Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Teevee Notes

So, how's the new season of teevee shaping up?

:: New show I like: Hawaii Five-0. I've said this before, but I do like the chemistry amongst the leads and the cantankerous relationship between Garrett and Danno. I just wish the show's production design wasn't exactly like CSI:Miami. Of course, Grace Park goes a long way.

:: I kind of liked the pilot episode of Outlaw, the new Jimmy Smits show, but I didn't like it enough to not forget about the show for two weeks afterwards. I'm a big fan of Jimmy Smits (The Wife is an even bigger fan of his!), but my favorite show of his was Cane, the soap opera he starred in a few years back in which he was the head of a family whose fortune is made in making rum in Florida. Unfortunately, that show didn't last long.

:: Shows I like that I haven't started watching yet this year: Grey's Anatomy (wow -- it's been a fave of mine ever since Season One), 30Rock, and House.

:: Shows I'm not liking as much as I used to: The Office, CSI:Miami. Both have, in their own way, become just too farcical to take even remotely seriously.

:: Reality: The new season of Hell's Kitchen is just OK. Maybe it's too soon after the most recent season, or maybe this go-round's competitors are lacking, but the show seems to be amping up the lunacy and taking the focus off the cooking as much as possible. This disappoints me. I know that the show's main selling point is watching Gordon Ramsay blow a gasket every week, but it gets a bit old.

I've noticed, by the way, that Ramsay's favorite adjective is "amazing". As in, "Today you will cooking with the most amazing fresh salmon!" "You're to prepare a dish using the most amazing Kobe beef!" "My wife and I just had the most amazing...."

Survivor's Wednesday timeslot blows. Haven't seen it yet this year, except for the first one.

The Amazing Race is off to a good start. The Race looks pretty demanding this year. Typically they'd spend several episodes in Europe before moving on to another continent, but this time, they were in England for one episode, and then BAM! They're off to Ghana. Wow!

The Apprentice is also in bad-timeslot hell for me. Oh well.

:: I still like The Mentalist, but I wish more and more that Patrick Jane would be wrong once in a while, and that they'd either ramp up the "Red John" storyline to a conclusion soon or just forget the whole thing. Endlessly dragging on the tale of the "superkiller who continues to elude the hero" gets old after not as long a while as many teevee writers seem to think. (Witness the wonderful NBC show from the 90s, Profiler, which dragged its own "superkiller after the heroine" mytharc thing for so long that by the time it was resolved, it had pretty much lost all of its steam.)

:: I need to watch at least one episode of CSI:NY, just because I want to see Sela Ward again.

:; The prospect of a new Wonder Woman teevee series would make me happy, if it wasn't being developed by David E. Kelley, whose work I have always hated. Ugh. To know that there's a Joss Whedon script out there for a Wonder Woman movie that will never be produced is bad enough, but David E. Kelley? That would be like announcing the filming of a new Star Wars trilogy, to be written and directed by Michael Bay.

:: I'd like to see the new J.J. Abrams spy show on NBC, but I don't think I'm gonna get time for it.

That's about all for right now in Teevee Land!

3 comments:

Mimi said...

I have not watched an episode of The Office either.

Do you watch Big Bang Theory? I can see you loving that show.

Kal said...

I am finding that I hate 'The Mentalist' now. Patric Jane is beyond annoying in his arrogance. At least House didn't make me want to slap him in the head.

Speaking of slappying someone in the head - David Caruso is the worst actor in the history of TV. He is just so LAME. I will never watch another episode of any show he is on.

I love Jimmy Smits too and I like 'Outlaw' but it is going to be crused in the ratings and that is too bad because it's a above average law proceduaal which is smart and has appealing characters.

Jimmy is the Summer Glau of dramatice series television. Both are the kiss of death to a show. I can think of three shows off the top of my head that were cancelled way too early and Summer was on them - 'Doll House' - Sara Connor Chronicles' and 'Firefly'. Jimmy's list is conciderably larger.

I am diggin on 'Good Wife', 'Community' '30 Rock' (which has become even more beautifully bizarre with really strong characters and writing)

House is on it's last breath. I like that he found love with Cuddy and I like that for once when he did his 'this is not gonna work' Eeyore routine, that someone didn't let him win and get his way like the big baby that he is. Plus all the other characters beside those two are just filler and uninteresting filler at that.

'Hell's Kitchen' is boring and I find that Ramsey needs to be more of a teacher than a humiliator but I realize that is his style and why people like him.

Roger Owen Green said...

I've watched one episode of The Office (eh) - I'm REALLY hoping it's the last season, that Michael Scott rides off in the sunset with Holly.
Saw 10 minutes of Glee. Nothing else (other than news programs), except Baseball: The Tenth Inning. Need to write about that.