a) "The Americans"
I like the whole premise of this show and the way they've kinda set the scene and built up the tone and context -- the selection of early '80s music in the soundtrack is really great and evocative -- but as far as the show itself I'm not really sure yet. The pilot kind of established the story in such a way that it seems so obvious where it's going to go (and the thing with them living right under the nose of a guy whose job it is to catch people like them feels a little too "Breaking Bad"), so at this point I guess I just have to see if the show is as predictable as I fear or if it has some tricks up its sleeves.

b) "The Following"
This show occasionally impresses me, with how dark and nasty a network primetime show is able to get, and some of the ways they jump around the chronology and keep you on your toes. But I dunno, doesn't really grab me, and the Kevin Bacon role doesn't really feel very meaty, no pun intended, for a film star to make the jump to TV, they really need to make that character more of a person and not just a protagonist.

c) "Continuum"
New SyFy show, I like it but not as much as my wife, the concept is kinda cool but I dunno if it may just end up a glorified procedural ultimately. Rachel Nichols is very pretty, though.

d) "Legit"

e) "Kroll Show"
Of course, there's also guys like Nick Kroll, who I think is funny as a standup or when playing some kind of normal dude not too unlike himself, but he seems to have gotten it into his head somehow that he's good at 'characters' and has filled a sketch show with all sorts of borderline offensive or at the very least deeply unfunny accents and stereotypes. There are bits here and there that have made me laugh, the show may grow on me, but on the surface I'm kind of against the whole idea of the show.

f) "The Jeselnik Offensive"
And then there's really lazy shows like this, where Comedy Central just puts a comic in front of an audience and has him do some topical jokes and loosely organized segments about current events. Anthony Jeselnik is kind of well suited for this, though, in that his sense of humor is really mean so he's just letting loose and not doing really bland pop culture riffs. Also, I find his standup unnerving because he tends to take really long pauses between lines, and it feels like maybe the structure of the show makes him pick up the pace so that that's not a problem.

g) "1600 Penn"
It's been fun to laugh at NBC's terrible business decisions while they at least had a bunch of great shows on the air, but now that "30 Rock" is gone and a lot of their other shows are headed off the air or downhill, but now that they're greenlighting shows like this it's all just kind of sad. I don't know who I feel worse for, Bill Pullman, who's got genuine comedy chops but is barely even in this, or the girl who played 'Becca' in Super Bad who once again plays a character named 'Becca' on this show.

h) "Newsreaders"
I loved the show-within-a-show "Newsreaders" episodes of "Childrens Hospital," so I'm pretty thrilled that they made it into a spinoff show, so far it's exactly what I hoped it would be.

i) "Burning Love"
Apparently last year this was a web series, and I'm glad they finally found a place for it on TV, since I don't really watch web serieses and it's kind of ridiculously stocked with talent -- produced by Ben Stiller (who makes some cameos), starring some "The State" guys, full of famous and semi-famous movie actresses, all doing a really hilarious over-the-top parody of "The Bachelor." Unfortunately, it's on E!, buried in a 'mock block' with "After Lately," when it would probably better find an audience on Adult Swim or Comedy Central.

j) "Love You, Mean It"
It was pretty ridiculous that for a minute before this was canceled Whitney Cummings had 3 TV shows on the air, but I actually thought this stupid talk show on E! was way more enjoyable than either of the sitcoms she created. She just seemed kind of relaxed and funny in a way that the hosts of these kinds of shows seldom are, the whole thing had a nice vibe.

k) "Catfish: The TV Show"
I thought the movie was kinda dumb and forgettable, and that it seemed even tackier for them to do a TV version. But I was wrong, serializing the concept as a TV series is totally a better look than the movie ever was. The "Nev" guy is still pretty irritating, but a lot of the stories are undeniably compelling, or at the very least kind of ridiculous and hard to look away from.

l) "Mockingbird Lane"
I love Bryan Fuller and always want him to have a TV show on the air, but a "Munsters" reboot is kind of a waste of both his and Eddie Izzard's talents. Still, the pilot wasn't bad, and I'm glad NBC at least aired it as a one-off special just so I could see it what it would've been. So win/win, I guess.

m) "Girls"
This show kind of won me over somewhat by the end of the first season, but I feel like the second season has been another, steeper climb to get over what feel like a whole bunch of shortcomings that are becoming more glaring with each episode. There are suddenly so many soap opera shouting matches in this show, and it's becoming stifling how often the dialogue goes to "oh yeah, we took it there" extremes where a show with a smarter sense of drama or narrative might actually let some subtext go unsaid now and again or, gasp, let the actors do some of the heavily lifting instead of just delivering these emotional data dump speeches. And really, just some appallingly stupid plotlines lately, only occasionally balanced out by some smart writing or funny moments.

n) "Smash"
It gets harder and harder to defend this show, especially now that "Nashville" is doing such a better job of putting an ensemble drama against a music backdrop, but I dunno, I enjoy it even with its many obvious shortcomings. Also, I did a job a while back where I worked with Megan Hilty for a few minutes, and she seemed cool, I liked her.

o) "Community"
I loved this show as much as anybody did the first two years, and would probably have been as upset as anybody if Dan Harmon went out after that instead of the mild letdown of the third season. But now the whole thing with all the handwringing about showrunners and people pretending the show was ever more than just a really good sitcom has just made the whole situation insufferable. The new episodes so far, they're not that great, but not much of a dropoff from season 3. Halloween episode had some big laughs. I dunno, feel like people have really sucked a lot of the fun of this show from outside of it, it's a bummer.

p) "30 Rock"
Meanwhile this show NEVER fell off EVER, one of the most consistent sitcoms to ever be on the air as long as it was. Finale didn't kill me as much as it did for some people, but I would still say they went out on top.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 01, 2013 at 11:37 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.