Monday Roundup

Two new shows "rolled off the lot" tonight. The first, NBC's Heroes, did so with great fanfare. The other, the CW's (Canine Whistlers?) Runaway, arrived softly.

The best comparison I can make for Heroes is FX's summer series, The 4400. Both of them revolve around a group of unrelated characters suddenly developing "super powers." In both cases, the audience has been told that these people are destined to save the world. Both shows are played for realism, even though the concepts both crib from comic books (X-Men, chiefly). But there are two important differences between the two shows.

First, The 4400 has a built-in "MacGuffin" to build stories around -- the "superhumans" were all abducted over a period of decades, and miraculously returned all at once having experienced no passage of time; a pair of government investigators digs into their lives in every new episode. Heroes has no such underpinning. Apparently, these people are all simply undergoing random genetic mutation. And the only connections between any of them are happenstance intersections that could well be cribbed from flashbacks on Lost.

Second, The 4400 is consistently a very well written show that is unfortunately saddled with some bad acting. (Not across the board, but it's a decidedly mixed bag.) Heroes, on the other hand, has a fairly good pool of actors, but the writing was seriously lacking. Ridiculous situations, unengaging characters, cliche dialogue, predictable "plot twists" -- this first episode had it all.

All told, I'd much rather have the bad acting than the bad writing. I can't see picking up Heroes.

Meanwhile, Runaway was premiering on the CW. (Cowboy Whittlers?) The two actors at the center of this show are great -- Donnie Wahlberg was brilliant on Boomtown, and Leslie Hope was outstanding on 24 (even in a few moments when the plotlines -- amnesia? really? -- let her down). And the writing was generally better than Heroes as well.

But... I do have a complaint, and a concern. The complaint: for the 147th time, we got a clone of that moment from The Silence of the Lambs where the authorities show up at the wrong place, but we're supposed to think they're about to bust in on the criminals. The first time, it was worth an Oscar. By today? I think it's cause to have your Writer's Guild membership revoked.

As for the concern -- here we have another show with a shallow premise. A family is living together in hiding, as the father tries to clear his name of a murder he didn't commit. Unlike The Fugitive, or Prison Break, they're not on the run. They're trying to stay settled in one town. How many times can the "will they get caught this week? Naaah!" beat be played? (Maybe ask the writers of HBO's Big Love?) How deep can this conspiracy to frame the father possibly go, that many little clues could be doled out in different episodes?

In other words, even if the acting stays as good as it is, and the writers find some other Oscar-winning films to rip off, where is there to go? I'm not sure that I care to find out, given how Monday night is as packed as it is.

Because after all, Prison Break and Studio 60 were both great tonight.

Prison Break once again found away to play some great tension over "getting caught" even outside the prison walls. They left at a nasty cliffhanger that leaves you dying to see how they'll get out of it. There were great character moments as we got to see: Haywire return for the first time this season, Michael come seriously unraveled early in the episode as once again his careful plans were disrupted, T-Bag being utterly creepy. I don't mind the dramatic conceits that Sucre would just happen upon C-Note hitchhiking, because it gets the characters back together again. The show is not at its best with the cons all split up.

And Studio 60 was even better this week than last. While the ultimate payoff of the Gilbert & Sullivan parody was not itself very funny (especially compared to other moments in the episode), I accept that you can't always play these moments off screen (like the "Crazy Christians" sketch, which I guarantee would be funnier in your imagination than it would be on your television) -- you can't always just tease. In any case, the 40-odd minutes leading up to the song were wonderful.

I'm guessing most of you didn't watch all of these shows. (Who could blame you?) But I'm betting that with a "menu" this diverse, you probably caught at least one of them. Anyone have favorite (or least favorite) moments to share with the class?