A touching, intimate, humor-laced family drama that is easily the best new show debuting this fall, and the way you'll be able to watch it holds a not-small part of its power.
There's enough detail in the setting and characterization to keep it distinct from the mothership, but also more than enough of the template (down to the freeze-frame tic at the open and close of each act) to make it go down like a comforting plate of crawfish etouffee.
Silicon Valley has its share of pause-the-DVR laugh lines, but it's not as relentlessly funny as, say, Judge's "Office Space." It does, however, get better as it goes along.
The new season returns to the show's more familiar structure. But the character beats that played out last season--and in previous seasons, for that matter -- linger. The result is that the Harlan, Ky., and environs of Justified feels like a very familiar, lived-in place--in the best possible sense.
Lowe's job of selling Alice's yearning for Wonderland is all the more remarkable for the fact that her world-spanning love with Cyrus comes off a little bit limp in the premiere.
Merchant uses his gangly physicality (at 6-foot-7, he towers over everyone else on the show) to good effect in scenes when Stuart is on the make. Despite that, though, and despite the fact that Merchant is willing to make himself the butt of the joke, Hello Ladies doesn't quite pull off the trick of making Stuart someone you want to spend week after week seeing.
