Much to write about this time around, thanks in part to Blogger not saving a draft of an earlier post on Friday. (Thanks.) So, first, new TV:

The second episode of Medical Investigation--airing in the series' regular Friday timeslot--felt much more like a pilot than the "preview" episode on Thursday night. Part of my thinking is this: Anna Belknap's hair was shorter (which won't really mean anything until I see how she looks next Friday, but in the preview episode, it was the length seen in her promo photo). The slightly less gay reason is that Friday's episode was writen completely by the series creator, while Thursday's was co-written by him and someone else. Thursday's episode also seemed to have more complete production credits at the beginning, whereas the average pilot doesn't have that big a staff. And, aesthetically, the Thursday show seemed a little more polished, a little zippier. It seems clear that after the pilot was produced, someone probably had a note along the lines of, "Could it look more like CSI?" Friday's show was paced and shot more like a medical drama. However, I'm still more inclined to watch this show than CSI for the reasons I said earlier: there seems to be more at stake on this show than on CSI. These characters are working to save people's lives; the CSI characters come in after the lives have already been lost.

And I'm just going to say this about Friday's Stargate Atlantis: At this point, I think I'd vote for any candidate who supported a constitutional ammendment to ban bullshit virtual-reality storylines from all Stargate TV series.

Saturday brought with it the premiere of The Batman, the new animated series about... (figure it out). Now, ten years ago, Warner Bros Television created a groundbreaking animated Batman series that pretty much redefined superhero cartoons. This, by its very nature, was likely to come up short, and most of the reviews I've read seem to take it to task for not being that series from ten years ago. I'll admit, I thought it had its weak moments. The conceit here is that this is a Batman just three years into his career, still learning. In this week's episode, he meets the Joker for the first time. But it's not really the Joker I'm familiar with from the comics. What makes the Batman/Joker matchups sparkle is the mental combat, because the Joker is crazy. Here, it's altogether too physical, and it just doesn't feel quite right. I mean, Batman can get in a punch-up with any villain, he can beat the crap out of any villain. Fighting the Joker is all about figuring out his lunatic mindset, and there just isn't any of that here.

Having said that, I did find a lot to like about the show. I like most of the designs and the animation. And I liked the multicultural cast (Hispanic police chief, African American and Asian detectives). And, to be honest, it's Batman. It takes a lot for me to be critical here. (Remember my raves about Birds of Prey back when it was on? I stand by them, but even then, I admitted that I wasn't necessarily seeing things clearly.)

Last night, I watched the series premiere of Jack & Bobby, which has been touted as one of the must-see new dramas. For something that was supposed to be all that and a bag of chips, I thought it was just okay. It's kind of The West Wing meets Smallville; we meet a young kid as a teenager, we know he's going to grow up to be President of the United States, so the fun part is watching him get from here to there. The characters felt real, the show looked just fine, and I'll definitely be back next week. I think I was expecting something unbelievable, based on the hype, and whatever I got couldn't live up to those expectations.

This week, I also got a ton of TV shows on DVD. Specifically Alias Season 3, American Dreams Season 1, Everwood Season 1, Angel Season 4, and the complete Keen Eddie. Now, longtime readers of this journal (both of you) have probably heard me wax enthusiastic about Alias, Keen Eddie, and Angel, so those should come as no surprise. Everwood was sort of an impulse purchase. I've just started watching the show on The WB, and I'm enjoying the heck out of it. Amazon.com discounts DVD sets pretty heavily before they come out, so I thought I'd get it while it was on sale. I watched the first four episodes so far, and I'm glad I got it.

And then there's American Dreams, which continues to be a personal favorite. So far, I've only watched the first episode three times (each time with a different commentary track; haven't even watched it with the regular soundtrack yet), but I completely remember how it won me over right from the start. It's a family show, but not like any other family show currently on the air. The creator/producer Jonathan Prince talks about the fast-paced editing style, and says they deliberately decided to shoot a family show like a cop show. The show allows characters to be mean and unlikeable at times, and still human. I was surprised to learn that Executive Producer Dick Clark had urged the producers to make the show harder-edged, but that hard edge is what gives the show its reality. The show returns for its third season in a couple of weeks, and I've got plenty of DVDs in the meantime, so expect to hear more.

Oh, and American Dreams is the show responsible for my not renewing my subscription to Entertainment Weakly. They criticized the show because the father, Jack Pryor, wouldn't let his daughter walk home with an African American kid, but would go into business in an African American neighborhood and let his African American employee run the store. Because, of course, racism is just this monolithic behavior, and there are no shades of gray or complexity. People are either one way or another, at least according to EW. This, from the same magazine that had problems with October Sky, the movie about an Appalachian boy who grows up to be a NASA rocket scientist, based on Homer Hickam's autobiography, because they thought the character in the movie felt too cosmopolitan to be from an Appalachian coal town.

As for Alias, I've only gotten through the first episode of the season, plus the bonus animated cartoon (titled, imaginatively, "Animated Alias"). The animation looked familiar, and it turns out it was done by Noodlesoup, the same guys who do The Venture Brothers on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. It's slight, and just sort of expands on stuff seen in an episode of the show rather than adding anything new, but it's cute, and it's new Alias than I haven't seen before, not in any form.

Apparently, the DVD release of the third season of 24 includes ten minutes of direct-to-DVD footage introducing characters from the upcoming fourth season. So hopefully, this will only be the beginning of DVD producers coming up with unique added-value features for their sets of TV shows on DVD. (As opposed, say, to the upcoming set of Buck Rogers DVDs, which have no special features, just the episodes, and are way expensive. Not planning on getting them...)

Speaking of DVDs, it has apparently been announced that George Lucas is making still more changes to the upcoming DVD release of the original Star Wars trilogy of movies. And, predictably, fans are outraged, in a manner that suggests that this is somehow important. Me, I can see both sides. On the one hand, I understand the desire of an artist to keep refining a work until it most closely matches his original vision. And the original movies were produced under financial and technological constraints that no longer apply, so if George Lucas wants to use his money and contemporary technology to make them look the way he wants them to look, that's his right. They're his movies (even if he didn't direct two of them, by all accounts, they're still pretty much his vision). On the other hand, I can understand the fan point of view that says, "I fell in love with the movie I saw in 1977; I want to see exactly the same movie on DVD." But at the end of the day, I say this:

If you're over 18 and concerned about this, you'd better be registered to vote, and you'd better do so in November's election. Because if your passion, your drive, your firmly-held beliefs are all directed to whichever blinking version of Star Wars you get on DVD, then grow up.