Category Archives: TV

Best Buy’s Worst Commercial?

Posted on December 14, 2011 | 3 Comments

Christmas is retail’s last chance to increase their profits for the year. So they tend to pull out all the stops. This is the season when you’ll get the craziest commercials advertising the ‘best bargains’. From a marketing perspective, it’s the time to bring your ‘A’ game. The only other time retailers are trying this hard, they have a Super Bowl spot.

The goal of a good Christmas commercial is to show that your company  has great gifts for good prices and encourage a behavior of giving. You want the customer to feel good about what their purchasing.

This is a current Best Buy commercial:

It succeeds in advertising gift ideas for good prices. But then instead of encouraging a behavior of giving or making people feel good about themselves, it appeals the competitive nature of people. Worse, it appeals to competing against someone who is basically universally liked. It’s like having an arm wrestling competition against a baby. We don’t really want to be the customer in the commercial. And if we don’t want to be the customer, then why would we buy the product?

A better way to use this same concept in a commercial is to take the focus off of Santa. We like Santa. We don’t want to beat him. We want to help him. So instead of ‘Game On, Santa.’, why not focus on Santa’s helpers? I mean if you’re hellbent on appealing to humanity’s competitive nature for a Christmas ad (which I don’t think is a very good idea), the way to do it is to show Santa asking his elves what they’ve made for gifts for a family. They show little wooden toys they’ve cobbled together. Then have Mom there with the Kindle Fire and various other gadgets from Best Buy. Now Mom has helped Santa by shopping at Best Buy.

Marketing is fairly simple. Too often marketers try to get too clever with it and fail. Answer these questions in as quick and entertaining a manner as you can:

Why does the customer need the product?

Where can the customer get the product?

Why is yours the better product?

Necessity, availability, quality and value. That’s what it comes down to. These Best Buy commercials fail right out of the gate by not giving you that necessity. You don’t need to beat Santa. You need to BE Santa.

- Jack Cameron

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My thoughts on the whole Netflix/Qwikster thing

Posted on September 19, 2011 | Leave a comment

I went to Safeway the other day and was shocked by a new business that had opened up next door. It was a video store. With the exception of Red Box or the DVD section in the local grocery store, video stores are practically extinct. This is due in large part to the prevalence of Netflix. Netflix has changed the way we watch movies. And they are about to do it again.

Recently Netflix announced that they were going to effectively split the company in two. Their DVD by mail service that was the nail in the coffin to your local Blockbuster is now going to be called Qwikster. Meanwhile, their streaming service which you can use on most gaming consoles and Blu Ray players, will continue to expand under the Netflix banner.

Qwikster will continue to have the wide variety of movies and TV shows you’ve come to expect from Netflix. In addition to that they’re adding a video games section for an additional charge, much like they do with Blu Ray DVDs now. That’s the good news. There’s more than a little bad news. The most noticeable change is that the two sites are not going to have any interactivity. So the movie in your DVD queue and your streaming queue will no longer be able to interact with each other like they do now.

There are many who see this move as stupid. It’s hard not to see how this makes getting DVDs by mail a bit more of a pain. In this age where everything is connected, Netflix is separating things. Netflix has become the preferred way of watching movies by being ahead of the curve at every step. So why would they make a mistake now?

It’s simple really. One of the reasons Amazon.com has successfully killed many brick and mortar book stores is that Internet technology only gets cheaper and real estate only gets more expensive. When it comes to cost, technology beats traditional every time. The bottom line is not only is streaming movies less expensive, it’s getting cheaper all the time. Whereas the Unites States Postal Service has threatened to shut down entirely if they can’t increase revenues. For Netflix, a perfect world would be one where they don’t have to mail their customers anything at all.

So what’s the solution? If they simply got rid of their DVD by mail service, we would all simply go to Blockbuster or Red Box for our DVD needs. You can’t just cut people off. They’ll find another outlet. What you do instead is slowly introduce the concept of streaming. Make it available using a computer. Then make it available for people with X-Box 360, then PlayStation 3, then Wii, finally make it available on Blu Ray players. And make it part of the DVD by mail service. Eventually, even the people who don’t usually use streaming will try it out.  They’ll watch a TV show on their computer at work during lunch or something.

Once you’ve got a good audience through a slow ramp up, you can start charging for the streaming and the DVD by mail separately. The result will be the some people will choose the streaming and some will choose the DVD by mail. And some will actually pay more for the same service you were providing. Now that you’ve established your audiences, you can further separate them by making them into two separate entities. This will make even more people choose between one or the other. Since it’s more cost effective to stream movies, keep the Netflix brand and name connected to the streaming service. Give the other company a name that sounds like other failed Internet companies like Friendster and Napster. Call it Qwikster.

Now you’ve got two separate companies with two separate destinies. The Netflix streaming service continues to increase its library. Qwikster will eventually raise their prices due to the cost of postage or whatever other excuse they can come up with. And more people will leave Qwikster. Maybe they’ll have new releases only available on Netflix. Eventually, Qwikster will die. And when it does, Netflix will still be going strong with their streaming service. They’ll have cut their costs, increased their profit and retained the majority of their subscribers. It’s actually a very good marketing strategy.

While I’m sure that Netflix’s streaming service will increase (assuming the studios let them),  they won’t include all of titles that are currently available on DVD. Unfortunately, this means that soon there will be thousands of titles that aren’t available unless you want to buy them. It means hundreds of thousands of hours of television and movies that new generations will never see. As a guy who likes old movies, I think this sucks. Worse, I’m not sure that there is any way around it.

I don’t like this latest move by Netflix, but it isn’t stupid. What bugs me is that I’ll still be a Qwikster subscriber until its last day because it’s still the best game in town.

- Jack Cameron

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Fall TV Preview 2011 – Part 2

Posted on September 7, 2011 | Leave a comment

Person of Interest Looks Like Fun

Okay, here’s part 2 of my Fall TV preview. I’ve listed all of the shows premiering between Sept. 18 and Sept 24. and what I think of them. There’s a lot of good shows  coming up. There are also shows that should have been cancelled years ago.

Feel free to post your own thoughts in the comments.

Sept. 19

Dancing With The Stars (ABC):  So the big controversy is apparently that Chaz Bono is on it. Apparently there are ultra-conservatives who think having a transgender person on a reality show is bad or something. I think a much bigger controversy should be why there are so many dancing shows.

How I Met Your Mother (CBS):  Consistently the funniest show on any of the big three networks. Neil Patrick Harris just kills it on this show and the writers are some of the smartest, wittiest writers on television. 

The Sing Off (NBC): Sixteen a cappella groups compete against each other. I like a cappella from time to time, but definitely not every week.

Two And A Half Men (CBS): Ashton Kutcher is not Charlie Sheen. Charlie Sheen is funnier and I didn’t watch the show when Charlie was on it.

2 Broke Girls (CBS): Sarcastic Brooklyn waitress meets uptight socialite who suddenly has no money. You’ve seen this show a hundred times and so have I. I’m betting this show won’t be around by Christmas.

Castle (ABC): I’m a huge fan of Nathan Fillion. I even watched the six episodes of Drive a few years ago. I honestly didn’t like the premise of Castle and thought it wouldn’t last. It has and the few episodes I watched were actually good. I’ll be watching this regularly this year.

Hawaii Five-O (CBS):  Flashy cop show that has nothing original going on.  I watched a few episodes last year, but it’s just not my thing.

The Playboy Club (ABC): First off, having a show called The Playboy Club and not having it on HBO or Showtime is just a little bit silly. Secondly, you’re not going to capture that Mad Men audience by making shows that take place in the mid-60s. You’ll get them by having fantastically well written and well acted shows. Whether this is one of them remains to be seen. Personally I doubt it.

Sept. 20

Glee (Fox): I’ve watched a few episodes. I’ve never been one for musicals (with the obvious exception of Dr. Horrible and the like)

NCIS (CBS): My biggest problem with this show is that Mark Harmon will ALWAYS be Mr. Shoop from Summer School. I simply cannot see him as anything else no matter how much of a hard ass he tries to be, but my mother-in-law loves this show so I’m glad it’s back.

The Biggest Loser (NBC): Watching fat people try to lose weight isn’t my idea of entertainment. It just isn’t.

NCIS: Los Angeles (CBS): I watched the first few episodes of this show and somehow they’ve all merged into one episode. I think because to me they all seemed the same thus I stopped watching.

New Girl (Fox): Zoey Deschanel stars as a recently dumped girl named Jess who moves in with three guys and starts singing. Despite my dislike for musicals, I may watch this simply because Zoey Deschanel is endlessly watchable.

Raising Hope (Fox): I’ve never seen an episode and I’m genuinely surprised it’s back this year.

Body of Proof (ABC): A neurosurgeon gets in a car accident and is unable to operate, she then becomes a medical examiner. I’ve never been a fan of M.E. shows. And really, it seems to me if you want a show on ABC, make it a medical show and you’re in.

Unforgettable (CBS): A woman who remembers every moment solves crimes. I wouldn’t be interested but one of the creators is John Bellucci who was the voice of Derek Wildstar on Star Blazers back in the day. No, this is no guarantee he can write a show, but I’m willing to give it an episode or two.

Sept. 21

The Middle (ABC): Described as a ‘slapstick sitcom’ about a wacky family and how they get along, I’m willing to say that five years from now, not even the people who created this show will remember it.

The X-Factor (Fox): Simon Cowell’s latest talent show. I’ve never watched a full episode of American Idol. I intend to continue this tradition of not watching Simon Cowell’s shows. Sadly, everyone else in America will watch because….well I have no idea why.

Modern Family (ABC): If I were to watch a ‘slapstick sitcome’ about a wacky family and how they get along, this is the one I’d watch. But I’m probably not going to. I like Ed O’Neil a lot, but I like him in his dramatic roles more than his comedic ones.

Criminal Minds (CBS): I’ve talked about this show before. I used to be a big fan but it’s become a weekly event of ‘What horrible thing can we do to how many beautiful women this week?’ (As a side note the CBS show Unforgettable claims only six people in the country have eidetic memories. Since one character on Criminal Minds also has a eidetic memory, that means a third of these people have TV shows.)

Harry’s Law (NBC): David E. Kelley’s latest law show is like all of his other shows. It’s quirky and topical and occasionally funny, but it’s nothing challenging or more than expected. Still, it’s better than most shows out there. I’ll likely be watching this at least in the beginning.

Revenge (ABC): A woman enters a community for the explicit purpose of exacting revenge. It could be fun and at least one episode is directed by the awesome Philip Noyce. I’ll try it out, but with a plot like this, the show needs a specific end point otherwise it’ll start treading water.

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS): Sometimes you want to die where everybody knows your name. Okay, that was my way of welcoming Ted Dansen to the cast of CSI. This show should have been cancelled years ago. I still hold out the hope that the final episode will reveal that the mob pays for all of the incredibly expensive forensic equipment they use in exchange for the Las Vegas police looking the other way.

Law & Order: Special Victim’s Unit: Wow. I thought this show got cancelled. I’m glad it’s not. Not because I’m watching it, but because that means Richard Belzer can keep playing Det. John Munch, a character he’s been playing since 1993 when he was on Homicide: Life on the Street.

Sept. 22

Charlie’s Angels (ABC): Look, I know for a fact that there are talented, creative writers out there who have original ideas. Can we please stop trying to recreate old shows from the 60s and 70s? Thanks to DVD if we want to watch those old shows, we can.

The Big Bang Theory (CBS):  A stupid show about smart people. And yet, it’s still funny. It could be better if it assumed a certain intelligence in the audience and didn’t have a laugh track that a monkey could follow along to. I’ll be watching because the actors are actually good at turning okay material into genuinely funny stuff.

Community (NBC): Another show I should watch that I don’t. Probably because I’m watching Big Bang Theory. Maybe I’ll try this out this year.

Parks & Recreation (NBC): I’ve heard absolutely nothing about this show and I’ve never watched it. Is it any good?

Grey’s Anatomy (ABC): I must confess I’ve seen every episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Since its second season, this show has had a slow decline in quality punctuated by occasionally really well done episodes. I still contend that every single character on the show is a selfish punk who deserves every bad thing that happens to them.

Person of Interest (CBS): A weird show from the guy who gave you Lost and the guy who gave you Inception. Really, do you need any more than that? Okay, the star of the show is that creepy guy from Lost? Not enough? Fine. The other star is JESUS CHRIST. Oh wait, I mean James Caveizel. Sorry for the confusion. Seriously, this show had better kick my ass. I’m really looking forward to it.

The Office (NBC): Loved the British version of the show and just couldn’t get into the American version. I know he’s no longer on it, but I think I might be the only person in America who doesn’t think Steve Carrell is funny.

Whitney (NBC): A show starring Whitney Cummings who I’ve never heard of and am not interested in.

The Mentalist (CBS): For a show called The Mentalist, this show should be a hell of a lot more clever than it is. Instead it’s House meets Criminal Minds. Yawn.

Prime Suspect (NBC): Somehow there is not already a show called Prime Suspect. This is a cop show starring Maria Bello. This means I’m watching it. She’s a good actress and she’s nice to look at. I still have little hope of the show being good, but I’ll try it out.

Sept. 23

A Gifted Man (CBS): A doctor starts seeing his dead wife. With Medium and Ghost Whisperer gone, I suppose CBS needed a new supernatural show. The only thing this show has going for it is the first episode is directed by Jonathan Demme. I may watch just for that.

Nikita (CW): Apparently this is the second season of this show I’ve never heard of. It’s apparently based on La Femme Nikita. This show will likely continue to fly below my radar.

Kitchen Nightmares (Fox): Chef Gordon Ramsey has become more famous than yelling than he is for cooking. If a British guy yelling at morons at restaurants that are barely getting by in a struggling economy throughout the country sounds like fun to you, you and I probably have very little in common.

CSI: NY (CBS): Still waiting for Gary Senise to show that he’s really a traitor like he is in almost everything he’s ever been in.

Supernatural (CW): Isn’t this like the third last season of this show? Seriously, I swear I read that this show ended three or four years ago.

Fringe (Fox): A smart show with good special effects, good acting, and fantastic writing? With the exception of Person of Interest, this is the show I’m most looking forward to this Fall.

Blue Bloods (CBS): I started watching this show when it premiered last year, but I just couldn’t get into it. This is almost entirely the fault of The Wire. Thanks to The Wire I have absurdly high standards when it comes to a good police drama.

Sept. 24

Rules of Engagement (CBS):   And I thought Friday night was the death slot. Does anyone watch TV on Saturday nights? Why not just cancel the show?

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Fall TV Preview 2011 Part 1

Posted on September 6, 2011 | 1 Comment

Parenthood Premieres September 15th

I tend to watch a lot of television. And even the shows I don’t watch, I tend to be at least aware of. I’ve been told I know more about the TV and movie industry than anyone should who isn’t in the TV and movie industry. I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not.

So here are the shows premiering this week and next week and what I think of them.

Sept. 6

The Rachel Zoe Project (Bravo):  I’m not entirely sure I would know this show from any of the other big-ego-no-talent-hey-look-at-me-and-how-I-spend-my-time/money reality shows on Bravo. Needless to say, I won’t be watching.

Sons of Anarchy (FX): Strangely, I have never seen an episode of this show. Bikers never interested me, but I’ve heard good things and will likely check it out on DVD sometime. As such I won’t be watching it this Fall. I’m too much of a completionist to start in the middle.

Sept. 13

90210 (CW): I didn’t watch the original. I won’t be watching this one. ‘Nuff said.

Ringer (CW): It’s Sarah Michelle Gellar playing a dark and damaged girl pretending to be her twin sister. Written by one of the writers of Supernatural. This will likely be very average. So I’ll probably watch something else.

Parenthood (NBC): There are a dozen reasons why this show should suck, but it doesn’t. It’s actually fun to watch and I like the cast of characters they’ve put together. Granted, I’ve been watching anything with Peter Krause since Sports Night, but really, this is a well acted and well written show that doesn’t assume a certain stupidity on the viewers part. I’ve seen every episode and I’m looking forward to this season.

Sept. 14

H8R (CW): A show with text-speak for a title with a first episode that has Snooki on it. The fact that this was even given a green light is more proof that the CW really isn’t a very good network.

Survivor: South Pacific (CBS): If this show is going to continue being interesting, they need to do a ‘from the ground up’ rebuild of it. Since they’re not going to do that, I’m not going to watch, but here’s my suggestion. Have three tribes. Two do what they’ve always done and vote one at a time off. The third tribe is a group of 3-5 ‘pirates’ who try to make the other tribes so miserable that they quit by taking their supplies and wrecking their shelters and whatnot. If the third tribe can get all of the others to join them or quit, then the pirates share in the million dollar prize.

America’s Next Top Model (CW): This show seems to have so many seasons that apparently being ‘top model’ is something that lasts about four months. Like most reality shows, I won’t be watching this one either.

Up All Night (NBC):  A sitcom with Christina Applegate and Will Arnett about the ‘joys’ of being new parents. I’ve got news for you. Assuming new parents have been able to get the kid to sleep, the last thing they want to do is watch a show about trying to get the kid to sleep. Don’t expect a season two.

 Free Agents (NBC): With the massive success of adapting The Office from British television, I suppose it’s to be expected that they’d continue to try to adapt more shows. This one is an office comedy with Hank Azaria in it. I love Hank Azaria. So I might watch an episode or two.

Sept. 15

The Vampire Diaries (CW):  I could be wrong, but I think the vampire thing is over. I mean except for True Blood, I don’t know anyone fanatical about vampires anymore.

The Secret Circle (CW): I was just thinking how the CW doesn’t have enough supernatural teen angst shows….luckily this showed up. I’m clearly not their demographic and that’s fine. I’m sure there’s someone who might want to watch cheap cgi mixed with melodrama.

It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia (FX): This is one of those shows I should watch but I don’t. It’s my kind of humor. It’s got a good cast. And I just never get around to watching it. Maybe I can fix that.

Archer (FX): Again, my fault. This is something I might like, but I’m simply not a fan of animation in general these days.

- Jack Cameron

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Stories I Only Tell My Friends By Rob Lowe – A Review

Posted on June 21, 2011 | Leave a comment

It took me a long time to be a fan of Rob Lowe. I would see him from time to time in movies, but he was never the reason I was watching the movie. And even when he was playing charming fuck-ups like in St. Elmo’s Fire, I still didn’t like him because ultimately he looked like the guy who went out with your girlfriend after she dumped you. A bit too sharp. A bit too good looking. He rarely played the guy I wanted to be. Then I started watching West Wing. On West Wing, he played Sam Seaborn. He was a writer. He worked at the White House. And thanks to West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin, he was very smart and said amazing things.

So I grew to appreciate Rob Lowe, but I didn’t know much about him. I knew somewhere in his past he had inadvertently pioneered the celebrity sex-tape scandal, but I didn’t know anything beyond that. My point here is that while I liked Rob Lowe well enough, I didn’t read his autobiography because I was a Rob Lowe super-fan. I read it because he titled it ‘Stories I Only Tell My Friends’ which I thought was a great name for an autobiography.

It turns out one of the many things Rob Lowe has in common with his West Wing character is that he too is a writer. This book sounds like him, which is really the best you can hope for in an autobiography. He writes with potential. There is something inspirational in his tone even when he’s talking about bad things. There are times it sounds like the writing of a politician, but I mean that in a good way.

If you take the time to read ‘Stories I Only Tell My Friends’, you’ll find two things:

1. That Rob Lowe has always wanted to be an actor and worked hard at it.

2. That Rob Lowe was phenomenally lucky.

He gives example after example of both of these things. He starts out as a kid in Dayton, Ohio doing children’s theater. He goes after every opportunity he can find to get on stage. Then after a fairly devastating divorce, his mother moves him out to California where he just happens to go the same Junior High School as Sean Penn and his brother Chris, and Charlie Sheen and his brother Emilio. This is what I’m talking about. He does work at it, but he gets these breaks that are one in a million. What makes it work is that he doesn’t seem to take any of them for granted.

Rob Lowe may have had some incredible luck, but he’s earned his place in Hollywood. Reading his autobiography, I was amazed by great people he’s had populate his life. And yes, the whole, work hard-get famous-go on a bender-go to rehab-come back better than ever thing can be seen on every single episode of VH1’s Behind The Music. But the reason that show works and the reason this book works is that each of those stories is personal. Lowe’s descent is entirely due to the unique circumstances he found himself in. What makes Lowe’s journey worth reading is that he’s a good storyteller and he never comes off as the pompous ass I originally thought he was. He’s not that guy. He’s one of us…or at least he tries to be.

One other note. It has occurred to me that every autobiography published in the next thirty years is going to have a chapter on 9/11. I think we should take all of these chapters and put them into one book.

-          Jack Cameron

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How Torture Porn Killed Criminal Minds

Posted on November 6, 2010 | 2 Comments

 

Yet Another Girl With A Gun To Her HeadMany people have said that I have a criminal mind. So it seemed only natural that I might watch a show like Criminal Minds. And I did. The first few seasons were entertaining, occasionally even riveting psychological drama. It helped that they had capable writers and a good cast. The likable team of misfits that made up the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit was a great juxtaposition to the horrible deeds of the serial killers they’d catch each week.

The problem is that there are only so many ways to show the FBI catching serial killers. And there are only so many kinds of serial killers. So after having them catch young serial killers, old serial killers, partner serial killers, father & son serial killers, femme fatale serial killers, cop serial killers, and a bunch of others I’ve left out, what is left? The detail. That’s it. Exactly how they get caught. Exactly who they kill. And exactly what they do to them. The show used to be catching the man (or woman or child or Eskimo stilt walker) responsible for dropping the bodies. Now it’s become about exactly what they do to those bodies. They no longer just find bodies on some logging road. Now we are treated to a few minutes of the killer taunting or cutting or raping or whatever else they can come up with. It’s gone from psychological drama to torture porn.

This isn’t the first show to lose my interest after falling into this trap. It happened with Oz. It happened with 24. It’s not that I can’t stomach to watch these gruesome scenes. I typed up police reports for two years and have a vivid imagination and the things I’ve read (and thus imagined in my head) in the Child Protective Services reports are worse than anything I’ve ever seen on the big or small screen. I have no problem with the gore, but the gore has to have a point.

If the scene is not furthering the plot or furthering the character, then it’s just there to titillate and as a storyteller, I tend to be offended at that sort of thing. The Shawshank Redemption has scenes where our main character gets raped by a group of inmates. That scene is less than a minute long and there isn’t one shot of throbbing penises penetrating him. Why? Because it’s entirely unnecessary.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are times when the sex, the violence, the torture, or the wonder have to be front and center and we need to experience it to really get the movie, but this only happens in the presence of good storytellers. I recently watched an Australian movie called The Square. The story is about a man who commits one sin, then a slightly worse one, then worse, as slowly he’s entirely compromised as a human being. It’s an incredibly well done film and there are no unnecessary scenes in it even though there are a few very unpleasant ones.

At the same time, master storytellers tend to be able to tell a story without overly graphic scenes. The best sex scene in any movie I’ve ever seen is in Robert Altman’s movie The Player and it has no nudity in that scene. A master storyteller understands that given the right fuel, the scene will light up in our heads better than anything they could film. It’s why Silence of the Lambs is a better thriller than any of the sequels. If you know how to tell a story, you don’t have to go there. The audience will go there on their own and they won’t feel too dirty afterword.

I get that not everyone is like me. Some people like to watch pretty explosions or special effects or graphic sex or violence.  I do too, from time to time, but I prefer all of those things to be accompanied by a story. Otherwise it’s all just porn: There to get you off in only the most base way and better when you don’t think about it at all. That’s not what I want from my entertainment.

There was a great comic book series in the 90’s called The Maxx. It ran 35 issues and was still fairly popular when the creators stopped making it. When asked why they stopped, they said they didn’t have any more story to tell. This is what has happened on Criminal Minds. They have no more stories. All they have left are some decent characters who week in week out share the screen with some other characters who are doing horrible things to people. If you’re a long time watcher of the show, you’ll also notice that the newer episodes have more killers who take their victims hostage for days. This isn’t something most serial killers do, but it’s hard to torture dead people and that’s all they have left to show us it seems. Unfortunately they have no more story to tell, but they all still want paychecks and people are still tuning in so Criminal Minds will continue. I just won’t be watching them.

-Jack

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Fall Season TV Review

Posted on October 20, 2008 | Leave a comment

I watch entirely too much television. It’s a habit. And like all habits, it’s sometimes a lot of fun and sometimes it’s outright painful. When the Fall Season begins, I tend to go on a TV binge. The downside of this is that I end up having less time to write because I’m watching TV. The upside is that when I have time to write, I can let you all know the shows to avoid and the shows that are actually worth your time.

Big Bang Theory

A couple of nerds have a hot next door neighbor. This is basically the entire premise of this show. Basically each episode is full of geek talk vs. real world talk from the hot girl, punctuated by arguably televisions most annoying current laugh track. BBT is actually a fairly entertaining sitcom, but the laugh track gets to me. I don’t like to be reminded when to laugh. I’ll laugh when it’s funny.

How I Met Your Mother

I ended up watching this show last year because it was on after Big Bang Theory. It quickly became apparent that this was the far superior show. The title of the show comes from the framing device of each episode being one of the characters telling his children how he met their mother back in the early 00’s of the 21st century. While all of the actors on this show are good, Neil Patrick Harris tends to steal every scene he’s in as the womanizing Barney. This show is about twice as funny as Big Bang Theory and is consistently entertaining.

Heroes

As a life long comic book collector, I was genuinely impressed with the first season of Heroes two years ago. They managed to have fun with the super-hero genre while still being original. They threw a bunch of balls in the air and caught every one of them. Then last year Season Two happened. While a certain amount of blame could be put on the season being cut short by the writer’s strike, the bottom line is that Season Two wandered all over the place and ended up absolutely nowhere. It’s no surprise to me that this season has had a huge ratings drop. However, the creators of Heroes apparently learned from their mistakes last year. The first two episodes of Heroes were more eventful the all of the Second Season combined. Things are happening fast and it is fun. The only problem is that right now it’s more plot than character. It’s almost as if they’re just doing all these big things just to do them. Like the first season, this one has a lot of promise, it’s just a matter of whether or not they can catch every ball they throw.

Fringe

When I was in high school, the Fox Network had a show about weird science and paranormal events that were investigated by the FBI. It was called X-Files. Fifteen years later, Fox has another FBI weird science show. This time it’s Fringe. Like X-Files, Fringe has an overall conspiracy combined with weird event of the week. So far this is working well, just like it did for the first few seasons of X-Files. Here’s hoping that Fringe can sustain the balance of mystery vs. reveals.

Eli Stone

I’m not a big fan of musicals. But my wife is. This is why I ended up watching Eli Stone. Eli is about a lawyer who has an aneurysm that causes psychic and musical hallucinations. Basically each week he has a vision of some sort that he has to unravel in order to save whoever he has to save and invariably it has something to do with his being a lawyer. Last year they ended the season with Eli getting his aneurysm removed right after predicting a huge San Francisco earthquake that destroys among other things, the Golden Gate Bridge. It wasn’t until this last episode that I really started to like the show. It takes guts to seriously mess with the city your characters live in. Unfortunately, this fun lasted all of one episode because in the season opener, the Golden Gate Bridge was back and so was the aneurysm. And to make matters worse, they decided to take the most intriguing part of the show and kill it by revealing that yes, his visions are in fact from the big guy upstairs. I don’t think I’m going to stick around to find out what happens next.

Grey’s Anatomy

Despite being a heterosexual male, I have in face seen every single episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Why? Because I’m obsessive and I tend to either watch every episode of a show or none of them. Unfortunately Grey’s Anatomy is a show that only gets worse and worse. I realize I’m not the demographic they’re looking for, but after four seasons, not one of these characters has become redeemable. In fact, every single one of them is so self-centered and short-sighted that it’s kind of scary that any of them are doctors. For a while there were two or three characters that were worth watching, but they either left the show or became so morally compromised that you couldn’t possibly think of them as good guys without forgetting what a good person is. With any luck at all, I’ll avoid most of this season because at this point I really couldn’t possibly care less who screws who or why or who is mad about it.

The Mentalist

When my son was younger, he’d watch a show called Blue’s Clues. Every episode they’d have some sort of mystery and they’d discover clues and try to make the kids watching the show guess what was going to happen. This is great for a show aimed at kids because it makes them think and builds confidence. Strangely, it seems to also be the premise for The Mentalist. The title character of The Mentalist is supposedly a guy who notices absolutely everything and using these abilities, solves crimes. And as the audience, we see what he sees and then get to feel all smart when we come to the same conclusions. Unfortunately this doesn’t make us think the character is smart. He is, at most, only as smart as we are, and while we tend to think we’re fairly bright, we all know we’re no geniuses and so the premise of the show falls apart.

11th Hour

I’m blaming the success of House on the glut of new shows that revolve around a ‘cranky genius’ character. Of course the success of House isn’t due to Dr. House’s character, it’s due to him and his supporting cast. So the 11th Hour, about a ‘scientific consultant’ for the FBI doesn’t fail because of lead, Rufus Sewell. It fails because there isn’t one other interesting character around him. If that weren’t bad enough, so far every episode, has been a slow plodding thing that lasted an hour but seemed like three. This show can’t be cancelled soon enough. Rufus Sewell is a good actor. He deserves good work.

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