Tag Archives: Spring 2013 TV Season

Spring 2013 Review: How To Live With Your Parents (For the Rest of Your Life)

5 Apr

Instructional program on living with one's parents for the foreseeable future

How To Live With Your Parents (For the Rest of Your Life) (yes, that title is a ridiculously too long mouthful, like this comment) is clearly trying its best to be a Modern Family clone.  This actually makes perfect sense, as Modern Family is one of the most successful comedies on TV, and probably the single most if one combines critical and commercial appeal. I’m only surprised I haven’t seen more Modern Family take offs, to be honest.  How To Live With Your Parents (the relatively short name I’ll use from now on) oozes wanna be Modern Family, and it is not at all a coincidence that ABC has been airing it immediately before that show.

The basic backbones of Modern Family (besides the specific actors and writers and all that) are a quirky family with a sense of comedy that tries to strike a middle ground between more traditional family sitcoms (think Everybody Loves Raymond as the most recent of this model) and new-fangled comedy that young people like (e.g.The Office).  It’s all based around a family which is wacky and somewhat non-traditional but extremely functional, and the message is often more or less that the characters’ families drive them completely crazy but they love them dearly and, at the end of the day, they couldn’t imagine being with anyone else.  Structurally, it’s fairly light and cute, but attempts to be moving and heartwarming, with occasional narration (on Modern Family, mostly at the end of the episodes, but there’s talking to the camera which can be similar to narration).  Again, mixing the young and old, the family is not a classic American nuclear family, a la, say, Everybody Loves Raymond, or the trillions of family sitcoms before, but shares the sense of love and togetherness from those programs, with the wackiness but not absurdity or sense of despair from classic dysfunctional family sitcoms like Married with Children and Roseanne.

Basically, How To Live With Your Parents checks off every one of these boxes.  The main character and narrator is Polly, played by sitcom veteran Sarah Chalke (Scrubs, but also Roseanne, How I Met Your Mother, and Mad Love).  Polly divorced her husband recently and, not having any money or a job, moved back home with her mother and stepfather.  She brought along her young daughter Natalie.  Her mom (Elizabeth Perkins from Weeds) is a Character, a mother with absolutely no filter or sense of appropriateness who is way more comfortable talking about sex than her daughter is (a more and more common TV trope, a reverse of the traditional mother who is incredibly uncomfortable talking about sex (again, see Doris Roberts, Everybody Loves Raymond), often combined with a daughter who is relatively repressed and/or anal).  Her stepdad (Brad Garrett) is also a Character, albeit less so than her mother, and constantly bemoans the loss of one of his testicles from testicular cancer.  Added to this pool is her ex-husband who is a well-meaning dreamer/idiot, very much in the Andy from Parks and Recreation mode, who loves Polly’s family and tries to stay in her life however possible, no matter how much of a bad idea it might be.

She now works at a local coffee establishment and I can’t tell yet whether her co-workers there are characters or not.  Polly helpfully gives us the what’s what within this debut episode by using cutesy white text on screen to point out certain facets of her life she’s explaining, along with frequent flashbacks showing off the crazy in her family.

In the first episode she goes on her first date in ages, and, although terrified, asks her parents to babysit her kid for the night (she’s a classic super nervous mother, with a strict routine and specific rules, while her parents threaten to go all willy nilly Parental Control on her daughter).  Basically, both her date and her parents babysitting end up being semi-disasters, but lessons are learned, things work out in an incredibly heartwarming fashion, and it turns out she’s really grateful to have this zany but loving family even though they’re super insane and drive her completely bonkers.

Will I watch it again?  No.  Did I mention it’s actually not funny at all?  I should probably do that.  It wasn’t offensive; it was more modern than just about any CBS comedy but it was hardly breaking new ground either.  That said, it wasn’t actually funny at all.  The laugh lines and jokes just did not work.  I mean, I could see what the humor was supposed to be, and which lines where supposed to make me laugh but yeah, did not take.  I don’t watch Modern Family, so even if it worked, it’s not incredibly likely I would watch it, but it wasn’t a very difficult decision.  It’s much more heartwarming than it is funny.

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Spring 2013 Review: Do No Harm

15 Mar

Do No Harm

Do No Harm has already been way cancelled after just two episodes, drawing the worst premiere rating ever for a network drama (some jokester got away with adding to the wikipedia page for Do No Harm, ” (yes, worse than The Mob Doctor!)” to demonstrate how low the ratings were).  Still, we review on, for posterity’s sake, if for nothing else.  Plus, a lot of people worked hard to get this show to air.  The least we can do is reward their effort by watching one episode.

Dual personalities, which are at the core of Do No Harm, have been a handy subject matter for recent failed dramas.  A few years ago, the Christian Slater vehicle My Own Worst Enemy, in which he played a spy who had a chip in his brain which turned him into an innocent who acted as the perfect cover, aired.  Kyle Killen’s well-liked Lone Star was also cancelled after just two episodes, and featured a man living a double life (though by his own choice).  This seems to be something of an obsession for Killen, whose other failed drama, which aired last year, Awake, featured a man who also lived between two different realities – he was always the same, but everything around him was different.

Do No Harm lead character Dr. Jason Cole is a top neurosurgeon who suffers from dissociative identity disorder, or multiple personality disorder.  From 8:25 AM to 8:25 PM every day he’s charming and responsible Dr. Cole, helping patients, taking risks that some members of the hospital brass would rather he not, and charming his colleague Lena Solids (former Law & Order ADA Alana de la Garza), who wants to take their friendly relationship to the next level.  By night however, he’s the sociopathic Ian Price, who lives to wreck Cole’s life, and to take advantage of his money for booze, drugs, women, and whatever else he can find to blow it on (maybe blow?).

For five years, Cole has successfully knocked himself out for 12 hours a day, with the help of an employee at the hospital acting against all policy, supplying him with a special drug.  From 8:25 at night until the morning Cole would simply be unconscious.  Somehow no one at the hospital has ever had occasion to notice that he was available at all during those hours.  However, the drug’s effects have worn off and now Cole is faced with the terrifying reality that his evil twin is back in his life.

Do No Harm is surprisingly uninteresting for a show about a man terrified by his other personality trying to ruin his life and destroy everything he loves.  I just don’t really care what happens.  Cole seems so blandly good, and his other half so viciously evil.  During the episode we basically get the idea that Cole is a pretty amazing dude whose only issue is, well, the big one, of his split personality, but he doesn’t really seem like an interesting guy.I get the whole dichotomy but perhaps some traces of subtlety would go a long way towards making the concept work; if both versions of him were a little more complicated.

In fact the only reason to root for the show is that it gives Samm Levine, who played Neil in Freaks and Geeks, a job.  Levine to this point has been just about the least successful of a phenomenally successful cast, so he could use the work.

Will I watch it again?  No.  Not that there’s all that much to watch even if I wanted to, but there’s not much here other than the hook.  It’s not a bad idea for a hook, but shows that are just about the hook and don’t have strong characters and writing are limited at best.  Again, it’s worth noting for a second that this is another show that is by no means truly wretched, but there’s no reason anyone should waste even half a tear on Do No Harm’s quick cancellation.

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Spring 2013 Review: 1600 Penn

11 Mar

1600 Penn

1600 Penn looked awful in commercials, but it was merely not very good in practice.

1600 Penn is, as the name suggests, a comedic rendition of life in the White House.  The main family and cast members include the father, President Strandrich Gilchrist, played by Bill Pullman (no mention of this could be complete without of course noting that he also played the President in Independence Day), the first lady, Strandrich’s second wife and former campaign manager, Emily Nash-Gilchrist (Jenna Elfman), oldest son Skip (Josh Gadd, a co-creator of the show), daughter Becca Gilchrist (Martha MacIssac, best known as Becca from Superbad), and youngest children Xander and Marigold (Benjamin Stockham and Amara Miller, respectively).

The family’s personal problems are constantly getting in the way of the President’s political goals.  There’s plenty of infighting; Becca still hates her step mom, and Skip is a ridiculous screw up who constantly disappoints his parents by getting into trouble and having to have them, sometimes with the help of the Secret Service, bail him out.  The President likes to win too much that, after a little patriot cheering, he can’t even intentionally lose a tennis match to a Latin American whose support he needs on a crucial vote (played by Miguel Sandoval, who played cock-fighter Marcelino in Seinfeld, and tequila company head Carlos in Entourage).  The day is saved when Skip walks into the room where the Latin American leaders are planning to vote, and Skip drinks with them and unintentionally convinces them to gang up against Sandoval, who apparently has been bullying them for years.

If you can’t tell from the above few sentences, it’s an incredibly silly show.  It’s not particularly funny.  With most of the attempts at laughs, I can see what the show is going for but the jokes don’t really hit.  Josh Gadd is probably the best part of the show, being ridiculously incompetent but kind of likable, but even most of his attempts at being funny are not successful.

Compared to fellow political comedy Veep, 1600 Penn is far more over the top and ridiculous than Veep, which focuses on everyday humor and a bit of satire.  For a show about the President, there’s nothing at all satirical or political about 1600 Penn.  I wouldn’t expect to see any but the most basic jokes about Democrats or Republicans, if that.  While both Veep and 1600 Penn try to create humor out of the contrast of real people’s lives with the majesty of the White House (or the Vice President’s office, but for this point, the same difference), Veep aims for humor out of the mundane, while 1600 Penn attempts to mine the ludicrous not even attempting to resemble real life.  Josh Gadd’s Skip is certainly the most goofy aspect of the show, but he really drives the direction of the show, rather than being the exception.  To give another example, Skip at one point accidentally lights a fire in the White House, while recording a fire safety video, which causes the window to explode and hit a visiting dignitary.  It’s not that this kind of comedy can’t work, it just doesn’t really here.

It’s not a truly terrible show.  It doesn’t make me angry, and it’s surprisingly watchable, in the sense that it doesn’t make you want to immediately get up from your couch mid-episode and turn it off no matter what.   It’s bad enough though that I don’t think there’s any fixing it or making it into a second season surprise.  Even a moderately improved 1600 Penn probably leaves a fair amount to be desired.

Will I watch it again?  No.  I damn it with the faint praise that it’s far better than I originally thought it would be from the commercials, unfunny rather than cringeworthy.  Still, that falls fairly far short of the standard for getting me to watch multiple episodes.

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Spring 2013 Review: Deception

8 Mar

Deception

Deception, in five words.  Primetime murder mystery soap opera (quick definition: primetime is not simply a time-the-show-airs issue, it’s an adjective describing the type of soap; priemtime implies a soap that’s a bit classier and less ridiculous (by soap standards, remember, so that’s only saying so much) than daytime soaps).

Now, in longer form.  The premise event of Deception is the mysterious death of socialite and scion of the uber-wealthy Bowers family, Vivian.  Her death appears on its face to be due to a drug overdose, but there are clear signs pointing the police in the direction of murder.  The Bowers family made their millions through the pharmaceutical company currently run by patriarch Robert Bowers (Victor Garber), and it’s a classic dysfunctional rich family fueled by jealousy and greed, which means that everyone’s a suspect.  While the family attempts to mend itself after hearing of Vivian’s tragic death, viewer surrogate Joanna Locasto (Meagan Good) must infiltrate the family to attempt to figure out who the murderer is.  She’s in a unique position to investigate the inter-family dynamics, given that she used to be Vivian’s best friend growing up, when Joanna’s mother worked for the Bowers family.  Vivian and Joanna were BFFs until a falling out about 15 years ago, which is slowly revealed through flashbacks, when Vivian attempted to run away and Joanna, believing she was drug-addled and liable to get herself hurt, tattled to her father, ending their relationship.

Since then, Joanna’s lived her own life as a member of the NYPD, which the Bowers family doesn’t know. With the convincing of her former partner/lover and now FBI agent Will, she agrees to make a return into the Bowers’ lives, ostensibly to grieve Vivian, but with the secret goal of figuring out the murderer.

Suspects include the father and CEO, Robert, son Julian, the bad boy now creating drugs for his father’s company, who Joanna once had an ongoing fling with, ill-tempered older son Edward, who was accused of strangling a woman years ago, but managed to fight off the charge, Robert’s second wife and former secretary Sophia, and youngest daughter Mia.

The investigation turns out to be even more complicated than originally thought when a tabloid journalist who was spying on the Bowers is murdered while waiting to feed Joanna some information, after he relates to her that there are allegations that Bowers’ company is about to put a drug on the market responsible for killing dozens of people in overseas test markets, a drug which was created by Julian.  The episode ends with the dual revelations that Vivian was pregnant when she died, and that she was pregnant once before, right when her and Joanna had their falling out, and that that baby was Mia, who has been posing as Robert and Sophia’s daughter.

Deception is another in the minor trend of thriller prime time soaps started by the minor success of ABC’s Revenge. The incredibly dysfunctional uber-rich family vibe being infiltrated by an outsider who is really an insider which features prominently in Revenge is at the heart of Deception as well.  The feature mystery here is of course the whodunit, and the family members are the primary suspects, though I’d guess there will be more peripherally shady characters entering at some part that could be involved somehow in the plot.

The show wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad either.  The mystery is intriguing enough, and I”m generally a sucker for a classic whodunit, just not necessary enough to actually watch several hours of TV.  Similar to what feels like the last couple of shows I’ve written about (The Following, The Carrie Diaries), there’s not a ton that makes this show stand out in a crowd, but it’s perfectly respectable in its own right.  I could imagine getting stuck in a rabbit hole of Deception episodes on a Saturday morning on repeats on TNT someday, but it just doesn’t have quite enough to make me place it on my considerably crowded television schedule.  Like most serial dramas, the set up is easy, while the pay out is hard, and the set up here is certainly at least adequate, and honestly, if I heard the the later episodes were excellent and compelling and unpredictable, there’s enough for me in the first episode be interested in coming back to the show, but I don’t have implicit faith.

If Deception does succeed, it will be difficult to avoid the same issue that Revenge faced.  Pace it too slowly, people will get tired of waiting and it will seem needlessly drawn out.  Solve the feature mystery in good time and the writers need to think of something else equally compelling.  Shows like this are exactly why I support the expansion of season-long TV series, American Horror Story-style.

Will I watch it again?  No, I’m not going to.  Honestly though, it’s not a total loser.  It’s not required viewing by any means, but I still haven’t reviewed a truly terrible or even a pretty bad show yet from the Spring 2013 season.  I’m sure it’s coming and I’ve just watched them in the wrong order, but while I’m not going to watch Deception nor tell anyone else to watch it, I’d have no qualms if someone I knew told me they were watching it.  I might even read the wikipedia page later to find out who the killer is if the show makes it that far.

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Spring 2013 Review: The Carrie Diaries

4 Mar

Carrie, '80s style

There was a show you probably heard of called Sex and the City, on HBO in the late ’90s and early ’00s.  Sex and the City was based on the autobiographical columns of New York writer Candace Bushnell.  Sex and the City was hugely successful, spawning two movies (the second less successful than the first), and single-handedly increasing brand awareness of products like Manolo Blahnik shoes, at least among people like me, who would never have heard of them otherwise.  After the fantastical success of the Sex and the City TV show, Bushnell, in 2010, wrote a two-part series called The Carrie Diaries to serve as a prequel to Sex and the City, about Carrie Bradshaw’s life as a senior in high school.  It’s these prequel books that are now being adapted into the TV show The Carrie Diaries.

Okay, so The Carrie Diaries.  The star is of course teenager Carrie Bradshaw, a high school junior in 1984.  It’s part classic ’80s John Hughes movie.  Carrie’s got her own crew wacky friends, where everyone has a role.  There’s bookish Asian girl Jill, who everyone calls the mouse (Ellen Wong from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, who has to be almost 30 by now), slutty drunk Maggie (played by Katie Lindlay, best known as dead teenager Rosie Larson from The Killing), and a guy, Walt, who’s dating Maggie but is clearly probably gay, staring at pictures of Rob Lowe late in the episode.  There’s a mean girl (exactly how mean has yet to be determined, but you know the type), Donna, and her posse who run around the school like they own the place, and there’s a rich bad boy, Sebastian with a good heart who Carrie clearly likes, Andrew McCarthy in Pretty in Pink style.  There’s lots of ’80s style all around and plenty of period music in the first episode, including Blue Monday, Footloose, Burning Down the House, Just Can’t Get Enough, and several others.

There’s a serious side to the show as well (it is, after all, an hour long and it doesn’t seem like CW does half hour comedies anymore).  Carrie’s mom died just months before the show begins, and her, her dad, and her rebellious sister are all suffering in the aftermath of her death and handling it in different ways.  Her dad looks like a cross between Dennis Leary and Tim DeKay from White Collar, and is having a hard time filling the role of both parents, and knowing when to try to take over his wife’s role, and when he’ll never be able to.  Her 14-year old sister, Dorrit, was the outcast to the good girl Carrie, even before her mother’s death, and she acts out, frustrating both her dad and Carrie, who don’t know how to handle her behavior.  Carrie struggles as well, trying to be the good girl, help her sister and dad, and live her own life.

There’s yet one more important aspect.  In order to help her both grow up and recover from the devastation of her mom’s death, Carrie’s dad arranges for her a one day a week internship at a law firm Manhattan, where she’s always wanted to live (get it?  that’s her future home!).  While there, she meets a crazy artsy socialite, Larissa (played by Freema Agyeman, Dr. Who’s Martha Jones), who has Carrie help her steal a dress from Century 21 and takes her to a super wacky artsy party where she meets a bunch of fascinating people (her first gay people!) and pretends to be older than she is.  She also says the worst line of the episode as she leaves, narrating about how infatuated she was with New York – saying that she doesn’t need a boy, because she’s found her man – Manhattan. Boooooo.

There it is, one part ’80s teen comedy, one part heartwarming dealing-with-serious-issues teen drama, and one part teen pretending-to-be-someone-else in Manhattan.  As for quality, well, it’s okay.  That’s really about it.  The acting was fine, the treatment of the ’80s mimicked the classic ’80s of films without being grossly over the top, and the tragedy of Carrie’s mom’s death seemed well handled by the show in the first episode, with pathos but not overdramatic.  If you like what you’ve heard so far, there’s nothing negative enough about the quality of the show that would recommend against watching it.  If you don’t like what you’ve heard so far, there’s nothing positive enough about the quality that would recommend watching it.  It certainly doesn’t transcend it’s genre, but it’s not an embarrassment either.   CW’s made a number or programs in this vein, and while I don’t think it’s ever going to get close to the kind of buzz of Q rating of its notable progenitor, The Carrie Diaries does seem clearly aimed at CW’s core demographic. As for comparisons to Sex and the City itself, The Carrie Diaries are a little bit more serious, more teen (obviously), thus more emo, and less irreverent, and also, fairly obviously, less bawdy.

Will I watch it again?  No.  This show falls into the vast chasm of shows that aren’t so good but aren’t so bad.  I don’t really have so many bad words for The Carrie Diaries; I could imagine why someone might want to watch it.  It just has nothing particularly interesting for me in a world where there more than enough good and interesting shows out there that I haven’t seen yet.

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Spring 2013 Review: The Americans

1 Mar

Johnny and Linda American

The Americans is about a couple of Soviet sleeper agents living in America, posing as a typically American family during the late cold war period.  I’ll get to more about it, I promise, but follow me for a minute as I take a diversion onto a more general point about the Cold War in pop culture, and then back to The Americans particularly.

I grew up too late to really experience the cold war.  I don’t really remember the fall of the Berlin Wall, and even if I did know it at the time, I certainly didn’t understand what it meant.  The Cold War itself doesn’t seem like a great time in which to live, but for movies and television it seems like a constantly underused time period, especially in terms of the use of Soviet antagonists.  While World War II Nazis are crazy super evil and immediate, reflecting the fact that World War II was a concentrated war centered on armed conflict, Cold War Soviets, at least post-Stalin, are less here and now evil and more mysteriously and michievously villainous.  Everyone knew the Nazis wanted to basically take over the world and kill all the Jews and Russians and whatever other ethnic groups, but no one exactly knew what the Soviets wanted or what they were willing to do to get it.  The beauty of the Cold War from a broad literary perspective is that neither side knew exactly what the other was thinking, and at anytime, one misplaced step could set off a chain reaction to mutual destruction.  And while, unlike in the third easily literarily interpretable international relations event of the 20th century, the Vietnam War, it’s pretty clear we’re the good guys in the Cold War, it’s not exactly clear how bad the other guys are (No one seems to do World War I or Korean War movies in America, aside from M*A*S*H; World War I just doesn’t have the same place in the American psyche as it does in the European, and no one knows anything anymore about the Korean War).

Thus, while World War II works best as a setting for sweeping large-scale action like in Saving Private Ryan or clear cut good vs. evil revenge like Inglorious Bastards, the Cold War plays best to sneaky subterfuge and taut suspense.  There’s a number of already-on-the-way-to-destruction movies like  Dr. Strangelove or Fail-Safe, but in terms of pre-nuclear destruction, The Hunt for Red October is one of the best examples of movies that follows these themes.

So, back to The Americans.  As per that deviation, The Americans fits that Cold War narrative to a T.  The series stars Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys as the Soviet sleeper agents who have been in the US for a decade and a half at the start of the show, set in  1981.  Flashbacks tell us that they were chosen two decades ago to be married and infiltrate the US, and in the present day, they’ve got two kids who know nothing about their true professions.  They’ve started to become Americanized in their home lives while constantly executing missions for their Soviet overlords.  We learn in the first episode that Rhys’ Phillip is more loyal to his wife than to his country, while Russell’s Elizabeth would die before defecting.  It’s unclear whether that dynamic will reappear as a potential stress on the couple in later episodes, but it certainly seems possible.  In the pilot we also see their difficulties in maintaining a normal family life and carrying out these missions, as they get by a couple of very close scrapes in the first hour alone, and a Soviet superior tells Elizabeth it’s only going to get harder.

Across the street, new neighbor FBI Agent Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich) moves in, completely coincidentally, but Beeman, who works in the counter intelligence department and recently relocated to Washington DC after spending three years undercover, immediately suspects something is off about Elizabeth and Phillip.  Initially, I thought the FBI was going to look pretty naive and incompetent in the show, and Beeman in particular seems bright eyed and bushy tailed, and when he introduces himself to Elizabeth and Phillip straight out as a FBI agent, it seems as if they can spy circles around this guy.  However, smartly, it seems like the FBI in general, and Beeman in particular, are more capable than we think and the episode ends with the FBI declaring war on these sleeper agents.  Shows and movies are almost always better with well-matched adversaries, rather than one  competent side and one incompetent.  Whether we end up rooting for the KGB agents or the FBI, the show has more long term potential if both are relatively capable.

The Americans looks like it will have all the hallmarks of Cold War fiction; simmering tension with punctuated burst of activity, and constant paranoia on either side; the KGB agents that they’re about to get caught at any time, and the FBI agents that KGB sleeper agents could be anyone and anywhere.  The show also reminds me of Breaking Bad in the sense that our primary protagonists are the ostensible villains (Walt, the KGB agents), while our secondary protagonists are the ostensible good guys (Hank, FBI agent Stan).  It’s unclear as of yet exactly how likeable or unlikeable the KGB agents will be as characters, and how they’ll manage to make the FBI-is-or-is-not-onto-them plot keep moving without stalling or engendering the concept of the show, but there are certainly enough possibilities out there to be worthy of seeing where the creators go with it.

It’s also worth noting that there is already some great period music, and hopefully will be more of it.  In particular, the show opened with Quarterflash’s Harden by Heart, which was already a great sign for my liking it.

Will I watch it again?  Yes. It wasn’t amazing or mind blowing (see: Homeland’s premiere) but it was definitely good enough to come back to.  Also, it’s worth noting that FX is creating itself quite a brand; recent solid-or-better dramas include this, Justified, and Sons of Anarchy.

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