This summer spotty internet access and a new DVR have gotten me to watch a lot of new shows. Here is a rundown of some of my current favorites.
Reality Shows:
I never really thought of myself as someone who liked reality shows. Besides watching Dancing with the Stars with my mom, I tried to avoid them. This summer those tricky buggers seeped into my life and I got hooked. And not just watching them regularly hooked, I mean yelling at the television, stomach in knots over who gets kicked off hooked.
Who wants to be a Superhero?: I didn't know what to expect when I tuned into Sci-Fi for this Stan Lee reality show, but it's probably one of the best ones out there. A group of Superhero hopefuls, in homemade outfits, compete to win their own comic book and a Sci-Fi movie made about their character. The challenges they face are either deceptively easy or seriously scary. In the very first episode they were told to do a quick change in public without being seen and try and cross the finish line with the best time. What they didn't know was that there was a little girl crying out for help right near the finish line, and the real challenge was to help her. Yeah, more than a few ran right by her.
A couple weeks ago they got suited up in body armor and had to fight off two very real attack dogs. Last week they had to go out in their outfits and order a takeout lunch, which doesn't seem very hard, until we find out that the waiters are plants. Each superhero was asked what their real name was and most forgot that Stan has a huge rule about never revealing your secret identity. It's the twists that really make this show excellent. After they kicked off a hopeful who was a real jerk, Stan turned around and made him the show's supervillain! My absolute favorite hero is Major Victory, who is both charming and funny and sometimes breaks into superhero poses.
Project Runway: Everyone online was talking about how great the show is but I never really got it. Then Bravo ran a marathon of episodes last week and now I'm excitedly waiting the next installment. Most all of the fashion design hopefuls have some sort of personality clash or weird quirk. Seriously, can Angela just quit with the rosettes already?
Personally, I just love critiquing the outfits and guessing who the judges will pick as the winner. The episode where they modernized the style of a fashion icon (like Jackie O. Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, or Pam Greer) really wowed me. Who knew hot pants could look so good?
DesignStar: Pretty much the same format as Project Runway, but with designers of rooms competing to win their own show on HGTV. Every week someone really surprises me, usually with an out of left field genius design, but sometimes just by glaring mistakes made. In this show I really pick favorites and people to hate.
My initial favorite was cute Vanessa because of the great orange and brown bedroom. But she choked when she had to do a room on her own (repeat after me: "a hairdryer is not good wall art"). Temple really stepped up when she was finally on her own by decorating an awesome room out of auto parts, but she was a really disorganized leader in the next challenge. My new favorite is David, the hot artist guy. Sure his designs have been uber phenomenal (he made hamster balls look like excellent decorative accents), but he spends half the show with his shirt off. One word: Freckles.
The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency: This is by no means a good show. I think Janice probably has some sort of chemical imbalance in her brain that makes her act like a psycho egomaniac. But this show, even a little more than Top Model, shows exactly what the modeling industry is like because nothing is fair. At least on Top Model the girls get a challenge every week, but on JD one minute someone wants to fire you and the next they say you did an awesome job.
Oxygen was running a marathon the other day and it was like watching a train wreck, albeit a familiar one. Trying to teach young models runway walking, yelling at them about their hair or cuticles, pressuring them to lose more and more weight. It's crazy, it's the business, and it's real.
America's Got Talent: This show is probably my guilty pleasure. I don't really want to admit that I like it, but I still watch it every week. It's got everything from acrobats, little girls that sing or yodel, Asian-American acapella, clog dancing, Rapping Granny and more! This week is the season finale and I really hope some of my favorites do well.
Last Comic Standing: This show ended last week, but it was a very entertaining ride. Some of the funniest people got knocked out unexpectedly and some unexpected people really did well. I'm sure Bravo will be showing reruns sometime soon and you can catch my favorites online: Roz, who has a big attitude to go with her hilarious delivery; Gabriel, the guy who could have won it all if he hadn't got kicked off for using a BlackBerry; Chris, the love child Willy Wonka and Cosmo Kramer; Josh, the guy who makes it ok to laugh at cerebral palsy.
Quirky Shows:
Summer is a great time for fun quirky shows. So pull up a big comfy chair and save the drama for the fall line up.
Eureka: Just when I had given up on shows with fresh concepts, along comes Eureka, a Sci-Fi show which enters on a town where all the government's top scientist and researchers live and work. The town sheriff investigates whenever something odd happens. He's no rocket scientist, but he's good at his job keeping a keen eye out and connecting the dots. The show opened to the highest ratings ever for a Sci-Fi show premiere.
The casting director for Eureka did an excellent job because I can just look at each actor and figure out which character archetype they represent. The hero has an honest smile, bright clear eyes, and a slightly chiseled jaw. The secretly evil character has angular eyes, sharp cheekbones, and a smirk. Check it out and see if you can tell who's who.
Psych: The USA network really produces some great characters. Psych is about a fun, flirty, but irresponsible guy who has a skill for remembering what he sees, almost like a modern Sherlock Holmes. He calls in tips to the police for rewards, but they start getting suspicious when he knows so much about crimes. So, he says he's psychic and is suddenly allowed to work on big cases that stump the police. It's just plain fun and comes on right after Monk. They are also showing some episodes on broadcast TV but I'm sure they'll stop soon hoping to get people to buy cable.
Life on Mars: Sometimes I'm really disappointed by what makes it on to the BBC, since they have some pretty great shows over there. Luckily Life on Mars is a winner. Sam Tyler is a modern day police detective that gets hit by a car while working on a case. When he wakes up, he's in 1973. Is he in a coma, is he crazy, or did he really time travel? The funny thing is, that's barely important. The best thing about this show is showing how a modern day guy has to deal with the 1970's. His new partners at the police station think nothing of beating up suspects, planting evidence, or leaving a stakeout to grab a pint at the pub. The show has a crime every week and the leading guy is really intriguing. Oh yeah, and sometimes there is a creepy little girl with a clown that talks to Sam in his sleep...
Cartoons:
Cartoons are great because you don't have to catch them from the first episode. Everything you need to know is encapsulated in a 30 second intro with a catchy song. None of my top picks are new, but I love them anyway.
Kim Possible: I consider KP to be a classic in the making (and I own a posable Kim doll). Basically a cute redhead cheerleader and her dorky best friend are action heroes who regularly save the world. There are classic evil supervillians who continually try to dominate the world with far fetched plans.
I just got to watch the Kim Possible Movie, A Sitch' in Time, where a time travel monkey idol lets us see how KP accidentally got into regularly saving the day. She just set up a website for babysitting with the slogan "Kim Possible can do anything" and someone in need typed in her address by mistake and called her into help. Her only real skill was being a good acrobatic cheerleader, but it was just what the sitch called for (with all the cris-crossed lasers). Also, seeing an alternate future where all her friends fight an evil dictator and get pretty buff in the process was also fun. KP reruns many times a day on the Disney Channel. And there is also a hairless mole rat named Rufus who is a cute and useful sidekick.
Danny Phantom: I never got into Nickelodeon until I caught an episode of Danny Phantom, a kid who got turned half ghost in an odd accident. The show focuses on Danny and his friends fighting ghosts while clueless adults muck around. His parents call themselves ghost hunters long before they have proof that ghosts even exist. They are responsible for Danny's accident by making a faulty ghost portal. Danny can fly, turn invisible, walk through walls, and take over other people's bodies. It's the usual High School Supernatural comedy that I'm a sucker for (also with a great episode involving an alternate dystopian future). Unfortunately Danny is on his last legs and will be cancelled early next year, so I'm catching all the episodes I can now.
Samurai Champloo: Being without cable for many years I totally missed this show's first run on Cartoon network. It's an excellent anime starring a ronin, a girl, and a vagabond trying to get by in Edo period Japan. The cartoon mixes old Japan with hip-hop music and fresh fighting styles. What I really like about this cartoon is how historically accurate it is for an anime. A lot of the issues that the trio deal with were real social problems happening in Edo Japan. Reruns air on Sunday night on Cartoon Network.
Hopefully all these fun shows will fill the entertainment void until the new fall season starts. I'm really looking forward to the return of Bones, Grey's Anatomy, and Dancing with the Stars. I hoping to be pleasantly surprised by some new shows as well, including Heroes, Disney Channel's The Replacements, Nickelodeon's Kappa Mikey, and Spike TV's Afro Samurai.
Oh crap, I just spilled some of my chai latte on my surge protector! I unplugged it immediately when it started making a crackling sound, but now I'm running on battery power. I hope I didn't do any permanent damage. Maybe I'll just go watch some tv...
I've been told the photo on my main page makes me look like the girl from Night of the Living Dead (which is what I get for trying to go arty with a black and white photo). It's been a slow summer, and before the big fall schedule started up I thought I would take a quick look at the rising menace of zombies. 
Another terrific online zombie find is the flash cartoon Xombified about a good zombie named Dirge who is helping a lost little girl named Zoe get back to the last human city when she mysteriously ends up in the zombie infested outside world. I really like the pairing of the characters and the storyline. There is even a zombie dog. Check out the first seven episodes and you'll be dying (oh man sorry, I was hoping I would get through this article without an unintended pun) for the exciting conclusion.
For a little more gore check out Ross Campbell's The Abandoned, a graphic novel in which everyone over the age of 23 mysteriously dies and then rises from the dead. All the young characters must run for their lives and fight of their parents and the other elderly zombies. Uniquely, this story is drawn in black, white, and red. Tokyopop has the first volume up for online viewing.
Another April Fool's article used a picture of Sam, a three time champion of the World's Ugliest Dog contest, to espouse the discovery of zombie dogs. I'm sure zombie paranoia is felt by others, including Largo from the webcomic Megatokyo (he once mistook ravers for zombies) and songwriter Jonathan Coulton (who's song Re: Your Brains is mildly hilarious), and the cult classic will stay alive and well (oh damn, another one!) until at least 2012.