My Shortest Season Pass List in Years

Blame it on the Red Sox who want to keep playing. Blame it on lots and lots of football on Sunday and Monday nights with live scoring on my fantasy team. Blame it on the new job. Blame it on having a slightly older kid who stays up a bit later. Whatever it is, my TV watching is seriously lagging this year. I have updated the season pass list at the left of this page to reflect the shows I've actually been watching before they get deleted from my TiVo. All in all, I'm relatively underwhelmed by the new offerings.

• Pushing Daisies was way too much like a Broadway musical for my liking. It's no longer on my season pass list.


• Chuck is probably good, but I has been sitting on my TiVo for weeks without any major urge for me to watch it after the first episode.


• Private Practice is passable, but not outstanding -- what Grey's pulled off as quirkiness, Private Practice pushes to the edge of corniness.


• Cane is good enough to keep me interested, but mostly because I absolutely love Jimmy Smits. In my world, he is currently president after all.


• Gossip Girl is good, but it is hardly Gilmore Girls or the O.C.-- and it never will be.

Brothers & Sisters has risen to the very top of my favorites list. It's exceptionally good and has be crying as some point during nearly every episode. At some point, I think I'll write a post about why I love it so much when TV makes me cry. But not tonight. I'm going to hope that the TV program I'm watching tonight doesn't make anyone in the Nation (i.e. Red Sox Nation) cry.

Shark Jumping in Progress?

Friday Night Lights is definitely still one of my top two favorite shows, but I'm a bit worried. There's this term that's used by TV commentators and bloggers: jumping the shark. Wikipedia explains nicely why it's called that. It happens, in my humble opinion, most often when showrunners are pressured by the network to spice things up a bit by changing something major about the show. Sometimes it works. Often it just spells the beginning of the end. The potential for shark jumping in Dillon, Texas should have been predictable given the skin-of-its-teeth renewal at the end of last season. But it might have been nice if the showrunners could have resisted. Instead, they decided, in their infinite wisdom, to have Landry kill someone and pitch his body off a bridge into the river at the end of the season premier. Not exactly in keeping with the normal course of events in Dillon, and a bit too I Know What You Did Last Summer for my taste. Next week they find the body. Here's hoping it all gets resolved quickly and we can get back to the good old fashioned Friday Night Lights I've invested so much time cheering about.