END OF THE WORLD

At least on CBS with CATEGORY 7

I love mini-series. And with my Trusty Tivo, I can now tape all of the disaster movies... my favorite! Especially if they have Shannon Doherty!

I missed Category 6 - but they summed up the previous mini-series in about 30 seconds of film time. Las Vegas, St. Louis and Chicago destroyed!

Highlights:
Gov't angencies mentioned (Wow - I never even knew we had some of these.)

• FEMA
• Air Force
• White House
• Federal Protective Services
• Extreme Weather Lab (They'll give a grant to anything.)

Flying Heads/ Heads being destroyed.

• At the beginning - a huge laughing clown head attacked France (darn!)
• George W fell off of Mt. Rushmore ** more on this later
• The Sphynx head was decapitated

2 counts of "Abuse of a Mime"

As France was being attacked by weather and 2 soccer hooligans were hanging for life on the Eiffle tower, you could see "The Beast" in the background

Pink Floyd-esque music playing during destruction of Kings Island, I mean France, reminiscent of Tornado scene in Wizard of Oz if you play it with Dark Side of Moon.

Within the first 10 minutes, the following phrases were mentioned:

• "Decimated"
• "Global Crisis"
• "Entire Planet Doomed"
• "Global Catostrophe"
• "Merely Coincendental"
  

2 Promotions to the movie "Chicken Little" with the sky is falling references.

1 unnecessary trash can kicking

Several annoying film techniques - AFT (Did the director/camera crew have a checklist of AFT?)

• Fast forward time lapse
• B & W
• Stutter Effect
• Bad zoom and pans
• Lightning white fade outs (with cool thunder sound effects)
• Crazy angles
• Slo-mo
• Video cam, with battery indicator

I am disappointed that it took 38 minutes for Shannon to show up. However when she did, she:

• Builds rockets
• Serves mean shots
• and gives a good right hook!

Mount Rushmore:
Why they made this a target, I'll never know... unless it was cooler to show George's face falling off, than say, a chunk of the grand canyon. GNN, (The local news outlet) was making a big deal of Mt. Rushmore -- IT"S IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE! Just ask Cary Grant!

Actual quote by park rangers: "George has Water on the brain" and"Water's freezing...and expanding!"

Causes:

• God/ plagues (to anger religious conservatives)
• Energy Industry (To anger big business)
• "Some Force" (to anger those in favor of Intelligent design)
• End of days (crazy freaks unite!)
• Terrorists (To anger anyone else)
  

(Although, no mention of Chem-trails... My guess is on the Chem-trails, not to be confused with contrails -- google it and watch your skies!)

While the Engery industry is a good guess, it's kind of ironic that the storm chasers use a super powered USAF jet to fly over the US in record time (How much does that get to the gallon) and also a big Ford 350 4x4 (Which I know uses a tank of gas just on a trip to the store)

And who do you think is flying the super jet? None other than Tom Skerrit - reprising his role as a Top Gun pilot, complete with Jump suit. OK, so now he works for theUSAF and Top Gun was with the Navy, but to the untrained eye - it's the same job!

Swoozie Kurtz as a religious zealot was cool
Having Krycek from XFiles as bad religious zealot was even cooler!

Weather reports get in the way of good sex.

Director of Homeland security was none other than our favorite janitor, the "Greasy Beau-hunk"

I counted at least 10 bad joke/puns

At least 6 laugh out loud moments (Including crazy clown and death by frogs)

Next target is Detroit. Like Mt. Rushmore - WHAT'S THERE? Are they going to kill off some murderers?

The writer of the trailor park scene must have had a field day. Thankfully I had Tivo so I didn't miss any of the trailor-trash " cliche jokes"

• Saving Pink Flamingoes
• Fat Chick running with beer
• Velvet painting flying away in the wind - (Not sure if it was an Elvis)
• Man saving Pot Plants

Shannon was rescuing cats...awwwww how cute!

The last half hour was not as exciting, exept that Buffalo was next... Why Buffalo? I guess they couldn't film in Cleveland. Lots of Panic in the streets.

They did mention sending all essential families to the Greenbriar -- true fact, although it's primarily a resort not a Military Facility as FEMA director Gina Gershon stated. It can house all of the upper gov't people in a secure facility in the hills of West Virginia. It used to be top secret, but it seems as everyone knows about it now...

Finally - towards the end, our hero Extreme Weather Guy makes a pot of tea and solves the reason why -- it's the Mesosphere, and big industry is heating up the air causing the sky to fall.

It's nearing the end, families are leaving, and crisis is hitting New York/ DC. My Tivo stops.... DAMN YOU FOOTBALL for Running 10 minutes over.... what happened to Swoozie now that she is in charge of Hall Ministries? Will the two youngsters get married to spite their parents? Will Extreme Weather guy get his spot of tea?

I'll have to find out next week.