Midseason Series Premieres Part Tres

NBC

The Book of Daniel
(Friday at 10:00)
Grade: B
There’s so much stuff jammed into the season premiere, it took 2 hours to tell it, so, here’s the shortish version. Daniel Webster (Aidan Quinn; Desperately Seeking Susan [ha!]) is an Episcopal priest, with a borderline alchoholic wife, a daughter just caught for dealing pot, a gay son, and a horny adopted asian son. His sister-in-law is a burgeoning lesbian, her dead husband ran off with $3.2 million of the church’s money and is found dead with the money still missing. Oh, and Daniel talks to Jesus, in a he’s invisible but in the room kind of way. Daniel’s boss, the bishop (Ellen Burstyn) is hassling him, and his father, another bishop, doesn’t think much of him. There’s actual even more things going on, but if this has interested you enough already, maybe you should check out the show.

I like this show. Not love it, but it’s definitely interesting. What I like best is when Daniel talks to Jesus, because, it’s pretty funny usually. Jesus is a bit mysterious, and a bit cryptic. The daughter is also pretty good. What I don’t like about the show is the fact that every time they talk to or about the gay son, it has to be mentioned that he’s gay and they seem to make a huge deal of it. There’s actually a lot of different plot threads going on, and it’s a bit confusing. Though to be honest, when I watched the second episode, I was playing a videogame and not really concentrating on the TV. Anyways, I think it’s interesting enough to keep watching.

Four Kings
(Thursday at 8:30)
Grade: C+
Ben’s (Josh Cooke; Committed) grandma has died and left him a gigantic NY apartment, into which he invites his 3 best friends to live with him. Barry (Seth Green; BtVS, Austin Powers) is a music producer, Jason (Todd Grinnell) is a real estate developer working for a Trump-type mogul, and Bobby (Shane McRae) is a slacker. Ben is the serial monogamist of the group, where Barry is the perpetually put-upon loser in the love game. This is a situation that would only be found in the sitcom.

Once you get past the very Friends-like setup of the show, you find a show that’s struggling a bit to find its feet. There have been a few very funny moments and quite a few more where the jokes fell flat. You can see that there is a long friendship and familiarity between the characters though, especially in the in-jokes and strange rituals that always seems to manifest in groups that have been friends for a long time. The show is not bad, but is just so uneven, that sometimes even the good laughs are dragged down by lame setups and unnecessary selling of the joke. I really want to like this show, as Seth Green definitely has the comedic abilities, and is especially funny when playing indignant or angry, but the Jason and Bobby characters I find not really that funny. I don’t know if the writers just haven’t found good material for them, or what, but I hope that they can make a better contribution to the show soon.