The Omnigeek

I don’t know why NBC even tries these things. They clearly cannot do science based TV. Okay, ER was pretty good on a science side, but every thing else they do is an EPIC FAIL.

I didn’t go into this show with a lot of high expectations has other recent NBC shows have bombed, but hey, I’m willing to give it a go. I’m not sure I would even give this a “B” movie status on the SyFy (formerly SciFi) Network. Some of the original’s on SyFy are pretty bad, and this one would have a hard time making that network.

The basic plot of “The Meteor” involves a comet that hits 114 Kassandra, a main belt asteroid and knocks it out of its stable orbit into a collision course with Earth. A kook of a scientist who was fired from NASA/JPL played by Christopher Lloyd spots the impending dome and along with his assistant, played by Marla Sokoloff races from their exile observatory at the end of the Baja Peninsula with the information the Air Force will need to attack the planet killer.

Meanwhile, the JPL Science Advisor, played by Jason Alexander, that fired Lloyd’s character in the first place is at the Air Force’s Near Earth Astroid command center where the Air Force is monitoring the situation and plotting an nuclear missile strike.

A side plot revolves around a small California town, where the sheriff’s son, an LAPD officer who tries to bust his crazed partner has to try to keep the crazed partner from killing his daughter and his father the sheriff, played by Stacy Keach. The sheriff is trying to keep his small town from becoming mass chaos from the early meteor strikes that have been picking on it.

Science aside, this story is so full of stupid plot holes its not even funny.

Lets start with the exiled scientists. Instead of staying at the observatory where they can monitor things and transmit data over the internet, they decide to race along the Baja to get to JPL. Well, their older SUV breaks down and the character played by Lloyd gets hit by a truck while he’s standing in the road and killed. Note, I’m referring to the characters by their actor’s name because none of the character’s have memorable names. Assistant hitches a ride to a Police station, presumably in Tijuana, Mexico where she finds a couple of bad guys have taken over the police station and are now dressed as the cops and they try to molest her.

Now so far, she has been timid, scared and naive. Once the one dude ties to assault her, she manages to subdue him by beating the crap out of him with a fire extinguisher in a panic. But the suddenly she takes the gun from him, what looks like a .357 magnum revolver, and for the next 30 seconds, she is Laura Croft as she blasts her way out of the police station, dropping the other bad guy with three accurately placed shots and marches to the police car outside to drive to JPL where she immediately returns to her cowardly wimp character.

There is no way her character could squeeze off three shots from that gun. If she is the timid scientist, the first blast would have blown the gun right out of her hand and she probably would have missed anyway. Dumb character play.

Now to the Jason Alexander character. He’s a bumbling idiot. He doesn’t know squat and is panicked when put on the spot by the Air Force to come up with the answer. Well here is the problem. The janitors at JPL are smarter than this dude. JPL holds the brightest minds on the planet. This representation of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory is an insult to all the fine people that work at one of NASA’s main research facilities. There is no way on Earth that JPL would depend on some numbers from a fired quack to get the job done. They are too good.

Secondly, the Air Force has a bunch of smart people too and probably wouldn’t need NASA’s input to figure out how to deal with this large rock coming toward Earth. I haven’t even gotten to the bad science in here, this is just character issues.

And WTF is going on with this sub-plot with the crazed LAPD officer? It has no place in this film.

Its a two parter that finishes up Sunday, July 19th. I’ve committed too much energy to this show to not watch the conclusion but save yourself the time…..

Okay, my wife likes reality TV and I respect that. With there being less and less hockey on to watch as the season winds down and a complete lack of creativity from the writers there are fewer and fewer non-reality choices to choose from.

Normally, I surf the interwebs while casually paying attention to the TV. I can count the shows I care about on one hand (and maybe a toe or two) and even then, I try to take it in and cruise the other “tubes”.

Shows that Matter to me!

• Big Bang Theory
• Criminal Minds
• Numb3rs
• Hockey of any kind
• NASCAR Sprint Cup and IndyCar Races
• The Mentalist
• Nurse Jackie — could be interesting, willing to give it a chance.

This week, NBC started airing a new TV series called “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here”. It’s a Survivor meets Big Brother meets Fear Factor show where “D List” celebrities get dropped in the jungle of Costa Rica, do stupid, gross stuff in teams and one of the losers gets voted off by the viewers all in the name of charity.

Fail point 1. I’m not sure you could call all these celebs even “D List”. Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s wife, Patti? Though I have to admit, she’s actually one of the better people on the show!

NBC and its lack of any real TV is running four episodes this week, Monday thru Thursday. Come on NBC your “Inside the West Wing” news program last night was excellent, “I’m a Celebrity” not so much. Thru three episodes, no one has been voted off. Of course two people “left” the show (multiple times) and NBC replaced them with another person and the two quitters are trying to come back so they are getting more people than they are kicking off. Oh, thats Fail point 2.

Fail point 3 has to do with the two quitter celeb’s from “The Hills”, another stupid reality show. Spencer and Heidi Pratt quit, left the show. The others split up their stuff. They came back and a screaming match that would outpace The Apprentice” kicked up. Does NBC operate like the Apprentice’s Boardroom with people screaming at each other until stupid decisions come out? Reality check — thats not the way the real world works. At this point, the cast has voted against allowing the couple to come back after they have quit several times, but highlights indicate they are coming back.

These two characters are pure turn-offs. I’m not sure how someone like Spencer Pratt ever got to a point where he got a TV show on the air. I’m personally thankful that I’ve never waisted a single brain-cell on “The Hills”.

Fail point 4 is the Baldwins. NBC has something good with Alec Baldwin. Between some of the best Saturday Night Live hosting skits and 30 Rock, Alec is doing well for himself and doing well for NBC. But come one how many celeb reality TV shows can brother Steven Baldwin possibly be on? Someone in Hollywood give him some real work already. To that, brother Daniel is the “New” cast member, clearly to push Steven’s buttons.

Fail point 5: Eating gross Stuff. The show is on at 8pm in the Eastern and Mountain time zones which means 7pm in the Central and Pacific time zones. Thats dinner time for most people. We don’t need to see people eating disgusting body parts from gross animals. Folks, this is NOT entertaining.

Fail point 6. Sticking body parts into boxes with creepy animals in it. Okay, this is a game we all played as kids at our Halloween parties. You build a box, call it “Brains” and put in Jello and challenge your friends to stick their hand in the box. We’ve seen shows like Fear Factor do this, lay in a box while we pour hundreds of snakes on you….. Well last nights episode went to a new level. Lou Diamond Phillips (one of the actual celebs on the show) who has a reoccurring roll on “Numb3rs” had to stick his hand into a hole full of rats in an attempt to unscrew a “star” shaped nut from a bolt.

Okay, putting your hands in to an aquarium bowl of fish to do this, or a wad of dirt and earthworms is one thing. Okay maybe even a box with a couple of venom drained tarantulas is another. But for Phillips, the rats were hungry and he was food. Despite having his hand ravaged by dozens of bites, he hung in there until he got the prize. The person he was going up against, Torrie Wilson, a former WWE wrestler, pulled her hand out after one bite. Phillips determination earned him a trip to the set doctor (who we actually got to see) getting cleaned and stitched up from the dozens of bites. Did NBC really need to go there?

Fail point 7. The show is based on a British TV series by the same name. One of the hosts is the winner of the British version. She’s very attractive, but you can’t understand her. Her accent is too thick. Maybe I shouldn’t go there, but can we stop importing their garbage shows? American Idol was a winner, but please enough is enough. Why can’t we create garbage shows to export to other countries?

I’ve been informed we will be watching this while trying to watch Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

Usually we flip away during the gross parts only to land on some other reality TV series. One night we were flipping between “I’m a Celebrity” and the Bachelorette. Sadly, “I’m a Celebrity” makes “The Bachelorette” look like rocket science. Could this be part of NBC’s grand plan? To lower the intelligence of their shows in an attempt to make their other shows look better?

Gag me with a “Reality Show”!