The Summer 7: My Favorite Shows of Summer 2010 by Heather M

Fall arrives this week, so it’s a good time to recap the summer TV season. This summer, I resumed some longstanding favorites and picked up a few newbies. I also divorced a couple of shows – I didn’t go back to Army Wives when they dispatched all the spouses back into action and I decided to skip True Blood because I was burned out after the Maryann takeover last year. I did follow it via recaps and nothing I read made me wish I’d was watching it. So long, TB. In no particular order, these were my DVR/appointment shows for summer 2010:

1. Eureka, Syfy
I’ve covered the fourth season for the blog, and it bears repeating that this was the show’s strongest season since its first. With a time travel bent influencing the action, everybody came back better and happier. The show is coming back to resume season four early next year and then we get season five. You can watch the last few episodes at syfy.com.

2. Haven, Syfy
This quirky noirish drama could have been over-the-top like Happy Town but it instead fell somewhere squarely in the middle of Twin Peaks and Northern Exposure (two shows I loved back in the day), setting a fish-out-of-water tale of FBI agent Audrey Parker in a picturesque town with more than one secret. We don’t know yet whether they’re coming back. I hope so—I like this cast a lot. Syfy Rewind has the episodes posted the day after they air.

3. My Boys, TBS
Just unceremoniously dumped after the conclusion of its fourth season (after being off the air a ridiculous 13 months between seasons), this gem rebounded from the departure of Jim Gaffigan with a new dynamic that brought PJ’s sole gal pal, Stephanie, fully into the fold. The seasons were always too short, and now, the series officially was, too. I have no doubt all of these folks will land other gigs, but I’m highly annoyed at the way they, and the fans, were treated (and that NBC torpedoed Jordana Spiro and Kyle Howard’s second-position jobs on its network because a decision hadn’t been made on My Boys yet). You can catch the last few episodes online.

4. The Gates, ABC
The absolute definition of a guilty pleasure, this delightfully trashy supernatural melodrama mixes sex, intrigue, vampires, werewolves, witches, and succubi, oh my! And it’s been fabulous. I knew a lot of this cast from other work, but several are new to me. Some of the arcs were a little heavy handed and eyerolly, but I actually came to give a damn about the adoptive vampire parents who worried they’d be outed and the whole alpha female dynamic. A big thumbs up to ABC that they have actually aired all of the episodes. It wraps on Sunday with a two-hour finale. You can catch the last five episodes on Hulu. No news on a renewal yet. The other awesome thing? They shot it in a well-to-do enclave in Shreveport, Louisiana of all places. Woo hoo Louisiana revenue!

5. Movies of the week, Lifetime/LMN/Hallmark Channel
Guilty pleasure #2. Once the domain of the "big" networks to keep their lead actors employed during the hiatuses, movies of the week have become the bread and butter of basic cable. Cast with a variety of familiar faces (many of them doubly so to genre and sci-fi fans) like Julie Benz, Emma Caulfield, Leslie Hope, Natasha Henstridge, Gabrielle Anwar, Charisma Carpenter, and Dina Myer, etc., they're usually paint-by-numbers feel-good or gal/guy-in-peril stories. Mostly female-driven, the movies' recognizable leads are backed a host of (often Canadian) HITGs. I dig the MOWs because I usually can six-degrees-of half the folks in them and because the (also mostly) Canadian locations (usually Vancouver/Montreal/Calgary) are a vicarious travelogue. I’m apparently not alone—Lifetime and Lifetime Movie Network debut at least two original movies a month, sometimes one a week, (usually on Saturday or Sunday evenings) and Hallmark Movie Channel usually has at least one new film a month. Once aired, they then get added to the networks’ already robust MOW libraries, where they run year-round, and their DVD library (yes, people pay for them). You can also see the Lifetime flicks online.

6. Covert Affairs, USA
Y’all know how I feel about Chris Gorham. The real surprise in this spy yarn from USA is that Piper Perabo can do light and funny and kickass and serious all at the same time. I haven't seen more than ten minutes of Coyote Ugly, so I only knew her from farce work (Slap Her…She’s French), romcoms (Imagine Me and You/Because I Said So) and a heartbreaking coming of age film (Lost & Delirious). She’s also done her share of accents, so I was pleased to see her rock her mother tongue. The only downside—a ridiculously overlong hiatus until season two, slated for next summer. USA seemed to have gotten with it, shortening the hiatuses of their other shows, so I don’t get the slow drag to a second season for their newest hit, especially when the first season ended the only way it could have (I think). Catch up with the season via the full episodes at USA's website.

7. Warehouse 13, Syfy
An amalgam of funny, sweet, sci-fi, and rat-a-tat-tat line delivery between its Tracey and Hepburn leads made Warehouse 13 a surprising hit for Syfy, and in a lovely bit of karma, a long overdue one for series stars Eddie McClintock and Joanne Kelly, and especially Saul Rubinek. McClintock was sort of in Clooney territory with a large collection of unsuccessful pilots and one-season wonders. Until now. What could have been an X-Files rip with male and female federal agents has evolved into a much more familial ensemble venture. The show gives as much weight to its two leads as it does Artie, Claudia (a very smart addition in season two), and a parade of rotating guest stars. They’re finishing season two Tuesday night (after an all-day season two marathon) and will be back for a third season in the spring.

And that’s a wrap on summer. Come see us at TV Goodness, where we’re reviewing the new and returning fall shows, and where I’ll be reviewing Haven until its season concludes in early October. Thanks so much for reading!

Haven: Sketchy by Heather M

A lot is being written lately about watching TV online instead of on an actual television. I watch shows online fairly regularly, and for me, it’s always a much more intimate experience as a viewer because I’m sitting close to the screen, laptop on my lap. The only downside is that I like closed captioning. I’m a dialogue gal that way. And while some shows (thanks, Human Target!) are cc’d online, the vast majority are not, which sucks for folks who genuinely need the captions. I watched Haven on Hulu (without captions) this week and may take to rewatching episodes this way. It’s such a visually pretty show. This week’s Trouble du jour, not so much with the pretty.

The episode, funnily enough titled “Sketchy,” centers on folks of rather sketchy repute falling to harm in extremely violent ways. The first, a Wall Street investor, crumples up into a ball on a docked boat after all of his extremity bones break at 90-degree angles. The second victim, a shady real estate broker, is literally shredded. The third victim, Jimmy, isn’t sketchy, just wrong place, wrong time, and his facial features start to disappear while Audrey and Nathan interview him. Thankfully Eleanor knocks him out with a handy morphine drip while the investigation continues. It’s not long before Audrey and Nathan figure out that the injuries are the result of actions being performed on sketches of the men.

It turns out that Vicky, who works on the boat with Jimmy (her fiance) and her dad, Alec, is an artist. She realized her ability when Richards, the captain of the boat, crumpled a sketch and caused the death of the seal in the drawing. Alec is into Richards for gambling debts, so Richards has blackmailed Vicky into providing sketches of his business clients for leverage to collect other outstanding debts with the promise that he'll forgive Alec's debts, and then things get ugly. Richards kidnaps Alec, steals all of Vicky's sketches, and is essentially holding the whole town hostage via a sketch she did from an overlook.

Audrey wrangles Duke to help and he gets onto the boat under the guise of a wine deal, rescues Alec, and takes down Richards by punching his sketch (after handily picking the safe where the the drawings were stashed). Richards dies when a scuffle on the dock sends his sketch into the water and Nathan can’t retrieve it. Audrey gives the sketches to Eleanor for safe keeping and fiance Jimmy gets his features back.

On the domestic front, Jess comes to the station under the guise of reporting a prowler with ridiculous features and when Nathan completely misses that she’s hitting on him, Audrey very loudly clues him in. [Sidebar: Jess invites him to a venison dinner because she shot a deer and when Audrey calls her on that being opposite her philosophy toward the animals last week, she gets a quippy answer, so that's a character reversal.] Later, Jess helps on their case when they ask her to stand by with a tranquilizer gun during Jimmy's interview (before they have ID'd Vicky). When the interview goes south, Nathan balks at getting involved with her because it's too dangerous. After the case is wrapped up, he turns up at her door for a “security review” with a bottle of wine behind his back, although I couldn’t tell if it was one of the 68 Chateau Latours from Duke.

Duke and Audrey continue their banter, and at one point he slips a comment about Audrey being Haven’s finest ass (and Nathan, too but a different kind of ass) and I’m not totally clear on why she laughed vs. letting him have it. It came off sort of skeevy instead of teasing. At the end of the episode, Audrey hangs out at his restaurant draining martinis to thank him for his help, and the way Duke asks if they are happy martinis or sad martinis redeems the ass comment.

Audrey continues her bonding with Eleanor and expresses her exasperation with the Troubles and wanting to kick them in ass while also wanting to get the hell out of Haven but seemingly being unable to do either. She has a cute scene with Nathan when their investigation leads them to an art store where we found out Nathan’s into decoupage and Audrey profiles him that because he can’t feel, his sense of sight is stronger (after he explains what the decoupage does to enrich the colors of the images). We also get Audrey doing her best over-the-top bad cop when she tries to rile each suspect into a rage to trigger their suspected ability, which while funny, could have gone either way if she'd been successful.

In all, this was a solid outing but I sort of guessed at things as we went along even though I was unspoiled. I liked that the episode’s title was a double entendre but I think it also tipped the plot early. It did feel more on track with the actual timeline of the show, in terms of Audrey trying to navigate her partnership with Nathan and friendship with Eleanor, and whatever she has with Duke. I think if this show was on pay cable, she and Duke would be FWBs. I’m glad they’re not. I like that they haven’t really defined what the energy is there. I think Duke is a good guy trying to pass himself off as more bad ass than he actually is, which works.

There's another new episode this Friday (thank you, Syfy). You can watch this week’s episode again on Syfy during the week and now on Hulu or Syfy.com. Another bonus of watching online – you actually get to hear all of Shawn Pierce’s moody score over the end credits.

Haven: Fur by Heather M

So, full disclosure: I'm a vegan, and if I come across an episode of a show that I watch that’s going to veer into hurting or killing animals, I'm usually going to skip it and watch something else. Haven went there this week, but given what I wrote previously about its secret heart of gold, I didn't turn the episode off after it opened with a wolf attack and diverted to focus on a hunting party because I knew this show would not be all about that. And I was right (in a way/we'll get there).

The episode opens at the Haven Hunt Club, beneath a full moon as a man departs the club, gets in into his Cadillac and then notices the back window is smashed out. As he turns toward the backseat to protest, a wolf lunges at him and he screams. The next morning out on Main Street, a woman is straddling Audrey’s hood and scrawling “NO PARKING” on her windshield in what looks like lipstick. Audrey approaches, hollering, and the woman climbs off and explains that cars in that spot block the view and caused a pedestrian to be hit years earlier. Audrey asks why there's no sign, and the woman, Eleanor, just points at her handiwork on the windshield and says that the summer people need to learn. She then chastises Audrey for her choice of patisserie, Larissa's, telling her she should have gone to Rosemary’s. Audrey cuts her off when her phone rings and then asks where to find the Haven Hunt Club.

Audrey arrives at the club to survey what's left of the car's owner, TR Holt, and she and Nathan banter about werewolves and full moons. Nathan says he's not a club member because he doesn't kill animals for fun (you go!). The Chief arrives, blustering about forming a hunting party to track the wolf. Nathan asks the Chief to give them a day to find other leads and he grudgingly agrees. One of the men at the club clues the team in that Holt was arguing with another club member, Donnelly, and that a third man, Landon, got caught in the crossfire of a near miss out in the woods the week prior. Audrey goes to talk to Landon but has to best him at skeet shooting first (which she does easily) and he tells her he thinks the shooting in the woods was an accident but it did scare him.

At the precinct, the paper boys, Dave and Vince, ware waiting, and Audrey says she wants to ask them some questions off the record. They say there was probably a woman involved. They bring up Jess Minion, who owns the 90-acre spread adjacent to the Club and has been pronounced a witch because she won't allow them to hunt on her land. They also suggest that Donnelly’s wife may have been dallying with Holt.

Later that night, Donnelly is attacked in his home, also by a wolf. The next morning, his widow says they've been hexed by Jess and points out a symbol on her property. Nathan and Audrey go speak to Jess and there's a flirty interplay between Nathan and her which Audrey catches immediately. The French-Canadian Jess, who spent childhood summers in Haven and inherited the land from her grandmother, insists she’s not a witch. She says the symbol is Micmac for forgiveness and shows them the graves of the animals she's buried on her land who were left for dead by hunters. She sees the animals’ retaliation as justice. Before they leave, Jess tells Nathan his inability to physically feel pain isn't a shortcoming but is instead a kind of magic. He ponders that as they go.

The hunting party convenes at the club and Landon is called away by his mother, Piper, ostensibly because his son was concerned. Audrey, Nathan, the Sheriff and Dave don’t find much of anything and makes their way onto Jess’s land, to which Nathan objects, and he intervenes when his dad nearly shoots Jess’s dog, who he’s mistaken for a wolf. The misfired shot brings out another problem, though, as the foursome are attacked by a moose. Nathan and Audrey unload shotgun shells at him and when he collapses to the ground, they find he's full of rags and sand.

They go back to speak with Jess and she again insists that she's not behind it, and she comes clean that the tribal magical symbols she scrawled were gleaned from Wikipedia. She says she has no powers (except maybe over Nathan...). Back at the club, Audrey and Nathan find blood on the teeth of one of the stuffed wolves and piece together with Eleanor's "autopsy" that reveals a severed finger in the belly of the wolf, that that the attacking animals are from the club's trophy room and are returning to life to avenge their deaths by killing their killers (Sweet!). Before they can get too happy about that, Nathan says they need to find the bear who's no longer in the trophy room.

Over at Dave and Vince's, Dave is napping on the porch from his near-moosing when he hears growling that he assumes is Vince in need of a Benadryl. The bear takes off after both of them and Audrey and Nathan arrive in time to rescue them. When they sort through what's left of the bear, they find a tag that had been on all the other animals, indicating Landon was the taxidermist, so they head off to see him. He's in the back of his shop cleaning up the mess from an animal attack and as they start to interview him, Piper comes in wielding scissors and telling Landon to get to the car. Audrey and Nathan are confused about why she's on the offensive and when she lunges at Nathan with the scissors, he deflects the blow back to Landon, whose arm is gashed, revealing that he's not a real boy. He too is stuffed. He didn't know, and he bolts.

While Piper, Audrey, and Nate head to the club in pursuit of Landon, Piper sort of nebulously explains that she brought Landon back to life when she found him after the fire that killed his wife (we're to assume he was not burned, I guess) and that she'd always been told to be careful about her "gift." She says she can feel the animals coming back to life. At the club, Landon is storming the trophy room with an axe as the trio arrive, and as Nathan pulls Landon out, Piper slips into the room, locking the door and saying it’s the only way to stop the animals, who immediately begin waking up. A wolf lunges at her and she falls as Landon swings his axe at the door trying to get to her.

Later, we just see a partial view of her behind the couch. Later, Audrey and Nathan talk to Landon and Nathan repeats what Jess said to him that his condition is magical and doesn't make him any less of a man or a father. Landon leaves, bolstered, with his son. Audrey asks Nathan if he believes that and he says not really and Audrey gently tells him it made a difference to Landon.

Nathan goes to see Jess to apologize to her and invites her to breakfast. At the precinct, Audrey is going over her report when Eleanor comes back in and they discuss that Piper, too, was stuffed. Audrey can't bring herself to write that down because it perpetuates the "Troubles," and she’s afraid if Landon knew, he might one day stuff his son should something befall him. Eleanor says they can only do what they can do. Before she leaves, she tells Audrey she’ll help her find her mom and pronounces her one of them, before leaving her with a pastry from Rosemary's.

Overall thoughts:

• A couple of firsts in this episode – no Duke (booo) and the owner of the condition that led to the episode's "Troubles" didn’t survive the episode.
• I was grateful we had implied gore but no actual gore with the critters. Not a fan of stuffed things on walls - I liked Audrey's nervousness as she went through the lodge, a little wary of being devoured by the room.
• Without getting onto a soapbox about it, I was completely down with the animals having their individual vengeance on the hunters who had killed them.
• I like that Audrey is being accepted as a local and that somebody wants to help her learn more about her mom.
• I wasn’t really feeling the vibe that was supposed to be happening between Nathan and Jess but I’m OK with them giving him a love interest.
• I enjoy that Dave and Vince are the insiders and will gleefully go off the record when Audrey has questions.
• Some of the frustrations expressed by Nathan and Audrey made this feel like it should have been a later episode. If he's been itching about his condition with the resurgence of the "Troubles" and she's been itching about her inability to fit in (i.e. choosing the wrong pastries), I’d missed that or it had been very subtle.

The episode repeats throughout the week and is available now on Hulu and Syfy.com.

Snap Judgment_Haven by Claudia Charles

Although I'm not the biggest Eric Balfour fan, I decided to give Haven a shot. I do like that Nicole de Boer stars in the series. I haven’t seen her in too much since Star Trek Deep Space Nine and then in Stephen King's Dead Zone, USA Network's sci fi series also starring Anthony Michael Hall. The opening of the pilot episode seems a little dry to me. They're trying too hard to establish Emily Rose's heroine, Audrey Parker, as a sarcastic know-it-all. She's an FBI agent extraordinaire investigating the murder of a serial killer she's been tracking when she's paired with one of Haven's local police officers, Nathan Wuornos. Look for lots of clichéd references regarding the FBI versus the local LEOs. As for Balfour's introduction, they want his character (Duke Crocker) to be enigmatic, but unfortunately he lacks the presence to carry what could be an interesting role. The acting's so-so, although to be fair, the cast seems to be rather hemmed in by some stock dialogue. So the secret of Haven is that people have powers over the weather? Okay…

I will say that the last fifteen minutes of the episode improved. The mystery was introduced regarding an old picture of a woman who looks eerily like Audrey. Her doppelganger may be her mother, but Audrey has mentioned she's an orphan. I'm intrigued enough with this aspect that I'm willing to watch another episode. The jury's out on this series for me.