procedural-related stories
Posted Oct 8th 2009 5:02PM by Jason Hughes
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Pickups and Renewals, Ratings, NCIS, Reality-Free
CBS must be pretty happy. They've been dominating the television landscape for the past several years. And their spin-offs policy continues to work very well. In it's premiere week, not only was
NCIS: LA the top-rated new show of the season, but it pushed its parent series all the way to number one on the week, achieving its highest ratings, too.
Those strong ratings have helped boost Julianna Margulies'
The Good Wife to the top as well. As a show of thanks and support,
CBS has ordered full-season pick-ups for both The Good Wife and NCIS: LA. As much as I complain about procedurals dominating the CBS landscape, people want to watch these shows. CBS does them better than anyone.
So that's one more night locked in and secured for CBS to dominate. If America ever does get tired of procedurals, though, they're in big trouble!
Posted Sep 23rd 2009 9:08AM by Jason Hughes
Filed under: OpEd, House, Reality-Free
I have a problem with procedurals. I tend to get bored with the same formula week in and week out. And yet, I've been enjoying
House for years, despite the incredibly repetitive sequence of events we get every week. The reason for that is because of the brilliance of the character Gregory House, and Hugh Laurie's portrayal of him.
As Jonathan mentioned in his
review of House's season premiere, this two-hour trip into the insane asylum broke the procedural formula completely. Not only did we not see House cure any medical ailments, we didn't see the rest of the cast at all, save a quick cameo by Wilson. Instead, we got a character study and a major breakthrough for House.
But a breakthrough is a beginning. What if the show, like the character, had a transformation of its own? How about a medical-based drama instead of a medical procedural? We can still have cases and House diagnosing them, but dump the weekly formula and instead make it about the characters and their lives.
Continue reading What if House stopped being a procedural?
Posted Apr 1st 2009 12:38AM by Debra McDuffee
Filed under: Episode Reviews, Reality-Free, The Mentalist
(S01E18) This was a fun episode of
The Mentalist, reminiscent of parts of the psychic episode, "
Seeing Red," in that we got to see Jane in a comfort zone of his, something that he knows well. The difference is that Jane believes in hypnosis.
And we got to see Jane do his thing tonight ... his hypnosis thing anyway. He was clever enough to put the tracer in Rigsby's pocket, but my favorite episodes of
The Mentalist are when Jane knows whodunnit ahead of time and sets them up. When Jane is a step -- or two -- ahead of everyone else, he shines.
Continue reading The Mentalist: Russet Potatoes
Posted Feb 11th 2009 1:06AM by Debra McDuffee
Filed under: Episode Reviews, Reality-Free, The Mentalist
(S01E14) "There's no business like Cho business." -- Patrick JaneI'm not quite sure how
The Mentalist does it. At the beginning of every episode, I want to think that it's just a typical procedural and that nothing really sets it apart. Usually, it is Simon Baker who wins me over and makes me think differently. However, tonight it was all Cho.
We started off with Cho questioning Walcott about his wife Claire's murder. When the weasel threatens Cho's job if he doesn't give the name of Claire's lover, saying that he can have Cho's job with one phone call, Cho deadpans, "That's impressive. The best I can get with one phone call is a pizza."
Continue reading The Mentalist: Crimson Casanova
Posted Jan 19th 2009 2:35PM by Debra McDuffee
Filed under: Episode Reviews, Reality-Free, The Mentalist
(S01E13) The opening of this episode was the Jane that I love -- random, bizarre, smart and observant, with no regard for convention. Did you catch the way he hammered away at Frank, the guy who found the dead body (Harry Lashley) with the woman he was having sex with?
Jane continued to be fun and outrageous throughout "Paint it Red," which made it one of the more entertaining episodes in a while for me. The case was relatively interesting, but Jane was so upbeat, divergent and ahead of the team -- love that! -- and the interactions amongst the team were top notch.
Continue reading The Mentalist: Paint it Red
Posted Jan 14th 2009 1:03AM by Debra McDuffee
Filed under: Episode Reviews, Reality-Free, The Mentalist
(S01E12) The opening scenes grabbed me right away this week.
The Mentalist is best when Jane is doing his divergent thing, and that's just what he does when the rest of the team goes into the flower shop to interview the missing boy's parents. He puts together the pink bike, the glance to the woods and the crows and finds the boy's body before the theme. Nice.
There were other parts of this episode that were throwbacks to the early days, when Jane was not only way ahead of the team, but also more over the top than some of the more recent episodes. Thank you, Bruno Heller!
Continue reading The Mentalist: Red Rum
Posted Dec 17th 2008 2:07AM by Debra McDuffee
Filed under: Episode Reviews, Reality-Free, The Mentalist
(S01E10) Man, I just love
The Mentalist. This episode was no exception. Yes, it's a formulaic show, but like
House, I've grown to love every piece of the formula and feel robbed if something is missing.
The only negatives tonight? Once again, I knew who did it early on in the episode, but they really did a good job of creating many believable suspects this week. I also missed mention of Red John, although we did get to learn a little bit more about Jane in the aftermath of his tragedy through his relationship with Sophie.
Let's get into the nitty-gritty after the jump.
Continue reading The Mentalist: Red Brick and Ivy
Posted Nov 28th 2008 9:02PM by Debra McDuffee
Filed under: Celebrities, Reality-Free, The Mentalist
Being a huge fan of CBS's new show,
The Mentalist, I was pretty thrilled to see a smart and insightful
Q&A with Bruno Heller over at
The Live Feed with James Hibberd.
What struck me the most about this interview was that the questions were good ones, and the answers were thoughtful, honest and complete. So many times I'll get excited about an on-line interview, only to find that I haven't learned anything new about the interviewee and / or the show, and I'll finish reading the interview with the feeling that the person didn't really want to be interviewed in the first place.
Thanks to Hibberd's good questions and Heller's elaborate answers, we learn how
The Mentalist came about, Heller's history with procedurals, how Heller feels about
The Mentalist, and more. Was Heller's answer about Red John spoilery? Join me after the jump to find out ...
Continue reading Bruno Heller talks of The Mentalist, procedurals, and Simon Baker
Posted Nov 26th 2008 2:04PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Industry, NCIS, Reality-Free
Considering the fact that
CSI has been the basis for two very, very successful CBS spin-offs --
CSI: Miami and
CSI: New York (in case you've been out of the loop for the past six years) -- it hardly comes as a shock that another CBS ratings powerhouse,
NCIS, is planning a spin-off. Maybe the only shock is that they've waited till now to really put thought into action.
EW's Michael Ausiello landed the exclusive and reports that the
NCIS spin-off will be like the other
CSI's in that they will not take a character from the show and make him/her the centerpiece of that new series. That means you don't have to worry about Ziva, Tony, Abs, McGee and Gibbs breaking up.
And after the fans' reaction at the end of last season, when the team was split up as the new director took over only to be reunited early this season, that's a major relief.
Continue reading NCIS planning a spin-off
Posted Nov 11th 2008 10:30PM by Debra McDuffee
Filed under: Episode Reviews, Reality-Free, The Mentalist
(S01E06) The title of this episode is hilarious. We've got the "red" that has been in every episode title of
The Mentalist so far, but the "red-handed" refers to the murderer stealing from the casino. Add in the layer that the show opens with the victim's dismembered hand in the middle of the road in Vegas, and tongue-in-cheek doesn't quite do it justice. Very clever, writer guys.
But again, not so clever with concealing the guilty party from the viewers. Um, so why wouldn't we suspect the (really, like I'd spoil this tid-bit before the jump?) ...
Continue reading The Mentalist: Red-Handed
Posted Aug 26th 2008 10:22AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Pickups and Renewals, Reality-Free
All right, let me say this up front and without equivocation: if CBS picks up
Flashpoint and cancels
Swingtown, I'm going to be ticked off. I'm not down on
Flashpoint.
As Jane wrote, Flashpoint is a good show. No
24, but solid procedural entertainment. However, when I read that
Canada's CTV has renewed up north and sources say that CBS is close to doing the same, I immediately got my back up.
Why should
Flashpoint get a break while an interesting, quirky and outside-the-box drama like
Swingtown may not? It's disheartening to me that
CBS is searching for a cable network to take Swingtown, while a "safe" crime show like
Flashpoint doesn't have that concern.
Continue reading The chances for a Flashpoint pickup are good
Posted Aug 18th 2008 11:36PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: The Closer, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
"What makes a child go bad? Nurture or nature?"
(S04E06) For the first act of tonight's show, I kept thinking, what's the deal with Sergei? The episode unfolded like an onion, revealing more and more about this kid. The more I heard, the less I cared that he was missing.
It makes you wonder, how does someone like Brenda remain neutral and not form an opinion too soon in the investigation? It must be her training, because while Pope was quick to remove the "critical missing" status from the case, Fritz -- who came along to provide backup -- was not. It was up to Brenda to make the tough call. For a while there, it seemed like she may have messed up by yielding to Will's point of view.
One of the virtues of
The Closer is that even though it's a procedural drama, they let true feelings show. There are visceral emotions at play, like when the neighbor cried about how his dog was killed, and when Theresa showed the detectives Sergei's room and revealed how evil her brother was (to her), and when Jason confessed that Sergei was terrorizing him.
Continue reading The Closer: Problem Child
Posted Feb 27th 2008 1:01PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, 24, CSI, NCIS
It doesn't take a rocket scientist, let alone a forensic specialist, to detect that the
CSI franchise is hot. CBS currently boasts three shows with
CSI in the title --
CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: New York -- four if you include the non-Jerry Bruckheimer produced military procedural
NCIS. So, then, it shouldn't come as a surprise that
CSI is expanding. No, there's not a new
CSI TV show happening, but there is an amusement park variation on
CSI coming to life at Magic Mountain, the Valencia, California tourist attraction. (By the way, isn't it nice that Valencia didn't get nuked for real like it did on
24 last season?)
Continue reading CSI: Magic Mountain - it's true
Posted Sep 26th 2007 11:05PM by Richard Keller
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, OpEd, Episode Reviews, Life
(S01E01) After posting my early look at this new NBC procedural crime drama, reading your comments, and thinking about Charlie Crews in general, I have come to the belief that Life may actually have a chance this season. Not because of the crimes he and Detective Dani Reese solve -- hey, a murder is a murder is a murder. Not because of Charlie's mix of innocence and quirkiness. I think what is going to keep people tuning into the program is the whole sub-plot of the series: trying to find out who the heck framed Charlie for the murder of three people.
Continue reading Life: Pilot (series premiere)
Posted Dec 20th 2006 9:22AM by Anna Johns
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, CBS, Industry
Keeping with its promise of
shying away from procedurals, CBS has ordered pilots for two seemingly unusual series. The first is centered around an ex-priest who travels around performing exorcisms. It's called
Demons. It's being created by Barbara Hall, who also created
Joan of Arcadia, and executive produced by movie man Joe Roth.
The second series is called
Swingtown and it sounds like it's bound for a 10 pm time slot. The series is set in the 1970s and is about a bunch of married couples who swap spouses. It's being created by Mike Kelley, writer and executive producer of
The O.C.Pilot season, by the way, is soon upon us. January is traditionally the time of year when the networks request pilots from all the television veterans and wanna-bes who have been pitching them this fall.
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