New Year’s Resolutions from TV Guy

Just some TV-related New Year’s Resolutions, for me and you, after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Grey’s Anatomy - Season five, thus far

At first I was digging this season.  The first four or five episodes (I forget exactly how many it was) mostly delivered. They had one or two (okay, try three or four) bad storylines, but overall the show was the most enjoyable it had been since season two, a sign that perhaps Grey’s was done slumping. But starting with the episode that introduced THE DUMBEST STORYLINE IN THE SHOW’S HISTORY, the bad stuff has started to outweigh the good. I made a list of the good and the bad, and I think there’s enough of the good to keep me around, and THE DUMBEST STORYLINE IN THE SHOW’S HISTORY is so shockingly awful that it alone might keep me watching out of curiosity. Read on to see if my list is the same as your list.

Read the rest of this entry »

My Heart Shows

Remember “Heart Songs,” those posts the four of us did in the music blog last June? No? Come on, you remember. Shane’s and Karl’s didn’t go up until very late on the last night of June (in fact, technically they went up July 1^st) and they all hated me for making them write it. You really don’t remember? Okay, well they were based on Weezer’s song “Heart Songs” (that was during Weezer Month).  They were about songs that really meant something to us in our lives, beyond just being a really good tune that we loved. And for some reason, I recently got the urge to write about my “heart shows” upon unearthing my DVDs of the first and second shows on this list. And look here for the original heart songs.

Read the rest of this entry »

Quick Reviews: Dexter, Entourage, and Chuck

Reviews of the latest Dexter, Entourage, and Chuck after the jump… Read the rest of this entry »

Dexter; “Our Father”

Spoilers for Dexter’s season premier after the jump… Read the rest of this entry »

Comedy Roundup: How I Met Your Mother, The Office, and Entourage

Spoilers for How I Met Your Mother, The Office, and Entourage after the jump… Read the rest of this entry »

CW Guilty Pleasure Roundup: Gossip Girl and 90210

Spoilers for the season premier of Gossip Girl and the series premier of 90210 after the jump… Read the rest of this entry »

Past Gem: NewsRadio

On my list of the most underrated sitcoms of all time, NewsRadio finishes number one.

Its writing was as sharp as any sitcom on the air today. The dialogue crackled and popped as spoken through the mouths of one of the freshest and most talented casts ever seen on television. It lasted only five seasons and ninety-seven episodes, but contained in those episodes are storylines both mundane and ridiculous, characters both mutedly silly and certifiably insane, and comic genius both unrelentingly absurd and sophisticatedly wry.

NewsRadio took place in the offices of WNYX, an AM news radio station inhabited by some of the greatest comic creations television has to offer. Dave Foley plays Dave Nelson, the WNYX news director. Nelson is the only truly sane person in the office, but rather than being the dullest character, his tremendous and liberal use of sarcasm makes him one of the best. And Dave Foley gives the best straight man-surrounded-by-a-bunch-of-wackos performance this side of Jason Bateman. Maura Tierney is great as the neurotic Lisa Miller, the smartest person at the station. Stephen Root can occasionally steal the show as the deranged billionaire station owner and CEO of Jimmy James, Inc, Jimmy James. Vicki Lewis is terrific as the hyper Beth. Andy Dick plays Matthew, and though I can speak much for his post-NewsRadio output, he truly shines on the show with an endearing performance that lent more than just slapstick to the role. Joe Rogan is even respectable as electrician Joe Garrelli. Khandi Alexander is lovely as co-anchor Katherine Duke, but the writers made the inexcusable mistake of under-using her until she left the show in season four (but on amicable terms, it would seem). Phil Hartman played anchor Bill McNeil, who is truly the heart of the show for the first four seasons. His performance is the greatest in the cast, and there are few who could walk away from NewsRadio naming anyone else as their favorite character. The fifth season suffers greatly from his absence, as Phil Hartman died between the fourth and fifth season. The new anchor in the fifth season, Max Lewis, played by Jon Lovitz, is a mediocre replacement for Bill McNeil. While he starts off a decent enough character, by the end of the season you’ll be dying for him to go away.

That’s not to say that the fifth season as a whole was bad, because that is hardly the case. It had plenty of classic episodes (“Flowers for Matthew,” “Assistant”) and great recurring characters (the always-reliable Patrick Warburton as Johnny Johnson) and arcs (Jimmy James being arrested as the legendary D.B. Cooper) but didn’t soar as high as the previous years. The series hit a peak with the third and fourth seasons, which are just consistent, spotless comedy. The episodes in these seasons were brilliant. “Twins,” in which Matthew’s identical twin brother comes to the station, played by Jon Stewart (yes, the “identical” part confuses the other characters as well); “Arcade,” when Dave rediscovers a passion for an old arcade game of his youth; “Super Karate Monkey Death Cart,” in which Jimmy James, after having his autobiography flop in English and succeed in Japanese, has it translated back into English from the Japanese (the title changes from Jimmy James: Capitalist Lion Tamer to Jimmy James: Macho Business Donkey Wrestler); “Complaint Box,” which finds Dave forced by regulation to install a complaint box in that quickly becomes abused by the staff; “Security Door,” where Dave installs a security door that makes the rest of the office extremely irate (the hilarity is at its highest when Dave gives an illustrated lecture about why the security door would be effective in any situation, and his illustrations manage to predict all the bizarre questions the employees ask). Highlights from other seasons include: “Bill’s Autobiography,” in which Bill tries desperately to pen an autobiography but realizes his life has been rather dull (“Chicago, 1968, the Democratic Convention. Hippies and yippies alike fill the streets, waging a war of peace against Mayor Daley’s thugs. There I was…watching it on TV in my dorm and drinking”); “Smoking,” where smoking becomes prohibited in the office; “Flowers for Matthew,” in which Matthew takes a smart drink concocted by Joe and suddenly becomes incredibly brainy and is nicknamed Smatthew (Smart Matthew) by Dave (the ending is brilliant in an understated way); “Bill Moves On,” the fifth season premier in which the cast and crew mourned the loss of Phil Hartman by paying his character a moving tribute; “Noise,” in which the crew is alarmed by Dave’s fluctuating blood pressure and buys him a white noise machine that causes him to do nothing but sit and stare aimlessly.

NewsRadio was pretty much as great as ensemble comedy can get. Every performer brought something, every character was hilarious, and the writing was superb. It all meshed in one of the most glorious parades of manic joy human beings have created.

Lost; “There’s No Place Like Home”

Major spoilers for the season finale of Lost coming after the jump… Read the rest of this entry »

TV is like oxygen

Get too much, you get too high; not enough, you’re gonna die.

Okay, that metaphor was better when Sweet did it, but I digress. Anyway, I suppose the end of a TV season was not the right time to start up a TV blog. Still, I promise a post sometime Friday or (hopefully not) later on the Lost finale, which I am psyched for. Last year’s finale was the best episode of the series, and while I don’t expect this one to be better (or even on par), I will be sorely disappointed if it’s anything less than great, since the anticipation in me is huge.

Regardless, this is about the summer. The blog will still be active, probably mostly with “past gems” and “classic episode reviews,” though I’m sure a review will pop up of something on during the summer, or maybe just a bit of general musing on TV. In any case, it will not go inactive (which is more than I can say for its sibling, the Weather Critic). I’ve been hoping to write a little something on my favorite episodes of Buffy, which I think could make for a neat series of posts. I’ve also pondered doing the same for Scrubs. Of course, blogging will be significantly harder throughout the summer, since I will be spending it in multiple states and will not have a ton of free time. But if I can’t write a post on “Once More, with Feeling” by September, I’m just not cut out for this job.  [Note to self: never make promises in this blog again.]

I leave you with these words:

Tomorrow. Lost. Get pumped.