TV Diary
1. Pushing Daisies
I've been binging on the new slate of primetime shows, after starving for decent first-run TV for the last few months with little to subsist on other than a subpar season of "Entourage" and a few guilty pleasure Summer reality shows that weren't actually that pleasurable. The Fall season is kind of depressing and exciting at the same time, because most of the new shows invariably suck, and even the ones that are good are unlikely to survive a full year, which really puts the pressure on to enjoy and support them while they're here. So far, this is my favorite of the new season, which I hadn't heard about at all beforehand but has apparently been really well reviewed. The premise is somewhat similiar to Jeff Goldblum's recent short-lived mid-season replacement, "Raines": a guy who talks to the dead, and tries to solve their murder or cause of death. But in "Raines" it was all in his head, while this one goes all the way supernatural with the concept, albeit in a more overtly comedic and almost overbearingly cutesy way. But the love story at the center of it is kind of touching, the unknowns in the cast are likeable, and it's good to see Chi McBride finally get a role that taps into his comedic talents in a series for the first time since "The John Laroquette Show," after a run of playing it straight on shows like "House" and "Boston Public."
2. "Chuck"
Conversely, this is one of the other best reviewed new Fall shows, but it's pretty much the worst one I've seen so far (granted, I haven't seen "Cavemen" yet). It's an 'action comedy' with no sense of tone, poorly shot action sequences, and zero laughs. Part of it's that the lead guy sucks (the blonde girl has potential, though), but mostly I can't believe they gave this thing a full hour timeslot. I've only watched it in passing, during commercial breaks from CBS, but this probably could've been done better as a half hour comedy and go for a modern "Get Smart" vibe. While I'm glad NBC has held onto "30 Rock" and some other good shows with unspectacular ratings, it seems like a total bonehead move that they didn't produce a single new half-hour sitcom for the Fall season (and its one comedy mid-season replacement, "The IT Crowd," has reportedly been pre-emptively cancelled already).
3. "Reaper"
This show has a lot in common with "Chuck": it's a comedic action show, about a young guy who works at a fictional stand-in for a real-life chain store (in "Chuck," Best Buy becomes Buy More, in "Reaper" Home Depot becomes Work Bench) and gets unexpectedly saddled with a life-changing responsibility (in "Chuck" spies are after the guy, in "Reaper" the guy has to work for Satan). This one is a lot less hyped, mainly because it's on the CW, but it's better in just about every way as far as I can tell. It's also good to see Bret Harrison in a series again so soon after "The Loop" was unjustly cancelled.
J.G. got hooked on this show right away, although she admitted up front that it's kind of trashy/cheesy, but I gave it a chance, partly because of the involvement of Kristen Bell, and I'm still feeling burned about the cancellation of "Veronica Mars." It's really just kind of blank and barely there, though, partly because Bell is more magnetic and charismatic in her 2 minutes of voice-over narration than the rest of the cast is in the whole episode. Plus it feels like so much more could be done with a scripted drama that feels like a clusterfuck of Cruel Intentions, Paris Hilton and "Laguna Beach" and totally preys on our national obsession with spoiled, debauched rich kids. The girl who plays Blair is cute, though.
5. "Moonlight"
Another show with "Veronica Mars" alumni (Scientologist and accurately typecast charismatic creep Jason Dohring) and it's about vampires, which is a twofer pretty much guaranteed to get J.G. watching. I only watched a little of it, seems decent. Shannyn Sossamon's role is so small that I didn't even realize it was her.
Another weird recycled-feeling new show, as Josh pointed out to me the other day, with Peter Krause playing a guy not unlike his "Six Feet Under" character who inherits the family business after his father dies. But then, I never liked "Six Feet Under" and mostly know Kruase for "Sports Night," so that's not really a hang-up for me. Also circling the same funny/trashy/dramatic axis that's so in vogue in TV these days (it's seriously like the networks stopped aiming for HBO territory with their more ambitious shows and started shooting for "Nip/Tuck" instead). Still kind of undecided about this, some of the cast is good and some of it is really bad, and the camera-work is all spastic and makes me nauseous. If I get hooked on this I won't be proud of myself. And there's Samaire Armstrong in a supporting role, joining Shannyn Sossamon in the "how the it-girls of yesteryear have fallen" files.
This show reminds me of "Beauty And The Geek," in that its foundation is a really antiquated, 1980's "Revenge Of The Nerds"-type depiction of geeks that rings hollow these days. And it's not that I'm enough of a nerd to feel misrepresented or self-righteous, it's more like, in a youth culture where a huge percentage of young males can quote Star Wars at length and play video games all day, the stereotypical nerd they're presenting is really outdated and Urkel-ish. But then, J.G. is more of a science geek than me, and she thinks this show is hilarious, so maybe there's something there that I'm just not getting. Of course, all Chuck Lorre shows are rooted in hoary old comedy formulas, but I can understand "Two And A Half Men"'s popularity, I see where it succeeds and almost transcends that formula. I really can't see this show doing that.
At this point, Saget's been working against his "Full House" image with dirtier and dirtier material longer than that show was even on the air, so it's kind overkill for this HBO special to be nothing more than a reiteration of that schtick, which most people have probably been aware of at least since The Aristrocrats. But the sad thing about this is how shockingly bad it is, even compare to other times I've seen Sagat do standup. He just keeps babbling, with no sense of timing or pacing, as if to play up the idea that he has a sort of comedic Tourette's, and it ultimately comes off like an incompetent attempt at Sarah Silverman-style shock comedy.
I might've said something like this before, but my favorite thing about this show, aside from it being set in Baltimore and showing a somewhat friendlier side of the town than, say, "The Wire," is that despite the Food Network calling it a 'docu-soap,' it's one of the least soap-y reality shows on television. It's just people working really hard at an interesting job that they mostly seem to really enjoy doing, and there's no real drama aside from the occasional suspense of a cake collapsing or something. J.G. and I have talked about getting some kind of weird groom's cake from them for our wedding, but I'm undecided about whether I want to do that (the only obvious idea so far is a drumset cake, which they've already done on the show, and I'd want to do something more original). I'd say that I have a crush on Elena, but it feels weird saying that about someone who may be like blocks away from me right now when it's just a TV crush. I think they did a cake for the City Paper a while back, I wonder if that's featured on a recent or upcoming episode.
10. "Meerkat Manor"
It's probably a cliche at this point to say that this is one of the most dramatic and involving reality shows on television, despite being about animals, but it remains pretty much true. The show has always tempered the inherent cuteness of its subjects by not flinching from the darker plot developments, stating at the beginning of every episode that these are the "real life and death events" of the meerkats. But that contrast has become really stark this season, with Animal Planet's ad campaign becoming really silly and goofy, and the most recent episodes featuring one heartbreaking story after another. I think there were 3 consecutive episodes that featured the deaths of newborn meerkat pups. And in last week's episode, there was a death of a major character that was honestly pretty emotional and hard to watch, and I'm gonna go ahead and avoid spoilers and not say who.
This show would be more interesting if it was about a guy who did airbrush designs on the hoods of trucks.
Amy Schumer got eliminated from the show like 2 days after I posted about how I know her, but still, she had a pretty good run. And while I haven't always been crazy about John Reep, he was really consistent on the show and I totally see why he won. He killed on their fake Friar's Club Roast exercise.
This is the most laughably, transparently scripted 'reality' show (I hate using scare quotes for that, but seriously) on television, more than Laguna Beach, probably even more than that show about the Coreys if I'd bothered to watch it. The most pathetic instance, during a contrivance in which Gene leaves his wallet or whatever on a cab and then hails another cab to chase it and get his stuff back, the driver, like he's reading off a cue card, tells Gene that he watches the show, and asks him about a particular recent plot point. Come on, nobody watches this show (OK, correction: Wikipedia says it's "the second highest rated show on A&E, only behind Dog the Bounty Hunter," although that probably says more about A&E than the show). The son Nick is kind of weird to watch, though, mainly because he looks and talks so much like Gene he's like an eerie clone. Except he comes off more likeable, but then everyone is more likeable than Gene Simmons.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, October 04, 2007 at 3:35 PM.
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