Clear Your Schedules! Fall TV is Upon Us

August 29, 2012 Leave a Comment

So “30 Rock” and “The Office” are leaving the airwaves. A lot of your favorite cable shows are signing off, too (sorry, “Breaking Bad” fans!) You want to check out some new shows this year, but you don’t know where to start. Don’t worry, Kate’s done (some of) the work for you! Here’s my comprehensive list for 5 new shows you should check out. Come on! Give them a shot.

NASHVILLE (ABC, Wednesdays at 10 p.m., premieres Oct. 10)

Nashville

You Better Watch.

Okay, I’m not just saying this because I’m a proud Nashville native and I’m basically pissing my pants because they film this in my hometown. I’m saying you should watch it because it looks awesome. The plot seems very similar to another Nashville-set country music drama, the 2010 film “Country Strong,” only with more believable actors playing the lead two roles – Connie Britton as the aging superstar and Hayden Panettierre as the young, Swiftian ingénue. (Can you believe anyone tried to pass Gwyneth Paltrow and Leighton Meester off as country singers? Blech.) It’s got drama, it’s got songs, it’s got Hayden Panettierre in the superbitch role she was born to play.

Watch it if you liked: Friday Night Lights, The Good Wife, Smash

GO ON (NBC, Tuesdays at 9 p.m., premieres Sept. 11)

Go On

I think this show won't suck. Almost sure.

Yes, I liked the pilot for “Go On.” Sue me. I, Kate, with a heart of stone, found it to be quite touching. And pretty funny, too. I liked Matthew Perry (Chandler always was my favorite Friend), I really liked Tyler James Williams, and I just loved that old lady taking home her donut box crown and the whole crew chasing the Google cameras at the end. It was a surprisingly sweet show with characters I took to immediately, with the exception of the therapist/group leader lady. The “kooky, diverse misfits” ensemble reminds me somewhat of “Community,” which is a very good thing. I think this show needs to work out some kinks, but it has great potential, and could also bring in some big ratings if NBC times its inevitable sports star guest spots correctly. I mean, the biggest program on television is NBC’s Football Night in America… they’re going to milk that for all it’s worth on a show with a sports motif, right? Also, if you blinked you might have missed him, but John Cho’s in the cast!

Watch it if you liked: Sports Night, Community, How I Met Your Mother

LAST RESORT (ABC, Thursdays at 8 p.m., premieres Sept. 27)

You know the show is serious business when everyone's doing the power-pose.

In a somewhat appropriate slip-up, I first typed “Lost Resort” as the show’s title – clearly, ABC is trying to fill the void left by “Lost” with a suspenseful, tropical-set drama, only without the sci-fi elements (I assume?). The story is as follows: a U.S. submarine crew goes rogue after they decide to disobey orders to bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age. They are then attacked by their own countrymen, leading the crew to declare their own nation on a remote island. I am interested in this drama (which as readers know would not be my usual cup of tea) for a few reasons: 1.) The plot involves turning against the U.S. government, which is pretty daring for primetime. (IT IS OF COURSE SOMETHING THAT I DO NOT CONDONE, SECRET FBI INTERNET-WATCHERS.)  2.) I’m a little impressed that they cast a black dude, Andre Braugher, in their lead role as the Captain. Of course, they put a white dude on all of the posters… but progress is progress, right? 3.) Dichen Lachman, former “Dollhouse” hottie and thief of my heart, is also in cast. Possibly in a role that would require her to wear a bikini. Hey-oh!

Watch it if you liked: Lost, Dollhouse, Terra Nova

THE MINDY PROJECT (Fox, Tuesdays at 9 p.m., premieres Sept.25)

I truly believe that Mindy Kaling is the spiritual successor to Tina Fey. She has a lot of the same sensibilities, the same ability to be a writer, producer and actor all at the same time, and, like Fey, she’s fucking hilarious. Both women are truly funny, not just “funny, for a girl.” However, those who aren’t familiar with Kaling should not expect her to be anything like Fey in style. Kaling’s strength comes from playing off an essential girlishness that she embraces about herself, a girlishness that Fey, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph and others rarely exhibit. In “The Mindy Project,” the Mindy Lahiri character is obsessed with romantic comedies and finding her true love (“I’m Sandy Bullock!” she drunkenly yells in the pilot episode), but she is more than just unlucky in love – there is an inherent loneliness and desperation to her that Kaling is okay with exploring. Mindy, the character, should be a powerful, self-possessed woman – she’s a successful OB/GYN – but because she’s been fooled by society into believing in the lie of movie romance, she feels incomplete. I’m really excited to see where the show takes her character.

Watch it if you liked: New Girl, The Office, 30 Rock

THE NEW NORMAL (NBC, Tuesdays at 9:30 p.m., premieres Sept. 11)

The New Normal

They've already banned this show in Utah. SO IT MUST BE GOOD.

I’m recommending this show hesitantly. The premise, in my opinion, is delightful – a woman agrees to be a surrogate for a gay couple, and her daughter and wacky mother tag along for the ride. The cast is brilliant – Ellen Barkin is a powerhouse, and I must admit to a huge crush on Andrew Rannells, who shot to fame staring in the Broadway musical “The Book of Mormon” but who was known before that as a voice actor for cartoon series like “Pokemon” and “Yu-Gi-Oh” (thereby sealing his place in my heart forever). However, this show is produced by Ryan Murphy, creator of some of the weirdest shows ever – “Popular,” “Nip/Tuck,” “American Horror Story” – and one of the greatest burnouts of all time, “Glee.” That means this show could be amazing, or it could be so laughably terrible and preachy that we’ll all want to stab our TVs, and our brains. He also cast a former Real Housewife in the show, in a role I have yet to understand the purpose for. So there’s that. But I’m really holding out hope that this show takes off, because as Georgia King’s character so adorably puts it in the pilot episode, love is love – and who doesn’t want to watch a show about love?

Watch it if you liked: Modern Family, Glee, Arrested Development (Barkin gives me a Lucille Bluth vibe)

 

1600 Penn

Bill Pullman should always be the President, right?

Wait For It: 1600 PENN, another NBC comedy starring a “Book of Morman” headliner, Josh Gadd, doesn’t premiere until midseason, but the dysfunctional-Presidential family story has me interested already. Also, I’m not sure what CULT, a CW midseason drama, is about – is it about a cult, or about a TV show about a cult? I dunno, but it sounds kind of unique, so I’ll give it a shot.

What shows are you looking forward to? What did I miss?

Filed Under ABC, Featured, FOX, Lady Power, NBC, Recommendations Tagged With 1600 penn, abc, Arrested Development, cult, dollhouse, fox, glee, go on, last resort, lost, modern family, Nashville, NBC, New Girl, The CW, the good wife, the mindy project, the new normal, the office

The Showrunners, Arrested Development, and the Golden Age

June 5, 2012 Leave a Comment

As you all know (and you should, if you don’t), we are in a golden age of television. Yes, a TV landscape that includes 4 Kardashian-themed programs can be considered a golden age. One of the biggest influences on the current crop of (non-Kardashian) shows is Arrested Development, the beloved comedy that boosted many careers and kickstarted the “mockumentary” sub-genre.

Arrested Development returns

And soon, Arrested Development will be back on a screen near you, if you have a Netflix subscription. But will it live up to the hype of the desperate fans that pleaded for its return?

The true answer to that I don’t know, as I’m no expert at Divination, but I think I am qualified to make a few predictions. For one, there are jackasses out there that didn’t like the second season of Game of Thrones (“It didn’t follow the booooooooks!” they whined), and others that bitched and moaned about Leslie winning on Parks and Rec (“It’s gonna change things!”). Likewise, there will be some little shits that will hate on the new Arrested Development, about how it’s not as good as it used to be, etc. Those are nerds that will never be pleased, so I’m not worried about that demographic.

But there is one real problem Development faces: we are living in a golden age of television, and some people might just not be so impressed anymore.

Currently I’m reading The Showrunners, by David Wild, a book about TV writers that was penned back in 1999. Wild, a Rolling Stone writer, interviews legendary TV figures like Aaron Spelling, the Bright/Kauffman/Crane team, and my person TV hero Paul Simms. Simms, for one, discusses his time spent writing for HBO’s Larry Sanders Show, which is discussed in the book with such reverence you’d think they were talking about M*A*S*H or Lucy. Marc Maron, comedian’s comedian and host of the WTF with Marc Maron podcast, talks about Larry Sanders with the same incredulousness, that such a show could even exist.

I was too young to have seen Larry Sanders the first time around, but I watched it when I was older and the show hit On Demand (at my parent’s place, of course). And it’s funny. But it didn’t blow me away – nothing I had not seen. Reminded me of 30 Rock, and Extras.

Now, don’t worry, comedy nerds. I get the show. But this is the basis of my argument – time has passed. Since Arrested Development went off the air, we have seen Community, we’ve seen Modern Family, we’ve seen Veep. Hell, The Office feels SO old-hat now, and it experience it’s height of creativity, it’s height of popularity, and later creative downfall, all since Development left the airwaves. When AD was on the air, Amy Poehler was the less famous of the Arnett-Poehler duo. When AD was on the air, Saddam Hussein was still alive!

So what if that happens now? What if we have seen too much to be impressed anymore? AD has a dated format – I hate to bring up Community yet again, but when you have a show parodying shows that parody documentaries, that genre might be a little stale.

Plus, the Arrested Development story ended. The Iraq plot solved itself as best it could, and we knew that the family would never become decent humans, so we were satisfied watching Michael and his son escape into the distance.

As The Showrunners reminded me, history is full of classic TV that overstayed its welcome. That’s really the whole design of the American TV system – play, play, play until it fails.

I was as sad as anyone that AD lasted as briefly as it did. But can’t we just leave a good thing as it was?

Filed Under Featured, Netflix, Old School, Rants Tagged With Arrested Development, community, fox, modern family, netflix, parks and rec, the office, The Showrunners, Veep

Game of Thrones Week 1: Jack Gleeson for Emmy

April 10, 2012 Leave a Comment
Jon Snow and Ghost on the Iron Throne from Game of Thrones

Hmm... Just like his father?

And we’re back! HBO’s Season 2 of Game of Thrones premiered, and I high tailed it to my parents’ house to watch with my friends and family. I feel sorry for those watching that haven’t finished the Song of Ice and Fire book series (i.e. everyone who was watching with me last night), because this opening episode was a bitch to keep up with.

I have so many thoughts on this episode, but the first one is that “The North Remembers” will likely not go down in history as the best episode of this series. Much like the first episode of Season 1, Season 2′s opener just had too much ground to cover in too little time to build a strong narrative in any of the zillion plotlines this series will follow this year. When we got to Gendry at the end with the reveal of Arya, it felt like the show had only been going for 20 minutes (my boyfriend, who has graciously committed to watching the show with me despite his distaste for fantasy: “God, that felt like two hours!”). I think that Game of Thrones fans will just have to get used to the fact that the first episode of each season, much like the prologues of the books, will not be quite as enthralling as the rest of the series.

–So with that said, the rest of the episode was pure (Arbor) gold. First, we open the episode not on Dragonstone with new characters Stannis (Stephen Dillane) and Melisandre (Carice Van Houten), as I assumed it would be, and instead right back at King’s Landing on young King Joffrey’s (Jack Gleeson) nameday (that’s Westerosi jargon for birthday). King Joff is having knights battle each other to death for his own sick pleasure and even tries to drown one guy, Ser Dontos, in wine when he shows up to the fight drunk. (Note: not trying to give out any spoilers, here, but remember Ser Dontos. He will be back.) Thankfully, Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) – who’s looking more like a Lifetime Original Movie victim with every breathe – speaks for the man and surprisingly, the Hound backs her up, so Joffrey keeps him alive to serve has his new jester.

Jack Gleeson is such a magnificent bastard here, and his swagger and evilness really steals the whole episode. If the Emmy awards are looking to honor another actor besides Peter Dinklage, I really think they can look no further than Gleeson’s beyond-his-years performance.  If anything, Gleeson’s sneers have made my dad reeeeally hate Joffrey. My pops, who’s the kind of guy who used to imagine ways he could kill Osama bin Laden himself, has already asked to be transported to Westeros so he can tell the characters “that somebody ought to kill that little punk.” At least Dad didn’t volunteer to do it himself.

-Meanwhile, Joffrey’s mama Cersei is in hot water over Ned Stark’s beheading and her apparent lack of control over her boy-king, so Tyrion is sent to reign her in. Here is a place the show deviates from the books – in the series, Cersei is pulling all the strings, but here, Joffrey is shown to have a mind of his own and tries to exert his own authority over the Queen Regent. Whether that will continue is up in the air, but it seemed that it was the King, not his mother, that ordered the death of Robert’s bastards on the show last night.

–Daenerys Targaryen (whoa, I haven’t had to spell that in a while) is beautiful even when she is dehydrated a covered in sand. She’s trying to feed her dragons, but they won’t eat anything she’s giving them. The last time we saw Dany it seemed like everything was going to be awesome all the time for her – there were dragons, boobies and people bowing at her feet. But the dragons are still babies, so they are not going to be conquering anything anytime soon, and could be stolen if Dany’s khalasar runs into the wrong people. She sends out the blood of her blood to go find help. I think she’s finally starting to think Jorah ain’t lookin’ too bad anymore.

-Jon. WTF is going on with Jon? He’s hanging north of the Wall with the Black Bros and Craster, he-who-marries-his-daughters, but I am bored. Jon’s one of my favorite characters from the book but I was more pleased to see Samwise Gamgee- I mean, Samwell Tarly – than anything. I just missed that dopey face of his.

Samwell Tarly from Game of Thrones Season 2

I think he's thinking about taters.... Boil em, mash em, stick em in a stew.

On a side note, surely we’ve all noticed that Jon’s loyal sidekick Sam is the most direct analogue for a Tolkien character in the whole series. Probably the second most directly inspired character would be Theon Greyjoy for Smeagol-Gollum. Meak, rhymes with weak, rhymes with reek, rhymes with My Precious.

-And finally we come to Arya and Gendry, one of my favorite team-ups in the series. We only get a brief glance of the young wolf but it was an exciting way to end the episode and only proves how vital she is to the series, that merely her appearance onscreen would be enough for fans to end the night on. So happy to see the adorable Maisie Williams again. And did they change the actor for Gendry, or does he just look different without the soot all over his face? I’ll have to check on that.

Stray thoughts:

-Peter Dinklage, you’re a badass. Please work on that accent, though, kay? It takes me out of the scene every time.

-Richard Madden, you are killing it. You might be stealing my love away from Kit Harington this year. Robb Stark was just dripping with sexiness. It was coming out of his ears. Damn.

 

Filed Under Featured, Parental Guidance, Recaps Tagged With Emmy worthy, For Your Consideration, Game of Thrones, HBO, Stuff I Watch With Mom and Dad

Television for the 99%

January 29, 2012 2 Comments

I’m goin’ legit, y’all.

As you know, if you are reading this, I’m Kate and I don’t have cable. My beautiful Samsung television set picks up ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, The CW, My TV30, WGN and, for some reason, The Lifetime Movie Network.

Most everything else I watch is courtesy of hulu.com or Netflix streaming on my Nintendo Wii. Sometimes, cable networks throw me a bone by streaming their new episodes on their websites, like Logo does with RuPaul’s Drag Race (bless your hearts, you marvelous gays!).

However, I still somehow manage to watch programs like Justified, Top Chef and Game of Thrones because I stream or download them illegally on the Internet.

And apparently, it is going to get a lot harder to do that pretty soon.

Now, I’m not here to comment on the SOPA/PIPA debate. I will say that current legislation is a little… much, shall we say, and most believe the government’s efforts will not make much difference in stopping piracy. But it’s definitely true that change is on the horizon. Megavideo, a site I used for years to watch episodes I missed here and there, was recently shut down by the feds. I am going to have to adapt to a changing environment.

Since I am not yet a self-made millionaire, I still can’t afford the luxury of cable TV, and this space will reflect that. So I am setting down some ground rules. I will not recap or review a cable program that has just aired. I must wait until that show has come to hulu, Netflix, or – God forbid – DVD, if I want to write a column or get into detailed discussion about it. If I can watch it legally, I can talk about it, but if I can’t, then I must zip my lips. (Or… keyboard.)

And, as of now, I am vowing to stop using those illegal sites for as long as I’m writing this blog.

Of course, I can hear what you’re saying now, echoing across the Internet. “BUT KATE! How will you possibly go a whole year without watching the new season of Game of Thrones?” Well yes, it’s true that I’d sooner drive my old Caddy over a cliff than miss it. So I thought I’d throw in a little loophole for that one. I’m adding the new category of “Parental Guidance,” because yes, folks, I will be watching that show on Sunday nights at my parents house. A show that coined the term “sexposition,” a show with as many boobs as Congress, a show where the lovable dad gets decapitated. I will be watching with my Ma and Pop. Because that’s what you do when you’re poor.

So those are the new house rules, gang. Right now, I’m going to make the best with what I’ve got, so that one day, I will be able to afford the finer things in life, like 700 channels of high definition reruns. Maybe U-verse will have come to my neighborhood by then?

Filed Under Featured, Housekeeping, Parental Guidance Tagged With Cable is too expensive, Comcast, Game of Thrones, HBO, hulu, justified, My parent's house, netflix, RuPaul's drag race, Top Chef, U-verse