Saturday, October 06, 2007

New Show reviews

Last week, more like a week and half ago, I was able to watch a number of premieres for shows both new and current. It turned out pretty entertaining to say the least. I'll just review the ones I like and have watched during the week. Potential spoilage for those who don't have these shows aired outside of the US.

Chuck was a new show where a hapless Nerd get zapped with the combined secrets of the NSA and CIA. The info spills out from him on seeing a visual cue. NSA and CIA sends out an agent from their agencies to assess and protect the namesake of this show. Adam Baldwin carries his belligerent operator for the NSA that harkens his earlier roles of being a cold calculating covert operative or a merc. The show has its own brand of awesome which can resonate with the average joe as well as the nerd/geek underdog crowd. Though some technical aspects might strike as wrong to be nitpicked by the more technical experts of the field of computer hardware and such like the theft scene involving Chuck's PC and how Chuck defused a bomb by uploading a virus from a porn site into the laptop which triggers the bomb. The show can harken to be like Jake 2.0 minus the nanites but substitute it with a Johnny Mnemonic data courier-esque setup without the brain overload. It is an amusing show to watch to keep tabs on since secrets are going to be uncovered from it which can make things interesting for Chuck's intel agent bodyguard/chaperones.

Heroes Second Season gets started 4 months after the climax of a 1 season. We get to follow what happen to Hiro when ported back into the past. Surprise, surprise it turns out that his childhood idol Takezo Kensei is actually a Gaijin conman played by David Anders who played the role of Julian Sark in Alias. In the present, some of the characters are shown to go about their normal lives: Matt Parkman gets promoted to Detective, Mohinder Suresh get approached by a member of the Company as per plan with Noah Bennet, CLaire is trying to fit in a new high school while trying to put a facade of normalcy under protest. Other surprises show like the Petrelli Brothers, Nathan and Peter survived the aerial detonation shown in the end of season 1 though they're seperated. A mysterious person has enter the stage as this person has sought out Hiro's Father and Petrelli matriach, Angela by leaving them torn up pictures of them with the helix symbol scrawled on their faces. Hiro's father was the first fatality. Molly Walker, the one who can locate other Heroes has been having bad dreams again involving this mysterious threat on the level of Sylar. Not all of the characters we know since Season 1 are covered fully though they will be in subsequent episodes. Besides the old faces we know, there are new faces as well that will add to the lineup. Alejandro and Maya Herrera are twin siblings who are on the run. Maya's power is to cause a fatal disease manifested by crying tears of blood while her brother Alejandro cures those affected by it and keeping Maya's power in check.

Journeyman was like a cross between Quantum Leap and Groundhog day given that the lead character Dan Vasser has the ability to travel backwards in time and then returning back to the present in order to fix certain events for people he's drawn to rectify on figuring out what transpired in the present to fix in the past. Dan Vasser's purpose will unfold before him as his ex-girlfriend is already in the same business as he's in as well as possessing the same time travelling abilities.

Speaking of Jake 2.0 nanites, Bionic Woman has introduced newer tech to make things interesting for rebooting the titulat character from its 70's roots. Bionic Woman went to a bang on start involving Katie Sackhoff's character Sarah Corvus being cornered by a security for slaughtering people in the research facility that converted her. The new Bionic Woman played by Michelle Ryan is quite a looker to play the part and the way things were handled in her character that's different from the role originally played by Lindsay Wagner. In the case of the bionics used, they operate far differently than the transistor and servo prosthetic varieties, which gives way to better use of biomimetics and one element to make things possible to make it work without problems, nanotechnology in the form of anthrocytes. These little machines are responsible of giving Jaime Sommers her healing factor as well as some hardwire combat programming since they do some work with rewiring her brain to accommodate the new limbs, eye and ear that were replaced from a vehicular accident perpetrated by Sarah Corvus. The SFX is pretty good like jumping across rooftops with a Wuxia/Wirefu flair as well as the fast running speeds she can do which can be considered to be at superspeeds to be seen as a blur while keeping pace with a moving automobile in one scene. The show has some promise in storyline given that the bionics program has its share of successes and failures which will be brought to life like how things have gone with Dark Angel's Chimera projects by Manticore.

Smallville picks up from the cliffhanger last season wherein the last Zoner turns into Bizarro. Kara aka Supergirl get to debut briefly as she's responsible of saving Lex Luthor after the police car he was in got flooded over when the dam broke. Clark gets some advise from Martian Manhunter as to how to deal with Bizarro. Bizarro derives his powers from metabolizing Kryptonite radiation and yellow sun radiation weakens it. Chloe was briefly DOA but later performs a Lazarus in a morgue drawer. Lana is not dead as everybody thought in the end of the episode.

I'll prolly post more interesting tv reviews and news as time allows especially for the interesting highlights.