Deutsche Version | CW 41 | CW 42-43

Bones 5×04 The Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
I really enjoyed this episode with all its entanglements in suburbia and especially the bantering between Bones/anthropology and Sweets/psychology regarding the life there.

Supernatural 5×05 Fallen Idols
Kripke warned the viewers not to judge to quickly about the appearance of Paris Hilton. And he was right, she was the perfect specimen to make the point the wood god wanted to make. And: “You got whaled on by Paris Hilton!”

Smallville 9×03 Rabid
I didn’t care much for the zombie story (despite Supernatural horror still isn’t my genre) but I really like the way they are pushing the triangle C-L-B forward without making it feel forced. I also hope that this wasn’t the last appearance of Green Arrow. I hope he finds his path again soon and will play a larger role this season.

The Big Bang Theory 3×04 The Pirate Solution
I’m surprised, Leonard’s and Penny’s relationship is actually lasting (at least for now ). And Raj and Sheldon work together in a “Eye of the Tiger” montage – awesome!

Two and a Half Men 7×04 Laxative Tester, Horse Inseminator
It was funny (it would fail if it weren’t) but again not extraordinary. Maybe I shouldn’t watch two sitcoms in a row.

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Categories: TV Season 2009/10 Diary
Tags: Ally McBeal · Babylon 5 · Bones · Boston Legal · Castle · Cougar Town · Dollhouse · Emergency Room · Firefly · FlashForward · Gossip Girl · Heroes · House M.D. · How I Met Your Mother · L.A. Law · Matlock · Pirates of the Caribbean · Smallville · Stargate Universe · Supernatural · The Big Bang Theory · The Good Wife · Twilight Zone · Two and a Half Men
Comments: 1 Comment

The Good Wife @ Wikipedia
The Good Wife @ IMDb

Attorney-at-law shows have always been an off and on thing for me. Back in the days I watched Matlock and L.A. Law, then later Ally McBeal. But then I fell off the bandwagon and while Boston Legal seemed to be funny it never managed to make me tune in.
Today I heard about this show with Julianna Margulies (Carol Hathaway in ER) and I thought “Why not?”. So I “organized” the pilot episode and watched it. And I really did like it.
Alicia Florrick is the wife of a fallen state attorney who’s now in prison and she returns to her job as lawyer at a law firm. The characters seem to be interesting and the case was good, too. And I loved that Alicia’s teenage daughter put the theme of Twilight Zone onto Alicia’s cell phone as ring tone for when her mother-in-law calls.

Categories: Short Review
Tags: Ally McBeal · Boston Legal · Emergency Room · L.A. Law · Matlock · The Good Wife · Twilight Zone
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Deutsche Version | July | September

August, 12th

Top Gun

Tom Cruise    …    Maverick
Kelly McGillis   …    Charlie
Val Kilmer   …    Ice
Anthony Edwards   …    Goose
Tom Skerritt   …    Viper
Michael Ironside   …    Jester
Tim Robbins   …    Merlin
Clarence Gilyard Jr.   …    Sundown
James Tolkan   …    Stinger
Meg Ryan   …    Carole
Adrian Pasdar   …    Chipper

Synopsis: Lt. “Maverick” Mitchell – a slightly maniac F-14 pilot – and his RIO Lt. “Goose” Bradshaw have been accepted into the United States Navy Fighter Weapons School – more commonly known as “Top Gun”. There they will learn the finer arts of aerial dogfighting. That is, if they don’t get thrown out due to Maverick’s behaviour. And the competition is hard, Top Gun accepts only the best pilots to begin with.

My Opinion: This movie has incredible flying scenes even after all these years. No crappy CGI but real planes flying in real air. And a great soundtrack, too. Ironically I haven’t seen that movie that often but I seem to know it by heart due to the many parodies on many scenes of that movie.
And while I recognized Adrian Pasdar (Nathan Petrelli in Heroes) at once, it took me a while to recognize Goose as Dr. Greene from ER.
Too bad, that there aren’t more good airplane combat movies out there.

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Categories: DVD / Blu-ray, DVD Marathon, Movie Watchings 2009
Tags: Alias · Apocalypse NowPlatoon · Emergency Room · Heroes · Hot Shots! · Kickboxer · Kill Bill · Léon · Nikita · Top Gun · Two and a Half Men · Wall Street
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I haven’t actually seen the last 7 years of ER, so I missed a lot. The last episode I’ve seen was from the end of the eight season (where Marc died).

But I still wanted to see the last episode. And many claimed that it was a homage to the pilot “24 Hours”, so I watched that first.

And I have to say it were great 3 hours. To see how it all started and then to see it 16 years later and how few has really changed and how the people have developed. Of course I didn’t understand all developments due to that 7-year-gap and I missed a few of the people (Romano, Kovac and others) but  it was still a great ending. The show has come to an end but life goes on in that fictional universe. That’s my kind of series finale.

And there actually were many parallels to the pilot, like Lydia waking the current attending or the new med students (16 years ago: John Carter, now: Marc Greene’s daughter Rachel) and other small yet noticeable things.

It was a great end to a great show and I am sure some day I will watch the missing seasons.

Categories: Short Review
Tags: Emergency Room
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Deutsche Version | Season 1 | Season 3

Disc 1

Vortex

Synopsis: Lana’s Truck is torn apart by the tornado but Clark is there to protect her. But on the day after the storm he has to go on a search for his father who has run after the reporter that wanted to disclose Clark’s secret. While they are searching for him, Chloe makes the suggestion that they should stay “just friends”.

My Opinion: This was actually a good resolution. Of course they had to find a way to silence that reporter and this way had an ironic touch. If Lex knew what secret the reporter has taken into his grave, I believe he would have killed Jonathan instead.
And when it comes to woman Clark is as sensitive as a wrecking ball.

Heat

Synopsis: The new school year has started and Lex wants to marry! And his fiancé is Clark’s new biology teacher. She’s so hot that Clark sets the silver screen on fire just by staring at it. But something isn’t right with her. She has a strange control over all men, including Lex – but not Clark.

My Opinion: A “new ability” episode. It’s always fun to see Clark learning to control it and he always can put it to good use in the same episode. But I didn’t care much for the pheromone lady, maybe because I watched a similar story recently on Stargate SG-1.

Duplicity

Synopsis: Pete finds Clark’s spaceship (that had been lost since the tornado) in a field and he wants Clark’s help to salvage it. But then someone steals the ship and Pete suspects Clark – which isn’t far from the truth because Clark and his father actually intended to steal it. Then Clark decides to reveal his secret to Pete.

My Opinion: A really good episode. I’ve been waiting for it. Clark simply needs someone he can confide to (apart from his parents) and his best friend Pete is the perfect choice. And Pete will prove that he’s worthy of that knowledge in the very next episode.
The fact that Lionel now knows of the spaceship will also lead to very interesting storylines.

Red

Synopsis: Clark buys a ruby ring for $350. But the stone isn’t ruby, it’s red Kryptonite (not yet) meteor rock. Clark loses all stoppages and becomes a badass guy. But just as the effect of green meteor rocks worsen his condition over time, so does the red one.

My Opinion: Great episode. Loved it. It rarely happens that Tom can play Clark out of character and the red Kryptonite (sorry, it’s simply easier than “meteor rock”) gives him the perfect opportunity. I don’t really worry about the end, he will save Lana’s live once or twice and they will be friends again.
But the episode reminded me of Harley Cat:

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Categories: DVD / Blu-ray, DVD Marathon, Smallville Marathon
Tags: 24 · Battlestar Galactica · Buffy the Vampire Slayer · Emergency Room · Home Improvement · Smallville · Stargate SG-1 · Superman
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Deutsche Version | Part 4 | Part 6

Knight Rider

What’s the show about?
Michael Knight works for Foundation for Law And Government. But he doesn’t work alone. He has help in form of his car: The Knight Industries Two Thousand, KITT. KITT is a bullet-proof computer on wheels and it helps Michael on his missions to help people who need help.

“Knight of the Phoenix”
Michael Long works undercover until he is shot by the industrial espionage expert Tanya Walker. Luckily he survices the attack but his face is totally destroyed and has to be surgically repaired. After that Michael Long is officially dead and Michael Knight arises. His surgery was conducted by doctors paid by Wilton Knight who also gives him his new identity. Additionaly Wilton’s engineers have done something to Michael’s car…

My Opinion
Another 80s classic one simply had to watch back then. Oh gosh, I definitvly watched too much TV in the 80s. And the 90s. And now.*g*

BTW: There was a cultural reference in the pilot: When Michael sees KITT’s interior for the first time he says that he feels like being in Darth Vader’s bathroom!

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Categories: DVD / Blu-ray, DVD Marathon, Pilot Marathon
Tags: 24 · Angel · Buffy the Vampire Slayer · Emergency Room · Knight Rider · MacGyver
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Deutsche Version

In opposition to the early adopters I’ve always been more of a late adoper. Especially when it comes to trends and hypes. Every time a hype is rolling I am against it per se. And to be honest in most cases the hype doesn’t last long and it was a good thing I wasn’t being involved in that crap.

Something like that happend with Friends. It was running on TV all the time but I haver felt any connection to that flat sharing community from New York. Over the years I watched a few episodes but I had never the urge to zap in the next week. Since a few months, Friends is running again on the german TV station Kabel 1 and I watched a few episoded again.

When we talked about this show at work, a friend of mine recommended this show wholeheartedly. He watched it during its original run and additionally with the original soundtrack (usually movies and shows are dubbed in germany).

Thus I made the decision to buy this show three years after it ended. And I decided to buy the entire show at once. Unfortunately the german box is sold out and I didn’t want to have a variation of different box types. Then I found the UK box and bought it for 90£ (135€, $187). 13.50€ is a fair price for a season box around here, although a national electronic store is currently selling them for 9.90€ apiece. Well, at least I’ve got a really nice package for all ten seasons:

And what can I say: I was fascinated from the first episodes on. The facial expressions and the gestures of the actors and the jokes are awesome.

But the most important element of the show is a continuing story telling. As I have stated in this blog before (and also in the forums I am posting), TV shows must have a continuing storyline to be interesting. I grew up in the 80s and (being born in east germany) I watched a lot of “Westfernsehen” (TV stations from west germany). I watched everything the TV stations deemed worthy of broadcasting: Star Trek, The Fall Guy, Riptide, MacGyver and so on. But somewhere in the history of making TV shows they switched to continuing stories. Examples for this are Babylon 5 and later on also Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Both shows, as well as Emergency Room and Friends started in the years 1993/1994. In my opinion these shows had a lasting impact on TV shows.

Some say that Friends was corny and contained many soap elements (especially the Ross/Rachel story and the season cliffhangers) but they always spiced it up with a great pinch of humour.

But let’s look on other comedy shows in comparison: Married With Children, Home Improvement and King of Queens. All sitcoms in the classical fashion with a certain set of places (first and foremost the living room) that remain constant throughout the years. The difference is that the characters only change slightly or not at all. Granted, the children get older but other than that very few things change. If you watch an episode of the first or seventh season becomes only clear through the age of the actors. That’s my personal reason why I stopped collection these shows. There is no need to watch the next episode. You’ve had a few good laughs but when the next episode begins everything has been resetted.

On Friends there is the additional element of the relations between the characters. This is through the chosen setting (6 friends). Almost all characters are “combinable”, while the classic sitcoms is based upon a family and thus the characters have defined relations among each other. Just the combinations of who is roomie with whom and situations based on that are simply not doable in other sitcoms.

The next thing is the ensemble. No one of the six is perfectly normal but that is not unusual among sitcoms (Al Bundy, Steve Urquel, Dharma Freedom Finkelstein-Montgomery) but in this show everyone is a bit of a weirdo. And they are well-balanced. Nowadays Jennifer Aniston may be the well-knownst actress but I had never the feeling one of the characters was missed out. No character outshone all others nor was anyone over-shadowed. Granted, Joey had the least character developement of all (although he made a great leap forward over the last two seasons) but that doesn’t mean the others outshone him.

So I watched The One Where It All Began for the first time on October, 18th and in the night from November 1st to 2nd The Last One. 14 days (in which I regulary went to work) for 236 episodes á 22 minutes. A great deal but absolutely worth it. One hopes, worries and suffers with the characters and that’s exactly what makes a good TV show. When you almost get the feeling the characters are real and not just on that screen. When you ask yourself after the last episode whether they will see each other on a regular basis even when they live in different places now.

I thank you Monica, Phoebe, Rachel, Chandler, Joey & Ross for a great time!

Categories: DVD / Blu-ray, DVD Marathon
Tags: Babylon 5 · Emergency Room · Friends · Home Improvement · MacGyver · Married with Children · Riptide · Star Trek · The Fall Guy · The King of Queens
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