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 »

“I’m going to sing now.”

“Adam, stop doing your Taxi Driver impression. No one is talking to you.”

I had a hard time picking out an opening quote for this episode. There were so many choice lines from Max’s celebrations of Haddie’s new hair color (“You look like a panther. Or a vampire from Twilight.”) to characters asserting series theme-summations (“You be a man, dad” or “I consider myself too big to fail”). One of the goals when writing television/film is to temper realistic dialogue with dramatic substance. If it’s all “realistic,” it might come off “banter-y” (and, at times, robbing the emotion of a scene). If it’s all dramatic, it turns out to be a Nic Cage flick. A balance is necessary and has been a goal for this show from the beginning.

We’ve discussed the “Robert Altman scenes” between siblings in this series, scenes where the characters (typically the adult Braverman siblings) talk over each other, have natural cadence, and laugh at each other (a crime many shows commit, especially sit-coms, where people will say something funny but no one will laugh diegetically). The comfortable, conversational tone between them is often tempered by dramatic, sometimes poignant, scenes from the characters when they’re without the other siblings. This is a balance the series has been hoping to hone throughout this half-slate and this season finale is the culmination of that practice, an execution of character and narrative that shows real potential for next season. Although, I’m not sure where next season is going.

I think they might be writing Julia off.

Read more »

The recent episode of Friday Night Lights, entitled “The Son,” begins with Matt Saracen watching an old video of his father sending a holiday message to his American family from his base in Iraq. His father wears a Santa hat but speaks with such stoicism that the gesture conveys awkwardness instead of humor. His speech is a bit halted, but more from discomfort with addressing his family than from emotion. Based on previous episodes, fans are familiar with Henry Saracen’s inability to connect with his son. But because of the perfect execution of this short holiday message, new viewers, too, would understand with equal clarity the enigma that Matt studies as he repeatedly plays this video.

This episode of Friday Night Lights has been critically acclaimed. Featuring a grieving Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford) struggling to come to terms with the death of his many-years-absent soldier father, the program spotlights the depth of Gilford’s performance, the classically underwritten style of the program’s best scripts, and the right amount of poignancy mixed with patriotism.  Gilford has long been a key player in FNL for his believable performance of a teenager—easily capturing a mix of youthful naïveté and awkward sincerity. In this particular episode, he demonstrates a facility with the more adult emotions of anger and horror. 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 »

“Muah ha ha.”

Where does one buy villainous trenchcoats?

The spy procedural is based on the “unreliable witness.” Espionage, as a genre, involves a number of “agents” that can turn coat on a dime or, at the whim of the show’s authors, reveal themselves to have always been a double agent without precedent. No character can be trusted with anything. In fact, not even what the audience sees can be trusted since, often, what they see is a biased version of what is actually transpiring. Nothing is reliable, not even what the viewer can testify to seeing. The abilities of spies have risen to superhuman in order to either (a) cover up narrative holes or (b) make an audience believe that this network of subterfuge, obfuscation, and coolness is believable. Spies are the new superheroes because, with a gadget or some sleight of hand, maybe even the opportunity to slip off a dress at a moment’s notices, anything is possible. For reference, see Alias, Burn Notice, or Dollhouse (though the latter has its own complications with the supernatural/extraordinary).

Chuck started like a children’s version of the spy procedural: many of the tricks of the spy trade but with this elementary element that even a goofball can do the job, if a bit clumsily. Chuck as a character is proof that spies have been elevated to something that has normally needed a cape and underwear-on-the-outside-of-the-pants to designate its superiority. We have been led to believe that he is a normal guy given extraordinary power and that is the only way he could possibly compete on the same level as his fellow agents (Walker and Casey) that received “ordinary” spy training. The thread of Chuck’s normal life kept it grounded and almost made it a parody of all those spy procedurals that take themselves so seriously.

But Chuck has been growing up over the past season and a half and has reached a sort of awkward adolescence. While the ending to Season 3 packed a few punches, it is constantly wrestling with the spy procedural genre and that which kept it grounded, a thread that was spinning out of control, the two halves of the show diverging intensely. At the end of this episode, the show seems to have made a choice. And I can’t say it made the right one. Especially since it goes into next season with what might be some heavy intra-network competition.

Read more »

“Well well well, we came a long way to kill ya’ll little niglets. Now it’s time for the big bonanza!”

Serialization is wonderful. It rewards viewers for continuing to watch a show and really gives the feeling that there is actual story, that the characters we’re watching are real people with real memories. It does wonders in animation. Every time Sideshow Bob reappeared on The Simpsons it was sure to be a great episode. The Boondocks has continued to do this with its very own Colonel H. Stinkmeaner.

Stinkmeaner, an angry old man whose purpose in life is to spread ignorance and chaos, first appeared in season 1 (“Granddad’s Fight”) where he ends up getting killed in a confrontation with Robert Freeman. He returns in season 2 (“Stinkmeaner Strikes Back”) as a demon possessing Tom DuBois to continue his reign of terror. In this episode Stinkmeaner’s old crew, The Hateocracy, returns for revenge on the Freeman Family. Read more »

“Buddy’s here!”

The best marriage on TV? Probably.

Those two words convey the delight of Friday Night Lights‘ most recent episode, “A Sort of Homecoming.” Despite the fact that it ventures into challenging territory by contemplating race, religion, and sex, it is often the smallest of moments that offer satisfaction. In the scene referenced above, Coach Taylor unintentionally crosses the economic and racial barriers that exist in Dillon, Texas, and finds himself at an impasse in his goal to build team spirit for East Dillon High School. Then, Buddy Garrity enters the room and suddenly those barriers disappear in a spontaneous eruption of nostalgia for the great football moments of a Dillon long past.

I’ve already watched the entirety of this season—and to be honest, I was initially hesitant to jump back in–would I be bored?  Would the season hold up?  It only took ten minutes, and I was hooked all over again.  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 »