Summer's Here!

New episodes of The 4400, Rescue Me... So far so good. Today The Closer and Saved. These are both playing commercial free. Normally, I sort of TiVo shows and watch them one after the other without commercials, so it will be interesting to see what it's like watching it this week without commercials. Sometimes, when I watch The Closer, I miss California. What makes this show so good is watching the characters. They are well written, growing characters. Kyra Sedgwick as Brenda Johnson is a hard ass. It's her job to be so. So watching her trying to soften herself in different situations is hilarious and heart rending. The personal conflict is probably the most realistic of any procedural show I've watched, not counting Law & Order: SVU. I'm pretty excited about this season, the caliber of writing and acting that the 2nd season opener portrayed was exactly where you'd expect the show to go from last season. Chalk one up to another good drama from TNT.

You'd think a show about EMTs would be adrenaline filled, exciting, but Saved was not. The opening was stale, reusing CSI musical and visual conventions. The first scene was the best part of the show, but not exciting. The introduction of the main character was, to say the least, lame. A very realistic fight though. It made me laugh. The main idea of the season opener was "just another quiet day" where nothing is quiet, but each vignette was brief and emotionless, nothing drawing us into the characters, nothing to make us emotionally connect with the secondary characters or the stories. The pacing was slow, anti-adrenaline if you will, and the storyline was generic. The most irritating thing was the music, drawing so much attention to itself, you felt musically manipulated. However, even that didn't work because it was all so colourless, redoing what was done before. I would like to say I didn't like any part of it, but John the Baptist was actually funny (not as funny as it could have been, but the actor that played him had a very good voice) and the little boy was extremely cute. It will be interesting to see where the writers and directors take the show, but my guess is that this show doesn't stand a chance.