a) "The Affair"
I wasn't in a rush to check out this show initially, because I get a little weary of every other show on TV being about infidelity and broken marriages, and given the title I figured this was just gonna serve up a double helping of that and nothing else. But I'm glad I started watching it -- the whole format of the show, with the first half of each episode from his perspective, and the second half from her perspective, is pretty brilliant, mostly because it's so understated, with no big 'gotcha!' moments. And there's some kind of murder mystery brewing to drive things forward, which makes me wonder how this is gonna continue into a second season (it's already been renewed).

b) "State Of Affairs"
I am kind of fascinated by Katherine Heigl, how bad her reputation is and how she ascended up out of "Grey's Anatomy" to do movies and then made mostly flops after Knocked Up and is now back to TV. I like her and root for her, though, maybe just to be contrary but I do think she has some genuine talent and screen presence beyond just being photogenic. Any way her new show has a semi-interesting premise but I'm a little weary of network shows about the White House and government intrigue, they all seem pretty inherently frothy and ridiculous.

c) "Gracepoint"
With 8 episodes down and only 2 to go, I'm kinda getting bittersweet about this show only being a one-off miniseries, it's really good. The number of creepy people in this small town leading the detectives down red herring paths is almost kind of ridiculous, but they've still plotted it all out pretty well and connected the dots believably enough, I'm curious to see how it all ends.

d) "Brooklyn Nine-Nine"
This was a pleasant surprise last year and it's remained really consistent lately. The strength of the ensemble and how they bounce off of each other almost reminding me more of "Newsradio" or even "Taxi" than the show's "Parks & Recreation"/"The Office" pedigree.

e) "The Newsroom"
By the end of the second season I was actually beginning to warm up to "The Newsroom" and see more of what Aaron Sorkin's actually good at in it than the shortcomings his later output in general. Still, them doing a short final season is not really a disappointment to me, I feel like the guy is better off focusing on movies now, that's where all his best work has been since "The West Wing." The first episode of the season was all the things I hated about it, but the second season was really good, and introduced new characters played by Jimmi Simpson and Kat Dennings that almost make me wish the show had more than 6 episodes this season. I also like that they're giving more to Chris Messina to do, even though it's a little weird since it's hard to look at him without thinking of his "The Mindy Project" character now.

f) "New Girl"
I can't tell you how happy it makes me to see a new opening credits sequence with both Damon Wayans, Jr. and Hannah Simone in it. It's been really consistent, too, although it's become one of those weirdly divisive shows where people have these really strong opinions about it suddenly becoming irreversibly bad at some point. Like, I had no problem with the Jess/Nick coupling or how they've handled the breakup, the show never became a soap opera.

g) "Sons Of Anarchy"
This week's episode was by far the best of the season so far, which has unfortunately had a lot of stalling and getting ducks in a row so that they could save the big inevitable Jax/Gemma confrontation for the final episodes. Jimmy Smits being the one to really break down and weep was a good choice, he's really an amazing expressive actor and you really feel for him getting mixed up with this insane group.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 22, 2014 at 12:29 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.