Tue, October 2, 2007

Premiere week was a doozy, and I watched it in one uninterrupted 9 1/2 hour block on Saturday. It was back to the old feeling of the first few ATGoNFPs, baby! There is absolutely nothing like it – a world of shimmering, unspoiled potential stretching out in front of me, and being mangled an hour at a time by the usual forces. Stultifying writing, bizarre casting choices, "notes" from the network. Even so, I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Bionic Woman

NBC, Wednesdays at 9:00

I've only seen one season of Battlestar Galactica (and that was plenty for me), but it was enough to convince me that its executive producer David Eick (who also helms Bionic Woman) leans toward a liberal, feminist mindset. As he should; as should we all. So it is with tongue firmly planted in cheek that I present the following conspiracy theory for how Bionic Woman is designed to derail Hillary's presidential aspirations.

The point of this episode, as we see in the flinty eyes of the estimable Miguel Ferrer at the end of the hour, is that it's a big mistake to put a woman in charge of a dangerous piece of military equipment. She can't be reasoned with, and she's got these emotions and whatnot. She's going to do what she wants, and God help us all if that deviates from the Pentagon's secret plan. Ferrer and his goons at the super-secret biotechnology lab have put bionic upgrades into two women so far, and so far it's come back to bite them in the ass twice. Think about that before you vote to put a lady-person's finger on the button next fall.

The show begins in a cavernous underground hallway at the biotech lab (Wolf Creek, in case that hallway wasn't creepy enough). We're following armed commandos as they step over a half dozen dead men in lab coats. At the end of the hall, there's Katee Sackhoff, chewing on some guy's face. This is what I was afraid of: sure the ass-kicking will kick ass, but will it be any fun? If it was, I didn't notice. I was too distracted by the creepy government guys and all the angry yelling. Jamie (the titular woman) is terrified and furious when she wakes up after a car crash (no less awesome the hundredth time you watch it) to find her legs, arm, and half her face replaced with bionic implants. (Not the Steve Austin/Luke Skywalker kind; these are bionic molecules that heal and enhance her.) And she stays scared and angry, even as she flees Wolf Creek and finds herself dodging assassination attempts from Sackhoff, her cybernetic predecessor. I'd be scared and angry, too, but it doesn't make me excited to watch next week.

It's a shame we didn't see more of Jamie before the accident. Her transformation alters her life drastically, and the way she responds to it is what will make her story interesting. The beats of shock, discovery, and adaptation are familiar enough, given the stockpile of superhero origin stories we've watched this decade. Why dwell on those when we could have used that time to get a real sense of who she is, what she cares about, and what sort of life this madness is interrupting? All we know is she's an anonymous bartender with a computer hacker sister and a bun in the oven. Frankly, a change of pace might do her good. Maybe she thinks so, too, because she doesn't ask many questions. She just shows up to fight Sackhoff when Sackhoff wants to fight. Jamie deserves credit for figuring out that she calls the shots, not Ferrer (whom she could crush like a bug). But, what next? Back to serving mojitos and enforcing bedtimes until something bionic goes down? Surely she has goals of her own, but it's hard to guess them when we only see her act on the defensive.

Private Practice

ABC, Wednesdays at 9:00

So far, I haven't had good things to say about the TV work of my fellow Trojan Shonda Rhimes. I'm sure she's a nice lady, and very creative, but let me borrow a gem from Andy Kindler: Not only is Grey's Anatomy not my cup of tea – it makes me hate tea! But I don't hate TV; I love TV, and I'm disappointed every time its potential is squandered.

Deep in my black heart, there's a tiny pearl of hope and optimism straining with all its might to outshine the darkness. (Not literally, of course – that would be fatal.) That little pearl believes that TV and movies have the potential to reach out to their audience and illuminate something about the human condition or the wondrous, mysterious universe in which we find ourselves. That there are creative, talented people who can resist the temptation to pander, and aspire for their art to give people more than just a way to kill an hour. So the cynicism on display in Shondaland hurts me – it assumes that any time spent crafting relatable, intriguing characters or believable situations is wasted, because TV viewers just want sex and verbal sparring. And it insults our intelligence by surrounding this sideshow of selfish, sex-crazed assholes with grave and farfetched medical emergencies in an attempt to make it feel relevant.

Private Practice is more of this pandering, pushed to extremes; even people who love Grey's Anatomy were horrified by the crossover episode last spring that launched this spin-off. I watched the pilot with one of them, and from what I can tell, nothing has improved since then. The show dresses itself up as a story about doctors and midlife and pursuing a new direction, with Addison Montgomery (Kate Walsh) departing dreary Seattle for a luxurious obstetrics/pediatrics co-op in Santa Monica. But it only takes a few minutes before people are standing around the break room bickering about sex. (I have no problem whatsoever with sex, only with its being used as a shorthand for "interesting.") It's a shame – Walsh has always charmed me in her other work, but this character is just a horror show and has never been written well. She's weirdly confrontational, and manifests her selfish insecurity in awkward outbursts. She grabs your attention, but not because she's interesting: she's just randomly unpredictable, which forces you to lean in, assuming greater focus will yield an explanation that sadly is not forthcoming.

I'll give Private Practice credit for innovating: it employs the first-ever retro-exposiblitz, introducing all its major characters in one 90-second rant by Kate Walsh, with brief clips of each person culled from the crossover episode. But even if I could stand to watch another show in the Grey's Anatomy vein, I don't think I could watch a childbirth scene every week. A TV series should have just one of those, during May sweeps of its sixth or seventh season the way God intended.

Dirty Sexy Money

ABC, Wednesdays at 10:00

For another group of characters I couldn't care less about, take the Darlings – a preposterously wealthy family of snobbish, entitled Manhattanites who breeze through life with no regard for anyone else. Their longtime family attorney dies in a plane crash, so the paterfamilias approaches the attorney's son to replace him.

That son is Nick (played by Peter Krause, who's shed his mopey Six Feet Under demeanor and has the fight of Sports Night's Casey McCall back in him). And the family has already got a series of dumb quagmires on deck to ruin his day. Karen, the oldest daughter, is marrying for the fourth time, and needs a pre-nup. Her brother Brian, a clergyman, wants his illegitimate son admitted to a fancy private school. Patrick, the District Attorney brother with aspirations for the U.S. Senate, is having an affair with a transsexual. The youngest brother won a yacht in a poker game and finds himself accused of human trafficking when its crew of illegals are discovered. And the baby of the family is mad that her dad bought her way into the cast of a Broadway show. Whew! It's enough to drive him crazy, and it nearly does.

To top it off, Nick discovers his father's death occurred under suspicious circumstances, and finds a briefcase in the wreckage of his plane which promises to reveal more mysteries once it's opened. As much as Nick may want to extricate himself from the Darlings, it's not going to be easy.

Krause's no-nonsense ferocity sustains the show, because he acts as our proxy, snapping at each of the Darlings to grow up. When Patrick (William Baldwin) begs Nick to break off his affair for him, Nick snaps, "Is she more of a man than you are?" Natalie Zea plays Karen in a flighty, distracted fog – yet she's present enough to fling barbs at her siblings in defense of Nick, her onetime lover. The fun comes from Nick's childhood relationship with these people, when he'd see them at functions or any time their antics called his father away from his real family. (Think of Sabrina, living over the Larrabees' garage, but without the wistfulness.) Also endearing is Tripp Darling's (Donald Sutherland) respect for Nick's clear head and upstanding conduct. Tripp isn't a bad father or an evil tycoon; he's just ill-equipped to manage his beloved family because he's not accustomed to saying no. He's always wielded his money and influence to get them what they want – and he's still kind of boggled that hasn't worked out. Scenes between him and Krause are great, with Krause speaking truth to power and Sutherland genuinely eager to understand this wholly alien world view. The rest of the scenes are pretty dull, except those which are stolen by Natalie Zea (every single one she's in).

Life

NBC, Wednesdays at 10:00

Detective Dani Reese (Sarah Shahi) sits in the office of her lieutenant (Robin Weigert). She's been summoned to talk about her new partner, Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis), a former cop who's returned to the force after serving twelve years of a life sentence for a crime he didn't commit. But Reese has no idea why she's there. As the conversation unfolds, we learn she's a recovering drug user. She thought she got partnered with the new guy because she's on the department's shit list after her drug bust, but the lieutenant hints that it's actually so Reese can keep an eye on Crews. She's on the brink of losing her badge so she'll have to speak up if Crews goes off the script, or risk sharing the blame. As this dawns on Reese, it turns her against the new partner whose eccentricity is already annoying the hell out of her, but the manipulation turns her toward him at the same time – they're both under a microscope. All this information is spooned out carefully, without halting awkwardly to underline the character beats or skipping so quickly that it's lost in the shuffle. It's the first we're learning about the lieutenant's suspicions – in fact, this is her first appearance in the episode, and it's almost halfway in. The whole scene is engineered perfectly: the performances, the dialogue, even the blocking. It fits eight or ten pages of necessary first-episode backstory into a casual two-minute conversation. That's rare to see on most network shows in their fifth season; unheard of in a pilot.

This is just one reason I love Life, and I'm betting you will, too. I converted you people to Veronica Mars by the sweat of my brow, and I'll do it again if I have to. This is the best one-hour series since Veronica swung into our lives, and it's once again anchored by a character with an axe to grind, a personal mystery to unravel, and an unconventional knack for solving crimes. Crews was subjected to untold torture at the hands of his cop-hating fellow inmates, and to survive he read The Path to Zen continuously. Now that he's out, he's soaking up the sunshine, devouring all the fresh fruit he can get his hands on, and trying to shrug off his bygones by remembering that the universe presents us with a series of moments, and it's up to us to make the best of them. He combines the trippy metaphysics of I ♥ Huckabees with the poised kookiness of Psych – it's no wonder I love this show. His off-kilter approach raises eyebrows, but it gets results. He's driving Reese crazy, but he just may end up saving her.

There's more to love: his wide-eyed techno-shock, his monologues about the meaning of moments, the indulgences afforded by his multi-million dollar settlement. But I'll let you find those on your own. I'll only add that Life has a cast to die for. Lewis could coast for the rest of the decade on the fantastic understated stoicism he brought to Band of Brothers. Weigert is fresh from a dazzling turn as Calamity Jane on Deadwood, the HBO show that deserved the press The Sopranos got instead. Adam Arkin plays Crews's prison buddy-turned-financial manager, with his typical syncopated charm. And Sarah Shahi... If you haven't seen her before, she began as a Cowboys cheerleader, with looks that make every other NFL pom-pom toter look like Rachel Dratch. But she's paid her dues with small roles on shows like Alias, where she stole scenes sparring with Bradley Cooper, and Teachers, where she honed her comic chops against such posers as the sidekick from National Treasure. She popped up briefly in Old School and Christopher Guest's For Your Consideration. And she spent a year or two in a powerful recurring role on Showtime's lesbo-soap The L Word. She nails Dani Reese. The vulnerability, the dark side, the weary sarcasm, and that little spark that says, "Maybe, just maybe, this freak is going to believe in me, and I might just be able to rise to that occasion."

You're going to watch this show and you're going to love it, or you'll have me to answer to. If for some reason your TiVo failed to record the premiere episode last Wednesday, USA is repeating it tomorrow (October 3) at 6:00pm before the new episode on NBC. (That's 6 o'clock Eastern, for you west coast satellite folks.) There you have it. Go.

Big Shots

ABC, Thursdays at 10:00

Big Shots is indeed a dude version of Desperate Housewives. The question is, will women tune in for a show that casts them as the root of their husbands' despair? Will guys watch a show so devoted to introspection and feelings, with almost no car chases? Is America still not tired of the Viagra-based punch line?

There's an interesting place to go here: guys have their share of problems and insecurities, just like women, but generally lack the emotional tools to talk openly about these issues and support each other. On the other hand, they have their own alpha-male strategies for handling such setbacks. Big Shots generally shies away from this area, aiming instead for the sorts of outsized drama familiar to Housewives viewers. Dylan McDermott's character is frightened that the press will get wind of a liaison he had with a transsexual prostitute in a truck stop bathroom. (Yes, that's two tranny mistresses in as many nights on ABC. Shemales are the new "moving in.") Joshua Malina's mistress is tired of getting the short shrift, so she storms in to tell his wife – and instead becomes her interior decorator. (Next week, they go to couples therapy as a threesome.) Michael Vartan's boss dies, which is great (he assumes the CEO job, though his boss had planned to fire him) but not so great (he finds out his wife was sleeping with the boss, too). Christopher Titus suffers a domineering wife (as Chandler would say, "Whaa-pah!") and also continues to prove he should never be on television.

Vartan's able as ever, and McDermott banters charmingly with WB alum Peyton List as his daughter, but ultimately the show spends too much time treading water. Viewers seeking insight into the mind of the modern male will probably embrace the middle-class ensemble of Carpoolers rather than these coddled millionaires who spend half their time on the golf course. For what it's worth, Big Shots is the third show in two weeks to play the bongo-tastic Peter Bjorn and John song "Young Folks" to lighten the mood. Imagine all the songs we'd hear if two albums had come out last year!

Moonlight

CBS, Fridays at 9:00

You read about how they retooled this show, fired half the cast, brought in the indiscriminate smug smirk of Jason Dohring, all this stuff to make it better. And it's like, Why? The network bought a half dozen other pilots that never won a time slot. There's mid-season stuff waiting in the wings (including the amazing The Amazing Race, reality Emmy juggernaut!). Why not just give up? I understand how nerve-racking it is facing down the barrel of Viva Laughlin, but still, this is sad.

The show is about a vampire in Los Angeles who has some other vampire friends, but refuses to be like them (drinking fresh blood, etc.). He gets his blood from a contact at the morgue and he works as a private eye, trying to help people. Apparently, preview audiences found him unsympathetic nonetheless, because the show has a tacked-on opening dream sequence where some lady interviews the vampire (har!) and he gets to explain how he's actually a good guy and wouldn't hurt a fly. He explains that vampires don't really turn into bats, but someone forgot to tell the sound guy because later when he fights a guy, he shrieks exactly like a bat. Throughout the show, he often explains to people what he isn't, what he doesn't do, and what his reasons aren't.

One thing he does do is protect this girl who is a cub reporter for a TMZ-style gossip blog portal. She likes to play "intrepid journalist," but she forgets that nobody cares about accuracy, or anything really, on a gossip blog. They just want new videos uploaded all the time. (You thought the deadlines were hell at the newspaper! These guys live or die every time someone hits "Refresh.") When the girl was younger, his vampire ex-wife kidnapped her to make a family, and he saved her. So he has this lasting connection to her which is just beginning to turn romantic. Apparently he's all for exploiting her, but he's a stickler for age-of-consent laws. She's dumb as a post and they have no chemistry whatsoever – but considering how much remixing this episode went through, it's entirely possible they never stood on the same set together. If I'd spent 90 years on the planet, I think I'd have realized there are better women out there. These two are like a couple on one of those WB shows, where you only know they're "meant for each other" because the music says so.

She carries an iPhone like Dan from Journeyman and everyone on Without a Trace, but I'm pretty sure hers is a prop-department hackjob, not a loaner from Apple, because she holds it upside-down. Whenever there are titles on the screen, one random vowel is given an ethereal glow. At first I thought it was just O's, like the moon. Then I thought maybe O's and A's, like blood types (clever!). But it turns out it's all the vowels. I could have spent this paragraph telling you about the mystery of this week's episode, but it was even more absurd than these random tidbits.

I'll TiVo Another Episode Of...

Life, obviously. It's already on my Season Pass list right below vigil entries like Veronica Mars and Arrested Development. I'm loving every minute of it, and from the general buzz level it seems there won't be many more minutes left. Chuck as well, since it hasn't disappointed yet and is due to really hit its stride after another episode or two. Reaper, for the same reasons. (God, they really are identical!) And, out of curiosity, Journeyman and Dirty Sexy Money. Another episode or two, and I'll know if Journeyman will delve into fun stuff or get stale fast. With Dirty Sexy Money, I just need to know what's in that briefcase. 5 out of 11 is higher than I'd like; I need to set high expectations for episode two of these shows.

Returning Shows

The Office is in that danger zone from which few romance arcs return unscathed. But given the track record over the last three years, I'm just going to assume it'll turn out awesome, sit back, and enjoy it all. CSI kept TV's great unheralded romance arc alive by not killing off Sarah Sidle, but darkness still looms ahead for her and Grissom. NUMB3RS followed its compelling season finale with a powerhouse season opener, directed to grating excess by co-producer Tony Scott. This marks the second time in a row that I have not hated Val Kilmer in something. Chilling.

Without a Trace and American Dad are as they were. Las Vegas promises to build upon last year's awesome half-season with the addition of Tom Selleck, but at two hours long, its premiere was more than I could fit in this week.

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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