I've been enjoying several of the new shows and the return of several of my favorites from last season. Burn Notice, in its 3rd season. This one set the standard for a new type of series. It has an overall storyline for continuity: Michael was fired from his job as a spy, and he's trying to find out why it was done and how to get his job back. But it is also episodic. He needs to make money to live on, and he is a really really good guy, so every week he helps some lovable person who's being persecuted by gangsters or corrupt officials, and coincidentally there's often a big cache of dirty money from which he can extract a fair payment for his services. The characters are sympathetic and richly drawn (if a tiny bit cartoonish), it's set in Miami with lovely tropical scenery (including lots of babes in bikinis), there's lots of humor, only the bad guys get killed, there are plenty of explosions and car chases, the stories are engaging, and enough end badly to maintain a little suspense. Bruce Campbell, the wisecracking Prince of Thieves in "Hercules" and "Xena" is well typecast as "Sam," Michael's trusty wisecracking sidekick. Leverage, also back for another season. This is in the same vein as "Burn Notice," although the ongoing storyline is thinner. A bunch of former crooks have set up a service to help lovable people--one in each episode--who are being persecuted by gangsters or corrupt officials; but unlike "Burn Notice" these folks are so rich they don't need to be paid and they always disburse the dirty money to the poor. The plots are more intricate, involve a lot of technology, and the bad guys are brought down in inventive and humiliating ways. More humor, not so much violence, although one member of the team is an invinceable athlete who blithely takes on undercover roles as a boxer and a minor-league baseball star. For the new season the producers managed to snag Jeri Ryan, the Bodacious Borg Babe "Seven of Nine" from "Star Trek: Enterprise," as a main character, so the ratings will jump into the stratosphere as soon as word gets around to the male audience. Her assignments always require jumping around in tights or impersonating a fashion model. Human Target, a new show in the same new genre. Mark Valley of "Keen Eddie" and "Boston Legal" plays a role that was custom-made for his talents, a guy with a mysterious past who can impersonate a person of any profession while defeating black-belt ninjas. He also belongs to an agency that helps lovable people--one in each episode--who are being persecuted by gangsters or corrupt officials. Do these outfits have their own Yellow Pages? This show is notable for its jaw-dropping action scenes, such as a fight in the (opened) landing gear bay of an airliner in flight and car chases that rejuvenate their hackeyed formula. The explosions are phenomenal: in the series opener the first U.S. bullet train, which cost something like $80 billion, is destroyed... inside the tunnel that is the only rail link between Los Angeles and San Francisco. 24, back for... well who's counting the seasons? The "good guys" don't break the law--including the Constitution, numerous international treaties and Biblical injunctions--quite as often as in past episodes--some reviewer tallied more than 100 instances in one 24-hour day. So far there hasn't been a repeat of the poor-tasting nuclear distruction of an entire Los Angeles suburb. As usual they appeal to the American dark side with leaders of Muslim nations as easily corrupted thugs, and Jack Bauer as usual gets beaten up horribly once every hour and always shows up one hour later (on the next week's show) without so much as a Band-Aid. One thoughtful reviewer opined that this show is really a metaphor for the American workplace. Jack can never get anything done because his superiors are incompetent, corrupt or handicapped by their own superiors. He always has to strike out on his own, getting little help from his boss and often being pursued (and beaten to a pulp) by good guys who honestly believe he's a bad guy. The reviewer quipped that if people would simply do what Jack tells them to, the show could be retitled " 7 1/2". NCIS, a long-running series. This is the most popular drama on American TV, a spinoff of "JAG," another military crimes-and-cops drama. It's shrewdly cast with Mark Harmon as the boss, a heartthrob for the over-forty female audience, Cote de Pablo, a hot Chilean female co-star as a multilingual Israeli liaison officer, Pauley Perrette, a tattooed female lab geek for the young crowd, Michael Wetherly, a star of the sorely missed "Dark Angel," and several other stars who appeal to specific audience demographics including 76 year-old David McCallum. The characters are appealing and have become familiar, the stories are well-written, good guys occasionally die when the actors want to leave, there's an undercurrent of intrigue, and a few jokes. NCIS Los Angeles, a spinoff of a spinoff. It's as well-written and well-cast as the original (with LL Cool J and Linda Hunt) and it's set in subtropical Los Angeles instead of (currently snowbound) Washington, i.e., more babes in bikinis. The first few episodes pissed me off because they were about fighting the Drug War instead of ending the violence and corruption by ending the (unconstitutional) prohibition, but they must have heard me complaining and now deal with more solid premises. Lost, the seventh and final season. If you thought it was crazy last year, now there are two of everybody and three of a few characters, with alternative stories running in one timeline in which the plane never crashed, another in which the H-bomb exploded and Made Strange And Mysterious Things Happen, and another that I can't figure out but John keeps showing up as alive, dead, and an avatar for somebody else. I'm waiting patiently for the writers to deliver the nice, neat, logical denouement they promised, rather than a muddle of woo-woo like Twin Peaks. Still waiting for: Breaking Bad, the third season still being promised. A serious, challenging story about a high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with cancer and decides to help his family survive his impending expensive hospitalization and eventual death by taking over the local methamphetamine business--since after all he is a professional chemist who can turn out the highest-quality meth in the state. There are some very uncomfortable confrontations and things often go horribly wrong and good people die. But the characters are drawn very well, the irony of the story line is developed convincingly, and the story is made quite believable with twists you could never anticipate. All in all I find it spellbinding but it's probably not for everybody. Dancing with the Stars, which must be in its 700th season by now. There's a reason this is always one of the top two or three shows on U.S. TV and has a huge foreign audience. The celebrities are very well chosen; they really want to learn how to dance and put a lot of effort into their lessons, the judges are very helpful in identifying what they need to work on. The professional dancers have become great teachers who teach specifically to the needs of this arena; I've even picked up a few pointers from them. Their choreography shows their pupils in the best light and appeals to both the judges, who vote on by-the-numbers criteria, and to the audience, who vote on how well they are entertained. The house band is arguably the best ensemble on TV and regardless of whether the dance is a samba or a Viennese waltz they can usually give the music a comfortable rock beat. Tom Bergeron, IMHO, challenges Jon Stewart as the best host on TV, ad-libbing his way through surprises and disasters with a disarming levity--Marie Osmond fainted during her post-dance interview and he took it in stride. And Samantha Harris... well she sure looks real good and has a great wardrobe designer.
