New Fall Shows, Round 3!

The hits keep on coming, and by "hits" I mean shows that will likely get cancelled in another few weeks. Sorry for the delay in this latest round-up of capsule reviews, but I'm doing my best to make it up to y'all by being particularly clever and insightful with this latest batch.

That last part is a total lie, btw. You get your usual tired jokes and awful puns. You know you love it.

Anyway, let's get to it!

Selfie: The internet decided that this show was going to be terrible months before it even aired. After all, the main character, Eliza, is pretty much a walking example/cliche of everything that is wrong with our narcissistic, self-involved, tech-obsessed culture (despite being portrayed by the delightful Karen Gillan from Doctor Who). And based on the first 5 minutes, which were to be perfectly honest, horrifying, I would agree with the internet. But then a weird thing happened: Eliza (and the show) displayed some moments of genuine pathos that hit me in the gut. And then all of a sudden, I was rooting for Eliza to get her shit together and you know, become a real and likeable person.

Selfie is based on the play Pygamalion (though you are probably more familiar with the musical, My Fair Lady). In this version, Eliza seeks out the "rebranding" skills of her coworker and marketing expert, Henry, to teach her how to connect with people and make real friends...rather than just friending people on social media. What is surprising (and smart) is that Henry isn't set up as an all-knowing perfect example of normal humanity. In his own way, Henry is just as incapable as Eliza when it comes to making connections, so you know--they'll be able to learn from each other. I know, it sounds lame and it's definitely not an original idea, but Karen Gillan and John Cho are inherently likeable and I'll keep watching for now.

Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn they ain't.

Bottomline: If you can look past the vulgarity, there's some real meat and emotion to this story about the difficulty of connecting with others in our self-absorbed culture. Karen Gillan and John Cho are also both great in their respective roles. Selfie airs Tuesdays at 8:00 on ABC.

Gracepoint: The consensus on this one seems to be a general feeling of "....but why?" For those not in the know, Gracepoint is an Americanization of the British mystery series Broadchurch, about the murder of a young boy in an English village. In typical BBC fashion, the British version was nuanced, well-acted, and focused on not only the whodunnit aspect of the story, but also the secrets everyone in the small town kept from one another.

Usually when a British import is adapted for American television, people who are fans of the original wail and rend their garments lamenting how much worse the US show is in comparison to the British one. That's not the case here--Gracepoint is similarly atmospheric, similarly well-acted, and well, similarly everything good about Broadchurch. In fact, THAT's the problem. Gracepoint appears to be almost a shot for shot remake of Broadchurch--including the brilliant long tracking shot in the early minutes of the first episode that introduce the main players in the mystery.

They even got David Tennant to reprise his role as the police detective in charge of the investigation,  playing the exact same character, just with a cheesy American accent. Of course I don't know if the show will have the same killer as the British version, but to be honest, I'm not going to stick around to find out. I've seen this story already. I understand wanting to adapt the story for an American audience, especially given the high quality of the original, but as someone who has seen both, you gotta give me something new to keep me interested.

Even the actors are like, "why are we here?"

Bottomline: If you haven't seen Broadchurch, Gracepoint is a dramatic and intricate story about a murder  in a small town with excellent acting, atmosphere, and twists and turns. If you have seen Broadchurch, then you've also seen Gracepoint. Gracepoint airs Thursday evenings at 9:00 on FOX.

Manhattan Love Story: It's cute. It's too cute. It's another one of those annoying romantic "comedies" where he's a handsome bro, she's an adorable and quirky gal with bouncy curls, they're not perfect but they might just be perfect for each other!

Gag. Me.

It's too bad both the leads in this show are so annoying, because the supporting characters, especially girl best friend Amy (played by Jade Catta-Preta--a dead ringer for Lady Gaga when she looks normal), are actually really funny. But I don't think I can get past the cute. It's just trying too hard. Both the leads showed some promise of actual personality, but I'm not sticking with it to see if those hints of promise are explored.

Oh, and if I see one more show where the writers/producers try to make a gorgeous woman seem more "real" by having her unable to understand how a smart phone/email/Facebook work I am going to lose it and Hulk the fuck out.

She even bites her lower lip. You guys, I CANNOT EVEN.

Bottomline: Plays up every current rom-com cliche and the supporting actors deserve way better. Manhattan Love Story airs Tuesdays at 8:30 on ABC.

The Flash: One of my favorite pilots of the season, The Flash has a sense of fun that can be lacking in Arrow (don't get me wrong though--I love Arrow) but still maintains enough action and drama to keep your eyes glued to the television. It passed the smart phone test--meaning I wasn't reaching for my phone to fiddle with it while the show was on. 

But it's not all fun and games, there's also an underlying sense of stakes and peril; I wouldn't be surprised if some of the characters from the pilot get bumped off in the coming season. Special bonus points for giving Tom Cavanagh a role he can really bite into (is he a good guy? A secret Evil Mastermind? I don't knoooooow!) and putting Jesse L. Martin back on my tv. Do you think he will sing in an upcoming musical episode? God, I hope so. This is a short review, but that's because I don't really have anything negative to say. The Flash is just good old-fashioned comic book fun. 

"Wheeee, I'm super fast! And bouncy!"

Bottomline: The Flash impresses with its ability to combine the fun of superpowers with a real sense of darkness and danger for the characters. One of my favorites of the season, The Flash airs Tuesday evenings at 8:00 on the CW.  

The British Be Invadin

As Clovis and Maggie Cats have decamped for parts unknown, I felt it behooved yours truly to update all of you lovely people about the programs I have been spending my time watching instead of keeping up with Mad Men. (It's on my DVR, chickens! Fear not.) I thought perhaps you lovelies all thought I had shut myself in my apartment, huddled in blankets, binge watching Call the Midwife while eating cookies and cream gelato directly out of the pint. Me? Do such a thing? So, I thought I would keep you abreast of what I had been up to TV-wise.

I've been watching the hell out of Call the Midwife.

My dudes, this show gets me right in the feels. Now having completed its third, yes, third season, the BBC One drama has seen some major changes occur in the lives of the young midwives and the nuns of Nonnatus House. The most significant event of Season 3 is that Jessica Raine, who portrays the late Jennifer (Lee) Worth (on whose memoirs the show is based) has said goodbye to the series in the hopes of finding greener pastures elsewhere in some absurd little backwater known as Hollywood. After three seasons of filming graphic births, Raine is ready to move on to new challenges and new roles. Jenny starts a new job at a Marie Curie cancer hospital, working with terminally ill patients, and she begins her life with Philip Worth.  However, her departure does not mean the end of the series. BBC has renewed Call the Midwife for Season 4, starting in 2015. Like all good ensemble shows, Call the Midwife has done a fine job of developing its supporting characters, so there is plenty of interest in Chummy, Trixie, Cynthia, kind Sister Julienne, BAMF Sister Evangelina and batty Sister Monica Joan. 

RIGHT IN THE FEELZ!

If you watched all of Season 2 and the Christmas special, you will know that Sister Bernadette has thrown off her habit like she is Maria Fucking Von Trapp, and gotten herself married to Dr. Turner. She dyed her hair and went back to being called Shelagh and she is all kinds of prosh. Dr. Turner and Shelagh were being all kinds of improperly flirty in Season 1 and it's nice to see that relationship come to a successful conclusion. However, Shelagh discovers that her bout with tuberculosis during Season 2 has left scar tissue on her lady bits and she is told that it is unlikely that she will be able to conceive a child.

The show also shifted focus this season somewhat away from Jenny's personal life and more on the personal lives of Trixie and Chummy. Chummy has a bittersweet reconciliation with her posh mum, and she tries to become a Modern Lady, attempting to balance marriage and family with a career. And Trixie starts dating A VICAR. 

Go on with your bad self, Trixie.

I'm sure there will be more development of Cynthia, and the producers have introduced two new characters: Sister Winifred, direct from the Mother House, and new midwife Patsy. 

Call the Midwife is a huge hit in the UK and I encourage all of you duckies to tune in. The guys on this show are so hot. Even Dr. Turner is sexy for an old dude. Seasons 1 and 2 are available via Netflix streaming and through Netflix DVD. Generally, it airs Sunday nights at 8 EST on PBS. 

Next in PBS news (I'm not frontin or nothin; I watch a lot of PBS) is Mr. Selfridge.

 I'm actually glad I gave this show another shot. It's done the opposite of what Downton Abbey has done -- Mr. Selfridge started out weak and it's getting stronger. The shows are pretty comparable, and I do think Mr. Selfridge is a much better show at this point. Season 1 began in 1909, and Season 2 has moved forward in pastfuturetime to 1914, and addresses the outbreak of World War I. Harry (Jeremy Piven) and Rose (Frances O'Connor) Selfridge have stopped cheating on each other with really scary stalker people and are trying to rebuild their marriage. Since the show moved five years into the future, the role of Gordon Selfridge has been recast with an older actor (now portrayed by Greg Austin) and Harry sets the lad to work in the store, starting in the stock room and moving up to the perfume counter, where he begins a flirt with a young shopgirl. D'aww. 

With the outbreak of war, Harry attempts to break into the British establishment by using his money and connections to secure a seat on the Procurement Committee. He runs into a roadblock in the form of Lord Loxley, who dislikes Harry on a personal level. The Procurement Committee is dismissive of Harry's attempts to break into the British aristocracy because he is of low birth and American and all that jazz.

Focusing more on the ensemble cast and their personal struggles has allowed the characters to become more fully fleshed out, and in many cases, more likeable. Case in point is Mae Loxley (Katherine Kelly), who during Season 1 was a very cougary vampy person, but this season has revealed that the formerly MIA Lord Loxley is a TOTAL fucking asshole and I kept wishing for Mae to push him down the stairs.

Just you wait, my dears. 

There has also been a bit more focus on Store Ginger, Kitty Hawkins (Amy Beth Hayes), late of ladies' accessories. Kitty is now Miss Mardle's assistant, and she gets to boss the junior accessories assistants. Her character has revealed itself to be less catty and much more amiable, likely due to her character maturing, and through her burgeoning relationship with newspaper man Frank Edwards (British mainstay Samuel West). All workplace dramas need a ginger. Fact.

And then I told him I never wanted to speak to him again. I think I'm in love!

The title may be Mr. Selfridge, but the star of the show is, and always has been, Agnes Towler (Aisling Loftus). Agnes returns from her design studies in Paris and takes over as head of design.  There, she must contend with the jealousy of wannabe rival in ladies' fashion, the bitchy Mr. Thackeray. Agnes is also conflicted due to the return from America of her former lovvvvaaahhh, Henri LeClair (Grégory Fitoussi) because, in his absence, she has grown closer to Victor Corleone. Agnes realizes she must choose between one of her suitors, and compounding her work and personal stress is the fact that her brother, George, is one of the very first to sign up for active military duty. Oh, the dramz.

Oui!

The adorable Miss Mardle (Amanda Abbington) receives two life bonuses this season, while Mr. Grove continues to be a clueless douche. If you haven't noticed, and you should, Amanda Abbington also appears on Sherlock as Mary Morstan, and she is totes Martin Freeman's lady friend in real life. She is just wonderful on Mr. Selfridge, and if you haven't tuned in, you should.

We'll mad your men. And sell it a sturdy pair of boots.

Seriously, this show has gotten under my skin. The first few episodes of the first season are melodramatic and silly, but this season has made up for it in spades. If you're looking for a British costume drama that has the bells and whistles of Downton Abbey, but with better writing and a perfume counter, I very much encourage you to get on board with Mr. Selfridge. The show's home network, ITV, has renewed it for a third season. Mr. Selfridge normally airs around 9 p.m. EST Sundays on PBS. Some episodes are available for streaming on PBS.org.

The next ensemble of which I speak is BBC America's Brit-Can-Am Orphan Black, which is an entirely different kind of ensemble show altogether.

My dudes, this show is crack. I can't say too much about the season thus far without revealing major spoilers. 

Cosima (Tatiana Maslany) is working for the Dyad Institute, but the symptoms of her mysterious illness begin to worsen. Sarah (Tatiana Maslany) searches for answers about Mrs. S's involvement in Project LEDA. We learn more about pro-clone Rachel (Tatiana Maslany), and Helena (Tatiana Maslany) survived being shot by Sarah, but was abducted by some creepy International House of Prayer culty science people. Alison (Tatiana Maslany) turns into a pill popper due to her guilt over Ainsley's death, and the fact that she's finally realized that her husband, bumbling, oafish Donny, is in fact her monitor.

Canadian actress Tatiana Maslany (Tatiana Maslany) deserves some kind of acting Olympic gold medal. Much has been said about her performance  and it all bears repeating. Her portrayal of each of the clones is so mesmerizing and utterly believable that you really do forget that Cosima, Rachel, Sarah, Alison, and Helena are all played by the same actress, and the illusion goes far beyond wardrobe, make-up, and hair. 

Orphan Black airs Saturday nights on BBC America at 9 p.m. EST. Netflix for some odd reason does not have this available for streaming, but they do have Season 1 on DVD.

Dammit, Joss!

Words cannot express the wonder and delight I feel at this moment... Joss Whedon To Write, Direct 'S.H.I.E.L.D.' TV Pilot.

And yet, my heart quakes with fear... What if this is another Firefly - an awesome show that will get scuppered after only a few episodes, leaving us forever wanting more? Or another Dollhouse - an amazing premise ruined by TV execs and foisted on a somnambulant public? I'VE BEEN HURT SO MANY TIMES.

*deep breath* Calm down, Sri, it's going to be okay. I will now comfort myself with news of the second installment of Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog. Also, this picture of Felicia Day.

Television’s Favorite Gingers: Special Birthday Edition!

Guest blogger Jayowolf is back again, with more gingery goodness!

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If you listened at all to public radio last week, you likely noticed amongst all the talk from the nation's elitist cultured chattering classes that Lucille Ball's 100th birthday was August 6th. The Queen of both comedy and "B" movies (seriously, she was an early scream queen in the Fay Wray tradition) left an impact on entertainment that we're still feeling today.

It's hard to overstate how significant Ball's career was. Most of modern television only operates the way it does because of her ideas for how to film a television show in a way that would be seen as new and different. I Love Lucy was the first show ever to end its run at the top of the Nielsen ratings. It was also the first show to provide a profitable business model for running a show in syndication, proving that re-runs of a show could still generate money. It was the first one shot on 35mm film, the first to use the now-standard three-camera set up, and the first one ever (yes, EVER) filmed in front of a live studio audience, establishing the gold standard for sit-coms for the next 50 years.

Much is made today about cracks in the glass ceiling and it's frankly kind of shocking to realize how many of those cracks were first made by Ball. She was the first woman to run a studio independently. Even though she initially partnered with her husband, Desi Arnaz, once they divorced she not only bought out his stake in the production company but remained as studio head. Every time a modern female producer steps into her office and contemplates the pile of scripts in front of her, she is really only echoing what Lucille Ball accomplished 50 years earlier.

Also, she's hiding chocolates in her mouth. Because that's what women do.

The irony of watching Ball's signature character, the somewhat hapless and zany housewife Lucy Ricardo, is that most of what the character was guilty of doing the actress behind it was pulling off amazingly. For every joke about how horrible Lucy the character was with money, Lucy the woman was running one of America's most profitable institutions. Desilu Productions is responsible for some of the most popular and profitable sitcoms in TV history, including The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Andy Griffith Show, and My Three Sons.

They also didn't stop at sitcoms. Do your television tastes skew more toward the thrilling action adventure hour? Desilu was the producer for Mission: Impossible. For your language requirement in college, did you study Klingon? Thank Desilu; they produced Star Trek when no one else would take the show. Also get help – no one needs to be fluent in Klingon.

Finally, this. Just because.

But because the Network giveth and the Network taketh away, it's also fair to credit Ball with being the first network axman. Under her leadership, Desilu only produced shows that she believed would capture long-term interest from an American audience. Which means the shows that weren't performing up to her standards ran serious risk of being cancelled perhaps quicker than they would be under other production companies. Every "brilliant but cancelled" show that you've complained about/missed/blogged ad nauseum over owes part of its death, at least spiritually, to Ball's keen sense of giving the public what it wanted over taking too many artistic chances.

Ball was fond of saying that you couldn't teach someone comedy; it was something that a person either had or lacked. The jury is still out on whether or not the same is true for business and executive acumen (rumor has it both our current president and the guy who had the job before him both have differing opinions on the subject) but Lucille Ball's success in both arenas certainly suggests that she pretty much always had the upper hand with us, even if her characters made us believe otherwise.

Gingers II: The Revenging

Seth Green

Gillian Anderson isn't the only television ginger with the ability to call up a rabidly excitable fan-base at a moment's notice. Noted ginger Seth Green is easily as accomplished as Ms. Anderson, even if his career choices have been more along the lines of body humor and melodrama to her English drawing rooms and corsets. Sidebar: Seth Green actually once guest starred on a very early episode of The X-Files, cementing the linkage between these two actors in a Kevin Bacon kind of way. You can see a shot of him in all his early 90s glory illustrating how the UFO his character saw resembled a hamburger here.

Green is probably most known for his role as Oz, the ironically calm werewolf on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, although savvy television watchers in the know will also recognize him as the voice of Chris Griffin on Family Guy. As Oz, Green got to play to every musically-inclined nerd-girl's fantasy as the guitar player for cool, hip in-show band Dingoes Ate My Baby who just also happens to be a werewolf and dates a witch. He's considerably less accomplished as Chris Griffin, and yet the character still somehow manages to come off more respectable than his sister, Meg.

Approximately 93% of all Seth Green's time is spent being this cool.

Where he really earned our love, however, is in his work on the terminally awesome shows Greg the Bunny and Robot Chicken. The former was sort of an adult version of the muppet show – Greg, the titular bunny, was a struggling entertainer who also happened to be a puppet. In the show, puppets were treated as though they were real, although second-class minority citizens. The show moved back and forth between being truly edgy (Greg loses his virginity as a result of prison sex after mistakenly being arrested for being a pedophile) and trying to maintain a network television audience without paying a bajillion dollars in FCC fines. Robot Chicken, likewise, is an unorthodox attempt to mix stop-motion animation with sketch comedy. And a lot of Star Wars jokes. Further proving his dominance over television and nerd-life, Robot Chicken was for a long while the highest rated show on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim and the second-highest for the network in general. The only show that was ranked higher? Family Guy.

The really creepity thing about Seth Green, though, is how much he comes off as a cool guy. As unabashed in his nerdiness as he is about his small stature, he easily fits the mold of that friend that would just be cool to hang with. And probably watch a lot of TV together.

Seriously. He's wee. That's his wife and that image isn't photoshopped.

Love to the Gingers

Please find below yet another ginger fan-service post by our own guest blogger, Jason (aka Jayowolf, cause apparently animal nicknames are becoming a thing). If you are a lover of gingers, as so many of us at TV Sluts are, feel free to suggest your favorite fiery-headed fox for adoration and squee.

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Not long ago, I wrote a post here that someone in my life called "gushingly" positive about Christina Hendricks. The word "gushingly" was used with that same kind of faux constructive praise, sort of like the tone of voice you use when you're trying to find something nice to say about the business contractor who just sold your house out from under you.

Now, I don't think I'm being too unfair in saying that part of the bite to the word had something to do with jealousy. And while there are probably a number of things that could have inspired said emotion, I'm going to go for the most obvious one, or at least the one that I want to believe is most true:

HOLY F*#KING SH!T CHRISTINA HENDRICKS IS A REDHEAD!!!

Don't hide from the truth, dear readers – in one way or another we're all a little intrigued by the coppertops in our lives. To that end, I offer what will hopefully become an ongoing feature on this blog – Television's Favorite Gingers.

Just in time for the New Year!

Gillian Anderson

Long before Christina Hendricks fled the sci-fi world for period dramas, Gillian Anderson had that territory mapped, charted and sold to Rand-McNally. Easily the world's sexiest doctor-cum-scientist-turned-FBI agent (granted, it's a small pool), Anderson skeptic-ed her way into our nerdy hearts as Special Agent Dana Scully from The X-Files.

While she could easily have become a staple of Comic-Con and other social-skill challenged gatherings, she skewed classy instead and opted for "serious" roles in adaptations of Dickens' Bleak House and Wharton's House of Mirth. Basically lots of time spent in corsets and drawing rooms without having to ever look at a surgical scalpel again.

Yeah, Gill – We thought the X-Files 2 script
was a little suspicious, too.

Anderson was labeled at the time the "thinking man's sex symbol", a phrase that kind of carries all the same bite as the aforementioned "gushing" when you really think about it. In any case, it may have contributed a little bit to her publicity off-camera. Although far from the train wrecks of today's modern pop culture starlets, Anderson was noted for purposefully cultivating a far raunchier image of herself in real life than she portrayed on television.

This actually was probably a smart, not to mention lucrative, move considering the last thing a serious actor wants is to be typecast. By being unafraid of showing herself as the opposite of the staid, buttoned up Agent Scully, she was also able to stick to being identified as an actress and not just the former star of The X-Files.

Also? This. Just because.

And yes, we know she isn't a natural redhead. It was out of a bottle. That why this is called "Television's Favorite Gingers" and not "Real Life's Favorite Gingers Because a Bunch of Killjoy Nitpicks Had to Get All Wicked on Our Asses."

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Next time: "As unabashed in his nerdiness as he is about his small stature, he easily fits the mold of that friend that would just be cool to hang with."