The Best TV of 2006

Now that Christmas is over and it'll be the New Year tomorrow, I figure I'd do a bit of looking back on things. So, the best TV of this year:

New TV

This was the year that the television networks picked up on the fact that serialized TV might sell really well. Following the sucesses of LOST and Prison Break, it seemed like a no brainer. Odd thing is, it didn't really work as well as people'd predicted. Critic favorites like the Nine and Six Degrees bombed and were cancelled, although a couple held on nicely.

1- Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip - I like TV, the industry, writing, everything. I'd heard about the show earlier on in the year and thought that it sounded bad, but when I saw the pilot episode online, it hooked me from then. This show's the most important one on there. It takes on religous, governmental, politics, broadcasting theory and ethics in its episodes, stuff that you don't really see. This is smart TV. The dialogue, characters, plots, all fantastic stuff, and it's a shame that this show didn't catch on as well as it should have. Hopefully, we'll see a season 2 to this.

2- Heroes - This is a fun show. Can't take it too seriously, but it's just one of the best geek shows out there. There's a good kick back to the community with references and things like that that makes it fun to watch, as well as a really cool storyline and characters to match it.

3- Day Break - This was cancelled just the other week, which makes me very unhappy. The good news is that this show's got all the 13 episodes filmed, or so I heard, so they'll be out sometime. Detective Hopper's reliving the same bad day, and while this show couldn't last very long, it's got the strongest of all the storylines of any tv show. They should have just billed this as a miniseries or something.

TV That Came Back

Battlestar Galactica - I didn't think that it could get any darker, but it did, and man, the opening five episodes just blew my mind. There's been a couple of episodes that I wasn't thrilled with, but on the whole, Battlestar's back and kicking ass. Can't wait to see the next ten episodes. As far as Season 2 went, this year's half of the episodes was weaker than season 1 and the first half, but they really pulled themselves together towards the end.

Veronica Mars - Season 3's on a new network and doing pretty well, although they're not going to be doing an overall mystery this time around. The rape mystery was brought to a conclusion, which was pretty good, and the writing and characters are just as good this time around. Can't wait to see the next half of the season.

House, MD - House was cured! Sort of. After getting shot, he could walk for four months. Then he's back to drugs again, and he's got a cop after him, a former actor from the show Hack, who's one of the cooler new characters that's been in the show, much better than Vogler from season 1. House is sarcastic still, and downright mean at times, and they're really pushing his character around, which doesn't happen that often.

Prison Break - Okay, they broke out of Fox River, and they're on the run. A good chunk of them have been killed, right from the first episode. It was good to see the show change gears so quickly, but I don't think that this has much life left in it. While they're still alive, they're still running, and they've done a terrific job with it.

Other good ones this year - Supernatural, LOST, Stargate SG-1/Atlantis. Supernatural's gotten into more of an arc, which is interesting, and they've really forced some characterizations out of the brothers, LOST has been interesting and Stargate's really gotten into it's stride again, only to be cancelled.

Foreign TV

1- Life on Mars - Aired earlier this year on BBC1 while I was over there. I didn't catch the show while I was in England, but I did recently. It's one of the more imaginative and interestin series that I've seen, mixing police drama with science fiction and the 1970s. Brilliant show.

2 - Green Wing - This show is hilarious. Simply brilliant show, great acting, really fun sense of humor there.

Misses this year were The Nine, which should have been a movie, Six Degrees, which had an interesting concept, but handled poorly with some bad characters. Smith was promising, but it never took off, which was a shame, that one I actually liked.

In the upcoming year, I'm only looking forwards to one show, and that's The Dresden Files, airing on SCIFI in January, based off of the books by Jim Butcher. It looks really good, and I can't wait to watch it.

You only get what you give

Mundane day today, with an evening filled with many interesting things that will be listed. I puttered. I changed out all of the lightbulbs in my house with energy savers, finished out a couple more loaves of bread and fullfilled my obligations for Thanksgiving dinner, watched some more of Veronica Mars, did a little reading and yeah. No major progress on my reports or other readings, but that'll be coming soon. Hopefully.

Interesting / Noteworthy things:

• Prison Break, Heroes and Studio 60 were on. Prison Break was decent, but Heroes and Studio 60 were brilliant.
  
• Studio 60 made fun of Jessica Simpson and FOX and really dug at the network for product placement.
  
• Veronica Mars has been picked up for a full season, or twenty episodes.
  
• Steven Spielburg told people today that he'll be working on a Tintin miniseries and a new WWII one.
  
• The trailer for Harry Potter 5 came out, and it actually looks good.
  

Bad things:

• Peter Jackson isn't going to be directing or working on the upcoming Hobbit movie. Between financial things between his studio, Wingnut Films and New Line Cinema, over the gains from LOTR, they're not being asked back. Between that and the Halo movie, he's not having a good fall.

Also, I'm jointly posting on this blog and the livejournal that I've sorta, kinda, not really kept up for about the same amount of time.

Oh man, I'm just geeking out about that!

That's about accurate, courtesy of the Incredibles. This is because of the following news stories and other random geek things that have hit the web while I was away at work:

1. Studio 60 has finally received a full, 22 episode order for the season. Despite the lower than expected/wanted ratings, the studio has some faith in the show, and will at least bring us to the end of Season 1, during which, hopefully we'll see the ratings improve somewhat. I really wish that we'd gotten a bit more of a chance with some other shows, which were cut really fast, like Smith. This is also despite some pretty low blows from FOX, who reported that the show was going to be cancelled, presumably to force viewers away from the show.
   
2. Speaking of Smith, CBS has released the remaining four episodes that were filmed online, streaming free on their Innertube platform for the next four weeks. The first three episodes are also up, and the entire series will be put on iTunes, and apparently there'll be an explanation for the remainder of the season posted somewhere. Smith, for those of you not familiar with the show, was a heist-based show, following a band of master thieves. I'm a fan of the genre, and this show is a nice weekly dose of that. It had quite a bit of potential, with an overall storyline and some interesting characters, but it was pulled from the air after only three episodes. Hopefully, the remaining four episodes will have some closure.
   
3. The Spiderman 3 trailer has hit the web, and you can see it here. It's amazing. We see the Sandman, Venom, Spiderman, Hobgoblin, lots of flying around, some amazing looking special effects and man, May 4th can't come fast enough.
   
4. Production for the SciFi series the Dresden Files has started, and the show's slated to start on the network in January of this coming year. I'm looking forwards to this, although I'd thought that production started already, because there's trailers for it. It's about a Wizard in Chicago, and I have one of the books, which is good thus far. I need to finish it.
   

Yay!

The Saints are Coming

I finally found a copy of U2 and Green Day's collaboration, The Saints are Coming, which sounds fantastic (It'll be on their upcoming Best Of album called U218) - It was a collaborative effort after Katrina, as the song has some very strong connections with New Orleans. And, given Green Day and U2's political despositions, it's also a bit of a stab at the relief effort and the government's response. (At least the video is).

And it's been reported that Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the best show on television, has been renewed for a full 22 episode season. NBC, you've made me a very happy man.

I need to bring my computer in for fixing. There's nothing physically wrong with it, but there's still a crapload of viruses on here, giving me popups and messing with Mozilla Firefox (I switched from IE after I finally realised that IE sucked), redirecting me to random pages, usually when I go to open an image. Not to mention that I need to close about ten applications when I actually start the computer, not that it seems to do much. And in general, it seems to be operating slower and not as well as it used to. I'll stop by computer services today and see what they can do.

And there are times when I don't want to be here, here in Vermont. At times, I feel too far from certain people, disconnected and unable to go to them if needed. At times, it's all that I can do to restrain myself from running the half mile to the payphone. Why does Vermont have to seem so isolated? And why do those people I want to be with have to be so far...

Sorry, that's cryptic, but that's all that you get.

Notes

Note to self:
With a two piece bike lock, it's best to try and actually keep the two pieces together, not in two places, one said place being hidden away in a place that I forgot, because said lock is useless with just one of said parts.

Note to customers:
Please stop being bitchy. Yes, the price on your receipt that I just printed off for you is accurate, because it's tallied up by a computer and is exactly the same price that I just told you. Now take your merch and stew somewhere.

Note to NBC:
You have better keep Studio 60 on the air or I'll pull a Dane Cook and start punching infants. (Not really, that's just for shock value)

Note to Carbon Leaf and Snow Patrol:
Why is your music so damn discriptive that it hurts?