Take it from Virginia Madsen: Sometimes being bad can feel oh-so-good.
"Sometimes it's really fun to root for the bad guy," Madsen tells TVGuide.com of her new ABC dramedy, Scoundrels (premiering Sunday at 9/8c).
Summer TV: Check out 23 other must-watch new shows
Madsen plays Cheryl West, the matriarch of a family of criminals. When her husband Wolf (David James Elliott) is sent to prison, Cheryl decides she and her four children — ditzy aspiring model Heather (Levin Rambin), young and smart Hope (Vanessa Marano), and twin boys (both played by Patrick Fleuger), one of which is a dim slacker while the other's a sharp lawyer — are going to go straight. Of course, things don't exactly work out that way...
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It's no longer news that summer is among TV's busiest seasons — but this year, cable is getting more competition than usual with scripted fare from the networks. The difference being that cable channels (USA, FX, TNT, Syfy, ABC Family and the pay giants, to name a few) tend to put their best foot forward with critically championed signature shows. The networks? Not so much.
Still, ABC is going unusually gung-ho, launching three new dramas of varying quality and distinction within a single week. Its Sunday combo of the whimsical Scoundrels and the sinister The Gates at least aims for something a bit different, while Thursday's Rookie Blue misfires with a tired arsenal of generic cop-show clichés.
Rookie doesn't try hard enough to stand out, while the Sunday shows may be guilty of trying a bit too hard...
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Welcome to Promise City: Built on the graves of 9,000 people.What a sad yet awesome episode. We said goodbye to the Bill Gates look-alike NTAC geek, Danny Farrell, Mrs. Farrell, Isabelle and Penny Johnson’s Rebecca Parish. For whom did I shed the most tears (yes, that was me you heard bawling through the whole episode)? Danny Farrell. He was estranged from his brother for so long because of Shawn’s abilities, and yet his newly acquired ability caused the deaths of at least 9,000 — and he went to all that trouble to make sure it didn’t kill him. Maybe it was only fitting that he had his brother kill him, in some twisted sort of poetic justice. It didn’t make it any less sad. As Shawn put it, he didn’t want to lose his brother and his mother on the same day. At least it’s brought the whole remaining Baldwin/Farrell clan closer — perhaps our only consolation.And what has become of those who didn’t die? Everyone in Seattle who survived now ha...
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Let’s take stock of where we stand going into the season (series?) finale: Tom, Meghan and Diana are no longer pretending that Tom is really Tom, and in order to save him, Diana may have killed him. Kyle distrusts Cassie more than ever now that pretty much everyone she’s told him to trust has betrayed him. Shawn and Danny’s mother could be dying, and Collier is possibly Marked. Think they could have packed any more in?The Baldwin/Farrell clan really can’t catch any breaks, can they? On the upside, Shawn, Kyle and Danny are now all Promicin-positive with few ill effects. On the downside, it looks like Mrs. Farrell may be dying from the shot and Tom is lying in the back room of a home-goods store with two bullets in him courtesy of Diana. Isabelle needs to extract herself from that extended family posthaste.On the whole, the episode really was one of those good-news/bad-news kinds of nights. We got Curtis Peck back (good), then Tom killed him (bad). We can kill off...
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For most of the episode, I was really feeling sorry for Diana, since she was being betrayed by just about everyone she cared for. Then Drew Imroff blew his brains out. Not only did this guy lose most of his fortune and have his company’s reputation ruined, but his Marked buddies decided this made him too much of a liability. What’s that saying? True friends stab you in the front?Their plan is to implant Drew’s personality into Jordan Collier — not exactly a low-security candidate. I’m not sure about the long-term viability of the plan, but then again the Marked know how the future turns out, and I don’t, so I’m not going to judge. On the other hand, based on what we’ve seen in the last two episodes, it might be a moral step up for Jordan to be someone else for a while, as he presumably won’t be intent on seeing half of the planet die. Of course, considering the Marked hate P-positives, maybe it’s trading one side of this genocide for...
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