I've had it with this yak carcass.

Which is to say I'm done with this blog. Now I'm gonna go watch TV.

1) Take a shot whenever Cassie looks confused.

Pilot review: The Secret Circle

I'm going to start by saying that I saw the second half of this pilot at Comic Con. At the time, I had very low expectations, and I still thought it was god awful. It actually turned out to be better when I watched the pilot from the beginning the other night, but it's still not good. It might make a good drinking game show.

What it has going for it:

• It's on the CW. This show is the epitome of the CW wheelhouse. TWoP laid it out recently. It's teenagers who have supernatural powers and dead parents. So naturally it's compelling in the way all CW supernatural teen soaps are compelling. (As a devoted watcher of Supernatural, I probably shouldn't be so judgmental about this.)
• It has the potential to become what I always wanted Vampire Diaries to be: The Covenant.
• It comes on right after Vampire Diaries. It's going to have to work really hard to get cancelled this season.

And against it:

• It's pretty awful in terms of writing and acting. There were actually some okay special effects, so it could have been worse.
• Lack of a likable villain. There was one thing about Vampire Diaries that made me overlook the predictability of the show and tune in for episodes two through eight-ish: Damon. He's a great character to love to hate, and also just to love, as it goes with these bad boy vampire types. So far the closest this show has is Faye, and she is not going to cut it. Right now the only real villain is Diana's dad and nothing about him is lovable.
• Natasha Henstridge's face. Seriously, I don't know what she did to it, but I didn't even recognize her. I think she od'd on Botox.

Crap. I can already tell I'm totally going to watch this show. I'm always disappointed that I didn't keep watching Vampire Diaries and I keep telling myself I'll catch up on that one.

This would play better on FX.

Pilot review: Free Agents

Kathryn Hahn and Hank Azaria play co-workers, whose names I didn't catch, who are both too messed up for relationships, have fun banter with each other, and keep accidentally having sex. I thought it was funny. No one else seemed to.

What it has going for it:

• Kathryn Hahn: I really liked her in Anchorman and really, really liked her in How Do You Know. She's even better in this. The bit where she's buying a frozen dinner and six bottles of wine and then freaks out at the grocery store guy is the best.
• Banter: This show is full of banter. That pretty much seems to be the point of it. And Kathryn Hahn and Hank Azaria are good at it. I cracked up over the bit where they argue about whether or not Sarah Michelle Gellar was in the Scooby Doo sequel. She was. This is the kind of thing I enjoy.
• John Enbom: One of the guys behind Veronica Mars and Party Down. So that explains the top notch banter. It also makes me hope this show could get better. Maybe they could steal Adam Scott from Parks & Recreation. And possibly Martin Starr from NTSF:SD:SUV. Really if the cast of Party Down could have just been the supporting cast for this show, it would be so much better.

And against it:

• The supporting characters are absolute crap. The bitchy executive assistant is kind of funny for a moment, then just grating. Everyone else starts out terrible and only gets worse. And that includes Tony Head. It was pretty much intolerable whenever the main characters were in scenes with anyone but each other.
• Both main characters are kind of pathetic to a ridiculous degree and I see that getting old really fast.

I wanted to say something about the vague Aaron Sorkin-ness of it all, what with the walking and fast talking, but that isn't really a good or bad thing. Just odd.

"We really, really need normal cheese."

Pilot review: Up All Night

I found this show really funny and my house guest did not and I suspect that has to do with two things that make the show particularly appealing to me:

1. I'm pretty sure I'm one of few people in a demographic that would be interested in a show that features a baby this heavily (I feel like Raising Hope is a lot less baby centric).
2. There have been a lot of people on SNL over the years whose schtick I've eventually gotten sick of. Maya Rudolph was never one of them. I still think her crazy Oprah yelling is hilarious. And now I'm nostalgic for that middle school girl character who's in love with Justin Timberlake.

So with that said:

What it has going for it:

• Christina Applegate and Will Arnett playing real people instead of whatever you call what they do in Anchorman and Arrested Development respectively. Over-the-top caricatures, I guess. It was pretty much the kiss of death for Running Wilde. Whatever it's called, they're not doing it, and it's great in this context.
• Maya Rudolph: Like I said, I think she's hilarious. I may be the only one.
• The tiny disasters: Them waiting on the pregnancy test; Chris trying to find the normal cheese in the grocery store; them trying to change the baby's diaper while hungover. These little bits were the best thing about the show.

And against it:

• It's a show that prominently features a baby. I know Raising Hope is doing great, and the baby doesn't seem to hinder the show at all, but I just feel weird about this. Although now that I think about, I guess there are a couple other shows I don't watch, Modern Family and Parenthood, that feature babies and small children and seem to be going fine. But this is basically a show about raising a baby, and I'm not sure how long that can stay funny.
• There are only three characters and the baby in this show. Which would be fine if there were a lot of supporting characters in the show for them to interact with, but there was basically just Ava's other assistant girl and a half second of Nick Cannon. It seems kind of sparse.

This is a show I may follow up post on if/when I'm able to get any feedback from my husband. I don't think he has the same fondness for babies or Maya Rudolph that I do, so I'll be interested to see if he finds it funny.

The Socialite & the Stripper

Pilot review: Ringer

Sarah Michelle Gellar's return to TV. It's on the CW. She plays twins. It's a big, soapy, mystery-thriller thing. And it's actually pretty good.

What it has going for it:

• SMG: Disregarding my Buffy fanatacism, she's a good actor. I'd kind of forgotten that. For the most part, the show hinges on her making the Bridget/Siobhan thing believable, and she does.
• Twists: I'd read the premise of this show a while back. I knew she played twins. I knew Siobhan disappeared and Bridget pretended to be her. I even knew that it was likely that Siobhan wasn't dead. What I did not see coming was that Siobhan was counting on Bridget to impersonate her so she could have "herself" killed. That's some quality intrigue.
• Ioan Gruffudd & Nestor Carbonell: Because this show was originally intended for CBS instead of the CW, the cast is majorly outclassing the network.
• Bridget & Andrew: This is probably just me being sappy, but the idea that Bridget might bring love back to Andrew and Siobhan's loveless marriage was one of the most compelling parts of the show for me.

And against it:

• It's on the CW. Although I thought that would hurt Nikita last year and I was completely wrong. Maybe this is just what people watching 90210 at 8pm want to be watching at 9pm.
• Juliet: I'm not sure if the problem is the actress or just the way Andrew's daughter is written, but all the scenes this girl was in seemed to drag the show back down into true CW quality territory.
• It wasn't the fastest paced show out there, and this was the pilot. It has the potential to get slower, and that'll pretty much mean boring.
• On the other hand, it's pretty complex to start with and it has the potential to become so convoluted that it's impossible to follow.

Technical change important to no one but me.

So I said I was going to do a scorecard, but I've been totally unable to come up with a good, general set of criteria on which to score shows without making the whole thing totally boring. I read through some of my posts from last year and actually liked the For It and Against It plan I had going back then, so I'm just going to do that again.

Breaking In was cancelled.

(So I'm just going to cruise on by the fact that I haven't written a single post in 4 1/2 months. As usual, I'm taking the path of ignoring that stuff and moving on.)

Once again, I'm going to try the "watch every new show" thing this fall. It worked out pretty poorly last year, but I'm going to try it at least a few more times before I declare myself mentally unstable. This year's plan is to fill out a generic scorecard for each show instead of trying to write funny and/or meaningful stuff about each one. That took way too long, got in the way of me watching half the shows, and was rarely funny and/or meaningful.

Before that all starts next week, here are my carryover shows from last year that are relevant to this fall season:

• How I Met Your Mother
• Glee
• Raising Hope
• Nikita
• Supernatural
• The League
• Bones

Wow. I really don't watch much anymore. Anyway, I'm behind on The Walking Dead and Community, but I'm going to try to catch up before the new seasons start this year. The Walking Dead is more likely to happen than Community as I'm only two episodes behind rather than 24. And as always, I also have a list of things I wish I was watching and may eventually go back to catch up on:

• Fringe
• The Vampire Diaries
• Justified
• Mad Men
• Chuck
• and pretty much everything on TNT, USA, and FX

One final note. This pretty much carries over from any previous year I've done this and should be obvious but: I won't be watching anything unscripted/reality-like. I think the only two new one's are The X Factor and H8R and I will be resolutely ignoring both of them in addition to the wide array of reality shows that will be returning.

Alrighty. I'll be back next week with a scorecard for Ringer.