Yearly TV update!

What I'm watching that I wasn't watching last year, or I feel the need to tell you to watch again:

Agents of SHIELD (ABC, Tuesdays 8 PM): I LOVE THIS SHOW. Everyone's so shippable! And so pretty! And the MCU references! And the Marvel Comic references! And how it all ties into the movies and hints at the movies! And a Dollhouse reference! And Samuel L. Jackson cameos! EVERYTHING I WANTED AND HOPED FOR OUT OF THIS SHOW! (Except they haven't had a musical episode yet, and I expect this from the exact same production team that made a musical supervillain web series)

Almost Human (Fox, Mondays*): It started only months before the Robocop reboot, but this is definitely much better, and yay for Karl Urban! However, Fox decided to Firefly it, meaning they pushed back the premiere after all the advertising was already printed/filmed, and then aired it all out of order, then shuffled the finale around with the Sleepy Hollow finale and the premiere of The Following. So there's been basically no character development, and if there was supposed to be a plot arc, I can't see it. Hopefully it'll get another season.

Arrow (CW, Wednesdays 8 PM): The first season skipped right over all that typical first-season cheesyness, making the finale feel like a second or third season finale. The second season has only improved, and it's one of the most underrated shows on TV.

Cosmos (Fox, Sundays 9 PM): Neil DeGrasse Tyson rebooting a Carl Sagan thing with good science and glorious HD space photos. It's everything I never knew I wanted... it's like the total antidote to Ancient Aliens.

Intelligence (CBS): This is only on the list because I wasn't watching it last year. It's not spectacular, but it's a nice solid action-y filler for when the DVR is running low.

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Hub, Saturdays 10:30 AM EST/7:30 AM PST): Oh, I love this show, and this season just keeps increasing the quality. From exposing shame homeopathic cures to realistic depictions of fashion week to the Doctor Whooves thing just keeping on going, there's nothing I don't love about the show.

Orphan Black (BBC America, returns April 19th): LET ME TELL YOU HOW I LOVE THIS SHOW. I may love this show about as much as Agents of SHIELD. It's a unique concept with stellar acting and a storyline that really picks up at the end and amazing acting and a whole boatload full of female characters who do stuff and their lives don't revolve around men and did I mention that Tatiana Maslany was totally robbed of that Golden Globe?

Rizzoli & Isles (TNT, Tuesdays, on hiatus): NOOOOOOOO! I love this show so, so much, but I am still procrastinating on watching the midseason finale because we know what's going to happen....

Sleepy Hollow (Fox, Mondays*): This was possibly sillier than National Treasure at first. And then there started being supernatural elements... so now it's some kind of horror show. There's also very little on TV as entertaining as seeing a character from the 1700's get outraged over the tax on Starbucks, or try to use Siri.

The 100 (CW, Wednesdays 9 PM):  England a space station holding the post-apocalyptic remnants of humanity is getting overcrowded, so they decide to send their convicts juvenile delinquents down to Australia Earth and see if they can survive and found a new civilization while all the local fauna trying to kill them. Given how Australia contains almost 0% unattractive people and it started from convicts and idk, sheep ranchers? and this show is populated with CW actors, several generations on their descendants will probably be simply too beautiful to look at directly.

The Tomorrow People (CW, Wednesdays on hiatus): Follow up Stephen Amell in Arrow with his cousin Robbie Amell: How could you not watch, at least at first... I kind of gave up because it just didn't hold my interest.

Warehouse 13 (Syfy, on hiatus): I'm so excited for the second half of the fifth season to return, but sadly, it's the final season. This is another show I've stuck with for years on end and loved very much. If you haven't watched this, catch up while you can!

*Fox has not learned one single thing from Firefly. Not. One. Thing. Sleepy Hollow premiered, like usual. And then when Almost Human premiered it was supposed to have a special premiere timeslot and a normal timeslot, but then after all the advertising for the special premiere time, they pushed it back by a week or two and changed the special timeslot. Then, in the middle of all the out-of-order Almost Human episodes, there were more "special time slots" for the season finale of Sleepy Hollow and the season premiere of The Following. And then, they not only shuffled around those timeslots, but the weeks on which those things would take place, and stuff like that. I couldn't keep track of any of it.

Orphan Black

So back when Doctor Who season 7.2/7.5/whatever you want to call it where JLC shows up for good premiered, this TV show - about clones, who discover they're clones - premiered right afterwards. I watched it, and it seemed interesting, but it didn't hold my interest enough to watch the next week's episode.

Sometime after all the season finales, though, I ran out of new things to watch and gave this show a second try. And wow, was it worth it.

The basic plot is that our main character (and almost always our POV character) Sarah is a small-time criminal and deadbeat single mom, and one night she sees a woman who looks just like her commit suicide in the subway. At that point, she decides that the logical thing to do is to pick up that woman's bag and heels and take over her identity or at least her bank accounts. Then, she ends up discovering that this woman's life isn't magically perfect - in fact, both Sarah and the dead woman, Beth, are members of a group of clones that's being killed off.

Admittedly, the first three or four episodes are a bit slow. But sometime around episode six people outside of their little circle start discovering their secrets, sh#t really hits the fan, and this series becomes incredibly addictive. And the supporting characters are great, too: Beth's partner, Art, and the forensic tech, and her boyfriend, Paul; Allison's husband; Cosima's French friend Delphine; Sarah's foster mom, her biological daughter, Kira, and my absolute favorite of all, her flamboyantly gay foster brother and co-conspirator, Felix.

And that Emmy buzz surrounding Tatiana Maslany? She completely deserves it. At times, I completely forget it's the same actress playing all those characters - apparently, there's supposed to be nine clones that Cosima has tracked down "so far", but so far I've only counted six that I've seen on-screen (Sarah, Beth, The German/Jane Doe, Allison, Cosima, and Helena). The amazing part isn't just how she plays Sarah or Allison or Cosima - it's how she also perfectly manages the complexities of one clone trying to be another. A less skilled actress, if she played Sarah and Allison, for example, and suddenly was faced with the role of Sarah pretending to be Allison, might simply play that role the same way she plays Allison, whereas with Maslany's performance we still know that it's Sarah we're watching.

Although nothing will fill the gap that Fringe has left in my heart and schedule, this is definitely satiating my desire for brainy weird scifi! (Also, this makes keeping track of a different versions of each character in each of 2 universes in each of 2 timelines, plus one universe in a future timeline, look simple!)

Hiatuses, cancellations, and new stuff!

So, there hasn't been anything new on this blog in a little while. Reasons include:

• Arrow has been on hiatus
• Cult has been canceled with no indication of when the remaining eps will air
• Zero Hour has been canceled, but is still airing in Canada
• I have a part-time job (yay!)

I've also been watching The Following, aka the last cult conspiracy show standing. It's getting quite interesting, but the characters continue to do more and more stupid things. I want to start a drinking game based on how often Kevin Bacon goes into a building where a serial killer is without backup. There may or may not be a post on the compiled stupidity of the first season.

The pilot of Defiance aired this weekend, and it's a kind of last-remaining-human-outpost show that feels like Falling Skies meets Outcasts. So far, I think I kind of like it.

Tried watching the first two episodes of Hannibal. I found it deeply weird. Deeply, deeply weird and kind of fucked up. Like, the creepiest episodes of the early years of X-Files weird and fucked up.

And my roommate has gotten us both addicted to Alias. Some of the stuff is a blast from the past and is so late 90's/early 00's it's ridiculous. And there's a young Bradley Cooper in it!

Best of all, I have 20 episodes of Ancient Aliens queued up on my DVR. My "Best Of" selection of some of the episode titles includes:

• Aliens and the Secret Code (sounds like Nancy Drew)
• Aliens and the Third Reich (yep, Nazis again!)
• Aliens and the Undead (zombies are popular, too)
• Aliens and Bigfoot (sounds like X-Files)
• Aliens and Dinosaurs (There was a Doctor Who episode or three like this)
• Aliens and Cover-Ups (Conpsiracy theories exist to cover up the real conspiracies!)
• Destination Orion (We already know that all alien things lead to Orion)

So, yeah. New stuff soon!