Would you believe it if I told you that Disney has recently rolled out the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers again and they’re treating it like it’s a new series? Yeah, the same one with Jason, Tommy, and the Puddy Patrol from 1993. Yes, it’s the same exact show. It has now started it’s second run Saturday mornings on ABC, along with a brand new toy line with the classic heroes. ABC has even put a spin on it “claiming” that the evil Rita Repulsa has gone back in time to destroy the original Power Rangers. Don’t believe me? Here’s a clip.

When it first came out, Power Rangers was a strange beast. In an era dominated by animated programming for children, Saban Entertainment rolled out a live action show that managed to merge Saved By the Bell and the Ninja Turtles by combining footage from Japanese sentai shows (Power Ranger shows that already existed) with their own unique live action sequences on a shoe string budget. Essentially, whenever you saw the teens walking around you were watching footage made in America, but the moment they morphed and the shit hit the fan, you were watching a Japanese television show. Needless to say, this somehow became an enormous hit that has had a new seasons for the last 17 years. While the hype may have died, Power Rangers never really did. Though with all that hype came the inevitable rip offs, and god were they freaking terrible.

Since Saban was making money hand over fist with Power Rangers, they obviously wanted to expand their brand further and make more shows just like Power Rangers. The first of which was VR Troopers, which of all the Power Ranger clones was probably the least offensive even if it did star a talking dog named Jeb. Jeb was obviously supposed to sound like Jack Nicholson, and I really don’t know what they were thinking there. The bad guy also reminds me of Dennis Hopper acting like King Koopa from the Mario movie. Such inspiration!

Being a ‘real life’ grave digger, I am exposed to death on a daily basis. Unfortunately, I have never experienced the paranormal first hand and you think I would have at least once working at a cemetery, which makes me a bit of a skeptic.
 
On the other hand, there’s always that question; do ghosts really exists? Let’s face it, there are strange, unexplainable anomalies that have happened to all of us at one time or another. Wouldn’t it be nice to find out the truth once and for all?
 
That’s where the Ghost Hunters (aka The Atlantic Paranormal Society, or TAPS for short) come in. In case you’re unfamiliar, these guys go around and hunt down ghosts like real life Ghostbusters… but without the proton packs
 
They have an array of high tech gadgets like night vision and heat sensitive cameras, pocket sized digital recorders and devices that measure electromagnetic fields to help them find, record and possibly contact entities.
 
Since the premiere in 2004, my wife and I have been attached to this show because of it’s slightly different approach to ghost hunting. Instead of just labeling a house as ‘haunted’ or ‘not haunted’ or jumping the gun and thinking every sound heard during an investigation is infact a ‘ghost’, TAPS tackles every one of their investigations by first finding out their client’s haunted claims and then during the investigation discover whether or not they can validate or disprove those claims. For example, the client may say that their floor creaks like someone is walking around right next to them, but then TAPS may discover that it’s just the fat guy who lives in the attic, thus disproving the client’s claim.

 The Ghost Hunters is now one of the most popular shows on the Sci-Fi network because of their hunting techniques and honest personalities, which I believed was a well deserved achievement. However, most recent events led me to believe that this show is actually no different from any other show on television… for entertainment purposes only. The reason for this? Show me a ghost.

In 5 years, we have yet to see a full body apparition. Yeah, shadows are nice to see when they happen, but they are few and far between. The thermal imaging camera may pick up wandering souls from time to time as well, but can’t those be disproved as well?

I was flipping through the channels tonight and I came across The Critic. I remember really liking it when it first aired in 1994, but alas I was clearly one of the few who did. It did not last too long on broadcast TV.

When looking at it’s credits, it is hard to believe that this show could fail at all. The Critic follows a down on his luck, dumpy, and fictious movie critic who is voiced by John Lovitz. The show lampooned then-current movies, and was way more clever than that other pop-culture laden animated sitcom, Family Guy, in this department. This is because it has a veritable army of comic writters and animators behind it. Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, Superbad) served as a Consulting Producer and Brad Bird (Iron Giant, Ratatouillie) as another creative consultant. Phil Roman handled animation production, and the theme was handled by Hans Zimmer. Well, I know that there’s a lot of “executive” and “consultant” titles being thrown around there, but the fact is that all of these names listed have gone on to do really great things. What could have went wrong?

The Critic had a short life span of only 23 episodes, and apparently was switched mid-season from ABC to FOX. If there’s anything that’s going to kill off a new show, its yanking its plug out of its socket and trying to plug it back into another outlet. It’s a no-brainer that The Critic was destined to fail with that type ill management.

This weekend saw the return of an old friend of mine: Jack Bauer. Last year, “24” was a victim of the writer’s strike and it did not return to TV for its seventh season until now. I think many, myself included, probably welcomed a break from “24” as its sixth season was some what of a let down. The problem with “24” is that you begin to question everything you see and hear which instantly means whatever the characters are saying you should probably expect the exact opposite. After a solid five seasons, the show began to sag under its own self imposed restriction of a twenty-four hour plot line and was a casualty of its own twisting narrative.

 However, if there is one thing that I think I can never get enough of its watching Jack Bauer running around from terrorists, cops, security guards, and other government agents while yelling over the phone to Chloe. It was rumored that Keifer Sutherland wanted to put more focus on the supporting characters and put less of the spot light on Jack last season. I think this hurt last season, because except for maybe Silver Spoons I found none of the other characters all that interesting. While the fact that there is always going to be an undercover mole tipping someone off, for some reason watching Jack running and gunning never gets old for me, and last season just didn’t have enough of that.

Yesterday Frank informed me that G4 has a new show on called “Unbeatable Banzuke.” The show is from Japan, and it has been brought here from the same studio that has brought us “Ninja Warrior.” I checked G4’s schedule and saw the show was coming on at 9pm, and I couldn’t wait to check it out.

Meanwhile, the new “Knight Rider” was set to premier last night at 9pm as well. The trouble here is that my wife wanted to watch Knight Rider because she was a fan of the original series. Since I’m always forcing her to watch shows I like, I decided not to argue about it and reluctantly put on Knight Rider.

Knight Rider begins with some old dude who gets held up by a couple of bad guys. They search his house, which is full of crazy robotics and more computer monitors than BestBuy, when they come across KITT, a brand new Ford Mustang Shelby GT 500KR with a mind of its own. Because KITT is self aware, he senses trouble and drives out of the place. The bad guys shoot KITT, and as the bullets hit the car we get slow mo shots of the car either healing from the bullets that hit or deflecting the bullets. I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking at actually. I just know that bullets don’t work on KITT.

We than meet the new Hasselhoff of the show, Michael, who is seen in bed with some hot woman. His buddy comes in to bother him, and while he’s doing this another scantily clad woman jumps into bed with him. Because it was revealed this guy had a threesome in the first minute he’s on screen, we’re supposed to think that Michael is the man, but he’s really just a bad actor. Then it cuts to a much needed commercial.

Tonight marks the return of one of the greatest television shows of all time, Lost. It has been on hiatus for 8 months. EIGHT STINKIN MONTHS! That’s longer than my other favorite show, 24, takes a break. Anyway, most of the world knows there’s a writer’s strike STILL going on so all script writing has come to a halt. Most shows were seriously affected by this and could not complete filming full seasons. Last year Lost announced they set a date when the series would end. The plan was for 3 more 16-episode seasons. 2008 was supposed to bring us the first of those three final seasons. Well that was ruined by the strike. Now the fans only get 8 episodes in Season 4. But for diehard Lost fans like myself, its still better than nothing.

So what’s the point of this? Nothing really.
I’m just extremely pumped to see new episodes of Lost. Last year’s season finale might have been the greatest plot twist of any television show I have ever seen. I’ll just go out a limb and say it was the best season finale OF ALL TIME!! It totally opened the door for millions of new stories and possibilities with the characters. Dr. Jack Shepherd is determined to save these people. He’s obsessed with it. I don’t care if they reveal 50 more unanswered questions because I’m just along for the ride. I know all will be answered in years to come. Tonight at 8PM EST on ABC we get a total series recap. Then at 9PM EST we find out the next chapter in the Survivors’ story.

So the new show on NBC right now is this POS called Chuck. I gave it a shot last week because, hey, why not, right? I was open to something new so I gave Chuck a shot. Let me save you the trouble of actually seeing it yourself and just tell you flat out its terrible. Its about this guy who works in the…tech support department (?) of a fictional electronics store. Somehow, he downloads a bunch of top secret stuff to his brain, and now the government is keeping tabs on him while he manages to save the day with that lethal combination of nerdom and confidential information. His relationship with the one hot CIA agent is so forced its beyond ludicrous as the show attempts to straddle the line between a comedy and a drama. It fails on both fronts if you ask me.

Anywho, I think its painfully obvious that the suits at NBC were like “hmm, we already have The Office which is totally kicking ass…I know! Let’s get a guy and make him up like that Jim Halpert!” So here you go:

We Jack Bauer fans have a lot of waiting to do over the next few months. Okay, so this past season of 24 certainly wasn’t the finest in the series, but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss spending Monday nights with my favorite CTU agents.

That said there is a whole world of 24 out there, including plenty of ways to spend time with Jack while we wait for Day 7 to arrive in January. You might be surprised by the amount of options, ranging from books to video games. Take a look.

24: Declassified Books

With the release of the new theatrical Ninja Turtle movie, simply titled TMNT, I feel it’s time to take a moment to share a little retrospective of my favorite green machines. When I hear the words “Ninja Turtles” I can’t help but think back to my youth, the days when Turtle Power meant something, and when saying “radical” was acceptable, and cool.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw the Ninja Turtles; I hated them. My memory is a little fuzzy, but I remember a kid in my class brought the toys into school one day. A friend of mine and I were playing around with them when we decided that they were “stupid,” and proceeded to act like assholes and tear off their heads (that was when they had the soft heads). Immediately we realized we did bad and tried to reattach the heads, but failed. So we left them in a corner and probably went and ruined something else instead. Youths… a bunch of assholes.

However, I suppose the memory of tearing their heads off never left me. Not much later I remember going shopping with my Mom for a day, and I spotted a copy of the cartoon series on VHS. After a bit of begging, my Mom rented the tape for me, and from that moment on, I was a Turtle fan for life.

I watch a lot of TV. Over the last couple years, I picked up a few new shows like 24, Lost, Heroes, The Office, My Name Is Earl, and some others. One show I have never had an interest in is HOUSE. HOUSE stars Hugh Laurie as Dr. HOUSE who specializes in the weirdest of cases. Now, I know how people can counterpoint my point, because I never actually watched an episode of HOUSE. I base all my opinions on seeing the promos on Fox. Somehow over the course of 3 seasons, HOUSE continually faces his biggest challenge yet every single week. Just when you think HOUSE might get a case he is comfortable taking care of in no time, YOU’RE WRONG!!! IT’S HIS BIGGEST CHALLENGE YET!!! WILL HOUSE BE ABLE TO OVERCOME HIS DEMONS TO CURE THIS SMALL CHILD THAT CAME IN WITH A SNEEZE BUT NOW HAS…… CANCER IN THE LIVER!!! Stay Tuned for an all new HOUSE, M.D.!!!!

I was never a fan of hospital shows. I don’t like ER, Grey’s Anatomy, Scrubs, or any of those other cookie cutter drama/comedy hits… or Dramadies as people say. But just because I don’t like them, doesn’t mean I hate them. I can honestly say I hate HOUSE. In fact, I just hate seeing his smug face on my television screen while I am waiting for Jack Bauer to come back on and cut someone’s finger off. ON AN ALL NEW HOUSE!!! HOUSE DEFIES AUTHORITY AND FACES HIS BIGGEST CHALLENGE YET WHEN HE MUST OPERATE ON A BOY WHO CAME IN WITH A BLOODY NOSE AND NOW HAS…… AIDS!!! Stay Tuned for an all new HOUSE, M.D.!!!!