CMI on TV

by: Lauren Laster | Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - 10:06am

If you’re new to The Good Wife, you’ve picked a good place to join us. Season five hit the ground running with a new governor and a new firm. The season four cliffhanger about whether or not Alicia will leave Lockhardt Gardner to join Cary is immediately answered—Florrick Agos will be up and running in the next few weeks. Now that we’ve established Cary and Alicia are leaving, the episode leaves us with the question of how they tell Will and Diane, stay until they get their bonuses, and take enough big clients to stay in business at the same time.

As usual, the character-driven procedural keeps us interested through the relationships, not necessarily the case of the week. But this week’s case was particularly brutal. Was it just me, or was the intensity of twice seeing a man almost intravenously executed a little...

by: Evan Mantel | Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - 12:04am

Ronald Reagan popularized the phrase "trust but verify", but it would seem that the world of The Blacklist did not get that memo.

It seems like the FBI puts a lot of trust in a man who is supposed to be a world class criminal. And in this episode, that overly-trusting nature almost came back to bite them in the backside. Note to the FBI, it shouldn't be a surprise when the world class criminal plays you. Fortunately, he held true to his stated desire to ferret out the corrupt crime bosses. But Reddington is a criminal, and I wonder if he will always remain so noble...

One thing I find interesting in new shows is how some of the structures around the main plot line changes. I am talking about things like, secondary cast members, theme songs, or major...

by: Evan Mantel | Monday, September 30, 2013 - 10:59am

Well, this is disappointing. No, not the episode. My lede. I had a great little gimmick all ready to go centered the color red and the several red herrings that occurred in this episode.

Well, look who has egg on his face when he does a bit of research and finds out that what he thinks is a red herring is actually the literary device called Deus ex Machina. Whoopsies! Lede shot.

Anyways... There where three main uses of that Deus ex Machina device in this season opener. The biggest of these was Nolan getting out of jail. Apparently, he had put fail-safes into Carion to ferret out the Initiative. Seems like a lot of worry would have gone out of the end of last season if the writers had planned on using that out before the summer, but what...

by: CMI Staff | Monday, September 30, 2013 - 8:13am

This was the pilot. Pilots are weird. There’s usually a lot of time between when the first episode is shot and when it gets picked up for a full season, giving writers and producers time to think, change and adjust between that first episode and the rest of the season. Sometimes we’re introduced to characters we never see again. Sometimes writers decide to go a completely different direction with a character. And more often than not, the set gets a makeover. So don’t judge a show by its pilot.

That said, this show has some great potential. “The Crazy Ones” was advertised as the grand TV return of Robin Williams as marketing legend Simon Roberts. Add in Sarah Michelle Gellar as his type-A daughter-turned-business partner, several highly attractive employees, and McDonald’s as a client. The number of genuine father-daughter moments leads me to...

by: Cody B. Holt | Friday, September 27, 2013 - 11:06am

The premise is clever, Michael J. Fox is cute, Parkinson’s is a pain, and that’s about all you need to know about NBC’s new “Michael J. Fox” show. Unfortunately, NBC made the horrible mistake of showing us all the funny parts in the wall-to-wall advertising they’ve subjected football fans to over the last four weeks. Every laugh amounted to “Haha so that's how this fits into the narrative now that I've seen it 100 times.”

That’s not to say my high hopes were dashed. I’ve been excited about this show for a while. It’s as if it were my density. And fortunately, the execs decided to give us a one-hour premiere, which means we got a whole other half-hour episode that let us get past the standard awkward pilot. Honestly, even the good pilots are as awkward as a nerdy high school boy asking his crush to the Enchantment...

by: Evan Mantel | Thursday, September 26, 2013 - 3:33am

Modern FamilyThis was a classic Modern Family. And as such, I am upset.  Wanna know why I'm upset? (if you don't, why are you even reading??? Why?)

I'll let you in on a little secret: I write for a conservative blog. (I'll wait for those gasps of shock to die down.) As a conservative blogger on entertainment, I'm in a tricky predicament during episodes like these. With a crappy episode, (like this one) it is easy to rip the flawed presuppositions.

But this was a good episode. I laughed. I cried. I felt. It moved me like good art is supposed to do. But that's the problem. It moved me. It made me...

by: Evan Mantel | Wednesday, September 25, 2013 - 10:28pm

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.Not a good week for Cobie Smulders. Not. Good. At. All.

First the premier of her ticket to the big time, How I Met Your Mother, started off with a whimper. On Tuesday, her new show Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. underwhelmed as well.

Let me be clear, I don't think S.H.E.I.L.D. was awful. There are some intriguing questions surrounding Agent Colson and the concept seems really solid. But overall, the acting was weak and many of the lines fell flat.

One of the intriguing points in this first episode was the conflict between S.H.I.E.L.D.  and...

by: Matt Philbin | Wednesday, September 25, 2013 - 10:02am

“Our destinies are entwined. We’re on the battle ground where the armies of good and evil will wage war for the fate of mankind.” So says 250-year-old Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) to Lt. Abbie Mills (Nicole Beharie), the less superannuated half the “buddy cop” team at the center of “Sleepy Hollow.” That’s quite a claim, and its one that the show may stand or fall by.  

Basic set-up: Revolutionary War soldier Crane is killed in battle at Sleepy Hollow, but through magic, awakes in a cave there in 2013. Unfortunately, so does the massive, equine killing machine of a Hessian officer that Crane beheaded right before he died (and who, sadly, is not Christopher Walken, the Horseman from the 1999 film of the same name).

Crane is arrested for killing Mills’ boss, Sleepy Hollow’s sheriff, but she knows it was really...

by: Cody B. Holt | Wednesday, September 25, 2013 - 8:38am

Dear “Hostages,”

I always give a show three episodes to get me hooked. I get it – it’s rough to get things rolling, and it takes a while for characters to find their stride and for the plot to get “good.”

I’ll do the same for Hostages, but come on people, you gotta hold up your end of the bargain. The premise is interesting enough, for sure, but when your series premiere spends half of its time establishing characters at the expense almost any plot, I get a little worried. And bored.

That’s not to say this show can’t get really good down the line. And I’ll keep watching whether or not I enjoy it, because it’s my lot in life. There’s certainly potential there. And while the pilot is roundly dry, it does give us a boatload of questions that should get us through the rest of the season. It seems everyone in the Sanders family has a...

by: Evan Mantel | Tuesday, September 24, 2013 - 2:20pm

"This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper."

~T.S. Elliot

HIMYM: Season PremierLet me first just say that I am a big fan of How I Met Your Mother. By now, though, you should know what's coming next.

This final season premier failed to explode into greatness, rather preferring to whimper into the corner of perverted humor.

It just wasn't any good. There were parts that made me laugh, sure, but by and large the humor was forced and/or bawdy. If it wasn't a failed scene of Marshall trying to get a picture taken off the web, it was Barney's erotic cake...