The Winter 2013 Television Thread

Time To Titties. I abbreviate to preserve, you know, decorum and shit. They won't cop to it, but I'm, like, seventy three and a quarter percent sure that the guys at Cinemax in particular track that statistic because, you know, they're Cinemax. I will be the first to salute Banshee if it manages even one episode this season where nobody gets naked. I kind of think it'll be an achievement if they can just keep Maybe His Daughter completely dressed.

I'll give them credit, though - this episode had stuff in it that wasn't unnecessary nudity and swearing that would have kept it off broadcast television, which I don't remember noticing so much of in the pilot. So - you know, much respect for justifying the show. And in case it's not clear, I do kid this one because I like it. I mean, I watched the second episode of this one. I barely finished Deception.

Development news. Also a not-quite-cancellation-but-it-ain't-good and a significant premiere.

Another dead soldier. Ben and Kate got yanked. Them Tuesday night comedies ain't working out so hot.

The CW wants so hard to be in The Hunger Games business. Except in this one Cat Piss is a contestant on The Bachelor. Empowering.

Mad Men Season 6 starts April 7. AMC really needs to learn how to run a network better - this is a pretty late announcement when the show was already in production at the end of last year.

ABC added four shows to its pilot slate. None of these dramas are male-targeted, so I still have no clue what they're going to do with S.H.I.E.L.D. Even the one about...I dunno, love zombies?...sounds not-male-targeted in the logline. Doesn't mean that it is, but if they're seriously trying to get that demo on Thursday nights, they're going to need SOMETHING other than S.H.I.E.L.D.

Fox drama pilots. The Orci and Kurtzman one has to be from Bad Robot, so you figure that it's in competition about the robot buddy cop thing that they've already got on the slate and that at least one will get ordered.

Something that kinda cracked me up about The Following, but also something they did right: one of my pet peeves on TV shows is people not saying "bye" before ending a phone call. Everyone hangs up on each other. But on The Following, they did!

I hate when they don't have any god damn liquid in the cups they're drinking out of. Put fucking water in there at least, people! COME ON! I CAN TELL THEY ARE EMPTY WHY ARE YOU SIPPING FROM THEM?

I'm not sure I can stand another episode of Banshee. I have an issue with the lead, Anthony Starr. It seems to me that he has no lower lip. I look at his face and wonder how long it'll be until he inserts the word "Chaw" into casual conversation, and then spits messily onto the dirt road.

This is the second series I may ditch because I can't stand something visual about the lead character. I have the same problem with Gabriel Macht's Eyebrow Mole on Suits. I hear Eyebrow Mole is going to get a couple of lines in a few of the upcoming episodes.

Kinda digging the new season of Being Human. Sally is even hotter than I remember.

Huh. For some reason I thought this had something to do with Robert Patrick being on a lot of shows or something, but he would be T2, right?

TIL T3, or I now speak Seiler.

What? Yes they have, and yes they have. The doctor's lounge was in the first episode at least, and they've had various shots of her walking around outside, talking to that kid on the steps, getting into a limo outside a club.... What a weird thing to say.

Man, TV networks are weird. Ben and Kate gets the ax, and meanwhile CBS just ordered a pilot for a show based on that terrible Cameron Diaz movie Bad Teacher. 44% on Rotten Tomatoes (36% audience rating) and they want to make more?

$216 million box office on the one hand, and a 1.2 in demo with only 2.53 million total viewers in the other? No - that seems like about the right decision. Always remember, quality is - at best - a secondary concern when you're programming television. Your customers are advertisers and they need people. Ben and Kate was never making it out of the season alive with those numbers, but I do think that we'll see some minor churn at Summer Press Tour asking after the sudden spontaneous decision that every single network reached at basically the same time to try and program sitcoms on Tuesday night and their subsequent failure.

He's not saying they were never outside. He's saying that they've never shown the outside of the hospital, thus it's surprising that suddenly they're situated in a working hospital with shots outside their little office area. I also thought that they were a private practice in a separate building.

Just rewatched the first episode. It did show them working in a hospital (though I never saw any lounge area) but it strongly suggested that their practice was in a separate building given the scene where Mindy has to run across traffic to get from their practice to the hospital where Doctor Ultimate-Love-Interest was stealing her clients. Neither the first nor the second ever had an establishing shot of a hospital.

Like I said, it was surprising. Made me reconsider what I'd seen on the show before. Not sure why it's such a 'weird thing to say'. Though I guess you had a 'weird way of misunderstanding me'.

Oh, right, establishing shot. I guess they don't really do those. Maybe that's passé now. I did think they were in a hospital, though I can't remember why. Maybe when she did clinic duty and helped that immigrant woman? Anyway, I'm betting the reason they showed that there's a hospital outside their little office is precisely because people didn't realize they were in a hospital.

Because I just had this conversation twice, I should probably put it here.

Aaron Ashmore (Jinks from Warehouse 13, some guy from Lost Girl who was at one point sexing the shorter one that's funny some of the time, etc.) is not in The Following. Bobby Drake (Iceman) from the X-Men movies is in The Following. You're not crazy, however - they're twins.

Haha, oh yeah, I remember that back when I was watching some bloody awful horror movie involving idiots getting trapped on a ski lift and encountering some wolves.

I guess they really should've cast them as Multiple man instead of Iceman.

Lots of nudity, whatever. I do like Banshee. My expectations were low so that may be helping. So far > Following

Holy shit, I totally thought it was Jinksy. At least knowing they're twins I don't feel like I'm going insane now.

Just watched the third episode of Banshee. I love this show. He is like an even more angry Deadwood sheriff with a crazy ass violent streak. The other actors and characters are good with interesting back stories. The overall story arc is unbelievable, but once you buy in, it is a fun ride.

The pay off in episode 3 was just awesome. I was giddy throughout.

Totally unexpected surprise. I have watched some of the other non-HBO, premium channel series, but I generally lose interest after 2 or 3 episodes. Not so with this one. Pushes the right buttons for me.

You know why I like Legit? I didn't cry, but I almost did, because it did as good a job of explaining why you don't just kill yourself as anything I've ever seen. I don't know if it'll make it (it's really down there in the Wilfred zone for actual laughs per episode, which is bad when you don't have Wilfred's twisted little over-plot), but I'll watch it to the end one way or another. Plus, it's nice that a show can bring on a guy with Prader-Willis and have him be funny without being mean to him (though I doubt that Rodney will be any sort of a regular character, given the premise by the end of the episode).

The second episode of Ripper Street has a good old-fashioned Victorian street urchin fight, and it's pretty awesome. I'm definitely digging this series.

A million times THIS!! I mean, even if they just taped some metal washers in them to give the cups some weight. A cup of coffee has weight in excess of the cup and these people are slinging them around like they are, well, empty!

That just reminds me of the jokes that some show did because the FCC wouldn't let them drink beer on air. So they would pour a glass, then cut the camera away, and then the glass would have less beer in it, and the guy would be like, "Ahhh"

I don't suppose anyone is planning to suffer with me when Smash premieres February... 5th, I think. That show is horrible, and yet I find myself really looking forward to it.

Castle is the worst one of these (mainly because he brings coffee to his partner every morning). Every single time, not a drop of liquid in the cups.

They could at least, ya know, ACT and pretend that the cups are filled with liquid.

Not so much. You should know going in, however, that the first season was produced in a vacuum, with no feedback whatsoever, and as a result the second season is going to be very different. I think Luther gets devoured by a pack of rabid hyenas or something. I think it's Luther. Somebody awful, anyway. Regardless, their first order of business will be getting rid of everything that anybody didn't like (within reason - Kat McPhee is still a part of the show, despite the fact that she just can't fill up a stage the way an experienced Broadway musical theater actor can).

I'll be watching Smash. I mean, Smash will play while I do other things, things that I will pause doing when people start singing and then resume again once the singing stops.

I dunno... something tells me that if they were able to make their protagonist super-annoying and their antagonist really sympathetic completely by accident, any new stuff they do will probably be just as bad. And it's not as if they're going to nuke Debra Messing's character (ugh).

Still, I'll be watching, so there's not much I can say with any measure of definitiveness until then.

The Following did a pretty good job, and didn't seem to devolve outside of the pilot into a procedural, like I was expecting it would.

Only real drawback from this episode, for me, was the use of Sepultura's version of Angel, rather than the original from Massive Attack. The original is creepier.

I do have some questions for the writers, though: Why isn't the wife in a safehouse? If even a casual background check of a suspect can reveal the false front, why not do serious background checks of everyone on the scene? How is Joe able to grab and squeeze his wife's neck enough to leave a bruise if he's got 3 broken fingers on that hand?

Right out the gate, the first thing that I notice about the second episode of The Following? It might be a really bad idea to butt your episodes up against one another all Walking Dead comic book style. Particularly for a show that's really just a slasher movie. I don't want to sit through a thirteen hour slasher movie. I'd kind of rather have an elephant stomp on my balls. While it might work in series (a fun departure from so many television series reading better in trade), I shudder to think what it's going to be like trying to watch this on DVD. Also, that line that whasserface the cult lady who's also on Person of Interest actually tries to sell (has he opened a new void in the human soul? really? is that what he did?) is a little much.

But if you put that aside, and just reconcile yourself to the fact that this show likes to hang out behind the school with the smokers and write bad poetry about fucking corpses, it's still the show it was.

Stupid question of the day - why was Natalie Zea wearing a wedding ring? Or did I miss something because I was only about half watching?

I'm not entirely sure - I'd have to go back and look again - but I think it was a flipped shot. If I remember right, the mole above her lip was on the wrong side of her face.

I watched and enjoyed "The Americans" last night. Deep cover Russian spies in Cold War 80's. I was pleased. Sadly because I've chosen to watch this show I know it will be canceled. It's like a sad curse I have. If I start a show from the beginning then it gets canceled. But if I choose not to it thrives and survives so I can join it later. It's a hard game to play with my entertainment.

I did that to Awake last year and yet Touch, which I deserted early, is having its Season 2 premiere soon.

So I'm not the only one responsible for Awake getting canceled! Glad to know!

Just watched the first episode of Kroll Show, which I didn't expect a whole lot of and which ended up being absolutely hilarious. Are we in the midst of a sketch renaissance?

Graveyard Carz on the Velocity Channel is the funniest car restoration show I've ever seen. Like, good enough that I've been tweeting quotes from it all night. And I NEVER do that.

Talk about high bars!! ;)

A) I know that this has been a popular refrain for a few years, but I really hate this year of The Office.

B) If Suits wants me to cheer for the tiny blonde girl over Louis, keep trying. He's right. She sucks. It's frustrating when a show doesn't know who its own hero really is. Like when Gordon Walker didn't get to kill Sam Winchester.

I can't stop thinking of Louis Litt as Snape. I think I am broken. I mean, it's not even the same guy, but....I mean, I'm not the only person seeing this, am I?

I'll process Do No Harm tomorrow, but I'm expecting very little, particularly because it had the worst debut in modern history. If it makes three episodes, that'll be a minor miracle. I'm guessing somebody at NBC is already checking to see how soon they can have Hannibal ready to go.

I'll process The Americans later tonight and am expecting considerably more from it, and the good news there is that it did as well as American Horror Story in the slot. Oh, and speaking of that show, one of the few parts of the season that I liked in a pretty unqualified fashion has confirmed that she's good for the next season. Maybe this time they'll give Ms. Rabe something more complex to do than just shouting at a wall while attractive.