TV: Monday edition

The fall TV season has started, and I've spent a good deal of my time sampling everything so you don't have to. There's a huge amount of programming out there, so rather than cramming it all into one post, I figure the easiest thing to do is divide it up into days. So, let us begin with Monday. There's a lot on Monday, so don't feel like you need to read all of this in one sitting.

Torchwood (7PM, HDNet)

A British show from the makers of the new Doctor Who (never seen it) that has a similar concept to Men in Black, but a totally different feel. In the US, it airs on both BBC America and HDNet, so I don't need to tell you where I watch it. Amanda once said to me, "Why is British TV so much better than American TV?" I've sampled a lot of British TV, and some of it's great. Jonathan Creek is one of my favorite shows, and it's never had an American version. But, can even the best British TV, or any foreign TV for that matter, compete with Lost? Boston Legal? House? Hell, even our version of The Office is loads better than their original, and even Ricky Gervais agrees. Still, while the best stuff is coming out of this country, others still have good stuff, and Torchwood is a decent enough example.

Prison Break (8PM, Fox)

I stopped watching shows like CSI and Without a Trace not because they're bad shows, but because they're the same week to week, year to year. That's totally not a problem with Prison Break (or P-Break, as I call it silently to myself). Even shows like 24, which necessarily changes its plot entirely every season, feel similar year to year. With 24, it was especially bad last year. After a great start, it was such a slog to the end. You watched it because you felt you had to, not because you wanted to. And the villain's name was Chang? What, did they just open the yellow pages for Chinese take-out, throw their finger down at random, and say, "That's our main villain, right there?" But now I'm in a position where I have the first five seasons on DVD, and have no desire to get the sixth. What if the seventh is great? My DVD collection will be 1 2 3 4 5 7. That's not great. The stupid box art doesn't help either. Can you believe Barack Obama got a little flak for saying he stopped wearing a flag pin after September 11 because too many people were using it instead of patriotism rather than because of it? I totally agree, and now Fox is trying to guilt us into buying 24 season six by plastering a flag on Jack's face. Asshats. But Prison Break doesn't have those problems.


How I Met Your Mother (8pm, CBS)

When I was in elementary and middle school, I watched a ton of multi-camera studio-audience sitcoms. Full House, Home Improvement, Seinfeld, everything on the TGIF, you name it. As I got older, I watched these less and less, until now, when we've only got one holdout: How I Met Your Mother, now also in its third season. Is it because I'm getting older? Or maybe it's because society is changing? I think it's the latter. 30 years ago, the powers that be insisted on including a laugh track in MASH, even though it obviously had no audience. If you want to go even further back and more obvious, Hanna Barbera cartoons like The Flintstones, The Jetsons, and worst cartoon of all time Jabberjaw had laugh tracks, and I think even the youngest of children understood that no studio audience would have the patience to sit through the 6 month animation process. Later, shows like Malcolm in the Middle showed us the radical concept that people can choose when to laugh on their own, and maybe they could be filmed like movies instead of like plays. That being said, there is something nice about having live voices laughing with you. If it's fake and canned, it's insulting, but if it's actually filmed in front of people, like they used to verbally tell you at the front of the Cosby Show, it's not so bad.

Also, it's a good show. There's even a website set up counting down to when one character will slap another. Hard.

Chuck (8PM, NBC)

Spy action comedy. I'll take one. But more importantly, this is the third show that's on Mondays at 8 that I watch. This is why the internet is great. I really don't have moral objections to downloading television; if I watched it over the DVR, I'd just be skipping commercials anyway. Is it stealing if it's normally free? I don't think so, really. And there are plenty of shows that I wouldn't have ever gotten into if it weren't for downloading. I caught up with Alias when I was sick during the second season, and ended up watching every episode on ABC after. If you miss an episode of 24 or Lost, you're screwed entirely, but I can download that episode and I'll be fine. And that doesn't even include foreign TV, like Regenesis and the aforementioned Jonathan Creek, or HDTV versions of shows like Stargate and The 4400. I love the internet.

Heroes (9PM, NBC)

Take the plot of X-Men, don't change it at all... and you've got Heroes. Heroes tries to be a little more real-world, which might be why it moves so damn slowly. I really like serialized shows, but only if they spend most of their time on one really interesting story, and keep it moving along. Like Alias kept seeming like it would be with Rambaldi, but never really was. Rambaldi was originally a MacGuffin, which is something that really doesn't matter but advances the plot, and it ended up being the most interesting thing about the show. This should, of course, not be confused with a MacGruber, which makes life-saving inventions out of household materials.

Journeyman (10PM, NBC)

Take Quantum Leap, remove the body snatching aspect, and here you go. What I like about this one is how, in the pilot, he buried a newspaper in order to prove to his wife that he's travelling through time, and so for the whole series she knows exactly what's happening. I really, really hate it when other characters just don't believe the main character, or he spends half his time keeping the show's premise a secret from other characters. Remember the 100th episode of Smallville, where Clark told Lana his secret, we all thought the show would be better for it, and then he went back in time and un-told her? I wanted to wring the neck of every writer on the show. Soon after, I stopped watching it entirely, like Without a Trace (same show every week) and Numbers (it's not about the numbers anymore, and if you replace an E with a 3 when spelling your show, you're an idiot).

Californication (10:30PM, Showtime)

On right after Weeds, which doesn't do anything for me, this unfortunately named show (that fortunately has nothing to do with the Red Hot Chili Peppers) is easily my favorite of the new season. Of course, since it's on cable, and they start shows whenever they feel like it, should it technically be called part of the fall season? I'll say yes, if only because without it, there's no new show that I really love this season. Every season's got at least one. One you call your show. Last season it was Justice, which apparently was only watched by the writers of this Superblog. God, that was fantastic. Somebody in the show had her head knocked off while riding a rollercoaster, and that still goes through our heads whenever we ride one.

---

And that takes care of Monday. Don't worry; future days won't be quite so long. Monday is just a really heavy day for television for some reason. It's actually a big problem for those of us whose DVRs are teetering on the edge of full all the time. It's not MY fault there's more on TV that I want to watch than free time I have.