Posted Oct 28th 2009 12:02PM by Jonathan Toomey
Filed under: OpEd, Friday Night Lights, Early Looks, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
Entering into its fourth season (and second since the NBC/DirecTV deal),
Friday Night Lights is a show in transition on numerous levels. The high school football drama returns tonight to DirecTV's 101 Network at 9 p.m. ET (NBC won't air this season until next summer) and for fans of the show, it's an episode they've long been waiting for.
Ever since the season three finale, as Coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) and his wife Tami (Connie Britton) stepped on to the East Dillon Lions decrepit football field, Eric's new home, the tension has been at an all time high in Dillon, Texas. How can Coach Taylor, a man whom many consider to be a high school football wunderkind, start from scratch with a team that doesn't even exist yet?
Continue reading Friday Night Lights, season four -- An early look
Posted Oct 28th 2009 9:01AM by Jonathan Toomey
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, Sports, OpEd, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Early Looks, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
Fantasy football is a tricky thing. You either love it or you hate it and that largely depends on whether you're good or bad at it. For the most part, the same can be said about FX's newest comedy
The League. When it's good, it
is good, but when it's bad... well, you get the picture.
The show, which premieres tomorrow night, Thursday 10/29, at 10:30 p.m. after
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, is FX's first solid attempt to produce a lasting companion piece to
Sunny and, given some of its predecessors (like
Starved or
Testees), it'd be easy to write
The League off. But, like a two-minute drill that gradually picks up steam,
The League might actually go... all... the... way.
OK -- no more football metaphors.
Continue reading The League -- An early look
Posted Oct 13th 2009 10:02AM by Jonathan Toomey
Filed under: OpEd, Nip/Tuck, Early Looks, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
Over the span of its first five seasons, Nip/Tuck has had some spectacular highs and some even greater lows. Regardless of how you feel about them (personally, I liked season three and The Carver), as viewers we've all watched Dr. Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh) and Dr. Christian Troy (Julian McMahon) slowly lose the battle to the one thing they're paid to combat - aging.
Entering its penultimate season, Nip/Tuck could use a little nipping and tucking of its own after the mediocre fifth season that saw a lengthy hiatus at the hands of the writers strike. Fortunately, it seems that things might be getting back to "normal" for McNamara/Troy. And by normal, I mean no more serial killers, organ thieves, or weirdo lip-synching musical montages. Beyond that, it's freak show as usual.
Continue reading Nip/Tuck season six -- An early look
Posted Oct 5th 2009 10:25AM by Kona Gallagher
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, Early Looks, Reality-Free
Rita Rocks is premiering its second season on Lifetime tonight, along with
Sherri Shepherd's new sitcom, Sherri. For those of you who haven't seen the show before,
Rita stars
Mad TV's
Nicole Sullivan, who plays Rita, a suburban mom of two daughters who plays in a rock band on the side. Rounding out her garage band are her friends Owen (
Ian Gomez), Patty (
Tisha Campbell-Martin) and Kip (
Ricky Ullman), Rita's daughter Hallie's (
Natalie Dreyfuss) boyfriend.
The second-season premiere doesn't really focus on Rita's music so much. While we do still see her at practice, she's mainly dealing with mom stuff, specifically in relation to Hallie, her oldest daughter. In fact, what we have is a perennial family-sitcom classic-- the parent having to give the child "The Talk."
Continue reading Rita Rocks season two -- An early look
Posted Oct 5th 2009 9:00AM by Kona Gallagher
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, Early Looks, Reality-Free
Sherri, premiering tonight on Lifetime, is a very confusing show. It has flashes of genius, with several lines that made me laugh out loud ("Screw me once, shame on you. Screw a white woman -- we done"). At other times, however, it's bogged down with over-the-top dialogue and atrocious acting.
The premise behind
Sherri is basically
Sherri Shepherd's actual life. Both the real and fictional Sherri has held down jobs at a law office while working as a comedian and an actress, with bit parts on television shows. They both got married and had a son, only to find out that their husband was cheating on them.
Continue reading Sherri -- An early look
Posted Sep 29th 2009 2:02PM by Mike Moody
Filed under: Stargate, Early Looks, Reality-Free
When word broke that the
Stargate franchise was moving into darker territory with
Stargate Universe, fan reaction ranged from cautiously optimistic to downright angry. The anger mostly came from fans who felt jilted by Syfy's sudden cancellation of the veteran show
Stargate Atlantis (it didn't help that Syfy announced the new series in a press release that also announced the cancellation of
Atlantis). To some, it seemed like the fan favorite (
Atlantis) had to die so the edgy new experiment (
Universe) could live.
Universe –- a fine, scrappy show packed with great actors – might now be facing an uphill battle with some of its target audience members.
Stargate fans unwilling to give the show a chance should know one thing: The franchise's spirit of adventure remains intact in the first three episodes of
Universe. It is different and darker than
Stargate: SG-1 and
Atlantis – even blatantly dreary at times – but it's still
Stargate.
Continue reading Stargate Universe -- An early look
Posted Sep 28th 2009 10:02AM by Jonathan Toomey
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Interviews, Celebrities, Pickups and Renewals, Early Looks, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free, Press Kits Unwrapped, Lie to Me
Lie to Me is not a show that grew on me last season. When it first premiered earlier this year, I didn't even bother watching it. I tend to shy away from mid-season replacements to begin with and something about seeing Tim Roth speaking in his normal British accent in promos for the show seemed weird to me.
Then summer arrived, TV viewing options started to dwindle, and suddenly Lie to Me became a viable option. I watched the pilot, was mildly amused, and then dropped it for over a month before I looked at another episode. At first, it wasn't that great, and now that I've had the opportunity to speak to Roth about it, it's good to know that I wasn't alone in thinking that.
Continue reading Talking truth with Tim Roth of Lie to Me
Posted Sep 27th 2009 9:02AM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Other Comedy Shows, OpEd, Early Looks, Reality-Free
If you think of all the places that would turn
Californication's Hank Moody into a kid in a candy store, "college campus" should be at the top of your
Family Feud survey.
What would be at the bottom? Probably the Vatican. Then again, an unrepentant sexaholic like Moody always loves a challenge.
The third season follows Moody as he navigates his way through the student body of a local college as an English professor, his relationship with his growing teenage daughter Becca and the rest of his other relationships -- or at least the ones that alcohol hasn't erased from his memory.
Continue reading Californication, season three -- An early look
Posted Sep 25th 2009 10:00AM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Dexter, Early Looks, Reality-Free
The introduction of a baby into the plot is usually a sure fire sign that a television show has jumped the shark with a pair of Acme rocket powered water skis.
But things are different for a twisted little space of pay cable called
Dexter. The mere thought of putting a cute, adorable and affable little tyke into the mix sounds like something that would inspire the furious typing of a thousand angry Parents Television Council members' Selectric typewriters.
The latest addition to the Morgan clan is just a small addition to the newest season of Showtime's seriously macabre drama. It doesn't overtake the show and turn its serious moral tone into something ridculously psychotic like
Three Madmen and a Baby. It's just one of many obstacles the world's most huggable serial killer has to deal with to feed the John Pinette sized appetite of his mysterious "dark passenger," and it's not all dark and drenched in blood.
Continue reading Dexter season four -- An early look
Posted Sep 24th 2009 3:02PM by Brad Trechak
Filed under: OpEd, Animation, Early Looks, Reality-Free
Having watched the first three episodes of
The Cleveland Show, I find it's a bit like a 70's black sitcom such as
Good Times or
What's Happening, but more demented. The standard
Family Guy humor and asides are still there, but generally the plots feel a little more linear and directed towards a goal. Of course, going forward that could be an exception and not the general rule. The show could end up being a complete
Family Guy copy, but with a black family.
The first episode (airing Sunday at 8:30 ET on FOX) begins in Quahog with the cast of
Family Guy. The entire circumstance behind Cleveland's departure from that show is explained before the opening theme song. And what a theme song! It's better than
Family Guy's. Very catchy. It's the sort that sticks in your mind like Fun Tac.
Continue reading The Cleveland Show -- An early look
Posted Sep 21st 2009 10:02AM by Jonathan Toomey
Filed under: OpEd, House, Early Looks, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
Dr. Gregory House has problems. This is not news. We know this. His colleagues know this.
He knows this. The issue at the core of tonight's two-hour season premiere of
House ("Broken" airs at 8PM ET on Fox), is waiting patiently for our favorite curmudgeon to admit what he knows.
Ever since last season's finale, we've all wanted to know one thing - is House
really crazy or has the Vicodin finally done enough damage that he's hallucinating dead people and
having imaginary sex with Cuddy? The answer is finally revealed, and despite
Fox's viral marketing campaign that presented the possibility of someone having done something to House to cause his problems, it turns out that Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital is precisely where he belongs. Or is it?
Continue reading House season six -- An early look
Posted Sep 16th 2009 9:02AM by Jonathan Toomey
Filed under: OpEd, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Early Looks, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
The beauty of
Curb Your Enthusiasm has always been its roots. Born from the mind of a man who launched a show about nothing,
Curb is little more than an edgier version that's still... about nothing. It only makes sense that one day we would witness the colliding vortex created by those two masses of nothingness and that day has finally arrived. Well, almost. Season seven of Larry David's
Curb Your Enthusiasm premieres on HBO this Sunday night, September 20, at 9 p.m. ET and having seen the first three episodes, I'll say this about the long-awaited
Seinfeld reunion - it's
real and it's
spectacular.
Continue reading Curb Your Enthusiasm, season seven -- An early look
Posted Sep 9th 2009 9:04AM by Michael Pascua
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, OpEd, Early Looks
For the thirteenth season of
America's Next Top Model nothing really has changed. The girls stand even less of a chance of being a successful model this season because of their well-advertised height deficit. Fans of the show will find the same exact program since
ANTM has been part of the CW lineup. I guess after twelve cycles, it's inevitable that we'd see a lot of the same.
Top Model will also be emphasizing the word "petite" for the height-challenged girls. There are points of bad overdubbing where the Jays voiced over the word "petite" because they didn't originally use it. If this season does well, it may become the catalyst for "
America's Next Top Plus-Sized Model."
Continue reading America's Next Top Model cycle thirteen -- An early look
Posted Sep 4th 2009 3:01PM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, OpEd, Early Looks, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
The level that FX's
Sons of Anarchy's second season has to reach to top their outrageous first might seem unfathomable. But the man helming this ship is writer, creator and executive producer Kurt Sutter - the man who helped steer
The Shield through seven strange and unpredictable seasons of treacherous waters that were once deemed unchartable for the likes of basic cable.
It's tight control on what appears to be complete chaos. Sutter and company are a fleet of reckless
Sledge Hammers who are willing to blow up whole buildings to get the job done. Trust him. He knows what he's doing.
FX's white hot biker drama kicks off Tuesday and it brings all of the blood, guts, bullets and glory that the first season did in buckets. And that's just in the first five episodes.
Continue reading Sons of Anarchy, season two -- An early look
Posted Aug 14th 2009 11:02AM by Kona Gallagher
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Early Looks, Upfronts
Previewing NBC's fall offerings has been a long process. First I gave you
Community and Trauma, then
Parenthood. Now, I have NBC's second medical drama that's premiering this year:
Mercy. While
Trauma follows first responders in San Francisco,
Mercy follows nurses in a hospital in New York.
While it's true that I've seen the pilot and should be able to give you some insight into what to expect when it premieres (Wednesday September 23, at 8 PM ), the fact is, every single thing you need to know about
Mercy is summed up in its synopsis:
"Nurse Veronica Callahan (
Taylor Schilling) has just returned to Mercy Hospital from a tour in Iraq and knows more about medicine than all of the residents combined. Together with fellow nurses Sonia Jimenez (
Jaime Lee Kirchner) who turns the heads of everyone at Mercy hospital and Chloe Payne (
Michelle Trachtenberg) a naïve newcomer who learns to deal with the difficulties of working in a challenging and sometimes unsettling profession, they navigate the daily traumas and social landmines of life and love both inside the hospital and out."
Continue reading TV Squad previews NBC's new shows (Part 3)
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