Watched 7/17-21 - Damn Fine TV.

First off, Leverage is some good stuff. Season 2 premiere. Best grifter/Mission Impossible/scam/character/caper show on TV. Brilliant stuff. Great character beats and acting. Clever plotting. High humor.

Pull quotes -

"Never before has a production of the Sound of Music made me root for the Nazis."

"YOU quit drinking?
...You rent a condo above a bar?
That's right.
Well, that's very... Catholic."

"It was fun, it was wonderful while it lasted, but, you know... I was drunk most of the time to be honest with you..."

"You know when you're sober your metaphors get creepier..."

Next up - Dollhouse. You know, this show, first season, wildly uneven up until episode 6 or so [Man on the Street] where it started to get good. Now, making it's way to the magical internets is both the unaired 13th ep of season one and the unaired pilot that was scrapped after "network input" into something more palatable/adventure-of-the-week'ish for general TV consumption.

First off, the original pilot - vastly superior to what was aired on FOX. One day, suits will learn to just leave Joss Whedon the hell alone to do what it is he does. Whedon's shows are built to be anti dumbing-this-down-for-the-masses TV. You can literally see how and where the pilot that actually aired was genericized, made more "interesting" for the cheetos and beer crowd [love beer, love cheetos... you know what I'm saying] and generally just made dumber. This unaired pilot is way more interesting, the performances "pop" more, it's more intelligent, and even Dushku's performance, which has taken some slings and arrows this year, is really, really good. Very sharp. Suits, leave Whedon alone. You don't know what the hell you're doing. He does.

Topher - "Morality is programming too."

Indeed.

And Epitaph One, the 13th ep of the season, was straight genius. Set 10 years in the future, you see the future of world and the Dollhouse. [Which begs how will they squeeze out the dramatic tension in Season 2... see what Whedon comes up with, should be interesting.] Suffice it to say, spoiler free, the post apocalyptic future of the Dollhouse is way screwed up. Great episode. Kind of mythic. Outstanding performances as well.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold - good stuff. The cartoon for kids continues to mine some of the more obsure DCUniverse goodness. OMAC and Shrapnel? Quirky goodness.

World's Strongest Man 2003-2008 + the "30 Years of" special... I don't dig on this as much as MMA, but strongman stuff is brilliant. Ultimately about man against the thing, and either it wins, or you do. Good stuff.

Warehouse 13 - first 3 eps - good show. Drawing a lot of comparisons to The X-Files. I can see that, if the X-Files had any kind of sense of joy or humor about itself. Wild amounts of potential. Jane Espenson, of Buffy and Angel, on writing. Plus it has Saul Rubinek, the character actors'character actor, at his twitchy best. And C.C.H. Pounder, lending all her weighty gravitas.

And it's been said cleverer by better than me, but "SyFy" instead of "SciFi" just makes you sound like assholes.

Star Trek Voyager S4 - Continuing to go nowhere fast. At least nice character pieces and acting. Only thing keeping me hanging on. The conflict between Janeway and 7 of 9 is good, when they use it right. Tuvok and the Doctor are still awesome, underutilized.