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Amazon Pilots
Feb. 24th, 2014 08:24 amSo we watched three of the Amazon Pilots last night:
1. Transparent has potential. It's a quirky half-hour dramedy from Jill Soloway, the Six Feet Under writer whose movie Afternoon Delight wasn't quite as twee as it should have been, but was still about an hour too long. At the half-hour mark, she's a little more focused (she's at her best at even shorter targets, as her run on The Oblongs shows), but only Gaby Hoffman and Jeffrey Tambor have the chops to save things from getting too quirky-for-the-sake-of-quirky here (if you were wondering if Jay Duplass is a director who can act, well, at least this is a way he can brag he's as good as Scorsese). Basically, I'd give it a second episode, but wouldn't commit to an entire season yet. There's a "twist" (a couple, actually), but none of them are shocking, and all are clearly a part of this show's elevator pitch.
2. Bosch is a fucking mess. Imagine the worst crime show on TV right now (or, since we're in something of a golden age right now, imagine, say, late-run CSI Miami, or maybe The Hat Squad). Then throw in literally the least-talented cast this side of an Ed Wood movie (lead Titus Welliver excluded), dialogue painfully written by (it would seem) high-school interns with no sense of pace or rhythm, and a plot that's mind-numbing banal. If this is the show that "wins," Amazon's pretty much acknowledging that they can't compete with Netflix in this game.
3. Mozart in the Jungle was the best of the lot, a well-acted show (with folks like Bernadette Peters, Saffron Burrows, and Malcolm McDowell) with a lot of sex, witty dialogue, and interesting characters. Alas, not as many of the jokes work as the writers think (although the Oedipus Rocks musical-within-a-show, featuring the music of Styx, is fucking awesome), and the ending is trite to the point of painfulness. It's about an oboeist trying to make it in the big city. Throw out one annoying off-the-cuff transphobic remark (made by a character we're not, as best I can tell, supposed to like, but with one half hour episode, it's a little early to tell), and it's a show I'd at least give another chance or two to, just to see where they're headed.
I'll watch the Chris Carter one sometime later, just to see if he's still got anything left in the tank, although I don't have high hopes. But the bar's reasonably low to begin with here.
1. Transparent has potential. It's a quirky half-hour dramedy from Jill Soloway, the Six Feet Under writer whose movie Afternoon Delight wasn't quite as twee as it should have been, but was still about an hour too long. At the half-hour mark, she's a little more focused (she's at her best at even shorter targets, as her run on The Oblongs shows), but only Gaby Hoffman and Jeffrey Tambor have the chops to save things from getting too quirky-for-the-sake-of-quirky here (if you were wondering if Jay Duplass is a director who can act, well, at least this is a way he can brag he's as good as Scorsese). Basically, I'd give it a second episode, but wouldn't commit to an entire season yet. There's a "twist" (a couple, actually), but none of them are shocking, and all are clearly a part of this show's elevator pitch.
2. Bosch is a fucking mess. Imagine the worst crime show on TV right now (or, since we're in something of a golden age right now, imagine, say, late-run CSI Miami, or maybe The Hat Squad). Then throw in literally the least-talented cast this side of an Ed Wood movie (lead Titus Welliver excluded), dialogue painfully written by (it would seem) high-school interns with no sense of pace or rhythm, and a plot that's mind-numbing banal. If this is the show that "wins," Amazon's pretty much acknowledging that they can't compete with Netflix in this game.
3. Mozart in the Jungle was the best of the lot, a well-acted show (with folks like Bernadette Peters, Saffron Burrows, and Malcolm McDowell) with a lot of sex, witty dialogue, and interesting characters. Alas, not as many of the jokes work as the writers think (although the Oedipus Rocks musical-within-a-show, featuring the music of Styx, is fucking awesome), and the ending is trite to the point of painfulness. It's about an oboeist trying to make it in the big city. Throw out one annoying off-the-cuff transphobic remark (made by a character we're not, as best I can tell, supposed to like, but with one half hour episode, it's a little early to tell), and it's a show I'd at least give another chance or two to, just to see where they're headed.
I'll watch the Chris Carter one sometime later, just to see if he's still got anything left in the tank, although I don't have high hopes. But the bar's reasonably low to begin with here.