My Heart Shows
Posted by Zach on November 23rd, 2008 filed in Old TV, Past GemsComment now »
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 1st) 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.
Three’s Company
One of these shows is not like the others. That’d be Three’s Company, the one “Heart Show” that most would consider a “Dumb Show.” Well, me too, but you see, Three’s Company represented an essential part of my early adolescence. I was maybe 10 and just beginning to love TV enough to write a blog about it, and for some reason the late night Company repeats on TV Land and Nick at Nite were irresistible. The cartoonish antics of the faux-homosexual Jack Tripper and the gorgeous babes he was forced to live with platonically captivated my budding (read: immature) love for humor, specifically slapstick. I haven’t watched the show in years, but someday I’ll dust off those old DVDs lying in my closet (sadly I only collected the first three seasons before I grew out of it) and give this series one last hurrah. Oh, and it has one of the best theme songs ever. EVER.
Titus
I loved this show back in 6th grade, and then it got canceled. Then it got released on DVD a couple of years ago, and I loved the show all over again. But let’s focus on my first Titus-loving era. This was one of the first times I loved a show and saw it get canceled. (The first was Family Guy, which I actually watched in its original run but no longer brag about it since I hate the new ones.) You hear a lot about “dysfunctional family sitcoms,” but they usually are rarely more than a family of oddballs who shout at each other. Not the Titus family. The Titus family was very, very fucked up, all because of Papa Titus, played with glorious zeal by Stacy Keach. He drank, smoked, terrorized his children, and had more heart attacks and wives than most could fit in one life. He was based on Christopher Titus’ actual father. Occasionally it could be too sitcom-y, but when it toyed with darker subject matter it was brilliant. I cherish my DVDs. Now if someone would finally release Andy Richter Controls the Universe, then I will be truly happy.
Futurama
As with all Americans, I had a deep fondness for The Simpsons. But when Futurama repeats started airing on Adult Swim, I had a new favorite cartoon show. Hell, a new favorite show. I look back on Futurama with a lot of fondness. And so far I’ve loved the movies. In fact, Futurama is the only show on this list still producing new material. Unless that Arrested Development movie actually happens. GOD I HOPE THAT HAPPENS.
Arrested Development
PLEASE LET THAT HAPPEN. Arrested Development is my favorite sitcom of all time. The jokes-per-minute ratio is staggering and, yes, challenging. It will take more than one repeated viewing before you can get even 90% of the jokes in one episode. And I remain convinced that I do not, and will never get 3% of each episodes jokes. There’s just too many to keep track of them all. It is the best, most insanely superb case of sensory overload that one could ask for.
The Wire
Here is my favorite drama series of all time, which finished up its unbelievable run earlier this year. I have never been able to write adequately about The Wire. I don’t know why. I think there’s just too much that’s amazing about it. When I’m asked to sum up why it’s good or what it’s about I find a tidal wave of words I want to use shooting towards me, and invariably I always manage to grab the wrong ones. If you want a work of fiction to change your life, this is the one. Look nowhere else.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Or look here. The amount of lives Buffy has changed is monumental – adolescents with self-esteem issues who found the courage displayed by Buffy and her friends despite their near-crippling fears to overcome even the baddest bad. But if you’re not an adolescent with self-esteem issues or other demons, you want The Wire. But watch Buffy anyway, because it’s the perfect blend of horror, humor, action, and tragedy. The romance between Buffy and Angel, especially in the second season, makes Shakespeare look like a ninny for writing Romeo and Juliet.
Quick Reviews: Dexter, Entourage, and Chuck
Posted by Zach on October 6th, 2008 filed in Current TV, New Episode Review1 Comment »
Dexter, “Finding Freebo”
Well, that was an improvement. I actually found the layers we explored of Dexter’s psyche to be new and refreshing. There was very limited time given to the typical bullshit office politics, which is always a good thing. And I’m very, very intrigued by the ending. Right now I think I’m gonna dig this season a lot more than I thought I was after the premier.
Entourage, “Tree Trippers”
This is the funniest Entourage in a long, long time. The absurdity was comic rather than mind-numbing for once. I happen to believe there are few things funnier than stoned characters acting like complete idiots, especially if it involves inappropriate shouting. (Partly why I loved Pineapple Express.) So this episode is an easy one for me to rate.
Chuck, “Chuck Vs. The First Date” and “Chuck Vs. The Seduction”
This was not the case with its first season, but in its second year, Chuck has modified itself and this can officially be said: everything works. Nothing in these first two episodes has made me go “ooh, ew” or any similar unenthusiastic reaction. (Okay, to be fair, I was kind of like “whatever” with the Bryce reveal, but otherwise, EVERYTHING WORKED.) Does that mean the show’s perfect? Maybe, but that doesn’t necessarily make it the best show ever. It’s perfect like Robert Christgau thinks Crosby, Stills & Nash’s debut is perfect - every part works as well as it possibly could and the intended effect is achieved completely. But Robert Christgau doesn’t like CSN’s intended effect. I think you’ll have a lot of trouble disliking Chuck.
Dexter; “Our Father”
Posted by Zach on October 1st, 2008 filed in Current TV, New Episode ReviewComment now »
After last season ended, even though I enjoyed the hell out of it, I couldn’t help but feel like I didn’t want to see Dexter again for a while, at least a couple of years. Because it’s on Showtime I was hoping for some kind of Sopranos-esque leave of absence so it could come back after too long of just whetting our appetite and blow our minds. And now that I’ve seen the first episode of this season, I know why.
Barring some serious game-changer, I’ve seen all I need to see of Dexter’s world. Had they taken a longer break, I’d have forgotten all but the biggest of plot points from the first two years and it would have felt fresh as ever. But now I don’t feel the same fascination with Dexter’s mind as I used to, with the way he balances his friends, family, and Rita with his life killing serial killers, with Dexter’s relationship with his late father, or with the office politics (okay, those never held any fascination). In fact, I may have tired of the series in season two had they not taken things in such an inspired direction with the Bay Harbor Butcher saga. Dexter’s accidental killing of an innocent doesn’t add enough to the series the way that storyline did.
The one way I can think of for this season to be interesting: Rita’s pregnancy. If Dexter frets about whether or not the kid could end up with the same horrific personality as him the writers may have uncovered some dramatic gold. And a time jump next season (all the rage in TV Land nowadays) with Dexter taking care of his child and discovering some dark urges in him akin to Dexter’s own could be riveting. If they go there, that is. If not, and if they don’t have any other ideas on par with the Bay Harbor Butcher, I’m going to have a lot of trouble caring about Dexter this season.
Also, Deb’s back to pissing me off. I felt better about her last year, but she did nothing but irritate me in Sunday’s episode.
This is one of those cases where star ratings become redundant. The show is still well-made, well-written, and well-acted (okay, at least by Michael C. Hall, if maybe not all of the supporting cast), but I’m just not feeling it as much as I used to, so I’m going to give it
Comedy Roundup: How I Met Your Mother, The Office, and Entourage
Posted by Zach on September 30th, 2008 filed in Current TV, General Review, New Episode ReviewComment now »
How I Met Your Mother
Every freshman hit worries about the sophomore slump, and heck, they should. Friday Night Lights, Heroes, and, depending on who you ask, Lost all had one. But to me the greatest danger comes when the show reaches its fourth or fifth season. Sophomore slumps happen, but slumps this late in a series are almost inevitable. The shows that manage to put off slumps until the seventh or eighth season become classics. That’s why the two shows I’m most worried about this year are How I Met Your Mother and The Office.
But as of the first two episodes, I’m a lot less worried about HIMYM. (Thoughts on The Office below.) HIMYM has put Barney in an all-out romantic stupor over Robin without defanging him, they’ve kept Ted in a relationship with the awesome Stella (played by the similarly awesome Sarah Chalke), they’ve included Robin as a major force in each episode without it being a drag (when she’s romantically involved with a guest star you have to sound the alarm), and they’ve found some great ways to have Marshall and Lily be in the A and B stories rather than merely existing in the periphery like they did too often last season.
The truth is, even if HIMYM manages to survive this season with its dignity, from here on out it will just feel like a countdown to when they finally do hit a slump. But don’t call me a cynic – no one will be rooting harder than me for them to avoid one.
The Office
Oh baby, now this is comedy done right. I’m even less worried about The Office than I am HIMYM, because if the season premier was any indication, the creative team is more inspired now than they were two years ago. Last season started with four mediocre hour-long episodes that were a complete mistake, but the season finale was the same length and almost perfect. There was so much going on, and the entire thing was excellent. Yet a season premier naturally has more going on with various character arcs than usual, but a lot less than a season finale. So without the basic arcs to serve as the stuffing as in the finale, the writing team had to come up with a standalone story like that wouldn’t lose steam by the end of the hour. And boy did they succeed. Thursday’s episode was filled to the brim with great asides, hysterical character humor, and the best Jim and Pam moment since the season two finale. To me the post-strike episodes last year were the best The Office had ever been, and I am so glad they’ve kept that streak going.
Entourage
I hadn’t enjoyed this show, let alone loved it, since season two. Since then they’d just been recycling the same old motifs: Drama’s pathetic, Vince can do one stupid thing after the next and come out on top, Turtle is creepy (well, maybe they don’t see it that way), Eric’s in danger of becoming a suit, because that’s such a bad thing, and Ari’s still Ari, which means he’s still the most enjoyable character on the show, but he became one-note and started getting a lot less screen time. (One-note with little screen-time apparently still gets you Emmys.)
But this season seems to be righting a few of those wrongs. As a counter to the past two seasons, so far we have: Drama’s pathetic but finally finding success, Vince has done one major, huge stupid thing and is paying for it, Turtle is creepy (okay, no change there), Eric’s in danger of becoming a suit and has two potentially interesting writers he’s managing, and Ari’s getting more screen time than he has in a while.
Okay, so the Drama stuff isn’t working (and it was the only stuff that actually used to work), I’m sure Vince will be successful again by the end of the season, I’m sure the material with Eric and the writers (plus that one rapper) will go nowhere, at least nowhere enjoyable, but I don’t really care, because right now I’m digging Entourage in a way I no longer thought possible after last year’s burnout. (And trust me, the fact that they used one of my five favorite songs of all time in a recent episode, Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” is only coloring my judgment a little bit.)
CW Guilty Pleasure Roundup: Gossip Girl and 90210
Posted by Zach on September 6th, 2008 filed in Current TV, New Episode Review1 Comment »
Gossip Girl
I last wrote about this show complaining that after the season finale’s extremely satisfying first three acts, the final act blew it with a number of unsavory plot twists. I was never worried that the show would be in any way bad thanks to those twists, only that I’d rather see a sophomore season based on all the developments made in the first three acts than when they were dismantled in the final act. I wrote that the show demonstrated signs of A.D.D. by “creating a couple and planting the seeds for their breakup in one episode,” and of the other new couples that episode was hinting at, namely Dan and Vanessa and Serena and Nate, “I wouldn’t be surprised if both of those relationships ended by November sweeps.” It turns out the series has a far worse case than I thought: neither of those relationships lasted the time off between seasons.
Dan enjoyed an O.O.C. (out-of-character) summer of countless week-long-at-best relationships, often at the same time. He finally confronted his feelings for Serena in this episode, but not before ignoring them caused him to lose a major (and improbable) opportunity to have his work published. Serena and Nate, meanwhile, have led Gossip Girl to believe they’ve been dating all summer, only so that Nate could enjoy an affair with a married woman and Serena could mope over Dan in peace. Vanessa, meanwhile, wasn’t even in this episode, but for that I’m thankful. Rumors say that the character she’ll become involved with when she comes back might make her story the creepiest thing I have seen on television in a long time, discounting what’s become of Shane Botwin on Weeds.
But on the bright side, this episode had some fun Blair/Chuck material, even if seeing them as a couple would have been a lot more fun (but it looks like we may get there sometime before the season’s over), and Serena and Dan had a nice moment on the beach at the end. Still, a show like this should know better than to get Serena and Dan back together again so soon. Seeing them repeat their relationship already could possibly just be boring. It would have been a lot more entertaining to see them form new couples. At least this year we don’t have to worry about being treated to the non-excitement that was the Nate/Blair/Chuck triangle. With Nate out of the Blair picture, hopefully for good, we can be sure we’ll get a lot of entertaining Blair/Chuck fireworks before they start dating.
For the most part, this was a pretty good season premier. I’d love for this show to stick to couples more often, and I can only hope now that we’re back into the regular season we can slow things down. This premier and last year’s finale burned through enough story to carry an entire season. I honestly feel cheated out of a few things that as a loyal viewer I deserved to see. But I’m willing to accept these minor irritations as long as the show itself is still a fun time, and at the moment, it looks like it’ll live up to the first season and then some.
90210
So, here’s a predictable confession to make: I have never seen the original Beverly Hills, 90210. You see, I was not a teenager in 90s, I was a child. Personally, I’m happier to grow up now than back then, but there are parts of our culture these days that cannot compare to the 80s and 90s. Chief among those is our lack of guilty pleasure primetime soap operas.
The decade’s nearly over, and I can’t think of many series I enjoyed purely for the fun melodrama. First, note the word “fun.” I group melodrama into two categories: soapy melodrama and fun melodrama. Soapy melodrama is rarely anybody’s friend. It’s the type of thing you’ll find on One Tree Hill or bad O.C. imitations. But fun melodrama is soapy melodrama that doesn’t take itself seriously. The O.C. was the big guilty pleasure of our decade, and every primetime soap opera we’ve had since it debuted owed it something, including its existence. The O.C., in its first season, was the perfect mix of melodrama that took itself even less seriously than you did and comedy that was actually pretty solid. But many soaps created in the first season’s wake aped the wrong parts of The O.C.’s formula, creating superfluous drama instead of over-the-top, amusingly superficial drama. But The O.C. also had extremely good characters, particularly in Summer Roberts and Seth Cohen. Without the combinations of character, humor, and lack of seriousness, most imitations failed.
But Gossip Girl set out to change that. No, it’s not nearly on The O.C.’s level, but it exists purely to entertain. (Still, it’s no coincidence it’s run by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, The O.C.’s king and queen.) It satisfies a craving in our culture for a guilty pleasure that doesn’t make you think but at the same time doesn’t treat you like an idiot. And yet it needs company. Thankfully, its network, the seriously-bound-to-fail CW, has provided it one. How? By remaking the definitive 90s primetime soap, Aaron Spelling’s Beverly Hills, 90210, renamed just 90210.
And I have to say, I’m satisfied. The cast is both gorgeous and good. It’s an interesting mix of soap vets (Lori Loughlin, Rob Estes), relative newcomers (Shenae Grimes, Jessica Stroup), and superb, way off-beat choices (Jessica Walter and especially Tristan Wilds, last seen becoming the new Omar on The Wire). Even AnnaLynne McCord, who I hated on Nip/Tuck last year, is pretty good as Naomi, the show’s vixen.
Despite the hype making it seem as raunchy as Gossip Girl, the story was not terribly racy, besides a certain activity performed in a car in the beginning. It went through some teen drama archetypes but it explored them with a fresh attitude and some decent dialogue. The characters are of course firmly rooted in cliché, but comfortable cliché, not eye-rolling cliché.
Still, going into this show there were two elements, its origins and its makers, that could sink it or make it awesome, respectively. To be honest, a sequel to 90210 is not a really promising concept to build a series off of. Luckily, this doesn’t get in the way of anything. In fact, I’m sure it adds to the experience for some viewers nostalgic for the old series by featuring a few characters from it. Then there’s the aspect of this production that I felt might actually give it a chance at greatness, and that’s the writers. Rob Thomas, who most recently created the wonderful Veronica Mars, played a hand in developing it. He split after the pilot to work on two others of his, including one that has already been picked up for a series. Gabe Sachs and Jeff Judah were enlisted to take over show running duties after his departure, and they have a history with the classic series Freaks and Geeks. Unfortunately, instead of rising to greatness, or even really goodness, these three just prevent the show’s Beverly Hills, 90210 groundings from crashing it.
But hey, while that’s not enough to make the series all that good, or even on the same level as something light like Gossip Girl, it’s enough to make it mildly pleasurable. There’s no good reason not to watch this show, unless you don’t have the time or you don’t have a stomach for soap operatics. I for one plan on milking whatever enjoyment I can out of it, even if that means dulling my critical eye for an evening a week.
Past Gem: NewsRadio
Posted by Zach on July 12th, 2008 filed in Old TV, Past Gems1 Comment »
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”
Posted by Zach on June 3rd, 2008 filed in New Episode Review2 Comments »
Okay, so this was a good episode. There wasn’t really ever a moment that I wasn’t enjoying it. Between Locke and Ben’s bizarre encounter in The Orchid, the Oceanic Six’s adventures in the helicopter, the race-against-the-clock with the bomb on the freighter, the mostly awesome (“mostly” thanks to Sun’s lackluster confrontation with Charles Widmore) flashforwards, the Desmond/Penny reunion, and the big old “holy fraks” that were Ben turning the Frozen Donkey Wheel and Locke being in the coffin, I’d say it was a hell of an episode. That is, I would say, but you see, it just didn’t live up to the hype. And that’s the fans’ fault for a number of reasons. Damond Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, if anything, tried to downplay the hype surrounding the finale, promising that it wouldn’t be anything like the game-changer that was “Through the Looking Glass.” Nice try guys, but you had to know it wouldn’t work.
So we fans over-hyped it, but, come on, after such a kick-ass season on the wake of the best episode of the series in the third season finale, how could we not expect something great?
So ultimately the episode’s biggest failing was the hype, which it wasn’t even responsible for, but it’s not like it didn’t have its own genuine faults. As many have pointed out, too much of the episode felt like putting in the missing pieces of the puzzle. How do the Oceanic Six get off the island? How does Jin (supposedly, and more on that in a bit) die? How do Locke and Ben move the island? Who was in the coffin? Those all got answers, but even if they had all been great answers, the episode would have done well to incorporate some genuine twists that weren’t mere answers to questions we’d essentially been told to ask since the third season finale. (On the other hand, bravo, Lindelof and Cuse, for actually giving us all those answers and not being as stingy as usual.) But, in the end, were all of the answers even satisfying?
I’m torn over whether or not the answer to how the Oceanic Six got off the island was fulfilling or not. On the one hand, it turned out to be more a matter of “right place at the right time” than the six making a deal (or five, I suppose, since Aaron probably couldn’t do much deal-making), which might have been more interesting. But on the other hand, the helicopter stuff was pretty darn cool, especially their shock when the island disappeared. Frank’s shouting was hilarious.
The Jin’s death mystery was a different beast. Early in the episode I realized that Jin was just too good a character for them to actually kill. But the flashforwards with Sun crying at Jin’s grave don’t really work if she thinks he’s still alive, even if he’s not with her. I thought that they could easily get Sun off the island, thinking Jin’s dead, but have him not be. While we still don’t know if Jin’s actually dead or not, I’m heavily inclined to think he’s alive and well. (Okay, maybe not-so-well since he was definitely in that explosion, even if he managed to get into the ocean or something before he was injured too badly.)
As for the island moving, that was one hell of a payoff. The Orchid was a pretty awesome place, the standoff with Keamy was cool, and Ben turning up in the arctic to turn the Donkey Wheel? Wow. Plus I find it very interesting that the person who turns the wheel isn’t allowed back on the island. Apparently the island is truly done with Ben and ready to move onto Locke. (Though given Locke’s “appearance” in the flashforwards at the end of the episode, it might not need him for too long. He did fail Richard’s test when he was a kid.) This also begs the question of how Ben will be incorporated into the series if the Oceanic Six make it back to the island before the show’s over, since Ben can’t return.
And who was in the coffin? That’d be Locke, dead as a doornail. I doubt it.
So the episode had three deaths of series regulars, one that was more of a preview of a death (Locke) and the character will still be around for a while, but I still don’t buy that he actually dies, one that we had already previewed earlier this season (Jin) and I don’t buy it at all, and only one that was an absolute case-closed death (Michael). So why don’t I buy Locke’s death? Because the Jack-Locke feud is one of the central plot devices of the series, and symbolizes an essential theme, faith versus science. And since the producers are on the side of faith, there’s no way Locke would die. Also, the fans would rebel. (They haven’t yet because I assume they don’t buy it either.) And Jin? I already outlined my feelings. It’s one thing to kill characters that seasons later we barely remember and never really cared about (Boone, Shannon, Ana Lucia, Libby), characters with an actor who wanted to leave (Eko), or characters everybody hated (Charlie), but you don’t kill Jin, who along with Hurley is one of the show’s two comic relief characters that the audience has no ill feelings for whatsoever. I haven’t met a Lost fan who didn’t care about those two. And it’s kind of odd that they brought Michael back only to kill him in the finale. I get that they planned it as sort of an arc – he couldn’t die off the island because he still had duties to perform, he performed those duties and helped stop the bomb, and so then he could die – but in execution it was imperfect. While I do find that Harold Perrineau comes off as ungrateful in his interview with TV Guide, I can’t help but feel like the producers should have told him that he was only there for the season, especially after their big showing at Comic Con.
As for the second-to-last surprise, with Desmond and Penny reuniting, well, that only solidifies what has become plainly obvious in the past season – the Desmond/Penny romance is the strong point of the show. “The Constant” was the best episode of the season, and any other episodes dealing with their romance was great too. It’s odd that the new characters Lost keeps introducing are some of the best in the series (Desmond, Ben, Juliet, the freighter foursome) while old ones grow quickly stale (Jack, Claire, Kate), and they also used to be a lot worse at introducing new characters (Ana Lucia, Libby).
So it was a good episode, but I felt a twinge of disappointment thanks to the precedent set by “Through the Looking Glass” and all of the hype. Still, looking back on the season, I feel more fulfilled than I ever have before with this show, including season one. Perhaps season one was better, but there’s a huge feeling of gratitude for a show this late in its run, and undeniably struggling in seasons two and three (even if I enjoyed both), to deliver such an awesome season, even with one or two episodes that didn’t quite do it for me. Looking to the future, I’m still confident that the final two seasons will rock because the producers are now following a clear outline as they did this season. On the other hand, I can’t fathom how they’re going to be telling stories from now on. We can’t do present-day stuff with the Six, because we got all that this season, but we can’t do flashforwards with them either then because the characters in the flashforwards also have to be the characters in the present-time story. And will the series end with flashforwards to the Six getting back on the island, or will that be present-day? Can they abandon the flash-whatever format? I doubt they will. Also, there are three years of stories to tell on the island with only thirty-two episodes left to do so, and most episodes take place over one to two days, which means there’ll have to be a huge time jump at some point.
Ugh…my brain hurts.
TV is like oxygen
Posted by Zach on May 28th, 2008 filed in Housekeeping2 Comments »
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.
House; “Wilson’s Heart”
Posted by Zach on May 20th, 2008 filed in New Episode ReviewComment now »
Sigh. Bye-bye, Amber. You were easily my favorite of the people competing for Foreman, Chase, and Cameron’s old jobs, and I was sad when you didn’t get it. (Of course, thanks to some evil publicists, I already knew who would win.) But I was ecstatic when they brought you back – as Wilson’s girlfriend, no less. (Didn’t see that coming!) But all good things must come to an end.
I’m happy they sent Amber out like this. Obviously, I’d have preferred to see her stick around for years to come, but if they’re going to kill her, might as well make it as tragic as possible. The first half of the episode felt a little flat to me, like it was just going through the same stuff as last week’s. But when House realized what Amber’s symptom was, the whole thing kicked into high gear. Amber and Wilson’s goodbye was the finest acting either performer has ever gotten to do on the show, and keep in mind Wilson has been here the whole time. Robert Sean Leonard could not have done a better job with it (and same for Anne Dudek).
I think a rift between House and Wilson next season could be a really good story, so long as they don’t drag it out past its expiration date. A good five episodes are all it needs, at best. And speaking of next season…how long can we expect 13 to be around now that we know she has Huntington’s? 13 is my favorite of the chosen ones, so I’m hoping they at least give her some great material to go out on or wait until near the end of the series before anything big happens with her and the disease. And finally, are the writers going to try harder to incorporate Chase and Cameron next season? They’ve been doing a slightly better job of it lately (especially with Chase), but I’m sure none of the two characters’ fans are satisfied. (Personally, I wouldn’t miss them. Keeping Foreman in the limelight while marginalizing those two works for me.)
House has been messing a lot with its normal routine lately, besides even completely uprooting the entire cast. The mysteries have been a lot less traditional and more offbeat (the soap actor) or with higher stakes (this two-parter, the Mira Sorvino episode). I think the writers are getting bored with the same-old, same-old House formula. What could they do next season to still keep it fresh? Or are they satisfied going back to the basics since they have a whole new team to do it with?
Gossip Girl Finale; “Much ‘I Do’ About Nothing”
Posted by Zach on May 20th, 2008 filed in New Episode ReviewComment now »
As great a finale as I could have asked the Gossip Girl creators for. A couple things may have bugged me, but in the end, it was just a hell of a time. Until, you know, the last ten minutes. Then things got ugly, and I don’t mean that in a good way. But, yeah, let’s go with the pretty 50 minutes first.
The first fifty minutes in this episode felt like an episode of The O.C., one of the better ones, even. Gossip Girl may be a blast, but it isn’t too much more than a guilty pleasure. But The O.C. knew how to mix the melodrama with enough other things to get rid of the guilt. It had the best dialogue this side of a Gilmore, it was tons of fun, and not in campy ways, and its characters were far better-rounded than a show like it deserved to have them. (Okay, save for Marissa.) Gossip Girl, on the other hand, has good dialogue, but the enjoyableness of the characters and the storytelling is rooted in camp. Not in the finale.
The finale had everything that once made The O.C. so much more than a guilty pleasure. The characters came alive, particularly Blair and Chuck. They both started the series out as hollow caricatures (especially the once-insipid Chuck), but have each grown a lot since. In fact, Blair owned the proceedings last night. Between her epic takedown of Georgina and her romance with Chuck, it felt like a character with enough energy to take on Summer Roberts. Chuck, meanwhile, began his transformation into a man in his lovely wedding speech and progressed even further when he planned to take Blair on a trip to Tuscany. (Oh, how much I wish those final ten minutes hadn’t happened so that could be end-of-story.) Regarding other characters the finale was a wicked ride as well. The Lily/Rufus material was gold, although I obviously wish Lily and Bart hadn’t gone through with the wedding. The wedding itself was a blast, thanks to, besides the aforementioned Blair/Chuck and Lily/Rufus material, the drama with Serena and Dan, and to some degree Vanessa and Nate. Basically, it had everything that used to make The O.C. so damn awesome. (Well, maybe it didn’t have the self-referential humor, but it had everything else.)
It’s no wonder it was co-scripted (with Stephanie Savage) by Josh Schwartz, co-creator (again, with Stephanie Savage) of this and creator of The O.C. And the thing that cemented its position as the most O.C.-esque episode to date? Death Cab in the soundtrack. (Or, at least, it sounded a whole lot like Death Cab, and it makes sense with their new album out, but I haven’t heard it yet, or much of their other material if that song wasn’t new.) Josh Schwartz will never turn his back on them.
But then there were those final ten minutes… I so wish they could be taken back. How A.D.D. is it to create a couple and plant the seeds for their breakup in one episode? But it’s extremely frustrating when it’s a couple I want to see happen. Chuck and Blair would have been so freaking awesome together. Can you imagine that? They would be the bitchiest and funniest couple on TV since…I dunno, Seth and Summer. And I’m not really looking forward to any Dan/Vanessa romance. It was a dumb idea to break Vanessa and Nate up so soon (again with the A.D.D.), but that would be even dumber. Nate and Serena, on the other hand, I wouldn’t mind seeing. And I’m willing to let Dan and Vanessa grow on me. But given how short a lifespan so many couples ended up having thanks to this episode, I wouldn’t be surprised if both of those relationships ended by November sweeps.