Movie Box Review

On summer Sunday nights, the 4 broadcast networks air a grand total of zero hours of original scripted programming; instead, viewers get a strict diet of animated repeats (FOX) and unscripted series like Big Brother (CBS), America's Got Talent (NBC) and The Bachelorette (ABC).  Looking at the schedule, one would assume that there's no audience at all for scripted entertainment to end the weekend.

During the same hours, though, half a dozen cable networks air some of their most valuable original scripted shows, most of them with significant success, in genres that range from soapy horror (True Blood, HBO's biggest hit) to crime (Breaking Bad on AMC, The Glades on A&E, In Plain Sight on USA), from scifi (Falling Skies on TNT) to sophisticated sitcom (Curb Your Enthusiasm on HBO).  Even in Fall, when the FOX cartoons will be new and CBS and ABC bring their procedurals and soaps back to the schedule (and NBC gratefully airs football), Sundays remain the leading night of the cable scripted week, with hits like Dexter and The Walking Dead joining the line-ups (and undoubtedly Mad Men will return to its Sunday home in early 2012).  Sundays have become to cable TV what Thursdays are to the networks:  the place to showcase a network's marquee comedy and drama.

HBO's return of ENTOURAGE to its schedule earlier tonight completed the cable summer Sunday package.  This is, of course, the 8th and final season of the series, but by no means the last we've seen of these characters:  in a development that suits the general formlessness of the show, HBO has put a feature film version in development (hoping for a counterpart to its bonanza with the first Sex and the City movie), so no one should expect an "ending" when the series finishes a couple of months from now.

Tonight's season premiere, written and directed by series creator Doug Ellin, was perfectly in keeping with what the series has always been:  a slick, pleasant half hour with the boys, gliding over reality and dramatic consequence in favor of snappy odes to luxury and friendship.  The action picked up 3 months after the Season 7 finale:  Vince had avoided jail for his coke possession by going to rehab, and as the episode begins, he's about to go home.  Although various things have happened while he was gone (E and Sloan are officially broken up, at least for now; Ari and Mrs. Ari too), the most dramatic development is the apparently drastic diet Turtle has gone on--Jerry Ferrara is a shadow of his old self.  (I'm happy for Ferrara's good health, but not so sure this works for Turtle as a character; his genial comfort with his own bulk was part of what made him the most grounded of the group--well, that and the pot.)  

The main storyline of the premiere was the effort of the friends to keep Vince away from stimulants of any kind and all stress--particularly difficult because he'd come out of rehab with a lousy idea for a new project (something about a dog being smuggled to the site of a mine cave-in to help dig for survivors, which Vince was going to direct himself) that no one wanted to tell him was dreadful.  In the way of Entourage, neither of these problems turned out to be very serious, and the only potentially affecting revelation of the episode, that the separated Mrs. Ari is seeing someone else, led only to Ari belting down fake vodka.  (One assumes that the fiery end of the episode won't change much either.)  Entourage has always been interesting for its mix of accurate detail (real restaurants and clubs, genuine industry jargon, cameos by stars playing versions of themselves) and utterly unconvincing substance (Vince as an actual movie star); it seems likely to go out on the same note.

A quick look at some of the other Sunday cable series:

TRUE BLOOD:  As addictive as it's always been, the guilty pleasure in an HBO schedule that always has its fill of high-quality medicine (Boardwalk Empire, In Treatment).  The storyline about amnesic Eric is so far delightful, and nothing but good can come from Fiona Shaw's addition to the cast.

BREAKING BAD:  Just begun, and blistering already.  Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, and Giancarlo Esposito give 3 of the best performances on television, and the supporting cast is right there with them; Vince Gilligan's show may be pulp, but it's a reminder of how satisfying and deeply horrifying pulp can be.

CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM:  Larry David does what he does, and no one who's imitated him over the last decade or so can do it as well.  Tonight's episode, with Larry frequenting a Palestinian restaurant where Jews go for illicit meals so their Jewish friends won't see them, was particularly inspired.

IN PLAIN SIGHT: The decision to write Mary McCormack's real-life pregnancy into the show turned out to be a good one:  having an actual emotional through-line in the season has placed the series apart from the rest of the light USA procedurals and given it some heart--without cutting back at all on the flashing repartee.

FALLING SKIES:  TNT's big-budget Spielberg show still seems to finding its way (it's already renewed for a second season, so no rush).  The last couple of episodes, with danger coming from other humans rather than the CG effects or guys in monster suits, have been an improvement, and so has the toning down of Will Patton's military man, who's now more of a weathered colleague to Noah Wyle's hero than an antagonist.  Moon Bloodgood, too, has stepped up in recent episodes that demanded more serious drama from her.

NECESSARY ROUGHNESS departs from the USA Network formula in several ways:  our heroine Dani Santino (Callie Thorne) is the mother of teenagers, she doesn't work undercover or take on wacky identities, she has no extraordinary abilities other than empathy, and her wise-cracking best friend isn't around enough to count as a sidekick (in the pilot, she's played by Amanda Detmer, who's now a regular on ABC's fall sitcom Man Up).  While it's nice to see the network stretching its usual rules of engagement, the result sadly doesn't have much bounce.

Dani is a psycho- and hypno-therapist; 17 years ago, she had the opportunity to continue her education and start a serious psychiatric practice, but she became pregnant and downscaled professionally to raise her family.  She now sees patients in her home, helping them to stop smoking, lose weight and the like.  When she finds out her husband (Craig Bierko) has been cheating on her, she files for what turns into an ugly divorce, and then she happens onto the chance to become team therapist to pro football's NY Hawks.  (The show, although set in New York, is shot in Atlanta, and it's not one of the more convincing city-for-city substitutions.)  The team has plenty of players who could use her help, because their personal problems are affecting their game, as well as a love interest for Dani (trainer Marc Blucas) and an enigmatic team "fixer" (Scott Cohen).  

The premise of a shrink to professional athletes is a promising and topical one, and the Necessary Roughness pilot, written by the team of Liz Kruger and Craig Shapiro, quickly trots out the tropes you'd expect:  her first patient, TK King (Mehcad Brooks), is jewelry-laden and arrogant, with anger management problems; he hangs out in strip clubs with his posse while getting into drunken fights.  The show takes all this more seriously than you'd expect from an USA show (even the hypnotism is played straight), and Dani's cure for TK turns out to be simplistic and sentimental.  Meanwhile, she has standard-issue problem kids (Hannah Marks and Patrick Johnson), and a mother (Concetta Tomei) who's almost a clone of Sharon Gless in Burn Notice. 

Although Thorne is more than capable of sharp humor (for seasons, she's been craziness itself as Denis Leary's mistress on Rescue Me), the script for Necessary Roughness's script has very little snap.  The pilot plods through Dani's family problems and the wait for TK to listen, really listen, to what she's saying so he can start catching passes again.  (The 75-minute length of the pilot doesn't help.)  The only intriguing character is Cohen's fixer, mostly because he's pretty much left in the shadows. 

Necessary Roughness has a great lead-in from USA's hit Royal Pains, so there's little doubt it'll get sampled in its premiere, and in Thorne it has a star who's likable enough to hold onto an audience--if the writers can provide her with the material.  Right now, Dani isn't very distinctive, and the problems she's solving feel banal.  USA may have sacrificed its trademark tone, but not to attempt something original--it's turned itself temporarily into Lifetime.

Click below for reviews of tonight's premieres:

At this point, I think we could all identify a USA Network series blindfolded and with the soundtrack running backwards.  There's the quirky, unconventional savant lead--available, like a comfortable sweater, in several colors:  cop/detective (In Plain Sight, Psych, White Collar), spy (Covert Affairs, Burn Notice), doctor (Royal Pains) or lawyer (Fairly Legal and the new SUITS).  Whatever the profession, the protagonist is usually a con artist of some sort, pretending for purposes of the job to be something he or she isn't.  There's at least one bantering sidekick, and one or more stodgy representatives of the established order, so the leads can run circles around them.  Add a disease/case/crime of the week, and mix well.  The formula has been staggeringly successful for the network:  this summer, USA will broadcast 8 hours a week of original scripted dramas, on Sundays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays--that's more drama, and almost as many scripted series in total, than FOX will air next fall. And FOX and the other networks only wish they could have USA's recent track record for success; like an expert politician, USA knows how to stay on message.

In Suits, our hero, Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams), is smart enough to have gotten into Harvard Law School, but a youthful screw-up ruined his prospects, and now he makes ends meet by taking tests for others, passing effortlessly because of his phenomenal memory (have I got a girl on CBS for him!).  All this changes when he comes to the attention of Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht), an arrogantly brilliant attorney who can't find a junior lawyer built enough in his own image to assist him.  Bromantic sparks fly, and Mike is the firm's new "lawyer," able to throw around legal concepts while needing the help of the firm's cute paralegal (Meghan Markle) to file the simplest motion.  The forces of authority are represented by the firm's managing partner (Gina Torres, sympathetic) and Harvey's scheming rival (Rick Hoffman, who always plays this role).  

On the USA scale, Suits, at least in its 90-minute premiere episode, is a little more earnest than usual.  (TNT's version of the show, this summer's legal romp Franklin & Bash, goes the other way--too silly to have any weight at all.)  Since Mike really did want to be a lawyer, and he honestly wants to help people, in Sean Jablonski and Aaron Korsh's script he's less of a smart-aleck than most of the network's heroes (Harvey, who's more in the cynical-with-a-heart-of-gold mode, has the mentor part), and perhaps correspondingly, Suits is a bit low in initial buoyancy.  There is, for example, a grandmother for Mike who, despite her Alzheimer's, is unfailingly able to give exactly the right advice--not to be brutal, but granny's  probably not necessary.  Still, the central characters are all likable, as are the actors, and the storytelling, however predictable, is efficient; the one-hour format will probably help boil subsequent episodes down in a helpful way.  

Pick the simile:  Suits fits USA like a glove, it's made to order for the network, it's custom tailored to their measurements.  The point is that the network's streak is likely to continue.