In Case You Were Wondering...

I never did watch another episode of The West Wing. 


I've had 10 months to watch them. *sigh* 

A Return to Bad Form

Clearly, I don't keep my promises. Well, not promises, I wouldn't say things like that to all...none of you.

I did remove myself from the summer slump. How I managed it without Mad Men, I don't know. I could have rotted there forever, and no-one would notice. I mainly have Breaking Bad to thank, as I slowly catch up the US schedule. The writing, the characters, the plot...it's all marvellous. I can't think why I didn't start watching it before. I love Bryan Cranston, I love Aaron Paul. The secondary characters are just brilliant - Skylar, Saul, Hank, klepto-Marie. I've almost finished season 4. 

And from the summer feasting on meth lab madness, we are swiftly deposited in the lap of the pilot. I know, I'm a little late. It's practically NOVEMBER, for fuck's sake. But, ah well, I'm lazy and no-one cares anyway. So, the pilots. The most interesting to me this year were:

Ringer, the new Sarah Michelle Gellar vehicle. The premise looked interesting, and I do like Gellar. It's a shame though, that my patience is so limited that I couldn't stick with it. Then again, I don't have the patience for a lot of things - I am the woman who paid to see A.I twice and walked out after 45 minutes. Both times. 

The pilot episode feature an appearance of the worst incidence of green-screen I have ever seen, and I mean really, actually, cross my heart seen. Not the usual overstatement of grand hyperbole that I go for. It involves a speedboat, fake wind and bad dialogue. I'd just about had it by this point. 

I told you I wasn't patient.

With one down, I placed all of my eggs in the prehistoric basket. What's that you say, "foolish"? Well, yes. Probably. Terra Nova has been billed as exciting sci-fi. Plus, it's executively produced by Spielberg (whatever that means), so it has to be good, right? 

I was disappointed. I was expecting good things, and I do like a little light sci-fi with my evening drinks. But I have Fringe, and that's actually good. So I won't watch any old tripe. I don't know what sort of vibe they were going for with Terra Nova, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a Shipwrecked-meets-low-budget-Jurassic-Park-but-with-no-good-actors vibe. And I have a strange kink for cheesy natural disaster films. So my threshold for hokey is quite low. 

So no more Terra Nova. I didn't even make it to the end of the pilot. 

I did give Revenge a go (just for Emily VanCamp, who I love), and also Person of Interest (because my JJ Abrams fascination is akin to my Douglas Coupland masochism). Revenge seems enjoyable, if a little contrived. But the cast is good, and it's achingly aware of itself, so you never know. Maybe I'll watch it instead of Glee this year. Person of Interest, on the other hand, is so confusing that I don't think even Jim Caviezel knows what is going on. Which he should probably be happy about.

Once again, it seems, pilot season was a bit of a bust. Nothing on the scale of last year, of course. But J.J. Abrams has lost two years in a row now. So it's back to the standard stuff. Complaining about Grey's Anatomy, yet watching it all. Failing to stop watching True Blood. Absorbing every second of The Good Wife. See, I threw that in at the end there to prove I could do something other than complain...