Louie - The worst thing about the TV and film industry is when the execs demand changes and it sucks the life out of the show. Or they make what is clearly the wrong choice. See: Conan O'Brien. It's refreshing to see what seems like the opposite of that on Louie. Looks like FX just went, "Hey Louis CK, here's some money and a time slot. Do what you want." I don't know how close to the truth that is, but it's resulted in a show that is unlike anything else on tv. It's not quite a sitcom, not quite a sketch show, and not quite anything that will rake in any amount of money for the execs, but it's pretty great.
Rubicon - I watched the first two episodes when they arrived in a pair along with the beginning of the new season of Mad Men. The AMC hype machine had been working pretty hard on this, even giving a sneak preview of the first episode attached to the finale of Breaking Bad on my DVR. The first warning sign that Rubicon was going to be kind of bad was a bit of dialogue that went something like this-- "He used to be late all the time. He was late to meet his wife and daughter at the World Trade Centre and was on his way out of the subway when the first plane hit. He's never been late for anything since."
That was the moment in Rubicon that elicited the greatest emotional response from me, and that was anger at the shitty writing. A couple thousand people died on 9/11. From the number of people in TV and movies in the nine years since who have had personal stories about those they'd lost, you'd think the entire city of New York had been destroyed. Someone reminded me recently that there was a train crash in one of those episodes. That I had forgotten anything had happened at all speaks to Rubicon's level of emotional resonance.
The marketing for this is pretty terrible. AMC runs ads of the actors talking about how great it is. We know they like it. Even if they didn't, they're getting paid to say they do. And none of them seems particularly smart. Also the tagline, "Not every conspiracy is a theory" does not work in any language. Conspiracy theory is a pair of words that go together to mean something. The word conspiracy has it's own meaning that has nothing to do with the word theory. It's like if Smuckers advertised by saying, "Not every jam has traffic in it."
Terriers - FX is a weird channel where Fox inexplicably chooses to put good shows it's not going to cancel because their first two great episodes didn't get great ratings (more on that later). The Shield, Justified, Sons of Anarchy, and Louie are a few favourites. (On the other hand, there was Nip/Tuck which should have been cancelled after about half of its run). Terriers sounds like it shouldn't work-- it's the story of an ex-cop turned private investigator an his ne'er-do-well partner who get in over their heads when they stumble upon a murder. But it's pretty great, thanks in no small part to Donal Logue who I've wanted to see in more things since he was the comic relief in Blade. And he and Michael Raymond-James have a great chemistry with a constantly shifting status dynamic.
Nikita - So, some writers saw a few episodes of Dollhouse, rewrote them, and branded them as being based on something else. The most ridiculous thing I saw in the slightly more than one episode I watched was when Nikita was buying weapons from some high-class arms dealer in his penthouse suite and used one of them to rob him. Because he keeps them loaded as he's selling them from his penthouse suite. Because he's stupid, and I'll be honest-- so are you if you like this show. Sorry.
Boardwalk Empire - Yeah, it's as good as you've heard. I'm just hoping Michael K Williams gets a little more screen time because he's had about a line and a half so far.
Lone Star - One of the more promising shows of the year, and Fox cancelled it after two episodes. That's what they do. They comission great shows, and rather than let them build an audience by word of mouth or stellar reviews, they cancel them if they don't pull in ad revenue immediately. Meanwhile, 24 went on 5 seasons after it was any good. Idiots.
The Event - Here's a show that reeks of network exec tampering (that is, if there was anything good in there to begin with). It looked kind of promising after one episode, despite being the latest nebulous title, big cast, secretive plot, way too beautiful cast, Lost rip-off. It lost me after the second episode though, when it started making too many left-field revelations. Personally, I think creative people should make the show they want to make, but if they're going to keep ripping off Lost, here's what they need to do: Make it look like nothing's too odd at the beginning. Build that comfort for a bit while you DEVELOP SOME FUCKING CHARACTERS and then drop some weird science. Lost had something a little odd and threatening in the first episode that was weirdly non-specific, took a bit of time to establish the flashback routine, and then gave you a mind-blowing fourth episode where it revealed that Locke was in a wheelchair until the plane crashed on the island. The Event just keeps throwing weird shit at you. And speaking of flashbacks, if that's how you're going to tell your story, come back to one particular time period. This thing's jumping all over the place with all these characters so the audience never has an anchor, and therefore never really gets to care about anything, or any one of these model/actors.
Raising Hope - This kind of came out of nowhere and is fun and a bit dark. The crazy old lady is its one sitcom thing I've seen too much of, but it gives that the nice touch of letting Cloris Leachman have these occasional moments of lucidity where she is aware of her surroundings and reminds everyone of how disappointing they are before dropping into crazy mode again. It also features the underused Martha Plimpton and Garret Dillahunt. And the wonderful Kate Micucci, who should be a way more gigantic star than she is.
Running Wilde - Okay, the reunion of Will Arnett, David Cross, and Mitch Hurwitz is not the second coming of Arrested Development. On the other hand, it's certainly not the Run Ronnie Run to Arrested Development's Mr. Show either. And it brings Peter Serafinowicz to North American audiences, which is good for everybody. I remember not being too impressed with 30 Rock at first, and I think this show has the potential to build into something that good. That is, if Fox doesn't cancel it within a month.
No Ordinary Family - Oh, how I wanted to like this show. Casting Michael Chiklis and Julie Benz as your leads has to work for your show right? Not if you don't hire any decent writers. The wonderful thing about superheroes is their origin story. And boy did they ruin that on this show. The family's super powers arrive when their plane crashes into a South American river while on vacation. Never mind that they're in a plane on a sight-seeing tour at night in a storm. That's dumb, but not the worst of this. The worst is the plane crashes, the family swims to the shore and huddles together in the wildnerness of the rain forest, and then the next shot is them walking in the front door of their home after the vacation.
Um... really? Even if this wasn't an origin story, you kind of want to see them get out of this jam. As it stands, the audience is left to wonder why they even bothered going. And with the origin story, there are countless missed opportunities. They use their new powers to fight off the dangerous wildlife. They meet a lost tribe of people who have worked to keep civilization away from their magical river. They stop an evil logging company from destroying endangered species. Anything but they go home and gradually discover that they can do things.
And then there's the powers. Some pretty standard stuff. Dad's super strong, Mom's super fast, the daughter reads minds, and the son's super... smart? Being smart is not a super power. I think the writers just ran out of cliches. I honestly thought for a while in the pilot that the son's power was being super mopy. Turns out that's the whole family.
Bonus mention - Better With You - Not worth putting this in the main body of this thing, because I only made it through about two minutes of this, but imagine Cloverfield, but instead of all these rich urban assholes getting eaten by a jerky camera-shy monster, they get to go on living and exploring the foibles of their uselessly entitled lives. That's what this show is. If you like it, take a good hard look at your life, because you should be a better person than you are.
Bonus bonus mention - I forgot about Justified, because it started so long ago. But that's a good one too.
2 comments:
Can you please elaborate on the term left-field revelations.... what does this mean?
Revelations... that came from left field.
Slang definition of "out of left field": http://www.englishbaby.com/lessons/1613/slang/came_out_of_left_field
Literal definition of "revelation": http://www.thefreedictionary.com/revelation
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