a) "Inside Amy Schumer"
As Amy Schumer's profile as a comic has steadily risen and she's turned up in more TV shows, I've mentioned here now and again that she and I went to the same college and co-starred in a student film 10 years ago (I went through the whole story and linked the film here). But it's still pretty wild to me that she ended up as the star of her own Comedy Central show, which has already been renewed for a second season. CC's tendency to give tons of comics Chappelle's Show-type sketch-driven star vehicles has resulted in a lot of really terrible television, and I'm happy to say hers is one of the best of the lot (maybe 2nd best after Key & Peele?). Sometimes the post-Sarah Silverman 'edgy' bent to the sex and race humor is really tiresome, but for the most part I think she's often a hilarious comic and the show has preserved her voice pretty well. I haven't even talked to Amy since those few weeks where she was playing my only acting role's love interest, but I still feel kinda proud of her. The 'sex tip' sketch in the finale tonight was hysterical.

b) "Ray Donovan"
I've never been much of a fan of Liev Schrieber, and from the exterior this looked like a really boilerplate 'gritty cable drama with antihero protagonist' show, but the pilot was pretty fast and surprisingly charming, which either means it's got serious potential or nowhere to go but down. In any event, I'm intrigued and cautiously optimistic.

c) "Family Tree"
Christopher Guest's movies have had such diminishing returns that switching to a TV show at least seemed like a good bet to see if things would work better now in that format. This really didn't hook me, though, felt like they made the ostensibly wise decision to root the show in something a little less over-the-top than, say, Best In Show, but the result is that it's rarely very funny and gets kinda ho hum.

d) "The Goodwin Games"
A show starring T.J. Miller from the creators of "How I Met Your Mother" should have loads of potential, but this is just kinda forgettable. There were some definite laughs the one time I watched it, but the whole premise and everything, it just doesn't work.

e) "Deon Cole's Black Box"
When he first started showing up onscreen toward the end of Conan's "Tonight Show" run, and then even more on "Conan," it really just felt like they were throwing up their hands and acknowledging that they had a really funny black writer who was giving them material that a white comic, especially Conan, just could not get away with saying. But over the past year as he's gotten more and more screen time, Deon Cole has lost some weight and gotten more animated with his delivery and it's really just felt like he's been feeling himself and enjoying the attention to the point that he's not as funny as he was in his initial appearances. So I was pretty skeptical when TBS went ahead and gave him his own show. It's pretty funny in parts, but he's really just mining some really tired race humor tropes a lot of the time.

f) "Veep"
I really liked this show in the first season, and was really geeked to be on the set of the show in Columbia, Maryland a few months ago when I worked on a PSA that Julia Louis-Dreyfus was in (the set is way bigger than it looks on TV, it's all these big fake walls and matte paintings inside a giant warehouse). But I think it's really hit its stride in the second season, the show just feels funnier and more tightly constructed, less reliant on just purely filthy language for laughs.

g) "The Venture Bros."
It's weird to realize that "The Venture Bros." premiered 10 years ago, and is just now only premiering its 5th season. But really I have no problem with a show stretching out its run more than even "The Sopranos" if it's this goddamn good. There were times in the 3rd or 4th season, when it might've felt like they were getting away from what the show's about or didn't have enough Brock, but now it feels like they're just committed to constantly expanding the show's universe and letting the relationships between characters change, all in service of hysterical dialogue and completely insane storylines. Got irritated by the stop motion bit in a recent episode, but otherwise the 5th season has been great so far, the hourlong premiere was epic.

h) "The Daily Show"
I've never been the hugest John Oliver fan and had previously thought him best in small doses, but for the most part he's been killing it in this summer guest host stint. I occasionally find myself missing Jon Stewart or wondering how he would've approached a gag, but in general the show hasn't missed a beat, while also not being so great that I won't be happy when Stewart comes back.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 03, 2013 at 8:36 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.