The fall TV season is underway!! I’ve watched some of the sneak previews of some of the new shows and have reviewed them. I also have the finale of Big Brother 8, the premiere of Survivor China, thoughts on Heroes, and a lot more. Definitely a supersized edition!! Hope you enjoy!!
Big Brother 8: Big Brother has come to an end for this season with the live finale on Tuesday night. Dick vs. Daniele in the final two. Father/daughter make it to the final two. We first go to the jury waiting to see who the last member of the jury was going to be. Zach walks in and the mood goes even further down when they realize that Dick and Daniele are the final two. Eric confirmed to Zach what has been speculated and that Zach would have gotten the win if he could have gotten to the final two. Eric said it would have been a 6-1 vote obviously leaving the one vote as America’s vote, I’m assuming. America did vote for Eric to vote for Dick to win the game over Daniele. The jury discussion on the game was about what I expected. Jen was absolutely not wanting to vote for either of them and to no surprise wasn’t going to vote for Dick. Amber called out Daniele on more personal life stuff than game play. Daniele was asked what good thing she would take from each houseguest which the jury didn’t buy at ALL. Dick spoke on how he regretted having to turn on Eric and Jessica which is true. From everything I’ve seen, I think Dick did just genuinely like Eric. We get to the voting with each person voting on who they want to win. Eric voted for America voting for Dick to win. Jameka voted for Daniele. Amber voted for Dick. Dustin voted for Dick. Jen voted for Daniele. Zach voted for Dick. Jessica voted for Dick. Dick wins Big Brother 8 on a 5-2 vote. No surprise on the voting. I think Zach voted for Dick based on that last HOH competition with him gaining a lot of respect for him. The reveal of America’s Player was TREMENDOUS. That was a great segment letting everyone realize what was going on and them realizing that the odd stuff in the house was the result of Eric. They did not point out that Eric won money for what he was getting accomplished. He did make $40,000 this summer. Thank you to the producers for not showing the clip of Eric giving the woobie to Jessica during that America’s Player video. She was still processing everything and I think if that would have been shown, she would have had her mood fearfully change thinking that she may have been played. Eric did tell Jessica that the feelings that they shared for each other were absolutely real and not part of America’s Player. You could just see the pizzazz taken out of Dick’s celebration when the America’s Player was revealed to have saved him on the week where Dustin was sent home. I did like that Eric told Dustin and Amber that he wouldn’t have voted them out if it was up to him which was the absolute truth. Amber was running Eric down big time after Dustin was voted out and now the truth comes out.
What You’ve Missed Since The Live Show Ended: Ah, sorry. Habit!! LOL!! There was this lovely blue swirl on the feeds as us older Big Brother fans used to call it, FOTH!!
What You Missed On The Live Feeds: It’s always a bummer every season when you look at the house and realize there are only two people left in it. Watching the feeds all season, you get used to seeing this big amount of people in the house and hearing it lively in there. The end of the season comes and that big house suddenly seems so quiet. Shortly after the show ended, Dick was outside and heard cheering over the wall. He told Daniele that they had fans. She wasn’t buying that was the reason they were cheering. He told her that they haven’t heard a thing outside like that all season and suddenly have now after the live show adding to Daniele “what do you think is going on over there, a car rally?” LOL. Later on Dick was outside in the back yard talking to people on the feeds saying “how many of you people threw your beer at the TV tonight when you realized we had won”. He did tell Daniele that they caught several good breaks allowing them to keep going in the game. Daniele was not happy at all about the jury questioning saying that all of her questions were about her personal life and being in her dad’s shadow. She was mad at Dick for him saying to the jury that he had the tougher game. Daniele disagrees as she has told everyone all along that her game has been the toughest.
Some various news coming out of the finale and interviews afterwards: If you are still a feed subscriber, there are interviews being done with houseguests. Dick, Daniele, and Nick did a chat for about an hour this week on Real.com. More interviews are said to be on the way. If you’re wondering about Eric and Jessica, Eric said on House Calls today that they are their normal selves and that she is fine with the America’s Player twist being revealed. Big Brother is re-airing the live feeds as they happened in real time. They did this with All Stars last year. The feed replays were up by 11:00pm only two hours after the finale concluded. I’m going to watch this a little bit plus I learned last year that it is a great way to come back down slowly off of the Big Brother feeds instead of an immediate halt. I compare it to bringing you off slowly instead of cold turkey. LOL!!! I am having fun watching it. So, the feeds will be going for another two and a half months if any of you are mad that you missed stuff on the feeds. Go to Real.com for more info.
Looking back at the overall season and wrapping up the Big Brother coverage. I really enjoyed this season quite a bit. These houseguests provided a lot of entertainment in this game. I enjoyed watching the Eric/Jessica romance bloom in the house. They were a lot of fun. With Dick, I know watching him on the feeds was wild cause you just never knew what was going to happen. I didn’t like a lot of things that he did obviously. The America’s Player twist was interesting and sometimes frustrating cause Eric was having to balance a couple of different games too. He never knew when America was going to vote a different way and mess up his game. I know a lot of these houseguests talked a ton of trash on other people. I don’t know if one can really be mad at the other cause I’ve heard some pretty vicious things said about different houseguests. Dick and Eric were front runners early on as their late night game strategy session showed how big of game players that they were. Big Brother is this fun and unique reality show where you can watch it all the time. I’ve always loved the uniqueness of it and it is a time consuming thing if you are a feed watcher. It’s a two and a half month addiction of watching and learning about these houseguests and seeing how this game plays out. You cheer for who you like and boo who you don’t like but at the end of the day, it is all a game. I do wish all of them great things in the future. It’s fun too cause a lot of times you’ll end up cheering for completely different people than what you started with at the beginning as you see things evolve. If you are a fan and follow it quite a bit, I highly recommend heading over to Joker’s and hanging out there. It is so much fun and adds to the great experience where you get instant feedback seeing what other fans have to say, have other people capturing feed video in case you miss something like say when you’re sleeping (LOL), and just a lot of fun people. I spend a lot of my summer there as well and look forward to doing it against next summer. I was glued to the live feeds for the last couple of months. I’ve lost a ton of sleep including some days where I’m feeling a little sleepy from my late night feed watching. Maybe now I can get back on a decent sleeping schedule again. LOL!! As far as favorite houseguests, if you couldn’t tell by my thoughts over the summer, my favorites were Jessica, Eric, and Carol. So, we say goodbye to a season that gave us America’s Player, romance, banner planes, pots and pans, bunny suits, rival twists, beer pong, crying, booyahs, and tons more. Honestly, this is the most fun time that I have every year typing this up in covering this show as best as I can for you Big Brother fans. Plus, I have some of you that don’t even watch the show but have kept up with it through reading what I write. Hope I covered it well for all of you and I’ll do it again next year!!
Big Brother Videos Of The Week: Here is one funny video and then a couple of excellent music video recaps of the season.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGKuaM617hY – Big Brother 8 Tribute which is very good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_mbcLnEZLg – The same person also made this good season recap.
Movie box office numbers for last weekend. 1. The Brave One – $13.4 million. 2. 3:10 To Yuma – $8.9 million. 3. Mr. Woodcock – $8.7 million. 4. Superbad – $5.1 million. 5. Dragon Wars – $5 million. 6. Halloween – $4.8 million. 7. The Bourne Ultimatum – $4.1 million. 8. Balls Of Fury – $3.32 million. 9. Rush Hour 3 – $3.30 million. 10. Mr. Bean’s Holiday – $2.7 million.
I’ve got to say that it is a bummer starting a fall TV season without Veronica Mars and Gilmore Girls. I miss both of those shows big time already.
Since I have been searching for something to watch to help deal with the Big Brother withdrawal (LOL), I checked out several of the sneak previews of the new shows before they air. NBC, CBS, and Fox are offering some of their shows as previews. I’m not even paying attention to anything new from Fox for obvious reasons that I talk about in here frequently. Here are some thoughts on three different shows. From the NBC side, I watched the first episode of Chuck. I enjoyed the first episode of this show. I did enjoy it. The story revolves around Chuck who works as a computer technician at a store. His roommate from years ago ends up sending him an email with all sorts of government secrets. He reads it and all the secrets transfer right to his brain. As you can imagine, this very much changes his life. This is a comedy and I like the cast that they’ve picked out for the show. I did enjoy it for sure. If the idea sounds fun to you, give it a shot and see what you think of it. I listened to a TV Guide podcast where they were talking about all the new shows and they all liked Chuck. Chuck premieres on NBC on September 24th at 7pm right before Heroes. I also watched Journeyman from NBC. I wasn’t sure going in what I would think of this show. The show focuses around Dan who is able to travel through time but it is not under his control. He is sent through time to help change something that is going to occur. Dan has to figure out why this is happening, what is the purpose, and also has to try and explain his disappearances from present day. As expected with time travel, things get complicated including in his own life. The show feels like a modern day Quantum Leap at times. I’ve got to say that I enjoyed this pilot. Interesting story. The show does a good job of setting the time period where you really get a good feel of where he is in time. I had a good time looking around and hearing the music and was able to pinpoint where he was a couple of times before it was revealed. I heard one song and immediately pinpointed the year that he was in. I found that to be fun. I also checked out Bionic Woman from NBC. I am not familiar at all with the original Bionic Woman as I never followed it so this story was completely new to me. The show centers around Jaime Sommers. She is trying to juggle her personal life and job together as she takes care of her teenage sister while working as a bartender. She is involved in a car accident that almost kills her. To keep her alive, she is forced to add another thing to her already busy life as she will now have to pay up for being kept alive. She will now have to explore what has been done to her while figuring out just what sort of group she is now associated with including dealing with another bionic woman from the past. I don’t like to be a broken record but I enjoyed this show as well. Keep in mind that it takes a whole lot for me to dislike a show or movie. I like Michelle Ryan in the lead role as she does a good job. I actually doubt that I’ll keep up with this show but I think people that are into that story will enjoy the show. Props to NBC for doing these previews cause I likely would not have watched these when they aired so their mission was accomplished with me to check it out.
I also watched a special preview of the pilot episode of The Big Bang Theory from CBS. This is probably the new show that I was looking forward to the most by seeing the previews. Funny concept and I like the casting for the show. The show stars Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, and Kaley Cuoco. The general idea of the show is that you have two “nerds”, Sheldon and Leonard, living together in an apartment. They realize that a beautiful girl named Penny has moved in across the hall played by Kaley Cuoco. They pay close attention to her very quickly and we basically see these two worlds collide with her and the guys. Lots of funny moments and lines in the premiere. I enjoyed the show and did have some laugh out loud moments at it. I’m going to stick with this show and keep watching. The Big Bang Theory premieres on CBS this Monday night at 7:30pm.
ABC is not offering their new fall programming as a preview in complete form with their reasoning being that people won’t tune into a show premiere thus hurting the opening rating if viewers have seen it already. I can see that point of view for sure. However, I see the other point of view first hand. It would have been very unlikely for me to watch those NBC shows that I talked about unless I had the On Demand option. The fall season had yet to really get underway leaving me with a chance to watch some shows. I can see it hurting the ratings premiere cause I, like others, won’t tune in to the premiere cause I’ve seen them. However, it gave networks a chance to expose viewers to new shows that they may not have watched on network time. Like I said, I see both points of view on it but I know it worked on me to have the preview.
Save the cheerleader, save the world. One thing was clear in season one of Heroes and that was just how does that play into the story? Why is it so important to save the cheerleader and why will it save the world? Well, I’ll tell you why and go into my thoughts on season one of a show that quickly jumped into my top five favorite shows. If you haven’t seen the season and don’t want spoilers, you don’t want to keep reading this. The cheerleader, Claire, is basically living a normal high school life, well, besides the fact that she is invincible. She continues to try to figure out why she is this way but it turns out that her dad is a lot more involved in the story than she thinks. All over the world, we are introduced to several heroes who have different special powers. Claire is invincible. Hiro can teleport to locations and through time. Issac can see the future in his drawings. D.L. can walk through walls. Nikki has a split personality of Jessica that has powers but it is unclear on for sure as to whether Nikki can channel these powers as well. Nathan Petrelli can fly. Matt Parkman is able to hear people’s thoughts. Peter Petrelli, brother of Nathan, though can top them all. His power is that he can get within inches of someone and be able to pick up their ability. Yep. While all the others have one ability, he has tons that he picks up along the way. The main villain, Sylar, also has this ability. Well, it’s not so much as an ability as that he kills the hero that has an ability and then takes it from their brain. We have Mohinder Suresh, a professor, who finds out that his dad was murdered and he begins to follow what his dad was working on which is studying people with these special abilities. Sylar ends up tracking down the heroes working on getting their abilities to become more and more powerful. The story starts rolling when Hiro teleports himself into the future without knowing. He sees a comic book of his journey that was written by Issac but the only thing is that all this hadn’t happened to Hiro yet except for his arrival in New York. He sees a major explosion in New York but teleports out. He then goes on a mission to find out what happened and to try to change what happened. Peter is also trying to figure out his abilities and what is happening to him. He gets a visit from Hiro (a very powerful future version of him) that tells him what is about to happen. Hiro has researched everything back to try and find out what could have been done to change things. Save the cheerleader, save the world is what Peter is told. Peter must figure out who the cheerleader is and why he must save her. He ends up saving her. Why did it save the world? It all comes together very nicely when Syler gains more power. He can’t do what happened in that future cause he doesn’t have invincibility which he got from killing the cheerleader. It turns out an exploding man is who does the damage to the city in the future. The exploding man ends up being Peter when he picks up an ability from another person with abilities named Ted. How do you stop an exploding man? Well, Nathan and Peter fly up into the sky as we see the explosion. We learned a lot more on Claire and her dad including that she was adopted. We learn that her dad was given Claire to keep an eye on cause of her abilities. He is involved in a group that also hunts down people with special abilities. Mr. Bennett is a character that often leaves you guessing on whose side he is actually on. We also learn that Claire’s real father is Nathan. That makes her the niece of Peter. This show is just a great mix of comedy, action, and just really great story. It leaves you thinking and wanting more. The story of Hiro is a lot of fun and he’s a great character as well. Good for comedy but then very essential into the whole story. There is a ton more that has occurred over the first season but it would take forever to cover it. Just watch the show. I doubt you’ll regret it. That takes us into season two which premieres on Monday night and leaves us with many questions. What has happened to Peter and Nathan? Where do Claire and her dad go from here? Where is Sylar who obviously crawled away and survived?
Some Buffy/Angel comic stuff. First, if any of you missed the previous issues and want to get caught up, here is an excellent chance. Dark Horse is releasing a book that will contain all of the first five issues in it. The release date is October 31st (Halloween, fittingly enough) and that is a sweet cover to it is all I can say. The separate comics are also still available but this book gives you a chance to have them all together.
Also, the first issue of the season six comic of Angel is set for release in November. Now, on to my thoughts on issues five and six of Buffy season eight. Most of these issues really tie to each other on how the story is set up. Issue five is a separate slayer story that Joss was wanting to tell and stands on its own. I found it enjoyable and it puts a different perspective on the slayer story involving all the other slayers around the world. It is about the one that was the Buffy double that was actually seen on season five of Angel and then explained in a recent issue. Issue six is very good and this is the beginning of the Faith storyline. This just had a really big time classic Buffy story feel to it and was definitely one of the best issues so far. Faith is brought back into the mix by Giles over a problem with another slayer that isn’t living up to the power that she has. Giles recruits Faith to deal with it knowing that she is the only one that could do it. We also see that things with Faith didn’t just magically get all better after season seven ended. Faith is still battling her past. The conversations with Giles and Faith in this issue is very fun. Is Giles looking for Faith to get some blood on her hands to protect the world? We’ll soon find out.
Survivor China premiered tonight on CBS. I thought it was a fun premiere and it gave us a good look at some of the personalities that we will see on this season. With every season, there is a tough balance to find right from the beginning. The balance is to fall right in the middle. What am I talking about? Well, you don’t want to be too strong and show too much leadership that may turn people off. On the other hand, you don’t want to be seen as weak either. It is important to fall right in the middle. That can be difficult and you definitely have to be extremely careful to not make people mad right off the bat. People are looking for a reason to vote someone out immediately cause it is so early on. A lot of this balance went back and forth tonight. On the one hand, we had Chicken. His tribe was building the shelter and wanted to use his experience on how to build it. He got a vibe immediately that they weren’t appreciating his style of advice. So, he switched course and didn’t give ANY more advice just saying continuously that he’d go with the group. We had Dave who assumed quite a bit of the leadership in the same tribe including stepping up to be leader when they got to tribal council. We had Peih-Gee who was definitely wanting to assume leadership and turned people off with that. On the other hand, we had WWE’s Ashley Massaro struggling in the beginning which did surprise me. She ended up very sick on day two unable to help with the tribe. She was targeted for eviction wondering if she wasn’t going to be able to make it. She recovered and felt better on day three but already put a target on her back from some. All of these reasons came into play on who got voted out. The voting saw Chicken, Ashley, and Peih-Gee get votes. Chicken was voted out tonight and his reaction had me laughing. It was a typical reaction that I think many probably want to do when they’re voted out. LOL. Other thoughts from the premiere. How long till Courtney drives people crazy? I have a feeling that she may be good TV this season. Todd could be a player. It sounds like he is for sure going to have a mental strategy. We’ll see how it plays out for him. Jean-Robert kind of came off to me as a little paranoid. He may already be looking too hard at others but we’ll see how it turns out for him as well. James could be a player too. He is definitely strong enough but the social part of the game appears to be a likely weakness for him.
A reminder to all of you How I Met Your Mother fans. Season three premieres on Monday night with guest stars Mandy Moore and Enrique Iglesias. I highly recommend checking out this show if you haven’t gotten to see it. Barney is one of the best characters on TV right now. I laugh a LOT at this show. One of my top five favorite shows. Now, suit up and watch How I Met Your Mother on Monday nights.
Lauren Graham wasn’t a free agent for long. NBC has already signed her to a developmental deal which is said to be worth seven figures. It looks like NBC will be planning a show based around her in the future.
NBC has announced that they will offer new episodes of their shows on NBC.com for one week after their airing so there is an option for anyone that may miss a show.
We’ve got some ratings news back from some of the series premieres so far. Nothing so far has sky rocketed but we’ve got some decent ratings. Just kind of in that middle ground. Kid Nation premiered among a ton of controversy drawing a little over 9 million viewers on CBS. Gossip Girl on The CW premiered with about 3.6 million viewers. Back To You on CBS premiered with 9.4 million viewers. The numbers are just kind of in the middle but the networks are pointing out the demographic numbers more than the overall viewers. All eyes turn to see how they do in week two.
USA has renewed their show, Psyche, for a third season. The show will get 16 episodes that will air next summer.
24 is set to launch season seven on January 13th and 14th. A character not seen for a while is set to return. I won’t reveal the name in case some of you don’t want spoilers. If you do want to know, just search around as all the entertainment websites are covering it. I don’t watch the show so I don’t know how key the character is to the story.
The ratings are in for this past Sunday’s Emmy Awards and they aren’t pretty compared to previous years. This year’s Emmys were the second lowest rated Emmy Awards show ever getting 13 million viewers. Here is an interesting stat. Fox leads the way as the highest rated network with the 18-49 demographic. The Emmys brought Fox the lowest 18-49 demographic ever for the network. The Emmy Awards show that was the lowest rated was in 1990 which was also shown on Fox that year drew 12.1 million viewers. The networks often throw the towel in with trying to compete with high profile awards shows. When you look at the numbers for the shows competing against the Emmys on Sunday, several held their own against the Emmys. NBC had football and fared extremely well against the Emmys and the Emmys barely beat the NFL game during the 7pm hour and the game actually beat the Emmys in the 8pm hour. In the 9pm hour, the viewer ship went back up for the Emmys. Big Brother 8 also aired a season recap episode against the Emmys and pulled a 6.5 rating up against the Emmy Awards 8.2 for that hour.
TV on DVD releases for Tuesday, September 25th. The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes (Complete Series), Bliss (Season 3), The Bronx Is Burning (Complete Series), The Cosby Show (Best Of), Davey and Goliath (Lost Episodes), Dog The Bounty Hunter (The Arrest), Drawn Together (Season 2), Grounded For Life (Season 5), Inside The Actors Studio (Leading Men), The King Of Queens (Season 9), My Name Is Earl (Season 2), Numb3rs (Season 3), The Streets Of San Francisco (Season 1 – Volume 2), The Unit (Season 2), The Untouchables (Season 1 – Volume 2), Urban Gothic (Season 2), Voltron: Defender Of The Universe (Collection 4), What About Brian (Complete Series).
You Tube Video Of The Week: Dan showed me this one and I had to pass it along. Very funny. The watersliding Doberman.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Z8BLOxMt4
Have a great weekend!! Take care and God bless!!
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