One great, one pretty good, two good and one OK. That's my take on what I've seen so far of Monday night's brand new shows.
We'll start with great: Lone Star on Fox.
Starring a very attractive James Wolk (he's like a young Kyle Chandler), as Bob or Robert, depending on who he is talking to in Texas, this show is a drama about a scam. Or rather, about a scam artist who is trying to disengage from the scam. Bob/Robert leads two lives, one in Midland with his adorable girlfriend Lindsay, (Eloise Mumford), and one in Houston with his gorgeous rich wife Cat, (FNL's Adrianne Palick). Bob's dad, played beautifully by a well-aged David Keith, is King Scammer, and they have spent years setting this up in the hopes of ripping off Cat's oil-rich family. Her daddy, played beautifully by a well-aged Jon Voight, hires Bob to help run the business, much to the chagrin of her suspicious brother Tram (Mark Deklin). Her other brother, Drew, is kind of a dimwit. The rub is that Bob thinks he can actually do this stuff, and he wants to stay married to Cat and get married to Lindsay and have his cake and eat it to. The pilot set it all up great, and I am hooked.
Pretty good is Raising Hope, a sitcom on Fox. Now this show is not for the faint of heart or for those who like their comedy along the lines of Full House. Jimmy Chance (Lucas Neff) is a loser who gets a serial killer pregnant and ends up with the baby after she is executed for her crimes. That scene alone makes you laugh and cringe at the same time. His parents Burt (Garret Dillahunt) and Virginia (Martha Plimpton) have enough on their hands barely getting by without a baby in the house. And then there's senile old MawMaw, played by Cloris Leachman, often without a shirt on. This is black comedy of the blue-collar variety, and it made me laugh a lot.
Good includes Mike & Molly, a CBS sitcom that comes from Chuck Lorre but is very sweet (although there was one joke in there that made me think of Two and a Half Men).
Billy Gardell and Melissa McCarthy are the names in the title, and they meet at Overeaters Anonymous. This was a sweet, gentle comedy that gives Swoosie Kurtz some great screen time, so I am all in favor.
Also good was Hawaii Five-O, even though its opening sequence was lifted straight from the first Iron Man. But hottie Alex O’Loughlin is a good Steve McGarrett, stoic even in the face of his father's murder. Scott Caan is an appealing and humorous Danno, it is great to see Daniel Day Kim as Chin Ho Kelly and the lithe Grace Park as Kono is the token girl. A lot of the first plot laid groundwork and most of the story was completely ridiculously, but Jerry Bruckheimer knows how to keep things moving so we'll see.
As for OK, that would be NBC's Chase, which is basically Walker, Texas Rangerette. Kelli Giddish stars as U.S. Marshal Annie Frost (speaking of stoic) and the rest of her team - Cole Hauser as Jimmy Godfrey, Amaury Nolasco as Marco Martinez, and Rose Rollins as Daisy Ogbaa - pretty much just follow her around. It's very much like that cable series about that marshal that I can't stand. One and done with this.
What did you think?
Thought Hawaii Five has potential. Glad to see the Hoff go. He is just too into himself. Haven't had time to watch all the new ones & they keep coming!
ReplyDeleteWas surprised at how much I did NOT like the reboot of "Hawaii 5-O". Full of explosions and guns, with coincidence substituting for a plot. Kudos, though, for using the original theme and for casting Grace Park.
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