January TV in Brief

A handful of mid-season replacements aired their pilots this month. Here's my thoughts, as quickly as possible:

Bob's Burgers

I was skeptical about this animated sitcom from the creator of Lucy, Daughter of the Devil and Home Movies. After all, it was just last season that Fox added the disappointing Cleveland Show to its "Animation Domination" lineup. But the unique art and original voice of Bob's Burgers is exactly the breath of fresh air their Sunday night needed. Sandwiched between The Simpsons (now in its 21st season) and three shows with Seth MacFarlane at the helm, Bob's is looking pretty darn special.

The Cape

Kudos to NBC for trying something a little out of their box, but I think The Cape misses the mark. The style vacillates uncomfortably between gritty action and over-the-top comic book action. If the show were super-stylized (in the vein of say, Pushing Daisies) to capture that comic book feeling, I think it could really be worth watching. As is, it's an unremarkable superhero story.

Lights Out

Holt McCallany gives a pitch-perfect performance as a boxer balancing his family life with his return to the ring. If you like FX-style dramas, this seems to be a good one. (I don't.)

Off the Map

It's Grey's Anatomy in South America. And it doesn't pretend not to be. I wish more emphasis was being placed on the unique experience of young American doctors in a foreign country, rather than the quirky kinds of medical problems people might have in South America. It's okay, I guess. Unremarkable.

Being Human

Based on the British show of the same name, this Syfy original is the story of a vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost sharing an apartment. I'm not familiar with the original so I can't draw comparisons, but this is my favorite new show. A premise that could have been hokey is instead played deliciously dark, and the main cast is terrific. This one has a permanent spot in my DVR.

Harry's Law

Kathy Bates is great in this lawyer drama from the creator of Ally McBeal and The Practice. Bates's character has left patent law to start her own firm where she defends the underprivileged and poor residents of her neighborhood. Which means her defense strategy is usually to make grand speeches about things like inequality and rehabilitation over incarceration. Radical liberalism aside, Harry's Law has the quirky fun we expect from a David E. Kelley show.

Perfect Couples

This NBC comedy about three young couples has two couples too many, in my opinion. Every time Mary Elizabeth Ellis and David Walton are onscreen, the show is worthwhile. The other two couples are boring stock characters. Been there, done that.

Fairly Legal

USA's new show has a decently original spin on the lawyer drama - Sarah Shahi plays a mediator, so her goal is not to win a case, but to find a solution where everyone walks away a winner. However, the execution of the idea is nothing special, and Shahi doesn't really have the chops to carry a series like this on her own.

Finally, a special shout-out to the return of Parks and Recreation, still going strong.

Overall, January had a much better offering than the fall. In February we'll see the premieres of Mad Love and Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior on CBS, FOX's The Chicago Code and Traffic Light, and the much buzzed-about return of Matthew Perry in Mr. Sunshine on ABC.

My theatre company is producing my one-act play, Eternity in the Hearts of Men, November 18-20 at the Atlantis Playmakers Theater in Burlington, MA.

Eternity premiered this past Spring in New Orleans. I'm using this second production as an opportunity to do some major rewriting, and I'm learning new things in the process.

Poster from the New Orleans production.
My name is spelled all kinds of wrong.

My friend Bee called me about a year ago asking me to write her a one-act play with four or fewer characters. In 24 hours or less. Fortunately, I had an outline for a sci-fi play in the works. It wasn't quite ready to go to pages yet, but I try to take any opportunity that comes my way. So I pulled an all-nighter writing what ended up being my favorite thing I've ever written.

The way this script came to be is important to my recent rewriting. I wrote it so fast that I pretty much only had time to hit the major story beats and keep moving. The result was a fast-paced story, told in eight short scenes.

There's a lot of good in the script, but I think it's main weakness is that I wasn't able to take enough time with the characters. It's story-story-story right out of the gate, with quick scene transitions that feel more cinematic than theatrical. I'm trying to slow things down a tad, lengthen the script overall, and give the characters more time to be characters.

At first I wasn't sure how to go about messing with the script. I didn't want to just wedge irrelevant scenes into such a tight, plot-driven piece. I found the answer where I find the answers to all life's questions: TV.

In the past year I've taken an interest in TV writing, and looking at the script with TV writer eyes has really helped. I've sort of asked myself, if this were a TV series, and the end of the play was the end of the season, what other episodes might there be? What conflicts can be explored between these characters? What else is at play here?

A good TV show will have a major arc for the whole season, but is allowed to go on little tangents that aren't strictly necessary to the big plot points. My hope is that by thinking in this way, I'll be able to avoid writing new pointless scenes, but instead write scenes that expand the world of the play. I'm trying to tell a bigger story, not the same story with some new bits glued on.

Think of it this way. The plot is horizontal. The characters are moving along from point A (inciting incident) to point B (resolution). I'm not adding length to the horizontal axis. I'm trying to explore the untapped vertical axis - what's going on with the characters all along the way.

This may not work out at all, but I'm totally digging it right now.

Pilots, Part Nine: Dick Wolf's Makeover

Twenty-two pilots viewed and reviewed in one month! What a ride it's been. Today I bring you the final chapter of my September 2010 TV coverage with NBC's

Law & Order: Los Angeles

Law & Order: Los Angeles follows the same format as the original Law & Order, but with a change of address.



(Two pictures this time because I wanted to give you two angles on the woman in red with the big hair. What a distracting extra for a courtroom scene!)

The Law & Order franchise got itself a little face-lift. The first change you'll notice is the absence of the "In the criminal justice system..." opener. I miss it already. Fortunately every scene is still preceded by an address and the Law & Order bonk-bonk sound.

The pilot was maybe a little too in-your-face about the Los Angeles setting. The original is very New York, so I expected Los Angeles to have a similar sense of place. I think there might have been more subtle ways to do this than to have the first crime be about burglars robbing celebrities. The episode featured paparazzi and reality tv and even a mention of Perez Hilton. Okay, I get it. We're not in New York anymore.

Other than the change of scene, this Law & Order doesn't offer any other new bells or whistles. When Special Victims Unit and Criminal Intent premiered, I was totally on board because they were clearly something different from the original series. Los Angeles doesn't really feel different enough for me to sit up and take notice.

Bottom line, Law & Order is a strong franchise, but an old one. Don't we deserve something a little fresher?

Pilots, Part Eight: I'm No Superman

Only one show on the docket today, so let's jump right in with ABC's -

No Ordinary Family

No Ordinary Family is about a somewhat ordinary family who develop amazing superpowers.


Here's what I like about this show. They seem to be focusing on the "family" part of the title. The "no ordinary" part is a nice complication, but at its core this is a family drama. That's a fresh way to tell a superhero story. The family has some serious family problems, and they've suddenly developed crazy abilities on top of that. It's simple and nice.

I find it a little odd that there is a crime-fighting element. The father (The Shield's Michael Chiklis) seems to think he's Batman now, getting all vigilante and stuff. It works in the pilot because it speaks to the father's character (he wants to be a superhero), and it's a further complication for the family to deal with. In the last few scenes however, they seem to be setting up the crime-fighting as a major part of the show, with dad getting himself a secret lair and the emergence of super-villains. I just hope the plan is to keep it tied in with the problems of the family.

The powers that each character develops were well chosen. They are completely woven into who the characters are and what they want. For example, the working mother (Julie Benz) develops super speed and is better able to make time for work and family.

It's nice. I'm curious to see where it goes.

The last September pilot premieres tonight on NBC - Law & Order: Los Angeles!

Pilots, Part Seven: Friday-Style Justice

That title seems like I'm reviewing Dragnet. Worry not. It's been six or seven years since the last time they remade Dragnet, so hopefully we have a couple more years before the next one. No, I'm here to talk about the new Friday night dramas, Blue Bloods on CBS and Outlaw on NBC.

Blue Bloods

Blue Bloods is about a family of cops and lawyers in New York. Guess what they do? Fight crime!


It's a cop show (and you know how I feel about those by now), but the family element is really nice and gives it something unique. There's going to be lots of opportunity for discovering these relationships over the course of the series.

The thing I hate most in a cop show is the whole good-guys-vs.-bad-guys thing, but Blue Bloods has taken great strides to mitigate that. Sure they get the bad guy in the end, but the main drama of the episode has to do with police brutality. Is it okay for a police officer to step outside the law if it saves a life? Whenever you can give characters opposing viewpoints where neither is right or wrong - that's good drama to me.

Outlaw

Outlaw is about Cyrus Garza (Jimmy Smits), a Supreme Court Justice who resigns to return to practicing law.


I have some major quandaries with the premise of this show. First of all, Garza leaves the Supreme Court because he wants to be able to actually make a difference, to really seek justice for the people. Huh? Since when is the SUPREME COURT impotent to affect the law or make just decisions? Surely he had more power to control these things as a justice of the highest court in the nation than he will as a litigant for a private law firm.

Equally perplexing was the fact that Garza is supposed the be "the most conservative Supreme Court justice", as appointed by George W. Bush. In the world of Outlaw, "most conservative" seems to translate to "most apathetic to the problems of the American people". The episode begins with Garza being guilted into leaving the Supreme Court by the memory of his dead father. No longer will he be the cold, ambivalent, conservative justice. Now he's going to fight for things like gay marriage (I'm seriously not even exaggerating. He said the words "gay marriage").

He leaves the Court specifically to take on the case of a convicted murderer on death row seeking a new trial. Now, yes, of course the man is discovered to be innocent later in the episode. But Garza has no reason to believe that the verdicts of his trial and appeals were wrong. He stops being the most conservative Supreme Court justice to become the worst kind of bleeding-heart liberal. I don't get it.

The show does offer some fun legal plot twists and interesting interpretations of the law. It keeps the episode interesting. But between the bizarre agenda-pushing origin story and Garza's tendency to make long speeches about morality and justice (while questioning a witness even!), it's not easy to enjoy.

Lone Star's abysmal numbers from last week sank even further last night. Looks like my top pick this fall is done for.

UPDATE: Yep, it's gone.

Up next is No Ordinary Family premiering tonight on ABC.

Pilots, Part Six: Unfunny People

Pilot week continues with My Generation on ABC, $#*! My Dad Says on CBS, and NBC's Outsourced.

My Generation

My Generation is a mock-umentary show about nine high school graduates from the class of 2000. Ten years later, the documentary film crew catches up with them to find out where they are now.


There's some cool things about this show. It's inventing it's own format. It's honestly portraying people in their mid-twenties in a way that TV seldom does. The thing is, I didn't like it.

I think the problem may be that it was trying too hard for that realistic documentary feel. The result is that nothing much happened. Entirely too much time was spent on one-on-one interviews with the characters and narration about the characters. I want to see scenes, please! These people's lives were a little too far on the side of realistic. Real people's lives are not very interesting. That's why my facebook mini-feed is not a hit TV show.

The first episode had the burden of establishing not only who these nine people are, but also who they were ten years ago and what happened in the past ten years to make them who they are now. (Hint: Most of the time it was 9/11.) Instead of doling the exposition out interspersed with some kind of STORY, this glut of information was just dumped on the viewer for most of the episode.

There's another thing, but I'm hesitant to say it. I hate to give opinions that limit the kind of stories we can tell, because execution is always more important than premise. But there's a reason television has seldom tackled a realistic show about people in their mid-twenties - it's depressing. I don't think it's impossible for it to work, but it would have to be handled really well to not be a total buzz-kill. My Generation has the added... what's the opposite of a bonus?... the added opposite-of-a-bonus of showing us these characters as they are graduating high school with high hopes and great expectations. And then we see how far they've really gone - not very. Which is completely realistic, but not very uplifting.

Anyway, I applaud this show for stepping out of the box and trying something other than doctors/lawyers/cops. I'm actually kind of interested to see where it goes because the format is so unique.

$#*! My Dad Says

$#*! My Dad Says is about a young man (Jonathon Sadowski) who loses his job and has to move in with his crotchety father (William Shatner), who says shit. It's loosely based on the popular Twitter feed, Shit My Dad Says.


I didn't actually think it was that bad. Rephrase: I didn't think it was as bad as I thought I was going to think it was. It wasn't funny, but then neither was anything else this fall. It's a standard Odd Couple format (How will this mismatched pair live together?), which has been done again and again, but I don't think it's necessarily dead yet.

What this show does have going for it is an awesome cast, including Madtv alumni Nicole Sullivan and Will Sasso. The four stars do a great job of delivering jokes that aren't so good. If the quality of the writing picks up, I could see this being a decent comedy.

Outsourced

In Outsourced, a manager from a novelty catalog company (Ben Rappaport) is sent to run their call center in India.


What is with all the non-funny comedy pilots this season? Is it me? I watched the premiere of The Office and laughed, so I don't think my funny bone is broken. And I wanted to like this show. I really really did. But there is just so much bad going on here.

I was really pleased when I first heard about this show. There is a dearth of Arab and Indian characters on television and then here's NBC making a show where most of the main cast is Indian. A show that takes place in India, no less. But from what I saw in the pilot, it looks like that was supposed to be the joke. All the humor seems to come from a place of "India! What a silly place! They worship cows and eat gross food! They have humorous misconceptions about normal American people!" I wouldn't say the jokes were offensive, but I wish the tone of the show was more inclusive of this other culture, rather than taking every opportunity to point them out as the Other.

I know you were all missing the cops and lawyers. Well, worry not. Tonight there's Blue Bloods on CBS and Outlaw on NBC.

Pilots, Part Five: The Lawyer Who Loved Me

I'm back with the next batch of pilot-y goodness. We've got Undercovers on NBC, Better With You and The Whole Truth on ABC, and CBS's The Defenders. Let's begin with:

Undercovers

Undercovers features a married couple who are also CIA agents (Boris Kodjoe and Gugu Mbatha-Raw). After five years of retirement, the agency has roped them back in.


Once again I feel I must draw a comparison to Alias. The reason is two-fold. For one thing, Alias set the bar for any spy show, and it's a tough mark to hit. But also, both Alias and Undercovers were created by J.J. Abrams.

Abrams is back with his trademark witty banter and the kind of fun-filled action/comedy romp we love him for. Oh wait. That's not what we love about J.J. Abrams?

Abrams has actually become popular for setting deep and complex characters in the context of a dense mythology (e.g. Lost or his recent Star Trek film). Undercovers feels like what Alias would be if you stripped away everything that made it an important and critically-acclaimed series.

I can appreciate it if Abrams wanted to try something new (there was certainly no need for him to recreate Alias) but this feels more like pandering. When compared with his other work, Undercovers seems self-consciously commercial.

It's fun and fast-paced. I can definitely see people watching it. I was just hoping for something more.

Better With You

Better With You is a comedy about three couples in three different stages of relationships: the engaged-after-two-months young lovers (Joanna Garcia, Jake Lacy), the young couple in a serious nine-year relationship (Jennifer Finnegan, Josh Cooke), and the parents who've been married 35 years (Debra Jo Rupp, Kurt Fuller).


Better With You is funny enough. I got a few laughs from the episode. But I'm not really impressed. It feels stale. The cast is made up of two-dimensional stock characters. There's nothing new about the premise or execution. We've been there, done that a hundred times before, often with better jokes.

This show is also not what it claims to be, at least not yet. Yes, it has three couples. But aside from the gags that opened and closed the episode, it doesn't do much in the way of comparing the three relationships. This may develop more in future episodes. The pilot had a story about six people that happened to be paired up. What I think would be more interesting is to give each couple a story in the episode, with the three stories linked thematically (think Sex and the City) and use that to explore how the three relationships are fundamentally similar or different.

Maybe I'm thinking too hard about what's meant to be a light 'n' fluffy comedy? I could be wrong, but I don't see this one becoming very popular.

The Whole Truth

The Whole Truth has an interesting twist on the courtroom drama. It follows both the prosecution and the defense as they prepare and try their case. In the end, only the viewer learns "the whole truth".


The premise is so simple, I'm surprised we haven't seen it before. (Maybe we have and I just don't know about it?) In your usual lawyer show, you're rooting for one side or the other. You're thinking "I hope they get that bad guy" or "I hope that innocent man goes free". The Whole Truth keeps things evenly balanced so you're never quite rooting for either side. You get the delightful stance of just being on the side of justice. As I watched I found myself thinking "I hope they get that bad guy. Unless he's not bad. Then I hope they acquit. I just hope they do the right thing either way." Isn't that interesting?

A complaint I have with the pilot is they seemed to have too many balls in the air. The case was really twisted up so that no single aspect of it got very much screen time. It sometimes felt rushed, especially in the courtroom sequence that was essentially a montage of all the witnesses.

I always prefer shows with longer story arcs, but this is a strong enough show that I think I might check out it's stand-alone episodes from time to time.

The Defenders

The Defenders is about a pair of brilliant-but-flawed defense attorneys (Jerry O'Connell and Jim Belushi) in Las Vegas.


I don't have much to say about The Defenders. It's a lawyer show. I like lawyer shows, generally. I didn't find the characters terribly interesting, although the case they tried in the pilot was fun to watch. It fell into a sort of moral grey area, raising questions about the thin line between voluntary and involuntary manslaughter.

The action was a little one-sided. Obviously they're not going for the same balance as The Whole Truth, but the show seemed unfairly prejudiced against the prosecution and even the judge. It was like everyone was out to get our heroic defenders.

Nothing too thrilling. Might be worth a watch if you're a big fan of the lawyer stuff.

Things are finally slowing down - no more four-shows-a-day for me! Tonight offers My Generation on ABC, $#*! My Dad Says on CBS, and Outsourced on NBC.

Pilots, Part Four: Cops and 'Coms

Whew! All this TV watching is harder than it looks, no lie. It's pretty much taking over my life and it's only Wednesday. So please appreciate that fact as I tell you about NBC's Chase, FOX's Raising Hope and Running Wilde, and Detroit 1-8-7 on ABC.

Chase

Chase is about a gaggle of U.S. Marshals in Texas tracking and collaring dangerous fugitives. As one character put it, "It's like hide and seek - with guns."


This cop show was a bit more palatable for me, because it at least breaks away from the usual format a little. Instead of solving a crime and arresting the offender, Chase just spends an hour on trying to do the second part. It adds a little variety to this fall's lineup of cop procedurals, but seems to lead to some repetitive action in the pilot. (He's at his mother's! Oh, we missed him. He's at his girlfriend's! Oh, we missed him. He's at the motel! Oh, we missed him. He's at the Mexican border! etc etc) I don't think it's impossible to get more creative with the show's premise on a weekly basis. There's plenty of ways to chase a crook. I just didn't see it in this episode.

Laying in hints about Annie Frost's (Kelli Giddish) backstory was handled clumsily, as in this exchange:

FUGITIVE
Didn't your mother teach you girls shouldn't play with guns?

ANNIE FROST
My mother died when I was eight, so no.

Really?

Ultimately, it's just another cop show. 'Nough said.

Raising Hope

Raising Hope is a comedy about a 23-year old (Lucas Neff) who finds himself with custody of the infant he conceived during a one-night stand. He and baby Hope live with his parents (Martha Plimpton, Garrett Dillahunt), so he'll get a little help from them.


It took me almost half the episode to really get into the groove of Raising Hope. It's decidedly not joke-y. There are few laugh-out-loud moments. But once I understood the rhythm of the show, I began to really enjoy it. It's sort of similar in tone to Arrested Development or Juno - quirky, awkward, with heart.

It's definitely not the best place to go for laughs, but this show's got style. I could definitely see myself watching some more of it.

Running Wilde

Running Wilde is about a self-centered billionaire (Will Arnett) and a liberal do-gooder (Keri Russell) living together in his mansion. Maybe they'll learn a few things from each other.


Well, for starters, it's not very funny. But more importantly, it makes no sense. The first episode was dedicated to getting this crazy mismatched pair to a place where they would decide to live together. It didn't work for me. They didn't earn it.

The billionaire wants the hippie to live with him because he has a crush on her. That's okay, I guess (although he's kind of moving a little fast). But why does she agree to live with him? No, I'm really asking you - why? Is it because her daughter doesn't want to live in the jungle anymore? There's other non-jungle places they could live. Is it so the daughter can go to the school in that district? There are other homes in that district. There are other schools. Is it because the hippie thinks she can change the billionaire? Maybe, but it still doesn't work for me. Why does she care? She hates him. None of this adds up to them living together in my mind.

I think she decides to move in with him because she's secretly always dreamed of living in a television sitcom.

I don't like it. Next?

Detroit 1-8-7

Detroit 1-8-7 is about homicide detectives. They fight crime. In Detroit.


Cops. Murders. It's pretty much NYPD Blue or the first half of Law and Order. The only somewhat fresh aspect is that it's filmed in a rough, mock-umentary style.

The climax of the episode involved our standard "out-of-the-box" detective (Michael Imperioli) defusing a standard hostage situation by relating to the criminal with a standard heartfelt monologue.

No, thanks.

Take a break from the cops with tonight's shows about lawyers and spies! Undercovers is on NBC, Better With You and The Whole Truth on ABC, and CBS brings you The Defenders.

Pilots, Part Three: Cops and Cons

It's pilots galore this week. Today I'm talking The Event on NBC, Lone Star on FOX, and CBS's Mike and Molly and Hawaii Five-O. (I haven't seen Chase yet.)

The Event

The Event is an action/mystery show. What do the missing girlfriend, stolen plane, and mysterious group of people in captivity have to do with one another? And what-oh-what is the titular "event"?


Whether creator Nick Wauters was influenced by Lost or not, The Event is definitely following in that show's footsteps. I think it's safe to say that this show would not have been made were it not for the success of Lost. But let's leave that aside.

The Event is thrilling in a mind-bendy sort of way. The timeline of the pilot was almost too twisty to keep up with, but it worked. I admired the device of seeing a scene several times from different perspectives - the scenes meant something different every time because the viewer had new information.

The pace of the episode was heart-palpitatingly fast, except for the unusually long and dull romantic-cruise-sequence. (It was like, "What is this scene doing here with no guns and car chases and planes crashing?") So far there are no characters I was able to really hook into, but I don't think that's what they're going for. The characters feel like pawns to serve the plot and the mystery (in a good way?).

In the end, I don't care about the characters, but man do I want to know what the heck is going on. My prediction is that The Event will be like last season's Flashforward: it opened with a bang, but fizzled out quickly. We'll see.

Lone Star

Lone Star is about a con-man (James Wolk) trying to get out of the game while still leading a double-life, juggling two wives in two different cities (Adrianne Palicki and Eloise Mumford).


This is my favorite pilot I've seen this month. It's really proof that execution is far more important than concept. The premise of Lone Star didn't appeal to me at all, and had me a little confused ("How do you make a show out of that?"). But the episode is artful and unexpected. It's smart, good story, just the right amount of soap. I didn't expect to feel so personally troubled watching it, but it plunks you right down in the main character's predicament, pulled in several directions at once. Dare I say I was moved by it?

I don't have much else to say about it other than a strong recommend. I can't wait to see if it continues as strongly week-to-week.

UPDATE: Because this show is interesting and original and enjoyed by me, it is of course already in danger of cancellation.

Mike and Molly

Mike and Molly is a romantic comedy about a police officer (Billy Gardell) and a fourth grade teacher (Melissa McCarthy) who meet at an Overeaters Anonymous group.


This is probably my least favorite pilot I've seen this month. It's not funny. With a sitcom, I can forgive a lot if the jokes are funny. They're not. The majority are fat jokes of the fat-people-only-think-about-eating variety.

The jokes betray the story and the characters. For example, when Mike and his partner are investigating a burglary at Molly's home, Molly's sister is smoking marijuana out of an apple because her bong was stolen. What? Even if the joke was funny (which it's not) I would still be offended by it. It's just bad storytelling. Why WHY would ANYONE smoke marijuana and talk about their stolen bong in front of the police? And WHY wouldn't the officers say or do anything about it? It's not even acknowledged.

The best way to write comedy is to let the jokes come organically from the action of the episode and the flaws of the characters. Mike and Molly is a bunch of weak one-liners forced onto a threadbare story. Yeah, thumbs down.

Hawaii Five-O

Hawaii Five-O is a remake of the popular cop show of the 1970s. They fight crime. In Hawaii.


I'm running out of steam here, so briefly: Hawaii Five-O has a great core cast of characters, which is what really sells a procedural cop drama. The characters are fun and the relationships dynamic. The four main characters are well cast (Alex O'Loughlin, Scott Caan, Daniel Dae Kim, Grace Park). The show keeps the fun of the original but ditches the cheese factor.

No real complaints, I guess. I just cannot care about TV cops anymore. If you go in for that sort of thing, this one's worth a watch.

Tune in tonight for Raising Hope and Running Wilde on FOX, and Detroit 1-8-7 on ABC (more cops!).

Pilots, Part Two: Spy! Spy! My Darling!

My fall TV coverage continues with CW's

Nikita

Nikita is based on the 1990 French film La Femme Nikita. It's about a girl (Maggie Q) who was trained as a spy by the government agency known as the Division. When the Division killed her fiance, she fled and went into hiding for three years. Now she's back to take down the corrupt organization that ruined her life.


I hate to draw comparisons between Nikita and Alias, but it's kind of hard not to. Their premises are mighty similar, right down to the murdered fiance. And although I'd love to see more shows like Alias, there's something that show had that Nikita lacks. Alias was an action show, but what made it so great were the variety of characters and interesting relationships.

That's what we watch TV for. People will go see a movie for the action and special effects and pretty girls in bathing suits. But people will not tune in to a TV show week after week for these things. What keeps viewers coming back are characters that they care about, that they feel a connection to, a need to check in with them once a week. Nikita delivers on action and pretty girls, but none of the characters really grabbed me, least of all Nikita herself.

A pilot needs to be able to prove to me that there are lots of interesting stories to be mined from the series premise. Nikita will definitely be able to deliver great action and thrills, but I'm struggling to see where the emotional stories will come from. So once again, this doesn't seem like a show I'll be watching.

Things start to get crazy Monday, September 20 with the premieres of Chase and The Event on NBC, CBS's Mike and Molly and Hawaii Five-O, and Lone Star on FOX. I'll be trying my best to keep up!

Pilots, Part One: The Truth About Cats and Dogs

Welcome to my first post on new pilots. To be clear, I don't fancy myself a journalist. I'm not attempting to write true "reviews" of new shows, but just to throw out my thoughts on what worked for me and what didn't. I'll also be focusing on the storytelling and not on things like production and performance.

Today we're talking CW's Hellcats and FX's Terriers.

Hellcats

Hellcats is about Marti (Aly Michalka), a pre-law college student who loses her scholarship. Faced with having to drop out, she joins the cheerleading squad to get a new scholarship. Let's start with the bad.


The Bad

The episode begins with a voice-over. I could do a whole post on the problems with and merits of voice-overs (hmmm... maybe I will). In brief, voice-overs can sometimes be used as a lazy way to puke exposition all over the viewer. This seems to be the case here. It's ridiculous though, because any piece of exposition we learn from the voice-over comes up naturally in dialogue before the first commercial break. You could literally just chop the first two minutes off the episode and not miss out on anything.
Marti only initially appears to be our eyes into this world. In reality, the voice-over completely disappears until the very end of the episode (where it is just as unnecessary). What is this voice-over doing? What purpose does it serve? It's a crutch. Get it out of there.

A big part of the show's premise is that Marti is going to bring some fresh moves to the Hellcats. She's not a typical cheerleader, and the team is desperate for a way to stand out so they can win something or other, you get where I'm going with this. There's a scene where the coach tells the team they are going to throw out their old routines and "improv". Sounds pretty cool. But then we cut to: the Hellcats doing a rehearsed cheerleading routine. In perfect unison. Hmmm... something is not right here. This show is unwilling to follow through on its premise. Which is a shame, because how much cooler would it have been to see thirty cheerleaders busting a move, doing their own thing, and then finding a way to bring it all together as a routine? Way cooler, I'd say.

Maybe the biggest problem I had with the episode is that it kind of didn't work as an episode. It worked as a pilot, introducing characters and establishing conflicts that will carry through the series. But the episode didn't work on its own. It was the story of Marti joining the squad... for the first half. And then I don't know what it was about. It meandered around a little, finally ending with a cliffhanger that felt like we were getting somewhere. Because there was no beginning-to-end through-line, I didn't know what I was watching for. An episode should have a question that remains unresolved until the end, where the resolution might raise further questions for the next episode. For the first half, the question was, "Will Marti find a way to pay for school?" After she makes the squad, the question is, "Will something, anything happen?"

The Good

I know it seems like I didn't enjoy the episode, but I actually did. I like the characters. The cheerleading is well choreographed and fun to watch. The episode did a fine job of expeditiously setting up a lot of different conflicts in just one hour. And the cliffhanger ending I mentioned was rather well executed and has me intrigued. Bottom line, I'm not impressed enough to want to commit to the full season, but I could see myself checking out another episode or two. It's fun to watch, and that's no small thing.

Terriers

Terriers stars Donal Logue (Grounded for Life) and Michael Raymond-James (True Blood) as a pair of private eyes. That's pretty much it. They solve crimes for money.


What I can say about Terriers that I couldn't quite say about Hellcats is that after seeing the pilot, I know what a typical episode looks like. On Terriers, two guys solve a crime, there's some clever misleads and plot twists, some humorous bits, and a few scenes about their relationships with the women in their lives. That's exactly what a pilot should tell me - what I will see if I tune in next week.

The pilot also sets up a Big Bad, a villain that will carry through at least a few episodes, possibly even a whole season. I like that it blends a procedural format with sort of a longer-arcing story.

The show takes a tried and true format (crime-fighting duo) and executes it very well. It has that recognizable FX-y grittiness. And as a bonus, the main characters are original, complex, and likable. That being said, I don't think I'll be watching any more of it, but only because it's not really a genre I enjoy.

Next up is Nikita, premiering tonight on CW!

Ally McBeal v. Not Ally McBeal

I've been watching old Ally McBeals this week. I just discovered that they play it in the afternoon on some cable network called Reelz (??). What a treat! The show has held up rather nicely, even though it's been 13 years since it premiered. (Can it be? How old am I?)


One of my favorites things about the show is Nelle, played by Portia de Rossi. It's a great character. She's gorgeous, but is never reduced to the status of sex object because she's also a competent, well-spoken professional.

But it's Ally's show, and everything has to work in relation to the protagonist. This is why Nelle is so perfect. She is the physical manifestation of all Ally's insecurities. Where Ally is awkward and erratic, Nelle is poised and precise. And making the beautiful Calista Flockhart look like just-your-average-girl is a feat that could only be accomplished by putting her next to de Rossi.

In any type of story, it's important to have a strong mix of characters. On television, it's essential. It's the beating heart of a series. We love Ally because she is insecure and flawed, and it sure is fun to see the sparks fly when she is on screen with Nelle. It's a great source of drama (and comedy) throughout the series.

If anyone would like to purchase the complete series set of Ally McBeal for me, I would be okay with that.

TV For Fall/Fall For TV

Autumn is almost upon us, and you know what that means - jackets! I can't wait. Love to layer.

But only slightly less important is the fall TV season. I've decided to try to watch as many pilots as possible this month, sort of a crash course in TV pilots for myself. To keep me on track, I'll be writing about all of it here.

You should play along at home. First up are the premieres of Hellcats on CW and Terriers on FX, this Wednesday (9/8).

I'm a Huge Fan

It's been a slow summer for TV. Sure, Futurama's back in style, but one series does not a season make. But there is another summer show I've been keeping up with - Huge. Never heard of it? Of course not. It's on ABC Family.


I don't usually check out what's on ABC Family - it's generally aimed at the tween-to-teen range - but I tuned in for Huge because the name Winnie Holzman was attached. You may remember her as the creator of My So-Called Life. (Huge was actually created by Holzman and her daughter, Savannah Dooley. You may remember Savannah Dooley as the daughter of the creator of My So-Called Life.) The show follows the stories of a group of teenagers at a fat camp, and tackles some sensitive issues with grace and honesty.

Huge is not perfect by any means, but I'm finding it to be quite watchable, at times downright enjoyable. Well, let's be honest. It's kind of knocked my socks off. And the fact that it stars Nikki Blonsky and Gina Torres is sort of just the icing on the cake.

I like that the show doesn't preach a message, and it could have easily gone into that territory. It doesn't say "if you work hard you can make a better, more beautiful you", and it doesn't say "you're beautiful just the way you are". It just raises questions and ideas about body image, self-esteem, and healthy living. It lets the viewer sort it out. Which is kind of nice.

One last thought, from Winnie Holzman herself. In this interview with the Huffington Post, Holzman talks about the importance of seeing yourself on TV. Take it away, Winnie:
"I really learned that when I got into television, I really learned the power, how deeply it affects people to see themselves on television, to see something that they can relate to, that they feel is like them in some way, people feel validated. Its not a little thing, it really means a lot to people."

Am I That Elitist Critic Who Hates Everything?

I don't really like movies so much. By which I mean: I don't like movies. I usually hesitate to mention this to people, because the reactions I receive are frequently more than I can bear.

FRIEND

What do you mean you don't like movies?

ME
Don't really like 'em. They're... not really... my thing.

FRIEND
You can't dislike all movies.

ME
I've liked some movies before, but generally I don't want to watch a movie.

FRIEND
But you like TV? TV is the same as movies but not as good.

ME
That's not really accurate... Let's just forget about it.

FRIEND
No. You have to explain this to me.

ME
It's just not really a form of storytelling that appeals to me.

FRIEND
I mean, some movies are bad, but you can't tell me you didn't like Gone With the Wind/The Godfather/Shawshank Redemption/Lord of the Rings/The Dark Knight/Inception!!

ME
I didn't see those movies...

FRIEND
You DIDN'T SEE the best movie of the year/our generation/all time?!

ME
No... because I don't like movies?

FRIEND(?)
How can you say you don't like movies when you haven't seen Citizen Kane/Aliens/Schindler's List/Iron Man/Avatar?!!

Then they all look at me with the same expression - a mix of contempt and pity. Disappointment. "I thought I knew you," their eyes say.

Someone actually once said, "This makes me lose respect for you."

Look, here's what it is. I prefer a form of storytelling that can explore greater depths of character. Features don't have the time for it. But besides my personal preference in the types of stories I want to see, think about this:

Most movies are trash - just like most of what's on television is trash and most books are trash. The thing about movies is that it is way more difficult to sift through the rubbish to find the good. It's harder to walk out of a movie than it is to change the channel or put down a book. It just is. What books and television offer me is a much greater potential for hours of enjoyment. A TV series or a novel or a feature film is equally likely to be terrible, but if you find a good television show you've found 13, 22, maybe even 100 hours of fun.

Even the best movie can only promise you 2-3 hours' amusement.

Sorry, Eddie.

Two Jokes Are Worse Than One

The teaser of "Bogie Nights", a first-season episode of Strangers With Candy, features Jerri Blank planting a ficus for "St. Arbor's Day". The camera angle widens to reveal that she has planted the tree on the pitcher's mound of the school baseball diamond. In the episode's tag, we return to the tree. The holiday now being over, Jerri hacks the tree down with an ax.


The joke in the teaser is humorous. The one in the tag falls flat. And it's because we're getting two jokes at once. The joke is that Jerri thinks she is doing something good for Arbor Day, but her efforts are a failure (Audience: "That's not where you plant a tree!"). OR the joke is that Jerri is doing something good for Arbor Day, but then she takes it back once the holiday is over (Audience: "But you're supposed to let the tree grow!"). But the joke is not both of these.

A joke can't be funny for two reasons. It just can't. The trick to a good joke is that it's simple. Expectation, then subversion. If a joke has two punchlines, the result is confusion. And while a confused character can be funny, a confused audience is no laughing matter.

Compare to this type of scene: As two characters have a conversation in the foreground, something wild and unexpected is happening behind them. The joke is that the characters don't notice the crazy antics in the background. But if the dialogue in the foreground is also supposed to be funny, then nothing in the scene gets a laugh. The jokes choke each other out.

This is an old rule of comedy, but I just realized that Aeschylus uses it to his advantage in Agamemnon, of all things. Queen Clytemnestra speaks to the chorus after she (spoiler alert) kills Agamemnon. She gives a lot of good excuses for why she did it. She did it because Agamemnon killed their daughter, Iphigenia. She did it because Agamemnon brought a concubine home from the war. She did it because of the curse on the House of Atreus.

Just as a joke can only be funny for one reason, you can only kill someone for one reason. But the error here is Clytemnestra's, not Aeschylus's. If Clytemnestra had protested with any one of these excuses, the audience might sympathize with her. But the combination of reasons results in no reason at all. She seems unreliable and the audience doesn't trust her, just as Aeschylus intends it.

Be on the look-out for when one-plus-one equals zero.

Sort of Off-Topic, But Also Sort of Not

I was thinking about an icky narrative convention seen in many works of fiction where a female character is punished for having sex. This is very common in horror movies (as we learned in Scream, "virgins never die"). But sadly it shows up in much sneakier ways all over the place. Watch for it - a woman who has sex outside of marriage is almost always headed for a downfall.

And so this got me thinking about things like abortion and rape. That's right. This post is about women's rights. Continue at your own risk.

I don't think the abortion debate is really about women's rights. I think it's about fetus rights. And I can respect either side of the argument. If you're pro-life, you believe a fetus has rights of some kind. If you're pro-choice, you don't believe a fetus has any rights. (Because surely life is the most basic right we can grant.) Although I have my own beliefs, I can respect either of these two viewpoints as valid.

What I cannot respect is the belief that there is some sort of moral grey area surrounding pregnancies that are a product of rape. If you believe that abortions should only be allowed for rape victims, you have some pretty screwed up ideas about pregnancy.

Here's my attempt at objectively summarizing this point of view: A pregnant woman has already made her choice, and should now have to deal with the consequences. An exception can be made for rape victims, because that choice was taken from them.

And not so objectively: Pregnancy is a punishment for doing something wrong. Women are punished for having sex by being forced to bear children. But rape victims didn't do it on purpose, so they can have abortions.

People with this belief are not anti-abortion because they believe in the rights of the fetus. They are anti-abortion because, if women are allowed to terminate pregnancies, how will they be punished for having sex?

The widespread popularity of this belief means our young female who is murdered after losing her virginity is sort of art-imitating-life.

Just like pregnancy, this guy makes sure
lusty young gals get what's coming to them.

So Say We All

The Syfy (formerly SciFi) sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica did a lot of things that impressed me. Here's one.


The series began with a bang, but by the end of the second season, things had begun to fizzle. The show was still good, but it didn't feel as special as it did at its inception. Here's my best guess as to why.

At the beginning of the series, we find our characters in the middle of a huge crisis - their world and most of the people in it are destroyed by evil robots. We experience all the excitement of discovering how life will continue for the survivors, how these people will interact when thrown together, how each of them reacts to the situation, etc. etc. It is fertile ground for interesting stories and revelation of character.

Then things settled down. The survivors had more or less found their new way of life. There were still conflicts between the characters, they still had their personal struggles, but the show lacked the massive conflict it once had. The plight of our characters didn't seem quite as important as before.

So what did the writers do? Between the second and third seasons, the show jumps ahead one year. When we pick up the story again, everything has changed and the characters are in the midst of another major crisis. So we the viewers have all the enjoyment of learning about what happened in the past year, discovering how things work in a new present, and watching once again as the characters we love sort out their future.

Pulling this kind of series retool is a risky move, but in this case it paid off big time.

Why We Hate Time Travel

Time travel. Everyone hates it, but it remains one of the most-explored ideas in speculative fiction. Why do we hate it? Why are we continually subjected to it? Can it be saved from the realms of the implausible and the mind screw?

To begin an attempt at answering these questions, we should first be reminded of Sturgeon's Revelation, courtesy of our friends at TV Tropes. Sturgeon's Revelation states that 90% of everything is crud. When someone ponders, "Why are there so many sucky romantic comedies?" the answer is: "Because 90% of everything sucks big time." But this only begins to explain the public's hatred for time travel stories.

For answers we might look to the best examples, the 10% of time travel stories that don't completely bite. They're hard to find. In fact, I would posit that an even smaller percentage of works execute time travel well. In my mind, this involves jumping two major hurdles:

1. Time travel elements must not alienate your audience.

2. Time travel must be woven into the narrative in such a way that it is inextricable from the emotional journey of the characters.

Clearing the first hurdle allows your story to be enjoyed by its audience. In order to use time travel to its full potential, you must leap the second hurdle as well.

In a Treehouse of Horror episode of The Simpsons, Homer travels back in time and accidentally changes something. When he returns to the future, everything is different. He keeps jumping between past and present in an extended gag of making mistakes in the past and discovering a vastly different present. The episode succeeds in not pissing off the audience because the time travel serves the joke. However, time travel in this instance is purely a comedic device and not truly a part of the story. In fact, there is no story here. It's merely a montage based around different variations on a fill-in-the-blank joke. It's entertaining, but we're looking for something better.

The first story arc of the Young Avengers comic books involves the villain Kang the Conqueror. The Avengers have defeated Kang before, but because he's a time traveler he's allowed to return as many times as the writers desire with no further explanation than "time travel". It is revealed that one of the Young Avengers is actually a younger version of Kang who has come from the future to stop himself from God I can't even finish this plot summary it sucks so bad. The time travel is certainly a part of our characters' emotional journeys, but the number of graphs and charts and 3D models I would need to draw to begin to understand what is happening give this work a big thumbs down.

So what is an example of the best kind of time travel story? I'm surprised to hear myself say this, but Back to the Future. The time travel is simple enough to understand and fully integrated in the story of Marty McFly becoming entangled in the early stages of his parents' high school romance.

Here's a better one: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. The mechanism of Henry's spontaneous time travel is mentally acceptable because it follows specific rules (everything only happens one way; nothing can be changed; Henry's body travels in time, but no objects, clothes, or food in his stomach, etc. etc.). Time travel is intricately woven into the plot - Claire's life is linear and Henry's time line jumps around. Better still, time travel has a huge effect on the character's emotional stories, the most obvious example being the strain it puts on Henry and Claire's marriage.

Seriously, read The Time Traveler's Wife. (Seeing the movie is not the same thing.)

So why are we continually subjected to time travel fiction? I think it's because it holds so much possibility. There's no better way for us as human beings to take a look at where we've been and where we're going. Time travel stories have the power to be transcendent - as long as they don't get seriously fucked up along the way.

Unsolved Mysteries

If you are interested in story, I encourage you to visit TV Tropes. It's a fascinating site to get lost in for hours and hours, and covers so much more than just television. I try to use terminology from this website in everyday speech. I'm hoping these terms will cross over into our cultural vocabulary. Terms like: Butt Monkey.

The Butt Monkey, as defined by TV Tropes, is the character that is always the butt of the joke - jokes made by other characters, or jokes played on the Butt Monkey by the writers. This is your Meg Griffin from Family Guy, your Sweet Dee from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and your Mason from Dead Like Me. I'd like to talk about one of my favorite Butt Monkeys - Jerry from Parks and Recreation.


The writers at Parks and Rec have gotten a lot of comedy mileage out of beating up on Jerry. His coworkers all hate and ridicule him. What makes it so funny is that there is no reason why. When the gang from It's Always Sunny rag on Sweet Dee, we understand it. Because she's an obnoxious bitch. But Jerry is set up as just a nice, normal, happy guy. He's not really offensive in any way.

Or at least that's how it used to be, until they pulled on the dangling thread and the mystery of Jerry was unraveled. You may have seen the episode I'm referring to. The writers decided it was time to do a Jerry episode, an episode that was all about Jerry making a fool of himself. The Jerry ridicule gets so bad that his coworkers decide not to make fun of him anymore. By the end of the episode they are back to their old ways and the status quo is restored. Or is it?

There are several problems with this admittedly very funny episode. First of all, the episode turns Jerry into a complete buffoon. In the past, Jerry has embarrassed himself, but usually in ordinary ways, like when he accidentally says "murinal" instead of "mural". The joke is that the other characters are unnecessarily cruel to Jerry. In this episode, Jerry becomes such a clown that it's now obvious why the others make fun of him.

Another thing that was so great about Jerry as Butt Monkey was that it was never acknowledged. It appeared that everyone in the office had independently decided to mock and loathe Jerry. This episode made it seem like a joke they all shared, especially when they all decide to start being nice to Jerry.

But the biggest crime of this episode is over-exposure. There's never more than one or two Jerry jokes in an episode. They're like a little treat sprinkled here and there. After a full episode of dumping on Jerry, the joke feels played out.

It's always trouble when an episodic work solves one of it's essential mysteries. It's like when Fran and Mr. Sheffield got together on The Nanny. It's like when we found out Wolverine's origin story in the X-Men comics. Sometimes you need to just leave it alone.

Thank God we didn't see Wilson's whole face until the series finale of Home Improvement.