2013 TV Season Premieres – Tuesday

Sons Of Anarchy – 10pm on FX (Premiere Date 9/10/2013)

Sons Of Anarchy just aired it’s 3rd episode this week, so I’m going to talk about how the show as a whole as been this season. As this show usually does, it left last seasons with a lot of crap going down. The main villain Pope was dead (which has some bad repercussions), Clay was in jail, and Tara was arrested. And that’s only some of what was left dangling when the show ended last year. Now we pick up not long after all this stuff went down, Tara is up on murder chargers for what Otto did to that nurse, Clay is in jail for murder he didn’t commit, and the MC is in pretty bad shape all around. SOA is a show that’s great at having a lot of plot lines going, but having them all actually mean something. Even the little bits that get no screen time have a good chance of being a major blow later on in the season. This year that appears to be Bobby, who after what Jax has done decides he needs to get away from Charming, and appears to be setting up his own chapter (maybe Nomads).

This season has so much going on it’s hard to really narrow any one thing down as the main conflict. You’ve got Donal Logue’s violent, unhinged ex-US Marshall stirring things up while he’s out for revenge. On top of him you’ve still got Pope’s guys out there as both business partners and enemies of SAMCRO. They still want Tig dead, but they want to do business as well. It’s quite the interesting relationship. On top of all that, the premiere also featured one of the most intense things I can remember seeing on TV. If you haven’t watched any of this season yet here is your warning, the following will have ***SPOILERS***. So throughout the entireity of the first episode we see this random kids, in a school uniform. He’s usually walking or sitting with his notebook in the generally area where the club is moving through. There’s actually one scene where the kid and Jax make eye contact for a minute, I thought something was going to happen there. But nothing did, Jax just got on his bike and left without a word. Not long afterwards we the kid ends up at his school, after taking off his jacket, he rolls up his sleeves and reveals scars from cutting. At this point you knew something was up, and seconds later he pulls a large gun from his bag and proceeds to enter the school and kill several people in his class, both students and teachers. That’s how the episode ends, with an outside shot as blood splatters on the inside of this school and children screen over the gunfire. It’s a pretty chilling thing, even without visually seeing the massacre.

(Spoilers are over)

And that’s just the first episode, everything since that act has added to the tension of the show. After all these years we’re actually seeing the fallout to the rest of the community from the things SAMCRO has been doing. The guns and the violence isn’t contained the way they have always thought. And now they have a whole lot of powerful people out to get them and make a message out of them. I mentioned already that we’re only three episodes into the season, and things really are intense at this point. I can only imagine how crazy things are going to get, not just with the major stuff I’ve been talking about, but with all the smaller character stuff too.

Verdict:Watch It

Score: 8/10

Reviewed By: Chris

Dads – 8pm Fox (Premiere Date 9/17/2013)

I was really looking forward to Dads, it was on my Friday Five list for new shows a couple weeks ago. Unfortunately it didn’t hold up to my expectations, or based on the internet’s reaction anyone else’s. It had some good stuff going for it, a strong cast, and what should be a funny concept. The problem was the premiere just wasn’t all that funny, it was going for the shock laughs rather than something genuinely funny. We get it the dads are older and have terrible interpretations of the world, such as calling the Asian businessmen orientals. But did they really have to go all the way to making the small penis joke after having Brenda Song do the ‘slutty school girl’ because according to the show that’s what all Asian men want?

To be fair, I haven’t yet watched the second episode that aired this week, and from what I’ve heard it did get a little better. I guess after all the backlash they got from early screening of the pilot the folks in charge decided to change a few things up. I’m going to be giving this show one more chance, but after that if it hasn’t gotten better then I’m done. At least the show has a great cast, Seth Green and Giovanni Ribisi are playing their parts great and are generally the only actually funny parts. Seth Green’s imaginary sword killing of his dad was one of the few highlights from the first episode.

Verdict: One More Chance

Score: 3/10

Reviewed By: Chris

Brooklyn Nine-Nine – 8:30pm Fox (Premiere Date 9/17/2013)

Now here is another new Fox show, but one that actually delivered. The new cop comedy is one of the funnier shows I’ve seen so far this season. Andy Samberg is great, and Andre Braugher as the captain is a perfect fit. I’m generally not a big fan of cop shows, they usually need an interesting hook to keep me, usually comedy will do it. It’s one of the reasons I love Psych, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine is looking to be right up there with the popular USA series. The first episode has a lot of just silly gags going on, and a lot of that feeling carries over into the second episode. From Braugher’s entrance as the new Captain of the precinct and immediate hounding of Samberg, he’s got a great mix of comedy and seriousness. He’s got that very dry straight faced response to all of Sambergs crazy hi-jinks. While it’s not a new dynamic, it’s one that tends to work best when the actors are good at what they do. The rest of the cast really rounds things out, including the hilarious Terry Crews, who you honestly don’t expect to be as funny as he is.

Fox has been doing pretty well in recent years with picking out winning comedies, the problem is the right ones don’t always last. I’ll be talking more about that later on with another Fox show. But regardless of that, Brooklyn Nine-Nine has the stars behind it, and the writing to keep it going. So hopefully this is one of those shows that keeps going and keeps making us laugh.

Verdict: Watch It

Score: 8/10

Reviewed By: Chris

New Girl – 9pm Fox (Premiere Date 9/17/2013)

It’s kind of a shame, for a show that was actually really good in it’s first two season, I’ve just got nothing to really say about season 3 of New girl. The first episode had it’s moments, with Nick and Jess finally together and running away to Mexico for some alone time. And in classic Nick fashion he decides that they should just stay there forever, which leads to him getting in over his head. It’s nothing out of character, but it just didn’t have that much going on. Probably the highlight of the episode was the side story with Schmidt and Winston. Where Schmidt needs to pick between Cece and Elizabeth while Winston is trying to do a puzzle. It gets particular funny when we find out Winston is color blind and that’s why he can’t put the puzzle together. Hopefully the season can pick it self up quickly and do more group episodes, it’s great everyone has these independent stories, but the funniest stuff tends to come when they’re one unit dealing with something ridiculous. Perhaps we’ll get another round of True American this season, that would be fun.

Overall New Girl is still a solid show, and has it’s laughs, but after 3 years it’s just not going as strong as it once was.

Verdict: Watch it

Score: 6/10

Reviewed By: Chris

The Mindy Project – 9:30pm Fox (Premiere Date 9/17/2013)

I really don’t think Mindy Project, it’s not the worst show on TV, but it’s damn close in my opinion. I watched most of the first season because my girlfriend is a fan, and it was awful. Some of the characters are funny, and there are enjoyable moments here and there. But Mindy Kaling is no funny, she’s annoying and I just can’t get past that. There are so many other shows on TV worth watching. ABC premiered two new comedies that air Tuesday nights that just by the first episode are better than all of The Mindy Project. Aside from James Franco being part of the first two episode, the only enjoyable part of the premiere was Morgan when Mindy woke up in the New York hospital. He is generally the comedy is this show, which is kind of sad since the whole thing is suppose to be a comedy.

The premiere picks up a few months after last season ended, Mindy gets sick and has to leave Haiti (I think that’s where she’s at) and come back. Things go on fairly boring from there with her boyfriend, the minister who brought her to Haiti trying to get married spur of the moment. Things just go on from there with things happening that don’t make sense until the credits roll. I suppose I’m a bit biased since I really don’t enjoy the show, but just nothing really jumps out about it. I don’t see a reason to care about this character that tries way to hard at such stupid things. All the other minor characters end up being the ones that you care about, but there stories are always stunted for Mindy’s crap.

Verdict: Skip It

Score: 2/10

Reviewed By: Chris

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – 8pm ABC (Premiere Date 9/24/2013)

I’m honestly going to keep this one short, I don’t want to say to much about the show, but it was basically awesome. If you’re a fan of the Marvel movies you’ve got no reason not to check the show out. They make some nice nods to the movie universe with mentions of things like the New Mexico incident(Thor) and Extremis(Iron Man 3). But they never make it to much about those things, the show is about this group of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents trying to contain ‘superhuman’ situations. Honestly though, the best part about the show is that Coulson lives! Sure we don’t really know how or why, they give a brief explanation that doesn’t really seem to be all there is to it.

You might be thinking this is just going to be a monster of the week show with these guys taking on one super powered person after another, much like Smallville, but you’d be wrong. In this pilot episode they’ve already planted seeds for what could be season wide stories carrying through everything. I’m sure there will be a certain amount of monster of the week going on, but there’s going to be something else arcing over it all, which is nice.

Everyone behind this show has said they don’t want it to be a marathon of cameo’s, but fans will notice a lot of nice nods to characters, and some familiar faces like Cobie Smulders reprising Maria Hill for the pilot. And who knows, with How I Met Your Mother ending this year, maybe she’ll be back if the show gets a second season, and really why wouldn’t it get a second season?

Well I went a little longer than I wanted to one this show, but it’s just worth it, so go check it out already. Though with the ratings it got, I imagine there aren’t many people left that haven’t seen it.

Verdict: Watch It

Score: 9/10

Reviewed By: Chris