The television season that was – Tuesdays

This week I’m taking a look back at the 2010-2011 television season. In case you missed it, take a look at how I spent my Sunday nights and Monday nights for the last eight months. I’ll give you a few minutes….

All caught up? Here’s my Tuesday night experience.

Tuesday was the night of the miserable sitcom (or was that Wednesday?). I tried Running Wilde because I generally give all reasonable sitcoms a chance … I’m rethinking that policy now, and not just because of Will Arnett’s giant miss: Traffic Light was one of the worst relationship comedies I’ve ever seen, while Raising Hope made me wonder if someone should call child protective services on account of Bayley and Rylie Crecut (Hope) being exposed to that environment.

But it wasn’t just the sitcoms … Body of Proof makes little sense as a concept for a series. And while sometimes a show itself can overcome such a shortcoming, this one didn’t.

NCIS has been better, but again it’s a game of relativity: a bad season of NCIS is still better than most everything else.

White Collar could have been better, too. There were enough episodes that didn’t touch on Kate to make the season exciting, but it’s about time that that particular nugget from Neal’s past be retired. The making of Neal Caffrey the con artist was awesome; who killed Kate is one of those mysteries that no one cares about, as opposed to why gnomes aren’t as interested in right socks as they are in left ones (How to Train Your Dragon).

The Good Wife did a tremendous job this season of crafting some of the finer legal cases to ever appear on network television. Either in court or out, Lockhart/Gardner (and Bond) performed some awesome — and intriguing — legal maneuverings. But I think the show somewhat fails when it comes to the personal. Better said, it has failed to make me care about the personal sides of some of these people’s lives, and for the most part I find them to be an unnecessary — and at times even unwanted — distraction. Kalinda slept with Peter? Okay. Ship her off the show, boot Peter out of Alicia’s life, find her a new place to practice law, and move on. Do we really need all the rest?

One of two big surprises for me this season was Detroit 1-8-7. The first week or two did little more than get me to give it another chance, but after that Michael Imperioli and company finally broke through. And it was great. Not The Unusuals special, but 187 had its own kind of magic that clicked hard. One of its strongest qualities was the partner pairings: Fitch and Washington were perfect as mentor/mentee, while Longford and Mahajan were hilarious. If only the network had given it another season to reach an audience … but alas, networks have no patience for slow starters these days.

From this perspective it seems like my Tuesdays were pretty barren. So why was it always my busiest night? Probably because I reviewed three of the four shows that I watched on Tuesdays … that’ll do it.

How did you experience Tuesday night television this season? Share your adventure in the comments below!

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Jun 01, 2011 @ 11:15 EST5EDT