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Yep, it’s that time of year again, when I finally post another thing on this blog! And wouldn’t you know it, it’s year-end countdown time!
The top 10 tv shows this year are a huge change, I believe, from previous years. The final year of LOST barely made it into the top 10, and a surprise show got the top spot! Let’s get to it. Read More →
It’s June. The Emmy nominations are coming up soon, and the official television season is over and done, so it’s time to rank the best of the best of this past television season.
Freshman shows and shows that were new to me were in their prime this past year, old favorites mostly floundered, but great performances fuel what was one of the strangest tv seasons to date.
My complete breakdown after the jump…
Read More →
As the 3rd season of one of the best legal dramas ever comes to a close, the certainty of it coming back is still up in the air. The third season of Damages was by far superior than last year’s. Though the intrigue and suspense of the first season can probably never be surpassed, the new case involving the Tobin family drew great strength from the familiar characters. The connection between Patty Hewes and Ellen grew stronger, showcasing how Patty truly believes in Ellen, but on the other side she doesn’t want her to succeed like her without the tragedies and emptiness she had to go through to get there herself.
This past season was really well grounded, establishing an overall mystery arc that played out fluidly and believably. It all came to a close tying up all the main loose ends and could truly go into history as the show’s series finale and I’d be okay with it. Though who certainly wouldn’t want more Damages! Read More →
And the list goes on… this week went to TV, and yesterday we had the first half of my picks for the best TV shows of the decade.
But the best is yet to come… some are older, going back to 2001, some are newer, who are still currently running, but all define the best TV experience these past 10 years!
So here it is, follow the jump to see the TOP 10! Read More →
It’s the end of 2009, and with it, the end of the 2000′s. There was great TV this past decade, amazing TV. And I’ve been there all the way with it.
It’s tough to make a list of the best series, because even the best had down times or even awful times. so I’m pin-pointing the best season(s) of the shows that really defined the last 10 years, for me at least.
Follow the jump for the first half of the TOP 20 shows of the 2000′s: (NOTE: The list includes shows that had their debut or had their best season on or after 2000, and only shows that I have personally watched, so sorry for not including shows like The Sopranos, The Shield, The Wire, The West Wing, etc., because sadly I never got around to watch them).
Ok, so it’s a little early to close up shop on 2009′s tv, so this isn’t my annual top10 list of the best of the year, that will come mid-December. I just noticed that I haven’t written in a while and this television season has started out pretty interesting, good shows gone bad, new shows finally breaking through from the start, and an overall ok new season.
OUT WITH THE OLD.
Lots of the older shows are starting to show their age. Dexter (my grade: B-) has taken most of the season to pick up the pace this year, it’s on episode 9 and it finally gave us something to get excited about. The Office (C+) got better last year, but this year it fell back to the sameness of seasons 3 & 4 that kinda bored me. Gossip Girl (C) is suffering a “junior slump” really bad, which always happens with teenage shows when they go off to college (and the whole gang always stays together). Mad Men (B) and Big Bang Theory (B) have been alright, but not as intriguing or funny as seasons 1 & 2. House (C+) is getting a bit too boring for my taste, and Brothers & Sisters (C+) I watch only out of habit, not because it’s any good, really.
IN WITH THE NEW.
ABC is on a roll this new season, they have several of the most talked about good new shows this year, though that’s soon to come to an end. First off Modern Family (A-), it is easily the best new show this year. It is laugh-out-loud funny, witty, and downright enjoyable. Then their sci-fi offerings FlashForward (C) and V (C+) got off to great starts, but that’s where they end. FlashForward has only gone downhill from that very catchy pilot episode, the characters have become too mundane, the story non-believable, and the situations completely cheesy and incoherent. V is just escapism tv, the story is way too far-fetched, and to cap it all off, it’s going on a several-month hiatus after only 4 episodes!
Then there is Glee (B). Fox took a big risk launching this show back in May for just one episode, but it really paid off. This show is completely a feel-good series, it’s obviously not award-worthy but I just find it fun to watch, escape from the world for 42 minutes with singing and dancing, which actually supports the story they’re telling, it’s not “just for show”.
GOOD IS GOOD.
Some shows have actually continued their goodness of even improved this season. Notable improvements are It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (B+), Fringe (B+), Ugly Betty (B), 30 Rock (B), Survivor (B+).
Notice how there is only one A in the whole bunch, how I miss Battlestar Galactica 
.
So this weekend I sat down and watched my first taste of new programming this season. The premiere of ABC’s new gimmicky FlashForward.
It is one normal day in Los Angeles. Two police officers are chasing a black SUV with a prime suspect for a case. Medics are starting a surgery at a big reknowned hospital. Planes are in the air. Boom! Everybody in the whole world blacks out and has flashes of their own lives. When everybody comes back to themselves, 2 minutes and 17 seconds later, everything is a chaotic mess. Cars fell off bridges, planes dropped, patients died, crashes all over the streets and freeways.
Recounting their experiences, they all find out that every single person had a vision of their own lives in the near future, April 29, 2010, to be exact. And the conspiracy starts! Our main character saw himself in his office trying to solve the case of what exactly happened that day, drinking alcohol again. His wife’s flash is of being with someone else, a woman sees herself pregnant, and the other cop (John Cho) doesn’t see anything at all, making him believe he will be dead by then.
Though the premise is interesting, and there were some obvious deal breakers (like the woman pregnant, who flashes on herself at the doctor getting an ultrasound, at 10pm???), this pilot sure looked to have been very well produced. There was a lot of money put into this and you can tell, and it actually made for a better viewing experience. It was entertaining all around, but the one thing that made me want more was the final scene, in which they show a surveilance video from a baseball game in which you can see everybody in the stadium drop at the same time, and while everybody is out, a man walks among them and walks out. Interesting…
My Grade: B
Warning: SPOILERS ABOUND NEXT. It was a weird reimagining of the original show, the opening scene reminiscent of the first scene in the original pilot, the show “intro” in the middle of the episode with older, wiser, fatherly Dexter. And a whole new show that is thrown in our faces.
There are very big noticeable changes in this season of Dexter. First of all, we know who the bad guy is from the beginning and see glimpses of him in weird little snippets. Dexter is now a family man, with a brand new baby in the house that limits his sleep (way too much focus on this, btw), and living in suburbia. Debra is living with Anton then Lundy comes back in the picture. But the biggest WTF moment was… Angel and Maria??? Batista and LaGuerta??? really? That came totally out of left field, and I don’t think it’s good!
Finally, I read somewhere that the producers and writers thought up of interesting mini cliffhangers for each episode, and this one was a doozy. With Dexter’s sleepless nights, on his way back from a kill and from the pharmacy with some of his baby’s medicine (his name is Harrison, btw), he starts falling asleep at the wheel and hallucinates Harry in the middle of the road and curves really fast to evade him. This sends his minivan off the road, rolling 2 times and crashing on the side of the road. This left the question in the viewer’s head about the body parts from his kill being in the van or not, since he was in a hurry to get back home.
All in all I’m glad Dexter is back, but I am not feeling this beginning as a something to root for. We’ll see in the upcoming weeks.
My Grade: B-
The route for this upcoming season of The Amazing Race has been revealed. For what I believe the first time ever in the history of the show, we know where the racers are going before the season even starts, and where all the pit-stops are going to be. Here is a rundown of the list:
1. Tokyo – Japan
2. Cai Be – Vietnam
3. Ho Chi Minh City – Vietnam
4. Phnom Penh – Cambodia
5. Dubai – UAE
6. Dubai – UAE
7. Groningen – The Netherlands
8. Stockholm – Sweden
9. Tallinn – Estonia
10. Prague – Czech Republic
11. Prague – Czech Republic
12. Las Vegas – Nevada
The runners start off in Los Angeles and are heading West again this year. And the one stop I’m curious about is Dubai, so I’m glad they’re staying there for 2 pit stops. For a spoilery rundown of what the teams will be doing in each place, head over to EW.com.
This season of The Amazing Race starts on Sunday September 27, at 8pm EDT on CBS.
So it’s not just NBC anymore, and there are still some good shows to come back on the night like 30 Rock, Grey’s Anatomy and the new FlashForward, but Thursdays have started and they are good! (reviews include SPOILERS)
The Office. The show starts off its 6th season without even acknowledging the big reveal from last season’s finale. It’s just a typical day at the office, but it’s not the office without Michael Scott doing some inappropriate thing, mainly, he find out via the new interns that Stanley is having an affair. Surely he has to tell EVERYBODY, but then trying to take it back he makes up rumors for everybody else so they all think that all of them were fake, including Stanley’s affair. Turns out he makes one up that is actually true, Pam is pregnant! and in order to save Michael and Stanley the embarrassment they admit it as the only true rumor. Michael obviously has to ruin things by calling Stanley’s wife in the process to tell her about the affair, and ruins their marriage in the process. Hilarious way to start off the season. B+
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. The gang takes advantage of the mortgage crisis. Yes, that’s the episode’s title. And as everything you can expect from this gang, they do their darnest to be crazy. So Frank decides to buy a house that was in foreclosure then resell it, thing is, the owners haven’t been evicted yet, so the gang decides to sell the house while the people are still in it. On some other part of town Dee is selling herself as a surrogate for a couple that can’t carry a baby. At the end they decide to have a bidding war for Dee’s womb and scare a couple into buying the house. The funniest part, Dee doing a horrible belly-flop into the conceiving couple’s house pool. B
Survivor: Samoa. Another season, another huge villain to root against. Samoa brings to us Russell Hantz, this little big muscle guy with a bald head and a bad look. From the start he says he’s going to make it a living hell for all of his tribe-mates, and that included emptying all the water canteens, burning one person’s sock, and making and alliance with every single woman in the group. He called a couple of those alliances the “dumb blonde alliances”, so you get my drift on how much of a jack ass this guy is, and I truly want to see when everybody calls him out on it and leaves, I couldn’t stand the guy, and you know very well that Survivor will focus on him the most until he’s gone. But even in its 19th season, Survivor is still going strong, it’s something to look forward to and something reliable that you know what to expect. B
I will try to continue on the mini-reviews throught the initial 2009-2010 season run, so stay tuned.