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I watched The New Normal and I liked it.
Dammit Ryan Murphy.
Dammit Ryan Murphy.
is TMNT going to be shown in Canada?
I think I'm going to PVR all of these..........is TMNT going to be shown in Canada?
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Unless there's another show with that acronym...
http://www.ytv.com/shows/132/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles/
Ratsky, it's Canadian actually. Animated in Vancouver, my friend is working on it. She was saying that she did a lot of work on the premiere!
Sweet, I'm always down for a new TMNT.....hope its good
t's a boring pilot with a mediocre writing staff on a show that looks uncomfortably less expensive than it actually was and has a shitty timeslot so yeah.
Agreed. Though I haven't seen the full thing yet what I have seen looks horribly cheap considering the amount of cash they spent on the pilot. And the pilot was shot by an actual feature director to boot.
I'm eager to see what other people think they when see it.
The Voice - 4.1/11
The New Normal - 2.5/6
Got lost on the last page. ABC released the full pilot:
http://www.flavorwire.com/325852/fall-2012-tv-pilots-you-can-watch-online-right-now#1
The first ratings of the new season.
*explodes with excitement*
Eh. That's about where I expected The Voice to start. But I'm not sure if NBC would be happy with those numbers for The New Normal. A 2.5 seems a little soft even by NBC's standards.
Did they already air/première this during the Olympics like Go On?
Thanks. I'll give it a look.
Oop, talking out of my ass apparently, it must be a collaboration project. Nick produces. But I know Bardel is animating, so... I dunno. Haha.
And yet it's one of the most recommended, talked about pilots of the season.Sure. He's also made two boring cop shows and a boring pilot about people on submarines. It's a boring pilot with a mediocre writing staff on a show that looks uncomfortably less expensive than it actually was and has a shitty timeslot so yeah.
And yet it's one of the most recommended, talked about pilots of the season.
Terriers is a cop show? Since when?
And calling The Shield 'boring' (of all things) might be about the stupidest thing I've heard on GAF in a while.
Did Shawn Ryan kill your family by any chance
C-
"The New Normal" opens with Bryan recording a video diary for their unborn baby, getting choked up as he ponders the idea that he or she might one day call him "daddy." Rannells' face is in tight close-up, the emotion on display very raw and genuine, and it's a smart move to get viewers on his side as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, the pilot then goes out of its way to undermine that feeling early and often in service of one ill-conceived joke after another. In the worst of these, we see Bryan shopping for pants when his attention is captured by something else in the men's department.
"Ohmigod, that is the cutest thing I have ever seen!" he exclaims. "I must have it!"
He is, of course, looking at a baby in a stroller, and though Rannells' face again melts, it means nothing, because the earlier line not to mention a later one where he tells David, "I want us to have baby clothes and a baby to wear them" fits a whole bunch of homophobic assumptions about how gay men would only want children as some kind of stylish accessory.
And that's unfortunately how "The New Normal" keeps operating: two parts Check Out How Daring We Can Be for every one part Please Emotionally Invest In What Is Happening. Mixing humor and sincerity is far from an impossibility Lear did it regularly, and Adler did it with her "Chuck" scripts but here they're constantly at odds.
We're asked to care about Goldie as she tries to break her family cycle of "babies having babies" so daughter Shania (Bebe Wood) can have a better future, but her scenes mainly play like a delivery system for Ellen Barkin to strut on-screen and do her best Sue Sylvester impression as Goldie's racist, homophobic grandmother Jane, who in the pilot alone crudely insults both gay men and lesbians, Jews, Asians, African-Americans and even the disabled. To go back to Lear, even Archie Bunker was more subtle than this and that was 40 years ago. Barkin's there to stir up controversy and attention, little more.
I don't think Murphy is being dishonest when he hypes up his shows. I think he genuinely believes that "Glee" is consistently about all the things he says it's about, and that "The New Normal" really has a lot to say about the atypical state of the modern American family. But the execution in this case is too shrill and scattered to get any of his points or jokes across.
D+
Normally, Murphy and Adler can be counted on for a handful of jokes so well-constructed or so weirdly transgressive that they provoke at least a smile. Thats simply not the case here. The jokes keep piling up, but the laughs are nonexistent. There are good elements here and there in The New Normal. If it were from any other producer, there might be enough here to suggest a wait and see attitude, one that saw how awful the pilot was but allowed the producers time to work with the talented cast. Instead, this show comes from Murphy, and when youve got a Ryan Murphy show thats too broad, too loud, too enamored of its own tweaks at the status quo, and too terrified of anything that isnt delivered with 15 exclamation marks, its easy to expect things will only be downhill from here. A low-key family comedy about two gay parents and their surrogate could have been amazing, but it would have required a deft touch. Murphy seems to have started with, How can we get banned by the Salt Lake City NBC affiliate? and gone from there.
Often, I think, the best way to make an effective show about a larger social issue is to start with grounded, engaging characters and let the bigger meaning come from there: see, for instance, how Parks and Recreation builds on the relationships and dreams of its bureaucrats to tell stories about community and how people can do good (or screw up) through public institutions. The New Normal, on the other hand, has too many shrill, irritating characters to appreciate it as anything other than a statement about How Parenting Is Changing Now. And, frankly, given that gay parenting has been a major subject for three years on one of the most popular sitcoms on TVModern Familyits hard to buy The New Normals premise that its making us confront a shocking shift in societys norms.
Really, the most potentially interesting dynamic in this story is not the gay adoption but the implied class issueshere, involving a very well-to-do couple whose lives are intersecting with the poor single mom theyve hired as a surrogate. Maybe that could make for a more interesting story going forward, but for now this show is much more normalread: mediocrethan it seems to think it is.
Is there a thread for Parenthood? Really good show. I am looking forward to the new season. I will be watching Go On as well and I still need to watch Sons of Anarchy Season 4 :| I am going to be a bit late to that one. I will record them and get the DVD soon I hope.
In the op! Link.
New trailer for Arrow. At least the CW knows what it's selling. I said hot damn.
http://www.eonline.com/news/345085/arrow-first-look-stephen-amell-makes-being-bad-look-so-good-in-new-promo?cmpid=sn-000000-twitterfeed-365-kristin&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=twitterfeed_kristin&dlvrit=51396
Parenthood is a pretty comical state of affairs (see also: The film and TV versions of "Parenthood," and endless array of sitcoms and movie comedies, real life, etc.). The dignity and autonomy of those with kids is constantly compromised by tiny beings that can't even vote or drive. Where's the humor in that? Oh, I don't know, everywhere? Yet this show fails to find any of it, and rests most of its humor on a very tired and ill-conceived hook: Men taking care of small children is hilarious because it's so unexpected! And that makes me wonder: What rock have the people who created this show been living under? It's neither unusual or necessarily hysterical to see men caring for the their children, yet "Guys With Kids" would have you believe that dudes wearing baby slings is intrinsically guffaw-inducing (and maybe it was ... in the poster for "The Hangover"). The women here are shrewish, the vibe is both manic and tired, and overall, the decent cast (which includes the wonderful Anthony Anderson) is given nothing funny to do. All things considered, if you're going to watch a very broad comedy on NBC, make it the one with the monkey.
The first problem is that she shows defining sight gag is already a cliché: the idea that men wearing babies is inherently hilarious is already well-plowed by The Hangover and What to Expect When Youre Expecting. The other problem is that its too typical of Guys humor: many of the jokes are not really jokes at all, except its supposed to be funny that a dude is saying them. As when Gary commiserates with Nicks wife about begin taken for granted as a stay-at-home spouse: Believe me, I know. And then when you do finally wind [the kids] down, they come in and wind them right back up! And then have to take an emergency call from work just when its bathtime!
Guys With Kids problem isnt really in its heart but in its guts. Like so many bad sitcoms every year, it just doesnt have the guts to go beyond the most obvious jokes in its premiseand the most obvious jokes in this one are that, three decades after Mr. Mom, its hi-larious when dads try to be moms. Its conceivable, I guess, that it could become as good as the show its producers say they had in mind. But it will have to man up.
Well, one of the problems [with the show is that] fathers taking care of their kids is not unique. Their problems doing it are not original. No matter how the three male stars (Anthony Anderson, Zach Cregger and Jesse Bradford) play their plight, it never garners more than a smile at best because it's so patently not unusual. In fact, it's less funny because the pretense that it should be unique is insulting. It's 2012, not 1955.
Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Tempestt Bledsoe and Erinn Hayes get to wear the pants, but even that's not particularly funny. Think about how strange that is -- Mom's working. Hi-larious! What's really funny (in a sad, sad way) is that NBC is so desperate for anything that funny people like Fallon pitch, it can't seem to say no to what is obviously a limited-potential series. Guys With Kids is a series that works on paper but not in the pilot. It's a show that should never have been put on paper to begin with.
Is there a Last Resort thread guys?
Arrow does intrigue me. I hope it turns out decent.
I thought the Last Resort pilot was pretty good. Introduced everyone quickly, had a few thrills, set up the immediate premise cleanly and dropped some subtle mysteries leading in to the future.
Also, good grief Autumn Reeser is incredibly hot.
Downton Abbey series 3 begins tonight in the UK.
The Mob Doctor was... mildly interesting. It's a new twist on the medical drama but not something we haven't seen before elsewhere. Two seperate worlds yadda yadda yadda. Decent acting and characters. The backing soundtrack/medical music whatever is horrificly tiresome though. They could've gone down a different track with this but instead they went the 90s ER route. Urgh.
The most confusing thing about this show is the age of the lead character. I honestly can't tell if she's mid 20s or late 30s.
On the plus side it has Saracen.
That's kind of how I felt. I mean, it could have been much worse, but it was okay. Probably not going to watch another episode, though.
I think the producers meeting went something like this:
"We should do a medical drama because people eat that stuff up."
"Ok, but lets add a twist so people don't think it's just the same old hospital show though."
"I have just the idea!"
As a pilot it's pretty bad. Whilst it sets up the general idea quite well there is a substantial change of what each character is there for in the last 10 minutes. Personally I think that's asking for trouble in a pilot.
And the music really was horrendous. It's not chart songs or anythign in that vein, but just demo tunes from a pre-internet era Casio keyboard level of mind-numbingness.
Yeah I think this was a one and done for me too.
C
There are some obvious echoes of "Lost" (which Abrams co-created), and of the many half-baked "Lost" imitators that failed quickly in the years since. Aaron is very much the Hurley figure, and there are already plenty of cryptic clues about what happened with the power and whether it can already be turned back on. The problem is that "Lost" (and before it, "X-Files") pretty clearly demonstrated that mythology on a sci-fi series like this becomes more trouble than it's worth, and that if the other parts the characters in particular, but also the storytelling that has nothing to do with presenting and solving mysteries aren't any good, then the mythology sure won't be worth it on its own.
Esposito and Burke are good enough that I'll watch a bit longer just for them, but that's about all I took out of the pilot, character-wise. And though the swordfight is very cool, it and some of the more haunting post-apocalyptic imagery (like Wrigley Field overrun with ivy) feels like the kind of thing that will be downplayed once the series is working on a regular budget and schedule. (TV shows virtually always look more expensive in their pilot episodes than they ever do after.)
I can see the pluses and (mostly) minuses of living in a world without electricity, just as I can see why these three men thought it would be fun to come together to tell the story of that world. But they haven't done enough with it to make me instantly pull my nose up from my phone whenever the next episode starts.
I am torn between the competence of the "Revolution" pilot and the fact that, over the long haul, none of the broadcast network shows with genre overtones have ever consistently had a tenth of the wit, audacity or depth of the mothership, i.e., "Lost."
Will "Revolution" be able to inject its tech-dystopia with real stakes if it's hard to care whether the younger characters live or die? Will it be one of those shows where the Big Concept crowds out the construction of a believable world and compelling relationships? I simply don't know, and I have to get back to my electronic devices, so I'll close this post with two thoughts.
First, I put some of those questions to Kripke in an interview that I'll post Tuesday, after "Revolution's" premiere. Second, only time will tell whether this show will finally break the curse of every show from "FlashForward" to "V" to "The Event" and "Invasion" and "Terra Nova" and "V" and a dozen other shows I've spent too much time rewriting in my head.
Seriously, I want "Revolution" to work, despite the fact that positive experiences with dramas like this are more rare than NBC's accidental encounters with healthy ratings -- they're just too inconsistent to believe in. One thing you can be sure of: I'll assess the show again in the coming months, once I decide which part of my brain was right.
Its all far from terrible, but there are few gasps, goosebumps or laugh-out-loud momentsthe sort of things that convert wanting to like an ambitious show into actually liking it for itself. Revolution has promise. It has crossbows and swordplay. It has a lot of room for world-building and stories that could sustain for seasons.
What it still needs is that magic that makes you thrill and care about characters whom you feel you know as distinctive people. For lack of a better word, Ill call that: electricity.
The pilot is a winner, and it will pull you back the following week. The question is whether the story not told in the pilot will be the story that keeps viewers around or sends them away.
Mostly, it's a hospital drama -- and a rote one at that. The side job stitching up bad guys seems tacked on for no reason, like racing flames on a Prius. Yeah, yeah, it's different. It's not just a hospital drama. See, she's a doctor and she works for the oh, never mind.
The truly odd thing about The Mob Doctor is there's a pretty good show sitting right there inside the pilot. The wonderful William Forsythe plays a mob boss, and every time the camera is on him and every time he talks, you want the show to be about him. Leave the doctor behind. Call it The Mob Boss and you've got something.
The Mob Doctors pilot is stranded between quality cable nuance and broadcast network spoon-feeding. Some of the expository dialogue is bad even by Fox drama standards. But theres a lot to like here: Spiros old-movie toughness and understated glamour; the occasional shifts into subjective slow motion; Forsythes silverback gorilla craftiness; a double-twist ending. The soundtrack choices are smart: Every pop song has at least two meanings.
The Mob Doctor is created and written by Josh Berman (Drop Dead Diva, Bones) and Rob Wright (Drop Dead Diva, Crossing Jordan), showrunners who prefer dames to babes. Grace is a dame through-and-through, snapping out terse one-liners and striding through chop shops and hospital corridors with a gunfighters gait that would make Raylan Givenss heart race. But more action-movie posturing is the last thing The Mob Doctor needs. The story is about trying to be a moral person in immoral circumstances while battling the childhood demons in your head. The deeper it dives into Graces mind, the more special it will become.
The Fox series The Mob Doctor, which begins on Monday night, is an odd hybrid, a medical drama merged with a Mafia morality play. Its hard to tell from one episode how sustainable this gimmick will be, but from the pilot one thing is sure: the writers never encountered the adage less is more.
Ms. Spiro is perfectly adequate, but for her to have a chance to be memorable this show will need the courage to slow its pace. If you think of it as filling the medical hole in Foxs schedule created by the departure of the venerable House, the challenge becomes clear. House didnt survive for all those years on its operating-room scenes; it survived on Hugh Lauries ever-deeper portrayal.
"The Mob Doctor," a new dramatic series on Fox, defies both the laws of physics and of television itself: Despite being jam-packed with plot twists, character reveals, surprises, a car chase, a couple of dead people and a lot of cell phone calls followed by "I have to go," it is a constant struggle for a viewer to avoid being bored to tears.
The concept is silly, a kindergarten class could have fashioned a more credible script, the characters are unbelievable, and the performances are awful. Because there's a good chance the cast will be looking for work very soon, I won't single any specific performance out for criticism. To be fair, Meryl Streep and Dame Judi Dench couldn't sell this drivel.
So I guess The New Normal is just a half-hour of Glee minus singing.
Holy soapboxing Batman. But at least he takes up torch in the valiant fight against gingers.
The Last Resort and The Mob Doctor's pilot episodes are free on iTunes.