The Mentalist is a new show on CBS, the pilot episode debuted a couple days ago.  It’s about a guy whose observational skills are so sharp that people would assume he’s a psychic if he let them.  He used to make money doing John Edward (biggest douche in the universe) style shows, now he works with the police to investigate serious crimes.  Apparently there’s a show on the USA network with a similar premise called Psych, but I’m assuming that show is terrible because.. it’s on the USA network.  And also its website shows that it’s really wacky.  The Mentalist is not wacky.  It’s a funny show, but the humor mostly comes from the main character being a dick.  Kind of like House.  Actually everything I said about House yesterday probably will apply to this show as well.  Of course only one episode has aired so far and I could just as easily see this show being softened to appeal to a bigger audience if it doesn’t do well at first (or if the writers get sappy/lazy which is probably more likely).

10/3 Update:

Episode two was pretty mediocre.  I still laughed at a couple of the being-a-dick moments but overall the concept of the show is too stupid and the writing is not good.  I doubt I’ll watch any more episodes of this show.

I downloaded The Fall on a whim.  Never heard of it before, but it was in the HD section of my movie download source and it has a pretty good rating on IMDb so I figured I’d give it a shot.  Usually when I do this I watch about 5 minutes of the movie before deciding there’s a good reason I never heard of it because it sucks.  However the first opening credit at the start of The Fall is “David Fincher and Spike Jonze present.”  Those are two guys whose work I really like, and though it’s not entirely unusual to see a well-known director/producer’s name slapped on the beginning of a movie for marketing purposes, it’s a little weird that these two guys who as far as I know never worked together share the credit.

Anyway, so I watched the whole thing.  And it’s pretty good.  Great locations and cinematography and costumes and those types of things that people don’t really care about but like to bring up when they can’t think of anything more meaningful to say.  It’s about this little girl in a hospital with a broken arm, and a silent film actor who was paralyzed from the waist down after performing a stunt involving a bridge and a horse (it’s set in the early 20th century).  It’s sort of set up like The Princess Bride, the dude is telling the little girl a story and we see it visualized as it would be in her imagination, intercut with some serious stuff happening in reality.  It’s a good story.

The little girl is not a very good actor but she does a good job of being a little girl.  Usually kid actors are at their most unlikable when they’re being very precocious and acting above their age.  This girl can not be accused of doing that, and as a result you end up feeling for her.  Apparently the writer/director/producer, a guy annoyingly credited by first name only (“Tarsem”), spent four years and millions of his own money to make this movie.  Watching the movie you definitely get a sense that this is one person’s vision put on film.  So if that’s interesting to you it’s probably worth seeing.

Heroes (still) blows.  That is all.

Ok here’s a little more.  The series of events in any particular plotline are almost always completely illogical.  The entire premise of the show is stupid.  The dialog is fucking awful.  The pseudo-science is insulting to intelligence.  I hate this show.  I think I gave up on it sometime last season, but I was bored enough to download the premiere of season 3.  I’m pretty sure I’ll never be bored enough to watch another episode.

I enjoy House.  He’s a sarcastic ass that hates everyone, it’s easy to relate to.  The whole medical show angle is a means to an end, I don’t give a shit about what is wrong with the patient in any particular episode.  Which is fortunate because often times the storyline of an episode is a mess and the editing is sloppy, if I cared about the stories those might be real problems.  The show is about House being an antisocial douche, TV rarely has characters like this.  And it’s very rare that he does anything sitcom-y or out of character, they stick to their guns past the point of uncomfortable.  It’s great.