Wednesday, October 8, 2008

The Top 10 List #2 - Opinions On Television

The top 10 list regarding my opinions on TV shows are:

10. Grey's Anatomy really disappointed me. I mean, I was impressed with the first two seasons, showcasing the lives of doctors and interns in a hospital, focusing on the troubled but well-meaning Meredith Grey. (And by the way, I still prefer Meredith over that bitch Christina, whom every fan of the show loves because she gets the best lines, but I seriously think she's there just to be Meredith's opposite, and she's so two dimensional. Why in God's name did they give Sandra Oh an Emmy???) But I got really pissed when they started season three with (drum roll) a recap of what happened in the first two seasons! WTF? One entire episode to recap two seasons? What are you, nuts? Oh, this must be because you guys just won Best Drama at the Emmys, isn't it? So you guys probably thought "Let's remind everyone why we're that damn good." As Meredith would say "Seriously!" (And anyway, we all know Meredith and McDreamy are made for each other, you don't need so many seasons to tell us that.)

9. The best reality show on TV is The Amazing Race, hands down. American Idol comes a close second. TAR is interesting as they show how ordinary people cope through immense pressure and work as a team to come in first in a race around the globe. AI is entertaining, but only during the audition sessions. When they get to finalising the real singers, you'd have to pick a favourite, otherwise you'll lose interest. That's why I didn't follow the Jordin Sparks season. None of them impressed me.

8. I don't watch sitcoms anymore, though I tried being a casual follower of That 70s Show and Everybody Loves Raymond. The last time I really loved a sitcom was a decade ago, when they had one called Perfect Strangers, about two cousins, one a country bumpkin, the other an over-ambitious journalist living together in Chicago. Best comedy I ever saw.

7. My favourite medical drama is still E.R., even though House has become more prominent as of late. House is entertaining, playing like a medical version of CSI, but the show spends way too much time trying to get the characters to do something else besides saving lives as it progresses. I didn't think that was cool. E.R. on the other hand keeps things real, and there are plenty of suspenseful moments, and the characters are easy to empathise with.

6. Prison Break is the one show which I think that, although being very popular, should just end its run once the new season is over. If they stretch it any longer, it's going to start losing credibility. Lost on the other hand, fares a little better. They suffer the same problem, but J.J. Abrams is smart enough to not reveal too much, so he still has plenty of room left to play with.

5. Supernatural is the one show that doesn't need good actors to succeed. Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles aren't great actors, but they do well enough in a very fascinating show about hunting evil in the night. It sure beats Smallville. I mean, how long are they gonna stretch the idea of Clark not being able to tell Lana his secret? And why hasn't she figured it out yet?

4. 24 is my all-time favourite drama. Sure, they repeat the same formula season after season. But just put a troubled hero against dastardly villains and throw in the race against time element, and what you have is a story that never gets tired. At least not for me.

3. The only CSI worth watching is CSI NY. Why? Because out of the three CSI shows, NY is the only one that has characters who look like real cops. And I never understood why the labs in Vegas are so damn dark. And I hate Horatio Caine on Miami. He's a supermodel with a badge.

2. If you want a legal drama that examines exactly how the law works, watch Law & Order. And I mean the original one, not the spinoffs.

and finally.......

1. I love wrestling! Yeah, I know. You're going to tell me that wrestling's fake. Actually the correct term is 'scripted'. It's not fake when they really hurt themselves. Wrestling is like a soap opera with real violence. These guys were trained to take a beating, which is why they keep telling us not to copy them at home or anywhere else. I truly respect the things they do in the ring, though I admit wrestling was more entertaining eight years ago than it is now.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

World's Most Amazing Crap

There's this show on TV called World's Most Amazing Videos, which showcases supposedly amazing happenings, mostly how people cheat death. For example, there's a big car accident and some guy was just inches away from getting impaled, or there's a wild animal on the loose and someone barely survived on the receiving end, and so on and so forth.

I usually don't watch shows like this, because it's total crap to me. It's not entertaining or enlightening, and truly not amazing. Today however, I got a glimpse of this show as I was waiting for another programme to start, and I saw this segment of how this guy, who is a hunter, barely escaped being mauled by a lion.

Here's how it went: the guy took aim at the lion and shot it, but the lion did not die. Instead, the lion got up and charged straight for him. As it lunged at him, he fired again, and though the lion got hit, it managed to knock him down in the process. The lion then ran off but the hunter managed to shoot it again, killing it successfully. The guy then proceeds to tell in an interview on how close he was to getting killed by a lion, and then shows us that same animal, now stuffed, sitting in his house on a table.

And then I start thinking: what a load of bullshit this is! This guy shoots a lion, like a hunter would take aim at any kind of game, and now wants to not only talk about his close brush with death, but display his fallen prey so proudly? Is this the message the producers of the show want to present? That killing a lion that wasn't provoked is the right thing to do? I mean, aren't lions living beings too? It may be an animal, sure, but it had the right to live, and this guy just killed it, and gets to show off. If I were that lion, I'd attack him too if he tried to kill me. Damn, now I don't know who's the bigger animal: the hunter or the show's producers.



OK, now to show you something that isn't crap at all, the cover to Marit Larsen's new album;) I sure hope I won't get sued for putting it up here.

Happy Aidilfitri to all Muslims out there.