Archive | September, 2011

Ranking the Shows I Watch – 20: Boardwalk Empire

22 Sep

I have mixed feelings about Boardwalk Empire.  First of all, this is certainly not the  most important facet to me of a television show, but it bears saying that Boardwalk Empire looks fantastic.  HBO should be commended for paying for such great production values for their dramas and Boardwalk is no exception.

Both superficially and not so superficially, Boardwalk has a lot in common with creator Terrence Winter’s old employer, The Sopranos.  The main character, Steve Buscemi’s Nucky Thompson, is a man-who-runs-town figure who is also the head of his town’s (Atlantic City) organized crime family in 1920 as prohibition is about to begin.  As in Sopranos, he is thoroughly trained in the old school, but he on the brink of a new order, as prohibition means great opportunity for organized crime, but also allows for the quicker rise for a younger generation of mobsters who play by a different set of rules.  Micheal Pitt’s Jimmy Darmody, who was close to Nucky for years, plays what seems to be the Chris Multisanti role (thoroughly less insane, at least so far, and more serious, but bear with me).  Nucky, like Tony Soprano, struggles to bend and not break while melding some of the old school with some of the new, with plenty of even more conservative associates on one side threatening to end him if he moves too much in one direction, and younger change-oriented associates, like Jimmy, threatening over overtake him if he doesn’t, all while rival organized crime organizations smell blood.

One of the stranger aspects of the show is that a handful of major characters are real people, while the rest aren’t.  This gives Boardwalk a weird amalgam between real and invented, and we know a few things that have to happen – Al Capone is going to rise up in power, and should the show continue to run through prohibition, Arnold Rothstein will be murdered in 1928.  A mafia history devotee could have called ahead of time that Big Jim Colosimo would die, at the hands of Johnny Torrio.

The show is solid but it just isn’t seriously top tier.  It’s main problem might be that it’s not a lot of fun.  It’s a little bit stilted, and even though formula is all there, I just don’t get the unbridled joy and rush of excitement I do from watching a Breaking Bad or a Game of Thrones.  This could change of course, but, and I know I keep comparing it to Sopranos, but it really is a fairly apt analogue, as deadly serious as Sopranos could be, it was also often fun, and that aspect seems sapped from Boardwalk.  Maybe the lack of a Chris, or a Paulie Walnuts, or a Roger Sterling from Mad Men, hurts that, and maybe it’s just the feel of the show and that’s how the creators wanted it to be the whole time.  I wouldn’t mind it loosening up a little bit though.

Why it’s this high:  It’s high time Steve Buscemi got to star in his own show, and the production is beauitful

Why it’s not this high:  Try as it might, it’s not quite Sopranos, and it’s a little bit wooden – it feels almost like someone tried to create a color-by-numbers show in the mold of Sopranos

Best episode of most recent season:  I don’t remember a clear standout but “Hold Me In Paradise” because I’m a sucker for history and this is probably the strangest and most thorough crossover into historical fiction – parts of it take place at the Republican National Convention, particularly talking about the redoubtable Warren G. Harding, and Arnold Rothstein deals with fallout of the Black Sox scandal.

Tags: , , ,

Fall 2011 Review: New Girl

21 Sep

(Here at Television, the Drug of the Nation we’ll be doing one review for one show on each day of the week, each week.  For example, one Tuesday we might review 2 Broke Girls, and then the next week Terra Nova or The Playboy Club.  So, if your favorite or least favorite show didn’t get reviewed yet, not to worry)

Coming into the first episode, I had two thoughts about New Girl.  First, I felt that no one debut this season was being sold so much on the back of one person, in this case, on the shoulders of star Zooey Deschanel.  Second, while I didn’t think much of the show a month ago, as it got nearer, for reasons I’m not entirely sure of, I started to get a little bit more excited about it.

As for the first at least, Zooey Deschanel did a good job but what I was surprised by was how much I liked the supporting cast as well, which consists of her three new roommates.  (Unlike a complex drama, I can sum up the first episode plot here in one sentence:  Zooey, as Jess, comes home to her boyfriend, finds him cheating, moves into a new place with three dudes, and is still depressed about the break-up).  Her model best friend is also on tap to be a main cast member, but she was only in the show for a minute or two, so it was hard to get a feel for her one way or the other.

The three roommates consist of three kinds of archetypes, a poser-y white guy quick to take off his shirt and call people bro, an athletic trainer who wears gym shorts and yells a lot, and a guy still depressed about a girl who dumped him months ago who dials her up when drunk.  Over the course of the episode though, these archetypes quickly fade into real people, with maybe the slight exception of the take-off-the-shirt guy, named Schmidt, but even he is normalized by the fact that his roommates make fun of him constantly (the trainer, who everyone seems to call Coach, makes him put money in a Douchebag jar every time he acts like well, a douchebag) and even he seems to not take himself too seriously.  There’s a degree of self-awareness, and a much more accurate acknowledgement of what archetypes are; they’re one side of someone’s personality, but if you dig deeper, and often not very much deeper (this was 20 minutes of tv, after all) there’s generally a person who is more or less like anybody else beneath.  I’d rather characters a little less developed in a pilot (again 20 minutes of TV) than characters who are instantly labeled by a few choice phrases and actions, pigeonholing them for the future.

Like the two new Whitney Cummings sitcoms, 2 Broke Girls and Whitney, New Girl is all about a 20-something female with a strong personality which she asserts as a force on all those around her.  Unlike those two shows, New Girl is single camera instead of multi camera, doesn’t use a laugh track, and is good.  Not to pile it on to 2 Broke Girls on top of what I’ve said before, but every character aside from the two main ones was a thin stereotype.  I know it’s just one episode, but in just twenty one minutes or so of New Girl all the characters managed to seem like real people (second time I’ve used the phrase, I know); by the end, when the roommates ditch their party to hang out with Jess who had been stood up by a guy, it already felt like a warm moment which was earned and not overly cheesy, and I already liked all the major characters.  That’s impressive.

Even within the episode, the show took a few minutes to find its footing.  Jess’s depression became a little much, and she has this tic where she talks in kind of a weird voice which became a tiny bit grating.  The show becomes a lot better when she starts smiling a little bit and having fun, and hopefully she’ll be getting over her depression in future episodes.  These are relatively minor complaints; it’s by no means a slam dunk instant classic, but what is?  It’s very very hard to produce a sitcom that’s great right out of the box – even the best often need a few episodes to find their footing.  Whether it will find said footing and become a really top tier sitcom or just slide along at being generally enjoyable enough to make you smile and laugh a couple times an episode, I don’t know, but to even put itself in that position after one episode is pretty damn good.

Important note:  The athletic trainer roommate Coach played by Damon Wayans Jr. in the pilot is being replaced, as his Happy Endings got unexpectedly picked up for a second season. It will certainly be interesting to see how the new roommate compares to the old.

Will I watch it again?  I was legitimately 50/50 before I saw it, but yeah, I think I’m going to.  The first episode got stronger as it moved forward, and although anything can go in any direction, I think it’s more likely to get even stronger as the season moves forward than not.

Tags: , , ,

The Zeljko Ivanek Hall of Fame: Nestor Carbonell

21 Sep

(The Zeljko Ivanek Hall of Fame is where we turn the spotlight on a television actor or actress, and it is named after their patron saint, Zeljko Ivanek)

A personal favorite of mine, Nestor Carbonell has been there and back on television, likely to be found somewhere on your set (people don’t call them sets very much anymore I”ve noticed) during each of the past fifteen years.

Carbonell’s first television role was, like many others, in a Law & Order episode, in 1991.  Next, he  appeared in an episode of Melrose Place and two of A Different World in 1992.  He also appeared in single episodes of Reasonable Doubts and Good Advice.  Carbonell got his first shot in a lead role in 1995’s Muscle on the WB.  Muscle was a parody of ‘80s primetime soaps (think Dallas or Dynasty), and was set in a fictional gym in New York.  Carbonell starred as a gigolo named Gianni who used the gym pick up clients.  The show also starred Alan Ruck and Michael Boatman, who later played best friends on SpinCity.  The show lasted thirteen episodes, the only series of its two hour block of new series, including The Wayans Bros., The Parent ‘Hood and Unhappily Ever After, not to get a second season.

Carbonell rebounded quite nicely with a main role on Brooke Shields show Suddenly Susan as photographer Luis Rivera.  Carbonell appeared in all four seasons of the show, running from 1996 to 2000.  During that period, he also appeared in episodes of The John Larroquette Show, Veronica’s Closet and Encore! Encore!.  In 2000, he had a recurring role in Showtime series Resurrection Blvd., about a family of boxers.  He appeared in an HBO movie, The Laramie Project, in 2002 about the Matthew Shepard murder.  He starred as Batmanuel in the ill-fated live action version of The Tick, with Patrick Warburton as the title character.  After its cancellation, he appeared in single episodes of Ally McBeal, The Division, Monk, and Scrubs.

He next co-starred in the brilliant conceptual Century City(expect more on this show in the near future) about a team of lawyers in the year 2030 dealing with all manner of futuristic issues.  Sadly, the series lasted just nine episodes.  He appeared in episodes of House M.D. and Justice League and then as a recurring character in 11 episodes of Lifetime’s Strong Medicine as a well-meaning millionaire with embezzlement issues who marries one of the major characters.  After that he continued the single episode circuit, with appearances in Commander in Chief, Day Break, Andy Barker, PI, Queens Supreme and three Cold Cases.  Over the run of the series, Carbonell voiced character Senor Senior Jr. in 12 episodes of Disney Channel original Kim Possible.  In 2007, he played the firsr born son in the Jimmy Smits led family rum-and-sugar empire drama Cane, which lasted 13 episodes.

In was in 2007 in which he got the role he’s probably most famous for, ageless and mysterious Richard Alpert on Lost.  Slated to appear in seven third season episodes, the early cancellation of Cane opened Carbonell up to rejoin Lost, and he appeared in a couple of season four episodes, nine season five episodes, and was a main cast member for the final sixth season.  Alpert first arrived on the island in the mid-19th century as a slave on a ship, and later he becomes a key other member, and doesn’t age for some reason.  All of this is kind of explained in one of the very last episodes of the series, and as the series wraps, Alpert starts aging and makes it away from the island on the plane with Kate, Sawyer and some others (not Others, just other people).

After Lost, he appeared on two episodes of Psych, one of Wilfred, and now is co-starring as a federal agent out to protect Sarah Michelle Gellar (one of her two characters anyway) in Ringer.

Carbonell also went to Harvard and is cousins with 500 home run hitter and steroid user and denier Rafael Palmeiro.  Oh, and not TV but it bears mentioning he played the mayor in the Dark Knight and will reprise the role in the next Batman film.

Tags: , , ,

Fall 2011 Review: 2 Broke Girls

20 Sep

I thought about sub-titling this review, “In Defense of Hipsters.”  I didn’t, but we’ll get back to that shortly.

It’s very early in the fall premiere season but we have an early contender for if not the worst show, the show I find most personally offensive.  Honestly, it’s not because the writing is bad, although it is.  But honestly, (and here’s a kind of compliment, to show this is all even-handed), the writing wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.  And Kat Dennings, who I haven’t liked since Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist  wasn’t as bad as I thought she would be.  The problem with this show is both its absolute lack of understanding of what it’s trying to make fun of, and the ridiculously one-sided stance that comes from that.  Allow me to explain.

The first minute or so of the show is the worst minute of television I’ve seen in years (is decades too far?) and although more concentrated than the rest of the show, is a good microcosm for the show at large.  I made a mention of a Coldplay reference in my preview of the show but I’m going to break it down further and attach the youtube so you can see for yourself.  I’ll break down the clip below.

Two men are sitting at a table in the diner in which waitress Kat Dennings, named Max in the show, works.  The men are maybe in their mid-20s and are dressed in plaid and have wool caps on.  One of them, after attempting to call her over to the table, snaps at her (finger snaps, not snaps in anger).  Without question, this is a rude action.  She then retaliates eight-fold.  She snaps directly in his face, an action far more rude in and of itself than snapping in the air for the waitress.  She then calls out the patron as a hipster, for having no job, which, first, she has absolutely no way of knowing, and second, even if she did, it would be extremely uncalled for and none of her business.  She and him are nothing alike at all, she asserts.  After the second man at the table notes that his friend has been “burned,” Max lets him know that he doesn’t get off either for this seemingly minor transgression.  She, she tells him, wears wool hats because it’s cold, while he, she claims, wears them because of Coldplay.

Let’s break this down.  First, if she was pissed, she could have, I don’t know, told them that snapping was obnoxious.  Instead she decides to be a total asshole, far more than was called for in retaliation for their snaps.  Second, these people don’t dress like hipsters do in New York.  Anyone who lives in New York should know this.  There is stereotypical clothing they could pick, horn rimmed glasses and tight jeans and trucker hats or beards, but they just got it completely wrong.  Third, fucking Coldplay?  I’m sure someone wrote this line and thought it was so brilliant that they didn’t want to actually bother to think about accuracy.  Coldplay could not be farther from a hipster band.  Do hipsters like Coldplay?  Sure, maybe, because EVERYONE likes Coldplay.  I’m going to go farther though.  If anything, hipsters are more likely to HATE Coldplay.  In wikipedia’s article on the hipster subculture, they rip a Time magazine quote which says (I know, Time magazine is truly the definitive source on hipsters), “Hipsters are the friends who sneer when you cop to liking Coldplay.”  I’m sure Max would like Coldplay if she didn’t seem to hate everyone and everything that wasn’t hardscrabble and poor and an underdog.  They’re probably too successful so she has to resent them.  Fourth, why can’t they wear wool hats?  Why is this an objectionable stylish statement to you?  If he’s uncomfortable or hot inside, this bothers you why?

And to the greater point, as I alluded to earlier, what the fuck is with this defenseless picking on hipsters for no reason?  Why is Max on so much of a higher plane than them?  Because they like indie music?  Since when did hipsters become so horrible?  I’m tired of them being an easy target for honestly no reason, even beside the fact that if there was going to be hipster bashing it should have happened five years ago.  There’s plenty of understandable reasons to pick on hipsters; their pretentious music taste, sure.  Where is this stereotype that hipsters would be mean to waitresses?  Later in the episode, Max notes that she doesn’t envy the other waitress because an Arcade Fire concert just got out next door and hipsters would be crowding the diner.  Why the fuck is this so terrible?  Not to mention, the Arcade Fire sell out Madison Square Garden.  They wouldn’t be playing in Brooklyn.  Of course, most of the audience of this show probably doesn’t even know who the Arcade Fire is, Grammy and #1 album or not and they certainly wouldn’t know a real indie band (The Drums, Yuck, or Wild Beasts, just to name a couple actually playing the Music Hall of Williamsburg in the near future).

The Big Bang Theory is despicable for its depiction of nerds, but at least it plays correctly to the horrible stereotypes of nerds.  2 Broke Girls can’t even get that right.

I can’t spend this amount of time on everything else in the show, and admittedly, that’s the single most painful minute, so I’ll move more quickly.  Williamsburg, a very gentrified area at this point where rent is not cheap by any means, is portrayed as a rough shithole where second broke girl Caroline, who lost all her money when her dad, a Bernie Madoff take off, got caught, can’t wear her nice coat for fear of getting robbed.  Her apartment definitely costs a significant amount of rent for such a titular broke girl.  The subway the two are on looks more like a stereotypical subway from the ‘80s than one from today.  By no means are all subways immaculate, but nor are they covered in graffiti.

Also, Max works a second job as a nanny for a clueless rich socialite in big bad MANHATTAN.  Max is smart and streetwise.  The woman she works for though, boy, rich people are so STUPID and LAZY, they can’t even pick up their own kids.

This isn’t fucking Williamsburg.  There is nothing New York about this show.  I know Michael Patrick King worked on a definitive New York show in Sex and the City but this couldn’t be farther from that.  It’s filmed on a sound stage and doesn’t look or feel at all like New York.  Beyond that, it’s just painfully inaccurate and patronizing to the people and to the neighborhood.

And I’m sure all this ribbing of hipsters and rich people and New York is all supposed to be taken in good fun, and you might say, chill out, it’s just a sitcom.  If that’s how you feel, that’s fine, I’ll respect that.  But to me, relying on stereotypes, and worse relying on inaccurate stereotypes is the worst, and maybe worse than worst, the laziest type of comedy.

I’m sorry this review is extra long, but I know I came in biased to this premiere so I wanted to make sure these were really my feelings and I wasn’t forcing it because I wanted to hate the show.  I took a good long think about the comedies I do like, and none of them have this attitude of patronizingly picking on certain defenseless easy target groups.  Sure, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia picks on everyone, but those characters are supposed to be despicable people, while somehow I think you’re supposed to love Max.

Will I watch it again?  No, I will not.  You don’t have to hate it.  But it wouldn’t hurt if you didn’t watch it at least.

Tags: , ,

Ranking the Shows I Watch – 21: White Collar

20 Sep

USA is showing up all over this list, but I believe this is its last appearance.  White Collar is a USA-style show about a federal agent and his partner, an ex-con who is helping out the FBI as part of a crazy special deal to suspend his sentence.  Basically, Neal Cafferty, a top class white collar criminal, master of cons, burglaries, forgeries and art theft among others, was a fugitive who top class FBI white collar agent Peter Burke chased after for years, before the show’s beginning.  Burke was the Tommy Lee Jones to Cafferty’s Harrison Ford.  Eventually, Burke gets his man, and due to a number of circumstances not worth explaining here, a unique Mod Squad like bargain is struck in which Cafferty will work for the FBI with an anklet around his, well, ankle, letting the feds know his location in case he leaves a set radius outside of the FBI office.  The two team up to solve all sorts of while collar crimes using Caffery’s knowledge and con-artist skills and Burke hard-nosed disciplined attitude, along with the help of Neil’s best friend, the eccentric Mozzie, who seems to be a bit of an expert on everything.

I love a good grift show. (who doesn’t?)  I’ve watched a good deal of Leverage, and a couple of Breakout Kings, but just short of the amount I’ve required to give either a spot on this list.  That said, White Collar is light and fluffy for a show about federal agents, but it’s a little bit more serious than some of USA’s shows, like Royals Pains or Psych, and it’s very well executed considering its set USA network limitations.  Individual episode plots are just about always nicely wrapped up in neat little packages, with, in USA fashion, little bits of continuing storyline slowly advanced throughout a season.

I couldn’t finish this article without noting one of the scene tropes I most enjoy in White Collar.  Occasionally, Neil and partner-in-crime (quite literally) Mozzie need to employ a grift for whatever end.  They talk about it, and rattle off a bunch or ridiculous names of grifts, such as the “Cannonball” or the “Lazy Susan,” which apparently any grifter worth his salt knows by name, and then one or the other will explain why that’s not suitable with a small snippet like , “too crowded,” or “don’t have a dog.”, before one of them will pick one and explain why it just might work.  It’s an exceptionally silly segment if you step back from it but also quite enjoyable in the moment.

Why It’s This High:  It’s probably the best USA show – it’s enjoyable every week, fun to watch, the chemistry between the two main characters is great, and as I said above, I love a good grift.

Why it’s not higher:  Some of the same factors that make USA shows have a floor of enjoyability, also give them a low ceiling – they’re fun to watch, but don’t have the depth required for greatness

Best Episode of Most Recent Seasons:   We’ll go with “Burke’s Seven” – It contains a couple of the great grifting tropes – a team – rather than the usual two man cons run on the show, and a character, FBI employee Peter, having to prove himself innocent of a frame job, through con – figuring out how a criminal stole Peter’s fingerprints to put them inside a gun which shot Mozzie so our heroes can clear his name to Peter’s boss, the always wonderful James Rebhorne.

Tags: , ,

Fall 2011 Preview and Predictions: ABC

19 Sep

(In order to meld the spirit of futile sports predictions with the high stakes world of the who-will-be-cancelled-first fall television season, I’ve set up a very simple system of predictions for how long new shows will last.  Each day, I’ll (I’m aware I switched between we and I) lay out a network’s new shows scheduled to debut in the fall (reality shows not included – I’m already going to fail miserably on scripted shows, I don’t need to tackle a whole other animal) with my prediction of which of three categories it will fall into.

These categories are:

1.  Renewal – show gets renewed

2.  13+ – the show gets thirteen or more episodes, but not renewed

3.  12- – the show is cancelled before 13)

ABC’s got more new scripted shows than any of the other networks, but they also have a couple that look certain to fail, so it’s a trade off.  Charlie’s Angels, Revenge and Pan Am debut within a week, while everything else comes later.

Charlie’s Angels – 9/22

My friend posited that the only reason the original Charlie’s Angels was popular was because there was no easy access to attractive women on the internet in the 1970s.  That may be a bit simplistic, but this edition of Charlie’s Angels certainly doesn’t seem to be doing anything to improve views of the franchise.  There’s nothing to see here; while it probably won’t be embarrassing, I don’t think it will be very good, and I think audiences will not find much reason to watch the show.

Verdict:  12- I don’t think that ABC has put a ton of eggs in the Charlie’s Angels basket so it may not feel obliged to keep it around too long if it’s unsuccessful.  Other ’70s adaptation Wonder Woman didn’t even make it to TV, so maybe the trend isn’t there.

Last Man Standing – 10/11

There are few instant obvious choices for pure unredeemable terribleness on the schedule, but we’ve got one here.  I’m not sure what the exact word opposite of can’t miss would be (must miss?), but this would be categorized under it.  Tim Allen plays a Colorado man whose home life is dominated by women, his wife, played by Nancy Travis, and his three daughters.  He’s a man emasculated by their constant and overbearing female presence and misses times when men where  men.  Oh, and Hector Elizondo is in it for some reason.

Verdict:  12- This just be my easiest 12- of the entire season.  If it didn’t have Tim Allen on it, it wouldn’t be on TV.  Even if it did have Tim Allen, it wouldn’t be on TV if ABC didn’t owe him so much for years of Home Improvement

Man Up – 10/18

This series, part of the Man block with Last Man Standing, also deals with emasculation and seems at first blush about as likely to succeed as Last Man Standing.  The show is about three men who have decided they want to “man up” and start being well, more manly.  About the only thing I can see offhand to like is the appearance of Mather Zickel who plays a news magazine host in my favorite episode of Childrens Hospital and a pornographic film maker in a fantastic episode of Party Down.

Verdict:  12- It both looks terrible at worst and mediocre at best, has absolutely no buzz or backing and nothing to recommend it.  ABC has more new shows this fall than anyone; some of them have got to fail.  It’s supposed to be better than Last Man Standing to be sure, but that’s not saying much.

Once Upon a Time – 10/23

The other fairy tale show (along with Grimm), Once Upon a Time stars Jennifer Morrison, best known as Cameron from House, as a bail bondsman who finds out she may be the daughter of Snow White, and that she may be the only one who can save both the real and fairy tale worlds from, well, something bad, I’m sure.  The show takes place in Storybrooke,Maine where fairy tale characters like Snow White and Prince Charming have regular jobs (much like the comic series Fables, which I recommend to anyone who thinks this premise sounds interesting).  It has a very minor bit of cache coming from a couple of Lost writers.

Verdict:  13+ – one of the shows I could very easily see going either way, both critically and commercially, so I’ll take the easy way out.  I could see it being great, as the premise is interesting, or being terrible, as sometimes ambitious premises have the lowest floor, but it’s mostly likely to be somewhere in the middle

Pan Am – 9/25

The other early ‘60s show (along with The Playboy Club), Pam Am for sure looks like the better of the two.  Pan Am features Christina Ricci and others as Pan Am flight attendants who are also somehow involved with espionage.  The tone is light and fluffy rather than serious, and I’m interested enough to at least give it a chance, though I’m still quite apprehensive.

Verdict:  Renewal – it’s a good fit on ABC’s Sunday night next to Desperate Housewives, as hopefully for it, it will put people in the proper mood for a show that is closer in tone to Desperate Housewives than to Mad Men

Revenge – 9/21

Revenge is loosely based on The Count of Monte Cristo, the basic plot of which I finally had explained to me last week.  Instead of in France, Revenge is set in the Hamptons where mysterious woman Emily Van Camp of Everwood and Brothers and Sisters looks to take the title action on Madeleine Stowe and friends.  Every year, one or two series intrigue me for reasons I can’t quite explain, usually series where I don’t know enough information to make me realize they will be bad, so the series sound open to any possibilities.  I think this year’s edition is Revenge.

Verdict: Renewal – I may be well be wrong (on all of these, actually) and the show may be terrible, but I have not taken a subway not filled with Revenge ads in the last two weeks and if I’m intrigued maybe other people will be.  And maybe it will actually be good!

Suburgatory – 9/28

TV’s answer to satirical the-jungle-that-is-suburban-high-school movies like Mean Girls and Easy A, everyone is already labeling star Jane Levy as the new Emma Stone or Lindsay Lohan.  Levy plays a girl who was moved from NYC to the more affluent ‘burbs by protective single dad Jeremy Sisto.  I might be getting ahead of myself, but this show could actually be good; it’s a time tested premise, but what will make or break it is how it’s done.  Alan Tudyk of Firefly and Rex Lee of Lloyd in Entourage fame appear in the show as does Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Cheryl Hines as a catty neighbor.

Verdcit: 13+ Writing up that preview I almost convinced myself that it would be good enough to just put renewal on a whim, but I’m going to be cautious.  I haven’t seen a whole lot of advertisements around for it.  However, if it actually is good, I think ABC could be a decent home for it.

ABC is the last of the networks to be previewed, so it’s time to sit back and see how the shows go from here.  We’ll be here all week with reviews, and probably another broad cable show preview at some point.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Power Rankings: Saved by the Bell

19 Sep

(Power Rankings sum up:  Each week, we’ll pick a television show and rank the actors/actresses/contestants/correspondents/etc. based on what they’ve done after the series ended (unless we’re ranking a current series, in which case we’ll have to bend the rules).  Preference will be given to more recent work, but if the work was a long time ago, but much more important/relevant, that will be factored in as well)

We’re taking on Saved by the Bell this week, which like most rankings has some pretty good winners and some pretty miserable losers.  Note ahead of time that I’m not mentioning Saved by the Bell: The College Years for everybody; that’s just kind of assumed.

7.  Dustin Diamond (as Samuel “Screech” Powers) – Diamond’s post Saved by the Bell career has been much more as a punchline than as an actor.  He was one of two Saved by the Bell cast members to put their inevitable career decline on hold with a spot in Saved by the Bell: The New Class, which ran until 2000, and in which he appeared in 67 episodes as principal Belding’s assistant.  After that his career consisted mostly of a handful of cameos as himself and appearances on reality shows.  The cameos include in Big Fat Liar, Pauly Shore is Dead and Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star and the reality shows include The Weakest Link, Celebrity Boxing 2 and Celebrity Fit Club.

6.  Dennis Haskins – (as Richard Belding) Like Diamond, Haskins appeared as his Saved by the Bell character in Saved by the Bell: The New Class, but he actually appeared in just about every episode and was the only consistent character throughout the run of the series. He’s had few roles since then, mostly appearing in single episodes of TV shows, but at least, unlike with Diamond, it’s been as a character and not as himself.  These shows include The Practice, JAG and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.  He also showed up most recently in three episodes of Men of a Certain Age.

5. Lark Voorhies (as Lisa Turtle) – After Saved by the Bell, Voorhies worked for a year in soap The Bold and the Beautiful before she left when her character was asked to do sex scenes, which she declined to do for religious reasons.  She was a recurring character in NBC and later UPN sitcom In the House which starred LL Cool J and Maia Campbell.  She appeared in single episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Family Matters, Malcolm & Eddie, and Grown Ups.  She played a major character in the 2001 film How High.  She also appeared in music videos, including Boyz II Men’s On Bended Knee and Dru Hill’s These Are The Times, amongst others.

4. Elizabeth Berkley (as Jessie Spano) – Post Saved by the Bell, Berkley is best known for what she did immediately after, which is appear in cult film and massive critical and commercial failure Showgirls, one of the only mainstream films with an NC-17 rating.  She played a small role in The First Wives Club after that.  In the 2000s, she has appeared in a number of TV shows, such as in two episodes of NYPD Blue, three of Titus, a CSI, a Without a Trace, and a Law & Order Criminal Intent.  She also featured in four episodes of The L Word and nine of CSI:Miami.  In addition, she’s had a successful stage career, appearing in such plays as Sly Fox and Hurlyburly.

3. Mario Lopez (as A.C. Slater) – Lopez’s first big role after Saved by the Bell was as Greg Louganis in 1997’s Breaking the Surface: The Greg Louganis story.  In 1998, he got the role of Bobby Cruz in USA’s cop drama Pacific Blue, which he held for two seasons.  He guested in episodes of Popular and Eve and in 2006 worked a year on The Bold at the Beautiful.  In 2009, he started an eight episode run as a plastic surgeon in Nip/Tuck.  In addition to a successful acting career, Lopez has become a successful host.  He co-hosted short-lived talk show The Other Half, designed as a male counterpart to The View.  He hosted a show on Animal Planet called Pet Star, America’s Most Talented Kid on NBC, and several Miss America and Miss Teen USA pageants.  He currently hosts America’s Best Dance Crew on MTV and will host H8R on the CW.

2. Mark-Paul Gosselaar (as Zack Morris) – Gosselaar’s first significant roles post-Saved by the Bell were 1998’s feature film Dead Man on Campus (the last film he’s been in) and 1998 WB drama Hyperion Bay which lasted one season beginning in 1998.  He starred in another short-lived WB series, D.C., in 2000.  He guested on an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in 2001 before getting partnered up with Dennis Franz in season 9 of NYPD Blue, replacing Rick Schroder.  He played the role of Detective John Clark for four years, until the end of the series.  He appeared in ten episodes of short-lived ABC Geena Davis series Commander in Chief.  He was in three episodes of HBO”s John from Cincinnati and starred for a season in TNT’s Raising the Bar, as a public defender.  TNT didn’t blame the failure on the show on him, casting him in his current role as Bash in Franklin & Bash, again as a lawyer.

1. Tiffani Thiessen (as Kelly Kapowski) – going with the “Amber” in the middle of her name for much of her career, it’s now been eliminated in her more mature days.  Immediately after Saved by the Bell ended she landed a role in Aaron Spelling’s Beverly Hills, 90210 as bad girl Valerie Malone.  She entered in season 5 and stuck around until season 9, being generally micheivious and dating nearly all of the major and minor male cast members.  She starred in a number of made for television movies in the mid-90s, and starred in two short-lived series, Fastlane, with Bill Bellamy and Peter Facinelli in 2002, and ABC’s What About Brian in 2007.  She appeared in three episodes of Will and Grace, eight of Two Guys, a Girl, and A Pizza Place and 11 of the two season Good Morning Miami.  Most recently, she found success with a lead role, albeit the smallest lead role in the show, but still, in USA’s very successful White Collar as FBI agent Peter Burke’s wife, Elizabeth.

Tags: , , , ,

Review: Entourage Series Finale – “The End”

17 Sep

For the smallest sliver of a second, I thought everything would not work out in the world of Entourage.  Then I thought to myself for a second and laughed.  All would not be right in the world if Entourage didn’t end like it did, and more than that Entourage wouldn’t be being true to itself if it ended any differently.  That’s not necessary a good thing or a bad thing; it’s probably a little both.  It’s just a true thing.

What I hadn’t realized coming into the episode, though I suppose it seemed obvious as the episode went forward, was that Turtle’s and Drama’s plots had wrapped up in earlier episodes.  Perhaps this is because both arcs ended so suddenly; Turtle’s with the reveal that Vince hadn’t sold his or Turtle’s Avion stock, making them both more millions and Drama’s with the abrupt end of his and Andrew Dice Clay’s strike and then Vince offering to pay Phil Yagoda’s charity a cool hundred thousand to cast Johnny.  There was no cool down after the climaxes to both of these plots; Turtle’s dream of bringing Don Pepe’s to LA was never resolved one way or the other or mentioned again, and Drama just sort of will be off making his TV movie eventually, and his show may or may not be a hit.

So the finale is mostly about Eric, Vince and Ari.  Actually it’s not really about Vince either.  Vince got shorted a plot for much of the season after his drug scare was over.  Often one or two cast members draw the short straw plot-wise in an Entourage season, and this season may have been more dramatic than others.  The season as a whole was not particularly well-plotted, and I’m not sure if that’s due to the fact that there were less episodes than usual.  Vince’s second plot started as the season was winding down and involved him interviewing with a beautiful journalist and then trying to win her over, against her better instincts to date him.  In an episode or two, after some fairly simple persuasion she agrees; obviously her policy against dating actors and or subjects is not as rigid as she initially led Vince to believe.  More than that, we find out in the next episode that out of nowhere, Vince had the BEST DATE OF ALL TIME and is getting married to a woman who didn’t even want to take him two days before.  I don’t expect Entourage to be realistic, just consistent, and this stretches the boundaries even for me a little bit.

Eric and Sloan, I realized while watching, is by far the longest plot in the Entourage universe, extending throughout several seasons.  The smart move would have been to either end this last year, with what seemed like a nice final wedding end, or just push off last year’s plot to this year.  Instead, Entourage reached into the well one too many times and had fans groaning about the E and Sloan drama not being over yet.  Even though any Entourage fan knew to expect that they’d get together again, it still felt way too forced in the finale, as Sloan went from despising him and the idea that he may have slept with her ex-mother-and-law to getting back with him again.  Now that I think about it, Turtle and Drama convinced the journalist to date Vince, and Sloan to see Eric again; they must be extremely persuasive speakers.

Of course, Ari and his wife have had their issues before, but until this season that was just chatter and not serious.  At least this plotline was thoroughly worked through the season – it was definitely the plot that got the most attention and at least felt fairly complete.  It also felt a bit forced how they agreed to get back together once Ari quit, but not nearly as rushed as Eric and Sloan or Vince and I don’t even remember her name because she was in only three or four episodes.

Just in case we thought things were wrapped up in too neat of a little package, after the credits Ari, now jobless and on vacation with his wife, is offered the job as the head of the studio, or whatever is higher than that, something more prestigious than he’s ever been offered before.  Do I smell movie?

The plots weren’t particularly strong.  Everything felt rushed.  I don’t think I’d necessarily want or expect everything not to work out; that’s what Entourage is, ultimately.  I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask for the plots to be well developed before they end well though.  It’s by no means Lost-level failure, nor could it be within the parameters of what Entourage is and if I don’t think about it too much I’m happy to live in a world where everyone’s happy, but it’s weaker than it needed to be with just a tiny bit more work.

Tags: ,

Fall 2011 Review: The Secret Circle

17 Sep

There will be some shows this fall season for which I won’t at all know what to expect; The Secret Circle is the exact opposite.  I came in with a very specific set of expectations and the show met them exactly.  The Secret Circle is based on a series of books by LJ Smith, who also wrote the Vampire Diaries series of books, and who moonlights as an NFL tight end.

The pilot episode begins with a teenage girl getting into a mysterious car accident while her mom is killed at her house by someone using what looks to be witch-like powers to set the house on fire.  Cassie, the teenage girl and our protagonist, moves to her grandmother’s house in the town where her mom grew up.  Things get weird right away as her room starts acting strange and the roof looks like stars.  At her first day of school, we meet our cast of kids, all of whom seem to be awaiting Cassie’s arrival eagerly.  We’ve got Diana, the leader, Faye, the trouble maker, Melissa, Faye’s sidekick who seems to only be allowed to speak after Faye, Adam, Diana’s broody boyfriend, and Nick who attempts to look through the window at Cassie undressing and says just about no other words in the first episode except for introducing himself.  There’s our team, ladies and gentlemen.

They’re particularly excited because they know, but Cassie doesn’t, that they’re all witches and six is some sort of magic number for witches, so when Cassie joins their circle, they’ll all get crazy more powerful.  Over the course of the first day, Cassie also meets the second round of characters, the parents, including Faye’s mom, Dawn who is the principal at the local high school, Adam’s dad, Ethan, whose a bit of a melancholic drunkard, and Diana’s father Charles, who if we really look at him and think for a second, turns out to be the man who we saw at the beginning of the episode who was responsible for killing Cassie’s mom!

Cassie meets everyone, and they finally confront her and tell her that she’s a witch and they need to join the circle; they’re all scions of powerful witch families who have been witching it up for generations.  She does the requisite denials (this is crazy! you’re all insane!) , while they try to convince her by telling her all about their family history and how earlier in the episode one of them set fire to her car with magic and with demonstrations of their power.  Adam shows her what she can do with a flying water droplet spell and almost kisses her.  (sidenote: I’ve often wondered exactly how many times I would deny it if someone told me that there were witches, or vampires, or whatever – it’s so frustrating watching characters in denial when we know it’s real, but the first episode would probably just me denying it for an hour).

Anyway, she kind of accepts it by the end, after she uses her power to stop a violent rain storm started by Faye, and we also see some of the evil machinations of the father Charles and the mother Dawn who are clearly covering up some series of events that led to Cassie’s father’s death a generation ago and are planning something likely equally villainous.

That was a little bit of a long description, but I have to say the show was not bad by any means.  The dialogue was clichéd and the characters were certainly archetypes.  This show isn’t breaking any molds by any stretch of the imagination.  The writing is certainly far from standout.  But for what it’s trying to be, it does well.  By the end I was genuinely interested in knowing what the cover up might be that the parents were hiding for all these years.  That might be one of the advantages about basing a show on a successful book series; you already have a blueprint that you know works.  There’ll be plenty of teenage angst undoubtedly and growing up and likely love triangle between Adam and Diana and Cassie, and they’ll look and sound like other shows but if the pilot is a basis, then in a very respectable way.  Also, I’d like to issue a quick shout out for the nice use of The Joy Formidable.

Will I watch the next episode?  Probably not, admittedly. It doesn’t quite stand out enough in any one facet.  But I’m kind of thinking about it, and just that fact means the show is not a total failure.

Tags: , ,

Fall 2011 Preview and Predictions: Fox

16 Sep

(In order to meld the spirit of futile sports predictions with the high stakes world of the who-will-be-cancelled-first fall television season, I’ve set up a very simple system of predictions for how long new shows will last.  Each day, I’ll (I’m aware I switched between we and I) lay out a network’s new shows scheduled to debut in the fall (reality shows not included – I’m already going to fail miserably on scripted shows, I don’t need to tackle a whole other animal) with my prediction of which of three categories it will fall into.

These categories are:

1.  Renewal – show gets renewed

2.  13+ – the show gets thirteen or more episodes, but not renewed

3.  12- – the show is cancelled before 13)

Time to tackle Fox’s slate of four new fall non-scripted shows (X Factor the big unscripted debut).  New Girl starts next week and Terra Nova the week after.  The other two start much later, owing to Fox’s yearly late start due to postseason baseball airing all October.

New Girl – 9/20

Fox is trying to add “adorkable” to the lexicon, and as much as I hate forced additions to the lexicon by advertisers (see: my hatred of the old cell phone commercials trying to get your “five” to catch on), I have to admit it’s a pretty good word and as apt for series star Zooey Deschanel as for anyone.  Zooey, as Jess, breaks up with her boyfriend at the beginning of the show and moves in with three dudes, who teach her a little bit about life, while she has something to teach her too.

Verdict:  Renewal – the show doesn’t sound or look great, but even I have to admit Zooey Deschanel has some undeniable charisma even if I’ve never been infatuated with her

Allen Gregory – 10/30

Fox is the leader in primetime animated series, in their vaunted Sunday block, anchored stalwarts The Simpsons and Family Guy.  When I read that Jonah Hill was creating and starring in an animated series on Fox, I was interested.  Hill voices the title character, a snooty 7-year old with two gay parents.  Unfortunately, I’ve read seriously bad notices about the show being both derivative and more than that straight out bad.

Verdict:  12- Hill’s name should count for something but with the Napoleon Dynamite animated series barking at the door, I’m not sure the series will be given that much room for failure

I Hate My Teenage Daughter – 11/30

Two suburban moms, portrayed by Jamie Pressly and Katie Finnernan, find, to their dismay, that their daughters are becoming the type of kids they hated when they were in high school.  The dads, both exes, are incompetent, as the mothers try to do their best to straighten out their daughters.

Verdict:  12- Another of the class of it’s just going to be bad.  It’s not that the premise is as forced as How to Be A Gentlemen; a show with this premise could in theory work.  Still, it’s not going to; it’s going to be very bad.

Terra Nova – 9/26

Probably the winner of this year’s biggest Lost clone award, Terra Nova is actually somewhat of a Lost meets Land of the Lost, as future people, with the planet in danger (take that climate change skeptics) build a time machine and go back millions upon millions of years to create a human colony in the ancient past.  Oh, yeah, and they built their colony in the middle of killer dinosaurs.

Verdict: Renewal – well this is half a cheat, since Fox skipped ordering a pilot and just ordered 13 episodes straight out, a highly unusual step.  It’s probably the most expensive new series and it looks it.  I don’t know whether it’s going to be interesting, whether the characters will be compelling, and whether the story line will make sense, but it’s going to look fantastic.

Tags: , , , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →