So, who thinks that a game with lyrics that Christians (Or Jews, for that matter) found offensive would be delayed to fix the music?

Sorry this was delayed. It’s been a busy week.

On House, Dr. House tries to help his team with a diagnosis long distance while he’s being forced to go to his father’s funeral. Fringe‘s heroes hunted for a man who (unintentionally) caused electrical devices to go haywire and the scientist who gave him the power.

Further discussion (and spoilers) after the link.

More …

I just wrote a post last week about how I was going to start writing more about television. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to put that off another night, though, since something more important than Chuck and Heroes came up. My wife’s birthday was last night, and we were out celebrating with friends and didn’t get home until too late. I’ll watch the episodes online sometime this week, but posting about the shows will have to wait until next week.

There may be a House/Fringe post tonight or tomorrow, though, so stay tuned.

[The date on this post reflects when it was originally written, not when it was posted -- I accidentally forgot my power cord to my laptop for a few days, and didn't get the chance to get it posted until a few days after it was written.]

I’m pretty burned out on politics right now, so I’m going to talk about another topic I’ve been neglecting for a while: television.

My television watching has been cut back pretty dramatically since I shut off my cable early this year during the writer’s strike. Prior to that, I usually had the television on for background noise, but I knew I’d only miss a couple of shows when they returned (Lost and Jericho, to be specific), so I had the cable shut off.

After our wedding, I had cable reinstalled at our house immediately^[a]. Not so much because I wanted television, but because I needed internet connectivity. While I had thought I’d just jump right back into watching television, I’ve found that I don’t often turn it on unless I’m watching a DVD or have a specific show I want to watch.

Anyway, here are the shows I’m watching this year, along with some quick thoughts about where they’re at so far.

• Monday
  • Chuck I’m thrilled that Chuck is back this season. I was a little worried with the writer’s strike that it may not survive. I’m really enjoying this season, but I hope that we don’t just stick with the status quo forever. Knowing that Chuck is slated to be killed as soon as he’s no longer needed as the Intersect adds some drama, but it’d get old quickly if we just stay right there. I’d rather he find out and then have him have to deal with deciding whether or not to share flashes that might help build a new Intersect, or get a new Intersect built and have Casey help him hide from the government or something.
  • Heroes I think this season is much stronger than last season was, thankfully. Still, as much as I liked the idea that The Company was forced to ally with Sylar to hunt down all these escaped villains, I find the recent revelation about his origin to be a bit forced. It might work out for the best (I kind of liked Future Sylar), but right now it just seems like a stretch. I’m also getting tired of the time travelling and visions giving people forewarning about what they’re going to face. What’s wrong with letting them deal with an issue as it comes up for once, rather than having them only get involved when they see the horrific future that might come about if they don’t work on it?
• Tuesday
  • House I’m still enjoying House, but with the older episodes in syndication, I’m reminded that it used to be much better than this. I’m not sure exactly why; I’m not sure if it’s that House is meaner than he used to be or what; I just find that I’m much more entertained by rewatching old episodes than I am by watching these new ones.
  • Fringe I’m enjoying this so far, but not as much as I’d hoped. It’s better than last year’s overhyped show (ABC’s Pushing Daisies, and is a good diversion, but it’s not really grabbed me yet. While I don’t have anything against the “Mad science of the week” format, the show obviously wants to tell a more overarcing story, and I’d rather get to that sooner than later, as long as it doesn’t turn out to be the crazy mishmash of government conspiracies that The X-files turned out to be.
• Wednesday
  • Bones .
  • Knight Rider What I didn’t do when I got the cable reinstalled was get a DVR, so I’m not really watching Knight Rider. I watched about half of the first episode this season, and wasn’t particularly impressed. I was extremely annoyed by the transformation into a truck, and the whole “the car’s on fire and we’re all going to die” scene at the beginning of episode one wasn’t nearly as dramatic as I’m sure they intended it to be. We had no real feeling for this KITT’s capabilities, and we had no real connection to any of the characters (KITT included), so it was a bit early to be putting them all at that much risk, I think. Anyway, given that this isn’t as good as the movie^[b] and the fact that both of us love Bones, we’ve been opting to watch that instead. I may watch reruns or buy the DVDs if the show survives.

That’s pretty much it, actually. I don’t watch much on Thursdays, though my wife is giving Kath & Kim a shot and she loves The Office (I also enjoy it, but not enough to be particularly worried about it if I miss an episode). My only Friday night show is Stargate: Atlantis, and I don’t generally sit down to watch much TV on the weekends.

Starting next week, I’ll try to review new episodes as they air, but I make no promises.

1. Seriously. They came the day after we got back from our honeymoon. [↩]
2. And, let’s face it, the movie wasn’t exactly award winning drama; just fun escapism. [↩]

Not Sarah Palin — Joe Biden

Holy crap, we’ve got everything backward this year. I would much rather watch two more debates with Governor Palin and Senator Biden than with Senators McCain and Obama.

I genuinely liked Joe Biden in this debate. I (sometime strongly) disagree with his policies, and I desperately wanted Sarah Palin to call him on it when he claimed that deregulation caused the current financial crisis^[a], but he came across as a genuinely likeable candidate.

I know Biden has a reputation for being something of an “attack dog”, and I think that part of the reason he was more likeable tonight than he’s seemed in the past was that he was reining that instinct in. He attacked McCain’s positions, but he’s worked with McCain for decades and obviously has a lot of respect for him, so he didn’t come across as mean, which is a serious risk for him. He also didn’t say anything overtly stupid^[b], which is something I’m sure the Obama camp was worried about.

I thought that Palin did very well. She worried me a bit on the first question. I know what she was getting at when she talked about asking the parents on the sidelines of a soccer game about the economy, and I want our politicians to genuinely care about the situation that our citizens are in, rather than simply gauging the problem by Wall Street, but I was worried she was going to come across as a little too small-town in this debate.

After that, though, she did much better. I’d address each question, but there are dozens of bloggers already doing that, and most of them are doing it much better than I could. Besides, I quit watching after about an hour. I’m getting old now, and can’t stay up as late as I used to. There was some stuff I needed to do before bed, and I figured that, since Palin was performing well and Biden wasn’t showing off any of his big gaffe-making tendencies, the transcripts would be just as good. Having read them now, I’m pretty sure I was right.

All in all, I think Palin won on the issues, but I’m predisposed to believe that anyway, since the Republicans tend to be a little (but only a little) more libertarian on the issues covered last night^[c] than the Democrats are. I’m sure that my wife felt it went the other way.

Palin performed about as well as I hoped she would, and I think she’s gone a long way to calm some of the fears about her that arose from those interviews. She does better when she’s talking to the American people directly rather than talking to an interviewer, especially when the interview is then filtered through an editor.

Biden, on the other hand, did much better than I’d expected, but my opinion of him was formed mostly from reading comments he’d made here and there and from seeing clips of some of his worse gaffes, so I hadn’t really expected much. After watching him last night, I really wish he was at the top of the Democratic ticket. Obama may do better than he does with prepared speeches, but I think Biden is much better speaking off the cuff.

Again, I wish we could see more of these two and less of McCain/Obama in debates. I think both of them were more interesting to watch than their Presidential candidate counterparts, and since both candidates on each ticket are going to be covering the same talking points, we may as well hear from the people who’re more fun to watch and listen to.

1. In fact, it was too much regulation, or at least government interference. Specifically, the Federal government was encouraging lenders to engage in the very “predatory practices” that both candidates blamed for the crisis when it encouraged them to go after lower income people who, honestly, didn’t have the ability to pay for the loans that they were being given. [↩]
2. He got his facts wrong several times, but so did Palin — politicians lie and it’s hard to have all the relevant facts on those little fact sheets they’re allowed, so I don’t mind the occasional factual error in these debates [↩]
3. Not that there aren’t issues where it’s reversed, we just didn’t cover them in this debate very much [↩]