Tom Dickinson is as much a writer as anything else.
I’ve got a lot of shows I’ll be tuning in for during the coming fall TV season. Here’s a list. They’ve all started already or will start in the coming week, unless otherwise noted.
I won’t be watching all of these shows every week, but still… it’s a lot.
Boardwalk Empire
Sundays at 9:00 on HBO
This show has been getting a lot of good press recently. Set in Atlantic City during prohibition, the series will follow Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi), a politician who tries to profit from the new anti-liquor laws. SOme have hailed this as HBO’s answer to AMC, whose show Mad Men has stolen some of HBO’s thunder in recent years. Whatever the case, this show is at the very least worthy of checking out.
The Walking Dead
Sundays at 10:00 on AMC starting 10/31
Speaking of AMC, their highly-anticipated zombie show The Walking Dead, based on the acclaimed comics of the same name, will be premiering on Halloween. This is virtually a no-brainer, if you’ll pardon the pun.
The Venture Bros
Sundays at 11:00 on Cartoon Network
I think this show has gone slightly downhill since its second-season, struggling to balance complicated story-lines with comedy, but it’s still one of the best animated shows on television.
The Sarah Jane Adventures
Mondays on CBBC
The only show on this list from across the pond, this spin-off of Doctor Who is a little juvenile but a fantastic adventure show in its own right. With guest appearances slated from the Eleventh Doctor and classic companion Jo Grant this season, and a finale with the ominous title of “Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith” it certainly looks like this is shaping up to be a great season.
Chuck
Mondays at 8:00 on NBC
I haven’t managed to watch Chuck consistently, catching only about half of the first season and about half of the third season, but I really want to catch up on everything and watch the show regularly this season. It’s a great action comedy with likable characters, and the humor is geared toward a specific audience of which I happen to be a part.
The Event
Mondays at 9:00 on NBC
I can’t say I have high hope for this show, which seems a bit too aggressive in its attempts to capture the mystery of LOST and the thrill of 24. But I’ll certainly give it a few episodes to see if it can change my mind.
No Ordinary Family
Tuesdays at 8:00 on NBC starting 9/28
This show, about a family with superpowers, could swing either way in terms of how enjoyable it is. It looks like at the very least it has a healthy sense of fun. I’m giving it a shot.
Stargate Universe
Tuesdays at 8:00 on SyFy starting 9/28
Stargate Universe really impressed me with its first season. I’ve never seen any other Stargate before this series, but in no way did that make this inaccessible. It’s a bit like Battlestar Galactica (in fact, it seem to consciously emulate it), but it makes for lighter fare, with less focus on religion and politics than on drama and derring-do.
Being Erica
Tuesdays at 9:00 on CBC
My only Canadian show. Being Erica is about a woman undergoing time-travel therapy, allowing her to relive her defining moments. It’s a bit soapy, but it’s a lot of fun and the lead actors are great. The series keeps getting deeper into the characters and introducing new variations on the time travel premise. I’m hoping Season Three will push this trend further.
Running Wilde
Tuesdays at 9:30 on FOX
This new comedy comes from the creator of Arrested Development and features one of its stars Will Arnett. Frankly, the trailers don’t look very appealing: it looks like a sappy romantic comedy into which Gob Bluth (Arnett’s character from Arrested) has been transplanted as its star. I loved Arnett in Arrested, but I don’t think that character can work as the center of a show, and particularly not a show like this. But based on the pedigrees of the creator and star, I have to give this a shot.
Caprica
Tuesdays at 10:00 on SyFY
We’re finally getting the second half of Caprica’s first season. The show is occasionally quite frustrating, but often interesting nonetheless, and it features some great performances. Here’s hoping they manage to iron out the problems and build an audience quickly, as SyFy is making the renew/cancel decision in November.
Undercovers
Wednesdays at 8:00 on NBC
This show about married spies looks like it could be a lot of fun, but it’s the name of creator J.J. Abrams that makes me really interested. We’ll see whether this show earns a spot on my regular viewing schedule.
Terriers
Wedensdays at 10:00 on FX
This show follows an ex-cop and his best friend in their adventures as unlicensed private detectives. After watching the first half of the pilot I almost took this off my schedule, judging it “good, but not for me.” After continuing to hear it get critical acclaim, I gave the pilot a second look and I’m hooked. Two episodes have already aired, and both have been great. This is certainly one to watch.
Community
Thursdays at 8:00 on NBC
Community was the funniest show on television last season, Modern Family be damned. I’m certainly hoping for more of the same this year.
30 Rock
Thursdays at 8:30 on NBC
30 Rock’s glory days are well behind it, but it’s still worth watching. I don’t know whether I’ll tune in every week, but it’s certainly got a spot on my DVR.
Fringe
Thursdays at 9:00 on FOX
When this show is good, it’s really good. The rest of the time, it’s just a mediocre paranormal procedural. But the show has been getting more consistent as it’s delved deeper into its mythology, and it certainly looks like they’ve passed the tipping point where the mythology is beginning to dominate the show. And in my opinion, that’s a good thing.
Human Target
Fridays at 8:00 on FOX starting 10/1
Loosely based on the comic from DC, this show follows Christopher Chance, a private bodyguard and security expert who only takes on the toughest cases. Human Target impressed me last season with its three charismatic lead characters and its amazing action sequences. The mythology is interesting enough, but the show does quite well in non-mythology episodes as well. It’s just plain fun.
Smallville
Fridays at 8:00 on The CW
Season seven seemed like a natural point for me to stop watching this show, as it had lost its creators and written out most of its original cast. Now that the tenth season has been announced as the final, I’m hoping they’ll go out on a high note that will remind me why I used to love this show.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Fridays at 9:00 on Cartoon Network
This show hasn’t always been incredible, and its flagrant disregard for established continuity is a little annoying, but it can occasionally turn out some really great episodes and it’s certainly worth a watch.
Young Justice
??? on Cartoon Network
I don’t know when this show will be starting, but it looks like a pretty cool animated take on the DC Universe. It’ll have to work pretty hard to measure up to Teen Titans, but I think it’s worth a shot.
There’s a point during Scott Pilgrim vs. the World when the title character “levels up.” In the world of Scott Pilgrim, this is an expression of the protagonist’s moral development, as you might find in any well-told story. Sometimes this is signified by a moment of epiphany: perhaps a sharp intake of breath, a swell of music, a long, slow shot of the protagonist’s furrowed brow, a symbolic gesture performed involving a cherished object, or something of the like. In this case, it just happens to manifest as the literalization of a video game metaphor. Scott’s vital stats (Heart, guts, will, etc) go up. Either you accept this in the spirit in which it is offered, or you reject it as an idiotic conceit, the death of cinema, and a symptom of all that is wrong with today’s youth.
I think it signifies a deliberate statement by director Edgar Wright to viewers who cherished the comics. Wright acknowledges that he hasn’t captured the journey of the comics’ protagonist, because he is interested in taking his Scott on a different journey altogether. There’s no question that Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is, as an adaptation of the story in Bryan Lee O’Malley’s comics, a pretty shallow distillation. This is not a criticism, it’s a statement of fact. When you take six graphic novels and cram them into a two-hour movie, large chunks of the source are going to be left out. The reason the film works (which it does, and very well) is because it’s not afraid to be its own entity with a different purpose and tone from the work that inspired it.
At the start of the film, as in the comic, we are introduced to Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera), a young slacker living in Toronto. He plays in a garage rock band called Sex Bob-Omb, and enjoys an immature and utterly chaste “relationship” with a high schooler named Knives Chau (Ellen Wong), who idolizes him and his band far beyond their respective merits. Scott’s world is shaken up when he meets the American delivery girl Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), the who is the girl of his dreams (literally: she enters his dreams, which is where he first encounters her). Scott begins to pursue a relationship with Ramona, but soon discovers that as a result of their involvement he will be attacked by the League of Evil Exes, consisting of seven of Ramona’s vindictive past lovers.
The look and feel of the film are certainly not like any other film I’ve ever seen. I’ll admit it’s not as groundbreaking as some of its admirers have claimed: in fact, it’s not too far out of line with Wright’s own past work. Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz both deconstruct established genres and reconstruct them into something which is at the same time a parody and an exemplar of that genre, and also entirely new and fresh (and hilarious). Shaun of the Dead was a parody of zombie movies, but it was also itself a really solid zombie movie, as well as a fantastic romantic comedy. But Scott Pilgrim vs. the World does this with a level of aesthetic richness unachieved by either of those films (or any similar examples that I can think of) and gathers influences far greater in number and diversity. The most obvious are from comic books and video games, the former contributing a lot of the film’s unique visual elements and the latter lending the film its structure and many of its best visual jokes. 
But just as important (yet not as remarked-upon by the mainstream film press) is the swath of musical influences that are brought to bear on the movie. You don’t bring in Nigel Godrich to oversee the music for your film unless you mean business. Godrich’s score excels, both in fast-paced action scenes (employing garage-fuzz and retro-chiptune sounds in equal measure, among others) and more contemplative, melancholy moments (Which sounds like Jon Brion in an underwater echo chamber). It’s just as dense and highly polished as you’d expect from any Godrich-produced record. The enlistment of Beck, Broken Social Scene, and Metric to bring the film’s fictional bands to life is pure magic, particularly Beck’s grungy, unpolished garage rock which stands in for Scott’s band Sex Bob-Omb. This contrasts nicely with the use of the Metric tune “Black Sheep,” which was apparently deemed too slick for their uber-slick 2009 Fantasies. Here the song is given to Envy Adams, Scott’s “evil” ex-girlfriend, and it fits her like a glove—and why wouldn’t it? Envy was originally inspired by Metric frontwoman Emily Haines. The film’s non-diegetic music is just as impressive and diverse, ranging from huge names like The Rolling Stones to obscure Canadian girl band Plumtree (whose song “Scott Pilgrim” actually inspired the title of the comic). In a film as thoroughly preoccupied with music as this, even the slightest musical misstep would make the whole film seem disingenuous and heinously so. It’s greatly to the film’s credit, then, that Godrich and Wright (working in collaboration with O’Malley) get pretty much everything perfect, and it makes both the soundtrack album and the score album must-owns.
Of course, all the slick direction and music in the world wouldn’t save the film if it wasn’t well-cast, but that’s not a problem either. It’s apparent that moviegoers are suffering from Cera fatigue, and critics have accused his overly sensitive milquetoast persona of being the bane of this film, but this reviewer disagrees. Here Cera demonstrates that given the right film, he can rise to the challenge and serve as an engaging (if unusual) leading man. Perhaps the reason it works so well is because rather than Cera’s typical “
As for the film’s supporting cast, the worst that can be said is how tragic it is that each of them can’t get more screen time. The most egregiously slighted are Kim Pine (Allison Pill), Scott’s former girlfriend from high school who now plays in his band, and Envy Adams (Brie Larson) Scott’s former girlfriend from college who used to play in his band, until making it big and leaving him behind. While Kim is an important character in the comics, Pill’s role is reduced to a source of scowling sarcastic one-liners. But she slings these with such aplomb that one can’t help but wish we could learn more about her and watch Pill delve into her storyline from the comics. Similarly, Brie Larson’s brief on-screen presence gives only a surface impression of O’Malley’s version of Envy. But as no film can be perfect, the fact that the supporting cast is so good that it leaves you desperately wanting more is a good problem to have.
The film also has its share of standout performers who actually are given their due. Chief among these are Ellen Wong as Scott’s underage girlfriend Knives, and Kieran Culkin as his snarky gay roommate Wallace Wells. Wong’s performance shifts so effortlessly from humor to pathos on a dime that it’s impossible not to love her. And yes, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, it lacks the complexity of her character from the comics, but the film certainly does right by her nonetheless. Her importance is actually stressed more in the film than the comics, and she is given a key role in the film’s climax while she is sidelined in the final graphic novel. Wong is such a presence in the film that she probably deserves to be billed as one of the stars. As for Wallace Wells… well, he was never particularly complex in the comics, so you’ll hear no complaints about his diminishment from me. Culkin steals nearly every scene he’s in, and is one of the funniest things about the movie. If there’s any justice in Hollywood, then both Culkin and Wong will be noticed for their stellar performances in this film despite its lackluster performance at the box office (and their near absence from the film’s promotional material).
The film is chock full of other admirable performances: Anna Kendrick (best known from Twilight) is hilarious as Scott’s gossipy sister Stacy. Mark Webber, despite his lack of musical experience, rocks out as Scott’s nervous bandmate Stephen Stills (yes, that is the character’s name, and there’s another character named “Young” Neil). Aubrey Plaza (who can be seen on NBC’s “Parks and Recreation”) is a riot as the bitchy, profane Julie Powers. And then, of course, there’s a veritable slew of Ramona’s evil exes.
But my complaints about the film, ultimately, are only minor gripes, motivated by intense fan love. I miss the complexity of the books, but trading that complexity away for cinematic energy is appropriate. The film makes it seem perfectly justified by compressing the time scale of the story: while the comics unfold over the course of more than a year, the film seems to take place in a span of days, or at most weeks. So the film’s lack of depth seems appropriate to the early days of a relationship, when it’s all very surface-level. It brings me back to my initial point: that Scott Pilgrim vs. the World isn’t even really attempting to capture the story of the comics, instead only using the basic gist of the premise to build its own story. In the process, much of what I love most about the comics is excised, but then again, the comic lacks much of what I love most about the film: the fantastic performances, the cinematic energy, and the rich visual and aural aesthetic. In the end, I’m left with two very different takes on Scott Pilgrim, neither a pale shadow of the other, each with its own peculiar magnificence.
Frankly, “Teacher’s Pet” is a pretty uninteresting episode of Buffy, which is a bit of a surprise because it comes from David Greenwalt. There are some rather funny dialogue moments, but it’s not enough to save this episode. Overall, I think it’s the weakest thing I’ve reviewed so far, and yes that does include the film and the unaired pilot. 
It seems to me from my limited research that “Never Kill a Boy on the First Date” hasn’t exactly been celebrated by Buffy fandom, and that’s not really fair to it. It won’t be making any top ten lists, but it’s a very good episode that’s significantly different from what’s come before and does a good job of showing the versatility of the show—even if the main antagonist is another vampire. 
The boy Willow is getting romantically entangled with turns out to be more than he had seemed at first. In other words, this episode seems in some ways to be a bizarre parody of the previous one. But aside from some extremely cheesy usage of technology, this episode held up pretty well. 
I only watched this film reluctantly. Why? Mostly because Joss Whedon has basically disowned it. He’s been fairly open about the fact that he felt director Fran Rebel Kuzui mishandled his script. So, for this reason, the movie is sort of the black sheep of the Buffy franchise. But you know what? I actually quite enjoyed it. Kristy Swanson’s Buffy will never be my Buffy, but by no means does that make her a bad Buffy. 
Like the movie, Joss has disowned the pilot, and declined to release it in any form. As far as Joss is concerned, there will never be an official release of the Buffy pilot presentation. In fact, the pilot isn’t really all that bad. I think it’s genuinely about 80% of where Buffy was by the time it made it to air. Most importantly for me, it contains all of the sparkling Joss dialogue you’d expect, and even a few gems that never made it to air (which I’ll let you experience for yourself). 
Many dislike the first season of Buffy, but I’m not one of them, and I think the premiere is a particularly strong moment for the show. “Welcome to the Hellmouth” provides a great introduction to these characters and this world. There’s a lot going on in this episode, from the setup of the world to some great (and not-so-great) performances by the cast. It all adds up to a very enjoyable beginning that just oozes with potential. 
This episode provides us with some of our first really big action sequences, as well as some of our first big library exposition scenes. Overall, it’s a fine conclusion to the gang’s first adventure, kicking off Buffy in style. The season arc, while basic, is set up well here and we get a pretty good sense of what the world of Sunnydale is going to be like for Buffy. Some of the performances still aren’t up to what they’ll one day be, but nonetheless it’s quite enjoyable. The ending scene is just bad. 
This episode provides some really solid drama and a well-told, twisty-turny “monster of the week” procedural aspect. There are some strange shifts in characterization from the premiere, and there’s virtually no serial aspect to this episode, but neither of those prevents it from being a great episode of Buffy. 
So. Wow.
