Category: tv

New Fox show – Joe Millionaire

Ashley Bischoff5 Comments

Metafilter makes mention of a new show on Fox, Joe Millionaire. There's a bit of a spoiler below, so stop reading now if you don’t want to hear it (granted, it’s a spoiler that will probably be widely known by the audience watching the show).

“Joe” features 20 single women who fly to France in order to win the affection of a hand-some American they believe to be worth $50 million. The twist: The as-yet unidentified man is actually a construction worker with an annual income of $19,000. […]

As a fan of “reality tv”, this could be interesting.

Outfoxing TiVo

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TiVo has a suggestions system where, if you have extra free space on the drive, it records shows that it thinks you might like (based on previous shows you’ve recorded). This, however, creeps some people out:

Mr. Iwanyk, 32 years old, first suspected that his TiVo thought he was gay, since it inexplicably kept recording programs with gay themes. A film studio executive in Los Angeles and the self-described “straightest guy on earth,” he tried to tame TiVo's gay fixation by recording war movies and other “guy stuff.”

“The problem was, I overcompensated,” he says. “It started giving me documentaries on Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Eichmann. It stopped thinking I was gay and decided I was a crazy guy reminiscing about the Third Reich.” […]

(Link from ObscureStore)

Fast Talking TV

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Some producers on TV are under the impression that talking quickly makes a character seem smarter (and I’m not sure I disagree). And, these days, script writers are cramming even more dialogue into a show’s time block:

When “ER” premiered eight years ago on NBC, its dialogue was so rapid-fire that scripts ran 60 pages, about 10 pages longer than the typical one-hour drama. Viewers loved it, and the show was a huge hit.

Today, the show isn’t a minute longer. But its scripts now run more than 80 pages. […]

Of course, the writer includes the obligatory “MTV is to blame” jab in there ;). Not that MTV is an innocent network, but I don’t think there’s much correlation with this issue. (Link from ObscureStore)

Enterprise: Carbon Creek

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

I watched the Enterprise episode “Carbon Creek” over the weekend. I’m quite a fan of Enterprise, and I find that many of the episodes are just as good as TNG from years back.

In this episode, T’Pol tells the story of how Vulcans made First Contact with humans in Pennsylvania back in the ’50s. Spoilers follow.

There wasn’t much plot in the episode, and it was more of a character study (but, that’s ok, as sometimes that can turn out well). T’Pol tells of how a Vulcan ship crash-lands on Earth and, with little hope of rescue, the Vulcans start living among humans.

After several weeks of human life, they hear that their distress call was received after all, and that a Vulcan ship will pick them up. At this point, one of the Earth-living Vulcans mentions to his captain (T’Mir) that he would like to stay on Earth.

Cut to the rescue-ship landing scene, and the captain of that ship asks why only two Vulcans are at the landing point. T’Mir explains that two of her comrades died in the crash and that their bodies were cremated (really, only one body was cremated). So, she was covering for the Vulcan that wanted to stay behind — but she lied. And, Vulcans can’t lie, right? Bleh.

Seagal Sunday on TBS

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It looks like TBS is having a Steven Seagal marathon on Sunday with what they call “Seagal Sunday”. Starting at 11am CST, there’s Above the Law, Hard to Kill, On Deadly Ground, Marked for Death, and Out for Justice.

If you’re a fan of absurd action flicks, that may seem like a lot to program into your TiVo/VCR. But, many can be eliminated:

So, with one (or maybe two) movies worth watching, maybe it’s not much of a marathon ;). But, I’ll still look forward to Above the Law, at least (and On Deadly Ground isn’t bad either, if you haven’t seen it yet).