Archive | September, 2012

Summer 2012 Review: Bunheads

15 Sep

I’ve always suspected I would like Gilmore Girls if I ever got around to watching it.  By the time I was ever really aware of the show, it was fairly far along into its existence, and it wasn’t quite so easy to acquire full seasons of shows, and it’s never had the must must watch tag of The Wire or Six Feet Under or The Sopranos, and well, I never did get around to seeing more than 15 minutes at a time of the show. Everything I’ve heard about it though suggests it’d be up my alley; most of all the fast talking and pop culture references for which it’s famous.

So having not previewed cable shows as thoroghly as I did network shows, I came into Bunheads, created by Gilmore Girls’ Amy Sherman-Palladino,  knowing, for me, surprisingly little. I knew it was about dancing, and I suspected, because it was on ABC Family, that somehow kids would be involved, and that there was some sort of controversy about all the main characters being white. I was actually surprised twice during the first episode at events that led to the establishment of the premise of the show.  Honestly, before I knew anything, I thought it was some sort of show about muslims, and that bunheads was a derogatory term.

The show starts with a frustrated vegas dancer, complaining about the essence of her day to day life in the chorus of a Las Vegas revue, and frustrated that her career can’t evolve further. She turns down a coworkers offer to get drunk because she has a big audition the next day, for Chicago, where she could get to be a real dancer again (the musical, not the city). She has a frequent admirer/stalker who comes and visits her in the dressing room every time he’s in town(portrayed by Spin City/Ferris Bueller’s Alan Ruck), buys her flowers and gifts and tries to take her out to dinner. She goes out of her way to avoid and turn him down. The audition is a nightmare when the director takes one look at her and does not even let her show off her routine. Being in such a bad mood, she wants to deal with no one, but lets her guard down and lets her admirer take her out for a meal, where she gets trashed and he proposes to her and tells her about his hometown. Several hours later she wakes up in a car and puts things together and realizes she’s now married to this dude and off to his hometown.

Pause here – I thought for sure something bad was going to happen. Maybe I’ve learned to be inclined that way from years of television, but I assumed this guy was super creepy for real and she was going to end up dead in a ditch, or, well, I didn’t really know what bad, but I assumed something bad would happen. Something bad does not at all happen, or at least nothing epically bad like that.

She arrives in his sleepy coastal town of Paradise, California, where it turns out that his description of living right on the water was correct, but that he omitted that he lives with his mother. The mother just happens to be a ballet teacher to a class of kids, but in particular to four teen friends, who hang out and all have different personalities, which I’m sure we’re going to learn more about as the show goes on. From what I can gather, one is super talented but cynical and unmotivated, one is really into it but doesn’t have the body type to be a great dancer and is insecure about that, one keeps talking about how her boobs are getting bigger, and then there’s a fourth who I think is maybe a follower of the first. Anyway, it turns out the guy is actually a super duper nice guy if actually a little creepy, and, yes, he realizes she doesn’t love him, but that’s okay, because he loves her and she might reciprocate some day. She is touched, they have sex, and then she gets into a fight with his mom at a party she’s throwing for the newly married couple. She wanders into the dance studio where the teens are drinking some beer and teaches them about auditions and shows them some dance moves. The mom walks in, sees how good she is with the girls, and the two of them go to the bar and talk. They have some heart to heart moments about lost promise and potential and dance, when all of a sudden her husband’s ex walks in with some terrible news.

Okay, so they don’t actually say straight out what it is but I happen to know (second episode spoiler?), the guy died in an auto accident all of a sudden, which since I knew nothing about the show I found quite surprising. So, without knowing the premise, that’s two pretty crazy turns – that our main character gets married to a stalker after a drunken night in Vegas and that the guy then died like literally the next night in an auto wreck. I like Sherman-Palladino’s (boy that name is a mouthful) style.  The dialogue was snappy and well executed for the most part.  It veered a little dangerously Glee-y when everyone started to break out in dance at the bar after our main character and her new mother-in-law had their heart to heart, but aside from that seen the potential schmatz was low.  It’s unfortunate that dance is definitely pretty low on things-I’m-interested-in but a great show transcends its subject.  This wasn’t a great show from its first episode, but it was actually pretty good.

Will I watch it again?  It’s at least maybe. This was definitely better than shows I’ve said maybe to in the past.  I’m going to be swamped with new shows over the next month, but as for candidates that I swing back around towards like I did Boss this summer, depending on how many good shows pop up in the fall, I wouldn’t rule it out.  Honestly though, what will most likely happen is that I’ll forget all about it entirely until unless the next season starts because it’s on ABC Family, and who remembers that ABC Family has shows.

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Fall 2012 Review: The New Normal

14 Sep

Maybe I had this preconception going in, so it’s unfair, but The New Normal felt like it definitely oozed a lot of the Glee Ryan Muprhy sensibility (probably not as much American Horror Story).  Not so much songs, but very slickly and cleanly produced and very quirkly, while also wearing social and racial issues on its sleeve, without a trace of subtlety.  This is exemplified by the grandmother character played by Ellen Barkin whose one note is calling everybody racist or homophobic names, and who comes off as a very poor man’s Jessica Walter in Arrested Development.

Let’s start with our premise.  An otherwise contented and career-wise successful gay couple decides they want a child.  The more flamboyant of the couple does something or other in an office where he has a sassy black female assistant who he lavishes with gifts that she buys with his dime, while the sport-loving more masculine member (played by Doug, the groom from the Hangover’s Justin Bartha) is a gynecologist.  The two find an egg donor they love (she looks like Gwyneth Paltrow) but the original surrogate for their baby attempts to blackmail them, threatening to smoke and drink unless they cater to her expensive needs.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the Midwest, Goldie is working as a waitress/bartender (guessing based on uniform) and regretting her past mistakes, having a kid at 15 (her greatest mistake, in both senses of the word, etc, etc) which never let her live out her dream of going to law school.  She’s on her way to work with her aforementioned homophobic, racist, grandmother, and her daughter, when she has to stop back at home after forgetting something.  She finds her douchebaggy husband having sex with another woman, and sees this as a moment to leave everything behind and drive straight to the west coast.  Although she is originally consigned to coming back, having no money, she decides to attempt to stay, forge a new life out west, and make a go of it.

Eventually our two halves are matched up as David and Bryan (the gay couple) get matched up with Goldie who has decided to be a surrogate and as it turned out specifically requested a gay couple.  Everything’s going swimmingly as Goldie and her daughter and David and Bryan get along famously, until her grandmother storms implores her not to carry a gay couple’s baby (using more choice language, I assure you).  Goldie goes through with it, and she’s back with the couple and her daughter and we’re right about to see whether the baby took or not when the show ends (I’ve got a sneaking feeling it did).

It’s kind of Modern Family light.  There’s a big all families are different but loving message and although unorthodox totally the opposite of dysfunctional (well, grandmother aside, maybe).  It’s probably warmer and sweeter than it is funny, and generally quirky without being over the top ridiculous.  It’s not bad at all.  I felt glad for the couple too, and for Goldie to start her new life, in just that episode.  It’s not that good either though.  There’s nothing, after watching it that really pulls me back.  With comedies, it’s not really about seeing a finished product as much as it is seeing signs that can improve into something you want to watch every week.  To its credit, the show seems to come out fully formed.  Unfortunately fully formed, while not bad, is not good enough.  I have a hard time seeing this turn into a show I eagerly anticipate the next episode of .

Will I watch again?  I don’t think so.  I don’t think it’s bad, but there’s nothing compelling enough to come back for a second episode with so many other choices out there.  Even Modern Family, which had strong moments was never really my favorite kind of show.

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Fall 2012 Previews and Predictions: ABC

13 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 next.  The network sits pretty and in the middle of the pack, and has five new shows on offer this fall.

666 Park Avenue – 9/30 

An evil apartment building.  Yes, that is what the show seems to be about.  Already, the season grows less exciting.  Lost veteran Terry O’Quinn (John Locke) portrays the evil owner of the building, married to Vanessa Williams.  The series premise is set when a couple, not  presumably knowing the evil nature of this building, moves in and takes over roles as co-managers of the building.  The building is filled with a bunch of supernatural shit, and it’s goal is probably to be something like Lost meets Revenge (high class trashy soapy fun of Revenge with the supernatural aspects of Lost).

Verdict:  13- Revenge against some odds worked both critically and commercially, but I’m taking the under on lightning striking twice.  I have no idea what to expect in terms of the quality of this program, but but I don’t have a lot of faith; while hardly a crazy obvious cancellation (where are you, Allen Gregory?) some shows have got to go.

Last Resort – 9/27

The Shield’s Shawn Ryan (yes, I know I need to go back and watch The Shield – it and Dr. Who are my top 2 long term big TV projects that hopefully will happen one day) brings us this kind of cool set up about a US Navy submarine which gets an order to set off a nuclear bomb, and defies it, setting up at an island until they can figure out how to get back home without being considered traitors.  I’m calling this Crimson Tide meets Lost (yes, nearly every new ABC hour long program can be described as something meets Lost).  It starts the estimable Andre Braugher of Homicide and Men of a Certain Age and Scott Speedman of many Underworld films as the top two in command of the sub.

Verdict:  14+  I almost put renewal.  I really wanted to, but  these high concept shows have so much going against them that lower their chances of success.  Without quickly picking up both a huge amount of critical buzz (which is enough to initially give concepts juice on premium cable, but not so much on networks) and a minimum of commercial interest, grand high concept serial series (which I think this is?) have a difficult go of it (Lonestar, anybody).  I’m only picking 14+ over 13- now because of the Shawn Ryan name.  I hope it will be good though.

The Neighbors – 9/26

Classic that-guy (and Zeljko Ivanek Hall of Fame member) Lenny Venito and ‘80s semi-brat pack actress Jami Gertz are a couple who move into a New Jersey housing complex, and find out their neighbors are aliens who name themselves after American sports legends and have weird Conehead-like alien tendencies.  I’m honestly not sure what to think; it sounds ridiculous and cartoonish, but there’s a number of different tones the show could be going for here; out and out silly, corny, absurdist, cheeky and over the top.   It’s easy to lean towards this show being bad, but it’s hard to say for sure.

Verdict:  14+  I have no fucking clue.  This could be a classic 13-, it’s honestly one of the more obviously 13- sounding shows on this list.  However, I’ve briefly come across articles that the show is better than I expected it to be, and there’s this off and unlikely chance it could be a weird quirky success.  I’d still bet against it, but compromising here.

Nashville – 10/10

One of the shows I’m most excited about, it sounds like Country Strong the show (actually that’s not the comparison I should be making right after saying I’m excited about the show) on the surface, about a middle aged female country superstar (played by the great Tammy Taylor FNL actress Connie Britton) and an up and comer who wants the spotlight on her, played by Heroes’ Hayden Panettiere.  Plus, there’s I don’t know, a bunch of country music?  I don’t know what the natural arc of this show is, and maybe that’s a bad thing, but also maybe that’s why it’s interesting.

Verdict:  Renewal – This and Last Resort were probably the two shows that sounded most promising to me from the basic descriptions.  Last Resort, well, I’m a sucker for at least being interested in all shows like that, but few are better than mediocre, and most fail.  Nashville, however doesn’t fit that pattern.  I don’t care all that much about country music, so it’s not that angle, and I’m not sure what my good reason for interest aside the fact that it stars Connie Britton and it sounds, well, different.  I think we’ll know within a few episodes whether this show is sticking around.

Malibu Country – 11/2

Reba is back, baby.  You knew TV couldn’t be without her for too long.  Reba, a Nashville resident, naturally, and playing a character named Reba, finds her husband cheating and moves from Nashville to, you guessed it, Malibu, California.  Her mom is played by Lily Tomlin, which tells you how old Lily Tomlin is.  Oh, shocker, Reba plays a one-time country music singer, who is now trying to reignite her career.

Verdict:  13- This looks like the type of predictable utterly forgettable sitcom Then again, Reba ran for six seasons (wow, is the right answer), so who am I to say it can’t happen again.  I’ll say it though.  It’s probably not going to happen again.  This would be high up for me on the most likely 13 or less choices this year, though the relative success of Last Man Standing proves that I know nothing.

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Fall 2012 Preview and Predictions: NBC

11 Sep

(In order to meld the spirit of futile sports predictions with the high stakes world of the who-will-be-cancelled-first fall (now spring!) 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.  14+ – the show gets thirteen or more episodes, but not renewed

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

NBC

NBC has the first debuts this year so we’ll start there.  The last place network, which is coming off a super popular Olympics high, has six new shows initially scheduled to air this fall.  Let’s take a look.

Go On – 9/11

Go On aired a special pilot sneak preview in August, as NBC tried to take advantage of the one time people were actually watching, during the Olympics to promote a couple of its new shows.  You can read my full review of the pilot here, but here’s the basic premise.  Friends veteran Matthew Perry is an egomaniacal sports talk radio shock jock who is forced by his employers to attend grief therapy while dealing with the death of his wife.  He helps out the other members of the therapy group, while also learning from them, etc, etc.

Verdict:  14+ I don’t see it going that far – it’s just not that good, and while obviously that means little to nothing in what happens to shows on network television, I don’t think audiences will connect – I don’t really see it’s audience – not Community enough for that crowd, or Whitney enough for that crowd (I hope that’s not really a crowd).  Perry’s name will get it the full season pick up though.  Also, it’s better than Mr. Sunshine, which is worth something I suppose.

Animal Practice – 9/26

The other NBC show which got a shot at airing during the Olympics, a full review can be found here.  It’s about a veterinarian who loves animals, but not so much their owners.  He’s now forced to work with the new owner of his animal hospital, who is an old flame, who is returning after having not seen him for a couple of years.  Also a couple of wacky sidekicks and a monkey that does human stuff.  So that’s cool.

Verdict:  13-  Honestly, a quick look over the fall shows (and maybe I’ll regret this when I get to CBS or Fox) tells me there are far fewer crazy obvious instant cancellations like The Playboy Club and I Hate My Teenage Daughter (and Last Man Standing…oh, wait).  Something’s got to get cancelled.  Probably quite a few somethings.  This utterly forgettable show will likely be one of them.

Chicago Fire – 10/10

Too soon for a reference to a disaster that killed hundreds and destroyed over three square miles of downtown Chicago?  House’s Jesse Spencer is the lead in an ensemble show focusing on the exciting and fast-paced lives of firefighters and paramedics in Chicago (the non-police two thirds of Third Watch).  It’s less overused than cops for sure, so small amount of credit there, but it offhanded screams out generic procedural (I really think the logic was um, cops, been there – how about firefighters?), maybe with some personal life business to get you all attached to those characters.  We’ll see though.

Verdict:  Renewed – crapshoot 101.  NBC has not been a big home to procedurals of late, but they’ve got new management and probably want to follow the CBS model to success, with at least one.  Prime Suspect did fail miserably last year, but boy, NBC would take almost anything right now.  Oh, and it’s produced by a guy named Dick Wolf who used to have some pull around NBC.   Dick Wolf claims he chose Chicago over Law & Order’s NYC to be different but if you don’t think it’s because of the name you’re kidding yourself (future overseas spin off The Great London Fire?  Think about it).

Guys With Kids – 9/26

Jimmy Fallon co-created this sitcom which stars Law & Order verteran Anthony Anderson, Whitest Kid U Know Zach Cregger, and general actor who is in a bunch of things but no one super notable role Jesse Bradford as three dads with young kids, “desperately trying to remain dudes” as the official NBC web site tells us.  Two are married, one is divorced.  Anderson is married to Cosby Show daughter Tempest Bledsoe and Cregger is married to Sopranos daughter Jamie-Lynn Sigler.  Can they remain “cool” with little kiddies by their side?  Only time will tell.  It seems incredibly uninspired but who knows these days.

Verdict – 13- – it’s got the Jimmy Fallon backing and early reports say that it might be better than I instinctively thought (any show about dudes trying to remain dudes just reeks off the bat but comedies are less premise dependent than dramas) But again, it’s NBC so I have to assume that a fair amount of their shows will get cancelled.

The New Normal – 9/11

Ryan Murphy kind of owns television these days.  Glee is still going str…well, going.  American Horror Story made some splashes last fall and will be back.  And this year he’s got a more traditional comedy featuring a less traditional group of folks.  A career oriented gay couple decides they want a kid, and hire a surrogate mother from the Midwest who has an 8 year old kid of her own who comes out west where they live.  She’s accompanied by her racist, homophobic grandmother (I’m kind of guessing about the racist, homophobic part).  And now, they’re THE NEW NORMAL.  It smells a lot like Modern Family, for better or worse.

Verdict:  Renewal – Ryan Murphy’s on something of a role these days, and what network wouldn’t kill for even a shot at the next Modern Family, which will be winning Best Comedy Emmys like Rafael Nadal wins French Opens (Congrats Andy Murray by the way!).

Revolution – 9/17

JJ Abrams 101.  A post-apocalyptic future where the power is out, for good.  Without electricity, the world descends into chaos with militias and warlords and what not ruling their own patches of earth.  Is the supernatural involved?  Who knows.  Our own roving band of misfits is being pursued by a particular militia.  Actors included Twilight grad Billy Burke, Lost grad Elizabeth Mitchell (and a star of V, cementing her sci-fi TV cred), Gustavo Fring himself, Giancarlo Esposito, and a bunch of relative newbies.  After failure after failure (see:  Terra Nova, The Event, V., Flashforward), hope for the next Lost remains.

Verdict: Renewal – I know this is wrong, I just know it, I’m making the exact same mistake I made with Terra Nova, but man, one of these shows has to succeed eventually, right, or they’d stop making them?  Plus the JJ Abrams imprimatuer could buy it a couple of extra episodes at least?  Maybe?

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Summer 2012 Review: Copper

8 Sep

So, as a terrible joke (the use of the word “joke” is charitable), a friend and I started calling this show “Cobbler” and now I can’t get it out of my head.  So, let’s cobble it out.

It’s the early ‘60s.  The 1860s, that is, and we’re located in the Five Points, a la Gangs of New York.  The Civil War rages, but we don’t really care.  Our main character is “Copper” Kevin, a former Civil War soldier who returned with his daughter dead and his wife…missing?  We open with an ambush of three would-be bank robbers.  Well, they get the robbing part right and all, but are taken out a few yards from the bank by Kevin and two colleagues.  The take down is violent – they shoot first, and ask questions later, though with good reason, and grab some of the cash before their superiors gather it up for return to the bank.  They’re not corrupt; that’s just the way the 1860s work.

Kevin and his partner each have their own lady loves, I can’t really figure out a whole lot about them from the pilot.  He also gets an offer to referee a boxing match from the scion of a rich family, something or other Morehouse, who likes Kevin because Kevin gave him an assist in the war – always the great social equalizer.  While there he meets the prototypical rich local plutocrat, Mr. Haverford and his English wife, Mrs. Haverford.  You might be seeing them again!

Soon, a girl is found murdered.  Kevin notices that she is the girl he saw earlier, in the first scene, who talked to him for one second for some reason.  Sorry, forgot to mention that earlier.  Through some investigation, Kevin learns that the dead girl is the sister of the earlier girl, and that the earlier girl was kidnapped to work as a prosititue by the nefarious local madam, the contessa, before running away.  He takes the dead girl’s body to some random black guy who is apparently his personal M.E. (why are a black guy and a white guy being friends at this point – easy answer – war buddies), and whose wife is played by the actress who played Wallace’s love Jackie in the second season of Veronica Mars.  Black M.E. (now there’s a show title) tells us that she was raped, well, after death, so I suppose not technically rape, but you get the idea.  In addition, she was hit in the head with a blunt object.  Kevin pays the contessa a visit and beats up one of her doorman, a bulky dude, who Kevin is convinced kills the girl, because, well, he’s big, and why not?  Kevin beats the shit out of him, without a confession, but leaves him handcuffed in a room/torture chamber.

Kevin pays a return visit to Black M.E. who tells him, ah hah, it was a staff that did the damage, and the man had to be a certain height – taller than the guard who Kevin initially suspected.  Kevin feels slightly bad about the guy he just beat, but realizes where he saw a cane, at the home rich local plutocrat Mr. Haverford, who he immediately knows did it.  He steals the staff, as evidence, and then brings it to his superiors.  Of course, because this is America, where the rich, no matter when, buy their way out of criminal activity, his bosses arrange it so that the guard he originally beat was “guilty” and sentenced to death, settling the matter, even though everyone knows what really went down.  Justice!  Kevin is disgusted but powerless.  He settles down, hopefully having saved the girl’s sister (who they found later and hid from the scary plutocrat; sorry, forgot to mention that), for now, before at the end, he is confronted by Mrs. Haverford, who asks if her husband committed the crime.  He did, Kevin, tells her.

I wanted the show to be better than it was.  I have surprisingly little sense of what the show is from just the one episode.  If I had to guess, there will be a case every episode with slow advances on the personal lives of the two main coppers and the pursuit of evil plutocrat Mr. Haverford.  However, it could easily become a longer arc-ed show right off, which would almost certainly be the more interesting choice.   I think there’s a lot of very easy ways to make a show like this interesting (in this case, good) but I’m not all that confident that the show will trend in that direction based on what I got in the first episode.  From just one episode each, I think I’m a bit more interested in Hell on Wheels than Copper in terms of recent shows set in the second half of the 19th century.

Will I watch it again?  Maybe.  Actually, as fall starts, it immediately jumps behind a number of other shows.  I wanted to like it more than I did, as I said, but that’s the show’s fault as much as mine;  it definitely could have been more inspiring.  I was hoping for something more than what seems awful like a police procedural set 150 years in the past.  In an idle moment maybe I’ll try to sneak in a second episode to get a real batter sense for how the show is going to work, but if it ends up just being another single episode case, than that episode will probably be the last I watch.  More serial TV, please.

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Summer 2012 Review: Sullivan and Son

5 Sep

Here’s the premise, and essentially the first episode of Sullivan and Son in reliatvely brief. Steve Sullivan is a big-city corporate lawyer living in New York, where he was just promoted to some nameless, not-understandable-by-normal-people position for his investment bank.  He’s returning to his hometown of Pittsburgh for his dad’s birthday with his girlfriend, another big city NYer more excited about his promotion than he is. He gets back, hangs out with his friends from home and his family, and finds out his dad is selling the bar that has been in the family for multiple generations. He realizes his dad enjoys every day as a bartender, while he dreads every day as a corporate lawyer, so he decides on a whim to buy the bar, and move home to spend time with his friends and family. His big city girlfriend can’t even begin to comprehend his decision and decides to return to NY, ending their relationship.

Sullivan and Son features just about every classic go-to sitcom contrast a viewer can ask for (or ask to please not have). It’s got poor vs. rich; he was making big time bucks in his NYC corporate lawyer job, but will trade it in for a less financially fulfilled life living around the poorer goofballs of Pittsburgh – rich is good for your wallet, but not for your soul.  He’ll both bartend and practice some law, although local real person law rather than unintelligible corporate law (see: Ed). It’s got big city – small town (even though it’s Pittsburgh, not Stuckeyville, but still). New York may be upscale and sophisticated but it has no heart, and people don’t care about each other like they do in Pittsburgh.  Steve’s girlfriend represents every negative stereotype about NYC and pretty much admits it straight out – she wants to pay too much for pretentious but inferior products – coffee, she says, costs four dollars, because that’s how you know it’s good. She wants to be around people who matter, and who are sophisticated, unlike those losers in Pittsburgh, and, well, she wants this big materalistic life that clearly shows a lack of appreciation for the things that really matter in life.   We’ve got the ethnic clash as well – (a la Rob Schneider’s Rob! (forget about that one already?  sorry for reminding you), but one generation removed – unlike Rob, who is marrying a Mexican-American, Steve is son of mixed-race parents) – Steve is the product of an Irish father and a Korean mother.  Her Korean mother naturally prefers her son to her daughter, and participates and likely will continue to in further Korean cliches.

The bar is fulled with lovable loser characters who will inhibit the series – Steve’s cadre of hometown friends, who naturally act like kind of jerks, because that’s how all good sitcom friends act (see:  The League) – like real friends who make fun of you, but take it just a little too far in situations.  There’s the older folks too, including the mother one of his friends (played by brief SNL veteran Christine Ebersole), a local lovable drunk who still wants to sleep around with just about anyone, making for both awkward and good-humored situations for the other customers, as well as the resident old racist (played by brief SNL veteran Brian Doyle Murray), which also makes for awkward and good-humored situations for the other customers.  There’s also the old high school crush that may have been interested in him too (Ed again) who is apparently now kind of dating a guy who does exactly what Steve used to do two days ago before he abruptly decided to take over the bar.  I guess they’ll never revisit that.

That’s the show.  There’ll be some guys hanging out and ribbing on each other, some will-Steve-slowly-get-closer-to-dating-his-old-high-school-crush, some Irish and Korean stereotypes, and some good-hearted everyone loves each other after all moments, I’m sure.  It’s not  terrible like the truly bad shows are (again, Rob!) but why this show exists I’m not exactly sure.

Will I watch it again?  No.  I suppose if I must judge this against other TBS sitcoms, it’s better than Men at Work.  The humor is cliched and tried but I think I like the main character in this show more than anyone in that show, and the people in general seem less obnoxious with the possibility of even being likable.  Alas, it’s still not very good.  I’m sorry if The Office, Arrested Development, and it’s progeny have gotten me to expect more out of a sitcom than a couple of cliches and a laugh track, but they have.  Just try a little harder next time, please.

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Summer 2012 Review: Major Crimes

4 Sep

Do you like The Closer?  If so, you’ll like this.  If not, you won’t.

I really want to simply end this review with that line but it feels like a cheat, so I’ll explain Major Crimes, if by chance you, the reader, has had the good/bad fortune to never have seen The Closer, or can’t imagine a Closer without Kyra Sedgwick (after 7 long seasons as the most popular show on cable, it can be hard).

Mary McDonnell, best known to me, at least, as President Roslin in the rebooted Battlestar Galactica, portrays the new main character in this The Closer spin-off.  At first, I thought moving from President to head of Major Crimes would be a pretty big demotion, but the LAPD may actually be bigger than the society over which Roslin was President.  McDonnell, as Captain Sharon Raydor, a character introduced late in The Closer, with the possible intent of a spin-off right from the beginning, takes over right where Kyra Sedgwick left off.  Quite literally, she replaces Sedwick’s Brenda Johnson as head of the LAPD’s Major Crimes unit.  Many in the unit, mostly the same characters from The Closer, are not fans of Captain Raydor, and and apparently have despised her rule-abiding policies for the past couple of seasons of The Closer, which I have not watched, when she was in a different position. Aside from the general emasculation that the old white police boys club clear feels because a woman has been assigned to lead them (again!), they don’t like Raydor in particular because of her new plea bargain friendly policies, designed to create cheap, fast and easy plea bargains for criminals even though they may involve slightly shorter sentences than if these cases went forward and to trial the old-fashioned American way.

In particular, this first episode involves a police shoot out.  Undercover cops are trailing a couple of suspected armed robbers, who have taken out a couple of grocery stores, but without violence.  Right at the beginning of the episode, the robbers are involved in a shootout with the police, leaving two of them dead, and one caught.  The caught criminal is about to agree to talk, when he’s fired upon.  It’s at this point that we learn that Raydor has become the new head of the unit and her subordinate, who headed the unit for about a week previously after Brenda left is not happy about it, let me tell you.  He gives her and Assistant Chief of Operations Taylor, who comes by to deliver the news, all the guff they can handle before reminding them that there will be more guff later, after he does his damn job and solves this case.

Blah, blah, blah, it turns out the shooters were a gang of military vets who were unable to fit in with regular society and played a first person shooter called “Win or Die” together (only the relatively young  woman working the case knew what the video game, or video games in general, were, unsurprisingly).  One is left alive, and turns out to be a cop’s son, and the police have the goods on him.  Raydor works hard to get the right facts confessed for the DA and makes a plea bargain happen which again further incenses the old white dude now her inferior.  Raydor struggles with her hold on the unit, which largely despises her, but stays firm and does her damn job, making it through her first day in charge alive and with a win on her record.

Oh, also, there’s a weird subplot about a disaffected teenage boy who is a material witness in a major case which may or may not have been discussed in The Closer and who needs a place to stay until his time as witness is up.  He complains and whines and complains and eventually it turns out he’ll live in an uncomfortable living arrangement with Raydor and be a main or at least recurring character for some reason.

This show is exactly what it appears to be on the surface.  I’d rate it as slightly better than The Closer because I prefer President Roslin’s no nonsense rule-following attitude to Kyra Sedgwick’s incredibly annoying I’m-just-a-girl southern accent as she talks to suspects when convincing them to confess, but the style, format, and cast is essentially the same (sadly without JK Simmons).  It’s well produced and the action is brisk, easy to watch, and paced smartly.  It’s nothing more than a police procedural though, and there’s no special element that makes it stand out, and anyone expecting anything additionally will be sadly disappointed.

Will I watch it again?  Honestly, no.  I would understand if someone else did though.  If you liked The Closer and it wasn’t entirely for Kyra Sedgwick, you’ll probably like it.  If you didn’t you probably won’t, and if you didn’t care at all about The Closer, you probably will not care at all about Major Crimes, which is more or less how I feel.

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