According to anonymous reports, NBC has canceled two of its high profile shows, Lipstick Jungle and My Own Worst Enemy. I never watched either, but I’m not at all surprised: Lipstick Jungle looked like a crappy (and presumably watered down) rip-off of Sex and the City, and My Own Worst Enemy… well, it was just one of the worst-titled shows of the season.

Honestly, why name a show My Own Worst Enemy? Especially a thriller? It sounds like a sitcom. Thrillers, especially ones about undercover agents or hitmen or whatever Christian Slater played, should have cool one-or-two-word titles, not some cheesy title that immediately will turn audiences off. Think: Alias, Lost, CSI, JAG, Cold Case, NCIS, The Shield and countless others. Regardless of what you think of those individual shows, nice, short, cool names sell. Clever titles that might work as book titles don’t. My Own Worst Enemy was doomed before the marketing ever started.

Of course, the marketing didn’t help. The concept was cool in theory, but the previews prevented it as more of a gimmick than anything else. They needed some slick, action-packed previews, not the stuff that they threw at audiences seemingly every commercial break.

And personally, I almost find that well known actors are often a detractor for new shows. I’d rather see a show based around an idea rather than around an actor, and the fact that Christian Slater hasn’t done anything of significance in ten years was problematic. I have nothing against the guy, but more often then not, if I see previews for a new show led by a truly recognizable actor, I question its quality.

There’s my random blog post today…

Holy crap. How things can change in six months. The top-rated NBC action series Heroes, which was an instant hit two years ago, has been canceled after a 25% drop in viewership with the third season’s premiere. With advertisers dropping off left and right, NBC will air the remaining seven episodes that have already been filmed and, presumably, wrap things up with a quick season finale - if fans are lucky.

No doubt, fans like me are going to protest this like crazy, as Heroes is one of the most refreshing shows on television. It was a risky venture by NBC - after all, even with superheroes being as popular as ever after successful franchises like X-Men and Spider-man, TV audiences can be finicky, and the thought of a television show about “realistic” superheroes was pushing the acceptability factor of people. Nonetheless, it launched with a slam dunk and just went from there, delivering some of the best television we’ve seen in years (OK, not nearly as good as Lost or Battlestar Galactica).

Unfortunately, the second season was a bit weak at times, and the last several episodes were hurried by the writer’s strike, cutting short major season arcs and conveniently wrapping them up in overly ambitious ways. Season Two saw a ridiculously small amount of episodes, and apparently that was more than enough to kill it for audiences. Still, a 25% decrease is pretty shocking, and NBC must have passed the break-even point as I’m sure Heroes is quite pricey (despite having rather crappy special effects by today’s standards).

Anyway, while Heroes did experience a 25% drop with its season premiere, NBC of course is not really canceling one of its most popular shows. Did you really believe that? Did you?

Heroes: Season Three is almost here, which means Season Two is coming to DVD. The four-disc set contains the shortened, 11-episode season, complete with time traveling, viruses, wedding massacres and more. It’s no question that most Heroes fans will scoop this DVD set up despite what my Bible-like words say below, but what about those on the cusp? What about those poor, pathetic people who haven’t completely embraced the world of Heroes? What about starving African children?

Let’s all face it: Heroes: Season Two wasn’t as good as series one. Writer’s strike aside, it was still a tad rushed, a little weak in the writing department at times, and so on and so forth. Some characters were taken down some strange paths (Mohinder), and others were introduced that just weren’t very interesting (like the New Orleans girl who can learn anything). The writer’s strike made the last several episodes even more accelerated than the earlier ones, leading to rough transitions, undeveloped stories and a resolution to the season-wide story arc that should have come 13 episodes later. All that being said, Heroes is still one of the best shows on television.

But that’s not what I’m here to review. There are plenty of websites devoted to just how good (or bad) Heroes is, so I’m focusing the rest of this review on the bonus features. As is typical with TV releases these days, the bonus features are annoyingly spread across multiple discs, which is probably fine for most - except for when you’re trying to review the bonus features and have to swap the disc out every fifteen minutes, damn it.

Anyway, the highlight of the box set is the deleted scenes, of which there are plenty. Practically every episode has a couple of deleted scenes, some of which are quite revealing. As always, you won’t miss too much if you never see these, but as far as deleted scenes go, they’re pretty good. The highlight… of the highlights… is an alternate ending, which truly is an alternate ending. SPOILER ALERT. Whereas in the actual final episode of the season, Peter, Nathan and Hiro stop the virus from being unleashed - only to have Nathan get shot while attempting to announce that he has special powers. In the alternate ending, the writers take the darker approach by letting the virus get released, causing Odessa, Texas to go into quarantine. Ultimately, the actual ending is tighter and more effective, but it would have been pretty cool had Peter not caught the vial at the end of Season Two.

Beyond the alternate ending and deleted scenes, Heroes: Season Two comes with some pretty good “Genetics of a Scene” clips, which are pretty entertaining and slightly insightful. I’d recommend these. There are also some NBC featurettes, which I didn’t watch, and a series of “Untold Episodes,” which are pretty good. There are also audio commentaries for the episodes.

Unfortunately, the rest of the bonus features aren’t all that good. There’s a ridiculously cheesy “documentary” about Takezo Kensei, which is so bad I could only watch a minute of it. I mean, it’s about as bad as faux documentaries can get. A “news reel” about Richard Drucker is also quite terrible, and rather pointless unless I completely missed something. The “Season 2: A New Beginning” featurette is just a promotional, “you’re going to see things you’ve never seen before” kind of featurette, and the Season 3 preview is, as expected, nothing special.

Heroes: Season Two is worth the purchase because, yes, it contains all of the episodes from season 2. The deleted scenes, alternate endings and “Genetics of a Scene” bonus features are well worth it; at the same time, NBC would have done well to save themselves some money and not include their “original” bonus features, as they are downright terrible and just a waste of money. Still, recommended for the overall value of the show.

I’m a big fan of serialized shows, and in general not a big fan of sitcoms or reality shows. They can be entertaining even when they are complete crap, but I don’t like that guilt factor when watching a show. However, there are two reality shows I am big fans of, and they are two of the originals. They are both on CBS, and you may have heard of them: Survivor and The Amazing Race.

While some have said Survivor has grown old, the producers have really figured out a way to make the show unpredictable without being ridiculous, and it continues to work its magic. I look forward to this one quite a bit each week.

And then there’s The Amazing Race, a ridiculously addicting reality show that doesn’t rely (too much) on drama on talking to the camera. It’s a race around the world, and it’s a race produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. Every episode is exciting, and you get to see places you’d never ordinarily see.

Anyway, to the point of this article, CBS has renewed The Amazing Race for its 13th season. The show apparently struggled with its eleventh season, but now in an 8:00pm Sunday timeslot, it has been averaging 12 million viewers a week, more than enough to convince the channel to bring back its Emmy-winning reality show. Sweet!

Um… Where do I start? High School Musical 2 is coming out on DVD this Tuesday in an Extended Edition, which includes a new music scene, sing-along features, a rehearsal cam (where you can watch dance rehearsal footage while watching the movie), karaoke features and music videos. First, though, you have to see the movie, and if you’re not in the Disney demographic, you probably won’t like it.

“Probably won’t like it” - is that true? High School Musical 2 was one of the biggest hits of the year, and that must mean that more than pre-teen kids are watching it. It received pretty good reviews, so that must mean that some adult critics liked it, too.

But honestly, I do not see what the appeal is, though I’ll admit that I am way out of the target demographic. I like musicals, but I like realistic musicals with engaging music with excellent musical sequences. High School Musical 2 does not offer this. I liked one song out of the entire movie, and had to fast forward through several of the other musical sequences as they were just so utterly unbearable. The songs are so chipper (yes, so Disney) and cheesy, but what really kills them is the poor audio matching to the actors - I’m pretty sure they sing the songs, but the audio track is so obviously separate from the actual filmed scenes that it pretty much looks like they’re lip syncing the entire time. Oh, and the dance moves are just dreadful. I felt like I was watching an N’Sync or Backstreet Boys music video from ten years ago, as the dance moves are so goofy and un-trendy you just have to see them to believe them.

When the actors aren’t singing, High School Musical 2 is pretty bearable and somewhat entertaining. The development of Zac Efron’s character is decent enough (the story is about him forced to decide between a bunch of easy choices to get into college and allegiance to his friends and girlfriend), and I also liked the nasty performance by Ashley Tisdale. Having known nothing about the High School Musical franchise before tonight other than Vanessa Hudgens’ nude photos, I was a bit surprised to see that Hudgens has such a small role in the movie (maybe because her acting, singing and character aren’t very inspiring). In reality, the writers’ decision to keep the movie away from a typical teen romance story (though it does have a lot of those elements) and do something different (no, I’m not saying it’s original by any stretch) was a smart one, though.

The only other thing that bugged me about the movie was just how G-rated it was. I should have seen it coming - it’s from the Disney channel after all - but for some reason I had expectations that it was going to be something more. Since it has been so successful, I figured that the movie would branch away from Disney just a little bit, but nope. Why does G-rated stuff bother me? The movie is about 17-year olds, yet Efron and Hudgens only kiss at the very end, there’s almost no cleavage (hair is strategically placed at times to hide Tisdale’s) and the girls don’t wear bikinis. It’s not that I needed these things, but the absence of them are so blatant and forced that the whole movie feels unrealistic as a result. It’s hard to get into characters when everything about them is unbelievable.

High School Musical 2 is probably popular because it is safe and G-rated while never boring, which is perfect for families with younger children or people with certain religious values who don’t believe that men and women should touch each other before marriage. I understand this, and for the right age, I can see how the movie could be quite entertaining.

Still, I am just shocked at how low quality the music and the dance numbers are; they are so bad I couldn’t even watch them. That’s not a good sign for a musical.