The TV thread

I think it would take some serious storyline maneuvering to have Axe back in the U.S. And Damian Lewis returned home to Australia in the wake of his wife's death. I don't know if he changes course on that decision.

 

It's Showtime, and they just run shows into the ground. See - 11 seasons of Shameless, eight seasons of Homeland, nine seasons of Dexter.

 

Ending of first season of Homeland pretty much ruined it for me. Ending of second season definitely did.

 

This definitely concerns me when it comes to Yellowjackets

 

They are going to turn it into the new Lost.

 

Mafee gained the weight Chuck and Dollar Bill lost. Chuck looks better. Dollar Bill looks awful.

 

Watching the Law & Order reboot right now, and time has not been kind to Carey Lowell.

 

Still watching. It’s definitely a different show without Axe. But I’m enjoying this season.

The first season played at such a fever pace with the spiraling battle between Axe and Chuck. And they had to keep escalating. And it really got to a cartoonish, unbelievable level.

I think this is a good reset. The Olympic storyline is believable. And I think it’s been pretty funny.

It’s a quieter show for now. And I think Axe will be back, assuming Lewis wants to, after the death of his wife.

 

I never had one of those, but I was a big fan of the show. I think I even saw the movie in the theater. I don't mean the remake. I mean The Nude Bomb.

That show was why I thought it was cool when I interviewed Dick Gautier once. He played Hymie the android on the show. One fun bit of trivia was that Gautier once played Batman in a PSA in 1971. The commercial was supposed to feature the cast from the Adam West version of Batman, but West refused to do it. Gautier filled in for West. I will never forget the delight in his voice at finding out that someone knew about it, then he told me the details. The story I've read since then is that West just didn't want to play the character anymore, but Gautier claimed it was about money.

You probably forgot that Dick Gautier once filled in briefly as Batman

Edit: Wow. The PSA is on YouTube!

 

Now do the men

 

Sam Waterston was looking a little rough, too. It just wasn't as jarring as Carey Lowell, who looked pretty young for a 40ish woman the last time we saw her in this role 15 or 20 years ago and suddenly reappeared looking ... well, every bit of her 61 years old.

Overall, I wasn't blown away by the premiere. One of the great things about L&O v1.0 is its timelessness. Even the episodes from the first few seasons are infinitely rewatchable because the cops followed the clues and the lawyers tried to examine the depths of the law. It was a classic formula. They let the characters evolve, for the most part, by the way they worked each case rather than forcing personal storylines into each one (and yes, I know Mike Logan had every imaginable childhood horror inflicted upon him at one time or another).
This episode, at least, it felt like they were leaning too much into current events (often a problem with the later seasons of v1.0; this one was a not-great riff on the Bill Cosby case) and the cops were sitting there finding every pertinent clue by hacking into crystal clear 4K security cameras that only exist in TV shows. It was a little too much NCIS/FBI/CSI for my liking, whereas the best L&O episodes have always had the cops doing actual legwork. And then the new prosecutors just weren't that engaging to me.
On top of it all, it had the same issue most new series have of the actors not having their timing and their character beats down yet. The new cop and prosecutor, Cosgrove and Price, felt like caricatures from either end of the political spectrum.
I'm hoping it will get better. If we learned anything from the original run it's that they just need to find the right cast that clicks with each other. One great cop and one great prosecutor can carry the show while the rest of the cast rotates around them. But right now the chemistry just isn't there. It didn't feel like Law & Order, it felt like any number of other forgettable procedurals that have always lived in its shadow.

 

Agreed with @Batman , it may take a few episodes for the new characters to grow into the roles. I can see tensions growing between Bernard and his new partner, though. Latter seems to be a loose cannon.