Tag Archives: The Blacklist

TV catch-up: ‘Sleepy Hollow,’ ‘The Walking Dead,’ ‘SHIELD’ and more

sleepy hollow headless horseman

The highlights of my TV viewing year are the limited runs of “Mad Men” on AMC, “Justified” on FX and “The Walking Dead” on AMC. That’s not to say there aren’t other shows that I’m hooked on.

But they always take a backseat to those three.

This fall, there’s a surprisingly high number of shows that have rapidly become must-see (to coin a phrase) viewing. This doesn’t count “Parks and Recreation,” for example, a charmingly daft sitcom that just keeps chugging along.

Here’s a roundup of what I’m digging right now:

“Sleepy Hollow” – This fantasy adventure series, which has become something of a hit, is one of the greatest pleasures on TV right now. If you haven’t watched the first half of this 13-episode season, go catch up, online or on demand, right now. I’ll wait.

Okay, back? The story of the return of Revolutionary War soldier and spy Ichabod Crane, reborn in modern times more than 200 years after he and the (now) Headless Horseman fought it out on a New York battlefield, is terrific fun. Crane is teamed with a young female cop as they investigate the rebirth of the Horseman, who turns out to be one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the Book of Revelations. 

The show has something for everyone: Fish out of water comedy and commentary, monster of the week, creepy thrills, fun special effects and great chemistry among the cast members.

Tonight’s episode found the 21st century characters explaining to Crane the secret relationship between Thomas Jefferson – one of his contemporaries and heroes – and Sally Hemmings, all the while preparing a snare to trap the Headless Horseman with ultraviolet light. You don’t have to ask. Just go with it.

“The Walking Dead” – I was relieved to see the Governor show up at the end of last night’s episode. I was feeling a little claustrophobic with the flu storyline that’s dominated this season so far. I do love the beefed up roles for many in the cast, including Carol. Was anyone else as surprised as I was about Carol’s exile?

“Agents of SHIELD” – I was looking forward to this Marvel spin-off more than any other series this fall, and I’m not alone in my disappointment at the resulting show. Each episode is an improvement on the last, for the most part, but I can’t be the only one that’s impatient with the character development and over-arching plot. I’m still watching, however.

“The Blacklist” – God help me, but I’m enjoying this series more than “SHIELD.” “The Blacklist,” about a mysterious criminal (James Spader) who comes in from the cold to help the FBI catch other criminals, isn’t quite as looney as “Sleepy Hollow,” but almost. Spader is the main reason to watch as he gives a master class in unsettling but entertaining villainy.  I can’t wait to see him as the bad guy in “The Avengers: The Age of Ultron.”

“The Mindy Project” – As fun and kooky as “Parks and Recreation” is, there’s not a more clever sitcom on TV right now than “The Mindy Project,” with Mindy Kaling as a neurotic doc surrounded by neurotic docs in NYC. The second season of the show is even better than the first.

‘Agents of SHIELD’ improving, but what it could learn from ‘Sleepy Hollow’ and ‘The Blacklist’

SHIELD girl in a flower dress

Okay, that was more like it.

Five weeks in. “Agents of SHIELD” feels a little more like it’s finding its way. And who knows, maybe the slow burn strategy of Joss Whedon and his showrunners has been planned this way all along.

But tonight’s episode, “The Girl in a Flower Dress,” took a couple of big steps toward making the show a must-see each week and, in the process, accomplished a couple of things: It (mostly) resolved the “is she or isn’t she a mole?” storyline about hacker Skye, and it furthered a series Big Bad in Centipede, the group that’s continuing the Extremis experiments – giving people superpowers, as in “Iron Man 3” and the “SHIELD” pilot, through dangerous chemicals.

It also established some other nifty ideas, including the fact that “SHIELD” has a list of superpowered people it’s keeping tabs on. This has been a matter-of-fact part of the Marvel movies and needed to be re-established here.

What still needs to be resolved right away: Coulson’s secret. If there’s one more reference to how the unwitting Coulson (the wonderfully deadpan Clark Gregg) has changed since Loki impaled him in “The Avengers,” I’ll cry.

Coulson thinks he died for a few seconds. Higher-ups including Maria Hill know something else is the truth … and think Coulson must never know.

I think everyone suspects that Coulson is a Life Model Decoy – as mentioned in “The Avengers” – or a clone or something. But please, please don’t save the explanation for the end of the season. Coulson needs to find out sooner rather than later, maybe in a November or February sweeps week episode. And then he needs to get pissed, taking it out on Nick Fury – Samuel Jackson’s already appeared in the series, so there’s no reason he can’t come back – and everyone else who deceived him. Knowing how buttoned-down Coulson is, that “taking it out” might consist of an icy glare and a brisk walking away. But do it soon.

That way, expectations will be defied and the next story arc – how Coulson comes back to lead the team – can begin.

Okay, now here’s what I intended to touch on before I saw tonight’s episode: A few things “Agents of SHIELD” could learn from its counterparts on other networks, “Sleepy Hollow” and “The Blacklist:”

Turn up the charisma. Yes, Clark Gregg is no James Spader, who’s chewing the scenery and loving it on “The Blacklist.” But “SHIELD” needs some flamboyance.

Turn up the crazy. “Sleepy Hollow” is getting points for the relish with which it embraces its storyline. “SHIELD” shouldn’t imitate it, but it needs more of the kind of moments that will make fans and casual viewers alike chuckle.

Show why these people are together. A seven-year-must-prevent-the-end-times-like-in-“Sleepy Hollow” plot device isn’t necessary. But there’s got to be more of a reason holding these people together than just the “we’re all in the SHIELD helicarrier break room at the same time” vibe that sometimes seems to be the case.

Give us more surprises. In the first episode of “The Blacklist,” the frustrated FBI agent stabs sneaky fugitive Red Reddington (James Spader) in the neck with a fountain pen. Yikes! It was quick and unexpected and totally justified. Give us more of that kind of “hey did you see that?” moment. (They even had Reddington make a joke about it in a later episode.)

Give us some Marvel comics names. Remember before the series began, people were speculating on which characters would be introduced? Luke Cage? Moon Knight? Who would have thought that “Arrow” would be introducing established DC Comics characters every week and Marvel, the king of synergy, would be running a series of wannabes past us every week?

Give us the goods, “Agents of SHIELD.”

TV Catch-up: ‘The Blacklist’ and ‘Sleepy Hollow’

the-blacklist

With a little more than a week to go before “The Walking Dead” returns and fills up another 60 minutes of my TV viewing time, I’m trying to catch up on a few hour-longs.

“Agents of SHIELD” hasn’t set the world on fire – just a figure of speech there – yet, but I’ll be watching every week. That’s a given, as is “The Walking Dead” when it returns a week from tomorrow.

And so far I’m really intrigued with and enjoying “Sleepy Hollow” and “The Blacklist.”

“The Blacklist” has its greatest asset in James Spader, 1980s teen movie star turned TV stalwart and creepiness personified.

“The Blacklist” owes a lot to “Silence of the Lambs,” “24” and lots of police procedural shows.

Spader, who will play robotic villain Ultron in “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” plays Raymond “Red” Reddington, a long-sought criminal mastermind who turns himself in to the FBI and offers to help the feds catch others on the “most wanted” list. But he insists on dealing only with Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone), a first-time profiler.

Reddington leads Keen and her fellow agents through their paces in the pilot as they chase a terrorist and associate of Reddington with mass casualties in mind.

Random observations about the pilot:

A couple of moments surprised me, including one in which Keen takes out her frustrations on Reddington’s carotid artery.

Spader spouts his lines with relish. He’s good fun.

He does looks odd in his rose-colored aviators and old-fashioned hat.

In the opening scene, when Reddington shows up at FBI HQ and surrenders, a guard confirms his ID and hits an alarm. So that means every guard in the place knows to pull his gun on Reddington, just because he’s kneeling with hands behind his head?

A kidnapping scene on a bridge is implausible as hell but pretty fun.

As for “Sleepy Hollow,” I’ve really enjoyed the couple of episodes I’ve seen so far. The show is fairly smart and has some nice creepy moments not only with its “monster of the week” to be fought by Ichabod Crane and company but with its only-barely-glimpsed “Big Bad.” Thanks to snippets of “Sympathy for the Devil,” we can guess who this horned fellow is.

I like the cast – thank goodness they’ve brought Clancy Brown back; I’ll take all the flashbacks and dream sequences I can get of this guy – and I like the style.

I just hope the show doesn’t pull a “Lost” or “X-Files” and lose its way along its multi-year, multi-monster, multi-secrets path.