The new season begins and they try to make us think Luc married Brooke. For a second I kind of like the idea and almost believe it, but they over egg it by claiming the pair are living the high life in New York. I don’t believe they’d really leave Tree Hill. Then it cuts to a scenario where’s he’s married to Lindsay and I know it’s a dream sequence. Then we see him married to Peyton and it just feels right. Those two are made for each other, always have been, even if I do think Peyton can do better. Maybe someone who doesn’t flit between pretentious navel gazer and defeatist misanthrope. Plus his tattoo is stupid and his nose annoys me. Peyton and Brooke should hook up. Anyway. And the end of the dream sequence we see Luc is at an airport waiting for a flight to Vegas, he tells a stranger (something TV characters do that real people would never dream of) that he’s going to propose to someone tonight. It’s Peyton.

The pair head to Vegas and in-between having lots off off-screen sex they talk about how much they love each other and how happy the finally are. It’s about time Peyton stopped getting beat up on this show. They eventually decide Vegas is not the place to be married after going to a really tacky chapel. I’m sure somewhere in Vegas there is a chapel with no Elvis whatsoever, but you’d never guess from watching TV. Anyway, Luc knows the perfect spot and whisks Peyton back to the hotel room where he first proposed years ago and re-proposes. I admit I tear-up a little.

Meanwhile Skills is still doing Nathan’s mum, eww. Mouth actually moves to Omaha with Millicent; I hope he still shows up every now and then. Nathan is trying to get his game back on and won’t admit to his back pain; I do not see the NBA in his future, no matter how many silly dances his son does. Dan has been kidnapped by the evil nanny from last year after she runs him down. She keeps him in a fake hospital and intermittently tortures him so that he’ll be persuaded to get her Jamie. I want to know how they pitch these stories in the writers’ room. Oh, and Brooke and her mother keep fighting, a lot. At the end of the eps her store is robbed by a masked person and Brooke is attacked. This should be a good season.

Here we are with the new one, this one brought to us by Rob Thomas, who is officially awesome. However, this show kinda isn’t. It starts off with siblings ripped out of the N’s South of Nowhere (really how many African American boys are adopted by nice, rural, white families before they move to LA?) but more annoying. Then in comes Lucille Bluth minus the wit and biting sarcasm. I think this family is going to piss me off. I need an extra-marital affair or a drug addiction or something, right now these people are so homely I want to throw up.

The writers try to amp it up a little by alluding to a teen blowjob in a parked car but it’s not enough. Where’re the teen suicide attempts, the battles with alcohol addiction, the after school shift at the Peach Pit? Hell, where’s the school paper? It’s not long before they re-introduce Kelly; did they guess my interest was already waning? I always preferred Kelly to Brenda but I’m sort of missing Donna and her abnormal head.

What follows is lots of character setup. Naomi is just like the actresses past character from Nip/Tuck, I can’t tell if it’s because the actress is bad or if she’s just been type cast. However, I think there may be fewer attempts to seduce her mother’s lesbian lover’s ex-husband, mores the pity. Then there’s her boyfriend, he cheats. Her best friend, she’s a drug addict (I know I said I wanted one but she’s a really annoying one). The young teacher, probably the only teacher we’ll see (how long til he has an affair with a pupil?). And finally Kelly sister, the child of Kelly’s mum and Mel Silver, so I guess David’s sister too. I never thought I’d want to see Brian Austin Green again. I think she’s the only character so far that I don’t want to garrotte. It’s revealed that Kelly has a daughter with Brandon but he’s off in some foreign country and Brenda turns up to chat or something. Shannon Doherty has done something funny to her face and I can’t work out what it is. But it’s looks badly photoshopped or something.

By the end of the ep, boring daughter has been whisked off her feet by a rich boy and boring son has asserted himself as part of the lacrosse team. All rather dull but I know I’m going to watch anyway.

The pilot is about the creation of a unit to deal solely with investigating crime and such that arise from fringe sciences. Did I hear Chris Carter calling from the mid-90s? I know X-Files comparisons are easy here but it’s hard not to see them. There’s the sceptic in the form of Anna Torv ( the hot lesbian from BBC show Mistresses), the wunderkind who believes but sometimes wishes he didn’t (that’s Pacey Witter, sorry, Josh Jackson) and government officials wanting everything swept under the carpet. To spice things up a little they’ve added a mental old man. It seems Pacey’s dad has been involved in this stuff for years, got locked up in a psych ward for it an now isn’t quite the man he once was. While some of his lines are funny I think he might become a little grating.

In the pilot Anna Torv’s character, Olivia, investigates the strange melting illness the object of her workplace romance is suffering from. To do this she has to persuade Pacey to leave a lucrative deal in Iraq so that they can spring his father, a scientist who knows all about melting diseases or somesuch. Together they perform preposterous experiments, including some kind of mind meld, get perilously close to losing him and a few other cringe inducing moments. The tone was also a little off with the writers not seeming to know how much they want to play for laughs. Not enough and the show becomes laughable despite itself, too much and any attempt at serious is utterly undermine. So far the latter seems to be the case.

All that aside I did enjoy it, though it’s not the new Lost. Worth watching a few eps to see if it finds its feet.

True Blood is set in Bon Temp, Louisiana (another draw for me as southern US accents set me all a-quiver) at a time when synthetic blood has recently been invented. The new product has meant that the vampires of the world have finally come out of hiding and through government legislation are trying to make a place for themselves in society.

The show opens by introducing us to waitress Sookie Stackhouse (not sure her name is quite twee and cliched enough) played by Anna Paquin and her collection of friends and relatives.  There is the friendly boss blatantly in  love with Sookie but she doesn’t see it, the sassy best friend and the loser brother. For those of you aware of Aussie soap Home & Away he’s played by the dude who used to play Vinnie. Sookie is just a you’d expect, plucky but good hearted and just plain desperate to experience more than her small town has to offer, dagnabbit.

Then in walks Bill, who everyone can spot as a vampire from 100 yards. Having never seen a vamp before Sookie is drawn to him and by the end of the ep has saved his life due to some convoluted plot device about vamp blood getting humans high and Bill being kidnapped by some rednecks so they can drain him (in this universe vamps are allergic to silver as well a the usual stuff).

Add in some slightly amusing references to vamp racism and workplace discrimination and the over-used wrong assumption technique wherein we are lead to believe the scary looking mofo is a vamp but it’s really the mild mannered dude near him, and you have an interesting if not thrilling pilot. I think if I had my way they’d develop the townsfolk more and make it a sort of southern vamp filled Stars Hollow.

Anyway this is one I’m definitely going to try.

The premise is simple.  Gosselaar plays Jerry, a downtrodden public defender while his girlfriend works for the DA’s office. All their law school buddies fall on one side or the other which leads to many impassioned arguments in the bar after work. Perhaps that’s the bar they’re raising? In the mix is Gunn from angel and Malcolm’s mum from Malcolm in the middle (who is so obstinate there is no way she would really be allowed in the courtroom any more).

The plot for the pilot revolves around a man accused of a rape he didn’t commit and lots of people getting tied up in all the red tape of the legal system that they all so wholeheartedly believe in but know isn’t infallible. What martyrs they all are. It was all a little predictable and dull. The only good thing being the ridiculous judge. Not sure I’ll bother watching again.

Now I’ve watched a lot of crime shows in my time, hell I even wrote my masters dissertation on them, so I’m pretty familiar with the formula. Very rarely does something come along that sparks my interest in this genre. Last year it was New Amsterdam, which of course meant it was cancelled, this year it might well be the Mentalist.

Baker plays a man so good at reading others he used to pretend to be a psychic. After the brutal murder of his family by Red Peter, a serial killer he’s been helping the police catch in order to raise his profile, he decides to drop the act and use his skills purely for good. Now working with the police he catches criminals by watching how they act. This could be cloyingly trite but actually works well with Baker playing the boyish charm and charisma of his character perfectly.

In the opening act we see Patrick use his skills to uncover that a father murdered his own daughter only to have the wife then shoot him. The tone for the show is set as is the concept that while Patrick may find the culprit, his methods aren’t always the best way to go about things.

The central case of the episode is nothing spectacular and I think much like NBC’s Life, this show is going to hinge on whether you like Patrick or not. I have to say I do.

Plus it was nice to see Amanda Righetti in there from Reunion as the new detective whose religious beliefs are at odds with Patrick’s practice.

Looking forward to being back

V and Logan are hanging when some girls from weight lifting class invite him to a party and don’t even know who V is. She’s peeved cos he’s going to this party and won’t join her at a Martin Amis reading. This couple is doomed and V needs a guy who’s a little more intellectually rigorous. That used to be Logan but it seems going to college has killed half his braincells.

Weevil’s back and he’s working at a car wash it would seem. V turns up and he jokes about the Rose Royce song. It seems he’s out on probation for assault rather than murder. He’s not happy with situation, acts out and ends up getting fired. Oh Weevil, when will you learn?

Veronica goes to see Ed Begley Jr. sorry, the Dean of Hearst. His AC isn’t working, I think that may be important. He wants her to rat out who told her about the pot growing. But she’s a class act and won’t say a word. So he says he’ll have her thrown out if she won’t tell. Bummer. He also has issues with the angry feminist students who he believes vandalised his car. They blame the guys who run the satirical newspaper who mocked them in the latest issue. I’m with the satire guys, mainly cos I’m bored of feminist film theory. Though I like that they’re called Lilith House.
V goes to see Mac but she’s gone to the gym with Parker, what has guilt done to my favourite computer geek?

The jock with the stolen play book is the boyfriend of the girl who runs the radio station and Piz wants a show so he takes the jock to see V. Not the most exciting mystery and I think it’s a little below V’s talents. But she solves it after much back and forth. Turns out it was the girlfriend who didn’t want her boyf to keep playing football. When Piz gets his show he invites the feminists and the satire dudes on his show. While there they get word that one of the feminists has been raped and they blame the satire guys.

Eli starts working for Keith and breaks a case about a shoe thief. Go Weevil, I hope things  work out for the two of them, I like them as partners.  But then he screws that up too by beating up a child abuser. He needs some anger management. V than gets another job for him as a maintenance guy at the college. Yay, Weevil’s gonna be around more and a handy helper for V.
All this while V is wondering why Logan isn’t spending time with her and keeps lying about where he’s been. Seems he’s off illegal gambling. He’s obviously going to get a gambling problem, which is too run of the mill for VM. I hope thye somehow make it more interesting than that. Come on Rob Thomas, you’re better than that. But if it makes V wake up and realise Logan has become a fool then I guess the end justifies the means. They argue and he acts all hurt and I just want to hit him in the gut and make him realise how amazing V is.

At the end of the ep he kinda apologises, V accepts and they go off to do it in the library.

Derek and Peyton are at the cafe. Turns out she slammed the door in his face at the end of last ep, I didn’t get that vibe from the ep, it seems not like something Peyton would do. Maybe that’s just cos Peyton Sawyer is 2nd on my list of fictional characters I’d want to know in real life after Veronica Mars but before Lorelai Gilmore. Anyway he says he’s known about her for a while, even goes to her blog but wasn’t sure about her being in his life. Oh and he’s a photographer, just like Peyton is an artist. If you ever get subtle Schwahn I’m going to stop watching. Peyton’s not sure if she’s ready for another new family member, which I can understand, this is her 2nd in a short period and all her other family members tend to leave or die.

Nathan tells Hayley he wants to start concentrating on ball and their marriage, he thinks he might need tutoring, she recommends sleeping with the teacher. Filthy mouth that girl has these days, she’s starting to talk like Brooke. Anyway I think Nathan putting all his hopes on basketball saving him is going to lead to his downfall.

Evil Dan is still crazy and hanging with his brother’s improbable ghost. In order to unMacbeth himself he goes to talk to Karen, I see a relationship in their future that will make Luc even more broody. I know, who thought that was possible.

Derek and Peyton are hanging, he gives me the creeps.  She invites him to a party. I hope he turns out to be ok, Peyton’s the only reason to watch this show and I really want her to be good this season. Especially as it may be the last. Damn ratings. Then there’s some of that sport with hoops and balls that this show was meant to be all about. At one point Nate chokes, you know, cos the river and all. I really don’t care about the stupid river. Oh and Mouth tries to ask Rachel out, poor Mouth.

It’s one of those teen parties that only happen on the WB/CW.  Brooke kisses Derek thinking he’s Peyton’s date. I have a feeling he wishes he was too, this show needs a little incest. Oh and Brooke, I’m bored of you just being an ass. I liked you for a while when you seemed like you had a heart and desires outside of who you slept with. Stop ragging on Peyton.  Rachel keeps coming on to Nate but he’s not biting, until she mentions the river, bitch is good at what she does I’ll give her that. If she ruins Nailey her bad character development and one dimensionality will piss me off even more.  Luc goes to see Brooke and retracts his statement from last season that he’s the guy for her. I like that they expect the viewers to remember something from so long ago.  Peyton and Nate talk, I like their relationship. Rachel confronts Brooke with the idea that she thinks Brooke is pregnant. This attempt to deflect the truth is really bugging me now, it’s so obvious it’s Hayley. Oh and why are Rachel and Brooke sharing a room. She has a huge house but there’s no spare room for Brooke to sleep in?

Derek is in Peyton’s room and just loves her art. I actually do like ehr art, I wish my room had been that cool when I was 17. She gives him teh pic Ellie drew of her. He’s kinda pervy about it. Plus he knows nothing about their father. I’m not sure he even is Derek, I think he’s just a freaky stalker.  She’ll get in danger and then Luc will save her and they’ll get back together and I’ll be happy for her even if she could do better. And as the ep ends I am proved right as he has a freaky stalker wall with pictures of Peyton dating back a while.

In Mac’s dorm Parker is giving a statement to the police while Mac and Veronica sit there looking awkward. Obviously Veronica’s got a lot of empathy going on, what with her own roofy experience and Mac just feels bad. Plus she has an inappropriate song going round her head. I know kinda how she feels, not on the same scale, but I’ve had Christmas songs on my internal jukebox for a good fortnight. Mac and Veronica play blame tennis, but I don’t think either is to blame, there was no way they could know that what was happening was rape. It’s just a really unfortunate circumstance. Lamb turns up and makes things worse, I don’t know how anyone that met him could vote for him for Sheriff. Veronica tries to say that she thought the buzzing she heard, obviously an electric razor, was a sex toy. Lamb is an ass about the whole situation.

For the record I’m still not feeling the new theme tune. Keith spends this ep walking through the desert looking really thirsty. Cormac is following him, hoping Keith will let him know where Kendall’s money is, but then Liam shows up and shoots Cormac dead. Meanwhile Logan has actually turned up to class and he’s being taught by Homer Simpson. I thought once having a lecturer who sounded like Kermit the Frog was cool, but Logan actually got Homer Simpson. Anyway he and Wallace and few others (including Rider Strong, Shawn from Boy Meets World) agree to take part in that Stanford Prison Experiment.

Veronica decides she’s going to catch the rapist, like d’uh, of course she is, did anyone doubt that she would? She’s also going to get a paying job as the university’s own Jimmy Olsen. Her first assignment is to infiltrate the theta beta sorority house and rush as a pledge, hopefully exposing all the naughty things they’ve been up to.

Parker is packing up her stuff and moving home, her parents always said she was too immature to move away to college. When her mom comes to get her it’s almost like she blames Parker a little. Mac doesn’t stand for this and tells Parker that she should stay, that Mac will have her back from now on. I heart Mac a lot.

Veronica heads to the first rush event where they all have to dress like 50s housewives. Guess who’s there, yes it’s Keri Lynn Pratt again (seen in Bones 2.5), she’s been busy this season. What’s she gonna do when she’s no longer a nubile blonde? The sisters are singing ‘True Colors’ and Veronica wants to vom, me too. They take her purse when she arrives and then spend of the rest of the party drinking lemonade (Veronica VOs “Worst Roman orgy ever”), eating sandwiches and being overly nice. No naughtiness whatsoever.

At the experiment Wallace and Rider Strong are made guards and Logan is a prisoner. The guards are trying to get info from the prisoners and can use all sorts of intimidation tactics. Throughout the experiment Rider is a complete ass, especially picking on one geeky jewish boy, but they don’t break. Logan especially seems to enjoy pissing Rider off. At one point the prisoners escape to go get food. They bump in to Veronica and lots of jokes about conjugal visits ensue. When they get back the bullied kid cracks, but Logan and the others have fed him the wrong info so it doesn’t matter that he told. Logan’s obviously been learning from his lady. It gets to 6 O’clock and the prisoners haven’t told. Thinking they’ve won Wallace gets them to tell the info and they win. Turns out they moved the clock forward when the prisoners escaped and it was only 5:55. Go Wallace.

Veronica gets invited to another theta beta party, this one a lot more like the parties she was warned about. There is a dream Veronica Mars moment where she does what she calls the ‘faux lesbian dance’ with two other girls. I think I might need defibrillating, maybe one day my dream will come true and Veronica will get it on with a girl. She is at college now afterall. She also makes some important discovers. The theta betas steal rushes’ keys so they can leave them surprise invites for the party and they have a camera over a locked door. Veronica gets introduced to Chip, they guy she accused of the rapes last season. Awkwardness ensues. Veronica’s drunk act is a little too good and the sisters suggest she leaves so the safe ride people come pick her up. The woman driving gets pissed off with Veronica for being a drunk sorority whore. Veronica has a hard time persuading her of the truth. She offers to recite a Virgina Monologue as proof and my drink nearly comes out my nose. Driving woman is the kind of pretentious college student I hate.

Keith gets home and he and Veronica bond over things going wrong in their lives. Keith and Veronica are by far the best family on TV. Veronica is having doubts about how bad the theta betas are and if they have any part to blame in the rape. Veronica finds out that Moe, Wallace’s dorm guy, was the driver who took Parker home the night she was raped, but there was another girl with them. Veronica goes back to break in the the sorority house and what does she find in the locked room? Pot and lots of it. Sounds like the best sorority I’ve ever heard of. She gets it to her publish but then she’s accosted by one of the sisters. It seems the den mother has cancer and grows the pot for medicinal purposes. Veronica tries to stop the article being published but no luck. She just can’t catch a break these days. I’d comfort her if she needed it. Guess she’s back to everyone hating her.

The ep ends with the revalation that the money Liam wanted was in the house all the time, the briefcase last season was home to a painting worth millions of dollars which had been hanging in the house. Keith gets it auctioned and gives the proceedes to the food bank. In class Logan streaks after losing a bet with Wallace over who would win the experiment. Why can’t Veronica streak one week?