Take Me To The Pilots '15: FOX's ' 'The Grinder'

[You know the drill, and I will continue to mention it in each and every one of these posts that I do: This is *not* a review. Pilots change. Sometimes a lot. Often for the better. Sometimes for the worse. But they change. Actual reviews may be coming in September and perhaps October (and maybe midseason in some cases). This is, however, a brief gut reaction to not-for-air pilots. I know some people will be all "These are reviews." If you've read me, you've read my reviews and you know this isn't what they look like.]

Show: "The Grinder" (FOX)
The Pitch: "Hi, I'm Rob Lowe and I have DirecTV. And I'm Former Network TV Star Rob Lowe and I'd really rather not be on cable."
Quick Response: While occasionally funny and never truly unpleasant, "The Grinder" is a very, very pilot-y pilot. It spends its entire time trying to justify its premise -- Former star of a legal TV show returns home to put his TV skills to use at his family's legal practice -- and the result is far heavier-on-its-feet than it should be. There's a lot of effort put into announcing -- not always showing -- how overly cautious Stew (Fred Savage) might be improved by Dean's (Rob Lowe) "never settle" Grinder persona, but how Dean might be semi-ironically unsettled in his private life, while Stew has a wife (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) and kids and security. It all climaxes in a not-especially-creative and not-especially-funny and way-too-long courtroom scene in which everybody proves their value to everybody else and I stopped laughing entirely. "The Grinder" is, for want of a better word, a bit of a grind. And after 23 minutes, I was left only with a sense of the premise, but no sense of how long it could possibly sustainable, since once the plot was in motion, it was only limitedly funny. It's going to help when, in Episode 2, Savage's character is smoothed out so that he isn't simultaneously being talked about like he's a good lawyer, while also being shown in the courtroom with a pathological discomfort that renders him far more pitiable than he thematically should be. Savage isn't bad. He's just playing what he's been given by the writers and what he's been given by the writers needs to be depilotized. Lowe's character also has been written one-note and although he hits every punchline in the first half with the expert timing we've watched him hone over the years, there's a key ostensible emotional beat that either Lowe or the show can't decide is genuine or not and it falls flat. There are, alas, no supporting characters and somebody will eventually have to give Mary Elizabeth Ellis and William Devane something to do, much less figure out what the kids are supposed to be. Kumail Najiani has the pilot's highest ratio of lines-to-chuckles, but I don't know if he's ever going to be back. Natalie Morales, featured in FOX pictures as a cast regular, isn't in the pilot. So what's the series? Dunno.
Desire To Watch Again: I think Rob Lowe and Fred Savage are a good combo and I think a good series could revolve around their characters, especially if I no longer have to hear them explain what the show is about. I really want to see a second episode, because this is a case in which the second episode could be everything. If the show loosens up and gives the ensemble things to do, it could work. If not, clips from the show-within-a-show "Grinder" may be the best reason to watch.

Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Supergirl'
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Take Me To The Pilots '15: CBS' 'Supergirl'

[You know the drill, and I will continue to mention it in each and every one of these posts that I do: This is *not* a review. Pilots change. Sometimes a lot. Often for the better. Sometimes for the worse. But they change. Actual reviews may be coming in September and perhaps October (and maybe midseason in some cases). This is, however, a brief gut reaction to not-for-air pilots. I know some people will be all "These are reviews." If you've read me, you've read my reviews and you know this isn't what they look like.] 

Show: "Supergirl" (CBS)
The Pitch: "Get your superhero drama right here! Get it while it's fresh! Recognizable superhero drama unassociated with any lead actor for nearly three decades... STEP RIGHT UP!"
Quick Response: The sense that this isn't a CBS show is pretty much impossible to shake. It's a CW show with a CBS budget, or maybe an ABC show, but from the side of the comic book empire that isn't ABC's corporate sibling. But whose business is it if "Supergirl" isn't on-brand for CBS? It's CBS' business and not mine. Ali Adler, Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg's take on the character is on the sunny, frothy side of superhero coin, with more smiles and toss-off jokes than 13 episodes of deceased DC stablemate "Constantine" and possibly more than three seasons of "Arrow," excluding Felicity scenes. The unassuming-nerd-finds-voice-in-heroism vibe is very close to that of "Flash" with two key differences: "Flash" always had a core of sadness courtesy of the death of Barry's mom, while "Supergirl" has less gravity despite the backdrop of an entire eradicated planet. And second, this IS NOT an origin story, at least not entirely. Kara Zor-El was raised knowing she had powers, but opted to hide her light under a bushel. So there's minimal dilly-dallying with, "Oh, I have powers? I can do THAT?!?" It's mostly, "I've had powers, but perhaps I need practice to fulfill my potential" which makes for a different and welcome dynamic. Melissa Benoist, who was winsomely effective in "Whiplash" and kept me watching "Glee" at least two episodes longer than I should have, is an appropriate lead for the low-intensity fun here. She doesn't wow you, but I think she makes Kara relatable and human in a way that might be more important than wowing. She's got solid chemistry with the very appealing Mehcad Brooks, the fairly funny Calista Flockhart and also with Chyler Leigh, who mostly survives the responsibility of dumping a massive amount of exposition here. I was less convinced by Jeremy Jordan as Kara's Cisco and could have done without the pandering Helen Slater/Dean Cain cameos, but pandering is a not-insignificant part of what "Supergirl" thinks it has to do. I liked the blending of soft-sell and hard-sell empowerment messages, thought the special effects were on the upper edge of expectations and got some decently earned emotions courtesy of the score. "Supergirl" has a good mixture of blatantly comic book tone with shades of grounding, without ever getting too dark or brooding. It's a daytime, outdoor superhero show, at least in the pilot. Perhaps budget necessities will force them onto stages and into the forgiving darkness of night eventually. Oh and while the initial "Supergirl" trailer had the misfortune of coming fast on the heels of the "SNL" "Black Widow" spoof, it was mostly awful trailer soundtrack choices that led people to make that overly facile comparison. The music choices in the actual series is much less a hacky Katherine Heigl rom-com and much more "Devil Wears Prada" if Anne Hathaway had superpowers, a different thing entirely. The "Supergirl" team should already resent the CBS marketing team for that blunder.
Desire To Watch Again: I'll happily watch additional episodes of "Supergirl." There's some predictable pilot clunkiness and excessive underlining of theme and whatnot, but by pilot standards, it quickly settles into a tone and a style and I reckon those are reproducible. I don't quite know what the week-to-week series is and that may be where the CBS-ness of it becomes a worry, but Berlanti and Kreisberg know how to do superheros and Adler's background on "Chuck" really ought to be a perfect training ground for what "Supergirl" ought to be moving forward. So really, maybe we should be comparing "Supergirl" to "Chuck" instead of "The Flash"? Either one is optimistic.

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Time for Check the Fien Print to return!

Greetings, old chums!

Perhaps by now you've read about my departure from HitFix.com as of Wednesday, February July 8.

No? Please read!

As I figure out what comes next, I expect that this is where I will look to post periodic reviews, thoughts and whatnot.


I may even try to change the design a tiny bit, though after 13 consecutive years of working on the Internet, it has become well and truly clear to me that I don't have a clue about how the internet works.

Anywho...

STAY TUNED!

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HitFix Is Live!

I meant to have this post up yesterday but... exhaustion prevented it. Or something to that effect.

I posted a couple weeks ago with the basics about HitFix and have been mentioning it ever since. If you don't remember the background, read this handy Variety story...

In any case, HitFix is now live! You can check it out at HitFix.com. As it says in the upper left corner, we're live, but we're still in beta, so we know about various bugs and we're working to fix everything as fast as possible.

But what's there, we're mighty proud of. I'm especially happy with the logo for my HitFix blog, which I think is mighty snazzy. So go check out the site and lemme know what you think.

A couple recent posts to get you started:

My review of "Gran Torino"
My review of "Frost/Nixon"
And some thoughts on current state of The CW

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SAG nominations don't go out on a 'Wire'

SAG TV 2009 nomination analysis

[For those of you looking, the launch of HitFix has obviously been very slightly delayed. I'm not going to make a promise to you about a specific date, but we're gonna have the site up as soon as we're ready to be proud of it. We very nearly are. VERY. Does "early next week" count as a promise? HitFix is coming. It looks and works better every day.

[This blog post will obviously be at HitFix.com when the site goes live....]

Full post below...

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Fien Print Neologism: Ducking the Shoe

[This post, like the past few, will be following me over to my new online home at HitFix.com... Keep an eye out, kids, because HitFix is launching on Friday. Or at least we're hoping it will be! To whet your appetite, go check out Drew McWeeny talking HitFix on G4's "Attack of the Show." ]

Because the English language is a living breathing creature, it's necessary to come up with new words and parts of speech...

New Phrase: Ducking the Shoe (or Duck the Shoe)

Part of Speech: Either a verb or a gerundive of some sort

Definition: Escaping even the most minor of punishments for extended errors or catastrophic misdeeds.

Used in a Sentence: Despite dwindling ratings at NBC, Jeff Zucker and Ben Silverman have been ducking the shoe for years.

Origin and Linguistic Evolution: Last week, a certain president of a Western Superpower with rather dramatically low approval ratings in his native land had a shoe whipped at him by a reporter from a country he supposedly liberated. Said lame duck president successfully evaded said shoe, just as he also evaded an electoral challenge four years earlier, an ill-ingested preztel and any sort of censure from the legal bodies in his home nation. This blog isn't a place to get political, so I won't. Y'all know about the shoe.

In any case, as jokes about the incident were spreading the Internet like pregnancies in an Eastern Massachusetts high school, Alan Sepinwall and I determined that "Ducking the Shoe" needed to become a catch phrase. The venerable "Jumping the Shark" became so meaninglessly mainstreamed that nobody using it knows what they're referring to anymore, while its media-annointed replacement, "Nuking the Fridge," fell flat when people realized that using the expression would force us all to remember sitting through "Indiana Jones and the Quest for Profit."

Hence... "Ducking the Shoe," the perfect phrase for a moment in history where avoiding accountability isn't just a way of life, it's an art form which, if handled properly, can cause the government to provide you with billions of dollars in compensation for your ineptitude. Ducking the Shoe isn't an insult, so much as a reflection on the renewable resilience of the American Spirit. At our finest, we're a nation of shoe duckers. What, you'd rather be hit by the shoe? Go back to CANADA.

I spent several days running "Ducking the Shoe" into the ground on Twitter, attempting to work the phrase into the vernacular.

Examples:

The "Heroes" fall finale stunk, but don't expect any heads to role, as it was written by the already scapegoated Jeph Loeb. Tim Kring, meanwhile, continues to duck the shoe.

Sacramento Kings coach Reggie Theus was unable to duck the shoe and was fired for his team's slow start. Golden State Warriors coach Don Nelson, though, is ducking the shoe due to the mistaken impression that when Montae Ellis returns from injury, the team will cease to stink.

For an example of the myriad possible uses of the phrase, check out Medialoper's 2008 Ducking the Shoe Awards.

Medialoper's very thorough list inspired me to codify Ducking the Shoe in blog-post form. Take the phrase. Work it around in your mouth a little bit and hear how it sounds. Lace it up and walk around the store for a while to see if it fits. Sprinkle it on your food to taste -- It's fat-free!

It's not too late for 2008 to go down at The Year of Ducking the Shoe.

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TV Review: NBC's "Momma's Boys"

[Targeted launch date for HitFix.com is now Friday, Dec. 19. Mark your calendars. Tell your friends. Etc. This review is being posted in The Fien Print blog at HitFix, but since it won't be live until Friday, might as well give it a place to live until then...]

NBC's reality show "Momma's Boys" is being dumped into a mid-December wasteland of repeats and holiday specials. Clearly the network is hoping the tiresomely generic series will score big with viewers who can't distinguish between "previous unaired" and "actually original."

The rest of the review after the bump...

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2009 Golden Globe Nominations: 10 Thoughts on the TV Nods

[Note: With HitFix still revving up for launch, I don't have an immediately place for this sort of rambling analysis. This post will migrate over to my HitFix blog as soon as it becomes active and available.]

My Ten Thoughts about the 2009 Golden Globe nominations in TV after the bump.

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2009 Golden Globe Nominations: 10 Thoughts on the Movie Nods

[Note: With HitFix still revving up for launch, I don't have an immediately place for this sort of rambling analysis. This post will migrate over to my HitFix blog as soon as it becomes active and available.]

My Ten Thoughts about the 2009 Golden Globe nominations in Movies after the bump.

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A Personal and Professional Update

While I probably should be writing my reviews of "Slumdog Millionaire" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," I interrupt this semi-fallow blog not-quite-in-progress for a wee bit of a personal announcement...

As some of you already know, Friday (Nov. 28) was my last day at Zap2it.com.

I started at Zap2it in February of 2003 and will remain friends and allies with my former colleagues from Zap2it. I think we've made a pretty great site.

Beginning Monday, Dec. 1, I'll be starting a new gig as Executive Editor (putting it in caps makes me feel special) and All Around TV Guy at a new online entertainment site called HitFix.com.

After six years at Zap2it, it was time for a change, but I wouldn't have made the change for just for any startup or just for any group of people and I believe that HitFix has all of the components necessary to become a destination site for entertainment news and information and analysis. We also have plenty of special features that will set HitFix apart, but part of the joy of getting hype in motion is that you don't want to burn out the buzz too fast! Stay tuned!

We're aiming for a soft-launch of Dec. 15, so join me in knocking on wood. After that point, much of the content that's usually been posted in *this* blog and posted in the myriad Zap2it blogs will become a part of HitFix. That will include reviews, industry commentary and, heaven help me, "American Idol" recaps.

As I said, the HitFix editorial team is a stellar group, including MSN Movies guru Gregory Ellwood, Ain't It Cool legend Drew McWeeny and music insider Melinda Newman. And we have some damned smart people working on the tech, design and business end of things. We're going to be smart, funny, well-informed and timely.

I'm excited and I look forward to sharing more information soon...

[I also look forward to eventually writing those late movie reviews. Knock on wood there as well.]

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MovieWatch: "Quantum of Solace"

"Quantum of Solace"
Director: Marc Forster
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 68
In a Nutshell: [Yup. I've been a bad blogger. I have a half-finished review of "Changeling," a couple stray paragraphs of a review of "Synecdoche, NY," an a chunk of writing on "Waltz with Bashir" that I may still get to use at some point. I've also funneled a few things into various Zap2it blogs. And, probably much more than I should, I've left potentially fertile ideas go half-baked on my Zap2it Twitter feed (http://twitter.com/Zap2itDaniel). My apologies. I have other excuses as well, but I may get into those later.]

A thought (or maybe a meditation): When "The Bourne Identity" came out in 2002, an impressive number of the positive reviews shared a similar sentiment, one that said that this was a James Bond movie done right. Interesting how many reviews of "Quantum of Solace" already seem to be complaining that the new James Bond movie isn't a James Bond movie at all, but a Jason Bourne movie. But if a Bourne movie was a good Bond movie, when did a Bond movie being a Bourne movie necessarily become a bad thing?

Full review after the bump...

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MovieWatch: "W [red period]"

"W [red period]"
Director: Oliver Stone
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 43
In a Nutshell: [Apologies for the long time between posts. I was unexpectedly called out of town for family matters and getting back into the writing swing of things these past few days has been a struggle.]

Oh Oliver Stone, you gloriously tricky bastard!

News comes out that you're making a George W. Bush biopic and everybody assumes it will be a leftist hatchet job. You [or your people, or your people's people] leak the script to said movie and everybody becomes *convinced* that it will be a leftist hatchet job. You release a trailer that's so bizarre and confusing that everybody decides your movie will actually be an unintentionally hilarious leftist hatchet job.

Then the movie comes out and it *isn't* a leftist hatchet job and it *isn't* really all that unintentionally funny.

Thus, thanks to the wonders of the ol' bait-n-switch, some critics, confused that "W [red period]" wasn't the thing they feared it might be, were fooled into thinking it's actually a good movie.

Full review after the bump, of course.

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10 Baseball Postseason Thoughts for 10/14/08

I'm not sure I have anything to say about last night's scripted television, but I probably have some thoughts on the baseball I've been watching for seemingly 12 hours a night all month.

Ten of them, in fact... Cuz it's a round number.

1) Some folks in Red Sox Nation are getting antsy about going down 2-1 to the Devil Rays. I say, "Bring it on!" If a very superficial gloss of recent history has taught me anything, it's that the Red Sox are incapable of *making* the World Series, much less winning it, without making a miraculous comeback from 3-games-to-1 down. The last time the Red Sox even made the World Series without overcoming a 3-1 deficit was, of course, 1975. And the last time they *won* a World Series without doing it was 1918. You may have heard about that one. In 1986, the Sox came from 3-1 down against the Angels. In 2004, of course, they came back from 3-0 down (and therefore also 3-1 down) against the Yankees. And last year the Sox won the World Series after digging out of a 3-1 hole against the Indians. So it's all part of the plan, Nation!

The rest of my thoughts after the bump...

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Start Making Sense: Thoughts on "My Own Worst Enemy" and "Life on Mars"

When the phrase "suspension of disbelieve" is tossed around, folks often exclude the first part of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's literary term, that being the "willing" part of "willing suspension of disbelief."

*Any* tv show, movie or book can ask its audience to suspend disbelief, but that doesn't mean we're gonna. And we're fickle, too. Like in the first season of "Friday Night Lights," there were cliches and contrivances aplenty, but because I was so wrapped up in the show, I almost never got into the sort of obsessive nit-picking that I usually get into. I didn't want to ruin the moment. Then when the show went off the rails, suddenly all of those affectations began to annoy me. Was the second season of "Friday Night Lights" less realistic -- Killer Landry aside -- than the first? Or was it just a case in which I felt as if my willingness to suspend disbelief had been corrupted and, with that contract in violation, I refused to play along any more? The latter I think. Many more people have experienced the same feelings with "Lost" in its second season or with "Heroes" in its second and third seasons. If the spell gets broken for a single second, it's something really hard to re-cast. Credit "Lost" for having mostly succeeded. Pity "Heroes" for not standing a chance.

Anyway, these thoughts came to my mind while thinking over the freshman dramas "Life on Mars" and "My Own Worst Enemy," two shows that ask an awful lot of their viewers.

My early read on "Mars," which premiered on ABC last Thursday, and "Enemy," which premieres on Monday (Oct. 13) on NBC, after the bump...

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MovieWatch: "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist"

"Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist"
Director: Peter Sollett
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 69
In a Nutshell: Although it's a movie about high school kids and it features stars of several successful high school movies, "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist" is a teen romantic comedy that isn't really intended for teens. It stars actors who look like 20-something hipsters reading dialogue that sounds like it was written by 20-something (or 30-something) hipsters. The movie is sweetly innocent, but not in a way that speaks to or reflects genuine innocence so much as a nostalgic yearning for an innocence gone by. It's principle sentiment is "John Hughes Meets 'After Hours,'" so I guess I'm saying it's a movie about the young at heart made by and for people who may not be so young themselves?

There's nothing wrong with that, but I have reason to believe, based on the audience reaction around me, that "Nick and Norah" is a movie that doesn't play so well to the audience it's been targeted at and yet may not have been properly targeted to reach the audience that would actually find it to be a pleasant relief.

More thoughts after the bump, as I balance sports on television with a review I should have written a week ago...

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MovieWatch: "Body of Lies"

"Body of Lies"
Director: Ridley Scott
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 63
In a Nutshell: [I feel like I've already over-blogged today. I mean, if I get this posted by the end of the evening, that'll be three posts in one day. Who do I think I am, Sepinwall? Even if it doesn't get posted til tomorrow, it'll still be excessively prolific. And I still won't have done my week-old review on "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist." Oh well. What I'm saying is that this may be a short review.]

"Body of Lies," which I saw because you're supposed to see Ridley Scott movies on the big screen just in case they're any good, isn't a bad movie. What it is is a movie with no imperative reason for existing. It's a movie that Ridley Scott made between other projects he wanted to do more simply because the script and cast were in place. It wasn't a movie Scott made because he had a story he needed to tell. It wasn't a movie he made because he had a desperate desire to work in a new genre or a new part of the world. It was just something to do. And that lack of urgency is tangible in the movie.

There are great directors who can still make great movies even with a lack of personal urgency. Scorsese's done it. Spielberg's done it. It's just not Scott's M.O.

Heck, Ridley's brother Tony has made a whole career out of simulating urgency that didn't otherwise exist, out of forcing so much visual frenzy onto a movie that you only sometimes notice that there wasn't a darned thing for the movie to hang its hat upon. OK, actually you often notice that there's no steak, only sizzle in Tony Scott's movies, but at his best, he distracts you.

So I guess that with "Body of Lies," Ridley Scott has actually made a pretty decent Tony Scott film. Of course, Tony Scott made his version of the same movie in 2001 when it was called "Spy Game."

Full review, as short as I can make it, after the bump.

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MovieWatch: "The Express"

"The Express"
Director: Gary Fleder
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 35
In a Nutshell: The story of Ernie "The Elmira Express" Davis is the stuff that a great underdog sports movie is made of. Perhaps, though, Ernie Davis was actually the stuff that too many great underdog sports movies are made of.

With screenwriter Charles Leavitt incapable of deciding the story he wants to tell, director Gary Fleder is unable to put the proper emotional emphasis on a single foot of celluloid. As a result, I sat in the theater constantly frustrated by all of the things I knew should be powerful or exciting that the filmmakers were botching.

Full review of "The Express" after the bump...

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Notes on Bob Dylan, Ray Guy and the Nobel Prize

While I was atoning for one or two of my sins on Thursday (Oct. 9), some random Swedish people announced the winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. I didn't expect to win, so I wasn't disappointed. Ever since my former semi-neighbor Eudora Welty passed away, I haven't expected anybody I know or pseudo-know to win, so I wasn't disappointed.

And I can't really feel embarrassed that I don't really the work of the man who *did* win, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio. It sounds like he's an interesting enough guy and I'm sure he's a superior writer.

But I was listening to NPR on Wednesday and one of the anchors was telling people not to expect an American to win, going through the odds from some betting house that said that Phillip Roth and Joyce Carol Oates had the best chances. And the newsreader noted that way down the odds list was Bob Dylan at something like 50:1 and the anchor closed with a snort and said something akin to "We don't know why he's on the list at all."

What now? Snobbery is a built-in expectation when you listen to NPR, but that's ridiculous. Why *shouldn't* Bob Dylan win the Nobel Prize for literature?

My thoughts here after the bump, along with a REALLY strained analogy or two...

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MovieWatch: "Blindness"

"Blindness"
Director: Fernando Meirelles
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 38
In a Nutshell: In college I took a sociology class titled "Deviance and Social Control." If they still teach it at Penn, I strongly recommend it. But anyway, one of the things that came up in that class was the old cliche that "In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." Our professor didn't buy into that at all, making it clear that the one-eyed man would, essentially, become the ultimate outsider as the blind developed their own coping mechanisms, their own way of life outside of the sighted world. He point? In the land of the blind, it would suck to be a one-eyed man.

That idea is carried through in the new theatrical release "Blindness," Fernando Meirelles' rather dismal adaptation of Jose Saramago well-regarded novel.

"Blindness" is being marketed with imagery that would seem to imply that it's a cross between "Children of Men," "28 Days Later" and "The Miracle Worker." It's a misleading ad campaign, but it's actually brilliant. People are much more likely to see "Blindness" thinking it's some sort of badass zombie flick or political thriller than if they knew the truth of the matter, which is that it's a thuddingly obvious allegory spiked with moments of pretentious artiness and very little actual soul.

A full review after bump...

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Monday TV: Good Luck, "Chuck"

Monday nights confuse and disturb my DVR.

Poor DVR.

It doesn't understand how it's supposed to record four shows in the 8 p.m. hour, how it's supposed to use its two tuners to get "Chuck" on NBC, "How I Met Your Mother" (and, to a much lesser degree of urgency, "Big Bang Theory) on CBS, "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" on FOX and "Gossip Girl" on The CW. It doesn't know to appreciate the fact that I only watch "Dancing with the Stars" in the office and only because it provides sometimes appealing lunchtime entertainment. And it doesn't even learn to appreciate that relatively calm, cool and collected 9 p.m. hour in which I'd normally only request NBC's "Heroes," FOX's "Prison Break" and The CW's "One Tree Hill" from it.

The fact is that while there's a logjam on Monday nights, a situation made worse by my decision not to watch "Mad Men" until the show becomes available in HD OnDemand, I don't actually love a lot of those shows.

In fact, in a twist, the Monday show that I've already moved to the top of my DVR priority list (and would, in a critical capacity, recommend highest), is "Chuck." I learned long ago that rooting for my favorite low-rated NBC shows to become hits -- think "Friday Night Lights" or "30 Rock" -- was a lost cause. But "Chuck" is a show so instantly accessible to so many different types of audiences that it ought to have room to grow.

More on Monday night TV and a review-y-thing of this Monday's (Sept. 29) "Chuck" after the bump...

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