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!
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