Thoughts on TV's Fall Premiere Week

Image credit: Fox

*Warning -- Spoilers ahead from a whole bunch of season premieres.*

Lots of TV shows premiered this week, several more (The Good Wife, Desperate Housewives, Brothers & Sisters) will be premiering in the next few days. Here’s a wrap-up of the good, the disappointing and the jury’s-still-out premieres:

House – The episode marked the official beginning of “Huddy.” As I watched House and Huddy spend a lot of time in bed and get emotionally intimate with one another, I was plagued by this question: How in the hell is a House-Cuddy romantic relationship going to work given that he’s a nut case and she’s, well, she’s Cuddy AND his boss AND has a small child at home?

That’s what the rest of the season will tell us apparently. I'm hoping this won't turn out disastrously, like so many of the pairings of leads who’ve been kept apart then become an official couple turn out to be. (FYI – LOVE Wilson.)

Image credit: NBC

The Event – I’m still licking my wounds from that Lost series finale which left me feeling duped and stupid for having invested so much time and energy trying to parse scenes, statements and motivations when none of it even mattered. And I still harbor disappointment about how last season’s FlashForward failed to capitalize on a fascinating premise. So when I watched the pilot episode of the complicated, flashback/flashforward/present time show I was leery of getting burned again. I’m not giving this show much time to hook me, I’ll tell ya that much.

Raising Hope – This quirky, politically incorrect half-hour comedy about a guy suddenly getting custody of a child he conceived on a one-night-stand -- with a woman he didn’t know was a serial killer -- surprised me. The hapless dad, who still lives with his parents (who had him when they were teens) and his loopy grandma, has a Malcolm in the Middle-like appeal. I’m intrigued.

Parenthood – I thought the first two episodes of the sophomore season of this show were well done – read my CliqueClack TV review of the latest episode here -- but I was surprised that the writers made Peter Krause’s character Adam Braverman look like an obnoxious control freak in the second installment. Still can’t stop seeing Lorelai Gilmore in Lauren Graham’s Sarah Braverman.

The Middle – This season two premiere resonated a bit too well and loudly in my household where three kids recently went back to school. It was set on the first day of school and featured Patricia Heaton’s Frankie Heck vowing that -- after day one of school went badly -- the family was going to start the new year off fresh and “get in front” of all the possible problems. Frankie's noble campaign, of course, backfired.

Image credit: ABC

 Modern Family – After so much pre-game hype, this premiere fell short of my insanely high expectations of it being laugh-out-loud funny from beginning to end, although Cameron ducking Mitchell’s crazy nailgun wielding was hilarious. As was "Buckety."

30 Rock – Okay, I know I’ll be inviting haters for saying this, but, even with Matt Damon on board, I was kind of bored with this premiere.

Grey’s Anatomy – Pitch. Perfect. This was a perfect follow-up to the tense, shocking season finale where 18 people at Seattle Grace were shot, 11 killed. The characters all responded differently to their emotional trauma, but I think Meredith Grey will, as usual, take longer to heal than the rest. Read my CliqueClack TV review of the premiere here.

Private Practice – After a rather unusual mashup of love scenes between Pete and Violet, and Cooper and Charlotte (the scenes reminded me of something out of a movie) this premiere disappointed me because, following the emotional punch of its season finale in May where a main character unexpectedly died, a volatile couple reunited while a kept-apart one got back together, I wanted more depth, more . . . something.

Your thoughts on the big fall TV premiere week?

Image credits: Fox, NBC and ABC.

Notes on Pop Culture: Heigl Reportedly Working on Exit, 'Grey's' Deals in Power Struggles & Jealousies, 'Private Practice' Love Triangles

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the recent episodes of Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice.*

No More Izzie Stevens?

Have we seen the last of Katherine Heigl as Izzie Stevens on Grey's Anatomy? Was that locker room scene with Alex Karev back in January at Seattle Grace, when she said she was looking for a job out of town, her last? Entertainment Weekly, quoting unnamed sources, says that Heigl is currently negotiating details with ABC brass so she can leave the ABC drama.

Izzie has been mysteriously absent for most of this season. First George O'Malley died. Then she miraculously recovered from cancer that seemed like it was going to kill her. She got canned from Seattle Grace and fled in shame, refusing to make contact with Alex or with her doctors. She popped in a few weeks ago for one episode but then disappeared again making vague statements about looking for work elsewhere.

We knew that in real life, Heigl took time off for a movie and to bond with the baby she recently adopted, but it wasn't publicly clear, until today, that Izzie may not appear on Grey's again. Wonder if the Grey's writers will concoct a story about Izzie dying -- maybe getting George O'Malley'd and hit by a bus? -- or if they'll just never mention her again, kind of like Erica Hahn who disappeared into a parking lot.

It's kind of sad what happened to the once interesting Izzie. (I know, there are plenty of Izzie haters, but -- excluding the Gizzie debacle -- I wasn't one of them.) I would've liked to have learned more about her trailer park background, about the circumstances which led her to give up her daughter for adoption. Her backstory made her interesting. I much prefer her to ANYONE from Mercy West.

Grey's "Push" episode

The latest episode of Grey's, "Push" -- about which I blogged over on CliqueClack TV -- focused largely on a power struggle between Richard Webber and Owen Hunt, Richard and Derek Shepherd and the jealousies experienced by Owen over McSteamy's interest in Teddy Altman (for whom Owen still harbors feelings) and Lexie over McSteamy moving on.

After watching this episode I'm willing to climb out on a limb and make these three predictions. By the end of the season, 1) McSteamy and Callie Torres will be trying to have a baby (given Arizona Robbins' bombshell at the end of "Push") 2) Owen and Cristina will be kaput or circling the drain and 3) Derek will no longer be chief.

My favorite part of the recent episode: Bailey's rant about how she saw no need to wax her "surgical area" and that if her male friend couldn't handle a little "nature" and "God," then he wasn't worth her time. That, and her embarrassment at the prospect of having to pick up condoms for her date, were fantastic.

Private Practice keeps being romantically ridiculous

I'm really growing weary of the romantic storylines on Private Practice this season. I really wish the characters would heed Sheldon Wallace's advice to "grow the hell up" -- including Sheldon.

The sophomoric "I love you . . . No, I love you now . . . No, no, no, YOU'RE my soul mate" blather has gotten really old. I'd much rather see these late thirty- and fortysomething characters start acting like mature professionals who hold people's lives and mental health in their hands, not like teenagers in heat governed solely by their hormones.

It's not that I'm hoping they'll all get married and enjoy placid, loving relationships, but, as I said in my CliqueClack TV review of the latest episode "Triangles," I'm starting to think we need a who's-sleeping-with-whom scorecard in order to figure out Private Practice these days.

Image credit: Michael Desmond/ABC.

Talkin' Lots of 'Private Practice'

Ever since the start of its third season, Private Practice has been lurching from one wildly dramatic storyline (with Violet Turner recovering from the violent, brutal C-section at the hands of a former patient), to another (currently Sam and Naomi Bennett's 15-year-old daughter's pregnancy and the flirtation between Sam and his ex-wife's best friend, Addision Montgomery). Suffice is to say, Violet's baby drama aside, there's been lots of romantic partner swapping, rivers of tears, loads of screaming and shoulder-clenching tension in recent episodes, so much so, that they've provided lots of grist for two Private Practice-centric pieces.

The first is a column on Mommy Tracked about the bold move on the part of Private Practice writers to decide to portray two moms -- Violet and Naomi -- in a negative light, as Violet decided that her post-traumatic stress was too much for her to bear so she gave her baby over to his dad and refuses to see the infant, while an infuriated and unhinged Naomi tried to force her pregnant teenaged daughter into having an abortion against the girl's will. (Naomi's reaction to her daughter's pregnancy has been so harsh that, aside from Emily Gilmore's reaction to her 16-year-old daughter's pregnancy, I'm having trouble thinking of another mother who's been portrayed this badly.)

The second is a post over on CliqueClack TV about the preponderance of Private Practice's intramural partner swapping which has grown to such epic proportions that I wonder if the show's in danger of running out of people to sleep with . . . kind of like what's happened to Grey's Anatomy.

Have you been watching Private Practice? Think they're gonna have to import more Grey's characters (a la McSteamy) in order to get more people for Private Practice characters to sleep with? Are you surprised by the portrayal of Violent and Naomi as troubled moms?

Image credit: Eric McCandless/ABC.

The Ambivalent Mother . . . on Your TV This Fall

Noticed a mini-trend in TV shows this fall featuring an ambivalent mother?


Desperate Housewives has Lynette Scavo, the married, full-time ad exec, mother of four, who is distinctly unenthusiastic about the fact that, in her mid-40s, she’s pregnant with twins. In fact, during her first ultrasound, she didn’t even want to look at the screen and later said that there was a voice in her head telling her not to do this.

On Private Practice, single psychiatrist Violet Turner -- a recent victim of a violent crime where a maniac former patient cut Violet’s unborn baby out of her belly and left Violet for dead – said she feels so emotionally dead inside that she doesn’t feel as though she can care for her baby Lucas. So she brought the baby to his father’s home, Violet’s co-worker Pete, and left him there. When Pete has brought Lucas to work in the hope of getting Violet to engage and bond with her infant, she simply couldn't because she sees the baby as a living, breathing reminder of the attack that has traumatized her.

On Mad Men, set in the 1960s, Betty Draper just gave birth to her third child and hates her life. Parenting is the last thing she wants to be doing, particularly when it comes to dealing with her young daughter who’s acting out in anger because she misses her grandfather who recently died and everyone seems to think she should be “over” it by now. Betty doesn't realize she's still mourning too, even though she named her baby after her father and has seemed like she's favoring her infant over her two other kids.

On ABC’s new comedy The Middle, Patricia Heaton’s Frankie Heck does her best to work and parent, but winds up, out of sheer exhaustion, tuning out a lot of what her kids say, including when her awkward teenaged daughter talks to her and she only half-listens. She also forgets things all the time and her kids face the consequences.


Maybe it’s not a trend, but I’m finding these characters to be a breath of fresh air, mothers who aren’t all phony rainbows and unicorns when it comes to parenthood. They provide a nice balance.

Image credit: Karen Neal/ABC.

Why Do I Like 'New Adventures of Old Christine' But Not 'Cougar Town?'

That's the subject of this week's pop culture & politics column over on Mommy Track'd: How I can find Julia Louis-Dreyfus' kooky, desperate, fortysomething divorced mom on The New Adventures of Old Christine charming but be repelled by Courteney Cox's kooky, desperate, fortysomething divorced mom on Cougar Town. (I also looked at how other divorced moms in their late-30s/40s are portrayed on TV on Brothers & Sisters and Private Practice.)

I think part of the problem is that when I watched the satirical Cougar Town pilot episode (other than loathing the name), I felt as though this was a show about a man's perspective on what life is like for a divorced woman in her 40s, and that she's mocked for being in her situation. Old Christine, on the other hand, takes a woman's perspective and frames Louis-Dreyfus' oddball behavior into a Lucille Ball-type depiction of slapstick humor. Put more simply: When I watched Cougar Town I cringed. When I watched Old Christine's premiere, I laughed.

This clip from the Old Christine premiere reminded me of something you might have seen on I Love Lucy. Christine (Louis-Dreyfus) couldn't get comfortable on an airplane and the airline attendant wouldn't give her a pillow, so she took matters into her own hands:



When I saw this scene from Cougar Town (which came after a scene where Cox was examining her body in the bathroom mirror and finding it lacking in the sexy department), I wasn't laughing.



What do you think of depictions of divorced, fortysomething moms on TV? About Cougar Town, New Adventures of Old Christine?

Season Finales Aren't What They're Cracked Up to Be

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from a variety of recent season finales*

I've come to the conclusion that, for the most part, season finales are serious let-downs. They almost never live up to the hype. And how can they, really? We viewers want drama, humor, the occasional sweet moment and cliffhangers . . . but not emotionally brutal cliffhangers that can sometimes appear out of left field. The networks just want one thing: Monster ratings, and they don't care how they happen. This means there's tremendous pressure to amp up the drama and conflict, even if they don't make sense as far as where the show has been throughout the season because without ratings there will be no show. This annually leaves us viewers with TV season finales that largely leave us disappointed and, sometimes irritated particularly if a naked, ratings-chasing maneuver is employed.

Take Lost's shocking season three cliffhanger finale. Now that was one hell of a finale. A beloved character, Charlie Pace sacrificed his own life in order to save his friends and, after three seasons of character flash-backs, Lost engaged in several flash-forwards, depicting Jack Shepherd in a future point in time longing to return to the island while, in the current time period, Jack was singularly determined to get everyone off of it. It was the gold standard of finales. A major character died in it -- doing something he thought would save the woman he loved -- but his death was beautifully and touching done. It was tough to watch Charlie drown, but it made sense for the larger story at the same time that it made viewers sad.

Compare that to Grey's Anatomy recent, fifth season finale, where it was left uncertain as to whether two of the show's original characters will live or die when season six begins. One character, Izzie Stevens, had been battling cancer, so if she had died it would've been understandable and, given the previous three-hankie episode where she was married, poetic and tragic. But instead, the show had Izzie AND George O'Malley facing death, as O'Malley was hit by a bus and potentially fatally injured. Tacky. Grey's fourth season finale ended on a much better, more uplifting note, with Meredith Grey committing to Derek Shepherd by making a "house" of candles on the plot of land Derek had picked out for their future home, even as O'Malley learned he'd failed his intern exam.

Grey's season finale notwithstanding, the rest of this year's season enders were all over the map as far as quality goes.

Lost's season ender was good, but I thought it opened up too many different and confusing themes. Whereas the season three flash-forward finale blew my mind, this season's ending frustrated me because I was (and still am) having trouble reconciling the religious imagery and overtones with the sci-fi time travel angle, plus I feel deceived about the whole John Locke-is-really-dead twist.

The 24 finale -- which had many gripping moments this season, loved President Taylor, Renee Walker and even by-the-books Larry Moss, liked the debate over the use of torture, adored the new Washington locale -- was a classic case of too much build up. The show seemed to sputter to a lackluster conclusion, particularly when there's not much drama in the Jack Bauer's-gonna-die question because we already know that Bauer lives because Kiefer Sutherland has signed on to take his 24-hour odyssey to New York City next season, provided his parole officer lets him out of LA. Kim Bauer sitting next to her father's hospital bed, coupled with the ambiguity of the resolution with the sinister Alan Wilson -- who apparently was behind all manner of badness for several seasons, including the plot against President David Palmer -- didn't hold a candle to previously powerful season finales like the death of Teri Bauer in season one, the apparent poisoning of President David Palmer in season two and Bauer being shipped off to China in the fabulous season five.

The finale for House, however, was a nice departure from the pressure to be overly, out-of-one's-depth dramatic with the last show of the season. The tone of the final 2008-09 episode was well balanced all the way through to its "what the?" ending where we learned that Greg House didn't actually have relations with Lisa Cuddy and that his hallucinations had become so severe that he checked himself into a psychiatric facility.

Friday Night Lights capped a poignant season with an episode that jumped a few months into the future and unceremoniously had Eric Taylor dumped as the Dillon Panthers' coach and instead, assigned to run the football program for a new high school whose most talented players had already been poached by Dillon. There were way too many holes and unexplained questions as to how or why the town that had been behind Taylor -- who led his team to the State Championship that season -- would so easily fire him. I'm sure next season will be just as good as previous ones, but the finale felt abrupt.

The Office ended quietly with an insane Dunder Mifflin company picnic -- and the delightfully awful Michael Scott/Holly skit where they inadvertently informed an entire branch that it was being shuttered -- where the closest thing to a cliffhanger was Pam's visit to the ER. Viewers were led to jump to the conclusion that Pam is pregnant, but that's just an inference without overt confirmation.

Contrast the low-keyed Office finale with the over-the-top Private Practice finale, where there was an accidental embryo switch leaving two women pregnant with the other's baby, the ob/gyn for a patient with a high risk pregnancy was caught making eyes at the patient's husband in front of said patient, and a pregnant shrink (who refused to figure out which of her two lovers is the father of her baby) was rendered paralyzed by a shot administered by a patient who plans to cut the therapist's baby out of her belly. This wasn't a series of episodes. These events didn't unfold over a period of weeks. It was in one finale. And it was all too much.

I'm convinced that the ratings pressure is the biggest culprit for the zany finales and the reason why viewers inevitably feel disappointed by the aggressively-promoted season finales, many of which fail to justify the hype because either they're artificially crammed with manufactured drama or because the writers have things happen that they normally wouldn't.

What recent season finales did you like? Which ones let you down?

Image credit: Fox.

TV Squad Puts 'Grey's' In the Crosshairs

TV Squad (full disclosure: for which I used to blog) has a new list out. They love lists. This time, the web site puts 10 shows in the crosshairs and targets them for cancellation. Topping TV Squad's "Series That Should be Canceled" is Grey's Anatomy, writing: "I cannot take one more minute of Meredith whining. I've reached my limit." (See why I DON'T think Meredith is a whiner and why I root for her character, here.)

Included among the other programs that TV Squad targets are: Survivor, American Idol, Brothers & Sisters, a CSI, a Law & Order and Private Practice (lots of hating on Shonda Rhimes here, although the Violet-being-held-captive-for-unwilling-C-section scenes in the season finale were patently insane, plus her refusal to test for whose baby she was carrying was annoying to no end).

I must, however, disagree with the list, at least as far as Grey's goes . . . as long as the remainder of the Grey's season doesn't go whole-hog dead Denny-ish wacko on me. If that happens, I may find myself concurring with TV Squad, but not because Meredith's a "whiner."

Is there any TV series which you wish would just be put out of its misery?

Image credit: ABC.

Gizzie Gone? Confusion Over Whether Heigl & Knight Will Leave 'Grey's'

*Some Grey's spoilers below. . . You've been warned!*

The writing has been on the wall for some time.

T.R. Knight has been unhappy that his George O'Malley has seemed liked persona non grata on Grey's Anatomy these days. During the last episode, if you blinked, you missed him. And with a two-hour Grey's-Private Practice crossover extravaganza slated for this Thursday, I'm not expecting George to have much more airtime. If he does, I'll be very surprised.

Katherine Heigl -- who publicly lamented the fact that her character, Izzie Stevens, had a cruddy story arc last season -- has been rewarded by having her character talk and have "sex" with her dead finance Denny Duquette, who is likely, according to news reports, the manifestation of some type of brain tumor or something of that ilk. While we mercifully didn't see Denny last week, I fully expect that the next time we see him, Izzie's head will have exploded. Will that mean the end of her character? Who the heck knows?

The internet has been abuzz over the past few days with reports that both Knight and Heigl's characters will soon leave Grey's. Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello echoed those reports -- ". . . all indications are that it will happen. The only question is when." -- adding that show creator Shonda Rhimes may want "Heigl and Knight to briefly reprise their roles next season." That would rule out the possibility of Izzie dying from a brain tumor or aneurysm this Thursday, unless, of course, she's slated to return as a ghost to haunt Alex Karev, who'll have had two serious girlfriends leave following serious medical problems.

Those who've commented on Ausiello's article at EW.com are all over the map about what they think about the possibility of these two original characters leaving, but many are in agreement that Grey's isn't what it used to be.

Your thoughts Grey's fans?

Image credit: ABC.