FALL TV EXTRAVAGANZA!!!

 

NEW GIRL

2.5 STARS (OUT OF 4)

I’ve never been one to instantly fall for what the A.V. Club calls the “manic pixie dream girl”, despite everyone else I know being mesmerized by them, and calling me homophobic slurs for not. In New Girl, we get the queen of the MPDGs, Zooey Deschanel, taking the premise of manic and pixie to a whole new level. Her character, Jess Day, is very emotional, wears her heart on her sleeve, and sings everything. Ev. Er. Eee. Thing. She is the overwrought center of a group of new roommates, the other three being dudes who are just as two dimensional: the douchey bro, the angry black guy, and the sensitive crybaby. Watching the four of them futz around with who their characters are supposed to be is pretty painful, not just because the characters are so far from polished, but because who the characters that they are eventually shooting for will be awful, annoying, and awfully annoying, when and if they ever get to that next level. The only thing that gives me hope for this show, much like the only thing that gives me hope for life, is Parks and Rec, and more specifically Amy Poehler’s Leslie Knope. It may be hard to remember now, but Poehler really struggled with Knope in the first season or so. The cast of New Girl would be well-served to go back and watch that transition. Fake people can sometimes be good for laughs, but those aren’t the laughs you want. Those laughs aren’t earned. Flesh them shits out, New Girl cast, and you might make it to halfway decent. Based just on this episode though, I can’t really recommend it.

 

 

UNFORGETTABLE

2 STARS (OUT OF 4)

 

HOUR LONG DRAMA, EACH EPISODE ONE AND DONE, EACH EPISODE SOLVES A CRIME. THIS SHOW IS DIFFERENT BECAUSE OF “X”.

 

X = Carrie Wells has a really good memory.

 

Poppy Montogomery, apparently of Without a Trace fame, is Carrie Wells. She has an affliction that only six or seven people in the country suffer from, according to her ex-boyfriend/detective/partner Dylan Walsh (Nip/Tuck): she can’t forget shit. Anything. Ever. Even stuff that she doesn’t seem to be paying attention to when it’s going on. Days, weeks, even years later, she can recreate the scene in her head, and then remember every detail. She uses that power, along with the ability to coincidentally be in the right place at the right time, to solve crimes. It’s a cool enough premise, I guess, if we’re drunk in a bar and thinking up realistic superpowers to propel a procedural cop show. But the premise wears thin in THE VERY FIRST EPISODE. I can’t imagine it sustaining an entire season. Luckily I’ll never have to find out.

 

TOMORROW: REVENGE!!!

 

-Ryan Haley