The Diamonds in the Prime Time Rough

All too often, we all feel inclined to dismiss something based on scant information. And yet, first impressions aren't always justified. Ever been to a restaurant that looks a bit on the derelict side from the outside and expected the food to be similarly shabby, only to walk out with your tastebuds singing odes of joy? Or perhaps you've been hit on someone at a party or a bar and thought, "Ye gods, I would never," only to find that, in fact, you would and did? If you're nodding right now, then with the wisdom you gained from whichever experience you're nodding over, I want you to bear with me while I put forth seemingly unlikely candidates as excellent TV shows.

GCB

I didn't want to like this show. In fact, I was firmly against this show and all it stood for after watching one commercial. Based on the ads, it appeared that the show was going to consist of one-dimensional Texas stereotypes flailing at each other cartoonishly. This premise did not appeal to me.

Then the first episode came on one particularly lazy night. The remote control was in the kitchen, for no good reason I can recall, and I was aaaaall the way in the living room. I thought hard about my options here, including throwing things until I hit the power button, but finally realized the truth: bad TV is sometimes better than no TV at all. So I bravely prepared to face the consequences of my laziness and watch a terrible, terrible show.

I ended up enrapt. I was wrong, and I wasn't wrong all at once. GCB has a definite "guilty pleasure" feel to it. The humor is definitely a little cheap and cheeky at times, and the characters occasionally feel like those cartoons I mentioned. But the dialogue is hilarious, the plots are juicy, and in unexpected moments, the show demonstrates a sincere side. Underneath the ridunkulus spectacle of moments like Carlene Cockburn's "Gone With the Wind" vow renewal and the new-breasts-on-a-young-cheerleader-in-an-old-uniform problem, you have themes of redemption, hypocrisy, and forgiveness lightening the heavy-handed humor.

The plot centers around Amanda Vaughn, a recently widowed mother of two who is forced to move back to Dallas from California after her husband dies in the midst of running off with his mistress and the proceeds from his Ponzi scheme. Stinging from the humiliation, the publicity, and the loss of her privileged life, she is forced to move in with her outrageous socialite mother, Gigi. To complicate matters further, Amanda is a bit of a recovered mean girl. Back in high school, she ruled the roost as the queen bee and made some of her classmates' lives Hell. Notwithstanding the kinder, gentler Amanda that maturity has created, those former classmates have neither forgiven nor forgotten her past transgressions.

In particular, the three furies of Dallas take the form of primped and surgically enhanced religious nut, Carlene Cockburn; ruthless businesswoman, Cricket Caruth-Reilly; and teenage-bombshell-turned-timid-housewife, Sharon Peacham. They initially come off as wealthy, scheming, competitive biddies trying to find ways to shut out and shut down the penitent heroine. However, subsequent episodes reveal a softer side of each of these women, as well. Cricket is shown to be involved in a devoted marriage, despite the fact that it's acknowledged between she and her husband that he is gay and their physical needs thus must be satisfied elsewhere. Nonetheless, they are tender and supportive towards one another, and she protects his image while he helps support her ambition and raise their daughter. And Sharon, while seeming ditzy and insecure, is a devoted wife and mother who often has the very best intentions. And the biggest she-witch of the three, Carlene Cockburn, occasionally slacks off from being an over-the-top fountain of insane quotes to show that she, too, has a heart, and is capable of empathizing even with the woman who made her life Hell in high school. Besides, despite the fact that they seem an inch away from making hot monkey love every time they make eye contact, Carlene's relationship with her husband is actually strangely sweet.

Throw in great fun like Amanda taking a job at a Hooters-esque little joint called "Boobylicious" to support herself, a Heck House, and a pre-vow-renewal bachelorette trip that involves primped women in fashionable camouflage ensembles, and you have a lot of spectacle with just enough heart to keep it relatable.

• CLIP: Guns n' Texans- http://youtu.be/VDFwoyJvGlc

• See also: some of the more fabulous GCB quotes, like, "The closest I ever came to abstaining was no salt in my margarita" and "I don't remember the exact verse, but the Bible is just full of that kind of whoop ass" at http://www.tvfanatic.com/quotes/shows/gcb/page-2.html#ixzz1ry7RBqdp 

LOST GIRL

This is another show my sister's been bugging me to watch for ages. I poo-pooed a TV show about fairies, thinking it was either going to be untrue to the folklore in a way that rendered the usage of the word "fairy" purely decoration or far too cutesy. For someone who recently had to eat crow upon the realization that another TV show involving folklore didn't have to be cutesy or trite- that would be "Once Upon a Time," of course- I probably should've learned my lesson by now. But "Lost Girl" isn't at all what I expected.

I queued it up one night when I was bored and in the process of abusing my On Demand options. Unfortunately, On Demand had cycled episodes 1, 2, and 3 out, already, and so I was stuck with episodes 4-7. I shrugged. If 4 stirred my curiosity, I'd track down the rest. If 4 blew a goat, then I'd go back to obsessively watching "The Walking Dead" and be done with it.

The first episode I watched, therefore, opened with a human girl trying to explain the concept of rejection to a beautiful succubus who can magically seduce a man with the merest of touches. The highly comical exchange went something like this:

Succubus: "Feel bad for me, I'm sick."

Human: (after hearing symptoms) "That's not sick, hon, that's rejection."

Succubus: "What is this rejection you speak of? This has never happened to me."

Human: -expletive deleted.-

The ensuing fun of watching the human friend, Kenzi, show the succubus, Bo, how to engage in the required healing catharsis of post-rejection excess is nothing short of hilarious. There is smashing of an abandoned car, and eating of ice cream, and drunkenness with a side of a threesome for Bo. And-

What? What's that you arched your eyebrow at there? Oh, the threesome. Listen, it never gets gratuitous, but there's some sex goin' on in this here show about a succubus who feeds off of human sexuality. With a lot of shows, this could quickly become excessive, but here, it's actually used with enough restraint that I never got to the point where I thought I'd accidentally turned it to Cinemax late at night.

So anyways, getting back to the episode, it turns out one of the folks who approached Bo for a little somethin' somethin' with a seductive siren was a Fury bent on- what else?- revenge. Her ulterior motive in agreeing to a threesome with Bo and her husband was in hiring Bo to kill a human woman her husband was involved with. This, of course, gives our heroine some qualms of conscience. It seems Bo doesn't have that more-magical-than-thou attitude most Fae have towards humans, since she was actually raised among them and didn't know she was any different until she killed a boy the first time she had sex. Plus, while Bo is staying out of the perpetual tension between the Dark and Light Fae, who are headed towards a serious smackdown, she does seem to be more disposed to being good.

Ultimately, after getting sucked into watching all of the available episodes and adding it to the scheduled recordings on my DVR, I found it relatable, funny, colorful and dramatic. I am a huge folklore and mythology buff and I find the approach they've taken here to be quite clever. Taking all the typical magical beings we've peopled our legends with, the story essentially shows us that these are, in fact, just varieties of the Fae, Light and Dark (much like varieties of turkey). Banshees, furies, leprechauns, will-o'-the-wisps, skin-walkers, shape-shifters, sirens... All Fae, all the time.

And though this is not a traditional approach, it involves a lot of the traditional lore. For instance, in "Fae Day," a banshee wails during a celebration and it is explained to Bo that banshees predict deaths, foretelling the demise of  those from the 5 noble families, human and Fae. This is also what Irish folklore tells us. But interwoven with a story that pits a Dark Fae who has succumbed to a mixture of dark magic and Wall Street greed against his more dutiful Light Fae brother while Kenzi shows the latter how to yuk it up with one day left to live, it becomes less dry, more current, and just another intricate fiber in the complicated web that is the Fae world.

I could go on, about quotable dialogue-

• Kenzi: "It tried to web me in the face! In the face part of my face!"
• Bo: "It looks like we had a lot in common, looking for love in all the wrong places." Kenzi: "Is that your way of saying 'anal'?"
• Kenzi: "So not only does this Aswang have a very unfortunate name, but they also eat dead people! And nobody thought to mention this to me, like hey Kenzi watch out for random body parts or by the way foot soup!"
• Kenzi: "Do you hear that? It sounds like whispering kids or giggling elves. Did you bring elves home? I'm not judging, I just want to know."

-and great characters, plus intriguing plot twists, sexual tension, and romance, but I think I've said enough for now. If you're not intrigued, then perhaps you skipped over the part about the threesome with a Fury and the foot-eating . If so, it's definitely your loss to miss "Lost Girl."

• CLIP: A collection of funnies from "Lost Girl"- http://youtu.be/cBFOSKKVXnI