"Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23" with Les Chappell

Cross-talking about the new show "Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23" (on ABC) with Les Chappell of ahelplesscompiler.wordpress.com:  


Me: I thought the bitch character (can't remember her name) was unusually cartoonish but I was thinking "By golly, it's so crazy it just might work" like those 1950's movie executives. On the one hand, her desire to ruin the lives of innocent midwesterners moving to NEw York City in an effort to set them straight is a poor choice for a defining trait of a character because it's so thin and baseless in any which number of ways. This isn't Pushing Daisies or Once Upon a Time so I expect more realism. However, she's so unwaveringly outrageous that I think she could be TV's next Sue Sylvester. Then again, I'm not sure I know of a show where one of the two leads is the over-the-top X factor. That's a delicate balance to hold.

Les: I don't think she was purposely trying to ruin their lives, she just used that as a flimsy justification for stealing their money. I do think they maybe went too over-the-top in her bitchdom, but for now I'm excusing that as a pilot thing they'll tone down in upcoming episodes. Also, the character was named Chloe.

Me: Don't get me wrong, the one's roommate is nuts while the other one's sane has been done before. Two and a Half Men, the short-lived Tony Shaloub-Neil Patrick Harris vehicle Stark Raving Mad are the first two to come to mind and neither of them had roommates insane as advertised (Remember, Charlie Sheen's offscreen antics don't count) but I think Chloe is more the equivalent of Zach Galifianakis in The Hangover: Someone who's just so ridiculous that they're best used in the background rather than driving the plot forward


Les: I think I have more confidence in Krysten Ritter to drive a sitcom than you do - I didn't find her over-the-top ridiculous, just portrayed as meaner than she actually is. I think in a few episodes it'll settle into more of an Odd Couple sort of thing and they'll move closer to each others' poles and even out. Plus, the Beek from the Creek adds a hell of a lot of humor to things.

Me: While other tv reviewers feel they can distinguish themselves through being thorough in their research, I prefer the opposite. I like to research as little as possible, for authenticity's sake and out of laziness, but thanks for the assist. Chloe it is! Back to the review and I'm sorry to take up your valuable facebook wall real estate with my shennanigans but I'm kind of on a roll and the inspiration to write has just sort of struck me here and now, so I'm just going to continue reviewing if that's allright with you. In response to you, I disagree: Her M.O. was lulling Midwesterners into her apartment and making them miserable so they'll leave and go back to the Midwest. She's in it for the money, but she's also doing it out of a deluded sense of chivalry. I mean this is a deluded character that if she existed in real life might qualify for an episode of Ripley's Believe it Or Not or one of those wierd world of crime museums. Not only that, I think that's the source of her humor. I kind of hope they tone it down, but I think it's too late to really change directions two episodes in because there's not much else about her but that. She sort of spends an inordinate amount of time doing that so it almost is the equivalent of a career for her and defines her relationship with at least two other characters already.

Les: I didn't get the chivalrous vibe from her - not to say that's a wrong theory, but I got nothing in the way of being helpful from her. She's got as the Beek put it pirate morals. And I really don't think she's that extreme - I could find people like her easily amongst Portland's population.

Les: Oh, and two episodes in? There's a ridiculous amount of time left to adjust. It usually takes comedies at least half a season to get the calibration right. 

Me: And how about the James van der Beek factor. I read a review the morning the show premiered (the only one I read, I'm weak) that lamented the use of J vdB because bringing in a star to play a slighter more degenerate version of themselves is too "been there done that." I've seen it done with one-off guest roles in Extras and Curb Your Enthusiasm and presumably it's been done in Entourage, but I think there's a major difference between that and having James van der Beek be a fabric of the show week after week. I'm guilty of not subscribing to Showtime and thus never having seen Episodes but I also believe Matt LeBlanc and his degenerating was the purpose of the show, and here James van der Beek is like 3rd-billed. That seems a much better fit 

Les: I skipped Episodes because everyone said it was awful, though apparently Matt LeBlanc was the best part of the show. I think the Beek isn't a big enough star for it to be too distracting, and this is something he's done on Funny or Die videos before so he knows how much he can get away with. And agreed, if he's part of the show's universe on a regular basis that's different from a cameo here and there on some other shows. My concern would only be if every episode focuses on "Dawson's Creek" references and him either cashing in on or trying to escape the fame of it. (And really, all I want is for him to act on his apparent feud with James Franco he mentioned in episode two so Franco can make an appearance channeling the way he was in 30 Rock S4. "I'm the actor James Franco! And I'm in love with and common-law married to a Japanese body pillow!")

Me: Oh I totally forgot about Franco's love with a body pillow. With Kevin's body pillow girlfriend and van der Beek's rivalry with Franco, that's two distinct reasons to bring Franco on the show himself. I'm guessing he's already slated to appear a few episodes down the line and this is very weak foreshadowing


Les: If it brings James Franco in, I don't care if it's weak foreshadowing. All Franco, all the time.

Me: Also, they have a weird neighbor with a Lars and the Real Girl thing going on and who has an odd juxtaposition of being an out-and-out pervert and seemingly an acceptable member of society. He's kind of the wacky guy I expect to be in a sitcom but not the guy who's being asked to carry the plots. Add him and Mark's girlfriend who's so thin that she can only make love underwater (Maybe Niles' ex-wife picked up this guy on the rebound?), and it seems as if the show is aiming for the most offbeat characters it can think of. It's the humor of wackiness, agree?  

Les: Again, it's a pilot, it's trying a few things out. The masturbating neighbor, the obsessive girl down the hall, the banker turned barista - if the showrunners are smart they'll find a way to give them more depth or phase them out gradually, and if they're not they'll stay as they are. It could be a "New Girl" or an "Are You There, Chelsea?"

Les: But anyway: I like Krysten Ritter, I like this version of himself VDB's playing, I like Drema Walker, and I think the show's funny enough I'll add it to the comedy rotation. ABC's got a good track record of comedies that start out rough and get better ("Happy Endings" and "Cougar Town") and what I saw makes me think this one could slide in alongside those two. 

Me: I don't think Happy Endings started out anywhere near as ambitious as this. It was an unremarkable Friends clone that found its grove (although for the record, not with me, I'm just acknowledging its success). This is a high concept show with balls-to-the-walls ambition. It reminds me in how far out in left field it is with Knights of Prosperity which ABC failed to nurture. I get a good feeling from this show as well. I like it but I think for it to have legs, it's going to have to smooth out its edges in the opposite direction of Happy Endings: It has to tone down its more outrageous characters  

Les: I really don't get the left-field, high-concept vibe from this you're getting. It's a classic Odd Couple scenario with both sides of the equation modernized.

 

Once Upon a Time....

“Once Upon a Time” is an interesting show to watch in a vacuum (what I call watching a TV show or a movie without having read any reviews, reading commentary, or internet message boards). So many questions are popping up that I can’t turn to the convenience of the internet for: Does Regina know that she’s an evil queen? So the bail bondswoman’s stated reason for being in town is to stalk the kid she gave up for adoption ten years ago against her mother’s wishes? Is that the crazy guy from Prison Break as the town sheriff?

ON TO THE REVIEW:

Once Upon a Time is a show about the residents of modern-day Storybrooke, Maine, who previously inhabited the world of familiar fairy tales before being banished by the evil queen from the Snow White story.

In the modern-day world, that evil queen goes by the name of Regina Mills (Lana Parrilla) and she is the town's mayor. The narrative is complex and highly confusing which is due to the fact that the plot is dictated almost entirely by Regina's 10-year old adopted son, Henry. The other characters all have amnesia and somehow he is the only one to have figured this all out.

Thus, the story is told from two conflicting perspectives and that's a very interesting scenario that the show delivers on. From the point of view of everyone else, Henry is a troubled child with a big imagination and from the POV of Henry, these are lost fairy tale characters who haven't figured out their true identity.

Because Once Upon a Time jumps back and forth between Storybrooke and the actual fairy tale world (I'd estimate the screentime is split 70-30 between the two universes with Maine getting the 70%), the show is on the side of Henry and we know it's only a matter of time before the rest of the town starts seeing things from his point of view. This is the central conflict and that's reinforced by Henry's belief that the characters will all be happy when they discover their true nature. Thus, it's a show of characters awakening to their true nature and works on that level.

This also makes Henry the guy who's always right. He's also a giant exposition machine. The person who he's doing most of his expositioning to is Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison). Swan is a cynical 30-something bounty hunter who discovers in the pilot episode that she is Henry's birth mother.

Emma's a key figure in the story, but the reasons that she impulsively uproots from Boston to Storybrooke after the pilot episode aren't particularly well hashed out. There's not really a strong case for why she's there. Emma's concerned that Regina doesn't have her son's best interests at heart but, then again Regina doesn't want her to take an active role in the kid's life ten years later and Emma has no rights to do otherwise. It's a good thing the show's fantasy, because if we looked at Emma's rationale from a realistic ethical or legal standpoint, we might not really be on her side at all.

Regina is eventually revealed to be somewhat malignant, but the show starts off with some genuine thematic confusion as we're left wondering why we should be behind a woman who voluntarily gave up her kid in a closed adoption process, and is now upending everyone's life on a hunch that the boy's adopted mother isn't all she seems. This is made iffier by the fact that Emma reconnecting with her son is one of the key conflicts in the story. If you can discount the clunky set-up (the key to enjoying much of this show), it's not such a bad story either).

Besides, the pilot at least establishes Emma's motivation, although somewhat weakly. The "why" of what Emma's doing in Storybrooke, is more of a "Why not?". One of Emma's key characters traits is that she's being rootless and having close to no support system (she's adopted herself).

The show's biggest strength is that it works both as an overarcing storyline, and as a series of entertaining one-off episodes. The fairytale land sequences are having diminishing returns with me for each episode, but it frames the story well.

Fall Preview III: Up All Night, Prime Suspect, Terranova and the topic of originality

Up All Night-I am about as interested in this TV show as I am listening to some couple at a family reunion showing me baby photos and talking all about the cute little boy. Yes, I understand this show inverts that notion and explores how parenthood can be surprisingly difficult but that's not exactly news either.

Personally, I would much rather see Will Arnett taking creative risks with Mitch Hurwitz ("Running Wilde" is just on hiatus #Holdingout), even if the results aren't entirely satisfying. Arnett just feels creatively neutered here in generic sitcomland.

If the show is going to be this generic, my sensibilities might be less offended if a laugh track were put in. As it stands, the single camera format communicates to me that the show's creators think that what they're doing is edgy.

The show breaks from the A-premise occasionally with a B-premise that centers around new mom Christina Applegate as a production assistant at an Oprahesque talk show. Oprah is predictably played by Maya Rudolph (although it's nice to see her on TV again). The show would be better served by devoting more time to this world, except for the fact that you could then criticize "Up All Night" for being a lesser clone of "30 Rock" or the film "Knocked Up."

I hear other critics being quick to praise this, but the show doesn't show much promise to me.

Prime Suspect-Just like comedy, TV dramas like to play it safe. They stick to the same kind of professions for their characters (doctors, lawyers, and cops, oh my!) and emulate the style of other successful shows in that format. These shows are commonly referred to as "procedurals."

Procedurals create a marketing paradox of sorts: You don't want to advertise yourself as being entirely different from the other cop/lawyer/doctor shows but you don't want to make it look like the writer simply cut and pasted a script of Grey's Anatomy and just changed the names around.

What they usually do to navigate that different/same dichotomy is to present themselves as the same concept with edgier characters. The start of this trend might have been "The Closer" which presented itself as (imagine Don LaFontaine saying it) "A cop show..featuring a detective who's pretty, female, and tough and if that weren't enough, she has a southern accent."

Look at Prime Suspect's promotional materials on the NBC website:
"The series stars Maria Bello ("A History of Violence") as tough-as-nails NYPD homicide Detective Jane Timoney, an outsider who has just transferred to a new squad where her new colleagues already dislike her. Jane is confident and focused - and also rude, abrupt and occasionally reckless. She has her vices, and rumors of a questionable past follow her everywhere - but at the end of the day, she's an instinctively brilliant cop who can't be distracted from the only important thing: the prime suspect."

Mario Bello's Jane Timoney is far from the first or last character to copy the same sets of attributes of another successful character. USA Network has built a factory of shows modeled on Monk: Exiled [Profession: spy, doctor, cop, lawyer, investigator, white collar worker] who has [obsessive compulsive disorder/too much of a conscience/a crazy dad who scarred him/an unknown enemy in the CIA who burned him] which prevents him from entering his profession in the mainstream, so he must resort to doing his job on a freelance basis outside of the establishment while discovering [the identity of his wife's killer/how to build a better relationship with his dad/how to connect to his brother and find love again/the identity of the man who burnt him] so he can be complete again.

Ultimately, "Prime Suspect" exists so that you can pass an hour in front of the TV without expending too much brain power. It's like eating a protein bar in lieu of a homecooked meal (for this analogy to work, I'm suggesting the goal here is eating a hearty and tasty meal and not a nutritional goal. The protein bar could very well be more healthy for you than the meal).

Terra Nova, on the other hand, has an ambitious concept. That's already a step up from a procedural. The show initially takes place in the year 2149 where the planet has been sufficiently ravaged by environmental destruction due to the pressures of overpopulation. The frontier in this show isn't space but time. A portal is discovered in space-time that allows people to travel back several million years to the Mesozoic Era where our protagonist family goes to begin a new life. The theme of redemption is especially fitting for the father, a former cop who went to prison for overpopulating the planet (A wonder Lionel Richie hasn't already been arrested for this *rimshot*) (the max in this universe is two kids, he had three. Why the mother didn't also go to prison, I'm not sure).

With this blog post centering around the discussion of procedurals and originality, I find two things ironic about the dad figure. First, he's a former cop and in one of the three episodes I've seen him in, he's solving a murder. Second, the character is played by Jason O'Mara who's credits have consisted largely of procedural shows: "Life on Mars" (although that show did have a time-travelling twist), "In Justice," and "The Agency." If my thesis is that procedurals are bad for TV, I'd have to add a corollary that while it's bad for TV viewers, it's financially the opposite for the networks so it is touch to avoid getting a high-concept sci-fi show like this on the air without working in elements of a procedural.

Somewhat. It's family-centered but doesn't have a very strong family. Of the three children, middle child Maddy (Naomi Scott) seems the strongest so far. She's charming on screen and in terms of plot dynamics, she's believably inquisitive which can add tension in plots. In one episode in particular, Maddy was an effective Nancy Drew character. Other than her, the younger child doesn't have much to do except be cute and precious and the older child (Landon Liboiron) is the typical rebellious son who exposes his father's weaknesses.

What is intriguing is the concept, but I hope the show picks up the pace in terms of captivating plots and makes the family element more exciting.

Fall Preview II: Pan Am and Playboy Club

My Latest Article at Examiner.com: The Expanding Dumping Ground of Films

Two Shows which Often Get Reviewed Together:


Playboy Club:A lot of the special interest groups you might expect protested this ill-fated show and as strange as it may sound, I put myself in that category to an extent. I find any celebration of Hugh Heffner as a creative genius to be misplaced and tasteless. Heffner was a guy (even though he's not yet dead, I feel he's best discussed in the past tense) who lived out his sexual fetishes because he's rich and because (for a variety of reasons unknown to me because I'm not inclined to research it) he was able to get away with it. I don't think there is anything notable in that. There are a lot of guys who'd live Hugh's decadent lifestyle if they had the money and could get away with it too.

In short, it's hard to be invested in a series based on the debate over whether the Playboy Club was good or bad for society, when you just don't care either way.

So if you strip all that way, this is essentially a workplace drama (albeit a very odd workplace) and a period piece set in the '60s and not too bad of one at that.

With the exception of the male lead, who is so obviously trying to emulate Jon Hamm's stoic blankness, the characters were fairly interesting. Amber Head as the novice bunny Maureen is pretty decent casting and through her, one can see this show as a fairly gripping girl-trying-to-make-it on her own story. Laura Benanti, the playboy bunny with the most seniority, is a formidable foil to Maureen, but she's a little broadly drawn. Why does she care if the playboy bunnies hook up with her clients? If she has such an accute business sense, why does she want to be head bunny and sing up on stage, rather than remain behind the scenes or just start her own nightclub?

The sexual tension and relationship dynamics between the characters are surpriginsly interesting to me, since sex is present everywhere and in everything and I assume the guys have such easy access to it here. How do you define a menaingful sexual interaction or even a meaningful flirtation when it's already a paid commodity and accessible?

The pilot and the next couple episodes wisely focused on something that had nothing to do with the Playboy Club (since that doesn't interest me): Maureen accidentally murdered a mob boss and she has to cover it up.

Pan Am:
No matter how many times I've been on a plane, the experience of flying still remains glamorous for me and that even includes waiting in the terminal and going through security.

With that in mind, it's hard to dislike this show and I suspect a lot of people will latch on to that sense of glamour. Despite using an actual plane, the production values don't strike me as particularly amazing. It might be just me but the score seems too Hallmarkish, the plane's a little too well-lit, Berlin looked like it was shot in Toronto.

If the show is anything like the first and third episode I saw, then the show's format is as follows: The first act is the flight's outbound flight from JFK, the second act is the flight back to JFK, the third through fifth acts (the meat of the plot) consist of flashbacks to what the girls were up to on their layover, and the finale is the plot resolving back on the plane as they're landing at JFK.

Christina Ricci, the biggest name in the ensemble, plays an attractive character in Maggie. She seems to be into the countercultural movement and a sort of emblem of the free-spirited decade. It's because of her spunky and unpredictable nature that I enjoyed the subplot of her trying to meet Kennedy. I think we can all relate with similar experiences trying to meet famous people.

As much as stewardesses (particularly of old) were associated with sex symbols, the Berlin episode wisely makes a couple moves to show these woman as empowered but not dislikable. Maggie flirts and befriends a journalist in order to get into a press conference but makes it clear she won't trade sex for a front row seat. Also, newbie Laura (Margot Robbie) rejects the advances of one of the co-pilots.

The episodes provide an excuse for a hodgepodge of stories about these characters in a time and place which hasn't been particularly disappointing so far. More than a number of other shows, I do question how many plots they can derive out of this show, but if shows like "Chuck" or "Gilligan's Island" can stretch a thin premise, I'll wait and see.

One slightly awkward part of the third episode was how lightly it treated the plot wherin French stewardess Colette (Karine Vanasse) comes to terms with her childhood in World War II. This should have been "Sophie's Choice"-level drama and didn't fall short by a lot, but still. Likewise, when Kate (Kelli Garner) makes a life-threatening mistake in her espionage activities, I can't imagine the show will all of a sudden turn into 24.

All in all, a pretty decent show worth checking out.

Coming Up: Up All Night, New Girl, H8ters, 2 1/2 Men and possibly Murhy's Law

Ricci as Maggie is already a fairly well-developed character

Fall TV Preview Pt. I: Last Man Standing, 2 Broke Girls, Free Agents

Last Man Standing
My main preconception for this show was that its reason for existence was that TV executives feel the universe is severely misaligned if anyone who has ever helmed a successful TV show ever isn't currently on network television (see Bill Cosby, Jeff Tambour, Bob Newhart, Lucille Ball, etc.) in some form or another.

I also felt that while Home Improvement entertained me as a 10-year old, it probably would not hold up to a grown-up audience which, for better or worse, I am now a part of.

However, ten minutes of this show changed my opinion pretty quickly. I now think that there's always room for a by-the-numbers family comedy in the prime time schedule (Modern Family is too clever and therefore disqualified form this category) and even if he's not treading in vastly dangerous waters with this familiar role, Tim Allen is giving me what I need.

It's odd that both this show and "Home Improvement" have Tim Allen playing roles of highly empowered middle men: They both have hiring and firing power but answer to a company owner. On "Home Improvement", Allen was the host of his own TV show but his boss was the head of the Binford Tool Company. Why a TV show would be owned by a single sponsor is beyond me. That would mean that every Tool Time commercial ad would be for Binford tools like the "George Burns and Grace Allen Show" had commercials and in-show promotions consist entirely of carnation milk.

The show is an interesting twist on "Home Improvement" in that Allen has three girls instead of boys. The dynamics are a little better this way with less of Allen's character revolving around his infections manliness and also has the benefit of positioning the mom (Nancy Travis) as less of a foil to be subverted (poor Patricia Richardson). The show has an even more interesting twist in that the oldest kid is a single mom. The show earns big points for downplaying this facet to her character rather than branding her as a Hester Prynne incarnate (Ellen Wernecke will be so proud of me for throwing in a literary reference!).

Lastly, the pilot episode seemed relevant to the economic climate of today with Tim Allen's job in danger. Here's hoping the show maintains that sense of instability. That would be an interesting ride.

[Update: Just have to mention that the show does not hold up after that many episodes. Quit watching this one about three weeks later]

Two Broke Girls:
My review for this show (after two episodes) will be short and simple, because there's not much to the show:
It really hearkens back to old-timey sitcoms which I would loosely translate as a TV show with little complexity in its humor.

Most good sitcoms today are loaded with multi-layered complexity with their jokes. Brick jokes, call backs, and running gags lead to punchlines that can take an entire episode to set up. In contrast, every laugh in a sitcom like "Two Broke Girls" never requires more than two lines of set up at the most (I didn't scientifically measure this, feel free to point out any counterexamples in the comments).

Still, while the jokes might not require me to focus on all 22 minutes but the story in the two episodes I watched were good enough to keep me glued.

I have to confess that because I didn't see the pilot, I'm not entirely sure why the rich heiress roommate is suddenly poor. No matter, the odd couple chemistry is sparking and the premise is a unique enough angle to induce my curiosity.

Besides anything with the wonderful Kat Dennings (from "Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist") is worth a glance. The ensemble is pretty strong except for restaurant employee Oleg who's an all-purpose source of ethnic humor. [Update: What was I thinking when I wrote this and praised the backup ensemble? The entire ensemble is awful although it's hard to react that negatively to Garrett Morris (one of the seven original cast members of SNL). The show's Chinese restaurant owner character is equally as bland as Oleg, and while it's terrific that the show was able to snag someone from the Christopher Guest theater company in Jennifer Coolidge, I've never seen such a capable comic actor stripped of any of their potential]


Free Agents
I'm not familiar with what direction this show took after the pilot (yes, I know it was cancelled), but the first episode had a sort of artificial slickness to it that came off as schwarmy (fair warning: that might not be a real word. Perhaps, it could be?).

I can't think of a plausible reason why characters in Hank Azaria's office are talking about sex so much (including the board meeting) except that the company is a manufacturer of sexual innuendo. To the show's credit, a later scene in which a board meeting is called just to discuss Alex's (Azaria's) date is so ridiculous, you have to think that they're in on the joke (my third lampshading reference in a row!).

The show is also a little guilty of overly stylized dialogue reminiscent of "Studio 60." While the characters aren't nearly as homogeneous as that disaster of a TV show, they're all on the same page in trying to be as uber-hip as they can at all times of the day. Alex's secretary (Natasha Leggero) is too hip to actually act in any helpful capacity to him as it interferes with her lifestyle of being rude and snarky.

Hank Azaria is about as good of a choice for this role as you can get. His age and level of attractiveness are about right for the degree of self-doubt that the character is written with.

It was somewhat jarring that he'd elicit such curiosity about his sex life. As a character actor, Azaria is the definition of someone who's sex life you're supposed to be apathetic to because he's sharing screen time with a handsome leading man like Brad Pitt or Orlando Bloom whom you're supposed to be thinking more of as a sexual being.

To further illustrate this point, let's try this hypothetical: Do you think when Paul Giamatti goes to a cocktail party, people want to hear all about his sexual escapades? Whether he's having sex or not, it's certainly not something that anyone would be interested in knowing, which is exactly why he gets cast in awkward dramedies or John Adams and other meaty character roles.

Kathryn Hahn (not really a well-known actress and liable to be confused with Catherine O'Hara) is just a tinge too witty (not as bad as the supporting players) as Helen, but she's not far from being a great lead. She pulls off some very honest and relatable moments and brings about the pilot's funniest moment when she vents out her frustration at a seemingly judgemental grocery store clerk.

Most importantly, the romance here makes sense for the characters. It was also a nice touch that the romance only started to feel genuine when Helen's independent woman persona crumbles in the third act.

Updates on New Fall Shows I've Defended Pt. II: )&#@ My Dad Says and Outsourced

A month ago when the new shows premiered, there were four series getting critical pans that I tried to gallantly defend. Here's an Update on $)&# My Dad Says and Outsourced:


3. #@)$*() My Dad Says on CBS:
What I said before:
"William Shatner, who can be easily pigeonholed in our heads as that caricature of his Captain Kirk character he's been doing for years, is delightfully fresh here. Thanks to the writing, his character is a relatively unique comic creation. The show has heart as well. When the father and son are dancing at the end of the pilot, it's an earned moment. The best indication, however, that I wanted to see more is simply that the show made me laugh. Numerous times."

How I feel about it now:
The show has no over reaching arcs with little change from episode to episode, so not much has changed. That's a good thing and a bad thing. I don't think will ever think this show will ever be brilliant but it's reliable. It's got good chemistry and it's funny. It was also one of the highest rated shows of the season.

4. Outsourced on NBC:
What I said before:
"Outsourcing has a natural go-to place for its humor in the form of culture clash jokes and the writing seems competent enough that they know how to mine it. Culture clash humor is going to rely more on the relationships between the characters than the "Hey, you guys are wearing funny hats" type of observational shtick. In that category, potential is developing in the network of relationships that’s being established. The protagonist has an American colleague (Diedrich Baker) who’s kind of boorish, a passive-aggressive assistant manager and a team of subordinates with whom he’s having several awkward Michael-Scott-like moments. There’s also an flirty Australian love interest but she’s been kept in the background so far."

How it's been coming along:
The show is gradually improving in characterization and plotting with each episode.
I'm already liking a lot of the characters who I couldn't differentiate between in the pilot. The soft-talking Indian woman and the awkward Indian guy who talks too much are still both a little cringe-worthy, I will admit but Maneet is a good confidante character, Asha is a very good character and the Rajiv is great. Aisha is a strong romantic foil to Todd and has bucked at least a couple stereotypes so far. The last episode showed more of this interesting tension within Rajiv as a guy who wants to usurp his boss but also has that non-confrontational ever-pleasing attitude that we tend to associate with most Indians who work at a call center.

Lastly, I applaud the show for handling the love triangles with range and sudlety. Normally, when a character has a crush on another there's practically a nametag on them stating as such. There were virtually no tipoffs that Todd might have made a move on Asha while Tonya (the Australian) gives us a big contrast with her directness. Love and infatuation comes in many forms and this is one of the few shows that really recognizes that.

A couple of bloggers who are former TV writers have also got onboard Outsourced. Ken Levine, who wrote for Wings, Becker, Cheers and a million other things, said that he doesn't necessarily dislike the show and sees potential but they tend to be going the safe route. Another former TV writer (for the Cosby Show), Earl Pomeranitz, detailed how fond he was for the show but thinks it will probably be cancelled.

In response to Earl: It got a full season renewal, so don't be so down. Thursday night shows that haven't been amazing have gotten a second year before. Christina Applegate's vehicle "Jesse" got a second season and the Mark Fuehrstein vehicle "Good Morning Miami" got a second season. Neither show was very good. That would basically mean that even if this show never catches on, it could easily produce 40-ish episodes.

And yet another somewhat tangential argument: For the first time since about 2002, NBC could be able to build a solid block of two nights of comedy (it tried in 2006 and failed). Office would have its swan song of a season, Parks and Rec would be back, throw in Community, 30 Rock, Outsourced and one to three new pilots and NBC has 6-8 shows to work with. They could try Outsourced on a different night and pair it up with Parks and Recreation or Community and it might be able to do fairly well (hopefully, the critics will either get behind it or the critics who are behind it will be a little less ashamed of it and a little more bold and proactive in it)

As for Ken: I think a lot of criticism might have to do with whether the show really feels like it's in India but if it was actually set in India and the show went 100% in making us feel like we were in India, trust me, it might be a great show but it wouldn't be broad enough to keep an audience. It would be like a weekly installment of Slumdog Millionaire. This isn't HBO where they have a niche market, this is NBC. They have to play it safe to some extent.

Related post:
My take on the best comedic shows of 2008

Updates on 4 New Comedies Pt. I: Raising Hope and Running Wilde

Here are where I now stand on two of the four shows I was previously defending against the critics:

1. Running Wilde on Fox
What I said before:"The premise of a rich man who is absurdly out of touch with reality being brought down to Earth by the only woman he's ever had any contact with is certainly unique. On top of that, add in the two obstacles that she's: 1) Already engaged to someone and 2) Is voluntarily on the opposite end of the socio-economic spectrum than him"
"Even though the reviewers only have the pilot to work with, they should be ashamed of themselves for writing off Hurwitz so quickly....The massive improvement between the pilot and the second episode shows how promising this show can be."
"Will Arnett was deservedly nominated for a supporting Emmy as Gob and he regularly stole the show from an incredibly talented cast. He is more of an extreme than Bateman's Michael Bluth but he's counterbalanced by greater extremes as well and there do exist relatively normal characters in the form of Migo and Puddle."

How the show is coming along: One slight weakness is that the show jumps somewhat erratically from plot to plot: One minute the family moves into the tree house and the next, the daughter's already at school and has acclimated enough to her new environment that she has a boyfriend. Meanwhile, the mom has already betrayed her entire life's calling by helping a Fortune 500 company drill for oil in Alaska but reverted to her normal self again.

Even if the episodes don't tie together or even belong in the same universe as one another, each episode has the same sense of fun and multi-layered complexity that we loved Arrested Development for. As it stands, it's a good collection of stand-alone episodes that fails in its ambitions towards a larger arc. Then again, "Seinfeld" and "It's Always Sunny" are also stand-alone series and no one complains there.

As for the characters, Migo and Mr. Lunt have not gotten much more developed although we can tell them apart a little better (Migo's more duplicitous and less effeminate). David Cross's character, Andy Weeks, is gold and Peter Serafinowicz, as Fa'ad, has been a great third wheel. The writers seem to know exactly where to insert him within the episode so that he amplifies the comedy. In the last episode, his big reveal (that his acting coach, Alan Alda, taught him only to act like Alan Alda) was the punch line that made the show memorable.

2. Raising Hope on Fox
What I said before:"I'll concede that the show's premise isn't as novel as 'My Name is Earl.'........However, many of the same elements of "My Name is Earl"- characters driven toward unexpected self-improvement; exploring people on the socio-economic fringes of Americana; characters who are endearing in spite of their stupidity; moments that are genuinely touching- are here as well and that's a good reason to invest yourself in this show."

How I'm feeling about it now:Of the four comedies I'm following, this is the one that's getting the best reception and it has earned a full season order from the network (No full-season order for "Running Wilde" as of yet). Unfortunately, this is also the only one that I now like less and wouldn't even mind if this one gets cancelled.

This show does have the same elements as "My Name is Earl" but it's got a much less interesting premise and that restrains its flexibility as to where it could go plot-wise. It's not only far less interesting but frankly unoriginal: There have been many shows and movies about white trash families or guys who knocked up a girl before they were ready to be a dad. How many variations of the three plots they've been working with so far-"Dumb unemployed kid struggles with being dad", "Boy likes girl who works at supermarket"; "Inexperienced father puts up with equally incompetent parents"- can they pull from this before the audience starts to get bored of the same and where can they possibly go from there?

It's all the more troubling because "My Name is Earl" boasted the extraordinary talents of Jason Lee, Jamie Pressley and Nadine Vazquez and I don't think this cast here has it in them to raise this above the derivative. For those of you who will point out that Chloris Leachman is an Oscar-winning actress, that's true but as a senile grandmother, Leachman doesn't have anything to do but act crazy (and if you saw her on Dancing with the Stars, it's entirely possible she's lost her mind anyways).

At the moment, I'm hanging with this show from episode to episode sidled with an expectation that this will soon get boring for me. I will admit that the last episode was surprisingly good. Sabrina's a very sweet and endearing character and the romantic tension between Sabrina and Jimmy thwarted by a suddenly enraged mom who previously was doing all she could to make sparks fly between them was a good twist.

Coming up....."Outsourced" and "#@$* My Dad Says" (side question: do you have to type four specific characters for the first word of that show or can you just type any four?)

No Ordinary Family as Compared to Heroes

It's hard not to compare the two shows "No Ordinary Family" and "Heroes." They're both very uniquely grounded takes on superherodom and they both explore characters faced with the ramifications of suddenly having superpowers and the consequences therein.

The main upside of NOF is that the stories are a lot tighter. Heroes had about 10 disparate characters at any given time and I was only interested in about 3 of them (the cop who read minds, the Indian who's father had something to do with it all and Hiro). This show compresses all of it into one family and essentially one storyline. There are also two sidekicks (Romany Malco and Autumn Reeser) who make the show better with every minute of screen time they get. The sidekicks each have unique personalities-one's an impassioned district attorney and good friend of the dad; the other's an adorably nervous (and easy on the eyes) lab assistant of the mom and brings an overeagerness to live out her comic book fantasies through her-and they take you away from the family when needed.

The main downside is that this can get a little sappy and melodramatic. If this guy portrays his love for his wife and kids once more, I'm going to throw up.

The show's premise is that it's about the conflict between suddenly being a superhero and managing a family. Suddenly being a superhero surely is dramatic but does that make your family's conflicts any more dramatic? All I know is that from the very first episode this was a family that functioned better than 90% of families in existence yet the show treats the Powells as if they have legitimate problems. It helps justify the need for this family to have all these family meetings but it's a sense of false drama.

Here's an example of this in a nutshell:
In the first episode, the husband says to the wife, "If you paid more attention, you'd know that your son has a learning disability and your daughter just got dumped." To quote Seth and Amy from Saturday Night Live: Really?!!? The thing that's keeping you from jumping full-force into embracing your superhero lifestyle is the guilt that your ADD kid (you know schools today have enormously bloated special-ed departments which take care of that, right?) and your rediculously normal daughter getting dumped makes you feel like a bad mother?

The bottom line is that if there is palpable drama to this family, they need to show it and the kids need to really be dysfunctional for those mushy moments to be justified.














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Fall Schedule I'm settling on

I do this every year:
Monday: Castle-I think I'm going to with this after a search for another drama or two in my schedule. I looked at Fringe and some HBO shows but decided that because this is on cable and I don't have to pay through the roof to watch it, it will suffice. I like the chemistry between the stars and it held my attention better than Fringe.

Tuesday: Glee-I liked this show plenty last year. Issues about its annoying lack of consistency from episode or even within each episode linger, but it's good imperfect escapist fun. Looking forward to seeing more guest stars and more Michael Chang this year.

*Raising Hope-I defended it as one of four new shows with promise in my last blog post, but lately I don't see it as going anywhere significant like My Name is Earl did. After three episodes, I feel like most of the will-they-or-won't-they drama between Sabrina and the protagonist has run dry and a lottery winner who interacts with different parts of the community every week has much more to it than a show about a guy raising a baby. I don't see an ever-expanding universe of quirky characters (i.e. Norm McDonald, Giovanni Ribisi, Mike O'Malley, Jon Rappaport, Katherine Kinney, Alyssa Milano, Burt Reynolds, Clint Howard, etc.) and I don't see many interesting plots they can pull out of this. That being said, I'll give this show a little more of a chance and I might find myself watching this because it's between Glee and Running Wilde and I don't feel like leaving the TV for a half hour.

Running Wilde-Running Wilde has improved greatly between the first and third episodes and is starting to look like a promising entrant on my top ten list. Disturbingly, the negative reviews are getting increasingly worse.

No Ordinary Family-I still intend to give this show a chance. It's on the same time as Glee so I'll have to watch it on itunes/hulu.

Wednesday: Modern Family-Definitely becoming a favorite

Thursday: Community-30 Rock-Office-Outsourcing-I'm in for the penny, in for the pound on these four.

#@%*) My Dad Says-I'm liking it for the dialogue

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Saturday: SNL-So far so good. I have an increased interest in this show just for the sake of distinguishing the cast members from each other alone

Sunday: Family Guy/American Dad

In Defense of Four New Prime Time Comedies of the 2010 Season

Six new comedies came out on prime time this fall season and I've watched four of them: $#)%* my Dad Says, Outsourced, Raising Hope, and Running Wilde. I like them all and think that the kinks that came with the pilots can be eventually worked out.

The critical consensus is that of disappointment with some, if not, all of these shows. Since I've been liking everything I saw on the comedy front this season, it might look like I'm soft but it's more of an issue of me tuning out the crap. A good amount of TV is derivative and uninspired and I knew fairly early on that "Mike and Molly" and "Better than You" fit that category. The former (premise: fat schlub finds a woman willing to marry him) was also identical in premise to "King of Queens," "According to Jim," or "Still Standing"; the latter (some variation of newlyweds awkwardly adjust to larger social circle) looks indistinguishable from "Worst Week", "Til Death", "For Your Love" or "Everybody Loves Raymond." I was bored before I even tuned in and I'm thankful that only two shows on that level of blandness exist this season.

The other four new comedies each offer something original and for that they deserve our attention and the benefit of the doubt that given time they can grow. This is dually important because unoriginal and uninspired TV still populates the airwaves.

Here are those four shows:
1. Running Wilde on Fox
The Hook (What drew me into thinking that this would more than an ordinary show): Creator Mitch Hurwitz practically reinvented comedy with Arrested Development and Will Arnett and David Cross both excelled under his tutelage. The premise of a rich man who is absurdly out of touch with reality being brought down to Earth by the only woman he's ever had any contact with is certainly unique. On top of that, add in the two obstacles that she's: 1) Already engaged to someone and 2) Is voluntarily on the opposite end of the socio-economic spectrum than him

How the show delivers: The pilot was sluggish but by just the second episode we saw the kind of intricately absurd plotting that made Arrested Development so great. We also saw the complexities of the love triangle once David Cross entered the picture. Also, this show has the same chemistry between Cross and Arnett with a much better framework that pits the two against each other in a way that Arrested Development never did: Cross's character was an asexual outsider without any business accumen, so he never competed with Arnett's the way Arnett and Bateman would compete over girls and status.

What the detractors say: The pilot felt a little sluggish to the reviewers as well but there were other complaints.

Every character on AD was strong but the butler and the secretary characters don't really seem to add anything. Already, TV.com added Mr. Luntz (the secretary) to their list of least likable characters writing that, "He seems to be half-British and also weirdly half-effeminate, but he also has no real point of view."

Three reviews I've come across don't like Will Arnett as a lead character for a sitcom. Ken Levine "does not find him funny for a second", TV Guide says the show delivers "more smarm than charm" (an implication to Arnett who's comic persona is all about smarm) and Time Magazine's James Poniewozik makes the unfavorable comparison of Will Arnett as the lead to Jason Bateman in AD.

My defense: Even though the reviewers only have the pilot to work with, they should be ashamed of themselves for writing off Hurwitz so quickly. Poniewozik is already proclaiming that Hurwitz's talent will shine through eventually but probably not in this series which sounds like he's writing his epitaph. The massive improvement between the pilot and the second episode shows how promising this show can be. Will Arnett was deservedly nominated for a supporting Emmy as Gob and regularly stole the show from an incredibly talented cast. He is more of an extreme than Bateman's Michael Bluth but he's counterbalanced by greater extremes as well and there do exist relatively normal characters in the form of Migo and Puddle.

2. Raising Hope on Fox
The Hook: Just like Running Wilde, my interest in the show comes from the past work of it's creator Greg Garcia who was behind "My Name is Earl."

How the Show Delivers: I'll concede that the show's premise isn't as novel as "My Name is Earl." One show was about a lowlife crook whose winning of the lottery inspires him to make entirely unique life changes for the better and "Raising Hope" is just about a lowlife teenager who knocked up a girl. However, many of the same elements of "My Name is Earl"- characters driven toward unexpected self-improvement; exploring people on the socio-economic fringes of Americana; characters who are endearing in spite of their stupidity; moments that are genuinely touching- are here as well and that's a good reason to invest yourself in this show.

What the detractors say: Of the four TV shows, Raising Hope is getting the most positive reviews even those reviews are pretty cautious. Most have said that the pilot isn't that great but that it shows promise. Looking at a couple of those reviews at Time Magazine and AV Club), there seems to be some criticism of the show treating their characters with contempt as well as the gags being lazy. Former TV scribe Ken Levine, who blogs here wrote "this show felt like all the white trash jokes they couldn’t get to on MY NAME IS EARL they jammed in here."

My response: I am in agreement here that the show's humor is unimpressive early on and coming from desperate places. At the same time, I would expect a low laughs-per-minute ratio on a show like this in comparison to a better sitcom. The humor doesn't come from one-liners but rather our relationships to the characters and those will grow over time. Early on, the change in pace and the general weirdness of "My Name is Earl" meant it took a little while to grow on you as well.


3. #@)$*() My Dad Says on CBS:
Hook: #@$*( My Dad Says comes from a unique source in the form of a guy on Twitter who started blogging funny things his old-fashioned dad was saying. That doesn't necessarily mean the show will be good, but it gets my attention because if the show is created by an outsider, I'll probably get a fresh perspective. Also, it is a perspective that is pretty relatable: Most of us have at least one elderly relative who casually says things in the privacy of their own home that would get us in a lot of trouble if those words came out of our mouths.

How it delivers: William Shatner, who can be easily pigeonholed in our heads as that caricature of his Captain Kirk character he's been doing for years, is delightfully fresh here. Thanks to the writing, his character is a relatively unique comic creation. The show has heart as well. When the father and son are dancing at the end of the pilot, it's an earned moment. The best indication, however, that I wanted to see more is simply that the show made me laugh. Numerous times.

What the detractors say: One reviewer (TV Guide) sees Shatner's character more as a "shallowly conceived grouch belching trite punch lines." Alan Speinwall and Joel Keller of AOL's TV Squad both think Shatner's character is too crude to solicit empathy although Keller thinks Shatner showed potential in one scene. There was also some criticism that the rest of the cast is somewhat weak in comparison to Shatner.

My defense: First off, the cast includes Will Sasso and Nicole Sullivan who might be taking a while to find their chemistry but they certainly have the talent as evidenced by their work on "Mad TV." Jonathan Sadowski was a last-minute replacement and he's the straight man to Shatner's funny man so he doesn't have to be the show's strongest link. The major question here is whether Shatner is convincing and it's just a matter of me buying it whereas others didn't.

Another thing to keep in mind is that this show is on CBS. The network's bread and butter is mediocre middle-of-the-road comedies like "Everybody Loves Raymond" "Yes Dear" and "Two and a Half Men." Admittedly, "Raymond" has more pathos, but none of those shows were innovative in anyway, whatsoever. At best, they were good for a few laughs in a familiar setting. If it can get past the initial torrent of negative reviews and survive its first season, there's no question "#@$* My Dad Says" could at least deliver at the bar set by the other shows on the network.



4. Outsourced on NBC:
The Hook: Outsourcing is interesting. An article on what life is like for an American middle manager transplanted to India would be intriguing so a TV show set in that world would naturally be intriguing as well. It’s not just because I was a geography major in college but because it’s relevant and has affected people I know.

How it delivers: Outsourcing has a natural go-to place for its humor in the form of culture clash jokes and the writing seems competent enough that they know how to mine it. Culture clash humor is going to rely more on the relationships between the characters than the "Hey, you guys are wearing funny hats" type of observational shtick. In that category, potential is developing in the network of relationships that’s being established. The protagonist has an American colleague (Diedrich Baker) who’s kind of boorish, a passive-aggressive assistant manager and a team of subordinates with whom he’s having several awkward Michael-Scott-like moments. There’s also an flirty Australian love interest but she’s been kept in the background so far.

Criticism: Todd van der Werff of the A.V. Club declares this is the end of NBC Thursday night's glory days. According to him, the show's scenes between Americans feel like they're on a different show than the ones portraying American-Indian culture clash and neither are executed particularly well. Some critics found the characters boring like the blogger from Film School Rejects who named this show the failure of the season. James Poniewozik acknowledges "satire is a dangerous zone" but says the show is a disappointment with cheap jokes that insult the audience.

My response: Again, it's a matter of placing too much emphasis on the pilot. Characters might be one-dimensional in the pilot because there's not enough screen time to develop everybody and give exposition in 22 minutes. The show's breakout characters in Parks and Recreation, Ron Swanson and Tom Haverford, seemed like dumb one-note characters in the pilot too. Swanson gave a speech about he preferred Chuck-E-Cheese to government and it seemed like the writers were trying too hard to inject the characters with quirks. Over times, his quirks formed part of a fully-fleshed personality that strengthened because it stayed consistent over several episodes. I could see three or four of these characters as pop culture stalwarts like Ron Swanson or Dwight from "The Office." In addition, there were only a few one-line gags in the pilot which is an indication that the show is going to be going for broader situational laughs.

Thanks for reading and be sure to click on my work at examiner.

My take on the season's new shows

My take on various TV shows presented through Helium

Cougartown, ABC-The show is clearly oriented towards a female audience in the same way Desperate Housewives or Grey's Anatomy is, but it's surprisingly watchable to both genders. It's more about a woman going through a midlife crisis than it is "Sex and the City" with a teenage son. Courtney Cox does imbue the character with a sort of sincere desperation that puts her on just the right side of endearing.
My verdict: I'll watch it if I catch it on TV

Community, NBC-The idea of a setting of community college is a winner and the cast as pretty amicable. I like the characters of Annie, Abed, the Spanish teacher and Britta already. That being said, some are hailing this as a show that is a genuinely finished product when the show still needs a lot of fine tuning to find its groove. Attempts at sedimentality have been cringe-inducingly akward so far.
My verdict: I watch it weekly but am willing to unceremoniously drop the show if it doesn't iron out its kinks

Glee, FOX-I love this show. I had an attraction to Popular as well ten years ago which was created by the same guy so I had an expectation that we'd be taken into a world of strange extremes: rigidly defined high school stereotypes contrasted with very relatable relationships between people. The show certainly has a unique style and the musical numbers are fun. I don't buy that it's a parody so much as just a tonally different version of High School Musical. The show takes its musical numbers too seriously to be called a parody.
My verdict: Watch it weekly

Castle, ABC-Nathan Fillion just strikes me as a poor man's Jason Bateman. He looks matine-idol-like enough that if you put him on the bridge of a spaceship like in Firefly, then he's pleasant enough, but I'm not that big of a fan of him. In Castle, he's a bit smarmy. There are a number of shows featuring some duo of detectives, thieves (the show with Melissa George and John Stamos), or hostage negotiatiors (that show with Ron Livingston) with sexual chemistry but I give this show credit for not jamming these two people together in circumstances that are hard to buy. It seems that the two are genuinely stuck with each other and only one of them likes it, which is a good formula for keeping the dynamic interesting.
My verdict: Arguably worth watching. Deserves a couple more episodes

Modern Family, ABC-Some are hailing this as the great new comedy of the season and like Community, it's not fully formed enough for anyone to really make that call yet. It's use of the single camera mockumentary format detracts from the show, as far as I'm concerned. Just because the Office uses a mockumentary style and it's a great show doesn't mean that it works for everything. In this case, the humor isn't effective enough for us to laugh without some kind of cue (Malcolm in the Middle, Arrested Development, Srubs, My Name is Earl and 30 Rock, for example have musical cues which cue us in). The combination of a gay couple, a traditional 3-children household, and a patriarch who married a Columbian half his age and takes on her son from another marriage (I'm sure that was a run-on sentence) is still a pretty good set-up and that's what makes the show work well. Some people are saying that Ty Burrell is the breakout character as the dad who tries too hard to be cool, but my favorite Sofia Vergara as the saucy Latina.
My verdict: Not the centerpiece of my TV viewing schedule, but I'll watch it. Deserves time to see where it goes, at least.

Flashfoward, ABC-This sounded like an intriguing show but too many cop cliches kept me from getting too interested in it. After seeing so many cop shows, seeing anyone act remotely like Dennis Franz is enough to get you to tune out. This isn't a cop show, but an example of breaking cliches to make a show interesting would be Dennis Leary's Rescue Me where the firemen are heroic but also pretty vulgar.
My verdict: Didn't even make it to end of episode 1

The Jay Leno Show, NBC-As many others have pointed out, putting Jay Leno on at 10 pm pretty much strips NBC of any integrity that they believe that they can deliver us a good product. It was pretty much a cost-cutting movie and it's like watching monkeys in a cage to see the network execs try to pass this off as a bold creative move that they can be proud of. The only thing to mildly be excited about is that D.L. Hughley and a couple other intriguing personalities are added as correspondents, but NBC is basically throwing in the towel at this point.
My verdict: Depending on who's the guest and if nothing else is on TV, I probably still wouldn't watch it, but maybe if I really have to watch TV

The Good Wife, CBS-I'm trying to figure out as I watch this if lawyer shows are intended only for a certain subset of the population (i.e. people who've been to law school) or if the drama is captivating enough for everyone. There's a lot of dark music to indicate this is supposed to be gripping, but I'm not feeling it. The other angle about the disgraced politician's wife, however, is plenty juicy. The show is basically about Elizabeth Edwards, Silda Spitzer or Jenny Sanford and appropriately starts off with a press conference where the political figure is apologizing while the wife "stands" by his side. As they're walking down the hall on the way out, she slaps him. Now we're talking! A little bit later the daughter asks mommy, "I just read that daddy slept with a prostitute my age. Is this true?" This is the juicy stuff but the show doesn't seem as interested in all that as it does about being a generic lawyer show about a tough woman. I can see how a weekly series that takes the tone of a Douglas Sirk melodrama might really become a drag, but that's the show's most relevant and pressing angle.
Final verdict: Don't see promise

Cleveland Show, FOX-(a bit of a longer review than I originally intended on)
On Family Guy, Cleveland Brown has never served much purpose besides being a token black character as far as I've been concerned. Obviously, Mike Henry disagrees. Henry is the white actor who voices Cleveland and when he talks about his excitement for centering a spinoff around the Cleveland character, it seems apparent how proud he is of his own creation. What exactly Cleveland's unique mannerisms are, beyond being a little timid, that make him worth watching, I'm not sure. He's certainly never been a great source of humor.

Fortunately, there are some unique characters in the background: Cleveland's son, Cleveland Jr. is an incredibly sympathetic figure because he's probably one of the most hopeless characters on television (chubby, little ambition, so eager to please that he's willing to find his niche as a bathroom attendant), his biological son Rollando is someone I could see myself liking more than Stewie (he's a smack-talking kindergartener who might be described as street-smart in the same way Stewie's book-smart), and a rebellious teenage daughter who's more assertive than Lisa Simpson or Meg (might not be up there with American Dad's Hailey). The wife, Donna, is the heart of the show. The show advertises itself as the sappier and more heartwarming spinoff of Family Guy and there's just a little bit of that gooey feeling to be found within the story of Cleveland and Donna being reunited as a married couple.

Cleveland and his three neighbors (two white guys of various socio-economic levels and an animatronic bear) form a social group that's almost a virtual clone of the quartet that drinks at Quahog's Drunken Clam which wasn't a good idea if the show wanted to set itself apart. The bear is nowhere near as funny as Roger the alien, Klauss the fish or Brian, the dog.

The setting and the fact that this will be a fairly faithful take on the black sitcom (as faithful as white writers can be) might also be seen as a plus or a minus
Final verdict: Worth watching to see where it goes. Watching 3 Seth MacFarlane shows in one night is a bit overkill, but if I'm not feeling the American Dad or Family Guy episodes, I'll tune into this

Japanese Game Show imports

I remember when I first saw a link to "Japanese Tetris" where various contestants try to fit through various shapes or risk landing in a pool of urine (according to this source, it is urine they land into http://www.cracked.com/article_15804_p2.html), I thought it was a pretty cool idea for a show and judging by how popular these clips were.

So when they decided to build an American game show out of this Japanese game show, in Fox's new game show "Hole in the Wall," why is it all of a sudden pegged as one of this Fall TV season's most likely failures?

Well, in truth, even though the American version is mostly the same as the Japanese version, there is a slight difference: The Japanese videos are exotic. They're doing something completely out of the ordinary and they're also acting in ways that seem unusual to us. The Japanese participants are being slapped around and falling into vats of urine and are still laughing and having a good time which is somewhat odd. Wierd music is playing in the background and of course, everyone is speaking in a language you don't understand. This enables you to use your imagination a little bit to figure out what everyone is talking about.

When you Americanize it, you take away the mysteriousness of this outside culture. You also feel the fakeness of the whole thing. Sportscasters are giving commentary on what's taking place as if this is a sport that's been around as long as baseball, when in fact, only 24 Americans have played this game in history (4 episodes of 6 contestants each). The contestants on the Japanese shows play the game as if they're taking it seriously and because the average American doesn't know much about Japanese culture, for all we know, this is as much a part of the Japanese way of life as Samurais, origami, and bullet trains are. Therefore we think we're peering into Japanese culture. In America, there's now cultural foundation for this game, the contestants' enthusiasm is not an enthusiam for this game....they just want to make money and the only reason they want to make money through squeezing themselves through enroaching shapes is because that's the avenue laid out for them by American TV executives hoping to artificially create a cultural phenomeon by cashing in on a Japanese trend. It's all too transparent.

So in this case, the exoticness makes all the difference

Fall TV Review

So far I've seen:
K-Ville: As a strong advocate for raising awareness for Katrina, this show does a service to that cause, but the cop characters are seriously cliched, and the references to Katrina are really forced upon the script. It might also be possible that Anthony Anderson is overrated.

Back to You: Maybe Kelsey Grammar is destined to be Frasier Crane forever, because I have to admit it's hard to see him as anything else. I love shows that take place at TV stations and am even a sucker for mediocre copy-offs of that form like the 2-season long Good Morning, Miami, but this falls a little flat. I think too much screentime goes to Kelsey Grammar when there are a lot more interesting characters like Fred Willard that I'd like to see more of. It has the potential to get better.

Kid Nation: It's not that bad or inhumane at all. I found it kind of cute. And I kind of like reality shows where there's no elimination.

Chuck: First off, I've already seen this show when it was called "Jake 2.0." That show, about a computer programmer at the NSA who gets involved in one of those toxin/nanoprobe accidents that has been used as a convinient superhero-creating plot device since the origin of comic book heroes. In this case it turns geeky Jake into a human computer. The show ran approximately five years ago for a single season but it's rerun quite frequently enough on the sci-fi channel that a casual viewer like me can get familiarized with the series and subsequently feel weary of Chuck for it's lack of originality.

Granted, there are a few differences: Chuck isn't superhuman, he just knows secrets, but when they use the word "human computer" to refer to Chuck, I just think this is trying too hard to be Jake 2.0. But all in all, it's an entertaining show so far. I like the cast of characters: The cool brother-in-law, the caring-but-overbearing sister, the geeky sidekick are all great additions and Zach Levi is an affable lead. It's funny, because I've seen the show Less than Perfect, but can't remember him in it for the life of me. The efforts to keep the sexual tension in place between Chuck and the female CIA agent seems a bit forced, however. The way she turns from mouthwateringly flirtatious mode to this-is-business mode indicates she couldn't care less about him, so I'd perfer the show stay consistent with that tone and make it so that Chuck is just trying to see something in her where nothing really exists.

On another note, I didn't really believe a lot of the show. Although, it's supposed to be light-hearted fun, even the most pessimistic view of our current administration doesn't hold that CIA and NSA regularly go around killing American citizens over bueracratic turf wars without the directors of one or both agencies getting fired in a public scandal (which, by the way, is a good thing I think).

Journeyman-It sounded cool but it didn't really hold my attention, unfortunately.

Bing Bang Theory-I really find it entertaining and even though it packs massive cliches into each of its characters, the whole nerd-hottie dynamic is something quite original to see for a TV show. Besides, nerdiness can make for great humor as evidenced by the character of Sheldon: the protagonist's snarky roommate who for all his great intelligence doesn't know when to keep his mouth shot. Sadly, I don't think it has too good of a chance of surviving because laugh-track sitcoms are an uphill battle.

Pushing Daisies-Pleasantly quirky. I would have said that there's no more room for another murder mystery on TV, but then again reviving the dead and putting them back to sleep has never been done before. Kristin Chenowith is a pleasant addition to any cast, Chi McBride plays his usual Mr. Grumpy character, the main character doesn't particularly look star like but he holds up ok, and Anna Friel is easy to fall in love with as the girl-next-door type. And on the subject of naming Anna Friel's character Chuck: why is it suddenly hip and sexy to give your female characters guy's names?

Big Shots-Not worth even watching the pilot to see if you like it or not.