The Good, the Bad, and the Boring
The Good, the Bad, and the Boring by Roxanne McDonald
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Fall’s TV lineup brings a few nice surprises and lands a few duds at the same time. |
For a good percentage of the population, fall is a time to stay inside more and get cozy with TV programming
targeting just such persons. Those who have been out getting some exercise and natural sunlight are primed for some quality TV. Those of us who stay inside year-round and are hooked to our sets by an invisible umbilicus are primed for new and maybe even better shows.
Eh. Some wishes fulfilled, some not so much.
“Tori and Dean: Inn Love” is one of those surprisingly engaging shows. For me, anyway. I had ignored the first couple of episodes thinking it was going to be another Jessica and Nick look-at-my-celebrity life kind of show, but Tori has such a cutesy sense of humor and an ambitious presences and Dean is industrious and equally well-humored, so the half-hour Lifetime TV segments really do have a gentle pull.
“The Reaper” I just accidentally fell into as it airs on the WB after “Beauty and the Geek”. So I gave it chance. It’s quirky and at times tries too hard to deliver the buddy-pic characters as innocuous everyman and best friend bozo with the yuck yucks. But it also has a quasi- “Charmed” or “Buffy…” meets “Smallville” appeal I bet will draw the teen, tween, and twenty-something demographic…with not only its youthful feel but its fairly original premise.
“America’s Psychic Challenge” is one of those shows that just by the title you are apprehensive: with “America” built into the tag, you can go either way, ending up with a
mockery of a fol de rol or a truly American style that sucks viewers in more easily than ads for iPods. And the psychic ability being the requisite for competing, viewers might have been doubly skeptical.
But if the editing isn’t so overdone as to make for fraudulent participants, then the surprising success of the psychics competing is as delightful as watching Sylvia Browne on “Montel”. Well…, almost as delightful. [Who can come close to Dame Sylvia, the goddesses of all that is clairvoyant?] And besides being fascinating Friday night fodder as a majority of the psychics show true gifts [again, if not counterfeit props prodded by production the whole way through], other perks include the grousing psychic, the know-it-all discussions, and the return of the host-bot Burke.
And to replace the much-missed true crime series, to make up for the lack of “Snapped” and “Bridezilla” episodes, and to keep in time with the other networks catching on to the spiritual realities, along came [a few seasons ago, but new to me a few months ago] a show I just can’t get enough of—if only to laugh at it on occasion.
“Dead Famous” is “hosted” by two individuals, a female skeptic and a male sensitive. What is intriguing is the sharing of legends that are passed on regarding Billy the Kid, Howard Hughes, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, et. al..
What is hilarious is when celebrity ghost hunters Fleming and Porter seek out someone’s spirit in the most inappropriate or oddest of places. For instance, I am still questioning whether the spirit of John Lennon would really hang out not only on this earthly plane at all but in some bunker?
Oh, hey, what is TV for if not to make us all armchair experts?
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