Mon, October 1, 2007

The TV networks and movie studios discovered ComicCon and they're desperate to win the affection of dweebs everywhere. If you want my projection, the shows and movies that appeal to a nerd mentality in a "by us, for us" kind of way have a shot, but those attempting "geek cred" with some hasty stereotypes are going to fall flat.

Chuck

NBC, Mondays at 8:00

Chuck (Zachary Levi) will remind you of the Steve Carell character from The 40-Year-Old Virgin. He's kind of a loner, uncomfortable at parties or around women, and he works the tech support desk at a big box store. (This has been adopted as a shorthand for "geek," but it's apt for this character – unlike the clumsy nerd clichés of a show like The Big Bang Theory.) Physically, he may remind you of Jimmy Fallon, which is a huge strike against this show from its first scene.

Chuck receives the entire collected intelligence of the NSA and CIA in an e-mail attachment from a college buddy who's become a rogue agent. When Chuck views this, the information is stored into his brain – making him the only repository for all this data. This premise requires some liberal bending of the way steganography works, but obviously that's not the point. (The point is, Jameson has heard of steganography.) It makes for a swift and satisfying setup. Chuck is on the run quickly, his new abilities are understood, and so is his importance to the agencies now seeking to capture him.

The show succeeds at blending action and comedy in a way that diminishes neither. In some cases, the action is funny; in others, it's stylized enough to poke fun at action shows (e.g., Alias) without going too far into goofy territory. But the real success is with Chuck's character, because we get a view of how problem solving is a big part of his personality – and how his talent for it exceeds the technological realm. When Chuck is approached at work by a father whose camcorder failed to record a ballet recital, Chuck could turn the guy away. It was his fault; he didn't put a tape in. But instead, he stages an impromptu encore performance to replace the missing recording. Levi does a good job inhabiting Chuck. He delivers nerdy monologues without becoming annoying, and he plays insecurity well.

Also excellent is Adam Baldwin as an NSA agent in pursuit of Chuck's secrets. (Though you know this already, if I fail to mention he played Jayne on Firefly, they'll take away my blog license.) He exudes a seething grit, akin to Agent Smith from the Matrix movies, but with that wild Jayne sparkle in his eye. When Chuck defuses a bomb then pauses to panic about the close call, Baldwin quips gruffly, "Don't puke on the C4." Baldwin's foil is Yvonne Strahovski as Sarah, a CIA agent trying to protect Chuck. As part of her initial cover, Sarah and Chuck have some nice romantic chemistry (she's got a sweet Christine-Taylor-as-Marcia-Brady vibe), and then she kicks some ass. The two agents will share joint custody of Chuck, but it's clear he'll be closer to Sarah.

The show mines comedy from many places, not just the obvious fish-out-of-water premise. There's Chuck's relationship with his sister and her boyfriend, Captain Awesome (as soon as you meet him, the reason for his nickname is obvious). His friends and co-workers. The slacker wage-slave culture. (And big box stores in general – Chuck's is called Buy More.) Plus, undoubtedly, the romantic spark between Chuck and Sarah. In fact, Chuck might have earned a perfect score from me with slightly fewer comedy sources. There's a rivalry with another store employee that oozes a little too much irony, and frankly there's already plenty going on. But given the razor's-edge balance of the show's premise and comedy, it delivers about as well as we could have possibly expected.

The Big Bang Theory

CBS, Mondays at 8:30

The same cannot be said of The Big Bang Theory, from co-creator Chuck Lorre. Lorre, who's been described as the angriest man in television, has worked on popular shows like Roseanne. He co-created great shows like Dharma & Greg and terrible shows like Two and a Half Men. I mention this because The Big Bang Theory has the potential to be like Dharma & Greg, which explored the injection of a unique world view (Dharma's qi-based "universe in harmony") into a familiar, recognizable life (Greg's buttoned-down attorney routine). Maybe you didn't love the show, but there was an undeniable sparkle when Jenna Elfman's fearless exuberance won over Thomas Gibson's scowl. In the early years, every episode left me with a smile on my face because of the way she'd made him (and me) look at something differently. Instead, this show is more like Two and a Half Men: it mines cheap, easy laughs from stock situations and has little to no regard for its own characters.

There's a cynical, sarcastic edge to the humor, which is frustrating, because when I think of nerds – especially science nerds like Sheldon and Leonard in this show – I think of gentler, more open-minded people. Victims of sarcasm and put-downs, who aspire to a higher standard in their own behavior. Admittedly, most modern sitcoms have this edge. To quote again from the great George Meyer:

"On most shows nowadays, almost all the characters are stereotypes, or they embody one basic trait and very little else. And you have shows where all seven characters talk exactly like comedy writers. All the characters seem to be constantly cracking jokes and, specifically, jokes meant to injure other people. My old girlfriend Maria once said that if anyone ever said to her even one of the things that the people on sitcoms routinely say to each other she would probably burst into tears and go running out of the room. [...] I never dreamed that television comedy would turn in such a dreary direction, so that all you would see is people in living rooms putting each other down."

I think sitcoms are especially hurt when this is applied without consideration for the characters. On Dharma & Greg, Joel Murray or Susan Sullivan might have been sarcastic or mean, but never Jenna Elfman. In the same way Randy isn't quippy on My Name Is Earl and Kenneth's humor on 30 Rock doesn't come from criticizing people. Rather than showing us something new, Sheldon and Leonard confirm old stereotypes. (Check off the mentions of "blog," "download," and "Battlestar Galactica.") Sheldon is incessantly spouting random trivia, including the spiel about light's wave-particle duality – something Leonard, as a physicist, must already know. But he's not saying it for Leonard, he's saying it for us: because it sounds like nerdy scientific gobbledygook. In our "us vs. them" world, that's second only to homosexuality as the fastest way to create a "them." Just ask Al Gore. And nothing's easier to laugh at than "them." (Just ask Al Gore.) Similarly, their apartment is decorated with hyper-geeky stuff like a shower curtain with the periodic table of the elements printed on it. What are we to make of this? Men – and nerds in particular – have no time for decorating. The path of least resistance is the bone white shower curtain at Target. They must have sought out this particular one, which means one of two things: they are so completely nerdy that they demand something nerdy be printed on everything they display in their home; or they purchased it as a joke, embracing their nerdiness. I think the show wants us to believe the first one, but only the second one makes sense to me. If I'm expected to believe they haven't both memorized the periodic table, I certainly can't imagine they bought this curtain so they can run in and look at it when they need to check the atomic weight of Polonium.

The show's creators boasted to EW that they have an astrophysicist friend review their scripts for authenticity. This strikes me as exactly the kind of backward thinking that results in a show like this – shouldn't they have their comedy writer friend review scripts for solid laughs? TV viewers aren't seeking verisimilitude in the nomenclature of quantum states – they want relatable characters who can make them laugh at universal situations. Dharma showed us that a flower child could be just like us. Sheldon and Leonard could give nerds that same humanity and connection. But they're not just like us; they're just like every other sitcom character.

Journeyman

NBC, Mondays at 10:00

When I read about this show in coverage of NBC's upfronts, I dismissed it as "a rehash of Quantum Leap (crossed with a rehash of Early Edition)," because it's about a man who travels in time throughout his own lifetime righting wrongs, but he also works at a newspaper. For about the first 45 minutes of Journeyman, I thought I'd gotten it wrong. Gone was the "righting wrongs" angle, as well as the Dean Stockwell role: the guide or "time sherpa," who hangs around nudging the main character toward an understanding of his weird new situation. I loved this, because Quantum Leap was fine – and Dean Stockwell was excellent – but it was pretty treacly stuff, and generally left out all the more entertaining aspects of time travel, the stuff that makes Back to the Future: Part II so mind-bendingly fun.

However, in the last 15 minutes, the dude stops a guy in 1997 from killing his child and estranged wife, so apparently it is Quantum Leap after all. This is disappointing, because in all other ways the show is a surprise success. It poses all the fun time travel questions, and does a seamless job of establishing the rules of its world on-the-go, without any tedious explanation. There's fantastic chemistry between Dan and his wife Katie – really great instantaneous chemistry, which is vital because his first leap is less than a minute into the show, leaving precious little time to introduce the man and his family dynamic before thrusting him into the past. The story definitely pulled me in – I skipped the commercials with twice the urgency I normally feel.

The show has yet to throw any serious curve balls Dan's way. Whenever he makes a phone call or saves a guy's life in the past, I wince at the ripple effect this might have when he returns to the present. He steals a bike, and I'm all, "Gasp! It's gonna be raining donuts when he gets home!" He buries a toolbox? Raining donuts! Still, that kid he saves at the end of the episode does grow up to rescue some children from a bus crash, so Journeyman slips a TV Emergency Tracheotomy in under the wire, helping ensure that no premiere season has gone without one since the mid-1970s.

I hope Journeyman doesn't become about solving a new problem every week (though next week's "scenes" show him delivering a baby on a plane, so the outlook is bleak). If so, this is the fallout from the cancellation of Kidnapped that I was wailing about months ago. Networks are so terrified to produce serialized shows, they're forcing legitimately serial shows like Journeyman into episodic territory. I noticed Dan carries an iPhone, though – so I'll at least watch until the episode where he goes back and convinces himself to wait for the price cut.

Reaper

CW, Tuesdays at 9:00

Reaper tells the story of Sam, who awakens on his twenty-first birthday to learn his parents sold his soul to the devil before he was born, and now he must become Satan's bounty hunter. Since the show is an action-comedy built around a twentysomething slacker who works in a big box store and is suddenly thrust into a series of weekly adventures, the entertainment press has unanimously declared the show identical to Chuck. EW even reviewed the two in one of their mishmash TV reviews, which I hate because one show always gets shafted when it comes to word count – except when they reviewed 30 Rock, Studio 60, and SNL in one mishmash, and SNL basically got a quick paragraph: "Still sucky!" That, of course, was awesome. Still, lumping the shows together based on those criteria is positively ridiculous. (Hey! Also, they both have birthdays. It's the season of the birthday show!)

Reaper's premise doesn't thrill me, but its actors and writing are delightful. Missy Peregrym appears as the co-worker/love interest, and she's great – immediately and effortlessly warm, natural, clever, and damn cute. After Sam saves her life, she compares him to Batman, which I replayed four or five times, because having a pretty girl call me Batman would be a dream come true. (Chuck mentioned Batman to Sarah on Chuck – this is basically like watching the same show over again.) Ray Wise plays Satan with a sparkly, unflappable charm and an ever-present grin. And he looks fantastic for 60. It's the first time I've seen him in any role other than anonymous authority figures, and he really takes to it. (Kyle Rankin and Efram Potelle have apparently been giving him parts like this for years; as usual, we have them to thank.) Tyler Labine – who's been criticized for channelling Jack Black, but honestly, who wouldn't? – plays Sam's sidekick, Sock. He brings all the fun slack-ass wisdom and goofball antics of Employee of the Month without having to watch any of it come out of Dane Cook's stupid face. And Bret Harrison is certainly passable as Sam – nothing overwhelming, but he's mainly the straight guy, at least in this episode.

The show handles the supernatural element well enough, fitting most of it into the category of, "Uh... that was weird." This helps me, because supernatural stuff is usually the quickest way for a show to lose me. It's the reason I never watched Supernatural, and one of the reasons I never became a regular Buffy viewer even though I liked it a lot. Speaking of which, I know better than to invoke Joss Whedon, but Reaper's writing does make it fun to hang out with its gang, the way it was on Firefly or Buffy. Those are the scenes that make or break a show like this; the action and plot are fairly interchangeable. The gang is the heart, and this show has a good one.

Cane

CBS, Tuesdays at 10:00

Every time I see a Cane ad on TV or in a magazine, I'm unable to stop myself bellowing two things and then giggling uncontrollably:

1. From some comedian's bit about the incongruity of Jimmy Smits occupying a seat at the Jedi Council (Arksie will fill in the comedian's name in the comments below): "What do you think, Jimmy Smits?"

2. From a 1990s SNL spoof of Chicago Hope: "Hector Elizondo as Dr. Hector Belizondo."

In the annals of onebee's had-to-be-there jokes, these are certainly among the least relatable. Still, there was never a chance I wouldn't open this review with them.

Elizondo plays the patriarch of the Duque family, who have been in the rum and sugar business for years. Everyone refers to him as "Papi," which is how the show's writers tell you they have heard hispanic people talk – even if only on TV. Smits plays Alejandro ("Alex"), Papi's adopted son and the husband of Papi's daughter Isabel. Isabel's brother Francisco ("Frank") is played by Nestor Carbonell (who has a name that's almost as fun to say as Benedict Cumberbatch). On Kim Possible, Carbonell plays the whiny, entitled Señor Senior, Jr. (heir to Ricardo Montalban's Señor Senior, Sr.), and the part of Frank is not far removed. He's engaged in battle with Alex over control of the family company, but since he's sleeping with the daughter from the Samuels family (the Duques' primary competitor in the sugar market) he has different plans for their operations.

Frank wants to sell off the Duques' sugar holdings to the Samuels family, but Alex wants to keep them. Smits – who hasn't forgotten all his lines from The West Wing yet – is sure that sugar-based ethanol is going to be the fuel of the future, so he wants to stay invested. All this intrigue is overshadowed by physical threats against Alex and Isabel's kids, part of a history of bad blood with the Samuels clan. Also, their oldest son, Jaime, wants to enlist in the military and marry a white girl (the same one who had Duncan Kane's baby). And there's another Duque son, Enrique ("Henry"), who runs a nightclub and is inadvertently engaging in shady deals with the Israeli mafia. So there's a lot going on.

Which doesn't amount to much, at least as far as this reviewer's interest. It's soapier and steamier than the stuff I usually watch, but the show is filled with fine performances. Jimmy Smits is in fine form, and Paola Turbay is positively breathtaking as Isabel. Seriously, even if you just flip over during the commercials of Boston Legal, you should really check her out.

More to Come...

We'll leave off there for today and cover the second half of Premiere Week tomorrow. I'm not afraid to write the other six reviews right now, but I think you deserve a break from reading. Nearly 800 words on The Big Bang Theory?! Clearly I got carried away.

Returning Shows

How I Met Your Mother remains in amazing form, and if anyone were paying attention, it would be the show solidly proving that you can still do innovative, funny stuff in the studio-audience format. Whitney Pastorek's two-page love letter to the show in EW's fall TV preview states the case perfectly. Inside a funny sitcom with a great story, they've buried little jokes that skewer the sitcom format with a slightly subtler touch than NewsRadio. The cast is magnificent, the writing and directing are top-notch, and they've even managed to survive (and evolve!) their lame "flashback" premise. (For those already watching the show, slapcountdown.com is all I really have to say.)

The cast turnover on Criminal Minds garnered some press, and it's sad to lose Mandy Patinkin, but the show will survive – it's always had a revolving-door cast, though nothing like that of Boston Legal. It's another year of change for that show, too, but as long as Shatner and Spader are around I can't complain.

Premiering This Week

Aliens in America: CW, Monday at 8:30
Cavemen: ABC, Tuesday at 8:00
Carpoolers: ABC, Tuesday at 8:30
Pushing Daisies: ABC, Wednesday at 8:00
Life is Wild: CW, Sunday at 8:00

Returning This Week

30 Rock: NBC, Thursday at 8:30
Friday Night Lights: NBC, Friday at 9:00

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