The TV Season Thus Far

I would say that this television season has been a disappointment, but that would imply that there were some positive expectations to begin with.  There were no shows with enormous “buzz,” like last season’s Agents of Shield.  There were no unknown quantities that had network support, like Lost.  Everything was vaguely familiar, and nothing looked like it would break out as a hit.

What can you say when the best new comedy of the season is already gone? I am referring to You’re the Worst, FX’s boundary-pushing comedy about two horrible, terrible people who discover they have “feelings” for one another [insert air quotes and eye roll].  In most fiction love makes good people better, but in this case two self-absorbed, emotionally stunted narcissists actually reinforce each other’s baser natures. Chris Geere and Aya Cash play Jimmy and Gretchen; he’s a pretentious British novelist (although no one is buying his book) and she’s a publicity manager for a rap group with the worst case of arrested development since the characters on Arrested Development. Both of them are shocked when a one night stand (that pushes the limits of what can be shown on basic cable) turns into something more.

Making Jimmy and Gretchen look relatively respectable by comparison are their friends; his roommate Edgar is a Gulf War vet with PTSD (and who may not have been playing with a full deck before being sent overseas), while her friend Lindsay is a coke-snorting sex addict.  Lindsay, trapped in an unhappy marriage to a dweeb she has nothing in common with, spent the 8 episode run descending further and further until she ended up abandoning her husband, frantically trying to do coke off her own boobs. 

You’re the Worst managed to make the two main characters grow while not falling into the trap of “love making them better people.”  She finally cleaned up her apartment, which looked like the inside of a teenaged boy’s closet, and he gave her a key to his place when hers burned down. Because the show had done the heavy lifting on their character development, it felt like progress and not a plot device.

The only other new show I am enjoying this season is The Flash, the second attempt at adapting the DC staple to television. The 1990 version was campy, while this version is (dare I say it) more realistic.  Grant Gustin as the titular character (known as Barry Allen when not in costume) does a great job of balancing the over-eager youth in a system where letting things slide is the norm (I like the detail that he is actually a very good crime scene technician).  Cavanaugh exudes oily charm as the scientist who is ostensibly helping him but has a hidden agenda, and Jesse Martin provides a solid anchor as the cop who is a surrogate father to Barry.  The villains of the week have been a tad silly, but maybe that’s not a bad thing compared to some other overly-serious shows.

This brings me to Gotham, the biggest disappointment of the season so far.  The premise, characters, and setting are all absurd in the extreme, but every character in the series (and every writer writing it) appears to be oblivious.  One of the dumbest plot contrivance of all time was the reaction of the police to a vigilante who kills people by attaching them to weather balloons that fly away; it never occurs to the police, not even “good cop” Jim Gordon, that the people will eventually come back down one way or another. No one sends up a helicopter to track the balloons, no one checks wind patterns to see where they might be blown, everyone just considers the victims as good as dead as soon as they float off, and both Gordon and his no-good partner are shocked when someone points out the balloons will eventually pop at high altitude, letting gravity take its course.  The performances are still entertaining, but they need to get off of origin stories and establish a more complete environment.

I am frustrated with CBS’ Scorpion, because I want to love it and CBS is watering it down to where it is difficult to like (I had the same reaction to last year’s Intelligence).  The CBS format is like the opposite of the Seinfeld “no hugging, no learning” mantra.  One character has to learn a lesson in every episode, usually something about trusting oneself or trusting ones friends.  It doesn’t help that the “geniuses” in the show don’t act like geniuses; they act like what stupid people think geniuses act like. I’m sticking with it, but it is on thin ice.

Constantine is obviously designed as a Friday night companion piece with Grimm (and if you had told me when it began that Grimm would last four seasons, I wouldn’t have believed you). I’ve only seen the pilot, and it was obvious that the show was re-tooled after it was completed, so we will have to see how it develops. I generally don’t like shows or movies where evil is all powerful, yet can be defeated by muttering something in Latin. I want rules, rules that make sense and are understandable within the fictive universe. Constantine may develop those rules, but until then I am skeptical.

I have given up on Forever, which was conveniently plotted and relied too much on the charm of its lead actor. In one episode the medical examiner who lives “forever” (played by Ioan Gruffudd) investigated a bogus anti-aging clinic, and when he got their client list his adopted son’s name was on the list; it turned out he had just asked for some information. First, the fact that out of the 8.5 million inhabitants of New York City he would know someone on the list was absurd; second, the potential danger was diffused so quickly it was as if it was only put in the show to create the promo for the episode. I wish that New Amsterdam had lasted longer and was available on DVD.

I don’t see things improving on network TV anytime soon.  But the good news is that HBO and CBS just announced independent streaming services, so many soon I won’t have to get 500 cable channels to watch 13.