My TV strike break rookie report

Since the new TV season is pretty much to the halfway point and being interrupted by the writers' strike as well as the usual holiday preemptions, I thought I'd blog my two-bit impressions of the season's rookie shows on the traditional over-the-air networks. In a sort of best to worst order, here goes (and anything not mentioned I just haven't tried):

Top of the rookie class goes to NBC's Life and CBS's Big Bang Theory. When they started, I read a couple lukewarm reviews and, in fact, I didn't even watch the pilot of Life. Then a friend turned me on to it and I was immediately hooked. I've since seen the pilot episode too. Grades: A's for both.

Seems like most folks these days don't like the traditional sitcoms with laugh tracks, preferring instead the newfangled single camera shows with jarring quick edits and added cartoony sound effects in place of the laugh track. As you may be able to infer from my phrasing, I just don't go for those types of shows myself. I just find them to be "falsely" funny, using the odd techniques to force laughs out of material that just isn't that funny or well acted. I find most to feature not characters, but caricatures. Many of them rely way too heavily on voiceover narration as well, in my opinion. I prefer comedy to flow naturally out of the characters' interactions and dialogue rather than be artificially inserted by getting directly into a character's head.

But oh well, this entry is about the new shows, not what I don't like in older shows, so enough about that. I just wanted to give a little bit of background as to my own taste. If you like traditional sitcoms, Big Bang Theory may be for you. If not, well then maybe you'd probably be better off skipping it.

Just slightly behind Life and Big Bang Theory is NBC's Chuck. I'd put Life up there as my top surprise show of the new season, but Chuck isn't far behind on the surprising scale. It's not all that believable, but I don't think it's meant to be since it's categorized as a "comedy" in the Peoples' Choice Awards. It has just the right amount of a fun feel to make it palatable. Grade: B. (As an aside, this show bears a strong resemblance to Jake 2.0, an old UPN show which was cancelled about halfway through its inaugural season if I remember correctly, but which I liked regardless.)

I also kind of like FOX's Back To You. It's not stellar, it has some minor stumbles here and there, but I think it's pretty good with a strong chance of developing to something better given the actors and creative people involved. Grade: B–.

Next comes CBS's Moonlight, a so-so effort. It tries to be noirish and surprisingly not all that supernatural despite being about a vampire private eye. Sure, they focus on the vampire stuff, but they don't seem to be protraying a Buffy- or Angel-type universe with all sorts of other supernatural realms (witchcraft, assorted demons, monsters, and creepy-crawlies). It's on at a very convenient time for me, so I've kept watching it, but if there was anything else at all on better, I'd have probably abandoned it a few weeks back. Grade: C.

Next up is the biggest disappointment, especially if you judge by the network and critical hype: ABC's Pushing Daisies. It was interesting for one episode, but quickly grew more annoying with each subsequent episode. I continued watching it through the last aired episode to date, but that one pretty much convinced me that the show is just not for me. Way, way, way too much narration and by the third episode I was already sick of the phrase, "The facts were these..." I like the general concept, but wish they'd somehow found a way to give it a little more serious and grounded tone. It's all played to be stylish and clever, but in a too self-conscious way that screams "Look how stylish and clever we are!" The narrator often says something about a scene and then a character echoes the exact same line in an attempt to be humorous or ironic, but it's just annoying. And actors saying their lines really fast in a monotone is not funny—it's just poor acting. I wanted to like this show, but have now officially given up on it. Grade: D.

Another big disappointment for me is NBC's Bionic Woman. Another show I wanted to like and even kind of expected to like. However, it just seems to be action by the predictable numbers. The only character I really like to any extent is the HQ techie geek guy who talks in Jamie's ear on missions. This show just gets little things wrong. Like when Jamie has to steal a car for transportation so she bionically rips a door clean off so she and her co-travelers can get in and go. They then drive up to this ritzy resort hotel with people milling about outside and yet I did not notice one of them even look twice at the car with no door pulling up (as if five others like that had already pulled in!). This is a show that could use a good dose of fun and humor a la Chuck. As of the last aired episode, I've given up on this one too, so between this and Pushing Daisies my wednesday night viewing schedule has opened up somewhat of late. Grade: D.

And now last, but with an unsure grade is NBC's Journeyman. This is a show that I'm still watching because I'm curious just how they may explain (or hint at explaining) the basic concept (which is kind of up my alley for my general tastes). But frankly it's just plain silly to me that the guy flits back and forth in time right out of thin air, but never seems to disappear from in front of anybody, except for once in front of his son. When he travels into the past and is there for, say, three hours, he's also gone from the present for three hours. And yet his travels don't seem to have an analogous spatial link between times in that he disappears from one place and reappears in the past in a whole different part of town (though still the same town, I think).

Also, he's a reporter, so I would think his best bet at figuring out what's happening to him would be to plant himself somewhere in view of numerous witnesses and wait for the next shift to occur. Now there's a story! He obviously can't control when the trips occur because once he even disappeared out of the car he was driving which then crashed driverless. And yet he never seems to disappear if he's going to the bathroom, or showering, or making love, or in a staff meeting. I can't see how the writers will possibly be able to explain what's happening in a way that makes even a little bit of sense. But it's that curiosity about how they may try that keeps me watching despite the unbelievable nature of what's going on. Plus, there's nothing else of interest on at the time. So I guess I'd have to say... Grade: tentative D. Still watching anyway, wanting it to get better and more coherent, but not really expecting it to.

I tried the pilot of the CW's Reaper, but it just didn't grab me. I already watch House and The Unit in the same time slot, so Reaper was going have to WOW me to break into my lineup. It didn't. But I probably didn't give it a fair try since I'm still a bit miffed at the CW for having canned Veronica Mars (though to be honest I wasn't really surprised given its low ratings). So between the bad taste from the VM thing and having stiff competition, Reaper would have had to show promise of being an all-time great show to get me to watch. Grade: an admittedly biased F.

As I said at the outset, anything not listed was not sampled mostly because there just wasn't anything about those other shows to lead me to believe I'd like'em. Of the untried shows, probably Samantha Who? would stand the best chance of being something I might like, but my monday night viewing schedule is already crowded enough.

Oh, I also watched both aired episodes of Viva Laughlin. Basically I watched it because I knew it was going to be canned quickly, so now I can say I watched the whole series! I really like Lloyd Owen from the British shows Coupling (as a multi-appearance guest one season) and Monarch of the Glen as the star for a few seasons, but Viva Laughlin was just plain bad. Grade: F.