I enjoy your writing very ...
Question: I enjoy your writing very much and very often completely agree with you. But after reading your recent
Dispatch on Wednesday-night shows, I felt compelled to write and say I disagree with you on
Dirty Sexy Money and
Life. I know
Money is supposed to be a hoot of a soap, but I found it pretty insufferable. Who wants to spend time with these people? Even for all that money, why would Peter Krause's character (who's constantly praised by the others as being such a "good" person) put up with them for one more day? And I'm hardly drawn to even sample cop shows anymore (don't get me started on the CBS procedurals), but I found
Life to be a very nice surprise. Funny and tense, with some moving moments, (
Spoiler alert) like Crews helping his recovering partner when she's freaked out by unexpectedly encountering drugs and acknowledging that by shooting a suspect, he's shot and killed another human being. I do think
Damian Lewis' performance isn't exactly "beyond reproach" — sometimes he's over-the-top, like he's channeling
Brent Spiner playing Data. But this show and
K-Ville make a case for there still being life in the standard cop show.
Answer: To each their own. What I like about
Dirty Sexy Money is the one aspect that relates to many of the new shows I most enjoy this season: They're fun.
Chuck,
Reaper,
Pushing Daisies,
Aliens in America and this: I spend an hour or half hour in their company and I've mostly enjoyed myself. None are perfect, and with the exception of
Daisies (the lasting power of which remains to be tested), I wouldn't classify any of them as great. But they're a refreshing change from a year ago, when so much was dark and gloomy and ultimately doomed. The flamboyance of the Darlings on
Dirty Sexy Money is meant to be mocked, and they're hardly intended to be role models, but in the recut and reworked pilot that aired last week, Peter Krause's exasperated amusement hit just the right tone for me. I especially enjoyed
Donald Sutherland's Mephistophelean patriarch,
Glenn Fitzgerald as the most mean-spirited man of the cloth in recent memory and
Natalie Zea as the romantically deluded older sister. And I thought the pilot made it pretty clear that the seductive power of millions of dollars explains why Krause's character is subjecting himself to the Darlings' constant abuse. Still, it's quite possible that
Life is going to be the mainstream choice in that Wednesday time period (the
CSI spin-offs appear finally to be losing a bit of steam), and if so, whatever. I find it unwatchable: completely generic when it isn't being actively cutesy and annoying. And I was clumsy in using that "beyond reproach" line regarding Damian Lewis. I was referring to his reputation, I guess. His performance in
Life is simply awful, not for a moment believable. And for that, I primarily blame the writing. As for
K-Ville, don't get attached to that one. A noble failure if ever I saw one. If you want to single out a Fox show that elevates the procedural, I'd suggest the infinitely better and less full-of-itself
Bones.
