Tuesday/Wednesday night TV

With so little to watch on Wednesdays for me, I decided to just lump my thoughts for the past two days into one post.

House: I wouldn't always like it this way, but tonight's episode that was sans Chase, Cameron, and Foreman was a lot of fun. Without them around, we got a whole bunch House/Wilson banter, which was awesome. Their friendship is so remarkable in the way they tolerate each other, despite knowing how to push each other's buttons so perfectly. I loved Wilson kidnapping House's guitar and then House retaliating by kidnapping one of Wilson's patients. As for the medical mystery of the week, it wasn't anything particularly groundshaking (despite that being what brought the woman into the hospital in the first place. Ha!) until the big reveal at the end. Once again, the themes of the medical mystery perfectly connected with House himself is dealing with. And now the games begin as House will put 40 hopeful candidates through the ringer to try and find a new team. Should be fun to see how it all plays out.

Reaper: They intrigued me with the premise and hooked me with the actual initial episode. This show is great! Everyone is perfectly cast in their roles. Ray Wise as the devil is superb. You might as well give the guy an Emmy nomination right now. I can't wait to see his antics every week. The whole bounty hunter aspect of the show is really cool too and it should be very interesting to see what kind of powers/capabilities the escaped souls will have that Sam must capture each week. Sam's buddy, Sock, is hilarious and I'm glad to see Tyler Labine get some work after Invasion was preemptively canceled a couple of years ago. And Heroes loss is Reaper's gain, as Candice the shapeshifter is playing Andi, the girl Sam has a crush on. Her presence was the only negative of the show. Not because she was miscast (she's absolutely adorable and makes for a very "crushable" girl), but because she wasn't the original girl for the part. They filmed the pilot with a different girl, but then changed their mind. So when they added Missy Peregrym, instead of reshooting the pilot, they just reshot her scenes and spliced them in. The end result was Sam having different facial hair in different scenes of the show. Luckily that problem is isolated to this episode. Overall, this is a definite winner and I hope it really catches on with viewers.

Back to You: After being on the fence with this show last week, tonight's episode did nothing to help it's cause. There is a good show buried in here, but they're having difficulty digging it out. A lot of the lines/jokes are so obvious that I'm saying them before the actors are. And the station manager and reporter who got passed up for the anchor job do nothing for me. However, Fred Willard was just fantastic tonight. His stuff consistently had me laughing throughout the half hour. I just wish they would focus more on the newscasting aspect of the show, instead of the tired relationship/personal issues of the characters. I'll give it another week or two to turn around, but right now, this show is on notice.