Night 10: Becky, Can I Get a Xylophone Flourish? ...No?

Good Morning Zayniacs!  So we’ve all survived another week of premieres, in my case, barely.  I’m going to start with a recap of what’s going on this weekend in TV because I’ve got family in town so there’s pretty much zero chance of me being able to write a blog on Sunday.  Tonight, we’ve got the final season premiere of Fringe.  The network decided to give them a 13 episode season to wrap up their storylines and I couldn’t be more excited to see where it all ends up.  Saturday, we’ve got the premieres of The Clone Wars, Green Lantern, and Young Justice, along with the new reboot of TMNT, if you are so inclined.  Also, the fall finale of Doctor Who will probably have me teary-eyed as we bid farewell to the companions of the last two and a half years.  On Sunday, we’ve got a lot going on.  We have the season premieres of Once Upon a Time (preceded by a season 1 recap if you’d like one), Revenge, The Amazing Race, The Good Wife, and Family Guy.  Also, we have the series premiere of 666 Park Avenue.  So…big weekend everyone!

So last night I did watch a couple things from previously in the week but then didn’t watch a couple things like Elementary, The Office, or Up All Night.  Let’s talk about what I did watch though.  Stay tuned until the end of the blog for a special section.

Vegas:  I liked this a whole lot more than I thought I would.

Last Resort:  A really interesting premise with some amazing talent.

SNL:  Jay Pharaoh is awesome, the rest….eh.

Big Bang Theory:  A disappointingly mediocre start to the season, with a “what the crap?” ending. 

Glee:  More good than bad which is more than I can say for the last couple seasons.

X-Factor (Wednesday):  I’m burning out fast despite some entertaining moment.

Grey’s Anatomy:  An odd choice as a follow-up to the finale but really good regardless.

Parks and Rec:  Solid episode despite relying on awkward humor of which I’m not a huge fan.

So let’s talk about Vegas.  This show is set in the 60s and I think it really benefits from that choice.  It keeps it from feeling so much like your typical procedural.  We didn’t have a montage of people giving meaningful looks to inanimate objects in a lab while a rock song played.  We also didn’t have Super Zoom that showed us exactly what was embedded into somebody’s corpse.  I have to give a lot of credit to Carrie-Anne Moss.  That woman is versatile.  She played Trinity, a leather-wearing badass, and you believed every second of it.  Here, she plays a tough but still fairly feminine ADA and pulls it off with equal success.  She was definitely my favorite part of this premiere.  Dennis Quaid, Jason O’Mara, and Michael Chiklis all did good jobs as well.  This was an interesting premiere with most original take on a procedural I’ve seen in a while.  The production value is really solid and the period work was great.  This show will probably get cut from my DVR eventually just because it’s not “must see TV” for me.  However, I would recommend you try and see if it is up yours because it’s a well-made and well-acted show that will probably do very well.

ABC has been marketing the crap out of Last Resort which makes me think it cost a fortune and they’re really trying to make sure it does well.  Thankfully, I don’t think they have much to worry about.  I thought the Pilot was excellent.  I was really surprised how many good people were in it.  I really only knew about Scott Speedman (Felicity) and Andre Bragher (Men of a Certain Age).  We also had Bruce Davidson (X-Men), Autumn Reeser (No Ordinary Family), Omid Abtahi (Sleeper Cell), Robert Patrick (The Unit), Jessy Schram (Falling Skies) and Dichen Lachman (Dollhouse).  Thankfully, ABC was not marketing a bad show.  I thought the Pilot was really interesting.  A nuclear sub out near the middle east picks up a SEAL team with no idea what happened.  Later, the sub is given order to fire their nukes at Pakistan.  They receive this order in such a way that they assume something must have happened to DC.  When they check, nothing appears to be wrong so they try to verify the order.  All of sudden, a missile is heading right for them and sinks them to the bottom of the ocean, they get the sub running again and then realize that it was an American missile.  They find a nearby island with an missile warning system and take it over and are now poised to face off with the US.  It was a fast paced and really tense hour and I hope they can keep up that level of quality storytelling.  I’m really curious to see where they will take the show on a week by week basis.  Will we have a threat of the week or will it be a more drawn out arc.  I personally hope for the second because something this big feels like it needs to be told on a continuing basis without trying to wrap things up at the end of each episode.  Unless it drops significantly in quality, I will be tuning in to this show for a while.  Unfortunately, their ratings were not stellar so we’ll have to keep our fingers crossed that in a world where Two and a Half Men is popular, well-made shows like Last Resort can somehow survive. 

Big Bang Theory was really odd for me last night.  I expected to like it a lot more than I did.  I was really excited for the new season since I thought last year was their best yet.  However, we got the character paired off into their couples with very little interaction between the group.  I usually like Penny and Leonard but they were acting like toddlers.  Amy and Sheldon’s “romance” has never been my favorite part of the show.  Bernadette and Howard still delivered though.  When did Howard become one of my favorite characters?  I couldn’t stand him in the beginning.  So, is Raj gay now?  I’m confused. 

Glee made me like Sarah Jessica Parker.  I’m angered by this.  Why’d she have to come and actually be entertaining and slightly heartwarming?  I was perfectly fine as my main reference to her being Family Guy’s comment about her looking like a foot.  Normally, I can handle Glee’s ridiculous 180s with their character but for it to happen in under 5 seconds was a little much.  Brody says, “I’m not interested in more, just friends” and then leans in for the kiss and I’m assuming more if Finn hadn’t knocked on the door.  What…the…crap.  I tried to stick up for Brody last week when everyone thought he was creep but if you’re going to pull crap like that, I can’t do anything to help you.  The songs were not as great this week.  I love Tears for Fears as much as the next guy and I like Blaine’s voice but that was just filler, plain and simple. 

X-Factor had a couple of funny things and maybe one singer that I liked.  This two hour block was just too much and I already had to DVR it in non-HD last night because I had too many things recording. 

So I finally got current on Grey’s Anatomy over the summer with a free month of Hulu Plus.  I always had to wait until Netflix released the previous season and by then the season had started and I wasn’t recording.  However, I’d heard about the death in the finale and I wanted to try to get current this time.  Of course, since I put in that effort and had to still sit through commercials on Hulu despite the fact it’s a paid service (if I’m giving you money, you don’t need ad money, so don’t make me watch commercials you morons) Netflix posts the new season well in advance of the new season this time.  Anyway, the premiere jumped ahead at least a month from the finale and the characters are a mess.  This was definitely a depressing episode with hit after hit.  Another main character died, two were seriously altered, one permanent, the other…we’ll see.  It looks like next week, we’ll be going back to the actual crash.  I find this a weird choice to show us the aftermath and then show the event, especially considering there could have been some interesting twists to show.  However, the only thing I can think of is that there will be better character stuff to show the decisions that led to the consequences we saw last night.  I don’t know.  I’m glad they’ve thinned the herd a little.  We have a new batch of interns with some solid actors like Tina Majorino (Veronica Mars) and Gaius Charles (Smash from Friday Night Lights).  Overall, I thought it was a solid premiere and I’m curious to see where we go from here.

Parks and Rec was solid yet again.  However, I’m not a huge fan of “funny because it’s awkward” and that’s most of what we got from Ben this week.  However, it did have a good ending and April threatening the douche with a melon baller was awesome.

So, that brings us to our special segment.  I’m cutting shows right now.  I tried to set the new recording for October 10 and I have 11 recordings that night, and two conflicts, one of which is Arrow not recording right now.  This is unacceptable.  I’ve been more lenient this year because I cut stuff really early last year and I ended up regretting a couple of them, specifically American Horror Story, Grimm, and Person of Interest.  So I’ve been compensating a little this year by being too lenient with crap.  Well it’s time to thin the herd so as I type something to cut, it’s being deleted from my series recordings.

The New Normal:  You should have gone two weeks ago but I kept hoping you’d give me something to look forward to and you just kept getting worse. 

Animal Practice:  There was literally nothing funny about the episode I watched this week and everyone else hates you too so I’m not going to invest any more time into something that has zero chance of survival.

Guys with Kids:  Go back to your late show Jimmy Fallon and leave the sitcoms to people like Modern Family.  Despite one solid comedian, this show is painful to watch.

Brickleberry:  The League and It’s Always Sunny will be back now filling my quota for offensive comedy.  Also, they’re both much funnier than you were.

The X-Factor:  This is easily the biggest cut but the entertainment/time suck ratio is way out of whack and now that it’s interfering with better shows, it has to go. 

That’s all for now but we’ve got a few others on thin ice.

The Mob Doctor:  I still haven’t watch the second episode but your ratings were abysmal and you’ll be cancelled any day now.

Vegas:  A great show, just not enough to get me to spend an hour with you every week.  Maybe the second episode will knock my socks off.

666 Park Avenue:  I know it hasn’t premiered yet but I can just feel that it’s going to be bad.

Ben and Kate:  I want to like it but I just don’t know that it’s going to be enough.

Elementary:  I watched the first 5 minutes last night before going to bed and I’m not optimistic.

The Neighbors:  While I was surprised by the premiere, I’m not hopeful about sustained funny.

Alright, that concludes our week.  I’ll see you all back here on Monday morning for a report on as much as I could watch on Sunday night.  I’m predicting now that it will be Once Upon a Time, The Good Wife, and maybe Revenge. 

Good Day All and Happy TV Watching!