Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Lost in 8:15

Dear lord, the "Catch up on Lost" video is kinda overwhelming, but also simplistic, informative in an unemotionally recappy way, and awesome.

January 31st can't come soon enough.

The Wire - The Rewatch

It's been so long since I've watched The Wire that I've decided to rewatch the entire series prior to the fifth and final season's premiere on Sunday, January 6th (well, I might not get all the way there by the premiere... that depends on Netflix's speed, but I'll definitely be caught up by the series finale). Just from the first disc of the first season, it's so very clear that this is the best show on television, bar none. Possibly ever. The storytelling... this series is what great literature should aspire to be.

A shame the series has been so consistently under the radar.

Sunday, December 23, 2007

The Amazing Race 12, Episode 7 - This Is Forever, Now

First thing's first. I'm SO glad Azaria and Hendekea are gone from TAR. I think they were well liked, but I didn't not at all like the way Azaria treated his sister. At all. Nate and Jen supply enough dysfunction, thank you.

So, where we stand:
- 6 legs down. 6 to go (including a super leg? I ask because I can't remember last season's All Stars edition having the super leg).
- 0 fast forwards. 2 to go. ETA: 1 to go. There's only one of the race. And DAMN that's nice. That's like Joyce getting her head shaved nice. I mean... I'd have difficulty with that. Ink and Judaism aren't supposed to mix.
- 0 non-eliminations. 3 to go. If they've kept the "marked for elimination thing", that basically means that tonight HAS to be non-elimination.
- 1 dysfunctional, whine-y "BABYYYYYY" teams remaining.
- 2 teams with elderly folks remaining (I don't feel we've been given much at all on Don's personality in the Grandfather/Grandson team, and I still haven't been able to get over Ron's behavior in the second leg...
- Neither the Goths nor the Hippies have had a major blow up. Both are destined to have one. However, I think that the final three, based on the physical nature of the race, is going to be these two teams as well as Nate and Jen (sigh).

One of my friends who only started watching TAR this season complained that most of the "competition" was in getting airplane tickets. That's pretty true of this season... which is why I was glad to see one of the first (IIRC) bottlenecks of the race in the ferry to Ancona.

Uh oh, here comes TK and Rachel's crisis... maybe? I'll admit, I don't know the pressure of being on the race. I've obviously never been on it. But how do you leave your clue behind? Ugh, that wasn't nearly as devastating as it could've been... dammit, I want drama!

And a SECOND bottleneck at the Road Block that, thanks to a traffic accident altering 2 teams' courses and 1 team deciding to wait for the thing to clear wasn't a bottle neck. That doesn't happen too often.

Jen and Nate are not in a good relationship if they can't handle each other while "hot". When they're cool, they work. Which, it seems, is only when they're winning. And since Don is going to get the tattoo, I sense a big Jen-style blow up when they're announced as team number two by Phil (barring anything going wrong).

Ron continues to suck. Ugh, so frustrating.

Wow, this leg totally blew for Goths and Hippies. And Jen didn't explode at the pit stop! WTF, why are these people acting out of character?

Okay... only 2 non-eliminations this race. So, 5 legs to go. Only 1 non-elimination left. And they changed the rules! That "marked for elimination" crap was, um, crap anyway. I'm excited to see this Speed Bump in action (and ooh, wouldn't it be EVIL if the second non-elimination was the penultimate leg, so one team had a speed bump on the way to the final finish line? I know, I know, the producers of this show aren't as evil as I wish they were...)

Welcome

Hello, teh interwebz!

My name is Travis Yanan (not really, but that's a tangential story for another time, perhaps). I live in Los Angeles, I love watching television, I occasionally participate in the creation of television (I'm a writer, but you won't find this name on any "written by" credit on IMDb, so no need to look), and I love talking about television.

But most of all, I love talking about television ratings. When I wake up in the morning, one of the first thoughts in my head is "I hope the fast nationals are out" so I can analyze them (why? because I'm a NERD about them... the same way some of my friends need to know every statistic about every team in baseball... of which neither obsession is really healthy, compared to, you know... having a life).

I post quite a bit on Marc Berman's Programming Insider Feedback Forum, occasionally filling in for Marc on his ratings-posting duties when he asks.

As above, I'm a writer, but I also like some reality shows (I decried them several years ago as a signal of the end of the American Century, which may have been true of The Swan, but that was before I was introduced to entertaining and addicting fare like Top Chef and The Amazing Race).

But enough about me. This blog is about TV, TV ratings, and the shows I watch (should they ever return... please, AMPTP, get back to the table!) As the next few days and weeks progress, I'll be posting my thoughts on the TV I'm watching, ratings information (which may be sparse at first because of company losures thanks to "silly things" like the holidays... by the way, happy holidays), my own personal thoughts and spin on the night's ratings, and more. Should be fun!