Thursday , March 28 2024
There's just too much there on Monday, but I saw some of it, oh yes, I did.

Donnellys, Heroes, and Your Mother

Why, I ask you, does Monday night TV have to be so good? Why do there have to be so many good hours of shows on Monday? Can’t we move some of that stuff to Tuesday and Wednesday, where I personally feel that there is a dearth of entertaining television?

Between How I Met Your Mother, 24, Heroes, and now The Black Donnellys. I’ll grant you that Donnellys takes the place of Studio 60, so it’s not like I added a new hour of television viewing, but I now need to get all invested in some other show that I never watched before. It’s stressful, I’m telling you. 

In any case, on HIMYM, I’m not sure how I feel about Barney not being able to drive. On the one hand, it makes complete sense. A lot of people who grow up in New York City never learn how to drive. On the other hand, Barney admitting to not being able to drive seems odd. His character admitting any such sort of weakness seems out of place. Maybe that’s not quite right, but there was something there, that while funny, didn’t seem true to me.

Not only that, but what about the fact that they found an empty parking lot during the transit strike for them to practice driving in? As someone who spent an hour to get ten blocks during the transit strike, I can assure you that there were no empty parking lots. Beyond that, no one would ever drive to get Thai food in New York, surely they would’ve just hopped on the subway or in a cab. I love the show, I really, really do, but when they try to do such a NY-centric thing they need to pay more attention to the realities of New York City.

Heroes… best… episode… ever. I don’t want to give too much away, but holy mackerel wasn’t that great? Wasn’t that great? That was great. Just great. Doctor Who used to be a good guy, working for the man… wow. Hero’s father being a part of this whole shebang… wow. The standoff in the Bennett home… wow. There have been some weak episodes in the past, episodes where nothing much happened, but they definitely seem to have turned up the heat in the past couple of weeks. I have an inkling that they’re building to something big, and maybe more than the whole NYC is going to blow up thing, but we’ll have to see about it. And, if you haven’t visited the Primatech Paper website, you should. 

I don’t want to spend too much on The Black Donnellys as I've already written a full review, but let’s discuss for just a moment. Can they keep this going? Surely, eventually, the boys figure out what they’re doing, and plots will be harder to come up with, but maybe that’s a season two or three concern and consequently not something I should be focusing on at this moment. I thought the show came out of the box really, really strong. It had a definite POV, attitude, style, and some wit. The Donnelly brothers seem likable despite their illegal doings, which is always a tough line to try and straddle correctly. 

I’ll get to 24, probably tonight, maybe tomorrow, but at this moment Heroes is much more appointment viewing for me. No? Am I wrong? 

About Josh Lasser

Josh has deftly segued from a life of being pre-med to film school to television production to writing about the media in general. And by 'deftly' he means with agonizing second thoughts and the formation of an ulcer.

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