Best New Crime Show?

[Gerald So]

In your opinion, what's the best new crime show this season?

My vote goes to NBC's CHUCK, starring Zachary Levi as an electronics store techie whose brain is bombarded with thousands of state secrets when a rogue spy sends him an e-mail. Adam Baldwin and Yvonne Strahovski star as agents from the NSA and CIA respectively tasked with recovering said secrets. It's nicely unclear which agency has the better motive.

The least original show of the new season IMO is NBC's JOURNEYMAN. (I say this as a big fan of QUANTUM LEAP and a modest fan of TRU CALLING.) Unlike QUANTUM LEAP, JOURNEYMAN is short on backstory. Hero Dan Vassar (Kevin McKidd) blacks out and starts tripping through time without warning. Very disorienting to me. This is one I'll skip.

[Kevin Allman]

I have to admit to watching Fox's K-VILLE, because I'm from New Orleans...it's about 80% hooey, 20% authentic, and the plots make zero dollars and no sense.

But Anthony Anderson (as the lead cop) is very good, and the scenes with his wife and daughter, who live in Atlanta after the storm, are the best things in the show. The few local actors they cast give it some real flavor (and make the standard L.A. model/actors stand out even more in their inauthenticity). And I give the producers props for actually shooting it on location around New Orleans, instead of trying to make Vancouver or Toronto look like the Lower 9th.

It's developed an amused little cult of people who get together in New Orleans and turn each episode into a drinking game: when will they mention voodoo? when will you spot Mardi Gras beads? And scenes like the one where Anthony Anderson is seen pouring hot sauce on his oatmeal (on a blazing hot day) - well, you just gotta laugh, and New Orleans can use all of those it can get these days.

[J.D. Rhoades]

Heh. I just remember seeing the previews when one of the main characters is yelling at the other, "we can make it like it was!" And I couldn't help but say out loud, "What, when New Orleans supposedly had one of the most violent and corrupt police forces in the country?" Never could muster much enthusiasm for the show after that.

[Kevin Allman]

Yeah, Anthony Anderson's partner is a prisoner who swam out of Orleans Parish Prison and got hired by NOPD after presenting himself as retired military or some such...and when Anderson finds out, his entire reaction is "Well, I'll give you a chance, bro...but I've got my eye on you."

It's basically Starsky, Hutch, and Beignets; I can't imagine it'll succeed.

[J.D. Rhoades]

That is an incredibly stupid premise.

[Gerald So]

My problem with K-VILLE is its mixing a harsh reality like Katrina with a premise as impossible as a convict joining the military. The military questions and vets anyone who enlists as a matter of course. The Armed Forces have access to records that have been sealed or expunged by other authorities. Not to mention that breaking the law by lying to the military is not behavior you'd expect from a con trying to go straight.

IMO, it wasn't even necessary to make the character (Trevor Cobb) a convict. Say he killed a man to escape Katrina, and no one discovered the murder in all the chaos. There's no record of it at all. Then wracked with guilt, Cobb joins the Army to make a fresh start. You get the same shadowy past without stretching plausibility.

[Mary Reagan]

How can you judge a show with no sound and the distraction of a book?

[Gerald So]

Premiering tonight (Oct. 12) at 9 on ABC is WOMEN'S MURDER CLUB, based on the novels of James Patterson. The books don't interest me, but the show might, ala Fox's BONES.

[Mary Reagan]

It's been getting a lot of buzz. Not sure if that bodes well for the show or not.

[Gerald So]

I enjoyed the pilot. Angie Harmon and Rob Estes, both seen in law enforcement backdrops before, slide easily into their new roles as Insp. Lindsay Boxer and her ex-husband-cum-superior officer Tom Mitchell. The rest of the cast, all good-looking, was less familiar to me but played their professional roles and personal chemistry well enough. If the show pulls off this balance, I'll keep watching.

[norby]

Well, I like Journeyman, with the exception of the incessant returning of Dan's girlfriend Livia. She's annoying, and, in my opinion, unnecessary to the show. It would be more intriguing if Dan were simply stumbling along instead of having her guiding him.

I do like Life-I'm with Margot, I tuned in intially because of Damian Lewis, and then finding out that Adam Arkin was also on the show just clinched it. The pilot turned me off at first, but I had a chance to re-watch it on Bravo and enjoyed it more the second time.

Pushing Daisies and Chuck, they just got on my nerves. I think they're a little too quirky or something. I wanted to like Chuck because of Adam Baldwin, he's always great to watch., but I just couldn't make it. Oh well.

[Gerald So]

After three episodes, PUSHING DAISIES is just too precious. Cloyingly cute. Bury it, I say. Godzilla, step on Bambi.

I'm still watching CHUCK, but I want to see Chuck's spy adventures spill into his day job more, forcing him to juggle. As it is, he seems to have lots of downtime to go on missions with Sarah and Casey,

[norby]

Not to mention, just based on the episode I saw, he disappears from work a lot with no repercussions. Try that for real and you would be fired in a heartbeat.