shows that are over, and shows that are actually over

(I think I wrote this on Monday night/Tuesday morning. That’d make sense, as much as any of it does.)

This Cubs losing streak is costing me sleep. This is not some figurative whine about the badness of the last week and a half, this is a literally “I’m unable to go fall asleep after losses.” Like, I think the only close to full night of sleep I’ve gotten is Sunday, because it was a day game and gave me many many hours to wear myself out feeling miserable. At this point, I’m hoping for a win, but hoping to remain lucid until Wednesday’s day game.

While insomnia has me, I figured I might as well work thru the ideas in my head. This actually, where I got a post stuck out of my head out in to paper, and then fell asleep soon after. Didn’t actually post it, but details are for suckers.

Let’s talk about TV shows I’ve already slightly talked about in a different place. Maybe I’ll make this not absurdly, for a change.

Scrubs: this could’ve been worse, given the (non!) victory lap. The interns were good – better on the websiodes – and there were a few episodes which were actually really good; a best of Scrubs DVD would be like a half dozen episodes about death, I think. There were no “will JD & Elliot stick?” plots – they did, they had a fight, but they was not the usual aching about it, which was a nice change. Not sure why they spent two episodes in the islands, now that I think about it, except it allowed them two spend two episodes in the islands.

I liked the show enough that I’m okay with the idea of the people making it trying to make some more money by beating the horse a bit more. If they can get paid for making afterMASH, more power to them. But, at the same time, they could’ve done a better job of making us see the point of doing any more, what with the final being so definitive the story being over. Don’t get me wrong, I really liked the ending and appreciated it over leaving things open for another season, but when the show’s been based around the lead character’s wacky adventures at his hospital, it would’ve been nice to get some idea for what the show was now going to be out when those that lead character was no longer going to be at the hospital. Not to mention the hard to miss ending bit of the architect of the show literally taking down the canvas where future stories were played out, and throwing it in the trash. Symbolism wasn’t exactly subtle.

Maybe my real problem is with being told not to think all future Scrubs episodes are unnecessary by the same people who just told My Last Ever Episode? Or maybe, if they want to keep using the “Cheers->Fraiser” comparison with what they plan to do, they need to go all the way and change the name of the show before next season. (Oh, but then it wouldn’t be Scrubs, and the DVDs wouldn’t sell as well and I think that’s all we’re here for at this point.)

Everyone Hates Chris: A comedy featuring voice over narration of the lead (male) characters struggles, including his interaction with a huge cast of eccentric characters. Somehow this one got slightly less attention for ending. I only knew when I heard Todd Briges mention it to Bryan Alvarez – no, I can’t believe that’s actually what occurred either – but I had seen the ratings enough to know this was doomed. And, giving it being a predominantly minority cast, a sitcom, and on the CW, it did pretty well to last four seasons.

Not making the claim this was a great show – it’d be one that’d stack up on my TiVo and get watched in bunches when I realized they were about to be deleted – probably because I think I’ve now seen every show about someone coming of age I need to see in my lifetime. But it was a show that had it’s great moments, and a show so under the radar (that’s the minority/CW thing again) that few saw them.

Like the final scene. For no reason besides they could and it’d be a hilarious, Chris waiting for the results of the GED which would change his life (just don’t ask me how) ends up being Chris playing Tony Soprano in replica of the last scene from the Sopranos. Like, with every bit they could manage to squeeze in – onion rings, Chris watching ominous looking individuals walk by his table in slow motion, everyone singing along to a cheesy eighties song, someone having trouble parking their vehicle – all right up to the moment where Chris gets the envelope with his GED score instead, and the show immediately goes to black.

Though, to really pay it off, they should’ve waited a beat and then jumped back to give the answer (or maybe a non-answer, and the usual coda) – it didn’t quite make the leap to parody it needed to be. But it was still enjoyable enough as is, like the rest of the show. And we didn’t really need the answer, since they made sure to wink at Chris’ inevitable future if the show was to continue following the pseudo-autobiography of Chris Rock path. (Though I was kind of surprised it never tied into the b-plot.)

Because of this show, I won’t keep seeing Tichina Arnold as Pam. (Though having Gina show up here as a guest somehow made my year.) As a tradeoff, Terry Crews is totally Julius now and forever, no matter how many movie trailers I see him in as Menacing Guy #2

Okay, now I’m meandering on wikipedia and finding out things like the engineer at the radio station on Martin worked at is now the father of Ben Linus on LOST. Need to sleep.

NUMB3RS 5×9: Conspiracy Theory

Not that I didn’t already know NUMB3RS and baseball only produced insanity, but when watching seeing this week’s episode

that’s clearly wrong. To be fair, there’s actually a loud siren that goes off in the houses of any interested in baseball statistics when anyone says “well, obviously Jeter’s better”, but those numbers don’t make any sense. They don’t make any sense because they’re the 1996 stats, not the 1995, and they don’t make sense because if you combine two averages, the number has to be somewhere in between them. I don’t know teach advanced math at Cal Sci once every six or seven episodes to know that.

(Justice averaged .327 in those years, Jeter .302. Can’t figure out which two years they used to get that combined number)

And they don’t make sense because Charlie is dropping them easily. I can believe he knows every thing about any field of mathematics (or non-mathematics presented as math for the sake of having one professor who knows everything) but I can not believe he knows the batting averages of New York Yankees off the top of his head.

I bring this out not just to point out I can identify baseball mistakes on TV shows (I can!) but because it was one odd moment that took me out of a delightfully insane episode. The crazy conspiracies nuts, the JFK argument, the random arrest story – the plot was good, and all the little notes were great. They had me when Liz pre-empted Charlie’s “imagine” (and Charlie’s metaphor involved him being in a Parka for no particular reason) but they won me for good with the third camera. That was lots of fun.

imdb (which has a link to the full episode) says this episode was written by Robert David Port. I have no idea who that is, but I hope they continue being awesome.

(I don’t think I’ll have much to say about the result of the Veterans Comittee vote tommorow, but I might as well put off writing about the Cubs until then. Still working on twitter/wordpress integration.)

that blew

I spent the last 12 minutes of Burn Notice wondering if my TiVo had goofed, and was only grabbing the first hour of a two part final. There was surely not enough time resolve everything, which was right – instead of doing any of that, everything just went kaBOOM, just leaving enough time for “see you this winter, sucker”

When they’ve spent 3 months teasing the payoff to the main storyline, when the preview for this episode was “it’s all leading up to his moment!”, you’d to actually get the conclusion to the story. It’s till a good show, but they didn’t need to be so lame.

Seeing as Carla has killing off everyone else with the operation before the conclusion and pretty much knew Michael had an extra key card AND he’s super parnoid, he probably should’ve thought a little bit longer about booby traps. Seeing as I’ve watched television shows before, I probably should’ve been more parnoid when they noted there was a not-yet-seen person grouped with Carla’s other operatives; surely this operation had no chance of happening if there was a character not yet on screen.

what I learned this episode: as a spy, it helps to have many different poolside outfits

the Mole: 5×3

I think Ali’s the Mole. It’s a slightly educated, mostly gut feeling.

FAIL! I’ve got no idea now. At least Bobby was someone else’s pick.

Whoever lays out the games was pretty dead on when they figured they’d need half naked people by episode 3 for ratings purposes.

the Mole: 5×2

I got talked into watching this show, again, but of course the person who did isn’t returning my voice mails. It’s gotta go somewhere, here’s good enough.

People who obviously aren’t the Mole and are easy to eliminate
– Paul (way too into ‘the game’)
– Bobby (way too blatant)
– Mark (way too insane, couldn’t fake being the Mole if he tried)
– Nicole (way too into creating herself as Reality TV Star)
– Victoria (way too concerned about losing money on every game; apparently unaware no team ever gets 100% of the money)

People who are reasonable suspects
– Clay
– Craig
– Kristen
– Alex
– Ali

Clay, Kristen, and Ali have relatively hid in the background, which is what all the former Moles have done early on. You don’t really need to screw something or misled people, because they’ll do it to themselves. Craig is the sort of “we’ll make anyone the Mole so you can’t rule anyone out next season!” pick some shows will try, though I’m not sure this one will make it thru this season much less the next. I’ve got Alex and Paul also confused in my brain, but I don’t think Alex has done enough to rule himself out.

I think Ali’s the Mole. It’s a slightly educated, mostly gut feeling. Kristen’s my second guess, mostly because I get her confused with Ali.

taking the show way too seriously note: I spent five minutes analyzing the ransom note on freeze frame, noting the missing and misplaced letters, looking for a phrase from the first letter of each word or the first letter on each line, analyzing patterns in letters with similar fonts…and came up with absolutely nothing. I’m 100000% sure they’ll show it again at the end of the season with a voice over explaining how obvious the clue was, but it was beyond me here.

stuck on the edge of my mind

So today, I’m stuck inside all day, and walk out to find 65 degree weather. That was bizarre. I swear it was snowing ten days ago. As I write this around 11, I’ve seen this scroll on ESPNEWS twice NCAAM Wyoming expected to fire coach Steve McClain Wyoming fires coach Steve McClain The first blurb … Continue reading “stuck on the edge of my mind”

So today, I’m stuck inside all day, and walk out to find 65 degree weather. That was bizarre. I swear it was snowing ten days ago.

As I write this around 11, I’ve seen this scroll on ESPNEWS twice

NCAAM
Wyoming expected to fire coach Steve McClain
Wyoming fires coach Steve McClain

The first blurb right after each other. I guess they want to make sure you know what’s up with the men’s basketball program in Wyoming. Maybe for Air Force’s benefit?

random stuff while watching RAW

– Cryme Tyme won the #1 contendership on Janurary 7th. That’s, uh, 64 days ago. TWO MONTHS.

It’s not like the tag team titles haven’t been defended.

01/29: HBK/Cena b Rated RKO (win the titles)
02/26: HBK/Cena b Rated RKO
03/12: HBK/Cena b TWGTT
03/12: HBK/Cena b Cade & Murdoch
03/12: HBK/Cena b MNM

Five different teams have gotten shots before JTG and Shad! I hope this is just an ingenious plan to keep delaying their title shot til WrestleMania, and it’s a secret plan so they can’t tell anyone. That makes sense.

– Is Edge hurt? Perhaps he’s just speaking up for minorities! If only he didn’t hate Cryme Tyme. Edge’s attempt to be the evilest man ever is fun to watch.

– The thing about Kane and Khali in a chain match is it wouldn’t really hurt their mobility.

TV shows I’m watching

24: I was thinking they just brought back the president and first lady just to live off what they did last year a bit. The impact on the main story was a bit much – the first lady relationship was a nice call back to last season, but everything worked out too quickly at the end to believe – but the stabbing totally made it worth it. I thought Gregory Itzin was only signed for three episodes, and I wouldn’t mind leaving his death/non-death being up in the air. No need to kill of yet another president.

Congrats to Jack for making it out of an hour without physically torturing someone.

TAR: I have absolutely no idea who’s going to win here. I don’t think anyone does after that last leg. If they can get Midget and Me off the show – they’ve been close, but a non-elimination has to be coming up – this might be a really good ending.

Numbers: Last Friday’s show good – I always like episodes where a one episode character becomes reoccurring and where lines like “he picked the wrong computer geek to mess with” are said half kidding. The one three weeks ago, with Don in therapy and the rest of the team handling a kidnapping was awesome. Any show that does a real time format in 2007, and decides they’re not going to do 24, but instead a homage to Run Lola Run of all things, is going to make me go to the thesaurus and look up synonymys for great so I’m not repeating myself. It was the best episode I’ve seen. I don’t know if Numbers is actually an excellent show (probably not), or some show you should seek out if you’re not watching, but it’s a show I’m highly enjoying at the moment. The farther they’ve gone thru the season, the more I’ve liked it (like Psyche, which totally grew on me and was terrific by the end of the season.)

soul brother Rocky

I have three very pressing questions 1) Since when is there a Black Family Channel? 2) Why does “Bullwinkle and Friends”, and “King Leopardo”, air on the Black Family Channel? 3) Does this mean I’m black? Answers below.

I have three very pressing questions

1) Since when is there a Black Family Channel?

2) Why does “Bullwinkle and Friends”, and “King Leopardo”, air on the Black Family Channel?

3) Does this mean I’m black?

Answers below.

Continue reading “soul brother Rocky”

drawn together

So there’s this guy. He keeps running into this girl, and I’m sure he’d like to ask her out or something. I’m not too sure about her – she seems to have some body issues and is a bit sketchy – but he obviously likes her alright, so who am I to argue.

Anyway, they keep running into each other, but I guess don’t get to spend much time together, because her job has her on the go all the time. You’d think he’d realize he doesn’t have much of a chance and ask her out already, but – and this is the part I really can’t believe – instead, every time, he keeps asking her questions about her car insurance.

I totally don’t get people sometimes.

Numb3rs, 3-8 “Hardball”

(cross posted from the-w) This week’s episode of Numbers – a show I believe myself and maybe CRZ only watch, and I can’t even rationalize why I’m watching – was able baseball stats. I couldn’t resist writing about the show while I watched, taking notes that would only make sense if you were watching the … Continue reading “Numb3rs, 3-8 “Hardball””

(cross posted from the-w)

This week’s episode of Numbers – a show I believe myself and maybe CRZ only watch, and I can’t even rationalize why I’m watching – was able baseball stats. I couldn’t resist writing about the show while I watched, taking notes that would only make sense if you were watching the same part I was, even if that’s the most useless way to do it. Sorry.

Continue reading “Numb3rs, 3-8 “Hardball””