Fringe Renewed, Wonder Woman revealed

Good news for "Fringe" fans. Despite less than stellar numbers on the move to Friday nights, it has been renewed for a fourth season. Maybe, the studio has hopes for weaker opposition next year.
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Unless you're a reality television fan, there is simply not much to watch most days. I find Tuesday to be a deathland other than "Nor Ordinary Family" is often entertaining if badly written but it doesn't look good as the two leads are already working on other pilots. I may end up watching "NCIS" just out of default. Likewise, Wednesday night only has one good show that manages to be both funny and have some heart to it: "Modern Family". I didn't care for the first two episodes, a little too much of reality tv storytelling with the "character" interviews ala "The Office". The solid cast and writing and true comedy arising from the characters and their foibles and cross-interests won me over. The little interviews come across a little more as a bit of Greek Chorus or George Burns breaking the fourth wall than riffing on reality shows. Part of this is the show isn't overbearing in filming so that it looks like a reality tv show and can easily be watched as the sitcom that it truly is. But, the lead-in comedies such as "The Middle" feels like a retread without really offering much to me that I care to try to watch it each week. It's just a step up from leaving the television off. "Mr. Sunshine" which comes on afterwards looks like one of those shows that are bound to appeal to critics but not capture a broad audience. It's wacky and surreal, but not especially witty or endearing. The characters all feel like character types but not real people. Even Matthew Perry seems like he's just playing himself, a watered down Chandler Bing. I find myself just turning the tv off or switching to the omni-present news or the last half of "Criminal Minds". I've seen several episodes of the spin-off "Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior" and I couldn't tell you a single thing about any of the characters, even their names, other than one is a sniper. It's as decently plotted as the other has been in the last season or two, ie not as good or engrossing as the first several seasons as it devolved into going more for shock, but still interesting. It just hasn't taken the time to really develop the characters any. Doesn't help that it shares arguably the least interesting but most flamboyant character from the lead show, the tech guru Penelope. Here, her bright colors and attitude tends to completely overshadow the rest of the cast despite screen time.
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David Kelley ("Ally McBeal", "Harry's Law") is bringing Wonder Woman to the small screen. She'll be played by Adrianne Palicki ("Friday Nights Lights", "Supernatural") and not necessarily a bad choice. Some pics of her in costume have been released and for a superhero translation to film, it's not bad. It's closer to the comics than the Batman and X-Men movies have been and the new versions of Spider-man and Captain America. Or the costumes in "Smallville". It actually looks a bit superheroic. It's way better than the sweat-suit costume Cathy Crosby wore. The only drawback to the costume really is the same for several of the others: there are examples of extremely faithful versions of the costume worn in real life and they worked. As good as the latest Batman movies are, all it takes is to look at "Batman Dead End" to see a faithful adaption of the costume and being perfectly believable and workable. The new Spider-man movie needlessly moves away from everywhere Raimi's movies got the costume right. It wasn't Spider-man's costume fans complained about, it was the Green Goblin's. With Wonder Woman, we've seen Linda Carter easily pull off the costume. Emily Deschanel even wore a more faithful version of the costume on an episode of "Bones" despite not having quite the right curves but still managed to not look ridiculous. Average comic convention has women walking around in faithful versions. So, with the proper attitude in filming, I see no reason that it wouldn't work again. I could even see a tweaking of it with slightly more muted colors, going more for a "Xena" look to it where it looks more like leather and metal. What they chose can work, but I don't see where it's all that more acceptable than the one in comics. It still has many of the same hurdles to overcome as the other one. It's just different in that it covers the legs, something most male viewers don't really mind seeing.


What kills interest in the show really is Kelley's involvement. He has cred for strong women characters, but nothing to suggest a strong action show. Then there's the whole set-up of her as a business woman and looking for love and place to belong. What does that really have to do with Wonder Woman? It makes her sound passive and needy instead of powerful and mysterious. We'd have been better off with Bellisario ("NCIS", "JAG", "Magnum, P.I", "Quantum Leap", "Tales of the Gold Monkey") handling the character. He has under his belt shows with strong women, character and action driven, and often featuring military themes as backdrops. Superhero action combined with NCIS seems just the right combination for Wonder Woman. Oh well, wait and see. "Smallville" didn't seem to be that good of an idea and despite barely exceeding ok on occasion, it has proven to be pretty enduring thanks mostly to a strong and appealing cast.

End of The Cape

Doesn't bode well for The Cape. Not only did it have it's season shortened by several episodes, but it also suffered to have its season, and possibly series, finale aired online only. A couple supporting characters do not show up at all and the hero's son makes only a perfunctory appearance. However, it's a good episode, full of tension and resolving the subplot of the Cape's former cop buddy, Marty Voyt (Dorian Missick), who is in the employ of the master-villain Mr. Fleming aka Chess. Because of evidence that the Cape had uncovered the previous episode linking Fleming's organization ARK to crime, a fall guy is needed and that fall guy is Voyt. The Cape needs the help of Max Malini's Carnival of Crime and the mysterious Orwell to try to protect his Voyt and his family, and Faraday's wife who wants to defend Voyt and uncover evidence that clears her husband's name. It becomes a story of redemption for Voyt, caught between the man he wishes he was and the man he's become through the decisions and compromises he's made along the way. There's considerable tension and it ends where the story began in the first season, along the boxcars of a train.

The return of The Event is not earning any higher numbers. Maybe the networks will learn that what made Lost a success was a little more than being an impenatrable and often highly improbable mystery. I heard the current episodes are better and more linear, but the first couple from last season was just plain bad and boring with a bunch of characters that were little more than character types. There just seemed scores of bad-storytelling, ill-conceived ideas and questions that arose more from the storytelling than intentional to the plot such as why the African-American President is named and portrayed as if he's Hispanic.

So, right now, Monday nights for me is one decent show on at 8 and then a wasteland of nothing until 10 when I have to choose between two actually decent shows. It's enough that I don't feel like I'm missing anything if I just keep the tv off and read a good book.

Monday, Monday

Monday night television is my favorite night of tv. It doesn't have my absolute favorite shows, that'd be Thursday (Big Bang Theory) and Friday (Smallville, Supernatural/Fringe). But, it has the best variety and solid block of shows, from 8-9 a couple of comedies, at 9 an action show, and at 10 a choice between a solid action show and a solid though light-weight mystery.

8pm
I can choose to watch the drama House, and I know that's what my brother is watching. For my wife's sake and my own enjoyment, I choose How I Met Your Mother, a delightful half-hour comedy with one of the more unlikeliest premises. The characters, even as screwed up as they often are, are likable and believable, even in the most unlikeliest of scenarios. The show makes us care about the characters to the point that it can venture into the realms of drama and pathos. Such as this season, the character of Marshall loses his father to a sudden heart-attack. Because you care about the characters, you feel it as a tragedy, even as it explores the humor of relationships between friends and between family members.

To the show's credit, his father's death is not just a one episode plot device. It signals major issues that the character of Marshall has to deal with and by extension, his wife and friends. The episode of the funeral was heart-felt and funny as he must deal with he and his father's last conversation being absolutely mundane and nonsense out of context, forcing the others to deal with the most recent conversations they had with their fathers (and with Barney, the fact he doesn't know his father). But, it's funny as well, as Lily decides to be and do whatever her mother-in-law needs her to be despite their not getting along, Barney and Ted try their best to get Marshall to laugh or even smile again, and Robin, who has been to funerals before, carries a purse with never ending supplies for whatever any of the guests and family members need. Funerals are not normally funny business, and I can only think of two other comedies that have managed to successfully walk that line, the best being the death of Chuckles, the clown on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

But, the show doesn't stop there. We see this as a pivotal point in Marshall's life and his actions in the three episodes that follow are directed by that, from his going home to run away from problems on the pretense that his mother needs him, to working himself to death in trying to reform at least one small part of the company he works for because his dad never saw him become the environmental lawyer he wanted to be, to this week's of him and the gang all getting their hearts checked out.

Yet, the show doesn't become dreary. This week's centering around the heart check-ups, Barney has to wear a heart monitor and the show becomes a flashback within a flashback as he relates the events that explains the odd readings, mainly that he's on a date with a girl that he may or may not actually like and she drops the bomb on him that she wants to get married, settle down and have kids. Something that's in direct opposition to the way he lives his life. It's funny and it serves the double purpose of humanizing his character. His character is so broad, shallow and farcical, it needs episodes that redeem him as a person in the eyes of the views, that we can see why the others are friends of his (something that never comes across as clear with the David Spade character Russell on Rules of Engagement). Otherwise, he runs the risk of becoming simply a caricature of himself.

8:30
I normally watch the above "Rules", an often very funny show that sometimes delivers little nuggets of truth about the nitty-gritty mundane aspects of being in a relationship but doesn't really engage you with the characters or take stylistic challenges in storytelling. It's moved to Thursdays now and a new comedy Mad Love fills that slot. ML is even more generic and less engaging as a comedy. Sarah Chalke is as adorable as ever, but her and Jason Biggs' characters as newly dating, in-love couple is completely by the book and meh. On paper, the more interesting relationship is the one between their best friends who hate each other played by Tyler Labine and Judy Greer. Good on paper, but not on the show as Tyler Labine's fat, slob and slacker character is cliched and annoying to the point that it's no wonder Greer's character doesn't like him. Who would? Their exchange of barbs aren't witty and given with barely perfunctory delivery. Making Labine's character be the narrator is also an interesting hook, but fails because his character is not. It's a show and concept that a writer like Steven Moffat could probably get a lot of mileage out of (and did with similar themes in the original BBC version of Coupling, stay away from the NBC remake which fell completely flat despite working with some of the same scripts). The only saving grace for this show is that the only other thing worth watching is the second half of House.

9 pm
The Cape. Not doing well numbers-wise, so I guess I'm one of the few watching and enjoying this. Opposite is the often well-done Lie To Me which is also suffering. Or, to continue with comedies by watching Two-and-a-Half Men which had long since become a caricature of itself before it began to completely self-destruct due not to Sheen's excessive life-style that showed how unfunny the man-child he plays in real life really is, but due to a feud between him and creator Chuck Lorre that has gone completely public and surreal. Over the last week, we've been bombarded with images of Sheen rattling off sentences with bizarre metaphors and analogies to the point that he has morphed from being simply an aging playboy to being simply deranged, a mind that is perpetually stuck in an intoxicated haze of self-worth and denial of reality.

The Cape is a fun super-hero show that manages to have some fun with the concept, while playing it straight and not mocking the concepts. It's a little hokey with the super villains, or at least the concept of a super villain just needing a hokey name and some kind of visual deformity since there are no actual super powers or magic in the show. On that level, one gets the idea that the creators are stuck in the mindset of writing a "superhero" show, instead of opening up the gates of creativity (and reality) a little bit. One of the great things about superhero comics is that it allows for one to have not just men fighting crime in costumes, but also powers, magic and horror. They came close with the two-parter featuring a villain called the Lich, who through the use of chemicals was creating human zombies under his control (that's Zombies as in voodoo and not based on films of George Romero).

The most recent episode was good up to the end as Vince Faraday, aka the Cape, involves himself in a gang war as Scales decides to expand his base of operations to include the territory where the Carnival of Crime makes their home. It allows the show to address at least somewhat the dichotomy of a group of criminals actually sponsoring and helping a superhero and their fragile relationship. After her experiences with the Lich, Orwell does not seem her usual self and the master villain Peter Fleming/Chess struggles with a dual personality. To help his bid for power, Scales brings in a bomber that no one knows what he looks like and Faraday takes the opportunity to take the man's place in Scales' organization.

Ultimately, it proved to be too much going on for the episode as it just sorta ends with no real resolution to any particular plot thread. It says that he got some key information while Orwell seems to be suffering from a complete breakdown. Maybe dear old dad isn't the only one with mental health issues?

10 pm
Now I have to make a serious choice. I enjoy both Castle and Hawaii 5-0 a lot. The former is a light weight mystery with a little humor, romantic tension and a whole lot of charisma and chemistry among the cast and the characters they play. The latter is a solid action show that really doesn't have much in common with the original other than setting and names, but again the characters and actors seem to have a good chemistry among them. Normally, I choose Castle. I have a little more vested in the show having faithfully followed it for a couple seasons now. At least I have a backup during re-run season.

The last two weeks has been a two-parter, advertised as a two-night event. That implies that it would be on two consecutive nights, but it's not the case. A nice bonus is the guest-star is Adrian Pasdar, the flying man of Heroes and my own personal pick to play Lamont Cranston in a Shadow movie. Pasdar plays a driven federal agent brought in to direct a search for a bomb and investigation of a terrorist plot. The stakes are definitely higher for this case and a couple of times, it looks like it could easily have deadly ramifications for Beckett and Castle. It's a good twist on the formula of the show, taking it a little bit out of its normal comfort zones. Sadly, almost completely absent are scenes with Castle and his mother and daughter. Usually, the relationship with them is thematic to the episode and case at hand. Here, their presence is felt more through what it means for Castle as a father and someone with inside knowledge of a terrorist plot. We see his struggle and humanity, but it doesn't really give them much to do.

The two-parter is enough of a departure from the usual formula, it almost feels like it could be testing the waters for a spin-off with Adrian Pasdar's character. Much as Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior was first tested out by appearing in the regular Criminal Minds. The episode was so far off from its normal structure and rhythm and so much emphasis given Forest Whitaker's character and crew, it felt like the try-out episode it was and was an inferior episode in an unremarkable season. The difference here is that Pasdar's character never totally takes over the show. He's a foil for Beckett and Castle and it's the fact that he's more fully developed and given more substance and depth than most characters intended for a one-time appearance are given.

11pm
Go to Wal-Mart to pick up some 9v batteries as the smoke detector has been beeping intermittently all night.