Gracepoint (Fox) Episode 1: Inferior to the original in just about every way. It’s a carbon copy of Broadchurch, which isn’t a bad thing in itself since that show was so sublime, but in copying it over it loses a bit and feels rougher around the edges. A beat lingers too long here, subtlety is missed there, and the British cast (excepting the leads) is superior to the American cast (especially the Solano family vs the British Latimers), even Tennant’s American Emmett Carver feels inferior to Detective Alec Hardy (particularly when he storms into the police station demanding to know who leaked the identity of the victim, his screaming feels a bit over the top and almost amusing). There is one way I see Gracepoint distinguishing itself: Anna Gunn’s detective Ellie Miller. There’s a lot of scenes, a lot that Olivia Coleman did better, and that’s not a knock on Anna Gunn who doesn’t have to prove herself as an actress, Coleman just has an everyday lady, next-door-neighbor vibe to her that radiates authenticity and subtle nuance. But there are some scenes that Gunn seems to translate in a different manner than Coleman did, it’s not better, it’s not worse, it’s different, and at this point, differentiating itself from the original beyond just changing the killer 8 episodes down the road is a step in the right direction.
I’ll be sticking around for as long as I can tolerate of Gracepoint’s 10-episodes, but I imagine I’ll be demoting it to background viewing soon enough.
Bad Judge (NBC) Episode 1: Pretty good cast, meh show
Stalker (CBS) Episode 1: I was expecting this show to be shit based on the reviews, and it was certainly not good, but I don’t find myself wanting to spew the kind of vitriol that reviewers have towards this show. It’s another murder/slasher crime-porn procedural routine for CBS, nothing more, nothing less.
Red Band Society (Fox) Episode 3: It’s not badNo, it’s bad, just also incredibly and utterly forgettable. What is recent-Oscar winner Octavia Spencer doing in this? It’s like Picasso being in a kindergarten art class surrounded by kids finger painting.
Madame Secretary (CBS) Episode 2: It improves a bit with its second episode, but still feels twice as long as it actually is due to lots of filler and boring-as-shit family storylines dragging down the pace. It feels like it’s striving to be something greater, but at this point it is trying so damn hard to be the type of classy, smart, sharp show that The Good Wife is, and occasionally Madame Secretary almost grasps it, but as for the other 95% of the time, this show is dull, boring, insipid, and just trying far more than it is actually succeeding. Maybe it will blossom into a smart geopolitical drama, but right now it is basic as shit.
Gotham (Fox) Episode 2: I don’t understand the degree of the positive reviews Gotham is receiving. It’s tone is inconsistent and feels so scatterbrained in its atmosphere. Gritty cop drama? Hyper-realistic comic book adaptation? Dark drama? It’s wildly all over the place, not that I would mind if it could do a halfway decent job at any of those tones. It squanders talent and there’s nothing appealing here to non-hardcore comic book fans. I’m less enamored with Fish Mooney in the second episode (especially when she screams for everybody to get out of her restaurant in a moment of over-acting), but Penguin is still solid and the Riddler is right up there with Penguin, despite only having a total of 2 minute 30 seconds of screentime between the two episodes. It was a chore to watch Gotham, there is very little pulling me into the show, and it is being downgraded to background noise.
Black-ish (ABC) Episode 2: meh-ish
How to Get Away with Murder (ABC) Episode 2: The first episode didn’t blow me away, but was fairly entertaining, if too populated with caricatures and clichés of characters and not overly-intelligent writing. The crispness and intrigue of the new show pretty much all dissipates in the follow-up episode. The dumbness is more pronounced, the characters more one-dimensional, and the plotting more contrived and feels more artificially set-up. Oh Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer, you were both forces in The Help, you deserve shows that are on your level.
Returning Shows
Modern Family (ABC) Episode 2: Another episode showcasing that if Modern Family whittled down its cast to focus entirely on the Dunphey clan (that is Phil, Claire and the kids), this show would be better. Cam and Mitch’s storyline focuses again on how neither of them can say something directly and try weird ways to manipulate their daughter into smiling better, something that any sane person would overlook and not fucking care so much about. I didn’t hate Gloria and Jay’s story, it was kinda nice, and they actually found a role for Manny other than ha-ha, kid whose tastes is more mature than his age as the go-between for Gloria and Jay. The Luke-Haley-Phil plot was golden. Even if I figured out that they were being paranoid and it wasn’t an experiment early on, the journey was satisfying at hell (and Haley showed her dramatic chops with a semi-monologue about how she feels like a failure, the feels). Claire didn’t have much to do this episode but was on point as usual, and I’m indifferent towards Alex’s story as it wasn’t anything surprising or particularly new. All and all, it’s a pretty standard late-season episode for Modern Family that makes me wish they’d kick out Cam and Mitch but keep Lily.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Fox) Episode 1: Yes, yes, a million times yes!
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