Monsters of Television

“Oh, cool. A tiny weapons standoff!”

Interesting that Chuck’s Brunette that Ruins Everything of the season is actually his mOH MY GAH did they light Frost so that her hair would look blonde like Sarah’s to further beat the point into us?

What is this I’m feeling? There’s this disquiet. Loudness in my voice after the show ends. I — is this — actual anticipation for next week?

Chuck finally dished out an all-purpose good episode. There might have been a few stumbles here and there but, for what we get, I think finally shows some direction and gets into what this season is supposed to be.

But why am I surprised? Chuck did the same thing last season with its slow start. They are the San Diego Chargers of television, constantly digging out of the hole they put themselves in so they can make the playoffs. It’s like they have the talent to field and the pieces in place but they just can’t make it all come together until everyone’s written them off for the season. Maybe that’s why NBC picked up the back half of their episodes since they know the show is capable of making a run. Hopefully, Chuck won’t leave its audience the way the postseason usually leaves Philip Rivers: broken-hearted. End extended sports metaphor.

But what is it about this episode that makes it different from the rest? Why is it so good that we curse Matt Lauer for pre-empting it next week for a dumpy interview with a former president? Stakes, my friend. Or at least what appears to be stakes. Ten dollars says what was lost in this episode will be regained within the next couple. But there’s also ten bucks in meowing loud enough to make that old guy turn around.

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“You cozy?”

Downtown Atlanta after the zombie apocalypse: parking is still a hassle.

The Walking Dead holds a special interest for me. I’ve never read the comic. I’m not really a horror or zombie movie fan. Media properties operating in a dystopic post-apocalypse are exhausting.

But that tank scene at the end was shot two blocks from my old apartment.

Before I moved to LA two months ago, I lived in the metro Atlanta area for 17 years, inside or on the fence (I-285) for 11. I know a lot of people that have either worked in the production as extras, PAs, or other minor roles as well as people that have worked on the post-production of each episode (apparently they shot A LOT of footage in order to get every angle of walker attacks). I’ve been through their struck sets and watched people made up as ghouls amble toward Five Points station. Atlanta is a city I am very familiar with.

For instance, I know that the the scene where Rick rides the horse “into” town (the one also depicted on the poster) shows him on Freedom Parkway heading into downtown while everyone else seems to be heading toward Little 5 Points, as if commercialized bohemians were going to save them. And that he’s facing I-85, not coming from it.

All that aside, I feel like The Walking Dead does do something special for the horror genre. While it doesn’t necessarily tread new ground in an industrial sense, it does do something that horror movies have trouble achieving in their 90-minute running time. Here, they have the opportunity to build complex characters and stories at AMC speed.

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“I love our little give-and-take. Classic Ross and Rachel.”

Nothing can be scary anymore unless it’s a technique developed in Asia.

Dear Chuck, pick a tone. Stick with it. Love, Nick

The highs and lows in this episode have been good (for this season anyway) but, when they start robbing effect from each other, that’s when you know your tone is off. With some of the episodes of late, I was just getting used to conceding that Chuck was going to become the Big Bang Theory of hour-long dramas: broad, broad comedy with a hot girl to anchor it. The spy stuff was going to be the buzzing bee that gave it separation from the rest of its broad comedy brethren, maybe even a bit of heart.

But then some of the Chuck’s mom stuff was good, if eye-rolling material at times. The stakes were raised, the deception and double-crosses created tension, and we had yet another time where the B-story fed into the A-story. People, this had the makings of continuing the good they did last week.

And then it went goofy. The stakes were blunted. And I think it was because they didn’t want to have to decide between their slapstick idea and their real drama. “We can do both, right?”

As I see it, no.

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“No, I will not make out with you.”

Pants!

One can’t really be a closeted Emma Stone fan if one keeps telling everyone about it. There’s some sort of shame in me for being attracted to Emma Stone, not for her level of talent or aesthetic or charismatic presence but, almost solely, for her age. She’s drinking age and almost a full four years above jailbait but, for some reason, I reflect on the fact that, when I turned drinking age, she was dropping out as a freshman in high school and convincing her parents to move to Hollywood. And while she started to get down to the work that eventually brought her to the SNL stage, I spent it putzing around Atlanta, squandering my youth.

The point is the girl was 14 and probably more mature than I was in 2002 and it’s this duality, maturity in youth (aided by a deep husk in her voice), I think, that I detect when I hear the sheepish admissions of men my age and later of a crush on the chick from Superbad. But this SNL sadly reminded me of another popular crushed upon female celebrity (one that people more emphatically admit to): Megan Fox.

Though the two figures don’t share much outside relative age range (Fox is only two years older) and being obsessions of GQ editors, their SNL stints were equally lackluster. My issue with Megan Fox’s run were the skits primarily based on her being either a prostitute, male fantasy character, or herself, and her roles were generally uninspired (she only speaks gibberish Russian-sound-alike in one). While Emma Stone was allowed to play more varied roles, the skits themselves were relatively uninspired and failed to use her ability, save two where she was stepped all over.

So here are some quick reviews of last night’s SNL, ranked good (“Easy A”), bad (“Easy C”), or ugly (“Easy Fail”). You’ll see the list is a bit lopsided.

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“It’s the only thing we’re actually allowed to do together.”

“Hi. My name is Eric. I like young girls.”

Is Eric not icky to anyone else?

Sorry to pull out such an advanced term but Eric is disgusting. Between dating the Lux surrogate and constantly finding himself in compromising positions with a 16-year old, the words he chokes out about things being inappropriate and how he has to steer clear from Lux’s wiles are empty to his actions. And I’m not sure what’s more disturbing: Eric being two shots away from going where only a kid named Bug has gone before or the Lux and Eric ‘shipper tweets I see on the #LUX hashtag. Don’t these people watch E! Investigates? Do they think “the man” is getting in the way the “true love” depicted in the “Hot for Teacher” special?

And seriously, why can’t Math help Lux out? It doesn’t make sense, people. HE LIVES IN THE SAME HOUSE. Math! Come on, man! Save your best friend’s daughter from being molested.

Beyond Mr Daniels being — icky — the rest of the episode is dedicated to one history-revisionist storyline and another painfully obvious one. Cate and Ryan whine about a non-issue and Baze actually treads on some icky territory of his own. All of which is contained in another convenient coincidence where all the adults, for different reasons, are “staycationing” at the same hotel. What are the odds?

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” — if you have the mana to battle the other plainswalkers.”

Special buddies.

This episode would have been way better if it incorporated a Sharktopus. SyFy bastards of science aside, though, I didn’t hate this episode as much as I’ve hated most of this season.

The same problems are still there. The false cliffhangers and the lack of stakes hang like a dark cloud over (however minor) character development and a couple callbacks for the true believers. And, let’s face it, it was a Casey episode so we had a lot of him to look forward to.

But of everything that happened in this episode (and there are a few key plot points), I think the most important revelation of all was the many times that Chuck finally admitted: “This is all my fault.” Yes, Chuck. And it always has been.

Now, I’m not blaming him for getting the Intersect stuck in his head (although putting v2.0 in back in is all on him) so the entire problematic of the series is not his fault but many of the screw-ups, the pain, the suffering, is on the back of one Charles Bartowski. I’ve made the case several times before, and I’ll say it here: Chuck is a jackass.

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“Who the hell is that?”

“In the future, we’ll all be happy despite our rampant alcoholism, self-destructive natures, and our short-sighted family planning. Yay!”

Tomorrowland the Ride is ultimately flawed. The idea of the thing is theoretically interesting and, if you really believe the crafted displays of the future really are visionary, then I can see how you might enjoy the ride. But, of course, as the ride aged and the people starting to live in the years to which the ride makers predicted the change to occur, it became a relic of a bygone era. Instead of being a vision of the future, it was really just a reminder of how silly we were in the past.

And that’s because futurism by amateurs is also horribly flawed: it doesn’t account for cultural development. Usually, these things assume we’ll think the same and we’ll be the same in the future, just more advanced. But that’s not the way evolution works: every part adapts and, while there are threads of constance, the way we consider things will change over the course of years, decades, centuries. While flying vehicles in the past were thought to be the way of the future, the first thing that comes to mind for us when considering the same thing are the various media properties that have since used it to sell us on the future. It’s isn’t science fact; it’s the Jetsons.

Don Draper has his own little Tomorrowland going. The moment he walks into the restaurant and sees his family in the booth, he looks at it almost like a model of his future. This is the paradise, the peace, the comfort he seeks. And while there are differences from what he knows, ultimately, this is just a relic from the past he sells to himself as the utopian future. So while you think about how Don’s actions in this episode are sudden and without motivation, consider his discussion with Anna when they first started discussing Betty in the Christmas flashback sequences. Seem relatively familiar?

When Betty handed him the key to his house, she might as well have said, “Congratulations. Here is the key to the detritus of your past. You can match it to the building blocks of your future.”

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“My memory has Seinfeld money.”

While I think Noel’s summation to the 30 Rock live episode is pretty accurate, I think it’s worth looking at the show in a different lens. To me, the jokes worked (on par with the rest of the season so far at least — which may or may not be good) but I also feel the jokes they planned for this episode would have only worked for live (like this opportunity is something the writers have been waiting for).

Noel mentioned the tremendously underwhelming live episode of E.R., attempting a vérité style for a show predicated on drama. Why the episode failed is that nothing particularly “live” happened: the whole show went as planned and the only thing to come out of it was the accomplishment of getting everything off without a hitch despite the pressure of one take. Drama is the incorrect format for live television (soap operas did it out of necessity with their grueling schedules). Comedy is the only sane lens to view live television. And the modern example of this, and the one closest to 30 Rock in attempt, is The Drew Carey Show.

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Let’s take it down. What?

Saturday Night Live is busted. It’s not broken forever and the format isn’t dead. But it limps into every Saturday evening on the backs of Weekend Update, The Lonely Island, maybe the musical guest, and whichever topical host that wants to shill their product that week. The show is burdened by unfunny sketches and a desperate search for its identity. We are in the midst of building years for the series (as it has gone through several times in its history) and, while the writers try to rediscover their voice and themselves, the show is grasping for hooks anywhere they can.

Notice I said “topical” hosts. This typically means whatever male or female actor who has a new movie coming out or a television project on the network with some synergy value. But with hosts like Tom Brady, Michael Phelps, and Taylor Swift stepping into Alec Baldwin and Christopher Walken’s shoes, the host position isn’t just the coveted prize of any quick-thinking, steady-nerved actor but is a contribution of fame to anyone remotely recognizable.

It speaks to our times that viewers could amass enough clout to campaign for a woman they mostly knew as Rose Nylund to host the show in the twilight of her life. Betty White was a brilliant choice for Saturday Night Live host, even if most of the participants in the campaign weren’t aware of her decades of legit and television history before spinning tales of St. Olaf. It was remarkable that a grassroots movement could affect the casting decision of an institution. They never needed help before. But that is something that identifies the current paradigm of television audiences. We’ve gone from accepting what little we were given to turning the channel on something we don’t like to attempting to dictate what we consume, no longer viewing the medium (and those in charge) as being walled-off from the masses. And in an industry where viewing habits are shaking the foundations of an aging, if not antiquated, business model, the industry is willing to let the people speak (a little bit anyway).

But it may have opened the door to madness. Facebook is flooded with nominees to host SNL from Stephen Colbert to Joe Rogan to, er, Blake. And, of course, there’s nothing wrong with these pages inherently. Sure, the unified effort to push Betty White back into the spotlight has to splinter a little bit among all these choices but pages like this have always been around, just no one expected much of them (although I fully support the Nathan Fillion and Bruce Campbell efforts).

Among these efforts is one to place James Roday and Dule Hill as joint hosts. And I support it, if only because this might be their golden opportunity to do it and it could mean a deconstruction of SNL‘s hobbled format. But I fear the expectation of what a desperate network might require if this thing is successful. It could mean great things. Or it could be completely disastrous for the franchise.

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“Just the sight of a man and a bottle of Two-Buck Chuck and I start ovulating.”

“Oh, good. You look just as uncomfortable on my show as I do.”

Ladies and gentlemen, this was WB/CW meta-porn.

Obviously from my many mentions of Gilmore Girls and fewer (but important) mentions of Dawson’s Creek and Felicity, I was a fan of the late-90s/early-00s music-with-lyrics-fueled, fast-talking, youth-exploitive, hour-long dramas of the WB. In fact, what appealed me to start watching Life Unexpected in the first place was the constant comparisons to those dramas, particularly Gilmore Girls and Everwood. Sadly, when I arrived at the pilot, I realized that the only thing it shared with those shows is a mother who had a child at 16 and a bunch of adults that didn’t want to grow up. Maybe some fast-talking, definitely a singer-songwriter crooning lyrics over dialogue, but Life Unexpected hasn’t really lived up to the series to which it was compared.

You notice that I never mentioned One Tree Hill as one of those series I adored as a high school senior through early college. Because that show bugged the crap out of me. I liked seeing Tristan from Gilmore Girls (aka Chad Michael Murray) but he’s always had trouble picking roles that suited his abilities. One Tree Hill almost fit him if it wasn’t hampered by elementary dialogue, ridiculous overacting, and characters based almost exclusively on archetypes or stereotypes (like Lucas’s best friend, Skills).

Cringeworthy this show was. Maybe is. I haven’t watched more than an episode a season since. So, imagine my confusion (although I’d heard about it from various places) when I learned the show was flung forward in the future where Nathan and Haley have a writer’s soapbox of a child (you know, the kind that are wise beyond their years and announce the inner-workings of the characters around them) and I didn’t recognize anyone else (except Mouth who looks exactly the same). I don’t want to speak to how the series is telling its story but this particular episode seemed to dispense with typical structure. “Nobody Taught Us to Quit” felt more like walking into a soap opera with stories that are constantly ongoing, so much so that they have no need for intra-episode arcs. Instead, each scene is written like the conventional coda of a WB-series (cue the singer-songwriter, discuss interpersonal issues in overly-articulate platitudes, swell the emotion). It made the episode so. Long. And there really wasn’t much here for the crossover.

So all that WB torch-passing stuff was left to Life Unexpected.

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