I've enjoyed watching the Fox show Bones lately, because of its endearing characters, even though the science is sometimes a little wonky. The show is clearly a Moonlighting clone, with a strong unconsummated sexual tension between the two main characters driving the story, and some very witty banter. The tension of religion vs. science that permeates Bones and Booth's relationship is also fascinating, with Bones presenting atheistic arguments on a regular basis. It's really rare to find strong and sympathetic atheist characters on TV.

But lately, the show has started becoming predictable, with every new recurring character either ending up a murderer, a cannibal, or dead. And a recent episode, "Double Trouble in the Panhandle," really made me wince. Twice now, I've tried watching this episode, and I just have to turn it off before the end, it's so embarrassing. In it, Bones and Booth go undercover, joining the circus as a knife throwing act, in order to investigate the death of conjoined twins who were circus performers.

Frankly, I just can't suspend disbelief with this episode, and I have to say it: If this is the level the show is sinking to, then it has clearly jumped the shark. The writers are scraping the bottom of the barrel.

It's time to have Bones and Booth fuck, and end the series gracefully, before they embarrass themselves further.
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I've been a Joost user for many months now. I managed to secure one of the coveted Beta Tester invitations last year for my Mac OS X, and was delighted that Joost was putting streams of Babylon 5, Crusade, and Lexx episodes online.

Last week, I had a *SQUEE* moment, when Joost announced they were streaming all of the original Star Trek episodes (TOS, for the Trekkers), and immediately started watching some of my favourite old Kirk/Spock/McCoy plays that I haven't seen in years and years: The Ultimate Computer, Court Martial, and The Menagerie (Parts 1 & 2).

Joost worked great at first, but as time went on, the quality of the video streams have started getting choppier and choppier, and net lag has made Joost almost unwatchable. For four days now, I have tried to watch The Menagerie, Part 2, and not once have I been able to watch the whole episode through. Each time, the stream starts getting choppier and choppier as the episode plays, until by the middle of the episode, it just craps out and re-starts from the beginning. AAAAAAAAAGH!

At first I thought it was the fact that I had stepped down from a Comcast cable modem to a Clearwire wireless modem, which is slightly less fast, but still broadband. However, I'm still able to watch full-screen HD video streams from ABC.com (Ugly Betty, Samantha Who?) and NBC.com (Heroes), and PBS.org (Bill Moyer's Journal, NOVA) without much stuttering, so I am guessing that this is not a low-bandwidth problem on my end. I think that it's a problem on Joost's end. Either they don't have enough computing power/bandwidth to accommodate all of the new users that Star Trek is bringing in, or the rumours that the company is falling apart from the inside out are true. (I sure hope they aren't, because I like Joost!)

Either way, I am pulling my hair out here. Joost -- fix the lag problem!
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