Milch + Mann + Hoffman = Awesome?

I don't ordinarily write about shows in development, but occasionally, one sounds so cool I can't resist. I was already intrigued by HBO's "Luck" due to the presence of "Deadwood" creator David Milch (one of the smartest and most talented writers to ever work in TV, and certainly the most colorful I've ever met), a subject (horse racing) Milch is passionate about, and then the presence of Michael Mann as a producer and director of the pilot. (Like Martin Scorsese on "Boardwalk Empire," I don't know how much Mann will be involved past the pilot, but it's gonna be a damn good-looking first episode.)

And late yesterday came news that Dustin Hoffman is going to play the lead, which is one of the biggest casting coups HBO has ever had. It's been a while since he was able to successfully carry a movie, but the guy is still a two-time Oscar winner, portrayer of some of the most iconic movie roles of the 20th century, and still a great actor when he's motivated to do so. (He's also still a big enough name that, as "Parks and Recreation" producer Mike Schur tweeted last night, Hoffman would more or less lock up the Emmy for lead actor in a drama for however long he'd be on the show. (Emmy voters love to honor movie stars who come to work in TV.)

I was going to watch no matter what, because I love Milch's work (even when it's weird and borderline-incoherent, like "John From Cincinatti"), and because Dennis Farina is one hell of a second banana to have in the cast. But Hoffman's presence means many more people will likely check it out, at least for curiosity's sake. And the more people who watch potentially great, challenging television, the more potentially great, challenging TV shows get to be made.

Big Bang Theory, "The Excelsior Acquisition": One angry Sheldon

Last night's "Big Bang Theory" had its moments (primarily, for this comic book fanboy, Raj's endless rant about Stan Lee's penchant for goofy character names). Overall, though, it felt like one of those episodes the show will do on occasion where the writers try to figure out which old sitcom trope might be funny if they insert Sheldon into it. And Sheldon's day in court/jail had a rough draft feel to it, as if the idea of putting him in those settings had been satisfying enough for everyone involved. I hope when Sheldon inevitably delivers a breach baby in an elevator next season, there's a bit more polish.

Still, Stan Lee seemed more convincing as himself than he did in either "Mallrats" or that "Who Wants to Be a Super-Hero?" reality show he did.

What did everybody else think?

Chuck, "Chuck vs. the Fake Name": Would you like green eggs and ham?

"Chuck" is back post-Olympics, and I have a review of tonight's episode coming up just as soon as my tastebuds fist-bump each other...

"I hate those will-they-or-won't-they things. Just do it already!" -Paulie Walnuts
"If you and this girl love each other so much, what's keeping you apart?" -Skip
"It's complicated." -Chuck

When last we saw an original episode of this show, "Chuck" Nation was in the midst of a civil war, with fans hotly divided between those outraged by the Chuck/Shaw/Sarah/Hannah quadrangle and those outraged by the outrage(*). Things got so ugly in the comments to the "Chuck vs. the Mask" review, and then the follow-up post where I asked Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak to weigh in on things, that I eventually had to shut down comments on both.

(*) And, yes, I will acknowledge that there are many gradations among the two groups, including those who haven't been happy with the season independent with what's happening with the romance arcs, but the two loudest and most visible groups were the ones who fell on either side of the 'shipper line.

"Chuck vs. the Mask" wasn't designed to be the last episode to air for three weeks, but that's how the schedule played out. The hope would be that "Chuck" would return from Olympics hiatus with an episode to allay the fears of the 'shippers and other doomsayers and bring "Chuck" fandom back together in the kind of peace and harmony that led to the show being saved from cancellation in the first place.

"Chuck vs. the Fake Name" was not that kind of episode.

Which isn't to say it wasn't a good episode. It was, I thought - one of the best of the season, in fact. It had a lot of humor, Chuck being a good spy, Casey being even more bad-ass than usual, the darker edge that's been an increasing part of this season, and some great pathos from Yvonne Strahovski and Zachary Levi in the scene where Sarah tells Shaw that her real name is Sam. Other than some of the usual "Chuck" stuff you just have to roll your eyes at or shrug off (like the wiseguys smashing Chuck's communicator watch for the sake of the plot), it was packed with the sort of material that makes me love this show.

But even though it had those things, and Chuck breaking up with Hannah because Sarah's near-death made him realize how much he still loves her, it also had Sarah moving more deeply into a romance with Shaw - going so far as to tell him a secret about herself that she never dared tell Chuck - as well as the conversation quoted above between Chuck and the two wiseguys(*) about how annoying all this Unresolved Sexual Tension stuff can get. And my worry is that those of you who were pissed off three weeks ago will feel just as unhappy, if not more, about that.

(*) Their actual character names are Matty and Scotty, but come on. You hire Tony Sirico to play a wiseguy, and we're gonna call him Paulie Walnuts. OH!

I will say this, before moving on to discuss the many things I enjoyed about "Fake Name": generally, when shows that play with UST start having other characters make meta references to how the two characters in question should get together already, then it's time for those characters to get together already. My enjoyment of "Chuck" doesn't hinge on seeing Chuck and Sarah together, but my patience does wear thin when we reach a point where the couple is clearly apart only because the creative team is reluctant to end the will-they-or-won't-they dance already.

Now, I don't think that's exactly what Schwartz, Fedak and company (here with Ali Adler on script) are doing. I think this recent arc (going back at least to "Chuck vs. the Nacho Sampler") about Chuck turning himself into the man he thinks Sarah wants - when in fact Sarah wanted the old Chuck and is alarmed by what he's becoming - is pretty smart, and has been very well-played by Strahovski. I totally bought that she would be so confused and troubled by Chuck's growing ability to lie that she might feel compelled to blurt out her true name to someone else - and that hearing her do that would hurt Chuck deeply. But I do wonder if Shaw isn't one complication too many. There could well be more to this story as we go along (either Shaw secretly working for The Ring, even though they keep trying to kill him, or Sarah pretending to fall for him because she doesn't trust him, or what have you), but as things stand now, I think the writers could have maintained Chuck and Sarah's distance without having to bring in a couple of outside obstacles.

(Though doing that would have deprived them of the opportunity to give the fangirls and fanboys an episode that featured both Superman and Lana Lang in towels. And I hear some people enjoy that sort of thing.)

Anyway, moving on from 'Ship-ocalypse Now, "Chuck vs. the Fake Name" actually featured several pseudonyms. Not only does Sarah briefly slip out from under her own, but Chuck (who already has a cover identity as Charles Carmichael) spends a good chunk of the episode posing as gifted assassin Rafe Gruber.

Chuck turns out to be surprisingly adept at playing Rafe, and the joke was written, directed (by Jeremiah Chechik), and played by Levi on just the right level: funny to those of us who know how un-Chuck-like the role is, but just believable enough to the likes of Paulie Walnuts. The comments about the cupcake store were a great punchline leading into the opening credits, and I loved Chuck-as-Rafe's desire for sterile dental instruments ("I want to kill him - not some secondary infection!")

Though the Intersect 2.0 goes on the fritz when Chuck is afraid for Sarah's life in the hotel room, for the most part he acquits himself very well on the mission, even earning a healthy dose of respect from Casey. (And Casey gets to be awfully impressive himself, not only letting Chuck pull his tooth for the good of the mission, but making the one-in-a-billion shot with the sniper rifle to kill Rafe and save the day.)

We also get to see how Devon is struggling with his spy knowledge, even without the burden of a fake name, and once again how hard it is for Chuck to let someone from the real world into his life, with all the attendant dangers it now includes. He mainly dumps Hannah because, as Ellie intuits, he realized he still cares for Sarah, but there was also a "Peter Parker dumps Mary Jane for her own good" quality to the way things went down, and I would hope that this is the last time the writers tell a story about Chuck trying to date a civilian - and not just because I'm hoping, for all our sakes, that he and Sarah get together soon, for good.

And on that score, I'm not too worried. If Paulie and Skip can see it, and if Jeff (while discussing Chuck's amazing luck with the ladies with Lester and Big Mike) can be lucid enough to see that those other women don't matter because, "When he's with Sarah, the light in his eyes shine brightly" - well, then I think we're heading towards a destination that everyone will be happy with, even if the journey there is longer (and bumpier) than many would like.

Some other thoughts:

• This week in "Chuck" music: "Faces in the Dark" by The Generationals (Ellie talks to Awesome as he exercises), "A Sleep Be Told" by The Traditionalist (Chuck tells Awesome he didn't cook this meal), "Living a Lie" by Daniel Zott (the whole Chuck/Hannah split sequence) and "Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion" by the great Italian composer Ennio Morricone, from the Italian film of the same name (Chuck, posing as Rafe, meets the two wiseguys).

• This week in "Chuck" pop culture references: well, pretty much every second that Tony Sirico (aka Paulie Walnuts) and Louis Lombardi (aka Big Pussy's FBI handler, Skip Lipari) were on screen together was an extended "Sopranos" joke (and, at times, a pretty broad one, but no moreso than much of Sirico's time on the real show). Meanwhile, Ellie talks about Chuck's childhood crush on Mrs. Seaver from "Growing Pains," and Chuck explains that he once played Perchik in a school production of "Fiddler on the Roof" (the revolutionary played by Paul Michael Glaser in the '71 "Fiddler" movie). Rafe's last name Gruber is almost certainly another "Die Hard" shout-out (Alan Rickman was Hans Gruber), and all dental torture scenes in movies and television implicitly hearken back to the "Is it safe?" scene from "Marathon Man."

• Rafe was played by Johnny Messner, who did a stint on "The O.C." as Julie Cooper's con man ex, and was also named in tribute to new "Chuck" writer (and "Survivor: Guatemala" second-runner-up) Rafe Judkins.

• So we found out early in season one that Sarah's real middle name is Lisa, and now we know her first name is Sam (short for "Samantha," or do you reckon Gary Cole just gave her a boy's name to be distinctive?). Anyone want to set an over/under on finding out her last name?

• Speaking of aliases, what do you figure was up with Casey's extreme discomfort when Paulie Walnuts recognized him as someone he knew as Alex Coburn? Chuck did flash on the name, which is never good.

• This is our farewell to Kristin Kreuk as Hannah, but Schwartz and "Chuck" producer Matthew Miller understandably moved to quickly work with her again on "Hitched," the sitcom pilot they're developing for CBS.

• "Hannah, don't you think this chicken is moist?" is just a funny phrase. It just is.

Finally, I want to make it abundantly clear that what happened with the comments last time will not be tolerated in any way, shape or form from now on. I have commenting rules for a reason, and it's because up until "Chuck vs. the Mask" aired, I was able to keep this blog as one of the few places on the 'net where people can talk about TV in a mature, level-headed respectful manner. Here are the two relevant sections I need people to keep in mind here:

Rule #1: Be nice. This is an opinion blog, and a place where people can and should argue passionately for their point of view. But there's a difference between arguing with passion and arguing with hostility. If you can't find a way to express your viewpoint without insulting other commenters, or getting strident and self-righteous -- say, equating your opinion with fact, and deriding other people for not seeing the truth of your words -- then either tone down your words until they're more respectful to other people, or don't comment.

Rule #6. What did I say about being nice? Given that most of the recent violations have been about Rule #1, it bears repeating. This shouldn't be that hard, but sometimes, it is. Talk about the shows, not each other. Period.

I'm going to be very quick on the trigger to delete comments this week if you all can't behave, and if things edge into calamity like last time, I'm just going to switch the entire site over to comment moderation until things calm the hell down.

Disagreement is fine. Hysterics and name-calling are not. Are we clear?

And having said all that... what did everybody else think?

How I Met Your Mother, "Hooked": The midwest pharma's daughter

A review of tonight's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I get an in at the roller rink...

On the last day of winter press tour, the TCA got to watch the "HIMYM" cast(*) perform the table read of the script for "Hooked." On the plus side: I laughed a bunch at the table read. On the minus side: I didn't laugh very much when I got to see the final versions of the same jokes.

(*) The regular cast plus Bob Saget, who doesn't usually attend, and guest star Catherine Reitman (Henrietta), but not plus Carrie Underwood; based on the number of magazine covers I see her on these days, I'm guessing she had too much else on her plate. But given how Future Ted spends so much of the episode being judgmental of Present Ted, it was nice to have Saget there to deliver the insults.

Now, I generally avoid reading comedy pilot scripts to avoid having the punchlines ruined (and the scripts themselves are never as funny as hearing the actors deliver the material), so I can't say for sure how much I would have liked "Hooked" had I come to it with virgin ears. But I think in this case my issues were less with my familiarity with the material than the final execution of it.

Having been on a woman's hook or three in my pre-marital life, I could very much relate to the episode's premise, both at the table read and in the final episode. But most of the material in the final version was incredibly broad, whether Scooter's pathetic teacup pig eyes or the frantic desperation of every scene at Henrietta's apartment.

Not helping matters was the casting of Carrie Underwood as the woman with Ted on her hook. Stunt-casting is one of those deal-with-the-devil situations. Britney Spears' appearance in "Ten Sessions" helped give the show one of its biggest audiences to that point, and the writers were able to work around her and focus the episode largely on Ted meeting Stella. But her next appearance in "Everything Must Go" was one of that season's weakest episodes, and too much reliance on Spears was a big reason why.

And Spears at least had experience doing a kind of sketch comedy, where for Underwood it's a triumph just to come across as a flesh-and-blood human being while the cameras roll. Her screen/stage presence has improved massively since her lox-like days on "Idol," but comedy is still a foreign language to her. So all she could do was the bare minimum that the role required, which was to look pretty and be immune to the charms of Ted Evelyn Mosby. With a less limited actress/comedienne, the writers could have had more fun with what's life from the perspective of the hooker (as Robin put it), rather than the hookee.

But I don't want to be too hard on "Hooked." Again, I laughed a bunch at the table read (though there's always the phenomenon of things seeming much funnier in person than they tend to on TV), and it's entirely possible that most (but not all) of my problems stem from knowing the jokes ahead of time. But Barney's history of hot professions was funny both times.

So I'll clam up and ask... what did everybody else think?

The Marriage Ref: Do I know you?

A review of the heinous, Jerry Seinfeld-produced "The Marriage Ref" coming up just as soon as you laugh hysterically at all my jokes...

When no "Marriage Ref" review screeners were sent out, I assumed it was NBC being high-handed, as the network tends to be even though it's been doing so poorly for so long. We're premiering this show after the Olympics! We don't need reviews! And while I'm sure that was a part of their thinking, seeing the final product revealed an equally obvious motivation: We are gonna get killed by the critics when they see this fiasco.

Now, I'm not pretending that TV critics have the power to make or break a network show anymore. With the Olympics as a lead-in last night and "The Office" birth episode as a lead-in on Thursday, "The Marriage Ref" should do okay for a while. But good lord was it excruciating to sit through: 30 minutes (imagine how bad it'll be at its usual one-hour running time) of celebrities being smug, mocking ordinary couples with arguments so obviously ridiculous and one-sided that they would seem justified picking on the wrong side, and cackling at each other's lame punchlines as if they were all attending the Friar's Club Roast where Jeff Ross made his legendary Bea Arthur joke. Painful, pointless, obnoxious... I would almost rather have "The Jay Leno Show" back.

It was really interesting watching Seinfeld on "Curb Your Enthusiasm" this year, where he played himself as Larry David's ideological twin, equal in their feelings of superiority to the rest of humanity, but with Jerry having managed to pretend to conform to society's laws. (He did it in part by using Larry as a tool to get out his most evil impulses.) But where "Curb" builds its humor out of Larry constantly failing whenever he tries to prove this superiority (making the joke be on him, and not the world), and where "Seinfeld" managed to make Jerry's smugness work because it was in reaction to a fictional, cartoonish universe, the more we see of Jerry out in the real world, the more irritating he becomes. It should be impossible to make me feel bad for Larry King, but Jerry somehow managed to come across as the bad guy while pointing out how unprepared and oblivious King is.

Not only was "The Marriage Ref" not nearly funny enough to justify the constant chortling from the celebrity panelists, host Tom Papa and the studio audience (though I will acknowledge that jokes always seem much funnier in person than they do on TV), but there was this undercurrent of contempt for the couples being judged that made the whole affair feel particularly unpleasant.

I think Seinfeld is a tremendous comedian, and still consider "Seinfeld" one of the greatest sitcoms ever. Alec Baldwin is an incredibly funny man, if also a complete lunatic. Some of the panelists shown in the clips from upcoming episodes (Larry David, Ricky Gervais, Sarah Silverman) are so innately funny that I'd almost be tempted to check out their episodes if I hadn't just sat through this ugly, unfunny, patronizing mess.

What did everybody else think?

There is a new blog logo. Discuss.

This week's logo theme should be pretty obvious both in terms of what the four women have in common and why I chose it this week (hint: one of them has a new show debuting). So rather than guessing, feel free to suggest some people who you would have included for this theme if we weren't limited to just four.

As always, you can find links to and explanations for all the previous logos in this post. A lot of you e-mailed me some great logo suggestions last week, and I'll be using many of them to bolster my own meager backlog over the coming weeks, along with full credit for those who came up with the idea.

'Southland' season 2 review: Sepinwall on TV

In today's column, I review the new season of "Southland", about which my feelings are unchanged from midway through the show's brief first season: the stuff with the two uniform cops in the car is pretty good, and if the show was just that, it would be fine, but the rest doesn't really work.