Despite every show on Ryan Murphy's resume arriving with a fully-formed gay sensibility, he's unusual in that he's never been renowned for creating gay characters that proved particularly positive. Gay men are either swishy sex freaks or over-earnest victims, gay women are flexible, and bisexuality is a phase. Or, for women, something to be used to grab a guy's attention. All of which makes The New Normal, Murphy's sitcom about a gay couple and their surrogate, something of a risky move. He's an auteur who seems to believe he's an instigator of some kind of grand social change, and while there are certainly factors to somebody like Glee's Kurt Hummel that are overwhelmingly positive, a lot of his work with gay characters leaves a bitter aftertaste, pandering more to cliches and stereotyping than anything else.
Yup, there's actually a lot more TV out there that I tuned into this year. A couple of sitcoms, some very, very bad shows that I spent far more time watching than was necessary, and a couple of shows that ended up languishing on my DVR for so long that clearly something was amiss with them. So I tossed together a couple of brief paragraphs, nothing that goes into great detail, but somebody out there may like 'em.
With Desperate Housewives imminently checking out, ABC is eager to find its next hit soap -- a show that can hopefully break out unexpectedly and both satirize as well as pay homage to grand soap opera tradition. Good Christian Bitches, with that similarly arresting title, could have easily fit into the DH wheelhouse. But arriving mid-season under the hideously watered-down moniker 'GCB' (the B not even standing for 'bitches' anymore), Robert Harling's primetime sudser is quickly exposed as a pretty mundane comedy series, sacrificing most of the juicy potential of its premise and becoming something that's frustratingly forgettable.
Of the numerous themes and plot strands thrown at us during the pilot for ABC's big '60s melodrama, the one that stuck with me was the representation of gender. One of the last scenes in the episode sees two pilots talking stewardesses over drinks, one of them telling the other how the Pan Am ladies are 'above' ordinary women, like goddesses of the skies. So much so that it looks like its every little girls dream to become a stewardess when they grow up. But through the pilot we see how 'regular' most of these women are, all experiencing the same struggles and personal entanglements that everybody else experiences, even in 2011. Okay, maybe not the secret intelligence stuff, but same difference.
Patrick Wilson is one of the most underrated actors currently working. Throughout his career on film, stage and television, he has exuded a strength and charisma in varying different genres, but so far he hasn't found that project that pushes him into the big leagues. Therefore, he's landed on a Friday night CBS drama. A Gifted Man serves Wilson incredibly well, giving him a fully-realized character with flaws and neuroses who suddenly finds himself in extraordinary circumstances via the sudden appearance of his dead ex-wife. It's an intriguing premise, though not exactly a sure-fire one. After watching the pilot, I'm still a little unsure of where the series is going.
I hate to be one of those guys that perpetuate the horrible notion that actresses on female-driven shows all hate each other behind the scenes, but the new Charlie's Angels really hate each other. I saw them last weekend on E!'s coverage of the Emmy's red carpet, and I have literally never seen such cold women who clearly can't stand the sight of one another. Poor Rachael Taylor is trying to sell the thing in a way that could come across as wildly overbearing, a stern Minka Kelly is all passive-aggression and anger, and Annie Ilonzeh is quiet and pretty. It was such a weird spectacle, three ladies who weren't even attempting to put across some kind of friendship or chemistry. Then again, all three are terrible actresses. So what do you expect?
There's an art to creating strong primetime soap operas. You can go so far into left-field that there's no break from the zany absurdity, and wind up with a Titans or the depressing later years of Nip/Tuck. Or you can get stuck playing things straight, making potentially juicy scenarios pretty weak. You then wind up with Ringer. Judging from the extensive ad campaign ABC launched for its newest night-time soap Revenge, I assumed that executive producer Mike Kelley had hit that tricky spot between both camps. Based on this pilot, he totally succeeded with it. As a result, we get some straight moral ambiguity, as well as a bad girl in a bad wig lacing soup with poison. Revenge is a sudsy guilty pleasure that has an irresistible hook and some ridiculously strong lead characters.
It's really hard to not talk about Mad Men when reviewing this show. The Playboy Club, along with ABC's upcoming Pan Am, are both set in the externally glamorous vintage '60s, using the time period as a back-drop for exploring cultural and economic shifts and oppression of gender, sexuality and race. What instantly makes itself clear with this pilot is that The Playboy Club is in no way Mad Men. While Mad Men takes its time exposing the hypocrisy of the period and the flawed, fascinating characters at its center, The Playboy Club has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the face, with a script so annoying it's almost comedic.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is a show which prides itself on the depraved nature of so many of its stories. Now in its twelfth season, it's unsurprising that the show regularly seems intent on exposing whatever kinky sex fetish they can, creating a New York City full of irrational wingnuts and delusional perverts. The series is comfort TV, however, a show that you can easily tune in and out of with regularity, despite the obvious feeling that the actors and writers have all but given up trying to be convincing. Bombshell is the first episode I've seen in a while, SVU now being a show I tune in to whenever a decent guest star appears (including Shohreh Aghdashloo and Maria Bello, recently). While it was fun in its stupidity, it was pretty ridiculous that practically all the guest stars were wacko. There's the stabby housewife, the nutcase swinger, and the incestuous con artists. I practically need a decontamination shower after watching this show.
Maura Tierney is the definition of a great TV star. She commands the small screen with charm and power, and has been a regular on our TV sets for what seems like forever. It's also wonderful to see her healthy, kick-ass and playing a character far removed from her Abby Lockhart days. It needs to be said, however, that she is far too good for The Whole Truth. When this show inevitably goes south, I hope ABC throws even more pilot scripts at her, giving her a series that's actually worthy of her talents.