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Fall television round-up…
“The Class” (CBS, Mondays 8:30-9:00 PM)I don’t usually like sitcoms because there hasn’t been a decent one in five years, so my hopes for “The Class” were pretty low. In fact, if it could extract two chuckles from me in the span of half an hour, it would have already far exceeded my expectations. “The Class” managed five from me, so it’s a winner in my books.
From Larry David, the guy who shall forever be known as the creator of “Friends,” comes this high-concept comedy about a group of twenty-somethings who once attended third grade together. Straight man Ethan Haas (Jason Ritter, John’s son and previously collecting paychecks from “Joan of Arcadia” and Raise Your Voice) is throwing a surprise party for his fiancée, and thinks that inviting all of their estranged classmates (Ethan’s fiancée was also in the same third grade class) will make her day. As he makes his round of phone calls, we meet the main cast: fraternal twins Kat Warbler (Lizzy Caplan, who sounds just like her Mean Girls character, Janis Ian) and Lina Warbler (Heather Goldenhersh); likeable loser Duncan Carmello (Jon Bernthal), who still lives with his overbearing mother; gay hottie Kyle Lendo (Sean Maguire); high-strung weather woman Holly Ellenbogen (Lucy Punch); trophy wife Nicole Allen (Andrea Anders, last seen on “Joey” – let’s hope this doesn’t mean anything about the show’s fate); and loveably klutzy, suicidal Richie Velch (Jesse Tyler Ferguson). Naturally, no one remembers Ethan, but for varying selfish reasons decide to attend the party anyway. Various people connect and histories are revisited: Holly and Kyle used to date in high school, until she walked in on him during prom night in a compromising position with another man; Duncan sees the newly married Nicole, once the love of his life, and regrets dumping her; and Lina and Richie make an unlikely but sweet connection. When Ethan’s fiancée finally arrives, only to be greeted by a group of strangers, she completely loses it and promptly dumps him on the spot. As the party breaks up, acidic and sarcastic Kat ends up stranded at Ethan’s, and tries to console him to the best of her abilities, which basically means administering a couple of well-placed jabs in his direction.
As these connections are made, the pilot follows these couplings to varying degrees of success. While Lina and Richie steal their scenes as two odd and quirky people looking for love, Holly and Kyle share grating scenes full of repetitive gay jokes, and it’s revealed that Holly’s present husband, Perry Pearl, is the Hollywood version of gay – effeminate, fashionable, and more interested in cooking than watching a baseball game. Holly is ironically oblivious to all of this. (I’m glad to see that the writers are moving forward to 1995 with a gay character in the main cast, but would it hurt to throw in a minority once in a while?) And while Richie and Kat have the most natural chemistry and the funniest deliveries on the show, Duncan and Nicole’s storyline of middling marriage vs. true love starts out sweetly but veers off into predictable schtick faster than you can say, “I Love Lucy.” It will be interesting to see where the writing can take these characters but, for now, the show belongs on TiVo.
“Brothers & Sisters” (ABC, Sundays 10:00-11:00 PM)
“Brothers & Sisters” is one of those predictable ensemble dramas about a middle class, picture perfect family who is actually more screwed up than a night with Flava Flav. The cast, at first glance, seems like top caliber: Sally Field, Calista Flockhart, and Rachel Griffiths are all strong actresses in their own right and, in this ABC drama, family members with about fifty thousand chips on their shoulders. And as good as they are, even they can’t save this show.
In addition to chips, the Walkers also have about fifty thousand children, which we meet in this action-packed pilot. Kitty (Flockhart, still a couple of sandwiches short of a full meal) is an uber-conservative radio host who has burned her bridges with liberal mother Nora (Field). She has a boyfriend who, we learn, is evil incarnate because he chooses the restaurants that they eat at, and orders the wine for her. Needless to say, they aren’t going to last long. Sarah (Griffiths) is in a loving but sexless marriage, has quit her glamorous and exciting job in advertising to work in the family business (which involves cows or farms or something equally boring), and may have had a thing with her ex co-worker (Michael Beach). Kevin (Matthew Rhys) is gay and apparently hasn’t dated anyone in a while, despite his mother’s constant nagging. Thomas (Balthazar Getty, looking better than he has in the past ten years) does…pretty much nothing in the pilot, but he seems to be the least conflicted thus far. Justin (David Amble) is back from the Iraq war and screwed up, and Nora blames Sarah’s pro-war stance for his demise. There’s also a Julia, but since she popped up halfway through the pilot and had a total of two lines, I still can't figure out who she is. Uncle Saul (“Alias” spy Ron Rifkin) is also in the family business and might harbour a secret or two. The Walkers’ patriarch, William (Tom Skerritt), is a seemingly nice guy who tries to end the feud between Nora and Kitty. But I’ve seen Poison Ivy, so when he turns out to be shadier than expected, I’m not surprised. William is, as all middle class fathers on a primetime drama are wont to do, having an affair and paying off his mistress with stolen money from the family company. Sarah is onto him, but William goes and has a heart attack right at the 59-minute mark, leaving a barely passable cliffhanger for the second episode. The heart attack might have worked better as bait had we even started caring about any of these damaged but beautiful people.
The show’s saving grace might be “Six Feet Under”’s Rachel Griffiths, who is always poised, graceful, and fascinating. All the stuff going on in Sarah’s life is enough to fill any show on its own, but we’re forced to watch everyone else go through their own neuroses in a never-ending turntable of family drama. And unfortunately, Calista Flockhart’s Kitty is neither interesting nor compelling, so having her as the frontrunner ruins any chances this show has for being the drama it really wants to be. Sally Field, similarly, has seen better days, and manages to chew the scenery every way she can. When Balthazar Getty becomes the least annoying character on a show, it doesn’t say a lot for its appeal. The only reason I’d even contemplate watching any future shows would be to clock how many more lines Julia will have before the writers decide to off her.
“Smith” (CBS, Tuesdays 10:00-11:00 PM)
One particular scene in “Smith” is definitive of the show as a whole: as Bobby Stevens assembles his team of highly skilled crooks and awaits their arrival, each one pulls up in a car more flashier than the next. There’s the transportation expert, the explosives guy, the British dude, and the beautiful but morally unjust blonde. If you had just tuned in, you’d think you were watching a remake of The Italian Job with less talented actors. “Smith” is a lot of flash with no real substance, and the underwhelming pilot is overwrought with explosions, fast cars, shoddy dialogue, and predictable plot twists.
Bobby Stevens (Ray Liotta, here looking as tired, bloated, and generally bored as ever, so much so that you’d expect that he would take a nap right there in the middle of the scene) is a family man by day, and a highly organized, high-stakes thief by night. At home, he’s got to contend with his wife, Hope (Virginia Madsen, who’s seen better days in Sideways and A Prairie Home Companion), who is a big ol’ two-timing recovering drug addict. He also works at a boring nine-to-five, selling something I can only guess to be cups but can’t be bothered to confirm since Bobby hates his job and will probably quit in a couple of episodes. What I did notice is that the corner office with all the nice windows doesn’t quite mesh with his regional salesman title, but somewhere along the line, Bobby probably managed to steal that space with his mad heisting skills.
Bobby gets most of his assignments from a mysterious woman named Charlie (hot MILF Shohreh Aghdashloo, who has paid previous mortgage payments with stints on “24” and X-Men: The Last Stand), and the latest one involves a heist in a Pittsburgh art museum to nab some valuable paintings. Joining Bobby will be Jeff (Simon Baker), a reckless womanizing Aussie who cold-bloodedly snipers two men who bully him three minutes after appearing in his first scene – which was less charming as it was disturbing; Tom (Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie’s ex-husband and noted thespian of such works as Dracula 2000 and Aeon Flux), who has just served his sentence and is ready to chance another stint in jail; gambling addict Shawn (Mike Doyle), who likes to blow things up; beefy but sensitive Joe (Saw II’s Franky G), who was once in love with Shawn’s wife; and con-artist Annie (Amy Smart, another big-screen refugee who has previously starred in Just Friends and Crank), who is the object of Tom’s desires. About half of these people are useless, but we don’t find this out well until the half-hour mark.
While it’s nice to see Liotta having fun with his various guns and gadgets (in between his bouts of boredom with the scrip and his co-stars), the dynamic within this group is lacking, at best. Even while the heist is being executed –which is tediously told in flashback chunks – the lack of build-up leaves much to be desired in terms of excitement. Even when Annie’s role in the whole robbery, which is so stupidly small that one wonders why she even bothered to show up (free flight? Some time off from her Vegas showgirl gig? A year’s worth of cups?), threatens to falter, no one will be waiting with bated breath. Even when the heist goes terribly awry and there is a casualty (fine, it was Shawn – which is to be expected since he had about five lines of dialogue and a nagging gambling problem), the loss is not exactly mind-blowing. In fact, any one of these characters could have been killed off, and I probably wouldn’t have noticed.
The biggest offender in this criminal team is Annie, who, in the pilot, is drawn so two-dimensional that when she entices Tom to a mile high escapade, no one is shocked or surprised at her brazenness. For much of the episode, Annie does little but yell at a co-worker for screwing up her credit card fraud scheme, stun gun a poor stranger, and rip open her blouse (apparently, her breasts are her weapon). This is to show us that she’s got spunk, but does little to clear up why she’s even there. Madsen’s complex character, on the other hand, is worth a revisit, and the chemistry between Tom and Jeff trumps any sort of emotion we’re to feel about Tom and Annie.
The kicker happens during the last act of the show. Bobby meets with Charlie to give her the stolen loot, and they ponder the ramifications of Shawn’s death for a whole thirty seconds before Charlie asks Bobby if he’s available for any other jobs. “Three or four more, Charlie. And then I’m out,” Bobby answers in a not-at-all contrived way. You can tell that Liotta’s wondering if the arbitrary number has any correlation to how many more episodes are going to air before cancellation. (Update: Apparently, three was the lucky number indeed – the show has been cancelled after a mere three episodes.) ¤ C.Ho.
[ From "Heroes" to "Studio 60." Part I of the review. ]