utenzi

Two new shows debuted tonight. Hank and The Middle. Both on ABC. Apparently ABC is getting pretty desperate. The Middle has a great cast that is wasted in this boring vehicle. Patricia Heaton does a great job as a middle aged woman confronting how her life doesn't match her dreams, her husband (Neil Flynn, the janitor from Scrubs) does a great job being the comedic relief, albeit in a very laconic way, and the younger two kids do a fine job as well. But it just doesn't work. It's boring despite the cast. Sad. Hank, on the other hand, is just plain sad. It's so bad I almost deleted it during the first scene. Yes, that bad. I stuck it out to the end and believe that qualifies me for hazard pay. Ehh, I didn't feel very good today so maybe I'm being overly critical. Let me know what you think...

I saw Alyson Hannigan on David Letterman tonight and it was an odd "interview." She was promoting the new season of How I Met Your Mother which is on CBS, the same network as The Letterman Show . From Letterman's bland expression, lack of eye contact, and very obvious reading of questions from a card (and saying nothing but that) it really seemed like he didn't want her there as a guest. But... she's adorable! How could you ever not want her around? The man is obviously getting senile. She's just so darn cute. Like a lovely chipmonk.  On the other hand, Letterman seemed pretty focused when he was cutting down Sarah Palin regarding her upcoming memoir. In fact the Top 10 list was on that very subject. Quite funny too.  Going into tonight's episode of Hell's Kitchen the contestant count was down to 5 chefs. Three of them, Dave, Kevin and Ariel, are pretty strong... and then there's Tennille and Suzanne. Not so strong. But they all were pretty...

It's bright and early on Monday morning and someone is all smiles. I have to ask myself, is it because she's leaving? Or does she just really like orange juice? I guess I'll just have to wait and see. In the television realm, I wasn't very impressed with the teams on The Amazing Race and found the first hour of the show rather boring. I did like the second hour a lot better. I liked the girl that was eliminated but her boyfriend was a mite intense. Too bad the Poker Girls weren't eliminated at the end of the first hour, huh?

I picked up an excess of food on Thursday in prep for Kim's visit. She'd not been to my house yet and I wanted to be sure to have enough food on hand in case we didn't go out to dinner. The main items were a 3 pound bag of chicken thighs and a 4 pound package of 97% hamburger. Normally I'd go for smaller sizes but these were the ones that were on sale---and you know about me and sales! Kim and I went out to a Mexican restaurant on Friday night but for the most part we ate in after that. In so doing we managed to go through the entire package of hamburger but we never touched the chicken. I'll have to use that up on Monday, I guess. The picture here is me making a rather large meatloaf with the last 2 pounds of meat. It actually turned out quite well and we ate it along with some mashed potatoes that I whipped up while watching The Amazing Race. Rampant domesticity!

Last night I finally made time for Tuesday's season premiere of NCIS . Wow. That one was worth watching twice, maybe three times. They used great literary technique in devising how to reveal to the audience the movement of the plot and the show worked very well as a result. Strong themes were used, loneliness, vengeance, love and longing, betrayal and remorse, self-sacrifice---and all for a good cause. Great stuff! I can't recommend it enough. Contrast this show to the new one NCIS: LA and it's like great theatre versus boring puppet show. Zzzzzzz. Last night I also watched Wednesday night's premiere of Eastwick . The show about witches! I was pleasantly surprised by the show and found it quite watchable. Admittedly a lot of that had to do with the interesting screen chemistry of Rebecca Romijn. She's very easy to look at, and yet you can see why she was cast as a former-male in Ugly Betty . She's got a very strong bod, lionesque, perhaps. The show is a good...

A few thoughts and impressions about television shows... Accidentally on Purpose: New show starring Jenna Elfman. There were some funny moments but the chemistry here is lacking and while I did kinda enjoy the first episode I think this one is going to be a dismal failure. House: Wow. They certainly started off the season with a very good 2 hour episode. My only complaint is that silly music box scene near the end. The entire show was about House being cured of being House-like and then the show reverts for that one scene to the typical "magical cure" the show is known for. Sure, it was emotional but it wasn't very honest and they could have set up the final scenes in a different fashion. NCIS: Los Angeles: I thought the first episode was quite boring and the "N" part of the name was almost entirely missing. Why bother with the Navy angle if you're just going to do another CIS show? Modern Family & Cougar Town: both of these were okay but not great. I...

I have a 2-channel HD DVR, through DirecTV. Normally that's all I need and I'm very happy with it. But... tonight there's two-hour premieres for House (FOX) and Heroes (NBC) and on CBS there's The Big Bang Theory. What a dilemma! The solution is going to involve a little tinkering. The only broadband available way out where I live is Roadrunner from Time Warner (nee AOL), and to get that you have to subscribe at least to the basic level tier of cable TV. So I do, I just don't use it. Well, just so I can see Big Bang Theory I'm going to get one of my extra TVs and hook it up to cable in my bedroom and watch the show back there while House and Heroes record in the living room. This might cause my brain to crash. I'm not used to having to watch commercials on live TV.