Whew , I've been busy...

...but thank all that is good there's been a writers strike which will hopefully last until May.

Unlike the whiny Broadway strike this one is legit. Other issues the writers should resolve with there time off is how to stop all these spoilers. Spoilers have been ruining TV for the last few years and writing scared is also not good(JJ Abrams and boys who don't grow).


When the new episodes return I expect on location filming. All the money being saved by networks should insure better sets and when running down the streets of NY let it actually be NY.


The 4400 and The Dead Zone have been canceled as they should've been.

Journeyman
Great damn show. We see Dan Vassar traveling through time with his ex and save people. His ex Livia Beale is traveling through time from the 1950s. Apparently they are the last two time travelers and that it is a naturally occurring phenomenon that is dying off.
The show ended nicely with Dan accepting his fate while his wife watched. This show should not be canceled.

Tin Man
Awful in every way. Bad acting, awful effects, weak storyline.
Basically we see The Wizard of Oz a thousand year after Dorothy Gale landed there.

Dexter
Great show. It kept pace with the previous season and got better without having to rely on blood and gore.

Nuts

No not that one, which I thought would be a bit controversial.
Jericho was picked and will rerun this summer. It is a great show.

Well old summer shows are back.

• The 4400 was fine.
• The Dead Zone makes sleepy even after they changed the son and killed his dad.
• Rescue Me is great, Shelia is my favorite, Chief Jerry Reilly taking a bullet is messed up.
• John from Cincinnati reminds me of Kyle XY you know mystery guy with no background and lots of unexplained events. I'm hooked.
• Kyle XY is still strong but it should focus more on the family and less on the other stuff.
  

Reality?
I said it before I don't like reality show or game shows but if I do watch it it will be only the first season because after that they're all fake.

Shaq's Big Challenge has Shaq and a bunch of fat social stunted youths trying to lose weight. Of course they have bad parents and one of the girls is 50% fat-50% human, sexy huh?
The worst is Walter a loser-child-boy who plays video games.

Big Medicine is also a new favorite it is a show about those kids I just mentioned in about 12 years. There are 750 people on that show that have bariatric surgery to become thin because self control is too hard.

Big People, Little World is just great mostly because they have a beautiful home that is super messy. That is the place I want to raise kids.

Kathy Griffin gets sadder every episode.



Still adjust the blog so don't mind the unevenness.

Blech & Blah

The 4400: The Starzl Mutation
Shawn is forced to get married despite visions of the future that shows Richard as a bad guy.
But the big news was that Jordan Collier came back.
The Starzl Mutation is gene in people that lets them have 4400 babies.

The Dead Zone: Vortex
Cult dumbness. Blah.

Cable vs. Boredom

Since I do have a partial life I record shows on TiVo all day long and watch them late nights when I'm home. All these shows have been on cable but are they worth the space on my Tivo.
Monk, The 4400 and The Dead Zone are all coming in with a whimper.

When these shows first started they were exciting and different but quickly they reduse to resolve anything and just drag out. Monk has all but forgotten his dead wife. They should have a good three or four episode arc solving his wifes murder, then have him deal with it for next season.

Oh well I must keep watching. For now cable is winning.

Monk: Mr. Monk and the Garbage Strike
Funnier then normal Monk has to deal with a garbage strike in his area. The union boss gets murder and Monk is at a lost to who killed the guy. The smell of the rotting city has thrown off Monks crime solving skills. Eventually the captain takes Monk to a clean room and he solves the case.

Psych: Spellingg Bee
Shawn and Gus try to solve a murder at a spelling bee and I guess they do because I drifted away from the TV and didn't really pay attention that closely. This maybe the last time I see this show.

The 4400: The Home Front
Alana is taken in as a member of the Nova group. So her hubby works out a trade and gets her free but on the run with that dead guy from ER.

The Dead Zone: The Inside Man
Nazis, Jesus Christ and a museum robbery are all things Johnny must piece together to solve a museum robbery. Nice episode about faith.

Today's episode reminded me that he is a psychic, why not go to museum and get paid to verify art or bones? Why not look into the past and see Jesus Christ and Moses, go to the museum and touch dinosaurs bones and mammoths to see how the really look and how they lived? Imagine the possibilities. Yes I know Johnny is above that petty stuff but come on.

USA, USA ,USA Network!

I've been watching the USA network lately because there is nothing else on and they repeat their shows later in the night.

Monk: Mr. Monk and the Actor
The season premiere had lots of guest stars and some wacky storyline. Monk is not getting better with his OCD and they still won't move closer to find out who killed his wife.

Psych: Pilot
A man who was trained by his cop father to have a photgraphic memory uses his ability to catch criminals for the reward money. The catch is that he has to fake being a psychic to be taken seriously.

Oh yeah and his best friend is black and just follows him around for no good reason.

The 4400: Graduation Day
Isabelle pursues her boyfriends tormentors with deadly results and Tom tells her "I was told to kill you, but I'm not going to." Blah, blah, blah less talk more action.

The Dead Zone: Article of Faith
Racism and religion get to together and results in murder.

The 4395

The 4400: Gone:Part II
Maia is gone but still haunting everyones dream. Using Alana's dream powers Tom and Diana remember Maia but Diana is so heart broken she stays in the dream world.
Tom calls the future people by trying to kill himself. The future people sent the 5 missing kids to the 1800s but agreed to bring them back only if Tom accomplished a secret mission. Tom agrees, the mission is to kill Isabelle with a future syringe.

Throughout the episode they kept calling it The 4400 but if 5 of them were erased then wouldn't it change to The 4395.

A cool part is when Marco researched the 1800-Maia he mentions that they had moon colonies and synthetic-petroleum. Meaning putting the 5 kids in the past advanced mankind by hundreds of years.

The Dead Zone: Panic
Johnny Smith must save a neighbor boy and his own family when some mafia guys find a witness in his neighborhood. No surprise he saves them all.

Psychics Are So Easy To Fool

The 4400: Gone Part 1
Maia gets a vision of her mother forgeting her and then a long lost sister shows up. The sister turns out to be a fake and kidnaps her and four other kids into the future. The fake sister tells her that she was seeding into time a bit late and that she needs to go back earlier.
Meaning they can but her back twelve years earlier and have her in present time as an adult woman.
While this potential crap is going Isabelle is growing in power and attitude as she turns on her mentor.


The Dead Zone: Independence Day
Johnny Smith is trying to save his friend and a whole bunch of people stuck in traffic but it takes a while because he can't see the criminal right in front of his face. Of course everything works out in the end.

What is the keyboard version of rolling ones eyes? The biggest probelm with this type of Sci-Fi/Fantasy is that there are no set rules so when there are holes they are big.

Wow Sundays Are Boring

It has been a few weeks since I've been home late Sunday nights. Now I have to start going to sleep early, before 3:00AM, and so I'm home with my TV.
But there is no Sopranos or Grey's Anatomy instead it is horror time...
Not these shows aren't scary but they are horrible.

The 4400:Being Tom Baldwin
Some mutants 4400ers are using his power to imitate the agent and mess up their investigations into the Nova group. The transformer gets caught and everything is fine. The sub-plot is about Isabelle learning how to use her body.
They keep showing Lily in flashbacks and instead of helping the show it makes it worse because you remember how much better the show use to be.

The Dead Zone: Forbidden Fruit
I fell asleep through this one. Johnny Smith is back in the season premiere trying to save the earth but for a psychic he sure doesn't have a clue. They hint that the bad guys have a "match" for Smith and they must because they set him up and helped further the career of Stillson. Poor Miranda Ellis, Laura Harris, after nearly dying once she is back and dies fully. I think we don't actually see her corpse just a news report.
I do applaud Harris for actually coming back to die.

Treasure Hunters: Hunters Begin Their Quest
A rip-off of The Amazing Race but only in America. Yes I hate reality shows but everything else sucked, plus the first season of a reality show is the only one that is "real". Ten teams race around the U.S. and must decipher clues to get a hint at some ultimate treasure.
The funniest family is the Brown family who are black, ok a dark shade of brown. The fattest of which nearly ended his life when he couldn't swim away from the boat and was about to be mowed down by the propellers. The safety guys were angrily shoving him forward. He had to be escorted to the shore but he struggled throughout the whole show.
The "geniuses" also struggled because they out thunk these simple clues. They forget this show is on TV and the networks always dumb it down for a mass audience.

I played along at home with there interactive quiz and I didn't win the $10,000 it's on tonight wish me luck I don't want to work all summer. And yes that is the only reason I'm watching to play the at home prize game.

This Is Christmas Cheer

The Dead Zone: A Very Dead Zone Christmas
Johnny Smith helps a Santa with amnesia find his stolen bag. The kids who stole the bag are homeless and need help. Johnny's girlfriend is also a psychic and sees ghost who helps the little boys.
It was a cute episode that worked out nicely, the boys find their father and Santa turns out to be an actor best of all the dinner wasn't burned.

Monk: Mr. Monk and the Secret Santa
Monk solves a murder for Christmas, not especially moving. This show lost it's spark.

Ghost Whisperer: Shadow Boxer
A mom protects her family who is breaking apart. Not a Christmas episode I think they're in summer over there. I'm trying but the sweetness of this show is a bit too much.

Masters of Horror: The Deer Woman
After a real bad one two weeks ago and a great political one last week this one by John Landis was just OK.
John Landis the genius behind An American Werewolf In London tells a tale of a half deer half woman killer. There is no reason given for deer woman's murderous ways or resolution at the end.
The cool part was when the officer tried to explain that these things happen, "Remember in 1981 when a new species of wolf killed all those people in London."
Yeah and not Christmas related in any way.

Sci-Fi Sunday

The 4400: Mommy’s Bosses
They should’ve stopped at one season. Peter Coyote planned since ten weeks after the 4400 returned to our time. He found that all of the returnees had the ability to become telekinetics and more, so he drugged them to suppress their powers.
Isabelle played with her mommy’s head.
Tom and Diane saved the remaining 4400 with the crazy scientist’s help. The first saved was Shawn and it caused a domino effect of cures. 23 people died while the poisoning occurred.
Kyle is about to go to prison because the good agents turned in the bad ones. He goes to a cured Shawn and confesses the murder, Shawn then cures him of the device controlling him.
BUT I wonder the ball of light that came out of Kyle was that the bad thing or the real Kyle?
Diane was having dinner and kissing geeky-guy when Maia came in and said the war has just started.
Crazy scientist guy was injecting himself with something green and glowing.
Isabelle disappeared and showed up at Shawn’s place naked and all grown up.
As I said before Jordan Collier is alive and on the beach at the lake where they all first came back on a year ago.
Richard went to grab a cup of coffee and it moved to his hand on its own.

Remember Angel they outgrew Angel’s baby; it is what they do on soaps and Sci-Fi. Also like soaps Collier was never going to die, they never kill off main characters on bad soaps and bad Sci-Fi.

The Dead Zone: Saved
Johnny Smith had a chance to stop Armageddon but didn’t and made everything worse.
At least it’s over for this season; I will not be surprised if it doesn’t come back.

Sci-Fi Sunday

Yeah I'm late I've got college this will happen more and more. So I'll just give the Cliffs Notes version.
Dead Zone: Babble On
Johnny Smith has a bad HDTV set. He see a man with no face, it's his father. Along with new TV Smith is also getting his house refloored and the dust is causing visions. He learns his dad was a psychic/psycho. his dad and then later Johnny saw a vision of a building exploding. The explosion was one of the coolest I've seen in a while. As usual Smith saves the day and the last scene shows a little Johnny telling his dad of a psychic dream he had, it leaves you wondering did his dad have vision or was he just trying to protect little Johnny.

The 4400: Lockdown
Starts July 28 5:38pm and Tom & Diane in a face-off. Then ten hours earlier the story begins with Maia getting a mystery illness and four returnees waiting for their forced check up. Tom gets a threatening email soon all male-hell is breaking loose. At the NTAC all the guys start going Palmeiro on everybody. They shoot the boss and a lockdown occurs. The new strike team lead by 24 alum Roger Cross goes the most psycho. The agents realize they're under attack and by an angry 4400 in the building. The attacker is doing it in memory of Jordan Collier. One of the geeks counters the effects only after some death and destruction, the young Asian female attacker vanishes in the chaos. Maia is still very sick and Isabelle and Shawn are showing symptoms. We learn that Isabelle can psychically communicate with her parents and does it for each of them at different times upsetting them when they are not talked to. Crazy Kyle beds another hottie.
Two more episodes before the season finale.

Sci-Fi Sunday

The Dead Zone: Vanguard
Johnny Smith returns to the Armageddon prevention storyline. He goes to a reunion of his former science students and finds his star student possible is somehow involved with the end of the world. His former student played by That 70's Show's Danny Masterson is a genius working to perfect a plastic skin for burn victims. There's also a scene with a 1938 buffalo nickel, I just bring up because I like coins, it had little affect to the storyline. Masterson also made a little "you got punked" referenced. Masterson with Smith's help finds out that the plastic he made is also good for blocking radiation. Smith sees the future and Greg Stillson(Sean Patrick Flanery) glowing over making a nuclear bomb using this plastic.
Masterson's boss is the doctor who died in Stargate SG-1 and the Old General helping Stillson is the old general from Stargate, I can only conclude the share a studio. The old general introduces his daughter played by Laura Harris(Daisy Adair of Dead Like Me) they hit it off.
Masterson believes Smith's future vision and decides to destroy his plastic recipe and ends up killing himself. His partner saved 99% of Masterson's data and sells it to Stillson. Why didn't Smith see that?

The 4400: Hidden
Kyle is gone and his father, Tom, is scared. tom is accusing everyone around him of harboring the his and is ignoring his job. He comes to the conclusion that Kyle was involved in Collier's shooting.
Maia warns Diana not to chase the man involved with Collier's shooting or someone will get hurt. NTAC(the agency) is getting closer to finding out who shot Collier. They track down the person down to a public locker.
Tom tracks down his son to the same locker and gets there first to find a gun and typical assassin gear. He confirms his suspicions and follows his lying wife to where she stashed Kyle. He goes to the safe house and bonds with his son over the fact the future people used him. He and his eight year wife decide to take Kyle out of the country.
At NTAC headquarters they find another shooter and the guy goes nuts in the garage so Tom tells his wifee to bring Kyle back.
Diana tells Maia she was wrong and everythings fine but Maia whispers to herself, "Not yet."

Sci-Fi Sunday?

More uneven episodes of the USA networks attempt at Sci-Fi.
The 4400:
A nurse named Edwin Mayuya abducted Feb. 24, 1996 works at a hospital and has the power to heal babies in-utero and uses it until he gets caught. The press gets a hold of his story and plasters his picture everywhere. When an old African woman sees his face she screams and tells her granddaughter "that is the man who killed your parents" . The Agency takes Edwin and researches his background. He admits during a genocide in his nation he was in charge of a triage center and let the opposing troops come in and kill the enemy. After much debate with the self-righteous Agent Tom on what to do with him they find out he's dying with each child he genetically cures. The Agency ends up turning him over to the Collier-Cult and Edwin decides to keep using his gift even though it's killing him.
Richard Tyler gets the news that one of his old soldier buddies died. They meet up and reminisce over a Budweiser commercial for there retro cans and good old racism. The one guy who beat him up for being with a white woman on the night he disappeared is not there. He visits the racist and finds him lonely sick and still racist.
Also Kyle is about to crack and Agent Diana makes up with her sister after she used Maia last week.
The Dead Zone:
Bruce, Johnny's physical therapist, is happy to be on a date with a successfully black woman in Maine until Johnny ruins that. A car accident kills a mother leaving Johnny with a baby. The problem is the baby is Mexican and destined for the typical evil-gang-Mexican life if Johnny doesn't find his father. While trying to find the baby's daddy Johnny has to deal with an Evil-Mexican woman and her gang trying to continue their smuggling ring. As usual everything ends up great and daddy and baby reunite. Now if Johnny can only see a way to close the Mexican border that would be cool.
Lourdes Benedicto who is a proud New Yorker born of Filipino and Dominican parents is once again playing a dirty Mexican, if she ever comes across this please play a good Hispanic and stop playing those low Latina roles.

I'm Tivo Late

Thanks to TiVo I just watched The 4400 and The Dead Zone if it wasn't for TiVo I'd have to suffer through these shows at 100 degrees, 100 percent humidity and their thin plots.
The 4400:
Sherilyn Fenn played a returnee from October 1999 with the ability to grow killer spores from her hands when she is stressed. She is also mentally unstable. Everyone around her dies including birds. When confronted by Agent Tom and Diane she starts to spore-out and while Tom is trying to calm her down Diane shoots her dead.
Maia feeling used by her new aunt sets her up on a sports bet. Her new aunt bets a family ring and realizes she crushed Maia's spirit when yelling at her.
Kyle remembers everything about his blackouts and shooting Collier, meanwhile the Agency is closing in on the shooter.
The official website says that Lily was introducing daughters to each other carefully and slowly but I don't recall any of this I guess they're pushing it back.

The Dead Zone:
The funniest part was the first scene where Johnny Smith enters a bar walking arm in arm with Sarah Bannerman's as her husband Walt is behind them watching.
This copy of Eddie and the Cruisers has Sarah forcing Johnny to help find Darren Foldes, a young rocker, find his dead dad. Foldes is played by Ben Foster who made a return on Six Feet Under on the same night. Even his one of the not-so-dead-dad's most famous song is called Six Feet Under. Smith as usual makes everything alright by reuniting the lost family.

I don't like all the fact that the 4400 is becoming a freak of the week show. Almost half of the "featured" 4400's have died and they even mentioned some not featured have died. Why would people from the future put people back in time if they're going to die within the first year. Not to mention that the past can't be changed, but that's just the engineer in me making sense of TV.

On The Dead Zone they have dropped the secret society and doomsday storyline, most likely only until the season finale episodes. It's kinda of boring when they do regular episodes.

Sci-Fi Sunday?

The USA network has proven it can compete with the Sci-Fi channel on nerd domination for the night. Sunday night is one of the few nights in summer that is crammed full of same-time-shows. I watch Six Feet Under, Family Guy and The 4400 all at 9p.m., then The Dead Zone.

The 4400:
A departure from their standard three plot episode. This episode focused solely on Agent Thomas "Tom" Baldwin of the new federal division agency of Homeland Security called NTAC (National Threat Assessment Command) it's purpose is to keep track of The 4400.

Agent Baldwin wake's up to a happy son and a hug, feeling on top of world he goes to work and receives greetings as if he just came back from a long absence. While talking about The 4400 to his partner Diana she calls him crazy and wonders what he was talking about. After coming home to a surprise party he also finds a surprise new wife. He can't convince anyone that this world is not real even though he sees flashes of a black door and doctors behind them experimenting.
He learns that he's not alone in his delusion his wife Alana also remembers the other world and tries to help him. A month passes and he has found no proof of the old world and grows closer to Alana. His family and friends are doing great and Collier isn't dead(although he's not seen) instead he's governor, Maia is a grandmother, Richard died in WWII and creepy baby Isabelle doesn't exist.
8 years pass and he has accepted his new life and fell in love with his wife. Suddenly he sees the black door again and this time goes through. The other side has his wife on the medical table explain what is going on. The lab is where the future people brought the 4400 to alter them including Alana, she has the power to create alternate realities without her will. She was purposely given this power to fall in love with Tom Baldwin and ground him. She gave him "Something to live for in the trials that you will soon face" is what the future people told him.
Yes, this is just like the Star Trek episode where Picard mentally lived a lifetime on a dying planet and got a free flute.
He tells his ignorant wife of what happened and she wishes away a chair into the corn field. Eventually they tell their fake family that they are going on vacation as she erases their reality. When Tom gets back to the real world he has not even been gone one second. He sees Alana and she remembers everything too and they walk off together into the sunset.

The whole storyline further proved my point that the entire family was chosen for a reason not just the young ones. Shawn is one of them, Tom is one of us and Kyle is something else.

The Dead Zone:
Also slightly different format this episode is narrated like a fairy tale. An autistic boy travels to Johnny Smiths house to save his father. The boys father is a cop convicted of drug theiving and murder and was sentenced to death. When Johnny searches the boys memories he sees the night of the murder and some M&M commercials. It finally gets proven that a bunch of bad cops set him up including one guy named Boris CUJO, c'mon people more subtle Stephen King references. The father is freed from prison and gets a little hand touching action from his son.
This episode is better then last week's and even better then I make it sound.

Sidenote:Those great USA commercials continue with some from Monk I haven't seen before.

The Dead Zone

Um, Johnny, an artist, his daughter, a rock to the head and everyone is fine at the end. I'm sorry I fell asleep through most of it but it seemed dull.

Family Guy was funny, Stewies' rant that featured the Simpsons was funny.

Also I have to remind myself to see Fahrenheit 9/11 to see what the fuss was about, it was on Showtime tonight at 8:00pm but I missed it. It's on again tomorrow at 8:00pm.

The Dead Zone

Just a few words. This episode was a lighter, breezier one. Johnny runs into another Psychic who can also speak to a comatose boy. Jennifer Finnigan formerly of Commited played the cutesie other psychic. She lives, they kiss then they part ways.

USA the Nth Network

The 4400:
Robert Picardo plays Trent Appelbaum a loser abducted 15 years ago who owes money to a loan shark. That fat loan shark shares a drink with Appelbaum and loses 75 pounds over the weekend. The shark apparetnly never read or saw Stephen King's Thinner and lets his wife share the spit of death with predictably tragic results. Appelbaum sells his golden loogie to a company that gave it to 100 people, it's up to the agents to cure Appelbaum, his daughter and the 100 others. Meanwhile Jordan Collier is letting his greed slip affecting all those who believe in him.

The Dead Zone:
Johnny Smith never had the surgery that was supposed to save his life last season and he's never been healthier? Well anyway, this week Smith was chasing a serial kidnapper who obsessed with Leave It To Beaver. He kidnaps women and makes them into model housewives and then lets them go. One of the women, who like the others never told anyone of her ordeal, helps Smith and the Sheriff trackdown the psycho. She later betrays Smith and annouces that she loves Mr. Psycho and helps him escape. Hmmm, for a psychic Smith should've seen this coming. No updates on the secret society.
The USA network has evovled beyond the other basic cable channels with these one hour dramas this week the also will show the Tribute to George Lucas and soon Monk will be back on. Don't forget that Law & Order: SVU repeats which are the best of all the Law and Orders, although I here that the new Law & Order: Garbage Inspection Unit should be good.

Secret Societies and Other Evil Friends

The Dead Zone:
The season premiere started where last season left off. Psychic Johnny Smith is trying to stop his girlfriend from killing future president Greg Stillson. Rebecca Caldwell still upset about her dead sister believes that Stillson is the killer and will shoot him if Smith doesn't stop her. Unfortunatly everyone believes that Smith is a deranged stalker after Stillson. During the chase we see glimpses of Stillson's father smacking his son around and moulding him to the great guy he is now. Smith gets to the hotel in time to stop his girl and also learns that papa Stillson is the real killer. How does Stillson respond? Well he commits patricide. That was the main plot but it's the sub-plot that is going to kill the show. The Rev. Gene Purdy in jail for forgery and more gets a visit from a guy willing to help him and wearing a secret "illuminati" decoder ring. The guy frees Rec. Purdy and then goes to Stillson to cover-up the murder of papa. Why must they always bring grand-secretive organizations in show like this? It ruins the flow of the show, it's supposed to be about two locals who hold the fate of the world in their hands. Not Johnny Smith vs. an evil empire.

The Scholar:
Episode two had less interaction between the kids and more of their background stories. All the kids complain about their apparent poverty because their parents make less then $50,000. Wow, I must be dead if these geniuses think that is poor. Melissa completely dominated and the big whiner Scot won $50K. These kids are still stumbling over high school level questions.