TV round up (part one)

My last "TV round up" entry was way back on April 20, 2009. In all honesty, my television show based entries may the fewest and farthest between as I don't always feel like doing them at the time that I've watched the stuff, and as time goes on I'm even less likely to sit down to type something up.

Picking up from last entry, though (warning: spoilers below):

Heroes (NBC): "I Am Sylar" (Monday, April 20) and "An Invisible Thread" (Monday, April 27) finished off the show's third season. At this point, I don't recall enough about the episodes to really do into any long discussion about them, aside from certain memories of the season finale. I have to say that I'm rather ambivalent about how the writers left things. In general, I have enjoyed this third season of the series. It's had it's up and downs, of course, but still, as a whole, it's been enjoyable and definitely better than the previous, strike shortened, second season. My gut reaction is that I don't really like what they did with Nathan Petrelli. At times they haven't really know what to do with his character, it seems, leading to some pretty widely varying characterizations. However, I still find the Nathan-Peter-Angela Petrelli (plus sometimes Claire Bennett) family dynamic to be one of the most interesting aspects of the show and now an important "cog" in that has been lost. Plus, I have to wonder just how long they can really keep Sylar looking like Nathan (it's not like they are going to get rid of actor Zachary Quinto, so, now that Nathan's dead, I guess that means that Adrian Pasdar is the one to eventually go). And I couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed at just how Nathan met his end. But, then, again, just how much chance would Nathan really have against Sylar by himself? He probably did well to keep fighting as long as he did (albeitly, most of the fighting was off screen). And the fact that Peter flew into the room and took off with Claire just seconds before Nathan and Sylar did strain credibility a bit, I have to admit. Anyway, I am looking foward to the show's fourth (and probably final) season. It's going to be a slighly shortened season, just eighteen to twenty episodes. But's that's okay. I just hope that if it is the final season that they will write it as such, leaving no significant plot threads or cliffhangers unresolved.

Smallville (CW): Last episode I talked about was "Eternal" (Thursday, April 2). There were four more episodes of the then current eighth season ("Stiletto", April 23; "Beast", April 30; "Injustice", May 7; and "Doomsday", May 14). Too much time has passed for me to discuss these episodes individually, either. But I did, for the most part, enjoy this season of Smallville. They took the series in some interesting new directions. I do have to say that I found the season finale to be a bit of a mixed experience. A lot of build up for only a few seconds of confrontation between Clark and Doomsday. And Clark's declaration that "Clark Kent is dead" or whatever, well, I'm sure that that will be resolved quite quickly. I do, however, have to admit that I in no way saw Jimmy Olsen's death coming, nor their revelation that the character we've been seeing has not been the Jimmy Olsen ("Superman's Pal", etc., etc.) but rather his older brother. The "real" Jimmy Olsen is seen briefly at his older brother's funeral near the end of the episode. Apparently the actor playing the part of elder Jimmy was quite surprised to discover this, too, from what I read, finding out quite late that his character was being written out of the series. It does, however, help explain how Jimmy could be so much older in the Smallville continuity as, obviously, he's supposed to be so much younger in traditional Superman lore. I'll also be interested to see how they'll pick up the Lois situation, what with her accidentally putting on the time travel ring that the Legion gave Clark. Will we see Lois (and perhaps Clark, too) in the Legion's future time period next season? That'd be cool.

American Idol (Fox): Well, too much time has passed for me to really say much about the remainder of the American Idol season, other than that (as everyone knows) Kris Allen won. I was for most of the season a big Danny Gokey fan. Once Gokey was eliminated, I started rooting for Kris. Nothing against Adam Lambert. Truthfully speaking, Adam is probably the better singer (he definitey has a much wider range than Kris does). But Kris is just more my personal style, both musically and personality wise. Plus, Kris was the underdog up until the very end. So I'm happy that Kris won.

(I'm going to have to split this entry into two separate ones due to Blogger's maximum number of 200 characters in the "labels" per blog entry. I'll talk about animated series I've been following in part two.)

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. :)