new summer TV

Ironically, just as I actually have time to now watch TV, the regular season is over. But not to worry, the face of TV is changing, and there are plenty of summer series to watch. I can't say that this stuff is really quality at all, but hey, it's better than nothing...

Falcon Beach on ABCFamily – I’m not really sure what’s up with ABCFamily and all their original series that aren’t terribly family-oriented. Falcon Beach is set in a fictional beach resort town (I think it’s supposed to be New England but the original Canada, and follows the drama among a group of townies and vacationers. The main character seems to be this boring blond guy named Jason who gets a lot of pretty cool wakeboarding scenes and who will obviously be having a dumb romantic triangle with the bitchy ex-girlfriend returning from modeling abroad and the bitchy spoiled princess vacationing with her mother and bad boy brother. Then on the side there’s Jason’s nerdy best friend Danny who’s crushing on a lifeguard he’s known since childhood. It’s all very poor mans’s Dawson’s Creek but without too likeable characters, except for maybe Danny, but it’s almost required that you like the nerdy sidekick. The whole show kind of just has this weird sleepy fuzzy quality to it, and the acting is pretty bad.

Beyond the Break on the N – Follows four female surfers in Hawaii and their “coach,” former Baywatch dude David Chokachi. I liked this show a lot better, maybe just because the surfing scenes are pretty awesome and I’m used to the afterschool-special-ness of Degrassi and Instant Star and other shows on the N. The acting here isn’t that much better than in Falcon Beach, but it’s perky Saved-by-the-Bell bad acting and not taking-myself-too-seriously bad acting. Plus the girls were much more sympathetic and face it, Hawaii’s an infinitely better setting for a beach bikini show than the Atlantic coast.

The Hills - I was always a bigger fan of Lauren than Kristin on Laguna Beach, so naturally I tuned into this show. The only problem is that I HATE her friends! Well, Whitney seems alright but Heidi is possibly the dumbest blonde on the planet and she irritates the hell out of me. And the guys aren't too hot either. I'm awaiting the return of Jason for some real drama!

Hex on BBCAmerica - A Buffy/Charmed hybrid set at an English boarding school. It's been awhile since there's been a supernatural high school show so I was happy to see this one pop up. I liked the premiere, but the promo/preview sequence pretty much gave away everything to come and since the show has already run its course in Britain, I read over a summary of the entire series (on wikipedia!) and well, it ends up going in a very very crazy direction. I'll probably keep watching for a bit, but I'm not expecting it to be awesome.

Hell's Kitchen - I missed the first season of this, but heard of it during discussions of that other cooking reality show, Top Chef. The feel of this show very different from Top Chef though: it's more about running a kitchen and less about personal creativity. Gordon Ramsay is pretty amusing to watch (would be terrified of him in real life though) and the whole dinner service thing is super crazy. I wasn't terribly impressed with any of the candidates though...overall much lower caliber than on Top Chef I think. But then again this is FOX, and they love their stunt casting so they have a prison chef, a fishmonger, a pizza dude, and a salad chef among others.

Fresh Meat (RW/RR Challenge) - I'm a huge sucker for these challenges. I didn't watch a lot of the original seasons of these people, but I've come to know them well through the challenges and they're still funny to me. I kind of like this new twist, especially since the alumni and the newbies are paired up to work together. I really agree with everyone on the show that the Austin cast sucks. Can't wait until they're all GONE. Not sure if I'm a fan of the whole exile thing though, because half the fun of the Gauntlets and Infernos were the rest of the teams watching and cheering and booing. Plus the same exile thing every week isn't that fun either.

Windfall - I like the idea of this show, but I'm not sure about the characters. Luke Perry is always welcome but I wasn't so into the thing with his wife and the friend who might be the father of his student's baby. Dude from life as we know it with the Russian wife thing was also pretty stupid, and I don't really care what's going on with crazy flower shop man. I think there's a reason this got pushed from midseason to summer...

The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency on Oxygen - I actually wasn't really aware of Janice Dickinson at all until America's Next Top Model but for some reason lately I've been all into the fashion and the models on TV (ANTM, Project Runway, 8th and Ocean, What Not to Wear) so I DVRed this. Janice is totally crazy ("Two words, OUT!") and I was a little bewildered by the whole posing nude for a casting call thing but overall it was kind of fun. This show is obviously going to be half Janice antics, half actual modeling agency stuff. Kind of makes for a good time.