Sepinwall on TV: 'Gossip Girl,' the CW and critical thinking

Second of today's two columns, in which I riff on the CW's innovative new approach to network/TV critic relations, vis a vis their "Gossip Girl" summer ad campaign, and the lack of screeners for their big new show, whatever it's called. Somewhere in there, I kinda sorta review "Gossip Girl" season two, but only briefly, (and in which I primarily repeat my complaint from the last time I blogged about season one). Click here to read the full post

Soap stories

Grab-bag time. Spoilers for, in order, "House," "Bones" and "Gossip Girl" coming up just as soon as I angle my new flatscreen...

It's funny how, in the fictional universe of "House," Amber got the short end of the stick by not making the team, while in the real world of making "House," Anne Dudek seems like the big winner. Where Taub, Kutner and Thirteen get a few minor bits of business each week, Cutthroat Bitch gets her own subplots with Wilson and tends to make far more of an impression each week than the other three combined. ("Cupid" fans: do you think Dudek might make a good remake Claire, assuming she and Bobby Cannavale have chemistry?)

Meanwhile, the writers have started to remember that Chase and Cameron exist. Last week, we got House and Chase's abbreviated bowling date, and this week we got Cameron inserting herself back into House-world for a single case, and showing that, while she's outgrown her crush on House, she misses the work that they did together. I never really had a huge attachment to any of the junior docs when the original team was in place, and yet moments like the "All pretty girls are fungible" scene give me a greater appreciation for them. It's not that they're necessarily better actors or characters than the newbies, but they have years of shared history with House, and that's the sort of thing you can't trade on with Mini-Stud or Kumar.

As for the case itself, it was an amusing payoff to House's long-running soap fixation, but what really struck me was House's hypocrisy in the final scene with Cuddy. He's mad at himself because the "treat, then diagnose" philosophy should have failed, and only succeeded by sheer luck, but he's projecting his anger onto Cuddy because she allegedly is the one who's supposed to put the breaks on him. The problem I have with that -- not from a storytelling perspective, because we know House is a hypocrite, but just from a House's logic perspective -- is that House always gets his way, whether Cuddy tries to stop him or not. Unless the writers use this episode as an excuse to have House pay Cuddy more heed in the future, he was just full of bull there.

A very good "Bones," and I'm impressed by their ability to balance their usual humor with the higher stakes of the dad-on-trial story in a way that never felt awkward. The David Kelley shows (and, in the early going, "Eli Stone") usually use their humor as a crutch to keep viewers from having to take the dramatic material all that seriously, but it flowed much more naturally here. I bought Temperance being concerned for her dad and yet still able to joke with Booth while Sweets was on the stand, for instance.

Speaking of Sweets, good to see how they've contrived to have John Francis Daley join the cast permanently. I'm always happy for a "Freaks and Geeks"er to find grown-up work, and those scenes are often the highlight of each episode. One minor complaint: Brennan joining in with Booth's "Do you like us, Sweets?" mockery outside the courthouse didn't seem in character. For the most part, the writers are very good at mining humor from Brennan's stunted, overly-rational social skills, but this didn't fit.

Finally, I think I'm done with "Gossip Girl." It's not that I think the show is doing anything wrong; if anything, the execution in the post-strike episodes seems higher than previously, as they're using the entire cast better and have made appropriate additions like Michelle Trachtenberg as the evil Georgina.

I've just come to the conclusion that my problem with the show isn't the lack of self-aware "O.C." humor (though there isn't much of that), or that I'm creeped out by all this focus on Cindy Lou Who's sex life (though it was definitely not my favorite part of this episode), or that I feel too old to be watching this show (I've recently gotten hooked on MTV's "The Paper," and am working on a column about it).

I've just come to the realization that I have no interest in who gets to be Queen Bitch of that school, and since that's what's the fundamental focus of the series (and, I presume, the books), it just ain't my cuppa.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

A case of the Wednesdays

Okay, I'm feeling seriously underwhelmed here. I've now gone through almost all of the hellacious amount of new series that are airing on Wednesday nights (I'm about a third of the way through "Dirty Sexy Money"), and outside of the previously-blogged "Pushing Daisies," nothing especially wowed me and yet nothing made me rush to change the channel. Hell, the best thing I watched all day may have been the last 20 minutes of Monday's "Journeyman" that had been sitting on the DVR. So really brief thoughts on what I've seen, and feel free to comment on any of those plus things I missed ("Kid Nation," the Fox comedies, whatever). Spoilers ho for, in order, "Journeyman," "Bionic Woman," "Private Practice," "Life," "Gossip Girl" and "America's Next Top Model"...

"Journeyman": I'm glad that the writers are giving the show a sense of humor as Dan gets accustomed to the complexities of involuntary time travel, and I'm starting to feel a bit invested in the Dan/Katie marriage. But by far the coolest thing in the episode -- really, the coolest thing in all four episodes -- was the tachyon expert calling Dan while he was still in the past. I don't know that the show will be around long enough for Dany to explore his condition the way Henry in "Time Traveler's Wife" did, but that one moment put a big smile on my face.

"Bionic Woman": Meh. M-E-H, meh. Sister angst bores me, the spark of personality they gave Jamie last week was gone at the expense of a contrived thriller plot with iffy fight and stunt choreography (I'm already tired of the one punch/block combo that Michelle Ryan knows), but the Sarah Corvus/Jae stuff remains worth my attention.

"Private Practice": Outside of the continued dishrag-ification of Addison, there's nothing as egregiously bad here as a lot of the messes Shonda has made on "Grey's," but has there been anything remotely as compelling as "Grey's" when it's good? The attempt to turn Hooper and Violet into a slightly older George and Izzie is disappointing (what's so wrong with the occasional rock-solid male/female platonic friendship?), but at least they're doing it early so we won't have to rewrite history later, and at least there's no adultery in the mix.

"Life": I'm always happy to see William Sanderson (beloved as both Larry of Larry, Darryl and Darryl and as E.B. Farnum) working, and I have to admit that Crews and his quirks are growing on me. Not enough to keep me fully alert during all the twists and turns of the murder case, but enough to stick around a while longer.

"Gossip Girl": Several improvements over last week: Chuck and Tiny Archibald were absent and completely unmissed, Dan stops acting like a superior prig, and Blair is back to being queen bitch after last week's softer side. (I particularly liked her improvisation during the jailbreak from the Dawn Ostroff Memorial In-Joke Clinic.) Still makes me feel like a very old man while I watch, though.

"America's Next Top Model": Looks like Heather's getting more comfortable around the other hamsters, based on her very blunt and accurate critiques of each of them, and she also provided some nice comic relief with her klutziness (which may or may not be Asperger's-related) on the ice. Bianca had been growing on me as kind of a Fun Bitch the last few weeks, but her shredding of Lisa after Lisa came back from the bonus photo shoot was more the nasty, please go home soon (not that she will) kind. It's interesting how those two are the only ones to consistently stand out in terms of screen time (in addition to whoever the bottom two is each week); foreshadowing the finale, or just the editors playing up the two most compelling "characters"?

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

And the first back nine of the season goes to...

... the CW's "Gossip Girl," which is apparently doing well enough among DVR and iTunes users -- particularly among the CW's young female target demo -- to get an early full season order. (Whether all 22 episodes will be made depends on whether there's a writers strike, which I'm really dreading.)

Technically, no cancellations yet, but I'd be surprised if Fox ever airs "Nashville" again, outsidee of an extremely low viewership night. Christmas Eve marathon, anyone? Click here to read the full post

It's not easy being green

And now for the shows I actually watched live (or close to it) last night. Spoilers for, in order, "America's Next Top Model," "Kid Nation," "Gossip Girl" and "Top Chef" coming up just as soon as I pretend to get a tracheotomy...

I'm in general an "America's Next Top Model" agnostic, tuning in a few times a cycle to laugh at the models being stupid and/or the photo shoots being creepy (crime scene photos! gender-bending!) but never caring enough to make it appointment viewing. But dammit, stupid Tyra Banks has made me care by casting Heather, the girl with Asperger's. I know enough people with various degrees of Asperger's that I want to see how she does, even though I could easily predict everything that's happened to her so far: from the other girls being that ignorant and mean about it (particularly the one who whined that she wouldn't want Heather to "cling" to her, which misses the entire point of Asperger's) to the fact that Tyra's going to keep her around for a while for uplift purposes. Still, getting the first photo callout (and the other girls' reaction to same) was a nice touch, and while I don't expect her to win, she does take a good picture and I guess I'm around as long as she is. (Prettiest/most model-y girl by far? Lisa, but, like that awful one with the purple weave said, is Tyra -- sanctimonious, Oprah wannabe Tyra -- really going to pick an ex-stripper?)

And I think I've seen all of "Kid Nation" that I need to. It's kiddie "Survivor," and while the To Eat Or Not To Eat dilemma plays out a bit differently with kids than it did between, say, Kimmi and Alicia, the show's neither appalling nor exciting enough to be appointment viewing.

I'm not at the quits stage yet with "Gossip Girl," but my feelings remain the same as they did after the pilot: it's a very well-executed teen soap with almost no adult appeal. For me, most of the fun comes from noting the minute variations between it and "The O.C.," like how the brunchers were all agog at Dan simply shoving Chuck, when the Newpsies would have needed Ryan in a full-out brawl to grind to such a disapproving halt; or (as Fienberg noted when we talked) how Penn Badgley makes a much less amusing Adam Brody substitute than Zachary Levi on "Chuck." (Also, I like how Dan's hair grew eight inches since the pilot, which took place the night before.) I continue to suspect that Chuck is going to get the Luke treatment and be portrayed as not such a bad guy (for a date rapist, anyway) by mid-season, but I don't know that I'll still be around by then.

Finally, "Top Chef" winds up with what most of us assumed would be the top three (since Tre went home, anyway), but with some curveballs along the way. Casey had been edited as co-frontrunner with Hung for a while, but the comments about her elk being too rare seemed like the closest thing to a harsh criticism any of the Elimination dishes got, and I briefly thought she would go home instead of Brian "Elk isn't seafood" Malarkey. And what's up with a challenge like this so late in the competition? It felt like last week's challenges signaled a move away from the gimmicks and towards some serious kitchen artistry now that we were close to the finale, but now we're back to things like cooking fish next to a river or trying to please a bunch of rodeo types with game? (Also, way to complain about Hung's lack of Vietnamese cooking during an Elk challenge, Colicchio. Are you going to spend next week whining that Casey shouldn't cook pan-Asian because she's a white chick from Dallas?) Dale acquitted himself well with his Plan B, but the editing has been hammering home the Hung's technique vs. Casey's artistry for so long that I can't see him being a factor next week.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Kids, incorporated

Season hasn't even officially started yet but I'm already shifting into grab-bag mode. Spoilers of varying lengths for, in order, "Kid Nation," "Back To You" and "Gossip Girl" coming up just as soon as I call home...

I am shocked -- shocked! -- by "Kid Nation." All that pre-premiere fuss, and it seemed perfectly innocuous! Who ever would have predicted that? (Oh, wait.) Now, obviously the controversy about this wasn't quite the same as for, say, "Survivor: Race Wars," in that the stuff people are unhappy with -- the allegedly back-breaking, unsafe labor conditions -- can very easily be edited around without us ever seeing it. But in terms of the other major complaint, thus far, none of the kids seem all that scarred by the experience. Even the kid who went home was able to describe his reasons pretty damn logically for an eight-year-old, and he spent all four days with the other kids stroking his ego and telling him he was cool and should stay.

But is this a show I ever want/need to watch again? Not particularly. I appreciate that, except for the two oldest guys and that girl who said beauty queens don't wash dishes, all the kids are trying hard and being nice to each other, but bogus civilization-building -- even on the set of the great "Silverado" -- mixed up with scaled-down "Survivor"-style challenges doesn't do much for me.

I basically said my piece about "Back To You" in yesterday's column, but now that it's aired, I'm curious about two things: 1)Did anybody like it more than I did?; and, more importantly, 2)Is there anyone who hadn't figured out about the true nature of Patty Heaton's daughter long before it occurred to Kelsey? (In the original version of the pilot, by the way, father and daughter shared a peanut allergy, ala "October Road.")

I also largely exhausted my opinion on "Gossip Girl" with today's column, but I do want to talk about a couple of things: 1)The washed-up rocker dad's band is called Lincoln Hawk, which was the name of Sly Stallone's character in the epic underdog arm wrestling movie "Over the Top" (one of many glorious pieces of the film can be glimpsed on YouTube); and 2)While I won't object to having Kristen Bell still in my TV life in some way, I'm not sure the Gossip Girl narration works if it's supposed to be taken literally as what you'd find on her blog, as opposed to a Mary-Alice Young-type omniscient narrator. If Dan's a complete social zero, for instance, how does Gossip Girl know he's in love with Serena from the start? Why is she speculating about Chuck and Cindy Lou Who's dalliance at the party before the party's even over? Not a big problem -- my oldness is a bigger barrier -- but something I'll keep an eye on for however long I wind up watching this show.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

I grow old. I shall wear my trousers rolled.

Today's column was written while I had W.G. Snuffy Walden's "thirtysomething" theme on a constant loop on my iPod, just to remind me of my age. An excerpt:

Deep breath... It's time to review one of the fall's most controversial new shows, a weekly hour-long series where kids are allowed to create a world unencumbered by adult supervision, one where they're free to engage in all kinds of dangerous behavior, all in the name of televised entertainment.

No, not CBS' "Kid Nation," in which 40 kids are let loose in an old movie ghost town set, and which has been plagued all summer with accusations of child endangerment and circumvention of child labor laws. CBS didn't send that out for review (the sort of tactic movie studios use with Rob Schneider movies) and, besides, I expect the actual version that airs will, like "Wife Swap" and the "Survivor" season divided by race before it, turn out to be far less scandalous than all the advance hype would suggest.

No, I'm talking about "Gossip Girl" (9 p.m., Ch. 11), the new teen soap adapted from Cecily von Ziegesar's best-selling series of young adult novels about privileged teens attending a Manhattan prep school. None of the cast members accidentally drank bleach, and none of the actors' parents were asked to sign confidentiality clauses with $10 million dollar penalties (two more charges levied at "Kid Nation"). But the show takes place in a setting where the teen characters are the alpha and the omega, the rulers of their own destiny. They do what they want, whenever they want -- the pilot episode features underage drinking, drug use and sex -- and the adult characters are so irrelevant they may as well be voiced by trombones like in the Charlie Brown cartoons.

To read the full thing (which has some mild spoilers for the pilot), click here. Click here to read the full post