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.

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.