I once wrote a column for Sidekick about how every show I liked to watch on TV was on Wednesdays, and like four of them were on Wednesdays at 9. This year I’ve dropped almost all of the shows I was watching last year, but there are four new shows I wanted to try out, and naturally, two of them are on Wednesdays at 8, and two of them are on Sundays at 8. Why do the networks continue to force me to make such tough choices? We must get a PVR pronto!
Anyway, my real point here is that two of the new shows have already started and they are really good, so I thought I’d recommend them. The first (Sundays at 8pm) is Jack and Bobby, a drama about two brothers and their single mom. Jack, the older brother, is in high school, and Bobby is in grade 8. The show follows their exploits, but the cool thing is that we know, via cuts to a documentary being made 40 years in the future, that Bobby will eventually become President of the United States. Each episode shows you an event from Jack and Bobby’s life, and parallels it with a future event being discussed in the documentary. It’s really well done — cool storylines well-told, and excellent, interesting characters. I highly recommend it. In two weeks, it’ll be on opposite Desperate Housewives, which I think has real potential to become the ultimate guilty pleasure, so I’m not sure what I’ll do with the VCR. Hopefully by the time Arrested Development debuts in the same time slot on November 7th, we’ll be in our new house with better recording facilities!
The other new show I’m already watching is Lost, which is one of the Wednesday at 8 shows (the other one, Veronica Mars, has also already debuted but it lost the VCR war). Lost is a little schlocky but I’m just loving it. It’s the story of about 50 people who survive a plane crash and find themselves stranded on a desert island. There’s the survival aspect, but almost as important, there’s something weird about their island — some enormous animal (or animals) are on the loose in the jungle. It’s totally addictive and even after just two episodes I can’t wait to see what happens next.
Other than Lost and Jack And Bobby, I’m only watching The Apprentice and The Amazing Race. Eventually I’ll add Arrested Development and The West Wing (although it’s on serious probation, especially because Jack and Bobby is similar and so much better), and hopefully Desperate Housewives if I can work out the taping.
Ah, TV, you are a good friend to the housebound nursing mother.
TurtleHead 
Hey, CBS had Amazing Race slotted for Saturdays at 8. Has race 6 started? I didn’t see it in the listings last Saturday.
According to Entertainment Weekly’s Fall TV preview issue, Season 6 was supposed to start this past Saturday (September 25th). But, it seems that it didn’t for some reason — it’s nowhere in our local listings, and the CBS website doesn’t have any information about the new season (teams, episode guide, etc).
CBS still shows it as being on Saturdays at 8 on their schedule, so maybe they are saving it now for later in the season. I guess we will just have to keep an eye out for it.
And speaking of The Amazing Race, how awesome was it that Colin and Christie did not win number 5? Man, that was a fantasy ending if ever there was one!
Apparently they are engaged now — man, do they ever deserve each other.
The SF Chronicle tv critic, Tim Goodman, also recommended Lost. I’ve been taping it, but haven’t had time to watch it yet. Today’s column recommends Desperate Housewives, too (now also set up to tape). You and Tim might be tv soulmates. He also touted Veronica Mars as a good show, so you might want to give that a try.
Actually, after I made that post I did some research and it turns out I can’t actually watch Veronica Mars up here at all! It’s a UPN show, and in Canada we don’t get UPN as a network on cable, so we have to rely on local unaffiliated stations to pick up individual shows, and no one picked up Veronica. So, it’s not an option — bad news! If it turns out to be a hit, it might get picked up for a summer run by a local station — that’s what happened to Monk.
In better news, however, our local affiliate will be carrying Desperate Housewives at 7pm on Sundays, so there’s no Jack and Bobby conflict — yay! Bring on the trash!