(no subject)

Am rather impressed by Once Upon a Time: Wonderland by far the best pilot I've seen this season. A kickass heroine, an imaginative setting, and some rather complex and interesting supporting characters. (Granted it hasn't had a lot of competition in that department, the only other half-way compelling pilots that I've seen to date were Sleepy Hollow and The Back List.)
( plot spoilers )

The casting is quite good here - as it was in Once Upon a Time. And Sophie Lowe who plays Alice is a find, she's charismatic and spunky. She gets across vulnerability and wicked intelligence at once. Reminds me a little of Abbie in Sleepy Hollow. The guy who plays Cyrus is attractive, but it is soon to tell how good he is.

This series is a bit of a mash-up of Aladdin and Alice in Wonderland. Yet Alice is more based on Lewis Carrol, and Aladdin on well Disney's Aladdin or so it appears at first glance.
And like it's parent series - OUAT, it provides clever and at times surprising twists on established fairy tales and tropes. Plus the plot is fast moving, with questions being answered quickly. Also it's highly character driven. While the main goal is finding Cyrus (aka the protagonists true love), which as jaded television viewers know as the proverbial carrot which can't be reached until the series ends, the good news is that these writers don't play that game any longer. OUAT Wonderland only has 13 episodes - it's a closed arc miniseries that is slated to wrap itself up by mid-season. (Or so I've read, I hope they stick to that). And as evidenced in the parent series, these writers learned from the mistakes they made with LOST and tend to wrap up story threads quickly, all the while setting up new story threads in the process. As a result you get cliffhangers weekly and climaxes more frequently. Not a lot of boring filler episodes. All of which bodes well for this little series.

Will definitely keep watching.

Pilot? A

The Crazy Ones..

So, after reading some of the responses to my
What TV Show's Are You Watching Poll" - decided to give The Crazy Ones another shot. It's good, really good. I laughed quite a bit during the second and third episode. Gellar and Williams have decent chemistry and a good comic timing. Also James Wolak and Hammish Linklater work very well off of each other. A nice work-place comedy, which is a bit old-school - along the lines of WKRP and Newsradio, as opposed to The Office.

The third episode had a delightful bit about Sydney (Gellar's character) learning how to drive. (Sydney and Buffy have this in common - neither can drive nor like to drive. I've learned how to drive, but despise it - so find this rather comforting. And quite funny.)
Gellar reminds me a little of her Buffy character in this episode, with Williams as a crazy Giles. She's really more of a comedic actress than a dramatic actress.

At any rate, I've changed my mind about The Crazy One's.

To date - the new tv shows holding my interest are:

* The Back List
* Sleepy Hollow
* The Crazy Ones
* Once Upon a Time: Wonderland

I haven't cancelled Agents of Shield quite yet. The Whedon/comic book geek in me refuses to give up on it completely. But...it is definitely on the bubble. That said, regardless of what I think of it - I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that it gets a full pick up for a second season at least. It reminds me a lot of a rich man's Torchwood meets a poor man's Hawaii 5-O. Which means if you like Agents of Shield, you might want to check out Torchwood and possibly Hawaii 5-O?

Here's the ratings according to EW:

Crazy Ones - 16 million
The Black List - 13 Million
Marvel's Agents of Shield - 12 million

First to be cancelled? Lucky 7. (No surprise. I watched it...not bad, but not compelling either. Also cliche and not in a fun way.)