Monsters of Television

“He’s like the guardian angel of all the chefs.”

I’m going to go ahead and say it: I think The Next Food Network Star has been a massive failure for Food Network. At least in terms of creating stars.

With the start of its sixth season, the show has created one legitimate star in Guy Fieri, host of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives and Guy’s Big Bite (and, on NBC, Minute to Win It). Its other winners haven’t fared so well. The winner two seasons ago, Aaron McCargo (aka Big Daddy of Big Daddy’s House) (no, it’s not a Tyler Perry show), has done okay for himself in the network’s Saturday morning line-up, but hasn’t really broken out for the network.

The rest of its winners? Cancelled. Quit. Barely existing.

So why does the network keep putting audiences through this show? Is it so Bobby Flay can annoy me some more (and cash another paycheck (does he even work at his restaurants any longer?))? Is it so Bob Tuschman can continue to challenge Anderson Cooper for the Silver Fox of TV Award? Or is it so Susie Fogelson can…I don’t know, frown a lot?

It’s none of the reasons. Go back up to the first line. Notice the qualifying phrase? Yep, The Next Food Network Star doesn’t exist to find a star. It exists to sell audience on the idea of the network. It exists to showcase how the network goes through a(n absurd) casting process and then sell it to their advertisers. This way, even if the they don’t find someone that works (and they’ve only hit platinum blonde once), they’ve still made a buck off of all these people. Read more »

“Then what is the point of you?”

You will not be sleeping during the episode. (But don't they look cute?)

Dream episodes are always tricky. They can come off as overwrought or feel like a cheat. After the vapid “Vampires of Venice,” I was eager for a strong episode, and I was happily rewarded with “Amy’s Choice,” which does a number of things well on a number of levels. It’s a smartly constructed chamber-drama of sorts with some very nice character beats to be found through all the birds chirping and dangerous old people.

Due to the preview, I though the episode would be divisive, though I don’t think it ended up being that way. I think the challenge of the episodes come in how you want to interpret the reveal at the end, and what impact that has on your perception of the characters. It’s an inkblot of sorts, I think. Read more »

“This whole business needs a little Michael Westen.”

I didn’t watch season 3 of Burn Notice too closely. I watched the summer portion with a fair amount of dedication, but the winter portion somehow slipped by me. When I tuned in for episodes, I wondered where Detective Paxson went and why Gilroy really mattered that much (he felt like a stall). It made the season a bit of a mess for me, but the finale won me back with its oddly disturbing final shot and an eagerness to see if the arc for the season would be a little clearer.

“Friends and Enemies” is a decent season premiere. It essentially lays the groundwork for the coming season with the standard Client of the Week plot as the primary focus. It’s a structure the show has used for most of its run, but one I’m hoping the show, with its set-up this season, will eventually begin to integrate better. Read more »

“Madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go.”

Just in case you were wondering, he plays Hamlet as crazy

Tackling THE Shakespearean tragedy for the blog’s first DVD review and for the first review of a TV movie is perhaps a bit overly ambitious. Much like any staging of Hamlet, done in any medium, a review of Hamlet must figure out what new things it can say about a canonical piece of literature (no qualifier such as “Western” or “world” needed). Indeed, critiquing the script is pretty pointless (sure, I could complain about which quarto the production used, but I’m not that much of a Shakespeare nerd), so you’re left deciding if the production’s version of the script offers a new spin, if there is cultural relevancy, and whether or not the actors make the script engaging or collapse under its immense weight.

This particular adaption, based on the Royal Shakespeare Company’s staging from their 2008 season with the majority of that cast returning for the film, works very well even if it’s a bit conservative in its staging (compared, say, to Branagh’s opus, the gold standard of filmed versions). However, it’s well worth a watch if only for some fine performances. Read more »

“But fuckin’ community theatre? It’s like a delusion of a delusion.”

I adore a well-done farce. All the running around, the mistaken identities, the uptick in speed as the script hurdles towards its climax. It’s all great fun. (And one of the reasons I enjoy both Frasier and The Nanny.) But it takes a great deal of things for a farce to work, including a cast that is on their toes, a quick script, and smart director. Even if one of those things is only slightly off, the entire thing crumbles.

Thankfully, this is not the case in Party Down‘s “‘Not On Your Wife’ Opening Night.” Indeed, the show’s stab at farce never lets up, not even for a moment. And as much as I loved “Steve Guttenberg’s Birthday Party,” I think this episode is the best of the season thus far. Read more »

In perhaps a sign that we made it (though perhaps we should wait and see if we get invited to another one), Monsters of Television was approached to participate in a conference call with actress Sarah Douglas (known to some of you as Ursa or maybe as Pamela Lynch or perhaps as Queen Taramis) and director Pearry Teo. They are, respectively, the star and director of the Syfy Original Movie Witchville (which Nick and I live-tweeted when it premiered)

Despite some hiccups with Ms. Douglas’ cellphone (which resulted in me getting tossed back to the end of the question queue), the interview was a successful first outings for us. Below is the entire interview, including the questions from the other participants. Questions from Monsters of Television will be in bold and italics.

Any errors are entirely those of the folks who did the transcription. If you see a glaring error, let me know and I’ll correct it.

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“Show me the plan.”

It feels like season finales this year are aiming more for epilogues to their seasons than final chapters, if such a distinction makes sense. Some of it is industrial, networks ordering extra episodes, either a little too late to be incorporated into the first bit of the season (like Chuck) or ordered a few more than was originally expected (like Community). As a result, episodes that seem to function like finales become the penultimates, resulting in episodes that don’t pack the finale punch.

The Good Wife isn’t too different. “Running” isn’t as fiery an episode as I found last week’s “Hybristophilia”, an episode that hits all those season finale requirements of character maneuvering and arc resolutions. Indeed, it seems like the show decided to devote an episode to each of its arcs: the law firm and Peter’s trial were resolved last week, and this week follows through on the romantic entanglements among characters as well as set up Peter’s political aims next season.

Perhaps my lack of engagement stems that I don’t find either arc as interesting as the ones last week (though Peter’s arcs are connected), or that there was little in the ways of suspense in either arc. And it also could be that this episode, for the first time since I started watching, had me wishing I had been watching since the first episode. Read more »

“A bomb threat is a serious matter. A union lawyer is more serious.”

That “Rubber Room” serves as the (probable) series finale for the Law & Order mothership is, for my money, a good thing. As an episode, it doesn’t hit that L&O bingo I’ve discussed before (no major guest stars or traveling around the city for what I feel is are industrial reasons I’ll get to in a moment), but it does strike that balance between procedural and character that I feel the show does so well. At the same time, “Rubber Room” still feels like the show hasn’t moved out of the late 90s while addressing contemporary issues.

All in all, it encapsulates a standard Law & Order episode, and I don’t think the show should’ve ended with anything else. I’ll give some thoughts about this as a finale at the end, but I still feel the episode itself needs to be addressed as a non-finale, not only since it wasn’t intended as such but because I feel like even an intended finale would still be just anotherL&O episode. Read more »

“It’s just so much easier to let the Universe decide.”

Maybe that’s the mentality the show has decided to take, because it’s the only thing that makes sense. I imagine a conversation in the writers room goes something like this:

“So we get Robin and Barney together until Hippie Intern wears a tie!”

“Perfect!”

2 months later…

“Guys! Hippie Intern is wearing a tie!”

“Gotta break ’em up. Call Alan Thicke!”

Perhaps my annoyance at “Doppelgangers” is that I found the preceding episode to appear so promising, a return to form. And instead I get an episode where Ted dyes his hair, Barney ends up encouraging kids for Marshall and Lily (the true protagonists of this show, I’ve decided), and the show tries to pass this off as growth, but it’s growth the show can’t fully claim.
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