90210 s03e01: senior year!

howdy, gentile readers. welcome to the liveblogging of the 90210 season 3 premiere. when we last left our troubled adults-playing-teens, naomi was totes about to be raped by the totally hot journalism teacher. liam and darcyannie were seemingly on the verge of some hot degrassi angst. adrianna was about to go on tour with some douchey musician (which explains why navid dropped over to true blood for some hooking). silver and teddy totally made up (too bad for her, really, since he'll be playing for my team in a few episodes). i'm sure something boring happened between black brandondixon and his hippie girlfriendivy, but i lost interest in dixon after he got rid of his crazy lady girlfriend. oh, and the wilson parents broke up.

and show starting...

7pm: previously on...everything i said above. oh, and jen's pregnant and a bitch.
7:01pm: dixon said something stupid. must be monday. oh, boo, harry's principal spot is being painted over. oh, and navid is not dead from being a sexy hooker to the vamps. and mmm...teddy.
7:02pm: can silver say "kickass" one more time? no wonder teddy goes gay.
7:03pm: ha. naomi was at a seedy hotel, not the riviera. maybe seedy hotel manager will rape her, too, before her trust fund kicks in.
7:04pm: new character introduced with ivy. and sounding douchey. i think that's also supposed to be teddy's bf. and navid making out with cell phone. ha! that won't get old. and javier drops adrianna from the tour and tells her to join glee club.
7:06pm: i will not get used to naomi and annie friends again. rob pattinson "bites"; thanks for the fake, naomi. and queue earthquake. oh noes! teddy's knee. naomi did get raped.
7:07pm: "don't go spreading lies." ooh, say it again, hot journalism teacher.
7:08pm: really, reporting rape 3 months after the fact? did you learn nothing from paige's rape in season 2 of degrassi:tng? and commercial break.
7:12: "brother dixon"? really? oh, macho liam stuck in a room with annie. blah blah blah. jasper set boat on fire. annie doesn't return calls all. summer. long. she should have been there for him. read: she should've been giving him lap attention.
7:13: and school's dismissed for earthquake. allegedly. and dixon is being third wheel to ivy and new guy.
7:14: annie internship talk with drunk teacher. can i get brenda back?
7:16: liam reluctantly gives annie a ride to "dream internship" interview. blah. and the beach is dead. but oooh, larceny.
7:17: oh, adrianna, why couldn't you have stayed a les? ooooooh, limo crash while javier is being a dick. $10 something bad happens to him that has no negative effects on adrianna. and second commercial break.
7:22: and jetskis were stolen. nothing bad can happen from this. right?
7:23: dixon. jealous. he's always jealous. gawd. and yes, ivy, you squeal.
7:24: oh, navid and i have the same phone. and teddy falls. he should sue his doctor. and take off his shirt.
7:25: naomi at police station talking about her rape. i'll try my best to not laugh through this scene. yes, you are a "lying sociopath".
7:27: teddy's on his back. oh yeah. and now on limo crash. dead on arrival. totes javier. internet, you owe me $10.
7:28: that doesn't belong to you adrianna. diabolical look on adrianna's face. $10 she decides to do something with those songs, but then has a 180 because she's a good girl. commercial break.
7:31: oh great, kardashians (cq?). "nothing says you're back like backless." oy.
7:32: layway. ha! "i called her a bitch. sorry, i meant ho." way to make me like you, naomi.
7:33: annie's biggest strength? playing the same character on two different teen dramas. and hit and runs.
7:34: $10 annie's honesty gets her that internship.
7:35: "my first little earthquake with gidget." and ivy's cheating on dixon. finally, something interesting for this couple.
7:36: oh, it was a dream. knew it was too good to be true. sigh.
7:37: annie and liam kiss. degrassi style. commercial break.
7:42: you didn't call liam back because you were afraid to have a hot makeout session? "then i guess we're not friends." oh annie, you're a stupid bitch.
7:43: ade gets call from producer lady. boo hoo call. "things have cooled on the adrianna front."
7:45: and queue ade's diabolical plan. new material my ass. internet, you owe me $10. but ooh, pool party.
7:46: teddy whips out ... a flask. damn. and now silver gets all wet blanket.
7:47: ooooh, teddy played against his doctor's orders. you know what cures ruining your tennis career? and telling your girlfriend she's never been good at anything? cock. cock helps.
7:48: ivy and dixon. i bet she wants to have some of the sexxing with him so she can moan out the new guy's name.
7:49: oh, he loves ivy. and ivy says she loves him. boring. oooh, is naomi going to freak out?
7:50: drunk boy is surprisingly aware. and naomi is starting an orgy. great. am i watching nip/tuck? time for last commercial break.
7:53: lights still out at the wilsons. explaining why the hotness that is rob estes isn't there. it's ok to cry, lori laughlin!
7:54: and annie gets the internship. internet, you owe me another $10.
7:55: but oh, something about desperate. something evil this way comes. and teddy stops naomi from her near orgy. and new guy calls ivy on her lust for him.
7:57: ewww, new guy is fucking ivy's mom! "sex is just a random physical act." drunk naomi coming on to teddy. and silver walks in.
7:58: ade singing some stolen songs. and navid says her old material was "lukewarm." evil ade strikes her first victory!
7:59: hot journalism teacher is silver's new advisor. me smelly some future rapey (or near rapeness).

ok, that's it for the liveblogging. it was fun. and now, i need to concentrate on gossip girl. later, interwebbers!

soft re-launch

hey upper-east interwebbers, mando here. bringing to you the soft re-launch (heh. i said "soft".) of social ineptitube.

more later on the relaunch. but more imminenter, and in perfect sense, i'll be live blogging the 90210 season 3 premiere. and review the gossip girl season 4 premiere on the morrow.

why i hate time travel (journeyman 1.1, 1.2)

dan talks with a plot point in journeyman 1.2.

grandfather paradoxes. i frakking HATE grandfather paradoxes. they make my head hurt. and maybe that's the reason i hate journeyman as much as i do.

the premise of the show is...simple? dan vassar, a reporter for the fictional san francisco register, gets headaches, passes out, and hops to another time period in order to make sure certain events play out. only he doesn't know what he's supposed to do and who he's supposed to save. also, he keeps on running into his not-so-dead ex-fiancee, who's also a time hopper, and ends up in situations where he almost interacts with his past self or tries to pass himself off as his past self.

see, that's why my head hurts.

in the first episode, he follows around this one guy and keeps saving his ass, only he's supposed to eventually let the guy get killed so that he doesn't kill his son, who's apparently supposed to be important in the present. in the second episode, he helps deliver a baby, then follows her around, thinking he's supposed to help her make amends with her estranged father and be a bone marrow donor for him, only it turns out she's supposed to be a match for another patient who is an armed forces pilot in the present. bah.

one thing that got old really fast in the first episode (and even older in the second) was the overuse of popular music from the time period dan jumped to. because seeing a calendar or newspaper with the year on it isn't enough of a clue. no, we need to hear sarah mclachlan, oasis, etc., to fully get it. only no, we don't. give us viewers a little credit, ok.

dan's relationships are pretty front and center all the time. his wife, who used to date his cop brother, is having problems with his new side job, what with the not letting their little son know what's going on and having to cover for him with co-workers and friends. cop brother thinks dan's crazy. oh, and, there is dan's not-so-dead ex-fiancee who has the same side job as him and isn't dead, even though everyone thinks she is. then there's his editor at the paper, who thinks dan is a drug addict and is also not very happy with him, which, well, honestly, the guy's missed every deadline he's had in two episodes. his ass should've been canned.

on a sidenote, dan, a newspaper reporter, has an iphone?!? this really is fiction.

the only sub-sub-plot that actually has me interested is, in the second episode, dan hopped while on board an in-flight airplane. airport and federal officials weren't very happy about that. wifey came up with a lame story that dan must've unboarded while they were still on the ground. dan's editor thinks this is newsworthy, so he assigns a reporter to write a story about fellow reporter dan who apparently found a whole in airport security. only the reporter finds out there's security tape footage of dan and wifey getting on the plane, but not of dan getting off. now there's a story i'd read in the newspaper.

so really, if they could avoid dan almost interacting with himself and stop playing popular time period music, the show may not be that bad. it seems to have a pretty straight-forward plot, which may or may not be a good thing. it works on medium, which i love. but maybe it's too much like medium? i guess only time (ha) will tell.

an open letter to josh schwartz, re: chuck 1.1, 1.2

wienerlicious fight from ep. 1.2.

dear josh schwartz,
hi. i really liked the first season of the o.c. the second season was ok. the third made me want to drink myself to sleep, and i only watched the season premiere of the last season. also, i'm really, really enjoying gossip girl. that blair is all shades of alexis morel carrington colby dexter rowan bitchy! but josh, i'm really sorry to say this, because i do like some of your work, but i really, kinda, sorta want to make hate to chuck.

let me put it in words you may understand: chuck bartowski does not equal seth cohen. he's like a shell of seth; he has all the qualities that made me want to strangle seth, without any of the things that made me want to snuggle with seth at night.

but i can see where you're going with the character. he's the ultimate nerd fantasy come true. he has a computer-related job, then overnight he becomes a super-spy with a hot blonde possible love interest.

not to sound like something from e! or vh1, but that's when things start to turn for the worse, which, unfortunately is still within the first half-hour of the pilot.

the thing is, zachary levi just isn't leading man material. or maybe that's just my own prejudice because he'll always be kip the asshole from less than perfect. also, maybe it's just the schedule. i mean, it's kinda rough when there's a three-hour block of shows centering on reluctant heroes.

let's examine the facts. chuck is annoying. his best friend is annoying. within the first 15 minutes of the show, we get a batdance reference, which normally, i might be ok with, but they're comparing the impossibly good-looking blonde secret agent to vicki vale. and poor adam baldwin. does he always have to be in roles where he's the hardass? and chuck saves the day by defusing a bomb with an internet porn-related virus? riiiiiiiiiight.

the second episode wasn't any better. secret agent blonde takes an undercover job at a place called wienerlicious? wienerlicious? really? with teenage boys repeatedly coming in to comment on how hot she is. didn't you think that might be a bit much? because it really was.

so in two episodes, we have a nerd living a fantasy, complete with too-hot-for-him love interest, government conspiracies and secrets, a sidekick that should be put out of his misery, nerd flying a helicopter, an evil doctor trying to steal government secrets, and a fight scene in a place called wienerlicious. guess which is the only one i enjoyed?

josh, i used to have such high hopes for you. i'm hoping the next couple of episodes make me change my mind about chuck. but if they don't, well, at least i have gossip girls.

kthxbai!!!
mando

late thursday night/early friday morning update

mando here. just a little update. leanne's feeling better, but still a little under the weather. as for me, i've been rewatching shows for most of today and yesterday. reviews/recaps of the first two episodes of chuck, journeyman, and bionic woman will be up tomorrow afternoon. still tweaking and searching for images. i'll also have my review of cavemen up sometime tomorrow. this weekend, look for my "which commercials would make better shows than cavemen" feature, as well as my "which fictional shows set in the reality of shows would make better shows than cavemen". the latter should be a real hoot. also, in the works, an examination on the iphone ubiquity in shows so far, and whether the characters using them can actually afford them.

stay tuned.

tv news

periodically, leanne or i will post links to tv-related news online. here's the first of such posts.

hulk hogan set to host revived american gladiators. [ain't it cool news]

the daily show's demetri martin to spin-off into his own show. [e! online]

abc, rob thomas bringing back cupid, sans jeremy piven. [zap2it]

tivo users not taking a "pass" on new fall shows. [mediaweek]

the cw is cutting kids wb!; warner bros. says shows will still live on somewhere [newsarama]

tuesday night update

hi folks. mando here. leanne's a little under the weather, and i've been ultra-lazy, so there's been a lag in posting. she'll post when she's feeling better. in the meantime, i'll do my best to get everything up to speed. i'll get my reviews up soon (read: tomorrow-ish, thursday-ish) for the first few episodes of chuck, journeyman, reaper, big bang theory, how i met your mother, cane, back to you, weeds, dexter, cavemen, and carpoolers. also, by end of week, i'll have a feature up on commercials that would've made better shows than cavemen (because the pilot was AWFUL!!!!!).

enjoy the rest of you tuesday night, and stay tuned. (i can't believe i really just typed that. ha.)