Battlestar Galactica – Season 3

Archived review – My thoughts on the first 10 episodes of the season:

This is a hard one to comment on, since everyone's sick and tired of me saying how uber-amazing and superior this show is compared to anything else currently on TV. Even I'm tiring of it. The trouble with Season 3 is that its first few episodes were fantastic. Too fantastic. The occupation of New Caprica, complete with its thinly veiled allegory with Iraq, was perhaps the most gripping storyline I've seen from a TV show. Everyone had important parts to play, and I was completely surprised that my favourite scene (a death scene, no less) was between two actors/characters I previously had not much sympathy/liking for. It speaks volumes for the show that such a moment between two unlikeable characters can bring a (mostly) grown man to tears; Nothing this side of the death of Buffy's mother has done that! But sadly, that was where the show peaked. Once everyone was back in space and on the run from the Cylons, the reset button may not have been pressed, but the format and quality has reverted back to how it was in Season 2 - still amazing, but with occasional faults and slow-burners. The midseason finale was excellent, but didn't pack quite the same punch as previous finales. So in summary, still the greatest show on TV, but possibly harming itself by becoming too good :-)

I didn't get around to reviewing the second half of the season. Bad James, no Monster Munch for you! However, I do remember at the time being highly interested in Baltar's trial (and seriously impressed by Lee's heartfelt testimony), but not a whole lot else.

Lost – Season 3

Archived review – After the six-episode arc that aired before Christmas:

Only six episodes have been shown so far, thanks to the inventive scheduling that is 'showing one episode every week without countless repeats'. My, how did no one ever think of that before?! Because of this, it's kind of hard to figure out whether season three will be any good or not. Certainly, the first six episodes have been fairly good, of a similar (but not better) standard to Season 2. We've already had the introduction of the intriguing Juliette, a lot of information about the Others, and the surprising death of a fan favourite. Flashbacks have been a bit disappointing so far as they've all focused on characters we know so much about already. Also, the focus on the Others mean there's been little screen time for a lot of people; Hardly anything has been seen of Hurley, Claire, Jin/Sun and two new characters that have not yet shown any promise. The jury's still out.

And at the end of the season:

After an amazing first season, a so-so second season and those initial six unanswering autumn episodes, Lost has finally returned to form in what might overall be its best season yet. Once the show returned in January (or at least once Hurley's episode broadcast and finally lifted people's spirits from the previous era of capture/torture/depression), the pace got a little faster and questions were finally being answered. Such a conspiracy show is never going to hit the breakneck speed of, say, Heroes, but at least something significant seemed to happen every episode. Even more standalone episodes such as Expose, in which the writers admitted that the two new shoehorned-in characters were annoying and no-one cared about them by killing them off in an entertaining way, proved to be captivating detours. And someone please give newcomer Elizabeth Mitchell an Emmy for her performance in One of Us, or at least a nomination. The finale achieved everything that is so good about Lost - the death of a major character showed that anyone is expendable, there were brief moments of hope and joy amidst what is quite a sombre and despairing show. And for the first time ever, everyone was working together, a pleasure to watch after all the separation and trust issues raised this season. There was also an exciting twist that could change the entire format of the show (although I don't think there will be much impact for a while yet) and with the announcement of an endgame after 48 more episodes, hopefully the quality can be retained and a satisfying conclusion can be achieved with most major questions answered. For such a popular cult show, it would be a shame for it to peter out like The X-Files did. Here's hoping.

Veronica Mars - Season 3

Archived review

The sort-of-Buffy-but-not-quite show about a teenage detective is dead, and despite it being a pretty good show, I'm not too sad to see it go. I don't think I've ever mentioned this show before because I only started watching it this year, and the first two seasons took up much of my spare tired-and-depressed time in the winter months. The first season I would recommend to anyone, as I would the first season of 24 - There's a huge plot arc spanning the whole season that gets wrapped up nicely, but with VM there are also individual mysteries to be solved each episode. It works as a self-contained season and the main plots about who killed Veronica's best friend and who raped her (she's had a difficult time, to be sure!) are both intriguing and very personal (I even cried at the scene that resolves Veronica's paternity questions, which took me by surprise). However, unlike 24, there wasn't much more ground to be covered after that. Season 2 was too much a clone of the first, and Season 3 just didn't work. Struggling to find viewers, the format changed to smaller 7ish-episode arcs, and eventually standalone episodes, to make the show more accessible. Sadly, none of it was ever as emotionally affecting as Veronica's first-year troubles. Like Buffy, the show worked best when the title character was going through hell and had great difficulty dealing with it. As she got older and moved to college, Veronica learned to take things in her stride which made the show a bit harder to get invested in. Also, the dialogue in Season 3 wasn't quite as witty as before, or perhaps it was and I had just tired of it, much like the 'Buffy-speak' of old. So goodbye Veronica, it may have gone downhill but we'll always have that first season. I shall return to watch you again someday.

24 – Season 6

Archived "review" – Don't worry, I did go back for Season 7, and I'll give that season some love:

I only watched half of this sixth season of what was once an astonishing show before I lost interest. I'll sum it all up in five words; Oh dear. What a pity.

Heroes – Season 1

Archived review – My thoughts halfway through the first season:

The most promising new show has been this tale of ordinary people "across the globe" (although it's not long before they've all converged in America) that develop extraordinary powers. Taking influences from the serial storytelling of Lost to the 'connected-by-coincidences' aspect of Magnolia but fortunately dropping the camp and spandex that comes with most multiple superhero stories, the show impressed in the first few episodes simply by some of the most amazing and jawdropping cliffhanger endings ever. It stumbled on for a while longer and has only recently shown a lot more promise. A lot of this is to do with the characters finally meeting up and helping each other out. It's uncertain how long it will take for these guys to become a fully formed super team, but it's certainly interesting to see how they are assembling. I'll definitely keep watching for the time being.

And what I made of the second half:

One of my favourite new shows this year, Heroes has been a breakthrough hit (I'd say it was surprising for a fantasy-based show to be this successful, but it happened for Lost and this is slightly more accessible), a serialised drama about the lives of 'real' people across the world (i.e. in America) who gain superpowers. The no-camp-or-spandex policy works well, and it's only in the second half of the season that characters start to meet up and form alliances, making comic book geeks wet their pants in excitement. There are some flaws though. Being such a huge ensemble show, there are so many characters and storylines to keep track of that there is almost always no natural flow to an episode - it comes across as a 'sketch drama', where scenes seem disconnected and there's no guarantee that you'll get a successful resolution in the same episode. This really is a show that requires your full commitment. One of the most satisfying episodes so far was 'Company Man', which focused only on one particular location/storyline (coincidentally, it also featured illuminating flashbacks so it felt very Lost-like) and made for a spectacular hour. Hopefully the show will attempt more episodes of this format next year. Overall, Heroes has been one of the most exciting and fast-paced shows around. Unlike Lost, it answers questions. However, some of the acting is a little wooden and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed by the lacklustre finale which ended with a whimper rather than the promised 'boom'. There's talk of the show going down the Veronica Mars route and going with smaller episode arcs rather than a whole 22-episode run. This would probably be a good idea, and the lack of restrictions on such a fantasy-based show means it's unlikely to run out of steam just yet.

Scrubs – Season 6

Archived Review

For a couple of years now I've been complaining about how my favourite comedy has been going downhill, and with this season it finally occurred to me; it hasn't lowered in quality (much), it's just that it has evolved into the sort of show I find more difficult to like. As creator Bill Lawrence put it in the most recent DVD, earlier seasons saw a drama show with bits of comedy thrown in, but it is now a comedy show with bits of drama thrown in. And this is where I see the problem. When the focus of a show is drama, comedy is appropriate at almost all times (this is evident from Joss Whedon being able to switch the entire tone of a scene in Buffy from horror to comedy to drama to comedy in mere seconds) but when a show is just trying to get laughs, a dramatic turn can often seem as if it has been shoehorned in awkwardly, and the sudden sentimentality can be jarring. It's a problem because Scrubs had to change; It was initially a show about nervous interns who could be emotional wrecks and there were also many fraught working relationships. In later years, everyone has hit their stride, become confident and grown to be rather fond of each other (even if they still pretend otherwise). The only way to go, without hitting 24-like excessive disasters, is to lighten the show up and play it for gags. In that respect, Scrubs is still as funny as it's ever been, although perhaps a few more jokes fall flat than in the past, and certainly some of the staple ingredients of the show have gotten tiresome, most notably the still 1.5-dimensional recurring characters and Dr. Cox's long monologues which have lost much of their wit. Occasionally, it still has just as much dramatic impact too; Carla's farewell to Laverne was a tearjerker, but still not a patch on Brendan Fraser's death in Season 3.
A show like this obviously has a limited lifespan so I shouldn't be too hard on it for changing its ways, given that it couldn't carry on the same. At the same time, I am glad it is being put to bed next year. If we get at least one more brilliant episode like last year's "My Way Home" or this year's "My Musical" I'll be happy.

NB – I never got around to writing about the shortened (writers' strike, what else?!) Season 7, but most of the above still applied. Season 8 would bring the unexpected turnaround of the show...