Archive | October, 2011

Fall 2011 Review: Suburgatory

4 Oct

Suburgatory tells us a tale we’ve all seen before – outsider doesn’t fit in at exaggerated suburban high school, because high school is a jungle and as vicious a setting as anywhere else in life.  We’ve seen it in Mean Girls, in Easy A, in Clueless (Cher’s not an outsider, but the same other operating principals apply), in Heathers, and I’m sure in a number of other high school in suburbia movies.  Suburgatory expands this principle to the entire town rather than just the school, but the idea is more or less the same.  That’s not necessarily good or bad, but it instantly opens itself up to comparison against similar shows and movies, whereas my being unable to think of an instant comparison to, say,  Homeland makes it harder to have a direct benchmark to put it up against.

Jane Levy, portraying Tessa Altman, is moved by her dad, George Altman, played by Jeremy Sisto, from Manhattan after George discovers a box of condoms in his daughter’s room and panics, deciding he needs to raise her somewhere more wholesome.   When they get there they find the suburb to appear vaguely Stepford Wives-ish, while underneath is a culture of gossip and plastic surgery and incredibly irritating teenagers.  Both father and daughter struggle to fit in with the unusual surroundings, which go over the course of the episode, in Tessa’s opinion, anyway, from utterly hellish to maybe-not-entirely-the-worst-place-on-Earth.

How does Suburgatory do as a suburban satire?  Well, okay, but okay in the slightly disappointing sense rather than okay in the slightly better-than-I-thought sense.  The ideas are there – this is a concept that can certainly work, but the jokes and humor mostly falls flat.  In this suburbia-gone-mad setting, it’s always difficult to know how exaggerated to make everything – should you hew close to reality, shifting the humor towards very relatable situations, or should you go extremely over the top, drawing humor from the ridiculous and absurd?  Suburgatory seems to mostly stray towards the uber-ridiculous, which can work, but it mostly doesn’t, with a couple of exceptions.  There are a few concepts that seem like they could be funny, but just don’t quite click.  For example, Tessa describes Sugar Free Red Bull as the official drink of the suburbs.  This abstractly seems like it could be a funny idea, but in the context of the show it just doesn’t hit.

Cheryl Hines as the uber-hip but clueless mom (Think Amy Poehller’s character in Mean Girls) just didn’t work at all for me.  Whoever’s choice it was to give her an incredibly irritating accent was a poor one; honestly, it’s hard to tell how much of my dislike of the character was due to anything other than the accent.  Alan Tudyk was a little bit better as Sisto’s friend who seems to have convinced him to move to the suburbs, and he has one or two of the few standout lines.  Rex Lee, Entrouage’s Lloyd, who will be joining the cat full time as a guidance counselor, gets probably the best line of the episode, when he introduces Hines’ Plastics-ish daughter as Levy’s buddy.  Hines’ daughter notes that “Buddies are not your friends,” to which he agrees, “Not necessarily” (it doesn’t really work written, but it did spoken).

Will I watch it again?  Probably not.  It wasn’t out and out bad, and I like Jane Levy and Jeremy Sisto, but it disappointed.  I’ll certainly be interested to check it out at my mid-season check in, if it lasts that long, and see if it improved, because I do think it can, I just didn’t get enough out of that first episode to check in any earlier.

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Ranking the Shows That I Watch – 17: 30 Rock

4 Oct

You know the Thursday NBC line up is coming up through this list (and if you didn’t, well, you know now).  30 Rock might be many people’s top of the line up, but it’s my bottom, but that’s really no disrespect – it’s the best single network night on tv.

I do always feel a little bit mystified by this weird consensus that had formed around the show as the best on TV, though I think that’s faded a bit in the past year or two, as the mainstream Emmy voters throw their love towards Modern Family, and the more edgy writers towards Parks and Recreation and Community.  In hindsight, I suppose I’m glad it has its time ; it would be foolish for me to spend more time talking about how it’s a little bit overrated than on how it’s actually a very good and very funny show.

The past season had some excellent plots and parts and some exceptionally strange ones as well.  In the strange category, some of the leading candidates offhand might be the scam pulled with Jenna, Kenneth and Kelsey Grammar  involving ice cream cakes, Jack’s wife being kidnapped by the North Koreans (is this really a permanent exit for her on the show?  Seriously?) and Jack using Kenneth to fill in for his wife, after her disappearance in the last episode, featuring one of the simplest yet funniest lines uttered by Kenneth, as he says grace at the table with Jack (it’s not going to work as well written, but I’m still writing it), “Dear God, thank you for this venison. Onion god, thank you for these onions.”

Another highlight of the season for me was Jack’s competition with his boss’s granddaughter, portrayed by Chloe Moretz for future control of the company; hopefully we’ll see their rivalry again in future seasons.

It’s worth making a comment about the live episode 30 Rock aired towards the beginning of the season.  The episode had plenty of laughs, as any episode of 30 Rock does, but it felt awfully unnecessary, and although I understand the idea, it’s very hard for a live episode to not seem gimmicky for me.  Only once or twice did the episode take advantage of the fact that it was live for comedic purposes (a flashback with Julia Louis-Dreyfuss portraying Liz).

About the cast as well, all of them are funny when put in the right positions, but it feels like Kenneth and Jenna (and sometimes Tracy) are overused a little bit, at the expense of the writers (Judah Friedlander, Toofer, et al), who certainly don’t need to be elevated hugely, but in some episodes don’t even get more than one or two lines.  It all comes back to Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin at the show’s heart, with the other characters there to provide absurd b-plots, and I think the show realizes that.

Why It’s This High:  Alec Baldwin is truly masterful, and the scenes with him and Tina Fey are the essence of the show and the best part

Why it’s not higher:  The supporting cast is not nearly as strong as the two stars

Best episode of the most recent season:  “Queen of Jordan” – the entire episode is shot as a reality show starting Tracy Jordan’s wife and her entourage and it is a gimmick that actually does work, and contains another great 30 Rock wordplay joke – the promotion celebration that Mrs. Jordan’s single “My Single is Dropping” is dropping.

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Fall 2011 Review: Pan Am

3 Oct

Pan Am, one of two new shows this season set in the Mad Men era, the early ‘60s, thankfully does not try to emulate Mad Men in mood or feel.  It’s hard not to at least make a comparison, but while Mad Men is largely serious, Pan Am is light and fluffy, even buoyant.

Pan Am is the story of a group of stewardesses (they were certainly not called flight attendants yet) and pilots who work in the exciting world of intercontinental airfare.  In the first episode, they inaugurate a new jet.  There’s definitely a bit of soap feel, but more of a fun, light, escapist feel than, say,  in Revenge, which has more of a fun, but darker, trashy feel.

So far it seems we’ve got four main stewardesses.  Two are sisters, one who ran away from the altar just before her planned marriage to join her sister as a stewardess, and who was pictured on Life magazine as the face of Pan Am airlines before her first flight.  Her resentful sister has been working at Pan Am longer but has just been initiated into helping out US and British intelligence services.  The third stewardess is French and finds out that a man she’s been sleeping with is married, and the fourth is Christina Ricci, who seems a bit more of a hipster than the other girls, in the old-school Bob Dylan, early 60s sense, but flies around to see the world.  We don’t know nearly as much about the pilots, except that the captain was in love with a stewardess who we, but not he, know was also an agent for US and UK intelligence and now has to quit Pan Am for some reason.

It didn’t leave a strong impression as to what’s going to happen for most of the characters.  The only character for whom I got a feeling of what will happen going forward is Laura, the stewardess who will presumably be taking on new and exciting intelligence missions.  For the rest, well, personal drama, sure, but I can’t quite tell how much of the show we can expect to be serial, and how much episode by episode, and I’m not sure what manner of adventures we’ll see – hijackings?  Missed connections?  Angry customers?  I’d be interested to watch a mid-season episode if for nothing else to see what level of problems the stewardesses and pilots are dealing with.  I can’t imagine it being too dour week to week, or it would largely destroy the tone.

Will I watch it again?  Honestly, I probably won’t watch it next week.  That said, I think it’s so far the closest show on the border.  It wasn’t bad or disappointing, it just didn’t hit me hard enough with so many other commitments on board.

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Power Rankings: 3rd Rock From the Sun

3 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)

3rd Rock From The Sun – for a show I barely watched, this is a far more impressive Power Rankings than I was expecting.  Let’s go.

7. Simbi Khali (as Nina Campbell) – Every power rankings has to have a last place.  Khali in We Were Soldiers, in single episodes of That ‘80s Show and The Bernie Mac Show and as a voice in The Incredible Hulk video game.  Moving on.

6. Elmarie Wendel (as Mamie Dubcek) – She appeared in six episodes of NYPD Blue, 11 episodes of George Lopez, and in an American Dad and a Criminal Minds.

5. Kristen Johnson (as Sally Solomon) – in 2003 she appeared in a single episode of Queens Supreme and then in 2004 in a Sex in the City, in which she plays an aging party girl who falls out of her window and dies, forcing Carrie to reflect on her life.  She guest starred in six episodes of ER and in three of Ugly Betty.  She was in one episode of The New Adventures of Old Christine and in the second season premiere of Bored to Death as a dominatrix.

4. Jane Curtin (as Mary Albright) – her post 3rd Rock career started slowly.  She appeared in a series of TV movies, most notably as a librarian in the first The Librarian movie starring Noah Wyle, and she has reprised that role in two other The Librarian teleivision movies since.  She co-starred in short-lived Fred Savage 2006 series Crumbs, and appeared in two episodes of Gary Unmarried.  She played Paul Rudd’s mother in I Love You, Man and appears in 2011’s I Don’t Know How She Does It.

3. French Stewart (as Harry Solomon) – the man has kept far more busy than I had realized, albeit mostly in work that flies under the radar.  Within a year of the end of 3rd Rock, he appeared in single episodes of Ally McBeal, Becker and That ‘70s Show as well as as Inspector Gadget in the straight-to-video Inspector Gadget 2.  In 2004 and 2005 he appeared in single episodes of The Drew Carey Show and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation as well as three episodes of Less Than Perfect.  In the years since, the guest appearances have continued in force, with Stewart showing up in episodes of Pepper Dennis, Bones, The Closer, Cavemen, Pushing Daisies, Castle, Private Practice and SGU Stargate Universe.  He will be starring in a voice role in Fox cartoon Allen Gregory this fall.

2. John Lithgow (as Dick Solomon) –  at the same time 3rd Rock was wrapping up, Lithgow voiced the villainous Lord Farquaad in Shrek, and played Colin Hanks’ father in 2002 in Orange County.  He played Blake Edwards in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, and Alfred Kinsey’s strict father in Kinsey, both in 2004.  In 2006, he had a small role in Dreamgirls, and starred in a thirteen episode series, Twenty Good Years on NBC, with Jeffrey Tambor.  In 2009, he had perhaps his most memorable role since 3rd Rock, as Dexter nemesis and Trinity Killer Arthur Mitchell on the fourth season of Dexter, for which he won an Emmy.  Since then he appeared in Leap Year, in two episodes of How I Met Your Mother as Barney’s dad, and in Rise of the Planet of the Apes as James Franco’s dad

1. Joseph Gordon-Levitt (as Tommy Solomon) – It took Gordon-Levitt, the youngest main cast member, a little while to gain some career traction after the show ended, but since he grabbed it, he hasn’t given it up.  His first big post-3rd Rock break was 2005’s Brick, a high school film noir, for which he attracted rave reviews.  In the next couple of years, he appeared in Havoc and Shadowboxer, before appearing in The Lookout in 2007, for which he again received raves.  After Stop-Loss, The Miracle and Santa Anna and Killshot, he appeared in 2009’s (500) Days of Summer, an indie comedy smash, and as the villain, Cobra Commander in blockbuster G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.  2010 brought a key role in Christopher Nolan’s Inception and in 2011 he’s co-starring with Seth Rogan in cancer dramedy 50/50.  His future looks just as bright as he’s slated to appear in the next Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, and as Abraham Lincoln’s son, Robert Todd Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’sLincoln.

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Fall 2011 Review: A Gifted Man

1 Oct

Patrick Wilson is a renowned neurosurgeon in New York, operating on the richest and most exclusive clients (billionaires, world class tennis players) and basically being the best damn doctor he can be.  Unfortunately, he’s kind of a jerk, focusing only on his work, forgetting his assistant’s birthday (played by Margo Martindale who was wonderful as Dixie mafia leader Ma Bennett in Justified; she’s slightly less evil here), or being rude to his sister.  All of a sudden, during one day of his cold, nearly emotionless life, he appears to run into his ex-wife, who he hasn’t seen in years.  They get dinner and chat at his apartment, and he mentions to his sister that he saw her.  Later, he finds out she died three weeks ago in a car crash.  She visits him several times during the episode, in ghost form, and convinces him to help out the free medical clinic she left behind, by putting her password into the computer there, and to help out of the clients at the clinic in need, even though it takes time away from the VIP clients he normally services.

Wilson plays a privileged middle aged dick-ish guy as well as anyone (see:  Little Children) and I actually find myself liking him more than I’m supposed to.  Sure, he was kind of a jerk, but he was really more of an insanely career driven guy than anything else.  I’m actually not sure whether I’m supposed to like him more or less, but it’s probably better to like him more if I’m going to watch again.  The main hook of the show is that his dead wife’s ghost will try to make him a better man, which sounds utterly cheesy but didn’t play out as sappy as it could have.

This series faces the same issue I talked about in my review of the Secret Circle, or in many supernatural shows set in the real world – the how-long-should-it-take-before-I-believe-something-that-seems-insane syndrome as Wilson struggles with the existence of the ghost of his wife.  He has himself checked for a tumor with his MRI machine but by the end of the first episode it seems he’ll more or less have to get used to the existence of ghosts.  He visits some sort of spirit healer played by Pablo Schreiber, best known as The Wire’s Nick Sobotka, to attempt to remove the spirit, but bails out at the last minute when the ghost convinces him not to.

I watched this on back to back nights with Person of Interest, both on CBS, so it’s hard not to attempt to make a comparison.  Both shows were in a way the opposite of what I thought they’d be.  Person of Interest I thought would be a sort of sci-fi serial, and it seems to be more of a week by week procedural.  A Gifted Man, I thought, and I’m not sure I have a great reason for this, would be at least mostly procedural, and after one episode, it’s not really clear that that’s the case.  I still think there’s likely to be episode to episode plots, but the most important aspect of the show with Wilson and his wife’s ghost and him growing as a person and so forth has to be serial.

If I bashed the fake New York-ness of 2 Broke Girls, I should compliment shows set in New York that are clearly filmed in New York.  A Gifted Man doesn’t let you forget it, showing at least twice Wilson jogging by the East River.  Good for A Gifted Man.  It may be occasionally gratuitous but I’m happy to reward shows actually filming in New York by tolerating their showing it off.

Will I watch it again?  Probably not, but it was better than I thought it would be.  It’s a very respectable show, and I think has the potential to be more interesting than it sounds like it would be from its description.  That said, it’s not particularly up my alley just from the description alone, and it wasn’t quite good enough in any one way to make me really feel any need to see another episode.  I’m vaguely curious to check out what the show looks like if it’s still around for my midseason review.

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