Rookie Blue is the latest show on ABC’s summer schedule.  It’s a comedy/drama/crime show about a group of rookie cops in Los Angeles.  I’ve managed to fit in 3 episodes of the show so it’s time for a review.  First what drew me to this was the presence of Missy Peregrym (Reaper, Stick It).  She’s super adorable and I’ve enjoyed her performances in everything I’ve seen her in.  Also it sorta reminded me of the reality show Rookies which was both hilarious and also sad (one of the rookies died).  And I wasn’t wrong.  It is sort of like a fictional Rookies mixed with a little bit of Grey’s Anatomy back when that was watchable.

 

The ensemble is decent but hasn’t yet developed any chemistry, probably because in most of the episodes they’re all separated or broken into smaller groups.  They do need to work on that.  Also it seems the show is still finding it’s legs.  Some of the drama falls flat, but there are some good moments of tension that work well.

 

This is by no means a great show, hell currently it’s not even that good, but there is potential and it is incredibly watchable.  I’d say give it some of your time and see if it’s your thing.  You might just find a diamond in the rough.

 

 

The Deep End is an ensemble drama on ABC set in the world of a high class LA law firm.  It mostly focuses on a group of first year lawyers newly arrived at the firm and thrown into the deep end.  It has an ensemble cast featuring some great actors you’ve probably seen before like Norbert Leo Butz (best known to me for his part as Roger in the Broadway production of RENT), Tina Majorino (Veronica Mars, Big Love), Billy Zane (Titanic), Leah Pipes (Sorority Row) and a whole bunch more recognizable faces.  It’s sort of ABC’s attempt at a Grey’s Anatomy set in the legal world or a Ally McBeal type show.  You’d think maybe ABC would hold off on a show like this after they had a tremendous legal show, Eli Stone, and cancelled it.

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ABC has always done some interesting marketing, and usually if there’s a product to be made from a show they’ll do it, the results however are usually mixed.  Take for example Bad Twinby the fictional Gary Troup, a novel meant to be a tie in to Lost (the author was supposedly killed in the crash of flight 815 and in one episode Sawyer can be seen reading the manuscript for the book).  That novel crashed and burned as even the producers of the show disowned it.  So although it made sense for them to release a book written by a character on a show about a writer, I approached this with trepidation.

 

I am in fact weary of any sort of television tie-in novel.  I think they’re pretty horrible things that mostly have nothing to do with or contain the feel of the source material.  They’re just writers who bought some licensing rights and who are borrowing names and characters from an already established universe.  They usually suck.

 

Heat Wave actually has a really interesting premise.  It is by the main character of the show “Castle” and is actually a book in the show.  It’s the book he writes in the show.  So the plot is centered around a loose fictional version of all the characters in the show.  The lead in the book is Nikki Heat, who is representing Stana Katic’s character on the show, and she’s being followed around by a journalist called Jameson Rook, representing Nathan Fillion’s character.  It’s all sort of meta and if you watch the show it makes more sense (if you don’t watch the show, why not?).

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Scrubs premiered it’s 9th season tonight.  Who would have ever thought we’d find ourselves here?  Scrubs being a constantly in danger of being canceled show actually brought back after it is ended for good.  Last season was the real final season of Scrubs as we know it.  But it got good ratings and ABC wanted more, so Bill Lawrence, creator/showrunner, wasn’t going to say no and have the current crew lose their jobs.  But he had ended what we knew as Scrubs.  So this season we have an entirely new premise.  Now we’re in med school (but also still a hospital? which is the same hospital but in a different place actually inside a med school?) and instead of following Zach Braff’s JD, we’re inside the mind of Kerry Bishe’s Lucy.

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Castle is one of those shows that it would be easy to miss.  In a tv landscape oversaturated with procedurals of every kind, one more little cop show airing Mondays at 10pm on ABC is certainly easy to skip right over.  It’s not the most advertised show, and it started midseason last year (well this year but we’re talking tv years here).  But there’s plenty of reasons to be watching it and skipping over some of the lamer contenders in the category.

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