WebKittyn Warbles
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Fall TV Thoughts - Mondays
I think it will be very easy to get into Monday Night Football this season. At least until hockey time and the Center Ice sweet-ass deal from Dish. He shoots! He SCOOOOOOOORES!
I still haven't watched the Tuesday stuff yet so here's Monday's thoughts.. I know, you've been waiting anxiously to hear what I thought of Monday night tv. (note sarcasm)
The Monday DVR-ing Schedule:
8:00-9:00: Surface (NBC)
8:30-9:00: How I Met Your Mother (CBS)
9:00-9:30: Two and a Half Men (CBS)
10:00-11:00 Medium (NBC)
(follow the yellow brick road inside for the rest. see dancing midget) Surface (8-9, NBC): I really liked this one, surprised me. I'm not really into aliens, I run in terror from Art Bell and I always thought the best X-Files were the ones that had nothing to do with aliens. I do, however, like sea creature stuff and anything that includes Antarctica or other Lovecraftian locales.
I don't like the main actress, I really don't like her. She reminds me of a bad Kirstie Alley before Kirstie morphed into Sally Struthers. I stopped watching Boston Legal because I couldn't keep food down while watching her. Yet on this show her horse-face and bad acting didn't even get a notice, the plot had me.
The kid was really good, realistic sort of geek without the over-precocious air that only TV kids have. The fish eating egg was sufficiently creepy, I really liked this kid line.
The third member of the main cast is an easy going sort of beer drinking normal guy who also manages to come off as marginally real. That's a major coup in TV today.
The overall show was eerie and not one you could predict the entire hour for inside the first five minutes. The hour went by really fast and when it ended I honestly thought there was another segment.
They're aliens but they're also underwater and that makes it spiffy. I really liked this one, it may not be intellectual nirvana but it's dark, it's intense, the characters are solid and there doesn't seem to be a forced injected dose of personal-life drama (which ruined Wanted for me).
I will seek this one out again, this will be a weekly record and one I'll enjoy watching late at night.
How I Met Your Mother (8:30-9, CBS): This one will not be a regular record. I had higher hopes for this, I really like Alyson Hannigan and come on, it's Doogie! I wanted to like this show. The jokes were soft, you knew what Doogie was going to say way before he said it. Alyson Hannigan is wasted in this show. Typical sitcom.
I'll give it a few more weeks and see if it gets better but I wouldn't bet the cat on it.
Two and a Half Men (9-9:30, CBS): As expected, this one got some genuine snickers out of me. Charlie Sheen sounds just like his dad every now and then and I like it. Some of it is hokey but there's enough subtle wit and quick jokes to save it. The kid is fantastic and interacts with Charlie Sheen flawlessly.
I like the supporting cast too, there's a clever mix of kooks in there and they all work well with the main cast because they don't stuff them all in together. No need to cram too much crap into every episode, the writers on this show have their shit together.
This one will be a weekly record, it's a quick half hour and I like a late night snicker.
Medium: (10-11, NBC): Before it came on, I turned to the Gotard and said "if they keep the whiney family shit from last season I'm done." Lo and behold, right in the start of it all...... whiney family crap. I will never understand why shows with a definite theme feel the need to deviate from the theme with predictably conflicting and usually dull personal life crap. Love or hate Law & Order, it's not the second longest running drama because it sucks and there is no personal life crap to be found.
Why can't she just talk to the dead people and solve crimes? Why why WHY does she have to have a whiney wuss of a husband (with great hair, by the way) who whines about her talking to the dead people? Why do we have to detract from the dead people to fit that soccer mom image in there?
It completely ruined the show for me last season, I stopped watching. I like the dead people and the crime solving but damn near half the show is wasted on the personal drama. If I want personal drama I'll watch Desperate Houseskags or Nip/Tuck. Very disappointing.
I'll give it another 2 weeks or so and see if they lighten up on the personal drama but now that she won the Emmy (which I don't understand either but that's a whole other post) and they're pimping her as a soccer mom, I see only more personal drama ahead.
Boooooooooooo.
Hopefully I'll get around to watching Tuesday before next Tuesday.
-
Actually, for a while, Law and Order did have a bunch of family crap on it. For example, Lenny Brisco’s whole issues with his drug addict daughter who was murdered. SVU (probably my favorite incarnation not that there is no Lenny) has family crap with the guys separation and family and 4 gazillion kids that he always brings up and Marishka Haggarty’s character is always bringing up her alcoholic mum and the fact that she is a rape baby. In fact, the only Law and Order that doesn’t bring up the family crap is CI. I think the main difference between Law and Order’s method of bringing it in and Medium’s method of bringing it in is that Law and Order doesn’t drown you in whiny pithy crap. Every family moment has a purpose in the show. They don’t whine, they simply deal with it. Its grittier, dirtier and simply not annoying. (Or perhaps I just hate the husband in Medium...giving us physicists a bad name.)
Utopia on 09/21 at 03:19 PM -
It’s a very faint sideline on Law & Order, I talk to people who watch it and have watched it and never caught on that McCoy and Claire Kincaid were sleeping together. Briscoe’s daughter was about the most it ever really went into any of their personal lives and they killed her off. No one really gets to know very much about the characters, Jesse L. Martin’s been there a few years now and I don’t know a damn thing about the character’s personal life.
SVU does go into it a bit more but pretty much only with the main two. Past the drunk and now dead mother and unknown father, she really doesn’t date or get into drama. I did cringe when they added his divorce in, it was more than was needed and it seems to have made him slightly unstable but it’s a sideline.
You’re right, it’s the difference between making it a main factor and a slight sideline.
I was really getting into Wanted on TNT, it was a tough and gritty show with man-cars and violence. Then they go and make Gary Cole’s ex-wife and personal life a major factor, it killed the show for me on the spot. Always with the damn babies, why does the world need babies in every damn show?
Ok, I’m not going into my baby rant!
WebKittyn on 09/21 at 03:35 PM
<-- Steal me!
