Tag Archives: ABC

Fall 2012 Review: 666 Park Avenue

22 Oct

666 Park Avenue is a supernatural soapy horror, a super specific genre which happens to mean that the writers have narrow waters to navigate regarding the show’s tone.  If it’s too serious, it’ll be impossible to swallow the level of over the top silliness involved in an evil apartment building, while if it’s too jokey, it loses the scary horror element altogether.  Scary horror and fun but kind of silly horror can be combined (note: Shaun of the Dead, though that’s with satire instead of soap), but it’s a delicate balance.  I definitely think 666 sees Revenge as a model, following the formula of serious plot and soapy personal relations meant to be both serious and fun, but featuring a supernatural theme instead of a rich powerful family conspiracy.  It’s kind of fitting that on the other end of the spectrum from Revenge is ABC’s third Sunday night drama, the pretty bad (although quite successful) Once Upon a Time as a model of what not to do, which takes on fables, but far too over the top and silly, rather than serious, without being either fun or funny enough to make that trade off worthwhile.

Of course, the building isn’t actually 666 Park Avenue; that’d be a little too on the nose.   It’s actually 999 Park Avenue, but looks like 666 in the shadows.   It’s a large, old, building and our main characters Jane and Henry are wannabe yuppies, a young couple with lots of ambition and education but low on funds.  Their prayers are answered in the form of a building manager position at the building, which gets them a free room far above what they could normally afford.

Terry O’Quinn plays building owner/SATAN/SATAN associate Kevin Durand, resembling more later season Locke, when he was actually the Man in Black, then the regular Locke (yeah, I didn’t understand the last couple seasons of Lost either).  Vanessa Williams portrays his wife Olivia.  They’re somehow seeking to corrupt Henry and Jane (I wonder if having them be unmarried rather than married was a nod to the horror trope of disapproving of pre-marital sex?), while Henry and Jane are bowled over by their generosity before they start noticing slightly odd occurrences around the building.

Aside from the main plot of the two building managers getting settled in their new home, the episode plays out almost like a series of Goosebumps stories, which basically all have the same classic horror message:  Be Careful What You Wish For (I can’t find a clip for the life of me, but this always makes me think of the Simpsons Monkey’s Paw episode where Homer wishes for a turkey sandwich, “The turkey’s a little dry…the turkey’s a little dry!  oh, foe and cursed thing, what demon from the depths of hell created thee!”).  The first of two examples we see in the premiere is in the opening scene.  As a demonstration of both Durand’s power and his shady intent, a violinist who apparently had no talent and made a deal for ten years of greatness, is sucked away into the building after his time runs out, although he begs Durand for more.  Second, a man who agreed to kill on Durand’s command to bring his dead wife back to life is, well, sucked into a wall when he doesn’t.  Here’s a tip from someone admittedly not qualified to practice law:  Don’t sign contracts that oblige you to you know, die in ten years, or kill people, or sell your soul to any number of devils, etc.  About every five minutes out of Durand’s mouth comes some attempted witty ominous crack about how all people have needs and wants and must be willing to do what it takes to get them, or some such.

Note:  I do have a lot of doubt about the enforceability of these contracts in a court of law, though I guess that’s immaterial to Durand.

I’m not sure how many of the characters are regulars and how many episode of the week residents there will be, but besides O’Quinn and his wife, and the main two characters, there’s a young couple where the husband is a playwright who keeps staring at some woman in the window, and a young girl who apparently steals things and then maybe sees people’s futures in the items, or something. Going in, with the huge building filled with mostly rich people, compared to the cash poor main characters, I thought there might be an opportunity for some wonderfully heavy handed satire, They Live-style, but sadly, that element seems to be absent.

Will I watch it again?  Probably not.  Not because it was so bad as much as because it’s at least fifth in the picking order amongst new shows.  After one episode, I think it can be a good show but is unlikely to be a great show, and while I think watching the next episodes could possibly be enjoyable, it doesn’t quite cross the necessary threshold at this point.

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Fall 2012 Review: Nashville

16 Oct

I always love to hear of a pilot that doesn’t immediately sound like any other program I can think of.  Sure, when you get down to the nuts and bolts, almost every show incorporates elements from other shows, and that’s natural.  It’s not the most important factor into whether a show is actually good, but it is amongst the most important factors in determining whether a new show sounds interesting before you actually watch.  Nashville, based around the country music world in the titular city, seems very likely to be both new and good, based on the pilot, a rare and welcome combination.

Nashville has a fairly decent amount of moving parts for a show that’s not a complicated conspiracy show like Last Resort or Revolution.  Connie Britton (Friday Night Lights’ Tami Taylor) plays aging country star Rayna James, who finds out to her dismay that she doesn’t have as much juice as she once did, and her record and upcoming tour aren’t selling..  Because of this, her label wants her to open for hot young country thing Juliette Barnes (Heroes’ Hayden Panettierre), who is after James’ bandleader, for personal and professional reasons, as well as her fame.  Neither of the woman like one another; James sees Barnes as a flash in the pan making adolescent garbage, while Barnes sees James as an aging fossil whose time has come.

As if this music angle wasn’t enough, it turns out that James’ father Lamar Wyatt (Powers Boothe) is one of the most powerful men in Nashville.  The two of them don’t get along great, but they communicate through James’ sister, who is being groomed to take over the family business when their father retires.  Lamar wants James’ husband, Teddy, frustrated with not being the breadwinner in his family for years, to run for mayor against James’ friend, Coleman Carlisle (played by The Wire’s Bunny Colvin himself, Robert Wisdom).  James then has to deal with conflicting loyalties personally and professionally, which deal with her career, the future of country music, and the future of the city of Nashville.

I’m not sure exactly who else the other main characters are going to be, and what kind of role they will be play, but there’s a legendary old songwriter who is friends with James, James’s bandleader’s niece, who is a poet and possibly an up and coming songwriter, the niece’s boyfriend, a bad boy type, and some other young songwriter, all of which I didn’t get a great feel for initially due to the logical focus on James and Barnes in the first episode.

James and Barnes were plenty compelling on their own even after just forty minutes.  While ostensibly James is the hero and Barnes the villain, both characters already seem like they should be far more multifaceted than that.  James exhibits occasional diva-like behavior, and though understandably upset with her lack of popularity, is less than graceful when coming to terms with the reality of her difficult situation.  Barnes is mostly an ambitious man-hungry prima donna who has trouble being nice even for a few minutes, but her possible character building set up involves a drug addict mother constantly calling her for money.  I think there’s lots of possibilities for complex relationships between characters which are neither perfect nor evil, and these are good things.

Will I watch it again?  Yes.  From pilot alone, I think it’s the best hour long I’ve seen this season, with Last Resort the only other in contention.  I was excited before I saw it, and I’m even more excited afterwards.  We could have the makings of a really strong show.  This show received the greatest possible endorsement when, after finishing the first episode, I realized I wished I had a second to throw on right away.

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Fall 2012 Review: The Neighbors

9 Oct

The Neighbors is about a classic sitcom family (you know the type – largely functional and loving but having about one major disagreement per episode) which moves to a suburban development that turns out to be filled with friendly but super weird aliens.  It’s important to note first, that it’s not a very good show, but second that it’s uniquely unlike any other bad show that has debuted in the past few years.  It’s a show out of it’s decade; it feels much more like something from the ‘90s or ‘80s, and I don’t mean because of a laugh track or a multi-camera format, both of which it doesn’t have.  Rather, it’s just incredibly silly and wacky, like several old alien comedies, and relies on a lot of sight gags.

Most bad sitcoms largely consist of attempts to mix and match a combination of the classic multi-camera family/workplace sitcoms from the ‘90s and ‘80s (The Cosby Show), the edge, bawdiness and pop culture references of hipper successful comedies (The Office), and the youngish-friends-hanging-out boom that started from Friends (Friends).

The Neighbors doesn’t really take much from any of these, except from the classic family sitcom, with the family dynamics (men want to be men, unruly petulant teenager, woman are tired of not being listened to and respected).  It’s not edgy.  It’s not absurdist.  It’s silly.  It’s men are like men, alien or human, while woman are like woman, alien or human.  There’s a crazy amount of physical comedy and sight gags just based on the aliens being weird and not human like.  It’s an heir to the long but largely dormant tradition of silly aliens-in-suburbia comedy, including 3rd Rock from the Sun, Coneheads, Mork and Mindy, Alf.

They’ve got lots of kooky alien quirks.  Basically, a segment of an alien civilization is trapped on earth and all collectively moved into a New Jersey housing development.  The primary alien family has humorously named themselves after American sports stars (Larry Bird, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Reggie Jackson, Dick Butkus), and speak in all sorts of different accents.  They actually look like slimy green creatures, which they turn into when they clap their hands a certain way.  They travel around in weird colored clothing on golf carts, and like most classic humorous aliens, try to imitate humans, without entirely getting it right – they all bring the new family pies to welcome them in, leaving dozens of pies.  They read instead of eating, and have sex by staring at each other and raising their hands up.  They throw dishes out the window instead of cleaning them.  Aliens are super weird, guys.

It’s not subversive.   It’s not even relevant.  There are different ways to take on aliens humorously.  Darker absurbism and biting social commentary seem like they would be obvious possibilities, but silly is tried and true.  The humor is old-timey (or timeless, if you want to take that view) – the main plot of the first episode involves the human husband being jealous that the alien husband orders around his wife, while the human wife encourages the alien wife to stand up for herself.

Note:  Though I’ve barely talked about the cast here, the human father is Zeljko Ivanek honoree Lenny Venito.

Will I watch it again?  Nah, but I’m glad I did once; it’s not a success or good but it’s a breath of different air, which, well, it’s the kind of show that’s I’ll explain the pilot to someone humorously in a couple of years, whereas there will never be any reason to remember Partners.

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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: 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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Spring 2012 Review: Missing

27 Apr

Ashley Judd's son may or may not be missing

The pilot opens with main character Becca Winstone (Ashley Judd) finishing her run while her husband and young son are shown in Europe about to come home.  We know approximately when this is because, of all things, the kid has a Zinedine Zidane signed soccer ball, and calls Zidane the greatest player in the world, which puts us within a couple of years before or after 2000.  Becca speaks to her husband, and then son, on the phone, and as the husband starts the car to go to the airport, boom, explosion, he dies, and the son was just lucky to not have been in the car at the time.  Oh, and the husband’s played by Sean Bean.  Pretty cool.

We flash forward to the present day, 10 years later.  We know it’s the future because Becca’s hair is short; we’ll know we’re back in the past when her hair is long, and her son is 8 instead of 18.  Becca works at a flower shop and her son, after beating her for the first time ever on their daily run, lets his mom know that he got into an architecture program in Rome.  His mom clearly doesn’t want him to go, but relents, and says goodbye at the airport.  The son shows Becca a special code that will be his way of texting that he loves her; he doesn’t want to have to say “I love you, mom” in front of his friends (how embarrassing; they probably don’t love their moms).  This code, whose origins are explained in detail, will clearly never come back again in any way (sarcasm).

The son (what is his name?  Michael! We’ll use that from now on) calls his mom and texts and sends her pictures of his view.  Suddenly, however, he stops calling and texting, and gradually his mom becomes worried.  Time passes with no contact.  We know he’s getting missing-er because we see the action-packed process of Becca checking her phone and seeing “No New Messages” several times.  Eventually, she gets a call from her son’s school, saying he’s been kicked out because he missed three lectures (just three and kicked out?  rough).

“Something’s happened to my son,” Becca says alarmed.  Of course, what she’s supposed to say is “HE”S GONE MISSING”  We have a title to repeat here.

She’s soon on a plane to Italy to figure out what the fuck happened to Michael.  She checks out his apartment.  While she’s investigating,  she sees a gunman, and it turns out she has SUER NINJA FIGHTING SKILLS.  She kills the gunman, finding no information in the process, and then the hunt his on.  She calls an old Italian friend, apparently an old lover, to help and it turns out SHE WAS IN THE CIA.  Finally, by the way, we get a “My Son is Missing” –  could she have wasted the title with any less drama?  She and her Italian helper valiantly hunt for Michael’s kidnapper while the CIA hunts for her, because she’s been causing mayhem all over Rome.

Eventually, she finds some intelligence, and is on her way following a lead to France when she’s picked up by the CIA.   The agent with whom she speaks is sympathetic to her situation and lets her go for some reason I don’t understand even though he’s supposed to not let her go, though I don’t understand whether they’d have that power either.  She makes a mess in Paris, finding a new lead while the CIA are one step behind with the instructions to seriously not let her go when they grab her this time.  Oh, and then she gets randomly shot in the last minute on a bridge inParis.  I guess she’s dead.  End of series.  Sigh.

I was hoping for more nuanced multiple meanings of missing.  Like, maybe her sense of morality is also missing.  But not so much.  Serioulsy though, Missing is an action show.  I mean, there’s a story, and obviously the story is important, and the quality of the story could be a difference between whether it’s worth following or not.  But at it’s heart it’s an action show, and there really is a dearth of action TV series (there will be again once Missing is cancelled).  I’m not defending Missing here, but there should be a place for action on TV, and you could do worse.  You could do better.  But you could do worse.

I’m not particularly intrigued by the story.  I don’t care about the characters, certainly not after one episode, and it doesn’t seem like the premise lends itself to lasting multiple seasons (which the show won’t, but let’s pretend there was a chance it could be successful).  I’m trying to remember what grabbed me so quickly when I started watching the last action show I really cared about, 24, and I don’t exactly remember, but I don’t think this has it.  It’s good enough for my dad though, who is a big fan, and I can’t begrudge him that.  I wouldn’t turn away from watching an episode if it was on, though I could probably also have the new plot details explained to me in about a minute, but that’s not really the point.

Will I watch it again?

I’ve seen Taken, and you, sir, are no Taken.  That’s high standards of course.  If Missing was a 100 minute movie on TNT on a Saturday at 3:30, yeah, I’d probably stick around for the end.  A television series requires greater investment though, which I’m not really willing to give.

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Spring 2012 Review: GCB

26 Apr

One of the good christian bitches on the right

 

GCB begins with our protagonist, Amanda Vaughn, finding out that her husband, who has embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from investors (this embezzlement trope has to have been in at least a dozen shows over the last couple of years), and attempted to run off with his mistress, only to die in a car crash after veering off road when his mistress gave him a blowjob while he was driving.  Since the government took everything that remained, Vaughn now has nothing except the clothes on her back and her two kids, and decides to move the back to Dallas, where she grew up, and back with her overbearing zealous extremely Southern mother (Annie Potts), for a fresh start.

While she moves back and tries to figure out what to do with her life, we learn, though she’s humble and well meaning now, she was a mean girl queen bee in high school and tortured several of her classmates.  Those classmates are now well off and fashionable and upon seeing Amanda come back into town, they conspire to have their very southernly hospitable revenge.  The pack is led by Carlene Cockburn (Kristen Chenowith), once fat, and the biggest target of high school Amanda.  She’s got her lacky, formerly attractive but now fat, Sharon, and another crafty cohort in Cricket.  The fourth former Amanda enemy hanging around is Heather Cruz, unique in that she is the only member of the pack who seems to realize Amanda has changed and legitimately befriend her.  Making the women more angry is the fact that the husbands and men in their circle all seem to be attracted to Amanda, particularly Sharon’s husband; Cricket’s husband seems to have feelings for her as well, until we find out he’s in the closet, and it’s just actual friendship.

Amanda has trouble finding work, partly due to Carlene and co., who use their power in the community to ensure no one will hire her.  She eventually finds a job as a waitress at a Hooters-like establishment, sticking more of a middle finger at the Dallas high society her mom and former high school classmates now inhabit. She finds out that while she was made fun of by Carlene for her new job, Carlene’s company actually owns the restaurant in which she works, and decides to embarrass Carlene in front of everyone at church, which appears to be the ultimate southern embarrassment.  It’s on, ladies, like Donkey Kong.

The idea, if GCB is successful, is clearly to replace ABC Sunday night property Desperate Housewives, which is departing after this season.  GCB attempts to have the same trashy/fun/soapy/satirical/doesn’t-take-itself-too-seriously tone that Desperate Housewives rode to 8 occasionally repetitive but for the most part successful seasons.  Just like Desperate Housewives, GCB is all about the polite society on the surface, sex and filth underneath, and you know, catfights.  It’s better than I thought it would be, but I’m not sure whether or not it will have legs.  Nothing about it make it incredibly compelling viewing, and does anyone else find Kristin Chenoweth grating after a while (I think it’s the voice)?  It’s perfectly harmless, and if done at its best it could be the kind of enjoyable type drama which doesn’t make you think too much.  I just don’t think it’s likely to get there.

Will I watch it again?  Probably not.  It really is not bad, but I currently have Revenge satisfying my trashy/soap, (albeit a lot lot more serious) show quota.  There’s just nothing about it to help it stand out above anything else.

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Spring 2012 Review: Don’t Trust the B in Apartment 23

19 Apr

Non-B and B

Perennial rom-com bitchy best friend Krysten Ritter plays the title bitch (assuming I’m correctly positing that “B” stands for “bitch”).  Ritter is also known for her recurring TV roles on Veronica Mars, Breaking Bad, as Jesse’s one-time girlfriend Jane, and her unforgettable role as Brad Garrett’s daughter on ‘Til Death.

One note before I get to the meat of the episode:  The episode uses the single most overused television episode storytelling gimmick, which is showing the end of the episode, chronologically, at the beginning, and then having the rest of the episode show us how we got there.  Just quickly thinking, there are enough examples that I should save this for an entire entry, but suffice it to say, that while I do think the gimmick can be used in a really interesting way, it’s usually merely used as a lazy storytelling device to develop cheap suspense or interest.  Moving on.

In this particular beginning, the roommate of the B in Apartment 23 opens the show by telling us that she found her roommate, said B, hooking up with her fiancé on her birthday cake, and that that was the best thing to ever to happen to her (whaaaaat?  but these are all horrible things – how could they be good?).  This woman, June, our narrator, is a nice, mild-mannered midwesterner come to big NYC with a life plan:  She’s got a job for some big corporation, which is providing her with housing, and soon her scientist fiancé will join her, and they’ll get married and make babies.  Only, when she gets to work, it turns out the Feds have raided the place, and well, work doesn’t exist anymore.  She’s thus, in one shot, out a job and an apartment.  After a montage of following roommate wanted ads to weird apartments and people, she finds a seemingly nice roommate in Ritter’s Chloe, who shows her around, seems normal and asks for a couple of months rent.  Chloe then confides her plan to act crazy/irritating enough to drive her new roomie out, while keeping her already paid rent money, to her best friend James Van Der Beek, playing a self-obsessed Entourage cameo-esque version of himself.

June fights back, however, when Chloe tries to screw her, and Chloe starts to actually, well, not hate her.  June’s fiance shows up, and Chloe learns that he’s been cheating on June, but still naive June refuses to believe it.  Thus, Chloe sees as her only option showing June in person that her boyfriend is a cheat by having June walk on herself with June’s boyfriend.  June walks in, is outraged, but then the truth comes out, and although she’s depressed, she thanks Chloe, and thinks maybe, well, she does have a friend in big NYC after all.

Wacky side character alert:  It’s a fairly wacky show, so we have a couple.  First, neighbor Eli, who creepily spies on the girls but also offers friendly advice from time to time.  Next, we have Robin, another creepy neighbor, this time a female who is obsessed with Chloe.  Third, less wacky than the other two, we have Mark, June’s old boss briefly at her corporate job, and her new boss at the coffee shop at which she now works.

I didn’t laugh a whole lot.  I like the idea, and I think Krysten Ritter is well cast in the role, and I could see where the show was going with some of the jokes and gags.  But it wasn’t really funny.  ABC comedies seem to have developed a reputation for mediocre first couple of episodes, with the potential to develop into something still inconsistent, yet, significantly better.  Suburgatory and Happy Endings are two shows that have followed this model, and Don’t Trust The B seems like it could certainly fall in here.  It’s an okay show, with the potential to be better, and with comedies it takes at least a few episodes to see if a show can deliver on that potential.  Very few comedies are hilarious or fantastic right out of the rate, so while not being funny certainly isn’t a compliment, it’s not a definitive judgment.

Will I watch it again?  Yes, I think I’m going to.  It’s certainly easier to watch half hour comedies than hour long dramas, and while it’s certainly not great right now, I’ll see if the writers can find their footing with some good building blocks to work with.

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Spring 2012 Review: Scandal

18 Apr

Sometimes when describing shows like The Wire, or maybe now a show like Girls, critics, or myself, may describe them as “real” or “not TV,” placing them in juxtaposition with typical television.  Rarely is something described as extremely TV, though I suppose it’s partly because TV is the default setting for a TV show.  Scandal, for better or worse, is extremely TV.

While I’d argue, if I had to make a general rule, “not TV” is better than “TV”, if only because it’s more interesting because TV has been done a thousand more times, TV is by no means necessarily bad.  TV has positive attributes, and within TV, there’s a wide range of quality.  That said, because of the repetition, it’s a lot harder to stand out in “TV” than in “not TV.”   Scandal’s not bad.  But maybe it’s just that watching so much really good TV makes it hard for me to take something so TV seriously without some humor or irony, intentional or unintentional.  I think on some level, NCISs and CSIs, certainly CSI:Miami, at least are semi-self aware of their nature and all the easy ways to make fun of their techno speak and one liners, at least implicitly.  Maybe not, but, although I don’t watch those shows very often, I can enjoy the tropes and viewer humor on a level if I do.  Scandal is just so over the top and fully serious it’s making it difficult.  I usually develop an appreciation for over the top tropes, such as in rom coms, but it’s just not happening here.

Kerry Washington plays Olivia Pope, former White House employee, and current head of Olivia Pope and Associates.  What does Olivia Pope and Associates do, you ask?  Well, they’re lawyers, but they don’t practice law.  They SOLVE PROBLEMS.  They FIX CRISES.  Insert similar euphemism here.  Pope leads a team of dedicated associates who follow her lead and believe in her with all their hearts; they don’t always agree, but they trust her decision making.  Among her team are Stephen (played by Henry Ian Cusick – best know as Desmond from Lost), who requires a pep talk from Olivia convincing him to get engaged, Abby, Harrison, and Huck, the resident techie.  Introduced in the first scene is new hire Quinn, who goes to a bar thinking she’s been set up on a blind date, only to find out upon talking to Harrison that she’s been hired by Pope.  At Pope & Associates, they’re “gladiators in suits.”

Olivia Pope is a living legend.  She’s the best and whatever it is she does, the force for ULTIMATE GOOD and Quinn is literally (maybe not literally) foaming at the mouth to start working for her.  After she’s hired, Quinn and Harrison go back to the office, where the Quinn, the new girl, who only knows of the legend of Olivia Pope, learns how her new firm really works. She’s tutored by Harrison, who gives her constant guidance about Olivia, such as “Never say I don’t know.  Olivia doesn’t believe in I don’t know.”  Well, then.  That solves that.

The firm’s primary case in this episode (they’re not lawyers though, they remind us – so maybe case isn’t the right word) is the defense (but not legal defense) of a Iraq (might have been Afghanistan – don’t quote me) war hero who is now a big time conservative republican speaker, who found his fiancée dead, and knows he’ll be accused of the murder.  The team goes on an interview montage to see whether they should take the non-legal case and although three of the four votes go against taking it, like the old Abraham Lincoln story (I can’t find a good link in two minutes – but google “the ayes have it Lincoln”), Pope’s vote for it takes the day.  Her gut tells her the marine didn’t do it, and her gut is ALWAYS RIGHT.  Remember that!

Olivia is so badass! Within the first fifteen minutes of the show, she tells a presidential aide, that the PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES had damn well better make time for her if he wants her services.  He does, though, and he wants her to shut down a woman who claims that she slept with the Prez.  She worked for the president before, and she trusts her gut, so she’ll do it, but we get a little Kerry Washington twinge indicating HER GUT MAY REALLY BE BE TELLING HER HE’S LYING.

Olivia fixes cases, of course, as we’ve seen.  But she doesn’t just fix cases.  Oliva fixes PEOPLE.  So says Huck (Guillermo Diaz from Half Baked; apparently she fixes careers as well (way harsh; Diaz has had a perfectly respectable career, including recently the bizarre “I Wanna Go” Britney Spears video)).  Of course, the only one Olivia can’t fix is herself.  She doesn’t date she tells us, but that’s kind of a lie.  We’ll get to this in the first episode spoiler section upcoming.

Just when it seems like every shred of evidence is against their GOP marine, it turns out a a camera captured him and his (FIRST EPISODE SPOILER) GAY LOVER on tape.  At first, he’d rather go down with the ship than admit his homosexuality; he’s supposed to be a hero after all.  However, Pope uses LIFE EXPERIENCE to convince him to let the tape exonerate him from spending at least 20 years in jail.  “She’s not one of the good guys.  She’s the best guy.”  is the last line of wisdom mentor Harrison tells the rookie Quinn.  Olivia is THE BEST GUY.

I’m sorry.  I don’t know where along my years of growing up I lost an ability to take anything seriously, but I certainly can’t take this seriously.  I’m probably not entirely supposed to, and honestly, if you ask me what the real difference is between this and Leverage or any of any number of other shows, I don’t really have a good reason.  Maybe I’m just not watching it in the right mood.

First episode spoiler #2:  SHE HAD AN AFFAIR IN THE PRESIDENT!  THIS IS IN THE FIRST EPISODE.  That’s it.  I’ve changed my mind.  If you’re going to go in, at least go all the fuck in.  You do your thing, Olivia Pope.  You can FIX everyone and everything but you can’t fix yourself.  I take back everything I said earlier in this review.  This show is wonderful.  THE PRESIDENT LIED TO HER AND NOW SHE IS OUT TO GET THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.  MORE PLEASE.

Will I watch it again?  Yeah, it’s probably not going to happen.  Though, writing this was fun.  Maybe I’ll recap the show.  Also, Desmond’s in it.  That might be enough.

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Spring 2012 Review: Work It

9 Feb

It’s long past due that I reviewed this show that I called the Lebron James of shows-picked-to-be-cancelled (don’t think too hard about thea analogy) which was as predicted added to the great list of shows cancelled after a mere two episodes.  Still, late is usually better than never, and if I didn’t watch every new broadcast show eventually I wouldn’t be staying true to myself so here it is.  The show, for those who don’t know, is in a sentence, about two unemployed best friends who discover that women can get jobs in the terrible economy but men can’t, and thus dress up as women to get said jobs.

Let’s start out by saying that this show is cringe-worthy bad, hard to watch bad, and not hard to watch in a British comedy sense, where it’s like a traffic accident that you want to look away but you always want to watch, more that you just don’t want to watch. I had to watch the show in approximately 2 to 3 minute segments just to get through it at all.  Maybe a half a dozen comedies a year make you truly feel like you’re losing brain cells watching them (not that anyone actually knows what that would feel like, but let’s let that pass) and this is the worst of them all.  This is dare I say, more insulting than 2 Broke Girls, and I don’t pass that judgment lightly.

With the assumption accepted that the show is mind-bogglingly awful, let’s move on with some specific comments.  First, the show takes place in St. Louis.  What a sad fate for a  proud city.  Not that I have any strong feelings about the city one way or another, but it seems like the Gateway to the West deserves if not one great series, one half-way decent one.  The bestSt. Louiscurrently has is either AfterMASH or The John Larroqette Show. It deserves better than Work It.  (New great idea: Power Rankings of shows by city, or cities by show – look for it soon).

The main character I recognized from his stint playing Robin’s co-anchor and serious boyfriend in an arc of How I Met Your Mother.  In addition, Rebecca Mader, who played Charlotte in Lost, plays the bitchy office top dog, who is poised for sales competition with the main character.

The show is simply jam-packed with insulting shows about seriously out-moded gender stereotypes, and without a hint of winking self-awareness under which the creators could at least cover themselves, claiming everything is done in an ironic fashion.  It reminds me of the insulting stereotypes rife in Tim Allen’s Last Man Standing, but worse.  It takes until just two and a half minutes into the episode for the jokes about women to begin, as the worst character in a show of terrible characters, third friend Brian talks about a world in which women will take over, leaving only some men women will take as sex slaves, but not the good kind of sex – kissing and cuddling, and can you believe it, listening!  Boy, do women love to make men listen to them, an extremely emasculating pursuit.

In the theme sequence, the creators have their names appear in big letters.  I hope, for their sakes, that they’re pseudonyms, because otherwise it’s a big sign saying “don’t hire me ever again!”  Lucky for them few enough people were watching to ever remember their names.

In order to live in Work It’s world, we have to accept that people could unquestionably accept both of these men terribly dressed in far lower than Mrs. Doubtfire quality drag as women.  There’s so many insulting jokes about women that it would be impossible to list them all.

The single best part of the show may have been that in the closing seconds my file includes a promo for “Gary Busey and Ted Haggert: The Premier of Celebrity Wife Swap” which I still don’t believe is real.

Will I watch it again?  Well, obviously I don’t have a choice, since it will not air more than two episodes.  The answer would obviously be no anyway, but I still think it bears wondering how this ever got on the air.  On ABC, too, which while having far from a perfect record on sitcoms, has largely focused on laugh-track free slightly smarter sitcoms of late like Modern Family and Happy Endings.  I hope someone is laughing out there who created this show as a giant joke just to see if could ever get on the air.  At least one person would laugh then.

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