Category Archives: TV Review

Review: Mulaney

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Imagine a sitcom about a standup comedian who lives in the New York apartment. His two best friends are guy and a girl (he doesn’t date the girl). He has a next-door neighbor was a crazy character very tall and another friend who is a chubby guy. The show is named after him. It features clips from his standup routines. What an innovative concept? I wonder why no one has ever done that? Oh wait… They did. I guy named Jerry Seinfeld 25 years ago. But this isn’t a review of his sitcom Seinfeld. It’s a review of Mulaney starring standup comedian John Mulaney and the description that I’ve given is 100% accurate. John Mulaney was a bit player on Saturday Night Live in the 2010-2011 season and was a writer from 2008-2013 on SNL. He also does standup comedy.

It would take lots of guts to try to re-create the success of one of the most successful sitcoms ever created. But apparently that’s what they’ve tried to do. After all it’s been 25 years and even though Seinfeld is shown in reruns, perhaps a new younger generation would like their own version. There was a half hour special on NBC before the show premiered that featured some of his standup routines and introduce you to the cast of characters. After seeing some of his standup in this special and on various talk shows where he has promoted the show, I was thinking perhaps it might indeed be a worthy successor of Seinfeld although nothing will ever take its place.

This show might have the potential to be a hit sitcom because it has all of the right elements. This one has a couple of big points in its favor mostly in its cast. In the show, Mulaney’s character is a writer for a game show host played by Martin Short and if you like Short’s style of comedy (and I do) then that’s a big plus. Also the goofy next-door neighbor is played by Elliott Gould. He plays a flamboyant gay man named Oscar. The female friend Jane is played SNL veteran Nasima Pedrad. His sidekick Motif is also a standup comedian played by Seaton Smith who is new to TV but has done standup. The chubby friend I referred to is Andre the drug dealer played by Zach Perlman who looks like he’s trying to be a Zach Galifianakis clone.

I really liked standup routines from the special. Some of them were also featured in the opening episode. The supporting cast is reasonably good. But there’s a big problem. Mulaney can’t act. Even though he’s written every word of the episode himself, his delivery comes across like a fourth grader reading aloud out of their history textbook. He seems to be able to deliver his material in his standup routines adequately well but somehow when trying to play his character you keep wondering if he’s reading it off of cue cards or something.

My hope is that in future episodes Mulaney is able to relax into the part more and not come across as so stiff. For the time being I’m going to watch just to see Martin Short and Elliott Gould either one of which can crack me up. So for now my rating is “I’m Watching It” but I’m afraid it’s going to fall pretty far short of Seinfeld’s legacy.

Review: Gracepoint

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Normally I don’t put my recommendation in the review until I get to the end however in the case of the new Fox network miniseries “Gracepoint” I’m starting out saying it is rated “I Really like It” which is my second-highest rating behind “Must-See”. The reason I can be so confident about the show after seeing just one episode of the 10 hour miniseries is that I’ve already seen it before. Know the studios finally have not noticed my blog and started sending the screeners in advance (although I wish they would). This show is based on a BBC series titled “Broadchurch” which I have seen on BBC America.

The story is a murder mystery that begins when a 12-year-old boy is found dead on a beach at the bottom of the cliff in a small seaside town in northern California/England (depending on which version you seen). The detective investigating the crime is played by David Tennant/David Tennant. Yes that’s right, they cast the same famous British actor and former Doctor Who in the same part in both miniseries. However in this one he has to pull off an American accent. He does a much better job than his former Doctor Who co-star Karen Gillan and her new American sitcom Selfie. Tenants character, Detective Emmett Carver, has just joined the Gracepoint Police Department taking a job that had been previously promised as a promotion to Detective Ellie Miller played by Anna Gunn you may recognize from 62 episodes of Breaking Bad down 20 where she played Skyler White. Her son is the best friend of the victim. She knows the parents of the murdered boy well. In fact everyone seems to know everyone else in the small town.

I’ve only seen the first episode of the American version and although I’ve not compared it side-by-side scene-for-scene or sentence-by-sentence with the British version, I can tell you that every plot point in this opening episode is identical to the British version. Just as important as the plot is the overall quality of the acting, the casting, and the basic mood of the entire piece is of the same high quality as the British version.

I recommend that you try to catch the first episode in a rerun if there are any or on demand. Of course with the death of a child, it is naturally going to be a real tearjerker. The typical stuff such as a mother coming up to the crime scene screaming for her kid and the cops having to drag her away. Especially well done was the scene between the female detective and her 12-year-old son where she has to tell him that his best friend was found dead. And then the creepiness of the fact that the kid gets out his cell phone, deletes every text message from the dead kid, and then reformats the hard drive of his computer! What is that about? That’s just one of many plot twists you’re going to encounter along the way along with some creepy characters such as the local preacher, local motel owner, and a very creepy guy who rents kayaks and bicycles to tourists actually played by Nick Nolte in this version.

It’s not unusual, especially this season, to have an American remake of a foreign TV series. We’ve already reviewed Red Band Society and The Mysteries of Laura both of which were based on TV series from Spain. Similarly The Bridge and The Killing are based on series from Scandinavia. But in all of those examples the original show within a different language that to my knowledge was never released here in the US. SyFy Channel made a version of Being Human based on the BBC series of the same name but it was an episodic series with only minimal continuing plot lines. They made the American version significantly different enough that Bush right and the actors portrayed it in their own unique ways that they really were different series simply with the same premise. But when I first heard they were going to do a remake of an English-language show that had already been seen here in the US on BBC America Channel on cable, it made me wonder why didn’t they just buy the rights to show the British version? What about a California setting and a lack of British accents was going to bring something new and different to the show? So far the answer is it hasn’t changed anything. But considering how well done the original one was, I guess it’s just an opportunity to bring this amazing story to a wider audience on broadcast TV. For those like me who have already seen Broadchurch, we will watch Gracepoint just to see if it’s any different and to see if they change who the murderer is. And it’s an opportunity to relive a really great series. For the rest of you, bring your handkerchief and prepare to cry from time to time. But hold on to your seat because there are plot twists and you won’t know who did it till near the very end. A wonderful murder mystery that will wrap up well in 10 episodes.

Again my rating is “I Love It” and if you love a good mystery you will too.

Review: Manhattan Love Story

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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”

Review: Selfie

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In 2011 when I heard that Zooey Deschanel was getting her own sitcom titled “New Girl” I couldn’t wait to see it. Despite the fact that I’m nearly twice her age, I’ve always had a big crush on her. I know she always plays characters that are a little bit ditzy and I go for the more intellectual nerdy types but she is just unbearably cute. Unfortunately her show “New Girl” just didn’t show me anything interesting. I don’t know if she was too ditzy or if her roommates just want interesting or the show just wasn’t funny or romantic or any of the things I expected it to be. It’s in its fourth season now. I don’t know why. Maybe 20 something-year-olds get into it more than an old fart like me.

When I found out that Karen Gillan was getting a sitcom I try not to get as enthusiastic. While I have the same sort of dirty old man crush on her as I did with Zooey ever since I first saw her in Doctor Who as the doctor’s companion Amy Pond. While she does have a similar bubbly personality, the character she played in Who at least did have a brain and could hold her own against the Doctor. The title of this new ABC sitcom “Selfie” also didn’t give me much hope. It sounded to me like they picked the hot new word of the day for a title to draw people in. So I had especially low expectations and brace myself for high disappointment when I watched the first episode.

Even my pre-lowered not very high expectations were not even nearly met. I didn’t really know what the show was going to be about. As it turns out the concept isn’t that bad on paper. Basically it’s a remake of “My Fair Lady” for the 21st century. Gillan plays Eliza Dooley (wink wink to Eliza Doolittle). She works for a pharmaceutical company in the sales department. She is extremely self-absorbed and addicted to social media. She has thousands of “friends” on Facebook and other sites but no actual friends in real life. She dresses outrageously. We are told that she is a sex addict but don’t look for any even PG rated scenes of her in bed. The show opens with her caught in an embarrassing airsickness incident on board a plane with a bunch of her colleagues snapping pictures on their cell phones and thereby making her into one of those people that she likes to make fun of on the internet. The fact that she is a self absorbed image-conscious person actually gives an interesting double meaning to the title “Selfie”. So the title isn’t as ridiculous as it seems.

She then enlists a marketing man named Henry (don’t know if his name is Higgins or not) to give her a kind of social makeover and turn her into the kind of person that could have actual friends. Henry is played by John Cho a.k.a. Harold from the Harold and Kumar films and as Sulu in the reboot of Star Trek. The classic George Bernard Shaw “My Fair Lady/Pygmalion” storyline seems to me to be a ripe idea for a 21st-century update. While it did have a few tender moments, most of it was so ridiculous that it was unwatchable.

I could attempt to watch an otherwise ridiculous show just to see Karen Gillan. Maybe as the show progressed it would improve as Eliza is gradually transformed. But it seems to me that as she is attempting to suppress her Scottish accent, a lot of the charm has gone out of her personality. I really wonder if she could play the part better by going ahead and using her natural voice.

Based solely upon my Karen Gillan obsession I will give it another one or two episodes but for 99% of you my rating and recommendation is “Skip It”.

Review: black-ish

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The only criteria by which I ever judge a sitcom is simply “Is it funny?” Sitcoms don’t have to be socially relevant, moving, well acted, believable, or a whole host of other adjectives that you might apply to a TV show. In my book they just have to be funny. Shows like “Modern Family” and “2 Broke Girls” are ridiculous and unbelievable but they make me laugh so I watch them. However I don’t think I will be watching any more episodes of the new ABC sitcom “black-ish“. The short version of my review is that it is rated “Skip it”. By the way the non-capitalization is the way they spell it on the TV show itself. That’s not my typo.

The series stars Anthony Anderson as Andre ‘Dre’ Johnson who is black and has a mixed race black-ish wife and several kids. He lives in a mostly white neighborhood and works as an advertising executive in a mostly white company. In the opening episode is excited about being promoted to a vice president position but then learns that he’s in charge of the new “urban division”. Basically they made him in charge of all things black and he doesn’t like it very much. He feels like he’s lost his culture identity as a black person and realizes his kids never had it to begin with. During a dinner conversation several of them claimed they didn’t know that Obama was the first black president. I didn’t have any sympathy for him if his kids were really that stupid. Even when the youngest about six or seven years old said “He’s the only president I’ve ever known.” it just didn’t gave me any sympathy for him and it just wasn’t funny. When I was that kid’s age I knew that I was Catholic and that JFK was the first Catholic president even though he was the only president I had ever known.

You will probably recognize Anthony Anderson from his 50 episodes of playing detective Kevin Bernard on the original Law & Order rather than other sitcoms or guest starring roles he has had. The only other recognizable face in the show is Lawrence Fishburne whose talents are totally wasted in his portrayal of the grandfather of the family.

A friend of mine speculates that the reason this stinker has gotten such good reviews is because white reviewers don’t want to be seen trashing a black comedy. I don’t suffer from such restrictions no matter how much of a bleeding heart liberal I am.

As stated earlier, this one is a “Skip it” on my rating scale.

Review: How to Get Away with Murder

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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.

Review: Forever

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I recently posted a message on Facebook saying that based on the premise of the new ABC drama “Forever” it probably would not last as long as the title suggested. And while it won’t last forever, but certainly should last much longer than I first expected. The main character is Dr. Henry Morgan portrayed by Ioan Gruffudd you may recognize as Reed Richards from the Fantastic Four film series but more recently appeared in the TV series Ringer where he was has been to Sarah Michelle Geller. The title “Forever” comes from the fact that Dr. Morgan apparently cannot die. The show opens with him getting killed in a New York City subway train crash and then he miraculously reemerges in the middle of the Hudson River totally naked but otherwise unharmed.

I recently asked about the series “Z Nation” the question “Do we really need another zombie show?” And one might rightly ask “Do we need another show about immortals?” We got vampire stories that are semi-immortal or at least can heal quickly. Add to that list Wolverine from the X-Men. You’ve got Christopher Lambert in the Highlander series of TV and film. And let’s not forget my favorite Capt. Jack Harkness from Doctor Who and Torchwood fame. My point is this is been done before so what else can be brought to the genre? As it turns out they may have found a reasonably interesting new twist.

After the subway crash and resurrection, in voiceover he explains that 200 years ago he was a board a slave ship as the ship’s doctor. When the crew tried to throw overboard one of the slaves who simply had a cold and was not infected with cholera, Dr. Morgan intervened and tried to save the man. For his efforts he got shot in the chest and thrown overboard himself. This was Morgan’s first death and he has resurrected many times since then. In present day is a New York City medical examiner which allows him to study the phenomena of death up close.

The only person who knows his secret with his friend Abe played by Judd Hirsch. It’s obvious that their relationship goes back many years but you don’t really find out how they met until the very end of the first episode and I will not spoil that surprise for you but look for it carefully or you may miss it. His assistant in the medical examiner’s office is Lucas Wahl played by Joel David Moore who you have previously seen in 14 episodes of Bones as one of Dr. Brennan’s many interns. The other major character is the very sexy Detective Jo Martinez played by Alana De La Garza who you might recognize as Marisol Delco Caine from CSI: Miami. And more recently the TV series “Do No Harm“.

Dr. Morgan himself having lived over 200 years trying to solve the mystery of his existence is a very observant and analytical person with a Sherlock-Holmes-like ability to just look at you and know your life story. I suppose you have to ask do we need another Sherlock Holmes character and I’m not sure about that. Morgan seems to be constantly pining over the lost love of his life Abigail whom he met in World War II when we see parts of their relationship told in various flashbacks. The whole “being immortal is no fun because you have to all of your loved ones die” plot line is also not at all original.

So it seems like they’ve taken a lot of old ideas: immortality, Holmesian deduction, lost love due to immortality etc. and thrown them together. But for some strange reason it all really works for me. Some of it is the witty dialogue in which he somewhat sarcastically yet humorously talks about all the different ways that he’s died. For example when someone seems to us found out secret he tries to decide whether to run or face them. He recounts other bad experiences when someone figured out is immortality. He had his blood drained, organs removed, hanged as a heretic and then casually says “Hang me once shame on you, hang me twice…”. In another throw away line he says things like “That would hurt like getting a blunt object punched in your spleen which believe me is no fun!” Someone will have to create a wiki webpage to keep track of all the ways he’s claimed to have died.

In my most recent review of “Scorpion” I bemoaned it having “plot driven technology” and I long for a show that had “technology driven plot” where you introduce some strange new technology or in this case the ability to be reborn each time you die and then you ask the question “What if?”. That’s exactly what this series does and does so brilliantly. For example when he’s trying to figure out what kind of poison was used to kill the subway driver and he can’t get the tox screen quickly enough, he injects himself with blood from the corpse that still contains the poison just so we can see how he himself dies thus identifying the poison. And a bit of a spoiler, at the end of the episode when he’s trying to stop the bad guy and the only way to do it is to throw him off the roof of the building, he ends up having to fall off the building with the bad guy knowing that he’s just going to reboot but the bad guy will be stopped from poisoning thousands of people in Grand Central Station. The point is he’s taken this strange ability and turned it into a tool that lets him do his job. It may be a jumble of retread ideas but it is smart and clever and occasionally funny and a little bit dramatic and it seems to have peaks my interest very much so.

I’m giving it a very definite “I’m Watching” rating.

Review: Scorpion

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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.

Review: Gotham

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Every time the Batman saga gets a reboot it always starts with a young Bruce Wayne witnessing the murder of his parents. Then we jump forward to an adult Bruce Wayne either being Batman or at least training to become Batman. But what happened in all those years in between and how did all the other characters in this DC comics universe get to be the iconic characters they are destined to become? And how did the city of Gotham itself become a city that would attract such costumed arch criminals and a masked vigilante to fight them? Fox network’s new Monday night series “Gotham” attempts to answer those questions and if the first episode is any indication of what’s to come, it does so brilliantly.

The story is told through the eyes of Detective James Gordon whom we know will later become the famous police Commissioner Gordon who is Batman’s contact in the Gotham City Police Department. He is portrayed by Ben McKenzie who you would most recently remember from the TV series Southland where he played police officer Ben Sherman. Gordon is a young rookie detective who is partnered with the veteran Detective Harvey Bullock who has appeared in the Batman comics but has never been in any of the films or TV series. He is very aptly played by Donal Logue who has recently done multiple episodes guest starring roles on Law & Order:SVU, Vikings, and Sons Of Anarchy. He is a tough, shoots first and ask questions later kind of guy who is not afraid to do what needs to be done to catch the bad guys. In contrast to Gordon who literally shouts “stop or I’ll shoot” while chasing a bad guy who is firing at him. Gordon never did fire his weapon throughout the chase. In another scene he talks down a crazed junkie who is holding someone hostage rather than just shoot the guy and get it over with as Bullock would have preferred he had done.

While this good cop/bad cop duo would make it interesting enough show on its own, we also get to see Gotham’s up-and-coming band of young criminals. It gives us the opportunity to see their origin stories in a new light as well.

First off is Selena Kyle who is a teenage street kid who picks pockets, agilly slinks around rooftops and fire escapes, and likes to steal bottles of milk to feed stray cats. She is also a witness to the killing of Bruce Wayne’s parents and throughout the first episode keeps an eye on the young orphan showing us that Catwoman’s interest in Bruce Wayne goes back a lot farther than we thought. She is portrayed by newcomer young actress Camren Biscondova. Although she hasn’t had any lines yet, she certainly portrays the physical aspects of the character well.

Oswald Cobblepot is a young henchman who is already going by the nickname “The Penguin” because of his odd walk. However it’s a name he is not yet embraced and is angry whenever called by that name. He is a right-hand man to a new character not found in the comics. Jane Pinkett Smith portrays Fish Mooney. She is a nightclub owner with connections to a local mob boss Carmine Falcone.

We are also introduced to Edward Nygma who is a police evidence technician who is unusually obsessed with riddles. You don’t have to be clairvoyant to figure out his future. We also get a glimpse of a very young and timid girl named Ivy Pepper who avoids dealing with her abusive father by tending houseplants. We know her future as “Poison Ivy”. There is also a glimpse of a comedian who is auditioning to play at Fish Mooney’s nightclub who is not identified as a criminal but whose dark sense of humor could eventually land him the title Joker.

Gotham itself is a character in the show. We get to see its corrupt police department is achieved a tenuous detente with the criminal underworld. Gordon’s struggle will be between doing what’s right and maintaining this balance between law and organized crime that keeps the city from decaying into total chaos.

If TV shows get Emmy awards for casting (I don’t know if they do or not) this one is certainly worthy of earning one. Gordon, Bullock, and Mooney are familiar faces to TV viewers but they fit the roles excellently. The young criminals however are mostly unknowns with extremely short resumes on IMDb.com but each looks as though they were born to play their parts as these characters.

If you are a fan the Batman saga then this is an absolute “Must-See” on my rating scale. But even if you are not a comic book fan but are a fan of film noir crime drama with fascinating characters and amazing art direction then I would highly recommend this to you also. You won’t see capes, or masks, or the usual comic book shtick. This is just juicy crime drama that’s well worth a look see.

Review: Madam Secretary

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A new series on CBS Sunday nights is Madam Secretary. Téa Leoni plays Elizabeth McCord, a former CIA analyst who retired from The Company “on a matter of principle.” The series starts with her teaching in a Virginia University as a political science professor. She’s married with three kids although we only get to see the two teenagers at home. Word comes that the Secretary of State has been killed in a plane crash en route to Caracas Venezuela. President Conrad Dalton played by Keith Carradine is a former CIA director who was her boss and mentor when she worked for the agency. He recruits are to replace the dead Secretary of State and tells her she was his first choice for the job when he was elected but got talked out of it by his advisers.

Flash forward three months where she is settling into the job having moved her family to DC. She is resistive of the parts of the job that are all for show such as hosting a dinner for the king of Swaziland and his 10 wives and for getting a personal makeover by a stylist appointed by the White House to make her more camera friendly.

The main plot of the first episode is about 2 American college students who sneak into Syria to promote peace by joining an anti-government group. They get arrested and are being held hostage and the government is threatening to execute them.

She seems to constantly butt heads with her staff which includes Bebe Neuwirth. Most of them were leftovers from the previous secretary. She also isn’t getting along very well with the president’s chief of staff who is played by Zeljko Ivanek. He always plays characters who seem to have some hidden agenda and you definitely get that vibe from him here as he’s constantly trying to block her access to the president.

Tim Daly plays her husband who is a religion professor. Their relationship seems solid and he serves as a sounding board when she has problems at work. Other than that he hasn’t given much to do so far.

She remains friends with some of her old colleagues at the CIA and uses back channel contacts with Russian diplomats to negotiate the release of the hostages. One of her old CIA friends comes to her in the middle of the night in a panic and says he thinks that the plane crash which killed her predecessor wasn’t an accident. You can’t tell if he’s a burned out agent for conspiracy theories or if there really is something going on. Then he turns up dead. So the conspiracy is off and running. It remains to be seen how much of the weekly plot will circle around that issue.

The dialogue is smart. The plots are reasonably credible and the acting is decent. The show is immediately followed by The Good Wife on Sunday nights and should appeal to that audience as well. If you like tough, smart, intelligent women in interesting situations such as The Good Wife and you will really like this as well.

The shows creators said that they saw the intrigue around the Benghazi scandal and said to themselves “We’ve got to make a show about this.” The background of the character isn’t very Hillary-like so it isn’t exactly ripping off her story. Then again the title of episode 2 is “Another Benghazi”

I’m giving it a definite “I’m Watching” on my rating scale and it could get upgraded to “I Really like It” if it holds up week to week. I suggest you do to.