TV Season 2010 Pulse Check

Back in September I wrote two blogs on my favorite new Dramas and Comedies of the 2010 season. It is now time for a pulse check - how are they doing so far, are they still beating or on life support?

Beating Strong - Raising Hope
This show still makes me laugh. When the scripts are good so are the episodes. There have been a few blah ones, but overall I am really enjoying this blue collar family and their hilarious predicaments. Jimmy is the underdog you want to root for. He isn't the smartest guy in the world but he puts his new daughter first. His parents aren't the best but they sure try hard and Maw Maw is priceless.

Having Heart Trouble - The Event and Outsourced
Unfortunately The Event is becoming a bore. It is falling into the same pattern of Flashforward where it starts out intriguing and then can't keep the excitement going. I still have a few episodes on the DVR and I'm not dying to watch them.
Outsourced has lost it's hilarity. The first few episodes were great, hilarious, but now the writing has faltered and they are no longer as funny as they were in the beginning. In fact, I have not finished watching the last two episodes. I turned them off mid show and deleted them. Meh.

On Life Support - Undercovers
I can't believe I am saying this but I have lost the desire to watch this show. It has nothing to do with the cast, they are great, it is the writing
(JJ Abrams is obviously busy doing other things and it shows, bummer). There is no urgency in their missions. There is nothing at stake. In Alias, the fate of the entire world was always at stake as well as Sydney's life. There was so much intrigue, twists and turns that if you missed an episode you had to find out what happened, asap. It was a huge water cooler show. The critics and network executives at NBC agree with me about Undercovers as the show was just cancelled for good this week. The ratings were low and with no huge stars to keep it afloat the network decided to take it out of it's misery.

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Fall TV Season 2010 - Comedy

I'm rather embarrassed to mention the two new comedies that I enjoyed during premiere week. They are quite irreverent and not very PC. I'm honestly not sure if these shows will last anyways, but their first episodes made me set the DVR to record them for the next few weeks. The first show is Outsourced on NBC. It airs right after The Office which is a great lead in to this politically incorrect show about a manager who is sent to India to handle a novelties call center. Everyone has called for help or been called by their credit card company from a call center in India. We all know the accents and the frustration. This show demonstrates the other side of that phone call. It's a job, with little pay and little understanding of American culture. Like The Office, the characters all represent people we have known in our own jobs taken to extreme comedic proportions. Manmeet uses the call center to pick up women. He spends his time telling overweight, 55 year olds who smoke how gorgeous they are instead of selling them products they don't need. Gupta is the annoying coworker who talks non-stop about things no one wants to hear and doesn't take any hints when people don't want him around. I was immediately hooked. The other comedy I enjoyed was Raising Hope. It's a white trash show like Roseanne but with a heart, as the main character ends up with a baby and he has no idea what to do with her. He does realize that he needs a car seat for her and sets out to pawn his possessions using his only form of transportation that is safe for her, a shopping cart. That is the "family shopping cart," the one they use over their fire pit when they grill outside for dinner. Once again the characters are what carry this show. The mother and grandmother, played by Martha Plimpton and Chloris Leachman respectively are superb. Leachman actually wears only a bra for most of the episode which is both gross and hilarious at the same time. And former Goonie, Plimpton, as irascible as ever, was a delight to see on the screen once again. My only concern is whether the show can stay funny beyond the first few episodes. Only time will tell.


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