Well hey there. In case you didn’t know, this is the last week of The Three Strike Rule until the new year. Hey, don’t get mad at me, take it up with the Editor in Chief. Anyway, it’s been a pleasure writing about the boob tube over the coarse of the year; we’ve had some fun. To wrap things up, my compadre, Shaun Hamid, has joined me in giving you our two cents’ worth what 2007 brought us in television. Until next year, aloha.

BEST SHOW

Scott: Friday Night Lights (NBC/DirecTV) The small-town football series’ 2nd season ended on a high note last winter as we watched it regain its form after stumbling with a soap opera-ish murder plot. Still, NBC ran the final episodes with little fanfare, despite the fact that there was little original programming on the air due to the writers’ strike. The network redeemed itself by striking a deal with DirecTV to co-produce a third season. Since October, the satellite provider has been airing these new episodes and come January, those same episodes will air on the peacock network.

The third season has been everything fans of the show love, in particular the study of a working marriage between two of the finest actors on television, Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton as Coach and Mrs./Principal Taylor. They are the heart of the show. If you haven’t watched this show yet, what the hell is your problem? More than any other series on TV, FNL approaches each week with intelligence, humor and heart. At a time when the country is in turmoil, here is a quality show that taps into everything that is great about the America and reminds us of what we can be. Procedurals and medical dramas are a dime a dozen, and aren’t we all bored to shit with the woes of filthy rich people? I said it back in January, and now I’ll repeat myself: WATCH THIS SHOW!

Shaun: Mad Men (AMC) In spite of the remarkable amount of attention this show has gotten critically and awards-wise, it still feels unheralded to me. This show consistently elevates itself above much other dramatic fare. No network, NBC to HBO, has a show nearing its quality and innovation currently. While it can be irritating in its few failures, I think that is a testament to a show that a viewer expects so much from. If you have not seen this show yet, and judging by the ratings that may be a good bet, take the leap. It would be unfortunate for it to meet the fate of another similar luminary in another genre: Arrested Development.

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Heroes: Season Two
purchase this DVD set (Amazon)

Yeah, yeah, I know. Second season wasn’t as good as the first. The magic’s gone, and NBC’s superhero soap phenomenon, so buzz-friendly a year ago, totally fell victim to the sophomore jinx. Jumped the shark. Whatever.

Except you know what? The second season of Heroes wasn’t that bad. It had its problems, sure, and maybe those problems didn’t bug me as much because I was more interested in Journeyman (which really should have been renewed by those bastards at NBC) and Friday Night Lights (which was renewed — hooray for NBC!), but really, all the hate for Season Two was as over-inflated as the love for Season One.

Back to those problems. The main thing that dragged down this season of Heroes, leading to its precipitous 15% ratings drop, wasn’t so much the way the writers kept the cast separated — Hiro sent spinning back into feudal Japan, Peter waking up in a shipping crate with a bump on the noggin, Claire moping her way through a typically lame TV version of high school — or even the introduction of those melodramatic Dominican twins nobody cared about. Serial dramas are all about obstacles, and creator/EP Tim Kring and his crew came up with a nifty stack of them for his cast and viewers to surmount in the second season.

The problem, however, lay in the pacing. During Heroes‘ first season, it was held up as a wham-bam alternative to the suddenly pokey Lost — an hour in which you could rely on a miniature arc resolving in a good old-fashioned cliffhanger. This time out, the writers were content to let storylines dawdle for weeks, a problem compounded when that nasty old writers’ strike reared its head and the show’s producers were left with a truncated 11-episode run. (more…)

DOWNLOAD THE FULL MIX HERE

Well, here we go again! Another week, another mix from yours truly. I admit that this week’s mix is kind of strange in that the grouping of artists runs the gamut of musical duos. However, it’s not necessarily about the particular artists represented but how well they mix together in a set. On with the show!

“Dio,” Tenacious D

Probably the most famous duo in rock music — ever. Just kidding, but when you do a Google search with the following terms — “rock duo,” “history of the world,” “Satan,” “cock pushups” — you get one billion hits that say “Tenacious D.” This tune is aided by the furious four-on-the-floor drumming of some guy named Dave Grohl. Anyone heard of him? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

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