Since I’ve already written off CBS’ Eleventh Hour in the Thursday 10 PM time slot, I decided to take a look and see what was happening on ER. I was pleased to see that it was Abby’s (Maura Tierney) last day on the job. I never liked Abby.
And, in typical Abby behavior, even on her last day, she’s being inconsiderate of others, including her “best friend” Neela (Parminder Nagra). Neela is hurt that she had to find out about Abby’s departure through the rumor mill. And, also in typical Abby fashion, she tells off her new boss Dr. Cate Banfield (Angela Bassett) because Abby thinks she knows better, and of course, she doesn’t care because she’s going to be gone at the end of the day anyway.
Later, she also tells off a hospital board that was in the process of disciplining Sam (Linda Cardellini). It seems that Sam sent a patient home with an IV still attached, and if I followed things correctly, the patient injected themselves, using the IV, with another drug and it created problems. Abby’s defense for Sam made it sound like they fly by the seat of their pants every day in treating patients because they are understaffed and they get all the patients no one else wants. Excuse me, but that is no excuse for substandard care. And that’s the thing that sometimes bothered me about ER. They were always rationalizing their poor treatment of patients. In fact, it’s happened so many times over the years that I think the writers just made it the standard operating procedure at County Hospital.
When the staff says farewell to Abby, it was very telling about how bad the turnover has been on the show. It seemed that too many people were newer to me and as a result, the whole scene seemed almost hollow. What made the whole farewell episode even worse was the corny voice over of Abby reading what I believe to be Bible passages. Doubly corny was the whole contrived scene with Frank trying to learn how to tango, complete with the feet decals on the floor to help him with his steps. If he worked for me, I would have told him to remove them and get to work stat. But, I guess nobody really works at County. It turns out that Abby can save the day when she helps Frank at the very end by doing the tango with him, which he executes flawlessly. It was sappy.
And how could I forget Abby trying to talk a boy off the hospital roof by giving him a syringe that he could inject himself with at a later time, in order, I think, to end it all. Later, when she asks for the syringe back, he states, half questioning, that that she wouldn’t have let him do it. She says that she hadn’t though it through. Typical Abby. She always seemed too impulsive, and I don’t think her character grew much over the years.
The only person on the show who is mildly interesting is Dr. Archie Morris (Scott Grimes), who has, over the years, morphed from a joint-smoking doctor to someone who is somewhat responsible. There may be hope for him, but sadly he seems to be destined for comic relief on the show.
With Abby leaving, though, I have no reason to watch ER any more because there is no one left in which I am interested – both to praise OR to criticize. It looks like Thursday night at 10 is offering nothing compelling to watch. I may have to force myself to watch ABC. That’s when I know the time slot has gotten bad.
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Showing posts with label ER. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ER. Show all posts
Friday, October 17, 2008
Friday, September 26, 2008
Season Premier Hits and Misses
Quite a few shows had their season premiers this week. I’ve already written about CSI Miami (”Resurrection”) and CSI NY (”Veritas”) on this blog, but I thought I’d also give some attention to a few others that premiered this week. I also realized that I never turned on ABC for anything. At first I thought they didn’t have anything new, but then I realized that except for Lost, I don’t watch any ABC shows.
Law & Order SVU: “Trials”
I have a full recap for the season premier episode “Trials” on my blog All Things Law & Order. I also wanted to make note here that while the episode wasn’t bad, it really wasn’t anything special either. Most notable was the introduction of the new ADA Kim Grayleck (Michaela McManus). It was notable because it was awful. Her acting is wooden, maybe just a hair better than Elizabeth Rohm, who also played an ADA on Law & Order (the “mothership). It seems that they are making Grayleck purposefully annoying, portraying her as the competitive go-getter who thinks that she’s better than everyone else. It is made worse by her marginal acting. I hate to pass judgment so quickly, but you know what they say about first impressions...and my first impressions are usually right on target. I sense problems with McManus, hopefully the show won’t wait too long before they pull the plug on Grayleck.
The episode also continues to focus on the personal drama with Stabler (Chris Meloni) and Benson (Mariska Hargitay), and seems to put less emphasis on the actual crimes. It’s almost becoming a soap opera. I still like the characters, and the chemistry of the overall cast could be the best in the Law & Order franchise. But I would like to see more about the crimes and how they solve them, and less about things like Stabler’s troubled daughter and Olivia’s apparent post traumatic stress.
NCIS “Last Man Standing”
Law & Order SVU: “Trials”
I have a full recap for the season premier episode “Trials” on my blog All Things Law & Order. I also wanted to make note here that while the episode wasn’t bad, it really wasn’t anything special either. Most notable was the introduction of the new ADA Kim Grayleck (Michaela McManus). It was notable because it was awful. Her acting is wooden, maybe just a hair better than Elizabeth Rohm, who also played an ADA on Law & Order (the “mothership). It seems that they are making Grayleck purposefully annoying, portraying her as the competitive go-getter who thinks that she’s better than everyone else. It is made worse by her marginal acting. I hate to pass judgment so quickly, but you know what they say about first impressions...and my first impressions are usually right on target. I sense problems with McManus, hopefully the show won’t wait too long before they pull the plug on Grayleck.
The episode also continues to focus on the personal drama with Stabler (Chris Meloni) and Benson (Mariska Hargitay), and seems to put less emphasis on the actual crimes. It’s almost becoming a soap opera. I still like the characters, and the chemistry of the overall cast could be the best in the Law & Order franchise. But I would like to see more about the crimes and how they solve them, and less about things like Stabler’s troubled daughter and Olivia’s apparent post traumatic stress.
NCIS “Last Man Standing”
(NCIS Photos CBS)
The season premier of NCIS, “ Last Man Standing” picks up 126 days (according to the tally Abby (Pauley Perrette) was keeping) from the season finale when DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly), Ziva (Cote de Pablo), and McGee (Sean Murray) were banished to other jobs outside NCIS. While Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) kept his position at NCIS, he was saddled with a new, and inexperienced staff.
Ziva, now back to being a Mossad agent, is working undercover singing in a cabaret style bar, and gets caught in a terrorist’s explosion, McGee is relegated to a basement area where he is “boss” of his own computer tech team. DiNozzo is stuck on a Navy ship, begging to get out.
They also have a new NCIS Director, Leon Vance (Rocky Carroll), who replaced the ever-annoying Jenny Shepard (Lauren Holly), who is now dead and buried (so I hope - you know how TV shows like to bring people back from the dead).
While investigating a murder, it becomes necessary for Director Vance to clue in Gibbs to the fact that he had to transfer Gibbs' people away for them to help Vance work on a case. It seems that there is a leak within NCIS and Vance thinks that one of the three new people he put to work under Gibbs is the culprit. Vance was hoping that somehow Gibbs would be able to pick up that something was wrong with one of them, his magical radar would go off and he would start to investigate. Now really, I think that was the dumbest, most convoluted way to get to the bottom of a leak.
The bottom line is that it seemed obvious in the fact that the show would not work well without Ziva, McGee, and especially DiNozzo, and that they wouldn't leave these people out of the loop and of the show for long. As the show ends, it’s only DiNozzo who hasn’t officially returned to the NCIS home base. But we have to expect he will.
Also glaringly obvious was that it was the woman with the law background who was the leak. Yes, they tried hard to make it look like it was someone else, but not hard enough. Still, the episode seemed to work better than most, and I am not exactly sure why. It may have had something to do with the fact that Ziva, McGee, and DiNozzo were on the screen but not necessarily together. We got less of their usual juvenile banter. It also could be that Director Shepard is gone. While new Director Vance also seems to have his own quirks, at least he isn’t slobbering all over Gibbs like Jenny used to. So the premier gets good marks from me, and I hope the show keeps it up.
Without A Trace: “Closure”
I’ve come to the conclusion that there are no happy men on television these days. They all have all kinds of “issues” and are filled with angst. The poster boy for “Troubled Male Leads” belongs to Jack Malone (Anthony LaPaglia). Every time he is on the screen, I feel like the life force is being sucked out of me. Malone is different from characters like House, for example, because House seems to actually have some sort of life and interests outside the confines of the hospital. Malone, however, seems like he lives and breathes the FBI, and not in a healthy way. Sure, he’s going through therapy, but it seems even his therapist (played by Linda Hunt) seems to want to run away from Malone every chance she gets.
The real drags on “Without A Trace” are the cases themselves. They seem the same every week. And so it was with the season premier, “Closure.” It was nothing new. Someone went missing, they investigated, they found them. This show needs more. According to ratings reports, it also needs viewers, as they dropped off significantly from last year’s season premier. It was probably due to the change in the day that the show airs. I don’t know why CBS keeps moving this show. This show either needs to get Malone on some happy pills, or they need to start feeding them to the writers.
ER: “Life After Death”
I haven’t watched ER regularly for quite some time. I may have only caught a few episodes last year when they went into reruns and nothing else was on. The season premier, “Life After Death” finishes off where the season finale left off – with an ambulance explosion. It seems that Dr. Pratt (Mekhi Phifer) was injured, although the extent wasn’t fully realized until they began working on him in the ER. Full disclosure here, I never like Pratt. Never. In fact, he was one of the characters that caused me to stop watching the show because I found him to not only be a terrible doctor, but just an all around annoying guy. So I wasn’t sorry when Pratt’s injuries proved to be fatal. The sad thing is, there isn’t much else redeeming in the episode or in the show’s cast that makes this show compelling. Too much time was spent on Pratt’s death, and on the mourning of his colleagues. Since all I recall is how much his colleagues hated to work with him, I almost found the Pratt tributes phony.
Ziva, now back to being a Mossad agent, is working undercover singing in a cabaret style bar, and gets caught in a terrorist’s explosion, McGee is relegated to a basement area where he is “boss” of his own computer tech team. DiNozzo is stuck on a Navy ship, begging to get out.
They also have a new NCIS Director, Leon Vance (Rocky Carroll), who replaced the ever-annoying Jenny Shepard (Lauren Holly), who is now dead and buried (so I hope - you know how TV shows like to bring people back from the dead).
While investigating a murder, it becomes necessary for Director Vance to clue in Gibbs to the fact that he had to transfer Gibbs' people away for them to help Vance work on a case. It seems that there is a leak within NCIS and Vance thinks that one of the three new people he put to work under Gibbs is the culprit. Vance was hoping that somehow Gibbs would be able to pick up that something was wrong with one of them, his magical radar would go off and he would start to investigate. Now really, I think that was the dumbest, most convoluted way to get to the bottom of a leak.
The bottom line is that it seemed obvious in the fact that the show would not work well without Ziva, McGee, and especially DiNozzo, and that they wouldn't leave these people out of the loop and of the show for long. As the show ends, it’s only DiNozzo who hasn’t officially returned to the NCIS home base. But we have to expect he will.
Also glaringly obvious was that it was the woman with the law background who was the leak. Yes, they tried hard to make it look like it was someone else, but not hard enough. Still, the episode seemed to work better than most, and I am not exactly sure why. It may have had something to do with the fact that Ziva, McGee, and DiNozzo were on the screen but not necessarily together. We got less of their usual juvenile banter. It also could be that Director Shepard is gone. While new Director Vance also seems to have his own quirks, at least he isn’t slobbering all over Gibbs like Jenny used to. So the premier gets good marks from me, and I hope the show keeps it up.
Without A Trace: “Closure”
I’ve come to the conclusion that there are no happy men on television these days. They all have all kinds of “issues” and are filled with angst. The poster boy for “Troubled Male Leads” belongs to Jack Malone (Anthony LaPaglia). Every time he is on the screen, I feel like the life force is being sucked out of me. Malone is different from characters like House, for example, because House seems to actually have some sort of life and interests outside the confines of the hospital. Malone, however, seems like he lives and breathes the FBI, and not in a healthy way. Sure, he’s going through therapy, but it seems even his therapist (played by Linda Hunt) seems to want to run away from Malone every chance she gets.
The real drags on “Without A Trace” are the cases themselves. They seem the same every week. And so it was with the season premier, “Closure.” It was nothing new. Someone went missing, they investigated, they found them. This show needs more. According to ratings reports, it also needs viewers, as they dropped off significantly from last year’s season premier. It was probably due to the change in the day that the show airs. I don’t know why CBS keeps moving this show. This show either needs to get Malone on some happy pills, or they need to start feeding them to the writers.
ER: “Life After Death”
I haven’t watched ER regularly for quite some time. I may have only caught a few episodes last year when they went into reruns and nothing else was on. The season premier, “Life After Death” finishes off where the season finale left off – with an ambulance explosion. It seems that Dr. Pratt (Mekhi Phifer) was injured, although the extent wasn’t fully realized until they began working on him in the ER. Full disclosure here, I never like Pratt. Never. In fact, he was one of the characters that caused me to stop watching the show because I found him to not only be a terrible doctor, but just an all around annoying guy. So I wasn’t sorry when Pratt’s injuries proved to be fatal. The sad thing is, there isn’t much else redeeming in the episode or in the show’s cast that makes this show compelling. Too much time was spent on Pratt’s death, and on the mourning of his colleagues. Since all I recall is how much his colleagues hated to work with him, I almost found the Pratt tributes phony.
As far as the series is concerned, there is no drama left. It’s just a bunch of actors spewing out medical terms over a patient. This is being billed as ER’s final year, and that’s a good thing, because this show has been on life support for quite some time.
Check out my blog home page for the latest information, here.
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