Author: Shmee

As summer TV premier week continues, I got a chance to watch AMC’s new show Turn.  It is about George Washington’s spy ring in New York during the Revolutionary War.  AMC needs something to replace Mad Men for its summer line up when Mad Men goes off the air after this season, and I am not sure Turn is it, but it definitely is interesting.

The story starts off with some American rebels getting slaughtered by the British, and just one soldier Ben Tallmadge (Seth Numrich) making it out alive.  He blames the defeat on British spies, and he is trying to get his commanding officer to allow him to start a spy ring of his own.  Meanwhile a young farmer Abraham Woodhull (Jamie Bell) has fallen on hard times, and the British are not making it any easier.  Will they join up and gather intelligence on the British?  It would kind of be a crappy show if they didn’t.

This episode felt a little long, and I know that is because a lot of it was setup, but the extra thirty minutes of run time made it drag in places.  When the story was moving forward however, it was very interesting, and I do want to see what happens next.  If they can pick up the pace a little bit, AMC will have a good and very unique show in its hands.

The cast led by Jamie Bell and Kevin McNally is quite good.  If this show fails it will not be due to a lack of acting talent, and it looks like the actors are enjoying working in this setting.

Since I can’t think of one other period spy drama on TV right now (or ever), I think AMC has a real shot at a hit with Turn.  They have earned my attention for at least a few more episodes, and that is all a TV pilot can hope for.

I think Mike Judge has finally made the sequel to Office Space.  It is called Silicon Valley on HBO.  The show follows a group of young programmers that want to be the next Mark Zuckerberg in the titular Silicon Valley.

The main character Richard Hendrix (Thomas Middleditch) has created an awful music license checking website, but the backend lossless compression software, and an algorithm that can quickly search inside those compressed files, might be worth a fortune.  Now it is up to him and his programmer buddies to try and become the next group of billionaires.

This show gets Silicon Valley so right, and it understands it so well that almost all of its jokes land.  Plus it has Mike Judge doing office humor again, and that is always worth watching.  I guess Judge’s first job was as a software programmer, and it shows.  I can’t wait to see how he lampoons it all next week.

The group of actors they got together are all very believable nerds, and they play their roles so convincingly it seems like they must have been tech company interns at some point.  Shows end up all being about the talent of their cast, and I think Silicon Valley has a great one.  I mean it has Kumail Nanjiani in it, and I can’t even look at him without laughing.

Silicon Valley is off to a great start.  It was thirty minutes of non-stop laughs, especially if you follow tech news at all.  Since it is on right after Game of Thrones, there is almost no chance I will miss it.  If you do not have HBO you can watch the first episode for free on YouTube.com, so there is no reason not to give it a shot.

It seems like it has been off the air for forever, but Game of Thrones is back.  Season four kicked off predictably by just showing us where most of the main characters are.  Nothing too exciting happens, but it was nice to see everyone again.  I think the only characters left out of this show were Bran, Hodor and crew, but I am sure we will see much more of them in the episodes to come.

The basic feeling I got from this episode, is that if you have liked what Game of Thrones has offered so far, than you will get more of the same.  I think for most viewers that is quite alright.

The biggest downer of the night was that HBO Go crashed again on probably the biggest premier in the channel’s history.  Considering this happens a lot, I think that HBO is going to have to invest more in to their cloud infrastructure.  Still with The Walking Dead off the air, I am glad that Game of Thrones is back.

I usually don’t review individual TV episodes, but when the people that make Community decided to make a G.I. Joe episode, what else could I do?  Episodes like this are why I am so happy to have the creator Dan Harmon back.  Community is a weird show, and it was meant to be weird.

The episode starts off like all good G.I Joe episodes do, with a random Cobra attack on a known location.  In this case Cobra has decided to attack the Taj Mahal.  Jeff, known as Wing Man in this episode, ends the attack by outright killing Destro.  The Joes who have never killed anyone before, have no idea what to do.  This causes all sorts of fallout in the G.I Joe universe.

The thing I love about this episode is how well it lampoons not only G.I. Joe, and lets be honest it is an easy target, but Community itself for even doing a G.I Joe episode.  The whole thing is complete and utter nonsense, but it is amazing.  This is the sort of thing that they never would have tried during the “gas leak year“, but this season, why the heck not?

It is also episodes like this that exemplify why this show has never found a large audience.  Why on earth would you make fun of something, meanwhile slavishly recreating it.  It is because Community understands what it means to be a geek, and not just make fun of geeks.  The love of something that others view as ridiculous, but you love it because it ignites your creativity.

This show has given us several classic episodes, and I think this will be one of them.  This show makes me morn the loss of last season even more.  Because if they had stayed with this writing group, we could have had more episodes like this.  Instead of episodes that were needlessly trying to dig deeper in to the lives of the main cast, and about how much they need each other.  You know, non-weird topics that work better on other shows.