Toob Talk

Bryan Fuller is, apparently, a god among television producers.

Almost every single show he’s produced, I’ve loved.

Pushing Daisies is no different.

Yes, the pilot felt a little uneven at times, but at its worst it was still better than most others I’ve seen. Ever. I can also fully understand why this show will quickly be canceled, much like some of Fuller’s other shows.

The show centers around Ned (Lee Pace), a young man who discovers early on that he can bring dead things back to life with a touch. Shortly after, he discovers two other things. Firstly, that if the thing he has brought back to life stays alive for more than a minute, something else nearby dies. Secondly, that if he ever touches something he’s brought back to life again, it dies. Permanently.

There’s also a girl. Her name is Chuck (Anna Friel). She lived next to Ned and they really liked each other. But they were only nine when Ned’s mother died (and came back to life) and Chuck’s father died (and then Ned’s mother died again). Soon they were separated by the cold forces of reality. But not before one, sweet, first kiss.

Time passes as time does and Ned finds two uses for his gift–making the best pies (because his fruit is always fresh) and helping a less than ethical private detective (Chi McBride) solve murder cases and collect reward money (by asking the murder victim who killed them).

As fate would have it, Chuck comes back into his life. Unfortunately, it’s on a slab.

And that is where the story really starts.

Visually, there’s nothing on TV quite like this show, the over-processed colors and visual tricks add a certain surreal feel. Narratively, it is unique in it’s story-book feel, mostly due to the copious use of a verbose narrator. The closest I’ve seen to this mix before is in Tim Burton’s Big Fish. That particular mix isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

The characters are quirky, distinct and engaging. The writing is funny in an Edward Gorey kind of way. And the overall story is as heart-warming and classical as any good fairy tale.

If that sort of thing is to your liking, tune in and catch the show before it’s gone.

Of course, Fuller could get really lucky and have Daisies be as big a hit as Heroes.

Well, that was unexpected.

Cavemen didn’t totally suck. In fact, I think it’s the best written new sitcom I’ve seen so far this season. Even better, there’s no laugh track.

This show could work even it weren’t populated with cavemen. Most of the comedy is true situation based comedy, as opposed to the all too common one-liners and insult humor that populates the majority of sitcoms. What having cavemen as the main characters allows the writers to do, though, is deal with issues like racism without immediately setting off the raw nerves that are associated with the topic.

I hate to say it, but I think this show may actually be pretty good.

That worries me because I really don’t want to see a slew of copy-cat, based on commercial character, sitcoms. I doubt most would bother to put the work in that the Cavemen team has.

When I tuned in to Life, I expected yet another cop show (like K-Ville). What I got was a bit more.

Life tells the story of cop Charlie Crews who is sent to prison, only to be exonerated twelve years later. He returns to the force as part of his settlement and gets back to work. Of course, he spent a bunch of those 12 years in solitary (being a cop in the general population of a maximum security prison isn’t a pleasant thing), so he’s got a few personality quirks.

It’s those quirks that make this show stand out above the other cop shows. Crews (played excellently by Damian Lewis) is a great character. The story unfolds in such a way that, right from the beginning, we know that he’s a little bit off… and by the end we know just how off he may be.

Of course, it’s that special insight he has–that incredibly skewed point of view–that makes him the great cop that he is. And there is no lack of good TV police work in the show.

Even the underlying thread–the question of how he got into and out of prison–is engaging and not over done. Mostly, it’s dealt with through documentary style interviews (a convention that many shows have tried and just as many have abandoned). The rest is dealt with through good writing for and good performances from the supporting characters.

I wasn’t expecting to like it, but Life instantly made it onto my “must see” list. You should check it out, too.

Moonlight is the new show about a vampire, living in LA and fighting crime.

Don’t confuse it with Angel.

Don’t confuse it with Forever Knight.

Both of those shows are infinitely superior.

Sure, Moonlight has a brooding vampire in it, but Mick St. John has only been around for 90 or so years. He’s painfully human–not in the suffering yet noble way that Angel was, but in a whining, self-important sort of way. Mick’s also got a friend from “way back” (played by Veronica Mars bad boy Jason Dohring), except he’s not a smooth, manipulative bad-ass like Knight’s Lacroix, he’s more of a cutthroat businessman (which really doesn’t play will with Dohring as the character).

Moonlight is also a private detective show. So you don’t forget this, there is copious voice overs in the pilot.

What it comes down to is this: Moonlight just feels like a poor copy of many different things. It has nothing that pops out and makes it unique. Even it’s dark lighting feels like so many of the modern cop shows. (And I haven’t even mentioned how much a of re-tread the plot–about a suspected vampire cult killing people–was.)

I’ll give it another few episodes to find it’s voice, but my hopes from here on out are low. I suspect it will be gone from the schedule shortly.

With yet another high-powered (though oddly mixed) cast, ABC’s Big Shots could have been fantastic.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t.

It lacked everything that made Dirty Sexy Money fun. Things weren’t over the top enough. In fact, they were decidedly typical. Even worse, of the four main characters, only one (played by Michael Vartan) is really likable. One other (played by Christopher Titus) is tolerable. The other two are a whiny bitch and a just plain sleezey player (played by Joshua Malina and Dylan McDermott, respectively).

The differences between the characters left me wondering why, exactly, these guys would hang out. Only Vartan’s James Auster has an interesting plot going–and that wasn’t even presented as the “A” story. That’s part of the problem. The writers tried to make everyone the star of the pilot. Four distinct “A” stories in an hour-long pilot just doesn’t work. None of the characters got the time they should have. Everything, in effect, was a “B” story. But that’s OK because I don’t think any character other than Vartan’s could have carried a full episode.

If the writers and show runners are smart, they’ll let the other three “main” characters fall into the background and make the show all about the one good guy among a pack of wolves. That I’d watch. The show as it is? Not a chance.