Cover of Veronica Mars

One of my favourite TV websites to visit is The AV Club. Every day during the American TV season they post reviews of popular TV shows that aired the previous night. I don’t always agree with their reviews but they are always a good read and the commenter’s are, for the most part well informed and create some good discussion and it all generally adds to the TV viewing experience.

During the summer months new scripted American tv generally takes a holiday in favour of reruns and reality tv so during the summer the av club picks some classic tv shows to review. Generally these are shows the reviewers haven’t seen before and so the reviews are very much as if the shows are airing currently.

My intention for this summer therefore is to pick a few of these classic shows and watch each episode as the av club reviewer does.

On Monday’s from June 6th, I will be re-watching season 3 of The West Wing (and I’m currently watching season 2 in preparation) as President Bartlett prepares to run for re-election following the revelations about his health.

On Wednesdays from June 1st, I will attempt to watch Alias for the first time. Alias was the thing J J Abrahms did before Lost so I’m expecting Polar Bears.

On Fridays from June 3rd, I will be re-watching the awesome Veronica Mars, a sadly under rated teen show which focuses on the eponymous teenage private detective (played by the gorgeous Kristen Bell) who spends the breathtaking first season trying to solve the murder of her best friend Lily (played by Mamma Mia star Amanda Seyfried) whilst trying to survive high school.

Throughout the summer I will also attempt to catch up on Mad Men, though that’s already been reviewed by The AV Club so I will read the reviews when I watch the episodes. I watched about four episodes last summer before getting distracted so I’m going to start again as soon as the American TV season ends. Here’s to an awesome summer .

Related articles

• Announcing summer TV Club Classic for 2011 (The AV Club)

This afternoon however that all changed. A hilarious conversation about the meaning of the words jel and reem which I believe are from the Itv2 show The only way is Essex and a text from a friend moaning about her boyfriend being male have cheered me up.

I’m writing this on my new White iPhone on the bus home. I’m wondering if this can become a regular blogging venue as one look at the post dates of the blog will show just how flakey I can be when it comes to blogging. Time will tell.

Related Articles

• Essex reality show on Bafta shortlist (independent.co.uk)
• The Only Way Is Essex: beyond trash TV (guardian.co.uk)

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Today there was some big news regarding Doctor Who. The next series in 2011 will be split into two parts, with part one happening in the usual Easter to early summer time and the second part coming in the Autumn. I’m not sure what I feel about this really, I’m not sure it will make much difference to the overall show and It certainly will be nice not having to wait months and months for new Who.

Anyway with Doctor Who in mind I decided I would do a list of my top ten episodes of Doctor Who so far. I was going to write a paragraph about how I love each of them, but I can’t put into words why I like them without sounding like a complete and utter twat. Like a bad reviewer on a late night panel show. And Doctor Who doesn’t deserve that.

10. Utopia

9. Gridlock

8. Doomsday

7. The Parting of the Ways

6. The Stolen Earth

5. The Big Bang

4. The Empty Child

3. The Doctor Dances

2. The Girl in the Fireplace

1. Blink
Its strange that my favourite episode of Doctor Who, doesn’t actually have the Doctor in it for most of it. It’s just such a well put together story that has some very warm lovable characters that you instantly feel something for. Its got the right mix of comedy and horror. The antagonists, The Angels, are suitably scary and real. And the solution to the problem is so brilliantly simple, yet well thought out and smart. Its just an awesome self contained little episode.

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I just finished the first proper book I’ve read in seven years. The last one was “Can you keep a secret?” by Sophie Kinsella and I read that in two days on two train journeys to and from Hartlepool when I was visiting a friend to fix her computer. No I actually was, It’s not a euphemism.

It’s not that I haven’t tried to read any books in that time. I’ve bought lots. I’ve read the first line of slightly fewer, the first chapter of slightly fewer of those, and read half of almost none of them. It’s fair to say that whilst I liked the idea of reading I’d grown accustomed to the idea of not being able to read a whole book without getting distracted from it long enough to forget it. Then a year ago through a weird chain of clicking and watching YouTube video’s I came across five awesome girls.  One of these awesome girls is Kristina and through her video’s I became infected with her enthusiasm for all things book related. It was with her that i first heard the name John Green.

I’d never heard of John Green before but over the past year I’ve learned so much about him and the online world that he has helped create and shape, just from a load of youtube videos and so last monday when I was in a bookshop in Birmingham and I saw his name on a row of books I knew I had to give it a shot. The book in question was called “An Abundance of Katherines” and a week later I’ve finished it.

With my lack of book experience it’s hard to really give a review or a sense of whether it was good or not. The only thing I can say is that I’m sorry its finished. That I’ll never read anything new with those characters again. So I guess that means it was good. lol.

BBC

As I mentioned at the end of my last post I watched the first episode of a show called Vexed last Sunday and rather enjoyed it. The second episode was last night and you can find it on the BBC iPlayer here. I enjoyed the second episode too and decided to have a look and see what I could find out about the series.

I couldn’t find much, there’s no page on the BBC Website for the show, apart from one that every show has telling you when the next show is. And I found out through this that the next episode is the last one. The entire season has just three hour long episodes.

I hate this about British TV. In America you get at least 12 episodes a season, normally 22 or 24. You get time to get into a series and enjoy it (unless it gets cancelled). In Britain, we have so much crap on TV and when something good comes along it only lasts for 3 episodes. Doctor Who is the exception with its 13 episodes a year plus a Christmas special but otherwise it seems like nothing lasts more than a few weeks, six weeks tops. Its so frustrating to get into a show only to find out its off again next week.

Number of times I’ve eaten Chinese food: 6

Last YouTube video I watched: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k9d_xlxmjM

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I’ve only really been watching one thing this week and that is Angel.

Angel was a spin off from Buffy the Vampire Slayer that aired on The WB network in America and Sky One over here and it lasted five seasons. I’m currently nearing the end of the second season on DVD and am looking forwards to the final run of episodes up to the season finale which I remember loving when I was watching it for the first time all those years ago.

The main part of the season has been quite dark and depressing and showed the main character, the eponymous vampire Angel, becoming more and more cut off from humanity as he tried to stop an evil law firm called Wolfram and Hart. As a result he lost all of his friends and slept with his ex, a low point that made him realise what a tool he had been for the last few episodes and made him want to redeem himself. I think the reason why I love the episodes that are coming up is that they are such a change of pace, more humorous and tongue in cheek than the episodes that came before and although they still have their dark spots they are generally brighter.

Whilst I’ve been watching Angel through Seasons One and Two I have been reading another blog on The A.V. Club from someone who is also watching through Angel and Buffy. If you’re at all interested in either show then I recommend you read it and look through some of the comments because there is one guy on there who posts alot of good and interesting trivia from when the shows were made. Click here to read it.

As a final note I also watched the first episode of a new comedy on BBC Two on Sunday called Vexxed about two homicide detectives, and whilst I only watched it because I was too lazy to turn the TV off after Top Gear I watched to the end because I found it very funny in places and I think I will give it another go this Sunday.

The first thing I did when I got there was head to Yo! Sushi for lunch. I’ve never eaten there before, partly because of cost and partly because I wasn’t sure if I’d like it. But I did like it, I had a Maki selection, some Salmon Nigiri and a Spicy Chicken salad. Of all of those I was surprised that the one I didnt like most was the Chicken Salad. I still wouldn’t have it every day because of the cost but since I don’t go to Birmingham very often it may well become my usual Birmingham lunch.

Next I went hunting for cheap graphics cards. I found, as expected, none. So I bought a Key Lime Dessert from Marks and Spencer which again I wasn’t sure if I’d like it. But I did (A theme developing maybe). Then I went in Waterstones and bought two books the first of which was the second Gossip Girl book (the TV series is one of my many guilty pleasures) and the second was “An Abundance of Katherines” by John Green. I had never heard of John Green until a year or so ago when I discovered Five Awesome Girls, and over the past year I’ve heard so much about this particular author and finally I decided to get one of his books and find out what all the fuss is about. So far I’m up to Chapter Five (Page thirty three) and I’m enjoying it a lot. I’ve found it so easy to read so far and theres alot of nice touches and humour in those first thirty three pages so I may actually finish this book for once.

Finally I went back to Selfridges, more specifically the Krispy Kreme part of Selfridges. I queued up and chose my dozen favorites selection and when I got to the end a different man served me and charged me for and gave me a dozen originals. I’ll be honest I wasnt really paying attention and didnt notice his error as I was too busy trying to decide what flavour iced drink I wanted. Whilst I was waiting for the aforementioned iced drink the woman who picked my doughnuts in the first place waved me over and told me I had the wrong box. I was more than happy to switch and pay the extra money for them but the guy that served me just shoved the dozen favorites selection in my bag on top of the dozen originals and just told me to take them. So I ended up with an extra dozen doughnuts.

On the way home I decided to give the extra dozen doughnuts to my sister as its her birthday on Sunday. This may seem like a nice gesture on my part, but in reality it just frees me from having to try and find an actual birthday present.

Number of times I’ve eaten chinese food since 7th August: 5 (this is a guess I kinda lost count)

Last youtube video I watched: Apart from my own… Thursday on Five Awesome Girls

The England way for those who choose not to engage in the national pastime is play some good attractive stuff to give you some hope, make a howler of a mistake that gives the other team a goal and then play like world beaters to make up for that error.

Steven Gerrard, Englands goalscorer last night, typifies a true England player. Sometimes he can play like a Brazilian with wonder goals a plenty but more often that not he is fairly average and struggles to beat some Sunday League johnny’s. But I don’t see why we should be booing these England players for this. After all isn’t that why we love football in this country, we love that every year in the FA Cup our “golden generation” who play in the “best league in the world” can and often do (especially if they play for Liverpool) come unstuck against some part timers. We call it the romance of the FA Cup. Well lets call England’s continual failure to live up to their potential “the romance of the English national team”.

Previously on Ajayrious’ blog… Ajayrious was watching every episode of The West Wing..

Well I finished The West Wing, I thought the last couple of seasons dragged a bit and there wasn’t enough POTUS in the final season.

This summers viewing pleasure has been Frasier. Unlike The West Wing I have always been a fan of Frasier watching episodes here and there on the Paramount Comedy Channel but I never watched them in order and most of the early seasons I hadn’t seen so I decided to give it a go. I’m currently a few episodes into season eight.

I’ve also recently re-watched all of Doctor Who and Torchwood and Torchwood Season One especially stood out for me as being much better than I remembered it. The same could be said about Doctor Who season’s three and four aswell although I already liked those so it wasn’t as big of a shock.

Now I’m currently re-watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I’m a few episodes into season two just where it’s starting to get good and I’m looking forward to the rest of the series although I’m unsure if I will watch past season four as once the sister appeared it went downhill for me. But then again, maybe I will have different and more positive thoughts seeing it fresh again after all these years.