ABC is the place to be on Wednesdays, and it’s also home to one of the biggest regrets I have this TV season.
I stopped watching “Revenge” after I fell asleep in the middle of the third episode. I figured that was a bad sign, and if I was going to watch a weekly drama about poor rich people, it would be “Ringer.”
Big mistake.
“Ringer” of course, didn’t live up to the promise of its casting, and now everyone is raving about “Revenge,” making it sound like it’s the soapy, trashy, ridiculous fun that “Ringer” promised to be. Thankfully, it’s available on ABC.com and Hulu, so I just may retire “Ringer,” and get my “Revenge” over Thanksgiving…
Also on ABC is the surprisingly good comedy “Suburgatory.” I’m still smarting over the delayed premiere of “Cougar Town,” but “Suburgatory” is making that delay a little easier to handle.
Teen hero Tessa is like a red-headed, flesh-and-blood “Daria,” and is wonderfully played by (local gal!) Jane Levy. But even better than her is Carly Chaikin’s Dahlia, the dead-eyed, dead-pan, popular girl in school. This exchange in a changing room–along with Dahlia’s mother, Dallas (Cheryl Hines)–never fails to crack me up:
The more I think about it, it’s like they split “Daria” into two people: Her smarter-than-the-average-highschooler side is Tessa, and her dead-pan delivery is Dahlia. Brilliant!
For a while, ABC wasn’t providing any episodes online, but that seems to have changed, so those wanting to play catch up with a worthy comedy, check it out.
The night’s other new comedy is NBC’s “Up All Night,” and it’s a show that I continue to watch, and occasionally laugh at, but all the time I’m just thinking, “Why isn’t this funnier?”
The three main stars–Will Arnett, Christina Applegate, and Maya Rudolph–are all proven comedic talents, and yet, it’s just not that much with the funny! I often wonder if I would find it funnier if I were the parent of a newborn baby, (any parents out there want to attest to that?), but then again, “Raising Arizona” is, in part, about the foibles of parenting, and I find that shit hilarious. OK, fine, it’s not the most apt comparison, but I do think the show would benefit from some all-out slapstick hilarity now and then. Will Arnett walking around with a panty on his head! Give us some of that!
A few weeks back I wrote about “American Horror Story,” and it continues to be one of the shows I most look forward to every week, and I kind of hate myself for that, because the show isn’t good. In fact, it’s really bad! And it continues to get worse! And I can’t stop watching because I want to see the birth of the devil baby!
Last, and certainly to me, least, is “The X-Factor,” which I am, frankly, a little surprised isn’t on every single night. As I mentioned earlier this week, I decided neither I, nor the world, really, needs any more talent shows in our lives, so I cut this show off after the first week. I figure, if something miraculous, like a Susan Boyle moment, is going to happen, I’ll just watch the clips the next day on YouTube and save a couple hours of my life…
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