Tag Archives: Fox

Spring 2013 Review: The Following

6 Mar

The Following

The Following is at its heart a cat and mouse game between a crazy sociopathic serial killer named Joe Carroll (played by James Purefoy) and his troubled FBI nemesis Agent Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon).  Carroll was a charismatic literature professor obsessed with Poe and with killing college-aged women, knocking off over a dozen, before Hardy, who was obsessed with the case (think of Hardy as Jessica Chastain to Carroll’s Osama bin Laden in Zero Dark Thirty), managed to crack it, catching Carroll red-handed while saving his last intended victim.

Since Carroll was caught, ten years ago, he’s been in jail, and is sentenced to die soon.  He breaks out of prison at the beginning of The Following’s premiere, with the help of a prison guard he’s seduced into learning to become a serial killer himself.  Carroll then makes a beeline to take care of the only victim he didn’t manage to finish off, who Hardy saved.  Hardy, who has been out of the FBI for years, fighting his own demons, one of which is the bottle, is called back in to help find Carroll, and he’s the foremost expert, having penned a true crime bestseller about his chase for Carroll.

Carroll is rounded up at the end of the first episode and returned to prison after causing lots of damage, but not until it’s learned that in his time supposedly researching his legal appeals, he’s used the internet to round up tens and possibly hundreds of followers, willing to kill for him, die for him, or do any number of insane tasks for the cult of Joe Carroll.  In the first episode alone, it turns out that the gay neighbors and best friends of Sarah Fuller, the last intended victim, are actually cult members, willing to spend three years of their life living as a gay couple just to strike at the moment Carroll got out.  His ex-wife ‘s (Justified’s Natalie Zea) babysitter also turns out to be a cult member.

The Following is created by Kevin Williamson, best known for Dawson’s Creek, the Vampire Diaries, and the Scream series.  The Following is closest out of those to Scream (or Scream copycat I Know What You Did Last Summer, which Williamson also wrote) but without the cheeky meta-humor that was  a hallmark of those films.  There’s none of Scream’s humor in The Following.  It’s not a funny show.  It’s a gory thriller, somewhere along the lines of Seven.  The characters don’t seem particularly well thought out and the cult is pretty ridiculous in the amount that they’re both willing and able to do at the behest of Carroll.  I don’t think there’s likely to be a ton of depth or meaning or themes in this show.  That said, it’s not what the show’s about.  It’s an action thriller, in the vein of former Fox stalwarts 24 and Prison Break, and while I’ll never like a more purely action-oriented show as much as I’ll like Breaking Bad or Mad Men, there’s absolutely room for that type of show on TV.  Thus, if The Following keeps delivering the thrills with plotting that doesn’t seem too farfetched within its own world, it can be successful on its terms.

Repetition is a definite concern looking forward.  It’s a show that seems best designed for an American Horror Story-like single season anthology; I can imagine getting wary after one season of repetitive battles between Hardy and Carroll, knowing neither of them can lose entirely (probably anyway; if Williamson went rogue and killed one of them off at season’s end, it would be a pretty bold and respect-worthy move).  Still, I should at least give Williamson the chance to show that he can avoid seeming repetitive before knocking it.

Will I watch it again?  Maybe.  I was learning towards no at the beginning of the episode, and now I’m slightly leaning towards yes, though it could be a casualty of more spring shows that are better.  It’s flawed and simplistic to some extent; the one on one battle has distinct limits, but as a sheer thriller, some of its flaws take a back seat.  Williamson noted that he brought the show to Fox because his favorite show ever was 24, and I think there’s something that makes sense about that watching The Following.  Like 24, the characters aren’t particularly deep, but if The Following achieves its goals, it keeps you at the edge of your seat every week, and the first episode did a decent job at that.

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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 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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Taking another look: New Girl

4 May

Schmidt and Nick
I’m ready to admit it.  New Girl is a good show.  I’ve consistently rated it highly amongst the new shows of this year, but generally with the stipulation that it had the potential to be very good, but was still finding its footing.  Well, after watching the latest episode (though it really could have been done after the episode before, or the episode before that), I’ve taken the show off probation.  There’s no longer an issue of potentiality.  The show is straight up good.  I doubt I’m the first one to say this, but Schmidt, the lovable deuchebag is on the verge of becoming a break out character, and is the new Barney, from How I Met Your Mother.  As that show becomes less relevant, New Girl becomes more.  New Girl has mostly ironed out the problems that seemed like they could blow up after the first couple of episodes.  Jess, Zooey Deschanel’s protagonist, who bordered on unfathomably weird, has become far more manageable, and the word “protagonist” is misleading because the show is much more of an ensemble piece than Zooey and friends.

Schmidt, who seemed like he could easily move into the territory of an unlikable tool, has instead become the rare loveable deuchebag.  All the characters know what he is, and they hate him and love him at the same time.  His hilarious moments are both his most douche-y, and his most OCD, such as his complaining when Cece incompetently and uncaringly attempts to help him in the kitchen.  Winston, who wasn’t even in the pilot, and barely played a role in the first few episodes, actually became a character, with attributes and actual lines, some of which were funny.  Nick, as the straight man of the group, who seems bound to eventually get with Jess, has had his moments as well (though it’s worth noting that Winston might, by this point actually be more of a straight man than Nick, but moving on).  The phone call in episode “Kids,” where Schmidt pretends he’s talking to a woman, but is instead talking to Nick, is downright hilarious; and most of the credit here is to Nick and his reactions.  The same credit goes to Nick during the last scene in that episode in which Schmidt takes Nick to an Italian circus, and Nick can’t get enough.

Also, Winston is actually a character.  Winston got the short shrift in the early going, possibly due to the unforeseen circumstances that he wasn’t even supposed to exist.  Pilot character Coach, played by Damon Wayans Jr., was excised when Wayans Jr.’s other show, Happy Endings was unexpectedly (but fortunately) picked up for a second season.  Lamone Morris’s Winston debuted in the second episode as a basketball player with a short professional career in Latvia just moving back to the states, and he didn’t get a whole lot to do in the first few episodes.  New Girl finally got around to giving him some characterization, and while he still lags behind Schmidt and Nick in the amount of good lines he gets, Winston has at least gotten a couple of chances to shine.

The theme’s not great; but nothing’s perfect.

It feels good just to take the shackles off and enjoy a show without reservations.  Welcome to my personal canon, New Girl.  You’ve earned it.

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Spring 2012 Review: Touch

31 Jan

I admit I came into Touch with a bias, but I don’t think it was an unfair bias.  Unlike Alcatraz and The River’s premises, which sound interesting to me, Touch’s didn’t really.  I also may have less fairly brought bias against Tim Kring, the creator of Touch and of Heroes, who I still feel bitter towards while watching for Heroes, but I did my best to avoid taking that into my review of the show.

Touch is the story of an autistic boy and his father.  The father, Martin Bohn, played by Kiefer Sutherland, is a former journalist whose primary occupation nowadays is taking care of his son, and he has cycled through dozens of menial jobs to provide.  He’s facing crisis after crisis with his son, Jake, who hasn’t uttered a word in his life, and does things like climb up cell phone towers, but who also writes down lots of MEANINGFUL NUMBERS.  Martin’s wife and Jake’s father died in the September 11 attacks, giving the show completely UNNCESSARY 9/11 OVERTONES, one of my biggest pet peeves in stories and shows about New York.  Yes, 9/11 was a seminal event in New York history and yes, it can be used in a very powerful way to tell stories, and many times it has been.  However, at least as many times, it’s kind of been shoved in peripherally in stories that take place in New York to add extra free gravitas.  The story is suddenly a lot more dramatic because it somehow relates to 9/11!

Anyway, moving on.  So, Martin struggles to control his kid, and in the first episode, a social worker comes to temporarily take him away and openly questions whether Martin is up to the task of taking care of such a difficult child.  Martin, who realizes that Jake is gifted in certain areas, is starting to see meaning or patterns in the numbers Jake writes down.  He struggles to figure out their purpose, and eventually visits Danny Glover, an outside-the-system specialist on children with gift’s like Jake’s, who gives Martin some advice.  Basically, he tells Martin, in this episode and every commercial for the show, that Jake is able to see patterns that run throughout the world that the rest of us can’t, and it’s Martin’s job to interpret the patterns which Jake spits out like a robot.  Martin follows the numbers, and eventually realizes that through a series of planned or unplanned coincidences the trail his son set him upon eventually leads to the saving of a bus full of schoolchildren.  The social worker eventually comes to believe this too after Jake performs his magic on her, writing out her mom’s phone number which he could have no way of knowing.

The other plot involves three people across the globe, a call center employee in England who dreams about being a singer, an English restaurant supply salesman with a dead daughter on the road in Japan, and a teenager in Iraq who wants to be a comedian.  These three through a series of cell phone calls from the salesman’s lost phone, which contained the only copies of some pictures of his daughter, connect and somehow make each of their lives better.  The only relation this plot has to the Martin plot is that Martin, in his job as a baggage handler, picks up the phone at the beginning before forgetting about it as it goes on a plane to the UK.

Oh, yeah, and mute Jake narrates the show, and gives us big meaningful lessons about how everyone is connected but how we non-autistic people can’t see it.

I didn’t really care for the show at all, but I don’t tend to like just about any show where the main messages are about fate and all being connected and which seem to attribute GREATER MEANING to all sorts of random connections.  The show played on some fairly cheap emotion that didn’t feel earned at all.  I don’t think an autistic kid spitting out brilliant numerical patterns which can save the world is compelling.  I loved Kiefer Sutherland in 24, so it’s unfortunate but it’s back to the drawing board for the next great supernatural show.

Also, interesting fact of the day:  Kiefer’s full name is Kiefer William Frederick Dempsey George Rufus Sutherland.  Fantastic.

Will I watch it again?  No, I don’t think so.  I didn’t find the concept particularly interesting and the show itself certainly didn’t win me over.  I think a couple of fundamental tweaks with the concept could actually make the show significantly more interesting, but from the first episode at least it seemed like the show make a number of poor choices.

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Spring 2012 Review: The Finder

27 Jan

The Finder, a spin off from the Fox’s Bones from the same creator, should really be (like Bones as well, from what I know of it) on USA.  (disclaimer: I have embarrassingly never seen a full episode of Bones, so what I know about it is mostly taken from what I’ve read on wikipedia and what I’ve seen from snippets from accidentally leaving TNT on after Law & Order is over.  I hope to remedy this, but it hasn’t happened yet)  It has every aspect of a USA show down pat.

First, a short description of The Finder.  The titular finder is Walter Sherman, a former major in the military who was discharged after serious brain surgery.  He seems mostly all right, surprisingly, after this brain injury, but it has left him ( or kept the same, it’s unclear what changed after the inury) with a preternatural gift for finding things, or people, and any things or people, but it has also left him with some mental problems, including, friends worry, a possible breakdown if he can’t find something he’s looking for, which is his single-minded obsession.

He resides at a bar in the Florida Keys with best friend and lawyer Leo Knox (portrayed by Michael Clarke Duncan) where he waits for clients to show up asking for something to be found.  In the beginning of the first episode, he finds a guitar for John Fogerty (good get, he sings Fortunate Son, and the theme song) and the body and story behind a deceased air force member’s disappearance for his son who comes in looking for him.  Rounding out the character list are Willa Monday, a gypsy and small time teenage criminal who is out on probation working at the bar (it shows how terrible I am at determining age, as I thought the actress who plays Monday, Maddie Hasson, had to be in her early 20s, but she just turned 17) and Deputy U.S. Marshall Isabel Zambada, with whom Walter seems to have a friendly and romantic relationship.  Walter and Zambada also appear to help each other on occasion professionally.

Now, The Finder as it relates to the USA prototype.  A two-fer main team sets it up right next to Psych, White Collar, and Royal Pains (and actually Sherlock, not on USA, as well).  Like all three of these shows, The Finder has a main character who has extraordinary skills, not quite supernatural, but far above the abilities of a regular person.  The second main character is responsible for harnessing these abilities, making sure they are used in the best way possible.  The Finder, likes these other shows, contains traces of slight darkness, just so we don’t get too happy, that we could have to deal with over the course of the show, such as Walter’s potential mental imbalance (actually Psych doesn’t have that at all, it’s mostly just comedy, but for White Collar it would be the constant concern Neil will turn back to his criminal lifestyle).  These shows also feel like they’re on mood medication – there’s no unrestrained highs or lows, and because of the lack of lows in particular, the highs aren’t necessarily as high.  The same factor that makes these shows so easy to watch a random episode of is what makes them not draw you in and captivate you enough to watch every single episode in order (even though I do for a couple of them, so hypocritical of me, but the point stands).  It makes them good, but makes it difficult for them to be great.

Will I watch it again?  Honestly, probably I won’t in any sort of regular fashion, but I don’t have any real objection to it.  The premise is not a bad twist on every other show exactly like this and I like Michael Clarke Duncan.  I didn’t not enjoy watching the episode, I just don’t necessarily feel compelled to come back.  Could be ideal watching when I don’t really want to pay attention to something, or when it hits its fifth season and starts having Sunday TNT marathons.

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Spring 2012 Review: Alcatraz

26 Jan

Alcatraz is based on the supernatural premise that right about the time super prison in San Francisco bay Alcatraz was supposed to close, every prisoner disappeared instead of being transferred to other prisons.  These prisoners have started reappearing in San Francisco in the current day at the same age they would have been in 1963.  Main character and homicide detective Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones) is solving a homicide which leads her to Alcatraz, and to a nerdy PhD who specializes in all things Alcatraz named Dr. Diego Soto (Jorge Garcia, or Lost’s Hurley).  The two of them briefly meet up with her “uncle” who was a guard at Alcatraz (played by Robert Forster), and eventually run into the paths of FBI agents Emerson Hauser (played by Sam Neill)  and Lucy Banerjee (Parminder Nagra), who seem to already know about the return of the prisoner from Alcatraz.  Eventually they round up the inmate, and the FBI invites Madson and Soto to help out with the upcoming appearances of other former Alcatraz inmates in modern day San Francisco.  However, they’ll be on a need to know basis – it seems as if the FBI has a lot of secrets they’re not telling about why and how these inmates are coming back and who is behind it all.

We learn a couple of titbits in the two hour pilot which go toward these mysteries (the first two episodes were aired back to back).  First, Madsen believes originally that her grandfather was a guard at Alcatraz, and learns both that her grandfather was actually a prisoner, and moreso that her grandfather, also back at the same age he was in 1963, was responsible for the death of her partner, which happens in the first minute of the pilot (her partner falls off a roof as she tries to help in what has to be a homage to all-time great San Francisco film Vertigo).  We also learn that Hauser’s partner Banerjee hasn’t aged since the 1963s, like the escaped criminals.

Alcatraz is produced by J.J. Abrams, and comes with the imprimatur of some of the people who brought us Lost.  Like Lost, Alcatraz deals with the supernatural, and time travel in particular, along with big questions which leave the viewer waiting for answers which hopefully come sometime down the line.  Lost, however, started with a much larger story, was initially much more ambitious (I don’t mean that as a good or bad thing), and had a much larger cast.  Lost additionally had virtually no procedural aspect.

Although I haven’t watched Fringe, Alcatraz has a lot more in common initially with X-Files and with what I imagine Fringe to be about than Lost.  There’s a largely procedural element, a monster of the week, so to speak (inmate of the week in this case).  There’s also an ongoing long-term story which involves some shady super secret government organization which knows a lot more than anybody else about the mysterious circumstances, in this case, the disappearance and reappearance of Alcatraz inmates.

I appreciate that I know I’m in for the supernatural up front, and I don’t feel like the scope will continue to grow exponentially from season to season, compared to Lost, which is the upside of a more limited ambition.  Unfortunately, I also don’t find it nearly as intriguing as Lost from the first episode, though maybe, considering how I felt about Lost by the end, that’s a good thing also.  The show already has fallen into the cop cliche pile several times and while these cliches are so ubiquitous that I have learned to tolerate them well enough, it’s hard for a police-based show to be great without at least starting to break away from the most basic, such as the cop who cares too much, the cop who works best as a loner, and others.

The X-Files was an excellent show that became spotty and inconsistent, and a show in which the monster of the week or freak episodes were better than the long-term plot or myth episodes.  I’ve heard with Fringe the opposite is true, that the running plot episodes are better.  If this show can live up to the better-than-average if not great standards of these two shows, it will probably be at least a relatively enjoyable show if not a great one.

Will I watch it again?  I might.  I wasn’t blown away, but it was intriguing enough and I’m hungering for new shows to follow, particularly large mystery shows even though I know I’m likely to get hurt in the end.  After Luck, this is so far the second best new show, but I think there’s a fair distance between the two at the moment.

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Spring 2012 Review: Napoleon Dynamite

25 Jan

Most humor isn’t novel, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  It’s writing and acting that pulls it off.  Exact jokes word for word aren’t the same, but there are types of jokes, that are classics for a reason and can even transcend different types of movies and television series.  What pick and rolls are to basketball, these jokes are to comedy; everyone writing a comedy should know how to run these and they can go back to these tried and true jokes even when other attempts aren’t working.  Other animated series like The Simpsons, Family Guy and American Dad all work on these.

I noted a couple of classic joke types that were used in Napoleon Dynamite as I was watching the show that absolutely can work, but don’t.  For example, at one point, Napoleon is using an acne cream to eliminate a case of particularly disfiguring acne.  The acne cream has a list of potential side effects, parodying the type of side effects that appear on all sorts of drugs, and they are ridiculous.  This is supposed to be funny because of how ridiculous the particular side effects are, both in and of themselves, and compared to the fact that the medication is only an acne cream.  This is a tried and true type of joke and no one pulls it off better than Stephen Colbert.  In a regular Colbert Report feature, Cheating Death With Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, DFA, Colbert frequent introduces products by his fake sponsor Prescott Pharmaceuticals, with all manner of ridiculous side effects, including autonomous nipple, wandering genital syndrome, and brain tooth.  I almost never fail to laugh at these side effects.  But when Napoleon Dynamite reads the side effects, it’s not funny.  The particular side effects aren’t that amusing, nor is the way he reads it.

There’s a couple of other examples of this.  One is a fake initial joke; use a series of initials as a shorthand in a conversation and then when another character asks what the initials stand for, the person who uses the shorthand reveals it, which is hopefully funny, because the initials stand for something ridiculous or particularly unlikely.  Napoleon Dynamite attempts this, but it’s done poorly.  Another example is the shows attempt at a Chuck E. Cheese style band of animitronic animals singing.  This should be funny.  The Simpsons did a classic version with the animals of Wall E. Weasel singing “You’re the birthday, you’re the birthday, you’re the birthday boy or girl.”  It’s hilarious.  Napoleon Dynamite’s “Taking Care of Pizza” misses the mark.

If I had to order the problems with this show, and there are several, the top might just be Napoleon’s voice and inflection.  The way he says things is irritating and not funny.  The writing certainly doesn’t help, but he basically challenges any humor on the show to get through the handicap of his annoying voice.

The other question is to ask here is – Why?  Why make this into a show, a few years after the movie was such a break-out hit?  There’s just no reason for this show’s existence.  It almost feels like side characters are forced into the first episode, as if to say, all of your favorite characters from the movie are back!  Rex is back (who can believe they were able to get Diedrich Bader on board?) for some reason in a scene!

I remember why I thought the movie was very overrated, but even that was better than this.  Maybe some of the jokes worked once, but not again.  Maybe the movie was slightly better planned out than any individual episode.  Maybe some of Napaleon’s idiotic mannerisms played better in person than they do as a cartoon.  Still, going down from the movie isn’t a good sign.

Will I watch it again?  No.  It’s bad.  Napoleon Dynamite, like Allen Gregory, is the type of show which should be appealing to me as an audience but misses its mark completely.  In fact, I’d actually say, from the first episode at least, Allen Gregory was slightly less worse, though the margin is close enough that watching more episodes could change it.  Still, Napoleon’s incredibly irritating voice is probably what sends Napoleon Dynamite below Allen Gregory.

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