Anyone who knows me even a little bit knows that I LOVE the Shield.  Because I’ve gotten them to watch it or am still currently nagging them to watch it.  It’s one of my top 3 TV shows of all time.  It follows Vic Mackey, an LA police officer and his task force who go into business for themselves a lot, committing probably as many crimes as they prevent.  But Vic is the linchpin that holds the whole thing together.  One of my favorite lines from the series comes when Vic discovers one of his guys went rogue and did something horrific and he responds by saying “I was just following your gameplan, COACH!”  It was powerful and it hurt Vic like hell to hear it.  It’s the only show I can look to that ran seven seasons and something that happens in the pilot is still totally in play until the finale.  The gravity of the pilot is always looming large until the finale.  The meat of the show most times is Vic and his double dealings with all the gangs in LA.  He has his hands in their action a bit, the big dogs stay out of jail.  Fair trade.

Gang Related is a poor man’s Shield.  It’s a BANKRUPT man’s Shield.  Terry O’Quinn from LOST plays the Vic Mackey role, for lack of a better comparison.  He’s Vic in rank and baldness only, really.  He’s the leader of a similar task force designed to take out gang activity.  It’s kind of a shame because he’s a quite capable actor and he’s given fucking nothing to do here.

The show centers around our protagonist? antagonist?  Prantagonist? Ryan Lopez, who is on the task force, but for reasons that are never really made clear beyond “After all our family has done for you!”, his real loyalty lies with gang leader Javier Acosta.  In a scene pulled straight from the Shield pilot’s deleted and then burned scenes, Ryan’s drunk partner chases a tagger into a warehouse and when Ryan follows suit, he finds his partner shot and dying.  The shooter: Javier’s loose cannon son, Carlos.  The task force later finds and arrests him, but Ryan locates and takes the weapon, leaving them without evidence to hold him.  Carlos is ready to rat Ryan out if he spends a day in jail, so Ryan is helpless.  You can tell that he’s supposed to be conflicted as he aspires to be both like O’Quinn’s character and Acosta, but frankly, the actor just ain’t that good.

A few notes:

Towards the end, we’re introduced to a man who is investigating Ryan’s actions regarding his partner’s death.  This man is played by Jay Karnes.  Dutch from…The Shield.  Coincidence?

It’s interesting to note that Terry O’Quinn is really the only primary character in the show who’s white.  That’s kind of refreshing.

There’s a pretty little action sequence involving a land mine being placed on a moving armored car.  The Shield couldn’t afford shit like that, and frankly, they didn’t need it.

Bottom Line: If Fox thought that Gang Related was network TV’s answer to The Shield, they wouldn’t have debuted it in May.  Granted, I’ve only seen the pilot, but it’s just too shiny to achieve the grit that they so desperately seem to want.  This is basically Criminal Minds with a gimmick. And with Fargo, Mad Men and 24 back on the air, I don’t have time for this crap.

3.5/10

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Overworked, stressed out son is forced to live with his parents.  Super original stuff.  But the fact that it’s Arnett, Martindale and Bridges should lift it above that premise, right.  Nope.  Fart jokes.  Literal Margo Martindale fart jokes.  This is the same woman who magnificently played (and won an Emmy for) Mags Bennett on Justified.  She is an amazing actress and I don’t have time for Mags Bennett fart jokes.

The premise of the pilot is that his parents are just coming in for a visit when Arnett reveals that he got a divorce and this is all Bridges needs to say “If he gets to be happy, I get to be happy” and packs his shit and leaves, moving in with his daughter(Jayma Mays).  It seems like every family sitcom these days is all about being mean to each other for the sake of being mean, only without the emotional payoffs.  It’s a tried and true tradition, but you have to earn those emotional moments, or else you’re just being assholes to each other all the time.  All In The Family, Roseanne and Everybody Loves Raymond were pros at this.  Some sitcoms can still pull off the emotional punch every now and then(Marshall’s dad dying on How I Met Your Mother crushed me, for instance), but then they go right back to treating each other horribly the next episode.  It’s like they’re afraid if you get emotionally invested in the characters too much, you’ll lose that laughs per minute ratio.  I’d like to see a happy medium become the norm, because I get tired of laughing at shit that doesn’t matter and never will.

5/10, if only for the potential of the actors involved.

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Kumar, some new guy, Jerry O’Connell Romijn Stamos and Mr. Monk are four bros who live in some weird apartment complex for single bros to bro out and get their bang on.  What the fuck are you doing here, Tony Shaloub?  And they cast HIM as the mega confident poon hound.  No, he’s the sad sack.  Always.  It’s what he does! But they have Kumar in the sad sack role and Jerry O’Connell Romijn Stamos as guy who wears a speedo always because laugh.

This show is hot ass garbage, and I see no potential for even accidental growth.  They’re four guys who go to bars and bang chicks.  Although tell me if they start banging each other.  I give it 6 episodes.  Don’t let me down, America

Avoid at all costs 1/10

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In short, The Crazy Ones is Mad Men for dummies.  It follows the goings on of an ad agency and the wackiness that ensues.  Williams plays the former(current?) genius ad man in charge.  Sarah Michelle Gellar plays his partner and daughter whose strait laced no nonsense attitude evens him out.  I guess she got fed up with her floundering career and got that CBS “Fuck you” money, figuring pairing with Williams on a CBS sitcom is a guaranteed 5 or 6 seasons.  Rounding out the cast is the great Hamish Linklater(Who I’ve been a champion of for years since he basically starred as  young Joel the first time he ever went to a rave in the criminally underappreciated independent film, Groove).  James Wolk also stars as the eye candy for the ladies who they stole directly from Mad Men itself.

So I guess it all depends on how much you like Robin Williams at the end of the day.  If you like him, you’ll love this, and if you hate him, ehhhh, you still might like this in spite of yourself.

7/10

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Akerman plays the titular trophy wife as she spends her first date with Whitford at the hospital after going a little too hard at the club and falling on him and breaking his nose.  It’s there that his kids show up with first wife Watkins, a free spirit hippie type, and then wife number two(Harden) emerges as a disciplinarian doctor at the hospital and the two wives argue about traditional vs non traditional medicine and surprisingly, Akerman just can’t get enough of this wackiness, so she marries the guy.  Uggh.

No matter how hard she tries to play “cool mom”, the kids aren’t into it.  To her credit, Akerman is the best part of the pilot.  She’s not just a pretty face.  she’s a great physical comedienne with solid timing.  When she lets slip that she used to go to concerts with water bottles filled with vodka, the eldest daughter brings one to school.  Akerman finds this out as they get to school and Harden tries to get the bottle because her son is thirsty, but to protect her stepdaughter, Akerman chugs the whole thing and it was probably my only real laugh of the episode watching her down that bottle of vodka and her subsequent reaction.  Then the rest of the pilot is just her hammered and trying to play it off.

I don’t know.  there’s talent here.  there’s no doubt about that, but the subject matter is weak and they try to cram in way too many strong personalities into a small sitcom.  It’s just too much

4/10

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The pitch meeting for this sitcom was pretty much “Let’s get James Caan and get him to say awful, inappropriate things to children”  He calls them fat, gay, tells them to take baseball bats to the other guys knees.  To protest a call in one of his daughter’s games, he whipped out his dick and pissed on home plate.  What a crazy old man!!  I liked this better the first time I saw it when it was called The Bad News Bears.  James Caan, I knew Morris Buttermaker, and you sir, are no Morris Buttermaker.  Hell, you aren’t even the Billy Bob Thornton version.  Maybe I’ll watch it out of boredom and the fact that baseball comedies are some of my favorite things, but get better.  Quickly.

Oh, and his daughter pitched six perfect games.  Get the fuck outta here!

4/10

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Joel McHale is driving a fucking Delorean around Belfast castle!  What is even happening, this is amazing.  Marty, we have to go back!  In true No Reservations fashion, he has to sample the local cuisine and stops at a highly regarded restaurant and pulls a Ron Swanson basically saying give me all of the food and the beer that you have.  “They call fries ‘chips’ here.  I think they call potato chips running shoes” I’m going to stop quoting McHale now because literally every other thing he says is making me laugh and it would just fill the whole article.  watch it for yourself.  It’s worth the time.

He goes for coffee with his wife(whom he ribs for acting weird on camera), he goes golfing at a famous, beautiful golf course with some pros and he’s not so good.  He decides that his clothes were the problem so he visits an upscale clothing store and tries out many looks in case the ladies are watching the upscale men’s network. More food and beer followed by a trip to the racetrack(dogs, not ponies).  Joel places a bet and wins!  He celebrates by going to a renowned whiskey bar(he must be getting slammered) where the whiskey expert and owner chastises anyone who mixes Irish Whiskey and Coke.  You don’t do it.  You just don’t.

He leaves Belfast with a ginormous breakfast at the beloved Maggie May’s. Ok, one more quote “This will shut my bowel system down faster than a half a cup of diesel fuel”.  I guess with a show like this, it depends on the celebrity and the host city, so I checked what next week’s episode was. “Aziz Ansari in Hong Kong”  I will DEFINITELY be coming back for more of The Getaway.

Highest possible recommendation. 8/8 Toes

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The hysterical Curb Your Enthusiasm has pretty much trained me like a seal over the years to laugh at Jeff Garlin’s exasperated fat man schtick, so whenever he starts hollering and calling people morons, I have a Pavlovian response to it.  Jeff Garlin is great.  Wendi McLendon-Covey(RENO 911) plays the matriarch of the Goldberg clan and is clearly the pants wearer in the family, but it’s when Grandpa shows up that I lose my shit.  Peter Segal as a super horned up old man.  I sincerely thought he was either dead or retired.  Segal rocks the party, man.  But he’s starting to go senile and it’s when he drives his grandsons into a hamburger joint, literally right through it, that his children take his keys away and decide it’s time for their son to learn how to drive.

The Goldbergs wrung enough genuine laughter from me that I think I will remain a viewer.  Not to mention, as a child of the 80s, I’m a total sucker for 80s nostalgia and references, which this show has in spades(REO Speedwagon!, ALF, Simon!).  That was probably my favorite throwaway joke of the pilot.  when the easily frustrated older brother loses at Simon and punches it calling it a liar.

6/10

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The show is like a hybrid of 24 and Silence Of The Lambs with Spader in the Hannibal Lecter role.  Our Clarice Starling this go round is Elizabeth Keen played by Megan Boon, who’s an FBI profiler about to start her first day of work.  She’s green as grass but Reddington(Spader) refuses to speak to anyone but her.  He’s done his homework on her and knows secrets about her that she doesn’t even know, as in the end of the episode we realize her husband is not the man he claims to be.  We don’t know what his deal is, but he’s not exactly a baby happy husband that he’s been playing to this point.

Red laughs at the FBI’s most wanted list calling it a “popularity contest at best”.  He knows where the real danger is, the criminals that they don’t even know about yet that are planning some heinous shit.  THE BLACKLIST!  And we aren’t quite sure what his motivations are yet, but if the FBI follows what basically amounts to as his rider(look it up), he will help them catch the most dangerous men on the planet.  This show kept my attention from front to back and left me wanting more.  Which is more than I can say for Hostages.  Hopefully its post-Voice timeslot can pull it some decent numbers because I’m tired of getting attached to shows that get pulled after five episodes.

8/10

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I really don’t like the cast very much.  I was just hoping the premise could lift them above my dislike for them.  I was throwing shit at my TV when Toni Collete won the Emmy for The United States Of Tara.  Uggh, that show was awful.  Tate Donovan( who plays Collette’s husband) has bored the ever loving shit out of me in everything he’s been in, yet somehow continues to get plenty of work.  And then there’s McDermott, who I was always indifferent towards until he starting treating my darling Connie Britton the way he did on the initial season of American Horror Story.  Now he’s on my shit list.

They couldn’t have fit anymore tired tropes into this if they tried.  The surgeon operating under duress was already done last year.  It was called the Mob Doctor and it was putrid.  McDermott knows all the family’s secrets already through the pilot episode.  Husband fooling around on wife? Check.  Daughter secretly pregnant?  Check.  Son and buddy secretly dealing weed? Check and check.  You had what could have been a really cool show here, CBS.  And you still might.  Maybe you just decided to pour out all this exposition at once to make room for the craziness down the road.  I hope so.  I’m watching you.

3/10

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