In case you haven’t heard, there won’t be a fifth season of Rescue Me this summer—that’ll have to wait for next summer, although we’ll be getting 22 episodes then, which is pretty great. [Why we're not getting in the fall is beyond me, other than as part of an FX strategy to air the show in the summer when most other shows are in re-runs. Personally, I don't want to wait until 2009 for more Rescue Me.]

That said, we’ll see five-minute mini-episodes of the show starting in June. The eps are to air at 10pm EDT on Tuesday nights. Can I just hope that one is a hockey fight between Cam “Mungo” Neely and Denis? Wouldn’t that be awesome?

FX hopes that this project will keep the show on viewers’ minds during the unusually long hiatus. Denis Leary and executive producer Peter Tolan are co-writing the minisodes’ content, which was described as “comedic hijinks” by FX.

Hmmm … I wonder if the writers for It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia might get involved. They write some zany sketches … but hey, Denis’s comedy routines are funny.

In the sixth episode of the tenth season of Cheers, “Unplanned Pregnancy”, Bebe Neuwirth’s Lilith character refers to the normal babysitter the Doctors Crane use as “a 16-year-old bundled of breasts Frasier considers God’s gift to babysitting”. Given the affair Kelsey Grammer was found of participating in just five years later, Frasier’s expression in response—a turn of the head that leads to a leering smirk—is priceless.

[Sorry, we needed better Cheers fodder in the blogosphere today than TV Squad's "Five biggest Cheers mysteries". :yawn: Reference episode aired on TV Land this morning, and because I needed to decompress, I'm watching it tonight ...]

Can’t believe I’ve never written this one up …

I love TiVo’s Suggestions. They do me a great service. But TiVo … please give me a setting that says, “I love $Show_X but don’t want you to record re-runs for me.” Because honestly … as much as I love Gilmore Girls, I really don’t need to see all the re-runs again. But I want to know what other shows that GG fans watch.

[Okay, maybe that's a bad example.]

Maybe I’m weird as a TiVo user who doesn’t really like to re-watch re-runs. I’d just rather find new TV to watch.

The release date for the Rescue Me Season 4 DVD is unknown at this point. Amazon.com does have its standard “we’ll let you know when it’s released” page up if you’re interested. As soon as I found out when it’s available, I’ll post it here.

[As expected, I'm seeing requests for this info on the Season 4 entry, so I'm posting this separately...]

Now, I’ve had a crazy first half of January. [No, we're not going to talk about that. To quote Todd, "Your site has just turned into a daily dump of links!" And he's right, but the stuff I want to write about? It's not getting written about publicly. Most of that is work, but not all of it. I will leave it there and go on with this.] So despite having had my equipment since 2 Jan, I finally got it installed tonight.

Well, I’m only partially there. I’ve got to:

1. Get Multi-Room Viewing going on the new box and get it to recognize the other two TiVos.
2. Relocate my old TV and the TiVo that used to be upstairs to the downstairs.
3. Transfer all the old SD content onto the new HD.
4. Figure out what all Season Passes I need to get moved to the new box, and then shut them off of my old ones.

I’m going to push to do as much of this as I can tonight, but I’ve been doing the 0700 thing this week, and I’ve gotten maybe nine hours’ sleep the last two nights combined. [Has it been crazy? Yes. Has it been tough? Yes. Has it been trying? Yes. Is it worth it? Absolutely. Am I going to stay vague? Bet your fucking ass.] I’m winding down…

My Caedmon’s Call friends have the song that will close tonight’s season-ending episode of Grey’s Anatomy. I personally think that this is a plot by Allan Heinberg to get Derek to co-opt me [and other CC/Derek fans] to watch the show. I’m onto you, Heinberg!

A discussion of this ended up leading to Derek and I talking about Gilmore Girls after the show I attended last night. There we are on a sidewalk outside The Rutledge, talking about Lorelai borrowing Luke’s truck to help Rory move to Yale. I got to tell them that Season Four? IS MY FAVORITE. That was a fun time, because hey … I love talking about GG with people.

Oh, and … Writers’ Night at The Rutledge is hosted by Nathan Lee. Oh my gosh, y’all … that blew my damn doors off. I’ve already bought Down at The Rutledge off of CDBaby this morning, and now it’s my goal to bring him to Huntsville for a show. Wow. That kicked my ass. I just hate that I had recording problems last night [largely to do with it being an SRO crowd and me getting so hot that I almost passed out, but hey]. FUN TIMES.

[Who has two thumbs and got home at 2:00 a.m. this morning? Geof Morris.]

My Caedmon’s Call friends have the song that will close tonight’s season-ending episode of Grey’s Anatomy. I personally think that this is a plot by Allan Heinberg to get Derek to co-opt me [and other CC/Derek fans] to watch the show. I’m onto you, Heinberg!

A discussion of this ended up leading to Derek and I talking about Gilmore Girls after the show I attended last night. There we are on a sidewalk outside The Rutledge, talking about Lorelai borrowing Luke’s truck to help Rory move to Yale. I got to tell them that Season Four? IS MY FAVORITE. That was a fun time, because hey … I love talking about GG with people.

Oh, and … Writers’ Night at The Rutledge is hosted by Nathan Lee. Oh my gosh, y’all … that blew my damn doors off. I’ve already bought Down at The Rutledge off of CDBaby this morning, and now it’s my goal to bring him to Huntsville for a show. Wow. That kicked my ass. I just hate that I had recording problems last night [largely to do with it being an SRO crowd and me getting so hot that I almost passed out, but hey]. FUN TIMES.

[Who has two thumbs and got home at 2:00 a.m. this morning? Geof Morris.]

I figure that I owed folks an update [because some of my friends are looking] on what it’s going to take for me to go HD.

I called Alan Davis at Knology [phone number available upon request; leave a comment and I'll send you his number], and the differential pricing from where I was with Expanded Basic is +$9.99/mo to go to digital, +$9.99/mo to go HD, and then +$12.99/ea/mo for the two CableCARDs. “It’s expensive,” he warned me. [Yeah, a cable salesman who's worried about charging the customer too much money. I really do like this guy.] So, when I look at the fact that I’m not going to be paying TiVo $20/mo. for the service, I’m essentially paying for the CableCARDs. I could do without it, but then I’d not have the dual-tuner goodness.

The lead time on the order right now will be a couple weeks. I should have this thing hooked up before the Super Bowl, then.
[Anyone need an old 19" analog TV? I'll move it for next to nothing.]

Even as recently as a few weeks ago, when talking with Stephen about what they were going to do to replace the equipment they lost when their house was struck by lightning in August, I was saying, “I just can’t see doing the HD thing. Not only is there a capital outlay involved, but there’s a definite marginal cost of content involved, too.”

Yeah, well, I caved. Work took care of the capital for me with an unexpected bonus, from which I’ve bought a TiVo HD [with their offer to current subscribers of a lifetime subscription] that’s due to hit my doorstep tomorrow and a 32″ Vizio HDTV [okay, I haven't bought it yet, but I've decided on it and will get it at Sam's Club], amongst other things. [Thanks, Marty!] With my TiVo subscription costs going away [two TiVos at a multi-service discount runs me about $20/mo with taxes], I can justify it to myself.

I still haven’t decided if my non-over-the-air source of HD content is going to be DirecTV or Knology, the local cable company into which I’m locked in my neighborhood. I am leaning towards DirecTV mainly for their sports programming [sure, it's a monopoly, but it's a monopoly I want to tap], but I haven’t decided for sure. I will use over-the-air HD from the local providers and standard-definition from Knology [which I get for free, thanks to my HOA] in the meantime. Complicating factors will involve pairing up the TiVo HD with whatever receiver I have to use from either provider.

What kicked me over the edge? Well, it was the infusion of capital combined with the knowledge that 17 Feb 2009 is looming. Unless the WGA strike breaks the networks in the meantime, there’s too much network content that I enjoy in HD that I know that I won’t enjoy down-converted into 4:3, standard definition shots.

The other minor upshot is that I can slave my old [presently ailing, although hopefully back up to par] Mac mini to the new TV and offload the old Sony LCD I’ve been using on it since I got the new mini a few weeks ago. Between that and Screen Sharing in Leopard, I’ll be find to not have a traditional monitor slaved to that mini.

After how the fourth season went, I wasn’t sure if Rescue Me would get another season. After all, every other season had seen a renewal before the previous one was finish, and then we went a few months before we heard anything about the show’s future. In that time, Andrea Roth has joined Lost [and has also done some guest starring work on Numb3rs]. But indeed, Rescue Me has gotten a fifth season, with a 22-episode order. It remains to be seen whether or not the 22 episodes will be aired at once or in two distinct seasons, as FX did with The Shield.

A hot girl moves in next door to a couple of nerds. Sounds like my dream come true. I found the writing interesting to a point. The secondary characters are probably more interesting than the two main ones at this point, because while they build on stereotypes [the shy guy who can't say a single word to a woman, the geek who thinks he's a Lothario because he speaks a half-dozen languages and can sing karaoke], they’re at least semi-interesting ones to plot and weren’t run over by the laugh track.

Oh my holy heck, the laugh track. Whoever decided that this show needed one was an idiot. The people who watch this show are either going to be smart enough to get the brainy humor [whether or not they really understand it] or not. Putting a laugh track in there tells that part of the audience, “See! We were funny there!” STFU.

In many ways, being stuck behind How I Met Your Mother—a startlingly well-written sitcom about relationships written more with men in mind than, say, Friends ever was—is a detriment to this show. I might not have minded the heavy-handed sitcommy stuff if I hadn’t had the third season premiere of HIMYM as a lead-in.

Best moment of the whole show: the extended conversation as the depantsed main characters, Leonard and Shelden, go up the stairs. Most shows would have avoided that awkward moment [multiple shots of a nerdy guy's butt in his not-so-tighty-whities], but this one embraced it. That leads me to think that maybe the writers and producers don’t completely suck on this show. In fact, that they were willing to do that scene is the only reason that I’ve set my TiVo to record it again. After all, many pilots try way too hard.

Between the ending of Gilmore Girls and the cancellation of Veronica Mars, the only CW show that I watch is Beauty and the Geek. I have decided, however, to take a principled stand: if they were going to cancel VM—GG ended of its own accord—I was going to quit watching B&tG. As such, my TiVos are now set to fully ignore the local CW affiliate.

You might think I’m crazy. I’m just a drop in the bucket. But in kowtowing more to the bottom line—the short-term point of view—than the quality of the shows on the channel—the long-term point of view—the CW convinced me that they’re not worth my time.

If nothing else, it makes me feel better, which is typically 90% of the point of protests anyway. Besides, everyone needs something to be visibly and viscerally angry about, if for no other reason than to vent pent-up aggressions that otherwise eat at the body. Certainly none of the underlying problems are solved, but sometimes, you gotta whomp on something to get over it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to find Clarence Weidman’s number to have him do a little “business” for me.

TVSquad is reporting some changes in FX’s lineup for the summer, which includes news about our belove Rescue Me:

Plus, FX has suddenly changed its mind about Rescue Me’s placement on the schedule. This weekend, I told you that the premiere date was set for Tuesday, June 12th. Well, as of today that premiere has been bumped back to Wednesday, June 13th and Rescue Me will air on Wednesdays at 10 pm through the summer.

Now, my TiVo will pick it up on either date, but for those of you who make time to watch shows in real time, you’ll want to make a note of this. [Understand that the "10 pm" is the ET/PT timeslot and adjust accordingly.]

No release date for the season 3 DVD for Rescue Me has been announced. As soon as it is, I’ll update this entry.

Because all questions coming in to my old Season Three entry relate to this topic, I’m closing comments there.

Update, 9 Mar 2007: Amazon.com has a page up for Rescue Me: The Complete Third Season. There’s a place there to sign up for info as it’s known. Worth doing, I’d say.

Update, 26 Mar 2007: It’ll be out June 5, 2007, a week before Season 4 starts on FX.

According to TVIV’s page for Rescue Me, the fourth season will premiere on 12 Jun 2007. There’s still no definitive word on a release date for the season three DVD, but given when the first and second season releases have happened, I don’t expect it anytime before mid-May 2007.

Why the long wait? I think the fine folks at Apostle understand that we’ll slavishly buy the DVDs and watch each of the old episodes a couple of times before the next season re-airs, building all the anticipation that you need for a summertime-release show. If they put the DVDs out in time for, say, Christmas … well, you might not anticipate the summer show so much. While TiVo and time-shifting-via-DVR in general have made it far easier to stay current with shows—and kudos must go out to FX for re-airing each week’s episode multiple times before the next week hits—it’s just harder for a show that airs new episodes only in the summertime to get an audience, because of all the other things you could be doing on a summer evening besides planting your ass on the couch to watch Tommy, Garrity, Lou, and Franco, y’know?

Update, 6 Feb 2007: It’s my understanding that the show goes into production on Thu 8 Feb 2007.

Update, 9 May 2007: The premiere has moved back one day, as noted elsewhere on this site. And if you were looking for the season three DVD release date, it’s 5 Jun 2007. As TV-on-DVD releases typically happen on Tuesdays, it won’t move concomitantly with the timeslot change.