Monsters of Television

“There’s complexity, and then there’s lying.”

Here’s a fun bit of trivia for you: Covert Affairs was the topic of the first post on this blog.  (Note how article totally gives away the ending of the pilot? Yeah, kind of killed the suspense for me.) Happily, I was correct in my general assessment of the show when the pilot was picked up by USA. The show is Burn Notice and White Collar, with obvious dashes of Alias sprinkled into the mix.

As a result, like most of USA’s programming, Covert Affairs is a solid, promising, and entertaining  show. It’s stylish, briskly paced, well-staged action sequences, and deft humor. What makes me worried is that those words also describe how I felt about White Collar at its start, and then it began a decline that led to a shoddy betrayal.

I’d really prefer that Covert Affairs not do that, but I see the potential for it to happen. Read more »

“Do your thing, Dirty Harry.”

Peter: “How can I be cool again?” Mozzie: “First, I’d have to disabuse you of the notion that you were ever cool before.”

USA keeps reminding me their programming focus is on character. And that might be the only reason I’m coming back to White Collar.

The kinks in the partnership between Neal and Peter have been worked out from a chemistry perspective if not narratively. The glimmers of hope for a great buddy cop show (with federal-agent-procedural stakes) have been more or less fulfilled, demonstrated by Neal and Peter’s first conversation. Neal is no longer the criminal Peter feels he has to be skeptical of. They’re partners now and, while the cop in him is still skeptical, Peter is willing to accept the sketchier parts of Neal’s life (i.e. Mozzie) in order to maintain the friendship.

And that’s what this first episode is all about: the further establishment of the trust bond between these two former rivals, the progression of their mutual respect. Neal continues his track of warming to rule of law and Peter finds deeper sympathy for the devil. Every step of this episode is to further demonstrate how good a team they’ve become, from Peter’s restrained desperation to get Neal back on the force to their non-verbal (or monosyllabic) communication to Peter’s desire to find ways into Neal’s probably grief-stricken head. The stuff with Mozzie is very telling of the esteem in which they hold each other (because Mozzie wouldn’t trust Suit if Neal didn’t trust him). Other characters fall to the wayside in pursuit of this establishment but, let’s face it, even though Neal’s realtionship with her is funny and Peter’s sweet, no one is watching this show for Elizabeth Burke (who makes a single, superfluous, green-screen appearance).

Here’s the thing: as nuanced and developed as the characters are, I’m not sure I could care less about the story.

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“I’m a vampire, not a fucking idiot.”

HBO didn’t air a new episode of True Blood last Sunday. I guess they don’t think vampires are American enough. They divvy up land how they see fit, feel vastly superior to all others around them and suck the blood of others for sustenance. Sounds pretty American to me.

After a week off, things seem to be vamping amping up quite quickly. A third of the season is over and done with and with as many character and story convergences “9 Crimes” gave us, that fan is gonna be covered in shit for quite some time. Is that to say everything going on is interesting? Not necessarily right now. But there is oh so much potential. Except for Tara. My god, just kill her already.

In a scene we’ve all been waiting for since watching (and rewatching and rewatching) the season three promo, Bill breaks up with Sookie. He tells her he doesn’t want to be found and tells Sookie (and reminds the audience) of the crazy vampire sex he and Lorena had. Of course this is all so Sookie won’t come looking for him and he can keep her safe while he deals with Lorena and Russell. But he should know better than that as this only makes Sookie want to find him more.

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Name this chef. No, really, can you name her?

Last week’s Top Chef generated some testy reviews—when it generated any reviews at all, that is. This hasn’t been the most blogged about season of Top Chef, lacking characters that can offer the intense competition of season six’s Voltaggio brothers, the lovable quirkiness of season five’s Carla, and the amusing bromance of Spike and Mark in season 4. There’s also a serious and troubling dearth of likeability—where’s the Fabio? The Richard? In essence, there’s a lack of personality—more about this after the jump. But first, let’s look at other mean things people are saying about the episode, “Room Service”…

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“Geeze. Take a Midol.”

I’ve been looking forward to the premiere of Rizzoli & Isles (hereafter R&I) for a little while now. I’m a big fan of Angie Harmon (I thought she and Shaw should’ve teamed up on Chuck at the end for the season for their own villainous plans!), and while Sasha Alexander is basically known as the woman who proceeded Cote de Pablo on NCIS, she showed some skill on the show (though I never thought Kate really gelled the way Ziva has (this is not an invitation for Kate lovers to start yelling)) so I was interested to see what she would bring to this crime-solving, female power hour.

Sadly, folks, it doesn’t look good.
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“I’ve been a part of this family my whole life. It’s an overrated experience.”

This week we’re giving you a double dose of The Boondocks. Adult Swim must have missed the memo about what day it was and so while I was celebrating our Independence Day last weekend, they were airing a new episode. Thomas Jefferson and I were so pissed.

“The Story of Lando Freeman” was so ingeniously named because it told us the story of man named Lando Freeman. He had come in search of Robert, who he believed was his father. The similarities are uncanny (dress style, love of strip clubs, etc.) but it would take a lot more than that for Robert to welcome this stranger into his house and into his life.

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Well, it finally happened. It took five episodes, but The Next Food Network Star finally produced an entertaining episode.

I chalk this up to the fact that, with the field winnowed down to 8 contestants, the show has a bit a more time to devote to developing their personalities beyond a CPOV, and to actually start doing a few things it might’ve benefited from doing all along (namely having Giada earn her paycheck). But lest you think that I was over the moon about the episode, the show’s strategy of clever promotion and branding remains intact, and is just as painfully obvious as it has been in the past. Read more »

“This is the problem with the Impressionists: not accurate enough. This would never happen with Gainsborough or one of those proper painters.”

Combining two weeks of Doctor Who makes a bit of sense these days, given my busier schedule for the past two or three weeks and with BBC America’s infuriating scheduling of episodes. In any case, we have two fairly good episodes here, with “Vincent and the Doctor” being such a delightful treat and “The Lodger,” while fun, is a bit too breezy for its own good (though, as I’ll argue below, that’s kind of the point).

I will say that I like both episodes coming this late in the season, as I needed a bit of a pick-me-up. The show’s second half has been relatively so-so between pseudo-vampires and uninteresting Silurians (though I still like “Amy’s Choice,” but I think that’s largely in comparison to the others), and wrapping things up with two solid episodes before going into the finale does ramp up the excitement. Read more »

“Since when is the internet about robbing people of their privacy?”

Twitter. Facebook. iPhones. Technology today is so much about instantly being able to buy something, see something, hear something, tell your friends about it, have companies look at what you’re saying and tailor specific ads relative to your interests. There are those who believe these things are steering us down a doomsday 1984-like path of destruction (myself included). “Attack of the Killer App” gave us a glimpse of what that not too far off time may look like, with a little more humor of course.

The latest Mom product, the eyePhone, has just been released and everyone at Planet Express tosses their old phones away and rushes to the store. This is the beginning of a style of joke the rest of the episode employs that I am dubbing “Apple-knocking”. Apple-knocking is a very common  joke used by many and people (even Apple users themselves, the ones with senses of humor anyway) love it when it’s done well. Futurama did it well.

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“This is just a harmless game of cat and mouse between me and a professional killer.”

Maybe it’s because of how self-aware the episode was, but I thoroughly enjoyed “Neighborhood Watch.” Easily a standout episode of the season thus far (though, if you’ve been watching, you know this isn’t a huge accomplishment since this season has been kind of “Meh” so far), it’s a script filled with solid quips (“Better to have Michael Westen than a 2×4.”), a strong CotW story, and interesting development of the arc (though I figured Vaughn would like to know that Michael’s making headway).

The episode is also elevated by some solid guest work from the always great Benito Martinez and Navi Rawat, shedding her NUMB3RS character with nary a regret and providing a legitimately fun dynamic to the show as Kendra, the professional killer responsible for killing that guy in the airplane the crew discovered last week who was in turn responsible for something else (it’s getting a bit muddled right now). Read more »