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TV is the New Reading

POSTED:Sun, September 27, 2009 @ 2:52PM

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Monday night packed full of premieres

What a full night of premieres we had this past Monday. Between two-hour premieres of “House” and “Heroes” and the new CBS comedy lineup, I couldn’t possibly watch it all so I got a little help from a friend.

KG: “I’m Kim Gifford and I’m a huge fan of House.”

TA: Looking at Monday’s two-hour sixth season premiere of “House,” what were your reactions?

KG: “My reaction was I was extremely happy with it. It went back to a lot of basics that I’d missed before. Before you used to see this little inkling of the human that House truly is, the heart of gold that he’s got that he doesn’t want you to see. By the end of the episode you saw that coming back, and you saw that House was finally seeing the flaws – the Vicodin addiction, the jerk he had become because of that (and partially not because of that).

“The show, the two-hour premiere itself was phenomenal, emotional rollercoaster, up, down, sideways. I laughed, I cried. It began with showing House going through withdrawal from the Vicodin, and you sat there and hurt with him. You really did. Hugh Laurie was amazing, I thought, in that role. The cast of supporting characters that went along with it also was just fun this episode. Yes, Wilson was in it for a few brief moments here and there, but the rest of it was all just the rest of his looney bin friends in a sense. It was fun.”

TA: Minot State University had just done “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” recently and the parts I saw reminded me a bit of that production.

KG: “I went online this morning and one of the first comments I saw was ‘It reminded me of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” … It was really interesting to watch how it was so different and yet it was so House.”

TA: And an opportunity to really explore his character.

KG: “Exactly. We saw some emotions in House I don’t think we’ve seen since the first, maybe the second season. We got to see House connect with an actual human on a real level … truly for the first time in I don’t know how many seasons either. It was really amazing to see.”

TA: He refused to just relax and be the patient. He had to try to fix the people around him. Did that detract from his own healing or was that just House being House?

KG: “I think that was House being House, but two diferent times in the show, one time the female doctor and one time the male doctor, both say to him something to the effect of, ‘We’re here to help you, but you can help the people around you, too.’

“So I think they realized that one of the best ways to get House to realize who he was and why he was where he was at was getting him back to the basics, allowing him to help those people, allowing him to in a sense show that heart that we didn’t know or couldn’t remember existed.

“It was fun to see how they realized that whether he wanted to admit it or not he’s not all gruff and he just needed to connect again, and in reconnecting, he reconnected with every single one of those patients on such a different level. It was fun.”

TA: I got a brief glimpse of a scene where he was trying to get at a music box for one of the other patients.

KG: “The whole music box portion of that was really kind of neat, because House wanted to get that music box to the Superhero because the Superhero wanted to help that young lady. That was all it took, it was a great big circle, and it was kind of cool to see the music box, what an important part that music box actually played. … The Superhero saw the young lady, the Musician, keep staring at that music box … and the Superhero more than once said ‘They stole her voicebox.’ … At one point they roll the Superhero past the young lady and he tries to reach out and hand it to her, and House realizes what happened, so he backs him up, hands the music box to the Musician, who opens it up, it begins to play and for the first time in 10 years she’s out of her shell.”

TA: Any weaknesses in this premiere?

KG: I was disappointed that Wilson did not pick him up. I really anticipated, because that’s how the season ended, Wilson dropping him off and saying goodbye to his friend. … I really anticipated when he walked out of that door that Wilson was going to be standing there waiting.

TA: There was another scene I saw where the doctor called him in to help, I think it was the doctor’s father. Was he able to help the doctor’s father?

KG: “The doctor’s father passed away. But we saw that was another place where House was able to connect again on a human level, because the doctor called House and said, ‘I want you to take a look at his chart. You need to look at his chart again, he fell, they tell me we need to pull the plug, he’s done.’

“And House at first was a little gruff with him, but the doctor looked at him and said ‘I just need you to look at this. Please, just be here for me.’ And House pulled up a chair and sat with him while his father died. … It was amazing to watch that, and as I sat and thought about it more, and as I read e-mails from friends because we watch the show, all of us, so we back and forth all day long. Everyone of us has a favorite moment and the one thing that ties all those moments together is human in House coming out.”

TA: Is that where they’re heading this season?

KG: Everything I’ve read from Katie Jacobs and David Shore, this season should be really interesting. … It’s going to be interesting to see how far they take this whole ‘he’s a human’ thing. Are they going to go totally the opposite way, and are we going to end up with fuzzy bunny cuddly House, which I really don’t want? Or are they going to try find that happy medium? … It should be fun. It should be interesting.”

Heroes

We have seen some astonishing things in “Heroes,” and Monday’s two hour season opener was no different. At the end of the thrid season, the psychopath Sylar has been trapped in the form of New York politico Nathan Petrelli, but his handlers are getting really nervous. Matt, the Sycorax largely responsible for imprisoning this particular Ariel in that cloven pine, begins having hallucinations of Sylar just as the Sylar-Nathan begins experiencing the polyglot of powers at his disposal.

Hiro and Ando start a private Hero business when Hiro begins having time-travel malfunctions, and is suddenly dragged 14 years into the past to a carnival he and Ando and Hiro’s sister had visited. Hiro’s sister had started disliking Ando at this particular carnival, but with the people in charge of it, it was more like that crazy spooky “Carnivale” on HBO. In this case, a man’s manipulation of other people’s tattoos tells him the future through strange animation. Hiro’s travel to the past changes Ando’s fate, so that he and Hiro’s sister fall in love.

You just know that’s going to change some stuff down the line.

For her part, the rapid-healing cheerleader Claire is trying to start her freshman year in college, and is paired with an overachieving roommate who commits suicide under strange circumstances. Her power is revealed to a new friend when she investigates whether the roommate fell, jumped or was pushed.

It was hard to get a sense of where everything was heading with that outlandish carnival attraction, but I’m sure it’s heading somewhere. A seer and a lightning-fast knife-wielder make for some intriguing antagonists, if that is in fact who they are.

CBS comedies

Finally CBS unleashed a passel of comedies Monday night, only one of which was new, and I’ve got to say it showed some promise.

“Accidentally on Purpose” sent Jenna Elfman into the world as a fun-loving 30-something who hooks up with a young, charming and talented chef on the rebound from a breakup with her millionaire boss. She’s having a lot of fun until she discovers she’s pregnant, and what’s more, the new beau wants to step up and help her with it. Of course, he can barely take care of himself, but that’s where the fun comes in.

The show is reasonably well cast and well written, with comedy arising from witty banter as well as situations and some character work. Grant Show is a little bit too much actor for this show, but his scenes came together perfectly, and while Jenna Elfman reminds me a hair too much of Christina Applegate’s “Samantha Who?” character, she turns in a superior performance as well.

Now if they’d stop laying in the laugh track like there’s some sort of gas leak in the studio, we might in fact find ourselves moving on toward perfection.

They weren’t the worst offenders, however. The canned laughter was abused badly in the third season premiere of “The Big Bang Theory,” and was laughing at damn’ near every line in “Two and a Half Men.” I sat out the return of “How I Met Your Mother,” but there’s another one on this week at 8/7c, kicking off the whole thing again Monday night on CBS.

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