With the decade fast coming to a close, there will be continual and ad nauseum lists of best of the 00′s lists. Many are already being posted as we have basically seen every TV series that will air in this decade. (Unless you count 2010 as part of the decade, which you should, even though nobody does.) The standard shows that everyone has includes The Sopranos, The Wire, Lost, among others. I would like to throw Late Night with Conan O’Brien onto the list of shows to consider. It was not a typically great show, but it was amusing in its own, late-night, no-budget way. Conan is a comic genius. Hopefully, the next decade will feature A Game of Thrones as the best show of the 10s.

ABC has brought back the classic 80′s alien-invasion series, V. I remember my dad watching the miniseries and the following TV show often, but I was less interested at the time because it got in the way of me watching MacGyver. We have to have our priorities.

The show looks pretty good so far with special effects and good actors. I think that this show will also solve the cliffhanger ending for Lost last season. Something tells me that Juliet doesn’t survive that fall and explosion.

Dexter’s back!

Last year was a pretty good year for Dexter. I thought that Season 3 was a slight improvement from Season 2 in terms of acting and storyline (although still not as good as the first season). The fourth started last week and seems off to an uneven start. The highlight was seeing that John Lithgow has joined the cast as this year’s main badguy. It hasn’t been since the first season that we had a major serial killer as the focus of the storyline. The Ice Truck Killer wasn’t actually revealed until the end of the season, but seeing John Lithgow in the role promises to be cool. Unfortunately, the first episode doesn’t show much of him (except his pasty man butt). Another instance of dudity (dude nudity) invading pop culture. The FBI agent is back from the second season, although I don’t think that he’s a very good actor, and the rest of the cast seem to be involved in many unimportant subplots. Hopefully, the season continues with more direction. The first episode ends on a plus with a great cliffhanger ending.

Did I mention that I saw the premier of ‘House’?  I haven’t been watching that as much lately so I missed how two of his ex compadres got involved and totally missed how involved they got.  Fortunately they weren’t in it so it didn’t matter.  The entire thing was set in an insane asylum.  Now we all knew that House was crazy so this isn’t too surprising but my best guess is that he’s still nuts even though they’re going to let him go.  Nothing could top the scene in which he smashes his face into a cake.  To me it felt like his British humor was shining through.

The new season of shows has started with a bang.  I spent the summer catching up on my ‘Bones’ and the end of last season catching up on my ‘NCIS’.  Last night I got to see the season opener of ‘NCIS’ which was really interesting.  Gibbs looked amazing in his gilly suit and I was certainly impressed by his ability to travel miles in a matter of seconds to twice save his co-workers.  With Gibbs, you feel like this is plausible and not a mess up with the script.  I’m looking forward to the ‘Bones’ premier.  I just have to figure out when it is….

Sunday night I managed to tune into the Emmy’s for my annual peak. And as usual I managed to hit exactly the time that they were doing the montage of all the stars who passed away this year. It really provides a public service to those of us who have a dirth of memory. I had completely forgotten about David Carradine and I was reminded about Paul Newman as well. I don’t know how it happens that this is the part I constantly come across every year. Kinda creepy that my Spidy-sense is aligned with the parade of dead stars.

Even more news has broken about HBO’s upcoming series, “A Game of Thrones”. The news keeps getting more and more exciting as more and more characters are cast. Since there are absolutely so many characters in the book, there will be news breaking about casting in this series for a while to come. Here are some of the highlights so far.

Sean Bean – Eddard Stark (so very exciting, go Boromir!)
Peter Dinklage – Tyrion Lannister (everybody’s first choice; awesome)
Jennifer Ehle – Catelyn Stark (from Pride & Prejudice; solid actress)
Mark Addy – Robert Baratheon (from Still Standing; perfect choice)
Harry Lloyd – Viserys Targaryen
Kit Harrington – Jon Snow (looks perfect)
Jack Gleeson – Joffrey Baratheon
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau – Jaime Lannister (absolutely perfect choice; getting more excited)
Alfie Allen – Theon Greyjoy (exactly what an Iron Prince should look like)
Sophie Turner – Sansa Stark
Maisie Williams – Arya Stark (oh yes! perfect choice)
Richard Madden – Robb Stark (can’t believe how perfect he looks for the role)
Tamzin Merchant – Daenerys Targaryen (they did it again, can’t imagine better)
Iain Glen – Jorah Mormont

With the fall season fast approaching, I wait in anticipation of the newest spinoff at CBS, NCIS-LA. Naval Criminal Investigative Service – Los Angeles. The show with more abbreviations than any other in history. Heck, if you include that Los Angeles is even a shortened form of the full name of that city then you have abbreviations of abbreviations. (El Pueblo de la Reina de los Ángeles is an unwieldy name for such a large city.)

But no amount of abbreviating can quell my excitement for another spinoff crime drama starring a rapper-turned-actor. Ice-T made SVU a hit. LL Cool J can do the same over at CBS. Look, he even has more abbreviations than Ice-T.

I’ll let you know what I think of the show once it airs.

Now that I can stay up late at night again, I’ve gone a bit overboard and started staying up till the Late Late Show is on. Now that it’s Jimmy Fallon hosting it’s a whole different ball of wax than when Conan was on but there are still funny stunts.

Like Monday night I tuned in to find that he’s trying to organize a Saved By the Bell reunion. So far he has everybody on board except Screech and Kelly. They had Zack dressed up just like himself and he even had the old hair color back on. It wasn’t until he pulled out his 1990s cell phone almost the size of New Jersey that I really almost busted a gasket laughing.

It ended up waking up my husband who then had a flashback to his own Saved By the Bell days.