Fall Summer Preview

When all the network shows were finishing up in May, I looked at my severely reduced TV schedule for the summer, and saw this as an opportunity to catch up on my backlogs and movie collection "A Criterion a Day!," I promised myself in my head. We are now on the precipice of the fall TV season - only a month to go - and I haven't even been able to catch up with the current releases of Criterions, much less the back catalog. And the TV? It's still a-coming.

Nowadays, when I list my hobbies, I include television amongst them, even though I don't think many people know what I'm referring to. I'm not vegging out on the couch zoning to stupid VH1 reality shows or whatever reruns are playing on the CW (though that's how I spent a large portion of my teens) - this is specific, target watching of artful television. I think that there is TV today that is producing at a quality similar to that of films, and it can be approached similarly. Looking forward to the next few months, there's a daunting 23 shows whose seasons are premiering, and all but four of them are during the month of September.

Weeds - 16 Aug - Showtime
I've already written a review of the Season 6 premiere, but hopefully Season 6 will get us away from the unfunny Mexican storylines and try something fresh.




The Big C - 16 Aug - Showtime
A new show about an older woman who discovers she has stage 4 melanoma. Stars Laura Linney, Oliver Platt, and Gabourey Sidibe (Precious). Between this, Weeds, United States of Tara, Nurse Jackie, and The L Word, Showtime has a good track record with strong leading ladies.


Sons of Anarchy - 7 September - FX
Though I have yet to watch The Shield, Kurt Sutter has created some great characters, and the writing has kept tensions high throughout all of last season. With the resolution of the Nazi gang last season, I wouldn't be surprised if SoA takes on another season-long storyarc this season.

Terriers - 8 September - FX
A new series costarring the dude who played Renée on the first season of True Blood, it's about a couple of misfits operating a makeshift detective agency. I don't have any reason to believe this will be good other than FX being one of those basic cable channels like AMC which I will try just about anything they put to series.

The Venture Bros. - 12 September - Cartoon Network

With Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! ending last Spring, The Venture Bros. is one of the few remaining Adult Swim shows I follow (aside from ATHF and - hopefully - Check it Out! With Steve Brule). Things got shook up this season, with Brock stepping back from regular status, the death of 24, and Sgt. Hatred pussyfooting all over the place, but there is still plenty of good humor to go around. Plus, I love the into music.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia - 16 September - FX
After Seinfeld ended, there were a deluge of crappy sitcoms that directly tried to emulate their style, but I believe Sunny features the irrelevant storylines, callous characters, and wild situations to be as close as we dare to get to another Seinfeld while still pushing the boundaries for 2010.

The League - 16 September - FX

Given FX's previous willingness to attach whatever show featuring crude humor it could find to Sunny (I'm looking at you, Testees) I was reluctant to try The League. After becoming familiar with Paul Scheer through Human Giant, and learning that creator Jeff Scheer was a writer, director, and producer of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, I gave it a try this morning. Despite my unfamiliarity with fantasy football, I found a much funnier show than I was expecting, a good pairing for Sunny, and I'm excited to see what a full season will look like.

Boardwalk Empire - 19 September - HBO
A new show from HBO, the first episode directed by Martin Scorcese, starring Steve Buscemi as a mafia boss in the days of 1920s prohibition in Atlantic City? There's no way this can't be good.

Chuck - 20 September - NBC
Chuck is one of those shows that I download but have yet to watch, but there's been enough positive buzz over the past three years, not to mention a Cinderella story with Subway for season 2, and with a failed Jay Leno Show for Season 3, have kept Chuck around for far longer than would be allowed at a more successful network.

How I Met Your Mother - 20 September - CBS

Until I get bored enough to start into The Big Bang Theory, HIMYM is the only CBS show I bother watching. Season 5 was pretty weak, choosing to feature more sitcom-y plots than furthering the story of The Mother, but Barney Stinson is a legen-dary character and the creators give me hope that Season 6 starts turning things around.





Parenthood - 21 September - NBC
Peter Krause, Craig T. Nelson, Mae Whitman, and Lauren Graham give Parenthood some serious television clout, and the first season more or less maintained the balance between the troubles of the families and the feelgood moments.

Glee - 21 September - FOX
The first of two seasons to be ordered by FOX before the show concluded its freshman season, Glee is a hot property right now. While I don't mind most musicals, I don't find the format for television quite as endearing. For the fast storylines and whiny archetypes, I appreciate the quirk, and I champion Jane Lynch's role as Sue Sylvester as the primary reason why I continue watching. She is an amazing comedic talent and it's too bad it's taken this long for it to be recognized.

Modern Family - 22 September - ABC

Tied for best new sitcom alongside Community, there's not much to say about the show aside from it being genuinely funny through and through - though I think it's at its best when the families are co-mingling.






Cougar Town - 22 September - ABC
Scrubs Med School may have flopped, but luckily that wasn't the only show Bill Lawrence had last season. Originally a pretty average sitcom about a woman trying to find sex with younger men, Cougar Town quickly evolved into a suburban ensemble comedy that was much funnier than the title would have you believe. Lawrence tried to change the title over the summer, but alas, we're still stuck with "Cougar Town."

Community - 23 September - NBC
An excellent first season featuring some great comedic talents, Community struggled but ultimately succeeded to straddle the line between pop culture references and storytelling (as well as two very attractive leading ladies). What's next? Keep the streak alive, plus more John Oliver.

Outsourced - 23 September - NBC
Sadly, Parks and Recreation is on hiatus until midseason because of Amy Poehler's baby, but NBC has been doing pretty well the past few years with Must-See TV Thursdays, and presumably they feel strongly enough about Outsourced to place it amongst these veterans. The premise is interesting enough - focusing on Indians who take over an American call center - if the show can set aside cheap "culture differentiation" jokes, if the characters are likable, and if the writing passes muster, it might be something worth watching. (There's a lot of qualifies in that last sentence)

The Office - 23 September - NBC
Last season was pretty weak, establishing and quickly abandoning storylines, and featuring a Michael Scott that was dumb even by Homer Simpsons standards, hopefully the announcement of Steve Carell leaving at the end of the season will spur some more thoughtful and fleshed-out writing for the popular series.

30 Rock - 23 September - NBC
30 Rock may not have had its best season last year, removing some believability from the characters and introducing the boring Wesley storyline, but we can still hope that as the show approaches its 100th episode, it might get a creative shot in the arm.

Eastbound and Down - 26 September - HBO

Though essentially a Ferrell-McKay character stretched to fill a six-episode season, Kenny Powers is an unapologetically great character, and I await Season 2, which will abandon the majority of the cast and setting as Kenny goes to Mexico to play for a local team.




Bored to Death - 26 September - HBO
About as far from Eastbound and Down in terms of theme, Bored to Death's first season was a little light on comedy, a bit heavy on the hipster side of New York, but featured some great performances from Jason Schwartzmann, Ted Danson, and Zach Galifinakis.

The Simpsons - 26 September - FOX
It's been on the air for nearly as long as I've been alive - it wouldn't be television without The Simpsons. As someone who's seen literally every episode, there has been a boon in creativity since The Movie, and I've been getting a good solid laugh or two from most every episode. Not bad for a show in its 22nd season.

In Treatment - October - HBO

Recently announced for October, it takes some damn good writing to carry a 30-minute serial drama that takes place entirely within a therapist's office, and I'm hoping Season 3 will continue to bring the high level of quality despite no longer having the Indian show to pattern itself off of.




Peep Show - Autumn - Channel 4
A long-running UK cult sitcom that is shot entirely from the POV perspective of one of the characters, Peep Show has an everything-goes-wrong element similar to Curb Your Enthusiasm. The entire series is available to watch on Hulu, if you're so inclined.

Good Eats - ? - Food Network
Scripps has no rhyme or reason as to when it shows new episodes of its Nighttime lineup, so I can assume that there will be some episodes shown in the fall, coming off of a sweet 7-week run a few weeks ago. Continuously entertaining and informative even after 14 seasons, I learn something new about cooking in every episode.

Food Wars - ? - Travel Channel
Another hammy food travel show in the vein of Man v Food, I haven't seen Food Wars in months, though I know they're still filming.

A lot of good television to be watched, for sure. This is just a snapshot for the season - there's going to be a dozen more for the midseason and summer seasons, too - but the point is that there is a very large amount of high quality television that is being produced today - you just have to go find it. I'm sure I'll find the time to watch them all, though this is the hardest time of year to keep up, especially given my profession, but I'll enjoy as much as I can. It's a great medium.

Weeds Season 6 Preview

The new season of Weeds begins August 16th, and I was recently able to check out the first episode.

No one I know who likes Weeds speaks highly of seasons four and five, and it's easy to see why: the show began as a suburban comedy about a widowed wife who turns to selling weed to support her family, but at the end of the third season, the show decided to set suburbia literally up in flames and start anew with a bit of Mexican flare. Add some ganglords and a baby, and the lighthearted show many appreciated turned into a pitch black "comedy" about a woman who makes increasingly poor decisions*.

*In this respect, the show reminds me of Breaking Bad, as both main characters begin their stories as seemingly decent people who were forced into selling drugs as means to survive. Over the course of their respective shows, however, after being presented with plenty of opportunities to do the right thing for both themselves and their families, they choose to push forward into situations that bring them increasingly closer to their self-destruction. 


Fortunately, from the teaser trailer released by Showtime a few weeks ago, it looks like the Botwins might be separating themselves from the Mexicans, starting what is sure to be an arc-long chase resolving itself in the finale:



And the first episode seems to start these events in motion, with the family packing up their old life and separating the remaining ties to Ren Mar - essentially Andy breaking up with Alanis Morrisette and the rest of the family coming to terms with Shane's murder of Pilar. While everyone treats it lightheartedly, there wasn't much by way of big laughs throughout the episode, the jokes failing to connect under the dark cloud of Nancy coming to terms with how her life is about to change yet again, and why these things continue to happen to her. It's sad, because the audience can see why, and the it's frustrating to watch just how stupid this woman can be.

Regardless of how good or different seasons four and five may be in comparison to seasons one through three, I can't help but respect the brave decision to change the show's focus three years into a successful sitcom. It's a bit incredible to believe that in five years a nice suburban mother of two has become a drug smuggler on the lam from hitmen with her illegitimate child of a Mexican mob boss, a homicidal son, a different, drug-dealing son, and an infatuated brother-in-law. I partly watch because I'm invested this much time already, and partially because I hope it will get better. There's no way a person in real life would be able to escape this much peril time and time again, but if I wanted to watch real life, I'd turn on Shark Week.

Review: Futurama Season 6

Family Guy sucks. This is a position I've held for at least five years, though it's become a less controversial statement with each new season. Though the show itself is the antithesis of humor, there is one thing that Family Guy has done that is admirable: after being understandably cancelled in 2001, the show was resurrected in 2005 after strong DVD sales. It showed that a fan base can support a show, even when the network cannot. With this precedence, it opened the door to other wrongly-cancelled shows that were cancelled. Much better shows like Futurama, the sci-fi successor to The Simpsons from Matt Groening and writer David X. Coen that was preempted so many times by FOX that there were enough leftover episodes to create a fifth season once the show was cancelled after four production seasons.

I remember watching that first episode. I was in my final months of middle school at the time, and over the next five years, I watched and laughed with the show, memorized songs, and recorded episodes on VHS. I have an officially-licensed shirt. I have all of the action figures, both the four from the original run, and the 12+ in the recent re-release. I signed pointless online petitions when the show was first cancelled, I played through the mediocre PS2 game, I became teary-eyed as I watched The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings, and I did the same when I saw the character introduction sequence in Bender's Big Score.

It's safe to say I have an emotional investment in Futurama. It's the one that first taught me about the cruel wasteland that can be the television landscape. Since the show first left, however, I've watched dozens of other shows meet their ends, either from old age or forceful ejection, and I've seen a lot of comedy, which is why I'm find myself laughing out loud less and less at each new Futurama project, starting with the DVD movies and ending with the first two episodes of Season 6, the first of which premiere tomorrow night on Comedy Central.

I could try to rationalize why I feel this way - I think meta humor can be funny in small doses, but when taken too far, it's no longer so much of a jab in the audience's direction so much as it is the writers taking you by the shoulders and shouting in your face "WE ARE MAKING FUN OF SOMETHING IN REAL LIFE." (Arrested Development, in its final season, also started becoming a victim of this). Case in point - the wormhole through which they travel at the end of the last movie / beginning of the episode was described by Farnsworth as a "Central Channel" to which Hermes replies "hilarious!" and The Professor then says that yes, it is indeed a "Comedy Central Channel". I GET IT!

The first episode deals with wrapping up the events of the last movie and ensuring everyone is back to their old selves. There is a visual gag early in the episode that caused me to laugh out loud, though the remainder of the episode gave me nothing but some smirks. The second episode was no different, though I found the premise to be a little more enjoyable, even if the parody was again pretty blatant. It seems to me that the best episodes are the ones that either dealt with the Fry-Leela relationship (though even now I think it has run its course), or the ones that dealt with the mythology of the show (The Why of Fry comes to mind).

It's a television miracle that Futurama has received this many chances, and I hope that they will be renewed again after Comedy Central airs the next two seasons, but I can't put forward the emotion and devotion into one show like I used to: I'm juggling more than three dozen scripted series over the course of the year, and shows come and go all the time. Futurama finally has a fair shake on TV, but regardless of the outcome, we can all be proud that there was one good thing that came from the inception of Family Guy.

End of Season Review: The Ricky Gervais Show

Before Steve Carrell and team brought it to America, The Office was a two-season series in the UK created by and starring Ricky Gervais. Though I would argue that the dark wit, and genuineness, and the ending of the original outshines the American version (though both versions have their strengths), the show, followed by his other successful show “Extras,” propelled Gervais into stardom. Before and after the success of his TV shows and movies, Gervais, along with his writing partner Stephen Merchant, hosted a netcast* that eventually evolved into featuring the oddball opinions of their produce, Karl Pilkington. As the comedy duo moved into films and hosting awards shows, the broadcasts aren’t as regular as they used to be, but with several “seasons” of material in the can, there’s a wealth of information available for the producers of The Ricky Gervais Show, HBO’s other new Friday night show that animates the previously-recorded netcasts.

*Also known as “podcasts,” though I’m with Leo Laporte’s contention that the term “podcast,” applied to all online broadcasts, can be misleading.

The format is one that should be familiar to those who used to watch Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist on Comedy Central. Whereas the squiggly TV show was mostly just a sounding board for comedians to come and perform a few jokes from their act, RGS shows the three guys sitting at a radio station console, talking to the words originally spoke by Gervais, Merchant, and Pilkington, and animating a scene when something interesting is talked about. Dr. Katz wasn’t completely rehashed material, though – there was a storyline and improve conversations that permeated the episode, and while it usually wasn’t as funny as the jokes of the comedians, it kept things interesting, especially if you were already a fan of the comedian of the day. The Ricky Gervais Show is nothing but a straight 25 minutes from the podcast.

Like Funny or Die Presents, HBO’s other new Friday night show, I can’t really understand why this show needs to exist – it serves as a sampler of the podcast, and the animations can be chuckle-worthy at times, but it doesn’t really justify viewing again if you’re already familiar with the material. I can understand why HBO wants to keep it around, though – it’s dirt-cheap to produce, it only needs a small amount of viewers to keep it profitable, and all the writing was accomplished several years ago. It’s been renewed for a second season, and with the three boys still putting out regular podcasts today (at a rate of about one a month), the show has the potential to be around for quite a while.