Posted Feb 18th 2009 1:50AM by Debra McDuffee
Filed under: Episode Reviews, Reality-Free, The Mentalist
(S01E15) The Mentalist never fails to entertain, even when the case is obvious. There was something about the writing or directing of this show early in the season; I could peg every killer nearly the moment he or she was onscreen, because of the weird shifty thing they did.
Well, that didn't happen in this episode; instead, they dropped the biggest, most obvious clue in the history of procedurals. I kept hoping that it was a red herring, but no. I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy this episode; I loved the twists and turns the case took, but I hated knowing, absolutely knowing, who the killer was, in that different way than just the shifty stuff.
Continue reading The Mentalist: Scarlett Fever
Posted Feb 11th 2009 1:06AM by Debra McDuffee
Filed under: Episode Reviews, Reality-Free, The Mentalist
(S01E14) "There's no business like Cho business." -- Patrick JaneI'm not quite sure how
The Mentalist does it. At the beginning of every episode, I want to think that it's just a typical procedural and that nothing really sets it apart. Usually, it is Simon Baker who wins me over and makes me think differently. However, tonight it was all Cho.
We started off with Cho questioning Walcott about his wife Claire's murder. When the weasel threatens Cho's job if he doesn't give the name of Claire's lover, saying that he can have Cho's job with one phone call, Cho deadpans, "That's impressive. The best I can get with one phone call is a pizza."
Continue reading The Mentalist: Crimson Casanova
Posted Feb 9th 2009 2:28PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: CSI, How I Met Your Mother, 30 Rock, NCIS, Reality-Free, Mad Men, Burn Notice, The Mentalist, TV Squad Ten
What is cool? Can you define that thing, that quality that makes certain characters seem like they're more with it than everyone around them? Maybe cool is a state of being, not a thing you can pick up by wearing Armani or drinking Grey Goose or driving a BMW.
As I was looking around the current crop of television shows, I found ten characters who seem to capture the essence of cool -- whether they know it or not. After the jump, we count them down.
Continue reading TV Squad Ten: The coolest characters on TV now
Posted Jan 19th 2009 2:35PM by Debra McDuffee
Filed under: Episode Reviews, Reality-Free, The Mentalist
(S01E13) The opening of this episode was the Jane that I love -- random, bizarre, smart and observant, with no regard for convention. Did you catch the way he hammered away at Frank, the guy who found the dead body (Harry Lashley) with the woman he was having sex with?
Jane continued to be fun and outrageous throughout "Paint it Red," which made it one of the more entertaining episodes in a while for me. The case was relatively interesting, but Jane was so upbeat, divergent and ahead of the team -- love that! -- and the interactions amongst the team were top notch.
Continue reading The Mentalist: Paint it Red
Posted Jan 14th 2009 5:33PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Industry, Programming, TCA Press Tour, Reality-Free, The Mentalist
More TCA news: an actor from
Lie to Me calls
The Mentalist "a scam."
Reporters
asked the panel from the new FOX drama about the possible similarities between the two shows (which a lot of people have been talking about), and Brendan Hines said "the difference between the two shows is that our show is based on actual science, while
Mentalist is, I think, more of a scam." I'm not sure what the hell that is supposed to mean. Is her referring to how Simon Baker's character was a phony psychic, or does he think that the creators of
The Mentalist and CBS are pulling the wool over the eyes of viewers?
Continue reading In this corner: The Mentalist vs. Lie to Me
Posted Jan 14th 2009 1:03AM by Debra McDuffee
Filed under: Episode Reviews, Reality-Free, The Mentalist
(S01E12) The opening scenes grabbed me right away this week.
The Mentalist is best when Jane is doing his divergent thing, and that's just what he does when the rest of the team goes into the flower shop to interview the missing boy's parents. He puts together the pink bike, the glance to the woods and the crows and finds the boy's body before the theme. Nice.
There were other parts of this episode that were throwbacks to the early days, when Jane was not only way ahead of the team, but also more over the top than some of the more recent episodes. Thank you, Bruno Heller!
Continue reading The Mentalist: Red Rum
Posted Jan 7th 2009 1:42AM by Debra McDuffee
Filed under: Episode Reviews, Reality-Free, The Mentalist
Finally, an episode of
The Mentalist with a significant amount of story arc. We really got to see Jane's lust for revenge in this one, and the lengths he would go just to get a bit closer to finding out who Red John is.
The Mentalist jumped out of its formula slightly this week, and it worked for me. We learned some new things about Jane, Red John and the team, and even though it could have been an extremely dark episode, it was just dark enough to get the point across while still being entertaining.
Continue reading The Mentalist: Red John's Friends
Posted Jan 6th 2009 11:02AM by Debra McDuffee
Filed under: House, Scrubs, How I Met Your Mother, The Office, Reaper, Reality-Free, Burn Notice, The Mentalist, TV Squad Ten
Random House defines outrageous as
highly unusual or unconventional; extravagant; remarkable. It's as though they've been watching TV, and wrote their definition to fit some of the crazy characters on television shows today.
Oh, don't get me wrong; I'm not complaining. I love these larger-than-life characters, played to perfection by the talented actors who grace these roles. Some fit in perfectly with their surroundings, others stand out like a sore thumb amongst castmates. One thing they all have in common, though, is that watching them is pure entertainment.
Patrick Jane (played by Simon Baker on The Mentalist)Jane doesn't quite have the social graces to blend into society, and that's why I love him. The frumpy suits, the obnoxious antics, and the constant pushing of the envelope make for some good TV. From card counting in the casino to reading Lisbon's mind; hypnotizing suspects to making a sandwich in a victim's home, Jane's done it all. Unconventional, to say the least.
Continue reading TV Squad Ten: Most outrageous characters on TV
Posted Dec 19th 2008 7:29PM by Kona Gallagher
Filed under: Food/Home/DIY, Saturday Night Live, Festivus, The Office, Celebrities, 30 Rock, Reality-Free, Gossip Girl, Mad Men, Life on Mars, The Mentalist
Since I'm still new enough at TV Squad not to exist on the "Meet the TV Squad" page, this is my first Festivus. It's nice to be able to dig deep into my heart for all of my TV wishes in hopes that some internet fairy will grant them and make the television landscape just a little bit more awesome... for me, at least.
Without further ado, here is what I want for Festivus:
- Christina Hendricks and the rest of the Mad Men cast should guest-star on more shows. Ever since I started watching Mad Men, I've noticed Hendricks popping up places. She's on an episode of Without a Trace here, an old episode of Cold Case there... I love me some Joan Holloway and Mad Men isn't returning soon enough. I loved seeing Jon Hamm host SNL, and I'm super excited about his upcoming guest stint on 30 Rock. More please!
Continue reading All Kona wants for Festivus
Posted Dec 18th 2008 10:03AM by Isabelle Carreau
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, OpEd, Video, Festivus, Chuck, Reaper, Reality-Free, Fringe, The Mentalist, The Big Bang Theory
... six shows you should be watchin'.Chats around the watercooler often are about last night's big football game,
why Izzie is sleeping with Denny on Grey's Anatomy, or the latest OMG! WTF? twist on
Lost. Rare will be the conversations about the latest evil-doer that Sam and his friends had to capture on the latest episode of The CW's
Reaper. Thing is, some of us do want to gossip about
Reaper, but it seems like we are the only ones around the watercooler to watch it. "How can this be?" we ask ourselves, knowing how cool the show is (especially the Devil)!
Reaper is just an example, as there are tons of shows that people should be watching but seemingly don't. Here I bring you a list of six shows that I think you (or your friends and family members) should be watching and why. I restricted my list to shows that air on one of the major networks - so that everyone has easy access to them - and series that will still be on the air in winter 2009.
Continue reading On the 6th day of Festivus, TV gave to me ... - VIDEOS
Posted Dec 17th 2008 2:07AM by Debra McDuffee
Filed under: Episode Reviews, Reality-Free, The Mentalist
(S01E10) Man, I just love
The Mentalist. This episode was no exception. Yes, it's a formulaic show, but like
House, I've grown to love every piece of the formula and feel robbed if something is missing.
The only negatives tonight? Once again, I knew who did it early on in the episode, but they really did a good job of creating many believable suspects this week. I also missed mention of Red John, although we did get to learn a little bit more about Jane in the aftermath of his tragedy through his relationship with Sophie.
Let's get into the nitty-gritty after the jump.
Continue reading The Mentalist: Red Brick and Ivy
Posted Dec 15th 2008 5:13PM by Kona Gallagher
Filed under: OpEd, House, Video, Grey's Anatomy, Festivus, Chuck, Reality-Free, Gossip Girl, Fringe, Life on Mars, The Mentalist
...Nine foreign AmericansWith all of the starry-eyed, out-of-work Midwesterners who litter Sunset Blvd., one would assume that our television landscape would be similarly populated with corn-fed blonds. You would, however, be wrong. In fact, there are a ton of non-Americans who have come to Hollywood to take all of our primetime show-starring jobs.
What's fun for me is watching the shows to see who does a good version of an American accent, and who needs to spend a little more time with their dialect coaches. Below are nine stars who've jumped the pond to come to the good ol' U. S. of A.
Continue reading On the 9th day of Festivus, TV gave to me... - VIDEOS
Posted Dec 10th 2008 6:02PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Ratings, Reality-Free, The Mentalist
In sports parlance, every now and then a rookie sensation comes along and is an instant success. Like Robert Redford in
The Natural, only it's fact and not fiction. In TV parlance, Simon Baker -- who kind of looks like younger Redford (think
The Sting and
The Way We Were) -- has pulled off a rookie success that makes him look like pure gold.
The latest weekly Nielsen ratings are in and
The Mentalist is number one, just slightly ahead of
NCIS, with 18.8 million viewers. Simon Baker has a certifiable, solid and probably long-term hit series on his hands, and you know the powers that be at CBS have to be dancing in the corridors at the Black Rock.
Continue reading Rookie sensation: The Mentalist tops the Nielsens
Posted Dec 4th 2008 3:02PM by Isabelle Carreau
Filed under: OpEd, Desperate Housewives, Smallville, TV Squad Lists, Eli Stone, Reality-Free, Gossip Girl, The Mentalist, The Big Bang Theory
A little over two years ago,
Joel posted about
five episode naming patterns such as
Friends' episode titles always starting with "The One" or
Grey's Anatomy's usage of songs in lieu of titles. Since many series have come and gone since Joel first posted about episode naming patterns, let's revisit the subject. After all, episode titles are an integral part of a TV series and can add to the viewers' entertainment.
Here I bring you a list of seven episode naming patterns of series that currently air on a TV near you.
Continue reading Seven shows with episode naming patterns
Posted Dec 3rd 2008 1:01PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: OpEd, Heroes, 30 Rock, TV Squad Lists, Reality-Free, The Mentalist
1. Heroes. The show has problems, which have been
analyzed to death in the past several weeks, but it's still an entertaining hour of television. Great cast, and it's a fun ride. But a few things about the show bother me. One is the number of characters. Well, not the amount, per se, but how the show is structured with all of the characters. I'd rather see several characters sit out an episode than have ten characters all fighting for screen time in one episode. It's just too much. I also hate that there doesn't seem to be any real danger on the show, no real risk. I mean, if Hiro can go back in time, where's the real danger? If something can be done where a character can come back to life even after he is killed, where's the real risk? The show has to do something to change that in the next chapter.
Continue reading Six bad things about four good shows
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Seven of TV's best replacements
TV Squad Ten: The best movies about television
Eight of TV's weirdest dreams - VIDEOS
