Both Justice and Happy Hour have been placed on early hiatus by Fox, suggesting their time on this earth is not going to be a long one. Justice is potentially being spared the attack of Lost in a fortnight and is at least being replaced by its own re-runs. But Happy Hour is being replaced by repeats of ‘Til Death (now that has to hurt) and some people are already claiming it’s been cancelled.
Let’s wait to see which new show’s next. My money’s on Standoff.
There’s a very long interview with and profile of William Petersen, over at the Chicago Tribune. Has a few spoilers for season seven, plus lots of discussion about what he’ll be doing – if anything – by the time season eight rolls round.
In the US: Thursdays, 8/7c, NBC
In the UK: Repeats of the first season begin on Channel 4, 6th October. Second season planned for the “near future”
Characters re-cast: 0
Major characters gotten rid of: 0-2 (we’ll see in the next episode)
Major new characters: 0
Format change percentage: 50%
Bad deeds performed: Many
My Name is Earl is nice, isn’t it? A regular joe decides to make up for all the bad things he’s done and in return, good things happen to him, thanks to karma. Now Earl is back, he still has his list of bad deeds to tick off, but times they are a-changing.
In the US: Fridays, 10pm ET/PT, CBS
In the UK: First season currently being repeated on ITV3. No word on third season.
Characters re-cast: 0
Major characters gotten rid of: 0-2 (we’ll see in part two)
Major new characters: 0, but Dylan Bruno is now in the main cast list
Format change percentage: 0-25%, depending on part two
Pointless maths techniques performed: Many
There was something refreshing about Numb3rs when it first appeared. It was smart, for one thing: a maths professor helps his FBI agent brother to solve crimes, without either brother ending up looking stupid. But after the first few episodes, the shine started to go. It stopped being the CSI of mathematical criminal investigation shows (a small band, admittedly. Anyone name any others?) and become the CSI: New York instead. I’ve kept watching, more out of habit than because the show is drawing me in, although the occasional script does show a glimmer of the quality the show once had.
And now, it’s back. After its summer break, has it managed to recapture its former glory? I’d say, no, with an accuracy of 25-35%.
What a difference a good writer makes. Conversely, what a difference a bad writer makes. I actually really liked the first two episodes of Men in Trees. They were fun bits of rom-com plotting from one of the head writers of Sex and the City.
The third episode zoomed by on Friday and I think I’d rather brave a pack of ravenous jackals than sit through it again. On aggregate anyway: the second half was slightly better – I might be willing to brave a slightly malnourished jackal instead of watching that.
But my God, that was appalling. If I were to suggest an image of its quality, I’d offer one of Elmo’s racoons trawling through a skip and chucking out an old Northern Exposure script covered in unmentionable forms of slime. Dull, stupid and utterly unengrossing: ooh, a fund-raising event that auctions off men – never seen that before.
And correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t there supposed to be ten men for every woman in Elmo: do they really need an auction as a way to meet men*? Isn’t it the whole point of the show that Elmo is a town where women have the upper hand, simply because there are so few of them, and they can therefore get almost anything they want, thanks to the laws of supply and demand? Marin Frist is supposed to be finding herself, not bidding for the chance to have a date with a guy. Dear oh dear.
So I’m not sure what to recommend to you, the reading and viewing public. Judging by word of mouth, Men in Trees isn’t likely to last very long, and if this is what the scripts that aren’t by Jenny Bicks are going to be like, I’ll grab my shotgun and help put it out of its misery myself. But if this is just a blip – and a very ill-timed one for my third-episode verdict – maybe it will be worth struggling on with.
I’ll watch next week’s just to be sure, but I’m now going for a thumbs down on this one.
* Footnote: There is a saying, apparently, about the chances of meeting a man in Alaska – “The odds are good, but the goods are odd”. The goods aren’t that odd in Elmo though, so I don’t think that should alter things too much.
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