Catching up with the teevee.

Well, I spent the evening catching up with last week's illegally downloaded television, which was relaxing.

Burn Notice was a pleasure, as always. Kind of a nice departure, too, from their usual episode formula.

24 was, as usual, rather disturbing in its endemic contempt for civil liberties, though this season it seems to be trying to tack toward addressing that issue, and the complications of it. Still manages to be terribly addictive, though, simply because of the faux-real-time format. I dunno. I feel dirty watching this every week, and yet I still watch it.

Dollhouse was...mmm. Definitely had a certain Joss Whedon feel that makes me happy, but also felt like it was him trying to make the TV execs happy so that they wouldn't cancel and/or torpedo his new show before it got off the ground. Also kind of cool in that Eliza Dushku will probably get a chance to act a lot more than she did while playing Faith. I loved Faith, don't get me wrong. But still. And that scene toward the end where she's lying down to sleep and a panel slides over so that her sleeping cubicle becomes coffin-like...nice touch. Joss always seems like he runs afoul of TV network execs sooner or later, so I'm not terribly optimistic about this show, but I will keep watching it, I think. And keep my fingers crossed.

Termintator came back last week, too, after an annoying hiatus. Good episode, though the guy they found to play Reese (from the first movie) was kinda lame and he had unfortunate sideburns and facial hair. I sort of wonder if they're ramping up to close the series out, because there's been a death watch out on it since about six episodes into the first season. I hope that Fox makes an emphatic decision, one way or another. I also hope that they decide to keep it going, because I like the show a lot, and I think it does a nice job of maintaining and developing the storyline that the T2 movie laid down. If they don't, though, I don't want the season finale to be one of those half-assed things where it's like "It could be the end of the season, it could be the end of the show. So we're going to give you a cliffhanger that might never get resolved." I fear that they will, however. That would be sad.

BSG. Hmmm. There are only five or so episodes left. I hated the first two, this season. I was sort of okay with the mutiny episodes. I am cautiously optimistic, too, after "No Exit," though Tigh's wife being the uber-Cylon (and even more uber than was hitherto expected) still doesn't work for me particularly, and the structural problems with Galactica totally came out of nowhere. Like nobody ever noticed those cracks in the wall plating before now? C'mon. Anyway. As always, from week to week, I will give it the benefit of the doubt and trust it until next Friday. I dunno. I think it's probably good that it's ending soon, much as I loved it the first couple of seasons. It's telling that I'm not even expecting greatness at this point--I'm just hoping that they retain their dignity, and dot most of the i's and cross most of the t's, as they wind it down. They seem like they're doing that, at least provisionally, so far.

And then there's Chuck. I love Chuck. I root for Chuck. Along with Ash from Evil Dead 3 and Benjamin Braddock from The Graduate, and Tom Regan from Miller's Crossing, I think Chuck Bartowski makes a valuable role model. Of course, he's far younger than I am now, so I wouldn't really consider him as such, but if I were in my early to mid-twenties, I might. In any event, there's interesting things afoot for Chuck, and I do continue to appreciate that there is a constantly developing throughline from episode to episode, despite the fact that the show doesn't rate "serial drama" status. Not sure I like the turn that his relationship with Sarah seems to have taken, but the fact that he now has crazy Fulcrum shit in his head as well as crazy CIA shit is kind of awesome. So.

And yes, for someone who doesn't have a functional television at this point, I do seem to watch a lot of the teevee. I'm honestly not sure how that happened. Ah, well. That's one of the things that the internetz are for. Tra la.