Tv.com News

Hello again, good people. Welcome back to TV.com's Network Power Rankings, or as you may refer to them at home, "the most influential power rankings on the internet." If you're new to the proceedings or just need a refresher on my unbelievably complex theorem, here's how they work: Using a complicated methodology including ratings (Nielsen overnights, DVR numbers), business matters (pilot orders, scheduling, personnel decisions), buzz (social media, "viral" moments, other goodwill), and quality (good shows, episodes), I evaluate the performance of an ever-changing variety of networks based on the past two weeks. Also: Because there've been a number of comments about it over the last few entries, let me emphasize that a network only gets "credit" for a show if it airs during the period I'm analyzing  So if you think AMC deserves drops for Breaking Bad I agree with you, but you won't see me saying so here until the show actually returns to the air. 

And now let's get to it. Last time, History took the top spot thanks to big ratings (and decent buzz) for The Bible and Vikings, with AMC and ABC right behind. Unsurprisingly, there's been some movement over the past few weeks.

Although I consider a number of different elements when compiling the power rankings, it's hard for me to deny the allure of great shows. And a handful of great shows have bumped FX to the top of the rankings for the very first time. The Americans is the best new show to hit the air since Homeland, with its character depth and multitudinous and complex performances from Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys. Like so many great dramas, The Americans produces great individual episodes, but it's the culmination of the season's stories that's impressed me the most so far. The arcs are thrilling and emotional and still believable, despite the show's high-concept premise. If you're not watching the show, please start. It's already renewed for Season 2, so don't worry about cancellation. And despite some middling ratings, the show is doing well on social media platforms like GetGlue.

But it's not just The Americans. FX is bringing the heat with another quality season of Justified—no matter your feelings on how long it took to get to the Drew Thompson reveal, Timothy Olyphant and Walton Goggins have been wonderful  as usual this year—in addition to the ever-funny Archer and freshman comedy Legit, a show that I haven't seen too much of but many critics and folks on Twitter seem to enjoy. Those core four shows are impressive.

FX is garnering some buzz as well. The news that Academy Award winner Ang Lee will direct The Tyrant, a pilot from Homeland's Howard Gordon and Six Feet Under's Craig Wright, immediately rocketed that pilot to the top of my most-anticipated list. Finally, the Kathy Bates casting, witch premise, and New Orleans setting of American Horror Story's third season has me a little giddy for another wild ride. Ryan Murphy, I cannot quit you.

We can usually expect CBS (which, in the name of full disclosure, owns the parent company of TV.com) to continue to garner high nightly ratings, and over the last two weeks, the Eyeball has done just that. The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, and NCIS continue to dominate, and coverage of men's basketball conference tournaments and the selection show gave the network a nice weekend jolt (and expect even bigger things for CBS now that the tournament has actually begun).

However, CBS is making lots of noise with some impressive and interesting casting choices for pilots it has in the works, and that's what boosted it up a few spots this time. Rainn Wilson just joined Hart Hanson's adaptation of Backstrom in what could be a type-breaking role; Ben McKenzie and Mandy Moore are aboard The Advocates, from Bruno Heller and David Nutter (which is almost guaranteed to get picked up, so we'll see what happens to Southland; Kristin Davis will star in Bad Teacher; Amber Tamblyn and Skeet Ulrich will star in Anatomy of Violence, from the Homeland team (yeah, they're busy); and Stephen Fry is part of Greg Garcia's comedy pilot for the network. CBS is bringing us the stars!

The network is also buzzing because it released a smartphone/tablet app and sold The Good Wife in a somewhat groundbreaking syndication deal.

Zombies. Very, very popular zombies. The Walking Dead continues to thrive in the ratings and in various social media spaces, and the best news of all is that the last few episodes have been pretty darn good. Somehow, amid all the showrunner drama, it feels like the show can improve. Pretty wild.

AMC also cut a deal with Netflix to air The Killing just three months after it ends on the network and released a snazzy Mad Men poster, sending the buzz for the upcoming sixth season into overdrive.

Sure, the ratings forThe Bible and Vikings went down in their respective second and third weeks, but they didn't plummet. The Bible is a big-time success as a miniseries (will History and Mark Burnett do a sequel then?), and Vikings proves that History can guide a long-form scripted product to life. Armed with those two shows plus Pawn Stars, American Pickers, and Swamp People, History, had six of the top 12 cable shows two weeks ago (and that includes WWE's Raw counting as thee separate programs, so it was really six of the top nine). That's big business for a niche cable network.

Plus, we can't ignore the "controversy" over whether or not The Bible producers purposely hired an actor who looked like President Obama to play Satan. That seems really, really dumb to me, but people are talking about it.

I don't want to keep beating the same dead horse with ABC, so I'll keep it brief: The network has a slew of solid shows that generally perform well in the ratings and on social media. The best news is that the network's best drama, Nashville, (yeah, I said it) made ratings strides with the most recent DVR viewership figures. That nicely corresponds with the show's uptick in quality over the last few episodes. Red Widow hasn't lit the world on fire in its competitive Sunday-night timeslot but unlike 666 Park Avenue, it's a halfway decent show. Probably not decent enough to convince ABC to bring it back next year, but it's a watchable hour that fits pretty well with Revenge (which is back killin' it) and Once Upon a Time (which I've given up on but people seem to really like lately).

ABC also gets points for Good Morning America's first February sweeps victory in nearly two decades and some compelling casting choices (Kelly Preston in a comedy, Christian Slater in Kyle Killen's drama pilot).

Where my Fox haters at? The network rises a few spots on the back of a couple of interesting episodes of The Following and the solid ratings of the returning Hell's Kitchen. Like ABC, the story is kind of the same with Fox as it was last time we did this: American Idol is doing stuff and The Following and Glee are performing fine in their respective timeslots and on social media. New Girl and The Mindy Project haven't been on much over the past few weeks, but both shows saw nice growth in the most recent DVR viewership report and did fine last week in their return.

Moreover, Fox's pilots are coming together with some really engaging casting choices: Christopher Meloni in Justin Halpern's sitcom (probably my favorite casting move of the whole pilot season so far) and Karl Urban and Minka Kelly in a futuristic cop drama from J.H. Wyman and J.J. Abrams.

Can a network remain in the rankings because of a ton of teasers and trailers for upcoming series? Well, when we're talking about Game of Thrones and a Louis C.K. stand-up special, the answer is absolutely yes. Also, disregarding the sometimes-suffocating internet discussion about it, Girls just finished up a pretty darn good second season, so that's cool. But seriously, dragons!

Syfy takes the "generally successful broad cable network" spot from USA this time around, with more original shows on at the moment and a few buzzy moves. Continuum just wrapped its first season here in the U.S., and although the show wasn't an out-of-the-box hit for the network, it did just fine (especially for something Syfy didn't have to pay as much for). Being Human continues to roll on with its typical but dedicated audience of about two million viewers, and the show thrives in social media spaces like GetGlue. Throw in successful runs of Face Off (which was just renewed for a fifth season) and Robot Combat League (which is just awesome), and Syfy has a nice little stable of programs on the air at the moment, with the much-hyped Defiance and more Warehouse 13 on the way very quickly.

Plus, Ron D. Moore's Helix received a straight-to-series order of 13 episodes. Battlestar Galactica fans rejoice.

Hear me out. Yes, NBC is still struggling in the ratings. It's pretty bleak over there. The network has just been trying to hold on until this week, with both The Voice and Revolution returning, and while those shows will provide some more temporary relief, their probable success only reinforces how fractured and troubled NBC's schedule is. However, at least the network is responding to its mistakes by shipping Smash to Saturdays and giving Go On a chance on Thursdays after The Office. Acknowledging mistakes way after the fact isn't as good as just not making them in the first place, but it does help a little.

Plus, NBC is really killing it in the buzz department, both intentionally and unintentionally. Have you seen the teasers for Hannibal? How, uh, good does that look? And how surprised are you by that? The hype for Revolution's return is also at its peak right now.

Meanwhile, Justin Timberlake almost single-handedly brought the buzz to NBC late night, first with a much-discussed fifth hosting gig on SNL and then with a week-long stint at Late Night with Jimmy Fallon that birthed another "History of Rap" medley. And that's not all: Somehow, NBC head honcho Robert Greenblatt is so sensitive that he doesn't take kindly to Jay Leno's jokes about the network's flatlining ratings. Read that again. Someone is offended by Jay Leno's jokes—and not because they're bad. That kerfuffle, on top of whatever the heck is still going on at The Today Show, means that all sorts of people are talking about NBC. Who cares if it's not for "good" stuff?

This is another somewhat odd choice, mostly because so much of what airs on ESPN is terrible. However, the controversial First Take segment between Seattle Seahawks player Richard Sherman and ESPN goon Skip Bayless set the internet afire, so much so that Bill Simmons, one of the more popular faces of ESPN, got suspended from Twitter because he spoke out against his overlords. So of course, that only created more headlines and ESPN got exactly what it wanted. (Kind of like what I'm doing for the network right now, shoot.)

Yet, despite ESPN's general suckiness, there's one thing that the network knows how to do: air live sports. The last few weeks have been pretty exceptional in that department, with the focus on college basketball's conference tournaments.

And finally, Sunday's Survive and Advance, the latest in the 30 for 30 documentary series, was a rock-solid look back at the epic underdog run by NC State's men's basketball team in 1983.

Two networks share the "special acknowledgements" spot this time, almost solely because of their respective hyper-violent original series. Both Spartacus and Banshee are quite popular around these parts, and based on the critical response and buzz, both shows are having/had strong seasons as well. Though we're nearing the end of the line for Spartacus and Banshee is gone until January 2014, I thought they both deserved a little props for showing that there's good work being done all over pay cable, not just on HBO and Showtime.

There you have it, folks. Which network tops your list based on what they've been up to over the past two weeks?

View the original article here

Boardwalk Empire S03E03: "Bone for Tuna"

Everyone wants respect and everyone wants power. Where we run into trouble is when we can't truly handle the actions we take to gain respect or power. Some can handle it, many can't.

Nucky Thompson is in that latter category. Although he constantly likes to present himself as all-powerful and worth the respect of his peers, it's clear that Nucky's choices haunt him... quite literally, in fact. Turns out, becoming more than half a gangster does some psychological damage, particularly when it calls for murdering a protégé almost son-like figure. After spending all of last week's episode more or less hiding in New York City, Nucky's emotional issues worsened in this week's "Bone for Tuna," leaving him dead-tired, having visions, and feeling terribly troubled by his thoughts, most of which were focused on one Jimmy Darmody.

The whole point of Jimmy's "half a gangster" speech was to reinforce that Nucky isn't really cut out for this life. He's great at lathering people up and at convincing them to do what he wants, but when it comes to actually making tough choices—particularly those with violent consequences—he wilts a little, and really, never even seems like he wants to explore them. Nucky is a politician. It just so happens that in this time period, with the people surrounding him, it takes more than kissing babies and giving stump speeches to fit in. No matter how we feel about the way in which Boardwalk Empire built to Nucky killing Jimmy, I think we can agree that the show pulled the trigger there (literally) so that Nucky was forced to face the war within himself. He wants more power and respect, but can he stomach what it takes to obtain them?

Now that we've seen an all-powerful Nucky, I think the answer to that question is categorically no. It's been over a year since Jimmy's death and it's still bothering Nucky on a deep level. Tonight he had a creepy nightmare where he couldn't reach Billie on the phone, and suddenly came across a young boy who was quickly revealed to have a bullet in his head—conveniently placed in the exact spot where Nucky shot Jimmy. And when he woke up, things didn't get any better for Nucky: He couldn't get a hold of Billie in real life and started to see the young boy all over the place before falling full-bore into a memory of adult Jimmy.

Like many dream sequences that attempt to reflect a character's psychological state, Nucky's was not subtle. It was clear from the very beginning that the boy represented Jimmy, considering that Nucky helped him out from a very young age. It didn't help that in the beginning of the episode, Nucky saw the boy and was then suddenly holding a smoking gun. And other parts of "Bone for Tuna" went even further, boldly underscoring what Nucky has done and how he is (or rather, isn't) handling it. Gyp invited Nucky to accompany him to Gillian's place but Nucky declined, noting that he didn't really know Gillian that well (she basically did the same thing when Gyp later pressed her about Nuck).

But even though the episode didn't do much finessing with its execution, I'm frankly just happy that Boardwalk Empire realized that it was important to explore Nucky's psychological state in the aftermath of Jimmy's death. The story jumped ahead quite a bit between seasons, and based on the first few episodes, it seemed like, A) Nucky was okay, and B) the narrative simply wasn't going in that direction. In that regard, I'm satisfied that the show paid respect to the Nucky-Jimmy relationship by having the former walk around in a daze like a crazy person.

Perhaps more interesting were Nucky's continuous efforts to reach Billie—once he finally did, he (in his dream but really in "real life" as well) still felt alone. With the way that Nucky was desperately hoping to talk to Billie, you would think that he's deeply in love with her, but I don't think that's actually true. Instead, it seems like Nucky saw Jimmy as his family in a lot of ways. Sure, he has all these people around him and there's always a woman involved. But with Jimmy gone and his relationship with Margaret basically non-existent, Nucky doesn't have anyone. So the small connection he has with Billie is getting overblown; his attachment to her is part of the coping process. It's telling that when he had a bit of an episode in the church, Nucky grabbed Margaret's hand. He's grasping for any connection he can find because his one stand-by is gone.

Nucky's weakness were on display in his business dealings, too. He threw his weight around with Gyp in the premiere but after just one moderate bout of posturing from the hot-headed Italian, Nuck folded somewhat, giving Gyp a month's worth of product and treating him to a night in Atlantic City. Although Gyp cooled down temporarily (more on that in a moment), you have to imagine that if the roles were reversed, Gyp might step on Nucky's throat. Nucky would rather convince people to keep liking him. It's eventually going to come back to haunt him.

Though Nucky isn't particularly good at standing behind his tough decisions in hopes of gaining respect, other characters seemed to have better success in "Bone for Tuna."

Most notable was Richard taking issue with Mickey, who bragged to his underlings that he (and not Richard) killed Manny, simply as a way to motivate his crew with fear. Richard kidnapped Mickey, took him to Nucky, and flat-out admitted that he killed Manny as payback for Angela's death, which I thought was a small but powerful moment. Richard isn't afraid to take credit for what he's done, and most surprisingly, he's not afraid to let Nucky keep on living even though he's very aware of what happened to Jimmy. I think that's because, while Richard can handle the blood on his hands, he knows that Nucky can't—and it's better torture to let Mr. Thompson freak out on his own. Mission accomplished.

Gyp is quickly becoming the show's most complicated and intriguing character. In the Season 3 premiere, he was played for a fool. Last week, he stepped up and surprisingly outsmarted Nucky and Rothstein's operation. And tonight, he started the episode on the defensive, lets cooler heads prevail, and actually admitted his temper problems, only to let it all get the best of him again when Owen incorrectly translated Nucky's "buona fortuna" salutation and it comes out as, you guessed it, "bone for tuna." With that seemingly innocent mishap (though one might argue that Nucky was purposefully trying to screw with Gyp, I can't imagine he was in the right headspace to concoct such a kiss-off), Gyp reverted back into the guy that we saw in the premiere, one who has no problem beating a friendly stranger with a tire iron.

Respect is of utmost importance to Gyp, but the massive chip on his shoulder never allows him to be satisfied. Nucky, in part of his sleepless daze, kept telling Gyp that his business choices are nothing personal, to which Gyp eventually noted, "Nothing personal? What the fuck is life if it isn't personal?" I actually really like that line because so many characters in shows like this put "it's just business" out there (people in real life do it too) as if it rectifies the pain of rejection. Gyp is right. Being snubbed sucks. What's so great about Gyp is that he is basically the opposite of the reserved but internally demented Nucky: He wears his emotions on his sleeve, and that sleeve can tear at any second. So by the end of the episode, Gyp was right back where he began: He's staying in Tabor Heights and he isn't going to take this (perceived) bout of disrespect. And because he is a full gangster, he illustrated that choice by lighting Tabor Heights' sheriff on fire. Realness. But the big point is that Gyp is okay with his choices. He doesn't seem bothered by them at all, which makes him very dangerous to Nuck.

Elsewhere, Margaret and Van Alden worked to obtain respect in their own rights. Margaret used Nucky's honoring ceremony at the church (he was basically knighted) to put the bishop and the confrontational doctor from the hospital together so that she could lie by suggesting that the woman's pre-natal care clinic was actually the doctor's plan. With some slight reservations (don't want to be too progressive!), the bishop gave the bewildered doctor and Margaret his blessing, meaning Margaret got exactly what she wanted, how she wanted, and with the okay of one of the most powerful men in the city. She might hate Nucky for all the things he's done, but there's no question that she's learned how to get what she wants—and frankly, she might be even better at it than he is.

For Van Alden, the journey to respect was a little tougher. His co-workers tried to bring him into the inner circle with some mostly harmless hazing—the ink-squirting pen, always a laugh riot—but wouldn't you believe it, Van Alden didn't find it very funny (mostly because he only has one shirt). Surprisingly, he warmed up a little and decided to join them at a speakeasy, only to have the place busted up by his former co-workers at the Treasury. Going to place you hate just to have drinks spilled on you right before the fuzz breaks up all the "fun" is not a good night. Like so many of Boardwalk Empire's stories, it's tough to see where this one is going, but watching Michael Shannon's deadpan and overly serious reaction to the smallest of transgressions is one of the most enjoyable, weirdest comedic stories on television right now.

Respect is a hard thing to come by in this world. But perhaps even harder still is being able to handle what you've done to get respect. As it stands now, Nucky can't handle much of anything.

– Does anyone know if that Jimmy flashback was re-used footage from the previous seasons? I can't recall and it made me wonder whether Michael Pitt actually returned for that quick bit or not. Surely not, right?

– Lucky and Meyer's heroin operation is definitely my least favorite part of the show. Why is it relevant again?

You'll note that Nucky is nowhere to be found. Dude's in a slump. Here we go:

1. Gyp (previous rank: 1): Stood his ground in Tabor Heights and lit a dude on fire. Not a bad week.

2. Margaret (previous rank: 3): Making a high-profile doctor look like a fool while also getting a new wing of the hospital opened is worth a move up the rankings.

3. Jimmy's Ghost (previous rank: N/A): He might be dead, but he's surely having a big impact on those he left. Jimmy's Ghost might be Nucky's biggest foil at this point.

4. Richard (previous rank: N/A): Noble, strong and honest, three great qualities—even if they don't necessarily equate with "gangster."

5. Gillian (previous rank: N/A): Her manipulation of Gyp is either going to pay great dividends or blow up in a lot of people's faces... so, you know, like all her plans.

Boardwalk Empire "Bone for Tuna" Photos

View the original article here

Doctor Who S02E04: "The Power of Three"

This week's episode marked a return to form that I hadn't seen in a while—the unlikely enemy. I simply adore it when really random things are repurposed as mysterious menaces on Doctor Who, and I especially love it when those enemies are global. However, the "A" story was hardly the point of the episode.

We opened on the Ponds doing some of the less-than-glamorous chores that result from time travel, like dumping out very expired milk and lamenting their lack of detergent. It'd been ten years (for them, not the world), and the Ponds were beginning to realize that they can't keep traveling with the Doctor forever. It's not sustainable.

I feel like there are definite parallels between time travel and drug addiction in Doctor Who—like a drug, time travel is fun, it feels naughty, it opens your mind to new and bizarre things, but it wears on your body and your psyche. Regular life doesn't seem to hold a candle to drug-/time travel-enhanced life, and certainly can't fit into your regular schedule, so you end up neglecting regular life while you chase the dragon. After a while, even if you're still getting something out of your addiction, you're just exhausted by the whole thing. (Note: Drugs are bad.) You cannot invite getting high/the Doctor to your quiet night at home!

But there was one time, Amy informed us, where the Ponds did just that. One morning, small black boxes just showed up all over the world, randomly scattered everywhere, doing nothing. Everyone started freaking out about them, but they just sat there. The Doctor appeared, of course, bristling with curiosity.

The authorities were called in, in the form of our old friends UNIT (now the UNified Intelligence Taskforce, since the real-life UN decided it didn't love the fictional association), and no matter what they did, they could not figure out what was going on with the cubes. The world went from being freaked out to feeling comfortable very quickly, as the cubes became a common presence in people's homes and in social media.

There was a nice scene with the Doctor, who was sticking around to observe, losing his mind with boredom after four days (more parallels to addiction!) and then deciding to leave. He belittled Rory's protests that he couldn't leave his "little job," causing Rory to put him in his place. "What you do isn't all there is!" Rory shouted, and the Doctor was taken aback. The Ponds were setting down roots, which made it hard to live a double life.

Other than an isolated incident with two cube-related, hose-mouthed humanoids kidnapping a guy, months and months went by and the cubes were just there, assimilated into people's lives. After the Doctor took the Ponds on an anniversary trip that ended up lasting seven weeks, Rory's dad Brian started asking questions—questions about what had happened to his other companions.

"Some left me, some got left behind, and some—not many, but some—died. But not them, Brian. Never them."

It seems to me that the only way for the Doctor to really ensure the Ponds' safety is if he already knows their fate, an idea that I'm being convinced of more and more each episode.

The Doctor moved in and, like the cubes, was integrated into the Ponds' lives a bit. One year and one day after they arrived, the cubes woke up. The Doctor finally confronted Amy about her wanting to stop traveling with him. She couldn't continue leading both lives forever, she said, and the traveling was starting to feel like running away.

The Doctor responded by saying the most Doctor-like thing he's ever said, which is that the reason he travels is so that he may see everything. He knows that everything is fleeting—he knows better than anyone—and he just wants to see things before they flare and fade forever. This includes the Ponds.

Meanwhile the cubes had started a countdown, and when they opened, millions of humans dropped dead from heart attacks. The creatures behind the attacks were the Shakri, who the Doctor thought were just the Keyser Soze of Gallifrey—a spook story. The Shakri wanted to rid the universe of humanity before it started expanding in service of the Tali; essentially, they wanted Judgment Day. The Tali would be met, he said...

And here's where the episode took a downturn for me.

A beautiful series of conversations had been set up between Amy and the Doctor that'd I'd like to call their "pre-break-up"; there was also a weird invasion that ended up being deadly, and a very interesting reason for it to occur. But everything managed to resolve itself in about three minutes. The Doctor saved humankind with a mass defibrillation, gained an appreciation of the Ponds' everyday lives, and once things were all tidied up, was ready to drop them off at home... until Rory's dad intervened.

It's not the time travel they'll have trouble giving up, Brian said, it's the Doctor. He encouraged the Ponds to go travel; "life will still be here when you get back." And like that, the Ponds seemed to decide that they don't have to choose. They were a team again—"The Power of Three"—which made it seem to me that instead of a bittersweet but understandable goodbye, we are gearing up for something traumatic and heartbreaking.

This was my favorite episode of the season up until the end, which seemed a bit rushed and tacked-on, almost as a reassurance to us that the Ponds will not go quietly into the night. Overall, I still enjoyed it quite a bit, but for as well as this show handles complex relationships, it's amazing to me how simply the conflicts in this episode were resolved.

We'll find out next week how things with the Ponds wrap up, but you know, there are only a few ways to kick addiction: removing the substance from your life, years and years of meetings and therapy, or death. I wonder which path the Ponds will follow?

– Amy writes about travel for magazines? Now lookie here, there's a career for her that isn't Kiss-gram or modeling! Good for you, Amy!

– I loved the mention that the cubes, within three hours, had a thousand separate Twitter accounts. More proof that when the apocalypse occurs, we'll all be Instagramming it.

– As long as Matt Smith is the Doctor, there will always be a scene in which he does amazing things with a soccer ball.

– That The Apprentice clip using the cubes? Hilarious. The cubes in general were brilliant, because there is always something slightly menacing about a blank slate where it's not supposed to be.

– Nice call-out to both Yorkshire Pudding and Smith's first appearance as the Doctor, as the threesome ate fish fingers and custard.

– Very nice reference to Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart of UNIT, when we learned that Kate Stewart is his daughter. The Brigadier was a friend to several incarnations of the Doctor, so of course his daughter would carry the torch.

– "You were the first—the first face this face saw. You are seared onto my hearts."

– I love that Rory's dad Brian has taken on the necessary, wide-eyed and excited attitude about time travel that we expect of our companions. Sure, the Ponds are up for adventure and say things like "I'm gonna miss this!" but it's Brian who has a real sense of wonder about all of space and time. It's a new twist, and I like it.

View the original article here