My Take Radio

I’ll be the first to say that I do not watch prime­time ser­ial shows on reg­u­lar cable. Noth­ing has ever really grabbed my attention…until your illus­tri­ous host and I started watch­ing Burn Notice on USA. (Char­ac­ters wel­come, indeed.) Now, I sali­vate at the thought of another hour of spy-goodness on my tele­vi­sion (and also secretly wish to be a covert-op).

Cre­ated by Matt Nix, Burn Notice stars Jef­frey Dono­van as Michael Westen our hero spy who has been “burned”, Gabrielle Anwar as Michael’s ex-girlfriend and explo­sives fanatic Fiona Gle­nanne, Bruce Camp­bell as semi-retired intel­li­gence oper­a­tive and for­mer Navy SEAL Sam Axe and Sharon Gless as Michael’s mother, Made­line Westen.

About to pre­miere its fourth sea­son, the show cen­ters around Michael and his need to find out who burned him and to get back into the spy game. With a “burn notice”, a spy is wiped off the grid, with­out access to any­thing — a burned spy also has no prior work his­tory, no money, no con­tacts — no identity.

In between try­ing to find out why he was burned, Michael, accom­pa­nied by Fiona and Sam, sets out help­ing home­town res­i­dents with prob­lems only a spy can han­dle.  (Michael was left by  in the Miami, Florida when he was burned — which pro­vides a great back­drop for the show), He becomes sort of a pri­vate investigator/spy –for-hire for any­one who needs it, get­ting in and out of trou­ble along the way.

This show pro­vides excel­lent writ­ing filled with wit and sar­casm, which I love in all my shows. Westen could not have been bet­ter cast — Jef­frey Dono­van deliv­ers lines with per­fect tim­ing, and you grow to wish you had him in your con­tact list. The chem­istry between Michael and Fiona is pal­pa­ble, and you will really love them as a on-again-off-again cou­ple. Sam – or shall I call him by his fake name Chuck Fin­ley, pro­vides fan­tas­tic humor and is the needed cor­ner to this super-spy trifecta.

 If you do not have Burn Notice on your To-Watch List, get on it fast – Sea­son 4 begins this Thurs­day, June 3^rd at 9PM EST.  If not, now is the per­fect time to catch up on this great series –Get the first three sea­sons on DVD and check it out – I highly rec­om­mend it. USA  has already renewed the show for both a  fifth and a sixth season.

 “Covert intel­li­gence involves a lot of wait­ing around. You know what it’s like being a spy? Like sit­ting in your dentist’s recep­tion area 24 hours a day. You read mag­a­zines, sip cof­fee, and every so often some­one tries to kill you.” – Michael Westen

It’s hard to believe that The Ulti­mate Fighter has been grac­ing our tele­vi­sion sets on Spike TV since 2005. I credit TUF with being the show that made me a Mixed Mar­tial Arts fan. Hon­estly, I really didn’t know much about the sport before then, since obvi­ously it was not as main­stream as it has grown to be now. My knowl­edge of the UFC was sadly, only that of Ken Sham­rock and Dan Sev­ern – and that was solely based upon my being a WWE fan.

I’d like to take a look back at all of the sea­sons and refresh our mem­o­ries on what we have seen over the past five years. On top of all the MMA action, let’s not for­get things like the Coaches’ Chal­lenges, as well as all the drunken chaos and other enter­tain­ing stuff that has hap­pened in the TUF house.

(con­tinue reading…)

On Jan­u­ary 22nd, Starz debuted their newest series Spar­ta­cus: Blood & Sand. S:BS fol­lows the adven­tures and mis­for­tunes of an unnamed Thra­cian war­rior who vol­un­teered to assist Rome in bat­tle only to be betrayed by the Romans. When the unnamed Thra­cian saw what the Romans were plan­ning, he defied orders and raced back to his vil­lage to save his wife. Their reunion was short lived though as the Roman caught up to the Thra­cian and took his wife as well. His sen­tence for Legate Claudius Glaber was death in the arena. Sadly, Glaber did not get to see our hero die. After a brief and moti­vat­ing vision, the Thra­cian pro­ceeded to kill all the glad­i­a­tors. This fero­cious dis­play surely meant death until  Batia­tus, owner of the glad­i­a­tor Ludus, decided to inter­vene and pur­chased the Thra­cian in hopes of revers­ing his for­tunes. Batia­tus took the lib­erty of nam­ing our hero Spar­ta­cus due to his fierce­ness in bat­tle. Spar­ta­cus was the name of a leg­endary Thra­cian king.

At first glance, you will see a large num­ber of sim­i­lar­i­ties with the 300 film. From the CGI blood to the vicious com­bat, the inspi­ra­tion from this film helped shape Spar­ta­cus into what we are cur­rently see­ing. I also noticed a lot of sim­i­lar­i­ties with the hit HBO series Rome.The first few episodes were a tour-de-force of vio­lence, sex and bloodshed, and many may deem these depic­tions as exces­sive. Per­son­ally, I feel that they accu­rately rep­re­sent a time of bar­barism and there­fore should be depicted as such. The over­all story, while con­sid­ered thin by many, has poten­tial to lead to some­thing greater. In addi­tion, they are cre­at­ing inter­twin­ing sto­ries between the other char­ac­ters as well as the glad­i­a­tors.  Thus far responses for the show have been mixed, yet Starz has already ordered a sec­ond season.

 I per­son­ally have enjoyed the series thus far. How­ev­erm there are some cringe-worthy moments which made me wince a bit due to the graphic nature of the scenes. But, much like the glad­i­a­tor sport, I was entertained.

I rec­om­mend you check out one or two episodes and make your own judg­ment. You can watch new episodes Fri­days & Sun­days on Starz or Starz OnDe­mand. If you have Net­flix stream­ing at home or on XBL, you can also find all the episodes there.

What do you think of this series?

Share your com­ments below:

You mean aside from the fact that it’s already in sea­son 4 and you should go watch the back episodes now? My thing is, if you are a MTR reg­u­lar, there is prob­a­bly some­thing wrong with you.…I mean up there, in your head… deep inside. Since we have deter­mined that you are dis­turbed, shouldn’t your late nite pro­gram­ming be equally as twisted?

Enter the Ven­ture Bros., two boys (that are really clones of two boys) that have pos­si­bly the worst father in the world. Many fathers have joked that if some­thing hap­pened to their kids that they can “just make more,” but Dr. Ven­ture really means it. Their body­guard is Brock Samp­son — imag­ine Brock Lesnar minus the tat­toos, he’s much less of a dick but eight mil­lion times more vio­lent. That’s just the tip of the ice­berg. Throw in an arch­neme­sis with a but­ter­fly fetish whose girl­friend is the hottest chick on the show but her voice makes you think she’s a tranny (she’s really not, she’s a chain smoker), a fake Fan­tas­tic Four that makes the real FF look cool, the real Jonny Quest and Had­jii, and a slew of other WTF moments and you have what is per­haps Car­toon Network’s great­est Adult Swim hit ever.

Oh and if that wasn’t enough, last night’s repeat episode fea­tured Cap­tain Sun­shine. Cap­tain Sun­shine is a super­hero that flies around like super­man and has a solar flash abil­ity — he basi­cally blinds and flash sun­burns his enemies.

Cap­tain Sun­shine & Dean

 Did I men­tion that he’s a gay pedo whose but­ler gives anal lube to his young side­kicks at night? I can’t make this shit up peo­ple. That pic­ture is of him fly­ing with Dean Ven­ture a la Christo­pher Reeve & Mar­got Kid­der in Super­man. Oh best part, he’s voiced by Kevin Con­roy, you know, BATMAN from the 90s ani­mated series. This stuff writes itself people.

After weeks of story bits, some pho­tos and a few not-so reveal­ing pro­mos, we finally got to watch Smallville’s two hour Absolute Jus­tice episode. Here’s the recap.

We start off the episode with a bad­die pick­ing off old mem­bers of Jus­tice Soci­ety of Amer­ica.  We see Chloe walk­ing out­side, leav­ing Clark a voice­mail, when sud­denly all the power in the area goes out. Chloe looks around and sees some­thing glow­ing with elec­tric­ity. Run­ning over (because why would you run the other way), she finds a man wield­ing an energy rod. He intro­duces him­self as Sylvester Pem­ber­ton (hello Star-Spangled Kid) and says that they’re both try­ing to put a team together. He knows all about Watch­tower and notes that his friends did some­thing like it first. While talk­ing, Pem­ber­ton spidey-senses some­thing bad and throws Chloe into a dump­ster. He is attacked and ends up killed by some­one that can shoot giant icicles.  At the hos­pi­tal, Clark meets a heart­bro­ken Court­ney Whit­more (aka Star­girl). See­ing his press pass, she refuses to speak to him as he tries to help her. 

Never the one to not be a super sleuth,Chloe embarks on the path to dig­ging up the truth about Pem­ber­ton, who, accord­ing to his arrest records that Clark later gets a hold of, was part of a gang of crim­i­nals. (We find out via an old high­light reel of footage these 12 peo­ple really didn’t do “crim­i­nal” things). Chloe had got­ten a hold of  Pemberton’s cell­phone call log at the hos­pi­tal, and they decide after see­ing the footage and review­ing the log that they need to find a man named Wes­ley Dodds (aka Sand­man). As it goes, by the time Clark gets to his home, dear Sand­man is all holey and cold, and there is the “JSA” moniker scrawled  in his blood nearby. Hmmmm, what the hell does JSA mean?? Nobody knows — but they will find out.  

Mean­while, Chloe and Oliver have tracked down one of the remain­ing crim­i­nals, Carter Hall (Hawk­man). Clark goes to visit Hall, and we find out he is the keeper of a shut-down museum whose con­tents are bathed in sheets.  We also find out he keeps a close eye on a crazy, men­tally nutso Dr. Kent Nel­son (Dr. Fate), (For obser­va­tional pur­poses, let’s point out he keeps the Nabu mask in a bowl­ing bag. I don’t know if this is always the case, but it’s odd.) Hall denies talk­ing to either of the dead men, and says he refused Pemberton’s calls. Clark uses his x-ray vision on said bowl­ing bag and sees a golden hel­met inside. It turns on its own and faces Clark — eek. Carter tells Clark they have noth­ing more to say and Clark leaves. Once he’s gone, Nel­son tells Carter that the voices want to help, but Carter says that they’ll have to help them­selves. He clearly doesn’t want to be a hero again.

Oliver dis­cov­ers that Pemberton’s energy rod is miss­ing. He spots Court­ney walk­ing down the street, car­ry­ing the rod. He approaches her and wants the rod. She points it at him, but Oliver remonds her that two men have died and demands some answers. Nelson arrives out of nowhere and trig­gers the rod, say­ing they help them­selves. Bam! Nel­son and Court­ney have disappeared.

Oliver gets Chloe and they track down Pemberton’s car from the park­ing tick­ets filed against it (that darn Chloe is crafty). Inside the old car, we see it is labeled “Star Rocket Racer.” They find his jour­nal, which has intel on all of their real iden­ti­ties. Chloe fig­ures that Court­ney knows who they are as well. Back at the museum, we see Carter, Nel­son and Courtney. Stargirl insists that they know who the killer is, and that they have to do some­thing.  Dodds and Pem­ber­ton are dead, and Carter needs to stop being emo and lead them again. She says she will  go to another team if she has to, but Carter calls them ama­teurs. As Carter walks away, Court­ney asks him what Shiera (his wife) would have done, which causes Carter to stop and think for a minute. He then reveals his funny Hawk­man cos­tume and mace, and goads Nel­son into putting on the Nabu mask once again. This cre­ates Dr. Fate’s insta-costume. I think Dr. Fate looked the best out of all of them.  

Dr. Fate tracks down Chloe and Clark at the hos­pi­tal morgue, where they are check­ing out the frost-bitten body of Sand­man. Dr. Fate tells Chloe that her fate is much like his own. Huh? Like Dr. Fate, Chloe can see what every­one else is doing (as Watch­tower, any­way) but her own fate, like his, is obscured. When Dr. Fate looks at Clark, he sees the Super­man cape. (Woohoo!)  He superhero-travels Clark  back to the museum. When he comes to, Clark uncov­ers all the dis­plays, reveal­ing a that the museum was a front for the JSA Head­quar­ters. It is  filled with weapons, trin­kets, and cos­tumes. Show­cases hold things like box­ing gloves, a green lantern, a hel­met with the wings of Mer­cury, a belt marked “Fair Play,” an hour­glass, and var­i­ous weaponry. Another case holds a woman’s hawk mask, cracked on the top. Clark rec­og­nizes the Last Sup­per por­trait as the peo­ple in the files/reel he had looked at. Wow — these were not crim­i­nals, but heroes who were arrested and dis­cred­ited in the pub­lic eye long  ago!! GASP!

Whils Clark is pok­ing around, in flies Hawk­man. Doc Fate and Star­girl   arrive next, and Dr. Fate says that Clark is very impor­tant, and dif­fer­ent from the oth­ers. Hawk­man doesn’t under­stand why. Star­girl explains that the Star Span­gled Kid wanted to bring together the old and new heroes into a new team. Awkward ten­sion. Green Arrow arrives, fir­ing an arrow into the por­trait of the JSA. Green Arrow says that the JSA are noth­ing but crim­i­nals. He and Christian-Bale Batman-voiced Hawk­man are imme­di­ately at each other’s throats, and (yay) John Jones arrives and asks for every­one to work together peacefully. Clark warns that they’re not going any­where as long as there is a killer on the loose.

Oh yeah - back to that killer-at-large. We find out that our frost­bit­ten cul­prit is Cameron Mahkent, son of the comatose Joar Mahkent, known as Icicle. This whiney kid wants revenge because the JSA is respon­si­ble for his father’s condition. He has been recruited by Agent Amanda Waller — of an orga­ni­za­tion known as “Check­mate”. She’s the one who’s hunt­ing down the for­mer JSA mem­bers and using this dope as her pawn.

We also finally see Lois, who receives a pack­age con­tain­ing all the JSA’s crim­i­nal records, with a note that reads “The truth shall set you free.” (Note: Tess Mer­cer is also inter­ested in this package.)

Back at the museum, Dr. Fate talks with Clark and explains that he sees everyone’s fate except for his own, and that see­ing Clark’s future has given him hope. Clark will lead the new gen­er­a­tion of heroes, like Hawk­man led the JSA. When Clark notes that the Legion spoke sim­i­larly about his fate, Dr. Fate gives him some specifics and says he will one day tri­umph over Lex Luthor (wait — isn’t he dead?) He says Clark will help every­one embrace a new age. Lois then arrives at the museum, Clark runs away, and Dr. Fate lets her in. He greets her and Lois says that she’s look­ing for Carter Hall. He tells her that he knows her fate.  He blabs about her being impor­tant to the “sav­ior” and “the sen­tient power.” They will need each other.  Okay, fine.

Look­ing for Ici­cle, John and Dr. Fate check out a nitro­gen stor­age facil­ity, since, after all that murder, the lit­tle cold bas­tard need to replen­ish his A/C reserve. When they sense him near, Fate sends John out into the abyss, reveal­ing for a split sec­ond his true green Man­hunter form. This also gives John his pow­ers back. Sur­prise, sur­prise — Ici­cle then kills Dr. Fate, and takes the glo­den hel­met. Wow, the JSA are drop­ping like flies huh?

Back at The Daily Planet, Lois is going through old files. Amanda Waller comes up behind her and says that they’re clas­si­fied files, and she left them for Lois. Lois won­ders why she was cho­sen, and Waller says that Lois is good at being nosy and “embrac­ing the truth”. She hands Lois a fancy-schmancy cell phone with a chess motif and says that they’ll be in touch.  We also see that Waller also has some kind of his­tory with Tess, as we see a  sign of“Checkmate”- a White Queen chess piece - left on Tess’s desk. Ooooooo foreshadowy.

Ici­cle goes to see his comatose father and says that Doc Fate’s hel­met will help him fin­ish off the other heroes. He then takes his father’s hand, says that he’s ready, and then pulls the plug on his father’s res­pi­ra­tor. Nice. Ici­cle jerkoff puts on the hel­met, which glows red. Uh-oh.

Heart­felt con­ver­sa­tion between Green Arrow and Hawk­man about his wife, con­nec­tions, love, friends, etc. They fly to the Watch­tower where Chloe is, and in comes Clark and Star­girl. Blah blah blah — here is Ici­cle — ready to deep freeze every­one. Here comes the fight we have been wait­ing 2 hours and 35 min­utes for. Icicle sus­pends Chloe within a choke-slamy ice field. All our heroes attack in a semi-cool bar­rage of comic fight­ing skills, but Fate’s hel­met pro­tects the blue shit­bag against the brunt of them. Hawk­man knocks him down, but Ici­cle throws out a blast that sends the good guys fly­ing. F-A-I-L.  He faces off with Star­girl, but Man­hunter saves her by deflect­ing the next ice blast using his recov­ered pow­ers. The heroes close in and Hawk­man smashes the hel­met loose with his mace, and we see him lay­ing on the floor like there should be a chalk out­line around him. Kind of a lame-o fin­ish to the fight.

We then have all the heart-t0-heart talks at the end of the episode, which I really don’t care too much about. Yada. Yada. Yada. Clark should trust his team, they will make mis­takes, keep try­ing. He does say that if Clark over­comes his own chains, he’ll soar higher than any of them. (Yes Clark — can you just fly already!!!)  Chloe, Man­hunter and Oliver have a cute family-type moment and go out for dinner.

Back at the Planet, another cute Lois-Clark moment where Lois tells Clark about her con­ver­sa­tion with Dr. Fate. Clark asks if she believes in fate, and Lois says she believes in the fate you make hap­pen. Nice.

Waller has some­how got­ten Ici­cle, who is now holed up in a heated room. That must hurt. Con­ver­sa­tion ensues, and she thanks him for bring­ing the JSA back into the spot­light. Waller tells him that he’s done what she needed him to do, as she’ll need the assem­bled heroes to sur­vive the com­ing apoc­olypse (or should I write Apokolips.…Darkseid fore­shad­ow­ing maybe? Just throw­ing it out there). Waller then shoots him dead, say­ing “Wel­come to the Sui­cide Squad”.  As she leaves the room, we see none other than Tess Mer­cer — in a suit bear­ing a ID tag  much like Waller’s. Hello, Agent Mer­cer. Hmmm.…..

All in all, Absolute Jus­tice was a nice way of bring­ing every­one together. I found it a lit­tle long, maybe since I am used to 44 min­utes at a time. The cos­tumes were a lit­tle campy, as was Hawkman’s fly­ing. I did enjoy the ban­ter between Hawk­man and Green Arrow though. Stargirl’s mask was ter­ri­ble - it looked like play­dough stuck to her face.

Good news though: “Absolute Jus­tice” attracted almost 2.8 mil­lion view­ers, Smallville’s largest audi­ence of the sea­son. It also gave The CW its best Fri­day night in more than a year.

What do you guys think? Was this worth such a long “movie”? Leave com­ments below…

As a woman, I pride myself on being able to hang “with the boys” in regards to my abil­ity to watch stuff most girls won’t even con­sider.  So, in keep­ing up with this, I decided to watch the pre­miere of Spike TV’s newest com­edy “Blue Moun­tain State”. About five min­utes in,  all I could muster was “Wow”.  I imme­di­ately likened it to the “Van Wilder” movies or “Var­sity Blues” on crack. This show takes every col­lege TV show and movie you have ever seen and bun­dles it into one half hour of  non­stop sex, drink­ing and foot­ball. (I assume I have your atten­tion now?)

Before I begin, a lit­tle back­ground for those of you who live under a rock and haven’t seen Spike’s heavy pro­mo­tion for Blue Moun­tain State. BMS fol­lows three col­lege fresh­men who attend Blue Moun­tain State Col­lege. Two of the three are on the BMS foot­ball team ”The Goats” — Alex (Darin Brooks) and Craig (Sam Jones III, you may remem­ber him as Pete from Smal­l­ville). Round­ing out the three is the trusty sidekick/Alex’s BFF Sammy (Roman­ski) whose goal is to become the Goat’s mascot.

The show revolves around these guys adapt­ing to col­lege life while jug­gling foot­ball, (mostly) naked girls, team haz­ing and maybe (at some point) classes. We quickly meet some of the sup­port­ing char­ac­ters, most importantly:

Team Cap­tain and Line­backer Thad (Alan Ritch­son):  the odd­est char­ac­ter on this show, and I can­not wait to see where they are going with him.  He heads the haz­ing rit­u­als, which is all “pretty gay” and is obvi­ously the lead bad guy to our three newbies.

Craig’s gold-digging “B” of a girl­friend Denise (Gabrielle Den­nis): eas­ily the most annoy­ing char­ac­ter to me, as you will all prob­a­bly agree after watch­ing. As her main goal is to get Craig to the NFL (to get that money, money, yeah, yeah), she has a no-sex pol­icy with Craig, as “all the testos­terone makes him play better.”

 We also meet Coach Marty Daniels (Ed Mari­naro) quickly, and he seems to have good one-liners that will be funny addi­tions to the show. I wanted to see more of him, as the coaches usu­ally have some of the best mate­r­ial in these kinds of shows.

Ok, now onto the short recap. We got two back to back episodes to sink our teeth into (or maybe I should say fin­gers – more later.) Episode 101 was enti­tled “It’s Called Haz­ing, Look It Up”. In this episode, we meet the char­ac­ters and get to watch some funny haz­ing that includes shav­ing other team­mates’ asses, and hold­ing a book of team­mates’ secrets with­out los­ing it under penalty of ass-whopping, and a Cookie Race – I won’t spoil that.

Episode 102 is called “Promise Ring”. When Craig loses the promise ring Denise gave him dur­ing a night out at a strip club, he goes on a hilar­i­ous search to find the ring, which he believes he lost in (yes, not a typo) a strip­per before she learns that he lost it. Much hilar­ity ensues, and it cul­mi­nates with a not-so-subtle “break-in”. I won’t ruin that either.

All in all, the show is a lit­tle over-the-top in terms of debauch­ery, but it is cable TV after all. While funny, there are some things I can live with­out per­son­ally, but I am sure a lot of you will love it just the way it is. I will prob­a­bly give it a few more episodes before mak­ing a final judgment.

Side Note – I also really like the BMS theme song, which is ‘Hell Yeah’ by Rev Theory.

For now: here are some quotes to get you interested:

Coach Daniels: “Where do we come from? FROM OUR FATHERS BALLS!” “Cham­pi­ons know they came from their father’s balls.”

“Once upon a time, some weak pathetic pussy coined the phrase “Win­ning isn’t every­thing”. For most peo­ple in most sit­u­a­tions, he was right. But I’m not one of those peo­ple and THIS is not one of those situations.”

Alex: “Your girl­friend sucks. She intro­duces you to account­ing majors and then gives you shit for drink­ing a beer?”

“There is no way that girl is a vir­gin. Vir­gins don’t go to state col­lege, man. Wake the fuck up!”

“Never date the strip­pers, you don’t take the paint­ing from the museums”

You can catch Blue Moun­tain State Tues­days on Spike TV at 10PM EST. Check your local list­ings, and find the first two episodes at http://www.spike.com/show/34560

I want to work for the Nerd Herd

Oh Josh Schwartz, how I adore you. In 2007, the man behind “The O.C.” and “Gos­sip Girl” (yeah, yeah, I know) brought us a new show both men and women alike can obsess over. In case you have not yet become a res­i­dent of Buy-Moreia, let me give you a rea­son to change your TV zip code and catch you up.

Title char­ac­ter Chuck Bar­towski (played by Zachary Levi) is your aver­age Geek Squad-type guy who unknow­ingly, on his birth­day no less, opens up an email he will never for­get. No, I don’t mean that cute sur­prised kit­ten or a Happy Birth­day e-card. The email con­tains a mes­sage from his Stan­ford roomie– turned rogue CIA Agent Bryce Larkin. Upon hit­ting “open”,  a Pandora’s Box of US gov­ern­ment secrets is dumped into Chuck’s head via some laser beam super­com­puter magic.  (Let me add that this intel had been stolen by Larkin — hence the “rogue” part.) This data­base is called “The Inter­sect” – and now, thanks to Bryce, Chuck IS The Inter­sect. (The government’s only other copy of the Inter­sect was destroyed as a result of his thiev­ery. Fail.)

The CIA and NSA learn that Chuck was the last per­son that Bryce con­tacted and want the intel­li­gence returned to them, as they are unaware it’s in Chuck’s brain. The CIA sends Agent Sarah Walker (Yvonne Stra­hovski) to retrieve the Inter­sect, and the NSA sends Major John Casey (Adam Bald­win) to cap­ture Chuck, as he “knows too much”. The two agents even­tu­ally cross paths and dis­cover that Chuck is now the only ver­sion of the Inter­sect. The agen­cies decide Chuck must be pro­tected at all costs, and assign both Sarah and Casey the task. So, now that Chuck’s brain holds all the cards, he must use the infor­ma­tion in his head to help Agents Casey and Walker thwart assas­sins and ter­ror­ists, all while not being killed by the bad guys in the process.  Fun times. 

Obvi­ously, Chuck-the-Spy (or Charles Carmichael as he likes to call him­self on mis­sions) must keep his new job a secret from fam­ily and friends, which makes for some funny sit­u­a­tions. He con­tin­ues his job as Nerd Herd Super­vi­sor at the local Buy More (aka TV Best Buy), while Sarah poses as his girl­friend (hello, love inter­est)  and takes a cover job at the Orange Orange next to the Buy More. Fan­tas­ti­cally sar­cas­tic Casey reluc­tantly becomes a part of the Buy More team as his cover. (Since I worked for Best Buy myself, I share his pain.) The base­ment of the Orange Orange is also their spy base (known as The Castle).

Let me not for­get to men­tion the sup­port­ing char­ac­ters that fill the show like Ellie and Devon, Chuck’s sis­ter and her boyfriend, BFF Mor­gan, Buy More co-workers Jeff­ster and Buy More boss Big Mike, amongst oth­ers.  I can hon­estly say they make won­der­ful filler for the rest of the hour, and would be ter­ri­bly missed. You will end up lov­ing all of them, as they each bring essen­tial ele­ments to the show.

Episodes revolve around var­i­ous spy mis­sions and the trouble-making blun­ders Chuck makes. (Hello, he’s not really a spy, what do you expect?)

Chuck is a fresh idea for a show. It has all I want in an hour of TV — com­edy, action, drama, wit and sar­casm all bun­dled up in a nice lit­tle pack­age. There is great con­ti­nu­ity to the sto­ry­lines, and the writ­ing is  super funny.  Guest stars thus far have included: John Laro­quette, Chevy Chase, Scott Bakula, Jor­dana Brew­ster and  Rachel Bilson.

I am not going to give away any twists and turns, so I highly rec­om­mend get­ting the first and sec­ond sea­sons on DVD or Net­flix. Chuck is a great show that is steadily gain­ing pop­u­lar­ity, so hope­fully it will be around for a long time. So catch up fast and don’t for­get to watch the new episodes Mon­day nights at 8PM EST, so TPTB at NBC keep it on the air.

I swear to you, this is not a girly show, (even though I watch it, I am a girl, and  it is on The CW — which I under­stand is a red flag to any­one with the male anatomy.)  Super­nat­ural debuted on Sep­tem­ber 13, 2005 and is now cur­rently in it’s fifth sea­son. It was cre­ated by the fan­tas­tic Eric Kripke, who is also cred­ited as Exec­u­tive Pro­ducer, along with Joseph McGinty Nichol, whom we all know bet­ter as McG.

Per­son­ally,  I believe this show is get­ting bet­ter and bet­ter with each pass­ing sea­son. Kripke had orig­i­nally stated he had a Five-Year Plan for the show, and envi­sioned wrap­ping it up in Sea­son 5 (Boo). How­ever, I think we will be see­ing more of it due to a loyal  and grow­ing fan base, which is awesome  (Yay).

The main char­ac­ters of the series are broth­ers Dean and Sam Win­ches­ter. The guys have fol­lowed in their father John’s line of work – that being Hunters of demons and the para­nor­mal (bet­ter than sit­ting in a cubi­cle all day?? –You be the judge.) Amidst all this hunt­ing, we get great snarky lines and comedic gold – which in my opin­ion are one of the best ele­ments of this show. Another is the music –  “Carry On Way­ward Son” by Kansas starts off many of the episodes, and it gets stuck in my head every time. Dean’s black ’67 Chevy Impala has been dubbed by fans the “Metal­licar” for pete’s sake! With great writ­ing and exe­cllent sto­ry­line con­sis­tency,  this is truly one of the most under­rated shows on the tube right now.

In a nut­shell, Sea­sons 1–3 have revolved around the broth­ers learn­ing more about their work while sav­ing peo­ple from super­nat­ural beings — we have seen Ghouls and Gob­lins, Trick­sters, Shapeshifters, Paris Hilton, etc. Obvi­ously, there have also been major plot points, most of which I don’t want to ruin. Exam­ples are Sam devel­op­ing psy­chic abil­i­ties that prove to be more than that of John Edward, or Dean mak­ing a deal with a demon named Lilith to save his brother, giv­ing him one year to live before being dragged by Hell­hounds to Hell.

Sea­son Four was all about Heaven vs. Hell – Sam and Dean have to work with Angels, the most impor­tant being Castiel,  to stop Lilith’s plan of break­ing the 66 seals of Hell — which would let Lucifer walk free on Earth. Not a good thing. Well, with him being an Angel and all, Castiel (played by Misha Collins) had pre­vi­ously res­ur­rected Dean from Hell with the intent for him to stop her from break­ing these seals. Sam also dis­cov­ered he has a demonic side and kind of gives in to it by becom­ing strung out on demon blood (Super­nat­ural crack) in order to become strong enough to defeat Lilith once and for all. This, my friends, does not go as planned.

Sea­son Five’s cur­rent sto­ry­line revolves around The Apoc­a­lypse. Sam and Dean are in a race to try and defeat Lucifer (see, I said it didn’t go as planned) and not end the world. There have been some major rev­e­la­tions, which I will not spoil, that are lin­ing up to make this sea­son the best one yet. If you have never watched Super­nat­ural, check you local list­ings, and  I urge you to get Sea­sons 1–4 on DVD and catch up.

I really hope in read­ing this that you are old enough to remem­ber the orig­i­nal “V” minis­eries and Fri­day night TV show that aired in the mid-80’s because it is prob­a­bly the only way you would watch the new show that debuted tonight on ABC. Alien vis­i­ta­tion has been done to death in the years that have passed since the red-suited vis­i­tors first came to Earth and new­com­ers might ask “why should I watch this show?” The answer is sim­ple: Aliens on Earth have never been done quite like this and V was a great show. I have high hopes for ABC’s newest series to carry the torch that was lit back in my childhood.

The cast of V and the Vis­i­tor mothership

Can you tell who is human in this photo? If you have seen the pre­views then you know that Morena Bac­carin (3rd from right) most def­i­nitely is not. She in fact is Anna, who back in the 80s would have been called Diana, the leader of the Vis­i­tors (actu­ally Diana was not supreme leader like Anna is but she was still the “face” of her peo­ple). The big sur­prise in tonight’s opener is that some­one else in the shot is not human and I was very sur­prised by that reveal. The show is def­i­nitely off to a good start using both mate­r­ial from the orig­i­nal show and putting a 2009 spin on things. The show opens to three ques­tions: Where were you when JFK was assas­si­nated? Where were you on 9/11? Where were you this morn­ing? Some­thing big is def­i­nitely com­ing. Anna has that beau­ti­ful smil­ing face and she is ALWAYS smil­ing. This show is gonna get ugly. Diana was never any­where near this nice — and that makes Anna that much more ter­ri­fy­ing. As in any soci­ety, not every­one shares the same views; not every vis­i­tor is an enemy and not every human is a friend.

Whose side are you on?

I for one can­not wait to find out. This is a show that should not be missed.

In the begin­ning, there was calm after a ter­ri­ble storm, “Hey Monarch, I’m tak­ing your car.” Sud­denly, there is only mad­ness and con­fu­sion. Wel­come to sea­son 4 of the acclaimed Ven­ture Bros. series on Adult Swim. On many a show you have seen a 2 minute clip show­ing you what you can expect from the sea­son. Jack­son Pub­lick gives you an entire episode full of scenes span­ning the sea­son. I was treated to a con­fus­ing blur of tits, Hitler, ille­gal surgery, man-tits, reunions, farewells, nazis, poop, sky­div­ing and big­foot. The best part is that I did not make up any­thing in that last sen­tence. Sea­son 3 of the show was sheer great­ness and this new sea­son is look­ing to take it sev­eral notches higher. Peo­ple, get ready.