Check the Fien Print: 2015

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

The Fien Print at The Hollywood Reporter

Obviously I haven't been posting here because I've been at The Hollywood Reporter since early September.

I'd been holding off on doing a formal post here until I had a new URL for THR's version of The Fien Print.

And... It only took 10 weeks!

The Fien Print at The Hollywood Reporter.

Wednesday, September 02, 2015

'Mr. Robot' and 'Enlightened': Alienation and Changing the World

After a one-week postponement, "Mr. Robot" concludes its first season on Wednesday (September 2) night.

Created by TV newbie Sam Esmail, "Mr. Robot" is the first USA show that I've stuck with for a full season since "Political Animals," if you count that as a series. If you take "Political Animals" as a miniseries, I haven't completed a season of a USA show since the penultimate season of "Burn Notice."

But merely being interested in and sometimes appreciative of "Mr. Robot" apparently isn't enough. I like "Mr. Robot" and can't speak highly enough of Rami Malek's lead performance, but I remain distanced from the show and unable to be as impressed with the show as it often seems to be with itself. But I'm in the minority here and friends, colleagues and loved ones have been impressed enough for two of me, filling the summer months with waves of adulation for "Mr. Robot," celebrating the things it does that are apparently innovative and paradigm shifting. This Slate story -- the headline, actually and not the story itself -- raves that in Malek's Elliot, "Mr. Robot" has created "the new TV archetype of the alienated hero." That's clickbait-y headline-writing hyperbole and not the perfectly well-reasoned argument of the article itself.

The "alienated hero" isn't a new archetype on TV or in any other form of storytelling and separating the alienated hero from the anti-hero is a false differentiation. Tony Soprano is a Golden Age Anti-Hero. He's also entirely an alienated hero, battling depression and insecurities that put him at odds with the masculine ideals perpetuated by the men involved in That Thing of Ours. "The Sopranos" is an entire series about Tony trying to get well enough to reassimilate into a subculture in which assimilation often means death. If you think that the ending of "The Sopranos" is the death of Tony Soprano, it can be read that Tony's "death" comes after an episode devoid of Dr. Melfi, an episode in which he stands in his backyard in quiet repose, free from the ducks that were quacking in his head. Alienated heroes can be anti-heroes and vice versa and the Venn Diagram of the two contains all the overlap you'd ever want.

In praising "Mr. Robot," there's been much talk of its uniqueness, accompanied by many lengthy lists of comparisons. But nobody's comparing it to the one show I want people to compare it to, so I have to get this on the record, even if I don't have time to finish or revise this blog post in the way I'd like to.

Because when I think of stories about an alienated hero battling mental illness and joining with a group of computer-using misfits to bring down a monolithic industrial conglomerate using stolen documentation and the power of cyber-connectivity...

Well, I'm still thinking of Mike White's HBO classic "Enlightened," which was canceled in 2013 after two low-rated seasons.

If this post does nothing else, it should just get you thinking about how great a conversation would be between Rami Malek's Elliot and Laura Dern's Amy Jellicoe or, better yet, a conversation composed of dueling unreliable voiceover narrators, one plagued by daddy issues and the other by mommy problems.

Read on...

Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's 'Scream Queens'

[You know the drill, and I will continue to mention it in each and every one of these posts that I do: This is *not* a review. Pilots change. Sometimes a lot. Often for the better. Sometimes for the worse. But they change. Actual reviews may be coming in September and perhaps October (and maybe midseason in some cases). This is, however, a brief gut reaction to not-for-air pilots. I know some people will be all "These are reviews." If you've read me, you've read my reviews and you know this isn't what they look like.]

Show: "Scream Queens" (FOX)
The Pitch: "Ryan Murphy's Harper's Island"
Quick Response: The suspicion that FOX was hiding "Scream Queens" for critics (despite airing the full pilot at Comic-Con last month) proves pleasantly unfounded with Ryan Murphy's latest, which comes across as a much more effective effort at what MTV is failing with on "Scream." With the full "Glee" team -- Murphy (directing as well), Ian Brennan and Brad Falchuk -- reuniting, it's no surprise that "Scream Queens" is much lighter on its feet than "American Horror Story," a bit less self-consciously perverse and envelope-edge-pushing. More "gross" than "scary" or "genuinely disturbing," "Scream Queens" is full of out-sized performances from actors, women mostly, who seem to be having a lot of fun, which has always been the thing the Ryan Murphy Factory produced most effectively. Emma Roberts commits maniacally to playing the ultimate mean girl and Jamie Lee Curtis has a long-absence twinkle in her eye as a fraternity-hating dean. I've been convinced that Skyler Samuels was headed for a certain level of stardom since I was one of a dozen people depressed by the demise of "Chloe King" and she's nicely used as the "good girl" here. It's also notable that usually personality-free Diego Boneta, previously elevated to the status of place-holder leading man without any credentials, finds his calling as a Ryan Murphy mannequin, as does Nick Jonas (and I suspect Oliver Hudson will eventually join them in usefulness, though it hasn't happened yet... but this is just my gut feeling). There are several other little fun supporting performances, though don't expect much from Ariana Grande, whose capacity here won't surprise you and whose presence here has barely been capitalized upon. The writers do catty bickering well and there are some moments of verbal hair-pulling and face-scratching that made me chuckle and a couple bits of stylized violence that are played with a wink, a nudge and a vat of fake blood. Parts of "Scream Queens" grate, but that's not unexpected in a Ryan Murphy-ish way, especially his trademark inclusive ghoulishness, where he takes a demographically underrepresented character -- The obese maid! The deaf sorority pledge! -- and does a "I'm being sympathetic" feint before "But not too sympathetic!" grotesquerie. But mostly, I reacted more positively to "Scream Queens" than most of Murphy's work, perhaps because it's astoundingly devoid of anything self-important. It's a snarky, fast-moving college murder romp that isn't trying to be trickier or more audacious than it is.
Desire To Watch Again: Sure. Why not. Count me in for this one, at least for a while. It'll go south. They always do. But maybe it won't go south until Season 2?

Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Code Black'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's 'Blood and Oil' aka 'Oil Tree Hill'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Life in Pieces'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's 'People Are Talking'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's 'Rosewood'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Limitless'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's 'Dr. Ken'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's 'Blindspot'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's 'Grandfathered'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Angel From Hell'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's ' 'Quantico'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's ' 'The Player'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's ' 'The Grinder'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Supergirl'
All of my 2014 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2013 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2012 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2011 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2010 Take Me To The Pilots Entries

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

'Fargo' Season 2 Premiere - 5 Quick Reactions

On Monday (July 27) afternoon, FX informally kicked off the Summer TCA Press Tour with a number of screenings of the Season 2 premiere of "Fargo."

We're two-plus months away from the actual "Fargo" premiere, which will be announced when FX presents at press tour on August 7 and FX has already told us that we'll have three or four episodes to watch before we review the new season. In a series as marvelously novelistic as "Fargo" -- Season 1 was my No.1 show of 2014 -- I wouldn't even want to write a full review on the basis of just one episode.

However, I've got no hesitation about writing a handful of bullet points on what was and still is my most anticipated returning show of the fall.

So let's go...

The known unknowns of the 2015-16 TV season on the eve of press tour

Yesterday's "Code Black" posting was the last Take Me To The Pilots entry that I was able to do for a fall network series. It was the 14th TMTTP for Fall 2015, a number that might increase before mid-September, but which will still come in far below what we normally see for the start of a new season.

In Rumsfeldian terms, I guess these 14 entries, as of today, represent the known knowns:

Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Code Black'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's 'Blood and Oil' aka 'Oil Tree Hill'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Life in Pieces'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's 'People Are Talking'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's 'Rosewood'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Limitless'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's 'Dr. Ken'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's 'Blindspot'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's 'Grandfathered'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Angel From Hell'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's ' 'Quantico'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's ' 'The Player'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's ' 'The Grinder'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Supergirl'

That's not many and if you've been following along, you have a sense of my general enthusiasm.

Continued below...

Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Code Black'

[You know the drill, and I will continue to mention it in each and every one of these posts that I do: This is *not* a review. Pilots change. Sometimes a lot. Often for the better. Sometimes for the worse. But they change. Actual reviews may be coming in September and perhaps October (and maybe midseason in some cases). This is, however, a brief gut reaction to not-for-air pilots. I know some people will be all "These are reviews." If you've read me, you've read my reviews and you know this isn't what they look like.]

Show: "Code Black" (CBS)
The Pitch: "Los Angeles Med" or "LA-ER"
Quick Response: I could probably just file "Code Black" under "Sturdy medical dramas that will fill a gaping TV hole for some, but won't be necessary for me," but that would require that I have a needlessly complicated filing system, which I don't. Well directed by David Semel, the "Code Black" pilot has a distinctive look, almost as if it were shot through a chartreuse filter with light oversaturated throughout, and captures the chaos of an emergency room nicely, even if the sort of aesthetic genre reinvention of the "E.R." pilot isn't in the cards. Creator Michael Seitzman is also invested in the chaos, crafting an ER in which it's endlessly repeated that every second is the difference between life and death, but every doctor can spare a minute to pontificate on matters of curative decorum, or to provide a key piece of expositional biographical detail. Like there are a lot of walk-and-talk moments in this pilot, but there may be nearly as many inappropriate-pause-and-talk moments, when all that viewers are likely to want after the pilot are scenes of Luis Guzman's senior nurse leading ER tours and sequences in which Marcia Gay Harden and Raza Jaffrey's docs bicker about medical ethics. The first-year residents all get a character detail or two and none of them feel like anything more than window dressing after the first episode. The hook of "Code Black" is to be spending time in a Los Angeles area emergency room at its moments of greatest intensity, but the scenes likely to have the greatest impact are when it cheats. The key action set piece involves a surgery performed in the midst of freeway traffic that feels like it was yanked from a different show. And the episode ends with a piece of emotional pandering that's simultaneously excruciating in its contrived mawkishness, but also probably has a blunt force effectiveness that will leave many viewers sobbing. Look, there's an audience that craves the sort of medical drama in which people say things like "Life is measured here in split seconds. Hesitate and people die." over and over again, but perhaps also the sort of medical drama that isn't necessarily about which pretty doctors are sleeping with which other pretty doctors and that's not a value judgment about "Grey's Anatomy" on any level. Here, the pretty doctors don't have time to flirt, but they periodically get sprayed by arterial blood, which never damages their prettiness. This is, as I said above, a good showcase for Luis Guzman, even if he dominates the pilot's opening minutes and then is essentially MIA or useless for the last 30 minutes. It's also a good vehicle for Marcia Gay Harden, who creates near-effortless authority with a bare minimum of character. [It's also funny to think that Harden was originally supposed to play the role now taken by Bonnie Somerville and that Harden's role was set for Maggie Grace.] The other actors are mostly just there and only Ben Hollingsworth leaves a negative impression, though I think that's just a poorly written character, rather than a performance problem.
Desire To Watch Again: Shrug. This is a decent pilot, but it's a decent in a genre that I haven't necessarily been missing in my viewing rotation. If you have? It's decent! "Code Black" looks good and has a couple good performances and assuming you aren't me, you probably won't be offended by the manipulative trickery in the last 15 minutes. I'll probably tune in for a second episode, but not necessarily a third.

Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's 'Blood and Oil' aka 'Oil Tree Hill'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Life in Pieces'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's 'People Are Talking'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's 'Rosewood'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Limitless'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's 'Dr. Ken'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's 'Blindspot'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's 'Grandfathered'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Angel From Hell'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's ' 'Quantico'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's ' 'The Player'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's ' 'The Grinder'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Supergirl'
All of my 2014 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2013 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2012 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2011 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2010 Take Me To The Pilots Entries

Saturday, July 25, 2015

Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's 'Blood and Oil' aka 'Oil Tree Hill'

[You know the drill, and I will continue to mention it in each and every one of these posts that I do: This is *not* a review. Pilots change. Sometimes a lot. Often for the better. Sometimes for the worse. But they change. Actual reviews may be coming in September and perhaps October (and maybe midseason in some cases). This is, however, a brief gut reaction to not-for-air pilots. I know some people will be all "These are reviews." If you've read me, you've read my reviews and you know this isn't what they look like.]

Show: "Blood and Oil" (ABC)
The Pitch: "Oil Tree Hill" has replaced "The Nate Archibald & Cappie Oil Hour" as my title for this one.
Quick Response: "Blood and Oil" may be my biggest disappointment of the fall, but it's entirely possible that the disappointment is built entirely on my flawed expectations and not on the series itself. I've seen "The Overnighters" and several other New American Boomtown documentaries, so I know that there's an awesome, high-stakes human story developing in the Dakotas that can be told sensationally with only minor soap-y embellishment, think "Deadwood 2015." But "Blood and Oil" wants to be "Longitudinally Elevated Dallas" and nothing more. It's a choice that is totally valid, but if you go in wanting cable-style nuance and grounding from "Blood and Oil," you'll probably laugh for five minutes and quit. If you go in expecting "Nashville" -- a more logical expectation, I admit -- well, there's guilty pleasure potential here, I guess. [Note that for a soap opera, "Blood and Oil" isn't vaguely steamy. Dunno if that's a directing problem, a lack of chemistry between actors or what.] If "Blood and Oil" wanted to be better, it needed a leading man less bland than Chace Crawford though, in the interest of full credit, Crawford is more plausibly human here than he ever was on "Gossip Girl." Scott Michael Foster fares a bit better because Cappie is playing Evan -- You're welcome, "Greek" fans -- or at least Unreconstructed Evan, as a petulant rich boy with daddy issues. The high stakes -- it's right there in the title -- don't give Rebecca Rittenhouse the chance to showcase the humor that was her best asset on "Red Band Society," but she's still got a '50s ingenue kinda wide-eyed expressiveness about her that I dig and that could find purchase here. Early footage made it look like Don Johnson was playing the JR here, but at least in the early going it's nothing nearly that fun, but at least he's sturdy. Delroy Lindo is horribly, tragically, inexplicably underused in the pilot, but "Horribly, Tragically, Inexplicably Underused" could be the title of Delroy Lindo's autobiography. I recommend more Delroy Lindo going forward. I also recommend either steering away from the Native American stuff or doing it better, because the line "Whoever kills a spirit animal is cursed" from a never-seen-again NA character got my biggest laugh from any drama or comedy pilot this year. There are a lot of giggles in the "Blood and Oil" pilot, actually, a lot of heightened drama moments that play a bit more silly than perhaps intended, but one man's giggle is another man's (or woman's) giddy glee when it comes to slo-mo flipping cars or grown men mud-wrestling. At least the reactions are visceral, eh? I mean, I wanted provocative and "Blood and Oil" provokes.
Desire To Watch Again: Now that I know not to expect "Oil Tree Hill" to be GOOD, I'm perfectly willing to watch a couple more episodes. I watched two seasons of "Revenge," three seasons of "Nashville" and I'll watch some of this as well for the parts of the cast that I like. The pilot also ends with a good cliffhanger, or at least a cliffhanger that I'm curious to see resolved.

Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Life in Pieces'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's 'People Are Talking'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's 'Rosewood'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Limitless'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's 'Dr. Ken'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's 'Blindspot'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's 'Grandfathered'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Angel From Hell'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's ' 'Quantico'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's ' 'The Player'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's ' 'The Grinder'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Supergirl'
All of my 2014 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2013 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2012 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2011 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2010 Take Me To The Pilots Entries

Friday, July 24, 2015

Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Life in Pieces'

[You know the drill, and I will continue to mention it in each and every one of these posts that I do: This is *not* a review. Pilots change. Sometimes a lot. Often for the better. Sometimes for the worse. But they change. Actual reviews may be coming in September and perhaps October (and maybe midseason in some cases). This is, however, a brief gut reaction to not-for-air pilots. I know some people will be all "These are reviews." If you've read me, you've read my reviews and you know this isn't what they look like.]

Show: "Life in Pieces" (CBS)
The Pitch: "Mo' Modern Familyhood"
Quick Response: "Life in Pieces" is weirdly proud of doing what family sitcoms have been doing... forever. The subhead boasts "One big family. Four short stories. Every week." So... You mean it's a family sitcom with an A-story a B-story a C-story and a D-story? How revolutionary. I guess the hook is that the stories are told individually and then maybe they come together in a fourth concluding story? It's hard to tell, because the pilot for "Life in Pieces," directed by Jason Winer as if you didn't have enough reasons for "Modern Family" comparisons, actually struggles to gel the storylines in a meaningful narrative or thematic way and also has no connection to early loglines for the show, which mentioned using different perspectives within the family to tell single stories. "Life in Pieces" has all of these fancy ideas about what it is or isn't, which blur the line pointing to what it actually appears to be: A comedy pilot with perhaps the best cast of any new show this season and a couple decent laughs and at least the pretense of some underlying family drama. I'd honestly scrap whatever structural innovation the show is pretending to have in order to concentrate on what would probably be the "best self" for "Life in Pieces," which is a half-hour version of "Parenthood" -- you've even got Dianne Wiest, for heaven's sake, if you want continuity to the movie -- with the balance shifted to laughs. Nobody associated with "Life in Pieces" would want to admit it, but you have Wiest and James Brolin standing in for Zeek and Camille Braverman, Dan Bakkedahl and Betsy Brandt in for Adam and Kristina, Colin Hanks and Zoe Lister-Jones as proxies for Julia and Joel (this is the flimsiest comparison) and Thomas Sadowski and Angelique Cabral as the Crosby and Jasmine. It's almost eerie when you step back. "Life in Pieces" is, in fact, like so many familiar shows and features so many actors that you probably like already that you can slide into the pilot with amazing comfort and you don't require any getting-to-know-you exposition, which is a tremendous relief. And none of the actors is being asked to stretch tremendously -- Betsy Brandt playing light may surprise you if you missed "The Michael J. Fox Show" and Dan Bakkedahl playing less of a sad-sack than usual is also nice -- so it's even easier to just sign on for this as a family. "Life in Pieces" doesn't feel much like a CBS sitcom, both because of the single-cam trappings and because of a certain coarseness that particularly rears its head in the Hanks/Lister-Jones story and maybe because this isn't what CBS does normally, nobody in development was able to tighten the punchlines to get a couple more laughs. And for reasons of style and tone, it's going to be a bad match with "The Big Bang Theory," even if CBS wants to use its multi-cam hit to encourage people to watch "Life in Pieces." But if this were airing in ABC's Wednesday comedy lineup, it would feel like another promising family half-hour. So I guess my non-review bottom line here is, "The allegedly innovative structure is either a total MacGuffin or just poorly deployed, but otherwise, this feels less like a pilot and more like an middle-of-the-road episode of a long-running series that I mostly enjoy with a cast that I mostly love." That implies that there are better episodes ahead for "Life in Pieces."
Desire To Watch Again: Reasonable. Why not? I'll watch to see if the structure has any ongoing purpose. Mostly, I'll watch for the cast. There's a really good comedy here... in pieces. It's just OK for now. Let's see if it comes together down the road.

Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's 'People Are Talking'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's 'Rosewood'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Limitless'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's 'Dr. Ken'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's 'Blindspot'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's 'Grandfathered'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Angel From Hell'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's ' 'Quantico'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's ' 'The Player'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's ' 'The Grinder'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Supergirl'
All of my 2014 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2013 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2012 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2011 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2010 Take Me To The Pilots Entries

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Thoughts on the 'Wayward Pines' finale - 'Dear abbie...'

When FOX's "Wayward Pines" premiered in May, I was positive, albeit with some tempering.

Through six of the event series' 10 episodes, I felt like showrunner Chad Hodge and company had pretty successfully improved upon Blake Crouch's thin-as-a-literary pancake book trilogy, adding some extra layers to the source material and visualizing the tricky world nicely.

The first five episodes were basically Crouch's first book and I thought the way the series handled the improbable twist reveal was perhaps the biggest improvement of all, building a multi-tiered mystery out of Ben and Ethan's near-simultaneous discovery, as well as Theresa's increasing inquisitiveness. I also liked the heavily expositional sixth episode, which was driven by great flashback work.

At the time, I thought "Wayward Pines" was a fun summer thriller with the potential to be something more than that if it found a way to resolve itself that was more satisfactory than Crouch's two-books-of-filler approach.

Thursday (July 23) marked the finale either for the first season of "Wayward Pines" or, more likely, for the one-and-done event series it was always announced as.

And the final judgement?

[Obvious spoilers coming... Read on...]

[You know the drill, and I will continue to mention it in each and every one of these posts that I do: This is *not* a review. Pilots change. Sometimes a lot. Often for the better. Sometimes for the worse. But they change. Actual reviews may be coming in September and perhaps October (and maybe midseason in some cases). This is, however, a brief gut reaction to not-for-air pilots. I know some people will be all "These are reviews." If you've read me, you've read my reviews and you know this isn't what they look like.]

Show: "People Are Talking" (NBC)
The Pitch: "All in the Family: Couple's Edition"
Quick Response: I can tell that there are conversations that creator DJ Nash wants to have here that are, if not revolutionary, at least interesting. The premise is that Russell (Tone Bell) & Angie (Bresha Webb) and Mitch (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) & Tracy (Vanessa Lachey, eventually, but Meaghan Rath in the original pilot sent to critics) are couples who like to have Big & Edgy Conversations about race and religion and gender and relationships and that they mean well, even if they don't always know the right things to say or the right way to say them. Nothing in the pilot feels like "People Are Talking" is giving the edge of the envelope a gigantic push, but the desire to show conversations people might really have is in earnest and I credit it for that, even if the pilot has to be inevitably bland and dated in its targets. To get a more hearty endorsement, "People Are Talking" would have to be actually funny, which it isn't. The ability to be "funny" gets lost between "Aren't we outrageous!" and "But we're not actually racist/sexist/whatever, so please don't worry!" It's like if every time Archie Bunker said something awful, he quickly turned to Meathead and said, "No, but seriously what would African-Americans prefer I call them?" and Gloria turned to the camera and said, "My dad's just doing the best he can!" It's neither politically correct, nor butting against notions of political correctness. It's just genial button-pushing, which doesn't go far, but with a big assist from the cast, it could have potential if it advances FAST. Tone Bell was the best part of NBC's "Bad Judge" and he's the best thing here, though he has all of the lines you can tell Nash is proudest to have written, which is both a good and a bad thing. Bell has good rapport with Bresha Webb, the cast member I know least. Mark-Paul Gosselaar seems to be having fun playing a nerdy and sheepish guy, relishing simultaneously looking like Zack Morris, but having other characters pretend he doesn't. I'm sad to see Rath go, because she brings a brightness to comedies, a charm and liveliness that isn't the same as simply being beautiful, as the show may well learn when Lachey takes over. The show is determined to concentrate on its four characters in different pairings and permutations, but when it comes to the pilot, that means a lot of expositional dialogue rather than showing things, so Mitch tells Russell "Are you really upset about this, or is this a bit for your stand-up?" and Russell tells Mitch, "Professor, you're not teaching your ethics class right now" and somebody thinks that's better writing than showing Russell do stand-up or Mitch in the classroom. I disagree, but maybe we'll move past that in Episode 2.
Desire To Watch Again: Vanessa Lachey has displayed hints of being comedically game in the past and I definitely will watch a revised pilot, plus an episode or two to see if "People Are Talking" becomes fresher and sharper and, most importantly, funnier outside of the partially excusable embalmed pilot structure. A show can mean well, but if it doesn't do comedy better than this, I won't stick around.

Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's 'Rosewood'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Limitless'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's 'Dr. Ken'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's 'Blindspot'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's 'Grandfathered'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Angel From Hell'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's ' 'Quantico'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's ' 'The Player'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's ' 'The Grinder'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Supergirl'
All of my 2014 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2013 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2012 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2011 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2010 Take Me To The Pilots Entries

Firewall & Iceberg No.292 - 'Hannibal,' 'Orange Is The New Black' and more

I forgot to post this here yesterday, but a new installment of The Firewall & Iceberg Podcast is up over at HitFix.

Because we lost a 30-minute segment that we recorded on Emmy nominations, our revised Emmy nomination discussion is a little bit disjointed, but it probably covers some of the necessary ground, what with the nominations going out last week and all.

We talked about the third season of "Hannibal" at the midpoint, why I think the generally superb show has stumbled a bit this summer, but why I've still appreciated it.

Since Alan finished "Orange Is The New Black" Season 3, we also chatted about the whole Netflix season, though if we forgot to talk about your favorite story arcs, I apologize.

Firewall & Iceberg Podcast No.292.

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's 'Rosewood'

[You know the drill, and I will continue to mention it in each and every one of these posts that I do: This is *not* a review. Pilots change. Sometimes a lot. Often for the better. Sometimes for the worse. But they change. Actual reviews may be coming in September and perhaps October (and maybe midseason in some cases). This is, however, a brief gut reaction to not-for-air pilots. I know some people will be all "These are reviews." If you've read me, you've read my reviews and you know this isn't what they look like.]

Show: "Rosewood" (FOX)
The Pitch: "We need something to air with 'Empire.'" "Something compatible?" "Meh. Only on the most superficial level."
Quick Response: Not to accuse FOX of scheduling-by-profiling, but "Rosewood" has essentially been scheduled in a slot paired with breakout smash "Empire" because star Morris Chestnut is African-American and not because anything in the tone, style, structure, pacing or... anything is really joining the shows together. Despite the Miami setting and occasionally flashy director Richard Shepard behind the camera, "Rosewood" is a pretty bland affair, more compatible with TNT or Blue Skies USA's brand of procedurals than any recent FOX successes in general or FOX's midseason breakout Wednesday smash "Empire" in specific. Chestnut's Dr. Beaumont Rosewood, Jr. -- it's a name that stays hilarious in each nickname and variant -- is a Private Pathology Consultant, something I know both because the character puts up billboards all around Miami and because he has to keep repeating his professional specifics, because if you don't remember those key distinctions -- "private" and "consultant" in particular -- you'd never guess what the hook was that attracted creator Todd Harthan to this character and this world. The point is that "Rosie" doesn't work for the Miami PD, but he often works with them, so it's a different relationship than it would be if he were just a police pathologist. And because he's able to take his money and channel it directly into his business, he has fancy toys which, at least in the pilot, are only a little thrilling. "Rosewood" may conceivably be hamstrung by being too pseudo-realistic, because nothing Rosie does in the pilot is anything you haven't seen a TV pathologist do before, usually with fabulously flashy gizmos that don't exist yet. But Rosie does it and you go... Shrug. Rosie is also, to put it kindly, really annoying. He's got an array of medical issues that leave him talking about how much he loves life and savors each moment, but he does it with a cocky, optimistic smugness that we're supposed to find lovable because they're coming from Morris Chestnut. And I guess I'm pleased that this is the meatiest role that Chestnut has been given in years and he surely has the swagger of a star, but I don't think the admire-to-pity-to-empathize ratio with Rosie is properly calibrated in the early-going, especially as relates to the supporting characters. I didn't buy his interest in newly returned Miami Detective Villa (Jaina Lee Ortiz), which is bad because it's one of the character's key humanizing relationships. His care for a young girl in his building -- "Ben & Kate" vet Maggie Elizabeth Jones' Bella -- is just straight-up pandering and never feels developed. And it's hard to get what's happening with Rosie's grumpy mentor, played by Clancy Brown. These relationships all fail even though the characters are all reading expositional dialogue at each other, announcing each other's credentials and whatnot. At every stage, I think this pilot needed more development, but FOX needed contenders to go with "Empire" even more.
Desire To Watch Again: Almost none. If the clunkiness and kinks get worked out, I'm still not sure that "Rosewood" plays as more than a generic procedural and it's nowhere near that yet. Some viewers, though, will probably appreciate Rosie's optimism over the familiar House/Rake FOX procedural grumps. And plenty of viewers will be happy just to look at Morris Chestnut. So be it.

Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Limitless'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's 'Dr. Ken'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's 'Blindspot'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's 'Grandfathered'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Angel From Hell'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's ' 'Quantico'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's ' 'The Player'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's ' 'The Grinder'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Supergirl'
All of my 2014 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2013 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2012 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2011 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2010 Take Me To The Pilots Entries

Friday, July 17, 2015

Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Limitless'

[You know the drill, and I will continue to mention it in each and every one of these posts that I do: This is *not* a review. Pilots change. Sometimes a lot. Often for the better. Sometimes for the worse. But they change. Actual reviews may be coming in September and perhaps October (and maybe midseason in some cases). This is, however, a brief gut reaction to not-for-air pilots. I know some people will be all "These are reviews." If you've read me, you've read my reviews and you know this isn't what they look like.]

Show: "Limitless" (CBS)
The Pitch: "Bradley Cooper is prepared to make periodic appearance, schedule-willing." "'Kitchen Confidential' star Bradley Cooper?" "Is there any other Bradley Cooper?" "Sold."
Quick Response: As a feature film, "Limitless" as kinda "Man-Lucy," a stylish and astoundingly stupid movie that suffered every second you stopped to ponder the plot, but moved fast enough that you rarely questioned its "Flowers For Algernon For The Digital/Pharmaceutical Age" conceit. And as a TV show, directed by Marc Webb, it functions exactly the same way. It's flashy, dumb fun for maybe 33 minutes, as Jake McDorman's Brian Finch pops a pill and goes from music-playing slacker to Chuck Bartowski in a matter of minutes, all through the power of neural enhancement that you really don't want to quibble with excessively. McDorman's voiceover adds casual humor and also will force at least five viewers to think of "Limitless" as a sequel to "Manhattan Love Story," while Webb plays around with different aesthetic representations of Finch's newfound powers, flashy devices ranging from contrasting color palettes, Jake McDorman duplication and manipulations of time and space. It's a pleasant distraction from the reality that after popping good ol' NZT, rather than becoming something new or different, the main character just becomes, as I said, Chuck or The Guy from "Intelligence" or, more frequently, the latest permutation in TV's insatiable appetite for Sherlock-esque sleuths whose ability to know literally everything is often much more creepy than endearing and is almost always a cop-out for writers. "Limitless" is, perhaps, even less believable than "Chuck" or "Intelligence" because of its insistence on justifying the mechanics of its premise. But you won't care until a time that is rather unfortunate. "Limitless" grinds to a halt at the exact moment that Bradley Cooper's Eddie Morra pops up to exposit on how "Limitless" will function as a weekly series, to introduce unnecessary secret-keeping and to stanch all narrative flow through an extended and lazily cut conversation that nobody was going to trim around, because when you have multi-Oscar nominee Bradley Cooper, you make sure every second of his footage appears on-screen. From there, "Limitless" becomes committed in setting the table for subsequent episodes and it's basically exactly like "Chuck" and "Intelligence" and every other "Gifted person and handler" series and you realize how little effort was put into expanding this world. And then there are backstory details introduced about Jennifer Carpenter's FBI agent -- so far a waste of Jennifer Carpenter's swearing dexterity -- that are, again, the sloppiest thing anybody could have conceived of to push all of this forward. And in a 10-minute period, I went from being ready to watch "Limitless" on a casual weekly basis -- It's just another variant on "Castle," "Forever," "Elementary" and any other show that might accompany folding laundry -- to putting "Limitless" on one-episode probation.
Desire To Watch Again: Stupid shows about smart people are becoming part of CBS' brand and I really think the network would have paired "Limitless" with "Scorpion" except that a Monday 10 p.m. slot would have made the "Intelligence" comparisons -- Josh Holloway, Meaghan Ory and Marg Helgenberger can be traded straight-up for McDorman, Carpender and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as character types -- entirely unavoidable. I'm curious about a second episode, but a lot will depend on how McDorman's character evolves -- the "Greek" veteran is prone to smugness as a default -- and how many of Webb's flourishes remain to keep the look fresh.

Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's 'Dr. Ken'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's 'Blindspot'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's 'Grandfathered'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Angel From Hell'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's ' 'Quantico'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's ' 'The Player'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's ' 'The Grinder'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Supergirl'
All of my 2014 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2013 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2012 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2011 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2010 Take Me To The Pilots Entries

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's 'Dr. Ken'

[You know the drill, and I will continue to mention it in each and every one of these posts that I do: This is *not* a review. Pilots change. Sometimes a lot. Often for the better. Sometimes for the worse. But they change. Actual reviews may be coming in September and perhaps October (and maybe midseason in some cases). This is, however, a brief gut reaction to not-for-air pilots. I know some people will be all "These are reviews." If you've read me, you've read my reviews and you know this isn't what they look like.]

Show: "Dr. Ken" (ABC)
The Pitch: "ABC: We're the Diverse Family Network"
Quick Response: It's awesome, by the way, that ABC has carved out this Diverse Family brand and that they're making it work and that they keep adding family shows that are fairly good, as well as just different from what other networks are trying. "Dr. Ken" is nowhere near as good as "Fresh Off The Boat," "Black-ish" or "The Goldbergs," but it was less annoying than both ABC's promo reel made it look and less annoying in its second half than in its first. That first half is just Ken Jeong mugging for 10 minutes, flailing his limbs, doing not especially funny impressions of older Asian relatives and flailing his limbs some more. I quickly started to feel just a bit uncomfortable for co-stars including Suzy Nakamura, Tisha Campbell-Martin, Jonathan Slavin and Dave Foley, who all seem much more comfortable with the volume necessary to look like a human even while playing for laughs in the multi-cam format. Jeong's desperation for audience approval, something that's always been part of his comedic persona, is at its worst in the milieu. But halfway through, maybe somebody whispered, "Chill, dude" in Jeong's ear, or else the writers decided they no longer needed to have Dr. Ken impersonate and insult every person he interacted with and with that modification, I was able to find a couple lines of funny dialogue and some sweetness in the family relationship. I think Krista Marie Yu may actually be good as Jeong and Nakamura's teenage daughter, but it's a little sad to see Albert Tsai stumble over the line from effective sitcom kid mugging to just mugging. This fan of "Trophy Wife" and "Fresh Off The Boat" initially wanted "Dr. Ken" to just become the Albert Tsai Show, but that instinct slipped away. So much of ABC's push for "Dr. Ken" is about Jeong and his real medical credentials and all of that, but he's probably the weakest part of the show so far and I think the uncertainty about how to pitch the main character poisons his interactions with the rest of the ensemble in the first half and then he just becomes forgettable in the second half. As a single-lead-driven comedy, I don't think "Dr. Ken" is going to be able to work at all, but "Last Man Standing" started out as a similarly imbalanced vehicle for Tim Allen and then settled into something more ensemble-y. When you have pros like Campbell-Martin, Foley, Slavin and Nakamura, it'd be a mistake not to lean on them more.
Desire To Watch Again: Pretty low. Jeong's name, his first name at least, is in the title and he also co-wrote and co-created the show. He's been a scene-stealing supporting player for a long time and you know he wants to see if he's ready to be a lead. The pilot suggests the answer may be "No," but if the improvement of the second half carries through into the second episode, maybe "Dr. Ken" can be mediocre instead of bad.

Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's 'Blindspot'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's 'Grandfathered'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Angel From Hell'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's ' 'Quantico'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's ' 'The Player'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's ' 'The Grinder'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Supergirl'
All of my 2014 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2013 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2012 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2011 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2010 Take Me To The Pilots Entries

2015 Emmy Nomination Thoughts: Diversity, Genre-love, Snubs and More

Thank you to the TV Academy for holding off on nominations until 8:30 this morning, rather than doing the normal stupid thing and announcing at 5:30 a.m. PT.

That means that I'm still chewing over this year's nominations, but predictably they got a lot right and a lot wrong and that's just how these things go.

I've got 20 observations on trends, surprises and snubs. Or at least I've got 20 observations so far. I'll probably keep adding to this story as I remember or notice things.

Check 'em out below...

Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's 'Blindspot'

[You know the drill, and I will continue to mention it in each and every one of these posts that I do: This is *not* a review. Pilots change. Sometimes a lot. Often for the better. Sometimes for the worse. But they change. Actual reviews may be coming in September and perhaps October (and maybe midseason in some cases). This is, however, a brief gut reaction to not-for-air pilots. I know some people will be all "These are reviews." If you've read me, you've read my reviews and you know this isn't what they look like.]

Show: "Blindspot" (NBC)
The Pitch: "Jane Bourne" "Prison Break without the Prison" "Amnesia Chuck"
Quick Response: This is either an insult or praise: I'm not sure I've ever seen a pilot as uninterested in character, at least on a traditional expositional level, as "Blindspot." This could be intentional because the writers want to lead with plot and mystery and not muddy the waters? It may be intentional because the main character has no memories/past/characteristics and therefore it was decided to restrict the other characters to job title and "doggedly determined" for the pilot. So for Sullivan Stapleton's FBI Agent Kurt Weller, all of the normal shorthand character details that you'd normally expect -- A picture of a dead wife, a reference to Afghanistan, etc -- are absent. I can't even tell you where Weller is from, because while Stapleton does many things well -- he aces "concerned authority" -- American accents are something he does comically poorly and while he *may* be trying a Southern accent, my certainty on that front wavered with every line of dialogue. I'm assuming the characteristic sparsity was intentional because "Blindspot" creator Martin Gero did character well on "LA Complex," though he also did humor well and that's absent here. Gero and director Mark Pellington are mostly invested in several tiers of nicely shot sleight-of-hand in the pilot. You've got the "Let's spend as much time as possible circling Jaimie Alexander's tattoo-covered naked body without, you know, showing her naked body because we're on NBC" sleight-of-hand and then you've got the, "Let's make things go by so quickly, narratively, that you never stop and ponder under what circumstances any of this would make sense either as efficient gameplay for a criminal mastermind or... anything." Because there's no way to apply even an iota of logic to "Blindspot" and expect to be rewarded. It's all, "Wouldn't this be a wacky thing to occur?" and then, "Oh look, Jaimie Alexander naked and Sullivan Stapleton squinting!" A couple times, I got bogged down in thought and pondered the shell game that the creators were playing. I got distracted by the pilot's puzzle-of-the-week, which wasn't especially creative and featured some stunts/confrontations that were more silly and less inspired than an idea this tenuous should have for Week 1. I also got really distracted by the "twist" ending, which seemed to me to violate the show's sense of perspective and its dissemination of information. So rather than leaving me with interest piqued, "Blindspot" left me saying, "Stop cheating!" But I was never bored.
Desire To Watch Again: Stupid accent aside, I like Stapleton. I think Alexander is doing as much as she can, given that you feel uncomfortable for her for every second of the pilot. Rob Brown and Marianne Jean-Baptiste head up a decent ensemble. So I'll watch a few more episodes, but disbelief will be harder to suspend with every second, since the pilot doesn't even offer worthwhile hints on the big "Who would do this?" and "WHY?!?!?" answers.

Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's 'Grandfathered'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Angel From Hell'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's ' 'Quantico'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's ' 'The Player'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's ' 'The Grinder'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Supergirl'
All of my 2014 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2013 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2012 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2011 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2010 Take Me To The Pilots Entries

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Whew. Firewall & Iceberg Podcast is back!

Last week we professed caution about the ongoing existence of The Firewall & Iceberg Podcast and we weren't entirely messing with you.

It wasn't war or anything. My tenure at HitFix.com was coming to an end and there were logistics that had to be hammered out so that I could continue the podcast on a freelance basis. And as usually happens when both sides benefit from accommodations... A deal was made, contracts were signed and...

Firewall & Iceberg Podcast is BACK!

In all candidness, it's not like we were ever gone. Our last podcast was last week. But...

This is installment No.291 and it's podcast No.290 with both of us and it's all half-hour comedies, with reviews of "The Jim Gaffigan Show," "Impastor," "Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll," "Married" and "BoJack Horseman" as well as our Summer ReWatch takes on the finales for "Alf" and "Dinosaurs."

Here's the link to Firewall & Iceberg Podcast No.291.

We're glad these suckers are continuing.

Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's 'Grandfathered'

Monday, July 13, 2015

Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Angel From Hell'

[You know the drill, and I will continue to mention it in each and every one of these posts that I do: This is *not* a review. Pilots change. Sometimes a lot. Often for the better. Sometimes for the worse. But they change. Actual reviews may be coming in September and perhaps October (and maybe midseason in some cases). This is, however, a brief gut reaction to not-for-air pilots. I know some people will be all "These are reviews." If you've read me, you've read my reviews and you know this isn't what they look like.]

Show: "Angel From Hell" (CBS)
The Pitch: "She's the original angel from hell!" "You mean Lucifer?" "No. That's on FOX. This is more like 'Cupid' only with guardian angels."
Quick Response: I talked about "The Grinder" as a pilot-y pilot, but "Angel From Hell" makes "The Grinder" look structurally relaxed and easily repeatable. The 22-minute running time of "Angel From Hell" is about justifying why, on even the lowest level, Type-A dermatologist Allison (Maggie Lawson) would believe that alcoholic farmer's market busker Amy (Jane Lynch) might conceivably be less a loud, grating stalker and more a benign guardian angel breaking some sort of karmic edict for some reason to directly intervene in her life. Confession: I can't really distinguish between a guardian angel and a fairy godmother, but I'm not sure "Angel From Hell" can either, but it's making it up as it goes along and repeating certain things -- Allison thinks Amy is a stalker, Amy likes creme de menthe, something about safeguarding journeys through worlds -- almost as a distraction mechanism. Allison's incredulity has to be eased with a pilot plotline that generates a much-desired "Traffic Light" reunion, but also features two characters who, at least so far as I know, may never return again. That's not a great decision, because it leaves all of the other characters either really broadly sketched or negligible. Eventually, Lynch's Amy may make the necessary transition from irritating to fought-around-the-edges-potential-spiritual-guardian, but that doesn't happen in the pilot. And as much as I like Maggie Lawson -- "Back in the Game" is one of the most peculiar not-given-a-shot cancellations in recent years -- she's just playing "workaholic girl who doesn't know how to have fun" here. The couple details people mention about Kyle Bornheimer's character have seemingly no connection to what he's playing. It's frustratingly inevitable, because the premise is indefensible in literal terms, but they have to lay the foundation for it anyway and you know that Allison's going to semi-accept Amy, but the way it goes down is perfunctory and laugh-less. I'm not a fan of premise pilots that are like inoculations: "You might be a little sore, but at least we don't have to go through this again." When you get a pilot like "Angel From Hell" or "The Grinder," I almost wish the networks would put them online, but never air them and skip straight to Episode 2. Like, "Look, you don't really care how we got here, but if you do... Go online and watch the original pilot as background information, but otherwise you can just assume what happened and get into the series." Pilots like this are useless. They get you where you had to go anyway, but they do it without enough amusement to be worth even the 22 minutes.
Desire To Watch Again: I'm perfectly game to watch Episode 2. The pilot was pointless, but not painful. Or if it was briefly painful, at least it passed fast. Now give me the show. I almost can't give an opinion based only on this one episode. Is "Be better next week" an opinion? There you go. This sure won't hook anybody, but it has talented people, so maybe the real show will be good? Just me being an optimist, as usual.

Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's ' 'Quantico'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's ' 'The Player'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's ' 'The Grinder'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Supergirl'
All of my 2014 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2013 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2012 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2011 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2010 Take Me To The Pilots Entries

Sunday, July 12, 2015

Take Me To The Pilots '15: ABC's ' 'Quantico'

[You know the drill, and I will continue to mention it in each and every one of these posts that I do: This is *not* a review. Pilots change. Sometimes a lot. Often for the better. Sometimes for the worse. But they change. Actual reviews may be coming in September and perhaps October (and maybe midseason in some cases). This is, however, a brief gut reaction to not-for-air pilots. I know some people will be all "These are reviews." If you've read me, you've read my reviews and you know this isn't what they look like.]

Show: "Quantico" (ABC)
The Pitch: "How To Get Away With Domestic Terrorism"
Quick Response: "Quantico" is credited to Josh Safran, but this genetically engineered blending of "Grey's Anatomy"-style soapiness and "How To Get Away With Murder"-style non-linear mysteriousness against an FBI backdrop is almost hilariously test tube-bred for ABC's brand and schedule. Led by Priyanka Chopra, "Quantico" has a cast of obligatorily gorgeous people, many of whom are basically interchangeable with other gorgeous people you may have spotted on other TV shows, whether it's Johanna Braddy channeling Katherine Heigl, Jake McLaughlin continuing his role as poor man's Lee Pace and Graham Rogers, who I just assumed was Hunter Parrish for at least 10 minutes. The structure is totally "HTGAWM," with Chopra's character rising amidst the chaos of a major terrorist attack and being told that the suspect is one of the people in her FBI Academy class, at which point an agent pretty much says, "Try to remember everything that happened to you at the Academy," instigating the clunky flashbacks that required an almost unbearable amount of disbelief suspending, a mixture of details I assume really must have come up in Safran's research and leaps of logic that left me simultaneously questioning the intelligence of the people making the show and the people in the show, which isn't a good sign for a show that's theoretically about smart people. The flashbacks are still better than the post-attack "present day" footage, which suffers from shoddy special effects, a conspicuous lack of scale-capturing style and a total lack of urgency. If characters are dealing with a horrible attack and the flashbacks are meant to be interrogation/confession, you can't pause for characters to admire each other's towel-clad bodies and still have me taking your approach seriously. The appeal "Quantico" possesses comes almost totally from the cast. The camera likes Chopra, even if the writers don't quite share that appreciation yet. Braddy, Rogers and Yasmine Al Masri are also watchable. On the instructor side, Aunjanue Ellis is utterly wasted as one authority figure and Dougray Scott, not bad at all, was already recast (replacement unannounced), because recasting Dougray Scott is what Hollywood does. There's at least one awful scene between Ellis and Scott's characters in the pilot that rings false in terms of dialogue and development and also betrays the alleged integrity of the flashback structure. I hope it's removed. That can still be done. I wish any part of "Quantico" felt like it was being steered by a narrative imperative and not a network development note. That's probably a lost cause.
Desire To Watch Again: The only way "Quantico" could be more "ABC" would be if Shonda Rhimes' name were attached, which would also give me at least some hope for its ability bounce back from this pilot. Somehow, "Quantico" doesn't even end with a good cliffhanger, lurching five minutes past its biggest surprises to a shrug of conclusion. I'll be interested to see how the pilot is altered with Scott's replacement, but my interest beyond that will be only one episode if there's no improvement.

Take Me To The Pilots '15: NBC's ' 'The Player'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's ' 'The Grinder'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Supergirl'
All of my 2014 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2013 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2012 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2011 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2010 Take Me To The Pilots Entries

Saturday, July 11, 2015

Proposed Series: Why Dan 'Hates' 'Seinfeld' Rewatch?

I've been thinking, as you do, about fun things I could do on this blog to keep it chugging along and perhaps to accelerate the chugging.

Live-blogging "House Hunters" and "Househunters International" seemed like an idea, though I'm not sure I've ever watched a new episode "live," so probably that's not going to be functional.

Another idea struck me as I was eating a small bag of pretzels sent to me by Hulu:

For the duration of the podcast (but actually long before that), it has been a running joke that "Dan hates 'Seinfeld.'"

Continued below...

[You know the drill, and I will continue to mention it in each and every one of these posts that I do: This is *not* a review. Pilots change. Sometimes a lot. Often for the better. Sometimes for the worse. But they change. Actual reviews may be coming in September and perhaps October (and maybe midseason in some cases). This is, however, a brief gut reaction to not-for-air pilots. I know some people will be all "These are reviews." If you've read me, you've read my reviews and you know this isn't what they look like.]

Show: "The Player" (NBC)
The Pitch: "It's 'Las Vegas' meets 'The Game' meets 'Minority Report.'"
Quick Response: A few years ago, NBC had a show about a security expert with a military background who helped fight the particularly opulent crimes in Sin City with the help of a gruff older guy and a saucy Brit, among others. That series, "Las Vegas," lasted five reasonably successful seasons and let Josh Duhamel make bad rom-coms with Katherine Heigl, who later got an NBC show of her own. So why not return to that trough with Philip Winchester a more rugged proxy for Duhamel, Wesley Snipes a suaver replacement for James Caan and Charity Wakefield trying to out-posh Marsha Thomason? While "Las Vegas" was fairly low-stakes, creator John Rogers' has given "The Player" a vein of darkness with Winchester's Alex Kane trying to resist backsliding into a blood-thirsty past, while also seeking some well-deserved vengeance. But "Leverage" vet Rogers is more comfortable with the light and somewhat silly broader structure that involves statistics-based crime prediction, future-tech, gambling and everybody calling each other by funny names. It's an odd and not always effective blend, because you have Winchester ditching his "Strike Back" playfulness -- certainly the best thing to ever happen to Winchester's career -- to interpret his character as a self-denying sociopath, while Snipes and Wakefield are both having fun with their roles in the high concept bigger conceit. To work, "The Player" will likely have to decide whether Winchester's tone is the one it's going for or whether it's being steered by Snipes and Wakefield. The latter tone is goofier and tips back to that "Las Vegas" fizz, while the former tone is something more like "Blacklist," which I guess might still allow Snipes to play a version of Red Reddington. That would be fine, because Rogers and company understand a lot of things that Snipes does well as an actor and they let him exhibit dapper menace, close-quarters badassery, macho humor and some character work. Wakefield is pretty, peppy, British and wields The Most Powerful Tablet in the World. And Winchester looks comfortable doing stunts, which probably makes director Bharat Nalluri happy, since the "Hustle" and "Spooks" vet enjoys a good stunt.
Desire To Watch Again: I am a Wesley Snipes fan from way back and I'll support him in this, even if the show is more nimble about utilizing him than figuring out what it wants to be overall. Hopefully my Snipes-based interest will keep me with "The Player" in case it evolves into its own distinctive thing, not just another Vegas crime-fighting show with a slightly silly pre-cog twist. [Note that "The Player" at least sent us a full pilot, giving it an early advantage over "Minority Report," which is going through a lot of retooling.]

Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's ' 'The Grinder'
Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Supergirl'
All of my 2014 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2013 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2012 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2011 Take Me To The Pilots Entries
All of my 2010 Take Me To The Pilots Entries