2011-2012 New Show Reviews, Part I

Hey, did you know Matthew Perry has a new sitcom on NBC? If you watched even 10 minutes of their primetime Olympic coverage you do! The ads were unavoidable. They even interrupted the event coverage one night for a "full episode preview" of Perry's new show, Go On (or, as I like to call it, Goon). I watched it, and though it was a blatant attempt to rip off Community and market it to a more mainstream audience, it was better than anticipated.

Go On was the first major new show of the 2012-2013 TV season to debut (it's official premiere was Monday night). This means that the 2011-2012 season is over, and many of last year's new shows will be making their way to Netflix or DVD soon, if they're not available already. As a public service, I'm going to give (hopefully) brief reviews of every show to debut between August 2011 and August 2012 that I watched at least one episode of. (I've had intentions of doing this since at least last December; hopefully I'll remember the shows well enough that I haven't seen since last fall.)

This is definitely going to require multiple parts, though at this point I'm not sure how many. It will depend on how wordy I get about each show. If you didn't already know I watch a LOT of TV, you're about to. I'll limit Part I to the new cable shows I watched, listed in order from worst to best.

Brand X With Russell Brand, FX
Episodes Watched: 2 of 6
Status for 2012-2013: Seven new episodes ordered
For those who like: I don't know...leaving the TV on after Louie ends?
Comments: Ugh. I've never been a Brand fan; his Saturday Night Live appearance was ok, but his stand-up and his VMA hosting gigs were awful. On Brand X, Brand has an intentionally humorless sidekick (interesting choice for a comedy show) who feeds the host statistics he just Googled, and Brand riffs on them, inevitably making vulgar, unfunny jokes. Stay away from this one.

Baseball Wives, VH1
Episodes Watched: 4 of 8
Status for 2012-2013: Canceled
For those who like: Basketball Wives, but wish it wasn't so, um, urban.
Comments: This is the first show in the "housewives" genre that I've ever watched, and despite my admitted TV addiction, I'm confident it will be the last. Most of those other shows took place in potentially exciting locales like New York, Miami, Los Angeles, etc. Baseball Wives is set in Scottsdale, Arizona. That's strike one. The term "baseball wives" is used pretty loosely, too. The cast members are all either married to or divorced from retired players, except for one, who used to sleep with a current major-leaguer but was never anything close to his wife. That's strike two. And the show is soooo boring. In the confessional interviews you'll hear things like "I invited Anna to lunch to discuss the comment Erika made at our lunch last week." NOTHING happens on this show! That's strike three. Total whiff by Baseball Wives.

Full disclosure: the main reason I gave this show a try was because of Anna Benson. She gained notoriety about a decade ago for her outlandish comments and some racy pictures that littered the Internet. She became a bigger star than her husband, a mediocre pitcher. I thought she would make the show entertaining, or at least be nice to look at. Wrong on both counts. She's a horrible, rude person, and when I finally heard her voice for the first time, any potential physical allure disappeared as well. She sounds like a 80-year-old woman who's smoked three packs of cigarettes a day for 60 years.

Key & Peele, Comedy Central

Episodes Watched: 8 of 8
Status for 2012-2013: Renewed for 2nd season
For those who like: In Living Color
Comments: It's ok sketch comedy from a couple of former MADtv cast members. A couple of laughs per episode, but no single sketch or character that was really memorable. I like the genre, so I'll probably keep watching when the new episodes start up later this month.

Totally Biased With W. Kamau Bell, FX

Episodes Watched: 4 of 4
Status for 2012-2013: Unknown; the original order of 6 episodes hasn't even been completed yet
For those who like: Political commentary with a sprinkling of humor
Comments: There's a racial bent to everything on this show, and sometimes it's pretty forced. I love jokes about politics and other potentially divisive issues as much as anyone, but there actually have to be, you know, jokes. Just being indignant about something or insulting those whose views differ from yours is not the same as telling jokes. There's some humor in Bell's monologues, but not enough. He's done a couple of "man on the street" segments that have been pretty entertaining. Biased is a HUGE step up from Brand X, but it's definitely no Daily Show.

The Newsroom, HBO

Episodes Watched: 1 of 10
Status for 2012-2013: Renewed for a second season
For those who like: Every other Aaron Sorkin project
Comments: HBO surprisingly made the full pilot available on YouTube, otherwise I probably wouldn't have ever seen this show. I think I was a little prejudiced by some negative reviews I read before watching the episode, but a lot of the criticisms leveled against the show are true: it's at least a little pompous, the characters' ultra-competence at their jobs is incongruous with their failures in relationships, etc. But I love TV, and I love shows about TV, so I kinda liked it. Not enough to subscribe to HBO, but if they want to put more episodes online for free, I'll watch.

Pop-Up Video, VH1

Episodes Watched: Don't know for sure, but probably at least 50 of the 60 new episodes
Status for 2012-2013: The new season is already underway
For those who like: Music videos, and those who LOVE trivial tidbits about the production of said videos
Comments: This is a reboot of the show that aired from 1996-2002. Most of the "popped" videos are from the years after the show's original run stopped, but occasionally they'll slip in some "classic" '90s videos from the likes of De La Soul, Foo Fighters, or Goo Goo Dolls. I love music videos and I love trivia (especially cheeky trivia like the bits given here), so this show is tailor-made for me. It's always a fun half-hour.