Wed, October 4, 2006

Some of the season's new shows merited a second viewing. Others didn't, but got one anyway. The whole reason for starting the Annual TiVo Gauntlet of New Fall Programming in the first place was to ensure that if a show ended up defying all expectations and being awesome, I hadn't missed anything by stubbornly refusing to watch its seemingly dull pilot. So, the policy is, err on the side of caution. Caution or boobs.

Grey's Anatomy

I don't know which disappoints me more about Americans: our choice of president, or our choice of #1 show on TV. The mystery this week at onebee headquarters is how the hell Grey's Anatomy ended up on my list of returning shows in the first place. I think my brain is tricked because I have scarcely missed an episode. (I quit recording it long ago, but I always seem to be around whenever Mom and Sis decide to watch the show.) Now that I've seen the first two hours of the new season, I'm just appalled. Nearly every character on the show is a despicable, whiny narcissist – and none more so than the hero of the show, its actual narrator! It's just infuriating – I don't know how people can watch this. Chandra Wilson and Isaiah Washington continue to be brilliant, by the way. But everyone else is so fucking awful! If you're awake when Grey's Anatomy comes on, and your legs work, you have no excuse for watching the show. (I say this with full knowledge that I'll almost certainly see the third episode this weekend. I have no idea how to explain this; maybe this is how the show gets such great ratings.)

Wish List: Drs. Burke and Bailey lock everyone else in an operating room and then suck out all the oxygen.

Jericho

We have to assume that the "Entertainment Weekly" staff had access to at least two episodes of this show before they made it an "EW Pick," right? Could they have done it just based on the title? Or an autographed picture of Ashley Scott? Payola? Maybe they were sucked in by its title card, which is a clear rip-off of Lost: the show's title on a black background with a weird electronic tone behind it.

The show is positively laughable. Holly hinted as much recently, but I was still prepared to give the show a chance, because the pilot posed so many questions – if they ended up providing really cool answers, it could be an intriguing show. Well, what answers they have provided in episode two are decidedly uncool. And there are spelling mistakes. I think it's safe to assume these episodes are written by children. Characters do the stupidest things just to make sure the audience is following along – like the escaped convicts posing as deputies, who keep opening the trunk to threaten the bound deputies inside, risking discovery or escape just to make sure we haven't missed any hints.

All in all, breathtakingly bad. The second episode ends with a very spooky reveal involving pushpins. I was impressed by that, but everything else... ick.

Wish List: Get the Ashley Scott panties scene overwith soon so I can quit provisionally TiVoing this.

Justice

It took me a few episodes to realize this, but for some reason the four lawyers on this show are always yelling. Literally: always. Apparently, the writers think the only way to convey the characters' intelligence is to have them hissing at other people in frustrated condescension all the time. (After all, it works for Bush.) It's really weird, and Garber should know better than this.

The only good thing the show had going for it (not counting Garber – that's an awesome thing!) is the flashback epilogue on each episode, which reveals what really took place. But so far, the lawyers have won acquittal every time, and every time the epilogue has shown the defendant to be truthfully innocent. The device has lost its edge, just because the timid producers are afraid to show the lawyers freeing a guilty client. But the show is built on how much they don't care if the client is innocent! If we can love them for that, we should be able to handle the occasional actually guilty client.

Also, in a recent episode, someone pulled a background dossier for a witness and it flopped open to reveal a bunch of writing on one page, and on the other: two identical photos of the person taped next to each other on a sheet. The show is bad for many reasons much more important than this, but ever since, I keep giggling about the imagined line: "Yes, but what does he look like from the same angle?"

Wish List: Cancel this now and get Garber back on the open market!

The Amazing Race/Without a Trace

I just sat down to catch up on Sunday's TAR episode, and found that 40 minutes of each of these shows have been lost because football ran long on Sunday. You can't imagine the profanity-spewing tantrum that resulted. This is so unbelievably unconscionable. If you have variable-length programming and you don't have a buffer show afterwards in case it runs long, you really shouldn't be running new programming later the same night. The obnoxious thing is, CBS does have a buffer show between football and The Amazing Race: 60 Minutes! Just cut a couple of segments out and air them next week, and all's good. CBS also has about a dozen of its shows available for catch-up viewing on its website, but these two aren't among them. (Stupid, stupid!) I'm forced to try to download them on BitTorrent, which (illegal, whatever) takes fucking forever. This is why they shouldn't have moved these shows to Sunday. This is why there should be no football. I'm so damn mad.

Wish List: Anything is better than this. Come on.

The Class

Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Richie) has this trademark thing where he awkwardly interrupts himself. It's much funnier than you'd think it would be, especially after he's done it so much you would think you'd get tired of it. Jason Ritter is pretty good at comedy (and it's still sometimes startling to see him up and walking around). The show still isn't markedly better than your average laugh-track sitcom – and it has this unfortunate fixation with making sure all eight characters show up in each episode – but it has its moments.

Wish List: Fewer obvious set-ups. Shows with just three or four of the bunch at a time (set a precedent now while these actors are still too unknown to get uppity about the occasional benching).

Kidnapped

This has continued to be a very watchable show. (In week two, they added a slutty daughter – never a bad move. Although, slutty daughters out there? Please recognize that there's a line between "cute slutty daughter" and "psycho tramp who starts soliciting three-ways with guys she met 15 minutes ago." Stay on the cute side of that line; you'll help us all out.)

It turns out Kidnapped does this annoying flasho-zappo editing move as it goes out to commercial after each act. (I hadn't noticed before because I reviewed the Netflix DVD version and forgot to watch the broadcast to make sure they were the same.) It kind of replays a few prominent moments from the show up to that point. Tru Calling used to do this, and it was really annoying then, too, but at least it was a déjà vu show, so it fit. Also, Tru didn't add the psychedelic colors.

This episode also included a flashback scene, which I think is a mistake. It would be like doing a dream sequence in The Office – it breaks the narrative structure of the show, which in this case is the forward momentum of the investigation. But everything else is good so far, so Kidnapped retains the onebee stamp of recommendation.

Wish List: More James Urbaniak! Also, Sisto spends a lot of time sitting around. Maybe he could pursue entirely different leads than those the FBI is working on.

Heroes

Yowza. I didn't think we'd see anything as drastic as the difference between my staggering expectations for this show and its inconsistent pilot – but the difference between the pilot and this Monday's episode is twice as drastic in the opposite direction! Gone are the wooden and awkward line readings of Hayden Panettiere, replaced with sophistication, sarcasm, and natural rhythm. Plus, the really clunky plot devices motivating the Ali Larter character are almost gone (they should clear up entirely by the time she leaves Las Vegas), and her superpowers are much more interesting, though still largely unexplained.

Greg Grunberg classes the place up, with a little help from guest star Clea Duvall. He's a peach, and his story seems interesting. Certainly his performance is leagues above anything we saw in the pilot. (Curiously, there are conflicting accounts about why the original two-hour pilot was cut in half. If the second hour wasn't heavily reshot, then it's quite suspicious that the story and performances just magically improved so much right at the halfway point.) Hiro continues to be the audience darling he was destined to be, and he surprises us twice, and also reveals how pivotal he'll be to the first big superhero challenge that awaits our heroes-to-be.

Overall, it's awesomeness times 100 compared to last week's episode. Hooray!

Wish List: Keep going in this direction, and everything should be fine. Downplay the "it's in a comic book at the same time it's happening in real life" angle – there's enough interesting stuff going on already.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

Ha ha! Wouldn't it be funny if I spent yet another five or six pages celebrating this show? No. No it wouldn't. I'll shut up now and let the show speak for itself. It's doing far better than I could hope to. (But it's still amazing!)

I'll just leave you with this little morsel: minutes before airtime, one of the sketch show players is pestering Matt & Danny with anxieties about the upcoming show. Already late, the guys don't have time to stand around – they have to get to the stage already! So, it's the proud duty of veteran Bradley Whitford to unleash this giddy little Sorkin in-joke: "Can we have this conversation... moving?"

The best reason to get TiVo: you can pause a show after a moment like this, and take as long as you want hugging yourself tightly and rocking back and forth on the sofa, bathed in the warmth and brilliance of television that loves you back.

Wish List: A momentary peek four years into the future, where I could glimpse this show's ongoing ratings/Emmys domination and see everyone agreeing with me that it was always wonderful. Then I could stop working so hard back here in good ol' 2006.

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