MagneticMediaFed

“But it’s not just your Han Solo jacket that I like…

With the amount of television I have been watching over the past week I was beginning to feel like I lost sight of what separated a good show from a show that was just OK. Gossip Girl was quick to remind me. A good show is painless. A good show captures your attention as opposed to fighting for your attention. Two minutes into this week’s episode (and two hours since I sat down to hammer through a night’s worth of DVR’d programming) I was completely transfixed. Perhaps it’s the writing. No, of course it’s the writing. For a show chalk full of high school archetypes (though insanely rich and privileged ones) I’m shocked at how natural all of the dialogue sounds. Or maybe it’s the cast. This cast oozes charm like the Valdez. Whatever it is I pray it doesn’t change. More after the jump…

(more…)

My dear, you look absolutely perplexed.

It just doesn’t seem to end, does it? Tonight three new shows are premiering, along with new episodes from a couple gems from last week… and Top Chef. It’s OK. Sleep is overrated.

Bionic Woman — NBC 9:00pm
A so-so remake of a cheesy show about a robot-woman not called Small Wonder, though I haven’t seen the reworked pilot. I can guarantee lots of robot-woman fighting, if that’s your thing.

Life — NBC 10:00pm
Honestly, I know very little of this show. I know it’s about a guy who was wrongly imprisoned and then joins the police force. I’ve also heard the pilot is quite good.

Private Practice — ABC 9:00pm
It’s the Grey’s Anatomy spinoff. I won’t be watching (thank god!), though I assume many will. Let me know how it is.

Dirty Sexy Money — ABC 10:00pm
I really liked this show. It’s funny, has the always awesome Peter Krause, is briskly paced and kind of reminds me of a dramatic version of Arrested Development. That being said most the hour is dedicated to exposition, so who knows where it goes. Still, it’s the most interesting hour of the night.

Let’s also not forget we have new episodes of the awesome Kid Nation (8:00pm CBS) and Gossip Girl (9:00pm CW) as well as the (pen?)ultimate Top Chef.

Good luck!

“It’s not just about ham… it’s about self-respect”

Of all the fall pilots, this is the one I had watched the most. In fact, this morning when I saw the actual air version that I had recorded last night on The CW, it might have been the fifth or sixth viewing (though the first with the new “Andy”). Did I keep watching to try and pick up on the intricacies of reaping? No, I kept watching because the show is really really funny… and fun. More after the jump…

(more…)

Girl! Put some clothes on!

Last week we were left on a cliffhanger introducing a new couple to the house comprise of a beauty-guy and a geeky-girl. Right off the bat this week the two newbies were thrown right into the mix. This hunky dude, Sam, is – get this – a total tool. Granted, this was completely expected, and while yes the beauties are might not be the brightest, this guy is pushing new levels of intolerability. He’s Spencer-esque. Nicole, the geeky girl, never really had a proper introduction, so we don’t really know the roots of her geekdom. At this stage she seems far more likely to be cast in a teen sex movie as the “girl with glasses who will ultimately take off those glasses and shocks everyone with her natural beauty,” than the girl with the collection of scale replica Lord of the Rings battles made of hair (or whatever). More after the jump…

(more…)

I’m not going to have time this afternoon to get full-length reviews up for Cane and Reaper which both premiere tonight, so I’ll just give you some quick reactions and let you decide what to watch.

Reaper (9:00pm on The CW) is great. It’s about a kid who is sat down by his parents on his 21st birthday and told that they sold his soul to the devil when he was born. Now the devil has come to collect in the form of hiring our hero as a bounty-hunter of escaped souls from hell. Oh, and it’s a comedy. Much hay has been made of the fact that Kevin Smith directed the pilot. While I’m sure his input was kindly accepted, this show would have worked with or without him based exclusively on the strength of the cast. There are four must-see new series this fall and Reaper is one of the top two.

Cane (10:00pm on CBS) wants to be The Godfather. I mean, really wants to be The Godfather. Unfortunately it comes up considerably short. Still, there are far worse shows premiering this week and Cane shows enough promise it could turn into a really great serial. After one episode, you wouldn’t know this. Like K-Ville, the cast and groundwork is in place for the series to grow into itself over the long haul, but it certainly gets no added boost from its pilot, which I found at times painfully slow. Still, Jimmy Smits is in it and I once read that that has to be worth something, right?

Wow! Look at all of those gorgeous people!

How did this happen? How did a 27-year-old, heterosexual, baseball and Nintendo DS fan with a receding hairline and an unhealthy love of guitar solos turn into a giggly fourteen-year-old girl? There has to be an explanation. Why else would this individual be as inexplicably wowed by the new CW soap Gossip Girl (which kicks off tonight at 9pm following Top Model) as he is? It doesn’t make any sense. And yet it’s true. More after the jump…

(more…)

As far as reality-dating competitions are concerned, you can’t do much better than Beauty and the Geek. The Bachelor is far too cheesy to stomach and the I Love the Flavor of the Rock’s Charm School franchise on VH1 elicits too much of a gag reflex to tune in regularly. Beauty and the Geek, amazingly, works. Maybe it’s the fact that the cast is closer to my age, but it’s probably more that I find myself able to relate to the geeks at sometimes shocking levels of familiarity. Look, I’m no LARPing, sci-fi obsessed, computer programmer with bad fashion sense and few social skills (well, maybe bad fashion sense), but then again I do watch hours upon hour of television every day and blog about it. These are my people. Plus, I’m a sucker for the time-tested rom-com pairing of “kids from different sides of the tracks” learning a thing or two about how the other lives. More after the jump…

(more…)

It all comes back to the Canes.

Now that felt like vintage Veronica Mars. For perfectly logical reasons, the show has always been at its best when the character had something on the line. In last night’s finale, Veronica was trying to save her reputation and sometime in the process completely destroyed her fathers career. It’s a dark note for the show to go out on, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t the right note. More thoughts on the episode and the end of the series after the jump…

(more…)

A V-Mars Ruddtacular!

That was another fun one. Maybe not the episode perfection I was hoping for, but good nonetheless. Can’t go wrong with some Vinnie Van Lowe intrigue.

The problem, I hate to say, was the weakness of the mystery. I love the teen-soap elements they’ve been pumping up the past two weeks, but it’s certainly been to the detriment of the mystery writing, which was always so damn sharp in previous episodes. Honestly, the name was on the bag!

Still, you can’t go wrong with Paul Rudd. He’s the avocado of narrative entertainment. Sure, that turkey sandwich you’re eating is might tasty, but add a little avocado and it suddenly got a whole lot tastier. He’s a flavor enhancer — like Splenda or Brigitte Nielsen.

I have to admit, as far as the romances are concerned, I’m much more interested in the new Mac/Max trist than Veronica and Piz. Perhaps that’s because Mac never seems to get any action and also because I feel bad for Piz since Veronica will inevitably tear his heart out.

For the indie-rock fans out there, Stereogum breaks down who exactly wrote the music for “My Pretty Pony”.

Just read me the news, dammit!
A recent Gallup poll shows that one-third of Americans have a negative view of Katie Couric, anchor of the CBS Evening News. I suppose it’s hard to get ratings when people simply don’t like you. Her competition, Brian Williams at NBC and Charles Gibson at ABC has much lower negative ratings and were more or less tied in likeability (and in ratings).
READ MORE

They would just talk and talk and talk…
Gilmore Girls, the long running, quick-talking drama that began airing seven years ago on the WB, has been cancelled by the CW. This news should come as a surprise to few as the departure of the series creator last spring (and more important the dwindling audience) more or less left the writing on the wall. Given the performance of most of the CW’s line-up this year, it’ll be interesting to see if the network renews anything at all.
READ MORE

…

Read more?

U-S-A! U-S-A!

Oh-so good to have old friends back, even if they’re stuck in an episode splattered with 9th grade patriotic rah-rah nonsense. Outside of the can’t-we-all-just-get-along mini-mystery, there were some delicious developments involving Veronica, Piz, Logan and all the rest. Sure, if you think too hard about it and read too many trade publications you might think that the future of the show will ultimately render these romantic entanglements moot, but why throw cold water on otherwise spicy teen drama?

And speaking of all those teens, props must be given to the V-Mars casting department for finally getting everyone together in one episode. Season three has been void of many things and most of the time those things involved secondary cast-members. Wallace and Mac would disappear for weeks on end, which is what made last night’s buffet of familiar faces so charming. Add that to the numerous references to storylines from previous seasons and you “got yourself a stew goin’ on.”

The rest of the episodes from here on out all fit into the one-and-done mystery format. This is a good decision, especially if what we saw this week is an indication of how the narratives will be linked. Sure, the overarching mysteries are far more sophisticated, but good teen melodrama has its place as well.

This week was by no means classic Mars, but for a show that could very well be marching itself to the sea, it was a comfort to watch. That being said, my super secret source tells me that next week’s episode with Paul Rudd is the tits.

Tanya schools Drew in a cut-throat game of checkers.

Everybody Hates Chris is basically the show for which DVRs were made. You always forget about it until it shows up in your list one night and you think to yourself, “Hey, that’s a pleasant surprise.” Then you flip it on and for thirty minutes keep thinking about how wonderful the show is and how you should tell more people about it, only for the program to end, put something else on, and then completely forget about it until the next time your handy little machine decides to surprise you.

Lucky for me, I have this here television blog to keep the dream alive (or at least until the post works its way down on the page to where no man, woman or child dares scroll), so check out the show. It won’t change your life, but what does? It skews to the better side of the television universe and deserves to be watched.

As for the episode itself, Terry Crews and Tichina Arnold again prove they are two of the best comic actors working on television. The brilliance of their characters is that they are being portrayed through the eyes of a fourteen year old, which allows them to be much bigger in their performances than any of the kids on the show, who come off as any kid you’ve ever met.

Watch Everybody Hates Chris episodes at CWTV.com

I’ve been watching Everybody Hates Chris all season, and yet for some inexplicable reason haven’t been writing about it or talking about with friends. No wonder the show is drawing viewers in the dozens. Let’s try to correct that.

Last night’s episode was yet another solid one. The basic premise being Chris gets hired to DJ a party after doing a good job filling in for a DJ who was just arrested. People who like to say the phrase, “That would never happen!” probably should stick with CBS on Monday nights. Luckily I rarely find myself asking questions like, “What on earth was Chris doing at a dance club anyway? Isn’t he, like 14? Everyone else was in their 20s.” Yes, not asking questions like that makes watching almost all filmed entertainment a little more relaxing.

The best jokes in the episode revolved around the notion that in 1984 the suburban white kids found hip-hop utterly confusing. When Chris tells his friend Greg that he needs a copy of James Browns “The Payback” to mix at the party, Greg replies, “It’s all ready a good song, why do you have to remix it?” To which Chris replies, “I have to rock the party.” So true. So very true.

The performances on the show, especially Terry Crews and Tichina Arnold as Chris’ parents, are top-notch. Each has these delightful little ticks — specifically Crews’ trademark “shocked reaction to overspending.” It’s this wide-eyed kind of lurch that has become the embodiment of Julius Rock. Everything else the character does seems to be placed in and around that physical reaction.

Watch “Everybody Hates DJs” at CWTV.com
Listen to part of James Brown’s “The Payback”

Lots of madness brewin’ this morning on the V-Mars front. Let’s start with the bad news:

According to Kristin Veitch over at E! Online Veronica Mars has been canceled by The CW, though no official statement has been made by the network. Her information comes from “several solid sources.” Personally, I won’t be hosting the wake until someone in a suit gives the official execution orders and the phone call from the governor never comes.

For those who like to stay on the positive side of things, the Hollywood Reporter says series creator Rob Thomas (not that Rob Thomas) has come up with an idea for the fourth season in which the series flashes forward several years and follows Veronica as she works her way through the FBI academy. The idea isn’t just cool, but makes practical sense as Kristin Bell is 26 years old.

Thanks AK for the tip (via Ain’t It Cool News)

It was yet another GREAT episode last night. Loved the little kid. Who knew it would take an 11-year-old to get a decent plot line for Logan.

One moment that seems particularly inspired (assuming it was intentional) was the song dedication for Veronica from Logan via his new, young friend. The song was “What’s Left of Me” by Nick Lachey. It’s an absolutely god awful song and sounded completely out of place on a show that typically has such great soundtrack choices UNTIL you remember that it was suppose to have been picked by a
tween. It’s a brilliant pick because it is 1) the type of song you’d expect a little kid to think of as romantic, and 2) precisely the type of song you’d expect an FM radio station to play as a dedication.

Well done Veronica Mars, well done.