The new TV season!

My thoughts on the new TV season thus far:

The most eagerly anticipated show (according to the polls I saw) was Blindspot, NBC’s attempt to create a Blacklist-lite action show featuring a naked woman with amnesia covered with tattoos.  It’s probably not a good sign that when I watch it, I can only think of creating a drinking game where viewers must drink alcohol whenever a) Jane Doe yells, “He was the only link to finding out who I am!” b) Jane gets told to stay in the car; or c) a subordinate either questions or blatantly disregards an order given to them by a superior.  After the third episode that second one may be less in play as they’ve made Jane part of the team, which must really cheese off all the actual FBI recruits at Quantico (a show I don’t watch) who are trying to become FBI agents without getting tatted up and losing their memories.

I am getting a definite Flash Forward vibe from the first three episodes.  Flash Forward was, of course, the ill-fated series from a few years ago that started off with an intriguing premise (everyone on Earth passes out at the same moment and sees a vision of themselves in 6 months) and quickly went nowhere.  The creators may have a perfectly plausible explanation for why someone would drug a beautiful woman with amnesia drugs, cover her body with tattoos that feature word game puzzles giving clues to future crimes, and then dump her in a duffle bag in Times Square with a note to call the FBI, but right now I can’t imagine it will turn out to be as plausible as they think it is. 

I also wonder if they will run into the problem Prison Break had, where having a character with intricate tattoos all over his body got to be a little inconvenient down the road because the tattoos had to be replicated whenever the character took off his shirt.

The acting on Blindspot is pedestrian in the extreme, except for Jaimie Alexander who projects the requisite amount of plaintiveness as the central figure.  However, she is teamed with an actor, Sullivan Stapleton, who projects all the charisma of a block of wood, and whose overly earnest following of every obscure lead makes him the most gullible character currently on TV (the fact that the script makes him always right doesn’t mean he isn’t gullible, just that the scriptwriters are accommodating).

I am sticking with Blindspot for now, but my patience is wearing very thin.

Of the new shows I’ve sampled none has really impressed me.  The Muppets sort of captures the goofiness of their syndicated show in the 1970’s, but inserting them in the real world just seems to have imposed real-world constraints upon them.  It was hard enough wrapping my head around a frog dating a pig, but Josh Groban dating Missy Piggy is too much to take; plus the writing hasn’t been that sharp.

Minority Report is a huge misfire.  Of course the very premise of the show contradicts to point of the Tom Cruise movie that the Pre-Crime Project was a BAD IDEA.  But the pilot episode made use of lazy script writing, giving a “pre-cog” visions just hazy enough to be pointless but just accurate enough to provide enough clues for a solution.  The futuristic cop show on FOX Almost Human was uneven but far, far smarter.

The most welcomed comedy return has been Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which has kicked off season three with a pair of inspired plot runs—Jake and Amy are actually making their attempt at a relationship work, and Captain Holt being replaced with Bill Hader for one episode and then Dean Winters (best known as “mayhem” in an insurance commercial).  The Jake/Amy relationship has avoided the obvious sitcom traps and is remarkably sweet (the fact that straight-laced Amy finds Jake’s impersonation of their older, gay, black boss a turn on is inspired and disturbing).  This being a sitcom Captain Holt will eventually return as Captain of the Nine-Nine, but Winters is a nice comic foil for the cast to play off of.

I tried to get back into Gotham but gave up; the show is so busy setting up who is going to be whom in 15 years that it sucks all the entertainment out of what is going on NOW.  Great production design and some inspired acting/casting, but after a season and an episode I am out.

Sleepy Hollow did not impress in its third season premiere.  I find it hard to believe that Abbie could get through FBI training and become a full-fledged agent in only nine months, and I don’t see how working for the Feds makes her partnership with Ichabod any easier.  With Ichabod’s wife and son (and the Horseman?) apparently safely dead the show has gone ahead and created a new Big Bad, a young woman with a box named Pandora.  Yawn.  Plus the addition to the cast of Nikki Reed as an improbably buxom Betsy Ross just looks like a ploy for male viewers (and for an 18^th century love interest for Ichabod now that the ol’ ball and chain is dead in the 21^st century). 

So, no apparent breakout hits like summer’s Mr. Robot, or last season’s Fargo.  Just lots of time-wasting, DVR filling pabulum.  As usual.