New Shows Review: Sleepy Hollow/Dads

I'm not going to be able to make this as detailed as I'd like because of computer problems; basically my video card is dying and making my screen look like it's constantly doing the Batoosi and looking at it for too long makes me feel like I have a tumor in my eyes the size of an elephants nuts. Despite that, I wanted to give very brief reviews of the first two shows of the Fall Season I've tried out, both of them from FOX, the network I love to hate (or hate to love. I'm never sure. It depends on what's on at the time...).

Boy, do I not want to like this show. Sleepy Hollow honestly starts out as the most cliched thing I've ever seen. There's the moody atmosphere. There's time travel. There's a bigger star than the rest of the cast playing a mentor who gets killed too soon and the young cop who becomes driven to avenge them and the boss who works against her. There's the cop on the take. There's mysterious visions and an even more mysterious priest. Seriously, how many times have we seen something matching that description? But then they turn around and twist the entire legend and make it interesting; the Headless Horseman is actually Death, of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and Ichabod Crane is the First Witness mentioned in the Book of Revelation who is meant to spend seven years trying to save the world or some such stuff. And most people who know me know that stuff like that is right in my wheelhouse, and now I'm stuck with it. I just wish Clancy Brown was in it for more than three minutes...

Dads, on the other hand, is just out. Completely. There is seriously not a doubt in my mind that I will never watch this show again. The only thing worse than the ham-fisted, over-acted caricatures of characters the cast gives us are the endless string of jokes that just aren't funny. Every single punchline falls flatter than Keira Knightley's rack. The only time I laughed throughout the entire first episode was when a portrait of Rocky Dennis led to a joke about him being the ugliest person who ever lived.

I used an image from the movie Mask and not his real face because, you know, you have to have at least some respect!

The only other takeaway I have from this show is that Vanessa Minnillo... I'm sorry, Lachey... really isn't aging very well now that she's married into Middle American Cornhusking Life and the days of her looking like this...

...are long gone.

So one show grudgingly passed and one show will never, ever be bothered with again. You can expect more of these as the other new shows I'm looking forward to premiere, especially Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on Tuesday.

You know, unless my computer explodes by then.