Royal Pains

Royal Pains: Pilot
On September 26, 2008 I stumbled upon the filming of Royal Pains. At the time I couldn't take pictures so I had someone else take the shots and they gave me a great post you can see right here ...

Almost one year later it final premiered on the USA network and they showed the scene that took 24 hours to set up.

13 seconds maybe?

The show is about a brilliant doctor Hank Lawson who, one his day off, brought his basketball friend to the hospital while the rich hospital donor was also being admitted. Both had identical cardiac conditions and while the rich donor was stable he went and helped the young baller. The donor dies and instantly Dr. Lawson is being sued and he becomes a medical pariah.
After a time he is on vacation in the Hamptons and becomes an instant hit with his great medical knowledge, honesty, and quick response. Dr. Lawson becomes a concierge doctor which mean he works out of a SUV and gets paid for one time discrete service.

The show is funny at moments and the people are beautiful but all of the Hamptons becomes one giant stereotype. Personally I've never been there but it may be completely accurate from the few documentaries I have seen. I will watch the rest of the season.



Sidenote: I listen to Loveline Live online and David Carradine was recently on and was far from depressed so the entire Thai closet death is extremely fishy. Thai police ruling it a suicicde means nothing.

The End is Nigh

ER: And In The End...
A hour long clip show featuring only the fake doctors talking and none of the fake nurses which seemed wrong. Still there were some great memories and touching scenes.


The episode was a regular stint at the ER with mothers in peril and ignorant kids who party too hard. Many of the the original cast came back and they were all awkward. The only shining star of the night was Alexis Bledel as the never before seen Dr. Wise. She was scared and did not act as if she was so cool that all the misery around her was just background for her own drama.

John Stamos played George Clooney, Scott Grimes played Anthony Edwards, Linda Cardellini played Julianna Margulies, as a homage to Michael Crichton. They showed Dr. Green's daughter all grown up and ready to join the ER and probably tragically die or get viciously assaulted, but that is for an unseen future.

All in all it wrapped up nicely, no grand explosions or nuclear bombs.

Life on Mars(US): Life is a Rock
I saw the first episode and new this would end bad. No surprise as it did. American network producers, writers, and execs always do things out of fear. They never take a real chance because they may offend someone. This is a trend since All in the Family transformed into Archie Bunker's Place.
Back to the ending it turns out the entire show was a lie. The year is 2035 and the main characters have just spent years in stasis with a Dollhouse type program running in their heads. Sam chose to be a cop in NYC in 2008 but a glitch threw the time off by 25 years. Once they woke up they ignored their dreams and stepped onto the Martian soil.

Seeing the UK version with its great ending I can't help but be disappointed that the US took the title literally. In Life on Mars(UK) he woke up from a coma and realized his coma world is better than the real world and decides to jump off the roof to go back. Suicide may be a downer but it fit perfectly.

I Feel Nauseous, Quick To The Hospitals

House: Whac-A-Mole

A kid comes in with vomit and two kids and leaves with the vomit. A teenager is raising his brother and sister because their parents died. He chooses to stay sick and the kids go to foster care. Not a bad episode but the formula of make a patient sicker to cure them is getting ridiculous.
In this episode the little sister was played by Cassi Thomson and ends up in foster care.

Grey's Anatomy: From A Whisper to a Scream
Dr. Yang seriously screws Dr. Burke but not in a good freaky red pantie way. Everyone else besides Meredith is all mopey and depressed. Great extra long episode.

ER: Scoop and Run
This was a Dr. Abby Lockhart centered episode. She is a heroine and inspiration during a bus crash over the cliffs of Chicago??? Dr. Tony Gates and Dr. Neela got it on but I think he only did it to make it clear his live-in girlfriend/friend that their relationship is over, very scummy indeed. Everyone else in the ER was falling in love left and right.
In this episode the foster girl was played by Cassi Thomson coincidently.

General Hospital: 11/??/06
Luke and Laura had their last wedding but I found it interesting that in the backyard where they held the wedding were palm trees. No big deal you say. Well since it is in upstate New York in November I think it is kind of retarded of the director of that episode to show them so many times.

Surface Gets Better

Surface: Episode 12
Laura was about to open the door with the bad guys on the other side when Rich came in and snapped into action. After a chase through the hotel Rich confronts on of the agents and beats the crap out of the guy.
It's nice to see how every time you think Rich is mellowing out he goes a little psycho.
Eventually Lauar opens an e-mail from a stranger trying to help her. The person on the other uses an extreme version of Google Earth to take live pictures of Rich and Laura from a satellite. The person then gives the two a phone and some money and fake ID's. The stranger tells Laura to fly off and meet in person. When she does she realizes that the pilot is the stranger.
The stranger is played by Martha Plimpton, of Goonies fame, she is a scientist claiming to be one of 2,500 who helped design this creature.
Meanwhile Miles is trying to help Nim again, deal with a hot-fast-slutty girl and starting to transform into a sea monster.
The creatures seemed to haven't eaten a couple of kids but the world is still mostly ignorant.
Jackson is still missing.
Quote of the Show: "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope" when Laura sent a message to her ex via video-mail.

The Simpsons: Homer's Paternity Coot

Most shows that have lasted a long time takes special care not to make mistakes. But in this episode their was an obvious one. When Dr. Hibbard was announcing Homer's real dad there was a continuity error with Mason Fairbank's clothing.

As you see the doctor announces who Homer's father is,
everyone is shocked and Mason has a jacket and shirt.

Then Homer asks who Mason was and the doctor points him out,
and Mason is wearing the sweater from earlier in the episode.

Goofs like this are normal but on such highly rated show. Especially with all the computers now used this error should have been caught.


Cold Case: 8 years
I normally don't watch this show but a slew of Bruce Springsteen songs were used.
It was a very sad and good episode involving a twenty year old murder in New Jersey.
The music added a great element to the show the flashbacking was great.
This show was what Reunion wanted to be but Reunion failed.

New Thursday Line-Up

No more Joey, yes, wooooo yeah.

Four Kings: Pilot
Pilot episodes are the worst episodes of a show and this one is no different. They set up the show about four life long friends who inherit a beautifully large apartment in New York City and deice to live together. They are all now single and ready to move on to their next stage of life.
Seth Green is the funny angry one and the only thing worth watching. That guy from Commited is the main guy but not as funny as when he did Commited.

My Name Is Earl: Barn Burner
Earl's brother burns down a barn and Earl makes him do the list. Eventually Earl forgives him for ruining their future and takes the list back.
This was a dang funny episode with Catalina stealing most of the scenes. When asked what she feared the most she plainly says snakes..."snakes and rape". Also in another scene she speaks Spanish when responding to Joy. Let me translate what she said..."To all the Latino in the audience thanks for watching and for those non-Latinos thanks for taking the time and learning another language." I fell over laughing when she said that.

ER: If Not Now
The announcers for NBC should be tortured. All week long they announce the shock of what will happen to Dr. Neela will go down in ER history and then not only is it not on this week's episode it looks to be something stupif and boring.
As for the episode it was all about abortion and Dr. Abby keeping her baby. The only person I like in the show now is Dr. Morris played by Scott Grimes. I always liked him since his sci-fi horror days doing those Critters movies. Which comes back to the point that these Critters should eat the NBC announcers.

Thursday Shows

Smallville: Lexmas
Lex Luther goes to the big city to meet with a guy who will fix the election against Mr. Kent. While not deciding what to do with Kent Lex gets shot by those crazy-gun-totting-Asian-chicks that plague most major cities.
Lex is on the verge of dying and his mother visits him and shows him the great life he will have with Lana as his wife when he wakes up from surgery and turns his back on his father. At the end of the dream Lana dies and Lex could not save her but he did have many years of love and two kids.
When he wakes up he decides to go to the darkside and give up his happy future so that Lana can live.
Now the big problem I had was if his mom didn't show him the death of Lana or just didn't visit him at all he would've went on to have this great life. So the dead mother was actually a bad influence. Yes I understand that he was supposed to learn that love is greater then pain but still if his mom was good she'd leave him with the nice future and come back after Lana died.
I did like the fact that it's not about the good Lex vs. the bad Lex, just the Lex who wants to control everything.

Joey: Joey and The High School Friend
Joey's old high school friend comes back and although he's Adam Goldberg from the THREE episode arc on Friends about psycho roomie Eddie Menuek no one notices. Instead he is the father of Michael Tribbiani.
They explained Pheobe and her twin from Mad About You so I think they should of explained this also.
ER: All About Christmas Eve
Eve punches a bad Santa and gets fired and also gets dumped, she vows revenge on the other nurses. The rest of the story was just filler until the end when Abby announces to Kovac that she's pregnant.

Thursday Shows

Night Stalker was not given today so everyone waiting for part two will have to wait a while for the DVD or mid-season reruns. Instead they gave a cool Primetime about college crimes.

Smallville: Solitude
Mrs. Kent becomes sick and Milton Fine tells Clark it’s Jor-El’s fault. Clark goes to destroy the Fortress of Solitude and finds out Fine is not who he claimed to be and instead is working with General Zod to free Zod from prison.
Chloe comes to rescue Clark and Clark seemingly kills Fine.
Either way Jor-El still tells Clark someone close to him will die. Cough…Chloe…Cough.

ER: Two Ships
Abby makes an old mistake by sleeping with Dr. Kovac.
While Dr. Pratt is on the roof saying goodbye to someone we see two planes behind him crashing into each other while the pieces rain down over the city. The nurse who was fired a few weeks back is rehired for the plane emergency. When an Italian guy, played by Paolo Seganti of As The World Turns and a recent Freddie episode, is mortally wounded Pratt must keep him alive until his family gets there. He does and the guy tells Pratt to give up pumping his heart for him.
The final scene has a depressed Neela coming home to see Dr. Gallant coming in a taxi as the embrace in the middle of the street. Next week is their wedding.

Gilmore Girls: The Prodigal Daughter Returns
The Gilmores are in chaos because Rory and Emily are missing. Rory is in a newspaper office being super annoying to get a job, which she does. Rory now gets her life together and returns home to Lorelai, while Emily is found but spiritually lost.
Luke finds out he’s the father of a nerdy girl and doesn’t tell Lorelai.

TV is Getting Complicated.

Trading Spouses:Meet Your New Mommy : Perrin/Fisher Pt.:1 of 2
While I’ve stopped watching all the reality shows this one caught my eye, rather my ear. A psycho I set my TiVo to record and saw it was a two-parter.
The show is about putting spouses in households completely different then their own and hopefully sparks will fly. In this case a neo-hippie trades lives with a psychotic religious tyrant.
The best parts with the hippie are that she has a new husband and they are not communicating well but her family is nice. The church zealot on the other hand has a devoted husband but one daughter who sinned and has a five-year old at the age of 20, while the other daughter is like dad a virtual slave.
While the hippie meets the church group they do the un-Christian thing and treat her like the devil, I mean come on if you see a sinner help them or convert them don’t shun them.
While the nut other mom talks to god and starts to have a mental breakdown because she saw a Christian-psychic.
Next week they reveal what the other mothers have allotted the $1000 prize and crazy mom is going to tear up the check and her sanity with it.

Smallville: Exposed
I’ve lost partial interest in this show when Clark refused to tell Lana the truth after giving some flimsy excuse. In this episode the gang goes to a strip club to get a pervert killer and no freak of week.
The cool part was Tom Wopat as an old friend turned Senator of Jonathan Kent, strangely no mention of Mrs. Kent…hmmmm.

Joey: Joey and the Poker
A bit funnier than usually thanks to plenty of guest stars including crowd favorite Alan Thicke.

ER: Dream House
They fired a nurse working their since day one yet spent more time on a damn monkey. Ridiculous.

Law & Order:SVU : Raw (Parental Advisory)
This was a great episode involving Nazis, a crowd of shot children, a pervert and evil adopted parents who are not racist. This was a complicated episode but great and everything comes together. Oh also there was a court room shooting, an Oscar winner and lots of twist.
Thrilling.

More Quick Updates

Surface: Episode 5
Laura last week tagged a monster and now she is tracking it but if she track it so can the government. The beast is moving fast inland and up river into a populated area.
Miles and Phil lost their pet and must track it before animal control and everyone else find out what is going on. They track it to a supermarket and hijinks ensue. They never catch it but little Nimrod finds his way back to Miles bed.
Rich less crazy but still obsessed calls Laura and goes to meet her. His craziness makes her nervous. They go to take pictures of the monster with a crowd of people who think they are seeing a whale but all evidence is deleted by the monsters electric pulse.
Rich is arrested while Cirko takes Laura into the fold.

Great show, getting better.

Lost:...And Found
This was a nice episode, taking place 4 days after opening the hatch. Sun lost her wedding ring and we see the flashback of how she met her husband. We also see the back-of-the-plane-survivors working together to cross the island safely to meet our favorite survivors.
We also see 12 barefoot people, one dragging a teddy bear, all white...maybe The Others.

ER: Wake Up
John Leguizamo takes over Sherry Stringfields abandoned position as the new doctor that will shake up the ER. He's quick and efficient very into modern toys.
There was a public service announcement with Laura Innes, Linda Cardellini and Maura Tierney talking about breast cancer and some tacky scarf on today's episode.

Once on Sci-fi, Always on Sci-fI

Smallville: Arrival
Grand season premiere and weak CGI (again computer effects look bad). Clark and Chloe are off to the newly created Fortress of Solitude while 2/3 of the evil Kryptonians cause havoc in search of Kal-el.
The Kents once again get knocked around like volleyballs and Clark saves the day.
The banishment of the bad guys into the phantom zone was right out of The Superman Movies with the same spinning black diamond also the chamber where Superman’s power can be removed was similar to today’s storyline.
One of the coolest parts was Leonard Roberts (Forrest Gates) of Buffy the Vampire Slayer as bad guy #2 and James Marsters (Spike) of Angel as Brainiac.
Yesterday Amy Acker of Angel was on Supernatural.
There should be three bad guys but I think the main bad Kryptonian is in the movie Superman Returns and they don’t do crossovers.
Coming soon Dean Cain is in talks to do an appearance and they already filmed the scenes with Aquaman (some Ambercrombie & Fitch model)
Back to the episode Clark loses all his powers again and Chloe is at Lex’s mercy again.

Alias: Prophet Five
After the great season finale last year where a truck hit Vaughn and Sydney. We see it was just a plot by a rogue agent to find out that Vaughn really is and some other implausible storyline. Back to the interesting part...Vaughn is dead three times over. We then catch up to a now pregnant Sydney four months later trying to find out the truth about her dead man.
By the way the funniest part of this episode was watching them trying to cover up Garners huge belly. They try everything, the big purse, the wrap, the towel, an all black outfit and they even used a freight train to cover up the belly.
I usually only watch the first and last episode of Alias, but it is so much like Lost that it is funny.

Night Stalker: Pilot
Another no show monster show, I miss Darren McGavin.

ER: Nobody’s Baby
Danny Glover is playing nice and low key as one of the doc’s estranged father.

I missed Joey and Everybody Hates Chris, I’ll catch up on repeats I did catch a bit of the live Will & Grace it was kinda sucky…cough…Baldwin…cough.

In da House

Now that my regularly scheduled programs are over for the summer I'll start watching what ever else I missed during the season. I saw House it's a Fox medical drama on Tuesdays at 9:00pmET. The central character on House is Dr. Gregory House played by Hugh Laurie he has 3 specialist under him and a female administrator who he fondly dislikes. Dr. House is exactly like Dr. Perry Cox(John C. McGinley) on Scrubs except this is a hour long drama and Scrubs is a 30 minute comedy, but the same jokes work well on both. The show works well explain all the medical jargon by including graphic imagery. This is to make sure that an outrageous diganosis is possible even if the have to drill the story line into your head, which they did in this episode. "Paternity", the title of the episode I saw, dealt with a teenager with who after getting hit playing sports is suffering strange side-effects. Through a long and complicated way they come to realize he has the measles. The fun is the journey through his medical history and watching the symptons unfold. This is yet another good show to add to my long list.

News Van Evolution

While watching the season finale of ER on May 19 during the porch collapse I thought the special effects were amazing and the sound effects came through in Dolby Surround, except I didn't have Dolby speakers and the helicopter spotlight was coming from the window not my TV. Well apparently it was concerning the hospital near my house. Some woman walked into the ER claiming she had received an envelope filled with powder and know she's sick. The hospital closed the ER and OEM, FBI and Haz-Mat agents swarmed. Faster than you can anthrax the news van were circling. NY1, CBS, NBC, ABC, WB, UPN and FOX all showed up and crowded outside the ER delivering equal amounts of hysteria. But as the herd fed I saw this one lonely news van from Noticias 41 it was away from the main action and I managed to take a quick picture. Do you think because they spoke a different language that they couldn't share the primo ER spot? Is their a news van hierarchy?

Later updates proved that the women wasn't infected with anthrax and what she received in the mail was shredded paper. Let that be a lesson to everyone confetti can get too small.