TV year in review - 2011 edition
2011 TV year in review
I’ve never done this before, but I figure since I’ve seen so much films and TV series, why not finally do some reviews myself? And since most shows are finishing their season runs, if they haven’t already, what better to review than the year of TV series?
Before I begin, I think I should recap what the highlights for the TV year of 2010 was for me. My memory's a bit rusty, but I’ll see what I can recall. First off it was interesting to see Katheryn Winnick’s recurring guest spot on Bones. Not really all that great of a role, but interesting none the less and it’s mainly due to people’s reaction from both the viewer’s side and the cast/crew’s side. A.J. Cook was NOT on Criminal Minds, and not surprisingly, only good things came from it like A.J. playing a lesbian and A.J. starring in Bringing Ashley Home. A movie where she finally got a chance to act, an experience very much missed. The zombie series The Walking Dead became a sleeper hit for me. I also started watching the entire series run of both Avatar the Last Airbender and Legend of the Seeker and enjoyed them both very much.
Now time for the TV year of 2011 and early in the year the movie Bringing Ashley Home gave me a refreshing experience that I haven’t felt in ages. It made me highly looking forward to what sort of new and interesting roles were in store for A.J. That’s what a movie did however. My experience with TV series would come shortly after when Criminal Minds comes under the new management of Erica Messer and she manages to convince A.J. to return back to the show for a new 2 year contract...
You could sure bet this news was followed immediately by a great mourning. That promising revived movie career of A.J.’s I was looking forward to is dead again for at least the next 2 years... someone out there must really hate me...
Fast forward about half a year later and we come to fall. The time of the year many US networks consider the start of the TV season. Many shows came out and I gave many of them a try, but I’ll just bring up the ones worth mentioning, or rather the ones I could actually remember well. That should give you an idea of things to come. I guess I’ll start off with Terra Nova, a series about humanity over polluting the future. Lucky for us, a portal was discovered that takes things back to the age of the dinosaurs. Now humanity is trying to start fresh again.
Even though I was well aware the creators wanted this to be ultimately a family series, I just happen to be a sucker for dinosaurs. So I watched hoping maybe the family drama stuff won’t be too bad and if they keep enough Jurassic elements into the series, it should be fine. And if all else fails, they have Stephen Lang.
Needless to say, the series got quite boring, quite fast. How do you even that? They have dinosaurs and the crazy colonel from Avatar in your show. Quite frankly Jim Hensen did family series and dinosaurs better back in the 90s.
Click to viewSo if you want to watch a family series with dinosaurs in it, I would recommend the Jim Hensen series instead.
Next in line is The Playboy Club.
I’ll be completely honest, I was only planning on watching this series because Amber Heard was in it. So I watched it, and it blew all my expectations away. Now I could easily watch the series simply for these lesbians:
I’m not kidding either, they really are lesbians. However this series was such a pleasant surprise. A soap opera’ish ensemble show with an old school charm to it. All characters seem to be of an archetype at first, however as their stories develop, it takes a direction that feels refreshingly new. And it does feel like this series is planning to give every character their fair due. I’m sure even door girl might have gotten her own storyline in time. So it’s not one of those shows that has a large cast, but they have half-assed back stories, are poorly developed and ultimately are interchangeable *cough* nearly every crime drama out there *cough*.
This show’s cast I find myself liking nearly everyone. The weakest link in the bunch unfortunately seems to be the lead Eddie Cibrian. However there’s still plenty of other people that, dare I say it? I find this the best cast of characters that I can remember from a TV series, probably even better than the cast of characters from Avatar the Last Airbender. This show was all I needed for the year of 2011, so it’s only natural it was killed off after all of 3 episodes and the second great mourning of the year has arrived.
If you’re confused by the last sentence, let me tell you a little of my TV history. Ever since around the new millennium rolled in, a trend tends to keep on happening to me. Every time I watch a show that I end up growing a fond attachment to, guess what? They will die shortly after I discover them if they haven’t already been killed off. The only exception to this as far as I can remember so far is Avatar the Last Airbender. However if this is a show that’s on US network TV (as in the major channels), this is practically guaranteed to happen. Even worse, this trend works in reverse too. For example I hate reality TV, and one of the first to start it all was Survivor which debuted in the new millennium, and the show is still on the air and doing strong! No wonder I’m a movie person.
We get our first reboot of the season with Charlie’s Angels. And man even though I saw all the episodes that aired, this series completely slipped my mind until just now. To sum up the series: It took itself too seriously, and that was easily the biggest mistake the series did. Also heard some people were looking forward to Minka Kelly giving mouth to mouth to that news reporter chick from Transformers. But the series was given the plug before the episode aired. Well now you people know how I feel about Cassidy Freeman and Leah Renee’s relationship. Erica Durance guest starred in one of the last episode that was aired *waves to Lois*. Your pal Tess Mercer is having fun over in the Playboy Club. I think Charlie’s Angel should’ve just had Leighton Meester falling in love and obsessing over Minka Kelly again. I’m sure the show would’ve gotten a decent arc from that.
Speaking of Leighton Meester, season 5 of Gossip Girl is extremely boring. The CW is giving the series a 13 episode final season before they mercifully pull the plug on it. That’s all you need to know. Oh well, at least now Leighton’s schedule is open so she can find new movie roles and hopefully we can see Leighton once again kiss, fondle and lay down with her hand intertwine with hot chicks. It doesn’t matter if she’s doing this onscreen or off, it’s all fine by me.
Early in the year ABC cancelled V, a series based off an idea meant for a miniseries or movie. And this fall ABC decided to try this strategy again. Now I can admire the effort that if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. However sometimes things don’t work out for a reason. This time we get Revenge. A series based off the Count of Monte Cristo, only now it’s present time, the setting is Malibu and our leads are women. This is the series Eric Vander Woodsen went to and it’s also nice to see Young Zed from Legend of the Seeker again.
Unfortunately this series is following exactly in the footsteps of V. Seems interesting enough at first, but after a while you realize there’s no way they can tell this story without stretching the hell out of the storyline and you lose interest. And dammit, young Zed isn’t fun to watch when he’s not doing magic. Which just makes me miss Legend of the Seeker more.
I stopped watching somewhere after 3-5 episodes. This show makes me want to just watch again the Jim Caviezel and Guy Pearce version instead. That one has sword fighting.
Though I would watch the climax of the series if Emily Vancamp and Madeline Stowe get into a sword fight of their own, but odds are we’ll get a catfight that will involve someone getting pushed down a stairwell or balcony.
Mind boggling enough, this series is apparently bringing back the night time soap opera. What? There was a series this fall that I thought did the night time soap opera genre better, it was called the Playboy Club. Well the masses love repetitiveness, so that must be it. I don’t find this series worth watching, unless of course Emily Vamcamp and Madeline Stowe get into a sword fight or young Zed starts doing magic again.
On the comedy front, we have 2 Brokeback Girls. Okay that’s the Afterellen nickname, but it’s close to the real thing. The show even has recurring lesbian jokes and a horse to complete the nickname. This is probably the closest thing to filling that gaping hole left by the Playboy Club. Keep in mind it’s not a good substitute, just the closest thing available. It’s like losing a car and using a scooter afterwards, and not the motor kind. I would probably put this show in the time filler category. This is the same category the likes of Simpsons and Family Guy exhibits. I do however have to give Kat Dennings bonus points for sporting this new fabulous body.
I gave The Secret Circle a try since it was one of the few supernatural shows out there not about vampires. It’s nice to see both Natasha Henstridge (who I think is one of the better things about this show) and Gale Harold again. Oh hey, it’s Peter Scarbrow coming into the show later in the season. Much like 2 Brokeback Girls, I’ll put this in the time filler category.
Speaking of the time filler category, the new episodes of Family Guy is more or less hit or miss while Simpsons is just bad now. Generally in the past few years there would tend to be a few hidden gem episodes in there for Simpsons. Now I believe we’re out of hidden gems. However I’ll probably continue to watch it out of habit.
Waking Dead was the sleeper hit of 2010 and how did it fared in its second run? Well the premiere was good and the rest of the season, much like zombies, just drraaggg ooonnn. Okay I’m well aware AMC cut the show’s budget while doubling the episodes. So it should be expected we’re not going to be getting much military vehicles, vast exterior shots, deserted cities or large zombie fights. Cause you know, those kind of things and zombie extras are expensive. However can someone explain to me how is it possible season 2 has less going on than season 1 despite being over double in length? It was pretty much “Oh no we need to find that girl. Ah, she was a zombie in the barn this whole time as impossibly contrived as that is. We said we’ll leave the farmhouse after finding her, but we’re not for some reason. We pick up someone, but this goes nowhere. Shane has gone homicidal, I need to put him down. Zombies are attacking the farmhouse, okay now I think it’s time to do what we said we’ll do half a season ago. Oh there’s a tease in the final moments leading into season 3”. There I just told you the whole storyline of season 2.
Finally we have the last of the 2011 shows to premiere, Once Upon a Time. It was being billed as being from the writers of Lost. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not as I ditched that show rather early cause I was aware it was just going to answer questions with more questions until it reaches the point where the storyline and plots just collapse on themselves and leave gaping holes everywhere. A show like that wasn’t for me. Not to mention at this time I was still enduring Heroes, a show that was already giving me a similar experience in why having your writers make things up as the season goes along is never a good idea because you’re going to make soap operas look believable in comparison.
So anyways I check this show out because it has an interesting concept in having fairy tale characters stuck in the present time and not remembering who they are due to some curse. Seems interesting enough, however as I learned from Heroes, there’s a big difference in potential and living up to it. I honestly do not know what to say about this series. The concept is interesting, the writers dive into the characters’ past lives and it doesn’t appear to be the tedious cycle of answering questions with more questions, yet I can’t seem to fully get into this series or draw a conclusion on it. It’s like the same feeling I get when I try to review a movie that I haven’t finished watching. BTW that is not a good thing for a series to leave me with.
The only definitive thing I can say about this series is how much it makes me wish A.J. Cook was there so she can reunite with Jennifer Morrison, Meghan Ory and the province of British Columbia where better memories were made.
Damn those were good memories. The results would vary, but it’s way better than where she’s at now and the reunion at least would be greatly welcomed. Or better yet, even though the series hasn’t premiered yet, so this conclusion is premature, A.J. goes to Vancouver, but instead drops by Rachel Nichol’s show Continuum, which I’ll mention a bit later. Although it was brief, the two of them appeared to like each other a lot.
A.J. can join beating up criminals with the future cop. It would be sort of like my G.I. Joe fantasies of those two. Or why not do both? But who am I kidding? US TV is not that nice to me. *sighs* I should really try and get my mind off A.J. and CM, and think of other things since I still have one more year left till her contract expires. Then the possibility will come she might move on with her career. This saying is becoming a tired old tune for me after 7 years, but I don’t really much of a choice.
Among the piles, I do have to give credit to the series Lost Girl for breaking with tradition. Normally all these shows would open from strong to decent and decline in quality as the series went on. Lost Girl did the reverse of this. It started its second season making me think we have the second coming of The Hallows, but by midway the series seems to have finally found its stride. Of course that’s not to say it was a good season, but it definitely could have been worse.
So what were the highlights and winners of the year for me? Well you probably have guessed the Playboy Club was #1 and the runner ups were rewatching both Avatar the Last Airbender and Legend of the Seeker again. That’s right, I’m allowing other shows from previous years onto this list even when I already seen them and place them in my past lists. Hey I have a standard for the winners and if this year’s shows can meet them, I’m allowing past entries to qualify.
So to sum up the year: US network TV yet again reminds me why I hate it. Cause shows I grow an attachment to are destined to die shortly after I discover them if they’re not dead already while shows I want dead will seemingly live on forever. It’s pretty bad when even cable is beginning to fall in line with the rest of the major networks. I’m tempted to nickname the TV year of 2011 “Here comes the Pain”, however Criminal Minds has already taken that nickname. Movies really were the only saving grace of the year.
Now despite everything I just wrote, there actually was a few bright spots. While the US continues to disappoint me, my home country is starting to step up to the plate. Once 2012 rolled in, the creators of Degrassi releases their new show The L.A. Complex in January. It starts off as your typical show about young people trying to make it in all kind of fields in L.A. I’ll admit I didn’t find it that engaging at first, but around episode 3, I found myself legitimately enjoying the show and anticipating the next episode. Lets just say this show is not afraid to go there and does it in a manner that both feels refreshing and believable enough. Also nice to see Daisy from Higher Ground again.
While this show was out, Canada premiered another new show called Bomb Girls. Set in 1940s Ontario during the beginning of World War 2, the show follows the many lives of women in a bomb factory. This show feels almost like what would have happened to The Playboy Club if it didn’t get the Murphy treatment early on.
It’s even complete with lesbians. Well technically there’s officially only one so far, but you know what I mean.
I’m also anticipating the upcoming Canadian sci-fi series Continuum with Rachel Nichols. A cop from future Vancouver (yup you heard that right, filmed and set in Vancouver) on the hunt for criminals who’ve time travelled back to the past. As well as the Avatar sequel The Legend of Korra. It has come to my attention the first few episodes of Avatar 2 have already premiered in the US, so you can sure bet I’ll be watching those episodes online. Now after what I said about tradition, you may wonder why I have this attitude towards those two shows. It’s quite simple, one is from Canada while the other is a cable show, therefore it automatically has way better odds of not following suit.