I'm not feeling too well, so this TV Warrior update will be shorter than others.

CSI 9.3 - "Art Imitates Life"

I totally dug the Mannequin Serial Killer. Standing the bodies up was a new one. Also good: continuing cracks in the Gil Grissom facade. I think the double blow of losing Warrick and then re-losing Sara right on top has affected Grissom tremendously, and it paves the way for his leaving.


On the other hand, I hated the new girl Riley Adams (Lauren Lee Smith) from the first moment I saw her, but I think I was supposed to, so maybe I kind of love her. She has an abrasive personality that HAS to be designed to antagonize the audience, at least at first. She also smiles too much. Reminds me of Denise Richards in STARSHIP TROOPERS. There are situations where smiling just seems weird. Sara would hate her. Time will tell how the others take to her.

One other great line. Jeffrey Tambour has a great role as an arrogant artist. (I hope we see him again.) At one point he's shown pictures of the dead bodies, and turns them away, saying, "I can't stand looking at inferior art....it sears into my subconscious like bad Mexican Food."

Ouch.

Sometime (when I have more to give), we should discuss whether murder ever rises to Art.

Life on Mars 1.3 - "My Maharishi is Bigger than Your Maharishi"

After last week's disastrous episode, I was almost ready to write this show off. I gave it one more week, and this was a much stronger episode, although still weird. Why wouldn't this guy go visit wherever it is she supposed transfered in from (upstate NY?), and see if he indeed had a life, or if he just time-travelled. Seems like an easy thing to check.

Anyway, I continue to love Harvey Keitel, who gets to smack people around and care about gay people, but Michael Imperioli is still unused. Not sure how much longer I will stick with Mars, but the quality of last night's ep says at least one more week.

Eleventh Hour 1.3 - "Agro"

I've given up hope that the blonde chick will be scantily clad any time soon, so I'm left with the strange performance of Rufus Sewell, and further comparison between Eleventh Hour and Fringe. The show is interesting and all, but the way it's set up, I find it hard to believe two people would go all the investigating, and the science, and everything else. I mean, there are other people in the FBI. Why wouldn't they help out too?

World Series

With the long overdue retirement of Billy Packer, is there a more annoying sports announder than Tim McCarver? It's gotten so that I watch 80% of the game with the sound off. Sad.

I must have been in a terrible mood last night. I strongly believe in the theory that severe moods (happy or sad or otherwise) will often color how we view movies, and I think TV fits that bill as well. I don't know if it was my foot, which hurt enough to try to cut partially off, or that I spent much of yesterday wanting to kill something, but Thursday's powerful lineup left me flat.

Kath & Kim Episode 1.2 - "Respect"

Remember how I said last week's show was an abomination? It was MILES better than this week's. I have NO IDEA why I would watch suchdreck . I think I wanted to punish myself for some great sin. What's worse, I made my mom watch it with me. She too was horrified. (Although: she is predicting the girls' use of "Gorge" for "Gorgeous"will soon catch fire.)

Kath & Kim is abysmal, and I vow never to watch again, even if I have to poke out my eyes to make it work.

CSI 9.2 - "The Happy Place"

The first three minutes were really good, elegiac and mysterious. However, everything after the dent in the bus fell flat. (No pun intended.)

I just couldn't get into this episode. Again, I don't know if that's because it was me, or a "come-down" episode after last week's emotional goodbye toWarrick, or maybe just because every facet of the show seemed to point to Grissom/Sarah, and you all know how much I have despised Sarah. Sarah left him again at the end, and I think they are setting up Grissom going after her. Sad, but they have to have some reason for him to leave, and losing Warrick and then Sarah all over again might push him over the edge.

Grissom has always been the consummate professional, but it would be kind of interesting if we saw him crack. That I would enjoy, though painful. But tonight's episode? Waste of time.

Life on Mars 1.2 - "The Real Adventures of Unreal Sam Tyler"

My dad watched this episode with me, after I talked about how good it was last week. Ye gods. Do you know how embarrassing that was? I stake my reputation (entertainment-wise) on having well-formed solid opinions. If I recommend a show, it's quality, baby, and YOU WILL LOVE IT!

I mean, I know with these premieres, you can only go by what you've seen so far, and it's not unusual for a second episode to have a drop-off from a pilot, which gets more time, money and attention, not to mention that often the second episode (and those following) are shot months after the pilot, and the network orders some changes.

That said, last night's episode was terrible. I was mortified that my name was associated with it at all. Now I have a dilemma. I would like to give it one more chance (on the strength of the first episode and the premise), but if/when I catch up with Eleventh Hour, if that show is better, I might be tempted.

And either way, I can't see my dad watching Life on Mars ever again.

Sigh.



And to top it all, off, I watched the last three innings of the ALCS, hoping to see Tampa make the World Series, only to see Boston with another improbable comeback. Now that's all anyone in sports will talk about for two days. If Boston makes the World Series I am giving up baseball forever.



EDIT (ADDED 9:02 AM ON SATURDAY OCTOBER 18)

Eleventh Hour 1.2 - "Cardiac"

I saw the second episode of Eleventh Hour last night. While it did not suck, it was fairly boring and predictable, which in some ways is worse. The plot was a blatant rip-off -- of all things -- of a classic Family Guy episode! I gotta hand it to the producers: other than CSI, CBS cannot get anyone in the 18-49 demo to watch any of their shows, so they had to figure that no one even knew they had stolen from the toad-licking Lando Griffin episode.

I think my bigger problem is that is it obvious to me that Eleventh Hour is a Jerry Bruckheimer production on CBS. This isn't a rant about Bruckheimer, but you know I have gone on at length before about how I can almost always recognize what network a show is on after only a few seconds? Well, there are 11 procedural Dramas on CBS, and all of them look and feel very similar.

Perhaps this is why CBS gets the most overall viewers. Perhaps this is also why they can't get young viewers. CSI is the original, the best of them. NCIS seems to have some good chemistry/characters going for it, and The Unit has a somewhat unique storyline with the military.

That said, 6 of the shows are from Bruckheimer, 10 of the 11 are directly about crime investigation, and after awhile....they all sort of blend together.

Anyway, Rufus Sewell's strange affect is still the best part of Eleventh Hour, as is the possibility that it will dawn on Bruckheimer and CBS that the only real hope of long-term success lies with Marley Shelton in her Underwear on a weekly basis.

This is not a chauvinist pig issue. This is a quality of life issue. This is a quality of police drama issue. Women who look like Marley Shelton don't work for the FBI. The least they can do is make up reasons for her to be in various states of undress.

My plan to review all the new shows last night (plus the return of CSI) got off to a terrible start when I overslept. Then I had to find them all online to watch and review, which put me horribly behind.

I finally found Life on Mars, and watched it and totally fell in love. Only after I saw it did I discover that--and if this isn't an FML moment, I don't know what is--I watched the wrong version!

No, I didn't watch the UK original (that the American one is based on), I watched the American one, which was re-written and recast and re-shot, for reasons that can only be described as "Screwing me over."

So, Where I thought This was the cast:

I now find it's this:

This makes reviewing difficult, but I'm a gamer.

Life on Mars 1.1 - "Out Here in the Fields"

You know, I had a nice whole section written about the fans of the UK series who have been carping for months that the US version will likely suck. Maybe they're right. I haven't seen the British version, but logic says that it's hard to strike gold twice. But so what? If you saw the original, and the new version is very similar, why would you watch it? Just enjoy what you already saw! And if you want to watch the new take, allow it to be its own thing!

Sigh.

I feel a little bit for those people, because I just watched TWO U.S. versions of the same show! And you know how it is. You always love the first thing you see more. So, while I am very enthusiastic about Life on Mars, and think you should strongly consider it, I am hampered because it wasn't quite as good to me as the version that will never see the light of day.

But I'll quit whining now and get to it.

Jason O'Mara is Detective Sam Tyler, a cop in New York, present day. His girlfriend (Lisa Bonet) is abducted, and in the aftermath Tyler is hit by a car. He wakes up in weird clothes with a weird car and looks around......This ain't 2008!

Turns out it's 1973, and Tyler is a cop in NY there, too, sorta. Even stranger, there is a similar case to what the man who abducted Tyler's girlfriend back in the present.

Now, to pause for a moment. I have spent an inordinate amount of time (you don't want to know how much) thinking about what it would be to show up in the past. One thing I'm sure of: no one would handle it as well as Tyler. (It's sort of how people just accept aliens or magic on TV, with just a shrug.) However, this is not a criticism limited to Life on Mars, so let's move on.

For his part, Detective Tyler can't believe what's happening is real. He thinks he's lying in a coma in 2008 in some hospital. If you're thinking this is straight out of the Thomas Covenant Chronicles, you're not wrong. (You know, if the Lord Foul were a police Lieutenant.)

Because Tyler doesn't accept things as real, he can more or less function, and this includes working on the current case, which he thinks will help save his girlfriend back in the present.

The lieutenant is Gene Hunt, played by the immortal Harvey Keitel. The first version I saw it was Colm Meany, and that dude was fierce, at one point half-strangling a hooker to get information out of her. Keitel's version is softened up a bit, to make him more likable. You can just see how the Network ordered this change. "We want the audience to like the Lieutenant! We can't have him choking hookers to get information!"

Hunt also punches his new detective a lot, most of which is kept. It actually leads to a funny line, when Tyler asks what year it is, and Hunt says, "It's 1973, or as our Chinese Brothers like to say, 'Year of the Fist!'" and then punches Tyler in the stomach.

Another main character is Detective Ray Carling, played by The Sopranos' Michael Imperioli. He did not have much to do in the pilot, but with a name like that, I bet more will come.

And it wouldn't be possible time travel/amnesia without a new love interest. This comes in the guise of Annie Norris, a "police woman" played by Gretchen Moll.

I'll admit readily: I have never been a Gretchen Moll fan. And, to make matters worse, I really liked the girl they had in the version I saw. However, that girl was a detective, and no one seemed to even think twice about it. In this version (the real one), Annie isn't a real cop, and is treated derisively and disrespectfully by the men, probably much more exaggerated (and probably much less) than actual life.


I'm a big Time Travel guy. I also like the ambiguity, although the first version put it far more up in the air. Still, you can't watch the episode without wondering exactly what is going on. Everything seems real in 1973, but then how is Tyler a cop there? And why does he keep hearing voices that sound like a hospital, and people he knows talking to him? There are several ingenious ways they represent this reality, and I won't spoil any more.

Some people aren't going to be able to handle things. But if you lived through 1973 I think you might enjoy Life on Mars, for the fashion alone. (I told my dad I saw a few outfits I think he donated.) If you like cop shows it should be cool for you, because Tyler is a total 2008 cop, and it's interesting to see his vision of how things work (it takes two weeks to get fingerprints in 1973) conflict with the past. For example: warrants don't mean so much back then.

Lastly, if you like Mysteries, I think you might go for Life on Mars, because it's cool to figure out whether Tyler is really in the past or not. I enjoy that, and hope for more.

So far so good.

[Oh, and don't even get me started on the Soundtrack!]