Strike Survival TV Club: Cupid, "Heaven... He's in Heaven"

Time to talk about the third episode of "Cupid," "Heaven... He's In Heaven." And for an added treat, I've recruited "Cupid" creator Rob Thomas to participate in this trip down memory lane. My thoughts -- and Rob's thoughts -- on the episode coming up just as soon as I put "Walk the Dinosaur" on my iPod...

"Trevor, people die."
-Claire

When you do a show whose lead character thinks he's immortal, sooner or later you need to address that. So "Heaven... He's In Heaven" devotes all three of its stories to the subject of mortality, even though that's not apparent at first.

Story #1: Our Couple of the Week are unusual for the show, in that they're not strangers who meet and fall in love, but a long-married couple who have fallen out of love and need Trevor to rekindle their spark. The Bennets (Harry Groener and Joan McMurtrey) still care for each other, but there's a distance in their relationship, one that's only grown larger as Mr. Bennet has taken to spontaneously bursting into Fred Astaire-style song and dance numbers throughout his day. (When we first meet him, he draws a crowd on a busy sidewalk hoofing it to "Come On, Get Happy.") He says it's just a better way to express himself; she's embarrassed and, because she's not as light on her feet, feels left out. Trevor, figuring he'll get credit from the gods for helping the Bennets, recruits Champ to give Mrs. Bennet dance lessons, but it's Claire who actually finds the words to bring the couple back together.

Story #2: Claire is being shadowed by Dr. Pat Stroud (Byrne Piven) as he's on the verge of hiring her to run a prestigious psychological institute. Just when everything's going swimmingly, she gets the bad news that her pilot ex boyfriend Jack -- The One That Got Away, and all that -- has died unexpectedly.

Story #3: While discussing Jack's death with Trevor, Claire tries to get him to confront his (new?) mortality. When she literally draws blood, he goes into a tailspin, panicked at the thought of dying before he can complete his mission and return to Mt. Olympus, his godhood restored.

Okay, so the mortality theme is pretty obvious in the second and third stories. But as Claire starts projecting her own grief about Jack -- both his death and the way their break-up turned her into the predictable killjoy she is today -- onto Mr. Bennet, we begin to realize that the dancing is part of a larger, death-fearing mid-life crisis. In the touching climax to the story, Mr. Bennet visits his wife at her job at a natural history museum and admits that he needs to feel more alive. She in turn acknowledges the need to compromise, and shows off some of the moves she learned from Champ. As they dance around figures of long-dead cavemen and dinosaurs -- proof of how long the universe will exist compared to our brief time in it -- he assures her, "We'll be roaming the earth a little while longer."

As with "The Linguist," this story's greatly helped by the presence of the right guest star. I'm guessing most fans of this blog know Harry Groener from his role as Mayor Wilkins on "Buffy" season three (or maybe from "Dear John"), but the great body of his work has been on the stage, often in musicals like "Oklahoma!," "Cats" and "Crazy For You." His two big numbers here -- his sidewalk intro, and then singing "They Can't Take That Away From Me" in his glassed-in office while his co-workers watch admiringly -- may not be as elaborately choreographed as the best of Astaire or Gene Kelly, but he nails the style and grace of those men. You understand why people might stop to applaud him, and why his left-footed wife might feel left out of this new phase of his life.

It also helps that the script repeatedly establishes that what the Bennets are suffering isn't a fight, or bitterness, but just the sort of strange entropy that can envelope any couple that's been together long enough. There's a scene early in the episode where Mrs. Bennet stops by her husband's office, trying to be as spontaneous as he's become, and his delight at the gesture only lasts as long as it takes him to remember that he has to go to a meeting. (She notes with resignation that they used to be so attuned that she always knew when his meetings were.)

Before I move on to the other two stories, it's time to introduce a new regular feature in the "Cupid" club, which I've imaginatively titled Rob Remembers. I asked Rob Thomas if he wanted to share thoughts on each episode as we covered them, and while he wasn't available to do the first two, he's hopefully in it for the duration. I can't promise this kind of bonus for every future series in the TV Club -- given all I wrote and said about "Studio 60," I'm guessing Aaron Sorkin won't want any part of my eventual "Sports Night" posts -- but we've got it right now. Take it away, Rob!

Interesting that I should jump in on this one.

This was the first episode that I didn't write. It was an episode written by Jeff Reno and Ron Osborne, the executive producers who had come from MOONLIGHTING who were brought in to run the show. Networks, as you know, don't trust writers who haven't climbed the ladder to be in charge. At least not initially. Early in the season Jeff and Ron and I had a good working relationship which is tough under those circumstances. We fell into a system that suited everyone. I would break and be the "in charge" person on half the shows; they would break and be the "in charge" entity on the remaining half. We'd give each other notes.

The episode started pretty radically -- 12 straight pages of banter between Trevor and Claire.

We all had a gut feeling that having Trevor and Claire going at it on screen was the show at its best, but this was essentially one scene of two people talking very fast. It made the studio and network nervous, perhaps deservedly, but I was very pleased with the writing and the performances. I recall that Jeremy had a lot of difficulty on those sidewalk scenes remembering all that dialogue and was pretty frustrated.

The issue that I had regarding the episode was the fuzzy line between fantasy and reality. Harry Groener was breaking into song in the middle of the episode. I kept asking, "Is he really doing this?" "Do other people see him?" "Is this his imagination?" I knew we were already operating with a somewhat fantastic premise. I feared we were putting a hat on a hat by then, in our third episode, asking people to go along with this quasi musical episode.

I really do like the episode. To this day, however, I believe that it would've been better in a Season 2 when we'd earned the right to break our own rules.

For what it's worth, I never had the believability issues Rob had with the Bennet story. I took it as face value: that he was really dancing, and that in brief spurts, it put smiles on the faces of people on their lunch break, or colleagues in the middle of a long work day, or whatever. The episode never really addresses the long-term implications of this -- I imagine at some point, Bennet's boss was going to complain about all the man-hours being wasted on these performances and the audience for same -- but in these brief spurts, it worked.

If there's a story here that probably could have waited for a hypothetical Season 2, it would be the Claire plot, which tries to trade on the death of a character who we've never met, and who's first mentioned as Claire finds out he's gone. Had Jack been an occasional topic of conversation in the early episodes, and then we found out he died, I think they might have had something good. But by giving us the info dump at the exact moment we're supposed to feel Claire's grief, it didn't really work.

It did, however, lead to the delightful and somewhat poignant Trevor story. Whether you believe he's a god or just a delusional man, the prospect of death is the same, and Piven did a great job on his first largely non-comic storyline of the series. There are, as would be appropriate in a story like this, a number of ambiguous quasi-clues to his identity, like the shot of him sitting on the roof of a Chicago skyscraper that's probably not open to the public, and especially the moment where he gets injured at a construction site and has a vision of what he thinks is Zeus -- "Maybe part of your punishment here on Earth is to learn about mortality," Zeus tells him. "Mortals don't do it just to bump body parts. Sometimes they do it to thumb their nose at death." -- but what turns out to be a homeless man, played by David "Buster Poindexter" Johansen. And in the end, the Trevor and Claire stories dovetail nicely, as he learns to accept the terminal condition that is life and then invites Claire to literally dance on Jack's grave.

A few other thoughts on "Heaven... He's In Heaven":

-In case you hadn't figured it out by the man's jawline and last name, the late Byrne Piven, as Dr. Stroud, was in real life Jeremy's father, a fixture in the Chicago theater scene for most of his life. It was his long friendship with Dick Cusack that brought Jeremy and John together long before they were both in "One Crazy Summer."

-This episode features the first appearance of Melanie Paxson (then Melanie Moore) from the Glad commercials and "Notes From the Underbelly" as Claire's assistant, Jaclyn. Just as Champ's most important function on the show (even in an episode like this where he helps out with the Couple) is giving Trevor someone other than Claire to talk to, Jaclyn is, in her various appearances, less secretary than confessor for Claire.

-This episode features some of the series' best use of the Chicago location, between Claire and Trevor's extended river walk-and-talk, the skyline in the background of Bennet's office dance scene, and the shot of Trevor on top of that building.

Coming up on Tuesday: "A Truly Fractured Fairy Tale," featuring adventure on horseback, princesses and their P's, and more of Zeus the bum. You can watch it here, here, here, here and here.

What did everybody else think?

Click here to read the full post

Grey's: What God has joined together, let Shonda put asunder

Some brief thoughts on the last "Grey's Anatomy" episode until the strike ends coming up just as soon as I eat some eggs...

Dammit, they went and did it. Shonda and company went and split up the only happily married couple left on the show. Not that it was a shock after all the "Bailey's career is disrupting her marriage" subplots throughout the season, but I actually held out hope that, cheesey as it might have been, Tucker's accident might have brought her and hubbie back together. Can't have that, though, can we? Married people are boring. Obviously.

And yet in spite of that, I quite liked the rest of the episode. Turning the narration over to Bailey certainly helped, as did giving Chandra Wilson so many great scenes to play: running through her morning routine over and over to figure out whether she left the gate open, telling off Hahn (even though I think Hahn was absolutely right to toss her out and Miranda is too consumed with grief and pain to realize that), letting the Chief talk her into bringing in the healer, etc.

The healer storyline itself could have been the sort of cutesie-poo "Grey's" material I hate, but the casting of Glenne Headly and the scenes with Karev gave it enough gravitational pull that I didn't mind when they brought her in to save Tucker. (That scene, with all the characters out in the hall watching, gave the ep enough of a season finale feel that it almost seems okay they're shut down for a while.) And the Mrs. O'Malley story had Callie at by far her most likable (both in the scene where she complains to George about the baby clothes, and in the one where she talks about her brief stint in the family) since the whole quickie marriage thing happened last year. Sure, the latest Mer/Der break-up was a predictable snooze, but in an episode with this much Bailey -- even if part of it has to do with an arc I don't care for -- I can easily tune out those two.

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

Earl: You're not so bad

Spoilers for the final "My Name Is Earl" until the strike ends coming up just as soon as I ask my optometrist for some frames like Stan's...

Anyone who's read my sporadic blogging about this show over the last few years knows that I gravitate towards episodes where Bad Earl surfaces and wish that the writers would trust Jason Lee's charm a little more and make Earl's behavior more outrageous. So an episode titled "Bad Earl" should be catnip for me, right?

Instead, what the episode mainly gave us was Grumpy Earl. Sure, he threw out The List for a while, he walked out on helping Mistletoe (who was definitely the episode's best sight gag, non-car accident division), he knocked over Crab Man and Joy's trailer and he bigfooted on Ralph's Stan scam. But none of his actions were that terrible, and certainly not for that long, that they merited an intervention that quickly, either by the writers or the characters.

I'd be inclined to blame some of this on strike-related problems, but like I said, the show has always been a little too willing (either by the writers' choice or because of pressure from NBC brass) to distance themselves from Earl's dark side, even though playing likable bastards is the thing that Lee does best.

Ah, well. I probably should've seen the first car crash coming, but I laughed in surprise nonetheless. (Then I laughed at the Alyssa Milano crash because the special effects were so terrible. At least they used a stuntman for the Earl crash.) So long as NBC puts it on a night with much better shows like "30 Rock" and "The Office," "Earl" is just good enough for me to keep watching, but I almost always wish it could realize its potential more than it does.

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

30 Rock: Damn good coffee! And hot!

Spoilers for the last "30 Rock" we're going to get until the strike ends (sigh...) coming up just as soon as I get on my treadmill...

What an unexpected treat. When the Christmas episode aired, there was some confusion about whether that was the last completed episode or not, and the general consensus was it was kind of a mess because they were rushing to finish it and couldn't do polishes. Then this one turns out to not only be done, but significantly better. Maybe it wasn't tops of the season, and maybe I'm grading on a curve because it's been so long since I've seen a new episode of any of my favorite comedies, but I was so happy (and yet sad) throughout this untitled one.

Germans and their language are just inherently funny -- as "The Simpsons" has repeatedly proved (think "Worker and Parasite") -- and so there were guaranteed laughs coming from hearing those words come out of Jack, Liz and eventually Kenneth's mouths, not to mention the bizarre shows ("Interrogation Bear!"). The co-op board as blind date was a great opportunity for Fey to play that note of romantic desperation she does so well -- if the repeated drunk dialing wasn't as painful as the brilliant sequence with Mikey from "Swingers," it was still pretty damn funny. The Jack/CC storyline was the usual right balance of creepy Too Much Information (they both view sex as a competition) and absurdity (CC missing the vote on the bill to legalize recreational whale torture), and while Kenneth getting hooked on coffee was predictable and silly, Jack McBrayer's deranged face and the "Midnight Train to Georgia" musical payoff made it totally worth it.

I'm so not objective on this one that I'm going straight to the bullet points listing the other stuff I liked:

• Jack hears that Liz wants to wait for marriage before buying property; "Sure. Wait for that, your first home will be in the floating city of New Chicago."
• Tracy's very Homer Simpson-esque memory of what happened the night before
• Liz's hairstyle in the college flashback (What do you call that, anyway? A femullet?)
• "Boundaries are made to be tested! That's why my wife and I stopped using a safe word!"
• "We're all white!"
• Liz back in the Laura Bush suit she wore to meet Tracy in the pilot
• "Love. A urine mirage in a desert of fear."
• As part of the drunk dialing sequence, Liz singing "You Oughta Know," and her boasting that "I bought a black apartment!"
  
• "Blurgh!" "Yes, blurgh."
  
• The moment when Jack and CC, and then Liz join in on the song, particularly Liz being the one to sing "I've got to go, I've got to go!"
  
• Also, "There's an 11:45. I was misinformed about the time."

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

Sepinwall on TV: Waning 'Moon'

Today's column previews "Comanche Moon," the final miniseries in the "Lonesome Dove" saga:

I spent a lot of the six hours of "Comanche Moon" - the final miniseries in the "Lonesome Dove" saga - pondering the genetics of casting, since this was the third, fourth or even fifth time these roles had been filled by new actors. How, I wondered, could chatterbox Texas Ranger Gus McCrae age from David Arquette into Robert Duvall, by way of Steve Zahn? Who started off with Anjelica Huston's portrayal of strong pioneer woman Clara Allen and decided along the way that the role could also be played by Barbara Hershey, Jennifer Garner and Linda Cardellini? Why was Wes Studi playing a different role in "Comanche Moon" than he had in the second miniseries, "Streets of Laredo," even though his "Laredo" character, Famous Shoes, was in both?

I suppose if "Comanche Moon" were better, my mind wouldn't have wandered so much.

To read the full thing, click here. Like I say in the review, the original "Lonesome Dove" is one of my favorite books (and miniseries) ever, and the franchise has some extra sentimental value for me, as my very first story for The Star-Ledger was an interview with Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana connected to "Dead Man's Walk," so I was really hoping for more than I got, even though "Comanche Moon" is the weakest of the four books. Click here to read the full post

Potpourri, part two

Since it worked so well the other day, let's once again quickly hit various things happening in the world of the telly:

• After "Chuck" aired its Christmas episode, there were still two produced episodes lying around. NBC originally planned to save them to air until there were more new episodes, post-strike, but now that the strike doesn't seem like it's ever gonna end, they're going to air both of them on Thursday, Jan. 24, at 8 and 10, sandwiched around "Celebrity Apprentice," which unfortunately didn't flop when it premiered last week.
  
• Speaking of leftover episodes, tomorrow night's a big deal, with new "My Name Is Earl," "Ugly Betty," "Grey's Anatomy" (the last one finished) and "30 Rock" (ibid). When the "30 Rock" Christmas episode aired, there were conflicting reports (on this blog, anyway) about whether it was the last one completed. Guess they were somehow able to cobble together a 10th episode. Maybe there are a lot of flashbacks midway through? Whatever it looks like, it's something resembling a full night's worth o' bloggable material.
• "Dirt," whose first season was a huge disappointment, given the subject matter and the channel it was on (I haven't liked other FX shows, but none have bored me that much) will be back with a strike-shortened season of seven episodes, beginning March. 2
  
• Not that it matters, with renewal no longer an issue, but "The Wire" season premiere was by far the lowest-rated of the series, with only 1.2 million viewers. I'm going to check with HBO about tracking the On Demand viewership to see whether putting each episode up six days early is taking away a significant chunk of the audience, or if it's just smaller overall this year.
• Just to make the previous bullet point seem even more depressing, A&E has ordered another season of "The Two Coreys."
  

Click here to read the full post

The Wire broken down

From the channel that hired the guys who gave us "7 minute Sopranos" -- but not from the actual guys who gave us "7 minute Sopranos" -- comes "The Wire catch-up, 4 seasons in 4 minutes." I miss the original guy's voice, and the running gags aren't nearly as funny as "Bacala, still fat" or Carmela throwing the suitcases over the banister. Still, a useful reminder of what came before; I had forgotten all about Bodie throwing the gun onto the barge, for instance. (And how did he get out of that, anyway?) Click here to read the full post

Daily Show, night two: More politics = more funny

Since apparently discussing "The Wire" and late night talk shows is going to occupy 90 percent of my blogging time for the forseeable future, some brief thoughts on the second evening of "A Daily Show" coming up just as soon as I TiVo the "Classic Krusty" episode where he discusses collective bargaining with the chairman of the AFL/CIO...

Nice to see a man who can pay attention to constructive criticism. After Monday night's odd, often bitter episode devoted entirely to the WGA strike, Jon Stewart came back and apologized for it, in amusing fashion. Other than a gag segment with John Oliver on the picket line (and was I the only one disturbed when the green screen version of Oliver started to dwarf the real one?), Stewart went back to doing what he does best: skewering the fools and hypocrites in both politics and the media. The media orgy over Hillary's crying episode was (pardon the pun) crying out for the kind of angry incredulity that Stewart gave it, and he had himself a ball picking apart his conservative book-plugging guest, who tried valiantly to stay on message but eventually had to start laughing himself at how well Stewart was skewering him. Vast improvement, all around.

Also, because I just got around to watching Monday night's Letterman this morning, Tom Hanks again proved why he's one of the best guests in the business when he came out and explained to Dave that getting a shave on-camera is the sort of thing that hosts without writers should be doing. Click here to read the full post

Strike Survival TV Club: Cupid, "The Linguist"

Spoilers for the second episode of "Cupid" coming up just as soon as I take the car to the bar...

Before there was Andy Stitzer, 40-year-old virgin, there was Jennings Crawford of the 35-year-old variety.

After premiering with one of the least-inspired Couples of the entire run, "Cupid" comes back with "The Linguist," featuring one of the best: Tim DeKay as the aforementioned Jennings, a virginal scholar whose upper-crust accent and bearing aren't exactly what they seem; and Jessica Lundy as Kate, a blue collar cafeteria cook who aspires to so much more than her Superfans accent would seem to allow.

We meet Jennings at a dinner party that's a regular thing for Claire and her equally pretentious grad school buddies. (Thomas' script has the good sense to not make them total cliches; immediately after all of them denounce the vacuous state of network television, they begin discussing the latest episode of fictional cop show "Sunset and Vaughn.") Jennings wows Claire with his best party trick, where he listens to her describe the story of "Red Riding Hood" and uses that to correctly identify most of her biographical details. Claire, seeing an opportunity to get to the bottom of Trevor's identity, invites Jennings to her singles group to try the stunt on her favorite patient -- only Jennings surprises her and everyone else by announcing his virginhood to the entire room.

I've long been a fan of DeKay. He and Ally Walker were pretty much the only reason I stuck with "Tell Me You Love Me" (yet another series where DeKay played a guy who wasn't getting any), and he does a bang-up job as the repressed, lonely Jennings. His cultured affect seems a put-on at times, but that turns out to be the point, as he reveals to Kate that he comes from south Boston and developed the accent and mannerisms to fit in better when he went to Harvard.

I can't speak to how well DeKay does the Southie accent, nor Lundy the Chicago one -- most of my friends from both cities don't have anything close to the stereotypical regional dialect -- but it adds a nice twist to the "Pygmalion" riff. (Thomas doesn't even try to deny the source material, having Jennings and Kate's dialect lessons conclude with a "The grain in Champaign falls mainly on the plain" joke.) This isn't a snooty blue blood trying to raise some poor urchin up to his level; it's one changeling teaching his trick to a kindred spirit.

The faculty cocktail party scene, where Jennings drops all his affectations to tell Kate that she's "wicked awesome" with "a hot bod" and Kate in turn sticks with the speech patterns he taught her, is one of my favorite of the series. What sells it, I think, isn't just Jennings risking the ridicule of his peers by ditching his camouflage, but the moment where Kate herself gives in to his wooing and asks, "Are we goin' somewheres?" in her own normal speaking voice. It's not always easy to play "melting" as an emotion, but Lundy really does it right there. (Jennings' gratuitous Springsteen shout-out helps, though the Boss was no doubt prohibitively expensive, so we get Chrissie Hynde on the soundtrack, instead. More on that below.)

Because our Couple are so well-drawn, and because the regulars were strongly established in the pilot, they're able to take more of a back seat in this one. Claire's still trying to find out who Trevor really is, and Trevor has his usual assortment of snappy one-liners -- my favorite is when he tells Kate and her friends that he and Jennings both got thrown out of the Pet Shop Boys -- but this is one of the more strictly anthological episodes. I wouldn't want this every week -- the Piven/Marshall repartee is the show's best hook -- but when the guest roles are this strong (in writing and casting), I've got no problem with it. Just as the Greek gods allegedly sent Trevor down from Mt. Olympus to learn the value or true love again, this is an optimistic show that was produced in a very cynical time; how can we learn about the purity of love if we don't get extended glimpses of it?

Some other thoughts on "The Linguist":

-The opening title sequence, set to a version of The Pretenders' "Human" (albeit not the version that's on the "Viva El Amore" album), makes its first appearance, and of course, Hynde and company pop up again when "I'll Stand By You" plays over the "wicked awesome" love declaration.

-I have to say, I remember Claire as being much more of a pill than she's thus far been as I've rewatched. When Jennings makes his shameful confession, for instance, Claire (temporarily, at least) loses all interest in her reason for bringing him to the group and tries to help him out. And while she fixes him up with the snotty Glenn Miller fan, she doesn't realize at the time that she's messing with his thing with Kate. (Trevor had just told Claire that he had failed in his own fix-up attempt.)

-Not that it should be a surprise, since this is a show about a guy whose mission is to fix people up, but this episode features the first of many scenes where Trevor somehow manages to hit on a woman (in this case, a cute co-ed) and then immediately turn her over to his pet project. Jennings panics and blows it, but the girl seemed genuinely willing to transfer her attraction from Trevor to his friend.

-We already knew that Jennings had put together a file on Trevor, but that final shot of him sticking it in the back of his file cabinet can be looked at one of two ways: something that the show could have returned to down the road when Thomas and company decided to confront the matter of Trevor's identity; or a very low-budget homage to the final shot of "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

-Speaking of Trevor's identity, the closest thing we get to a clue this time out is Jennings admiring the pile of unhealthy food on Trevor's plate, and Trevor explaining that he can eat whatever he wants without suffering the effects. Didn't Bill Murray say something similar about being a god when he was stuffing his face midway through "Groundhog Day"?

-Vis a vis the early scene where Claire comes to group late to discover that Trevor has turned it into a Dionysian revel, do you think Piven tries to get it written into the contracts for his various roles that he gets to show off his biceps at least once?

-Champ would become a more useful member of the cast in episodes to come. Here, though, he's still a third limb, and so we have to spend time introducing the concept of "Sunset and Vaughn," which is filmed in Chicago, so that Trevor can almost ruin, then greatly enhance, Champ's chance at getting a part on it. None of that is nearly as entertaining as the revelation that Champ nicknamed himself after his first dog, and that his real name is Albert. (Explaining the change, he says, "You obviously didn't grow up black and overweight in America.")

-As he did in the pilot, Trevor sticks Claire with a meal check. I don't remember that as a running gag; I'm going to have to keep an eye out for that in future episodes.

Coming up on Friday: "Heaven, He's In Heaven," featuring a Piven family connection and a whole lotta dancing. You can see it here, here, here, here and here.

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

Stewart & Colbert: Okay, so now what?

Over at the NJ.com blog, some brief thoughts on the returns of "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report." Click here to read the full post

Potpourri

Brief thoughts on various TV items in the news:

• CBS made it official: Bowdlerized versions of "Dexter" will air on the Eye beginning Sunday, Feb. 17. As I wrote back when Les Moonves first suggested the idea, I don't think it's going to be that hard to get the show down to broadcast standards. You'll have to change some of Deb and Masuka's dialogue, but nobody else curses much, nudity wasn't really an issue until Lila came along (for now, CBS only plans to repeat season one), and most of the gore is implied rather than shown. (Dexter turns on the drill, then we cut away and hear a scream.) The "CSI" shows are bloodier. I still think plot is going to be a problem, given the different run times when you have to factor in commercials, but season one had a lot of fat with the Laguerta office politics material.
• The CW revamped its schedule, with repeats of "Gossip Girl" and "Reaper" moving to Mondays and Thursdays, respectively, to get out of the way of "Idol," plus another Pussycat Dolls reality show. How is it that a network that was supposed to take the best of the WB and UPN has turned out to be less interesting -- and less watched -- than either?
• "American Gladiators" opened pretty big -- by strike and/or NBC standards, anyway, with 12 million viewers and the biggest 18-49 audience for a new series premiere on any network this season. From 10-11, it nearly doubled the combined 18-49 ratings for "Cold Case" and the "Cashmere Mafia" premiere. Now, I hated "Cashmere Mafia" and even felt some mild childhood nostalgia while watching part of "Gladiators" -- even though they really need to pare down all the scripted "interviews" between each event, and even though I doubt I'd ever watch it again -- but it's kind of a drag to see such a calculated, lowest common denominator bit of strike replacement programming do so well. The more the networks are able to stay afloat without scripted stuff, the longer the strike is going to drag on.
• James Poniewozik thinks that Conan has had the most interesting late night show since they all returned, and I'm inclined to agree. He's doing everything in his power to do a show that doesn't resemble the one he would be making with the writers, entertainingly wasting time with stuff like spinning his wedding ring or climbing into a studio catwalk. Even the taped pieces aren't the sort of thing he would need writers for, like this bit where he harangues the NBC pages giving tours through his studio. I'm backlogged on Ferguson, and will have to focus a lot on Stewart and Colbert for their first few nights back, but if there's one good thing the strike has accomplished, it's got me watching a lot of late night TV again for the first time since my daughter was born and sleep became a precious commodity not to be squandered at the altar of the Top 10 list.

Speaking of Stewart/Colbert, I'm going to attempt to consume enough caffeine to stay up and write about both before sacking out this evening, and if not will have something up first thing in the morning, along with the second "Cupid" review. Click here to read the full post

The Wire week 2 thread for the On Demand'ers

Hopefully, you know the drill by now: if you have On Demand and watch the episodes early, this is a place to talk about episode 2, "Unconfirmed Reports." Do not talk about it in last night's episode 1 post, and do not talk about later episodes if you've obtained them through extra-legal means. Click here to read the full post

The Wire: Flat broke and busted

Spoilers for "The Wire" season five premiere coming up just as soon as I park my scooter next to my flatscreen...

So much for a new day in Baltimore, huh?

We already knew things were headed in this direction at the tail end of season four, after Carcetti left the $54 million on the table, but by jumping the story ahead more than a year (there's a reference in episode two, which doesn't take place much after this one, to Bubbs having been clean 15 months), we see just how much Tommy's push for governor has cost this city. Tommy ran on an anti-crime platform, and instead he's so strapped for cash that he's gutting the police department. Even before Major Crimes gets disbanded, we have that hilarious/pathetic sequence at Western roll call, where Carver just barely gets the troops under control, only to hang his head in defeat after reading the announcement about vehicle maintenance. When Mello tells Carver that his men have no morale left, he isn't kidding.

I've already seen some On Demand viewers complain that the pilot wipes out virtually every gain made in season four: MCU is disbanded again, City Hall is in the hands of a hack, the department is in trouble, McNulty is drinking, etc. But, again, we already knew some things were going badly at the tail end of that season with the $54 million dinner check, and we know that the more things change on "The Wire," the more they've always stayed the same.

With McNulty, keep in mind that he's been back in Major Crimes for more than a year. Previous seasons established a very simple equation: McNulty + investigative work = McNulty + booze. Take a serious alcoholic like him, who I'm guessing was white-knuckling it during his time on the Western beat, and put him back into the environment that caused all his drunken bimbohood in the first place, and it doesn't take Lester Freamon's great brain to figure out what's going to happen, does it? There's definitely some storytelling economy coming from the shorter episode order (10 episodes instead of 12 or 13), but we needed to return to the story this far down the road to really see the impact of Carcetti's decision, and there's no way we could come back after so long without Jimmy getting sloppy with The Bunk again.

(Poor Beadie, though. Looks like Elena doesn't have as much to be jealous about anymore, does it? I wonder if she kept the light on as long as Beadie is.)

Keep in mind, too, that it wasn't as though the MCU was making much headway with Marlo even before Burrell and Rawls pulled the plug. As I noted at the end of last year and as Kima noted tonight, "How can you wiretap that?" The MCU's usual electronic surveillance tricks are useless against a guy this cautious and low-tech, no matter what Lester insisted about Marlo getting lazy with the meeting places. It was sad to realize how Marlo, Chris and Snoop were aware of where the MCU was at all times -- and even able to slip away on occasion, as Marlo did with his trip to the co-op meeting -- but you could tell the MCU cops knew they had been made, based on the line about lowering the crime rate simply by sticking so close to these guys.

If Marlo hasn't been able to enact his vengeance as frequently as before, he's still a dangerous individual. He's trying to stir up dissent in Prop Joe's crew by loudly wondering why Slim or Cheese don't have their own territories, and he has Chris looking up Sergei the Russian, after we saw him tailing Vondas at the end of season four. When the irresistible force (Marlo) meets the immovable object (The Greek), exactly what happens?

Further down the Marlo food chain, we catch up with Michael and Dukie (Namond and Randy are no longer regular characters), Michael having taken over Bodie's role as our corner point of view character, Dukie cleaned up (his clothes practically looked stylish) but sad and out of place as ever. (Interesting to see big Spider and little Kenard rounding out Michael's crew. Spider's older and bigger than Michael but clearly subordinate, while Kenard doesn't seem to have a problem working for the guy who slapped him around late last season.)

Speaking of sad and out of place, Bubbs is once again camping out in his sister's basement, as he did when he briefly got clean late in season one. Because we know and love Bubbs and only see his life from his POV, his sister's stern rules -- locking the door to the basement, kicking him out whenever she's not home -- seem unduly harsh, but she's no doubt been burned many times by his failed attempts to sober up. (As she notes, the last time she let him live there, he pawned half her kitchen.) Bubbs (or Reginald, as I think we learn for the first time) may not be using, but he hasn't replaced the position dope took in his life with anything else. When he's in that basement, he just stares off into space; when he's out in the world, all he can do is keep his head down and avoid the many temptations that await him in his old neighborhoods.

Bubbs has one minor distraction in his life with a menial job selling copies of the Baltimore Sun to passing motorists during rush hour, which makes him an extended member of our newest family, the Sun staff.

Simon and Burns have taken different approaches over the years to introducing their new characters. Season two went heavy on the dockworkers from episode one, while Carcetti and Bunny Colvin took on importance more gradually in season three. The kids of season four got a lot of burn, but with so much going on in this premiere (and 2-3 episodes fewer than normal), the newspaper folk take a decided backseat to the familiar faces.

And yet, damn if I didn't feel like Clark Johnson's beleaguered city editor, Gus Haynes, had been on the show all along by the end of the hour. Some of that's a measure of Johnson's underrated acting talent -- I always argued that he was the second-best actor on "Homicide" by a mile, and that there were ways he was better than Andre Braugher -- but it's also a measure of how well Simon knows and loves the newspaper business, even as he's aghast about what's become of it. (No doubt Burns has similar emotions about the Baltimore PD.) The moment where Gus had me was when he scolded two colleagues for not calling anybody about the fire, the kind of obvious but easy misstep that happens when people get too comfortable with their assigned jobs. It reminded me, as so many of the Gus scenes here and elsewhere did, of Bunny. (There's sort of a parallel in the scene where Bunny issues compasses to his two new patrolmen; know the basics before you can know anything else.)

We see that he's not afraid to call out his two pompous bosses. The clash with the editor in chief over the desegregation story is the flashier one, but I got a big smile on my face when the managing editor complained about getting beat on the city bus story, since they have more resources than the other paper, and Gus didn't miss a beat before saying, "But not a transpo reporter." Between those scenes, his catch of the Fat Face Rick detail (and his generous crediting of the catch to the reporter), and his thinly-veiled "Why don't you go out and find a story?" response to social-climbing Scott's request for a story, I think I may have a little man crush on Gus Haynes right now.

Predictably, I've seen some grousing in the press about the newspaper scenes. Some of it's from people who know the real editors that Simon based Gus' bosses on, and feel he's being unfair. More of it, though, is just from fellow newspaper people who know the business well enough to either point out the minor inaccuracies and exaggerations or to assume this stuff is too inside baseball for non-journos to understand or care about. Admittedly, I'm an insider myself, as well as an unabashed "Wire" fan, but I don't see the newspaper stuff as any more inside or inaccurate than the police stuff, or the street stuff. I'm sure there are police contemporaries of Ed Burns who feel he's being rough with people they both worked with, or that he stretches a detail to make his point, but that's the nature of dramatic storytelling, even great drama like this. (My wife works in hospital administration and nitpicks every minute of "House," "ER," etc. for the mistakes.) Not to speak ill of any fellow critics -- I always hate reviews whose fundamental purpose is to show how much smarter the reviewer is than his or her counterparts -- but I wonder if there's really a problem here, or if there just seems to be one because, for the first time, the subject matter is one that the reviewers know as well as Simon.

Lots of set up here, lots of follow-up to follow in the coming weeks. Some other thoughts on "More With Less":

• It's taken me a while to get used to Steve Earle's version of "Way Down in the Hole," but that's an experience I go through each season. (Oddly, the original Tom Waits version from season two took me the longest to accept.) The main titles themselves, though, may be my favorite of the five. There's such precision to the editing and the way the images flow right into each other -- in one shot, we see newspapers at the plant simultaneously going up and down on different tracks, and in the next we see a newspaper vendor holding up his arms in position to match the plant shot; and the shot of Omar blowing up an SUV is immediately followed by a black cloud of smoke over the city skyline -- in a way that says "everything's connected."


• The credits also feature that kaleidoscope of targets from season's past -- Wallace dead, D'Angelo on the phone, Avon's mug shot, Sobotka's union card photo (or was that his mug shot, too?), surveillance of Bodie, and Wee-Bey's mug shot -- one of many reminders of all that's come before. Between that, the various lines that echo previous lines, the upcoming cameos by former characters, and even the scenes that echo stuff from Simon's "Homicide" book (and the series) like the lie detector/copy machine gag (which Munch and Bolander did in season one of the NBC show), there's a sense that Simon is saying goodbye to his fictional Baltimore once and for all.


• Since, at this writing, HBO.com hasn't gotten around to expanding the cast and crew list to add all the newspaper people, here's a quick rundown, with actor names where I have them for IMDb purposes: besides Gus, Tom Klebanow (David Costabile, aka Mel's husband from "Flight of the Conchords") is the managing editor with the rolled up shirtsleeves who first throws out the "more with less" concept; James Whiting (Sam Freed) is the patrician editor-in-chief who shoots down the desegregation story at his buddy's request; Alma Guitierrez (Michelle Paress) is the junior crime reporter who gets sent to Fat Face Rick's club; Scott Templeton (Tom McCarthy) is the general assignment reporter looking to move on up to the Times or Post; Jeff Price is the goateed City Hall reporter who didn't catch the Fat Face Rick thing in the Council minutes; Roger Twigg is the senior police reporter, the guy who says he wants to know what it's like to work at a real newspaper; Jay Spry is the bearded rewrite guy who explains the exact meaning of "evacuate"; and Bill Zorzi ("Wire" writer Zorzi, playing himself) is the federal court reporter, who asks Alma how the Fat Face Rick story broke. As with the kids last year, or Marlo's crew in season three, or the dockworkers in season two, give it a few episodes, and eventually you'll know 'em all about as well as I do.


• One other cool Gus moment, and something I didn't fully understand until the second time I watched the episode: while on the phone with the lovely and detestable Neresse Campbell, he uses an old trick of quoting a higher dollar figure than they had in hand, and her non-denial told him there were more contributions to be tracked down.


• For me, the biggest laugh of the episode was the revelation that Herc was now employed by Maury Levy, the sleazy but effective ex-lawyer of the Barksdale/Bell crew. Of course that's where Herc would land. (That scene also finally got around to explaining Herc's Noo Yawk accent on a show where everybody else at least makes an effort -- even if it's a doomed one, like Dominic West's unconvincing Bawlmer accent -- to seem local.)


• Bad as Tommy has turned out to be -- and State's Attorney Bond, for that matter, who doesn't care about the bodies investigation so long as he gets his Clay Davis trophy -- the one I truly hate is Tommy's chief of staff, Michael Steintorf, the one who's been pushing the governor's race the entire time. If Norman were the first voice whispering in Tommy's ear before he went to bed and when he woke up, instead of just the token "truth to power" employee who's there to make Tommy feel better about himself, do you think the city would be in as sorry a state as it is? Then again, Steintorf wasn't in the room when Tommy burned bridges with the U.S. Attorney, so maybe he really is the bad guy. Maybe Shakespeare had it slightly wrong; the first thing we should do is kill all the politicians.


• There have been some complaints that neither Ronnie nor Daniels recognized Chris -- the chief suspect in the very investigation they were discussing with Bond -- when he asked for directions. It's a bit of a stretch, in that I'm sure one or both of them has seen his picture up on the MCU cork board, but I can buy it in that context. If you're Pearlman or Daniels, caught up in a heated, dire exchange about the fate of your biggest investigation, would you even notice that the soft-spoken man asking for directions was your chief suspect, or would he blur into any random citizen who's a little lost?


• Another "It's all connected" moment: Monell, the suspect from the opening scene who got to eat the McDonald's food, was one of the two boys who bribed Randy to stand watch at the boy's room while they had some fun with a girl, one of the first links in the long chain that led to Randy's sad fate. I don't want to say more about that scene just yet because I know what's coming, but know that, like all the previous season openers, it tells you all you need to know about what this year is about.


• Carver's line, "In the real world, they pay professionals; that's why they call them 'pros'" reminded me a lot of his line from the pilot about how the drug war is misnamed, because "Wars end."


• Lots of echoes of lines even within the episode. Both Rawls and Templeton dismiss the bodies as last year's news. Both Twigg and McNulty wonder what it would be like to work in a real version of their chosen profession. Last year, there were a lot of cop/teacher parallels. Look for more reporter/cop parallels to come.

Finally, I want to be clear about the spoiler policy, especially since once again, some tool went and leaked the first seven episodes online. This post is to discuss episode 1 and only episode 1. There will be a separate post up tomorrow morning for people who see episode 2 early with On Demand, and my post on that episode will be up a week from tonight. Any comments I see with spoilers for episodes beyond the appropriate one for that post will get deleted immediately.

So, with all of that having been said, what did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Do blogs have frozen tundra?

I did a Q&A with the guys who run the Green Bay Press-Gazette's TV blog, in which we cover the usual suspects: the strike, "The Wire," "The Sopranos," etc. Click here to read the full post

Sepinwall on TV: Down to 'The Wire'

"The Wire" is officially back tonight, and since I've traditionally written about the show in our roomier Sunday section, that's where the final preview goes:

An old saying goes that tragedy plus time equals comedy. David Simon, creator of HBO's "The Wire," believes in a different equation, one where the passage of time is either a negative or a non-factor. In Simon's Baltimore, comedy and tragedy exist side by side, constantly feeding back and forth to each other. If the very contemporary events on "The Wire" - only the greatest drama in TV history - weren't so tragic, they'd be hilarious. And if they weren't so often funny, they'd be intolerably sad.

Over the years, so much critical praise has been lavished on "The Wire" - an unflinching look at the decaying state of American cities, in cop show drag - that the show too often sounds like homework. But the series has always been as much black comedy as bleak drama.

To read the full thing, click here. Meanwhile, as I mentioned in the comments to the Great Moments thread, I realized I couldn't really do such a list justice within the space and language restrictions available to me in the paper, so for the sidebar, I wrote about how David Simon uses the opening scene of each premiere to lay out that season's themes. To read that, click here. Back tonight at 10 with the first episode review. Click here to read the full post

FNL: Close quarters

Spoilers for "Friday Night Lights" coming up just as soon as I ask my wife for some lasagna...

First, I'm especially grateful to NBC PR for sending out a screener of tonight's episode, since I got to watch it before tuning into NBC last night and getting several promos that heavily featured the climactic misunderstanding 'twixt Coach and Riggins. Not that it was that stunning -- things were going so well for Riggins that you knew something bad would happen to ruin it -- but I'm starting to believe that the single greatest advantage of illegal downloading is being able to avoid spoiler-filled ads for future shows.

I'm glad to have the show back, and that they started production so early this season that they have more episodes left than most. I don't know that the show's ever going to get back to the creative heights of season one -- here, even with the manslaughter arc over and done with (sort of), there were a number of storytelling choices I found odd -- but at this moment in time, even slightly overcooked "Friday Night Lights" is like a feast for a starving man.

The tornado was pretty quite artery-clogging in its cheese factor (no doubt a sacrifice at the altar of the Promotable Moment), but at least we were done with it quickly, its primary purpose to set up one of our two uncomfortable living situations for the episode with the Laribee team moving into Dillon for a few weeks. Contrived though that situation was, the pressure cooker tension between the two teams -- one run by our heroic disciplinarian, the other by an overcompensating hothead eager to cause trouble -- created some nice dramatic moments. Even the more football-focused first season didn't deal too much with how ugly high school athletic rivalries can be (the only time they touched on it was in the racism two-parter), and for the first time in a long time, the football scenes felt more than obligatory. Football stories are good. Not only is football what the show is about, but it forces large numbers of characters together in the same plot, as opposed to going off in their own isolated twos and threes. This is a show about a community, or a series of interlocking communities, and all of them revolve around the team. If it took a bad CGI tornado to make the team important again, so be it.

(Plus, a point was finally given to the Stereotypical Lesbian Soccer Coach scene from a few weeks back, as Eric's decision to give her the bigger locker room made things worse here.)

Our other uncomfortable living situation was over at the Taylor house, which was already overcrowded with Shelly in residence, let alone Riggins. As Tami said, bringing Tim into that household was like putting gasoline next to a lit match -- just not in the way she meant. Sure, Julie is attracted to him -- having already crossed the "dating football players" threshhold and now in the standard bad boys phase, he's pretty much her ideal male -- but Tim, for all his epic self-destructiveness, knows not to cross that boundary, even if Coach doesn't know he knows. Rather, Tim's presence -- and his ability to once again ignite the hormones of a woman of a certain age -- brought the running conflicts between Tami and Shelly to the surface. "It's no wonder you're single" is pretty much the worst possible thing that a married person could say to an unattached, lonely sibling, but that moment felt so real. Mrs. Coach, much as we all revere her, is as human as everyone else on this show, and she's going to have moments when her temper gets the best of her and she says and does the wrong thing

The usual stellar work by Connie Britton, and by Jessyln Gilsig -- and by Taylor Kitsch, who became immeasurably more interesting as an actor once the writers realized last season to give him the minimum amount of dialogue possible. (Oddly, that's how the "Animal House" writers realized they needed to treat Belushi after a few weeks of filming.) It's not that he can't deliver dialogue, but that the mythic brooding quality of Riggins works best the less he says to anyone.

A great talker -- if not a great salesman -- is Brad Leland as Buddy Garrity, who played the hell out of Buddy's reaction to the news about his wife and the tree hugger, and especially the hurt little boy face upon realizing that he wasn't going to win her back with his sales pitch. On the other hand, that was an exceptionally weak pitch from the guy who's allegedly the Texas Car Salesman of the Year five years running. "You must forgive me" is beyond the hard sell; it's the no sell. (Which isn't to say it was a badly-written scene; I can easily buy Buddy being too blinded by ego to think he had to put more than a minimum of effort into winning Pam back.)

Finally, we have Tyra and Landry, who got a perfectly fine John Hughes type plotline with one rather large problem: it seems to be taking place in a universe in which Landry never killed a guy and they never conspired to dump the body. I know Landry makes a brief reference early on to having put that unpleasantness behind them, but none of what comes afterward -- none of what's said, or the feelings on either side, or the tone, or any of it -- is remotely informed by this great traumatic event they went through together. You could have inserted most of their scenes into an imaginary episode right before the season one finale with very minimal changes.

Now, as somebody who's been very vocal about the murder story being the dumbest thing this show has ever done, I suppose I should be grateful that the show is acting like it didn't happen, is taking steps to restore Tyra and Landry to the characters they were before the season began. But you can't unring this particular bell. It happened. They spent a whole lot of time on it, and it's the kind of thing that should both change both these people and inform all their interactions going forward, and there was absolutely none of that here -- just Jesse Plemons doing his best impression of Jon Cryer circa Duckie.

Short of permanently separating the two characters (and the actors who play so well off each other) or banishing them from the show outright, I don't know what the solution is. But as annoying as the murder storyline was, it's just as annoying to try to ignore it, you know? And that's precisely why I wish they hadn't done it. Whatever might have been gained in the short term doesn't come close to matching the long term effects that are now being awkwardly swept under the rug.

Still, it's good to have this one back for the next six weeks, and it would be a rare strike benefit if the number of original episodes helps boost viewership enough to ensure its continued survival.

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

Reminder: Friday Night Lights is back tonight

The "ER" post had a few "I forgot there was a new episode on" type comments, so as a public service, I want to remind people that the first of a whopping six new "Friday Night Lights" episodes is on tonight, with blog post hopefully to follow shortly after it finishes, as I've seen it in advance. Set your DVRs accordingly. Click here to read the full post

Strike Survival TV Club: Cupid, "Pilot"

Welcome to the first installment of the Strike Survival TV Club, where we reject the junky replacement shows the networks are offering, both scripted (“Cashmere Mafia”) and not (“American Gladiators”) in favor of looking back at good shows from years past. We’re starting off with “Cupid,” and in case you missed the post yesterday featuring links to all the YouTube clips from the pilot (plus a script for the opening scenes that didn’t make it), click here.

General thoughts on the series and spoilers for the first episode coming up just as soon as I compliment a woman’s shoes...

“We have been raised on fairy tales, and we have come to expect one of our own.”
–Dr. Claire Allen

This isn’t the opening line of “Cupid,” but it’s the most important. Before there was “Pushing Daisies,” there was “Cupid,” ABC’s first attempt at doing a genre-bending contemporary fairy tale. “Cupid” may not have the day-glo colors or the precious names, and it’s more blatantly anchored in the real world, but it has its own kind of magic.

This is the most likable Jeremy Piven has ever been. Paula Marshall, too, for that matter. (I know other TV junkies cringe when she pops up on a new series, but these 13 episodes bought a whole lot of goodwill from me.) There are dashes of comedy, drama, romance and even, at times, fantasy, all bumping up against each other but never really in conflict with one another. It manages to have its cake and eat it, too, with the way Trevor and Claire are both so often shown to be right; it’s smart about how relationships involve both the fairy tale and the compatibility test. And it’s fun.

I don’t want to get too deep into plot recapping with these discussions, both because I’m assuming that you’ve watched the episodes before you came here, and because the show tends to be less about story than tone. We meet people, Trevor tries to fix them up, he and Claire banter, Champ shows up to be exasperated and, nine times out of 10, we get a taste of true love by episode’s end. But for completeness’ sake, I’ll do a quick synopsis before going deeper into the episode.

Since “Cupid” is a love story – or a series of love stories – it makes sense that we start with a girl and a boy. So meet Claire Allen, therapist, columnist, author, and all-around relationship expert. Now meet Claire’s newest patient, who’s either a mentally-ill man named Trevor Hale who believes he’s Cupid, or who’s actually Cupid, banished to Earth without his powers until he can unite 100 couples in true love. Claire’s fascinated with Trevor, both as a patient and as a possible book subject. Trevor’s amused by Claire, whose clinical ideas of romance are diametrically opposed to his own, and he can use her singles support group to make matches.

And since “Cupid” is also an anthology, with a new Couple of the Week every week, we have to meet another girl and boy. So meet Madeline, lonely flower shop owner, who had a “The Way We Were” romantic fantasy a year before Carrie Bradshaw made it all cool on “Sex and the City.” And meet Dave, lovelorn ad guy, who would be perfect for Madeline except for one thing: he’s married. Kind of.

I’ll deal with Dave and Madeline, one of the series’ least interesting Couples, in a bit, but the most important question about the series at this stage is a simple one: who is this guy? Is he nuts, or is he Cupid?

The series never offers a definitive answer because it doesn’t have to. Until Trevor brings together his 100th couple, he’s as human as you or I. While shows with the Will They Or Won’t They? question can’t drag their feet forever (though some try, like “Ed”), the Is He Or Isn’t He? question could have gone on a long time without getting annoying.

Besides, the show clearly wants you to believe in Trevor, because what fun is it if Claire’s right and he’s just crazy? As I said above, the show doesn’t make their ongoing debate about romance an unfair fight, but deep down we all want to believe in the fairy tale to some extent. There are “clues” to Trevor’s identity throughout the series that could be interpreted either way, but it’s always more entertaining to assume that he’s really Eros. The pilot, for instance, offers up two clues: Trevor’s amazing dart-throwing ability, wherein he can hit a perfect bullseye while his back is turned to the board and his only guide is a reflection in a beer mug; and the fact that one of the 100 buttons on the string he hangs in his apartment appears to move over on its own accord after Madeline agrees to give Dave another chance. You could assume that Trevor is just a brilliant dart player (I’m sure there’s a video up on YouTube of someone doing a similar trick), and that he moved the button himself but doesn’t realize it because of his psychosis, but that just seems sad to me.

A lot of the credit for that goes to Piven. “Entourage” is the biggest role of his career, but it only showcases the abrasive side that any writer/director can bring out of him. As Trevor, he gets to be selfless (albeit for selfish reasons), charming, friendly, and, at times, just plain nice. A lot of that’s in Rob Thomas’ script, but not all of it. It’s why I had such a hard time figuring out who might play the role in the remake Thomas was working on before the writers strike hit. How many actors out there can simultaneously play leading man, fool, best friend, irritant, tragic figure and comic relief? How may could handle the rat-a-tat dialogue that occasionally moves faster than the stuff Lauren Graham used to have to say on “Gilmore Girls”?

(I had to go back four or five times to transcribe all of his rant to the guy hassling Claire at the bar, he talks so fast and yet clearly. For the record, it’s “You ever watch ‘Fame’? You know what I have in common with Bruno, Leroy and Coco? I’m gonna live forever. Are you gonna live forever? See, it would saturate my pleasure glands to rip your skin off and make ponchos for the kids. So keep your paws off my shrink here, cause I’m a frustrated taxidermist and I’d love to go deep on ya. We on the same team, Butterbean?”)

And as Claire, Marshall has to be able to constantly scold and disagree with Trevor without seeming shrill and joyless. There are moments here and there in the series where she comes close, but she and Piven have that kind of chemistry you can’t plan for – one of my many regrets about the show’s short run is that they never got to do the inevitable Trevor/Claire doomed romance arc – and so their bickering is less about her than about the sparks that fly when they get in a room together.

Like I said above, Madeline and Dave are one of the more perfunctory Couples, despite the presence of the always-awesome Connie “Mrs. Coach” Britton and the likable enough George Newbern. So much time in the pilot has to be spent setting up the regular characters (also including Champ, Trevor’s actor/bouncer roommate) and the concept that these two often seem an afterthought. They’re both nice people who are a little lonely, and the only conflict in their story (news of Dave’s marriage) happens three-quarters of the way through and is resolved almost immediately (Dave explains that he’s a few months away from being legally divorced).

Still, they do have that one lovely moment when Trevor sends Dave over to act out Madeline’s fantasy on the dance floor, though even that’s kind of problematic. After all, Madeline just revealed it to a roomful of people, most of them at the bar. She has to know that somebody told this guy to do it, and while he’s handsome and nice and the moment itself seems powerful to her, I kept thinking of the gag in “Tootsie” where Jessica Lange tells Dustin Hoffman (in drag) her ultimate fantasy for how a guy would hit on her, but when Hoffman (not in drag) tries it out on her word-for-word, she throws a drink in his face. I would, at the very least, have liked for her to comment on it during the dance or afterward on that first date.

That quibble aside, the dance scene touches on an important and recurring “Cupid” theme: that our ideas of love have been so shaped by the popular culture we consume. A later episode will feature a man who decides to turn himself into Fred Astaire to seem happier, and another has a woman fall in love with the image of a rugged, Marlboro Man-esque guy on a billboard. While too many pop culture references can become self-indulgent, I think it’s apropos here, and often leads to some of the show’s best moments.

This is already getting long, and I want to turn the discussion over to everyone else, so a few other quick thoughts on the pilot:

-As I’ve been rewatching these episodes, it’s been fun to see younger versions of people who would go on to do bigger work down the line. In addition to Britton, there’s Ty Olsson (Plow Guy from “Men in Trees”) as the target of Trevor’s Butterbean rant, and Paul Adelstein (Kellerman from “Prison Break” and Cooper from “Private Practice”) as the singles group guy in the baseball cap. He’ll go on to be a semi-regular on “Cupid,” and eventually get the name Mike.

-Getting back to the dart trick for a second, it’s funny the way memory works. With the exception of “Heart of the Matter” (if you’re already a fan, you know which episode I’m talking about, and if not, you’re gonna love it), I haven’t seen any of these episodes since their original broadcasts nearly a decade ago, and I always had it in my head that Trevor made the bullseyes blind, which seemed a more blatant “He’s a god” signpost. The beer mug reflection muddies that somewhat.

-In retrospect, Champ’s line about how he won’t go to any audition that says “Black actor” is funny, because the next season, Jeffrey Sams joined the cast of ABC’s “Wasteland” after the show caught a ton of heat for having such the most lily-white cast in a season where the networks were getting hammered about the lack of diversity. I’m guessing the audition for that role wasn’t racially-neutral.

-I like that Madeline and Dave bond over being White Sox fans. Given the Chicago setting – which becomes a vital part of the series’ look as it moves along – the easy choice would be to have them pull for the Cubbies. I could see how, if I were a Sox fan in a city dominated by the other team, hearing a beautiful woman start reciting Frank Thomas’ statistics would make me fall hopelessly in love.

-Claire’s return visit to the psychiatric board is another semi-clue, in that it suggests Trevor invented his name on the spot based on the “tremor” and “hail” lines in the quote on the wall. But it’s interesting that this RT Hale character’s backstory (including tragic anti-fairy tale moment where he can’t wake up his (drugged) sleeping beauty) could so neatly explain our Trevor.

-I almost always approved of the show’s musical choices, with the use of U2’s “Love, Rescue Me” over Dave and Madeline’s reconciliation the first of many spot-on tunes.

Coming up on Tuesday: “The Linguist,” which you can find at YouTube here, here, here, here and here.

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

Sepinwall on TV: Four fabulous women and their empty lives

Today's column previews "Cashmere Mafia," which I wasn't exactly a fan of:

We weren't more than 12 minutes into the premiere of ABC's new drama "Cashmere Mafia" when my wife asked me to pause the DVD so she could predict every single thing that would happen in the episode.

She was right, of course, on every single prediction. Keep in mind that while my wife is brilliant in many areas that make me feel like a complete dolt, outguessing TV shows has never been her strong suit, so "Cashmere Mafia" uses an especially large sledgehammer to tell its stories.

Pick your adjective - Predictable. Insufferable. Detestable. Tacky. - and it fits.

To read the full thing, click here. Click here to read the full post

ER: Jeannie's back

Spoilers for "ER" coming up just as soon as I do some laundry...

Some people, you don't really realize how much you missed them until they turn up again. Jeanie Boulet was never one of my favorite "ER" characters. There were individual Jeanie moments that still stand out -- "Would you please quit calling me Employee X? I am HIV-positive." or her telling Scott Anspaugh to stop fighting -- and I admired the way the writers used her to examine the changing status of HIV patients, but Jeanie the person never came to life for me as much as a Carter or Benton or Doug or Carol. But damn if I didn't smile broadly at the first glimpse of her, and damn if the room didn't get dusty when Jeannie realized that Carlos' condition had shifted to full-blown AIDS.

I had barely even remembered Jeanie's status on her exit -- for some reason, I thought she had actually gone away when Weaver laid her off for budgetary reasons, but her warm mention of Kerry made me skim the episode guide to refresh -- but my memory of all the struggles she went through after getting diagnosed, not to mention Gloria Reuben's expressive face, gave Jeanie's pain almost as much weight as if she had been hanging around the ER all this time.

I like that they left the story of Carlos unresolved -- as Jeanie pointed out, no matter the results of the biopsy, he'll have a hard road ahead -- and I especially liked the catch-up scene with Haleh. My wife thought it was weird to hear all this casual talk of Carter and Doug and Carol, but that seemed like the exact thing that Jeanie would want to discuss. (Plus, her knowledge that Carter had gone to Africa was quick shorthand to let us know that she had stayed in touch off and on with her old friends -- just not recently enough to know Kerry was gone.) The showrunner, David Zabel, has said that if the show gets renewed for one final season, he wants to revisit some other old characters, and this episode not only laid some groundwork (assuming Clooney feels like slumming again for his buddy John Wells) but also showed that the current writing team can handle characters who pre-dated them. Considering that only one current writer (Joe Sachs) was even with the show when Reuben left, and he didn't write the episode (Janine Barrois did), they did an excellent job of capturing that alternately warm and strident voice of hers.

One question on the rest of the episode: am I going nuts, or are they really going to pair off Gates and Sam? I know he's with the sexy chaplain and all, but he was staring at her for practically the entire episode, and there was a flirtatiousness to all their conversations that I'm used to seeing when they put Stamos with his next love interest.

(On a completely unrelated note, right before I watched this episode, I was watching a screener of CBS' "Comanche Moon" miniseries, and it was weird to see Linda Cardellini go from 19th century woman of the prairie to 21st century nurse in under five minutes.)

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

Sepinwall on TV: Back in business

Because of the weird deadline situation involving late night talk shows, my full column analyzing all five of them won't make it into the paper until tomorrow, but the bosses were cool with me posting the whole thing to the blog today, rather than have me spend time writing the column and doing a second blog entry on Kimmel, Conan and Ferguson:

So what did we learn on the first night of late night's return from the writers' strike? We learned that Letterman intends to keep doing the same show he always does (with writers), that Leno intends the same (without writers), that Conan (without) is going out of his way to point out how much he needs his writers, that Craig Ferguson (with) is doing the same, and that Jimmy Kimmel (without) isn't happy about any of this.

To read the full thing, click here. Click here to read the full post

Late night returns, part 1: Dave vs. Jay

Sorry for the delay on this. Was in the drippy/sneezy phase of a bad cold last night and realized I needed to sleep about five minutes into Letterman. So I'm going to be working my way slowly through all the late night shows as the day goes along. First up, after the jump: Letterman and Leno...

I don't think it's any secret that I'm pro-WGA on this strike. I was happy to see Letterman get the waiver to bring back his writers and hoped that his guys would wipe the floor comedically with Leno to prove their value.

That having been said, I hate to say it, but Leno flying solo was probably more entertaining than Letterman fully staffed.

Jay wasn't spectacularly funny with his monologue, or his audience Q&A (a bit that Dave also resorted to, albeit with some weak writer-provided punchlines), but there was a liveliness and spontaneity to him that you don't get from Scripted Jay. Some of the punchlines failed, some landed (the riff about why women would want to join Al Qaeda was nice), but for the first time in a long time, Jay reminded me that he once was (and in some ways still is) the hardest-working stand-up in the business. Too often, the Leno version of "Tonight" tries too hard to please everybody, but Jay seemed to leave the focus grouping behind, particularly during the Q&A segment, when he didn't try to hide how silly he found most of the questions.

Dave, meanwhile, came back and did basically the same show he always does. There were some pro-writer touches like the kickline of dancers holding picket signs, or "Late Show" writer Bill Scheft interrupting a prop gag at the tail end of the Q&A to deliver a rant aimed at "the arrogant media moguls who've gotten so fat on our sweat-soaked toil that they can no longer fit behind their mahogany desks," but for the most part, it was "Late Show" as usual. The monologue was the standard meta-commentary about how bad the monologue is (this time punctuated by Biff coming out to ask when the writers would be coming back), and if there were great punchlines in the Top 10 list of striking writers' demands, the halting delivery by 10 of those striking writers stepped on them.

Really, "Late Show" didn't come to life until Robin Williams sat down for the first guest segment and began riffing on Dave's strike beard. Not a bad episode, but also not a clear-cut "This is why the writers are so important" statement.

Back in early afternoon, hopefully, without thoughts on Conan, Kimmel and Ferguson. Click here to read the full post

Sepinwall on TV: Join the Strike Survival TV Club and discover 'Cupid'

As promised ad nauseam practically since the strike began, it's time to start being proactive about this strike thing, which means rejecting a lot of the awful replacement programming in favor of a look back at great, underappreciated series from seasons past. (For those of you relatively new to the blog, I did something similar over the summer, when I blogged about every episode of "Freaks and Geeks.")

And our first candidate, for reasons I explain at length in today's column, is "Cupid," Rob Thomas' little gem from the '98-'99 TV season. It's not out on DVD, but almost every minute of every episode is up on YouTube. Click here for all the links to the first episode, plus an excerpt from Thomas' script that covers the handful of scenes at the beginning that for some reason aren't up on YouTube.

I'll have a more proper blog post about the pilot up tomorrow morning, and intend to do two episodes a week on Tuesdays and Fridays. Depending on how the strike's looking, "Sports Night" is next in the queue, possibly running concurrently with the "Cupid" reviews. I'm going to save "The Wire" season one until the final season is over, and am hoping against hope that the strike ends soon enough that I won't need to pick any shows beyond these three. (I have some in mind just in case. Sigh...)

So go get with the Piven and Marshall, and we'll talk more tomorrow morning. Click here to read the full post

I officially give up

Fox just announced another revised schedule for mid-season, which changes a bunch of things about the strike schedule I wrote about back in November. By my count, this is at least the fourth different schedule Fox has announced for this season, if you count the one at the upfront, and now I'm done. I'm not going to reproduce the release, or even go through highlights beyond the fact that a couple of the dramas that were going to be burned off on Fridays will now move to Mondays. I'm sure you can find the info elsewhere on the web either now or shortly, but I don't see any any point to writing about it.

This is Fox, and if there is one certainty about Fox scheduling, it's that there is absolutely no certainty. I wouldn't be stunned if I get a revised-revised schedule sometime later today.

UPDATE: After thinking on it, I figured it took less time to copy and paste the schedule into the comments than it did to keep defending my decision not to discuss it at all. So click on through if you must know the fate of "New Amsterdam." Click here to read the full post

Sepinwall on TV: 'Law & Order' returns

And yet another column from today, reviewing the bright, shiny but still fundamentally familiar new season of "Law & Order":

There was a period late in the lifespan of GM's now-defunct Oldsmobile line when the dependability that had made the line so successful for so long began to be viewed as a drawback, not an asset in a youth-driven marketplace. "Not your father's Oldsmobile" became the new tagline, but it didn't help, as it alienated the people who actually liked their father's cars. GM added different bells and whistles, tweaked the basic concept as much as they could, but eventually phased out the line.

The original "Law & Order" was nearly at that stage last May. NBC was putting together its fall schedule, and suddenly all those familiar, reliable qualities that had made the show one of the most ubiquitous brands in primetime seemed like a hindrance. Why bother tuning in to new episodes of the old warhorse when reruns and the spin-offs were on virtually 24-7 around the channel guide? They tried adding younger, prettier female sidekicks on both the cop and lawyer side without halting the ratings slide. (The move to Fridays didn't help, admittedly, but the show had been trending downward on Wednesdays, too.)

At the last minute, NBC cut a deal with franchise overlord Dick Wolf to bring the original back at mid-season, which has turned into a stroke of luck. When it returns tonight, it'll be one of the few well-known scripted shows with a lot of episodes left, and much of the competition will be repeats due to the writers' strike.

But the first five episodes of season 18 couldn't help reminding me of the "Not your father's Oldsmobile" campaign.

To read the full column, click here. Click here to read the full post

A whole lotta Sepinwall on TV

Four different stories bear my byline in today's Star-Ledger feature section, and if you look really closely at Funky Winkerbean, you may spot my name scribbled into someone's hair like the Ninas in an Al Hirschfeld drawing. Among the stories:

• An overview of why this TV night is so different from other recent post-strike nights, and a preview of upcoming columns;
  
• A reminder about the return of Letterman, Leno and the rest, whether with or without writers;
  
• A refurbished version of last summer's column about older shows on DVD to watch if you're missing your favorites during the hiatus. (Slightly expanded with reasons to visit or revisit the current MIA shows.)
  

The fourth column is the only one of the four that isn't just repeating or repackaging information from earlier columns and blog posts, so I'll link to it separately in a second. Click here to read the full post