Archive | October, 2011

Fall 2011 Review: Last Man Standing

19 Oct

Let’s compare bad new sitcoms.  If Whitney and 2 Broke Girls are trying to be something vaguely new, with women occupying the tradition space of men on sitcoms, Last Man Standing is trying to be almost as retro as possible.  I almost though I heard Tim Allen bellow “More Power” once or twice as the resemblance to his Home Improvement character is striking.  This character is more crotchety though and the show is supposed to be everything a “classic” sitcom from before this decade is, whether that’s good, or bad.  Of course, in most cases, like this one, it’s bad.

Tim Allen portrays Mike Baxter, who is a manly man in the most stereotypical ways.  He loves cars, shooting things, and the outdoors.  He hates anything that reeks of hippies, or gays, or anything crying.  He must tangle with his beliefs as he has to deal with a family full of women, and he tries to relate to them as best he can.  In the first episode, it’s revealed he had previously spent a lot of time travelling away from his family, but due to change of responsibilities at his job and his wife getting a promotion, he’s sticking around which means more time spent dealing with all the women in his life.  In his job, he’s assigned to work on the new web site for his outdoor company.  He’s got to learn what young and female people are into.

While watching, I quickly invented what I’m calling the Last Man Standing drinking game.  First, take a drink every time Tim Allen doesn’t recognize something from the last 10 years or so.  What’s Glee, he wonders at one point.  Who’s Lord Voldemort, he is confused.  What’s a vlog, he asks his wife.  Second, take a drink every time Tim Allen knocks something for being unmanly.  A man in a tanning salon?  Drink!  Soccer practice – a European sport!  Drink!  Calling kids all champs!  Drink!  Once or twice he gets very dangerously close to straight out knocking gays; I was uncomfortable watching him skirt the line but not quite saying it openly.  Third, take a drink every time Tim Allen resents the fact that the world doesn’t work a certain way any more.  People can’t change their own tires anymore.  Men play fantasy football instead of regular football.  Men used to build cities just to burn them down (yeah, that’s a real one).  These are novel observations, folks.  The only problem with this game is that you’d be hard pressed not to be hammered by halfway through the episode.

It’s painful to watch sometimes and Tim Allen skates close to not just saying obvious cliché lines (his wife wants him to drive the minivan instead of the truck – did he hear that right?)  but lines that border on making reasonable people uncomfortable with his extreme positions.  Last Man Standing tries to play Mike’s crotchety-ness as an in-joke within the show to make it seem a little more modern.  Even though he’s ridiculously old-fashioned, the other characters in the show try to point out that even to them, his family, he’s a little bit nuts, as they do a “here he goes again” type of comment when he starts on a rant.  It doesn’t really help though.  I don’t know if this type of humor was ever funny; whether when this stereotype was first created it seemed novel or hilarious but it certainly isn’t now.

Oh, and a quick shout out to the inclusion of young star in the making Kaitlyn Dever as Tim’s youngest kid.  Dever previously played Megan Mullaly’s daugther Escapade in a Party Down episode and Loretta in a recurring role on Justified.

Will I watch it again?  No.  I was done with this one from about five minutes.  It’s schtick is apparent from the start and the only appeal could be if you’re extremely nostalgic about stock sitcoms from eras of yore.

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The Zeljko Ivanek Hall of Fame: Kristin Lehman

19 Oct

(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)

Like Kari Matchett, who we profiled earlier, Kristin Lehman is a Canadian actress who grew up on some of the same Canadian TV shows before breaking into the American scene.  Her TV career began with an episode of Michael Chiklis series The Commish in 1995.  She appeared in four episodes of Canadian vampire drama Forever Knight next, and in single episodes of Canadian crime drama Due South and Canadian series F/X: The Series, based on the ‘80s movie of the same name.  She then showed up in six episodes of Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, a sequel to ‘70s show Kung Fu, both starring David Carradine.

She acted in two separate episodes of The Outer Limits, and would go on to do two more later, and then in one episode of Canadian science fiction series PSI Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal (we’re leaning a lot about Canadian TV today – isn’t it cute that they have their own shows?).  After one Earth: Final Conflict and one Once A Thief, she moved onto American TV with a guest spot in fifth season X-Files episode “Kill Switch.”  In the episode, Lehman portrayed Esther Nain, a hacker with the alias of Invisigoth.  She works with Mulder and Scully to help stop an evil Artificial Intelligence which uses electronic devices everywhere to destroy its targets.  Lehman’s character is killed at the end, possibly helping to take out the evil AI in the process.

Lehman next co-starred in Canadian horror series Poltergeist: The Legaacy.  She appeared in two seasons.  She then co-starred in short-lived series Strange World, airing on ABC and created by Heroes creator Tim Kring and X-Files producer Howard Gordon about a military investigation into science and technology gone wrong.  She appeared in four Felicitys and co-starred in the extremely short-lived NBC series Go Fish starring Kieran Culkin as a high school student; Lehman played an English teacher.  She was in one UC: Undercover before getting a major recurring role on Judging Amy.  She was in 20 episodes as Dr. Lily Reddicker, a no-nonsense hospital chief of staff who takes a chance hiring Amy’s cousin.  She appeared in TV movie Verdict in Blood and an episode of the new Twilight Zone before getting another chance to star in TVTDOTN favorite Century City.  She played Lee May Bristol, a lawyer who was also part of a special project to allow certain genetically engineered humans, of which she was one, out into society.  She was in two episodes of Andromeda and one episode each of UPN Taye Diggs show Kevin Hill and Canadian comedy Puppets Who Kill.

She next co-starred in the nine episodes of one season ESPN original series Tilt, about the world of high-stakes poker playing.  She plays a woman known as “Miami” whose real name is Ellen and who is one of many in the show trying to take down big-time poker player and criminal Don “The Matador” Everest played by Michael Madsen.  The same year she played Francesca in G-Spot, a Canadian comedy series which aired on E! in the states.  She next co-starred in one season Fox drama Killer Instinct as Detective Danielle Carter, partner to Johnny Messner’s Detective Jack Hale who worked together to solve unusual crimes in San Francisco.  She was also in four TV movies around this time, Playing House, Burnt Toast, Damages and Rapid Fire, and then appeared in two Prison Break episodes in 2006.

She co-starred again in the short-lived Nathan Fillion Fox series Drive as Corina Wiles, partner to Fillion’s Alex Tully.  She appeared in Lifetime miniseries The Gathering with Peter Fonda, Peter Gallagher and Jamie Lynn Sigler.  She then took a couple of years off before showing up in one episode of Human Target and in her current role, co-starring in The Killing as Gwen Eaton, who is a close campaign advisor for Seattle mayoral candidate Darren Richmond and is sleeping with him at the same time leading to tension over the course of the campaign and the season.  She’ll be back in the role next season, though who knows if anyone will be watching after the last few episodes of The Killing’s first season.

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Fall 2011 Review: The Playboy Club

18 Oct

Of the two set-in-the-early-‘60s shows (Pan Am is the other), Playboy is  making much more of an effort to be Mad Men.  I’m not going to say that’s exactly what it is, or that it’s ripping if off, or anything of the sort, but I’ll make the mild comment that of the two shows, Playboy Club is clearly leaning more in that direction.

The Playboy Club is about the title location in Chicago, about a few of the girls who work as bunnies there, and about the manager and one particular key-holder (I guess you need a key to enter) named Nick Dalton who is a mysterious figure running for state attorney general but with a past that ties him to the mob.  The first episode is centered around a new bunny, portrayed by Amber Heard. Nearly the first action of the show is a man attempting to rape Heard.  Heard, helped byDalton, accidentally kills him, resisting the rape, and then finds out he’s a powerful Chicago mobster. Dalton and Heard bury the body and invent a story that she went back to his place to sleep with him, ruining his relationship with another bunny in the process.  They have to keep up the cover, while Amber Heard learns more about the salacious and exciting world of being a bunny.  There’s a vague hint that she has some sort of mysterious background which could have come out if the show lasted longer.

Unsubtlety is a hallmark of the first episode of Playboy Club.  It’s the ‘60s, and times-they-are-a-changin’!  That point couldn’t have been made more blatantly.  Literally, there’s narration at the beginning and end of the episode by Hugh Hefner basically saying as much (apparently the narration is only in the pilot).  The civil rights movement is on!  The one African-American bunny gives an incredibly unsubtle monologue about the opportunity working in The Playboy Club provides for someone of her race.  Gays have no rights!  One of the other bunnies and her husband live together in a sham marriage because they can’t come out with their homosexuality at the time.  We get it Playboy Club, you’re trying to put yourself at the heart of the cultural and political changes of the ‘60s.  Next time remember that these things work better when there’s at least a modicum of subtlety.

I’m fairly confident the main draw of this show is the attractive women wearing little clothing.  Not that that’s not a real draw, but there isn’t really much else.  That said, I’ll damn the show with faint praise by saying it’s not quite as bad as I thought it would be.  It’s not a truly terrible show; what I’ve found at least this year so far is that the worst comedies are significantly worse than the worst dramas.  It’s kind of offensive, and it’s attempt to say that these women are really not being objectified, but that they’re rather on the edge of a new femininity doesn’t really work.  The problem with the show more than that was just that it was boring.  Nothing happened in the episode that made me want to tune in for another one.

I realized The Playboy Club is cancelled already as I post this, but at least it’s nice to know there was no big loss there.

Will I watch it again?  Well, it won’t be on again, but no, I wouldn’t have anyway.  It wasn’t truly awful but it wasn’t by any means good either.  The only friend I know who watched all three episodes admitted a large part of his choice was made because of the scantily clad women.

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Ranking the Shows That I Watch – 13: Eagleheart

18 Oct

Probably the most obscure show this high on the list, Eagleheart is the rare show that I had never heard of at all before I watched it for the first time.  It was on after Childrens Hopsital on Adult Swim, and my friend, who I was watching with, said he had heard of it, and that it was supposed to be decent, so we decided to give it a watch.  Expectations were relatively low, and all we could tell right away was that it was a comedy in which Chris Elliott portrayed a ridiculous supercop charged with serious missions, along with his two partners, an idiotic guy Chris uses as a battering ram, and a woman who is generally more competent but whom he ignores.  We started to watch and we slowly started laughing and looking back and forth at each other until the realization gradually set in that this was actually pretty good.  We still weren’t entirely convinced, so we watched a couple more episodes and by the time two more were finished, we were pretty sure; surprised, but pretty sure.  Soon, we finished the series (it really only takes about two hours if watched all in a row – that’s how short the episodes are, eleven minutes each) and when I told my brother to watch, he balked.  When he eventually gave in, he was just as surprised, but enjoyed the show just as much as well.

It’s an excellent companion piece for Childrens Hospital, because the shows share a very similar sensibility.  The show is loaded with terribly corny wordplay which takes a certain appreciation which I understand not everyone has.  When Chris is captured on a blimp, the evil blimp captain baron tells him there’s only one day when one can leave the blimp – splatterday.  Yeah, it sounds stupid when I write it like that I realize.  But with audio and video it’s funny, I swear.

I’ll be the first to admit that this show is possibly ranked higher than it should be because I just watched it recently and the lines and laughs are fresh in my memory.  That said, I’m also glad that I put it this high because I think it’s probably the show in this tier that people are least likely be familiar with.  The show is so unheralded that the entry “Eagleheart” in wikipedia’s search takes you to Finnish power metal band Stratovarius’s thirteenth single release Eagleheart rather than the show.  I’ve read just about no buzz about the show, and I had never heard about it, yet I’m not sure why.  A lot of people may just not be into this type of comedy, but with each episode lasting a mere 11 minutes, it’s certainly worth giving a shot.

Why it’s this high:  It’s ridiculous, absurd, and though my brother noticed after watching a few in a row, there’s a pretty similar rhythm to the episodes, just because you know what’s coming doesn’t make it any less funny

Why it’s not higher:  I suppose when you have twelve eleven minute episodes it limits your peak here – the shows are short and sweet which is normally a good thing but may have a topping out point

Best episode of the most recent season:  I thought one would jump right out, but not as much – I’ll take “Chris, Susie, Brett and Malice,” in which the cops must disguise themselves as swingers in a swinger-unfriendly town.  When they try to shop in the supermarket and pick up some aluminum foil, the employees lets them know that they only sell “family foil.”

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Power Rankings: Malcolm in the Middle

17 Oct

 

(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 on a bit of a dip in these power rankings as for two consecutive weeks it turns out children who star in sitcoms aren’t often so successful afterwards.  I thought about throwing in a side character or two, but it’s not like any of them have much to write home about.  Admittedly it has only been five years since the show ended, but it doesn’t exactly seem like any of the younger actors have much momentum.  Alas, at least this show had one star who’s made something of a career for himself afterwards.

6.  Erik Per Sullivan (as Dewey) – It’s way too weird to think that Dewey is currently 20.  That said, his acting career hasn’t exactly taken off as he’s gotten older.  He appeared in an independent film called Mo in 2007 and in Joel Schumacher film Twelve in 2010.

5.  Justin Berfield (as Reese) – He was in one episode of Sons of Tuscon.  That’s it for acting.  However, he’s been more active as a producer, executively producing the short-lived Sons of Tuscon and now working as Chief Creative Officer of Virgin Produced, the television and film arm of Virgin Group.

4.  Frankie Muniz (as Malcolm) – Muniz hasn’t done so much acting in the years since Malcolm in the Middle – he was a serial killer in a Criminal Minds episode, and he had a cameo as Buddy Holly in Walk Hard.  That said, he’s probably the only actor to participate in open-wheel racing, where he competed in the Atlantic Championship in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

3.  Christopher Masterson (as Francis) – I knew this particular power ranking was not going to be the most fruitful, but I didn’t realize it was going to be this bad.  Masterson co-starred in independent films The Art of Travel,  Made for Each Other, and Impulse and appeared in a White Collar episode.

2.  Jane Kaczmarek (as Lois) – Immediately after Malcolm ended, she co-starred in short-lived Ted Danson sitcom Help Me Help You.  A couple of years later she starred as Judge Trudy Kessler for the two season TNT legal drama Raising the Bar.  In 2010, she was in Lifetime movie Reviving Ophelia.  She appeared on an episode of Wilfred, portrays Whitney Cummings’ mom on new series Whitney and has appeared multiple times in The Simpsons as Judge Constance Harm.

1.  Bryan Cranston (as Hal) –Cranston has been quite busy since Malcolm ended, but even if he hadn’t, he’d be on top of this list because of two words – Breaking Bad. Cranston has starred for four seasons as chemistry-teacher-turned-meth-maker Walter White, who has quickly become one of the great characters in television history.  Breaking Bad has received acclaim from all corners and each season moves up in the all-time television pantheon. For what it’s worth, he’s won three emmys for the role so far.  Cranston portrayed Ted’s boss in How I Met Your Mother in two episodes.  He appeared in ABC Family miniseries Fallen.  He also had supporting roles in 2011 movies The Lincoln Lawyer, Larry Crowne, Contagion and Drive.

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Fall 2011 Review: Homeland

15 Oct

There were a couple of candidates for the most interesting new show of the Fall, but I think I’ve found it in Homeland (so far, anyway).  I only kind of understood what the show was about coming in, but I leave the show a lot more intrigued than I was before watching.

At the beginning of the episode, Claire Danes’ character, Carrie Mathison, CIA officer, is in Iraq, and gets a message from an Iraqi prisoner set to be assassinated.  She gets the message after she promises to protect his family after bribing her way into the prison to talk to him.  Ten months later, she’s back in Washington and on the CIA shitlist for bribing her way into the prison.  We then learn two key pieces of set up for the show.  First, a marine taken prisoner of war eight years ago has been found alive by American special forces and is coming back home a national hero, and two, the piece of information Mathison got was that Al Qaeda had managed to turn a prisoner of war, which Mathison guesses to be the marine, Nicholas Brody, portrayed by Damian Lewis.

The episode follows the twin paths of Mathison and Brody.  Mathison, a career-driven agent, who is convinced that Brody is a terrorist, trying to circumvent the law whenever necessary to get the information to prove to her boss and mentor that Brody was turned, and Brody slowly trying to work himself back into a society he’s been out of for eight years, meeting a family he hasn’t seen, and a son he barely knows.

The supporting cast played less of a role in the premiere, but seems interesting.  On Brody’s side are his wife and his good friend, who have been sleeping together in his absence.  On Mathison’s side are her mentor, Saul Berenson, played by Mandy Patinkin, who believes in Mathison’s competence but is concerned about her tendency to take things too far, and her boss David Estes.

Underpinning this all is an intense psychological thriller.  Danes might be right, and Brody is a terrorist waiting to happen, and every moment not following his every move is a moment wasted.  Or, Danes might be crazy or obsessive – we get some hints she’s a little off her rocker in the first episode.  It may slightly lean towards the former in the first episode; we know he lies in his debriefing from quick visions we see inside his head.  Still, I’m counting on the fact that there’s a lot we don’t know and that it can still go either way.  In my opinion, the show would lose a lot if it just spilled the beans too early about what was really going on; part of what’s great is the intense psychological showdown and the lack of clear objective truth.

Will I watch again?  Book it – this is one of the highlights of the new shows, if not the best.  Danes is fantastic, and there’s a lot of different ways this can go, and still be great.  I can’t think of another television show quite like it.  After watching The Killing, I’ve developed a fear that every intense show with a great premiere is just waiting to go downhill, but hopefully this show will start building back my optimism.

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Show of the Day: The Adventures of T-Rex

14 Oct

Everybody my age, and probably just about everybody older and younger to a certain extent, watched cartoons growing up.  Which cartoons differ, but everyone excitedly woke up early before school (what was wrong with us?) just to get in a couple of cartoon episodes before the school bus came.  If you had cable, you probably watched cable.  If you didn’t, like me, you watched whatever was syndicated which ended up being a combination of Japanese cartoons, super obscure cartoons, and super obscure Japanese cartoons.

These cartoons tend to be ephemeral – cheaply made and quickly and easily forgotten.  They’re not made for their replay value; they’re made to entertain kids who won’t really think too hard about their quality.  The morning cartoons tended to be of even lower quality than the afternoon cartoons, where some of them may have retained a modicum of replay value like the strangely complicated plots of X-Men or the comic antics of Darkwing Duck.  Morning cartoons were more like Pink Panther or Mummies Alive!.  The most morning of the morning cartoons, the most at once disposable but because I grew up watching it for an entire year personally unforgettable was The Adventures of T-Rex.

The Adventures of T-Rex stands out ironically because for years I was convinced that it didn’t exist and I had just invented it.  I’m convinced everyone has one cultural moment from their childhood like this.  Some tv show, commercial, movie or song that they saw or heard when they were very young and before the internet (probably can’t happen as easily now) and can’t find anybody else who recognizes it.  The more people who give them quizzical stares and have no idea what they’re talking about, the more they think for a second each time, maybe it’s not real, maybe it’s some figment of my imagination that I created.  The Adventures of T-Rex was this for me.  What helped though, was that my brother remembered it as well, but I thought maybe we had just reinforced each other’s notions over the years.

Eventually, I found one other person in college who recognized it and it was a moment of sweet vindication.  This cartoon was real, something I believed it for so long was not a lie.  Wikipedia eventually got on board and published an article about the show.

The Adventures of T-Rex involved a world where everyone were anthropomorphic talking dinosaurs, and T-Rex was the collective of five dinosaur brothers who each wore different colors and had a different powers\ they used to fight crime.  During the day they played at a jazz club.  At night, they charged around Rip City in their Rexmobile seeking to find crime kingpin “Big Boss” Graves while spewing witticisms.  It lasted one year from 1992 to 1993, aired for 52 episodes and was a cooperative effort between Japan and America (it takes two countries to produce a show this good). The show is most memorable to me for it’s theme song, and I can’t even defend that as particularly memorable to anyone except me.  Still, the show will always have a special place in my heart, more so because it really existed.

Fall 2011 Review: Hart of Dixie

13 Oct

Unforgettable was exactly what I thought it would be, and so is Hart of Dixie, but as a very different type of show.  I’ll talk about the premise in more detail below, but I can pretty much sum it up like this:  big-city-super-educated-doctor-girl moves into small-hick-southern town, learns that the people there aren’t so bad after all.

That’s basically all I need to get across the main gist of the show.  That said, here’s a little bit of a longer version.  Rachel Bilson portrays Dr. Zoe Hart (yes, let’s spend a second on the literalness of the pun in the title, Saving Grace and others like it have a successor), a high-powered doctor whose had her whole life planned out since she was a kid. She wanted to be like her dad and become a Cardio-thoracic surgeon, working with him in his practice.  She is shocked when she doesn’t get the fellowship she needs because, as she learns, she doesn’t have the people skills needed to be a top doctor.  The person who grants the fellowships tells her to get some practice as a general practitioner, and then come back and reapply.  Meanwhile, she has had a strange outstanding offer from a general practitioner in a small Alabama town, a Harvey Wilkes, to come down to his practice and help out.  She takes him up on the offer, only to find out when she gets there that he died recently, but left his half of his practice to her.  She then has a number of City Slickers moments, meeting the (main) characters of the town and not fitting in everywhere, and she feels alienated.  Her mother comes down begging her to leave, and she is planning on it, until she is forced to help deliver a pregnancy at a wedding, and also finds out that Harvey Wilkes was her true biological father.  She then decides to stay and learn about her biological father and about being a general practitioner and about growing as a person.

Okay, so the simple explanation was probably just as useful as the long one in determining what kind of show it is, but that doesn’t say whether or not it’s good.  Like Unforgettable, I think part of it is just whether the type of show appeals to you, in particular because I think the show was nothing notably good or notably bad.  I liked Rachel Bilson more than I thought I would, and I do think she has the charm and likeability to carry a show, and I enjoyed Scott Porter (Jason Street from Friday Night Lights) speaking with a southern accent.  If you like the actors, and you like a little fluffy drama with some probable light soapiness,  you’ll probably like the show.  It’s not close to can’t miss television though.

Will I watch it again?  No, I won’t.  There just isn’t enough going on.  There’s nothing wrong with it, per se; it’s not bad.  It’s just not that interesting either.  It’s cute and it’s light and I appreciate the draw of shows like that but I already watch a couple that satisfy that sector for me.

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Ranking the Shows That I Watch – 14: The Office

13 Oct

Let’s put this right out there.  I know quite a fair number of people who were long time Office fans for the first three, four, or five seasons who just don’t watch it anymore.  It’s over the hill they say, jumped the shark, however you want to put it.  To me, that’s a lot of shit.  Has that happened in shows before?  Certainly.  I’ve complained about it myself.  And I’m making no claim that The Office as of 2011 and seventh or eighth season is as good as it’s ever been in its entire run.  But that doesn’t mean it’s not quite good and funny and enjoyable.

Admittedly this season was particularly strange, paving the way for the departure of Michael Scott, with guest star Will Ferrell as a potential replacement boss appearing in the last few episodes of the season.

Some people have said, Steve Carell is leaving, maybe that’s a sign you should just end the show, whether to put it out of its misery, or whether it’s going out on top.  Normally, I’d think they have a good point. It can look desperate to replace a major character in a comedy, and worse than appearances, there’s a huge risk of it simply not working.  The show got so far because of the chemistry and laughs generated by the core current cast.  When you risk throwing that off, you could have a show that would never make it on air as a pilot, but automatically gets a season because of the show’s pedigree.  In this instance though, I’m not particularly worried, at least about Steve Carrell leaving, although, of course, who they bring in is another matter.  I’ve been advocating Steve Carell leave the show for another boss for a couple years now.  Not at all because I think he’s done a bad job. On the contrary, I think he’s been able to make a character awkward and funny in a way I think very few actors could pull off.  Still, the character has inherent limitations and it’s a credit to him and the writers that they were able to continue to generate laughs until the end, but fresh blood can be a good thing.

Just looking through the episodes of the most recent season I recall funny segments.  In the last episode with Will Ferrell the oddly hilarious dunk attempt that landed him in a coma –  I can’t explain exactly why, but my friend and I laughed for five minutes straight and had to pause the show.  Dwight at the garage sale, starting small and then trading up, until he is sold on Jim’s magic beans.  Dwight and Jim gags may be the most resilient part of the show.  By all rights, they should get old, but they never do.  Ryan’s grilling of Pam about her Christmas comic book gift was fantastic and emblematic of the newest and best iteration of Ryan’s character as a pretentious hipster.

A word is also worth saying about how the Office’s attempts to add new blood (new blood?  fresh blood?  same difference) with new receptionist Erin and corporate liaison/stooge Gabe have very much worked.  Gabe becoming wholly unhinged by Erin’s awkward and extremely public break up with him turned into what may have been one of the funniest running arcs of the season, highlighted in the last episode when he quizzed Andy, during his interview, about the sun, and when Andy knew the answers, ordered him to “Shut up about the sun!” Erin carefully walks the line between adorable empty-headedness and maybe-she-has-an-actually-problem with the defining moment possibly being her believing that disposable cameras were for disposing immediately after you took the pictures.

Why it’s this high:  It’s still The Office, more or less, Dwight and Jim antics are hilarious, they continue to do good work

Why it’s not higher:  Yes, you should still watch it, but no, it’s not as good as it was during maybe the third season

Best episode of the most recent season:  There’s no obvious choice but I’ll take “Andy’s Play” which had one of my favorite scenes of the season at the end – Michael’s word-for-word rendition of a Law & Order episode as an audition

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Fall 2011 Review: Unforgettable

12 Oct

Poppy Montgomery’s character Carrie Wells can never forget.  No, really, she has an exceptionally rare medical condition in which she remembers EVERYTHING.  She used to be a cop up in her hometown of Syracuse, but she couldn’t deal with the memory so she moved toNew York, volunteers at a nursing home and makes money counting cards at blackjack.  That is, until a murder happens in her building and she runs into her old partner and lover, played by Dylan Walsh (of Nip/Tuck fame).  After catching up, he convinces her against her initial resentment to help them with the case by remember some things about the murdered woman’s apartment, which Carrie had been to a few weeks before the murder.  She helps them arrest one suspect, and then another more correct one and her ex eventually convinces her to come on board by showing her that she can still get closer to figuring out the one thing she can’t remember, the mysterious disappearance of her sister which she’s been trying to figure out since she joined the force years ago.

While American Horror Story was the strangest show amongst premieres, Unforgettable was probably the most predictable.  It’s as close to a straight CBS procedural as there is amongst the new shows this year.  Every week, there will be a crime, and Wells will consult to the police using her memory somehow to solve it (I’m not sure how they use this gimmick for twenty two cases a year, but I’m sure they’ll figure out a way).  Every once in a while, we’ll see a little bit of plot movement on the serial story of her figuring out what happened to her sister, and if we get a few seasons, maybe we’ll actually find out.

It’s hard to say much about this show that goes farther than what you already know from reading the summary.  It’s exactly what you think it is, and that’s neither a good nor bad thing.  If you like that kind of show, if you’re always watching CBS procedurals, it’s worth at least giving a chance, and if you like the actors, you’ll like, and if it’s not your kind of show, don’t even bother.

Two quick points – first, CBS is the network forNew Yorkshows this year, and Unforgettable continues the trend of A Gifted Man and Person of Interest highlighting the fact that they’re set in NY, here with some seriousEast Rivershots.  Second, there’s a flashback to when Wells is first getting together with Dylan Walsh and they play the song “It’s Been Awhile” by Staind to both represent the year (2001) and the fact that, well, it’s been a while since that scene happened.  Pretty brilliant.

Will I watch it again?  No, I’m not going to.  I don’t watch any police procedural show on a regular basis, be it a CSI, Mentalist or NCIS.  I hold absolutely no animus towards any of these shows; they’re almost all various degrees of watchable and I could do worse than spending a lazy morning hour watching Criminal Minds or an Unforgettable.

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