Aayyyyy!, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

What I'm Watching

I finally managed to watch the 2 new shows I was threatening to watch (in wide-screen hi-def TV, and thank you so much honey for the nifty-kewl birthday birthday present).

Both of the pilot shows were so-so, but I'll keep watching because most of the time pilot shows are too busy for their own good establishing characters, themes, and plots. It's a shame network TV can't let these elements accumulate over the course of 5-6 episodes but I understand there's a great deal of pressure to SUCCEED NOW! Of all the shows I am watching, only Lost had a pilot that knocked my socks off. And now that I'm thinking of it, the first episode of 24 was fairly good but not great. Battlestar Galactica had the luxury of a 4-hour mini-series for a pilot, and it was mediocre compared to the rest of the show. Deadwood,Veronica Mars, the X-Files, even Buffy the Vampire Slayer picked up steam as they went along.

So what am I saying? Both pilots were too busy for their own good. the Bionic Woman has an interesting premise and Katee Sackhoff so I will give it a chance to develop. It also has Miguel Ferrer as a kind-of buttheaded Oscar Goldman type. What happened in the pilot? Not much, in the sense that if you watch it tonight, I'm sure it will take a minute or two for you to catch up with what is going on.

Life is fairly standard cop fare, but it looks like one of those shows, like Veronica Mars, whose whole might be more than the sum of its parts. I mean that it will have a fairly significant story arc concerning the murders that Detective Crews was convicted of.

Things I liked: Damian Lewis (duh) and his down-on-her-luck parter Detective Reese (Sara Shahi, a very pretty woman of Iranian/Spanish descent). There's some good chemistry there. Things I disliked - they need to shitcan the whole Zen thing. Crews spent most of 12 years in solitary confinement so that he wouldn't be continuously brutalized by the other inmates and is therefore slightly off. He studied Zen and spouts it often. It's only funny when he's annoying the piss out of the people around him. It was nice to see his character go into full-bore hate mode when he and his partner are visiting a prisoner in jail and the guards taunt him. People who only know Lewis from Band of Brothers probably don't realize how well he does a hateful glare (those of us that sat through The Forsyte Saga know too well how deadly those glares can be). I'll watch, because the arc might get interesting. I mean, why would a guy who spent 12 years in prison rejoin the police force, especially after he was awarded a healthy settlement? Why to go after the people who allegedly framed him, of course.

Oh, who am I kidding? I'd watch infomercials if Damian Lewis hosted them (I'm that pathetic but I hope to Wodan that Mr. Lewis isn't).