Monsters of Television

Two lead roles in the CW in two years? Um, I don't get it.

I only have ten minutes, so I am going to write what I can and then maybe add more later. Here’s the summary judgement–I kinda liked The Secret Circle.  The reviews I’ve read haven’t been the most positive, but if you like cheesy TV with a side of angsty star-crossed lovers, then maybe this is for you.

Here’s the thing with the CW this year–I tried LUX but quickly figured out that the show was doomed, and then the show got so whacky trying to wrap things up.  But I just wasn’t that into the actors.  The irony is that only 2 of the 3 main actors are back on the CW this season, and they are the 2 I was less into.  Ah, well.  There is nothing wrong with cute little blondie, Cassie (Britt Robertson).  She is earnest and wears those sweet outfits with military boots well.  But am I going to root for her?  Unclear at this moment.  I’m way more into her grandmother–let’s make the show about her.

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The Ripper

The Vampire Diaries’ gang is all here, and the complications are multiplying quickly. Off like a horse at the races, we are immediately back in a big ol’ pile of supernatural craziness.  There’s also some tender human-type craziness, too, which is nice.  With Stefan sort of out of the picture for a bit, I imagine Damon will get an even larger piece of the action–not complaining at all.  How the show balances Elena’s love and loyalty to Stefan with the hint of her attraction to Damon will be interesting.  Will they retread old ground?  Will they let the characters develop a deeper, if less sexually charged, relationship, unique in its own rights?  Will Damon spend this year being a better man as he tried to spend last year becoming a weaker man?  [You may recall how critical I was of the dropped ball with Damon’s character last year–see my review of the finale for more.]  There are other questions (will the Jeremy storyline be as lame as I fear? Will Awesome Vampire Caroline take over the show, as she should?), but I am guessing we’ll have a strong focus on Elena and Damon’s story, and for that reason, I’ll keep my attention there for now.

Coming in to this new season, I was most hesitant about Stefan’s story, but the final scene did much to alleviate those concerns. As noted above, I’m not quite sure what is the plan with Damon [and not sure that I’m a fan of the longer hair, but maybe it is just in that awkward stage? Guess Somerhalder was too busy flying from Africa to New York to Paris this summer to get his hair done (for reals, did you follow him on Twitter? Guy went all over the world a few times, lucky guy).] Now that I’m also aware that Somerhalder is “not yet officially” dating Nina Dobrev, I’m curious how that is influencing my viewing. I see them touch or look at each other, and I think, “gosh, they must be having fun,” when poor Elena is supposed to be in the middle of an angry/emotional/depressed (pick one) scene.

Since we jump in pretty much where we left off, let’s do a quick rundown of where everyone is at right now:

“Poor Elena,” btw, is an understatement. It is her birthday, but all she can think about is the missing Stefan. Elena is sad but more or less holding it together.

Stefan is working for Klaus, doing whatever he says, even if that means ripping the heads off poor, innocent girls. [His outfits are now all black, btw, to indicate the darkness of his soul.] Basically, the entire episodes asks the audience to look for Stefan’s humanity, as Damon and Elena have been doing for months. That is actually a pretty sharp setup because it makes me care way more about Klaus’ DIABOLICAL plan [bad guys always have plans that deserve all caps].

Damon is still hanging with Andie, taking small breaks to chase down his brother and catalogue Stefan’s list of horrific crimes. He is keeping Elena in the dark. The best part of Damon’s life (at least, in my opinion), is when he hangs with Ric. [The buddy show that will eventually spin off from TVD better star Damon and Ric (sorry, Stefan).]

Ric is not holding it together as well as Elena. He is drinking a lot, sleeping on Elena’s couch, and otherwise acting like a sad sack. But hey, his girlfriend died twice, so that is a bitter pill.

Jeremy? Also losing it. He keeps seeing ghosts, but apparently these ghosts are completely incapable of conveying a message of any sense because all Jeremy has gotten out of them in two months is, “help me.” He hasn’t told Bonnie, the one person who could maybe help him because, um, why? Unclear. Better come up with a good reason that Jeremy would keep all this to himself, TVD, otherwise you have drama for drama’s sake rather than actions motivated by realistic character psychology (for all its excesses, TVD does usually ground its action in likeable, self-aware people).

Bonnie? Watching paint peel at her dad’s place out of town [don’t worry, she keeps up with Jeremy through his “facetime” feature on whatever phone the CW is hawking this week.]

And of course, my favorites, Awesome Vampire Caroline and her hunky friend Tyler. I write “friends” because that is what they are pretending they are, to everyone (but Matt’s) amusement.

So, that’s the landscape. We have a lot of characters that have done very little all summer but keep their feelings to themselves while they go through the motions. [So much for trips to the beach and hanging at the local drive-in, I guess.]

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“Your stab at pragmatism is, well, adorable…“

So after a really long hiatus (and a slightly longer hiatus from reviewing the show because it was getting to the point where I was just consistently annoyed that writing about it kind of ruined my Friday evening a bit), Young Justice returns with probably its best episode since the pilot episodes.

“Targets” was on and off of my radar since I was always trolling about for when it would air, and then it was accidentally(?) leaked online and thus got passed around on the torrent sites, as it would, generating some buzz. I thought I had missed it when I saw it as having an air date on the show’s Wikipedia page, but was quickly informed about the episodes’s status (the air date turned out to the be day the episode has been leaked online, poking a little bit of fun at the notion of an airdate).

But now that the show back, questions arise. Apart from the fact that Cartoon Network seems to have little rhyme or reason for its scheduling habits (do they think kids don’t notice those types of things?), I wondered about the benefits of “Targets” being the first episode back after the hiatus. Certainly it has me at least vaguely interested in the show again, but I wonder if the hiatus had ended with this episode would I have spent so many months with a bad taste in my mouth, wondering why I should even bother coming back to the series. Read more »

I’m all for NBC trying to carve out another night of comedy. I like having comedy on TV, even if I’m probably pickier with comedy than I am with hour-long dramas.  And this isn’t just motivated by the fact that I generally don’t seem to care for a lot of reality and competition programs. Comedy can help us see things from a different perspective, and it can make us laugh at things that otherwise aren’t terribly funny. Comedy can make us feel better, help us cope, and give us appreciation for things in ways that drama simply can’t.

So, while even though I didn’t like the pilot (or, really, the premise) for New Girl,  I’m glad it’s on. I’m likewise glad that Up All Night and Free Agents are on, even if neither of them have particularly strong pilots. Indeed, Up All Night‘s pilot the stronger of the two, but Free Agents is the show I’m more interested in seeing more of if it can deliver on its ideas more fully (the pilot is not as successful at it as I would have liked). Read more »

“It’s a Braverman.”

"Hey. Do I know you?"

Our fellow Monster Karen checked out last season’s finale of Parenthood as it aired at the behest of Matt and me insisting the show is good, sometimes great, and worth everyone at least checking out. We warned of crushing emotional scenes and certain actors knocking it out of the park to the chagrin of a viewer’s tear ducts (Mae Whitman, my elbow is pointing at you). Yeah, we like the show a lot. So when she reported back to us, just before we recorded a podcast, we were both pretty excited to certainly have a new convert.

It was not to be.

She may be able to stomach Gossip Girl camp and other CW fare but jumping into Parenthood at the finale was a little too saccharine, a little too schmaltzy for her. Needless to say, Matt and I were a little disappointed. But, at the same time, understanding.

One has to approach Parenthood with the knowledge that the series is a continual setup for emotional and familial catharsis. If the Bravermans aren’t hugging it out, they’re fighting against hugging it out even though they know they will eventually embrace — embracing. The basic elements of this show (diverse cast, unscripted scenes, copious demonstrations of togetherness to the point that you’re sure none of these characters have any other friends and, if they do, they’re villains) all contribute expertly to these cathartic moments in the season. We’re led up a mountain by a Braverman sherpa and, if you’re just choppered in to meet us without seeing the journey, Base Camp 2 may seem really overdramatic.

The collapse of my mountain metaphor aside, the Parenthood season opener picks up smartly where the finale left off. Maybe with a couple of hiccups that are the seeds of major season arcs. But they’ll pull it together — right? Read more »

“We’re both dead men anyway.”

Marie and Walt Jr. are like the Rose and Bernard of this show. Hear me out.

I don’t mean that they are romantically or cosmically tied to each other (although that would be far more interesting than Junior’s banal teenage angst or Marie’s off-again/on-again kleptomania). I mean that this is a show of cliques within cliques, inner circles overlapping together like an Olympic-level Venn diagram and there are only two people on this show that aren’t included in any of it. Well, the baby, too, but even she’s been accessory to some of Skyler’s research and criminal missions.

No, Marie and Junior are left out of everything, to the demise of any hope that their characters might get interesting in the near future. And, sadly, it seems like the only way to jump-start either of them is to (a) put them on a path that eventually collides with the secret-secrets of the other characters or (b) outright let them in on the secret-secrets so that they can become pawns/hostages/threats to the secret-secrecy. Either way, you’re running into a Chuck/White Collar situation where every loved one in the general vicinity of the main characters is pulled into the capers and, therefore, the danger.

Interestingly, that would make more sense in the world of Breaking Bad than it would be for those other shows since Walter doesn’t have a double-life (anyone dangerous in his life knows all of his business — he hides nothing) and family target practice seems likely if not inevitable sometimes.

All I’m saying is that, if we see that Marie and Junior end up selling Navajo fry bread at Four Corners, telling us they want to stay and live out their remaining years in peace, don’t be horribly surprised.

Now, let’s get to the fight. Read more »

“Pink wine makes me slutty.”

While it doesn’t premiere until Sep. 20, Fox has decided that early preview sessions have worked so well in the past (Glee), that they would go ahead and unleash New Girl on us a couple of weeks early (What, Terra Nova still isn’t ready?!). Never mind that  because I’ve been drowning in promos for the series on TV or due to the painful fawning over her at the TCAs I experienced via Twitter, I feel like I’ve been on board a constant hype train for Fox’s attempt to prove that they can still do a comedy (Raising Hope in a minor, but charming, fluke, I think).

But I will take a free preview (it’s on iTunes and your cable provider’s on demand options right now; it’ll be on streaming services on Sep. 13) since it means I don’t have to make time for it while trying to sort out the new schedule. And thank goodness for that since I’d be kind of annoyed that I cleared time away from watching other shows to check out New Girl.

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“I’m sure if you keep digging, you’ll find me.”

That says it all, doesn't it?

I think my favorite thing about “Hermanos”, among the many many many things I enjoyed in the episode, is that it very much felt like one of those cold opens from season 3 that feel like a miniature movie. Those cold opens are wholly self-contained but send character and thematic ripples across the show. And, sure, people like to say, with each episode of a television show, they’re making a miniature movie, but there’s just something delightful about those cold opens.

With “Hermanos” the entire episode leads up to a sequence that would have otherwise been the cold open of an episode. There’s a steady build to it, which makes it, honestly, a miniature movie within the framework of this entire episode being a miniature movie of Gus Fring’s life. Read more »

“Chalk it up to clean livin’ and vitamin pills.

Well, welcome to the party, Hank.

So often in fictional narrative media, we’re forced to suspend our disbelief when characters can’t see what we assume they should be able to see. Whether it’s the detective that ignores the clue we see buried in the box or tank-topped, cheerleader-shorted sophomore deigning to walk down the dank basement steps, we’re constantly forced to assume a human being in that storyworld doesn’t think critically like we do. It’s an eye-rolling affair sometimes but one we accept. Usually it’s a crutch for the storywriter: if it’s remotely plausible that a detail can be skipped due to human error or blissful naivete, then it’s less work for the author. Or maybe it’s just that years of cultural consumption have taught us that the dude’s behind the door! Run, girlfriend!

There are at least two times in this episode of Breaking Bad where the there are opportunities for a detail to be skipped or a monologue to continue that would at least continue a story arc into a natural conclusion for the week. But, instead, we get real revelations from people breaking that media perception of just allowing things to happen and not bringing critical thinking in until the penultimate act.

The best part is: it’s for our benefit. Read more »

“Someone has to protect this family from the man who protects this family.”

The contrast between a “normal” episode, filler, and a breather boils down to the WTF moment within the last five minutes. Last week, even if the episode itself was pretty low-key, it had Hank putting some pieces together that makes him one step closer to realizing who Heisenberg really is. Well, kind of. Baby steps.

There really wasn’t breath-taking intensity, though, unless you count the cringing anxiety I suffered watching the dinner scene. So you wouldn’t expect a breather episode to follow. And, yet, here we are. Fleshing characters out and not really pressing the story forward.

While there were some interesting scenes, for a series that can probably count its filler episodes on one hand, it’s almost disappointing when one comes around. This is especially true when the filler episode comes on the tail of a week with so much momentum. The ball started to roll and this episode totally forgets about the ball. Instead, we focus on stuff we kind of already know and (probably, hopefully) set the table for oncoming, rapid-fire WTFs. Probably preceded by an OMG and followed by a BBQ. Because barbecue is delicious. And so is Navajo fried bread. Read more »