So, if anyone's wondering what kind of TV I watch... I'm doing several posts on the contents of my DVR. So here's the regular-season network TV shows that are on my DVR:
Sunday: Once Upon a Time (ABC), Revenge (ABC). I don't actually watch either of these a lot - I don't have any way to catch up with the first half of season 2 of Once Upon a Time, and Revenge is my roommate's.
Monday: Bones (Fox), The Following (Fox). Long time Bones fan, but the show seems to be getting a bit boring, and The Following is just starting but looks promising.
Tuesday: Body of Proof (ABC). I like medical examiner shows, for some reason.
Wednesday: Arrow (CW), Law & Order: SVU (NBC), Criminal Minds (CBS), Supernatural (CW). Arrow is one of my new favorite shows, which I've blogged about before, and my DVR's priorities are set to record SVU and Criminal Minds if all three of the latter shows are on.
Thursday: The Big Bang Theory (CBS), Glee (Fox), Elementary (CBS). I don't keep up with Big Bang Theory very much, and I don't know why I still watch Glee but I kind of like watching it, and Elementary is another one of my favorites!
Friday: Grimm (NBC). This one is fun if still a bit monster-of-the-week, but the season 2 storyline is picking up quickly, and I still can't even get over the last screen before the (very long) midseason break, which read "To Be Continued... Sorry."
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Monday, January 28, 2013
Off-Topic: Hockey. *sigh*
Just in case any of you were wondering "Wow, is all you do with your time watching Teen Wolf and Ancient Aliens and blogging about them?" the answer is "No! I also watch many other TV shows, as well as LA Kings hockey, and CNN is always on in the background. Even when I'm watching Teen Wolf on my laptop.
Currently, the Kings' attempts at playing hockey are what's made me yell at the TV the most lately. I just don't really blog about this because this isn't a sports blog.
It's so depressing. Like, we won the Stanley Cup last spring. It was awesome! I was able to take a subway to downtown LA and watch the Cup be paraded down our street. I stood in line to get Dustin Brown's autograph on one of my Stanley Cup posters for my brother.
And then we were like "Yeah! We get to say we're the defending champions! Yay!" and then the hockey season was locked out, and we were all cursing Bettman's name, and breathed a small sigh of relief when finally the lockout ended and a shortened season was announced.
But then... what is this that they're doing on the ice out there?
Currently, the Kings' attempts at playing hockey are what's made me yell at the TV the most lately. I just don't really blog about this because this isn't a sports blog.
It's so depressing. Like, we won the Stanley Cup last spring. It was awesome! I was able to take a subway to downtown LA and watch the Cup be paraded down our street. I stood in line to get Dustin Brown's autograph on one of my Stanley Cup posters for my brother.
And then we were like "Yeah! We get to say we're the defending champions! Yay!" and then the hockey season was locked out, and we were all cursing Bettman's name, and breathed a small sigh of relief when finally the lockout ended and a shortened season was announced.
But then... what is this that they're doing on the ice out there?
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
New midseason TV!
Now that Fringe is over... OK, I still haven't gotten over Fringe, and there's now an empty Fringe-shaped space in my heart on Friday nights. OK, there haven't been any Friday nights yet, but there will be.
New shows that sound interesting are Continuum (Syfy), Defiance (Syfy), Cult (CW), and The Following (Fox). Then there's Zero Hour (ABC), which looks like it might be compatible with my Ancient Aliens (or Dan Brown or National Treasure) bingo cards.
First of all, the pilots of Cult and Zero Hour won't air for another month or so.
I saw the pilot of The Following last night, and unlike when I saw it at Comic-Con, I saw it from the start. It has Kevin Bacon, making the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon even easier now, and one Shawn Ashmore, the twin brother of Aaron Ashmore who I liked on Warehouse 13 (Oh, hey there's two of them! I can live with that ;-) Plot-wise, it so far seems like there's a non-zero number of characters who will, sooner or later, end up doing stupid things that will result in me yelling at the screen. Oh, and it's about this retired FBI agent who is apparently now consulting (something that retired FBI employees get asked to do both frequently and for good pay, in a rare glimpse of realism on television. It's less realistic that they get paid to consult on catching serial killers).
Defiance has Jaime Murray from Warehouse 13 (yep, I love that show) and also has a cool-looking MMO. Unfortunately, it does not have a cool-looking MMO that's compatible with Mac OS or Ubuntu Linux. Maybe the little things that are available On Demand will catch me up on what's going on? And there's this really neat website you can mouse around and check out. No, really. Sadly, we'll have to wait for April to see it. (And then it will be back-to-back with Warehouse 13. Yay!)
Also watched the pilot of Continuum, which is apparently Syfy's next entry in its (now) long and storied tradition of just straight-up importing stuff because Canadians are the only people actually making new scifi right now. Future cop winds up chasing down future terrorists in 2012 (really? Did they know they weren't even airing this until 2013?) but this seems like it'll raise a lot of interesting paradoxes about time travel and things, especially considering that Future Cop can't stop a present-day character from seeing glimpses into the future and knowing that they're going to be important and famous.
Slightly spoilery speculation for Continuum behind the cut...
New shows that sound interesting are Continuum (Syfy), Defiance (Syfy), Cult (CW), and The Following (Fox). Then there's Zero Hour (ABC), which looks like it might be compatible with my Ancient Aliens (or Dan Brown or National Treasure) bingo cards.
First of all, the pilots of Cult and Zero Hour won't air for another month or so.
I saw the pilot of The Following last night, and unlike when I saw it at Comic-Con, I saw it from the start. It has Kevin Bacon, making the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon even easier now, and one Shawn Ashmore, the twin brother of Aaron Ashmore who I liked on Warehouse 13 (Oh, hey there's two of them! I can live with that ;-) Plot-wise, it so far seems like there's a non-zero number of characters who will, sooner or later, end up doing stupid things that will result in me yelling at the screen. Oh, and it's about this retired FBI agent who is apparently now consulting (something that retired FBI employees get asked to do both frequently and for good pay, in a rare glimpse of realism on television. It's less realistic that they get paid to consult on catching serial killers).
Defiance has Jaime Murray from Warehouse 13 (yep, I love that show) and also has a cool-looking MMO. Unfortunately, it does not have a cool-looking MMO that's compatible with Mac OS or Ubuntu Linux. Maybe the little things that are available On Demand will catch me up on what's going on? And there's this really neat website you can mouse around and check out. No, really. Sadly, we'll have to wait for April to see it. (And then it will be back-to-back with Warehouse 13. Yay!)
Also watched the pilot of Continuum, which is apparently Syfy's next entry in its (now) long and storied tradition of just straight-up importing stuff because Canadians are the only people actually making new scifi right now. Future cop winds up chasing down future terrorists in 2012 (really? Did they know they weren't even airing this until 2013?) but this seems like it'll raise a lot of interesting paradoxes about time travel and things, especially considering that Future Cop can't stop a present-day character from seeing glimpses into the future and knowing that they're going to be important and famous.
Slightly spoilery speculation for Continuum behind the cut...
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Four Years, Four Months, Nine Days, and 100 Episodes
It started when I saw posters like this. The premise was something I naturally was interested in, as a long-time X-Files fan, the production team looked promising, and the gorgeous, gorgeous visuals pushed it to "I can not wait to watch this live" status.
It didn't disappoint. There were characters I loved, interesting and original concepts, and super amazing special effects. But we lived in fear of Fox pulling a repeat of Firefly, and moving the show to the Friday Night Death Slot and then cancelling it due to low ratings.
Then, Fox ordered the second half of its first season. It wasn't the most surprising thing in the world, but still not something I had counted on. This first season ended by introducing the other universe.
It was renewed, happily, for a second season. It seemed to have escaped the fate of Firefly. Characters died, and alternate universe versions of all the familiar characters were introduced.
Then it was renewed for a third season. A more overarching plot was coming into view, and more about the characters were revealed. More attention was paid to the tiny, tiny differences between the universes, and the "art piece" episodes were introduced. In the middle of this, our worst fears began to come true: Fox moved it to the Friday Night Death Slot.
Despite this, it was renewed for a fourth season. Due to a plot point, the entire of both universes was changed, creating slightly different versions of the characters in both universes, and the stories became more intense and high-stakes.
As ratings held steady but low, the fans mobilized and created a Twitter campaign in which we made an episode-specific hashtag to get trending during the show's airtime. Then, somehow, what was almost a miracle occurred: Fox began cooperating with the campaign leaders, putting the episode-specific hashtag in the corner of the screen rather than the typical "#Fringe" hashtag. It meant, importantly, that someone at Fox actually wanted to renew the show. As time dragged on, the showrunners even went so far as to film two separate endings to the season depending on which decision the network made.
Then, a mere two weeks before the season four finale, the show was renewed for a final thirteen-episode season. This season was set in a dystopian future, with older versions of some characters, more new characters, and a number of character deaths, along with the impending sense of tragedy when the show finally would end.
In the end, I watched every episode. I bought every DVD season, went to the Comic-Con and Wondercon panels, swapped people at SDCC for the gigantic Fringe backpacks both years I went, got a fedora from that final panel, participated in a (successful!) fan campaign, and made some amazing internet friends.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Ancient Aliens: TIME TRAVEL TIME! And NAZIS!
Alright, now that I've got that out of my way....
In the first 30 seconds you mentioned Hitler. Please tell me this isn't going to be about Hitler. Please.
"Could Einstein have accidentally helped the Nazis build a time machine?"Well, I guess it is going to feature Hitler....
I guess this week people watched "Let's Kill Hitler" and the Indiana Jones movies before producing this?
They're talking about Nazis potentially doing stuff in secret as if it's a question. Third Reich scientists carried out clandestine experiments on everything. Even - no, especially - implausible metaphysical type things. Are you seriously failing that badly at history that's only 80 years old? Oh, and "Super secret Nazi technology?" Thank you for those precise academic terms.
For what is probably the first time, and quite possibly the last, in this show's lifespan, it argues that an ostensible spaceship crash is actually not a spaceship crash. Because it's a Nazi time machine crash.
"...rituals of stargazing, believed to enable time travel." Well, if you take the Wilfred Mott approach, I guess stargazing maybe can help time travel?
Sirius is apparently where these aliens came from, because why else would people in multiple, separate ancient cultures be fascinated by the brightest star in the sky?
Nope, that actually doesn't look like a representation of a spiral galaxy. That is actually a single spiral, and that is a series of concentric circles. *facepalm*
Inaccurate visual of the day: A discussion of neutron spins accompanied by a clip of people in a lab lit solely by green light, pouring something that looks like liquid nitrogen into something else.
Oh, they actually used the word "Stargate". I HAVE WON ANCIENT ALIEN BINGO!
No, they're mentioning the LHC now... even better.
And they just used the word "god particle."
Oooh, and they're talking about aliens like the "Roswell" aliens. And how they look like how some people think humans might look in the future. Once again, some kind of wibbly wobbly timey wimey logic they're using here!
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