midwinter check-in

I mentioned Galavant earlier; this winter, early spring, whatever this season is in this post-season realm of post-television television, it became the comedy I most looked forward to. I'm not sure if second season is necessarily better than the first -- they're hard to compare -- so much as that more of a spotlight is given to my favorite character, Timothy Omundson's King Richard. While Karen David's Isabella was essentially the deuteragonist of the first season, her role was somewhat reduced in second season -- my only complaint -- with Richard assuming that role, and Galavant and Richard's quest often taking the form of a buddy comedy in the same way that Galavant and Isabella's  in first season followed the trope of the guy who falls for his platonic female friend while trying to impress/win back/rescue his putative love interest.

Even apart from the music itself, it's a very smart and clever show, very playful and sometimes arch, right down to Kylie Minogue playing the Queen of the Enchanted Forest, which turns out to be a gay bar. Please let that be a recurring role.

But as good as everyone else is, Richard is the highlight. Richard is amazing. Richard is one of my favorite characters in TV comedy.

Speaking of which -- the other show I find myself looking forward to every week is New Girl, which I would not have believed when it premiered. I openly scorned this show in its first season, having absolutely hated the pilot. When Jake Johnson started showing up in movies I liked, it pissed me off that he was stuck in a shitty show like New Girl. But I would catch pieces of episodes because we didn't have a DVR yet and it was paired with some other show I watched -- Mindy Project, maybe? -- and in time I started watching for Max Greenfield's Schmidt. And before long I was just watching, period, and tolerating Zooey Deschanel's Jess. And since then, either Jess has become less of an obnoxiously precious pixie or I've become used to her, I don't know. Greenfield and Johnson were my main reasons to watch, but, video-game style, the writers have unlocked the secrets to the comedy of everybody else over time, and my favorite scenes are often classic Winston and Cece mess-arounds. It was never that Lamorne Morris and Hannah Simone weren't funny, just that the writers couldn't figure out how to write Winston consistently -- and then sort of made that the point -- and Cece's role as Jess's best friend or Schmidt's crush sometimes made her more plot device than character. Those problems seem to be in the past.

It's not on the level of Happy Endings, Community, or Parks and Rec, don't get me wrong -- nothing at that level seems to be on the schedule right now. Although as far as shows that have the potential to get there, The Grinder turned out to be a hell of a lot funnier than I expected it to be. I don't really understand the Arrested Development comparisons I've seen some people make -- I think you need to rewatch Arrested Development if you think any show can be compared to it -- but:

a) the cast is so fucking solid, and it says a lot about Mary Elizabeth Ellis (the Waitress on Always Sunny) and Natalie Morales (The Middleman, Trophy Wife) that they fit in fine with veterans like Rob Lowe, Fred Savage (who is doing really great work here), and William Devane. Timothy Olyphant's recurring role as himself contributes so much both to the show and to Rob Lowe's character that part of me kind of hopes Tim-O doesn't get his own show and becomes a regular here? I knew he could be funny, but he is perfectly cast here.

b) the show is just meta enough without being a parody, a satire, a send-up, whatever. Actor who played lawyer on not-at-all believable TV show moves back home after his show ends, joins the family law firm in non-lawyer capacity, overshadows his hard-working brother by treating every case like one of his episodes. It's like ... what that Disney movie Bolt was supposed to be. And of course, every episode starts with the family watching an episode of the show-within-a-show.

Everyone is good, and the writing is solid, but the show is absolutely dependent on Rob Lowe's ability to sell his character, and he pulls it off. The Emmys ignored him on Parks, but maybe this will change things.

Meanwhile, off in superhero-world, Supergirl continues to improve, although it also continues to borrow more and more elements from Superman -- having already made Jimmy (James) Olsen part of the cast, they've now had a Toyman episode, introduced Bizarro (and it's Bizarro Supergirl, not Bizarro Superman), and written Max Lord as just a Lex Luthor who hits on Kara's sister instead of on Lois Lane.

Legends of Tomorrow has a boring name but a fun premise -- superheroes and supervillains culled from the Flash and Arrow shows are gathered by Rip Hunter to bounce around in time trying to stop immortal bad dude Vandal Savage. Wentworth Miller's Captain Cold and Caity Lotz's Canary are the standouts here, though I love that Rory from Dr Who is playing a Time Lord now -- but man, the fatal flaw of the show is that the guy playing Vandal Savage is just not good!

I've just looked him up, he's a Danish actor, and maybe in his native language he's a better actor, but here he's a) too campy to take seriously and b) this may be like ... voic-ist or something ... but his voice is simply too high-pitched for him to be a compelling evil immortal mastermind. It's a comic book show. There are conventions to be followed. Maybe if he were a better actor he could pull it off or if the writing were great it wouldn't matter, but in the show as it stands, it matters. Dude is just not convincing me that he's a threat to a box of kittens, much less to this time machine full of superfolks.

In other dramas, I really hope this turns out to be the final season of The Good Wife. As you may have heard, the showrunner-creators are leaving one way or the other (remaining as uninvolved producers) but CBS wants to sally forth if they can get the actors to stay. Between Peter's bid for the presidency, Alicia's solo venture, Eli telling Alicia about that thing that time ... this feels like a proper final season. This feels like time. I love the show, I love Eli Gold, I love Diane Lockhart, I think they did a great job adding the improbably named Cush Jumbo to the cast, and I love all these crazy judges and opposing attorneys, but it's time to either move on or make a spinoff starring the fantastic Carrie Preston.

I've been altogether deeply disappointed by Sleepy Hollow, a show I vocally championed in its first two seasons, this year. It simply doesn't feel like the same show, and I let it languish on the DVR until it feels like we have to watch it.

American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. is only one episode in, but it seems like it might be ... really good? Caitlin had to convince me this would be worth watching, but she was right. Maybe it helps that the show actually originated outside of Ry-Murpland and was brought into the fold after development had begun, I don't know. I guess it explains why Evan Peters isn't playing Kato Kaelin, anyway.

The Sci-Fi Channel, which I think is now called Syfy or SyFy or sYfY or essWHYeffWHY or some fucking thing, has adapted Lev Grossman's Magicians series, which is an interesting thing. I had some issues with the books, and I have some issues with the show, but it turns out they are not even the same issues!

Nevermind the issues with the books, by and large -- the biggest one was that I didn't like the main character, Quentin, very much. So far that is mitigated somewhat in the show by rearranging the presentation of the story a bit so that we get Julia's story at the same time as Quentin's instead of hearing about it later in flashback.

The Magicians is like an adult version of Harry Potter meets Narnia: magic is real but, as in those books, hardly anyone realizes it, and as in the Potterverse, its proper use is taught at special schools. The first book begins with Quentin finding out about and attending Brakebills, one such school -- unlike Harry Potter, this is a college, not a boarding school for berobed tots, so you have drunken sorcery and whatnot going on. Which is great! It's fun!

And that's my main issue with the show right there: it moves FAST. In the books, the "meets Narnia" part doesn't happen right away, but the show introduces the Narnia analogue of Fillory immediately and is rushing toward it. It seems to me that if you have the television rights to "the grown-up version of a Harry Potter type school for college kids, where they drink and screw and stuff," and there are only three books in the series, the most marketable thing to do is to linger at the school for as long as possible. Spend at least a season showing us what normal life at a college learning magic is like, because surely that is fascinating and challenging and dramatic on its own, right?

But the show doesn't seem interested in doing that, and it feels like dramatic potential squandered.

It's doing a decent job of what it is interested in -- calling it the best Sci Fi Channel show since Battlestar Galactica is faint praise, but nevertheless -- with the other key problem being that the most interesting female role, Alice, has been either underwritten, badly miscast, or both. I think it's a little of both, because I can't imagine anyone who hasn't read the books watching this and thinking of her as the most interesting of these women. Again, it's a shame -- squandered potential, because the book version is a great character, and this is only slightly made up for by the fact that they are doing better by Julia (so far).