Kate Walsh is very, very good. Bad Judge, sadly, isn't. But it could have been. Originally conceived by Will Ferrell's famed sidekick Adam McCay (and executive produced by Ferrell), Bad Judge was no doubt originally designed to follow in the footsteps of Bad Teacher and Bad Santa. It likely would have been very good at that, with Walsh in the lead supported by Ryan Hansen (Veronica Mars, Party Down), an actor who's so good with his face that he can get a laugh just by entering a room or raising an eyebrow to the point where you wonder if that might be his gimmick… but then he's just as good when it's his turn to talk, and you realize the guy's just fundamentally funny. That makes him a perfect compliment to Walsh, who sports a similar skill set, although in contrast to Hansen's laid-back hilarity she's at her comic best when pushed into neurotic frenzy.
Alas, the network panicked and instead of a lovably deplorable anti-hero, we have a nurturing, largely generic leading lady. Walsh is so good she saves a lot of it, but the show has an identity crisis even she can't solve, as half the episode was re-shot to make her into this new, loving character and half of it was left over from her days as a me-first hedonist. The show runner responsible for the pilot has already been fired, and replaced, so there will soon be yet a third interpretation on the table. Hopefully it will be one that tips the show in one direction or the other, as the leads are strong enough to make it work as either… but it can't survive as both.
NvTV 6: Black-Ish "The Talk" and #FreeFishburne
There may be hope for Black-Ish yet. Don't get me wrong, this is still a comedy that's not especially funny, but "The Talk" was a step in the right direction. While the first episode was burdened with beating us over the head with the series' central premise of Andre's gentrification paranoia, the second didn't much touch on anything racial, instead focusing on the relationships between the parents and their children. This was a mixed bag, on account of most of the child actors being terrible (though the eldest daughter is growing on me), but it gave Tracee Ellis Ross a lot more to do than she had last week, and it let Anthony Anderson play more than one note.
Read moreNvTV 5: "Manhattan Love Story" and How Much Of A Bad Idea Becoming a Reviewer Was
Well… that was unpleasant.
Did you laugh? I didn't laugh. I frowned a lot. Maybe I kinda smiled twice, but I wouldn't swear to it. In fact, now that I'm thinking about it, I'd bet against it.
NvTV 4: Black-Ish "Pilot": Child Actors Are Still Terrible, News At 11
I had such high hopes for Black-Ish. I liked both the actors I knew in advance, I liked the premise, and I like the Scrubs/Famliy Guy cutaway-style gags in the trailer.
Pilots are always the odd duck, so maybe Black-Ish will win me over next week. This week, though, it's yet another over-narrated (3 for 3 so far!) pilot that doesn't quite know what it is yet. Worse, it forgot to be funny.
NvTV 3: A to Z "Pilot" and Whether or Not Funny Is Enough
Two minutes in, I already hated this show.
Over-narrated, unfunny, generally the worst. Two minutes, and the show was already a very bad How I Met Your Mother ripoff, right down to the sitcom royalty off-screen narrator (Katey Sagal, doing the best she can) and the fixed end point in the future (Andrew and Zelda will date for exactly 8 months, 3 weeks, 5 days, 1 hour). Hell, it even stars the Mother. I was wondering how I was going to get through it.
But then something strange happened. It made me laugh.