As someone who spends a healthy (if that's the word) chunk of most weekends catching up on Friday night TV, here are some very strong arguments for even the most cabin-feverish among us to stay in this Friday night. It's also a classic DVR dilemma. Which to watch live, which to record?
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My vote is on having a real-time Fringe experience — which in this case means flashing back in time to another pivotal moment in the worlds-collide mythology. This terrifically imaginative series, hitting its peak in its third season in every way but ratings, needs every fan's support. I do think Fox believes in the show and is rooting for it to succeed, but the move to Fridays is proving to be as challenging as trying to tell the two Walter Bishops apart back in 1985. (I had to play back one scene twice because I temporarily lost track of which world we were in.)
Fringe reminds me of Lost in the way that over time it has abandoned almost any pretext of reeling in the casual viewer. You're either into ...
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Supernatural (Friday, 9/8c, The CW)
It's a mad, mad, meta world when the Winchester brothers are transported to a parallel universe where Sam and Dean become their actual alter egos: Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, stars of a TV show called Supernatural. Even weirder, Castiel turns out to be a Twitter fiend whose real name is Misha Collins, and so on. Sounds like a fun change of pace from the recent grim tidings. Meanwhile, in the same...
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Spartacus: Gods of the Arena rewinds the clock, resurrects a couple of dead guys and introduces two new characters who share in the gladiator-era debauchery and bloodlust.
Set approximately five years before Spartacus: Blood and Sand, the six-part prequel (premiering Friday at 10/9c on Starz) features a more youthful but no less ambitious Lentulus Batiatus (John Hannah), and his randy wife Lucretia (Lucy Lawless) as well as Gladitor Crixus (Manu Bennett) and Oenomaus (Peter Mensah). New to the story are Gannicus (Dustin Clare), a gladiator, and the merry widow Gaia (Jaime Murray), both of whom provide much of the entertainment — and trouble — in Batiatus' world before the arrival of Spartacus.
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Rome wasn't built in a day, but Spartacus: Gods of the Arena came damn close.
This is the program Starz quickly green-lit last year when Season 2 of Spartacus: Blood and Sand had to be put on hold due to leading man Andy Whitfield's cancer diagnosis. The powers behind the hit series needed a way to maintain creative momentum and keep their cast and staff together until Blood could resume, with Whitfield's replacement, Liam McIntyre. (Production begins this spring.)
But Gods, a six-episode prequel revealing how the House of Batiatus rose to prominence in the gladiator business, is no mere time-filler. It's just as epic and freakishly compelling as the original series and — if possible — even more gruesome, decadent and scatological...
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