my Mondays - Fall 2007

the REAL start of the Fall 2007 TV season has arrived, and thankfully it's a bang and not a whimper (like last week's unofficial start).

Prison Break at 7pm
Heroes at 8
Journeyman at 9

this will be my Monday nights for the next few months (barring any cancellations). funny enough, that just so happens to be my level of excitement for each show after this week - starting with luke-warm (Prison Break) and ending with HOLY SHIT (Journeyman).

- Prison Break -

after last week's shaky start that seemed to be both a restart to the series and a rehashing of the first season (he's back in prison after all), things were much better this week. maybe i've just accepted the new digs, new cast, and new plot - i dunno. it just felt better.

i do feel that it's moving way too fast and that they'll run out of things to do by episode 10 of the season, but i've always felt that way while watching Prison Break and they manage to find something new (and sometimes surprising) to do.

however, this season might still be my last, as the next logical step after another prison break would be to go on the lamb again/take revenge on those that were controlling you - and that's basically what the second season did. so it would be another rehash.

verdict? i'll stick around, and i'm mildly excited about doing so.

- Heroes -

ah, the show i was probably looking forward to the most this fall has had its first episode of its sophomore season. what did i think? overall i liked it just about as much as normal, but here are some random notes:

- what disease spreading through the 'heroes' population was Suresh talking about at the start, and why was it just kinda thrown out there (he mentioned it right away, then later in the episode, but that was it - no explanation). bad writing for something that's probably going to be a major plot point this season.

- i am not going to like Claire having a boyfriend, especially him. he practically stalked her at school and knew all the right things to say (maybe just bad writing). AND he's got powers too? come on, what are the chances? unless he turns out to be evil or something, i'm not going to like this part of the story.

- REALLY didn't like how they pulled the "4 months later" crap. i wanted to see the immediate aftermath of Peter exploding, of them all coming together. hell, i was really wishing that, once together, more of them would decide to STAY together. as it is, it's going to be the same setup this season as last - everybody is spread across the globe trying to get to one place all at one time and they'll finally come together again in the end. REHASH. all that said, at least the cop, Suresh, and Claire's dad are still working together to bring down the company. THAT'S cool.

- didn't like the sloppy "explanatory" writing of the cop suddenly being divorced and living in NY with Suresh and Molly. and come on - isn't it a little creepy nowadays for a grown man like that to divorce his wife and then immediately turn to living with a little girl? it's just weird.

- don't like that they're already starting with killing off characters, albeit secondary ones. that's one of the ways shows like 24 and Prison Break went stale so fast.

- REALLY am not going to like Peter not knowing who he is. come on, memory loss? that's the best you've got?!? and yeah, maybe it'd be cool with the right story to go along with it, but to take a tale as stupid as guys using him as the ultimate weapon, constantly dangling the carrot of "don't you want to know who you really are?" in front of his face? PLAYED OUT. stall tactics at its worst.

it sounds like i really hated the show, but i didn't - honest. i really like Hiro in the past (and how it looks like he himself is going to be his own childhood hero - weird), Nathan the drunk (which is cool because it's a total 180 degrees for his character), Suresh, the cop, and Claire's dad infiltrating the company, hearing about "the nine" heroes of old (and what might be going on with them that one of their own is killing the others off), Molly's dream of the coming shadow, the 2 new brother and sister heroes, and the Bennet family trying to start over and lead a normal life.

i guess that's one theme i kinda liked that ran throughout - the heroes are trying to fit in again, to be normal. i like that Claire doesn't want to fit in anymore now that she knows who she is and who she ought to be.

even though i like the theme of them trying to lay low, i can't wait until the heroes come out and play again, when they stop trying to fit in... and maybe a bit of my disappointment comes from the fact that i thought this season we would see that - a formation of a team or something. i guess that would be moving too fast. oh well.

verdict? i'm hooked, just like last season.

- Journeyman -

i'm going to preface this by saying maybe i like this show a little more than i should simply for the fact that it's got time travel and an interesting web of characters. that said, the show really is basically Quantum Leap, but instead of never returning home, our hero goes home quite often - and he's got a wife and kid waiting for him.

this episode was all about setting up the backstory of the characters, and it did a good job while weaving in his first time travel experiences. what i liked is that they didn't try to explain the time travel itself at all... that would have been too much. he time travels, he comes to accept it - even embrace it at the end.

this episode got out of the way the whole "where have you been? are you on drugs? are you crazy? we're worried about you!" thing with his friends and family and after struggling with trying to convince his wife he's time traveling he finally figures out a way to do it. while it would have been cool for the hero to be estranged from his wife for longer than just an episode, i'm glad he's got at least someone on his side.

besides, the whole "dead/not dead fiance" thing throws enough possibilities in for estrangement from his wife for future episodes.

what do i think is limiting in this show that might lead to cancellation?

- why he's time traveling will have to eventually be revealed (based on a strange hint we were given this episode at least), and then there goes that mystery.

- while the web of characters is intricate, it's rather small. now Quantum Leap managed to pull it off with just Sam and Al, but there was no "web of characters" in that show. each episode was a new story. something tells me this show is going to dip into that tangled web of characters quite often - probably more often than it should - and not let each episode tell a story itself.

- Quantum Leap had the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s to play with, and each of those decades were VASTLY different from one another, leading to tons of rich stories. from what i can tell, it looks like this show won't be going any further back in time than the 70s, which is too bad since the 80s, 90s, and 00s are all rather similar when compared to the 50s-80s.

- Quantum Leap had Sam leaping all across the country. from what i can tell Journeyman will have the hero leaping back just in his home town of San Francisco, which will get old after a while.

until this show is canceled, they've got a fan in me. the pilot met and even exceeded my expectations.

verdict? i'm looking forward to this show just a little more than Heroes.

at least for this week. we'll see what next week brings.

tomorrow night: House and Law & Order SVU.

- kawitchate