September 23rd's Weekly TV Thoughts

Last week before the new TV season starts.  I don't know if I'm ready for more shows than this.  I'm looking forward to new episodes of my shows, but not having so much to watch every night.

The Orville (Sunday) – Most of the jokes, especially at the beginning, seemed forced and were painful.  Yes, we got a lecture on zoos.  Yes, the character growth on the ship was fairly predictable.  Yet I found myself enjoying the show.  Still not completely committed, however.

Dancing with the Stars – So I’m going to start off talking about ultimate Frisbee.  The park where Cheryl and Terrell first met?  I was playing ultimate Frisbee there this summer.  And Sasha Pieterse used to come play at my pick up ultimate Frisbee game several years ago.  So you can bet who I am rooting for – Sasha!  There were a couple of stand out performances, and those will be the stars to beat this season.  The judges’ scores seem lower overall than they used to be, but it sounds like the stars only have a couple of weeks to get ready, which is down from what they used to give them.  Can’t believe we will be seeing two dances and two people eliminated already next week.  That’s just crazy!

American Ninja Warrior – They got me with the previews – no new winner this year.  But Joe got so close!  I’m actually a little bit surprised that only three people made it to the third stage.  Train hard, everyone, and I’ll be rooting for you again next season.

The Good Place – I started watching this show over the summer and fell in love.  It’s goofy at times, but pretty funny.  I was worried where they would go after the first season, but the season premier was very funny.  The new soul mates were great.  I hope we don’t spend the entire season erasing people’s memories so we can build a storyline, although getting to watch the action from the other side was certainly great for tonight.

The Orville (Thursday) – So when I’d heard this show was going to have a transgender episode, I figured I knew where the show was going to go.  This episode wasn’t it.  I’m actually still trying to figure out what point they were trying to make here.  After all, I was rooting for the baby to stay female, so this seemed like the sad ending, which actually surprises me.  Speaking of surprises, this had fewer jokes than we’d seen so far, but the jokes they did have actually hit their targets.