TV? During The Summer? Weird.

This is a pretty odd summer for me, in that there's actually more than one time slot a week that I eagerly anticipate, and so I'm going to talk a little about what's caught my interest this summer.

Eureka: I got hooked on Eureka last Thanksgiving, when Sci-Fi channel did an all day marathon of the first season. The plots are not anything all that original in themselves, but they draw their unique feel from the oddball science stuff that winds up in every episode, like a person feeling unappreciated taking steps to correct that - by using a machine that makes localized weather to make himself look brilliant.

Admittedly, I'm not all that interested in the sheriff's attempts at a relationship with the new head of the think-tank, but I do enjoy his butting heads with her ex-husband, and his relationship with his teenage daughter. It's a quirky show, one that I find enjoyable.

The Bronx Is Burning: It feels odd to me, as someone who is generally exhausted by ESPN's seeming constant fascination with the Yankees, to watch this show, knowing that it will end in their World Series victory. But, I rationalize it by telling myself that I enjoy watching the Yankees squabble and bicker like a bunch of elementary children, which I do. Honestly, watching Steinbrenner act like he did, it drives home just how much he's mellowed out in the last thirty years. Of course, that's probably due as much to getting old as it is his gaining some perspective in his later years. Turturro as Billy Martin cuts an interesting figure: full of brass and fire, but at times looking broken inside, to the point that he's ready to come crawling back to George to keep this job.

Burn Notice: I'm sure all of us have shows we loved that we feel got canceled before their time. A few years back, Jeffrey Donovan starred in a show for USA called Touching Evil about a detective with some mental issues, stemming from the death of his family, and his getting shot in the head. It was like Monk in that it had a quirky, but likable detective, but it was much darker. The crimes committed weren't as goofy, Donovan's character was frequently struggling with depression and trying to help other people in similar situations to his. Naturally USA bounced it all over the schedule, and it got dropped after 8 episode.

Burn Notice marks Donovan's return to USA as a professional spook who can't get a job, because he's been "burned". Now trapped in Miami, being harassed by his mother and gambling addicted brother, he's trying to figure out why he was burned, while taking odd jobs to get some money together, to get the equipment to figure out what's going on. It has a distinct MacGyver feel, only Donovan has no problem with using firearms. It's funny and has some nice internal narration about making listening devices out of cell phones, and things to remember while fighting, and it has Bruce Campbell, and really how can you go wrong with Bruce Campbell? Besides those creepy Old Spice commercials I mean.

I'll also mention that I like that Sci-Fi started showing anime on Monday night. That Highlander movie last night was tight, yo. At one point you had a guy with a sword squaring off with a guy with a gun, on the wing of a Nazi transport plane, that has an engine on fire. And then the plane exploded. Nice. Plus, it's from the director of Ninja Scroll, which means profanity (edited), nudity (blurred), and people get their heads split in half with swords, which is naturally shown in all its blood spraying glory. Wait, something doesn't seem right about that. Either way, it's always fun to watch fictional people with swords hack each other to bits, especially when they keep pulling themselves back together again.