“Iron Man,” a new spy, got his metallic mitts on a bunch of NBC’s pilots. (But the only NBC show Herc was ever keen to see this season is the sci-fi comedy-drama “Medium,” from the guy who created both “Moonlighting” and “Now and Again,” the great Glenn Gordon Caron!! And “Iron’s” appraisals do not make Herc grow more excited about NBC’s fall.)
“Iron Man” says:
Herc,
Through a friend of mine, we had a DVD featuring no fewer than eight of NBCs new fall pilots. One-hour dramas and half-hour comedies, four each. Perfect for our Memorial Day barbecue.
First, the bad: Three of the dramas were just bad. Nothing redeemable.
“Hawaii,” modelled perhaps on NBC’s only sophomore show, “Las Vegas,” is a comedy-drama about police detectives working Oahu, from writer Jeff Eastin (“Shasta McNasty”). It stars Michael Biehn (“Adventure Inc.”), Eric Balfour (“The O.C.”), Ivan Sergei (“Jack & Jill”) and Sharif Atkins (“ER”).
Starring the doomed Claire Fisher boyfriend from the first season of Six Feet Under. We could only take about 10 minutes of this one; it’s that same weird, pseudo-hip over-the-top style of that McG undercover car-thief-buddy-cop show from last year. The opening scene features a corpse being pulled from a pool of lava. He was killed and dropped in, they figure. Then we cut to a chase. A black cop delivers some racial slurs to a number of large Polynesians at a barbecue who block his pursuit of a perp. Then the perp makes it to a speedboat at the end of a long pier, and the cop jumps after him. The cop can’t swim! So the perp fishes him out, and my friends and I all agree to skip the rest of this one. Holy crap. I give it 7 weeks.
“Medical Investigations” is a drama about a guy who solves medical mysteries, and it’s probably nothing like “CSI.” At all. It’s from Jason Horwitch, who usually writes fact-based TV movies like “Joe and Max,” “The Pentagon Papers” and the upcoming “Evel.” It stars Neal McDonough (“Boomtown”), Kelli Williams (“The Practice”), Christopher Gorham (“Jake 2.0”), Anna Belknap (“The Handler”), Clare Carey (“Coach”) and Troy Winbush (“John Q”).
I hate to go into such depth on this show, but it’s badness deserves being relived (excruciatingly) at length. One of the worst shows I’ve seen in some time; so bad they haven’t even named it, yet. The brave folks at the Nat’l Institute of Health protect us from the bad stuff. The run around in helicopters, and fight with the ignorant local medical authorities... in New York City, no less, a place famous the world over for it’s backwards health care. I mean, don’t they still use leaches at Mount Sinai? But I digress.
The story of the pilot: aging yuppie archetype is walking down the street, yelling at his cellphone, when suddenly he turns blue and collapses. And he really turns blue. Like, Nightcrawler/Mystique comic-book blue. (I’m guessing they had to overdo the blue skin because this is one of those dramas that thinks it’s way cool to have the film stock desaturated and then given a blue sheen, ala Minority Report, so unless they pushed the blue skin, you wouldn’t be able to tell). Cut to: creepy blond actor (whose name escapes me), at his son’s little league game with his estranged wife. She’s divorcing him because he’s never there. The proof? His cell rings right when’s she’s done dropping the bomb, and he’s got to go. But not before helping his son with that swing, while he’s at bat! Then, a helicopter lands in the outfield (!), and daddy’s off to New York!
Anyhow, creepy blond NIH guy heads up the blue-man-group investigation, and he solves it by having a vision... Apparently, being an NIH investigator means you have profiler skills. Turns out, someone switched the salt at a local diner with saltpeter!
Everything about this show sucks ass, and even worse, everything is a blatant bit of recycling. It’s clear NBC wants so desperately to have a CSI style hit. The acting is flat, the story is uninvolving, the color design is boring and even the music sounds like it’s being piped in from the disco/mortuary next door. Bad, bad, awful bad. Sadly, I’m sure it’s going to be a monster hit.
“LAX,” also likely modeled after “Las Vegas,” is a comedy-drama set behind the scenes at Los Angeles International Airport, from screenwriter Nick Thiel, a “Magnum P.I.” vet who wrote five studio films between 1989 and 1996: “The Experts,” “Fire Birds,” “White Fang,” “V.I. Warshawski,” “The Associate.” It stars Paul Leyden (“As The World Turns”), Heather Locklear (“Spin City”), Blair Underwood (“Full Frontal”), David Paetkau (“Candy From Strangers”), Frank John Hughes (“Catch Me If You Can”), and Wendy Hoopes (who voiced Jane, Quinn and Helen on “Daria”).
Nice style, good opening (the CEO (?) of the airport strolls out on the runway late one night and greets a landing jumbo jet, fatally). The drama unfolds from there, with Blair Underwood and Heather Locklear as the new bosses. We had run out of steam by this one (thanks to “Untitled Medical Mystery”), so we didn’t watch it all the way through, but the first 20 minutes were quite good.
The sitcoms: two good, two bad.
"Crazy For You" is a sitcom about a odd romantic coupling from writers DeAnn Heline & Eileen Heisler (“Ellen,” “Three Sisters"). It stars Josh Cooke (who appeared on two episodes of “10-8”), Jennifer Finnigan (“Crossing Jordan”), Tammy Lynn Michaels (“Popular,” “The L Word”), Darius McCrary (“Kingpin”) and Tom Poston (“The Story of Us”).
The bad: Lame cutesy urban relationship sitcom. The premise: two nutjobs find love. He’s a genius-level mathematician slumming it working at a record store! She’s got big teeth and says lot’s of inappropriate things on dates! He’s neurotic and has to know where all the exits are at restaurants, and can’t ride in elevators! She’s got big teeth and has a dying clown living in her broom closet! He’s kind of engaging! She’s got big teeth! Blah. One mildly funny bit on the entire show, where he requests that the unexpected third-wheel leave them date in peace, and it turns out he’s a paraplegic, so the wheeling him out of the restaurant is just excruciating enough to be funny. Not enough funny for an entire show, though.
"The Men's Room" is a sitcom about dudes in their 20s, 30s and 40s, from writer Danny Zuker (“Fired Up,” “Jesse,” “Off Centre,” “Coupling”). It stars John Cho (the “American Pie” series), Eric Lively (“A Minute With Stan Hooper”), Scott Cohen (Max Medina from “Gilmore Girls”), Shelley Cole (Madeline from “Gilmore Girls”), Suzanne Cryer (“Two Girls and a Guy”)and Maitland Ward (“Boy Meets World”).
Also bad: a Walter Mitt-ier version of “The Mind of the Married Man”, as a sitcom. First person talking to the therapist/camera. A satellite falls through the ceiling and flattens his wife. And we go to the next show.
The good sitcoms:
"The Office," the NBC version of the BBC hit, was adapted by writer Greg Daniels (“King of the Hill”) and stars Steve Carrell (“Bruce Almighty”), Rainn Wilson (creepy Arthur from “Six Feet Under”) and B.J. Novak (“Punk’d”).
It’s good. Definitely accurate, way uncomfortable. Gone in 13 weeks, lamented, the rest of the episodes will turn up on A&E and critics will howl that Network TV is no place for quality shows. The comedic highlight: an office prankster who keeps sealing co-workers supplies in jello-molds. It’s smart and stupid. Funny.
“Joey” is a sitcom about what happens when Joey Trebbiani moves to California to hang out with his sister, his nephew and a hot neighbor. It’s from the writing team of Shana Goldberg-Meehan & Scott Silveri (“Mad About You,” “Friends”). It stars Matt LeBlanc (“Friends”), Drea de Matteo (“The Sopranos”), Ashley Scott (“Birds of Prey”) and Paul Costanzo (“Josie and the Pussycats,” “40 Days and 40 Nights”).
And the winner: Spot-on perfect. Funnier than the last six seasons of Friends. Drea has great comic timing, Matt Le Blanc has the character down to a hilarious science, the nephew is funny, the new neighbor is hot (and married), Stiffler’s mom is the mandatory crazy agent who points out that Joey has a huge head. It’s just funny. It works. Well-tuned script, perfectly directed, pitch-perfect acting. This one will go on for years and years. A good laugh every 30-seconds. We watched this one THREE TIMES, and it was funny each time, and every man, woman and child enjoyed it. You will watch. Oh, you say you won’t, but you will.
Call me Iron Man.
