AUTHOR: tbooty DATE: 5/24/2004 11:26:00 AM ----- BODY: i'm a thief. i admit it. although, i will point out that i'm not the FIRST person to steal from zoot, and she steals from everybody, so it's not like it's a big deal. (you know i love ya girl!) i'll get to the stealing part in a minute. first of all i'm totally season finale-ed out. all of my shows are done now, with the exception of kingdom hospital, which is a mini-series. it only has a few episodes left. one of which was supposed to air on thursday night, but they showed some stupid oprah dateline thing instead. now i have to wait until this week to see what happens. i had 2 of my staple shows end this year. (friends and ed) ok. i can live with that. they'd pretty much run their courses, so it was expected. what i hate is when they have a new show that is perfectly good and that i acutally enjoy watching, and they cancel it without even saying that it's cancelled. (for example: miss match. yes i know it was kinda hokey, but it was cute and then boom. gone. no explanation, no nothing.) i started watching las vegas this year. love that show! i watch a lot of tv. here's the rundown...........las vegas, queer eye for the straight guy (which hasn't had a new episode in weeks), will & grace, friends, er, kingdom hospital, miss match, alias and charmed. and ed, but that ended in jan/feb before all of the sweeps stuff. so out of 10 shows, 2 ended, 1 is a mini-series, so it doesn't really count, and 1 other was cancelled without fanfare. that takes me to 6. (i also watch nip/tuck but it doesn't start until 6/22) so all of my shows, with the exception of the mini-series and nip/tuck, are done for the season. this sucks and leaves me asking, as zoot did recently on her blog, what the hell do i watch now?? and gets me back to my thieving i was talking about earlier. zoot mentioned the "issues" she had with the season finale of 24. as i watched alias last night, i could totally see where she was coming from. i don't know if any of you watch the show. i never miss it. i own season 1 & 2 on dvd and have already bought season 3 (which is this season) even though it won't be released until september. shut up. first of all, let me give those of you who don't watch the show a quick recap. sydney bristow (syd) is a cia agent who works with her dad jack, also cia and her off again-on again boyfriend vaughn, also cia. vaughn's wife, is a bad guy, which we all found out this year, characters included. she works for both the nsc division of the cia and the covenant (the aforementioned bad guys). she hates syd because a) vaughn is still in love with her (& vice versa) and b) syd is a good guy and c) they are both after the same things. the whole basis of this show is that back in the time of galileo there was supposedly this guy named rambaldi who made all of these amazing devices that were centuries before their time as far as technology and such. the cia is trying to obtain all of these devices before the covenant can to keep them from being used for evil. and in some way that still, after 3 seasons, hasn't been fully explained, syd is connected to rambaldi. for example, her sister (that she didn't even know existed) has some sort of rambaldi "map" implanted in her that she can only access by having some formula injected into her. ok. so enough background. if you want more, go to abc.com and look up the history of the show. DISCLAIMER: DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW!! so vaughn's wife lauren (the baddie) shows up at cia headquarters disguised as syd and is acting all weird. she's leaving things all over the office and she's not speaking. the disguise was very good, as she fooled everyone, but she didn't speak. that's not a likely thing. nobody questioned this of course and lauren succeeded in stealing what she was after and blowing up most of the rotunda. this was the first thing that gave me pause. i mean, syd works with these people on a daily basis and the guy that "syd" shot would think it weird that she didn't speak. 2nd. during the show vaughn kidnaps his traitorous wife and is going to "kill" her. (at least that's what we think) from nowhere he is stabbed in the back and the wife escapes. we don't see who rescued her. later on, we see vaughn in the hospital being rushed down the hall er style on a gurney. nobody knew where he was. who called 911? how was he found? 3rd. after surgery (that took all of 10 minutes, i might add)we find out that he has a collapsed lung when his best friend tells him. he tries to sit up. he fails. he's weak, etc, etc. yet not 5 minutes later, his friend is helping him escape the hospital (as he's under investigation for "rogue" activity. i guess they frown on kidnapping your traitor of a wife and trying to torture her. go figure.) so that he can warn syd that she's walking into a trap. let's just say that the man moves (and breathes, for that matter) pretty good for a guy with a punctured lung. and that's not even mentioning the sliding down the fire hose in the stairwell! 4th. syd finds lauren and they have the inevitable cat fight. and lauren dangles information about "we're just 2 pawns in the same game" yadda, yadda, yadda. of course vaughn shows up in time and shoots lauren. my question is this......why on these shows does nobody EVER shoot someone in the head? they work for the cia for heaven's sake. don't they know about kevlar? body armor? what-have-you? i mean, if you were willing to kidnap the woman and torture her with acid to disfigure her, why the hell would you shoot her in the shoulder instead of the head? presumably, she's dead, seeing as how she was shot 5 or 6 times and then fell into a hole they were excavating, but still. be sure. go for the head shot! those were the main things. they didn't really detract from my enjoying the show and saying "NO!" at the ending, but they annoyed me none-the-less. one other thing that gets me. charmed does the season premiere/season finale thing right. a 2 hour show for each. why doesn't anyone else take that approach? this way you get an extra 2 hours where they can explore things and spend more time on some plot points instead of wrapping everything up in an hour. (not even once you subtract the commercials from the episode time.) just another of those things that make you say hmmmmmmmm. tani trivia answer.......... i have been to vegas 6 times. i think, for now at least, that will be the last of the tani trivia, as no-one really seems to be playing and until i get back into the daily grind of writing it seems kinda moot. (j, i know you've answered almost every question girl! thanks for the ego boost!) --------