The police procedural with a gimmick, i.e.
Bones or
Castle or
The Mentalist, follows the basic idea of solving murders but with something else to catch your attention. This particular one,
Unforgettable, has the idea of a cop who remembers everything about her life --
everything. She has hyperthymesia, or the perfect personal memory. So she thinks back through a scene and then, with us in tow, walks through the scene again paying attention to details that were not prominent the first time. Poppy (Petal ! Hee!) Montgomery is the Australian actor with decent charisma if we are not distracted by her botox upper-lip and the occasional slip-through of her australian accent. But for the show to not become (wait for it...) forgettable, she will have to step up her likeableness. I will give it a few more to see if it develops some character beyond the fuzzy walk-throughs of her memory.
As Marmy tweeted, the first 30 seconds of
Raising Hope was more of a laugh than the entire half-hour of
The New Girl. And that was even ignoring her normal dislike for Zooey Deschanel. I like shows about quirky people but i do
not like shows about completely uncomfortable people and situations. Zooey is the dumped Jess who has to find an apartment quickly so she can get over her ex via a week of watching
Dirty Dancing. So she checks out the Craigslist (we're CURRENT!) ad from The Nice Guy, the Douche and The Black Guy. She is awkward, emotionally unstable and seemingly completely neurotic but she knows models so the guys let her stay. In any other world, this whole bunch would be overweight, badly dressed nerds considering their inability to interact socially with anyone let alone each other but in this comedy world, they are the main characters with money, i.e. quirky. I knew it wasn't my kind of comedy immediately but crawled my way through it thinking it
might have some charisma near the end, which was then blown out of the water with an ear-splitting song. Yes, t'was the point of the scene but I didn't have to like it, did i? Buh-leted.
But then we have a comedy that is more my style, if a little formulaic and standardly formatted.
2 Broke Girls is a situational comedy set in a diner in Brooklyn where Kat Denning's hard working character is set up to work & live with a down-n-out socialite. I will admit I have a thing for Kat so I even forgave her
Thor but I did find this little sitcom charming and it even elicited a few overly loud guffaws from me. It has a gimmick where the girls are going to try and save enough to start up a cupcake shop. Amusing how so-5-years-ago trends like cupcakes still make it into scripts. And somewhat novel how they have made the unlikable fish out of water actually somewhat likable. Watch again!
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