Heroes is Back!

The second season premiere of Heroes aired last night, and it's great to have the show back. Flanked by Chuck and Journeyman, it was a great night of TV. And of course, there's a ton of speculation about what the new season has to offer.

One thing I noticed last night that seemed to stand out is that the symbol (the half-helix, or what Ando called "godsend") took a certain prevalence during the opening episode. But what bothered me is that it seemed different. When positioned vertically, the symbol normally has one line coming out of the top, and two on the bottom. Yet, several times last night, the symbol is shown inverted. Particularly coming from Molly's dreams about the man that can see her.

It reminded me of a typical convention of comic books, one that was the focus of the movie Unbreakable. Every hero has an opposite, a villian. It makes me wonder if the inverted symbol is a foreshadowing of sorts, preparing us for the introduction of anti-Heroes. In the first season, Sylar as Peter Petrelli's opposite was a primary focus, but I don't remember if the symbol was ever shown in conjunction with Sylar.

It's worth noting that on the pictures of Kaito Nakamura and Angela Petrelli, the symbol was in it's normal form ... perhaps Angela isn't as evil as Nathan wants to believe.

Journeyman

Journeyman is another one of those shows in NBC's Fall lineup that could have been awful if not executed perfectly, but again, NBC has another potential smash hit on their hands, and Monday nights are going to be hard for the other networks to beat.

The premise is similar to the old show Quantum Leap, but without the futuristic aspect to it, but it feels even more human, as they show the strain that the time travel takes on Dan and his family and friends. That makes the show even more engrossing that Quantum Leap ever was, and it's only the first episode.

After watching these three shows, Journeyman, Chuck, and Bionic Woman, I find myself incredibly thankful that these shows are on NBC and not Fox. Fox would have probably found a way to cancel them after just an episode or two, and the world would miss out on great drama (and in Chuck's case, comedy, too).

One funny thing I noticed ... when Dan jumps through time, his items go with him, including his Apple iPhone. It signals several times when he jumps because you can see that there's no digital cell signal back in the past. However, in once scene in particular, you can see that he's holding the phone upside down, but the text is right side up.

NBC Fall Season Rocks!

While I'm not a big fan of Comcast, when there's something on their On Demand service, I'm certainly grateful I have it. Sadly, the only network shows Comcast has had in HD for a while has been reruns of CSI.

I wanted to kill a little time today while something else was recording, and decided to check to see if the next CSI episode was ready yet, and there was a new listing for NBC. Imagine my surprise when the pilots of NBC's big fall season were there waiting for me. And from the looks of it, it's going to be a GREAT season.

Bionic Woman is a fresh take on the old series, and if it feels familiar, it should. It has the same tone as the remake of Battlestar Galactica, and even features a couple of those familiar faces as well. The last few minutes felt a little cheesy, and I don't want to spoil it for you, but when you see it, you'll know exactly the scene I'm talking about. That brief Velveeta moment aside, the show was really entertaining, and I can't wait to see where they go with it.

When I first saw the previews for Chuck, I thought that the show would either be really good, or really, atrociously bad. Lucky for us, it's great. To crib the phrase from his Steveness of Jobs, it's insanely great. Again, don't want to ruin the plot, but this show is going to pluck the strings of every geek out there as hard as Heroes did. So it's no surprise that it'll be airing right before Heroes in the lineup. That's going to be a hard one-two punch.

I still have to watch Journeyman and Life, so look for those impressions soon!

Oh, one small complaint ... Comcast didn't make the 5.1 soundtrack available on the HD feed, only the ProLogic sound. That's ok, it's just be even more reason to watch the shows again!

Problems with Heroes Disc 2 on HD-DVD? Read This!

If you've bought Season 1 of Heroes on HD-DVD recently, you might be running into probably getting the second disc to load. What's the solution?

Sadly, just patience.

The second disc is web-enabled, and when you first load the disc, it will attempt to download the web content to the hard drive built into your HD-DVD drive. Of course, this is a popular web series and the servers seem to be getting overloaded. This means that it might take up to an hour to download the content.

The disc should give you the option to cancel if it appears that it's going to take a prolonged amount of time. All I can recommend is that you load the disc before you want to watch it and let it download while you make dinner or something.

Just a reminder, Season 2 starts on September 25th!

Oh My God of War II

I finally talked the wife into letting me get a new game as a present for making Dean's List again last quarter. After much hemming and hawing, I finally chose God of War II for my dusty PS2, since the praise heaped upon the title has reached near epidemic proportions. Not only did my lovely wife let me get the game, she (get this) bought it for me. Managed to get the last copy at Fred Meyer, too. She's the bestest wife ever!

I managed to hold off playing it for approximately 45 whole minutes (I was watching Planet Earth on Discovery) before getting my hack and slash on. The game is every bit as epic as the press would have you believe, and it's not at all an understatement to say that you'll be jabbing your twin swords into the eye of a Collossus inside of 15 minutes flat. The cinematics are also quite amazing, and it's possible that I might include this game in a project I'm working on about Video Games as Art for the UW. Not only is the art direction superb (the camera alone deserves some sort of award), but the game does a great job of conveying emotion.

My wife was half-stunned, half amused by the sex minigame and relative plethora of nudity to be found in even the game's first few hours. Nothing says "mature game" like nipples and ass-crack, I suppose. Still don't think I could tempt her into picking up the controller, though. She might like to watch it, but there's enough of a leap between watching and playing that I don't think she'd ever traverse the gap.

The only thing that would have made this game perfect? Achievements. Damn the Gods for making this game a Sony exclusive!

Battlestar Galactica Season Finale Mindfrak ...

The following post is going to discuss the season finale of Battlestar Galactica. If you haven't watched it yet, stop reading this and go watch it! There are some massive spoilers ahead ...

So the mystery of the music in the ship was solved, and what an amazing mystery it was! It turns out that Chief, Saul, Sam and Tori are all Cylons! That's four of the final five, and with the return of Starbuck, it seems that she could be the fifth. The final season (not to be seen until January 2008!) is going to be a barn-burner, that's for sure.

There was also something interesting happening with Roslin, Sharon, and Caprica, as it turns out that they're all sharing the concert hall visions. Perhaps even Hera as well, Sharon's half-Cylon, half-Human hybrid baby. The visions center on Hera, and we've been told that she's very important, but this latest revelation just confused the hell out of me. I could understand Hera's importance if she were the only hybrid, but if the Chief is a Cylon ... that means his baby is a hybrid too! Plot hole, or important development? I'm not entirely sure.

Where does the show go from here? The "Caprica" spin-off has been shelved, and the word is that Season Four will be the last. Given that they appear to be very close to Earth now, it sounds like that's the case. But there's one more adventure in store for us before next winter ... there's a BSG movie coming in the fall that will focus on the Pegasus, but also adding one more piece to the puzzle for the new season. I can hardly wait!

Is 'Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader' Rigged?

Before I start, let me preface by saying that I have the weakest of "evidence" to go on, and that I'm truly grasping at straws here. And yet, I just can't shake the feeling that the newest game show hit, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader is rigged.

The realization crushed my spirits during the last episode, the one with the question about how many cups there were in five and a half gallons. At least, I think that was the question. It was called a "measurements" question, but really, it was just basic math. If you knew how many cups there were in a gallon (16), then it was just a matter of doing the math properly (multiply by 5.5 or by five and then add eight).

Of course, the correct answer was 88. There were a variety of ways to get to it, but when the adorable 5th grader Alana revealed her answer as 89, I was flummoxed. How on earth could she have been off by one!? I worked through the math in my head, a variety of ways, and finally determined that she simply couldn't have been off by one. Yes, she's a fifth grader, but if she knew the number of cups in a gallon (and she clearly did), then no math could have given her THAT answer. She could still have been wrong, sure, but not with that answer. Hell, there wasn't even a way that I could find that would have arrived at 89 if she had the wrong number of cups in a gallon.

So what happened? Sure, Alana is the youngest of the group of kids (she's only 9 ... you could never tell by how tall she is), but considering that the kids are coached ahead of time--they get multi-subject workbooks that many of the questions are derived from--so it makes sense that they'd be right more often than wrong. But again, how on earth could she have gotten that answer at all?

Unless she was told to miss it.

That was the only conclusion to which I could come. The kids are coached, but maybe they are also coached to get the "tough" questions wrong on occasion. I'm sure that there's some sort of statistical analysis one could do on what the likely wrong answers would be to that question, based on the type of math or assumption error and I'd be stunned if the answer "89" showed up on any of them. (Many multiple-choice exams are written with this in mind ... the wrong answers are "correct" if you made the right kind of mistake.) And when that happens, that's where teachers would look for cheating ... the outliers. What is the probability that a student will get this question right if they've gotten previous related questions wrong? Of course, here we'd be looking for the opposite ... what is the likelihood that Alana would miss this question given her previous answers on measurements questions, and if so, the likelihood that it would be such a frickin' odd answer?

The show is rigged in other ways too. For example, they'd never put me on the show. I'd never get past the initial interviews or exams, because I'd probably blow through them. The people they cast (and these shows are definitely cast, unlike Jeopardy!) may have had great grades, but that doesn't mean that they retained the information past the initial exams or papers. People who know me will tell you that while my grades may not be stellar, I do very well with concepts as opposed to rote memorization. So they quiz potential contestants, and figure out which personalities will work on the show and how likely they are to win.

By the way, if anyone is going on the show, and wants to know how to give yourself the best shot possible, here's what I would do, assuming the game was on the up-and-up:

Start with the 5th grade questions. While the show's name may lead you to believe that these will be the toughest, if you consider the rate at which you lose retained information, you might be better off going with questions more recent than 1st grade.

Don't use your "helpers". They may seem like they're there to bail you out, and they are--sort of. The worst thing you could do is use them early. What you should do is answer the questions to the best of your ability; you'll get one free pass in the form of the SAVE, where the fifth grader you chose got the answer right if you missed it. Next, use the Peek. Knowing a possible answer should allow you to puzzle out how they got the answer. However, this could also bias you towards a wrong answer. Finally, use the Copy, because it's pretty much just up to the 5th grader at that point and should be the least-reliable helper.

Again, this is all assuming that the kids haven't been coached to "throw the game" once in a while. If they have, all the more reason to avoid using the helpers at all if you can.

Studio 60 Devolves into West Wing Reruns

I'm a Sorkin fan. I thought The West Wing was one of the best shows on TV while Sorkin was still running it, and a great deal of my knowledge of how our government works (or should ideally work) came from that show. One of the things I've liked about Studio 60 was just how much like The West Wing it was in pacing and writing style. Even some of the actors were the same, people who've proven to be able to handle the way Sorkin writes. Hell, the title of the episode is in the same font.

Studio 60 stopped being similar to The West Wing last night, and practically turned into a rerun.

In the first five minutes of last night's episode, Sorkin managed to reuse at least three different lines that I clearly remember from The West Wing. First, the phrase "we're nowhere", which was used frequently in Sorkin's White House to describe the state when all of your progress had just brought you right back to square one. Next, when Matt Albie tells his assistant to go home, and she says, "I go home when you go home," it was lifted right out of an identical conversation between Josh Lyman (played by Bradley Whitford, also on Studio 60) and Donna Moss.

And in case you didn't remember where those had come from, Sorkin reminds you right before the opening titles ... when the lawyer in a sexual harassment suit walks into the room declaring that she was from GaugeWhitney ... the same fictional law firm that Rob Lowe's character was from on The West Wing.

I really don't think it's possible for someone to rip themselves off. They're still your own original ideas, you just had them earlier. But Sorkin certainly pushed that line, and he'll be lucky if he didn't just push this show off the network schedule in the process

Troup Fails to Advance on Idol

I haven't had a chance to watch the show yet, but online reports suggest that the first Hollywood round of American Idol: Season 6 was somewhat haphazard and most certainly confusing. Several people who forgot their lyrics were allowed to advance, meanwhile, even Robyn Troup's performance at the Grammy's two nights previous couldn't help her get to the next round (Idol was taped before Troup performed Sunday).

Blake Lewis, however, is all over local news and radio. Hailing from Bothell, WA (my own hometown), Lewis' beatbox skills and a well-orchestrated performance (I've heard this performance about seven times already this morning) propelled his group into the next round. The actual singing wasn't great, but they did something memorabe, illustrating that sometimes it's not enough to be able to sing, you need to put on a show as well. This is something Taylor Hicks had down pat.

The big complaint is that with only an hour, the judge's decisions didn't always seem to make sense, and some of the rationale may have been left on the cutting room floor. Either that, or it's possible that they're simply preparing for the eventuality that they need to have an even number of men and women (a ridiculous requirement anyway). Seemingly talented women are going home, while Sundance Head (male) got a pass after two lackluster performances (including forgetting the words in the group sing). In fact, Sundance advanced, and Robyn Troup (who was in the same group as Head) went home in time to sing with Justin Timberlake.

Sounds like it'll be a curious season, as the judges might be looking for something specific in their finalists this year.

American Idol Season 6 ... Over Before It Began?

Anyone who knows me has probably heard me rail on the "parade of mediocrity" that is the audition process for American Idol. I'm just the kind of guy that thinks that to get your fifteen minutes of fame, you must be able to do something significant to contribute to ... something. Looking like a jackass and not being able to sing don't count.

But that's neither here nor there. Tomorrow starts the first round of hopefuls that were talented enough to get to the Hollywood stage of the competition, and this is normally where I start paying attention to the show. Idol has the ability to make stars out of even non-winners, and in fact, not winning could end up being a major opportunity for you. Kelly Clarkson notwithstanding, some of the biggest names to come out of Idol are Jennifer Hudson and her meteoric rise to capture a Golden Globe and probably an Oscar, and Season 5 finalist Chris Daughtry who's debut album just went platinum (and is a great rock album).

Which led me to have an interesting conversation with my wife last night. How is it that the audience has been getting it so wrong, since they are the ones making this decision? The voting should be roughly analogous to how sales should go, right? And yet, winner Ruben Studdard falters while Clay Aiken makes out like a bandit. What's going on?

My hypothesis is that only Season 1 of Idol was "pure", meaning that the producers and the judges themselves didn't try to steer the voting too much. In later seasons, the producers and judges learned to distrust the voting audience and tried to find ways to steer votes. Simon Cowell in particular makes his attempts to guide the voting rather transparent ... after all, he's the one with money on the line when he has to package the winner for a mass audience.

Unfortunately, the agenda with the vote steering could be completely unrelated to who will be the bigger star, or the most marketable personality. Anyone putting on a TV show knows that you need to deliver a story, and the better the story, the better the ratings. So how do you do that with a reality TV show? That's where all the "back home" and "behind the scenes" vignettes come into play. How else can you explain the inexplicable win of Fantasia Barrino, other than that the audience bought into her story and wanted to reward her. One might even suggest that there were other reasons too, such as wanting to add more diversity to the list of winners. It probably doesn't go quite that far, but you never know. The vote steering can have the opposite effect at times, however. If enoguh fans of someone like, say, Jennifer Hudson, can be steered to another choice (and if they feel she's safe enough to continue), you end up with the results "shocker" that we're all so familiar with.

At the start of the finals round of Season 5, I told my wife that who will win American Idol that year depended on what kind of album Cowell wanted to produce. If he wanted another true pop star, it would be Kat McPhee. If he wanted to try his hand with a rock album, Chris Daughtry was a lock. Of course the joke was on me (and Cowell) as it turns out that Taylor Hicks was an unstoppable force from Day 1. Of course, Daughtry and McPhee both have hits on Top 40 radio right now, and I've yet to hear anything memorable from Hicks (though that could be due to the stations I listen to). Hicks win was partly due to a strong fan base back home (and loyal voters), and partly because of how many votes he was able to pick up from departing finalists. But arguably, the fans had their minds made up about Hicks from the get-go adding more to the argument over how "pure" the contest really is.

That brings us to Season 6, and the story this time around is that one of the Hollywood Hopefuls has a gigantic and arguably unfair advantage going into the voting (should she make it past the semi-finals). Robyn Troup has confirmed that she auditioned for Season 6, but could not say if she made it to Hollywood ... which of course means that she did (her NDA wouldn't bar her from saying that she didn't make it). If you don't know who Robyn Troup is, you probably didn't watch the Grammy Awards last night, where Robyn won a contest to sing with Justin Timberlake on the show and wowed the audience. If Robyn makes it to the Final 12, what are the odds that she won't win the entire thing? I suppose that depends on the story they want to tell, or if the audience has their mind made up at the beginning.

Addendum: As I've mentioned in previous blog posts, the producers have ways to steer the voting, from lighting and song availability in the "genre weeks", down to who performs first and last. If you think that the performance order is random, you're kidding yourself ... it's no surprise when one of the best performances of each week is the last to perform. "Send the audience home happy" is one of the old adages of showmanship. When they get to the finals, pay close attention to background and lighting for the performances, and see if you can pick out who the people behind the show want to win.

Also, as commenter Sue mentions below, I failed to acknowledge that Hicks' album went platinum one month after its release, though I credit my omission to the fact that it did so before releasing a single, which is likely why I hadn't heard anything from it on the radio. And to clarify, I'm not pointing out Hicks as an example of the fans getting it wrong, but more of a point to show that the judges failed to sway the fans away from Hicks. I've updated the post with a link to my blog post from last season explaining how DialIdol.com had Hicks picked to win by a landslide.

How Did Peter Petrelli Regenerate?

At the risk of spoiling part of last night's episode of Heroes, I felt like talking about it a bit, because this was a pivotal moment in the series that hints at many things to come. Namely, for the first time, Peter was able to use a power acquired from someone else, without being in the vicinity of the person.

So how did it happen? As we saw in the show last night, Mr. Invisible threw Peter off of the roof of The Artist's building, thinking that it would force Peter to fly. Instead, something more spectacular happened ... Peter crashed into the roof of a taxi. Peter explained his miraculous survival as having thought of The Cheerleader just before he landed, but I think there was more to it.

Claire's power is involuntary. She can't control whether or not she heals herself, it just happens. Similarly, once Peter acquired her power, he too gained an ability that was involuntary. So far, just about every other ability we've seen, The Politician's ability to fly, Hiro's ability to manipulate time, and even The Policeman's ability to read minds ... each of these has an element of control to it. Until Peter learned how to tap into these abilities, he wouldn't be able to control them. The manifestation of Claire's regeneration ability was that catalyst. (Not that this was the first time he's manifested a latent ability ... he's been channelling The Artist's ability to see the future for a while now, something that was originally an involuntary ability only manifesting when he was high.)

However, my theory is that this one event is actually that sets off the chain reaction leading up to the destruction of New York. Peter has already been around most of the Heroes at one point or another, and now knows how he can access those abilities, but lacks the necessary control. What is going to happen when he is reminded of Ted, The Nuclear Man ... the person that caused Peter's radiation sickness? Boom. Will that be the end of Peter if it happens? Of course not ... as we've learned by the lesson of Claire's Mom, it doesn't appear that you can be killed by the manifestation of your own ability. This is one of the things I love about this show ... they are establishing the ground rules by which the world operates, and they're letting you in on those rules piece by piece. Much like how The Sixth Sense stayed true to itself by operating within the bounds of strict rules, so too does Heroes. Sadly, Heroes is also doing a much better job of dishing out information that keeps you interested than Lost did in its last season (I hope tonight turns that trend around).

Something else just occurred to me as I was watching the show last night as well. Every Hero needs a Villian, and I think it's interesting that as far as we can tell, Peter and Sylar have the same ability but on opposite ends of the spectrum. Could this be another of the rules? Does each hero have a counterpart? Could this be why the show hinted at Jessica becoming a villian in the next episode? (Or did it? It looked like Matt Parkman was involved ...)

Of course, I haven't ruined all of the surprises in the show, so if you haven't watched it yet, make sure you do. In particular, be sure to check out the license plate on the car that Hiro's father gets into. That was a particularly good piece of geek lore.

Lost, Brought To You By Eight Commercial Breaks

I could be exaggerating, but I don't think so. I'll have to go back and count, but I think Lost hit a record for the most commercials crammed into an hour-long show. As a result, the show felt a little disjointed. But boy, the teasers were true, that first five minutes was just great, the typical sort of Lost stuff we've been missing.

Lost Season Premiere TONIGHT

Tonight marks the start of Season 3 of Lost. For those of you that were following "The Lost Experience" Alternate Reality Game (ARG), you know what the numbers are and what the Hanso Foundation is, and the nature of the relationship between Alvar Hanso and Rachel Blake. You're also left with even more questions, which is the hallmark of Lost. But tonight, you find out far more about The Others, and about Jack in particular.

I'll say no more except this: Apparently, the first five minutes are must-see TV in every possible definition of the phrase, and are better than anything shown in Season 2. If you found yourself drifting away, at least watch those five minutes and see if they can hook you again. If you need more convincing, you can read a relatively spoiler-free series of rantings by Jeff Jensen at Entertainment Weekly.

The move to Blogger Beta is complete. I've lost some functionality (due to a missing template backup), gained some other functionality, and am generally satisfied with where things stand for the time being. Thanks for hanging in there with me. Namaste.