It's Been A While

OK, so it has been just over 4 months since I last wrote a blog post. Here's a summary of what happened.

• After being out of work for month I got a job at a 3PL called Pro Star Logistics.
• I finished my yearly reading of Harry Potter.
  
• My new favorite currently running show "Once Upon a Time" premiered. (LOST is still my all time favorite show in case you were wondering)
  
• The 5th and Final Season of "Chuck" Premiered.
  
• We had a fun Halloween in which I dressed up as a member of The DHARMA Initiative, Alisa was a witch, Collin was a dinosaur coming out of an egg and Liam was a pea-pod.
• We had a fun Thanksgiving at Grandma Norberg's house and one at my in-law's house in Idaho.
• I began my yearly reading of The Lord of The Rings.
  
• We all celebrated Kari's return to her family.
• Season 19 of "The Amazing Race" concluded.
  
• The first season of "Terra Nova" concluded.
  
• Collin (or one of his little friends) threw something at my TV and cracked the screen causing an annoying black line that extends from the crack to the edge of the screen.
• We had a wonderful Christmas.
• 2011 ended.
  
• 2012 began.
  
• I began watching the 4th Season of "Merlin" via iTunes
  
• I lost my job at Pro Star and became unemployed again.
• "Alcatraz" premiered.
• Liam turned 1 year old.
  
• The 5th and Final Season of "Chuck" Concluded.
• Alisa and I started watching the show "Prison Break" on Netflix while up in Idaho and got ourselves hooked.
  
• I finished my yearly reading of The Lord of The Rings.
• Season 20 of "The Amazing Race" began.

So, that's about it. At the moment Alisa and I are waiting for the next few DVDs of "Prison Break" to arrive at the library but my main focus is job searching. Things are going pretty well. I have had several interviews and one coming up tomorrow and I'm actively networking. More posts soon.

Fringe Season 3

So, the season finale of Fringe aired back on Friday. I have made some pretty long blog posts regarding this show but I'm going to keep this one short. Overall, a really strong season. It ended with a really great cliffhanger which I had to rewind and watch a couple times just to make sure I got what was going on with the two Walters, two Olivias, no Peter and a whole pack of observers. One of the great things about this show (besides the show itself) is the fact that it has already been renewed for another season. So, I will look forward to September to see what happens.

Which Olivia is holding the gun? Do you know? I do!

Fringe does it again!

OK, so we had the Fringe Season 2 Finale back on Thursday and it was DYNAMITE! This is a great show and it had another great season. Last season's finale was awesome but this one was even better. Like last season this one ended with Olivia stuck in the alternate dimension. However, the great thing about this one is that nobody knows it yet because the Olivia from the other side has taken her place. I also have to wonder if we have really seen the end of William Bell. I can't wait to see how everything will play out next season. I think they did a really great job with designing the alternate universe. I think it is effective because they differentiated it from our world in very subtle ways. Though there are some pretty hefty differences (The blimps, The Statue of Liberty being a different color, Madison Square Gardens being encased in a giant wormhole) most of the differences are in the small details. I think that makes it more believable for the audience than it would be if the other world were vastly different.

In addition to this season ending well it also had some really great episodes along the way. One of these was the episode "Peter" in which we get to flash back to 1985 and see the story of how Peter ended up on this "side." I also thought it was great how Peter finally figured out the truth about where he came from. Though, I think the best episode was "Brown Betty." It was a really creative episode and I loved how they presented it as Walter telling an old fashion 1940s detective story but still having modern elements mixed in.

All and all, it was a great season and I look forward to watching it again when it returns in the fall.

Farewell to the Dollhouse

Well, it's over. Back on Friday the series finale of Dollhouse aired on FOX. I really enjoyed the episode though I think it would have been much better if it had aired after several more seasons. It always kinda sucks when a show you really like gets cancelled before it's has a chance to really get going. Fortunately for this show however, creator Josh Whedon knew going into this second season that the show would likely be canceled so he had a chance to try to put together a good ending and wrap up the various storylines. But, it still leaves me feeling like if it had been able to run longer it would have had a chance to be a lot better. It's a bit like if J.K. Rowling upon publishing Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone had been told by her publisher that they would only allow her to write one more book. She likely would have been able to find a way to bring the story to some kind of conclusion but, anybody who knew that she had a plan for seven novels would know that they had missed out on some pretty good stuff.
So, as much as I liked this show I have to ask myself why it was that it ultimately didn't make it. Here are some of my ideas:

• It came from the mind of Josh Whedon. Now that is not meant as an insult to the show's mastermind but the fact of the matter is, Josh Whedon tends to make some really quirky shows that often don't have mass appeal.
• Eliza Dushku is kind of a twit. Sorry, she's a decent actress (as she clearly showed in the finale) but when it comes down to it she probably just wasn't the right person for this role. She simply doesn't play the "butt-kick chick" part of her role very convincingly. It also didn't help that she's the star of the show and she seemed to be upstaged by Fran Kranz, Enver Gjokaj and most every other member of the cast.

So, whatever the reasons may be, it's over and I for one am sad to see it go. I shall however, take comfort in the fact that at least LOST returns this week.

2009 In Review

Let's be honest; 2009 kinda sucked for me and my little family. But, I'm not gonna spend a lot of time talking about that. Instead, I have decided to list some of the good things that happened over the past year. So, here we go:

• I increased the size of my coin collection.
• The International Astronomical Union did not eliminate any more planets from the Solar System.
• Josh Whedon gave the world of television a wonderful, albeit short lived, gift. And the gift was called "Dollhouse."
• Alisa got prettier
• Patrick Rothfuss turned in his first draft of The Wise Man's Fear to his editor.
• Collin got cuter.
• I acquired The Ultimate Recording Device.*
• J.J. Abrams' remake of Star Trek was just plain awesome.
• Chuck got renewed for a 3rd season.
• I got a new nephew and a new niece.

*The Ultimate Recording Device is a VCR/DVD Recorder Combo with a digital tuner. This device allowed me to continue to record my TV shows after the digital transition.

“You’re very talented. I would know; I’m very talented too.” – The super early sneak peak of GLEE

Last night I watched the pilot for FOX’s new show Glee. I thought it was a pretty good show and I had a fun time watching it. However, I almost didn’t end up watching it at all. I found out yesterday while reading online that though the pilot was airing that night the show was not actually going to be running until fall. After reading this I was a little confused as to why they were bothering to air the pilot so far in advance. The reason has to do with the fact that it is a musical comedy so they wanted to air it right after an episode of American Idol as a way of giving it greater exposure and hopefully, ensuring a bigger audience in the fall.

That being said, this looks like it will be a good show with some really funny characters. It revolves a teacher Mr. Schuester (played by Matthew Morrison) who is trying to resurrect the school’s defunct glee club. He naturally ends up with a bunch of lovable misfits and one little diva named Rachel (played by newcomer Lea Michele) who has an incredible voice. From the previews I had seen I was expecting Rachel to be really annoying but she actually pulls off the diva routine in a way that is cute and endearing. As a matter of fact, when I heard her sing “On my own” from Les Misérables that was when I really started thinking that I would end up liking the show.

One thing I found a little strange about this show is how it seems to revolve around the same view of high school clicks as you see in High School Musical. In this high school if you are a jock you are essentially not allowed to do anything related to music or anything else equally unsports like. Maybe I went to a weird high school but I just don’t remember it being like that. I was involved in theatre and the orchestra in high school but I was also ran track. Nobody on the track team seemed to care one bit that I spent the rest of the school year playing my little violin or putting on tights or sassy cinnamon lipstick for whatever play I happened to be in. I also remember that there were several guys on the football team who were also in the choir. But then again, I did go to school way back in the 90’s so perhaps things have changed since then. One other thing that I found a little annoying was the portrayal of one of the school cheerleaders. She is the president of the “Celibacy Club” so naturally she is portrayed as a self-righteous, semi-hypocritical, religious weirdo as well as the least desirable of all possible girlfriends. I guess that’s not too surprising considering the values of Hollywood.Anyway, looks like a fun show with great music. I look forward to watching it in the fall.

You'll Never Believe it!

It is official, Dollhouse is returning next season. In a move that surprised a lot of people FOX announced that the show that most TV industry people had given up as dead will indeed be renewed next season for a run of 13 episodes.

SWEET SASSY MOLASSEY!!

Danny Victorious – Hell’s Kitchen

Hell’s Kitchen had its season finale last night. It was down to Danny and Paula and I had predicted that Paula was going to win. However, to my surprise Danny took the $250,000 and will become the head chef of his own restaurant at The Borgata Hotel in Atlantic City. I liked both Danny and Paula so I would have been just as happy for either of them.

It is very interesting to consider what a misnomer the term "Reality Show" can sometimes be considering how contrived some of the things on such shows can be. There are usually people on any reality show that quite obviously don’t belong there. On Hell’s Kitchen there always seems to be a contestant or two who just plain can’t cook. Last season there was a guy on the show who wasn’t even a chef. This season you had Lacey. This girl couldn’t have cooked a bowl of Cheerios® most days. During her last dinner service before being eliminated she even admitted that she couldn’t cook meat. So, how do ding-dongs like Lacey get to be contestants on the show and more importantly, how do they manage to actually stave off elimination as long as they do? I think that has to do with the Producers of the show. Though Gordon Ramsey the host has the final say (supposedly) in who ultimately wins the competitions I think that producers have a lot of say about how things go leading up to the finale. The producers and the studio people I think are not nearly as concerned with getting the most qualified chefs for the show as they are about filling Hell’s Kitchen with those people who will make for the most interesting show. Lacey wasn’t there because she had any chance of winning. She was there because of her crazy attitude and the reactions she could solicit from the other competitors.

As I have said before with other shows: great season and I look forward to the next one.

FRINGE

As we all know it is season finale time. This is both an exciting and depressing time for me as season finales are usually the most exciting episodes but they also mean I have a minimum four month wait for new episodes. Last night I watched the finale of the first season of Fringe and it was a doozy. I know, I said doozy. It was the best I could come up with. Anyway, I really enjoyed this show’s debut season. The show was packed full of teleportation, alternate realities, weird genetically engineered mutant monsters, mental telepathy and bunches of other stuff that makes sci-fi nerds get all excited.

One thing that I think is really effective in a TV show for creating a compelling and exciting story is having that one mysterious character that is kept in the background for a significant amount of time. Usually, the mystery of this person is built up for a number of episodes and there is a big climactic moment in which you see the character for the first time and surprise, the part is being played by a well known actor. This is what happened in Chuck when we met Chuck’s dad last season played by Scott Bakula and in Heroes when we saw Linderman for the first time played by Malcolm McDowell. In Fringe we have William Bell, the mysterious founder of Massive Dynamics played by none other than Leonard Nemoy. I think these kind of reveals are most fun when you don’t know ahead of time who is going to be playing the “man (or woman) behind the curtain.” Unfortunately, I heard on the radio ahead of time that Leonard Nemoy was going to be appearing in this role so it took some of the excitement out of the reveal. Of course, the fact that Agent Dunham meets Mr. Bell in an office in one to the World Trade Center towers in an alternate universe seems only fitting considering Nemoy’s Star Trek roots.

Speaking of Star Trek; I gotta say something about the second to last episode. There was a great scene in which Peter and Agent Dunham are speaking to a guy who is giving them some information about Massive Dynamics and their role in a big conspiracy. The guy turns out to be nuts when he informs them that the Romulans are behind it all and informs them that he is Spock. Funny how this episode aired just a couple of days before the new Star Trek movie opened up. Oh, and Fringe creator J.J. Abrams directed Star Trek. That Abrams is so sneaky!
Last I just want to mention the character of Walter Bishop. There was a scene where Walter was in his old beach house with his son Peter having a bit of a loony freak-out session and I almost expected him to start ranting about how there could be no victory against the evil in the east and to set himself on fire. I wonder what it would look like to see John Noble play someone who isn’t crazy.

Call the fire department; someone’s trying to burn down the DOLLHOUSE!

So, last night I watched the season finale of Dollhouse and it was really, really good. This show just premiered this season and I was surprised at how quickly and completely I got hooked on it. Unfortunately, the show has experienced low ratings and is therefore in the same boat as one of my other favorite shows (and the subject of my last blog post) Chuck. Dollhouse may very well be canceled and the decision as to whether it will return next season is still up in the air. Thankfully, like Chuck this show has a pretty militant online following. There seems to be a good amount of opposition to this show’s return though. There are definitely strong opinions on both sides. Much of it revolves around whether Dollhouse is a feminist show or not and whether the main character Echo (played by Eliza Dushku) is a strong female lead or a weak one. Blah, blah, blah; who cares? I just like the show.

One of the arguments (besides the feminism angle) that has been made against the show's return has to do with the story’s ability to maintain another season. This is one of those shows that relies greatly on back story. Like my current favorite show LOST, Dollhouse’s premiere basically dropped you into the middle of the story and as the show goes on it gives you brief little glimpses of the back story through flashbacks. Dollhouse relies greatly on this to keep the story exiting and interesting. But, some people have expressed the concern that Dollhouse’s creator Josh Whedon has essentially exhausted the back story and therefore, there would not be enough left to reveal about the characters or the mythos of the Dollhouse to maintain the show through a second season. I can certainly see the logic in this thinking and if Whedon and the others associated with the show don’t feel like they can make the show work for another season than they should pull the plug now. That would certainly be better than having it come back just to see it get canceled after a couple of episodes.
However, now that I have seen the finale I don’t really think that argument holds water. In this last episode of the season some new ideas were introduced and many things were left unresolved so I think there would definitely be enough material to produce another season. But, if it is not renewed at least it went out with a bang and those of us who were fans will remember it as an action packed show that kept us very entertained for at least twelve Friday nights.