Wiener-iffic

Spoilers for the second episodes of "Chuck" and "Journeyman" coming up just as soon as I boot up my old Apple IIe for a game of Choplifter...

Many regime changes ago, someone in NBC research did a study claiming that even the most devoted fans of TV shows watch, on average, only half the episodes that air each year. The executives change, but that one theory stuck, and so many decisions at the network are made with it in mind: airing episodes out of order because they think no one will notice, or making producers of new series thematically repeat large chunks of the pilot episode with show two just in case people weren't paying attention or newbies waited a week to sample.

There's a little of that going on with "Journeyman" (more below), and a whole lot with "Chuck," where the second episode is basically an extra pilot episode. We get more of Chuck unsure of his loyalty to Sarah, Casey, or both; so much talk about "secrets" that I hope to God Josh Schwartz has the word banned from all future scripts (it wouldn't be half as annoying if they changed it up now and then, or stuck to a more official-sounding phrase like "classified intel" or whatever); an A-story designed to explain why the government can't just extract all the secrets (grr...) from Chuck's brain, etc. It's not really until the third episode that the series proper gets going -- which somebody in NBC promo agrees with, given how many of the "Chuck" ads during last night's Giants-Eagles game featured scenes from episode three versus this one.

That said, I appreciate what's going on here, especially after watching the "Bionic Woman" pilot. While the tones of each show are polar opposites, the basic substance is the same -- ordinary person gifted with superhuman powers and forced against their will to work for shadowy government types -- and yet the series that's actually taking the time to hit all the emotional buttons on the journey is the goofy comedy and not the dark drama. "Bionic Woman" just zipped past almost all of its lead's reactions to almost dying, losing her baby, turning bionic, having to work for Miguel Ferrer, etc., and if "Chuck Versus the Helicopter" is occasionally repetitive and maybe a shade too frantic (particularly the farcical dinner scene), at least it's trying to help you understand and care about its hero's feelings. Yes, it's mainly a comedy, but I've always believed that the best comedies feature recognizable human emotion at their core, and Schwartz and company are working at that.

Plus, it has that awesome fight at the Wienerlicious stand, which was miles better than the big "Bionic Woman" catfight in the rain. It featured so many wonderful things, including everyday objects (plastic forks, wooden hot dog sticks) being used as lethal weapons, plus a pretty girl kicking butt in a ridiculous outfit (the secret to the early genius of "Alias").

Next week's "Chuck Versus the Tango" is better, but there was other good stuff sprinkled throughout, including the "Lost" joke during Dr. Zarnow's test of Chuck ("Oceanic Flight 815 was shot down by (garble garble)"), Morgan trying to role-play with Casey, Captain Awesome (real first name: Kevin) saying "Indeed!" in delight when Sarah describes Ellie as awesome, the notion of mini-quiches with tracking devices (lest anyone try to take anything about the show too seriously) and even the tablecloth running gag (though there is no excuse for them to not have Morgan say "The flowers are still standing!" when his attempt failed).

Meanwhile, "Journeyman" loses a good chunk of whatever small goodwill the pilot's closing scene built up by coming back in episode two with Dan's wife again thinking he's a nutjob and not a time traveler. Then it loses even more with some of the least subtle period cues you can imagine (the disco/porno airplane, the "INTERNET EROTICA CONVENTION" sign at the hotel) and that completely random explanation for why Dan was tracking that girl's life. Why spend an hour getting us to, in theory, care about what happens to the girl and then reveal that she was entirely besides the point, and the entire mission was about the pilot who we met for all of 30 seconds? There's a difference between being unpredictable and just jerking the audience around.

There were a few nice touches on the margins, with Livia giving Dan advice on how to survive on his trips to the past (though the olde-timey cell phone is only going to work when Dan travels to a year when he had a plan for it, no?), but barring a brilliant episode in the next week or two, I don't think there's anything to see here.

What did everybody else think?

HIMYM: Steinfeld did it!

Quick spoilers for "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I clean my Glock...

On my drive home from work, I was mentally plotting my night of TV watching/blogging, it occurred to me that, of the three sitcoms I'd currently consider the best on TV ("30 Rock" and "The Office" being the other two), "HIMYM" rarely reached the heights of the other two ("Slap Bet" excepted) but was more consistently funny...

...so, of course, I have to be rewarded for this not so brilliant insight with an incredibly lame, sitcommy episode where one of the plots (Ted and Barney pretend to be tourists to pick up women) was lifted wholesale from a "Seinfeld" episode. Given that Barney makes a "Steinfeld" reference later in the episode, you'd think the writers would at least own up to it the way Mike Judge had Michael Bolton in "Office Space" admit that his embezzling scheme was used in "Superman III."

(Judge, by the way, has always insisted that he never saw "Superman III," but that once someone pointed it out to him while reading an early draft, he felt compelled to cop to it because the audience -- maybe not the whole audience, but some of it -- would know, and "Superman III" was a lot less popular than "Seinfeld.")

I'm not sure I've ever laughed less at an episode of this show. When even Barney's smutty punchlines are falling flat, you know it's just a bad night at the office.

That said, a few interesting things to note:

• Robin and Barney have yet another bonding moment when they drink together to the end of Vacation Robin, and Robin has no problem telling Barney about her erotic dreams. At this point, is there anyone in the audience who doesn't think the two of them are going to get together eventually?
• And speaking of the distant future, I like that combovers will still exist in 2029 -- as will Nancy Reagan's hairstyle -- but Marshall and Lily's bickering in both the present and future felt tonally off. It's not that I don't believe they'd fight, but that the pettiness and anger of it doesn't seem like something they'd do, not even after getting married. Maybe after 22 years of marriage, but the fundamental schmoopiness of their relationship is one of the defining characteristics of both Marshall and Lily, and I'm annoyed that it got tossed out for the sake of a flash-forward punchline to a subplot that wasn't very good to begin with.
• Also, was I the only one hoping that Combover Marshall would be slapping Barney?

Ah, well. They can't all be "Slap Bet." Or even "Wait For It..." I'm sure next week'll be just fine.

What did everybody else think?

Oh, and no: I'm not just annoyed at Ted's anti-Jersey rant. I've never claimed to be from New York, even when I lived just across the river in Hoboken. I know my place and am fine with it.

Sunday! Sunday! Soap day!

Spoilers for "Desperate Housewives" and "Brothers & Sisters" coming up just as soon as I get a neck massage...

So it's been a recurring theme on the blog this week that I'm not in a soap opera mode of late. I watched the season's first two episodes of "Ugly Betty," for instance, liked them, and yet made no effort to set my DVR to record it going forward (even though there's a hole in the lineup now that I've ditched "Survivor: China"). And I'm more interested in seeing episode two of "Bionic Woman" than "Dirty Sexy Money," even though the latter was clearly a much better pilot.

Which brings me to "Desperate Housewives." I was never one of the critics who was over the moon about the first season, nor someone who thought the shark fin had been leaped over in season two. And I remember quite liking the first episode or two of season three that they sent me on DVD -- and yet skipping almost the entirety of that season, save the supermarket hostage show (which I think I also got in advance). So this may be the last thing I blog about the show this year, even though I liked several things that happened in it.

Start with the arrival of Dana Delany, who, as most everybody knows, was the first choice to play Bree but turned it down because she'd just done a comic mystery soap hybrid with "Pasadena." Delany gives good bitch here, in a very different way than Marcia Cross plays Bree. I just hope it doesn't become one of those Al Swearengen vs. Cy Tolliver things where the creator brings in his original choice for the part in an only slightly modified role, then runs out of stuff to give him/her once the initial rush of loyalty fades out. Also, I'd rather see Nathan Fillion in an action role, but the guy can do comedy, and anything that keeps him employed in a relatively high profile is okay by me.

But as far as the returning characters go, I've reached the point where I dislike all the main women, with the exception of Bree (where Cross' comic flair compensates for what's often a very caricatured part). And that, as much as any soap fatigue, means I probably won't be around moving forward.

"Brothers & Sisters" is a more elusive creature to me. I mentioned in a comment to a "Dirty Sexy Money" post last week that, for reasons I still can't quite identify (even though it's one of the things I'm paid to do), Greg Berlanti makes TV shows that I admire, often like a lot -- I never regretted an hour spent watching "Everwood" -- and yet ones that I never feel compelled to see every week.

I had a season pass to "Brothers & Sisters" last year and was really enjoying what it had become under Berlanti's watch -- the road trip episode was a particular highlight -- yet there came a point in the season where the number of episodes that were backlogged on the DVR became so high that I knew I was never going to get around to them all anytime soon, and so I deleted them to make room for a Giants game or something. (Football in high-def roolz.) I dug the premiere episode, particularly Rob Lowe's presence as the one man capable of bringing the Walkers down from their various pity parties (he arrived almost exactly when I tuned out last year, though for no reflection on his work) and intend to be more dilligent about catching the show this year than last, even if it means sometimes watching episodes on ABC's kick-ass streaming site... But I still have this feeling that, within a month or two, I'm going to be cueing up old underdog sports movies on one of the movie channels when I should be watching Rachel Griffiths play drunk.

Somebody want to psychoanlayze me on this? And what did everybody else think?