story mixed in with their supernatural intrigue. Sure, any give Lost ep will boggle the mind and dazzle the senses, but it will also tell a story about a character, and when the hour is over you feel like you’ve learned something about why someone behaves the way they do, even if you’re left asking a million more questions regarding the madness that is the Lost universe.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip — A note for Aaron Sorkin: quit preaching to me! If I wanted political opinions I’d watch cable news. Or better yet, I’d watch The Wire. See, The Wire is one of the few shows that can say everything about everything without actually saying anything. Studio 60… has started to irk me simply for its lack of subtlty. Sorkin, I suppose, is an acquired taste. Maybe I have yet to acquire that taste. I’m curious if I will before I quit watching. However (as usual), Matthew Perry is still good enough to carry me over to the next week.

Weeds –  Have you noticed that once a season hits episode six or seven, it suddenly becomes void of discussion material? I did enjoy the scene with Andy and Silas laying the pool talking about how their lives suck. That was funny (if obvious).

Early in August when I rented Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip from Netflix I was certain that the buzz behind the show would make it a huge hit and could (potentially) save NBC from its current status as a last place network. I think I was way off the mark. And, while I’m not yet ready to start king-making again (and the fact that I actually have little power and influence), it definitely seems like Heroes is aligned to save the day [groan]. I promise there won’t be any more puns after the jump…

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