Topic: Rate the last TV show you've seen

[ThePerm]

For all those that have no idea what going on with the whole Tonite Show on NBC thing

In 2004 Jay Leno and NBC agreed to pass on The Tonite Show to Conan in 5 years just as Johnny Carson has passed it on to Jay Leno 17 years ago.

>>>>>>>>>>>fast forward to last year

Jay Leno passes the torch to Conan, but now decides he isn't ready to retire and would like The Tonite Show back. Jay pressures NBC into getting him a 10pm show so he wouldn't go to a different network and compete with Conan. 10pm show is a ratings disaster killing Conan's all important lead in which in turn lowers Conan's start up ratings. Not to mention that Jay was trying his hardest to book all the big guest before they could show up with Conan, and you can already see was going on here.

Now you can catch up with everything you missed right here:
http://gawker.tv/5448615/the-late-night-war-reaches-its-boiling-point-all-the-clips-you-missed

+2 respect for Jimmy Kimmel with his appearance on 10 @ 10 on the Jay Leno Show.

edit: Howard Stern also has a good outlook on what Jay was doing.

also how many people watched Leno just because it was before Conan? Im betting some percentage of extra Leno ratings were people who just couldn't stay up! Leno and Bret Favre should have show together.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Lost Tapes (no The Animal Planet)

Oh My, how intense. This show had more suspense and horror than most of the horror movies I've been forcing myself to watch from Netflix over the last year or so. Supposedly real stories and supposedly real footage mixed in with their re-creation using actors, scientific and historical backgrounding have had me watching the last few episodes with a slightly elevated heart rate. Very unexpected.

just the 2 eps I've seen so far - 8/10

[D_Average]

Jersey Shore - 5/5
Mindless "we're the sh## " debauchery at its finest.

[UltimatePartyBear]

Doctor Who: The End of Time. GOODBYE DAVID TENNANT.

His final line pretty much summed up how i felt at the end of it: I don't want to go!

Matt Smith has massive boots to fill.

Certain people around here ought to like the Timothy Dalton action, too.  They should have switched those parts so Dalton would be the next Doctor, actually.

Absolutely. But hey, its Matt Smith now. I don't mind him. I'm more excited that Steven Moffat is taking over as headwriter and executive producer because even though he wrote, at most, 2 episodes a year his ones were always the best ones by MILES. Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead are two of the greatest episodes science fiction has ever seen.

I'm not convinced.  Moffat's preference for the horror side of Who might get pretty old if stretched past more than two episodes a year.  On the other hand, if he can write a season without yet another way of bringing back the Cybermen or Daleks, more power to him.

[Caliban]

Big Bang Theory 1/5 - Predictable.

I tried that show for a few weeks but always came away underwhelmed. I know people think the girl is super hot, but I don't see the big deal. The tall geek is mean-spirited, too. I would argue that Better Off Ted is just as geeky but much funnier and more likable.

I recommend "The IT Crowd".

[NWR_insanolord]

Big Bang Theory 1/5 - Predictable.

I tried that show for a few weeks but always came away underwhelmed. I know people think the girl is super hot, but I don't see the big deal. The tall geek is mean-spirited, too. I would argue that Better Off Ted is just as geeky but much funnier and more likable.

I recommend "The IT Crowd".

That reminds me, I put that on my Netflix Instant Queue because someone, probably in this very thread, mentioned it. I should watch it some time.

[broodwars]

Lost (Seasons 1-5): *Dons Flame-retardant armor*  Well, I just finished Season 5 of Lost, the show that apparently everyone loves but me and for the life of me I can't understand why.  This show is one giant tease (to use a forum-friendly term) that in the end was obviously scripted by the writers throwing darts at a board and using an endless barrage of flashbacks, flash-forwards, and (to use a Funny Farm term) even in places seemingly flashing sideways to just drag the series on for as goddamn long as humanly possible.  For the first two seasons, at least half of every episode was spent covering the characters before they reached the island, as if that was something I ever cared about.  Then we finally seemed to gain something approaching momentum in season 3 only to see the show jump into one of the most ridiculous Deus Ex Machina plot points I've ever seen.  Once again, the dart board...

Writer A: "Ok, we need to find a way to explain all these freaky things on the island.  Ok, steady hand...*

*thwack*

Writer B: "BRILLIANT!  THE ENTIRE ISLAND IS A GIANT TIME MACHINE!  OF COURSE!

Then we spend the next two seasons repeating the oh-so-cute Pulp Fiction-style nonlinear storytelling, glacial pacing, predictable plot points, and unlikeable characters.  Joy.  It's especially fun knowing that at any moment one of the writers could just get bored and pull out the dartboard again.  The worst thing about it all, though, is that there is a genuinely interesting story hidden somewhere in here, one that would be infinitely more enjoyable if they just stopped trying to be cute with all the time-wasting flashbacks and whatnot and just told a straight-up story.  The episodes in themselves are perfectly enjoyable when taken as individual stories, but the moment you try to put them all together the show just falls apart.

Sadly, I've already wasted so many hours of my life on this series, yet ABC will probably have many more of them in a few weeks when Season 6 starts up...if only to watch and see how they can possibly resolve this train wreck without using the big "Reset the World!" button they've already hinted at a few times now.

3/10

[BlackNMild2k1]

"The worst thing about it all, though, is that there is a genuinely interesting story hidden somewhere in here"
"Sadly, I've already wasted so many hours of my life on this series, yet ABC will probably have many more of them in a few weeks when Season 6 starts up...if only to watch and see how they can possibly resolve this train wreck without using the big "Reset the World!" button they've already hinted at a few times now."

^Thats how I feel about it too.
Time invested + curiosity on how they actually wrap the whole story up and make it seem like they weren't just making it up as they go along = me sticking around till the very end.

[Halbred]

Yeah. I feel like the show only started getting good during the last two seasons, when the island itself was the focus. Still, a LOT of stuff doesn't make sense. This last season has a LOT to answer for.

[oohhboy]

"The worst thing about it all, though, is that there is a genuinely interesting story hidden somewhere in here"

It's an illusion. Like a mirage in a desert. What you're doing is the equivalent of drinking sea water because you are thirsty. Go watch a show that actually satisfy you and you won't go back to watching garbage. Go play some games or something.

[ThePerm]

lol the plotline of Lost is pretty easy to get

[BlackNMild2k1]

Spartacus: Blood and Sand <--Trailer [NSFW]

It's basically 300 meets Gladiator and from what I'm told also Rome.
It's like the the moves of Brad Pitt in Troy in the arena of Gladiator with the action and style of 300. Slow motion action shots, highlighted blood on a muted brown tone look with glowing outline. It actually reminds me a lot of the look from High Voltages Gladiator A.D. and if this show becomes a hit of any kind, they should try to do some sort of cross promotion since visually they are very similar.

Did I mention lots of gratuitous sex, nudity and violence? It's also produced by Sam Raimi and has Lucy Lawless(Xena: Warrior Princess) in it? So far I'm pretty into it. 4/5 stars

It premiers tonite on Starz in you get that channel, but it's already up on Netflix (like everything that comes on Starz) if you want to check it out early:
Spartacus: Blood and Sand <--Netflix Instant Watch

or you can check it out on Starz.com
Spartacus: Blood and Sand <--Starz.com

[Halbred]

Considering it. I used to be in love with Lucy Lawless, so I might check this out just for her.

[NWR_insanolord]

The only thing I've ever seen Lucy Lawless in was Battlestar Galactica, but I really liked her in that, and I have Netflix, so maybe I'll check it out.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Lucy Lawless has a sex scene.
It's not in the first episode, but I hear the first 3 eps have been leaked online.

[BranDonk Kong]

That would have been awesome 15 years ago. She has had a lot of work done, so she looks decent...but still. Meh.

[broodwars]

My Sophomore English teacher in high school looked like Lucy Lawless' twin sister.  The resemblance was uncanny.

It's an illusion. Like a mirage in a desert. What you're doing is the equivalent of drinking sea water because you are thirsty. Go watch a show that actually satisfy you and you won't go back to watching garbage. Go play some games or something.

The thing is, aside from a couple animated series that are still in production and won't be out for a while (like Clone Wars, which seems to air at really random times; Wolverine & the X-Men; and Iron Man: Armored Adventures), there really isn't anything else on TV right now I'd otherwise be watching.  I stopped watching 24 after Season 5 (and I'm amazed I lasted that long with such a monumentally stupid show) and Heroes after 2 1/2 seasons (ditto).  Warehouse 13's second season won't be out until Summer, so that just basically leaves Caprica to fill in the gap.  Besides, I do want to see how Lost tries to wrap itself up, even (maybe especially) if it leads to a spectacular collapse of Battlestar Galactica proportions.

On a side note, I've started watching the 2006 Fantastic Four animated series.  I'm only a few episodes in so I'm not ready to pass judgment on it yet, but so far it's spectacularly average (and, unfortunately, dubbed in Canada so there are some very familiar voice actors on this show I recognize from past Gundam projects).

[ShyGuy]

Lost is awseome. Please modify your posts. That is all.

[Halbred]

Last episode of Conan:

Awesome. The man is a class act.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Brood, you're into Warehouse 13 and I've never watched that, but maybe you should check out Eureka. I think it comes on right after that (when they're both on the air) but you have some catching up to do before the new season starts.

[broodwars]

Brood, you're into Warehouse 13 and I've never watched that, but maybe you should check out Eureka. I think it comes on right after that (when they're both on the air) but you have some catching up to do before the new season starts.

I've heard good things about Eureka, so I'll look into it.  Warehouse 13 is just goofy Sci-Fi fun, with a neat historical twist (like X-Files meets Indiana Jones National Treasure)...a bit of guilty pleasure, but with some stellar casting.

*looks up Eureka*

Hmm...sounds like Twin Peaks.

[Plugabugz]

Yeah. I feel like the show only started getting good during the last two seasons, when the island itself was the focus. Still, a LOT of stuff doesn't make sense. This last season has a LOT to answer for.

Lost fell victim to (what i consider to be) the biggest problem concerning American TV: TOO MANY EPISODES! Look at how tight Doctor Who has been at 13 episodes a season (and even then that's quite long). Primeval's third (and final-for-now) season was 10. Paradox was only 6.

Inevitably writers may have a story plan but with too many episode orders to do there's just going to be junk to fill out empty episode spaces. That's why we got stuff explaining why Jack got his tattoos. This same problem usually falls across every show in which it has 15+ episodes. Stargate has this problem, Sanctuary will (now it's extended to 20), House has it, the CSI trilogy definitely has it, Heroes suffers badly from it and so on.

[BlackNMild2k1]

That's kinda why I like how USA is handling some of their shows, like Burn Notice, and Eureka (SyFy is owned by USA Network i think). Half Seasons. 13+ episodes split into 2 story arcs.

[NWR_insanolord]

Battlestar Galactica did that, too. The second, third, and fourth seasons were each 20 episodes, but they split them in half. It was annoying, though, that it made a show that ran for 4 seasons go on for 6 years, and many would argue that the show still suffered from those problems.

[BlackNMild2k1]

USA does it differently though.

1st half season runs it's arc and then takes a 3 month break, then it comes back for the second half of the season and runs it's second arc then takes a 3 month break before the new season starts and the cycle continues.

I kinda like it because you don't go without your favorite shows for too long and they also don't have to force in some filler episodes to flesh out the series longer.