High Concept Monday Dramas

As I sat down to watch TV last night for the first round of the hour long dramas to premiere this year, I almost lost my cool. Midway through Bones, my cable went out and didn’t come right back on. In fact, it was a near half hour before things got back to normal, with only minutes to spare before the start of the two new Monday shows that I was planning to cover here. So, though I was forced to watch Brennan and Booth in the wee hours this morning before work, I was able to catch The Mob Doctor and Revolution last night so I could write about them today.

The Mob Doctor

This is a show that I have been pretty excited to see ever since uprfronts last spring. This is also a show that when I mention to other people that I’m excited, they look at me, head cocked to one side and say “Really?” They just don’t get where I’m coming from, and I don’t get them. For me, it has so many things going for it: namely, Jordana Spiro, who I loved on My Boys, Zach Gilford, who is and always will be Matt Saracen from FNL, and medicine, which I am a sucker for. Give me a medical show over lawyers, cops, housewives, and forensic pathologists any day. I just love them.

Oh, and The Mob Doctor also has the mob. Fun, high concept, right? Well, turns out the show is far more Grey’s Anatomy than Goodfellas, but I’m still hooked. The premise is basic enough: Young, gifted surgeon gets in deep with the Chicago mafia in order to save her brother’s life. To pay off his debts, she must preform medical procedures for the members of the mob, who tend to get shot with some frequency. The pilot establishes this idea pretty handily in the first few scenes, especially with a comical bit where Dr. Devlin (Spiro) yanks a screwdriver out of a lackey’s head.

What sells me on the show, however, is not the plot of the pilot, which admittedly is a kind of muddy (the whole storyline of the girl Devlin used to babysit for getting pregnant was superfluous). We sells me is Jordana Spiro. I immediately connect to her as a the woman straddling two worlds, perhaps because she did something similar in My Boys. She has the gruffness to deal with the mob bosses and medical bosses alike, and she has the poise and intelligence to come off as a very gifted doctor.

The second episode of The Mob Doctor will really tell the tale for me. It’s easy to have a solid pilot and not know where to go from there. The next episodes will establish if the writers can strike a balance between the two worlds and if they can keep the action believable instead of melodramatic. I’m excited to see what the new boss brings to the table and if the show can rise above the medical problem versus mafia problem of the week. I would love for it to go dark, like, say, The Black Donnellys, a similar show which was cancelled too soon. We shall see. Until then, I have high hopes. B+

Revolution

The only thing more present in my mind than the onslaught of Revolution previews that aired on NBC all summer was the deluge of middling to downright bad reviews that came out this week about the show. It seemed everyone was predisposed to hate it. I tried, however, to watch the pilot with an open mind. I like JJ Abrams – despite Alcatraz and, yes, Super 8 – and the concept is pretty cool – the world simultaneously losing all electricity. The show, in theory, had potential.

Unfortunately, I have to agree with the crowd on this one. Revolution is not good. Its major  failing is one that many high-concept shows of the past (especially on NBC) have fallen prey to and I call it the buckshot approach to tv making. Here’s how it goes: you take a cool concept, like aliens coming to earth (ie. V) or aliens living among us (ie The Event) or people living in the past (ie Terra Nova) and you create a big, sprawling cast, then give everyone interesting storylines that will eventually intersect with each other, and throw that all into the pilot. In concept, it should look like Lost. In practice, you shoot the audience in the face.

There is so much thrown against the wall in Revolution that everything ends up being mediocre. In 45 minutes, all the power goes out, we flash-forward 15 years, the father gets shot, the brother gets kidnapped, the sister gets attacked more than once, the uncle gets attacked and kills a dozen people and a lady talks to someone on a crude computer. On top of that, the sister meets her love interest, who, all star-crossedly, is part of the opposing militia. And did I mention that said militia is run by the uncle’s former best friend? It’s enough plot to fill an entire season, but stuffed into one episode, it feels hurried and unbelievable.

If you look back at high-concept pilots that worked, you realize that they only focused on one story and slowly introduced more as the season progressed. Lost only told the story of Jack, Charlie and Kate without much more than introductions to the other castaways; The Walking Dead only followed Grimes in the first episode; Mad Men didn’t even introduce Betty Draper until the last five minutes of its pilot. I wish that Revolution had learned from these superior shows, instead of following the vein of other failed shows. Nothing worked well, and the romantic entanglement, especially, was irksome.

The show has glimmers of promise – the science behind the blackout intrigues me, I love Giancarlo Esposito, and Zak Orth is pretty funny – but in the end, Revolution comes off as a bad, watered-down ripoff of The Hunger Games, and I would be surprised if I make it more than my requisite three episodes. D

Much Ado about Nothing (Yay!) and A Week of New NBC Comedies (Yay?)

I’ve spent the better part of this week at the Toronto Film Festival, and coming from a person who loves TV, I have to say it was a pretty successful trip. Not only did I get to see Joss Whedon’s latest feature, Much Ado About Nothing; I also had the pleasure of viewing Breaking Bad‘s Aaron Paul and Parks and Rec’s Nick Offerman in their bleak but honest film Smashed.

Now, anybody who loves the Whedonverse or Shakespeare for that matter, should/must see Much Ado. I didn’t get to see Whedon in person (heart-breaking, I know) but it was still my favorite of the festival. Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof, better known as Wesley and Fred, play Beatrice and Benedick, and they are the standouts in the film, both for the chemistry between them and their ease with Shakespeare’s iambs. But there are Whedon characters all over the place and they are wonderful to watch. Fran Kranz plays Claudio;  Reed Diamond, Don Pedro; Nathan Fillion, Dogberry; Sean Maher, Don John; Clark Gregg, Leonato; and Tom Lenk, Verges. That’s, respectively, Topher and Dominic from Dollhouse, Captain Malcolm Reynolds and Simon Tamm from Firefly, Agent Coulson from The Avengers and Andrew (my favorite) from Buffy. Basically, I geeked out hard. Oh, and it’s also a really good movie.

Smashed was very different from Much Ado, but no worse in quality. It is the story of a woman, Kate, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead of, in my mind at least, Scott Pilgrim fame who decides that she is an alcoholic and must stop drinking. The movie is honest, poignant, and ultimately gut-wrenching, especially when it deals with Kate’s marriage to Charlie, played by Aaron Paul. I have made it no secret that Jessie is my favorite character on Breaking Bad and in this movie, Paul brings the same bravado mixed with naiveté that makes me love him on his TV show. Nick Offerman also plays a role in the film as Kate’s well-intentioned mentor. It’s a departure from his comedy work, but he does a good straight man as well.  So, if you like the either show, or if you are a glutton for punishment and you like movies about couples falling apart (think Blue Valentine), then I say get thee to a theater come October 12. You won’t be sorry.

Having spent all that time at the festival, without access to regular American television, I have only just caught up on this week’s premieres. Imagine my joy when I get to come home from a two hour drive, plop down in front of my TV, and watch The New Normal, Go On and Guys with Kids. Honestly, what could be better? Besides, you know, a root canal, or a bikini wax or watching the scene from Siriana where George Clooney gets his fingernails ripped off (oof, I shutter just thinking about that scene). Ok, ok, it’s not actually that bad. But I wouldn’t call the experience good either. All three shows are flawed, severely in some cases, and it makes me wonder how many are going to make it past the three episode hazing period I give them.

Guys with Kids
Let’s start with the worst. Oh, there are so many things wrong with Guys with Kids. Pace, characterization, cliché, originality. It’s a total mess. First off, it doesn’t help that the show is filmed in front of a live studio audience. Does that make me a horrible person to say that? I used to love shows with audiences. I grew up on them. But then again, those shows were better in every other area. And tastes have changed. The live studio audience to me indicates that I’m going to find tired, cliché jokes that are delivered by actors hamming for the camera. And that’s exactly what Guys with Kids delivers. Think Scrubs’s “My Life in Four Cameras” but not funny.

Jesse Bradford especially is subject to overacting, dropping jokes like they are very heavy bricks, while Anthony Anderson clings on to the joke that he hasn’t been out of the house in years like it is his last cookie. And the women, Jaime-Lynn Sigler and Tempest Bledsoe come off as one-note characters just there so the men have something to complain about. There was a funny moment with Kareem Abdul Jabbar, but it wasn’t enough to save it for me. We’ll see if I can last two more episodes. D

The New Normal
My first thought about The New Normalwas that it was disorienting. Then I realized that because of Hulu’s annoying configuration, I had watched episode 2 before seeing the pilot. Realizing my error, I went back and rewatched everything in the correct order, and things made much more sense.

Now, The New Normal is one of the shows that NBC has been advertising heavily ever since the Olympics, and I would imagine that it is the one of the new shows that the network is proudest of. I mean, it’s got the gays, and a movie star (Ellen Barkin), and a sort of movie star (Justin Bartha) and a Broadway star (Andrew Rannells, aka, the guy from The Book of Mormon), and did I mention the gays? It’s so edgy and progressive that it has to be good, right? Well sort of.

My first thought, actually, was that besides the whole surrogacy element, the show is pretty much a rewrite of the well-conceived, poorly executed Running Wilde. You have the single mom who is trying to teach her daughter how to live and you have the kind-hearted benefactors who are kooky and a little profligate. Luckily for us, this show was more watchable than its cancelled predecessor. It’s flawed, definitely, but let’s start with the good things.

The best thing? Andrew Rannells, hands down. He is perfect as his character, Bryan, campy without being hammy, shallow without being cruel, different without being alienating. He sold me in the first scene where he talks about his future child calling him “Daddy.” The genuine emotion in that scene made me care for the character, and if I continue watching this show, it will probably be for him.

The rest of the cast is pretty great as well.  Georgia King plays a very believable, struggling single mother and Bebe Wood is rather adorable as her child. Plus she does a really spot-on impression of Little Edie. Justin Bartha isn’t perfect yet – after The Hangover, I have a little trouble seeing him in this role – but there is definite room for improvement from what I see. As for Ellen Barkin, she is the person that everyone is going to latch onto for her over the top bigotry, and yes, it was enjoyable at times, but I hope that they tone her down in the future. You can only do so many “fudge-packer” jokes before it gets old. And then there’s Nene. I am a little loath to mention her because she is so bad that she’s really out of place in the show. From the two episodes so far, she’s thrown in for a few seconds at the beginning of the show to make a few poorly delivered one-liners and then she flies off into the ether. I hope it stays that way, or better yet, she disappears entirely because she completely lacks comic timing. But I guess we’ll have to see how things go moving forward.

The other flaws in the show? Well, I’m not a fan of the random talking heads, like the two mothers in the pilot on the playground or the doctors in the second ep. It seems out of place, like the showrunners can’t decide if they want to be a mockumentary or not and so are splitting the difference and muddling the storytelling. In that same vein, the 30 Rock-style flashback/fantasy sequences are a pretty jarring. They appear as jokes shoe-horned into the episodes because the writers couldn’t figure out a joke to fit in the actual storyline. In several of the Community commentaries, Dan Harmon talks about how hard it is to write a comedy without the cross-cutting and fantasies, and I agree. I wish that The New Normal would either commit to the element, the way that Scrubs and Family Guy do, or eliminate the style all together. The half-measure that they are using right now does not appeal.

Over all, though, I liked the show enough to come back for at least a few more episodes. We’ll see if things improve. B-

Go On
The final viewing of the night went to Go On, Matthew Perry’s latest attempt to regain televisionary relevancy. I had watched the pilot back in August when it aired after one of the nights of the Olympics. Both then and now I was struck by its similarity to Community, a show which NBC has tried to disavow since its very beginning. This irony was not lost on me. But really, both are shows about curmudgeonly guys who are forced to join a group of misfits and actually finds out that he might have a place there. However, whereas Community is bold and bizarre (and awesome) in its storytelling and boundary-pushing, Go On seems to be taking a much more pedestrian and accessible path. It will probably benefit from this, but I don’t see it reaching the incredible highs that Community has.

That said, of the three shows, I laughed the most at Go On. By far, the actors have the best comic timing, which isn’t surprising given their pedigree. Not only is Perry from Friends, but there is John Cho from Harold and Kumar, Sarah Baker from The Campaign, Bill Cobbs, from nearly every role that Morgan Freeman turned down, Tyler James Williams from Everybody Hates Chris, and Seth Morris and Brett Gelman from a handful of Cartoon Network shows and Will Ferrel movies. Oh, and then there is Allison from Kings – not a comedy, but something you should really watch if you haven’t already. It’s excellent.

So, there is definitely a lot of potential in this show. And storytelling-wise, the writers seem to know how to break a show. The pilot has a clear focus of getting Perry into the group, and I feel that each character was given a moment to present him/herself through the bracket-type pain-off. And you can definitely see how things will move forward, with Perry accepting the group more and more and the group changing for the better because of the his saner, un-Stockholm-syndromed influence. The end of the episode was especially impressive, with the group chasing after the Google-car. If future episodes have that type of heart, I think I could latch on to it.

The second episode was rockier; while trying to up the ante, I think the writers bit off a little more than they could chew. Instead of the one, well-defined story, there were three: Ryan and Sonia with her cats, Ryan, Steven and George with the basketball and Ryan and Carrie with his still-present grief over his wife’s death.  The cats storyline was the best and by far the funniest. I laughed not only when everyone kept showing up with yet more felines, but also with Perry on the phone surrounded by cats and even more when Perry had to give the cats away on the side of the road. (I currently have a friend who is trying to do the same thing, and the image was just great.)

The George story of an blind man being robbed of his precious signed basketball was also great. The image of George sitting in the group circle with all his worldly possessions gave me a chuckle, and then when he started to play Coltraine, I really laughed. So random, yet so funny. This was probably the smartest joke of the episode, but I have to admit, the whole story nearly fizzled out after it. In fact, I thought they forgot about it until Ryan takes George to the basketball game. And even then, it was strange when the whole screen went black so we could hear the game.  Nice in theory, not so effective in practice.

And then there was Carries’s story. This was the least effective for me, just because it is the most well-tread. We have all seen the lonely person latch on to another friend, only to drive said friend crazy. It was done on Scrubs in “My Persepctive”; it was done on Community in “Home Economics”; and it was done on Friends in “The One with the Princess Leia Fantasy” Yes, it was sweet when Ryan got the text saying that Carrie was thinking about him. But it wasn’t enough to save the whole plot.

At this point, I think I might add Go On to my weekly viewing, but it will take a few more episodes to say for certain. Until that time, I think I will enjoy myself. Either that or NBC will cancel it before giving it a chance, which would be about my luck. We shall see, won’t we? B

Happy viewing!!

-Mary

Plagiarism…I mean, I can’t say it better than this

I would love to write a review of this week’s Breaking Bad, but after reading reviews at other sites, I realize that I could never verbalize my thoughts as well as this.

Matt Zoller Seitz at NYMag.com:

“Skyler’s haunted face is the image I’ll take away when I think about this episode. Now that the full extent of Walt’s ruthlessness has been revealed, she’s looking more like what she actually is: not a full partner in a criminal enterprise, but a prisoner in an abusive marriage. She’s the spouse of a brilliant psychopath, a man who keeps insisting that all his violence and terror is on behalf of her and their children, but who’s clearly on a power trip and that often verges on delusions of godhood — and not without reason. When all the evidence flew through the air and slammed into the concrete wall, I thought of Magneto in the X-Men films, and of the awesome and terrifying telepathic powers displayed in films like Scanners and The Fury. The hints of omnipotence (in Walt’s mind, anyway) were driven home in that exchange between Mike and Walt after the evidence locker sequence.  Mike wanted assurance that the plan actually worked. “Am I supposed to take that on faith?” Mike asked. “How do I know?” “Because I said so,” Walt replied, which is exactly what a parent tells children when asserting authority. Daddy said everything will be fine. Now shut up and go to sleep.”

Brilliant.

Laziness, thy name is Mary

In lieu of a weekly review this week, let me just say this:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Your welcome.

-Mary

Recounts and Clip Shows: It’s the May 6-12 TV Week in Review

Well, I’m back, not exactly well-rested, but better rested than before. At the very least, it was nice to have some time to do errands/laundry/catch up on shows. (I probably smell a little better now that the laundry is done, so, added bonus there.)

Now, this week, I’m thinking of taking a different approach. Really, until Thursday, there was nothing outstanding to me on TV. Yeah, there were some really good shows, Mad Men and Game of Thrones, to name two, but nothing that sparked my undying love. Then came Community and Parks and Rec and everything turned around. However, since I have already done a couple of in depth analyses of these two shows, I’m taking a break from the straight-up review. I’m still going to grade everything, but instead of doing a big breakdown of one or two shows, I’m going to do more of a “best of” tally. If that sounds weird, I promise it won’t be. Just click “Continue Reading” and play along. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

(Also, before we get started, in taking my little sabbatical last week, I missed talking about the finale of The Good Wife. I’m not sure there is too much to talk about, but I wanted to say that I did enjoy it, despite all the Kalinda stuff. I’ve said many times to my friends and family that Kalinda is not my favorite part of the show. (Shocking, I know). Everybody loves her, but I find her a little tedious in how much the writers try to make her interesting. It’s like Lisbeth Salander from The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (which I also hated). We get it, you’re edgy and mysterious. Stop gilding the lily already. But otherwise, I liked the finale and I’m looking forward to next season when Michael J Fox, I can only assume, becomes a big bad.)

Now, more after the jump.

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Girls, Girls, Girls: It’s the April 15-21 TV Week in Review

I’m currently rewatching The Office season two right now. That may seem like an odd statement to start off my weekly review, but it has its purpose. I rewatching season two, and it reminds me just how good TV can be. The season is one of the best on television, hands down, bar none, ever. Nearly every episode is excellent, from Michael dancing in “Booze Cruise” to Jim confessing his love in “Casino Night.” It’s the quality of entertainment that I want all television to have, so when I’m doing my reviews week to week, I always hope that the show I’m watching is going to have the same level of brilliance.  More often than not, I’m disappointed, but on the rare occasions that a show does step up to the plate and knock one out of the park, it’s so fulfilling that I keep coming back for more. That’s how I watch TV. It’s a little like a crack addict chasing that perfect high, but I never said that TV wasn’t my addiction. In fact, I admit that it most definitely is. And with that insight, let’s get on with the reviews.

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Disarming people on Justified and strangling women on Mad Men: It’s the April 8-14 TV Week in Review

“Sometimes, when I’m stressed out, I like to punch sharks” – Travis on Cougar Town

I was reading this week about David Simon and his dislike of internet TV critics. Now, David Simon is someone I respect artistically to a great degree. So his opinion made me take pause. But then I read this extremely well-presented article from Noel Murray over at The AV Club. Like him, I think my goal of this weekly review is really to talk about television, not ruin it. I want to know if other people feel the same way I do and to engage in conversation with them. I may not like certain episodes of TV, but I do watch the shows nonetheless, religiously for the most part. So, I hope I don’t harm anyone/thing by posting my feelings here.

Also, random thought before we start. Why does Dr. Spaceman keep trying to sell me hotels and smart phones? And “when is modern science going to find a cure for a woman’s mouth?” Just wondering.

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April 1-7: Games of Thrones, Pillows and Blankets; It’s the TV Week in Review

“You love your children. It’s your one redeeming quality… that and your cheekbones.” – Tyrion on Game of Thrones

Well, I may be a day late and dollar short, but this week’s review is finally here. I’m starting to think that I may be biting off more than I can chew with trying to do this weekly, but I’m going to keep going as long as I can. (There’s possibly a dick joke in that sentence, but that’s up to you, not me and my dirty mind). Anyway, I made it before the new week’s shows started (or close enough), so I’m going to count this as a win.

Also, let’s talk about grades for a second. It’s been suggested that I should grade the episodes each week. Now, that does have some appeal to me because it’s a far more concrete way for you, the reader, to understand how I felt about an episode. But then again… Grades are so highly subjective. You can like something, or not like it, but to attach a concrete value seems a little arbitrary to me. I think grading a television show is sort of akin to when my sophomore English teacher tried to grade our poetry and gave me an 85 on a sonnet. An 85?!? It was a f-king sonnet!! I worked really hard on it; it followed the rules; you may not have liked it but how dare you say it wasn’t “poetic” enough!! But… um… I digress… If I’m going to grade things, you have understand that there’s a scale for each show. A “B” for Mad Men is greatly different from a “B” for Castle. Every grade is going to be curved to the best episode of that specific series. Therefore, for this post only, I’m going to give my example of an “A” grade for each show, just so you know where I’m coming from.

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March 25-31: TV Week in Review

“A sex receptionist answers calls all day. A sexcretary does scheduling, light filing—basically runs the office” – Schmidt on New Girl

Well, it’s been another busy week for me. And another very sparse week of TV. Really. I can practically count the number of shows that were on on one hand. But there were some notable things, especially the return of Mad Men. Because I don’t have time to go through each show this week, I’m gonna just focus on Mad Men. Everybody cool with that? If not, oh well, I’m in charge here. The rest will get cursory reviews at the end. And that’s final.

Now, to the reviews.

March 18-24: TV Week in Review

I don’t know who told you that pouting was an option with me, but all you’re making me feel is a hatred for Renee Zellweger. – Dean Pelton “Community”

Unfortunately, I’ve been super busy this week, so this weekly review is going to take a little different form than the posts before.  I can’t really go in depth for each episode that aired this week, so it’s going to be briefer, more summary likes and dislikes in cases. Hope everyone’s okay with that. If not, too bad. These are the jokes.

However, just because I’m condensing things this week doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun. Here’s a picture, just for your viewing pleasure:

Now, the reviews are after the jump.