The good and the blowey

I admit, I thought I was going to like Jericho (CBS Wednesdays at 8) before I started watching it. I like the permise, nice and dark. A nuclear attack on the US leaves a small Kansas town isolated from the rest of the world. The plan is to never leave the town over the course of the series. It's got a great cast - Skeet Ulrich who I still think of as having Johnny Depp's face after David Spade pointed that out on SNL that one time, Beth Grant, Gerald McRaney, Ashley Scott.

I was engaged from minute one. These people all have individual problems on top of the big disaster they've got to learn to face together. There's a little adventure, a possiblity of romance, a giant mystery of just what the hell happened, and a good deal of general unrest and political underhandedness to wade through. The bad things about it were the fact that there's only one black resident and one Hispanic resident in the entire town, and the melodramatic rallying speech the mayor gave at the end of the pilot. I kept expecting Bill Pullman to show up. But overall I liked it, just as I thought I would. It's part of my new DVR lineup.



Shark (CBS Thursdays at 10), on the other hand, is not worth watching. It was the definition of mediocre. It's basicaly an hour-long James Woods showcase. His character is the ultimate lawyer stereotype until the client he got out of trouble murdered his wife. Then he continued to be the lawyer stereotype, but now he works for the prosecution. The only evidence to suggest the event actually effected him came in the form of sweatpants he wore around the house to seem like he was all broken up. He doesn't seem to wrestle with anything and his team is completely devoid of personality because he's sucking up all the acting energy in the room.

I was so bored I counted how many cliches I heard in one minute-long stretch of dialogue. Eight. This show blows.