2013 Fall TV Thread: Previews, Evaluations, Ridicule and Mourning

Just saw the 5 min trailer for The Crazy Ones on CBS, with Robin Williams, Sarah Michelle Gellar and James Wolk at an ad agency. Lots of Kelly Clarkson in the pilot which, HEY! GREAT! Hopefully Williams will be less zany and manic than it appears so far.

Also looking forward to the Michael J. Fox thing on NBC.

What else looks good?

Hopefully Williams will be less zany and manic than it appears so far.

good luck with that

Yeah, I know. It's a long shot.

will give this a shot
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BKK9JrvCEAE9Oz2.jpg

yeah it's got good ppl behind it, love joe lo truglio, and cop comedies if done well are fantastic (barney miller the pinnacle obv). i hope it's not too broad and ott, parks and rec style (which is what i'd assume we're getting) brought to a precinct is a good fit. did anyone here watch the job? really enjoyed that show and not just cuz karyn parsons was on it.

I watched Wanderlust last week and now anytime I see Joe Lo Truglio, the only thing I really see is his dong. Hope that doesn't ruin the show for me.

woah, look at that cast. what's the show? i'll def watch.

It's Brooklyn Nine-Nine on Fox.

The FX remake of the Danish/Swedish series The Bridge is airing tonight. AMC's The Killing has started to bore me rigid so it might be worth a shot.

i know it is terrible and all, but man i have really been loving Siberia quite a bit. i also assume i am the only fool actually watching it.

faux reality lost mashup thingy. i think there is a killer giant bird maybe! so i am down.

Giant killer bird? I was going to skip it, but now I'm having second thoughts.

i think that it may fulfill the promise of lost by killing a fuckton of people instead of having them all cuddle in a magic church somewhere

I like the sound of that already! I skipped it cos I thought it might be in the same vein as that awful Cult.

My friend gave me her unused Roku, so I just signed up for a Netflix account with the intention of watching Orange Is the New Black tomorrow night.

Orange Is The New Black is supposed to be very good. Looking forward to it. Gonna try out The Bridge tonight.

I might watch The Bridge too, but I'm afraid if I start with the remake I might never go back and watch the original.

I am starting the Danish/Swedish one after not getting too impressed by the NBC remake. I used to moan that tv/movies didn't feature enough blatantly ASC characters and after the recent mad proliferation of them I ain't sure it is a good thing. They are always very pretty/brilliant people. You never get any average ASC characters. It does have an effect people's attitudes, like the Tesco employee the other day who asked me "what is his gift?" . Yeah he can solve complex murder cases while looking great and doing equations for a laugh. The flip side is at least it highlights the fact that ASC people have a lot more going on in their inner life than what neurotypical people generally understand.

ASC?

Sorry. Austism Spectrum Condition.

I liked both The Bridge and Orange is the New Black. Diane Kruger's performance in The Bridge is very strange.

Anyone watch Naked and Afraid on Discovery? Reality tv. Two people, a man and woman, are stranded on a remote island, naked, and they have to figure out how to survive for like three weeks before a boat comes to pick them up. Also it has this weird stat that judges each person's total survival score ... a very bizarre addition that I found hilarious.

Mixed-positive on The Bridge, but I will say that Demian Bichir is fantastic. I can already tell he won't be getting enough props; not the sort of performance that nabs awards, but a great one nonetheless.

Waiting until I get through Top of the Lake before I start Orange Is the New Black, but I'm looking forward to it. TotL starts off as a slog, but it picks up around E3 or E4.

I didn't think the first episode of TotL was a slog at all. Very moody and interesting.

Really wish there was gonna be a second series of TotL but it doesn't seem to be in the cards. I'd love to spend another seven (or seventy) hours exploring that world.

Very moody and interesting.

Looking backwards, I can appreciate the first two episodes, but I wasn't acclimated to the pace and atmosphere yet and I was counting the seconds.

Top of the Lake looks interesting, will check out at some pt

http://www.uproxx.com/tv/2013/07/pbs-mocks-reality-tv-again-this-time-with-three-excellent-fake-trailers/

those fake trailers are well done!

Ehhhh

1975 spring tv

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/arts/television/borscht-belt-sherwood-forest.html?hpw&_r=0

Cries of “The Mills Brothers! The Step Brothers! The Joyce Brothers!” were not youthful (nor hip) references even in 1975, but that wasn’t the point of “When Things Were Rotten.” Speed was. Mr. O’Connor, The Times’s critic, clocked the show’s gags at about one every 15 seconds.

http://tv.nytimes.com/2013/08/07/arts/television/broadchurch-a-dark-drama-arrives-on-bbc-america.html

it manages to supply the fashionable existential dread while also providing a solid, Agatha Christie- or Dorothy Sayers-like mystery plot that proceeds at a deliberate pace through a cloud of plausible suspects with a minimum of confusion

sold

all you had to say was David Tennant

eh it was ok

I kind of feel like the opening scene of this week's THE BRIDGE, in which cartel assholes try to parse the meaning of the term "serial killer," kind of justifies the show's existence, despite the fact that it's clearly pretty flawed.

xpost yeah I saw the ad for Broadchurch and by the time the voiceover was saying 'David Tenn--" and I was settting my DVR

Broadchurch is a bit Midsomer Murders at times and the plotting is very by the numbers, here is one credible suspect acting very dodgy, oh no wasn't as it seemed, next. And so on until the final reveal. Tennant is very good and I like him doing grumpy Scottish, but Olivia Colman steals the show for me. It isn't in the same league as The Fall.

I look forward to watching Broadchurch when it's on Netflix next year.

I just noticed a lot of the American reviewers fucking love Broadchurch and are giving it major praise. Just from from memory I think it got a more lukewarm or mixed critical reception over here. Despite it's faults, it is definitely worth watching.

xp it might not take that long. Top of the Lake and The Fall showed up pretty quickly.

Those weren't BBC America shows. Should be in a few months, but Orphan Black still isn't up yet.

Oh, is Broadchurch an actual BBC America production? I didn't realize.

i love detective shows, am excited to try broadchurch

yes also why bcz tennant but besides that :)

no broadchurch wasn't a bbca production like orphan black was

I'm watching orphan black now (thanks internet), it's great

my stupid dvr didn't record it, had to reset it to catch a rerun tonight (whew)

just weird how much the "one season, one dead child, one grieving town, dark secrets" format turned into a thing. was twin peaks the first?

http://www.deadline.com/2013/08/tca-billy-bob-thornton-to-topline-fxs-fargo/

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/arts/television/how-to-make-a-tv-drama-in-the-twitter-age.html?hp&_r=0

i like that fx is sorta bringing back the miniseries and being pretty creative about it but that fargo show sounds awful. supposedly the pilot for the attempt at a fargo show back in the nineties (w/ edie falco) was pretty good.

i got halfway through the bridge and canceled my tivo sub
that shit got dumber by the minute.

I'm still watching the Bridge and I don't hate it. It isn't as good as the pilot promised, but it's still ok by me.

And I love/am obsessed with Broadchurch.

I'm a few weeks behind on The Bridge but I really like it. the show lays its THEMES on even thicker than the killer, but I still find it compelling in its flaws.

i'm finding Lillard v wearing, but everything else is ok. The Tampa boyfriend showing up was some serious lols

http://tvline.com/2013/08/28/paul-giamatti-hoke-fx-pilot/#comments

Paul Giamatti as a homicide detective playing "hardboiled and possibly insane". I'm in.

Dammit! I had no intention of watching Sean Saves the World, but I just noticed that Thomas Lennon is in it. I may still end up not sticking with it, but at least I'll give it a first glance.

so George Segal and Beau Bridges are both playing Grandpa in sitcoms? that is all.

like either of them have anything better to do

Peter Riegert and Seth Green playing father & son seems promising, but reviews of that one seem dire.

The plot has so many moving parts I doubt it can work, but Sleepy Hollow was pretty fun, Ichabod Crane dude is good at the whole "what is this horseless carriage?" fish-out-of-water thing

horses made of steel!!! etc.

I can take hokum like Sleepy Hollow when it doesn't take itself too seriously and is fun. Excellent!

morbs repping for DADS!

i'm optimistic about brooklyn nine-nine, the pilot was solid enough. plus it means more chelsea peretti in my life, which is great.

eh, like i mentioned in the New Girl thread, the supporting cast for Brooklyn Nine-Nine is promising, but Samberg is just awful.

Ichabod Crane dude is good at the whole "what is this horseless carriage?" fish-out-of-water thing

It's nice to see that running gags universally excoriated in movies (Depp in the Dark Shadows movie) are still good nuff for TV.

Dark Shadows wasn't THAT bad.

yeah I watched the Sleepy Hollow pilot last night and it's pretty good! That Ichabod Crane dude is v handsome imo *bats eyelids*

I didn't think so either, but Ap*tow/T*r*ntino types love to dump on Depp-Burton, and watch any old shit while theyre holding the bong

xp

Straw stoners have to be suuuuuper careful when they're sparkin' up a doob.

don't trust anyone under 40

Brooklyn 99 was fun. I'm in!

apatourette's/tarantourette's

i'm optimistic about brooklyn nine-nine, the pilot was solid enough. plus it means more chelsea peretti in my life, which is great.

― certified skeleton fucker (reddening), Wednesday, September 18, 2013 6:54 AM (15 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is otm. i like how shes like almost doing some vaguely latina accent but it's really just her like affected podcast talking to callers voice & it crax me up

I am amazed at how much I enjoyed both Sleepy Hollow and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, ESPECIALLY Sleepy Hallow which should have been terrible but... wasn't

Chelsea Peretti's name on B99 is Gina Linetti.

xpost yeah i was surprised by Sleepy Hollow. I dunno how they avoided the cheesy-crap pothole, but they did

it's pretty well executed but i really can't imagine caring enough to last even as far as i did with, like, Grimm.

I bailed on Grimm p early, it got too repetitive

Oh you missed Grimm suddenly becoming good then

i thought it was fine to begin with, just not gotta-watch-every-week compelling. did it become that?

the cast is strong enough that I think Brooklyn Nine-Nine has the chance to be great within a half-season, as they get the comedic rhythms down and the interpersonal dynamics become clearer. But considering what actual wacky cops are up to in New York, I almost want to start a pool for how soon they'll have to pull an episode out of the running order for sensitivity reasons.

If you were to have something akin to an allergic reaction to Samberg at his zaniest, would it be safe or dangerous to watch B99? Is he operating at full power all the time?

i thought it was fine to begin with, just not gotta-watch-every-week compelling. did it become that?

IMO yes, it become a lot more consistent in the second half of season 1 and a good amount of season 2 was excellent, largely because the secrets that dominated season 1 start getting revealed in logical ways to the central cast.

IMO Samberg is super toned down in B99; he's playing a character who is a smart-ass rather than a caricature and the interplay between him and Braugher in the pilot is fantastc

Cool.

There's a ZOINK or two, but yeah Andre Braugher is perfect and I'm guessing Samberg will chill even more as the season goes on

haven't watched it yet, but I'll try Brooklyn 99. Parks and Rec didn't start off super strong either

dunno if I like all this sex appeal being added to FOX's "Dads". remember when it was about the Dads?

^^^^ early contender for favorite post of the day

haven't watched it yet, but I'll try Brooklyn 99. Parks and Rec didn't start off super strong either

yeah, it wasn't until half-way through season 2 of p&r that i thought it got REALLY good, but they also had an abbreviated first season. Most sitcoms usually show their spots sometime in s1.

b99 has a tone problem, non-fatal probably, with a lead character who does crazy stuff but is fully aware he is doing crazy stuff, rather than a completely absurd dude like Andy on P&R

he was only doing "crazy" stuff in an attempt to get the goat of his straight-laced boss and partner; I was pleasantly surprised by how genuine/relatable his reactions during the deli fight were

i don't like the wink

I have nothing against Samberg (other than that Lonely Island songs are clearly his strong suit) but I kinda wish there was just a show, any show, starring Terry Crews and Andre Braugher without anyone billed above them

didn't Andre Braugher have HEIST? (sad that I have to even think about this, true)

Braugher had last resort & no-one watched it but me :(

oh yeaaaah. i watched like a minute of that and shrugged

Braugher also had a doctor show after he left Homicide--Gideon something.

and terry crews is/was surely top billed in the sitcom adaptation of "are we there yet?" but i think some dude means crews and braugher TOGETHER without anyone billed above them

was that fx show called heist or thief? i know fx retroactively made it a miniseries to get emmy nominations (for a show they had already cancelled). he also had that men of a certain age or whatever that was supposed to be good and got canceled pretty quick (plus o yeah that gideon show w/ david morse). part of me really wants to watch the first few seasons of homicide again, if someone told me that the first couple of seasons (the jon polito seasons) held their own w/ any of the golden age blah blah dramas i might believe them. brooklyn nine-nine kinda disappointed me, but i'll give it a long leash, ken tremendous has a good track record (i think p&r figures out what it is finale of season one and becomes pretty great by halloween) and i'm fine w/ samberg. has mindy project gotten alot better? i bailed on it first season but totally can buy it would eventually find it's footing. apparently adam pally is joining the cast. there must be some piece of research somewhere that suggests to the networks that if they can just nail their supernatural procedural that appeals to women they will hit major paydirt, shows like sleepy hollow and grimm just make me think that maybe i underrated angel.

Men of a Certain Age went for two seasons

did anyone watch DADS? not sure what morbs saw in it, i thought it was pretty awful, like if 2 broke girls had been a hit show in 1987 and then circa 1987 fox had tried to make a knockoff. ted was profoundly better and ted was pretty fucking awful also.

yah Men of A Certain Age was good too, I liked that one

I think the FX thing was called Thief. It was good iirc, but I haven't seen it since it aired. Braugher seems to always be working, but never in anything successful.

men of a certain age was good, and also pretty out of the ordinary, for present-day tv

homicide is one of the greatest tv shows of all time, seasons > 2 included.

Yeah I meant Braugher/Crews together, love both those guys.

did anyone watch DADS? not sure what morbs saw in it, i thought it was pretty awful, like if 2 broke girls had been a hit show in 1987 and then circa 1987 fox had tried to make a knockoff. ted was profoundly better and ted was pretty fucking awful also.

i basically had the same reaction

though i was basically fine with all the performers - esp reigert, green and oddly enough vanessa lachey

I almost love reigert enough to try it, but I have the phear

i'm a Seth McFarlane apologist but am running for the hills from this one

Nhex otm

i gave Dads a shot because i have a lot love for Green, Ribisi and Mull, but it's not good. has a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

I didn't realize Dads was a MacFarlane joint when I watched it but in retrospect I suppose that should've been obvious. Surprised there was no talking animal, although i think that would've turned the show into a full-on reboot of Unhappily Ever After.

I got around to watching the Brooklyn-99 pilot. Not bad, honestly, I think there's potential there. Maybe I'm just happy to see a single-camera sitcom that's not doing the mockumentary thing, residual effect from New Girl. Samberg IS very toned down from his gawky SNL persona, and I really like the rest of the cast. It's awesome that we get to see Andre Braugher in a straight-up sitcom!

B99 was way better than I was expecting, even with all the good words here. I approve!

I didn't think it was great but damn I really enjoy Samberg & Braugher together

btw can we get a Munch or Bayliss cameo up in here now Braugher's back on a cop show? *begs*

or some Yaphet Koto action?

Cmon

Hmm, for some reason I thought Yaphet Koto had died. Which I'm sure would come as terrible news to him, since he's still alive.

how dare u kill yaphet before his time

I watched a bit of Dads. Very 2.5 Men-esque

Brooklyn Nine Nine has such a good cast that i'm just kinda looking forward to the show's inevitable realization that it isn't really about Samberg's character and emphasizes the whole ensemble

I think they already realize that, but he's the only known star at this point to sell the show

wow Dads is dire

Saw the Blacklist pilot - as expected, pretty generic FBI/terrorism show except for James Spader who of course is always weird fun to watch. Lead is super pretty. Might continue on this since it feels like a pretty bare TV season right now.

yow

http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTU1OTMwNjk5MV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNzYyNTAyOQ@@._V1._SX640_SY512_.jpg

link's dead

beauty is fleeting

trophy wife > mom

Ncis premiere was trying to do way too much but I'm intrigued

Trophy Wife, Mom, Goldbergs, Brooklyn 99, Lucky 7 all turned off between five and fifteen minutes in
i got through shield but i kinda wish i hadn't
why is most of television so goddam dire

Blacklist is good fun imo

Like Alias + Silence of the Lambs, with a little Covert Affairs for sheen

like it's not great, but a good farfetched spygames thing

SHIELD wasn't amazing but it was pretty watchable. It reminded me of Bones, Alphas, Firefly... Whedon still writes like Whedon.

wow Dads is dire

― |citation needed| (will), Sunday, September 22, 2013 7:00 PM

http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-determined-to-make-the-best-of-situation,34015/

The Michael J. Fox Show is really really good imo

the pilot strikes a nice balance between genuine humour ( i laughed aloud maybe five times, which is unusual for me outside series 2/3 parks & rec) and requisite mawk, but i'd like to see it move gently away from the mawk once it beds in.

i was gonna wait and see on it but maybe I'll try to set it up. I love him so much

it's also set in a really nice patch of ny's upper west side (72nd st station, fairway markets &c.)

i feel like the show, at least the pilot, was more about satirizing or preempting any gratuitous sentimentality than anything else. it was directed/co-created by Will Gluck, who did the movie Easy A, so if you dig that movie, it's very much in that mode of humor.

Unlike P&R, which was actually a 1 hour episode, the MJF one hour block was actually 2 half hour eps. I thought the first was better than the second, but it's definitely the most promising new NBC sitcom since Community.

the whole 'he's got parkinson's, get over it' angle wouldn't have been possible even 10 years ago. i really love seeing stuff like this.

i.e. the success of a show like this is hugely important atm.

Despite the terrible and punny name, Masters of Sex is pretty good. Vibes of Mad Men going on there.

I really liked the MoS pilot despite the fact that John Madden directed it.

i dunno, Fox show seemed pleasant but really low stakes. "he's got parkinsons, so what?" is a nice sentiment but not particularly gripping tv (also could they really not find a more interesting backdrop than local news?). kind of reminded me of bob & cosby - sitcom legend's third time at bat, nice casts but low stakes. Has anyone ever gone for a third hit sitcom and made it beyond the contracted minimum of episodes? considering twice as many people watched the Robin Williams show at the same time, this doesn't look like the exception to the rule.

That Williams show was pretty ghastly at times but i can see it working - didn't know it was a David E Kelley production, and the vibe was sort of "Ally McBeal & The Last Crusade"

i mean, if anyone wishes mad men had robin williams on it, it's probably people leaving cbs on after big bang theory

actually that's not fair, re: minimum episodes. cosby was contracted for 2 seasons, made it to 4 (ratings dropping when it was moved to fridays). but still.

Masters of Sex is really good. I was saying to my wife, I would hate the title if it was all fictional and they made up a guy named Masters so they could call it that, but since he was real I think it's a perfectly good title.

Also wtf, since when do "low stakes" hurt a sitcom?

Sorry, really meant "low impact".

Bob Benson comedy riffing with Robin Williams is a car wreck, but I can't look away

Obv plenty of banal family comedies have existed, but compared to the kind of arguments between characters on The Cosby Show, Roseanne, Raymond, etc, it felt like every issue on Fox was a non-issue. Someone being vaguely neurotic, everyone else saying "whatevs." That shot of Betsy Brandt limply dancing in the opening credits felt pretty symbolic. Not in and of itself the death knell but NBC clearly had hopes beyond According To Jim for this thing.

have they even pulled themselves out of their complete inability to keep good shows on the air yet

uh the only comedies that got renewed by nbc last year were Community and Parks & Rec. if anything their problem is ONLY keeping good shows on the air, and failing to make the bad ones successful.

i was thinking more the transition from good premieres (like prime suspect) to lasting shows. but i guess hannibal is holding strong?

community seems kind of a fluke in that regard, since they kept it on by ruining a whole season of it

sitcoms without vicious arguments kinda sounding good to me at the moment, i love Community and New Girl but the need for every episode to culminate in CATHARTIC YELLING gets tiresome.

hey i liked bob. newhart was a comic book artist, iirc mostly just chillin'.

The MJ Fox show is a lot better than Whitney, Outsourced, Paul Reiser Show, etc

put THAT on the poster

having your second episode being about how sexy your irl wife no one cares about is was mad indulgent though

Low bar, I know...

i vaguely remember watching Bob when it started, but not any good or bad impressions in particular. i totally watched multiple seasons of Cosby's show with Madeline Kahn, though.

Trophy Wife is really good!

I watched the MJ show this afternoon. I liked it! And I loved Tracy Pollan playing the hot upstairs neighbor, that was super cute

did find this sweet gif set when looking for one of brandt's credit dance. sentimentality didn't get me through the episode but still, this earns an "awww."

http://michaeljlove-sx.tumblr.com/post/62428613629/deja-vu-on-the-26th-of-september-1985-michael

loved wendell pierce's bits, only character i flat out hated was the sister. man that's a tired archetype.

yeah...i have love for Katie Finneran for 'Wonderfalls' but that character was kind of a bum note compared to the rest of the cast.

in any event, my ideal TV parents to have a show about would be Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson in Easy A, and this is prob the closest we'll get so i'll take it.

only sitcom pilot i actually liked was mom - alison janney was great and there was some pretty great ensemble work in the last half (including badger from breaking bad!). strong, refreshing subject matter (reminds you chuck lorre worked on roseanne). though I doubt I'll go out of my way to watch it, i hope it lasts. while i don't hope they last I can see The Crazy Ones and The Goldbergs surviving (esp if they tone down the wonder years bullshit - that little perv is no kevin arnold) as I doubt america will care as much as about its historical laziness (pretty sure it's just set in "the '80s" rather than a specific year) as I did.

Only drama that's come out I'm remotely rooting for Sleepy Hollow.

anna faris is so likable that i'll probably continue to watch mom but i thought the writing was generally dire (if not quite as bad as 2 broke girls)

patton oswalt was straight up doing daniel stern in the narration too, presumably while looking at his check

xpost re goldbergs, obv

i was trying to figure out what year it could possibly be in the goldbergs - has to be at least '87 if the older brother shouts out "flavor flav," but stopped when i realized they clearly hadn't put in even that much work

i didn't watch the goldbergs pilot yet but i'm gonna guess it has got nothing on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goldbergs_(broadcast_series)

i haven't watched Mom yet, should check that out. besides Fox, i think Brooklyn Nine-Nine at least has potential -- imperfect right now but i feel like as long as there's a strong cast to start with, the writing and everything else can come into focus with time.

i watched the Hostage and Lucky 7 pilots but man speaking of 'low stakes,' i don't necessarily think that every network show now has to play keep up with cable like The Following or Hannibal and be as graphic and edgy as it can get away with, but so many network dramas just feel incredibly tame and defanged now.

oh right, forgot about nine-nine! i like the cast but they need to get over this "samberg refuses to grow up for some not particularly clear reason" bit NOW.

and yeah, couldn't finish lucky 7 or hostages (rating-wise, few started them). loved how every character on the other one had to have a secret - bet the brother owning a grand to a drug dealer's really gonna pay off in episode 4 if it airs.

andre braugher and alison janney are the mvps of the new shows imo, no shock there

ugh typos out the ass, there. take two:

"loved how every character on hostages had to have a secret - bet the brother owing a grand to a drug dealer's really gonna pay off in episode 4 if it airs."

the blacklist is highly recommend to people who want to watch a sassy tortoise annoy federal agents

hahah!

i kinda like blacklist. a nice replacement for my required 'spy cheese' viewing, since Burn Notice has finished

I need at least one show where things explode

cmon, person of interest! now starting s03.

I couldn't get into that - jim caviezel has dead eyes, it creeps me out

that show gets the "what is burn notice?" trophy now that burn notice is on. All I've ever known about it is that two guys, one from lost, are...agents of some kind.

for three years, every ad has just been them...looking at you, perhaps gauging your degree of interest.

it's an 'outsiders intervene in the lives of people who need help' show.

with michael emerson as a dude who made a 24/7 surveillance computer for the government and then had second thoughts

it also has taraji henson and enrico colantoni and robert burke and sarah shahi and amy acker and an nypd corruption ring and a russian mob turf war

and a TIMELINE

ah that's where sarah shahi went to

she just showed up as an antagonist that turned into (i think) a regular, right about after her quirky lawyer show got cancelled

I really miss that pretty broad

of all the things i hated about 'the crazy ones' i think the worst was editing robin williams to shreds. they bring in someone who's known for his raw energy and they slice it to pieces. i don't get it.

Getting a better off ted vibe from krazy ones. Except it sucks

first ep was like five ads rolled into one pretense of a show.

moms was good, are all chuck lorre shows zingfests like that

yes

Dharma and Greg was slightly zingy.

I haven't watched any of the later ones.

big bang gets way more grief than it deserves but isn't anywhere near good enough to deserve defending from that grief

ugh brooklyn 99 was really bad, didnt seem even vaguely 'promising' either. like p much just a really contorted way of making ppl appreciate new girl if they didnt already

blacklist... eh, just about got on the watchable trash list but i doubt for very long

michael j fox show was... weird? fast-paced is good but this was kinda machinegunning lines and characters without really knowing what it was doing, i'd say i was losing my footing but i'm not sure i ever had one to begin with. def not how i expected a walt jr and marie spinoff to play out

oh also re mjf show, i know character actors and all that but you can't just have bunk in your show... bunk is bunk, end of story

w/ brooklyn 99 i keep telling myself that the office took awhile and parks definitely took awhile but this feels different - there they were figuring out the characters and getting the tone just right and getting away from the shadow of another show (the office uk w/ the office, the office us w/ parks). this just feels like a bad sitcom so far, like they're aiming low and just trying to make a hit show and not a cult show that critics will like but will barely stay on the air.

trying to make a hit show and not a cult show that critics will like but will barely stay on the air.

I think this is correct

yeah idk i often feel a little confused when i see ppl (seemingly quite frequently) say stuff like "oh but x got good around halfway through the second season". if it's not at least okay to begin with it's pretty much dead forever in my book

suburgatory is probably the one recent show i can think of where i genuinely wasn't certain if i liked it for ages

well there's a middle ground between "dead forever" and "stick with it" - "go back when you hear it gets better." did that with parks & rec and the new girl myself.

oh, 30 rock too.

man apparently i need to avoid ever watching early community or 30 rock again cuz those are two shows i loved from day one that the consensus seems to be didn't actually get good until a little while into their runs

i enjoyed community from the get go (gets "even better" halfway through s1), but 30 rock season 1 (which i revisited recently) def has a simpsons season 1 vibe just in the relatively slack pace of jokes.

30 rock season one was so great from maybe two episodes in.

even if you enjoy it, i have a hard time believing you can't detect the change in editing/joke density

well there's a middle ground between "dead forever" and "stick with it" - "go back when you hear it gets better." did that with parks & rec and the new girl myself.

― da croupier, Tuesday, 1 October 2013 02:38 (6 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah this was... the whole point? talking about the unlikelihood of full-on miracle lazarus jobs not shows that were very watchable to begin with (personally i never did like parks and rec though)

30 rock seems kind of an odd one, i also rewatched some of season 1 recently and found it hard going but i def loved it at the time

s1 started rough though

iirc it didn't hit its straps until about halfway through that series

Fringe was a rare show that was pretty dire in the beginning and then became amazing from around midway through season 2 (it was also a rare sci-fi/mythology show that actually had a relatively satisfying finale). Combination of the actors settling into their roles + writers finding their groove.

haha figures that Fringe got good right after I completely gave up on it and refused to go back

lol I gave up after the third episode, and caught up with it later on. Ended up becoming one of my all-time favourite shows - who knew?

I dropped Fringe when it went on holiday break in its first year. I've heard ever since that it got really good when it came back. tbh I didn't care about the premise enough to go back, but you never know. It's on netflix and I might get curious one day.

Fringe definitely got better but it also often posed the argument that not every dramatic series can or should sustain a 60-minute episode length.

fringe turned into a very different show than it started out being in the first two seasons. granted it got confusing as fuck a couple of seasons after that, but it was v enjoyable overall

I couldn't make it past the first five or so episodes when it was on the air, but from all I've heard I may pick it up again someday to get to the good stuff

yeah this was... the whole point? talking about the unlikelihood of full-on miracle lazarus jobs not shows that were very watchable to begin with (personally i never did like parks and rec though)

yeah, i've got a pretty high bar though - i don't really WANT to get invested in new shows, so I'm quick to bail (almost gave up on Arrested Development around episode 2 cuz the obsequious narration bugged me). But because there are so many shows I get into later and then double-back on, I try to reserve initial judgment. I stop watching, but I don't pretend that assessment pertains to the same show a half-year later when everyone loves it.

Community and Suburgatory might be the only sitcoms of late that really got me from the get-go

i feel like sitcoms particularly need time to figure out the balance. if there's at least good acting talent to begin with, writing can catch up quickly

yeah, and we're all too quick to judge after episode 1.

also, the first episode is usually written by one person and the subsequent ones are written months later by a group of writers.

good point!

the best sitcoms i can think of started roughly (except maybe fawlty towers), so it's only reasonable to expect it of any sitcom. everything needs time to find its feet, even if that time is a year and a half.

seinfeld took awhile to find its footing, cheers had it all down from the pilot

brooklyn 99 better last night fwiw though not 'there' yet

cheers had it all down from the pilot

the first episode was good but in no way classic

First season of Buffy just not all that good -- I mean, better than most of what was around it, but lacking in what made BtVS BtVS

Less-than-stellar first episodes/first couple of episodes/first seasons are pretty much a rule for episodic television for which I can think of very few exceptions. Maybe just Larry Sanders and The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer.

Classic Pfeiffer.

Spader hamming it up on the Blacklist is wonderful.

Crazy Ones was highest rated premiere

prime location though i can imagine there's a significant potential cbs audience that still finds robin williams hilarious

I think it's near impossible to judge a pilot fairly as a pilot way after the fact, especially if the show went on to be a beloved institution. I loved 30 Rock from the jump and thought it was one of that fall's most promising pilots, but it feels sluggish now compared to later eps. Lots of the best pilots still show growing pains and abandoned ideas/characters later on. It's the shows that actually go downhill in the next few episodes that are doomed.

i ... tolerate sleepy hollow

So both episodes of Moms felt like rough going at first but really won me over by the end. The pacing is still a little wonky (the beat between the joke and the laugh track grates), and Anna Faris feels a little green to multi-camera format compared to Janney (lack of theater experience?) but her kid's boyfriend is a real find, A+ well-intentioned doofus, basically keanu in the movie parenthood.

We Are Men EASILY takes worst pilot I've seen this year. Really felt like a rough draft throughout, chances for comic set pieces skipped over, laugh-lines practically had "joke TK" in them.

has there ever been a show whose defensive macho bluster is presented right in the title ever worked? Man Up, Last Man Standing... A show can work with that energy, but I feel like it has to be couched in other details to succeed (Married With Children, Entourage). Imo dudes don't really go "hey, this show says MAN in it, I'm a MAN, finally a sitcom at 8:30 for me!" but I might be forgetting an example.

Trophy Wife has such a good cast but I have no sense they're ever going to explain how this guy wound up marrying or divorcing either of his first two wives (one harsh, one flaky) before hooking up with a well-meaning hottie. Goldbergs supporting cast is also great but they're doubling down on the "set SOMETIME in the '80s" muddledness without even giving us "malcolm in the middle" levels of surreal family hijinks to make up for it.

The Man Show was pretty successful, but obv not a sitcom. But yeah all those recent shows are weak, especially How To Be A Gentleman. Last Man Standing is amiable mediocrity, though, I guess it's still chugging along.

http://a5.mzstatic.com/us/r30/Music/4a/03/f4/mzi.pehdbdhk.170x170-75.jpg

rip

haha never saw it and couldn't find any parts of any episodes which is really saying something (found homeboys in outer space), but did find this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqlVZM_sSjo

Last Man Standing is amiable mediocrity, though, I guess it's still chugging along.

amiable?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFmkyZd1rZ0

I really want Trophy Wife to be good, the cast is amazing

I was kind of shocked to hear it was created by the Sarah Haskins from "Target Women," apparently based on her experiences as someone's third wife. The show would probably work better if the lead was more like her, but Malin Akerman is so relatively bland compared to everyone else that it accentuates the oddity of her being the sympathetic lead. Like, you know who might not sympathize with the plight of a young woman in short shorts trying to be more involved in the lives of her stepchildren? ACTUAL MOMS.

I initially assumed the premise was the outcome of some sort of "you know who's got an interesting life? My third wife" kind of bigwig groupthink.

and well whaddya know

*** How about "Trophy Wife"? Ugh. This one hurts, because "Trophy Wife" was possibly my favorite new network show of the fall. That wasn't a HIGH bar, but I found this comedy to be fairly charming in both its pilot and its second episode. America does not agree, as the second episode of "Trophy Wife" drew 4.3 million viewers and a 1.4 rating among adults 18-49. That's coming out of a 2.2 key demo rating and 6.06 million viewers for "The Goldbergs." That's not spectacular retention for "The Goldbergs," but shedding 0.8 in the key demo from a mediocre lead-in is never good, nor is shedding almost a full ratings point from its premiere. Want to know who tuned out? It looks like it was women. While "Trophy Wife" slipped from a 1.8 to a 1.3 rating rating among men 18-49, it went from a 2.7 rating to a 1.6 rating among women 18-49. And it appears that most of the drop was among slightly older women, as "Trophy Wife" fell from a 3.4 rating among women 25-54 to a 2.0 rating in that demo. I could keep going, but yeah. It's a 1.5 ratings point drop among women 35-54. That's as deep as I'm digging.

lol i'd heard that last man standing had settled into some clumsy attempt at an archie bunker update but i didn't know they actually had a meathead on there

i have a weird faith in malin akerman, maybe because of children's hospital... hopefully the show's still on the air by the time i give it a shot

despite the commercials annoying me all summer, Super Fun Night had a decent pilot, i could easily see it floating on the ABC schedule ala The Middle or Suburgatory. Rebel Wilson is good and supporting cast is decent

I really like Rebel Wilson, but I'm annoyed that they made her adopt an American accent. Still planning to watch, though.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/television/2013/10/the_best_performance_of_the_new_tv_season_is_margo_martindale_in_the_millers.html

hey, that's margo martindale

first ep of the blacklist seemed like it was just gonna be a gimmick procedural but the second def turned up the silly swag - lolled hard at the rossellini twist

idk i think i'm down for a spygame revenge

it's taking all of my restraint not to type her line out btw

I need to catch up on some stuff tonight, for sure. Nashville, Revenge, The Blacklist I guess. And Super Fun Night. I would say Scandal too, but I didn't watch it over the summer like I'd planned, so I'm still way behind.

yeah i caught that Margo Martindale show last night and was bitching on twitter about what a depressing turn of events it is for her career. she's cable drama guest star MVP but god knows HBO or AMC would never have her star in a show.

I'm glad she'll be back for The Americans, though I'm not sure how often.

A lot of the Millers was hacky but man, there are so many good performers on that, and I probably laughed more in the opening bit then i did during the entire mj fox show. I'm not against fart humor on principle.

mj fox show at times felt like one of those inspirational twinkly holiday adds publix will run sometimes

New comedies this season, favorite to least, based on 1-2 episodes:
Mom
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
Welcome To The Family
Trophy Wife
The Millers
The Goldbergs
Michael J Fox Show
The Crazy Ones
Dads
Sean Saves The World
Back In The Game
Super Fun Night
We Are Men

Shows I can actually see surviving: Mom, Nine-Nine, The Millers, The Goldbergs, Michael J Fox (highest-rated of the NBC thursday shows this week by glorious default!) and The Crazy Ones (everything that annoys me about this show will be received joyously by old people who watch Big Bang Theory).

Sean is hacky and the least charismatic performer is the grinning ghoul in the title. Welcome To The Family has a sweet cast but the fact that NBC went for a shitty "OMG/Dios Mio!" culture-clash angle that isn't in the pilot is a bad, bad sign. Super Fun Night allegedly has gone through a show-runner or two and the first episode (NOT the pilot, which they won't air) was flat enough to suggest that.

I laughed despite myself at Will Arnett and Margo Martindale dancing to "I've Had The Time Of My Life," so if I didn't even get close to laughing at Rebel Wilson singing Meat Loaf (and why at a piano bar rather than karaoke?) that's not good.

Weirdest thing about Sean Saves The World is the feeling that I'd seen it all before despite it being about a gay single father working at an internet company, which I'm pretty sure I haven't seen before.

lol croup old ppl are not the big bang theory's audience

i didn't mean that the primary audience of BBT is oldsters, but that any oldster who DOES watch it (and the ratings suggest it's got a relatively broad market share) will LOOOOOOOOVE The Crazy Ones.

basically I'm just saying that anyone who's first thought when it comes to Robin Williams is "funny!" rather than "yeesh" will be happy with the show

ok that makes sense. i wonder if my dad watches it, i know he watches 2.5 men.

it was kinda weird it was hyped as 'robin williams returns to tv!' like most of the public were still thinking of him as tv-turned-movie star after 30 years. it'd be like hyping something 'tom hanks returns to tv!' or even 'bruce willis returns to tv!'. i guess we'll never be over mork.

pretty harsh on super fun night, average in a sweet way imo

then again that is b99 i see there in second on ur list so maybe they subtitled it badly for bizarro world or something

millers was... not nearly as bad as i was bracing myself for. the husband and kid are total dead weight though

http://tv.yahoo.com/photos/fall-tv-shows-in-trouble-1380737839-slideshow/

it's taking all of my restraint not to type her line out btw

"i'm going to kiss that sweet, young fbi agent on the cheek and say goodnight... AND THEN GO DOWN TO THE DOCKS AND PICK UP MY NEXT SHIPMENT OF GIRLS!!"

lol!!!

cheesy classic, i lol'ed

my parents-in-law fucking LOVE big bang theory, every time we visit they try to make us watch old episodes with them.

Maybe I'm just feeling really generous/bored this season, I've been watching a lot more sitcoms this season and been feeling "eh, all right"

Trophy Wife, case in point. No doubt it will be cancelled, but I like the cast (Bradley Whitford, Marcia Gay Harden, Mikaela Watkins, Natalie Morales and a genuinely trying Malin Akerman) and the premise is a little different

on the whole i think most ensembles are totally great this season, its wack premises and creaky pacing that're killing me

Just looked at that Yahoo! list. What the hell even was Lucky 7? I never heard of it.

Lucky 7 was poorly advertised throughout the summer, much like Super Fun Night. By poorly I mean the ads were dumb and gave no real indication what the show would be like

If only they'd called Ironside "Wheels & The Legman"

I saw about 30m of Lucky 7, had to stop it when the lottery official made them blind vote whether the guy who was in pool but didn't actually give money should be included in the winnings because THE DRAMA IT WAS JUST TOO MUCH

part of my appreciation for brooklyn 9-9 is that it already has a decent parks & rec-ish rhythm down, using lil zoom-ins as comic cues rather than pausing awkwardly after jokes like most single-cam comedies this season. Glad to see a show use the rhythms of a mockumentary show without actually going full talk-to-the-cam mockumentary. Ep 3 actually had too many jokey bits rather than too few, which is pretty novel this season, plus Andre Braugher is killing it.

agreed, the whole B99 cast is pretty damn good

also so glad that samberg finally just put on the damn tie and they dropped the whole "cap'n, you gotta let me be me!" thing

braugher is such a killer straightman
it's like homicide all over again

i love him

I really liked Super Fun Night (which can largely be read as: I really like Rebel Wilson and I think it's a really good idea to give her a low-concept sitcom that's reasonably cute and funny).

And even though it has its own thread, it needs to be pointed out in as many places as possible that The Eric Andre Show remains pretty much the funniest show on TV.

I like that Brooklyn 99 is using Chelsea P more

And even though it has its own thread, it needs to be pointed out in as many places as possible that The Eric Andre Show remains pretty much the funniest show on TV.

good to know for when Netflix streams it 9 years from now

http://www.pbs.org/program/genealogy-roadshow/

watched this last night and it was supremely idiotic

so it's like antiques roadshow, but instead of an object, someone has a family story. and instead of telling you about it and a dollar value, they have pan shots of old documents, and tell you if it's bullshit or not. lots of dramatic music. there are people huddled around the expert and the uhh contestant during the big reveal, some of whom are probably family but are otherwise unexplained.

Your ancestor was....*drumroll*

HERMAN GOERING

*fanfare, tickertape, dancing girls*

So CBS already axed We Are Men. They're usually slow to cancel, so it must have been REALLY bad.

I really dig Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and I wasn't expecting to. Felt like last week's was the strongest of the three - I don't think we've seen the best of what's to come on this show, but it's still managed to make me guffaw.

Munch is leaving Law & Order SVU, so I'm crossing my fingers Brooklyn Nine Nine sticks around long enough for him to do my wished-for cameo

The first episode of Trophy Wife is some of the best TV I've seen in a while, but every episode since has been mediocre :(

I really dig Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and I wasn't expecting to. Felt like last week's was the strongest of the three - I don't think we've seen the best of what's to come on this show, but it's still managed to make me guffaw.

― Neanderthal, Wednesday, October 16, 2013 12:31 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I feel like the show just needs to breathe a little.

it's slowly getting a little looser

Masters of Sex is the first potentially great show I've seen this season

goodbye Welcome to the Family and Ironside

i was at least aware of Welcome To The Family and how doomed it was from the beginning (ball cap guy from Yes, Dear? that's your top billed star?) but i never even heard of Ironside or saw a single ad for it before it was canceled. and i've watched enough NBC in the past month that that seems like their fault.

I kind of love The Millers, or more specifically love Beau Bridges and Margo Martindale. I wish they'd just let Will Arnett leave cuz he doesn't seem like he's having a lot of fun.

Margo's got a real "oh, i already have an emmy for drama, when's my next fart scene?" vibe while arnett makes "i've made a huge mistake" faces

i like the hello ladies show

I started watching that and bailed after 20 minutes. I love Stephen Merchant but I guess I just wasn't in the mood for him? I plan on trying again

I had no idea what Chris Hardwick's @midnight show was going to be like, but it was fucking killing me dead for 30 minutes. There's no way it will be good every night, but now I've got something to kill time with between Colbert and Fallon.

god i hate chris hardwick so much and i hate the nonstop commercials for that so much i can't comprehend actually watching him on purpose

haha

I've never seen Hardwick being funny. Maybe the show is a change of pace.

Hardwick wasn't particularly funny. It was the content and the content the all-comic panel reacted to.

sounds like Talking Bad/Dead - tolerable if the guests are good

yeah Hardwick has pretty much never been funny but if it's just the latest way for CC to load up a show with comedians it seems like it could be a decent distraction on the rare occasion i feel like staying up past Colbert

so Hardwick is kinda acting as the DJ Khaled of television then?

that is a harsh diss on Khaled right there

WE THE NERDIST

One of those weird meta things - on Trophy Wife this week she makes a scene of hiding out and eating a bag of Let's potato chips, the imaginary brand from last season on Community.

http://www.uproxx.com/tv/2013/07/lets-potato-chips-have-appeared-in-community-orange-is-the-new-black-every-show-ever/

yeah finding out that things morley cigarettes, heisler beer, and (presumably let's potato chips) were the result of a using the same prop supplier and not some elaborate in joke was kinda disappointing.

oooooooh.

The Blacklist is really really really lazy. Choice cliches from tonight:

"The car isn't holding the bomb - the car IS the bomb!"

"It'll take at least two hours to evacuate everyone in a 20 mile radius!"
"We have 10 minutes."

i liked the almost human pilot enough to watch a second episode. generic cyberpunk setting + generic police procedural = actually kinda watchable to me!

'so do you feel EMOTIONS like a REAL HUMAN BEING??' sigh

brooklyn 99 going pretty ok so far.

chelsea peretti (first-date girl from the s1 episode of louie) annoys me considerably tho.

terry crews doing some good work there.

you have to suspend disbelief pretty significantly to buy Peralta, but the show makes me LOL so I do it easily

chelsea is rad fuiud

and its getting funnier each week

joe lo truglio is KILLING me, dude is so consistently funny

I've always loved his work, particularly on The State and similar themed projects, but it's kind of nice to see him in a more traditional setting because he does it very well. He's a weirdo, but for once, he's not significantly weirder than the other characters around him.

peretti is the best thing about the show imo

the show is already really solid, great cast all around

k this episode was ace. so many great moments, especially:

*Boyle INSISTING on bringing up his blog
*Terry breaking the 8-ball
*Pizza sauce prank
*The cop/firefighter turf war
*Gina scaring the interviewee

her bit on the witness stand in the previous episode was great

'to be candid...'

lol yes and the blinking!

so the crazy ones is just one ongoing exercise in brand partnerships right

Getting On (HBO, sorry) is fucking nonstop amazing right out the gate. Everyone has to watch this right now.

Masters of Sex has loads in favor of it and is consistently getting tripped up on its own feet with too many plots and counterplots that keep stirring the pot before anything gets even half baked. I'm hoping it calms down next season and trusts the actors to carry it a bit more.

anyone been paying attention to these sundance shows, are they really so good or is this another AMC bubble for people to latch onto

Rectify and Top of the Lake are fantastic. Les Revenants/The Returned is pretty good.

I loved Rectify. I thought Top of the Lake was good at times. The Returned was superb...until it wasn't.

Rectify is fantastic.

Anyone watching Almost Human? I was behind & watched the first two tonight, am totally on board. Good chemistry between the handsome blue-eyed fellow & Karl Urban, some good laugh out loud moments between them in ep 2

i watched it a little and found it decent. i find the trend of 2 hour pilots really off-putting, though, the show is too light to pull that off. i liked how quickly they got to an episode about sex robots, though.

trophy wife gets funnier every episode

I dunno, I watched last week's, and I still have that problem where I find it cute/charming but not actually ha-ha funny.

i'm digging it, but it's true, a lot of it rides on how likeable the cast is

its a really nice ensamble. i feel like they've hit a groove.

In which Alessandra Stanley compares OITNB to Clueless: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/arts/television/alessandra-stanley-sizes-up-2013-tv-fare.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=1&

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpVoUvLdErw

Never forget, 2013's best response to Alessandra Stanley's bullshit, courtesy of Chris Hayes: http://www.salon.com/2013/10/14/nyt_calls_chris_hayes_a_hollywood_diva/

hahaha

i still like almost human it's like gotham central in transmet universe

yeah I'm still loving it

i should give it a shot huh?

it doesn't really do subtle character sketches, it's very pulpy. i hope they make it weirder and weirder as it goes on

For the end of the year, I think what would be interesting is if everyone reading this thread gave a list of new shows they're sticking with and a list of shows, both new and otherwise, that they're giving up on (or thinking of doing so).

New shows:

The Originals (Best New Show 2013 - but I'm a Vampire Diaries fan)
Sleepy Hollow
The Tomorrow People (such trash, and not even that enjoyable tbh, but I keep on watching this for some reason, maybe cause it's hard to change the channel after Arrow)
Trophy Wife

Shows I'm (close to) giving up on:

Agents of SHIELD (I'm reallyyyy close to giving up on this one - gonna see how they resolve the "midseason finale" cliffhanger and if that isn't resolved in a satisfactory manner, I'm out)
Awkward (I've liked this show a lot and last night's finale was fantastic but it also felt like a series finale since the creator/"showrunner" is leaving the show so I don't know if I want to ruin the neatness of the entire arc so far)
Nashville
Revenge (see Agents of SHIELD)

New Shows:
Sleepy Hollow
Almost Human

Giving up on
Walking Dead
Agents of SHIELD (havent officially given up but cant be fucked watching)
White Collar

New shows:

The Americans
Orphan Black
Orange Is The New Black

Shows I'm close to giving up on:

Revenge, for the same reasons as Murgatroid gave. This series has gone some stupid places, but if what they've teased as happening is really what happens, I may be done.

mordy kinda selling me on almost human. bailed on agentzzz of shield, bailed on nashville a while back (ok show, just expendable), loved revenge season one, lost track w/ season two and haven't really looked back. i could see myself catching up on netflix at some point. i think the only new show i actively watch is brooklyn nine nine? it's kinda come into its own though it's nowhere near its ceiling (i hope). very much mean to check out masters of sex cuz i love period drama and i've heard good things and i find lizzy caplan very very interesting. has anyone experienced this feeling i've had of late where you'll hear some show that you've been meaning to check out whenever you finally somehow find the time has gone to hell and you get this odd sense of relief? in my case thinking here specifically of homeland and sons of anarchy.

i'm so relieved that homeland - whose second season i couldn't finish - is getting terrible and i never have to go back to it

New shows:
Brooklyn-99 - like Parks & Rec skipped ahead to season 2 - they're already on good footing, awesome cast
Trophy Wife - knew nothing about this beforehand, turns out to be mildly charming w/likeable cast
The Blacklist - utter garbage, but I love James Spader and am endlessly entertained by him in this stupid stupid show. I mean they had one episode where they brought Tom Noonan on as a serial killer called The Stewmaker, and that was one of the better episodes.
Super Fun Night - probably cancelled, pretty middle of the road in quality, but as with these other shows I like the cast and hope they end up in better produced/written sitcoms

On the fence:
Agents of SHIELD - only watched the first 4 eps or so, mean to catch up, but i'm not super enthused about it
Raising Hope - never really a top shelf show to begin with and eventually succumbing to the My Name is Earl curse of diminishing returns, but Garret Dillahunt / Martha Plimpton have supplanted the leads (great move) and this is probably the final season anyway so I'm hanging in there while they burn off double Friday episodes

Good returning stuff:
How I Met Your Mother - final season, shockingly good compared to the crap last few seasons that were so up and down, the renewed focus is good. Sentimentality hooray!
New Girl - still climbing in quality, bringing back Damon Wayans was a great move
The Walking Dead - just as dumb, just as fun as ever, show's basically been consistently watchable since end of season 2
Misc Cartoon Network stuff I continue to love: Adventure Time, Regular Show, Steven Universe (new and charming)

S2 of Revenge was pretty much garbage but S3 has been quite redeeming but like you said with Nashville, it also feels so expendable at this point.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine would be great if it was just Andre Braugher and Chelsea Peretti but I can't stand Andy Samberg as a lead (he's only tolerable in small doses).

I've never gone from being super-excited about a show to giving up on it quite as quickly as I have with Homeland.

steven universe, rick + morty

the big fix between seasons 1 & 2 for the office us and parks were them figuring out how to write the lead so maybe they can fix it, i'm fine w/ samberg (eg had no problem w/ him as a lead in hot rod) but agree they have some work to do there. braugher's been fantastic. i hesitate to recommend a denis leary project but the job, his cop sitcom from the early 00s, is pretty great imo, i like it better than rescue me though it helps it got cancelled after one season and didn't have time to go completely off the rails like rescue me.

oh shit I forgot

New Shows:
Blacklist - I could watch Spader in this all day long. It's totally rote but he KILLS it every week
Brooklyn Nine Nine - gets funnier every week & totally worth it for Joe Lo Truglio & my girlcrush on Chelsea Perretti

love joe lo truglio so much, neck and neck between him and ken marino for fave member of the state.

only thing i don't love about brooklyn 9-9 at this point is how often samberg's (and sometimes peretti's) motivation in a scene appears to be "ain't i a stinker?"

gave up on every other new show though i could see going back to a few once given the season 2 all-clear

The only shows I've watched with any regularity of late are S.H.I.E.L.D. (which is mostly cute and undemanding and not nearly as bad as everyone keeps saying, and which is supposed to start getting much much Marvel-ier after the break, so I'm hangin' in there) and HIMYM (which is mostly painful and cartoonish and not nearly as good as everyone keeps saying...there were some lulls prior to this season, but I never had so much trouble sticking with it before) and The Eric Andre Show (which makes me laugh super hard almost every episode).

Best new show I've seen this year is the waaaaaaay underrated and underexposed Nathan For You:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2rgzsO-AMM

New shows I'm sticking with:

Rectify
Hannibal
OitNB
Masters of Sex
Moone Boy
Nathan For You
Inside Amy Schumer
The Americans
Orphan Black

Returning shows I gave up on:

The Walking Dead
Homeland

Oh, yeah, Orphan Black was good value. As was however many episodes of Hannibal I've watched thus far. Will be returning to those.

So very smugly pleased with myself that I saw through the Homeland hype machine by the end of season 1.

I'd maintain that it was mostly great up until "Q&A." That's where the series really ended in my brain.

Until and including, I should say.

I hung in for another half a season, but much of my credulity fizzled along with Brody's bomb.

Am I really the only person who thinks Getting On on HBO is the best current show on television? Everyone should try it.

I intend to! The majority of my TV watching time of late has been devoted to an umpteenth rewatch of Roseanne, and I'm thrilled that Laurie Metcalf is back on TV.

oh, u know what else is good? alpha house on amazon prime.

Yeah, would like to watch that for similar reasons (plus Trudeau's previous televisual effort, Tanner '88, being one of my favorite shows ever).

Oh yeah, if Hannibal counts as new, then yeah, I'm sticking with that one. I tried The Americans for like, five or six eps and I just couldn't get into it. Same with the ten minutes of Getting On I watched.

Wow, you went in for 5 or 6 episodes and still didn't get into The Americans? The S1 finale contained THE MOST INTENSE bit of television I've seen anywhere all year.

I dunno, maybe I'm seeing something that isn't there or whatnot, but FX dramas on the whole have this kind of "HBO but not quite there" aesthetic that annoys me.

ok, i got bored enough to draw up a list so here's my stuff i'm currently watching / continuing to watch / will watch when it returns from hiatus. i can not recommend everything here:

15-30min comedy: alpha house, trophy wife, mindy project, new girl, brooklyn-99, modern family, eric andre show, children's hospital, eagleheart, parks + rec, comedy bang bang, key & peele, suburgatory, louie, always sunny in philadelphia, cougar town, himym, snl, i'll probably give community another try, veep,

hr-long dramas: almost human, game of thrones, orange is the new black

animated: bob's burgers, american dad, adventure time, rick and morty, china il, metalocalypse, steven universe, venture bros, archer, boondocks

rip: anthony jeselnik (cancelled), newsroom (maybe i'll catch up on the 2nd season - i doubt it), girls (blah), mad men (boring), homeland (ridiculous), ja'mie (stupid)

murgatroid otm

Justified and The Americans were both better than anything on HBO this year.

sigh. Justified. I can't wait til it comes back

Yeah, I was about to say in my above post that at the same time, I'm not really watching anything on HBO these days either save Veep. I'll check out Looking too as it's my sworn duty as a Gay (though Alyssa Rosenberg, who I usually trust with TV and whatnot, sez it's good).

i watch game of thrones and enjoy boardwalk empire a ton though i never watch it week to week i always wait til the season's over and binge watch it. i watch girls also, i like lena dunham so sue me, and if/when curb comes back i'll watch it also.

the only show that was really crucial for me this year was canceled. rip bunheads.

;_;

Yeah. At least Sutton Foster is getting a new show! On...TV Land! But still!

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view7/2532644/crying-baby-o.gif

Didn't know how I managed to not throw my TV out the window after Bunheads, Enlightened, and Happy Endings were all cancelled in the span of a year but I somehow survived.

Happy Endings was never gonna live man, let's face it. It was one of those shows.

A question about Enlightened. Did it end in a satisfactory way? I'd hate to start at the beginning and find out I'm going to arrive at a cliffhanger with no chance for resolution.

Oh, it ends PERFECTLY.

Okay, cool.

yeah it's great JF, you should totally watch it

tv is in too many places now, can't keep track

i mean amazon prime seriously

let's go back to just have four networks and put the three or four good shows on air on those

RE: Almost Human

i watched it a little and found it decent. i find the trend of 2 hour pilots really off-putting, though, the show is too light to pull that off. i liked how quickly they got to an episode about sex robots, though.

Watched the first episode of 'The Assets' - dramatised sorta miniseries about Aldrich Ames

It's not great, especially if you prefer your spy entertainment on the Tinker Tailer level, but as far as spies on network tv goes, i'm a sucker for pretty much anything so I'll take it

dude playing Ames is a dead ringer imo

best part: Ralph Brown (Camberwell Carrott Danny from Withnail & I) plays one of the bosses. Took me all episode to figure out who he was

okay it's not really the best thing but I was excited to realize it was 'im

finally watched trophy wife, it's really funny but it is SUCH a modern family rip, which is kind of, i dunno, if it was a person you would be kind of embarrassed for how unabashed they are at being current

yeah i finally watched it cuz of ilx, fun show and i'm really happy to see michaela watkins getting work since her getting fired from snl was such bullshit. the kids are really really good on it which is really not the case w/ these shows very often. all the kids on modern family starting to look awkward and ill fitting, like latter day ben seaver.

I was so annoyed with the Trophy Wife pilot because it was ALMOST funny, and the cast was SO likable, but it didn't really work

Fortunately within like two episodes the cast charisma and the scripts started clicking. I don't regularly follow it but I always enjoy it whenever I catch it.

Have they made any effort to explain the family backstory? Like how Bradley married and divorced two wildly different women but managed to keep an extremely amicable relationship with both even after quickly marrying a hottie about twenty years younger than him? Did they reveal they're actually all sister wives or anything?

it's a sitcom?

well, considering they were actively losing older female viewers in the first few weeks and ratings haven't improved, i was curious if there'd been any effort to address the conceit that's presumably alienating them.

lawyer, doctor (super republicany), new ager (super liberalish), half-his-age blonde who -doesn't- try to determine everything about his life / butt in; seems to be a sequence of over-reactions

i would rather hear about the kids, as is there's kind of a weird like dad-is-just-some-guy-who-was-married-to-mom vibe

dad seems like a dork - the two sons seem to reflect him a lot (like the dumb kid in modern family)

the whole concept sounds like it could alienate women - especially the young wife being superhot - but three of the leads are women and easily get the chunk of screen time and storylines, and they're all funny/sympathetic to some degree. i think the creator wrote it loosely inspired by her own experience as a third wife

yeah the cast is terrific but its pretty definitely going to be cancelled. it's just funny that it was created by the creator of Target: Women and all the interviews were all "well she's not REALLY a trophy wife, she's just a young woman we can all respect" and everybody missed that making the young hottie the sympathetic lead over two single moms might actually alienate the kind of people watching ABC after The Goldbergs.

Is Patton Oswalt the narrator of The Goldbergs? Trying to pinpoint what it is that makes me turn off the TV/change channels within 10 seconds whenever that show comes on.

think so yeah

wow, good for brooklyn-99 - winning golden globes on the basis of what? half a season?

yeah, they'd only aired 11 episodes when the nominations were announced

seeing chelsea peretti onstage at the golden globes was pretty cool

hell yeah

yeah tvbythenumbers has brooklyn 99 as likely cancelled but considering fox gave it the after the superbowl slot and they bought a golden globe for it i can't imagine they're going to cancel it after just one year (esp since ken tremendous shows tend to improve dramatically in their second season).

happy for them cuz I want them to get season 2 but this is my third favorite show on Fox Tuesdays and Samberg's sometimes the worst thing about it.

Jake Johnston and Chris Messina def deserve a trophy more than ol' Cute'n'Screamy

not to mention Andre Braugher

oh how i wish Andre Braugher was gay irl (also wished the same for Adam Pally re: Happy Endings)

I find it hard to believe Fox would actually pay to buy Brooklyn 99 a Golden Globe. Or any show, really, they just don't care! Look how well those awards did for Arrested Development.

That said I already love Brooklyn 99 and it's probably only going to get better

yeah I really enjoy Brooklyn 99 now -- it took a few episodes to get going but it's really come around

anyone else watching space dandy? djp?

Really liked that Broad City pilot.

^ this was a happy surprise

fyi: killer women is terrible

dnw

mr veg dvr'd it why because trisha helfer ... it's like a hallmark movie masquerading as a tv show

It was readily apparent from the commercials.

yeah, i caught one episode, because I love that Cylon. sadly... awful

has anyone else watched Helix?

the acting is kinda b-movie-level awkward/terrible but there is something about the story that I really love. or maybe I'm just fangirling for Moore, idk

lol 'maybe'

I realized it had that guy from The 4400 but wasn't sure if i should really give it a shot. looks REALLY low budget. Didn't realize RDM was involved

i'm mr meeseeks look at me rick and morty thread

i like broad city

Me too.

watched the first ep, not really my style - opening and ending of the pilot really turned me off

i like it

is 'intelligence' any good, cbs aficionados?

i keep seeing spots for it and i didn't even recognize josh holloway without his sawyer haircut (and shirt, i guess)

didn't watch, apparently it is vv dull and formulaic

i always lol when i see that it's Sawyer from Lost. he disappeared for a while, didn't he?

Yeah, for some reason Taylor Kitsch got the film career that should rightfully have been his.

who among those clowns really made out well

hurley, obv., and i'm always seeing dr. chang in bit parts now, and michael emerson has made a real strong showing

xp lol, i actually just saw X-Men Origins: Wolverine the other week and was thinking that!

most of the Losties are doing ok but none of them have really broken out the way they did on that show, sadly - even Emerson or Terry O'Quinn

those clowns!

emerson's got a big hit show on cbs. sawyer seemed the most likely for stardom and maybe still is but so far it was a tiny appearance in mi3:ghost protocol and not much else in movies. seems like somehow it's harder now for ppl to make the jump from tv to movies? maybe i'm wrong but the only ppl who have made the jump or whatever in the past ten or so years i can think of really are steve carell (whose movie stardom predates his sitcom stardom really), tina fey (same), and jason segal (where his having been on freaks and geeks clearly played a larger role in fostering his movie career than himym). there are others i'm sure who did tv and then got a nice movie career going recently but nobody that really built off their tv stardom like bruce willis or george clooney did. i mean jon hamm hasn't done it yet. anyway i would've thought 'cbs drama' would've been a perfect fit for holloway but somehow they fucked up and put him in something that looks like it should be on nbc.

burn, sucks to be nbc

yeah some of them have had steady tv work, terry o'quinn has been in something ever since lost ended, even ol aussie whasername has been on one of those fairy tale shows. and emerson is holding it down but i don't think those viewers are going to translate into anything but a solid line of tv gigs for the next ~10 years for him. (and he's even got supposed movie star jim caviezel alongside him to lend a little glow.)

a little earlier on, but jennifer garner made the switch kind of uneasily, had to put up with being in a lotta romcoms. not exactly bruce willis stardom but i can't think of many others. huh.

think you're right balls - the only ones who've made the jump recently that i can think of are disney channel-types like Zac Efron

yeah, i love Emerson but i always saw Caviezel aka Jesus as the mainstream draw for Person of Interest. kinda shocked it's been on this long, but CBS I suppose

yeah garner's a good call. she never really became a big movie star (to an extent she kinda stopped trying, seems like when she works now it's clearly something she actually wants to do and not really a career move), but her push into movies got that style of hype and industry support that willis or clooney got. her appearance in catch me if you can was somehow a big deal. bradley cooper made the jump but he was never defined by his tv work, he was a dude that happened to be on alias and then the show he actually starred in was canceled pretty quickly for better or for worse (i liked kitchen confidential). i mean think of how many movies the dudes from friends headlined and the best hollywood can come up w/ for neil patrick harris is the smurfs?

well, post-doogie wasn't his career kinda nowhere before harold and kumar reset his image? which was a while before himym, but i kind of expect him to get… something… going after it ends (as opposed to say hannigan who will maybe find another tv role, having built up a second store of viewer goodwill kind of like david boreanaz did, only he seems to have flourished more).

what about anyone from the desperate housewives / gray's anatomy side of nighttime soapish shows? i never saw any of those so i don't really follow their actors.

o fuck you're right

HEIGL

can't believe i forgot heigl

eva longoria seems to have set her sights on something bigger than movie stardom. the possibility exists that i have had a fantasy wherein i'm rich (from 'something', something 'positive', not like just wall st) and she becomes my bride and we team up and take the white house by TURNING TEXAS BLUE.

Heigl had a good run for like, three years there, huh, and her career promptly fell off a cliff after that

is that the lifespan of Hollywood careers these days

didn't she have 'trouble' with being 'opinionated' or whatever i.e. not taking typical women-in-media bullshit?

melissa mccarthy is a weird case in that you could easily argue that she's actually the biggest sure thing movie star right now (as in if there was a melissa mccarthy vehicle opening in theatres next week it would almost definitely be #1 at the box office) and yet the sitcom she currently stars in is a just a footnote to her career, it's barely a bigger factor in her success than whether she played volleyball in high school or whatever. it has got to drive cbs insane and they can promote that show w/ 'hey we got melissa mccarthy - LOOK WE GOT MELISSA MCCARTHY - SHE HAS A TV SHOW - MELISSA MCCARTHY FROM THE MOVIES HAS A TV SHOW' and most of america is still 'yeah we love melissa mccarthy, but that show looks fucking awful'.

oh yeah that's a good one. when she broke out i was wondering if she had brought any fans to the table from that show, but i figured it was just that she was running shit and the film performances by themselves did it.

heigl burnt some bridges but she also got a bad rep, esp in yr us weeklies etc, which may have hurt her w/ her audience. she also made too many shitty movies but i don't think that alone scuttled her career, it didn't do the same w/ jennifer aniston.

well, she was like one of the handful of top tv comedy actresses of the 90s, and they gave her SO many chances at vehicles. i think heigl may not have been in such a solid position?

Everyone got super sick of Heigl after a long string of increasingly shit films in which she played the same horrible character. (I know this because I watched all of them while playing drinking games with friends at the ol' video store gig.) Honestly I don't think the mini-Knocked Up beef had that much to do with her falling out of favor.

aniston did get a lot of chances - hell, she still gets too many chances, probably - if the brangelina thing hadn't happened i think she would've disappeared a lot quicker

Can I just: Most hideous movie poster featuring Katherine Heigl's dumb ass face

sadly most of the image links no longer work. well, not that sadly

I just noticed that NBC is premiering About a Boy on a Saturday night.

A SATURDAY NIGHT.

The last time Jason Katims decided to do a TV show based on a movie no one expected would spawn a TV show, we got Friday Night Lights, so sure, I'll give About A Boy a shot.

Wait, I forgot Parenthood. Is that show any good? A few people I follow here and there on Twitter watch it but it doesn't seem to have nearly as much of a dedicated following as FNL did.

i saw a commerical for About A Boy and thought for a second that Bent had returned

Parenthood definitely has a following, it's one of those weird you'd-think-it-was-cancelled-years-ago kind of audience, but it has consistent numbers. It's good if you like that kind of soft family drama, i.e. Judging Amy, Men of A Certain Age, etc. I never got into it, but I could see it was good for its genre.

Parenthood is good (at least, the first two seasons were) but it was so placid and kind-hearted that it was hard to remember to watch it.

Yeah I know people who really like Parenthood and also really like other things I like, so even though it looks uninteresting from afar I can appreciate what its appeal might be.

Parenthood is good but it needs to end next season. They are squeezing story lines out that don't feel organic.

About A Boy is the FOURTH show starring David Walton that NBC has put on the air in the last four years. It's like they really want him to happen, but not enough to give him a promising and/or well-promoted project. I like the guy (he was hilarious in Fired Up and the best thing about a couple of those NBC shows) but it's getting sad.

Sleepy Hollow finale was pretty dope

went full on Empire Strikes Back

About A Boy is the FOURTH show starring David Walton that NBC has put on the air in the last four years. It's like they really want him to happen, but not enough to give him a promising and/or well-promoted project. I like the guy (he was hilarious in Fired Up and the best thing about a couple of those NBC shows) but it's getting sad.

all of this is OTM, I commented on the same thing to my wife when the About a Boy promos started airing

I can't fathom why a broadcast network would even bother debuting a show on a Saturday night, though. If you want it killed, don't even bother.

most likely some kind of contractual obligations, i think

i always get the feeling there's a lot of bullshit network politics going on, shows get produced, executives change over, schedules get wrecked
you ever see the movie The TV Set?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfErkHGPJrA#t=265

Broad City and Workaholics aren't all the different, except I find myself hating the dudes on Workaholics and totally loving the ladies on Broad City. Is this sexist? Or am I just not bored with women doing gross/stoner humor yet?

the ladies on broad city are hilarious - much funnier than workaholics guys. also funnier than girls ladies imho.

Except Girls isn't trying to be laugh-out-loud funny whereas Broad City is (what I'm saying is to stop comparing the two shows - I get the impulse, but don't).

Yeah, I know the above assumes that we all laugh to the same kind of humor but y'all get what I'm saying, I hope.

i think it's natural to compare the two - both are ostensibly half hour comedies about young women living in NY. but you're right that only one of them is laugh-out-loud funny.

also broad city is really really jewy

Was not expecting that webisode to be so straightforwardly righteous, based on their Comedy Central show.

broad city spike lee homage fairly spot on

ok i laughed at the end, but... why did they do this

why did they create a well-made, humorous Spike Lee homage as part of their web series? Why not?

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/01/big-in-norway/355748/

hardcore

lol i remember reading a thing in the wsj about that

Kinda vr

I was staying in a hostel in Lillehammer a few years ago, and on the TV in the dining room was this real-time footage of huntsmen steadily creeping their way through a snowy forest, looking for elk or whatever. No music or narration, just hand-held footage of these men with rifles slowly and silently walking through the woods. I watched about ten minutes of it, I think.

Yeah, they copied that concept in Denmark, and filmed every train-route out of the front window. I couldn't sleep one night and channel-surfed, and found out they were showing the route that went past my parents house. So I spent twenty minutes waiting for the train to pass their house, and then I wanted to see the route I'd taken to school for ten years, and then I wanted to see what it looked like into central Copenhagen... I spent forty minutes watching that, and I had stuff to do the next morning.

It's fascinating.

Also: James Benning!

other than true detective, the best show right now is party down south, recognize

True Detective is piling up on my hard drive. Will begin watching asap. Have no idea when I'll get around to S1 of House of Cards, much less S2.

oh no i thought it was "party down: south" like party down but set in the south. it isn't.

ron's franchise at last

the most recent ep of kroll show (mother, daughter, sister, wife) was v funny

Unless it was totally Nick Kroll-free, I have my doubts about the truth of your statement.

zing! but true.

i sat through an episode once where they did this Degrassi Jr. High parody. it was a terrible mistake.

I caught the last 3 eps of broad city and really enjoyed them

I love the degrassi thing

i used to hate that 1 but the meal plan points vs meals skit of it was amazing

there some point when he starting talking about how Canadians deliver their milk in bags and uuuuuuuuughhh

i used to hate that 1 but the meal plan points vs meals skit of it was amazing

― johnny crunch, Friday, February 21, 2014 4:11 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha yeah that was great, Kroll Show has been growing on me

Kroll Show is great

Yeah, that About a Boy pilot wasn't very good.

when did the little boy in the middle become so creepy?

I just started watching Vikings this weekend -- no thread for it, I gather? It's a wee bit corny but fuck it I don't care I like it anyway.

I've heard some good things but I can't be bothered.

all I needed was the opening shot of Odin walking through the battlefield and I was hooked

Yah Vikings has been filling my Spartacus void.

spartacus was a bit too sexytimes for me...i like that there are lots of clothed scenes in vikings, lol

Yah def not the same but you know.

Apparently Australians and French viewers get Vikings nudity which is withheld from the rest of the world (VegGrrl will understand this when she learns it's on SBS here)

shut

up

now I feel conflicted about how happy I was that there was no nudity, becuase I'm thinking about all the hypothetical nudity that I am missing out on and I'm :(

Helpful guide to what you're missing on IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2306299/parentalguide?ref_=tt_stry_pg

Another reason to be pissed off about the post retune loss of sbs.

I can't get into vikings. There's just something fundamentally wrong with a show where vikings call having sex "having sex."

"I'd like 'raid her village' ifyaknowhatImean"

lol I was thinking the same when I heard that beauty!

"girl you get with me and i'll make you vallHOLLA"