2012 TV thread: winter, spring, maybe summer

DVR ratings don't come out for a bit. That 1.3 is live and yes, it is shockingly bad.

NBC opens February sweeps in strong tie with Univision

the chris rock 'inside comedy' is dope

xp what a disaster for NBC.

"it started to get better, and better, and better, and better, and you get your voice and ya dont care and ya start doing long shows and ppl started showing up like on the club level ya know, theres fights cuz ppl cant get in, thats when i knew i had a little something, it's like oh shit, fuckin fights every night"

saw Smash premiere. thought it was good enough that i'll watch another episode but it didn't blow me away. it feels like it's trying to be a cable drama on network. big ensemble cast, high production values. obv no cursing, nudity or decapitations. i guess NBC is very invested in this doing well?

The River was terrible. Think Awake will be any good?

this close to getting off the smash wagon. so much mediocrity. that scene between debra messing + her son was so hammily acted and so lazily written i was in physical pain.

yeah the stuff with the son was incredibly awful, although i liked the rest of the episode fine, and i figure soon enough they'll realize what a drag the family stuff is and stop bogging down the show with it

Switched At Birth started out as a show that other people were watching while I was in the room doing other stuff, but I'm surprised to find that I'm getting into it. Turns out that dismissing it as just another execrable ABC Family original program (and the others I've seen have, indeed, been execrable) was a mistake. It's very low-key and nothing earth-shattering (aside from maybe its casual and even-handed handling of deaf culture, including long and silent stretches of characters ASL-ing) but also quite smart and engaging. And I really like the cast. I thought I'd pimp it a bit since I couldn't find any mention of it on ILX, and especially since most people with discerning tastes are unlikely to trawl through the wasteland of ABC Family for descent programming (although things might be turning a corner there with the inception of Amy Sherman-Palladino's forthcoming show?). RIYL, say, Gilmore Girls or Men Of A Certain Age.

i love switched at birth! it's dumb about race, though. but it is great otherwise.

between himym + cougar town + raising hope this has been a big week for dramatic relationship shifts in sitcoms

and it's only tuesday!

four if you count New Girl!

four shows*

Justified ruled tonight!

finally watched The River pilot, ugh that was bad. i only checked it out because sepinwall had a generally positive opinion of it, but the acting was poor and the plot choices were ludicrous and it wasn't even particularly scary. v. disappointing.

I recorded the first two episodes of Smash, but then deleted them without watching.

AICN ratings update

Had no idea how low The Office has sunk. 30 Rock doing terrible (Whitney, on Wednesdays is beating it!) and Up All Night looks to be in real trouble even if The Office is as low as it is.

Stoked that I really got into Vampire Diaries, as it looks to be sticking around.

Also holy toledo at those Walking Dead numbers.

30 Rock is now opposite Big Bang Theory, which is very popular now. NBC may be accepting low numbers in the realization that nothing will do well in that slot (see Simpsons vs. Cosby Show in the 80s).

Well they benched Community because of its ratings in that timeslot and 30 Rock is doing worse.

I know that Baldwin signed on for one more season after this so I don't think it'll get cancelled. But still.

Maybe 30 Rock has enough prestige (Fey, Baldwin, Morgan) that they think it'll pan out in the long run.

apparently a bunch of normally popular shows saw unexplained dips in their ratings this past week, across all the networks. except fucking whitney, which went UP. hopefully people tuned in thinking it was a whitney houston tribute and then immediately changed the channel when they beheld its true horror.

"When's this Whitney Houston tribute starting?"
"It'll be on when this crap sitcom finishes"
"Are you sure?"
"Shut up"
"But it..."
"I thought I told you to shut up"

29 minutes later, ratings bonanza

Any advanced word on Missing, that new Ashley "Official ILX Crush Object" Judd's new action-chick series?

I only caught a few minutes of Comic Book Men but I can't imagine why anyone would want to watch it.

i'm sure i'm the only person still watching 2 broke girls on ilx, but they decided to pretend this week that kat dennings isn't jewish?

I still watch it. I don't know why.

also, this is pretty anti-Semitic. i think?

i'm trying not to be sensitive but the little satmar kids throwing around money and talking like gangsters is really o_O

I mean, I know *why* but I'm not proud of it...

I've given up even trying to come up with ways to defend this shows attitude towards race/gender/etc.

It's like a bunch of writers who don't know there's a difference between "edgy" and "offensive". Note to writers: the latter usually happens when you're lazy.

Any advanced word on Missing, that new Ashley "Official ILX Crush Object" Judd's new action-chick series?

...this is a real series?

it could just be i'm sensitive bc it's a community i know pretty well, and except for a couple nicely delivered characterizations (them loving dennings for looking jewish & dismissing other girl as a shiksa felt pretty spot-on / the snarky matriarch), it seemed totally foreign to me, like someone making up what they imagine satmar culture to be like.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/02/02/article-2095063-119097AF000005DC-822_634x788.jpg

"i prefer Burrrprint (The Movie 3D) to 808s and Heartbreak"

...this is a real series?

― Nhex, Wednesday, February 22, 2012 8:33 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not a dream, not a hoax!

i'm sure i'm the only person still watching 2 broke girls on ilx, but they decided to pretend this week that kat dennings isn't jewish?

― Mordy, Wednesday, February 22, 2012 11:18 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

her character =/ the actress, though? also she said she doesn't 100% know her parentage and the other characters said she looked jewish, so it wasn't like total weird revisionism. but yeah, still watching it.

yeah, when i posted that they hadn't introduced the ambiguity yet. obv kat dennings != max, but at the same time kat dennings is (to my eyes) such an obviously jewish actress that it seems silly in such an episode to not just make her jewish (esp when everyone comments on how jewish she looks - well duh!). iirc, they did a similar kind of thing in the episode of X-Files with the Golem where the white supremacist tells Mulder that he 'looks like them [jews],' which is a similar lol since david duchovny's father was a publicist for american jewish committee.

i should clarify, not that everyone who looks like a jew is one, and everyone who doesn't isn't one - but kat dennings in particular seems to have modeled a lot of her career + style on what i'd consider a jewish style of comedy, presentation, etc (not to mention that Nick + Nora movie) plus she's from around my neighborhood so maybe i just have this particular pov

Reminds me of Goodfellas, where Lorraine Bracco's character is Jewish but they comment on how Italian she looks

kat dennings != max

its true, sigh

on the plus side, that means you were never in a film being fingerbanged by Michael Cera

well, it was a mini-series

i have never been fingered by michael cera in a miniseries or movie

ok fine, webisode

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soJggb_jDL8

sooooo. west wing w/out sorkin?

Thick of It in the US morelike

Matt Walsh even kinda looks like Timothy Busfield

i like that we don't lock the old tv threads so if we ever want to go back and rehash the winter, spring and maybe summer of 2012 nbc dramas we can

For convenience, though: 2012 Fall TV Thread