Category Archives: Television

January 20, 2007 · 10:27 pm

Cultural News Bytes

A Look at the news of Today in Short Form

Television

A little memo to the CW: I appreciate you renewing Veronica Mars, but I really wish you’d stop piling on the obstacles to the show getting a fourth season.

“Reality series Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll, in which nine women compete for a spot on the hit singing group, will air for eight weeks starting March 6, Tuesdays at 9 ET/PT. Veronica Mars, which now airs in that spot, will take a breather then return for five non-serialized episodes — a first for that series — to finish out the season.”

Now, we knew the hiatus would be happening, but the “non-serialized” part scares me. I think the show can work without a serial plot, but I’m going to look in the direction of Alias on this one. Its fourth season was designed to be less serial, and it suffered greatly for it. I really hope that they at least apply enough personal drama to make the episodes work individually, and it should be an interesting challenge, but it’s clear that the network is not entirely behind the show. They already cut the episode order to 20 from 22, and now they’re testing out to see if it’s the serial nature of the show that’s the problem. Let’s hope, whatever happens, it survives.

(Also of note: Worst. Reality. Show. Ever. And I have no idea how they think it’s going to survive out of the Gilmore Girls lead-in,)

Box Office Update

Wooo! Man, my first weekend taking a stab at box office predictions and I don’t do half bad.

Friday Box Office Estimates (c/o BoxOfficeMojo.com)

1. Stomp the Yard – $3.75 Million
2. Night at the Museum – $3.050 Million
3. The Hitcher – $2.8 Million
4. Dreamgirls – $2.25 Million
5. The Pursuit of Happyness – $1.93 Million

None of the major box officer predictors were putting Stomp the Yard in the #1 spot, so go me! The Hitcher just wasn’t resonating with audiences in my mind, and I felt that Stomp the Yard would follow the lead of films like ‘Step Up’ and continue to perform well over multiple weekends. My predictions will likely be a tad bit too high for The Hitcher, but my placement should be fine.

As far as limited releases go, Pan’s Labyrinth performed extremely well in limited release with $1.3 Million. I really need to get out and see that, especially since Meryl Streep liked it.

Video Games

Quick note on Wario Ware: Smooth Moves (Wii) that just came out this week. I spent some time with Lucas’ copy on Wednesday, and “beat” the game in about 4 hours.

I’m glad I didn’t buy it, in the end. I think it’s a whole lot of fun, contains some moments of brilliant game design, but there just isn’t enough here. I am hideously disappointed in multiplayer, also. They killed Survival: One miss and you’re out? What the hell is that? It kills any chance of casuals getting into the game any further, and even the Lifeline mode that allows everyone to play never gets as hectic and the “winner” is quite random.

Speaking of which, where the frack are my stats? Does Nintendo have something against competition here, if they’re seriously not letting us keep our stats of how often we win in multiplayer?

The single player was solid, definitely quiet ingenious (The Dancing is every bit as amazing as YouTube promised), but nothing that got my overly excited. But really, compared to MegaParty Games, there isn’t enough depth to multiplayer (Although Bungie Buddies is a lot of fun). You have to have people of comparable skill level for Bomb/Balloon/Survival to work, and that just isn’t possible in a party game.

A little underwhelmed overall, but it’s definitely something I’ll go back to for multiplayer when people are around and Lucas is willing to part with it. It represents a solid step towards solid Wiimote functions, and I think it is therefore a solid addition to the Wii Lineup.

However, to get back to that dancing video, let’s head to YouTube to check it out. You play as the dancer in the back, and you have to follow all of the dance moves involved. Yes, all of them. It is insanely fun. And totally ridiculous.

Thursday Night TV Club – January 18th, 2007

Thursday is clearly the biggest TV night of the week at this point; no three hours of primetime offers nearly as many worthy programs, and the variety is truly stunning. Starting in February you’ll have a dose of reality (“Survivor”), a pinch of drama (“Grey’s Anatomy”), some procedural seasoning (“CSI”), and a huge helping of comedy (“The Office”, “Scrubs”, “30 Rock”, and “Ugly Betty”). That’s a whole lot of TV, and sometime it’s even a little bit daunting. Despite this task, I want to try to take it on, and will try to highlight three of them every Thursday that features new programming.

The episodes I choose may not be the best ones, but rather the ones worth commenting on. For instance, no matter its quality, I would have commented on last night’s Scrubs Musical episode. Similarly, I will very rarely comment on something like CSI unless I happen to decide to watch it, as it doesn’t do much week-by-week. Therefore, I’ll try to mix things up, and avoid covering the same show every week. Sometimes, however, this might be difficult.

Last night was one of those nights, so let’s run down some honourable mentions first:

– First off, I’m squarely on Team Pam, but I feel bad for Karen on The Office. She clearly didn’t know what she was getting into, following Jim to Scranton, and it’s got to be tough when she’s battling off against a receptionist with little else to do. This week’s episode was a bit too over the top in terms of Andy’s behaviour, I’d say, but it remained humorous throughout, and I wish more Staples employees were like Dwight.

– Well, sorry Mr. O’Malley! I know I said yesterday I wanted your storyline on Grey’s Anatomy to end sometime soon, but I really didn’t mean for you to die on us. Everyone’s laundry has now been washed, hung out to dry and then taken off the line, so Grey’s get a bit of a fresh start at this point in its season. Should be interesting to see where they head from here; according to the previews, some Chief-succession drama. I’m all for naming Burke “Caesar” and Derek “Brutus”, btw…and lets face it, Caesar’s totally a homophobe, he’s gone extremely soon.

– I’ve been a bit disappointed in The OC’s fourth season lately; the entire French husband thing was a stopgap and nothing more, and it’s hard to believe that there is only 5 episodes left for them to wrap things up. The episode was fine, as most have been this season, but it’s missing the carefree attitude I enjoy most about the show, and its own episode-ending creepy character note (I’ll get to the other one in a second) was downright abysmal. Here’s hoping for a quick resolution and then some OC soul searching to lead into a proper finale.

And now, to read onto the big three: Continue reading →

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January 18, 2007 · 3:55 pm

A Lesson in Post-Superbowl Programming

So, one of the most coveted slots in television is the hour that follows the Super Bowl each year. (Full History of the slot on Wikipedia)It has been used in the past to launch shows into the ratings stratosphere; it has recently been used to launch Survivor: All Stars, perhaps the greatest episode of Alias ever created (“Phase One”), and last season’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy that fully established it as the phenomenon it now is. It’s a way for networks to emphasize new shows, or existing shows, and there are usually a lot of benefits behind it.

It was therefore no surprise when CBS chose to highlight Criminal Minds, probably the most important show on its network at the moment. Facing a challenge from American Idol (Which we’ll see the resuls of later today), and having succeeded at toppling Lost in total viewers numerous times in the fall, Criminal Minds has been a strong performer in a tough timeslot, and CBS wants to keep it that way.

Mind you, I can’t personally condone such an action. The show bores me, almost to death. Watching Mandy Patinkin (“The Princess Bride”‘s Inigo Montoya he is no longer) stand around and talk about serial killers isn’t interesting, or really even that dramatic. The show’s characters are lifeless, their killers never overly compelling. It’s the epitome of everything I dislike about the procedural drama, which is perhaps why I was kind of intrigued by the prospect of their Super Bowl episode. The writers knew their responsibility, and might well step up to the plate to provide something worth watching. Right? Right? Continue reading →

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