Television Notes

[osprey_archer]

I've been giving a few new television shows a go, so I thought I would collect my thoughts here.

1. I've heard great things about 30 Rock, but... I didn't like the pilot. :/ Now, I wasn't blown over by the pilot for Graceland either, and I actually kind of disliked the pilot for Castle (in fact the first ten episodes or so grated on me; she's not interested, Castle, leave her alone!), so this is not necessarily the kiss of death, but...

Has anyone watched this show? Is the pilot pretty much of a piece with the rest of it, or is there a great tonal shift? Does Tina Fey shove Jack Donaghey out a thirteeth-floor window, for instance?

This is also giving me second thoughts about giving Invincible Kimmy Schmidt a try.

2. I watched the first two episodes of Wolfblood, which is cute but didn't blow me away. Possibly I've outgrown teen dramas? But I'll probably give it a few more episodes to find its feet; I think five episodes is usually a good number, especially with half hour episodes.

3. Orphan Black. Oh my GOD, you guys, this show is amazing, and Tatiana Maslany is an absolute revelation. If I didn't know that she was playing all these different characters, I never in a million years would have guessed, because she's so good at making them all different - obviously with help from wardrobe and the writers in giving them different speech patterns, but still, the accents! The body language! The facial expressions! That's all her, and it's all amazing. And her control is so perfect.

I've only seen the first four episodes so far, so I don't have much of an opinion about the unfolding mysteries yet - although I will say, I loooooved the way that Sarah had to figure out Elizabeth Childs' life in the first few episodes after unwitting stealing her identity. The way that they set up this smaller mystery within the bigger mysteries of the season gives me a lot of hope for good payoffs: they clearly understand the pleasure of unraveling a mystery when the question is not whodunnit but "what the heck has been done and what does it mean?"

Comments

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

I don't remember the pilot very well, but I had a reasonably good time with the first couple seasons of 30 Rock. It was never my favorite thing, but it was funny a lot of the time. When it started to go downhill, it went very fast and very far.

My favorite characters were Grizz and Dot Com (Tracy's permanent entourage), and they were given less and less to do over time, probably because they are deadpan rather than wacky, and the show got more and more wackiness-dependent. I liked Jenna and Jack McBrayer's character at first, but they decayed into unfunny caricatures of themselves -- McBrayer almost immediately, Jenna over time. By the time I stopped watching, it had become a half-hour of lead.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

If it's going to fall apart just a couple of seasons in, I feel even better about my decision not to keep watching. Why subject myself to a sad break-up with a television show, right?

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

Probably for the best. It's not a show that gets better over time, and not worth the heartbreak of watching it slowly calcify into complete unfunniness, imo.