Let me summarize last night's episode of 24...Jack Bauer wanted to torture an 11-month old.
























Reread that. 11-MONTH old. Thankfully for everyone's soul involved, he didn't go through with it.

And that was not to prevent a nuclear bomb, an airplane crash or anything involving thousands of people. That was to save the president's husband. Let it be said that there is no excuse too flimsy for Jack to think it justified to torture some. At least the writers thought that Jack torturing a newborn in an incubator to save the White House silverware would have been a bit too far. We'll have to wait till season 8 or possibly sweeps for that one.

The writers of this show must be really pissed about Obama's victory. This season has been filled with even more torture and sneering at hippie types. You know, like the "justice department" who want to "help the terrorists" by "following the laws." The lessons I've learned this season so far are: Torture totally works. It's really fast and really effective. The information is always credible. There is no good moral argument against it. People who are not willing to torture as their first option don't care about the country or at least are missing the big picture. It's ok to torture because our enemies are doing it and they are bad people. Don't think too much about the last one because it would mean that if people who torture are evil, and we torture then it mean that we are !#! (cognitive dissonance enabled) perfectly within our rights to do whatever the hell we want to our enemies.

In tonight's episode when the FBI director said "Following the rules is what makes us better" to which Jack responded, "Not today." He might as well have said "Fuck you, pussy."


Alright I'm gonna go torture me up some food.

Yeah

So I decided that I do like Burn Notice, but I wouldn't put too much stock in the first episode in the second season. It served as a good primer for those that have not seen the first season, covering all the main characters and introducing the enemy(?) for the second season.

Thinking about this show that I realized that you generally can't take it too seriously. I know that it's a B-show which means it has to simplify stories so that things don't get too complicated, but that's clearly not why I watch it. If that were the case I'd be watching The Wire (should I be watching The Wire? I've heard it favorably compared with Homicide). No, what I want is the is what most of the other good B-action shows offer: cheesy action, intrigue (Charlie's Angels), elaborate planning (A-Team), and Macguyverish science (Knight Rider...no wait Macguyver's a better example.)

Burn Notice does really have a lot of similarities with all the previously mentioned shows and it does well at mixing the best parts of all of them. It doesn't have a talking car, but it does have Bruce Campbell who is awesome in a different way.

P.S. I have only seen one or two episodes of Charlie's Angels but it just fits in with that style of show.

Oh my god the second season of Burn Notice has started!

Wait...

Do I even like that show?

Did anyone watch Lewis Black: The Root of All Evil? I was tremendously excited when I found out he was getting his own show. That feeling lasted about 10 seconds into the first episode. This show was not good, really not good. Nothing against Greg Giraldo or Paul F. Tompkins (who is awesome), but this show was really missing one big thing, namely Lewis Black.

Everything about this show seemed really fake, overscripted and overproduced. I thought Comedy Central just reused the set from Beat the Geeks (Side note: Whatever happened to that show? I remember enjoying it). The jokes that they were supplied were hacky and unfunny. I mean Oprah and the Catholic Church? Did doing Monica Lewinsky jokes seem too dated? All the comedians existing in the alternative comedy world (maybe not Giraldo) excel at their own oddball observations and humor. Given such mundane topics it's no surprise that all the jokes were so obvious. Oprah is an egomaniac, the Catholic Church allowed boy-fucking and repeat for 22 minutes. The last hope was for the comedians just to deliver this crappy material in their trademark characters. This worked well enough for Tompkins and Giraldo, but Lewis Black really suffered. He looked the most out of place there as all his comments seemed to add nothing to what was going on and seemed added as an afterthought.

Up until the second commercial break, I was convinced that the laughter was piped in. And after seeing the one quick audience shot I was convinced. They seemed to be sitting very orderly and looked bored. They would have made great extras in a Kraftwerk video.

Barring a rapid overhaul of the show's format and writing staff, I do not predict good things for this show. (Won't even last as long as Beat the Geeks)

Why didn't they just do 22 minutes of Back in Black, you know, the thing everyone loves?

So this show is finally over and we had to sit through an hour long recap show to get to the obvious answer. I think everyone watching the show was rooting for Dave and Jasmine and as this was put up for a popularity contest there was absolutely no suspense as they opened their envelope.

The recap show was actually a bit nice as we got to see that their "transformations" hold somewhat. There were some embarrassing bits where Josh had to strip and present his girlfriend. Sam and Jen were, I'm going to guess here, forced into an awkward hug.

All in all I'm glad that all contestants have something to show for their effort.

This seems like a terrible time to write about TV the writers are on strike and I've been working like a donkey and have only now caught up with the latest episodes of most of my shows. This is more due to the fact that since the writers strike has cut a lot of shows short.

I'm looking forward to the next season of Weeds. The season finale was really good but not as suspenseful as promised.

On my flight back from SLC I happened to catch one or two episode of the original Kitchen NIghtmares on BBC America. The original British version is light years ahead of its American counterpart.

Firstly, Gordon Brown did his own narration which already made it a lot more tolerable to watch. It felt like I was watching an actual documentary about a failing restaurant being slowly turned around, rather than an hour long trailer for a restaurant being immediately turned around by some Gordon Brown magic. Gordon Brown goes through what he thinks everyone in the restaurant is doing wrong and how they themselves can improve it. There is always plenty of blame to spread and most importantly the change comes from the staff rather than Brown.

The British version is so much more palatable and I wish I could watch more of it. Unfortunately, since I have stopped watching KN entirely and the T.V. Club has stopped covering it I won't find out if the American version has gotten any better. After watching three seasons of Hell's Kitchen, I would imagine that the answer is a big NO!

Beauty and the Geek

The basic premise of the show is that it has transformative powers. In that way I find it very hard to believe that Will and Jen will win. In my mind Josh and Shay, and Jasmine and Dave are the most transformed. Sam and Nicole seemed ready for the game and have not had any great transformation. Sam's streak of winning appears attributed to his "studying" or producer involvement, if the TV club is to be believed. Either way, the latter would imply that Sam and Nicole will and the former would imply that Jasmine and Dave will win. Now in 2 of the past 3 seasons the underdog came back to win against the favorite once again tilting the win in favor of Jasmine and Dave.

I'm talking as if it's the finals already but in my mind Will and Jen are a foregone conclusion. I was surprised that they managed to stick around this week let alone last week. Will is such a horrendous person so sold on himself that he basically refuses to accept any criticism. We haven't managed to learn much about Jen since Will is a black hole of negative attention.

Nip/Tuck

Glad Portia de Rosi is a cast member. Although It'll be hard to shake the specter of Lindsey Bluth for me. I keep expecting her to say something funny.

In LA most of the people they encounter seem to be a lot more plastic than in Miami. Not just clients, but almost everyone. Even Ollie's daughter struck me as built out of fake plastic body parts. I guess the point is that this is a virtue in LA. I wonder how they manage to find actors to play their clients. Was the man addicted to plastic surgery an actual plastic surgery addict who was also an actor or an actor with a lot of make up on?

They seem to find good twists to keep themselves going. Julia coming out seems fairly tame compared to the previous seasons. More intrigue to come I'm sure.

To NYC people who may not have Facebook. I am back in Ardsley for a while. I will be here till the 17th, when I will fly to SLC for a conference. I will be bck on Wednesday morning and will leave on Saturday the 24th.¨¨

I have also not watched TV in a while, which explaions my lack of posting.

Pushing Daisies

A darker episode this time. Both in terms of story and color.

We started with a flashback to Ned's lonely boarding school days. That was pretty depressing right there. It got even worse when Ned finally saw his father with his new family. This is probably the first time I felt sad for Ned, not just mildly uncomfortable. This was also followed by two murders and one attempted murder of Olive. A twist that most people probably saw 5 minutes before it was revealed, but still good stuff all around.

I don't have so much to say as I'm on the verge of passing out.

"In other news, Kittens on Parade!"

I was simply running experiments yesterday which involves pushing a button, waiting 2 hours, moving stuff around and pushing the same button again. This allowed me to catch up on last week's TV that I missed as well as keep up to date on the stuff I actually watch

Thanks to Jesse for the shoutout.

Heroes

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Claire sucks! This week she and her boyfriend devised a cunning plan to get back at the head cheerleader by him dropping Claire from high up, having the cheerleader witness it and go to the police only to have Claire reappear unharmed. High school is so much less interesting in real life than it is in TV. I went to two different high schools and they were both about the same. No one had elaborate revenge plans to get someone kicked off the cheerleading squad, but I guess Ardsley cheerleading wasn't exactly competitive and Trinity cheerleading wasn't exactly existent. I also don't think these one-off public humiliations would actually upset the social hierarchy of people that much. And seriously I don't think one person could hijack an entire team. Doesn't this school have teachers. In all six episodes I have seen only one teacher.

Bennett and the Haitian had the worst torture methods ever. They remove memories from their prisoner's detainee's mind.

"Remember meeting your wife?"
"No"
"Yeah!!! Now tell me what I want to know!"
My answer to this would be once again "No," with a mildly annoyed look on my face.

Bennett finds the painting that don't really tell us much. One has Hiro, another Peter with a gun and the one with Bennett dead.

Peter is in Montreal now and someone was expecting him...so that's something

I really disliked the device that Anto found the scrolls and was thus we are able to see Hiro's story, but I got over it this week. I'm finally getting into this story. We finally got a bit of intrigue when Hiro falls in love with the swordsmith's daughter and Kensei witnesses them kiss. Since this is all supposed to take place in the past I assume that Hiro and Kensei work together and defeat White Beard or that Hiro takes over the role and beats White Beard himself under the name Kensei. Since this is all taking place in the past I'm going to take the determinist standpoint and say that they must succeed because otherwise nothing else in the future we are watching will happen. This would be different to changing the future like they did last season. I'm sure I'll be pissed off again by next week when Anto accidentally finds another way to follow more of Hiro's story.

Weeds

For a successful drug dealer Susan really has no ideas who her enemies are or what her weaknesses are. Celia tried to blackmail her and she finally acted like a real drug dealer and threatened to kill her. Finally we have dealing with some attitude instead of a naive smile. Celia asked to be in on the business which Susan happily obliged by moving her grow house to hers.

Andy then walked into a trap where some rival drug dealer asked him about his business and showed that he knew all about Susan. I guess that's the nature of starting a new drug business. You are unaware of competition since they don't really advertise. Conrad had a similar moment when the fire marshal had to inspect their original grow house which he had no idea about.

This was more of a resetting episode and there will be more to come for sure next week.