What’s on my PVR – Part 2

Returning Shows:

Dexter: Ah, how I love that this show is back. Opening episode was seriously awesome, and made me even angrier that Michael C. Hall was completely overlooked for the Emmy. I wasn’t sure how they were going to possibly follow the first season up with a further season, considering what happened, but now I see that while the first season was about him chasing another serial killer, in this season he will become the hunted. By his own sister, no less, while “helping” the force find him. Awesome.

Gossip Girl: Still love.

Bionic Woman: Halfway through ep 2, and I’m enjoying it still, but it’s not knocking my socks off.

Journeyman: After week 2, I’m a little worried this show is going to be a “who will Dan save this week?” show and won’t have enough of the present circumstance in there. What I liked the most is the conundrum between sticking with his wife and child in the present and wanting to go to Livia in the past. I hope they delve more into that.
**Peter Bjorn and John Watch: “Young Folks,” which I previously spotted in Gossip Girl and Dirty Sexy Money, ALSO played in the end moments of Journeyman. Come on, people… sure, it’s a great song, but there are other small indie bands that have a huge song that could be inspiring you.

America’s Next Top Model: Same old.

Kitchen Nightmares: This week’s was more like the first ep, unfortunately. Now that someone posted in my comments that last week’s was, indeed, the contentious episode the show is being sued over, I wonder if Fox just toned it way down, making it far more subtle and not so over-the-top. THEY SHOULD KEEP DOING THAT. It was the subtlety that makes the show work on the BBC. This week, they pretended to return 2 months later, but they didn’t really (I was so excited, and then…) All of the scenes they showed were from the final night, not 2 weeks later. To make it worse, they made it look like Mike the manager had a blowup during service, when in fact it was long after the restaurant had closed. Not sure if Fox thinks were stupid (correction: they do) but the owners tell him to leave, he goes outside, cut to edit of a full restaurant of people looking outside. Cut to Mike, standing outside waiting for them to make a decision, and he’s standing near the window, which is DARK with the curtains drawn and it’s long after closing. Duh. I think Martin from ep 2 just might have a case.

New shows:

Chuck:
Premise: Guy who works as a Nerds on Site person for a Staples-type store gets an email from a former roommate, now working as a spy, sending him all of the government secrets encoded in a series of weird images. The spy is killed, and the NSA and CIA are in a race to see who can find Chuck and put him to good use.
What I Liked: The show is hilarious. It has a wry humour about it that made me laugh out loud at parts (in one scene he goes to “LargeMart,” which is clearly a Costco, and when a spy begins chasing him throughout the store he runs up to an employee and asks her if she can find someone from security “or that guy who checks the receipts.” HA!!)
What I Didn’t Like: I can’t really think of anything I didn’t like about this. It’s bizarre and over-the-top, and in just the right parts.
People from my other shows: Jayne from Firefly; General Beckman made appearances on Buffy, Alias, and Angel.
Verdict: Chuck’s a keeper.

Moonlight:
Premise: If you’ve seen Angel and Forever Knight, you know the premise.
What I Didn’t Like: Geez… where to start? First of all, in the opening five minutes they drop every myth about vampires you can imagine. This guy can walk around during the day, it just gives him a headache (??) Holy water has no effect on him, nor does garlic, a cross or any religious symbol, and if you drive a wooden stake through his heart, he “gets better.” COME ON. The writers just tossed everything about vampires out the window because it makes their job easier. Unlike the writers on Angel, these ones don't have to worry about actually setting everything at night and making sure they're consistent, etc. And as if the premise of the show wasn’t Angel enough, between every scene they do an overhead shot of L.A. shot very quickly with the traffic sped up below… EXACTLY the same segues they used on Angel all the time. There’s a blond woman in the show who finally catches on that Mick’s a vampire… think Elizabeth Rohm in season 1 of Angel, without the attitude problem.
What I Liked: Jason Dohring was great; he was NOTHING like Logan, showing the guy’s actually got a lot of range. And the second half of the show was a lot better than the first.
People from my other shows: Logan from Veronica Mars; Hiatt from The Shield; I know there were some others but now they escape me.
Verdict: One more week, and then I’m dropping it. The fight between the two vampires at the end was pretty cool, and enough to bring me back, but I was SO ticked about them dropping the vampire myths it’ll take a lot to keep me.

Reaper:
Premise: A guy’s parents sold his soul to the devil before he was born, and now on his 21st birthday the devil’s come to collect, making him a bounty hunter, collecting people who’ve escaped from Hell.
What I Liked: Another really funny show, Sock has a very Kevin Smith sense of humour (Smith exec produces and directed first ep), and the cast is great. Also had moments that made me laugh out loud. In the second ep they chase a guy who can make lightning, and they dress from head to toe in rubber, causing Sock to worry aloud that they’re going to die “dressed like a bunch of condoms.”
What I Didn’t Like: Odd that Chuck and Reaper are two similar shows in the same season – two geeks who both work in big box stores and have things happen to them by people on the outside that sentence them to a life of doom. I honestly keep mixing up the two shows in my head.
People from my other shows: Chuck’s crush, Ali, is the illusionista from Heroes.
Verdict: Another keeper. Man… my poor PVR. Why so many good shows this year?!

Pushing Daisies:
Premise: A piemaker has discovered since he was a kid that if he touches a dead thing he can bring it back to life, but with a second touch he kills them again, permanently. A second catch: If he brings them back to life for longer than a minute, someone else drops dead to balance out the universe. He makes money on the side of pie business by finding out where reward money is offered, and going in to the dead people, touching them, asking who killed them, getting the info, and killing them again.
What I Liked: I LOVED this show. The night before I watched it, I was saying to my husband that despite this season having a bunch of great shows that I really don’t want to stop watching, there was no standout like Heroes or Friday Night Lights that I became completely emotionally invested in. And then I saw this one. Okay, I won't become "emotionally invested" in it, not like Friday Night Lights, but it's a keeper for sure. The colours are a little too bright, the sets too unrealistic, the music very Tim Burton/Bernard Herrmann, and it features a voiceover that sounds like a man reading a bedtime story. It’s perfect. In fact, the thing I could compare it to over anything else is a Tim Burton film, which I was saying to a friend of mine the other day. It’s like an outlandish fairy tale… about killing people for money. Lee Pace is great as Ned; actually the cast is fantastic overall. The humour is very funny (the waitress at the Pie Hole, the hilarious name of the restaurant, keeps mixing up words and says for years she thought masturbation was when you chewed your food slowly, hahahaha!), and yet it has a twinge of sadness about everything.
What I Didn’t Like: Only one nitpick: When he’s a little boy, his dog is hit by a car, and he touches the dog, who jumps back up and starts running. Unphased, the kid runs after him. Some time later, after touching flies and bugs, etc. his mother drops dead of an aneurysm. He touches her, and she’s fine. Then that night she kisses him goodnight and drops dead, and that’s when he realizes if he touches something twice, it dies again. My question is… we’re to believe he NEVER touched that dog again? I find that hard to believe. Just a small nitpick. And I’m not sure how it’ll continue; I just hope it doesn’t become a “dead person of the week” show.
People from my other shows: Locke’s mom from Lost.
Verdict: The best of the new shows. I’m praying it doesn’t get cancelled after 3 episodes. Then again, it’s reminiscent of Wonderfalls, so…

Aliens in America:
Premise: A guy who is a complete loser in school gets an exchange student, thinking he’ll get some swim team captain from Sweden who will make him totally cool, but when an equally nerdy kid from Pakistan shows up, he knows his loserdom just plummeted even further.
What I Liked: Three new comedies that are really funny! STOP. I can’t take another show… how am I going to decide what to drop? The mother in this one is especially great; she’s uber-aware of the giant L on her son’s forehead, and does everything to make him “cool,” but nothing works. When he ends up on the jock’s list of top 10 “bangable chicks,” I was howling. (But felt bad about it.)
What I didn’t Like: The scene at the airport where the boy shows up from Pakistan would have been funnier with that crazy music, if I hadn’t seen the movie Election 4,000 times and completely associated it with Reese Witherspoon. Again, stop with the music that is so readily identifiable with something else.
Verdict: I’m going to keep watching. Dammit. I need to get a bigger PVR.

Still on the PVR: The Tudors, Five Days, The War