My Idol-Free Tuesday

Let's see, what happened in the world of television last night?  Was there anything possibly new, different, and/or interesting on the TV?  Hmmm…

Well, I know that I'd love to talk about Top Gear, I watched an episode last night, but it wasn't new, it was just sitting there on my TiVo, begging to be watched again.  Even so, as it wasn't new, let's pass on our usual Top Gear discussion, shall we?

I also watched a couple of episodes of Scrubs, those were both new.  I'm still up in the air on the J.D./Elliot relationship.  The two certainly have a long history, and one of last night's episodes delved into the possibility of the two of them rekindling their romance, but I don't know if that's the sort of thing that I'd like to see happen.

You may recall that one of the overarching plots of last season, and certainly how NBC promoted the "final" season, was the question of J.D./Elliot romance.  Of course, that whole thing never got resolved due to the pesky WGA strike (not that the writers or their strike was pesky, the pesky bit was it cutting short the television season, they had very good reasons to strike). 

The question wasn't touched for the first two episodes of this new season, which made me wonder if on ABC the show was going to head in a slightly different direction.  Last night however, the romance question was back with a vengeance.  It's still unclear if J.D. and Elliot will be together by the end of the series, but it definitely looks like they're going to make another go of it.

Separately, I did think it odd that Turk didn't appear in the first episode last night.  They mentioned him, J.D. certainly had thoughts about him, but he himself didn't appear.  No one acknowledged that he wasn't there, but he wasn't.  I'm not saying that it portends anything, just that it was odd, I can't immediately recall another episode without Turk, though it's certainly possible that it happened.

Anyway, off of Scrubs and back to new and different things that were on TV last night.  My television definitely showed the first episode of The Beast, the new Patrick Swayze A&E drama.  Swayze plays this possibly rogue undercover cop, Charles Barker, whose new partner, Ellis Dove (played by Travis Fimmel), is approached about squealing on Barker.  Okay, the approach is made at the end of the pilot, but as the entire show has been advertised as the rookie investigating the seasoned agent I don't feel like I'm giving anything away there.

Did I like it?  I did.  I found it fun watching Swayze in semi-bad guy mode, but still couldn't get out of my head that Newsweek article I mentioned the other day.  Quite obviously Barker is that morally ambiguous character Joshua Alston was writing about and I spent so much time while watching the pilot thinking about that.  Barker isn't drawn any differently (at least in the pilot) from the basic Vic Mackey mold.  That's problematic for the series, particularly when The Shield was so well publicized and liked.  Still, Swayze nostalgia could help boost The Beast. 

Other new shows… I also watched Leverage, but we've talked about it a lot lately, so I'll take a week off from that.  And, that's about it.  I watched nothing else, fully a quarter of televisions on between 8 and 10pm were turned to FOX, but not mine.