Comic-Con 2009 Part 3: More from Friday

On Friday we spent a good amount of time on the Comic-Con floor. We started the day interviewing Cameron Rains about the Astro Boy game but ended our day at a few very interesting panels. The first panel was Dollhouse which you can read about in the previous post. Next we stayed in the room for TV Guide's Sci-Fi Hot List which featured some of Geek World's favorite shows as well as some new shows coming out this year.

Included on the panel: Johnny Galecki (The Big Bang Theory), Zachary Levi (Chuck), Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory), Scott Peters (executive producer, V), Rebecca Romijn (Eastwick), Kevin Williamson (executive producer, The Vampire Diaries), Scott Wolf (V), John Cho (Flash Forward), Marc Guggenheim (producer, Flash Forward), Allison DuBois (the real person behind Medium)

We love The Big Bang Theory and it's fantastic that the show is doing well (hooray for the geeks). We were both amused that Jim Parsons sounds exactly the same on the show as he does in real life. While he (and Johnny Galecki) admitted not to actually understand Physics Jim sounds exactly like his character Sheldon (though to his credit he is not whiny like Sheldon is). We didn't learn anything new about the show but it was nice to know how many fans it has.

Chuck fans should be thanking Subway (the sandwich chain, not the mode of transportation) for the return of the show. While DVR ratings may have proved the show more popular than traditional ratings it seems nobody really bothered checking that (thank goodness Dollhouse may be setting a new ratings standard) so it took Subway's innovative marketing to keep Chuck alive. The last time we saw Chuck Bartowski he was demonstrating Chuck-Fu on the bad guys as Sarah & John watched in shock. Zachary Levi seemed to imply that next season will bring more of that (at least for a while) and Sarah may now be making sandwiches at Subway. They didn't give too many details but seeing the Chuck-Fu scene again was totally worth it. Can't wait till Season 3 starts! Thank you Subway!

We got to see a clip of the new show The Vampire Diaries. It seems pretty simple, it's like the OC but with vampires: girl meets vampire, vampires brother comes to town and causes problems, girl is in vampire love triangle while dealing with high school. It seems to be a better option than shows like 90210 but the whole teen soap opera is just not our style. Even so, we like Ian Somerhalder (you may remember him as Boone from Lost but we'll always remember him in his 6 episode run on Smallville as Adam Knight) so we'll check out the pilot when it airs.

V is a remake of a classic so we were a bit worried (Dave has very vivid memories of watching it as a kid). The clip they showed pleased us both. It looks like they took great care to update the classic sci-fi story. We love Morena Baccarin (Inara from Firefly/Serenity) & Laura Vandervort (Kara from Smallville). We had the opportunity to meet and interview Laura on the Smallville set a while back. We were always shocked at how they shot her in Smallville because she was absolutely stunning in person but they just couldn't seem to get the camera angles right to show them off. Pleasantly it seems V does not run into that problem. Yay Laura! Even Scott Wolf seems to do a good job. Definitely something everyone should give a chance!

Eastwick is an update of The Witches of Eastwick starring Rebecca Romijn, Lindsay Price, & Jamie Ray Newman as the three witchy sisters & Paul Gross as the mysterious man who enters their lives. Again this is not really our style. We saw a clip and I don't think we'll be watching it but it seems to be a fill for those now disappointed with Desperate Housewives. It's hard not to compare Paul Gross to Jack Nicholson (who played the character in the 1987 movie) and while the ladies seem to do a good job it just seems like Charmed without the fun.

Flash Forward was a show we hadn't heard about before the panel. It's surprising there hasn't been more about it considering it stars John Cho (Star Trek got so much attention you'd think they'd be mega-promoting anything with the stars of the movie). The premise is that everybody on Earth passes out and has a dream of 6 months of the future but John Cho's character does not see anything. It's all pretty mysterious but it looks interesting and definitely worth giving a try.

The other person attending the panel was Allison DuBois who is the real woman behind the series Medium (which by the way is now on CBS). She has a new show coming out where she works with other psychic investigators and law enforcement to help solve crimes (apparently it's different from a lot of the other shows like it because they actually found bodies so that's pretty cool for all of us who are interested the shows about real crimes).

It was a really good panel and it's just more proof that the geeks of the world are finally starting to take over the small screen! Geeks of the World, Unite!

-AnnaMay