This post is chock full of spoilers for Veronica Mars, so if you haven't seen the show, know that it is a mystery show, and that I am about to ruin a few major things for you. And go watch the show because it was awesome.

As you know by now, Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas has started a Kickstarter campaign to fund a Veronica Mars movie. I am not here to talk about the morality of that issue. I donated because I want to see a movie. That's as complicated as it gets for me. I'll let everybody else sort out whether or not the world is going to end now.

But - and I imagine many others did the same - when I saw that video of the actors together again, I went back to my DVDs and rewatched the first two seasons.

I loved that show when it was on the air. I hung onto every clue to figure out who killed Lily Kane. I rewound and rewatched that first kiss with Logan a hundred times and swooned. When Veronica opened the door at the last frame of season 1 and we didn't see who was at the door, I was so mad. I spent all summer hoping against hope that it was Logan. Of course, in all that thinking, I failed to ponder the fact that everyone would now know that Logan's dad killed his girlfriend, so he probably wasn't feeling too lovey-dovey at this point.

Logan has many haters, although all the ones I have thus encountered are male. I've yet to find a female fan of the show who doesn't think he's dreamy. I'm sure they exist, I just haven't encountered them.

Logan is a type of character we often see in television - The Reformed Bad Boy. Angel and Spike are both reformed bad boys. The only difference with those two is that Angel had already reformed by the time we met him. The reformed bad boy starts off as a complete asshole, and through getting to know him and the love of a good badass chick who sees through his bullshit and is completely amazing, he changes into a sexy protective lover who learns to be a better man.

He's not a fantasy. Guys like this do exist. The thing is, not every girl can be the one to reform the guy, even though most girls want to be.

So let's go back to Logan and see how we develop the reformed bad boy.

Logan was a spoiled rich boy who blamed Veronica and her dad for the way Lily's death was handled. He took it out on our girl every day at school, bullying her and being generally unpleasant all the time. But just as we decided he was as shitty as he could get, we discovered that his father, adored by millions as a hot successful movie star, beat him. So now we know there's a reason he lashes out at someone like Veronica. He's deflecting his own pain.

Don't forget that on top of this, the love of his life cheated on him throughout their relationship and then wound up murdered. That'll affect you one way or the other.

Then his mom kills herself. So now he's lost his girlfriend and his mother, and all he has is a father who plays her death for sympathy and a sister who doesn't really give a shit about anyone but herself.

So now we sympathize with Logan. Or at least, we should. Assholes are rarely just assholes. Most of the time, something makes them that way, and Logan has plenty of reasons. It would be a bit of a miracle if he didn't turn out damaged in some way. Some people turn to drugs. Some people turn to sarcasm and bum fights.

Then, of course, Logan finds out who killed his girlfriend. Then he's arrested for a murder he didn't commit - again - on the same night. Then he spends the summer getting shot at. It's understandable that a guy like Logan doesn't know how to direct his angst. He's had a shitty year.

Veronica is the kind of chick who could spar with Logan. She gets him, and her wit is just as quick, but she also helps him even though he's been horrible to her. And when Logan sees that, it changes him ever so slightly. Veronica is the kind of girl who could change a man.  He now has a reason to be violent - he must protect Veronica because he loves her. And although he respects her moxie, he also knows that she does indeed need protecting from all the bad guys she pisses off. A girl like Veronica is crack to a guy like him.

Not every girl can do it. In season 2, Logan dates a girl named Hannah. Hannah is very sweet and a complete sucker. She falls for Logan's act hook line and sinker. Even after he admits he was using her to get to her dad, she still wants to sleep with him just because he gives her THAT LOOK. Her dad - asshole that he may have been - did the right thing in getting her the hell away from Logan.

Unless you are a little bit asshole yourself, you'll never be able to keep up with that guy enough to fix him. Don't even try it, Hannah.

Logan used Hannah to get to her dad. Veronica used Officer Leo several times to get access to police information. Veronica really liked Leo. Logan really liked Hannah. But make no mistake - they were both doing the same thing. The only difference is, one is our perky blond heroine. One is our spoiled little rich boy.

I'm always going to have a soft spot for the Reformed Bad Boy. On the Firefly cast, I always found Jayne the hottest, so I went out and I found Jayne and I married him. There's a reason I call my husband The Beefcake.

The reason girls love that Reformed Bad Boy is pretty simple. If he's willing to hurt people, but he'll never hurt you - that's the best kind of guy to have around. Imagine an apocalyptic scenario, where it's every person for him or herself, and you may have to mug some jerk and take his canned food to survive. Is the nice guy gonna do that? No. Probably not. While he's pondering the ethical dilemma, the Reformed Bay Boy is hitting him in the head with a crowbar and handing the supplies to his own girlfriend.

I had to take some time away to deal with something for the last week, but I've dealt with it and now I've got my brain on straight enough to post something. I'd like to thank Buffy and Deadwood for helping distract me from the bad shit on my mind.

Although I loved the hell out of it, I haven't watched Deadwood for some time, but I recently listened to a Nerdist podcast with Timothy Olyphant that was absolutely enlightening. He spend about half an hour just talking about Deadwood and working with Milch.

I think most of us can agree that Deadwood was brilliant, and an unfinished work of art. There are so many great story telling lessons to be learned from that show. I want to talk about two of them.

SOILERS to follow for season one.

One is the development of Ian McShane's Swearengen. If you watch the pilot, Swearengen is a complete fucking asshole. He puts his boot on Trixie's neck for shooting a guy who beat her. He has a man killed because his presence is simply an inconvenience. The next couple of episodes, although you see some humanity in him, it's not much.

And then something happened. We saw him start to care about Trixie. We saw him give a shit about the camp. He came around to the idea that Bullock was an OK guy. And then he mercy killed the preacher.

All of these things softened him to the point that despite his consistency as an asshole, he became more likable. At first you might say, but why should he be likable? Cy Tolliver isn't likable and he's a great character. Let a villain be a villain!

That's what you might have said, but you'd be missing one big advantage of making Swearengen more likable, and that is the humor. As the show goes along, and we find ourselves more comfortable with the man, we find it easier to laugh at him. Ian McShane can play his eye rolls and reluctant sympathy for comedy. It works. Notice how even though they are cut from the same cloth, you never laugh at Tolliver. He's an evil piece of shit. You're never comfortable with him enough to laugh at him even if he makes some of the same jokes Swearengen might have made. But Swearengen - that motherfucker is hilarious. Watch the show. He isn't nearly as funny at the beginning of season one as he is by the end.

So the lesson there is, if you want to play your villain for laughs, he can't be pure evil. You can't laugh at a purely evil man. You have to like him at least a little.

The second thing I wanted to point to was the season one finale - which was a fantastic episode all around - and Alma Garret's relationship with her father. There is a lot of subtlety to be had on Deadwood, but probably never so much as in this one scene.

Alma and her father are along in her hotel room discussing whether or not she's going to give him any money. Alma's father touches her on the shoulder, on the temple, brushes her hair back - never anything else. But her reaction tells us she's extremely uncomfortable with his touch. When she suggests she'll only give him money if he goes away and leaves her alone, he simply smiles at Alma's adopted daughter, Sofia, and says he will do no such thing.

Even before Alma grabs Sofia and runs out of the room, we know exactly what he must have done to her. Nobody ever says Alma's father raped her. They don't have to. We know what he did. We see it all from her reaction and from his unstated threats.

You don't always have to spell shit out for your audience. Most people have seen enough stories that they can read the clues you give them, and they enjoy it a lot more when you lead them to the edge of the truth and let them get the rest of the way themselves.

Tomorrow, the Canadian series Lost Girl returns to television for its third season. It will air in the States on Syfy starting Monday the 14th.

A lot of people are just now discovering the show, which follows the adventures of a young Fae woman, a Succubus named Bo. This show is very Buffyesque, so if you loved Buffy, you will probably love this. I am totally hooked on this show in a bad way, as I have posted about before.

The first two seasons are available on Netflix streaming, but in case you don't have time for all that, I made a video summarizing all the important stuff that happened over the last two years.

So please to enjoy Previously, On Lost Girl......

 
I wrote this whole rant about Dish Network and AMC and how much bullshit it is that I pay so much money a month and they're not going to air one of my favorite shows because of a spat the companies are having and it's an outrage and all, and then thought about rape victims in Burundi and decided I sounded like a fucking asshole so I deleted it.

So I'm just gonna say, I hope they resolve this shit soon. It's not good for either company.

I've also gotten way into Strike Back, which is why I now have (with the exception of AMC, Sundance, WeTv and IFC) ALL THE FUCKING CHANNELS. I added HBO when I got into True Blood. I added Starz when I got into Spartacus, I just added Cinemax because of Strike Back, so I figured I might as well throw Showtime onto the pile since there's bound to be something I want there too. Now I can finally get into Homeland.

I like stories.

With this whole kerfuffle over AMC, I'm thinking of switching to the online model, but I'm not sure it's ready yet. One day everything will be customizable and online, but that day is not yet here.

So how do you watch your TV?

I finished my fan video. I bring you "Bad Boyfriend," a tribute to the character of Dyson on the Showcase/Syfy series Lost Girl.



I was surprised at how all-consuming this became. I will probably make this my new hobby.

Please to enjoy if you like alpha males. Or if you don't.

Seriously, look at this dude.

It's Monday. Know what Monday has become to me? Lost Girl night. This post will come as no surprise if you follow me on Twitter. I cannot shut the fuck up about this show.

It started in college. Or maybe not. Maybe it started when I was six and obsessed over Fraggle Rock. I didn't want to go to bed; I just wanted to spend more time with the Fraggles. It got so bad my parents took the TV away until I was 14. I read books. I went outside to play.

Then in college I got my own television.

One day I flipped some channels and found a show where some girl was holding two Pez dispensers up - one a witch and one a wolf, because she was a witch and her boyfriend was a werewolf. And I decided not to change the channel.

Probably in the same week, I saw a tiny gray puppet wandering around on a space ship calling himself a "Dominar" and negotiating with a gigantic space bug.

So I don't remember which came first, Buffy or Farscape, but in both cases I remember the exact episode that got me hooked. I'd been out of the TV loop for so many years that this was fucking amazing to me. And I started to obsess. I wanted more, always more. When Buffy gave her life I cried. Shit, I still cry even though I know she's coming back. When John Crichton destroys entire armadas to get Aeryn back in his arms, I cheer.

And that's probably when I really began to appreciate moving pictures. I write features, not TV, but the truth is, my love of visual story telling began with two great genre TV shows.

Remember when Veronica Mars opened the door at the end of season one and we had to wait an entire summer to find out who she saw? That shit drove me crazy. I thought about it all the time. Who's at the goddamn door?

And the horror I felt at the end of the last episode of Firefly as I realized there would be no more story - I don't want to relive those moments.

But then I became a very mature adult. I still enjoyed television. I loved Lost and enjoy Doctor Who very much, but I don't download wallpapers or search for spoilers or join fan forums. I moved on with my life. If I missed an episode of television, that was okay. I had a life to live and these people weren't real. I was a grown-up now, not a kid who imagines what character she would be if she was in this show. Not that I ever did anything so nerdy as that. I mean, come on, I'm pretty cool.

Then one day after Being Human on Syfy, I stuck around to see the pilot for Lost Girl. And fuck me. The little genre-obsessed girl inside never left. She was just waiting for the next great show. I was in from the minute the credits rolled.

I am obsessed with this show. In case you don't know about it, it's an incredibly popular Canadian production about a bisexual succubus named Bo (Ana Silk) learning about a Fae world hidden from humans. They're already filming season 3 in Canada, but Syfy's only beginning to air season two now.

I couldn't wait. I kept going online and looking things up and getting spoiled. As soon as I found out about Dyson (the wolf man pictured above, played by the sweltering Kris Holden-Reid) giving up his love to protect Bo, I immediately went online to see if he ever gets it back. And of course I spoiled myself on that and other things in the process.

I realized at this point that if I didn't go ahead and find these episodes and watch them, I was going to ruin the show for myself. It was the whole "Who's at Veronica's door" thing all over again, only now I can actually look it up and find out. And that just makes watching it later not as much fun. So this weekend I found them online and marathoned them all. I have now seen all of season two, and I am relieved. But now I can't wait for season 3.

But it's Monday today, and that means I can watch the episodes again on Syfy. And I will. Because I am once again reminded of how easily I get addicted to good stories. Some people can't stay away from their cell phones. Some people need food or booze or meth. I just need a weekly injection of a genre show with a great love story and some action.

And I am Team Dyson all the way.

The other day I was sitting in my classroom during my planning time, making the most out of my opportunity by grading papers watching Farscape on my laptop. A couple of girls who love me asked if they could use my room to work on their sewing assignment, and since they promised not to get in the way of my vital TV watching, I agreed.

Before you get all "Teachers don't do shit and get paid too much" rant, you should know that it was a Friday.

Anyhow, when I told the girls I was watching episodes of an old show, they rolled their eyes. I tried to explain by asking them what was their favorite fictional show. The plan was to tell them that one day they'd enjoy watching old episodes of that show to reminisce about how awesome it was.

Know what shows they immediately named? A bunch of reality shit. The first show one girl mentioned was Fact or Fiction, so I said No, girls, and actual fiction show, with a story. What shows do you watch with a story?

Know what one girl immediately said? Jersey Shore. Dammit to hell.

Eventually I got her to mention The Office, but then she confessed that she doesn't actually like The Office.

People, something has got to be done. This is just wrong.

So as they cut the shapes out of their pattern or whatever they were doing, I continued to watch Farscape. Then one of the girls asked what I was watching. "It sounds interesting," she said. "I want to watch that."

So I told them the premise of the show and that it was made by the Jim Henson company and included puppets and crazy creatures, and they both looked like they wanted to check it out. "That sounds cool," they said.

I don't know if they'll go home and watch Farscape today, but at the very least I planted a seed.

Did you guys see that Doctor Who season finale? Spoilers for that to follow.

SPOILERS FOR DOCTOR WHO SEASON FINALE.

Okay? Okay.

We knew he was supposed to die, but we as followers of the industry also knew Matt Smith wasn't leaving the show, and there's no way the writers and producers and the BBC were going to just end such a great show, and a lucrative show, out of nowhere. So the question in the minds of all the fans was "How the hell are they gonna get out of this one?" Which is a great situation to be in. I love it when I have no idea how they'll get out of the hole they dug themselves.

Which leads me on a brief tangent. I loved Farscape dearly, like more than any other show, which says a lot, but I was watching old Farscape episodes recently, and it still bugs me how they'd get out of these crazy impossible season ending puzzles by saying basically "And they got out of there somehow and ended up here" or "And he was not really dead" or some equally lame solution to a complicated problem. But who cares, really, because the show was badass.

Anyhow, the point is, we knew the Doctor wouldn't really die, but the show backed itself into a corner. How were they going to worm their way out of this? We were all looking for the answer.

And they gave us the answer. The Tesselacta showed up in the Previously On so we were all thinking about it. The Doctor is totally a robot when he's shot! He's got to be! But then they used The Tesselacta and some of the information it provided, so okay, maybe that's why they showed it. And then there's the fact that in the season premiere when we saw his death scene, he tried to regenerate. There's no getting around that. He definitely did that gold glowy thing he does. The robot couldn't have done that.

So it couldn't have been the Tesselacta.

And there it was, right in front of us.

I don't know about you guys, but I rejected the idea that it was the Tesselacta as soon as I realized that he regenerated. But when we went to the actual scene where River shot at him, we didn't get to see him regenerate. And as we flashed to the new present where River decides to save him, we still never see him regenerate. But we've forgotten that we already rejected the Tesselacta because he regenerated. All we remember is, we rejected it. So we never saw it coming.

What a great red herring. That's textbook; show me the answer, then give me a reason to disbelieve it, then make me realize I forgot that I had the answer all along.

And that's why Doctor Who continues to be number one on my list of shows to record on the DVR.

I missed the pilot of Ringer, but I did see the clip they showed on The Soup, so I feel pretty caught up. I loved Buffy so much, no matter how stupid this show looked I would have watched it, so I watched episode two. Oof.

I don't know what happened. I loved Buffy. She was great, but this girl sucks. That guy who played Pip in the BBC version of Great Expectations (you know him as Mr. Fantastic, but you are not an English teacher) made me interested, but not enough. I was about to stop watching and delete the recording and then I saw D.B. Woodside and I was like yay! D.B. Woodside! Buffy and Principal Wood, together again! And also the president's brother who was then briefly president!

And if you understood all that, you watch too much TV.

But then I realized it was a completely different dude who kind of looked like D.B. Woodside. So I was back to not caring. But then there was that chick who was on Hustle and Warehouse 13 and she's pretty cool, but not D.B. Woodside cool. And that eyeliner dude from Lost whose story never got resolved with any real satisfaction.

Still, based on all these people I recognized, I watched the whole episode even though I decided about five minutes in that I wasn't down with this show.

I just thought it was interesting that the actor made such a difference. I think there's such a glee to seeing someone who played a role you love that you're willing to sit through things that suck just to relive that feeling. I'm not saying Ringer sucks, but it wasn't for me.

I don't know. I just know I didn't like the protagonist. Maybe I should have caught the pilot, or maybe seeing The Soup make fun of the pilot set my mine in a certain direction. Maybe it's too CWish. Maybe I just don't see where this is going.  Maybe that redheaded chick's hair is entirely too red and it bugs me. Or maybe it's that I'm supposed to feel for a chick who has just walked into a life with a great job and a hot husband and lots of money and I just don't. I don't know.

But now I'm going to watch the second episode of Unforgettable, whose pilot I also missed.

I'm going on a brief vacation out of town. You gotta get out of town at least once a year, I say.

I got to page 60 in my script, which was my goal. I didn't want to leave town until I had at least 60 pages. I also enjoyed these last few pages more than the rest, which hopefully means I can go back to the beginning and rewrite those pages to make them even stronger now that I have a clearer sense of the script's identity.

Things that have annoyed me on television lately:

I hate that Hughes Net commercial. I don't know if you guys get it where you are, but it comes on ALL THE TIME on my TV. Hughes Net is some kind of internet service provider, and their whole schtick is this idea that you may be in the middle of nowhere, but that doesn't mean you have to settle for dial-up internet! But I'm not in the middle of nowhere. I'm in the greater Los Angeles area. Nobody here is getting back to nature. Where do they think they're advertising? Drives me an unreasonable amount of bonkers.

Dear Colby on Top Shot, please stop smiling like the Joker. It creeps me out. You don't actually have to talk through your teeth.

I wish high school kids were played by people who look remotely like high school kids. When your high school junior has forehead wrinkles he is not believable as a teenager. I'm looking at you, tough slutty guy on Glee.

A thing that made me happy recently:

Fright Night was fun. The lead had forehead wrinkles and the high school scenes were a bit silly, but once things got going it was quite enjoyable. But by far the most joy to be had in that film was.....

VERY SLIGHT SPOILER THAT YOU COULD DEDUCE FROM LOOKING AT THE CAST LIST, WHICH I DID NOT

...When David Tennant showed up. I was looking at this magic guy thinking, this dude is basically Russel Brand, so why didn't they just hire Russel Brand? Why hire this random actor guy? Who is this guy anyway? Seems familiar. And then he pulls off his wig and his facial hair and I squealed. I ADORE David Tennant in all forms. And he wasn't just a cameo, either. He was a liquored up leather-clad badass with a filthy mouth. He made that film way better than I expected it to be. I just wish I hadn't been tricked into watching it in 3D because the 3D was completely unecessary.

Have a good weekend, everybody.

HBO finally got me. They gave out a week and a half of free programming, just in time to catch the season premiere of True Blood. And it just so happens, True Blood's last season was up next in my DVD queue, and I just watched the first disk. I do not want to wait for the next disk. There is something horribly addictive about that show.

And then they showed that usual montage of all the shows they have. And you know I really love Eastbound and Down and Entourage, and I did enjoy the pilot to Game of Thrones....

Damn you, HBO. I resisted you last time, but you got me. You finally got me.

There's a new show on Spike TV called Repo Games. Your car is about to be repossessed, so the repo guy shows up and asks you a bunch of trivia questions, and if you get them right you get to keep your car. If you get them wrong you lose your car. It turns out, a lot of people who get to this point in their lives don't know a lot of trivia.

This is the first stage of events that will lead to The Running Man. I mean, how big a step is it from making people answer questions about literature to keep their cars from making people run as a guy covered in Christmas tree lights tries to cut them in half with a chain saw?

Then there's the duo of Tosh.0 and Web Soup, shows that play ridiculous web videos. Web Soup especially is one nut shot video from being Ow My Balls!

If you don't know what The Running Man is, watch more '80s movies starring Arnold. If you don't know what Ow My Balls! is, watch Idiocracy. Because every time I think about the friends I have who don't want to have kids and people like Octomom I get scared.

But then I watch Ow My Balls! and The Repo Man and I feel better. Sometimes you just have to wait for the future to get here.

You guys watch Top Shot? Beefcake's big into guns so we've been watching that for the past two seasons. It's this show on History where military guys, rednecks and the occasional golf pro compete to see who's the best marksman.

I don't really care about the guns - I'm more interested in the political dynamics between the competitors. This season there was this golf pro who had the stupidest stance every single time he went up to shoot something, but won over and over again, much to the chagrin of every other shooter in the competition. He was really annoying but damn if he wasn't a fucking savant with a weapon.

The host is annoying as fuck. He never shuts up and his teeth are like creepy white goblins that threaten to leap out between his tiny lips and chomp their way across my living room. But anyway.

What really interested me this season was George. George is a sniper instructor and a douche. He uses words like "failboat" with wild abandon and constantly talks about how awesome he is at everything. Beefcake and I regularly groaned at the television when he went on one of his bragging tirades. He was a great villain after the golf guy started proving that he knew how to shoot and everybody started picking on him. George is a great shooter and he knows it. You'll rarely find a better reality competition show villain than a guy who's really good at the talent at hand and knows it and won't shut up about it. You really want that guy to get his comeuppance.

SPOILERS FOR THE FINALE

Then in the final episode, we learned what everybody wanted to do with the money. One guy wanted to pay for his kid's final year in private school and the other guy wanted to send his kids to college. George wanted to buy $100,000 worth of guns. What a douche.

The guys started shooting. They got to pick the weapon and the target and the distance, and the guy who wanted to send his kids to college missed every shot. So up goes George. If George hits this shot, he goes to the final round and knocks the other guy out of competition. If George misses this shot, the other guy gets another chance at that $100 grand.

So George chooses a gun he knows the other guy can shoot, a HUGE target, and a short distance. And he misses.

George threw the competition.

And I thought, holy shit. I hated this guy. He was a selfish, egotistical prick. All he cared about was winning, and then suddenly after weeks of living with these honorable guys and becoming their friends, George learned that his ego could take a back seat to someone who needed the money more. George easily could have won the competition had he not thrown himself on the grenade.

It's one of the things I tell kids all the time when we talk about character development. Contrasts. All people have surprising elements about themselves that nobody would expect. Everyone is the opposite of himself, even if it's only in this one little area. Life proves that to be true all the time. Here's surprisingly honorable George.

It's like they wrote it that way. It's reality TV, so there's always the chance that they did, but I don't think so.  I think George grew a little bit that day. Sometimes reality shows try to force a story arc with music and editing. This story just unfolded all by itself. I thought that was cool.

I've been watching both versions of Being Human - the BBC version and the Syfy version - and I enjoy them both. What I especially appreciate is the way the American version has taken the story in a new direction instead of cloning the original. In some ways, I like the choices the American version has made better.

I do love Nina, though. Spunky little Nina.

Anyway, all that said, I have an issue with the ghost.

In the British version, Annie the ghost was murdered by her fiance. He was an abusive asshole who pushed her down the stairs, where she cracked her head open on the landing. Annie is the kind of woman who has deep insecurities, the kind of woman who is so afraid of being alone that she'll allow a man to treat her like crap because she thinks she's lucky to have him around. She demonstrates this in everything she does. Before she realized he killed her, she tried to follow her fiance around, thinking it was now her job to protect him. She takes care of everybody even in death, and in the current plotline she dotes on Mitchell - a vampire with a nasty past - because he saved her from a terrible fate.

In the American version, Sally the ghost was murdered by her fiance. He was an abusive asshole who pushed her down the stairs, where she cracked her head open on the landing. Sally is the kind of woman who always dreamed of traveling, regularly gave rants in her college classes about the stupidity of the state of marriage, takes no time at all to fall for a new ghost she ran into, and immediately gets angry and revengy when she finds out how she died. She's about as insecure as a bear.

I understand the desire to make an American woman strong and independent, but the kind of woman she is in this story is not the kind of woman who lets a man abuse her for very long. The British version is about a woman learning to balance her own independence with her desire to feel needed and desired. The American version is about a girl who is actually pretty together except for the whole dead thing, and she's just pissed off at the guy who killed her, but seems to be almost over it already.

I'm all for strong women, but not when they make no sense.

I love The Walking Dead, but that really shouldn't surprise anybody. They started off embracing tired stereotypes and have since gradually opened them up. At first it looked like every episode would be all stereotype all the time, but especially this last episode where the Cholos turned out to be running a clinic.

Along those same lines, I was overwhelmed with joy at the zombie episode of Community. I love ABBA. I love zombies. I love Community. I'm not sure how they got inside my brain, but I like it.

BBC's Luther is interesting as hell. The choices they've made on that show are so unexpected I feel surprised with every episode. It's not often you get surprised by TV anymore, especially cop shows.

Until Doctor Who comes back, Stargate Universe has become the show I look forward to the most during the week. The characters make some seriously tough choices, and I am always pleasantly surprised at where the show goes thematically. It is miles better than its predecessors, including the movie.

Dean Winchester is frequently comic relief on Supernatural. He's emotionally scarred but he covers it up with jokes, constant jokes. He loves to booze it up and chase women and kill evil things.

The thing is, Dean can have almost any woman he wants in the whole world, so why in the world would he ever pick someone as humorless as Lisa? I don't get that choice. His sense of humor keeps him balanced, so the woman he would choose to spend his life with, the woman who would serve as his rock in the storm, that woman should be AWESOME, like Jo was. Lisa is not awesome. Lisa is boring and unfunny, and I don't believe in a million years that a guy like Dean would end up with her by choice when he has so very many options. I mean I get that he was looking for a stable suburban life, but that doesn't mean he has to pick a chick with no sense of humor.

I mean, would it be so much to make her laugh just one time? Nobody wants to be around someone who never makes you laugh.

She theoretically broke up with him this last episode, so we'll see if she and that whiny kid come back to bore us to death.

I love this show and I hate seeing it so abused. Dean's next girlfriend better be cool.


Tomorrow be on the lookout, I have part one of an interview with the one, the only, the rock star: Bill Martell.

I really want to like Undercovers. The pilot was okay - not great, not even remotely as good as the Alias and Lost pilots - but good enough that I liked its potential. But now....

These two people were spies for years before they met. They traveled around the world lying to everyone they met, doing lord knows how many morally questionable things to get the job done. Yet they don't appear to have any secrets from each other.  Their "fights" are more like cute little foreplay. They just love each other so much that they know each other sooooo well and just want to protect each other, but not at the risk of sacrificing professional respect. It's like the fucking Cleavers with guns.

And the other spy guy, the hot white guy, he used to date the wife. Now he works with the wife and husband and they all get along. He doesn't really want the wife back - he jokes about it, but he's got a lot of other irons in the fire. The husband isn't particularly jealous, sort of mildly annoyed.

Speaking of jealousy, nobody's a better spy than anybody else. There's no real competition between them.

I don't tune into shows like this to watch the mission. I don't give a shit about the mission. I tune in to watch how the mission affects the relationship of a married couple, but so far the mission doesn't seem to affect them much at all.

Give one of them a horrible secret. Make one member of the group HATE another member of the group they're forced to work with. Make one of them kick so much ass on a mission while the other one ends up looking like an idiot. For heaven's sake, give us some genuine conflict, not this surfacy cute shit we've been getting. I'd say Undercovers does not need to be Chuck, but even Chuck has constant relationship conflict. So instead I say, Undercovers, be the edgy Chuck. Please.

Okay so. I'll admit when I was wrong.

Tony Danza's Teach does show what it's like to be a teacher. In the pilot he doesn't have the kind of discipline issues most teachers get, but he does have the general problems aside from discipline that we all have. But it's the pilot; it looks like in future episodes he will have to deal with some discipline issues. The first week the kids are figuring you out. The second week they're testing you.

There's a scene in the preview of upcoming episodes where he walks out in the middle of class and thinks about leaving. Oh yeah, I've been there. I've cried in the hallway in the arms of another teacher while my kids sat in my room waiting for me to come back. So I guess this show is for real.

I found myself willing him advice.

I found myself wondering if they said the same things about me in my first year that they said about him. I am both terrified and amazed at how much logic and empathy the kids used when talking about him.

I heard him say things exactly like the things I have said, because much like Tony Danza, I am manic in the classroom and I still talk too much.

With that in mind, the best advice I ever got as a teacher:

-When you ask a question, wait. And wait. Eventually one of them will get more uncomfortable than you are with the silence, and they'll answer the question.

-At the end of the day, the kids should be tired, not you. Make them do all the work, even if that work is mental

-Make the kids think you're crazy. If they think you're crazy, they'll always be a little scared of what you might do if they piss you off.