Desperate Housewives/Brothers & Sisters

I thought that the Desperate Housewives finale was quite good. It was a totally relief that Susan finally came to her senses and married Mike without all the bells and whistles. That whole “my wedding is bigger than yours” scenario was going nowhere. The Gabby/Mayor Whathisname marriage was doomed from the start, but it was fun seeing Mike Farrell in a role where he was a bit of a bastard.  And mark my words, Edie is not dead. She will be saved just in the nick of time by Mrs McCluskey or someone like that. I was a bit let down by the return of Bree, it wasn’t very exciting and the whole fake pregnancy thing was predictable. Why can’t Danielle just have a baby and people know about it?  It’s not that scandalous these days.  The whole Lynette thing was really well acted and I liked her mother. Tom’s still a major whiner.  It was a good way to wrap up a somewhat frustrating season with Bree gone for most of it.

 Brothers and Sisters was good. Rob Lowe just gets hotter and hotter. I can remember going to see St Elmo’s Fire at the movies when it came out and I was totally in love with him, and I’m in love with him all over again, even if he is playing a Republican Senator, and has a family of people who probably wouldn’t vote for him in a pink fit.  I think next season it will be revealed that Julia has post partum depression and they’ll all deal with that, and something will probably happen to Justin in Iraq. Maybe lose a limb?  I really liked it how they all ended up happy and in the pool, a nice book end to Tom Skerritt falling into the pool with a heart attack in the first episode.  Sally Field is one of the best actresses of all time – and I’m really happy she’s doing TV.

Jericho and Brian Cancelled

I’m disappointed. Jericho has been definitely cancelled and so has “What About Brian”.   “Brian” was totally dopey but entertaining and I liked watching it.  Apparently Barry Watson is going to be in a new show in the fall called “Sam I Am”.

And even though I said that Jericho was a bit boring – I still would like to see what happend!! Come on CBS!! I really hate it when shows I like get cancelled.

The big trend for the next TV season is going to be serialsed dramas with no breaks. So they are going to start Lost mid season and go through with no reruns until the end – which is a much better idea than all these reruns. I can’t stand it. In Australia  they pretty much have a new episode every week, unless it’s a holiday.  I couldn’t believe it when I came here that there would be up to a 5 week break between new episodes. Ridiculous.

I’m not going to speculate on what new shows I’ll be watching in the fall until I get the holy grail of information – the Entertainment Weekly fall TV guide edition. I love that. Mrs Names and I use it to plot our TV viewing and Tivoing for the first few weeks of th fall season, until we have weeded out what we do/don’t want to watch.

 I will be watching “On The Lot” which starts on Tuesday on Fox and “Pirate Master” on Friday on CBS. Both reality shows, On The Lot is for aspiring film makers and Carrie Fisher is going to be one of the judges, and Pirate Master is from Mark Burnett and is sort of a combination of Survivor and The Apprentice and 16 people sail around the Caribbean looking for Treasure . It has potential.

 I watched the ER season finale on Friday night.  I don’t think that Kovac is coming back from Serbia or wherever he’s from. I think that the phone call was that his wife is still alive or something like that and he chooses to stay there, leaving Abby and the baby back in Chicago. That was a definite “leaving forever” cab ride to the airport.  Stanley Tucci is fantastic as the new ER chief, and John Stamos is excellent every single week.  I can’t believe what a good actor he’s turned into.  I just love him in this role, and  he’s done a lot to bring ER back from the brink.

 Tonight: Bree returns to Desperate Housewives for the season finale and Brothers and Sisters will be sure to be a tear jerker.

We are approaching the best/worst month of the year

Yes, May sweeps. When all mysteries are solved. Things are revealed. In some cases storylines are wrapped up, but in other cases the season ends with a cliff hanger. I love that. Like when they blew open the hatch on Lost and we had to wait 3 months to find out what was down there.

Here’s a little summary of the things that I watch and when the season finale is.

Sunday 6 May.

This coming Sunday is the season finale of the Amazing Race All Stars.  The Beauty Queens, Dustin and Kandace (I never know which one is which), Charla and Mirna and Eric and Danielle are the final three.  I’m really hoping that Dustin and Kandace win, because they want it for all the right reasons – not just the $1 million, and they got totally ripped off with their 1st place in the Leg prizes, because it was stupid things like a canoe, or an ATV or a moped. Horrible.

 Wednesay May 9

 Jericho.  It’s limping to it’s conclusion and there is a cloud hanging over it. I’m not sure if it’s going to be back next season. CBS is promoting it with a death in the town.  I like this show, but I fall asleep in it nearly every week, so it can’t be that good. I never fall asleep during Grey’s Anatomy!!

 Thursday May 10

 My Name is Earl. Earl falls in love – awwwwwww. I love this show.  Although it hasn’t been as good lately because nothing is as good as the episode where “Cops” comes to Camden County. Funniest Earl ever.

Sunday May 13

 Survivor: Fiji.Three hour finale. Yay. I hope Yau Man wins the whole thing. He’s the only one that deserves it.

This Week In TV!

There were lots of good things on this week, and a couple of shows actually returned to the airwaves as new episodes, like Desperate Housewives,  and Brothers and Sisters, which is quickly becoming one of my favourite shows!  Grey’s was a clip show this week,which was infuriating, because I’ve really been missing it and I think that makes it 4 weeks now with no news Grey’s.  And I’m super mad at ABC, for dangling the carrot of Josh Charles in a two episode guest spot on Six Degrees. About 20 seconds after they showed “scenes from next week” and I got a glimpse of Josh, they gave the whole show the axe. Furious!!

Then of course of Tuesday and Wednesday we had American Idol, which is massively boring this season as the guys are all irritating and women are dull, but I’m still watching it anyway because I’m scared I’m going to miss out on something. Jericho is also on Wednesday and the Lost. I’m still loving it, and I think it’s been great that there is a new episode every week, so we can all follow along and not be totally confused. This last week, we had some more Juliet back-story and sort of found out what she was doing on the island and we also discovered that she’s playing games with Jack, and all is not what it seems. What a surprise!  The acting was strong and the story was good.  Only five more episodes until the season finale, and hopefully we’ll find out some more answers. Sawyer has been looking particularly hot in the last couple of episodes, and that’s been an added bonus.

As far as reality shows go, I’m watching Survivor and Amazing Race. Amazing Race is fantastic as always, there is never a dud season except for the family season.  Survivor just got interesting this week, when tribes had merged and alliances were fixed , they were broken up into two teams and then the losers of that challenge were the only ones to go to tribal council and Michelle was voted out, therefore messing up all the alliances.  Rumor has it that there will be another All Stars in season of Survivor in the fall. I always enjoy All Stars because you don’t have to waste any time getting to know the people. You can just jump straight in.

We are still watching Robin Hood on BBCAmerica  and The Riches on FX.  The Riches is Ok – it’s sort of slow, but entertaining and Robin Hood is great in a campy sort of way.

Oh, and My Name is Earl was back this week, but it was sort of disappointing. Nothing will ever be able to top the “Cops” eposide. Best ever!

TV Update

We are still getting over the disappointment that Studio 60 has been taken off (grrr NBC), and we watched the last 3 episodes  last week. They were good, and it looked like there might be a reconciliation between Matt and Harriet in the last 5 seconds. I guess we’ll never know, unless NBC kills off The Black Donnelley’s and brings back Studio 60.

 And talking about The Black Donelley’s, I just couldn’t be bothered to continue after episode two.  I just didn’t care anymore, and it was all filmed in the dark, which I find very irritating.  I have also given up on Six Feet Under. I had twenty episodes stored on the Tivo, and I started to watch on Saturday night and my mind was wandering (probably didn’t have anything to do with the margarita’s I had been sipping all afternoon with Mrs Names) and I realised that I didn’t cared about the Fishers anymore either. So I deleted them all. Gone. 20 hours of my life given back.

 Don’t worry, I still have plenty to watch. Marc and I have started to watch The Riches on FX , which is pretty good. We have only watched the first episode, and have two to catch up on, but we liked it. We are also watching Dirt on FX, and the season finale is tonight, it’s “The One Where Courteney and Jennifer Kiss”. Jennifer Aniston is going to play a rival tabloid editor to Courteney Cox’s Lucy Spiller and at the end they have a peck on the lips.

On Saturdays we are watching Robin Hood on BBCAmerica. It’s entertaining, and like most British shows, really well made. I think it’s aimed at a younger crowd than us, but amazingly people over 40 can still enjoy TV.

I watched the first episod of Dancing With the Stars last Monday, only to see if Heather Mills’ leg flew off. It didn’t.  If anything exciting happens on that show in the future, I’ll be able to catch it on YouTube.

I’m still watchingGilmore Girls, American Idol, Lost, Jericho, Survivor, Amazing Race, Brother’s and Sisters, Earl and Grey’s Anatomy.  Six Degree’s is back on Fridays and I have watched the first two espisodes of October Road, which is shallow but entertaining. The jury is still out on that one.

Here’s watch I’ve been watching the last week Sur…

Here’s watch I’ve been watching the last week

Survivor – It’s been good. I don’t really think the whole race thing is going to be an issue. However, even though I love Survivor, I think it’s time for this to be the last season. It would have to get way more contraversial to stay interesting for the very long haul.

My Name is Earl – Funniest show on TV. Love it. The whole thing is brilliant.

Kidnapped – Ok , with lots of potential. Bit of a shaky start last week, but I’m going to watch it again, I want to see what happens.

Grey’s Anatomy – The new season started last Thursday and it was good!! Not fantastic, but good. I think they spent a lot of time this episode setting stuff up for the future.

Six Degrees – Held my interest for the pilot. I don’t know how it’s going to fare in the long run, but I’ll keep watching to see how it unfolds.

The Amazing Race – best reality show on TV and they have really ramped it up this season. The challenges are much tougher and the contestants are a good mix. Only two models this season and they are recovering drug addicts, so you can forgive them for being models.

Desperate Housewives – Eh. It was OK. Eva Longoria was a standout as usual, but all the others have horrible storylines, that just aren’t that interesting. The worst thing that show did was kill off Rex.

Brothers and Sisters – I liked the pilot and I’m going to keep watching. I really love Sally Field, she is always fantastic. Calista Flockhart is also in it, and she is very un-Ally McBeal, but you can’t help noticing her botox. Her face doesn’t move, which is very strange for an actress.

Already on the way out is Justice, which is a real shame because Victor Garber is great in it and it’s an easy to watch crime/legal drama. I thought it was very entertaining. Fox should move it to a different timeslot and I think it will do better.

Poor Bill Clinton. Just sticking up for himself in a Fox Sunday interview with Chris Wallace, and now being villified for “exploding like a volcano” Hardly. My favourite part was when he told Wallace to wipe the smirk off his face. The Daily Show summed it up brilliantly in their “Moment of Zen” last night with a clip of Wallace asking Clinton why his administration failed to kill Bin Laden and then a clip of Katie Courice asking Condolezza Rice how the Secretary of State gets asked out on a date.