Television
The new TV season has started. There's not a lot of TV programs I'm interested in, but there are enough.

Wednesday night is Smallville and Angel.

Smallville was really good for the first season but was so-so last season. A few episodes, like the one with Christopher Reeve, rocked. The majority of the episodes were lame. Still, I like of lot of the stuff they are doing with the Superman mythos. I'm sure many other Superman fans hate it and I can easily see why they would, but I think it's a lot of fun and plays with one of my favorite "what-ifs" of the Superman story. "What if Jor-El (Superman's Kryptonian father) was a real bastard?" The season premiere was pretty good (I thought), although the red K, bad boy Clark is getting really old. As has been the case since the beginning of the series, I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with Lex. Also, they introduced Morgan Edge in the premiere andin an excellent bit of casting, had him played by Rutger Hauer.

The Angel premiere was great. Carla and I didn't watch Angel last season, although several friends of told us that it was terrific. We're just following Spike over to Angel, but I really liked the theme of the episode (and apparently the season) as the crew of Angel deal with being given control of Wolfram & Hart, the evil law firm that has been the main source of evil in L.A.. Can they make W&H a force for good in L.A. or will the law firm corrupt them? The premiere only had Spike in the last couple seconds, but it was a great entrance. I really liked the character of Eve, the Wolfram & Hart employee that is obviously there to corrupt the team (and has already turned Gunn into the most evil, soulless thing imaginable).

Since I work Wednesday nights, I'm having to watch these shows on tape. Carla and I went out and bought a Super VHS recorder so I can get better copies than the ones I was getting from the crappy old VCR. (The VCR I was using was a 4-head that Carla and I bought a few years back. It was the cheapest one we could find and the recordings showed that.) SVHS is great. The recordings are almost as good as watching the tv live.

There aren't many other shows on that interest me. I may start watching Gilmore Girls now that it is doesn't conflict with Buffy. I like the episodes I've seen before, but I'm not sure if that's a show I'd schedule myself to watch. I've been wanting to start watching West Wing for a while now, but it conflicts with Angel, so no West Wing.

I watched the Tarzan premiere last night. I missed a good chunk of it because of being paged for a work issue, but what I saw looked really promising. It looked better than Smallville has been lately, at least.