The TV MegaSite's Blog Post #123

• 5/11

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We watched our usual shows, "Mad Men", "Family Guy", "The Mentalist" and "Once Upon a Time". Mad Men was the best episode all season so far. It was great to see the end, especially with Don. We could have done without the threesome scene, however. It was boring, so we just fast-forwarded through it. "Family Guy" was not very funny. The only good part was Cleveland's return at the very beginning. I enjoyed the other two as usual! "Once Upon a Time" was a great season finale. I was so glad to see Neal back, even if only briefly. The ending was sad, though. I really loved Emma going by "Princess Leia", though!! LOL!!

I stayed up late working on the site's weekly Primetime news schedule and also doing all of our appearances.   This week's Primetime News and Schedule is at this link and next week's will be at this link.

I'm seriously considering posting the blogs on Thursday or Friday instead of Sunday because the weekend is way too busy for me. So this will be a short blog for a change.

• 5/12

I got up a bit late today, so I posted our soap scoops newsletters a little late...oh, well!

Tonight I watched "Bones" and "Castle". I enjoyed both. Castle was kind of weird because it was a jokey episode all the way through, and then the end was shocking and sad! I'm glad it wasn't the season finale as I had first thought. Whew! It was awesome seeing Eddie McClintock in his guest-starring role. He always fabulous.

Catching up still on "General Hospital" whenever I get the chance... I finally made it to the Nurse's Ball episodes! I think I'm going to record those on DVD to keep. I have most of the older ones already on DVD.

I might have to try to go to bed a little early so I can get up in time for some calls tomorrow.

• 5/13

Don't forget to check out our Primetime Forum - Danielle and I post lots of stuff in there, every day.

I have 3 interview calls early this morning... one at 6 am, one at 7:30 am and one at 8! Whew.

They all went well. It was very cool to speak to the president of ABC. I was half asleep and didn't realize quite who he was, otherwise I might have asked him whether fans should give up on hoping that "All My Children" and "One Life to Live" might return some day. He may not have liked that question, though, since the call was ostensibly about the new Fall season. Instead I asked him about the new show "Galavant" which sounds really great. It's a half hour musical comedy set in a fairy-tale like land. The music is done by Alan Menken, who's done so many great Disney musicals. It's written by Dan Fogelman, who's written lots of movies, plus the TV show "The Neighbors", which I liked, (but it was just canceled after 2 years). The trailer makes it look really funny.

The second call was with Matthew Rhys, who stars in "The Americans" on FX. He was also in "Brothers & Sisters". I love both shows, and he was great in both.I didn't realize until I heard him on the phone that he's Welsh and has a really thick accent! That was weird to hear.  You can't hear his accent at all on his two TV shows. Then the last call was with Roseanne Barr and the producer of the NBC show "Last Comic Standing". They were very funny ladies to listen to. Roseanne is going to be a judge on the show. It sounds very funny, so I might have to check it out, even though I don't normally watch anything that's not fiction.

I watched some of the episodes of "The Americans" that FX sent me to watch. Such a great show! It's very intense, though...not something you can just watch casually. I'm very behind again and have a pile of DVD's to watch that were sent to me to review (not even counting the 2 huge piles of shows on DVD I recorded to watch).

I'm about a week behind on "General Hospital", but I see bits and pieces of it while I run the transcripts for our site. This Nurse's Ball seems very long. Do they really have to have every single person sing at least twice? Yikes. I think I liked it better in the earlier days when it was just a few days. One of these days I do need to go back and watch last year's Nurse's Ball.

Tonight I watched "NCIS", which was pretty good. The parts with Gibbs were great as usual. It was a fitting tribute to Ralph Waite and his character. It was so great to see Billy Dee Williams back at the end!!

I also watched "Supernatural". Oh, no, Dean has gone over the edge! Poor Gadreel. Always a fabulous show. I can't wait to see what happens next week.

I'm still catching up on work emails. I still have about 1400 to go through, but probably most of them are ones I'll delete because they're too old now.

Tomorrow morning I have a call with Harry Connick, Jr. (American Idol) and Claire Coffee (Grimm). That will be awesome! We used to go over to a friend's house every Friday night, and he used to play a lot of Harry Connick, Jr. records. I remember when he was on "Will & Grace", too. He's so gorgeous and sings so well.  Claire Coffee was on "General Hospital" for a while as Nadine, and now she's on this great scifi show...

• 5/14

My two calls this morning went great. Harry Connick Jr. is just very enthusiastic and likes to talk. He has a lot of energy and clearly loves "American Idol" and his role in it. Claire Coffee was joined by Sasha Roiz in the chat. I didn't know what to ask because I'm very far behind in watching the show, but I think it went okay.

A friend called me a "TV Maven". I guess that's apt. I think I prefer "TV Expert", though. Or TV Critic.

It was great to see Dichen Lachman in "The 100"! She's always interesting. This show seems like it's trying to be "Battlestar Galactica" sometimes, but I do enjoy it nonetheless. It always surprises me.

"Law & Order: SVU" was particularly creepy, but it had great guest stars. I look forward to next week.

I thought "Hot in Cleveland" was very cute. But only on a silly sitcom could someone look like Valerie Bertinelli even after supposedly having radiation treatments for a brain tumor. LOL!

I'm still trying to get through all of the emails...

• 5/15

Watching some "Bold & The Beautiful" today. I have to admit that Hope getting a "pregnancy scare" was a good plot device, and also a rarity on soaps (usually it's not a "scare"). However, some additional dialogue, to make things more realistic, would have been nice. Like, for instance, when Hope found out she wasn't pregnant, she should have worried that there was something else wrong and gone to see her doctor to make sure she was okay.  Also, when she was talking to Brooke, Brooke could have said, "Honey, why did you think you were pregnant? Didn't you use protection when you had sex?"  And Hope could have replied, "Well, Mom, you know that The Pill isn't 100% effective" or something like that. They also missed an opportunity there to give young women information about birth control as well as sexually transmitted diseases etc.  I'm not saying they need to lecture us every time, but this dialogue was only focused on what it meant for Hope's relationships or future and nothing at all about her health or responsibilities of being sexual active. Boo!  If Hope were ignorant trailer trash like Amber, then it would have made more sense, but Hope is well-educated and comes from a rich family. Not only that, but she has a very sexual mom who would have made sure that Hope learned about this stuff.  At least Liam did snark briefly to Bill that he should talk to Wyatt about birth control.

Huh, apparently the May 9th episode of "Unforgettable" was the season finale.  Even more weird is that the show returns for its third season June 29. CBS is acting like cable now :)

"The Big Bang Theory" was the only new show I watched tonight... it was good. Sad at the end but otherwise very funny. I'm glad they got Stuart a better job! LOL! I wonder if they'll bring the comic book store back or not.  I do always gripe about BBT because it's completely unrealistic, especially when it comes to university stuff.  Since it's a sitcom, I guess it's supposed to be more silly and fantasy than real.  In this episode, Sheldon was told by the college president and the faculty senate that he couldn't change his specialty from string theory to the other thing he decided on (can't remember what it was, something to do with cosmology).  That would never happen. Now, as far as the GRANT he got, which they did mention, the people who gave him the grant may have a problem with that, depending on the terms of the grant.  But the people at the university don't care what you study as long as it's still in your same basic field. It's not like he decided that he wanted to become a history professor or something. As long as he was still teaching and researching, I really doubt they would care.  However...when you do your training for your field in graduate school, that's usually what you study, and no one would take you seriously if you just decided to try another field later in your career. This is what gets me annoyed because they make it sound like Sheldon is this big shot genius yet he's an untenured associate professor. Makes very little sense. But anyway, if he did all of his graduate school study and previous work in string theory, I don't know that it's very likely that he would just change to another sub field so drastically like that. Or rather, he might branch out into that but he would have to do a lot of work to catch up on what's going on in that field already and do some publishing in that field before anyone took him seriously.  For instance, if you're an English professor who specializes in Elizabethan poetry, they might not care if you started studying 20th century poetry. But if you decide to switch to, say, American novels of the early 19th century (something very different, in other words), then it might not work... they would say, you're an expert on Elizabethan poetry, why are you trying to publish this book on American novels of the early 19th century? I'm pretty sure it's that way in Physics, too.

Don't even get me started, though, that somehow Sheldon, Leonard, and Raj are somehow all researchers at the university, but teaching is never mentioned...that's, of course, ridiculous, and especially for Raj, who, until recently, couldn't speak to women without drinking first. That's a whole other level of ridiculousness. Universities don't just have scientists who just do research. They're professors -they teach! Also, Sheldon just took a sabbatical and left, with no mention of whether he was in the middle of the semester or not. If they're going by real time, Caltech's Spring semester doesn't end until June 13!  They've said in the past that Sheldon is an untenured associate professor, so he's basically just quit his job.  Even a tenured full professor, though, has to teach his class and keep his office hours, so he can't just vanish mid-semester. Ah, well.

Have a great week!  Please do check out our all of our new content on our site!

The TV MegaSite's Blog Post #122

• May 4th

 May the 4th be with you!

We watched "Mad Men", which has been our habit now for many years. I think my husband, David, is getting tired of it because they don't show the 60's stuff as much any more, and the plot is not as good as it was. It's not fun watching Don have to swallow his pride just to work at his job. I still enjoy the show, though, so I'll keep watching it even if David doesn't. Although I love Jon Hamm, my favorite character is Roger, who's always funny. I have to say that when the dialogue is funny, that's my favorite thing about the show.

Then we watched "The Simpsons", which was a very odd Lego episode. We don't have kids and haven't seen any of the Lego movies, so it was a bit odd to us, but parts of it were funny.

We lastly watched "Family Guy", which had many good jokes. It seems like all three of these shows had creepy or icky father-centered storylines. Did they think it was Father's Day next weekend instead of Mother's Day???

Then I watched "The Mentalist", which I always love. I'm glad they're finally moving toward a Jane-Lisbon union. It was awesome to see Jonathan LaPaglia again, even if he was playing a bad guy. I loved him in the scifi show "Seven Days" (98-01). He still looks great!

Now I'm happy to be watching "Once Upon a Time"- love it! It was really great, and I can't wait until next week's season finale!

I've been watching some older episodes of "The Young & The Restless" on DVD... catching up on the episodes from February now.

• May 5th

Wow, lots of interviews coming up. This is what I have scheduled so far:
May 7 David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel (Bones on FOX)
May 9 Oliver Platt (Fargo on FX)
May 9 Writers/producers of the new show "Gang Related" (on FOX)
May 12 FOX executives announcing the Fall schedule
May 13 ABC executives announcing the Fall schedule
May 13 Matthew Rhys (The Americans on FX)
May 13 Roseanne Barr (Last Comic Standing on NBC)
May 14 Claire Coffee (Grimm on NBC)
May 19 Heidi Klum and Nick Cannon (America's Got Talent on NBC)
May 21 Allison Tolman (Fargo on FX)

There'll probably be more, too!

I'm putting up our latest interviews...  Check 'em out! While I did that, I watched some of the early April episodes of "The Bold & the Beautiful". Not my favorite show, but I like the actors a lot...

I did a lot of work on the site, including putting up 3 more reviews of new shows by Sundi. 

• May 6

I don't know why the people in charge of making the actors look good think that we want to see guys with short hair or that they should pull the hair way back on either men or women. I know they want us to see their expressions, but most people do not look good with their hair pulled back. With men it makes them look like their hair is receding. With women it looks ugly. Both should wear bangs or at least have the hair forward a little bit. Foreheads are just not attractive. Shaved heads or very close-cropped hair is also not attractive. I watched part of "Magic Mike" and I don't think that Channing Tatum is all that handsome... I don't like his short hair. Look, if you have kind of boring or plain features, having close-cropped hair makes you look way more so. If you have very broad or protruding features, than having short hair just emphasizes those. I was noticing this on the soaps. Why do they always show Jacob Young and Darin Brooks and Tyler Christopher with their hair pulled back? They have looked way better in the past with their hair combed forward. It just makes them look older and less attrative the other way. Why do they have Stich on Y&R and Shawn and TJ on "General Hospital" with such close-cropped hair? They are not attractive this way. I know Stitch is supposed to be a former military guy, but he's very bland looking so he needs more hair.  Same with Shawn, he's not very handsome and needs more hair.  TJ is cute but needs longer hair as well. And then with women, same thing, they need to quite pulling their hair back and showing so much of their foreheads.  What is wrong with these stylists, anyway???

I'm having a hard time getting motivated today, so I've just been reading a few emails and not much else! Before dinner, I did a little bit of work.

After dinner, I watched "NCIS", which is usually great. That spy story was a bit convoluted, but it's always fun to see Tony in action. That little part at the end with Jimmy was awesome, too! Then came "Supernatural", one of my very favorite shows. I love all of the characters!!  Now I'm catching up on some GH so I can delete it and make more room.

I do enjoy watching GH, but most of the time the writing is like a cartoon, not like a good drama. This is why so many fans are disatisfied with the show. Sure, it's a really good, fun cartoon, but it's NOT a good drama. It's a really weak drama, written for children or very stupid adults.  Speaking of GH, why do they continue to think that we want to see good looking, likable people who are evil killers? We put up with this for years when Bob Guza was writing the show, but it doesn't mean that's what we like or want to see. Sure, we loved Sonny and Jason, DESPITE their flaws, not because of them. I really love the actors who play Sonny, Ava, Julian, and Franco, and Shawn is okay, but they're all merciless killers!  At least, Sonny rarely used to kill anyone, and it was usually bad guys. Having him kill A.J. was stupid. I'm very glad to have them reform Franco, but why make Julian and Ava killers from practically the first moment we saw them? How can we pull for Julian to reunite with Alexis, Sam or Lucas when he's, you know, evil?  It just doesn't work even though I really love the actor who plays him.  Same with Ava. The actress makes you feel bad for her, and root for her love with Morgan, but she's a killer. Then, she cheated on Morgan with his own father. How could she possibly be redeemed?  Same with Carlos. He's great with Sabrina, but...he's obviously a killer and a very bad guy, too.

Now, as far as Luke, I think it's great that they've given Tony Geary so much to do, and he's clearly enjoying being a real bad bad evil villain... but trust me when I say, it better not really be Luke. It better be someone wearing a Luke mask. Or someone controlling Luke's brain (is it Stefano from "Days of Our Lives"?).  Either way, it's silly and cartoonish. I love the actors and their characters, but they deserve real writing, not this silly, mindless fluff.  We want realistic, 3-dimensional people, not cartoon villains. I admit I do enjoy seeing Sean Kanan yell at Sonny as Sonny's conscience, masquerading as A.J....

I'm still trying to go through my thousands of emails! Luckily our volunteer Danielle has returned to us to run the Primetime Forum, so I have a little time to catch up now...

Jenn, who has been writing our GH updates for a long time, especially on Mondays, is now going to be writing them five days a week. Christine will be gone for about a month or so, but when she returns, she will do probably 2 days a week. But make sure to check them out!

Looks like we might be getting a new Bold & Beautiful update writer, too, so let's hope that works out... we're always glad to have good writers and reliable volunteers.

Speaking of updates, our volunteer Joseph has done a great job over the years with writing "Days of Our Lives" updates every single weekday, consistantly, reliably and well!  Yay!!

• May 7

"Hot in Cleveland" was great like usual...that adorable dog was the best part of it, though!

I always love "Law & Order: SVU", and it had great guest stars and good story, but this kind of episode just makes me want to take a shower. The main good part was seeing that Nick and Amanda are together!

"CSI" was great - love that "Stand By Me" opening! It's always fabulous to see Treat Williams. I wish they would give him another network show to star in. He's always fantastic.  Older but still gorgeous and such a super actor.

"The 100" was exciting and gripping as usual. I'm really starting to love that show.

Now I'm watching some DVD's from February with episodes of Y&R.  It's great to see Tristan Rogers again!

• May 8

I'm glad to hear that The CW renewed "The 100" and "Beauty and the Beast", and they're going ahead with the Flash ("Arrow" spin-off). Sad about "The Tomorrow People" and "Star-Crossed" getting canceled, though. Not surprised. I think they both could have been done better. I think "Tomorrow People" was a bit too convoluted, and the guy who plays the star looks more like a villain than a hero, among other things. From what I read, a lot of people hated Peyton List's character.  As far as "Star-Crossed", I think the premise was too stupid for people to get past. If they had made the aliens more alien-looking, then it would have made way more sense. Just looking like humans with tattoos would not be enough to make people treat them so badly. Hmm, we'll have 3 new superhero shows to watch (at least) this coming Fall, with Flash, "Gotham" and the new "Heroes". Wow!

We're watching an old episode of "South Park" from 2010 that we somehow missed the first time around...it's about KFC and medicinal marijuana. Hilarious! They're not usually so funny anymore, unfortunately.

I was just reading an article about the actors who play Will and Sonny on "Days of Our Lives", and they mentioned eating candy that fans send to them. I'm really surprised. I would never eat anything fans sent to me if I was a celebrity. How do they know it's not poisoned or laced with drugs? There are some crazy people out there.

I watched some shows to prepare for my phone call interviews tomorrow morning. I tried watching the pilot for this new show "Gang Related" on FOX that starts airing May 22, but I couldn't get through one episode. That's how awful it was. Not only is it completely predictable and unrealistic, but it's very violent and has a lot of torture. UGH.

• May 9

The calls went very well! First I spoke with Oliver Platt, who seemed very nice. He was kind of hard to listen to, though, because he stutters or hems and haws a lot. Maybe he just wasn't awake yet, I don't know! He's a great actor, though, so we'll forgive him. :) I got to ask him 2 questions, so that was awesome. My second call was with Mary Lynn Rasjkub of "24", and she was really nice, very normal and down-to-earth. She took great care at answering the questions and worrying about whether she was being accurate or not. She even shared a great tidbit from "The Larry Sanders Show", so that was neat!  Then the third call was with the "Gang Related" guys. I got in pretty early with my question, and then I hung up because I just had to get breakfast! :)

On B&B, I'm glad that with all of Hope's "pregnancy scare" that Brooke finally chided her about being more careful when using birth control... stupid that no one else even mentioned it. How does a smart, educated young women of today sleep with two guys and not use birth control? Same with Steffy when she got pregnant... UGH.

• So many announcements this week about shows. I'm disappointed that NBC is canceling "Revolution" and that ABC is canceling "The Neighbors". Still waiting to hear about "The Mentalist" and "Nashville"! I'm very grateful that most of my favorite shows have been renewed so far.

Right now I'm watching one of my favorite shows, "Unforgettable". I hope it gets renewed for next year. My only quibble is, why were they having Carrie's high school reunion, but they said she graduated in 93. So why is she going to her 21-year high school reunion? I wonder if they filmed it the previous year but then didn't air it for some reason. I have to admit that, someone getting murdered at their high school reunion has been done many times, so it's almost a cliche at this point. They really should have edited it to make it 94...

• May 10

We heard that "Nashville" was renewed, so yay!!

I was very busy today and didn't get to watch much TV. However, I did go to this fund-raising event and met a TV star, Jim Nabors!  He lives here in Honolulu. It was great meeting him. Here's the photo I took...

At the end of my perfect day, I was very excited to learn that "The Mentalist" was renewed! Woo hoo!! That makes me very happy. It's a shame they canceled "Friends with Better Lives" because I thought it was pretty funny. Oh, well, you can't have everything.

If you loved the show "All My Children" then please do check out Patti's AMC Fan Fiction because she does a great job.

I'm posting this Sunday night - I hope everyone had a nice Mother's Day!