Despite being an unemployed slacker, I somehow manage to find ways to fall behind in even that simplest of brain-deadening activities, watching television. It seems like only yesterday that I was hailing Drew Carey’s Green Screen Show as a revolution in televisual subjectivity and Lost as a cinematic marvel. Next thing you know, it’s February already, Green Screen is long since cancelled, Lost is somehow being propelled by the very plot holes that threaten to sink it, and a batch of midseason replacements have cropped up to fill gaps in the primetime schedule.
Since I wasn’t paying very good attention, I managed to miss a bunch of new shows like Blind Justice and American Dad. But since we’re already deep into February sweeps, I might as well run with what I’ve got, so a day late and a dollar short, here is a scorecard of some of the series that have premiered since the new year. As always, they’re sorted from most to least interesting.
The Formula: Profiler + The Sixth Sense.
The Rundown: Based on an actual person, an otherwise normal wife and mother uses her paranormal powers to get a job as a consultant for the local D.A., solving crimes not with forensics and footwork, but with dreams, visions, and conversations with dead people.
The Good: Allison’s family is surprisingly believable, especially when you consider the fact that it consists of a psychic, a rocket scientist, and three adorable girls.
The Bad: Allison’s abilities are not only far-fetched, they’re inconsistently far-fetched.
The Verdict: If Medium was actually about Allison’s superpowers, it’d be a total stinker. Luckily, her psychic abilities are mostly just a convenient plot device that gives them an excuse to write creepy dream scenes and solve mysteries without getting bogged down in the procedural details that turn every modern detective show into C.S.I. What the show’s really about is a woman trying to manage a new career, and the way she and her family have to adjust to the changes. Allison and Joe come home from work late and cranky, the kids whine about homework, and the kitchen is a vortex of rushing bodies during breakfast, but these aren’t crises, they’re just stresses that may or may not be dealth with. Families that are realistically grouchy without being completely dysfunctional are a rarity on TV, and it’s nice to see one come along, even though this one’s hiding behind a ludicrous facade. Combine the likable family with the dry, restrained acting that makes the paranormal parts of the series seem plain-old-normal, and you have a show that somehow manages to dodge the gaping pitfalls that the tales of a psychic detective’s adventures should be careening headlong into. There’s still plenty of time for it to get boring or stupid, but for now, this is the one midseason show that rates a Season Pass on my TiVo.
The Formula: The Rockford Files + Angel + Mean Streets.
The Rundown: Jonny Calvo gets out of prison, and wants to go straight. So he opens up a detective agency with his new friend Ed Random to hope the helpless — er, help the hopeless — er, do good things for people in trouble. Trouble is, his old gang boss wants him back, while a sketchy FBI agent wants him to go undercover.
The Good: Frankie G. (oy, what a name) tries really hard to make you feel for Jonny. Also, he ain’t hard on the eyes.
The Bad: G.Q. (oy gevalt, what a name) tries way too hard to make Ed funny, and comes off instead as an ADD-afflicted spaz.
The Verdict: There are some really nice things about the show, like the fact that Jonny’s ex isn’t a raging bitch in the way TV exes tend to be, or the fact that Jonny really does have a lot of regrets about the way he’s lived his life. The supporting cast really sinks the show, though, being by turns boring and irritating. If Mr. G. could get better coworkers and a last name, he could really go places.
The Formula: C.S.I. + A Beautiful Mind ÷ Square One TV.
The Rundown: One brother is an FBI agent, the other is a mathematician. Together, they solve crimes.
The Good: Rob Morrow! Sabrina Lloyd! Peter MacNicols! Judd Hirsch! The show has no shortage of comic actors I’m fond of.
The Bad: This isn’t a comedy, and so my favorite actors are all wasted. And all they do is talk about math and crime, math and crime, always with the math and the crime.
The Verdict: I laughed and laughed when the mathematician retreated from the stress of crime-solving by trying to solve the “P vs. NP” problem. Unfortunately, that was the only computer science reference made in the two episodes I watched, and my eyes glazed over for most of the rest of it. The writers deserve credit for taking their math much more seriously than most, but when you get right down to it, advanced mathematics makes for boring TV (“Mathnet” excepted, of course), and no amount of whizzy graphics or wacky editing tricks is going to change that.
The Formula: The O.C. + The Omen.
The Rundown: A pretty girl washes up onto the Jersey shore. Everyone in town immediately becomes obsessed with her, inexplicably horny, or both. Turns out her father is Satan and she’s destined to turn out wicked evil herself, wether she wants to or not. Will she steal the cute lifeguard away from his slutty girlfriend, or will she bring about the end times? Or both?
The Good: It’s created and produced by Marti Noxon, who wrote classic Buffy episodes like “The Prom.”
The Bad: It’s created and produced by Marti Noxon, who wrote infamous Buffy episodes like “Wrecked.”
The Verdict: Ok, so taking cheap shots at Noxon is pretty tacky, and I only watched the first episode, so I haven’t seen Grant Show’s mephistophelean character, who apparently makes the show almost worth watching. I’m therefore willing to hear arguments that I haven’t given this show a fair chance. For it to really work, though, you’d have to be completely terrified of and terrified for Christina, and unfortunately, the show’s clunky symbolism and wooden acting make it impossible for the audience to care one way or the other what happens to her, or to anyone else.
The Formula: Survivor + Martha Stewart Living.
The Rundown: Contestants must pit their wills and their “stylemaking” skills against one another. The winner gets a miniature version of Martha Stewart’s media empire: a book deal, a TV show of their own, etc.
The Good: You could do worse for judges than David Evangelista, Candace Bushnell, and Bobby Flay.
The Bad: The only competent, level-headed professional in the entire bunch got voted out in the first episode.
The Verdict: As a reality show, the pacing and casting are way off: people shouldn’t be driven to crying and screaming at each other in the first episode, unless they’ve cast a bunch of asses (let’s all take a moment to cast a few glares at the most recent Amazing Race) or severely underestimated the stress level. If the contestants all seem to be hitting the breaking point in the first episode, where are they going to be six episodes from now? It also fails as a design/craft/cooking show because the laws of reality TV editing don’t allow you to stay in one place long enough to actually get a feel for the projects the contestants are working on. Those of you with HGTV undoubtedly have something better to watch, and those of us without cable can probably muddle along without this show.