"This is so going in my blog!"

So the first week of the new season has begun, and I think this week I'll be blogging on the premieres of the returning series; next week I'll hit up the new series that look promising.  I figure giving them two episodes to hook me should be sufficient.

First off for tonight we have the premiere of How I Met Your Mother, a show I started watching last season on Seth's recommendation and generally good press on RPGnet.  This season's premiere did not disappoint.  Despite not achieving the lofty heights of the slap bet (more on that shortly) or Robin Sparkles (which was so spot on it was unbelievable), I have no doubt that Ted's tramp stamp will live on in the annals of history.  The big question will be how long it remains as a running gag, which has been the strength of the show so far in my mind.

The outro at the end of the show was an excellent call back to the slap bet of the Robin Sparkles episode, and shed...okay, absolutely no light on the Slap Countdown that showed up this summer, but the look on Barney's face after he got Marshall's call was most excellent.  I just wonder if the anticipated slap will be as good as the unexpected one at the end of Barney's one-man show last year, which was great specifically because you didn't see it coming (and because it was so perfect).

Next up for Monday was my favorite new show of last season, Heroes.  A lot of people thought the finale last season was a letdown; I thought so too at the time, but rewatching it over the summer on DVD, I thought it was a good episode (though not as good as "Company Man" or "Five Years Later").  This season's premiere was an adequate start, but I will definitely have to see the first few before I can make any real decision on it.  The one thing I noticed watching on DVD was that the show doesn't really develop too slow, there's just so much going on in so many different places in every episode that it feels slow.  This episode was no different, and now I remember how frustrating it could be.

Lots of things surprised me this episode though, which I think was good.  There's some definite work being done to set up this season's conflicts; the only thing I'm worried about is that many of them seem similar to last season's, and I don't want to see them rehashing things again.  However, most of the main characters have been changed significantly, which will hopefully keep things fresh; Hiro's adventures in 17th century Japan are being set up to be a lot of fun, in the same way that his journey last season was.  Considering they didn't mention anything about half the main characters, I suspect the first two episodes of this season are going to be essentially a two-part premiere the same way things were last year.  It does look like they've split up the terminally cute couple of Micah and Molly, which is a bit of a shame, but I guess we'll find out more next week.

Tomorrow -- House and The Unit (which I thought had been cancelled -- guess not!).