TV News and Reviews @ KickAssTV.com

Irish wannabe gangsters make a comeback in NBC’s Midseason replacement show “The Black Donnellys”, which despite the name, is not about a family of African-Americans named the Donnellys. The Donnelly boys are four close-knit 20-somethings who grows up on the mean streets of New York’s Hells Kitchen, and there they remain, and probably die, too.

Watch terrorist scum blow up San Antonio. Watch Jack Bauer be sacrificed to stop the reign of terror. Watch Jack Bauer go all Dracula on a terrorist scum. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, “24″ is back, and Jack Bauer, despite spending 2 years (or thereabouts) in a Chinese prison being tortured and forced to eat soy sauce and Kung Pao chicken 7 days a week, is still the baddest man on the planet. Or is he? Ol Jack is having doubts about his ability to do the job, or as he confesses to an unlikely source, “I don’t know how to do this anymore.”

“Jericho”, the new CBS show, has a kick ass premise, but the execution is open to intepretation. In short, there has been a series of coordinated, planned terrorist attack on the country, with nukes being set off in major cities. No one knows what exactly happened, why, or who is responsible. The show itself takes place in the small Kansas town of Jericho, and is confined there for the four episodes I’m reviewing here.

The Showtime Channel’s new series “Dexter” is a forensics/police procedural about a serial killer; but the twist is that the serial killer is also the show’s hero. Or anti-hero, I guess you’d call him. He’s a guy named Dexter, who works in the police labs as their blood specialist, and who goes after people he knows for sure are guilty, but for various reasons (police incompetence, a really good and expensive defense attorney, etc) aren’t properly punished, thus justice goes unserved. Enter Dexter.

If you’ve been paying attention to the storylines of Ron Moore’s new “Battlestar Galactica”, you sorta knew this was coming. Sooner or later, you knew Ron Moore was going to stop pussyfootin’ around and just come out and say it: He thinks the Iraqi Terrorists in Iraq that are blowing up men, women, children out for Sunday shopping are heroes, and that the American occupation, along with the Iraqi cops and government officials trying to keep their country from being torn apart, are villains.

“Prison Break” is back, biotches!!!

The premiere opens with some mysterious figures in a smoky room running down names of the escapees. Some notes: They mention that Not-Hilary Hilary is now the President and Michael is named the prison break mastermind. It appears The Conspiracy is going to sic the bespeckled man after the Prison Break Gang.

I can’t believe what an idiot I’ve been for missing out on all three seasons of HBO’s insanely good “Deadwood”. This mistake was doubly irritating, in hindsight, as I’ve always loved Westerns. I guess the reason why I never bothered with “Deadwood” was all the hype about the show being yet another revitionist Western, which is not all bad in spurts, but over the course of a season can get pretty damn boring. But daaaaaaamn, is “Deadwood” friggin good or is it goddamn good? I’m going with both.

I can’t stand TV Teens. You know what I’m talking about — those mouthy, rebellious, always-knows-what-to-say teens that only TV writers can think off because it’s the most creative (i.e. most unrealistic) version of a teen they can come up with. The daughter character in the new Sci Fi Channel “Eureka” is — tada — the consummate TV Teen. Mouthy, rebellious, and disrepectful to her father. If you don’t want to slap this little bitch’s teeth out of her mouth after an hour of the “Eureka” pilot, then you’re the writers who dreamt her up in the first place. Either that, or you’re a teen yourself, and you wish you could be as annoying and always-ready-with-a-comeback like her.

With the movie franchise hobbling on its last leg (”Trinity” was a disaster in almost ever respects), the Powers That Be made the most sensible decision (didn’t they?) and transplanted their franchise into TV form. So “Blade: The Series” was born. On basic cable network Spike TV, no less. With original “Blade” star Wesley Snipes spending his days in Romania making crappy direct-to-video action movies, the franchise producer, David Goyer, has tapped rapper Sticky Fingaz (no kidding, this is his name) as the new Blade. He’s a younger, shorter, but just as black, version of Blade. Well, at least they didn’t make Blade white, so that’s something.

“I don’t know things that I’m supposed to know, but I do know things that I’m not supposed to know,” says John Doe (Dominic Purcell) to a hotdog vendor 12 minutes into the pilot episode of “John Doe”. Hey, we’ve all been there, right? Well, probably not. Premiering on Fox TV in 2002, I remember “John Doe” being a pretty high-profile series, but it never really went anywhere. The show was axed after Year 1, leaving fans wondering what the secret behind John Doe’s ability to know everything in the world except, as he relates to the hot dog vendor, everything he’s supposed to know, such as his name or anything about his past, a mystery. (The producers actually spoiled this sometime ago at a convention; keep reading for it at the end of this review.)