#2013 pilots

[tvhangover]

Unfortunately Hostages is not one weird episode of United States of Tara, but an actual series.

Toni Collete acts the shit out of anything she’s in and this show is no exception, but the stuff she has to work with was just boring. I found myself drifting off on multiple occasions. I didn’t care that the daughter is probably pregnant, the husband is having an affair, and the son is dealing drugs. It all seemed like the writers were like, "Let’s put together the most cliched things in order to use it to pit the family against each other."

Dylan McDermott is a sexy FBI agent/mysterious person forcing Toni Collete’s character to kill the president with lipstick. Oh yeah, that’s right, that’s what this show is supposed to be about.

My favorite sentence from the AV Club's review pretty much sums up the show, "Hostages is taking a page from the Homeland playbook, playing with the idea of the good guys and bad guys meeting somewhere in the middle, hopefully in a sexy middle."

[tvhangover]

There’s a time and a place for most things and I think I speak for everyone when I say Anna Faris’s place was about 5 years ago, but good on CBS for giving her another shot.

The jokes were a little predictable, but that’s what made it fit right into the Monday night CBS line-up. I did enjoy the dynamic between Anna Faris’s character, Christy, and her mother, Bonnie, played by Allison Janney.

I wanted to not like Mom so much and possibly I took a lesson from Anna herself in Smiley Face while watching, but I laughed. I laughed more than once while watching this show. I am still laughing at the Christ-y line when I feel like maybe I shouldn’t be. Is this what it feels like to ‘get’ Two and A Half Men?

I liked the show, okay? There’s something there, even if it's just the pilot episode, that's worth liking - I think. There are some honest moments and maybe that’s just what Mondays on CBS needs.