While the rest of America continues its obsession with karaoke idol on Fox, here is a rundown on what I watched...
8:00 – Not much to say here as I kind of spent it flipping around primarily watching an NCIS repeat on USA and The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell (one of the creative forces and consultants on The West Wing) on MSNBC.
I admit I liked Keith Olberman as he was somewhat entertaining and very smart, but he really just became too much of a pundit than an analytical person reviewing the news like O’Donnell does. The new show does not quite have the same bite, but is intelligent where many others are not. I would have to say of the talking heads on MSNBC, I would rate him first, Rachel Maddow second and Chris Matthews – if the other two guys Ed and whomever the other guy is were not so dull – at the bottom. Matthews is sometimes funny and can be a real beast when someone doesn’t answer him, but as long as he continues to not let people at least speak before butting back in after his overly-lengthy question, I will continue to be put off. As for the competition, I can’t stand American Idol and could care even less about Paula Abdul’s dance show. And Minute to Win It was only entertaining the first one or two times. Put celebrities on that show doing silly things and I will give it another chance.
9:00 – Since the idiots at NBC decided to move Chase from Mondays at 10 to Wednesdays at 9, it has been a toss-up for live viewing. Tonight I went with Chase, a great new show in the middle of its first season, since Modern Family was a repeat. Typically I will go with the laughs of Modern Family, probably my favorite family sitcom of all-time. Cougar Town is usually pretty funny afterwards, although it’s starting to kind of die down for me. Chase was a continuation of a two-parter about a Mexican drug cartel that picked up with the abduction of the lead US Marshal character Annie Frost, who was taken over the border. What transpired kind of took her fellow marshals down a bit of an edgy path, but not as far as would be the case on other networks, particularly cable, either because NBC wants to keep it ‘family’ or they didn’t want to offend law enforcement agencies. It is a shame it looks like the network has given up on it moving it opposite Modern Family and Idol as that will certainly lead to cancellation when it would make a great pairing with USA network’s In Plain Sight, which deals with the witness protection side of the Marshals service and features another strong female lead. Perhaps if they would have developed the Frost character like In Plain Sight did with Mary Shannon (played by Mary McCormack) instead of the unknown and mysterious aura, it would have gotten better reception.
10:00 – I watched Blue Bloods on CBS, but I really couldn’t tell you much of what happened other than it was about Russian mobsters. I like a handful of the actors and characters on the show, but for some reason it just keeps getting more monotonous in its presentation. I understand the rationale for the family dinners that the Reagan family has, but I think the need to have that segment once or twice in the show cuts other stuff out or something. Also, I feel like it wants to be edgy because it’s got this whole long-term storyline of a secret police group that some of the family may be involved in, but it never really goes anywhere and is nothing but a continual, lame tease. The funny thing to me is that the show revolves around this family of cops (and a district attorney), but the most entertaining characters are the partners played by Jennifer Esposito and Nicholas Turturro.
Tape Delay – Although Modern Family was a repeat, Cougar Town was not. I’ll be catching that On Demand in the near future. I probably should have watched Off the Map instead of Blue Bloods, so I’ll probably watch that as well since they haven’t pushed me away yet with the expected relationship-soap-opera format. That is probably only one or two episodes away though.
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