TV and Internet Watching Notes...

I finished up watching the second season of Dead Like Me this afternoon. I was so worried that I was going to get to the end of it and be royally pissed like I was with the US version of Life on Mars.

I do know that there is some sort of follow-up movie to DLM, but to be honest, I don't think it will be the same without Mandy Patinkin. Of course, I'll eventually see it but I suspect it won't be for a few years - if I stay par for my course of things like this.

Anyway, if you aren't familiar with it, a girl gets killed by a toilet seat that fell from a Soviet Mir Space Station and considering this little incident takes place in the first episode, you'd think it would be the end of the show. Instead, she has been selected to be a Reaper and go around taking the souls of people who are about to die. Very kind indeed.

If ya need to know more, read about it here and if you want to see it, check it out on Hulu.

Last night was also the final episode of the season for Rescue Me, the show with Denis Leary that my wife and I just love. Great finale which I won't spoil in case you have not checked your DVR yet. The only good thing about this being the end of the season is that now we can start watching Sons of Anarchy. Can't wait.

We have been watching Nurse Jackie and Hung. Both of them are half hour shows that should really be hour long episodes, but it does make it easier to fit them in to our schedule of limited TV watching times.

I have written previously, not very glowingly I might add, about the local to San Antonio show that comes on late Saturday nights called The Cleto Show. I have several of the episodes saved on the DVR and just haven't gotten to them. This is one show that took my wife all of the first five minutes to completely swear off of. I think it was the third or fourth episode that I was skimming through where I realized that it might be slightly funny, and at very minimum, the supporting actors on the show are very funny.

There was some guy who commented on my original post about the Cleto Show who probably worked for the producers. His comments and my subsequent fisking thereof, were probably more entertaining than the show itself; but again, I continue to hang on to the chance that Cleto will turn out to be a very funny show worth recommending. I'll let you know when I get around to watching the rest of the season. One thing for sure is that Cleto does not mind being the butt of the joke, and that is a good thing.

So I have already received a few suggestions for my next series to watch while hitting the treadmill. My sister suggested Buffy the Vampire or something like that. I'll have to commence searching through the selections on Hulu (they should start paying me for these plugs, but really, I just love that web page) and see what sparks an interest.

Or, I could just get some suggestions from you folks... Tell me what I need to watch next or leave a comment below.

The Hulu Report: Manhattan, AZ...

I may have mentioned a while back that I have been using Hulu.com and my laptop as a source of distraction while I engage myself in the all important work of the treadmill. Oh yea, I may be a fatass, but at least when a doctor asks me about exercise, I can answer in the affirmative without bending the truth. Unless of course, you don't think that walking in place while looking at TV is a form of exercise. Hey; I'm not going to debate you on the topic, but I do know that at least in some societies, walking on a treadmill is considered at least some form of exercise, and depending on what the definition of "is" is, I think I'm on safe ground here.

Anyway, on to the important topic at hand, and my discovery in the really far back pages of the TV shows available on Hulu, of something called Manhattan, AZ. Let me give you my gist of it, then you can see if it is worth a look.

So this LAPD officer works as an undercover vice squad guy (and I'll leave it at that) while his wife is busy being involved in Greenpeace intercepting fishing boats. Meanwhile, their 13 or 14 year-old son sits at home eating potato chips, playing video games, and looking at Internet porn. For some inexplicable reason, half-way through the pilot episode, the actor portraying the son as a fat porn watching dumpling is replaced by a healthy, thin kid.

Anyway, the wife, out on her Greenpeace mission is somehow caught up in a fishing net and is tragically killed - but is not discovered until she has been processed by the tuna fish company. Many tears are shed as several cases of canned tuna are lowered into a grave. (Not kidding).

The LAPD vice cop gets a call from the mayor of a town in Arizona called Manhattan and is offered a job that will allow him to leave all the stress of the loss of his wife and the vice squad in LA, and become the sheriff of this small, vibrant but peaceful town.

When father and son arrive in Manhattan, AZ and find that they are in a desolate town totally unlike anything the mayor (played by Chad Everett) has described, they begin to balk at the job. But of course, the new sheriff has already put 30K down on a house in the middle of nowhere with no refund.

Okay. The pilot was only mildly humorous and had I not been walking on the treadmill, I probably would not have made it through the entire 22 minutes. But episodes 2 and 3 have quadrupled in entertainment, humor and quality.

The town is loaded with really eccentric people like an A1C who works at the super secret "Area 61" Air Force Base where something strange is taking place; a retired couple fully armed with all sorts of weaponry who have made their home in an abandoned hardened missile silo, and many other freaks of nature who could have easily ended up in any number of Showtime or HBO series.

As you might expect, the sheriff and his son being the outsiders in this bizarre town have to deal with the latest crazy thing to happen as the mayor of the town who also owns the store, the diner, the bar and every other business venture in town attempts to capitalize on ways to make money.

Look, if you are my age, you will recognize Manhattan, AZ as an updated version of Green Acres. Much of the comedy is predictable, but so far, I enjoy the quirkiness of the characters. I think Chad Everett does a great job of really poking fun at himself (in this show, he is a retired actor who has been in every B movie ever made as a minor cast character), and the young kid (who by now is probably in his mid twenties) who plays the son (the thin one, not the fat one) is actually pretty funny.

Oh, and that is the other thing about it. This show apparently played on the USA Network in 2000, so it is 9 years old. Where was I when it was on?

Got 22 minutes to waste? Check it out on Hulu (or wherever you get your Internet TV from) and if you can get past the pilot episode, I think you'll be okay.

Now that you know I enjoy really bad TV, do you have a show I need to watch? Tell me about it or leave a comment.

Important TV Viewing Report: PINK, Chelsea, Howie...

I mentioned not too far back that I was using Hulu via my laptop to keep my mind occupied while I walk on the treadmill. This has opened up an opportunity to consider some new shows worthy of a gander, a few minutes at a time.

The way it works is (as if you people didn't know this years ago), you go through the web page looking for shows or clips or full movies and such, then you add them to your queue. So, aside from a few commercials, the shows you select play one right after another.

I realized that I don't walk long enough to watch an entire movie, and to be honest, when I started looking at the half hour TV shows, I didn't see anything that would motivate me to walk on a treadmill for 30 minutes. Finally, I decided to start with a bunch of clips. Of course, I had to see all the Family Guy clips and the SNL Digital Shorts, but at some point, I decided to expand my horizons and find something new.

I found something called PINK. I know what you are thinking; with a name like that it must involve s-e-x! Actually, the show is about a lady who is a government hit lady. In spite of the frustratingly short webisodes (less than 5 minutes each), we learn that the lady named Nate (Natalie Cross) was brought up by her father, a former Delta operator, to be a trained killer. Pink refers to "pink mist" and who doesn't like the sight of that? If you have never watched a Web Series, this one is pretty spiffy. I especially like the production quality.

Another series of clips I have been watching are of this lady named Chelsea Handler. I know, she has been around for a while but I can't say that E Television is on my standard line-up (though I'm a long time fan of Talk Soup whenever I remember to watch it). Anyway, I doubt I would sit down and watch this lady for a full half-hour (or how ever long her show is), but I do enjoy the clips on Hulu of her closing remarks. Funny stuff. Oh, and as a bonus, she has a small Hispanic man named Chuy who is, a little person. I know it isn't right to admit it, but I think all talk shows with a little person tend to be funnier. And that is just wrong.

Finally, we have added a new show to our regular TV rotation called Howie Do It. I admit that at first, I thought it was a crappy knock-off of Candid Camera (which, of course, it is), but these hidden camera pranks are seriously funny. Okay, some of them are anyway. Of course, Howie Mandel is the star but he is not afraid to let other people run the prank. We watched one prank that had tears rolling down my cheeks from laughter. He has this man on the street sort of guy interviewing people but getting awkwardly close to them. In one scene, the interviewer is asking a huge biker dude about the economy or something while he gives him Eskimo kisses. You know, rubbing his nose on the other guy's nose. The same guy was giving another interview little kisses on the cheek and then would apologize and the guy kept saying, "It's okay." Funny, funny stuff.

Anyway, there you have it; three new shows or webisodes you may want to check out.