The Pusher and The User: WEEDS and NURSE JACKIE Premiere on Showtime Tonight

It’s Ladies’ Night on Showtime, with the return of Weeds and the premiere of Nurse Jackie. Weeds is sharp, brutally funny, and well-acted, and…we have a hard time watching it. Mary-Louise Parker is terrific in her role as widow-turned-marijuana dealer Nancy Botwin, but Nancy’s choices put her children in such horrific, dangerous situations that we have a hard time not wanting to call Social Services on a television character. Still, the lecture Nancy’s brother (the terrific Justin Kirk) once gave Nancy’s youngest son on…growing up…with a banana peel…is still one of the funniest things that television has produced recently, so if you can stomach the bad parenting, tune in.

Nurse Jackie, on the other hand, finds Edie Falco snorting Oxycontin to keep herself sharp enough to keep her patients out of danger. This pilot is by turns acerbic, heartbreaking, snide, touching, and clever, and it opens by quoting TS Eliot, so I fell a little in love a little too quickly. Falco is so good (and this is coming from someone who could not handle The Sopranos and therefore never really understood the acclaim for its leads) I almost want to hand her the Oxy myself. She’s joined by a solid supporting cast that includes Peter Facinelli (Damages, Six Feet Under, Fastlane), Anna Deavere Smith (The West Wing, The Practice), and Merritt Wever (Matt and Danny’s PA on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip). I’m terrified thinking that Nancy Botwin’s kids are going to end up in the emergency room, to the point where I’m not sure I can watch her show, but I’d feel a lot better knowing they were going to end up under Nurse Jackie’s tough, tender care.

Weeds season premiere tonight at 10pm Eastern and Pacific, followed immediately by the series premiere of Nurse Jackie, both on Showtime.

New Episodes of THE CLOSER, RAISING THE BAR on TNT Tonight

I kinda like FBI Agent Fritzie (Jon Tenney), so I wonder occasionally what he sees in Brenda Leigh Johnson. Sure, I love her, but I love her as a hard-nosed cop who makes cool intuitive leaps. If I had to live with her, the Bacon Universe version of Deputy Chief Johnson would be investigating how the real Deputy Chief Johnson’s hacked-up corpse ended up in the garbage disposal.

Still, Fritz seems to be sticking it out, and the new season of The Closer that begins on TNT tonight finds the newlyweds negotiating both marriage and a case both the LAPD and the FBI want. Brenda and Fritz can be married all they want, as long as we get to see lots of Provenza (GW Bailey), Flynn (Tony Denison) and Tao (Michael Paul Chan).

TNT also brings back legal drama Raising the Bar, which did not raise the bar when it debuted last year. I may try it again for the love of Jane Kaczmarek, for said love runs deep. If they expect me to stick with it, though, they’re going to have to come up with twistier storylines and retreads of things we saw on Law and Order a decade ago. Fleshing out the characters and their relationships would be a bonus, too. They’ve gotten a second chances, so we’d love to see them take advantage of it. Opening the season mocking Mark-Paul Gosselaar‘s hair seems like a good sign.

The Closer premieres at 9pm Eastern and Pacific, with Raising the Bar immediately following, both on TNT.

ROYAL PAINS “Pilot”: St. Hank of the Hamptons

Pilots are tricky beasts. The need to introduce the characters and situations that provide the foundation for the entire show often gum up the storytelling, creating a checklist approach (“Handsome protagonist–means well and is funny. Check!”) instead of something more elegant.

Royal Pains is not the pilot to break this pattern. While the show’s premise is established with relative economy, the characters have little dimension or shading. The finacee who dumps Hank when he falls on hard times? We know she’s not good enough for him because she states in her three minutes of screentime that she wanted to spend their money on fancy wedding paraphenalia rather than on Hank’s legal bills. Hank’s brother is a good-time boy who takes advantange of the moment. The Hamptonites Hank treats are self-centered and spoiled. Lather, rinse, repeat.

On the other side of the coin, Hank is good but no less one-dimensional. Hank knows medicine better than anyone! Hank would never accept money for practicing medicine! (Until the end of the episode.) Hank is honest! Hank would love to serve as a surrogate father to a poor little rich boy! He’s clearly meant to be with the Hamptons’ hospital administrator, as she is good. She is so good that she knows Hank is right. Because he is Hank!

Maybe Royal Pains‘ aches and pains will be limited to the pilot–as predicted, Mark Feuerstein is adorable, and while Paulo Costanzo gets little to do but be a rascal as Hank’s brother, he’s a charming rascal indeed. The musical choices are less than fresh (really, if songs have been featured on iTouch and Target commercials, they’re not going to serve very well to set a scene), and some of the more melodramatic lines are clunkers (“Why didn’t you tell me you’re a hemophiliac?!?” set me to giggling when I wasn’t supposed to be). But the banter between the brothers is snappy, and the main characters are at least charming, so perhaps Royal Pains is worth a second opinion.

THE LISTENER: That’s Not the Color of His Parachute

Susannah and I were recently talking about the set-up and structure of serial storytelling. It makes sense that we see so many cop and doctor shows, because cops and doctors are so much more likely to stumble across a dramatic situation than are, say, retail workers or pickle-dehairers. Sure, we occasionally get a show set in, say, the White House or a pie shop (and even then the latter is in many ways about solving crimes), but it’s generally easier to get a conflict that can be resolved in 42 minutes rolling with a cop or a doctor at the helm.

So it’s no surprise that The Listener focuses on a central character (Craig Olejnik as Toby Logan) who is a paramedic, as his job can bring his psychic talents–oh, did I mention he’s a psychic paramedic?–to bear on cases where people are already in trouble. One of the problems with The Listener–in addition to the fact that it’s neither terribly well acted nor designed–is that our psychic paramedic isn’t content being a psychic paramedic. Instead, he has to be a cop, too. It’s one thing to assume that Toby can solve cases more quickly than the cops because he can hear people’s thoughts, but it’s hard to swallow the idea that Toby can solve cases more quickly than the cops because he thought to look up some records on the computer. I’d prefer to see the show about the psychic retail worker who solves cases by hearing people’s thoughts while they’re struggling into the wrong size in the dressing room, but if we get The Listener instead, could we at least get a paramedic who wants to be a paramedic? If I get in an accident in his general vicinity, I’d prefer to think Toby Logan is more worried about my vital signs than about reading my thoughts to solve the mystery of who took my baby Babybel cheeses out of the communal work refrigerator.

Summer Premieres Abound on Thursday Night

New summer TV is busting out all over! If you’re like me and are waiting out the audition process on So You Think You Can Dance (why does the producer manipulation in the audition rounds work so much better on American Idol than on SYTYCD? How can they possibly think I want to see the entirely constructed tension of putting the adorable Kasprzak brothers on the stage together to hear about the last slot?), there’s still plenty of new TV for you tonight. USA leads the pack with a brand new season of Burn Notice, which presumably finds Michael out of the ocean and on the run. More Bruce Campbell, please! They follow the Burn Notice season premiere with the bow of new Mark Feuerstein medical dramedy Royal Pains. To be honest, I’m not sure I care about the cuts, bruises, and face lifts of the rich and famous Hamptons residents who need house calls, but I love me some Mark Feuerstein (Cliff Calley! ), so I guess I’m there (also: bonus Campbell Scott!). Burn Notice and Royal Pains might be a good match–good guys who lose their good lives and try to reconstruct new ones with help from wacky friends and family? Hmmm. Maybe I just favor the Campbells.

If you just can’t get enough medical drama, NBC also debuts The Listener, about a psychic paramedic (Craig Olejnik, sporting unfortunate hair). Yep. The lead character referring to his psychic ability as God setting him up with free cable is kind of cute, I suppose. On the other hand, I’m not sure I’m that impressed with paramedics who see a major car accident out their window and are surprised by it, as psychic ability apparently drowns out huge noises. The latest in an increasingly long line of Canadian imports, The Listener‘s cast isn’t as instantly interesting as Mark Feuerstein (few are!), so we’ll be waiting for Colm Feore to show up. Unless we’ve given up and are watching the early showing of The USA Network Campbell Evening instead. Burn Notice and Royal Pains on USA Network at 9pm and 10pm Eastern and Pacific, respectively, and a double dose of The Listener on NBC at the same times.

Start the Wake: ABC Begins Burning Off PUSHING DAISIES Tonight

As I will never, ever forgive ABC for holding a pillow over Pushing Daisies‘ face, I may still be going through the stages of grief. Please don’t try to console me by telling me they’re in a better place now–they’re in the last primetime slot on a Saturday night going into June. That’s not a better place.

Still, I suppose we should be grateful we’re getting these last three episodes at all. Tonight’s episode, in which we find out exactly why Olive’s into the whole constructed family thing Ned’s got going on, may have been my favorite of the final three episodes screened at the Paley Festival last month. Focusing on the murder of a department store window designer, it’s perhaps even more visually gorgeous than usual. Olive finds a backbone, bless her wee little pea-picking heart. And it’s your last chance to hear Kristin Chenoweth sing on this magical show. Don’t miss it–10pm Eastern and Pacific, 9pm Central and Mountain, on (Spit! Ptooi!) ABC.

DOCTOR WHO News: Old Friends, New Companions

For a show that’s taking a year’s hiatus (sort of), Doctor Who is making a lot of news this week:

• BBC America announced it will be showing the specials that comprise that last stories involving David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor. The 2008 Christmas special and 2009 Easter special–which have obviously already shown in the UK–will be on BBC America on June 27 and sometime in July, respectively, with the final three episodes to appear later.
• Auntie Beeb announced the new companion who will be accompanying Matt Smith‘s Eleventh Doctor: little-known Scottish actress Karen Gillan. Gillan’s already appeared in the Whoniverse (as a soothsayer in last year’s “The Fires of Pompeii”) and…not much else. We like and want to trust new showrunner Steven Moffat, but it’s interesting to think that if you combine Smith’s and Gillan’s ages, they’re a whole year older than Ninth Doctor Christopher Eccleston.
• BBC2 announced they’ll be filming a version of the Hamlet that Tennant appeared in last year alongside Patrick Stewart. The Baconeers can attest that the play was sixteen kinds of awesome (and also that both Tennant and Stewart might have been upstaged by Oliver Ford Davies’ terrific Polonius). This is exactly the kind of thing that shows up on US shores on Masterpiece Theater (e.g. Ian McKellan’s triumphant King Lear), so we won’t be surprised to see Hamlet wash up on American shores, too. Too bad Tennant’s hosting Masterpiece Contemporary instead of Masterpiece Classic.
• Finally, outgoing showrunner Russell T Davies announced that Tennant’s Tenth Doctor will be popping up in one of the Sarah Jane Adventures stories this fall (a two-parter, no less!). Given how much Tennant seems to adore Elisabeth Sladen and Sarah Jane Smith, maybe this is the sendoff he should really get.

THE GOODE FAMILY “Pilot”: I Can’t Be Seen Here–I Work in Academia!

You have no idea how many times I’ve uttered those very words.

Which, you would think, would make me part of one of the target audiences for ABC’s new animated comedy The Goode Family, which pokes fun at those lefty, sprout-eating, sandal-wearing hippies who organize their lives by asking “What Would Al Gore Do?”. I may not be much into sprouts, but it’s possible I own a reusable grocery bag. Presumably, another target audience would be people who have put a sticker in their back truck window that shows poor, bastardized Calvin urinating on Al Gore.

Unfortunately, The Goode Family offered little for either group to laugh at. Watching goody-two-shoes lefties awkwardly stammer over what ethnicity to call a neighbor is less funny than it is…awkward. The oneupsmanship in the in the uber-conscious health food store seemed to take forever and led to a punchline that had little punch. The episode seemed to hit a better stride when dealing with the relationships among the family members, so perhaps the lack of funny was merely the awkwardness of a pilot. Based on creator Mike Judge’s previous work (King of the Hill, Beavis and Butthead), there may be some comic gems hidden underneath the easy stereotypes, but with So You Think You Can Dance on opposite, who wants to spend the time rooting around in the carefully tended compost pile for those gems?

MENTAL “Pilot”: I Refuse to Turn That “E” Around

They say that drowning is just suffocating from breathing the wrong thing. People drown surrounded by oxygen because their lungs can’t convert that oxygen out of the water. It feels like we’re drowning in the television landscape right now, waiting for the summer season to start–everyone is still broadcasting, but we can’t convert the oxygen out of reruns of of Law and Order: Teriyaki Glaze or new and icky reality offerings (really, CW? Hitched or Ditched? Really?).

Fox hopes to come to the rescue with Mental, the tale of an unorthodox psychiatrist and the ways in which he enlightens both patients and his more orthodox colleagues. The network hopes they have the next House, but Mental just comes off as cheap in every way (it is kind of interesting to think about how the network is filming it on the cheap in Colombia, but it’s too bad the cheap shows through). It’s a cheap knockoff of the House formula, with a quirky lead hired by a hot female administrator and surrounded by underlings who are both appalled and intrigued by the way the lead’s nuttiness solves the case in 44 minutes or less. Unfortunately, Chris Vance, British though he may be, is no Hugh Laurie. His colleague is a cheap knockoff of Marcia Cross and Jaclyn Smith (Jacqueline McKenzie, much better elsewhere, like The 4400). His underlings are cheap knockoffs of Orlando Bloom, goatee version (Nicholas Gonzales), and Rashida Jones (Marisa Ramirez). The effects meant to give us a peep into the head of someone suffering from hallucinations looked like they came straight out of a Hulu ad. The lighting makes everything look so flat and cheap I wnated to kick at the flimsy walls while wearing pointy-toed shoes, just to see if I could kick right through. Even the title sequence is a cheap ripoff of Numb3rs, with the “e” in Mental flipping around, presumably to represent the lead’s quirky outlook. Perhaps worst of all is the show’s cheap take on mental illness–the pilot had a schizophrenic healed in 72 hours by the magic power of art.  Marvelous. While I’m hoping subsequent episodes are better, I can’t be sure the cheap life jacket Fox has thrown me will hold out long enough to see if that happens.

GLEE “Pilot”: Questioning Your Commitment to Sparkle Motion

Fox gave us a little taste of high school choir dramedy Glee last night after American Idol, and let’s be honest: that was good strategy. I loved the darn thing. Loved its guts. Any show with an a capella version of “Moonlight Sonata” and a huge choir’s worth of kids in polka-dot 50s dresses belting out “Rehab” has so got me on its side.

I do wonder, however, whom Fox is targeting with this show. The numbers, particularly among young viewers, don’t look huge but don’t look bad, which gives me hope. Maybe there really are millions of other people out there who, having  just been surprised on a cross-country flight that Delta’s entertainment system includes Spring Awakening (it’s the bitch of flying), screamed “It’s WENDLA!” when Glee’s version of Tracy Flick graced the screen (Lea Michele is a wonderful balance of ego and vulnerability here). Maybe the young people understand the greatness that is Journey. Maybe everyone else who watches Fox has a congenital inability to change the channel if they trip over Camp (hey, where is Fritzi these days? Ooh, she’s Stacey Pilgrim! That’s so cool! Ooh, she’s also in Twilight. That’s so not cool). Maybe millions of other viewers howled laughing when Tracy Flick, upset at the possibility that having the kid in the wheelchair take the lead on “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat” was meant ironically, snapped, “There’s nothing ironic about show choir!”…and then had to wonder if they would have understood the irony of show choir when they were her age or if they were in fact Tracy Flick. Were there enough of us rocking that boat in high school to support what, given the music rights, will have to be an expensive show?

Here’s hoping so, because even with some of the creakiness pilots tend to have (the musical theater kid in a Marc Jacobs jacket [Chris Colfer] gets thrown into a Dumpster by jocks? I’m shocked), this was a hoot. Presumably, we’ll be following the adventures of whether financially-challenged teacher Will (Matthew Morrison of Broadway’s The Light in the Piazza, Hairspray, and Footloose) can support an expanding family while paying for glee club, whether his shaky marriage can withstand both his wife’s spending habits and the adorableness that is fellow teacher Jayma Mays (Heroes, Pushing Daisies), whether star QB Finn (Cory Monteith [Kyle XY]) can bridge the jock/singer divide, and whether our plucky band can win the championship. As long as they sing and dance the whole way (to Journey songs!), I’ll likely follow them down the yellow brick road. You can make the wait until fall shorter by catching the pilot on iTunes (free, at least for the moment) and Hulu.