Autumn is coming and a new season of fantabulous TV entertainment is about to start in the USA. This previous weekend I woke up to realize that the internet is filled to brimming with so-called “preairs”. These are as yet unaired episodes of new series, and I’m betting some of them have been intentionally leaked.
I spent some minutes rummaging round the old leeching grounds and found quite a number of preairs:
- Bionic Woman
- Pushing Daisies
- Brotherhood (season 2)
- Sarah Connor Chronicles
- The Big Bang Theory
- Dexter (season 2)
- Weeds (season 3)
- Aliens in America
- Nikki and Nora
- Lipstick Jungle
- Californication
- Chuck
- Cane
- Cavemen
- Reaper
Well, since the studios were kind enough to leak some of this stuff, I had no choice but to oblige them by downloading some episodes. First up was Bionic Woman, a remake of the 1976 show starring Lindsay Wagner as Jaime Sommers, who receives bionic replacements after a skydiving accident. This remake is spearheaded by David Eick, who is partly responsible for the much touted remake of Battlestar Galactica.
The episode I found lying around was clearly a workprint. Some of the FX sequences were unfinished and there was some copyright-y notice on screen the entire time. Funnily enough the notice also contains the letters “DE”. Perhaps this leak came from David Eick himself?
Well, he shouldn’t have bothered. I couldn’t even finish the damn episode. When a pissed-off Jaime Sommers squares off with the guy who’s responsible for her slowly-awakening new powers, I was already expecting the worst. Yeah, after a 20-second conversation they end up in bed – and I hammered the STOP-button.
To wash some of the taste out of my mouth, I fired up the first episode (not a preair, actually) of The Company. It’s a miniseries consisting of three 2-hour episodes shown on TNT, produced by Ridley and Tony Scott, and starring Alfred Molina, Chris O’Donnell and Michael Keaton. ‘The Company’ refers to CIA and the story takes place during the Cold War. Molina and O’Donnell are spies, gathering information in East Berlin.
After a rather slow first hour things started really heating up. Double agents, KGB and moles in positions of power, oh my! I guess I’m a sucker for spy stories, because this one really piqued my interest. Episode two was aired yesterday and I simply can’t wait to… uh, acquire it as soon as possible.
By this time it was already really, really late, but I couldn’t retire for the night before taking a peek at the pilot episode of Sarah Connor Chronicles. I skipped around the episode, seeing only glimpses of it. Looks like plenty of action… and hey, it’s that girl from Firefly/Serenity! Any show with her in it gets my vote.
More on Sarah Connor and the rest of the new pilots once I find the time.
SCC fails in the one aspect it really ought to shine in – action. Okay, the bar has been set pretty high by Jim Cameron, and I wasn’t expecting to see the series reach his level, but it’s still a disappointment. Plotwise the taste was rather yummy.