The Box in the Living Room: Round 2
Having had some time over the weekend to catch up on a bit of TiVo, I have more initial impressions of the new shows from this season. I can feel you holding your breath in rapt anticipation. I assure you, it is perfectly safe to exhale.
More of the New
Invasion
A hurricane hits a Florida town, which may have been a cover for an alien invasion. Or it might have been a cover for William Fichtner. Possibly a little girl’s cat is involved. Ooh, look! Glowy lights!
Where Surface‘s pilot suffered from trying to do too much in the pilot, Invasion goes the polar opposite route and has an hour where practically nothing happens. The very convoluted relationships among the main characters needed more time to get straight than anything else. Ready? Main studmuffin Russell (Eddie Cibrian) is a park ranger dating/living with local news reporter Larkin (Lisa Sheridan) and her laid-off conspiracy-nut brother, Dave (Tyler Labine). They watch after Russell’s kids (Evan Peters and Ariel Gade) on weekends and return them to their mother, Dr. Mariel (Kari Matchett), the rest of the time to stay with her creepy Sheriff husband (Finchter) and his daughter from somewhere else, Kira (Alexis Dziena).
Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.
The big tense moment is when the young daughter wanders off as the hurricane is hitting and sees some lights (which aren’t effectively shown on screen) which gets Dave’s conspiracy-sense tingling as she recounts the experience. There is a car crash, a missing persons search resulting the the discovery of Dr. Mariel’s unclothed body (she pulls through, with some creepy help from the creepy Sheriff who stares creepily off camera for several seconds any time he gets on-screen), two boat rides, unidentified bodies dragged from a bayou and stuffed into a car trunk and a glowing manta ray under the water’s surface which maybe tries to eat Dave’s legs.
If this sounds exciting, rest assured it is not. Despite the “action” going on, everyone kind of walks around the whole show looking vaguely surprised to be on a set, much less on camera. The dialogue is cheesy and the suspense is played more like unintentional comedy, utterly failing to deliver anything remotely resembling a thrill. The special effects are not even effects, including the big “discovery” moment where the little girl sees… something, we presume since we’re not really allowed to share the awe. She does recount the story later in some detail but by then we don’t really care. The episode’s closing shocker (complete with thunderously ominous synthesizer music) is another half-shown look at some kind of unspecific something-or-other which may have something to do with Dr. Mariel but we can’t really tell since it looks more like someone may have dropped some Tide with Bleach into the swamp. However, the bubbling detergent sure makes William Finchter look creepy, so we must be shocked and appalled. Right? Right?
As per my rule I’ll give this one an episode beyond the pilot to straighten things out, but I can hardly wait to dump this Season Pass.
My Name is Earl
A petty thieving redneck with a two-timing wife and a blubbery brother/sidekick wins the lottery but loses the ticket. He learns about the concept of Karma in the hospital (from Carson Daily-hah!) and decides he needs to make amends for his life in order to get back the lottery winnings, so he makes a list and sets out to atone for his transgressions.
The show has promise. That’s the best compliment I can offer it. The semi-original setup deserves some mild acknowledgment and the show looks and plays like a movie comedy (which, after the raucous but wildly inappropriate canned laughter from How I Met Your Mother is so welcome as to get me all misty-eyed). Beyond that, the pilot felt pretty flat. Most of the jokes were Office-style “discomfort” humor—his wife gave birth to a black baby! How hilarious! But I didn’t laugh, because I didn’t laugh at the Office that much, either. The plot finally kicks in late in the episode with the guy who used to pretend to be the CEO of Del Taco playing a picked-on kid from Earl’s formative years as a lonely gay man in a small rural community.
ATTENTION: This is a public service announcement for all TV executives and movie producers. PLEASE NOTE: Gay jokes are done. Finito. Not funny any more. Seriously, we’ve heard them all. After Ellen, Will and Grace, Queer Eye, roughly 52,000 movies and Mythbusters you must surely know by now that it stopped being funny a long, long time ago. How many more “Oh my gosh! A straight guy dances with a gay dude!” jokes can you do? Find a different well because this one is dry. SERIOUSLY. KTHX.
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