Eric D. Snider

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Archive for the 'TV' Category

Your fall TV season premiere dates

Sunday, September 6th, 2009

Info is gleaned from reputable online sources. New shows are marked with an asterisk (*). Times are Pacific and Eastern; you people in Mountain and Central already know you gotta subtract an hour, right? Don’t ask why, that’s just how it works. Look, if new TV can’t cure your problems, I DON’T KNOW WHAT CAN!

Tuesday, Sept. 8
90210, 8 p.m. (CW)
*Melrose Place, 9 p.m. (CW)
Sons of Anarchy, 10 p.m. (FX)

Wednesday, Sept. 9
America’s Next Top Model, 8 p.m. (CW)
*Glee, 9 p.m. (Fox)
So You Think You Can Dance, 8 p.m. (Fox)

Thursday, Sept. 10
Supernatural, 9 p.m. (CW)
*The Vampire Diaries, 8 p.m. (CW)

Friday, Sept. 11
Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?, 8 p.m. (Fox)

Continue reading…

Winter TV premiere dates

Monday, January 5th, 2009

Here is a list of season premiere dates for your winter TV shows, followed by a list of when the shows that premiered in the fall will return from their winter hiatuses with new episodes. All information is swiped from E! Online’s handy schedule; omissions or errors should be addressed to the good people at E! Online, not me. An asterisk indicates a new series.

SEASON/SERIES PREMIERES:

Monday, Jan. 5
The Bachelor (ABC)
Secret Life of the American Teenager (ABC Family)
*True Beauty (ABC)

Tuesday, Jan. 6
The Biggest Loser: Couples (NBC)
Scrubs (ABC)
Nip/Tuck (FX)

Wednesday, Jan. 7
*13: The Fear Is Real (CW)
Damages (FX)

Friday, Jan. 9
*Flashpoint (CBS)

Sunday, Jan. 11
24 (Fox — 2-hour premiere; 2 more hours on Monday, the show’s regular night)

Continue reading…

Watch ‘Dear Zachary’ on TV this week

Thursday, December 11th, 2008

I neglected to tell you that “Dear Zachary,” one of the year’s best films and an extraordinarily moving documentary, was airing last Sunday on MSNBC. I totally forgot. Did MSNBC promote it? Would someone who never watches MSNBC have had any way of knowing it was coming up?

Anyway, we are in luck, because MSNBC is showing it again this Sunday at 1 p.m. PST (4 p.m. EST). Set your DVR and steel your emotions for an engrossing true-crime drama, a touching tribute to a murdered friend, and a gut-punching story about good’s attempt to triumph over evil.

In the meantime, avoid reading too much about the film. My review is safe, and so is the trailer (below), but some reviews and YouTube comments have been careless about spoilers. The less you know beforehand, the better.

P.S. I’m told that while the theatrical version has some swears — and you’d swear too, in these circumstances — they’ve been bleeped for MSNBC’s broadcast.

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‘30 Rock’ season premiere online NOW!

Thursday, October 23rd, 2008

Rejoice, “30 Rock” fans! The season premiere won’t air on the old-fashioned televisions until next week, but it’s on the Internets NOW! You can watch it! Not next week, but NOW!

From the wizards at Hell Laboratories

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008

Why would you want a doll that laughed incessantly? And why would you make a commercial THIS creepy unless your real intention was to terrorize children? (Not that I oppose the terrorizing of children, mind you. I just want advertisers to be up front about it.)

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TV reviews: ‘Kath & Kim,’ ‘Eleventh Hour,’ ‘The Mentalist,’ ‘Life on Mars’

Monday, October 13th, 2008

“Kath & Kim” (Thursdays, NBC): I lasted seven minutes before declaring this adaptation of a popular Australian comedy a lost cause. Molly Shannon and Selma Blair play the dysfunctional but chummy mother and daughter of the title, a pair of vapid, celebrity-gossip-magazine-reading buffoons. Neither character is likable, believable, or — most important — funny. I’m not even sure anyone told Blair that it’s supposed to be a comedy, because her delivery on the punch lines has the same flat monotone as her delivery of the straight lines.

“Eleventh Hour” (Thursdays, CBS): From producer Jerry Bruckheimer comes this generic remake of a British series about a brilliant scientist (Rufus Sewell) who helps the FBI with cases that involve … science. It’s not clear what this means, exactly. I mean, don’t ALL crimes involve science somehow? The law of gravity, at the very least? I think they’re going for particularly unusual scientific applications, as in the first episode, which involves secret cloning. Still, “science” is a little too broad a category to write a show around, and this one is laughably bland. It’s just another show about a “quirky” lead detective and his unamused partner/babysitter. “In science, a negative result is as important as a positive result!” Dr. Science tells us, to remind us how important science is. Science!

“The Mentalist” (Tuesdays, CBS): This one, I like. Yep, it’s another show about a nutty guy solving crimes. But it’s all in the execution. This guy, Patrick Jane (Simon Baker), used to have a career as a psychic and showman (think John Edward). Now he helps the “California Bureau of Investigation” (which is totally not just the FBI with a different name) solve crimes by using the talents that made him a good fake mentalist: a knack for observation, reading people’s body language and other cues, and sleight-of-hand magic. The first episode’s mystery was very easy to solve, but Simon Baker is fun to watch. I can see this show being good comfort food: not great, but reasonably intelligent and enjoyable.

“Life on Mars” (Thursdays, ABC): Remade from a British series (yep, another one), this is a sharp, unusual cop drama about a New York detective named Sam Tyler (Jason O’Mara) who gets hit by a car and wakes up in 1973. He’s still a cop, and he’s still working in the same precinct, but it’s 35 years ago. He sometimes hears things that make him think he’s really in a coma in 2008 and dreaming all this … but “all this” sure feels realistic to him. He uses his 2008 know-how to help solve crimes, while adjusting to the rather lax attitudes of law enforcement in 1973 (beating up perps for no reason, blatant sexism, etc.). The concept is intriguing, and the 1973ishness is conveyed convincingly in the sets, costumes, and music. With Harvey Keitel and Michael Imperioli (from “The Sopranos”) as co-stars, it seems like a torrent of F-words is always on the verge of breaking out. Good thing the show doesn’t air live. Anyway, I’m hooked after the first episode and eager to see where they go with it.

TV reviews: ‘Worst Week,’ ‘Gary Unmarried’

Sunday, September 28th, 2008

“Worst Week” (Mondays, CBS): I laughed a lot at the pilot episode of this fast-paced sitcom, and I was impressed by its enthusiastic embracing of farce and slapstick. It’s a single-camera show (i.e., no studio audience) about a hapless man named Sam who meets, and consistently screws up in front of, his fiancee’s parents. Yes, it’s like “Meet the Parents” — except that unlike Greg Focker, Sam is a likable underdog whose eagerness to please is endearing, not annoying. So many sitcoms are ultimately about guys being screw-ups, so it’s nice to see one that admits up front that that’s all it’s about, and then runs with it. The pilot involved many delightful elements of farce (miscommunication, people presumed dead who are not dead, etc.), and while I got squirmy a few times when I realized how bad things were about to get for Sam, I soon started seeing that as one of the show’s virtues: It’s a hilarious story about a perpetual trainwreck, and thank goodness it’s happening to someone else and not me.

“Gary Unmarried” (Wednesdays, CBS): … And now, after that refreshing bit of humor, we’re back to the same old boring thing. “Gary Unmarried” stars Jay Mohr as a newly divorced housepainter sharing custody of his two children with his ex-wife (who’s now dating their marriage counselor, haw haw!). It’s another bumbling-dad/horny-men/sass-mouthed-teenagers/bitter-ex-wife TV show, and it stands apart from the thousand similar shows in no discernible way. I chuckled a couple times during the pilot — not enough to watch the show again.

Ortega does what now?

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

If you have not already seen the Ortega commercial featuring Olympic gymnasts Shawn Johnson and the Hamm twins, you must watch it immediately. You must subsequently refrain from making vulgar comments. Personally, I find the unwitting double entendre of Johnson’s declarations to be the least trainwreck-y part of the commercial’s overall embarrassment.

Also: How did Paul and Morgan Hamm, who are twins and grew up together, come out pronouncing the word “Ortega” differently?

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TV review: “Fringe”

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

“Fringe” (Wednesdays, Fox): The new show from “Lost” and “Alias” creator J.J. Abrams is promising, though the almost-double-length pilot episode was filled with contrivances and clichés. Then again, it surprised me several times, too, so I guess you take the good with the bad. It’s about an FBI agent named Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) who’s recruited to help the Bureau investigate weird phenomena, with a civilian genius named Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) and his crazy scientist father (John Noble) assisting in an unofficial capacity. Now, how you can make a show about the FBI dealing with paranormal activity and not mention “The X-Files,” I don’t know. But the pilot suggests that, unlike in “The X-Files,” all the stuff they’re going to be investigating is somehow tied together — “The Pattern,” they keep calling it. (Yes, I know some “X-Files” things were tied together, but certainly not all of them.) An evil corporation run by a lady who has a robot arm is involved. Also, I believe they can reanimate the dead. Things like that keep me intrigued, the central characters have potential, and the writing is snappy. I’m gonna stick with it.

TV reviews: “Do Not Disturb,” “Privileged,” “Hole in the Wall”

Saturday, September 13th, 2008

“Do Not Disturb” (Wednesdays, Fox): Traditional laugh-track sitcom set in an upscale New York City hotel, where the employees sleep with each other and make saucy remarks about the guests. Niecy Nash, hilarious as Raineesha Williams on “Reno 911!,” feels very reined-in and restricted as the hotel’s H.R. supervisor; Jerry O’Connell (aka the fat kid from “Stand By Me”) is a little livelier as the hotel manager. There’s absolutely nothing special about the show, but the pilot episode made me chuckle a few times, and the characters are all vaguely likable. I would say it’s the kind of show you watch if you’re flipping channels and it happens to be on, or if it comes on right after something good — except that we live in the age of TiVo, and such primitive TV-watching methods are outdated.

“Privileged” (Tuesdays, CW): This is a surprisingly watchable lightweight dramedy about a Yale graduate and would-be writer who gets hired to tutor a pair of hellacious teenage billionaire girls. The tutor, played by Joanna Garcia (who apparently was on “Reba”), has a perky, quirky vibe that reminds me of Sarah Michelle Gellar, while the two girls — one secretly studious while the other aspires to be Paris Hilton — have more angles to their personalities than I would have expected. There’s also some backstory with the tutor, who grew up here in Palm Beach and has an estranged sister and father still in town. I actually laughed out loud several times during the pilot episode, which breezed by rather enjoyably, and I was interested in what would happen to the characters. I just might keep this one on the agenda.

“Hole in the Wall” (Tuesdays, Fox): The Americanization of popular Japanese game shows is all the rage right now, but while “Wipeout” is genuinely funny, “Hole in the Wall” is merely loud and shrill. Literally everything that is said by the hosts and the contestants is yelled rather than spoken. The game involves three-person teams standing in front of a wall that’s moving toward them. The wall has shapes cut out of it; the contestants have to position their bodies to fit the cut-outs, lest the wall smash into them and knock them into a pool of water. The actual game play is certainly entertaining, but it adds up to about five minutes of a 30-minute episode. The rest is ridiculous posturing and trash-talking between the teams (so embarrassing) and cheesy banter between the hosts (soooo embarrassing). Thanks to TiVo, you could watch the enjoyable parts and skip the rest, but why bother?

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