Monday, July 20, 2009

Glad to see me? I guess we're in the next life!

Howdy, folks. Had a fine time on vacation, including stops at Hershey Park (which, while fun, was sadly unlike The Land of Chocolate from Homer's dreams) and the Jersey shore, and randomly shared an elevator with the hilarious Ken Jeong (of "The Hangover" and "Party Down") at a remote Massachusetts hotel. (He couldn't have been more polite, by the way, even as the ride threatend to turn into an episode of The Chris Farley Show.)

I wasn't able to completely unplug, but for the most part, it was nice to be able to watch something like "Better Off Ted" without having to think about what to write about it, whether ABC had a photo or I'd need to make a screencap, etc.

Now I'm back, and after the jump we'll have a link to my latest column, and some other talk about how the next few weeks (involving Comic-Con and the TV critics press tour) will go.

The first order of business is to link to my review of "Torchwood: Children of Earth," which BBC America is running tonight through Friday at 9 p.m. As you can tell if you click through, I loved it, even though the ending was a bit rushed.

I'm aware that reaction to the final chapters was more mixed in the UK, where "Children of Earth" aired a couple of weeks ago, and it's at this point that I remind you of the U.S.-only codicil to the No Spoilers rule. I'm aware that this blog has some international readers, and/or readers who download shows that have aired in other countries rather than waiting for them to air here. And you're all welcome here -- just so long as you don't give away plot details about things that haven't aired here yet. Don't even try to cleverly hint at something; anything I see as over the line gets deleted.

I loved "Children of Earth" enough that I'm frustrated it's airing in a week that's being cleaved in two for me by travel (and was preceded by a vacation week). Ordinarily, I'd love to do in-depth reviews of each night, but that's not going to be possible here. Instead, look for a post to go live around 10:15 (when the eps are scheduled to finish airing) each night this week, possibly with a few thoughts from me, possibly just asking for your own thoughts. I'll try to do something slightly longer for the finale, but time will be a factor. And, again, I'm going to ask you to abide by the spoiler rule. If you've seen all five episodes but only one has aired here in America, talk only about things in that episode. Do not allude to stuff down the line. Got it?

Now, as for other stuff this week, it's up in the air. I have a lot of screeners to watch and other prep work to do before I head to California on Thursday. I've seen the next few "Nurse Jackie" eps, and I've watched the next episodes of "The Wire" season two and "Sports Night" for those reviews, but I don't know how much time I'll have to work on any of them. With ongoing shows like "Jackie," "Burn Notice" (which I watched last week but didn't write about because of vacation), etc., I may just wind up skipping episode reviews for the next few weeks, unless something's either really special or I have an unexpected pocket of free time. With projects like "The Wire" and "Sports Night," they'll get done when they get done, as I've been saying.

Gonna be a lot of playing by ear around here for a while, and that includes how I wind up covering Comic-Con (which I've never attended before) and press tour. I'm not sure what my technological capabilities are going to be at Comic-Con during the daytime, so the best I may be able to do is post a comment now and again on Twitter with my phone. (Though I imagine Schwartz and company will frown on that during the "Chuck" panel.)

And speaking of tweeting, this'll be my first press tour with an active Twitter account, but I'm not sure how much of it I'll be doing there. It's enough of a distraction as is to be blogging so much that if I was tweeting about every funny and/or newsworthy moment on top of that, I'd barely feel like I was present. A guy like Fienberg is wired to be tweeting, blogging and paying attention simultaneously; I'm not sure I am.

So, to wrap things up, I can't really give you a firm schedule for when posts will be up, how I'll be writing, etc. I just know I'll be writing things at various times. Wish I could be more clear, but I've never done Comic-Con before, Comic-Con has never been before press tour before (which means a lot of news may break at the con instead of the tour), etc.

Got all that?

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