These are part timely, part shows I didn't have time to watch the first time around because I was watching other pilots. This is basically pilot week, and while some shows have their pilot earlier or later, it appears this week is the standard. These shows were a combination of wanting to actually watch the show and seeing it on Hulu so fuck it.
The Goldbergs (Tue., ABC, 8:00 p.m.)
The Goldbergs gets the likely treatment I'm giving The Crazy Ones. There is so much negative buzz that I will only watch it if it's free on the internet. Well, this show was free on the internet. And it sucks just as much as I feared.
If you like Jeff Garlin screaming, this is probably the show for you. I personally didn't find him funny at all in this show because his humor is basically just straight up screaming. Well, that's not really fair. Everybody in this show screams. Troy Gentile stood out for being particularly bad at acting as Barry Goldberg. And as unfunny.
Verdict: Never planning to watch this again and I suggest you don't even start.
Hostages (Mon., CBS, 9:00 p.m.)
There's definitely a huge concern about a show when I did not enjoy the pilot episode AND I have serious doubts about if this could be stretched out over a season much less multiple ones. (If it's a hit - and I have no idea if it will - it will definitely be multiple seasons). I was mostly bored by it though.
Dylan McDermott plays a comically over the top FBI special agent who usually helps hostages escape, but instead is holding a doctor and her family hostage. The doctor, played by Toni Collete, is the one performing a routine surgery on the president and McDermott for some reason wants to kill him. It has something to do with his sick wife, but there is no indication of how in the world those two things could possibly be related.
Each of the family members is holding a secret from the rest of the family and it's really not that interesting. I don't know if it's the writing, the acting or a combination, but I could care less about their problems. Also, this show kind of suffers from "Well there's no way they will kill anybody in the first episode" so the tension just wasn't there for me, despite the music's best efforts to tell me there was tension.
Verdict: It's kind of intriguing enough to where I will follow along to see if it's good, but not enough to where I'll watch it until I know it's good. So I most likely just watched my last episode of this series.
Lucky 7 (Tue., ABC, 9:00 p.m.)
This has an intriguing premise, although displays a message that is well-explored. A group of seven gas station employees dream of winning the lottery and play it every week. When they do win, they find out that they have just as many problems with money as they did without. That's not really a bad message, but if the show plans to just show seven people who prove that and none of the stories are about how a person's life got better, it'd come across annoying and unrealistic to me. Money doesn't solve your problems, but it's also not like it won't help you either.
The people themselves weren't terribly interesting. An ex-convict who needs to get money to pay back for his former life? Original. A future father who needs money to get his own place for his wife and kid? This could have worked if I didn't hate the wife, who basically just threatened to leave him in the episode if he didn't get money. That's a loving relationship right there.
Anyway, I really liked the scene where they showed that the members won the lottery. Some of the scenes worked, some of them didn't. But I didn't like a lot of the characters so I'm not really sure how good of a strategy that is. Or at least I'm pretty sure that wasn't the creator's intent.
Verdict: This will be cancelled soon anyway after such terrible ratings so don't bother.
The Michael J. Fox Show (Thu., NBC, 8:00)
The biggest thing that a comedy pilot needs to do is make the viewer want to see these characters again. Humor, at least at first, is kind of a secondary thing. That's why the MJF Show works for me. The show is pretty tongue-in-cheek about Fox, his Parkinson's, and other people's reactions to his Parkinson's.
Michael J. Fox plays Mike Henry, a retired news anchor with Parkinson's. But he basically plays Michael J. Fox post-disease. He's famous so a lot of people stop him on the street and tell them how somebody they know also has Parkinson's, or Alzheimer's. I really liked the pilot, but the second episode was more sitcom cliche than I would have liked.
The supporting cast is top notch. Betsy Brandt (Breaking Bad) is good as the wife. Wendell Pierce (The Wire) is basically playing Bunk in this show but as a newscaster. Of the kids, Juliette Goglia made the best impression. I guess Katie Finneran is a regular in the show, but I don't see her point really. Neither of her story lines worked and it was the least funny part of the episode for me.
Verdict: The second episode leaves me worried, but I'll watch because I see potential in the show.
Playlist
1. "A Song from Under the Floorboards" - Magazine
2. "Punching in a Dream" - The Naked and Famous
3. "X Gone Give it to Ya" - DMX
4. "Too Close" - Alex Clare
5. "Master Hunter" - Laura Marling
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