Here's what's good, in my humble opinion. In the interest of posting this sooner rather than later, I'm not going to delve too deeply in the actors' resumés. Of course, there are a number of perfectly good shows that I just can't or don't keep up with, such as Mad Men (AMC), despite its many Emmy wins, Damages (FX), and many of the comedies. I hope I can get around to watching as many of these as I say I will, but time will tell. Because we have digital video recorders, netflix, hulu, and network websites, we no longer have to be in front of the screen on anyone's schedule but our own. For info on last week's Emmy Awards, go here and click the drop down menu to change category.
OLD SHOWS
30 Rock (NBC) is starting later this fall for its 4th season. It has deservedly won a lot of Emmy Awards for star, creator, and writer Tina Fey, star Alec Baldwin, and the rest of the writers.
Big Love (HBO) season 4 will start in January. Complicated but always interesting, about a man with three wives, with Bill Paxton, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chlöe Sevigny, Ginnifer Goodwin, and Mary Kay Place and Harry Dean Stanton as Sevigny's character's parents.
Breaking Bad (FX). I wrote about this a year ago after Bryan Cranston won the Emmy for starring. He won again. Second season is over. Watch for the third (after you see the others).
Brothers & Sisters (ABC) will start Sunday night (season 4). Sally Field is great as the matriarch of a family of five adult children, including Calista Flockhart (Ally McBeal) and Rachel Griffiths (Six Feet Under, Muriel's Wedding (1994)).
Californication (SHO) also starts on Sunday (season 3). David Duchovny is brilliant as a sex-addicted writer who has a complicated relationship with his baby mama (Natascha McElhone) (the "baby" is a teenage girl). Evan Handler (Charlotte's husband Harry on Sex and the City) and Pamela Adlon (Lucky Louie's wife) are also really good.
Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO). Larry David has hit a new level of cringe with this (season 7) premiere. Funny stuff. I didn't watch it before I met Jack. He will happily watch episodes that he has seen before.
Desperate Housewives (ABC). I still have to watch the last two or three episodes from last season. I may or may not take it up again. I'm set to record the season 6 premiere Sunday in case I want to continue.
Dexter (SHO). Shout out to producer Robert Lloyd Lewis. Dexter is bloody, sick, twisted, about a serial killer who kills only bad people. Don't watch it before bed, but do watch it. Season 4 starts Sunday.
Entourage (HBO) is sti-ill going on season 6. I'm glad they're back to the punchy endings before the blackouts that end each episode. Good fun. And everyone agrees that mean Hollywood agent Ari Gold is modeled after Ari Emanuel, brother of President Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. By the way, pretty much every woman on the show is effin nuts.
Flight of the Conchords (HBO). Bret and Jemaine started with a hilarious HBO comedy special and went on to star in two seasons of this series. I really hope it comes back. They have songs on iTunes and CDs as well, which I also recommend.
Gary Unmarried (CBS). The second season is under way, starring Jay Mohr (did you see Action, his one-season Fox series? Do so. He played a cruel producer). Sometimes this drags a bit but I always laugh.
Grey's Anatomy (ABC). Haven't yet seen the season premiere yet. But I'll watch it and the episodes that follow. Guaranteed.
Who among us doesn't love House (Fox), the misanthropic diagnostic doctor? I've been a fan of Hugh Laurie since he was half of a comedy duo with his fellow Englishman Stephen Fry. I loved watching the premiere today, though perhaps it had fewer laughs than usual (it's not a comedy anyway). Excellent use of mood music and it was wonderful to see Andre Braugher (Homicide: Life on the Street) and Franka Potente (Run Lola Run (1998) and others). Season 6 will be available on hulu starting September 29. Or watch it on the Fox website.
Hung (HBO). This half hour about a divorced down-on-his-luck teacher/male prostitute is a little odd, but Thomas Jane is hunky (sorry, girls and boys; no full frontal, even on HBO) and Jane Adams is adorably neurotic, as usual.
Lost (ABC). I'm getting tired of it, but want to see how it ends up when season 6, its last, starts early next year. Michael Emerson won an Emmy for playing Ben. I hate Ben! Everyone hates Ben! Don't reward his bad behavior!
Monk (USA) is in its last ever season. There have been some fabulous episodes and some not, but I will remain loyal until -sniff- the end. Hulu doesn't look like a good bet, so check the USA website, or wait for DVD.
The New Adventures of Old Christine (CBS). Like its brother show, Gary Unmarried, it can drag, but there are always laughs. Julia Louis-Dreyfus stars; Clark Gregg, director of Choke, co-stars, along with others.
Nip/Tuck (FX). Nasty, but can't stop watching (except when they show the bloody plastic surgeries). Misanthropic and especially misogynistic, but very well done. Season 6 will start in mid-October.
Nurse Jackie (SHO). Season 1 just ended. Also sick and twisted and highly recommended by both of us. Starring Edie Falco from The Sopranos. Her illicit lover is played by Paul Schulze, who was Father Phil in The Sopranos. Haaz Sleiman (The Visitor) and Merritt Weaver (the production assistant on the unfortunately cancelled Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip) also contribute.
The Office (NBC). Another of Jack's faves. Watch every episode (I can't vouch for the British version). Season 6 started last week.
Penn & Teller: Bullshit (SHO). We catch this from time to time. Always irreverent. Usually hilarious. And they like to throw in gratuitous nudity, because it's cable and they can. Now in its 7th season.
Private Practice (ABC). Soapy, chick TV. Everyone is gorgeous. Beautiful Santa Monica vistas. Season 3 will premiere October 1.
Psych (USA) is always fun. Season 4 started in August and will run to mid October.
Rescue Me (FX). As the ad says, "When you're laughing one minute and crying the next, that's good TV." Denis Leary and his fellow NYFD members are still working out their grief over 9/11 and their macho tendencies, as well as Leary's character's alcoholism and everyone's dysfunctionality. Season 5 just ended with quite the cliff hanger. Start at the beginning and watch it through. I got Jack to watch this and he's hooked.
Royal Pains (USA) with a shout out to producer Jon Sherman. The first season is now over and only the last 5 episodes are available on hulu and USA, so you may want to wait until the DVD release. Always gorgeous establishing shots of the Hamptons and funny banter. And Campbell Scott with an accent!
Ugly Betty (ABC). I still have to watch the last half of last season. Now that I don't watch this with Amy I may or may not go on. Whoops. Season 4 premiered tonight and I didn't record it. Hmm.
United States of Tara (SHO). Toni Collette won an Emmy for playing Tara, a woman with dissociative identity disorder (used to be called multiple personality disorder). This is the second most sick and twisted of the bunch, after Dexter, and Weeds is a close third (all Showtime, as it happens). It is brilliant, funny, touching, and we can't wait for season 2 next year. I wrote about it earlier in the year.
Weeds (SHO). Mary Louise Parker's main character started the series as a suburban widow who sold pot to support herself and her two sons, but it has spun out considerably from there. What will they think of next? Just when you think they've gone out on a limb, someone does something more outrageous. Season 5 just ended and it will return. Parker and co-star Elizabeth Perkins were nominated for Emmy awards.
NEW SHOWS
Accidentally on Purpose (CBS). I plan to watch it because I like Jenna Elfman.
Bored to Death (HBO). Jack & I enjoyed the pilot the other night. Jason Schwartzman (Rushmore (1998), I Heart Huckabees (2004), The Darjeeling Express (2007)) often annoys me, but I didn't mind him this time.
Community (NBC). Pilot was funny and the show was well reviewed in the New York Times. I'll try another. This is following The Office for now until 30 Rock starts up, then it will be on earlier.
Cougar Town (ABC). The pilot dragged a little but had its moments. Courtney Cox was great in Dirt (FX), but that was unfortunately cancelled. I'll give it another shot next week.
Eastwick (ABC). I loved the movie The Witches of Eastwick (1987) with Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon, and Jack Nicholson. I plan to watch this pilot on hulu or the ABC website and record subsequent episodes on my DVR if I like it.
Glee (Fox). If Amy still lived at home we would probably watch this together. It's family friendly (as long as you can explain to your kid what a "celibacy club" might be and don't mind some suggestive dance numbers). I liked the first two episodes of this high school musical series enough to start catching up online until I can watch on my DVR. Apparently the rest of the public did, too, because after two episodes Fox ordered up another bunch of 'em. Ryan Murphy, who produces Nip/Tuck, above, is trying something completely different with this one. It's corny but fun to see the kids putting on show after show (and they have, so far, left out the no-talents--everyone can sing and dance, even the kid in the wheelchair!).
The Good Wife (CBS). Drama starring Julianna Margulies as the wife of a philandering disgraced politician. As David Letterman said tonight, "Where do they come up with this stuff?!" I plan to record the pilot tomorrow night.
Modern Family (ABC). The pilot was good and this is on my DVR. Here's how it works: Ed O'Neill's character (Married With Children) is married to his young second wife, from Colombia, who comes with an 11-year-old son. Ed's character has 2 kids, roughly the same age as his wife. One is played by Julie Bowen (Boston Legal), whose character is married with three kids. The other is Jesse Tyler Ferguson, whom I liked in the now-cancelled series The Class, and I like him in this, as a gay man in a committed relationship, and when we first meet them they are bringing their newly adopted daughter home from Vietnam. It's sort of a mock-umentary, because sometimes the characters address the camera directly.
CANCELLED SHOWS THAT I LIKED (see link)
30 Days (FX). Morgan Spurlock put himself and others in alien situations for 30 days, much like in his feature documentary, Super Size Me (2004). The only reality show I watch (other than HGTV, maybe once a month, if I'm on the treadmill and something catches my eye).
Everybody Hates Chris (CW). Chris Rock co-created and narrated this semi-autobiographical series about a boy growing up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of NYC in the late 80s.
Pushing Daisies (ABC). Many producers worked on this but I always think of Barry Sonnenfeld, who directed the Addams Family and Men in Black movies/sequels, and was director of photography for the Coen brothers on Blood Simple and Raising Arizona, among his many credits. The visual style of this series was distinctive, with circles of some sort in nearly every set/scene. Kristen Chenoweth and Ellen Greene, both Broadway stars in their own right(s), broke into song not often enough for my taste. Chenoweth won the Emmy for supporting actress and, as part of her acceptance speech, said she was looking for work.
Samantha Who (ABC). It was cute. I liked it.
The Starter Wife (USA). Debra Messing starred as the ex-wife of a Hollywood producer in the miniseries and series. It was based on a novel by Gigi Levangie Grazer, who, when she wrote it, was married to Brian Grazer, Ron Howard's and Tom Hanks' producer. Art imitated life when he divorced her later. The series was entertaining.
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