a) "Drunk History"
I don't watch a lot of Funny Or Die videos, or a lot of web comedy stuff in general, but easily my favorites that I'd seen were some of the "Drunk History" shorts, so I was pretty excited to hear they were doing a TV show, and so far it has not disappointed. My favorites are the ones where Jen Kirkman is the storyteller, the one the other night with Winona Ryder in the reenactment was great. Just such a completely absurd concept, so hysterically funny to me.

b) "Under The Dome" 
It's nice that people are finally realizing that Stephen King adaptations might often be better suited to a TV series than a one-off movie, and this one had some potential, but really the pilot left me cold, so I didn't stick with it. Casting and characterization is everything in a show like this, and I just didn't wanna spend any time inside the dome with these people, don't really care about their plight.

c) "High School USA!"
This is one of the shows that FOX debuted last weekend as part of the Adult Swim-style 'ADHD' Saturday night block, which probably couldn't have been worse if one of the shows was "Mad TV Babies." This is basically just an Archie comics parody with sexting jokes and other R-rated foolishness, reminds me of nothing so much as "Drawn Together," which was also awful. Dino Stamatopoulos has written for some great shows, but this is just puerile garbage.

d) "Axe Cop"
Another FOX ADHD thing, not as bad but another kind of corny cartoon satire we've already seen enough of, in this case of action movies.

e) "Devious Maids"
This show is interesting to me because it's like Eva Longoria said, 'hey, there's not a lot of work for Latina actresses on English-speaking television, we all fight over these crappy housekeeper roles... so I'll make a show with enough crappy housekeeper roles for everybody!"

f) "Maron"
I've always liked Marc Maron as a comic, but I have no desire to listen to podcasts and don't really understand his enormously popular reinvention as a mediocre interviewer of other comedians. I gave this show a shot even though comics-playing-themselves shows are generally pretty lazy if you're not Seinfeld or at least Louie C.K., but the first episode about how people like Dave Foley so much more than Marc Maron just reminded me how much I like Dave Foley and didn't really wanna watch a show about the other guy.

g) "The Newsroom"
Lately I've been going back and re-watching "Sports Night" for the umpteenth time to remind myself what great television Aaron Sorkin was once capable of, since I knew I'd make myself watch the new season of "The Newsroom" even if it was terrible. So far, though, it's not; most of the first season's flaws are intact, but there've been a a good number of really strong, compelling scenes already, even if they're sometimes soon followed by some incredibly stupid or insufferably contrived development soon after. The scene where Maggie's roommate just destroys her for the passive aggressive bullshit of encouraging her to date the guy she liked was so good it almost made the whole awful love triangle plot worth it.

h) "True Blood"
I often felt like I enjoyed this show more in spite of Alan Ball than because of him, so I'm not surprised the season after he left has been pretty strong. Doesn't feel like the stakes (no pun intended I promise) are very high so far but it's at least been entertaining, the lack of Sookie/Bill drama is pretty liberating.

i) "King & Maxwell"
This seemed OK, but I can only stomach these basic cable procedurals if the leads are really entertaining or likable, and this was just kinda bland.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 31, 2013 at 11:58 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.