My take on two new shows and three returning shows. While each one entertaining, it just reminds me that I’m not watching LOST. Hurry up, January. Warning: small spoilers for Heroes and The Office.

Fringe
I get annoyed that FOX is advertising this show as the best new drama on TV, but then I realize that they might be right. The pilot made me nervous because it seemed lengthy and the first 2 minutes were so graphically gory (the airplane pilot’s face melted off) I thought I wouldn’t even make it to the opening credits. The rest of the pilot seemed like homage after homage – at one point I actually thought I had accidentally changed the channel and Altered States was on. But after I powered through the pilot, the second and third episodes were much better, albeit still gory. It seems very x-file-y; every episode will probably be a stand-alone mystery, but with an ongoing thread mystery; in this case, The Pattern. Also we have a government-like corporation that looks shady; in this case, Massive Dynamic. (Massive Dynamic has fake commercials and even a dummy website, much like our favorite Dharma Initiative – join now.) The female lead I’ve never seen before but I liked very much: Anna Torv. The father and scientist character (John Noble) is fun; wacky and weird. The male lead is Joshua Jackson and I HATED him in the pilot. He kept calling her sweetheart. J.J. Abrams has hinted these two will eventually explore a relationship, but I sense nothing like a Mulder/Scully chemistry. On the plus side I hated him slightly less in the second episode and a little bit less by the third. By the finale hopefully I’ll just dislike him a lot. Despite Dawson’s Creek, this new show definitely did not disappoint, and I’m sure it will make it through its first season.

Bones
Yikes what’s happened to Booth and Bones?
Complaints:

It’s like they’ve heard so much about their own sexual chemistry that it has practically disappeared.
Angela and Hodgins break up was sudden and didn’t make any sense
Sweets is absolutely ridiculous - what is he doing constantly in the lab?
Where is Bones’ complete lack of pop culture knowledge? She still is taking everything literally and responding that way, but it feels like too much.

At least these couple episodes into the season are better than that embarrassing London episode. I sincerely hope they get back on track. I read that the gravedigger bad guy will return – or at least that’s who they will be hunting this season. That gives me hope as one of my favorite past epis was the gravedigger one, when Bones and Hodgins get buried alive in his car.

Heroes
Does anyone have any idea what happened in season 2? Okay, good, me neither. All I can remember is being really excited that Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell) and Sark from Alias (David Anders) were going to be new characters; and bad guys at that. Unfortunately the bleeding black eye twins cancelled them out effectively. The writer’s strike was probably the best thing that could have happened for season 2 of Heroes. But as for the season three premiere:

Why is HRG (Noah Bennett) in the prison cell? And what is level 5?
What happened to Sylar again?
Did bleedy eye girl’s brother die?
How did Hiro get out of Japan and where is Sark? (And what’s his character’s name again??)
I thought at the very least the hour long preview before the premiere would help me remember something about season 2, but it only succeeded in reminding me how crappy it was and why I wasn’t THAT excited about Heroes coming back on. Oh, but there’s Peter Petrelli, never mind. Speaking of, can Peter now shape-shift? How does his future self not have the scar sometimes so he can pass for present Peter? How did he make present day Peter look like scary bald guy? And why can’t Present Peter do anything about it? The big reveal at the end of the epi – that Angela is Sylar’s mother, gave me no big surprise. There’s great potential there for a brotherly standoff of Peter & Nathan vs. Sylar, but I’m already afraid they’ll mess it up. However, that’s not to say I wasn’t entertained by those two hours. In retrospect when all these questions came pouring in, I got annoyed, but in the moment, I definitely ate a whole bag of popcorn. Poor Heroes has some fixing to do, but I think its audience, like me, is invested enough in our favorites: Claire, Peter, Hiro; that we’ll stick it out.

True BloodCheesy! Gory! Offensive! Questionable Louisiana accents! I love it!!

The OfficeThe proposal! Illicit uncomfortable affair! Michael refrains from saying “that’s what she said”! Kelly passes out! Phyllis blackmails Angela! Loved it!