Thursday, December 6, 2007

December 6, 2007 - Big Brother 9 Is Coming Soon, Heroes Finale, and More

Strike update. The WGA was presented a deal late last week which they were going to look over. However, later in the same night, they rejected the deal calling it a "bad deal". Both sides have been meeting all week since Tuesday. No real news coming out of it but the tone of the meetings seem to be better. It doesn't sound like they are close though on a deal but they are still talking. Talks are set to resume tomorrow. They're still meeting and negotiating so that makes me happy. Actually, it makes me content. I'll be happy when a deal is in place.

In other strike news, Jay Leno is going to pay his staff's salary for the time being due to the strike. Late night shows are taking a major ratings hit. Variety is reporting that The Tonight Show is down 40% in the 18-49 demographic from what it was a year ago. Conan is also down in ratings. Letterman is down 21%. The Daily Show is down 29% and Colbert Report is down 33%. Basically, they're down across the board which is expected.

CBS released their schedule for early 2008 and there are definite changes happening due to the ongoing strike. CBS has announced that Big Brother 9 will premiere on Tuesday, February 12th. Just as always, the show will air three times a week but one day is different than normal. Episodes will air Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Sundays. After a huge fan campaign to save it, Jericho returns for its second season on February 12th with a seven episode run. Survivor will return on February 7th. There has been a RUMOR going around for about a month now that this new edition of Survivor may be All Stars 2. We'll have to wait and see if that is indeed true. CBS also has some scripted shows set to return as New Adventures Of Old Christine will start its new season on January 28th. So, Big Brother is a go!! I have mixed feelings on this. I always love a new edition of Big Brother but it has been a successful summer show and this will be the first edition to take place during a different part of the year. I am just concerned about them over saturating Big Brother. My question is will Big Brother 10 be coming in July right behind Big Brother 9? Well, you know I'm in for the new season. Sign me up for the live feeds and suddenly my late winter is looking a lot more busy.

Movie box office numbers for last weekend. 1. Enchanted - $16.4 million. 2. This Christmas - $8.2 million. 3. Beowulf - $7.9 million. 4. Awake - $6 million. 5. Hitman - $5.8 million. 6. Fred Claus - $5.5 million. 7. August Rush - $5 million. 8. The Mist - $4.5 million. 9. Bee Movie - $4.4 million. 10. No Country - $4.3 million.

NBC sure did make some people nervous with the Heroes promo for this week's episode saying it is the "finale". Many people were concerned that the show was ending. I had a friend that called me and she was concerned that the show was ending for good cause of the "finale" promos. The show is not over FOR SURE. NBC just chose to word the promos very badly. The show is over until the strike is over. That is it for all the episodes that are completed. Lots of hype on this episode and it delivered. The promos focused on two heroes being killed off. I had predicted Maya as one and the way it looked early on, I thought I had called one of them. I couldn't come up with a good guess on the other one. Maya appears to have survived despite being shot. That character just doesn't do much for me. She believes some random guy, who admits that he's a murderer, over her brother. Her brother ends up killed and then she finally realizes what is going on with Sylar. Well, sorry that you're so dumb. LOL. The two that ended up in bad shape were Nikki who ended up being blown up in a building and then Nathan who was shot when holding a press conference with Peter and Parkman ready to expose some secrets. Peter was finally woken up on what Adam was trying to accomplish with releasing the virus. Have we seen the last of Adam? I'd say Hiro definitely got the best of him there. Will Adam be saved or can he even be saved? The Bennet's were reunited. Noah worked out a deal to get back to his family. Elle went to make her dad proud deciding to go get Sylar. She chased him off and saved Suresh and Molly. However, Sylar got his powers back at the end of the episode and that can't result in anything good for everyone. I am still calling that Elle is going to switch sides eventually. I was happy that at least we didn't get left on a major cliffhanger as everything was tied up pretty well for the time being despite what happened with Nikki and Nathan. Who knows when we'll get another new episode? Hopefully it will be sooner than later.

If anyone has Heroes withdrawal with the new season being put to a halt cause of the strike, here is an option that I have enjoyed so far. NBC.com has been posting episode commentaries with the cast and crew taking part in it. This is also a video commentary with us being able to watch the episode and the people doing the commentary. Very fun and a fun extra to have on the site. I'd love to somehow see these put on the DVD set in the future but I'm sure doing that would take up a lot of space on the set. Although, they could just take the audio from them and put them on the set. I made a list of all the commentaries that are currently available including who takes part in each one. Head over to the Heroes site on NBC.com to check it out.
Episode 211 Powerless - Commentary by Allan Arkush (executive producer) and music composers, Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin.
Episode 210 Truth & Consequences - Commentary by Adam Kane (episode director) and Stephen Tobolowsky (Bob).
Episode 209 Cautionary Tales - Commentary by Kristen Bell (Elle), Greg Yaitanes (episode director), and Ashley Crow (Sandra Bennet)
Episode 208 Four Months Ago - Commentary by Milo Ventimiglia (Peter Petrelli) and Greg Beeman (executive producer and episode director).
Episode 207 Out Of Time - Commentary by Daniel Attias (episode director) and Masi Oka (Hiro)

Smallville returns with a new episode next week.

Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers are going to be the halftime performers for this year's Super Bowl on February 3rd.

Monday Night Football on ESPN drew 17.5 million viewers which set the record for the most watched cable broadcast ever. The game barely defeated High School Musical 2 which had 17.2 million viewers earlier this year. The game peaked with 23.9 million viewers during the last 15 minutes of the game.

We're getting down the final episodes of this season's Survivor. Tonight, Erik was voted out. Todd has played a good game but the scenes from next week show that sides may be changed. I don't know how far that he'll get to the end but I am thinking that Courtney will make it to the final. Who is against her in the end may come down to whether the Todd/Amanda alliance holds up.

The new miniseries Tin Man that premiered this week on Sci-Fi channel got the best ratings ever for the network drawing in around 6.3 million viewers. The show is a new spin on the Wizard Of Oz story. I watched a little preview clip of it to see what it looked like but was just kind of indifferent to what I saw. I haven't heard a whole lot yet as far as reviews.

When I saw the previews for Knocked Up, it seemed like it could be a funny movie. For some people, it probably was. For me, I just didn't enjoy it at all. It was just too raunchy and strong language filled for me. I'm sure a lot of people enjoyed it but it just didn't do anything for me. Katherine Heigl plays Alison who works at E and just got a promotion of being moved in front of the camera to interview celebs. Her life changes however when her and her sister go out to a club one night and Alison meets Ben (played by Seth Rogan). The two have a one night fling but the two end up being connected forever when she finds out that she is pregnant. The two of them are from two completely different worlds and they have to work on adjusting to each other since they are having a baby together. I thought the acting was fine in it but the movie just isn't my kind of humor at all and I got drowned in not my kind of humor. I think I actually just laughed once and that was at the cussing tirade by Ryan Seacrest in his cameo in the movie. If I hadn't paid money to rent the movie, I probably would have turned it off halfway through. That was how much I wasn't liking the movie.

Saturday Night Live is set to air several "Best of" shows to fill time due to the strike. The Best Of Will Farrell will air this Saturday night. Others set to air in coming weeks are Best Of Chris Farley, Best Of 2006-2007, and a Best Of show that will revolve around the best commercial parodies that the show has done.

The Chicago Tribune did a poll of its readers recently asking them to vote on the worst TV show of all time. They have listed the top 25 voting results. The results are based on almost 5,000 responses.
1. "The Jerry Springer Show" 19.8%
2. "Cavemen" 15.6%
3. "Mama's Family" 7.3%
4. "Cop Rock" 6.9%
5. "Small Wonder" 6.6%
6. "Joanie Loves Chachi" 5.8%
7. "Barney & Friends" 5.3%
8. "Ernest Angley Hour" 4.0%
9. "Homeboys in Outer Space" 3.9%
10."My Mother the Car" 3.6%
11. XFL 3.4%
12. "Pink Lady and Jeff" 3.4%
13. "The Ropers" 2.8%
14."Manimal" 2.5%
15. "The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer" 1.5%
16. "B.J. and the Bear" 1.2%
17. "Mr. T. and Tina" 1.2%
18. "Petticoat Junction" 1.1%
19. "Beauty and the Beast" 1.0%
20. "Mr. Belvedere" 0.9%
21."Life With Lucy" 0.9%
22. "Turn-On" 0.6%
23. "You're in the Picture" 0.4%
24. "When Things Were Rotten" 0.4%
25. "The 100 Lives of Black Jack Savage 0.1%
When I first read about this list, my first thought was there are going to be a lot of shows that I watched on this list. Actually, there are very few. I watched Mama's family quite a bit as a kid but just can't get into it now whenever it is on in reruns. Call me lame but I liked Small Wonder. Not one of my favorite shows obviously but I used to watch it when it was on weekdays around 15 years or so ago.

Sheriff Sophia was in charge on this week's Kid Nation. To say the town was nervous about it was an understatement. The council left for a couple of days leaving her in charge. She ended up keeping the town in line and everyone seemed happy. I thought she did a very good job. She even had a nice bonding session with Taylor. The gold star went to Alex although there were several in the running for it. Zach went in and nominated himself for it. He got a laugh from Greg when Zach was giving his speech on why he should get it. The rest of the council wasn't happy at all about Greg laughing at him and Zach was actually in tears as he explained why he wanted the gold star. I've liked Zach quite a bit on this season but I had a problem with his crying about feeling disrespected by the council. My problem is that he was mad at people laughing at him. I seem to remember Zach laughing at the girls' crying a few episodes ago when they were crying about being homesick. Zach felt disrespected being laughed at when he was crying but he laughed at the girls' crying and made fun of them. I do think that Zach should get a gold star and there is only one left with there being others that deserve one as well. The Kid Nation season finale is this Wednesday on CBS.

NBC announced their lineup for early 2008 and they have a lot of unscripted TV set to air. The Monday lineup will change big time as Heroes, Chuck, and Journeyman will be done with new episodes. The replacement Monday night schedule will begin airing on January 7th which will be American Gladiators, Deal Or No Deal, and the return of Medium. Other shows on the schedule include 1 vs. 100,  Law & Order, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

ER just passed the 300 episode mark. That is an amazing accomplishment in this day of TV.

TV on DVD releases for Tuesday, December 11th.
Beverly Hills 90210 (Season Three), Big Love (Season Two), Dirt (Season One), Frasier (Season Ten), Gomer Pyle USMC (Season Three), Lost (Season Three: Unexplored Experience).

You Tube Video Of The Week: Want to see a sports video that makes you gasp to catch your breath? Glad he is ok!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF6azb6lAl4

Wishing all of you a great weekend!! Take care and God bless!!

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