Monday TV thoughts

Oh it's so good to have new television again. I have a renewed sense of energy, yet I'm doing less work if that makes any sense.

The Big Bang Theory: The show probably played it best by not dwelling on the actual date between Leonard and Penny and instead had the story centered around the aftermath, which allowed for a lot more screentime for Leonard's fellow geeks. Sheldon in particular was the star of this episode. And unlike in certain episodes last season, they did a really good job of finding a way to make Sheldon likeable and still funny. At times, he was a little cruel in his narrow-mindedness last season. This time he was hilarious from his efforts to unwillingly keep a secret, to bunking with his various friends and annoying them to no end. As for the future of Penny and Leonard, I think playing off their incompatibilities is the right move. There can remain that attraction, but these two should not become fated loves like Rachel and Ross. If they go down that road, things will just become nauseating and turn me off to the show. The return of Leslie Winkle next week should hopefully help in preventing things from getting to that point.

How I Met Your Mother: Not an overwhelmingly hilarious premiere, but a suitable one in advancing the stories that we were left with at the end of last season. I really like the pairing of Ted and Stella, but I think we're beginning to see that once again Ted has found a great woman who won't end up being the mother. How can this show be so cruel to us. They keep offering these great mates for Ted and then they all vanish. How can the actual mother ever top them? And as for the Barney/Robin relationship, it was nice for now to see a different side of Barney. But ultimately, I hope they find a way to have Barney remain his awesome self and still have a relationship with Robin. A long-term kind and nice Barney simply won't do. One last thing: Marshall really needs a job, but I'm loving his unemployed antics anyway.

Heroes: OK, where to begin here. This show is remarkable in that it has the ability to pull me in during the time that it's on. But the more I think about the show after its over, the more flaws and faults I find with it. This is definitely a turn off your brain show in order to maximize enjoyment.

The two hour premier was a definite improvement over much of last season, but I'll reserve judgments on how the season will play out as a whole for now. After all, they had 9 months to come up with this episode. Let's see what they do with a little less time as the season goes on.

Unlike last season's snail's pace, they threw a whole bunch of stuff at us; some of which worked, others didn't. Here's some bullet point thoughts on everything that went down last night:

- I hated that after building the whole first season on protecting Claire from Sylar, he managed to get what we wanted from her so quickly here in this season. But on the other hand, I loved seeing him at work and also making a comment about the brain-eating speculation.

- I really like the cast of new villains and cannot wait to see what havoc they wreak on the world. My only complaint is that The German looks too much like HRG.

- Mohinder continues to reign supreme as the dumbest person on television. Who here couldn't see a mile away that injecting himself was only going to turn out bad. I'm interested to see where they go with him and their homage to The Fly. By the way, I was surprised to find myself not hating Maya last night and also found her to be pretty hot.

- It seems like they got rid of a lot of dead weight. Molly, Micah, West, Monica: GONE!! Glad to see they put the kids to bed and decided it's time to let the grownups play.

- Also thrilled to see some of the better characters return. I was pumped to have Linderman back in whatever form it is (hallucination, ghost, shape shifter). But it just shows the show's lack of forethought by having him killed in the first place and now brought back under contrived reasons. On a similar level, I'm glad to see Claire's mom is back, but is she really the best person they could find to protect Claire? Where was the Haitian?

- Loved Bob and Elle's brief scene together. I cannot believe they killed him off. I'm sure they'll regret that later too and bring him back in some ludicrous way. I cannot wait to see what Elle does now that she's on her own. I think her electric attack on Sylar is just a glimpse of what she's capable of. And speaking of her showdown with Sylar, was anyone else singing The Man With The Golden Gun during that scene?

- Can they just kill off Matt Parkman already? I am going to hate every scene he's in while in Africa. Completely pointless.

- The Hiro/Ando/Daphne stuff was fun. I particularly liked the Batman/Catwoman trap they set. I'm glad Hiro was upfront about what he saw in the future. So many other shows who have strung that out and had this unspoken resentment between the two characters. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out and who actually is the hero and villain in that relationship.

-I'm calling shenanigans on Angela Petrelli being Sylar's mother. Something just doesn't add up there and hopefully we'll find out the truth to that next week.

There is plenty more I could talk about, which just shows you how much was packed into those two hours. But for now I'll leave it at that and let the rest of you voice your opinions.