Okay, pretty much the whole fall season is completed, and we're on hiatus across the holidays. With few exceptions, all the episodes that have been written have now been broadcast, and the networks are promising new shows "in 2008" -- a nice broad target to aim for when there is currently no end in sight for the writer's strike.
I wonder what the writers do, to stay true to the strike. You can't just turn off the switch and stop working through situations your protagonist could go through, possible mysteries, or jokes, or romantic possibilities. Do you ignore the ideas and hope they recur to you six months hence when the union says you can work again? Do you write them down, but in briefest notes so that technically it's not written? I'll bet there will be a lot of novels written this winter, or at least started, with characters who just happen to resemble this or that guy on television.
Anyway, the chips are kinda in, at least for which shows are going to make it through a whole season and which ones won't (though getting the go-ahead for a full 22 episode season is rather a moot point right now). The shows I liked all got a thumbs-up, and whenever the writers come back, these will finish out a season.
Chuck. My favorite new show this fall, at least when I'm watching it. This is the nerdy-spy comedy-drama. It is shallower than skin-deep, but the characters are delightful and the show does wonderful sendups of Bond and LeCarré and all spy tropes. The tone appears to be darkening (previews for 2008 say that the spies will determine that Chuck needs to be terminated), and I don't know where they could take the story without losing its wonderful frothiness. If you want to catch up, they will be rebroadcasting it in order from the pilot (where Zork is mentioned, twice!) on Saturday nights, starting 12/8.
Pushing Daisies. Not my favorite show, but so strong and unique that I appreciate the flavor -- like anchovies in caesar salad, or salt-and-pepper squid. This is that technicolor, Tim-Burtonesque show about a man who brings the dead to life by touching them once. The story has gone in directions I would never have predicted, and each week I wait to see how I'll be surprised again. Pushing Daisies has one more episode in the can, next Wednesday, 12/12. I'd be curious to hear from anyone else who's seen it, what they think.
Life. This show has grown on me, and is the show I'm most excited about. Life is Buffy for people who don't like paranormal, or Gray's Anatomy for people who don't like all that sex. Beautifully written and acted, it is full of visual and narrative metaphors, using Buddhist teachings in the way that Buffy used demons. The summary isn't so exciting: a cop was framed for a brutal series of murders many years ago, and spent 12 years in prison before he was proved innocent. He has been given a huge settlement, so he's fabulously wealthy, and has chosen to return to the police force in order to figure out who framed him. The force isn't so hepped up about his return, for complex reasons, the simplest being that many think he really was guilty, and some others are the ones who framed him. In order to survive, sane, among convicts who hated him for being a cop, he has adopted Zen Buddhism -- but imperfectly. The relationships (none romantic, yet), the plots, the stories are really excellent. The double-header episode that rounded off this half season was a metaphoric exploration (according to my internet sources who know more about Buddhism than I) of the path to enlightenment, or of falling off of it. Even without knowing that, I could see it was a many-layered episode, any layer of which was intriguing.
I'm not generally that interested in cop shows -- I watched a season of NYPD Blue, and a few seasons of Hill Street Blues, and don't hunger for more (aside from an early obsession with Starsky and Hutch which we can just stay quiet about). So hey, Life must be something special, eh? All episodes of it are available at NBC.com.
Pretty much, those three are it, after all my hoping for a good show last September. I do watch 30 Rock, but not religiously, and My Name is Earl has faltered this season so I don't go out of my way to see it. Gray's Anatomy is still on my Season Pass list; as is Blood Ties, but while I enjoy them, I don't feel the urge to get others to watch them. Saving Grace (which has new episodes coming out this week or next) and Mad Men are still saved on my humongous DVR, but I am saving them for viewing in the low season coming.
3 comments:
I caught that Joss Whedon directed the episode of "The Office" that was on last night (thursday.) I was just passing through at the right moment, so I don't know if it is new, old, a regular gig or what.
But you make me curious about "Life." I really enjoyed the episode of "Chuck" that i saw--very frothing and self-aware. It is too bad about "My name is Earl"--perhaps the only TV show in the past several years that I saw more than once and enjoyed.
Saw Pushing Daisies for the first time last week and really liked what I saw. Very stylish and unusual and I'd like for it to continue, just to see where it goes. However, I'll only watch it occasionally as I didn't find the characters compelling. I liked them, thought they were interesting, but I didn't bond.
I'm going to TiVo Life, however, based on your rec. The good thing about the writer's strike is that those of us who are only just beginning with a series can probably catch up by the time the strike is over.
I think Joss Whedon has directed the last two Halloween episodes of The Office -- I saw the first one (featuring a bat) on a plane to Minnesota last spring. Very very funny, and because of that I've watched The Office a few times. But usually it's just too painfully close to reality for me.
The "non-bonding" of the characters in Pushing Daisies is exactly right. I enjoy the show, and I like the characters, but the tone is so detached that at some level I don't care about them. I'm not sure we're supposed to.
I don't know if Life is going to be rebroadcast, since NBC is taking on iTunes with the whole buy-an-episode thing. Certainly there are none on the books for the next two weeks (granted, there's a lot of holiday dross filling the airwaves). But I really enjoyed the last few episodes, at a Buffy level -- leaving aside direct attraction for any of the characters (there's no Spike).
My Name is Earl -- they've stuck him in prison and I think the breadth of story possibilities is limited -- I'm waiting for notice that he's left prison, before I try watching a new episode. Here's hoping.
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