Mon, October 20, 2008

Here are the rest of the new shows from this fall's premiere season. Tardy, tardy, tardy. God, how I've failed you. I feel like the EW Fall TV Preview, I'm so goddamn late. Next year I'll have to modify my vacation plans, or start reviewing shows without actually watching them. Those reviews would probably be more interesting anyway – we could play ATGoNFP Bingo to see how close my guesses are!

My Own Worst Enemy

NBC, Mondays at 10:00

Christian Slater stars as Henry (and Edward) in a Jekyll/Hyde story so convoluted it will make your head spin. The usual top-secret agency headquartered in a hidden underground office (I swear, there must be a whole black market for Secret Real Estate) has decided that the ultimate spy is one who, when he is not being a spy, forgets all about his spy life and leads a dull milquetoast existence with an unsuspecting wife and family. Presumably this protects against the capture and torture of agents, because during their downtime their blocked memory leaves them with no secrets to reveal, but the show never makes it clear. Maybe they just think it's funny to marry women off to men who've had the lion's share of their brain turned off – in a way, that sounds like half the world's TV commercials or sitcom pitches.

What happens to Henry is what will happen to Echo on Dollhouse in January (assuming Fox disproves the caterwauling fanboy doomsayers and actually puts the show on the air): he starts to remember things he shouldn't. First, he's having dreams about a Parisian sex-fling-turned-assassination Edward was involved in the night before. Soon, he's waking up as Edward in the middle of his humdrum life, which leaves Edward understandably restless. The normal procedure – and this is where it becomes so tangled that only a black-ops government bureaucracy with zero budgetary oversight could come up with it – is that every time Edward returns from a mission, he goes into an elevator which systematically shuts down all of Edward's memories and uploads false ones in their place to account for Henry's lost time. This is all controlled by a geeky, unshaven kid in a room with a series of Minority Report monitors, who can replay moments from Henry's (fake) life like YouTube clips and instantly modify them on-the-fly. (Edward nicked himself shaving? Cue up Henry's morning memories and, with a few button clicks, there's a cut on his chin.) Then the elevator doors open and Henry, accompanied by his new fake memories, walks into a fake office filled with people who are presumably actors only there to provide realism for Henry's fake life. The secret shadow agency better hope Henry never gets an itch to apply for a different job, or else they'll have to start tunneling under a whole new nondescript office building!

It seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through just to do the job a cyanide capsule used to. The fun of the real Jekyll/Hyde story was that Dr. Jekyll would wake up and go, "What the fuck happened?" And part of that fun was that there was no thick chapter to wade through, describing the intricacies of the remote brain control supercomputer that pumped Jekyll full of pretend memories. My Own Worst Enemy seems to combine the latent-superspy thrills of The Bourne Identity with the rookie-in-the-deep-end everyman charm of Chuck, as Henry will be increasingly called upon to fill in for Edward when he wakes up at the wrong time. The secret spy agency seems to believe that these crossovers are completely impossible, but suddenly they're happening two or three times a day, so it's time to come up with a backup plan. Meanwhile, Russian gun dealers are tracking Henry down, which defeats the whole purpose of keeping him separate from Edward. For a moment, it seems like Henry and Edward will keep their newfound coexistence a secret to avoid being terminated, but then Henry walks in and blabs it all to Edward's boss (Alfre Woodard, who – in case she doesn't seem enough like the head of a top-secret agency to you – now walks with a cane).

Edward must be a pretty valuable asset, because for some reason Woodard doesn't shoot Henry dead the minute he shows up in the secret part of the building. Instead, she explains the entire setup to him – even though she admits she's about to wipe his memories clean anyway. If you're not going to kill the guy, wouldn't it be easier to pacify him with falsehoods rather than spilling the truth? Woodard hands him the keys to Edward's lush secret pad and leaves him to himself until everything can be sorted out. Just what kind of secret organization is she running? Maybe she knows something we don't: it turns out Henry's first instinct is not to run home to his wife – rather, he settles in to watch a little baseball.

In the end, Henry and Edward join forces – as they must, or else the "Henry" part of the show would be pretty dull indeed – and Henry demonstrates that, even in his neutered state, Edward is a pretty cool customer. Where the show goes from here is anyone's guess. The good news is, with all the explanatory stuff out of the way, it can be an exciting thrill ride if it wants. But, if the explanatory stuff is going to be this dumb, I wish they'd done like Valentine and skipped most of it.

Chocolate News

Comedy Central, Wednesdays at 10:30

This show was touted in the EW blurb as being more of David Alan Grier's brainchild than some of the lesser fare he's been involved with (including the ultra-short-lived sitcom DAG). Grier is downright hilarious when he's not launching into Robin Williams Overdrive and screaming at the top of his lungs, so it stands to reason that a show with his fingerprints all over it would be pretty good. And Chocolate News might be. It doesn't have the plainspoken incisiveness of Chapelle's Show (loath as I am to compare the two simply because they're both black-owned, it seems like no review of Chocolate News fails to mention Chapelle), but it has an edge of its own and a stylish wit. Grier opens the show with an impassioned and entertaining rant against the changing face of hip-hop culture. ("When did 'Fight the power' become 'Wait till you see my dick'?!") Then the sketch part of the show launches with an overlong interview in which Grier does a hilarious Maya Angelou, followed by a fairly trite profile of a sexually explicit rapper making PSAs for schoolchildren (which is lifted by the hilarious reaction shots from the shocked grade-schoolers), and is anchored by the in-studio signing of the N-Word Peace Treaty between the black community and an organization of whites who want to continue using the word. The conditions of the treaty are pretty standard name-calling stuff, but before the ink is dry the white contingent decides to take their new word for a spin, and a brawl breaks out immediately. Maybe not the most surprising ending, but it was pretty funny watching Willie Garson proudly address his counterpart as "n––––r," and then promptly get socked in the jaw.

In between this, they air a brief memorial retrospective of their former white correspondent Roger Dunn, who has recently passed away. Dunn is a distinguished Mike Wallace type, and during his years of service they sent him straight to the scene of such breaking stories as the Rodney King riots – and in every case, he found himself the victim of savage beatings. It's a quick one-joke sketch, but I was tickled by the idea of a retrospective on the show's first episode ever. Chocolate News is not a Daily Show for black issues – nor does it intend to be – but for a sketch comedy show, it's a remarkably solid half hour.

Kath & Kim

NBC, Thursdays at 8:30

This remake of an Australian show centers around Kath Day (Molly Shannon) and her daughter Kim (Selma Blair – real life age difference: 8 years; to put that in perspective, they are two years closer in age than Alicia Silverstone and Stacey Dash, who played classmates in Clueless). They love mall shopping, People magazine, and gaudy fashion. (It goes without saying that they are Floridians.) From the promotional material, we're meant to understand that Kath and Kim are mutually codependent, though in the first episodes Kath seems relatively stable and Kim comes off as a whiny, selfish brat.

This is the unfortunate problem of Kath & Kim. The characters are funny and the performances are great – Molly Shannon is more restrained than she's ever been; Selma Blair has always been underutilized in comedy; John Michael Higgins never, ever disappoints. But a big part of storytelling is framing: which parts of your characters' lives do you show, and which do you skip over? Kath & Kim takes good characters and situations with potential to be great, then squanders them by showing all the moments that should be skipped over. We need more heart-to-hearts between Kath and Kim – showing how Kath enables Kim's dependence and slothfulness, and why. We meet these ladies shortly after Kim has moved out and gotten married, when she gives up on her marriage and moves back home. By now Kath is dating Phil (Higgins), attacking a new exercise regimen, and seems to be doing much better without Kim. Thus, she doesn't need anything from Kim; maybe in the past she depended on Kim for companionship or support, but she's got Phil now. So, why does she take her in? We're meant to see them as peas in a pod – their shared obsession with trivialities like shopping and celebrity gossip binds them – but it would be funnier and more convincing if we ever saw that part onscreen. Even if they just showed Kath bending to Kim's tantrums, at least it would provide an explanation for Kim's behavior.

Selma Blair is very funny when Kim is in her snits. Horking down free food from her husband's short-lived employment at Cinna-Cake, she glances at her mom making out with Phil and groans, "Eww. I can't eat and throw up at the same time." But the writing pushes Kim to too many extremes. Her stupidity isn't charming or satirical like Idiocracy, it's just implausible. She really thinks "over" is spelled o-v-u-r? She can't figure out it's Phil on the other end of the phone when Kath keeps calling him "Sweetie?" And she's so lazy! She never has anything to do, which cripples the episodes because there's no goal for her character each week – she's just vegged out and sneering at everyone else who's trying to live their lives. Her sulky moods are spectacular, but it's no fun watching dysfunctional characters if you can't love them at least a little bit. The Office and Arrested Development have proved it can be done.

Eleventh Hour

CBS, Thursdays at 10:00

There's an alarming amount of paranormality this fall season – it's like we've grown tired of being scared of terrorists, so we need to be scared of something we can safely assume is totally fictional. Still, even with all these similar shows, I hadn't expected Eleventh Hour to be a complete carbon copy of Fringe. (Except it's the Bruckheimer version, so it's killing Fringe in the ratings, and will probably outlast it by several years.) Rufus Sewell, who comes mainly from British period movies, plays Dr. Jacob Hood, an eccentric genius who consults with the FBI on cases involving weird science. Exactly like John Noble from Fringe! He's even got a hot blonde handler, Agent Young (Marley Shelton, who is actually hotter and blonder than Anna Torv – though, ironically, not as young). I promise I'm the same guy who defended the differences between Chuck and Reaper last year. But this time, it's uncanny!

Maybe there's something wrong with me, but I think I kind of prefer the Bruckheimer version. (I've only really hated one or two shows this fall, so something is quite likely wrong with me.) The show is fast and fun, with thought-provoking moments. It's got those little moments of self-reflexive humor that make shows like this so enjoyable. Hood and Young have the requisite odd-couple interplay (she's all business, he follows his gut; he carelessly sits on his remote panic button, which rousts her from a dead sleep and sends her screaming through the hotel in her panties, gun drawn) but their chemistry is lively. It keeps the show moving. And the crimes they solve? Just regular people doing creepy stuff – no giant megaconspiracies involving secret billionaires. Plus, Hood snarls at those ubiquitous pharmaceutical ads – how can I not love the guy?

Life on Mars

ABC, Thursdays at 10:00

Like Eleventh Hour (and just about every third show this season), Life on Mars is an adaptation from abroad – this time from an excellent and successful BBC show. Actually, the Life on Mars we see is an adaptation of an adaptation – the first pilot was scrapped and its producers and most of its cast were dismissed. Among others, Colm Meaney has been replaced by Harvey Keitel, and Rachelle Lefevre has been replaced by Gretchen Mol. TV director extraordinaire Thomas Schlamme (The West Wing, etc.) has been replaced by Gary Fleder (Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead). A show had better be pretty fucking awesome to make up for such enormous missteps.

Life on Mars is decent, but far from awesome. Jason O'Mara (who escaped the axe) plays Sam Tyler, a New York City detective who is hit by a car while pursuing a serial killer and wakes up in 1973. Or maybe he's in a coma, dreaming the whole thing – the show won't say for sure. It's a huge and central mystery, and we won't find out the truth until Sam does, but somehow the show manages to make the suspense intriguing rather than irritating. Everyone in 1973 thinks Sam is just a transfer from another precinct, and they don't understand why he keeps mentioning DNA and computer databases in his crime-solving methods. (They're more accustomed to warrantless entry and punching witnesses.) He's uncovered a few leads in the department's 1973 cases that bear on his present-day murder case, so he digs in voraciously, hoping his curse is like Groundhog Day: once he gets it right, he'll get to go back to his time.

Harvey Keitel is just a thug, which makes it easy to long for Colm Meaney, whose typical demeanor is more like that of his BBC counterpart: gruff, irascible, but reasonable. Gretchen Mol is cute enough – she's the one Sam opens up to, so she has to wear a befuddled smile while she listens to his bizarre tales of the future – but watching Gretchen Mol after having been promised Rachelle Lefevre is like ordering crème brûlée and eating cat sand instead. Michael Imperioli is generally upstaged by his massive haircut and mustache, but this is Michael Imperioli – he'd be upstaged by John Waters's hair and mustache. He's tasked with delivering '70s-style witticisms like "crazier than a fruit bat at a cranberry convention." O'Mara, however, does a fine job. He exudes the requisite "tough cop" vibe while maintaining enough charisma and vulnerability to make us care about his predicament. He's especially eager to get back to 2008, because he was on his way to rescue his partner/girlfriend (Lisa Bonet) from a serial-killer suspect when he had his accident. There's a brilliant moment toward the end of the first episode where he meets his serial killer suspect as a child. He realizes he could save his girlfriend right then if he just eliminated the nascent psychopath – and this may all be a dream anyway, so what's the harm? But he can't do it – even in a world where nothing makes sense, he can't shoot a little kid in the face. As a moment, it conveys the stakes of his dilemma and the tortuous reality he faces: unsure if anything he does matters, but unable to shake it. Then, his radio interrupts him with a message from beyond his hypothetical coma; he hears his girlfriend telling him she's safe, the killer didn't get her. And all that intricate work is deflated, because, where are the stakes now?

As a concept, the show is obviously solid, since it shares its concept with the BBC version. The execution is maddening, because most of the fun is watching Sam come to terms witih '70s-era police procedure, and that all dissolves in the wake of Keitel's fury. Add trite details like using computer-generated spanking-new World Trade Center towers as a time-travelling landmark for Sam and the entire exercise becomes somewhat tedious. Plus, giving the '70s footage a sepia tint is just weird – is this supposed to be the 1870s?

Testees

FX, Thursdays at 10:30

Considering the oh-so-clever pun in the title of this show, it should come as no surprise that it aims for lowest-common-denominator humor and misses low. Spawned by Kenny Hotz (of Kenny vs. Spenny), it follows two schlubby roommates so poor they resort to volunteering for medical experiments. In the pilot, both roommates succumb to a medical-grade anal probe and Kenny believes it has made him pregnant. This leads to a scene in which he attempts to perform an abortion by sticking a coat hanger up his ass – a legitimately funny idea, but like everything else on Testees it runs on a little long. Mainly, the jokes are groan-inducing lame attempts at shock value. When his roommate holds out a pregnancy test stick, rather than taking it from him, Kenny sprays the whole room attempting to pee on it from there. Kenny lactates into his coffee. Another friend tests a penis enlargement drug, but the effect is so dramatic that every time he gets an erection he passes out from the drop in blood pressure.

At the end of the episode, Kenny thinks he's going to deliver his baby, but instead he delivers a fart so enormous it shatters his friend's eardrums and sets off car alarms across town. By that point, if you were expecting anything better, shame on you.

Crusoe

NBC, Fridays at 9:00

I haven't read any press on Crusoe, but I am willing to bet that at least two in three stories makes some sort of joke about hatches, Others, or polar bears. A re-imagining of Daniel Defoe's classic novel, the show follows shipwrecked castaway Robinson Crusoe (Philip Winchester, a name whose Britishness is exceeded only by the venerable Benedict Cumberbatch) as he makes a new life for himself in the jungle. He is accompanied by a jungle native from a cannibal tribe, who was destined for human sacrifice until Crusoe freed him. Crusoe calls him Friday, because that's the day they met (Friday, fluent in a dozen languages, says Crusoe couldn't pronounce his real name). (Wikipedia tidbit: the term "Man Friday" – later "Girl Friday" – for a close and trusted assistant originated with the Friday character from the book.) (Non-Wikipedia tidbit: I wish he'd marry Wednesday-Thursday from The Addams Family.)

From the Disney film version of Swiss Family Robinson, Crusoe lifts the elaborate treehouse full of various handmade contraptions – making this Crusoe somewhat more like Kevin Costner's Mariner from Waterworld. It's easy to understand why this was added – it is by far the most enjoyable part of the show. Crusoe has built booby traps all over the island, a sort of tightrope wheel for crossing a piranha-infested river, and various labor saving devices for lighting signal fires or juicing oranges. He's also got this incredible mile-long zip line to get home from far-flung areas of the island. It's pretty fun when Crusoe brings out his doodads and thingamabobs; the rest of the time, it's like Pirates of the Caribbean without Johnny Depp or most of the action scenes. Crusoe spends a lot of time recalling his former life with his young bride through flashbacks (just like Lost – har!) and the two-hour premiere episode goes in one big circle and ends up with a battle that could've occurred at the end of the first hour and saved a lot of time. All we really get in the interim is a sense of Crusoe's unstoppable magnetism, as an improbably hot female sea pirate falls for him, and a view of how totally dead he'd be without Friday. Aside from his linguistic skills, Friday is also a sort of jungle ninja, who can jump off a cliff and cling to its face or shoot an arrow like a sniper's bullet.

Crusoe is harmless fun, and pretty family-friendly although the flashbacks are steamy. All in all, I wouldn't be too offended by it except it represents a positively miserable lead-in for Life which is one of my very favorite shows. Thanks a lot, Crusoe.

Returning Next Week (Yay!)

30 Rock: NBC, Thursday 10/30 at 9:30

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