Ok, so we watched the second episode of the much awaited spinoff to BSG, or Battle Star Galactica, for those of you unfortunate souls who have not become familiar with this awesome series yet. We actually had it recorded on our DVR for a while, maybe two weeks, and we finally got around to watching it, because the first one, the season premier, was just really boring and anticlimactic. I know that it’s supposed to be a drama more than a sci fi specatacle, but I guess I keep hoping for more of the intriguing characters and masterful acting and story lines of Galactica.

I keep reminding myself that it’s only the second episode, however, I remember when BSG first came on, I was addicted from the first episode, and it just got better and better from there, and that’s what I was hoping for with Caprica. We’ll give it a few more chances. Hopefully I won’t be watching the clock when we see the third episode!

The HBO showing of BBC original “Extras”, another Ricky Gervais original comedy that has he same flavor as his original “The Office” show, was a very smart idea.  Not because it gives us Americans another flavor of the smart, awkward situational, eccentric comedy that Ricky Gervais is known for, but because it also helps to diversify their shows into difference genres.

For those of you who are not familiar with Gervais, he is the British creator of the original hit series “The Office”. Yep, you’ll see his name in the credits for the American version, which I hate to say, is not quite as funny as the British original, but definitely hits some of the right comedic notes with leading man Steve Carell. You just can’t out do Ricky’s perfection as an awkward, yet always wanting to be loved character who tends to always say and do the wrong things.

Ok, so enough about my obvious admiration for Ricky’s comedic genius, let’s talk about the show “Extras” that aired a while ago on HBO.  It’s a show about Ricky, who is a forty something guy that has acting dreams, but can only seem to get the lowly work of being an extra, over and over again. He continuously rubs elbows with the famous, and there are some pretty hilarious cameos by several very big actors and actresses. To name a few, Kate Winslet, David Bowie, Orlando Bloom, Ben Stiller, Ian McKellan, Patrick Stewart, and more.

They are parody themselves, which is hilarious in itself. For instance, Orlando Bloom is obsessed with making Ricky’s bumbling female friend, Maggie, think he’s hot and desirable, because he’s an ego maniac. Patrick Stewart parodies himself as an actor who is obsessed with making awful, pointless films where women’s clothes are being ripped off the whole time.

Just the guest stars are hilarious, and they really show their acting chops by getting into poking fun at themselves a bit, you can just tell that the set must be fun and open, because everyone is at their best acting and showing their comedy chops.

Just as in The Office, Gervais plays a misunderstood, and yet constantly self loathing and self sabotaging awkward guy who can’t seem to get ahead in life or get the acceptance that he so craves. It’s funny, because as with his Office character David Brent, you feel awkward for him when he messes up, but you also feel like you wanna see the guy succeed, and you actually start to care for him.

I highly recommend checking out this witty, heady comedy, it’s a comedy with some intelligence and sarcasm to it, which is exactly my cup of tea.

I was a HUGE fan of the BSG, better known as the Battle Star Galactica, series on the Sy Fy channel. When the series ended, you’d have thought my best friend died. I actually went through a mourning period and didn’t think that any show could ever live up to it.  I was right, nothing has quite lived up to it yet to fill that genre for me, but I was hopeful when first the movie came out “The Plan” which was basically a huge disappointment and waste of time because it was all recapping stuff you already knew, and which was also why, when Caprica was coming on the airwaves, which is a spinoff of the the show, I got more excited than a nerd waiting in line for a Star Trek Convention.

And hey, I’m not knocking conventions, believe me, my hubbie is a huge comic book and sci fi fan, so I naturally have to be a bit nerdy myself.  I liked the idea behind Caprica, and I really liked the original tv movie that served as the pilot for the show also.

I thought the cast consisting of mainly Eric Stolz and Esai Morales, with relative newcomer as the young daughter of Eric Stolz (a scientist who has invented cylon technology) who died in a terrorist attack on a subway, making a positive splash as the outspoken rebel of a daughter whose belief in “one true god” defies the current conventional wisdom of several gods that rule the earth.  All a very interesting concept, no?

And the true, die hard BSG fans who miss the show no doubt will get some much pined for background about what caused and led up to the Cylon war and the ultimate invasion that destroyed all known inhabitable planets for man.

However, there is definitely something lacking in the show that needs to be addressed if they want to lure new viewers in and please the ones they already have, many of whom no doubt were avid fans of Battle Star.  First off, it bored me.  We were actually glad when the first episode was over, it was excruciating slow and boring, and didn’t seem to give us a lot of answers, or even any reason to believe we’d see any action in the next few episodes.

It didn’t leave me feeling like I couldn’t wait to see the next episode, and that is what I felt when I watched the pilot for BSG, so I was hoping they could duplicate that originality and sense of excitement with Caprica. Not yet. We can only hope it gets better, I really need a fix!

So, we finally got to see the first episode of Lost from this final season. We had DVR’d it, and we didnt’ get to watch it until just recently because we had obligations out the wazoo, and frankly I was just too tired to get through all 2-3 hours of it in one night after work. So we finally watched all of it, the recap, the episode 1 and then episode 2. It was great, of course, in typcial Lost fashion.

I’m really glad I watched the recap, because there are so many nuances, and so many characters even, that I had forgotten about from seasons past.  I had all but forgotten about characters like Ana Lucia and Boon and his sister (by the way, I did notice that Anna Lucia and Libby, both actresses that were fired from the show, conveniently didn’t show up in any of the flashback scenes).

If you haven’t seen the season premier, then spoiler alert, don’t read this.  We see now that with the new season, the bomb going off worked in putting them back to where it never happened. Except, wait, there are really two realities now, contrary to what they first led us to believe, that everyone was now safely on a plan headed home from Australia.  Of course, nothing is what it seems on this show, and you’ll rack your brains trying to figure out what’s truly going on.

I hate to break it to anyone who thinks we’ll have all the answers at the end of this show, but they can never tie up every single loose end they created.  For example, what about the strange animals that were on the island, and what about the big monster that chased them a few seasons ago?  I’m not sure that we’ll ever see those things.  Maybe it’s some sort of alternative reality where everything that has happened in the past shows up there, like creatures from the past, people that are dead, etc. etc.

But as I said, I don’t think it’s all going to be tied up for us in a neat package at the end, no matter how much we hope for that.  That’s kind of the draw of the show too though. Everyone has kind of assigned their own theories to what’s going on with the show, from religious theories like limbo and purgatory to time space continuum theories, to science fiction theories. That’s the fun of it, each person attributes the show to whatever their own belief systems are.

I’m a huge fan of the hit Showtime series “Dexter”, so I was super excited when the 4th, and most recent, season started showing on the channel. This is one of the few shows that we actually will add the cable channel to our television for to watch it as it plays, rather than wait for it all to come out on DVD, so you know it’s pretty special!  Dexter, as you may know, follows a serial killer, played by the uber talented (and very handsome I might add) actor Michael C Hall, who used to be in another hit show Six Feet Under, which I tried out a few years ago, but stopped watching because it just didn’t grab me.

However, he’s not just your run of the mill serial killer, no. He kills with a purpose, he only kills the “bad guys”, although I suspect that without his dead father’s advice and constant ghost in his head telling him the difference between right and wrong, he may have killed indiscriminantly because his “dark passenger” need to kill and mutilate bodies is too powerful. Dexter is a self proclaimed sociopath.  Throughout the series though, we see him start to develop feelings for other people, that, in his own twisted way, mirror emotions of a true human being.

He develops a conscience, and compassion, although there are still some parts of him that need more development before he can be considered – er, fully human I guess you might say.  The fourth season of Dexter is excellent. We just finished the final episode, and let me tell you, it’s quite a bombshell ending for the season, and I’m really not quite sure where they are going to go with this next season, but I must hand it to the producers and writers, they have a lot of guts to do what they did.

We find Dexter in season 4 with a family, and with Rita’s and his baby as well. He’s a swamped family man who is trying to juggle a job, a wife and a family, and oh yeah, still trying to satisfy his dark need to kill people too. Needless to say, with too many irons in the fire, Dexter starts to get a little sloppy, and we see him screwing up left and right, much to our chagrin.

The antagonist in this season is John Lithgow, who is excellent as he’s always been in everything else.  He is the Trinity killer that Deb, Dexter’s sister’s ex boyfriend, the ex FBI agent Lundy, has been pursuing for years, without anyone believing him because the evidence is purely coincidental.  The season follows his travails trying to figure out who he is, and finally, breathlessly trying to reconcile who he is with what his family has become to him, and whether or not the two can peacefully, or successfully, coexist or not.

I didn’t think it was possible to top the last season of the dark, quirky drama “Dexter” on Showtime for this current season, but once again this show has proven it’s staying power and ability to outlast the time frame that you would think a serial killer show would be able to live without “jumping the shark”, so to speak.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there are some very far fetched ideas and plot lines in tne season, but there have been in previous seasons as well, but you have come to know and love the characters in Dexter so well, including Dexter himself, that you forgive this for the excellent acting and clever dialogue you get in exchange for suspending disbelief and delving into the world of Dexter headlong.

I always find that after watching this show, I was totally absorbed in it the whole time, and it flies by. I always wish the episodes would just last a little longer when they’re over, as it is one fo the truly escapist shows I watch where I can lose myself in the story line. This season’s protagonist is played by John Lithgow. Lithgow, in a turn from the generally good natured men he plays, is in turns an every day, sometimes charming and friendly family man who is in fact a serial killer called the Trinity killer.

We welcome back agent Frank Lundy, and the romance between him and Dexter’s sister Deb is rekindled, and we find out these two are really alike and really in love. SPOILER ALERT : I was really disappointed when Lundy is killed, and realized how well this show weaves characters.

You really come to love his twitchy intensity and workaholic manner that helps him be a virtual prodigy when it comes to catching serial killers, and you feel for him that it’s many times cost him his relationships and even one marriage for being so absorbed.

This season, the show really delves into Rita and Dexter’s relationship and fledgling marriage. It also deals a lot with Dexter’s “dad voice” that keeps telling him he is wrong to have a family, to try to be normal, and that he can’t camouflage his dark passenger much longer if he is to continute being a father and family man with a sociable persona.

I’m not sure if this is their way of saying that Dexter’s conscious is turning on him, making him believe he can’t have a normal life and continue hunting serial killers, or whether the show is trying to foreshadow some terrible demise, which of course, any fan would ultimately root against for the anti hero of this story.

I LOVED the first season of the HBO hit vampire and supernatural show True Blood.  I couldn’t wait to tune in every Sunday night, and was always bummed if we couldn’t see it that Sunday and had to wait and watch it a day later even.  I’m like that with very few shows these days, since I feel that little is actually worth watching and is pretty low quality, but this show’s rare mix of supernatural combined with a little bit of hip and new themes, and great dialogue and story lines, really sucked me in.

Now, the second season is a totally different story.  Sookie Stackhouses’ lines seem to be ridiculous.  You can almost see the actress, Anna Paquin’s knowledge of this when she utters some of the ridiculous lines she’s been given this season.  Oh, and her character has become sort of annoying as well as Bill’s character.  Everyone seemed a bit off from the start, with Bill’s southern accent seeming the worst of all of them.

The story line, I know follows the books pretty closely, but it veers off into the completely ludicrous.  I think the show where I decided the show had pretty much jumped the shark was when Jason Stackhouse dresses up in a branch and some costume to throw off the idiot black eyed zombies that have overtaken the town thanks to Maryann’s minead monster character.  The idea that everyone gets together for huge origies under her spell isn’t well played out, and tended to look totally moronic, further embarrassing the show’s integrity.

All in all, the show seems to have descended into hokiness from a light, fun cheekiness that existed the first season, and I’m hoping it can return to its former glory next season, but my hopes are pretty low since this season has been nothing short of embarrassingly bad in my opinion.

We just finished up the 4.5 seasons of probably the most phenomenal television show I’ve ever seen, Battlestar Galactica, and I must say that we went through a wee bit of a mourning period recently!  Don’t let the name fool you, it’s not some crazy science fiction series that doesnt’ really have a lot of humanity and where you see creatures running around from outer space, or ridiculous voyages that end in one show, but it’s a very human, realistic portrayal of a futuristic story about where the human race is.

The story line of Battlestar is where there is an ongoing war between the humans and their robotic creations, the cylons.  After millions of lives are lost, the two sides call for an armistice and the cylons go to live on a planet called Kobol and leave the humans alone.  Well, one day about 40 years later, the cylons attack all planets and colonies of humans that they have, both in space and on planets, having the upper hand because of the secrets that one Gaius Balter, a brilliant but sniveling,  cowardly, womanizing scientist who has been tricked in to givng the defence system secrets to the beautiful woman he has been dating for a while, a newer model cylon that looks, feels and acts just like a human.

The producers Ronald Moore and David Eick are nothing short of genius in the picking of ther characters.  The beautiful ex model who can actually also act, Tricia Helfer, plays the very sexual number 6 cylon, who is the focal character on the “other side” from the humans.  Edward James Olmos, who I think deserved to win an emmy for his performance as Admiral Adama, as well as his XO Saul Tigh is excellent.  These character are so three dimensional that you feel as though you know them a few episodes in.

Everyone is excellent though, and you can tell that the cast is very cohesive, as it shows through in their performances on screen.  Katee Sackhoff plays Starbuck, one of the central characters who was actually a guy in the original series.  She pulls it off wonderfully, and is one of the most endearing, if not confounding characters on the show.  President Laura Roslin is played by Mary McDonell, and you guess it, she’s awesome too.  Apollo is another great supporting character, played by Brit Jamie Bamber (you’d never know it, his accent is great in the show, he masks his British accent well).

And last but not least, the blubbering self preserving scientist Gaius Balter is played by James Callis.  He can make you angry but you are also rooting for him somehow.   A lot of the characters on Battlestar are like that though, which goes to show that it’s a great show when you have torn feelings about what certain characters are doing.  The special effects are great and the writing is superb. I’d highly recommend it to anyone, not just sci fi lovers.  It’s awesome.

Ok, so I’m a thirty something woman who is addicted to this show Gossip Girl.  So sue me, but it is one of those shows you pop in the DVD player (I rented the season off an online DVD rental place), and you find that a few hours later you’ve blown through like four episodes because it’s just so much fun to watch.  And don’t get me wrong, I know the show is totally unrealistic.  I mean, it’s all about the “Manhattan elite”, but what they fail to recognize is that their stories are about teenagers that are basically acting and talking like adults, which can be a bit over the top at times.

However, the writing is scandalous and the story lines are pretty juicy and just the type of stories that you love to hear about because they are the vicarious nature.  I’ll give you an example, a few episodes ago in the first season I was watching, there was an episode where the priveleged teens attend a masked ball.  Whether these types of events even occur any more, I don’t know, but it was interesting and fairy tale like, and I have to admit, I was waiting for prince charming to show up for his princess. Of course, there was a little more intrigue thrown in there with a side story about mistaken identity (it was a masked ball).

The story centers around the lives of 7 teens, Blair, played by Leighton Meester who does a great job of making you love to hate her, Serena played by Blake Lively, who is just so likeable and yet so stylish that you are really magnetized toward her character, Dan, played by Penn Badgely (he and Blake are an item in real life), who plays the guy from the other side of town who is an admirer from afar for a long time until he and Serena become more than friends, Chuck, who plays basically the John Malkovich character from Dangerous Liaisons, only much younger and with a more hip hairdo, Dan’s sister Jenny, the freshman who seems to always be in the middle of every story somehow, and Blair’s boyfriend Nate, played by the very pretty Chace Crawford.  What’s with these kids names these days anyways? And I’m talking about the names of the actors, not the names of their characters!

Every episode seems to be about some sort of an event in high society, and they are pretty interestingly portrayed, although I wouldn’t know a high society event if it hit me in the face, so it could all be pretentious stereotyping for all I know.  At any rate, Gossip Girl is definitely a guilty pleasure that you’ll enjoy if you like this sort of thing.

Well, the first few episodes of Showtime’s drama “Brotherhood” sure were short on orginality and likability of the characters, but I gotta tell you, the show has definitely grown on me.  The story about two brothers who are on opposite sides of the law, although those lines are very fuzzy a lot of times, is sometimes poorly written in terms of understanding who’s who and making you care when people go down.  For example, a character is killed in episode six and I have no idea who they even are until after they explain it, even though this character appeared several times before.

The show’s bright spot continues to be a surprise to me, it’s Annabeth Gish, who was of X Files notoriety, and for being a presence in a few other forgettable films.  She really brings some edge and charisma to the show as the emotionally damaged wife of the politician brother, Tommy Caffee.  She appears in the first episode to be a normal mother of three young girls, and the proper wife of a politician aspiring to do greater things, but we soon see that she is unhappy and mostly feels her life is a subterfuge for misery. 

In one scene, she tells her lover that she misses him and that she’s so lonely she feels like she’s gonna die, and we see that she is truly vulnerable, even though she puts on a brave, normal front to everyone.  Tommy Caffee, her husband, and the better half of the Caffee brothers (his brother is Michael, the thug criminal, but also their mother’s favorite son), seems to be oblivious to his wife’s plight.

Another bright spot is Ethan Embry, who’s also been in some forgettable films.  He plays a childhood friend of the Caffees who also happens to be investigating Michael for suspected criminal acitivities and possibly drug trafficking and racketeering.  Brotherhood has definitely grown on me.  I thought at first it was a poor man’s Sopranos, but it’s picked up the pace and it’s really gaining some momentum.