Thursday, December 30, 2010

All About The WB/CW: From Buffy the Vampire Slayer to The Vampire Dairies

I realized the other week that watching Gossip Girl/Smallville/Vampire Dairies/Hellcats on The CW is about as much as I've watched the network since Buffy/Angel/Roswell/7th Heaven in 2001, before Buffy and Roswell moved to the UPN network.

The sense of watching many of my shows (or at least something) on the network hasn't changed that much over the years. I fondly remember when The WB launched in 1995 and had a fun, fresh feel about it with a singing Michigan J. Frog from Looney Tunes as the mascot. Unhappily Ever After (From the creator of Married... with Children) was my first favorite program they had. Summer of '97 would be spent watching Buffy, which I started getting into a couple weeks after its debut in March. There were other shows here and there the network had that I'd check out as well.

Between 1998-2007 Mondays were about 7th Heaven and not too long after it was gone, I started watching Gossip Girl. It took awhile, but I hung in there and love the show now. There's often a bit of a "been there, done that" feeling with plots revolving around Serena, but creative writing, plot twists and drama always keeps the show good n' juicy. And Kristen Bell is amazing as the mysterious girl who sees everything while no one ever sees her. The other characters are great too. I really like the cast, which in a sense, makes it similar to One Tree Hill, which I watched when it first started in '06 because I thought the cast was great. I eventually gave up on it though, partly due to conflicting with American Idol.

Between 1999-2002 the best night of TV was always Buffy/Angel Tuesdays before Buffy moved. I'd religiously tape the shows which I realized later was silly and I never did anything with the tapes. Angel would go 2 more seasons and a couple months later I started getting into Smallville, which sorta filled the void left behind.

Despite all the TV I watch, it's not very often that a show I watch goes into a season knowing it'll be the last and tries to do as much as it can before it ends. Buffy did and it was glorious. Angel rushed its end (The WB really blew that one), Roswell somewhat, while 7th Heaven had a wonderful "last episode" -- and tossed it all aside for a luckluster season to help launch The CW.

The story of Clark Kent has come a long way in 10 years, over 200 episodes with many twists, deaths, teamups, cast changes -- and it's all coming together for the end when Clark will finally fly and become the hero everyone knows. They're really going all out including a ton of guest appearances, that will hopefully include Michael Rosenbaum (Lex) returning for the finale, after leaving the show over 3 years ago. Since then they creatively wrote the character out and one of the things I really like about this season is, with an rapidly aging clone, they're progressing the character to became the Lex who's Supermans' nemesis. Only way this story can properly end is with the real Lex (Rosenbaum) coming back. And once it's over, I look forward to finally watching the first 3 seasons, which (aside from a few eps) I've never seen.

Meanwhile, I started watching The Vampire Dairies in September after hearing about it from a friend. It's quite an interesting show with hot characters and drama. It took awhile to get used to a vampire show different than what I was used to, but I soon realized they do the "good vs. evil" thing pretty well. Like Buffy/Angel, I always enjoy flashbacks to hundreds of years ago. And this is another great cast. I look forward to Netflixing season 1 in 2011.

There's also Hellcats -- pretty much a Bring It On TV series with Ashley Tisdale. The plots not quite my thing, but it's something to keep handy on the DVR to watch during dinner or to kill time.

I'll also give props to UPN, which had Buffy 2 years until it ended and Roswell -- together on Tuesdays for a year until Roswell was canceled. Chris Rock's Everybody Hates Chris started there, which I always thought was pretty funny.

Basically, Tuesdays were always a big night for me, with American Idol since '04. As we begin a new Idol season soon, the performance night moves to Wednesday, which with Survivor and Modern Family, is the new big night.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

S-10.11 "Icarus"

Despite the awkwardness Tom and Erica had in the cold when Clark proposed to Lois, it was still a very touching scene. Loved the falling petals.

What kind of a S.W.A.T. raid was that? I was expecting stuff breaking everywhere. Clearly they didn't even bother looking around the barn much. >__>

I think it's pretty cool how they're tying the darkness to real historical events and those eras having heros of their own.

Great to see Hawkman fight Slade and get an awesome entrance. Liked how a big fight took place in Luthorcorp for once.

Bonus points for Slade calling it "Operation Icarus."

Since when is Zatanna part of the Superclub? It'd be nice to see her in Watchtower if they can get Serinda hopefully. And have we ever actually seen Bart's Impulse costume?

Interesting cliffhanger. What better way to end on then our heros falling in a perfectly laid trap.

This episode had to have been a minute or so longer than usual. Sure felt long, besides the fact the interrogations kinda dragged things out (and it was 9:01 when Supernatural came on).

Good episode to end the first half on. I look forward to the rise of evil Lex, finally getting more of Darkseid and his goons and everything really coming together to close out the show. I'm pretty intrigued about the "complete mythos alignment" too.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

S-10.10 "Luthor"

Hard to believe it took 10 years for Luthor to be an episode title.

Kryptonian artifacts still around? Nice, quick setup for Clark to get his hands on the Mirror Box. I liked how Clark was hard on Tess and discovered the clone had been staying in the lab. Good anticipation for the return of teen Lex soon.

Holy crap, alt-Clark was perfectly badass and Tom did an amazing job.

Swann, Veritas, Earth Two... Good references.

Interesting how the Luthors were able to take control of the Fortress in the other dimension.

Great to finally have some Tess/Lionel scenes. Can't wait for the real thing in this dimension.

And what about Chloe? Without Clark in her life, do you suppose she simply would've been a journalist?

How did Lionel end up on the street and not Watchtower? This threw me way off into thinking this dimensions Lionel was back, not alt-Lionel via the Mirror Box (I know, should've been obvious >_>). And I gotta say I'm fascinated by the concept that Lionel was automatically switched to "good" sort-to speak when he was transported (as he should be).