Tuesday, October 11, 2005

So what's on NBC this fall?

Not much... thank goodness I have SageTV installed and can compress 2 weeks of viewing into a single night. OTOH, most of the old favorites from last season made it into this season.

West Wing: I got into this a season or two ago. The storyline about the presidential election has staying power which has carried it through some not-so-stellar episodes. It's been fun to watch the Santos campaign go from not-a-chance underdog to getting close to actually winning (I'm still about 3 episodes behind on watching). Definitely a show that I plan on picking up on DVD at some point ($200 for the first 4 seasons with the 5th season coming out in Dec 2005).

Law & Order: Always worth a watch, even though I don't always care for the courtroom half. Detective Fontana is interesting without being a clone of Lenny (Jerry Orbach).

Law & Order: Criminal Intent: I happen to like the way the 2 detectives play off of each other (names elude me at the moment). She's a good match for his borderline insanity. She's also strong enough to reign him in when he teeters over the edge. Even when I know the outcome, there are quite a few episodes that are fun to watch again for the performances of the main characters or the guests.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Most of these are good. Munch generally always gets good lines. Olivia also gives good performances. Elliot is starting to wear and there were too many shows last season where they tried to drama-up the chance of him getting downchecked by the phsychologist after an incident.

Crossing Jordan: Except for the "magic tech" that they rely on a bit too much to solve cases, still mostly worth watching. The "vampire" episode from a season or two ago was memorable.

Las Vegas: Still a guilty pleasure.

Medium: Better then I thought it would be. Sometimes reminds me of Koon's Odd Thomas. They're starting to play a little too heavy on the "family strife because Mom's always busy" theme. They've also avoided turning her into an action hero. The main hook in each show is figuring how she'll figure something out and whether she'll still be sane at the end of the day.

ER: I'll watch it, but I'm not really that into it. It's generally just something to fill the time.

Shows that seem to have missed the cut from last season. Or haven't shown yet as of today in this season. (And we're about 2 weeks into the fall season.)

Committed: This was a pretty wacky, yet funny 1/2 hour sit-com that had mostly good episodes (there were 13).

Scrubs: Another of the few sit-coms that I could actually enjoy. It was generally smart and funny without being sophmoric.

Third Watch: The spring season was the last season. The final episode felt rushed and cramped (too many plot holes in too short an amount of time).

Medical Investigation: Haven't seen this on the fall schedule yet. Was generally worth watching.

New stuff that I'm evaluating:

Surface: I've got the first 3 episodes on disk that I can watch this week. I'm not sure that it will have staying power from what I've read in the reviews.

e-ring: Same deal as Surface. I've got the episodes taped, but haven't sat down to watch them yet. The reviews on this are also "iffy" so it probably won't make my "must watch" list.

Bottom line... out of the 21 hours of TV that I tape every week, it looks like 10 or 12 hours will have stuff worth watching. That's down from about 15/21 during the spring TV season.

Labels: 2005

posted by Wuphon's at 5:17 PM