But the best thing about Lost this season...

[dreamshark]

... might be that it's followed by a new show called "Invasion." They used that totally annoying lead-in technique where you sit through 5 minutes of commercials to see the "Next week on..." trailer, which flows right into the action of the following show. It worked. I was hooked before the first commercial. Once you get past the massive tastelessness of premiering a show that takes place in the immediate aftermath of a hurricane immediately after Katrina and more or less DURING Rita, it's a great show.

Most of the premiere episode was spent trying to explain the ridiculously complicated blended family that the story revolves around. So far, this family structure includes 3 men, 2 women, a heap of stinky bones in the trunk of Uncle Dave's car, two pleasant teenagers and the most absolutely adorable little girl you've ever seen. They all live in two houses on the same bayou, but they keep moving around. Fortunately one of the ex-wives is dead, or it would have been even more complicated.

The key to the entire show is this: Uncle Dave, the scruffy conspiracy theory buff, is right about everything. And adorable little Rose is right about the rest of it. Everybody else in the cast is trying to think rationally, which is clearly a mistake. Knowing this will not ruin the show for you if you haven't seen it. It will just make it easier if you try to come in at episode 3.

Comments

[barondave.livejournal.com]

I dunno. It seems too blatant a rip-off of the Spielberg War of the Worlds and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Most of the new sf shows haven't grabbed me as yet. We'll see about Night Stalker tonight. Indeed, I can't think of a new show that I like very much. Maybe Bones.

Of course, I'm not a Lost fan.

Good thing for Netflix. Finally finished The Hunchback of Notre Dame and ordered the 1939 Charles Laughton version and the Disney 1990's animation...

[laurel]

I didn't care for the first hour of Invasion nor for the first hour of Surface. Threshold seems the most interesting of the new sci-fi shows, but eh. I'm not wild about any new hour-long series this season; very disappointing after last season.

Best new shows seem to be My Name Is Earl and Everybody Hates Chris.

I'm sure there's campy silly fun to be had with Invasion, tho.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Well, let's see. Here's a list of the TV shows I am currently watching or have recently watched (mostly via Netflix): Survivor, Lost, West Wing, Six Feet Under, Upstairs Downstairs, The Sopranos, Firefly.

Here's some shows that I have liked enough to watch on a semi-regular basis in the past: The X-Files, Roswell, Northern Exposure, Twin Peaks. Yikes. Is that all the tv shows I've watched regularly in the past 15 years? It's all I can think of off the top of my head.

Notice what they have in common: continuing story arc, ensemble casts, engaging actors, good dialogue. Plus a little suspense, a little humor, lots of soap. Makes no difference to me whether they are sf shows or not, or whether the concept is derivative. I'm not a fan of action or gore or extended low-light scenes, although I can put up with a certain amount of those things if the other elements are strong enough. So far, Invasion has it all.

Richard's watching Night Stalker right now. I passed on that one because I've already got 3 shows I'm watching regularly and that's more than enough for me. Besides, it looks like it's along the lines of the monster episodes of the X-Files (I watched X-Files for the story arc, and just suffered through the monster shows).

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I didn't find it campy or silly. The basic plot requires a certain suspension of disbelief, but what TV show doesn't? I liked the acting and the writing.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Most of the shows with a continuing arc etc require Netflix. The shows that I watched regularly that overlap your list (Northern Exposure, West Wing), I haven't watched in repeats or DVDs. I've seen what happens! That's the disadvantage of story arcs: They've arced.

But shows that I didn't see or saw intermittently, like Six Feet Under or even Alias, I get the Netflix disks and eat them up like candy. Therefore, one of my Netflix rules is not to have more than one disk of any tv show out at any one time. I don't want to see all of Reilly, Ace of Spies (one of my current runs) too close together. But I can see an entire disk of The Sopranos in a few evenings, including commentary.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

"That's the disadvantage of story arcs: They've arced."

Too true. And in retrospect, when you see where the show went (or didn't go) it sometimes turns out not to have been worth watching after all (Twin Peaks, for instance).

One of my pet peeves is that the folks who put together series DVDs can't seem to comprehend that the people watching the series MIGHT BE DOING SO FOR THE FIRST TIME and don't want, for instance, a synopsis of each show flashed on the screen before the episode can be played (thanks a lot, HBO). Worse yet was the special feature included with the first season of Upstairs Downstairs that methodically spoiled every major event that was going to occur in all of the next 4 seasons. Why wasn't this feature on the DVD for the FINAL season, instead? Grrr.