Toob Talk

A couple of weeks ago, The Sarah Connor Chronicles hit the airwaves at Fox, a show that has garnered a lot of buzz in the geek world due to the fact that it’s a Terminator continuation and that it stars one of the favorites of Joss Whedon’s vocal fan-base: Summer Glau.

If you haven’t seen this show yet, go watch it on the Fox website now. (Now is the perfect time if you don’t feel like watching the State of the Union Address on live TV.)

In the three hours that have aired–before it was preempted by the SoTU tonight–the show has done a great job of washing the bad taste of Terminator 3 out of my head. Glau is a more interesting Terminator than Arnold ever was, especially since there’s still a whole lot we don’t know about what she can do. Thomas Decker as John Connor and Lena Headey as his harried mother bring a different set of facets to those now-iconic characters that we haven’t seen before.

Oh, and the action. The action is still there–in spades. There is, of course, another Terminator model chasing down the Connors, no matter how they try to escape. And some of those escapes are impressive, even for sci-fi action shows.

The story picks up a bit after the end of Terminator 2. Sarah and John have settled into an near-normal life. John in particular is enjoying the chance to be more of a normal kid. Sarah still suffers from the nightmares of the nuclear destruction wrought by SkyNet.

Needless to say, all hell shortly breaks use throwing the Connor’s back on the road and on the run, this time accompanied by a new protector: Glau’s Cameron, who starts out as the most personable Terminator ever, flirting with John when he starts at a new school.

Time travel figures more heavily in this show than it ever has in the movies. Any time that happens, I begin to worry for the quality of the show. Shades of the Enterprise temporal war and the cheap outs that Stargate: Atlantis gave us continue to haunt my expectations for this new show. So far, though, it hasn’t been used too much.

But we have only seen three hours of the show. And it’s ratings are sliding, so we may not have many more to watch, even with the ongoing writer’s strike. What you can do, though, is check out Popular Mechanics’ run down of the different Terminator models, including the newest one.

Bottom line is, I’m still enjoying the show immensely. Yes, the characters are different, but a lot of time has passed since those first two movies–that wears on people, even ones who grow up to be legendary heroes of the human race.

December always brings with it the traditional television season break.

Over the past decade, it’s served more as the mile-marker where half the shows pull off the road and a whole new set get ready to come on. This year, with the writer’s strike going on, there’s more chance than usual that everything on up to this point won’t be coming back.

So far, though, this season has been better than most I can remember. Here’s what I’ve been enjoying.

Kid Nation — Probably the best new reality show I’ve seen in a while. While I was at first worried it would be exploitive, it’s been downright inspirational. It wraps up next week and I really can’t wait to see what they have in store. Heck, I’m even looking forward to a reunion show a decade down the road, some of those kids are going to do amazing things.

Samantha Who? — Of all the new sitcoms, this one has a pedigree that actually paid off. Unlike Back to You (which should have been good, but wasn’t even close), the talents of the cast are utilized fully. Christina Applegate and Jean Smart play the perfect dysfunctional mother-daughter opposite one another and the rest of the cast adds more spice. Applegate is always a trip to watch and this show has given her a chance to actually play a range.

Dirty Sexy Money — I’m not fully caught up with all the episodes I’ve recorded, but this show just keeps getting better. It gets more twisted, more wild and just plain more fun every hour. The screwball family dynamics of the Darlings and the not quite Everyman portrayal by Peter Krause of lawyer Nick George is a near-endless source of entertainment. Granted, I don’t really see the show lasting more than two seasons (if it even gets through a full 22 episode run), but it’s going to be good while it lasts.

Pushing Daisies — I had hoped this show would be as creative, twisted and quirky as everything else Bryan Fuller has been involved in. Those hopes were more than met. The story of the pie-maker, the shady PI, the living dead girl and the cast of characters they encounter has been the most fantastical thing I’ve seen on network TV since Amazing Stories. Without question, the show is beautiful, but it’s fairy tale feel gives it a depth and timelessness few other shows could ever hope to touch.

The Big Bang Theory — When I watched the first episode, I hated this show. Needless to say, it got better. A lot better. As the writers and actors found the characters, Leonard, Sheldon and their gaggle of geeks and dorks (and Penny, the hot neighbor) have come to life and kept me laughing. Sure I’ve cringed a bit, too, but it was always because I started to think “Oh, crap… I’ve had that conversation and seen that happen.”

Journeyman — While the comparisons to Quantum Leap are inevitable, this show has come into its own quite well over the past weeks. While the main character may be jumping around time trying to put things right, he’s got a problem to deal with that Sam never did: he slips without warning and always comes back to his home time, often with odd consequences on both ends of the trip. Things get even more complicated as we meet more people who may be involved in manipulating events and slipping through time. This show got right everything that last season’s Daybreak got wrong.

Bionic Woman — Not quite as strong as I had hoped it would be, but Bionic Woman has still been a fun ride. The last couple of episodes seem to have finally hit their stride, making sharp the dark edge the show has been playing with and crystallizing the characters in more three-dimensional ways than before. Thankfully, they’ve avoided the temptation of camp and stuck to serious (or at least realistic) stories.

Reaper — Sure, it’s not a high-class show. What it is is just plain cotton-candy fun. Ray Wise as the devil, as expected, means you can’t go too wrong. The show is silly, the performances adequate for the stories. It’s low-impact, slightly above average, pure entertainment. Problems only flare up when they hint at darker and deeper sub-plots. Really, the show probably can’t handle that. Things should be OK if they don’t try too hard.

Life — It’s not very often that a truly different cop show comes along. Life is that rare bird. It’s got a hard-core revenge plot line the equal of any Dirty Harry film (though with a lot less shooting), but it’s also got humor and humanity in spades. The only thing it’s kind of light on is proper procedural details. Luckily, it doesn’t bill itself as a procedural—it’s a character driven drama that just happens to be full of cops and criminals. And it’s far from clear which is which most of the time.

Chuck — I still think this show has a limited shelf-life. They’ve only got one or two gags so far and, even though they just added a new (though expected) twist to the mix, I don’t know how they’d sustain it for multiple seasons and keep it as fun and interesting as it’s been. And it has been fun and interesting. The spy intrigue and relationship drama, along with the workplace humor, are all well above average.

As the remaining episodes of the current shows wind down, I’m looking forward to the replacements that are on their way. Until they show up, though, I’m going to keep enjoying what’s left of the good new ones. (And, of course, I’m also enjoying what’s left of all the returning shows I’ve been watching and recording.)

I’m apparently a little behind the times.

There’s a new show that should be hitting the NBC airwaves next year and I just found out about it.

Normally, that’s not too disconcerting of a thing. After all, I live in the DC area and not LA or NY.

What’s disturbing here is that the show I just found out about is by a high-powered producing team, with a solid (though not well-known) cast, that’s already drawing in viewers.

How’s it doing that if it hasn’t hit the network yet? By hitting the Web first.

The show is called Quarterlife and it’s the brainchild of David Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz (they’re the ones that brought us My So Called Life and Thirtysomething).

I spent some time today watching the six parts that have been posted so far (over at MySpaceTV), each between seven and fourteen minutes long. In the television world, they would be strung together to make the first hour-long episode. Online, they’ve been posting two a week for the past three weeks.

Unlike last year’s LonelyGirl15 stuff, Quarterlife doesn’t try to sneak in as a genuine blog–it is unabashedly a produced series. Even better, it’s got production values on par with your normal network show. If they’ve really cut any corners, they’ve been more than covered up by the style (kind of quickly cut and quirky) and basic format (online video) of the show.

The basic premise is relatively common–a handful of 20-somethings living with or near one another, trying to make sense of the world their in, trying to make friendships and romance work, trying to figure out life and work in general. There’s an actress, a couple of film makers and then there’s the character who’s the audience’s gateway into this world: a video blogger.

If that isn’t a cutting edge show, I don’t know what is.

It’s not the most original premise, but the first six parts definitely touch on themes that have been commonplace in entertainment media for generations. This show just frames them in something it’s current target audience can really relate to. Fifteen years ago, it would have been centered around that same bunch of friends accidentally finding the online message board postings of the main character. Twenty years ago, they’d have to actually be reading a paper diary or the main commentator would have to actually have a print column somewhere–in other words, it really wouldn’t work the same at all.

The performances by the cast are pretty good based on normal television pilot standards and excellent based on what you normally see on independently produced videos. The difference, I’m guessing, is in the amount of money and time the producers have had to invest in the thing. The actors have all shown up in other places before–I know I spend a lot of time thinking “Hey! I’ve seen them somewhere before!” and, sure enough, a quick check of the show’s listing on IMDB turned up slightly unfamiliar names with much more familiar credits.

As an interesting side note, the producers tried a show with almost the same name (and a similar premise) a few years ago on network TV. It was called 1/4Life and didn’t quite take (I didn’t even remember it until I really sat and thought for a while–and even then only because Shiri Appleby was in it).

If Quaterlife does make it to air on NBC, as has been reported, it will be the first show to make the leap from independent web production to mass network consumption. Even better, since the show is already well into production for the web, the ongoing writer’s strike shouldn’t really have an effect.

Could this be the way of the future? Short runs of shows done for an online audience that then vie for the attention of the TV networks? Do the “five or ten minutes here and there” habits of online video watchers translate to the “you’ll watch when we say you’ll watch” mentality of traditional networks?

I’d like to think that, at the absolute least, we can count on more high-quality online shows. While I’d love to see some of the better ones make the leap to the traditional mass media screen, I won’t be holding my breath. If there’s one thing the major media companies have proved again and again it’s that they adapt slowly. (They are, after all, still using sweeps months and Nielsen ratings to determine what stays and what goes and not at all taking into account the changing viewing habits of their key demographic.)

If things go exceptionally well, the online arena may, indeed, become where nascent shows duke it out. We all know that the online community can be more vicious than any network executive. We also know that it can be a fully interactive process, with the viewers and fans communicating directly with the people who make the decisions on how the show progresses. That’s something that traditional TV has never really had on a large scale. It completely inverts the power structure.

For now, though, I say check out Quarterlife. It may not be the future, but it is good entertainment. It touches on important issues for those of us who communicate and hang out here in the Blogosphere should be well aware of. How our personal observations, when posted in a public forum (be it accidentally or on purpose), can deeply affect those around us. How this new method of communication is still growing and still experiencing growing pains.

We’re all learning how to best interact here in the public digital realm. We may as well watch some fictional characters muddle through it, too.

And then, if they end up on our television screens, watch how it plays out in the “real world” of the general population.

With the writers on strike, some shows are in immediate trouble. Others have between a few weeks and a couple of months before they run into trouble.

The LA Times put together a nice grid about it the other day.

And, for Lost fans, today’s Ask Ausiello over at TVGuide.com points out:

Question: What does the strike mean for Lost? Any idea how many episodes they finished pre-strike? Is it still scheduled to air some time in February?— Mike

Ausiello: Why do I suddenly feel as if I’m talking to myself, Mike? Why do I also suddenly feel like I’m not going to like what I have to say? At least I know the answer to that second part — it’s because I don’t like what I have to say. If the strike extends into the new year and beyond, there is a chance ABC may opt to delay the new season until the fall. Or worse yet, February 2009. Another scenario has the network simply airing the eight episodes already in the can this February as originally planned — something Team Darlton would not be in favor of. Says Lost cocreator Carlton Cuse, “Damon [Lindelof] and my concern about running the [eight] episodes we will have made is that it will feel a little like reading half a Harry Potter novel, then having to put it down. There is a mini-cliff-hanger at the end of Episode 8, but it’s like the end of an exciting book chapter; it’s not the end of the novel. Damon and I didn’t write [the ending of Episode 8] differently [with the looming strike in mind]. We wrote it to be the ending of Episode 8.” In any case, he concedes that the decision to hold or air the episodes isn’t ultimately theirs. “It’s really [ABC honcho Steve MacPherson's] call,” Cuse notes, adding, “No one was happy with the six-episode run last season.”

So, this season may end up a complete wash depending on timing.

Jack Bauer fans may be a little out of luck, too. A recent TVGuide.com Strike Watch blog post says:

Fox’s “revised” 2008 schedule kicks off Jan. 13 and 14 with the series premiere of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and starts cooking with gas on the 15th with the two-night return of that singing show known as American Idol, but now is experiencing a Bauer outage. “The seventh season premiere of 24 is being postponed,” explains the network, “to ensure that Day 7 can air uninterrupted, in its entirety.” Fair ’nuff.

Heroes will make it through its current arc, but may end up going with an alternate ending if the second half of the season won’t be ready. And the Heroes: Origins mid-season break replacement is already dead.

Hopefully, this strike will be over quickly and things won’t get too much more screwed up. I’m not holding my breath for that, though.

So, enjoy your shows while they’re on and new.

On Monday, the members of the Writer’s Guild of America went on strike.

This has thrown the entire industry into a wee bit of chaos. Late night talkshows have already started running repeats. Many sitcoms only have a few episodes before they’re out of fresh stuff. Most hour long shows will be able to last until December or January.

Between now and then, most of the viewing public won’t notice much different aside from the mention on the news every now and then.

But a lot of other people will be noticing.

With no new shows being produced, the people that make production happen are left with nothing to do. The people and businesses who support those production crew members–everything from prop shops to caterers–are losing money. If the strike goes on as long as some predict, getting productions back up and running may be a problem as related support businesses, already facing higher costs for everything (just like the rest of us), may not be around.

I’m frequently very critical of the quality of the shows I watch on TV and the movies I pay way too much to watch. I’ll even complain (frequently) about the writing on shows. Don’t let that fool you into thinking I don’t sympathize with the writers.

Having worked as a professional writer (in the news business, not the entertainment biz), I know how difficult it is to put out quality. I can only imagine how much more difficult it is when you have to satisfy numerous commercial interests (studios, advertisers, “hands on” producers who don’t quite get it, etc.) and deal with drama and egos (from actors, directors, producers, executives, and what have you). Perhaps most of all, I know that the general public doesn’t understand how much work it actually is to create something that even vaguely holds together after all the other fingers poke at it.

Joss Whedon just recently wrote:

Writing is largely not considered work. Art in general is not considered work. Work is a thing you physically labor at, or at the very least, hate. Art is fun. (And Hollywood writers are overpaid, scarf-wearing dainties.) It’s an easy argument to make. And a hard one to dispute.

My son is almost five. He is just beginning to understand what I do as a concept. If I drove a construction crane he’d have understood it at birth. And he’d probably think I was King of all the Lands in my fine yellow crane. But writing – especially writing a movie or show, where people other than the writer are all saying things that they’re clearly (to an unschooled mind) making up right then – is something to get your head around.

Whedon is one of the writers and creators out there that rarely produces anything I can seriously complain about (especially since even he admit just how bad his bad stuff *cough*Buffymovie*cough* is). He and others like him–others who have put down their pens and closed their work laptops–keep me entertained. That’s no small task and I’d like to see them paid fairly for it.

The problem is, in the modern media business world, fair pay doesn’t exist. The top of the food chain gobbles up as much as they can and everyone else just gets the crumbs. Granted, those crumbs are still a whole lot bigger than what I ever expect to see from a job, but in that eco-system they are crumbs. This is how it has been for a long time and, probably and sadly, how it will continue to be for some time to come.

At issue (but only one of the issues) is how writers get paid when their work begins to appear in new media formats like DVD and webcasts. Thing is, “new” media isn’t that new any more. The studios have had more than a decade to work toward figuring it out.

But just like the RIAA, they’re slow to adapt and learn.

Television networks fought tooth and nail to keep their shows off of the web. Now every major network has it’s own webcasts set up for its shows. There’s revenue generated there. Not what they get from putting it up during prime time, but revenue none the less. The overhead to show stuff online is lower (or should be) than to broadcast it in traditional ways. The advent of digital production and storage should have cut the cost of warehousing film and editing and a slew of other production steps.

Yet, the consumer still pays through the nose for so much of that entertainment. The profit margin for the big companies must still be there. Bu the people at the bottom of the ladder–the writers, the actors, sometimes the directors–most certainly haven’t seen a comparable increase in their bottom paychecks. Especially when what you’re comparing them to is the network or production company executive’s pay grade.

I want to see the strike end soon–hopefully before we all notice that there’s nothing new on TV except sports shows and game shows. (It may already be too late for that, apparently.) But I hope it ends with the writers getting what they deserve. I hope that they don’t end up fighting a war of attrition.

Most of all, I hope that this really gets everyone in the entertainment business thinking more about making effective use of that new media they’ve been tinkering with for the past five years.

So, to all the writers out there, I support you and wish you the best. But, honestly, for once I’m really glad I’m not one of you. A strike like this is a difficult thing for everyone.

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.

According to an article in Variety, there is serious talk of bringing back Knight Rider.

Now, Knight Rider was one of my favorite shows in the 80s. Since I got my driver’s license, it’s held even more appeal because, hey, who wouldn’t like to have a car that could drive itself–let alone one that is nigh invulnerable? Sure it didn’t stick the last two times they’ve tried to bring it back (first with the lame TV movie Knight Rider 2000 and then with the wildly unsuccessful syndicated Team Knight Rider–and I just found out about the travesty that was Knight Rider 2010, never even heard of that before). But with the right twist and team behind it, it could work now, right?

I think it could.

Except if you read the article what they’re actually talking about is kind of ridiculous. They want to do a “‘Transformers’-inspired re-working of the 1980s hit action-drama series.” That’s right, they want KITT to transform into a giant robot and fight other evil giant robots.

I’m not doubting that a series like that could work, but why bother calling it “Knight Rider” when it’s actually “Transformers” (or, maybe, “Go Bots”)? Aside from the supposedly cheaper licensing fees.

Look, if you’re going to do a new version of Knight Rider, do it right. It requires three things:

1. A slick car. Preferably one that has a lot in common with a sporty one you can buy, but with a few extra things–like an AI with a bit of a condescending attitude and combat-ready options.
2. A person with a shady past who’s turning over a new leaf. I’m open to it being a woman. Amnesia is optional, but always a good plot device.
3. A sponsoring organization that is well-funded and well-connected. Make it a bit ambiguous as to who’s interests it actually serves and you’ve got plot for at least a season.

That gives a production or creative team a whole lot of leeway. And it doesn’t even exclude giant robots. Just don’t start out with them. Build your own damn brand and don’t ride on the coat tails of the current hot film. By the time you actually get the show made, those coat tails will be dusty and the coat will be so over-worn no one will care any more.

Friday is one of those nights that very often gets away from people. They go out and do things, their weekend starts and they’re just not going to sit in front of the toob for anything too heavy.

A lot of shows over the years have either started in a Friday slot and miraculously survived or been moved there to die.

The one exception to that rule seems to be very quirky shows. Ghost Whisperer has been doing OK, or at least good enough to kick off it’s third season at 8 p.m. on CBS. That’s followed at 9 p.m. by the premiere of Moonlight, the new vampire in LA fighting crime series (which will hopefully quickly and decisively differentiate itself from comparisons to Angel, the last show with that brief plot description.) The CBS prime time block gets capped off by the fourth season premiere of Numb3rs, guest starring Val Kilmer.

Other networks are pretty thin on scripted shows for Friday. NBC gets around to a two-hour fifth season premiere for Las Vegas at 8 p.m. Everything else is news, game shows and filler. I remember when Friday was the bastion of family TV sitcoms. That time, apparently, is long gone.

The only other jam-packed slot on the dial this Friday is up on the Sci Fi Channel. Their block of Doctor Who, Flash Gordon and, now, the return of Stargate: Atlantis usually does pretty well. I know it’s what I usually watch or record. (Though Ghost Whisperer has gotten a lot better as it’s taken a slightly darker turn–I really didn’t care for it as much more than eye candy when it first premiered.)

From the makers of Grey’s Anatomy comes… a show that feels exactly like Grey’s Anatomy.

Not that that’s an entirely bad thing. I happen to like Grey’s. And I’m sure there will be plenty of people who like Private Practice just as much. But unless they differentiate themselves, unless they get a more distinct feel, they’re not going to keep the 14 million viewers they had for the pilot.

The good news is, the show has potential. Kate Walsh did wonderful things on Grey’s with Addison, who was originally supposed to be a short term character when first introduced. Other members of the cast–Tim Daly, Amy Brenneman, Taye Diggs, Paul Adelstein and Chris Lowell–will look very familiar to frequent TV viewers. They’ve all been on good shows. Most of those shows were canceled before their time. They’ve got talent and the characters have potential to be good.

In the pilot, though, they’re all kind of flat and dull. That was the biggest difference from the first episode of Grey’s. That didn’t leave me feeling like it was dull.

Hopefully, over the course of the next few episodes, the show will come into its own. It took Grey’s a while to really hook me. Maybe Private Practice will work the same way.

My first thought, as I rolled my eyes at the show descriptoion was, “Great, another lawyer show with quirky characters.”

And so it was with great trepidation that I tuned in to the first episode of Dirty Sexy Money.

Now that it’s over, I can honestly say that not only was I pleasantly surprised, but I may just have to tune in next week–and every week after–just to see what they come up with next.

It’s the top-notch actors that really make this show worthwhile. Donald Sutherland’s presence alone adds a bit of class to the show, regardless of how lost and intermittently vile his character (the patriarch of New York’s richest and most famous family, the Darlings) is. Jill Clayburgh as the matriarch of that family is the perfect compliment to Sutherland. And Peter Krause is cast perfectly as their diametric opposite–their new family lawyer.

Krause plays Nick George, the son of the Darling’s recently deceased (in a plane crash) family lawyer. George, like his father, is a lawyer. Unlike his father, he is determined to be a good family man. After seeing how working for the Darling’s destroyed his parent’s marriage and knowing full well how difficult the job was on him as a young boy, George doesn’t want to put his own wife and young daughter through similar problems. Instead he runs a private practice that does as much charity work as possible.

But when Tripp Darling (Sutherland) offers him the job as family lawyer and tacks on an extra ten million dollars a year for George’s charity work, he reluctantly agrees.

The next 24 hours of his life are chock full of utter mayhem.

And we all get to go along for the crazy, disjointed, engaging and, ultimately, heart-warming ride.

Gorge is a man of integrity and virtue among a gaggle of self-important, self-indulgent, holier-than-thou, spoiled rich people. He is destined to be the conscience of the dysfunctional Darling family. If he can stand it.

Every character in this ensemble is quirky in a good way. They all have just enough implied depth that they stand out from the caricatures that they almost are. Each one, even in the space of an hour-long pilot episode shows a little bit of humanity.

Plus, the mayhem is fun. The best and worst thing about it is that what happens is nothing we haven’t seen on the news a thousand times before. It is familiar.

As I said, this show surprised me. I’m hooked and look forward to the expanding circle of mystery that was introduced in the final act. A bold move, since the basics of the show are more than enough to keep things interesting. If done well, it will make Dirty Sexy Money a true gem on television. If they’re writers aren’t up to the challenge, though, the show will quickly descend into a muddled mess that even Sutherland and Krause won’t be able to save.

Here’s hoping for the former.

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.

We see remakes all the time on the big screen. It doesn’t happen quite as often on the small one. At least not outright ones that aren’t Superman.

Why? Probably because there’s no way to avoid comparison with the original and TV executives are even more fickle than movie studios. The new Battlestar Galactica caught a heck of a lot of flack (even from me) before it hit its stride five hours into the series. It has since blown away just about everything else on TV.

The Bionic Woman is a remake (some would say “re-visioning” in order to avoid the negative connotation) of one of my staple shows growing up. The original was action-packed, light and fun, just like so many other shows of the late 1970s and early 80s. A lot has changed since then. This new version embraces those changes fully.

No longer is Jaime Sommers a tennis player injured in a sky-diving accident. Now she’s a bar tender, barely making ends meet as she tries to finish college and take care of her younger sister. The high point in her life is her (slightly older) boyfriend, Will, a surgeon working for a private company. It’s that last connection that comes in handy when their car is demolished by a tractor trailer.

Jamie is brought into the program Will heads. In order to save her life, he rebuilds her with a combination of high-tech mechanical prosthetics and nanotechnology. This leads to her getting the trademark bionic legs, arm, and eye. The super hearing kicks in a little later.

The big problem is, she’s not the first person to undergo the procedure. Sarah Corvus (played by Galactica’s Katee Sackhoff) was the first, but ran into some… difficulties.

Without question this show has more grit than the original ever thought of having. It’s got a very human edge, to it, as well. Much like the new Galactica took some key points from its previous incarnation, the new Bionic Woman has kept true to the core idea but made it something more.

This is a show to watch this season. If it does well–which I think it will–who knows what other super heroes of the 70s we’ll get to see next. In an odd twist of irony, maybe a new version of The Six Million Dollar Man will spin off of Bionic Woman.

It’s rare to see a comedy that has both high production values and an oxymoronic high-class flavor of lowbrow humor.

Reaper is one of those rare shows.

Granted, when I first started seeing stuff on it, I thought it would be a cold day in Hell before it turned out to be worthwhile. Seems that either Hell has frozen over or I was wrong about that.

Who’d have thought that a story about a slacker who’s parents sold his soul to the devil could be hear-warming? Oh, and don’t be mad at his parents–when they made that deal, they never planned on having kids, so offering up the soul of their first-born to save mom’s life seemed like a perfectly fine idea.

But, what’s done is done and now Sam, just celebrating his 21st birthday, has been visited by the big guy from downstairs and pressed into service. Sam’s now Satan’s right hand man, a hunter of of evil souls who have escaped from hell. If he doesn’t perform, not only will he still go to Hell when he dies (the devil, after all, does own his soul), but his mother will, too.

Sounds like the recipe for a dark and gritty show doesn’t it? It should, it’s only a slight variation on the plot of the short-lived Brimstone from a decade ago. The major difference here is that Reaper is produced by Kevin Smith and is thick with his quirky attitude and irreverent tone. So, instead of “dark and gritty” you get silly and snarky.

A combination that, oddly enough, makes the show quite endearing and a lot of fun.

As long as they keep up the writing, it should do OK. The CW’s decision to have it follow Beauty and the Geek in the schedule, though, is a little mind-boggling. It would fit much better paired with Supernatural, a show that has a similar theme but a completely different tone (kind of like how The Sci Fi Channel had Battlestar Galactica, a dark and gritty show, paired with the usually much lighter Stargate shows). I guess they just didn’t want to break up their Supernatural/Smallville block just yet.

Oh, and for anyone who was a Twin Peaks fan, good old Leland Palmer himself, Ray Wise, is playing the relatively likable (though distinctly unnerving) devil. Always a treat to see.

Definitely put this show on your list of things to check out, even if you have to watch it online or time-shift it. I know that’s what I’ll be doing. (Sorry, House still wins on a regular basis.)

Tonight you’ll be able to catch the broadcast premieres of Chuck and Journeyman on NBC. More importantly, there’s the second season premiere of Heroes, my personal favorite show of last season.

Chuck is already losing me to Prison Break over on Fox, in it’s third season, the show just keeps the action up and the plot twists interesting. I don’t know how Chuck is going to compete with that. Of course, K-Ville loses, hands down, to Heroes.

On deck for the DVR is the season premiere of How I Met Your Mother over on CBS, still my favorite sit-com that’s still on. That’s followed by a new sitcom, The Big Bang Theory, which, from what I’ve seen of promos, looks like it’s going to fall flat for me. But I’ll give it a chance this week.

ABC is kicking off their reality-laden schedule with the new Dancing With the Stars. After two hours of that, you can stick around for the new iteration of The Bachelor. I won’t be watching either. I’ll get all the Dancing info I need from Access Hollywood. And, really, I could live happily without knowing anything at all about what the new bachelor is doing with his roses.

Even before it hit the air, Kid Nation gained the title of most controversial new show.

For those who’ve missed the promo stuff for this new reality show, they’ve taken 40 kids from all different age and social groups and sent them to a pioneer-era ghost town. They have supplies, an appointed council and a lot of leeway in the direction things take over the course of 40 days. The pre-broadcast controversy came up when word got out that, at one point during the filming, a couple of the kids accidentally drank some (very diluted) bleach. That, of course, is really a non-issue as the kids are surrounded by camera people and the medical staff is instantly on call for anything.

Watching the first episode, I was worried for a little bit that things would be Survivor-flavored: where teams compete against one another and then decide who gets sent home. Thankfully, that’s not the case with Kid Nation. Yes, there is a team-based competition, but (at least so far) no one is sent home. They are, however, given the option to go home once a week.

What the show is about is team work, leadership and plain old hard work. Three things that so many kids these days seem to know even less about than I did when I was their age. Their ages run from 8 to 14 years old. Because of that span, there are some very deep challenges to overcome in the division of labor and social skills.

In charge of the group are four appointed town council members, themselves kids. Why they were appointed isn’t mentioned in the episode. I’m betting that somewhere around week three or four there’s going to be an election. They are, after all, setting up a town and politics most certainly is part of that.

Law enforcement is also a part of learning about civic government. There’s already been a spurt of graffiti, perpetrated by two of the older boys in the group. Nothing was done about that, but it does seem that a number of the kids aren’t too happy about it.

An all out crime wave, though, will probably not happen any time soon because of another great thing the producers have seen fit to do. Every week the town council will choose one kid who has worked hardest or best and award them a gold star. That would be a real gold star–worth $20,000. Plus a phone call home.

Having seen just one episode, I’m pretty impressed. While I’d be more likely to produce a show that did the same thing with just teenagers, I fully admire the chutzpa of the producers of filling the ranks with the mix of age groups that they did. That mix may end up making the show even more impressive, heart warming and valid in the long run.

Along with Beauty and the Geek and 2005’s Brat Camp, I think we have another very worthwhile reality show on our hands. This is a show families should watch together. There’s a lot to be learned.

One of the big-deal sitcoms hitting the small screen this season is Fox’s Back to You, a newsroom comedy starring long-time heavy hitters Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton.

Grammer plays Chuck Darling, an ego-centric news anchor who finds himself back at the station he left ten years ago. That, of course, happens after he made it big and then screwed up and got fired. Heaton is Kelly Carr, his former co-anchor who stayed at the station and has carved out a nice comfortable life.

If you can’t guess where the comedy comes in–or what “amazing” plot twists come up–you haven’t watched sitcoms before.

My first thought on hearing about this show was Good Morning Miami meets Murphy Brown–a blending of the silly comedy of the former with the quality cast of the latter. Well, both of those shows had something that Back to You lacks: heart.

What passes for creativity in this show is little more than re-packaged stereotype and easy jokes. The too-young-to-be-taken-seriously news director (played by Josh Gad who is clearly channeling a Chris Farley character from Saturday Night Live). The sexy Latina weather girl (who is, perhaps the most appalling of all the characters so far–a definite step down for Ayda Field after being on Studio 60). The ever-hopeful next-in-line reporter who lost his chance at the anchor position when Darling came back. There’s even Fred Willard playing, well, the same character he always plays.

Both Grammer’s and Heaton’s talent is wasted on this show unless they get some much better writers. Writer/Producer Steve Levitan continues the downward spiral started by Stacked. He’s come a long way from Fraiser and Wings, that’s for sure.

That all said, I’m pretty sure this show’s going to be a big hit. If generic and downright bland crap like the blissfully now gone Yes, Dear can last for six seasons, something the Grammer and Heaton’s star power can probably go at least that long.

I’m also pretty sure I’ll be able to find something else to watch. Which, really, is kind of a shame because ‘Til Death fills out the second half of he hour and it’s a pretty good show.

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.