The normal formula is that Dexter runs across another serial killer and somehow becomes involved with him, as brother, mentor, or student. I think Harrison is a little young to take up the family trade, but who knows? Baby serial killer? Maggie did try to kill Mr Burns, you know.

Dexter is a great show and Season 5 looks to as good as all the rest. Julia Stiles will guest star in 10 episodes as a new woman in Dexter’s life. Shawn Hatosy will appear in a multiple episode arc as a “bad guy”. Maria Doyle Kennedy will also join the cast of Dexter in Season 5 as an Irish nanny. April Lee Hernandez has been called for a recurring role as a police officer. Jonny Lee Miller has been added to the cast, and will have something to do with Julia Stiles’ character. Also Peter Weller will join the cast and he will be playing “a troubled Miami Metro police officer who gets caught up in an internal affairs investigation.”

So Dexter carries on as best as he can. I look forward to seeing how he handles it all.

The new season opens up with a collection of Previously on Eureka clips, the most interesting one being a small clip of Jack and Tess breaking up via hologram-this scene is interesting because it was never aired, never put in webisode, and never shown to the public in any form or fashion.  The general consensus is that the actress who plays Tess got a much better job on Eastwick, but then that show was canceled so she went back to Eureka.  This doesn’t explain why Syfy decided to blindside fans of the show and leave us stumbling along and searching the internet for a missing episode.

As the season opener rolls along it make a little more sense, we are assaulted on every side by new faces, new characters, and an alternate timeline where nothing makes any sense anyway.  The hardest part for me to deal with was Baltar’s tough guy mafioso accent and his constantly calling the Sheriff ‘Sport.’

I’ll admit that the standard formula for Eureka can be a bit predicable, but there’s nothing wrong with that.  Perry Mason was predictable, House is predictable, Three and Half Men is predictable-that doesn’t means it’s bad or unsuccessful.  Nothing annoys me more than great shows changing the entire formula of the show.  There is little danger of the new changes in Eureka being permanent. The great thing about Time Travel is that you can destroy the universe if you want to-so long as you still have the Tardis nearby, it can all be put back together again.  Also, the usual the Sheriff Saves the Town formula was used in the season premier.

I like Eureka and look forward to the new season, but I never liked the autistic kid in the first place and am not crazy about him being the linchpin of the story.  I would also like to see Stark return, since it seems his role in True Blood didn’t pan out very far.

One thing I did truly and completely hate in the season opener was the over use of really bad special effects ala Warehouse 13 and Sanctuary.  Just because you have all those damned green screens laying around doesn’t mean you have to use them on EVERY SHOT! Ok, other than that I’m glad to see the return of Eureka.

First Clown:

Hamlet:
This? [Takes the skull]

First Clown:
E’en that.

Hamlet:
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite
jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a
thousand times, and now how abhorr’d in my imagination it is!
My gorge rises at it.

PBS recently aired the BBC’s Hamlet-another one of those wonderfully anachronistic versions where everyone lives in an alternate reality where they dress much as we dress but talk much as Elizabethans talked.  The works of Shakespeare have been prone to these mashup productions for the past several years.  The fact that the original plays have been staged about a gazillion times means that even fans of The Bard might b tired of the same old thing.  The words remain the same, but the time, place, and costumes can be changed-these are often interesting productions.

David (Dr Who) Tennant and Patrick (Captain Picard) Stewart play Hamlet and Claudius without bringing to mind much of Dr Who or Captain Picard.  Of course, wearing a t-shirt and chewing up he scenery David Tennant doesn’t much bring to mind Hamlet either.  Still, it was an interesting bit of business.  High School was a while ago and I seldom sit and read Shakespeare as I once did.

Watching Hamlet is fun because it seems that every single line from this play has been taken and used elsewhere. It is hard to follow the story at times, as the individual lines all call so much attention to themselves.

This version of Hamlet is very stylized and near perfectly adapted to television.  The lighting and cropping of the shots are all filmic and often at odds with the exaggerated arm flailing and playing to the balcony demanded from a stage production.  It was still Hamlet and it was fun to see David Tennant and Patrick Stewart on the same stage.

So I am left to just watching, which is fine-who really wants to travel the world on someone else’s dime and get paid for it as well? Hmm, I think I could go to haunted houses or look for mythic animals-but then, I never watch those shows.

Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations is my favorite Travel Channel show. He makes it look easy. It seems like your really watching Tony wander around in a daze and listening to his snarky thoughts on everything he sees. It takes a special person to travel the world and bitch and moan about just about everything at the same time. Anthony Bourdain also does many of the things I like to think about, but never get around to doing Like writing books, traveling the world and drinking Absinthe.

The big news on the whole RSA front is that Craig is getting a Robot Skeleton sidekick-which should come little surprise to anyone who saw the anniversary episode that featured an all puppet cast. Gonna love Craig and the whole puppet thing. There is also that wonderful Myth Buster connection, I have always loved Myth Busters-though they have been scraping the bottom of the Myth barrel the past couple of years. But hey, who cares about the Myth as long they blow stuff up and blast Buster to a million little pieces.

The Dyson Vacuum is the one with the proper amount of suction, but being more of a Hoarder type myself, I haven’t owned a vacuum in a very long time. Of course, in Britain they call all vacuums Hoovers, so they would call a Dyson a Dyson Hoover. The mind still tends to wander, what is the proper amount of suction? A question for the ages and any number of Tiger Woods girlfriends.

Oh there is still a bit of drama over Jackie’s lover, but she has decided to ignore his constant text messages and get on with her life of doing good and doing drugs.  Besides, she was only banging Eddie to get  free drugs-and now that he has been replaced with a machine that’s one less thing she has to do everyday.

Doc Cooper-the world’s biggest asshole-has a Twitter account, DoctorCooper.  We see Doctor Cooper tweeting in the second episode and Showtime is going add these tweets in real time as Nurse Jackie is aired on the East Coast.  It seems like a cute idea, we’ll have to see how it goes.

We see most of the same faves again and pick up where we left off. Jackie’s husband and still nice and still clueless. One of Jackie’s daughter seems normal and completely forgettable while the other is worried about the end of the world and the house burning down. Jackie’s lover Eddie is still hanging around and still sort of stalking Jackie and her family. Zoey is still a little dim and is overly thrilled when the stoned out of her mind British Doctor gives her a Hermes scarf-which she wears in various styles.

There is also the usual business of some tragedy happening in the ER and Nurse Jackie trying to do the right thing when no one else can be bothered.

Nurse Jackie is a good show.