TV Series Premieres Part umm... I don't know.

So, I watched the first episode of Surface. My review is below. But I'd like to talk about a few other things first. Like Lost. Last nights episode was pretty cool. But man, I need my fix. I don't know if I'll be able to handle 3 weeks without Lost. That'll be rough. And Veronica Mars was excellent again, even if it was a fairly calm episode, it certainly laid the groundwork for a lot of things to go down. And thanks to VM's mom whose drinking finally paid off in helping out Veronica on her case. I thinks that's all I have for now.

-The Geek


NBC

Surface
(Monday at 8:00)

This is show is many things. Which things I’m not sure. It’s supposed to be a family oriented alien invasion show. The pilot leads off with middle/high school age kids drinking and wakeboarding at night in Dawson’s Creek… I mean Wilmington, N.C. Actually it doesn’t really matter where they are, just that one kid, sees something in the water he can’t explain. Then there’s a submarine in the Antarctic that is missing it’s crew, and a random Russian Scientist is there to inspect the mysteriously empty vessel for the U.S. Navy. The location then changes again to SoCal where Marine Biologist lady (Lake Bell… yes, that’s her name) is going to be taking a submersible deep to study life around geothermal vents in the ocean floor. She ends up being jostled by a big sea creature rising out of a very deep hole, and no one believes she saw something down there. In the fourth of the increasing implausible and confusing plot threads, a Louisiana scuba diver and his brother are out spear-fishing near an oil platform when his brother shoots another of these sea creatures and is dragged bottomward to his death. Eventually we get back to the Dawson’s River kids, who sneak out late at night and find in the water, what we assume to be either eggs or immature versions of the sea creatures. The one kid ends up putting it his parents aquarium where it eats all the fish and breaks out and hides. I guess this kid is going to befriend it. Anyway, we wind up the show with evidence that these sea creatures are huge and are recent additions to the planet. All in all, it’s entertaining but forgettable, and suffers from technical and societal inconsistencies. One of the most grating things to me was when MB lady was in the submersible, she refers to the seeing something on “RADAR” which is incorrect, underwater you use “SONAR”. That and the multiple, confusing plot threads make the show less enjoyable. I’ll probably watch what episodes I have recorded already, but I may delete them if I need the room.

C+