Summer of Our Semi-Discontent - Tales from the DVR

I'm in the formatting stages for Darker By Degree and Director's Cut, having just realized the in my format-stripping ministrations, I have lost all my italics. Since it's mystery series featuring an movie-buff actress as the first person protagonist, there are A LOT of italics for movie and TV series titles. Grrr. At least rereading everything again, I'm sure I'll find more pointless stupid errors, even though each book just came back from two rounds of proofreading. And did I mention they'll be published by the end of next week? Woot!

As stress relief, I'm trying to keep up with the DVR.

The Glades is back on A&E, and apparently between season one and season two, they replaced the writers with monkeys. The actors -- Matt Passmore, Kiele Sanchez, and Carlos Gomez -- are great, but the plot of the second episode was so strained and contrived that midway through I was tempted to dash off a strongly-worded letter outlining the shortcomings of the plot, and the absolutely nonsensical character "motivations." (My strongly-worded letters are devastating.) Hopefully it will get back on track and be as watchable as it was last season. (The Mentalist went through a period where the scripts appeared to be just random sentences strung together and it got better, so there is hope.)

Outcasts on BBC America:  A human outpost on the planet Carpathia is searching for the remnants of a flotilla of escape ships that left shortly before/during the destruction of Earth. (Random fact for the day: the Carpathia was the first ship to reach the debris of the Titanic and start pulling survivors out of the brine.) Starring Hermione Norris (Wire in the Blood) and Liam Cunningham (Dog Soldiers), it has possibilities. I'll hold back until I've watched episode two. I was disappointed that they dispatched the eye candy (Jamie Bamber) so early. And I will predict that Eric Mabius will be evil, because when is Erik Mabius not evil?

I have not watched TNT's Falling Skies, simply because it's two hours long, and I feel guilty staying still for that long at one time. It's on the DVR for the weekend.

Watched USA's Suits as an antidote to the other law show on TNT, Franklin & Bash. I will say that I enjoyed it roughly a hundred thousand times more. I think a large measure of my goodwill stem from the fact that the lead actors don't make me want to run them over with a bus and bury them in an umarked grave. Gabriel Macht (channeling Adrian Pasdar in Profit) and Patrick J. Adams are actually quite interesting, with none of the forced "look at me, I'm weirdly, charmingly eccentric" mania of that other show. And as a bonus, Gina Torres. (Hi, Zoe!)

Also Burn Notice is back, Leverage starts on Sunday, and in a couple of weeks the return of The Closer, Rizzoli and Isles, Eureka, Warehouse 13, and Haven, plus the premier of SyFy's Alphas. The DVR is holding steady about 50 hours, but I fear that won't last....sigh.