Fall has brought several new TV shows that we’re trying (or have tried) out. I’ll detail three of them in this post.
American Horror Story
Only watched the first episode of this one. Not sure what they were trying for here. I suppose the genre, at least on TV, is under represented, but it felt like they spent more time on ‘pushing the envelope’ than on establishing an interesting story. So you can curse on cable TV, swell. Ass cheek? Great. And several other ‘adult’ situations that I found more distracting than anything else. So far as the horror set up, everything seemed to be a retread of things we’ve seen before, and I’m not even that familiar with the genre.
Verdict: Punt.
Terra Nova
This one started out reasonably, a little sci-fi, some tense moments early, dinosaurs, and a few larger than life characters. But it bogged down quickly into eye-rolling plot points (armed soldiers killed by the threat, but regular civilians survive by running; horrifying monsters that will kill you dead, unless you just run blindly into the forest!) and several characters existing as plot points (Exposition Daughter being the worst). This one was teetering, and then the extra inning baseball game over-ran for nearly the entire episode, so that was the end of that. This one might have been fun if we’d given it time to settle in, but we did not.
Verdict: Punt.
Person of Interest
This one is my favorite of the group, but even it isn’t must see TV. Suz sort of nailed the concept, this show is basically Quantum Leap, a bit more on the serious side, but essentially strangers jumping into people’s lives and having to figure out how to help them. I thought A-Team, but that is a little too campy to be a good description of this show (although the voice-over introduction in the opening credits always makes me hum the theme from the A-Team). It has been mostly episodic so far, but with some story that carries from episode to episode, what will make things interesting is if they actually move things forward vs. hitting the reset button after every episode (for example, will they address the police officer who is tracking them down, or will she become the army guys who always show up too late at the end of the A-Team episode?). The jury is still out on Jim Caviezel, he seems to be playing the character as Batman right now. Emerson sometimes channels Ben Linus (which is a reminder that this show is no Lost), but other times is completely awesome. This show has potential, even as a more episodic procedural vs. a serial.
Verdict: Still watching.