New Fall Television 2015: The Bad News

The fall television season officially started on Monday, September 21^st, and as connoisseurs of only the finest programming (hahahahaha!  Oh, I kill me), I feel more than qualified to weigh in on the shows we attempted to watch but ultimately decided against.

First up, The Bastard Executioner:

This one is Kurt Sutter’s newest creation, and we wanted super hard to like it.  We watched every single minute of Sons of Anarchy, despite the final few seasons being almost uniformly crappy (one of the shining lights was Jimmy Smits as Gemma’s love interest – he was incredible).  Regardless of the ridiculous finish to the show, its high points were outstanding, and we were hoping Sutter’s latest vehicle could recapture that level of greatness.

Another shining light - 

Walton Goggins as Venus Van Dam.

Yasssss, Queen!

Anywhoodle, we had high expectations.  The two hour debut was super bloody, which seemed excessive, but okay fine, and the actors involved in the project are solid, particularly Stephen Moyer (hi, Vampire Bill!).  However, the first two hours plodded along, and one particularly drawn-out scene prompted Chris to turn to me and ask if we really needed to know any of the people being presented, since almost all of the characters involved would be dead within the next few moments.  We finished the premiere and made it about halfway through the next hour-long episode before calling it quits for good, or at least until we start hearing that the show has turned itself around. 

At least before we left, we were able to see Matthew Rhys from The Americans (a seriously amazing show – for reals, why aren’t you watching it?) use his true Welsh accent again, something we first witnessed in a very special episode of Archer.

David!  Come and have some toast!

Next, Moonbeam City:

We knew going in that this one would be a bit different, but when has that ever stopped us (answer: never.  Ever.  Never, ever, ever.)?  Essentially, it’s an animated series on Comedy Central set in the 1980s revolving around the antics of Dazzle Novak, a police officer, and his cronies at the station.  The voice talent is exceptional – Rob Lowe is the lead, but Elizabeth Banks, Will Forte, and Kate Mara also feature prominently – and the animation is fun in a flashback, 80s sort of way.  However, after watching two episodes, we found it to be mainly be an 80s attempt at recreating Archer.  To paraphrase from Michael Dukakis, “Moonbeam City, we’ve watched Archer since its beginning. We know Archer.  Archer is one of our favorite programs.  Moonbeam City, you’re no Archer.” 

Finally, The Muppets:

Also known as, the one that made me so sad.  I like to read the Hitfix.com columns by writer Alan Sepinwall on television, as he always brings up salient points for discussion, and I find him to be a pretty reliable indicator on what shows we’ll like.  When I read his disappointment about the new version of the show, I hoped he was wrong and that we’d disagree on our enjoyment of it; sadly, I have to concur with his review.  The new Muppet show is set up as a workplace comedy, in the vein of The Office, but it’s nowhere near as funny.  I found that the only times we even broke into a chuckle watching it were the scenes with Jere Burns as the father of Fozzie Bear’s new (human) girlfriend; most likely, that was just leftover goodwill from Burns’ time on Justified as Wynn Duffy rather than anything The Muppets gave him to play.

He’s totally awesome.

Look at that face.

We ended up completing the first episode, but we couldn’t make ourselves sit through another one, even though it’s only half an hour long.  For crying out loud, even Moonbeam City got another 30 minutes of our time!  So, so sad.

Thankfully, there are some new shows we’re actively enjoying, so a “The Good News” blog post on those should be upcoming, perhaps next week.  It’s a yin and yang thing, people.

Later!

Amy