Wed, October 15, 2008

The IT Crowd

IFC, Tuesdays at 10:00

This British sitcom might be described as The Office set in the tech support department, but hopefully not, because it's really its own show. For one thing, it's a multi-camera studio audience sitcom, which adds a completely different dynamic. For another, it can be ridiculously silly. It tells the story of Roy and Moss, two irredeemably geeky guys who work in the IT office of a huge corporation, and Jen, the completely unprepared woman who suddenly finds herself assigned to manage them. The show won me over with its first scene, in which Jen interviews for the job and describes herself as a computer whiz: "e-mail, attachments, clicking... double-clicking." I once sat in on similar interviews, and they were quite baffling.

Though there are many funny exploits within the company, especially run-ins with the clueless head executive, the interplay between the three main characters is the strength of the show. If you close your eyes and imagine how hilarious Chuck Lorre thinks the culture-shock comedy is on The Big Bang Theory, you get pretty close to the actual comedy of The IT Crowd. Roy and Moss are far from stupid, but they lack any skills at interacting with other people. Jen is great at that, but couldn't tell you whether her computer is plugged in (literally). All this might not amount to much on most sitcoms, but here the randomness factor is just high enough to provide some solid and unexpected laughs. Roy may strike you as yet another sullen and sarcastic office drone, but Moss is something different entirely, and the performance by Richard Ayoade is uniquely charming.

The Ex List

CBS, Fridays at 9:00

Last year I joked that the reason CBS moved Without a Trace into an inexplicable Sunday time slot was to rhyme with Sunday's other shows, The Amazing Race and Cold Case. When the CBS announcer started referring to "Race, Case, and Trace" in promos, I thought maybe I was onto something, but apparently it was a failure, because now Without a Trace is back on a weeknight where it belongs. Also, The Ex List was scheduled on Friday, about as far away from Tuesday's The Mentalist as you can get.

But not far enough. Holy fuck, what a terrible idea for a show. Like HBO's In Treatment, it's adapted from an Israeli TV show, and together they make an excellent case for banning the production of television outside America's borders unless it is overseen by Ricky Gervais or John Cleese. (I realize I am contradicting myself from a few paragraphs ago; you sit through the fucking Ex List and see if your world doesn't spin off its axis.)

The premise here is that Bella (yes we are expected to believe that is the name of a person) encounters a strip-mall psychic who tells her she will only marry if she marries within the next year, and that the man she will marry (if she marries) is someone with whom she's had a previous romantic engagement. So Bella (not a package of pasta; a real woman) goes about digging through her "Ex List" to see which former beau might be the new guy. In her quest, she is ably assisted by her roommates: a lifelong friend, his newish girlfriend, and some other dude. The show attempts to capture a sort of slacker hang-out vibe from their interactions (á la Knocked Up), with such gems as a discussion of Bella's unruly back mole and an extended debate on the most attractive pubic hairstyle for the girlfriend. "Ha ha!" screams CBS through desperately clenched teeth, "We have seen Sex and the City and this is what you are telling us you want! Right, women who watch television?" I never found Kim Cattrall remotely funny on that show, but something tells me that even if you did like her, it was because her incessant "overshare" worked within the context of her lifestyle. These ladies talk with the barely obscured frankness of a Kevin Smith movie dubbed for rebroadcast on A&E, but they're not swinging divas on 5th Avenue – they're just normal losers hanging out in their tiny front yard.

As Bella, Elizabeth Reaser (Grey's Anatomy) is all over the map. On the one hand, she's obsessive enough to keep pestering the psychic for increasingly vague details about her mystery man. But moments later, she's completely laid back when she gets dumped by her ex-of-the-week. She begs her friends not to make fun of her mole, but when they do, she rolls with the punches. A character like this needs to be all high-strung panic, or the premise falls flat. If Bella isn't crazy enough to charm us with her desperation to find this guy, we're going to quit caring about her search. Also, Reaser is disquietingly unattractive. Something about her massive face knocks the breath out of me whenever she pops up on TV in the endless stream of Ex List promos. She's got the cheekbones and forehead of Eric Stoltz in Mask and the choppers of Jim Carrey in The Mask – compared to a civilian, I'm sure she's quite a looker, but having her on my TV makes me forget what heterosexuality feels like.

Sanctuary

SciFi, Fridays at 10:00

This show's pilot was a two-hour special episode, but it could've been one hour if they'd cut out all the extended takes of dark alleys with moody music. Stop me if you've heard this pitch before: a regular cop who is good at his job starts noticing things he can't explain; as he digs further, he stumbles upon a bunch of creepy supernatural mysteries and the secret organization which covertly controls/investigates them. Men in Black, Fringe – if you stretch it a little, The X-Files and even The Matrix fit. So why do we need two hours of coy evasiveness to pull back the cover on this concept? The fun of having an established format like this is innovating within the concept – so skip past all the dull introduction and just start innovating!

The sanctuary in question is a place where the secret honcho, Dr. Helen Magnus (who turns out to be over 150 years old) houses all sorts of hideous creatures, some benevolent and some dangerous. So of course we are subjected to a tour of this massive castle full of werewolves, mermaids, and fairies. And of course the new guy, Will, stands in slack-jawed amazement through it all. Then Helen's daughter shows up, a saucy blonde in biker leather who kicks baddie ass and helps Mom lock up the weirdos. (You would expect her name to be Buffy, but it's actually Ashley.) The sanctuary embodies everything that is wrong with science fiction today: enormous sets. Computer effects make anything possible, and the result is that no one is creative any more. Will walks into a foyer, and it is ten times larger than the largest room you've ever been in. You're supposed to think, "Wow, that's big," but it doesn't even register because you've watched a million Lord of the Rings warriors wage battle from here to the horizon – big just doesn't feel big any more. Most of Sanctuary is like this: things aren't detailed in some interesting way, they're just big; things aren't fascinating; they're just creepy. It's not an altogether terrible idea for a show, but its execution lacks any compelling originality or fresh relevance.

Valentine

CW, Sundays at 8:00

The premise here could not be more dismal: Greek deities (like Hercules and Aphrodite) remain on Earth among modern mortals, and are tasked with following the directives of the Fates and bringing people together with their soul mates. But they've roped in Kristoffer Polaha from Miss Guided as Eros, the god of erotic love and the guy with the magic gun that makes people fall in love. His grumpy slacker approach elevates the rest of the so-so cast and makes the episode pretty nearly watchable.

The show generally leaves things unexplained as far as why it's so important for the deities to grudgingly complete their tasks, and the explanations on offer are so feeble you wish they hadn't bothered. But, if you look past all that (which is far easier than expected), the scenarios are somewhat entertaining. The best part of the pilot is also its biggest missed opportunity. Aphrodite (played by Jaime Murray of Dexter) realizes that she and the others are out of touch with the way mortals love nowadays, so she sets out to recruit help. She stumbles upon one of those Harlequin romance novels and contacts its author, Kate Providence. With a little convincing (Aphrodite's handshake gives Kate one of those When Harry Met Sally on-the-spot orgasms), Kate joins the team to provide some perspective on contemporary relationships. Her bubbly, upfront style makes a nice addition to the group, but the missed opportunity is that Kate seems to be an actual relationship expert. Her books are bodice-ripping fantasy fare, and the show would be much funnier if her perspective were similarly unrealistic. Aphrodite thinks she's making a huge leap forward in understanding human relationships, but really she's brought in one more archaic viewpoint with little basis in reality. Then we'd get to watch the gods and goddesses make all kinds of funny screw-ups based on 3rd Rock style misunderstandings of the world around them. It would've been a different kind of show – better, I think – but it isn't.

Still, considering how awful Valentine sounded from its pitch, this is an amazingly good version. If everything else is in reruns and you can't find your Simpsons DVDs, you could watch it.

Easy Money

CW, Sundays at 9:00

The explosion of cable shows seems to have convinced television executives that if you throw a slew of characters together, any story is interesting. Case in point: Sons of Anarchy about a motorcycle gang, and Easy Money about a family running a payday loan center. With characters as watchable as those on Burn Notice or The Closer, this might even work – but these characters are not so much well-rounded as encumbered. The show's creators seem to think that if a character has a bunch of conflicting and overlapping problems, that makes him interesting. But Jerry Lundegaard was fascinating because of his middle-class desperation, not because he was a fuck-up. Matriarch Bobette Buffkin (Roseanne's Laurie Metcalf) and her brood suffer from stupidity, debt, ambition, and romantic entanglements, but not in any particularly endearing way.

Brandy, the daughter, struggles with her husband Mike and his pyramid schemes; Cooper, the middle brother, loses money by writing bad loans then freaks out when he receives skydiving lessons for his birthday. Morgan, the older son, is sort of the protagonist of the show, and he feels out of place among these boobs. He opens the show with a monologue to Bobette about his squeamishness regarding their business (which is just on the legal side of loan sharking) and ends the episode with DNA evidence that he may be adopted. In between, he displays equal proficiency discussing metaphysics, tracking deadbeats, and neutralizing brawling customers. He hits on shopping mall DNA-test purveyor Marsha Thomason (Lost, Life, Las Vegas) but it doesn't go far because work is always calling. Morgan is easy to like – but everyone around him is such a waste of space, it's easier to give up.

It turns out the CW network's Sunday night programming is managed by a company called Media Rights Capital in what Wikipedia describes as a "time-leasing arrangement." I get bothered by production company names as cute as Shondaland or Clyde Is Hungry, but I still think you should do better than Media Rights Capital. Could anything sound more generic? Leveraged Video Products? Distributable Ownership Holdings? MRC claims to specialize in "the creation of premium entertainment content." With a name like Media Rights Capital, it has to be premium. (And, as much as Valentine and Easy Money overperformed their dull premises, premium it isn't.)

Reviews Forthcoming

Still haven't had time to watch any of these shows – so their pre-ratings remain in effect until that can be corrected.

Kath & Kim: NBC, Thursdays at 8:30
Eleventh Hour: CBS, Thursdays at 10:00
Life on Mars: ABC, Thursdays at 10:00
Testees: FX, Thursdays 9 at 10:30

Premiering This Week

My Own Worst Enemy: NBC, Monday at 10:00
Chocolate News: Comedy Central, Wednesday at 10:30
Crusoe: NBC, Friday at 8:00

Returning In Two Weeks

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

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