A complete archive of The Medium is Not Enough’s reviews of TV programmes since 2005
Okay. I surrender. I’ve had enough. It’s just too bad. I need to listen to the Carusometer more often. Last night’s episode was truly awful and I’m just going to give up on the show. If I need to know any crossover info between Torchwood and Doctor Who, I’ll look it up in Wikipedia from now on.
So we’re up to episode three on The State Within and I reckon we’re ready for a third-episode verdict.
After a really dismal first episode, things got better in the second episode, and improved still further with the third episode. Most of the stupidity has gone and the things that suggested they thought we were stupid have gone, too. It’s not so overblown; and the action they intended to be exciting in the first episode has been replaced with action that actually is exciting.
But the constants throughout have been the multiple, over-complicated plot strands; the ridiculously stereotypical US characters; and the generic British characters. The decision to make up countries, airlines, etc, mean that we might as well be observing the parallel universe’s planet Aaargh for all its relevance to the real world – at least 24 can accuse China or thinly veiled versions of Iran of being evil without worrying too much; here we have to deal with Tzazarazzakastan – who cares if fictional made up country with no real-world parallel is up to no good? Borat has more to say about former Soviet Republics’ human rights records.
So it’s getting better, but I think individual episodes are going to top out at a two on The Carusometer at most. On average though, it’s earned a three, so that’s what I’m awarding it.
The Medium is Not Enough has declared The State Within to be a three or “Minor Caruso” on The Carusometer quality scale. A Minor Caruso corresponds to “a show in which David Caruso might guest star after having demanded script approval, as a result of which all lines in which he’s not referred to as ‘big man’ will be rewritten by both his personal psychic and his agent. During filming, he will call his co-stars ‘actors’ in a sarcastic tone of voice, maybe with air quotes”.
In other words, it’s not worth getting into, you probably shouldn’t hang around for any further episodes if you’ve already started, and if you’ve taped them, you can dump them now without having watched them.
In the US: Wednesdays, 9/8c, ABC
In the UK: Bravo, starting in the Spring
Groundhog Day is one of those movies that has entered the vernacular. We all know what someone means when they say they’re having a “Groundhog Day”. It’s so all-pervasive and clever an idea, virtually every science fiction and fantasy show of the last decade, from Stargate SG-1 to Xena: Warrior Princess, has had its Groundhog Day episode, in which the lead keeps waking up on the same day, over and over again, until something’s fixed.
I’ll tell you one show that hasn’t though: 24. Until now that is. Because in the great 12-week lull until Lost returns next year, ABC has given us Day Break, something that marries the excitement and tension of 24 with a day that just keeps repeating.
Continue reading “Review: Day Break 1×1-1×2 (US: ABC; UK: Bravo)”
In the US: CBS, Tuesdays, 10pm ET/PT. Also available on Innertube.
In the UK: Airing on BBC1 towards the end of 2007, with possible pick ups on UK Gold
When a project’s been sitting around for two years and has already had the main character recast after a failed pilot, you suspect things are wrong with it. But when it’s rushed forward to replace a failed drama – in this case, Smith – there comes the suggestion that maybe it’s not going to be too bad.
3 Lbs is a combination of various other hospital dramas, in particular House and MDs, but it does have a few sprinklings of originality. Starring Murder One’s Stanley Tucci, Good Morning Miami‘s Mark Feuerstein and Torchwood‘s Indira Varma, it focuses on that much neglected organ: the brain.
In the UK: Channel 4, 9pm, Tuesdays. Repeated Thursdays 9pm, 12.05am, More4
In the US: BBC America, probably in 2007.
Characters re-cast: 0
Major characters gotten rid of: 0
Major new characters: 0 – it’s all Gordon, all the time!
Format change percentage: 10% (for one episode)
Number of cahones: 2
Gordon Ramsay can sometimes be something of a self-parody. A former professional football player who runs a half-marathon every Sunday, he’s now a multi-millionaire celebrity chef, best known for bullying people, shouting, asking people where their balls are (now in Spanish, as well as English!) and swearing. He is almost a living, breathing, stereotype of masculinity. All he needs is a rusty white van, a proper haircut and a rottweiler and he’ll be able to set up a testosterone donation centre for anyone who CAN’T FIND A PAIR! (I imagine, if it were possible for him to do so, Ramsay would talk like that: in capitals and exclusively punctuated with exclamation marks. He would also be known only as Ramsay.)
Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, now in its third series, gives Gordon a chance to use all four of the aforementioned talents in combination with his fifth, lesser known skill: helping people. Episode one gave him the chance to go to the Costa Del Sol to aid an ailing restaurant recover from a debt of €120,000. Said restaurant had found a niche on its particular part of the Costa: rather than copying all the other restaurants on the Costa and serving up sausages and chips to everyone (that really fills my very soul with despair. England, what has become of you?), the restaurant owner, Laurence Davey, had decided to serve Spanish food.
Was it still too adventurous for all those English people abroad? Or was the food just awful and liable to kill people, the service rubbish, and the floor itself covered in doggie excrement? Gordon was going to find out and tell Laurence how to fix it.
The trouble is, Gordon brought along his Ernest Hemingway guide to being a man…
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