I Just Read About That…

I was planning to write this post early in the TV Season.  I found out that the TiVo website rather helpfully includes a page of all the premiere dates of shows, which in addition to telling us when shows started, has also turned out to be a good way to keep track of the shows that were cancelled already.  Our goal is basically to get every good show cancelled so that we can watch our poor Netflix DVDs (which now that we had to change our policy we have mercifully fewer discs that we are not watching).  Um, thanks for the hike Netflix?

Anyhow, it’s now  about seven weeks into the season and we’ve already lost a number of shows–some as quickly as two weeks in…which, really?  I mean why bother.  Surprisingly, none of the FOX shows were cancelled yet.  That’s probably because FOX didn’t pick anything cool or interesting enough for me to want to watch–that’s actually not true, they have some good new shows this season, but nothing like Arrested Development.

So, this time I’m breaking it down by day of the week (which is silly since we TiVo everything and watch it whenever).  And this time red shows are shows we have given up on and Green ones are ones that we’re still enjoying.

Sunday

Pan Am (ABC)
We watched a bit of the first episode and decided not to bother with any more.

The Simpsons (FOX)
In past seasons we haven’t really watched new episodes when they aired, but this year we watched the day of, and they have been really solid.  And their openings are wonderfully surreal these days (that museum heist opening was awesome).  Keep up the good work guys.

Once Upon a Time (ABC)
It seems odd that there are two shows about fairy tales this season.  How does that happen exactly?  They’re both high concept and could hardly have come from a vacuum.  Anyhow, of the two I like this one less.  It has a lot of promise but there’s something about it that I find less than compelling.  I’ll keep watching though because it has piqued my interest.

Allen Gregory (FOX)
I had really high hopes for this show.  Jonah Hill is awesome.  I love the animation style, especially compared to the overt cartooniness of The Simpsons and Family Guy and I really like Allen’s adopted sister and her friends.  But Allen’s plot line–that he’s in love with the principal, is just not very interesting, especially for more than one episode.  And his parents are just flat.  Sorry guys.

Monday

How I Met Your Mother (CBS)
There’s still a lot to like about this show.  It doesn’t make me laugh as hard as it used to and there’s the great fear of Lily and Marshall having a baby and what that will do to the show (I cringe at the thought of a birthing episode), but they still manage to keep me watching.  And Kal Penn is a nice addition.  The show has grown so serious, which is good dramatically for the actors, but I miss some of the lightness too.  It’s interesting how little the show has been about Ted lately.

2 Broke Girls (CBS)
Vagina.  Vagina.  Vagina.  Vagina.  Vagina.   There, I got it out of my system.  When will this show?  It’s crazy how much they say the word.  And it was funny once or twice.  But come on!  This show has the worst tendencies of any sitcom that I continue to watch.  Why are there so many preposterous and borderline (or even crossing the border) stereotypes?  Why is the diner owner a short Chinese guy who has a crazy accent?  Why is the cook a Russian horndog (when the actor himself is not Russian).  Why is Garret Morris even on the show?  I’ve learned that whenever Kat Dennings is smirking, a lame/offensive joke is coming (watch for it yourself).  And yet for all the gripes, there’s a lot to like about this show.  There’s some genuinely funny moments (when the writers aren’t being lazy, the show really sparkles).  I hope they fire the stereotypes and get rid of the smirking and we’ll have a decent sitcom.  At least it’s funnier than Whitney (why did she get to create two sitcoms this season?  I blame her for the bad taste of this show.  And why did she choose to star in the crappier show?)

Mike & Molly (CBS) 
So happy for Sookie that she got her Oscar!  But I just don’t care about this show anymore.  The first season was cute, but we watched five minutes of season two and just turned it off.

Hart of Dixie (CW)
We watched the pilot episode looking for reasons to hate it.  Waited for every cliché to play out.  And some did.  But it was surprisingly well written and also surprisingly cliché-free in other areas.  Now there are 5 episodes on our queue.  I wonder if we’ll ever watch them.

Terra Nova (FOX)
I wanted to like this show.  Lost with Dinosuars!  We finally got around to watching the pilot and I remembered why I had stopped watching Lost.   This is going to be a “mystery” show and a “conflict amongst men” show.  Blah.  Ultimately we decided that the drama of the first episode was sufficient as a short movie.  I didn’t care about any of the characters in terms of story arc.  Why waste such interesting CGI and high concept premise on a lame drama about people not getting along.  Sigh.

Tueday

Ringer (CW)
The only reason we (and anybody, let’s be honest) watched this is because Sarah Michele Gellar is on it.  The first episode featured  the most egregious green screen/fake water scene that I have ever seen and I almost gave up on the show right then.  But we pressed on and the show became interesting.  It’s not terribly well written.  And the ideas aren’t wonderful.  And there’s a lot of confusion about who characters are and what their motives may be (not in a  we’re planning ahead for something great but in a what shall we do with these guys now that we’re not cancelled sorta way).  It’s far more of a soap opera than I would have expected (despite the whole “crime/witness” aspect), but I’m still hanging on.  I’m still not sure why it’s called Ringer, though.

Parenthood (NBC) 
This show gets better and better.  And a few of the plot lines that were worrying me have been cleared up (yay for Jason Ritter!  Yay for the Principal from Sunnydale!) and I’m really enjoying it (perhaps because there is less screen time for the kids who, frankly, are all irritating–what is up with the girls’ hair??).

Glee  (FOX)
Still preposterous.  And yet I still get a kick out of it.

New Girl (FOX)
This is my favorite new show.  It is really quite odd and yet the cast works wonderfully together.  I’m quite bummed that they lost Damon Wayans Jr to Happy Endings because his character was awesome.  And they totally dropped the ball in his “other black guy” replacement, but now that things have settled, it’s been really really strong.  And delightfully weird.

Tosh.0 (Comedy Central)
This season has seemed a little off to me.  I doubt that he has run out of amusing internet footage to mock, but he seems to be showing less and less.  And it seems a bit more gross/violent/ouchie than funny these days.  And the we redemptions, while funnier than they used to be, are also much longer than they used to be.  Still, makes us laugh though.

Wednesday

ANTM (CW)
I have nothing constructive to say about this show.  I like looking at the photos, I guess.  Tyra Banks is an absolute train wreck though.

Up All Night (NBC)
I may be in a minority about this, but I hate the Maya Rudolph character and I hate that she gets as much screen time as she does.  I also hate that we see Reagan (really?  Reagan Brinkley?  Really?) at work so much because it means so much screen time for her sitcomy coworkers.  There’s an early episode where they are at home looking at their neighbors and it is mostly self-contained and hilarious.  The best part of the show is seeing Wil and Christina playing off each other (the jokes about who has to get up in the night, about taking Amy to day care, all of that–you know, the reason the show was called Up All Night).  I probably wouldn’t mind Maya’s character if the show was meant to be about her more, but I feel the show is supposed to be about Wil and Christina and that Maya has hijacked it–and she is such a preposterous character (who they have thankfully toned down somewhat) that I just don’t want to see her.

Free Agents (NBC)
This show wasn’t great.  But it was nice to see Hank Azaria get a lead role!  We have been watching the British version, which also wasn’t that great, to be honest.  NBC has to stop relying on other countries for their TV shows (no offense to other countries, but NBC seems to make a real bollix of it whenever they try something like that).

Modern Family (ABC)
Still wonderful.

Suburgatory (ABC)
I wanted to like this show so much.  But I really just don’t.  I’m mostly offended by it that the crazy hyper crazy world they ended up in is being called The suburbs, specifically the Jersey suburbs.  I grew up in the Jersey suburbs and it was nothing like this.  Stop calling it the burbs.  Call it pretentious un-real town.  It’s not that radically different across the bridge, even in the most well-off towns.  We haven’t watched in 3 weeks which is never a good sign.  I wonder if that means we are done with the show.

Thursday

Archer (FX)
The three-part mini Archer was a wonderful taste to tide us over.

Big Bang Theory (CBS)
Although I miss the interplay of just the science geeks, I really like the interplay of the girls.  It’s a good addition.

Community (NBC)
Man, this show gets better and better.  And yet, NBC is shelving it for a while.  Thank good ness they’re saving the crapfest that is Whitney.

Parks & Recreation (NBC)
Lit’rally one of the best shows on TV.

The Office (NBC)
I didn’t think the loss of Michael Scott would change the show as much as it did.  It feels like it’s trying to figure out what to do with itself.  There’s still some really funny things going on, but it has lost some magic.  I’m just not sure why exactly.

How to Be A Gentleman (CBS)
This show lasted two weeks, I think.  I have to admit the premise of the show was pretty lame, as was the Kevin Dillon character.  And yet the supporting cast was golden.  Rhys Darby from Flight of the Conchords, Mary Lynn Rajskub from Mr Show, Dave Foley from everything that is funny.  If they had tweaked the show, gotten rid of Kevin Dillon and focused more of Foley and the main guy’s family, this show would have been really great.  Shame they didn’t get a chance to figure that out.

Work of Art (Bravo)
I love this show.  It’s the only show that really celebrates artists.  Sure it’s crassly commercial and the art isn’t always great, and there’s all the bullshit involved in reality shows, but it’s cool to see artists creating art.  I love that they do stop motion to show them creating things in full.  It’s exciting to me as an artist that this show is out there.  Now, what I hate about the show–the host.  China Chow is a waste of space.  The judges–pretentious and idiotic, they feel so compelled to have catchy slogans instead of real criticism–they’re jerks.  I don’t even really like the way they say the winners–no deliberation, just a winner announced (I realize they deliberate on their own, but i don’t like the way the show is edited in that regard).  Nevertheless, I find the show very enjoyable.  And the artists seem interesting without being too diva.

Project Runway (Lifetime)
I’m actually not sure what night this is on.  This season was good.  Not thrilling, and the whole end off it was weirdly off.  But I enjoy watching  people be creative.

Friday

Chuck (NBC)  
Chuck is leaving us after 13 more episodes.  I assumed they were going to slowly wind things down, but instead they jumped head first into a totally new idea.  It’s all Morgan!  I love Morgan as a character, but I don’t love this arc.  In fact, I don’t really love the whole Carmichael Industries thing.  I am glad that the whole “will they or won’t they” between Chuck and Sarah is over, though.  I trust they will end on a good note.

Grimm (NBC)
I can’t recall the last time I was excited about a show on Friday nights.  And a new show!…not just one that was dumped there midseason.  Grimm is a really great, mildly frightening show in the vein of Buffy.  There’s a lot that I don’t really “get” but unlike in Ringer, I’m curious to find out more.  I wish that the main guy didn’t have a wife, as that can never end well, but the whole bit with the “friendly” monster is so wonderfully Buffy that I love it.

—-

So this season proved to have a surprising amount of good new programming.  If I weren’t married to someone who hates horror shows, I would likely watch The Walking Dead and American Horror Story, but I don’t, so I watch Mad Fashion instead.

Oh, and Extreme Couponing is sent straight from the devil.  I hate it and could probably write 3,000 words about why I hate it so much.