Saturday, February 6, 2010

The TV MegaSite's Blog Post #79

Don't forget that you can see all of the new stuff put up on our site every day!

Today was cool- I got to speak with Diahann Carroll, a true Hollywood legend, for an interview. Her answers to my questions may shock you! They will probably send me the transcript in a few days, so I can write up the interview.

Next week I get to talk to the guy who runs Leverage on TNT (great show!) and someone from Southland (I'm hoping for Ben McKenzie, but I may not be that lucky). Stay tuned!

I meant to mention in yesterday's post that Wednesday on CBS was amazing because it was two hours of soap opera actor guest stars! First, criminal Minds had Victor Webster, who started on Days of Our Lives as Nicholas. He is always gorgeous, but he really showed in this episode that he can act, too. He should have his own show. I could easily see him in a show like Remington Steele, or Castle, or Human Target, where he plays a suave, charming con man or detective. He was great as Cupid on Charmed and also he was awesome on last summer's "Harper's Island" until they killed him off. He played a con-man-turned murderer on Criminal Minds, and he was brilliant and creepy. Rebecca Staab, who was great on Port Charles as Elizabeth, played one of his victims. The episode had many other great guest stars, too. I thought the ending was a little silly - they shot the bad guy, the blood was on his chect but on the opposite side of his heart. One shot, and he falls down and dies. And then, he's surrounded by experienced FBI officers and no one rushes to check to see if he's alive or calls for an ambulance. But the rest of the episode was very good.

Then CSI New York was filled with great soap actors like Charles Shaughnessy, Finola Hughes, Ivan Shaw (who used to be on AMC) and Michael Graziadei (Daniel, Y&R). It was also a weird episode about people who like to drink blood, like vampires, so it was a good one.

Over on Supernatural, it was another awesome episode. I just love that show, and I'll be so sorry to see it end. They went back in time to the 70s to visit their parents. It was very good. The show always surprises and amazes me, and it doesn't help that both of the stars are so gorgeous as well as being such great actors.

Tonight is Friday, and I am bummed because I miss Dollhouse. Last week was the last episode. So depressing. I loved that show, and it just got better and better. Smallville was a two-hour episode that was just excellent. Maybe the best Smallville ever, or at least it was up there. They had Michael Shanks as Hawkman. The episode featured the Justice Society. If you're not a comic book fan, you won't know who that is. They did a very good job with both the story and all the little details, like costumes and special effects. I wish all Smallville episodes were this good. It is usually an uneven show, at best, especially the past couple of years. Even the ending was a jaw-dropper!

Weird thing is, they had a new episode last week, and somehow I missed it. My DVR did not record it, nor Caprica. And this week, the DVR messed up (probably due to a storm) and did not get most of Bones. I hate when that happens. Thank goodness for the net, though.

Which reminds me, I found a good site online for watching shows casttv.net
I was able to find all of the episodes I missed this year on there, that I couldn't find anywhere else! That was great.

Numb3rs was also very good, with great guest stars. Marilu Henner, who used to be on Taxi with Numb3rs dad Judd Hirsch, was a guest-star. Unfortunately, they did not have one scene together! William Katt, who starred in Greatest American Hero, was the other guest star, as a Steven Seagal-type guy. He was hilarious.

I guess it must be sweeps month now, with all of these great shows!

Friday, February 5, 2010

The TV MegaSite's Blog Post #78

The past two weeks have been a whirlwind on our site! We have a new design that we have been putting up. Well, mostly it has been me putting it up, but Gisele is helping now, and hopefully others will help in the future. Our site is huge, so it will take a long time. I think it looks pretty good, but what do I know? :) I hope you can check it out on our site. So far it's just on our main pages and some of our main daytime pages.

I was tearing my hair out for a few days there because I messed up our navigation buttons and couldn't figure it out. It took a while to fix it, too. What a pain. Hopefully all will be good now.

Carrie is back writing 24 recaps for our episode guide, now that the show is back! She always does a great job. We have so many awesome volunteers that work daily on the site. They are all amazing. You can see all of the stuff that is put up on our What's New page, which we update constantly.

I have been so lucky lately to get many cool interviews with celebrities, and we have more coming up! Our site did not have many of these until the last few years, so it's been awesome. We have tons of new Primetime Interviews as well as some All My Children Q&A's and one with Juliet Mills of Passions.

Our Primetime News page and primetime forum has so much news, that Danielle puts up. We get a lot of stuff sent to us now by the various networks, and she also finds it on other sites as well. NBC/USA/Syfy sends me tons of stuff every day, which I forward to her. I get a lot from MTV, TNT, FOX, TVLAND, et al. I have also been getting info from CBS on their news site. There's always so much!

Please visit our site at http://tvmegasite.net and when you get there, click on the ads! They make us money to keep our site going. Or visit one of our many stores to buy DVD's, CD's, Books, etc.!

We like to give stuff away, too. We have a monthly drawing that you can enter every month between the 5th and 25th. I get sent tons of extra DVD's and other things by Warner Brothers, Universal, HBO, and others, just so we can give it away on our site. We need more people to enter, so please do!

This week I have started watching General Hospital and All My Children again. It's not that I ever made a conscious decision to stop watching the daytime soaps. I just fell behind sometime last year when we were traveling. I hate just picking up again, when I have a backlog. This has happened before. I decided to start watching again because of Sonny shooting Dante on GH. This whole week has been great as everyone finds out who Dante is. I love these big reveals. They are what makes soaps so fun (at least for me). They did a good job with this one. They really took their time, first introducing Olivia, then letting us know that she had Sonny's son, then introducing Dante, then letting him and Sonny get close...it was very good. And I know this even though I have missed most of it just because I have been keeping tabs on the show, reading about it, etc. I always record it on my DVR, so I see scenes here and there. The guy who plays Dante is very good looking, but in a weird way. Frankly, I don't think he looks like Sonny. Maurice Benard has dimples, and this guy has cheekbones like an indian. He looks more like the guy who used to play Jeremy on All My Children, Jean Le Clerc. But whatever, they're both gorgeous, so I guess that's all that matters. :)

GH is the soap I watched the longest, the first one I started watching in 1984, that is still on the air (technically Santa Barbara was the first one I started watching). It has gone through many changes, some not so good, but they have a good cast and characters. I don't always approve of the current writers and how they emphasize the mob stuff, but....it is what it is.

This week on All My Children, the first episodes are airing that they shot in California. They moved out there from New York, in case you missed the news. They have a new head writer, too. It's not as good as GH. They are rebuilding the show, so I'll wait and see how it works out. They're bringing back Brooke, and Dixie, so that should be good. They are supposed to be bringing back the way the characters are supposed to be, using their history, etc. In other words, fixing the damage done by the previous head writer, Chuck Pratt. The remaining fans wonder why it took them so long.

It was sad today to find out that Frances Reid died. She played Alice Horton on Days of Our Lives. She was 95, though, and had not been healthy enough for a while to be on the show, so it wasn't like a huge shock. I used to like Days ok, but I stopped watching when they got rid of my favorite characters - John and Marlena, and Steve and Kayla, and Tony and Anna. They got rid of almost everyone over 40 and kept Bo and Hope, whom I never cared that much about one way or the other. I was glad to hear that Carly and Vivian returned, but it was not enough to get me watching again. There are a lot of young actors on there that I don't really know or care about, and on top of all that, they got rid of Lucas, whom I really like. So forget it, I won't be watching Days until they at least bring back John and Marlena, who were the bedrock of the show. I heard they did bring Anna, but she is not the same without Tony.

I finally watched Monday's House. Usually we watch it right away, but my husband was out of town and just got back. We like to watch it together. It's just so funny and entertaining. I watch many good shows, but my husband only has a few he likes. House is a great show, but sometimes it is uneven and veers into weirdness or boring stuff. Most of the time, though, it's great.

I have two DVR's, each with 350 hours. I spend most of my time watching in the living room. That DVR is where I record the soaps, plus most of my favorite shows. Due to scheduling conflicts, though, I record some shows in the other DVR, which is in the bedroom. I don't like to watch in the bedroom, so I put those shows on DVD and watch them on my computer. I record some shows in there, too, that are not my favorites, they're just ok, and who knows if I will ever get around to watching them all. These include Flashforward, Vampire Diaries, V, The Middle, the forgotten, The Good Wife, Mercy, NCIS Los Angeles, and some of the canceled shows from this past fall.

The shows I like best are House, Brothers & Sisters, the CSI's, the Mentalist, Smallville, Supernatural, Fringe, Heroes, Medium, White Collar, Burn Notice, Mad Men, Damages, Caprica, Warehouse 13, Numb3rs, NCIS, Law & Order, SVU, Bones, Men of a Certain Age, Leverage, Castle, Stargate Universe, Durham County, Glee, Accidentally on Purpose...I think that's basically it. Online I watch Dexter and Being Human.

There are some other really good shows out there, like Chuck, 24, Big Bang Theory, 30 Rock, Grey's Anatomy, Lost, etc. but I only have so many hours in the day to watch TV! I hope to keep buying those other shows and watch them sometime on DVD. Sometime probably never comes, though. As you can see, I don't watch any non-fiction shows whatsoever.

Being a TV fan is kind of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it's very good for my site that I have watched so much and keep up on what's going on, but as someone who just likes TV and seems not to be too picky...it's tough to have shows I never watch that I would actually like! I guess it kind of stresses me out, like having lots of unread books and movies as well. There's never enough time in the day to watch/read the things we like, is there? Even for a TV fanatic like me.

Speaking of which, this new show Past Life looks good...if I can forgive FOX for canceling Dollhouse, one of my favorite shows. I'll get back to you on that.