Tuesday Night Highlights

90210

It’s really not very good. I wouldn’t miss it if it went the way of Pushing Daisies (blërg). The lead girl is all teeth, shininess and irritation. The “hot popular girl” is not hot and looks as old as Andrea Zuckerman did when the original premiered. Her “jock” on-again, off-again is doofy and dull. The “cool teacher” makes me wonder if such humans like him exist in the real world. The new James Eckhouse/Carol Potter combo pale in comparison. (They actually kinda make Mr. & Mrs. Walsh look cool.) The token minority looks a bit ethnic, but I only know that he’s Persian because he repeated it about 200 times in one episode.

Here are the nice things I can say: I laugh when they reference the original. Jennie Garth looks great. Shannen Doherty can still play Brenda effectively. Silver, the “weird” girl is played by a capable actress and is a likable character. Dixon, the Brandon character, is played by Tristan Wilds who was absolutely fantastic on The Wire and hopefully this show will get his career moving. (He’s good, but his character is worse than Brandon.) And Jessica Walter plays Lucille Bluth.

Here are my suggestions to fix:

1. Focus more on Silver and Dixon.
2. Have Jennie Garth get caught in a fire and freakout while flashing back to the original series causing her to head back to drugs. Maybe she can show up to work one day high?
3. Fire Rob Estes and hire Mrs. Teasley as the principal.
4. Get Liza Minelli to cameo and have her get into a catfight with Jessica Walter (a la Sidney and Jane on Melrose Place.)


Eli Stone

Here’s another show that I have to damn America for. I don’t love Eli as much as I love Pushing Daisies, but I do have plenty of love for it.

Another original show whose match you will not find on TV, Eli Stone is quirky, funny, heart-warming, touching, and well-made and it further depresses me that it won’t be around much longer.

Jonny Lee Miller is perfect as Eli. Victor Garber, who was great on Alias even when Alias wasn’t, is fantastic. He’s my favorite part of the show. Julie Gonzalo has grown on me since last year and I really do like Maggie now. Natasha Henstridge, Sam Jaeger and Matt Letscher, all of whom I have actively disliked in other stuff before, are all wonderful. Loretta Devine makes me laugh every week. I have to say that my favorite parts of the show are the musical interludes, especially when Jordan and/or Patti are singing.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it when it premiered last season, but I gave it a shot (as I do most shows) and was pleasantly surprised at how much I truly did like it. It’s just depressing that more people didn’t find this great show, which has been really finding itself this year. Looking into the real meaning behind Eli’s place in his world: why he’s getting these visions, what they mean, the good and bad he can do with them.

It’s hard to write about this show more without going into the immature rating place in my head. (Though what is this blog for if not free therapy?) But I’m sure I’ll be writing more about Eli in the future as he slowly disappears off of the television horizon to be soon enjoyed and lamented on DVD.


Fringe

This show is thus far my big disappointment of the new TV season. Outside of maybe 2 episodes, it has been painfully generic and dull and more than once, I’ve found myself falling asleep on it.

Its biggest problem: it wastes Lance Reddick. He has nothing to do but listen to Olivia as glance at her disapprovingly. Now and then he’ll have a line or two of exposition, but then he disappears into the ethers (or maybe The Pattern…) Why bother hiring him and Kirk Acevedo (who I have also seen do excellent work on other shows) when they essentially could make their two characters into one? Having seen Reddick be awesome on The Wire and on Lost, I just don’t quite understand what he’s doing on this show.

Another problem: After J.J. Abrams essentially started the careers of Keri Russell, Jennifer Garner and Evangeline Lilly, I was expecting so much more from Anna Torv. Instead I get the same line reading almost every time, the inability to make any facial expressions outside of disbelief, confusion and incredulity, and an incredibly dull character (not her fault, I know) that I would not miss if she suddenly disappeared into The Pattern.

What do I like? I like Joshua Jackson. I like John Noble. I like them together – that’s one thing the show has done very right. I like the 3-D location designators. I like the high production values – everything looks great.

It definitely has potential, and the one really good episode (the one where the parasite attached itself to the traitorous dude’s heart) was what I think the show should be. Unfortunately, it usually isn’t.


The Mentalist

One of the generic procedurals that I watch, The Mentalist isn’t great, but it’s entertaining and I can appreciate that.

I did like it better for the first few weeks, but that’s probably because I have gotten so used to the structure of an episode. You can usually guess the culprit before the first act is over (in the case of last week’s, I guessed about 60 seconds into the ep), but Simon Baker is the real reason to watch, and every episode he definitely keeps me amused.

The other thing I like about The Mentalist: I don’t hate Robin Tunney like I did when she was on Prison Break. She’s still a bit dull, but she works really well with Baker and actually has chemistry with him, which has to be more him than her.

The rest of the crew is ok. The Asian guy. The young girl learning on the job. The guy who’s been on a billion different shows and finally has found a hit (Owain Yeoman). Not great, not bad – the kind of backgrounders you’d expect to find on a show like this.

But Simon Baker is good, so until I tire of his antics, I’ll keep tuning in.