I can’t believe this show made it onto the air. I mean, by the time I got around to watching it on Hulu, it had already been canceled, but, really, it’s amazing this even made it to pilot. The premise is blatantly absurd (team of past life investigators and their PI help people experiencing past life regressions and help them solve their own murders?), but even stranger is that everyone seems willing to go along with it. I mean, the first episode ends with a SWAT team breaking down somebody’s door on the word of a teenage boy who claims to be the reincarnation of a murder victim. How did they get a search warrant based on that? Unless the second episode consists of nothing but the agent who approved that raid getting chewed out by the DA who has to prosecute this case, I’m going to have a very hard time accepting this series at all.

Now, what would be really interesting is if they acknowledged that past life regressions, while vivid, aren’t especially accurate. I really liked that BBC special I watched about the young boy with clear, distinct memories of the island he claimed he was from and his previous mother, but who freaked out a bit when they actually took him to the island and found it wasn’t quite as he remembered it. To me, that speaks more to cross-parallel world contamination instead of reincarnation (or some sort of time loop theory in which things aren’t exactly the same each time around), which would make for a much more interesting show. Though, I guess that’s pretty much where Fringe seems to be heading, isn’t it?

For a show that I was largely indifferent to for most of its first season, I must say Dollhouse turned into an impressively great show by the end. The season did not start out well at all. It took about three or four episodes to get back into its groove. I was sort of hoping all the technical advancements that were presented as throwaway plot points at the beginning of the season (e.g., Topher’s ability to control the endocrine system) would tie into the main road to Armageddon, but, aside from the using of phones to wipe dolls, it never really happened. Anyway, there was certainly a point, after the Manchurian Candidate storyline, where the show went well beyond “high gear” and into what Geoff Klock described as a series of season finales. It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that this is the kind of TV both he and I would get excited about, since really the only comparison is Grant Morrison’s hyper-compressed storytelling, in which all subtleties of storytelling are completely dispensed with, leaving behind nothing but concepts and moments of awesomeness.

I’m not sure I could have really taken another season at that pace (though I kind of wish Fox had renewed it again, just to see what Whedon and crew would do now that they’ve blown through the entire show bible and then some), but it was pretty great to watch. I guess, even more impressively, is that, in the midst of throwing years of plot into every episode, they managed to actually create coherent character arcs for at least some of the characters. Dollhouse was one of the shows I discussed every week with my dad, and he went from almost giving up on the show because he hated Topher so saying that Topher was his favorite character on the show. It was some really impressive work on the part of the writers as well as the actors.

I also can’t let the show without wondering openly about how Gjokaj’ impersonations of other cast members ended up on the show. I have to assume he just started doing impersonations of people on set, and they felt compelled to write them in. I think the worst part of this show ending is knowing no one else is going to come up with a premise that will take advantage of that guy’s uncanny mimicking abilities.

I’ve gone on before in the past about how profoundly uninterested I am in legal dramas (or legal comedies, for that matter). It’s not that I’m necessarily anti-lawyer – quite a high percentage of friends from high school and college are lawyers now – it’s just that, for non-lawyers, the only time you generally deal with lawyers is when something’s gone horribly wrong. It’s sort of the same reason I am not particularly interested in medical dramas. I don’t want to spend my free time in a hospital or an office filled with lawyers.

So, clearly, I’m not the target audience for this show (aside from being the sort of person who will watch just about anything with Clancy Brown in it at least once), so I’m not sure I’m really qualified to say how successful it was. All I can say with any definitiveness is that I certainly won’t be watching it again.

I can’t remember where exactly I read about this show – some anonymous commenter talking it up as a show that does right everything Heroes completely failed to. I did some investigating, and it sounded good, so gave it a shot. I wasn’t entirely won over at first – the characters, particularly Nathan, aren’t particularly pleasant. The second episode was Nathan-centric, which was tough, but ended up knocking him down enough that his character seemed a little less one-note and grating as the series progressed. By the end of the series, I was pretty much totally won over, though I have the problem that it’s kind of a tough show to recommend to people.

My only other real complaint is the brevity of the season. I’m normally a big fan of the six episode season, but it seems like they had a lot of plot to fit in (as well as doing a “superpowered person of the week” model, which I usually associate more with American shows who have to fill a lot of hours). Seemed a little odd not to address Sally’s death at all, but I guess they have to save something for the next season.

I’m not entirely sure the show really needed a long hiatus mid-season, but who am I to question the wisdom of USA’s programming department. Given that the back half of the season was so short, it seems like it might have been a good opportunity to actual set aside the “client of the week” storyline and just plow through a whole lot of backstory. I’m not complaining about the “client of the week” stories – they were all pretty solid and enjoyable – but it does sometimes get a little frustrating that we only get backstory-advancing episodes at the end of the season.

Also, I will say that casting John Mahoney as the shadowy figure behind the conspiracy is a pretty odd choice. He’s not exactly menacing. We’ll see how he does next season.

My friend Kara has been trying to get me to watch Top Gear for a while, but the stunning quantity of episodes made it hard to know where to start. Last time I went to visit, she had me watch the African challenge, which pretty much won me over. I tracked down the 11th season and watched it at home over the course of a week. Very enjoyable. Some of the challenges weren’t particularly interesting, but that doesn’t make the show any less enjoyable.

This iteration didn’t really engage me quite as much as the first one did. I mean, it did make me want to get a motorcycle and go on a lengthy roadtrip, but it takes very little to make me want to take a length roadtrip. There seemed to be even more whining on the part of the stars (equally shared this time – last time, Ewan was the chief whiner). Having the participants of the show complain greatly about how awful the schedule is does not make for enjoyable viewing.

I started watching this series about a year ago and completely lost momentum. It’s clearly trying very hard to recreate Life on Mars, but it just feels too deliberate, particular the decision to try and tie in a childhood memory of her parents with the main plotline. While it’s not as wrongheaded as either of the two attempts at an American remake, it suffers from the same problem of trying to reproduce something that is just fine as it is. Maybe I was just too attached to the original to be able to appreciate this.

I really like Tim Roth, so it’s hard for me to admit that this show is really pretty bad. I suppose it’s not really their fault for premiering a few months after The Mentalist, but there’s something sort of joyless in watching Tim Roth explain how he determined someone’s deception. It comes across less like a neat trick and more like drudgery that everyone else is too stupid to see, which, in turn, makes the show feel like we’re stupid for watching it.

Also, I think I liked this episode better when I thought the congressman was named “Zeb Wild.” It conjured up images of a retired hair metal guitarist who’d somehow gotten elected to congress. I’d much rather watch that show.

I never saw this show when it was on, but, despite the highly dubious casting, I was always kind of interested by it. I’m a little iffy on Straczynski in general (I have never been able to sit through Babylon 5, but I enjoyed Rising Stars quite a bit) but I figured it was worth a shot. The premise of the show isn’t all bad (though cribbing plots from youthsploitation Roger Corman pics seems like kind of a bad idea), but the execution is just terrible. The acting is awful, and the dialogue is stiff and painful. I was sort of considering watching another episode, but decided it wasn’t really worth my time.