TV
FALL TV EXTRAVAGANZA
BACK IN THE GAME ** (out of ****) Back in the Game isn’t the kind of pilot that makes you furious while you’re watching it, wondering if television will ever again reach the heights of “your day,†whenever that was. It’s hard to be furious, not because it’s any good, but because it does…
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THE CRAZY ONES ** (out of ****) Robin Williams is an easy punching bag. Once the king of the comedy world, a title that never lasts very long, Williams shtick seemed to run its course for everyone on the planet, at the exact same time. Thanks to ballooning alimony bills, my favorite reason…
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THE MICHAEL J. FOX SHOW **1/2 (out of ****) The danger of airing your first two episodes in one night, as opposed to just the pilot, is that we lose that week of focusing on the potential the pilot has. We can’t dream about all of the ways the second episode will improve on the…
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THE GOLDBERGS **1/2 (out of ****) The Goldbergs the show is a lot like The Goldbergs the family, which is not a way of saying that the show is successful. It’s screamy and grating, and fitfully funny, and you don’t mind if it you spend ten minutes with them every once in a while,…
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TROPHY WIFE *** (out of ****) All month long we’ll be discussing Pilotitis, a horrifically contagious diseases that surfaces every year around this time. Symptoms include tired, hack ideas and spoon feeding information down people’s throats. Trophy Wife isn’t a perfect show, but it is able to skip past so much of the terrible…
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THE BLACKLIST **1/2 (out of ****) I made it clear at a pretty young age that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. This excited older people to no end. It wasn’t because they thought I was going to be an especially good writer, or because I would one day…
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HOSTAGES *1/2 (out of ****) My goodness, what a shit show. Hostages is pretty much everything that’s awful about my job, all rolled up into a turd sandwich. Dylan McDermot (who has a lifetime membership to just always get a new TV show why? The Practice? We talking about Practice?) is a hostage negotiator…
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MOM **1/2 (out of ****) In this corner, we have Allison Janney and Anna Faris, two talented comediennes/actresses who routinely elevate whatever they are in. In the other corner, we have Chuck Lorre, an incredibly prolific yet untalented man who hasn’t produced anything even remotely watchable since being a writer on Roseanne (you ready…
Read MorePOPFILTER VS. OUR CHILDHOOD
PopFilter Vs. Our Childhood In which we reminisce about childhood entertainment, then go back and watch it and re-assess. MIKE GRAVAGNO VS DISNEY’S GARGOYLES In my head, Disney’s Gargoyles was a silver lining in the post-OJ Simpson trial world. That event changed my life, because it took away most of my favorite afternoon shows for what…
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SLEEPY HOLLOW **1/2 (out of ****) Sleepy Hollow is really the tale of two pilots. Sometimes it takes a show a couple of episodes to find their footing. Sometimes it’s an entire season. Sleepy Hollow sucks as much as you think it would for exactly 30 minutes, and then decides it’s all out of…
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