TV

There’s still time to enter the Lord of the Fading Lands Giveaway (below). Don’t miss your opportunity to get your hands on this fabulous new book!

For those who missed it, yesterday’s theme was, “things that are frustrating me.” I’d like to add to it that certain retail corporations, along with the other faults I described yesterday, will send a single china teacup in a two foot square box filled with styrofoam packing peanuts. I have SO MANY of these boxes lying around the apartment it’s not funny. And every time I gather them up and take them to the styrofoam packing peanut reclamation place, I get half a dozen more.

However, I did discover that CBS has put the new episodes from the third season of HIMYM on the internet, so now I’m all caught up. I also saw Lily and Marshall’s honeymoon video, which is hilarious.

Sometimes it’s very frustrating not having a TV. It means I’m totally dependent on the networks to put things on the internet for me to watch them. And then I think, well, me watcing HIMYM or Heroes or Ugly Betty or Moonlight on the internet is not proving to these companies that the show is a viable property — and then I remember that I’m not exactly a Nielsen household, so maybe me clicking on it on their websites or downloading them to iTunes is actually more helpful in terms of stats.

Uh, not that Heroes needs my help. (Nor Ugly Betty, for that matter.) Moonlight, however…

Sigh.

I’m watching this show because of the very passionate affection I hold for one Mr. Jason Dohring (aka Logan Echolls). I’ve seen the pilot. Eh. Look, I’ve got two seasons of Angel on DVD sitting in my DVD cabinet right now. Is there any reason I need to watch this show? The main character is so bland, and I can’t believe how much they ripped off Angel. And I’m not even talking about the premise (which has been done before)! The “fast cut night shots of LA” that occur between each scene, the skeptical blonde, bland cop internet investigative reporter human who looks like the younger version of the blonde cop chick who left Angel to go be a prosecutor on Law & Order… sigh sigh sigh. Oh, and he slayed his ex-lover/sire. You know, before the show started. But she’ll be back, I’m sure (judging from the promo photos), and he’ll no doubt become obsessed with her. Wasn’t this show originally scheduled to be produced by the same dude who produced Angel? I think they need to mix it up a bit.

Also, I don’t understand why you can either drink blood or inject it. And their vamp faces look stoopid. And poor Jason Dohring, who seems like the only interesting character on the show (love the Big Lebowski Porn King house he’s living in!) doesn’t look like he’s having fun with the character at all. SB doesn’t agree with me. He thought Dohring was the only redeemable aspect of the show. But I know that he is capable of being very, very gleefully evil, and I’m not seeing glee out of him, which is when he’s at his best. Maybe the problem is this character is too much like Logan (morally gray but lovable?) and he’s trying to separate them out. What it means, though, practically, is that he delivers all his fabulous lines (the only decent lines in the script) in a rapid-fire monotone.

I’m trying not to judge on the pilot. I learned my lesson from HIMYM, which I gave up on after the pilot and now regret it. And heck, I even gave the execrable Studio 60 three episodes before convincing myself that yes, it really did suck and that was okay and popping in a DVD of The West Wing instead. So I’ll give Moonlight a few more episodes. If they have that many.

Question, though: why oh why would they put bland, unattractive what’s-his-face in the main role when they could have had Dohring?