Blue's Reviews: Monday Night Television

Season premieres is usually a pretty exciting and fun time of year but thus far this year, I've been fairly underwhelmed. I talked previously about Entourage, Weeds, and some others that have failed to impress but I had high hopes last night as I settled in for the premieres of How I Met Your Mother and Heroes.

To kick things off, we watched a DVRd episode of Real Time With Bill Maher from last Friday night. It was a fun show as the Palin abuse-a-thon continued. The female guest - whose name I can't recall - seemed unfit to be on television as she had incredible trouble finding her train of thought over and again. Will.I.Am was the "celebrity" guest and really contributed very little to the show. I was hoping to hear more from him about his support of Obama. The "conservative" guest turned out to be one of my favorite conservative guests. He didn't blindly praise the Republicans, he didn't blast the Dems at every turn, and when the topic turned to religion, he actually had a viewpoint that was shockingly reasonable. Cheers to him! With the election drawing near, this show is definitely worth checking out when you can.

Next up was the premiere of How I Met Your Mother. This was probably my favorite show of the night - how could it not be when it focused on the story of whether or not Stella would like Star Wars when she finally saw it and if Ted would decide he couldn't marry her if she didn't. The show laid out the basic stories for the coming episodes - Marshall dealing with unemployment, Barney trying to tell Robin how he feels, Ted and Stella barely knowing each other and being engaged. I think the "slip-in" of Robin applying for the cable news job will become an issue at some point - my guess is the job is out of the area which'll lead to Barney finally having to tell her to try to get her to stay. Anyways, still one of the best comedies on television and if you're not watching it, you're a heartless, soulless beast of burden who I don't want to be friends with anymore.

The final show of the night was the two-hour premiere of Heroes - a show I was eagerly anticipating after hearing it had gotten a standing ovation when it screened at Comic-Con although my brain knows very well that it's easy to get your shit praised at Comic-Con if it's put together slick enough. The end result? It just was... well.... kinda okay. Nothing fantastic, nothing horrible. Just somewhere in the range of "eh." I don't think I can recall a show that has dropped in quality so much in so little time. Since the disappointing Season One Finale, it's been mostly downhill in quality. The premiere did little to make me feel otherwise. I don't really feel like analyzing why but suffice to say that if you missed this episode, you missed some big reveals but... well, it still felt like I didn't care when it was over.

The next batch of shows I'm looking forward to is The Office on Thursday and Pushing Daisies next week. The Amazing Race on Sunday is a favorite as well.