It’s been a big couple weeks for TV as the mid-season begins in earnest. Several new shows have debuted or returned or even ended, so let’s get to it…
The Walking Dead: Last night was the second season finale of this show. Longtime readers know that I think this is the worst show on AMC (although Hell on Wheels and especially The Killing are sometimes worse), it’s immense success has taken one of the last places you can find adult dramas and made it yet another haven for genre fanboys, and every episode has gotten worse than the one before it, starting with a good pilot episode and showing a steep drop in quality every second they spent on that damn farm this season. However, in the last couple episodes, we’ve seen a few interesting developments: 1. They killed off one of the least likable characters (and in this show, that’s saying something), and by that I mean Dale, NOT Shane (who I actually liked). By killing off the “moral compass” of a show filled with whiny, do-nothing moral compasses, it showed they might have grown a pair of balls. 2. Then Shane died, not really a surprise, but the actual scene was one of the best of the series.
Now there’s the season finale, by far the most action-packed episode of the entire series as long winded, repetitive speeches were jettisoned for a zombie bloodbath overpowering the farm. Sure, the lead character of Rick (the British Andrew Lincoln, still struggling with an American accent) is still a major asshole—-and the least interesting lead character in an AMC show by a mile—-and his wife Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) is even worse since she’s basically a trailer park princess who still doesn’t seem to get that she’s in the middle of the apocalypse, not a soap opera, but I can always hope the show really grows a pair and kills them both. Grade for season: C-…Grade for season finale: B
South Park: This show has been on the air since 1997, so now it’s entering The Simpsons territory as it keeps going strong into a third decade. However, the show can still throw a punch with the best of them as the season premiere saw them take the simple joke of whether or not to raise the toilet seat (something every guy on the planet who’s ever lived with a woman has probably had to encounter at one point or another) and elevate it to glorious heights, lampooning seatbelt laws, airport security (who become toilet bowl security), and a big brother-ish government going way overboard in the wake of tragedy. Brilliant…Season premiere grade: B+
Awake: The great Jason Isaacs (from Showtime’s criminally underrated series Brotherhood, still the best show they’ve ever produced) quarterbacks this promising drama as a husband/father who survived a car accident with his family. Then the show splits into two parallel realities in which his wife survived the wreck but his son didn’t in one reality and his son survived but his wife didn’t in the other. So far I love this show. It’s smart, refreshing, and feels like the wiliest police procedural (Isaacs character is a police detective with different partners and cases in the realities) ever made. I particularly like the therapy scenes between Isaacs’s dueling therapists offering contradictory perspectives on his situation. Between this show, The River, and Touch, it’s clear that the midseason shows are superior to the ones that debuted in Fall. Grade so far: A-
Missing:…Not so fast. No sooner do I say “The midseason shows are superior” when this show premiered. Missing isn’t awful, so much as just completely generic and unnecessary. If you’ve wondered if they could make the movie Taken much worse with a less gifted actor starring instead of Liam Neeson, then this is the show for you. For anyone else, this action show just won’t cut it, and I’m real disappointed since I was actually looking forward to a more realistic female driven action show that steers clear of the Charlie’s Angels-esque fantasy action. Still, it’s hard to say this show is in any way “realistic” as Judd barely breaks a sweat in karate chopping younger men twice her size…showing her struggle a bit would make this feel a bit more compelling. Grade so far: C
Fashion Star: Alright, so this isn’t my kind-of show at all. In fact, I’ve never even made it through a single episode of Project Runway without changing the channel. Still, I like the types of reality shows where someone is asked to create art or make a deal (Bravo’s Work of Art, or ABC’s Shark Tank) so I was willing to give this a shot. The show does have an interesting idea—-novice designers design items that real media buyers bid on, and put in clothing stores the next day if they like it—-but the execution is awful. For one thing, the editing of the first episode was an absolute mess as it jumped back and forth through time and space with no clear segue ways or even an indication of what the actual challenge is. [The first episode was so poorly paced, we didn’t even get to meet five of the contestants and their work went by in a montage.] I’d like to give it another chance and see what happens, but here’s hoping they fired the first editor. Grade so far: C