Things I Love/Things I Hate

Hello, Freaks. With all the craziness of February sweeps, I've been a TV-watching...well...freak.

There's been lots and lots of good stuff-

And a little bit of terrible.

Thing I Love: 

Revenge.

This show kicks ass. 

Thing I Hate: 

The ratings for Ringer have tanked. Like, really, really tanked- even for the CW. I don't think it's going to make it to next season, and it's really a shame, because it's gotten so much better. I'm not going to lie, I was almost ready to give up on this show. I wanted to watch because I was glad to see SMG back on TV, but the show felt forced and plodding, and I was just having an impossible time getting into it. The writers seem to have noticed, and the last few episodes have been much more faced paced, twisty and exciting.

Not that it matters, because no one is watching, so it's totally getting cancelled.

Poor SMG.

The ratings for the first episode of Cougar Town were also terrible, which makes me very, very depressed. As I wrote earlier in the week, this show is awesome and you and everyone you know should be watching it. Help me out, Freaks, I don't want to lose anymore shows!

That I like.

Thing I Love:

Pilot season for Fall of 2012 is shaping up to be very interesting, my dear Freaks. I mean, sure, as I talked about last week, it's all retreads and reboots, but at least there are a lot of people I really like getting into pilots! If you follow me on Facebook you already know that Zachary Levi will be starring in the FOX pilot Let It Go, which is super exciting until you realize that it's written by DJ Nash, who also wrote the terrible, terrible sitcoms Traffic Light and 'Til Death.

One of the many reasons I don't trust anyone named DJ. 

Terry O'Quinn, who you know I love if you read this regularly, is signed on for ABC's 666 Park Ave., and Jonny Lee Miller (Hackers!) is going to be the new Sherlock Holmes over on CBS. Man, I just have a feeling that show is going to be super-lame. Ryan Philippe will also be joining the network with the cop drama Golden Boy.

Is that "golden" like "aryan"? 

Kristin Kreuk will be the CW's Beauty on their Beauty and the Beast remake, while the adorable Becky Newton (Ugly Betty) joins the new sitcom from HIMYM creators Carter and Bays, The Goodwin Games (FOX). Fellow HIMYM-recurring-guest Kal Penn is signed on for Prairie Dogs on ABC, a sitcom about a guy who takes life lessons from a con man.

So...this show? 

And with a shout-out to a dear friend who will be very, very excited by this news- Dan and Roseanne are back! It's been announced that John Goodman will join Roseanne's new show Downwardly Mobile on NBC, co-created by former Roseanne scribe Eric Gilliland.

Hopefully they will also be bringing back 90's-era giant bows. 

Thing I Hate:

The critically praised and awesomely-starring-James-Van-Der-Beek-as-himself Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 will be -finally- premiering on ABC on April 11th. I've been waiting for this show since May, so I'm so excited to see that it's replacing...

Happy Endings.

Noooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!

But how will I live without Chandler, Monica, Rachel, Ross, Phoebe and Joey? 

Thing I Love:

I have mentioned NBC's Awake several times on this blog already, as evidence of how poorly the network is being run. It's a complicated premise that's both sad and confusing, and it's not going to work on network TV, etc, etc. The show premieres on March 1st, but I've seen the pilot, and it's...

Really good.

Like, really, really good. It's extremely well written, Jason Isaacs is just excellent, I was engaged for the entire hour- and honestly, that's been really hard to come by for pilots this year in general. It was a fantastic hour of television. I'd like to be proven wrong in my assumptions that people won't watch serious and well-done dramas on networks, so do me a favor and catch this one early.

Nah, you don't have to- It's NBC, they'll cancel it in a week to make room for more Whitney.

Thing I Hate:

Look, Vampire Diaries. You know I love you. I love your twisty, crazy, fast-paced energy, I love your ever-evolving romantic plot lines, I love your pretty, pretty actors. But there are times (as I've mentioned before) where you are really pushing the boundaries of my suspension of disbelief, even for a supernatural show. You can't get fingerprints from unpolished wood. You can't get an entire town of people to show up for a ball at seven when you invited them that morning. And you certainly can't show up looking like this:

Oh my god, she totally wore that to last year's Vampire Key Party Ice Cream Social!

Thing I Love/Hate:

The end of this week's How I Met Your Mother was... nerve wracking. I mean, Ted and Robin? We've been there already, and we already know she's not the mother, so...what are you doing, show?

But then I thought about it a little more, and it kinda makes sense. Ted and Robin broke up at the end of season 2, with a conversation about where they each saw themselves in five years. Well, here we are, five years later, and Ted isn't where he wanted to be. I actually think it makes perfect sense that his character would suddenly decide to want to retread old ground with her. He loved her; they didn't break up because they weren't in love, they broke up because she didn't want to get married...and now she does. I believe that his character would think that he could look past the kid thing because he wants so desperately to be done looking for "the one"- to get to his happy ending.

It obviously makes me nervous for the show, in much the same way Baby Eriksen does; these are problems that have killed sitcoms I have loved in the past. But maybe this can be the show that proves the trope wrong, you know? We got a brief flash in this episode of FutureMarshall and FutureLily, fighting over dealing with a crying baby, and it was really funny. If you can shift the tone of this show (which, by the way, is what happens to lives and friendships at these ages in reality) and keep it interesting and funny, then I am completely behind you.

I feel like the success or failure of this move, and perhaps the shift in general, will come down to how Robin handles things. I've long said that she is actually the one who is the biggest mess on the show, so truthfully I would believe several different reactions from the character, but I will need whatever happens to feel true to where she should be. After Barney, and the kid thing, and Kevin, and Barney again, and a proposal and now Ted, she should be....well, a mess.

I'm hoping that's how she handles it. And I love you, show, so you know I'm along for the ride.

As long as she's not the mother.