Reader, writer, grower of artisanal beards.
Tonight I had the rather odd experience of going to HEB and hearing “Lost in the Supermarket” by The Clash over the in-store speakers. If you’re not familiar with the song, here’s a pertinent lyrical sample:
bq{font-style: italic;}.. I’m all lost in the supermarket
I can no longer shop happily
I came in here for that special offer
A guaranteed personality
Today’s Player vs. Player is me in a nutshell. I’ve been starting to feel like a TV critic because I’m keeping track of so damn many shows. Currently these are on my must-see list:
Nip/Tuck, Lost, Alias, The OC, Prison Break, Arrested Development, Kitchen Confidential, My Name is Earl, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate SG-1, Rescue Me
(luckily, BSG and SG-1 are on winter hiatus and Rescue Me recently had a season finale.)
Also recording:
The Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad, Bones, Invasion, Threshold, The Office, Supernatural, Reunion
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In preparation for the coming of “The Chosen Collection”:http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/newsitem.cfm?NewsID=4018 (sorry, couldn’t resist), I’ve decided to go ahead and sell my currently owned box sets of Buffy seasons 5 thru 7. I listed them all around 8 o’clock tonight… and Season 7 is already sold. (It makes me feel better that I made back almost what it cost me, although somehow I still feel guilty for selling the sets… it feels like _treason_!)
The best offer Half Price Books could have given me was *$9* per season, which is just absolutely offensive. At least on Amazon, I can set my own price and keep most of the money.
The way I’ve got it figured, if I can get back at least $20 a pop for 5, 6, and 7 each, they’ve paid for their part of the complete box set. If I’m lucky, I’ll get a little more than $20 a pop and they’ll pay for a bit of the rest of the set – the ideal situation is me coming away between $25 and $30 for each set.
2005 has definitely been the year of my TV obsession. First I got inexorably caught up in watching the entire runs of two great sci-fi TV shows, pretty much back-to-back (Farscape, then Buffy), and then the whole thing snowballed, and I found myself juggling any number of shows at the same time. At the moment it feels like I’m following as many shows on DVD as there are currently on-air, but it’s more likely that the on-air shows are starting to tip the balance – especially when I watch enough DVD to catch up to the currently airing episodes, like I’ve done with The O.C.
Most of my dvd purchases as of late have been TV box sets, as well… the three Buffy sets, then The Office, Firefly, The OC, Nip/Tuck Season Two, Lost… (I got an awesome deal on Lost, which is on sale at Target.) Man… I can already see what my new year’s resolution for 2006 should be – watch/buy less TV!
Taken from Dark Horizons:
ABC President Stephen McPherson revealed that next season’s episodes (starting Jan ’05) will once again return to Sydney juggling her dual roles as an international spy and normal twentysomething girl, conceding the complex plot heavy episodes may have turned off some of the more casual viewers of the show – “We got so deep in the Rimbaldi and Covenant [mysteries] that we lost sight of some of the stuff we fell in love with [in the beginning]. J.J. is talking about getting back to some of the joy that she used to have in her personal life early on… while still living in this crazy world”.
Abrams himself, whose been working on the pilot for his upcoming ABC thriller, “Lost”, said the step back from the show during the break has allowed him a whole new perspective – “Going away to do Lost allowed me to look at Alias in a way that I could not have done otherwise ? from the outside, and it was like an incredibly enlightening thing. I suddenly knew in my heart what I wanted and what I didn’t want ? and I saw what was happening. Not that I wasn’t proud of what was there, but I saw some mistakes that I made and I thought, ‘Oh my God'”.
The delay to January which will allow the shows to be aired weekly without interruption was something Abrams was keen on – “I was begging them to do it”. McPherson adds “We’re going to be launching a lot of new dramas in the fall and we wouldn’t have been able to put any money [into promoting Alias]. So we felt the best thing to do was bring it on in January when we’ve got all [20 episodes] and a huge promotion platform with the Academy Awards”.
In good news for fans, McPherson also confirmed that there’s “not a chance” Season 4 could be Alias’ last – “It will be an asset for years”.