Category: External TV (Page 213 of 419)

“Reaper” returning to life more quickly than anticipated

February 3, 2009 /

The good news is that, according to Variety‘s James Hibberd, The CW has decided to bring back “Reaper” on March 3rd, which is a couple of weeks earlier than originally planned. The bad news is that it’s pretty clear that they’re doing so because they need a sacrificial lamb for the spot on the schedule against “American Idol,” and since they don’t want to keep wasting perfectly good episodes of “90210,” they’ve decided to use a series in which they clearly have limited faith.

Says Hibberd:

To make way for “Reaper,” the CW also advanced its first-season finale date for “Privileged.” The show will conclude Feb. 24, having aired fewer repeats than originally planned. The network has not yet decided whether the drama will return next season. “90210” has been wrestling with “Idol” in recent weeks. Yet it and “Privileged” enjoy the highest percentage of DVR gains among any show on any network.

I don’t want to sound like a pessimist, but while I think we can count on both “90210” and “Privileged” making it back in Fall 2009 (I can’t believe they won’t keep both shows at least into a sophomore season, given the importance of DVR stats in today’s TV), the odds of “Reaper” seeing a third year are already looking slim…and it hasn’t even premiered yet! The CW already hedged their bets with the show’s second year by only giving it a 13-episode commitment, and this maneuver stinks of someone at the network saying, “If it’s a hit, awesome, and if it’s not…well, we didn’t really expect it to be, anyway, so it’s no skin off our nose!”

ADDENDUM: Tyler Labine has been one of my Facebook friends ever since I interviewed him for Bullz-Eye, and when he changed his status this morning to indicate that he was “off to LA to get a new gig,” I immediately responded by asking, “Wow, is there really that little hope for a third season of ‘Reaper’?” He quickly replied, “No, no, just a big hiatus to fill up with gigs. Just a few movie ops. Season 3 is a definite maybe right now. I’ll keep everyone posted.” Oh, okay: if he’s hopeful, then I reckon can find it in my heart to be hopeful as well.

External Entertainment, External TV, Reaper, TV, TV Comedies, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

Heroes 3.14: It’s a strange new world we live in…

February 2, 2009 /

Welcome back, kids, to one of the most bashed series currently on television…and that’s by people who used to consider themselves fans of the show. Now, clearly, if you’ve been a regular reader of this blog, you know that, although I’ve been here from the very beginning of the “Heroes” saga and plan to hang on ’til the bitter end, I’ve had my problems with the show. Clearly, Tim Kring and the gang can’t please all of the people all of the time, but even I can admit that Season 3 started off looking like it was going to blow the disappointment of Season 2 out of the water and only ended up having its own share of problems. Worst of all, the first half of the third season, “Villains,” came to an end with the death of one of the series’ one interesting new characters: Papa Petrelli, played by the ever-awesome Robert Forster. (The only consolation is that, well, we thought the character of Papa was dead throughout the first two seasons, so there’s every reason to believe that they’ll find a way to bring him back to life yet again.)

Tonight, we were presented with the beginning of the second half of Season 3, which has been given the subtitle of “Fugitives.” How was it, you ask…?

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Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External TV, Heroes, Reviews, TV, TV Action, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

“Kyle XY” canceled, “Leverage” renewed, “Friday Night Lights” ratings

February 2, 2009 /

TV.com reports that ABC Family has elected not to renew “Kyle XY” for a fourth season, but did pick up “Lincoln Heights” and “Greek” for additional seasons.

The news of Kyle XY’s cancellation first hit the Web via a report from EW.com’s Michael Ausiello, who believes that Kyle’s slumping ratings may have done it in. The show, ABC Family’s first original program, was one of the main reasons ABC Family has turned itself into a promising off-shoot of Disney and ABC. But now with other ABC Family shows–such as The Secret Life of the American Teenager–raising the bar, it appears that Kyle XY is the odd-man out.

I didn’t watch “Kyle XY,” but this has to be heartbreaking news to fans of the show. “Greek” makes for good summer viewing, so I’m happy to see it was picked up for another season.

In other news, TNT renewed “Leverage” for a 15-episode second season.

The early-December debut of Leverage drew an impressive 5.6 million viewers, and over its first nine episodes has averaged 3.2 million viewers.

“Leverage” has been sailing along, though it is pretty unbelievable at times. It has a sense of humor and doesn’t really take itself too seriously (except when it takes itself too seriously). The characters are diverse and strong, and though the humor can be a little “shticky” at times, it’s a pretty funny show.

“Friday Night Lights” fans have to be wondering how the ratings have been since the show debuted on NBC. Well, the show averaged 4.17 million viewers over its first three episodes, which is down from 5.61 million last season. Michael Ausiello says that the show “will be back provided all (or most) of the 4.6 million people that tuned in for last Friday’s season premiere … stick around for the entire season. And they’d be fools not to.”

Hopefully, “Friday Night Lights” can stay above the 4.0 million level so that NBC is getting enough out of the show to continue to co-own the rights with DirecTV.

External Entertainment, External TV, Friday Night Lights, News, TV, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

I was all ready to write a positive review of “The Last Templar”…

February 1, 2009 /

…but then I saw the last 15 minutes.

NBC’s four-hour miniseries based on Raymond Khoury’s novel of the same name starts out a bit rough, but eventually finds its groove once the two main characters — archeologist Tess Chaykin (Mira Sorvino) and FBI agent Sean Daley (Scott Foley) — get some real screen time together. The plot revolves around the lost Templar treasure and a series of related murders. At its best, “The Last Templar” resembles “Romancing the Stone” with Sorvino playing the unruly adventurer and Daley the unwitting passenger that’s along for the ride. At its worst, it reminded me of “The Librarian” movies on the USA Network.

When “The Last Templar” works, it is due to the chemistry between Chaykin and Daley. Their budding romance is cute and there are several laugh-out-loud lines. Given the heavily religious subject matter, the miniseries does a nice job of balancing between the faithful (Daley) and the skeptic (Chaykin). That is, until the last 15 minutes, when the story goes off its rails.

At this point, I should warn anyone that might want to watch “The Last Templar” that there are spoilers ahead. For those that think that they still might want to watch it, I would recommend the miniseries to religious types that are looking for a little Indiana Jones/Jack Colton-esque adventure.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

So the Templar treasure is supposed to be the Gospel of Jesus, which would, according to Chaykin’s mentor/adversary, Bill Vance, prove that Jesus was in fact mortal and debunk Christianity as a whole. The only problem is that the treasure is at the bottom of the sea, where the Templar ship went down back in the 13th century.

After bringing up the figurehead from the Templar ship, Chaykin, Daley and Vance do battle on the deck of the boat during a storm and the ship is capsized. Tess washes ashore on a Greek isle and awakens to find Sean in the next room in a coma. She goes back to the beach to pray (for the first time, apparently) for Sean’s life and conveniently finds the figurehead, which also washed ashore. Inside, she finds the supposed Gospel of Jesus. So then she, an experienced archeologist, decides to open this priceless treasure on top of a windy cliff in the open air. As she’s examining the scrolls (which are literally blowing around in her hand because it’s so windy), Vance (who also apparently washed ashore the same island) manages to sneak up on her. Mind you, the two are on top of the cliff with no cover whatsoever. In the real world, Tess would have seen Vance coming from a mile away. (Of course, in the real world, Tess would have taken the scrolls back to safety before examining them.) But there they are, on a windy cliff, arguing over what they should do with the scrolls when the menacing Vance continues to approach Tess. She’s afraid of him and the scrolls slip out of her hands. Vance goes over the edge of the cliff and dies. The supposed Gospel of Jesus is lost forever.

That scene was bad enough, but it was followed up by a flashback to ancient times where we learn that the Gospel of Jesus wasn’t written by Jesus after all. It was written by the Templars to (I guess) dispel the notion that Jesus was the Son of God. Instead of just leaving the “was Jesus for real?” question unanswered, “The Last Templar” decided to hit us over the head with the fact that the Gospel was a fake. That, coupled with Tess’ prayers being answered with Sean’s awakening, made for a very heavy-handed conclusion to the story.

In the end, it appears that the miniseries stayed pretty faithful (pun intended) to the conclusion of Khoury’s book, at least based on The Last Templar wikipedia page, so maybe my beef is with Khoury and not with the miniseries. Vance’s appearance on the cliff was ridiculous, and after 3 hours and 45 minutes of doing a pretty good job of balancing faith and science, the miniseries abandoned that to have a feel-good ending for the religious folks.

The bottom line is that if you aren’t religious, don’t bother with “The Last Templar.”

External Entertainment, External Movies, External TV, TV, TV Action, TV Dramas

Battlestar Galactica: The Oath

January 31, 2009 /

Man, after three and a half seasons of following this ragtag fleet around space, it’s sure hard to watch them tear themselves apart. Like most mutinies, this episode was brutal. The survival of the human race is already teetering on the edge of the abyss, but now there’s a civil war brewing and things are getting ugly.

At the center of the coup is Gaeta, and Alessandro Juliani really shined in this episode. It was fun to watch him orchestrate the uprising from the CIC, throwing a little comment in here and there in order to get the Admiral to do what he wanted. It wasn’t until Bill sent the private down to take a look that Gaeta had to make his move and overtake the command center. It was a brilliant (if devious) plan.

This episode felt like one from the first couple of seasons where the show would get bogged down in minutiae, but given the limited number of episodes remaining (7), there’s no guarantee that Bill and Roslin will emerge unscathed as the leadership of the fleet. In fact, both of their lives are in danger — Bill has to survive a grenade blast and Roslin has a viper on her tail. This brings me to one of my problems with this episode: I don’t like unnecessary sacrifice. Never have. There was no reason for Bill and Tigh to stay on Galactica other than to show how big their balls are. They didn’t do anything to delay the troops from entering the hanger and the raptor would have gotten away with or without Butch and Sundance on board. Now, it may work out in the end — i.e. Bill does something on Galactica to save Roslin’s life on the raptor — but it still doesn’t make Bill’s decision to stay the right one.

The other problem with this episode was Gaeta’s failure to account for the President. Lee and Starbuck were able to walk right up to her door — no marines — and take her to safety. Didn’t Gaeta have a plan to capture Roslin? Didn’t he and Zarek want to tie up that loose end so that she wouldn’t…um…I don’t know…escape and find a way to broadcast a speech to the entire fleet? You could see Gaeta’s frustration as he finally isolated her wireless signal and ended her speech. Given how smoothly his plan was executed, the failure to deal with Roslin feels more like a plot hole than a misstep by Felix.

Otherwise, the episode moved the plot forward quickly and was suspenseful throughout. It’s tough to watch members of the fleet kill each other off, but it makes sense that there’s a sub-section that is still harboring distrust and resentment towards the Cylons. After all, it wasn’t long ago that these same Cylons killed billions of humans back on Caprica and the other colonies.

Battlestar Galactica, External Entertainment, External TV, TV, TV Action, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

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