Premiere Week... a Few Thoughts

Wow. There is way too much TV. Especially with the Jewish holidays... I am BEHIND in my viewing. Way behind.

A few thoughts, though... not on ratings (since I've largely twittered my impressions), but on the content itself.

House: Haven't watch last night's episode yet so I don't know the extent to which the show is "back to normal," but the premiere was a combination of awesome and troubling. The temporary and new setting was a fun change of pace, and we got to really see how far this show has come from it's highlight lead character but entirely procedural foundations. As all doctors are psychologists on House, even the psychologists, I found the character elements of the premiere fascinating, but the actual story chock full of meh. The character types found in the psych ward were just that... types. Totally seen every single one of them before. But a great piece of Hugh Laurie who, one of these days, might actually win an Emmy.

Big Bang Theory: I thought last night's was funnier than the premiere. The show just puts a smile on my face. It doesn't so much matter to me that it and HIMYM were split up, because DVR make me my own scheduler/programmer.

How I Met Your Mother: Last night's episode showcased exactly what makes this show awesome, and exactly why Ted is the sore thumb. His storyline was almost entirely separate and tangential to the other four characters... and it was the least entertaining part. The rest of the ensemble is interesting. Ted grates. The writers should really have him meet the Mother soon and show us the courtship and be done with it so that we aren't given these awkward little dating stories told from the year 2030 (though, seriously, Bob Saget-Ted, why are you telling your kids about Stripper Lily?) Though we've seen the doppelganger plot on other sitcoms... I really enjoyed the way HIMYM did it.

Grey's Anatomy: Like House, I appreciated the break from formula (though Grey's is certainly less "formula" than House on an episodic basis). The little vignettes were an amalgamation of entertaining, devastating, and uplifting. And I'm really glad the show chose to do with "40 day" thing and get it out of the way so we didn't have to spend the first 10 episodes dealing with mourning stories (though I'm sure we'll still get some). I'm intrigued by the Seattle Grace / Mercy West merger plotline and, boy howdy, Ellen Pompeo's face looked pregnant.

Dollhouse: The premiere wasn't anything special, story-wise. Decent twist with Ballard being Echo's client and now Jamie Bamber's arms dealer. The best part of the episode, as always, was away from Echo, this time with the Topher and Saunders/Whiskey goings-on. Hopefully we'll get more Victor and Sierra in the coming weeks. Though, honestly, I wish the show would just forgot its episodic foundation and hurtle along towards "Epitaph One" territory...

The Amazing Race: God I'm so happy TAR is back. I totally made the mistake of watching it while fasting. Which, if you watched the episode, you know was not a great idea as one of the challenges was a Japanese game show called "Sushi Roulette" (WANT!) which had the contestants standing in front of a giant wheel that spun and you had to eat whatever sushi roll landing in front of you and the only way to move on was, if a wasabi bomb landed in front of you, to eat the wasabi bomb in 2 minutes. I really, really, really wanted a wasabi bomb. I think the producers finally did a bang-up job in casting the contestants this season after a few cycles of non-standouts. Lance is going to make for a great Ugly American villain. Zev, the guy with Asperger's, is hilarious. There are two cute gay brothers. And that female poker player team... MAN, I was happy the first leg was non-elimination so they could stay in the game.

Desperate Housewives: The introduction of Drea de Matteo's character and family was not the smoothest that Housewives has ever done. Still, I'm glad for the "cliffhanger" (which in the "next time" apparently wasn't a murder as Julie is comatose / on life support) to spice the show up. I've ragged on the need for the seasonal mystery arcs in the past, but this episode was pure soap and had, for me, no drive. There was no excitement going into it from the end of last season, which showed in the ratings nosedive.

Thank god I'd already seen all of the pilots so I didn't have to watch them this week (although I did resample Modern Family, Cougar Town, and Flash Forward for the HD awesomeness)... but I definitely will have to find time to view this week. Cougar Town was much improved in reshoots versus the pilot. A lot of unfunny awkward taken out and some funny lines added in.

Diagnosis: Murder

About halfway through tonight's Very Special Episode of House. House thinks it was murder and I just totally flashed to Diagnosis Murder. This episode is totally going to turn into doctors trying to solve a murder, isn't it?

House shipping...

OMG did Foreteen just happen?

Hehehe

ROFL

House Needs an Idol Shot in the Ratings Arm

Thus far this season, House's original episodes have rated far lower than it did during its third and fourth seasons' fall runs. And I think the second season may have have higher rated fall runs, too, though I can't find data to back that up so I'm not going to use it for what I'm about to say.

House needs to be back at 9pm after Idol on Tuesdays.

I've been preaching on PIFeedback.com for a while that Fox should move House to Thursdays to grab a beachhead much as ABC did with Grey's.

Now I'm not so sure.

Thanks to the strike, and to Fox moving House to Mondays at 8pm when it came back with new episodes so Hell's Kitchen could air post-Tuesday Idol, House's ratings have fallen. Back in its first season, Idol made House from a failure into a hit (including repeats of fall originals rating like new episodes). The show came back in its season season far stronger than it had been before (but, again, I'm not sure if it was stronger then than it is now). Then Idol that winter/spring made House into a megahit. House returns for its third fall campaign even stronger. During some post-Idol episodes of House during that third winter/spring, House even beat Idol in some key categories. House comes back huge last fall for its fourth year... and the strike happens. And now House isn't hitting 7s in the demo, it's barely hitting 5s (the finals for today will be 5.0, I'm betting, as it paired until 9:01pm).

Fox doesn't have a comedy that's going to be helped by Idol at 9:30pm on Wednesdays. But it does have several dramas that should be infused with the Idol lead-in. House can now count itself among them. Shift Wednesday's Idol results show to 8:30pm (should Fox stick to the plan to keep it to a still-overblown 30 minutes this season), and make use of that 9pm hour.

Tuesdays are getting crowded

90210: Tabitha is back! And she's still the best thing about the show! Yay! Dixon is wearing a rainbow polo shirt. Mention of money problems... that doesn't bode well for Dixon (since he will undoubtedly become indebted to some rich f*ck for some idiotic reason). Awkward transitions. They forgot to make Naomi endearingly-but-fabulously-bitchy before they tried to give her layers and make us sympathize with her. She'd be a much better arch/villain than pouty spoiled rich girl with family issues. Mention of Donna Martin graduates! This show just bought another five minutes (I know, I said it bought a few weeks last week, but after the blissful euphoria of stupidity the show left me in... my judgment was impaired). Ugh, Dixon said "do me a solid". "Just because you're a bunch of rich brats doesn't mean you can't have angst!" Oh, Tabitha. Nat! Talking about Brandon! To Dixon! As he's hiring Dixon! Well, that was only slightly expected as a result of the money talk. Could the Saturn logo be any more offensively prominent in Silver's car? Aw, troubled jock Ethan has a mentally challenged / OCD / whatever older brother. Oh, lord, Dixon is doling out dollops of wisdom. Back to the Naomi and her cheating father plot... you know the problem with this? I don't care for her, and I don't care against her. And... the baby daddy is Dylan. There goes one of very few reasons to keep watching this show (love you, Tabitha). "That was way better than cookies". Um... Ty still hasn't tasted Annie's snickerdoodles (that just sounds dirty, doesn't it?) so he doesn't really know, now does he?

House: Only show on TV that'll give you a voluptuous cleavage shot during a sexual harrassment training seminar. House is back! Yayz! Huh. The main titles still aren't changed. Wonder what that means for Thirteen, Kuman, and Mini Stud. There's obviously post-Amber fallout to deal with today, but the show needs to figure out how to (re)incorporate Chase and Cameron. And I wouldn't call what this episode did as reincorporating them... but yay, they were both in it? Also... can we move forward on either the Huddy or Hameron fronts, please?

Fringe: Hey, hot chick in underwear in the opening! That'll keep the males watching. Lance Reddick has apparently been totally relegated to the Arvin Sloane exposition role (and he's not referring to Olivia as "liaison" in that relishy way). Zzzz, rehashy backstory. This first episode, thus far, looks incredibly (if expectedly) cheap compared to the pilot. The crazy old genius that is Walter Bishop really, really grates on me. I do like the angle that Oliva has to go back and rework the cases she and her traitorous ex-lover ex-partner worked (as he was all Patterny and traitorous). Okay, besides the description of the serial killer's MO... which gross... it's getting late (12:30am) so I'm just gonna watch and shut up. 'Night, readers!
... the science in this show confuses and annoys me. X-Files was at least based in some semblance of reality (thanks to Scully making sure it was). In Fringe, it seems the most out of the box explanation is always the right path to follow, and there's somehow a way (through Walter Bishop's old experiments and through Massive Dynamic's future-ish-tech) to test the theoretical science.

That Was Disappointing

Ugh. I loved the Gormogon serial killer plot on Bones. But the resolution was crap.

Meanwhile, House's season finale was great.

House

EXTREMELY weird episode of House last night. I enjoyed the show's last foray into the title character's mind much more (the season two finale "No Reason"). But the last act, when he finally interpreted everything... really, really solid. I was a fan of Cutthroat Bitch back in the Survivor-esque period that was the start of this season, but as soon as she started dating Wilson, she was... less awesome. Still, when the reveal was that she was on the bus crash with House (the creepy "who am I, what does my necklace mean" bit)... very, very much looking forward to next week's finale. We here at TY still love Anne Dudek and I'm glad that she's going to be our very special patient of the week.

Ready for some football

So that game was pretty boring / unintense until the last five minutes, huh (the party I was at had a whole bunch of socializing, and a lot of shouted "oh, shit. oh, shit." by the end)?

Was elsewhere, so I've got the whole thing (and commercials) saved on the FauxVo for review (I'll admit, I wasn't paying too much attention to the commercials this year).

The post-game was only 30 minutes, so House started at 10:38pm Eastern. Especially with such a close (if slightly low-scoring and boring until the last few minutes) game, should be a big lead-in for the episode. I'm expecting it to come close to the Grey's Anatomy numbers, simply because House is such a big hit already. The episode seems very formula outside of the "House and his team aren't actually with the patient, since she's in the South Pole" thing. I really, really, really wish the show had been able to go with its original plan for the post-Super Bowl episode... but enough complaining about that.

OH MY GOD the ending. THE ENDING!!!!!!!!! I'M SO HAPPY!!!!!!!!! That so fixes my issue with the result of Number 32 from my Top 50 of 2007 list.

Still not liking that the show can't fit both Cameron and Chase into episodes. Since the end of the Survivor-arc (as in last Tuesday's episode and tonight's episode), it's been either-or.

Tuesday TV

Idol: Okay, even if he hadn't figured the words out, the judges would have to be real tweedledumbasses to not let Jason Rich through. Maybe no immediate star quality, but a gorgeous voice. Not quite as "aw, shucks" as the season's other singing farm boy (Drew Poppelreiter). I absolutely love that girl who accidentally said she was going to be America's Next Top Model. Angelica Puente's voice has amazing range, I hope she can develop her own sound by the time Hollywood rolls around. And Randy recommended mirror time to the rocker guy (how can you be a rocker without, er, stage presence/persona?) Can't remember the name of the girl, but whoever sang Norah Jones... I liked it, the show needs a good, jazzy voice in the mix.

House: OMG, I've been waiting for this episode for months (and there are only two left...) What does the post-Survivor format look like? I'm watching now... no new opening credits? Sad day. They're credited as "Also Starring". Interesting. Also... Christmas episode? Oh, Fox scheduling department... oh, Preston Beckman... oh, writers' strike. Anyway... House went to talk to the patients' daughter really quickly (for him). I persist that I don't give two shakes of a fist about Ministud/Taub. Where the heck are Cameron and Chase, goddammit!? The show needs to figure out a way to include them. So, this whole episode is basically House fucking with his new team in order to make sure they're always on their toes and always looking over each others' shoulders and questioning each others' diagnoses (and I absolutely love that Thirteen sees through his bullshit and wants to drive him nuts). Smart, but... eh? Hah, Jennifer Morrison's lone scene is a mit-out-sound montage.

The preview for the not-supposed-to-be-post-Super-Bowl-but-post-Super-Bowl episode looks gimmicky... man, I wish they'd gone with their two-parter idea instead of making some mechanic at the South Pole into Izzie Stevens (preview basically has him drilling a hole into Mira Sorvino's head).

Nip/Tuck: EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ugh, the opening consult (newlyweds trapped in car during honeymoon resort to mild cannibalism because one has hypoglycemia)... wow, I'm sorry, I think this may be my last episode of this show. BWAHAHAHA! Okay, they just saved their bacon with that "We're CAA" bit. They do look like they're CAA... except, um, no, the assistant does not walk with the agent. The assistant stays in the Death Star while their bosses go to poach clients since said talent's agent is under the knife (would I be terribly surprised if this were based on a true story? It's CAA... so nope!)