TV: Various premieres part 2

Yep, another TV post. You're gonna be seeing a lot of 'em in the coming month or so.

Joan of Arcadia: I love this show. I am in no way a religious person, and that's not what attracts me to this show (I mean, I don't believe in aliens, but I still liked The X-Files); it's the stellar cast and their interactions. Amber Tamblyn is wonderful as Joan, Joe Mantegna and Mary Steenburgen add a great deal of acting weight and experience to the show as Joan's parents, and the large number of recurring players are consistently entertaining, from Christopher Marquette and Becky Wahlstrom as Joan's boyfriend and best friend (both of whom were promoted to regular castmembers this year), to Elaine Hendrix as the loopy teacher who seems to get physically aroused by science, to Mageina Tovah and Aaron Himelstein as the gawky nerds, to David Burke (Arthur from The Tick!) as the priest Joan's mother seeks out for advice.

And I loved how last season ended, with the life-shaking and all-too-plausible proposal that Joan had never seen God in the first place, that it was all hallucinations brought on by lyme disease. Where's your messiah now??

This season got off to a great start, with Joan returning from "crazy camp" believing she'd been cured of her visions. But that pesky ol' God kept popping back up. And it ended on a believably down note: Joan again accepts God is real, but after he basically abandoned her in last season's finale, she rejects him. Take a hike, Yahweh! I'm sure she'll be back to doing his dirty work next week, but it was a pretty bold move for a show that's proven to be so much smarter and open than its Touched by an Angel-like premise ever suggested.

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Listen Up: This show, on the other hand, is a piece of shit.

There have been times I've written things here and worried (no matter how astronomically unlikely) that someone involved with the show might stumble across my blog while Googling their own name and take offense, or be hurt. Well, if that should happen with this show: seriously, you all know it's a piece of shit. Don't even try to pretend otherwise. Every single one of you can and should do better (except maybe the girl playing Jason Alexander's daughter, who is instantly one of the most shrill, unpleasant, unlikeable characters and/or performers I have ever had the displeasure of witnessing). This vastly stupid and supremely unfunny show should be taken behind the barn and shot like Old Yeller at the earliest possible opportunity. I don't like it, is what I'm getting at.

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Still Standing: And this show may actually be worse, yet somehow it's entering its third season. Where's my messiah now?? Last week's season premiere was the first episode I've ever watched, and it most certainly will be the last. The grand twist they appear to have applied to this show is that not only is the father a drunken, clueless, boorish, irresponsible lout -- so is the mother! How refreshing. By which I mean: you suck. This show was so repellent, I wished I was Elvis so I could shoot the TV. It began with both parents arriving home drunk from a tour of one of the colleges their son may be applying to, and it went downhill from there. The creepiest sequence involved the father, trying to cheer up his teenage daughter, repeatedly telling her that she was developing a very nice figure. Where's Child Protective Services when you need them?