serious_critic

Watching Richard Quest as host is like enduring an hour long British version of Gilbert Gottfried high on meth (which is not surprising given Richard's history). The show is insanely boring with rules that seem to engage at a producers whim and with what seems to be the least amount of guaranteed money given away per half hour of any TV show in the last 30 years. With the maximum amount of money guaranteed for a perfect game being at 500,000 which requires getting 500 questions correct and only 35 questions being answered in the first hour long episode what is the incentive to watch. The opening 1 hour show featured one real contestant with a total of 22,000 or slightly above won but not guaranteed. This just after wheel of fortune gave away an actual 40,000 in less than 30 minutes. This show hopefully will not last long.

I tried so hard to like this show (through episode 9). It tries to ride off the coattails of "The Good Wife", but results in being yet another weekly procedural drama with the same formula as all other 1 hour procedural drama's. Sure it has a continuing story arch composed of conspiracy theories etc, but the whole show falls flat, and Téa Leoni solves the worlds problems in 45 minutes with time to go home and eat dinner with her family. I have no problem with strong women characters (check out my review for "The Good Wife"), but this show tries to beat you over the head with "I am woman hear me roar", the same way that "Scorpion" keeps pushing the line "My IQ is 197"...i am better than all of you normals. The writing is horrible, which i do not blame "Téa Leoni", but it leaves her with very little to work with. As a result, I have lost a lot of respect for "Téa Leoni" as an actress for even taking on this show. Despite showing her abilities as a great actress in other projects, her talents cannot fix the horrible writing and plot lines, which she seemingly fully and unconvincingly buys into. Tim Daly (Téa Leoni's husband) plays the most convincing and interesting character in the show, the rest of the characters seem to almost be reading from cue cards under the camera. The conspiracy theory is a simple ploy to try to keep the viewers interested in next week's show but only after Téa Leoni has finished saving the world. Hopefully this show will be on the chopping block.

I am glad this show features a laugh track or else I would would never have known it was a sitcom. It exploits the easy jokes of being a Mexican American, without providing any redeeming value for how poorly it handles the execution. The characters (especially Cristela) are 1 dimensional, and all the jokes have been done before, only much better. This show will be lucky to last a season, but with today's audience (and a laugh track to tell the sheep when to laugh), it may plague us for a couple of seasons before people see through its simple and shallow premise.

This is easily, and unintentionally the greatest new comedy of the season. [sarcasm]Who would have thought that incorporating the smartest person in the world to co-produce a show about themselves would be so narcissistic.[/sarcasm] It is obvious that this show is catered to dumb people because Walter O'Brian (the main character) has to remind the audience every 5 minutes that his IQ is 197. You would think being that smart, and with how much money is spent per episode CBS could afford some fact checkers or even professionals that knew how to do proper editing to prevent continuity errors in post production. Unfortunately this is not the case even though CBS does spend the money to make sure that the Big Bang Theory is factually accurate for its geek fans. O'Brian is so smart and loves condescending his targeted audience that he wraps his giant turd of a show in tin foil and tries to sell it as gold. I was looking forward to enjoying this show but it pushes the "Based on a true story" line well beyond its intended meaning. It seems to me that CBS it the real **** for producing Scorpion. Scorpion serves a huge advertisement for O'Brian's company while the script barely manages to attain the IQ of a peanut. Consider that one of the main producers of the show is Justin Beiber's manager (Scooter Braun), and that should be enough to realize this show is a joke. To be honest, I am pulling for this show to be renewed so that my software engineering friends and I can enjoy our weekly drinking game, not to mention I hope CBS continues to overpay for this travesty. If you are dumb enough to pay for and produce this show you deserve to be milked. If there is one thing this show demonstrates is if your IQ is high enough you can be as big a jerk as you want to without any real life consequences (what a great lesson to teach young geniuses). As a final note, wth is Katharine McPhee doing on this show? The cast is horrible, but her character totally takes it over the top. Greatest show evar!!!!!

This is easily one of the best shows currently on TV. Ridley Scott still has the chops after all these years. The Good Wife is as well written as most of Aaron Sorkin's scripts, and the characters are both intriguing and multifaceted. I hope this show keeps up the great writing and keeps its spot on the much coveted Sunday night prime time slot.