Awkward: Not Shy to Say I Like It

I recently caught Awkward, a new MTV series, a few episodes into its run and it pleasantly surprised me.  In Awkward, Jenna Hamilton, who gets injured in an accident, however it is misconstrued as an accident. Jenna then has deal with her newfound fame in high school, navigating reactions from friends, enemies and adults.

The primary storyline of the show is the romance between Jenna and Matty, a jock at her high school.  Jenna's rival for Matty's affection is Sadie, the school's spoiled, rich, bully.  There is a second thread about an anonymous, mean spirited letter Jenna receives after her accident.

Awkward is a surprising good comedy-drama.  The writers have slowly built the characters over the year to make them layered and interesting.  For example, the spoiled and rich Sadie is a chubby girl and over the season you have seen that her weight and family issues play a large parts in her meanness, not just at Jenna, but at herself.  Jenna's mother was a high school mean girl who got pregnant right out of high school and wants to relive her fun high school days through her daughter, yet doesn't want her to make the same mistakes as she did.  Of course, their are characters that don't work, such as the high school's counselor who just isn't funny or interesting and sticks out as a sore thumb as misplaced.

Jenna herself is an interesting character.  She seems like she is a typical high school girl who believes that she is smarter than almost everyone about her, however she is constantly discovering how little she does know.  Her relationship with Matty is a one sided affair; he is unwilling to publicly acknowledge their relationship or to even define it.  At the same time, Matty's best friend has told her how he feels.

Awkward is fun gem of a show.  The writers seem to care about developing the characters.  The acting from the lead character is really good and many of the supporting characters hold their own.  I really want to see how this show develops.

Fall Season Begins: The New Girl

The pilot for Zooey Deschanel's new sitcom was just made available early on iTunes.

What worked for me:

• Zooey does have an undeniable charm onscreen.
• I like that one of the main characters is sort of a "bro" douchebag, it lead to some of the episodes funnier moments.
• The male roommates are actually funny and have decent interaction with each other.

What didn't work for me:

• The events of the pilot happen too quickly, the characters became best friends so quickly it seems rushed.  However I suppose it was necessary to get the plots going.
• The hint at the main romance between the Zooey and one of the roommates too quickly.
• Zooey isn't actually that funny, just really cute.

I know that the show is called New Girl, so most storylines will concentrate on main character, however I hope that they can integrate the other three guys or even Deschanel's model friend otherwise this show will get real stale, real fast.

** Stars

Revisiting Sports Night

Sports Night was one of favorite shows when I was younger.  It was recently put back onto Netflix's instant watch and I decided to check it out once again to see if it sill holds up after 13 years.  The show was created by Aaron Sorkin who would later create West Wing, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and recently won the Oscar for writing the screenplay for The Social Network.

There are early trademark Sorkin touches in the show, fast paced witty dialogue mixed with stories that can be both funny and serious in the same episode.



However, there is something off-putting about the early episodes; the laugh track.  Laugh tracks have bothered me for a while, and they are unnecessary in an Aaron Sorkin production.  Sports Night tells really interesting stories and it doesn't need the laugh track to make you think it is funny.  It also becomes really irksome when you have the laugh track in one scene and then a really serious moment like this the next.  Fortunately as the first season goes on, the laugh track gets toned down and the show really starts delivered great episodes, with powerful moments like this.

The mixture of dialogue and story still holds up today, and I enjoyed watching this show a second time.

Instant Watch: The League Season One

I just watched the first season of FX's The League.  The six episodes that make up the first season are now available for Netflix's instant watch viewing and I highly recommend it, in fact, I watched all six episodes in one sitting.  It is that good.  The League is from the one of the writers of the Cyrus, Mark Duplass.  As I wrote about in an earlier post, I was a big fan of Cyrus, so anything from its writer is welcome addition to TV.  

The League is about a group of friends whose relationship is centered around their fantasy football league and how each friends need to win the championship trophy - The Shiva affects their lives.  There are great performances from entire cast.  In addition, the characters are distinct from each other, have their own interesting personalities and are backed up by strong and funny storyline premises.

Definitely a Netflix Instant Watch Gem everyone should try and see.  

**** out of **** stars.

Fall 2010 TV Review

It's the end of the year and I have thinking about this year in TV.
I did a little research and here is a list of notable fall network and cable shows:

Hawaii 5-0:  Fall's TV Breakout Hit

Show	Network	Status
My Generation	ABC	Cancelled
The Whole Truth	ABC	Cancelled
Lone Star	FOX	Cancelled
Rubicon	AMC	Cancelled
Running Wilde	FOX	Cancelled
Terriers	FX	Cancelled
Outlaw	NBC	Cancelled
Undercovers	NBC	Cancelled
Better with You	ABC	Full Season
No Ordinary Family	ABC	Full Season
Walking Dead	AMC	Full Season
$#*! My Dad Says	CBS	Full Season
Blue Bloods	CBS	Full Season
Hawaii Five-0	CBS	Full Season
Mike & Molly	CBS	Full Season
The Defenders	CBS	Full Season
Raising Hope	FOX	Full Season
Boardwalk Empire	HBO	Full Season
Law & Order: Los Angeles	NBC	Full Season
Outsourced	NBC	Full Season
The Event	NBC	Full Season
The Big C	Showtime	Full Season
Hellcats	The CW	Full Season
Nikita	The CW	Full Season
Detroit 1-8-7	ABC	Partial Pick-up
Chase	NBC	Partial Pick-up

Things I took from this list:
Show I'm still watching:  Nikita, didn't like it at first, but it has really grown on me after a bit.  I still think they need to make the show more fun, and less serious.  However, it is keeping up a pretty good quality for a CW show.

Most Disappointing Show That I Watched:  The Walking Dead, it started so bright at first with a great series premiere, however subsequent episodes did not live up to the promise of the premiere.

Most Surprising Pick-Up:  Outsourced, after the terrible reviews that the show received initially, I thought it would flop but surprisingly it has kept going on.

Show I'm sad I missed:  Terriers, I heard tons of good reviews and I wanted to check it out, however, I missed the first episode and then the second, and then I fell behind until I didn't bother watching.

Show I'll Miss the Most:  Rubicon, just when it started to get good it was shot down.  I suppose it was it was the show's on fault for being so slow at the beginning.

Human Target returns (with some changes)

One of my favorite guilty pleasure shows, Human Target returned last week.  The return was not without some changes.  It seems the show runners have decided that having three old guys is not what a mass audience wants to see.  To fix this, they have added two beautiful women to the cast to try and expand the audience.

The first is Ilsa Pucci, who is now the extremely rich benefactor of the group.  I suppose she might be the "Charlie" to the group.  The second is the thief Ames, who will fill the role of the newbie/mentee to the original trio.  Chance, Winston, and Guerrero are all veterans in their business and I'm thinking that having Ames allows the audience to develop a relationship with the trio.

Personally, I am slightly concerned about these changes.  One of the things I liked about Human Target was the scrappiness of Chance and Co.  They would call in favors to get a ride to some of the locations, now with Ilsa Pucci's backing they can pretty much do anything they want because of her money.  Second, and I hope I'm wrong about this, but I don't want Ames to just be a stand in for the audience.  At the start of the show, the relationship between Chance, Winston and Guerrero is fully developed, each knows the other very well.  With a new character in the mix, we are forced into a "getting to know you" period between the characters.  Hopefully Human Target can keep up the fun action that it had last season.  It has a great timeslot on Wednesdays and there aren't too many fast paced action shows on network TV right now.

Link to the first episode of the new season that introduces the new characters.

Random Thoughts: Some Favorite Cartoons

Every so often I get random thoughts in my head.  I've decided to start writing down these thoughts.  Here is my first random thought.  Let's see if I can keep it going.

A couple days ago I was thinking about some of my favorite cartoons, and I remembered a few of my recent favorite that I rarely hear talked about.  I'm not saying these are the best cartoons ever, but I sure enjoyed them. So without further ado, here are three of my favorite under the radar cartoons.

Fillmore! - Disney (2002-2004).
This show is about a juvenile delinquent who becomes an officer in X Middle School's "Safety Patrol".  The Safety Patrol is X's pseudo police department who investigates school related crimes.  The hook of the show was that it parodied hard boiled detective stories.  Crimes such as car theft and drug smuggling where turned into scooter thefts and tartar sauce smuggling.  The show played the crime parodies extremely straight faced and even had a deep voiced narrator to add to its grittiness.  Here is a clip to show you what Fillmore! was about.



Recess - Disney (1997-2001)
This show was about a group of Middle School friends who meet up during recess to escape from the trials of school.  The playground during recess is a microcosm of the larger adult world, with a leader, mean girls and snitches.  I loved the way that kids would get in trouble and they would help each out.



Codename: Kids Next Door - Cartoon Network (2002-2008)
The last and probably my favorite.  This show was about a group of kids who are secretly part of an elite agency that battled adult tyranny.  Adult Tyranny included forcing kids to wear ties, forcing kids to eat broccoli and refusing to give out candy.  I loved this show because it loved to parody pop culture, movies and TV.  Off hand I can think of parodies of the The Matrix, Star Wars Trilogies, Lord of the Rings, Aliens, and Air Force One.



Another episode, I couldn't find a youtube of this episode, but it is one of my favorites. Codename: Kids Next Door - Operation P.R.E.S.I.D.E.N.T.

I also thought about these shows and why I liked them.  I like these shows because they take the mundane things in life that we as adults take for granted or might be rather small in the grand scheme of things, however when seen through the eyes of children whose world view is a lot more limited, these mundane things are actually quite special.

My Fall 2010 (Anticipated) Standouts

There have been a few shows that seem intriguing to me this fall.  Not sure how they will do in the ratings, but I will definitely be checking out the first few episodes of each of these new shows.

Zombie Slaying on TV: Walking Dead Trailer

Premieres on Halloween (of course) on AMC. Count me in watching that night.