Vague Wisdom

serenejournal pointed me to this meme on autographedcat's Livejournal. I guess the idea is to answer one question a day from the list below. The first one is:

Day 01 - A show that should have never been cancelled.

I have many answers to this question. Many many shows, but the most recent is probably Firefly. I love Joss Whedon's stuff with the exception of Dollhouse. It's so disappointing that Dollhouse was given the time to develop a following even though it wasn't worth it, but Firefly got no chance. I could also include Studio 60, The Forgotten, Pushing up Daisies, Dead like Me...

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The most recent episode of Glee, the new Fox television show about a struggling Glee Club, has stirred up some controversy in the disability community. At least in my corner of the disability community. You see a continuing character on the show is a wheelchair user, at least the character is a wheelchair user. The actor playing this part is able-bodied.

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In an orgy of television viewing yesterday, I tried watching an episode of the original "V" television show. I remember it not being good, but I had no idea. I've seen better shows put on in grade schools! I'm still looking forward to the remake though. Yes I am a sick puppy. :-)

There hasn't been much to talk about on television this fall. Of the old shows coming back. I caught Heroes and liked the first episode, but I've decided to ignore last season. I don't see how I can reconcile what happened last season to anything. It just seemed to be a big reshuffle of heroes with villains, powers, who's alive and who's dead etc. etc. My problem is a couple of the "heroes" like Peter Petrelli and Mohinder (it occurs to me that a I don't remember what happened to Moinder. He wasn't in this premier) killed people and unless they somehow deal with that culpability I just can't think of those characters the same way. So nevermind last season and let's see how this year goes. The addition of Carny superheroes seems interesting and especially the addition of Robert Knepper to the cast will be great.

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This weekend we signed up for digital cable and internet through Comcast (the local cable company). We have always had Comcast for our television. I never wanted to go to digital cable because it seems like a scam. When I first got cable, way back in the day. They used to charge for every cable outlet. So if you had a television in the front room and a television in the bedroom you paid a fee for each outlet and you paid that fee every month. I always thought that was ridiculous. It's not like it was more work for the cable company to have programming come to two rooms in the house. Eventually the courts decided a lawsuit that made cable companies stop the practice. Now, with the advent of digital cable seems to be wanting to go back to the good old days. Now, in order to receive digital television we need a converter box (?) Type thing on each cable outlet which needs to be rented. So we are back to paying a fee per cable outlet. It bothered me enough that I never really tried to get digital cable.

Everything was fine for us, paying basic cable (which didn't require the converter boxes) still allowed us to get cable and Showtime. Which I liked for the Sopranos and Six Feet Under at the time. Then Comcast decided that all the premium channels would only be broadcast on digital. So I stopped watching Showtime and started renting their television shows on Netflix.

We also got our internet through Speakeasy's DSL. Speakeasy had been getting progressively more flaky. Either I couldn't get on at all or the speed was so very very slow that I was constantly reloading webpages, taking three or four tries at getting my e-mail etc. We thought we could solve both problems by getting Internet and digital through Comcast.

So, now I'm slowly working my way through Dexter's second season. Whoo hoo!

Eliza, Joss and even Buffy news. At the end of the article the writer mentions a Buffy spinoff called the Ripper. I have a very distinct memory of reading several years ago about a Buffy spin-off also called Ripper that was going to be produced in the UK. I hadn't heard anything about it since I first heard. I had almost decided I'd imagined the whole thing. Weird, huh?

That tranny hookers are the new guilty pleasure? I just watched Big Shots and Dirty, Sexy, Money on tape and *both* shows have subplots involving transsexual hookers.

Is anybody watching Burn Notice? The USA Network is doing a marathon of the show. I had intended to take a look at it but missed the premiere. Being a bit anal about these things, I never really looked into it, but a marathon is getting to be my favorite way to catch up on TV series I missed. Anyway there is some really good acting. Bruce Campbell (of Evil Dead fame) plays burned-out snitch for the feds. Gabrielle Anwar (who I have always thought of as very cute if not a particularly good actress) does a really nice job playing an IRA spy and ex-girlfriend of the main character. Sharon Glass plays the main character's mom. You gotta love a show that has the main character saying, "Guns make you stupid. Duct tape makes you smart." :-) (or something like that I'm not sure I got the quote exactly correct but it's something like that)

It's mainly about spy who has been fired (given a burn notice) and has been unceremoniously dumped in Miami with no resources and a desire to find out who is behind his firing. In the meantime he picks up odd jobs like getting back at some con men who have taken an old woman's life savings or saving a guy who's being framed for murder. It has some very smart dialogue good acting. The show reminds me of The Rockford Files with a little MacGyver vibe. I'm really enjoying it.

Are any of you folk watching Drive? The Executive Director, Tim Minear wrote and/or directed several episodes of Angel and some of Serenity (including one of my favorites Out of Gas). Nathan Fillion is one of the main characters (I guess he is the main character, but this show seems to be more of an ensemble than a show driven by main characters). His kidnapped wife is being played by Amy Acker from Angel.

I just watched the premiere on tape and caught the first episode last night. It's really fun so far. Complex enough to keep you thinking, but lots of driving action. I'm enjoying it.

I've been watching Bones fairly casually until recently. Which means I watched it if there wasn't anything against it that I wanted to watch more. I sometimes taped it because it came on right after Prison Break, but it wasn't a "Guy has to watch it" show. Being a person who enjoys the geeks (kinda wanting to be one myself) one would think I would like all those Crime Scene Investigation/Crossing Jordan/Quincy type shows and I do. I'm not sure why any of them haven't become my "gotta see'um" shows, but Bones became one after last night's episode. I dearly love shows that have victims either saving themselves or at least becoming part of the solution. So this week's show was right up my alley. I especially enjoyed the next-to-last scene between Jack and Angela. Such a sweet scene. If you didn't see it go to Fox and take a look. Have I mentioned that I dearly love this trend where television shows can be seen on the Internet after their initial showing on TV?