Digital Spy presents Remote Patrol - the weekly column from New York-based TV critic Bruce Fretts, taking a look at what's hot right now in US television.
Fretts is a veteran of both Entertainment Weekly and TV Guide Magazine, where he penned the wildly popular 'Cheers & Jeers' column for ten years.
Does HBO need to make a Comeback?
"It's official - they've run out of ideas, so it's time for my comeback," says Valerie Cherish (Lisa Kudrow) in the seriously belated - and belaboured - second season premiere of HBO's The Comeback. She's talking about TV in general, but she might as well be talking about HBO.
True, it's hard to argue the pay-cable network has totally lost its mojo as long as it has Game of Thrones, but it's in danger of becoming known only as the Game of Thrones and Last Week Tonight network.
Consider its pathetic current Sunday-night lineup: The Comeback, a show that was cancelled due to low ratings after a single season nine years ago and returned to even more minuscule numbers; The Newsroom, which was only granted a mercy final season out of deference to creator Aaron Sorkin's massive ego; and Getting On, which has the ignominy of being one of two obscure Laurie Metcalf sitcoms now on the air (the other is CBS's sure-to-be-axed-any-minute The McCarthys).
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Meanwhile, Boardwalk Empire has fallen, True Blood has squeezed out its last drop, and there's no promise that season two of True Detective will be anywhere near as good as season one (the cast is suspect, to say the least).
HBO still turns out quality movies (Behind the Candelabra) and minis (Olive Kitteridge), but as a network, it's becoming a sprinter, not a marathon runner. Its slate of series pales in contrast to Showtime, which just picked up the creatively revived Homeland as well as this season's most exciting new drama, The Affair. And going into their third seasons, Ray Donovan and Masters of Sex still have fresh legs.
The problem with HBO's original series is they've become so meta, they've crawled up their own asses and died. The Comeback and The Newsroom are so internally focused on the media universe, they practically review themselves.
To wit: Valerie Cherish, the washed-up sitcom vet and reality TV wannabe, now stars in an HBO sitcom-within-a-sitcom about a washed-up sitcom vet named Mallory Church. "It's a dramedy," she explains. "That's a comedy without the laughs." Which is a pretty succinct review of The Comeback, come to think of it.
Valerie is so fingernails-on-a-chalkboard annoying, it's impossible to believe she was ever popular. It's okay for a character to be completely one-dimensional on an ensemble show like Friends, but a lead needs more depth.
The Comeback tries to convince us that Valerie has become more self-aware over the past decade, but I'm not buying it. "I get it now," she tells Andy Cohen as she ambush-auditions for Bravo. "I didn't get it before." Whatever it is, I still don't get it.
As for The Newsroom, ugh. Keith Olbermann-esque anchorman Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels, showing impressive range in the same week that Dumb and Dumber To opens) is now engaged to marry his producer Mac (Emily Mortimer, who deserves better). In the season opener, they argue about whether US anchors Diane Sawyer and Brian Williams should be in their wedding party. I repeat - ugh.
Most of the episode centres around last year's Boston Marathon bombing, which the fictional ACN cable news network lags in covering to make sure they get the story right in the aftermath of the Genoa scandal that dominated last season. "We don't do good TV," Will pontificates to his troops. "We do news." Or, in this case, The Newsroom.
After CNN blows the story and some ACN staffer cheers their error, Mac says, "I don't like it when the media covers the media." The same goes for me with HBO doing shows about the media. It was clever back in the days of The Larry Sanders Show, but somewhere around the time of Entourage, it got stale. Meanwhile, the Entourage movie is coming out next year. Yep, it's official - they've run out of ideas.
