Caprica, like the Japanese, promises sexy robots

SyFy has released draft posters for the upcoming Battlestar prequel series, Caprica. And I hope you all realize that Caprica is giving us a glimpse into our own future here. Keep your eyes on the Japanese and those robots they keep working on. Sure, we say they’re freaky-looking, but on the inside, we’re cheering them on.

You can check out the rest of the posters at io9.

AMC’s The Prisoner

On November 15th, Ian McKellen returns to the role of Gandalf in the strangest reimagining of The Hobbit you’ve ever seen!

(Look, it was either a Hobbit joke, or, “The Prisoner is put on three years’ probation and must enter anger management counseling for assaulting our senses with its awesomeness.” You understand why I had to go with The Hobbit, right?)

The Cleveland Show: And EVEN a bear?

I’m beginning to think The Cleveland Show fits into the same category as Law & Order: Personal Injury Lawyers and CSI: Sacramento. After watching Cleveland and his son, Cleveland Jr. — who looked like this the last time we saw him — reconnect with their roots in Stoolbend, Virginia, I thought to myself, “Wait a second, I don’t give a s**t about Cleveland!” The entire show, which follows the Family Guy formula a little too closely, spent much of its 30-minute premiere making a bunch of bad sex jokes. Don’t they know? Race is the last barrier!

Like I said, the show follows the Family Guy formula almost to the letter. There’s Cleveland, his wife Donna, and three kids. There’s even a little one who runs around and, well, I won’t tell you what he does, but man hehehahahaha…so the entire thing just feels derivative. I’m thinking MacFarlane and friends should have started from scratch and thought up something a little more fresh, but if The Cleveland Show was just screaming to get made, I wish they had taken the characters in different directions.

Cleveland Jr., like Chris Griffin and Steve Smith before him, is a socially awkward, angst-filled teen. Rallo, while a few years older than Stewie, fills the exact same role minus the humor. Donna’s daughter, Roberta, is a nice change of pace. Her personality is a lot different from Meg and Hayley, and that will help bring a different dynamic to the show. The supporting characters may prove to be funnier than they were in the pilot, but again, they really stick to that Family Guy formula. Three guys who hang out with Cleveland at the local bar. There are the talking bears, Tim and Arianna, Holt the hipster, Lester the redneck, and a family from England. There’s potential there, we’ll just have to see if it pays off.

A lot of shows start off shaky, so you can never make any real judgments after only a single episode. Having said that, I feel confident in saying that The Cleveland Show is the worst television show ever made. It really isn’t, but it’s going to have to get a lot better a lot faster to keep me interested.

Animation Domination

If you were Matt Groening, would this picture piss you off?

Tonight’s the night.

Jimmy Bing’s Quick Picks

If you’re in the market for a quick, flip-through-it-before-you-go-to-bed number, you should check out Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds. It’s big, sprawling, hard science fiction. And at a brisk 576 pages, you’ll have it finished in a month or two.

While excavating the ruins of a million-year old civilization, archaeologist Daniel Sylveste discovers that the catastrophe which killed off the Amarantin may have been engineered to prevent an unstoppable threat from being set loose on the galaxy. Light years away, a ship crewed by the half-cyborg Ultras are seeking Sylveste in an attempt to save their captain, who’s been afflicted with a mysterious disease that infects both biological and technological lifeforms. What the Ultras don’t know is that one among them is an assassin who’s looking for Sylveste not to enlist his help, but to kill him. Exciting!

Before getting rich as a science fiction writer, Reynolds worked for the European Space Agency and his extensive knowledge of physics and astronomy fills his books from start to stop. It’s one of the biggest reasons I was turned on to his stuff. The Star Treks and the Fireflys are great, but if you’re looking for a more realistic approach to science fiction, Reynolds is the man. He’s heavy on plot but doesn’t scrimp on character, and his world-building had me spending my grandmother’s social security money at Barnes & Noble.

Revelation Space is heftier than a lot of the sci-fi out there, but the challenge is why we love to read, amirite? Unless the book’s about sexy vampires, in which case that’s why we love to read.

Grey’s Anatomy is back.

In case you missed Thursday’s episode…

Mmm, unconventional! I can’t wait to see what the season has in store!

FlashForward – “There are no more good days.”

EXT. DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES – DAY

A typical summer morning. Birds chirping. People on their way to work. Widen to reveal —

Four Hours Earlier

A typical summer morning. Birds chirping. People on their way to work. Mexicans trimming the trees and mowing the grass. Mark Benford kisses his wife Olivia before leaving for the day. Aaron Stark trims his beard. Bryce Varely sticks a gun to his head. The hot chick who was on Mad Men is taking her clothes off. Business as usual, right? WRONG. Today’s the day everything changes. Boom. Roasted.

FBI agent Mark and his sidekick Hikaru Sulu are chasing some stock terror suspect who will turn out to be central to the show’s plot halfway through the season when suddenly–!

For 2 minutes and 17 seconds, the entire world blacks out. No one’s sure what’s going on, but it’s like one of those Yellow Submarine things where even though it’s like one big acid trip, the music’s still pretty good so I just went with it. And then my aunt walked in and I was so high I hit on her, and she touched me in my swimsuit area.

When everyone wakes up LA is on fire. Sulu takes the helm while Mark tries to help all the people who are freaking out. Over at the hospital, Olivia is dealing with the same thing. Back at their house, Nicole the nanny pushes her boyfriend off of her long enough to make sure Charlie isn’t dead. She’s awake, clutching her teddy bear.

Nicole: Are you alright, sweety?

Charlie: I had a bad dream.

Nicole: What did you do?

Charlie: The malice of the act was base and I loved it–that is to say I loved my own undoing, I loved the evil in me–not the thing for which I did the evil, simply the evil: my soul was depraved, and hurled itself down from security in You into utter destruction, seeking no profit from wickedness but only to be wicked.

Nicole: Maybe I should call your mom.

Olivia’s got her own problems.

Later, at FBI headquarters, Mark and a stock task force gather in a conference room to figure out what’s happened. From what they know, the blackouts affected everyone on the planet.

Mark: No. It was more than a blackout. It was like a memory… of the future!

Everyone. At the Exact Same F’ing Time: You mean…a flash-forward?

Seth MacFarlane: Giggity.

Mark tells Demetri they need to figure out a way to see what everyone saw during the flashforward. They’re on it, and a plan comes together surprisingly fast.

Demetri: We’ll make a website!

Girl: And a TV show!

They take the idea to Stan, who’s quick to jump onboard.

Stan: Good job, guys. But let’s keep all this blackout business under wraps for now. We can’t let the public find out about this.

Mark: Uh, you realize the world knows, right?

Stan: Keep up the good work.

That night, Mark’s talking to Nicole. Ever since the blackout, she hasn’t been able to stop crying.

Nicole: I’ve been watching the news all day, except for when I was…nevermind. I just don’t know what to think, you know? I’m scared. I’m horny.

Mark: You really should go. I’m already a recovering alcoholic, I don’t need–you know. That other stuff coming up.

Nicole: What other stuff?

Mark: Please leave.

And she’s not the only one acting strange. Mark told Olivia what he saw during his blackout, but Olivia’s kept quiet.

Mark: What did you see, babe?

Olivia: I don’t want to talk about it.

Mark: But–

Olivia: He made me feel like a real woman!

Back in the office, whatshername calls Demetri over. She points to her computer.

Girl: Did you know every security camera in the world feeds into the FBI database?

Demetri: Really?

Girl: Yeah. I just finished looking through it. Check out what I found!

Demetri: That wasn’t taken during the blackout. It’s an Astros game. But it’s kind of cool that you found such a huge clue so quickly.

Girl: I know, right?

What does it all mean? Who’s the mysterious Suspect 0? What role will the kangaroo play? Was my Astros joke topical? More importantly, will FlashForward be as commercially viable as Lost? Tune in next week!

Cougar Town, “Pilot”: Pow!

“Maybe what really drives you nuts is that you couldn’t bag a young stud if you tried,” Josh Hopkins tells Courtney Cox in Cougar Town’s pilot episode. “You don’t think I could?” asks Cox, right before calling out to a kid riding by on his bike. “Pow!” She pulls open her robe, and the kid, who will be telling this story to his friends well into college, plows head-on into a parked car.

I just watched the pilot again and I’m still cleaning up the Dr. Pepper I spit all over my TV. I’m not sure what ABC did to deserve it, but as far as good TV goes, their cup runneth over this season.

Cougar Town stars Courtney Cox as Jules Cobb, a 40-year old single mom who’s trying to jump back in to the dating scene. Being single, being 40 with a 17-year old son, she’s (understandably) a little anxious. There to push her into the deep end is her best friend Laurie, played by Busy Phillips. After working some kinks out at the local discotheque, Jules hooks up with Matt. After moving things back to her place, they’re interrupted by Jule’s ex-husband Bobby and her son Travis.

Jules getting caught doing that thing she always told Bobby she hated but really doesn’t sums up a lot of show. It’s that, “Oh s**t. I’m doing this and people can see me,” feeling that makes Jules so hesitant to start dating again. Bobby and Travis aren’t making it any easier for her. Bobby looks on, amused, while Travis — the teenager who’s still getting picked on at school — can only watch in horror, especially after his dad gets a job at his school…cutting the grass.

The show was created by Scrubs alums (or as I call them, Scrubs Scribes) Bill Lawrence and Kevin Biegel, so fans of that show will definitely recognize the humor, although it’s a bit more reined in here. Reined in, but every bit as funny. We all knew Courtney Cox could do comedy, but this seems like a role she was almost born to, especially when you consider what all of the ex-Friends have gone on to do after that show completed its run.

Structurally, the show’s still working out a few kinks. I think it’s something all sitcoms go through in their first few episodes, and I don’t think the show is going to have any problems settling into its own rhythm. It’s a great premise, and while Cox is clearly the star, she’s got some talent backing her up. Brian Van Holt as Cox’s absent-minded ex-husband provides some of the show’s laugh-out-loud moments, as do Christa Miller and Ian Gomez, Cox’s neighbors who have settled into a life of utterly predictable marital bliss.

On the Working Title TV-Meter, we give Cougar Town–just kidding. Could you imagine something so ridiculous? Anyway, on the Working Title TV-Meter we give Cougar Town a B++, which is basically an A. I just hesitate giving any show an A right out of the gate, even though this one really had me laughing. Anyway, on Wednesday nights ABC is definitely the place to be. Cougar Town and the network’s other freshman comedy, Modern Family, seem to be a good pair. Considering the ratings, they’re both off to a good start. Hopefully that’ll keep up. I’d hate to buy a DVD next year that said Cougar Town: The Complete Series.

SNL is back this Saturday night…live. *cough*

If the Weekend Update Thursdays they’ve had on these past couple of weeks aren’t satisfying your SNL jones, you’ll be happy to know the show will be back with new episodes this Saturday. Jennifer’s Body star and future Jennifer’s Body 2 star Megan Fox will be hosting. I’m sure she’ll be really funny, and we’ll all feel bad for laughing at those Transformers letters. Anyway. In other news, Fox is currently in talks to star in the next Batman film. Rumor has it she’ll be playing an STD. (zing!)