Viva Laughlin

Viva Laughlin is an American version of a British show (Viva Blackpool) about the young upstart casino owner going up against the established casino mogul with a murder mystery thrown in. Being a British show gives it about 50/50 odds of success, since British imports have split evenly between being long running hits (The Office, Sanford & Son (née Steptoe & Son), American Idol (née Pop Idol)) and the really gigantic stinkers (Coupling, First Years (née This Life), Life is Wild).

It's got Hugh Jackman in it, which increases its odds, but it's also got Melanie Griffith, which decreases its odds by a slightly greater amount. So its odds are still about even until you learn it's a musical. To my knowledge, there has never been a successful TV musical, so you can just about count it out right there.

Don't get me wrong. I'm about the world's biggest proponent of the singing and the dancing and the musical theatre. But, I don't have a lot of hopes for someone to do a musical on the small screen successfully.

All of my worst fears were confirmed when I watched the pilot. It's not a musical like singing and dancing production numbers. It's only a musical in the sense that occasionally a song will play, and a character will sing along to it. Let me clarify. A song will play in its actual recorded version (Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil", for example), and a character will sing the same words along with the recorded track (so you hear both him and Mick). It's almost as if CBS bought a musical, but then was too embarassed to actually show a musical, so came up with ways to shield the American public from all that pesky singing.

If CBS took out all of the music, though, what's left would be still unwatchable. It's easily in contention for the worst new show for this fall season. About the only thing the show gets right is the feeling one gets from the actual city of Laughlin. Laughlin, Nevada is Las Vegas's ugly stepsister, where you get all of the desperation and seediness of Vegas without any of the fun or character. It's decidedly second-rate, and you always get the feeling, no matter what you're doing, that it would have been better in Vegas. This show recreates this feeling by being a decidedly second-rate show. The acting, the dialogue, the sets, the costumes and everything seem like low-budget rejects from other, better shows which provides a good parallel to the city of Laughlin. However, that's not a reason to watch this show. There is no reason to watch this show.

Samantha Who

Samantha Who (formerly known as Samantha Be Good, formerly known before that as Sam I Am) is the new comedy with Christina Applegate as someone who got bonked on the head, develops amnesia, and then slowly discovers that the person she used to be is not really the person she'd like to be.

I never really watched Married With Children, so I don't have any previous experience with Ms. Applegate, good or bad. I find her to be kind of the right balance between cute and annoying in this show, and the show itself is almost funny. I really like Jean Smart, also, no matter what she's in. I'm not sure how long they can drag out the amnesia thing though, because eventually she either recovers, learns everything about herself, or forges a new life and grows to accept it. There eventually has to be an end to the finding her in embarrassing comedic situations caused by her not remembering some crucial element from her past.

Also, I don't understand why developing amnesia after a bonk on the head is such a problem. I learned from Gilligan's Island that it's easily cured by applying another bonk to the head.

Women's Murder Club

I kept seeing this one come up on the To-Do List on the TiVo and thought, "Oh man, I gotta watch this?" But, rules are rules, so I dutifully recorded it just to see if it was any good.

It's not.

It seems like with a title like Women's Murder Club you'd have a club of women that commit murders. Or maybe a club that murders women. Either would be more exciting than what it actually is, which is a club of women who solve murders. The club is comprised of a medical examiner, a DA, a cop, and a reporter. They solve murders and talk about boys. A lot. It's apparently based on a book.

The pilot had one of the weirder cold opens of any pilot this season. The woman cop is checking her voice mail, trying to figure out where the reporter is that she was supposed to meet when the reporter falls from the sky and crushes the car next to her. That was pretty cool, actually.

The rest of the pilot was just unbearable, though, because the hens in the club really did spend more time talking about boys then they did actually solving murders. Also, the DA lady's short white boy hair was just really repulsive.

Life is Wild

Life is Wild is about a woman and her kids marrying a man and his kids and then the whole family moving to South Africa so the man can be a vet at a game preserve run by his dead previous wife's estranged father. It's the most common premise around.

The show felt more like an ABC Family type show than an actual network show. It had the same sort of wooden acting and stock footage.

One of my pet peeves is poorly written little kid dialogue. Anybody who's spent any time at all around kids could easily tell the difference between what a kid would actually say and what some writer who's never been around kids would think they would say. Oddly, it usually manifests itself as dumbing down of the kids. I very rarely see kid dialogue where I think "No way would a kid of that age string together that kind of complex sentence structure and raise that sort of insight into the issue at hand." However, I constantly see kids on TV or movies that make me think, "why is that kid retarded?"

Anyway, this show has that problem.

Pushing Daisies

For most people, it seems like it would be kind of hard to know what to make of Pushing Daisies. It's brightly colored (almost to the point of garish), there's some sort of supernatural or magical element, the sets are almost cartoony. I watched Bryan Fuller's other series Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me, so I don't think this is too much of a stretch although it certainly is farther out there than either one of these.

It's got a lot going for it. There's Jim Dale. Kristin Chenoweth is in it (although the crocheted dress she wore in the pilot is hideous). Ellen Greene is in it. There are supposed to be some semi-frequent musical numbers. And, the pie shop is named The Pie Hole. That's brilliant.

However, there's one big problem with this show that keeps me from watching it. Ned brings Chuck back to life, which means that the slightest touch from him kills her. Dead. Forever. But Chuck and Ned seem to spend way too much time in way too close of proximity, taking unnecessary risks. They'll sit next to each other, sit in a booth across from each other, work in the same kitchen together. It makes me physically uncomfortable to watch.

If I'm holding my phone in my hand and walk into a bathroom where the toilet lid is up, I start to freak out because I'm sure that the phone will somehow slip out of my hand and fly across the room straight into the toilet. I have to move my other hand over and hold my phone in both hands to start to feel secure again. This is the same feeling I get watching this show.

Carpoolers

I absolutely loved the short-lived Sons & Daughters, so I'm really glad to see Fred Goss working again in Carpoolers. He's playing pretty much the exact same character, so that helps me like the show as well.

Another plus is that the show's created by Bruce McCulloch, so other Kids in the Hall will be present hopefully. Also, I think Fred Goss lived in three different houses in the first three episodes, so that helps keep it fun.

All in all, this show is silly more than it is funny, so if it were solely up to me I might not commit to it. However, Becki really likes it, so we keep watching.

Cavemen

Much has been already been written about Cavemen, from better writers than me. In case you don't know, this is the show based on the successful series of GEICO ads with the cavemen living among our time. It seemed like such a no-brainer, given the success of Mr. Whipple's World in the 70s, and the more recent successes of Noid Patrol and Where's the Beef Now?.

This was a very early candidate for worst show of fall 2007, but I'm pleased to report that the powers that be have managed to make a show that's actually not the worst of the year. (Big Shots, I'm looking in your direction...). It's not good, but it's not nearly as bad as you might think. It pretty successfully sets a tone not at all unlike other comedies where a particular class of people, normally looked down upon, have to live among those who normally do the down-looking. Its closest analog is The Munsters, but I think it has just the slightest hint of Jeffersons.

It has a couple of things going for it. Nick Swardson was hilarious in the first episode, and the character of Nick is pretty funny. However, I don't understand why, with the bigger budgets that a series allows, the makeup's worse than the commercials.

Aliens in America

Aliens in America gets points from me for being a half hour sitcom, yet foregoing a laugh track. That's become more common recently, but is yet still too rare. It also has Amy Pietz, who I've liked in other things. But, the rest of the show just didn't click for me, so I'm not watching it.

Moonlight

Moonlight is about a vampire detective. Genius. Somebody somewhere realized people like detective shows, and they like vampire shows. It was an idea whose time had come.

Too bad it's not any good. I liked the reference to Hearst College, and I love it when a show uses really old stock footage, like the night shot of downtown Los Angeles showing the First Interstate Bank Building with its big sign on top (which hasn't been there since 1998).

The female lead is terrible. Just stunningly unwatchable. Even if the rest of this show was good, I would not watch it for that reason alone.

Big Shots

Big Shots has been often referred to as Sex in the City for men. Well, I didn't like that show, and thought there was probably a pretty good chance I wouldn't like this one either. Sure enough, less than two minutes in, I said out loud to everyone and no one in particular, "I hate this show."

I don't even want to write any more about it except to say that I loved Joshua Malina on Sports Night, but if this show stays on much longer he will be dead to me. Also, one of my pet peeves is people being pronounced dead too quickly on TV shows, without proper resuscitation efforts. This show had someone getting knocked over by a golf cart, someone else saying "Call 911!", and then another person just kind of leaning over the victim and saying, "You can forget 911". And that's it, the guy's dead. No CPR, paramedics, AED, nothing. Yes, I know it was important to move the story along quickly at that point, but come on, writers. What's wrong with knocking the guy over, then cutting to the country club the next day: "He died?" "Yes, can you believe it?" "Hit by a golf cart causing a sudden heart attack, wow!", etc. Doing it the way you did takes even slightly intelligent people out of the story.

Oh, and the one slightly redeeming thing about the pilot is the frequent use of the phrase "tranny hooker", which is always funny, even on a crap show like this.