Posts Tagged “Knight Rider”

What in the hell is wrong with you?  Are you striving to drive your network into the ground?!

Yes, I’m a big fan of Conan O’Brien.  No, this entry is not just about him.

You all remember when NBC decided that it’d be a great idea to cash in on our childhood memories with Knight Rider?  If you do, you’d also remember that it sucked horribly.  It stunk so badly they didn’t air more than four episodes despite the fact they paid for a whole season.  Because Knight Rider had a car as it’s central figure, some genius at NBC figured that people must not like cars and shows about cars.  With that logic in mind, NBC decided to drop Top Gear America without even showing the pilot.  For those of you who aren’t in the know, Top Gear is a BBC program in the UK that is one of the most widely distributed shows in the world.  It has been spun off into Top Gear: Germany, Top Gear: Russia, and Top Gear: Australia.  We were inches from joining the rest of the civilized world in getting Top Gear: America!  I guess people just don’t like car shows enough to watch them on TV (we do, however download Top Gear UK so much that it is the most BitTorrent’s show in the world).

The very first book I ever read on my own was Robinson Crusoe. I was seven years old, and had been reading for some time, but never with any interest. Between my short attention span and over active imagination, most story books were just too boring for me to want to read them all the way through.

Crusoe changed that however; I was bringing the book with me to the dinner table so I could keep reading, I would sit on the couch with the TV on and not look once at it all night, I would beg my mom to let me stay up just a little bit longer till I reached the end of the chapter. She must have been so happy (my mom is an avid reader herself, and I can only imagine how she must have worried that she had a 2nd grader who wouldn’t read).

So, I was able to catch the pilot and second episode of Knight Rider. I am disappointed.

Ok, so I get the fact that the original show wasn’t so great either. It was about a guy and his car, and as kids we didn’t care that the action was obviously staged and the driving was rather low budget. At the time, we couldn’t drive ourselves, so it impressed the crap out of us. But here’s the thing; we’ve grown up. I know that our parents are probably chuckling with the thought that we’re all old enough now to understand how lame our childhood heroes were, but it’s frustrating just the same.

It comes as no shock my close friends that I don’t have any sort of allegiance to any one political party.  I view politics the same way I view professional sports; just because I might like something that one person does, does not mean I want to be a die-hard fan of theirs or the team they’re on.  This does give me a somewhat unique viewpoint when talking with my politically minded friends, as I’m not bound by any sort of unspoken oath of fealty to either major party.

The new television shows for Fall 2008 network season are almost here.   Amid the cesspools known as ‘reality’ tv, cop show copy-cats and lame sitcoms we can usually find nuggets of interesting television.  Here are some of the shows that I feel would be of interest to fellow geeks with some of my comments for you to rip apart.  With some of the schedule conflicts, I can only thank the gods for DVR service.  All times posted are Eastern.
Think a show is missing from this list?  Remember that several shows have Mid-season premiers such as Lost (ABC), Reaper (CW), 24 (Fox) and Merlin (new show, NBC) .

I’m also interested in hearing what other geeks are looking forward to.

On a crusade....

Mondays:
8:00pm Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles (Fox)- Returning show starts on September 8th.  I will be watching this show again.  I really didn’t think this would make good episodic television, but I found myself watching each week.