Christmas Specials?

No good Christmas specials or episodes this year. The new Sound of Music was panned by critics but it was as boring and terrible as the original so I do not see the big deal.

TV Shows To Be Thankful For

This Thanksgiving let us celebrate the free over the air shows that give us joy.

Persons of Interest
Raising Hope
Sleepy Hollow
NFL Football

Short list but most of the other show are barely worth watching. Persons of Interest has been the best thing on TV lately, not including the premium cable channels.

Lbs.

Lbs. is a movie that aired recently on Thirteen a PBS channel. Often they show classic and indepent films with a brief narrative about the film and the process. This film was remarkable since the main guy in the movie actually lost the weight over the year it took to film.

The film Lbs. introduces us to an overweight Italian-American man from NYC that has a heart attack and must change his habits. He eventually pushes his family to the limit with his lack of will power and buys a trailer in the woods.

Enlisting the help of drug addicted friend they try to get sober together. That fails but it pushes the fat guy to do it on his own. What helps the most is final getting some nookie from a local married woman. He gains enough confidence to lose weight on his own and return to his family. Since most of his family and friends are toxic he keeps his distant and that is the point. He must now be independent and that is the best for him.

What annoys me is that this do nothing has enough money to go around and buy expensive things for a year without working. While he has no job he bought a $5,000 plot of land and buys healthy food for a year then moves into a hotel. The movie is good and Miriam Shor was great in her small role.

NBC Cancellations

Ironside (TV series) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Canceled:

Welcome To The Family, a show about a Latino family that must get along with a white family because their kids are expecting a baby. The white daughter gets knocked up and her mother is also preggers. I watched the most recent episode with a special appearance by Eva Langoria. The show is not that funny and surprisingly not that racial or edgy, despite my description.

Ironside, a remake of the original Ironside except the main character is cool while Raymond Burr, the original was more tough and straight. I tried watching an episode but when Ironside found a gun because it was at eye level saying something like thanks to my wheel chair I  have a new perspective I knew it was poorly written.

Sean Saves the World and the Michael J. Fox show are still hanging on. I have not seen Sean's show but it looks like a typical sitcom. Michael's show is good as I saw the pilot and liked it better than Robin William's show but it is less shiny than Robin's show so it may not last.

Is it a coincident that the "ethnic" shows were canceled first? Probably not but I blame the writers since they are not yet writing for all types of voices.

Community is coming back praise be the lord.

Wishful Thinking

Saw this sportscast the other night about the MLB playoffs and no one noticed that they had the wrong graphics or they just really wanted to go back in time.

That should say Red Sox vs. Tigers ALCS 2013 but instead we were back in happier times when the Yankees played and all was right in the world.

Lottery Feed Error

Technical information not meant for the public. I do enjoy when TV stations make small mistakes.

Un-Lucky 7

Windfall NBC 2006

First canceled show of the season is Lucky 7 a show about 7 lottery winners. I never watched any of the two episodes because it looked long, slow paced, and boring.

I liked a better version that was also unceremoniously canceled years ago called Windfall. Windfall had a well known cast and they used sexier people and storylines. Even with all that at the end it ran its last episodes on a weekend afternoon when absolutely no one was watching.

The legend of nothing ending well for lottery winners is now extended to the shows about them.

Shhhh!

Still have not seen Breaking Bad so shhhh.

New and Shiny Shows

The Crazy Ones: Pilot
Robin Williams is the dad, Sarah Michelle Gellar is the daughter and together they are the perfectteam in an ad agency. Real celebrities like Kelly Clarkson and McDonalds were used in the pilot. Clarkson was great as a version of herself that wanted to become less pure and sweet. Williams was typically and annoying while Gellar was almost invisible.
The Crazy Ones refers to a old commercial that pitched nothing but an idea before a product was made.

Two and a Half Man: Nangnangnangnang
The episode title refers to the sound/action that Alan made when breast feeding. The show introduced the new "Half Man". Since Angus T. Jones is gone they needed another woman crazy perv. Amber Tamblyn is a horny drunk lesbian who is also Charlie's secret daughter. In this modern day no one on the show asked for DNA proof which seemed a bit false. Amber is a great actress but so far her character is very one-dimensional.

Also Alan is no longer a chiropractor as he refused to pay higher rents for his practice.Now he is Walden's personal assistance.

Parenthood: It has to be now
Amber is going to marry her unstable boyfriend because that will help the situation. Kristina is running for mayor because her opinion matters even though all she cares about is her kids. that autistic kid is huge and now a photographer.

Great that the show is back but I forgot how silly these people act sometime, just like real people.

Sidenote: Optimum is still interrupting breaking news stories with Optimum commercials after 15 minutes of air time.

She's going to be O.K.

When we last left Detective Benson she had a gun to her head as was lead into her bedroom by an
unstoppable rapist/torturer.

Law & Order SVU: Surrender Benson/Imprisoned Lives

A four day journey with one of the most evil men this show has featured left Benson exhausted and mentally, emotionally, and physically abused. Fortunately she was not sexually assaulted. Her ordeal left her full of rage that she took out on her captor. Oddly though she lied about the details of her escape which in real life would not be necessary as since she was tortured that taking revenge would be okay even in the courts.

The entire season will be dealing with her torture but Det. Benson seems to be coping well.

The second hour was a mash-up of the different kidnapped and rescued stories we have been hearing about the last few years. Far from subtle it was a typical post-9/11 story line. For those who remember pre-9/11 storylines typically had the criminals winning.

Marvel's Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Marvel's Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. : Pilot

Well Joss Whedon just calls upon his friends from Firefly and Angel to make this pilot better than most. Whedon has a co-workers as they often appear in his works from Angel to Buffy to Firefly to Dollhouse to How I Met Your Mother.

This show explores the events after the Avengers saved NYC in that big movie that a lot people saw. Agent Coulson is mysteriously alive, his 8 second death and relocation seems to be a cover story. Coulson is putting together a team to find superheroes and make sure they are not a problem.

His team is full of normal humans and must find ways to control the situations created when super-powered beings start showing off. There are also other groups looking to the same and possibly for evil purposes.

I have hope for this show even it is a monster of the week like his other shows since there is always a bigger storyline. Disney is not the kid-first nuts they use to be so hopefully they will allow this show to push boundaries like Buffy did.