I had something of a light week of TV watching this past seven days, Halloween combined with the upcoming election seems to have reduced the amount of TV I like to watch around. Which is actually fine as

First up, on the 29th Stephen Colbert had a guest I have a great deal of admiration for, Mr David Simon.



I missed this on the actual date because The Colbert Report and I are not on speaking terms right now, it's not the fault of the show, it's Comedy Central's fault. They are the ones who removed region free viewing from their shows. Instead I caught this at Brian's blog over at mysterybookspot. I guess I should be grateful that I can at least watch the clips.

Boston Legal:
I think we're starting to see the shape of the end story in Boston Legal, there's been numerous mentions of how Crane, Poole and Schmidt are struggling due to the economic relapse, Alan's reputation and Denny's antics. This week had the two of them out away from the office on a dude ranch and included a truly disturbing moment between Denny and a Sheep (really? Is he that far gone now? Seriously?) plus a great reprise for the Texan lawyer Melvin Palmer. But the best moment is summed up in one sentence "Jerry as Bo Peep". The episode was a hoot.

Heroes:
The earlier season villains are all dropping like flies right now aren't they? I'm not really sure what else to say about the show right now, it seems like they're trying to correct all their previous mistakes and return everything to some kind of balance. It's still fun to watch, but it's not a great show any more.

House:
All I really have to say is "It's about time", House has been dancing around Cuddy like a petulant school child who isn't sure about how to deal with his crush since nearly the very start of this show. It's been obvious that he has deep feelings for her since, well as long as I can remember watching this show. But he's so emotionally stunted that he's been using cruelty as a way of getting and keeping her attention.

It was a pretty good episode this week, I didn't comment on the previous episodes because I fell behind with watching them and had only just caught up. This weeks was better than most of the previous episodes, apart from the Wilson/House Road Trip episode (which was also very good).

Dead Set:
I watched Dead Set every evening this week (or caught up the following day on those evenings when I was out) and on the whole, it was OK. Brooker's script was decent but not amazing, I was hoping it would have something new to say about the subject of zombies, especially with the big brother spin, but it essentially boiled down to "idiots in a siege situation" which is nothing new for any zombie aficionado. It had some good moments in it, but it also had a lot of things that were just essentially wasting time. Overall I'd call it a C+ effort, shows promise but room for improvement.

Oh and thumbs down for running zombies, they're not as scary as the shuffling drones are. Sure running ones give you more immediate kicks with chase sequences, but the slow mindless ones are far more indicative of the society which they're supposed to reflect and also they result in people dying purely through human errors.

30 Rock:
30 Rock premiered this week and the episode was used to swiftly return things to normality, getting Alec Baldwin back where he belongs and swerving to avoid the adoption issue because babies are not that funny.

The Office:
Holly is gone! Sad faces all around! Yes, it's true. The lovely Holly Flax (Amy Ryan) is gone, she was the perfect Miss Michael Scott and their collective mirrored dorkiness was so great that I will miss it almost as much as Michael will. In addition we have a great Dwight/Andy argument where Dwight uses the same antagonistic passive/aggressive style that Jim so loves to inflict on him. This time dressing up as if he wanted to go to Cornell, Andy's old university. Cue utterly childish behaviours that really result in no winner, just two losers.

Supernatural:
"Astronaut!"
Supernatural has indeed been spoiling us this October month with a third great episode, Monster (a fortnight ago) was so good it could have been the Halloween special but it was followed up with not one but two great episodes. This week's was Halloween themed with the lads investigating people dying from urban legends and attempting to foil a witch from returning Samhaim to the world of the living.

Not only does the episode steep itself in the fun of Halloween, and includes a brilliant moment between Dean and a fat little astronaut but it also pushes forward the main plot with Castile making a strong appearance. It also marks our second angel putting in an appearance - Uriel - played by the brilliant Robert Wisdom (The Wire, Prison Break). Great stuff.

In other things I've mostly been pottering around on Xbox live playing retro games this week, I discovered that I could play my all time favourite game 'Streets of Rage II' on the 360 and that's eaten up hours - I'm also resisting the urge to purchase 'Castle Crashers'. But I did have enough time to watch the first series of "Marion & Geoff", some of Homicide season 7 (series 6) and I've been catching up on the odd bit of "Monty Python" (I'm up to series 2 atm) .