JDB get a new house!

It’s finally time to reveal the secret we’ve been working on for the past couple of weeks.  We’ve got New House!  Yay!

Wait.  Did I say new house?  I meant A NEW HOUSE.  Jerk and DoubleBitch have moved into a very spacious and beautiful new Dot-Com!

http://JerkDoubleBitch.com

Is where you will find all our new updates as well as all the content you’ve loved from here!  All the same old JDB you know and love at a new shorter easier to remember URL!

We’ve got lots of great things coming up in the next few weeks as the Fall TV season gears up and some of the summer shows wind down.  So for more content on shows you love be sure to check out the new site and update your bookmarks.  Again that’s jerkdoublebitch.com

Much Love,

-Jerk & DoubleBitch

We’re now a third of the way through the second season of Leverage, seems like we’re due for some postness on the subject.

One of the reasons why we haven’t said much about the season is honestly, we’ve been a bit disappointed. While its been by no means bad, this season hasn’t been as amazing as the first (though I’d say 203 was very close to the first season’s quality). I’m hoping with 205 is where the second season hit its stride, because finally we got an episode that rivaled those of the first season.

I’ve got a theory about the drop in quality this season has had to date: on one hand the show’s early return meant the writer’s had less time to spend crafting this season than is normal. Add to this the fact that running thread for the second season of the gang making mistakes and screwing up which contrasts with what fans had come to expect from the show, and I can see why it took a bit for the fans and the writers to see the second season in the same light.

Back to the most recent ep, The Three Days of the Hunter Job. Along with being very sharp, letting the cast change things up a bit, and just generally rocking, this episode also ended really well. Leverage has often had a problem with odd endings, like Dean Deviln’s credit hits the screen either too early or to late during that final scene. I’ve found the second season has been even worse for this than the first, but 205 ended with a really nice moment between Nate and Sophie (who was far, far better this week. With episode 204 I found myself starting to really dislike Sophie, but now I’m feeling better about her). This scene carried on exactly long enough, and gave some great characterization for both of them.

Of course the show had to hit its stride with just two more episodes before the big mid-season break…

-Jerk

By the time I got through last week’s ep of True Blood, I’d completely forgotten about the bit with the Fellowship of the Sun’s anti-vampire boardgames. The first game Sookie picks up, Jesus Christ Vampire Exterminator seems like a pretty clear homage to one of my favourite Canadian indie films (and probably the most obscure thing I own on DVD), Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter:

I was still in the process of…. uh, manly-squeeing over this and so I almost missed the next, even cooler reference. I actually had to pause the ep and go back just to make sure I’d seen what I thought I’d seen, and sure enough I had. Check it:

That’s right, the drawing on the cover of The Send ‘Em Back to Hell Game is of none other than Kiefer Sutherland’s David from The Lost Boys! Yes, I’m that good at noticing Kiefer.

-Jerk

But they DO get together to talk about the most recent episodes of True Blood.

This past week I had the pleasure of taking part in The Televixen’s True Blood Podcast.  We had a lot of fun talking about what’s up with Maryann, the mental stability of Sarah and Bill’s new babysitter.

Be sure to check that out over at thetelevixen.com

And you can see some of our new friends in the blogroll on the sidebar or follow them via twitter:

@thetelevixen
@fancyfembot
@HiDarby
and Adam from @TVdoneWright

-DoubleBitch

Well it’s August now, and while we’ve been enjoying our Leverage and True Blood, the wait while most of our shows are off for the summer is now, give or take, halfway over. For me, I always find that how I’d rank the shows I watch changes while they aren’t on. Some shows I just can’t wait to see back, while with others I find myself not caring if I see them again. Does this happen to you guys too?

It’s interesting, because it’s some strange x-factor that decides this. It isn’t my very favourite shows that I find myself craving because I’m confident they’ll be great. Conversely, the ones I find myself not caring about aren’t the ones I was disappointed in last year, because I’m excited to see if they can redeem themselves.

So what’s been improved by its absence? I’m really looking forward to more Dollhouse and 30 Rock. I honestly can’t say why I’m craving these shows so much more now, but I am. On the other hand, a few months without it and I really don’t care if I see a new Big Bang Theory again.

So, what shows has time effected for you? Or am I just weird?

-Jerk

Today I set out to continue a JDB tradition and start a new one.  While JDB Actor Bingo was a brilliant idea, it kinda fell apart on us.  Maybe it just wasn’t meant for this format but from it has sprung a new way for us to share awesome information with you guys that you might not be getting anywhere else.  In my last post I mentioned the Zombie Dad from Reaper.   He really stuck with me and today we’re going to learn more.

Andrew Airlie was born in EFFING SCOTLAND.  Would you have guessed that?  Me either.  Honestly, in his latest role I thought he was actually James Cameron for a few minutes there.  Despite his homeland he is considered a Canadian actor and his credits certainly reflect that as he pops up in almost every major show filmed in Vancouver.  The X-files, Smallville, Supernatural, E:FC, The L Word, the 4400 and of course our beloved Reaper.   He’s now staring as the man in charge on ABC’s Defying Gravity which is apparently more Canadian than I thought.  Filming in Vancouver, making use of many of BSG’s crew members, being produced by the Canadian Omni giant and featuring 10 out of 14 Canadian leads.  Interesting.

There’s not a whole lot out there on this guy but apparently you can friend him on Facebook!

It’s been bugging me all week, trying to figure out where I know him from but I’ve finally done it!  For a while I thought he was on Titanic or something but I was just picturing him captaining a ship! Which he did! but with much better results.  Andrew played Captain Ballard and Max’s father on Breaker High!  Woo! I feel so much better now.

Until Next Time,
-DoubleBitch

p.s. Feel Free to leave us suggestions or any of your ‘where do I know that guy from’ moments and we’ll see what we can dig up.

When I heard there would be a new show by the Grey’s people, in space.. with that guy from Office Space I cant say I was jumping for joy but I gave the first two episodes a shot this week anyway.  Defying Gravity makes me a little sad, a little mad and maybe has me hooked.

First off we’ve got people on some huge 6 year space mission which scares me a little that potentially no matter what they do they’ll see 6 seasons.  I like that the characters have all been given history together and we’re let in on a lot of it right off the bat.  There’s an excessive talk about babies for my liking but I’ll go with it.   So it’s kinda sexy people in space full of sexual tension and drama and space panic.  One thing space shows do better than anything else is instill fear among the viewers.  I think it’s the unknown but put someone in space with a dropping pressure suit or saying they might crash into something and I’m with you.  I’m on the edge of my seat.  Me and space have a love hate thing going like that.  Gets me every time.

I guess the biggest potential for lameness here is found in the thing they’re calling “Beta” “It” or whatever is in “pod 4″ oooohh not pod 4!  It’s basically this all knowing thing that is somehow making all the big choices.  It’s a bit like the hybrid on BSG that’s my guess.  But they’re trying to play it up.  This could be something cool or it could be the thing that makes this show go from believable to a standard sci-fi thing that somehow got onto primetime.

Maybe that’s what’s bothering me.  THIS makes it on primetime?  THIS makes it on ABC..  grumble grumble insert BSG Fangirl rant here.  I understand the only thing the two have in common is that it’s a space show but that’s the only reason anyone’s tuning in to begin with unless you’re a big fan of the zombie dad from Reaper, cause he’s pretty great.

This is the kinda show that sticks with you, you go away wondering about the characters and how all this is going to work out.  Maybe I’m just a sci-fi girl looking for something to fill the space void in my life but I think I’ll be kicking around for a while to see where this goes.

One tiny little issue, is it just me or does Zoe look about ready to be a grandma?  I’m all for unconventional beauty in the forefront of a show but there’s something about the casting of a few main characters that has me kinda iffy.

-DoubleBitch

There’s not that much in the way of showness news popping up, and coming up with postness for older series we’re watching can be difficult, so to break up the monotomy of posts on the same half-dozen shows this summer, we decided some lists were in order.

So here’s the first of our looks at what we consider to be truly shocking deaths. Maybe we were shocked by the suddenness of it, the impact their death will have on the show, or maybe we saw it coming but loved that character and how could they kill them, dammit!?!?! We decided to do multiple entries in this list showing all of the deaths on TV that have really shocked us, instead of trying to figure out which were the most shocking. So, join us after the jump for the first five entries on the list!

First up we have what’s always my go-to example of a shocking death (well, in TV at least. This list would be INSANE for the comics I’ve read): Tara Maclay on BTVS. This one was made worse by my head being crazy. See, for some reason this year I got really worried that Tara on Buffy and Lorne on Angel were going to die, because they’d both been on for multiple seasons and still weren’t in the credits. So I made sure to pay attention to the credits of both shows every week. And finally Tara was in the credits! Boy was I relieved. 50 minutes later, not so much. And yes, at that time I knew all about how Joss had wanted Jesse in the credits when the show began. I still didn’t see it coming. (Yeah, that’s not her. Willow splattered in Tara’s blood is the image I keep from her death)

Next up is Victor Henricksen on Supernatural. By the third season, we were used to everyone on the show dying eventually, so in that respect seeing Henricksen get demon-nuked by Lilith wasn’t shocking. But they’d just spent the episode indoctrinating him to the boys’ world, and I was really looking forward to him showing up sometime in season four to help them out as a full-fledged Hunter. It was all the potential for future awesomeness that Henricksen had gained during that ep that made his death at the end such a shock. He was going places, dammit!

Third we’ve got Kara ‘Starbuck’ Thrace from BSG. Now I should probably mention that by this point in the series, I wasn’t exactly a huge Starbuck fan. In fact were you to make a chart of SA/t (that’s Starbuck Approval over time), you’d find a pretty constant decline over the course of the show. That said, she was one of the handful of ‘main’ characters on a show with a massive ensemble cast and a stated shelf life of just one more season, which made her just about as safe as a character can be.

Next up, Elle Bishop on Heroes. This one’s a little weird. It wasn’t really shocking when she died, so much as it was random and really confusing. In fact, everyone I talked to just assumed it was some lame cliffhanger and when the next week’s episode rolled around she’d be very much not dead. Well the next ep came, and instead of the assumed rebirth we got Sylar setting her crotch on fire (unfortunately not a euphemism). Elle’s death was shocking in that it was really dumb. It made no sense and didn’t even remotely serve the plot. Man, Volume 3 was bad!

The final death in our first entry belongs to Stringer Bell on The Wire. This is a really recent entry, as I just finished the third season two days ago. The other deaths on this list have been unexpected, but you knew String was going to die. You knew several episodes before it happened. But before he dies, you have to watch as his attempts to become a legitimate businessman begin to fall apart, as he struggles with the decision to inform on his best friend to try and save their business. Then he dies, and one of the greatest characters on the show is gone. It’ll be interesting to see what The Wire is like without Stringer Bell.

-Jerk

Okay, that was about as lame as I could possibly be right there in the title so from here on out’s gotta be pretty great huh?  Yep.  Go with it.

I finally received my Leverage Season 1 DVDs in the mail, according to my twitter on the 26th.  I marthoned the season worth of commentary while stopping to hit up a few that I had somehow managed to not watch at least 3 times already. Can I just say that I’m really happy to finally have this on DVD, great quality whenever I want to watch it is a great thing.  This may very well end up being one of those seasons I pick up an extra copy of to lend out because I don’t think I’m going to be willing to part with this any time soon. (Sorry Jerk.)

I’m not going to go through and spoil things for anyone because I want you all to check this stuff out on your own but I will go into a few things.  First off I have no idea what the swiss army knife image that shows up on all discs is supposed to be.  I’ve seen it before but yeah… Then the way the insert is written, one kinda expects all the deleted scenes to be on the final disc.  I actually like that they’re on each one but it did send me on a bit of a wild goose chase till I realized I was stupid and should just learn to read.  Everyone’s commented on the case.  It’s alright.  I understand it was a short season.  Maybe we can hope for more when we get a more substantial episode order.

*It should be noted that Jerk and I got in a fight when I asked him to find me a sexy picture of John Rogers because he was too busy watching Leverage.

I will say that this DVD package did something for me that no Season on DVD has done for me before.  It made me watch the show in a completely different way.  Having such key players do the commentary on EVERY FRICKEN EPISODE was an invaluable resource, even if Rogers had to have been fully tanked by the end.  Personally I was so glad to have him on every episode.  He’s funny, smart and gosh darn good looking.  This is a man that I WILL be watching carefully in the future.  Hell I’ve even put the Global Frequency comics on my ‘to buy’ list for FanExpo this year from like a 2 min clip I saw of his pilot.  I’m aware of how skewed that is.  FanBitch initiate!

Back to what I was saying, most of all it was seeing how much thought, love and respect goes into these episodes.  I now see the camera work on a deeper level and watch more closely for scenes that mirror or oppose scenes from other episodes in a way that I never would in other television shows.

It’s so refreshing to find that everyone involved loves what they’re doing as much as we love what they’re doing too.  There’s nothing more heartbreaking than a show that’s being made for the sake of being made.  In this industry you have to wonder how those can exist but they do.

So verdict is, completely predictable if you’ve ever been to the blog before, run and go buy Leverage Season 1 on DVD or pick it up from amazon.com.  If you’re a standing fan or a new one you’re going to watch in a new way and never regret the cash you put into this.

-DoubleBitch

When you’ve gone undercover and you read the minds of the people whom you are trying to trick, if you find that they know exactly who you are then perhaps continuing the (clearly failed) ruse and travelling further into the enemy building isn’t the best option. Especially when you’d gleaned the information you were sent to confirm several minutes ago.

Here, I’ll give you a better strategy than the one you used (which was to have no strategy and then get caught): after you’ve heard a thought that confirms they’ve taken Godric, subtly phone Hugo’s cell. He can act like it’s some sort of emergency call and you have to leave right away.

Or if you don’t want to do that, how about turning and fleeing as soon as you realize you’ve been made, instead of letting them introduce you to the henchman?

Just a few things to keep in mind, the next time you go undercover.

Love,
-Jerk

I figured we couldn’t let SDCC go past without postness, so here are some random thoughts on the Smallville, 24 and Supernatural panels from the show. I haven’t sought out any other television related con reports/videos yet, as I’ve been focusing on the comic stuff. *shines DB signal*

So the first thing I’ll mention is the fan questions. At every panel ever, someone always manages to make it to the mic who apparently never bothers to search the Intarwebs for interviews and stuff, and asks something that’s been answered fourty-eight times already. So I’ve come to expect that, it doesn’t bother me. So realize I’m discounting this when I say that the questions asked at the Smallville panel were terrible. I was hoping we’d get some good ones, what with Welling actually promoting the show and all. The clip they showed was pretty awesome, but not all that much interesting at the panel itself, other than Geoff Johns writing a Justice Society ep, but he’d already said if they had another season he’d love to write for them again, so no shock there.

The 24 panel was also all about the season 8 clip (which I’ve only found a transcript of so far), with little in the way of revelations in the panel. But with 24, I prefer to not know much about what’s happening, so that’s good. The clip was fairly tame but Kiefer did promise “We still blow lots of shit up.” so that’s good. I actually prefer when 24 starts off slowly, as opposed to what we got with Day 6. Oh, and I’m liking the mystery they’re keeping up around the new head of CTU.

The Supernatural panel was the best of the three, and it was actually kinda nice to not having Jensen and Jared for a change. It was quite screamy, but that’s to be expected. The questions were overall really good, and we got some great answers too. It’s cool that this season will be far more lighthearted than season four, and I’m really glad that they’re bringing back pretty much everyone who isn’t dead (and of course several who are) as they wrap up the SPN story (or at least, the first book of it).

-Jerk

While that would make for a great episode of Buffy I’m not talking about the Dushku.  Today I speak of Weeds.

I was roaming around amazon.com (because it frequently kicks amazon.ca’s ass in both stock and pricing) trying to get my hands on a Leverage Season 1 DVD, which sadly has not appeared in Canadian stores like I had been hoping it would.  It was then I came across Weeds Season 4 on dvd for $12.49.  I shit you not.  I couldn’t pass it up.  The question is now, why am I buying Season 4 of a show I’m just starting.

I now own seasons 1-4 of Weeds but have only actually watched season one.  I’m busy okay?  I’m workin’ on it.  So I’ve gotta ask why?  Was it the great deal?  cause honestly, I’ve paid that much for Paully Shore movies.  It’s a great deal.   Is it the hype?  I hear great things and have been hearing great things for a long time.

I think what it really comes down to is a great premises with great characters.  It’s believable that they have continued this level of success well into their 5th season.  Maybe the other reasons sit true too but Weeds is a show-er first and a steady grower on top of that.  I’m looking forward to my adventures into the second season and beyond.  Plus thats one hell of a hot cover.

-DoubleBitch