BuzzFeed: "Why Danish Political Drama Borgen Is Everything"

The Scandinavian drama, from creator Adam Price, is a dazzling exploration of the intersection between politics and the media that everyone should be watching. The television masterpiece returns to American screens — on KCET and LinkTV — on Oct. 4 for its third (and likely final) season. Minor spoilers ahead.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Why Danish Political Drama Borgen Is Everything," in which I review the third (and likely final) season of Danish political drama Borgen, which returns to the U.S. on October 4. (After writing about the Nordic Noir phenomenon last June, I named the show the best show of 2012 when I was at The Daily Beast and I stand by that metric. This is unlike anything on television.)

I’ve been passionately shouting at the top of my lungs about Danish political drama Borgen for the last year and a half. The groundbreaking and riveting show — which returns for a third season next month in the U.S. on LinkTV (and in Los Angeles on former PBS station KCET) and online — feels as if the best parts of The West Wing and The Newsroom were put in a blender and puréed… before being transformed into a gorgeously stylized haute cuisine dish. It is a staggering work of sophisticated beauty and dazzling intelligence.

Created by Adam Price, the superlative Borgen is often grouped together with its Nordic Noir kin — Forbrydelsen, which went on to be remade by AMC into The Killing, and Broen, which was adapted by FX as The Bridge — but the show doesn’t fit into the dark, dreary, and often depressing Nordic Noir category. For one thing, Borgen represents a rare streak of optimism and hope that isn’t typically seen in Scandinavian drama, which tends to revel in its almost all-consuming nihilism and darkness.

Borgen (which is often translated as “Government,” but actually means “The Castle,” a nickname for Christiansborg Palace, the seat of Parliament, the office of the prime minister, and the Danish supreme court) is gut-wrenching in its own way. The first two seasons of the show followed the ebb and flow of Denmark’s fictional first female prime minister, Birgitte Nyborg (Sidse Babett Knudsen). She’s an unlikely leader: a political moderate who ended up elected to the highest office of the country thanks to a quirk of Danish coalition government, and who struggled to balance her professional and personal lives. Her journey — attempting to improve Denmark while fighting off opposition from the left and right — was juxtaposed against that of gifted journalist Katrine Fønsmark (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen), a television news anchor with whom Birgitte occasionally crossed paths. One hallmark of Nordic television is its use of realistically rendered female characters and Birgitte and Katrine are no exception: Ambitious, flawed, and driven, they are spiritual kinsmen even while their work often puts them at cross-purposes. Ricocheting between print, online, and television media, Katrine attempted to find equilibrium in her own life, even as Birgitte’s fell apart in the wake of her national responsibilities: As Birgitte’s marriage imploded, her children’s lives became speculation for the tabloid press, embodied by the insidious presence of Michael Laugesen (Peter Mygind), the editor-in-chief of tawdry rag Expres and its online companion site.

Continue reading at BuzzFeed...

The Daily Beast: "Mockingbird Lane: NBC’s Munsters Remake Offers Eerie Charms"

The Munsters return from the dead. I review the spooky, dark reworking of the TV classic, which is airing tonight, from the brains behind Pushing Daisies and The Usual Suspects.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Mockingbird Lane: NBC’s Munsters Remake Offers Eerie Charms," in which I review the backdoor pilot for NBC's Mockingbird Lane, a remake of classic sitcom The Munsters from Pushing Daisies creator Bryan Fuller, which airs tonight.

The Munsters are back from the dead, though possibly for just one night.

The supernatural clan was the subject of the 1964–1966 sitcom (and its syndicated sequel, The Munsters Today, which ran from 1988–1991), notable for a few things: the show aired at the same time as that other spooky family sitcom, The Addams Family; the original series is still a cultural touchstone despite only lasting 70 episodes; and the show juxtaposed the supernatural—embodied by iconic characters from Universal’s library of horror titles—with the mundane, giving the audience ghouls attempting to assimilate into a world that feared and misunderstood them, even as they recapitulated the status quo of sitcom trappings.

Made up of father-and-daughter vampires, a blue-collar Frankenstein monster, a prepubescent werewolf, and their seemingly normal pink-skinned family relation, the Munsters return in Mockingbird Lane, which will air its pilot episode tonight at 8 p.m. on NBC.

Like the characters themselves, things are complicated: NBC is said to have passed on Mockingbird Lane but could still be deliberating about the fate of the potential series, using tonight’s episode as an attempt to gauge audience interest. Which means that tonight’s broadcast could be either a one-off special or a sneak peek, depending on how the ratings stack up.

Mockingbird Lane owes more to both the visual style and banter of the short-lived ABC drama Pushing Daisies—also from creator Bryan Fuller—than its previous television incarnations. With Mockingbird Lane, Fuller infuses the struggles of the titular monsters with existential angst, setting their plights—whether it be self-acceptance, fitting in, finding love and happiness, or sating an incessant bloodlust—against a gorgeously hyper-real backdrop. The art direction on the pilot is alone worth the price of admission, a fusion of computer-generated images, painstakingly designed sets, and a sense of wonder and whimsy.

Continue reading at The Daily Beast...

The Daily Beast: "Review: Season 2 of Homeland and Season 4 of The Good Wife"

Set your DVRs! I review Season Two of Showtime’s Homeland and Season Four of CBS’s The Good Wife, finding common ground in their deft and subtle explorations of identity.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "TV's Kick-Ass Women Return," in which I review Season Two of Homeland and Season Four of The Good Wife, tracing the way that both shows explore their characters' shifting identities.

In the season opener of Homeland, which airs on Sunday, Claire Danes’s Carrie Mathison smiles.

If you’ve been watching Showtime’s Homeland, the newly crowned winner of the Emmy Award for Best Drama, this seems entirely contrary to her character, a bipolar and deeply disgraced CIA officer who underwent electroconvulsive therapy in the first season finale. Carrie isn’t prone to happiness: she has been misunderstood, mocked, and kicked out of the intelligence community. For all of that, Carrie was also right that Sergeant Nicholas Brody (Emmy Award winner Damian Lewis), a former prisoner of war, is not what he appears to be.

Danes—who also won an Emmy on Sunday—inhabits Carrie with a crippling onus placed on her, one that has only widened the cracks in her sanity. Her prescience and her instincts go unheeded, and the damage that she causes threatens to consume her altogether.

CBS’s The Good Wife, also returning on Sunday evening, will deal with its own identity crises this season. On the surface, these two shows don’t seem to share many similarities. One is a tense terrorism thriller on premium cable, the other a contemplative legal drama that explores technology, politics, marriage, and the law with a subtlety that make it a paragon among television dramas. Both, however, tackle issues of self-identification with insight and perspicacity, and this is felt even more keenly in Homeland’s second season and The Good Wife’s fourth.

Within The Good Wife, Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) has played the dutiful wife and the aggrieved spouse with equal vigor, a friction that cuts to the core of The Good Wife. What does it mean to be good? And how does that reflect our own needs and desires outside that of familial responsibility? Having lost everything after the betrayal of her philandering husband, Peter (Chris Noth), Alicia had to, out of necessity, redefine herself through her work, returning to a profession that she had left. Her discovery that she excelled in the field is the first in a series of transformations for the character.

Continue read at The Daily Beast...

The Daily Beast: "Fall TV Preview: Where We Left Off"

Can’t remember how Revenge, Homeland, The Good Wife, or Dexter ended? Refresh your collective memory about the cliffhangers for 27 returning shows—and previews of what’s to come.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Fall TV Preview: Where We Left Off," in which Maria Elena Fernandez and I refresh your memory about how 27 shows--from Revenge and Homeland to The Good Wife and Boardwalk Empire--ended last season... and offer a glimpse about what's to come.

Carrie remembered stuff! Leslie was elected! Sheldon took Amy’s hand! Gloria is pregnant! Nucky whacked Jimmy! Victoria Grayson’s plane blew up! Dexter…oh, Dexter!

The fall TV season is officially here, which means we can all breathe a sigh of relief and pull ourselves up from the cliff-hanging precipice. Sure, there’s a bunch of new TV shows across the dial champing at the bit for your attention. But we want to focus on your returning old favorites.

What’s next on Scandal—will we find out who Quinn is? Will Emily track down her mother on Revenge? How will Captain Cragen deal with that dead hooker in his bed on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit? And just what will the gang at Greendale get up to on Community without Dan Harmon at the helm?

To refresh your memory after the long, hot summer, The Daily Beast has a guide to the good and bad times of last season and a peek into what’s coming next this fall.

Parenthood (NBC; Tuesdays at 10 p.m.; returns Sept. 11)

Where We Left Off: You’ll be forgiven for not remembering, since Parenthood wrapped its season way back in February. Crosby (Dax Shepard) and Jasmine (Joy Bryant) finally tied the knot; Adam (Peter Krause) and Crosby decided to keep the Luncheonette open; Mark (Jason Ritter) proposed to Sarah (Lauren Graham), even though the two were at odds about whether they wanted to have children. Elsewhere, after the heartbreak of not getting the baby they meant to adopt, Julia (Erika Christensen) and Joel (Sam Jaeger) instead adopted a five-year-old Latino boy, Victor (Xolo Mariduena).

Where We Pick Up: The entire Braverman clan prepares for the departure of Haddie (Sarah Ramos), who is heading off to Cornell. Sarah and Mark are happily engaged, and Sarah stumbles onto a job working for a curmudgeonly photographer (Ray Romano). Amber (Mae Whitman) is now working with her uncles at the Luncheonette, while Drew (Miles Heizer), now a high school senior, is ecstatic about the return of Amy (Skyler Day) from camp, but the course of (young) love never did run smooth. Kristina (Monica Potter) and Adam consider getting a dog for Max (Max Burkholder), while one of the Bravermans faces a—SPOILER ALERT—potential medical crisis. Prepare to cry. A lot.

Continue reading at The Daily Beast...

The Daily Beast: "Fall TV 2012 Preview: 7 Shows to Watch, 7 Shows to Skip"

The fall television season is here! But which shows should you be watching and which should you skip? I'm glad you asked.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Fall TV 2012 Preview: 7 Shows to Watch, 7 Shows to Skip," in which I offer my take on the upcoming fall season, with seven shows you should be watching (from ABC's Nashville to PBS' Call the Midwife) and those you should be snubbing (Partners, The Neighbors).

The fall television season is once again upon us, and overall the results are pretty depressing: there’s a decided lack of originality to much of the broadcast networks’ new offerings, as if they were somehow injured by the lack of interest in last year’s riskier programs.

In fact, there is a whole lot of formulaic fare coming to your televisions, and a ton of new (mostly awful) comedies this year. But fret not: it’s not all doom and gloom, as there are at least a few promising new shows on the horizon, from the Connie Britton-led country music drama Nashville to the sweet charms of offbeat comedy Ben & Kate.

Once again, the broadcasters have opted to hold back many of the more interesting new shows until midseason, which means we’ll have to wait until January for the launch of Kevin Williamson’s serial killer thriller The Following against James Purefoy in a murderous game, and Bryan Fuller’s television adaptation of Hannibal, which finds a young FBI agent (Hugh Dancy) meeting the cannibalistic psychopath Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) for the first time. Which isn’t to say that midseason is entirely promising either: the winter will also find ABC offering us the truly terrible Dane Cook comedy (and I use that word loosely), Next Caller.

In the meantime, however, while we’re waiting for the rise of the serial killers on the broadcast nets, here’s a look at the best and worst of the new fall television season.

Continue reading at The Daily Beast...

An Indelible Mark: A Review of Season Four of Fox's Fringe

Try as you might, there are some marks that can never be scrubbed out entirely. There are some people who leave an indelible impression on our souls which remains long after they've gone, an afterimage burned onto our retinas, an echo of a cry for help, a sigh, a plaintive wail, or a whispered declaration of love.

Within the world of Fringe, Peter Bishop no longer exists. We saw him blink out of existence at the end of the third season finale, flickering before our eyes as two universes forgot all about him. Nature, of course, abhors a vacuum, so time and space rush to fill the void left behind when an item is plucked out of the timestream.

What does all of this have to do with Season Four of Fringe? I'm glad you asked. (PLEASE DO NOT REPRODUCE THIS REVIEW IN FULL ON ANY WEBSITES, BLOGS, MESSAGE BOARDS, OR SIMILAR.) The season opener ("Neither Here Nor There") contains a rather ordinary procedural plot, but it also reintroduces us to the two universes, and to changes that have occurred as a result of Peter's non-existence. Some of these changes are slight, and some are rather large. The dead walk again as the living, memories are altered, personalities shifted as a result of Peter not being in the mix since the series began.

Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) is colder, more distance, less prone to smiling, and still grieving over the boyfriend she lost in the first Fringe case in the pilot. Walter Bishop (John Noble) is emotionally and psychologically untethered, lacking a connection that can anchor his fractured mind; he's now a virtual recluse, a man scared of his own shadow who can't leave the lab, much less venture out into the world. (Peter did more than take Walter out of St. Clare's; he gave Walter a purpose and acted as a life preserver in more ways than one, allowing Walter to explore the outside world anew.) Astrid (Jasika Nicole) is now in the field alongside Olivia, not forced to serve as Walter's primary caregiver and nursemaid in the lab setting. (Look for a particularly hilarious anatomical reference in the first episode back.)

And then there's Lincoln Lee (Seth Gabel).

Lincoln is still the nerdy FBI agent that we met previously on this side of the universal divide, but he doesn't remember the team nor their previous interaction. When a bizarre Fringe investigation drags him into their world, he acts as the audience's introduction (or, for veterans, reintroduction) to the backstory and thrust of the series. The case itself, as I suggested before, feels a bit been-there-done-that within the immense possibility of the show, connecting to an earlier conceit within the series and taking it into a new direction. (Yes, I'm being deliberately vague here.)

But it's the second episode of the season ("One Night in October") that brilliantly showcases what Fringe is capable of: emotionally resonant stories with sci-fi trappings that are intensely character-driven explorations of the human heart. This is very much the case with the largely Over There-set installment which finds the Fringe Division attempting to entrap a vicious serial killer (John Pyper-Ferguson, in a fantastic and gripping dual role) whose methods for spreading death are rather unique, yet also connect to the wider philosophical issues at play here. Are we the sum of our experiences? Do our choices define us? Can we remember when those memories are cruelly ripped away from us?

Peter Bishop does not exist.

We know this to be true, just as we know that the Observers feel that he has served his purpose and the timeline has been corrected. Yet, there is no Fringe without the younger Bishop, and Peter lingers in the, well, fringes beween here and not-here. But his interaction with the makeshift family that comprises the team had long-lasting ramifications for all of them. If they can't remember him, if he never truly existed, how have their lives changed? And why do all of them feel an emptiness where there shouldn't be one? There's a Peter-sized hole in the world, and no amount of gumdrops or creepy cases will change that, even if Walter and the others can't recall just why they feel quite so sad.

What follows in "One Day in October" is a beautiful exploration of memory, loss, choices, and divergent paths in the woods, one that informs not only the case at hand (an intensely creepy and profoundly unsettling one) but also the characters of Olivia and Walter, and their dark counterparts. Olivia and Fauxlivia have an intriguing moment of exchange that reveals just how much the universe has changed without Peter in it... and all of the actors do a phenomenal job creating new iterations of the characters we've come to know and love thus far.

Watch Torv's body language as Fauxlivia, slouched and loose, the timbre of her voice altered, and then see how rigid and unbending she is as Olivia. Noble does a staggering job (how has this man not been nominated for an Emmy already?) as the even more broken Walter Bishop, bringing a scared petulance to his routine, a terror that his fragile grasp on reality is slipping away further still. (There's also a hell of an homage to a certain 1980s commercial that is quite clever.) Gabel is great as the two versions of Lincoln; one sheltered and naive, the other headstrong and edgy. And it's great to see Nicole's Astrid in the field for a change; for far too long, she's been stuck in the lab. (I am curious to see just what happened to Blair Brown's Nina, but she's not in either episode, sadly.)

The installment also shows the uneasy alliance between Over Here and Over There, and how this dynamic will play out throughout the season. An opportunity for cooperation presents its own dangers. To catch a thief, it often takes a thief, it's said. And to catch a killer, it might require the same. Or at the very least, the killer's dimensional twin, who is a mild-mannered psychology professor. Do they share the same dark impulses? Why did their lives go in such opposite trajectories? And what will their crossing paths do to one another?

All in all, it's a fantastic start to the season for Fringe, in particular that second episode, which utilizes a real alchemy which which to test our characters in unexpected and tantalizing ways. While Peter Bishop may not exist (at least not in the sense that we've come to understand thus far), his presence is felt in intriguing and powerful ways. And so too is this season's first few episodes, which will linger with you well beyond the closing credits.



Season Four of Fringe launches this Friday evening at 9 pm ET/PT on Fox.

The Daily Beast: "TV to Watch (and Skip) This Fall"

The fall television season is now upon us, and the offerings seem pretty underwhelming for the most part.

From must-watch entries like A Gifted Man, Revenge, Homeland, and Pan Am to the better-forgotten Terra Nova, I Hate My Teenage Daughter, Man Up!, and Grimm, I break down which new shows you should be watching this fall and which will have you running from the room, in my latest feature at The Daily Beast, "TV to Watch (and Skip) This Fall."

What will you be watching this fall? And what are you skipping altogether? Head to the comments section to discuss.

The Daily Beast: "The Fall TV Season Begins!"

Time to head back to the couch, America. The fall TV season is here and all of your favorite shows—from The Walking Dead and The Good Wife to Dexter and Boardwalk Empire—and a slew of new ones are soon heading to a TV set near you. Will you find Ringer to be the second coming of Sarah Michelle Gellar… or is it the second coming of Silk Stalkings? Time will tell, but at least your TV favorites are back with brand new seasons, and lots of plot twists.

To refresh your memory after the long summer, over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled "The Fall TV Season Begins!," in which Maria Elena Fernandez and I round up a guide to the good and bad times of last season--or in this case, 23 cliffhangers--and offer a peek into what’s coming next this fall.

Talk Back: The Series Premiere of AMC's The Walking Dead

Here's to hoping you did more on Halloween than just go trick-or-treating.

Last night marked the series premiere of AMC's new horror series The Walking Dead. While you already read my advance review of the first three episodes here, now that TWD has premiered, I'm curious to know just what you thought about the zombie apocalypse drama.

Were you put off by the gore and violence? Or was it just the right amount of muck and mayhem for you? Did you believe British actor Andrew Lincoln as a Southern cop? Were you on the edge of your seat the entire time? Watch through clenched fingers? Unable to look away? Did the pilot episode linger with you the rest of the evening?

Also, were you struck by similarities to both 28 Days Later and Survivors? Did you feel it advanced zombie mythology or, er, regurgitated it?

And, most importantly, will you tune in again to The Walking Dead next week?

Talk back here.

Next week on The Walking Dead ("Guts"), Rick unknowingly causes a group of survivors to be trapped by walkers; as the group dynamic devolves from accusations to violence, Rick must confront an enemy far more dangerous than the undead.

Death Goes Walking: An Advance Review of AMC's The Walking Dead

Zombies represent a real nexus of fear for me, something approaching an all-out phobia.

Perhaps it has to do with the fact that zombies--unlike, say, other horror-based characters like vampires or werewolves--are brought about by something uncontrollable like a virus. They become a faceless mob, hell-bent on feasting on human flesh, transmitting the virus as it takes over the world. Unlike vampires (whose hunger is based upon something entirely different and inimical), zombies have no intellect. Rather they represent something alien, chaotic, and unstoppable, a walking virus in rags and bones that doesn't realize that it has shed its last vestiges of humanity.

One of the most eagerly anticipated new series this fall is AMC's The Walking Dead, a horror drama based on the ongoing comic book series by Robert Kirkman that's executive produced by Frank Darabont and Gale Anne Hurd. The six-episode first season launches on Sunday, bringing a horror series to basic cable fittingly on Halloween night.

In the hands of Darabont and his team, that central notion of humanity is explored through the nightmare situation that unfolds. What makes us essentially human? If we become monsters in the name of survival, do we lose that inherent humanity? How does one live when surrounded with so much death? Is there any possibility of happiness to be wrung out of this new hell? What happens when we're alive but dead inside?

The answers to those very questions are at the heart of this gripping, ultra-violent series, which follows the survivors of a full-on zombie apocalypse. Whether they're shooting or beheading zombies, those ragtag humans remaining are holding on dearly for survival and the series explores the unbreakable nature of the human spirit. Simple pleasures--a hot shower, a fast car, the sight of a loved one--take on monumental weight in the face of such horrific adversity.

British actor Andrew Lincoln (This Life, Love Actually) stars as Officer Rick Grimes, a local deputy sheriff who is in a coma at the time of the zombie uprising and awakens in a deserted hospital to a world that's very different than the one he left behind, a dark mirror image of where the familiar and comforting have turned topsy-turvy. (The comparisons to 28 Days Later are inevitable.) A vase of fresh flowers is long dead, its petals crushed and dried. A nurse's station becomes an ominous place, the creaking doors, chained and padlocked, containing the dead who continue to walk.

Rick provides a natural entry point to the series for the viewer, his disorientation ours as he attempts to find his bearings in these new circumstances. Where are his wife and son? What has happened to the world while he was sleeping? His journey will take him back to their house and ultimately out into the world, on a mad quest to reunite his family.

But this is a horror drama, after all, and the stakes are high, as is the mounting body count. Rick's journey towards Atlanta becomes a path of destruction and the pilot episode ("Days Gone Bye") is one of the most tension-ridden episodes of television you'll ever see, a white-knuckle thrill-ride that had me breathless with anticipation and dread. The ominous tone and foreboding atmosphere is ably assisted by cinematic-level visuals, sweeping shots of emptiness that signal the isolation and fear gripping Rick while rendering the swarms of zombies, their teeth and nails and rotting flesh, all the more terrifying.

As I mentioned earlier, I have a real fear of zombies that's almost paralyzing in its severity, but I couldn't help but fall under the spell of The Walking Dead's opening salvo. The plot is arranged in such a way that it becomes impossible to look away, dragging you along with its breakneck pacing and overwhelming horror. Its more philosophical questions remind of the short-lived British television drama Survivors, which also explored the ways in which we hold onto--or discard--our humanity in the face of cataclysmic change. The empty streets of Atlanta, however, hold nothing but death at the hands of the savage mob, just as in Survivors it contained a viral death warrant.

I will say that I was slightly let down by the series' second episode ("Guts"), which pushed it into far more prototypical horror territory, negating some of the moral importance of the pilot episode. Rather than continue to mine those themes, the episode focuses much more heavily on the logistics and terror aspect of the zombies as Rick finds himself in an impossible situation and then goes from the frying pan into the fire. (Lest I spoil plot particulars, I'm being intentionally vague here.) Still intense, but the violence begins to grate rather than engage after a while.

Additionally, the dialogue in the second installment felt particularly stilted in this episode and unrealistic and certain characters--again, I won't say who--behaved in manners that seemed to shout out that they had never seen Scream or any other horror movie and didn't know the "rules." (Stupid behavior, after all, gets you killed.) Rather than feel panic for these individuals, I actually found myself feeling that it would be justified for them to get eaten after behaving so idiotically. (Which is a bit of a problem in a series about survival and humanity.)

Fortunately, the third episode ("Tell It to the Frogs") put the series back on track in my opinion, better balancing the horror and dread with humanity and hope, zombies with matters of the heart and soul. It also delves into the makeshift community established by the survivors of the zombie storm, a place where members attempt to recreate society anew with rules, chores, regulations, and lookout duty. It's a place where a string of tin cans becomes an early warning system, where clothes are washed by hand, and the simple pleasure of fishing for frogs becomes a wish fulfillment fantasy.

The Walking Dead's cast is top-notch. Lincoln simmers with intensity, his honor and duty as affixed to him as his deputy sheriff's uniform. (I can't get one particular scene, in which he solemnly apologizes to a female zombie before ending her, out of my mind.) Jon Bernthal, who plays Rick's partner Shane, exudes a hard sadness. Former Prison Break star Sarah Wayne Callies plays Rick's wife Lori, a woman who is determined to keep her son Carl (Chandler Riggs) safe. Look for Steven Yeun to break out as Glenn, whose irrepressible nature is at odds with the horror witnessed around him. Michael Rooker and Norman Reedus are terrifically terrifying as redneck brothers Merle and Daryl Dixon.

I'm intrigued to see just where The Walking Dead is going and how long it can sustain its tension and horror in the long run. But despite some bumps in the road (particularly, again, in that second episode), even this zombie-phobe is along for the ride. Though I might just be watching with my hands half-over my eyes.



The Walking Dead premieres Sunday evening at 10 pm ET/PT on AMC.

Talk Back: Sherlock's "A Study in Pink"

Now that Sherlock has premiered Stateside on Masterpiece Mystery, I'm curious to know what you thought of the modern-day version of Sherlock Holmes, from creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss.

I reviewed the first three episodes of Sherlock here, and spoke with Moffat, Gatiss, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Martin Freeman in a feature over here at The Daily Beast.

But now that the series premiere--"A Study in Pink" (so clearly an allusion to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "A Study in Scarlet")--has aired last night, I want to hear what you thought of the mystery series.

What did you think of the partnership of Cumberbatch's Holmes and Freeman's John Watson? Did you like the way that Mssrs Moffat and Gatiss updated elements of both characters and included such technological advances such as iPhones, text messaging, and blogging? Did you love the way that director Paul McGuigan visually translated these elements to the screen with thought bubbles and the like?

What did you make of Gatiss' M? Or Rupert Graves' Lestrade? And of the mystery itself this week, that woman in pink, her coat, and that missing suitcase? And of the way that Watson came to Holmes' rescue?

And, most importantly, will you tune in again next week?

Talk back here.

Next week on Sherlock ("The Blind Banker"), Sherlock and Watson work on deciphering the deadly symbols that are covering the walls all around London and killing everyone who sees them within hours before any further victim succumbs to the mysterious Black Lotus.

Culture Clash: Brief Thoughts on IFC's The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret

I really wanted to like IFC's David Cross-led comedy The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, a co-production with Channel 4's More4 in the UK.

After all, the series was created by Cross and Shaun Pye (Extras) and stars Cross, Will Arnett, The Inbetweeners's Blake Harrison, and Sharon Horgan (Pulling). So I should really love it as I would seem to be the target audience for such a dark and depraved comedy of errors set against a backdrop of cultural differences between Americans and Brits.

But try though I might, there's something entirely off about Todd Margaret, at least in the three episodes that were submitted to the press for review. I couldn't shake off the feeling that this wasn't so much the story of an American adrift in England but rather an effort to smash together US and UK comedy styles. It doesn't quite gel, however. The effect feels a bit like a traditional US sitcom and a quirky UK one at the same time but also like neither.

Which isn't to say that there aren't a few laughs, because there are a few chuckles to be had here now and then.

Cross' titular character, salesman Todd Margaret, finds himself stranded abroad in an unfamiliar country when his new boss (Arnett) sends him to Blighty to hawk unsafe energy drinks to a new market. Upon arriving, this sad sack manages to blisteringly burn his hand, meet adorable cafe owner Alice (Horgan), have his luggage blown up, and then wet himself after his manipulative assistant Dave (Harrison) convinces him to drink several Thunder Muscle drinks. After which he wets himself and causes significant damage to the cafe.

The subsequent episodes--all of which begin with a courtroom scene in which a litany of charges against Todd are being read--continues the same themes as Todd tries to blend in (terribly), is played a fool by Dave again and again, and attempts to woo Alice, all while pretending (A) to be a local lad from Leeds, (B) have a dead father, and (C) know what he's doing at all.

The over-the-top situations that follow attempt to approximate some element of satire or farce but Todd Margaret is such a sad sack, so horrifically ill-at-ease with everyone around him (and himself), and so utterly clueless, that the air is taken out of the sails more than a little bit.

In other words, what this flabby comedy needs is some muscle.

The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret begins tonight at 10 pm ET/PT on IFC.

Talk Back: What Did You Think of the Series Premiere of ABC's No Ordinary Family?

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's... Michael Chiklis jumping over a building.

Now that ABC has launched its family-friendly superhero drama No Ordinary Family, I'm curious to hear what you thought about the Greg Berlanti/Jon Harmon Feldman-created pilot episode.

I was very frank about my own feelings about the pilot, which I've now seen no less than three different versions of since it was picked up to series in May. But now that the premiere has aired, I want to hear what you thought about the episode in question.

Did you enjoy the pilot? Were you bothered at all by the tonal inconsistencies? What did you make of the various coincidences that sprung up throughout the pilot, from the appearance of other super-powered types to that final reveal at the very end? What did you think about the fact that their powers were all connected to their internal struggles and did you find that to be on the nose at all?

And, most importantly, will you tune in again next week?

Talk back here.

Next week on No Ordinary Family ("No Ordinary Marriage"), Jim and Stephanie keep their powers under wraps, but it doesn't mean their abilities are dormant as Jim hunts for bank robbers and Stephanie goes back to work.

ABC's No Ordinary Family is Painfully Ordinary

ABC's superhero dramedy No Ordinary Family might be all the more frustrating because it has the potential to be something fun and irreverent, but instead is tonally inconsistent and plays too heavily with the sentimental and saccharine. To borrow some superhero parlance, rather than leaping tall buildings in a single bound, it thuds to earth with a sonic boom.

Creators Greg Berlanti and Jon Harmon Feldman want to have it both ways: he wants a superhero spectacle that borrows liberally from the success and charm of Pixar's The Incredibles but he also wants to tackle familial issues as well. When the Powells crash their plane into a remote section of the Amazon, they're granted extraordinary powers that separate them from mere mortals. Which would be enough of a suspension of disbelief but the powers they receive just happen to coincide with their particular cross to bear in life.

Father and husband Jim (Michael Chiklis), a police sketch artist by trade, has lost his spark and masculine edge: he's granted super-strength and nigh invulnerability, a bald-headed Hulk who can leap great distances. His wife, Stephanie (Julie Benz) is a harried scientist who is pulled in too many directions at once: she's gifted with super-speed! Kay Panabaker's Daphne can't understand her boyfriend or boys in general; she's the typical closed-off teenage girl, so of course she receives telepathy! And son JJ (Jimmy Bennett) is academically unmotivated, so he becomes a super-genius!

It's all a bit too neat and tidy as the Powells receive the very things that enable them to become better people, as Jim begins to moonlight as a steel-skinned vigilante, thanks to some assistance from his BFF George St. Cloud (Romany Malco); Stephanie is able to speed down a freeway and make a meeting on time. Daphne learns the truth about her boyfriend and JJ finally shines in the classroom.

But by solving their interior conflicts, the deus ex machina doesn't leave the series much room to grow either. It's also a bit head-scratching that the Powells would receive their newfound powers by landing in a remote section of the Amazon River and then return home to cross paths with other super-powered personae. It's a bit too coincidental and a final act reveal does nothing to ameliorate the strain of incredulity. Despite its efforts not to be Heroes 2.0, that's exactly what it began to feel like by the end of the hour, albeit a Heroes that focuses on more on hearth and home rather than, um, Sylar.

And, as mentioned earlier, there's a odd tonal inconsistency to the proceedings. In the pilot, the show tries to be cutesy, scary, and cozy in rapid-fire succession. While it wears its family entertainment badge of honor on its sleeve, it doesn't quite jibe with some of the violence that Jim encounters when he comes face to face with--SPOILER!--a teleporting thief with a penchant for firearms.

While No Ordinary Family could develop into a family-centric guilty pleasure in the 8 pm timeslot, it has a hell of a long road to reach that aim. Personally, I'd rather pop in my DVD of The Incredibles while they attempt to get there.

No Ordinary Family launches tonight at 8 pm ET/PT on ABC.

Memory Lives On Forever: An Advance Review of the Third Season Premiere of Fringe

When we last saw Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv), she had gotten left behind in the alternate universe while her place with her friends was co-opted by her dark-haired doppelganger and the extraordinary second season of FOX's Fringe ended with our Olivia a prisoner of the Department of Defense.

Season Three of Fringe begins not with one opener, but with two, as "Olivia" and next week's "The Box" pick up the pieces of where we left off, offering not so much a window into the lives of the Fringe Division members, but two distinct windows into "over there" and "over here."

The effect is as intoxicating as it is compelling, establishing from the start that we'll be tracking the goings on in both dimensions throughout the early part of the season. But rather than confuse the viewer, the season opener(s) offer the perfect jumping on point for new fans as well as the die-hards who are dying to know just what that final reveal means for Olivia, as well as for Peter (Joshua Jackson) and Walter Bishop (John Noble).

The producers have wisely stuck to the color palettes established last season to denote the place of origin: over there episodes are bursting with red, from the crimson-hued opening sequence to vermilion lens flares throughout the episode, whereas over here episodes use the blue that we've come to know and love throughout the series' run. Its effect anchors the action and relegates it to a particular sphere, reminding the viewers of just which dimension they're in and where the plot is unfolding.

And unfold it does. "Olivia" picks up some time in the future, as Olivia Dunham is continually interrogated by agents of Walternate, the Secretary of Defense, even as her caretakers believe her to be suffering a psychotic delusion. They maintain that she is the Olympic bronze metal competitive shooter Olivia Dunham; she maintains that she's from another world. What is a Fringe Division agent to do?

While I don't want to spoil the plot twists that lie ahead in tonight's episode, I will say that Olivia crosses paths with a cabbie played by The Wire's Andre Royo, who attempts to help Olivia... Help with what? Well, that would be telling, wouldn't it? Royo is perfectly cast here as a sympathetic cabbie, even when faced with the danger trailing Olivia in the form of her alternate reality self's partners, Lincoln Lee (Seth Gabel) and Charlie Francis (Kirk Acevedo).

As Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello has already reported, Royo will be making a return appearance on Fringe down the line. Which is a very good thing as he's not only excellent here but might be a deus ex machina for Olivia as she finds herself plummeting deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole over there.

Likewise, Torv does a fantastic job of portraying two vastly different aspects of Olivia Dunham, two women connected by an invisible thread whose lives have turned out very differently. Or have they? What defines us? Our experiences or our innate characteristics?

Meanwhile, what's happening on the other side of the looking glass? Hmmm. I will say that we get a snippet of information in "Olivia" that displays the circumstances that Walter and Peter find themselves in when they return from their cross-time caper. But fans will have to wait until next week's "The Box" to really see the Bishops--and Astrid (Jasika Nicole)--in action, as it offers an episode wholly set on their side of the dimensional divide as Walter grapples with the death of William Bell and the aftermath of rescuing Peter once more.

As for what that episode entails, I'm sworn to secrecy, but I will say that Alternate-Olivia's plans become far more clear as she begins preparations and gets closer and closer to Peter Bishop. Let's just say that last season's creepy trans-dimensional typewriter makes an appearance, an innocuous box is far deadlier than it appears, wood floors are hard to clean, testaments are made, and all tattoos can be temporary... All this, plus an eleventh hour plot twist that both makes sense entirely and is also wholly surprising, one that could alter one of the foundations of the series itself.

Is that vague? You bet. But stick around for the superlative first two episodes of Fringe's third season and you'll be rewarded by some taut storytelling, intriguing plot twists, and an appearance by the much-missed Gene the Cow. What else do you really need to hear?

Season Three of Fringe begins tonight at 9 pm ET/PT on FOX.

Goodbye and Hello: An Advance Review of the Sixth Season Premiere of Bones

What happens when the glue holding a group of people together takes off for far-flung adventure? What happens to those left behind? And is it ever possible to bring those now distant people back together again? Can you fix what's been broken?

Those are the questions hovering over the action on tonight's sixth season premiere of FOX's Bones ("The Mastodon in the Room"), which sees the gang at the Jeffersonian attempt to reform the gang when their individual sabbaticals come to abrupt ends.

The cause? An effort to save the career of Cam (Tamara Taylor), undergoing intense scrutiny when she lacks the certainty to identify the skeletal remains of a child in the face of a massive media blitz for a controversial story: the disappearance of a two-year old boy. Is the tiny skeleton in the morgue the boy that everyone's looking for? Or is it an unrelated crime?

Up until now, Cam's been in this fight alone, though she's had the support of tough-talking Caroline Julian (Patricia Belcher). And she's had to be alone because everyone else has taken off in search of their dreams: Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and Daisy (Carla Gallo) have left for a dig in Indonesia; Booth (David Boreanaz) is training snipers in Afghanistan; Hodgins (TJ Thyne) and Angela (Michaela Conlin) are in Paris; and Sweets (John Francis Daley)... Well, Sweets has grown a goatee and is wearing a jaunty hat and biding his time.

As for what this collective had built when they were working together? It, like so much else, has fallen apart. The center, after all, cannot hold.

The season premiere finds each of the wayward team members heading home in order to help Cam and try to pick up the pieces of where they each left off seven months earlier. But that proves harder to do than one might think. For one, time has marched on for each of the characters and things have changed in their lives. Daisy might still have Sweet's engagement ring but he might not want her wearing it. Brennan may have come to terms with her feelings for Booth, but seven months apart--and with no contact between them--have worn on Booth and he's moved on. Yes, his relationship with the yet-to-be-seen war correspondent is "as deadly as a heart attack," according to Booth. Hodgins and Angela have settled into life in Paris and face some changes of their own as well.

It's Brennan who doesn't change, the singular constant among the group. Her departure had a ripple effect on their common fates. The squinterns are long gone, headed for parts unknown, after Brennan left and, well, things aren't necessarily great between Cam and Brennan now that's she back, either. (As for the squinterns, look for Michael Grant Terry's Wendell to return.)

I don't want to say too much about the season premiere, other that it provides a new beginning of sorts for the gang at the Jeffersonian and that there is a massive elephant--or, in this case, a massive mastodon--in the room that no one wants to address. What follows is an attempt to answer those aforementioned questions and ponder just who is the true lynchpin of the group.

My only criticism is the early scene with Booth in Afghanistan, in which his predicament and decision to return home is way too on the nose, arriving with all of the subtlety of an anvil being dropped on our heads. While I understand that it was necessary to get Booth to make a decision quickly, the circumstances around that scenario are so obvious--to the point where a character actually speaks the very things that Booth feels about his own inner struggle--that it cheapens the moment.

But that's a minor criticism of a fantastic episode that involves swallowed rings, space-hogging animals, auto repair, sisterly moments, and crime-solving. And, yes, seeing Booth and Brennan back together again.

Change is good, but sometimes it's the familiar that's far more comfortable, no?

Season Six of Bones begins tonight at 8 pm ET/PT on FOX.

The Daily Beast: "Community: The Best Show You're Not Watching"

Community has zombies, outer space, and Joel McHale: why not more viewers?

Over at The Daily Beast, check out my latest feature, entitled "Community: The Best Show You're Not Watching," in which I visit the set of NBC's experimental comedy Community (while they were filming their Halloween episode) and learn about zombies, outer space, stop-motion animation, and more, as I spend two days on the set with creator Dan Harmon and cast members Joel McHale, Donald Glover, Yvette Nicole Brown, Alison Brie, Ken Jeong, Gillian Jacobs, and Danny Pudi.

Plus, be sure to take a look at the gallery, where you can see what's coming up on Season Two for your favorite Greendale characters, including Jeff, Britta, Annie, Shirley, Abed, Troy, Chang, and Pierce.

(And you can read my review of the season opener here.)

Season Two of Community begins tomorrow night at 8 pm ET/PT on NBC.

Sexpionage: Investigating NBC's Undercovers

J.J. Abrams and Josh Reims' new espionage drama Undercovers launches tonight on NBC, as the fall premiere week wears on. Will it perform better than FOX's Lone Star, which crashed and burned on Monday? We'll find out tomorrow.

Here's what I had to say about the series over in my Fall TV Preview feature at The Daily Beast recently:

WATCH: Undercovers (NBC; premieres September 22)

While we can all agree that Alias went off the rails in the later seasons--thanks to the increasingly Byzantine Rambaldi plot--the early years were pitch perfect. Series creator J.J. Abrams--here teaming up with his Felicity cohort Josh Reims—has gone back to the feel of those early Sydney Bristow adventures but infused them with more romance and a hell of a lot more humor with their new show, Undercovers. Boris Kodjoe and Gugu Mbatha-Raw play the world's most gorgeous professional caterers, a married pair who just happen to have met while on their previous job: as two of the very best agents the CIA had to offer. Forced back into the field when a friend of theirs goes missing while on assignment, the two rekindle the sparks of their dormant passion and are drawn back into their old lives. The chemistry between the two leads is undeniable, but if Undercovers hopes to become appointment viewing, the writers have got to balance the show's flashy style with some intelligence and substance.

While Undercovers isn't perfect by any means, it at least seems to know what it is and wants to be, which is more than I can say for many a new fall series launching right now. The main draw is definitely the winning combination of Boris Kodjoe and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who smolder on-screen together. Their relationship is at the core of the series, which explores the state of modern marriage, the ruts that some of us can find ourselves in, and the spark that's rekindled when these two reenter the high-stakes world of international espionage.

The show juxtaposes action and adventure in a style that's very familiar to fans of Chuck, who will encounter a series that's far more similar to the NBC action-comedy than Abrams' previous series like Alias or Lost. But the workplace setting here--Steven and Samantha run a successful catering company--falls with a leaden weight in the pilot episode, recalling the irritating and unnecessary arc that Merrin Dungey's Francie went through opening her restaurant on Alias. I don't care about the event functions, the canapes, nor the struggles of Samantha's sister as she's left holding the reins while our couple heads off in search of adventure, danger, and their missing former colleague.

If the writers can find a way to balance the funny and the tense, the provocative and the mundane, this could develop into a nice relationship-based spy drama that can sit comfortably alongside Chuck. As it is, the show has a nice amount of potential but it's one of those shows that I wish the network had sent out more than one episode of in advance. I'm curious to see the second episode and whether it proves to be engaging and diverting on a weekly basis, sans the production budget of this expensive pilot.

In any case, I'll be sticking around for a few weeks to see what develops, passed hors d'oeuvres or no.

Undercovers launches tonight at 8 pm ET/PT on NBC.

Talk Back: What Did You Think of FOX's New Comedies Running Wilde and Raising Hope?

As premiere week slogs on, I'm curious to know what you thought of the two newest comedy entries to the network lineup, with last week's series premieres of FOX's Raising Hope and Running Wilde.

Personally, I wasn't much taken by either of them, with the latter being truly depressing to me because it represented what will likely be the best shot at an Arrested Development reunion we can hope for, as it brought together creator Mitch Hurwitz, Will Arnett, and David Cross in one place.

But the pilot--both versions of it that I saw--left me cold and, while the second episode is sitting right next to me as I type this--I don't really have much impetus to watch it. Especially as the numbers last night were less than stellar.

I feel the same way about Greg Garcia's Raising Hope, which tries way too hard to be wacky and zany and instead overflows with poop and vomit jokes, none of which were all that funny.

But now that both episodes have aired, I'm curious to hear what you thought. Did you tune in to one or both of these? Did you find them funny? Did the combination of Will Arnett and Keri Russell win you over?

And, most importantly, will you tune in again next week?

Talk back here.

Moscow Mules and Mama Bears: Killer Frost on the Season Premiere of Chuck

And that's how you kick off a brand new season.

Last night brought the fourth season premiere of NBC's action-comedy Chuck ("Chuck Versus the Anniversary") and I hope that the episode delivered all of the espionage-tinged goodness that I promised in my advance review of the season opener last week.

I had also teased readers via Twitter about the premiere ("Chuck premiere: sexting, skydiving, Seinfeld references, (Harry Dean) Stanton? Sensational. Very fun opener.") and the episode held up extremely well under a second viewing in the time between now and then.

For me, anyway, "Chuck Versus the Anniversary" was perhaps the perfect way to begin a new chapter in the life of Chuck Bartowski, a character who has slowly evolved over the course of three seasons from reluctant hero to tragic hero to, well, just plain hero. His decision to take hold of his own destiny, to set out with Morgan on a personal quest to track down his mother may have not lead him to the answers he sought but it did bring him back together with his old team and put him in position to rescue Sarah and Casey for a change.

As we all know that secrets between lovers is never, ever a good thing, the writers were wise to have Sarah find out about Chuck's globe-spanning secret mission before the episode was out... and to have her offer her help and support to tracking down Mama Bartowski.

But, this is Chuck, after all, so it's only fitting that Mary Elizabeth Bartowski--a.k.a. The Frost Queen--isn't some abducted housewife but rather a bad-ass spy herself, a dangerous woman with the ability to take down a man about four times her size without breaking a nail. While Chuck might think he's doing a good thing to find his mother--who now he knows didn't just walk out on them when they were children--he might be opening the door to even more danger in his life. After all, these are some powerful men who have Mary in their custody and, should she be able to make her escape after all this time, they're likely to be only too willing to track her down and take her in again. But Mary's made it clear that her motivations have less to do with escape and more to do with keeping her family safe. Especially Chuck.

So just who is Volkoff? That remains an intriguing mystery to be solved down the line, but suffice it to say that he's likely to be the big bad for the season. Does his involvement in international espionage and terrorism predate The Ring and Fulcrum? Certainly seems that way, which means that Volkoff must be quite dangerous indeed to have stayed off of the CIA and NSA's radar all this time.

But while the Mama Bartowski storyline cast a nicely dangerous shadow over the proceedings, the majority of the episode was pretty light and, well, light-hearted, a nice change of pace from the doom and gloom of Season Three. I absolutely loved the map of Chuck and Morgan traveling around the world in a random fashion, the sexting between Chuck and Sarah (and its very nice payoff at the end), Harry Dean Stanton's turn as a repo man after Morgan's car, the shout-out to Vandalay Industries from Seinfeld, Chuck's doom-ridden job interviews, General Beckman's new job at the Buy More, and the focus on the bromance between Chuck and Morgan.

And kudos too for not splitting up Chuck and Sarah but instead deepening their bond and having them come out the other side of a long-distance relationship all the more strong. I loved that Chuck defended his elision as not a lie but rather the fact that he was keeping a secret, leading the two to promise not to do either anymore. Some shows have serious difficulties keeping things interesting once the romantic leads give into temptation but so far Chuck has done a superb job keeping their relationship compelling and interesting.

The same holds true for the workplace element of the series. The Buy More has long been a source for comic relief amid the high-flying spy action and the romance and Chris Fedak and Josh Schwartz have upped the ante further by pushing the CIA/NSA deeper into the Buy More infrastructure, revealing a new twist to the workplace setting that combines the disparate aspects of the series into a single location. The Buy More becomes both Chuck's cover story and his true identity, a real sense of danger and intrigue amid the X-Boxes and flat-screen televisions.

I love that Beckman is now in charge of the Buy More and that it's staffed with crack agents from the joint intelligence divisions. But I'm curious just how Big Mike, Jeff, and Lester--all three absent from the season opener but still series regulars--will fit into the new world order at the store. Is there a place for Nerd Herders amid a store that can transform into a fully functional war room with the flick of a switch? Especially when two of them happen to be under investigation for arson? Hmmm...

All in all, a fantastic installment that offered the very best of Chuck's winning combination of genre-busting elements and which offered a very exciting direction for the season to come.

What did you think of the season opener? Did it live up to your expectations? Head to the comments section to discuss, debate, and analyze.

Next week on Chuck ("Chuck Versus the Suitcase"), Chuck and Sarah infiltrate the catwalks of the Milan fashion world in order to uncover a deadly weapons plot; Morgan discovers a fatal flaw that compromises the new Buy More.