The Fall 2007 television season is packed with shows about cyborgs (Bionic Woman), vampires and immortals (Moonlight, New Amsterdam, scheduled for mid-season), the devil (Reaper), time travel (Journeyman) and geeks-mistaken-for-spies (Chuck). After years of having to go to cable or secondary networks to get my escapist fix (USA, SciFi or the defunct WB), this mainstream deluge must be due to the recent successes of Heroes and Lost. Or maybe it is something about the real world going to pot that is driving networks to think that viewers want unreal worlds.
I, of course, prefer unreal worlds. Television doesn't often do them well, however. But what if some of these new shows are actually good? I don't adore anything these days -- I'm looking for the next Buffy, the next Farscape, for some show I can really care about, that will last longer than a few episodes (cf. Firefly, Wonderfalls, or Dead Like Me -- which did last two years, but that was on Showtime, so it's different).
So I've been TiVoing everything and systematically working my way through the schedule. I haven't seen all the new series yet, but I'm catching up.
Continuing Series:
Saving Grace (Touched by an Angel meets Deadwood). Holly Hunter as a cigarette-smoking, adulteress alcoholic cop, who is visited by an Angel and told to clean up her act. I've only seen one episode (I've got the rest awaiting me on TiVo), but it was kind of luminously good -- beautifully filmed and acted, and far from preachy (she's not a friend of the Angel). Mondays on TNT.
Heroes -- I sigh to realize we have to start all over this season with new mysteries and new fingernail-biting suspense. It is nice to see some old friends (Hiro, Peter, Nathan, Matt Parkman), and to know I'm in competent story-telling hands. But I'm dreading the re-introduction of Sylar, because he was the creepiest, scariest villain I've encountered for years and I would be happier with him out of the picture. And I'm also not enjoying the story of the Nicaraguan twins, the Cheerleader is whiny, and I'd rather eat glass than watch any scene with the actress playing the child "Molly Walker". Mondays on NBC. Repeats Friday on SciFi Channel.
My Name is Earl -- Consistently funny, if you like to laugh at trailer trash (I guess I do), but with surprising character development and genuinely unsappy feel-good stories. Thursdays on NBC.
Gray's Anatomy - Yeah, it's a hospital show using illness, injury and disease as metaphors for unhealthy personal relationships, but at least the writing is good enough that they know what a metaphor is, and most of the actors are cute. I don't at all like the current story developing on Izzy and George, and I miss Addison (see Private Practice below). Thursdays on NBC.
New Series I like:
Pushing Daisies (Wonderfalls meets Dead Like Me meets Big Fish)
Trying to get everyone to see this series may be the reason I'm writing this whole entry. This is a pixilated story of saturated colors and jokes in dark moments. A pie-maker can bring the dead back to life with a single touch (but if he touches them again, they die again, and if he doesn't touch them again within a minute, a random other person dies). He works with a private investigator by touching murder victims and simply asking who killed them. I cannot imagine what they have in mind for a whole series, and it might end up a one-trick pony, but the first episode was light and funny and weird and affected (but in a good way). I liked it a lot, so I expect it will be canceled within a few episodes -- so try to catch it soon. Wednesday nights on ABC. Repeats Friday on SciFi (I think).
New series that are disappointments, but I hope they will surprise me (I'm giving them three chances):
Journeyman (aka. Quantum Leap). A journalist inexplicably starts jumping back and forth in time and apparently he has to help people he meets there. I was hopeful about this because it stars Kevin McKidd, most recently seen in Rome, but who I first saw in Topsy-Turvy as the rather dim handsome tenor opera star. (He is my choice to play Gabriel in the movie of the Lymond Chronicles for those readers who care.) The actor is Scottish, although he plays a flawless American accent in this so-far boring series. The hope here resides in a tangled and dark back story on the main characters -- if the creators of the series could come up with such rich back stories, then maybe the episode stories will get better.
Bionic Woman (The love child of Jamie Sommers and the Season 6 incarnation of Buffy Summers. Can Whedon have been making a textual reference when he named Buffy?). Another British actor playing American (the lead, Michelle Ryan). I thought this show was vaguely interesting until Isaiah Washington entered. Then I discovered I'm so put off by his celebrity persona (just Google "isaiah washington gossip" if you have been out of the country for several months) that I don't want to watch any more. Too bad for him, but I don't think it's a great loss for my television viewing. (Gave up after two episodes.)
Moonlight (Angel meets Forever Knight) My midwestern television correspondent thought this show was really boring and bad. That prepared me, but I didn't think it was that bad. In fact, while the editing is horrid, and the direction tepid, I kind of liked the energy (very different from Angel, much more tamped down), and what's not to love with the possibility for twisted incestuous romance (I mean, with the child who turned him "good", grown-up, after she survived an attack by his own vampire mother/sire? That could get interestingly dark, not to mention -- eeeuuuuwww.) By the way, starring another Brit with an American accent, "Beth", the pretty blonde child-savior-potential lover.
Life (NYPD Blue meets House). This series, about an upstanding cop who spent 12 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, and who is now back on the force, twisted and broken and desperately into Zen, but gunning to figure out who framed him, is not the sort of show I generally watch. But the SunnydaleU Group (People who love Buffy and Dorothy Dunnett) are excited by it, so I gave it a chance. And there is something undefinably intriguing about it -- maybe just because it is the fourth in this particular list with a major character played by a British actor with an American accent (Damien Lewis). Wednesdays on NBC.
New series I'm not watching after the first episode:
Reaper (Dead Like Me meets Bedazzled) A slacker finds out on his 21st birthday that his parents sold his soul to the devil, so now he has to collect evil souls and deliver them. Despite good media reviews, it's just not funny. Or interesting.
Private Practice. I'll be honest, I couldn't even make it through the first episode. All the characteristics I liked about Addison in Gray's Anatomy (one of the main reasons I liked Gray's Anatomy) are missing, and the first episode was just too cringingly embarrassingly Hollywood-cute to bear.
Haven't seen yet: Chuck, Aliens in America, 30 Rock and Friday Night Lights (all recommended by Salon.com).
Because I don't actually like to spend all my spare time watching television, I predict that by the end of this month I'll be watching only Heroes and My Name is Earl (because Pushing Daisies will be canceled, and Saving Grace will have ended). And Gray's Anatomy, to continue with sisterly bonding. That will be a relief. And leave me more time to blog.
2 comments:
Thanks very much for this summary. I'm going to TiVo Saving Grace (I liked the pilot, but forgot about it) and Pushing Daisies.
Let me know how you feel about the second and third viewings of the ones you're not giving up on, yet.
This is great. You've saved me so much time.
Good. Happy to save someone else the time, at least. I feel more than a little embarrassed -- I don't know whether due to watching all this television, or to thinking about it, or to posting it on the blog. But I have been treating it as a "project", so technically it applies for blogging as much as photos of the children.
Are you still watching Private Practice?
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