While AMC was capping off a terrific run of Breaking Bad with a record 10.3 million viewers and 6.5 in the key demo (just for perspective, most broadcast networks like NBC or ABC would kill for that number) I’m sure more than a few eyeballs found their way to Showtime’s premieres of Masters of Sex and Homeland…
Homeland…I’ve never really loved this show, and think it’s incredibly overrated (I mean, two Golden Globe wins for Best Drama?) and last night’s premiere was no exception. Whereas a truly great TV drama keeps finding new depths to explore, Homeland feels suffocatingly surface-level. We’ve really only got a half-dozen core characters and we don’t care about half of them (who really wants more scenes of Brody’s family or Carrie’s dad?). Even when Homeland changes their formula—-now Brody is on the run for something he didn’t do vs. not being suspected for something he was going to do—-it doesn’t hum with the thrill of the new. The biggest development in this third season premiere was having Saul decide to throw Carrie under the bus in order to save the CIA. And yeah, if that situation doesn’t exactly sound grounded in day-to-day human experience, that’s probably because it’s not. Grade for season 3 premiere: B-
Masters of Sex…This is a show about sex in the fuddie-duddie time before sex was really talked about, think Mad Men with more gratuitous, Showtime-esque sex and nudity. A leading doctor in the conservative Mid-West (you guessed it, William “Masters,” get the double meaning of the title now? hyuk yuk) decided to potentially risk his career by doing the first comprehensive sex study which at the time was deemed as “smut.” The stakes aren’t too high on this show, and Michael Sheen plays the part of an ice-cold, repressed doctor viewing sex as clinical perhaps a little too well but that doesn’t stop the show from having a secret weapon: Lizzy Caplan. The great Caplan has dark eyes that can seem flirty and intense in the exact same moment, and gives an erotic charge when she’s just standing still. Not a bad secret weapon for a show that desperately wants to be edgy and sexy. Only time will tell if this is really a good idea for a TV show and if it wouldn’t have been more successful as a mini-series where it might have grown less repetitive. Grade for pilot episode: B