2013 TV Thread: Winter, Spring, definitely Summer - pimp your new finds/threadless wonders here!

Will 1600 Penn get enough fans for a thread of its own? Will Following bring just Bacon to primetime or will it include a dose of ham?

Intrigued by the first episode of Continuum though it falls into a lot of low-budget sci-fi/procedural traps. I know it's not really 2013 but it's premiering in the US in 2013.

rachel nichols, sigh.

she was really good on 'the inside'.

SyFy's got a pretty decent lineup today of actual decent shows (Haven), entertaining light fare (Warehouse 13, Being Human) and shameless cleavage-fests (Lost Girl), i'll prob give Continuum a try.

First episode of Legit on FX was pretty fun. Good enough for me to watch a few more episodes.

I can't imagine 1600 Penn airs for much longer.

whoa, someone else who actually saw The Inside. high-five!

Those of you not watching Archer are missing out, and should rectify it immediately.

Anticipating The Americans on FX

3rd episode of 1600 Penn was genuinely funny IMO

was there ever a separate thread for 'scandal'? because i'm catching up on the first (half) season right now and that show is BANANAS

it sounds like that might be my kinda jam. i need to check it out

A girl I work with has basically sworn off watching tv altogether, but will still plant her butt and watch Scandal every week. I guess it's that good? I can only do so much soap, and I've already got Nashville and Revenge in my portfolio.

my twitter feed blows up every time Scandal is on. Kerry Washington is v v pretty but the first couple episodes didn't grab me so i never stuck with it.

it could always go south in season 2, but i think it's probably waaaay better than nashville. very fast plotting and lots of wtf.

Isn't this season 2? Maybe not. Time moves slowly in the tv universe.

it only had 7 episodes in the spring when it started, so i can understand thinking of it as still in its first season

Just based on the commercials, I kind of hate both the prez and his first lady. Is that what they're going for?

man you don't even wanna know about the first lady, just watch.

i caught the first season on netflix, just don't know where the second season will end up going yet.

omg you guys this show

I sorta spottily watched Scandal last season/earlier this season. I definitely found it more engaging than Nashville. And Kerry Washington is kinda riveting to watch in general (and, yeah, absolutely gorgeous).

I am enjoying the arrow show. it reminds me of the first season of veronica mars; earnest and hokey in the same measure, a genre exercise without much conviction. lead is good, but i think he is contractually obligated to take off his shirt and make me feel stupid and weakling. there are some incredibly bad actors on the show, but john barrowman is good so far, and it's nice to see colin salmon again.

whoa, how did i post from that account?

you don't think the first season of Veronica Mars had conviction? it seemed to have a pretty clear focus to me...

yeah that sounds 100% backwards to me - veronica mars had one of the best first seasons of any show ever! total confidence.

i liked the first season of VM a lot, but the detectivey part of it seemed p. put on.

the first few eps of scandal really turned me off. the dialogue felt forced like that snl sketch where everyone talks as though they're a character in some '40s hardboiled move through a 90s lens, but not endearing or self-aware about it. i'll give it another shot though.

<3 Kroll Show.

not looking to start shit, but i find kroll so horribly unfunny

his 'characters' are pretty awful. i'm ok with him when he's not wearing taped-on facial hair and speaking in an accent.

i find kroll so horribly unfunny

FORKS! I'VE FOUND YOU! I was beginning to think I was the only person who felt this way.

the degrassi parody was v painful

krolls characters are hilarious on comedy bang bang but i fear it may not translate well 2 tv idk theres still hope imo

I go back and forth on Kroll. I find him funny on the League when I watch it and sometimes enjoy him when he crops up as a guest star or on Comedy Bang-Bang or whatever. OTOH, in high-pitched drag or doing an accent too far afield from his actual ethnic background I'm sort of o_O

I love him on podcasts, hated his comedy special, hate The League, loved the first ep of Kroll Show.

Loved the Degrassi parody and the reality show deal.

*shrug*

I only like El Chupacabra for any length of time...I watched the first ep of Kroll show and didn't really find anything super funny. I was hoping for lots of lols :(

anyone watch The Following? thought it was ok. would feel better about its potential if the Hannibal knockoff wasn't played by a dimestore Gerard Butler.

I kinda want to see it but I dunno

odd thing to praise it for, but i was impressed with how grisly it was at points -- compared to cable these new network dramas tend to feel so defanged usually

ok i watched a bunch of season 2 scandal and i'm sold now. the clunky dialogue takes a backseat to total crazy soap opera stuff with elected officials -- way more fun than i remembered.

I saw The Following and was a little disappointed, but will give it a few more episodes.

WRT grislyness on network TV, I saw a Criminal Minds episode a month or so ago and was shocked at how graphic it was. It was the human marionette one, for those that watch. It was pretty much at a Dexter level of gore.

yeah i haven't watched a lot of procedurals the last few years so i may be way off on that. i just think about how timid something like The Mob Doctor seemed.

RIP Apt 23

Bummed. So bummed.

I have access to ITV and BBC players now (yay vpn) - is there anything new in British TV worth checking out?

Apparently UTOPIA is interesting but I haven't seen it.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/fox-pulls-ben-and-kate-basically-canceling-it,91502/

bummer. heard a radio interview w/ Dakota Johnson yesterday, she came off kind of distant while answering questions about the show and now maybe i feel like it's because she knew what was coming.

The Following is so fucking stupid

Really sad to see Ben and Kate go, hoping to see lots more of that cast in other stuff.

no doubt about that, IMO

going to watch the first episode of Real Husbands of Hollywood in the next few days, will report back

rip

http://www.avclub.com/articles/hey-abc-family-just-renew-bunheads-already,100223/

Wow, that's great!

Finished Top of the Lake. The last episode in particular seemed like it was about 3 hours of tv crammed into 1 hour. I guess I liked it overall, but never even came close to loving it.

^ france in a nutshell imo. there's this weird twinning of over-the-top sentimentality and cold brutality at the heart of pretty much every great french cultural endeavor

say didn't you marry a french lady, what about that cultural endeavor, hey hey

what does france have to do with top of the lake

I think Tracer was conflating Top of the Lake with Les Revenants/The Returned. No biggie.

its a big deal to me

the bridge is very promising but the aspergers/autistic lady is not acting the part well imo

ah whoops

xpost really? maybe i'm just biased because she was in Inglourious Basterds and I kinda dig her

i dunno, it seems really hamhanded and not especially nuanced to me. She was fine in Basterds. This seems out of her depth? Maybe I'll be proven wrong. I hope so.

She reminds me of Claire Danes in Homeland.

It's a pilot, people. She's got plenty of time to improve.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/07/sports-could-save-the-tv-business-or-destroy-it/277808/

Let's talk about a channel that many non-sports fans might consider utterly critical to the bundle: AMC.

You might think that AMC makes money from all the people who watch "Mad Men" or "The Walking Dead." The opposite is true. AMC makes money from all the people who don't watch "Mad Men" or "The Walking Dead."

Here's what I mean. Only 2.5 million people watch the typical "Mad Men" episode. Eleven million watch the zombies. The other 80+ million households who have, but don't watch, AMC still have to pay between $3 and $3.50 each year to the network out of their cable bill. They don't have a choice.

Much more than advertising, it is these mandatory fees that explain exactly how AMC makes money. Reading from the company's 10-K annual report: "Affiliation fees [i.e.: a little more than $3 from each pay-TV household each year] represents the largest component" of AMC's revenue.

"Mad Men" and "The Walking Dead" might still be produced in an a la carte world. But maybe not. We only know that today, these sensational shows exist because the vast majority of the country that doesn't care who Don Draper is still pays for his suits.

That's the AMC Tax.

Second episode of The Bridge encouraging. Also, Lyle Lovett!

In other news, the Emmys still suck.

I'm surprised to say that The Bridge has actually gotten worse? I don't care about any of the characters and as of episode four, they're starting to leap in and out of established character with frightening regularity. And now some FBI agent is beating a missing girl so they cut his head off and turned that in along with cell phone video of him with the girl? Ahma try one more episode but the acting is VERY hit or miss and the story is needlessly complicated and dopey.

I gave up on The Bridge too.

File with The Killing, which was never much cop but at least took a couple of seasons to become as uniformly terrible as The Bridge did by the 2nd ep. I have not watched the original Bridge yet, so can't compare. Kruger's performance of a woman with autism is one dimensional and panders to male fantasies about sexy young women with autism wanting to sleep with ugly old plain men, because they have no inhibitions and an animal sex drive, yeah sure. Her performance is bad and seriously fucking counter-productive. Stopped watching it weeks ago and I do watch some garbage.

original bridge is freakin great

Wish I had watched The Killing this season tbh. Meant to be very good.

Interesting to see the changes in The Bridge between the pilot and what they're shoving out the door now - what started off as a moody and rather effective border procedural is now a TexMex Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. If Kruger was a better actor, she might save the rotten lines she's given but episodes 3 & 4 power-dived straight into the ground. I'm out.

Yeah, the actress may not have been able to save this show but she sure ain't helping.

ok i just hit the part in OITNB where the two mustache guys talk about their mustaches LOL

wow way to go The Bridge in teasing us with some notion of having broader thematic issues and resonance and then swapping that out for some straight se7en revenge fantasy

Yeah, seriously disappointing.

I'm one or two eps behind but yeah, this show has pulled the rug out from under me

Intrigued by the first episode of Continuum though it falls into a lot of low-budget sci-fi/procedural traps. I know it's not really 2013 but it's premiering in the US in 2013.

― Gukbe, Friday, January 18, 2013 7:24 PM (11 months ago)

man i could look at rachel nichols all day

and this has cancerman from x-files and that chick from andromeda in it too!

she's the only reason I've thought about watching that show tbh

still haven't seen it though

damn you rachel nichols

it's decent so far, got a lot of ideas to play with.

but really… sigh…

what is the 'chicago fire' spinoff going to be about? arson investigators? arsonists? burn unit nurses? fire code inspectors??

― j., Saturday, May 11, 2013 2:32 AM (8 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

apparently it is… cops. blurb is bound to be a tease

District 21 of the Chicago Police Department is made up of two distinctly different groups: The uniformed cops who patrol the beat and deal with street crimes, and the intelligence unit, the team that combats the city's major offenses, such as organized crime, drug trafficking and high-profile murders.

this seems like a ploy by dick wolf to get me to watch his boring firefighter show, since there's crossover

and there's gonna be an SVU crossover! i love that connected-worlds shit.

wait what? what shows are talking about?

second broad city ep also very funny

lol this isn't the right thread

do we have a winter 2014 thread?

nhex i talking about chicago fire, chicago p.d.

sadly despite a bit of post-shield in the premise (it's like he's running a strike force, except it's AFTER he got jammed up, and now he's back on the force because IA are trying to run him to root out corruption, only it turns out he is the one seemingly calling the shots) and a seemingly nice attention to stationhouse milieu it seems like chicago p.d. is yet another attempt by nbc to get by on the bare minimum. the two-ep premiere already had a give-me-back-my-son kidnapping and a dead cop, and even though it's set in chicago and they often say 'chicago' every single out-of-stationhouse scene appears to be set in a vacant warehouse wasteland, and the unit is so white (sorry, jon seda) that the main black roles seem to be for the drug gangs that the lead visits regularly to pump for information. (bunny colvin puts in appearances now and then but he's at the commander level, so not much cause to be in and out all the time, not even for the traditional 'black lieutenant' sop to diversity casting.) elias koteas and robin weigert are around but will probably be wasted. and jon seda's wife wants him to bring his hooker informant home for dinner because she is jealous. fine writing, dudes.

robin weigert, she pops up in random stuff, always happy to see her.
that all sounds awful, dick wolf cannot do the "standard" cop/lawyer show drama well, ever

it's sad, you could see some potential, signs of freshness (he's only the producer anyway, got some old hands in there but probably not everyone), but the cast is just too small and the writing too thin. like, they conclude the kidnapping with a bus sting, and the sexy young woman officer is confronting the perp who is holding jon seda's son, and the cops do a move that jostles the bus so the son is thrown to safety and the perp is off balance while sexy young woman officer is holding on to something, WHICH GIVES JON SEDA AN OPPORTUNITY TO ENTER THE BUS AS THE LAST MOMENT AND SHOOT THE MAN WHO HAD HIS SON. cmon.

there were some moments of detail that could have built something nicer but then they just rushed too fast to beats that they landed on like elephants. time to rush into the cell and strongarm the suspect, etc.

ugh i think like 30% or more of this is gonna be OUTSIDE FAMILY ISSUES to complement main dude's declaration at the end of the premiere that his squad is a family.

'cops are like a family' has got to be the #1 fast track to a cop show with tired storytelling

i miss nyc-22

Broad City is my jam.

Anyone watch Chozen? I liked the first episode more than I thought I would.

i was just looking for this thread to say broad city is good

i will not buy a sodastream full price i will not do it

ilana glazer looks & has similar manerisms 2 eric andre imo

i watched a few chozen and im not into it

chozen is kinda meh. broad city is dope and i have a crush on both of them

man...

ilana glazer looks & has similar manerisms 2 eric andre imo

I totally noticed this too!

do we have a winter 2014 thread?

We don't, but this one is more current.

2013 Fall TV Thread: Previews, Evaluations, Ridicule and Mourning