Home
Oct. 22nd, 2007 @ 12:53 pm tv
Television lately

Well.

Mad Men turned out excellently, to lead with the good. In the end, though I like the high points of Friday Night Lights (first season) better, Mad Men has hardly any (= "I can't think of any") low points, while FNL had three or four. Arguably the best show of the year, then. Definitely one I'll be buying.

Desperate Housewives continues the night-time-soap tradition of rewriting characters to suit plot needs, but there's no J.R. Ewing in this Dallas, no Erica Kane, no unchanging center -- as much as they act like Susan is that center, she's been inconsistent since last season. Maybe Bree is the closest. In any case, the Dana Delaney plot is already more interesting than anything in last season, even if it does appear to maintain the pattern of "parents have deep dark secret about child, which turns out to be a sacrifice they made for the child's own good."

Pushing Daisies shot way up in my estimation with the third episode, the first one not directed by Barry Sonnenfeld (barred from directing any more because he kept going way over budget with the special effects and those damn sets). It's the first episode to make the characters seem like people, though I'm not sure they're people I like.

Now the bad ...

Heroes, How I Met Your Mother, and The Office have all lost a significant portion of my interest, though I'm expecting The Office to improve when they leave the supersized episodes behind.

Reaper, after the second-strongest pilot of the season (trailing Sarah Connor), became an unfortunately boring show with a couple engaging performances.

Friday Night Lights disappoints me every week, the moreso because every episode has excellent moments in it. It's not just the Tyra-Landry plot. It's the black-and-white characterization of the replacement coach (played by Hank from Twin Peaks, someone ideally suited to shades of grey), and the way that seems to make Taylor's return inevitable. It's the fact that everyone seems a little off except Buddy, Tami, and maybe Eric -- and even then, I'm not sure Buddy is reacting as strongly to Newcoach as he ought to be, given the shit he gave Eric last year over very minor slights.

Bill Simmons -- another FNL fan disappointed with the new season -- says once your team wins the championship, you have five years in which you can't complain about anything they do. First season of Friday Night Lights was unquestionably a World Series win, but in the world of television, what does five years scale down to? Half a season? A full season?
About this Entry
4 comments
Leave a comment
Permanent Link