Minority Report

There's no way the regular TV Sluts could make it through all these Fall Premieres by ourselves (even we're not THAT talented), so we're calling in all the troops. Here's a guest post from Mac Attack covering the new show, Minority Report, based on the movie of the same name. It's not a remake, but rather a continuation of the story. Is it worth your time? Read on to find out! --Maggie Cats 

 Minority Report: Somewhat aptly named. A show about precognition gives us a vision of a post-racial future. Main character is a woman of color, DC's mayor is a black man married to an Asian woman (who used to play professional football for the... wait for it... Washington Redclouds!). Even the semi-antagonistic office-political rival within the cops is FES from That 70's Show. Minority indeed. The only four white people with significant roles in the episode were all characters from the movie.

As someone who thinks "psychic" is a pretty terrible premise for a show, I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. In part, they down-play the psychic element. The show focuses on Dash, one of the two twin male psychics, and establishes that he was, by far, the weakest of them. For whatever reason, he's the only one still interested in stopping murders; for the other two, their days of future crime are in the past. So, the heroes will have FAR less information than Tom Cruise did.

I do like pre-cog humor, which this episode was unfortunately somewhat light on. Two jokes stood out, and they were good, but not great. And they've already overused the "You're the pre-cog, you tell me" gag. A lot.

I think they knocked the tech out of the park. It was ubiquitous. It was central, or shown in the background, or as an accent, and just all over the place. Sometimes it was a plot point, sometimes it was just to give a sense of place. I worry that it's a breeding ground for 'forgotten phlebotinum'. Will an episode come where a crime could easily be prevented, if someone just used the device some random students are seen using in the background of episode 7?

Hopefully, no. One of the first scenes was... kinda the worst. They tried too hard, I feel, at the first crime scene. Their forensic technology seems impressive, but the woman using it looks like she's playing Dance Dance Revolution, or possibly that scene from the Toxic music video where Britney Spears dances past some laser beams while lip-syncing.

 Don't pretend you don't know what I mean.

I have seen the movie, and I have not read the book. My gut says that you don't have to have seen the movie to understand what's going on, and you definitely don't to enjoy it. They re-cap the salient details of the movie quickly right at the start and let you get into the show. There's one huge detail central to the movie that they leave out for a long time, until it's revealed at a dramatically appropriate moment; I feel like if I hadn't seen the movie, I would have enjoyed that aspect of the episode more. As it was, I spent the whole episode thinking, "But why aren't they mentioning..." and then when they finally did, instead of a big pay-off, I was like, oh well then. Okay.

All in all, I think this was a solid first episode. Better than I expected from a "based on". There are the central characters, who are plucky but seem unaware that they've stumbled upon a much bigger picture. There are at least three side-characters who obviously have their own agendas; are they nefarious, merely self-serving but otherwise decent people, or actually altruistic heroes?

Perhaps Dash could tell you.

Guest post by Mac Attack. Minority Report can be seen on Fox Mondays at 9e/8c, or on Hulu the following day

Fall Premieres Part I

It's the most wonderful time of the year! The Fall TV season is upon us and it's like Christmas morning, but with even more potential for fun and disappointment! Which of our anticipated favorites will end up being awful? What black horse series will be take us by surprise and become a new obsession?

And remember, there's also the chance that everything will be terrible. Wheeee! It's like TV show roulette!

There's a whole lot of shows and only so much typing my little delicate lady-fingers can handle, so I am going to knock these out quick and dirty for you over the next couple weeks. Sure, some things might be worthy of a full write-up, but I'm fundamentally lazy so the chances of that are kinda slim. #truthtelling

Best Time Ever with Neil Patrick Harris: You gotta give it to him, NPH always works really hard. You can tell that he really wants to make this one succeed; he was almost manic in the premiere, with the jokes! And the stunts! And the dancing and the quipping and chatting and smiling and jumping and...man, it's exhausting just writing about it.

The producers don't want you to call it a variety show (that's been made very clear in all the pre-premiere press), but I'm not sure there's any other way to capture the essence of the show. Best Time Ever's website describes it as "a live one-hour show that is unlike any other on American television. Anything can happen on "Best Time Ever with Neil Patrick Harris," which will feature appearances by A-list stars, stunts, comedy skits, incredible performances, mini game shows, audience giveaways and hidden camera pranks."

They're also very open with the fact that it's based on a British series called "Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway," and while I've never seen the original, I'm willing to bet it's better than the American version.  Because the first episode of Best Time Ever felt a little too rushed, a little too full, that there was never any time to breathe. NPH worked his butt off, but none of the segments got the chance to stretch their legs.

I can't decide if making the show live is a help or a hindrance; in the premiere NPH felt almost frantic and the pacing was kind of off. NPH came across more "used car salesman" rather than "comfortable show host." But the guts of the show are sound, the gags were pretty funny and/or cute and/or clever, and I think with time when everyone settles into it there really could be something here. Though it's unlikely it may get the chance based on the premiere ratings. Still, if you're looking for something family-friendly, say to watch with the parents sometime, this would be a great pick.

Honestly, the best reason to keep watching is to see what the show does with the "Little NPH" guy. He's kind of like Neil's Mini-Me. Please, God, let there be a Doogie Howser, MD, reference soon.

Best Time Ever airs Tuesday nights at 10:00PM EST on NBC.

The Bastard Executioner: Wow, this show has really thrown me for a loop. I kind of hated the first hour which felt like a total Braveheart rip-off except in Wales, and featured such gratuitous violence (especially towards women) that I almost turned the television off in disgust. The entire set up of the series was so paint-by-numbers it was kind of embarassing.

According to the press-release monkeys over at FX, The Bastard Executioner is about "Wilkin Brattle, a 14th century warrior, whose life is forever changed when a divine messenger beseeches him to lay down his sword and lead the life of another man: a journeyman executioner. Set in northern Wales during a time rife with rebellion and political upheaval, Wilkin must walk a tight rope between protecting his true identity while also serving a mysterious destiny."

So basically, this guy was a bad ass soldier fighting on the side of the English King in Wales, but gave up the sword when he saw an Angel (for real) on the battlefield. He gets married, lives the whole quiet life, until he fights back against the local Baron's tax-collectors. Of course there is retribution, and his entire village and family is killed in really horrible and awful ways, and it all goes down just as you expect. He swears vengeance and pretends to be a traveling punisher, basically a torturer and executioner for hire to infiltrate the Baron's estate. No, really.

Like I said, the first hour was pretty bad for several reasons, but then the second hour when Wilkin (ugh, that name) ends up in the Baron's castle got intriguing. Mostly due to the character of the Baroness, credited as "Baroness Lady Love Ventris" (no, really), who so far is fascinating and really well-acted by Flora Spencer-Longhurst. I've never heard of her, but I am impressed. I am really hoping that she will end up as more than just a love interest and will stick around for a couple more episodes to see where the show is going. Oh, and there was also some really interesting twists at the end of the premiere episode dealing with Katey Sagal's character (yes, THAT Katey Sagal) and excellent work from Stephen Moyer (Vampire Bill in True Blood!) that left me pseudo-hooked.

One warning though: there is some REALLY graphic violence here. So much so in fact that I was shocked this aired on regular cable--sure, it's not basic cable, it's FX, but still. This is the kind of stuff that you wouldn't even see on Game of Thrones. If that's something that bothers you a lot, you're going to want to avoid this show like the 14th century plague. But if you can handle it or even dig it, The Bastard Executioner might be up your alley.

The Bastard Executioner airs on Tuesdays at 10PM on FX.

There's a lot of RAWR on this show. 

Empire

I've had so many ideas for blog posts swirling around in my head the past couple weeks, it's been difficult to decide what to write about. And then I realized I was using that as an excuse to be lazy. So I'm kicking off some more regular posts with a review of my favorite mid-season premiere of the season: Empire.

Just to clarify....not this Empire.

THIS EMPIRE.

What's not to love about rich people scheming and backstabbing? Sure, this is kind of a common plot in television, but you guys. Empire is really really good. I think it's actually crazy good. It takes everything that's awesome about shows like Dallas, but isn't ridiculous or campy. I was completely hooked in just the first few minutes and every episode keeps getting better (and the ratings have gone up with each episode which is kind of unheard of these days on network television).

The plot is very King Lear set in the modern music industry. Lucious Lyon (Terrance Howard), is a former drug dealer turned hip hop mogul and the CEO of Empire Entertainment.  In the pilot episode, he's diagnosed with ALS and told he has only three years to live. Of course his thoughts turn to his legacy, and he tells his three sons that one of them will inherit Empire...and they will have to prove they deserve the honor. So basically, they are competing among each other for ULTIMATE POWER. Well, ultimate music power. Well, millions and millions of dollars. The stakes are high is what I'm saying.

Everyone instantly starts plotting against one another and the waters are further muddied with the arrival of Cookie, Lucious' awesome ex-wife and mother of the three sons. She's just out of prison where she served time for getting the seed money for Empire Entertainment by getting involved in some drug deals. Cookie is just an all-around badass with amazing fashion sense and is pulling for her second son (he's very much of the John Legend-type singer/songwriter school) to be the heir. But since the son is gay....Lucious is against the idea.

If Cookie ain't happy, ain't NOBODY happy.

I mean, seriously. THE DRAMA. There is so much going on with this show it's crazy, but it all makes sense, the performances (at least as far as the older characters are concerned) are really strong, and the music throughout the show is great. It's also really nice to have a black-centric show that doesn't feel like it was just thrown together (ahem, Blackish. Looking at you). This is a tight, well-made, compelling drama.

Empire has right off the bat established itself as must see tv for me, so give it a shot and I bet you'll get hooked. You can find it Wednesdays at 9:00 EST on FOX, and catch up with the three aired episodes over at the show's website.

Making a Run (heh) at The Flash

My name is Clovis and I’m the fastest blogger alive.

Okay, so that’s clearly not true given how long it’s been since I’ve published a post, but I couldn’t resist the into when talking about yet another of the pantheon of new comic book properties that are showing up on our airwaves. I speak of The Flash, of course; The CW’s Arrow spinoff chronicling the story of Barry Allen, the Fastest Man Alive.

No.  The other fastest man alive.  The white hipster-y one.

Like Arrow before it and Gotham alongside it, The Flash is another of DC Comics’ superhero stories.  Barry Allen is a forensic scientist working in Central City when he is working one night in his lab and is struck by a stray lightning bolt and falls into a wall of chemicals.  When he comes to, he finds himself with the ability to move at super speed and quickly becomes a crime fighter facing off against other oddly-powered individuals.  As with my Gotham review, this one is going to get nerdy, folks.  If you’d prefer to skip all the comic book talk and jump straight to the TV show, you can jump ahead.

Wow, what a flashy character!

The Comic Book

So here’s the fast and dirty (get used to it guys, the puns are irresistible on a topic like this) on The Flash:  Barry has super speed.  He can run faster than anything else on the planet, fast enough to run on water and generally muck about with physics in all sorts of fun ways.  He can vibrate his atoms to allow him to do things like pass through walls.  He can also, on rare occasions, transcend and travel through time due half to Einsteinian physics and half to comic book hand-wavium.  He is motivated by an almost naive desire to do good partially stemming from seeing his mother murdered mysteriously as a boy.  He is also always, ironically, late to everything.

The character is actually one of comic books longest-running legacy characters.  It’s also notable for being one of the first comic book characters to introduce the idea that a super hero could age out of his or her role and be replaced.  The character of The Flash originally dates back to 1940, the Golden Age of comic books, and was a college student named Jay Garrick who gained his super speed after inhaling water vapor. (Yes, really.)  In 1956, DC Comics streamlined its storytelling process, the first of MANY times it would do this, and integrated all its separate characters into a shared universe.  In the process, The Flash was given a different identity, costume, and background and was now Barry Allen, forensic scientist who gets his powers through that aforementioned lightning bolt.  Barry Allen would later be replaced by Wally West, the character’s nephew in 1986.  I bring this up because each time The Flash became a different man, the other characters still continued to exist.  This made The Flash as an identity something that could be passed down, a radical concept to comic books.  For a sense of perspective, consider that with a few stunt-stories, Batman has always been Bruce Wayne, Superman has always been Clark Kent, Iron Man has always been Tony Stark, and Peter Parker has always been Spider-Man.

The people who make red spandex are basically kept in business by these guys.

This sense of legacy in the comics is what has always given The Flash a certain emotional heft to it.  Barry recognizes Jay as a predecessor, while Wally comes to utterly revere Barry after becoming the Flash himself due to, shall we just say, unfortunate events related to Barry.  As such, The Flash as a character is always imbued with the notion of time being a precious commodity and the idea that we’re all racing toward an ending that’s coming faster than any of us would like it to.  Despite that gloomy notion, The Flash as a character is almost uniformly written as an optimist.  In all iterations, from Jay to Wally (and beyond, but that’s getting more detailed than you want, trust me), The Flash represents the character who, possibly more than almost any other super hero, does what he does because he believes in the best of people and just wants to do the right thing.

Okay, non-comic books fans.  You can come back now.

"Faster than a speeding bul... oh hey wait..."

The TV Show

I’ll say right away, like Maggie Cats said a few weeks ago, The Flash had one of my favorite new pilots this season.  Almost everything about the way the show has presented its key characters and its premise has been on pace right from the start.  Barry (Grant Gustin), initially introduced last year as a guest character in Arrow, is established at the start as a forensic scientist working for the Central City police department.  He’s been drawn to a life in law-enforcement after seeing his mother murdered under HIGHLY mysterious circumstances as a young boy.   With his father convicted of the murder, Barry was raised by family friend and police officer Joe West (played by Jesse L. Martin) who raised Barry as a sorta-sibling to his own daughter, Iris (Candace Patton).  Barry’s father, btw, is played by John Wesley Shipp who played The Flash in the short-lived 1990s era TV version of the same character.  In the pilot episode, Barry is struck by a stray bolt of electricity as the result of a catastrophic accident at STAR Labs, a sort of CERN-esque research facility headed by Dr. Harrison Wells (Tom Cavanagh).  When Barry awakens six months later, he finds that he has acquired super speed as well as an enhanced physiology that has increased his endurance and his ability to heal.  What is a young man to do in this situation?  Fight crime, naturally.

From there, the show plays out as you’d expect from The CW.  We’ve got your over-arching mystery (what was that strange yellow blur that killed Barry’s mother in their own home all those years ago?), your healthy dose of love-triangle (Barry is, natch, secretly in love with Iris who sees him like a best friend and is herself involved in a secret relationship with her father’s rookie partner at work), an assortment of enemy-of-the-week villains (turns out that stray bolt of electricity didn’t just affect Barry), and a possible twist (the good Dr. Harrison who helps Barry establish his heroic identify may not be all that he seems to be).  The thing that makes all of this work, honestly, is the speed at which this story progresses.  There’s no denying it – The Flash moves quickly.

Pictured: Rush hour in the speed lane.  I'll stop.

Unlike Arrow’s season-long brooding, Barry gets into this hero thing before the end of the first episode. All the major plotlines are introduced, the outlines of each character’s development are laid out, and we’re, well, off and running.  Seriously, more happens in the first thirty minutes of the pilot episode than you see in most seasons of an HBO series.  The show is also undeniably fun.  The Flash as a character is universally depicted in the comic books as someone with a sense of humor.  He’s Peter Parker without all the personal hard luck.  In keeping with that, you’re not going to find much in the way of personal agonizing or tortured development here.  Barry wears bright red and yellow and speeds around at 300mph in the middle of the day.  Unlike Arrow’s Oliver or even any of the numerous iterations of Batman, there’s no need to only operate at night.  In a cameo scene with Oliver Queen, Ollie even calls this out when urging Barry to use his powers to help his city.  “You can inspire people in a way I never could,” he tells Barry.

The Easter Eggs

Of course, in addition to all this actual mainstream drama and adventure, there are TONS of bones thrown for nerds like me.  After the STAR Labs accident, a broken gorilla cage bears the name “Grodd”, implying something has gotten out.  Barry’s first speed tests occur at a Ferris Air testing field.  One of Barry’s superhero support team members is Francisco “Cisco” Ramon.  The other is Caitlin Frost.  Caitlin’s fiancé, tragically killed during the STAR Labs explosion, was Ronnie Raymond.  In the comics, every issue begins with the same phrase: “My name is Barry Allen and I am the Fastest Man Alive.”  Because every episode begins with a brief recap of what’s come before, take one guess what the voiceover begins with?  And at the risk of avoiding spoilers, I won’t even mention several other major plot points and characters introduced in the first few episodes that potentially point to some MAJORLY big (and spoiler-y) things that DC Comics and Warner Brothers appear to be ramping up for all their comic book properties, including a few possible implications for those big movies that you might have heard were recently announced.

Um. Spoilers?

Bottom line? Watch this damn show.  It’s fun, it’s adventurous, it’s breezy, and it’s got some great action with a nice dose of frothy character mush.  Nerds will feel respected, everyone else will just enjoy a good story playing out. 

The Flash airs Tuesday nights at 8/7c on The CW.

Criminals Are a Superstitious, Foreshadowing Lot

I’m going to get this out of the way right at the beginning:  I’m a huge Batman fan, but I hate seeing his origin story.  The reason is because I’ve seen it so. Many. Damn. Times.  And now, come to your television and mine, is Gotham; yet another origin story for Batman.  And as the TV Sluts most dedicated comic book nerd, I’m here to break it down for you.  Fair warning: I’m getting Bat-nerdy ALL OVER THIS MOFO.  I won’t feel badly if you need to turn back now.

I"m so desensitized to this image that for all I know, this could be from Modern Family.

The saving grace of this take on Batman’s origin is that it is told through the eyes of a young Lt. James Gordon, the man who will one day become Gotham City’s famous Commissioner of Police.  As we see how Gordon will eventually become the paragon of law and order, the show is promising to focus more on the development of the various rogues and ne’er-do-wells that will eventually becomes Batman’s famous villains than on the Dark Knight himself.  As such, it’s sort of Batman without the Batman, though a young Bruce Wayne is a regular character.

The first episode sets the stage for us with a variety of characters good, bad, and ambivalent react to the shocking murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne, the wealthiest couple in the city and, obviously, parents to young Bruce.  We see the reaction to the crime from the three different factions of people Gotham has laid out for us: the police investigating the crime, the mob factions who see it as a potential leverage point, and the people caught up in between, most of whom have rather familiar names.

They're like the Brady Bunch.  With more secrets.  And darker clothes.  

And that’s where Gotham earns a lot of its nerd street cred right off the bat.  Seriously, you guys, there hasn’t been a finer collection of Easter Eggs in one place since the last White House Easter Egg Roll.   All the mainstays of the Batman universe are here:  Sarah Essen is Jim Gordon’s captain.  His partner is Harvey Bullock.  The CSI-guy who helps them understand the ballistics of evidence is Edward Nygma.  Bullock and Gordon, who work in Homicide, are envious and jealous of two other cops always showing them up from Major Crimes, ReneeMontoya and Crispus Allen.  And that’s just the police force.  The show opens on a teenage Selina Kyle just learning how to be a thief.  The daughter of a mob lackey is a young Poison Ivy.  Mob boss Fish Mooney’s underling is none other than Oswald Cobblepot.  Right off the bat (heh), your Batman geeks are SQUEEE-ing all over the place.

The risk for the show, then, is how to tell a major story that everyone knows, how Bruce Wayne becomes Batman, with this many characters, most of whom are the ones that are usually in the periphery.  Gotham aims to tackle that problem by running largely like a police procedural with an emphasis on the job that James Gordon has fallen into as the Last Good Man in Gotham City.  We can only presume that the deeper stories, already starting to be seeded in the pilot episode, will begin to fill in the holes that a Law & Order: Gotham would be unwilling to.

So how does it do in its first four episodes?  All told, not too bad.  Let’s start with look and feel.  Production value is high and the show looks slick.  The show gets a lot of free atmosphere simply from filming in New York rather than Los Angeles or Vancouver and as such, Gotham City looks and feels real.  New York is stylized, blending the actual architecture of a gritty city with enhanced fantastical elements to give it a more gothic feel.  The skies are always moody, the streets are always dirty.  To a comic book nerd like me, it looks very close to how Gotham City is supposed to look.  Denny O’Neil, one of the all-time greatest Batman writers who help shaped the character, once described Gotham as looking exactly like New York below 14^th street at 10 minutes past midnight on the coldest, wettest night in November.  The show has followed that lead, effectively making Gotham City a character in and of herself.

So how about the story?  Wisely, the central mystery that we’re given (who actually killed the Waynes?) is carried through the first four episodes without being overbearing.   The show is devoting much more time to showing how corrupt Gotham City is and what it means to try to keep this city, built on a precarious system of checks and balances between the warring crime families, the police, and the emerging underclass of citizens who are taking matters into their own hands, from falling into chaos.  The writing itself is, for the most part, good while obviously trying to find its pace and hit its stride, a common issue for new shows.  Some truly clunky dialogue in the first episode is thankfully significantly improved by the third, which gives me a lot of confidence for the rest of the season.  (Though for the sake of full disclosure, I would watch this show no matter what just because of the topic.  I’m a sucker.)   

This course of action is not uncalled for in my case. 

The performances vary from middling to fascinating.  Donal Logue’s Harvey Bullock and Robin Lord Taylor’s Oswald Cobblepot in particular steal just about every scene they’re in.  Taylor lets his proto-Penguin be sleazy and slimy while at the same time making you want to know more about this kid who is so clearly set on a bad path.   By episode four, Oswald has already started to become a minor player in the nascent gang war that has started to erupt since the death of the Waynes.  Likewise, Logue nails Harvey Bullock as the cop who is just going along to get along in a city as corrupt as Gotham is, despite the fact that underneath it all he really wishes he could make a difference.   The actor having the most fun with a role, however, is clearly Jada Pinkett Smith, cast as a mid-level mob boss named Fish Moody who nominally is in service to Carmine Falcone, the head of the most powerful mob family in Gotham, but scheming to improve her own station.  Watching Jada Pinkett Smith as she Eartha Kitts al over her scenes is legitimately fun.   And while Ben McKenzie is solid as James Gordon, it’s hard to get too creative with a hero character who has to carry all the action.  His best scenes so far have been playing off young Selina Kyle, cast here as a street orphan who’s ridiculously talented at getting by on her own.  (Selina is perhaps the character that the writers have nailed most solidly.  Every line she has absolutely sounds like something the 13-year-old version of Catwoman would say.)

"Purrrrrfect?"

That kind of devotion to the comics without being hemmed in by them is part of what makes Gotham so enjoyable for me.  The writers are playing with any number of nerdy references: Gordon and his Fiancé, Barbara, live in a curiously lavish penthouse apartment with the main feature being a huge clockface that doubles as a window.  Comic readers know that this couple’s future daughter, who becomes Batgirl, is frequently drawn in her own high-tech apartment in a prominent clocktower somewhere in Gotham.  Episode four revolves around a development deal to bring back the abandoned Arkham Asylum.  (A map showing the neighborhood even refers to the area as “Arkham City.")  Characters meet at the corner of Fourth and Grundy.  The dancers at Fish Moody’s night club are dressed curiously as harlequins.   There's even a struggling comedian who auditions at the same club.  (The producers have stated that they will tease exactly who becomes the Joker over time, and likely ambiguously owing to the ambiguous nature of the character's origins in the comics.)  

A Batman TV show has been something of the Holy Grail for both networks and Warner Brothers for some time.  For as popular as the character is, there are a dozen reasons why the last time Batman was on live action television, he was played by Adam West.  And while Gotham bears no resemblance at all to the 1960s Batman, fans of the Bat universe will be more than pleased to see it brought to them each week.  Whether or not it can win over more casual viewers is now the question.

Gotham airs Monday nights at 8pm on Fox.