NBC produced a half hour preview of its new fall season that was hosted by the stars of their new sitcom “Marry Me“. During that preview they introduce themselves as the stars of “NBC’s new hit comedy ‘Marry Me'”. That’s a pet peeve of mine. People who don’t understand the meaning of the word “hit”. It makes me want to hit them (different meaning of the word “hit”). How can the shell be a hit if it hasn’t even aired yet? So the show already had one strike against it going into it. Having already fallen in love with the new couple comedy “A to Z” I went into this one with a huge chip on my shoulder.

The entire first episode was essentially a single joke, the consequences of which plays out over the entire episode. It’s one of the most clichéd gimmicks in all of sitcomiry (okay so I made up that word). In the opening scene Annie and Jake have just come back from a romantic vacation in Mexico and she goes off on a rant complaining that Jake did not propose to her during this romantic getaway. In the rent she reveals that they been dating for six years, she’s 32 years old and her eggs are dying, and he needs to get off his ass and propose to her. As she is ranting and running around the apartment she has her back turned to him and doesn’t see that he’s down on one knee with a ring in his hand trying to tell her to turn around and look at him. She continues to ignore him and then goes on to ranting about family and friends who make fun of them because they’re not yet engaged. Along the way she says all sorts of nasty things about those family and friends. After she FINALLY turns around to see him ready to propose then all of those family and friends who she has just trashed (including his mother) pop out from behind their hiding places to say “surprise”. They’ve heard everything. So it’s all of the extremely clichéd situations of every situation comedy you ever seen all rolled into one scene. As silly as it was I have to give them credit for pulling off the biggest one of those I’ve ever seen.

After everyone leaves, they decide that that was not their official proposal because he didn’t want to have to tell that horrible story of how the proposal went for the rest of his life. He promises to re-propose in a few days and then that will be the official one. She then decides that the only way to “fix this” is for her to propose to him. So she goes to his place of employment to propose to him in front of all his colleagues and along the way reveals that they had just spent a week in Mexico. However he had told his boss he needed off work because his father was sick. This gets him fired from his job so now she’s real and another proposal story.

We then get to see some flashbacks of how they met and various events along the way. The flashback gimmick works pretty well and is not a distraction. In fact in this case it makes a little more interesting. By the end of the episode they do get officially engaged. It remains to be seen how much of the story is told “present-day” and how much in flashback.

There’s reasonably good chemistry between costars Casey Wilson and Ken Marino. She is also currently a very of the film Gone Girl but is better known for her role in the recently canceled ABC sitcom Happy Endings. He is relatively unknown but has appeared in the adult swim series Children’s Hospital. Some sitcoms rely more on the supporting cast then the main characters in order to succeed. This one includes Tim Meadows from SNL and Dan Bucatinsky from Web Therapy as Annie’s gay parents. JoBeth Williams plays Jake’s mother. They might add something interesting to the mix.

Compared to the other new romantic comedies this season “A to Z” and “Manhattan Love Story” this one is stronger on the comedy than the romance. As always the real test is “Did I laugh?” and be in place and I did. Given that I really like A to Z and that Manhattan Love Story is growing on me, this one might not make the cut on what I’m watching regularly. But it does show a little promise so I’m going to give it a rating of “Could Be Watchable”.

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Update: This show was canceled by the network after just four episodes.

I suppose every new TV show these days has to have some sort of a gimmick. For the new ABC romantic comedy Manhattan Love Story the gimmick is we get to hear internal thoughts of the major characters.

Analeigh Tiption plays a girl named Dana who just moved to New York from Atlanta for a new job as a editor at a publishing house. Her former college roommate sets her up on a blind date with Peter played by Jake McDormand. Don’t be surprised if you don’t recognize either of them. Tipton has appeared in the films Warm Bodies and Crazy, Stupid, Love but not much else. McDormand played Evan Chambers in the TV series Greek which I never watched. He also did 10 episodes of Shameless and was in a single season sitcom Are You There, Chelsea?

As might be expected the first blind date was pretty much a disaster but there was some real chemistry between the characters. There’s not really much else to say until we get a couple of episodes into the show. If you can get past that gimmick of the voiceover internal thoughts there might be enough chemistry to make it a reasonably watchable little romantic story. In some ways it’s reminiscent of one of my favorite sitcoms “Mad About You” but so far is not nearly up to that standard. For now will give it a rating of “Could Be Watchable”

Producer Shonda Rhimes now owns a monopoly on Thursday night ABC. Her hit series Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal are now followed by a new show “How to Get Away with Murder“. Although she did not create or write this series but only is executive producer, it fits right in with her other types of shows. Namely strong women (two out of three black) who are in powerful positions and who live in worlds where plot twists are everyday occurrences. However I’m not sure this one is going to live up to the standards of the previous two. It is written and created by Peter Norwalk whose only leather credits include co-executive producer and writer for other Shondaland productions.

Viola Davis plays Annalise Keating is a criminal defense attorney and a law professor. Davis is best known for her Oscar nominated performances in the films The Help and Doubt. In the opening episode her character recruits five of her top students to work in her law firm on real cases. The open classroom scene is such a ripoff of The Paper Chase that I can’t believe they actually did it. It’s the tough law professor who ambushes a student on the first day when he didn’t realize that they had already been given homework before the class even started. Either that happens in every law classroom so it is an ordinary occurrence or they just ripped it off. But the comparisons stop right there. Keating is no Professor Kingsfield. She also isn’t the sort of idealistic good guy lawyer that we are used to seeing on TV. Before the episode is over we see her get stolen illegally obtained evidence admitted in court. And after she calls to the witness stand a police officer with whom she is having an affair and ambushes him into saying that he has seen police corruption that could exonerate her client, you’re left wondering whether she simply used her pillow talk knowledge of his day-to-day work to her advantage or if she actually coerced him into committing perjury. I guess time will tell in future episodes.

The show also uses the gimmick of telling the story in two different timelines. It starts out with five college students trying to decide what to do with a dead body and a murder weapon. Then it flashes back three months to their first day in her class and that’s when we discover that they are her new interns. The story flips back and forth between the two timelines throughout the opening episode and the way things are going we can expect to see that same manner of disjointed storytelling. It was innovative when they did it in the Glenn Close lawyer show Damages but it made the plot more confusing. It does keep you guessing what’s going to happen next and how you’re going to get from here to there but after a while he gets to be really annoying in my opinion and I’m not looking forward to it in this series. There are times when flashbacks, flashforwards and parallel timelines make for interesting storytelling but I’m not convinced this is going to be one.

For that time being I’m going to give it a couple more episodes so I guess technically my rating is “Could Be Watchable”. But there are better lawyer shows on the air such as The Good Wife, Suits, and if you can classify it as such Scandal. Although I’m not reviewing existing shows, I will say here that the season premiere of Scandal really hit the ground running and continued at the phenomenal quality it has had in previous years. If you like political intrigue and have not seen this show, by all means check out Scandal. And if you got some spare space on the DVR in time to watch it then try this murder show and see if it is to your taste. Just don’t expect the usual Shonda Rhimes quality.

Many years ago I coined the phrase “plot-driven technology”. It describes that point in a sci-fi story or even a non-sci-fi story that involves some sort of high tech equipment wherein you ask the question “Why don’t they just___(fill in the blank)__?” and the answer is “Because the plot of the story required it to work that way.” You’ve seen it hundreds of times. “Why can’t a Klingon warbird fire its weapons while cloaked?” And then later movie “Why can the Klingons now fire while cloaked?” The answer to both questions is “Because the plot required it.” While all technology has its natural limitations, way too often a lazy author invents a reason for the technology to fail just at the right moment to move the plot in the direction that he wants it to move. This is especially true in sci-fi where the technology is made up in the author’s mind anyway so he feels free to impose whatever limits he wants to.

Well written sci-fi or technology-based drama can say “What if we had a particular technology that doesn’t really exist? What might happen under those circumstances?” And at that point you have a technology driven plot. Not plot driven technology.

I really, really wanted to like the new CBS series “Scorpion” and you can probably see why if you know me at all. It’s about a group of four young geniuses who are hired by the government to solve the problems that mere mortals cannot solve. They are all socially awkward introverted super geeks with a combined IQ of 700. “Scorpion” is the hacker name of this band of misfits. In the first episode they pair up with a diner waitress who has a young son who is withdrawn, noncommunicative with anyone except his mother, and as it turns out perhaps even a bigger genius than the heroes of our story. The basic plot is that they are going to help her understand what it means to have a genius for a son. And she is going to help them to get along in the world that they don’t understand because they are stuck in their heads.

The previews for the show promote it to be an action-packed thriller and indeed that’s what we got in the first episode. Our gang of heroes has 45 minutes to keep 50 passenger jets from “falling out of the sky”. Along the way they have to hack into numerous databases, physically break into a cloud storage facility, steel hard drive, steel of Ferrari, drive it down the runway as a jet airplane flies overhead and dropped a computer cable down to their laptop so that they can fix the software bug while driving hundred 50 miles an hour towards a crash barrier.

I love the premise of the show and the characters look reasonably interesting. But my problem with the show is that it is just totally unbelievable because it has wall-to-wall plot-driven-technology. The basic problem there trying to solve is that a bug was found in newly uploaded air traffic control software. It crashed their entire airport systems and simultaneously cut off all and I mean ALL ability to communicate with the aircraft. I’m just not buying it. Are you really telling me that there is no analog radio or backup communication system available at all between the ground and jet airplanes? So the whole crisis upon which the entire episode is based is totally unbelievable. Then the repeated statement “the planes will fall out of the sky if we don’t do something!” Doesn’t make any sense. The skies were clear. You can land the plane using visual flight rules if you had to rather than just deliberately run out of fuel and crash. Then of course is the whole James-Bond-like solution of sealing a really fast car, driving down the runway at high speed with an airplane flying 10 feet off the ground. The copilot climbs down into the wheel well to feed a network cable down to our heroes were carrying a laptop. Then they can download a fresh copy of the software from the airplanes, install it in the ATC towers and solve the problem. Oh I forgot to mention that the original software was backed up in a cloud storage facility but that backup gets overwritten every few hours. Any cloud worth its money keeps multiple revisions intact just so that this kind of thing doesn’t happen. It was just all too much manufactured crisis for me.

In any sci-fi or high-tech show, you naturally ask the audience to engage in a mild suspension of disbelief. Sci-fi is all about the question “What if?”. This show asks us “What if you had a bunch of 20-something-year-old geniuses can solve problems using mental powers way beyond those of mortal men?” So we suspend our disbelief and give them that premise. But the rest of the show needs to be smart enough to play that what if game with some credibility. In recent advertising for the show they’ve added the tagline “inspired by actual events”. My guess is that they realized that the show stretched credibility way too far and there trying to convince you this kind of stuff could really happen. I can believe in a bunch of geeky geniuses solving problems using brainpower and technology and that you can have a good action show based on the premise. But this one just doesn’t work very well.

I will probably continue to watch it for a few episodes because the human interaction between the characters does show some promise. It does seem to have a lot of heart at times as the geniuses try to counsel the mother to a deeper understanding of her young son. And as ridiculous as they were, the action sequences were a lot of fun with well done special-effects. So it’s not really a bad show. It’s just not nearly as great of a show as it could have been and it left me sorely disappointed. I’m giving it a tentative “Could Be Watchable” rating.

It was 2006 when Will and Grace left the air after eight seasons and we no longer got to see the best of what Deborah Messing had to offer us in the way of comedy. We did get to see her in a six hour miniseries followed by a 10 episode series titled The Starter Wife which had its moments but overall wasn’t that great. We also got to see a dramatic side of her for two seasons of Smash. When I heard she was getting a new show on NBC I was really looking forward to it because I’ve always been a big fan.

In her new series The Mysteries of Laura which premiered on NBC this week, she plays police detective Laura Diamond who is recently divorced (her husband is dragging his feet signing the final papers). She’s raising twin 4-year-old boys who are the most rowdy undisciplined children you’ll ever see on television. In an opening action sequence she shoots the ear off a guy who is who is holding it hostage at gunpoint and then walks away casually. Her car and her desk and her clothes are always messy. In trying to find a new preschool for her boys she did background checks on the teachers to see which one had the most parking tickets so she could blackmail them into getting her interview with the principal. It’s pretty much just one silly cliché gimmick after another. And SPOILER: her ex-husband who is also a cop gets transferred to her precinct and gets promoted to be her boss. Like we didn’t see that coming.

Underneath it all she does solve a crime but it was a little bit too much of a Perry Mason moment when at the last minute she declares “I solved the case” and then proceeds to reveal that the killer was someone who has never been a suspect the entire show.

In a way it’s reminiscent of comedy cop shows such as Monk (although her messiness is opposite of Monk’s OCD) or perhaps Psych although not quite as over-the-top.

The opening action sequence was kind of fun. Deborah Messing is easy on the eyes even though a scene in a swimming suit highlighted her flat-chested figure. I will probably like it better than I did Brooklyn Nine-Nine which I stopped watching after about two or three episodes.

For now giving it “Could Be Watchable” under my rating system. Keep in mind I’m a huge Deborah Messing fan or I would probably be passing on this one completely. Once I get to know her character better and decide whether or not the silliness is really funny or just plain stupid then I will decide whether or not to keep watching. For now I’ll watch as long as I have DVR space and time but don’t be surprised if it’s one of the first that I cut from my list of watching.

So a producer walks into a network executive’s office and says hey I’ve got a great idea for a TV show. It’s a mix of Grey’s Anatomy and The Breakfast Club. And without hearing another word, the executive says yes and it appeared on Fox network last night under the title “Red Band Society“. Okay I don’t know that for a fact but after watching the first episode it has to be something like that. (On further research this is actually a remake of a Spanish TV series of the same name.)

And they are none too subtle about the references to those two shows. Octavia Spencer plays a short, rotund, hard-nosed, African-American nurse who even gets referred to as “a Nazi” just like Chandra Wilson’s Dr. Bailey in Grey’s. The head doctor is named McAndrews which might as well be McDreamy. It’s their job to take care of the group of about six teenagers in various stages of death living in a Los Angeles hospital pediatric ward. Among the kids we have a former jock, a bad boy, a basket case, a stuck up cheerleader, etc. etc. There is a voiceover narration throughout the entire show just like Grey’s except there’s a surprise. We will get to that surprise in a minute.

Trying to repeat the success of two other successful franchises can be a challenge that is too big to meet especially throwing two of them together in the same show. The real test will be the writing and the acting. Once I realized what the show is about I got a giant chip on my shoulder because I knew each week that was going to be some teenager who had a chip on his shoulder because he was sick. And in some respects we’ve got that. However the chip seems to come and go frequently. Part of the time the kids have an attitude of “I wish people wouldn’t treat me special because I’m sick”. And the rest of the time they expect people to treat them special because they are sick. They gratuitously playing the “pity me” card but it’s not because they really want pity, they do it because they know they can manipulate people with it. In a strange way that actually works. One of the reasons I’m going to be somewhat judgmental and picky about this show is because it strikes a little bit close to home having grown up with a disability of my own and having friends who dealt with their own disabilities with varying degrees of success. Also having to have face the loss of friends due to their disabilities at an early age influence is my perspective.

The title of the show comes from the red paper wristbands that the kids get when they go off to surgery.

There is a risk that a show about kids many of which you have terminal illness can get overly melancholy, overly melodramatic and just plain sappy. I held back lots of reservations about the show until the last quarter of it in which it tiptoed up to all of those lines that managed not to cross them. It’s actually written with quite a bit of heart and it will tug on your heartstrings and maybe have you reaching for the tissue but I don’t think it goes too far.
However, there are problems. And they are big ones.

The voiceover narration is actually a kid who is in a coma. Even though he can’t move or speak, he claims to be able to hear everything and to tell you the story as it unfolds. His hearing must be supernatural however because he also comments on things that don’t occur within earshot. Another problem with coma boy is a scene where one of the other kids passes out and as she is unconscious she has a vision wherein she can communicate with the boy in the coma. And in another scene one of the patients reveals that he too was able to speak to the coma boy while he was under anesthesia during surgery.

If you could get past that strange plot point there are some other unrealistic things going on. The coma boy has a girl for a roommate. Despite the fact that he’s in a coma he would never see mix male and female patients in the same room at a hospital in the US or perhaps the world. In another scene, they are wheeling a kid off to surgery and he asked if they could wait a minute. The doctor agrees and the kid jumps up off of the gurney, runs down the hall to give something to one of the other patients and then comes back again. You think they’re really good to let you get away with that?

If you can overlook these plot devices and just roll with the story, this has a lot of potential. I mentioned it tiptoed up to the line of being overly melodramatic. Different viewers will draw that line in different places and who is to say that the writers will continue to be as skillful at not crossing it as they were in the first episode.

I’m giving it a “Could Be Watchable” on my rating scale. It could get upgraded the quality is sustained in future episodes.