Because of the strike, which I support wholeheartedly, Winter TV will be interestingly scheduled. Here is one blogger who took the time to compile a list for you.

NOW LISTENING: Cops in the background – honey has the day off and is watching TV.

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For those of you who are television junkies like us (witness the Summer and Fall DVR lists), you probably get frustrated trying to keep track of when the hell your shows start up again. Look! I found an alphabetical list of start dates for every Fall show! Sweet! And, you’re welcome.

Where else to read my writing today:

Profy: Review of MX Play

Tags: Fall TV Schedule

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I’ve been meaning to write a whole post about what’s on my DVR this Summer for months. When I was watching the semi finals of some shows and the finale of some this week I realized I better get cracking – I’m late. So, better late than never, incontrovertible proof that I watch far too much television:

Reality Shows

Hell’s Kitchen (has ended): Who doesn’t love asshole chef Gordon Ramsey? If the recent finale of Hell’s Kitchen left you wanting more, don’t worry – he has a new show coming up in the Fall we can record, Kitchen Nightmares. And by the way, aren’t you glad Rock won out over that whiney nanny??

On The Lot: It’s Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher – you know what I mean), the ever obnoxious Gary Marshall and a rotating “guest judge” giving aspiring directors a shot at a job with DreamWorks. The finale is next week, so you may have to wait for next summer to see it, but it is highly worth it. The film makers create two minute movies using assigned themes each week, the panel critiques, then the audience votes. My favorite, Zach, left last week, so now I’m rooting for Will. Honey is rooting for Jason. I can’t root for Jason – he wears that retarded hat all the time. It’s distracting.

So You Think You Can Dance: Last year my favorite, Benji, won. This year, his sister Lacey is in the competition and I am rooting for her – she is excellent. The finale is tonight I believe. (I record it and won’t see it until later in the week, so don’t tell me who wins!) The reason this is on my DVR and Dancing With The Stars is not is because this show showcases real talent, real dancers and real choreographers and just means more.

Top Chef: I enjoy watching this show because of the chefs. They seem more “real” than the ones on Hell’s Kitchen (Seriously, still wondering how the whiny nanny with no cooking experience got on Hell’s Kitchen this year, folks.) and you get to see a lot more actual cooking, which appeals to the foodie in me.

Dramas

Saving Grace: I tried this one out because of Holly Hunter. I love Holly Hunter, she is a fantastic actress. I almost bailed after the first episode because of the overtly religious undertone of the show. My first thought was “On man, not another preachy 7th Heaven – Touched By an Angel crapfest.” In the end I came back and gave it a second chance and now it is on my DVR. It has a great ensemble cast, and once I started watching I found the religious nature of the show balanced by the struggle to accept the religious nature as true. Also as evidenced by the most recent episode, it is not afraid to fairly portray religious people as occasionally bat shit crazy and not right in the head, or to portray that even the most evil can find good. It’s interesting. So what brought me back for more viewing and helped me get hooked? The theme song, an original by Everlast.

John From Cincinnati: this show also has religious undertones. I think. Maybe. Ah, hell, who knows, this show is somehow both addictive and confusing as all get out. It has a phenomenal ensemble cast, including Rosanna Arquette, Luke Perry and Ed O’Neill (of Al Bundy fame), surfers, lawyers, crazy gay guys that see dead people, a harelip, vietnam vets, stoners, floating grandpas – it’s weird. “I don’t know Butchie, instead”

Side Order of Life: Jason Priestly also has his own show this year (must be a comeback year for the 90210 kids). I am not sure how I got suckered into this one. If I had to say whether Luke Perry’s or Jason Priestly’s show was better, I’d go with Perry. This is a nice show, and recording it helps fill the gaps on the nights when there is nothing else on. About a photo journalist who can’t seem to figure out what she wants in life, her ex (Priestly), her friend with cancer and her boss, it is a safe bet for a compromise watch or a gap filler.

State of Mind: Starring Lily Taylor of Six Feet Under fame (I miss that show so much), State of Mind follows the psychologists, psychiatrists and lawyer in a connecticut practice as they display their own neuroses while treating their patients. It’s pretty good so far, though I could do without the dream analysis at the beginning of each show.

Rescue Me: Denis Leary. ‘Nuff said. No, seriously, we’ve watched this show about New York firemen from the beginning and it is truly a stellar show. It has had a long run, with no sign of plot weakness, so hopefully it will continue to rock my DVR into next Summer. The most shaky story line so far has been this year’s baby plot, and for a show that’s been on this long to have only had one shaky story line that’s saying a lot.

Weeds: How are you not watching Weeds?? It is kind of an intermediate show, starting now and lasting partially through the Fall season. It has Mary-Louise Parker. It has Kevin Nealon. It has pot. It has wit. It has small town politics. It has rival gangs. Shoot, the whole show is based on the premise that a widowed mom in need of cash would grow the best hydro in town and take over the territory – how can you lose? In it’s third season, it looks like it is here to stay for a while.

Californication: David Duchovny is finally back on screen with the new series Californication. He plays a one hit wonder author named Hank Moody. I actually haven’t watched the pilot episode from Sunday yet, so Ill come back and change this when I do. This is another intermediate show falling between the end of Summer and the beginning of Fall.

Comedies

I don’t have any new comedies on DVR this Summer. To fill the gap I am recording ‘Til Death reruns, but that will stop once Fall rolls around. Why aren’t there many good sitcoms anymore? Is the market for lightness and humor just dead?

Booted From The DVR List

Don’t Forget The Lyrics: The new Wayne Brady show featuring karaoke singers vying for a million dollars got on the DVR list because I think Wayne Brady is hysterical. It came off the DVR list because he just couldn’t be hysterical enough to make up for the bad singers, and the good voices were too few and far between. It’s one thing to listen to an American Idol bad audition for 30 seconds,, and entirely different to have to listen to one for 30 minutes. Yikes. I’d recommend skipping this one unless you have ears of steel

Damages: This show had great promise with an all star cast featuring Glen Close. I couldn’t stand it. At all. Not only was it convoluted (and not in the good Lost and Heroes kind of way), it was annoying. It’s off the list.

These Would Totally Be On DVR List If The Network Could Figure Out to Mark Them As New Once In A While

Ice Road Truckers, Dirty Jobs, Mythbusters, Deadliest Catch, The Daily Show, Colbert Report, What Not To Wear. What do they have in common? Because the network they are on hasn’t figured out that only ONE show per week should be marked as “new” and the rest as “repeat” or “rerun”, we can’t DVR them. When you try to DVR “new episodes” or a “season pass” of these, you get a full DVR with 19 copies of the same shows, same episodes. And good luck if they run a marathon, in which ALL the episodes should be marked as old – you get 72 hours of the same show, and another full DVR.

The theme from Saving Grace by Everlast:

Tags: Everlast, summer television, tivo, dvr, saving grace, holly hunter, weeds, david duchovny

Technorati Tags: Everlast, summer television, tivo, dvr, saving grace, holly hunter, weeds, david duchovny

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We’re gonna have a TV Party tonight, alright!
We’re gonna have a TV party tonight, alright!

(All right, enough with the Black Flag already)

I haven’t had a television party since the days of Melrose Place. I used to have a bunch of friends over to watch it each week, mostly guy friends of mine that didn’t want to be caught dead having a Melrose Place addiction. They had a rep to protect, you know. Regardless, we’d kick it at my place a few blocks off the beach on Casitas St in Santa Barbara and watch bad TV, drink a lot of Guinness (aka Vitamin G), eat pizza and play darts during commercials. It was awesome.

A bunch of our friends here watch Heroes. We finally decided to try having Heroes parties here like I used to have back in the day with Melrose Place. It was a lot of fun to have people over, but it wasn’t quite the same. Why? Because of TiVo. In the days of Melrose Place, there was no TiVo. We all had fun, but we also had to come together between commercials and actually watch the show. Not so with TiVo.

With the DVR technology, the well meaning, usually fun but terminally rude person (every party has one, right?) has no reason to Stop. Talking. Already. So he yammered on all night long, continually causing us to have to hit pause or rewind. It was pretty irritating – I want to have fun, but I also want to see the damn show already! Normally I’d just watch the show over him and so would everyone else – but he is one of those who just gets louder when he is being ignored. Sigh. His wife was pretty annoyed too, so she may “have a little talk” with him. If so, we’ll try it again next week. If not, no big deal – we’ll watch Heroes anyway.

Anyone else stuck on Heroes? I have a few shows on my DVR top priority list. Right now they are: Heroes, House MD, Lost and The Dresden Files. What are yours? I must say I’m happy so many plot holes got filled last night on Heroes. Finally, we discover unequivocally that Claire’s adopted dad is not the total scum bag we thought he might be. Lost dropped a few points on the priority list this season – they have been stringing out the unresolved plot lines on that show for far too long, in my opinion. Last week helped a little, but they have a long way to go.

Now Listening: The Clash London Calling

Tags: heroes lost house md dresden file tv party

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As a long time KISS fan (come on, who isn’t at least a closet KISS fan?), I was excited to watch Gene Simmons: Family Jewels this week. The DVR was set so I could watch it the next day, and I blissfully watched Hell’s Kitchen hoping Virginia got her comeuppance for being such a backstabbing, weasely, greasy flirt (hellooo, newlywed?) and terrible line cook (she didn’t). Fast forward to the next day. I go down and decide to watch Family Jewels with my first few cups of coffee.

What a joke! I think I was expecting more from this show than The Osbournes, mainly because Gene Simmons is much more coherent than Ozzy, much smarter (Gene speaks several languages and holds a degree in education, among other things), and also has a much, much (much) sexier and more “normal seeming” family. Wrong! The most entertaining thing about this show were his kids. His son has a great sense of humor, and his daughter kept making comments the whole time that indicate she has definitely learned from her parents’ mistakes and doesn’t plan to go down that road.

Gene seems to operate in a mid-life crisis, aging rocker fog. His significant other of 23 years is Shannon Tweed, former Playmate of the Year. His children are 13 and 17 years old, and the family dog is actually pretty well behaved for a rock and roll household dog. One episode dealt with his wife’s birthday (there were two half hour episodes back to back). The show opens with Gene saying they’ve had 23 years of blissful “un” marriage, and readying himself to launch into what was obviously a familiar monolog on the subject, when Shannon starts shaking her head and adding comments like ‘he’s had this blissful “un” marriage, I want to get married. What kind of loser isn’t married after 23 years?’. After that we at first think Gene is being involved and nice, wanting to plan a surprise party for her. Soon it turns out that requires a level of involvement with his family that he can’t muster up, so the kids take over.

While they are planning a surprise party for their mom, and their mom is running the house and working on her own thing, Gene is… wandering the streets and bars of Los Angeles and then Vegas nightlife alone, drooling over women barely older than his kids and playing the Big Rocker role to the hilt. Generally, looking like a moron. After he attends a stranger’s wedding in Vegas, the family decides to play a practical joke on him and make the party more about him and his fear of committment by staging a wedding.

To divert his attention while they set this extravagant practical joke up, Shannon tells him she’d like him to “be her for a day” for her birthday. Sounds simple enough, right? She gives him a list of her daily tasks (laundry, driving the kids around, walking the dog, normal mom stuff) and goes on her merry way, with him bitching behind her the whole time about working around the house. Sadly, hilarity never ensues. The rest of the show is as boring as this recap has been. The practical joke falls flat, and gives Gene yet another opportunity to bash marriage and complain and talk about how he is “rock and roll”.

This show gets a big, fat YAWN so far from me. I’ll probably watch one more half hour episode in case the first two were just the “adjustment” phase, but it doesn’t look like I’ll add this to my normal DVR recording list. At least when Ozzy was a moron you knew his brain was possibly too fried to know the difference anymore. What’s your excuse, Gene?

Now Listening: George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic The Best of: 1976 – 1981

Tags: Gene Simmons Family Jewels Shannon Tweed

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Listening to an interview with Piers Morgan (one of the judges on the new NBC show America’s Got Talent) on the radio today introduced me to the phrase “trainwreck television” -
Piers stated that Americans love “trainwreck TV”. I think he’s absolutely right. Until recently, I never would have put myself into the trainwreck television watcher category. Old standby pseudo-reality shows with boring formats like Survivor, Big Brother, Amazing Race, Real World and the like just never struck a chord with me. However, it seems if you put pseudo reality in the right format, my book-loving self gets hooked like everybody else. Thank goodness for TiVo or I’d never be able to watch the normal television I love plus these shows!

What trainwrecks am I currently watching? Talent trainwrecks. I have been hooked by American Idol since day one. Add in So You Think You Can Dance and America’s Got Talent and my weekly dreck roster is complete. I am also watching Hells Kitchen, in spite of not liking it last season, because a friend of mine from my wasted youth is on it (Go Sara!). My favorite part of American Idol is, of course, the auditions phase. I’m actually only half enjoying the auditions phase of America’s Got Talent (how many drag queens and bad jugglers can you stand, anyway?), though I loved the auditions for So You Think You Can Dance – the street dancers are consistently amazing to watch, even if they don’t make it through.

What is it about watching people try, fail, try again, and perhaps succeed that has Americans hooked? Are we living vicariously through total strangers? Are we so busy we have to rely on others to fulfill our secret dreams and desires (to have talent, to have money, to have fame, to have)? Or is it so much less complicated – do we simply want to be entertained at any cost?

Weigh in people – I want to know what you all think (and also what trainwrecks you watch).

Now Listening: The Cure Disintegration

Technorati Tags: American Idol America’s Got Talent So You Think You Can Dance Hell’s Kitchen

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