6 posts tagged “life on mars”

If you'd like to pretend that I don't use the kind of language I'm about to use, just pass this one by, ok?

This post is going to be about the series finale of the US version of Life on Mars.

I'm giving y'all some room up top here, not because I'm going to spoil anything, but because I'm about to get all shouty and capslocky and I'm giving you some time to decide if you want to read that.

Ok. Ready? I have a question for the writers of the US Life on Mars in regard to the series finale that aired tonight.

WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?! JESUS H. CHRIST ON A CRUTCH THAT WAS THE BEST YOU COULD COME UP WITH?!?! You had advance warning that your show was going to get canceled and you were given an opportunity to wrap it all up and you what, asked a five year old how it should end? Without giving them any information about the show other than the title? This can't possibly be where you thought it was going to go when you started. If it was, then I'm even more upset. I don't think I've ever been offended by the ending of a show, especially one that was actually allowed an ending. FUCK YOU, US LIFE ON MARS.

I take back anything good I ever said about this show, and I apologize to anyone who was watching it on my recommendation. No ending at all would have been better than this shit.

The first eight episodes of the original UK version of Life on Mars will be out on DVD in the US in July. It's awesome. Rent it instead. Or just ask me, I've ripped my region 2 DVDs and could loan you the copies.

While I'm here, there's a new movie coming up called State of Play starring Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck. It is a (here's that word again) remake of a British miniseries that I've mentioned before called, unsurprisingly, State of Play. The miniseries is fantastic and it's available on Netflix right now. I suspect the movie might be pretty good, but I think the original is worth a rental.

Well this is just sad. All of the networks have announced their winter schedules. All of the schedules assume the strike will continue and there will essentially be no more new shows produced this season.

The breakdown of shows I care about is as follows:
ABC: Lost starts in February and will run eight episodes. There are rumors that the start could push until March or April. It also changes nights and will be on Thursdays at 9:00.

CBS has the CSIs until they run out of episodes, which will be very soon, in their usual times and will then go in to reruns. Jericho returns February 12.

NBC is bringing back Law&Order on January 2nd with a two hour premiere. They will run original episodes on Wednesday nights a 10:00. L&O:CI comes back on January 9th at 9:00. Scrubs will continue on Thursdays at 8:30 until it runs out of episodes.

Fox has House on its regular Tuesday night slot until they run out of episodes. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles starts on January 13th and airs on its regular Monday night slot after that.

The CW has Smallville in its regular Thursday at 8 slot until they run out.

Cable stuff of interest includes Reno:911 returning on January 16th. BBC America has Torchwood back on January 26th. The glorious Life on Mars has five episodes left after tonight. Tonight's episode will repeat right before next week's in case you missed it.

Apologies up front for the complete lack of updates lately. I was busy and then I was lazy. There's so much to write about I don't exactly know where to start, so I'll start with British TV since there's no good news about American TV at all.

Series two of Life on Mars starts on the 11th. Rent season one if you missed it, but don't miss season two. This show is so great I have no words. And in typical British fashion, the entire show is two series of eight episodes each. Fantastic. My Life on Mars DVDs from the UK are at a friend's house at the moment. I'm looking forward to seeing the special features and whatnot. Ah, the joys of a region free DVD player.

Series two of Torchwood will air in the US at roughly the same time as in the UK, starting in mid January. Of course, we'll still get the edited for time and content version, so I'll probably watch the downloads anyway. Some special guests appear in series two including James Marsters (Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Freema Agyeman who reprises her role as Martha Jones from Doctor Who. Torchwood starts on BBC America on January 26th. Torchwood series one comes out on DVD in the US January 22nd.

Speaking of Doctor Who, there's lots of new Who news out there. The Christmas special Voyage of the Damned is set to air on Christmas day in the UK and co-stars Kylie Minogue. Remember at the end of the last season when the Titanic crashed in to the TARDIS? That's where it picks up. Series four begins sometime in 2008 and will be loaded with companions for the Doctor. Catherine Tate will reprise her role as Donna from the Christmas special last year and will be the Doctor's full time companion. Also making appearances this season will be Billie Piper and Freema Agyeman as Rose and Martha. John Barrowman has also said that Captain Jack will show up at some point.

And since we're talking about David Tennant anyway, I just got a copy of Blackpool on DVD from amazon.co.uk. Hooray. No more crap video rips for me! Now I can rip them myself and put them on the phone. It would make for a great paper on US versus UK TV to break down why this works and the US version was so completely crap. I can't put my finger on it at all, but I love Blackpool and Viva Laughlin was just plain unwatchable.

When I got to work this morning I had a lovely semi-crushed box from Amazon sitting on my desk. In that box was the Serenity Collectors Edition and the Heroes Season 1 DVD set. I also had a bottle of Bookers bourbon on my desk as a thank you for the ass kicking I took at work the week before I went on vacation, but that's a horse of a different color.

I'm sitting here repeating to myself "I must not watch Heroes tonight". I've got so much unpacking and laundry to do it's not even funny. So expect a post tomorrow about how I watched seven commentaries or all the special features or some other nonsense that had me up until 2am.

I'm also very much looking forward to the Life on Mars full set that Chuck brought me from the UK. I hope there are lots of goodies. I've only ever watched the episodes on my computer, so I'm psyched to see them on an actual screen. It's probably a good thing I don't have my mitts on those yet, see above note about 2am.

Spend 11 hours on a plane with a bunch of British television and your brain will start to hurt. Trust me. I watched five hours of Life on Mars and three of a new series called Torchwood.  I've talked about Life on Mars before, so I won't rehash, but I've finished it now and I loved it even more than I thought I would. I completely respect the creators desire to end it. And wow, did they do to an incredible job. I won't ruin in for anyone who might actually see it (cough*netflix*cough), but man, what a solid ending. Nothing spectacular, but it delivered. Answered the overarching question of "what the hell is Sam's deal?" without being idiotic. Yes, I'm looking at you, Lost. The poor people sitting next to me probably thought I was insane, but whatever. It was great tv.

Now Torchwood is, believe it or not, a spinoff of Doctor Who. Torchwood as a concept was mentioned a few times during Doctor Who. It's an earth agency that deals with alien technology. And when put that way sounds even dumber than it is. I wanted to watch the first season of Torchwood before I finish the third season of the good Doctor because some of it apparently ties together. Series one of Torchwood is 13 episodes. I'm not quite three hours in. This is not the smartest show on tv so far, and the first season certainly got mixed reviews, but I think I'll enjoy it. It's supposed to pick up in the second half of the season. I'm certainly not advocating watching this one. I know most of you give me that little tolerant smile when I bring up the good Doctor anyway (remember, huge geek, internet access), so this is taking it to a new level.

I've been away for the last few days in Philadelphia. My feet hurt from all the walking, but I'd never been there before so I got to see a lot of the historical stuff today before I flew back. Got one of those weird surges of patriotism I'm prone to from time to time. Wish I knew what to do with that when it happens. It's usually followed by a fit of frustration and disappointment. Either way it was rad to see the Pennsylvania State House where all the Declaration of Independence and Constitution stuff went down. I don't think I would have gotten anything out of it if I was forced to go there as something "educational" like the eleventy kajillion kids that were there today. The tour guide was a real character too. He was born for that job. I'm glad it found him. The point being I've been away from the computer, I'm 100+ emails behind, and I certainly haven't been following the TCA stuff going on this week. Maybe I'll get caught up some tomorrow.  My brain doesn't know what timezone it's in anymore, but it's telling me it's bedtime. Perhaps I will listen to it for once.

Whew. I've been busy enough lately that I haven't been updating. That and nothing earth-shattering has happened anyway. So here's what's on my little entertainment brain...

First and foremost I guess I should mention that the Oscars are on tomorrow. Since I haven't seen a single nominated movie, I care less about them this year than usual. Of course the tivo is set. Of course I'll watch it. But I'm not making an event out of it like I sometimes do. Also on Sunday nights, my new reality series The Amazing Race. So far I've only seen one episode, but it's really entertaining. This is an all star edition, and the best quote of the show came from one of the other contestants: "We know Rob and Amber because, obviously, we live on the planet." Bwahahaha! I think it's hilarious that we have an all star of all stars reality tv couple. How many shows have they been on now? I lost count. And so far I don't miss Survivor.

The Black Donnellys starts this Monday. NBC did that thing they did with Studio 60 where they made the pilot available from Netflix. And, shocker, I didn't actually get it. So I'll be watching Monday night with the rest of y'all to see how it is. It's getting middling reviews. And I've even seen some people who say that the pilot is really good and they're still not going to watch it. It certainly won't kill me to have one less hour of tv on Monday nights. It also looks as if NBC is rerunning the pilot on Thursday in ER's slot. They've really been promoting it, so I guess that makes sense. Oh, and speaking of which, anyone want to lay odds on whether Studio 60 is coming back? I think it's dead. I guess if The Black Donnellys does even worse in the same slot it might come back. But they'd probably just replace it with a rerun of Deal or No Deal.

Heroes is officially my favorite show on tv. BSG has been sucking wind a little lately and Lost is staging a comeback, but I'm still not sold. I just think the execution of Heroes is so great. There's actual content and story progress every week. And it's just ridiculous enough. It's not postmodern ironic like it could have gone, and it treats the viewer like an adult even though it's basically a comic book in tv form. Now if they could just find a way to excise the Niki/Jessica subplot or at least make it interesting, it could be even better. And why does Mohinder have to be such a sucker? I guess because he thinks Sylar is locked up somewhere that the psycho riding with him to find all the other "gifted" folk is just a little odd? I think the killing of the super hearing lady proves Sylar isn't thinking things through. I'd suspect that Mohinder is going to catch on at some point and I think it would have been smarter to follow him around to find all these people first and then pick them off menu-style starting with the most badass powers first. Instead he kills the first one they come across? Seems rash. I'm still loving the Peter character development. I never understood the motivation of Claude teaching him, or even why Peter thought he could in the first place. But it seems to be working. Turns out all Peter needs is some sort of proximity to the power and it alters his DNA or some such nonsense. It's shaping up to be an epic battle between Sylar and Peter. They'll have the same powers, but Peter might not know about all of them. Classic good vs evil. I'm also still enjoying the ambiguity of which side a lot of the characters are on. Or the fact that some of them aren't on any side but their own (see: Nathan). And I totally didn't see the Simone thing coming this week, but I can't say I'll miss her. Just gives Peter something to be super pissed about. I think in the next couple of weeks we get to finally meet Linderman. Will it be when Hiro gets his sword? I could go on forever about this show (clearly). So great, so much fun.

I'm enjoying the second mini mystery on Veronica Mars more than I enjoyed the first one. The death of the Dean is so much more interesting than the rape storyline. I really like the twist of the forensics professor who literally wrote the book on the perfect crime being the chief suspect. Now if they could just bring the regulars back in to the fold, I'd be satisfied. I miss Wallace. Several interesting twists this week, the biggest being that Keith is back as Neptune's sheriff. Too bad it had to happen at the expense of Lamb, he was such a great foil for both Keith and Veronica. What's going to happen to Keith's open investigations? And does this mean that Veronica can now get whatever info she wants in a slightly more legit fashion? I think father and daughter will butt heads over some of the legalities of V's activities now that Keith has to be above reproach.

And I'd be remiss if I left the return of Lost out of the discussion. So here's a question. Have we learned anything we actually care about? We've been given tidbits about the Others, learned that Jack's tattoos mean something akin to Stranger in a Strange Land (hence the title of the episode), and learned that Desmond can see that Charlie is going to die and he's trying desperately to stop it, but knows he can't. We caught a glimpse of the captured Tailies and saw some of the abducted kids. And then learned exactly zilch about what they've been up to and why they're just roaming around on exile island like that. "Just here to watch"?! WTF? Oh, ok, we learned that Ethan (season one, abducted Claire, shot by Charlie) was the Other's only surgeon until they grabbed Jack. So, that seems like a poorly thought out plan sending the doctor to go undercover and do dangerous stuff. I take that as another sign that the writers are still making it up as they go with no actual plan. I did enjoy Desmond's timebending flashback episode. It was entertaining storytelling, but what exactly was the point? So the jury's still out on Lost, I guess. I've really enjoyed the first two episodes back from the break, but it all still has the patina of "this better be going somewhere good" in my mind. And I think the move to 10:00 was stupid. It's hasn't won the timeslot since the move, and I only see the numbers trending down. So maybe we won't have to wait until year five for some answers, just so long as they give us some before it gets canceled.

I have recorded and not watched The State Within, the BBC miniseries about terrorism. Supposed to be really good. I'll write about it after I've seen it. But it reminds me that the new Robin Hood is coming up on BBC America. I think I mentioned it already, but it starts March 3. There are some other new shows coming up that I'm looking forward to. Fox made it official that Drive will start on April 15 with a two night premiere and they've been promoting the heck out of it, which is great. I hope it's good. Other than Eddie Izzard's new show, The Riches (March 12), I think that's it for my interest in the midseason shows. I sure hope so, because I think you'd all agree that I don't actually need to be watching any more tv.

Then of course there are the British shows that are not technically available. I've started watching season two of Life on Mars, and have finally become intrigued enough to consider Torchwood. Maybe this summer when there's no other new tv on. I'm also hearing good things about The Wire and Rome, both available on dvd now.

I've officially started watching 30 Rock, thanks to a glowing recommendation from Lynn and Scott. So now I've got all of the Thursday night comedy block on NBC, minus The Office, which I still have no desire to watch. I watched the Joss directed episode, which was the only time I've ever made it through an entire episode. It was ok. Loved that the episode he directed had a vampire theme. Genius. I think NBC has finally found another great set of Thursday shows, and I hope they don't screw it up. Oh, right, they're pulling 30 Rock to debut the new Andy Richter show on March 15th. I guess it probably gives it a decent shot at being watched, but is it a smart move? And if it takes off, where will they put it when they bring 30 Rock back?

Not sure I've said anything about the current season of 24 or not yet. It's still very much 24, but it's lacking that certain something this year. Still entertaining in a five-year-old-telling-a-story way and just as over the top as before, but not as stellar as last season. I think the Chloe-Morris-Milo love triangle is pointless. And while it was an interesting idea to make Jack's family part of the baddies, it didn't carry as much weight as I thought it would. They're just too one dimensional. Which is a stupid statement to make given that it's 24 we're talking about and a two dimensional character is almost too much to ask for. The guest actors have been a little disappointing as well. Chad Lowe and The Biscuit have been given really uninteresting characters to play considering they're contemplating assassinating the president. Although I have to admit it was fun to see The Biscuit get his ass kicked last week. All the president had to say was that he valued his input and he decides that maybe it's not such a good idea to kill him in the next hour? Sissy. I hope they give Ricky Shroeder more to do when he arrives on the scene.

I don't think I have any useful gossipy entertainment tidbits to drop on you today. I've not really been paying attention. I keep hearing that Britney Spears has finally lost it. But I almost feel bad for her. I said almost. Too bad she's such an idiot. Anybody who looks to Paris Hilton for guidance is, well, words fail me for how idiotic that is.

I'm sure there are a bunch of random newsish things out there, I'll hunt around later and see if there's anything else to report.

Well now, see what happens when I actually write about the shows and not just news about the shows? Long winded much? We'll see how this goes for the future. I'm not sure reviews are up my alley, but I enjoy thinking out loud about the shows.