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Thank you to everyone for your input in my post asking for TV recs. I've downloaded more than just The Good Wife, Lost Girl, and Rizzoli & Isles; those are just the ones I've gotten around to checking out.
1. The Good Wife, a legal drama with politicking. Julianna Margulies and Archie Panjabi (the sister from Bend it Like Beckham) are the main female leads, with backup from the guy who was Dan Rydell in Sports Night, the divine Christine Baranski, the divine Alan Cumming, and Mr Big from Sex & The City (DISCLAIMER: I loathe S&TC with the fiery heat of 10k suns. But I have female relatives). I've watched all of season 1 and a bit of season 2, and Wax has watched about half of that.
This show is interesting and well-written, but the actors are the main draw. It suffers from an overload of a) characters who are always stupid and b) other characters doing stupid things. The cumulative effect of this is to make me and Wax root for the characters who are never stupid and against the characters who do stupid things, regardless of whether they are evil or not. At this point, we're hoping several of the main characters who are supposed to be sympathetic accidentally kill themselves in Darwin Awards fashion, preferably involving rocket launchers or Coke machines, and the remaining ones have a party at the funeral. Still, we have no intention of stopping watching. The dialogue is good, which is more than you can say for a lot of primetime US TV. On the other hand, several people had led us to believe that this show was "femslashy", and both of us disagree. The strong female characters are great and we enjoy their interactions and also their scenes by themselves (Archie Panjabi reminds me of The Perfect Being aka Arwen, our smallest cat: she's a tiny gorgeous badass who doesn't give a fuck), but we're not seeing the sexual tension.
2. Rizzoli & Isles, a police drama starring Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander. Boston cops, Italian and Irish accents. Fun times. I'd say it's about as good as CSI but funnier (which is also true of NCIS, but this is less slapstick and has more issues and subplots in play as opposed to being focused on the workplace and the cases the way NCIS is). The bullpen and the Boston accents are refreshing. Alexander's character is the only WASP with a lot of screentime, which is highly satisfying to me. On the other hand, after 5 episodes I don't think it stands up to CSI for sheer follow-along-and-try-to-solve-at-home mystery. Wax thought it was fun but she was willing to skip a few eps to watch American Horror Story instead, which she likes (I don't watch horror or horror-adjacent stuff.) I will keep watching and might look for the femslash fic that I'm pretty sure is out there when I run out of other stuff to read.
3. Lost Girl, starring two chicks with vaguely familiar faces but I don't know where I saw them before. We've only watched the pilot, and it wasn't very good. In a way it's similar to a CW show, with the same kind of approach to plot and modern fantasy as some of their other current attempts (Supernatural, Vampire Diaries) and the same CW-central-casting girls who all kind of look the same and wardrobe and makeup only exacerbate the problem. The dialogue is bad and sometimes painfully bad, as is the direction - better than Smallville for sure, more on a level with Charmed. The feel of the show is kind of like Xena from what Wax and I remember of it - the mix of wisecracking, plot holes, and action - silly and ultimately arguably fun, but also exasperating. Wax disliked it and won't watch anymore, and I've put it at the bottom of my list. After I run out of the others, I intend to watch at least three or four more episodes to give it a chance to get better, but I'm not confident I can stick it out to the end. My tolerance for bad dialogue and horrible directing is even lower than my tolerance for CW Central Casting Syndrome.
1. The Good Wife, a legal drama with politicking. Julianna Margulies and Archie Panjabi (the sister from Bend it Like Beckham) are the main female leads, with backup from the guy who was Dan Rydell in Sports Night, the divine Christine Baranski, the divine Alan Cumming, and Mr Big from Sex & The City (DISCLAIMER: I loathe S&TC with the fiery heat of 10k suns. But I have female relatives). I've watched all of season 1 and a bit of season 2, and Wax has watched about half of that.
This show is interesting and well-written, but the actors are the main draw. It suffers from an overload of a) characters who are always stupid and b) other characters doing stupid things. The cumulative effect of this is to make me and Wax root for the characters who are never stupid and against the characters who do stupid things, regardless of whether they are evil or not. At this point, we're hoping several of the main characters who are supposed to be sympathetic accidentally kill themselves in Darwin Awards fashion, preferably involving rocket launchers or Coke machines, and the remaining ones have a party at the funeral. Still, we have no intention of stopping watching. The dialogue is good, which is more than you can say for a lot of primetime US TV. On the other hand, several people had led us to believe that this show was "femslashy", and both of us disagree. The strong female characters are great and we enjoy their interactions and also their scenes by themselves (Archie Panjabi reminds me of The Perfect Being aka Arwen, our smallest cat: she's a tiny gorgeous badass who doesn't give a fuck), but we're not seeing the sexual tension.
2. Rizzoli & Isles, a police drama starring Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander. Boston cops, Italian and Irish accents. Fun times. I'd say it's about as good as CSI but funnier (which is also true of NCIS, but this is less slapstick and has more issues and subplots in play as opposed to being focused on the workplace and the cases the way NCIS is). The bullpen and the Boston accents are refreshing. Alexander's character is the only WASP with a lot of screentime, which is highly satisfying to me. On the other hand, after 5 episodes I don't think it stands up to CSI for sheer follow-along-and-try-to-solve-at-home mystery. Wax thought it was fun but she was willing to skip a few eps to watch American Horror Story instead, which she likes (I don't watch horror or horror-adjacent stuff.) I will keep watching and might look for the femslash fic that I'm pretty sure is out there when I run out of other stuff to read.
3. Lost Girl, starring two chicks with vaguely familiar faces but I don't know where I saw them before. We've only watched the pilot, and it wasn't very good. In a way it's similar to a CW show, with the same kind of approach to plot and modern fantasy as some of their other current attempts (Supernatural, Vampire Diaries) and the same CW-central-casting girls who all kind of look the same and wardrobe and makeup only exacerbate the problem. The dialogue is bad and sometimes painfully bad, as is the direction - better than Smallville for sure, more on a level with Charmed. The feel of the show is kind of like Xena from what Wax and I remember of it - the mix of wisecracking, plot holes, and action - silly and ultimately arguably fun, but also exasperating. Wax disliked it and won't watch anymore, and I've put it at the bottom of my list. After I run out of the others, I intend to watch at least three or four more episodes to give it a chance to get better, but I'm not confident I can stick it out to the end. My tolerance for bad dialogue and horrible directing is even lower than my tolerance for CW Central Casting Syndrome.
