Jason Getty is not a man who grabs life by the horns and lives with gusto; he is a man who watches as life happens to him. He has had precisely one moment of assertiveness in his life, a confrontation with a con man that wound up with Jason burying a body in the backyard. A year later, he's just beginning to get over his paranoia about being discovered when landscapers turn up not one, but two bodies on his property. And neither of them is the body that Jason put there.
Mason eventually fills us in on how all three of the bodies got there, and tells her story through multiple points of view -- Jason, the people left behind by the assorted corpses, the cops investigating the whole mess. They're all distinct, vivid characters with lots of personality. Mason even gets away with making "volunteer police dog" Tessa a point-of-view character, with logic and motivations that feel perfectly dog-like.
Almost half of the book takes place on a single night, a long, bleakly hilarious series of disastrous meetings that bring together all of the book's characters in a frantic chase through the countryside. It's a magnificently planned sequence, reminiscent of Hitchcock in the way that complications pile upon complications. Everyone is struggling desperately to escape their situation, and every tiny decision only pushes them deeper into it.
This is dark comedy at its best; none of the characters are wholly sympathetic or wholly evil, and there are a lot of delightful moments where you realize that you're queasily cheering for someone to get away with doing something horrible. Mason's prose is smart and witty, filled with unexpected turns of phrase and sharp observations.
Highly recommended, and all the more impressive for being a first novel.
October 08, 2013
October 05, 2013
TV: The Millers (Thu 8:30, CBS)
Do you remember this song from about 20 years back?
"Justified and Ancient" was a disposable piece of dance music featuring guest vocals from Tammy Wynette. The lyrics were utter nonsense about a couple of guys driving around in an ice cream truck, heading for MooMoo Land, but Wynette brought to the song the same absolute conviction that she'd brought to her finest country songs. And by god, somehow she made you care about that damned ice cream truck.
Margo Martindale is doing the same thing in The Millers, taking material that barely rises to the level of marginal and making it weirdly compelling through sheer force of personality.
The central character here is Nathan Miller (Will Arnett), who is finally forced to tell his parents (Martindale and Beau Bridges) that he and his wife have divorced. The news inspires Bridges to announce that he wants a divorce himself; when the dust settles, Dad's moved in with Nathan's sister and brother-in-law (Jayma Mays and Nelson Franklin), and Mom's moved in with Nathan.
The rest of the cast are fine, and they are all worthy of better material than this, but Martindale is performing acting miracles. She's given fart jokes, and overbearing mother jokes, and ball-busting wife jokes; she's asked to re-create the classic dance scene from Dirty Dancing, and somehow, she makes it all work and gets laughs with every single bit of it.
The show is created by Greg Garcia, who has done marvelous things with unpromising premises in the past (My Name Is Earl, Raising Hope); the hope that he might be able to bring the writing up to snuff, combined with Martindale's astounding comic magic, will be enough to keep me watching, much to my surprise.
"Justified and Ancient" was a disposable piece of dance music featuring guest vocals from Tammy Wynette. The lyrics were utter nonsense about a couple of guys driving around in an ice cream truck, heading for MooMoo Land, but Wynette brought to the song the same absolute conviction that she'd brought to her finest country songs. And by god, somehow she made you care about that damned ice cream truck.
Margo Martindale is doing the same thing in The Millers, taking material that barely rises to the level of marginal and making it weirdly compelling through sheer force of personality.
The central character here is Nathan Miller (Will Arnett), who is finally forced to tell his parents (Martindale and Beau Bridges) that he and his wife have divorced. The news inspires Bridges to announce that he wants a divorce himself; when the dust settles, Dad's moved in with Nathan's sister and brother-in-law (Jayma Mays and Nelson Franklin), and Mom's moved in with Nathan.
The rest of the cast are fine, and they are all worthy of better material than this, but Martindale is performing acting miracles. She's given fart jokes, and overbearing mother jokes, and ball-busting wife jokes; she's asked to re-create the classic dance scene from Dirty Dancing, and somehow, she makes it all work and gets laughs with every single bit of it.
The show is created by Greg Garcia, who has done marvelous things with unpromising premises in the past (My Name Is Earl, Raising Hope); the hope that he might be able to bring the writing up to snuff, combined with Martindale's astounding comic magic, will be enough to keep me watching, much to my surprise.
Labels:
TV
TV: Sean Saves the World (Thu 9, NBC)
Thursday night seems to be this year's designated night for returning comic TV stars -- Michael J. Fox and Robin Williams premiered last week, and now Sean Hayes is back in Sean Saves the World. He plays Sean, a single father whose 14-year-old daughter (Samantha Isler) has just moved in with him after his ex-wife has moved out of town; he gets child care help from his hyper-critical mother (Linda Lavin).
Half the show is set in Sean's office, where he and his co-workers (Megan Hilty and Echo Kellum) are coping with an eccentric new boss (Thomas Lennon, giving the most uncomfortably creepy performance I've ever seen in a sitcom).
The workplace stuff is better than the home stuff, but neither is very good, and Hayes is the weak link in the show; the loud, broad comedy that worked for him as a supporting character on Will & Grace is overbearing and abrasive from a leading man. There's an occasional funny line from Kellum or Lavin, but they can't make up for the awfulness of Hayes.
Half the show is set in Sean's office, where he and his co-workers (Megan Hilty and Echo Kellum) are coping with an eccentric new boss (Thomas Lennon, giving the most uncomfortably creepy performance I've ever seen in a sitcom).
The workplace stuff is better than the home stuff, but neither is very good, and Hayes is the weak link in the show; the loud, broad comedy that worked for him as a supporting character on Will & Grace is overbearing and abrasive from a leading man. There's an occasional funny line from Kellum or Lavin, but they can't make up for the awfulness of Hayes.
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TV
TV: Super Fun Night (Wed 9:30, ABC)
Super Fun Night is an uneven mix of socializing-pals comedy and workplace comedy, created and written by Rebel Wilson, who also stars. She's Kimmie Boubier, a young lawyer who hangs out with her two best friends (Lauren Ash and Liza Lapira) for a weekly "Super Fun Night." The show juggles those stories with Kimmie's work life, where she has a crush on one co-worker (Kevin Bishop), and a rivalry with the office dragon lady (Kate Jenkinson).
Wilson is doing the role with an American accent, and she's spending so much mental energy into it that she loses the spontaneity that is her greatest strength as an actress. I do admire the way she hurls herself into every joke with total commitment, and she may be even more willing to use her own size as a comic weapon than Melissa McCarthy.
But the material here isn't terribly interesting or novel; the pilot is centered around Kimmie's attempt to get over her stage fright by singing at a piano bar, and we've heard most of the jokes before. Super Fun Night isn't an awful sitcom, and there's nothing to object to, but there's nothing that's going to bring me back for a second episode, either.
Wilson is doing the role with an American accent, and she's spending so much mental energy into it that she loses the spontaneity that is her greatest strength as an actress. I do admire the way she hurls herself into every joke with total commitment, and she may be even more willing to use her own size as a comic weapon than Melissa McCarthy.
But the material here isn't terribly interesting or novel; the pilot is centered around Kimmie's attempt to get over her stage fright by singing at a piano bar, and we've heard most of the jokes before. Super Fun Night isn't an awful sitcom, and there's nothing to object to, but there's nothing that's going to bring me back for a second episode, either.
Labels:
TV
September 30, 2013
TV: Betrayal (Sun 10, ABC)
Melodramatic soap opera about a love triangle complicated by a murder trial.
Sara (Hannah Ware) is a photographer who meets Jack (Stuart Townsend) at a gallery exhibition of her work. They are both unhappily married, and they begin a passionate affair.
Sara's husband, Drew (Chris Johnson), is a politically ambitious prosecuting attorney. Jack's wife, Elaine (Wendy Moniz), is the daughter of local tycoon Thatcher Karsten (James Cromwell); Jack was raised in the Karsten home after the death of his parents, and now works as Thatcher's in-house attorney.
So of course, when Karsten's mentally challenged son TJ (Henry Thomas) is accused of murder, Jack and Drew are destined to wind up on opposite sides of the murder trial.
The principal problem with the show is that if you're going to tell a story about a passionate love affair, someone involved has to be believably passionate, or worthy of passionate; Ware and Townsend are both bland actors of flat affect; neither seems capable of any emotion deeper than mild peevishness. On the other hand, Cromwell is entertaining as the shady tycoon, and Thomas plays TJ's mental problems with more subtlety than you might expect from a show of this sort.
There's nothing wrong with a good trashy wallow in cheesy melodrama, but the key word there is "good," and there's not much that's good about Betrayal. It's tepid where it should be torrid, undercooked where it should be overheated, and lacking the necessary passion to kick it into high gear.
Sara (Hannah Ware) is a photographer who meets Jack (Stuart Townsend) at a gallery exhibition of her work. They are both unhappily married, and they begin a passionate affair.
Sara's husband, Drew (Chris Johnson), is a politically ambitious prosecuting attorney. Jack's wife, Elaine (Wendy Moniz), is the daughter of local tycoon Thatcher Karsten (James Cromwell); Jack was raised in the Karsten home after the death of his parents, and now works as Thatcher's in-house attorney.
So of course, when Karsten's mentally challenged son TJ (Henry Thomas) is accused of murder, Jack and Drew are destined to wind up on opposite sides of the murder trial.
The principal problem with the show is that if you're going to tell a story about a passionate love affair, someone involved has to be believably passionate, or worthy of passionate; Ware and Townsend are both bland actors of flat affect; neither seems capable of any emotion deeper than mild peevishness. On the other hand, Cromwell is entertaining as the shady tycoon, and Thomas plays TJ's mental problems with more subtlety than you might expect from a show of this sort.
There's nothing wrong with a good trashy wallow in cheesy melodrama, but the key word there is "good," and there's not much that's good about Betrayal. It's tepid where it should be torrid, undercooked where it should be overheated, and lacking the necessary passion to kick it into high gear.
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TV
September 27, 2013
TV: The Crazy Ones (Thu 9, CBS)
Robin Williams returns to weekly TV after 30 years, but his shtick hasn't changed much.
In The Crazy Ones, Williams is Simon Roberts, who runs an advertising agency with his daughter, Sydney (Sarah Michelle Gellar). Every conversation with Simon is an excuse for Williams to take off a riff of funny voices, rapid-fire punch lines, and manic wordplay; Gellar's primary function is to wear frustrated pouts as she tries to keep her father in check.
The underlings at the agency include Zach (James Wolk, apparently determined to work in as many TV ad agencies as possible); the charming ladies' man who's ready to sleep with clients if it'll help; art director Andrew (Hamish Linklater, given very little to do in the pilot); and scatterbrained assistant Lauren (Amanda Setton). Of the group, Wolk comes off best in the pilot, managing to mostly hold his own against Williams in manic mode.
But the pilot gives an awful lot of screen time to guest star Kelly Clarkson, who can't act, and to Williams' shtick, which plays much differently from a 62-year-old than it did from a kid in his late 20s. What felt like spontaneous youthful exuberance now feels labored and forced, and the character comes across as so undisciplined and out of control that it's difficult to believe he's the advertising genius he's supposed to be. Another crucial difference is that Mork was an alien being, so the manic babbling didn't have to be believable by any human standard.
Gellar doesn't make much of an immpression at all, and it's increasingly looking as if Buffy was a miraculous fluke, the one role to which she was perfectly suited.
If you're a huge fan of Robin Williams, you may love The Crazy Ones; if you're not, he's going to wear out his welcome very quickly.
In The Crazy Ones, Williams is Simon Roberts, who runs an advertising agency with his daughter, Sydney (Sarah Michelle Gellar). Every conversation with Simon is an excuse for Williams to take off a riff of funny voices, rapid-fire punch lines, and manic wordplay; Gellar's primary function is to wear frustrated pouts as she tries to keep her father in check.
The underlings at the agency include Zach (James Wolk, apparently determined to work in as many TV ad agencies as possible); the charming ladies' man who's ready to sleep with clients if it'll help; art director Andrew (Hamish Linklater, given very little to do in the pilot); and scatterbrained assistant Lauren (Amanda Setton). Of the group, Wolk comes off best in the pilot, managing to mostly hold his own against Williams in manic mode.
But the pilot gives an awful lot of screen time to guest star Kelly Clarkson, who can't act, and to Williams' shtick, which plays much differently from a 62-year-old than it did from a kid in his late 20s. What felt like spontaneous youthful exuberance now feels labored and forced, and the character comes across as so undisciplined and out of control that it's difficult to believe he's the advertising genius he's supposed to be. Another crucial difference is that Mork was an alien being, so the manic babbling didn't have to be believable by any human standard.
Gellar doesn't make much of an immpression at all, and it's increasingly looking as if Buffy was a miraculous fluke, the one role to which she was perfectly suited.
If you're a huge fan of Robin Williams, you may love The Crazy Ones; if you're not, he's going to wear out his welcome very quickly.
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TV
TV: The Michael J. Fox Show (Thu 9:30, NBC)
Michael J. Fox plays a character much like himself in his return to a starring TV role. Mike Henry used to be the popular news anchor in New York, until he retired because of his Parkinson's disease. The good thing, he told himself, was that he'd get to spend more time with his wife (Betsy Brandt) and kids. But now that even the youngest kid is old enough now to have things of his own to do, everyone's getting a little sick of having him underfoot. So his wife and former boss (Wendell Pierce) maneuver him into returning to work.
The pilot episode spends a lot of time getting the audience comfortable with Fox/Henry's medical condition, and with the idea that it's OK to laugh about it; the second episode backs off on that, and returns to more traditional sitcom territory (Mike lies about having a crush on the pretty upstairs neighbor).
The problem is that Parkinson's is the only thing that's remotely distinctive or unusual about the show, which leaves Fox in a difficult bind. Emphasize his illness too much, and you risk being perceived as exploiting it; de-emphasize it, and there's nothing else interesting going on.
Fox is just as likable as ever, and his comic timing remains sharp. He and Brandt do a fine job of showing how their marriage has been impacted by Mike's Parkinson's without obsessing about it. And Wendell Pierce gives the show's best performance, stealing every scene he's in with droll understatement.
But the writing's flat; the kids are standard-issue TV bland; and Katie Finneran is wasted as Mike's bitter "how can I still be single at my age" sister. Replace Fox with any other leading man, and this show barely gets noticed, if it even makes it to air at all.
It is a gift to us all that Fox's illness is manageable enough that he is able to work, because he's a fine actor, and in various roles over the last few years, he's used his talent to great effect to demystify Parkinson's and its effects. But it would be patronizing to praise this show for those reasons, when it really isn't very good. It's not horrifically bad, to be sure; it's just relentlessly mediocre, and Fox is capable of better than this.
The pilot episode spends a lot of time getting the audience comfortable with Fox/Henry's medical condition, and with the idea that it's OK to laugh about it; the second episode backs off on that, and returns to more traditional sitcom territory (Mike lies about having a crush on the pretty upstairs neighbor).
The problem is that Parkinson's is the only thing that's remotely distinctive or unusual about the show, which leaves Fox in a difficult bind. Emphasize his illness too much, and you risk being perceived as exploiting it; de-emphasize it, and there's nothing else interesting going on.
Fox is just as likable as ever, and his comic timing remains sharp. He and Brandt do a fine job of showing how their marriage has been impacted by Mike's Parkinson's without obsessing about it. And Wendell Pierce gives the show's best performance, stealing every scene he's in with droll understatement.
But the writing's flat; the kids are standard-issue TV bland; and Katie Finneran is wasted as Mike's bitter "how can I still be single at my age" sister. Replace Fox with any other leading man, and this show barely gets noticed, if it even makes it to air at all.
It is a gift to us all that Fox's illness is manageable enough that he is able to work, because he's a fine actor, and in various roles over the last few years, he's used his talent to great effect to demystify Parkinson's and its effects. But it would be patronizing to praise this show for those reasons, when it really isn't very good. It's not horrifically bad, to be sure; it's just relentlessly mediocre, and Fox is capable of better than this.
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TV
September 25, 2013
TV: Lucky 7 (Tue 10, ABC)
Every year during pilot season, I try to watch at least the first episode of all the new shows. But I'm not a total masochist; I allow myself to bail on one show each year, which I think of as the "life is just too damn short" exception.
This year, that honor goes to Lucky 7, in which a group of convenience store co-workers win the lottery, and we watch as their lives are changed by the money. None of them are interesting, likable, unlikable, or compelling in any way, and when we hit the first commercial break 15 minutes in, I could take no more. Because life is just too damn short.
This year, that honor goes to Lucky 7, in which a group of convenience store co-workers win the lottery, and we watch as their lives are changed by the money. None of them are interesting, likable, unlikable, or compelling in any way, and when we hit the first commercial break 15 minutes in, I could take no more. Because life is just too damn short.
Labels:
TV
TV: The Blacklist (Mon 10, NBC)
James Spader stars as Raymond "Red" Reddington, an international criminal whose only loyalty is "to the highest bidder;" he'll help whoever pays him to pull off whatever crime they want.
The show begins when Red walks into the office of the FBI and turns himself in. He offers to help them capture all of the world's biggest criminals -- spies, hackers, and so on; "the people you don't even know about" -- but insists that he will only speak to Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone). She's a young FBI agent, and it's her first day at the DC bureau. She has no idea why Reddington is interested in her, but when Assistant Director Cooper (Harry Lennix, doing his usual efficient authority figure) asks her to work with him, she agrees.
The dynamic between Reddington and Keen is very Silence of the Lambs, as he taunts her with his knowledge about her personal life, and demands that she share further details in exchange for information. Spader delivers his threats and insinuations with silky menace; he's having a grand old time with the part, and he's the best reason to watch the show.
Boone is a convincing young agent, gifted with natural insight into others, and self-aware enough to know her own weaknesses (most of them, anyway); in her scenes with Spader, she's a smart enough actress to stay out of the way and not try to compete with his quiet hamming.
There's a nice plot twist at the end of the pilot that suggests the connection between Reddington and Keen may be something other than the obvious guess (which would be, of course, that he's her father). The Blacklist could get repetitious and boring very quickly, but Spader's enough to make it fun for now.
The show begins when Red walks into the office of the FBI and turns himself in. He offers to help them capture all of the world's biggest criminals -- spies, hackers, and so on; "the people you don't even know about" -- but insists that he will only speak to Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone). She's a young FBI agent, and it's her first day at the DC bureau. She has no idea why Reddington is interested in her, but when Assistant Director Cooper (Harry Lennix, doing his usual efficient authority figure) asks her to work with him, she agrees.
The dynamic between Reddington and Keen is very Silence of the Lambs, as he taunts her with his knowledge about her personal life, and demands that she share further details in exchange for information. Spader delivers his threats and insinuations with silky menace; he's having a grand old time with the part, and he's the best reason to watch the show.
Boone is a convincing young agent, gifted with natural insight into others, and self-aware enough to know her own weaknesses (most of them, anyway); in her scenes with Spader, she's a smart enough actress to stay out of the way and not try to compete with his quiet hamming.
There's a nice plot twist at the end of the pilot that suggests the connection between Reddington and Keen may be something other than the obvious guess (which would be, of course, that he's her father). The Blacklist could get repetitious and boring very quickly, but Spader's enough to make it fun for now.
Labels:
TV
TV: Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Tue 8, ABC)
Corporate shilling and excessive capitalization be damned: I'm just going to call the show SHIELD and be done with it.
The action picks up shortly after the climactic Battle of New York from the movie The Avengers, as humanity copes with its discovery that there are superheroes among them. The government agency SHIELD is made up of non-super people, and their task is to locate and recruit the superpowered, both to gain access to their skills, and to help them adjust to life as a superperson.
The show gets off to a reasonably good start, cheerfully explaining away the resurrection of Clark Gregg's Agent Coulson (for non-Marvel fans, he died in The Avengers) in a way that clearly doesn't actually explain anything, and leaves his non-death as a mystery to be slowly revealed over the course of the season.
Coulson's team is introduced in efficient fashion, and while none is really a full-rounded person yet, they are given enough individuality that you're never left muttering "which one is he"?. There's Grant Ward (Brett Dalton), the dashing black-ops guy who hates the thought of working as part of a team; Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen), who doesn't want to leave her comfy desk job and go back into the field, and only agrees to go when Coulton promises that all she'll have to do is "drive the bus;" Skye (Chloe Bennett), the team's newest recruit, a gifted computer hacker. Effective comic relief is provided by the tech team of Fitz and Simmons (Iain De Castecker and Elizabeth Henstridge), who complete one another's sentences and think so much alike that everyone just calls them FitzSimmons.
As good as the pilot is, though, I can't shake the nagging feeling that there just isn't much here. I worry that the show will devolve into a lightly comic version of The X Files, which a new super-powered freak brought on as the villain every week. And since Joss Whedon isn't going to be involved with the show on a week-to-week basis, I'm skeptical that the bantering dialogue will be good enough to hold my attention for long. I'm in for now, but I have my doubts.
The action picks up shortly after the climactic Battle of New York from the movie The Avengers, as humanity copes with its discovery that there are superheroes among them. The government agency SHIELD is made up of non-super people, and their task is to locate and recruit the superpowered, both to gain access to their skills, and to help them adjust to life as a superperson.
The show gets off to a reasonably good start, cheerfully explaining away the resurrection of Clark Gregg's Agent Coulson (for non-Marvel fans, he died in The Avengers) in a way that clearly doesn't actually explain anything, and leaves his non-death as a mystery to be slowly revealed over the course of the season.
Coulson's team is introduced in efficient fashion, and while none is really a full-rounded person yet, they are given enough individuality that you're never left muttering "which one is he"?. There's Grant Ward (Brett Dalton), the dashing black-ops guy who hates the thought of working as part of a team; Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen), who doesn't want to leave her comfy desk job and go back into the field, and only agrees to go when Coulton promises that all she'll have to do is "drive the bus;" Skye (Chloe Bennett), the team's newest recruit, a gifted computer hacker. Effective comic relief is provided by the tech team of Fitz and Simmons (Iain De Castecker and Elizabeth Henstridge), who complete one another's sentences and think so much alike that everyone just calls them FitzSimmons.
As good as the pilot is, though, I can't shake the nagging feeling that there just isn't much here. I worry that the show will devolve into a lightly comic version of The X Files, which a new super-powered freak brought on as the villain every week. And since Joss Whedon isn't going to be involved with the show on a week-to-week basis, I'm skeptical that the bantering dialogue will be good enough to hold my attention for long. I'm in for now, but I have my doubts.
Labels:
TV
TV: Hostages (Mon 10, CBS)
Hostages wants desperately to be 24 when it grows up, but it's never going to get there. It's a hopeless muddle, filled with embarrassing cliches, like the moment when FBI hostage negotiator Duncan Carlyle (Dylan McDermott) apparently shoots a hostage who turns out to be the hostage-taker: "What if you'd been wrong?!?" "I wasn't."
Our heroine is Dr. Ellen Sanders (Toni Collette), who is (along with her insufferable family) taken hostage by McDermott(*) and ordered to kill the president, on whom she is performing surgery the next day. Were I Collette, I'd be tempted to disobey in the hope that McDermott and his gang would kill my mopy husband (Tate Donovan, who has charged into late middle-age with remarkable speed) and bratty teens.
(* - Yes, that's right, the hostage negotiator is the hostage-taker, because this is a Modern Television Drama, which means lots of Moral Ambiguity, don'cha know.)
Hostages is only scheduled to run for 15 weeks, but it's hard to see how there's enough story here to fill even that limited run. Oh, sure, we can drag an hour or two out of the blackmail-ble secrets of the Sanders family (Adultery! Teen pregnancy! Teen drug dealing!), and the mystery of Carlyle's motivations will no doubt be dragged out for a while, but there's some very thin gruel being served up here.
Our heroine is Dr. Ellen Sanders (Toni Collette), who is (along with her insufferable family) taken hostage by McDermott(*) and ordered to kill the president, on whom she is performing surgery the next day. Were I Collette, I'd be tempted to disobey in the hope that McDermott and his gang would kill my mopy husband (Tate Donovan, who has charged into late middle-age with remarkable speed) and bratty teens.
(* - Yes, that's right, the hostage negotiator is the hostage-taker, because this is a Modern Television Drama, which means lots of Moral Ambiguity, don'cha know.)
Hostages is only scheduled to run for 15 weeks, but it's hard to see how there's enough story here to fill even that limited run. Oh, sure, we can drag an hour or two out of the blackmail-ble secrets of the Sanders family (Adultery! Teen pregnancy! Teen drug dealing!), and the mystery of Carlyle's motivations will no doubt be dragged out for a while, but there's some very thin gruel being served up here.
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TV
TV: Mom (Mon 9:30, CBS)
Mom can't quite make up its mind, at least in the pilot, what kind of sitcom it wants to be. There's a wacky workplace sitcom about our central character Christy (Anna Faris), who's a waitress at an upscale restaurant; Nate Corddry is her blandly stuffy boss and French Stewart, still gifted with the ability to milk huge laughs from punch lines that aren't really very funny, as the pompous chef.
There's a domestic sitcom about Christy the single mom of two, teenage Violet (Sadie Valvano) and pre-teen Roscoe (Blake Garret Rosenthal), dealing with Violet's dimwitted boyfriend (Spencer Daniels) and Roscoe's irresponsible dad (Matt Jones).
And there's the most interesting show of the bunch, in which Christy, an alcoholic who's just hit four months of sobriety, is horrified by the reappearance of her estranged mother, Bonnie (Allison Janney). Bonnie's been sober for a few years now, and wants to mend fences with Christy, who wants none of it.
But Christy worries that Violet is on track to repeat the same mistakes she made, and feels compelled to build a new relationship with Bonnie when Violet challenges her: If you can't forgive your mother for her bad parenting, then why should I forgive you for yours?
Mom is at its best when the focus is on the relationship between Christy and Bonnie; when Faris and Janney are on screen together, it has the makings of something very special. But of the many possible versions of Mom, that's probably the hardest to write, and it's been a long time since Chuck Lorre showed much willingness to rise above the easy. The pilot is good enough to keep me watching in hope, but I fear that it probably won't live up to its potential.
There's a domestic sitcom about Christy the single mom of two, teenage Violet (Sadie Valvano) and pre-teen Roscoe (Blake Garret Rosenthal), dealing with Violet's dimwitted boyfriend (Spencer Daniels) and Roscoe's irresponsible dad (Matt Jones).
And there's the most interesting show of the bunch, in which Christy, an alcoholic who's just hit four months of sobriety, is horrified by the reappearance of her estranged mother, Bonnie (Allison Janney). Bonnie's been sober for a few years now, and wants to mend fences with Christy, who wants none of it.
But Christy worries that Violet is on track to repeat the same mistakes she made, and feels compelled to build a new relationship with Bonnie when Violet challenges her: If you can't forgive your mother for her bad parenting, then why should I forgive you for yours?
Mom is at its best when the focus is on the relationship between Christy and Bonnie; when Faris and Janney are on screen together, it has the makings of something very special. But of the many possible versions of Mom, that's probably the hardest to write, and it's been a long time since Chuck Lorre showed much willingness to rise above the easy. The pilot is good enough to keep me watching in hope, but I fear that it probably won't live up to its potential.
Labels:
TV
BOOKS: Openly Straight, Bill Konigsberg (2013)
Rafe has been openly gay since he was in the eighth grade. And in Boulder, Colorado, it really hasn't been a big deal. His parents are almost ridiculously supportive, to the point of throwing him a surprise coming out party at Hamburger Mary's, and his classmates haven't hassled him about it.
But even so, Rafe can't help but feel boxed in by the idea that everyone sees him as The Gay Kid; he fears that his social circles and range of potential friends are being limited by that perception. So when he transfers to an all-male boarding school in Boston for his junior year, he decides not to mention being gay to anyone. He won't go so far as to lie if someone asks a direct question, he tells himself, but he'd like to see what life might be like if he gets the chance to be just Rafe without being The Gay Kid.
The plan seems to be a success at first; Rafe quickly falls in with a group of the school's jocks, not at all the sort of artsy/nerdy types he'd hung with in Boulder. But inevitably, Rafe falls for one of his new friends, and wonders if there's a way to turn this friendship into something more.
Konigsberg does a fine job of lightening his serious issues with a lively sense of humor; the conversations between Rafe and his new pal Ben capture perfectly the way that smart kids meander between goofiness and profundity. He lets the consequences of Rafe's decision play out in an honest manner, without imposing an artificially happy outcome, but still finds a way to end things on a realistically hopeful note.
But even so, Rafe can't help but feel boxed in by the idea that everyone sees him as The Gay Kid; he fears that his social circles and range of potential friends are being limited by that perception. So when he transfers to an all-male boarding school in Boston for his junior year, he decides not to mention being gay to anyone. He won't go so far as to lie if someone asks a direct question, he tells himself, but he'd like to see what life might be like if he gets the chance to be just Rafe without being The Gay Kid.
The plan seems to be a success at first; Rafe quickly falls in with a group of the school's jocks, not at all the sort of artsy/nerdy types he'd hung with in Boulder. But inevitably, Rafe falls for one of his new friends, and wonders if there's a way to turn this friendship into something more.
Konigsberg does a fine job of lightening his serious issues with a lively sense of humor; the conversations between Rafe and his new pal Ben capture perfectly the way that smart kids meander between goofiness and profundity. He lets the consequences of Rafe's decision play out in an honest manner, without imposing an artificially happy outcome, but still finds a way to end things on a realistically hopeful note.
Labels:
Books
September 24, 2013
BOOKS: California Rush, Sherwood Kiraly (1990)
For the most part, baseball's a simple game. Hit the ball, throw the ball, catch the ball, run the bases. But some strange things can happen, and there are a lot of obscure rules that pop up when they do. And so every now and then, someone writes a story about that mythical game in which all of those things happen, the most bizarre game of baseball every played. Sherwood Kiraly's California Rush is such a story, and it's an entertaining take on the theme.
The first two-thirds of the book meanders a bit, as we stroll casually through the careers of the men who will be the opposing managers in the key game. Davy Tremayne is a golden boy -- attractive, talented, popular with the fans. Jay Bates, on the other hand, is a short-tempered fellow who will bend the rules as far as they'll go to get an edge.
But the meandering pays off, because by the time we get to the final game, in which Davy is managing (and playing for) St. Louis, and Jay is managing the California Rush expansion team, we know them well enough to understand their behavior and their reactions to the bizarre events that unfold. And a wild game it is, unfolding in so unlikely a fashion that one player refuses to continue, believing that this game can only be the work of the devil, and it would be sacrilegious to keep playing.
California Rush is by no stretch great literature, and if you're not interested in baseball, you'll be bored to death by it. But for baseball fans, it's a moderately amusing story, and Kiraly manages to keep finding new bizarre plays and rule interpretations to throw into the final 50 pages.
The first two-thirds of the book meanders a bit, as we stroll casually through the careers of the men who will be the opposing managers in the key game. Davy Tremayne is a golden boy -- attractive, talented, popular with the fans. Jay Bates, on the other hand, is a short-tempered fellow who will bend the rules as far as they'll go to get an edge.
But the meandering pays off, because by the time we get to the final game, in which Davy is managing (and playing for) St. Louis, and Jay is managing the California Rush expansion team, we know them well enough to understand their behavior and their reactions to the bizarre events that unfold. And a wild game it is, unfolding in so unlikely a fashion that one player refuses to continue, believing that this game can only be the work of the devil, and it would be sacrilegious to keep playing.
California Rush is by no stretch great literature, and if you're not interested in baseball, you'll be bored to death by it. But for baseball fans, it's a moderately amusing story, and Kiraly manages to keep finding new bizarre plays and rule interpretations to throw into the final 50 pages.
Labels:
Books
September 23, 2013
BOOKS: More Than This, Patrick Ness (2013)
In a brief prologue, we are with a 16-year-old boy who has swum too far out into the ocean. It's cold, he's losing strength, and he's terrified. He knows he's about to die, and it comes almost as mercy when instead of the long, slow agony of drowning, he is dashed against the rocks and killed instantly.
And then, at the beginning of Chapter 1, he wakes up.
Seth finds himself in the English village of his childhood, but it's deserted, with overgrown weeds everywhere and a thick layer of dust covering everything. The local supermarket has plenty of canned food that hasn't gone bad, so he's in no danger of starvation. But how can he possibly be here at all, apparently still alive? Where is everyone? And why is there a shiny black coffin in the middle of his bedroom?
The terror and mystery of this complete isolation may not be the worst thing in store for Seth, though, because when he falls asleep, he dreams. His dreams are intensely realistic, and in all of them, he's forced to relive the most painful moments in his life.
Ness tells a terrifically twisty story about reality and fantasy, the importance of friendship, the pain of loneliness (and of life in general), and the desperate measures we will take to escape that pain, or to at least make it more bearable. The characters (no, Seth doesn't remain alone for the entire book) are lively and memorable; I particularly liked Tomasz, an 11-year-old Polish boy who grumbles in grandly comic style about how unappreciated his acts of bravery are.
More Than This is a marvelous book. It's creative, thought-provoking, and very hard to put down.
And then, at the beginning of Chapter 1, he wakes up.
Seth finds himself in the English village of his childhood, but it's deserted, with overgrown weeds everywhere and a thick layer of dust covering everything. The local supermarket has plenty of canned food that hasn't gone bad, so he's in no danger of starvation. But how can he possibly be here at all, apparently still alive? Where is everyone? And why is there a shiny black coffin in the middle of his bedroom?
The terror and mystery of this complete isolation may not be the worst thing in store for Seth, though, because when he falls asleep, he dreams. His dreams are intensely realistic, and in all of them, he's forced to relive the most painful moments in his life.
Ness tells a terrifically twisty story about reality and fantasy, the importance of friendship, the pain of loneliness (and of life in general), and the desperate measures we will take to escape that pain, or to at least make it more bearable. The characters (no, Seth doesn't remain alone for the entire book) are lively and memorable; I particularly liked Tomasz, an 11-year-old Polish boy who grumbles in grandly comic style about how unappreciated his acts of bravery are.
More Than This is a marvelous book. It's creative, thought-provoking, and very hard to put down.
Labels:
Books
September 21, 2013
TV: Ironside (Wed 10, NBC)
Premieres October 2; pilot currently available at Hulu.
Because Ironside is a 21st-century police procedural, we are obliged to begin with a scene in which Robert Ironside (Blair Underwood) demonstrates that using a wheelchair is no obstacle to his committing illegal interrogations and acts of police brutality. And because Ironside is a 21st-century police procedural, the principal crime in the pilot is the death of a pretty young white woman, whose corpse is seen surrounded by an ample pool of blood.
Ironside heads up his own hand-picked team of detectives as the result of a settlement following his being shot on the job two years earlier. The detectives are the obligatory Mod Squad of police sidekicks -- one pretty female (Spencer Grammer), two hunky males (Pablo Schreiber and Neal Bledsoe) -- none of whom is allowed to have any personality, because that might pull focus away from Underwood, and this, by god, is a star vehicle. There's also the obligatory grumpy "why can't you follow the rules, Ironside?" captain, played by Kenneth Choi with even less personality than the Mod Squad. The only supporting character who does have much personality is Ironside's former partner (Brent Sexton), still on extended leave and struggling with guilt in his role over the shooting; he's giving the only remotely interesting performance in the pilot.
Underwood has settled on acerbic and bitter as the entirety of his characterization. It's certainly credible that having been shot and being disabled as a result might leave one bitter, but in flashbacks to before the shooting, we see that he was just as big a jerk then, too. I'm all for actors attempting to stretch and play different types, but there's also a lot to be said for knowing what you do well. Blair Underwood at his best is a tremendously charming, warm, sexy, likable man, and it's painful to watch him closing off all of his principal assets to play this nasty, hostile person. He treats his underlings like idiots, and has so little respect for their abilities that you wonder why he picked them for his squad in the first place.
Those pre-shooting flashbacks have been used by the producers as justification for hiring Underwood rather than hiring an actor who really does use a wheelchair. If they're actually going to show us something useful about the character, that might be a reasonable defense, but in the pilot, they don't tell us anything that couldn't be equally well covered in four or five lines of dialogue; they're such useless scenes that I started to feel like they'd been added fairly late in the process, after the producers realized they might take some heat for not hiring a paraplegic actor.
The case-of-the-week is serviceable, but it's nothing particularly distinctive or interesting, and the answer falls into place pretty much as you'd expect it to after the first five minutes. And "nothing particularly distinctive or interesting," unfortunately, is also a pretty good summary of the show as a whole. The time slot's not fiercely competitive, and the show could easily run for two or three years, getting just-good-enough ratings to survive without ever impressing anyone in any way.
Because Ironside is a 21st-century police procedural, we are obliged to begin with a scene in which Robert Ironside (Blair Underwood) demonstrates that using a wheelchair is no obstacle to his committing illegal interrogations and acts of police brutality. And because Ironside is a 21st-century police procedural, the principal crime in the pilot is the death of a pretty young white woman, whose corpse is seen surrounded by an ample pool of blood.
Ironside heads up his own hand-picked team of detectives as the result of a settlement following his being shot on the job two years earlier. The detectives are the obligatory Mod Squad of police sidekicks -- one pretty female (Spencer Grammer), two hunky males (Pablo Schreiber and Neal Bledsoe) -- none of whom is allowed to have any personality, because that might pull focus away from Underwood, and this, by god, is a star vehicle. There's also the obligatory grumpy "why can't you follow the rules, Ironside?" captain, played by Kenneth Choi with even less personality than the Mod Squad. The only supporting character who does have much personality is Ironside's former partner (Brent Sexton), still on extended leave and struggling with guilt in his role over the shooting; he's giving the only remotely interesting performance in the pilot.
Underwood has settled on acerbic and bitter as the entirety of his characterization. It's certainly credible that having been shot and being disabled as a result might leave one bitter, but in flashbacks to before the shooting, we see that he was just as big a jerk then, too. I'm all for actors attempting to stretch and play different types, but there's also a lot to be said for knowing what you do well. Blair Underwood at his best is a tremendously charming, warm, sexy, likable man, and it's painful to watch him closing off all of his principal assets to play this nasty, hostile person. He treats his underlings like idiots, and has so little respect for their abilities that you wonder why he picked them for his squad in the first place.
Those pre-shooting flashbacks have been used by the producers as justification for hiring Underwood rather than hiring an actor who really does use a wheelchair. If they're actually going to show us something useful about the character, that might be a reasonable defense, but in the pilot, they don't tell us anything that couldn't be equally well covered in four or five lines of dialogue; they're such useless scenes that I started to feel like they'd been added fairly late in the process, after the producers realized they might take some heat for not hiring a paraplegic actor.
The case-of-the-week is serviceable, but it's nothing particularly distinctive or interesting, and the answer falls into place pretty much as you'd expect it to after the first five minutes. And "nothing particularly distinctive or interesting," unfortunately, is also a pretty good summary of the show as a whole. The time slot's not fiercely competitive, and the show could easily run for two or three years, getting just-good-enough ratings to survive without ever impressing anyone in any way.
Labels:
TV
September 18, 2013
TV: We Are Men (Mon 8:30, CBS)
Premieres September 30; pilot currently available at cbs.com.
We Are Men is the story of Carter (Chris Smith), who is left at the altar and moves into a "short-term housing" apartment complex that is basically a waystation for lonely divorced men. Three of the building's resident lotharios take Carter under their wing to help him recover from his heartbreak. They're played by Jerry O'Connell, Kal Penn, and Tony Shalhoub; their character names and personalities aren't all that important, mostly because none of them has any discernible personality beyond being a permanent horndog. Oh, I suppose Penn is the most pathetic of the three, and Shalhoub the sleaziest, but really, they're all pretty awful (and I do not ever again need to see O'Connell in a Speedo, thank you very much).
Women exist in this show only as castrating harpies, sex objects, or (as in the case of Carter's fiancee) some combination of the two. The lone exception is Shalhoub's daughter (Rebecca Breeds), who is clearly meant to eventually be Carter's love interest because they both like basketball, which is what passes for complex character development on this show.
In what seems to be a dominant theme as the new TV season begins, some very good actors are being wasted here; I think I could enjoy O'Connell, Penn, and Shalhoub in a buddy comedy, but it would have to be funnier and cleverer than this one. Smith isn't much of a presence, which is rather a handicap for the guy at the center of the show, but he's not offensively dull, and he's blandly pretty to look at.
I don't see any reason to think this will be any more successful than Partners was in this time slot last year (and in the department of "things I never thought I'd have to say," Partners was a better show). Gone by Christmas.
We Are Men is the story of Carter (Chris Smith), who is left at the altar and moves into a "short-term housing" apartment complex that is basically a waystation for lonely divorced men. Three of the building's resident lotharios take Carter under their wing to help him recover from his heartbreak. They're played by Jerry O'Connell, Kal Penn, and Tony Shalhoub; their character names and personalities aren't all that important, mostly because none of them has any discernible personality beyond being a permanent horndog. Oh, I suppose Penn is the most pathetic of the three, and Shalhoub the sleaziest, but really, they're all pretty awful (and I do not ever again need to see O'Connell in a Speedo, thank you very much).
Women exist in this show only as castrating harpies, sex objects, or (as in the case of Carter's fiancee) some combination of the two. The lone exception is Shalhoub's daughter (Rebecca Breeds), who is clearly meant to eventually be Carter's love interest because they both like basketball, which is what passes for complex character development on this show.
In what seems to be a dominant theme as the new TV season begins, some very good actors are being wasted here; I think I could enjoy O'Connell, Penn, and Shalhoub in a buddy comedy, but it would have to be funnier and cleverer than this one. Smith isn't much of a presence, which is rather a handicap for the guy at the center of the show, but he's not offensively dull, and he's blandly pretty to look at.
I don't see any reason to think this will be any more successful than Partners was in this time slot last year (and in the department of "things I never thought I'd have to say," Partners was a better show). Gone by Christmas.
Labels:
TV
TV: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Tue 8:30, Fox)
There are still some bugs to be worked out of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, many of them surrounding Andy Samberg in the lead role, but the show's got a fine ensemble, characters who feel far better developed than we normally get in a comedy pilot, and some unusual dynamics driving the relationship between the two leads.
Samberg stars as Jake Peralta, star detective of a Brooklyn police station. He's a goofball who's "learned everything except how to grow up," says one co-worker, and the other detectives in the station are a colorful assortment. Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero) is Peralta's partner, a woman who takes her job a little bit too seriously. Sgt. Jeffords (Terry Crew) has been stuck on desk duty for a year since losing his edge after the birth of his daughters. Detective Boyle (Joe Lo Truglio) isn't the smartest or the strongest member of the squad, but he's the hardest working; he's got a crush on his partner, Det. Diaz (Stephanie Beatriz), a tough cop who takes no nonsense from anyone.
The cast is rounded out by the arrival of their new captain, Ray Holt (Andre Braugher, who manages to be surprisingly funny by playing everything with exactly the same solemn gravitas he has in drama), a well-respected veteran who's finally getting his first shot at command. He's determined to make the most of this opportunity and turn his detectives -- especially Jake -- into the best team in the city.
And here's where we have a potentially fascinating twist on the relationship between Peralta and Holt. You expect the show to be driven by conflict between the two, with Holt insisting that Peralta straighten up, and Peralta wanting to continue his clownish ways. But it turns out that the reason Holt's waited so long to be given command is that he's gay; Peralta actually respects his history as a cop and doesn't want to be the guy who screws things up now that Holt's gotten his shot. Rather than conflict, the driving force may be the two working together to improve the squad, in the process of which Jake finally learns how to grow up.
The supporting cast is terrific, and their characters already have a lived-in realness that even a good sitcom doesn't normally get to until far later in its run. The relationships among them are crisp and individual, and while each of the characters is clearly rooted in some archetype of ensemble comedy, they've each got some depth or personality beyond those archetypes.
Samberg is the show's weak link; he's still playing everything as though it were a Saturday Night Live sketch, and of all the actors, he's the least integrated into the cast. You could argue, perhaps, that this is an appropriate acting choice; Peralta is meant to be the company clown, and learning to fit in better is his likely character arc in the show. But he's taking that too far, I think, and is too stylistically separated from the ensemble.
But everything around him is so good that I'm willing to overlook that for a while. This is an extremely promising pilot.
Samberg stars as Jake Peralta, star detective of a Brooklyn police station. He's a goofball who's "learned everything except how to grow up," says one co-worker, and the other detectives in the station are a colorful assortment. Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero) is Peralta's partner, a woman who takes her job a little bit too seriously. Sgt. Jeffords (Terry Crew) has been stuck on desk duty for a year since losing his edge after the birth of his daughters. Detective Boyle (Joe Lo Truglio) isn't the smartest or the strongest member of the squad, but he's the hardest working; he's got a crush on his partner, Det. Diaz (Stephanie Beatriz), a tough cop who takes no nonsense from anyone.
The cast is rounded out by the arrival of their new captain, Ray Holt (Andre Braugher, who manages to be surprisingly funny by playing everything with exactly the same solemn gravitas he has in drama), a well-respected veteran who's finally getting his first shot at command. He's determined to make the most of this opportunity and turn his detectives -- especially Jake -- into the best team in the city.
And here's where we have a potentially fascinating twist on the relationship between Peralta and Holt. You expect the show to be driven by conflict between the two, with Holt insisting that Peralta straighten up, and Peralta wanting to continue his clownish ways. But it turns out that the reason Holt's waited so long to be given command is that he's gay; Peralta actually respects his history as a cop and doesn't want to be the guy who screws things up now that Holt's gotten his shot. Rather than conflict, the driving force may be the two working together to improve the squad, in the process of which Jake finally learns how to grow up.
The supporting cast is terrific, and their characters already have a lived-in realness that even a good sitcom doesn't normally get to until far later in its run. The relationships among them are crisp and individual, and while each of the characters is clearly rooted in some archetype of ensemble comedy, they've each got some depth or personality beyond those archetypes.
Samberg is the show's weak link; he's still playing everything as though it were a Saturday Night Live sketch, and of all the actors, he's the least integrated into the cast. You could argue, perhaps, that this is an appropriate acting choice; Peralta is meant to be the company clown, and learning to fit in better is his likely character arc in the show. But he's taking that too far, I think, and is too stylistically separated from the ensemble.
But everything around him is so good that I'm willing to overlook that for a while. This is an extremely promising pilot.
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TV
TV: Dads (Tue 8, Fox)
Dads has probably gotten more pre-season buzz than any of the fall's new shows, and none of it has been good. "It's racist and sexist and horribly offensive," has been the unanimous cry from critics.
The problem with the show, though, isn't really that it's offensive (though it is). Comedy can be offensive and be very successful; South Park has been doing it for years. And even Dads creator Seth MacFarlane has pulled it off, in the best moments of Family Guy. But offensive comedy must, like all comedy, be funny, and Dads isn't.
The premise isn't awful: Two best friends who run a video game company (Seth Green and Giovanni Ribisi) have their lives disrupted when their fathers (Peter Riegert and Martin Mull) come to live with them. And those are four fine comic actors, who manage even to scrape an occasional laugh out of the flimsy material they're given here.
But oh lord, is it flimsy material; the central jokes of the first episode center around the boys asking their co-worker Veronica (Brenda Song) to put on a slutty schoolgirl outfit to amuse potential investors. Here we see that the show can't even be bothered with precision in its ethnic insults: An actress of Thai-Vietnamese descent is asked to perform a Japanese stereotype for a group of Chinese investors.
There are racist jokes (Riegert assumes that Ribisi's wife must be the maid, because she's Latina), and gay jokes, and old jokes, and "Jews are cheap" jokes, and it appears that the second episode is already resorting to the "dad eats a pot brownie" plotline, which most sitcoms don't get desperate enough to use until at least the third season.
It's one thing when a show sets the bar high and fails; you can at least respect its ambition. But Dads sets the bar as low as it can possibly be set, and still fails to reach even the minimal goals it sets for itself. It's a tragic waste of a talented cast on material that would be an embarrassment on the stage of the South Succotash Community Theater.
The problem with the show, though, isn't really that it's offensive (though it is). Comedy can be offensive and be very successful; South Park has been doing it for years. And even Dads creator Seth MacFarlane has pulled it off, in the best moments of Family Guy. But offensive comedy must, like all comedy, be funny, and Dads isn't.
The premise isn't awful: Two best friends who run a video game company (Seth Green and Giovanni Ribisi) have their lives disrupted when their fathers (Peter Riegert and Martin Mull) come to live with them. And those are four fine comic actors, who manage even to scrape an occasional laugh out of the flimsy material they're given here.
But oh lord, is it flimsy material; the central jokes of the first episode center around the boys asking their co-worker Veronica (Brenda Song) to put on a slutty schoolgirl outfit to amuse potential investors. Here we see that the show can't even be bothered with precision in its ethnic insults: An actress of Thai-Vietnamese descent is asked to perform a Japanese stereotype for a group of Chinese investors.
There are racist jokes (Riegert assumes that Ribisi's wife must be the maid, because she's Latina), and gay jokes, and old jokes, and "Jews are cheap" jokes, and it appears that the second episode is already resorting to the "dad eats a pot brownie" plotline, which most sitcoms don't get desperate enough to use until at least the third season.
It's one thing when a show sets the bar high and fails; you can at least respect its ambition. But Dads sets the bar as low as it can possibly be set, and still fails to reach even the minimal goals it sets for itself. It's a tragic waste of a talented cast on material that would be an embarrassment on the stage of the South Succotash Community Theater.
Labels:
TV
TV: Sleepy Hollow (Mon 9, Fox)
Every year, we get one or two pilots that are so loopy, so willing to leap cheerfully into full-on crazy, that I watch with amazement. Usually, such pilots are obviously doomed from the start (see, for instance, last year's Cult or Zero Hour); occasionally, such a show is miraculously able to maintain its special brand of weird for a season or two (we still miss you, Pushing Daisies). This year's "how long can they possibly keep this up" pilot is Sleepy Hollow.
We open in 1781, on a Revolutionary War battlefield where Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) is battling a masked horseman. Crane plugs several rounds into him; he keeps coming. Crane chops his head off, and he still keeps coming, knocking Crane to the ground, apparently dead.
But wait! Not quite dead yet, it seems, because we leap forward to the present day, where Crane suddenly wakes up in an underground cave, not having aged a day. And it seems that his old foe the horseman, still headless, is running around Sleepy Hollow chopping off people's heads. Crane is inevitably arrested, and Lt. Abbie Mills (Nicole Beharie) finds herself taking his bizarre story seriously, because strange things have happened to her in Sleepy Hollow, and she knows what it is to be thought crazy.
And things only get nuttier from there, with Crane reading key passages from George Washington's own bible (note to producers: It's the book of Revelation, not Revelations), and discovering some sort of horrifying historical/supernatural conspiracy involving the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (of whom the Headless Horseman is apparently one), and Ichabod and Abbie are apparently fated to spend the next seven years working to prevent the evil from taking over the world. (Seven years, huh? Why, that just happens to be the length of an actor's standard TV series contract. If nothing else, you have to admire the optimism.)
Mison and Beharie, both new to American TV, are a terrific central pair, though I'm already scared that the show will be unable to resist making them a romantic couple. (They may be deterred by the fact that Crane is married, and that his wife occasionally visits him in visions.) The show's absolute commitment to its goofball premise is commendable, and the whole thing is strangely entertaining in a way that has you screaming "oh, come on" at the TV every five or six minutes. (Who knew, for instance, that Revolutionary War nurses displayed such ample cleavage?)
It's almost certainly going to come crashing down in spectacular style, but I'll keep watching, just to see how long the show can keep walking its unlikely tightrope.
We open in 1781, on a Revolutionary War battlefield where Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) is battling a masked horseman. Crane plugs several rounds into him; he keeps coming. Crane chops his head off, and he still keeps coming, knocking Crane to the ground, apparently dead.
But wait! Not quite dead yet, it seems, because we leap forward to the present day, where Crane suddenly wakes up in an underground cave, not having aged a day. And it seems that his old foe the horseman, still headless, is running around Sleepy Hollow chopping off people's heads. Crane is inevitably arrested, and Lt. Abbie Mills (Nicole Beharie) finds herself taking his bizarre story seriously, because strange things have happened to her in Sleepy Hollow, and she knows what it is to be thought crazy.
And things only get nuttier from there, with Crane reading key passages from George Washington's own bible (note to producers: It's the book of Revelation, not Revelations), and discovering some sort of horrifying historical/supernatural conspiracy involving the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (of whom the Headless Horseman is apparently one), and Ichabod and Abbie are apparently fated to spend the next seven years working to prevent the evil from taking over the world. (Seven years, huh? Why, that just happens to be the length of an actor's standard TV series contract. If nothing else, you have to admire the optimism.)
Mison and Beharie, both new to American TV, are a terrific central pair, though I'm already scared that the show will be unable to resist making them a romantic couple. (They may be deterred by the fact that Crane is married, and that his wife occasionally visits him in visions.) The show's absolute commitment to its goofball premise is commendable, and the whole thing is strangely entertaining in a way that has you screaming "oh, come on" at the TV every five or six minutes. (Who knew, for instance, that Revolutionary War nurses displayed such ample cleavage?)
It's almost certainly going to come crashing down in spectacular style, but I'll keep watching, just to see how long the show can keep walking its unlikely tightrope.
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TV
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