Tag Archives: series

The new 2014-15 TV season: Monday night

The PolyBlog
October 21 2014

For new shows, I have to confess, I am shocked by the allure of Gotham. By all accounts on the show running spectrum, this show should die a quick and horrible death. While the Batman franchise can live large at any time, a story where Bruce Wayne is a kid means that the basic story arc is that the entire city has to go into the toilet so that Bruce Wayne needs to become Batman to save it. So, to prove that story arc possible, just about every season has to end with things getting just a bit worse. So I was fully ready to take a pass on Gotham, with the full expectation that it would die. But a friend at work said she had watched it and really enjoyed it, so I pulled it up on my DVR and gave it a go. The show is borderline awesome. It has a Gotham City feel to it from the get-go, with a look and feel to match. Jim Gordon is the main protagonist and just a detective, but the choice of Ben McKenzie as the actor is extremely compelling (I never watched Southland, nor O.C., but I’m curious how he was in them). He’s great here. The rest of the characters are a little cartoonish at times (not Batman 1966 cartoons, just a little overplayed, like most Batman villains). The first three episodes were pretty good, and while Jim gets dirty in the city, he also gets to make small differences, maybe take some of the edge off the city’s blade. It’s already picked up for a full season, as it should be. Long term, I don’t know, but I think Season 2 is relatively assured.

I’ve only watched Scorpion‘s first episode, and while the pacing was a little off, and the writing a bit clumsy in places, overall I’m in for the recording. Unfortunately, I think the show is too quirky to be sustainable. “Super nerds save the world” usually works better when the nerds are secondary, not primary characters, even if CSI and Numbers proved otherwise for a while. Nevertheless, I’ll give it a go for watching for now.

I saw the promos for Jane the Virgin. The premise is she’s saving herself for marriage, but add one mix-up at the hospital and she’s accidentally artificially inseminated. Let the storyline begin. Yawn. That’s good for about, oh, two episodes and then it just becomes single pregnant girl. Oh wait, she’s Latina. Maybe three episodes.

For returning shows, Mom blew me away last season for all of ten seconds in the restaurant, and then she went home to her family, and the show dropped 50 IQ points. Pass.

I don’t watch the zombie shows, and making it vampires instead doesn’t help, so I passed on The Originals both last year and this year. I didn’t realize anyone was watching it enough for a renewal, but there you go. Equally passing on 2 Broke Girls, Dancing with the Stars, and The Voice. The false drama of all three (!) makes them unwatchable for me.

The Big Bang Theory is one of my favorite shows, and I love that the premise of 4 guys and a girl has broadened out to 3.5 couples with another half on the way. The extra options for interactions, and the fantastic choices for actresses to play Bernadette and Amy, female nerds of a different feather to compliment the male versions, makes the other storylines regularly even funnier than the main lines. I was disappointed the first episode of the new season so quickly resolved Sheldon’s angst from the end of last season though, could have been good to let him stew awhile longer.

Sleepy Hollow just plain rocked last year. I could do without most of the characters other than Ichabod, but Tom Mason is phenomenal as the lead. His look, his mannerisms, it is easy to suspend disbelief most of the time. And they handle the flashbacks pretty well. The show went a little Supernatural-ish at the end of last season, where it had been light horror before, and not to the betterment of the show. I have recorded the first four episodes, and haven’t caught up yet, but I expect the series will continue for the whole season easily, with return to regular plot-of-the-week being main storyline by episode 5 or so.

I also make sure not to miss an episode of The Blacklist. I really wondered if the show would have legs last year with James Spader as the lead, and if you can forget any show where he looked like he should be hanging out with Andrew McCarthy, he’s really quite good as Reddington. More importantly, Megan Boone as agent Elizabeth Keen (technically she’s trained as a profiler, but that seemed to fall by the wayside by episode 2) is awesome. Good looking, compelling, the hot brainiac next door type. I vaguely remember her from the short-lived L&O: LA, but she was decent there too. Love the show, and the first couple of episodes of the year have been great to meet (spoiler alert! spoiler alert!) Reddington’s ex-wife. I found his return to working with them far too easy, and they shook up the people on the team a bit too, but basically the same show cuz you don’t fix what ain’t broken. It’ll be around full season easy.

My second favorite show on TV is Castle. I know I just lost all credibility, but I love the premise of a mystery writer who solves crimes without it being Angela Lansbury. Add the fact that Stana Katic is awesome as Beckett, and it is Must-Watch TV in my house. I’m going to go out on a limb, but it has a bit of an innocent-without-being-cozy feel to it, the same type of shows I grew up watching — Simon and Simon, Moonlighting, Magnum P.I. The various dark cop shows can keep their angst in dealing with corruption, noir plots, personal demons; Castle is all about the mystery of the week, wrapping it up in 44 minutes, with nary a need for a F bomb in sight. Episodes 1-2 of the new season deal with Castle’s disappearance at the end of last season, but by episode 4, Castle and Beckett are back in near-normal land, and I suspect that will continue until 75% of the way through the season. I’m sure the “big secret” will come out then, perhaps just in time for new nuptials?

I am not sure how NCIS: LA will fare this year. I watch Gibbs’ team on regular NCIS every week, even though it is beyond formulaic. But NCIS: LA has an extra vibe that both helps and hinders things — maybe it is the rogue nature of their operation, or the constant will they / won’t they / did they vibe for Kenzi and Deaks, or maybe even just the ridiculous over-acting by their bosses, but I feel like the suspension of disbelief gets harder every week. I’m in, but when I’ve hit this point with other shows, I started watching part of it in fast forward, and it wasn’t long before the networks cancelled them outright. If NCIS: Orleans cannibalizes the audience, I bet LA is toast.

There’s a new show starting in November called State of Affairs, which looks like a cross-between Madam Secretary and Homeland — a hot blonde CIA analyst who advises the President. I found HL hard to get into (the meds for her mental condition seemed way too cliché to hold my interest) and Madam Secretary is smarmy. I want to believe a storyline in the genre can work without degrading down to Covert Affairs level (although I do enjoy that show too), but Katherine Heigl plays the analyst? With a Southern belle accent? I’m passing long before I get to even see an episode, and betting on cancellation by Episode 4.

DayShow TitleCategoryInterestPredictionStatus
MondayMomReturningZeroCancel mid-seasonPending
Jane the VirginNewZeroCancel mid-seasonPending
State of AffairsNewZeroCancel mid-seasonPending
The OriginalsReturningZeroFull seasonPending
2 Broke GirlsReturningZeroFull seasonPending
The VoiceReturningZeroFull seasonPending
Dancing with the StarsReturningZeroFull seasonPending
ScorpionNewModerateCancel mid-seasonPending
NCIS: LAReturningModerateFull seasonPending
GothamNewModerateFull seasonPending
Sleepy HollowReturningHighFull seasonPending
The Big Bang TheoryReturningHighFull seasonPending
The BlacklistReturningHighFull seasonPending
CastleReturningHighFull seasonPending

The new 2014-15 TV season: Sunday night

The PolyBlog
October 20 2014

I am a huge fan of serialized storytelling, so the fall premiere is like my fantasy sports league. I try out new players, fall back on old stalwarts, lament the loss of retired ones, and avoid others that I wouldn’t draft even if nothing else was available.

Sunday night of the new season is a perfect example for me. For returning shows, American Dad, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Boardwalk Empire, Bob’s Burgers, The Newsroom,  and Family Guy were never on my schedule, but somebody’s watching them.

There are also the hugely popular The Walking Dead, Homeland, The Good Wife and CSI. I missed the initial bandwagons, although I did watch some of the early CSI, but I’ll catch up on them on Netflix sometime. So too for The Simpsons, it’s not on my recording schedule.

I used to record Once Upon A Time, but somewhere in Never Never Land last year, it became just Never Never and I lost interest. The Frozen storyline looks interesting this year, maybe somebody can let me know how it’s going. I record Revenge for my wife, and after it is over, she updates me in about 4 minutes on anything I care about. I can’t believe Charlotte is still alive. Seriously? I don’t even watch the show and I want to see if the fandom of wesleycrusherdiediedie are available for an online petition. I gave Resurrection a try last year, but it never gelled for me. I was incredibly surprised it was renewed.

Which leaves me open on Sunday night to new shows. The Affair on Showtime sounded promising — the story of an affair told from two very different points of view — but I don’t get the feed. The Comeback stars Lisa Kudrow. Outside of Friends, I find her almost unwatchable, so zero interest in this one, but the little I have seen is unfocused, going nowhere. I’m surprised Kirstie Alley wasn’t available for a couple of episodes to star and kill it.

When it comes to Madam Secretary, I thought the show was going to blow chunks. Tea Leoni was in the movie Deep Impact, where the asteroid had better emotional range than she did. Just about everything else I’ve seen her in, I’ve had to watch with almost gritted teeth. And yet I was incredibly surprised when I pulled up the first and second episodes. She is okay, not stellar, but easily pulls off the character. The problem is that the show seems to be trying to be The West Wing, International Edition, and there is a lot of walking and talking, and deep conversations about ethics and principles. Unfortunately, it continually comes across as “she was the brilliant analyst” and the rest of the characters are all lazy asses who just want to work in good jobs but have no idea what they are doing. I get that the writers are trying to show conflict between her and the staff, but they continually do it by demeaning everyone else to make Tea’s character look better. The West Wing did it too, no doubt about it, but they also showed the main characters struggling to understand things, to come up with options, to not always have the right answer until the last 7 minutes of the show, and sometimes, yes sometimes, to royally screw the pooch. Tea’s good, the show isn’t. I predicted cancellation after 4 episodes, but I think they may already be past that now!

Which just leaves Mulaney. The bar is pretty high for me, as I dislike almost all sitcoms. One of the few I can tolerate is The Big Bang Theory. But I’m eternally hopeful. Mulaney wasn’t the saviour I’d hoped for. Pitched as more “I Love Lucy” than “Louie”, there was no edge in the scenes I saw. SNL audiences may love him, I had to pass.

DayShow TitleCategoryInterestPredictionStatus
SundayBoardwalk EmpireReturningZeroCancel mid-seasonPending
The NewsroomReturningZeroCancel mid-seasonPending
ResurrectionReturningZeroCancel mid-seasonPending
The ComebackNewZeroCancel mid-seasonPending
MulaneyNewZeroCancel mid-seasonPending
Bob’s BurgersReturningZeroFull seasonPending
Brooklyn Nine-NineReturningZeroFull seasonPending
Family GuyReturningZeroFull seasonPending
American DadReturningZeroFull seasonPending
CSIReturningZeroFull seasonPending
Madam SecretaryNewMildCancel mid-seasonPending
HomelandReturningMildFull seasonPending
The Good WifeReturningMildFull seasonPending
The Walking DeadReturningMildFull seasonPending
RevengeReturningMildFull seasonPending
Once Upon A TimeReturningMildFull seasonPending
The SimpsonsReturningMildFull seasonPending
The AffairNewModerateFull seasonPending

Show cancellations, on the bubble etc…

The PolyBlog
January 24 2013

As I’ve mentioned a few times, I love serialised story-telling whether in book form or television or movies. I like to see characters develop, and to visit them in different scenarios. Which is a rationalization perhaps of why I like to watch TV, other than the fact I just enjoy it. But, as the year passes the mid-way point, the pundits start guessing who’s going to get cancelled (boo! hiss!) or renewed (yay!). Usually, I’m in agreement with most of the cancellations for new comedies, most of which I gave up on after one or two episodes. Dramas I’m more hit and miss on as networks often don’t let them last enough for me to decide if I’m in or out — my “on the bubble” period is a lot longer than networks who are paying for them.

Today, I wandered by the TvByTheNumbers site to check out how my shows are doing…and was pleasantly surprised!

I had very little interest after episode 1 in 666 Park Avenue, Last Resort, Made In Jersey (lasted ten minutes), or Partners, all of which were cancelled. I think there was something “there” for The Mob Doctor but not enough to keep watching it. I tuned in, I tuned out, I tuned in, I tuned out.

Today, Don’t Trust the Bitch in Apartment 23 and Ben and Kate seem to be as close to formally cancelled as you can get without a press release containing the words cancelled, and I never liked either one. Happy Endings, Guys With Kids, and Up All Night are all listed as Likely to be Cancelled, and I couldn’t agree more. CSI: NY is a bit long in the tooth, and while I liked Gary Sinise, I can’t take him every week. I didn’t get excited about Vegas, but not surprised it’s not likely to continue.

The “on the bubble” list has almost nothing I care about — Last Man Standing, Malibu Country, Cleveland Show, the Good Wife, 90210, the new Carrie Diaries, Hart of Dixie, Mindy Project, Beauty and the Beast, 1600 Penn (please kill this!), the New Normal, and Whitney (whose acting reminds me of The Nanny without the voice). I kind of fell out of routine with Nikita and it started back up without me even noticing it in the PVR guide, too confused storylines now. Deception lasted one episode for me, although I liked the premise. My only concern is The Mentalist, and while other sites suggest it is near certain for renewal, the series could close soon without a great loss, they just need to wrap up the Red John story (and a lot of those final pieces are already in place, if needed).

Some of the shows I like that are expected to be renewed are Castle, Revenge (no, I don’t know why I’m still watching some parts of it), Elementary (loving it!), Once Upon A Time, Blue Bloods, Person of Interest, Arrow, Grimm and Revolution (a nice surprise!). The Big Bang Theory is a no-brainer for renewal (already renewed!), but I’m surprised NCIS and NCIS: LA are still listed as certain renewal, given that NCIS has some pieces in place that would allow them to wrap and NCIS: LA has been a bit stale of late.

I won’t miss Fringe as I didn’t even watch this season…I watched up until the end of last year, but the parallel work together was a step too far for me, and when they went to Watchers controlling the future, I was lost.

Way too soon for some other shows, but I’m loving Showcase for a lot of short-season shows (Continuum, Suits, Rizzoli, Lost Girl, Covert Affairs, etc.).

Series premiere: The Following

The PolyBlog
January 24 2013

Kevin Bacon plays a retired/disgraced FBI agent in the new series “The Following” about a vicious serial Killer that Bacon’s character caught years before and who escapes from prison one month before he’s set to be executed.

You find out early on that, like most protagonists on TV, they have to have flaws that tell you how much they have paid for their devotion to justice. Dead spouses, divorced spouses, mental disease, or in this case, alcoholism. But when the serial killer starts his rampage again, the FBI brings back the agent that caught him. Purely as a consultant of course.

I’ve read a bunch of the experts’ reviews on line, and while I don’t disagree with them that many of the elements of the pilot are a bit cliche, there are still some shining moments that will bring me back for weeks 2-8 before the network decides to continue or not. First, the cliches.

I’ve already mentioned the agent is retired and disgraced. Plus he’s an alcoholic. Not too long in, we also find out that he was a lone wolf, little evidence, just a gut feeling about someone that led him to save the day. A tortured soul who stared into the mental abyss of the serial killer and didn’t come back entirely complete. He even has physical scars, gasp!

At a second level down, there are some glaring neon signs that are not quite cliches, but certainly bad writing. Over-exposition to explain how the serial killer likes Edgar Allan Poe — not the deep analysis that would go with a full psych profile, but rather a basic overview of pop culture’s understanding of serial killers. There are also giant CLUES that show up — tertiary characters that have way too much dialogue or screen time (which makes them future victims or future bad guys to justify why they got the time in the first place). I met the first one and thought, “Yep, she’s dead soon” — less than two minutes later. Second one, “Yep, she’s not making it through the episode”, and she didn’t. Third time, they introduce a supposed gay couple who are so innocuous you know they are going to be part of the cult (non-spoiler — they are!).

But, there are the bright spots. Natalie Zea plays a strong-willed ex-wife of the serial killer who had an affair with the agent after the arrest of her husband, so there is some fodder there for both sparks and history. Jimmy Olsen from Smallville plays a techno/psych/jack of all trades for the police, and is the only one to spot that the ex-agent is drinking on the job, even offering him a breath mint to help cover it up. The serial killer isn’t as deviously chilling as Heath Ledger’s The Joker, but the final speech by the serial killer to the agent is quite strong acting.

Lots of plot holes for the future…for example, Bacon is expert but sees the word “Nevermore” written on a wall and takes several scenes before he reveals its from The Raven (like that was news? the most well-known Poe verse ever?). The serial killer now has a following, cult members ready to do his bidding, yet his recruitment of them was all supposedly online, which seems a pretty strong hold over someone without more personal / face-to-face contact, so I’m interested to see what comes later in terms of more depth.

Finally, while I hate to say this, there is a scene where one of the followers kills themself, and it is very well done. Graphic without being over the top, and very startling. A good way to show that the serial killer is truly evil — she dies for no real benefit.

I’m seriously hoping they start to just focus on the charisma of the cult leader (which the ex-wife is strangely immune to?) vs. the re-emergence of Kevin Bacon as agent-extraordinaire.

I’ll give it a few more weeks and then decide. If it goes only into clichés, pass.

Series premiere: Cracked

The PolyBlog
January 11 2013

The new trend in series is to have whack-a-doodles helping others think outside the box. Damaged somehow, if not full on mental disorders. Perception has a delusional psych professor helping the FBI; the Mentalist uses someone whose family was murdered by a serial killer to track the serial killer; House and Monk were, to some at least, just plain nuts.

The latest incarnation is Cracked, a Canadian production just starting on its first season on CBC. The main character is a top cop, who has done great stints you learn in the elite units of the department — homicide, even tactical. After a tense situation, he’s trying to get some coffee and an irate citizen starts ranting, etc. Enough to set him off on a small psychotic-like break — he starts bawking like a chicken, while in full uniform, in front of a whole coffee shop. Awkward, right? Anyway, he gets reassigned to be a lead detective in a new unit that deals with psych-crimes — anything with a psychological dimension (like a deranged or disturbed person) and they get the case. Not exactly a winning strategy with homicide, but them’s the breaks. His boss is happy with him generally, and he’s there ostensibly to take a break from his high-pressure previous job. Not to mention, as he does, that if you’re looking for someone who’s a bit bananas, it doesn’t hurt to have the lead detective be half-way up a banana tree himself.

The case was relatively linear, and it was interesting to see what was essentially deductive reasoning following the clues. It felt very much like a low-budget Law and Order: SVU, maybe L&O: Psych Crimes would be more accurate.

There are five main actors/characters in the show so far — Aidan, played by hunky David Sutcliffe who looks very familiar but none of his resume items leap out at me … he was big on Gilmore Girls, but I never watched it; Daniella, his forensic psychiatrist partner who refuses to carry a gun, played by Stefanie von Pfetten (lots of little credits, nothing big); Poppy as another member of the team, played by Luisa D’Oliveira (small credits); Leo as a psychiatric nurse, played by Dayo Ade from old Degrassi Junior High fame or more recently, the L.A. Complex show on Muchmusic; and Diana, their boss. Diana is played by Karen LeBlanc, and while I’m happy to see her here, I’d be much happier if they put her back on Defying Gravity — I’m still bitter they didn’t finish that show. Sigh.

Not the best, not the worst. But it was interesting at the end of the show to see Aidan really open up with a suspect, talking about the darkness that is inside himself, showing that the chicken imitation was not a simple “trauma” reaction, but linked to something much darker inside of him. One of the few redeeming qualities and I’ll give it a couple of episodes probably.