First Impressions: The Nine Lives of Chloe King

Aw summer, a time where the bar is set so low shows like Pretty Little Liars and Franklin & Bash can be considered quality entertainment. Enter the latest offering from ABC Family The Nine Lives of Chloe King that hopes to vie for the top of your guilty pleasures list. The show naturally starts with the title character being tossed out a window to her death (spoiler alert to those who did not bother to look at the title: she lives with eight lives to spare) then morphing in one of the tell tale signs of poor writing, the “two days earlier” screen.

In those two days we learn that Chloe is your typical sixteen year old wallflower with only two friends (one is so annoyingly peppy that it almost becomes entertaining, almost) and has never been kissed. Well that is until she gains unnatural balance. And excellent hearing. And claws. And heightened agility. And being able to draw the ire of dogs. And attract any guy who looks at her. Yep, she is turning into a cat, tail and all (the last one is a joke, maybe). Or technically a God descendant ancient race that has cat like features called the My (or Mi, I am too lazy to look up how it is supposed to be spelled).

I also think I have created my new drinking game: take a shot whenever the show takes elements from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A perky teen girl gets superpowers from some ancient prophecy. Shot. Raised by a single mother. Shot. She has two friends, a nerdy boy and girl that kind of like each other. Hangs out in bars despite being under-aged. Shot. Shot and shot and shot. She has a watcher (or two). Shot. There is a cute boy she cannot hook up with or bad things will happen. Shot. She dies and is brought back to life. Shot. The big problem is that the one thing that Chloe does not steal from Buffy is cleaver and witty banter. But it is summer and what better is there to do? Go outside in the high pollen count?

The Nine Lives of Chloe King airs Tuesdays at 9:00 on ABC Family. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download The Nine Lives of Chloe King on iTunes (which you can currently get for free).

First Impressions: The Killing

Dilemmas, dilemmas. Sunday night I had to decide between watching AMC’s latest series The Killing or VH1’s 40 Greatest One Hit Wonders of the 90’s. Reluctantly I choose the more scripted fair because undoubtedly VH1 would repeat it a couple hundred more times this month and sit there and scream at the television at some of their entries on the list (like when I flipped during the commercial break and saw House of Pain; has no one heard of Shamrocks and Shenanigans, Who’s the Man?, On Point; more on that later this week).

Despite not being in the can like all the pretentious television critic for AMC, I am always down for a good murder mystery, and even bad one as I made it through a whole season of Pretty Little Liars. Much like the ABC Family drama, The Killing shows the aftermath of a murder of a teenage girl, but the similarities end there. This time the detective work is left to the professionals. Taking lead on her last day of work before moving to a new city is Mireille Enos (who it takes a while to get used to watching in modern day clothes after her work on Big Love). Shadowing her on the case is her replacement Joel Kinnaman (dude’s Swedish, so I cannot translate any of his previous work).

The victim, Rosie Larsen, was killed pretty methodically, being drowned in a car that was sunk to a bottom of a lake of which she was locked in the trunk of. The big twist being that car was registered to the city councilman, Billy Campbell (The Rocketeer) who is running for mayor against the incumbent. Campbell has a few skeletons of his own has been has been hiding an affair with his campaign manager, Kristin Lehman (Tilt), and he knows a few things the Larsen family is going though, as he experienced the same thing with his late wife.

Rounding out the cast are Rosie’s parents Michelle Forbes (Battlestar Galactica: Razor) and Brent Sexton (Deadwood). If you want to be sad for hours on end, just watch their scenes after they found out their daughter died, maybe too real for television especially when they are forced to explain to their sons that they will never see their older sister ever again.

Every good murder mystery is judged by the quality of suspects and there are plenty to be found on The Killing. The two I am targeting includes Eric Ladin (Generation Kill), another of Campbell’s campaign advisor who was a bit too quick to turn the murder into political gain and could have easily been the one to report the campaign car stolen. But my lead suspect is the father of resident douchebag Jasper Ames who was even quicker to break up the questioning of his son. Of course as Aaron Echolls showed, who did not appear until the sixth episode of Veronica Mars, we may have not even met the murderer yet.

As much as a murder mystery can draw me in, the strong point of the show are the two detectives and their two very different styles. In an era where every character on television likes to take long expeditions of dialogue, Enos’s character chooses her words very carefully and doesn’t speak an unnecessary one. While Kinnaman is a very believable former undercover Vice cop as he looks like a skeevier version of DJ Qualls. And his scene with the soccer players was a marvel to watch in that you could have believed any outcome that could have happened from that meeting.

For any degenerates out there that enjoy a good drinking game, may I suggest you take a shot of your favorite poison of choose whenever the show lingers on an image of a bridge. You may get as drunk as the drinking game I invented for whenever Al Swearengen said his favorite word.

The Killing airs Sundays at 10:00 on AMC. You can stream episodes over at amc.com. You can also download The Killing on iTunes (where you can currently download the pilot for free, or Amazon Instand Video, see below, where you can get the first two episodes for free).

First Impressions: Survivor: Redemption Island

Survivor: Redemption Island poises the question can the unredeemable actually be redeemed? For its new season Survivor brought back two of its biggest doushebags ever for another go around. Boston Rob gets his fourth go around even though he failed to make the jury on two of his previous season. Then the other contestant is the one person that can make Rob seem sympathetic, Russell who gets to play for the third time (and most likely last since it has been brought to light that he spoiled his first two seasons, which is a breach of contract that could cost him millions) who played the dumbest game ever only to repeat it on the second go-around and got completely outplayed by two girls.

Of course Redemption Island has less to do with the two returning contestants and more with the place voted out contestants go to battle in hopes to reenter the game. We will have to wait until next week to see how it fully works after a second contestant gets voted out (or possibly the third episode depending on when exactly the competition takes place). But from the preview it looks like something out of MTV’s The Challenge and it looks like Francesca Hogi will be taking on a dude (though the thick leg in the preview could be a production personal doing a run-through or someone from a later challenge) and hopefully it is Russell.

Then at some point during the season, the person left standing on Redemption Island will be released back into the game. I originally assumed that it would be around the merge, but the Redemption Moments were all of jury members who went fairly deep in the game. So I wonder when they get to the jury, will the person still on Redemption Island be able to sit in on Tribal Council? Hopefully they are not let back in late in the game because the later the less I like the idea of Redemption Island.

After a poorly cast Nicaragua season, there were plenty of standout characters from Redemption Island including redneck Ralph Kiser and an overabundance of eye candy highlighted by Andrea Boehlke but former Special Agent (?) Phillip Sheppard was the breakout star of the premiere episode. He bragged about his ability of being able to read people thanks to his federal agent (?) yet he has the social skills of Sheldon Cooper. His blowup was one of the more entertaining tribal councils in a while. Hopefully he somehow manages to stay awhile but sure dumb luck.

Contestant I’d Most Like to Have Dirty, Dirty Sex with Even if She Hasn’t Take a Shower in a Month: Andrea Boehlke

Winner: Andrea Boehlke

Back Up Choice: Mike Chiesl

Survivor: Redemption Island airs Wednesdays at 8:00 on CBS. You can stream episodes on CBS.com. You can also download Survivor on iTunes.

First Impressions: Perfect Couples

Tonight starts NBC highly touted three hour comedy block with critical darlings Community (8:00), Parks and Recreations (9:30), old stalwarts The Office (9:00), 30 Rock (10:00) with NBC’s highest rated new show from the fall Outsourced (10:30) pulling up the rear. The one new addition to the lineup Perfect Couples get the prime against the unwatchable $#*! My Dads Says timeslot at 8:30.

Much like the unfunny ABC freshman sitcom Better with You, Perfect Couples follows three couple and even features a similar type of cold open. Unlike Better with You, all the couples are not related aside from a brother and sister with the other relationship coming from common area of work. Olivia Munn (Date Night) and Hayes MacArthur (She’s Out of My League) are the uptight couple. Dave Walton (100 Questions) and Mary Elizabeth Ellis (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) are the couple that always fight. While Kyle Bornheimer (You Again) and Christine Woods (Flash Forward) are the grounded couple.

Much like Better with You, Perfect Couples started out pretty laughless. But by the second commercial break, the show got better, but still well below Outsourced in terms of quality laughs. But Perfect Couples does have one ace in the hole: Olivia Munn. Anyone who watched her on Attack of the Show she is a hardworking star in the making that will make it worth tuning in every weak because if there were to get on track, she will be the reason why.

Perfect Couples airs Thursdays at 8:30 on NBC. You can also stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Perfect Couples on iTunes.

First Impressions: Friday Night Lights: The Final Season

This Halloween I drove an hour just to watch the season premiere of Friday Night Lights on a fifteen inch television (which is smaller than my computer monitor). And it was totally worth it. I doubt I will travel the distance every week and thus will hold off my weekly commentary of the show until its NBC showing, but here is my first impressions of the final season of the best show on television (spoiler warnings to those who are waiting for the NBC broadcast).

As it has been the last three seasons, it is time to say goodbye to beloved members of the original cast as both Landry Clarke and Julie Taylor, the last remaining original high school students head off to college. The two didn’t get as triumphant send off as previous members (though I suspect both may show up later) they were both appropriate with Landry’s triumphant last waltz of Cruxifictorious and Julie got one last ping pong match in. There was also when last swich-a-roo with Julie offering an epic send off, which I thought she was going to plant one on him, but instead it turned out to be one last trip to the Landing Strip. It’s a shame that Julie didn’t accompany Landry to Grandma Saresen’s house though.

But the heart of Friday Night Lights remains the story of those left behind in Dillon, Texas. Despite only winning two games last season, Coach Taylor has to temper expectations after one of those wins came at the expense of the West Dillon Panthers’ playoff hopes. The team is still a shell and Coach has to put on his recruiting hat and apparently poached the black defensive coordinator (whom I don’t think was ever given a name) from West Dillon, sadly it looks as if Mac McGill may have stayed. He even inadvertently added Billy Riggins to the staff who managed to Coach even more than the assistant that repeated everything he said with Billy quoting of Ronnie Lott.

Coach leaves recruiting of actual players to last year’s standouts Vince Howard and Luke Cafferty. They are enlisted to recruit a stand out basketball player who wears a wool cap despite being in Texas during the dog days of August. Heb may not like football, but the white boy can jump (and apparently catch footballs). And he self admitted free sprit which means he is the likely predecessor to Tim Riggins when it comes to a penchant of skipping practices. Even more expections will have to be tempered after the Lions beat the defending state champs thanks to an injury to the opponent quarterback that had shades of Jason Street to it.

And as downtrodden as Dillon is to live in, no one is more downtrodden than Becky Sproles and somehow her situation got even worse this season. Her mother is now working on a cruise ship and though her father moved back in town to take care of her, he too if off most times on the road as a truck leaving Becky alone with his wife and her baby half-sister. Naturally, things do not go well and she cannot even turn to her only friend who if currently in jail, leaving her to turn to his brother, showing up on the doorstep of Billy Riggins who has a little one of his own. It is sad that the show won’t last long enough to see how Becky overcomes everything and leave Dillon like the characters came before her.

Friday Night Lights airs Wednesdays at 9:00 on DirecTV. You can buy previous seasons of the show on the cheap (as low as $13.49 a season) on Friday Night Lights. You can also download previous seasons of Friday Night Lights on iTunes. The show will return to terrestrial television in about three to six months.

First Impressions: The Walking Dead

You know you are in for a different kind of television show when before the title sequence even rolls; the protagonist of the show shoots a little girl in the head. Sure she was a brain eating zombie, but still jarring. And not to be outdone by the opening, the closing scene featured even more zombies disemboweling a live horse. That just sets a tone never set by any television show before it, especially by basic cable standards.

And despite a cast the size of Ben Hur in the credits, the majority of the first episode of The Walking Dead almost exclusively features Andrew Lincoln (Love, Actually) as he wakes up in zombieland after being shot some time earlier. The only (living) people he runs into are a father / son who can’t bring themselves to leave the town where the zombified remains of their wife / mother roam the streets. This does get tedious fast because Woody Harrelson, Lincoln is not. You just sit there after a while for Lincoln just to get somewhere.

We do get a small glimpse of the other cast members, which could have been a longer glimpse, maybe some back-story will come soon as how they got there. Of course all that intrigue went out the door with the introduction of the love triangle. Crappy soap opera type storylines is something that The Walking Dead does not need. More intriguing though was the snarky disembodied voice that is on the other side of the frequency of Lincoln in the tank at the end of the episode. That dynamic should maked for one entertaining second episode.

Besides the size and scope of the show, what is amazing about The Walking Dead it is the first zombie story where you actually feel bad for them even as they try to suck out the brains of those still living. From the heartbreak the husband goes through trying to put his wife out of her misery to Lincoln going out of his way to track down the zombie without a bottom half. When he said, “I’m sorry this happened to you,” so did I.

Despite not being an AMC fanboy, I still had high hopes for The Walking Dead and it almost lived up to expectations (had they cut the fat and just went with an hour premiere it might have). Between the encampment of survivors and whoever was taunting Lincoln at the end, should make for an entertaining first season, which is only currently ordered at six episodes.

The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 10:00 on AMC. You can download The Walking Dead on iTunes. You can also download the show over at Amazon on Demand (see below).

The Walking Dead: Sneak Peek [HD]The Walking Dead: Sneak Peek

First Impressions: Survivor: Nicaragua

It is weird to think how much the world has changed in the short amount of time I have inhabited this planet. Thanks to the fall of the Berlin War, Europe looks completely different then when I entered grade school. Nicaragua was a war zone growing up and now they are hosting game shows in the country and Sandinistas and Contras are just album names by The Clash and Vampire Weekend (though the later admits they named it after the NES game).

Nicaragua thankfully is the first Russell Hantz free installment of Survivor in over a year. Though with just the first episode under our belt, all the contestants this year seem a little too nice, in fact is was a pretty pedestrian start to the season after all the bombast of the previous All-Star season. Even without any All-Stars, that doesn’t mean we didn’t’ get a familiar face as former Dallas Cowboy coach and current Fox commentator Jimmie Johnson who promptly started puking during his first night.

We do get two new twists this season. As mentioned previous, this year’s tribes are divided by age, over forties in one tribe and under thirty in another. This probably means that they will switch them up within a month. I kind of wished they would have gone four tribes, twenties, thirties, forties and fifties. The other new twist may be the worst idea the show has had. The Medallion of Power allows the owner gets a head start in challenges and if they choose to use the medallion it will then go to the other tribe. Lame.

The only other contestant of note besides Johnson is the second amputee in the history of Survivor, and first female to walk around the island in a prosthetic. Though I have been starring at the photo of Kelly Bruno (at right, in the pants) and I swear she has two feet there. Did Survivor really Photoshop toes on her for her individual promotion shot but not in the cast photo above? It is interesting the dichotomy between the two tribes where Johnson said they should bring him to the final because no jury would award him a million dollars where the younger tribe talk about how they want to get Bruno out soon because she would be a lock to win Survivor if she made it to the end. Alright it is time to name the hottest hot chick on the beach and who I predict to win.

Contestant I’d Most Like to Have Dirty, Dirty Sex with Even if She Hasn’t Take a Shower in a Month: Alina Wilson

Winner: Kent State’s own Jill Behm

Survivor: Nicaragua airs Wednesdays at 8:00 on CBS. You can stream episodes on CBS.com. You can also download Survivor on iTunes.

Toss Up: Persons Unknown vs Pretty Little Liars

Though they have had success with reality shows, television networks have yet to come with a summer scripted season that anyone wants to watch. Yet on the cable side, from FX to TNT to even smaller stations like AMC have created buzz worthy shows most of last decade. The problem has always been for the major network, their summer show have always seemed like series they are burning off in the summer because they were not good enough during the normal television season, while the cable networks have such a small slate of show, most all of them are treated like flagship shows.

Two new shows debuted this week, one network and one cable, and look like they would have nothing in common. On the network side looking to buck the trend is Persons Unknown, The Prisoner meets Lost for NBC; while ABC Family offers up the Desperate Housewives for the Gossip Girl set Pretty Little Liars. On the surface the two shows would have nothing in common, but at the heart of both shows is an overarching mystery.

For Persons Unknown, the big question is why these people were brought to this deserted town and where exactly is this town. The show started out very much like it could have Lost but instead of an island, the castaways were landlocked in the middle of nowhere, but instead of waiting until the end of the second season to see anyone off the island, we learn of a reporter investigating one of the missing persons. “Others” also show up shortly in the form of a catering Koreans and a night bellman, neither of which give us much information so far.

For Pretty Little Liars, the big mystery is who is sending all the title characters messages that only their missing friend would know. All these secrets are pretty familiars for shows of this ilk: hooking up with a teacher, same sex attraction, hooking up with a sister’s boyfriend, eating disorder. Not surprisingly the end of the episode the body of the missing girl shows up dead because the title sequence features the girls gathered around a casket. Seriously, is this the first time a title sequence featured a major spoiler?


Another thing the show share is not a particular strong cast. It may not be a good sign when your show is headlined by Cameron Frye. As seen by his recent spot on Justified, he can make a decent guest turn, but he cannot lead a series like Persons Unknown. On the other hand, Pretty Little Liars is full of actors that can barely pass a college students let along sixteen year olds. C’mon, Bianca Lawson was playing that age thirteen years ago when she was on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, when her current character was three years old.

In terms of a toss-up, I am going and call it a tie because Persons Unknown is the superior show with a better set up of its mystery. And being a thirteen episode miniseries, there shouldn’t be the too many to count loose ends that hampered Lost. But being on cable, Pretty Little Liars has a much better chance of extending past thirteen episodes.

Persons Unknowns airs Mondays at 10:00 on NBC. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Persons Unknown on iTunes. Pretty Little Liars airs Tuesdays at 8:00 on ABC Family. You can stream, recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Pretty Little Liars on iTunes of which you can download the Pilot currently for free as well as Amazon Video on Demand:

First Impressions: Friday Night Lights 4.x

I am a very patient man; you may not find a more patient man than me. Yet waiting for the new season of Friday Night Lights to start on broadcast television was excruciating to the point that I was asking everyone I know if they had DirecTV last fall knowing NBC wasn’t planning airing the new season until this summer. The Jay Leno debacle gave me some hope of the show returning earlier, but alas we had to wait until May, a full year after the season three finale, and thanks to a tornado, I had to wait a couple days longer.

The show did not disappoint. Even as they recycle out some old cast members (so long Tyra and Lyla) they still manage to find ones to replace them that just intriguing. We meet Michael B. Jordan (a name made for a sports show) running away from the cops, who is lucky enough that one of the arresting officers brothers played for Coach Taylor and Coach is in desperate need of players even if the only football he ever plays is Madden.

Another entertaining introduction, but for an entirely different reason, is when Riggins tumbles out of bed to the sound of flings daughter Becky Sproles singing, who asks possibly the harshest question ever delivered from a sunny disposition, “So what is it like to be the guy who used to be Tim Riggins.” Ouch. That almost makes up for the show trying to make us believe that the pale redheaded Alicia Witt has a high school aged ethnic looking kid.

But that was all peripheral to Coach Taylor who went to three straight playoffs, two championship games and one win but because he took on the rich guy with a son who has a rocket arm, he gets stuck with the short straw when the school does some redistricting. All the good players just happened to stay at West Dillon with Joe McCoy and it seems the only former Panther relocated to East Dillon with Coach was perennial benchwarmer last season, Landry Clarke. And for some reason, even his staff stayed in West Dillon (how dare you Mac McGill after Coach stood by you after racism claims and health problems) except one who I don’t even recognize.

So after three years of a town that cared about football above all else including a new scoreboard when the classrooms were in desperate need of new books, this season will be through the eyes of the football team time forgot with even worse school conditions and I cannot wait to see how the season unfolds as I burn my Panthers blues in favor of Lions reds.

Friday Night Lights airs Fridays at 8:00 on NBC. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Friday Night Lights on iTunes.

First Impressions: Parenthood

There may not be a more likeable cast in the history of television than that of Parenthood. On the show you have Peter Krause (Sports Night), Monica Potter (Head Over Heels), Lauren Graham (The Pacifier), Erica Christiansen (The Upside of Anger), Craig T. Nelson (Coach), Sarah Ramos (American Dreams), Sam Jaeger (Eli Stone), and Mae Whitman (Her?). That is as close to a Murderers Row of likeability you are going to get on the small screen. Oh, yeah, and Dax Sheppard (Idiocracy) is also in the cast.

Of course as Potter found out with her last foray into television Trust Me (with the ever Tom Cavanaugh and Eric McCormick), likeability doesn’t necessarily makes for great television if the stories and characters are not well conceived. Luckily for Potter, this time around the behind the camera personal is just impressive including Ron Howard, Executive Producer of Arrested Development, Jason Katims, Executive Producer of Friday Night Lights, and Brian Glazer who was also an Executive Producer on those two shows. Keep in mind those two shows both landed in the top six of The 100 Greatest Television Shows of the 00’s so color me excited for Parenthood.

Parenthood, of course, is a remake of the movie (that was already turned into a television show in 1990) but I have a hard time remembering much about either besides the cast and I think there was some storyline about dumpster diving after a retainer accidentally got thrown away at some Chuck E. Cheese type restaurant. And even then I am not entirely sure if that was the movie or the television show. I really couldn’t even tell you about the similarities between the new version to the old ones aside from the extended family and a nice mix of humor and family drama.

As the new story goes, Nelson, along with Bonnie Bedelia (Die Hard 2) are the parents of four very different children. Graham is moving back with her children to the family abode after running out of money. Krause (married to Potter) is the closest to being a nuclear family of the bunch, or at least that it what it looks like from the outside until his son is diagnosed with autism. Christiansen is the overachiever who leaves her husband (Jaeger) to play Mr. Mom. Oh, yeah, and Dax Sheppard is also a sibling.

After all the advertisings during the Olympics, the show did live up to the hype if not for a few flaws. With a cast this large (fourteen regulars), some characters are going to get lost in the shuffle as the first episode that seemed to focus heavily on Krause and Graham and maybe a line of less to Jaeger and Bedelia. And maybe they were trying to fit too much into the pilot, but storylines seemed to be rush like with the cousins being caught with pot which seemed to go away as fast as it was introduced. Oh, yeah, and Dax Sheppard is loitering on the show somewhere. On the brightside, unless my eyes were failing me, I swear I saw Lyla Garrity somewhere in the season promo.

Parenthood airs Wednesdays at 10:00 on NBC. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Parenthood on iTunes or Amazon on Demand (see below):