The Philanthropist, starring James Purefoy (HBO’s Rome, A Knight’s Tale, Resident Evil) as Teddy Rist, started off by confusing me a bit but by the end of the episode, I found the story to have a compelling emotional element that kept me tuned in.

The show opens in the middle of a chase scene where Rist is being fired upon by some locals while on a river bank, barefoot in a jungle somewhere.  We then jump to a bar scene where he’s chatting with a young lady while she’s bar tending and he explains in a backtrack sort of fashion how he came to being shot at on this riverbank.

They use this venue of Rist talking with the bartender to recant a quick history of how he got to this point of time.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed or if you want more frequent updates follow us on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!

This is a DVR spoiler-free review.

“Follow me through the mirror, down the rabbit hole.  Trust me, it has to be this way.”

A rabbit hole indeed.  Ronald D. Moore has done it again giving us some brilliant writing with Virtuality as far as I’m concerned and Fox not sticking to the original plan of creating a series out of his concept is not only their loss, but ours as well.

We have 12 astronauts on a 10-year journey that becomes a potential rescue mission to save humanity.  Their space faring vessel is named the Phaeton.

The show opens with a scene that introduces the Virtual Reality system (VR) world from the ship.  We’re also almost immediately introduced to the glitch that we’ve been told about in the studio press releases.  I think glitch might be an understatement, but that’s just me.

This season of Smallville was better than the last few - and yet the last few episodes were starting to force me to extend my patience bubble farther out than normal.  Stilletto?  It felt like it was trying to fall apart for me to some degree, yet I suppose what can you expect from a fantasy show that has inexplicable superpowered aliens?

This reflection on the Smallville season finale will have spoilers…

After a very long wait, and a somewhat disappointing second season, Heroes has finally returned for Season 3: Villains.

At the end of season 2, Sylar (Zachary Quinto) had just gotten his powers back, Noah Bennet aka “HRG” (Jack Coleman) had just gone back to work for “the company” in order to spare his family, and Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar) had been apparently fatally shot just as he was about to reveal his ability to fly to the world.

BTW, full-on spoilers in the review below.

I’m just going to say upfront that this is nothing but a SPOILER filled recap/review of the season 4 premier of Supernatural. If you’ve DVR’d it, then as I always say, avert thine eyes and return once you’ve seen it for yourself. If you are of the inclination, then read on my trusty readers!

Supernatural: Lazarus Rising starts out the CW’s 4th season of the popular fantasy show.

We get dealt with a nice compilation of the brothers Winchester, Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles), demon fighting escapades from last season. It ends with the Hell Hound coming and taking Dean away and getting sent to Hell.

So it looks like this is going to be it: The final season of Smallville. Will season 8 go out with a bang - or a laughable whimper? Let’s see how things start…

In the season 7 finale they actually went easy on the cliffhangers - all we had was Chloe (Allison Mack) being hauled off by Federal agents, Lex (Michael Rosenbaum) activating the device that would control Clark, and both he and Clark (Tom Welling) apparently buried under tons of ice in the Fortress of Solitude.

There are major, detailed spoilers in this review.

Well… I just watched the online series/season premiere of NBC’s reboot of Knight Rider. I know the term “reboot” has been overused of late, but in this case it truly applies. Exactly 7 months ago to the day, NBC unveiled a pilot/TV movie of a new version of the well-known Knight Rider TV series from the 1980s. While I thought it was extremely cornball, it had enough nods to the original series to soften me up a little bit and not totally rip it.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.

Screen Rant reviews J.J. Abrams’ Fringe

We’ve given sporadic coverage to J.J. Abrams’ new TV series Fringe (which airs on Fox) over the last few months, and now I wish we’d done more. It can take a new TV show a few episodes to find its legs, but the series premiere of this new Fall 2008 TV series was great.

Let it be known that there are spoilers below. If you haven’t seen the show, the premiere will be broadcast this upcoming Sunday. I recommend you check it out.

Over the the last twenty-five years The Terminator franchise has set the standard for science fiction films - smart, action packed and filled with ground breaking special effects. The (first two) films are iconic and idolized by millions around the world. So when it was announced that the franchise would have a television spin-off many fans were unhappy, (myself included,) as it would not star Arnold Schwarzenegger (for obvious political reasons.) We feared that a TV series, sans Schwarzenegger, would cheapen the previous entries that had gone before it.

However, there is no need to fear Ye Terminator faithful: although the series does not equal the greatness of T1 and T2, it does expand on the characters, adding new twists, as well as some key references to the films.

There’s nothing like taking four hours to tell a story that would fit into two.

I remember watching the original movie version of Michael Crichton’s story The Andromeda Strain and being riveted to the screen. I was suspicious of the A&E version when I first heard about it, even though it had names like Ridley Scott attached to it.

Well The Andromeda Strain 2008 managed to live down to my expectations.

After a full year, Battlestar Galactica is back - and man was it worth the wait.

I had Tivo’d the season 3 finale just so I could re-watch it right before the season 4 premiere, so there it sat on the hard drive for a full 12 months. I planned on making tonight a BSG event.
It was almost like seeing the finale for the first time all over again, and I feel for folks who hadn’t recorded it. I’d forgotten about the emotionally packed episode’s highlights, which included the verdict on Baltar’s trial and the sharp falling out between Lee Adama and his father. Of course the BIG deal about the finale was the reveal of second in command Saul Tigh, Master Chief Galen Tyrol, resistance fighter Sam Anders and presidential chief of staff Tory Fostervas being Cylons.

This final season premiere episode picks up right where that one left off. Spoilers galore below, FYI.

John Amsterdam has a problem.

He’s immortal, and like all immortals, he wants to have a finite life span while the rest of us mortals would all like to live forever. Did I mention the immortal is immortal?

As New Amsterdam, the new series on Fox TV starts, we are rushed through a number of explanations of the character’s background: He’s been sober since the mid 1960’s, he gets a new partner, he’s had a lot of cop partners, he’s had a lot of girlfriends, (In case we don’t get the immortality thing) etc., etc.

This review is for last February’s two hour pilot - If you’re looking for the September Knight Rider series premiere review click here.

Let’s get just get straight to the punch line: NBC’s Knight Rider TV movie (or pilot, depending on what you’d rather call it) was not nearly as awful as I had anticipated.

Now that that’s out of the way, please don’t mistake “not as awful” for “awesome.”

I will say that one of the things I reminded myself of as I watched this with the intention of writing a review was that the original series was not exactly Citizen Kane.

Overall I would describe it as a typical mediocre TV movie punctuated with moments of awfulness.

BTW, there will be spoilers in this Knight Rider review, so you have been warned.

Lost has finally returned, and this episode was an odd mix of satisfaction and, at the end, frustration.

It satisfied because there was actually some sense of forward movement in the story. It felt like something was actually happening. The “rescuers” will soon be coming, there are actual conversations with someone on the freighter via the uber-satellite phone, the castaways learn that Charlie has died and that the rescuers may actually have some nefarious purpose related to the island.

The premiere episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles opens in the year 1999 with a big action scene which is glaringly obvious is a dream sequence about 2/3 of the way in. Sarah wakes up from the nightmare and my first thought was: Lame cop out.

The FBI is after Sarah Connor for her escape from the looney bin in Terminator 2 and because they believe she is responsible for the death of Miles Dyson, also from that film. Dyson was the guy who was responsible for Skynet, the computer system that brought nuclear armageddon upon humanity. It seems that his death only delayed the inevitable.

Regarding the timeline of this series: It seems to take place between T2 & T3.

Ok, before I rip into this thing, maybe I should list some positives about the episode so you don’t think I’m being a jerk just for fun. Was there anything good about the show?

Yes.

The new series Moonlight has premiered on CBS, and “premiere” is exactly the right word to describe the opening episode.

Personally, I’m getting pretty frustrated with premieres that pack too much “character background” into the opening episode of a new show. They do it in such a fashion that either the show doesn’t really flow, or we aren’t sure in what direction the series will go.

My initial hype-induced perception was that this show had potential. With executive producers like Ron Koslow (who brought us Beauty and the Beast 20 years ago - a show I enjoyed back in the day) & Joel Silver (The Matrix!), there was hope.

But was that hope justified? Let’s see…

If you’re in some form of withdrawel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural may by what the doctor ordered.

Supernatural revolves around Dean and Sam Winchester, brothers who pursue demons and monsters after losing their parents to the forces of evil. It’s kind of like Ghost Hunters on Sci Fi, but with weapons! They’re very retro, cruising around the country in their cool 1967 Chevy while listening to classic rock. Unfortunately, in the process, they’ve inadvertently become fugitives from the law and use surreptitious means to get the job done.

So it’s finally here: The Smallville season 7 premiere. They certainly left a lot of cliffhangers in the season 6 finale, and in this episode we get some, but not all the answers.

The episode is called Bizarro, for good reason. Right off the bat, the episode opens with a bang with big, epic special effects scenes including the dam from the previous episode bursting and a subsequent flood, which Clark in an heretofore unseen level of heat vision power, turns into steam with a wide angle burst of his vision. Very cool and a preview of things to come regarding his willingness to finally unleash his powers this season, I’ll bet.

The one lame point in this opening series of scenes was when they showed a father trying to get his son out of the way of the oncoming flood tripping and hitting his head on a rock like some young girl on the run from the villain in a horror movie. But hey, that was minor IMHO.

Moving on… and be warned, full-on spoilers ahead.

It’s funny… just yesterday I wrote that I might be in danger of being accused of writing nothing but good reviews about the season premieres on TV this week. Just in time to save me, the Bionic Woman series premiere aired tonight.

The episode opens with a bunch of dead and bloodied bodies strewn about the corrider of some apparently underground research facility. There is an assault/SWAT team that comes across the bodies and finds a woman hunched over in a hospital gown huddled at the end of a room. She has killed everyone but says that it’s out of her control. The leader promptly tells her he loves her… and puts a bullet in her. Ah, young love.

The show cuts to three years later, and we then meet our pre-bionic heroine Jamie Sommers (Michelle Ryan) tending bar. She comes home to a teenage girl that it’s obvious she cares about (her sister, who is in her care) but who has a rebellious streak a mile wide. Jamie tends bar by night and goes to college by day, where we meet one of her professors who teaches some sort of bio-tech class at the school and is also her boyfriend.

Ok, what the heck is going on? This is the third show I’ve seen in the Fall 2007 season, and it’s the third one that I’ve liked. It’s bizarre… I need to see something crappy before readers start accusing me of being a shill for the networks.

On top of that, I tuned in fully expecting to not like this show at all based on the description. I’m not used to being surprised by actual quality on network television.

Reaper is the ongoing story of newly turned 21 year old Sam Oliver (played by Brett Harrison) who on his birthday discovers that his parents sold his soul to the Devil before he was born, and that on his 21st birthday he would be turned over for whatever nefarious purpose Satan (played by Ray Wise) had in store for him.

I loved the first Highlander movie. The 2nd one, eh, not so much and it was downhill from there. When I heard a 5th Highlander was coming to the Sci Fi channel Saturday night movie, I shuddered. Sci Fi’s usual Saturday night B movies are good for killing time and just hanging, with the B standing for needing (B)eer, for the (B)oredom of the (B)ad effects, and a(B)ysmal acting. But then, I saw something that caught my eye.

The cast for this latest version included Adrian Paul, Peter Wingfield and Jim Byrnes. Suddenly there was hope… or was I being set up for an emotional fall? These are the actors from the Highlander televsion series that was on from 1992 to 1998, and they were reprising their roles in this newest movie “sequel”.

I’ve always been one to say I’ll try anything twice. Last Friday night, I revisited Sci-Fi channel’s Flash Gordon to give it another look see since this show gave the Sci-Fi Channel’s best ever series premiere.

I don’t know if they were trying too hard to cram a lot of development information into that first episode, or now there are different writers or editors for the regular episodes, but to my surprise, last nights episode was much better than the premiere.

I just sat through 90 minutes of Sci Fi Channel’s new contribution to their line up, Flash Gordon, an original Sci Fi series. Their splash site says “The new Flash Gordon follows Flash (Eric Johnson) and his companions, Dale Arden (Gina Holden) and Dr. Hans Zarkov (Jody Racicot) through wild and momentous adventures.”

http://www.scifi.com/flashgordon/about/

Though the pilot episode was 90 minutes long, we were rushed through character development in the show. They threw the characters at us, and telling us so much about them rather than just letting a developing storyline do the job.

by Bruce Simmons

I sat down to watch Don’t Forget the Lyrics with Wayne Brady and write a review for you, the readers. I like Wayne Brady. I loved him on Whose Line is it Anyway. I had high aspirations for entertainment.

I failed.

The first singer hit the stage, and sang so far off key, that I have discovered how spoiled I have been by American Idol.

So Season Three of Lost is finally over and the finale was definitely a mind-bender.

I’ve complained about Click to continue "Lost Season 3 Finale"

So Season 1 of Heroes is finally over and it pains me to say this, but I didn’t love the finale. I just thought it was “OK.”

Especially following on the heels of the previous episode, which was amazing, the final episode titled How to Stop an Exploding Man just seemed a bit anti-climactic to me. Maybe it was because there was such a huge sense of anticipation and excitement leading into it, that the episode could not meet expectations.

As has become tradition with Click to continue "Smallville Season 6 Finale Packs In A Ton Of Stuff"

Holy cow… Last night’s episode of Heroes title Landslide was amazing.

It was the penultimate episode of Heroes‘ first season, and if that was the next to last episode, I can’t wait to see the final one next week!

I gotta tell ya… the ONLY reason I’m hanging in there with Lost is that I’m a coward. I’m afraid that the week after I stop watching there will be some huge revelation that will finally make sticking with this damned show worthwhile.

In the meantime, we continue to suffer…

At the end of last week’s episode, the TV version of “Movie Trailer Announcer Guy” says dramatically that three mysteries will be revealed in this week’s episode.

Yeah, right.

After a long wait, Jericho is finally back and it at least partially answers a lot of questions. CBS’ Jericho is following somewhat in the footsteps of Fox TV’s 24 and American Idol in broadcasting only new episodes sequentially, without any reruns to gum things up and annoy viewers. Although this puts a long gap between what are now know as the “Fall” and “Spring” seasons, I think it’s a good idea for shows like Lost, Heroes and those mentioned above. All of these shows are sequential in nature, depending on the episodes that came before, and it’s aggravating to see a rerun in between new episodes on shows like these.

Jericho is one of those “ongoing mystery” shows that were spawned by the success of ABC’s Lost. It also happens to be one of the shows (along with NBC’s Heroes) which has taken that original concept and improved it substantially. These shows have done that by actually moving their respective plots forward and revealing what’s happening in the story and who the characters are at a pace that doesn’t leave the viewer feeling like they’re getting jerked around.