Garfunkel and Oates

I love the comedy team of Garfunkel and Oates. I dug their digital show on HBO a few years back, and was delighted to hear they were getting a full-time series on IFC. There's no doubt that Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci are talented and funny, but the question in my mind was could they fill a half-hour on their own?

There were some shaky moments with bad acting and weird pacing that could very well be planned to be awkward examples of cringe humor, but it's hard to tell. About ten minutes in, I was wondering if they could do it or not, having only previously experienced two minute songs and five minute episodes. I really shouldn't have worried. By the end of the first episode, I was convinced, happy, and ready for the next one.

This is a show about them, or fictional versions of them, in the stand-up comedy world, and yes, the hilarious not-safe-for-family-or-work songs are there - they couldn't leave out the best part, could they? This series has the raw absurdity of "Louie" and the real brutality of "Seinfeld." I'm all in, you should be too. "Garfunkel and Oates" airs Thursday nights on IFC.

Petals on the Wind

Petals on the Wind ~ When Lifetime did Flowers in the Attic and it was even a little bit successful, it was pretty much guaranteed they would do a sequel... especially when there's one tailor made as part of the book series it based on. I should note however this was given a green light before Flowers even aired. That's how sure Lifetime was of the source material. So here's Petals on the Wind, which was just as popular as Flowers back in the day, but didn't have a crappy movie version to tarnish it. Let's see how good or bad the Lifetime treatment is.

Just as Flowers artfully used a cover of "Sweet Child o' Mine" to promote it, Petals similarly uses a cover of Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight," a song that was actually around when the book came out, and intros the movie almost as if this was a series rather than movies. Is it? "Last time on Flowers in the Attic..." makes me wonder. Not that I would mind a well done TV series...

It begins ten years after Flowers, and the children have been recast. I guess the shooting schedule for the final season of "Mad Men" might interfered possibly for Kiernan Shipka. And while the book picks up immediately after Flowers, the movie is a decade later, necessitating older actors. Chicken or the egg here, I have to wonder what came first - time shift or recasting? Either way, Rose McIver as Cathy is a weak sister to Kiernan Shipka.

The ten year jump that begins at Paul Sheffield's funeral does happily evade the creepy doctor character who adopted the children and tried to marry Cathy. Sometimes gothic romance and horror take a left turn into soap opera so bizarre, it really is better left forgotten. Not that a story that centers on incest isn't already inappropriately creepy... but you know what I mean. Good move, Lifetime.

The sad news is however that all of the rest of this seems very forced. From Cathy's abusive relationship with Julian to Carrie being bullied at school, and on top of it all is Heather Graham and Ellen Burstyn's characters being shoehorned roughly into the story. I had a lot of trouble with Burstyn especially after literally just watching her brilliant comedic turn on "Louie" just before this.

Will Kemp is great as Julian, Cathy's husband in the book, boyfriend here, as long as you stop visualizing him as Starsky from "Starsky and Hutch," a comparison that gets difficult when you see his car. Rose McIver is no Shipka as I mentioned but she is certainly as hatable as Cathy should be. She deserves what she gets in so many ways. This was okay, not as good as Flowers, but a suitable sequel. The over the top revenge ending is well worth the two hour watch.

Lifetime has already announced plans to do the next two books in the Dollanganger series by V.C. Andrews, If There Be Thorns and Seeds of Yesterday in 2015, but there's been no word about the fifth and final installment, Garden of Shadows, probably because the ads refer to Seeds as the final installment. Interesting.

Lucky Louie

This isn't a review of HBO's cancelled sitcom "Lucky Louie" that starred comedian Louis C.K., although I loved that show. This is a review of the new Louis C.K. sitcom "Louie" on FX, but it seems strange to me after the odd reception the first series got from critics that he would get another one so quick. Either way, I'm thankful he did.

That said, I had to wait more than a few episodes before I could decide if I really liked it or not. It has elements of the HBO show in it as well as some things borrowed from "Seinfeld," mostly the comedy club bits. But it also has something else, and it took me a while to pinpoint it. It's Woody Allen.

It was the loopy old jazz music that first brought this comparison to mind but then it became much clearer. When Woody Allen was in his Annie Hall phase, he was still funny, but there was also the hint that he was trying to say something about his world, our world. This is what Louis C.K. is doing. It's sharp, subtle and clever.

There is of course the problem of its lead-in, "Rescue Me," which in the last season became a sad parody of itself, and so far this season, two episodes in, it has become a humorless cartoon. I hope it doesn't affect "Louie." Hopefully he'll be luckier with FX than he was with HBO. Check it out, well worth your time.