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Posts tagged as “Fringe”

TV Fall '08: The Complete Review – What is new

We now continue with Part 2 of our Television Fall 2008 coverage and the new shows that are coming up this fall.
A lot of adaptations from international shows and some weird new series.
Is this season any good?

They’re coming. Prepare for our new overlords.

– Worst Week (premieres Sept. 22): A remake from an english show. First made for NBC, now it comes to CBS. I’m not watching this.
– The Mentalist (premieres Sept. 23): I saw the pilot and strongly disliked it. I prefer to it the fresher (and funnier) Psych.
– Gary Unmarried (premieres Sept. 24): Another CBS sitcom that I won’t watch.
– The Ex List (premieres Oct. 3): Isn’t that the plot from Sex and Death 101 but upside down?
– Eleventh Hour (premieres Oct. 9): Again, another remake from the Sleeper Cell guys. Another show I’ll probably not watch!



– Knight Rider (premieres Sept. 24): I threw up a little in my mouth when I saw the pilot earlier this year.
– My Own Worst Enemy (premieres Sept. 29): Christian Slater in a modern spin of Jekyll&Hyde. I may watch it to see what it’s like.
– Kath & Kim (premieres Oct. 9): Oh, when will they learn?
– Crusoe (premieres Oct. 17): Is this going to be a minaturized version of POTC? Probably, but I’ll watch the premiere anyway just to make sure.
– Life On Mars (premieres Oct. 9): A failure waiting to happen.

– Fringe (premieres Sept. 9): If you’re reading this, chances are that you already know what this show is. I’m still waiting to see “what’s next” so I’ll tune in for the first episodes. Will the lightning strike twice?
– Do not disturb (premieres Sept. 10): Booooring.


– 90210 (premieres Sept. 2): Melrose Place is back in business. I’m not sure if people are actually going to watch that, I won’t.
– Privileged (premieres Sept. 9): Once named Surviving the Filthy Rich (no this is not a Paris Hilton reality show), it appears to be some sort of Gossip Girl 2.0.
– Valentine (premieres Sept. 21): What is that you ask? Some kind of spin on Greek Gods and love it seems. I won’t watch to find out the rest.

– True Blood (premieres Sept. 7): Six Feet Under is one of my favorite shows, if not my favorite show. So it is without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that I REALLY wanted to see (and love) True Blood. I was fortunate enough to be able to see the pilot and I’m REALLY disapointed. Alan Ball what have you done? Hopefully the show will get better but…I honestly doubt it.

Come back tomorrow for the third and final part of our Complete Review. We will have something that resembles an analysis of what is up with the various networks.

Online shows and college love

You know how I talked about The WB’s online launch on August 27?
Well now there’s another, again, new kid on the block.
And his name is Strike.TV

Yes, that’s Kristen Wiig.

The idea for Strike.TV, like Whedon’s Dr. Horrible, was thought out during, you’ll never guess this, the writer’s strike.
Strike.TV allows for screenwriters to create a content that will be filmed and produced, while still maintaining ownership of their work.

The writers behind the site’s content include writers for The Office, How I Met Your Mother and much more (see the above trailer).
Several original series will be available on the website such as Global Warming, with Aasif Mandvi and Kristen Wiig.

The site will be paid, similarly to Hulu, with short ads before the program.
Strike.TV is expected to open to everyone later this month.

And what about that “college love”?
Well you certainly know that ABC, NBC and Coe like to stream their shows online, and also like to cash in the checks they earn with the ads in them.
Fox is soon going to join them with Fringe and The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
On September 8 and 9, both premiere will be streamed simultaneously with their TV broadcast.
The catch is that this stream will only be available to college students, or rather people surfing the web with .edu domains. Why .edu domains in particular you may wonder. Well Bill Bradford (the VP of “content strategy”) saw that .edu domains were among the top visitors for Fox’s website and came up with the streaming idea.
Brilliant.
Especially when you know that “.edu people” are also the number one people to download illegally shows, such as, you know, the leaked Fringe pilot.

You're leaking coolant at an alarming rate

While we’re on the Wired subject, or not, as well as Internet, here is another small article about leaked pilots on the Interweb.
What interested me in this article is that, as usual, the people behind the article like to hide behind “torrent-tracking sites” to speak of illegal file sharing, when it’s obvious that they have, like all of us, downloaded shows at least once in their lives. After all, the article is from Wired!
I mean if you go to any torrent website, you’ve known damn well for over a month now that pilots, like Fringe, have been leaked; hell, there’s even some talk that J.J. himself leaked the pilot!
“The number of leaked pilots and shows is always increasing”
Thank you mister obvious. I don’t need a torrent expert to tell me that, I’ll just open my eyes.
Let’s not pretend that we’re all good little boy scouts that have never ever illegally downloaded something and also never heard of torrent websites.
Yes, “society” (and suits) frown upon downloading but if you go download illegal stuff on the net, at least have the guts to admit it instead of pretending you don’t know pilots have been leaked for over a month.

And also, let’s be honest, if it was not for pirating and Internet, Lost and Heroes would not have been huge phenomenon.
Last year, months before TF1 premiered Heroes in France, there was something called the Heroes World Tour, where the cast travelled through several cities to promote the show.
One of those stop was Paris.
I wanted to meet Jack Coleman and I knew that Heroes was very popular here in France. Keep in mind that the HWT was months before the show even premiered for the first time ever on French TV. Despite that, hundreds (if not thousands?) of people formed a giant queue in front of where the cast was supposed to show up. Long story short, I unfortunately was not able to meet Coleman (too much people in line, despite me having arrived with friends at 8AM – the signing was during the evening).
Obviously everyone of them had downloaded and watched the show beforehand.

So yes, downloading greatly helps a show nowadays and helps build its reputation.
Let’s face the future and acknowledge that the illegal leaking of shows helps build a fanbase instead of destroying one.