Wife is Good

With political sex scandals seemingly cropping up every couple of months, it was only a matter of time before someone took the opportunity to use this scenario as the basis for a TV show. In CBS’s The Good Wife, Julianna Margulies plays Alicia Florrick, mother of two teenagers and wife to State’s Attorney Peter (Chris Noth), caught on tape having sex with a hooker and jailed for abuse of office. Left as the breadwinner, Alicia decides to go back to being a lawyer, a job she abandoned thirteen years ago to focus on her family.

After more than fifty years, the legal drama formula doesn’t offer much in the way of surprises. These days, you know that the twist is coming, it’s only a matter of when. On that front, The Good Wife is no different; a murder case is turned on the discovery of a doctored video, a rape case hinges on a contaminated DNA sample. Yet with Alicia working hard to defend her clients (and Margulies working just as hard at combining strength and sympathy), the cases still prove stimulating.

What really makes The Good Wife more than a spinster variation on a theme is the excellent cast. In addition to Margulies (playing her second lawyer in two years, though she’s much softer here than she was on Fox’s brief but promising Canterbury’s Law), we are treated to the wonderfully haughty Christine Baranski (Cybill), whose clipped line readings never get tired; and Josh Charles, bringing the same air of confidence he exuded on the still lamented Sports Night.

Thus far the series strikes a nice balance between the court cases and examining the effect that Peter’s dalliances are having on the Florrick family. How do you shield your kids from a scandal that dominated the news? Does Alicia, the dutiful, “good” wife continue to stand by her man even as there's a chance he could be released on appeal? As the headlines have shown, politics are hard enough to deal with when they’re left in the office, and the answers don't come any easier when they’re brought inside the home.

Sunday Night is Cutthroat

Rarely will a series enter its fourth season without having experienced any major creative hiccups. Showtime's Dexter is that series. New episodes began last night after a nine-month absence (fitting since Dex is now a new daddy), and it was as easy as ever to get sucked back into the world of the Miami Homicide Division and its kooky killer hunters.

The hour opened with Dexter (Michael C. Hall, solid as ever) being severely off his game; baby Harrision is not sleeping well and it’s driving Dex nuts. In a hilarious Murphy’s Law-style reenactment of the series’ title sequence, Dexter is unable to squash the mosquito on his arm, his normally crisp white T-shirt has baby puke on it, and his shoelace breaks when he pulls it tight. If all this sounds like no big deal, remember that Dexter is a meticulous man; his continued freedom requires that everything be just so in order for him to get away with his acts of vengeance. Which is why it’s such a shock to see him screw up in court, mixing up case files and allowing a murderer to be released. Of course, all this means is that Dex has found his latest mark, and it couldn’t come at a better time. Firmly ensconced in the horrors of suburbia and family life, he’s been jonesing for a kill (Dex somehow equates murder with being there for his son, saying he’s “killing for two” now. Isn’t it amazing that we care so much for this guy who has such a deeply warped mind?)

It wouldn’t be Dexter if there weren’t a serial killer to track in between scenes of our loveable main character killing people of his own. This season, that killer is played by John Lithgow. We got two brief glimpses of Lithgow’s Trinity Killer last night, once when he created a literal bloodbath by killing a woman in her tub and again when he showered in scalding hot water. If there was a problem with the episode, it was these scenes. Gripping though they were, it was a strange shift in POV, since much of the show, especially the murders, is seen through Dexter’s eyes. Still, the marvelous Lithgow will no doubt devour this role, and his character’s presence brings back Keith Carradine as Agent Lundy, now retired from the FBI but determined to find the one that got away.

The episode ends with Dex so exhausted that he rolls his car after falling asleep at the wheel. While we know our “hero” will be fine, the real trouble lies in the fact that he was driving back from his kill site at the time, with several trash bags full of body parts in the back. How’s he gonna get out of this one? That’s the beauty of this show, which puts the mouse so close to the cat that the cat has no idea it’s even there.

Also back last night was CBS's The Amazing Race, returning for its 15th season fresh off another Emmy win. For the first time in Race history, a team was eliminated right off the bat during a ho-hum challenge in which the correct license plate had to be found on an entire wall filled with license plates. It’s hard to feel too bad for the team (Eric and Lisa, who decided that it was their fate to “set [the others teams] free” ) since we only knew them for about a minute before they were sent packing, but how depressing must it have been that their race began and ended in the L.A. River.

Outside of the usual assortment of married and dating couples, the remaining eleven teams have among them two Harlem Globetrotters who go by the names Flight Time and Big Easy; gay brothers Sam and Dan; and Zev & Justin, one of whom (Zev) has Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of high-functioning autism that makes social interactions and unfamiliar settings a challenge (so far he hasn’t let it effect his game play).

The Amazing Race works on several levels: there’s the team component (so many couples have used this show as a means of measuring whether their relationship can be successful), the scenery aspect (you’re guaranteed to see parts of the world you never would have known existed otherwise), and the sheer fun of the race (in classic Race tradition, we already had our first sprint to the elimination mat last night, where on-and-off daters Garrett and Jessica went home). All that plus the vicarious thrill of watching people eat wasabi bombs in Tokyo and knowing that you don’t have to. Put another stamp on my TV passport, please.

Bad Brothers, plus the Season's First Casualty

Fox’s annual competition to have the worst and most swiftly cancelled comedy (past “winners” have included Do Not Disturb and Happy Hour) continues this year with Brothers, created by sitcom veteran Don Reo, who has worked on everything from Blossom to My Wife and Kids to one of Fox’s most acclaimed comedies of the past decade, Action. (Arrested Development’s Mitchell Hurwitz is also an exec producer here, meaning he’s 0-2 this year since he was also responsible for another lame Fox entry, Sit Down, Shut Up.)

Brothers stars ex-NFL player Michael Strahan as ex-NFL player Michael Trainor, and paralyzed actor Daryl “Chill” Mitchell as his wheelchair-bound brother “Chill.” So far the originality is just spilling off the page, right? Since every black family needs a ball-busting mama, CCH Pounder steps in to fill that role. I can understand Pounder wanting a change of scene after all those years on the gritty The Shield, but this? Rounding out the cast is Carl Weathers as the somewhat clueless patriarch, though that obliviousness seems to stem from a nascent case of dementia. And the reason these people are all living under one roof again: Michael is broke and “Chill” needs help keeping his restaurant afloat.

Laughing yet? Neither was I. Most of the jokes in the first two episodes centered on either the gap between Strahan’s front teeth or Mitchell’s wheelchair. And when they weren’t making cracks about those things, there was plenty of awkward conversation about everyone’s sex lives. All four of the cast members—even Strahan, who is also a contributor to Fox’s NFL Sunday pregame show, is surprisingly comfortable in his first acting role—could be doing something much better with their time. Until this show’s inevitable cancellation, I know I’ll be doing something better with mine.

Speaking of cancellations, the new season’s first one came to pass yesterday as The CW let go of The Beautiful Life: TBL. I hadn’t even gotten a chance to watch the two episodes that aired yet, so I can’t offer a critical analysis of the show, but I can tell you that it brought in paltry ratings, with this week’s installment barely getting over a million viewers. I’m sure exec producer Ashton Kutcher will be just fine, but could this be a death knell for Mischa Barton’s career? For the time being, The CW will run encore episodes of Melrose Place in the Wednesday 9pm time slot (just what we need), as they try to drum up more business for that cellar-dwelling show prior to the November 17 episode in which Heather Locklear will reprise her role of Amanda Woodward. Why, Heather, why?

Community Gets an A

Whether or not you like NBC’s new sitcom Community hinges largely on one thing, namely how you feel about star Joel McHale. If you’re a fan of his smarmy antics on E!'s The Soup (I definitely drink that Kool-Aid), then you’re predisposed to enjoy this single-camera comedy awash in sarcasm. If, however, McHale’s mixture of arrogance and self-deprecation irks you, then this is probably not the show for you.

McHale plays Jeff Winger, an arrogant (though not quite self-deprecating) lawyer forced to go back to school after his degree is revoked. Jeff chooses to attend Greendale Community College, or as he calls it, a “school-shaped toilet.” It doesn’t take long for Jeff to happen upon Britta (Gillian Jacobs), a fellow student who, because of Jeff’s lies about being well-versed in Spanish, agrees to a study session with him. By the time that session comes around, the room is occupied by others looking to take advantage of Jeff’s alleged knowledge.

And so we have our ragtag bunch of characters, including the wonderfully deadpan Chevy Chase as Pierce, a moist towelette kingpin who is bad with names and thinks a “sausagefest” is a good thing; Troy (Donald Glover), stuck in a high school mentality to the point where he still wears his varsity jacket everywhere he goes; and Abed (Danny Pudi), a manic personality who communicates by using quotes and lessons learned from movies and TV shows.

Community is created by Dan Harmon (The Sarah Silverman Program) and has the duo of Joe and Anthony Russo (Arrested Development) among its exec producers, so it’s no surprise that the show is aggressively funny and that most of the jokes come at someone else’s expense. Like Arrested, it’s the kind of comedy that requires constant attention lest you miss the jokes; there’s no easy setup-setup-punchline approach here. The show is clearly influenced by the classic films of the late John Hughes, to whom the pilot was dedicated, and McHale is Judd Nelson, Matthew Broderick, and Steve Martin all rolled up in one big ball of sass.

Who knows if this is the kind of show that will be able to sustain itself for seasons on end. (Community college is usually a two-year program, but this group could definitely stretch things beyond that.) What I do know is that after last fall, which produced only one truly funny new sitcom (the unfortunately cancelled Worst Week, whose exec producers are also on staff here), Community is a welcome addition to the TV community.

Bad Pun Alert: Vampire Kinda Sucks

While all involved will likely deny it, any similarity between The CW’s new drama The Vampire Diaries and True Blood (itself an imperfect show, to be sure) is almost certainly intentional. When your network is flailing, why wouldn’t you want to crib from what has become a cultural phenomenon? But if you add Twilight to the list as well, I think this is one vampire project too many.

Developed by Kevin Williamson (Dawson’s Creek) and Julie Plec (Kyle XY) from a series of books by L.J. Smith, Diaries tells the story of Elena Gilbert (Degrassi: The Next Generation’s Nina Dobrev), a high school student struggling with survivor’s guilt brought on by the deaths of her parents in a car accident months earlier, and Stefan Salvatore (Paul Wesley, who previously played a werewolf in the short-lived Wolf Lake), a vampire who, way back in 1864, was in love with a girl who looked exactly like Elena. Showing up to put a stake in Stefan’s romantic intentions and make good on his promise to create “an eternity of misery” for his sibling is brother Damon (Ian Somerhalder), a nasty vamp who tries to persuade Stefan to give up his self-imposed human feeding fast.

The teen drama clichés all put in early appearances: sex, drugs, rebellion, dead parents. And the vampire tropes are here, too: super hearing, the ability to seduce people into a kind of goofy submission (what True Blood calls glamouring), the need to be invited inside someone’s house, and oodles and oodles of moodiness. (Luckily for Stefan, the oldest-looking high school student this side of Ian Ziering, a special ring allows him and his brother to go out in the sun, otherwise he'd never be able to graduate.)

Maybe it just isn’t possible in 2009 for a vampire show to be anything but derivative, but couldn’t they at least try? I can appreciate the need to be faithful to the books, but if the show is to last for any stretch of time, the writers will eventually have to stray from their source material, just as Dexter has managed to do so deftly. Considering the ordinariness of events so far, it may have been wise to abandon the book's story from the outset.

What’s really missing from the show, though, is a little levity; everyone in this town is so deadly serious all the time. I guess it makes sense coming from the vampires since they’re, you know, dead (or is it undead?), but the teenagers should lighten up and have a little fun. Thankfully, the dialogue is more natural than the teens-can-use-big-words-too approach Williamson took with Dawson’s, but that doesn't mean anybody has anything all that interesting to say.

The scenes between Wesley and Somerhalder (looking like he’s having a better time here than he did on his single season of Lost, where his Boone was the first major character to die) have a certain dark pizzazz reminiscent of the good vamp/bad vamp dynamic between Bill and Eric on True Blood. But that energy dries up as soon as they leave each other’s company, and all we’re left with is a fairly dull soap opera in desperate need of some real bite.

House Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Leave it to a guy like Dr. Gregory House to check himself into a mental hospital and then think he doesn’t belong there. That was the scenario last night on the sixth-season premiere of House, a two-hour episode that, regardless of your level of familiarity with the series, feels like a movie about a man who has seriously lost his way and, after a long, bitter struggle, wants to find it again. Aside from a brief appearance from Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard), none of the other series regulars show up here. There is no messy backstory, no references to what might be going on back at Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital. It's just House, his fellow patients, and the work they all need to do on themselves. (Among the most colorful characters we meet in the psych ward is House’s roommate Alvie, who likes to speak in spontaneous rap lyrics. He’s played by Lin-Manuel Miranda, bringing his hyper-effusive energy from Broadway’s In the Heights to the part.)

The episode, beautifully written and deliberately paced, is an exploration of House’s realization that he can’t always be the one to fix everything. In the words of his psychiatrist Dr. Nolan, played by Andre Braugher (Homicide: Life on the Street), House is “just another screwed up human being who needs to move on.” Nolan and House start out as bristly adversaries (Nolan refuses to write a letter that will give House back his hospital privileges, rightly believing he hasn’t taken his treatment seriously), later developing an understanding of one another, exemplified in a touching scene where Nolan invites House to the hospital room where his father lay dying.

During his stay, House takes an interest in Lydia (Franka Potente), a married woman who comes to play music for her catatonic sister-in-law. They share a connection unlike any we’ve ever seen in House’s world. For perhaps the first time, we see that House is capable of having a genuine conversation free of sarcastic defenses—he even confesses to having (gulp!) fun. A slow dance leads to sex leads to tears for House, allowing himself to express his feelings in a way he and Cuddy, who keep their cooped-up emotions in check, never truly have. All of this plays out quietly and organically as a step-by-step process; nothing is forced.

Because House wouldn’t be House if he was completely happy, Lydia leaves in the end (ironically, it’s House’s fault this happens as he’s responsible for finding the key to her sister-in-law’s condition—a music box she had been denied rights to makes her speak again; no longer tied down, Lydia and her family decide to move to Arizona), but instead of retreating into darkness, House goes to Nolan, proof that he has come along way. After his release, as House settles in for the bus ride back to civilization, he reflects on his experience, even displaying a slight smile on his face. It turns out there is a heart buried underneath that crusty exterior after all.

Hopefully this isn’t the last we’ve seen of Braugher. As anyone who’s ever been in treatment (to borrow the title of an HBO series) knows, mental breakthroughs happen over long stretches of time, and while the premiere was careful not to try to tie everything up too neatly, it would be a shame if House went back to work and settled comfortably into this old habits again. I don’t know how long a trip it is between Princeton-Plainsboro and Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital, but from this viewer's standpoint, it would certainly be worth the time.

I'd Like to Thank the Academy

As trendsetting as TV can be, the Emmy Awards have never been especially good at leading the way in innovation. Two years ago, the show tried a theater-in-the-round approach, leaving half the audience starting at the winners’ backsides. And last year brought us the infamous five-reality-hosts-without-a-plan debacle. So the bar was set pretty low when it came to producing an Emmy broadcast that would outdo recent ceremonies. With so many repeat winners, it fell to the show itself to keep things lively.

What were this year’s innovations? The band and control room found their way onto the stage at L.A.’s Nokia Theatre, and the awards were handed out according to genre (comedy first, then reality, movies/miniseries, variety, and drama), much better than the scattershot pick-a-category-from-the-hat approach they seem to have taken in the past. But the biggest and best innovation was the show’s host. Following up his successful turn at the Tony Awards in June, Neil Patrick Harris (also a nominee for How I Met Your Mother) took to the stage with a terrific opening song that urged viewers to put down the remote. Unlike so many hosts who disappear for long stretches, Harris would remain on stage most of the evening, standing behind a podium to the side of the main action, introducing many presenters by calling out their most obscure credits. Harris was also a wonderful sport, playfully poking fun at himself after losing the Supporting Actor in a Comedy trophy to Two and a Half Men’s Jon Cryer.

As is too often the case with Emmy, when it came to the awards, there were not nearly enough surprises to go around. Kristin Chenoweth took the night’s first comedy award, going from tears to pimping herself out for work (she won for the cancelled Pushing Daisies) and back to tears. The rest of the comedy categories played out exactly as you’d expect, with 30 Rock dominating, taking home Emmys for writing, lead actor (Alec Baldwin), and series. (Toni Collette was able to break through and take lead actress for United States of Tara.)

I was a little put off by Tina Fey’s acceptance speech when Rock won Best Comedy for the third year in a row. “That was a nail biter,” she said when she hopped up on stage with her coworkers, as if we all knew they were going to win again. And let’s face it, we did all know, but it’s one thing to think you’re going to win, another to mock it as a foregone conclusion. If Fey has tired of all the accolades the show receives, perhaps someone should remind her that submitting yourself for consideration is optional and she’s welcome to sit it out next time around.

On the drama side, Mad Men took top honors, winning Best Drama for the second straight year, while the supporting acting races went to first-time winners Michael Emerson (Lost) and Cherry Jones (24), and the lead acting awards to repeat winners Glenn Close (Damages) and Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad). With 30 Rock being such a prevailing comedic force, it was nice to see some deserved diversity with the dramas.

The Amazing Race remains undefeated in the Reality-Competition Program category, taking home its seventh (!) consecutive Emmy. Survivor’s Jeff Probst won again for reality host, taking a second to acknowledge the yeoman’s job Neil Patrick Harris was doing behind the mic, as did Jon Stewart when he accepted another trophy for The Daily Show (both men know from whence they speak; Probst was involved in last year’s much-maligned Emmy show, and Stewart was skewered after hosting the Oscars a few years back). HBO’s Grey Gardens was the biggest winner in the movie/miniseries categories, with wins for best movie, lead actress (Jessica Lange), and supporting actor (Ken Howard); PBS's Little Dorrit won Best Miniseries.

Sure, the awards themselves could have been more exciting, the acceptance speeches a bit more heart-tugging, and I could have done without the pop-up alerts designed to keep viewers tuned in by telling us that Justin Timberlake and the Gossip Girls would be on stage in six minutes (the one promoting the In Memoriam segment was particularly tacky). All in all, though, thanks largely to Harris—invite him back every year, Academy—it was a sufficiently pleasant way to spend the last night of the 2008-09 season.

Notes on a Busy Thursday

It was a jam-packed night of TV yesterday as several networks attempted to beat the throng of premieres that will dominate the landscape next week. Full reviews of The Vampire Diaries and Community will be posted in the weeks to come, but here’s what happened on three returning series:

Survivor: Samoa — Promos touted Russell Hantz as the worst villain in Survivor history and, boy, they weren’t kidding. Even Jeff Probst said the guy was pure evil in a recent TV Guide Network special, and while Probst has confessed to not liking some contestants in the past, never before have I heard him come out and say he hopes someone doesn’t win. What makes Russell so bad? Within hours of arriving on the beach, he's dumped out all the water, put someone’s socks in the fire, lied about being a victim of Hurricane Katrina, and formed what he calls the “dumbass girl alliance” with three of the young women in his tribe. He then targets one of those women, Marisa, for elimination after she has the audacity to tell him that she doesn’t completely trust him (gee, I wonder why). Somehow, Russell’s plan to get rid of Marisa is successful and hers is the first torch snuffed. Russell says he will “do whatever it takes to win this game,” but has he forgotten that eventually he's going to need to get on people’s good sides in order to get their vote in the end? If his nasty behavior continues—and there’s no indication that it will curtail—Russell will go down as a memorable TV personality for all the wrong reasons.

The Office — Hopefully after a season of ups (the Michael Scott Paper Company) and downs (pretty much anything involving the tiresome Dwight), The Office will be able to find a consistent storytelling pattern. Season six kicked off with an acceptably funny if not uproarious episode in which Michael (Steve Carell) deals with his usual desire to be part of the in crowd, this time by spreading gossip about his coworkers. To save face after revealing Stanley’s affair to everyone, Michael begins doling out intentionally false rumors—Andy is gay (although Andy’s confusion about this suggests there might be something there), Pam is pregnant (actually true but no one knows yet), and Kevin has someone inside him controlling his every move (apparently the only blatant lie in the bunch). But in typical Michael Scott fashion, he then declares that one of the rumors is factual. Now it’s Jim who comes to Stanley’s rescue, revealing to the office that he and Pam are indeed expecting.

Kudos to the writers, as well as John Krasinski (Jim) and Jenna Fischer (Pam) for maintaining the cuteness level between these two. So often in TV, once characters become a couple, they cease to be interesting, but Krasinski and Fischer are so perfect together that they’re able to cut through the absurdity around them and give the show its beating heart. Their pregnancy should provide plenty of fertile material for this batch of lunatics to feast on.

Fringe — I checked out of Fringe fairly early last year, feeling that it was an ersatz X-Files severely lacking in what made that classic show so fascinating. After hearing from more than a few people that Fringe had improved as it went along, I decided to give it another shot as it started its second season, and I have to say I’m glad I did. I’m still not sure I understand what’s going on, which was a big stumbling block for me last season, but after just one episode, I can already tell that character development has been brought to the forefront.

In the premiere, Olivia (Anna Torv) returns from a visit to a parallel dimension by exploding through the windshield of her car, recently crashed by a soldier from said dimension whose mission is to hunt her down and kill her. That soldier is a shape shifter who can take on other people’s visages by plugging some kind of contraption into the roof of his mouth and that of his victim. As the premiere ends, we see that he’s used this device on Agent Francis (Kirk Acevedo), thereby giving him unrestricted access to the Fringe Division, which itself is under threat of being shut down for not producing results. If none of that made any sense to you, well, join the club. But just like The X-Files used to do so brilliantly, Fringe has started to benefit from its esoteric nature, putting character over story to suck us in and keep us invested.

One element of Fringe that still bothers me, however, is John Noble’s Walter, father to Peter (Joshua Jackson, looking and acting more like George Clooney with each passing year, though he could stand to ease up on the constantly furrowed brow). Walter is literally a mad genius, the kind of guy who, during an autopsy, holds a piece of licorice in one hand while he fingers someone’s intestines with the other, all the while giving his lab assistant instructions for making custard. He’s wacky to the point of being a distraction, especially frustrating since much of the explanation for the cases comes from him. How am I supposed to pay attention to what he’s saying when he’s always doing something crazy at the same time? Nevertheless, I’ll be watching Fringe again, the rare show that has clearly earned its second chance.

Wrong Place, Wrong Time

For a serial to be truly effective it has to have stories that grab you and demand that you come back week after week. When Melrose Place originally aired on Fox in the ‘90s, it was just that kind of show. Not that it could ever be classified as “good,” mind you, but in the realm of guilty pleasures it was hard to top. Those feelings of nostalgia make The CW’s new remake that much harder to sit through.

In this early stage, one of the new Melrose Place’s main focuses is a whodunit: Sydney Andrews (Laura Leighton, whose death in the original turns out to have been conveniently faked), now the complex's landlord, is found floating dead in the pool. Right off the bat, we have a problem. Sydney was one of Melrose’s most annoying characters back in the day and, as we see in flashbacks, not much has changed. She’s still a conniving bitch, only now with the added burden of struggling with sobriety, as if that's supposed to make her seem sympathetic. She’s had negative interactions with nearly all of the building’s residents, so aside from the fact that one among them is apparently a murderer, it’s way too easy to shrug off her death and move on.

But what the show has to move on to isn’t all that interesting. There’s Jonah and Riley (Greek’s Michael Rady and Cloverfield’s Jessica Lucas), a budding filmmaker and his teacher girlfriend, newly engaged after five years of dating and still trying to work out some trust issues between them; Ella (Katie Cassidy, Harper’s Island), a publicist who is being set up as this version’s answer to Heather Locklear, though it'll take an awful lot for her to top Amanda Woodward; David (Shaun Sipos), who likes to steal things like paintings and watches, and is the previously unknown son of the cold and calculated Dr. Michael Mancini (Thomas Calabro); Lauren (Stephanie Jacobsen), a med school student who starts pimping herself out to pay her tuition; and Violet (Ashlee Simpson-Wentz, showing that her acting chops have not progressed in the slightest since 7th Heaven went away), the building’s newest resident, who may or may not be Sydney’s long-lost daughter. So far, it’s a whole lot of nothing about nothing, with none of the dastardly intrigue that can make a show like this such untidy fun.

There’s nary an unattractive person in the bunch, but one of the most glaring mistakes the producers have made is in taking almost no effort to diversify the cast (it’s the same scenario over on the equally unnecessary remake of 90210, which, as it enters its second season, shows no signs of leaving vapidity behind). With the exception of a couple of token ethnic actors, the cast is otherwise lily white, a problem shared with the original. I know there are plenty of other shows that are guilty of this as well, but it seems to be more egregious here. I mean, what better place to open yourself up to diversity, in both an ethnic and story sense, than an apartment complex, where people from all walks of life converge? On both fronts, this incarnation of Melrose Place clearly misses the mark.

Leno in Primetime: More of the Same

The major question that I asked myself over and over again as I watched the premiere of NBC’s The Jay Leno Show was, why? Why does Jay continue to deliver torturous monologues peppered with punchlines that most people in the audience simply don’t get (thanks for the very timely Wilford Brimley reference, Jay)? Why do we need to see a Cheaters spoof in which bandleader Kevin Eubanks was caught spending time with a Jay look-alike? Why does Dan Finnerty and the Dan Band (featured in The Hangover) need to sing and dance as they offer an allegedly unsuspecting woman a while-you-wait tour of a car wash? And finally, why do we need this show at all?

In typical Leno fashion, the funny stuff—and there wasn’t much of it to be had last night—almost never comes from the host himself. Jay’s first guest, Jerry Seinfeld, provided some laughs as he boasted about having access to Oprah Winfrey and then proceeded to deny Jay the chance to get in a question when Oprah came on for a satellite interview. Later, there were a few chuckles during the "Headlines" segment (Alpo appearing on a menu, a Chinese restaurant called House of Poon), but even that bit was lackluster. I can’t figure out if Leno’s decision to have most of the comedy derive from a source other than himself makes him incredibly gracious or just incredibly unfunny. Would that Leno would muster up the courage to say something unexpected, to stretch his comic muscles and stop trying to make every joke so saccharine.

Some fortuitous booking allowed Jay to get Kanye West to sit down briefly and address his inexcusable outburst at Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards. West, whose ego has gotten the better of him in the past, seemed to be genuinely disappointed in his actions, and you’ve got to hand it to Jay for not backing down when he asked West what his deceased mother would have thought about his inappropriate behavior.

The Jay Leno Show is clearly not out to change the face of TV talk. The show’s idea of doing something revolutionary begins and ends with Jay no longer conducting his interviews from behind a desk, opting for a more intimate approach akin to Inside the Actors Studio. Leno’s comic stylings have never been for me, and a new time slot has done nothing to change that. Given the show’s boffo premiere numbers (over 17 million viewers against weak competition; the real test comes next week and in the months ahead, once the promotion has died down), it’s clear that America likes its comedy on the vanilla side. As for me, I wish Jay the best of luck, but I’ll continue to get my kicks from the more irreverent Jimmy Kimmel and Joel McHale.

The Promise of Glee

After months of hype and an admittedly exuberant and infectious pilot, Glee finally settled into its series run last night on Fox and the results were decidedly mixed. Cut from the same absurd cloth as executive producer/co-creator Ryan Murphy’s WB drama Popular, and with some of the flashes that make his Nip/Tuck a polarizing guilty pleasure, Glee spends much of its time focusing on the cattiness of high school life, softening occasionally to throw in a mostly welcome musical interlude. (The show came painfully close to erasing all the goodwill inured by the pilot's “Don’t Stop Believing” performance, though, when Matthew Morrison’s glee instructor Will Schuester—the whitest of white guys—started rapping a version of Kanye West’s “Gold Digger.” Bad idea.)

"Being part of something special makes you special,” sad sack/optimist Rachel Berry (Lea Michele, who can really belt out a tune) said in the first episode. You get the sense that the whole cast feels that way about the work they're doing, and there is certainly something special about Glee.

Jane Lynch is special in the role of Sue Sylvester, head coach for the cheerleading team (called the Cheerios), who has it out for Will and his squad of singers. Sue is threatened by the glee club, fearful that they’ll take away attention from her troupe of rally girls. Lynch delivers a one-liner like nobody’s business—at one point last night she recommended hobbling students who had dared to use the cheer copy machine—and her presence brings dimension to what could be a one-note character.

The chemistry between Lea Michele and Cory Monteith (who plays Finn Hudson with the perfect amount of inner conflict as he struggles with being a member of both the football team and the glee club) is also special. The pair shine when they sing together, and they shared a kiss last night that brought their flirtation to Romeo and Juliet heights, that is, if Romeo had a problem with premature ejaculation and Juliet was forever getting slushies thrown in her face.

And the music is something special as well, with the exception of the aforementioned “Gold Digger.” In the second episode, we were treated to a wonderfully inappropriate, sexually themed performance of “Push It,” and Michele’s solo of Rihanna’s “Take a Bow,” sung as she watched Finn canoodle with his cheerleader girlfriend. It’s no surprise that a soundtrack is already scheduled to be released on November 3.

What isn’t so special about Glee are the two women over whom Will is torn. There’s his shrewish wife Terri (Boston Public’s Jessalyn Gilsig), who has no appreciation of the lengths her husband is willing to go to make her happy (Will is pulling late-night janitor duty at school to earn extra income to buy Terri her dream home). On top of that, she’s now lying to him about being pregnant, having found out that what was thought to be a real pregnancy turned out to be one of the hysterical variety, brought on by her strong desire to have a child. Why Will stays with this selfish woman who continually puts down his “stupid dance routines” is beyond me.

But the alternative isn’t much better: Emma (Heroes’ Jayma Mays) is a germaphobic counselor who spends time alone in her car, listening to sad music and crying. Will is enamored of her and Mays is fine in the role, but Emma is tied down with so many quirks (she hands out brochures titled “Wow! There’s a Hair Down There!” and “So You Like Throwing Up,” and has to wipe every grape individually with a moist towelette before eating it) that cutesy rests on the verge of annoying.

Overall, though, there’s enough in Glee to merit coming back for more. When the show gets past its moments of self-adoration, there’s a fair amount of depth beneath its colorful confectionary shell. And I have a feeling that in a few weeks, once the show is able to find its true voice, Glee could become appointment television. Don’t stop believing…

A Bitter End for Rescue Me

Over the years, Rescue Me has provided its share of disturbing images, but none may be more so than seeing our (anti?) hero Tommy (Denis Leary) lying on the floor of the bar bleeding to death from two gunshot wounds courtesy of his Uncle Teddy (Lenny Clarke). Teddy is grief-stricken after his wife Ellie died in a drunken collision with a big rig, all while the rest of the family (Teddy included) reveled in their renewed drunkenness, believing they are in total control of the alcoholism that has gripped nearly every member of the Gavin family. Initially blaming himself for removing Ellie from sobriety, by the end of last night’s season finale, Teddy decides that Tommy, by virtue of being the one behind the bar the night of the accident, is culpable for her death. With the show’s entire cast of men at the bar, Teddy shows up and takes the place hostage, forcing Tommy to down shots of whiskey and trying to coax Tommy into killing him. When Tommy refuses, Teddy shoots him in the shoulder, then in the arm, telling everyone they’ll be there for a while as they wait for Tommy to bleed out.

It was a powerful cap to what has been an uneven season for Rescue Me. Perhaps the onus of producing a full season of twenty-two episodes for the first time (past seasons have been held to thirteen) was too much for Leary and company. Ill-thought out story lines included Franco’s foray into the boxing ring and subsequent relationship with a lesbian boxer; Lou’s brief marriage to the woman who previously bilked him for thousands of dollars and returned to try it again; and momma’s boy Damien joining the squad, seemingly so he could be nothing more than a mole providing information about Tommy to his psycho mom Sheila (Callie Thorne, wrongfully denied an Emmy nomination this year). But even a subpar Rescue Me makes for salacious viewing, with its sometimes shocking mix of drama and comedy creating an uncomfortable and mostly realistic account of how darkness and light often converge. And this exceptional cast knows how to sell just about anything they’re given.

Last week FX announced that the next season of Rescue Me will be its last (the 19-episode batch will likely be split into two parts, one airing in 2010, the other in 2011). With Leary being the obvious soul of the show, last night’s cliffhanger ending doesn’t actually leave his survival in question. But with Rescue Me, it’s all about how the characters deal with the aftermath of harrowing situations. After all, this is a show that was born out of the continued trauma brought on by the 9/11 attacks. How will being shot and left for dead affect Tommy and the rest of the Gavins? Will their hard-drinking ways be abandoned for good? And how does a family that relates best when they’re passing around a bottle face the reality of what their actions have wrought? As is the show's tradition, the answers will no doubt be surprising and hard to come by. The Gavins, and I, wouldn't have it any other way.