The post about new TV shows
In my last TV post I said I'd say something about the new shows I'm watching.
Despite believing that this year's crop of new shows was even more dismal than usual, I decided to try out three: Undercovers, No Ordinary Family, and The Event.
I haven't watched Undercovers at all. I keep meaning to, but I've been too busy and I'm already watching...*counts*...nine shows a week, ten once Psych starts up again in a few weeks. That is ridiculous. So I can't say anything about Undercovers because I haven't yet seen a second of it.
As for the other two, there are probably spoilers under the cuts.
No Ordinary Family was the one I was "most" excited about, "most" being a relative term seeing as I wasn't really very excited about any of the new shows. My verdict after three episodes: cheesy, kind of cute, has some fun and quirky side characters. The pilot was quite possibly one of the most badly structured episodes of television I have ever seen. Yay, our family was in a plane crash in the rainforest, but everything's normal now! How did we get home safely from the middle of nowhere with a crashed plane and a dead pilot? The audience won't care about details like that, will they? (How much you want to bet the pilot isn't actually dead, but will show up in the future as another bad guy with superpowers?) Speaking of which, I didn't really like how they set up that there were other people with superpowers and some kind of conspiracy around them. Not that I have a problem with that storyline itself, but it was just another random thing in the middle of a bunch of other random things that the writers threw together and called an episode.
The second episode was mostly dull. The third was better, which gives me hope that the show could be good outside of occasional scenes that I find cute or funny (mostly scenes involving the parents' friends/confidants/sidekicks), but I'm not sure I'll be watching. Which brings me to the biggest point against the show: Michael Chiklis. Everything else I can forgive as the usual bugs associated with getting a new show off the ground, but they cast Michael Chiklis. And I know I'm the only one in the world who thinks this, but I hate him as an actor. So now you're asking yourself why I bothered to watch the show at all knowing he was in it, and the truth is that it did give me pause, because really, anyone else in the main role would have been preferable to me than Michael Chiklis. But I gave it a try anyway, because I liked the premise and thought perhaps I'd moved beyond the Michael Chiklis hate. But no. I still hate Michael Chiklis. And because of that, I don't give two craps about his character. And since he's the main character, I don't think I'm going to be able to get past that enough to enjoy the rest of the show. It's like how I can't watch Burn Notice despite liking the premise and Bruce Campbell, because I despise Jeffrey Donovan. Sadly, I think No Ordinary Family is going to fall into that same category. I'm going to keep trying for now, but I think this one will eventually fade away from my show list.
The Event was the one I mostly decided to try out because it was hyped so much, and even then I almost didn't want to because everything about it screamed "dull." Which makes it this year's dark horse winner, because I was sucked in from the very first episode. I think surprisingly good sums this show up pretty well. It's not something I'm waiting for each week with bated breath, but it's one of the first shows I get around to watching when I have some free time during the week (I think only Fringe currently beats it in terms of how impatient I am to watch the next installment). It's miles ahead of Flashforward, which was last year's attempt to capitalize on the sci-fi-y drama serial, in that I actually cared enough about the characters to want to see how they dealt with their various problems. Also, the entire premise wasn't blown in the pilot episode, leading to a string of dull follow-up episodes where the uninteresting characters wrung their hands and cried about what had happened to them. I have no idea if Flashforward ever got interesting again, because I stopped watching it. It's cancelled now anyway.
I'm not saying it's a perfect show. The complete lack of female characters with any sort of agency made me frown a lot, but from the third episode on it seems to be doing a little better on that front. Just be aware, if you want to start watching it, that the story mostly centers on three or four male characters, and lot of the female characters are incidental. Sophie (Laura Innes's character) is maybe the one exception, but she really hasn't had anything to do so far but sit in a cell and be cryptic. From the third episode the female FBI agent who's helping Main Guy (I'm really awful with names in new shows, sorry) becomes way more involved, as does Girlfriend of Main Guy, who in the first couple episodes was mostly in damsel in distress mode. And she stiill sort of is, but she at least makes attempts to rescue herself instead of sitting there crying for her boyfriend to come save her. Okay, she does some of that, too. But she's become slightly more three-dimensional since the pilot, and I hope that continues. So that's my major criticism: not very good female characters. But I think it has and hopefully will continue to improve in that area.
Also, I'm not sure the concept can go for multiple years. With this one, I'd almost prefer they just do one or two seasons and wrap everything up. Treat it like a really long miniseries instead of something that could continue indefinitely. I just don't think the premise can stretch over several seasons, not without dragging things out to an interminable degree. But it's a network show, which means it will either be cancelled before its time or forced to stay on far past its natural lifespan.
Despite believing that this year's crop of new shows was even more dismal than usual, I decided to try out three: Undercovers, No Ordinary Family, and The Event.
I haven't watched Undercovers at all. I keep meaning to, but I've been too busy and I'm already watching...*counts*...nine shows a week, ten once Psych starts up again in a few weeks. That is ridiculous. So I can't say anything about Undercovers because I haven't yet seen a second of it.
As for the other two, there are probably spoilers under the cuts.
No Ordinary Family was the one I was "most" excited about, "most" being a relative term seeing as I wasn't really very excited about any of the new shows. My verdict after three episodes: cheesy, kind of cute, has some fun and quirky side characters. The pilot was quite possibly one of the most badly structured episodes of television I have ever seen. Yay, our family was in a plane crash in the rainforest, but everything's normal now! How did we get home safely from the middle of nowhere with a crashed plane and a dead pilot? The audience won't care about details like that, will they? (How much you want to bet the pilot isn't actually dead, but will show up in the future as another bad guy with superpowers?) Speaking of which, I didn't really like how they set up that there were other people with superpowers and some kind of conspiracy around them. Not that I have a problem with that storyline itself, but it was just another random thing in the middle of a bunch of other random things that the writers threw together and called an episode.
The second episode was mostly dull. The third was better, which gives me hope that the show could be good outside of occasional scenes that I find cute or funny (mostly scenes involving the parents' friends/confidants/sidekicks), but I'm not sure I'll be watching. Which brings me to the biggest point against the show: Michael Chiklis. Everything else I can forgive as the usual bugs associated with getting a new show off the ground, but they cast Michael Chiklis. And I know I'm the only one in the world who thinks this, but I hate him as an actor. So now you're asking yourself why I bothered to watch the show at all knowing he was in it, and the truth is that it did give me pause, because really, anyone else in the main role would have been preferable to me than Michael Chiklis. But I gave it a try anyway, because I liked the premise and thought perhaps I'd moved beyond the Michael Chiklis hate. But no. I still hate Michael Chiklis. And because of that, I don't give two craps about his character. And since he's the main character, I don't think I'm going to be able to get past that enough to enjoy the rest of the show. It's like how I can't watch Burn Notice despite liking the premise and Bruce Campbell, because I despise Jeffrey Donovan. Sadly, I think No Ordinary Family is going to fall into that same category. I'm going to keep trying for now, but I think this one will eventually fade away from my show list.
The Event was the one I mostly decided to try out because it was hyped so much, and even then I almost didn't want to because everything about it screamed "dull." Which makes it this year's dark horse winner, because I was sucked in from the very first episode. I think surprisingly good sums this show up pretty well. It's not something I'm waiting for each week with bated breath, but it's one of the first shows I get around to watching when I have some free time during the week (I think only Fringe currently beats it in terms of how impatient I am to watch the next installment). It's miles ahead of Flashforward, which was last year's attempt to capitalize on the sci-fi-y drama serial, in that I actually cared enough about the characters to want to see how they dealt with their various problems. Also, the entire premise wasn't blown in the pilot episode, leading to a string of dull follow-up episodes where the uninteresting characters wrung their hands and cried about what had happened to them. I have no idea if Flashforward ever got interesting again, because I stopped watching it. It's cancelled now anyway.
I'm not saying it's a perfect show. The complete lack of female characters with any sort of agency made me frown a lot, but from the third episode on it seems to be doing a little better on that front. Just be aware, if you want to start watching it, that the story mostly centers on three or four male characters, and lot of the female characters are incidental. Sophie (Laura Innes's character) is maybe the one exception, but she really hasn't had anything to do so far but sit in a cell and be cryptic. From the third episode the female FBI agent who's helping Main Guy (I'm really awful with names in new shows, sorry) becomes way more involved, as does Girlfriend of Main Guy, who in the first couple episodes was mostly in damsel in distress mode. And she stiill sort of is, but she at least makes attempts to rescue herself instead of sitting there crying for her boyfriend to come save her. Okay, she does some of that, too. But she's become slightly more three-dimensional since the pilot, and I hope that continues. So that's my major criticism: not very good female characters. But I think it has and hopefully will continue to improve in that area.
Also, I'm not sure the concept can go for multiple years. With this one, I'd almost prefer they just do one or two seasons and wrap everything up. Treat it like a really long miniseries instead of something that could continue indefinitely. I just don't think the premise can stretch over several seasons, not without dragging things out to an interminable degree. But it's a network show, which means it will either be cancelled before its time or forced to stay on far past its natural lifespan.