Still More New TV Shows

This has dragged on for a while now. There have been three editions thus far this season, and there are still shows I haven't reviewed. They probably won't get reviewed now. But let's not worry about that. This feature has four reviews to round out my Good/Bad/Ugly rating of this fall's new TV shows.

Fastlane (Fox Wednesday/CTV Tuesday): This is your brain. This is your brain after watching Fastlane. What is Fastlane? Think hour long music video with snappy dialogue and lots of gun play. About the dialogue, it's fast paced and witty, with lines like "I know you didn't just throw my Desert Eagle out the window" and the why-hasn't-someone-used-this-one-before "You've got bail." Oh, and in a first for my primetime network television experience, I've heard the term "nutsack" used twice already, and not in reference to bags of almonds. About the gun play, there's a lot of it. I don't think I've seen an episode yet where people didn't empty multiple clips with typical action movie poor accuracy. And about the music video, the use of music is highly eclectic, with an emphasis on current hard urban stuff, to early 80s Phil Collins. So how is Fastlane? It's silly, lively, and lots of Good fun, so long as you drop your brain into neutral before watching.

Still Standing (CBS/Global Monday): Don't you know I'm still standing better than I ever did, looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid? Well, not really. I have no idea why they called this show Still Standing, but I'm not going to dwell on it. This is one show I didn't expect much from, but I watched it because, well, I need fodder for these reviews, and Jami Gertz is on it, and she's cute, and she's one of these people who used to have somewhat of a career (if you consider being in The Lost Boys a career) but just kinda went away for a while, and might be on a comeback now. But it turns out that Mark Addy, who plays the husband to Gertz's wife, is the best person on the show. He's very funny, in a non-animated-Homer Simpson sort of way. Gertz is quite funny too, but Addy makes this show Good.

Boomtown (NBC/Global Sunday): Police shows follow a fairly uniform structure. There's cops, and sometimes lawyers and firemen and EMTs too, and there are bad people, and bad stuff happens, and the cops have to bend the rules a bit, and the bad guys generally end up in jail. Or maybe dead. Sure, there is lots of variety in this format, from Fastlane to The Shield in just shows that debuted this year alone, but they all follow this same basic format. Boomtown is different. Every episode looks at one case from multiple points of view — a lot of points of view. I was skeptical that this would work, but it does. Not so much because of the multiple POV approach, but despite it. The writing has been creative and compelling, and that's what makes the story work. Filling in parts of the story scattershot give a more complete view of what's going on, but by and large each episode focuses on one or two of the recurring characters. The way it's done is neat but basically gravy. So if you like gravy, which I don't, it's Good.

Hack (CBS/Global Friday): David Morse is best known for playing cranky but competent military/law enforcement types in movies like The Rock, The Negotiator, and The Green Mile. So it's not much of a stretch when he plays an ex-cop who rather reluctantly helps people in Hack. Apparently he got in trouble for being a dirty cop, but not a bad dirty cop, rather a good cop who didn't turn in some money as evidence. So now he drives a cab and has a chip on his shoulder. Or maybe he had the chip all along. In any case, he's not a cop any more but he helps people in an outside-the-law manner. This makes him a tough guy who's rough around the edges, but he helps people. He plays by his own rules, but that's only so he'll get results. So don't confuse him with Batman. Or Dirty Harry Callahan. Or Shaft. Or Andy Sipowicz. Or Vic Mackey on The Shield. Or two of the cops on Boomtown. Or any number of John Wayne characters. You get the idea. Too Bad they couldn't come up with a more original concept.