Since I spent Thursday night checking out Second Life, and Friday night playing Guitar Hero with Jeremy and Jen, the last two new shows I decided to throw on the TiVo were put off until this weekend -- Big Shots, the "Sex and the City with guys" starring Christopher Titus and Josh Malina (among others), and Moonlight, the new vampire PI show. For what I thought, you can look behind the cut.
So I picked Big Shots out for basically two reasons -- Christopher Titus, who I've really liked since his show on Fox and his stand up specials, and Josh Malina, who was great on Sports Night and West Wing. Unfortunately, the weak premise was a little worrisome; shows that are "some other show with a twist!" just seem like a set up for a really bad ripoff of a show. Unfortunately, the first episode didn't do much to make me think otherwise, either. The first episode was very predictable, and I was very unimpressed by the transsexual hooker storyline, for obvious reasons; it seems like that's always trotted out as the cheap joke for shows like this.
The second episode actually improved somewhat. Josh Malina's storyline was pretty funny, I liked Paul Blackthorne's guest appearance (I thought he was pretty good on The Dresden Files), and the other storylines were not as weak as last week's. On the other hand, I still think Christopher Titus is being tragically wasted as wacky comic relief, it's still pretty predictable and has the tendency to go for the cheap laugh. With all the other TV shows out there, I just don't think this one is going to be worth spending an hour on. I might catch this one from time to time, but I don't think this is going to go in my season pass list.
Moonlight seems to be the spawn of the superpower/supernatural craze, and seems to be a retread of Forever Knight and Angel. Last week's pilot was weak, to say the least, and I have to say that this week's episode wasn't really much better. There's a lot of problems with this show. First, we've got the fact that the main character, Mick St. John, has a name that seems like it came out of a bad romance novel, or porn, or someone's bad vampire fanfic. Then we have the rather annoying soundtrack; Forever Knight may have had a bit of cheese, but the soundtrack was not friggin' Celine Dion and Billy Joel. Their vampires also seem rather watered down, probably due to budget concerns (shooting at night is more expensive). The dialogue is weak as well, and I just can't believe the whole news website junk that the lead female character supposedly works at. The only decent thing about the show is Jason Dohring, and that's mostly because he's just playing Logan from Veronica Mars as a vampire.
The worst part of the show is that it is just a higher-budget retread of every other vampire show that has been on TV, and it's not doing it nearly as well. The supporting cast (aside from Jason Dohring) is weak and doesn't stand out at all, unlike on Forever Knight and Angel. The plots of the first two episodes were very cliche -- a fake vampire sex cult (complete with the twist I saw coming from a mile away) and the vampire-hunting criminal out for revenge, and as a vampire, he seems rather sloppy about hiding that fact. If they were going for a more serious treatment like Forever Knight, the writers are either making him really stupid, or haven't thought this out very well. Add to that the fact that in the first show, he went from being paternal to the female lead to her being his apparent love interest, which strikes me as rather creepy. I'll be leaving this one off the TiVo too, unless I hear it makes some vast improvements later this season.
The second episode actually improved somewhat. Josh Malina's storyline was pretty funny, I liked Paul Blackthorne's guest appearance (I thought he was pretty good on The Dresden Files), and the other storylines were not as weak as last week's. On the other hand, I still think Christopher Titus is being tragically wasted as wacky comic relief, it's still pretty predictable and has the tendency to go for the cheap laugh. With all the other TV shows out there, I just don't think this one is going to be worth spending an hour on. I might catch this one from time to time, but I don't think this is going to go in my season pass list.
Moonlight seems to be the spawn of the superpower/supernatural craze, and seems to be a retread of Forever Knight and Angel. Last week's pilot was weak, to say the least, and I have to say that this week's episode wasn't really much better. There's a lot of problems with this show. First, we've got the fact that the main character, Mick St. John, has a name that seems like it came out of a bad romance novel, or porn, or someone's bad vampire fanfic. Then we have the rather annoying soundtrack; Forever Knight may have had a bit of cheese, but the soundtrack was not friggin' Celine Dion and Billy Joel. Their vampires also seem rather watered down, probably due to budget concerns (shooting at night is more expensive). The dialogue is weak as well, and I just can't believe the whole news website junk that the lead female character supposedly works at. The only decent thing about the show is Jason Dohring, and that's mostly because he's just playing Logan from Veronica Mars as a vampire.
The worst part of the show is that it is just a higher-budget retread of every other vampire show that has been on TV, and it's not doing it nearly as well. The supporting cast (aside from Jason Dohring) is weak and doesn't stand out at all, unlike on Forever Knight and Angel. The plots of the first two episodes were very cliche -- a fake vampire sex cult (complete with the twist I saw coming from a mile away) and the vampire-hunting criminal out for revenge, and as a vampire, he seems rather sloppy about hiding that fact. If they were going for a more serious treatment like Forever Knight, the writers are either making him really stupid, or haven't thought this out very well. Add to that the fact that in the first show, he went from being paternal to the female lead to her being his apparent love interest, which strikes me as rather creepy. I'll be leaving this one off the TiVo too, unless I hear it makes some vast improvements later this season.
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