Another year, another NSTV (Northwestern Student Television) show has come and gone. As mentioned previously, NSTV is hit or miss and this year was no different. Unfortunately, almost everything in the show counted as "hit" - it was the technical aspects of the show that were lackluster.

The bad signs abounded when the show started over half an hour late. Why? Because they were still waiting on the show to finish being edited and copied to tapes. Even with the late start, there was a 15 minute intermission after the first tape while we waited on the second tape. Thus, non-show time was nearly as long as the show itself.

The good news is, the sketches were great. There was a definite improvement on the overall continuity and flow of the show over past years, as well as a distinctly more professional shooting style. The acting was top notch, with actors Ellie Reed and Dan Millstein standing out in particular. The intro/outro video was easily the highlight, as well as a sketch involving the making of a terrible, terrible action movie. Greatest line? "I once had the opportunity to meet the late legend, Robert Altman. I didn't."

Overall, the show could have been great had it not been for some crunch-time technical problems - I've seriously never heard of so many things going wrong for one event. It was a shame that it was only 50 minutes because individually the sketches were funny, but the show left me feeling underwhelmed. But I would bet if you were going to just watch this year's NSTV show on DVD (which will be on sale soon) you would most likely enjoy it immensely.