Grey’s Anatomy Season Finale:
Please take a long hot bath before watching tonight’s season finale of Grey’s Anatomy. It will knock you on your ass.
Google Goes Video:
Will you be patronizing Google’s new Video Store when it opens? Episodes of CSI and Charlie Rose look rather attractive to me. I’m thinking this may be yet another nail in the coffin of the corner video store. Seeing this item (via Largehearted Boy) about the closure of the legendary Rhino Records Westwood, where I used to browse on weekends when I worked as a day laborer for Warner Brothers in the early 1990s, got me thinking there may simply not be a market for retail music and movie stores in our digitally delivered future. And while that convenience sure sounds great, the fallout may be much sadder and more painful than I had originally imagined.
Thoughts? Feelings?
Questions of ‘Lost’:
So I just finished watching the first season of “Lost” and have three questions for both you and I to ponder…
1) Why does nearly every episode begin with a close up on someone’s eye?
2) How much of the show’s appeal can we attribute to the hyper-connectedness of our world, to the idea that, in 2005 thanks to cell phones the GPS and the Internet, it’s nearly impossible to be physically “lost” and that the nightmare of the 21st century is to be cut loose from that web of connection (question via Dave)?
3) How much of the show’s appeal is a post 9/11 fantasy of a unified society, of a “country” bonded across race, class and gender lines around a common purpose, instead of the red state/blue state mess we find ourselves in now?
Your thoughts are welcome, neigh encouraged.
And the Buffy Goes to…
I didn’t watch The Emmys last night (the NY Times as a half-decent summary) but did come across Salon’s announcement of The Buffy, the award for most underappreciated TV Show. This is the second year of The Buffy. “The Wire”, HBO’s Baltimore crime drama which is sitting in wait in my Netflix queue, won last year.
This year, the award went to “Veronica Mars” which I couldn’t be happier about. I don’t know if I’ve done it here yet but you Must Watch Veronica Mars, easily the best new show on television. VM is a noir Encyclopedia Brown, set in a plastic Southern California town. Veronica, a former quen of her high school’s whose best friend, Lilly Kane was murdered. Her father, the sherrif accused Lily’s powerful parents of involvement which led to the’s Mars’s being ostrcized from the town.
Season #1 is Veronica’s attempt to solve her friend’s murder. Season #2, which begins next week, is something else entirely.
This is consistently great television, funny, smart, dark, creepy. I can’t wait for this next season to start.
Season #2 begins Wednesday, Sept. 28 on UPN. See it, see it, see it. You will not be sorry.
Post-Katrina Laughs:
The first seven minutes of “Everybody Hates Chris” looks pretty damn good.
Six Feet Under Passes On:
Six Feet Under airs its final episode tonight amidst much hype. I started watching the show on DVD about a year ago and had shut myself off from all media mentions for fear of spoiling plots three seasons down the road I hadn’t got to yet. Nonetheless, I heard a retrospective on Fresh Air which just about blew everything. If you’re in the same boat, listen the interviews indivdually and not in the round-up format like I did.
Creator Alan Ball is scheduled to give the post-mortem (ha!) to Terry Gross next week.
Numb3rs:
Have you seen Numb3ers (pronounced Numbers, not Numb-3-ers), a new crime drama on CBS? It’s pretty damn good and I don’t sign on for new shows all that often, if at all. But I love crime dramas and I think the math twist is pretty interesting. Plus its nice to see Rob Morrow and Peter MacNicol breaking out of their old TV armour and trying something new.
Friday Nights at 10, I think. I TiVo it. Also it’s got a fan site.
(S)Punky Bewster:
I had no idea Punky Brewster was such a ho.
Family Ties:
Can I tell you how happy I am that I can finally see reruns of “Family Ties?”
Oh, I just did.