TV Show Reviews

Falling Skies Seasons 1-3

falling skies

Falling Skies Seasons 1-3

Network:

TNT

Starring:

Noah Wyle

Will Patton

Drew Roy

Plot:

Survivors of an alien attack on earth gather together to fight for their lives and fight back.

Review:

I like aliens and a future setting but I’m kind of overloaded on a dystopian future. I’d much prefer a Star Trek future where shit actually looks like it gets better. If you act like the world is going to become a more shitty place to live it probably will. The power of positive thought?

Anyway. At least initially I haven’t noticed much consistency in the world. One episode when a kid with a thing on his back is woken up he can’t remember his dad but when the main character’s kid wakes up his first words are “Dad.” Doesn’t seem consistent.

The first season of a show is a lot of times the weakest. Right until the last one that is.

Second season picked up when they finally made it to Charleston but that was only a few episodes. Overall it was better than the first but still nothing much.

Third season is set seven months after the ending of the second. Noah Wyle’s character is now the president, his woman is about to give birth, and his oldest son is now in a wheelchair. The last we’d seen of him he was infected with some alien thing that seemed to control his mind? It wasn’t clear, or at least not clear to me.

The third season was definitely the best. I think the show really hit it’s stride when they arrive at Charleston. There are quite a number of characters they follow, and sometimes that can be a bit jittery as they bounce around from one to the other, but for the most part they’ve done a really good job of making me care about them.

I really liked the introduction of the new aliens in season three and the ending of the season was great. The new season starts June 22nd at 10:00 pm EST on TNT, so tonight.

Royal Pains Season 5

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Network:

USA

Starring:

Mark Feuerstein

Paulo Costanzo

Reshma Shetty

Brooke D’Orsay

Campbell Scott

Ben Shenkman

Plot:

An unfairly discredited but brilliant diagnostic surgeon winds up working with his cheesy brother in the Hamptons as a concierge doctor to the uber-rich and ultra-elite.

Review:

What the hell did they do to Paige, Brooke D’Orsay? She became this moody bitch and the relationship between her and Evan, Paulo Costanzo, is just falling apart. Makes me sad. Though originally I did ship Evan and Divya, Reshma Shetty, when Paige was introduced and also Jeremiah, Ben Shenkman, my feelings changed. I really like the idea of Jeremiah and Divya so they better not get rid of him.

Kind of disappointed in the whole Hank, Mark Feuerstein, pills thing. I was glad that there winded up being a legitimate reason, still thought that was an over done story line. Also it would be really nice if Hank Med wasn’t always in jeopardy.

3.5/5

New season starts tonight at 9:00 on USA

Numb3rs (2005-2010)

Numb3rs title

Numb3rs (2005-2010)

 Network:

CBS

Starring:

David Krumholtz

Rob Morrow

Judd Hirsch

Alimi Ballard

Navi Rawat

Plot:

Working for the FBI, a mathematician uses equations to help solve various crimes.

Review:

This TV show should have been called Math, not Numb3rs. It’s even said in the opening credits sequence, which by the way is stupid and did not grow on me.

They also did an episode in the second season about a group of gamers shooting up a school which, as a gamer, pisses me off. I hate when TV shows do that story and for a while so many of them did.

Honestly a lot of the tech speak in the show is total bullshit, I have no idea if the math stuff is though. Hopefully they used all their money on math consultants and not tech people. I read somewhere that some TV/Movie tech advisors like to give total bullshit mumbo jumbo to writers as a joke. If that’s true it kind of pisses me off because it takes me out of the story.

Don, Rob Morrow, has women that come out of the woodwork. Every few episodes it’s like there’s a new one that shows up. This stopped happening by the last seasons and he had a steady woman that showed up every few episodes.

If you’re looking for a show that you can have on in the background and not be distracted by this is the show.

Around the second half of season three things started to get more action packed so naturally I started to enjoy it more. There were still some fairly boring episodes that were easily ignored but now there were also Chinese spies, lots of gun fights, and some pretty decent explosions.

The ending of the last season came off as pretty rushed so I’m not sure if they knew it was coming or if cancelation was sprung on them. It felt like they were trying to close up story lines but ended up just rushing everything and it didn’t feel like much closer.

Oh well. Show grew on me, but then after six seasons it better. Liked the fact that they had several strong female leads and they could kick ass and didn’t constantly talk about men and stereotypical girl shit.

3/5

 

Royal Pain Seasons 1-4 USA Network

royal pains

Starring:

Mark Feuerstein

Paulo Costanzo

Reshma Shetty

Brooke D’Orsay

Campbell Scott

Plot:

An unfairly discredited but brilliant diagnostic surgeon winds up working with his cheesy brother in the Hamptons as a concierge doctor to the uber-rich and ultra-elite.

Review:

You can really tell the quality of the show increased at season three. The first two seasons weren’t bad but the timeline seemed a bit wonky and each episode ending seemed to happen ten minutes before the show was over. You ended up having three different endings which was weird.

Hank, Mark Feuerstein is a douche bag more often than not and my favorite character is by far Evan, Paulo Costanzo. It use to be Divya, Reshma Shetty, but season four her character became this love sick teenager and it annoyed me. I realize why they did that, she was promised to someone most of her life and she never had a lust filled teenage romance, still doesn’t mean I have to like it. Especially since they added a new doctor in the fourth season that was just so quirky I couldn’t help but want him to get with her.

Season Four had a season finale and then a two part Christmas special. Since I didn’t watch it live I’m not sure how they advertised but that’s how it felt. The season finale ended with an explosion and Hank getting knocked out. Then all of a sudden it’s Christmas? Wtf?

The Christmas Special was just ok, lots of emotional Christmas stuff, some that I feel didn’t need to be there. Did we really need to see Jill? Fuck Jill. Who cares about her? I want to know what happened to Boris. If they’ve killed him I’ll be pissed. The ending completely redeemed all the stupid stuff though.

Seasons One through Four are on Netflix Instant and season Five has aired but isn’t available steaming anywhere. Naturally after the ending of the Christmas special I had to go to Amazon and buy season Five. I did what they wanted me to do. Oh well. I haven’t finished watching it yet so I haven’t included it on this review. So far all I can say is dude that beard looks fake.

Season Six stars on June 10th.

4/5

Leverage (2008-2012)

leverage-cast

Network:

TNT

Starring:

Timothy Hutton

Gina Bellman

Aldis Hodge

Christian Kane

Beth Riesgraf

Plot:

A crew of high-tech crooks attempt to steal from wealthy criminals and corrupt businessmen.

Review:

I recently binge watched all of the seasons of Leverage. It took me longer than pre-baby but oh well.

The first four seasons were lacking in any kind of character development, but the heist of a week wasn’t a bad deal. Really the only development was with Nate, Timothy Hutton’s character, and it wasn’t forward development. Poor Parker, Beth Riesgraf, didn’t grow at all and then in the fifth season she became an almost different person.

The last season was character development overload. Back story was being learned on Parker and Elliot, Christian Kane, that had never been mentioned before. Parker and Hardison, Aldis Hodge, were definitely dating and there was even PDA. Nate and Sophie, Gina Bellman, were also most certainly in a relationship. It had been alluded to in previous seasons but there was never really anything positive there. She was always trying to get him to stop drinking and he was always trying to drink.

Technically I think it could have ended with season four but I really enjoyed the fact that the characters actually got to stretch out of their molds and grow in season five.

3/5