Dexter

I don’t subscribe to Showtime so my previous exposure to Dexter…the macabre but surprisingly engaging crime drama starring Michael C. Hall…was from watching the pilot when it was posted on Showtime’s website just before the show debuted on the network. I enjoyed the pilot…featuring the titular character, a forensics expert for the Miami police department who is himself a serial killer who kills only other serial killers…and I looked forward to when the show was inevitably collected on DVD.

CBS is broadcasting an edited version of Dexter on Sunday nights (a happenstance created by the writer’s strike and the need to fill programming hours.) The edits were largely due to language (a couple of the supporting characters swear like sailors sometimes), for time, and for some of the more grisly bits (though, that said, the murders on the show are not always especially graphic…some of the stuff is no worse than what you might see on any given episode of CSI) but I was interested to see the difference.

Luckily I had received the season 1 DVD set of Dexter for Christmas and I took the occasion to finally sit down and watch all 12 episodes. Dexter is a stylish, black comic little gem of a series and Hall (late of the darkly comic Six Feet Under) is excellent as the titular character, a sociopath (though perhaps not as disconnected from his feelings as he so often claims to be) whose murderous impulses have been channeled into a “good” outlet by his late adoptive father, a policeman who recognized his son for what he was and taught Dexter a code that keeps him from killing the innocent.

Everyone in and around Dexter is damaged in their own ways…this includes his sister Deb (a police officer), his girlfriend (a skittish victim of spousal abuse), his nakedly ambitious boss, and an affable cop…and no one (save for one perpetually angry cop) seems to notice that there is something off about him. The series veers toward soap opera off and on but they pull back from that particular precipice almost every time.

Season 1’s overarching plot includes the hunt for Dexter’s opposite number, a macabre serial murdered who is dubbed the “Ice Truck Killer”, and while the identity of the killer is telegraphed fairly early on the eventual resolution of the conflict is ultimately satisfying. Dexter is probably not everyone’s cup of tea…the “hero” is a serial killer after all…but I found it oddly compelling and I look forward to season 2.

Viva Laughlin

Oh my. Did we learn nothing from Cop Rock? Mixing casino drama with a murder mystery, cheesy soap opera/family drama, and karaoke production numbers must have seemed like a good idea to someone at CBS….as hard as that is to believe…but the finished product was…not so good.

Viva Laughlin is bad on so many levels…bad writing, bad acting, poor character development, uninteresting mystery, improbable coincidences…and, oh yes, the production numbers.

Melanie Griffith (am I delusional or couldn’t she really act at some point?), bless her, was a sport to vamp along to Blondie’s “One Way or Another” while trying to seduce an old flame but she really should have re-thought that.

Hugh Jackman (an executive producer and apparently a recurring guest star) strutting with casino waitresses turned backup dancers while singing along with the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” (see above) was not quite as embarrassing…but it was a close call.

Similar fates awaited Elvis’ “Viva Las Vegas” and Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s “Let it Ride” (both warbled by Lloyd Owen, the series lead) before the hour was over.

I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt and saying they were deliberately going for “campy”…they missed “campy” by a mile (we’re apparently supposed to take this silly stuff seriously) but I’m going to give them that benefit of the doubt just the same.

Maybe there’s an audience for Viva Laughlin but I’m not going to be part of it.

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October 22 addendum:

After two broadcasts CBS has mercifully put Viva Laughlin out its (and our) misery by canceling it. It's Sunday night time slot will be filled with a CSI rerun next week and then with a new edition of The Amazing Race. Presumably no careers have been marred beyond redemption (not likely since not many people watched Viva Laughlin.)

Women's Murder Club

I’ve never read any of the James Patterson novels that this ABC show is based on so I came into it with no expectations (well, the title sort of made it sound a bit like Sex and the City only with Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte solving crimes rather than dishing on their lovers :-).

Happily, I found Women’s Murder Club to be smart and witty with the crime drama leavened with enough emotional stuff to keep things interesting while not bogging down the proceedings.

The concept of four friends…a workaholic police detective with no time for romance, a hard working medical examiner whose husband is a wheelchair-bound ex-cop, a smart but emotionally insecure assistant DA, and an ambitious, slightly ditzy newspaper reporter…who pool their wits and talents to solve crimes is elegantly simple and, at the same time, ripe with myriad story possibilities.

Angie Harmon is Lindsay Boxer, the cop whose life is complicated by the fact that her ex-husband has just been made her boss. She is has a nice, banter-filled relationship with her partner, Warren, a “grizzled” (Lindsay’s word) veteran played with acerbic charm by Tyrees Allen. Her friends, Claire Washburn (the medical examiner) and Jill Bernhardt (the assistant DA), are ably brought to life by Paula Newsome and Laura Harris. The three women move between ably doing their jobs and tweaking each other about their love lives…the chemistry between them is very real. Aubrey Dollar plays Cindy Thomas, the reporter, who is not part of the club (her word) yet but you can tell she will be.

The first show deftly sketched out the characters (though, of course, there is much more for us to learn as the series goes on) while solving a murder and then introducing the return of a killer that Boxer failed to put away before. It is not remarkably original but it is very entertaining and that’s more than fine with me.

Short Takes (New TV Season, Part 1)

Chuck (NBC)

The first show was fast-paced and engaging with a nice mix of action, comedy, and romance and some interesting chemistry between the leads. Chuck was better than I had expected to be honest and it could become something enormously charming if the balance of adventure and humor is maintained.

Heroes (NBC)

They certainly hit the ground running. It’s “four months later” and the characters are all in new situations and new Heroes are introduced. The first episode managed to catch us up on the status quo for almost all of the main characters from last season (the exceptions being Nikki, D.L., and Micah), introduce several new intriguing mysteries, and bring one supporting character’s story to an apparent end…and, most importantly, leave you wanting more (is it Monday yet? :-) Looks like Heroes might avoid the dreaded sophomore slump.

Journeyman (NBC)

The pilot was convoluted…time travel stories tend to have that problem…and it was a tad too soapy for its own good but there was enough of a hook to make you want to give it a chance to get better. I’m not loving it yet but I’m willing to give it a couple more episodes to win me over.

House (Fox)

Gregory House is the most irascible lead character on network television…and ain’t it grand? (No disrespect to James Spader…I’m a big Boston Legal fan…but Hugh Laurie got robbed at the Emmys.) The new season starts off with House trying to prove that he can do his thing without a team (all of whom quit or were fired at the end of last season…I expect the band to get back together before season’s end) and finding, much to his chagrin, that he cannot. It was great beginning to the new season (hopefully with no maniacally overzealous cops dragging down the season like last year.)

Kitchen Nightmares (Fox)

Gordon Ramsay takes his act (you know, the screaming, the cursing, the derisive nicknames) out of Hell’s Kitchen and out onto the road to restaurants that need his special brand of TLC to get their acts together. It’s all very predictable. It’s all very stagey. It’s all only mildly interesting.

Bionic Woman (NBC)

There’s some good stuff here. And a lot of cliched stuff as well. Michelle Ryan, as Jamie Somers (the titular Bionic Woman), is very pretty but a bit blank in the pilot (maybe we can write that off to her character being in shock over her new status quo as a “$50,000,000 woman” (inflation don’t you know? :-) with super-powerful enhancements (legs, arm, eye, ear) as well as having been swept up into a dark world of espionage. The first episode sets up the series fairly nicely…but the set up is full of tough talking cliches (as opposed to characters) each with their own…drum roll please…DARK SECRETS and nebulous pacing (it’s not clear, for example, exactly how long Jamie is incapacitated after the accident (which, of course, is not really an accident) that leads to her being fitted with bionic parts.) Throw in an angry but apparently precociously intelligent teenager (Jamie’s sister) and a lover who hasn’t told her a lot of important things about himself and we’re getting into deep soap from the jump. And the series is remarkably humorless…a super-hero story (and that’s what Bionic Woman is, of course) shouldn’t take itself quite as seriously as this one does. Now that the setup is in place, it has the potential to get better. We shall see.

Life (NBC)

Not sure what to make of this one yet. The premise is intriguing…a police detective wrongly convicted of murder is exonerated after 12 years of very hard time and returns to the force despite the fact that he collected a multi-million dollar settlement for his wrongful incarceration. He’s partnered with a detective with baggage of her own (she’s less than 2 years out of rehab for a drug problem) and the unlikely team (who will, of course, come to bond) sets out under the skeptical eyes of superiors and fellow cops. There’s a certain quirky charm to it (it has faint but insistent echoes of the failed Jeff Goldblum vehicle, Raines) and it could turn into something quite compelling given a chance to find its way.

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This is, according to Blogger's count, the 300th Neverending Rainbow post. Yay! :-)

K-Ville

The new network television is starting to roll out slowly but surely (the debuts and season premieres stretch well into October) and I’m not really excited about much. But I’ll approach it with as open a mind as possible.

K-Ville, Fox’s new cop show, uses post-Katrina (hence, the “K” in K-Ville) New Orleans as a background. The lead character, Marlin Boulet (the always amazing Anthony Anderson), is a cop who lives in the devastated upper Ninth Ward and who is trying to get his wife and daughter to return to what he still considers home. Boulet’s new partner, Trevor Cobb (a very fine Cole Hauser), is an Army vet with a dark secret who’s joined the New Orleans Police Department seeking a kind of redemption. Boulet and Cobb are, as a matter of course, opposites…one black, one white, one hot-headed and hard-drinking, one calm and adverse to drinking while on duty, one with his passionate heart on his sleeve and one close-mouthed and guarded…and, of course, you know that they will become trusting partners as the series continues.

And that’s the problem. When all is said and done K-Ville is, New Orleans location aside, just another cop show that hits a lot of the familiar cop show beats. A cop show complete with a squad of colorful cops, a gruff Captain with a heart of gold (John Carroll Lynch), frenetic car chases and shootouts, and tired plots with “shocking” twists that are neatly tied up by the end of the hour. New Orleans is, in the end, mostly just window dressing for an otherwise ordinary police procedural with soap opera touches that carry most of the character development.

Andrews and Hauser do, however, raise the bar with their strong performances (even as they deal with the melodrama of their characters: Boulet’s family problems and drinking and Cobb’s dark secret which is revealed at the end of the first episode.)

K-Ville is okay…and it may grow into something better but it’s not enough to sway my attention from the return of Heroes in the same timeslot on September 24th.

NBC's Fall Schedule

NBC has become the first network to announce their fall lineup.

The ratings plagued Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip did not, alas, make the cut. Law and Order will be back for an 18^th season (still gunning for that 20-season Gunsmoke record drama series run, the show will be broadcast on Sunday nights after the end of the football season and NBC’s Sunday Night Football games) while Law and Order: Criminal Intent will shift over to the USA Network (with those episodes probably being used on NBC later to take the place of failed series.

The critically acclaimed (but ratings deficient) Friday Night Lights will get a second season…and a move to Friday nights.

Heroes will be “bulked up” with Heroes: Origins, a spin-off series that will introduce a new hero each episode and then allow viewers to vote for which one will be added to the main series during the next season. This will give us 30 episodes of Heroes goodness next season. There will also be 30 episodes of The Office (including 5 hour-long outings) as well as 25 episodes of My Name is Earl.

There is also going to be revival of 70’s cult classic The Bionic Woman. And Lipstick Jungle, the new hipster women in the city series from the writer of Sex and the City, will debut in January following the football season. The series stars Brooke Shields and Kim Raver (late of 24).

The schedule is as follows (new series in capital letters, ER excepted):

MONDAY
8-9 p.m. Deal or No Deal
9-10 p.m. Heroes
10-11 p.m. JOURNEYMAN

(Journeyman is the story of a time-traveling newspaper reporter.)

TUESDAY
8-9 p.m. The Biggest Loser
9-10 p.m. CHUCK
10-11 p.m. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit

(Chuck is a comedy/spy thriller about a computer geek who becomes a secret agent.)

WEDNESDAY
8-9 p.m. Deal or No Deal
9-10 p.m. BIONIC WOMAN
10-11 p.m. LIFE

(Life follows the adventures of a police detective returning to the force after spending years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.)

THURSDAY
8-8:30 p.m. My Name Is Earl
8:30-9 p.m. 30 Rock
9-9:30 p.m. The Office
9:30-10 p.m. Scrubs
10-11 p.m. ER

FRIDAY
8-9 p.m. 1 vs 100/THE SINGING BEE
9-10 p.m. Las Vegas
10-11 p.m. Friday Night Lights

(The Singing Bee is a karaoke reality show where contestants must sing the lyrics of popular songs perfectly even after the band stops playing; it will alternate 8-week runs with 1 vs. 100.)

SATURDAY
8-9 p.m. Dateline NBC
9-11 p.m. Drama Series Encores

SUNDAY (Fall 2007)
7-8 p.m. Football Night in America
8-11 p.m. NBC Sunday Night Football

SUNDAY (January 2008)
7-8 p.m. Dateline NBC
8-9 p.m. Law & Order
9-10 p.m. Medium
10-11 p.m. LIPSTICK JUNGLE

Raines

I really like Jeff Goldblum…his rambling, ramshackle charm is apparent in everything he appears in…and so I really wanted to like Raines (which debuted on NBC this week in ER’s Thursday night timeslot)…but, alas, I did not.

Goldblum’s distinctive mannerisms are in full effect…if muted due to the character’s tragic past and seemingly fragile grip on his sanity…but despite his best efforts this show is a plodding, predictable police detective procedural with the added bit of business being Detective Michael Raines’ penchant for interacting with hallucinations of the victims of the murders he’s investigating (they go out of their way to make sure we understand that they are indeed hallucinations…figments of Raines’ imagination…and not ghosts.)

The conceit is too precious by half and, sadly, it’s about the only interesting part of the show. The supporting cast is filled with cop show clichés (the gruff boss with the hidden heart of gold, the beautiful tech geek, etc.) and the twist at the end of the pilot concerning Raines’ injured ex-partner (the remarkable Malik Yoba in a fine turn) was easy to peg from the first time he appeared.

I’m glad to see Goldblum get a regular gig I just wish it was something more worthy of his talents.

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More MKW Blogstuff: Bread and Roses

The Black Donnellys

Man, that Martin Scorsese is something else. One day he’s finally winning that elusive Oscar and the next day he’s presenting a new TV series on NBC. The Black Donnellys has all of those classic touches you’d expect from a gritty crime drama by Marty: the wiseguy narrator (complete with the…um…”cool” nickname of “Joey Ice Cream”), the freeze-frame cuts into and out of flashbacks, the hustling thugs trying to make a living on the mean streets, the tough guy dialogue (“What did you do with the body?” “You don’t wanna know”), the lovingly atmospheric cinematography that makes the hardscrabble streets look nostalgically inviting and only vaguely threatening, the staccato bursts of violence (lots of bullets and baseball bats and kicking…gotta have the kicking), the soundtrack featuring a blend of classical/operatic music and pop music (interesting choice to replace some of the classic rock Marty usually favors with the kind of emo pop that would feel comfortable on any given episode of Grey’s Anatomy…that Marty is a flexible guy, I guess.)

I presume that the result…an admixture of Goodfellas and (a low rent) Entourage with a heaping helping of the Irish-American vibe from the old soap opera Ryan’s Hope thrown in for good measure…is still a work in progress (the characters are all one-note ciphers thus far, for example, and the overall feeling is a bit more soapy than I expect from a good Marty crime drama) but I’m sure that Scorsese will…huh? What’s that? Marty didn’t do this? The guys who wrote Crash and Million Dollar Baby are responsible for it?

Oh.

Allrighty then.

Nevermind. (Sorry, Marty.)

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More MKW Blogstuff: Bread and Roses