TV Meme: Day 3 - Favorite New Show From This Past Season

Unlike years past this was a pretty slow year for me in selecting new television programs to watch. I was just starting grad school when the Fall season got underway and I had been under extreme pressure from Mrs. Kano to drop some of the many shows I was already watching - so as shows were canceled and completed I didn't really jump on to too many new shows from this past season.

And, when things were coming together for this upcoming season I wasn't really too thrilled with many of the previews. The lone show that grasped my interest was FlashForward as Lost was ending and I was hoping to fill my nerd-void (that apparently didn't work). I was also somewhat interested in The Middle, which was a new comedy on ABC thanks to the inclusion of Neil Flynn (or the Janitor in Scrubs). That being said, I was also interested in Cougar Town the new brain child of Scrubs helmer Bill Lawrence.

Although I enjoyed all three of the above shows - and two of them actually will return for a second season (adios FlashForward) it was a show that I really had no intentions of watching that gets my pick for favorite new show of the season. And despite my search for another Lost this show just may help me as I grieve the loss of Scrubs.

My favorite new show from this past season is none other than: Community. And, like I said above, I had no real intent to even watch this show except for the fact that I was allowed to watch the very first episode wicked early on Facebook - which actually peeked my interest.

I was unsure if the premise of the show could actually work, but so far it has and it has surpassed my level of expectations and then some.

Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) is a lawyer who gets caught with a phony law degree. So, in order to get back to his cozy lifestyle and his former job, he is forced to enroll at a local community college and get an actual degree.

In the pilot he does his best to talk his way out of actually attending class or paying attention in an attempt to basically just get his degree handed to him - but that fails.

He meets a pretty girl in the cafeteria, Britta Perry (Gillian Jacobs) who is struggling with Spanish and, in an attempt to get in her pants, pretends to be a Spanish tutor and invites her to study with him. She accepts, but little does he know that she invites a handful of other students from her Spanish class to the study session - and this is the birth of an extremely funny comedy.


The rest of the cast rounds out amazingly, Pierce Hawthorne (Chevy Chase) is the old man of the group. In the past Chase has sort of become annoying, but he really hits it on all levels as a supporting character. Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi) is a film loving student that Jeff believes possibly has Aspergers. Abed compares everything that happens to a movie and has movie quotes that fit every situation. Troy Barnes (Donald Glover) is a former football star who misses out on a scholarship. Troy wasn't one of my favorite characters at the start of the show, but he has truly progressed into a great character and has some great one-liners. His relationship with Abed is one of the best in television. Annie Edison (Alison Brie) is a goodie-goodie brainiac who is only in community college because she became addicted to pills in high school. She is the young girl of the group and tries to keep everyone on task. Finally, Shirley Bennett (Yvette Nicole Brown) is the mother of two boys that recently divorced her husband. She is very religious and sometimes tosses her two-cents around.

One other character missing above is Senor Chang (Ken Jeong) who is the groups Spanish teacher and gets involved in a lot of their extra-curricular activities somehow. He is extremely over the top and hilarious in almost all of his scenes.

As I said, I was not looking for this show but it somehow found me and I couldn't be happier. Sure, it had some growing pains in its first season, but for the most part it was downright amazing and hilarious. I haven't laughed this hard during a show since - dare I say it - Scrubs.

And just because I think she is so cute - here is a picture of Alison Brie:

TV Meme: Day 2 - A Show Needing More Viewers

I actually believe that all of the shows that I watch need more viewers. Each and every year I fear that a show I am currently invested in will get canceled - even though the show itself is amazing it may lack the viewers because of one or more different reasons (terrible time slot, terrible promoting, etc.).

The show I picked, however, has quite possibly the most jumbled time slot in any given week - and that is the 9 p.m. time slot on Thursday night.

It originally started on Monday nights and I felt got a decent following, but for whatever reason it was moved opposite Grey's Anatomy and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation in its second season, and to no one's surprise the ratings took a hit.

The show I am talking about is, of course, Fringe.

The show originally teamed with House on Monday nights in one of the best pairings in television, but for some strange reason they decided to move it to the most crowded timeslot of the week - and despite the show actually getting better, the ratings fell in its second season.

For the most part, the show is on a continuous plot line of Walter Bishop's and William Bell's science experiments - and the Fringe team is out to clean up everything that happens out of the ordinary (which usually finds it way back to having something to do with Bishop and/or Bell).

Occasionally, there is an episode that is tossed out that really doesn't have much to the ongoing plot line - but every so often it is nice to get away from that (sort of a monster of the week type episode).

For the most part, however, we have been on the plot line of this alternate universe that William Bell and Walter Bishop had stumbled across in the past. And in two seasons, it is nice to see how things have progressed - and I have to say this show has had two of the most satisfying season finales I have ever seen (the first season's finale was amazing).

The best part of the show is Walter (John Noble) and Peter's (Joshua Jackson) relationship - and give and take. Walter has become one of the funniest and best characters on television, and I have to admit that Pacey from Dawson's Creek has seriously come into his own in his acting.


When the show originally started I felt the low point of the show was actually the lead of Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) - as the show has progressed, however, she has really grown on me. I also really enjoyed the character of Charlie (Kirk Acevedo), and I really hope they figure out some way to get him back permanently.

What's difficult for me is that I actually watch all three of these shows (not to mention 30 Rock which is usually on around the 9 p.m. timeslot) so I don't want to tell people to not watch the other shows. But, this show has really progressed and is very interesting - not to mention it sort of blows your mind every so often (something that I need now that Lost has finished).

TV Meme: Day 1 - An Unfairly Canceled Show

When I first spotted this on Rachel's Reel Reviews I was immediately interested, and when Nick at Random Ramblings of a Demented Doorknob also jumped in to participate I thought it would be a great time to finally get my blog up and running again.

I posted the directions of this 30 Day Meme last week and I took some time to think about my answers carefully. I have been an avid television watcher for a long time now, and as I have said in the past, I probably watch too much television. But, for some reason my answers to most of the questions kept coming back to somewhat new shows - I just don't really remember loving too many shows when I was in grade school that weren't cartoons or something of that nature.

Anyway, let's get started.

This is pretty interesting that this would be the main topic on Day 1 of this meme as I have stated in the past how much I hate when shows get canceled prematurely. I have major problems each Fall season as I think about which shows I may want to watch because, for the most part, a lot of the new shows won't last until January much less the entire season. Shows just don't get the leeway they were allowed in the past; they aren't given time to find their audience - if they stink out of the gate in the ratings department they usually get axed.

I have spoken about this before, but a few of the shows that I feel were yanked far too quickly were:

• Standoff
• Las Vegas
• Saved
• Playmakers
• Traveler
• Freaks & Geeks
• Undeclared

And those are just a few. But, the show that always jumps out to me as being unfairly canceled perhaps actually should have been canceled. But, only because the show that it once had been was no longer and it had been changed to something that was not watchable.

SeaQuest DSV was my new Star Trek back when it originally aired in 1993. It starred Roy Scheider (of Jaws fame) as Captain Nathan Bridger. He took command of the Seaquest DSV, much like Kirk of the Enterprise, but instead of being in outer space it was located in the ocean.

Jonathan Brandis was another huge character named Lucas Wolenczak, a brilliant teenager who actually created a device to speak and understand dolphins - including his pet dolphin, Darwin.

The show added a couple new characters in the second season, including the Deluise brothers Peter (Dagwood) and Michael (Tony Piccolo). Dagwood was a GELF (Genetically Engineered Life Form) and Piccolo had gills implanted so he was able to breathe under water.

I remember the first two seasons of the show as being very entertaining. I would always look forward to watching it each and every week. However, the show made a huge change in the third and final season - including losing all but three of the original cast members, Scheider being the major loss - which is why I have sort of claimed that season three is not really SeaQuest (in fact the actual name of the third season is SeaQuest 2032) to me and that this show was pretty much canceled after its second season - when in fact the show was finally canceled after the horrific third season.

It really is too bad because the concept was great, not too many series had been developed under water - and much like Star Trek (which only lasted three seasons itself) could have become something after the show was complete. However, that never happened and the two main characters - Brandis and Scheider - have both passed on so the show and any possible movies are also dead.

Iron Man 2

OK, this is pretty weird that I am debuting an entirely new website design and name to the site - "Kano's Lay-Z-Boy Theater". The name of this site derives my inability to get to the theater anymore.

But, for my first post on this newly revamped site I, ironically, will be posting a review of a movie I saw in the actual theater - Iron Man 2.

Iron Man sort of came out of nowhere a few years ago, and was a huge surprise hit in the same summer that brought us The Dark Knight. Iron Man I was not able to see in the theater, but was able to check out on its arrival on DVD and I found it very entertaining - sort of the anti-Dark Knight as it wasn't dark at all and most of its appeal came from its humor and leading man - Robert Downey, Jr.

Well, Tony Stark (Downey, Jr.) returns as a huge phenomenon to the adoring public, however, he continues to battle the same health issues from the first movie - and his suit only appears to be causing his health more damage.

This time around the characters are aplenty as we are introduced to Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell), a competitor of Stark Industries; Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), the main villain of the film; and Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson), who we know as Black Widow. Also around are Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) - who took over for Terrence Howard.

I have to admit that in the past (older Batman films, Spiderman 3) I have always been against the inclusion of so many characters, but in this film it really didn't hurt too much. There was a lot going on in the film, but for the most part it worked.

My main complaint would be in the finale. There was such a major buildup for the final fight that was sort of let down by how brief the ending became.

Another huge part of this movie was the continued recruitment of Stark to possibly join Fury's Avengers team. I am pretty interested in seeing that film as long as it is done correctly - again the more characters in a film sometimes takes away from the actual story telling.

On a side note: I remember during the showing of this film thinking to myself that I could take a hit in the man department because, honestly, I found Paltrow to be much better looking that Johansson. I am not sure what it was, but she really stood out to me - much more than she did in the first film.

Finally - I am sure most of you have heard about this already, but make sure to stick around until after the credits for a little extra does of fun.

Grade:

TV Meme - Tune in Monday

OK. So I have been absent on here for a good while now - but I have an excuse. I was getting my master's. I have completed basically all of my classes now and should be more up-to-date with my blog posting as well. Plus, during that time I just have not seen many movies to even jump on here to post anything. That should be changing as well - in fact I already have a handful of movies I have seen and should be posting about those soon as well.

Also, I am hoping to revamp the look of this site within the next week or so (depending on when my new banner is complete and in my possession). I will have a new name so a new look seemed appropriate as well. Check back for that in the coming weeks.

That being said, I thought I would do something fun in my triumphant return and I saw that Nick had posted this TV Meme that he plans on starting today. So I thought I would try to do the same - but I will start mine on Monday (giving me a few days to actually think about it and also give him a jump start to get ahead of me).

Anyway, this is what the lineup will apparently look like and I will do my best to fill it in as best as possible:

Day 01 - An Unfairly Canceled Show
Day 02 - A Show Needing More Viewers
Day 03 - Favorite New Show From This Past Season
Day 04 - Favorite Show of All Time
Day 05 - A Show I Hate
Day 06 - Favorite Episode of My Favorite Show
Day 07 - Least Favorite Episode of My Favorite Show
Day 08 - A Show Everyone Should Watch
Day 09 - Best Scene Ever
Day 10 - A Show I Thought I'd Hate But Ended Up Loving
Day 11 - A Show That Disappointed Me
Day 12 - An Episode I’ve Watched More Than 5 Times
Day 13 - Favorite Childhood Show
Day 14 - Favorite Male Character
Day 15 - Favorite Female Character
Day 16 - My Guilty Pleasure Show
Day 17 - Favorite Mini-Series
Day 18 - Favorite Title Sequence
Day 19 - Best TV Show Cast
Day 20 - Favorite Kiss
Day 21 - Favorite Relationship
Day 22 - Favorite Series Finale
Day 23 - Most Annoying Character
Day 24 - Best Quote
Day 25 - A Show I Plan on Re-Watching
Day 26 - Biggest Season Finale Shocker
Day 27 - Best Pilot Episode
Day 28 - First Show Obsession
Day 29 - Current Show Obsession
Day 30 - Saddest Character Death

So - I might have some more posts before then, but this will start on Monday with Day 1. Again, sorry for the lack of posts in basically the last year - but I hope to be back strong now (hope I can keep my word).