Monsters of Television

Really, guys? A clip show? Of all the self-indulgent — Ricky Gervais is rolling over in his grave right now. He heard about it, dug his own grave, and is spinning around in it. It’s mainly ceremonial and not any indication of his health. But you get the point.

Why a cllip show, guys? So we can catch up on the complicated storylines? Get everyone up to speed? Or was it so we could see how good this show used to be and reminisce about better times? Either way, we get filler. Weak.

Devon: “Is that your spy training?”
Chuck: “Duck Hunt. Nintendo.”

Angie Harmon can tip me over the side of the building anytime. Unless she really intends to drop me. That would be a real mixed blessing.

My initial reaction to this episode was relatively harsh compared to the other reviews I’m reading. And maybe they have a point. I tend to be a little harder on Chuck but only out of love. The cast, the situations, the chemistry could make this show a flaming diaster but the combinations are all right and the show works, even deigning to attain emotional peaks some shows can only hope for. Just look at how dedicated the fanbase is and imagine if it was on a network people actually watched. However, it needs to continue and even aim higher. Seth Meyers might have been joking about the pressure on Chuck, but, since NBC is run by crazed carnie junkies who will slash and hack at their schedule with reckless and self-destructive abandon, the show can’t wander. I want to see Chuck persevere.

So let’s give this thing another shot.

Captain Awesome is strapped to an office chair on the top of a tall building. Angie Harmon is there (going by the name Sydney) in a little black number tipping him precariously off the edge trying to get him to say — I don’t know. Maybe admit that he’s a spy? But Devon is not a spy, even if hot girls tell him otherwise.

Read more »

So there I am, watching the 16-year old lead of the show blow out candles on her birthday cake, surrounded by well-intentioned well-wishers, but let’s face it, they’re all complete strangers she’s known for two days. With one candle left, one of the strangest of the strangers makes sure to note, “You have to blow them all out or your wish won’t come true.” She looks around at the biological parents flanking her, the biological parents that until the day before yesterday were completely absent from her life, two otherwise childless adults that have taken to her with exceptional speed. She looks them up and down and I see the grin start to curl onto her heretofore snarky lips.

“No,” I say. “No, don’t say it. Don’t say it.” She looks back at the stranger, smiles brightly and says it. “It already has.”

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

This is the show compared to Everwood, Juno, and Gilmore Girls for its unconventional familial situations and witty writing. I had a lot of trouble finding it. Not to say there aren’t glimmers of hope but — okay, there was one part that Lux (that’s the girl) stops morning show DJ Kate (the mom that put her up for adoption) when she’s pouring her heart out to her about how she wants to make up for not being there and Lux tells her, “You were there. On the radio.” Even my girlfriend, who once got teary-eyed during a holiday Publix ad, gagged right there.

While some of the banter is witty and some of the character situations have potential for depth and poignant drama, they need to purge the saccharine. Watch when the aforementioned shows hit their stride (see Everwood and Gilmore Girls late-Season 1 and Season 2) and skip the overdone stuff from all of them (see Gilmore Girls, Season 3). I have it on good authority that this series is going to get good. It needs to. Because lines like “he really puts the ‘ew’ in Stewie” and “it’s not a girl scout … it’s a girl” are not going to cut it.

Josh Schwartz über producer tweeted that, in his humble opinion, this episode is the best episode to date. A tall order given a series with a lot of pretty decent episodes. And this episode taught me many things.

One of them is that Josh Schwartz cannot be trusted.

While some information was revealed, like Brandon Routh as the Zippo-obsessed guy that was sitting on Beckman’s desk (Schaub? Shaw? Shoal?), there was also a lot of messy dialogue and the plot didn’t really do anything but demonstrate that The Ring has some really fancy equipment and the Chuck has not missed a step on the whining. Seriously, terrorist organizations need to stop targeting Chuck’s family members or they need to get Chuck in some Pampers.

Now, it wasn’t all bad. On a superficial level, it did have Angie Harmon and she’s a stone cold fox. And there’s always the Yvonne Strahovski factor. In spite of his “it’s my family” temper tantrums, Chuck grew up a lot to protect Devon. And we did see how Chuck is a loose cannon and how dangerous he can be given focus. And Buy More Fight Club was cool. Finally, they’re starting to build Morgan’s character a little bit beyond the man-child lackey to Charles Bartowski.

But, come on, Schwartz. Be a responsible producer. Don’t overhype shows. There wasn’t even any Bon Iver.

Wilson: “She no longer thinks we’re gay. Now she thinks we’re mendacious dirtbags.”
House: “Mendacious dirtbag does come much more naturally to me.”

“I’m really glad that worked on zero evidence. Otherwise, how stupid would I have looked? Pret-ty stupid.”

Drug deal in a wet, dilapidated parking garage at night. Four guys standing around the back end of an SUV with bricks of something-er-other neatly packaged in the back. I know there’s an air of privacy that needs to be maintained for these kinds of things but, one day, I’d like to see someone do a drug deal in a nice park during the day. Maybe that’s how they came up with Weeds. Anyway, roles of the four men are soon revealed: Seller, Buyer, Henchman with a Gun (for the buyer), and The Patient (technically at this point he’s Henchman without a Gun but let’s just cut the sheepdip and name him what he is to this episode). Some tough negotiating leads to Henchman with a Gun to pull his piece, demanding respect for his boss. The Patient tries to wrestle the gun away from him, and Henchman ends up shooting himself in the foot but The Patient crumples to the ground, takes a lick to the skull from the asphalt. He has no other external injuries.

The Patient and the Seller go to the clinic instead of the ER to stitch up Patient’s head wound and House picks up on clues (no trauma, gun powder on his sleeve) that he has loud-noise-induced vertigo. How he proves it: when Patient tries to walk away, House slaps his cane against the bed and the Patient goes down like a Tennessee Scare Goat. And thus we have a new case.

Read more »

“The sun is up! God can see us now!”

With all the dirty pool going on in late-night recently, 30 Rock is in a prime position to put all this into perspective for us. As an outpost of reflexive network satire, and probably on “Team Conan,” the show is going to have a field day with all that’s been going down. But let’s get through the episodes they already have in the can, shall we?

“No. Seriously. We’re good.”

Winter hiatus is over (because this show is nothing if not meta) and Liz finds Jack in the lobby, spins him around and asks him about his holiday. The beauty of Jack is not that he’s necessarily more elite than everyone, just that he finds snobbier ways to do the awful things everyone else in the cast does without pretense. For instance, Jack spent his New Year’s Eve hwarfing in the bushes. One of the writers for TGS might have that same scenario after a bender of cough medicine and Gentleman’s Jack (like you do) but Mr Donaghy engages in communal purge only after sniffing the horrible scent of recently uncorked BCE wine. Somehow classier. Liz, meanwhile, drunkenly outed her gay cousin and Jenna met with James Franco’s agent to “hammer out” the details of a contractual romance with Mr Franco. All of these are accompanied by 30 Rock‘s trademark flashbacks (like Family Guy but, you know, relevant) until Tracey announces he thinks he might have conceived the daughter he’s wanted for the past couple of weeks. The other three stop Tracey before he gets to describe it, the swish-pan coded as an actual quick camera movement instead of transition to a flashback. See? Meta. And, within the scope of the teaser, we have all our stories in a nice, neat package.

Well, almost all of them. Jack realizes after the credits that he must have drunk-dialed Nancy (his married childhood crush that he reconnected with before the hiatus). After some detective work by Cerie on YouFace, Jack realizes that, in order to save face (and there is little that more important to Jack than face), he must delete the message he probably left her while she was on vacation. Kenneth gets to play sidekick.

Read more »

We’re all waiting. With everything that’s been happening with Comcast, Conan, Leno, and the crash and burn that is NBC, 30 Rock has been that bastion of satire poised in the right position with courageous-enough showrunners to address the comedy of errors that is their network. So we wait with bated breath for the episode (episodes? arc? season?) that addresses the mess Jeff Zucker and company have made of the once stalwart network. This is not that episode.

But it’s pretty good anyway.

Though it doesn’t have heads of entertainment making the self-destructive decisions that we know will eventually come, it does have Jack chasing down a childhood love’s answering machine to delete a drunk dial (which, of course, because it’s Jack, is probably more eloquent than any of us could make sober), Tracy coming to terms with the fact that he likes to have sex with the daughters of others (illuminating the grim truth of having a daughter of his own), and Jenna having a contractual romance with James Franco (to hide his obsession with a Japanese body pillow name Komiko). Also, the family member Liz outs over the holidays comes to New York and indirectly introduces her to the possibility of a threesome. Seriously.

While this episode was funny and I know it’s a little much to ask for a rush piece to capitalize on the times, I’m really pumped to see what they do. Sure, there are all kinds of storylines and characters that they’re focusing on since they’ve been writing this season since well before all this recent drama started. Whatever. I’m starting the hype machine now. Step up, Fey.

Let me introduce myself: I am the only person left in the United States that has not seen an episode of American Idol. I would say it’s just me and the visually-impaired but I’m sure they’ve at least sat in front of the television to listen to people try to impress others by being loud and wavering their voices. Not me. Didn’t care for it. My only contact with American Idol was through the sarcastic gaze of The Soup.

Is that something to be proud of? Am I a better person for not watching American Idol until the 9th season, the first season minus Paula Abdul, the last season for Simon Cowell, and the inaugural season for Ellen DeGeneres to join up in Hollywood? The easy answer is yes. But maybe not.

First of all, people that have sat through eight seasons of this must have nerves of steel. The show is exhausting. In fictional narratives, the scenes of intensity are organized and spread out. Every two minutes on this show there’s some sort of manipulative/heartbreaking/heartwarming/awkward scene that, in non-reality television, would probably not matter all that much. But, because these are real people, the mood intensifies. And it’s hard to watch.

And the singing, oh God, the singing. The bad ones are assumed to be painful but the good ones are just as rough. When people sing in my general area I don’t know where to look. And I get that awkward feeling just watching the auditions, like I need to be doing something else in order to cut the anxiety. My house has never been cleaner.

And it’s so long. Are all these shows going to be two hours? It gets repetitive. Here’s a singer that struggled and but is finally making a dream come true. Here’s a goofball without a shot. Here’s the unassuming, small-voiced wonder kid that can belt it out to the rafters. Uh-oh, Simon’s getting testy. I understand that they want to feature every city that auditioned but — man, it hurts.

And this isn’t even the competition yet. I already don’t really like Kara. Is that bad? Do people like her? I’m not sold on her as a judge. I’m sure she has credentials (though I’m not exactly sure what Simon’s credentials are either) but she drives me up a wall. There was a dude in Boston that got on her nerves and I thought he was the coolest guy there. You know, old what’s his name? With the emo glasses and all the waiting? Nah, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, so I’m going to have to stick around with these judges for the entirety of the season, which, from my outside experience, lasts about forever. Kara annoys me. Randy kind of annoys me. Simon is fine. Whatever. I haven’t liked Victoria Beckham since she went on The Daily Show with Baby Spice and told John Stewart he wasn’t funny (you know, shortly before she turned into an alien) but she’s just a guest judge. What I’m really waiting for is the main event: NPH.

So. Am I a better person for not watching American Idol before? My reason for not watching was because I didn’t cotton to the idea of choosing an Idol and screaming and buying into it. I also, generally, hate the music. But I think what the producers do, especially in the beginning stages, before the actual competition, is focus more on the American part of the title. They attempt a cross-section of middle-America. Is it exploitative? Maybe. They’ll probably say these cats set themselves up. I’m not so sure. But maybe I’ll start to understand why this show garners so many fans for people that really haven’t proven anything except they have decent enough voices to compete on television. Or maybe I’ll never understand. I’ll keep you posted.

UPDATE: Credentials —

• Simon: Music publisher/producer
• Randy: Producer/A&R
• Kara: Songwriter
• Victoria: Posh Spice

Devon: “Nothing against married life but I could use some real excitement.”
Chuck: “Devon, you’re an adventure sports cardiologist.”
Devon: “Whatever, man! I could do that in my sleep!”

We start off promising. The year is 2000 and, instead of checking out gross cadavers on the first day of medical school, Awesome and Ellie are learning how their bodies work in a broom closet. Uncharacteristic of Ellie (and she notes it) to make out with a stranger when she should feel obligated to do something else, the fact that Devon can pull her away is already a sign of something different for her.

I know what you're thinking. No, this isn't some early soft-core work for Sarah Lancaster. Sorry to disappoint.

And it appears like it might be something different for us: we see a different side of Ellie and it takes 90 whole seconds before Chuck is even mentioned. Even when Chuck does show up, the focus is still on Ellie and Awesome so it seems like, possibly maybe, we might see Ellie do something other than whine about Chuck (since the wedding’s over with). Nah. Now she just whines about how the passion has already left her marriage of six or seven months (give or take).

There are always a few weak characters in an ensemble cast (especially one as large and diverse as this one) but the writers really seem to be missing an opportunity with Sarah Lancaster. If you watch her, she makes the best out of her part on the show and has some of the most natural dialogue execution in the cast. Maybe the writers think of her as “Gift Shop Girl” from Scrubs, not “Madison” from Everwood, and don’t feel she can handle a meatier part. Maybe they’re setting her up for a larger role. I hoping more the latter than the former. Because Ellie is dangerously close to being more nagging neighbor than essential part of Chuck’s life.

Anyway, so Devon is in the know about Chuck’s extracurricular spy career (see Season 2, “Chuck vs The Colonel”) and his interest of late is escalating. Chuck keeps blowing him off but his chance to help out is coming. Just as Chuck is called to the Castle, Awesome is called to the ER and their jobs are to be intertwined. Team Chuck’s mission is to protect the premier of a small Communist country (Costa Gravas) who is being treated for heart trouble in Los Angeles (guess who his doctor is). Casey is particularly irked (more than usual) by the nature of the mission since he, personally, had been sent to kill the man several times in the ’80s. But now, on the eve of democratic elections, the man the people of Costa Gravas call “Angel de la Muerte” has to protect a man he once had to assassinate.

Read more »

Morgan: “Look, all I’m saying is there has to be, what, 2 million ladies
in the City of Angels? They can’t all say no to us.”

My girlfriend has a giant crush on Jess Mariano. Every time he shows up on re-runs of Gilmore Girls (appearances far and few between now that ABC Family’s syndication is into the later seasons), she all but swoons for the leather-jacketed rebel of Stars Hollow. But she refuses to watch Heroes and is disgusted when she reads about him in Us Weekly (especially when he’s dating the considerably younger Hayden Panettiere). Her crush is on the character alone which works out for me since he’s fictional and can’t show up with Distillers tickets to whisk her away.

Sarah Walker does roughly the same for me (minus the near swoon — I keep my swoons to myself) and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone. But never have I been so willing to watch a crush (in real life or television life) get with another dude.

“Not in front of the guys, love. I just shot a bloke in the face! Let me have my moment!”

“Chuck vs the Three Words” starts off with a Vinnie Jones that I didn’t even recognize until the middle of the episode (unrecognizable, as Noel says, with hair and a smile) smoking some dude for carrying a garish gold brief case (obviously the new Anonymous Object of Importance). He also gets all gushy with someone on the phone, playing that “me-too-don’t-make-me-say-I-love-you-in-front-of-the-guys” game. Cut to that night when our old friend Carina (Mini Anden) is having drinks with Sarah at “the club.” Carina wants to talk about Chuck. Sarah does not want to talk about Chuck, especially since she’s broken the “cardinal rule of spying” (as elicited by Roan Montgomery in Season 2: “never fall in love”). Meanwhile, Chuck and Morgan decide to leave their sparse bachelor pad to go out to the club (the exact same club Sarah and Carina are at — what are the odds?). Suddenly, Vinnie comes out of nowhere and starts fondling Carina (with his hands and with squishy pet names). Chuck flashes on Vinnie and tries to warn everyone that he’s a bad arms dealer man. Relax, Chuck. That’s just Carina’s fake fiancee and mark. And thus begins our mission.

The mission is to get the gold case during Carina and Vinnie’s engagement party from a highly secure area with lasers and opportunities for Chuck to use Intersect 2.0. But he can’t. Because he’s too emotional. So let the inopportune whining begin.

Read more »