Toob Talk

Fox is once again getting the jump on the other three networks with it’s fall premieres. Monday night saw the debut of their new cop show, K-Ville.

K-Ville, short for Katrinaville, is set in the 9th Ward of post-hurricane-trounced New Orleans. It follows the on the job and at home troubles of long-time local cop Marlin Boulet (Anthony Anderson) and his new partner, Trevor Cobb (Cole Hauser). Botlet’s old partner cracked under the pressure of the job during Hurricane Katrina and ran off, leaving Boulet up to his neck in injured and panicked people. Needless to say, he’s a little leery of taking on a new partner, even two years after the flood waters have receded.

As far as cop shows go, this one’s pretty standard. The caper they foil in the pilot is a little over the top in its execution and resolution, but the character interaction has the seeds of something that could be interesting to watch. The fact that it’s actually filmed in New Orleans is nice from both a realism angle and a humanitarian angle. But that’s about where the uniqueness of the show seems to end.

Also on the negative side is the editing technique used in the show. The cuts are disorienting, not in the usual MTV way, but in a “How the heck did the characters get there?” sort of way. In some cases, it makes things look just plain silly. We jump from being inside when a drive by shooting happens to being half-way into the chase–and then after just a few screeching twists and turns we jump again to the car they’re chasing being on its roof and empty. It’s like they couldn’t afford to film the important parts of the chase, the real action and the stunts. So all we’re left with is filler.

It doesn’t do anything new–not that there’s that much new that can be done with the cop show–and without something more distinctive than its setting, it won’t last long. Especially once NBC’s Monday night stars up. The lead in from Prison Break may help it last half the season, but I don’t expect it to last much longer.

Of all the networks, NBC seems to be a bit ahead of this technology curve. At least for the upcoming fall season. They’ve made three of the pilots for new shows available in a few different ways. I watched them on my cable system’s On Demand system the other day.

One of those new shows is Journeyman. It focuses on Dan Vasser, a reporter with a bad history who finds himself periodically unstuck in time. The transitions between present and past are random and can strike him at any time. In the past, he has to “fix” things so the present turns out slightly different.

Now, if you’re as avid a TV watcher as I am, you’re already thinking “Hey, that sounds like Quantum Leap.” Or maybe you’re thinking of any number of other time travel shows that have come and gone over the years (like Seven Days or the real classic Time Tunnel). If you were watching shows that got quickly canceled in the middle of last season, you’re immediately going think of Day Break.

The pilot episode was a bit confusing–and that’s a good thing in a show like this. With no clear indication of when a time shift was happening, the audience was brought deep into Vasser’s own feelings of disorientation and confusion. There are some neat ways he discovers he’s slipped back in time, like being in the middle of surfing for info on his cellphone web browser and suddenly having no service.

Overall, the pilot was pretty solid. There’s a good gritty realism to the characters, a feel of realism, even though there is time travel involved. If they focus on that feeling–on that style–the show could last for at least a season, if not more.

Unfortunately, at the very end of the show, they introduced a special effects transition to the time shift. If they go that route, they won’t make it five episodes before they’re canned.

Speaking of time travel shows that didn’t make it far, remember Day Break? There’s a familiar face from that failed show in Journeyman. Moon Boodgood played the girlfriend of Taye Diggs’ time traveling cop in last year’s series. This time around she’s playing the ex-girlfriend of Kevin McKidd’s (fresh off of HBO’s Rome) time traveling reporter.

If this show doesn’t make it, she’s going to get typecast and earn a bad reputation.

Of all the networks, NBC seems to be a bit ahead of this technology curve. At least for the upcoming fall season. They’ve made three of the pilots for new shows available in a few different ways. I watched them on my cable system’s On Demand system the other day.

One of those new shows is Chuck. The story of a hapless tech-support geek (er, nerd) who inadvertently becomes the receptacle of a huge database of intelligence agency information. That info is dropped directly into his brain through an unrealistic (though OK in the context of the show) plot device–he gets an e-mail from an old college friend who just happens to be a rouge CIA agent.

That data, now inextricably tied up in socially inept Chuck’s head, makes him a target for recruitment or elimination by every intelligence agency out there.

That makes for a pretty good pilot episode, but I don’t know if the show has a lot of staying power. Without some serious twists and additions to the base premise (perhaps even more of a sci-fi turn), it’s only going to get less believable that the aging information in Chuck’s head is still worth caring about.

It’ll be an enjoyable bunch of episodes, though.

But, for a few episodes, this is going to be one of the fun shows to watch. Even in the pilot the cast seems well-suited for and comfortable in their characters. Newcomer Yvonne Strzechowski is tremendous fun to watch as she plays Chuck’s new handler, an elegant counterpoint to Zachary Levi’s sweet nerd. Adam Baldwin doesn’t have a lot of screen time, but his John Casey is another good solid heavy role for one of my favorite supporting actors.

Knowing that McG has his fingers in this show, I think I can safely say that the attitude and action will carry through for as long as it lasts. How long will that be? I don’t know. But I’m betting less than a full season.

Lost, as I watch it.

(more…)

This week’s episode of Heroes took us five years into the future of the show we’ve been watching all season.

As has always been the case with the show, it was done with style and punch. For those that are familiar with the super hero genre, though, none of what we saw was particularly new.

In the classic X-Men story Days of Future Past, we were shown a similar track of events and a future similarly dangerous to those who are special. That was back in 1981 and the image is still echoing in the genre. Heroes did a very good job of it.

The future we see in Heroes has half of New York in ruins, only barely better than it must have been in the days following the explosion the heroes have been trying to prevent from episode one. We see that Hiro isn’t the only one that has become darker in the five years since the explosion.

We also get some questions answered and are left asking some more. (more…)

I’ve been a bit remiss on commenting on recent TV.

And with the networks being as quick on the trigger as they are, I totally miss out on the chance to recommend things before they’re bounced all over the schedule and/or pulled completely.

Case in point: Drive.

The two-hour premiere left me feeling distinctly “eh” about the show. But I caught that third hour (of course, on a different night from the premiere) and found that the show had started to find its stride. The characters set in, enough of the plot was exposed to see the pleasing and vaguely creative curve it taking and the rhythm of the regular run-time started to kick in. Hour four was even better.

There will be no hour five. Fox has pulled the plug on it. They, of course, cited low ratings. (Which, for Fox could mean anything lower than what 24 pulls in.)

Here’s the thing, though… they’ve got another nine episodes (according to a Reuters article, at least) of the show already in the can.

This is not unlike what happened with ABC’s Daybreak which was brought in (and then quickly dropped) when Lost went on its break early in the current season. Daybreak got burned off online. And, as seems to often be the case with quickly canceled shows, the best episodes were the un-aired ones. (Not that Daybreak is the best example–the show had a good number of problems and should have been tweaked and tightened a lot more before it ever hit the air.)

The simple fact is that it sometimes takes a show some time to shake out the bugs. Actors get to know their characters better after a few shows. The show runners know better where the strengths and weaknesses of their staff writers fall. The producers get a better idea of who the key demographic actually is (as opposed to who they want it to be).

Over the years, there are very few shows I’ve seen that shouldn’t have made it past four on-air hours. Of those that are among those very few, most are game shows and reality TV shows. And of the oh-so-very-few that I firmly believe should have been axed right quick, some of them stayed on the air for a long, long time (Yes Dear and Life According to Jim come to mind).

While I may not be terribly picky about what I watch on TV, I am picky about what I watch regularly and even more picky about what I think is actually good TV. Las Vegas is entertaining, but it’s never been good TV. Every season, it seems there are fewer and fewer shows I feel compelled to keep watching. Of those that I do, I’ll bet dollars to donuts that half (or more) of them will be dropped from the schedule before mid-season.

I look at the current network TV line-up and I see a bit of a wasteland. Not that TV has ever been a place populated with kings and paragons of knowledge and virtue, but the landscape is most certainly different from what it was in the heyday of my original television watching days. I remember more shows taking chances and I remember more networks taking chances on shows.

Yes, shows have always been pulled–and some quite quickly–for as long as networks have looked at their bottom lines via ratings. But the ratings game has changed a lot more in the past two decades than the marketing babble has. The effectiveness of advertising as a whole has dropped (thanks in no small part to everyone who time-shifts their viewing with TiVO, watches their shows online or otherwise puts themselves in the position to skip that nearly twenty minutes per hour that isn’t show).

Networks today are so numbers-conscious that they lose sight of the bigger picture.

They forget that the numbers are only part of the story.

Or, maybe, the number are the story. Maybe it’s just not the story the networks think it is.

If nothing else, the Web has proven that there is a market out there for alternate distribution routes. I’ve watched all of Daybreak online. I probably would have watched it in real-time, too, but I’m not the typical viewer. Many viewers today are used to getting things when they want them–as can be easily seen by the popularity of TiVO.

Maybe the networks need to re-think how they run shows to begin with. They’ve certainly been trying half-heartedly to do that for years.

But that’s another story.

The point here is, a show has to be such a wiz-bang success right off the top these days that the more subtle fare rarely has a chance. Those more subtle shows (like Lost and Heroes) that do manage to hit it big are flukes.

I’m going to miss seeing Drive on TV. It was just getting fun… and looked like it could have gotten good. Maybe I’ll get to see the rest of it–on my own terms, of course–if they dump episodes to the Web. Or maybe it will go the way of shows like Push, Nevada and never be heard of again except in the bios of the people involved in it.

This week, there were a handful of new shows that popped into the line-up.

The only ones that really had me interested were on at 10 p.m. on Thursday. That one of the few blank spots that’s been on my schedule. I’ve been turning the TV off after Grey’s Anatomy for a while. Men in Trees just wasn’t doing it for me at all.

But this week there were two new shows that at least made me think, “Hey, I could enjoy that.”

After watching the pilot episodes of October Road and Rains, I can safely say that there won’t be a problem deciding which one to watch.

October Road intrigued me because I enjoyed Laura Prepon in the few things I’ve seen her in. Mostly That 70s Show. She’s the main reason I tuned in to the new show. She is not enough to keep me watching. In fact, she’s not even the best thing in the show. She’s the second best. The best is the young actor playing her character’s precocious son, Slade Pearce.

The rest of the show, unfortunately, fell very short of my expectations. Not very easy since I didn’t have a lot of expectations. The plot was shallow and well-traveled. The characters were mostly flat. The dialog was mostly uninteresting and only mediocre in its delivery. There’s no chemistry to the show. Well, none that wasn’t completely carried by the music.

Let’s talk about the music for a minute. I know that there’s a trend to use classic music in shows. It’s cheaper and carries a lot of accrued emotional impact with it. But there’s usually a lot more justification put forward in a show for the music the characters listen to. In Supernatural (one of the earlier in the night Thursday shows that uses a lot of old rock and roll), the 70s rock fits perfectly with the characters and, especially, their car and attitude. In October Road, though, where the characters graduated high school in 1997, they seem fixated on mid-80s heartland rock. It doesn’t fit at all with the characters or the setting.

The music makes the temporal setting of the show feel off. That anachronistic feel is cemented by the dialog. It also feels like it was written, at the latest, in the early 90s. The worst example in the pilot would be the afore-mentioned precocious child describing his nowhere near as precocious friend as the Lenny to his George (a wonderful Of Mice and Men reference). His not to bright friend hears this and says “It’s Squiggy, you fool.” How the heck would a modern 10 year old have a Lavern & Shirley reference be the first thing that pops into his head?

Things aren’t all bad with the show, though. There are a hearty bunch of literary references peppered throughout. Mostly because the main character is a writer. A writer who wrote a book that made everyone in his home town look like idiots. And then hadn’t come back in a decade.

I spent the whole time thinking “Didn’t I see this already?” To which the answer is, yes I did. About five years ago there was a short-lived show called Glory Days which had pretty much the same plot. Except it was set in the Pacific Northwest and was a whole lot quirkier and at least a little bit better.

Bottom line is, don’t bother crossing the street for October Road.

Now, the other new show, Rains… that was good TV. The premise may look familiar at first blush. You’ve got a cop who sees and talks with the victims of the murders he investigates. Many shades of Medium and The Ghost Whisperer flood through quickly. But it’s made very clear very quickly that he’s not actually seeing the dead people. He’s just got a very active imagination. And, maybe, he’s a little crazy.

Jeff Goldblum takes the lead and his quirky style and slightly off look make the character work. That character, Raines, was a big fan of the classic detective novels. At least until he became a cop. Then he got a bit weighed down in the non-glamorous reality of it all. In the pilot, he’s back on the force after taking some time off after a bust gone bad got him and his partner shot.

The victim, played by Alexa Davalos (last seen regularly in the canceled mystery/period series Reunion), shows up, constantly changing as his perception of who she actually was changes. She has no more information than he does. She offers no clues. She is, without a question, just a figment of his imagination, there for him to bounce ideas off of.

Some may be put off by the dialog of the show. It is very much pulled stylistically from Chandler and other noir authors and films. There are plenty of Sam Spade and Phil Marlowe like moments which are funniest if you’re a fan of the classic detective genre. Even those who are fans of the modern police procedural, though, will at least be entertained by the way the case plays out.

Rains left me with a smile on my face, which puts it way ahead of October Road which left me dozing off.

There’s no doubt at all what I’ll be watching Thursday night at 10 p.m. It’s Rains all the way.

Well, the new season of 24 is most certainly off to an amazing start.

In fact, with the way tonight’s second hour ended, I’m having trouble imagining just how they’re going to top it in hour 12, let alone hour 24. But maybe that’s because I’m still picking myself up off of the floor. It’s been a while since I’ve screamed at the TV like that.

This show most certainly still has “it.”

That’s all I’m going to say for now. Just in case someone out there hasn’t seen it yet.

Entourage
So I’ve “discovered” this new show on HBO called Entourage. OK, so I’m a season and a half late getting on the bandwagon with this one–I was without my own TV when it premiered last year. The show follows the struggle of a new actor and his friends trying ot make it big in Hollywood. The main cast is great, their chemistry and delivery is more convincing than what you get in many dramas, let along half-hour comedies and the writers on the show really know how to keep all of them up to something. Even though I’ve only seen two episodes, I’m seriously considering picking up the first season on DVD, just so I can catch up. But the really good thing is, unlike HBO’s hour-long dramas, the episodes of this show seem to stand alone just fine (much like Sex in the City did, but not quite as much as Arliss did). There’s more there if you’ve seen everything that’s come before, but if you just catch one every now and then, there’s still enough meat to chew on.

Beauty and the Geek
My favorite new reality show, Beauty and the Geek, ended last week. This week they had a wrap-up/reunion show. Even though the regular run of the show had a good feel to it, this reunion managed to feel really stunted and fake for most of the hour. What it did manage to do was let us see how the beauties and geeks react in front of a live audience. Something they didn’t have to deal with while filming the show. If nothing else, it made it very, very clear that some people don’t take well to a real spotlight… and others, well, others seem born to be on the screen (no matter how annoying they may be).

This show really does hold a special place in my heart. Being a certified “geek” and having been lucky enough to spend a lot of time around “beauties” it was very interesting to see the social dynamics and personal growth play out honestly on a TV show. Unfortunately, I doubt the second season will be anywhere near as good. It never is once people know what they’re in for.

The Inside
I know the show’s as good as dead right now, but I’m still watching it while I can (well, before I get the DVD set). While they haven’t exploited the wonderful ensemble cast they have quite as much as I’d have liked, they have been doing good stories and really digging into the psychology of their main three characters.

I think they may have jumped the gun on the plot of the last episode. It’s something I would have saved for a season finale and then drawn out with a bit more mystery for half of the second season. But, taking into account there won’t be a second season, I’m glad they did it now. It will be very interesting to see how much commentary is on the DVD release, I’d love to hear what the creators were thinking.

Something new tonight…
And now, I’m going to watch the first episode of yet another reality show. This one’s called Hooking Up and follows 11 women through their online dating experiences. It should be… ummm… interesting? Maybe I shouldn’t be watching this while still considering the possibility of beginning to date again…