My DVR will be warm this winter...because it will always be recording...

So the list went out a while ago in calendar form which I'll attach below but the list I'm working off of now is better.  I'm only going to pick and choose what I talk about because a lot of these are reality things that I doubt any of you have interest in.  Some of these dates are included on the chance one of you watches them.  Inclusion on this list does not necessarily mean I watch...I just want to put that out there.  I'll start out with any new shows and then list the returning shows just so you know when your DVR should be picking them back up. 


January 2:
How I Met Your Mother
2 Broke Girls
Hawaii Five-O
The Bachelor
The Lying Game
Pretty Little Liars

January 3:
Work It - This show has been generating a lot of drama because apparently it's hurting the transgender community.  Have you ever heard of Bosom Buddies?  It's a freaking sitcom people...come on.  I'll probably watch the pilot out of curiosity but it'd have to pull off something pretty special for me to keep watching past that.
The Biggest Loser - I watched this for the first time this past season and I have to say, I kind of enjoyed it.  There are certainly worse reality shows out there than one that tries to get people healthy.
Parenthood
NCIS/NCIS: LA

January 4:
Modern Family
Happy Endings
Revenge

January 5:
Vampire Diaries
Winter Wipeout - As said before, Jill will be missed but if the obstacles from the little preview a couple weeks ago are any indication, the show is not slacking off when it comes to creative ways to make people fly through the air.
Grey's Anatomy

January 6:
Supernatural

January 8:
The Firm - I vaguely remember the Tom Cruise movie but the buzz around this show has been generally good.  Josh Lucas is a solid actor so we'll see what they can do.  Plus, Tricia Helfer will be joining the cast.  More Six is always better.
House of Lies - Kristen Bell, Don Cheadle, Jean Ralphio from Parks and Rec.  Do I need to go on?  I watched the first 5 minutes of the pilot on Youtube and it's certainly interesting.  I look forward to seeing the rest of it.
Once Upon a Time
The Good Wife
Family Guy
Pan Am (for now...)(sorry Brian)

January 9:
Castle

January 11:
Are You There Chelsea? - I like Laura Prepon and I have occasionally found Chelsea Handler to be funny so I'll probably try it out.  I'd be surprised if I made it through a whole episode.
Whitney - I think I'm done with Whitney.  I've decided.

January 12:
Rob - No Rob Schneider...NO...go back and make The Hot Chick part 2, I'd watch that.  Cheech, go make Tin Cup 2...I'd watch that.
The Finder - I watched the backdoor pilot for this show on Bones last year and I have to say that while it was mildly entertaining, it was nowhere near enough for me to add to my already bloated DVR schedule.  Your mileage may vary.
Bones - I'm still a couple of episodes behind but I have to say that despite the criminally accelerated relationship, the show has maintained its sense of humor and the baby stuff with Brennan has been very amusing.
Big Bang Theory
Parks and Rec
30 Rock - I finished listening to Tina Fey's book on the drive down to Houston and I'm not extremely pumped for a new season of 30 Rock.  I would also HIGHLY recommend the audiobook of BossyPants.
The Office
Up All Night
Person of Interest
The Mentalist

January 13:
Fringe - WATCH IT!
Grimm

January 15:
Napoleon Dynamite - I remember watching the movie after everyone told me it was amazing and despite the final dance routine, I was left very underwhelmed.  This cartoon has all of the original cast voicing their characters.  If that floats your boat, go nuts, but I'm taking a solid pass on this one.

January 16:
Alcatraz - Okay, this is a JJ Abrams show.  While that would normally make this an instant watch, we all remember Undercovers...it was just last year.  The premise of this show, everyone on Alcatraz disappearing in the past and then starting to reappear one by one in the present, is interesting but I'm afraid there will be big mysteries that will string us along.  LOST has made me extremely gunshy when it comes to serialized shows.  Once Upon a Time is completely taking up my allotment of being strung along right now.  I'll give this two hour pilot a shot but I'm not hopeful for its long running presence on my DVR..
Lost Girl - New SyFy...nope I'm not doing it...New SciFi show that looked interesting if I'm remembering the right preview.  I'll already be on SciFi to watch Being Human so I might as well record another hour and see what's happening.
Being Human - One of the most pleasant surprises of 2011.  I had seen the first 3 episodes of the British version of the show and I rolled my eyes with everyone else when I heard they were making an US one, while the British one was still airing.  Then, they started casting actors I really like.  Sam Witwer (Starkiller, Doomsday, and Crashdown) and Sam Huntington (Jimmy Olsen, and many more) are great actors and their chemistry on the show is great and the girl that plays Sally started out a little rough but she quickly took her role and ran with it.  I'm a HUGE fan of this show and I can't wait for it to start up again.

Whew...well I need a little breather.  I'll be back later today or tomorrow with some more for you.  That should tide you over until now.  If you haven't seen a show here yet, be patient, then after I post my next list, if you still don't see it, let me know and I'll find it for you.  As always, comments are welcome.


Let see if this calendar works...

Zayne

Leave by the door or by the floor...

I don't know if any of you have watched Who's Still Standing? but I watched the first episode on Monday night and I kind of like it.  I've come to hate most new "game shows" because of the hour, there's about 5 minutes of actual game content and the rest is fluff either hearing about the contestants or listening to them needlessly jabber on about why they're choosing the wrong answer.  The other option is it's filled with jabber, plus it has zero amount of skill involved in it.  Yes, I'm looking at you Deal or No Deal.

For instance, Minute to Win It.  Perhaps I should have guessed about how much actual game time would be in the show based on the name but I watched the first episode out of curiosity anyway.  I then proceeded to watch it in about 10 minutes because I had to fast forward through 6-7 minutes of BS between each 1 minute game.  I have way too much TV to watch to put up with that crap.

That is one of the many reasons I love Wipeout.  Unfortunately, one of the reasons left the show.  We'll miss you Jill!  No fuss, no muss, just maybe a 30 second interview and then onto the pain. 

So long story short, (too late) Who's Still Standing? was fun to watch.  It was super fast paced trivia without a lot of BS and I kind of hope it lasts because it'd be fun to watch every now and then if I was in the mood for a game show.  The gimmick is simple but effective and in the first episode, I got to hear a relatively large man scream like a little girl as he fell down the hole.  What more could you ask for?

Midseason Updates Part 2

Raising Hope: The second season so far has not had the same endearing quality to me that the first season did.  I’m starting to see the more low brow aspects to the humor that I glazed over in the first season because of my love of Martha Plimpton and Garrett Dillahunt.  However, there are still small shining moments of true wit in this show that keep me coming back.  They’ve had some solid guest stars like Patton Oswalt but I just don’t see a promising future on my DVR for this show.

Person of Interest: Despite a strong desire to watch this show, too many built up on the DVR and sacrifices had to be made for the greater good.  If it gets a second season, I’ll definitely consider going back to catch up.

Charlie’s Angels: CANCELLED

Community: This half of the season had more “okay” episodes than I remember season 2 having.  However, when it lands, it freaking lands.  The Chaos Theory episode was one of my favorite half-hours of comedy ever.  The mid-season finale with all of the Glee references made my side hurt from laughter.  The anime foosball sequence was instant classic.  No show in recent history has been nearly as innovative or as successful at its sarcasm as Community.  If NBC doesn’t bring it back after Whitney and Are you the Vodka, It’s Me Chelsea go down in flames on Wednesday night, I’ll be booking a flight to New York to have some words with them…  Insiders on the show feel pretty confident that they will be back.

Parks and Rec: I can believe that about 6 months ago, I wanted nothing to do with this show and now I’m completely caught up and loving every second they throw my way.  While I really enjoyed The Office in earlier seasons, I never connected with some of the characters.  The same cannot be said for Parks and Rec.  I love every single character on that show.  The addition of Ben and Chris was great and I can’t imagine the show without Ben now.  “What happened, they cancel Game of Thrones or something?”

The Office: So I watched the first two episodes of the season, then I was letting them accumulate.  Apparently when I did that, my DVR decided to arbitrarily not record 3 of them so I just cleared the rest off and I’ll catch up on Netflix next summer or something.  Apparently, it’s done a good job of staying afloat without Steve Carrell.

Big Bang Theory: This show has increased a TON since the beginning.  While the nerd references were always fun, there was something missing.  In comes Blossom (yes that Blossom) and Summer from True Blood and the show explodes with greatness.  Giving Penny her own group of girls to interact with was brilliant and on a regular basis, the girls are far funnier than the guys.  This show went from being something I recorded in non-HD and watched when I could to something I watch pretty much right after Community.  Yes it still has its moments when it’s very sitcom-y but the girls have added a lot more depth to the comedy and I’m excited to see if they keep it up.

Fringe: The show took its time introducing to a new environment after the cliffhanger last season.  Just as the show was really kicking into gear, FOX, in its infinite wisdom pulled it until 2012.  Yes, this means we’ll get a practically uninterrupted second half of the season but I think people needed to be left with more.  The show is dangling by a thread and if it gets taken off the air, it will be a grievous loss of Firefly proportions.

Supernatural: We’re in season 7 now and the show still manages to surprise me.  They’ve been systematically attacking the infrastructure of the show.  We haven’t thought about how these guys operate and survive since they first told us in season 1 (scamming credit cards, etc) and now this season, the Big Bad has been taking away those things and causing them to go further off the map.  It’s been an interesting approach and a character death at the end of this half of the season was heart-wrenching.  When a show in its 7^th season can still pull that kind of emotion out of its characters, it’s impressive to me.

Pan Am: The show was interesting but it wasn’t high enough on my priority list to keep from getting piled up on the DVR and eventually swept off when space was needed.  Its ratings situation is precarious at best so I don’t know that it will stay up in the air long enough for a second season renewal…see what I did there, with my airplane pun….I’m awesome.

The Good Wife: I know most of you giggle secretly that I watch a show called The Good Wife but I can tell you that it earns its Emmys every freaking week.  This third season had a very strong shift in the dynamic of the characters and I can’t say it completely worked for me.  However, the acting is continually solid and they’ve shown signs of getting back to what the show face-meltingly awesome in season 2.  If I could only recommend one show to try that you wouldn’t normally watch, it’d be The Good Wife…seriously.

Family Guy: In a pretty decent season so far, they’ve had one of my top 5 favorite episodes, Back to the Pilot (OH, they’re setting up the f*cking cutaways!) and one of my least favorite, the Thanksgiving one that literally went into a 5-7 minute speech about the Armed Forces.  I don’t watch a comedy for your politics Seth MacFarlane.  I watch it because it makes me smile.  Keep doing the second thing, not the first thing.

Chuck: Despite a questionable cliffhanger at the end of last season, Chuck’s managed to make its final strides to the finish line just as entertaining as before.  They show did a segment at the nudist colony this past week and instead of doing snarky camera angles and pieces of fruit, the show just straight up blurred it out like a reality show.  For whatever reason, I thought this was brilliant and made me laugh quite a bit during that whole sequence.  Carrie Ann Moss (yes Trinity is on Chuck now) has been a good addition to the cast.  I thought she was only going to be a one-off guest but she prove a great recurring character that I hope we see again before the series finale.

Now onto the cable shows…

The Walking Dead: This show built up all 7 episodes of this first part of the season on my DVR and then I watched them all in about 3 days.  What a great show.  Some people claimed a part of this season was slow but I didn’t see it at all.  I loved every minute of it.  Daryl is an amazing character for being made for the show and Andrea is apparently lining up with her comic counterpart and I can’t wait to see where she goes.  Shane’s slow descent into madness was fascinating to watch and Rick’s slow march into defeat was painful to see.  I can’t wait for February when the show comes back.  There will be a ton of fallout from the winter finale and I hope it’s amazing.

Burn Notice: This season was…interesting.  The show has gone back and forth for me in quality.  Thankfully, they usually split their plot arcs so if one doesn’t work for you, chances are the second one will be more your style.  Season 4 had a weak middle for me but both the beginning and the end were spectacular.  Last season they added a new regular character and I have to say that I thought the addition of Jesse turned out to be a great move for them.  Watching him find his place with each member of the team was a lot of fun, especially between him and Sam.  However, this season, Jesse apparently has a security firm job but then he can get off whenever he wants to work any job with Michael.  Whereas I felt that Jesse was perfectly integrated into season 4, he’s felt almost tacked on at some points this season.  Anytime Maddie gets involved in the case, I know it will be a good one and this year was no exception.  Thankfully, they haven’t fallen in the trap of including her more because she’s so great.  They space it out and therefore make it special every time.  The finale was definitely a game changing thing and I hope it isn’t resolved too soon next year.  On the flip side, I hope it doesn’t last too long because the character is needed.  There’s a fine line they need to walk at the beginning of next year but Burn Notice has shown it can be trusted to do the right thing.

Psych:  Despite a long wait for the new season, the show hasn’t let me down.  They have thankfully done a good job of putting their will they/won’t they together without harming the dynamic of the show.  The romantic subplot was always just that, a subplot, so it makes it easier to change the dynamic without altering the fundamental thing that makes the show what it is, Shawn and Gus.  Gus has reached new levels of crazy this year and while I would almost be inclined to say it’s slightly out of character in some parts, the comedy that results is really hard to argue with.

I technically still have The Closer and Leverage but I don’t know that many of you care about either so I’m going to wrap it on.  My fingers hurt. 

Midseason Updates Part 1

So I know a lot of you have seen this but not everyone was included on the initial e-mail because they weren't in my work e-mail list.

Let’s start with a final rundown of new shows.  Not many survived but the few that did I think are really excellent.

Ringer:  I’m currently about 4 episodes behind.  It started to get a little drawn out and it’s hard getting motivation to watch.  I’ll be catching up at some point in the next few weeks so we’ll see if that can drum up my interest but with several new shows coming in the January I’d like to watch, it’s not looking promising for Ringer to stay on my DVR…

Up All Night: The pilot was great, the next few episodes were a little shaky but I’m happy to say that this show hit its stride.  They found a balance for Maya Rudolph’s crazy and adding in Jason Lee to the mix helped ground her a LOT.  Christina Applegate and Will Arnett are great together.  I look forward to seeing how this show pans out in the Thursday Night Comedy block come 2012. 

The Secret Circle:  Never made it past the first episode.  From what I’ve read, I’m definitely not missing the next Vampire Diaries so there’s little chance this gets picked up by me in a later season.

The Playboy Club:  CANCELLED

2 Broke Girls:  While the previews occasionally look amusing, there’s always a part of them that makes me roll my eyes.  This one is staying off the record list for me.

New Girl:  I’m a couple weeks behind but every time I sit down to watch it, I enjoy it.  The ratings have been solid so I don’t see this going anywhere anytime soon.

Revenge:  This show was the biggest surprise of the new season for me.  I went in expecting to watch maybe 1 or 2 episodes and I’d probably rank it around #2 of the new shows, behind Once Upon a Time.  It’s got a solid cast that continues to impress and storyline that make enough progress each week to keep you interested.  I will admit that the show is a little soapy but I think the show handles it intelligently enough to make you forget a little.  If you can find a way to catch up before it comes back in 2012, I’d recommend it.

Whitney:  I’m a little ashamed to admit I’m still watching this.  The show is cliché and exactly what you’d expect it to be.  However, it throws in just enough actual funny every other episode to keep me coming back.  If my DVR got to the point it was at in November with 60 some odd recording and I needed space, I’d not shed a tear to clear off Whitney.

Once Upon a Time:  It lived up to what I wanted and more.  I love the cast and it has been made unfortunately one short in the fall finale.  I’m just a little afraid of getting strung along considering the two guys making this were higher ups in LOST and they like adding in LOST references to the show but right now, I’m content enjoying the fun twists on the stories. 

Now onto the regular shows I watch and how the first half of their seasons fared.

Parenthood:  Solid as ever and showing no signs of letting up.  Unfortunately this will only be an 18 episode season but I’m hoping something else on NBC will tank in the winter (a very likely scenario) and Parenthood may get picked up for a few extra episodes. 

Survivor: A game-changing move turned this season into more uninteresting drivel.  I’m tired of that happening.  Maybe 22 seasons is too much…

The Vampire Diaries:  This show continually impresses me.  The storylines move at a fantastic pace.  The characters grow and evolve in logical ways.  The mythology grows deeper while still providing satisfying answers to questions.  What more do you want?  This season hasn’t been as good as last season but that was a high bar and season 3 is definitely keeping up its end of the bargain for entertaining television.

Archer:  The trilogy didn’t really do it for me but I’m hoping a return to the weekly format will even the show back out. 

It’s Always Sunny:  I had 9 episodes built up on my DVR and finally sat down and watched them all over the course of 3-4 days.  It was certainly a mixed bag but overall stay pretty solid.  Chardee MacDennis is one of the greatest games ever though. 

Castle:  I know some people were irritated with the shows initial direction this season but for me, it’s really hard to argue with a consistently entertaining Monday Night show.  I always enjoy myself and to me, the sexual tension has not reached the point of annoying like in other shows…

Glee:  I’ve had a weird relationship with Glee this season so far.  The show really came out of it sophomore slump . There was something bugging me and I couldn’t figure out what.  Then I realized, the show has started to really focus on characters and letting them progress in a natural way.  So why was this not entertaining me.  I realized that after the mental beating that season 2 was, I’d stopped caring about what happened to these people.  Then the music for about 2-3 episodes was mediocre at best and I was getting ready to send Glee out to pasture.  Then something weird started happening.  The characters were being well written and I started to like them again.  Now I’m enjoying the show again almost like I was in season 1.  It’s also helped that music has gotten better.  More hits, less West Side Story.  Granted, Glee is not beyond a severe dip after the break but I’m back to being optimistic.

Harry’s Law:  Deleted it off my DVR and its ratings tanked this season and NBC is scrambling to save it.  So sad…

Modern Family:  Deserving of every award they get. 

I took your advice

Hello Friends,
So I finally took the suggestions I've been getting for a long time.  I've started a blog for my TV thoughts.  Since I'll be on a blog now, you'll probably be getting things in smaller chunks and probably at least an update or two each week depending on what's going on.  Let me know if you have any suggestions for things I should or shouldn't cover.  

Please subscribe to keep me from looking like that crazy person that talks to the internet hoping someone out there is listening. This was all of you people's idea.

Zayne