Whether I liked the pilot or not, the show was chosen by the people as this year’s “Favorite New TV Drama” on last night’s telecast of The 34th Annual People’s Choice Awards on CBS. I’m shocked, obviously, as I believed America lived and died by my opinions, but there you go: the people have spoken.
Alex O’Loughlin, who plays Mick St. John, the immortal and decidedly vampiric private investigator from Los Angeles, accepted the award on behalf of the cast via video from Australia; Nielsen doesn’t actually calculate how many swoons a particular person inspires, but based on the legion of comments about the series that’ve popped up on this site, we have to figure it must’ve been in the millions.
So it’s official. I’ve got it. The show’s apparently more than just an “Angel” wannabe, it’s clearly got a fanbase who loves it, and with one hand in the air and the other hand on the keyboard, I hereby swear that I’ll watch it when it comes out of DVD. Now, will you people stop yelling at me…?!? I’m very sensitive, and you’re hurting my feelings.
So The CW provided critics with the first part of the 2-hour 5th season premiere of “One Tree Hill,” which picks up four years, six months, and two days after the 4th season finale…and although I have never before seen an episode of the show, I know this to be true because, well, the episode is entitled “4 Years, 6 Months, 2 Days.”
It’s a leap of faith I’m taking, I realize, but, dammit, I’m confident that I’m right about this.
In addition to the screener of the episode, however, critics were also given a pleasantly threatening note, which begins with the line, “Please Do Not Reveal the following information in your reviews, features, etc,” then goes on to offer up five bullet points that, obviously, I won’t be offering up for your reading enjoyment.
Well, okay, I will list them…but so as not to upset anyone at The CW, I’ll have to put in blanks where the crucial information is. If you’re a real fan of the show, though, I’m sure you’ll be able to solve the mysteries.
* Do not reveal (PERSON) is in a (THING). * Do not reveal (PERSON) as (PERSON)’s (GENDER)friend. * Do not reveal (PERSON) is in (PLACE). * Do not reveal (PERSON)’s and (PERSON)’s reunion. * Do not reveal (PERSON)’s (EVENT).
See what I mean? Easy peasy.
The truth of the matter, however, is that my never having seen a single episode of “One Tree Hill” in no way affects my ability to offer this heartfelt opinion of the proceedings: if you’d told me that the script had been written by Chester Cheetah, I would’ve said, “Wow, that sure is eerily appropriate, as I was just thinking how that’s the only possible excuse I would’ve accepted for why it’s so cheesy.”
Yeah, yeah, that’s right, the guy who doesn’t know anything about the show takes a cheap shot, thereby proving that he’s a complete asshole, which is what you already suspected, anyway. Look, I absolutely applaud a show for taking a risk in an attempt to shake up the status quo (as I just did that yesterday with”Medium,” in fact), but this thing plays less like a new season of a show than one of those TV reunion movies, like “An Eight Is Enough Wedding,” or even worse, like that updated hour-long version of “The Brady Bunch” that ran in the ’80s: “The Bradys.”
In fact, can I get a clip for that, please, just to refresh your memories…?
Awesome, thanks.
Man, that sure was awful, wasn’t it, folks? And, sadly, that’s how this new season of “One Tree Hill” is looking. It’s, like, “Hey, look, the kids are all grown up and living awesome new adult lives!”
So what can I tell you that hasn’t been put on the do-not-reveal-under-penalty-of-getting-your-ass-kicked list?
* Brooke (Sophia Bush) is a veritable fashion mogul, now that her design company – Clothes Over Bro’s – has skyrocketed her to fame and fortune. * The music-loving Peyton (Hilarie Burton) is working at a record label. * Lucas (Chad Michael Murray) has published his first novel and is scoring critical acclaim. * Marvin the Mouth (Lee Norris) is looking for the elusive job as a sportscaster. * Haley (Bethany Joy Galeotti) is just finishing her student teaching. * And Nathan (James Lafferty) is…well, Nathan’s fate no doubt has the producers rubbing their hands together in glee at the thought of what kind of reactions they’re going to get from the fans, which is why I can’t reveal it to you. I’m guessing, though, that the writers came up with it by asking, “Short of death, what’s the most unfortunate fate that could befall the show’s resident basketball star?”
The only real good news is that Daphne Zuniga, late of “Melrose Place,” has been added to the cast as a hard-ass businesswoman who works for Clothes Over Bro’s, providing a reminder of how much fun melodrama can be when the right person is reading the lines. There are also a few entertaining sequences with the less grown-up members of the ensemble as they play basketball, video games, and basically act like real people in their early 20s. Otherwise, we’re given a non-stop run of plot threads and cliches that feel rehashed from Lifetime movies or ABC Family Channel flicks. In particular, the sequences with Peyton at the record label would be hard-pressed to play more unrealistically.
Boss: How long have you been in Los Angeles, Peyton, from… Peyton: …from Tree Hill, North Carolina. Four years. Boss: Four years. Why’d you come? Peyton: I wanted to discover and sign bands that could change someone’s life, like the band’s that changed mine. Boss: I figured you were one of them. I used to be, too. Then I figured it out: it’s called show business for a reason. We’re here to make money. Peyton: Even if the product sucks. Boss: Especially if the product sucks. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but rock and roll can’t actually save the world. Peyton: See, i disagree. Walk into any club on the strip tonight and just look at the kids. Look into their eyes. I mean, they’re all looking for something to believe in, and I think that music can be the thing that changes their world.
Aaaaaaarrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhh…
Okay, fair enough, I’m not a fan of the show, so you can discount my opinion completely. But I’ll close with this: my wife was a huge “Dawson’s Creek” fan, and she still watches the reruns on occasion, but she watched “One Tree Hill” with me last night, and not only did she declare it awful, but she also actually regretted that she’d never get back those 42 minutes of her life.
…but as long as there aren’t any new episodes of the show floating around out there, anyway, I have to say that I’m really psyched for the new season of “Medium,” which premieres tonight at 10 PM on NBC, in the slot that once housed our current favorite time-travel drama.
I’ve long been on record as admitting that, for as much as I’ve loved each of the three seasons of “Medium” that have been released on DVD – and for the obligatory plug, you can find those here, here, and here – but I’ve never followed the show from week to week. I don’t even really have a good excuse for it; it’s just one of those cases where either it was up against a show I was already addicted to or, more likely, I just plain forgot when it was on. (So sue me: I’ve got a two-year-old, and my concentration ain’t what it used to be.) But after thrilling to Season 3, which ended by changing the dynamic of the series that felt realistic rather than an attempt at bringing in new viewers, I can honestly say that even if there wasn’t a writer’s strike and even if I wasn’t starved for new scripted programming, I’d still be tuning in to Season 4 of “Medium.”
Quick catch-up: Alison DuBois (Patricia Arquette) is a happily married mother of three little girls who went to school to study law before real life got in the way, so now she works part-time for the District Attorney of Phoenix, Arizona, and…oh, right, she has dreams and visions where she communicates with the dead – or vice versa, as the case may be – and uses the information she receives to solve crimes. Yeah, yeah, I know, it sounds like the makings of a show that’d be front and center on the Lifetime network…and the fact that the show’s reruns actually air on Lifetime makes it hard to disagree with that suggestion. But in addition to “Medium” containing one of the most realistic television marriages ever (thanks to the great chemistry between Arquette and her TV husband, Jake Weber) and some of the better child actors in recent memory (particularly Sofia Vassilieva as the teenaged Ariel), the show is also home to some of the creepiest shit this side of a Stephen King novel.
When Season 3 ended, the DuBois family was dealing with some serious issues. Alison’s abilities, which had always been kept under wraps by D.A. Manuel Devalos (Miguel Sandoval), were revealed by a very skeptical journalist – a deliciously sleazy turn from Neve Campbell – and resulted in Devalos being “given” a leave of absence and Alison being let go from the department and becoming persona non grata to everyone with whom she’d previously worked, including Detective Lee Scanlon (David Cubitt). And as if that didn’t shrinking the family income enough, Joe (Weber) ended up losing his job following a work-related hostage incident, due to corporate insurance concerns about his psychological well-being and his wife’s newfound reputation as a crackpot.
So now what?
Enter Anjelica Huston. Still having visions and dreams but unable to do anything with the information she’s receiving about a little boy who’s been kidnapped, Alison contacts Ameritips, an organization that’s been trying to solve the case, and meets with Cynthia Keener (Huston), an investigator with the group. Keener is decidedly skeptical when Alison explains how she came about her information, but she suggests that Keener Google her, and – no surprise – she soon gets a callback. Keener is still skeptical, but she’s willing to take Alison’s information with a grain of salt. The eventual result is a new, if uneasy, alliance between the two…and, more importantly, a paycheck coming into the Dubois’ bank account.
A word of warning: there’s a shot in tonight’s episode that is so downright disconcerting that it actually took my breath away for a second. It’s not really a spoiler to suggest that it involves the kidnapped boy, since it’s a longstanding tradition with “Medium” that Alison’s visions don’t always come to pass, but I’ll just say that if you’re a parent and you’ve ever even briefly allowed yourself to fear what could happen in that moment when you realize you don’t know where your kid’s run off to, it’ll make your blood run cold.
I’ve also seen next week’s episode, and while I’ll save most of my observations about that for next Monday, I will say that it’s also really good and, as with the upcoming new season of “Jericho,” I can’t help but think that the writer’s strike might actually pay off for “Medium.” People want new stuff to watch, they’re willing to consider shows that they might not ordinarily watch, and based on what I’m seeing so far, “Medium” – like fellow NBC show “Law & Order” – is starting so damned strong with its new episodes that it might just find a resurgence in popularity that it hasn’t seen in quite some time.
The premiere of the fifth and final season of “The Wire” is finally upon us, and while it doesn’t look to be as good as last year, the show continues to trump just about everything you see on TV. The biggest problem with the first episode was that not a lot really happened. It served more as a building block for the next nine episodes than anything else, and while very few new ideas were presented, we now have a good idea where Ed Burns and David Simon are going with their plans to interject the media into their stories.
And since we’re on the subject, I might as well begin there. Simply put, I wasn’t very impressed with the Baltimore Sun scenes that dominated much of the second-half action last night, but I also wasn’t a very big proponent of the political subplot at the beginning of Year Four, either. There’s definitely a few things to like about the new setting – namely actor/director Clark Johnson as City Editor Gus Haynes – but I can’t imagine anything of real interest being drawn from the concept that the newspaper is in danger of being downsized. Whether that threat was just motivation for the writers to dig deeper into the city’s corruption or if it’ll play a bigger role later down the line remains to be seen, but there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s definitely important to the story.
As for the rest of Baltimore, things are pretty much the same since we last left them. Bunk is still playing tricks on street thugs (how that kid ever fell for the photo copier “lie detector” is beyond me), McNulty and Co. are back on Marlo, Bubbles is still clean (and apparently working for The Sun selling papers), and Carcetti’s busy juggling the city budget between the schools and police department. This hasn’t made the new mayor a very popular man, either, as cops continue to work overtime without pay, and the Major Crimes detail is disbanded almost as quickly as it was formed.
There have been some changes, albeit minor ones. Carver is now a Sergeant (and in charge of the West district), Herc’s working as an investigator for a criminal DA, and Dukie’s taken off corner duties in order to play nanny to Michael’s younger brother. Oh yeah, and McNulty’s drinking again. As if you didn’t see that coming. Here’s hoping he doesn’t screw over Beadie in the process, because she was one of my favorite characters from season two. I’m also patiently awaiting the return of Omar, Cutty, Randy, Namond and the countless others I’m forgetting about, but with only 9 episodes remaining, I can’t imagine their absence going on for much longer.
Girls want to be with him and guys want to be him. Tim Riggins got a ton of screen time this week and it didn’t go to waste. He moved in with the Taylors and his initial flirtation with Shelly had me a little worried. A few more days under the same roof (and if Tami hadn’t said anything to her sister) and the two might have had a little tryst when no one was around. Given Shelly’s sauciness and his tendency to fall for older women, it was a serious possibility.
But Riggins can’t catch a break. He does the right thing by protecting Julie at the party, but I had a sick feeling when he was putting her to bed that someone was going to walk in and get the wrong idea. And that’s exactly what happened. Eric’s biggest fault is that he doesn’t listen. What he walked in on certainly looked bad, but he knows that Riggins is a good guy. Their clothes were all on and one look at the condition of his daughter would have confirmed Riggins’ story. But when Eric gets pissed, he just tells people to shut up and then walks away (or kicks them out).
It’s a shame because he had a sort of “son that I never had” vibe going with Riggins. First, he says he likes having Tim around because it “evens up the gender teams” and then the two are playing ping-pong at 5 AM. It will be interesting to see if/how this relationship is repaired. Riggins could use a strong father figure and Eric fits the bill.
The tornado scene was pretty cool and Tim’s actions in the store (in protecting Julie) certainly fueled her little crush. Those two are in two completely different worlds, so a potential relationship would be a bad, bad idea.
Speaking of relationships, what the freck is Tyra thinking? Landry risked his future to protect her, and she drops him seconds later so that she can date the sleazy quarterback from a rival school? It’s one thing to take some “time off,” but to immediately date the enemy is just insane. Her confession at the dance that he makes her “feel too much” spoke volumes, but Tyra is a mature, intelligent young woman. It never should have gotten to that point.
I thought the whole storyline about a tornado forcing a rival team into Dillon a little unbelievable, especially with the way that the Laribee kids were acting. It’s pretty ballsy to walk onto someone else’s turf – someone who’s doing you a favor – and act like a total asshole. Given the enormous depth of most of the show’s characters, I thought the Laribee kids (and their coach) were paper-thin.
In other news, Buddy had to deal with the engagement of his ex-wife (are they even divorced?), which led to a pretty good scene with Buddy begging for another chance on the doorstep of his old house. I like Buddy when he’s feeling good about himself, so let’s hope that he moves on and doesn’t spiral downward into depression.
We should get some football next week with the Dillon/Laribee battle, and given all the off the field drama between the two teams, it promises to be an interesting game.
