Friday, September 25, 2009

Smallville, Dollhouse, FlashForward, Heroes, HIMYM, Big Bang Theory, Survivor, & More - September 25, 2009

Smallville premiered tonight and I really enjoyed the setup for this season. The season premiere picked up three weeks after the events of the season eight finale. As talked about at Comic-Con, Clark’s ability to fly was discussed immediately between him and Jor-El. Clark asked why he wasn’t able to fly as Kara does but was told that he has the ability but just hasn’t done away enough with his human side. We also saw Clark with a much different look including a cape (which looked awesome in that rooftop shot by the way) and seeing him leaving his trademark symbol everywhere. Chloe continued to battle with Clark over his human side pleading with him to use the time traveling ring to go back and save Jimmy. She mentioned how she had given up so much of things in her life for him and needed his help in return. Nice line as a comeback when he said how the last time that he tried to change destiny, he lost his father. Hard to argue against that. I do like Chloe’s point though too cause she has given up so much for him. Chloe said that she had been searching for Clark for three weeks and he had been nowhere to be found. Once Lois returned, he was suddenly back on the radar. Speaking of Lois, she returned from the future at the beginning of the episode but brought a not so friendly foe with her. She went to Oliver for help in battling her but Clark showed up to save the day. This was what the woman wanted though was for Clark to show up. She had Clark’s watch that was from one year in the future where she said that she was there to stop him from the bad that he does in the future. The battle has her being killed….until we see her again later in Zod’s army. Yep, Zod has built his army and Tess was there to witness it. Zod was questioned by several people with him on the answers that he wasn’t giving them to their questions. How about the visions we got from Lois at the end of the episode? Very interesting. Enjoyed the premiere.

That gets us to my other anticipated season premiere of tonight, season two of Dollhouse. I should point out that I watched the unaired episode of season one called “Epitaph One” earlier today. WOW is all that can be said. That was an incredible episode!!!!! It was an awesome episode based in the future with a lot of cool twists. I love that they are giving Amy Acker more to do. She is doing an incredible job. I’m talking about in the unaired episode and also in tonight’s season premiere. Plus, Felicia Day is great in it too in her guest starring role. Anyway, if you haven’t seen the unaired episode that would be the season one finale, do yourself a favor and watch it. $1.99 on iTunes. Worth every bit of it. So, what about season two tonight? Fun premiere. I loved the stuff that they did with Dr. Saunders/Whiskey where she is realizing what is going on. I love Amy Acker. She is such a great actress and the scenes with her and Topher were great. Topher is starting to break down over everything that is going on. So, Ballard is now Echo’s handler. That seemed like a no brainer to me to where the story will have to go. Great to see Alexis Denisof get his series debut even though it was short on this episode. Yeah, I know I’m just hitting on a few points but this was a fun episode and I’m so happy that this show is back.

More great news from the Whedonverse this week as Dr. Horrible took home an Emmy for Outstanding Special Class – Short-Format Live-Action Entertainment Program. Big congrats to all the cast and crew!! Well deserved!!

Last night’s Survivor. Well, I figured it would be based around Russell some more. However, Ben stepped up to get the most attention on this episode. Ben has been doing a lot of talking and getting on the nerves of his tribe. The immunity challenge was also very physical and he was thrown out of it for delivering a cheap shot to the leg. Yes, the only person ever in Survivor history to be kicked out of a challenge. He proceeded to use a machete all night long pounding on things while others were trying to sleep. Then, he got into a verbal exchange back in camp with another person. This person drew probably the second most attention on this episode and this was Yasmin. With Galu winning the challenge, Russell as leader was able to send one of his tribe back to the Foa Foa tribe to observe them including going with them to tribal council. Yasmin was sent over there. What did she do? Well, she basically criticized them the second that she got there for what they were doing wrong and confronted Ben for what he did in the challenge. All I was thinking was what are you doing Yasmin? The odds are that the tribes are going to be switched up very soon based on previous seasons and you’ve gotten on the nerves of EVERYBODY on the other tribe. Just did not understand that at all. Russell did make big news in this episode by finding the hidden immunity idol. I need to add that he found it without even having a clue. NO CLUE HAD BEEN GIVEN OUT YET!!! LOL. He just decided to look for it at camp and found it. Wow. That was amazing. He did confide to Jaison that he had the idol. One tribe member was removed from the game. Mike was forced out of the game after the immunity challenge after he had such a rough time of it. His blood pressure was up and down and the medics said that he couldn’t stay out there. He needed to be evaluated more for his safety so he was pulled from the game. Galu won the immunity challenge which meant that Foa Foa was going to lose one more tribe member. Three in just a few days. Betsy was voted out after getting seven votes to only one vote for Ben.

I was very happy to have my CBS comedies back this past Monday night with The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother. I thought both were very good. How I Met Your Mother led off the night with the episode revolving around two things, Barney and Robin defining their relationship and then Ted's first day as a professor. Barney and Robin refused to define it but got locked in the bedroom by Lily who wouldn't let them out until they wrote on a piece of paper an acceptable answer on what they were and slide it under the door. Oh, it wasn't just Lily. We had a whip snapping Marshall outside as well. Indiana Jones tie in with the whip and it was funny. How did Ted do? Well, he ended up in the wrong room and taught architecture to economic students for a while. It was funny. We still got the clue that the woman that he ends up with was in that very classroom. No clue on who yet though. On a side note, I thought Barney's comparison of dating women and comparing it to the the three rules of Gremlins was hilarious!!! It is nice dialogue touches like that with this show that make it so successful. The Big Bang Theory had the guys returning from their Alaska adventure. Sheldon's experiment didn't go near as well as he thought after he learned that the guys sabotaged his experiment because he was driving them crazy. His learning of this and the disappointment that followed got in the way of the big moment that we were all waiting on, Penny and Leonard getting together. Upon knocking on her door to say they were back, she immediately kissed him. Every time that they began to kiss, Sheldon would show up. It was all very funny. I was thinking that they should just go and lock the door to Penny's apartment and then roam to another room to stop the noise of his knocking on the door. LOL. We did get the moment at the end with them both agreeing that it was.....weird. Really fun premiere of the season three premiere.

The Big Bang Theory did very well on its first outing this season drawing its highest audience ever. I'm so glad to see people finding the show as I've been pushing it for a LONG time now. My favorite comedy on TV.

On to my 90's retro night of programming. 90210 and Melrose Place. Too good episodes of both. Nothing really spectacular on either but I thought they were solid. Now, a very nice twist on Melrose is coming next week but I'll get to that in a minute. First, to 90210. The episode took place at a party on Teddy's yacht. Annie and Naomi continued their war. Annie went to Liam and they were going to go to Annie and tell the truth. Only thing was that Annie turned it all around saying that they had been together and had been making fun of Naomi the whole time. Yeah, Naomi didn't take that well. The war is still on. Liam then started looking at some blue prints of something when he returned home. Annie was also grounded over the picture incident by her parents. Harry and Debbie are disagreeing over how to handle it and that enters Kelly Taylor. Kelly and Harry talked about it with her saying that she thought that the pictures getting out was enough punishment for Annie. This stirred some trouble between Harry and Debbie. Dixon met a new girl who is much older than him but he hid from her the fact that he was in high school. Silver learned what was going on and played along with it when she met the girl. Silver is still taking Naomi's side on the whole Annie/Naomi war which is just kind of bizarre to me. Please bring back the old Silver. On to Melrose Place. Oh, that Michael Mancini. What is he up to now? He apparently has a folder on his computer about all the tenants at Melrose Place currently and back in the day including names such as Jane, Allison, Amanda, and Jo among others. We saw in a flashback where he helped Sydney fake her death. She later showed back up in his life where she had spent six years in jail for faking her death but pointed out that she never ratted Michael out for helping her. Well, they aren't going anywhere near where I thought they would with Violet . That character is following in the footsteps of her mom very well. She is shown wearing a dress of Sydney's which Sydney was wearing the night that Violet met her and applied to move in. Violet did go into the apartment, still covered in police tape, to get the dress as well. Lauren tried to get a job as an intern for Michael. Her tuition payment problem came up and it appeared that he wouldn't take her seriously. She mentioned some news about seeing his son, David, in Michael's office. This leads to Michael and David playing some mind games back and forth. Lauren did eventually get the job which obviously had to do with the news that she knew on David. Problems between Jonah and Riley. Jonah was upset that Riley had not told anyone of their engagement. Ella did get Jonah a job at producing the new Boomkat music video. Things went well after Jonah took it over but then the original director put his name on the finished product with Ella unable to do anything about it. The tease next week shows a new landlord, a certain Jane Mancini. Oh yes. This is going to be fun.

Heroes. Ok, the season four premiere of Heroes was a step up for me from last season. I like that the show has started to push back toward season one with them back in the real world instead of it all being about who is out to get them. That is coming of course but I like that there is basic stuff going on with Peter working at the hospital and Claire being in college. Just simple things. Claire’s roommate being killed off immediately had me flashing back to season four of Buffy when I thought that annoying roommate would be sticking around longer. The bigger story will be the new college friend of Claire’s. Then, we have Hiro who is “dying” as his freezing time has caught up to him. Now, he is changing the future after he went back to the carnival causing Ando and Hiro’s sister to now be in love. Tracy is back. Sylar is doing some major messing with Parkman and it was HILARIOUS stuff. I loved their scenes together. Parkman was the one that changed Sylar and Nathan so now Parkman is the only one that can see Sylar. Anyway, this was a major step up for me from last season. I’m just hoping that things stay this way.

The new season of The Amazing Race premieres this Sunday night on CBS.

I mentioned last week that I had watched the special 18 minute preview of FlashForward so I was looking forward to seeing the rest of the episode this week on ABC. Solid premiere and I’m interested to see where things go. If you aren’t familiar with it, everyone in the world blacks out for exactly 2 minutes and 17 seconds. While they are blacked out, everyone gets a vision of their future. From what was seen in the first episode, everyone’s vision apparently is from April 29, 2010. The opening segment was very Lost like with the first episode with blowing things up. When they blew up the semi, I thought there goes the plane just as it exploded during the chaos on the beach. As you can expect, things are crazy after the black out. What we learn later is some of the visions that people saw. Everything from the people involved in the investigation being hunted down for what they had learned, a father seeing his daughter alive that he thought was killed in Afghanistan, a woman having a sonogram done when she isn’t pregnant or doesn’t even have a boyfriend, a wife seeing herself happily with another man, or something as simple as seeing sports headlines in the newspaper. However, not everyone got a vision. One guy is incredibly freaked out cause he didn’t see anything!! So, he’s wondering if he’s even alive in six months. The investigation turns to security cameras where it is shown that there is one person walking around a baseball stadium in Detroit during the blackout. There is clue number one on what is happening. How is this person avoiding it all? Am I the only one that keeps wanting to know what that bad dream was that the little girl had? Especially when she wakes up and says “there are no more good days”!! Anyway, I enjoyed the premiere and will keep checking it out for a bit to see how it goes.

ABC has to be thrilled with the ratings for FlashForward. This became the first regular TV series to beat Survivor in the 18-49 demographic since Friends in 2004.

Movie box office numbers for last weekend. 1. Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs - $30.3 million. 2. The Informant! - $10.4 million. 3. Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself - $9.8 million. 4. Love Happens - $8 million. 5. Jennifer’s Body - $6.8 million. 6. 9 - $5.5 million. 7. Inglourious Ba******* - $3.8 million. 8. All About Steve - $3.3 million. 9. Sorority Row - $2.4 million. 10. The Final Destination - $2.3 million.

Carrie Underwood's new single, Cowboy Casanova, is now available to download over at iTunes. It is doing very well so far. So well that it is the highest climbing song of hers to date.

The fall season has already seen its first cancellation. After just two episodes, The CW has cancelled The Beautiful Life. I can’t say that I’m surprised as it almost felt like the show was doomed before it premiered based on things that I have been reading in the last couple of weeks.

The Live With Regis and Kelly Relly Award winners will be announced next week on the show.

TV on DVD releases for Tuesday, September 29. C.S.I.: NY (Season Five), How I Met Your Mother (Season Four), Life On Mars (Full Series), The Patty Duke Show (Season One).

TV Line Of The Week: From Heroes. I laughed hard at this line.
“Hi, my name is Sylar. It’s been about six weeks or so since I’ve seen my body and I want it back.” Sylar to Parkman at Parkman’s counseling group meeting.

Twitter Update Of The Week: @Doc__Brown
“Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads.”

You Tube Video Of The Week: Dr. Horrible takes over The Emmys. Now, you knew that I was going to love this clip of Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, Felicia Day, and Simon Helberg. Great stuff!!


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

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