(No specific plot related spoilers.)

The Wire has been my favorite show of recent, and though the last season has felt somewhat rushed and some of the newer characters less believable, I have still thoroughly enjoyed it up to the end. I read a review of the last episode on CNN.com in which the reviewers were disappointed with the ending but I think it the ending is appropriate and is very consistent with the message that David Simon is trying to send throughout the 5 seasons. Some characters stories feel more concluded than others, and some are more “just” than others, but the overall message is that life continues, Baltimore will still be Baltimore, and the institutions that make up our world will stay on their respective courses.

Anybody else here read io9? It’s Gawker’s new science-fiction blog, edited by the people who put together She’s Such a Geek! (well, at least that’s where I know them from). I’ve been enjoying it, but I actually had to quit reading it, and I wrote them a note explaining as much.

See, if I wanted to go to a spoiler site, I’d go to a spoiler site; but this blog has spoilers kind of mixed in with all kinds of other information. It’s set to send the entire content of posts to RSS readers (rather than hiding spoilers beneath the “more” tag), and occasionally contains images that you can’t really skip over as easily as refusing to read a block of text (such as when I saw the Cloverfield monster the day before I went to see the movie).

I do need to take the site off my reading list, and I do think that hiding images and spoiler text for recent releases “after the jump” would help—but, as I realized shortly after I wrote the note to them, I do recognize that it’s really hard to qualify what counts as a “spoiler” without hamstringing your entire blog. I mean, to some people, any kind of foreknowledge of a movie might feel like a spoiler. I know some people who try to avoid trailers, even, when they’re for a particularly anticipated release. And, just to be clear, I’m not recommending that blogs like io9 tiptoe around the details of Tron. After a movie has been out on the home market awhile, the ending is probably considered public knowledge. You don’t apologize for noting in passing that Romeo and Juliet die at the end, right?

I read other major entertainment blogs (and Gawker blogs), including some that cover SF movie releases, and the other ones never make me feel like I’m in danger of reading a spoiler at any moment. Do I just have weirdly specific ideas of what counts as a “spoiler,” or has anybody else experienced similar problems reading content online?

I have a handy little widget in my Dashboard that tells me when the next episode of shows I’m watching are airing. There are about 22 series listed in there, 19 of which should be current shows (assuming that Bionic Woman, Journeyman, and Reaper are all dead). This is what it looks like right now. Man, is that depressing. Add in the list of spring premiere dates that AICN just put up, which lists about 70 shows, about half of which are reality programming. An interesting point raised by one site that I read: note that despite the amount of gaps on the schedule, most of that room is being filled by reality entertainment programming and not, say, news programming, which there’s an endless supply of that doesn’t require writers. Not surprising, perhaps, but certainly interesting.

As we’ve seen, I have a strenuous regimen of television watching—one that, if confined to traditional broadcast methods, would probably occupy most evenings of my week, lowering my productivity to near-zero. But we live in the twenty-first century and so technology helps me take what once might have been a crippling condition and make it manageable.

Unlike music and movie piracy, television piracy didn’t really start to become popular until the advent of BitTorrent. While TV shows are usually shorter than movies and thus have smaller file sizes, they more than make up for that smaller size with increased frequency. Distributing a movie is difficult enough, but if you’re trying to keep up with a weekly show, there’s a heck of a lot more data to be transferred on a repeated basis. BitTorrent made that much easier, due to a couple of factors: 1) The de-centralized nature of the file-swapping technology shares the burden by making every downloader a server as well, which leads to 2) the somewhat counterintuitive proposition that the more people who download a show, the faster everybody downloads it.

I’ve often wondered if some metric could not be divined from the relative speeds of downloading. Some shows seem to transfer very quickly, while others simply crawl. This is due in part to differences like file size—for example, downloading an entire season usually takes longer than downloading a single episode—the overriding mechanic at work here is popularity. Again, in optimal conditions, the more people downloading a file, the more servers, and the faster it goes. And if popularity is the deciding factor, it would seem logical (if simplistic) to conclude that the shows that download the fastest are the most popular.

Television ratings are an imperfect science—if they can even be called a science. Even today, Nielsen relies heavily on written diaries kept by their selected “families,” tracking their television watching habits (they do have an electronic device called a “Set Meter” as well, and have been slowly adapting to other forms of technology—while the company moved to start including digital video recorders, such as TiVo, in ratings, it did not do so until 2005).

But do ratings even work?

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We’ve been pretty vociferous in our love for HBO’s The Wire, which both Tony and I believe to be among the best—if not the best—show on television. While you’re waiting for the fifth and final season to debut on HBO on January 6th, you may care to whet your appetite by heading over to Amazon to watch a series of three short “prequels,” each showing the background of different characters on the show. Kudos to the kid they found to the young Proposition Joe, who’s note-perfect.

The writers’ strike has entered its fifth week and, given the apparently unsatisfactory offer from the AMPTP last week, it looks to continue indefinitely. A number of shows have already run out of produced episodes so the network slate is going to start looking a little sparse post-Christmas. Here’s an update, courtesy of Geek Tonic, of how many episodes are left for shows that I’m watching (if I don’t cover your favorite show, hit the link above for the full list). A * indicates that this season was intended to be a show’s final season.

*Battlestar Galactica – 10 episodes of the final season are ready to go, but episode 11 (which was to be directed by showrunner Ron Moore has apparently been canned). The show’s currently due to start in April.

Bionic Woman – Last episode aired last week. Not picked up for full season, so may not return.

Burn Notice – Season two is due to air next summer, but not sure where production stands, but will probably be delayed.

Chuck – One episode left, due to air sometime in 2008.

Dirty Sexy Money – Two episodes left to air.

Entourage – Next season due to air in the summer, may be delayed.

Heroes – Finale aired last Monday (Short review: meh).

How I Met Your Mother – Last episode airs next Monday.

Journeyman – Three episodes left to air. All will air in the next couple weeks, though it sounds as though the show will not be renewed. There’s currently a campaign underway to save this show which, if you ask me, definitely deserves to be renewed. If I could save one show this year, this would be it (my other favorites, Pushing Daisies, Dirty Sexy Money, and Chuck have already been picked up for a full season, strike notwithstanding).

Lost – 8 episodes of the 16 episode season are in the can and due to air starting in February.

Psych – Complete second half of the season airs starting in January (special Christmas episode on this Friday!).

Pushing Daisies – Last episode airs next Wednesday and acts as the season finale.

Reaper – Last episode aired last night. Was not picked up for a full season, so its fate is up in the air.

*Scrubs – 6 episodes left (this is the last season, and it was supposed to be a full 22 episode order, so that may leave the show hanging at the halfway mark, details at Wikipedia).

*The Shield – All thirteen episodes of the final season will air in January or February (I’m watching season five right now, so I should be finished in time for the new season).

*The Wire – The final season will air in its 10 episode entirety starting in January (thank god).

Looking at that list reminds me of one thing: I apparently watch way too much television. Of course, there’s always British television and Netflix to get us through these difficult times. Despite the personal pain the lack of television will cause to me and my loved ones, I continue to support the strike wholeheartedly. Consider this my personal sacrifice.

It’s been about two weeks since television and feature film writers went on strike, and I’ve been wanting to write something about it since day one. Though I’m not a member of the Writers’ Guild, I do make my living by working with words, and I’m one hundred percent behind the strike: this is what unions are for. And the recent announcement that writers and studios would be resuming formal contract talks on the 26th gives me hope that a resolution is near at hand.

You know, there’s no better illustration of the problems with the Hollywood studio system than this: one of the major reasons that the studios have agreed to resume talks with striking writers is that they’ve now had to suspend production on a film. And not just any film, but Angels and Demons, the forthcoming sequel to The Da Vinci Code, based on Dan Brown’s bestselling novel.

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A recent post at BoingBoing compares two television viewing programs for computers—or rather, simply states bluntly that “Miro Kicks Joost’s Ass.” Even having not used either program before, this seemed potentially simplistic to me, so I figured I might as well download both and see how they work. Here is my very brief review, based on admittedly very brief usage on my Macbook.

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From Variety comes news that America’s most loathed network, FOX, has picked up rights to remake arguably my favorite sitcom of all time for American audiences. Even if you’re not familiar with Spaced, you may be aware of the creative team behind it, several of whom went on to make Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. I’d count Spaced as superior to both, but that may be simply because I prefer the serial format to films.

In a comment on his MySpace page, Spaced director Edgar Wright said “The interesting part of that is, no-one has been in touch with me at all. Haven’t deigned to get in contact. So my involvement is indeed very unclear.” So if Edgar, Simon Pegg, and Jessica Stevenson aren’t involved, who is? According to Variety, it’s a creative collaboration between Adam Barr (“Will & Grace,” “Desperate Housewives”) and McG (“The OC,” “Chuck”).

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

Chuck has grown on me, it’s true, but it’s still a far cry from Spaced. And just because someone does a good job, say, watering my plants doesn’t mean I want them to raise my children. And Will & Grace and Desperate Housewives? That’s only a positive if I consider the fact that they could have gone with whatever brilliant minds sit behind ‘Til Death or King of Queens. At least we end up with a show that will only be groan-inducingly bad, rather than making people actively contemplate taking their lives.

The beginning of a new television season is always an emotionally trying time. With all the new shows vying for attention, how do you decide what’s worth an hour (or half hour) a week, and what is just sucking up your time? While I’ve yet to determine any sort of comprehensive formula, I find that—not unlike evolution—I tend to keep watching good shows, while the unsuccessful ones fall by the wayside.

Also, considering the spate of cancellations and non-pickups last year, as well as the number of shows that have been delayed to midseason (Lost, Battlestar Galactica), returning shows have been far and few between this fall: my slate of non-new shows is limited at present to Heroes and How I Met Your Mother, with the final season of Scrubs starting this week. That leaves plenty of room for these new additions:

What: Pushing Daisies
Why: For my money, still the best new show of the season. Lee Pace as Ned, the pie-maker who can bring people back from the dead temporarily, is eminently likable; Anna Friel (love interest Chuck) is delightful; and Chi McBride as Emerson Cod, the private eye who enjoys knitting in his spare time, gets all the best lines. Some find the show’s sense of whimsy too much and I get that, but mostly it just makes me smile. I’m glad that the most recent episode has already started dealing with some continuity issues, so it’s not just “Corpse of the Week.” The show may not be for everybody, but—you know what, strike that. Everybody may not be for this show, but they should be. That is all.

What: Reaper
Why: It’s fun. Ray Wise as the devil is hugely entertaining. But the formulaic nature is starting to wear on me and it needs some character building to keep it fresh. Sam getting to see his contract is a good start, but the love interest angle is turning into one of those annoying repetitive “will they/won’t they?” loops. Flesh out the universe a bit, keep the characters growing, and this show could be something. And how come Sam didn’t get to keep his telekinesis power from the pilot? What’s up with that?

What: Chuck
Why: Just having seen the pilots, I declared this inferior to Reaper, but the series has grown on me as it explores the relationship between Chuck and his superspy protector Sarah. Unlike Reaper, I feel like Chuck might have a better handle on drama. Adam Baldwin’s menacing Major Casey is almost reason enough to watch, though my favorite character remains Chuck’s sister’s boyfriend, Captain Awesome. If the character development continues and they don’t rely too heavily on the “all the secrets are in his brain” premise, I’ll keep watching.

What: Dirty Sexy Money
Why: My surprise hit of the season. Who would have thought that a show about a super-rich family of over-the-top socialites and the honest, normal lawyer who works for them, would be so damn entertaining? Peter Krause is at his best as nice guy Nick George, but my favorite characters are quickly becoming lying, philandering man of god Brian Darling (Glenn Fitzgerald) and his illegitimate son (whom he has told his family is a Swedish orphan named Gustav). The continuing intrigue over Nick’s father’s murder, and the introduction of techno-philanthropist and presumable foil Simon Elder (Blair Underwood) suggests that the ongoing plot has legs.

What: Bionic Woman
Why: Dear god, I wish I knew. Maybe it’s because Michelle Ryan is so hot that she makes my eyeballs melt, just like that guy from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Maybe it’s because of Katee Sackhoff’s superb performance as psychotic bionic woman #1, or the scary psychiatrist lady, or grim Miguel Ferrer. Probably not because of Isaiah Washington or the most annoying little sister since Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Or the stupid technological explication. Or the inane, utterly predictable plotting. Okay, let’s face it: it’s Michelle Ryan.