That Not So Fresh Feeling

The other day at trivia (where we came in 4th out of 25 teams), there was a question about WKRP in Cincinnati, which I remembered, but no one else did. I mentioned to my teammates what may be the funniest sequence from any episode I can remember. Then I went on hulu.com, and lo! there it was.

I figured this was a good chance to try out the Hulu embedded clip thing. So, here’s what I think is a damn funny 3 minutes from WKRP in Cincinnati.

(If this doesn’t work, I’ll fix it. Just trying to do the Hulu embed through MarsEdit.)

Through the wonder of the internets, I was able to check out a few of the new fall TV shows via my TiVo. Yay! New TV!

So, then I actually watched them. And new TV didn’t seem so new anymore.

Let’s start with the worst. “Journeyman” stars the dude from “Rome“. Not the really cool dude, but the other one. The less cool one. He plays a journalist (ha, “journ”alist … “journ”eyman … ha) in San Francisco who has a British accent that just sort of peeks out every now and then. It’s only mildly annoying. It’s slightly more annoying when he randomly starts going back in time. It becomes apparent, fairly quickly, that the show will be about him adjusting to the new time he’s in and then setting some prior wrong right.

Yep, exactly like “Quantum Leap.” Except not nearly as good. The one good bit was that they resolved the marital strife his time traveling caused right off the bat. But, otherwise, this looks like a show that’ll make it through half the season before they have to rewrite it and have it take a massive twist because it’s just boring.

“Bionic Woman” reminded me a lot of another show. What was the name of it? Oh yeah … “The Bionic Woman.” Except this one tried to be all futuristic and clever. It had one decent fight scene with the villian (Starbuck from “Battlestar Galactica“, which is an infinitely better show, as far as I can tell), but like everything else in this show, it was rushed and pretty much pure exposition. You’d think a dorky sci-fi action show would be right up my alley, but I fell asleep twice trying to get through this. The best part is how the main character flips out after becoming bionic, hates everyone involved, but within 10 minutes is fully using her new powers and fighting the bad guys. I guess they wanted to get right into the bionic powers rather than dealing with the potentially interesting story of her struggling to deal with her new powers.

Whatever. I probably won’t watch this. It looks like it’ll be a worse version of the new Terminator show. Which I haven’t seen yet.

Finally, there were two kinda good shows.

“Life” is not about Eddie Murphy being in jail. No, this version is about a cop who was wrongfully accused of a murder and spends 12 years in jail before being freed. Part of his settlement for wrongful imprisonment (besides a bunch of money) is to be put back on the force as a detective. It all stems from him living his zen-like existence and wanting to make a difference … or is it. Muhahahaha.

Actually, the zen aspect of the main character, and how it affects his perspective and approach to police work is kind of fun and reminds me a good bit of “Raines,” a show from last season that I like a lot (about a detective who talks to ghosts in his head). So even if the show didn’t have a secondary element, it’d still be worth watching. But there’s a nice reveal at the end of the pilot that puts a slightly new spin on the main character (is he as zen-like as he seems) and adds a hopefully nice serialized story to the proceedings. I’ll be watching.

Finally, there’s “Chuck.” Or, as it’s also known, “Jake 3.0.” It’s about a guy who works for the Geek Squad at Best Buy … umm, I mean the Nerd Herd at Buy More. He’s a dork, he’s droll, he’s Seth Cohen. Hey, wouldn’t you know, this the new show by the guy who invented Seth Cohen. Surprise! Chuck gets an email from an old associate and BAM, he knows a bunch of spy stuff he shouldn’t. The NSA and CIA send operatives to capture or kill him. They all work together to save stuff.

Ok, so it’s a bit derivative of the previously mentioned Jake 2.0 crossed with The O.C. And, given the subject material and the plot, it’s a bit lacking in the energy department. That being said, it was really fun. It’s obvious that this could be a good, even great show, once it finds its footing a bit. They had to cover a lot of ground in the opening episode, so it’s not too surprising that it was a bit uneven. It looks like it’ll be worth watching for the first season and a half before it turns crappy like The O.C.

Around Wednesday I started feeling sore — an achy back and neck. It got progessively worse (from handleable to requiring a few Advil every couple of hours) until Saturday when I had a fever, headache, and even worse back pain. It was a fantastic way to start a long weekend.

So, given that I was going to be spending a majority of my time on the couch or in bed, most of it was going to be consuming a bunch of the media that had been collecting over the past few weeks. 10 or 12 podcasts, 3 Netflix DVDs, and a whole bunch of season finales on my DVR (Heroes, Lost, Veronica Mars). With work and the generally nicer weather, a variety of things have been building up across my network.

It’s an odd feeling to be anxious about the things building up on your “convenience” devices (DVRs, iPods, DVDs-by-mail). The whole point of these tools is to make life more convenient (which they do!), but the downside is that from time to time, when you’ve been really enjoying the convenience, you get to a point where you’re not sure how you’re going to get through all of the media you’ve saved up. It’s an oddly daunting feeling.

It’s the downside (if you can call it that) of the “digital-content-at-your-convenience-era”. Media overload.

After spending a whole bunch of time on the couch, I’ve made it through most of the TV on my DVR. I’ve still got 7 or 8 hours of podcasts to get through, but I’ll make up that time at work (just one of the benefits of working at a computer). Hopefully, I’ll get through one more DVD, too, which would make this little bout with what seems to be the flu about as successful as it could be (minus the night sweats, fever, and inability to sleep).

Thanks to the GigaOM/NewTeeVee folks, I snagged myself a copy of Joost and started playing with it. First, for those who don’t know, Joost is basically TV over the internet. They’ve got a big peer-to-peer network setup (the guys behind Joost stared Kazaa), and your client lets you basically flip through channels and pick out shows to watch on demand.

It’s very much like the on demand video you might get through your cable company. Except the quality is crappier, the selection is crappier, and the delivery is crappier. Otherwise, it’s just like your local cable on demand.

That’s probably too harsh an assessment of Joost, which is very much in a beta/technology preview mode right now. They’re signing up new content providers on a near-weekly basis, so the content will likely get better very quickly. I just don’t imagine that I’ll ever have a major use for Joost, except as an occasional time-killer.

For example, if I’m at home, I’ve got a 46″ HDTV hooked up to Comcast cable and an HD DVR. If I’m lying on the couch, I can inevitably find something on the DVR or on live to watch, particularly if its in HD. If I’m really bored, I’ve got Netflix, as well as Comcast OnDemand (where I can stream HD movies, if so desired).

If I really can’t find anything to watch, I’ve got Netflix “Watch Now” which streams at better quality than Joost. And, for that matter, has a much better selection.

The other advantage all of these other mediums/models have over Joost? No commercials. Granted, I’m paying up front for them, but (unless I’m stealing someone’s wireless) I’m paying for the network connection that Joost is coming over too. If I really wanted to cut my bills, I could drop everything but Netflix, and probably still have more to watch, at higher quality, on my HDTV, than Joost can offer right now.

Putting another bullet into Joost is the fact that the major networks are offering a bunch of their shows online in pretty decent quality video, with minimal commercials. I’ve watched the entire runs of Raines and Andy Barker, P.I. on NBC.com. The quality is not noticeably different than Joost’s quality and it’s through a web browser, rather than a specialized client.

Now, I’d argue that Joost is dead today, but isn’t dead for the future. If they can beef up the network delivery to deliver even near DVD quality video, that’d be a nice step up. Taking it one step further, if they could make deals with the major content providers to deliver the shows I’m interested in, then you could even make the argument that it might start to encroach on cable’s on demand services. If they can deliver live (or near-live) sporting events, so that I could watch the Sox or Celtics from a hotel room far away, that would be probably the killer app for this technology. Or, if a show like Scrubs got cancelled, but lived on in a Joost delivery mechanism, that’d also go a long way towards helping Joost make it’s mark.

For now, Joost is a second rate on demand service, with a bit of a wonky interface and a crappy selection of content.

(I didn’t touch on some of the community type features that Joost offers because I don’t really care about them. Why would I want to chat with random people watching the same show? Rarely, for me at least, is TV an interactive endeavor.)

One last thing tonight: I’d been reading about the integration between TiVo and Amazon’s Unbox service, where you can download a movie or TV show from Unbox and have it delivered to your TiVo. TiVo has sort of lost me as a user, as their HD DVR is way too expensive, and as bad as the Comcast/Motorola DVR software is, I can record HD and do pretty much everything I need to do. The TiVo has been relegated to backup recordings and occasionally streaming some music.

However, TiVo and Amazon are offering a $15 credit, so I figured I’d give it a shot. I signed up for it today–it was very easy, you just sign into Amazon, then type in your TiVo account info, and you’re done–and scanned through for something to download. I didn’t want to get a TV show, so I grabbed a rental of the recent Mike Judge movie Idiocracy. It cost about $4, which leaves me a good amount of credit to rent a few more movies or TV shows. The rental last a few days after download.

Now, after about an hour, it’s only downloaded about 1/3rd of the movie (I’ve got an older wireless adapter), which means this isn’t going to replace On Demand for instant gratification. On top of that, it’s not in HD, so I’ll probably never use it when I could use On Demand or Netflix.

But, for stuff that I’m not worried about being timely or high quality video, it’ll be worth playing around with. Frankly, I doubt that this will take off. I just don’t have much of a desire anymore to watch stuff in crappy TiVo quality. I’ve got a laptop that I can download movies/shows in high quality, or watch them online in high quality, and I can access them faster than the TiVo can get them from Amazon.

So, it’s sorta cool technology, but I think it’s a little bit of “too little/too late” from the TiVo camp. I don’t think this will compete with Apple TV; I don’t think this will compete with BitTorrent and a laptop; I don’t think this will compete with On Demand. It doesn’t win on price, quality, or convenience.

Well, at least I don’t think it does, since I haven’t had a chance to watch it, and it won’t let me start watching it until it’s fully downloaded.

Lost is nearing the midpoint of its third season, and I’m nearing the endpoint of caring. After a phenomenal first season, and a second season that meandered but eventually built up steam to an interesting season finale, the third season has been disappointment after disappointment. While the Others are interesting, the pieces of the story, the revelations, the so-called answers have been so incongruous and so minor that it seems rather obvious the writers and network are stretching the story out to ridiculous lenghts.

Every article during the first two seasons talked about not wanting to be The X-Files and never answer major questions. Well, at least The X-Files answered something each season. Each mythology episode of The X-Files at least furthered the overall story. I just don’t feel like Lost is moving in that direction. The backstory device is running thin the 3rd, 4th, 5th time they revisit a characters backstory, revealing such intriguing story items as “the meaning of Jack’s tattoos” and “how Locke lived on a drug farm.”

There’s a chance that Lost’s uninterrupted run will lead to the show hitting its stride again, but I’ve got less faith this time, given that at least the “bad” episodes in season two were fun to watch. There’s just not been anything particularly great this season.

Lost is still ok. It’s not as good as Veronica Mars. It might even be worse than the exposition-heavy Heroes. Where those shows differ from Lost is that they’re at least advancing their stories in ways that make you want to turn in each week. Lost, to me, is falling to 24 territory: a show where I could just read a recap of an episode and how it fits and be happy enough to have not spent the hour wondering why the show isn’t better.

I do think, though, that like The OC, if the show doesn’t pick up by the end of its third season, I’m not sure I’ll be there for the start of the fourth.

I’ve watched the Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip pilot twice now. It’s really, really, really, really awesome. If you liked Sports Night or The West Wing, I have no doubt you’ll like this show. The pilot is unmistakeably Aaron Sorkin, and after 4 seasons of TWW, it’s pretty much impossible not to dig Bradley Whitford and Timothy Busfield reading his dialogue. And given how great Matthew Perry was in his short run on the show, he’s pretty much perfect as well.

I’m going to do a pilot blow out in the next couple of days (thanks BitTorrent!), once I watch two more that I have on my hard drive.

The early results:

• Studio 60: ++
• Aquaman: –
• Heroes: +
• Kidnapped: meh

Ah, YouTube. Is there anything from my childhood that you can’t find?

Nope. YouTube, you are the greatest … I really hanker for a hunk of cheese.

“Hello, Appetite Control? Need more protein. Playing tennis today, you knoooow!”

Today is my 28th birthday. It’s almost over.

I’m planning on getting myself a video iPod in a couple of weeks as a gift, but I was at Target today and they had an awesome DVD deal, so I pulled the trigger and got myself something.

It was like $23!! Less than my age!! So happy birthday to me.

Scrubs is hands down the best show on television. Tonight’s episode was just absolutely pitch-perfect. From the ridiculous humor (”We should have sex sometime”) to the absolute gut-wrenching low that ended the show, every note was played perfectly.

I’m not kidding. I’ll fight you if you disagree. Punch you right in your stupid face.