Recently in Television Category

Jennifer recorded the Rockefeller Center tree-lighting special on TiVo; we were watching it last night. No, Jennifer & the kids were watching it: I was - mostly - reading the newspaper.

At one point, I looked up and saw a young woman in ridiculously baggy pants - she looked like she was wearing a codpiece - butchering Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree: flat, tuneless delivery, with occasional interludes of calisthenics that were probably intended to be dancing.

"Who is that? I asked.

"That's Miley Cyrus," Jennifer said.

"I thought she could sing," I said.

Jennifer tells me that the performances on this show were all faked: lip-syncing, unplugged guitars, etc., to a prerecorded soundtrack, because it's impossible to get good sound playing outdoors at Rockefeller Center.

They didn't get very good sound from Ms. Cyrus indoors, either.

(Are there any Rockefellers left, these days? And are any of them still involved with Rockefeller Center?)

Watching - with Jennifer, in the quiet hour between the kids' bedtime and our own - the first episode of Legend of the Seeker. Somehow I don't think we'll be watching the second episode.

It's very pretty, I suppose - filmed in New Zealand, just like The Lord of the Rings - but there isn't much of a story. It's just a bunch of stock fantasy-novel scenes & characters, slapped together without much regard for whether the result makes any sense.

And the extravagantly capitalized dialog - "I am the Confessor, I must give the Book to the Seeker." - is way over the top & really annoying.

Supposedly, Legend of the Seeker is based on a series of novels by Terry Goodkind. I've never read any of them, and am not motivated to start now.

Earlier in the month, Jennifer & I let the TiVo accumulate quite a backlog of shows. We're working through them, slowly, one or two shows per night.

Currently, we're watching:

• Eleventh Hour - A bit erratic, as if the writers & actors haven't quite figured out the characters yet. I predict swift cancellation for this one.
• Fringe - Strange. Uneven. But growing on me. The star - Anna Torv - has a squinty, bewildered look that is rather distracting.
• Heroes - Season three is better than season two, but not as good as season one.

TiVo says we have two episodes left - one each of Eleventh Hour and Fringe - and then we'll be caught up.

CNN tells me that Jericho, which was cancelled last May due to low ratings then - in response to viewer protests - brought back for a probationary seven-episode mini-season, has been cancelled again.

They just couldn't pull in the viewers, it seems.

I'm not surprised - the recent episodes seemed a bit unfocused, as if the writers had a bunch of interesting characters & scenes they wanted to get in, but didn't have a clear idea of how it all was going to fit together.

There's only one episode left; perhaps they'll manage to wrap everything up into an audience-satifying package, but I doubt it.

It's been years since these commercials were in heavy rotation on the Discovery Channel, but Jennifer & I still get a chuckle by saying, "Hello, meteor!" to each other.

...Heroes is getting interesting again.

Thoughts on tonight's episode of Heroes:

• I still don't like the Guatemalan Wonder Twins. I am impatient for Sylar to kill them.
• Adam is evil, but he will repent. (And then die, just like Darth Vader.)
• If Adam is immortal, does that mean Claire is immortal too?
• Bob is evil. (Just like in Twin Peaks. Perhaps it's a rule that all characters named 'Bob' must be evil.) He will turn out to have a boss who is even more evil, but he won't show up until season three.
• Mohinder worked with Claire's father - no, I will not call him HRG, thanks for asking - for eight episodes, trying to bring down the Company, and accomplished...nothing at all. That whole plotline was just dropped on the floor.
• At least we've left 17th-century Japan behind. I hope.
• I'm tired of Niki. Her story was the big clunker of season one, and she hasn't improved much in season two.

The writers' strike has put Heroes on hiatus: three more episodes, then it's rerun time. Perhaps Tim Kring will use the downtime to fix what's wrong with the show.

But will enough viewers come back, once the strike is over, to keep Heroes on the air?

• Maybe the Haitian is responsible for Peter's amnesia.
• The Guatemalan Wonder Twins are getting really tiresome.
• If "everything Isaac painted came true," as numerous characters keep saying, why is Sylar still alive?
• Looks like Engineered virus wipes out humanity is this season's crisis.
• The writers are starting to re-use super-powers: two flying people, two regenerating people, etc. Running out of ideas? Limited effects budget?
• I'm sure 17th-century Japan is a fascinating place. But what's it got to do with the rest of the show?
• I detect a certain X-Files odor clinging to The Company and The Organization. The writers really don't know where they're going with either of them, do they?

I imagine I'll keep watching, just to see if the writers manage to escape the (rather deep) hole they've dug for themselves. But this season isn't nearly as engaging as last season.

Lately I've been watching these shows:

• Ice Road Truckers, on the History Channel: lunatic truckers, driving the winter ice roads north out of Yellowknife.
• Burn Notice, on USA: spy gets fired, tries to find out why. (Sort of a backwards version of The Prisoner, which might explain its setting: Miami is just about as surreal as Portmeirion.)

Neither is particularly enlightening. They're just a bit of trashy fun.