Eh.

I watched Big Shots last night. Eh.

It's being billed as "Desperate Housewives for men." I don't know any men that will appeal to. And I don't like Desperate Housewives, either so it doesn't really appeal to me. I don't see this show developing much of an audience.

I love Michael Vartan and I think he's playing beneath his capacity here. He was kind of miscast because he's supposed to be the one truly nice guy in this group of sinful men, but he just comes across as pathetic. The other guys just seemed like caricatures. And there was a tranny who Dylan McDermott supposedly thought was a woman, but not only was she not pretty like he kept claiming, but there is no way on earth any normal human being with a modicum of intelligence would not know that was a man. I won't be putting this one on my schedule.

Then I watched Cane. Eh.

Shows on CBS have this CBS imprint on them. It's like they have an over-polished look, a exposition-heavy, melodramatic essence that's kind of unmistakable. This show has that same feel. It's about a Cuban American family that runs a sugar cane farm and manufactures a successful line of rum. I know they're Cuban, because half the episode felt like a Discovery Channel special on Cuban culture. Kudos to CBS for some ethnic diversity in their programming, but it just felt so forced, and maybe that's because the exposition was too obvious.

The cast is a good one. Jimmy Smitts, Hector Elizondo, Nestor Carbonell, and the fabulous Polly Walker who played Attia, the most lovable bitch to grace the small screen on Rome.

But it's hard for all that talent to get around the soap opera nature of this thing.

The pilot was written by Cynthia Cidre, and that's certainly a Spanish last name, but I get the feeling CBS execs nixed some of the Spanglish out of fear that Americans wouldn't understand it. All of the Spanish is either full sentences in subtitles or simple things we all know like "por favor". That ain't Spanglish. Then again I suppose most people probably do have trouble following true Spanglish if they're not used to it.

If you were really into Dallas, this is kind of the same thing but with people who salsa dance. I don't dig the melodrama so I won't be adding this to my schedule.

I don't want to watch Life yet because I'm afraid it will also be mediocre and I just love Damian Lewis and want his show to be awesome. But I'll have to get to it eventually.