It’s been a big couple of weeks in the world of TV, so let’s get started with some reviews.

Emily’s Reasons Why Not

I sat through about ten minutes of this show with my wife before she’d had enough.  I had planned on finishing it later so that I could give you my own “reasons why not” to watch, but all you need is the one that ABC just gave:  it’s been cancelled after two episodes.  The show was truly awful, so I’m glad there’s no need for me to subject myself to the rest of it.

Final Score: 1 cent.

In Justice

This is a new legal drama that follows the “National Justice Project”, a group that takes on cases where people feel they were wrongly convicted and jailed.  It starts off showing “what the jury believed”, and then goes about showing how they were wrong to believe such things.  The characters gather evidence and do your regular legal drama-type things before coming to a conclusion about whether or not the conviction can be overturned, etc.

This is a pretty solid legal drama.  The problem with a lot of legal dramas is that they focus on cases rather than people, and this show seems to get that aspect right.  The characters have separate personalities that are allowed to manifest themselves, and the show is well acted.  The one concern I have comes with the premise.  It’s an interesting premise in itself, but the first two episodes have shown the team taking on cases after impassioned pleas from family members of those who have been wrongfully imprisoned.  Apparently the process is that people send requests for help in letter form, so as to not crowd headquarters with a bunch of sad and angry people who would yell at the workers all day.  But the first two episodes feature family members who come to the headquarters and are told by the workers that they need to send their request in writing, only to plead with them until they gave in and took the case.  If this worked, why wouldn’t everyone do it?  

But all in all, the show is fun to watch.  The first two episodes dealt with people who were actually innocent, though I imagine there will be the occasional person who was actually jailed because they actually deserved it, or someone who didn’t deserve it whom they still can’t exonerate.  Coupled with the political aspirations of the character that runs the Project, there are plenty of storylines to keep the show interesting for a while.

Final Score: 3.5 cents.

Love Monkey

I like Tom Cavanaugh.  I enjoyed his work on Ed, and he seems to have the same “good guy who can’t get it right” kind of vibe going for this new show on CBS.  Cavanaugh has officially mastered the art of delivering fast-paced, clever dialogue, but he doesn’t do it in a way that makes the character feel unauthentic.  The supporting cast (featuring, among others, Judy Greer, Jason Priestly and Larenz Tate) also does well with the dialogue and seems to have a promising chemistry that, if developed, could make the show very good.  

The premise is interesting enough. Cavanaugh’s character, Tom Farrell, plays a “Jerry McGuire” of sorts who happens to work for a major record label instead of a sports agent firm, but he still delivers his “it’s about the music and not the money” speech and is promptly fired, contemplates starting his own label, realizes he has no money for that, and lucks into getting a job for a minor record label run by a guy who shares his ideals.  This is all on the first episode, and it’s kind of nice that it’s out of the way.  It establishes his character without dragging out a storyline that we’ve seen before.

Here’s the thing.  I won’t go into a lot of detail about all the characters, because there are several, but the one thing that bothers me with the whole “group of friends” thing is that there’s one woman who is Tom’s “friend who is a girl”.  And already in the first episode, he’s encouraged by his sister (married to Jason Priestley’s character) to pursue a relationship with her.  The title of the show refers, obviously, to the way Tom swings from relationship to relationship like a monkey.  But if we already know whom he wants to end up with, what’s the fun in that?  We don’t need another “Ross and Rachel”, or even “Ed and Carol”.  Couldn’t we just have him be a swingin’ bachelor for a while and then maybe meet someone a few years into the series?  

That one aspect aside, the show has promise.  Another interesting part of the series is that it will supposedly showcase multiple little-known musicians, which could be cool.  They started out in the pilot episode with a guy named Teddy Geiger, a seventeen-year-old singer/songwriter in real life, who plays a young singer/songwriter named Wayne.

All in all this is worth checking out, if only for a few weeks to see if it goes somewhere.  There’s plenty of room for development with a good cast, good premise, and what could be a lot of good music.

Final Score: 3.5 cents (with potential)

Four Kings

Four Kings is NBC’s final piece to the “Must See TV” puzzle that they’ve been trying desperately to reassemble since the end of Friends.  It’s not terribly original, but it’s harmless enough.  The premise is that there’s these four guys who have been best friends their whole lives, and when one of the character’s grandmother dies, she leaves him her huge New York apartment, into which all four soon move.  

Semi-hilarity ensues, with your basic guy stuff going on.  For instance, in the most recent episode, the game of “chesting” was introduced, where one guy sneaks up on another and punches him in the chest, at which point “the chestee becomes the chester” and must “chest” someone else.  You know the four kings.  In fact, if you’ve been to college, you may have been one of the four kings yourself for a while.  In my case, there were five of us (four of which are contributors to this blog).  While we don’t live close enough to “chest” each other, we could certainly relate to the kind of humor on the show.

Seth Green does a good job playing the angry, cynical friend, and there’s also a kind of dumb and childish friend, along with…the other two who are kind of interchangeable.  And that’s the problem.  It’s an okay show with moments where it’s quite funny, but there’s not been anything yet to make it stand out.  Of course, there’s also the issue of the show’s lead-in, Will and Grace.  I’m not sure that this is such an effective lead-in (though I have problems with the whole idea of lead-ins anyway.  Do people really just watch one channel all night because they don’t care what else is on?  What’s happening to the male channel-surfing population?).  It just seems weird to me that they’re going from Sean Hayes to Seth Green.  And if the plan is to try and tailor a show with this premise to fit Will and Grace fans, just tell me now so that I can never watch it again.  

Final Score: 3 cents.

Thoughts and Ramblings on the Week That Was

I won’t put in too much here, considering the already staggering length of this week’s column.  Let me just throw out a big fat “Welcome Back” to 24.  They dispensed with any notion of a big happy reunion between Jack, David Palmer, Tony and Michelle with the first episode.  (Of course, Tony could still come back.)  With that option gone, we really don’t know what’s going to happen, and that’s the way I like it.  I actually predicted some of the plot points last year, which I didn’t like.  So it’s refreshing to have the good old unpredictable 24 back this year.  

Also, it’s time for the annual hilarity of the American Idol auditions, which never get old for me.  And if you saw one performer’s rousing (read: I couldn’t stop laughing) performance of “I Shot the Sheriff”, you know why.  So keep it up, FOX.  Oh—and let Arrested Development go while you’re at it, so someone else can pick it up and air it for many years to come (pleeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaase pick it up, ABC!).  

I’ll be back with more next week.  Until then, keep smiling, fools.