Author Archives: Allison Lips
‘Mom’ Has To Deal With “A Pee Stick and an Asian Raccoon”
Is it possible for a show to jump the shark at the beginning of the second episode? Yes. Mom can now claim that award.
It’s official, Christy’s daughter, Violet is pregnant. (The pee stick in this episodes title is a pregnancy test. Oh, the writers are so mature.) Considering, Violet’s grandmother and mother both had children in their teens, it was likely, but it didn’t have to happen. Violet could have been the odd woman out in her family. She could have gone onto college and not followed in Grandma “Aunt” Bonnie and Christy’s footsteps. Instead, Violet thinks her life will be fine because the baby isn’t due until after she graduates.
Violet’s life may workout because Bonnie and Christy want to be a better great-grandmother and mother, respectively, than they were a mother, but that’s not guaranteed. Her boyfriend, Luke, is a moron. He’s the guy who’s too stupid to realize that when your girlfriend only has sex with you, you have to be the father of her baby. Luke doesn’t comprehend that and thinks receiving the “iffy” burgers at his fast food job is a perk. He has no future, yet Violet is head-over-heels in love with him. Fortunately for her, Luke’s to stupid to conceive of running away from his pregnant girlfriend.
Stephen Merchant is Delightfully Awkward in ‘Hello Ladies’
Hello Ladies may take place in Los Angeles and air on an American channel, HBO, but it is a pretty standard modern British sitcom. Every character is an awkward person, who doesn’t know how to function in normal settings. In this case, Stuart Pritchard (Stephen Merchant) leads his group of awkward male friends around LA nightlife as an attempt to pick up women. Spoiler alert, it doesn’t have the outcome they wanted.
Stuart’s best friend is Wade, whose wife recently left him. Wade somehow manages to walk into doors that don’t exist. This is a man who introduces himself to women in a bar as Wade as in Roe vs. Wade. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he then goes on to remind the women- he and Stuart barely know, yet want to have sex with- that it was the court case about abortion. Stuart digs the hole deeper by saying, “Let’s not talk about abortion before we have to.” That line pretty much sums up Hello Ladies‘ premise in a blunter fashion: men looking for cheap meaningless sex. You could easily think of Stuart as a gawky unsuccessful Joey Tribbiani.
‘The Crazy Ones’ Is A Half Hour Ad
Do you want to watch a half hour long McDonald’s ad? Of course, you do. Nothing’s better that 30 minutes of trying to convince a celebrity to sing “You Deserve a Break Today.”
Not really.
CBS needs a reality check. No one wants to watch a sitcom length ad, even if it stars Robin Williams. And yet, The Crazy Ones is just that: an ad disguised as a sitcom starring Robin Williams. Since the show does take place at an advertising agency, many viewers may be generous enough to give the show a pass on using real brands because it adds realism. The problem with that is the show isn’t realistic at all.
Which Returning Show Are You Looking Forward To?
We’re trying something new at Wait! What’s a Dial? In the past, we’ve reviewed shows based on their trailers. However, now that we’re reviewing a lot of pilots, we want you to let us know what you think the upcoming season of returning shows will be like based on their trailers.
Homeland
Is “Back in the Game” in the Game?
I’m going to be honest. Back In the Game is not a show I’ll be watching week after week. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad show. I’m just not one of those baseball dads or soccer moms who turned the show on and said “this is my life.”
Back in the Game focuses on the relationship between Terry Gannon, her son, Danny, and her dad, The Cannon. The three of them live under one roof because Terry had to move back home after her divorce. Terry, played by Maggie Lawson, isn’t happy about the arrangement because The Cannon always calls Danny “Donny” and pushes baseball on him., which is a problem because not only is Danny not very athletic, he’s only interested in the game to get a particular girl.
Things are complicated when Danny’s tryout is so bad he doesn’t make the team. The coach, Dick, holds a meeting for parents of all the rejected kids. It becomes clear that Dick rejected all the outcasts. The foreign looking kid. The flamboyant stereotype of gay men. The fat kids. All don’t make Dick’s team.
‘The Goldbergs’ Retread ‘The Wonder Years’
The Goldbergs is a lot like The Wonder Years. Perhaps too much. Both have an adult narrator reflecting back on his childhood and take place during what is perceived as a more idealist time. For The Wonder Years it’s the 50s; for The Goldbergs that time is the 80s. Had the similarities ended there, The Goldbergs would be described as inspired by The Wonder Years. Instead, it’s a copy.
How similar is The Goldbergs to the beloved sitcom about Kevin Arnold? Grumpy father? Check. Perky mother? Check. Older sister? Check. Older brother? Yup. Winnie Cooper? No, but there’s a already a love interest for young Adam Goldberg. Supposedly, all these characters are based on real people, but that doesn’t help the show’s case.
Read the rest of the article at No White Noise.
Not Everyone Will Love ‘Mom’
Mom is a broad comedy that wouldn’t feel out of place in TV Land’s lineup with Hot in Cleveland and The Exes. While it is not the best show ever, Mom works well and is one of the few shows nowadays that an entire family can watch together.
Mom stars Anna Faris as Christy. At first Christy isn’t the most likeable character, even though she is genuine. As the pilot progresses, we find out that Christy can’t connect with her daughter because she takes after her mother, Bonnie, who was a terrible parent. Both women are members of Alcoholics Anonymous, which is where they run into each other after years of not talking. Christy tries to be a better parent than her mother was, but its hard when her mother is the perfect grandmother for Christy’s daughter, Violet. Despite not getting along with her, Violet take after her mother, Christy. Have you noticed a theme yet?
Christy, Bonnie, and Violet have a tendency to date really stupid men. Baxter is the son of Christy’s youngest son and thinks selling pot is a good way to get money for the child support he is six months behind on. Bonnie will do just about anything that moves. Violet has the most stable relationship with men. She has been with her current boyfriend Luke for around a year. However, Luke’s about as bright as Baxter. The only reason Luke likes bananas is because they come with their own container.
Conan Celebrates 20 Years In Late Night, We Look Back at ‘Late Night’
It’s hard to believe that Conan O’Brien has had a late night talk show for 20 years. Granted, he’s had three of them: Late Night with Conan O’Brien, The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, and Conan, but that’s still no easy feat. He could have gone the way of Pat Sajak and Chevy Chase a long time ago. Actually, that was expected of him. Very few critics foresaw Conan having a long career and many, as demonstrated in this review from Entertainment Weekly, were unnecessarily harsh. It didn’t help that they were fueled by NBC’s decision to renew Conan’s Late Night contract on a weekly basis.
In hindsight, it is hard to watch Conan’s first night as host of Late Night, especially knowing the terrible treatment he received. Even hardcore Conan fans have to admit, on his first night, he was very green. To be fair, Conan did acknowledge it in a funny way and immediately addressed the fact that everyone kept hounding him with some variation of “better be as good as Letterman.” Conan had potential and viewers were willing to give him a chance, even though his bosses only kept renewing his contract because they had nothing else to throw on the air.
‘Thieves, Inc.’ Steals Food Network
Connie and Scott in and out of costume.
Food Network’s latest addition to its new Undercover Wednesdays is Thieves, Inc., which has Monument Security’s Connie Ribble and Scott McDonald steal from the clients. Store must be happy that these two are on their side because Connie and Scott don’t have to try very hard to successfully steal thousands of dollars worth of merchandise in a matter of minutes.
In the first episode, Connie and Scott helped the owner of a gourmet food store, Garden of Eden in New York City, catch thieves and improve his security. At first, Connie and Scott use the typical strategies thieves use, such as dressing up as someone who stocks shelves or using a baby to throw off suspicion. If they have no problem doing those, they get more brazen and start doing crazy things like stealing an entire food cart that was sitting outside in front of the store. Shockingly, no one notices and those who do don’t question. Granted, the store is in NYC, but even New Yorkers can only tolerate so much strange behavior. The fact that Connie and Scott get away with so much and dress up in crazy outfits makes the show fun to watch.
‘The Million Second Quiz’: All Hype, No Substance
NBC is attempting to make game shows an event again, which isn’t going to happen with The Million Second Quiz. That’s because the show is boring. While Ryan Seacrest is likeable, he talks too much. To make matters worse, most of this chatter is about contestants that viewers only watching the hour in primetime will never get to see play the game or about how line jumpers became contestants. Clearly, NBC didn’t think through the fact that no one will be sitting at home watching the live stream for the remaining 23 hours a day.
When Ryan isn’t talking, the show is the lovechild of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and Twenty One with NBC’s version of the Prize Patrol surprising line jumpers, who are contestants that have been playing from the comfort of their own home and now will be flown to New York City to play the game for money, thrown in for good measure. Like daytime Millionaire, every questions has four possible answers. The elements taken from Twenty One are the fact that two contestants answer the questions at the same time and the “doubler,” which is explained in the rules below.
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