Kings premieres this Sunday, but I got to see the first three episodes already to review the show for PopMatters. They were supposed to put up the review today, but the film section ran long and they decided to push it until the weekend. I guess that means that you guys get the first scoop on my opinion, but I’ll just give you the gist to avoid repeating myself. Check PopMatters.com this weekend for the full thing. [ETA: Official review is up here.]

The bottom line: I like it, as Maggie said, for its constant WTF factor. It’s just weird. Well, on some level, it’s the same as any primetime soap. There’s a fish-out-of-water that has to learn how to roll in an impossibly beautiful, elite social circle while everyone’s parents are distracted with their bad marriages. But, in Kings, this formula is injected into something truly bizarre. I dig alternate realities, and this one looks like a prettied-up, super-corporate version of New York. Figuring out the ins and outs of a modern, warring monarchy is the best part. So, while the “epic” nature of the show can drag things into boring, I liked it because it shows me something that no other series does. It’s not set in a hospital, or in a police station, or in a recognizable era from America’s past, or some combination of those (a prison hospital transported to the ’70s?). It’s off in its own crazyland. I fully support that.

Hey, something great happened on TV last night! No, I mean other than Jon Stewart pwning Jim Cramer. Half of the original cast of ER showed up to help bury that creaky old workhorse. And I say that in the most affectionate way possible.

Yeah, my roommate and I are like the last people in America watching ER. We may be the only people who care that after fifteen freaking seasons, the show that actually was Must-See TV back in, um, eighth grade, is coming to an end. And we are not (or at least I’m not) particularly ashamed that we squealed like thirteen-year-old girls when George Clooney showed up.

Here’s the best part of last night’s episode, if you’re not interested in seeing Susan Sarandon cry or Eriq La Salle show up to needle Noah Wyle. Although that was great.

Also, and stop reading here if you DVRed the episode and actually care what happened, I appreciated that Doug and Carol never find out that the kidney went to Carter. I watched Private Practice earlier in the evening (after missing about a month’s worth of episodes. Strangely, this does not affect my comprehension), and when the hot cardiac surgeon that Addison was flirting with in the scrub room (DANGER, WILL ROBINSON. HAVE YOU LEARNED NOTHING ABOUT HOT SURGEONS?!) turned out to be her high-risk pregnancy patient’s wannabe wandering husband, the contrivance actually leaped out of my television and smacked me over the head.

Like, I get it, Shonda. You think everything is connected. But sometimes everything is not connected. Would it have been dramatically weaker if the hot surgeon was just married to a lady we, the audience had never met? (Nice touch that they kept meeting in the scrub room, where he wouldn’t be wearing his wedding ring, though.) Would we have been okay with Addison sleeping with a married man if we hadn’t known that the man’s wife had had two miscarriages and was now on bed rest to keep their much-hoped-for baby inside her body until it’s viable? I don’t think so. As much as we think sometimes that there are only about 100 people in New York and everything else is done with mirrors, sometimes strangers happen, SHONDA. ER gets that. And while that’s not the only reason it’s lasted 15 years, it’s something I appreciate. Also, George Clooney. I missed you.

One’s a pasty, black t-shirted British comedian. One’s a blood red, usually nude American kids entertainer.

Via Best Week Ever, here’s a glimpse of a remarkably light-hearted Ricky Gervais and a remarkably dark Elmo.

Totes awk, y’all.  But satisfying nonetheless.

This is part two, where the meat of the interview begins.  Here’s part three.

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