Tue, September 16, 2008

Supernatural phenomena play a big part in this premiere season – with various paranormal investigators, fake psychics, real telepaths, and even (maybe!) Greek gods and goddesses descended from Olympus and disguised in human form. It's enough to become tiresome, but don't give up too quickly, for a pair of this week's shows are poised to overcome their spooky sides.

Fringe

Fox, Tuesdays at 9:00

Promotions for Fringe miss no opportunity to point out that its co-creator, J.J. Abrams, was also a co-creator of Lost. With good reason: Lost was a smash hit and remains among TV's most talked-about shows. That doesn't mean Fringe will be exactly like Lost – Abrams also created Six Degrees, which incorporated no grand, inscrutable mysteries (except why anyone thought it would make a good TV show). Still, the producers want to remind you that while Fringe may share its mysterious sci-fi nature with Lost, it will not be the same show. In interviews, they fall all over themselves promising that Fringe will cater to the "casual viewer," in an attempt to dispel fears that its mythology will become so densely interwoven that it becomes impossible to follow new episodes without a binder of backstory information. It's certainly possible for a show like Lost to be successful (e.g., Lost), but it's difficult to draw new viewers, and it's entirely possible that existing viewers may find their energy continually sapped until the show just becomes a chore to watch.

Still, aiming at the "casual viewer" is probably overkill. There's no need to worry about bewildering someone who watches your show by accident – who wakes up to find the set tuned to Fox, say, or gazes at a closed-captioned episode while standing in line at the bus depot. The casual viewer can do great with shows like Law & Order or CSI – those shows' character arcs rarely affect the events of any given episode. A show like Fringe would do better to aim at the "normal viewer," defined as someone who watches a show the same way most of us did before Lost came out: regularly and attentively, but without our finger poised over the pause button and without spending hours scanning message boards or alternate-reality web sites for additional information. (Those activities belong in the category of "obsessive viewer," a category which existed before, but has surged in response to Lost and possibly painted its writers into a corner from which the show can never recover.) Already, Fringe has offerings for the obsessive: an alternate reality game has been underway since June; the message "observers are here" pops up for one frame of the opening credits; an establishing shot features a promotion for www.glowingmonkeys.com, a blog which denies it is associated with the show, but most likely is. There are reports that this will continue, but so long as it entices the obsessive viewer without diminishing the experience of the normal viewer, it needn't concern us.

Assuming the best (i.e., online homework will remain optional), Fringe shows potential to be a lot of fun. It's more of a thriller than a true sci-fi story – it doesn't aspire to ask many moral questions – but as thrillers go, it's engaging and well paced. The pilot is slick and cinematic; it reportedly cost $10 million to shoot, and the money is clearly visible on the screen. The dialogue is deft and intriguing, laying out paranormal phenomena and corporate conspiracies at a quick pace without straining believability. Joshua Jackson is grimly focused and hot-tempered as ever, and Anna Torv continues Abrams's track record of plucking young beauties from near-obscurity: Keri Russell for Felicity, Jennifer Garner for Alias, and Evangeline Lilly for Lost. Torv spends this week mostly in dour disbelief, but shows an ability to warm up as things progress. And Lance Reddick, playing her boss, seems genetically engineered to play a mysterious national-security hardass. His clipped delivery and striking features seize your attention whenever he's on the screen.

So far, Torv and Jackson (and his wackball mad-scientist dad, played by John Noble) have reverse-engineered a chemical pathogen which causes people's flesh to melt – and in doing so, they've exposed a pattern of other bizarre phenomena and revealed some questions about the involvement of Massive Dynamic, a huge GE-type company headed by a mega-billionaire who used to work in Noble's lab. The billionaire remains unseen, but his assistant (played by Blair Brown, née Molly Dodd) is creepy as hell and has a next-generation robotic arm her genius boss designed for her. Torv rescues her co-worker/lover (Mark Valley) from the disease, only to find him linked to the conspiracy – but don't worry, there'll be no workplace romance. Abrams likes his leading ladies nice and available, so just as Danny died before the opening credits of Alias, Valley perishes in a car chase before Fringe fades out. This week, we'll find out what else Reddick has in store, why Jackson has decided to stay around and help out, and whether the show can deliver on its promise to maintain the intrigue without descending into joyless, labyrinthine mythology. Worth a look!

Privileged

CW, Tuesdays at 9:00

As expected, JoAnna Garcia delivers sweet, clumsy charm as Megan Smith, the Yale-educated aspiring writer who finds herself fired from a Manhattan tabloid magazine and accepts work as a tutor to twin 16-year-olds in posh Palm Beach, Florida. Her charges, Rose and Sage, have a scintilla of dimension beneath their bored rich-bitch exterior – having lost their parents at a young age and struggled to live under Grandma's wing amidst the temptations and excesses of wealthy society. Having grown up "across the tracks" in West Palm Beach, Megan thinks she knows what to expect but is quickly overwhelmed. The estate is monstrous, the girls are dismissive, and Grandma Laurel (Anne Archer) is too distracted to give Megan any backup.

The show succeeds on the winning smile and plucky resolve of Garcia, who channels the sunny enthusiasm of Amy Adams, and plays barely-keeping-her-head-above-water perfectly. As the show pours more distress onto her, she keeps rising to the occasion. Wrangling the girls, managing Laurel's expectations, avoiding conflict with her estranged sister who still lives nearby, and awkwardly flirting with the hunky boy next door. Megan's equally comfortable quoting Jay Gatsby or Spider-Man's Uncle Ben, and once she gets her feet under her in Palm Beach, she comes out of her shell (with the help of the sassy head chef, Marco) and lets her bookish, nerdy flag fly. Laurel admires Megan's bravado, which means Rose and Sage are going to have to get used to her style (or, in their terms, utter lack thereof; Sage: "I puke prettier than that outfit you're wearing"). Privileged is a breezy trifle, but stacked up against utter vapidity like 90210, it's the good kind of trifle. Megan's fun to hang out with, and you won't feel dirty later for having watched the show.

Do Not Disturb

Fox, Wednesdays at 9:30

The studio-audience sitcom just keeps taking it on the chin. Do Not Disturb features Niecy Nash, who is very funny; Jerry O'Connell, who can be funny; and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who is outrageously funny even though you've never heard of him. And even with record-holding sitcom director Jason Bateman at the helm, it goes nowhere. The show is about the staff of a chic New York hotel, but does nothing to take advantage of that setting. What's the point? If it's just going to be stock characters bouncing off each other, why not put it in a hospital, or a donut shop, or a prison?

If you're going to do a comedy that takes place at work, there should be something comical about work. Reno 911 places a bunch of incompetent morons in a position of authority: that's funny. On Just Shoot Me!, Blush Magazine epitomized everything Maya Gallo hated in the world, but she went to work there because she had no other options – admittedly not hilarious, but it worked and, like 30 Rock, it provided an environment in which off-the-wall characters like Nina Van Horn or Tracy Jordan seem almost normal. Even on Murphy Brown, FYI wasn't just a backdrop – it gave the show an opportunity to tackle political themes and portray a bunch of prima donnas who tried to take themselves seriously as journalists. Newhart was set at an inn, and it mined comedy from Dick Loudon's run-ins with the guests – but it wasn't really a workplace comedy anyway; it was more about the culture shock of landing in a tiny New England town. The Office is probably the ultimate workplace comedy and although paper products hardly form the basis of many jokes on the show, the fact that their business is so bland and increasingly obsolete helps underscore the point that each character is there for only one reason: they're trapped.

On Do Not Disturb, none of this. Just a half-dozen sarcastic assholes sniping at each other, while the sets behind them happen to look like a hotel. The pilot episode focuses on the well-trodden "sexual harassment" plot line, with O'Connell's horndog trying to mend his ways and Nash's straight arrow being tempted into bending the rules. Niecy Nash manages to resurrect a few moments, but most of the jokes fall dead. (Not that the forced laugh track ever lets up.) Molly Stanton (as the "pretty ditz") gets an inexplicably large amount of screen time, but unfortunately is not prepared to carry the load. Sadly, even the direction is lacking, with editing that flattens comedy timing and far too many wide shots. Presumably the reason for this green light is Fox's interest in propping up the other end of an hour for the final throes of 'Til Death. Would reruns of Arrested Development somehow be worse than this?

True Blood

HBO, Sundays at 9:00

It's hard to be more impressed with the choices of any young actress working today than with those of Anna Paquin. (Even Scarlett Johansson has her period duds, and Natalie Portman will need to make a dozen more Garden States to wash clean the George Lucas stench.) Paquin has certainly made smarter calls than any Supporting Actress winner in the last decade and a half – a watchable Spike Lee movie; the X-Men series (the prestige superhero franchise until Christopher Nolan's Batman); a Spielberg movie; some daring indie character work – not every one a hit, but almost all interesting and varied. Now she takes on Sookie Stackhouse, the central character in a series of steamy vampire novels set in the deep South. There's a lot going on in True Blood, and plenty of creator Alan Ball's (Six Feet Under) signature cynicism about human nature, but Sookie's perspective is what makes it a show.

Sookie lives with her grandmother in the small town of Bon Temps, Louisiana (as in, laissez le bon temps rouler!), where she waits tables at a bar. From a young age, she's been telepathic: she's able to hear people's thoughts – in fact, it's difficult for her to tune them out. Then she meets Bill the vampire. (The show has a whole political undercurrent about vampires "coming out" now that synthetic blood is available for their nourishment, and seeking equal rights to the human population. There's an unmistakable parallel to the battle for gay rights – one clever road sign reads "God Hates Fangs.") Bill, being dead (or, dead-ish), isn't on the same wavelength as everyone else and therefore, to Sookie, he represents quiet. She can't read his mind, which means when she's with him, she's mercifully at peace. Further, when she trusts him, it's actually an act of faith. The fascinating thing about Sookie is that all her life she's been a talented judge of character, because she knows everyone's secret thoughts. Suddenly, she's confronted with someone who can keep secrets, who retains an air of mystery. She has a good feeling about him, and wants so desperately to relate to someone in a normal way that she dares herself to trust her instincts.

Sookie is the kind of strong female character that makes you resent how often the term "strong female character" is bandied about. Orphaned young and outcast because of her gift, she's learned to rely on herself, and has developed a resolute faith as well as a steadfast personal code. She's vulnerable, but she's so secure in what she believes to be right that she's rarely fearful. Sookie approaches vampires with an eager thirst for understanding, and once she meets Bill and experiences relief from the din of others' thoughts, she's hooked. She's also got a reliable support team: her grandmother (played by Lois Smith, whose handlers refuse to put her out of her misery), her boss who harbors a secret crush on her, her well-meaning fuckup of a brother, and her hilarious friend Tara (Rutina Wesley) who steals every scene with her firebrand hostility. She's like Wanda Sykes, Jr. – and she never stops. We meet her moments before she quits her job at a discount store (a frequent occurrence; as Tara says, "I can't work with stupid people!"). Before she storms out, she threatens her boss that her baby's father is just out of prison and will come beat him up. As her manager blubbers, she snaps at him, "I'm not serious, you pathetic racist! I don't have a baby!" Later, she's spinning a new yarn about a jealous and trigger-happy husband with a penchant for genital mutilation in order to keep guys from hitting on her at a party.

The show is bloody without being gory, but makes up for it – and then some – in the areas of sex and violence. It's a slimy and unpolished approach; everyone shimmers with sweat basically all the time. In fact, Ball goes out of his way not to pull any punches, which comes off excessive and exploitative, especially during the pilot's extended rough-sex scene. Some of this would be best left to the imagination, and the vampire politics contribute little to the tableau, but take a look at the world through Sookie's eyes, and all the other stuff becomes less important.

Premiering This Week

CW has moved the premieres of Easy Money and Valentine to Sunday October 5. New grids are available to help ease you through the tearful rebuilding process. (Considering the two shows in question, however, you may not want to get your heart set on October 5, either.)

Returning This Week

House: Fox, Tuesday at 8:00

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