ABC’s ‘Once Upon a Time’ is being touted as a new show “from the writers of Lost,” as if Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz were the only ones who wrote for that monumental series. It’s not a big deal, it just strikes me as a little bit of false advertising (“From a couple of the people that were on the ‘Lost’ writing staff” would’ve been more accurate).

Anyways, the ambitious storytelling and supernatural/sci-fi nature of ‘Lost’ is a clear influence on this show, which goes so far as to include a couple of subtle references to it (a close-up shot of a character’s eye opening, numerical motifs) in the pilot, but where ‘Lost’ was able to sink its hooks into me right from the start, it looks like ‘Once Upon a Time’ is going to need more time to get me psyched about the prospect of following another mythology-heavy serial down the rabbit hole. Continue Reading

Well, they’re not so much thoughts as they are reactions, and they’re probably gonna read as scattershot as the episode itself: Continue Reading

I don’t much care for movies or TV shows about terrorism. One of the key problems with pretty much all of them is the villain. They’re all the same, they have the same motivation. The success of any attempt to humanize them will depend largely on how you feel about terrorists, and I’m not sure there are many people who empathize with how they choose to carry out their beliefs. I can’t really recall many American films or TV shows or miniseries that don’t present a terrorist as anything more than some faceless threat the hero must stop (they’re basically the new Nazi in that regard). So what happens when the hero himself is the potential threat? The game changes, and you get something like Showtime’s ‘Homeland,’ a new series that seems made up of a lot of the things I don’t like about these types of thrillers, but presents them in a way that feels fresh and compelling. Continue Reading

‘Suburgatory,’ which debuted on ABC last night to strong ratings, is a promising new comedy that felt not unlike a TV version of Mean Girls, as the shrewdly observant Tessa (Jane Levy) and her single father George (Jeremy Sisto) relocate to the suburbs after he realizes that New York might not be the best place to raise a teenage daughter. Of course, the two quickly discover that living in the suburbs comes with its own set of challenges. Continue Reading

I’m still playing catch up from last week so most of my reviews as of late have been brief, which isn’t ideal, but I figured something was better than nothing. I didn’t love this pilot, which premiered last night, but I didn’t think it was unbearably bad either, so I wanted to give it a quick review for those interested. Continue Reading

Sorry this is late. I fell way behind on the reviews I was planning to write after last Thursday, so this is going to be a short one. Continue Reading

Sorry this is late. I fell way behind on the reviews I was planning to write after last Thursday, so this is going to be a short one. Continue Reading

Here’s a question (or questions): When you think of ‘Charlie’s Angels’, whether it’s the original 1970s show or the movies from the early 2000s, do you think of sex trafficking? Torture sequences? An Angel getting blown up? A young, hunky Bosley who seems to be of more use than the Angels themselves? Or do you think of three hotties who go out on missions, take down bad guys, and actually look like they’re having fun doing it? If you answered ‘No’ to the first set of questions (and you should’ve), then brace yourself for the brand spanking new ‘Charlie’s Angels’, re-imagined as a surprisingly (in a bad way) serious-minded action drama series starring three new Angels with haunted pasts and limited acting abilities. Continue Reading

I don’t have much to say about ‘Revenge’ (generic title, but it does get to the point). It’s a loose adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo”, and it seems to have all the requisite ingredients for a soap opera that’s equal parts cheesy and trashy (despite being set in the Hamptons). Unfortunately, it took a lot of effort for me to make it through this pilot.

Emily VanCamp doesn’t seem quite right for the lead. She seems to handle the gentler side of the Emily/Amanda character better than the devious side. The script may have her doing all these nasty things, but I just found it hard to believe that she’d be any sort of match for Madeleine Stowe’s Victoria, who’s got the soap opera villain thing down, and who seems to have more resources at her disposal (She’s one of those characters that’s so powerful she’s got shady people on the other end of a phone waiting to do her bidding).

I’m positive there’s an audience for this kind of show, but I’m not really a member of said audience. There’s definitely some camp value here, given the serious tone which at turns led to some unintentionally hilarious moments (I can’t get over the voiceover they saddled VanCamp with, which contains gems like, “They say vengeance is a dish best served cold, but sometimes it’s as warm as a bowl of soup.”), but ‘Revenge’ doesn’t seem worthy even as a guilty pleasure. The machinations of the pilot, with the gradually revealing flashbacks and sideplots introducing forgettable supporting characters, mostly left me bored. The show seems more like it’d be more at home on the CW than ABC (it could enjoy a nice, deception-filled timeblock with ‘Ringer’). On a side note, I was surprised to see the episode was directed by Phillip Noyce (Rabbit-Proof Fence, Salt), because it struck me as looking fairly ordinary, even for TV.

Bottom line, if you like your primetime soaps chessy, you might enjoy what ‘Revenge’ has to offer.

I think ‘The Playboy Club’ is a misleading title. If the pilot is any indication, the show should have been called ‘Nick Dalton (and Also, Playboy Bunnies)’. He’s a frequent patron of the title nightclub, and he’s kind of dating the top Bunny. Those seem to be the only associations he has to it, and yet somehow he’s the main character of the show. And since he’s played by Eddie Cibrian, he’s also the blandest, most boring character on it. Continue Reading