Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “Teacher's Pet”

Poor Xander. He wanted so badly to be the hero of a Bruce Campbell movie and win the girl -- in this case, Buffy. But as usual, she ended up rescuing him far more than he ever rescued her.

Plus one of Buffy's teachers actually acted nice to her. So guess what happened to him?

And Buffy actually defeated this episode's supernatural adversary by doing research -- and by reading a book. Will wonders never cease?

TV Quote of the Week

All men think they're fascinating -- in my case, it's justified.
--Bruce Campbell, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, “My Fair Cupcake”

Hey, I Remember This Show: Jack of All Trades

For MaryAnn.

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.: “Pilot”

I always seem to be discovering new TV shows either two seasons after everyone else has discovered them or else after they're gone off the air.

This show is one of the latter examples, and the sad part is that I had plenty of opportunities to see it on TV during its first run. I just chose not to see it because it didn't seem like something that would appeal to me. Perhaps I was fed up with mediocre Indiana Jones imitations and thought that this would be just another one of those. Or maybe I thought the title was just too gimmicky to describe a TV show that was worth watching.

Whatever was the problem, I'm certainly over it now. Bruce Campbell has long been one of my favorite actors and this is definitely one of his better TV series. Add in a sci-fi gimmick that is actually intriguing and supporting characters that are genuinely memorable and I could just kick myself for not discovering this show earlier.

The whole show revolves around the title character, the Harvard-educated son of a Western marshal who is hired to capture the twelve criminals who murdered his father on his last mission. Along the way, he tangles with a rival bounty hunter named Lord Bowler and a sexy entertainer named Dixie Cousins. His would-be sidekick is a lawyer named Socrates Poole and he also finds time to run into a mad scientist and his beautiful daughter.

As you might guess, he doesn't catch all the criminals on his first outing but he does bring a few wrongdoers to justice, and he also comes across a mysterious golden orb that has been discovered by Chinese railroad workers. At the end of the episode, the mysterious orb is being washed away in a river but rest assured that it will return.

If only the same could be said of this series.

All the TV Shows That I Have Seen

1. Burn Notice: The First Season.

An USA cable series about an ex-CIA agent who does good deeds for a fee while trying to figure out why he was blacklisted from the CIA. It sounds like The Equalizer: The Next Generation but it is much better than that. The series also stars Gabrielle Anwar as a "trigger-happy ex-girlfriend" and Bruce Campbell as a former comrade-in-arms.

2. Eureka: The First and Second Seasons.

A TV series produced by the SciFi Channel but unlike most SciFi productions, this show is actually very good. Colin Ferguson stars as a former U.S. marshal who gets drafted to become the new sheriff of a small town that specializes in government science projects. Easily the best science fiction program I've seen since Firefly though considering how few such shows I've seen since then, that's not saying much.

3. Firefly: The Complete Series.

A Joss Whedon show that really is as good as you've heard. Advertised as a Western in space but way more complicated than that. More successful on DVD than on the small screen and the obvious inspiration for Serenity.

4. Heroes: The First and Second Seasons.

A show about -- surprise, surprise -- superheroes that started off promisingly at the beginning of the first season and then went downhill. The second season almost made me give up on the whole thing in disgust.