A New Holiday (November 16th) – Carissa’s Wierd
Yes it’s that fateful day once again. But since I just posted about Carissa’s Wierd, I’ll leave off talking about them anymore.
Instead, a brief television interlude. It’s important to state before I begin that I don’t actually have a TV – so I only watch things online.
Anyways, last year, I was commenting pretty regularly on the first season of Dollhouse. Not because it was great, but because it was a new Joss Whedon show and it (occasionally) showed some signs of serious potential. And surprisingly, it got renewed. So I figured I’d write some more this year.
Well, it turns out, not so much. I found all four episodes of season two to be so atrocious that I couldn’t even be bothered to complain about them. I never thought the premise was that great to start with and things severely declined as time went on. Unsurprisingly, it’s now been cancelled.
Honestly, I can’t say I’m going to miss it. In fact, I’m increasingly starting to wonder whether the version of Joss responsible for Angel, Dollhouse, and the final two seasons of Buffy is the real Joss – and the brilliance of the rest of Buffy and Firefly is the rare exception.
Elsewhere in the TV world, I’ve been enjoying the latest season of Top Chef. The quality of cooking this time around is clearly a major step up from past years (particularly the previous season). That said, the inability to send Robin home was a never-ending nightmare, every single scene with Mike Isabella made me want to throw things at him, and I could seriously do without another word about the sibling rivalry. I really like Jenn – though she really nees to pull it together – and Kevin, so I’m hoping they both make the final.
The Office has declined quite a bit from where it was in seasons 2 and 3, but is still solid. 30 Rock has been good but not great this year.
But the real welcome surprise is another NBC Thursday night show: Community. I really want to like this one because the main character is played by Joel McHale, who I was introduced to back in the 90s on the classic Seattle show Almost Live! (a local version of SNL, basically) It was probably my favorite show as a kid (Billy Quan, The Lame List, Roscoe’s Oriental Rug Emporium, Uncle Fran…the list goes on), but when McHale came on the show he struck me immediately as someone who had a big future. He stole every skit he was in.
So I’ve always hoped he’d make it big and it’s cool to see him on a major show now. Of course, his character is actually one of the least interesting. The real magic is with Abed – who is easily my favorite new character in years. The Abed-Troy Spanish rap is what convinced me the show had serious potential. And he also has one of the single best lines in TV history: “9-11 was pretty much the 9-11 of the falafel industry.” Oh man, good stuff.
I haven’t watched any of the new Stargate series. I’m expecting it to be bad, but I’ve read a couple reasonably positive reviews, so I’ll probably give it a shot.
Oh, and the new Doctor Who special FINALLY aired yesterday. I haven’t seen it yet, but am pretty excited. It’s really a shame, though, that David Tennant’s final episodes are also going to be RTD’s final episodes. I have a feeling the Tenth Doctor is not going to be allowed to exit with the class and dignity he deserves.