TV Deathwatch 11/11/09

http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/watch_with...ly_cancels.html

Quantumhawk is the master, and I can't pretend to understand the methods of his madness, but I figured at least a few other people would want to know.

In my opinion, the good episodes of this show have been great. But the bad ones have been utter dreck, and there's such a drastic change between the two, that it really just seems like a sloppy effort overall. It isn't, but that's the way I feel it comes across, unfortunately.

And I was just thinking earlier whether there were any shows I'm watching now that I can give up, so that my weekly TV commitment isn't so high.

Stargate: Universe - Episode 3 ("Darkness")

You all know anyone can create these threads, right? (There was a comment in the episode 2 thread about "waiting for an episode 3 thread")

Anyway, I wanted to discuss it a bit, so here we go.

I thought this was another really excellent episode. The shower scene and spying on the other woman were a little unnecessary. The Planet of the Apes bit was a bit over the top, but worked naturally enough for the character of Eli.

I was annoyed about Young's wife/ex? and that whole scene. I can understand him wanting to see her, but it sounded in the previous scene like he had an idea about what to do regarding the current predicament of the crew. Not to mention, she followed him outside to essentially repeat the same scene we just saw inside. It was redundant.

A couple of the interviews were okay, but some were also quite dull. Add to that the cool, yet also not totally necessary issue of the planetary atmosphere and turbulence, and it seemed like this episode really just was about killing some time.

Also, the way no one really talks to each other. Rush, in particular, is getting a little old. I get that it would take him way too long to explain everything to the others, but on the other hand, he's really withholding key info, and not listening to that hallway guy who might have actually had something important to say. I hope this gets addressed more directly soonish, because otherwise the whole show will play out as a result of misunderstandings - and even though Frasier was on the air for 11 years, I really don't like that plot device.

The dark, more serious tone, with the episodes being about the group's very survival is definitely entertaining though. Early BSG played this out to excellent effect as well, and especially if they're setting up a longer-term situation for this crew, it's good that they're shown having to face this stuff, rather than ignoring it all like on Voyager. I do hope they soon get to the point where they need to get raw materials and start getting to a few planets though, because it's going to strain suspension of disbelief soon if they all just manage to stay on this ship which is very clearly just barely holding together.

Still, cool show, and I'm definitely looking forward to next week's since they're going to need to steer somehow!

Smallville Season Premier

Anyone else watch this tonight?

It went about as expected with Clark, I think. Nice to see him finally starting to be more like Superman. But what a horrible costuming decision. And I still want to rip my ears off every time someone calls him the red/blue blur. Ugh.

As for the season arc, connecting to something in the future, again, ugh. I intentionally didn't watch Flashforward because I think this is a really hard story conceit to do properly, and I trust the Smallville team to pull it off even less than I did the Heroes team for the past two years. I can think of two occasions it went well - Heroes' first season, and Babylon 5 - and in both of those cases there were still significant issues with it. No way do I picture this being an effective device this year.

Brian Austin Green as Metallo is cool though (by John Corbin in this ep, more clearly in the ad). I guess his other show he was supposed to be on after Terminator must not have gotten picked up. But at least there's one new character who I think will be at least somewhat entertaining.

Then the Zod stuff. Clearly this whole episode was written around "kneel before Zod," and it actually worked. This story I actually think is interesting. It's a younger version. Is it time travel? Is it cloning? Is it something else? More mention of Kandor and the bottle, and pretty much this seems like the only genuinely original and interesting plot to be introduced.

The writers even gave themselves an out with the horrible Jimmy Olson thing from last year, and didn't take it. I'm starting to hope for a Dallas thing where this is like a completely branched timeline and that somehow things eventually get reset. Because otherwise, just...too many stupid ideas piling up on top of each other.

Last year gave me a glimmer of hope that maybe the show could be better again (at least the first half of last year), but this premier says they're going to do more of the bland and dull this year. Shame.

Student uses samurai sword to kill burgler

CNN Story

Sounds like self defense to me. Unless there's additional details missing, I really hope this is open and shut, with no prosecution for the student.

"Defying Gravity" New ABC Sci-Fi Show

A friend recently told me about this show. It's 6 episodes in, but I'm only through episode 3. (So if you are watching this, please don't say anything about later episodes?) You can see them on Hulu if you've missed them on TV, since it's on at 10:00e/9:00c on Sundays, which is a weird slot.

I was given the following info about the series, which now that I've seen a few eps, I feel is enough to lay out the premise, but doesn't ruin any reveals or anything.

Basically, Ron Livingston (from Office Space) is on a crew of astronauts in 2052 who are going on a single big 6-year mission to visit most of the planets in the solar system. There's some question about the past of him and the mission commander, who both were involved in a mission to Mars where people got killed, and were just alternates on this mission until the very last minute when 2 people were suddenly diagnosed with an extraordinarily rare disease and had to be replaced. And apparently something called "Beta" (no idea at this point who or what) is in mysterious control of the whole mission and all the people on it.

It's not like OMG GREAT! or anything. But it is a decent premise, most of the characters are interesting and generally likable with a few conflicts (internal and interpersonal) tossed in. The whole thing feels like it's put together rather intelligently, especially by making current stuff look futuristic using a small TV budget. Some things are handled well, some things are kind of obvious cheats. But it seems pretty solid, generally interesting, and I plan to keep watching.

I had heard nothing about this show, no promotion, no nothing, so I figured maybe someone else here might appreciate the heads-up. It's a good little late summer find.

Anyone else seen it? What do you think?