Here’s “What have you been watching this week?” your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched this week.
After the jump, The Apprentice, Being Erica, Better With You, Chuck, Community, Cougar Town, Dexter, Hellcats, Help, My House is Falling Down, Life Unexpected, Mad Men, Modern Family, No Ordinary Family, Running Wilde, Smallville, Southland, and Stargate Universe.
Can you work out which one I’m going to drop from my viewing list? I’ll give you a clue – it’s definitely not this one:
A little later than normal, but it’s here at last, your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV that they might be missing – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched this week.
Lovely wife is back and we’ve managed to catch up on the backlog almost. Still got this week’s episode of Being Erica to watch, but otherwise, we’re sorted.
The Apprentice: Well, it’s back – Britain’s biggest collection of complete cocks has expanded once again. This year, the BBC is slightly taking the piss since although there are a few female cocks (that blonde one with the glasses) and a few female incompetents, all the men are absolute cocks – or at least, all the ones they decided to put on screen, since there were a few who apparently didn’t say so much as a word. Still, if you want a slightly upmarket version of The X-Factor to shout at, you can’t really do better than this, and thankfully, the biggest cock of the entire episode was thrown off.
Being Erica: Episode two felt a bit more like Being Erica of old, despite the new format, with Erica having to deal with the fallout of her relationship decisions at the end of season two. Dr Tom’s back to his old self, too, with no hint of all the politics suggested by episode 1. However, just in case you thought that it was male writers who had the monopoly on being unable to write unconvincing dialogue for the opposite gender, this week, not one male character, gay or straight, had a convincing line of dialogue. I don’t think it’s because they’re Canadian.
Boardwalk Empire: I’m finally working my way through these and am on to episode two. For the uninitiated, this is a 1920s gangster story set in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where Steve Buscemi is the city treasurer. He’s half-gangster, half-legitimate town figure and boy is he glad that prohibition has set in. Episode 1 was directed by exec producer Martin Scorsese and was as beautiful a piece of work as you’re going to find on TV – wonderfully evocative of the era and an interesting contrast to the austerely beautiful aesthetics of Mad Men. It was also one of the bloodiest pieces of work I’ve seen for a while, with a full-on shot of someone getting their face blown off with a shotgun. With a supporting cast including Gretchen Mol (Life on Mars US), Kelly MacDonald (State of Play, Trainspotting), Michael K Williams (The Wire) and Dabney Coleman (Major Dad – tee hee), it’s very much must-see TV but despite that, it’s actually not that enjoyable yet. I hear it’s a bit like The Wire, in that it builds over the season, so I’ll be sticking with this for a while at least. Oh, in case you’re wondering UK readers, yes, it had been acquired, and it’s going to be one of the flagship programmes on Sky’s new Sky Atlantic TV channel.
Chuck: More guest stars again this week, with Stone Cold Steve Austin and Nicole Ritchie returning. Okay as they go, good to see Chuck flashing again, but nothing remarkable, and mostly about getting everything back to the status quo at the Buy More.
Community: Last week’s was good, but okay, despite the double cameo of Drew Carey and Rob Corddry: some individually great moments (the chloroform scene), but as a whole, nothing too special. But this week’s was the first truly awesome episode this season. Most of this is down to John Oliver (of The Daily Show), who’s going to be pretty much a cast regular this season as the anthropology lecturer, despite being a psychologist and not knowing anything about anthropology. Every single line, more or less, particularly when dealing with “Señor Chang”, was comedy gold, and Britta and Annie’s bickering, Pearce’s neo-Buddhism and even Betty White’s cameo were excellent. By the way, UK viewers, season one has finally started airing on the Viva channel in the UK. No, I have no idea WTF that is, but at least it’s on Freeview.
Cougar Town: Just chugging along. The funniest thing about it is the constant renaming of the show in the titles (this week “(badly titled) Cougar Town“). But it’s enjoyable, both textually and actually like hanging out with a group of drunk 40 year olds who like to play games with each other.
Dexter: Hmm. Dexter struggles with family. Dexter’s out hunting. Been here before. Enjoyable enough, but needs a little something more.
Detroit 1-8-7: I got about 20 minutes into episode one of this fake dramedy documentary cop show with Michael Imperioli (of The Sopranos and Life on Mars US) set in Detroit before quitting. Southland does the whole “fake documentary” thing far better, and this was actually quite tasteless (not in a good way, unless you find cellphones with inappropriate ringtones going off during “your daughter is dead” scenes entertaining), unfunny and uninvolving, with nothing new to say or do (Look, guys, it’s the rookie detective being sick at his first murder scene. Seen that before?). Weirdly, do you find it slightly offensive that the hero of the piece is the only white person in the cast?
Hellcats: The fourth episode of the series was a little bit on the rubbish side and oh no, no, no, no, no, ended with a goddamn music set piece to show off Aly Michalka‘s musical skills. Really, we don’t need that: that’s so early 2000s (cf Buffy, Charmed). Even Smallville ditched the Talon music scenes by season three. Episode five was more interesting with Christian judgementalism being dolled out by in great big ladles by Teryl Rothery at Ashley Tisdale and Marti going off to do a less comedic Legally Blonde against Gale Harold’s orders. It seems to have settled down into a Fame thing, with a bit of relationship soapiness and a dance routine each episode, the near-journalistic quality of the first eps a distant memory. But it’s still a good show. One thing I have noticed though: for cheerleaders, they don’t seem to spending a whole lot of time around football matches, do they?
House: Has now turned into fan fiction. Ugh.
Life Unexpected: How many of you are roughly 30 years old like Baze and Cate? How many of you reckon you’re a tad more grown up them then? Oh, practically all of you then. Really, could we have a bit more adult behaviour from the adults, please? Even Emma Caulfield’s acting like she’s 21 again. Paige, at least, is growing on me (particularly now I realise she’s scream queen Arielle Kebbel), but the absence of Abby is getting more and more glaring. But, at least the last episode remembered that Lux used to be a foster kid and brought back Tash to rub in the fact that life is usually pretty sh*te for foster kids.
Mad Men: A good episode as always. A nice illustration of how expectations of the behaviour of expectant fathers has changed and a good character piece for everyone from Roger downwards.
Modern Family: The earthquake episode was pretty funny, particularly thanks to the guest cameo by Nathan Lane. But can we have a non-camp gay man in this, just for a change? They do exist you know. Oh, and could Phil stop being such a dick? Thank you.
No Ordinary Family: Another piece of semi-family fun that never quite hits any highs but never really gets to any lows. Our family is busy adjusting to their new powers, with teenage boy revealing that he’s now got a super brain (or at least can spout math mumbo-jumbo that’s entirely irrelevant to the actual problem being solved, but it sounds good) and everyone else working out how to control their own powers. Some good bits with both Michael Chiklis and Julie Benz and a surprisingly nasty ending to the episode. This might just turn out to be the second decent new drama of the season.
Outsourced: Well, I made it through to the episode two and not only was that completely bereft of humour, it was about an offensive as episode one. Given that this is actually the most successful of all of NBC’s new shows so far this season, and it isn’t exactly storming the ratings, it does make you wonder if anyone’s sorry they jumped the gun and cancelled Heroes now. I’m out anyway, so no ep three for me. Avoid this, if possible, because even though the characters are sympathetic, everything else is dire.
Parenthood: I’m not exactly sure why I’m watching this beyond an admiration for the house-husband character and a general liking for both Monica Potter and Erika Christensen. I feel a ruthless streak coming on, to be honest, since there’s not really much here anymore, and all sorts of season one plotlines seem to have been dropped (Christensen’s battle with the hot housewife after her husband, grandfather’s investment cock-ups, etc).
Rubicon: OMFG. Something happened! Awesome! At last, we have some action, we finally know what this whole conspiracy is about and the bad guys have finally bought themselves a clue. If this were 24, all this would have been in episode 1, rather than episode 11, but at least we know now.
Smallville: In episode 2, Michael Shanks as an expert on ancient Egypt. Typecast, much? In episode 3, the return of Supergirl – better! Lots of in-jokes to the comics, which, let’s face it, is what the whole point of Smallville is, and everything does seem to be developing in pleasing directions as well. I’ll stick with it for Supergirl for now.
Stargate Universe:Ah, now that’s more like it. After last week’s disappointing start to the first season, we have Stargate Universe‘s patented “whatever can go wrong absolutely definitely will go wrong” school of drama, with deaths, murders, and everyone being self-serving and calculating exactly who to screw over. One slight disappointment is the easy way in which Rush solved the master code problem in between episodes, but it has given us the return of Louise Lombard. Also a little disappointed with how quickly they gave up on the possibility of having Lou Diamond Phillips as a spy in the Alliance Camp. But a good episode all the same.
30 Rock: Last week’s was a bit daft, but still fun and did at least have Elizabeth Banks in it. This week’s was the first edgy show of the season, with a big send up of NBC’s lack of diversity that gave us a shout out to Community star Donald Glover (former writer for 30 Rock) but singularly failed to mention Undercovers. I wonder why that is, apart from Undercovers being dreadful. Some great moments.
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).
In the US: Fridays, 10/9c, CBS In the UK: Not yet acquired
In the neverending quest for new ways to do cop and legal dramas, the concept of the “super-format” has emerged (I just made up that name so don’t go looking for it anywhere else. It’s mine). So you want to do cop shows, but you also quite like the whole lawyer thing as well? Well, how about Law & Order, where you get both cops and lawyers: a twofer super-format. Or maybe you quite like stories about guys on patrol, rookie cops and detectives? Well, how about Southland, then? That’s a threefer super-format. Or perhaps you even like the mix of politics that you get at the top of the police hierarchy with the day-to-day police work of the rank and file as well as lawyers? Well, how about The Wire then?
Indeed, The Wire was perhaps the first of the “super-super format” shows: a format that tries to amalgamate everything to do with the legal system and look at it all equally. But post The Wire, what new super-super format can you have?
Blue Bloods rather cunningly does the very American thing of making it all about family. In this case, the Reagans, a New York Irish family of cops and lawyers. We have Tom Selleck, complete with his old Magnum PI moustache, as the New York chief of police. His dad is the former chief of police. He has two sons, one a detective (Donnie Wahlberg), the other a beat cop. He had another son, who was also a beat cop, but who died in the line of duty. And he has a daughter (Bridget Moynahan) who is an assistant district attorney.
The result is a show in which you get to see all aspects of New York policing, from the politics at the top to the investigations by detectives to the day-to-day issues of the average beat cop to the problems of the legal system – all while the politics of torture are discussed over Sunday lunch. For a while, it actually seems pretty good – and then six minutes before the end, we get the Blue Templars and everything falls apart.
I’ve given up on a few shows over the last fortnight, most notably Leverage, which has been boring the pants off me of late (YMMV), and Rizzoli & Isles, which made Women’s Murder Club look like a documentary. But here’s what I have been watching
Burn Notice: This season is really just fantastically unmemorable at the moment. I literally can’t remember what’s happened in it within about an hour of viewing it. But while I’m watching it, it’s fun.
Covert Affairs: Embarrassingly for Burn Notice, despite Covert Affairs being a duller show, it is making Burn Notice look a bit daft in comparison to the far more realistic tradecraft that goes on here (not that it’s that realistic, of course). I am enjoying Covert Affairs, and the arrival of Sendhil Ramamurthy (who despite having a US accent normally, still sounds like he’s putting one on) is excellent news. But despite the awesome Piper Perabo, it doesn’t quite have that magic it needs to make it must-see TV.
The Gates: Glad they’ve finally pushed a couple of revelations, but we’re going to need a few more answers soon, IMHO, to avoid this becoming dull.
The IT Crowd: Last week’s wasn’t quite as funny as previous weeks’ episodes, but it still had some great moments.
Mad Men: Season four’s here and it’s a little dull, I have to confess. A few nice moments and obviously the first ep was largely dedicated to establishing where everybody is a year on from season 3, but it didn’t really come alive until its last few moments. Oh, and the Advertising Age guy’s shorthand? All good teeline, but together, didn’t mean a thing. Absolute gibberish.
Persons Unknown: Massive outbreak of silliness in the last two episodes. Sigh. I knew it couldn’t last.
Rev: The first episode not written by the series creator and the first I didn’t enjoy. It just felt a bit nasty, to be honest.
Royal Pains: Doesn’t quite have the edge of last season, the demotion of Jill to an occasional walk-on is a real body-blow to the show, as is the absence of Boris at the moment. But Anastasia Griffith is fine and the Pretty Woman reference last week was fun.
Scoundrels: Now, I’ve never been to a strip club (I just haven’t. Honest), but even I know that the one they have in Scoundrels is pretty tame – much like the show. It’s chugging along though, has some fun moments, and some fun characters. It just flounders as soon as anything too much like drama hits it. Also had the first Terminator in-joke of the season this week, which only took five episodes. Well done on the restraint guys.
Southland: Onto episode four and it’s just become a slightly soapy mush, which is very disappointing given its first couple of episodes. I’m going to stick with it, particularly since I hear season two focuses on the two interesting characters from the first two eps, but that was a real plummet in quality.
Top Gear: Rubbish interview of Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, but nice to see them both do so well in the circuit. The Ayrton Sena piece was a surprisingly lovely tribute as well. Generally, though, this season has lacked a certain pizazz.
But what have you been watching? Anyone catch The Pillars of the Earth?
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).
