TV Diary
a) "Girls"
I feel so reactionary just having the need to watch this show after its mountain of advance press and having some stupid opinion about it, especially since I spent a few minutes with that Tiny Furniture movie and had a huge wave of revulsion and just had to turn it off. Anyway this show is OK for what it is, but I'm pretty indifferent to the idea of watching people sit in a New York apartment listening to MGMT and talking about living in New York or whatever, seems like the most boring and payed out possible way to be get a bunch of 'voice of a generation' talk, almost Garden State level lame, even if it's undeniably at least a little smarter and more self-aware than that (while too willing to hold up being smart and self-aware as virtues in and unto themselves and not actually do much with them).
b) "Don't Trust The B---- In Apartment 23"
I was pretty skeptical about this show ahead of time because the whole 'B-list celebrity playing unflattering caricature of themselves' thing they're doing with James Van Der Beek is so, so played out. But I like Krysten Ritter and I have to admit she's done well at really throwing herself into a pretty ridiculous role and making it work, and now and again the writing shows little glints of serious potential.
c) "Scandal"
When Vanity Fair did their big cover spread recently of women from TV and I was like "woah, Kerry Washington has a show? I need to see that." It's just aight, with a good cast, though I don't really care about any legal procedural enough to even appreciate some kind of novel twist on the genre.
d) "Magic City"
The whole "Mad Men"-birthed trend of glamorous/sexy period piece shows from the late '50s and early '60s is just kind of laughably played out and predictable at this point, but I am glad that it's come to premium cable and Starz has bankrolled this lavish, faintly pointless world of insanely hot women. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is kind of underrated and it's nice to see him headline a decent show, although he doesn't carry it as much as he probably could/should.
e) "Bent"
I feel bad for David Walton, he's a genuinely talented guy (he was hilarious in Fired Up!) and NBC clearly wants him to be a star, but they keep putting him in doomed shows -- this is the third sitcom he's had on the network in the space of 2 years. It's also by far the best of those shows, which makes its brief run (6 episodes over 3 weeks in March and April) all the more bittersweet. It's basically an update of "Who's The Boss," though.
f) "Best Friends Forever"
Another doomed new NBC sitcom, not as good as "Bent" but surprisingly aight. At first I expected the worst because I know one of the leads mainly from "Best Week Ever" and this is so low budget it looks like a web series, but the small cast has some actual chemistry and there was a pretty realistic edge to the couple-with-third-wheel-female-friend dynamic.
g) "Stevie TV"
Some chick doing unfunny pop culture impressions on VH1, which gives me serious Julie Brown flashbacks. She's pretty hot when she's not done up in some terrifying costume, but that's not very often.
h) Game Change
When I first saw brief clips of this in HBO ads a few months ago I thought it was a documentary, so when I found out that Julianne Moore was playing Sarah Palin I was just taken aback and amazed by the resemblance. Actually watching it, though, she doesn't really look that close to Palin (to be totally real here, Palin is way hotter), and the performance is okay but nothing special, although much better than Ed Harris's John McCain. On the whole the perspective and the framing of the story just fell kinda flat, although Woody Harrelson was dope as always.
i) "GCB"
When I first saw ads for this I was like hey, a sitcom with Kristen Chenoweth and a bunch of hot southern ladies, that could be good. But then I realized it's actually an hourlong drama on after "Desperate Housewives" and it's not very funny at all and didn't really stay awake through a whole episodes.
j) "Luck"
I got through a second episode of this before feeling a "Treme" level of apathy and giving up. I felt kind of relieved when it got canceled even though the circumstances of it are pretty unfortunate.
k) "Happy Endings"
Man this show has been on fire lately, really bummed that its season ended fairly early and it'll probably like 6 months until any new episodes. Damon Wayans Jr. is brilliant, which is something I never ever expected to find myself saying.
l) "Fairly Legal"
This was a very enjoyable little USA network trifle last year, I'm glad it's back. They seem to be trying to change the dynamic a little this year with a new boss, and it works well enough, although the way they introduced him (a change meeting with a guy at a bar who ends up buying the company) was kind of an unintentional echo of the last couple episodes of "Sports Night."
m) "The Voice"
I always hated the freak show auditions and then got excited about the finals in "American Idol" but I'm finding the opposite reaction with "The Voice" -- it's really fun to get introduced to the singers and see the coaches compete to claim them. But then the whole narrowing down process is not nearly as exciting, particularly those stupid boxing ring competitions where they turn a bunch of songs that aren't meant to be duets into showcases for two different singers, and it invariably becomes more about who's more suited to the material than who's better.
n) "Justified"
I was so big on the second season of this show that I almost didn't want the third season to be as good, but it really is. They've really tied all the past and present storylines really well along with some one-off plots and Neal McDonough just killing it as the main villain this year. I haven't caught up on all the episodes yet and I'm kinda pissed that "The Soup" aired a pretty huge spoiler of what happens.
o) "Shatner's Raw Nerve"
I happened upon this show one day when "Weird" Al Yankovic was the guest and wow, William Shatner is really just not a good interviewer at all. And he asked Yankovic about his parents' death in like the first 5 minutes of the show, no warming up or leading into it at all, that's totally a last-ten-minutes kind of question.
p) "Unsung"
This is still one of the best music-oriented shows on TV, although I don't get around to watching nearly as many episodes as I'd like to. The Ray Parker Jr. one was really interesting, I need to investigate his catalog more, I had no idea how many huge records he wrote or played on before going solo.
q) "Fraggle Rock"
When I was a kid I loved this show, my grandparents in Delaware had HBO and they would tape it and let us watch whenever we visited. So it made me so happy to see that Hub plays reruns of it, I watch it with my son now every morning. And even though "Sesame Street" is a better kids' show (and my son likes it more) and "The Muppet Show" is a better comedy show, there's something about "Fraggle Rock" that is so fun and strange, they created this whole intricate little world with all these different types of creatures that were all brought to live with different kinds of puppetry, and there's a whole mythology to that world and a chemistry among its characters.
I feel so reactionary just having the need to watch this show after its mountain of advance press and having some stupid opinion about it, especially since I spent a few minutes with that Tiny Furniture movie and had a huge wave of revulsion and just had to turn it off. Anyway this show is OK for what it is, but I'm pretty indifferent to the idea of watching people sit in a New York apartment listening to MGMT and talking about living in New York or whatever, seems like the most boring and payed out possible way to be get a bunch of 'voice of a generation' talk, almost Garden State level lame, even if it's undeniably at least a little smarter and more self-aware than that (while too willing to hold up being smart and self-aware as virtues in and unto themselves and not actually do much with them).
b) "Don't Trust The B---- In Apartment 23"
I was pretty skeptical about this show ahead of time because the whole 'B-list celebrity playing unflattering caricature of themselves' thing they're doing with James Van Der Beek is so, so played out. But I like Krysten Ritter and I have to admit she's done well at really throwing herself into a pretty ridiculous role and making it work, and now and again the writing shows little glints of serious potential.
c) "Scandal"
When Vanity Fair did their big cover spread recently of women from TV and I was like "woah, Kerry Washington has a show? I need to see that." It's just aight, with a good cast, though I don't really care about any legal procedural enough to even appreciate some kind of novel twist on the genre.
d) "Magic City"
The whole "Mad Men"-birthed trend of glamorous/sexy period piece shows from the late '50s and early '60s is just kind of laughably played out and predictable at this point, but I am glad that it's come to premium cable and Starz has bankrolled this lavish, faintly pointless world of insanely hot women. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is kind of underrated and it's nice to see him headline a decent show, although he doesn't carry it as much as he probably could/should.
e) "Bent"
I feel bad for David Walton, he's a genuinely talented guy (he was hilarious in Fired Up!) and NBC clearly wants him to be a star, but they keep putting him in doomed shows -- this is the third sitcom he's had on the network in the space of 2 years. It's also by far the best of those shows, which makes its brief run (6 episodes over 3 weeks in March and April) all the more bittersweet. It's basically an update of "Who's The Boss," though.
f) "Best Friends Forever"
Another doomed new NBC sitcom, not as good as "Bent" but surprisingly aight. At first I expected the worst because I know one of the leads mainly from "Best Week Ever" and this is so low budget it looks like a web series, but the small cast has some actual chemistry and there was a pretty realistic edge to the couple-with-third-wheel-female-friend dynamic.
g) "Stevie TV"
Some chick doing unfunny pop culture impressions on VH1, which gives me serious Julie Brown flashbacks. She's pretty hot when she's not done up in some terrifying costume, but that's not very often.
h) Game Change
When I first saw brief clips of this in HBO ads a few months ago I thought it was a documentary, so when I found out that Julianne Moore was playing Sarah Palin I was just taken aback and amazed by the resemblance. Actually watching it, though, she doesn't really look that close to Palin (to be totally real here, Palin is way hotter), and the performance is okay but nothing special, although much better than Ed Harris's John McCain. On the whole the perspective and the framing of the story just fell kinda flat, although Woody Harrelson was dope as always.
i) "GCB"
When I first saw ads for this I was like hey, a sitcom with Kristen Chenoweth and a bunch of hot southern ladies, that could be good. But then I realized it's actually an hourlong drama on after "Desperate Housewives" and it's not very funny at all and didn't really stay awake through a whole episodes.
j) "Luck"
I got through a second episode of this before feeling a "Treme" level of apathy and giving up. I felt kind of relieved when it got canceled even though the circumstances of it are pretty unfortunate.
k) "Happy Endings"
Man this show has been on fire lately, really bummed that its season ended fairly early and it'll probably like 6 months until any new episodes. Damon Wayans Jr. is brilliant, which is something I never ever expected to find myself saying.
l) "Fairly Legal"
This was a very enjoyable little USA network trifle last year, I'm glad it's back. They seem to be trying to change the dynamic a little this year with a new boss, and it works well enough, although the way they introduced him (a change meeting with a guy at a bar who ends up buying the company) was kind of an unintentional echo of the last couple episodes of "Sports Night."
m) "The Voice"
I always hated the freak show auditions and then got excited about the finals in "American Idol" but I'm finding the opposite reaction with "The Voice" -- it's really fun to get introduced to the singers and see the coaches compete to claim them. But then the whole narrowing down process is not nearly as exciting, particularly those stupid boxing ring competitions where they turn a bunch of songs that aren't meant to be duets into showcases for two different singers, and it invariably becomes more about who's more suited to the material than who's better.
n) "Justified"
I was so big on the second season of this show that I almost didn't want the third season to be as good, but it really is. They've really tied all the past and present storylines really well along with some one-off plots and Neal McDonough just killing it as the main villain this year. I haven't caught up on all the episodes yet and I'm kinda pissed that "The Soup" aired a pretty huge spoiler of what happens.
o) "Shatner's Raw Nerve"
I happened upon this show one day when "Weird" Al Yankovic was the guest and wow, William Shatner is really just not a good interviewer at all. And he asked Yankovic about his parents' death in like the first 5 minutes of the show, no warming up or leading into it at all, that's totally a last-ten-minutes kind of question.
p) "Unsung"
This is still one of the best music-oriented shows on TV, although I don't get around to watching nearly as many episodes as I'd like to. The Ray Parker Jr. one was really interesting, I need to investigate his catalog more, I had no idea how many huge records he wrote or played on before going solo.
q) "Fraggle Rock"
When I was a kid I loved this show, my grandparents in Delaware had HBO and they would tape it and let us watch whenever we visited. So it made me so happy to see that Hub plays reruns of it, I watch it with my son now every morning. And even though "Sesame Street" is a better kids' show (and my son likes it more) and "The Muppet Show" is a better comedy show, there's something about "Fraggle Rock" that is so fun and strange, they created this whole intricate little world with all these different types of creatures that were all brought to live with different kinds of puppetry, and there's a whole mythology to that world and a chemistry among its characters.
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on Monday, April 16, 2012 at 9:56 AM.
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