{"id":87,"date":"2009-09-25T15:57:39","date_gmt":"2009-09-25T19:57:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/45.79.82.122\/blogs\/natterings\/?p=87"},"modified":"2013-10-07T00:35:48","modified_gmt":"2013-10-07T04:35:48","slug":"tv-worth-watching-a-completely-subjective-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/natterings.com\/?p=87","title":{"rendered":"TV worth watching (a completely subjective report)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s what we set the TiVo to capture:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbs.com\/primetime\/criminal_minds\/\">Criminal Minds<\/a> &#8211; here&#8217;s my favorite almost too-gory and too-dark show about a FBI team investigating horrific crimes.\u00a0 <em>Criminal Minds<\/em> is one of the two shows on TV that I just call downright <em>smart<\/em> &#8211; the leads are intelligent, their motivations are complex, their victims are portrayed as actual <em>people. <\/em>I can only contrast it against the various CSI shows, in which corpses are almost universally young and hot, and lovingly panned over during science!montages! (I&#8217;m looking at YOU in particular, Miami).\u00a0 In Criminal Minds, the crimes are painful and horrible and the victims are not idiots.\u00a0 Thomas Gibson plays a spectacular team lead; don&#8217;t be turned off by all those years of <em>Dharma and Greg<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amctv.com\/originals\/madmen\/\">Mad Men<\/a> &#8211; this is the show I&#8217;m measuring everything else against these days.\u00a0 Fantastic writing, fantastic acting.\u00a0 Season 3 was all style and no substance until this past episode (I think all I have to say is &#8220;the lawnmower one&#8221;), and now everything is in chaos, and I in <em>no way<\/em> know where the show is going next.\u00a0 How great is that, to still be surprised by dramatic TV?\u00a0 Special props to my favorite actors\/portrayals on the show:\u00a0 Jon Hamm&#8217;s Don, Elisabeth Moss&#8217;s Peggy, Christina Hendrick&#8217;s Joan.\u00a0 If you haven&#8217;t been watching this, give it a try.\u00a0 It&#8217;s what TV sets are for.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fox.com\/glee\/\">Glee<\/a> &#8211; of course!\u00a0 None of the episodes have reached the dizzying fun of the pilot, but if the show just wants to highlight Jane Lynch and Stephen Tobolowsky forever, I&#8217;m good with that.\u00a0 It&#8217;s eminently quotable, the song choices so far are a\u00a0 hoot, and if they&#8217;re lip-synching, so what?\u00a0 It&#8217;s actual TV-fiction, not even &#8220;reality&#8221; TV-fiction.\u00a0 I&#8217;m looking forward to learning more about the rest of the squad, especially the as-yet unexplored Tina and Artie (&#8220;You&#8217;re not trying hard enough.&#8221;\u00a0 &#8220;At what?&#8221;\u00a0 &#8220;Walking!&#8221;).\u00a0 It&#8217;s not perfect &#8211; it can be far too broad and far too talky, and I wish the character of Will&#8217;s wife Terri wasn&#8217;t so utterly Evil with an E &#8211; but it&#8217;s still a great weekly dose of goofy musical theater.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fox.com\/fringe\/\">Fringe<\/a> &#8211; okay, give it a chance.\u00a0 Yes, the first half of the first season draaagged, and lead agent Olivia Dunham was a shell-shocked victim careening from one supernatural event to another.\u00a0 But then there was a winter break, and when the show returned, Anna Torv&#8217;s Olivia grabbed those supernatural events and <em>kicked their asses<\/em>.\u00a0 John Noble (Denethor!) chews up the screen as the literally mad scientist, and Joshua Jackson (as the scientist&#8217;s handler\/son) is good enough that I have almost stopped thinking of him as Pacey.\u00a0 Don&#8217;t go in thinking hard about the science.\u00a0 Don&#8217;t think about the science at all, actually.\u00a0 But watch it for Torv&#8217;s death glare, and for the one or two audacious moments per episode that take your breath away.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tnt.tv\/series\/leverage\/\">Leverage<\/a> &#8211; pure pulp goofiness.\u00a0 The showrunner, John Rogers, maintains his own blog <a href=\"http:\/\/kfmonkey.blogspot.com\/\">here<\/a> in which he answers viewer questions.\u00a0 Every week.\u00a0 That&#8217;s the kind of show this is:\u00a0 chatty, completely unrepentant about catering to fans, cheerful as all get-out.\u00a0 There will never be nuanced, shades-of-grey villains on the show; Rogers says so!\u00a0 There will instead be &#8211; every single week! &#8211; a caper plot, lots of witty banter, at least one fist-fight (no guns!), and an accent change by Gina Bellman (who is off having a baby right now, but hopefully will be back for season 3!).\u00a0 This one, I might wait a few days before catching on TiVo, since it&#8217;s up against <em>Criminal Minds<\/em>, but it&#8217;s always great fun to watch.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Runners-up:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Bones &#8211; forensic hijinks, and Angel is much better as a jock than an emopire.<\/li>\n<li>FlashForward &#8211; give us your actors, Britain!<\/li>\n<li>Top Chef &#8211; despite the jerky contestants, I really enjoy reality shows in which competence is key.<\/li>\n<li>Project Runway &#8211; see above.<\/li>\n<li>So You Think You Can Dance &#8211; see above, though the emphasis on contemporary dance and head judge Nigel&#8217;s perviness are dropping this from my list quickly.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And, these are the things the TiVo thinks I should be watching, but I don&#8217;t:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee &#8211; fingernails down a chalkboard.<\/li>\n<li>Burn Notice &#8211; Gretchen, you like this one, right?<\/li>\n<li>Eight gabillion Iron Chef reruns, most of which I do break down and watch, who am I kidding.\u00a0 Sea urchin battle!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s what we set the TiVo to capture: Criminal Minds &#8211; here&#8217;s my favorite almost too-gory and too-dark show about a FBI team investigating horrific crimes.\u00a0 Criminal Minds is one of the two shows on TV that I just call downright smart &#8211; the leads are intelligent, their motivations are complex, their victims are portrayed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[25],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/natterings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/natterings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/natterings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/natterings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/natterings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=87"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/natterings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":241,"href":"https:\/\/natterings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions\/241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/natterings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/natterings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/natterings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}