We're close to a month into the new fall TV season and I have to say, it's pretty sucky. Yes, I know that's a highly technical term, and I apologize to anyone reading this for using such advanced terminology, but I call them as I sees them.
There were a number of new--and returning--shows I decided to watch or was looking forward to seeing again. At this point--I'm either happy or sad to say--I've pretty much dropped all the new ones I decided to try. That speaks volumes either to the quality of those shows or my dwindling attention span.
Of all the new shows, the one I was most looking forward to was Person of Interest, the JJ Abrams/Jonathan Nolan collaboration featuring actors Jim Caviezel and Michael Emerson teaming up to fight crime in New York City with the aid of Emmerson's post-9/11 super computer. The good news is it's filmed in NYC, and it neatly captures the post-9/11 surveillance, closed circuit TV, and other assorted changes in city life since that horrible day. The bad news: It's kind of boring. Caviezel is about as exciting as burnt toast, Emerson does this very actorly limp that is supposed to give his character some kind of damaged depth, and co-star Taraji P. Henson is the most unconvincing police detective EVER. No one seems to get that this is a "new millennium" version of the classic The Equalizer, and as such, should neatly sum up the paranoia of everyday city life. It fails miserably at that, with a "person in distress" weekly plotline and a much too slow unveiling of the two main characters' backstories. I gave up on this show halfway through the last episode, when it was revealed the "damsel in distress" was really the person doing the bad stuff, a plotline they recycled from an earlier show. Yes, four shows in and they're recycling already. Yeesh (there I go using highly technical terms again).
I was also looking forward to New Girl, starring the lovely Zooey Deschannel. Three shows into that, I gave up. Deschannel is lovely and quirky and different, but I got to the point where I wanted to slap her for all those things. The guys she lives with are all blatant stereotypes, including the em0/sensitive guy (who you just know will end up being in love with Zooey and they will live happily ever after) and the douchebag guy. New becomes old really fast in this day and age.
Whitney Cummings was the "It Girl" there for a short period of time. With two new shows on the networks this year--2 Broke Girls and Whitney, her own "sitcom"--Cummings breezed in out of nowhere (for me, at least) to suddenly dominate prime-time. The good news: 2 Broke Girls is cute and funny, if a little too much a female version of Two and A Half Men, especially when it comes to how far can you go to be dirty on network TV, at least dialogue wise. It coasts along with the very appealing Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs and is refreshingly Whitney-free. I wish I could say the same for Whitney, which is about as funny as pay toilet in a diarrhea ward (I doubt they've ever had diarrhea wards in hospitals, but that joke from a 10-year-old perfectly illustrates the kind of "sophisticated" humor present on Whitney). My advice to NBC: Change the name of the show to Skanky. It fits better.
American Horror Story is Glee creator Ryan Murphy's new FX show. It's gotten a lot of press (Entertainment Weekly seems to LOOOOOOVE it, for some reason) and I'm at a loss for why. I watched the first episode and gave up. The creators and the netlet owe Stephen King a royalty payment: The show is nothing but a rip-off of The Shining, with an evil-infected house in Los Angeles subbing for the evil-infected hotel in Colorado, and a bit more sex added in. I totally forgot to watch episode 2 and by the time episode 3 aired last night, I was over it.
As for returning shows, I'm sad to say that The Office without Steve Carrel is like AfterMASH without Alan Alda: uninspired, unfunny, and just kind of sad. It's time to close down Dunder-Mifflin, I'm afraid. The Walking Dead grew from six episodes last season to 13 this one, and if the first extended (90 minutes) episode is any indication, that was a major mistake. The cast spent just about the entire show looking for a missing kid in the woods. It was a long and boring search, and a metaphor for what I was experiencing while watching. Both the actors and me where asking the same question: When the F is something going to happen? Turns out zombie killing gets real old real fast, and I actually think the show jumped the shark when Rick and Daryl cut open a dead zombie to find out if the missing girl was in its stomach. It was a long, gross sequence done solely for the gross-out factor, with much head-turning, eye-rolling, and disgusted looks from the actors involved. Don't worry...I'm pretty sure all the viewers felt that way, too.
And finally there's the new--improved?--Two and A Half Men with Ashton Kutcher. I've never been a fan of Ashton and find him pretty much as bewildering, appeal-wise, as Jennifer Lopez. As software billionaire Walden Schmidt, Kutcher is a bit like the dead Charlie Harper (Charlie Sheen) and a bit not so much. He's a naive chick magnet on his own for the first time, having been booted out by his wife (the wonderful and horribly underused Judy Greer). He's taken over the Malibu house with Alan (Jon Cryer) and Jake (Angus T. Jones) still in residence. Each subsequent show seems to offer diminishing returns, both for the viewer and in the ratings. Supposedly in real life, Demi Moore has kicked Ashton out of the house. I think I'm about to do the same. This show would have been so much better if Hugh Grant had signed on. I will admit though that Cryer is one of the funniest and most talented actors on TV today. Give him his own show!