Monsters of Television

“What are sidekicks for?”

It’s hard to be a sidekick. You’re often times over-utilized and under-appreciated. You get next to none of the glory but you’re always the one to take the blame when things go wrong. Most of the time your parents are dead too so life just sucks. George and Katie both got fed up with playing second string to the Super Powells and staged a walkout.

This was only a matter of time. George getting caught picking up after Jim. But rather than being carted off to jail like any other black man would have been, he‘s praised as a hero, something that will increase the size of his nearly bald head 10 fold. And it does. Jim is not liking that George has the credit. He has to hide while George gets the glory, under the pretense of protecting Jim’s identity of course.

Read more »

“Police and parents. Of course that’s your plan, Humphrey”

This week’s episode felt like an old mystery novel. Two reluctant enemies team up to solve a crime. An old foe reappears and aids in the search. Unlikely alliances are made and old ones crumble. Questions are answered, reveals are divulged, and the criminal isn’t who you think it was all along. When every conceivable cat was brought forth from the big bag of shit that is the Humphrey/van der Woodsen’s lives, it was Lily who was the enemy. And she would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for those meddling kids. And that dog, Serena, too.

While I still despise her, I did find myself feeling bad for Serena.  So many of her mistakes are her own, but this one (and a huge one at that) was entirely on Lily. And it’s not just Serena who got screwed over. Poor Chuck is now scrambling to save Bass Industries from being sold. Hos desperation is at maximum levels as he’s turning to Jack for aid. Season 4 is the season of unlikely alliances indeed.

Read more »

“Ted, let me show you my harpoon collection.”

“The Mermaid Theory” is not a bad episode, but it’s not particularly great either. If anything, it’s a lazily funny episode of HIMYM, which seems to a trend the show keeps falling into (“Glitter”, “Baby Talk”) this season. The show has ideas, but they never really reach hilarious or emotionally strong heights that the show used to be able to achieve without a hiccup.

If anything, the episode’s three-plot structure only makes clear the its failings and its strengths. Read more »

“If I could’ve traded places with him, I would have. I would trade places with him right now.”

“So — what do you want to do for 21 seconds?”

In the podcast earlier, I was curious as to what the cliffhanger for the end of this season could possibly be. Surly, we’d get some answers to some long-standing questions and maybe some tense moments with the cast being locked down in the basement of a suburban performing arts center technologically-advanced government building but where are they going? Karen pointed out that they need a plan. So when I sat down for “TS-19” tonight, that’s what I hoped to see. Instead, I got something else entirely. And even that was hampered by some of the same problems that’ve haunted this still-so-young series.

Chief among those problems: I don’t care about 80-90% of the cast.

Thus begins my series of Lost contrasts. The Walking Dead is completely different from Lost and not just because of the spelling. Though they both feature groups of survivors trying to fight for continuance against all odds and a mysterious force (smoke monsters and Others vs the where-did-they-come-from ghouls), The Walking Dead has a pretty serious problem of never endearing many of the characters to us. Lost had a giant ensemble cast to which they were able to give a lot of service, making it so that audience not only knew of each character but could identify them in a line-up. Before Jim started going bananas on the hills, diggin’ holes, did you remember who he was? Congratulations if you did (from the radiator hose thing). Many people didn’t.

And when you have a bunch of characters no one knows anything about and aren’t very developed beyond the surface, that’s horror code for “it’s time to thin out the herd.”

Read more »

“The Sacrifice”

Still pretty, but getting way scarier.

Lots of people were doing dumb things to save people they love on this week’s The Vampire Diaries.  Even Damon, who was trying to preach wisdom to Elena about her kamikaze mission, did his own dumb thing.  But when Damon does anything, somehow it seems less dumb, only sexy.  And there was much Damon sexiness to be had.  Perhaps they are trying to make amends for that wretched incident with Rose last week (yep, still hate this character). Maybe they just can’t let go of the tension between Elena and Damon.  Or maybe they know that Damon is why this show sizzles.  Case in point—the first half of this episode was rather lame—and I can only explain it by noting a decided dearth of Damon dash (the alliteration took over—apologies).

Reviewing each episode of a series is a problematic business because it can force a person to make too-firm pronouncements: i.e. episode A was excellent, episode B was crap, and episode C was passable.  When we start debating whether an individual episode was weak, I worry we lose the forest for the trees—after all, I wouldn’t be writing about this show if I didn’t enjoy it with some consistency.  Also, I haven’t yet seen a crap episode of The Vampire Diaries, so when I complain about weaknesses, I’m quibbling.  That said, this episode may be worth exploring a bit deeper to see where the show tends to be weakest in order to highlight why it succeeds as often as it does.

Read more »

I know next to nothing about Supernatural. I know it has Dean from Gilmore Girls. I know it involves Dean and his brother (who is also named Dean, making this very confusing) hunting demons. I know at some point a giant teddy bear tries to commit suicide. And I know one episode takes place in a haunted hotel that is hosting a Supernatural fan convention, and people assume the two brothers are actually cosplayers, not the actual brothers. But that’s about it.

So I approach Supernatural with practically no biases or pre-conceived notions of what the show is, except for thinking that Jared Padalecki is dull to watch (he is on Gilmore Girls anyway). Unlike The Wire or Mad Men, both of which I watched this year on DVD, Supernatural wasn’t something people thought I needed to watch to be a knower of all things in contemporary American television.

And that’s exactly why I selected it. So each week (or perhaps more than that), you’ll get treated to my impressions about the series as I go through it. I’m suspecting it’ll be an episode a week, unless I’m just not that busy during a particular week, and the posts will probably go up on Saturday afternoons. So this won’t be like my Mad Men recaps which were often just impressions on a whole season. Also: Karen will be chiming in occasionally as well to give a Supernatural veteran’s take on episodes. This will hinge entirely on her interest in the episode and her schedule, but I look forward to her contributions.

So without further ado… Read more »

“The town gets together every Thursday night to watch reruns of Everwood.

Orgasmic pie and “damn fine” cider.

If you came here looking for more Twin Peaks fan service, detailing all the little references and inside jokes about the iconic series, you’ve sadly come to the wrong place. My experience with the show is severely limited to the kind of education best described as osmosis where I understand the jokes other media properties are making but have no real point of reference myself. So, instead, I’m just going to talk about Psych. Sorry.

But CNN has a good list of the references if you really want one.

It’s interesting, though, that, in its fifth season, Psych has a number of parody/homage episodes under its belt, a trend that is no more identifiable than it has been lately, what with this Twin Peaks version and the upcoming It’s a Wonderful Life take the network has been promoting for months. Careful, Psych: you’re already a show that rough-rides that line between inspired content and series-of-pop-culture-references-that-don’t-fit-together-cohesively-but-people-believe-it-does-because-it-has-a-good-message. That’s right. I’m warning you that you’re a modern pop culture reference and musical episode away from being Glee. And that is dangerous territory, my friend.

Read more »

“We’re not done yet.”

Among some of the folks I follow on Twitter, noticeably Daniel Walters and Justin Fowler,  there’s been discussion of how much impact a season finale can have on a particular season and our reception of it. Debate centered around whether or not a bad finale could hamper an otherwise strong season, or if a great finale helps elevate a murky season (see: Lost, season 3 (though it was getting progressively better before the finale, but that finale is amazing)). Likewise, a bad finale can only make a bad season seem all that worse (see: Battlestar Galactica, season 4 (at least in my opinion)).

The other central point that people discussed was the over-emphasis placed on the finale as an end-all be-all determiner of quality of a season. This is a silly mentality to take, of course. A season finale can’t wipe out all the good that has come before it (nor can a series finale for that matter (well, maybe)), and it shouldn’t be thought of as doing so.

Which is exactly the mentality I have about “The Fortress of Deception”: it may’ve been action-packed, but it wasn’t at all what the season had been leading up to recently. Read more »

“Alcohol just makes people sad. It’s like the Lifetime movie of beverages.”

One thing that has been mentioned about this season of Community is that it seems every new episode is “the best episode of Community ever.” I certainly don’t think this is true, and I don’t think “Mixology Certification” enters that discussion, either. I do, however, think that is a very good episode of the show, one whose character and setting beats work better than other episodes, like “Accounting for Lawyers” earlier this season.

Much like “Accounting for Lawyers,” “Mixology” is a remarkably standard sitcom episode, with very little in the way of what we normally think of when we think of Community. And while I do love Community for its joyful embrace of meta humor and homages, there’s something  very refreshing about watching the crackerjack cast and writers pull back from their general approach to tell a very simple, straight story.

Read more »

“I can operate a motor vehicle. I am perfectly capable of operating a JJ.”

The team-ups continue.

Jim and Steph spend their anniversary tracking down a super-powered arsonist while JJ and Daphne have to get out of a few sticky situations reminiscent of the shenanigans the Seaver kids used to get into. The important thing to take away from this, once again, is teamwork. Dynamic Duo plus Dynamic Duo equals Fantastic Four. Steph’s involvement in this episode’s crime fighting is a significant move in that direction.

So Jim (and apparently his clothing as well) is flame retardant. Good thing since this week’s villain is a fire starter. The obvious bad guy (whom I shall henceforth refer to as “Pyro” for many obvious reasons) who started the fire looks a little…off when first we meet him. Kind of reminded me of the guy from the Fringe episode “The Plateau”.

Read more »