New TV shows, Part II

Here's where I talk about all the sci fi/fantasy/paranormal shows I've watched so far this fall.

Reaper
Grade: A

I'm starting with this show because I liked it the best. You'd think a show about a boy whose parents sold his soul to the devil before he was born would be depressing, but Reaper is laugh-out-loud funny. It's the only new show I've watched this fall that made me forget all about the fact that I was watching the first episode of a new show and trying to decide if I liked it. Instead I got all caught up in the characters and what was going to happen to them. My favorite part of the show is Tyler Labine, who played Uncle Dave in Invasion a few years ago. He always plays jerks and always manages to make them completely lovable. I guess the rest of the cast is great, too, since I didn't notice their acting and instead just thought of them as being their characters. Here's hoping that future episodes are as funny as the first one was.

Chuck
Grade: A-

This show was not quite as perfect as Reaper in my book, but it was still quite enjoyable. The premise is much the same as Jake 2.0, but it seemed a bit faster and flashier than that show. Chuck is a computer specialist at a big electronics store, and he has had government secrets downloaded into his brain in a thoroughly unbelievable manner. Now he has to deal with the fallout from that while still living his normal life. There were some exciting moments and some gentle humor, but this was a classic "first episode" that set up the premise and didn't do much else, so I'm not exactly sure what to expect from future episodes.

Journeyman
Grade: B

I really, really wanted to like this show, because everyone was calling it the new Quantum Leap, and I loved that show. Well, I'm going to call it the anti-Quantum Leap. It takes everything from that classic and turns it on its head, and not in a good way. While our main character (whose name I can't remember and won't be bothered to look up) does leap into the past to help people, he does it in a very uncaring, mechanical way that would have appalled Sam Beckett. He seemed to see the people he helped as pawns to further his goal of getting back home and nothing more. I'm going to watch this for a while just because I'm so loyal to the genre and the memory of Quantum Leap, but unless it improves a lot, I don't expect to enjoy it.

Bionic Woman
Grade: B

This show was slick and sophisticated and ultimately hollow. You'd think that we'd feel something for a girl who was almost killed in a car crash and instead was re-engineered against her will, but I didn't. They just tried to cram too much into this hour, and I don't know what to expect from future episodes, but I don't think they'll be much fun.

Moonlight
Grade: B+

This is another show that I didn't expect much from, but it was surprisingly good in a low-key way. It's the story of a vampire who solves murders, and it reminded me a lot of The Dresden Files. Too bad it's on at the same time as Friday Night Lights, which starts next week. Still, I'm intrigued enough that I'm seriously considering taping it. We'll see.

New TV shows, Part I

If anybody is actually reading this, you probably thought I died! Well, I didn't, but I have been very busy with the new school year. But I've decided to come out of retirement now to post my thoughts on the new TV shows. Not that you can't find the same thing on about 70 million other blogs out there, but only at Snowie's Place can you get my expert opinion. ;)

In this post I'm going to talk about the non-sci fi or fantasy shows, and then I'll make another post just for the sci-fi, fantasy, and paranormal shows, since there are so many of them this year.

Back to You
Grade: B+

This is an old-school sitcom, so if you've liked those in the past, you'll probably like this one. It's set in a newsroom, bringing back memories of my favorite, The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The first couple of episodes have been just fine but nothing really wowed me about them. Then again, it usually takes sitcoms a little longer to get off the ground, since there's only so much story you can tell in half an hour. I'd keep watching this one if it wasn't at the same time as Pushing Daisies, which I expect to adore and which starts next week.

Gossip Girl
Grade: B

This series is based on the book series which has been popular with teenagers recently. I haven't read the books, so I don't know what the similarities and differences might be. All I know is that this isn't like any high school I went to! In fact, the only way I can watch this show with a straight face is by convincing myself that these characters are really in college. Only then do the absent parents, drinking in public, and adult spending habits make any modicum of sense. That being said, I enjoyed the first episode in an escapist sort of way, but the second episode failed to build on the strengths of the first. I'll probably watch once more just to make sure that nothing interesting starts happening, but if not, I might be watching Bionic Woman in this timeslot instead.

Cane
Grade: B

I'm required by law to like this series because it's about Latin Americans, right? (It's about a family of Cuban sugar growers in Florida, the Duques.) And I do like the Hispanic aspects, but they haven't been enough to draw me in. As far as plot goes, there's the usual family angst and an unsolved murder mystery from the past. It's all been done before, so after viewing the first episode I'm not sure if this one is going to hold my interest or not.

Dirty Sexy Money
Grade: B+

This series is very similar to Cane in a lot of ways, except that the central family is white and Episcopalian. The pilot didn't bowl me over, but I can see there are elements here that might be fun in the future. The members of the Darling family just seem more memorable than the Duque family, and it seems like the show will have a more light-hearted tone, the way Brothers and Sisters (which I've come to adore) has turned out. Still, it's a hard decision for me whether or not to keep watching, because of....

Life
Grade: B+

I didn't expect to like this, because it's gotten pretty bad reviews from the critics. I was planning to skip it entirely, but then I found out the pilot was available for viewing online. I watched it last Saturday morning and was surprisingly drawn in. It's about a police officer who has been wrongfully imprisoned for murder and now has been pardoned. He's back on the force and trying to solve murders using the unusual techniques he picked up in prison (where he avidly studied books on Zen buddhism.) I've always liked quirky detectives like Monk and Poirot, so I see potential here. On the other hand, it has a slightly darker tone than either of those shows, and I don't like dark murder mystery shows. I honestly don't know if I'll end up watching this or Dirty Sexy Money next week.

Big Shots
Grade: A-

I wasn't expecting to like this show either, because I heard it got very bad reviews. However, the New York Times gave it a good review, saying that it was a very rare thing: a satire on television. I watched it and thought it was pretty funny, although not perfect. I think that the bad reviews, which mostly said that the problems of the four main characters were too trivial to take seriously, missed the fact completely that the show is meant to be over-the-top and farcical. It seems like other people did as well, as the show got very bad ratings. I'm afraid it will probably be cancelled soon.

K-Ville
Grade: B-

I almost forgot that I'd watched this show last week, and I guess that tells you something. It's been billed as a dramatic look at life in New Orleans following Katrina, but it turned out to be a completely routine cop show. Great if you like that sort of thing, but I don't. Plus it's on at the same time as Heroes, so there's not really a contest.

Well, there you have it. My look at all the non-sci fi shows I've watched so far this fall. I'll be back later with the sci fi pilots, and then I guess in a few weeks I'll wrap it up with all the stragglers that are premiering late this year.

The end of the road

This post is my last official one for the Learning 2.0 program, and so I'm going to give you a list of things I learned.

1. It's a lot easier to write a blog than I thought. I was afraid of clamming up in front of a large audience, but I didn't, and I think I was able to find a fairly consistent voice. On the other hand....
2. It's a lot harder to get people to read and comment on your blog than I thought. I don't know who in the library has actually been reading this, but the comments have been few and far between. Even worse, I've tried to tell my friends outside of the library that I have a blog now that they could read, and the response has been a big yawn. My visions of wealth and fame as a celebrity blogger have not come to pass.
3. Not every technology is for everyone. Some people are just resistant to certain ideas, like me with the podcasts (see below). And I think some of my co-workers have the idea that they're being expected to love all 23 of these things. I don't really think that was the point of this exercise; instead it was just to familiarize ourselves with these concepts. I have a co-worker who still hates Facebook, but at least now he can give a convincing argument about his reasons for that opinion, and so the exercise was a success in my opinion.
4. RSS feeds are much cooler than I ever thought. I was resistant to that idea, but now I check my Bloglines account every morning, and it really does save me a lot of pointless surfing during the day.
5. People are surprisingly motivated by the chance to win prizes. I'll have to remember that next time a teach an English 151 class.
6. It's really easy to make a list in Blogger!

Podcasts

There sure are a lot of Doctor Who podcasts out there, or so I discovered from looking in the different podcast directories. My favorite one in terms of ease of use was Podcast Alley. It presented the results in a nice, compact list of titles, and they seemed to be ranked according to relevance. That being said, I have no interest in listening to any of the podcasts I discovered. I can't explain why, but I'm much more of a visual than auditory learner. I could sit on my sofa watching TV all day and not get bored, but try to get me to listen to a 15-minute non-musical radio program and my mind keeps wandering. For that reason, podcasts have never really been my thing, and I don't think that's going to change unless you know how to change the wiring of my brain!

About YouTube

Once there was only one copy of my video in the whole world. It lived on the old laptop that I let my ex-husband have after our divorce. And recently I said to him vaguely, "Maybe we should post it on YouTube one day," and next thing I knew he had done it and anybody in the whole wide world could see it! The good news is that it's now up there. The bad news is that it was already pretty heavily compressed, and then YouTube compressed it again when it was posted there, so now there are certain shots where it looks like I smeared Vaseline all over the lens. In other words, while YouTube is great for getting your material out there, it certainly does not serve an archival function!

My video

I discussed in an earlier post that I had made a video in library school that is now on YouTube. Instead of just telling you about it, why don't I let you look at it?

Farecast

The award-winning Web 2.0 application I chose to explore is Farecast, from the travel category. Farecast tries to look at current airfares and recent trends and predict if they will go up or down in the near future. This can be helpful to you when planning a trip. One drawback I see is that they only have a limited number of airports supported. I understand why this has to be, since mathematically you can get into a huge number of combinations very quickly if your number of choices is too big. And fortunately for us, Columbus is one of the supported airports. However, I couldn't find anyplace I really want to go on the list. I am considering convention travel to New Orleans, Salt Lake City, and Madison, WI next year, and none of those airports are supported. (I'm really surprised about New Orleans because it's a very popular destination.) So I made myself a few fake trips, one to New York- La Guardia (for some reason, JFK isn't even a supported airport) and one to Minneapolis, and it told me to buy now in both cases. I know that airfares are lower than they've been in a long time, so I think that is good advice, but on the other hand, I didn't need to go to a website to figure that out! I think this coudl be useful if you live in Los Angeles and want to go to other big places, but for a regular person I'm not sure how useful it is.