The New Fall Season:2006

[inuvik]

rmiro13 said:

I'll probably check out "Ugly Betty." Originally, that was a Spanish show several years ago and it was very successful. I knew several people back in Miami who watched it regularly though I never did. I wonder how the English version will do.

I'll watch it too, but I must say I am a little ticked by it. Why is she ugly--because she has glasses and braces? Talk about reinforcing stereotypes. (I know, I should relax, it's just a TV show).

I e-mailed my local station to find out if they would be showing Monk again, and hooray! They actually answered, and on the next day too, and I will get the season 5 premiere (blindness!) on Sunday. They moved it into Everwood's old time slot--grrr--but I shouldn't rehash old wounds, I know.

[inuvik]

carl1951 said:

And, as true to form, no descriptive programing in the offering.

I'm sorry to hear this Carl. I keep forgetting about it, but you'd think more stations would do it. Closed captioning seems to be everywhere, but not DV. Maybe CC is cheaper?

[hoosier]

I did see Heroes and liked it. I was afraid it would be cartoonish, remember that show that had Courtney Cox and Dean Paul Martin ages ago about superheroes?, but its not. The characters are conflicted about their abilities, Claire hates being different but the Japanese guy loves it. And Claire's father? What is he up to???

Vanished I found boring. Could barely get through the first ep but I did like the actor playing the lead FBI agent. Ditto for Standoff though the pilot had that unexpected twist at the end. I did like Kidnapped but I'm afraid if I miss an ep I will be lost.

I stumbled across the pilot of Men in Trees and I did find it funny. Not Northen Exposure by a long shot but it was a decent enough little show. Didn't take a lot of brain effort,if you know what I mean. It was nice to see Jerry from ER. For those of you who haven't seen it, he owns the local watering hole and is filthy rich because he is the man who invented those moist towellettes.

I do want to see Nine. I think its to be on next week.

I had to watch the season premiere of Close to Home to see how they introduced David James Elliott of JAG. A real gung-ho NYC lawyer returning to his roots. Has big city ideas. His assistant clashes with just about everyone. They showed more of the city and really seemed to take just about every opportunity to emphasize that they were in Indianapolis, not LA or NY. The shots of the city were gorgeous though they seemed to show them walking by Monument Circle all the time they were outside! And I noticed that they still haven't fixed the state seal in the courtroom. That bothers me bigtime! Come on, its a buffalo people not some big bull!

Old favorites tuning into--NCIS,Prison Break, House,Bones,Lost, Criminal Minds (of course opposite Lost!) Cold Case, L&O,Criminal Intent (Eric Bogosian is the new captain) and Without a Trace.

I have only watched ER sporatically the last few years. I see that John Stamos is now a regular. He wanted that instead of Jake in Progress. I still can't forgive ABC for giving JIP a second chance and not BJ

[carl1951]

Thank you Inuvik. Maybe you're correct; CC is cheap(er).

Later, Carl

[bjobsessed]

Finally had the chance to see Jerhico last night. Not a bad show. Definitely a little different. Michael Gaston did a nice job, but if you weren't paying attention, you could easily miss him.

[Deleted]

I thought Ugly Betty was good, considering it's a rip-off of The Devil Wears Prada. As I mentioned in an earlier post, "Letitia" is on that show.

[inuvik]

I notice that tonight Heroes is on after Prison Break, and not Vanished. Could Vanished be our first victim of the new fall season?

[shmeep]

My parents left and I finally got caught up on all my shows over the weekend! I had some time to watch while they were here, but I guess you never notice how "offensive" television is until you're watching it with your fundamentalist mother. She didn't comment, but I kept finding myself growing uncomfortable and finally decided to just do most of my catching up after they were gone. One show we were able to watch and enjoy together was Ugly Betty. We loved it!

So now I'll go ahead and respond to a few things in this thread.

inuvik said:

I'll watch it too, but I must say I am a little ticked by it. Why is she ugly--because she has glasses and braces? Talk about reinforcing stereotypes. (I know, I should relax, it's just a TV show).

She's NOT ugly. That's the point and the charm of the show. She doesn't measure up to the standards of the fashion world (who does?) and may be a bit--well--dorkier than some, but she's really adorable. I love this show already and I'm glad a show with such a broad appeal has a minority lead.

carl1951 said:

Thank you Inuvik. Maybe you're correct; CC is cheap(er).

Later, Carl

CC is very likely not cheaper than descriptions (although I don't have any specifics on that). It requires far more work and more technology and the captions are still often wrong. I think the reason there are more captions than there are descriptions on television (not that I think it's right) is that there are more Deaf and hard-of-hearing people than there are blind people. Also, a lot of people who aren't Deaf prefer to watch with captions. Perhaps they're getting on in years and the hearing isn't as sharp as it was or there may be a show with rapid-fire dialogue (Studio 60) or something with a lot of accents. The television might be set up in a bar or other noisy environment where people like to be able to glance up and know what's going on. Whatever the case, there are far more uses for captions than there are for descriptions so that's my guess about why it is so much easier to find captioned shows. Really, this prevalence is fairly recent. I've been with my husband since 1998 and at that time, we never knew if something we wanted to watch would have captions or not. It's just been in the past three years or so that we've started to take for granted that nearly everything is captioned. We are still often surprised to find that something we want to watch isn't captioned and if it isn't, there's no point in him watching at all.

inuvik said:

I notice that tonight Heroes is on after Prison Break, and not Vanished. Could Vanished be our first victim of the new fall season?

From what I hear, this wouldn't be a bad thing. Is Heroes on the same network as Prison Break and Vanished where you live? Here, Heroes is on NBC and the other two are on FOX, but I have no idea how Canadian television works. Vanished is still on here, but I plan to switch over to Heroes at 9. Well, actually, I plan to tape Heroes and watch The Bachelor because my husband and I are dorks and never miss a season of "the most romantic Bachelor yet"--as they all are for some reason. Too much snark value to pass up.

[inuvik]

admin said:

From what I hear, this wouldn't be a bad thing. Is Heroes on the same network as Prison Break and Vanished where you live? Here, Heroes is on NBC and the other two are on FOX, but I have no idea how Canadian television works.

Yes, all 3 are on the same network. How Canadian networks work (with American shows) is whoever buys them can show them. In this case, Global is showing all three.

[Katryna]

I have been watching Jericho and puzzling over where I had seen the actress who plays Gracie (the woman who owns the grocery store) before. I resorted to IMDB to find that her name is Beth Grant. She played Captain Stiles' wife Donna in Bakersfield PD!

[hoosier]

kathy said:

I have been watching Jericho and puzzling over where I had seen the actress who plays Gracie (the woman who owns the grocery store) before. I resorted to IMDB to find that her name is Beth Grant. She played Captain Stiles' wife Donna in Bakersfield PD!

She could take part in the 6 degrees game ;D I remember her as one of the town women who had a glam makeover in the movie Too Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar, one of my favorite films.

[shmeep]

I caught the premiere of The Nine this week and it is fabulous! I've never seen anything like it. Here's a little recap from TWoP:

A bunch of people (nine, to be exact) are just going about their normal daily routines when they are involved in a bank robbery/hostage situation. The titular nine include bank tellers/sisters Franny and Eva. Eva is a single mom who is looking forward to getting a date with regular customer Nick, a second-generation loose-cannon cop with a gambling problem. Jeremy is a surgeon who is dating Lizzie, a hospital worker. She's pregnant with Jeremy's child, but hasn't told him yet. Kathryn is a hard-nosed lawyer who comes to the bank when her mother claims some jewelry was stolen from her safety deposit box. Egan Foote is a schlubby loser who wants a boat loan, but his wife won't approve, so he decides to kill himself. The group is rounded out by Malcolm, the bank manager, and Felicia, his teenaged daughter. We see the very beginning of the robbery, committed by two brothers, one of whom is ex-military. And then it flashes to the end, when the SWAT team crashes in. We learn a few things about what happened in the interim. A security guard was killed. Nick the cop hatched a plan to end the whole thing early on, and feels that the hostage negotiator screwed it up and prolonged the event. Jeremy did SOMETHING HORRIBLE that led to Lizzie's deciding she wanted him out of her life afterward. A hank of hair was cut from Kathryn's head. Eva was shot, and later died in surgery. And Egan the schlub did something heroic. In the aftermath, the nine try to keep in touch. Jeremy and Franny end up sleeping together at Eva's wake. Nick and Kathryn seem to have a special connection. One of the robbers is shot, but pulls through. The other one goes to jail. And Felicia claims to remember nothing about the whole ordeal. So why does the last scene of the episode show Felicia going to the jail to visit one of the robbers?

I can't believe they based the entire show on the aftermath of a hostage standoff. Kind of picking up where Inside Man left off...and getting to see Tim Daly on TV again every week is certainly no punishment. He's another who gets better with age. I'm dying to know where they're going with this. I love that we didn't get to see everything that happened during the standoff that bonded these people so tightly together but that it will be revealed in flashbacks bit by bit throughout the season. Very interesting device. I'm in.

[mlm828]

admin said:

I can't believe they based the entire show on the aftermath of a hostage standoff. . . . I'm dying to know where they're going with this. I love that we didn't get to see everything that happened during the standoff that bonded these people so tightly together but that it will be revealed in flashbacks bit by bit throughout the season. Very interesting device. I'm in.

Me, too. I watched The Nine, too, and liked it. I like the idea that we only have a few hints about what happened during the siege. I think the premise of following what happens to people after a traumatic event, and how they are affected by it, is absolutely fascinating. I was stuck by the way the former hostages only seem to be comfortable with each other, as if no one else can know or understand what they went through -- which is probably the case.

I'm not sure where they may be going with the bank manager's daughter visiting one of the robbers in jail. Possibly she really doesn't remember anything, and she visits the guy to try to jog her memory. Or she does remember, and she visits him for the purpose of confronting what happened. The point was made, earlier in the episode, that her father was not with her during the whole siege, which could be intended to lead us to believe something horrible happened to her. Or maybe she was in cahoots with the bank robbers somehow? I don't think this is the case, but I don't know enough to say at this point.

[hoosier]

admin said:

I caught the premiere of The Nine this week and it is fabulous!
I can't believe they based the entire show on the aftermath of a hostage standoff. Kind of picking up where Inside Man left off...and getting to see Tim Daly on TV again every week is certainly no punishment. He's another who gets better with age. I'm dying to know where they're going with this. I love that we didn't get to see everything that happened during the standoff that bonded these people so tightly together but that it will be revealed in flashbacks bit by bit throughout the season. Very interesting device. I'm in.

I was really looking forward to this show since the commercials made it seem exciting and intriguing and it did not disappoint. I especially liked how Egan chose to see the ordeal as a second chance at life and was going at it with gusto, much to his wife's annoyance. As to Felicia and the robber, I wondered if maybe he had saved her from something--his brother? He came to talk to her, he could have refused. And Nick and the FBI and how his reinstatement and promotion hinged on his keeping quiet about whatever went on during negotiations. A lot of little sidebars! It will certainly be interesting to see how it all works out.

[inuvik]

I just spent the worst hour of my TV life on Friday. One hour of my life truly, totally wasted! I was actually squirming from boredom, do you know the feeling? Claustrophobic, desperate--and yet I stuck with it in case it got better. Sadly, no such relief.

Friday Night Lights.