calmBeen meaning to talk about the previous week and the start of the new television season. While I'm going to discuss some shows, there will be no spoiler warnings here per sé.
The new season of television began a week ago today, with the season debut of Dancing With the Stars. The season is going to be interesting due to the cast of the series this time out. While Chaz Bono has made the headlines already with the controversy surrounding his being part of the show, there's other members of the cast that are just as interesting - Elisabetta Canalis, Hope Solo, J.R. Martinez, Ricki Lake, Chynna Phillips, Rob Kardashian, and a few others. The first two-hour episode and the follow-up elimination episode featured some excellent dancing, some real surprises, and had a nice feel to it.
Right after the episode of Dancing came the season premiere of Castle. This story continued on from the previous season's finale in which Kate Beckett was shot and left for dead, though we all knew that they weren't going to kill her off. The episode went pretty much as predicted, had a few neat twists and surprises, and introduced a new head honcho (or should that be "honchess"?) at the station house. Good episode, and solid storyline and murder mystery as usual.
Tuesday night saw the second season premiere of Body of Proof starring Dana Delany. I've always considered this series similar to Crossing Jordan, with an older version of the character, though that doesn't do the Body of Proof series justice, and to be honest, I totally enjoyed this particular episode. Both the murder investigation in this episode and the personal stuff that Megan Hunt was going through this episode were fun to watch, with serious aspects of the story dominating but some humour rearing its head in the tales as well. Good start to the new series.
I managed to catch the new comedy New Girl, starring Zooey Deschanel, and rather enjoyed it for the most part, though I found some of the comedic elements of the story a bit droll for my taste. It reminds me of The Big Bang Theory in some ways as well as Three's Company, but the female lead here carries the series and gets all of the best lines. On the other hand, there's Whitney, the new series starring Whitney Cummings, and was exactly what I expected of it, light fare with a good sense of humour and a modern sensibility. The premiere episode was all right, but it wasn't great, and I'll have to decide whether I want to catch it again this week.
Since I watched Body of Proof on Tuesday night, I didn't catch the other new series that i wanted to watch that night, but it re-aired on Saturday night, so I did manage to watch Unforgettable. The premise of the show is intriguing, to say the least, and I have always liked Poppy Montgomery in her tv work and stuff, so I was hoping for a great show with this series, and have to say that I wasn't disappointed. The way in which her unique memory ability worked and was shown was really neat and well-executed, the character herself and the surrounding cast, and the crime investigation in this episode were nicely handled, and the series definitely shows promise. The casting of Poppy Montgomery (Carrie Wells), Dylan Walsh (Al Burns), and Michael Gaston (Mike Costello) was inspired, and this series promises to be great.
Finally, Sunday night saw the premiere episode of the new series Pan Am. This ensemble cast follows one of Pan American Airlines crew during the late 1960's, and features a good cast including Christina Ricci. The first episode had an interesting storyline, some flashbacks that made the characters seem a bit more real, and an intriguing spy story in it as well, and I was pleasantly surprised at the acting of most of the cast. Harking back to the days when flying was a relatively great experience and a more innocent time in the aviation industry, this is another series that offers a lot of potential. Looking forward to future episodes of this.
The only series that I haven't talked about here is the one that I'm most anticipating - Terra Nova. The series debuts tonight, but I'll be taping it to watch later in the week. Definitely looking forward to this, but don't know whether it has a chance.