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Fall 2012 Review: The Mob Doctor

2 Oct

The hardest shows to write about aren’t the worst or the best, but the most, well, blah. That’s the level of wordsmithery I’m consigned to. The Mob Doctor isn’t very good, but it’s hardly horrible.  Jordana Spiro plays a young doctor, Grace Devlin, who wants to progress in her medical career, but who is also in debt to the mob. That’s essentially the long and short of it; it’s two different shows that connect at a nexus in an attempt to put a twist on either of those genres, medical and mob, but mostly end up as a generic show that spans two genres rather than one.

Here’s the medical show: Grace is a classic doctor-who-cares-too-much who is trying to move up in the cuthroat world of surgery with a boss she doesn’t like, and who doesn’t like her, and an even higher boss that she both likes and is liked by, played my all-time blog favorite Zeljko Ivanek. She’s got a boyfriend (played by Zach Gilford, Friday Night Lights’s QB1, Matty Saracen), a rival, and angers both by her willingness to break the rules and the law to help someone out of a jam, and by her tendency to whistle blow on her boss, which makes a viewer want to yell a classic The Wire “Chain of command!”  She’s clearly good at what she does but she risks alienating her coworkers with her attitudes and her recklessness.

Here’s the mob show: Spiro agreed to take on her brother’s debt to prevent him from being gunned down by mobster Morretti (The War at Home’s Michael Rappaport). She’s also buddy buddy with allegedly retired mobster Constantine (mob character veteran William Forsythe, who just played Manny Horvitz in Boardwalk Empire), having known him since childhood.  In the first episode, Moretti threatens Grace’s family if she doesn’t kill a patient in witness protection for him.  When she doesn’t, she makes a beeline to her friend Constantine’s house.  It turns out the witness was all part of a set up to take Moretti down so Constantine can reclaim his rightful position as Head of Mob.  He offers Grace a choice; get the hell out of Dodge (Chicago) or if she decides to say, she owes him now, with unspecified mob medical favors.  She, not wanting to leave her life and family, takes the latter. So, she’s torn between the two worlds, and you’ve got what’s likely twin procedural action.  She’ll have to do a surgery for the hospital, and do a surgery for the mob, all while avoiding on stepping on many sets of toes.

Note:  Two characters got to tell Spiro alternately, “we’re done here,” and “this isn’t over,” two phrases I would kill to have a chance to properly roll off in a nautral conversation and then walk away, authoratitvely but smoothly.

Will you watch it again? Nope. Honestly, it was much more blah (that’s that non-word again) than out and out bad, but there’s so many other shows to watch that one has to make their viewing choices carefully, and affirmatively;  when choosing, it makes sense to watch shows that you excited to see the next episode of rather than shows which you finish and merely say, “you know, that really was watchable,” and mean that as a backhand compliment.

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Fall 2012 Review: Revolution

27 Sep

One of two new long-form serial shows on network TV, along with Last Resort (which I preferred),  the central premise of Revolution is  that all electricity in the world has turned off for some mysterious reason.  This is far more science fiction than Last Resort, which is more hard-boiled political thriller, and it has the JJ Abrams good conspiracykeeping seal of approval.  There’s a whole lot of premise and plot in the first episode to attempt to put the show on solid footing going forward, so some plot now, and more opinion at the end.

The show begins in the current day with a family in Chicago, composed of a father, a mother (played by Lost’s Elizabeth Mitchell), and a little girl.  The father says something like, it’s happening, and that means that the world is losing power, which he knew would happen; he calls his brother, in the military, preserves a USB key which is placed on an unnecessarily special looking necklace (Chekov’s USB key? Also someone should tell them that it doesn’t matter what the USB key looks like, it works the same).  And then it happens; power goes out everywhere, planes fall from the sky, people die, mass hysteria.

It’s now 15 years later.  A bunch of people are living in an old fashioned village, and a portly dude with glasses (where do they get glasses from?  I guess he just had the amazing fortune to never break or lose his glasses in 15 years of mass hysteria) is telling a group of kids about how the world used to be.  The father from the first scene is here along with his two kids, teenagers, Charlie, the elder girl, and Danny, the younger son.  They’re part of a family unit with their dad’s new girlfriend, an Australian doctor, who joined up after his wife died (sidenote:  we, of course, know she’s not dead, because Elizabeth Mitchell is in the main credits, so unless there’s just a shit ton of flashbacks, or hallucinations, she’s somewhere).

Representatives from some sort of evil-seeming militia, the Monroe Republic, come up on horseback with weapons, led by Giancarlo Esposito (on a villainous streak coming off playing Gus on Breaking Bad).  When the father assures Esposito they’ve paid their taxes, Esposito explains that’s not why he’s here; he wants the father and his brother Miles.  The father doesn’t want to go, but on threats to the rest of his family, he agrees, asking just a moment to say goodbye.  The members of the little town, including Danny, don’t understand, and stupidly try to turn their weapons on the much better equipped militia.  The father ends up being shot and killed in the crossfire  which means Esposito, to save his own hide, takes Danny, the son, instead.  The father, before succumbing to his wounds, tells his daughter that she needs to seek out his brother Miles in Chicago.

Off to Chicago!  The great journey begins!  The daughter, Charlie, the new girlfriend, Maggie, and the fat dude, Aaron, all set out to find Miles, who will hopefully help them rescue Danny.  Charlie runs into a young attractive dude with a bow and arrow and tells him where they’re going.  The crew tries to sleep on the plane (en route, the fat dude, says he used to be a multi-millionaire from some company name Google, but that’s all worthless now), where they’re assaulted by some hooligans.  They attempt to rape Charlie, but the crew escapes because the hooligans drink some of Maggie’s poisoned whiskey, and the young bow and arrow dude from before shoots another hooligan.  Nate, the bow and arrow dude, accompanies them; while Maggie pleads with Charlie not to trust him, his act of helping them out wins the day.

That’s it, they’re in Chicago.  That was fast (their speed in reaching Chicago reminds me of this Flight of Conchords scene).  They go to a random bar, and naturally the first person they meet, the bartender, is Miles, though he doesn’t want to admit to it, and he talks to Charlie in private, and tells her he can’t help.  Also, he discovers that new friend Nate is a spy, and warns Charlie and crew to get the fuck out of Dodge for their own safety.  The militia comes in and it turns out Miles is a super duper badass who kills just about every militia member and at the end of the battle it also turns out that the rest of the crew stuck around to help him.  So, his niece convinces him to join with them and find her brother.  Meanwhile her brother escapes, is taken in by a woman and helped, then caught again at that woman’s house.  The woman also has a crazy USB key which she puts into a super old PC and types in the command prompt to someone else.  Power still exists!

So there’s obviously one huge question hanging over the entire show – why did the power go out?  Then there’s also, why do these people have ridiculous USB keys, and all of that.  Initially I’m less impressed with the characters than Last Resort, as they seem more likely to be cardboard action-adventure clichés and I almost wish this show was just set in this post-apocalyptic society, and there were no USB Keys, and no crazy power conspiracy, but then it wouldn’t be a JJ Abrams show, would it.  For all the later disintegration of Lost, damn, that pilot was captivating and I haven’t seen one as good in a Lost-type show since.  I do wonder though whether the end of Lost has made me look for the potential future problems in all of these first episodes.  When I watched the Lost pilot, I was innocent and naive, assuming the writers had a brilliant plan for how the series would be laid out just as good as that first episode.  If I had to guess there’s ten ways this show can come apart and at least one will happen, either due to the plot, or due to everything else being uninteresting besides the plot.  It doesn’t have to go that way though, and it’s unfair to judge the pilot simply on the likeliness that that will happen.

I also misjudged how the show would work, even in the first episode.  I thought the quest to Chicago would be an epic multi-episode spanning arc in which we’d slowly learn more about the world that exists in Revolution, but instead it took about five minutes.  This isn’t in and of itself bad, except that it leads to likely pacing problems in the future.  Shows like this want to have extremely plot-heavy first episodes to get the viewer involved, but if the next few episodes end up becoming much slower to compensate, it basically defeats the point.  There’s so many more ways to screw up long form serial conspiracy shows than to get them right that it makes one very dispirited just trying to think past a pilot.

Will I watch it again?  Yeah, I’m going to watch a couple more.  The more I think about it, the more I expect the show to get at least mediocre and then quite possibly bad, but because I desperately want one of these types of shows to succeed and be good I’ll give it a couple of chances.  My report and opinion after five episodes will carry a lot more weight than this first impression.

 

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Fall 2012 Review: Guys with Kids

25 Sep

Personal branding has become a big industry in TV, as more and more showrunners and executive producers and creators pop their names on different projects.   You’ve got the actual people who run the show day to day like The Shield’s Shawn Ryan behind Last Resort and The Office’s Mindy Kaling taking on The Mindy Project, but you’ve also got the producers with whom it’s unclear how big their role is on the show – Judd Apatow behind Girls and JJ Abrams behind Revolution, for example.  Guys with Kids has been promoted heavily as being produced and “from” NBC Late Night host and longtime SNL alum Jimmy Fallon,  and is being sold on that name more than any of the actors or anything about the show itself.

Now, I haven’t always been the biggest Jimmy Fallon fan (I think SNL is the most overrated cultural institution of the past 30 years and never dug his weekend updates), and I just about never watch non-Daily Show/Colbert Report late night TV, but from what I hear, Fallon’s show is actually kind of pretty good, and every once in a while I’ll see a decent segment that becomes viral. So, I’m not exactly expecting the world when Jimmy Fallon puts his name on a show, but I do expect better than a retrograde laugh track-y sitcom about men trying to stay men.

Three best friends and dads with young children hang out and try to stay cool even with all the responsibilities placed on them by having kids.  They’re played by Anthony Anderson, who has four kids, Zach Cregger, who has two, and Jesse Bradford, who just has a baby. The former two are married, while the latter is divorced. The only minor “twist” on typical sitcom family structure is that Anthony Anderson is a stay-at-home dad, while his wife, played by The Cosby Show’s Tempestt Bledsoe, works. In every other way, the jokes are typical and the laughs are canned, filled with lots of familiar ground like that men and woman are different, and which activities are and are not masculine.

The first episode plotwise as well is loaded with typical sitcom situations shown and portrayed in a typical way. Typical doesn’t have to mean bad, but in this case it does. Divorced Bradford wants to go on a date to the Knicks game (Go Knicks!), but his crazy ex-wife (played by Childrens Hospital’s own Erinn Hayes) won’t watch the kid, or allow him to hire a babysiter because she has her own date, with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (and, yes, from the moment his name was mentioned I put the odds at 85% that he would actually show up, and he does, and I wonder how much he got paid). Hilarity ensues when the babysitter bails, Cregger has to watch the baby, and Bradford has to rush back to his apartment when his crazy ex, who still has a key, decides to pay an impromptu visit to check that he wasn’t lying about the babysitter. Cregger on the other hand, angers his wife (Meadow Soprano herself, Jamie-Lynn Sigler) by agreeing to watch Bradford’s kid on the night they’re supposed to go out to a silly Titantic themed event for their daughter’s school. The event is ridiculous, he thinks, why would she care, not realizing she just wants to get out of the house, after spending much time indoors with the kids, as stay-at-home dad Anderson explains. Come on dude! Marriage 101!  He makes it up to her with an adorable fake Titanic dance when she gets back, and all is forgiven in the name of love.

Even the most boring and trope filled plots can be played with and reworked endless times in genuinely interesting ways. However, I spend time describing the plot because 90% of the time, you actually can guess accurately from just reading it whether the show is going to be good or not. I think this is one of that 90%.  I don’t think the premise is the real problem though; rather, it has all the pitfalls of most multi-camera shows that appear these days (I don’t think multi-camera shows have to have these problems, but they tend to); the timing is terrible, the few jokes that could be funny aren’t, and everything feels boxed and forced instead of free and natural.  I like Anderson and think that if he was put in a better situation to succeed he could be very funny; but the mediocre dialogue in addition to the format are stacked against him.

This would be a show not worth watching 15 years ago, but at least it wouldn’t have stood in such stark contrast to the really good comedies on TV.  The best I can say about it is that it’s not offensive like the truly awful comedies, the Last Man Standings, and the Rob!’s, but that’s very small praise.

Will I watch it again? It’s nice to have an easy no.  It’s too bad Jimmy Fallon couldn’t use his newfound critical acclaim to put his name on something better.

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Fall 2012 Preview and Predictions: The CW

24 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)

It’s easy to forget that the CW still exists.  It does, though, and it, like last year, has three new fall shows, and like last year I doubt more than one will survive.  Let’s see, though.

Emily Owens, M.D. – 10/16

Owens is a first-year intern at some hospital in Denver where she realizes that both her medical school crush and her rival from high school both work. It’s like high school all over again, but in a hospital, which sounds about perfect for the CW. They really, really play up the just-like-high-school angle on the CW about page, and Owens looks pretty frazzled in the promotional poster (note: wikipedia has been sadly lacking in information about CW’s new shows so I’ve been spending more time than usual on cw.com).  Also noteworthy, series star Mamie Gummer is the daughter of Meryl Streep.

Verdict:  Renewal – the most generic sounding of the three CW shows, but, first of all, it sounds right up CW’s alley, and second of all, it’s most analogous to the CW show that eventually made the cut last year, Hart of Dixie.  In a complicated and mostly unnecessary analogy, Emily Owens is equivalent to Hart of Dixie, a show about a doctor which is mostly good spirited and has personal drama, Arrow is Secret Circle (this is the worst comparison), a show about people with abilities and possible conspiracies involves those people’s parents, and Beauty and the Beast is Ringer, a more hard-boiled action thriller.  Anyway, the entire analogy only serves the minor point of explaining why I’m choosing Emily Owens to be renewed over the other two CW shows.

Arrow – 10/10

Having raked in cash from ten seasons of Smallville, the CW tries to duplicate that success with a show about a less popular member of the Justice League, Green Arrow. Green Arrow is a bow and arrow slinging hero who in this incarnation is far more analogous to Batman than  Superman. He’s a billionaire playboy (CW’s words) who disappeared at sea for five years, and after finally returning has developed his Green Arrow alias, a vigilante persona, while being chased by a policeman.  Also, there may be sinister motives behind is disappearance at sea.

Verdict:  14+  It’s a superhero show, and superheroes are still pretty in, so it has that going for it.  It doesn’t look all that good though, and Green Arrow, while I’m personally a fan, is definitely a couple of rungs below Superman and Batman as far as comic book heroes go.    CW, since the ratings are even lower than NBC, is mostly a crapshoot, but I’ll say they give it the season and then give it the boot.

Beauty and the Beast – 10/11

An extremely random quasi-remake of the CBS ’80s series of the same name, Beauty and the Beast starts erstwhile Lana Lang from CW series Smallville Kristen Kreuk as, uh, the beauty, Catherine Chandler, a homicide detective (CW’s show page describes her as “smart, no nonsense” and “strong and confident”). When she was a teen, her mom was killed in front of her, and she was only saved by a mysterious human creature, which you may correctly guess, is the titular beast. Chandler has a partner and a boss but becomes unmoored when she discovers that a murderer that they’re tracking is a dude who has been off the official radar for years, presumed dead, and turns out to be what saved her from being murdered. He also turns Hulk-like into a beast sometimes for some reason. By the way, these CW about pages are just a treasure trove of tropes (say that three times fast), for example, describing her boss as “tough but fair” and describing her relationship with the friendly M.E., as “a fun, flirtatious relationship that could easily turn into something deeper – if Cat would let that happen.”  Maybe she will!

Verdict:  14+  I have no fucking idea.  It sounds highly forgettable, which leads me to not pick renewal, but I’m guessing that CW will be slow, like last year to cut bait on its shows, preferring to wait until the end of the season, even when the result is nearly inevitable.  It’s just a guess.

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Fall 2012 Previews and Predictions: CBS

21 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)

So CBS has two shows that look out and out terrible and two shows that will probably be bad, but have at least the possibility of not being terrible.  Let’s check ‘em out.

Made in Jersey – 9/28

If I had a contest where I picked the worst sounding show of the new season, it would have to be Made in Jersey.  I hate to be judgmental (I don’t actually hate it, but I admit I shouldn’t do it), but sometimes all you really need to hear is a premise, and you know all you need to know.  Made in Jersey is about a New Jersey lawyer from a stereotypical Italian family making her way at a presumably WASP-y white shoe New York law firm.  If I had to guess what would happen, it would be that her clients and coworkers are initially skeptically of her Jersey accent and unorthodox tactics, but she wins them over by showing them tricks they didn’t learn growing up in Connecticut and going to Yale.  Worse, the actress playing the main character is English, which at least led me to hope that the premise would be based on a lawyer from actually Jersey, the English island near France.  Alas, it was not to be.

Verdict:  13-  I know, I know, it’s CBS.   It’s on Friday, which is a blessing in that ratings are expected to be lower, but a curse in that people don’t really watch TV on Friday.  So people will watch it, and CBS didn’t cancel much very fast last year.  But their standards are also higher, and it really does look terrible.

Partners – 9/24

Two close friends and coworkers must deal with the strains of each other’s relationships; that’s about all we’ve got for a premise.  Well, also that they work as architects and one of them is gay.  Numb3rs star David Krumholtz plays the straight friend, who is engaged to One Tree Hill’s Sophia Bush.  Ugly Betty’s Michael Urie plays the gay friend, and Superman himself, Brandan Routh is Urie’s significant other.  It really shouldn’t be obvious from this limited amount of information that the show is going to be terrible, but in this case it is.

Verdict:  14+ Honestly, I shouldn’t let my verdict on one show necessarily impact my verdict on another, but I figured at least one of Partners or Made in Jersey, the two terrible looking shows would get cancelled quicker than the other.  I’m torn.  Made in Jersey is on Friday nights, which means most people won’t watch, but a mediocre A Gifted Man hung around almost a full year there.  Partners will have the security blankets of How I Met Your Mother and 2 Broke Girls (shivers) around it on Mondays.

Vegas – 9/25

The first of the CBS shows that may not actually be terrible necessarily.  It’s the 1960s, and Vegas is in its wild west days, before Steve Wynn and the like.  The show is portrayed as a battle of wills between the sheriff of Clark county, where Vegas is located, Ralph Lamb, played by Dennis Quaid, and a Chicago mobster who follows Horace Greeley’s advice and goes west to set up his own base of operations, Vincent Savino, played by The Shield star Michael Chiklis, looking to rebound from the extraordinary failure of No Ordinary Family.

Verdict:  Renewal – This is the show I feel like I have the worst grasp of on this channel.  How procedural vs. how serial it is, I don’t know, and even if I did know, I don’t know how much that would matter anyway.  I don’t think it will be very good and I don’t think it will be terrible, but I have no idea where in the range of kind of bad to kind of good it will be.  This is a wild shot in the dark.

Elementary – 9/27

Like modern-day adaptations of Sherlock Holmes, but unsatisfied by the mere 3 episodes a year produced of the British Sherlock and prefer it set in New York City?  You’re in luck.  Trainspotting’s Johnny Lee Miller is Holmes in this adaptation, and Lucy Liu is his (shock!) female Watson.  As a fan of Sherlock, I was naturally inclined to believe that a CBS take would be inferior, but initial reports are that the show is actually not so bad.  One difference may be in the involvement of Watson, who seems, in Elementary to be less involved in the cases and more irritated at Holmes.  I’m still skeptical but I’ll try to give it an honest chance.

Verdict:  Renewal – I think it’s a good fit for CBS.  It’s a procedural which means it’s right up CBS’s general alley, but if early reports are accurate it’s maybe a little bit better than most.  It should appeal to core CBS audience; Holmes is a hundred-year old character, but the show attempts to make Holmes new again with a twist.  I’m not crazy confident in this prediction but I do definitely think it’s the most likely renewal on the network.

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Fall 2012 Review: Last Resort

20 Sep

Last Resort is one of the two big complicated serial shows being attempted on network television this autumn (Revolution is the other).  These shows generally come in two flavors, huge conspiracy and science fiction/supernatural (some have a mix).  Last Resort is the former, and has the pedigree of being the product of The Shield creator Shawn Ryan.  The first episode was plot-heavy, even for a pilot, and a little confusing, so follow along closely and try to keep up, or skip to the end if you plan on watching it for yourself.

The action begins on a submarine, the USS Colorado.  Captain Marcus Chaplin (Homicide: Life on the Street star Andre Braugher) is a long time veteran and his second in command is Sam Kendal (Scott Speedman), who has a young wife at home.  Marcus says Sam’s been recommended for a desk job so after this one final mission he can go home and spend time with his wife.  They pick up a couple of Navy Seals who were stranded on some mysterious mission and who, upon being picked up, don’t play nice with the sailors on board.  A bunch of not all that interesting personal sub drama passes by (some resent the female third in command, possibly because she’s female, possibly because she’s very young and the daughter of an Admiral played by Bruce Davison).

The sub gets an order to fire a nuclear strike at Pakistan.  Marcus and Sam get their keys out and are ready to turn them, before they look at each other, and say, wait a second, this order came from a strange secondary command channel (who doesn’t love complicated military jargon?), let’s get some more confirmation before you know, killing millions of people and possibly starting a nuclear holocaust.  Apparently this secondary command channel is only supposed to be used if DC is incapacitated, and Marcus checks their TV, and sees that well, the US isn’t blowed up.  He calls up some Washington people to double check his orders.  The Navy Seals and Robert Patrick (I can not figure out what his role is yet – he seems senior to most people but below the captain and his main role seems to be to lambaste every decision the captain makes) both tell him to turn the damn key, and when he questions the order, the Washington person tells him, well, he’s no longer in command, and Sam is the new captain.  Unfortunately, Sam is also like, what the fuck, and doesn’t fire, leading to a mysterious attack on their sub from another American ship.  As shocking as that is, once they collect their bearings and check the TV, they’re eve more surprised to see that the attack on them is being billed as an attack by Pakistan, giving the US license to launch a counter attack on what the sub people know is a phony pretense.

Realizing they can’t go back home without being attacked by more US planes, they surface at some island nearby, a tiny Caribbean nothing island apparently run by a random native who is the resident crimelord/man who runs island.  The naval officers take the island over, including a NATO station.  They challenge the power of the resident ruler and investigate but are given away when a lower ranking officer rats them out and is about to shoot Sam, before the man threatening gets shot instead by the third-in-charge woman.  Everyone runs off to the sub, and they’re all about to be killed by oncoming American bombers when Marcus threatens to send a nuke to DC if the bombers aren’t called off.  The bombers are called off, but the nuke lands anyway, albeit in the middle of the ocean, but well, everybody on the sub isn’t getting home anytime soon without being arrested forever.  Braugher records a video telling the US and the world that they’ve got a dozen or so more nukes, and if anyone fires on the island, those nukes are a firing.

Oh, and one of the Navy Seals gets wasted at a local island bar where he offhandedly mentions that he may be responsible for the whole sequence of events which took place.

There are a couple of scenes in DC as well.  A brillian female weapons contractor yells at the Naval admiral played by Bruce Davison for covering up some naval plot but he acts like it’s a surprise to him too.  Apparently she thinks it may have something to do with a crazy new weapons system she designed.  Scary government people have convened at Sam’s wife’s house as well, and when Sam tries to call home, he’s cut off after a minute.  Similar scary government people cut off the admiral when he’s talking to his daughter.

There’s plenty of questions asked – both trying to explain what happened, and where we go from here – why the nuclear strike, why the secondary command channel, why the cover up, etc.  I’m quite intrigued.  I can’t help myself – as much as I know that 90% of these types of shows end up deteriorating into some combination of nonsensical plot and miserable dialogue and lazy characterization, even the slightest hint of conspiracy is like catnip for me, for at least one episode, anyway.  As far as how Last Resort fares so far in these other non-plot aspects, dialogue, characters, etc, etc., well.  I think it’s better than Revolution’s first episode and superior to Terra Nova last year.   One of the many dangers of these types of shows is that the exciting plot can cover up for really cliched or boring characters, and while the characters weren’t exactly fleshed out a whole lot in this first plot heavy episode, well, Andre Braugher is good, and well, The Shield supposedly had good characters.  There are some potential cliches in the world-weary-but-wise commander and the plucky-young-female-officer-bent-on-earning-respect but I’ll give the show a little bit of leeway.  Instead the show chose to focus on drawing viewers by ratcheting up the stakes in the first hour; it’s hard to get much tenser than the possibility of all out nuclear war with an atomic bomb going off in the first episode; even 24 went well into season 2 before firing the initial nuclear blast.  It feels like cheating and it’s going to be very difficult to keep the subsequent episodes nearly as fast-paced, but as far as making me want to know more, it worked.

Will I watch it again?  Probably.  I knew I would be on the hook from the premise.  I’m a sucker for this kind of shit.  Unlike comedies, which often build from the premise, even what end up being mediocre dramas can have fine first episodes that make the show seem really exciting.  So I certainly will not be incredibly hopeful.  But I’ll watch.

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Fall 2012 Previews and Predictions: Fox

18 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)

Fox, loaded with terrible competition shows, which kill scripted tv, and with an hour less of programming than CBS, ABC and NBC, only features three new shows this fall, coming off a fairly successful season.  Let’s take a look.

The Mindy Project – 9/25

Mindy Kaling, The Office’s Kelly Kapur plays a gynecologist just over 30 who is only now realizing that her life is not a romantic comedy and trying to put it together.  If I created some sort of buzzometer based on internet chatter, this would go up near the top.  She’s basically a slightly more fleshed out, less extreme, and more competent version of Kelly, and co-stars include Groundhog’s Day Ned Ryerson, Stephen Tobolowsky, recurring character actor Chris Messina (The Newsroom, Six Feet Under, Ruby Sparks), True Blood anti-vampire crusader Anna Camp, and some British dude named Ed Weeks.  I’ve seen it, and while it’s not great off the bat, I have hope.

Verdict:  Renewal – I think Fox will be all behind The Mindy Project and looking to make it a success in any way possible, and pairing it with New Girl is a fantastic idea.  If it opens even okay, I think it’ll cruise towards renewal and hopefully develop into part of the new answer to the dying NBC Thursday night comedy block.

Ben and Kate – 9/25

Academy Award-winning writer Nat Faxon takes on the titular role as Ben, a mid-30s happy screw up who moves back home to live with his mores responsible and serious sister Kate, and help watch over Kate’s young daughter.  The premise does not sound particularly good, and the previews didn’t look great, but I’ve seen it, and it’s definitely promising.

Verdict: Renewal – I would never have given it this review if I hadn’t watched it already, and I honestly shouldn’t be giving it this review now, since it’s more of a vote based on my personal thoughts than on it’s objectively likelihood which always leads one to trouble (see:  picking 2 Broke Girls to fail quickly).  That said, it looks pretty good, and it’s on what could shape up to be a nice little Fox tuesday comedy block, so maybe if it gets caught up in that with New Girl and Mindy Project it’ll get just enough love.

The Mob Doctor – 9/17

My Boys’ own Jordana Spiro is a doctor with old famiy mob connections.  Somehow or other she gets pulled into managing some combination of regular doctoring and doctoring for the mob, and well, I’m not really sure.  I guess it was only a matter of time before we figured out a way to merge doctor show and gangster show.  I’m glad we did in theory, but probably not in practice.  It also co-stars fantastic that guy William Forsythe (He already has gangster experience as Manny Horvitz on Boardwalk Empire), former Dillon High QB Zach Gilford, and my all-time favorite TV recurring character actor Zeljko Ivanek.

Verdict:  13-  On my confidence meter, I think I’d be put this one up as fairly likely to be cancelled.  Looks bad, not supposed to be good, not a whole lot of advertising, and I’m just not feeling it, in my arbitrary “feel” method of prediction.

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Fall 2012 Review: The Mindy Project

17 Sep

The Mindy Project had the blogs and entertainment sites a buzzing, probably moreso than any other comedy this season.  Mindy Kaling who was best known for both acting, as Kelly Kapur, and writing for The Office for many seasons, has become a star on the grow at least since she published her memoir, “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me ?(And Other Concerns)” last year, if not earlier.  In the show, Mindy plays a gynecologist, honoring her mom who was an actual gynecology.  Let’s take a look at the first episode.

In one of my least favorite plot devices, we see a craaazy point in time where Mindy is now and then are shown, via flashback, the events that preceded.  Mindy’s in her pretty dress sitting down cuffed after being arrested by the police for a drunk and disorderly.  HOW DID SHE GET THERE!  I MUST KNOW.

Okay, that’s a bit much.  Anyway, it turns out that Mindy, and this won’t be a surprise for anyone who has read anything about or by Mindy Kaling, grew up obsessed with romantic comedies and obessed with the idea that her life would be one.  We see quick flashbacks of her obsession through high school and college and all the way up to being a doctor, when all of a sudden she has the perfect meet cute situation.  She runs into her perfect guy on an elevator, and all of a sudden, the elevator malfunctions, after the guy accidentally dropped his papers and she helped pick them up.  (Pause: Bill Hader is her dream guy?  Seriously?  Was Will Forte not available?)  They’re dating, and everything’s going well until he dumps her for someone else, and flash forward she’s at the wedding, getting wasted and giving a vindictive speech, and then running away, and into a pool where she has a conversation with a doll about how life is not a rom com and she needs to shape up.  She drunkenly bikes away and then gets arrested.

Boom, Mindy’s gone through a traumatic experience and it’s time to change her life.  She’s going to settle down, drink less, and earn more.  She meets with best friend Gwen (played by Anna Camp, Reverend Newlin’s wife in True Blood and some recurring character in The Good Wife).  Gwen, who is married with a young daughter, sets her up with a nice guy, which turns out to be Ed Helms, and the date is going more or less just fine until she’s interrupted when she has to attend to the birth of a poor mother she took on out of sympathy.  Frustrated by the way the date ended, Kaling wavers on her resolution and decides to have meaningless sex with vapid Brit doctor Jeremy.  In terms of other characters, we also have arrogant but honest doctor Danny (classic that guy Chris Messina, who recurred on The Newsroom and the last season of Six Feet Under) who will be a constant thorn in Mindy’s side and possibly a hate-turns-to-love interest?  We also have two clerical assistants for Mindy, whose names I don’t remember, one of whom seems like they’re supposed to be Erin from The Office type stupid, and also amazing that guy Stephen Tobolowsky as Mindy’s boss.

So, on the whole I’d say the project isn’t a complete success so far, but there are elements that work or will work with some fine tuning.  Honestly, this was my most eagerly anticipated new comedy and I was a little bit disappointed, relative to expectations.  It had a number of funny parts but definitely didn’t all come together (few comedies do in the first episode; for every Community with a hilarious debut, there’s a 30 Rock and a Parks and Recreation that take a few episodes to gel).  Mindy Kaling may still be finding herself.  Her character unsurprisngly shared some aspects with Kelly from The Office – over-talkative and overdramatic, but she’ll have to develop fuller as the star of the show rather than a side character.

Will I watch it again?  Yeah, I will.  I like Kaling overall, and I like Chris Messina, and though I actually thought Ben and Kate was better, I think there’s enough combination of potential and pedigree here.  I think I’d try it again without having the preconception of this being a good show doing to the people involved, but it’s hard to say for sure.

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Fall 2012 Review: Ben and Kate

16 Sep

I didn’t really have any thoughts  one way or the other about Ben and Kate originally except excitement at seeing Nat Faxon, who plays Ben as is best known by me as one episode Party Down character Garland Greenbush (he’s the annual all around winner at the Party Down company picnic; Casey calls him an “unemployed wizard”) and Academy Award winner for co-writing The Descendants.  All I knew was that it was about brother and sister, and, well you can tell from the picture, Faxon plays kind of an idiot.  It’s also kind of rare to see a successful comedy based around siblings, and it’s an obvious arrangement that honestly I’m really surprised isn’t used more often.

Every since they were little, Ben, the older brother, was sort of a happy-go-lucky dingbat who makes other people laugh but has no sense of responsibility whatsoever while younger sister Kate got pregnant young (a la Goldie from The New Normal, regular blog readers note) and has had a heightened sense of responsibility since she was younger, due to I’m sure many things, but certainly largely due to having a kid.  Ben blows in and out of town on a whim, stopping by Kate’s for a day or a weekend and then leaving again to his home apparently in Sacramento.

Ben blows into town once again in the current day.  He’s here this time because the only woman he ever loved is apparently getting married, and he’s planning to crash the wedding with his one friend, Tommy.

Kate, meanwhile has had trouble with men ever since the birth of her daughter, and Ben is always there to make a bad situation worse.  This time, she’s dating George (a guy she really really likes, people) and Ben is already making things awkward when he barges in when they’re about to make out on the couch.

On the way to crash the wedding with Kate’s daughter (Ben did not approve of the babysitter, so decided to take the daughter along with him), Kate accidentally dials Ben on her phone, and Ben overhears George talking to another woman on his phone, leading him to switch plans mid-gear, prevent Kate from sleeping with the sleazebag George, and miss crashing the wedding in the process.  They all go to the wedding together, where Ben gives a horrendous rendition of the speech he wrote on his hand but can’t read to his great love, only to find out that she was married an hour ago.

Ben, down on life, but getting over it, tells Kate, maybe he’ll stick around this time and help her raise her kid, while she gets a chance to get her life more together (after all, he’s only moving from Sacramento – Sacramento burn);  while he’s admittedly a completely irresponsible dingbat, he knows how to laugh and enjoy himself, something she could use.  Our happy family then, including Ben, Kate, the daughter, Tommy, and Kate’s fellow bartender friend BJ all travel back from the wedding festivities together.

A lot of the charm of the show was purely the humor of Faxon (again, I admit I’m biased from his fantastic Party Down cameo, again, as what Casey calls a “wizard of making woman uncomfortable”).  There’s a scene where he’s making a U-turn in Kate’s huge car and it could easily be mundane and pointless but instead is possibly the funniest scene in the show.  There’s another couple of silly scenes of him making fun of the weakness of George’s high five which made me laugh.  He carefully walked the line between hilarious and lovable and total idiot (the Andy Dwyer line?).  Lucy Punch, the British actress who played BJ, had a couple of funny lines at the bar trying to tell Kate how to seduce a man, and strangely reminding me of Ricky Gervais – I think all British comedy is just the same.

Will I watch it again?  Yeah I think I’m going to.  I’m not 100% sold yet, but I laughed enough and I like Faxon enough to bring me back for at the least another episode.

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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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