TV round up

Ack. It's been nearly two weeks since my last post. Well, I was out of town part of that time (about four days of it).

Well, I certainly have been watching TV during that time. Let's see if I can remember the more significant ones. (Note: Spoilers below.)

Heroes (NBC): "Turn and Face the Strange" (Monday, April 6), and "1961" (Monday, April 13). Can't remember enough about "Turn and Face the Strange" at the moment to make comments about it, aside from recalling that it did feature Matt Parkman going after Danko in revenge for Daphne's death. And more fun stuff with Hiro, Ando, and Matt's baby son. "1961" was interesting, seeing Angela Patrelli as a young girl. I thought the episode was largely well done, especially in the casting of young Angela. (They really need to work on making the flying effects for Nathan and Peter a bit more consistent, though. Sometimes they are good, sometimes they are weak, such as when they just jump off camera or land unconvincingly.) Only two more episodes from this season remain to be aired.

Smallville (CW): "Eternal" (Thursday, April 2). Episode that finally moves the Davis Bloome/Doomsday storyline forward. The scenes interwoven with the series pilot are a bit uneven in terms of convincing they are (it would be hard not to be, probably), but it sure was good seeing John Schneider as Jonathan Kent and Annette O'Toole as Martha, again. Overall, I liked this one, just as I have most of the episodes of Smallville this, eighth, season. Four more episodes of this one to go.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Fox): "Adam Raised a Cain" (Friday, April 3), and "Born to Run" (Friday, April 10). The series really decided to turn things on their head with the final two episodes of the season (and, unfortunately, very likely the series in general; no official word yet on whether the series will be back for a third season but things don't look good, ratings wise). In "Adam", we have a new Terminator show up, a battle between the principal characters and said Terminator to save the life of young Savannah Weaver, and the death of a primary character (Derek Reese). Sarah is later captured by the police while attempting to meet with "Catherine Weaver".

In "Born to Run", among other things happening, Sarah is broken out of jail, and she and John confront "Catherine Weaver", discovering that she is a liquid metal Terminator. But "Weaver" acts as if she is actually attempting to destroy SkyNet, too, and protects Sarah, John, and Ellison from an attack drone that suddenly crashes into the room. Meanwhile, Cameron's chip is taken by "John Henry", who has traveled with it into the future. John and "Weaver" go after them, leaving Sarah and Ellison in the present. John finds himself in a future with a living Derek and Kyle Reese (the latter, John's father), someone who looks like Cameron but is apparently human (whom the audience would recognize as Allison, the human Cameron's form was based upon), and no one knowing who "John Conner" is supposed to be. To be continued (hopefully)...

(I was in Mississippi visiting relatives when "Born to Run" aired. Fortunately I happened to notice that it was on and was able to watch it then because when I got back to Atlanta I discovered that my machine had not recorded it, and that it was mostly pre-empted in the Atlanta area anyway for local tornado warning storm coverage/reports. Needless to say, I would have been quite "irked" to have missed the finale and had to watch it via computer, as I had to earlier with "To the Lighthouse".)

And, finally, American Idol (Fox): Last "TV round up" I posted, I talked about the performance episode on March 31, where the theme was iTunes top 100 downloads. Well, the following night (April 1), Megan Joy got let go. Can't say that I was too disturbed about that. Megan has a nice if rather unusual tone to her voice. I could never completely reconcile it with contemporary songs (not that she sang very many of those in her time on Idol). Her voice was an odd combination of old jazz/"cabaret" plus something else that I could never quite place. At first I thought that I'd be disappointed when she was voted off (which I knew she would be, relatively soon), but I think that she eventually got to where she couldn't take the negative comments from the judges (especially Simon) anymore, to the point where she was putting up a "don't care" attitude by the end, which I started to find rather annoying myself by her final appearance.

The next week (April 7 and 8), the theme was "Songs from the Year The Contestants Were Born". Which makes a good number of us feel old when the oldest contestant (Danny Gokey) sings a song from 1980. The rest of the contestants were born in 1982 (Adam Lambert), 1984 (Lil Rounds), 1985 (Matt Giraud, Kris Allen, Scott McIntyre), 1986 (Anoop Desai), and 1992(!) (Allison Iraheta). Danny sang well, I remember that (he also was the first to sing that night). I really don't remember most of the rest of them at the moment. Anyway, Scott McIntyre was eliminated the following night. Nice guy but it was inevitable that he was be going somewhere around this point. I couldn't see him progressing into, say the top four or five.

Last week (April 14 and 15), the theme was "Songs from the Cinema". This blog entry is getting longish so suffice it so say that I thought most of the candiates sang okay, with few really standing out to me. This was probably at least partially due to most of them singing the same sort of movie love ballads, which gave the entire episodes a sort of "sameness". Matt Giraud got the lowest number of votes but the judges finally used their one-time "Judges' Save" to keep him around until next week. However, that means that two will be eliminated next week, and next week (according to Simon as the show was finishing up) will be "Disco Week". Wonderful. :)