Monthly Archives: September 2012

Series premieres: Ben and Kate, Partners

The PolyBlog
September 26 2012

I confess that my attraction to situation comedies is pretty low. I watched Cheers, Seinfeld, Cosby Show, Friends, etc. but never religiously. In short, comedies are rarely must-see TV for me. Part of that is the type of comedy that is out there, which in my mind comes in one of two forms:

  • Stars who are “X” — Fat like Mike and Molly, gay like Will, male and single like Men with Kids, neurotic like Whitney, etc. Because you don’t need a premise for a show, you just need to know that fat, gay, single or neurotic people are automatically funny;
  • Stereotype extremes — Like Corner Gas or The Office, these are characters who are one-dimensional and who you would never meet in real life. Because one trick ponies are apparently funny.

I confess that sometimes I slip off my high horse and watch the premieres, hoping that someone will rise above the drech that is common. That’s how I started watching How I Met Your Mother (which is consistently inconsistent in quality) and The Big Bang Theory (which has strong archetypes (rather than stereotypes) who are trying to be normal or at least thinking they already are normal). When HIMYM or BBT veer into stereotypes or one-trick ponies, the shows suck, don’t get me wrong. Raj on BBT drives me bonkers, and if I was Ted’s kids on HIMYM, he’d already been dead and buried by now.

But it’s premiere time, and I gave Ben and Kate a try. Ben and Kate are brother and sister, with Kate being a single mom of a five year old girl. The premise sounded potentially interesting — Ben moves in, both trying to grow up, etc. Then the show started, and Ben is a stereotype character culled from an Adam Sandler-casting call reject letter. The dialogue was terrible, woodenly delivered by both Ben and Kate, as well as their friends. Five minutes in I was ready to gouge my eyes out. I thought perhaps I was being harsh, but my wife was in full agreement — the show just plain stunk. Pass.

Partners is a horse of a different colour, but I didn’t have much more luck with it. There are four main characters — two architects and their significant others. Making for a foursome — one hetero couple, one gay. David Krumholtz plays the stable, conservative, rational half of the architect business, and that is not a great opening. I didn’t realize it was him until the show started, and if I had known, I might have taken a pass. I liked him in Numb3rs, and last year’s The Playboy Club, but comedy? A bit wooden, albeit playing a wooden character. Add in the fact that his gf is played by Sophia Bush (Brooke from One Tree Hill) and alarm bells start ringing…except she wasn’t horrendous in the first episode. The real pain comes from ultra-flamboyant Michael Urie playing gay architect Louis…I never watched Ugly Betty (even though, you know, braces must be funny!) so have no idea if he was any good there, but he is so far over the top here, it’s cringe-worthy. Think of Jack from Will and Grace — except make him one of the two leads. Oddly enough, despite the pain, he does pull off the best scenes of the premiere, but only when he’s with Sophia — when you put his partner at home or partner at work in the scene, it dies a quick death.

The oddest casting for me though is Brandon Routh as his gay partner, Wyatt. I thought Routh did a great job rebooting the Superman franchise back in 2006, but the powers-that-be apparently didn’t agree. I also liked him on Chuck. But he plays a somewhat dumbed-down innocent nurse in this series, and there just wasn’t enough of his character to see if it will gel. Unfortunately, though, he also seems to be deigned to be the proverbial double-entendre guy so they can all be “oooh, aren’t we risque, we’re doing double-entendre but with gay entendres!”. Those aspects of the show went over like lead balloons, just nothing there. In the end, the show didn’t completely blow chunks, but with a busy PVR, this one definitely does not make my taping schedule.

See you around the channels…

Series premieres: Common Law, Copper and The Almighty Johnsons

The PolyBlog
September 24 2012

I watched all of these three shows on speciality networks, which are really starting to turn out to be my go-to channels when I want something different. However, “new” and “different” doesn’t mean “good”, and swinging for the fences doesn’t always mean a home run.

Common Law was like a 2012 version of Miami Vice, except the partners don’t get along and wind up in couples counselling. I’m sure that is interesting to someone, or they thought it would give it a comic edge, but all it did was make it boring. Yawn.

Copper had a better pedigree, looking at a cop coming of age in the working class ghetto of NYC in the 1800s. I watched the first episode, where you find out he is a relatively good cop, not entirely ethical, some rough edges, etc. Throw in politics above that he has no interest in, and life is both bleak and grand at the same time. Sure, there’s a backstory about his family and who might have killed them, and he used to be a soldier too. All the new shows have backstory, of course. And, oh look, procedurals are interesting, so let’s throw in some 1800’s forensics. Canada has a cleaner, upright version called Murdoch Mysteries, and I don’t watch it either. I watched the first episode and never found a single character for whom I cared about their story or their outcome. Another pass.

The Almighty Johnsons may be mislabeled as a “new” show, as it is more “new to me”. It is a NZ import, and I quite like most of it. The main plot revolves around 20-year-old Axl who has his 21st birthday and finds out he’s a god. Not a “golden god” like in Almost Famous, but an actual god. Norse, actually, building on NZ lore that the norse gods of old mythology sailed away and landed in New Zealand with their descendants. Axl has 3 brothers and a supposed “cousin” who turns out to be his official grandfather. Olaf is an oracle who tells them all what things mean, when he isn’t surfing, having sex, or getting high. An old soul in a young body. Axl’s brother Anders is the god of poetry and words, or as a goddess refers to him, the god of PR and bull****. He can tell weakminded women what to do and they do it, although most of the time it is just telling them to sleep with him. Another brother, Ty, is the god of all things cold and dark, which comes in handy as he is a refrigerator repairman — if he touches things, and uses his power, he can freeze them. Mike is the responsible brother, which is funny as he is the god of games — any game, any type of chance, he can win. And he refuses to use his power as everytime he does, someone near him seems to have bad luck as a result. Mike is married, and even his wife doesn’t know he’s a god. The only ones who do know their secret are a collection of four goddesses who are tired of playing second fiddle to male gods. But all that is about to change — Axl is actually Odin. God of gods. And if he finds his beloved goddess, Frigg, they all get their full powers. And so launches the quest — to find Frigg, unite the two lovers, and reap the powerful climax. So to speak.

Each episode is partly about the quest, and partly about the gods learning to live seemingly normal lives with normal issues, complicated by their pseudo powers. Mike is the luckiest man alive, but can’t get his wife pregnant; Ty falls in love and ends up always turning cold; Anders says he’s fine because he sleeps with whoever he fancies; and Olaf is just drifting through life, a free spirit. No one knows how to find Frigg, but it’s kind of silly — unless the writers don’t have any clue what they are doing, or they thought they were being coy, the “right” girl for Axl is clear. He has the hots for his female roommate, as does she for him…her name is Gaia. Yep, mother earth. Not a “goddess” per se, but obviously written in Season 1 to be his possible destiny, even if Axl is too blind to see it. She may not be Frigg, or she may be who knows, but she is the right girl for Axl. So far. 🙂 Of course, as of the last episode I’ve seen, he just met a goddess named Eva who blew him away!

Loving the show, will be sorry to see Season 1 end shortly.

See you around the channels…

Series premiere: Perception

The PolyBlog
September 20 2012

I know what most people think when they think “weekly procedural”…it’s the same thing the suits think at the studios. “Why would I watch this one? What’s different about it?”.

Columbo had his mannerisms. Jessica Fletcher was a crime writer and did her Miss Marple routine. Castle moved Jessica out of mild murders and brings a fiction writer’s perspective to the NYPD, Patrick Jane was a mentalist / psychic / con artist, Cal Lightman could detect facial micro-expressions to tell when someone was lying, Shawn Spencer pretends to be a PSYCH-ic detective but is much like Jane or Lightman. There are a bevy of female medical examiners, journalists of varying stripes, telepathic Listeners, P.I.s, and damaged cops.

So we need something new. Something fresh. Something familiar, but new. How about Eric McCormack as a psychology professor…but he can’t be gay like Will and Grace, we’ll make him straight. And give him a female partner. Someone young and innocent looking. A former student now a cop. No, better, the FBI. But he can’t just be a psych expert, he needs something else, a twitch, an itch, a damaged history to make him torn. How about a mental illness, like Goren in L&O: CI? Maybe schizophrenia and his hallucinations will be his brain creating physical manifestations of his detection of clues? Like a doctor that doesn’t really exist talking to him and telling him what to look for through cryptic hints. And an ex-gf who “completes” him, keeps him grounded, but despite being a real person, exists only in his imagination. To quote George Costanza, “Now there’s a show.”

And it is, actually. I am making fun of their thought process in pitching it to the suits, but it surprisingly works. Not once have I looked at McCormack and thought, “Will as a detective”. Then again, I wasn’t a hugeWill & Grace fan. Watched occasionally, but wasn’t “must-see” TV for me. Not even when Harry Connick Jr. showed up and did decent turn. Good dialogue writing, lots of snappiness, but the show bored me. Here, the show is not boring.

The format of the show is relatively straightforward, even formulaic. The professor will talk to his class, explaining an area of neuropsychology to them, which by happy coincidence will be related to the case for the week. Sure, it’s exposition by dialogue, but it works. You get the deeper question, and then FBI girl comes in and asks for his help with her latest case. I have no idea why she seems so young and he looks like he is ancient in comparison (admittedly McCormack does turn 50 next year and she’s 33, but it seems more like 55 and 25). But I digress…as the show progresses, he’ll start to have schizophrenic episodes, hallucinations, etc., they’ll reveal a clue to the solution to the case, and voila, they’ll solve it. Then back to the classroom to wrap up the psycho philosophy that explains everything.

I like the show, it zips along okay. The “professor solves everything” might get a little tired, but no one has tired of Patrick Jane or Columbo yet, so maybe not. I’m not sure the psychology is completely sound as presented, but I don’t care, it’s a plot device, not a documentary. I’ll watch for as long as it’s on, but it’s one of those short-season-network-shows, probably ending just in time to give me Rizzioli and Isles (weekly procedural with female rogue cop and female rogue ME as partners…how is that I only just realized that Isles is the same actress (Sasha Alexander) who played Cate Todd on NCIS? I wouldn’t even have thought of it except that I just saw a rerun with her last night. Weird. Anyway.).

See you around the channels…

Series premiere: Revolution

The PolyBlog
September 19 2012

I had high hopes for this show, and after watching the premiere, I think I’m down to just hoping it sticks around long enough to find a following and doesn’t suck after episode three. The basic premise of the show is that some sort of “event” happened where, as one character put it, the laws of physics went crazy and everything just stopped working, with nobody knowing why. It’s an exaggerated answer, but the reality is that all electrical devices stopped immediately. Even batteries died. No power, anywhere (although technically you only see it disappear in North and South America, and really only in the U.S.). However, the show then jumps fifteen years into the future and you see how life in the mid-west at least has adapted.

Some people have set up little villages, living cooperatively to grow food etc., hunting with crossbows and arrows, etc. A militia is ruling the area and thinks a guy named Ben knows how the blackout happened and, potentially, how to get the power back on. There is some evidence for the viewer that this is indeed true — he knew it was about to happen, tried to stock up on water and rations just before the blackout, and downloaded a whole bunch of data about “something” onto a flash drive too. He ends up being killed by the militia just at the start of the show, and his daughter goes off in search of his brother Miles. Throw in a step-mom-like character who has some skills with the dark art of combat, a mysterious friend of the girl’s father who may have ulterior motives, a power hungry general in the militia, and some shadowy people running some sort of secret underground that has a working Commodore 64 that can be powered with a special device that is identical to Ben’s original flash drive, and you have a great mythology to work with, or against, as a backdrop.

When I saw the trailers, I thought, “Okay, this looks a bit like the Hunger Games — strong female lead (the daughter), running around with a bow and arrow, political shenanigans for power in a dystopian future of some sort.” I also saw her potential love interest, who is a complete ripoff of Taylor Lautner’s portrayal of Jacob in Twilight and thought, “I bet the casting call was for a new Lautner”. But I could work with it.

Yet most of the online discussion talks about how it is like Flashforward or Lost, etc. Having seen the episode, there is something really odd I don’t get — not a single comparison to the show Jericho. Except it seems far more comparable.

There was a catastrophic event (nuclear detonations in Jericho, black out in Revolution). People ended up being cut off from rest of society in many respects. Shadowy figures with cryptic comms devices and knowledge of what really happened. Conspiracies with power-hungry people. Lone character (Jericho = man; Revolution = girl) must lead a team back to civilization. For me, the only real change was male/female lead, and that it is not “right after the event:” but supposedly fifteen years in future.

Not entirely sure how a four or five year old child goes fifteen years in the future and yet has maturity of sixteen year old, but I am picking nits. I like the Miles character (her uncle), supposedly expert combat soldier, and there’s a fantastic fight scene (hand to hand and swords!) in the opening so you can see he’s no pushover. There’s the young love interest, and he actually has some presence. A stupid posturing character, but actual presence in the character. There’s a whole substory about why she can’t run and hide i.e. the militia has her brother (think the movie The Patriot with Mel Gibson and you know how the conversation with the militia goes wrong at the beginning of the show, just substitute kid dying for father dying here).

But just as Jericho achieved limited success, once you get down to the story of the week and without the special effects and budget of the premiere, the show is going to start to devolve into “character” (which is great in some ways), or their relationships (ruh roh), and the plot will start to lag. Plus they have the challenge of flashbacks being needed to fill in gaps, yet dragging you out of the impetus of the present-day storyline. Flashbacks are REALLY hard to do regularly and keep the audience attention — flashbacks generally suck because whatever tension there was in the past, it’s fifteen years later. You likely know who died and who didn’t, so the stakes are low. Spend too much time in the past, lose momentum; spend all your time in the present, need too much exposition through dialogue. It’s a conundrum.

My real complaint in the first episode is that Charlie, the daughter, is no Katniss. Her father says she’s strong, and can do whatever needs to be done, but you basically see her spend the rest of the episode (except for one very brief part of a larger scene) either being helpless and crying or helpless and getting her butt kicked. I hope she doesn’t spend many episodes crying because the actress sucks at it. Totally unbelievable, and boring. Not a scintilla of emotional investment that resonates with the audience at all. The only acting in the show that is worse is the brother. He’s practically a blank screen, no presence at all. I can’t believe he wasn’t recast. Unless they tend to turn him into beefcake sometime.

Like I said, I liked the potential storyline for this one, but I was also one of the few who signed on for Jericho and Fastforward. Both of those died young, and I’m not holding on for Revolution to make it to year 2. I’ll watch, but I’m doubtful.

See you around the channels.

The new 2012 TV season is upon us…

The PolyBlog
September 17 2012

I started watching some of the new shows as they trickled into the summer slots. I confess I was more taken with some of the summer series — Continuum, Suits, White Collar, etc. on networks like Bravo, Showcase and Space. The downside is that most of them are only 10 or 12 episodes per season, which makes some of the arcs a little short. I loved Continuum, enough to start an episode guide; Suits blasted through Season 2 way too fast and loose, but the final episode paid off big time with a new hottie in young Mike’s life (who looks a LOT like Donna, just saying) and lots of political shenanigans at the firm; and White Collar is finishing its Season 2 arc even though I think USA network is already into or done Season 4. An episode disappeared a couple of weeks ago — they advertised it and never showed it. I have no clue what’s going on there. Rizzioli and Isles is about to start again as is Covert Affairs and, I think, Lost Girl. In Plain Sight wrapped the season and the series, and I was pleased to see that Mary didn’t suddenly become the Stepford Mom.

However, this is about the new season, not the old seasons, so let’s get on with it. But be warned — there be spoilers beyond this point.

Grimm added itself to my PVR roster last year, as the dark fantasy alternative to Once Upon A Time. Grimm is pretty dang good, with lots of mysteries. The season ended with Nick meeting his supposedly-dead mom, and his fiancee going into a coma from a witch’s spell just as Nick was about to tell her about the beast world. New season opened and his fiancee has forgotten who he is AT ALL, let alone being a Grimm, and yet Nick’s cop partner finds out his secret. Throw in Monroe and his gf, and suddenly Nick’s got a posse helping him with the wild creatures that go bump in the night. The mom episodes were great, but didn’t last long enough, and Nick didn’t seem to be as affected as he should be. But I’m picking nits. I love the show, definitely on my PVR for the future.

Go On is the new Matthew Perry vehicle and I confess I was one of the few people who didn’t like Friends that much, yet turned into Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and loved it. I even gave his arena show a go last fall, but it didn’t gel. This one was worth a go, but I struggled for the first episode. Basic premise is that he is a DJ who lost his wife, his boss wants him to go for grief counselling, he doesn’t want to go, ultimatum is given after a meltdown, he goes. But he wants to skate through it, blow it off. Best scene in the premiere is him turning a therapy session into a Final Four grief tournament — he puts all the patients into brackets and gets them to “compete” to see who has the worst story for being there. The biggest pain/grief wins. The scene is darkly hilarious, and hides the fact that it is “real” vs. the “sugar” approach that the real therapist is doing (who incidentally has no training in this area). Perry manages to break through to one of the characters, and ultimately decides to return to the group as it might help him after all. I have a suspicion that anyone who liked the dysfunctional relationship backgrounds of those on the sitcom Becker might find this one appealing, but it dragged all the way through. Just not enough of a premise to hold my interest.

Guys With Kids is semi-interesting premise — oh, look, it’s guys with kids. Think the Exes show but with kids. Essentially the three guys try to be dads, date, have lives etc. Essentially they suck at it. And each week, they’ll learn a little lesson about how to be better at something. The opening lesson is to have the newly divorced dad stop listening to everything the hoverparent ex-wife has to say about their child. With the exception of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar dunking a kid, there was nothing funny in the entire episode. I didn’t even snicker. Yawn.

The New Normal is the latest Ryan Murphy creation, who brought us such great works of art as Glee, American Horror Story and gasp, the Glee Project. Yawn. Okay, three critics trounced this, and I thought, “Sure, if they hate it, it might be good”. See the way my mind works? Nope, the show sucked. It is about two gays who decide they want a baby — no chemistry between them when they meet, no chemistry when they decide they want a baby as an accessory, nothing at all anywhere that is remotely funny or compelling. What a crapfest. I’m sure someone will nominate it for an emmy somewhere sometime.

The Mob Doctor premiered tonight. I really really wanted to like this one. The main actress is Jordana Spiro — I loved her in the show My Boys even if the show itself didn’t gel with me. Yet, here’s the thing…watching the show, I kept looking for the punchline. I saw her smirk, I saw her smile, I saw her almost wink at you, and then no punchline. Cuz of course this is a drama. And the big drama is that a mobster wants her to kill a patient and she’s refusing to comply. If you think any of the characters seem a bit familiar, I kept thinking, “Main character. Brother. Mother. Complicated love life. Principled behaviour. I didn’t think Rizzioli was back for another couple of weeks?” Yep, Rizzioli is a cop and Dr. Grace is a surgeon, but same general feel. I didn’t completely hate it, so I’ll give it another week or two, but not the strongest sale so far.

Other shows that interest me for the future:

  • SUNDAY: The Mentalist, Once Upon a Time, Revenge, 666 Park Avenue;
  • MONDAY: How I Met Your Mother (season premiere only), Partners, Hawaii Five-O (premiere only), Revolution, Castle;
  • TUESDAY: NCIS, NCIS: LA, Ben and Kate;
  • WEDNESDAY: Law & Order: SVU (premiere only), The Neighbours, Arrow;
  • THURSDAY: The Big Bang Theory, Person of Interest, Elementary, Last Resort, Beauty and the Beast;
  • FRIDAY: Made in Jersey, Blue Bloods, Fringe, Nikita

See you around the channels…