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

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