Navy NCIS

The first episode of any new law enforcement drama is apt to feature a High Stakes storyline, and CBS’s new Tuesday drama Navy NCIS is no exception. A naval officer dies a mysterious death on Air Force One, leading to concern about an attempt on the life of President Bush. This actually gives a fairly good opening to explore the place of NCIS (the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, making the show title Navy Naval Criminal Investigative Service) among the varied law enforcement agencies, as they get involved in jurisdictional disputes among varied agencies.

The show has a good attention to detail and a willingness to throw in some inside humor. However, the attempts at banter in the pilot don’t quite work. The rhythms are off, there’s an extra line where it doesn’t need to be, and you can tell it’s supposed to be witty but it merely looks like people striving to be witty, people thinking of the right thing to say a half second too late. That’s a shame, because the series stars Mark Harmon, who as a regular on St. Elsewhere and recurring characters on Moonlighting and The West Wing has been involved in most of TV’s best-bantering hour-long shows.

I’m not a big one for the modern procedural show. If you’re a fan of JAG or CSI, this one is well enough done that it’s worth checking out.

The Brotherhood of Poland, New Hampshire

David E. Kelley specializes in either dramas with a strong sense of whimsy or hour-long sitcoms with dramatic intensity. In either case, it’s a tricky thing to get the chemistry right, but when it works (say, the early seasons of Ally McBeal) it works.

His new CBS show, The Brotherhood of Poland, New Hampshire is both far too mild in the comedy and too unconvincing in the drama to work, however. The story builds around the lives of three brothers i the titular New Hampshire town, one the mayor, another the police chief, and the third a struggling loser. There are various forms of marital tension, work tension, and so forth. Despite some likable actors being involved (well, Mare Winningham), I find myself watching and simply not caring.

And, having realized that, I find myself not watching at all.

Frasier

Last season, I actually stopped watching Frasier. It had become a show of missed opportunities and awkward staging, and the characters had slipped ever more into caricature.

NBC aired two new episodes tonight, after having bought back some key folks on the other side of the camera. The creative fix-up worked, and the old spark was back. They did put some effort into distancing the show from the Roz-loves-Frasier tone that the last season ended with, and that’s one thing I’m not sure was necessary. Particularly with this being the last season, it might finally be time to play out a subtext that had long been there…. although really, I think the Frasier/Roz relationship was the sort of like&respect relationship that leads people to name someone as their Backup Spouse, the person of comfort that you end up with when you give up on passion. And neither character should do that.

As a practical matter, they should be keeping an eye on keeping Roz free at the end of the series. She’s the obvious one to make a spin-off from.

One Tree Hill

The WB adds One Tree Hill to its Tuesday line-up. This is the tale of two half brothers, one brought up in privelege and the other raised in a lower class style by his single mom. It is, of course, the latter one we are rooting for as the two battle each other in basketball and for the heart of a punk-lovin’ cheerleader.

The camerawork is nice, the conflicts are shallow, and nothing in the pilot suggested to me that it has more than a couple plotlines in it. There are some good folks in it, like Moira Kelly (the single mom) and Barry Corbin (the basketball coach), and you get to hear occasional drops of punk music between all the product-placement songs, but nothing really left me wanting to see more of this.

I'm With Her

Years ago, the Fox network put forth a show called Flying Blind, about a nebbishy guy who gets romantically involved with a gorgeous, beloved party animal of a woman (Tea Leoni), who carries him into her world. It was an enjoyable show, particularly for those of us who can identify with nebbishy guys. I mean, those of you. There’s nothing at all nebbishy about me, of course! I’m a hip, swingin’ thang!

I’m With Her, a new Tuesday ABC sitcom, revisits that concept… or, more directly, does a TV riff on Notting Hill, the film about a Julia Roberts-like movie star (Julia Roberts) who falls for a normal, everyday kind of guy (who just happens to look like Hugh Grant at his most charming). In this TV show, the male lead may not be in the female’s class, but he’s not a nebbish either; he’s a handsome high school teacher, with a perpetual 3 day growth of beard.

This show could be bad, but it’s not. It’s actually fairly charming, and the first episode at least is concerned about the characters’ emotional centers. The cast is rounded out by the roommates each of the lovers has — in his case, a goofy fellow teacher, in her case a sarcastic sister living in her shadow. The sister i can deal with, the fellow teacher got a bid annoying. While it may not have the nebbish identification factor for you nebbishes, it is definitely a watchable show. I’m keeping my eye on this.

It is paired in the lineup with 8 Simple Rules…, so it’s fate may be entwined with the public reaction to the loss of John Ritter.

(Note: yes, I did briefly have this up with the title “She’s With Me”. That’s what I get for my latenight posting habits.)

Las Vegas

I really enjoy Las Vegas, but that’s different from enjoying Las Vegas. One is a 24 hour city of glitz, money, and strong freedom within strong boundaries, a victory of man over nature and often over common sense and ethics. The other is an hour on NBC on Mondays.

But the other ain’t bad, at least to start off.

The show focuses on a hunky young VP of casino security. For a show about such a wild spot, family is a core theme, as he deals with his existing family (and the construction business he walked away from) and the new family he finds himself embroiled in by dint of dating the daughter of security chief Big Ed, an ex-CIA guy well played by James Caan. Rounding out the show are various casino employees, including a lifelong friend of the lead played by Nikki Cox. (This is Ms. Cox’s return to Vegas, as her two-season sitcom Nikki — first season very good, second less so — had her playing a Vegas showgirl.)

The show is slickly produced, the characters given interesting aspects (if at some times blatant; the valet/chauffer has a background in engineering and tends to make gadgets, stated as an aside as if he won’t be constantly called on for plot-convenient gadgetry), and there is much to like. The first episode had a crime story (about a card cheat) and a practical effort story (about trying to find a specific high roller and keep him at the casino) in addition to the central character drama about the impact of knowing the boss’s daughter carnally. While there’s at least one crime story set up for the future, likely on long-running tale, it’s still not clear what texture this will take on. Will it be a crime-of-the-week show when all shakes out? Or will it be Love Boat In The Desert?

I do hope they pay a bit more attention to logic and detail. While there are minor mistakes that can be put off as simply creative choices (like having someone zoom along the strip at a time when cars should be clogging it), there are others that are less forgivable. The card cheat storyline is built around the assumption that cheat has someone on the inside helping him, an assumption without clear basis. When it is revealed how he’s cheating, it’s quickly clear that not only is an inside man not needed, but the assistant being an inside man is a hinderance, not a help. The setup didn’t make sense, and the method they used to close down the cheat was not only unneccessary but relied far more on luck than would have made sense. If you saw the episode, ask yourself this: what if that last hand had been a blackjack? Could the cheat have just walked away with the money? If not, what was the point of doing the last hand? (There actually is a point to trying to get him to lose his money before they stop him, but the show did not cover it.)

This ain’t a must see, but it did keep my attention. I expect I’ll keep an eye on it and see how it shakes out.

Two And A Half Men

And my optimism for good shows to come pays off, not with a perfect revelation of a show, but with a good strong start to a sitcom with possibilities.

I had looked forward to Two And A Half Men (CBS, Mondays). The buzz on it had been good, and the scenes that CBS put on their promotional disk (shipped out with Entertainment Weekly) had some charm. Plus, the show had Jon Cryer, an actor with two died-too-young sitcoms in his credits.

However, I’ve avoided getting too much detail on most of this year’s shows, so while I knew the basic premise of the series (newly seperated chiropractor Cryer and his ten-year-old son move in with Cryer’s brother, single-and-lovin’-it jingle writer Charlie Sheen), I didn’t know all of the names involved. So watching, I get hit with:

• Creator Chuck Lorre, the man behind the charming Dharma & Greg

• James Burrows, the director behind building the chemistry in so many hit sitcoms. Count him as the key or starter guy for Cheers, Frasier, Friends, Will & Grace, Dharma & Greg, NewsRadio, 3rd Rock… and a number of less-successful shows as well. Sometimes he is brought in just for the first 1-3 episodes to get the show going, sometimes he sticks with a show for years (most recently, Will & Grace). And one of his commercially unsuccessful shows was an admirable single-season series called Partners, which also starred Mr. Cryer.
• Holland Taylor plays Cryer & Sheen’s mom. I’ve watched many a weak show for Holland’s naughty grand dames.

The actors are all charming, the writing is good, the characters are clearly motivated and delineated, and there are laughs to be had here… and not all cheap ones. This is about a man learning to be without his wife, his brother learning to be with a family, and his son learning to be a man. This show is not powered off of hate, anger, or even much insulting, it’s powered off of hope, striving, and most importantly the basic human foibles.

This one will get programmed into the ReplayTV for recording every week.

California: The Show

Well, I’ve already voted in the Great California Election Survivor Challenge. There’s a good chance I’ll be traveling on the election date, so I got myself an absentee ballot. I voted against the recall, not because I have any love for Gray Davis, but because I’m against undoing an election on the basis that one party managed to actually find a worse candidate than Gray Davis.

Of course, I still have my 135 names to pick from, just in case y’all don’t listed to me and vote against the recall. So I voted for Cruz Bustamante, not because I have any love for him, but simply because way to assure that those who sought the recall are not rewarded for having done so.

But dadgum, it sure would be nice to have a major election with someone to vote for, rather than folks to vote against.

(Yes, as an absentee voter I’m one of those who might need to re-vote if the vote is delayed. I can’t say that would particularly bother me. I’m of two minds about the whole argument for delaying the vote; on one hand, it is a real fairness concern, on the other hand I couldn’t see us delaying a Presidential election 6 months over such a concern. But while there’s something to be said for getting this nonsense over with, there”s also something to be said for a delayed recall creating the chance of their being no recall at all.)

Luis

I’m not sure who looked at Luis Guzman and said “this guy needs a sitcom”. While talented in villain roles, he has a built-in scowl and awkward physicality that makes it hard for him to even be the sort of lovable gruff fellow that he strives to play in Luis, his new Friday night Fox show. A show that at least treats New York as a multi-ethnic town, if seemingly calculatedly so. We’ve got one Puerto Rican (Luis, the donut shop owner), a Dominican (his ex-wife), their daughter (who rents a room above the shop), two white guys (the daughter’s non-earning artist boyfriend and a donut shop employee), an old Irish woman (also renting a place above the shop), one black guy (local bum selling what he trash-picks), and a Chinese guy (foreign doctor turned Chinese food delivery guy).

When they record the dialog for most animated TV shows, they record all of the lines for one actor, then bring in another and record her lines, and so on, putting them together in editing. This show felt like that. There was not a lot visible interaction. Guzman in particular seemed to have a few set deliveries to rely on. There are a couple moments of humor among the frentic rat-a-tat of insults in various directions, but not enough to recommend it.

If it sounds that I’m unexcited by this season’s premieres, well that’s true so far. However, most of what we’ve seen has been on the smaller networks (WB, UPN), who don’t tend to generate much I like, and there is a real tendency to debut weaker series first so that they’re competing with reruns rather than popular new or returning shows. But I’ve seen some footage from Two And A Half Men and heard things about Joan Of Arcadia, Miss Match, and The Lyon’s Den that leave me with hope… and I expect to find a few surprises along the way.

Like Family

Like Family is about a white mom and her at-risk teenage son who move in with old friends, a black family with a teenage daughter and a younger son. The focus seems to be on the white son, which is problematic because he neither seems at-risk nor teenage; he comes off as an actor trying out for the role of Chandler in Friends: The College Years.

The again, the black daughter doesn’t look the age she’s supposed to be either; we’re supposed to believe that she’s young enough that her parents assume she’s not even dating, but they have her played by Megalyn Echikunwoke (yes, I used cut-and-paste for that), a rather curvaceous lass of interesting background (black dad, white mom, raised on a Navajo reservation) who definitely looks all of her 20 years, if not a couple more. Lovely enough to be the daughter of Holly Robinson Peete (who plays her mom), but not a high school student.

The performances by most of the cast are acceptable (if at times a bit pat), and there are some moments of humor, but nothing stand out about it. This is the sort of show like Peete’s previous For Your Love that could last a few years without ever drawing much notice.