As we enter into the new Fall television season in the next few weeks (NBC will be rolling their lineup out sooner than the others to capitalize on the Olympic’s coverage) it’s time to say goodbye (and judge) all the shows I’ve been using as filler for the last couple months.
Dallas…Against all possible odds, this is the most shockingly not-awful show of the summer. Sure, Bobby’s a hypocrite and a bit of an idiot, and I seriously hate Jesse Metcalfe’s Christopher (a rageaholic who only thinks he’s the good guy), but all that is more than made-up for every time Larry Hagman’s undeniably fun J.R. Ewing (“the villain” that I actually like better than any of the good guys) appears on screen, instantly ratcheting up the excitement. I’ll be honest and say that the storyline of whether they would drill for oil on the ranch—–it is a no brainer that they should—–felt a little ridiculous in such tough times. [A bunch of millionaires trying to stop the drilling of oil because they can afford to turn down the billions it would generate.] However, I’ll be excited to see where Dallas can go if it ever fully shakes off the 80’s and embraces the down-and-dirty spirit of the recession years. Grade: B
Longmire…I said in an earlier review that I suspected this central premise (an old-school Wyoming lawman solves cases-of-the-week against beautiful scenery) might grow a little thin the more episodes it had, and I was right. The show seemed refreshingly low-key in the first couple episodes I watched, but once you get past the novel and gorgeous scenery, there’s really nothing being offered up here that you can’t get on the networks. Just another generic police procedural after all, and I think each episode gets a little less fresh. Grade: C…But visually, B+
Falling Skies…Summer’s most infuriating show. 90 percent of the time, this show is a real piece of shit. It has annoying characters, brain-dead dialogue, sentimental scenes that feel disgustingly fake, and the occasional (in-the-dark) battle scene that looks like they let someone having a seizure shoot it. And yet…and yet I can’t quit it. Because the other ten percent of the time, it’s amazing. I’m talking about when they get to the down and dirty of the alien invasion (tactics, the way they think, a possible rebellion amongst the aliens) that’s when this show clicks. Now if only they had the budget (much like The Walking Dead) to really let this sucker loose…minus the canned morality speeches. Grade: C…And yet, I’ll probably watch season 3.
Alphas…Another junky sci-fi show I can’t quit just yet, even though it really doesn’t reward me for watching. Alphas (playing on the Syfy channel…a surefire indicator of quality) is about a team of government blah blah blahs with special powers yada yada yada who stop…people with abilities who have some kind of need to destroy the world. Alphas sounds generic because it is generic, and yet I’m a little less involved with the mythology than I am with the honest intelligence that seems to lurk underneath the edges. It’s basically a police procedural with super-powers (kind of like Grimm, Alcatraz, or any of the other faux-special procedural shows over the last year) but David Straitharn more than keeps you watching as the sharp leader of this rogue team. Grade: C-
Small Town Security…This new reality show from AMC is about, you guessed it, a security firm in small town Georgia. This show works because it goes deep into its oddball characters. These are people it actually takes more than an episode to get to know, distinguishing them from pretty much any other cast on reality TV (aren’t the Real Housewives and Jersey Shore cadets even more one-dimensional than most fictionalized TV characters?). They’re by turns weird, hilarious, and fascinating, and that’s good since they are pretty much the entire show. At times, it almost looks like the show is veering too far into the other braindead reality genre (the macho men—–and women—–who make up the “Thank God I went to college so I don’t have to hunt alligators” genre of Poor Folk Reality shows) but it never makes easy distinctions like rich vs. poor or red state vs. blue state. Instead, it just lets these strange-but-relatable folks exist, which is the exact right approach. Grade: B