Witches, stars and money

In today's All TV column, Matt reviews season three of "Entourage," which he liked. I did, too, and it'll be one of the summer staples of What's Alan Watching?, along with "Deadwood," "Rescue Me," and other shows I'm still working out. Something that probably won't be a staple is "The 4400," which I did take a second look at and even gave a positive review to in the column today, but which I still don't love enough to commit to watching every week. Good story, mediocre characters.

I already linked to my "Windfall" review a few days ago, and I don't know how much more I have to say about it, save that I could have done with at least two fewer "Oh, my God!!!!!!" scenes and that I'm already bored with the Jason Gedrick/Lana Parilla/Sarah Wynter/Luke Perry love quadrangle.

One show I didn't get a chance to review for space reasons was "Hex," which is sort of a British "Buffy" about a teenage girl with supernatural powers who fights evil at her boarding school. A few brief spoiler-laden thoughts after the jump, for the benefit of anyone who watched it.

One of the first notes I took as I watched the pilot (which, as all BBC America screeners are, was the uncut British version, so I can't speak 100% to what aired) was "Is there a typo in the title? It sure seems like the H should be an S." Witchcraft and female sexuality have often been linked, but after all the underwear-posing, porn-watching parties, Thelma the lesbian hitting on Cassie, Cassie getting tarted up immediately after discovering her powers, etc., etc., it felt like the show was either beating me over the head with the link or just really eager to keep the fanboys' attention.

Thelma was definitely my favorite character, and the one the writers had invested most of their energy into, so I was both surprised and oddly pleased when she got killed. Shows don't usually bother giving sacrifical lambs this full a personality (JJ Abrams got talked out of killing Jack in the "Lost" pilot, and even Eric Balfour in the "Buffy" pilot was really just Xander, only less so). So while I was disappointed at the thought of losing the show's most interesting character, I also admired the show for making me care this much about someone they were going to bump off, which suggested that the stakes might be continually high. But when they brought her back as a ghost in the final scene, I was just as pleased. Basically, I'm easy to please.

Not sure yet how interested I am in Cassie, and I'm hoping they give Colin Salmon more to do in future episodes. I suppose I could just go over to some British fan sites to find out, but I hate spoilers. So if you know more about the show than I do (i.e., anything that happens after the pilot), please refrain from mentioning it in the comments.