Pilot Watch 2007: Fox comedies

Because Fox has so many new shows, I'm splitting them up into gendre. The three sitcoms right now, the dramas to follow at some point.

Usual disclaimer applies: these are not reviews, just initial impressions. Too many things can and will change between now and September to make any kind of final judgments on any of these shows at this early stage.

"Back to You"
Who's in it: Kelsey Grammer, Patricia Heaton, Fred Willard and that one guy from "Out of Practice" who wasn't a showkiller
What it's about: A successful anchorman loses his job for an on-air flub and has to return to his old gig in Pittsburgh, where the female partner he left behind a decade earlier resents his return.
Pluses: Grammer, Heaton and Willard (as a sexist sportscaster) are all comedy veterans who know their way around a punchline.
Minuses: The punchlines aren't very good. I wrote about "'Til Death" last year that Brad Garrett was able to sell some lousy jokes, and either he's a better salesman than Frasier and his ex-sister-in-law, or the jokes are even lousier here. I laughed a handful of times, but I cringed far more often.

"The Return of Jezebel James"
Who's in it: Parker Posey, Lauren Ambrose and Scott Cohen
What it's about: Long-estranged sisters -- one a Type-A book editor unable to conceive, the other a slovenly 20something -- reunite when the older one asks the younger one to carry her baby.
Pluses: Posey and Ambrose have great chemistry, and the pilot picks up significantly when the two of them get to work together.
Minuses: Amy Sherman-Palladino's writing does not work with a laugh track, which makes jokes I might have otherwise smiled or even laughed at feel like hackery.

"The Rules for Starting Over"
Who's in it: Craig Bierko, Rashida Jones, Shaun Majumder and Johnny Sneed
What it's about: Four friends in their 30s struggle to re-enter the dating world at the end of long relationships.
Pluses: Umm... it's nice to know Rashida Jones will have another job lined up once "The Office" sends Karen on her way.
Minuses: This is produced by the Farrelly brothers, but it feels like bad imitation Farrelly, with token gags about a human being sexually assaulted by an animal, a disabled character who tells jokes about his condition but won't tolerate them from others, etc. Bierko can be interesting when he gets to play manic (see his ADD musician on "Sex and the City," or him on "Boston Legal" this year), but he makes a poor straight man.

The Shield: Franka goes to Farmington

Spoilers for "The Shield" coming up just as soon as I sign some autographs...

I'm going to be brief, because this is yet another episode about moving the pieces forward. In a way, it feels like this season and the Lem/Guardo storyline ended with episode six, and what we're in now is a prologue for the final season, especially Shane's involvement with the Armenians.

And that group is now represented by the awesome Franka Potente, of "Run Lola Run" and the first two Jason Bourne movies. This is a very different character for her, quieter and more calculating. When I first heard about the casting, I tried to talk Shawn Ryan into having her say "Scheisse" at some point, but I don't know that it would feel right coming out of her mouth. Still, Shane is in way over his head (as usual) dealing with this young woman, who seems so sweet and in need of protection, yet can casually order the castration of men who have crossed her.

The highlight of the episode for me, though, were the scenes with Ronnie and Shane, and Ronnie and Vic. Last year, one of the commenters suggested that David Rees Snell never got much to do because he wasn't a good actor. I think this season has shown that it was just a lack of opportunity, not talent. Ronnie's made a very interesting number two for Vic, smarter and cooler-headed than Shane -- and, as we discovered last night, maybe even more ruthless. Either he figured out the Terry thing a long time ago and made his peace with it, or he was able to make a quick moral calculation, but I got chills when he told Vic that he could have helped him cover it up better than Shane.

The counterfeit purse subplot was a decent throw-away, there mostly to show some thawing between Dani and Corrinne and between Dani and Tina, and I liked Hiatt winning brownie points with Vic at the same time he's losing them with Claudette.

As I've been saying for the last few weeks, this is NOT the place to discuss, even obliquely, the final two episodes, which have been available online since they aired in France. No hinting, no questions, no responding to other people's questions with "You'll see in episode 9." Got it?

What did everybody else think?

Veronica Mars: Rob Thomas is a whore

Hey, Piz said it, not me. Far as I'm concerned, Rob Thomas is a good guy.

Spoilers for the "Veronica Mars" series finale -- and thank you very much, CW promo guys, for that taunting "season finale" ad right before it started, as if there's any value in pretending it's not dead -- coming up just as soon as I seal up our doggie door...

Sigh... Rob said he was very happy with how they ended the season, and he was right. These two episodes were easily the highlight of this self-contained bloc, and the finale was by far the best episode of the season -- probably up in my top 5 "Veronica" episodes ever. I still can't blame Dawn Ostroff and Moonves for pulling the plug -- the audience had very clearly rejected this show -- but I feel a lot sadder about it now than I would have if we had ended after, say, the Uganda episode, or even the Paul Rudd episode.

Or maybe I'm just feeling sad because of what Veronica did to Keith. My wife felt that was a lousy ending for the show, but it felt right to me. This began as a noir show, and while those influences waned in the later seasons (especially after Lamb died and Keith became sheriff), I was glad to have it back for the finale. Veronica's always had this bull in a china shop approach, and she's gotten away with it with few repercussions for herself or the people she cared about. Not this time. Great work by Enrico Colantoni as Keith began realizing he was investigating his daughter, and equally great work by Kristen when she finally came home after Jake Kane told her there was no fixing this for Keith. Veronica casting a futile vote for Keith and walking off into the rain is a bleak ending, but strangely appropriate. We're left dangling a bit on what will happen to Keith -- He'll almost certainly lose the election, but will he do jail time? Lose his PI license, too? -- but as series-ending danglers go, I've seen far, far worse ("Now And Again" being the one that messed with me the most).

And it also felt appropriate to return, at the end, to the show's other core elements: Veronica taking on the rich and powerful (both the fraud ring and, especially, The Castle), Veronica as a school outcast (and having an undeserved reputation as a whore), Veronica squaring off with Jake Kane and Clarence Wiedman, Veronica being at odds with law-enforcement, etc.

It was great -- and, since I either didn't notice his name in the guest credits or they kept it until the end, surprising -- to have Kyle Secor back. His delivery of "Veronica Mars? VERONICA MARS?!?!?!" was a thing of beauty, and the huge portraits of Duncan and Lilly in the mansion were both a callback to the show's origins and a reminder of how much Jake has lost. His daughter's dead. His son is going to be a fugitive for the rest of his life. His wife seems gone. Now he's just a cranky rich man with only his stupid secret society to take care of. I'd feel a little sorry for him if he wasn't, you know, such a bastard.

Along the way, we had characters who had either been too absent or too uninteresting returning to prominence and form: Weevil is planting a foot (probably on the injured leg) back on the wrong side of the criminal line, Wallace is flying model planes and making sacrifices for Veronica, Logan has violence issues, and Mac is using her mad computer skills to help Veronica (I can't remember the last time she did this on a case). After a season in which the supporting cast felt adrift and too often absent, it was nice to have them all back and all acting like I remembered them, and none of it felt like a reset button was being hit.

Some briefer, more specific thoughts on the episodes to follow:

• I didn't see the point of the answering machine payoff in the first episode. If Veronica had the whole thing recorded on her Sidekick, what does it matter if the machine at the office did or didn't get it? (Also, one of my few nitpicks of the episodes: How do these techno-savvy fraudsters not recognize that Veronica could be screwing them one of 17 different ways with that Sidekick?)
• Wallace wearing the electro-shock collar was massively creepy -- and made me even more invested in Veronica taking them down -- only to be surpassed in the creepy factor by Gory's confession about his dad and uncle and the woodshop.
  
• And speaking of Gory, I suppose Logan's fate is also something of a dangler, but he's always had a death wish, so it fit.
• One other complaint: Dick wallowing in guilt over how he treated Cassidy didn't really work (the character's been too shallow for far too long to make me care about his feelings now) and was abruptly dropped as soon as he found the Veronica/Piz sex video.
• The sound on my DVR dropped out for almost the entire scene in the first hour where Wallace was told about The Castle. Was anything useful said? And did anyone not assume that the sex tape came from a Castle camera planted to keep an eye on Wallace?
• Kristen sings one last time! Too bad it wasn't something more interesting than "Bad Day," even if that was appropriate (and funny) for the situation.
  

What did everybody else think?