I'm Not James Patterson, But I Do Okay.

Greetings Zayniacs!  It has been a really long time.  Life has been kicking my ass, mostly in a good way.  However, that means I have not been able to spread my ever-wise TV opinions.  Obviously I’ve watched a ton of stuff since my last blog post so we’ll start with the few new shows the premiered last week and then get into some highlights from the last week and a half. 

Real quick, we have our first two cancellations of the season.  Made in Jersey got first honors by being cancelled after only two episodes.  It’s shocking, I know.  Today, the second one bit the dust.  Animal Practice is officially canned with Whitney taking its place in November. 

Arrow:  A solid premiere with a lot of potential.

Nashville:  A decent show but I think I’d built it up a little too much in my head.

Chicago Fire:  Trite and predictable.  Skip it.

Emily Owens, M.D.:  Despite really wanting to like it considering the cast, I’m just not completely sold yet.

Vampire Diaries:  A really solid start to the season.  Hopefully that quality continues tonight.

The Walking Dead:  Wow, just an amazing premiere and you all should be watching.

Castle:  On course to have its strongest season yet. 

Once Upon a Time:  Speaking of strong seasons, this show is easily in my top 3 this year so far. 

We’ll start with these for now and maybe get to more later.

So first out of the gate, we have Arrow.  I had fairly high expectations for this show going into it.  I kept hearing really good things about it and the more I heard about how many comic characters were going to be making appearances I got excited about a show that seemed poised to be the kind of DC Universe show that Smallville flirted with being several times throughout its run.  Thankfully, I was not disappointed.  I thought the show did a really good job of introducing the characters and giving us a solid base to build from.  The action sequences were fast paced and well-choreographed.  The main actor did leave a little to be desired but that kind of stuff can improved if you have a good world to live in and a solid writer behind you. 

The second episode improved on the show greatly.  The fight scenes were still great but I thought the tighter focus on Ollie and Dinah (I refuse to call her Laurel, it’s freaking Black Canary, just call her Dinah) helped out the pace of the story a lot.  I also really liked seeing a long look at the formation of a Bruce Wayne-esque playboy persona.  We got it very briefly in Batman Begins but I think this show is going to explore the toll that kind of duality can have on someone.  In Batman, he’s stated several time that Bruce is his mask and Batman is who he really is.  I think Ollie still views his Arrow persona as the mask and so when he has to put on another mask as Ollie, it’s hard for him and Stephen Amell did a really good job portraying that in his face.  I look forward to seeing how they deal with all of this in later episodes. 

I was completely prepared to call Nashville my biggest disappointment of the new season.  Thankfully, I watched the second episode and I’m glad I did.  The difference, to me at least, was night and day.  I thought the premiere seemed really scattered and packed with storylines I don’t necessarily care about.  The soapy elements were kind of out of control and I like the more defined conflicts of this episode with Rayna and Juliette vying for Deacon and Gunner trying to convince Scarlett to record the demo.  I still really don’t care about the political storyline and it feels like a waste of Powers Boothe’s time.  It also helped that I enjoyed the songs a lot more this week.  I thought that besides the last song of the episode (which was incredible), the premiere’s music was very underwhelming.  Don’t get me wrong, the soapy elements are still there but the levels were much more tolerable. 

Chicago Fire is bad.  There’s really not much else to say.  Despite a generally solid cast, the characters are flat, the writing is stilted, and the plotlines are overused and poorly executed.  This one doesn’t deserve a second chance. 

Emily Owens is a very conflicting show.  The actors are very good but the writing feels like it was done by a teenage girl in some spots.  I understand the analogy of being an intern at a hospital being like high school but do the characters have to act like teenagers?  It feels like a waste of their talent.  With lines like, “my nemesis is being particularly nefarious”, I’m not sure how serious they expect me to take the show but then we have a plotline with a character giving the news to their mother about stage 4 pancreatic cancer.  It just feels a little all over the place.  I’ll give it another shot but unfortunately it’s in a very busy time slot for me so this may get cut sooner than it normally would because it’s competing with Go On, Happy Endings, Don’t Trust the Bitch, New Girl, and The Mindy Project, all shows that have impressed me a lot more than this show did.

Vampire Diaries opened solidly.  I’m glad they didn’t find a way to bring Elena back to life because that just may have been stupid enough to get me to quit watching.  However, human characters are becoming more and more scarce on that show and I feel like they do need to hold on to a couple.  Jeremy is the usual damsel in distress so he’ll probably stay human but Matt seems more and more like he’s filling the role of the heart and conscience of the group so I hope they go more into that.  I wish Klaus would have died but they unfortunately wrote themselves into a corner and now we’re stuck with him.  I can only hope that they find something interesting for him to do this year instead of constantly being verbally menacing without any action to back it up.

The Walking Dead should teach a class on how to write an amazing premiere.  The pace was non-stop and the body count was off the charts.  I couldn’t even give you a ballpark of how many zombies died in that episode.  I was initially skeptical that there was a time jump but I can’t argue with the really fun results of the team being such a cohesive unit now.  The push into the prison in the phalanx formation was amazing to watch.  I don’t want to say anything else too spoilery in case some of you haven’t gotten a chance to watch it yet but I have to say that I’m now extremely excited about this season.

Castle continues to knock it out of the stinking park every week.  Putting Kate and Castle together might be the best thing they could have done for this show.  The writing is faster and smarter than ever and the jokes are all landing.  There were several moments of the episode that I rewound just to laugh again.  I couldn’t be more pleased with the season and I look forward to seeing how the crap hits the fan when Ryan lets it slip that he knows.

Once Upon a Time really found a way to change their show for the better.  There was a certain LOST-ness to it the way they did flashbacks last year but thankfully, they’ve added the dual present storylines as well now and it has helped out the pace significantly.  The biggest issue I had last year was that in the middle of the season, it really started to feel like they were treading water but there is none of that this year.  It feels like they have so much story to get to and I can’t wait to watch them do it.  The character moments are all excellent and Snow and Emma’s talk in her could-have-been nursery was very touching.  The other refreshing aspect to the show is the way characters are reacting to each other.  Sleeping Beauty was being a whiny, irrational hooker this week and instead of coddling her, Mulan told her to stop being a baby and suck it up.  I appreciate that.

Unfortunately, that’s all for now kiddos.  I’ll try to get to some more thoughts some time tomorrow.  In case, my workload doesn’t lighten, next Tuesday brings us the season premieres of Happy Endings, one of my top 3 comedies on TV right now and just keeps improving, and Don’t Trust the Bitch in Apartment 23, which had a shockingly solid start last year.  James Van Der Beek playing himself was consistently hilarious and the chemistry between the two leads is promising. 

Hope you all enjoyed and as always, please feel free to leave your thoughts and questions in the Comments section below.  Have a Great One and Happy TV Watching!

We Were Supposed to be Watching Swamp People!!!

Greetings Zayniacs!  It’s been a little while.  Did you miss me?  One quick piece of news and then on to the recaps!

Community, which was set to debut on October 19^th has been pulled from the schedule.  Basically, NBC wants to spend their marketing dollars on promoting the shows on Monday-Wednesday so they can try and save the abysmal ratings of Animal Practice and Guy with Kids.  However, they admitted that they would like to keep them in their back pockets in case they need scheduling changes.  Translation: We know Animal Practice and Guys with Kids are awful shows and are already planning to ship them to Friday and burn off their episodes and premiere the equally odd pairing of Community, a quirky and intelligent show, and Whitney, a formulaic crap pile that should never have gotten a second season, on Wednesday Nights in the winter.  In conclusion, it sucks that we will have to wait for more Community, but this probably means they will be pulled back from the brink of the Friday Night Death Slot.

Alright, onto the highlights from the past several days:

666 Park Avenue: All I watched was the premiere from the 30^th and it was exactly as awful as I thought it was going to be.  Removed from my DVR.

Raising Hope: The premiere was okay with few laughs.  Unfortunately, I don’t have time for only a few laughs.  Removed from my DVR.

Supernatural:  A solid premiere with some interesting questions.  Sam needs to stop being a giant wuss right now though.

30 Rock: A decent premiere.  Jack and Liz continue to make me laugh but Kenneth’s girlfriend is getting on my nerves.

Glee:  A sad episode that I feel should have had more impact on me than it did.  However, Glee’s first ever live performance delivered in a big way and I’m so glad they chose to do it that way.

Once Upon a Time:  Continues to deliver in its second season as allegiances shift and I can’t wait to see what comes next.

The Good Wife:  Another solid outing despite one really disappointing storyline and something involving two fingers and an ice cream cone I wish I could wipe from my memory.

Family Guy:  Much better than the premiere but still not great despite the fact that I wholly support any skewering of the Nielsen system.

Partners (two weeks):  This show is starting to grow on me.  Again, very sitcom-y and over the top but I had several laugh out loud moments last night (see post title) which is more than some veteran comedies are providing nowadays *cough* How I Met Your Mother *cough* so it stays on the DVR for now.

Castle (two weeks):  Any reservations people had about the show going bad after the couple got together can rest easy now.  This season has continued the pattern of excellent characters and fun dialogue.  However, I figured out the doll thing last night pretty much as soon as he gave it to the captain.  Usually they do a better job of diverting my attention from the reveal.

Revolution (two weeks):  Continues to be a solid enough show to keep my eyeballs.  There’s just something that feels predictable about the individual episode plot points that make me wish we could spend more on the interesting mystery arc, and less on telegraphed switcheroo of Danny saving the bad guy just to have the bad guy throw him against the wall and handcuff him again.  (also, I find it amusing that “switcheroo” does not activate spell check)

Let’s expand a minute on Glee.  The episode was good and the reactions and conversations surprisingly in character and mature, despite one huge gap that I’ll get to in a second.  I felt emotionally satisfied by the two relationships that had definitive closure.  The two that were left open-ended were more irritating to me.  Santana and Britney had a really sweet scene but I was never that invested in their relationship and now maybe we’ll get less comments about scissoring.  Finn and Rachel needed to end.  Their relationship dragged the show down considerably last year and I finally started to like Rachel this season without Finn so I’m glad they ended it and logically it makes sense.  She’s making something of her life and he’s directionless and needs to get his crap together before he tries to share his life with anyone.  Will and Emma seemed to be thrown in simply because all the other pairing on the show were fighting so why not.  There was zero closure on their issue which makes it more frustrating but they were singing the final song with the other couples that did break up so what the heck. 

Now onto the section of the show with both the high and low moment quality wise.  We’ll start with the low.  Blaine wouldn’t cheat.  That seemed to come out of freaking nowhere.  To maybe flirt with someone and possibly kiss would be one thing but to hookup and, seemingly, have sex?  That’s just a tiny bit extreme and very irritating.  However, this seemingly out of character decision led to one of Glee’s best moment since its beginning, a live piano version of Teenage Dream.  The amount of emotion Darren Criss put into that song was incredible.  The barely contained emotion behind his singing were pretty great to watch.  Unfortunately, Blaine and Kurt’s storyline was also given zero definitive resolution which I’m guessing means they’ll be the couple to get back together but my interest in that will last maybe one more episode without a lot of movement.  In closing, I thought the fake rapture thing was actually kind of funny, despite the ridiculousness of it all.

Sadly, after the initial glow has worn off, a few cracks are beginning to form in my love of Revolution.  There was just a lot of stuff this week that didn’t sit completely right with me.  For one, killing off Maggie was not earned.  She was the most grounded of the characters but killing her off so soon does nothing but provide the extremely predictable motive for Miles to stay.  Of course he wasn’t going to leave, he’s top billed on the cast and there’s no reason to follow him solo if he’s just going to go wander the land like a nomad.  We start getting very sad and heartbreaking flashbacks for Maggie and then after she get’s stabbed, you know she’s done for.  If LOST taught us anything, it’s that if you form a deep connection with a character through flashbacks, watch out, the Grim Reaper’s a coming.  Then, the aforementioned plotline of the bad guy that has Danny getting pinned and about to die, needing Danny’s help, conveniently right after having a conversation with him about mercy and how is Dad was so great. 

There were a couple other niggling things but overall, I just expect better from Eric Kripke.  He’s too good to be falling into so many tropes of the genre.  One of the things I really liked about Supernatural is that they never played for keeps when it came to the brothers.  Yes, there were always in mortal danger but they never played it for anything other than momentary suspense.  Of course Sam and Dean aren’t going to die, because they’re your only main cast members.  The few times that big things happened, like Dean only having a year to live before demons came for him, it was a great season arc.  We always assumed he would just find some way out of it at the end of the season so when we watched him get viciously mauled and killed by hell hounds, that was genuinely shocking.  However, before the end of the season, we’re shown a shot of Dean in hell, yelling for Sam.  Obviously he’s going to get out but the question that stuck with you over the summer was “how?” and “what would the cost be?”.  Then of course, the beginning of next season started the angels arc and it was all uphill and awesome from there. 

I will continue watching Revolution because there is still some good there and I have faith that it can and will improve, but my skept-o-meter is powering up on a few of these things.  Also, there was seemingly lightning in the storm last night…huh?

That’s all for right now but I’ll probably have some more thoughts later.

This week, we’ve got a few highly anticipated premieres.  For starters, Arrow is premiering at 7pm on Wednesday on the CW.  I have extremely high hopes for this show.  This could just be setting myself up for disappointment but I have been hearing pretty great reviews for it as well which makes me think my hopes may actually be met.  With guest spots already booked for characters like Deadshot, Deathstroke, Huntress and most recently, the Royal Flush Gang, I look forward to seeing a show that has such unfettered access to DC’s stable of characters.  Next up, we have Nashville, premiering Wednesday at 9pm on ABC, another show which I have high expectations for and have heard nothing but good things about so far.  Connie Britton is an amazing actress and I can’t wait to see what she can do in this role.  I’m not a huge fan of modern country but pieces I’ve heard so far sound good and the show will seemingly have a fairly decent mix of original and covered songs.  Lastly on Wednesday at 9pm on NBC, we’ve got Chicago Fire.  It looks to be essentially a weekly version of Backdraft.  I liked that movie and a few of the cast members are solid so I’ll give it a chance to impress me.  Cautious optimism when it comes to this show. 

In its 4^th season premiere on Thursday Night, we’ve got The Vampire Diaries.  I urge you to look past its stupid name and realize you’ve got yourself a really great supernatural show.  The third season was a little disappointing in regards to its main arc and a villain that lacked real punch and threat, but I’m hopeful that they may have learned from their mistakes and this season could be great again.  The ending of season 3 certainly opened the door for some interesting storylines.  Lastly, premiering at 8pm on Thursday after Vampire Diaries is Beauty and the Beast.  This stars Kristen Kreuk of Smallville fame as a cop (yeah, I checked out at this point too) and some unknown actor playing a tortured, brooding dude who has some kind of monster side to him.  I have less than zero interest in this show and I most likely will not even watch the pilot.  That may change, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.  However, I want you to be informed.

Have a Great Day and Happy TV Watching!

Night 11: Ogres?!?!.....RUN!!!

Greetings Zayniacs!  Well congratulations you lazy bums.  Looks like Unknown wins a fabulous prize…because no one else even tried to answer.  He’s not even right!!! 

Let’s get to the TV.

Fringe:  Great way to kick off the final season.  I think it was really ballsy for us to just jump right back to 2036 but hey, the only people still watching at this point are the fans. 

Doctor Who:  Yup, I teared up, just as expected.  Curse you Stephen Moffat. 

The Amazing Race:  A solid start to the season.  No team came off as completely insufferable like several of the teams last year, most of whom ended up in the finale somehow. 

The Good Wife:  Wow, what a way to kick off the new season.

Once Upon a Time:  Rocked my freaking face off.

Family Guy:  Eh, an okay episode.  Not too many laugh out loud moments

Revenge:  Didn’t disappoint.

There’s only two people that read this that I know of that watch Fringe and I’ll probably be discussing it with them individually so unless someone speaks out in the comments (not likely, I can’t even tempt you people with prizes), I’m just going to pass on a more detailed review.

Ditto Doctor Who.

Over the past couple years, I’ve realized that I do like some reality TV, but it has to have some kind of competition involved and have minimal “reality drama”.  One of the reasons I disliked last season of The Amazing Race was because a team from Big Brother caused so much unnecessary drama that it became tiresome to watch.  However, in the premiere, I don’t see any teams that will cause it on the level that those two did.  There will of course be the same level of screaming and mental breakdowns that we all know and love on the show but there’s a fine line for me. 

The Good Wife is a show I’ve been pushing for a long time now.  I watched the premiere 3 years ago out of curiosity and liking Josh Charles (Sports Night) and Matt Czuchry (Gilmore Girls).  What I stumbled into was an extremely well acted legal show that focused more on plot and character arcs while maintaining a secondary, yet still entertaining case of the week.  The cast continues to impress me and the guest stars of this show have been nothing but stellar.  This year will be no exception.  Nathan Lane, Kristen Chenoweth, Maura Tierney, and Amanda Peet are just a few of the actors who have signed on this year, most for recurring roles.  I cannot stress how much I love this show.  Most of the problems I had with the pacing of last season were solved when I re-watched the season on DVD.  Apparently, it was CBS’s moronic airing schedule and not the actual show at fault for not pulling me in as much as previous years.  Hopefully, the show will have a more consistent airing schedule this year and we can enjoy another well-written and expertly-acted year.

Once Upon a Time had every reason in the world to fail.  It was about fairy tale characters that got moved to the real world with no memory of who they used to be.  However, we would still flashback to their fairy tale lives where the world was largely created as CGI environments.  Despite all that, the first season became the #1 new show of last season.  The show did stumble around a little bit in the middle of the season but I thought they really finished strong.  The other concern I had about the show was that, being run by LOST writers, they would fall into a similar trap of building mysteries and plotlines without ever resolving things.  I thought the curse would last for a long time.  Thankfully, I was very wrong and the curse was broken in the finale.  They all remember and in the final scene of the season, Rumplestiltskin brought magic to our world.  I couldn’t wait to see where the show would take us.

Warning: Full Spoilers for last night’s episode follow.  You have been warned.

So we start off with a regular guy in New York City going about his day.  It starts raining and his window is still open.  He can’t get it closed and then a bird flies in and drops a postcard from Storybrooke with one word written on it, “Broken”.  My theory is that this is Rumple’s lost son Baelfire and he just had to wait for the curse to break before he could send a message out.  Back in Storybrooke, we get the reunion we’ve waited a year for.  Snow White, Prince Charming, Emma, and Henry are united all knowing who they are.  Ginnifer Goodwin acted the crap out of that scene and I had watery eyes 5 minutes into the episode.  (I appear to have been very emotional this weekend.  Perhaps because I can’t get a simple comment out of 95% of my readers…but I’m not bitter)  I’m glad that we didn’t drag this reunion out because there was plenty of tension to be had with Emma having a really hard time getting past the fact that she’s spent her entire life searching for them and they’ve been here the whole time.  Granted, it’s been against their will but that emotional baggage doesn’t just disappear.  Later, I liked when Charming and Snow were watching Emma walk up and Charming mutters, “don’t push it Snow”.  Snow acknowledges this only to then immediately tell Emma that they “need to talk”.  I think there is nothing but greatness to come out of all these interactions now that they know who they are. 

In our fairty tale story this time, we get the awakening of Sleeping Beauty by Prince Phillip and his odd companion.  She’s told she’s been asleep for a year.  Their kingdom looks in shambles and why prince and princess suck face for 10 minutes, the companion takes a look around and is blown back by some kind of creature emerging from the ground in a blast and attacking.  After the prince fends it off, the companion is revealed to be Mulan and the prince is marked for death by the wraith.  In Storybrooke, we get to the parallel story of Mr. Gold using the newly restored magic to summon the wraith to suck the Evil Queen’s soul, effectively killing her but still leaving her technically alive to fulfill his promise to Belle.    

Seeing Regina team up with The Swans (the Whites, the Charmings?  I don’t know what to call them) was really entertaining.  What I found really interesting was Emma apparently having the magic, no pun intended, touch when it came to getting the Mad Hatter’s hat to work.  Apparently, an unpleasant side effect was Regina getting her, seemingly, full powers back.  Emma and Snow fall through the portal to oblivion for some long overdue mother/daughter bonding.  Back in fairy tale land, Phillip tried to be heroic and go to his death to protect Aurora and Mulan.  They followed him however, only to watch him die.  They returned to the place where Aurora was awakened and the truth comes out.  While she was technically asleep for a year, their portion of the kingdom was somehow unaffected but frozen in time when Regina cast the curse 28 years ago.  However, about a year ago, around the time Emma showed up in Storybrooke, time started up again in their kingdom.  There’s apparently a safe haven with more people that they’ll be heading to together.  First though, they hear a rustling in the rubble where the wraith came from.  It’s Emma and Snow!

This premiere gave me everything on a character and plot level I could have wanted.  We got the family reunion, we got new twists, and new mysteries.  When news of the new characters this season started trickling in, I was curious how they would all come into play.  When we met Aurora and Mulan, I assumed that we would meet their counterparts in Storybrooke during the episode and they would become recurring character there where Snow White would form an elite task force of ass-kicking princesses like in Shrek.  However, they have no counterparts because they’re still in fairy tale land!  I really liked this twist and then pairing Snow and Emma up with them should lead to some interesting stuff, particularly, the title of this post.  I like that magic works differently in our world and seeing Regina try to use her powers and nothing coming out was awesome. 

So who was the guy in New York?  Who is Dr. Whale’s fairy tale counterpart, because Charming doesn’t recognize him?  How will Emma and Snow get back?  Will Regina take over the town by force now that she has her powers back?  Personally, I can’t wait to watch and see the answers to all of these questions.  Best of all, I have confidence that they will be answered in a timely fashion!

Unfortunately, Revenge is going to get the short end due to my extended review of Once.  The premiere was very good.  We picked up pretty much every plot thread at its logical next step.  Our big flash forward mystery this year is “who is the dead body on Jack’s boat?”  I’ll be curious to see how the season is plotted out this year.  Due to the initial 13 episode order of Revenge, that was when they initially planned the Fire and Ice party to happen.  However, they were popular so they got their full 22 pickup early and they pushed the reveal back a couple episodes and then moved the plot for the rest of the season forward from there.  Since they know they have 22 episodes to work with, will that mystery last all season or will we get a similar setup with the big mystery serving as a closing of the summer and a jumping off point for the rest of the season?  Future weeks may have a longer look at Revenge as opposed to Once.  It will depend on the level of crazy of the episodes. 

Alright, we’re starting to wind down a little bit on premieres.  This week, there are only 4.  On Tuesday, Raising Hope, which I’m considering not watching this year and Hart of Dixie, which I do not and will never watch. On Wednesday, Supernatural premieres and I couldn’t be more excited.  Despite a lackluster finale to a decidedly mediocre season, the more I hear about what’s coming, the more excited I am.  On Thursday, 30 Rock premieres its final season.  It’s time for it to go.  I just hope in can go out on a higher note than last season.  Why am I telling you about the whole week right now?  I’m not sure how much I’ll be writing this week.  Starting now, this will probably be a weekly to semi-weekly blog.  If an episode of something melts faces, I may come on and write a blurb, but there will not be daily rundowns of everything I’ve watched.  If you’re disappointed, angry, joyous, or slipping into a depression spiral over this news, let me know in the comments (right…) and I would be happy to continue.   

I hope you have all enjoyed a more extended look at premiere season this fall and I may be back for something similar in the winter.  We’ll see.

Have a Great Day and Happy TV Watching!