Notes on Pop Culture: TV Season Thus Far = Some Good, Some So-So

The fall TV season is about to go on its typical holiday break which means we’re soon going to be seeing an uptick in repeats through the new year. Grey’s Anatomy, for example, has already aired its last episode of 2011. While I’ve already extolled the virtues of the new shows Homeland and Boss here, how have other favorite TV shows being doing thus far this season?

Grey’s Anatomy: It’s had an up and down start to its eighth season. While the last episode before the holiday hiatus was solid, the softball one was the weakest episode in some time and the weeks upon weeks of Derek being a sanctimonious withholding jerk were hugely grating, never mind a gigantic turn-off. Made me despise his character. Now that we’ve learned that Meredith and Derek have lost Zola, I’m wondering what horrendous thing the writers are going to do to Meredith next as Teddy mourns her husband and Cristina likely goes into shock again, not long after she regained her emotional equilibrium after the mass shooting. (To read reviews of this season’s episodes thus far, I’ve been reviewing them over on CliqueClack TV.)

The Good Wife: This show seems as though it’s been keeping things on the down-low for a lot of the season thus far. It doesn’t seem to be taking as many chances as it has in the past and the Alicia-Will affair has, with the exception of the season premiere, been mostly under wraps, cloaked in nuanced bits of conversation in Will's glass office or aluded to in coded ways. Their relationship has not been a huge focus of Alicia's world as her attention has been split between her kids and a boatload of casework lately.

The incremental increase in the pressure the angry and jealous Peter Florrick is applying to Will in the form of an investigation into Will's actions has made for good television. Plus we don't really know if Will has been thoroughly on the up-and-up in all his business dealings. I hope the slow build will pay off, much like the big reveal about Kalinda did last season. The writers have got to know that they've raised the stakes with its stellar second second.

Seeing Eli Gold on a regular basis, now that his offices are inside Lockhart/Gardner and hearing his witty one-liners has been a wonderful addition. (The “Here. Comes. Santa.” line in the latest episode was great.) And now that Peter is getting closer to finding out for sure that Alicia and Will are sleeping together, the tension that’s been at a low boil will start to heat up.

Up All Night: I’ve also been reviewing Up All Night, the freshman Christina Applegate and Will Arnett comedy about neurotic new parents. After a bit of charming awkwardness and lack of clarity as to what role the Ava (Maya Rudolph) character should play, the show has hit its creative stride.

Its best show of the season was the latest one where Reagan and Chris had a hard time trying to get away for a romantic evening at a hotel together in order to snap their multi-week romantic dry spell. I also loved seeing Reagan’s therapist parents, Toby from The West Wing and Gwyneth Paltrow’s mom Blythe Danner. I hope they’ll return for guest spots.

Parenthood: Here’s another show that has been hot and cold thus far this season, though it’s had more quality moments than cruddy ones. The latest episode is an example of the quality that we know Parenthood writers can deliver when they want to. They provided Sarah Braverman (Lauren Graham) with some meaty material (it’s about damned time) involving her ex-husband Seth (played by the excellent John Corbett), and featured some thoroughly charming, achingly loving scenes between Adam and his wife Kristina who recently gave birth and who is still adjusting to the changes in her body. (I also review this show weekly here.)

What needs work? Figuring out what to do with Jasmine, Amber and Zeek who had the misfortune of having a storyline about starring in erectile dysfunction drug ads. I also hope that my concerns about where they're headed with this whole coffee cart gal adoption thing are misplaced.

Modern Family: As much as it pains me to write this, I’ve been distinctly underwhelmed by this season’s offerings from my favorite comedy, the episode above – where Phil made a string of mistakes when caring for the kids while Claire was trying to launch her bid for City Council (accidentally drugging Alex and giving Luke a shiner) – notwithstanding.

From the episode where Cam tried to pick up a woman just to prove that he could (so uncomfortable and so unfunny) and the one where Jay was acting like a grumpy old man who wouldn’t go out salsa dancing with Gloria (so tired and disappointing), to Claire getting drunk and going out with Cam and Mitchell’s friends, there have been several unfortunate misfires.

I don’t know what to make of the paucity of really strong material as of late -- the expectations are ridiculously high given their Emmy prowess --  but I’ve got my fingers crossed that the Modern Family writers get their mojo back. And soon.

Notes on Pop Culture: 'Good Wife' Stays Solid, 'Grey's Anatomy's' Parent Issues & 'Parenthood' Turning a Corner?

Good Wife Remains Solid

Okay Good Wife writers. You’ve got me.

My frequent complaint about your freshman drama has been that I’d prefer to see more scenes depicting the life of a political spouse/family in the wake of a humiliating sex scandal committed by the public official (a la the Spitzers, Sanfords, Clintons, Edwardes, et al) rather than load it up with legal procedural stuff. If I want to watch a garden variety lawyer show, I could go elsewhere. It’s not that I mind the legal cases, it's just that I didn’t want them to overwhelm the unique twist that makes The Good Wife different from other dramas.
That was the fear I had when The Good Wife seemed to be focusing more on getting to the truth about a criminal case or on how to deftly maneuver in the courtroom in order to secure a particular judgment.

But, overall, I have to say, the writers have done a good job of balancing the law and the personal life. Even though the latest episode “Doubt” – in which the disgraced, house-arrested Peter Florrick (Chris Noth) did not even appear – focused largely on a murder case, it did so in a way that was smart and intriguing by looking at the case from the perspective of the jury. Gold stars for not ending the episode in a rosy, optimistic note for Julianna Margulies’ Alicia Florrick’s team.

Grey’s Ponders Mixing Maternity & Medicine

Mixing maternity and medicine has been a semi-regular theme on Grey’s Anatomy since day one. We’ve known from the first handful of episodes that Meredith Grey sustained emotional damage from a childhood in which her parents divorced, her father essentially abandoned her and her mother, a successful surgeon, virtually blew her off and always chose medicine over Meredith.

In a 2007 episode, Meredith was assisting in an operation on a child both of whose parents were career-oriented and hardly ever at home. As a result, the girl bonded with her nanny more so than with her own parents. Meredith remarked that people with big-time careers should just get a cat instead of a kid because the kid needs time and attention from a mom or a dad. However the lead surgeon in the room, Miranda Bailey, a new mom, took umbrage.

Years later, Bailey, who’s now a divorced mom, has had her ups and downs with the child/career thing but seems to be in a good place right now just as other characters with high-pressure careers -- Callie Torres, McSteamy, McDreamy and Meredith -- are contemplating parenthood. I explored how Grey’s has been handling the issue of doctors having kids in my weekly Pop Culture column on Mommy Tracked.

Notes on Pop Culture: Showtime's Women-Centric Dramedies, Put-Upon Political Wives & 'Bright Star' Shines

Showtime’s Women-Centric Dramedies

In advance of the season two premieres of Showtime’s Nurse Jackie and the United States of Tara, the Wall Street Journal ran a feature story entitled, “Showtime’s Bad Girls Make Good: A crop of shows with dysfunctional leading women has given the cable network a burst of momentum.”

Writer Amy Chozick pointed out that, in addition to Jackie and Tara, this is the network that airs Weeds and has a new show slated for this summer called The Big C, about a cancer patient starring Laura Linney. Showtime, the article said, “is reinventing itself with original series largely driven by complicated women. Showtime’s strategy: attracting big-name actresses, of a certain age and experience, who are hard-pressed to find juicy, challenging, starring roles elsewhere.” That is something I can definitely applaud, and is another good reason to keep Showtime as one of my pay channels.

After watching the season premiere of Nurse Jackie I reviewed it for CliqueClack TV and found it very promising. As for the Tara premiere, well, let's just say that I’m going to reserve judgment until I see more episodes.

Put-Upon Political Wives on TV and Real Life

CBS’ The Good Wife has been knocking it out of the park recently. (Entertainment Weekly recently ran a cover urging people to watch it.) The tension has been amped up with Peter Florrick -- the disgraced Chicago state’s attorney who was jailed for corruption and who was found to have slept with escorts -- now under house arrest and living in the apartment with his wife Alicia and their two teens. Alicia’s not sure if she’s going to reconcile with him (he’s sleeping in a guest room) or if she even wants to, despite the fact that, in a recent episode, she slept with him for the first time since the scandal broke. I’m thrilled that the show’s writers aren’t rushing things, like having Alicia simply accept his apology or have her just boot him to the curb. It’s been intriguing the way it’s been playing out.

That being said, Peter still went ahead and hired some political consultants to explore the notion of running for office again, without really talking to his wife or thinking about what this would mean to her, to have his indiscretions brought up yet again if he re-enters politics.

TV husbands blowing off their wives’ concerns for their political ambitions – including with Big Love’s Bill Henrickson – are the focal point of my new Mommy Tracked column this week in a piece that asks how much bad behavior wives can and will take when their husbands run for office. Real-life political wife, Elizabeth Edwards, unfortunately, was included in the column because she's plastered on the cover of People after her husband’s mistress and baby mama, Rielle Hunter did a high profile interview with GQ.

Bright Star Shines

While researching a recent column about women’s power in Hollywood in light of Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar win for best director for The Hurt Locker, I read that a number of film critics had heaped praise upon an indie flick, Bright Star, written and directed by Oscar winning screenwriter Jane Campion. The critics said that the film -- set in 1818 and about the love affair between 23-year-old English poet John Keats and his next door neighbor Fanny Brawne -- was criminally overlooked during awards season yet it still made dozens of critics top 10 lists for best film of 2009.

I finally saw it. (It's out on DVD.) And I loved it. Not only was it beautiful and deeply moving on many levels, it was extremely thoughtful, witty and possessed a quality about it that will linger in your mind long after the film’s last frame. Plus, it’ll make you long for springtime. And butterflies.



Image credit: Entertainment Weekly.

Is 'The Good Wife' Turning Into Just Another Legal Procedural?

I like Julianna Margulies. And I’m fond of the premise of The Good Wife: A woman -- a wife and mother -- is trying to pick of the pieces of her shattered life after her corrupt politician/husband humiliated her by having affairs with hookers and is now in jail because he was found guilty of abusing his office.

The first few episodes of The Good Wife deftly balanced Margulies’ Alicia Florrick’s attempts to attend to the needs of her children and shield them from the tawdry nature of the allegations against her husband Peter (Chris Noth), with her own personal resurrection as she returned to the professional world as a lawyer after having been out of practice for more than a decade. Alicia was ostracized from her so-called friends and her social circle as a result of the scandal and continues to struggle with her mother-in-law, who moved in with Alicia and her two teenaged children in their new apartment, away from their leafy suburb. The mother-in-law, who frequently defends her son, took it upon herself to bring the two Florrick kids to visit their father in jail for the first time against Alicia’s wishes.

All of that was good material, I thought, as the first few episodes aired and garnered top 20 ratings.

But as more installments have aired, there’s been less and less about Alicia and her family members’ lives, about the impact of Peter’s imprisonment and more emphasis on the legal cases, for which Alicia usually comes up with the miraculous key to winning the case. Don’t get me wrong, her husband Peter’s imprisonment/sex scandal is mentioned in each episode, but it’s becoming a means to an end because Peter was a prosecutor and can assist his defense lawyer wife by providing valuable information.

This is exactly what I didn’t want to see. I was hoping this show would heavily focus on a dramatization of how political wives try to carry on – for themselves, for their children -- after their husbands behave atrociously and were publically chastised for doing so, like so many real life pols (*cough* Edwards, Spitzer, Sanford *cough*). I wasn’t looking for an updated version of The Practice, with a light sprinkling of the life-as-the-betrayed-wife-of-a-lying-cheating-pol tossed in like spice, as added seasoning.

While the latest Good Wife episode “Conjugal” featured, as you might expect from its title, a conjugal visit between Peter and Alicia, the contact between them was verbal and chiefly about a murder case. Alicia wanted information from Peter to be shared privately, away from the guards’ surveillance, and the only way to obtain privacy was via a conjugal visit. Peter did attempt to hold his wife’s hand while she slept on the bed and he on the floor, but she quickly released it.

Maybe things will change and become more focused on the personal once Peter is released from prison and tries to stage a political comeback – and I’m hopeful they will – but I’m disappointed that The Good Wife appears as though it’s in danger of turning into a garden variety legal procedural.

Image credit: CBS.