TV Review: Once Upon a Time, Pilot

This blog entry is brought to you by the writers of LOST.  Just kidding (I wish).  Anyway, this show has been much-hyped, and there have been equal amounts of anticipation and skepticism surrounding its premise.  However, the pilot is absolutely stunning, a great start to a story I can't wait to experience.  
This is a fantastic pilot for the balance it strikes.  It's got mystery without being confusing, a certain degree of dazzle without being over-the-top, and characters who are equal parts fantastical and realistic (thanks surely in part to the fact that most of them have fairy tale alter-egos).

We start off in the fairy tale world with Snow White and her Prince, and the Evil Queen who vows to subject them to suffering in a world more terrible than any they can possibly imagine-- ours.  Cut to Jennifer Morrison's Emma, a bail bondsperson who is fiercely independent and "kind of a loner."  She's busy celebrating her 28th birthday all by her lonesome when who should knock at the door but a ten year old boy who says he's the son she gave up for adoption.  He, naturally, wants her to accompany him to one Storybrook, Maine where, we will soon learn, all of our favorite fairy tale characters are living, completely unaware of their true identities.

ABC is taking full advantage of the ease with which they've been able to link this show to the fan base of shows like LOST.  For one thing, throughout the episode we see numerous fun little references to the show that launched a million theories, as well as many similar elements of mystery.  After all, the pilot already brought us a prophecy (not to mention the creepy, inscrutable Rumpelstiltskin, who made it), magical memory loss, several ambiguous characters who may prove to be either friend or foe, and a love story between two characters who've been separated by the Queen's spell.  This show definitely has the potential to emulate LOST's weekly cliffhanger/boatload of unanswered questions design as well, and with maybe even a little more mass appeal (because much as I love the show in question, not everyone shares my fascination with things like time travel and polar bears well outside their natural habitat).  I'm already excited to go back and look for details I missed before, and speculate wildly on the meaning they might hold.

The vote is generally split on Jennifer Morrison as an actress-- some people like her, others can't stand her.  I think her performance here is a lot more dimensional than I was expecting, and I think I can definitely get on board with her as our heroine.  The rest of the cast fits their respective roles just about perfectly-- Ginnifer Goodwin is particularly adorable as a princess-turned-schoolteacher.  Everyone brings their absolute best, and it is a trend I hope will continue throughout the season. 

I also really love the emphasis the pilot places on the importance of stories.  One of my favorite scenes in the pilot features Emma and Snow White's schoolteacher persona in a conversation about the power of fairy tales to take us out of our own reality, particularly if that reality is a disappointing one.  Not only do I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment, I have a sneaky suspicion that this show may just have the power to play the same role for those who watch it.

What can we expect to see this season?  Well, apart from trying to solve the mystery of everyone's fairy tale identities, I'm already wondering what the Queen's deal is (she's got to have more to her than simply wanting to punish everyone, especially going to the length of inserting herself in Storybrook with them), as well as what, exactly, Rumpelstiltskin is up to, and how Emma becomes more active in the events with which she is prophesied to be involved.

TV Review: 2 Broke Girls, Pilot

I'm going to go ahead and say it:  this is my favorite of the three pilots I've watched for this season.  I was not expecting this to be the case, as it looked like the weakest contender based on the ads; then again, the other two shows (Up All Night and New Girl) basically put all the funny parts in their countless promos, thus dooming themselves to me being bored, because I watch promos for everything I'm interested in excessively.

But yes, 2 Broke Girls is pretty darn charming.  I think I like it because the pilot delivered pretty much exactly what I was promised:  a straightforward premise, two characters who are reasonably likeable and who both have room for further development and complications, and some sassy, real-life humor that was genuinely amusing and more raunchy than I'd expected for CBS.

Kat Dennings plays seasoned waitress Max, and is actually kind of perfect as the lead of this show, and I really liked the opening with her talking to the hipsters.  She definitely won't be able to get by on the street-wise schtick forever, but for an introduction to this character it really works.  Beth Behrs plays Caroline, the very recently impoverished daughter of a notorious Ponzi schemer.  I expected this character to be kind of whiny and annoying, but there is already something very genuine and endearing about Caroline, and the writers have clearly worked hard to make her a foil to Max without it being unreasonable that the two of them might become friends.

The plot is no roller coaster (the pilot did little more than establish that they will both be working and living together from now on), but it still moves with surprising speed and fluidity because of the back-and-forth between all the characters, primarily the two girls.  The only potential problem was Max's live-in boyfriend, who came off flat, but that issue was resolved by the episode's end, with her sending him packing.  And yes, having a laugh track when so many of the shows I watch now don't use one is a little jarring, but I think if the wit of this show is maintained I can even make peace with that. 

TV Review: Up All Night

In Up All Night we've got another show with a premise that has definite potential but which makes its debut with an underwhelming pilot.  Will Arnett and Christina Applegate are Chris and Reagan, new parents to baby Amy, who has some kind of weird thing going on with her hair (or does all baby hair look like that?).  Whatever the case, the hair was distracting.

I really enjoyed the cold open with Chris and Reagan waiting for the pregnancy test results (and especially Reagan's monologue about her bleak future in a nursing home), and the reversal of the stereotypical roles (Chris stays home with the baby while Reagan goes back to work).  Maya Rudolph's character freshens things up a bit with her trademark over-the-top humor.  She plays an Oprah-like talk show host, complete with inflated self-importance, who is heavily dependent on Reagan to do basically all her work (example:  "we're going to put our heads together and Reagan's going to come up with something"). 

We see some of Chris' adventures in childcare, which are amusing but which don't dominate the episode, which I think really does it a favor.  He also busies himself coming up with an elaborate plan (and a fantastic invitation/itinerary) for his and Reagan's 7th anniversary celebration, which of course never come to fruition.  Reagan gets caught up at work and Chris stays home and apparently eats an entire pizza by himself (I really liked the shame he played this scene with).  They eventually decide to go out later in the evening to reclaim their lost "idiot" years, bar-hopping and singing karaoke which, despite being an obvious play for laughs, works because who wouldn't enjoy Arnett, Applegate, and Rudolph performing a drunken rendition of "It's Raining Men"?  That's right, no one.


While this show has to prove itself by showing a little more range in its subsequent episodes, there is a definite motif here begging to be explored.  What all three of the main characters have in common is a kind of perpetual adolescence, a desire to remain their young, hip selves even whilst they navigate the waters of adulthood and the responsibilities therein.  This obviously isn't going to work, at least for the new parents (as they learn when they wake up to vicious hangovers and a screaming baby), and I am interested to see how this development continues as the show wears on.  It's not a lesson any of them will learn overnight, and it will be fun to watch these hilarious actors try to find their way toward maturity. 

(Advance) TV Review: New Girl

So the folks over at FOX decided to go for a more aggressive approach marketing this show by putting the full pilot up on iTunes for free downloading (at last check it was still available, so if you don't feel like waiting till next Tuesday, I recommend it).  I watched it on Saturday but wasn't quite ready to form an opinion of it, and so watched it again last night to see if I could glean anything new.  I think I'm one of the few people I know not blinded by the Zooey Deschanel adorable factor, and so that has allowed me to be more objective than the army of her fans who will undoubtedly supply this show with the bulk of its ratings.

The premise is pretty simple:  Deschanel's character Jess is smarting from a bad breakup and wants somewhere new to live.  Cue interview session with the three amigos in their almost too-good-to-be-true apartment.  We meet her three soon-to-be roommates, only one of whom (Nick) seems to have a first name.  The other two are called Coach (yep, you read that right), and Schmidt (which I'm assuming is his surname).  And yes, on the whole they are as flat and douche-y as they sound.  The only redeeming quality these three have in the pilot is that they form a quick, platonic attachment to Jess and by episode's end really have her back, which is nice because she needs all the help she can get. 

Looking at this show's long-term potential, however, raises some flags.  The pilot had some laughs, certainly, and the writers should be able to coast on the whole "the gang gets into a mix-up" gimmick for a while, but if they don't do something about characterization this show is going to lose its charm fast.  Jess is very funny and has the potential to continue to get laughs, so long as she doesn't let the guys whitewash her.  Most of the things I thought were funny were her awkwardness and "nerdy" references, but you could already see hints of her trying to shed that skin because it wasn't "cool" enough.  I'd like to see Jess remain an unabashed nerd, something that can still work really well in comedy (there's a reason both male leads from The Big Bang Theory have Emmy nominations).  If she becomes just another pretty girl trying to fit in, this show will embark on a slippery downhill slope, fast. 

Of the three roommates, only Nick is tolerable right now, and even he's walking a tightrope there.  He is introduced with an easy role; he's the heartbroken, kind-of-a-bummer guy.  But that works for him, and of the three guys he seems to have the most genuine interest in being friends with Jess, proven when he ditches drinks with his ex to go and "save" Jess from being stood up.  His character runs the risk of becoming bland, though, if they don't come up with something other than the recently-dumped angle.  I noticed that he apparently works at the bar they go to on their first night out; I'm sure that could be incorporated in some way to add to his character or at least provide an activity for him that isn't moping over his ex (played, incidentally, by the fantastic Mary Elizabeth Ellis, aka "the waitress" from Always Sunny).  Coach, on the other hand, has hitherto exhibited almost no personality whatsoever.  By the end of the pilot we know two things about him:  he's a personal trainer and he is apparently a hardass/sucks at talking to women.  Let's peel the onion a little with this one, guys.  And Schmidt...well, let's just say that if this character keeps up his current antics, he will be the reason I (and likely many others) have to stop watching this show.  He is really, really douche-y, unapologetically so, even when he has to put money in the "douchebag jar" (I did like that).  I get that we need to have the one guy who is kind of full of himself and is (hopefully) being set up for eventual redemption, but if you ask me, his personality still needs to be toned down a little.  Not only is he kind of a jackass in a very stereotypical way (he decides Jess should move in because her friends are models, and he removes his shirt whenever he feels like there's a woman nearby who needs to be impressed), but he also comes off as extremely unintelligent.  If this is all for the sake of his later development/improvement, I hope that Jess intervenes sooner rather than later.  Also, on a somewhat unrelated note, what the heck is his job, where he apparently works exclusively with shrill women?

All of that said (and now looking back I'm realizing I had a lot more thoughts than I expected), there are still some moments where the show exhibits real potential.  Jess' quirks, as aforementioned, so long as they aren't overused or wiped away completely, make her character much more relatable, so that even though it is clear why the guy stands her up for their date, you still feel genuinely bad for her.  Additionally, the scene in the restaurant, as cheesy as it was, gives us the most fantastically garbled, off-key rendition of "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" that I've ever heard, although I spent most of the episode wondering why Dirty Dancing would be someone's go-to breakup movie. 

Overall, New Girl gives us a somewhat uneven pilot with glimmers of potential.  I think it will be clear within the next two or three episodes whether this is a show worth sticking with, because it will either get much better or much worse (there's not much room for a middle ground).  Check it out on iTunesTuesday, September 20th on FOX.