10 Cent TV Critic - "The Good Guys"

When I was in college, I took a course called Audience Analysis and now I think of myself as a television expert.  Having said that, I watch a lot of television.  Too much.  Waaaaay too much.  But it won't stop me from telling the world (!!) what I think in this, the 10 Cent TV Critic.  Today, Fox's newly premiered "The Good Guys"

My favorite television show of all time was "The West Wing".  I loved everything about that show, from the pilot to the finale and everything, including the incredibly "meh" 5th season, in between.  I'm a huge Sorkin fan (apologist?) and will consider anything he touches gold.  Even his appearance on Entourage last year.

Bradley Whitford's Josh Lyman was one of my favorite characters on "The West Wing" and I have been a fan since his immortal turn in "Billy Madison".  Naturally I had an interest in what he was up to these days.  That would be our topic du jour, "The Good Guys" on Fox.  I'll let the always comical Warming Glow bring us up to speed:

"Okay, there’s two cops, right? One of them’s a young guy, and his partner — GET THIS — an old, washed-up cop. *kisses fingers* Groundbreaking stuff. It stars a now-hefty Bradley Whitford (Josh Lyman from “The West Wing”) and Colin Hanks."

No, it isn't too groundbreaking.  But here are some things it had going for it, before watching frame 1:

• Good lead actors, including Whitford and Tom Hanks' son Colin Hanks.  
• Matt Nix producing, which wouldn't have meant a thing a few years ago, but since USA's "Burn Notice" is burning it up on cable (see what I did there????), there's some considerable clout.
• Tim Matheson directed the pilot.  He's done the same with several good episodes of "Burn Notice" and  "The West Wing"
• The Fox Preview Effect.  Here are two shows that Fox ran as previews, gave some summer love to and then built an image around: "The O.C." and "Glee".

But then there is the actual pilot.  To be honest, it was well North of decent.  The writing was surprisingly crisp for a pilot and the show's pace was impressive to say the least.  Colin Hanks did his part but the show was stolen by Whitford, whose 70s tough guy cop was hysterical and entertaining throughout.  And that mustache.  My goodness.  You could clean a floor with it.

There are fixes that need to be made.  The show operates as, basically, a 4-character show, which works fine for Nix in "Burn Notice", but shouldn't hold water on Fox ("Glee" is the prime example, with about 12 leads and 25 other characters) so that needs to be addressed.  Also how many crimes, exactly, go from routine investigation to ZOMG MURDER?1!!! even on a television show?  (Aside: I know, I know, point out your plot-holes elsewhere, dickbag.  But still: there better be more to the show than this, because that arc is only good for four or five episodes.  Having said that, every episode of Law and Order was like that for 20 years. This is why I got a C+ in the aforementioned Audience Analysis class).

Bottom line: if Nix and Whitford (also an EP) want to stay on TV in the fall (Fox has it slated on Fridays to begin, which is terrible) they have a great foundation to build on.  They just need to do the requisite architecting and contracting to make it work.

Prediction: Summer to half-season on Friday is a tough place to start, especially on Fox.  The show needs to build a strong base this summer or else it may not get through the 20-episode order.  I hope it does, I'd guess it will, unfortunately, not.

Let's see if blogging via e-mail works.

"Bookkeeping" is one of my favorite words in the English language.  Look at it.  Three consecutive double letters.  Yes, these are the idiot things that keep me going on a daily basis.  That's miserably sad.  Jesus, when did I become Andy Rooney?

Anyway, I want to take care of some bookkeeping work for this whole blog thing.  For one, I'll be doing a majority of posting via E-mail because blogger doesn't have a BlackBerry client of which I'm aware, and the site itself is blocked by my work's firewall.  This is annoying, but so is government work.  And because of the aforementioned horseshit lack of availability of Google Image results, I'm not sure about images working from the e-mails.  Will they? Let's try one:

If that didn't work, you missed out on some good Arrested Development referencing.  If it did, then woot.

Hey, that kinda worked only after I fixed it when I got home.  Good to know.

I'm in a pretty shitty mood at work today because I was asked to stop using Google Talk (GChat) at work by one of my supervisors so that I "wouldn't get in trouble" with the much, much more powerful managers in my office.  10 minutes later, I got shat on by one of the more powerful managers.  So someone opened their fucking mouth, which is awfully upsetting. 

Generally speaking, I'm content at work, but certainly not fulfilled.  This is an easy job that a lot of people make look a lot more difficult by being morons.  People fall asleep on the clock here and get wrist-slapped.  I use gchat and get bitched at by two different supervisors.  I've grown tired of and used to it by now. 

At some point I'll get out of here.  Maybe get some more education and get a better job.  Or I'll rot here with the rest of the lifers.

I swear there's not that much angst but I need a place to publicly bitch about things, so this will have to suffice.

But, hey, how about some big ups to these guys:

Here's a "Tex message" for you and the rest of your team: cram it with walnuts, assholes.

I hate the Yankees.

Here I go again.

I'm going to be perfectly frank, there is no freaking way that I'm going to ever update this as much as I'd like to or as much as I should or anything like that. I'll get over that. As I hope will the three people reading this that aren't me or spam followers on Twitter.

Anyway, I wanted to give myself something to do at work, now that they've blocked Blogger and Google Image results (note: not Google Image, itself, that still works just fine, but the results are blocked. Fucking joke.)

Also, yes I swear. Like a longshoremen.

So I'll post random thoughts, links, bullshit like that. I'll bitch about work, talk about golf and television and movies (I have horrible taste) and try to be funny while being the last person to start their own blog in hopes that Uproxx or Gawker will pick me up and get me the fuck out of the Courthouse.

So, while I don't hold my breath for that, I'm going to watch television and try to figure out how to e-mail in blog entries. Fun.