I’ve complained before about oversized programming, but tonight’s example really pissed me off.

Read the rest of this entry »

Not everything has premiered yet, but some of the new shows have aired their second episodes. I’ve yet to love anything so much that I want to add it straight away to my watchlist. Here’s my take on the handful of shows I wanted to give a second chance. Back to You — Kelsey Grammer’s character is sufficiently un-Frasierly, and a second viewing featured subplots to bolster supporting characters. There are a few laugh-out-loud jokes, but mostly the humor tries to hard. I don’t feel compelled to follow the show further, but I would recommend it to my dad. The Big Bang Theory — This episode featured Jim Parsons a little more prominently as roommate Sheldon. His twenty-something David Hyde Pierce quality works well. The show manages to mine the nerd subculture in a way that is funny whether you relate or not. Kaley Cuoco does a masterful job staring blankly to dismiss the nerdiest moments, as if she doesn’t notice or understand just how nerdy her new pals are. You kinda believe this hottie would be friends with the nerds next door. I will continue to watch, though I wouldn’t go out of my way to suggest this show to folks less inclined than me to watch sitcoms purely for research.

Read the rest of this entry »

If the opening minutes of The Bionic Woman are some of the best I’ve seen in a while, the opening minutes of Moonlight are the worst. Scene one: a contrived “interview” giving us the vampire rules in this world. (The interview device is never used again.) Scene two: the vampire in his world, all slathered in voice over. And then scene three, just so every clunky exposition technique possible has been used before a regular scene occurs, a news reporter feeds us recent events.

Read the rest of this entry »

In this charming new offering from ABC, we meet Ned, a man who was born with the extraordinary ability to bring things back to life.  In the clunky opening, telling the story of Ned’s childhood, a narrator feeds us all the rules to Ned’s abilities.  He can resurrect people with a touch.  However, if he ever touches the person a second time, they drop dead, instantly, forever.  Meanwhile, Ned only gets a minute to decide, because if he leaves a recently reanimated person alive longer than that, someone else in the vicinity will kick the bucket.  If that seems like too many rules to hit us with at once, it is.  But, remember that the best mythologies come with their intricate details.  Plus, we forgive the show thanks to its sweeping, comforting storytelling style–somewhere between a Dr. Seuss book and a Tim Burton movie.

Minor spoilers in this paragraph!  As a child, Ned had a crush on the girl next door, whose name is Chuck.  Sadly, when first exploring his powers, Ned brought his mother back from a heart attack.  Not aware of the one minute rule yet, Ned inadvertently caused Chuck’s father to bite the big one.  Years later, he has never told Chuck his awful secret.  In case the set-up isn’t dark enough yet, Chuck gets murdered on a cruiseliner.  Ned, working as a P.I. who solves crimes by questioning the dead, brings Chuck back.  Only at second 59, Ned cannot go through with returning her to the grave.  And so the show has created the ultimate in sexual tension.  Our hero and the love of his life cannot so much as brush pinky fingers, or she’ll die.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, that was weird. I’ve been waiting for weeks to bash the premiere of Cavemen. I wanted to jump all over network television for selling out, or for scraping the bottom of the idea barrel. But, oddly, the show doesn’t suck. Huh.

Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a winner. It’s about cavemen. At the same time, it pulls off a dryness in tone that’s actually quite worthy. The writing is smart, the performances are fantastic, and there’s a hipster charm to the show I hadn’t expected. The creative team came off of Blades of Glory, and indeed the humor would most closely match Will Ferril-style comedy.

Other shows premiering this fall feature smart premises and weak execution. In contrast, Cavemen features sophisticated execution, and THE WORST CONCEPT IN THE WORLD. You could send a thousand creative teams away and ask them to work this concept, and no one would do a better job than the pilot that aired on ABC this week. But at the end of the day, it’s a show about cavemen in modern society. How good could that ever be?

Read the rest of this entry »

I was lucky enough to encounter a fun and challenging writing exercise this weekend. It started with my posting a few months ago of a comedy monologue for women. I mentioned that if anyone had a certain type of character they’d always wanted to play, then I’d be happy to write a monologue for the first five people who asked. Well, a woman named Jenni had an audition coming up, and she contacted me asking if the five were used up. (They weren’t. In fact, there are still four left after this.) Jenni was going to audition for a musical comedy. She had her song picked out (nothing less than some JOURNEY, believe it or not…) and for some fool reason figured I’d be the writer to give her something to put her over the top. I asked what kind of character she always wanted to play, and Jenni’s response was… <drum roll…> A serial killer.

Putting aside my worry over what that might foretell about Jenni’s psyche, I tried to tackle creating a monologue. I gotta say, it was really, really hard! First of all, you have to make someone who kills people come across as likeable. (The second season of Dexter premiered this weekend. That helped a little.) Then, it’s a twist that the killer is female–not the way we usually picture chain murderers. And once you’ve created a likeable murderess, you must make the whole thing funny!

Read the rest of this entry »