Kneel Before Zod! Smallville Returns - and: Jennifer Love Hewitt Talks To Me!

Wow, Southern California is Burning. Luckily I am somewhat removed from the epicenter of these wildfires here in Burbank, but still, outside right now there is a thick smell of smoke and even inside my apartment you can smell it. Pretty crazy - hopefully the whole thing calms down in the next day or two and the air around here becomes a bit more breathable, because right now it feels like I'm sitting around an everlasting campfire.

On another note, I want to give a big thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes yesterday - I really appreciate it. Kind of funny how in this day and age one has to check IM, facebook, myspace, and email just to see all the messages that people are sending. But despite the need to check so many different websites, it's all good and it's always great to hear from so many friends new and old - especially on a day when I had to work until 9:30 pm at Last Call With Carson Daly. I'm looking forward to the festivities though on Saturday, when me and fellow NBC page Liz (also of the Sept. 28th birthday) will be holding our joint Hard-Rockin' Birthday Bash - and I hope to see a ton of people there!

TODAY AT WORK:

- I met Jennifer Love Hewitt! Okay, well, barely. But I did escort the former Party of Five-er and current Ghost Whisperer to her dressing room, where she promptly asked about the possibility of meeting fellow Tonight Show guest Matthew McCaughnehy (sp?). Well, she seemed nice enough, I guess, though much smaller in real life than I thought she'd be. Oh Party of Five, what a great show that was. Well, at least I really liked it at the time ...

- Nobody really of note was at Carson yesterday. I did see the band Keane perform - can't say I'm really a fan of their Coldplay-esque whiny-rock, but they weren't bad live, I'll admit. Oh yeah, funny story - they had Tony Yao of G-Unit performing at Carson, and I guess some ppl have some beef with him as part of this whole stupid East Coast vs. West Coast rap war thing. So the Carson peeps got nervous that some ppl in the audience wmight cause an incident or whatever, and suddenly asked ME to stand in front of the stage during the performance and watch out for anyone who might try to do something crazy. So, what, I'm supposed to take a bullet for this guy or something? So there I was , barely standing off camera during Tony's rap song, hoping that none of the slightly sketchy-looking guys nearby were in the mood to fan the fires of any rap feuds. How do I get into these situations?

- Tuesday however, I was present at Leno for the now-omnipresent Jennifer Garner interview where she let slip that her baby is going to be a girl. Have to say though that despite questionable taste in being hitched to Ben Affleck, the star of Alias and Elektra seems to be an incredibly cool and friendly person who completely won over the crowd, so count me as a fan, even if I never really got into Alias. Also saw cameo appearances by Damon Wayans and Pamela Anderson~!, who stopped by to sign Jay's bike for charity. That's two, count 'em two sightings of Pamela in the last month. In addition, saw a surprisingly rocking performance by Stephen Stills, he of Crosby, Stills, and Nash fame. I know it's just my own ignorance, but I honestly never even realized he had any kind of solo career before this week. Hey, not bad though, the man can still rock.

- Interviewed for primetime programming assignment on Tuesday. Tommorow another interview for a studios-production assignment. Once again, wish me luck and stay tuned.

Alright, I got a whole buncha TV Reviews for ya, but I'll try to keep 'em quick ...

DANNY'S MIDWEEK TV ROUNDUP:

TV SHOW OF THE WEEK:

SMALLVILLE - Smallville always seems to deliver with it's "big" episodes, but this season premiere really had a lot to prove after last season which was in general underwhelming and filled with nonsensical subplots and a plethora of lame crappy episodes. So I was eagerly anticipating this episode but also kind of hoping against hope that it wouldn't suck. But guess what? IT COMPLETELY ROCKED! Now THIS. IS. SUPERMAN. Intense action! Great character bits! Plot! Villains! A lot of cool stuff happening! It all added up to an episode that completely erased all the lameness of last season and set this show on a great course for the Season 5. This was just a joy to watch. They even got me to once again root for Lana, who in Season 1 was everybody's favorite girl next door but last year was turned into the most annoying character ever. Erica Durance as Lois was great. Jon Shneider as Mr. Kent was great. Michael Rosenbaum as Lex, as always, was outstanding. And finally, we got some progress with the whole Chloe-Clark thing, and who would've thunk it - the scenes with Chloe and Clark were amazing and actually gave me chills. And what about those Kryptonian supervillains - the disciples of Zod, no less - blowing crap up like there's no tommorow with turrets of heat vision blasts. And Braniac! And what about the always-super music of Mark Snow mixed with snippets of the original Superman score - simply awesome music in this episode. And Tom Welling should be Superman! After seeing Super-Zoolander, I mean Brandon Routh, as Superman, and seeing Tom Welling kicking all kinds of ass tonight, I mean come on - this episode restored my belief that this cast could and should make a Superman movie, they are just that likable. Most importantly, this show restored my faith in Smallville, which has had lots of ups and downs, but when it's at it's best - this is really great TV that both entertains and inspires. Smallville is BACK, baby. My grade: A

OTHER SHOWS:

VERONICA MARS - dammit, I missed the first half of the season premiere, but I liked what I saw even if I missed some important stuff. Still, it looks like the groundwork is being laid for another intriguing mystery, while the loose ends from last season were addressed nicely. And what an ending - this show never does things quietly, that's for sure. Please, Watch This Show - tape/TIVO Lost if you have to. While it will be hard for Season 2 to match the sheer clockwork-like perfection of Season 1, this is good stuff, really good stuff even - surprisingly dark, witty, and entertaining. My grade: A-

PRISONBREAK - okay, this show is starting to seriously kick some ass. Things really kicked into high gear this week, and I'm loving the sheer over the top violence and mayhem of this prison-riot story. I am liking the cast on this show more and more with each episode, and this was just a classic to-be-continued nail-biter. Is Michael Scofield the new Jack Bauer? I wouldn't go that far, but he's already much cooler than that wannabe badass Chase from 24 season 3. My grade: A

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT - Once again, please, watch this show. It's only the best live action comedy on TV, and this episode continued to bring the funny after the great season premiere last week. Sure, some of the jokes were a little too out there, but hey, when the preview for next week's ep with Scott Baio made me burst into laughter in and of itself, you know this show is quality. My grade: A -

MY NAME IS EARL - Hmmm, once again, this show is trying really hard to be different and clever and cool, but honestly I just don't think it's all that funny, and nowhere near as clever as it'd like to be. Sure, the potential is there and Jason Lee simply rocks, but as of now I just don't think this show is worthy of the hype. I caught part of Commander in Chief that aired opposite Earl, and while it's not really my thing I could see that show becoming big as it has a good cast and some good dramatic chops inherit in its premise. As for Earl, it's got an uphill battle in more ways than one. My grade: C

THE OFFICE - whoah, can you say funniest episode yet of the American version of The Office? I can, because while this show has been straddling the line of Funny, this episode lept over that line and delivered the goods. This was laugh out loud funny, and it's about time this show kicked comedic ass like this. Carell, Rain Wilson, and the rest were on the top of their games, and the writing was the best I've seen yet on the show. The one bad thing: argh, this was kind of similar to my in-progress spec script - another idea I have to scrap! Anyways ... My Grade: A -

THE OC - Ummm ... what is going on with this show? Sure, there's some intriguing stuff going on with Julie Cooper and the sketchy chick played by Jeri Ryan, but the sudden deluge of cheesy high-school antics is killing this show! This show was originally about bigger stuff than social committees and school dances and petty jealousy - save that for some other show - this is The OC, bitch? Bring back the epic soap-opera storylines, the shocking dramatic twists, the old Seth Cohen, dammit all. Instead we get the HUGE revelation that the "Dean of Discipline" is getting some from a student! Haven't seen THAT before, and it's not like we couldn't see it coming a mile away. Fix this show! My grade: C

REUNION - this one on the other hand, is quickly becoming what the OC used to be - the best guilty pleasure on TV. But while the OC built it's reputation on becoming the first post-modern teen soap, Reunion is a good old-fashioned mystery built around a cool, modern premise and structure. I am loving the format of this show where each episode takes place One Year Later, and I am really getting sucked in to just about all of the wonderfully twisting plots and characters, and now I am dying to know who got murdered and who the murderer is. The cast is really growing on me and they have me hooked, with plenty of twists with each new episode. My grade: A-

NIGHT STALKER - I had high hopes for this show, mostly because it's from Frank Spotnitz who was a big force behind two of my all time favorite shows (both from creator Chris Carter), The X-Files and Millenium. I was hoping that the terrible reviews were wrong, but unfortunately, the critics were right - in fact most of them probably went too easy on this steaming pile - because this remake of the old-school Kolchak: The Night Stalker was a convoluted, boring mess. This marks the latest in the line of network scifi pilots that has totally sucked - joining Surface, Threshold, Invasion, and Supernatural in the category of "nice try, but go watch some X-Files and see how it's done." Actually, nice try is a bit generous in this case, because this show had bland characters, pretentious direction, a going-nowhere script, and did nothing to make you want to see more of this new version of Kolchack. Oh well, at least I have my Millenium DVDs to remember a time when Frank Spotnitz's name was associated with quality.
My grade: D

And finally ...

LOST - One one hand, this episode entertained me pretty thoroughly. On the other hand, it was basically a rehash of last week's ep with little new material - a bad sign as I don't want this show's pacing to become even more glacially slow than it already is. Sure, the time jump stuff was done pretty well, and the raft bits, especially the little battle with the CORPORATE LOGO SHARK OF DOOM were kind of cool for a while ... but come on, this whole episode goes by and we are pretty much back where we started. Now it does look like next week's invasion of the mysterious Others is going to pick up the pace a bit, but right now there are so many unanswered questions that the average viewer has probably forgotten half of the questions that this show has posed so far. Still, this show does intensity like no other, and it's pretty remarkable how they told us virtually nothing new yet ramped up the tension to crazy levels. Yeah, I'll keep watching. My grade: B

Okay ... lots of TV stuff in one post, I know. Anyways - I'm out. Thanks once again for all the birthday wishes. By the way, the quote of the day yesterday had to have come from one of my supervisors at work, the always-quotable Christy, who upon hearing that I was turning 23, responded by exclaiming: "23? I own pairs of shoes that are older that you!"