Battlestar Galactica
As we move into the second half of the final season, will all really be revealed? Season Four has been good, definitely better than Season 3 (which IMO got bogged down by the Starbuck/Apollo “plot”), though the logic of the Final Five Minus One doesn’t make much sense.
— Returns Friday, Jan. 16 @ Sci Fi 10pm

Bones
I’m not the one watching this, but Katie’s still hooked, so I guess it’s still good.
— Returns Thursday, Jan. 29 @ Fox 8 pm

Fringe
We both gave up after something like 4 episodes. It seemed like they were trying too hard to be The X-Files, too focused on the conspiracy and everything fitting “the pattern” and being tied to work in this one lab…and then there’s the problem with not bothering to research the regular science or think through the consequences of the totally-made-up “fringe” stuff that gave the show its title. The only thing worth watching for was John Noble’s mad scientist, Walter Bishop.

Lost
After a couple of seasons of floundering, Lost came back very strongly last year. Having an end point to work toward certainly helped, as did opening up the format from present with flashbacks to present with both flashbacks and flashforwards. At first the flashbacks were great for showing what motivated the various characters, what brought them to the island, what issues they were still working through, etc. But after a while they started answering questions no one asked (“The secret of Jack’s tattoo!”) or re-treading old ground. Adding flashforwards to post-Island events really added to story possibilities, and they made thorough use of it.
— Returns Wednesday, Jan. 21 @ ABC 9pm

Heroes
Alternately fantastic and infuriating. I’ve gone into this recently, so I won’t repeat it here. That’s what links are for. With luck, Volume 4 will fall more on the fantastic side.
— Returns Monday, Feb. 2 @ NBC 9pm

Pushing Daisies
As good as ever. They managed to somehow maintain the tone while moving forward with character development and further exploring the consequences of Chuck’s resurrection.
— Sadly, canceled. Word is that ABC may show the last three episodes next summer. SUMMER. *grrr* Just show ’em in a 5am marathon so they can be released to iTunes, Amazon Video and DVD, willya?

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
This still hasn’t totally grabbed me the way Heroes or Pushing Daisies has, but it’s been an interesting, intricate take on the Terminator mythos. And oddly enough, I’m far more interested in the second half of this season than I am in the upcoming Terminator: Salvation movie. Sadly, Fox has moved it to the Timeslot of Death.
— Returns Friday, Feb. 13 @ Fox 8pm

Dollhouse
Not much to say about this one, since it hasn’t aired yet, but I’ll at least take a look at just about anything developed by Joss Whedon. Eliza Dushku and Amy Acker won’t hurt, either. Unfortunately, Fox has placed it in the Second Timeslot of Death, right after SCC
— Starts Friday, Feb. 13 @ Fox 9pm

(TV Guide via Blog@Newsarama)

I finally saw Terminator 3 this weekend, and something has been bothering me about the ending (aside from watching the end of the world).

Skynet’s a distributed system. Presumably its intelligence scales along with the number of nodes it has. Those nodes are computers all over the world. Those computers are most concentrated in major cities. Skynet launches a global nuclear attack on those major cities. That wipes out a huge percentage of its own computing nodes. It’s also going to take out huge chunks of the Internet’s infrastructure, leaving many of the remaining nodes disconnected from each other.

In its attempt to wipe out humans, Skynet gave itself a world-class lobotomy.

I don’t know about you, but that just doesn’t sound like a winning strategy to me.