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In my earlier post on my favorite new shows from 2013, I mentioned ABC Family's The Fosters as a nice addition to TV family dramas. The family consists of a bi-racial lesbian couple raising five children - one biological son, adopted girl/boy twins, and two foster siblings. Well, it appears Emily Nussbaum from The New Yorker magazine is also a fan of the show. In her article "Sweet and Low," she states:
"The Fosters" is a perfect example of why it makes sense to bake diversity into the premise of a TV show - once its there, you don't have to add it later, through romantic interests or a "diverse" plot in Season 3, as many cable dramas have done. The characters fee like individuals, not like abstractions.
This is an excellent point. Once you get past the construction of the family, what you have is the typical problems of a family with a number of extra twists. For instance, does the biological son have privileges beyond the adopted children? Will the foster children be sent back or can they too be adopted? And what happens when potential "brother" and "sister" find they are attracted to one another? This is not Flowers in the Attic, but honest questions about a constructed family.
A clown, a cop, and an old lady enter an elevator... This is the set up for a bad joke and a particularly bad pilot titled The After. I still cannot determine if this Amazon pilot is a
serious drama or a comedy masked as a bad drama.
The setup to the story is pretty basic. A group of people become stuck in an elevator (including a clown). The elevator stops operating and the group need to climb out at the garage level. While there, they learn they are stuck in the garage with no power, another couple joins them (a lawyer and prostitute, of course), and they encounter escaped convicts, one of whom is shot to increase the drama. Then they learn the learn they were in the elevator for three days, a story line they never pick up again. Then...okay, I am already tired. Just say it later involves one random explosion, crowds inexplicably running around in the city, an escape to a mansion, Latino thugs, and ultimately (spoiler! - if you really care) an alien.
The writing is lousy, the acting is atrocious, and the mimicking of so many better shows that preceded it is sad. I was not overwhelmed with the acting in NBC's Revolution, but those actors are Oscar-material compared to these clowns (okay, one clown and the others). What is even worse is that the viewer ratings are overwhelmingly positive. Do these people own a television? I am with the 412 who gave it one star, only because I cannot give it zero stars. Here is one comment from the one-star category:
This show was so sloppily written with a bunch of stereotypical ethnic
characters it was nearly offensive. Token black male prisoner, angry
drunk Irishman, ethnic female cop, Mexican gang-bangers, sleazy white
lawyer and his bimbo gf, rich Jewish lady, strong yet needy female lead.
Bin this waste.
Enough said. The good news is that I completely enjoyed another pilot - Bosch. The pilot is a step above the typical police serial primarily due to the acting. Titus Welliver (Sons of Anarchy) plays Harry Bosch, a divorced detective trying to keep his badge after a questionable shooting and related trial. In the meantime, he starts to investigate the murder of a young boy while also initiating a relationship with a street cop.
The pilot is based on a Michael Connelly's series with Harry Bosch, starting with The Black Echo. Here is a quick summary of the book's plot (via Amazon), which is a completely different storyline from the pilot but gives you some background on Bosch:
For maverick LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch, the body in the
drainpipe at Mulholland Dam is more than another anonymous statistic.
This one is personal...because the murdered man was a fellow Vietnam
"tunnel rat" who had fought side by side with him in a hellish
underground war. Now Bosch is about to relive the horror of Nam. From a
dangerous maze of blind alleys to a daring criminal heist beneath the
city, his survival instincts will once again be tested to their limit.
Pitted against enemies inside his own department and forced to make the
agonizing choice between justice and vengeance, Bosch goes on the hunt
for a killer whose true face will shock him.
All in all, the production quality was solid, the acting superb, and the story line strong enough for an audience to want more. Amazon has a winner here.
Just as Buffy the Vampire Slayer produced the spin-off Angel, it seems Supernatural, another slayer series, will produce offspring. The success of Sam and Dean Winchester has spawned the new series Tribes. The 20th episode of the current season of Supernatural will bring to life a new set of characters that will then take the story elsewhere.
TVLine has the layout of the new cast, noting the story will be set in Chicago and involve five monster crime families. I guess Chicago is a good setting since it already hosted some monstrous crime families in the past.
It will be interesting to see if the new show can duplicate the success of the original. Sam and Dean are today's darker version of the Hardy Boys, whereas the new show seems to be a more typical collection of characters. As long as Tribes has similar writing and does not take itself too seriously, it should do well. The Vampire Diaries already has its spin-off in New Orleans, so now Chicago has a chance.
On Valentine's Day you will have the opportunity to watch the second season of House of Cards on Netflix with your sweetheart. However, Congressman Francis Underwood and his wife Claire are the furthest thing from a model couple for budding love birds. Their relationship is a strange mix of calculating power, fear of others, and self-inflicted pain. Its what the Republicans always feared about the Clinton marriage, but in this case it is true (on TV, that is).
In season one we saw Francis (Kevin Spacey) get passed over for the Secretary of State position, and for the rest of the season he clawed his way back to the top over a series of bodies, both alive and quite dead. In the meantime, Claire (Robin Wright) had her own struggles keeping her non-profit afloat using questionable financial resources while stepping over a few bodies herself. This was truly a couple forged in hell bent on power through any means necessary.
Are there many other players here? Of course, as with any game of chess, but you always have your eyes on the king and queen pieces. This is the modern version of MacBeth with plenty of sex and murder to keep the crowds coming back. It is necessarily new? No. But it is well done and makes Washington a much more interesting and functional place than you might believe from the daily newspaper stories.
Netflix made a shrewd bet when it spent $100 million on the two season series, and now it has committed to a third season as well. That suits me just fine since this is a terrific series that keeps you at the edge of your seat. That said, I think I will watch my episodes weekly since it lasts that much longer.
Last year Amazon reached out to the public and asked us to comment on a number of new pilots to determine which ones the company would develop into full-blown series. It worked well, and Alpha House and Betas were the resulting new shows. I like both of these new series and look forward to another chance to be part of the selection process.
Well, we now have another chance with a new batch of dramas and comedies. You can check them out yourself and provide your input. The five new adult shows are as follows:
-- The After (one-hour Sci-fi drama): Eight strangers are thrown together by mysterious forces and must help each other survive in a violent world.
-- Bosch (one-hour police drama): A homicide detective works to solve the murder of a boy while standing trial for the murder of a serial killer.
-- Mozart in the Jungle (half-hour comedy): Sex, drugs — and classical music — see what happens behind the curtains at the symphony.
-- The Rebels (half-hour comedy):
Julie is in over her head when her husband suddenly dies, leaving her the owner of a pro football team.
-- Transparent (half-hour drama):
A family with serious boundary issues have their past and future unravel after a dramatic admission.
I plan to watch all of them this week and provide feedback. Compared to the networks, this seems to be a better way to go rather than killing new shows mid-season, which has to be expensive. And here it is the public deciding rather than advertisers reacting to some social pressure group (of six paying members). Give it a try.
About this time last year I discussed Crackle's new online series Chosen starring Milo Ventimiglia (who also produces the series). It turned out to be a good, yet gritty, thriller with his character being tasked to hunt and kill others while being hunted himself. All of this was done in this strange setting where the police and others seemed to be in on this warped and deadly game. Well, it is back and this time Chad Michael Murray plays one of the victims in this adult version of The Hunger Games, whereas Brandon Routh has a playboy role that we learn more about at the season progresses. Here is Crackle's quick summary of the season two story:
Season two of Crackle’s original series picks up where the first left
off, as Ian (Milo Ventimiglia) and Laura Mitchell (Nicky Whelan) take
their daughter Ellie and hide out in a remote cabin hoping to escape the
game and pull their family back together.
Back in the city, we meet Jacob Orr (Chad Michael Murray), a
down-and-out bartender who is struggling to make ends meet as he takes
care of his handicapped brother. On the way home from a party thrown by
his millionaire best friend, Max Banyan (Brandon Routh), Jacob finds
“the box” on his passenger seat. After being shot at by another
“hunter,” Jacob quickly realizes that he has been thrust into the deadly
game. He must rely on his most basic survival instincts to protect his
new love interest, Avery Sharp (Sarah Roemer), and his brother — all
while being forced to hunt down a target of his own.
Having watched the second season, I can only warn potential viewers that the program is more disturbing than season one. Murray does a nice job holding the episodes together, while Ventimiglia and Routh have smaller but meaningful roles. I thought Murray's talent was wasted on the never-ending One Tree Hill, so it is good to see him playing new characters. In fact, I hope we see more of Ventimiglia, Murray, and Routh in more productions (though I won't say whether or not you will see them again the planned third season of Chosen since I don't want to give anything away).
I am looking forward to the return of Game of Thrones on April 6th. While I am sorry for the loss of some much-loved characters in the last season, plenty of characters remain in season four to either give us hope or boil our blood. King Joffrey Baratheon is one character the effortlessly can cause good people conniption fits.
But if you want to learn a little bit about Jack Gleeson, who plays King Joffrey, you might find his talk at the Oxford Union Society interesting. Unlike King Joffrey, the limelight holds little appeal for the 21 year-old who looks forward to continuing his studies and Trinity College in Dublin (philosophy and theology). One of his statements in particular seemed to summarize his disdain for the nature of celebrity in our society:
It was an atmosphere from which I instantly wanted to retreat. I detested the superficial elevation and com-modification of it all juxtaposed with the grotesque self-involvement it would sometimes draw out in me. Being a faceless member of the mob I soon realized is far more comforting than teetering on a brittle pedestal one inch of the ground.
Well said! He went on noting how the role of celebrity embarrassed him and seemed to indicate how this one part of society was "revered almost religiously." Quoting from scholars in anthropology as well as Dostoyevsky's work, Mr. Gleeson made some fascinating points during his 20+ minute lecture (which is what it was, him having brought prepared remarks). It was much better than a discussion about his favorite scene in Game of Thrones, which was the point, of course.
What is ironic is that this bright lad would have most likely lectured to an empty room if it had not been for his celebrity status. We can only wish him well as he leaves the warping lights of fame and learns that the world holds much more in store for him. And if a reader can find Justin Bieber, maybe you can send him a copy of Mr. Gleeson's remarks.
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