Category Archives: Dramas

Bomb Girls

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Reelz Channel bills Bomb Girls as an original series, much as Soap Net took credit for the originality of Being Erica. Both are actually Canadian shows, lacking some of the sheen of more mainstream fare but with their own charm nonetheless.

The Bomb Girls pilot introduces us to a group of women working in a Canadian bomb factory during World War II. It opens with a series of very short scenes, quick brushstrokes that show us three women each under the thumb of a man. One expressing a desire to “go a little further” with her fiance is told to cool it. The next one is chastised by her husband for serving pot roast, a luxury he claims they can’t afford. The third is singing in a street choir and has the audacity to notice a passing man. Her preacher tells her with a firm hand squeeze to stay focused. Continue reading →

Saving Hope

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As Saving Hope heads toward the light, not a lot of people will mourn its passing, according to the ratings. It did so poorly this summer that NBC isn’t airing the final two episodes of the lone season. Viewers have had to watch online to find out if Charlie, a charismatic surgeon, wakes up from his coma. The finale goes online Sunday.

Saving Hope is a kind of Dead Like Me meets Grey’s Anatomy — and those two show probably don’t have a ton of audience overlap. Continue reading →

Make It or Break It

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Gymnasts are an ideal subject for a television show, as anyone currently enamored with Gabby Douglas, et. al., might attest. The sport provides the perfect convergence of teenage angst, body image pressure, and fame. (Alyssa Rosenberg at Slate recently wrote a thought-provoking article about evolving views of and pressures on gymnasts and other young female athletes.)

The creators of Make It or Break It, which has aired for three seasons on ABC Family, saw the opportunity to fill the 3-year-and-50-week gap between Olympics. They imagined a group of aspiring elite gymnasts all training together as teammates and frenemies, with a healthy dose of parental strife for the older audiences. Continue reading →

Arrow and Revolution

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It’s official. Bows and arrows are the hottest accessory for fall. I don’t know if Darryl from The Walking Dead started it, or if we can credit Katniss Everdeen, but two of the fall pilots screened at Comic-Con last night heavily featured this handy but rustic weapon.

Continue reading →

Battleground

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UPDATE: 7/22/12 I wrote the analysis below having only watched the first episode of Battleground. I don’t usually approach these posts as recommendations for or against watching a show. Having now completed the first season, I say “Watch it. Watch it now.” This is one of those shows that the pilot does not do justice to until you can appreciate it as part of the larger picture.

For example, some of the stuff that makes you scratch your head in the pilot (like just when are these interviews supposed to have been recorded, and what the hell is Cole wearing?) are ambiguous on purpose. The final episode has me dying for season 2.

 

If you happened upon the pilot episode of Battleground, you might think you were watching a documentary. For a few minutes at least, Battleground defies the obvious comparisons to Parks and Recreation or The Office. As mockumentaries go, this one opens on a more serious note. There is a film-like look about it. Amber waves of grain and small hometown businesses flavor the opening credits. It’s a bit like the tour of Scranton that opens The Office, but without the underlying sense of sarcasm. Then… we meet Jordan T. Mosley, the show’s Dwight Schrute. But I’ll come back to him. Continue reading →

Falling Skies

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Falling Skies returns for its second season in a couple of weeks so it’s a good time to revisit how the TNT series began. When it debuted in the summer of 2011, carrying an Executive Producer credit from Steven Spielberg, I — and probably many others — had high hopes. (Remember, this was before the harsh lesson that was Terra Nova.) I couldn’t help but compare it to The Walking Dead, which had left us hungry for more six months earlier. Each centers on a band of survivors toughing it out after an apocalyptic event, and each story centers on a family man assuming a role of responsibility within the group. That’s where the similarities end. If you’re going to compare the two, Falling Skies will inevitably lose. So, yeah. Don’t do that. Continue reading →

Bunheads

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Ballet does not get a lot of pop culture recognition, and I love ballet. Like love it. Doing it, watching it, teaching it. So I wanted Bunheads, a show about dancers coming to ABC Family, to be more than Make It Or Break It with tights. It takes about 30 seconds worth of the pilot to see it’s got its own thing going on — though it does share some traits with the network’s gymnastics dramedy.

This new show from Amy Sherman-Palladino, beloved as the creator of Gilmore Girls, forgotten as creator of The Return of Jezebel James, premieres June 11, but a sneak peek of episode 1.1 was briefly available online. Continue reading →

The Incredible Hulk

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Although the character The Incredible Hulk was born in 1962 and took animated form in 1966, the television series that ran from 1977-82 is probably responsible for introducing the masses, including us Gen-X kids, to the gamma radiation-fueled green guy. More recent live action portrayals have been underwhelming at best, until The Avengers. I don’t know if everyone was as pleasantly surprised with Mark Ruffalo‘s Hulk as I was, but I think it was partially because he reminds me of the actor imprinted on my memory as THE David Bruce Banner, Bill Bixby. (His name on his tombstone is David Bruce, though he goes by David on the show and Bruce in The Avengers. If anyone can explain this, please do.) Continue reading →

Revenge

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I finally had see what all the hype was about. I found Emily VanCamp first endearing, then later super annoying on Brothers and Sisters. (The pilot of which I really  must write about at some point.) This show has been billed as the ushering in a new era of prime time soap operas to rival the heyday of Dallas, priming us, of course, for that reboot. Continue reading →

Mad Men

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Don DraperUnlike many pilots, where we dive headlong into action, meeting a spate of characters before the opening credits, Mad Men‘s “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” asks us to sit down and get to know its main character, Don Draper. We spend the pilot’s first six minutes with Don (Jon Hamm), not in the heat of battle on Madison Avenue, but in a quiet moment, alone in a bar. He scribbles thoughtfully on a napkin, mulling an idea. He launches an impromptu focus group of one with a waiter. He wants to know what motivates this guy–the average working man–to smoke the brand of cigarettes he smokes. (This brief encounter also gives us taste of 1960s culture vis-a-vis race, but more on that later.) Continue reading →