Some people juggle geese!

Two of note this week. South Park returns Wednesday at 10:00pm Eastern and Mythbusters at 9:00. They're both shows hard to set a season pass for because they run a lot of repeats during the week. So if you want to see the new episodes of these two shows, it helps to be specific. Good luck.

I love FlashForward. That is all.

Firefly was canceled with 4.5 million viewers. Dollhouse was renewed with 2.7 million viewers. This simultaneously makes me happy and very very sad.

Been a while since I did a proper news post. The numbers in my news feed look suspiciously low, so I’m sure there’s a bunch of stuff/time missing. Forgive me, faithful readers.

The Beautiful Life (which honestly I wasn’t sure I’d even heard of) appears to be the first cancellation of the fall season.

Conan O’Brien apparently whacked his head while filming a sketch for The Tonight Show on Friday and had to be rushed to the hospital. He’s fine and back on the air.

Things are not looking good for Three Rivers. It was a show I was vaguely interested in before, but then they recast some of the actors and shot a new pilot. This new pilot didn’t go over well, so they’ve shot another pilot which will be the first episode to air and the original re-shot pilot will be the second episode. And with that, I’m out.

A potential Lost clue showed up on the new show FlashForward last week. In one scene we see an Oceanic Air billboard in the background touting its “Perfect Safety Record.” So either the bomb worked or this show is set before Lost.

ABC has announced that they’re going to do a “split launch” of V. It will start as previously announced on November 4^th, but will go off the air for some undetermined amount of time and return some time after the Olympics. There have been some rumblings of trouble for the show and there was a two-week shutdown over the summer. This seems like a bad plan to me because new shows that take long breaks early in their run don’t tend to do well (see: every new show the year of the writers strike).

The original leads of Law & Order: Criminal Intent are all leaving this season. Two of the non-original actors are taking this as an opportunity to bail. Considering this show has been demoted to USA, I think this is the death knell.

J.J. Abrams is producing an as-of-yet untitled sitcom for Fox.

Betty White has signed on for a guest spot on 30 Rock.

Surprising pretty much no one, Heather Locklear is going to be on the new Melrose Place.

Fox has also picked up a new Ron Howard sitcom about the IRS.

A new show from the folks who make Robot Chicken premiered on Sunday. It’s called Titan Maximum and it’s basically a Voltron parody.

The A-Team movie cast is coming together with the latest addition reported to be the guy that starred in District 9, Sharlto Copley.

Mad Men has already been picked up for a fourth season.

South Park returns with new episodes Wednesday, October 7^th.

Did I mention that Disney bought Marvel?

Things that don’t seem necessary: Ghost Rider 2.

Here’s a good one: David Cronenberg is rebooting his own reboot of The Fly.

This is the best sentence I get to write today. Justin Timberlake has been added to the cast of the facebook movie written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher.

Tron: Legacy is going to get a simultaneous IMAX release, December 17, 2010.

I still can’t believe they’re making a Battleship movie, but not it has a director in Peter Berg.

Bruce Campbell will be in Spider Man 4. Why they’re making a Spider Man 4 is a whole other question.

So they’re rebooting Fantastic Four? Really?

The Road has been pushed back again to November 25^th almost a year after it was supposed to be released.

Warner Bros and Mattel have parted ways over He-Man. Mattel will continue to shop it to other studios.

Guy Ritchie’s next project after Sherlock Holmes will be an adaptation of a DC comic called Lobo.

In completely unnecessary remake news, the 2007 British film Death at a Funeral is being remade in the US for a 2010 release. The original was hilarious. I don’t get this decision at all.

We've finished the first week of the new TV season, so I thought I'd give a little recap.

How I Met Your Mother, House, The Big Bang Theory and Castle all returned strong. The House premiere was the best of the lot. I’d kinda gone off house a little last season, but I’m completely on board now. I haven’t seen Heroes yet.

Despite what I said about Modern Family I didn’t watch it and therefore it looks like I won’t. It’s still getting good write-ups though, so if you’re looking for a sitcom, well, you should watch The Big Bang Theory, but if you need a second sitcom, this one might be worth checking out. CSI:NY is as ridiculous as ever and I still haven’t watched Glee despite all the good things I’m hearing about it.

Week one of Fringe was outstanding. Week two of Fringe was creepy and weird. I shouldn’t have watched it right before bed. CSI is still CSI, and the premiere was worth the price of admission for the opening sequence alone. Holy bullet time, Batman. I didn’t set a recording for week two of Community, so I guess there’s another one I’m not watching. It’s also getting good reviews, so if you need a laugh, go for it. I was hooked ten minutes in to FlashForward. Set your season passes now, and if you missed the first episode go watch it on Hulu. Now. Seriously. What are you still doing here?

You back? Good.

Friday used to be a boring night of TV.  Less so now. Law & Order came back for its 20^th season with a story about prosecuting Dick Cheney for war crimes. Ah, L&O, tell us how you really feel. I honestly don’t know why I watch Smallville any more. I don’t really have any idea what’s going on because I usually have it on while I’m doing something else. The only thing I really know is that they’re heading toward breaking the producers’ first season promise of “no tights, no flying.” Dollhouse was a little confusing, but returned strong. I might have to watch it again to get the full gist.

I just watched The Simpsons premiere and I gotta say, I’m not impressed. They’re making a big deal about it being the 20^th season of the show, but if it continues this way, I probably won’t keep watching.

Tonight I scored a last minute ticket to KFOG's fall TV preview hosted by SF Chronicle critic Tim Goodman. It was an entertaining and informative four-ish hours at Kelly's Mission Rock in San Francisco. Tim showed us screeners of the first episodes of five shows, four of which are new shows.

First up was Community, a new comedy on NBC Thursday nights this fall starting this week. It was a lot funnier than I thought it would be and will be giving it a shot in my season pass list.

Second was Modern Family, the sitcom on ABC that I had thought looked mildly interesting. That assessment hasn't changed. It's not afraid to be politically incorrect, but that's not enough to make me want to watch. Funny, but not enough to hold my interest. Plus, don't we have enough "mockumentary" style shows?

Third up was a new show on HBO called Bored to Death. It's an interesting premise and a good cast, but not enough to make me want HBO. This is a rental if it's anything.

The fourth show we got was the season premiere of Parks & Recreation, on NBC. This non-Office spin-off held exactly no interest for me when they ran a short six episode season last spring. I have to admit, I thought it was pretty funny. Again, not enough to make me set the Tivo, but a lot better than I expected and apparently a lot better than the first set of shows. The writing was snappy enough, I just don't think I can handle that much Amy Poehler on a regular basis.

The last show we saw was an animated show that will be on FX sometime in 2010 called Archer. This was flat out brilliant. FX is giving Archer a super secret sneak preview this Thursday after the season premiere of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I neglected to mention the return of Sunny in my fall preview, so consider this your reminder of its return. The Thursday episode of Sunny is showing up as an hour long on the Tivo. The second half of this hour is Archer. See? It's sekrit. So even if it doesn't show up in the listings, and it won't, record Thursday's Sunny, because even if you don't watch it, and you should, you should check out Archer.

It’s that time of year again. My Entertainment Weekly Fall TV Preview has arrived. That means it’s time to do a night-by-night breakdown of what’s ahead for fall. Bear in mind that some of my favorites aren’t returning right away this fall. Lost and 24 return in January and Chuck is supposed to come back in March.

SUNDAY as usual doesn’t have much going on. At 8:00 The Simpsons (Sept. 27) goes up against The Amazing Race (Sept. 27). It’s not my thing, but Family Guy returns the same day as The Simpsons. There’s one possibly interesting new show on Sunday. It’s the first in what will be a recurring theme: a medical drama. The networks are all in love with medical dramas this year. Not only were there a handful of nurse-centric dramas this summer, but there are at least three new medical dramas this fall. Everyone is apparently trying to capitalize on the gaping hole left by the conclusion of ER. Sunday’s entry in to the medical drama race is Three Rivers (Oct. 4) on CBS in the 9:00 hour. The star, Alex O’Loughlin, you might recognize from the fan favorite but quickly canceled Moonlight. The angle of this show is that it’s about transplant surgeons in Pittsburgh. Last spring it looked promising, but since then the network has recast almost everyone except the lead and remade the pilot. So it’s something I might check out, but I’m not holding my breath.

MONDAY kicks off what can best be described as NBC’s ill-fated 10:00 experiment, The Jay Leno Show, which will run every weeknight, thus eliminating five hours of actual programming. I can’t imagine a circumstance that would have me tuning in to this unless he’s got some celeb guest I can’t miss. Jay’s main competition on Monday nights is Castle (Sept. 21), which I found to be a confection of a cop show last year and am happy to see it back on the schedule. The 8:00 hour on Monday is the problematic one with How I Met Your Mother (Sept. 21), Heroes (Sept. 21) and House (Sept. 21) all vying for the two tuner slots on the Tivo. I’m pretty sure the way it’s going to shake down is HIMYM and House on Tivo and Heroes on Hulu unless Heroes stages some amazing comeback and becomes good again. The 9:00 hour has a new entry in my must watch list The Big Bang Theory (Sept. 21) at 9:30 against the next medical drama entry Trauma (Sept. 28). Big Bang Theory became a must watch after I saw a panel at Comic Con and devoured the first season after returning home. It’s geek humor at its finest. Trauma is a drama about EMTs that is set in San Francisco. So far I’m hearing middling things about it, but it might be worth a look.

TUESDAY brings us the reboot of Melrose Place (Sept. 8). I wish I was kidding about that, but the CW had decent enough success bringing back 90210 (Sept.8) and made the next logical leap, I guess. I’m not watching either, I just thought you’d like to know. Tuesday has exactly nothing else I’m planning on watching until November when the reboot of V (Nov. 3) happens. It has a solid cast and the previews I’ve seen so far look promising. I don’t really remember the original, so I won’t be offended if they deviate. I’m looking forward to this one.

WEDNESDAY isn’t too crowded either. ABC is taking a huge risk and bringing an entire night of new shows. There are four sitcoms from 8:00-10:00, the only one of which looks even remotely interesting is Modern Family (Sept. 30). The drama entry that follows the sitcoms is Eastwick (Sept. 23). It’s a TV version of The Witches of Eastwick. I wish I was kidding about this one too. The only two shows of interest on Wednesday night appear to be CSI:NY (Sept. 23) at 10:00 on ABC and Glee (Sept. 9) at 9:00 on Fox. I still haven’t watched the first two episodes of Glee, but I’m hearing good things. The problem with Glee is that it sounds quirky and it’s on Fox, so I’m not going to get too attached.

THURSDAY has one of the other few train wreck hours of the week with the 9:00 collision of three shows I watch and two popular shows I don’t. The most anticipated of this set is Fringe (Sept. 17). It only got better as the season went on last year. I can’t wait to see where it goes this year. Also returning at 9:00 are CSI (Sept. 24) and 30 Rock (Oct 15), which is coming back late so NBC can try to launch another sitcom in its slot and then move it. The new sitcom is called Community (Sept. 17). It looks ok, but it’s not really on the list. Of course, 30 Rock’s lead in is: The Office, which I once again will not be watching. The other popular shows at 9:00 are Supernatural (Sept. 10) and Grey’s Anatomy (Sept. 24). The big new show on Thursday this year is Flash Forward (Sept. 24).  It’s being touted as a sci-fi drama and has a hell of a cast that includes Dominic Monaghan, John Cho, and Joseph Fiennes. I’m going to check this one out for sure. Flash Forward goes up against the 19^th(!) edition of Survivor in the 8:00 hour.

FRIDAY used to be a total dumping ground, and maybe it still is, but there are a lot of popular and good (not always the same thing) shows on Fridays this fall. The most important of these is the second season of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse (Sept. 25). In the 9:00 hour it goes up against several other popular shows that have all shifted nights: Ugly Betty (Oct. 9), Medium (Sept. 25), Southland (Oct. 23) and the encore airing of America’s Next Top Model. NBC has moved the original Law & Order (Sept. 25) to Fridays at 8:00 for its 20^th season. NBC just can’t seem to kill this show no matter how hard they try. It goes up against the also relocated Smallville (Sept. 25). I keep promising I’m going to stop watching Smallville, but it’s a bit like a big traffic accident. I just can’t help myself.

SATURDAY has nothing to recommend except the fact that with the right set of channels you can watch college football from 9:00 am to 11:00 pm without stopping. This is often what I find myself doing.

I'm still waiting for my Entertainment Weekly Fall TV Preview issue to come. It usually arrives after the fall season starts anyway, so I've got one show to talk about before it comes. This Wednesday Glee starts on Fox. There was a sneak preview back in the spring, which I still haven't watched, but the critics seem to think it's going to be fun. It's about, yes, a glee club in high school. So a bit of a musical. I'm going to check it out.

Most everything starts next week or the week after, so I'm hoping to get the EW and get my preview done for you, faithful readers.

I was a beginner at Comic Con. It never occurred to me before that you could be a beginner at going to a convention, but Comic Con is no ordinary convention. I believe this year they said there were about 140,000 people in attendance. Keep that number in mind when I start to talk about the panels.

I got to Comic Con about two hours later than I wanted to. Again, rookie moves all around. I drove down from Santa Monica thinking that I could make the 112-mile drive in about two hours. It’s mostly highway, right? Bzzzzzt! Thanks for playing. I followed the suggestions of Comic Con and decided to take public transit to the convention center. First attempt yielded no parking and lots of people looking for parking. So I went one stop further out, still no luck. I finally ended up at a stop that was at a mall about two stops from where I was staying that night. But the housing debacle is a whole other post and not really relevant.

Once I arrived at the convention center, registration was a breeze, which I am thankful for. Apparently first thing that morning the registration computers were down for about two hours, nearly causing a riot. At least I got some small benefit from my late arrival. The Comic Con education continued from here.  Stepping back for a moment, Comic Con is essentially composed of two things: the expo floor and panels. Panels happen in rooms from 50 people up to 6000.  Most of the rooms are pretty small. Only Hall H, Ballroom 20 and one variation on Room 6 seat more than a couple hundred.

The first thing on the schedule I really wanted to see was the Avatar panel. I had heard about the whole waiting in line thing, so I headed to the line for Hall H about an hour and a half before the panel. This was Comic Con line lesson number one.  Remember the numbers from above? 140,000 people, most of whom would like to go in to a room that seats 6,000. Yeah. About two and a half hours later, after sweltering in a completely unshaded line outside (and having left my sunscreen in the car, rookie) I finally got in to Hall H just in time to hear Sigourney Weaver answer a question and James Cameron thank the crowd and say goodbye. I also heard him announce that IMAX theaters around the country will be showing 15 minutes of Avatar on August 21st. Side note: I tried to go, but as soon as I got the email about signing up, it was full. Bummer. Anyway, I found a seat and waited for the next panel to start, which thankfully was also one I wanted to see, just nowhere near as much as I wanted to see Avatar.

Panel number two was Terry Gilliam presenting The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. So I was in the same room as Terry Gilliam, which is kind of cool. He presented some gorgeous footage from the movie as well as addressing the fact that Heath Ledger died during filming. The solution is quite creative, I think, and I won’t ruin it for you. The movie itself looks like a typical Gilliam film, beautiful and completely obtuse. He also announced that after years of wrangling, he finally got the rights back to make his Don Quixote movie. Side note: if you haven’t seen Lost in La Mancha, it’s worth checking out.

Also on Day 1, I checked out the Doctor Who Comic Con exclusives, which last year were awesome and this year were not unless you’re a super fan that has to collect everything from every era of Doctor Who. There were four sets of paired action figures of One and Two with Daleks. There were two sets of each one, but the cool thing about them was that you could get each pairing in color or in greyscale. I decided to pass on these, but bought myself a plush Adipose and a sonic screwdriver toy. Colin Baker, Doctor number six, was signing autographs a few booths over from the main Who booth. He was charging $20 and I never saw a single person stop. Considering he was the Doctor that got me to stop watching, I certainly wasn’t going to.

The final thing I tried to do on the first day was attend the screening of Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog. I knew Joss and co were at the con, so I figured there was a good chance of seeing some cool folks if I went to the screening. I again made a rookie mistake by wanting to eat as opposed to sitting in line, so by the time I got to the line for the screening, the room was full and the line went down the hall, through a door and outside. There was no hope of getting in to that one. Crap.

I didn’t get up early enough the next morning to get to the showfloor in time to get some cool swag the BBC America booth was giving away, which was a bummer, but I did finally score one of their cool bags on Sunday. Friday was all about Ballroom 20. There was a Battlestar Galactica/Caprica panel I really wanted to see in the early afternoon and a Dollhouse/Joss Whedon panel to end the day. Once again, I failed to get in in time to see the BSG panel. I’m not sure I consider this a total loss just because I really kind of hated Caprica, but it would have been nice to see some of the BSG folks.

However, once I was in Ballroom 20, I didn’t have to leave, so I figured I’d just hang around until the Dollhouse panel. They do allow bathroom passes, so once you’re in a room you don’t have to leave just to pee, which is nice, but it leads to rooms being clogged by people waiting for stuff much later while people who want to just see what’s on right now are screwed. It’s not a great system. But I digress. While waiting for the Dollhouse panel, I got to see panels for Big Bang Theory, 24 and Bones. What I got out that time was that I should be watching Big Bang Theory. I got the first season from Netflix after I got home and really enjoyed it. The 24 panel was ok, Kiefer Sutherland was there as was Starbuck from BSG who has a role in the upcoming season. 24 looks like the same show again, but it’s working for them, so why change? I took an extended bathroom break during the Bones panel, so it’s still a show I’m not interested in.

The Dollhouse panel and Joss Q&A were great fun. Joss is just so much fun to listen to. I don’t have much more to say about it because you either love Joss or you don’t and if you don’t you don’t care and if you do I could go on for hours, but that would annoy people.

Friday nigh there was a party at 4^th and B in San Diego for The Mighty Boosh. I have tried a couple times to understand this show, and still don’t, but it looked like it could be a fun time and maybe we’d spot a celeb or two. I went with a couple people I met last year when I went to see Shakespeare in the UK. Fun to see them again. The party was really more The Mighty Boosh Live for an hour and some music. The drinks were decent, and the closest I got to famous people was at the upstairs bar while was waiting for a drink. In general, I’m terrible with faces out of context. Apparently this is true for famous people too. However, when you’re standing at a bar and Boomer and Anders from BSG are standing right next to you, it’s hard not to notice. Then it’s hard not to stare. They are both very pretty. Grace Park is taller than I thought. I didn’t actually speak to them, but it was cool to see them.

Saturday was a long day of walking around looking at stuff after a significant alarm fail and a very late start. I contemplated going in to a panel at some point, but didn’t give it enough time. I just wanted to see a panel in the middle of the afternoon in Ballroom 20, but I realized that the people I was waiting in line with were trying to get in for the 5:00 panel. This is the problem with the line/room policy. I didn’t give a crap about their panel, but they had to keep me out of the one I did want to see so they could make sure they had a seat at the one they wanted. Grr.

Lesson learned from the Dr. Horrible experience, I got a sandwich from Ralph’s at lunchtime and went to stand in line for the Doctor Who/Torchwood screening that night several hours before. I knew the Who and Torchwood people were already in town, and I hoped that at least some of them would introduce the shows. I was not disappointed. I even got myself in a really good spot to take pictures. The intro was very fun and is on youTube for anyone who cares.

Sunday was, of course, the day I had been waiting for. It was really the whole reason I went. The panel for Doctor Who was at 10:00 am. I met my friends in line at around 5:30 am. There was no way I was going to miss this one. I got in, got a really good seat, took lots of pictures and don’t remember a thing that was said. They did show previews of the rest of the David Tennant episodes and they look, to quote the man himself, awesome.

The rest of the afternoon was spent checking out the last of the showfloor and then checking out the Being Human and Torchwood panels from BBC America. Being Human just ended its six-week run on BBCA last week. It’s probably out on DVD by now, and is worth checking out. The premise is stupid enough that I didn’t want to watch it initially, but I ended up loving it. Torchwood was just finishing up headlining the most successful week ratings-wise on BBC America ever. Even the nutjobs that were protesting what happened to one of the characters behaved themselves for the most part.

Then the long journey home began, but you don’t want to hear about that. The TCAs were the following week in LA. I’m not sure I’m going to get to a TCA roundup before I do the fall TV preview, but they’re sort of the same thing, so keep an eye out. It should be coming soon.