By Stu Robinson,

Tonight brings the Season 2 premiere of CBS’ new Hawaii Five-0.

To borrow the slogan from another classic TV show: Same bat time; same bat channel. Once again, it will go up against the ABC hit Castle. NBC hopes to grab some attention with The Playboy Club, but in this time slot I expect it to last about as long as Hef’s latest engagement.

While we wait to see if the H50 writers can resolve last season’s cliff-hanger in a remotely plausible fashion, I thought I’d set the mood with that boffo theme song – along with some of the creativity it has inspired on YouTube.

First, the behind-the-scenes video from last year’s re-recording of the theme.

The Brain Setzer Orchestra had a slightly different take, but still pretty cool.

This one’s a little out there, but it won CBS’ H50 theme song contest last year.

It would be hard to get more out there than these videos giving the H50 sound treatment to Star Wars and Star Trek. I think one of the commenters said it best: “Book ‘em, Chewie.”

Finally, who knew there were lyrics to the H50 theme? Sammy did!

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Stu Robinson, a college friend of the TV Tyrant, is a writer, editor, media-relations practitioner and social-media guy based in Phoenix.

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By Stu Robinson,

I’ve observed that episodes of CBS’s new Hawaii Five-O come in two varieties: those devoted to revealing the back stories of Steve McGarrett (Alex O’Loughlin) and the three other main characters; and those that simply serve up a crime for them to solve. Episodes 13 & 14 are prime examples of each.

Episode 13 delves deeply into the mysterious murders of Steve’s parents and reintroduces his younger sister, Mary Ann (Taryn Manning) – missing since Episode 5. I’ve spent a lot of time joking about Mary Ann – how she appeared out of nowhere in Episode 4 and then vanished with no explanation after the following episode.

We don’t know where she’s been all this time, but – as I revealed in an earlier blog post – she was, in fact, kidnapped at some point. This dawns on Steve after three ninja-like prowlers break into the McGarrett home overnight but take only the mysterious toolbox containing clues about what Papa McGarrett was investigating at the time of his death. Other than the Five-O team, the only person who knew about the toolbox was Mary Ann, who discovered it and photographed the contents in one of her earlier episodes. Sure enough, calls to her phone go unanswered and a search of her rental home turns up not Mary Ann but signs of a struggle.

Now, I’ve mentioned several times this season that Hawaii Five-O often asks viewers to suspend disbelief in order to move the plot along. But this time we’re expected to believe Mary Ann’s kidnappers are THE STUPIDEST CRIMINALS EVER.

Why? Because they never confiscate her iPhone. [Product placement!] So when she wakes up in a car trunk, she simply speed dials her bro, head of the governor’s anti-crime task force. Steve tells her to kick out one of the tail lights, which enables her to describe where she is and makes the car easy to identify. Using a helicopter made available in minutes by a tour company, Steve and Danno locate the damaged car (not a Chevy) and swoop in to rescue Mary Ann.

Because two kidnappers are killed in the rescue, the Five-O team has no clue how to proceed – except for the evidence photos on Mary Ann’s iPhone, which her kidnappers never took away.

The trail of evidences leads to the head of the local Japanese mafia, or yakuza. He is a powerful businessman with ties to the governor, and his brother is a former Honolulu cop who the team believes planted the car bomb that killed the McGarretts’ mother. Eventually, the businessman’s fingerprints are found on the stolen toolbox, which Kono recovers. Of course, he wouldn’t have needed to handle, or even steal, the toolbox if his goons had confiscated the iPhone with the photos.

The yakuza boss is arrested while playing golf with his brother and the mysterious Wo Fat, who first appeared and the end of the previous episode. The brother turns up dead shortly thereafter, killed coincidentally in the same manner as Mama McGarrett. With him dead and Victor Hesse in jail, it would appear that the killers of both parents have met justice. But Episode 13 makes it clear that additional evidence from the toolbox relates to more recent investigations by the McGarretts’ father, so viewers can expect more to come with this back story.

At the end of Episode 13, Steve puts Mary Ann on a Hawaiian Airlines (Product placement!) flight to Los Angeles in order to get her away from whatever danger remains on the islands. Of course, she notes the resemblance to the scene years earlier when their father put her and Steve on separate planes for the same reason.

And Now, Something Completely Different

Episode 14 is a straight-up whodunit that begins when Kono and Chin Ho assist the Honolulu Police in a high-speed pursuit. Kono’s Chevy Cruze (Product placement!) blows past a police car and closes on the fleeing Ford Mustang before the latter flips over, killing the drive and ejecting a box containing a severed head.

It is a fast-moving episode, but views do get the opportunity to figure things out on their own. I got it a half step before the Five-O team.

The plot doesn’t get into the main characters’ back stories – with two brief exceptions:

• During their requisite bickering, Danno brings up McGarrett’s daddy issues, asking, “Why is it that every time somebody’s father is involved, you get all goofy? … You lose all objectivity. It’s called ‘transference.’”
• Chin Ho and Kono encounter Chin Ho’s ex-fiancée. In an earlier episode, Kono made reference to the fiancée deserting Chin Ho when he needed her most,but in this episode the fiancée reminds Chin Ho that it was he who told her to go. Since this character wasn’t the least bit integral to the plot, the viewer must assume that a future episode will take up this subplot.

At the end, McGarrett passes on a golden opportunity to drop a “Book ‘er, Danno.”

As guest stars, Episode 14 included an aging Greg Germann (Ally McBeal) and Jordan Belfi, who played a recurring charcter on O’Loughlin’s first U.S. television series, 2007′s Moonlight. Unfortunately for Belfi, both characters he played end up dead.

On the lighter side, a recurring gag refers back to the the cop series CHiPS, which ran from 1977 to 1983 on NBC. After noting some motorcycle cops at the accident scene, McGarrett remarks how cool that job would be. Danno, being Danno, responds that the mortality rate for motorcycle cops if five times that of regular police.

“It’s a TV cop fantasy,” McGarrett protests. “Why you gotta ruin it with statistics!”

The two go on to argue about which of them most closely resembled the CHiPS character “Ponch” (played by Erik Estrada). This goes on until Kono interrupts them watching a CHiPS marathon at the office and remarks that the other main character, Jon (played by Larry Wilcox) is “hot.”

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Stu Robinson, a college friend of the TV Tyrant, is a writer, editor, media-relations practitioner and social-media guy based in Phoenix.

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I rarely root for a series I once loved to end, but an exception could certainly be made for Heroes.

Looks like I could easily get my wish, as Airlock Alpha (once syfy.com, before the SciFi Channel became SyFy) reports that NBC sources say Heroes is being asked to wrap up its entire story by season’s end.

An unidentified source was quoted as saying:

There isn’t much happening with this show in terms of audience, and giving it a ‘final chapter’ feel is something the network is considering to help allow the show to go out with a bang.

As I wrote earlier this season, even the most die-hard fans have been having a hard time staying interested. It’s all unfocused – the storyline’s all over the place, the characters are no longer interesting and they don’t seem to be working toward anything.

Even the disjointed, strike-impaired second season seemed to be working toward something. And last season had a good start before trailing off into “who the hell cares” anymore land.

I would love for Heroes to wrap up at the end of this season and answer these questions/resolve these plotlines:

• Who’s the third Nikki/Tracy triplet and what’s her power. And what’s the story behind their creation?
• Adam Monroe – what time is he REALLY from and how long has he actually lived?
• How far back to the heroes go? How many generations? Why do some of their children have powers and some don’t?
• Why has Peter’s ability to keep previous powers he absorbs gone away? (Or was that just a side effect of his father’s “hug”?)
• What happened to Peter’s Irish girlfriend in the plague-inflicted future that was prevented?
• When is Sylar going to actually figure out who he is, already, and is Matt just crazy and imagining Sylar in his head or did Sylar actually manage to crawl up in there?
• Where is Micah?
• Seriously, where is Micah? And what about his cousin? And the Haitian?
• What about future Hiro with the goatee. If you can’t change the future, as Hiro is finding out, where is Goatee Hiro?
• What is WITH this carnival? They obviously are aware of HRG and Primatech. How many generations do these carnies go back? Actually, you know what? I don’t even care that much about the carnie folk. I kind of wish they hadn’t been introduced, though there were a couple of cool scenes with them, because that just adds a whole new thing they need to answer and I find that to be obnoxious.

I know I’m forgetting some. Please leave your questions you want resolved in the comments. We should send them a letter or something and say, “THESE ARE THE THINGS YOU MUST RESOLVE BEFORE GOING OFF THE AIR. kthanxbai”

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We never got around to watching Damages this year when it was actually on the air, but we dutifully recorded it to catch up with some time.

There, an entire season sat, taunting us.

I remembered that last year, with Season 1, we knew, somehow, that we were going to like the show, but just couldn’t get ourselves to hit “play” on the first episode.

We’re not big on the procedural in our house. Only the star power of the cast – Glenn Close, Rose Byrne, Ted Danson – and the fact that it was on FX made us take a second look.

About five minutes into the first episode, we were completely hooked.

Oddly enough, the same thing happened this season.

It ended weeks ago – April 1 – and we hadn’t started watching it until over the Memorial Day weekend. We’d exhausted most of the other shows and movies on the DVR that we watch together.

So we finally caved in and started watching Season 2 of Damages.

About 5 minutes into it, we were completely sucked in.

I’m not sure how they do it, but the writing, the acting, the lighting, the cinematography is stunning.

Glenn Close is a revelation; her character is mercurial and changes from happy and pleasant to angry and bitter at a moment’s notice. And both are believable. Rose Byrne has earned my respect as an actress.

And Ted Danson? I forgive you for the Three Men and a Baby movies, Ted.

The success of Damages on cable is bittersweet, though. It makes me realize that a fantastic show like Kings would probably have aired its entire run in consecutive weeks and have been renewed for a second season if it had been on FX rather than NBC. It makes no sense that the highest quality shows on TV today (OK, besides Lost) are all on Expanded Basic Cable, or whatever they’re calling it these days.

I’m reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace right now and in his descriptions/rants about the entertainment technology of the future, it reminds me too much of now.

The Big Four Networks running the show makes no sense. Once Lost & 24 are over next season, I’ll have little reason to stick to the major networks. OK, I think Fringe is going to keep me hooked for a couple of years.

But give me shows like Damages and Breaking Bad, short seasons, off the broadcast spectrum, and I’d be a happy TV camper.

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As it is with every year, a whole bunch of science fiction-y shows were canceled at the end of the season, but I have to give it to the networks for trying a bunch of new ones next year.

It was so hard to keep track of the comings and goings during the upfronts, but SciFi Wire thankfully charted it all in a very understandable fashion.

The clear winner, IMHO, is Fox.

Sure, Fox canceled Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, better known as TSCC because it’s a lot freakin’ shorter. But it did keep Dollhouse around for at least another 13 episodes. (Side note: This comic is probably a bit too close to reality for comfort when it comes to how the decision was made.) I’m thinking that Fox didn’t feel like incurring the wrath of the Whedonverse again, whereas TSCC ended at a spot that could full well be the series’ end. (Not that I wouldn’t have loved to see where it would have picked up in the fall.)

Fox also kept Fringe, which is one of my favorite shows. So the net gets brownie points for that. It’s also picked up Human Target and Past Life, each for 13 episodes and for midseason.

Human Target is based on a D.C. comic book and focuses on a guy who goes undercover, basically, as his clients whose lives have been threatened. It was written by Jonathan Steinberg, who was the co-creator of the late Jericho.

I’m not sure I completely understand the premise of Past Life, and the description on Zap2It didn’t help much, but from what I can tell, it’s about a bunch of investigators who solve crimes by dredging up their clients’ long-lost memories. Whether that means memories of dead clients or memories of past lives for solving cold cases or just stuff people have forgotten, I’m not quite clear on. I’m guessing it’s one of the first two, otherwise the whole “science fiction” aspect of it is lost on me.

NBC is second in the science fiction Olympics, though it canceled more sci-fi-ish shows from this season than it has old and new ones put together. Off the schedule: Knight Rider, My Own Worst Enemy, Kings (I still haven’t forgiven them for that decision) and Medium (which CBS decided to pick up).

But it decided to renew Chuck (midseason) and Heroes (really? Talk about a show past its prime, despite it having been around for only 3 seasons) and has three new shows, though two of them are summer series: Day One, The Listener and Merlin.

Day One sounds the most promising to me, what with its post-apocalyptic Melrose Place-ian-ish-ness. Of course, that means it stands an excellent chance of not succeeding.

The Listener is about a paramedic who can read minds, it seems. And Merlin – well, if you can’t guess what it’s about, you need to go back and read King Arthur.

ABC lost more than it’s gained, but it has one of the best sci-fi shows ever: Lost. This is the show’s last season, though, so hopefully one of the new shows will pick up the mantle. Canceled were Cupid, Eli Stone, Pushing Daisies and Life on Mars (which is the only one of the four I cared about; I tried to like Pushing Daisies, but it was just too precious for me).

But it has V, a remake of one of my favorite miniseries ever. I’m sorry the guy originally responsible for it isn’t involved, and I’d sure like to see Michael Ironside in it, but what is he now, 65, 70? I have great hopes for it, especially if they redo the hybrid alien baby and don’t use a really lame puppet.

ABC also is trying out Eastwick and Flash Forward.

Now, Eastwick is based on the John Updike novel The Witches of Eastwick, which was quite memorably adapted into a movie starring Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon and Jack Nicholson. I tried reading the book at one point but it was a bit too dated and I just couldn’t hack my way through it. I’m willing to give the show a shot, though.

Flash Forward has a lot of promise, though, with a premise in which the entire world blacks out and glimpses 2 minutes and 17 seconds of an undetermined time in each person’s own future. It’s based on a book, whose author is even writing one of the episodes. It’s being written as if it will be five seasons of 22 episodes apiece and could become a worthy successor to Lost, if it catches on.

CBS gave up on two shows: Eleventh Hour and The Ex-List, but kept Ghost Whisperer and snagged NBC’s cast-off Medium. That’s all.

The CW kept Smallville and Supernatural. Though this season is likely to be the final season of SPN, that’s great news they decided to keep it on. But it killed Valentine and Reaper, the latter of which I mourn deeply. I still have three or four episodes on my DVR, so I still have more Reaper to see.

It’s airing the new show Vampire Diaries, though, which I’d imagine might be a good pair with SPN. It’s based on a pre-Twilight series of books, The CW would like you to know, thankyouverymuch. It’s about a girl who can’t decide between two vampire brothers – one good, one evil, of course. They’re battling for her and the souls of all the people in her small town.

So that’s it. Of course, there will be some shows on SyFy, USA, FX, AMC and a whole other slew of acronyms, but these are the big five, so to speak.

Which shows are you looking forward to, and which ones will you miss the most?

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OK, I guess the TV seasons before most people had televisions were worse, but this season was for the birds, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The four major networks (that’d be CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox – sorry CW) lost an average of 16 percent of viewership in the coveted “demo” – adults 18-49. That includes DVR use.

Fox was on top, followed by CBS, ABC and NBC. But “on top” still includes a steep drop.

Why is this?

A whole mess of things.

First off, a lot of people are watching online – legally and illegally (Hulu an example of the former, BitTorrent an example of the latter). I know some folks who don’t have televisions, even, and only watch what they like online.

Second, a lot of people watch on DVR, but not within that 7-day window included in ratings. For example, my husband and I haven’t watched Season 2 of Damages yet. The entire season is sitting there on our DVR. We just finished up the entire first seasons of Dollhouse and Better off Ted in a few days in marathon viewing sessions. (I’ll be writing about BoT in a couple days). I still have episodes of Reaper, the season finale of Supernatural and Sunday’s episode of Breaking Bad on my DVR, waiting for me to have a chance to sit down and watch ‘em.

Then there’s the whole DVD experience, too. A few years ago, we caught up on the first two seasons of Alias by borrowing them from the library. I’ve been watching Season 1 of Torchwood on DVD, a Christmas present.

The ratings were as of Wednesday night, which marked the “official” end of the TV season. Did you even know that? Didn’t think so.

There is no such thing as a TV season anymore. We just were treated to a third season of Burn Notice this winter, and another one is coming this summer. Some shows never start until “midseason” (24, American Idol, Lost). Others bounce around the scheduling calendar (Battlestar Galactica, Kyle XY).

Yet the ratings system, other than adding the DVR and DVR+7 ratings into the mix, hasn’t changed in forever.

It’s time to change. We’ve lost too many good shows (Jericho, Kings) to the poor way ratings are measured. All the networks own multiple stations now; if the ratings for Kings are too low for NBC proper, why not send it on over to USA or even SyFy?

C’mon. The Nielsen ratings are so … 1980s.

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Just got the news that NBC Universal is going to have a show that should be very cool in the fall (still no word on Chuck, though Heroes got renewed): Day One.

Here’s the official description:

From executive producer/writer Jesse Alexander (“Heroes,” “Lost,” “Alias”) and director Alex Graves (“Fringe,” “Journeyman”), “Day One” tells the story of life on earth following a global catastrophe that has devastated the world’s infrastructures. Beginning with the immediate aftermath of the cataclysmic event, an eclectic band of survivors — played by Adam Campbell (“Date Movie”), Catherine Dent (“The Shield”), Julie Gonzalo (“Eli Stone”), David Lyons (“ER”), Derek Mio (“Greek”), Carly Pope (“24″), Thekla Reuten (“Sleeper Cell”) and Addison Timlin (“Cashmere Mafia”) — strives to rebuild society as they unravel the mysteries of what happened and face their uncertain future. The group, all residents of one apartment building in suburban Van Nuys, Calif., embarks on a quest for survival and discovers that hope is found in small victories — and heroes are born every day. “Day One” is a Universal Media Studios production.

The pedigree is great – folks behind Lost, Alias, Heroes (hey, it has had its moments), Fringe and Journeyman? That’s a scifi geek’s dream!

I just hope that it goes on in the fall, isn’t bumped all over the scheduling map and is given an actual chance to catch on. Given that all of the above shows except Journeyman was a success (Fringe hasn’t been renewed yet, but TV Guide says it is likely to be), there’s hope yet. I must take note, however, that most of the aforementioned shows were smash hits almost from the start.

And as for Journeyman, I have to admit that it took a while to grow on me. I’d almost erased it from my DVR season pass a couple of times, but it just caught me enough to give it another go. It finally sank its hooks into me for good about mid-season, but that was too late for some, I’m afraid.

So, sci-fi fans, take heart. We’re not being abandoned. Now, dammit, you just have to actually WATCH the show. I don’t care if you DVR it, watch it live or watch it online. Just watch it.

Photo courtesy NBC Universal.

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