Lost: Enter 77
Not as compelling as the Desmond episode, but still a more solid entry than we got the last two weeks. I think part of it may have been that I’d heard such an early buzz about this episode that it raised my expectations and hopes to a point that no TV show could really meet (unless it’s by Joss Whedon).

I’ve got to say that the past three weeks, I’ve not seen the point of the flashbacks. And this comes from someone who has defended the format time and again to those who wonder why we’re still doing them. So, after his particiaption in the Gulf War, Sayid tried to escape his past, only to have it catch up to him. He’s tricked into coming to a restaurant, taken hostage and tortured so that the restaurant owner’s wife can see him treated as badly as he treated her. In the end, she comes to him, seems to forgive him and we’re left hanging. About the only connection to what was unfolding on the island was that in the flashback and the home of guy with an eyepatch, there is a cat.

Honestly, we’ve seen better Sayid flashbacks in the past two seasons. And we know he’s a bit haunted by what he did. But he will still do it if the ends justify the means. And he’s good at it.

So, we didn’t really till any new ground here. Which is a shame really, but it seems as if the flashback segments are getting shorter. I just wonder if they’re running out of things to do with the characters in these segments.

I don’t think they have….I just think they’re not taking the next step.

Meanwhile, the storylines on the island are interesting. Locke, Kate, Sayid and Danielle find the home of the eyepatch man and he reveals a large number of answers. The Dharma Initiative is gone, he’s the last member of it, etc. He’s also got a satellite dish that could be used to communicate with the outside world. As we find out in the course of the hour, it’s not working, but Sayid thinks it could have been put back on-line.

We never find out becuase Locke manages to blow up the house. Locke plays chess against the computer, winning and unlocking some more footage of the Dharma scientist guy we’ve seen several times before. The last screen is to push 77 if the house has been invaded. We see the house wired in the basement and it doesn’t take much to put two and two together. The fact that the house blew up at the end wasn’t shocking. It was all there and you could easily put it together if you paid attention.

What is interesting is Locke’s decision. I think he had a good idea of what would happen should he enter 77. As I’ve said before, Locke has a good reason for wanting to stay on the island and I can see why he’d want to destroy a chance to communicate and be forced to leave. And I don’t think we’ve heard the last of this conflict between he and Sayid..and if you did watch the previews and they gave away any of these details, please don’t tell me. Like I’ve said before, I avoid previews at this point because they give too much away (unless it’s footage for Spider-Man 3 and then I’m all over it…)

Meanwhile, on the beach Sawyer is challenged to a game 0f ping-pong. The bet–if one person can beat him, he has to stop calling everyone nicknames for a week. If he wins, they give back all his stuff they took while he was off with the Others. A lighter plot but one that worked and it gave us a chance to see life on the beach. Also, was there an inside dig at the two new characters who appeared out of no where by Sawyer?

Jericho: Heart of Winter
This episode would be a good one to take a long winter’s nap through.

There were elements here that should add up a good episode. You’ve got the town struggling as winter storms advance and there’s a lack of fresh meat. You’ve got Hawkins and Sarah going to meet the Old Man but finding out that three of the agents in their group have been comprimised. You’ve got Sarah trying to find the package and killing her contact to do it.

But yet, all of this is not enough to make a good episode.

The problem is there are so many bad scenes between the interesting ones that maybe I’m missing something between rolling my eyes. We go out hunting and encounter..well, evil guys in a black truck. We’ve established going too far out of town is dangerous, so no new ground here. It’s a chance to wreck the truck, get Skeet in trouble and have him almost die. As he’s stuck under the truck, he confesses his big sin from his time in the Iraq war, which I guess is supposed to answer some questions but it felt more like throwing us a bone. Also, I can’t see Skeet’s character being that tortured over just one thing. We need more than that..if that’s all we get on this I will be annoyed.

Also annoying is how stupid Hawkins is being. He doesn’t see that maybe, just maybe Sarah is up to something. This is a guy who somewho senses that Skeet is watching him through a telescopic lens and yet he doesn’t see the deception under his own nose. Even in the end when Sarah decides to go out for a walk even though we’ve previously established it’s frigidly cold outside and being out after dark in Jericho is not a good idea.

But he NEVER sees through this.

And then we’ve got Emily and Roger…which that’s a yawn-fest. I think we’re just wasting time until he catches her with Skeet. Until then, color me bored.

Not hard to do really. The whole show did that this week..and more.

Lost: The Glass Ballerina
Up front, I have to admit that the Sun and Jin backstory is not the most compelling, so I was a bit disappointed to see them go it so early in the season.

When the story started up, I was worried that season three was going to repeat the same mistake season two did–re-examining the same events and day on the island from 18 different angles (anyone remember last year how we saw three episodes showing us where various people were when we first went inside the Hatch….it was fun the first two times but after that, I was ready for the show to start moving forward). I’m glad that Lost seems to have broken that pattern here. Yes, we did cover some of the same day, but it was from a wildly different persepctive. We got to at least see what Sayid and company were up to on the boat during the same time period. Also, the storyline is moving forward a bit.

I do have to wonder something–why do the Others not want the castaways to have the boat? What secret are they hiding? Is there something that had Sayid and company kept sailing around the island they would have discovered? Also, Ben claims he was raised on the island and I wonder–is this true? We saw Alex again last evening (talking to Kate while Kate was breaking rocks), who also appears to have been raised on the island. It seems as if the Others are fascinated with taking children and raising them on the island…but for what purpose? Are the Others, perhaps, the children of the original Dharma Initiative families who rebelled against their parents somehow?

And why does Ben have everything wired and is observing everyone? He seems to be some kind of spider in the middle of web, observing everything. But for what purpose is he doing it?

Let me admit that when Ben took the chair into talk to Jack, I was having Battlestar Galactica season-premiere flashbacks. All you needed was Ben to whip out his sunglasses and you’d have almost the same scene, though I think Galactica’s was far more compelling. (It had Dean Stockwell, who is just plain great in everything he does…) I do wonder why Ben is so interested in Jack. Is it that he feels some kind of connection as they’re both the leaders of their respective tribes? Or does it go deeper? Is Ben perhaps romantically attached to Juliet and sees Jack as some kind of threat? Or is there a rift between Ben and Juliet and Ben wants to break Jack first? It is interesting to see how both sides are trying to break Jack. (Could it be good cop/bad cop?)

As cynical as Jack was last week about the information they had on him, why was he so quick to believe that the Sox had won the World Series? He never questioned if it was some digitally maniuplated footage and sound to make him believe or to break his will. And what exactly does Ben want in return from Jack? And will Jack give it to him or just pretend to go along in order to get back to the other castaways?

Meanwhile, Kate and Sawyer are put to work…breaking up rocks. I don’t quite understand why the Others have them do this, other than so Sawyer can test the defenses and figure out an escape plan. But maybe that’s part of what the Others are doing–observing how these two react to being locked up. Of all the castaways, it’s Kate and Sawyer who have the most experience being on the run from the law and escaping, so perhaps the Others are looking to beef up security in this area. Or maybe they just want to watch Kate do some manual labor in her sundress….not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Intersting that Sawyer’s kiss is a calculated move. Or was he just saying that to cover up his true feelings for Kate? After all, this is the man who never lets anyone close to him.

You know, there are times I just love this show.

And then there are others I don’t. Pardon me while I can’t get up much interest in the Sun and Jin storyline. The early scene shows Sun lied to her father about breaking a glass ballerina. It show a pattern of lying to men in her life, despite being caught in the deceit. I guess that Jin knew of Sun’s betrayal as he alludes to it here. Also, you have to wonder if the baby is really his. I also wonder–the scenes we’ve seen earlier in the show when Jin comes home upset with blood on his hand–do they take place directly after the events we saw here?

I don’t think we really discovered much new about the characters here. I think a lot of us had wondered if Jin was really the father of Sun’s baby..and now we have it confirmed that may not be the case. I wish I could say it should be interesting to find out, but honestly it’s just not the compelling to me. I do like the way Jin feels like an outsider and how his instincts are often on the money. And the scene where he loaded the gun so efficiently as Sayid looked on in awe and horror was great.

But other than that, this plotline didn’t really do a lot for me. At least we got it out of our system early and we can now start to focus in on the other castaways as season three progresses.

Jericho: The Walls of Jericho
I made the mistake of watching Jericho after Lost. Bad idea. Jericho is a nice warm-up for Lost but viewed right after it, it pales by comparison.

It probably doesn’t help that this week’s episode of Jericho was the weakest we’ve seen so far.

And it had the potential to be so good. It’s four days after the bombs fell and the town is starting to deal with some harsh realities–such as when some supplies of things run out, that’s it. For example, gasoline. The gas is needed to power the generator for the hospital and Eric promises some to keep the bar running as well. Our heroes scramble around town trying to find gas and get it where it needs to go. I do have to wonder why the mayor and the town government hasn’t stepped up with some rationing of some type. I mean, does it make sense that people are out driving around town like nothing has happened? Yes, it’s only been four days but it seems to me that the town leadership might step up and do some rationing. Because as we saw with the teens and the party, not everyone has the best interests of the whole at heart.

The one good thing I can say about that plot this week–at least Skeet didn’t come up with the plan. Oh sure, he was there running the plan but at least it wasn’t his.

Meanwhile, a stranger comes into town who is apparently part of the conspiracy of….well, whatever it is. I’m not quite sure what Hawkins and his group did or what role they play but we’re getting little tiny clues each week. It almost feels like they’re some kind of cell sent in to infilitrate the towns. For what purpose, we’re not quite sure. And how much you want to bet that little flash drive Hawkins had comes into play as something huge and big by season’s end? Call me crazy but I was having images of Jack Bauer chasing across L.A. to get a flashdrive as I saw that.

Meanwhile, Eric and his wife are having problems because he’s more interested in being down at the bar, having a drink and checking out his mistress than being at home with her. Or being a leader in the town. At some point, someone in this town is going to have step up and establish some authority or else it could really ugly, really fast. Last week we saw the Mayor slug his opponent for trying to use the situation for his own political gain, but honestly we don’t see the Mayor acting like the leader he was in the first episode. Maybe that’s part of the plan of the show…or maybe it’s just lazy writing. I am hoping for the fomer, but with this show it’s really hard to be sure.

Veronica Mars: My Big Fat Greek Rush Week
Nothing is every what it seems on Veronica Mars. That refers not only to the on-going mysteries that throw in one red-herring after another but also the individual episodes themselves. Most of the time it works but there are times when the show tries too hard to surprise us.

This wasn’t one of those cases where the show worked too hard.

Veronica joins the college paper and is assigned the story of cracking the secrets of the sorority. Veronica accepts the assignment, figuring that the sorority may be a lot like the 90ers from Neptune High. At first, it appears that way but as the story progresses, we find out that not only are there the stereotypical sorority gals in the house, but there are some genuines, authentic people with whom Veronica could have been friends. And then Veronica gets caught in a dilemma. She uncovers the truth but instead of being shocking and lurid, it’s the sorority coming together to help their den mother. Veronica faces a dilemma and ends up betraying both sets of her new friends and losing both. In one move, Veronica is shunned from two new peer groups, both of whom would have accepted her for who she was. Which is why when Veronica laments with Keith that she’s really messed things up, the scene rings so true. (Side note: is there any better father/daughter relationship on TV right now than this one? I think not…) And this all ties in so naturally to the on-going mystery of who the Hearst campus rapist is. We got some clues and right now I suspect everyone…well, except Veronica, Mac and Keith. But so far it seem as if everyone is a suspect and I am beginnng to wonder if this isn’t a group of people setting up these things. The girl on the ride home golf cart seemed pretty bitter and hateful toward the sorority girls. It might not be too huge a stretch to suppose she is somehow in on it, helping the serial rapist.

Meanwhile, we get to see the man behind Homer Simpson as a professor of sociology and a sociology project gone horribly wrong. We even got a little “d’oh!” homage. And another use of “frak” How can you go wrong?

Lots of interesting new shows this fall along with the returning favorites (I am counting down days and hours until BSG returns).  Here are some thoughts on a few I’ve sampled in the past week. For those of you new to my TV Round-Ups, there will be SPOILERS for the episodes…so if you taped, TiVOed or DVRed, you have been warned…

Jericho: Pilot
This show contains, perhaps, the most iconic image of the new crop of fall shows–that being the little kid standing on his roof, seeing the mushroom cloud from behind the mountains.  A nice moment that might have had a bit more impact had we not seen it in every promo, every 20 seconds for the last month and a half.

Jericho starts off with that one moment and then, provides very few answers for the next hour.  The sense of isolation, panic and worry the town feels is shared by the viewers, especially when the news arrives that not only was Denver destroyed but so was Atlanta.  As chilling as the scene of the mushroom cloud is, the voice mail from the kid’s mom who was in Atlanta as the bomb hit…it just shows why old radio will always be far more effective at being scary than TV or movies ever could dream of being.  Beyond the big questions of who attacked, why was there an attack and now what (also I have to wonder if anyone in the federal government is still out there and still running the country) there were some other ones that will have to be immediately addressed–such as the escaped prisoners from the prison bus.   And that doesn’t even get into the whole what was Skeet Ulritch doing for the past few years while he was away from town?

The series has potential and it could be a nice lead-in to Lost on Wednesday nights.    The only thing I didn’t care for was the ending–it seemed too much like forcing a cliffhanger into the events that were playing out on screen.  And instead of having me say–wow, I am intrigued to see where this whole birds dead in the road plot goes, I was thinking, “Yeah, but what about the woman’s husband who was supposedly flying back to town?  Is he still alive?”  That’s a far more interesting question in my book.

Heroes: Genesis
One thing I love about Heroes is that right out of the gate it acknowledges that its influenced by X-Men comics and Star Trek.   It’s not saying that it’s out to reinvent the wheel, but instead is going to tell stories from a different take on things.   And, so far, it’s pretty good, though there was some predictable moments in the pilot.

For one thing, they worked too hard to set-up Peter (Milo Ventimiglia) for a fall (literally and figuratively).  The scene of his taking the step off the building has been almost as inonic as the mushroom cloud image from Jericho all summer.  So, I knew there had to be some twist to it and I figured that somehow the brother who had everything would somehow be part of it.  And it turns out that is true–the brother is the one who can fly, not Peter. Does this mean Peter doesn’t have powers and isn’t special?  And if so, what does that do to him?  I’m guessing he has to have some way to fit into the show or else they wouldn’t spend so much time featuring him as one of the stars of the show.  (Unless they’re going to pull a Psycho and kill off the big name star before the end of the third reel).

Also, I called early that the mysterious goverement man with glasses would somehow tie into Claire (blonde, healing power cheerleader).  When Dad wasn’t around and was referred to as coming home that night, I knew where all of that was headed.

But as predictable as those were, there was still a lot to like. The two most intriguging characters are Hiro (teleporter guy) and Nikki (Vegas stripper, where I’m not quite sure what her power is just yet).  Hiro is a delight and I could watch an entire show with his exchanges with his buddy about his powers and wanting to be special.  His delight at teleporting for the first time was great.  And Nikki intrigues me not just becuase it’s Ally Larter playing the role but because we are given so little info about her power.  We see the consequences of it but not it in action.  I am fascinated to see where this all goes.

Of course, there is a lot of that whole Lost, we’re all connected but don’t know it yet vibe hitting this show.  So far, except for Claire’s connection to her dad, it all feels natural enough.

So, I am going to hesistantly add this one to the viewing rotation.  I say hesitantly not because of the show’s quality but because I just am not sure if I trust NBC enough to give it the chance to build an audience that this kind of show will need.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: Cold Open
Dang nabbit, I’m hooked.

If the first episode was good, this one is great.

The pilot set up the various relationships and situations and now we can finally start building on that.  And man, did we ever.  The first scene with Matt and Danny discussing things is exactly the way to do exposition without it feeling like a huge info-dump of information.  They reminded of us of the various plot and players in the situation and then started putting those into motion.  I have to admit I loved every second of the show and was stunned at how quickly the hour went by.   And now I’m eager for more…

Yep, I’m hooked.

One choice the show made that I liked was not showing us the controversial sketch.  I think it’s a great idea since no matter what it is, it will fall short of audience expectations.  I loved the cold opening to the show and the little jabs at SNL.  Loved the homage to The Mary Tyler Moore Show.  I pretty enjoy enjoyed the entire hour of this show from start to finish and I think we’ve got a real winner on our hands here.  As I said before–I’m hooked.