ABC Family's new Twisted should be a nice sister show for its returning Pretty Little Liars
06/10/13 02:55 PM
Premiering: Tuesday, June 11th at 8 p.m. (central) on ABC Family
Starring: Maddie Hasson, Avan Jogia, Kylie Bunbury, Denise Richards, Ashton Moio, Sam Robards, Kimberly Quinn, Grey Damon
Produced by: Gavin Polone, David Babcock, Adam Milch
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
ABC Family churns out hits with a regularity that struggling parent ABC can only envy.
The network of Pretty Little Liars, Switched At Birth, Bunheads, Baby Daddy and The Secret Life of the American Teenager seems sure to have another long distance runner in Twisted. A mystery drama set in a small town, it launches Tuesday (June 11) after the Season 4 premiere of Liars.
Troubled teens of course are behind its wheels. Jo Masterson, Lacey Porter and Danny Desai (principal stars Maddie Hasson, Kylie Bunbury, Avan Jogia) were best pals as 11-year-olds. Alas, he screwed that up by strangling his aunt with a jump rope. After five years in juvenile detention, Danny returns to be ostracized by his high school classmates while Jo and Lacey have grown apart.
“The people in this town don’t care about the truth. All they care about is your head on a stick,” says top cop Kyle (Sam Robards), who also happens to be Jo’s dad.
In that respect, Twisted bears a passing resemblance to the Sundance Channel’s recently premiered Rectify, which otherwise is much darker and adult-laced. Also unlike Rectify, Danny’s guilt isn’t at issue. But what drove him to kill his aunt at such a young age? And is he capable of killing again? The first episode comes and goes without any firm answers -- but with a new murder whose perpetrator is unknown.
The head of the high school mean girl faction, Regina Crane (Karynn Moore), delights in dubbing Danny “Socio” while also flirting with him. He’s fairly cool with that, accepting it as “kind of a cool, intimidating nickname.” And Danny’s still ripe mother, Karen (Denise Richards), doesn’t mind her son getting a little action if it can help ease him out of a pariah mode that’s underscored by one of Regina’s lieutenants sniping, “Paging Dr. Lecter, your spawn is loose on our floor.”
By the end of Episode 1, Twisted has imbedded its hook with open questions about a mysterious necklace and Danny’s connection to its past. Jogia plays this role winningly, accentuating resiliency and a quick wit rather than creepiness communicated by menacing stares. Hasson also is appealing as a fellow outcast who slowly warms to him.
Twisted likely will quickly achieve fave rave status on a network that’s come a long way since being bought a dozen years ago by the Walt Disney Company (which also owns ABC).
The network remains contractually obligated to carry Pat Robertson’s The 700 Club at least twice daily under ironclad terms of the sale. But this hasn’t cramped ABC Family’s style -- or ability to divine what its 15-to-30-year-old target audience will watch if not outright worship.
GRADE: B
Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net
The leads have it in TNT's King & Maxwell
06/07/13 10:29 AM
Premiering: Monday, June 10th at 9 p.m. (central) on TNT
Starring: Rebecca Romijn, Jon Tenney, Michael O’Keefe, Chris Butler
Produced by: Shane Brennan, Grant Anderson, Chris Downey
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
Ampersands have been good business for TNT.
Its reigning most popular drama, Rizzoli & Isles, returns for Season 4 on June 25th. Season 3 of the sturdy Franklin & Bash launches on June 19th.
So the third time around doesn’t even have to be a charm because these two ampersand-centric series already have proven themselves. King & Maxwell, premiering Monday in tandem with TNT’s second season of Major Crimes, looks like another easily absorbed summertime breeze.
Its stars, Jon Tenny from The Closer and the still lustrous Rebecca Romijn, seem to be equipped with the requisite chemistry. Telegenic to a T, they spar and kid when not springing into action. Having each other’s backs doesn’t mean you can’t throw an occasional rabbit punch. It’s a formula that’s been used far more often than -- ampersands -- on both big screens and small.
OK, but just what do Sean King and Michelle Maxwell do? On the face of it, Rizzoli & Isles sounded like more like an Olive Garden pasta entree than a cop series. And Franklin & Bash could’ve been two professional wrestlers but instead is a comedy-heavy legal hour.
TNT publicity materials say this latest pair “aren’t your typical investigators.” This is because their previous gigs as Secret Service agents give them “a leg up on conventional law enforcement.”
Believe that if you will, but it doesn’t really matter. King & Maxwell fires up Monday with a vigorous, expertly shot action sequence in which Maxwell chases a runaway tour bus driven by a man in a beaver suit. The bus careens through the streets of D.C., leaving a demolition derby collection of disabled vehicles before finally flipping over. None of this has anything to do with the central crime of the week. It’s simply an effective way to immediately command a viewer’s attention before Maxwell and King come together for the first time to bicker over the proper way of reading Miranda rights.
Tenney affects a disheveled look throughout, with wrinkled shirts, untended whiskers and semi-wayward hair. Romijn in contrast is polished and well-dressed, solidifying her credentials as one of the greatest-looking 40-year-old women on the planet.
She’s also grown as an actress, although King & Maxwell doesn’t require any heavy lifting on the part of either principal. Their principal antagonist is gruff FBI agent Frank Rigby (Michael O’Keefe), who huffs and carps along with partner Darius Carter (Chris Butler).
“I don’t like private investigators,” Rigby says. “You’re usually cashed-out cops or enthusiastic amateurs.” Arf, that’s one of the lamer lines in a series adapted from the series of books by David Baldacci.
King & Maxwell soon gets down to the business of solving the murder of King’s attorney friend, Ted Burgin, who had been representing an accused serial killer before being offed by a drive-by shooter. He really wants to nab this particular offender. Because when King was spiraling downward -- a presidential candidate got killed on his watch -- Burgin got him sobered up and on the road to recovery.
The case turns out to have many more layers, none of them particularly believable. And the script and circumstances really labor down the stretch. Still, Tenney and Romijn make for a pretty nifty pair, whether quipping on cue or subduing some henchmen with their feet and fists.
The overall production values are first-rate. TNT’s dramas invariably look good, as do their stars. All of that other stuff -- headlined by plausibility -- might well be beside the point in terms of overall enjoyment. Tenney and Romijn are easy on the eyes and equally easy to take as crook-catchers whose badinage might end up in bed with them someday. For now, they pass the all-important likability test with bright, flying colors.
GRADE: B-minus
Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net
USA's Graceland has no Elvis in its building
06/06/13 01:02 PM
Premiering: Thursday, June 6th at 9 p.m. (central) on USA
Starring: Daniel Sunjata, Aaron Tveit, Vanessa Ferlito, Manny Montana, Brandon Jay McLaren, Serinda Swan
Produced by: Jeff Eastin
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
USA’s latest “Characters Welcome” drama has a Real World motif with its collection of young, handsome or pretty (or both) federal agents sharing a multi-storied, beachfront Southern California pad.
The place used to be inhabited by a drug lord with a “hard core” love of Elvis. So its bantering/sniping inhabitants dub it Graceland, which also just happens to be the name of this new, not-so-hot series from the creator of USA’s White Collar.
Graceland supposedly is “based upon actual events.” That’s because, once upon a time, the U.S. government actually did plant a group of agents in an undercover residence for the purposes of stinging drug dealers.
Paired with the launch of Burn Notice’s final season, Thursday’s extended premiere episode (running until 10:15 central time) otherwise depicts the thoroughly fictional exploits of taut-talking, hard-driving, not entirely forthcoming team leader Paul Briggs (Daniel Sunjata) and five others under his wing. There’s also a chore list posted in their communal kitchen, with the food and drinks labeled to ensure a little extra added friction when someone poaches on someone else’s stuff.
The obligatory tenderfoot is cute, brainy Mike Warren (Aaron Tveit), who graduated top of his class at Quantico before arriving at Graceland to initially be gruffly treated until he earns his spurs.
But agent Catherine “Charlie” Lopez (Vanessa Ferlito) grows friendlier and more supportive before the others fall in line. She’s the one who gives Warren the lowdown on the somewhat legendary Briggs. He used to be “buttoned-down,” you see. But then “somethin’ went down, he took a leave of absence, came back all Zen’d out like that.”
Charlie also informs the newbie that “you’re gonna find out fast there are no secrets at Graceland.”
Except for Briggs, he adds. Yep. Got that right. Kid learns fast.
Shop-talk lingo such as “booger sugar” and “running a reverse” are sprinkled in before the talky buildup finally gives way to Warren’s first undercover assignment. It’s convoluted to say the least, with a ding-dong buyer named Felix the initial mark before far bigger danger lurks when Warren’s planted in the midst of nasty Russian mobsters operating out of an auto repair garage.
Posing as Felix’s brother-in-law, a wired Warren first gets a jagged scar that’s quickly painted above his left eyebrow by the multi-talented Charlie. Cripes. Really?
Meanwhile, back at the team’s eavesdropping command center, the dialogue deteriorates to clunky when Warren starts to improv.
“Where’s he goin’ with this?” wonders fussy Gerry Silvo, a recurring member of the federal brass played by Jay Karnes (who once knew the far greater glory of The Shield).
“I wish I knew, boss,” Briggs replies.
Charlie is soon left to mop up. “The new kid, he’s smart,” she says approvingly when the Russians start playing along. Thud.
Graceland ends with a twist that really isn’t much of a one for those who’ve seen enough of these infiltration devices. It gives this series a week-to-week serial thread -- albeit a frayed one -- in a drama “where nothing is what it seems and everyone has a secret,” according to USA publicity materials.
In the spirit of all its telegraphed punches, I’m just gonna go ahead and say it. Graceland is nothing to get all shook up about.
GRADE: C
Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net
TNT's The Hero puts "The Rock" in a crock
06/05/13 01:37 PM
Premiering: Thursday, June 6th at 7 p.m. (central) on TNT
Starring: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and 9 supplicants
Produced by: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Dany Garcia
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
Only in the ever-ridiculous realm of “reality” TV could a weepy salon assistant who dubs herself “a crier” be proclaimed a hero -- or HEE-ro as local TV news anchors like to say -- for climbing two flights of stairs near the top of a skyscraper while chanting “I’m not gonna fail.”
Patty is afraid of heights, you see. Or at least she claims to be. But by that low standard, your friendly content provider pronounces himself a hero/HEE-ro for daring to brave the entire first episode of TNT’s The Hero.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has taken time out from his many activities to front this far-fetched hour of heavily edited challenges and constant bickering among the nine hopefuls. He retains a winning smile plus that trademark head tilt. And a continuous loop of both would make for a better show. I’d also include the magic moment where The Rock barks “Walkie” before being tossed one from somewhere off-camera.
Incessantly promoted during TNT’s coverage of NBA playoff games, The Hero begins with The Rock grandly atop a Panama high-rise. He’s not one for under-selling.
“This will be the site of the greatest adventure-competition you’ll ever get to experience from your couch,” viewers are informed. “Get ready, America. ‘Cause we’re lookin’ for a hero.”
Whoever wins this thing won’t be moving on to the Twelve Labors of Hercules or even a stint as a crossing guard. Instead they’ll pocket whatever cash has been built up in the “Grand Prize Pot.”
The country at large is supposed to help select the victor, although the review DVD of Thursday’s Episode 1 doesn’t explain how this will happen. But TNT publicity materials say that “through the series’ unique and interactive digital platform, viewers will be able to engage with the show and one another, ultimately playing an important part in the outcome and helping to define what it means to be a true hero.” Yeah, sure.
Much work needs to be done on this front. Because none of these nine contestants stand particularly tall. Besides the histrionic Patty, they include snide professional wrestler Shaun; cocky construction worker Marty; a New England Patriots cheerleader named Athena and Beaumont, TX trauma surgeon David, a well-chiseled, youthful-looking 50-year-old on the rebound from an unfaithful wife. Or so he says in the introductions.
David later seems to want it both ways, though. Vying to be the first designated participant in the weekly climactic “Hero’s Challenge” (which originates from a bug-infested “Noriega’s Bunker”), David boldly confides to the camera, “I’m not that great a guy. In my personal life, have I ever cheated on someone? Yes.”
The Hero turns out to be lots of talk and relatively little action. Too much time is spent either in the “Hero Penthouse” or “The War Room,” where the trash talk flows like honey.
There’s a fairly picturesque segment in which six selected contestants gather at the top of Panama’s Tower Bank for a “swinging hand to hand” challenge involving six selectees. But more footage is spent, it seems, on The Rock’s one-on-one tutorial with skittish Patty, who’s offered $25 grand to blow this popsicle stand rather than somehow try to emerge as the last-standing hero.
The Rock first descends upon his nine supplicants in a chopper after Patty exclaims “Oh my God!” a half-dozen or so times. “Attention, heroes. You’re about to dive head-first into a life-changing adventure,” he assures them.
It’s all cut and spliced to the point where any real “jeopardy” involved is anyone’s guess. The weekly competitions on Survivor are far more convincingly presented. On The Hero, viewers instead are likely to laugh out loud when The Rock asks “Do they have the raw courage to go off that building? Are they a hero? You tell me, America.”
I’ll tell you this. America just isn’t likely to give a damn.
GRADE: D
Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net
Arrested Development on Netflix: a review after digesting all 15 episodes
06/04/13 12:30 PM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
Eye surgery (true) and “face blindness” (false) have delayed this review of Arrested Development’s unprecedented, much-awaited rebirth on Netflix after a 2006 cancellation by Fox.
The series that initially lasted for three seasons and 53 episodes has been ready for streaming since the Sunday before Memorial Day. There are 15 commercial-free new episodes in all, with most of them running a half-hour or more. In fact, Episode 8 of Season 4 swells to 37 minutes.
So in effect, creator, executive producer and head writer Mitchell Hurwitz has given fans a full 22-episode fourth season -- and then some. That’s because a typical network comedy, minus commercials, has only about 20 minutes of actual content. Under the Netflix banner, these 15 episodes cumulatively add more than 150 minutes to the length they’d be if Fox were showing them. That’s a good deal of extra power-watching for those who’ve already powered through.
I’ve watched all 15 episodes, several of them twice. Overall impression: look for them to get better, stronger and funnier. They even start to make a little sense, if that’s possible for a series whose absurdities sometimes reach the point of almost indefensible absurdity. Oh those Bluths. In the annals of dysfunctional, devious, utterly hapless families, they simply have no peers.
One of the more “believable” absurdities is face blindness, which afflicts a pivotal new character named Marky Bark (no relation that I’m aware of). He’s a bumbling activist played by Chris Diamantopoulos (Moe in the recent Three Stooges movie). And he’s first seen in Episode 3, hooking up with Michael Bluth’s twin sister, Lindsay Funke (Portia de Rossi), at a methadone clinic that her idiot, off-and-on again husband Tobias (David Cross) has mistaken for a Method One acting school.
Marky can pretty much make out eyes and teeth but otherwise can’t tell one face from another. So he hopes that Lindsay’s hot, which she in fact still is. Their sex together is short and not all that sweet. Still, off they go to a ramshackle ostrich farm run by his cantankerous mother. Arrested Development’s tangents, now explained in even lengthier detail by narrator Ron Howard, continue to be loopier than a lasso trick. Ergo, the show has yet to achieve more than cult status in times when that’s increasingly cool.
You’ll get at least glimpses of all the Bluths in most of these 15 episodes. But the focus is on individuals, beginning with “It’s Michael’s Arrested Development” after Howard sets the table with, “Now the story of a family whose future was abruptly canceled.”
Jason Bateman’s Michael, by far the sanest of the bunch, is in another financial mess after his Sudden Valley housing development crumbles under the strains of a horrible economy, circa 2007. So he ends up moving into son George Michael’s (Michael Cera) already crowded dorm room on the University of California-Irvine campus.
For some reason Michael decides to become an online student at the University of Phoenix in an episode that also flashes back to the origins of a Cinco de Quatro celebration meant to short-circuit Cinco de Mayo. Its architects were a young Lucille and George Bluth, played in several episodes by guest stars Kristen Wiig and Seth Rogen.
First impressions aren’t everything, but it’s best to get off to a strong start with all of this heavy-breathing anticipation at stake. Arrested Development instead wobbles in the early going. And that prompted an almost instantaneous wave of negative feedback from those who just couldn’t wait to pounce.
The aforementioned Episode 3 gets things rolling, though, with de Rossi, Cross and Diamantopoulos carrying much of the load with an assist from Ed Helms returning as laissez-faire realtor James Carr. Episode 4 is stronger still, with Howard playing himself as a director intent on making a movie about the far stranger-than-fiction Bluths. All Michael has to do is get each family member to sign off. Which of course can be a near Mission: Impossible. This episode also has the biggest gaggle of guest stars, including Conan O’Brien, James Lipton, Scott Baio, Carl Weathers, John Krasinski and Andy Richter (who turns up in a number of guises in later episodes).
Howard’s crazy-quilt narratives, integral to Arrested Development, are by no means his only contributions this time around. He’s also terrific as himself, never more so than while wearing a “haircut beanie” while getting a trim during Episode 9.
Also included are the Opie Awards, with narrator Howard wondering how anything could be better than that. Maeby Funke (Alia Shawkat), now 23, gets one for Lifetime Achievement but perceives it as a sure sign that she’s already washed up. In the only Episode devoted to her (No. 12), she takes the Opie into her own hands for her own purposes. It’s the same episode in which her cousin, George Michael, dubs himself George Maharis in an effort to seem cooler while his still untested and in fact non-existent “Fake Block” privacy-protecting device begins to take off.
Four episodes earlier, new character Herbert Love (Terry Crews), emerges full force as a crooked politician who declares at a power-broking dinner, “Is there anything better than the great American scallop?!” These are the kinds of lines and situations that have made Arrested Development great.
The senior Bluths -- George and Lucille (Jeffrey Tambor, Jessica Walter) -- are also very much in evidence. Her impending trial is one of this season’s centerpieces. But will any family members actually show up on her behalf? Walter again is sublimely imperious in every scene while Tambor (also reprising his twin brother, Oscar), is entangled in ill-fated business ventures that include a sweat lodge scam and the building of a Great Wall to thwart immigration.
Then there’s Will Arnett’s even smarmier Gob Bluth, the self-absorbed, hopelessly inept illusionist whose decidedly unGod-like escape routine (in Episode 7) at the Church of the Holy Eternal Rapture might be denounced from some real-life pulpits as the ultimate in sacrilegious comedy. Later in this thoroughly out-of-body episode, Gob is part of an Entourage sendup in which all gather nightly at the “And Jeremy Piven” bar.
But what of infantile, momma’s boy Buster Bluth? Well, he gets just one showcase episode, and it’s not until No. 14. But “Off the Hook” arguably is the funniest of all, with Tony Hale fully demonstrating why no one plays a better basket case. This is also the one where Howard contributes his best narrative line after Buster dementedly takes care of a variety of mock Lucilles while she remains in a posh prison. “To an uninformed observer,” says Howard, “it looked a little like that Vince Vaughn movie, Psycho.”
This long awaited return of Arrested Development isn’t always on top of its game. There’s a tired old gay joke at Ryan Seacrest’s expense and a “registered sex offender” subplot that even the imbecilic Tobias doesn’t deserve. But Cross is so good in this role that just about anything he’s given can work on some level. He’s also adept at playing with others, particularly when collaborating on a “Fantastic Four” musical at a rehab center run by Argyle Austero (fine work by guest star Tommy Tune as the brother of Liza Minnelli’s Lucille Austero).
Season 4 of Arrested Development is supposed to lead to a climactic feature film. In that context, the final episode is left open-ended, as are all of them for that matter. The overall storyline, if it really can be called that, can be faulted for too often tying itself in knots. But seriously, what else was expected? A sense of the nonsensical has always been this show’s sixth sense. But if you watch long enough -- and then optimally watch it all again -- the pieces start fitting (Picasso-like perhaps) into a semblance of an overall big picture.
So maybe I do in fact have “Face Blindness” when it comes to Arrested Development. But as the subtitle of Episode 13 says, “It Gets Better.” And in this view it certainly does, whether it’s a disheveled Gob being found on the “Locker Hawkers” TV show or Walter’s Lucille referring to Minnelli’s “Lucille 2” as a “sterile cuckoo bird.” Oh all right, here’s the link.
GRADE: B+
Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net