NBC

8:00p/7:00 Central

• America’s Toughest Jobs wraps its first season run on NBC with a finale where the final four contestants must face again the toughest jobs of the competition so far. CMT’s Hulk Hogan’s Celebrity Championship Wrestling was more fun than I expected, but I’m an old school wrestling fan. The second episode kicks off tonight.
• For sports fans, it’s a choice between ABC’s Saturday Night College Football and World Series Game 3 on FOX. That one’s all tied up and headed to Phillie for tonight’s contest.
• MyNetwork TV is throwing on the feature film Wes Craven’s Dracula, while CBS offers up another Saturday night of repeats, starting with an NCIS from last year featuring Gibbs’ wife as a witness in a murder case.

Read the rest of this entry »

Comedy Central

Hey, kids! It’s time for a quick round-up of highlights from this week’s episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Can you feel the pressure building as November 4th draws nearer and nearer? I haven’t seen this much tension between audiences and TV since I last saw Videodrome. Points if you know what I’m talking about, double-points if you cringed while remembering James Wood’s new flesh fist gun and tripe-points if you noticed that I only wrote this because I like mentioning Videodrome as often as possible. Videodrome.

Read the rest of this entry »

Travel Channel

In honor of Halloween, I decided to watch a show that I have never seen before: Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern. This week the Travel Channel was featuring a spooky Halloween special and I gave it a gander. I’m not sure how representative this special was of a typical episode, but it definitely defied my expectations. Honestly, I was expecting a slightly trashy show kind of like Fear Factor. How wrong I was! I was pleasantly surprised to find a very intelligent show that doesn’t just feature Andrew trying bizarre foods, but it also looks into the history and culture of the delicacies.

The first half of the episode was dedicated to some history and clips from old shows across the world, from Asia to South America. Andrew discussed some of the different foods that he has tried and was planning on feeding to the guests coming to his Halloween party. He interviewed a food historian and an anthropolgist about the nature of fear in regards to food and how something that is taboo in one society is perfectly normal in another (like eating bugs). He also had a guest bug chef on who pan fried some crickets with chili peppers, basil, potatoes, and garlic. Honestly, they looked really good.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sci Fi

(Season 5, Episode 13)

How does the old saying go? You can put lipstick on a pig… but it’s still a clip show. Really, that’s what we had here. No matter how you look at it, ultimately a clip show is just not going to be as good as a full scale episode where fans of the show are concerned. Trips down memory lane are nice, but we’ve all seen it before, and something we haven’t seen will always be better.

That being said, as far as clip shows go, this was one of the better ones. The all too brief story serving as the framework for the clips brought up some interesting questions, and gave Woolsey a moment to shine.

Read the rest of this entry »

NBC

(Season 2, Episode 6)

“I’ve always been a leave-it-in-kinda guy.” – Ted to Olivia, on her pulling a pencil out of his hand

Well, that has to be one of the sexiest pencil-stuck-through-the-hand scenes I’ve ever seen. Actually, it may be the only such scene I’ve ever seen. Adam Arkin and Christina Hendricks sure know how to bring the fire, don’t they? More, please.

Other points of interest:

I’m still trying to reconcile Reese being attracted to Tidwell. He’s so sweaty and icky. And she’s not.

So funny how Tidwell’s all freaked out over the earthquake and Crews is Zen-errific about everything.

Read the rest of this entry »

SciFi

(Season 1, Episode 5)

I’ll give credit where it’s due. What started off as a typical monster horror episode evolved into something slightly more interesting and sustained this for at least most of the episode. That’s not to say that we haven’t seen pretty much everything that happened in this hour about a hundred times or more, but at least they had me intrigued for about twenty minutes there in the middle.

I think they forgot the strength of the show, which is the intrigue about the Sanctuary itself and the menagerie of creatures that make up this world. Sure, there was a monster in this episode (of course), but at the same time … there wasn’t.

Read the rest of this entry »

Wikipedia

If you’ve been reading along, you already know that we are selecting our favorite TV character nominees for President. So far, we have had nods for Rupert Giles, the Head of Richard Nixon, Optimus Prime, and Laura Roslin. I would like to add former President Josiah Edward (Jed) Bartlet to the mix. Now, please bear with me, I can already hear some of your protests, but if we are allowed to nominate Brits and severed heads, then I think we can also nominate Jed.

So, if you’ll join me after the jump, I’ll elucidate on some of Jed’s pros and cons and hopefully you’ll agree with me that he would be the strongest candidate for the job. After all, he does have plenty of experience. Read the rest of this entry »