I treated my illness with a week of medicinal Starcraft and all kinds of cold-fighting beverages. I'm feeling better now, and life moves inexorably onward for me. My portfolio is coming together nicely and I should have it in the mail to BSU this next week. I'm also back to selling books at BN, so w00t for me.

In my geek opinion, it's been an up-and-down month for geek shows. My big three are Angel, Smallville, and West Wing. One is building to a giant climax, one is spinning it's wheels, and one is meandering aimlessly, respectively.

As Angel gears up for a series finale that might just be The End in a big way, there were several excellent episodes this past month. We got a goofy mystical puppet episode written by the Tick creator Ben Edlund, a cool flashback episode on a WWII submarine, and even a sort of a "beginning of the end" episode written and directed by Joss Whedon himself. There has been a real sense of urgency and suspense in the show, and more than one main character has died. I would even go so far as to opine that this has been better so far than most of the last season of Buffy.

Smallville is either running out of ideas to take from other shows and movies, or the producers have some huge idea cooking on the back burner for the last few episodes of the season. I'm not quite sure what's going on. There was a surprisingly nice episode about a girl who could teleport, hence she didn't really have any sense of personal boundaries and this leads to certain trouble for our hero. Then there was the usual plotting about bombs with kryptonite, cars with kryptonite, and everything else that has already been done to death on the show. It's getting sad. Aside from that, though, the characters other than Clark and Lana have been given more important roles. There have been two different explanations about Pete's whereabouts during the first half of the season. The last episode was mostly a dud, save for a wordless scene at the end that puts nearly three years of mystery in perspective and left my jaw on the floor. If the writers can manage to avoid any more gaping plot holes and stop being so grossly negligent with Clark's secret, then the season's last six episodes will be very cool indeed.

Then, there's West Wing. Insert labored sigh here. It's only too clear how smart a writer Aaron Sorkin is now that he isn't heading the show anymore. It's almost as if the writers are locked in separate offices with nothing but word processors and muted televisions on CNN. There hasn't been any thought given to the characters themselves, the people behind the official titles. The original intent of the show was to put a human face on politics. I missed a couple of episodes due to work, but so far this season has been sort of an echo of the previous four years.

I watch more TV than I used to, but I try to limit myself to shows I'm actually interested in. I'll be cutting way back next fall, I know that. Until then, I can anticipate Wonderfalls, a promising new show for the clods at Fox to run into the ground, and an eventual second season of Dead Like Me.