TV reviews

A complete archive of The Medium is Not Enough’s reviews of TV programmes since 2005

The CarusometerA Carusometer rating of 2

Third-episode verdict: Better With You

7 October 2010 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

In the US: Wednesdays, 8.30/7.30c, ABC
In the UK: Not yet acquired

It’s a good job that the Carusometer is such a fault-tolerant instrument of detection. Were it not so robustly built, it would have passed a straight five on every episode of Better With You, thanks to the cringe-worthy studio audience that not only blots out all the jokes with its laughter, but forces the actors to over-act something colossal.

Yet Better With You is easily the funniest of this season’s new comedies. It’s very traditional: it’s multi-camera with, yes, a studio audience; it’s an ensemble of characters delivering one liners, with very few guest actors; the characters are largely thick as two short planks; most of the jokes are about well-trod relationship issues and make you feel like you’re still trapped in 1995.

But despite that traditional quality, it’s funny. The dialogue’s good, the cast are good, it can be quite sweet (episode two’s "firehouse vision scene", for example), it does touch on the occasional deeper topic (episode three, for example, hinges on a family Christmas card and whether elder daughter’s boyfriend of nine years qualifies as family or not because he’s not married to her) and it never veers into anything too vicious (cf Rules of Engagement). It’s just you have to survive all those traditional qualities to get to the funny.

I’m not sure I’d entirely recommend it, since there really isn’t that much new going on here. But it’s very likable and you are guaranteed laughs with it. What more should you ask of a comedy?

Carusometer rating: 2
Rob’s prediction: Will be lucky to last a season, but might surprise us all

The CarusometerA Carusometer rating of 3

Third-episode verdict: Running Wilde

7 October 2010 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

In the US: Tuesdays, 9.30/8.30c, Fox

Three episodes in and there’s just a chance that Running Wilde is finding its feet. After a shaky start that was largely redeemed by Peter Serafinowicz, episode two proved to be not quite as funny – indeed, "pretty bad" would be a good summary with Peter Serafinowicz being the episode’s only good feature.

But now episode three has shown up on our collective doorsteps and while we’re still not in hysterical territory, this was actually quite a funny episode – even if most of that funny was, you guessed it, thanks to Peter Serafinowicz and despite KFC having possibly the biggest, most obvious smack-to-the-face bit of product placement since the 1950s.

The show’s main difficulty is Keri Russell’s character. If your character is essentially a humorless green activist, be not surprised if that character doesn’t raise many laughs. Episode three showed us the problem wasn’t Russell, since here we had her character temporarily turn evil and be very funny. Arnett’s not quite hitting the comedy highs we know he’s capable of, and where he does succeed, it’s when he’s with Serafinowicz, who manages to make every line he delivers funny – when the line is actually funny (eg when he’s offering vodka to small children) it’s even better.

So there’s a chance that the series is settling down now. It’s still not the funniest new show on the box and unless Russell’s character gets a revamp some time soon, it probably never will be. But it is the sharpest new comedy and has enough signs of promise that I’m going to stick with it, even if it’s likely to get cancelled soon thanks to poor ratings. But that might just be because of Peter Serafinowicz.

Carusometer rating: 3
Rob’s prediction: Probably going to get cancelled before the end of the season unless there’s a sharp increase in the funny quotient

The CarusometerA Carusometer rating of 3

Third-episode verdict: The Event

6 October 2010 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

In the US: Mondays, 9/8c, NBC
In the UK: Channel 4. Starting this month

"What is The Event?" (shhh, Mitchell and Webb fans). NBC’s big hope for ratings success, it’s a bit of silliness that I think I’m going to duck out of right now.

Now the first episode wasn’t incredibly impressive but did have enough mystery and fun in it to make watching episodes two onwards a reasonably bright prospect. However, pretty much everything you guessed was going to happen during the pilot turned out to be the case in episode two, leaving a few mysteries that were really just logistics rather than anything else. It was also even sillier than the first episode.

Episode three did at least reinject a few mysteries into the plot, giving us factions within factions, gave us some character background for Jason Ritter, and tossed us a few miracles to be explained involving those mysterious people being kept as prisoners in Alaska. It also gave us a couple of good stunts and a new female goodie, which is a nice change from the current set who are all either dead or being held captive somewhere.

But what’s being built here is a world with its own mythology, something involving ‘an Event’ which apparently isn’t just (spoiler)us meeting aliens for the first time. And I’m frankly not that interested. It’s too divorced from the real world, nothing’s in the slightest bit plausible and with its constant time jumps, it feels like an excuse to fill up airtime, rather than anything too interesting, different or carrying an important message. Maybe the cliffhanger at the end of the season is that the world’s about to end. But The Event‘s silliness is such that I wouldn’t care if it did.

Basically, despite NBC’s fevered efforts attempting to create an online mystery-solving community to mirror Lost‘s, it’s not Lost 2, it’s Flash Forward 2. So I’m dropping out. Let me know if it picks up again in later episodes, but you remember what happened with Flash Forward, don’t you? Do you want to waste that much time again?

Carusometer rating: 3
Rob’s prediction: Will last a season at most, unless a miracle happens.

The CarusometerA Carusometer rating of 4

Third-episode verdict: Hawaii Five-0

6 October 2010 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

In the US: Mondays, 10/9c, CBS
In the UK: Bravo this month, allegedly

Three episodes into Hawaii Five-0, and I’m pretty much tempted to call it a day on this remake of the classic 60s/70s show. Although the first episode had its merits, episode two was very silly indeed, trying to do Sneakers and being a bit laughable in the process. With no Len Wiseman directing, the action quickly fell apart, giving us possibly the stupidest, most badly edited catfight I’ve seen since the 70s. Daniel Dae Kim driving around on a motorbike while everyone else is in the car just felt odd, and Grace Park seemingly trying to play her character as an 18-year-old was ludicrous.

Episode three didn’t plum the same depths of silliness, but it was duller. This had gang warfare between the Samoans and the Triads, with a bit of backstory for Kim’s and Park’s characters, but fell into tired old cliches and even more ludicrous action scenes: Danny hides behind an overturned trestle table as cover against 9mm rounds (by contrast, a recent episode of Dark Blue showed, more realistically, 9mm rounds passing through internal walls at close range).

The only real reasons for watching (unless you count Steve’s Ferrari, Grace Park constantly in a bikini or you’re a big Daniel Dae Kim fan) are the camaraderie between Scott Caan’s Danno and Alex O’Loughlin’s Steve and indeed Alex O’Loughlin, who really has obvious talent, if only he could find a decent vehicle to star in.

It’ll probably run for a while, but I don’t think I’ll be sticking around for it.

Carusometer rating: 4
Rob’s prediction: Will last a season, maybe more if they retool it next season

US TV

What have you been watching this week (w/e October 1)

1 October 2010 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

Kale Ingram in Rubicon, the hardest gay man in town

Lovely wife is off in Barcelona with her pals at the moment, so there’s a slight backlog on things we watch together – 30 Rock, Community, Modern Family, Cougar Town, Being Erica, Life Unexpected and Hellcats. I’ve also yet to muster up the enthusiasm to watch Detroit 1-8-7, My Generation and Boardwalk Empire and I’ve decided not to bother with Lone Star now it’s been cancelled. And as for Undercovers, The Defenders and The Whole Truth, there’s just not enough time in the world to be giving some shows a second chance. I’ve also got Outsourced episode 2 to watch, Law and Order: LA and I might even given Downton Abbey a try, despite it being on ITV. This is a very busy time of year!

  • Better With You: Just like with the first episode, there’s some good writing, there’s a good cast, it makes you laugh. It has its fair share of cliches, mainly to do with the oldest couple, but they’re reasonably tolerable. But the horrible, horrible laughter track and studio audience are like fingers on a blackboard. I’m not sure despite the fact it’s the only really funny new comedy so far this season that I can actually carry on watching it.
  • Chuck: It seems like the Buy More is turning into “the place where guest stars who would like to cameo on Chuck turn up”. This week it was the turn of the Old Spice guy who proved nearly as awesome as Captain Awesome – glad to see him back, too, because he is just awesome. Otherwise, a mixture of fun and… oh no, it’s the Buy More crew back. And is it my imagination of is Chuck just not bothering to “flash” much these days.
  • Dexter: A surprisingly emotional start, with our Dexter mourning the departure of someone close to him at the end of last season. Some real nice touches, no obvious serial killer adversary for our Dexter and it looks like the real enemy for him this year is going to be himself. No Julia Stiles yet (she’ll be along soon), which I’m looking forward to. So very promising.
  • The Event: Hmmm. Pretty much everything you guessed was going to happen during the pilot has now turned out to be the case. If I spend the reason of the season having every mystery proven to be obvious, I’m not going to be best pleased. Episode three is apparently the point at which things change in interesting ways, so I’ll stick around for that one, but the appeal of the show has dropped significantly as the silliness factor has kicked in.
  • Hawaii Five-0: Talking of very silly indeed, Hawaii Five-0 tried to do Sneakers this week and it was all a bit laughable. With no Len Wiseman directing, the action quickly fell apart, giving us possibly the stupidest, most badly edited catfight I’ve seen since the 70s. WTF is up with Daniel Dae Kim on that motorbike? And what age is Grace Park trying to play? But the Danny/Steve pairing is a fun one, the return to original series format (a guest helper of the week for Five-0) is a nice touch and the scripts are enjoyably stupid, so I’ll probably stick with this one for now.
  • House: Distinct lack of women on the main team all of a sudden. But an acceptable episode, even if the new “nice” House is hard to take seriously.
  • Mad Men: I’m up to speed at last! Very much enjoying the season so far and enjoying the hoops Don is being made to go through. Didn’t like Lane’s father (W Morgan Sheppard from Max Headroom et al) but I do like Don’s new girlfriend and the relationship he has with her.
  • Parenthood: A much more balanced episode, with both men and women getting decent plot lines. But the last minute “Asperger’s kid takes an interest at last” moment didn’t ring true, Monica Potter’s character is just collapsing and not enough is actually happening – it’s actually hard to say what the point of Parenthood is since there’s no real plot drive towards anything. So I’m on the verge of giving up. Just not quite yet.
  • Raising Hope: I gave up after five minutes into episode 2, on the general grounds it wasn’t funny.
  • Rubicon: Not much happening at all still. But it’s engrossing and I have to say Kale – not the hero but his boss – is proving to be one of the most interesting characters on TV for some time: a gay man in a relationship, successful, happy, talented, the hardest man in town despite being in his 40s or 50s, a former US Marine yet possessed with some of the finest taste in interior decor around. No one really quite like him on TV. Makes the show worth watching all by himself.
  • Running Wilde: Even Peter Serafinowicz couldn’t really rescue this one. A few funny moments, but way too few. I’ll probably watch next week’s though.
  • Shit My Dad Says: We lasted two and half minutes on this before giving up. Not funny in the slightest.
  • Smallville: I thought I’d give this one a try again, given it’s the last season. Still as dumb as a box of hammers, and way too comic strip, but it was good to see John Schneider get to cameo. Ditto Dr Fate, even if Chloe isn’t going to be around much now. I think I’ll skip a few more episodes until Supergirl’s back.
  • Stargate Universe: Not the rip-roaring return I was hoping for, given the strength of the various cliffhangers last season. Everything’s been wrapped up a little too neatly. I also wasn’t happy to see the return of the people they’d left behind on that planet, which robbed that episode of one of the show’s most magnificent ambiguities. The constant darkness also means I can’t see what’s going on half the time. But I’m interested to see what they do with the Lucian Alliance people with Robert Knepper about.
  • Supernatural: And… I’m out. The end of last season was a natural conclusion to the previous five years, so I think I might as well leave while the show is on a high. The departure of Eric Kripke as showrunner seems to have robbed the show of some of its strengths, since this first episode was dull and was just a traipse over the glories of past episodes. The new format felt very crowbarred into the show (spoilers: look! It’s me your dead grandfather! And here are all your cousins! Let’s go fight bad guys). None of it really rang true. So I think I’ll cut this out of my schedule.

But what have you been watching?

As always, no spoilers unless you’re going to use the <spoiler> </spoiler> tags, please. If you’ve reviewed something on your blog, you can put a link to it here rather than repeat yourself (although too many links and you might get killed by the spam filter).