Tuesday TiVo dilemma

The TiVo records 2 things at a time, and we can't watch another channel when it records 2.

Tuesday at 9, however, is a WEALTH of good TV.  What's a girl to do?

House
DWS elimination show
Deadliest Catch (it's back!  YAY!)
Dog the Bounty Hunter

Thank God the cable companies re-run their primetime shows 3 or 4 hours later. DC and Dog each record at 1am Wednesday, while DWS and House record LIVE...

So I'll be seeing both of them tonight.

I've mentioned before how much I LURVE Deadliest Catch.  Don't ask why.  I just like watching these guys go out and try to beat Mother Nature and make BANK in 2 weeks.  Good for them.

Spring is definitely the BEST TV time.  YAY!

In which I do my Mike Teevee impression

As the new fall season of TeeVee unfolds, I find myself drawn back to network shows a bit more than in the past.  Cable shows will always own (and then break) my heart (DAMN YOU SCI-FI CHANNEL!!!), but this year's network offerings look to be a better group than most.

Of these new shows two were IMMEDIATE hits in our house: K-Ville and Chuck.  Each is already queued for a season pass on the TiVo.  Finally there's something good to watch on Monday other than Football and DWS.  Although I admit this week we watched ALL of the Padres/ Rockies play-in game, instead.  Good thing we have a dual tuner Tivo and 2 tv's.....  Hubby has also recently gotten into Shark, and has a season pass for that as well.

Cavemen was better than expected.  It plays more as a buddy comedy with gimmicky jokes than a gimmick comedy with buddy jokes.  We'll see how quickly the jokes get tired....

We're still on the fence about Cane.  The first episode was good, but the previews make it look like every episode will be: Alex loves his family, but they don't all love him; Alex faces a challenge; Alex bulldozes his way through; Alex must face repercussions of previous bulldozer incidents.  In which case, YAWN!

Tonight we get the new season of South Park, and the first episode of Pushing Daisies. I'm interested to see what the show will really look like.  Visually, the previews are like a mixture of Pleasantville and Big Fish, so I am interested to see how much of that carries through the whole episode.  If the show is good, so much the better.

Strangely enough, I'm very sad the summer TV season is over. As much as I love House and Betty and DWS, the summer shows were so much more interesting and so much more watchable than regular October to May network TV.  Psych, Dresden, The Closer, Burn Notice, and Painkiller Jane were weekly appointments for us, and some of the best TV I've seen in years, even if the folks at SciFi got cancel happy on us (see note above re: Sci Fi).  Oh well, if nothing else it's good they're all on in the summer: the TiVo would be SWAMPED otherwise, and it would take me MONTHS to catch up!

Survivor got its season pass yanked: predictable, stupid, filthy.  When TAR comes back, then I'll watch reality TV on CBS.  There's a REASON that TAR has won every "best reality show" Emmy since its inception.

Not surprisingly we've watched very few of the "returning" shows on the TiVo so far.  I am, of course, keeping up with DWS, usually on the same evening it airs.  And CSI we watched almost live.  I was terribly disappointed that they seem to have gone back to the "less-plot-more-artistic-long-camera-shots" method and are now adding indie rock for crap ass montages.  Look, we wanted to see them get Sara out from under the car.  We wanted some kind of master plan from the arch criminal.  We got neither, just a drunk pirate wandering in the desert with NO COMMON SENSE about how to be found.  And she was carrying a mirror!  Does she not know to flash with it?  I mean, she COULD NOT have walked so far from the crash that she didn't hear that helicopter Greg was flying around in.  You get up on high ground, and flash with the mirror, dumbass.  You don't collapse 3 feet from the roadside because you wandered instead of conserving your energy and trying to stay cool during the day!  Wander at night.  Moron.  CSI Vegas is getting to be as dumb as CSI Horatio.

Yes you read that right.

Ok, well, the cold medicine and returned-camera high are wearing off, so it's nappy nap time for me.  See you later.

It's Amazing!

CBS moved the start date of Amazing Race 12 up to November 4! And today they released the team information for the new season. I already KNOW I'll be rooting for Nicolas and Donald, and we'll have to wait for the season premiere to see who else we'll love and love to hate!

Ralphie Rocks!

TBS set records with this year's "A Christmas Story" Marathon:

The marathon scored its best-ever average delivery in total viewers (2.8 million) as well as in such key demos as adults 18-34 (775,000), adults 18-49 (1.6 million) and adults 25-54 (1.5 million), according to Nielsen Media Research.

For the marathon's entire 24-hour run, TBS ranked as the No. 1 ad-supported cable network in 18-34, 18-49, 25-54 and total viewers. (Ad-supported networks include most basic cable outlets with a few exceptions like Disney Channel.)

During the marathon, the most-watched airing of "Christmas" in total viewers was the first telecast (8 p.m. December 24), which averaged 4.4 million viewers. The 10 p.m. telecast that followed was the most-watched among 18-34 (1.2 million), 18-49 (2.2 million) and 25-54 (2.1 million).

The 10 p.m. showing also beat all broadcast programming on Christmas Eve (8 p.m.-midnight) in the 18-34 demo.

Forest for the trees (and some TV notes)

It was a busy weekend at the Casa de CTG. For the first weekend in about a month it was cool enough to work outside, and we were actually IN TOWN to get things done.

Despite the fact that GMT is home for the summer, the yard has been getting away from us shamefully. It has just been too hot to work in the yard for long periods, so the list of things to be done has far outpaced the the things we can GET done. Add to that a tree that decided to DIE in the middle of the yard, and well, it was starting to look like there were a few dead cars arriving to be parked on the lawn in a week or so.

Finally this weekend we were able to tackle some big projects. First up was the dead tree. Our lovely plum tree just turned brown and withered. We'd known it was sick, with some disease that didn't affect the other fruit trees in the yard, or the neighbors yard. But then it just up and died. So we took it down before it fell and killed someone.

Hubby clipped off all of the small limbs and branches with pruning shears and then we borrowed a friend's chainsaw and chopped it down a piece at time into a rather cheerful looking pile of firewood.

When Hubby got to the stump, the reason for the tree's downfall became immediately clear: Termites had infested the base of the tree and killed it from the inside out. Of course, we sprayed the stump with bug spray and threw the termite pieces in the trash. They live in the soil in Pasadena, I know, but the fewer the better is my motto when it comes to Termites.

When the plum tree was done, we moved the operation to the front yard, and using our awesome pole trimmer and tree saw, we took out all of the lower branches on the nasty tree that shades our driveway (and drops leaves and makes the car sticky from its secretions), mostly because the branches were likely the cause of our cable having loose connections, and because the branches were beginning to brush the roof. Yeah, not good. I've noticed these trees all over Pasadena, and it seems to me that most people who park under then DO NOT experience sticky, leafy car like we do, and I realized, most of the other trees are higher above the cars, so hopefully the trim will help with that, too.

Then, later last night we went over to some other friends' house and picked up their mini-whisper-chipper. This should allow us to get rid of most of the tree waste by making it into some lovely mulch. YAY!

I am totally exhausted.

Also from this weekend, it seems we stopped watching House entirely about the time we went into escrow on the house. Regular lurkers will know that was well over a season ago, strike or no strike. So this weekend we picked up where we left off, and have watched 9 episodes or so, which brings us up to just about the last pre-strike episode. It's nice to have all that TiVo space back, too. Just 12 to go. I expect we'll get through them in the next couple of days. Then we have a whole season of Ugly Betty to get through. As well as a whole slate of summer shows.

Speaking of summer shows, we were both very impressed with A&E's The Cleaner, starring Benjamin Bratt. Despite a few cheesy moments (including a Pulp Fiction-esque heroin rescue and a very amateurly foreshadowed suicide), it was gripping and we're looking forward to the second episode on Tuesday.

Also, our all-time favorite, Psych, is back on USA. This season started off with what I consider to be just a "meh" episode, despite the much ballyhooed arrival of Shawn's Mom: Cybill Shepherd. She was actually excellent, and seemed to fit right into the cast. The plot was MORE than a tad contrived, with Shawn resorting to fraud and blackmail to keep Gus's "dayjob" from forcing him out of the agency. Not his best work, and certainly not the best script of the show. Surprisingly adorable: Henry getting all mushy about his ex and Lassiter crying on the therapy couch after boasting to Jules that he was kicking a$$. Looking forward to a much better season once the writers get over their long winter break.

And a final thought on TV: All-time Foodie fave Ted Allen returns to weekly TV with a new show on Food Network starting next Tuesday (7/29). It's called "Food Detectives" and looks to be the gay love child of Alton Brown's Good Eats and MythBusters. Even if the concept wasn't so cool, I'd be all over this show. How can you not love the man who once advocated that bacon should be its own food group, and later described it as the "best two words in food: Ba. Con."?