Welcome to a very special The Walking Dead edition of Bullet Sunday!
As I mentioned yesterday, when I travel for work I have to go a day early to be sure I arrive on-time. What I didn't mention is that I also stay an extra day later just in case my work time has to be moved. Like it did today. Instead of starting on the job this morning, I'm instead starting tomorrow morning... leaving me with a free day to do whatever. So after getting caught up on some other work, I decided to explore the beautiful rural Georgia countryside... which just so happens to be filled with locations from The Walking Dead comic book! I've been meaning to do this for a while, but work always comes first and I've never had the time.
• Map! Luckily for me (and every other fan of The Walking Dead comic), somebody has created a very cool Google Map overlay with updated information of location from the series (WARNING: MAP CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS!). This makes it easy to plan a trip to see some of the sights. I decided to focus on those around the Thomaston area where I'm staying...
I could have gone a bit further north, but many of those locations are private residences and the like, so I restrained myself to the more public locations.
• Woodbury! Introduced in issue 27 of The Walking Dead, Woodbury is a critical location where a lot of stuff goes down (for those watching the television series, this is a ways off). While the town in the comic book is quite a bit different than real-life Woodbury, it's still worth a visit. Seeing the actual place makes the comic come to life. Like many places I've seen in the area, the Woodbury Police Dept. was decked out for the holidays, which is kind of nice...
But the most interesting thing about Woodbury to me was to be found in front of the Woodbury Pharmacy...
Soda pop machines! (in the Pacific Northwest we say "pop" but I'm originally from California where it's "soda" so I usually merge the two... here in Georgia, everybody says "Coke" for most every soda pop type beverage). And it wasn't just any kind of soda pop they were selling... there was a lot of really cool flavors, some of which I have never heard of before, including "Grapico" and "Sunkist Peach"...
But the best part? The sodas were cheap! Fanta cans were 40¢! Pepsi product cans were 50¢! Bottles were just $1! I haven't seen it this inexpensive in a very long time. Interestingly enough, there was a steady stream of cars stopping at the pharmacy to use the soda pop vending machines... even though the pharmacy itself is closed on weekends. As I sat there drinking my peach and grape fizzy drinks, I saw some pretty interesting people show up for their non-Coke Coke fix.
Woodbury has a rather sad number of empty (abandoned?) buildings, some of which were very cool to photograph...
• Gay! As I headed to my next location, I stopped off in Gay, Georgia, home of the Cotton Pickin' Fair twice each year...
The city of Gay has a very small population, but they still have a Town Hall building...
• Concord. I had no intent of stopping along the way to my next destination, but as I passed through the small city of Concord, I saw something that changed my mind...
It's the Concord United Methodist Church facing off with the Concord Baptist Church at high noon! It was a bit strange how they were built not facing the main road... but instead facing each other. I'm sure there's a story there, but I can't guess what it might be...
• Zebulon! I remarked on Twitter that "Zebulon" sounds like a town that has been taken over by space aliens. Because, seriously, doesn't "Zebulon" sound like an alien overlord right out of Planetfall or something? Despite the rather odd name, the town itself is quite nice, with the beautiful Pike Co. Courthouse Square and charming shops. But I was not here for Zebulon, I was here for "The Prison"... AKA "West Central Prison"... AKA "West Central Pre-Release Center of the Georgia Department of Corrections"...
Introduced at the end of issue 12, "The Prison" is arguably one of the most important locations in the entire run of The Walking Dead so far (and is probably going to be introduced in the second season of the television show). The sheer volume of story that happens here dominates the first 50 issues of the comic, and to see it in person... even just from the outside... is kind of chill-inducing...
I drove next door to a sports park so I could see the location from the vantage point of "Hershel's Garden." Again, it's quite different from the prison in the comic, but seeing the location still adds atmosphere to the story...
That's it for The Walking Dead Bullets... but I've got more in an extended entry!
It's a blah blah blah kind of week. Thankfully it's Bullet Sunday with some good things to the rescue!
• Music! One of those shows that I wish I could quit, but can never seem to stop watching is Grey's Anatomy. They just keep doing things to keep it interesting, and the stories are (usually) pretty good. But the best thing about the show is the music, and I've lost count of the number of great songs I've found from watching Grey's. This week it was Mackintosh Braun (a band I had never heard of before) and their song Could it Be. Turns out the entire album is great, and now I'm a fan...
Well done Shonda Rhimes and the rest of the people responsible for Grey's Anatomy not sucking too badly. Now please fix Christina and move past the whole "hospital shooting" crap which has been lingering for far too long.
• Pooh! This caught be completely by surprise... Disney is coming out with a new Pooh movie on July 15, 2011 called (appropriately enough) Winnie the Pooh!...
Beautiful! Thank heavens they didn't feel the need to recreate the look of the series in 3-D or use computer animation or some other stupid shit like that. The Keane song is perfect, and just the icing on the cake. I hate seeing movies in theaters any more because people are assholes, but I'll make an exception for this.
• Veterans! Thanks once again to Applebee's for treating veterans to a free meal on Veteran's Day this week. It seems as though they were making money hand-over-fist from all the people who were there with veterans that were not veterans (like me!), so I can only hope that it's a win-win event for them.
• High! I've mentioned plenty of time that I have a paralyzing fear of heights, and always have to psych myself up when traveling because all the good touristy stuff seems to be up high. Recently I watched a television program about the "Grand Canyon SkyWalk" which goes beyond scary for somebody like me...
Photo from the official Grand Canyon Skywalk Site.
While searching for a photo on the internet which shows the glass floor, I came across this shot...
Shiiiiiiit! Photo from GloboTreks.
The GloboTreks article is called "7 of the Most Impressive Skywalks in the World", and I've only seen one of them in person: the Sears Tower "Ledge" in Chicago...
Yes, it's just as scary as you'd think it would be.
They might as well call this list "7 Places Guaranteed to Make Dave2 Crap His Pants"... because, damn... just look at some of these terrifying things. Of course, if I should ever visit any of these instruments of torture, I'd definitely force myself to experience them. I always do. But I'm sure my "experience" would consist of me crawling on my hands and knees while crying for my mommy. After crapping my pants. Because, damn...
• TV on DVD! Tonight I found out that one of those long-forgotten television shows I've been begging to come out on DVD, Palace Guard, actually DID get released on DVD back in July! Apparently all nine episodes are included on some kind of massive 10-disc retrospective called Prime Time Crime: The Stephen J. Cannell Collection. It seemed a total bargain at just $22, so I scraped together the money and ordered it immediately. I previously described the show thusly...
The best role of D.W. Moffett's versatile career, and a show that I find impossible to understand how it failed... The Palace Guard certainly seemed like a crowd pleaser, and was mindless fun in a way people usually respond to. PLOT: Moffett is a career jewel thief who is caught and imprisoned. As a part of his parole, he gets a job as a security expert in a megalith hotel chain. A Moonlighting-like twist is thrown in when he starts to fall for his boss (Marcy Walker) who pretends to despise him but, of course, is falling for him as well.
I can't wait to watch the show again and see if it holds up as well as I remember it. If only television studios would get off their asses and release some of my other favorites (even selling them on iTunes so they don't have to go to the expense of pressing DVDs would be great)...
Now it's back to blah blah blah...
Welcome to an ALL-REVIEW EDITION of Bullet Sunday!
• SIDEWALKS! I still haven't come down off the high I got from Matt and Kim's second album masterpiece, Grand, so when I heard they were dropping their third album, Sidewalks, I was skeptical. How could they possible come up with anything even near as awesome? Well, they're Matt and Kim, so how could it not be awesome? I love it, and have been listening to Sidewalks constantly. Here's a short video talking about the album with a sweet taste of the awesome first track...
The only song I don't much care for is Northeast, which deviates from the happy funtime sound that makes me love the band so much. The other nine tracks are gold, however, with my clear favorites being Block After Block, Cameras, AM/FM Sound, and Good for Great. My only criticism of Sidewalks would be that it seems over-produced compared to what's come before. The charm of Matt and Kim's music has always been the raw, unpolished, basement sound that lets their indie roots shine through. But everything here is polished so heavily that no rough edges show, and I'm not sure that's a good thing. Kim's wild, unapologetic brashness when banging on the drums is kinda... muted... this time around. And while the complexity they've layered into their latest songs adds a welcome maturity to their sound, I'd hate for them to eventually be buried by it.
SIDEWALKS RATING: B (Recommended).
• THE WALKING DEAD! Comic book adaptations for television have historically been hit-or-miss, with even the most successful translations feeling like something is lacking. So imagine my surprise when one of my favorite comic books ever, The Walking Dead, actually managed to elevate the source material so high that it exceeds my impossibly high expectations. In some ways, it's even better than the comic book upon which it's based...
Shocking, I know. But no more shocking than a comic book where no character is sacred and anybody can die at any minute. What's truly shocking is the production values on the series. AMC is putting some serious cash into all aspects of the program, and it shows. The special effects and location shooting are brilliant. The zombies are works of art and not the schlocky B-movie retreads I was expecting. And the acting is top-notch, with Andrew Lincoln's flawless performance as Rick Grimes adding a sense of danger and realism that's almost too good to be true...
Genius television on every level, and already renewed for a second season!
COMIC RATING: A+ (Highly Recommended).
TV SHOW RATING: A (Highly Recommended).
• EARTH! As a huge fan of The Daily Show, I was quick to snap up their humorous primer on all things USA called America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction. Even though The Daily Show is a comedy program, it still manages to have an intelligent discussion of news and politics between the funny. With America (The Book), they poke fun at the country by reducing our culture and history down to a ridiculous grade-school textbook filled with witty essays that illuminate while they amuse. It was a terrific book, which compelled me to pick up the follow-up tome, Earth (The Book): A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race...
It's reminiscent of America (The Book), but on a global scale. Except this time they dismissed with the essays and went with page after page of easy jokes and witty one-liners slapped on wacky infographics and amusing photos. While still funny and moderately insightful, it doesn't leave the reader with much to think about (which seems to be the point). So while I definitely enjoyed Earth (The Book) it was kind of a step-down from their previous effort.
AMERICA (THE BOOK) RATING: A (Highly Recommended).
EARTH (THE BOOK) RATING: B (Recommended).
• BLU-RAY COLLECTIONS! I've been opposed to wasting my money on re-purchasing videos on Blu-Ray that I already own on DVD unless there's a very good reason for doing so. Unfortunately, two new sets have dropped which left me with no choice, because they both contain some of my favorite films of all time PLUS very good reasons for buying them...
Back to the Future: 25th Anniversary Trilogy. I am convinced that all three of these films are some of the most brilliant and inventive movies to ever grace the silver screen... and it's all because of the details. The original Back to the Future not only had a great story, but showed the consequences of time travel with numerous small details that geeks like myself go crazy over (such as when Marty destroyed one of Old Man Peabody's trees in 1955, causing the "Twin Pines Mall" in 1985 to transform into "Lone Pine Mall"). Then we got Back to the Future II, which managed to create an all-new story WITHIN the original film all while giving us a fantastical look at the future. Sheer genius. Back to the Future III was a bit more mundane, trading the future for the Old West, but managed to wrap-up the trilogy in a way that was satisfying and respectful to those that came before. This new Blu-Ray set has an incredible transfer to hi-def that's a marked improvement over the old DVD versions. Despite having been filmed in the 80's, everything looks crisp and new, and there's tons of extras that any BTTF fan will love (some of which I have never seen before). An added bonus... digital copies of all three films is included, so you can transfer everything to your iPod, which is awesome. Two down-sides. 1) The packaging can make releasing the discs a real challenge. You pull down on the disc to unhook it, but sometimes it doesn't work like it should, and I worried that I'd snap the thing in half. 2) The menu system is FUCKING STUPID! Maybe it's just my player, but every damn time I view something, the menu won't come back and I have to eject the disc, then wait the five minutes it takes for the menu to load again. A serious flaw that drops my rating... I'll take functionality over design any day.
BACK TO THE FUTURE: 25TH ANNIVERSARY TRILOGY RATING: B+ (Highly Recommended).
Alien Anthology The issue here is picture quality. The Alien films are fairly dark, which is a real problem for DVD/TV. You can get some nasty compression artifacts and murky shadows that obliterate details and kill the spooky atmosphere that makes the movies work so well. Thankfully, the new Blu-Ray Hi-Def transfer is fantastic. The picture is probably better now than it ever was, which makes me wish they'd re-release the films in digital theaters. In any event, the original Ridley Scott Alien film was a masterpiece blend of science fiction and horror that can still scare the crap out of me even today. It was followed by Aliens, where James Cameron did the impossible by grafting a high-octane "space marine" action flick onto the original sci-fi/horror concept... and actually made it work. David Fincher's Alien3 was a disastrous disservice to the story from Aliens, but a pretty good film when looked at independently. Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Alien: Resurrection has some amazing visual sequences that are tied together by a rather weak story which revives Sigourney Weaver's deceased character in a way that never really worked for me. And even though I hated the freaky-ass mutant alien that provided the "villain" for the fourth installment, I think I enjoyed the film overall. Everything is brought together beautifully with a shitload of awesome extras that will take me days to get through. The packaging (again) is a bit odd (WTF-?), but workable. For any fan of any of the films, Alien Anthology is a must-have.
ALIEN ANTHOLOGY RATING: A (Highly Recommended).
And now I'm out of money, so that will have to be enough unabashed consumerism for the day.
I think I might have a problem.
I loathe Reality Television, but find myself watching it anyway. Well, selectively watching it. Most of it is total shit and filled with stupid drama I would never want in my own life... let alone to watch for entertainment. But there is gold to be found in the manure pile.
For me, it basically breaks down to four shows...
Okay then... one television program you do NOT see on my list is Hoarders, a show which focuses on the truly sick and sad world of "compulsive hoarders" (people who cannot throw anything away, and accumulate massive piles of crap and filth). The show has absolutely NO appeal to me, and the idea of watching scene after scene of freaky shit like this makes me want to vomit...
Until this past weekend when I realized I AM TOTALLY A HOARDER!
At least when it comes to old computers, electronics, and (especially) cables...
I would have taken a photo but, to be honest, I'm just too embarrassed.
But realizing you have a problem is the first step of recovery, so I threw out TWO HUGE GARBAGE BAGS worth of old cables. Some of them were easy to toss out... like old parallel printer cables and SCSI cables for which have no use, as I don't own any devices which use them any more. Others were more difficult... like USB and power cables which are perfectly good, but I have dozens (hundreds?) of them. The worst offenders were stereo RCA cables and phone line cables, which nearly filled an entire bag all their own. And yet, I have no idea how I got so many of them in the first place. I probably just got in the habit of grabbing them any time somebody had them left over or something, and they just piled up over the years.
The old computers and electronics, however, I can't bring myself to toss.
I have eleven old computers (mostly Atari brand) complete with peripherals that are just too awesome to be destroyed. Including an original Macintosh (still works!) and two Apple Newton models (still work!) and Atari 2600, ColecoVision, & Atari Lynx game systems (all working!)... among many others. Odds are, I will never seriously use them. But they are an important part of my computer and video game loving past, and I just can't bear to part with them. So back into storage they go.
So yes, I am a hoarder. Of a sort.
But it can't make me relate to the reality television show of the same name any easier, nor make me want to watch it.
Thank heavens. Isn't four of them enough?
It's bullets over broken promises on Bullet Sunday!
• Tweet! Did you know the incomparable Elizabeth Hurley is on Twitter? It's true! She tweets fairly regularly about all kinds of stuff... but mostly about being Elizabeth Hurley, which is reason enough to follow her...
No tweets yet on the burden of being the most beautiful woman on the planet, but give her time.
• Better! I saw this video on Blair's Corner this past Wednesday, and it won't leave my head. Of all the inspiring "It Gets Better" videos floating around, this one sums it all up beautifully...
How can anybody watch this and be okay with a society that fosters such senseless hatred? As councilman Joel Burns says, it's not just about gay kids... it's about any kid that gets bullied just for being different. Six years ago somebody wrote to me from a life of pain and non-stop harassment. It broke my heart then, and the recent rash of teen suicides has brought it all back again.
Things have to change. Things have to get better. But it's not going to happen magically. We have to work for it by rejecting hatred and intolerance wherever we find it, and creating a world that embraces compassion and understanding. Though not always. I am quickly losing my compassion and understand for people who use religion and politics as an excuse to enforce a culture where kids are driven to kill themselves. They can just go fuck themselves.
• Beaver! Even though Leave It To Beaver was before my time, I remember it very well from reruns. "June Cleaver" is an American institution, a national treasure, and the epitome of television moms...
So when I heard that Barbara Billingsly had died I was understandably upset. Oddly enough, it's not June Cleaver that I most remember her for...
Go cups cut out to da Big Man, Big Momma. We fallin' out now you got your boots on an have a ball.
Huh. Feels like Monday.
I spent the entire weekend trying to get caught up with work but failed miserably despite working day and night. I suppose this is a FAIL! I can feel good about. But not really. I DO feel good that I've reached TWO HUNDRED Bullet Sundays though...
• Negatory. I am still trying to decide if there is a triple negative or a quadruple negative in this here sentence: "I ain't not never seen no deer there this time of year." What's odd is that even though this sentence is a grammatical nightmare, if you turn off your brain it makes perfect sense. It's like the more negatives you pile up, the more emphatic the "no" is. I'll have to remember this the next time somebody asks if they can have one of my cookies.
• Icy. Two shows I love to hate to watch are Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers. I don't know why. Probably because real people in real danger makes for real entertainment!
Though they're both great television, I'm probably most attached to Ice Truckers because I'm hopelessly in love with trucker Lisa Kelly...
I got to meet Captain Sig Hansen (from Deadliest Catch) totally by accident when I was at Walt Disney World's Norway Pavilion at Epcot a couple years back. It was pretty cool. But it wasn't Lisa. (insert winky smile face here)
ANYWAY... tonight was not only the season finale of Ice Road Truckers, but the debut of Ice Road Truckers: DEADLIEST ROADS! Here was me throughout the entire show...
Because I am afraid of heights, and they were driving these rickety trucks on this insane crumbling one-lane road carved out of a mountain with a million foot drop on the side...
And it gets worse next episode. Insanity. But good entertainment (even though not every driver is going to make it). If you're not watching the two Ice Road Truckers shows, I highly recommend them. Assuming your sphincter muscles are strong enough and you can get over the giggles every time somebody talks about "dropping their load."
• Closet. Annnnd you just know... know... what's going to happen six months down the road...
We've seen it a hundred times. The people who are most vicious in attacking and condemning homosexuals are the ones who ultimately end up putting their penis in a place they advocate it doesn't belong. And this flaming ball of "heterosexual righteousness" is actually stalking a guy... specifically because the guy is gay! Bizarre. Oh well... I look forward to adding another self-hating cock-master to my growing collection of hypocrites. It's only a matter of time.
And now... back to work. I've got three days before I fly out again, and entirely too much to do before then...
And so Betty White was on Inside The Actors Studio tonight.
It's kind of odd seeing her relatively recent massive surge in popularity when I've been a huge fan of hers for as long as I can remember. I first saw her on game shows like Match Game, Pyramid, and (of course) various Password reruns and revivals. And while I didn't watch a lot of Mary Tyler Moore Show episodes, I (of course) remember her genius performances there. And then came appearances on everything from The Love Boat to Mama's Family... and (of course) The Golden Girls, where she (rightfully) became a huge star again.
From there, Betty gave me no shortage of reasons to remain a die-hard fan. Dozens of amazing guest appearances in just about everything... including a ballsy role in Lake Placid and her wicked turn as Catherine Piper on Boston Legal.
Now she's appearing everywhere, including her mind-boggling awesome guest-hosting gig on Saturday Night Live.
So what in the hell took James Lipton so long to finally get her on Inside the Actors Studio?
I have no idea. But it's about frickin' time.
Sadly, as Karl noted on Twitter, it was absurd that they cut the interview down to a mere one-hour show. Her career is so brilliant, varied, and long that TWO hours would barely scratch the surface. Yet they butchered it down to just one? Stupid. I mean, hey, it's Betty White... so the show was understandably fantastic. But it was a rushed superficial hack-job of an interview and James Lipton should be ashamed to air it. All I can hope is that eventually they release the full two-plus hours they recorded on iTunes or DVD or something.
Updating my New Television Season Scorecard... tonight was the premiere of No Ordinary Family...
Now, I've made no secret of my scathing hatred for the pile of shit television show Heroes which featured boring super-powered people rarely using their super-powers (unless they were lame-ass powers that didn't require special effects). Now, for reasons I cannot fathom, ABC has decided we can't live without a mash-up of Heroes and Modern Family by way of ripping off Pixar's The Incredibles. Along the way, they steal from comic books left and right (the "super-speed" wife has to eat huge quantities to maintain her metabolism, just like The Flash, for example). Not to mention a blatant rip-off of TV's Greatest American Hero ("instructions not included?"... SERIOUSLY?).
The result is an all-new show that we've already seen a dozen times before.
And while it doesn't 100% suck, it does mostly suck. Because there's nothing surprising enough... exciting enough... new enough... to draw me in. Hell, even the big fight scene at the end (well done as it was) ended up being a rip-off of Nightcrawler's invasion of The White House in one of those awful X-Men movies. Nothing in the show has any semblance of originality to me. I was
On the plus side, I do think the performances were pretty good. And I think they set themselves up for the possibility of doing something interesting with the show's background mythology (unlike shitty Heroes which failed miserably with theirs). So, despite my better judgement, I will be tuning in for a few more episodes just to see if they go anywhere I want to be. Final score? C-
It's time for Bullet Sundayyy! It's time for Bullet Sundayyy!
• Sharktopus! As a fan of stupid crappy horror movies, I was ecstatic when SyFy Channel (the queen of stupid crappy horror movies) announced SHARKTOPUS!!!
Well, the movie finally debuted last night, and I am happy to say that it was indeed so unbelievably stupid and crappy that it's raised bad television to an entirely new level of awesome. I can't wait for the Director's Cut Extended Special Edition Blu-Ray release!
• Elmo! Yes, it was a little odd that Katy Perry decided to wear a very low-cut dress so she could stick her boobs in Elmo's face for an appearance on Sesame Street. But Katy Perry is Katy Perry, so what can you do...
That being said, whoever it was at Children's Television Workshop (now called "Sesame Workshop"... the production company behind Sesame Street) who decided to leak the video on YouTube is a complete genius. Not only do they get a preview of the reaction that the clip will receive, but they get free publicity for the show with millions of YouTube hits. Well, to the surprise of NOBODY, people across the country lost their minds over the thought that children might be exposed to Katy's cleavage, so her appearance was canceled. Heaven only knows how these puritanical nutjobs react when taking their kids to a pool or the beach. As usual, the young children they are so desperate to protect probably wouldn't even understand they're looking at something "dirty" and it's the ADULT REACTION that MAKES it "dirty" and damages their kids, but whatever. I still think it was kind of cute.
• Beheaded. I received a comment while I was on vacation asking me if I had changed the DaveToons that rotate randomly across the tops of all Blogography pages. Apparently they hadn't seen their favorite header in a while, and wanted to know what happened. The answer is YES! I replaced all of the old "flat color" DaveToons with newer "shaded color" DaveToons a couple months ago. Thanks for noticing!
8 old ones were kept, 2 were updated, and 40 were replaced. If your favorite is gone, I'm sorry... maybe it will come back one day. But the good news is that all the old headers have been archived from the past five years so you can look at them whenever you like...
• TV Scorecard. For anybody who cares, I've put a quick rundown of the new shows for the 2010-2011 season with my score (based on their first episode) in an extended entry. For everybody else, I'll see you tomorrow when we're back to the daily grind...
Today as I was driving home from work, I was very nearly broadsided by somebody in a hurry to leave a parking lot.
As my life was flashing before my eyes, I was temporarily blinded by the awesomeness of all my earthly endeavors. Being blinded while driving caused my life to flash before my eyes... again... as I very nearly ran off the road into a bin of apples. Not the coolest way to die, but I do like apples so there's that.
It was nice I didn't die, because Betty White was guest-starring on Community tonight. AND SHE WAS TOTALLY AWESOME AS USUAL!
Of course, my Betty joy was short-lived once I had tuned into the two new shows of the evening...
S#*! My Dad Says. Truly, gut-wrenchingly awful. About as funny as having diarrhea while getting a root canal after totaling your car. So not-funny that I started laughing at the commercials because they were hilarious by comparison. I love William Shatner more than cantaloupe, but he is given nothing here worth anybody's time. His Priceline Negotiator commercials have more substance than this show. And are a hell of a lot funnier. How the bloody fuck did this show ever get greenlit?
Outsourced. This television show totally gutted a rather charming movie I liked of the same name... with absolutely no payoff. The film had an exotic feel of foreign lands and performances that drew you into the story. The television show has none of that and just feels petty, small, and even a little offensive. I don't like the lead character, hate the amateurish and unfunny digs on Indians and their culture, and everything just falls apart from there. When I see messes like this, I can't help but think of all the amazing shows which were canceled so that total shit like Outsourced has room to air. Even more tragic? Parks and Recreation was moved to mid-season so this show could have a time slot. Blergh.
So... the scorecard for this new television season so far is looking pretty grim. Only one show so far is in my "love it" column (Raising Hope), a mere handful in my "maybe" column (Undercovers, Lone Star, Running Wilde), a few in the "last chance" column (The Event, Hawaii Five-0, Better With You), and everything else in the "abort" column. With only a few shows left to debut, it's looking like slim pickings. After inevitable cancellations, I'll probably only be left with one or two shows to carry over.
Oh well... I watch entirely too much television anyway.
I hate new television season.
Because there's always one of those shows that you end up really liking that ends up getting canceled. This makes being a television fan kind of an abusive hobby to have. It doesn't help that a show's fate is determined by the American public at large... most of which have the attention span and interest level of an epileptic hummingbird on crack.
This season my early favorite show is the very funny Raising Hope...
The show is flawlessly cast and really well-written. This alone is grounds for its cancellation, but it's also kind of goofy and has a little white trash appeal which gives me hope it will stick around for a while...
But I'm not holding my breath.
I'm sure there's some shitty reality television show we can't live without that's looking for a time slot.
UPDATE: For those who missed the premiere, you can currently get the episode for FREE on iTunes. It's also available in its entirety at the FOX series website... but who knows for how long.
Atom Entries Feed Comments Feed
