Law & Order Criminal Intent

This show came out in 2001 and lasted 10 seasons. Now this isn't the first Law & Order to come out, and there have been others after. However this is my favorite of the lot. The series had a total of 195 episodes each  being about 42 minutes or so.

Now let me start off by saying that the series does change its cast every so often. This being due to a variety of circumstances, but in the end the only 2 that stay for pretty much the entire thing are Detective Alexandra Eames, and Detective Robert Goren (The two in the center shown above). The series starts out with the first 4 seasons or so having half about the cops finding the criminal, then charging them. But the other half being filled with the law side of attempting to prosecute them. This ends up showing a side that a lot of other cop shows don't. Which adds it own set of intrigue to it. Unfortunately they dropped the courtroom side of things after the 4th season and they refocused on the cops side more. 

The series starts out not telling us much about the characters individual lives. And honestly they barely tell us much about anyone by the end except Goren. All kinds of stuff happens to him. Schizophrenic mother, drug addict brother, daddy-issued crazy childhood friend, super crazy and yet insanely awesome mentor (played by the incredible John Glover), a sociopathic grifting nemesis, a mostly useless nephew, a potential serial rapist/murderer father, and more. 

What the series lacks in personal characterizations, it makes up for in intelligent and interesting dialog and fascinating bad guys and scenarios for the characters to fight through. Some are predictable, and others are obvious. But it still has some unknowns.

I liked the show, but there were some problems therein. Especially the episodes with Jeff Goldblum, and I say that even though I very much like him as an actor. Law & Order Criminal Intent gets a score of 8.5 out of 11.

Tokyo Ghoul

This anime is violent, bloody, occasionally sexual, thrilling and most of all intense. This series is very recent having had its second season come out in early 2015. There are a total of 24 episodes.

The series revolves around Keneki. A young man who goes on a date with the beautiful Rize in the first episode, only to find that she is in reality a Ghoul. Or a being of incredible strength and supernatural abilities, that also just happens to consume humans. And on top of all that Rize is a little different than other ghouls, she doesn't eat for her own survival. She eats for the sheer pleasure of seeing the light drain from her victims eyes as she guts them alive and feasts upon their flesh. Unfortunately for her there is an "accident" during her pleasure time and she gets killed, at the hospital her organs are scooped out and placed into Keneki to keep him alive. And now he is a half human, half ghoul.

The first season is mostly about his struggle in dealing with his new found abilities, but more importantly his new found tastes and hunger. For ghouls cannot eat normal human food, they must consume human flesh to survive. Human food is somewhat like a poison to them if fully digested. So he hungers for blood but continues to refuse to eat on the lines of his morals. But he struggles through, he joins a group of ghouls who only eat flesh of those who are already dead, and work to help out and support other ghouls in trouble. But they must always be vigilant because there is a police-like organization CCG who hunt down and eliminate ghouls. This first season ends with a gigantic change awakening in Keneki which leads him to allowing his violent side to emerge.

The second season deals more with this new violent Keneki and the new organization he joins called Aogiri Tree. A group of ghouls bent on surviving and destroying those who might be a threat to them. All of this leads to some interesting characters and discoveries. One of which is that the CCG find out about his original group who helped in at the beginning and the war that ensues from this discovery. Keneki is constantly battling with himself and his urges, as well as with Rize who is now often present in his mind, and tends to represent his ghoul side. 

I really enjoyed the series. Sometimes I think we all need to watch some gory violence to satisfy our internal angers and struggles, and this show definitely provided that. That being said, I thought the end of the series was a bit weak. It doesn't end with that final blaze of glory I was hoping for. Now there is the potential that a third season may occur. However from what I have been able to find at this point in time, they are not planning to do so yet. In the end I give the series a 9.5 out of 11. A good show to watch if you want to see some blood.

Roseanne

Roseanne was a rather important show in that the two main characters/actors were overweight. Even today we don't see many tv shows with overweight main characters. Side characters and background characters tend to be okay, but rarely the main ones. The show started in 1988 and ended in 1997 with a total of 221 episodes over 9 seasons.

The show starts off pretty simple with a mom and dad struggling to get by. They have 3 kids, 2 girls and 1 boy. The aunt also is around pretty much all the time. As the seasons progress the daughters get boyfriends (who are brothers) Eventually stupid mistakes are made, but the family fights through it all. Some characters are introduced as side-characters that eventually become a lot stronger parts of the story as a whole. 

The biggest part of this show is the sexuality. The characters talk about sex a lot. Especially once the kids grow up enough to become sexually active themselves. Later in the series, pretty much every female character gets pregnant and have babies all over again. 

Now every show does some special stuff for their pilot, and for their finale (assuming they are allowed to finish the show and have a finale). Roseanne did some odd stuff for their final season which turned out to all be a lead up to the finale. This is some spoilers. Season 8 ends with the second daughters wedding then the dad played by John Goodman has a heart-attack. Season 9 starts with the family winning a $108 Million lottery. Season 9 is then just a series of adventures/fantasies/trips they take and do with the money or just imagine. In this season the dad almost cheats, and the Roseanne almost cheats, and all kinds of stuff like that. Honestly it was weird and didn't fully make sense. But in the last episode it turns out that all of that was just a fantasy of Roseanne as she writes novels to get by. It turns out that the dads heart-attack killed him, and Roseanne is struggling with depression from then on.

I liked the show, there was some good comic story-lines. But like many sitcoms they fell into the trap of babies everywhere. But they made it up at bit with the finale and last season. In the end I give it a 9 out of 11.

The Drew Carey Show

This show, as you may be able to guess is based mostly about Drew Carey. He is a low level executive stuck in the same position for years and years. The show started in 1995 and ended in 2004 with a total of 233 episodes.

The show has plenty of twists and turns with plenty of relationships for everyone at some point or another. But the main thing is Drew with his three best friends drink too much, hate their jobs, and enjoy various high jinks with each other. The show has some basic side characters which become main character for some seasons, then fall away back to side characters. There are some main characters who leave the show forever later in the series (mostly to start on the show Scrubs). 

Drew is constantly complaining about girl problems, but actually ends up having quite a few girlfriends, some of them fairly long-term ones throughout the series. These include 2 of the main female characters for the show. The only character who actually appears to be as lonely as he constantly professes is Lewis played by Ryan Styles. He ends up with only one serious girlfriend that lasts more than one episode, given she is a labrat kind of character for a drug company. 

The show has a whole bunch of side things, like dance numbers, music videos, episodes with mistakes in them as April Fools Day bonuses at the time that they were shown on tv, and improve episodes where they bring in a whole bunch of the actors from Whose Line Is It Anyway? and then they play some of those games on the show. Many of these are absolutely fantastic, and thoroughly hilarious. 

I enjoyed the show, though sometimes it was a bit repetitive and had some of the same plot lines. Plus the final season is completely different and often times kind of annoying. That last season changed the entire dynamic of the series by making a 2 year old suddenly an 8 year old. The relationship between Drew and Mimi is suddenly cohabitational. But I digress. 

In the end I must give The Drew Carey Show a total of 8 out of 11. There are some parts that are some of the funniest things on television, or the most clever. But others that are simply a show trying to be funny and sometimes failing miserably.

Leverage

Leverage is a modern day Robin Hood like show where the team steals from the big corporations, or corrupt business people, and give back to those that have been hurt by these richer people.

The show started back in 2008. The show continued until Christmas Day 2012, with a total of 77 episodes. Each episode is about 42 minutes long. The show is made up of 5 main characters. Our Hitter, Elliot Spencer (He's the guy in the vest), is also a retrieval specialist. The Hacker, Alec Hardison (The black guy). Grifter, Sophie Devereaux (not that is actually her name...also she is the brunette). Parker (The blonde) is our resident Thief. And finally our Mastermind, Nate Ford (the guy sitting down). 

All these characters were people who only worked alone as thieves and whatnot, taking things they wanted or were hired to take. Other than Nate Ford who was a Insurance Fraud Investigator. At some point or another he chased all of the other 4. 

This show is a perfect mix of comedy, action, intrigue, and bate-and-switches. There are plans that fail, others that go too easily and turn out that they had the wrong idea about who was the bad guy. There are certain lines/things that are used in most episodes. For example Elliot constantly talks about how certain haircuts, shoe prints, physical stance, gunshot sounds, the whoopa-whoopa of a helicopter are all very distinctive of a specific type of person or gun or whatnot. Ford ends up saying "Lets steal us a..." That dot-dot-dot could be mountain, a bank, an IRS building, a close encounter, or even a potato.

In the end I loved this show. It was a great show with impressive interactions between characters. They take down politicians, CEO's, coaches, insurance companies, and more. I enjoyed the playful nature behind much of these kinds of take downs. Especially those that take a significant turn in the middle. I give the show as a whole a 10 out of 11.

Better Off Ted

This show came out in 2009, unfortunately this spectacular series was cancelled after it's second season. Each season had 13 episodes, and each of these 26 episodes was about 21 minutes long.

The series follows Ted Crisp, the Head of Research and Development at one of the largest companies in the world Veridian Dynamics. This comedy shows Ted's boss relationships toward Phil and Lem, who are both genius' who have little to no person skills. His boss played by Portia de Rossi, who is a relatively soulless director. And finally a tester of new products who tends to have an odd love/not-love/worker with Ted. 

Ted every so often breaks the 4th wall by talking directly with the audience as he narrates pieces of his life working at the company, or his own personal life as a single father. He helps guide us through the interesting, disturbing, and possibly highly useful inventions that Veridian Dynamics is creating. Some examples are a scented lightbulb, but unfortunately after a 3 days it starts to smell like rotted meat. Beef grown in the lab entirely free of cows, but tastes like despair. Toothpaste that accidentally created a parasite that grows hair on any and all surfaces including on a desk.

My personal favorite part of the show (other than the Dalek found in the robot graveyard) is the commercials that come up in every episode that are produced by the company to keep up business for the company. Some of these commercials are actual commercials produced by real companies just with new voice-overs. 

Finally I must say I loved the show, but like many others I discovered it after it was already cancelled and subsequently over. But in the end I give it a 10 out of 11 because I laughed repeatedly during almost every episode, and as such thought it was a fantastic show people should definitely watch.

Cheers & Frasier

This is a double review because Frasier was a spin-off of the show Cheers. Also it was kind of a continuation for the fanbase and so on.

First we shall start with Cheers. It started back in 1982 and ran for 11 seasons into 1993. The cast changed a little bit here and there due to the beloved actor Nicholas Colasanto's death in 1985, and the actress playing the main female role deciding to leave after season 4. The character Dr. Frasier Crane joins the show in season 2 and eventually becomes a regular. Each episode was about 22 minutes with a total of 275 episodes.

Cheers takes place almost entirely in the bar in Boston known as Cheers. Sam Malone our main character is the owner of the bar, he is a recovering alcoholic, and highly successful womanizer. The show revolves around him and the relationships that flourish and/or flounder in the environment of this bar. There is the waitress who is constantly getting pregnant, the dumbwitted bartender, the overly intelligent(usually too smart for their own good) waitress(and/or manager depending on the season) that Sam is constantly trying to seduce, the mailman who knows all of the useless trivia(some of which is completely false), the psychiatrist whose advice is never fully acknowledged in the bar, and finally NORM! the man who spends all of his time in the bar and has a tab that could probably pay for the bar ten times over. If you ever hear someone yell NORM! it is most likely a reference to this show.

I thoroughly enjoyed the show for the first 8 seasons or so, then honestly I found it to get extremely boring. The jokes became very basic, or stretched as if the writers were trying too hard to show new material. There were moments of course that were still funny or entertaining throughout. But I felt it more of a chore and a challenge to actually finish the show. Sam is constantly getting stuck in the same situations, Frasier wants sex from his wife, Norm is avoiding his wife as well as work, Cliff is either talking about some random fact(that may or not be true) or talking about the pride of his job of mother, Carla complains about her kids and money problems, and the main female character complains about life or does something that Sam finds attractive. These come up most episodes, especially by the end. 

Then came along the spin-off simply titled Frasier to take place in a Seattle, Washington. 

Frasier started up in 1993 and continued until 2004 with an additional 11 seasons. The episodes were also 22 minutes long with a total of 264 episodes. This show follows Dr. Frasier Crane who has moved to Seattle to be an on-air radio psychiatrist. He also is to take care of his father. He has an assistant at the radio station named Roz, and hires Daphne to care for his aging father at home. Frasier's brother Niles also lives in Seattle and is also a psychiatrist. For quite a few seasons Niles was chasing after Daphne, but from a distance so as not to make things awkward between them, and to avoid rejection. However everyone but Daphne knew. The show revolves around these 5 characters and generally takes place in 2 locations, Frasier's living room, or the radio studio. Later on they also incorporate a coffee shop fairly often.

Now there are some inconsistencies between what Frasier tells us in Cheers and what is revealed on Frasier. But for the most part you can ignore them. Frasier is a much more intellectual type of comedy than Cheers was. Frasier is a higher class and standard than the lower-class of Cheers. And in the end I think I enjoyed Frasier more, especially because it didn't seem to drag by the end. 

In the end I give Cheers an 8 out of 11. And Frasier receives a 10 out of 11.