Monsters of Television

“Try it. I hate monkeys.“

Well, they’re at least steadily moving away from seriously offensive back to blandly generic, I’ll give them that. Sadly, blandly generic is way less interesting to write about, which makes “Alpha Male” just kind of there, with a couple of bright spots thanks to Rob Lowe’s well-executed work with Captain Marvel.

The episode also picks up immediately after the events of “Homefront,” carrying through with the rest of the team reacting to the information about the mole (predictably poorly, petulantly, and unprofessionally) in a decent enough manner, but the show delays any direct development on that front by having the team go to India to investigate some vague attacks on Mayor Hamilton Hill in India.

Did I mention bland? Read more »

“Your love is weird and toxic and it destroys everything it touches!“

This episode isn’t going to help folks who feel that Community needs to move beyond exploring what it means for these seven people to be a group, family, whatever they are.

I haven’t had a problem with this so far. Being funny gets you a long way, and if you’re not grooving on the plot of an episode, you can at least enjoy the episode’s jokes and humor (2001 references, parallel Earths in an absurd model U.N.-off). But even without humor, I think that the group exploring what they are to each other and as a whole, after the events of last season, is valuable.

But it needs to be better than this, fresher and more illuminating.  Read more »

“I don’t know when or how, all I know is it’s going to happen.”

Good grief, how intense were those last 10 minutes of “Crawl Space”? It was a pretty wild episode, but those last 10 minutes. I had goosebumps, folks, I was unable to sleep for a little while after the episode, with Walter’s laughter ringing in my ears (and that virtuoso shot that closed out the episode).

So that leaves “End Times” to set the stage for the finale. Which is incredibly exciting for me. Nick gave me the option to watch The Good Wife tonight (which is delayed in my market because of the NFL) while he took this week episode, but I declined. For one reason, I just wanted to watch The Good Wife tomorrow (I have nothing else, really, to watch), but for the other reason, well, it’s the penultimate episode of the season, and if Breaking Bad does anything well, it’s the episode before the finale (even in the event of a shortened season).

In essence, I wanted what I suspected would be the craziest episode of the season for myself.

And instead I got this.

Read more »

“Yes on the Red,  no on the Tornado!“

I don’t have too terrible much to say about “Homefront.”

It was a better episode than last week’s “Terror,” but there isn’t much about “Homefront” that is terribly remarkable either. It’s a pretty standard chase episode with two of the show’s more interesting characters, Robin and Artemis, at the center of it, which gives the episode stakes. As the only two non-super-powered members of the team, they are, as Artemis becomes fixated on, far more at-risk than the others.

But there’s also some a little bit of fleshing out of the characters, and I will say that the episode, at least, does a nice job of giving Artemis some development in a more organic way than what they attempted to do with Superboy last week. And that I can appreciate. Read more »

“How progressive of you to have a multi-cultural evil twin.”

“Geography Of Global Conflict” is a fun, enjoyable episodes that I doubt many folks will remember on down the line, except for me since it serves up a delicious dish of Greendale insanity that I have been missing. Model UN-off! Britta being the worst! Chang abusing his power! Twinning! It was all very season 1-esque, and I really appreciate that.

That said, the episode is a little too busy to give itself the time to do some stronger character work that it’s interested in doing (particularly with Jeff and Annie). And it’s not even really that interested in doing it though, either, since much of it, like Jeff’s beats last week, are focused on relatively familiar ground. Read more »

“You seem different.”

Well hello there, The Good Wife. I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you all the more because this fall season, so far, in case you haven’t heard, has been kind of the pits. Sure, I kind of like Revenge (it has potential) and while I’m not really keen on what many of the new comedies have been doing with their second episodes, I’m still willing to roll with them a bit longer. But nothing has really grabbed me this season so far.

But you, you my dear, you grab me.

I’m so glad you’re back. Please don’t even leave me again. Or become awful. Mainly the latter. I don’t think I could bear it. Read more »

If you follow along with us at the blog, you know I enjoy a good procedural. But good procedurals are hard to do, with their own challenges (compared to the more serialized drama). You need interesting characters (as I’ve stated before here) but you also need compelling cases-of-the-week. If you don’t have the latter, the former get a little a less interesting (unless they’re really good actors and it’s one of those cases where it’s just a pleasure to watch them).

Annoyingly, Person of Interest and Prime Suspect both stumble in their pilots in compelling cases and are dragged down by uninteresting characters (though there are interesting characters in them, thank goodness). Likewise, both shows feel oddly dated. Person of Interest might’ve felt more relevant and engaging had it aired a season or two after the World Trade Center’s collapse while Prime Suspect is just a weird case of something that would’ve been big in the late 1980s or ’90s, right along NYPD Blue, but now seems a little unnecessary. Read more »

“Because we know you types are all about sincerity.”

One step forward, two steps back.

“Terrors” is one of those episodes that may have been better suited as a two-parter, especially given all the character beats it would like to address but decides not to so we can have a prison break episode that wasn’t really about a  prison break. Instead, it’s a dullard of an episode with bad writing and uninspired action that leads to it feel painfully generic.

On the upside, Amanda Waller is still The Wall and not The Rail, so I guess I should be thankful for small favors.
Read more »

“Hey, Sean Penn called. He said to dial it back.“

Busy, busy, busy.

“Biology 101” is something of a reset button as the show attempts to, in fact dial itself back from the larger, more parody/homage/theme-based episodes. I’m personally okay with this as their more high-concept episodes last season were beginning to distract or were struggling to feel consequential, both at their time of airing or in hindsight. The study group got lost a little bit, as did Greendale as an environment (Did anyone really care about anthropology, or any of their other classes?!).

So I, for one, welcome a return to a more season 1 structure. And I’m glad they went ahead and got that musical number out of the way.  Read more »

“I have to admit, it’s nice meeting someone who never knew the old me.“

This is the first hour-long pilot I’ve gotten to this season (I’m skipping The Playboy Club until the weekend), and I’m pretty okay with it. I don’t think Revenge is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen, but it’s certainly not the worst either. Of the new shows I’ve watch so far, it’s easily the one I’m most willing to tune in for a second episode of.

And maybe it’s because I’ve just had a long week (and I don’t even get paid to watch this stuff, let alone write about it), but I’m feeling like I’ve been a bit overly critical of stuff, picking at flaws more than the strengths. Admittedly, it’s easy to do that with a pilot since there are often just so many flaws (pilots, by their very natures, are little ugly ducklings), so I’ll try and offer more than just a list of flaws. Read more »