TV round up

What I've been watching the past few days:

Monday, Heroes, "Into Asylum" (NBC). I like the direction Heroes has taken this season, especially since the midseason mark when they started their "Volume IV: Fugitives" story arc. In this episode, while it did not entirely work, I did enjoy seeing Claire and Nathan together for an extended period of time. Better was the stuff with Danko and Sylar, and also the Peter and Angela's seeking refuge in the church. I'm looking forward to how this season will finish up, and I hope that it can reclaim some of those ratings that the show has lost over the past couple of seasons to make next season (which has already been confirmed) not necessarily the show's last.

Last week through Monday: I've been watching the Smallville: The Complete Fourth Season DVD set (season four ran from 2004 to 2005, and was on the WB Network), specifically the episodes with commentary tracks. (I actually started this with last season's DVD set, season seven, watching the episodes I had missed seeing the first time around through to the end of the season, and rewatching the ones with commentary. I had already watched the episodes with commentary tracks on the season one and two sets awhile back, I think, so when I finished with season seven, I jumped back to season four.) Anyway, these commentary tracks are pretty fun. The episodes on the season four set with commentary tracks are "Crusade" (with commentary by Erica Durance ("Lois Lane"), Annette O'Toole ("Martha Kent"), and show executive producers Alfred Gough, Miles Millar, and Ken Horton), "Transference" (commentary by John Glover ("Lionel Luthor"), Gough, Millar, and Horton), and "Spell" (commentary by Kristin Kreuk ("Lana Lang"), Allison Mack ("Chloe Sullivan"), Durance, and episode director Jeannot Szwarc). Especially entertaining are Durance's comments on "Crusade" (her first episode on the series, introducing the Smallville version of Lois Lane), Glover's on playing Clark in Lionel's body in the body-switching episode, "Transference", and all three of the "girls" having a lot of fun going back and revisting the episode in which they got to play their characters possessed by witches from the past. Lots of cracking up by all involved with that particular commentary track.

Finally, tonight (Tuesday) as usual I watched American Idol. Yes, I admit it. Guilty pleasure, I suppose. Tonight they had a very broad theme, they could sing anything from the iTunes "Top 100". Most of them were good (as in "okay"). A few really stood out. I have to say at this point that my front runners are Danny Gokey (who I've liked from the start), Kris Allen (who has really jumped ahead of most of the others in the past few weeks), and either Lil Rounds or Allison Iraheta. If I had to predict the top three right now I'd have to say Gokey, Allen, and Rounds. (I missed last week's results show, by the way. Totally forgot about it once the time came. Watched Smallville from 8 to 9 and then turned the TV off or left it on one of the sports cable channels or something. Of course, Idol is usually on Tuesday and Wednesday, so that might have been part of it.)