It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these LNST columns. I’m still watching as much TV as ever, but I’m just not writing about it as much. I guess that’s because a lot of things are in reruns, I haven’ caught on to a lot of new shows and I’ve found other bloggers who write about the shows I like far better than I (and for actual money). Last night was a unique experience though as Syfy launched what looks like a pretty solid line-up of sci-fi themed, hour long shows. I only watched two of them, though because I’ve got to get caught up on my Housewives. Yes, I realize how sad that is.

EUREKA (8:00PM, Syfy)The missus and I lucked out and got completely caught up on Eureka‘s current season a few weeks back. Syfy was running a marathon and we tuned in exactly at the place where we left off during the previous marathon. Last night’s episode was the premiere of the second half of this season (yeah, it’s confusing). If you missed out, this whole season has revolved around Jack, Fargo, Allison, Jo and Henry dealing with a trip to the past that changed the present. This particular episode didn’t deal with that too much, instead focusing on Fargo and Zane accidentally launching themselves into space and everyone else trying to get them back safely. It’s a real “anything that can go wrong, will” story that shows off how good the Eureka writing staff is at playing within in their chosen genres. I’m still on the fence whether not getting into the greater mythology was a mistake or note. On one hand, it’s a kind of season opener so it might make sense to go light on the continuity, however, it’s not a season opener but a mid season opener, so why not jump in with both feet? I’ve got high hopes for the rest of this season. I’m guessing the Big Five’s big secret will start leaking out all over the place and am curious to see what the writers do with that.

WAREHOUSE 13 (9:00PM, Syfy)I didn’t write about it on the blog, but the last season finale for Warehouse 13 was pretty epic. While each episode that season had a solid monster of the week-type set up with Pete, Myka, Artie, Leena and Claudia tracking down artifacts that cause all kinds of havoc while also building on an overarching story. Things got pretty crazy at the end of the season with the world at risk and Myka quitting the Warehouse. The missus caught me up on that because I forgot most of it, so I was pumped for the premiere. And it turned out pretty good. I can’t really explain the episode because I missed a few of the details regarding the specific artifact, but people were getting killed and the Warehouse 13 crew–including new member and walking lie-detector Aaron Ashmore from Veronica Mars!–figuring it out. Of course, they run into Myka in her new day job and she SPOILER winds up rejoining the team with Ashmore staying on as well.

I did have one geeky problem with the episode though. The beginning is kind of ridiculous. Ashmore gets introduced as a New Jersey fed trying to figure out why a rock and roll museum is shooting lightning all over the place. Turns out Jimi Hendrix’s guitar is inside and causing the commotion. Claudia has to screw in his tremolo and whammy the guitar so it stops. My problems were two fold. First off, this whole scene just had a generally silly tone to it. The museum looked like a few pieces of clothes and a rack of guitars placed in an office building’s hallway. The dialog also got a little too inside baseball with Claudia geeking out when fire and lightning is literally inches away from killing her. Even worse than that, though, was the fact that Claudia picked up a normal right handed guitar to play. The problem with that is that, while Hendrix did play a right handed guitar, he flipped it over, switched a few parts and actually played it left handed. So, when she puts the guitar–which is not encased in anything by the way–over her shoulder, it’s normally right handed. If you’re going to throw around years and tremolos, you damn well better get all the details right. Just saying.

REAL HOUSEWIVES OF NEW YORK (10:00PM, Bravo, rerun)Because the missus and I were out of town from Thursday evening until yesterday afternoon, we missed a lot of our regular shows, including Real Housewives of New York and New Jersey. As such, when I saw that these reruns were starting at 10, I passed up on Alphas, but will probably catch up on it at some point this weekend. Quick funny story, I was in the living room watching RHONY while my wife was in the bedroom feeding the baby and watching Alphas. She was disappointed when she came out and I was watching Bravo.

Anyway, I’ve become enthralled with Brian Moylan‘s Housewives posts on Gawker, but figured I’d toss out a few observations of my own (I haven’t read his post(s?) on the most recent episodes. Anyway, the juxtaposition of Ramona dragging her daughter Avery to a burlesque store (which is really a sex store, right?) played up against Jill’s daughter Allie explaining to her that she’s taking a sex class (a pretty popular class at every college, if I remember correctly) and wants to be a sex columnist for a magazine (snicker, good luck with that honey) was amazing. This episode should have probably been called “Ramona’s a bad mother” because after emotionally traumatizing Avery at a sex store, she then meets up with her for lunch and asks if she can make some calls while they eat. Avery explicitly tells her mother that she misses her and wants to spend more time with her parents and Ramona completely brushes her off, later saying that Avery is constantly calling her and her husband to find out where they are and looking annoyed while doing it.

There’s some other junk with mothers and daughters, including LuAnn–who’s become the most insufferable of the ladies by far–teaching her too-hop daughter to drive out in the Hamptons. It must have been a fluke when both of them were in the same county at the same time, so they made the best out of it. There’s also a bit where the Countess’ producer–who happens to look exactly like Tintin–plays her new song for her. It’s awful as you might expect. I hope that guy never works for legit people ever/again.

The rest of the episode revolves around Sonja’s burlesque party (which is why Ramona was in a burlesque store earlier). Most of the attendees didn’t seem to know what burlesque really was as it looked like a messy mash-up of Victorian, steampunk, circus master (Mario) and vintage Clockwork Orange thanks to Kelly. I am absolutely a one hundred percent heterosexual male, yet anytime Sonja smushes her lady bits into a supposedly sexy and far too revealing outfit and starts prancing around, I get a little sick in my stomach. She does not got it, she should not flaunt it, she just looks like a sad old lady looking, nay BEGGING for attention.