Television

Community – Competitive Ecology

Although Community’snarrative continues to be slightly broken by its irreverent moments, those moments remain the saving grace of the show, as showcased in this pretty damn hysterical episode.

What makes a comedy show’s episode a success? For most genres, the success or failure of an episode is determined by criteria such as plot, acting and directing. But in comedy, these things don’t matter nearly as much. Isn’t the success of a comedy measured foremost in the amount of times it makes the audience laugh? True, the quality of humor is perhaps even more subjective than the quality of a plot, but it’s hard to deny thatCommunity continues to be very funny at most levels.

Keith Carradine Heading Back to the Wild West Via Gateway

Keith Carradine, who played “Wild” Bill Hitchcock in HBO’s western drama, Deadwood, is set to return to the wild west. No, I’m not talking about Cowboys and Aliens, although he did also star in that film as Sheriff John Taggart. Starting to see a pattern here?

Parks and Recreation – Born & Raised

We are
three episodes into Parks and Recreation’s fourth season and
though it has yet to produce a real barn burner, the season also
hasn’t put out any complete duds. “Born & Raised” continued
that trend with a story that brought Leslie’s birthplace into
question. Though the episode took a while to really get going, there
were still some great laughs to be had throughout its second half.

The cold
open provided a few humorous moments early on, though they would drop
off after that for awhile. Voice of Homer Simpson, Dan Castellaneta,
was responsible for a few of the opening scene’s great lines, if only
for the mellifluous drawl with which he delivered them. Besides the
comedy, the scene also introduced the driving force behind all of the
episode’s storylines. Leslie’s book about Pawnee was actually a bit
of product placement for the real life companion piece for Parks
and Recreation, but it ended up
causing nothing but trouble for the book’s fictitious author.

Terra Nova – Instinct

Terra Nova followed its good two-part premiere with an even better episode. “Instinct” struck a more personal chord with its villains (pterosaurs fighting for their breeding ground and an old flame hoping to re-conquer Elizabeth Shannon) as well as with its protagonists (teenagers discovering and parents rediscovering love). The relationships that seemed clumsily dealt with in the extended premiere were handled with care in an episode that did not need dinosaurs to make us fear for our characters.

Sometimes, an episode has an identifiable moment that wins the viewer over and after which the writers, and the cast, have to do a pretty bad job to get him or her to reconsider. “Instinct” had such a moment for me right at the beginning with the survival training, especially when Lt. Washington (aka Wash) described how beetle grubs could become a delicious alternative to real food (“If you find yourself low on provision and starving, you won’t be saying ‘ew’ [like Zoe], but [pauses after gobbling a larva] ‘hmmm’.”). After that scene, I was not only taken by the episode, but found myself paying much more attention to Simone Kessell’s Washington.

NBC Cancels Two Series and Picks Two Up For Full Seasons

NBC was the first to set up the
chopping block with their period drama The Playboy Club having
the dubious honor of being the first cancellation of the season. The
low-rated network also gave walking papers to Free Agents,
while giving full season orders to two of their other freshman
comedies, Up All Night and Whitney.

After a poor premiere and a steady
decline in ratings since then, The Playboy Club getting the ax
wasn’t unexpected. NBC’s equally under-performing new drama Prime
Suspect will fill the gap on Mondays until the premiere of Rock
Center with Brian Williams on
October 31. The cancellation of Free Agents
was also inevitable, after for the second week in a row it failed to
surpass a 1.0 rating in the key demo. Reruns of NBC’s surviving
comedy Whitney will air in its place on Wednesdays; which is
where the series will likely end up when 30 Rock returns
midseason.

Haven – Sins of the Fathers

Haven, the series, is a bit like the beautiful shots of Haven, the city, and its surroundings: there is a certain modesty to it, but it can be definitely bewitching. What the series lacks in the way of pace and structural discipline, it makes up for in the performance of its leads and the very distinctive way it draws the viewer in. However, it is still a TV series, so it cannot really shine when it completely throws any one aspect out of the window. Despite significant improvements over the first season, this is what has occasionally mired the show until now and is the reason why “Sins of the Fathers” is not the finale it could have been.

Right after things became interesting with Audrey’s outburst, Dave and Vince had the type of conversations that seem designed to ruin wonderful moments. The beginning of the investigation and the always entertaining Duke turned things around until Nathan’s warning (about Duke) happened, raising its ugly head above the surface of a story that was again getting smoother. Unfortunately for the episode, this was the pattern until the end. Before I get into why that string of carelessly thought out scenes is wrong, let me discuss a couple of them, because they are representative of the series’ issues and because they are also a good taste of what followed in this story where the dead came back to deal with unfinished business.

Fantasy Novel ‘The Magicians’ Gets Adaption at Fox

In the ever growing trend of fairytale
infused dramas, Fox has picked up Lev Grossman’s The Magicians
to be adapted for a series. Deadline was first to report on
the new project that has received a commitment for a script to be
penned by X-Men: First Class and Thor writers, Ashley
Miller and Zack Stentz. The pair also have television experience
having worked on both Fringe and Terminator: The Sarah
Conner Chronicles.

Described as Harry Potter for adults,
the adaption of Grossman’s novel will be a one-hour drama centering
on twenty-somethings who study magic in New York, but also have
access to an enchanted world. Fox will be looking to cash in on the
popularity of the 2009 novel, and it’s sequel, The Magician King,
which recently released in August.