Stay Tuned #3: Characters Welcome
In the first three episodes of Anger Management (reviewed last issue), there is news footage of "Charlie" getting angry and breaking his knee over a baseball bat, and an entire episode is devoted to the concept of the slumpbuster: a baseball player with a low batting average sleeping with the most full-figured or ugliest woman he can find to clear his head and get back on a hitting streak.
In a brilliantly unoriginal play, USA Network's Necessary Roughness aired an episode titled "Slumpbuster" that same week, complete with angry bat-breaker. I enjoy watching Callie Thorne (Rescue Me) as sports therapist Dani Santino, a much milder character than in her previous gig, but still taking crap as often as she takes no for an answer (not very often), especially when it comes to her two kids (Amazing Spider-Man's Hannah Marks and Mean Girls 2's Patrick Johnson) and her patients, who usually change from episode to episode, following the time-honored TV tradition of solving a lifetime of psychological and personal issues in the course of 45 minutes (because now, we have to endure three five minute blocks of commercials that feature talking warts, Wal-Mart steaks, and "Diesel, self-serve, fix-a-flat. Jumper cables, 5% cash back").
The only exception--and one that is getting quite old--is New York Hawks wide receiver Terrence King (Mehcad Brooks, True Blood: Season 2), whose full-of-himself antics were at first endearing when watching the egotistical man-boy insert himself into the lives of the Santino family, and became slightly bearable as T.K. tried to become his own man and start a life with an old girlfriend. But quickly thereafter, the selfish self-pity lost its appeal. It's a good thing that this season, the fallout of T.K.'s shooting in the season 1 finale may spell the end of his career (from death wish to serious injury to pill-popping, T.K. is in a serious downward spiral), and consequently, any need for him to remain on the show.
The saving grace on this show is the unofficial love triangle she has going on with physical therapist Matt Donnally (Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Marc Blucas) and the team's fixer, Nico Careles (Gilmore Girls' Scott Cohen), who deserves a series all his own, in my opinion. Nico pops in and out of cars like Batman visiting Commissioner Gordon, has some subterfuge-laden sub-plot in every episode, and goes to questionable but undisclosed lengths to get his job done (no, it hasn't come to murder yet). And he does it all with a flare of understated cool (can a flare be cool? Can understatement have flair? I don't know, but he pulls it off very well).
And I'm always interested to see what object will roll up on Dani's feet in the next intro.
Just can T.K. and the show will be perfect.
B+
The other show returning for a second season is Suits, in which Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams), a professional test taker with eidetic memory (read it once, remember it forever) who cons his way into an associate position at New York's Pearson-Hardman law firm under senior partner Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht, Grand Theft Parsons, reviewed here), despite having never gone to Harvard.
The characters on this show have sort of a Gordon Ramsey quality to them; that is, they're pretty much all dicks, but as the series progresses, you get to see a softer side to them and you come to understand that they're just being dicks because it's how they got successful and it's how they stay successful. Ruthlessness is the key to victory in the world of high-stakes litigation, and they let nothing slide.
Cases in point: P-H's managing partner--and Harvey's boss--Jessica Pearson (played calculatedly by former Angel villain Gina Torres, a show that had a much more ominous definition for the term "senior partners"--Wolfram & Hart, anyone?), who has no place in her soul (what soul?) for sentimental lawyering, and resident torture expert Louis Litt (regular scum-of-the-week cameo artist Rick Hoffman), who makes a habit of delegating ridiculous amounts of legal not-so-briefs to Mike and the other noobs at the firm.
But loathable personalities aside, the witty banter (careful not to go into the land of excessive cuteness, as on Suits' companion in TV law, Fairly Legal) between Mike and Harvey, and between Harvey and everyone else, has confidence man smoothness written into its bones and offsets the dramatic character of the show nicely.
Between the love-hate characters, the interesting cases, and the idea that everyone (not just Mike) has a career-ending secret, Suits stays watchable.
It doesn't hurt to have "Greenback Boogie" by Ima Robot as your theme song, either.
A
My father refuses to watch it, but USA's newest character-driven drama is a hoot in my book.
Underworld: Awakening's Michael Ealy and newcomer Warren Cole star in Common Law (a double entendre, seeing as how the first time the two leading men go to group therapy, their classmates think they're gay) as police detectives who work together despite their clashing personalities, and are assigned to couples counseling when their clash comes to a head.
Each episode begins with relationship advice in the form of a quote by famous philosophers such as Sun-Tzu, Oscar Wilde, and Ronald Regan, and is written in some coincidental way to match the topic of that week's therapy assignment with the circumstances of their current case. The characters' antics regarding both can border on the childish, since their personalities are cliche'd hyperboles of the womanizing slacker (Ealy's Travis Marks) and the uptight ex-lawyer control freak (Cole's Wes Mitchell).
But despite the infantile escapades that pepper each episode, Wes and Travis' chemistry has a Lethal Weapon feel to it, incorporating the kind of cheerfully sarcastic yet drama-appropriate banter that is characteristic of most of USA Network's more (or less) successful character-driven programming.
And what would a successful, smartly funny show be without a strong supporting cast? Their captain is played by Jack McGee (another Rescue Me alum), who shows he's not opposed to dispensing occasional new-age silliness in contrast with his previous role as 62 Truck's cynical, ball-busting fire chief, and Lost's Sonya Walger provides an unflappable stabilizing force as Wes and Travis' therapist (you might even recognize a patient or two, as well).
Common Law is arresting entertainment, limited only by the number of clever things ever said throughout history.
A-
The heat here has me Jonesing for some water, so Just the Ticket will return next time for a review of Salmon Fishing In the Yemen.
The only exception--and one that is getting quite old--is New York Hawks wide receiver Terrence King (Mehcad Brooks, True Blood: Season 2), whose full-of-himself antics were at first endearing when watching the egotistical man-boy insert himself into the lives of the Santino family, and became slightly bearable as T.K. tried to become his own man and start a life with an old girlfriend. But quickly thereafter, the selfish self-pity lost its appeal. It's a good thing that this season, the fallout of T.K.'s shooting in the season 1 finale may spell the end of his career (from death wish to serious injury to pill-popping, T.K. is in a serious downward spiral), and consequently, any need for him to remain on the show.
The saving grace on this show is the unofficial love triangle she has going on with physical therapist Matt Donnally (Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Marc Blucas) and the team's fixer, Nico Careles (Gilmore Girls' Scott Cohen), who deserves a series all his own, in my opinion. Nico pops in and out of cars like Batman visiting Commissioner Gordon, has some subterfuge-laden sub-plot in every episode, and goes to questionable but undisclosed lengths to get his job done (no, it hasn't come to murder yet). And he does it all with a flare of understated cool (can a flare be cool? Can understatement have flair? I don't know, but he pulls it off very well).
And I'm always interested to see what object will roll up on Dani's feet in the next intro.
Just can T.K. and the show will be perfect.
B+
The characters on this show have sort of a Gordon Ramsey quality to them; that is, they're pretty much all dicks, but as the series progresses, you get to see a softer side to them and you come to understand that they're just being dicks because it's how they got successful and it's how they stay successful. Ruthlessness is the key to victory in the world of high-stakes litigation, and they let nothing slide.
Cases in point: P-H's managing partner--and Harvey's boss--Jessica Pearson (played calculatedly by former Angel villain Gina Torres, a show that had a much more ominous definition for the term "senior partners"--Wolfram & Hart, anyone?), who has no place in her soul (what soul?) for sentimental lawyering, and resident torture expert Louis Litt (regular scum-of-the-week cameo artist Rick Hoffman), who makes a habit of delegating ridiculous amounts of legal not-so-briefs to Mike and the other noobs at the firm.
But loathable personalities aside, the witty banter (careful not to go into the land of excessive cuteness, as on Suits' companion in TV law, Fairly Legal) between Mike and Harvey, and between Harvey and everyone else, has confidence man smoothness written into its bones and offsets the dramatic character of the show nicely.
Between the love-hate characters, the interesting cases, and the idea that everyone (not just Mike) has a career-ending secret, Suits stays watchable.
It doesn't hurt to have "Greenback Boogie" by Ima Robot as your theme song, either.
A
Underworld: Awakening's Michael Ealy and newcomer Warren Cole star in Common Law (a double entendre, seeing as how the first time the two leading men go to group therapy, their classmates think they're gay) as police detectives who work together despite their clashing personalities, and are assigned to couples counseling when their clash comes to a head.
Each episode begins with relationship advice in the form of a quote by famous philosophers such as Sun-Tzu, Oscar Wilde, and Ronald Regan, and is written in some coincidental way to match the topic of that week's therapy assignment with the circumstances of their current case. The characters' antics regarding both can border on the childish, since their personalities are cliche'd hyperboles of the womanizing slacker (Ealy's Travis Marks) and the uptight ex-lawyer control freak (Cole's Wes Mitchell).
But despite the infantile escapades that pepper each episode, Wes and Travis' chemistry has a Lethal Weapon feel to it, incorporating the kind of cheerfully sarcastic yet drama-appropriate banter that is characteristic of most of USA Network's more (or less) successful character-driven programming.
And what would a successful, smartly funny show be without a strong supporting cast? Their captain is played by Jack McGee (another Rescue Me alum), who shows he's not opposed to dispensing occasional new-age silliness in contrast with his previous role as 62 Truck's cynical, ball-busting fire chief, and Lost's Sonya Walger provides an unflappable stabilizing force as Wes and Travis' therapist (you might even recognize a patient or two, as well).
Common Law is arresting entertainment, limited only by the number of clever things ever said throughout history.
A-
The heat here has me Jonesing for some water, so Just the Ticket will return next time for a review of Salmon Fishing In the Yemen.
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