Tue, September 7, 2004

This fall season promises to be as maddening as any other in recent memory. Coupled with the fact that Fox is – as usual – delaying most of its premieres until after the World Series (of Baseball), a few networks have actually divided their "fall lineup" in to "fall" and "mid-season" shows (this seems unprecedented to me; shows often launch at mid-season when programming executives flinch early and cancel shows that haven't reached an audience yet, but this is the first time I can remember networks announcing new shows as slated for mid-season). Plus, Fox has adopted the "year round" metaphor that's been so agonizingly unhelpful in high schools, meaning that they premiere shows willy-nilly anytime they want, which affords them the ability to cancel things really, really early (like, say, Wonderfalls) and pretend it was intentional, because reruns of The Swan were supposed to premiere that week. They've kind of squooshed "year round" together with HBO's short, distantly separated seasons and come up with something so confusing that I don't know how anyone ever makes a Fox show into "appointment television" – the schedule is in constant flux, and the only way to know when your shows are on is to watch Fox constantly and listen to its on-air promos. (Suddenly, the strategy makes so much sense.) Fortunately, Fox only has one "appointment" show left, Arrested Development, and they're well on their way to canceling that despite a shower of Emmy nominations, so it's really okay if I don't know when shows are on that network. Trading Spouses and Method and Red, I can afford to miss. It does make the job of reviewing the new fall offerings rather challenging, though. Is Quintuplets a new show, a returning show, or the continuation of a season that began in mid-summer? Or, is it simply a horrible, disastrous trainwreck of unfunniness that even Andy Richter can't salvage a laugh out of? (Answer: D.)

As usual, the earliest shows to debut are the worst, because networks are trying to just rip off the Band-Aid as fast as they can and get it overwith. (You may recall that Whoopi and Happy Family – which title I just had to look up on my own website, the show was so forgettable – bowed in this slot last year.) This time, it's NBC yet again who's itching to dump some stink. The highly publicized and universally mocked Father of the Pride is first up, followed closely by Hawaii, a new cop show because Christ knows we can't have enough of those.

Father of the Pride

(NBC, 9:00 Tuesdays)

My God, how awful. I'm biased, I know. I detest Shrek and everything it stands for, and therefore "from the makers of Shrek" just brings me to a boiling point of furious rage, but I know it's more than bias that makes me hate this show, because a) others think it's dumb, too; and b) I hate it so, so much more than mere bias can account for. I like DreamWorks a lot – for obvious reasons. I like Jeff Katzenberg in general, his Lion King has long been among my favorite animated films. I really liked Antz, even more than its counterpart offering from my beloved Pixar: A Bug's Life. But, from Antz, DreamWorks/PDI went downhill. Fast. Shrek was a miserable abortion of what we should think of when we think of "family film," "comedy," "animation," or even "entertainment." (It was relatively harmless at first, but coupled with colossal public response – its video release is credited with singlehandedly saving Blockbuster Video – and a fucking Oscar, it's only gotten worse, cf. Shrek 2.) What's worse, DreamWorks/PDI decided to make Shrek their brand. Rather than approaching each project with a unique style that best fits the particular purpose, it's just all "make it look like Shrek." I guess you can't blame them. Audiences are eating it up. They won a fucking Oscar for it. Anyway, Father of the Pride suffers from the Shrek effect. The frame seems unnecessarily lifeless, the animation is muted, and the designs are dull and uninteresting. I'll come back to this critique in more detail in a few weeks, because my anti-Shrek 2 rant got so frenzied that I had to take it apart and spend some time reworking it into an anti-Shark Tale rant, but the point is that there's no energy in the picture: not in the props or sets, not in the character design, not in the character movement. All the characters move as though they've been left out in the rain and their joints have swollen into rigid positions. The rubber bands are too tight. Everybody looks stiff. The women have the same half-dazed, droopy, cross-eyed look that Jennifer Lopez had in Antz. The lions are all one color, so they look really flat. The backgrounds are completely still. I would attribute all of this corner-cutting to the constraints of a network budget, but it's the Shrek style. Their big-budget films look the same way!

I'll admit, the designs of guest-starring pandas Lisa Kudrow and Andy Richter (whose performances steal the show, by the way) are excellent. Much richer shading and coloring, and much more expressive characters. Sad that they're only stopping by. But, why not apply the same ideas to the main characters? Look at an actual lion (not the plush toy version in the Mirage gift shop). Its coat is a mixture of many different tones. Try that. Jesus, try something.

Okay, enough harping on the technical details. Audiences clearly don't care about that, or Shrek 2 would've tanked. I kind of hoped audiences would subconsciously pick up on these subtle shortcomings, but they haven't. It's like MP3 compression, the DreamWorks/PDI animators are taking out the things that they know most people just won't miss. They slipped it past the fucking Oscar voters, after all. They must be doing something right. God, I hope this show fails and fails miserably.

Anyway, on to the show itself. Bad. Very bad. Opens with a joke like a kid overhearing his dad (John Goodman) and a friend (Orlando Jones) discussing an anticipated sexual encounter with his wife (the lovely, perfect, amazing Cheryl Hines, woefully underused). Somebody says "zoom-zoom in the boom-boom" (sigh) and the kid asks "Dad, what's zoom-zoom in the boom-boom?" First of all, what have I done to deserve this? Really, another sitcom is going to go with the "I've really been looking forward to some time alone with my wife because I'm starving for sex" joke? And, really, we're going to have another kid ask "what's zoom-zoom in the boom-boom"? Good God. I know it takes nine months to get an episode from script to screen because of the animation process, but this was very, very tired far longer ago than nine months. At least John Goodman, God bless him, has the presence of mind to phone in his entire performance. He's doing the best he can to help us change the channel. (The riotous follow-up? Some sort of time zone joke that puns "Mountain Time" with "mountin' time" – they promised us this was animation for adults. Were they referring to lobotomy patients?) Also uninventive: Lisa Kudrow's pet kittycat is tiny and cute but has a gruff male voice and a Brooklyn accent. Where have we seen that before? Oh, right. Fucking everywhere. And John Goodman, the lion character? Named Larry. Larry the Lion. Oh, it's just too good. (Perhaps we should give them a pass on this one – it's possible the producers just liked Cheryl's "Larry..." whine so much from Curb Your Enthusiasm that they found a way to keep it in.)

I'll admit that the show does have a few things going for it. The pandas, as I've said, are great. Lisa Kudrow and Andy Richter do a fine job of the voice work as well. And Siegfried and Roy are pretty adorable in their semi-dazed, goofy way. "Entertainment Weekly" mentioned that they're the best part of the show, which makes it sad that they're only peripheral characters, and I have to agree. We have to hope that the show fails and exits fast enough that nobody has time to go back and re-work the scripts for more gratuitous S&R. Audiences are too smart to fall for this, aren't they? Isn't there any justice?

Katzenberg gets a "created by" credit on Father of the Pride, but I'm reasonably sure he didn't cook up the idea. I'm really curious how that came about, though. It just boggles the mind. Still, Katzenberg green-lit the thing, so he's far from blameless. I'm just astonished. I remember the reports of his micro-management at Disney, stressing over every little detail of the animated films until they were perfect. Where's that attentiveness today? Father of the Pride is just appalling. The Katzenberg I used to know could've taken the exact same dialogue tracks and made a much better show out of it. There's so much room for more animation, more visual gags, more fun. I'm not surprised at all, but I am... stunned.

In coming weeks, the donkey from Shrek will be guest-starring on the show. I'm going to be busy that night, seeing how many white-hot barbecue forks I can shove into my brain.

Hawaii

(NBC, 8:00 Wednesdays)

Where's the shortage of cop shows? I'll give you the CSI family. (CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: Copenhagen, etc.) These are "forensics" shows, which specifically showcase the technology and detective work that goes into physical evidence and all that. Fine. Still, there are twenty kajillion other hour-long police dramas on television right now that are identical. Plenty. Plenty. At this point, if you're coming to me with a TV show about some police officers, you're going to need a better hook than the beach. Even Without A Trace, a show I adore, hardly has enough of a "hook" to justify another entry into the oversaturated marketplace – focusing on missing persons, rather than murder. Cold Case? Please.

Anyway. Regardless. NBC is hurling Hawaii at us, which isn't really an update of Hawaii Five-O, per se, although cops on the show will shout "Five-O!" at perps, and bank robbers will wear Jack Lord masks. But its hook, the reason we should regard it as a worthy entry, is that it's set in Hawaii. Hawaii, people! Not New York or L.A.! Not even Chicago! Tropical, but still America! Hawaii. Aside from that, the show is relentlessly, steadfastly unoriginal. (And even the Hawaiian cop show idea isn't exactly untrodden ground.) The wisecracking detectives are nothing new, the sexual tension simmering just beneath the surface is nothing new, the quirky murder stories are nothing new (Oo! A body dumped in a lava flow!) – it's all just sad. The production values are decent, but this is the pilot. We've all seen how precipitously that can change once the show gets picked up and put on a weekly budget. (Ahem, Max Bickford.) Also passable is the opening sequence, short and sweet, but the graphics are terrible. Hawaii and LAX both share this problem. Did NBC fire their graphics guy this summer and hire a student intern in his place? It's weird.

Also, I'm not sure if I like the stereotyping. None of the four main characters are Hawaiian, but so far all of the bad guys are. Hm, convenient. And the witnesses are dropping Hawaiian words like "ohana," which are a couple dozen times cuter when Stitch says them: "Ohana means family. Ohana means no one gets left behind." Aw.

Yep, this is another one for the dustbin. Not sure why anyone thought it was time to pitch another bland cop drama, but here it is. Wake me when they get desperate and bring in guest star Larissa Meek. Otherwise, don't.

Returning Shows

Scrubs is back (now on Tuesdays) and always plenty entertaining. The premiere wasn't top-notch, but that's mostly because it was way too Turk-n-Carla centered, plus stupid daydream fantasies. The only problem I have with Scrubs is the only problem I've ever had with it: daydream mindscreen fantasy Ally McBeal moments. Don't do that, Scrubs. Last Comic Standing is also back (quickly!), and promises to be slightly more watchable (although less Bonnie McFarlane-y) since the show focuses only on stand-up comedy this time around, and eschews the footage of comics cohabiting. Still, every moment I have to watch Tere Joyce or Tammy Pescatelli is a moment I'll never have back.
Scrubs
LCS

Premiering Next Week

As a public service, I've decided to add this section to the bottom of each week's list of reviews, so you can keep up with the new shows rather than missing the first one and waiting to see what I have to say about it. (Not that I particularly recommend either approach over the other.)

That 70s Show: Fox, Wednesday at 8:00
Quintuplets: Fox, Wednesday at 8:30
Joey: NBC, Thursday at 8:00
The Apprentice: NBC, Thursday at 8:30 (extended 90-minute premiere)
Medical Investigation: NBC, Thursday at 10:00 (early premiere)
Medical Investigation: NBC, Friday at 10:00 (episode 2, airing in its actual time slot – sound of crickets chirping in background)
Jack & Bobby: WB, Sunday at 9:00

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