Primal Screen
'Rookie Blue' delivers young cops in love — and works
Published: May 23, 2012
The leads are adorable, the production numbers are effervescent, and the script is witty. Rags makes me feel like a teenager again, reveling in innocent fun. It’ll be hard to go back to Gene Simmons Family Jewels when the clock strikes midnight.
Hemingway & Gellhorn (8pm Mon, HBO)
HBO’s TV movie dramatizes the real-life romance of blustering novelist Ernest Hemingway (Clive Owen) and strong-willed war correspondent Martha Gellhorn (Nicole Kidman). Owen wears the big mustache well, and Kidman has the chops to make Gelhorn both sexy and intelligent. The problem is the script, which hits one wrong note after another. The characters communicate in bits of clunky exposition, and Ernest spouts literary philosophy 24/7 — a bit much even for an egomaniac. “The whole trick is writing the way people talk!” he tells Martha.
Ironically, real people don’t talk anything like the characters in Hemingway & Gelhorn.
Monster-in-Laws (9pm Mon, A&E)
The reality series returns for a second season, trying to repair relationships between married couples and their misbehaving in-laws. It’s hard to believe the producers can find a monster-in-law more monstrous than Linda, the subject of the season premiere. For 25 minutes, this woman dishes out abuse to her son Jim and daughter-in-law Michelle, who exhibit Christ-like forbearance. Linda calls Michelle “a bad wife and mother”; she calls Jim “weak”; and she calls the couples’ innocent young daughters “sluts.” Even the show’s resident relationship expert loses her temper over Linda’s vicious comments. I got so worked up myself that I almost threw the TV out the window.
In the last five minutes, the relationship expert abruptly turns Linda around, and the healing begins for Jim and Michelle. But not for me — I can’t find forgiveness that quickly. I need a relationship expert of my own to get over this episode.
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