Just when I think I could give up on TV and walk away forever, TNT creates a new medical drama, Hawthorne. I was skeptical. Grey’s lost its appeal once Isaiah Washington left and Izzie started sleeping with her ghost lover. ER lost me nearly a decade ago and Private Practice always has been a bit on the goofy side. Added to the mix is the fact that almost every great drama or comedy I became attached to in the last two years has been cancelled prematurely. I’ve not been willing to spend time caring about yet another new show, especially another medical drama.

But, Jada Pinkett Smith, as Christina Hawthorne, is a great, talented actress. Based on the pilot alone, I would say the show has strong promise. The characters and dialog feel real to me. Having grown up with a mom who spent her entire career in the operating room, I heard a lot about what goes on at a hospital. I know about the real struggles of nurses and surgical techs, the clashes between staff and doctors and power plays between other nurses. Many of my own friends were also nurses. What I can appreciate about Hawthorne is they accurately portray many of the gripes and joys I’ve heard from my own mom and friends. The dialog felt real and the characters believable. Read the rest of this entry »

Can y’all tell I’m excited about the new season?

Very short, very quick note to all the people who were looking for the song that opened the episode “The 12 Step Job” of Leverage, it’s been posted for your pleasure, along with a little more background on it, at iFMagazine.com.

Leverage returns to TNT this summer; we’ll be reviewing it as always.

I really wanted to like TNT’s Trust Me, thinking that a lighter, modern take on the advertising business would be a nice counterpoint to Mad Men‘s meditation on mid-century America. With a cast mostly populated by actors I’ve liked before and the cushion of working for a cable network willing to give shows room to breathe and find their own way, Trust Me looked like a shoo-in on paper.

But no matter how many checkboxes get filled in, it’s the execution that matters.

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I am really excited for the second season of Leverage. Sharker is going to ROCK!

Grifter, hitter, hacker, thief. You were all trying to solve your version of the crime instead of just trying to solve the crime. There’s a reason we work together.

Even amongst critics who enjoy Leverage, it doesn’t get a lot credit for style. Dean Devlin established a house style in the pilot that has been enhanced and codified through this first season that serves the show well, but few bother to note those things it does well. One of them is on display tonight.

The opening scene closely mirrors the opening of last week’s “The First David Job”, all the way down to Nate’s line to Blackpoole: “Are you here to kill me, Ian?” And the crane shot in the closing scene mirrors the same shot of the team scattering in the final scene of the pilot. These callbacks establish a through line from the pilot, through last week’s setbacks, and into next season.

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His cover’s blown. Faces of his people have been sent to every law enforcement agency in the state. We’ve taken their money, their base of operations, and now Nate Ford will never, ever, get his revenge. They will do the only smart thing to do. They’ll scatter.

Leverage rarely plays around much with time, generally running straight through from beginning to end with only occasional detours for con explication or character asides. Tonight is a little different. We open in the present with a completely blitzed Nathan crashing a party dedicating a new museum wing to his old boss at IYS, Ian Blackpool. Offering to sell Blackpool something, we finally realize this is a con when he calls over Sophie, posing as Portia, a representative from the Vatican. We also realize Nate is not as drunk as he appears, at least not as incapacitated.

Jumping back to two weeks earlier, we get the setup – an intervention for Nate, who wants them “not to get hung up on the alcoholic” part of him being a functioning alcoholic. But since this is a Leverage-style intervention, the team just wants to help Nate get revenge.¹

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1. Good for Nate. He didn’t have to say, “no, no, no.” [↩]

When I was a kid, I was like eight-years old, I had a foster mom who was a Jehovah’s Witness. Used to dress me up in a suit and a bowtie, take me door to door to spread the word. Black neighborhoods, white neighborhoods, didn’t matter. I would kick, I’d scream, or whatever, but she would say, “Alec, you need to learn to talk to people.” See, everything I learned about people, I learned ringing doorbells in a bowtie. Parker never had that.

You think you know a show…you think they’re pulling out a jury show because they want to save a few bucks and do a bottle episode. And then they whip name guest stars at you with reckless abandon – a Brent Spiner here, an Armin Shimerman there, and what the hell, let’s top it off with a Lauren Holly for good measure – and dress a bunch of sets we’ve never seen before. What I’m saying is, this isn’t your usual jury episode.

It’s a little lighter on the action – not a fireball in sight – than some other episodes, but Jonathan Frakes manages to keep the pace brisk from behind the camera. Even courtroom scenes, which are normally the bane of any action show with all their talky-talky, don’t feel like they’re slowing down the proceedings at all.

By the way, if you didn’t catch our interview with Jonathan Frakes yesterday, be sure to go clicky-clicky right here with your mouse, touchpad, rollerball, or alternate pointy device.

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Tomorrow night’s episode of Leverage, “The Juror #6 Job”, was directed by TV veteran Jonathan Frakes and reunites him with Star Trek alums Brent Spiner, Armin Shimerman, and Kitty Swink. I had a chance to talk with Frakes about his experience on this episode and with the Leverage team in general (he’s directed two episodes so far.) We also talked a bit about the present and future of television.

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My father was an addict, my grandfather. I know how these people operate.

TNT’s done a bit of a number on the order of episodes, shuffling them around for a variety of reasons. Last week’s episode, in fact, was intended to be the third on the air according to John Rogers. But we get serendipity. Nate’s drinking from last week, which seemed a bit out of place because it was more pronounced than in previous weeks, makes a nice precursor to tonight’s full-on addiction problem.

Like any high-functioning alcoholic, as long as Nate’s well lubricated (but not too lubricated) he’s fine. Hence the booze in the soda can first thing in the morning and the ubiquitous tumbler. And like any high-functioning alcoholic, any interruption in the flow can be catastrophic.

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