The new fall TV season is starting, and I've manage to catch a couple of the new shows. The first ones I saw were the new Fox sitcoms Dads and Brooklyn 9-9. While B9-9 showed some potential as long as they find the right way to present Andy Samberg's man-child detective.
Dads however is a different story. It has a good cast, and the people behind the show are supposed to have some sort of comic pedigree, but I found it offensive. Not for its use of negative Asian stereotypes and politically incorrect language for laughs, but because I laughed harder at funerals.
Funerals of people I liked.
The film was a mash of hackneyed plot-lines, cardboard characters, and dialogue that would have been exponentially better if they just set up a camera and let the actors improvise.
It reminded me of the sort of sitcoms Fox made in its early days when it kept trying to rip off its own hit Married With Children, but failed.
My theory behind the show is that the people behind it thought they were being subversive and "meta" by being so hackneyed, but did it without the sort of manic energy and imagination to make being subversive and meta work.
Sleepy Hollow showed a nice bit of bat-shit imagination in its premiere. An intriguing central plot of Ichabod Crane and a modern police Lieutenant battling monsters to stave off doomsday, but runs the risk of slipping into the realm of Lost when they start pulling monsters and mysteries out their ass once folks get bored with the headless horseman.
I'm actually eagerly curious over Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, since I was a Joss Whedon fan since the dawn of the Buffyverse, and would like to see what he does working in the Marvel Universe and what he's allowed to do with it.
I'm also curious to see what happens on the returning Person of Interest, the series that shows how to do continuing mystery-box story-lines right.
Though I must admit that I watch very little network television.
What do you folks think about the new TV season?
Though I must admit that I watch very little network television.
What do you folks think about the new TV season?
Friends & I have also been saying that "Once Upon a Time" is the way Lost SHOULD have been. (and not just because it has a lot of Lost alumni)
ReplyDeleteI'll catch it on Netflix, if it ever makes it there.
ReplyDeleteAgents of Shield - they aren't all that likeable in the movies - a bunch of authoritarian TSA/stormtroopers. I guess they go with the present statist zeitgeist though.