I DVR'd three new TV series this week: "The Unusuals" on ABC,
"Southland" on NBC and "Harper's Island" on CBS. "The Unusuals" wasn't
bad but I'm not a big fan of cop shows. I think they're propaganda most
of the time unless you get into more realistic "bad cop" scenarios.
Why do we have so many cop shows anyway? I'm not that fascinated with
police work but maybe it sells well to the undereducated. And
"Southland" was yet another cop show laking place in Los Angeles.
The "First 5 minutes" is what I give a new series to see if it grabs me
or not. "The Unusuals" passed the test but "Southland" and "Harper's
Island" did not. They will probably get erased from the DVR without
seeing the rest of the pilot. "Harper's Island" is particularly bad and
obviously not for an educated audience the first 5 was SO dumb. Having
lived in Seattle there is no "Harper's Island" I know of and I noted the
"exteriors" supposedly in Seattle had some high rises in the
background. Seattle has few high rises. I think they were banned
probably in the 1960's. Vancouver has a ton of them. But the first 5
minutes of the story was so lame and didn't get into what the crux of
the story is about. "Southland" was just weak and of course yet another
cop show so I won't waste any more time on it. That saves a lot of time
for movies especially as we go into summer and the networks figure no
one watches TV.
Before I sign off I want to mention this week's episode of "Reaper"
which stars Ray Wise as the Devil. It's a great comedy created by Kevin
Smith ("Clerks"). In this week's episode the Devil was playing around
with a camcorder and throughout the show he had the camcorder. At one
point he says something like "this is beginning to turn out like a David
Lynch movie." That's an "in" joke of course because Wise played a
character on "Twin Peaks." Also of note on this series is Jenny Wade
who is a great young comedianne playing a demon who takes human form to
have a relationship with Ben the Rick Gonzales character. She's got
great comedic timing and I'm sure we'll be seeing more from her.
So why do low budget series like "Reaper" are a success (BTW an ABC
production) a bigger budgeted series fail? Too much bean counter
intervention? It seems the most successful series have the least
intervention by the network or the creators supported by the network. A
friend brings me his back issues of The Hollywood Reporter and it is
interesting to read the inside stories on some of these shows. Recently
there was an article on Julia Roberts talking about her making a
comeback. The article mentioned that she sold well during the Clinton
era as people liked more easy going roles like she played but during the
Bush era the more hard core Angelina Jolie roles sold better. I still
don't know if Roberts will sell that well during the Obama era as I
really don't think she that good an actress (her brother is much better)
but she does well in subdued roles.
The political observation was interesting because I noted when India got
it's progressive leader and the conservative BJP lost power Bollywood
movies got pretty crappy. I think it may have something to do with
challenging the current regime. If that is so we may get worse movies
during the Obama administration than the Bush one.
