monday kicked off with “House” which started exactly where season 6 ended… with Cuddy and House about to land in bed. the medical mystery or the patient of the week could be classed as sidelines (or even nonexistent) because the entire episode more or less focused on the Cuddy/House relationship, them taking a day off and having sex. the most entertaining part was doubtless the “patient” of the week, the only neurosurgeon on the premises of princeton-plainsborough who apparently suffered from a case of food poisoning after attending a seafood festival and eating toads eggs. the team of house was tasked to “cure” the sick surgeon as soon as possible otherwise the ICU and ER of the hospital would have to be shut down since there has to be a capable neurosurgeon present at all times. after drugging that poor surgeon with various weird drug cocktails he was totally stoned and couldn’t resist to take his clothes off… hilarity ensued. but apart from that not an overly exciting episode which clearly served to set the theme for the season to come: House and Cuddy having a relationship and how that will affect their work.

monday was also the premiere of “The Event“, a brand new tv series about, well, “the event”. my decision to give it a go was solely based on the “logo” of the show and the fact that Laura Innes (Kerry Weaver from ER!) appeared on the cast list. i don’t want to write too much about it because that would spoil your enjoyment… however, it can be best described as a mixture of “24″ meets “Lost” meets “Fringe”. be warned tho, the first 15 to 20 minutes can be utterly confusing but bear with it and i am sure you won’t be disappointed. it eventually leads up to what i assume is “The Event” and that can only be described as a proper “WTF” moment. by the end of the first episode you are left with a lot of questions that according to the masterminds behind the show should be partially answered as soon as next week. it definitely managed to get me hooked and looking forward to the next episode.

on wednesday there was the premiere of “Undercovers“, the new show of J.J. Abrams (Alias, Lost, Fringe). the name is quite telling, it’s about a married couple of former agents that gets called it whenever the CIA has a difficult or too sensitive case on their hands. it’s very much a spy series and reminded me a lot of Alias but i found it funny and entertaining. it is not as riveting or engaging as “The Event” and i don’t think that is even the intention but it’s solid entertainment for sure.

last but not least the premiere of season 3 of “Fringe” was aired on thursday. season 2 ended with a cliffhanger and a lot of  unanswered questions so i was quite eager to see how the story will develop. again, i cannot write too much about it but the episode mainly focused on Olivia (which was also the name of the episode) and it set the theme for the season to come. again, i am curious and eager to find out how they will resolve the current issue regarding Olivia.

anyway, it wasn’t overly clear to me why “they” (the people of the alternate universe) did send an entire building to “our” universe. Walter and William Bell did the same thing with a car 25 years ago and i assume that was a test to see if it is possible to pass objects through the “gateway” between the two universes… well, from what we have learned so far it is very well possible (i guess the car was just an ethical test subject) since we know Peter (the current version of him) is from the alternate universe and Olivia herself paid a visit to Mr Bell in the alternate universe and returned.

it does make sense though that if you send an object/person/whatever to the other universe, something of “equal mass” will return since both universes are in balance. i assume there is a certain time frame until balance will restored (the car of the original experiment returned within 35 hours) and that explains why Olivia could briefly visit Mr Bell in the alternate universe. my assumption would be that the corpse of “our” Peter is buried in the alternate universe to maintain equilibrium.

i love it when Walter concocts weird drug cocktails but i was surprised to see Cortexiphan being administered intravenously. guess that speeds up or amplifies the effects of the drug. and i knew the moment when Walter mentioned that Olivia will be able to identify objects from the alternate universe by seeing them having a “glow” that Peter will glow sooner or later. however, the hotel from our world that was eventually pulled into the other universe shouldn’t have had a glow unless Cortexiphan made Olivia detect anything related to the alternate universe…

all in all a very enjoyable episode that did answer some questions and created even more questions. if there is a war coming between the two universes, why don’t “they” just send an invasion force over? why swap two buildings? to test the procedure of crossing universes further? granted, the special effects with the man who survived the first swap and ended up with two heads, four arms and four legs was kind of impressive but still… it was never really answered why?

what happened in the latest Fringe episode then? well, some 100 year old Nazi scientist (bear with me, this is Fringe and sci fi after all) shows up at a Jewish wedding. one elderly woman (who is a holocaust survivor as it turns out later) gets agitated when she sees the Nazi and appears to know him from somewhere. a few moments later half of the wedding guests choke to death. the Fringe team is called in and they find out that the Nazi used a scented candle to disperse a poison gas that killed every jewish person at the wedding.

as the episode progresses it is revealed that this Nazi scientist was involved with gruesome experiments (that apparently stopped him from aging) and is using a poison that can be tailored to kill very specific people like for example people with brown eyes or dark hair or whatever. so when the Nazi sees Walter Bishop at another crime scene he recognizes him mysteriously. it turns out that Walter’s father used to work undercover with those Nazi scientists and did smuggle research results out of Germany. in the end Walter concocts a poison specifically tailored to kill the Nazi before he can release the poison gas at a “tolerance conference”.

the underlying subplot with former Nazi scientists migrating to the US is hardly new; it was used in several X-Files episodes as well and it really did not bother me. what bothered me tho was that the Nazi used a Jewish wedding as a science experiment to test his poison gas. i found this quite tasteless and it made me feel really uneasy. yes it is television and sci fi and it wouldn’t work in real life because there is no DNA string or whatever that denotes that you are Jewish but still… it just was not right.

also, the “artist” who bought the German books that Walter’s father used to smuggle the research out of Germany… his obsession with swastikas and Hitler images was unsettling. considering that the public display of a swastika (unless its for educational purposes) is a crime here it it wouldn’t surprise me if that episode got censored for German/Austrian television.

i wish Fringe would start using Massive Dynamic as the “evil entity” again, i really miss Nina Sharp. or more “Observer” involvement and more “Pattern” related events please!

so here we are, jack bauer chasing terrorists, setting up perimeters, yelling for medics, pointing the gun and yelling “do it NOW”. all the things we came to love and associate with our favorite counter-terrorist “agent” (or whatever he is these days). i don’t want to tell any details about the plot so far, but it is your typical 24 fare mixed together… you know, assassination attempts, nuclear devices, bio weapons, moles… all the fun things that make jacks day so exciting! i am eagerly awaiting the next episodes for sure.

• intel or nvidia chipset? thats the big question regarding my new computer i am about to build. i am perfectly happy with my current intel chipset and hence going for a motherboard with an intel x48 chipset would be the logical choice. however, there is still that big question whether or not i should invest into SLI which means i have to get a nvidia chipset (like the 790i) for SLI to work since it does not play nice (or rather not at all) with intel. i am really not sure if SLI is worth the trouble and if a 9800gx2 (instead of 2x 9800 GTX) will suffice. meh.
• i finally caught up on the forth season of House and now i am looking for a new tv show to turn my attention to during summer. i am going to give Lost a try since it is something different than House and having J. J. Abrams as co-creator/writer/director/executive producer is always a plus.
• oh my, why do Maxim Recovery Bars in the flavour Banana with Chocolate coating taste so unbelievably good? the downside is that they are rather hard to come by here. why can’t Powerbar create something similar tasty? 

at the moment i am at the end of season 1 and one thing struck me as weird because i haven’t noticed it before: the subtle religious or spiritual undertone of some episodes. i find it hard to believe that our dominant belief systems can survive another 200 years without any significant changes.

additionally, i am trying to picture the “galaxy” of B5, ie. put it on an actual map of our galaxy and see how big it actually is. google came up with useful information and it seems that the area of space B5 covers is actually pretty small. but still, considering the Voyager probes that were launched from Earth in the 1970s are “only” to leave our solar system now after thirty years countinous travel.

it is New Year’s Eve today and i am not sure what to expect from 2008. maybe i should put it in a B5 like phrase: i want to find something worth living for because nothing is the same anymore.

finally, “heroes” is back! the second season premiere started out as compelling as the very first episode, if not more so! the ongoing story is advanced, we meet familiar characters and new faces. i like it how the show gets away with a huge cast and so many simultaneous storylines that are all connected.  i really don’t want to spoiler here, so go and watch it, it’s highly recommendable!

i haven’t watched the first episode of the forth season of “house” yet, since i am still catching up with seasons 2 and 3. although it is not strictly required to watch the episodes in a chronological order, it surely enhances the overall experience.

we’ll have to wait until january 2008 for the seventh season of “24″. after a horrendous season 6 (at least in my opinion, although i recently read somewhere it isn’t that bad when you watch all episodes in a row and not with several week long breaks inbetween), i do not get my hopes up. still, i am curious how jack bauer is going to save yet another day and if the writers can “save” the show from its current dive.

in the late 1990s and early 2000s i was watching quite a lot of television and among my favorite shows were medical dramas like Chicago Hope and ER. since 2004 i have been watching few selected shows (24, Alias, Frasier) on DVD only. there are various reasons i gave up on watching “real” tv like the annoying commericals and inconvenient scheduling. as far as the medical dramas mentioned are concerned, Chicago Hope’s last season was aired in the US in 2000 and ER just became boring with only one actor of the original cast remaining.

around the time i stopped watching television, a new show hit the screen: hailed as the “hottest” medical drama on current tv, “house, md”. i only became aware of it a few months ago and it took me a few episodes to get hooked. however, it is not your average medical show though. surely, it takes place in a hospital and there are doctors and conditions to be cured. the protagonist, dr. gregory house is a complete jerk, he is antisocial, up front honest and may come across even rude, but he is a diagnostic genius, one hell of a medical sherlock holmes. its a refreshing new take on the outworn medical drama concept. television will need to keep reinventing itself in order to ensure its future. i think this trend of coming up with something new and unprecedented started with “24″ and recently found a masterful execution in “Heroes”. with the fierce competition of the internet and online games, the traditional media like television would be in a deep crisis if it wasn’t for those fresh and hot shows that keep the audience interested. after all, we want to be entertained!

maybe the time has come for a new kind of “hero” to save the day? and that leads me directly to that fresh new show called “Heroes”. it is a bit more fictional than 24 (one could argue about that, Jack Bauer has some amazing abilities as well) and less focused on “likely scenarios” (like for example terrorism, international incidents and political string pulling behind the scenes) but provides the viewers with the feeling that there are heroes (ordinary people with extraordinary abilities) out there that can save not only the cheerleader but also the world. Heroes is a refreshing new take on the tv drama with a quite large cast and a huge story arch. i will definitely write more about this issue once i have caught up with the first season of Heroes.