Monsters of Television

“This is a crowning achievement in madness.”

My fondness for ’80s dance and music is limited. I’ve been known to enjoy Huey Lewis, his News, and the works of Mr Phil Collins but there isn’t much I enjoy from the oversynthed, factory-made one-hit wonders that more often define the decade than the masters that rose from it, most of whom are either dead, scandalized, or have aged into crazy. I’ll let you decide which one Madonna is.

But, when I say factory-made, I don’t just mean that it has that sheen of being mechanically-reproduced. It’s also specifically-formulated to move anyone to dance that isn’t cynically-precluded to stone-face its charm. So while I wasn’t especially looking forward to ’80s Night on Dancing with the Stars, its arrival in a dance competition was inevitable and, therefore, acceptable.

What a relief it is, though, for the contestants to step up their game this week. The dances last week were so rough, so sloppy, so UGH, that people limped their way into their highest scores of the competition (I’m looking at you, Bono). But this week the people came to play and everyone showed some improvement. Mostly everyone. I’m pretty sure Carson’s not going to get any better. He’s running on adorable fumes.

Let’s go through the contestants. Showtime, Synergy! Read more »

“Stop those delinquents.“

Still with the kind of boringly generic stuff, but this time coupled with head-scratching plotting. Young Justice continues to be an adventure show that does not terribly interested in being much more than that, and I suppose it’s just time I accepted that.

But it’s hard to move out of that mindset. I think my problem with Young Justice boils down to a lack of personality. Say what you will about Teen Titans or Batman: The Brave and the Bold (and you should say good things about both, by the way), but at least they had (using past tense since Brave and the Bold is on its way out to make room for the CGI-styled Beware the Batman) style, verve, and made an attempt to do more than just standard heroes versus villains (with occasional dashes of romance mixed into Teen Titans).

So, if I judge from just that perspective, then I suppose “Revelation” is a fun episode with lots of fighting. But, really, I was just bored and kind of cringed at the less-than-inspired writing for the Joker (and Brent Spiner’s painfully pitchy performance). Read more »

“Hey, JC. You taking requests?”

Last season’s finale was the worst. The big ending (spoiler alert — although you’re reading a review for the beginning of season two so season one spoilers are your fault) was dumb for a lot of reasons. Personally, it was ridiculous because I’m from Atlanta so I know the CDC doesn’t look like that (it’s a boring government building near the Emory campus) and I don’t have any emotional attachment to the Cobb Energy Centre getting exploded by bad CG. Narratively, it was terrible because the ending told us nothing that we didn’t already know and really only served to thin out the cast (which, admittedly, needed to be done) and making an already bleak forecast for our heroes even bleaker. How much does hopelessness make you want to come back and watch a show?

There was a lot of industrial drama, showrunner changes, and network chicanery during the off-season and I was curious about how it would affect the show, because, frankly, it couldn’t really get much worse than how it devolved over the course of six episodes. There was a lot of promise from the beginning of using the series to explore more than just raw survival of the human spirt. Pun totally intended, there was an opportunity to flesh the situation out more, to develop characters beyond archetypes and create a different kind of dilemma that the horror movie doesn’t have time to work out. Instead, we got a six-hours-long B-movie epic.

I like being right. More than I like barbecue. More than I like watching Green Bay win. Almost as much as I love gelato. I love being right. So I wanted to tune in to The Walking Dead season two and see it slop onto the screen in a hot mess. I wanted to see the hot garbage from last season continue into this one and justify my desire not to watch it. What I found, however, is a show trying to regain its balance. And a show that may have been studying Lost in the off-season for survivor dynamics. And I really like Lost. Dang it. I really wanted this show to not be interesting. Read more »

I feel like I should say a big “thank you “ to the writers of The Vampire Diaries. Now THAT is what I’ve been looking for. Is there a single character that doesn’t have raised stakes? Well, Bonnie, maybe. But even Matt—yes, Matt!—does something awesome this episode. He becomes a real character, who wants something, who isn’t afraid to make tough choices, and who refuses to let others lead him by the nose. Without going into too many details (to avoid spoilers on the front page), let’s review.

Stefan? He’s f’d, basically, and this is a good thing from a narrative perspective. The best thing about the change that Stefan experiences is that it directly impacts other characters, driving the plot in a really upsetting way (you know, “upsetting” in a good way).

Damon? He makes a series of choices this episode that have serious ramifications. And he’s totally adorable while doing it. Damon basically solidifies his loyalties, and they are exactly where they should be.

Jeremy? Takes responsibility for his new abilities. And he partners with Katherine! How cool is that?

Tyler—oh, my baby Tyler. Let us not speak of it because it is so upsetting (“upsetting” in a bad way). But obviously, Awesome Vampire Caroline’s concerned look at the end of the episode suggests this storyline is far from done, meaning Caroline and I both expect it to get worse.

Bonnie mostly reacts this episode. She is given little to do but to follow everyone else’s lead. The fact that she follows Matt—and that he knows what he is doing—is pretty remarkable. Rebekah also sits around following orders, but I suppose she could still become a useful character. Or she may be another Bonnie. Or worse, Rose.  But TVD specializes in redeeming awful characters, so jury is still out on Rebekah.

Elena witnesses something awful. And she refuses to let Damon help her forget. I’m really excited to see how the psychological torture of the next few weeks affects her.

Most shocking? Klaus finally DID something! I know, I can’t believe it either. He finally grew up to become a real bad guy. And then he gets one-upped by Damon, returning some balance to this battle. A bad guy that is too powerful leaves the viewer with little of interest—bad guys, too, need a weaknesses, or the tension drops out.

The only downside to this episode was the absence of Ric.  But I imagine he will have a stronger role to play in the weeks to come.

It took TVD a few weeks, but they have finally brought all our characters back together, and it was epic.  Look below as I use strange modifiers to describe this episodes–words like “subtle” and “elegant”.  Despite its many other virtues, these are not words that one usually associates with TVD, meaning this episode delivers in new and unexpected ways.

Read more »

“This is the darkest, most terrible timeline.“

I feel like I’ve written this review before, as my immediate thought was to discuss, once again, how the show can deploy genre homages/high concept episodes and do them well: a strong character core is needed for the episode to work, otherwise, while it can be entertaining, it just becomes some postmodern pastiche. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but when you have a group of characters such as these, and when you tell stories about how their actions impact one another, homages without the core result in hollowness.

“Remedial Chaos Theory”, like “Modern Warfare” in season 1, gets this. I think the show dodged this to some extent through season 2, resulting in probably why I wasn’t as in love with as much as others. But not only does “Remedial Chaos Theory” understand the need for those characters beats, but its character-driven nature of the episode (or, rather, its “character-less”-driven nature) actually blends the kooky ambition strength of “Modern Warfare” with the emotional elegance of “Mixology Certification” and the result is one of the show’s best episodes so far. Read more »

“Take that, hyphens.”

Pro tip: don’t watch Season 3 Psych right before watching Season 6 Psych. It’ll only depress you.

That’s not to say the first episode of this season is a disappointment. It’s the Psych that you love if a little dulled by years of repetition. Shawn’s a little fatter, Juliet is a little weaker (her character is, more or less, a reaction shot to her male colleagues), and Gus doesn’t say “What” nearly enough.

But the basic pieces are still there and, dare I say, with some stakes raised. I don’t want to speculate about what’s planned for the rest of the season (since, last time I did, I predicted another “yips” story arc that amounted to nothing) but Psych has two trump cards sitting in its extra-pocketed sleeves ready to play for instant game-changers and we get a sneak peek at both of them in this episode.

I don’t want to speculate but I will. I want one or both of these things to happen. Because, unless there’s a plan for a wedding season finale, we need something else to look forward to. We’ve waited long enough. Read more »

“It was all Temple of Doom.”

It took me four weeks to realize it but this show is absurd.

Granted, I don’t have a trained eye but I do have SOME eyes (two of them) and I’m watching some of these dancers flop across the stage and all I can do is grit my teeth. I shake my head through most of these until JR or Ricki or Chynna come out. And even Chynna crapped the bed.

But the judges are willing to arbitrarily fling points at people they like. No one scores below a six. People that completely fail score above 20 (mind you Chaz was scoring mid-teens at the beginning of this competition) and the people that stumble their way through dance every week are patted on the back and told “It’s going to be okay because you try real hard.”

One of the things I noted that I liked last week was the lack of in-fighting and animosity between players. But Nancy Grace and Chaz Bono are being treated like they took bronze in a fourth-grade relay race. “You try so hard! Good job! Here’s the third highest score we’ve given all night! A for effort!” Maybe the judges could be a little more ruthless. Maybe we can stop the baby games. This isn’t Biggest Loser. Hurt some feelings.

What I’m saying is that the field for Movie Week was really soft. I mean, really soft. People limped to their highest scores of the competition. Points were tossed around so much that they had to give Ricki 10s because they had no where else to go (to be fair, she did have the best dance of the night).

With Kristin ducking out early, it seems like the judges are gaming the system by handing out points, padding the voting numbers. Shenanigans. Let it play out. Let Kristin be the cautionary tale for audience participation and do your jobs as judges: tear these people apart.

Let’s talk about these miserable performances: Read more »

Judges be crazy.

I just don’t understand the scoring for the competition in general but especially for this evening. I’m not sure why they even have paddles 1-5 because nothing scores below a six no matter how egregiously a star has crapped the bed. And Chynna Phillips crapped the bed. She looked like she was loopy on ‘ludes the whole dance and somehow STILL came away with more points than Carson, whose dance really didn’t seem all that bad.

It’s Movie Night on Dancing with the Stars which means a host of everything Len hates (and, therefore, I hate) about this show which include gimmicky openings and flashy schtick for every dance. Some did it well (JR’s Pink Panther wasn’t bad, Ricki Lake’s Psycho was great) and some were train wrecks (Flash Gordon? Really, Nancy?). I hate to say that I’ve become a dance purist by watching this show but really it’s just that any opportunity I get to roll my eyes at Nancy Grace and Rob Kardashian is one I’m going to take. Also, Rob Kardashian did me wrong with his Superman paso doble. It looked more like an old man shuffle in some places. But I’m going to assume he’ll be saved in the results show because his video shows him “working hard” and “taking this seriously.”

After a month of watching this show, I’m starting to finally see the strategy employed by not only the dancers but also by the judges to save their favorites. Call me naive but I thought the pre-dance videos were just filler to show while the stars and their partners set up for whatever heinous gimmick they wanted to perform before the dance started. Now I see that they’re almost campaign videos designed to endear themselves to the audience. I suspected that’s what Nancy Grace has been using it for but I just assumed she’s a manipulator and exaggerating for the camera comes naturally to her. The videos this week for certain contestants at the bottom of the pile (*cough* Chaz *cough*) were particularly obvious about what it wanted to do. Sure, it was more fun to have Richard Simmons play the part of Chaz’s Mickey Goldmill than it was to see him whining about everything. But this is clearly propaganda.

On top of that, the judges were just wild with their choices. Full-on bananas. They had to give Ricki Lake 10s because they had nowhere else to go with their voting after rating total crap so high. Between them rating Chynna so high despite her completely failing on the dance floor (all 7s) and Carrie Ann arbitrarily deducting points, citing that she wanted to see something more dramatic from JR after his performance last week (how can you make Pink Panther dramatic?), their scores lost validity this week. Not that I really know how much their scores factor into the no-doubt intense algorithm used to determine Night 2 power rankings anyway.

I can’t even speculate about who’s going home tonight because the scores are so skewed that nothing makes sense to me on this show. Carson seems the most likely candidate since he’s at the bottom of the scoreboard but more deserving are Nancy, Rob, or Chaz. But the judges love Rob (probably for the family bubble butt) and Chaz had Cher-Power behind him. Nancy has her deal with the devil.

“It’s not polite but it’s fair.”

First my apologies for no review last week. Between covering the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad and various obstacles (including a dropped sandwich (it was a very long day)) and socializing, I didn’t get around to “The Death Zone” until Saturday afternoon, and by then I didn’t see much point in writing about the episode. I did enjoy that episode, found the case of the week interesting, and while it could’ve used more Eddie Izzard (what couldn’t?), I was overall pretty happy with it.

Second: Dallas Roberts!

Third: Lisa Edelstein!

Fourth: Isiah Whitlock, Jr.!

Swoon. Read more »

“I musta saw it on House or somethin’.”

I sat still for a long time after the episode ended. Not blankly, not cursing the skies for ending this season of Breaking Bad and making me wait months and months for it to begin again. Not really any desire at all. Actually, just a furrowed brow.

Noel remarked last week that the penultimate episode was a little boring by Breaking Bad standards. The cliffhanger aspect wasn’t as demanding and reveals weren’t as gasp-worthy. That’s how I feel about this episode for the most part. Other than the ethical obstacles Walter obliterates in “Face Off,” the finale kind of tied itself into a nice bow. Okay, it’s a sloppy bow but — instead of feeling like I’m dangling off the edge of a mountainface, I kind of feel like I’m staring at the danger from a safe distance.

That’s a weird metaphor. Let me explain. Read more »