This then, is a rundown of the shows I'm following here in the first quarter of 2013:
AMERICAN DAD: I am endlessly fascinated by the notion that American dad has about two seasons worth of episodes in the can that they can roll out at will despite being pre-empted, forgotten and shoved aside for one-hour Family Guy episodes (usually dreadful) or an extra episode of The Cleveland Show (The Caddyshack 2 of spin-offs--let's just pretend it never happened) It's the Anti-South Park, in terms of how it feels about timeliness.
This is to its benefit, as it's not hidebound by doing feeling like it has to be au courant (which it tried to do early on and it was just god-awful then) and so can pursue any lunatic tangent they feel, whether said tangent is a quadriplegic with telekinesis or just providing and excuse for Patrick Stewart to be utterly batshit insane and hilarity, typically results.
Naturally, this is the one that no one watches so much so . . .yeah. Leave it to me to back the winner.
TRON: UPRISING: Bit of a cheat this one, as it aired its last episode last Sunday, but I thought it was worth a mention all the same. This show kinda spun its wheels in place at the mid-season break (it felt very much like the final episode had come ten episodes before it actually did) but this turned into a pretty interesting show, expanding on the story in between the first and second movies (and probably having more story and more depth than both combined--I mean, I love the movies but they sure as heck aren't deep)
Naturally, they ran it at midnight on Sunday and have no cancelled it because no one was watching. Is that a tautology or a truism? I'm not sure.
JUSTIFIED: Last week, Justified had an interesting master villain for the season in in Robert Quarles, who met one of the most bizarre fates possible in a TV show. This year it seems there's a larger plot but no apparent master villain (to be be fair, after three seasons, that would get a bit rote if they didn't change it up) and in the meantime it gives us some time to see our nominal protagonist and antagonists--Raylan Givens and arch-nemesis/occasional ally Boyd Crowder deal with the fallout of certain seismic changes in their lives and situations.
I'm kinda curious to see how this plot they're developing plays out, though it is some curious commonality that it's a cold case from the early 80's, considering . . .
THE AMERICANS: . . .this show, which debuted this week, also takes place in the early 80's. I was intrigued by the premise (KGB sleeper agents in 1981 America) and despite the fact that the lead character is Felicity (" . . .on the WB," I find myself adding silently. If you're too young to get that, yo're a young punk and I hate you) she's actually pretty damn awesome in this (I respect anyone who punts someone's head through drywall) and the pilot really impressed me.
Barring one thing--while I appreciate these kinds of elements are there to prove to us that these people are Tough Bastards who work for Evil People, was it necessary to have KGBelicity raped by her superior on-camera just so we'd have a character connection when she kills him twenty years later while he's trying to defect? That's . . .well, it feels too easy and I guess I was hoping for more nuance.
They're the KGB. If you know even a little bit about them, you know what kind of hard-asses they are.
That said, it's got an interesting dynamic--KGBelicity is all gung-ho about killing people for the KGB, and her husband (whom she was pared up with in what it is assumed is a loveless arranged marriage for the sake of their cover) is quite impressed with the amenities of the west.
I'm intrigued to see where this goes--the mise en scene is quite interesting (the Soviets reaction to Regan being installed in the pilot was telling and adds some tension, knowing as we do that the USSR will be very different come the end of the decade) and for all my wisecracks, KGBelicity is an ass-kicker par excellence.
ARCHER: Speaking of spies (man, this made for a great segue trifecta) The several parts spy comedy/office comedy/meditation on collective madness recently returned for its fourth season this month, and it's said that this season will be a bit more serialised, and I can see a little of that. My main thing was--would it be funny?
As of last week's episode, featuring one of the best final two minutes in the show's history, I can safely say . . .most definitely.
GREEN LANTERN: THE ANIMATED SERIES: Initially, I really hated this damn show, because Hal Jordan is a deeply boring character crammed full of undeserved smugness and a 1960s, boring-ass, Chuck Yeager manque who come across as a self-absorbed asshole sixty years removed from that milieu.
The show won me over by doing what the comics did long ago--by generally allowing Hal to do the heavy lifting with regards to plot so the other characters can be far more interesting and overshadow his milquetoast ass. See also: why do you think there are five Green Lanterns from Earth in the comics, all of whom, even undercooked though they may be, are far more interesting than Hal Jordan by several orders of magnitude.
This has been recently cancelled to the surprise of no one (as it was made to tie-in to a movie no one liked enough to want to see any more of) and while it's kind of a shame it's being dropped just as it hits it's stride it's . . .enjoyable enough, but I won't miss it that much.
YOUNG JUSTICE: You'll hear a lot of stuff about Young Justice being cancelled, because holy GOD are people angry about this. They're . . .well, everyone's entitled to their opinion, but Young Justice really dropped off for me in this season.
I hated the multi-year jump they did at the beginning of the season (it's a bullshit way to kick over the table without doing it logically and I hate it so much.) and far too much of the consequences of decisions made in that time-jump (which we were mostly left out of seeing) were driving the story, which is a bit like trying to go on a road trip without tires--you can kinda do it, but you will face many problems brought on by a fundamental absence of very necessary things.
Couple this with the fact that one of the major driving plots as of late happens entirely because no one is willing to have a conversation with people who should probably know about things so they don't screw them up and . . .yeah. It's OK, like Green Lantern's OK, but this was not the new Justice League Unlimited, nor was it the panacea for lapsed DC fans who hated the new 52--it was a generally not-terrible DC cartoon that was a passable way to kill a half-hour.
And that's what's on the docket for winter. Pretty soon Mad Men will return (and so will my reviews--I have no idea why people love my writeups SO MUCH, but they do) and the last few Breaking Bad episodes will also unspool. So there's that going for us, which is nice.
No comments:
Post a Comment