Tag Archives: Fox

Power Rankings: Firefly, Part 2

24 Jan

Part 2 of our Firefly Power Rankings.  Part 1 can be found over here.

4.  Alan Tudyk (as Hoban “Wash” Washbourne) – The year after Firefly ended, Tudyk appeared as Steve the Pirate in Dodgeball: An Underdog Story.  Next he was in I, Robot, Death at a Funeral, 3:10 toYuma, and Knocked Up as Katherine Heigl’s boss.  He was in episodes of Arrested Development, as Pastor Veal, and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.  He was in three episodes of V and four of Dollhouse. He’s been a voice actor, voicing characters in Ice Age; The Meltdown, Astro Boy, and Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, as well as in cartoons Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Young Justice, American Dad, and Family Guy and video game Halo 3.  He appeared in Transformers: Dark of the Moon and now appears in the main cast of successful first year ABC sitcom Suburgatory.

3.  Morena Baccarin (as Inara Serra) – She had a vocal role in three episodes of Justice League as Black Canary and appeared in three episodes of The O.C.  She was in single episodes of Kitchen Confidential, How I Met Your Mother, Justice and Las Vegas.  She appeared in six episodes of Stargate SG-1 season 10 as primary antagonist Adria.  She co-starred in TNT Treat Williams-led one season hospital drama Heartland.  She appeared in individual episodes of Dirt, Numb3rs, Medium, The Deep End, and The Mentalist.  She starred in two season ‘80s remake V on ABC as villainous alien and primarily antagonist Anna.  Her most recent role is starring in Showtime smash new series Homeland as Jessica Brody, the wife of longtime prisoner of war inIraq, Nicolas Brody.  I almost put Baccarin second because of Homeland, but changed my mind.  Still, it gets her third over Tudyk.

2.  Gina Torres (as Zoe Washburne) – She was in two episodes of The Guardian and in Matrix Revolutions (she was in the other two as well, but they came out before Firefly was done).  She appeared in seven episodes of 24 as Julie Milliken, wife of an important donor to President Palmer’s campaign, who had an affair with Palmer’s brother Wayne.  She appeared in a vocal capacity in six episodes of Justice League as Vixen.  She was in two episodes of The Shield, one of Without a Trace, and three of Alias, reprising a character she had played before Firefly.  She was the titular wife in I Think I Love My Wife.  She co-starred in one season Standoff on Fox aside Ron Livingston and Rosemarie DeWitt.  She was, over the next few years, in single episodes of Boston Legal, Bones, Pushing Daisies, The Unit, Drop Dead Diva, The Vampire Diaries, and The Boondocks.  She was in two episodes of Dirty Sexy Money, Eli Stone, Flash Forward and Gossip Girl.  She was in ten episodes of ABC Family’s Huge as a director of a camp for overweight kids and voiced Airachnid in the current Transformers: Prime animated series.  She’s currently co-starring in USA’s Suits as a lawyer and boss of main character Harvey Specter.

1.  Nathan Fillion – Immediately after Firefly’s end, Fillion was a recurring character on Alicia Silverstone one season sitcom Miss Match.  He was in two Justice League episodes as the voice of Vigilante.  He was in a flashback episode of Lost as a fiancé of Kate’s.  He got a second attempt at starring in a series in Fox’s Drive, but the show lasted a mere 6 episodes.  Fillion appeared in Waitress and in two episodes of One Life to Live.  He showed up in 11 episodes of Desperate Housewives as Dana Delany’s character’s ex-husband.  In 2008, he co-starred in internet production Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog by Joss Whedon.  He lent his voice to three episodes of Robot Chicken.  He got his now biggest role in 2009, with the debut of ABC’s Castle, now in its third season, and already renewed for a fourth.  Fillion has also voiced characters in several video games, including Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach, and Jade Empire.  Playing the titular character in a successful show that has run longer than anyone else from Fifefly’s (well, except Adam Baldwin’s Chuck) gets him the top position.

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Spring 2012 Preview and Predictions: Fox

4 Jan

(In order to meld the spirit of futile sports predictions with the high stakes world of the who-will-be-cancelled-first fall (now spring!) television season, I’ve set up a very simple system of predictions for how long new shows will last.  Each day, I’ll (I’m aware I switched between we and I) lay out a network’s new shows scheduled to debut in the fall (reality shows not included – I’m already going to fail miserably on scripted shows, I don’t need to tackle a whole other animal) with my prediction of which of three categories it will fall into.

These categories are:

1.  Renewal – show gets renewed

2.  13+ – the show gets thirteen or more episodes, but not renewed

3.  12- – the show is cancelled before 13

Spring note:  It’s a lot harder to analyze midseason shows as there’s no collective marketing campaigns going on at one time, as many of the shows start dates are spread (or are even unannounced for some)  Still, we’ll take partially educated guesses.  Also, they’re a lot less likely to get partial pick ups, so maybe that trade off will make it easier)

Fox next.  While not CBS, Fox has been doing well lately, especially among the valued 18-49 demographic.  They’ll be debuting four shows this spring, including a spin-off, a movie port, and a couple of supernatural sci-fi efforts.

The Finder – 1/12

The Finder is a spin-off of Fox hit Bones, created by Bones’ creator Hart Hanson.  That’s really the most important detail here, but we’ll dig a bit further.  The spin-off will be taken from characters introduced in the sixth season of Bones specficailly for the purpose of spinning them off.  The main character, the titular Finder, is to be a House-like figure – eccentric, offensive, paranoid but brilliant and excessively competent.  His particular skill is well, finding things, anything, from people to places to things and he works out of his lawyer’s bar in Key West.

Verdict:  Renewed – I’m not sure what to think again here, but I’ll err with renewal on the Bones brand name.  It’s easy to overlook just how successful Bones has become for Fox, and if any of its magic could rub off on the spin off, Fox could really use a replacement for the likely soon to be departed House.

Alcatraz – 1/16

JJ Abrams executively produces this supernatural science fiction show about a few San Francisco detectives who realize that modern day crimes appear to be committed by people who were Alcrataz prisoners several decades ago.  The main character’s family worked in Alcatraz so she’s super interested, and comes up against a sinister government employee played by Sam Neill who tries to stymie the nascent investigation. The detectives bring in Alcatraz expert and all around nerd Jorge Garcia (Hurley from Lost) to help out and learn that this conspiracy goes all the way to the top.  Well, it goes somewhere anyway.

Verdict:  Renewed – I realize I’m a sucker for all of these supernatural sci-fi premises.  The shows often don’t work, crumbling under their own weight either right away, or after a couple of seasons, but at the beginning they sound so interesting, novel, and full of potential.

Touch – 1/25

Kiefer Sutherland is back on Fox, this time as father of an autistic boy who has the power to predict future events (Knowing anyone?  Mercury Rising?).  Oh, and Sutherland’s wife and the boy’s mother died (same person) in 9/11 (seriously, what’s the statute of limitations on shows/movies/books in which 9/11 is a peripheral but IMPORTANT part).  Danny Glover co-stars as an expert on children who works with the boy.  The show is from Tim Kring who I’m still angry at deep in my bones for everything associated with Heroes.

Verdict:  12-  After what happened to Heroes, I have no faith in Kring.  Kiefer’s good, but the premise doesn’t wow me.

Napoleon Dynamite – 1/15

Based on the movie, Napoleon Dynamite will follow the adventures of the title character, along with his brother, his best friend Pedro, and others, all of whom will be voiced by the actors who played them in the film.  Presumably, the show will share the same sense of humor as the film which became a surprise hit, and part of the stable of required viewing for anyone who went to college when I did (See: Donnie Darko, Requiem for a Dream).  Personally, while there were certainly funny parts, I’ve always thought the movie was highly overrated, but I appear to have been outvoted on this.

Verdict:  Renewed –  I’m definitely 50/50 here.  It’s an established property and the movie probably appealed to many of the people who are fans of the Fox animation block.  Also, it’s got the same creative team, so that helps it not be a cheap knock off.  I have my doubts, but Fox could use a non-McFarlane non-Simpsons animated success in the mix.

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Fall 2011 New TV Show Predictions Reviewed, Part 1

23 Dec

A couple of months ago, I made predictions about how long new shows on cable networks, ABC, and Fox would last.  As all the shows have aired for a few weeks, it’s time for an evaluation of my predictions, although for some shows, the final word is not in yet.  Such an evaluation follows:

Cable

Hell on Wheels

Predicted: Renewal

What happened:  Renewed away – not as successful commercially as AMC stalwart The Walking Dead or critically as Mad Men or Breaking Bad, but good enough.  It’s no Rubicon.

Homeland

Predicted:  Renewal

What Happened:  Renewal – right on, everyone else agreed with me and I agreed with everyone else that this is the best new show of the year.  It’ll be back with a vengeance.

American Horror Story

Predicted:  Renewal

What Happened:  Renewed – I still don’t understand it, and I don’t mean that in either a good or a bad way, but it’s become a bit of a sleeper hit.

Boss

Predicted: Renewal

What happened:  Renewed – Cheating, it was renewed before it aired.  Still, it got good enough reviews, for whatever that’s worth.

Enlightened

Predicted: Renewal

What happened:  Renewed, but barely, as it survived the great HBO comedy extermination of 2011, which saw the ends of personal favorite Bored to Death, Hung and How To Make It In America.

ABC

 

Charlie’s Angels

Predicted:  12-

What happened:  Cancelled.  One of the five easiest predictions to make all year.  Had no chance from day one.

Last Man Standing

Predicted:  12-

What happened:  Picked up for full season so far.  Probably the prediction I got wrong which I would have staked the most on.  I still don’t think it will last past this year, but I would have said it’d be gone after three or four episodes, so who knows.

Man Up

Predicted:  12-

What happened:  Second of the top five easiest decisions.  Didn’t have a shot in hell, and shouldn’t have.

Once Upon A Time

Predicted:  13+

What happened:  Picked up a for a full season, likely renewal.  It’s become a family hit, and although it hasn’t been renewed yet, so I could technically still be right, it probably will be renewed and I’ll be wrong.  Oops.

Pan Am

Predicted: Renewal

What happened:  Not cancelled officially yet, but looking like all but a formality.  This was one of the more difficult shows to call.

Revenge

Precited:  Renewal

What happened;  Picked up for a full season, and looking likely for renewal.  Very pleased about both my call, which wasn’t obvious, and the popularity of one of the better new shows.

Suburgatory

Predicted:  13+

What happened:  Picked up, with a renewal likely.  It’s been kind of a surprise hit on what’s become a bit of a surprise hit Wednesday night comedy block on ABC, with Modern Family, The Middle, and Happy Endings next to Suburgatory.

Fox

New Girl

Predicted; Renewal

What happened:  Picked up for a full season, it would be a total shock if it was not renewed.  One of the biggest new show hits of the season so far.

Allen Gregory

Predicted:  12-

What happened:  Cancelled – not a shocker by any means.  Bad show, bad spot, no chance.  Third of my five easiest cancellations to call.

I Hate My Teenage Daughter

Predicted:  12-

Renewed:  Uncertain, as it didn’t start until the end of November.  That said, I still feel fairly confident in a cancellation.

Terra Nova

Predicted: Renewal

What happened:  This is the closest show on the list, and it could still go either way.  I wouldn’t take odds one way or the other.

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Fall 2011 Review: Allen Gregory

22 Dec

Most failed comedies are trying their hand at one type of show or another and failing. Last Man Standing tries to capture the traditional family sitcom genre, of which Everybody Loves Raymond is the recent king (The King of Queens for a more recent, but less acclaimed version) and certainly memories of Home Improvement are in mind with Tim Allen on board. I Hate My Teenage Daughter seems to want to capture the dysfunctional family sitcom – the Roseannes, or slightly lower, the Grace Under Fires. Allen Gregory tries to capture the edgier, animated comedy, in the mode of its Sunday night Fox-mates, Family Guy and American Dad. However, watching the show made me think of another successful animated comedy, Archer. Allen Gregory is about a precocious and pretentious seven year old who after years of home-schooling and being told he’s the best thing since sliced bread is being enrolled in a public school where he has to deal with the fact that he’s kind of a loser.  He’s got two loving gay parents, one of whom is his natural parent and is voiced by French Stewart, and an adopted Cambodian sister who is the most normal family member but whom Allen and his dad constantly mistreat.  Allen is voiced by Jonah Hill and is pretty much a giant dick, in the mode of Sterling Archer from Archer, but he’s just not as funny in any way.

Archer, and to a lesser extent, The Venture Bros. both walk a fine line by having their main character be a giant dick. This is difficult to maintain. When the main character is someone we like, we’re much more willing to cut them slack or leeway. However, when the main character is a dick it had better fucking be entertaining or hilarious (see:  the very polarizing reactions that Young Adult, in which Charlize Theron plays a total bitch has drawn). The jokes that revolve around how funny he is as a dick need to be spot on, or you’re just watching a guy being a giant dick, and it just feels awkward and you feel bad for everyone around him.  The creators of Allen Gregory really should watch both seasons of Archer if they haven’t already. The setting is very different, but that’s exactly the humor they’re going for. Archer just does it better. They could learn some lessons there.

The show takes a stab much closer at the type of humor I enjoy, than say, I Hate My Teenage Daughter, to its credit I suppose, but unfortunately it keeps missing. The creators probably enjoying watching funny shows, but they just don’t have the writing or editing ability to replicate them.  The first episode didn’t even show any evidence of being near the mark and it didn’t even have the one or two hilarious moments that sustain even the lesser Family Guy or American Dad episodes.

Will I watch it again?

No, it wasn’t good, and I have no reason to think it will improve in the future. There was no sign that this show was close to finding solid footing and just a  tweak would make the difference.  Back to the drawing board.  Hopefully, we’ll get some new animated shows better than this in the near future.

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Fall 2011 Review: I Hate My Teenage Daughter

16 Dec

Within the first two minutes of this show, the premise is established.  Two single moms are best friends and grew up as outcasts and losers in high school.  They have teenage daughters who are best friends and who are super popular and part of the cool crowd.  The parents want their kids to have everything they didn’t growing up and spoil them endlessly, but are afraid that partly because they’re so spoiled their daughters are turning into everyone they hated when they went to high school.

The parents are played by Jaime Pressly (of My Name is Earl) and Katie Finneran (Wonderfalls).  Pressley, the dominant of the two, grew up as a social outcast and tends to make the decisions about what needs to be done with the kids (based on the first episode, anyway).  Finneran grew up obese in the same high school that her daughter now goes to and the current principal was her primary torturer as a teen.  Both of the mothers have exes who appear in the first episode and are frustrated by both the women and the daughters, while they have no idea how to control either.

I have maybe as little to say about this show as I do about any new show that debuted this fall.  It’s exactly what you think it is.  It’s a bad, traditional style sitcom, and it’s definitely bad but it isn’t as aggressively bad as Whitney or aggressive offensive as 2 Broke Girls or aggressively sexist as Last Man Standing.  I thought it would be offensive, but it ended up as merely entirely forgettable.

It’s just bad.  It’s closest analogue in that sense may be How to Be a Gentleman, though that had a bunch of cast members I like.   It steers towards the dysfunctional family sitcom tree in the vein which Roseanne and Married With Children pioneered, where the family members clearly love each other overall but are always doing things to get on each others nerves.  The first episode involved the parents trying to discipline their daughters for locking a handicapped boy in the restroom.  As much as it pains them, the parents force themselves to bar the kids from attending their first high school dance as punishment, but the daughters manipulate their way eventually, before the parents get the last laugh.  The jokes are corny, the exchanges canned, and it sounds like that comedy level would probably fit more at home in 1992 than it would today.

Otherwise, notably I Hate My Teenage Daughter bizarrely co-stars Chad Coleman, best known as Dennis “Cutty” Wise from The Wire, as Finneran’s’ ex-husband.

Will I watch it again?  No, I’m not going to.  It’s hard to decide whether this show is more bad or more unmemorable.  I’d probably lean towards the latter, and I’m not sure if that’s a backhanded compliment, but either way, there’s no reason to see any more episodes.

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Fall 2011 Review: Terra Nova

15 Dec

Lost set both a high and low bar for long supernatural mystery shows.  It was captivating at the beginning with well-developed characters, fine acting, an interesting setting and a mystery which had fans thinking about the show, searching the internet for theories and possible answers to all of the questions the show posed, big and small.  Of course, some Lost fans will tell you that if you thought it was just about the mysteries you didn’t get it.  That’s bullshit.  Mysteries aren’t enough if the characters and the story are shit but there is no question of their importance when you pay so much attention to them early on in the show.

Since Lost began, a host of long form mystery shows have tried to replicate its success and very few have had any success.  The Event, Flashforward, Surface, Invasion, are some and the list goes on.  Terra Nova is the newest attempt.  Terra Nova does a good enough job of setting up an interesting premise with enough initial mystery to make me curious going forward.

Terra Nova begins in 2149, where man has destroyed the environment.  The air is not fit to breathe and strict population controls lead our main family to get in trouble with the government for having a third child.  The patriarch, Jim, is thrown in jail.  Two years later, Jim’s wife, Dr. Elisabeth Shannon, is recruited for Terra Nova, a journey into a new space-time, 85 millions years ago but in a different timeline, which has been found through a mysterious portal.  She helps her husband break out of jail and the whole family, including teenage son Josh, teenage daughter Maddy and five year old Zoe, makes it into the past.  From there, we find a paradise surrounded by a gate, with fierce dinosaur creatures outside.  Another threat is from a separatist movement from Terra Nova known as Sixers.  The other initial mystery lies in strange writings which Josh finds on a mischievous adventure outside of the camp, and the fact that it’s probably related somehow to the head of Terra Nova, Commander Nathaniel Taylor’s, missing son.

Unfortunately, only a small part of a show like this in its premise.  Delivery on the questions set up is so important.  When  your show is about a mystery, a satisfying conclusion is integral to making that work.  That includes parceling out answers slowly but definitively, keeping the audience dangling but  never dangling too far.  It’s a carrot and stick game, and it’s important that the carrot never goes so far that we can’t even see it anymore.  Conclusions are so much harder than premises.  I can think of a hundred great ideas for premises, but it’s much harder to figure out how to solve them in ways that are interesting, not entirely predictable, and don’t feel like they come out of nowhere.

Good characters and writing make the journey more interesting, more meaningful, and more worth rewatching if everything else is a success.   It’s hard to tell what you’re going to get in these respects from the first episode.  Overall, it was just about average in every way in regard to these aspects.  The characters were fine, not especially interesting or necessarily lacking and the writing was nothing to commend but wasn’t terrible either.  Right now the only part of the show tempting me to watch again is the mystery, which isn’t ideal, but sometimes it takes a while to develop compelling characters.

I did think it was strange that they chose the evil Colonel from Avatar to be the leader of Terra Nova considering the similarity between the two just in terms of both being set in pre-colonized planets lush with wildlife and dangerous creatures.  If he turns out to be evil, and Giovanni Ribisi is the penny-pinching corporate overlord, I am not going to be happy.

Will I watch it again?  Maybe.  I’m watching it late enough in the season that I’m unfairly influenced by what I hear around me, and that seems to be not much, which I’m interpreting as meaning it’s neither very good nor very bad.  It was, like Hell on Wheels, good enough to make me interested in watching a second episode, but not good enough to make me feel like I necessarily had to.

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Show of the Day: Heat Vision and Jack

21 Oct

I would wager to say Heat Vision and Jack, which was made in 1999, is the most well-known pilot of the last twenty years that never actually aired.  I’m sure there’s some other contenders, and I don’t think it’s hands down, but I do think it’s true.  Even more than that, I’d wager than more movie stars have broken out of this unaired pilot than any other, probably ever.

What I didn’t mention yet is that it’s also one of the more surreal pilots, a comedy/science fiction fusion in which Jack Black portrays a former astronaut, Jack Austin, whose exposure to some sort of dangerous solar radiation gives him super intelligence which is triggered by exposure to the sun, ie. sunlight.  In the dark, his powers are lost.  He also has a catchphrase when his powers activated, which entails him screaming, “I KNOW EVERYTHING”  It’s absolutely as ridiculous as it sounds.

We’re not even close to the levels of absurdity yet though.  Next, Jack Black’s character’s roommate, Douglas, is hanging around the space station to meet up with Black after a mission, when he gets shot with some crazy solar ray of radiation.  This radiation causes him to merge with his motorcycle, becoming Heat Vision, the talking motorcycle.  The motorcycle is voiced by Owen Wilson and has trouble righting itself if it tips over.

Heat Vision and Jack are both wanted by NASA for scientific prodding and such and are on the run from NASA all across the country.  They solve supernatural crimes and mysteries as they move from town to town evading primary villain NASA employee Ron Silver.  That is actor Ron Silver playing himself as a tracker of these fugitives, and who also appears to be invulnerable, able to take bullets without permanent harm.  A police officer even recognizes him as the villain from Timecop.

The show was created by Dan Harmon, now responsible for NBC’s wonderful Community and Rob Schrab, who co-created The Sarah Silverman Program.  Ben Stiller directs the first episode and has a cameo.  Christine Taylor also guest stars in the episode as a local cop, and this is where she met future husband Ben Stiller.

The first episodes opens with a monologue by Ben Stiller, introducing the show, and making several references to The Phantom Menace, which came out about the same time.  The episode involves some sort of alien which takes over the body of character actor Vincent Schiavelli and starts causing mayhem.  Heat Vision and Jack must stop him while evading Silver.

It’s worth a watch for its absurdity if nothing else.  I have my doubts about how the concept could have lasted six seasons and a movie, but for one episode the concept is hilarious and strange.  The special effects are truly atrocious and the camp level is extremely high and while Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson and Jack Black were not nobodies at the time, they were also nowhere near the peak levels of fame they’d achieve just a couple of years later as the Frat Pack movement hits its heights in the early 2000s.  There’s something enjoyable about watching them with that hindsight.  Also, enjoy Ron Silver, who died two years ago of cancer and sadly will not be doing any more acting as himself or anyone else.

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Fall 2011 Review: New Girl

21 Sep

(Here at Television, the Drug of the Nation we’ll be doing one review for one show on each day of the week, each week.  For example, one Tuesday we might review 2 Broke Girls, and then the next week Terra Nova or The Playboy Club.  So, if your favorite or least favorite show didn’t get reviewed yet, not to worry)

Coming into the first episode, I had two thoughts about New Girl.  First, I felt that no one debut this season was being sold so much on the back of one person, in this case, on the shoulders of star Zooey Deschanel.  Second, while I didn’t think much of the show a month ago, as it got nearer, for reasons I’m not entirely sure of, I started to get a little bit more excited about it.

As for the first at least, Zooey Deschanel did a good job but what I was surprised by was how much I liked the supporting cast as well, which consists of her three new roommates.  (Unlike a complex drama, I can sum up the first episode plot here in one sentence:  Zooey, as Jess, comes home to her boyfriend, finds him cheating, moves into a new place with three dudes, and is still depressed about the break-up).  Her model best friend is also on tap to be a main cast member, but she was only in the show for a minute or two, so it was hard to get a feel for her one way or the other.

The three roommates consist of three kinds of archetypes, a poser-y white guy quick to take off his shirt and call people bro, an athletic trainer who wears gym shorts and yells a lot, and a guy still depressed about a girl who dumped him months ago who dials her up when drunk.  Over the course of the episode though, these archetypes quickly fade into real people, with maybe the slight exception of the take-off-the-shirt guy, named Schmidt, but even he is normalized by the fact that his roommates make fun of him constantly (the trainer, who everyone seems to call Coach, makes him put money in a Douchebag jar every time he acts like well, a douchebag) and even he seems to not take himself too seriously.  There’s a degree of self-awareness, and a much more accurate acknowledgement of what archetypes are; they’re one side of someone’s personality, but if you dig deeper, and often not very much deeper (this was 20 minutes of tv, after all) there’s generally a person who is more or less like anybody else beneath.  I’d rather characters a little less developed in a pilot (again 20 minutes of TV) than characters who are instantly labeled by a few choice phrases and actions, pigeonholing them for the future.

Like the two new Whitney Cummings sitcoms, 2 Broke Girls and Whitney, New Girl is all about a 20-something female with a strong personality which she asserts as a force on all those around her.  Unlike those two shows, New Girl is single camera instead of multi camera, doesn’t use a laugh track, and is good.  Not to pile it on to 2 Broke Girls on top of what I’ve said before, but every character aside from the two main ones was a thin stereotype.  I know it’s just one episode, but in just twenty one minutes or so of New Girl all the characters managed to seem like real people (second time I’ve used the phrase, I know); by the end, when the roommates ditch their party to hang out with Jess who had been stood up by a guy, it already felt like a warm moment which was earned and not overly cheesy, and I already liked all the major characters.  That’s impressive.

Even within the episode, the show took a few minutes to find its footing.  Jess’s depression became a little much, and she has this tic where she talks in kind of a weird voice which became a tiny bit grating.  The show becomes a lot better when she starts smiling a little bit and having fun, and hopefully she’ll be getting over her depression in future episodes.  These are relatively minor complaints; it’s by no means a slam dunk instant classic, but what is?  It’s very very hard to produce a sitcom that’s great right out of the box – even the best often need a few episodes to find their footing.  Whether it will find said footing and become a really top tier sitcom or just slide along at being generally enjoyable enough to make you smile and laugh a couple times an episode, I don’t know, but to even put itself in that position after one episode is pretty damn good.

Important note:  The athletic trainer roommate Coach played by Damon Wayans Jr. in the pilot is being replaced, as his Happy Endings got unexpectedly picked up for a second season. It will certainly be interesting to see how the new roommate compares to the old.

Will I watch it again?  I was legitimately 50/50 before I saw it, but yeah, I think I’m going to.  The first episode got stronger as it moved forward, and although anything can go in any direction, I think it’s more likely to get even stronger as the season moves forward than not.

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Fall 2011 Preview and Predictions: Fox

16 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)

Time to tackle Fox’s slate of four new fall non-scripted shows (X Factor the big unscripted debut).  New Girl starts next week and Terra Nova the week after.  The other two start much later, owing to Fox’s yearly late start due to postseason baseball airing all October.

New Girl – 9/20

Fox is trying to add “adorkable” to the lexicon, and as much as I hate forced additions to the lexicon by advertisers (see: my hatred of the old cell phone commercials trying to get your “five” to catch on), I have to admit it’s a pretty good word and as apt for series star Zooey Deschanel as for anyone.  Zooey, as Jess, breaks up with her boyfriend at the beginning of the show and moves in with three dudes, who teach her a little bit about life, while she has something to teach her too.

Verdict:  Renewal – the show doesn’t sound or look great, but even I have to admit Zooey Deschanel has some undeniable charisma even if I’ve never been infatuated with her

Allen Gregory – 10/30

Fox is the leader in primetime animated series, in their vaunted Sunday block, anchored stalwarts The Simpsons and Family Guy.  When I read that Jonah Hill was creating and starring in an animated series on Fox, I was interested.  Hill voices the title character, a snooty 7-year old with two gay parents.  Unfortunately, I’ve read seriously bad notices about the show being both derivative and more than that straight out bad.

Verdict:  12- Hill’s name should count for something but with the Napoleon Dynamite animated series barking at the door, I’m not sure the series will be given that much room for failure

I Hate My Teenage Daughter – 11/30

Two suburban moms, portrayed by Jamie Pressly and Katie Finnernan, find, to their dismay, that their daughters are becoming the type of kids they hated when they were in high school.  The dads, both exes, are incompetent, as the mothers try to do their best to straighten out their daughters.

Verdict:  12- Another of the class of it’s just going to be bad.  It’s not that the premise is as forced as How to Be A Gentlemen; a show with this premise could in theory work.  Still, it’s not going to; it’s going to be very bad.

Terra Nova – 9/26

Probably the winner of this year’s biggest Lost clone award, Terra Nova is actually somewhat of a Lost meets Land of the Lost, as future people, with the planet in danger (take that climate change skeptics) build a time machine and go back millions upon millions of years to create a human colony in the ancient past.  Oh, yeah, and they built their colony in the middle of killer dinosaurs.

Verdict: Renewal – well this is half a cheat, since Fox skipped ordering a pilot and just ordered 13 episodes straight out, a highly unusual step.  It’s probably the most expensive new series and it looks it.  I don’t know whether it’s going to be interesting, whether the characters will be compelling, and whether the story line will make sense, but it’s going to look fantastic.

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Show of the Day: Greed

16 Sep

In 1999 the phenomenal, hard-to-believe-just-how-good success of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire spawned a generation of game shows.  Never ones to be denied an easy chance to ride a trend, TV execs everywhere thought the game show was back in a big way and were determined to make sure they all had entrants in the field.  Each game show created during this period had its own feel.  The Weakest Link was all about the host, nefarious Englishwoman Anne Robinson while  21 evoked a retro feeling for when game show scandal was in.  Greed was the Machiavellian entrant into the game show conversation.  Like all of the major game shows of this wave, trivia was the show’s stock and trade, but it was the gimmick that made the show.  In Greed that gimmick was that it was a team game that slowly turned team members against one another as they chose between team success and the risk/reward of greater personal gain.  Trust and team versus individual became of issue in the reality game shows developing around the same time, particularly Survivor, where alliances and assurances became key, but I can’t think of another game show which so gleefully turned constestant on contestant.  The Weakest Link employed voting contestants out, but there wasn’t the one-on-one animus as in Greed, or the sense that it was a choice; you were required to vote for someone.

Hosted by game show veteran Chuck Woolery (original Wheel of Fortune, Love Connection, Scrabble), a game of Greed began with six contestants asked to answer a question where the answer was a number between 10 and 999 (this was Greed’s rough knockoff of Millionaire’s fastest finger, in which contestants quickly ordered four choices – I’m not sure how many people would recognize that term now, but it was one of several Millionaire terms to enter the lexicon back then).  Based on how close they got to the answer, the contestants would be ordered from one to five, with the sixth being magnanimously thrown back into the contestant pool for another shot in a later game.  The first person became the captain, who has all the power in the world of Greed, and two through five line up after him or her.

The game begins.  The first four questions are asked to each of the contests, starting with the fifth, and moving up, towards the captain, with each increasing in dollar value.  The questions are multiple choice.  It’s important to remember in Greed that the captain has all the power.  The captain can choose to accept any contestant’s answer or can reject the answer and replace it with his or her own.  In addition, the captain can choose to walk away with the money the team has won after any question, with that money being redistributed evenly amongst the team.

Here’s where the real Machiavellian aspects begin.  After the fourth question, if the captain chooses to continue forward, a device known as the “Terminator” chooses one contestant at random and offers them $10,000 win or lose to challenge a contestant of their choice.  The stakes?  Whoever wins gets the losing contestant’s share of the prize money, and if the losing contestant is the captain, the winner gets the captain’s seat as well; the loser is eliminated from the game.  Many shows would simply rely on the contestant’s own ambition and confidence as fuel for challenging another contestant.  That’s not enough for Greed, though.  Greed gives you 10K for this privilege.  You could lose all your money as a team, but if you take up the challenge, you’ll take home with 10 grand, no matter what.  That’s an incentive that’s hard to resist.

Later questions had multiple correct answers, necessitating each member of the team to give correct answers one by one, with the captain having the choice of accepting or rejecting any part of the answer.  If the team continued to move on, another “Terminator” or two would come along potentially reducing the team to just a couple of players.

Sometimes you’d see a lamb of a contestant actually refuse to take the money for the Terminator, only to be challenged in the next Termination round, making his or her weak decision look foolish.

On later, high value questions, with four or five answers required, when Woolery showed them that they had all but one answer correct, the producers would offer the players a bribe – a small percentage of the total money to each contestant.  Each contestant would make their own decision to keep going and bet on their answer being right or to walk away with the bribe. If there are fewer contestants than answers in a round, the captain can answer them all him or herself or can pass off that duty to any fellow contestant.

Greed began airing in November 1999, right on the heels of Millionaire’s success and sadly stopped in July, 2000, never to return.  It was by no means must-watch TV, but I always thought it was a cut above a lot of other game show clones.  Greed was also the first game show to give away $2 million in one shot, which you can watch below, on a rather easy question mind you.

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