Michael Tyminski

The Short Form: The 66th Emmy Awards

The Short Form: The 66th Emmy Awards

Seth’s Hosting Job: I think Seth did a great job at keeping the proceedings going, but at times the show hit a very late night vibe with minimal grandiosity. This may be in part because his monologue was so brief and he was introduced with minimal fanfare (there wasn’t much of an opening credit sequence that you tend to see in awards shows), but what should be considered one of the big four awards shows almost seemed infinitely smaller than it should have. His monologue was not only short but seemed to fall fairly flat with the crowd, which was unfortunate because it was actually very funny, but the crowd seemed to appreciate the jokes more as the night went on.

The Show Itself: This show seemed to completely lack luster from well before the show even began (as one can expect from a show that scared off of a Sunday for the friggin VMA’s). Normally from awards shows we expect a pompous overblown affair with tons of glad-handing, self-aggrandizing, multiple sets and set changes and **shiver** overwrought musical numbers, however we got a bare minimum of those tonight. The one area the show completely dominated over the prior edition however, was in it’s memoriam segment, while last year we got six funeral dirges, this year we got one simple, classy, memoriam with Billy Crystal providing the best awards show eulogy for a man I’ve ever seen in his speech about Robin Williams.

It was a surprisingly good night to be CBS (or Modern Family): If last year was the story of cable and Netflix burying those last shovels of dirt on the big four, then this year would be about the big four making the most of their nominations. CBS picked up three Emmys on three different shows (Allison Janney for Mom, Jim Parsons for The Big Bang Theory and Juliana Margulies for The Good Wife). Modern Family also picked up a trio of Emmys for Best Supporting Actor, Best Directing and Best Comedy Series, meaning that yes, those pesky broadcast networks managed to pick up all but two of the major comedy awards tonight.

Breaking Bad Gets A Stunning Victory Lap: Up until the 10pm hour, the story of this night seemed to be parity. The comedy category split awards between five different shows (Modern Family, Louie, Veep, Mom and The Big Bang Theory), The miniseries hour saw similar division. However, once 10 pm hit, it was win after win after win for the last half-season of Breaking Bad. The final list included Best Supporting Actor (Aaron Paul), Best Supporting Actress (Anna Gunn), Writing (Moira Walley-Beckett for Ozymandias), Best Actor in a Drama (Bryan Cranston), and Best Drama Series.

On the Red Carpet Front: The story of this night on the red carpets is most definitely the color red. You could find red dresses anywhere on the red carpet, from Heidi Klum to E! Host Giuliana Rancic to Julia-Louis Dreyfuss and Christina Hendricks. While red is typically a very bold choice, the color seemed to work equally well on everyone wearing it even as the cuts varied wildly.

In terms of winners and losers, this is a night with way more winners than losers, especially on the comedy side. In addition to the red dress brigade, I was a big fan of Sofia Vergara’s white and gold combo, Sarah Silverman’s jade green dress, and . I think the big winner of the night was Laverne Cox who shone through the sea of champagne and red with an amazing and downright sexy white dress.

What didn’t work on the red carpet? I wasn’t a fan of Lena Dunham’s light pink look. While Dunham typically goes for something a little more anti-fashion as a rule, the dress, her skin, and her hair somehow managed to clash horrendously. Similarly Hayden Pannettiere’s decision to combine a deep plunging neckline and a third trimester baby bump just did not work for me. But for me, the biggest loser of the night was clearly E!’s clutch cam, which didn’t provide either the scandal, entertainment value or buzz (seriously people, it’s a bag – I may watch red carpet but I draw the line at accessories).

The Night In Speeches: In keeping with the pace of the show, everything seemed quick and to the point. Ty Burrell opened up the night with a pretty funny speech written from the kids on the cast of Modern Family. Sarah Silverman gave a similarly funny but incredibly winged speech after winning the writing award for her recent comedy special on HBO – thanking her agents while naming them after The Three Stooges and a number of other close confidants in one of the rare speeches that can be categorized as both short and rambling.

Steven Colbert and Jimmy Fallon teamed up after a flub filled award win for The Colbert Report to put together a pretty funny speech in which Colbert put words in Fallon’s mouth ultimately forcing the censors to jump in (in retrospect, I wonder why NBC didn’t offer Fallon the gig, he seems tailor made for stuff like this). Weirdly enough, the funniest speech of the night was Bryan Cranston’s self deprecating speech for Best Actor in A Drama

In Summation: This was a surprisingly tight show, fitting pretty squarely inside the 3 hour window NBC gave for the show. The Emmys also managed to avoid the funeral dirge angle that last year had with it’s six memoriam segments (five spotlights and the one usual montage) but also still seemed to miss the celebratory nature of these sort of shows. I think that the blame rests squarely on NBC, whom clearly treated this show as an afterthought (there’s still time left in the broadcast, let’s rush Vince Gilligan offstage in the last award of the night!), with little pomp and less circumstance. I don’t necessarily think that the show was bad, just lacking in star power (the only music segment featured “Weird Al”) and grandiosity (when you’re taking the backseat to the lowest wattage VMA’s in recent memory in spectacle, you’re clearly doing something wrong) and almost felt that the awards were reduced to a formality – a function i’m willing to guess was in part a result of the lack of love the peacock got in the nominating process (CBS and ABC did quite fine thank you).

Last but not least, this is my last day at Manhattan Digest, so I want to take this moment to thank Ryan for giving me a forum to grouse about TV over the last year and a half. It’s kinda crazy to see how I’ve grown as a writer and even moreso as a pop-culture consumer (lets just say I’ve watched more E! and Bravo in the last year and a half than I had any business doing in the 26 years of my life prior). I also want to thank all of you whom have read, commented, and devoted a little bit of time to reading this.

Fall Preview 2014: NBC

by Michael Tyminski

Fall Preview: NBC

Last year was a startlingly successful year for the peacock – the network somehow inexplicably ended up number one in demo and pulled off the coup of all holiday coups getting 20 million viewers to see it’s holiday musical special of The Sound of Music. While the schedule itself didn’t change much, we do see some shakeups in even NBC’s lineup, a little interesting for network that’s trying to build off last years success.

Sundays for NBC in the fall are way simpler than any other network: it’s football, football, and more football. NBC’s Sunday Night Football starts with a Thursday debut on September 4^th with the Seahawks and Packers facing off leading into their time slot debut on the 7^th with the Colts and Broncos.

Mondays also remain completely unchanged for NBC from last year with both The Voice and The Blacklist returning back to back on Mondays starting September 22^nd. The voice sees yet another judging rotation, with Gwen Stefani and Pharrell Williams joining the show’s central Adam Levine and Blake Shelton bromance. NBC further protects The Blacklist, by running State of Affairs (11/17) between the seasons of The Voice. This combination was one of the key planks of the peacock’s schedule last year and they wisely want to to keep the same foundation this year after seeing Revolution and Go On both die horrible deaths after being separated from The Voice.

Tuesdays kick off with the second day of The Voice, which along with Fox’s Utopia function as the only multi day shows on the air this fall. The 9pm hour is filled with comedy, with the debuting Marry Me, and returning About A Boy (both premiere on 10/14). Rounding out the night is the returning Chicago Fire (9/23), which has held down that Tuesday at 10 slot over the last three years.

Wednesdays remain crime night at NBC, (probably due to the relative lack of crime dramas on the other networks that night), and we see the returning Dick Wolf double header of Law and Order: SVU, and Chicago PD. Opening up the night, however, is the debuting The Mysteries of Laura starring Debra Messing as a detective who also has to deal with twin boys and a divorce. All of the Wednesday series begin on 9/24.

We do start to see some structural changes on thursdays for the peacock as the thirty year vaunted Must See TV comedy block is officially dead, with Parks and Recreation finishing out and Community kicked to the Yahoo! Screen curb. NBC’s plan for Thursdays this fall actually looks suspiciously like it’s Tuesdays. Moving into the 8 o’clock hour? The Biggest Loser (debuting 9/11). NBC’s favorite drama, Parenthood, then returns to schedule on Septmeber 25th, occupying out the 10pm hour. We do still get a 9pm comedy hour that is built with 2 new shows: Bad Judge,starring Kate Walsh and whose premise I shouldn’t need to spell out, and A to Z, a romantic comedy starring Cristin Miloti (best known as the eventual mother of How I Met Your Mother).

Fridays bring the return of NBC’s horror block. With Dracula kicked to the curb, and the always amazing Hannibal taking a snooze til mid-season, we get the returning Grimm at 9, followed up by Constantine at 10, making for a stellar year for DC’s licensing (this, the Batman universe for Gotham, and The Flash were all picked up this year). Both return just in time for Halloween on 10/24, reflecting a similar strategy to what NBC did last year. Dateline rounds out the night at 8. Saturdays are typically a non factor for the peacock outside of SNL, so expect the usual mix of reruns and top flight Notre Dame football games in the primetime hours.

Tomorrow we finish up our Fall Preview 2014 with a look at the CW and some returns to the cable landscape!

Fall Preview 2014: ABC

by Michael Tyminski

Fall Preview: ABC

Last year, ABC’s went through a big shuffle, blowing up Tuesdays in the hope of capitalizing on Disney’s Marvel movie universe. This time around, ABC keeps a very similar lineup only switching up some new shows while generally standing pat.

Sundays feature the usual cocktail of dramas for ABC, with Once Upon A Time, Resurrection, and Revenge (all return 9/28) returning to their regular slots of 8 and 9 and 10pm respectively. Mondays also feature their usual lineup of Dancing With The Stars (9/15) leading into Castle (9/29). While Dancing with the Stars received a cut in hours last year, the show maintains it’s 2 hour slot this year, preventing any further time related clawbacks for the veteran series.

Tuesdays, which was the alphabet’s trouble spot last year, still maintains the seemingly hodgepodge scheduling ABC gave it last year, but a slight shuffle makes the lineup start to make a little more sense. The night is still built around tentpole show Agents of SHIELD, which moves to 9 pm (9/23), allowing for both the lead in and lead out effect of last year’s most hyped show to positively affect the remainder of the night. The night begins with two new comedies in Selfie and Manhattan Love Story (both debut 9/30), and in a positive development, ABC finally stops pairing non-family comedies with Modern Family. Following Agents in the ABC’s Tuesday 10pm death slot (which killed three series last year) is Forever (9/22 – time slot premiere 9/23), a show that melds crime procedural, medical procedural, and vampires.

Wednesdays are still ABC’s comedy wheelhouse and the lineup resembles what ABC should have gone with last year. The Middle and The Goldbergs hold the 8pm hour firm leading into Modern Family at 9. It’s another year, and another lead out for ABC’s most watched comedy, as the show melds into urban family comedy Blackish at 9:30. Nashville survives another year to round out the lineup at 10 (all shows debut 9/24). The thing I like about this lineup is ABC finally figured out that it should just keep it’s family centric comedies together. At no point was the audience for Modern Family, The Middle, and Surburgatory ever really going to go for a show like Super Fun Night, Happy Endings, or Don’t Trust the B.

Thursdays see a slight shuffle with Grey’s Anatomy moving to 8pm while Scandal finds it’s home in the 9pm slot. New show How to Get Away with Murder premieres at 10. This is a very strong lineup, if only because it effectively counterprograms against the newly enhanced Thursday Night Football menace (more on that tomorrow) by focusing on three shows that will likely skew heavily female (all shows debut 9/25).

Fridays bring the usual mix of Shark Tank, 20/20 (both return 9/26) and the return of Tim Allen’s Last Man Standing (10/3), while adding quirky comedy Cristela (10/10) to the mix. ABC has found a surprisingly high amount of success with this hodgepodge lineup over the last couple of seasons and there isn’t much of a reason to change it. Saturdays meanwhile are the domain of College Football, a recurring trend that one can expect to see across over all four networks.

Tomorrow: CBS’s fall lineup features some interesting moves. Keep following us at Manhattan Digest for more.

Partners On FX Is Severely Lacking

by Michael Tyminski

Partners: Mondays at 9 Eastern on FX

FX has made a number of bold and interesting moves over the past few years – they focused on expanding their comedy division and had strong successes with Louie, Archer, and The League. Two years later, they laid the groundwork for a split into three networks: the FX we all know and love, comedy-centric FXX, and the movie channel FXM. Lately, the network has been an aggressive participant in the event series trend, with limited run series like the various seasons of American Horror Story and Fargo. However, they pay for all of these gambles from a trick they learned on one of their least critically acclaimed shows in the form of Anger Management, where they started using a 10 episode first season and 90 episode second season model to bring in top name stars for their newer shows, like they do with Monday’s new debut Partners.

Partners stars Kelsey Grammar and Martin Lawrence as two attorneys who start a legal partnership at their respective nadirs. Grammar’s character, Alan Braddock, is a hotshot attorney who just got fired from the family business and is making money doing some horrifically unethical legal work. Lawrence’s character, Marcus Jackson, on the other hand, is battling a divorce and has much of his work being performed pro-bono for baked goods. When the court forces the two to work together, they form a partnership in an attempt to be profitable and ethical something neither has completely grasped.

Partners is ultimately a mess. It’s pilot is an origin story that feels thrown together, with it’s points being held together with the absolute minimum of internal logic. The end result, is a story that feels not only rushed, but nonsensical at points due to the wild jumps of logic that the show makes. Furthermore, this show about lawyers seems to take a long detour into Braddock and Jackson being private investigators (while their assistants do seemingly nothing) at least once during every episode. Add in some tacked on family subplots by giving Braddock an unnecessary daughter and you have an incoherent plot soup.

Worse than that, much of Partners feels incredibly tired. Many of the the jokes feel like a raunchier version of something out of a 90’s sitcom (which is no surprise when you consider the showrunner is Robert Boyett whose mostly known for ABC’s TGIF block). This tiredness extends out to much of the line delivery, which for Lawrence especially feels flat and uninspired, as if it’s clear he took the script for the paycheck.

The one bright spot on the show is Grammar-himself, who keeps the same Grammar-esque pomposity and tone adds a little bit of the levity to the shows delivery. While normally I’m not a fan of someone hamming up on a sitcom, here it’s necessary if only to breathe life into the otherwise dull proceedings. Unfortunately, however, even that one bright spot is but a tiny shrub in the path of the awful tornado that Partners ultimately is.

The Final Verdict: The latest 10-90 experiment by FX, I would be surprised if Partners makes a second season. It mixes tired jokes, incoherent plotting, and mostly uninspired acting into what feels like an interminable 22 minutes. Skip this one, FX doesn’t misfire often, but Partners is a complete dud.

Fool Me Makes Summer TV Magic

by Michael Tyminski

Penn and Teller’s Fool Me: Wednesdays at 8 Eastern on the CW

I have opened numerous CW reviews talking about the networks love for supernatural dramas and teen dramas, but the other pillar they stand on is obscenely cheap unscripted programming to get them through the summer months. This time around however, they’ve managed to cross two of their pillars yet again, with a reality competition built around the paranormal (or whatever fancy word for magic you wish to use this time around). As a fan of fourth-wall breaking duo Penn and Teller’s last TV effort (Bulls**t), I figured I would take a look at their newest offering (not actually that new, this is a port from across the pond) to see if it brings the same level of entertainment.

Fool Me puts the titular duo head to head vs. a magician, who performs a magic trick. Penn and Teller, then need to replicate the trick after seeing the trick only once. Any magician who fools the veteran illusionists gets the right to perform with them during a show at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas. Hosting the show is well known British TV personality (and equally obscure on this side of the pond) Jonathan Ross.

You can tell that Fool Me was originally not shot on a CW budget from moment one, as the show opens with a very cinematic and swooping crane shot. Even the shows interview segments look particularly polished (even in relation to the standards of US reality shows). This runs contrary to CW’s prior summer offerings, which seem particularly cheap in comparison (see: the revival of Whose Line is it Anyway and Oh Sit for example)

The truest advantage of this show is that Penn and Teller have such a good grasp of the show that you simultaneously never feel like they’re not the stars but at the same time know when to step back and let the acts win over the crowd. This is particularly notable by their raucous closing act – a number in which Penn razzes a crowd member for a while with a basic card trick before the true trick is revealed when the card in question was palmed with a knife through his hand.

There are some flaws with the show however. Ross is not nearly game enough as a host, often dropping empty platitudes and awkwardly playing off of Penn and Teller’s charisma. This shows itself most glaringly during the opening act, a loaded dice trick where Ross’s cellphone was under the threat of being smashed during the entirety of the trick. Even with his own talk show across the pond, it often seems like Ross feels the need to one-up everyone on stage, creating a very awkward vibe whenever he has to interact with anyone on the stage.

The Final Verdict: I don’t expect a lot from my midsummer filler programming – don’t bore me, and don’t make me think too much, and in a lot of ways Fool Me works on both counts. Ross is kind of annoying, but there’s a reason that Penn and Teller command the amount of attention that any other magician (even the ones who get the occasional one off special cannot). Check it out, especially if you enjoy Penn Jillette’s acerbic wit or enjoy seeing some theatricality.

Running Wild Feels More Like Running Mild

by Michael Tyminski

Running Wild w/Bear Grylls – Mondays at 8 Eastern on NBC

The last decade brought two styles of reality television into vogue: shows about people roughing it in exotic and often dangerous locales that seemingly put the star in the face of death on a weekly basis (Survivorman, Man vs. Wild), and shows that took a look into the life of the rich and opulent (see any Bravo show that isn’t Top Chef). Needless to say, in the desperate scramble to come up with some summer television, NBC has elected to mix some roughing it chocolate with what it hopes will be some celebrity peanut butter in order to score a hit with it’s newest show: Running Wild w/ Bear Grylls.

Running Wild w/Bear Grylls is at it’s core about one simple concept: extreme vacationing with A-Listers. With a guest list that includes Zac Efron, Channing Tatum, and Ben Stiller, Grylls ventures around the world finding the ideal spots that will push their given celebrity to the limits. Monday’s premiere begins with Zac Efron traversing New York’s Catskill Mountains (an interesting call if only because when I think Catskills, I think skiing, old comedians, and Dirty Dancing – not life or death survivalism) trying to finish a 2 day course that includes a number of challenges including rappelling, skydiving, and survival.

So how is Running Wild? Well it’s pretty slow. There’s a lack of real tone differentiation between it’s high adventure and downtime moments, causing many of the journey’s legs to bleed together. I found a similar problem with last year’s Get Out Alive, meaning that they didn’t really learn the stylistic lessons of last year’s attempt at the same format. This is a shame, because a 120 rappel, skydiving, and worm omelets are all basically played as humdrum as a walk through the park on a Saturday afternoon. I don’t necessarily ask for excessive dramatics here, but some sense of stakes would be nice.

Oddly enough, the slowness actually contributes to the show’s strongest point: for a guy who’s famous for being stuck in the woods alone, Grylls is a surprisingly good interviewer. If Running Wild was truly meant to be celebrity rehabilitation puff-piece in the wild, then Grylls more than holds up his end of the bargain, coaxing his guests through numerous tasks – (the Catskills become Grylls personal high ropes course) while using the downtime to ask seemingly probing questions that ultimately make that weeks celebrities look better. This distinction becomes night and day when you see Efron’s cutaways, as the cocksure actor in many of the shows cutaways gives way to a more vulnerable soul out in the wild.

The Final Verdict: For the second straight summer I’m reviewing a Bear Grylls reality show, and for the second straight year, the show feels like it’s just there. It’s a true shame because Grylls is a quality TV personality, it’s just that Running Wild makes life-or-death resemble a trip to 7-Eleven. This is the sort of show that typically puts my thumbs firmly in the middle – check it out if you have nothing better to watch on an early Monday or are waiting for American Ninja Warrior.

Food Fighters Scores A Split Decision

by Michael Tyminski

Food Fighters: Tuesdays at 8 Eastern on NBC

The competition genre has seemingly been on it’s last legs for a while as the genre (Voice aside) has struggled to produce new hits. The end result is that reality hours for the most part have been down across the board, except at the peacock, whose newfound respectability (unfortunately, much to my chagrin, I can’t put quotation marks around respectability anymore) has a summer schedule jam-packed with as much unscripted TV as possible (Last Comic Standing, America’s Got Talent, and American Ninja Warrior being just some of NBC’s recent summer offerings). They add to this stable of competition television with Tuesday offering Food Fighters.

Food Fighters, at it’s core is like Bobby Flay’s Throwdown on steroids. One contestant, with their signature dishes (everyone’s got one – they typically get busted out for dinner parties and the like) must take on not one celebrity chef, but five whom attempt to knock the contestant off their culinary pedestal. The show stars Adam Richman (of misguided thinspiration scandal fame as well as Man vs. Food) as the host, while the celebrity chef pool features a mixture of familiar Food Network stars (Duff Goldman, Cat Cora), brand ambassadors (Lorena Garcia), and new faces (Jet Tila, G. Garvin, Elizabeth Falkner).

The first thing I noticed while watching Food Fighters was the grandiosity. The kitchen area is two tiered and sweeping, the show doesn’t spare it’s prize budget (you’re looking at a $100,000 top prize that seems attainable, but at the same time it’s tough to walk away with less than $5,000 – $10,000). While a lot of cooking shows have tried to give this sort of vibe in the past – this show is truly the closest an American company has gotten to copying Kitchen Stadium from the Japanese Iron Chef, with it’s decadent two tier kitchen, tons of lights and almost game show like appearance.

This grandiosity, thankfully, extends out to the chefs, who play up generally affable villains in the pro-wrestling mold. This include Kevin Belton, a Cajun chef with a knack for witty banter and playing to the crowd, and Marcel Vigneron, a former Top Chef competitor who has a knack for unorthodox cooking methods. It’s Garcia, however, who steals the show by putting on balancing act unlike any other with some impressive knife work and nimbly sashaying around Richman when he gets in the way during a mid showdown interview. Surprisingly subdued amidst the largeness of this show is Richman himself, who despite operating as host, commentator, and interviewer manages to fill a background role without taking the spotlight away from the competitors.

Of course, none of this grandiosity means a thing without a sound format, and Food Fighters comes through in that regard. Seeing how it’s ultimately the battle between home cook and celebrity chef, the show relies on two key twists to balance the tables. First and foremost, in a twist taken from Throwdown, the judges are average citizens, who are put to a blind taste test. Secondly, however, is the strategic element of Food Fighters, where the home chef picks which chef challenges which recipe, meaning that seafood experts could be forced to bake, while Italian cuisine maestros can be pushed into making tacos.

There are, however, a few mild quibbles. First and foremost, the five course setup gets slightly monotonous at points, even if the timers were often incredibly short (all of the battles ran between 15 and 25 minutes in length). The judging segments also seemed fairly weak, with the judges often restating the obvious, which makes some of the decisions feel downright puzzling when Richman announces them. Finally, the show only bothers to promote the end-bosses of any given show, which is a true shame, since it slightly misleads it’s audience.

The Final Verdict: It doesn’t necessarily add a ton to a genre that’s pretty well played out (both food competitions and competition style network shows), but Food Fighters won me over by coming way closer to the pinnacle of the genre than most of the cooking shows out there and generally sidestepping most of the melodramatics and ridiculous gimmicks that are a staple of the format. It’s downfall, however comes in it’s high variance, like many game shows, there will be some curbstomp level showdowns (one chef used egg roll wrap for his tacos because he “couldn’t find the tortillas” and got soundly whumped 5-0) to go with some truly amazing battles (Garcia’s showdown in particular, even the result is a headscratcher). Check it out if you get the chance, even if it’s the sort of show that will likely work better catching the odd battle or two on Hulu.

The Strain Is A Virus Stuck In A Useless Host

by Michael Tyminski

The Strain: Sundays at 10 Eastern on FX

Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen a ton of fantasy and horror on the airwaves – NBC has found a Friday night niche running out shows like Dracula, Hannibal, and Grimm. AMC scored a huge hit with The Walking Dead (which will be it’s last major tentpole standing after Mad Men leaves the air next year). HBO has found strong success off of shows like Game of Thrones and True Blood. Even Showtime has entered the fantasy game with Penny Dreadful. Now FX, which has made it’s name in drama off of gritty realistic dramas like The Shield, The Americans, Sons of Anarchy and Justified is getting into the supernatural game with The Strain.

The Strain, the brainchild of film director Guillermo Del Toro, follows the CDC Canary Team, a unit designated to handle to some of the world’s worst viral outbreaks. This time around, however, the outbreak is a virus that afflicts it’s hosts with an ancient strain of vampirism. As a result, Canary Team member Ephraim Goodweather (Corey Stoll) assembles a rag-tag army of New Yorkers to fight the vampires in a war that will determine the fate of humanity.

Let’s start with the positives: when The Strain wants to scare the pants off of you, it’s going to scare the pants off of you. This is particularly notable in the slower early portions of the pilot, where the episode lulls you into a false sense of security before using it’s jump scares judiciously. The show also manages to give off a couple of solid gore scares along the way for good measure, as you expect from a show that gives you large numbers of dead and undead bodies floating around at all times.

Unfortunately, those crystallized horror moments are lost in a bloated pilot. As is typical for FX, The Strain‘s premiere clocks in at around 100 minutes. Unfortunately, the pilot squanders most of it’s first half setting up awkward romance and divorce plots for Goodweather that feel tacked onto the show’s ultimate premise of good vs. evil. What makes these bloated moments particularly damning though, is that these moments don’t actually make me care about Goodweather (or any of the protagonists for that matter).

The flatness of the writing unfortunately extends out to much of the show, including the acting. It often seems like the actors are sleepwalking through their lines, even though the only characters with lines so far are the living ones. Similarly, while many horror movies tend to have their fun little moments (often when an undesirable character gets theirs), The Strain exists on being drab everywhere – even plucky moments where Goodweather and assistant Nora Martinez (Mia Maestro) are exchanging what one would assume would be banter are completely devoid of punchiness.

The Final Verdict: There’s a good show waiting in The Strain if it just cut out all the fat and focused on the primary plotline. Unfortunately, with the amount of filler in the show, it’s going to take a lot more than diet and exercise to slim down what felt like a grossly bloated pilot. I’d skip this one or wait until the season’s closer to over before looking at it– Sundays at 10 are prime real estate for dramas and this one has to be the weakest new offering in that time slot.

Trends from This Years Emmy Nominations

by Michael Tyminski

Source: Emmys.com

Earlier this morning, Emmy Nominations were announced, and as typical there are some insights and trends that can be gleaned from the International Television Academy’s nominations for this year’s award show, being held on August 25th a Monday for the first time ever.

The Academy finally watched a big four comedy that wasn’t Modern Family: It’s been a rough few years for the big four networks in terms of nominations at the Emmys. However, the one consistent beacon of hope for the big four has been ABC’s Modern Family. It’s taken four straight best comedy awards and held half of the best supporting actor field last year. More often than not, it, The Big Bang Theory, and the token Amy Poehler best actress nomination are all the networks have seen on the comedy side of the ledger.This year, however, it seems like the networks have picked up a smidge of ground on the comedy side. In addition to the above, shows as diverse as Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Mike and Molly, and even Mom managed to score nominations from the academy.

Conversely, the only network dramas that even remotely register are The Good Wife and Scandal: Another year, and on the drama side, it feels like another set of the same nominations (except for Homeland disappearing from the ledger). The nominations are the same stew of Breaking Bad, Downton Abbey, Game of Thrones, Mad Men, and House of Cards. The networks continue to generally be locked out outside of the acting categories, and even then the nominees only come from Scandal and The Good Wife (the latter of which typically needs nominations like this to stay on the air).

Netflix held it’s gains from last year: Last year, the big story was Netflix’s breakthrough, as the web streaming service scored nominations for season four of Arrested Development and House of Cards. This year, we once again see the voters loving House of Cards, with the show picking up multiple nominations. While there was no new Arrested Development this year, the voters found room in their hearts for Orange is the New Black and even Derek scored a nomination for best actor in a comedy (Ricky Gervais).

The Academy needs to figure out what to do with anthology and limited series: The academy showed remarkable inconsistency with how it placed it’s anthology dramas in this years awards nominations. The most egregious example? American Horror Story, which while different stories is in it’s third season was placed in the outstanding miniseries category, while True Detective, which is slated to operate the exact same way is placed in the best drama category. With limited series (shows designed to be one season and done or one season and a total revamp) on the rise, it’s essential that shows like American Horror Story, True Detective, and Fargo are all being considered in the same category.

It’s the usual suspects for variety and reality: If you follow the Emmy nomination process, all of the variety program nominations should come as no surprise (I believe Jimmy Kimmel Live, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Real Time w/Bill Maher, and Saturday Night Live were all nominated last year). This is a similar case in the reality category where smart money usually calls on The Amazing Race to win until the TV academy thinks of something new to automatically check off in this box.

The 66^th Annual Prime Time Emmy Awards are Monday August 25^th (in order to avoid a conflict with NBC’s football contract AND the considerably less prestigious MTV Movie Awards) at 8 Eastern on NBC. Keep checking Manhattan Digest for more news and coverage of this event.

Vicious’s Bite Is Delightful

by Michael Tyminski

Vicious: Sundays at 10:30 Eastern on PBS (Check your local listings)

No need for a double take, I am actually reviewing a new PBS show. While typically PBS skews a little more highbrow or educational than what most of my readers typically want to see, when I found out about Vicious I knew I had to make an exception to the rule because anything starring Ian McKellen will trump pretty much anything else, including an HBO series premiere happening concurrently (if I have time this week, I will try to pick up The Leftovers during the week). British comedies have traditionally had a strong cult track record in the US (PBS in particular being a key importer of the subgenre) so it should be interesting to see how Vicious translates as it moves across the pond.

Vicious is a multi-cam comedy about two longtime romantic partners Freddie Thornhill (Ian McKellen) and Stuart Bixbi (Derek Jacobi) trying to age gracefully while sharing the same London flat for a half century. With both men well beyond retirement age, their free time is mostly spent entertaining guests and slinging the most caustic invective possible at each other. The two are surrounded by a small clique of other elderly friends, and Ash, their considerably younger twenty-something neighbor.

So how is Vicious? Well starting with the obvious, it’s an incredibly snarky show, and it’s the sort of show that truly succeeds at it’s barbs. In a TV environment where barb-loaded multi-camera shows often swing and miss (Whitney and Friends with Better Lives both come to mind) for it’s barbs to feel not only funny but also unforced is a refreshing change. It often does that by layering the causticness on top of the delusions of much of the friend circle, whose swollen egos make for a sufficiently juicy target for the sniping that comes later.

None of this however, succeeds without McKellen and Jacobi, who completely succeed at being an old, married couple. The two are often at each others throats, but it becomes clear in the end that while a half-century of familiarity brought a ton of contempt, one doesn’t just stay with someone for that long without actually caring about the other person in the relationship. Furthermore, both actors’ theater background is put to good use as Vicious gives them room to truly ham up and vamp a little bit, which only helps to embellish the slams that are central to the show. It is in radiating out from McKellen and Jacobi that Vicious finds it’s groove and clearly the best angle for a show that doesn’t really do B-plots.

There are some very important structural issues that hold Vicious back though. This is particularly notable whenever the full cast happens to occupy a scene such as tonight’s wake: everyone (Ash excluded) seems to operate as the same exact level of acidity, leading to instances where everyone aside from the central pairing gets drowned out. The plotting also seems fairly threadbare at points, with the show often meandering or circling on it’s punchline-laden asides just a tad too much.

The Final Verdict: Vicious is an exemplary execution of the multi-camera sitcom. It doesn’t necessarily add anything new or revolutionary to the format, but instead simply works because it’s central pairing is better than pretty much any central pairing on this side of the pond. I’d recommend checking it out, with it easily entering must watch territory if you’re into McKellen or very biting comedies like Veep.

Michael Tyminski

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