2012 Imaginary Episode 5½: Charlie vs. the Presidential Debate

October 22, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in TV/DVD Tags: Charlie Matheson, dystopia, entertainment, episodes, humor, Miles Matheson, NBC, parody, post-apocalyptic, Revolution, television, Tom Neville, tv 2 Comments

President Bass, David Lyons, "Revolution"

If only the blackout hadn’t canceled all Presidential debates, “Bass” Monroe could be rocking the podium.

Careful students of their cable TV channel guides, as well as viewers who paid attention to last week’s ending promo, already know that NBC’s Revolution is on vacation this week, preempted by the third 2012 Presidential debate, which is bound to generate higher ratings and almost as much Internet nitpicking. I have no idea why I should allow this skip-week to stop my weekly recap fun. With days to while away until next week brings us episode six (entitled “Sex and Drugs” according to NBC.com), the following is my idea for what this week’s episode might look like if it existed. Please enjoy fake episode 5½, entitled “The Body”.

Scene 1: Open on a knock-down drag-out melee between Our Heroes and a horde of sword-wielding hobos inside a spacious, empty indoor set. Miles takes them down three at a time. A heavily bandaged Nora is reduced to slaying only one at a time. Charlie is struggling with one grimy, 350-pound lout who refuses to let go of her crossbow and is shouting ugly sexist epithets. Aaron is hiding outside behind a bush, watching everyone’s backpacks. Charlie slips and falls backward. Her aggressor raises her crossbow above her head, poised to strike. Five-second “REVOLUTION” title card rolls.

Scene 2: “TWO HOURS EARLIER…” says the caption. In the hour that’s passed since last week’s train job failed, Our Heroes have only walked as far as Dayton, Ohio, some 110 miles east of Noblesville. Nora’s massive stab wound is clearly slowing down their progress. Miles decides they can’t go on like this and she needs a stab-wound specialist. He knows a former friend in Grand Rapids who might be able to help. Charlie is torn between continuing their trek to rescue her brother Danny in Philadelphia, or losing yet another female cast member. Grand Rapids it is, over 300 miles northwest of Dayton.

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“Community” Fans Deprived of Season Premiere Search Skies, Streets, Hearts for the Elusive REAL October 19th

October 21, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in TV/DVD Tags: Community, entertainment, fan rage, hiatus, NBC, Nielsen fail, October 19th, postponement, season 4, television, tv 8 Comments

Community, NBC NBC told us all summer long that our great and powerful TV series Community would return to us for its fourth season on October 19, 2012. They worked out their fall schedule. They announced it to the press. They promised.

Mere days before the 19th arrived, NBC broke its promise and informed a despairing geek nation that the return of Community was placed on indefinite hold because the network was perfectly happy with their schedule as-is and didn’t feel the need to satisfy any more viewers. Having won three straight weeks of competition against the other networks, NBC was feeling pretty sure of themselves and decided to coast on this temporary victory, especially since commitment to fans is obviously for chumps.

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“Revolution” 10/15/2012 (spoilers): Charlie vs. Choo-Choo and the Philly Flash

October 16, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in TV/DVD Tags: Billy Burke, Charlie Matheson, dystopia, entertainment, Giancarlo Esposito, Jeff Fahey, Kim Raver, Miles Matheson, NBC, post-apocalyptic, recap, reviews, Revolution, Soul Train, spoilers, television, Tom Neville, Tracy Spiridakos, tv 3 Comments

Giancarlo Esposito IS Tom Neville IN NBC's "Revolution" Barely recovered from last week’s Shocking Character Death, the heroes of the Revolution are allowed to dawdle in mourning for all of half an hour before action hero Miles Matheson decides that grief is over and it’s time for everyone to move on. As soon as they cross the next set of bushes without benefit of jump-cut or montage, presto! They’re in Noblesville. Keeping in mind that Indiana Beach is 85 miles northwest of Noblesville, I infer from this instant arrival that our intrepid remainders — Miles, Charlie, Aaron, and “willing” “prisoner” “Nate” — graciously carried their fallen comrade’s body all eighty-five of those miles before deciding that the time and place were right for a proper funeral service, right next door to our villains’ current location. If you ask me, the Indiana Beach area is much prettier and farther away from evil. On the other hand, Noblesville has a large concert venue, the ~~Deer Creek~~ ~~Verizon Wireless~~ ~~Klipsch~~ now presumably sponsorless Music Center. Maybe music fans of the future would love a final resting place near that.

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“Revolution” 10/8/2012 (spoilers): Charlie vs. Old Man Witherby at the Abandoned Amusement Park

October 9, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in TV/DVD Tags: amusement parks, Billy Burke, dystopia, entertainment, Giancarlo Esposito, NBC, post-apocalyptic, recap, reviews, Revolution, spoilers, television, The Plague Dogs, Tracy Spiridakos 2 Comments

Billy Burke, Revolution, NBC Viewers have had a week since last week’s episode of Revolution to write down their guesses as to which character would die tonight. Would it be Aaron, the softest of Our Heroes, whose death would take all sense of comic relief with him? Would it be Miles, the main character? Would it be Charlie, the character that the show keeps telling us is the main character? Would it be “Nate”, sacrificing himself to atone for his nebulous militia past? Would it be Neville, executed for the crime of being too interesting a villain?

Before that moment of tragedy, we saw at least one victory in tonight’s new episode, “The Plague Dogs”, named after the Richard Adams novel about a pair of lab-experiment dogs on the run, like our heroes except with stranger side effects. Our cast finally reunites in the ghost town of Lowell, Indiana, as previously promised, fifty miles south-by-southeast of Chicago. (One empty business sports a sign reading “G. Stein Furniture Company”, the name of a real business in North Carolina. But never mind that.) As they merge and move along, their old buddy “Nate” also stumbles out of the shadows and joins them as a willing prisoner. We’re told that his last encounter with Charlie from episode 2 (“Chained Heat”) happened someplace called Pontiac. Presumably this is Pontiac, Illinois, one hundred miles southwest of Chicago and less than thirty miles away from Chatsworth, the recently raided town that the Rebel Alliance name-checked last week. (Pontiac, Indiana, is even more out of the way, hours south of Lowell. Obviously the larger city of Pontiac, Michigan, also won’t do.)

Their objective is to catch up with Neville’s entourage, en route with Charlie’s brother Danny to Noblesville, Indiana, which is thirty miles from where I’m now sitting and typing. Lowell to Noblesville is 120+ miles beyond what they’ve already walked from Chicago to Lowell. The bulk of the episode detours them into an abandoned amusement park, which in our reality would most likely mean a ten-mile digression off I-65 to Indiana Beach in scenic Monticello. It’s not a ride-for-ride carbon copy, but the show captures the basic essence of roller coaster, water slide, Ferris wheel with extra-wide gondolas, and plastic beach chairs. The show version has more water towers, its 1950s diner looks more like a place I know at Ohio’s Kings Island, and the giant-size guitar in the background of one shot gives away its true identity as the Hard Rock Amusement Park in Myrtle Beach, SC. As a single-episode stand-in, I guess it’ll do.

Also different from Indiana Beach: the attack dogs and their unhinged master, who sics his minions on Our Heroes and then vows revenge when they kill one in self-defense. How dare they! His poor, innocent, feral dogs were minding their own business and just going about their bloodthirsty day, and then that happens! Clearly the humans are at fault and must pay. Instead of haunting them with a fake ghost like most amusement park caretakers would, this grizzled stalker attacks from the shadows and even designs a primitive deathtrap for Charlie. Luckily for her the fixtures are authentically rickety and her day is saved. Ah, if only everyone’s day could be saved…

Meanwhile on the road to Noblesville, Danny does his own bit of heroic lifesaving after finding himself trapped with Neville in a storm cellar during a genuine Indiana tornado. The twister seemingly passes; Neville shouts “Amen!”; and I couldn’t help laughing as the ceiling collapsed on him. That’s our unpredictable Indiana weather in a nutshell, folks. If nothing else, Revolution nailed that part. Alas, Danny and Neville re-enact the old fable about the scorpion and the fox, as Danny conscientiously saves Neville’s life, only to be stung by him in return. Points to Danny for moral superiority in the face of a CG storm, at least.

Meanwhile down in Noblesville, now revealed as Monroe Militia HQ, Evil Dictator “Bass” Monroe continues holding Charlie’s mom Rachel captive, perpetuating what must be a years-long tradition of interrogating her unsuccessfully, even with sadistic lackey involvement. A flashback reveals that not only did Rachel turn herself in to save her family, but that her original captor…was Miles himself! DUN DUN DUUUUUN! I suppose this should be shocking, but it’s kind of not. Now that we know the Monroe Republic is half Monroe’s fault and half Miles’, I expect we’re in for a long parade of stunning revelations about the evil Miles committed before he realized what a series of grave mistakes he’d made, like My Name is Earl with more bloodletting.

To his credit, Miles corrects one important wrong in this episode. After two acts’ worth of wishy-washy quitter angst once again, he finally takes a leap of faith into the waiting arms of family commitment, officially deciding to stay with his niece and help see her quest through to the doubtlessly heroic end. The impetus that inspires this decision is tonight’s Shocking Character Death…which would be a lot more shocking if I hadn’t totally called it last week.

Alas, poor Maggie, we knew you slightly. Your flashbacks reveal a little more history, of your children separated from you in England, of your epic one-woman journey from Seattle to Buffalo, and of your unbelievable discovery that large boats capable of sailing to England are now extinct because of wars that demolished them all and, I suppose, resulted in the deaths of every boatwright and every boating company in America. Never mind that Christopher Columbus and several centuries of pirates managed just fine without today’s boat construction technology. Were all those Carnival Cruise liners drafted into the wars and sunk during fierce naval conflicts, too?

Sorry, where were we? Yes, Maggie, then — Charlie’s de facto stepmother passes away due to femoral artery damage from one vicious stab wound courtesy of the Phantom of Indiana Beach. A sad ending to her story, after being rescued from suicidal thoughts by Charlie’s dad Ben, made a part of the family, and now…this. In her final flashback, Maggie reads to her kids from yet another classic road-trip tale, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a copy of which she leaves behind with Our Heroes, perhaps serving as a reminder to keep following that yellow brick road. Or a reminder of a more innocent time when adorable dogs like Toto were the norm and not the exception.

MCC Request Line #1: “New Girl”

October 7, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in TV/DVD Tags: comedy, entertainment, Fox, fox sitcom, Katie, Max Greenfield, MCC Request Line, New Girl, reviews, television, tv, Zooey Deschanel 8 Comments

Welcome to the first installment of a recurring feature in which I’ll be accepting viewing or reading suggestions from MCC readers and sharing my results, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer. Rather than dive face-first toward the bottom of the barrel, I’m leading off with a softball pitch of a show, as suggested by the curator and creator of Enchanted Seashells, a tugboat captain’s wife who’s also an accomplished artist in the medium of seashells. Check out her blog for some pretty inspired creations!

Zooey Deschanel, "New Girl", Fox sitcom Today’s subject: the Fox sitcom New Girl, now in its second season. Instead of researching at length and arming myself with knowledge of characters and situations in advance, I followed in the footsteps of our primitive ancestors and sat through a random episode with as little forethought as possible. In the old days of comic books, there was a saying that would translate into the TV world as, “Every episode is someone’s first.” Theoretically, if a TV show would like to attract new viewers and see ratings rise over the years, instead of dropping steadily from episode one to episode the last, then it would be in the showrunners’ best interest to ensure that every episode is a satisfying dosage for any viewer, whether new or returning.

To simplify the process, I tried the most recent episode available on Fox.com, entitled “Katie”. If any factual errors appear below, it’s because I relied only on my own knowledge and whatever was presented to me within the episode itself.

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“Revolution” 10/1/2012 (spoilers): Educating Charlie, the Secret of Miles, and 10,000 Sniper Bullets

October 2, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in TV/DVD Tags: archery, Billy Burke, Daniella Alonso, dystopia, entertainment, Mark Pellegrino, NBC, No Quarter, recap, reviews, Revolution, spoilers, television, Tracy Spiridakos, tv, walking 8 Comments

Action heroine class is now in session.

Week Three of NBC’s Revolution, entitled “No Quarter”, took major strides toward turning Charlie into the main character at last. She found a personal mentor in Nora; she completed her third kill (random crossbow takedown); she took out an entire bridge with archery and explosives, and — most shocking of all — she learned Miles’ deep, dark, horrible secret that makes her morally superior to him.

Miles’ shady past may never have come to light if Nora hadn’t introduced us to her friends in the Rebel Alliance, including their leader, Nicholas (Derek Webster from Damages and Harry’s Law), labeled a Catholic priest but struggling to walk the walk in a world turned topsy-turvy. More credit for the rebels’ survival may be owed to their nameless sniper who has the pleasure of mercilessly wielding the precious M40A rifle that Our Heroes acquired last week. (If they distinguished which of the three kinds of M40As it was, then I missed the last digit.) While everyone else hides in the basement of a former restaurant called Harrigan’s that resembled a Bennigan’s except of course totally different, the noble sniper mowed down the onslaught of evil cannon fodder as quickly as they could be ushered out of hiding by their leader, Jeremy (Mark Pellegrino from Supernatural, playing quite the remarkable villain here). Fortunately for the sniper, either Nora also lifted a gigantic box of M40Ax rounds along the way back to Harrigan’s, or the rebels stole the bullets previously and kept lugging the dead weight around until they could locate a weapon to match with them.

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Driveway Tunnelers Fail to Find Hoffa, But Recover My Lost “Cabin in the Woods” Review

September 28, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in Movies/Films/Flicks, TV/DVD Tags: ancient gods, Avengermania, Cabin in the Woods, Drew Goddard, entertainment, Fran Kranz, Joss Whedon, movies, Primeval Part 2, reviews, spoilers, The Avengers, The Cabin in the Woods 2 Comments

My daily MCC followers may recall a recent entry in which I eulogized one of my oldest entries, a review of The Cabin in the Woods that somehow vanished from this blog without malice aforethought or explanation forthcoming. Originally posted on May 6th, I tried to return to it months later to double-check something I’d written (I don’t even recall exactly what), only to discover a large hole in my history where once it had existed. The software left a trail of another post that I intentionally deleted a few weeks later, but not the Cabin piece.

Wanna hear a funny story about a forgetful old man?

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Ranking the Six “Sherlock” Episodes While Waiting to Judge “Elementary”

September 26, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in TV/DVD Tags: BBC, Benedict Cumberbatch, CBS, drama, Elementary, entertainment, episode list, Jonny Lee Miller, Lucy Liu, Martin Freeman, Sherlock, Sherlock Crisis, Sherlock Holmes, steven moffat, television, tv 8 Comments

Sherlock, Elementary My wife and I were quite pleased to catch up with our peers recently by viewing all six episodes of the BBC’s fascinating Sherlock. Before diving in, I expected I’d at least enjoy some engaging moments from Martin Freeman, one of my favorite components of the original UK version of The Office, among other productions. Once our viewing began, I was struck more deeply by Benedict Cumberbatch’s performance as a truly intelligent character with a broken social compass. More succinctly put: he’s smarter than everyone around him and doesn’t care who that bothers. I’ve known more than a few Internet users with that same attitude, many of them mistaken in their position. I can see why the show would attract such a sizable Stateside fan base.

We owe sincere appreciation to the creators — Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss, and some ancient writer named Doyle — for an intricate, adrenalized concoction of tension, intrigue, and emotional gamesmanship. I’d also like to thank the crowds of fans who recommended this to us. At the moment, I would rank the six episodes produced so far as follows, with spoilers ahead.

1. “The Great Game” (s. 1, ep. 3) — A bored Sherlock finds his spirits, and later his blood pressure, raised when a mad bomber taunts him with a series of life-or-death puzzles to solve, with victims as the prizes. Our Hero finally meets an opponent to equal or even rival his talents, and finally demonstrates that he actually has moral boundaries in comparison. Humor succumbs to terror as the challenges proceed relentlessly, concluding with a revelation that had me kicking myself for not guessing it sooner. (Mental note: when reading or watching a work about Holmes, any character named “Jim” needs to be heavily scrutinized. How could I not even have thought about it?)

2. “The Reichenbach Fall” (s. 2, ep. 3) — Moriarty drives Holmes and friends to the brink of insanity with the greatest game of all, one that destroys reputation, relationships, and lives with equal aplomb. The hyperintellectual brinksmanship was truly a wonder to behold. At times it was extraordinarily tough to disbelieve the lies. The main reason it has to settle for runner-up is because the last thirty seconds of the episode were no surprise. I already knew the show would be returning for season three. Granted, I have very little idea how Sherlock actually pulled off this astounding stunt (other than a nascent theory involving Molly), but we know that, somehow, someway, he did pull it off. When I’m supposed to be surprised and I’m not, I deduct points.

3. “A Study in Pink” (s. 1, ep. 1) — Where it all began, laying out the premise, putting all the pieces in starting positions, and setting the bar ridiculously high with an initial, disturbing stumper of a mystery. Tonally distinct, visually inventive, detail-oriented, funny, and enthralling.

4. “A Scandal in Belgravia” (s. 2, ep. 1) — For once, not only does Sherlock have to discern what the clues mean, he has to discern what the clues are. The Woman is such a formidable, superior Catwoman to Sherlock’s momentarily awkward Batman that I was a little disappointed that the solution to the locked MacGuffin phone depended on her being deep-down lovestruck. Otherwise, all performances were in top form, though Irene Adler’s risqué nature pushed the content boundaries a bit more than we’d expected.

5. “The Blind Banker” (s. 1, ep. 2) — Sherlock versus the Asian underworld, with a little help from British subculture and a little interference from Watson’s wish for a personal life. This would’ve been a very good episode of any other TV show, but the impersonal villain and the cutesy dating scenes felt inessential in the context of this series.

6. “The Hounds of Baskerville” (s. 2, ep. 2) — I would still call it good TV to an extent, particularly the scene in which an incensed Sherlock shows off to prove he’s still in control of his faculties, but it was the most predictable episode to date. Once you eliminate any possible supernatural causes on general Holmes-lit principle, the only remaining explanations possible for the demon dog are (1) the vulpine roomie from Being Human is a liar or a madman; (2) genetic tampering; or (3) hallucination. The excessively misty government property narrowed the possibilities for me fairly early into the episode. (If I was meant to think, “Oh, that’s just England for you!” it didn’t work.) The whodunit aspect also tipped its hand too early if you’ve seen too many mystery shows, which have taught us that the guest star who’s dying to be most helpful to Our Hero is almost always the guilty party. Sure enough, my wife and I had him pegged after his “chance” interruption of Watson’s drink-chat with the therapist. Alas, even the smartest kids in class are bound to trip from time to time.

The Internet says that Season 3 isn’t scheduled to begin production till January 2013, which means we have at least a year before my wife and I will be able to watch episodes as they air. Until then…well, we do have an option to keep us occupied. CBS’ new counter-interpretation of the Holmes milieu, Elementary, will premiere this Thursday evening, September 27th. Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu are the prettier, Americanized versions of the detective duo who’ll be plying their trade in New York City and presumably encountering their own special Moriarty in the months ahead, though the early publicity info has a dearth of other Doyle staples such as Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson.

A schedule conflict will prevent me from watching the premiere as it airs, but I’d like to see it for myself at some point — partly because watching new things is a fun source of writing prompts for me, but mostly because I’d like to judge it firsthand rather than dismissing it outright. I’m willing to grant the benefit of the doubt, though I take slight issue with apologists who defend it on the grounds that plenty of actors have performed their own interpretations of Hamlet and other famous characters without being beholden to other versions. Though this is true to an extent, you rarely have two versions of Hamlet being staged in the same city at the same time. Usually a bit more space is left between them so they can stand or fall on their own merits, rather than competing against one another for the same audience. Also, if Elementary turns out to be nothing more than CSI: English Accent, I’m definitely done with it.

“Revolution” 9/24/2012 (spoilers): Mitigating Morality and Fussing Over Flags

September 25, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in TV/DVD Tags: Billy Burke, Chained Heat, entertainment, Giancarlo Esposito, recap, reviews, Revolution, spoilers, television, tv 4 Comments

The Rebel Alliance goes up to 11 Last week’s premiere of the new JJ Abrams series Revolution achieved encouraging Nielsen ratings. Then again, so did the pilots for The Event and FlashForward. We’ll have to wait until Tuesday morning to discover how episode two fared. I’m sticking with it for now with some form of curiosity, but I can’t say the show is firing on all cylinders yet.

The interesting sword-fighting scenes in this week’s episode, “Chained Heat”, are mostly between Miles and special guest C. Thomas Howell as a generic bounty hunter. Unfortunately for Miles, all his other party members lack key adventuring skills. If they were Dungeons & Dragons characters, their class would be Hostage. Worse still in Miles’ mind, head hostage Charlie still adheres to old-fashioned, inconvenient, old-world beliefs such as Killing Is Wrong and Slavery Must Be Stopped. Through the course of the hour, Uncle Miles has to teach his niece that (1) life in the new world is basically a constant state of war, so killing is mandatory until someone reinvents the American legal and penal systems; and (2) they have better things to do than become a traveling abolition squad. The validity of either lesson remains open to debate.

At first Miles abandons his dead-weight companions and tries to carry the series solo, but Charlie refuses to let him because she believes she’s the main character, and also she wants to fight by his side with her crossbow that she’ll willingly use to wound animals or shield herself from swinging swords. Despite her inexperience and naivete, despite Miles’ considerable head start, and despite a scene where she plods around a playground for a while and has an intense childhood flashback, somehow she catches up with him anyway. One has to wonder if perhaps she possesses innate tracking skills not yet mentioned, if Miles somehow got lost, or if he was just testing her to see if she would follow him, and had been hiding in the bushes all this time.

Miles wouldn’t be alone in using shrubbery as camouflage. That’s exactly where “Nate” spent this episode, keeping himself, his conflicting motives, and his general brooding hidden but never far from the action. Basically he’s set up as a season 1 Angel to Charlie’s Buffy. Those are some big shoes to fill, “Nate”.

Of course, in order to follow Miles in the name of “only trying to help”, Charlie had to let Aaron and Maggie stay abandoned and fending for themselves. The duo reacts to this by not staying put, instead venturing forth armed only with the late Ben Matheson’s potentially world-saving flash-drive MacGuffin amulet, a dead iPhone that hopefully doesn’t experience memory degradation issues, and Aaron’s magic glasses that have survived fifteen years or more without collecting scratches all over the lenses. Maybe I shop at all the wrong optometrists, but after two or three years with the same pair of glasses, I’m usually half-blind and having to learn how to focus through the few clear spots.

Thus do Aaron and Maggie throw caution to the wind and advance in the direction of Grant Park, the hometown of Grace, the mysterious lady from last week that Danny met by pure happenstance, who then threw him to the wolves, and who for some reason has a working computer with a 56K modem with the old dial-up squawks and everything. We know little else about her so far except she had/has an asthmatic son whose inhaler had no expiration date; she’s not afraid to throw innocents to the wolves for the sake of saving her own skin or cause (too early to tell which of those means more to her); and her subplot ends in a cliffhanger involving a rude home invader named Randall. I like to think that a character with that name just has to be awesome, so I’m sure there was a perfectly courteous reason for him to smash her door down.

Funny thing about Grant Park, though: it’s fifty miles south of Chicago. That wouldn’t be a cakewalk for the Fellowship of the Ring, let alone for casual pedestrians. I can’t wait to see how that goes for Maggie and Aaron, who’s not exactly built like a cross-country runner. I also look forward to finding out how Charlie’s brother Danny, who was taken captive many miles west of Chicago in the pilot, somehow beat them to Grant Park by a full episode — accidentally and with asthma, at that. They do have one thing in their favor: Miles told everyone to meet in two weeks in Lowell, Indiana, which lies a measly fifteen miles east of Grant Park. That leg of their trip should be a breeze compared to the Chicago-to-Grant-Park marathon.

Miles’ side quest, as it turns out, is to recruit the last cast member, Nora (Daniella Alonso), who can hold her own in a fight, can allegedly blow stuff up, is willing to steal herself better weapons, and has a Rebel Alliance tattoo on her back, in the form of an eleven-star American flag. Apparently the rebels are so hardcore, they think North Carolina and Rhode Island don’t count as Original Colonies because they were too slow to get ratified. 11-OC in full effect, y’all.

Meanwhile, Giancarlo Esposito’s Neville, the most interesting evildoer in the show, saw reduced screen time, but taught us two key lessons: he’s some kind of religious (for me, the most eye-rolling revelation this week), and the original fifty-star American flag has been renamed the “rebel flag”. With the series taking place in northeast Illinois, it may be years before the characters walk far enough south for us to learn what a Confederate flag is now called. His superior, Sebastian Monroe, presidential monarch of the Monroe Republic, had even less screen time with only two scenes to call his own: one demonstrating that he’s against torture but not murder; and one revealing that Charlie’s mom is alive and captive.

Hopefully the future doesn’t see Charlie following her mom’s lead in every other episode. I’d like to see her grow as a character, preferably sooner rather than later. It was sad to see her innocence die a little when she experienced her first kill (and, seconds later, her second kill) while helping Nora steal the cool sniper rifle from the copter-hoarding Imperial forces. She doubtlessly has more trials ahead of her, so she’ll need to keep working on her backbone development, stop letting strong men back her into helpless positions, and start owning the fact that this entire journey was her idea.

If she keeps insisting on retreating to the background, I would recommend the show change focus ASAP so that Miles really is the one true main character. Along those lines, they’d do well to change the name of the show as well. My suggestions for a new name would include Miles to Go; Miles Down the Road; Crossing Miles; Miles and Nora’s Infinite Hit List; or We’re Walking, We’re Walking, We’re Walking.

My Geek Demerits #4: Not Watching “The Big Bang Theory”

September 23, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in Meta, TV/DVD Tags: Bazinga, big bang theory, entertainment, geek demerits, geeks, musings, television, The Big Bang Theory, tv 3 Comments

[Being the fourth in an intermittent series covering assorted areas in which I feel resigned to live as a minority among geeks.]

The people who hang around us the most realize that my wife and I differ from them in key ways. In small-talk situations we find ourselves fielding questions about certain movies, TV, books, genres, and other topics that never arise at elegant dinner parties. We’re not know-it-alls and we’re immediately honest in admitting when we haven’t seen or become aware of a certain work or area. If the answer lies within one of our personal proficiencies, we cheerfully oblige. I do edit myself for length because no one ever wants or truly needs my complete, passionate answer in paragraph form. I’m merciful that way. It makes me look more introverted and antisocial than I really am, but it’s for everyone’s own good. Also, people tend to wander off after the first three sentences.

Every August like clockwork, someone will ask if we’re attending GenCon. Five to six weeks after a new super-hero movie is released, they’ll ask if we’ve seen it yet. When the subjects of Star Wars or Star Trek arise on occasion, my wife tags in to the convo while I sit ringside. Once every eight to ten years when someone asks me about comics, I have to remember to limit my answers to twenty words or less, and to confine my citations to Marvel or DC titles only, because explaining the fact that hundreds of other publishers have existed throughout comics history will only frighten and confuse them. Conversely, if someone mentions sports of any kind, we have nothing to offer them and wait patiently until they can find a normal, human, sports-loving conversationalist to rescue them from us.

In the last year or so, one question has begun popping up more frequently than any other: “Do you guys watch The Big Bang Theory?”

For my wife, it’s an easy question to answer. She has no use for 98% of all network TV shows produced after 1992. Her part in the conversation is done, and she’s ready to flow to the next topic. I have my response rehearsed and down pat: I fix my gaze upon any other point in the room except the questioner, pause with a strained expression, and mumble, “No.”

They’ll say, “Really? Oh, it’s so funny!” Then they’ll try to quote a line or antic that comes to mind, smile, and wait for me to be bowled over. The most common choice is a shout of “BAZINGA!” as if this will implant fake happy memories of the show in my head and win me to their side.

Instead I bounce my gaze to a point on the opposite side of the room from the first faraway point, smile sheepishly, wince, and mutter, “Heh. Yeah, I…just don’t.”

If they’re terrible at reading body language, they’ll finish their pitch with, “Oh, you should try it! It kinda reminds me of you guys!”

My first impulse is to imagine them dying gruesomely before my eyes. Since that’s a sinful thought, I try to capture it, suppress it, nod a little, replace my smile with a blank look, and wait out the rest of the scene in silence, just like Clark Kent used to do on Smallville whenever anyone confronted him with a question he didn’t feel like answering. If I’m to continue living in peace with others, then I have no choice but to muster up a humane response.

I watched the entire first episode. In 2007 a magazine graciously sent us subscribers a promotional DVD containing the premiere episodes of both BBT and How I Met My Mother. My reaction to the latter was easy to summarize: Neil Patrick Harris was in top form, but I’m generally not amused by comedies about people striving for sex and love in that order. My reaction to the BBT pilot was even more adverse, but tougher to articulate. Everything that bugged me about the pilot has only been exacerbated by further examples and new reasons developed over the years.

Right off the bat, I was disappointed that the pilot was entirely stocked with stereotypes. The classic dumb blonde was the central figure, surrounded by the emotional good geek, the unemotional bad geek, the worse geek who thinks he’s suave, and the token nonwhite geek. I was more disappointed that all five characters were conscripted in service to a comedy about people striving for sex and love in that order. Well, except the bad geek, who appeared to suffer from a Vulcan emulation disorder.

More problematic: I simply didn’t laugh. At all. I half-smiled at the periodic table shower curtain. That’s as good as it got. Most of the jokes didn’t feel written For Geeks By Geeks. It felt like classically trained sitcom writers dusting off the old clichéd jokes about geeks and taking them for a spin at the geeks’ expense, even in lines spoken by one geek berating another. If I might borrow Johnny Carson’s old shtick and pretend that someone just shouted, “HOW BAD WAS IT?”: it was so bad, I once watched an entire episode of According to Jim that made me laugh more. The gags at the dumb blonde’s expense only worsened the feeling that I was watching corporate-approved assembly-line sitcom product.

I came away from the single viewing experience with an offended impression in my head that I couldn’t properly label until a few years later when an Internet participant under the message-board username “Front Toward Everybody” coined the right summation and crystallized my conclusion for me: “nerdsploitation minstrel show“. If the frat jocks from Revenge of the Nerds suddenly became aware enough to create a TV show spoofing and mocking their arch-nemeses, BBT is the end result I imagine.

I’ve witnessed little evidence to reverse my position. The jokes that are quoted to me every so often, whether by well-meaning friends or by easily amused magazine writers, elicit no merriment from me, and fall a few notches below the everyday chatter that online friends proffer via social networks for free. Those same samples have failed to dispel my presumption that the show revels in laughing at — not with — the issues and weaknesses of some among our crowd. I find that more saddening than snicker-worthy.

On a different level, I’m also annoyed that the show does indeed kowtow to corporate interests. I’d suspected this at first when ads for the show (produced by Warner Bros.) began appearing in titles published by DC Comics (owned by Warner Bros.) with the cast all wearing DC super-hero attire. My suspicion was confirmed this weekend when I received my subscription copy of the new issue of that same magazine that sent me the DVD in 2007. This week’s cover story about BBT (apparently they still love it to pieces) confirms on page 33, “A rule that only DC Comics products can appear in the comic-book store was lifted in honor of Marvel legend Stan Lee’s guest appearance in season 3.” I’m surprised DC didn’t bar Stan the Man from appearing and insist that the show feature special guest star Dan DiDio instead. Openly corporate favoritism is, in my opinion, highly anti-geek.

Naturally, the Nielsen commoners can’t get enough of it. It’s now the highest-rated sitcom in current production, preparing to start its sixth season this coming Thursday, September 27th. I realize the industry has rewarded it with many Emmys, which mean about as much to me as Tonys do. (Hint: as I live nowhere near Broadway, the answer is near zero.) I get that I’m supposed to dig the theme by Barenaked Ladies, who’ve composed several great songs but have never sustained a fully satisfying album from start to finish for my taste. I realize the show has garnered many renowned guests hallowed and revered to our crowd — numerous Trek actors and actual scientists, among others. How nice for the show that it has powerful friends, allies, and fans. Good for it.

Perhaps the show has matured since then and stopped falling back on easy go-to shtick. “It’s funny ’cause geeks don’t get women!” “It’s funny ’cause geeks use real big words!” “It’s funny ’cause geeks like stupid stuff!” If those have disappeared, great. I’m glad it’s experienced a miraculous, hopefully repentant turnaround. The rest of the world can continue enjoying it at their leisure for the twenty more seasons sure to come.

Meanwhile, I’ll be fine over here without it. If I want to see or read works authentically FGBG, funny or even dramatic, I’ve had plenty of options past and present about our mindset — Scott McCloud’s Zot!, Evan Dorkin’s “Eltingville Club” stories, Sideways, Frasier, High Fidelity, Phonogram, Fringe, The Nerdist channel, and the amazing, colossal, heartbreakingly underrated Community, which in its three seasons has been more magnificently FGBG than I thought humanly possible, without stooping to the lower common denominators or compromising a great taste in reference points.

Even if the Nielsen commoners take Community away from me after the new showrunners fail to appease them, I guarantee shouting “BAZINGA! BAZINGA! BAZINGA!” at me won’t change my mind.

“Revolution” Pilot: From Slow Burn to Swashbuckling

September 18, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in TV/DVD Tags: Billy Burke, entertainment, Eric Kripke, Giancarlo Esposito, JJ Abrams, NBC, pilot, reviews, Revolution, television, tv 3 Comments

Billy Burke, NBC, "Revolution" Tonight was the broadcast premiere of NBC’s newest genre series Revolution, from executive producer JJ Abrams and creator Eric Kripke, best known as the original mind behind Supernatural. In a world where electricity has gone the way of the dinosaur and the physics of combustion engines have magically suspended operation, factions have arisen to make the most of a scary new world without advanced technology, lifesaving devices, or Angry Birds.

After a cursory intro peppered by distant, low-key plane crashes, the show’s setting begins fifteen years later after mankind has regressed to villages and an entire generation has grown up with only vague memories of ice cream and the Internet. Our heroine, Charlie (Tracy Spiridakos), is a more optimistic, less assured Katniss Everdeen who eschews regular bows in favor of a crossbow, which serves her poorly when she learns the hard way that reloading takes longer. At least, I hope she realizes her error. If she sticks with the crossbow simply to avoid trademark confusion, I’ve no doubt that future fight scenes will sadly gloss over this issue. Don’t be fooled by how easy the Huntress makes it look, kids.

After a tragic death and the passing of a family MacGuffin, Charlie reluctantly inspires a ragtag team of misfits to quest with her to Chicago. There’s her dad’s Australian girlfriend Maggie (Anna Lise Phillips), a doctor with sly methods for maiming a foe; Aaron (Zak Orth), a former Google exec who tags along because of comic relief; and Nate (JD Pardo), an archer with multiple weapon proficiencies and shifty priorities. They vow to walk dozens of miles together for justice, revenge, safety, and premise.

The reason for this quest? Charlie’s asthmatic brother Danny (Graham Rogers) has been taken captive by the most immediate Big Bad, Giancarlo Esposito (now departed from Breaking Bad and incarcerated on Once Upon a Time), a sinister militia captain named Neville who’s not thrilled with the orders he has to follow, but has no qualms about putting his crack-shot skills to use for his overlord, Sebastian Monroe, ringleader of the militia that rules the immediate surroundings within the landmass formerly known as the USA. Esposito firmly takes charge of every scene and won’t let go, particularly in a sequence in which he nimbly and unflinchingly mows down a row of uppity villagers, exactly one split-second bullet per villager.

Our Heroes’ not-quite-epic journey to save David — even though he’s a prisoner waaaay back home — trots them through O’Hare International Airport, fifteen miles east to Wrigley Field, a few miles south to the Magnificent Mile, then into the heart of the Loop, where an old hotel sets the stage to introduce Charlie’s long-lost uncle Miles (Twilight dad Billy Burke), who may be the lynchpin of their cause if only he can put down the bottle, stop hiding, and assume his role as the One True Main Character…who’s apparently expected to drop all his plans, trek with them back across twenty-odd miles of I-90 North, and save the day without an audition or an incentive beyond “Because family is important!”

When Evil Esposito isn’t onscreen, the first ¾ of the pilot skims through a lot of character meetings without many chances to get to know anyone at length. The energy level cranks up at the 45-minute mark (including network ads) when Miles, previously described in an offhand manner as a “killing machine” as if it weren’t nothin’, engages in the sort of well-choreographed, high-speed, one-man-army swordplay demonstration that was once the hallmark of bygone shows such as TV’s Angel. For a few minutes, I was on Action TV Cloud Nine.

If you’re patient enough to endure the setup and introductions, lying in wait after all that happy Errol Flynn-ing are two special surprises in the final five minutes: a revelation that threatens to undercut the show’s entire premise; and a better look at one of the show’s secret weapons barely noted in the preview materials — David Lyons, once known as TV’s The Cape! Somewhere out there, Abed Nadir is deliriously happy.

The pilot was released online early at NBC’s official site, but that’s not helpful to people like me who prefer larger TV screens, or to people also like me who somehow didn’t find out about the early release until after the fact. (For shame, Internet — you’re supposed to tell me these things!) Revolution isn’t quite A-plus material yet, but the pilot, as directed by Iron Man‘s Jon Favreau, climaxes with enough pizzazz and tantalizes with enough promise that I plan to check back next week for more, though I’m making no long-term commitment yet. After the sweat and tears normally poured into a pilot on big-budget double overtime, it’s usually the second episode that doesn’t try as hard to impress, and is a better indicator of the real quality control levels to be expected in the weeks ahead. Also, I’d like to see if Charlie wises up and ditches that awkward crossbow.

The Fall 2012 TV Season: Which New Shows Can I Kill Just By Watching Them?

September 15, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in TV/DVD Tags: Arrow, cancellation predictions, Elementary, entertainment, fall season, Go On, Last Resort, Matthew Perry, new shows, one-season wonders, Revolution, television, tv, TV cancellations 6 Comments

The Flash. Brimstone. Clerks. Firefly. Threshold. FlashForward. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Persons Unknown. Outsourced. Terra Nova. I watched these shows, I grew attached to them for various reasons, and they each lasted one season or less. This has happened to me often enough that I refuse to write it off as coincidence or horrible taste.

I am not simply unlucky in leisure. I am more than a mere jinx. I am the destroyer of new network programming.

Even as far back as my childhood, incidents occurred. Does anyone else remember the McLean Stevenson vehicle Condo? Its truncated run wasn’t another example of his own curse in action. That was me. When Isaac Asimov co-created Probe, I was there to ensure he failed in at least one creative venture in his entire life. What had two thumbs and watched the American version of Cracker? This young adult viewer, that’s who.

By comparison, consider a few of the shows I didn’t watch: Lost, Heroes, The Big Bang Theory, 99% of all reality shows — all of which I didn’t follow, all of which may have lived longer than they should have. Sometimes I’ve even saved the life of a show by walking away from it. I gave up on Grimm after several episodes about a cop with a greater destiny who insisted on remaining a boring old cop; lo and behold, without me around, the cop and his world of were-critters live on. If a bad time slot and the CBS site’s horrid streaming browser hadn’t caused me to lose track of Person of Interest halfway through its decently rated first season, surely something awful would’ve happened to it or its cast, guaranteed.

(Never mind examples that dispute my hypothesis. Once Upon a Time was either a magical fluke, or will nosedive in quality this season and join the small Two-Season Miracle Club alongside Pushing Daisies, Dollhouse, and Who Wants to Be a Super-Hero? You heard it here first.)

The 2012 fall season is now upon us, and I’m about to kill again. I can’t help myself. Sometimes I just like watching new things on TV. At the moment I’m considering trying several different shows this season. I apologize in advance for the livelihoods I may ruin and any budding fandom that will be crushed because of my attempted participation.

The death march consists of the following shows. I may watch a few others if I hear great things, or if I’m in need of more writing fodder.

Last Resort — A heavily armed submarine crew disobeys a direct order to begin nuking things and finds itself a Gilligan’s Lost Island on which to stand its ground, declare nationhood, and get to the bottom of a vast government conspiracy back in their former homeland. The unusual Tom Clancy-esque premise is bolstered with a cast that blatantly delves into the my mental catalog — Homicide‘s Andre Braugher, Dollhouse‘s Dichen Lachman, Robert Patrick the original T-1000, Persons Unknown‘s Daisy Betts, Karen from Falling Skies, and TV’s Scott Speedman (whom I’ve watched in almost nothing, but he seems to get around anyway). I’ve not seen any other shows from creator Shawn Ryan (The Shield, The Unit), but the buzz from them alone sounded out-of-the-ordinary, and he receives bonus points for having worked on one season of Angel.

Revolution — To be honest, I hate the premise of the show. Earth has all its electricity permanently turned off after a mysterious event, of the kind that made such winners out of FlashForward and The Event. Fifteen years later, the show picks up with the remnants of humanity making the best of a situation where apparently all generators and Duracells were instantly ruined and never reinvented. I’ve never been a fan of shows with primitive settings. I’m hardly a JJ Abrams completist. The cast is largely unknown to me, except for the never-boring Giancarlo Esposito and Elizabeth Mitchell from the new V…but part of me wants to know how they plan to patch this together into a viable series. Also, the pilot was directed by Iron Man auteur Jon Favreau. Whatever happens, at least that episode shouldn’t be boring.

Arrow — May Justin Hartley forgive me, but as a comic book reader, I feel it my duty to try at least one episode of the colorless Green Arrow series, even though it more closely resembles the morose Mike Grell post-Crisis reboot of the late ’80s than the dashing Smallville bright spot. When it comes to comic adaptations that the general public may not get, it can’t possibly be as bland as Sable, which I also helped bury in my youth after a handful of airings. Sorry, First Comics. My fault.

Elementary — My wife and I still have one more episode of Sherlock to watch before we’re caught up with the rest of the world. After that finale undoubtedly blows us away, maybe then I’ll be in a position to ask what in the world CBS is thinking. I thought the preview I posted a while back had potential. Then I began watching Sherlock. Now? I really hope Jonny Lee Miller, Lucy Liu, and the Star Trek: Voyager writer who developed this version know what they’re doing.

Go On — I’ve already seen the first two episodes. So far, it hasn’t been canceled yet. Knock on wood, I suppose. In his role as a sportscaster grieving for the loss of his wife who died while texting and driving, Matthew Perry balances snark and pathos better here than he did on Studio 60, where he was still trying to shake the “Chandler” label. Enough time has passed, and enough hair has grayed, that I didn’t think of Friends once during either episode. The determinedly quirky cast includes Tony Award Winner Laura Benanti, character actor Bill Cobbs, Sam Witwicky’s mom, the new Sulu, the Chris that Everybody Hates, friendly traitorous Skye from Terra Nova, and some comedians I don’t know, none of which I loathe yet. I’m a big fan of humor/heart fusions, and Go On seems to be working well toward finding the right mix. The “March Sadness” scene is what first drew me in, but the interplay between the variegated members of the support group will make or break it in the long run. I could see it happening…alas, if only I weren’t there to see it.

Wave goodbye to all the nice, well-meaning shows, folks. Perhaps I could save careers and lives by sticking to DVD sets or TV Land reruns, but I refuse to live with my head in the sand, or to turn on TV Land if I can help it.

Here’s hoping more than one of them isn’t terrible, and that at least a few of the Nielsen commoners can finally agree with me on anything. The power to stop my TV show killspree is ultimately in their hands.

Can the Final Season of “The Office” Out-Excruciate Season 8?

August 29, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in TV/DVD Tags: entertainment, final season, Greg Daniels, NBC, predictions, rainn wilson, Season 9, television, The Office, tv 2 Comments

Rainn Wilson as Dwight Schrute, "The Office" After Steve Carell’s departure near the end of Season 7, and an uneven Season 8 marked by low ratings and much grumbling in our household about quality control, The Office returns for its final season on September 20th with original producer/showrunner Greg Daniels retaking the controls. I’m letting optimism get the best of me and taking this as a positive sign.

In a recent Entertainment Weekly interview, Daniels revealed some of the plot points in store for the last stretch of episodes, in which they’re free to go nuts and “blow things up.” Among other surprises in store, Season 9 will see Kelly’s defection to Fox’s The Mindy Kaling Project; two new characters taking over Customer Service; the return of Pam’s ex Roy (among other long-gone faces); an inevitable segue to Rainn Wilson’s Frasier-iffic spinoff The Farm, and at long last, a behind-the-scenes look at the documentary crew that sees, knows, and films all.

What about those other surprises in store? It’s too early to know for sure what ideas are locked in, what remains on Daniels’ wishlist, and what will end up as mere Season 9 DVD extras. It’s a good bet that whatever happens, it won’t be predictable, and in some cases it won’t be what we longtime fans want to see. Sometimes that’s a good thing, because we fans tend to imagine and ask for the safe, the easy, and the comforting from our favorite shows. When The Office is working as it should, it’s generally never safe, easy, or comforting — it’s the kind of awkward, messy, embarrassing series that can leave you laughing even while you cover your face in disbelief and keep peeking between your fingers at the TV.

If they really want to awkward things up, here are a few post-shark-jumping ideas for any number of episodes that will likely never be requested by fans, thus making them 50% more likely to happen than most of the typical fan wishlists currently viewable online:

* News arrives that Michael Scott has died offscreen. Totally, thoroughly, irrevocably, irretrievably dead, dead, dead, dead, DEAD. Thus is Steve Carell finally granted some semblance of peace, quiet, and reprieve from millions of fans who won’t stop pestering him to come back One Last Time to Save the Show. Carell instead relishes the chance to watch Season 9 from home as a fan while pondering his next dozen seven-figure-paycheck film roles.

* After buying the company, David Wallace gives Andy his blessing to run the Scranton office as he sees fit. Andy reassigns Nellie to the receptionist’s desk, has Erin take over the fictional role of office administrator, transfers Pam to Quality Control, and moves Creed down to the warehouse in the newly created role of Janitor Emeritus. Creed still never lifts a finger, except to devote more time to Creed Thoughts and its eight million imaginary followers. Most popular entries among the voices in his head include “Where’d All the White People Go?”, “What’s a Janitor, and How Does One Janit?”, and “I Must Kill The Baler Before It Kills Me”.

* Wallace also assembles his new officers. His new COO: Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration. Phyllis is subsequently appointed to an executive VP position.

* Pam follows up Cece and Philip with a set of healthy quadruplets. Pam can’t convince any of her coworkers to look at their cute photos. The writers never even bother to name any of them.

* Jan brings her li’l toddler Astrid in for a visit, but is dismayed to find out that He Who Is Not Coming Back no longer works there. She spends the day hanging around anyway, pays Kevin a thousand dollars to babysit for her, then goes out for a lovely, wild evening with Stanley.

* After a disastrous incident with Angela’s state-senator husband that no one ever describes onscreen, Oscar decides he might not be gay after all and tries flirting with Angela, just because he’s curious to see what happens. There is no conceivable TV universe in which this begins or ends well.

* Ed Truck’s ghost returns to haunt Dunder Mifflin, approaching each of our characters one by one and asking if they’ll be his friend. Everyone hems, haws, and finds excuses to say no. David Wallace drives his son to the office and has him capture Dead Ed with a Suck It. When fans ask if there’s a remote chance of a super-special cameo by Michael Scott’s ghost, the very next episode features a team of priests, rabbis, shamans, and Ghost Hunters taking turns doing whatever they can to Scott’s grave to ensure that he remains dead, dead, dead, dead, DEAD.

* Mose rides a jet-ski over a shark pool. Turns out it’s his favorite hobby. No one knows why, and they’re afraid to ask where he got all those sharks.

* Toby resigns to become a full-time crime novelist. His first book is poorly reviewed, but sells like gangbusters in Latin America. Several months pass before anyone in the office notices he’s gone.

* Ryan begins to freak out when he realizes that all of his coworkers have been slowly pairing up over the last several years, that sooner or later he’ll be required to pair up with someone else now that Kelly’s gone, and that the only remaining candidates are Meredith and Madge down in the warehouse. When a desperate Ryan finds out the hard way that Madge has already hooked up with Gabe, he spends the last three episodes in his office closet, curled up under his desk and crying till the cameramen promise to go away.

* Darryl goes back to being really cool, just like he used to be, once upon a time.

* Some genius superfan kicks all his social-media accounts into hyperdrive and organizes an international “Bring Michael Back” campaign by convincing several million fans to mail buckets full of cheese puffs to NBC. In answer to their demands, Greg Daniels appears in the very next episode in a special cameo, dressed as the Munchkin coroner from The Wizard of Oz, holding a poster-sized death certificate, and singing: “As showrunner / I thoroughly can now confirm / That he’s not only merely dead / He’s really most sincerely dead!” All of fandom agrees to stop asking if Daniels promises never to wear the costume again.

* Instead of filing for bankruptcy and closing its doors forever in the final episode, Dunder Mifflin becomes a new power player in the publishing industry with its brilliant innovation that takes America by storm: electronic paper that exists only in virtual form, but which the company sells in virtual reams of 500 and in virtual cases of twelve reams apiece. This proposal makes no sense whatsoever, but crafty ol’ Jim finds a way to sell millions of cases to hundreds of gullible companies whose management are all over age 80. It is the greatest prank of his entire life.

* Final sequence: for the first time in his life, Dwight accidentally kills someone with one of his stashed office weapons — a delivery boy who didn’t check in at reception and has more tattoos than Dwight would prefer. His retreat to The Farm is borne not of a desire to focus on a different career, but to escape the long arm of Scranton law. Dwight imagines he’s an excellent refugee. The reality is that the Scranton police know Dwight pretty well and never did like that delivery boy, who had a rap sheet a mile long and was more terrible at delivering than Fry from Futurama. According to their final police report, the evidence was all too circumstantial for them to build a solid court case, so they’re prepared to let it languish in permanent cold-case status. As a practical joke they let Dwight live the rest of his life in hiding instead of telling him all of this.

“Bunheads” 8/20/2012: the Ringer Twirls While the Ballerinas Burn

August 22, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in TV/DVD Tags: A Nutcracker in Paradise, ABC Family, Bailey Buntain, ballet, Bunheads, Casey J. Adler, Emma Dumont, entertainment, Julia Goldani Telles, Kaitlyn Jenkins, Rainbow Connection, recap, Sutton Foster, television, The Ringer, tv 3 Comments

The Ringer waits in the wings for her time to strike.

Important things first: ABC Family has wisely chosen to order more episodes of Bunheads, with a promise to return in the winter instead of making us wait till June 2013 for our next fix. Much appreciated, ABC Family execs!

That saving grace means that this week’s episode, “A Nutcracker in Paradise”, wasn’t the series finale after all, but a “summer finale” marking the end of the season in an astronomy sense rather than the TV-standard sense. I’m unused to this approach to TV time-marking since I’ve never watched any other ABC Family shows, unless you count the old reruns of Whose Line Is It, Anyway? that they dropped long ago, or one time our family visited the set of The 700 Club in Virginia Beach even though we weren’t fans. (Long story.) I look forward to the “winter premiere” when its time arrives, but one has to wonder if the summer season and winter season will together comprise the eventual Season 1 DVD set, or if Summer 2012 was Season 1 and Winter 2012-2013 will be Season 2, or if the DVD manufacturer will avoid “season” divisions and opt instead for “volumes” like some animated shows do.

I’m taking a DVD release for granted, of course. Now that the specter of cancellation has dissipated for the moment, unbridled optimism is the order of the day. While we’re dreaming big, let’s also wish for more fun cameos for the benefit of you Gilmore Girls fans, maybe a few higher-profile guest stars, and something involving the word “Emmy”. Call me a lunatic, but it feels a lot better than living in a constant state of fear and chanting, “Six seasons and a movie! Six seasons and a movie! Six seasons and a movie!” as if the Beetlejuice summoning method will make it so.

Regardless: we can breathe more easily, knowing that the show didn’t end permanently with this week’s cliffhanger. I knew the show was headed somewhere dark as soon as I realized that the first half-hour had far too many happy moments in it. Too much happiness always means doom and gloom are bound to arrive and restore much-unwanted balance to the scales. First happy event: the previous week’s feud between Ginny, Melanie, and Boo over the date-ability of icky Charlie and dashing Carl was forcibly negotiated with a gum-wrapper treaty and no small amount of badgering from an annoyed Sasha and a tentatively promoted Michelle, clearly high on the first of many power trips yet to come.

With everyone friends again, love was truly in the air! (Well, not for Truly, hereby dubbed Lady Not-Appearing-in-This Episode.) Michelle and Godot the bartending stud moved past the googly-eye stage and shared tender public moments, to a lot of bemused head-turning from the other tables. Fanny and Michael seemed happier than ever, and in talks for some extended quality time in Montana. Boo gave the most achingly self-deprecating speech of the season, threw herself on the mercy of the Nutcracker fundraiser, and won back the heart of Our Hero Carl at last. Hurray for happy endings that will certainly stay very happy forever and sure not be ruined by any horrifying turn of events or anything!

Not even Sasha was immune to Cupid’s well-oiled scattergun. Despite her wish for lesbianism to save them all from guy trouble, Sasha met-cute against her will with a potential suitor of her own at the Oyster Bar’s fundraiser. He begins the episode as Tyler, star of a sad basketball team on a Charlie Brown losing streak, and ends the episode as Roman, newborn rebel transformed by thirty-year-old goth-rock. I’m fine with the costume department’s eclectic decision — grateful, even, that they went with something besides ’80s hair metal or up-‘n’-coming corporate-rock product placement. I’m not sure how well “Bela Lugosi is Dead” would lend itself to modern dance, but they’re certainly welcome to try. (If that doesn’t work out, might I suggest “Detonation Boulevard” by the Sisters of Mercy?)

Outside the subplots of love, Sasha once again nabbed a solo routine, this time in a satirical anti-Wall Street number accompanied by the descendants of the dancers from Madonna’s “Material Girl” video. Michelle enjoyed a rousing musical moment, a dream rendition of “Maybe This Time” from Cabaret. Boo and Carl shared a blissful makeup dance to “The Rainbow Connection”, as covered by Weezer with Hayley Williams of Paramore. Hopefully the winter season/volume/session/whatever allows opportunities to shine the spotlight on Ginny, Melanie, or even twelve-year-old Matisse, who by my reckoning is owed something for enduring Ginny’s frantic will-I-or-won’t-I rapid-fire blathering that seemed to be fueled by one too many gallons of Red Bull. (Fun trivia: this episode isn’t actress/dancer Matisse Love’s first time performing The Nutcracker.)

Alas, everything came crashing down in the episode’s fateful second half, in which Michelle wreaked untold havoc with six of the deadliest words in the English language: “I was only trying to help.” After earning so many smiles from Fanny in the first thirty minutes, she found it was all frown-hill from there.

First she attempts to play Doctor Love for Fanny and Michael, now falling out over Michael’s alleged plan to move to Montana permanently and possibly solo. When Michelle tries to talk Michael out of doing what she thinks Michael is doing, Michael apparently accelerates his plans and vanishes ahead of schedule. Handy tip: when a schmuck of a male is trying to avoid commitment, telling him his Signficant Other’s surprise commitment plans may not be the best way to change his mind. Who knew.

And then there was the big night, The Nutcracker in all its intended glory, Paradise Dance Academy’s biggest show of the year, the one that keeps them solvent and on the map. It’s like tax season for H&R Block, or the Indianapolis 500 for the town of Speedway, or the annual Marvel crossover event. This. Was. Very. Important. And all of it came crashing down in an initially funny, suddenly terrifying sequence in which an inattentive Michelle reaches for some refreshing misting water for the overheated cast and instead whips out her can of “pretty mace” on all of them, even testing it on herself like a true Stooge. Hijinks, eye damage, and “Marco! Polo!” ensue. As blinded teens body-slam each other or crawl offstage to safety, The Nutcracker transforms into Rise of the Ringer as Sasha’s usurper seizes the day, takes the stage, and delivers the performance of her career to an appreciative audience of zero.

Yes, behind all this madness and mayhem lurked…the Ringer. The first-ever super-villain ballerina was cordially invited to infiltrate the dance studio at Fanny’s behest while Sasha was still under the spell of Bring It On. Though Sasha was obviously freed this week from the Cult of Sue-Sylvesterology and ready to assume the role of Clara per Paradise annual tradition, the Ringer was nonetheless unstoppable by the adults and unflappable in the face of Sasha’s attempt to fire her. The nameless Ringer was a lean, mean, dancing machine undaunted by multitasking, untempted by human niceties such as courtesy and emotion, and completely oblivious to everyone else’s constant movie references. “I don’t have cable!” she whined in pain as she revealed her one weakness and her secret identity in that moment: she’s obviously a Nielsen viewer. Expect this supernaturally talented adversary to become Bunheads’ answer to Sideshow Bob in the seasons/volumes/sessions/whatevers ahead.

Beyond a bittersweet yet enigmatic dream reunion between the widow Michelle and her departed one-time husband, the episode ended with a wrenching walk down the hospital’s White Mile, accompanied by the echoes of Fanny’s fury and the sounds of Paradise parents demanding something between justice and litigation. The final Dead Poets Society tribute may not have been original, but it was no less heartbreaking, especially when Michelle had to remind Blockbuster’s best customers how that particular movie ended. (Seriously, is there so little to do in Paradise that all the kids spend their entire lives sitting through eighteen hours of cable movie channels every day, memorizing them wherever possible, maybe even taking notes on index cards just for small-talk prep? Remember the time when Melanie cracked wise about Martin Scorsese’s Kundun? What human does that? Watch Kundun, I mean?)

In these next few months without Bunheads, many questions will haunt us. Can the parents of Paradise ever forgive Michelle? Can our queenly quartet devise a clever way to restore Michelle’s honor and somehow blame everything on the Ringer? Can Fanny forget that free-love cad of hers and move on with her life and heart? Even if she does, can the studio afford to go on? And is there some way Ghost-Hubbell can become a regular?

Until Bunheads returns, we bid farewell for now with this closing number — that Weezer/Williams cover of “The Rainbow Connection”, one of the best Oscar-nominated songs of all time, a close personal favorite of mine since childhood. Kermit’s fragile banjo hook strikes a nerve for me every time. This version opts instead for ethereal strings that don’t achieve quite the same authenticity, but a TV season/volume/session/whatever that included both this song and They Might Be Giants holds a pretty astronomical ranking in my book.

The “Falling Skies” Season 2 Finales You Won’t See on TV in Our Reality

August 17, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in TV/DVD Tags: A More Perfect Union, entertainment, Falling Skies, humor, Noah Wyle, predictions, season 2, season finale, Skitters, spoilers, television, TNT, tv Leave a comment

The first nine episodes of Falling Skies‘ second season have been a tense thrill ride, except arguably the one episode that was devoted entirely to people chatting in cars. And, granted, fans of special effects may also noticed to their chagrin that last week’s episode, “The Price of Greatness”, didn’t feature a single live Skitter. I also find it immensely distracting every time two characters ostensibly hundreds of miles apart just happen to bump into each other. Otherwise, thrills have been a-poppin’ and tension has been mounting.

The addition of special guest stars Terry O’Quinn (Lost) as the first post-apocalyptic politician and Matt Frewer (forever Max Headroom in my heart) as an unthinking military man was certainly a step in the right direction away from staleness. Based on the promo for the season finale (enclosed below), it’s safe to say we can expect great, hopefully unpredictable things are in store for us. So far, I’ve been pretty satisfied with where the show has been steered of late, thanks in large part to season 2 showrunner Remi Aubuchon, whose previous work on NBC’s Persons Unknown was a big hit in our household and apparently nowhere else. (I still think of the show every time I’ve seen Reggie Lee pop up in other things like Grimm and The Dark Knight Rises. Seeing our heroes undergo Level 2 would’ve been a real treat.)

What if things had gone differently? What if Aubuchon hadn’t been available to helm Falling Skies because he was too busy wrapping up Persons Unknown season 3 after it magically found an audience? Imagine infinite versions of the show by infinite showrunners, perhaps in worlds where the fates of many a TV creator ran along a much different career track than they have in the reality we know and love.

In some of those alt-Earths, the Falling Skies season 2 finale, titled “A More Perfect Union” in our present reality, might be reimagined by those alt-producers like so:

Joss Whedon: One of the Overlords is finally given a name and a distinct, engaging personality. Season 2’s Big Bad is revealed at last, and happens to be the CEO of an evil galactic corporation. The season concludes not with another cliffhanger, but with a satisfying firefight that looks really expensive but was done on a shockingly modest budget, while at the same time offering deep-rooted closure to the season’s ongoing themes of distrust between allies and compromised freedoms. Also, because Tom has a happy relationship with Anne and is a great father to his boys, he obviously has to die quickly and brutally at the end. Season 3 will see the show renamed Maggie the Skitter Stomper, and Hal coping with his grief by developing unhealthy addictions to black clothing and expensive hair care products.

Chris Carter: Tom and Anne’s relationship is immediately downgraded back to irritating will-they-or-won’t-they status. The finale introduces four new kinds of aliens, six new supporting characters, and eight new conspiracies, ending after much sound and fury with an alien-war cliffhanger and a “To Be Concluded” placard. It is a placard of lies.

Amy Sherman-Palladino: After nineteen straight episodes of near-flawless heroism, Tom spends some time revealing all his fatal flaws and making sure we know he’s no hero to be praised or followed. This culminates in a harsh argument with Weaver in which both characters are required to recite entire speeches’ worth of dialogue at each other, longer than the Declaration of Independence and at 400 wpm. Weaver eventually convinces Tom about his wrongness just in enough time for the two of them to nab a pair of empty front-row seats at the Charleston Elementary production of My Fair Lady, in which li’l Matt closes the show with a heartbreaking rendition of “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face”. Eliza Doolittle is played by his new harnessed girl-pal from two episodes ago, who’s seen the error of her ways and begrudgingly joined the 2nd Mass after all. Forgiveness and healing are all but certain, as are countless tossed-away joke references to hip, erudite topics such as The Fantasticks, Secrets and Lies, Tamagotchi, The Decameron, and Steve Urkel.

Shonda Rhimes: Fifteen minutes of relationship angst and forty-five minutes of sex scenes. Noah Wyle will glisten and preen like he’s never glistened and preened before. Every female character will become insufferable.

Dick Wolf: The finale is a fully self-contained episode, except half the cast die or quit the rebellion. Their replacements in season 3 will be played by desperate but totally terrific Broadway actors at half the cost.

Alfred Gough and Miles Millar: Hal suddenly realized he’s still in love with Karen, was meant to be with Karen, and will never give up waiting for Karen, even though the best viewers will waste countless hours disagreeing with him via the Internet. All other characters will moan, groan, and keep pointing him toward Maggie in vain. Pope’s chaotic-good repartee will become three times zingier, and Pa Mason will spout more aphorisms than ever. Frustrating cliffhanger ending is mandatory, and won’t see full closure until eight episodes into season 3.

Vince Gilligan: Tom goes underground to meet the dregs of what’s left of American society. He discovers a way to destroy the invaders from within once and for all, but it may require him to sacrifice the life of one of his sons. He goes forward with it anyway, as the darkness begins to form slowly in his once-pure heart. Anne is strangely on board with every bizarre decision he makes. The Noah Wyle that America once knew and loved as the benevolent Dr. John Carter gets really scary to watch.

Frank Darabont: The first fifty-eight minutes will be the characters standing around wreckage, staring into space meaningfully, pausing to reflect and mourn at length, holding conversations about compromised freedoms, and ending every other sentence with, “…but at what price?” The final two minutes are super awesome alien wartime nonstop explosion cinema extravaganza that blows the fans away, costs $60 million to film, and requires a now-penniless TNT to cancel all its other original series except Franklin & Bash, whose two stars are willing to forgo paychecks and work for vending machine snacks.

Veena Sud: One solid hour of everyone standing, staring, pausing, and generally hanging out on lots of dull grey sets. Smiles are forbidden. Dale Dye and all other officers above Weaver will admit they’re no closer now to understanding the aliens’ motives than they were when the invasion began two seasons ago. In the only real plot development of the entire episode, Tom is relieved of command when he admits he has no idea how to use a gun, and has just been getting really lucky all this time.

Thankfully none of these realities are ours, for we live in the greatest reality of ALL TIMES. Enclosed for posterity is that brief season finale promo that may or may not contain all the hints we need to predict what’ll happen this Sunday night.

My amateur predictions:

1. Charleston will burn.
2. A minor recurring character will die. The easy money’s on Tector.
3. The firefight will look spectacular.
4. Lourdes hopefully stops mourning and gets back to representing for the faithful.
5. Just as the battle is nearly lost, Ben returns with a veritable cavalry.
6. Pope quits and leaves for good, and then returns again, and then quits and leaves yet again, and so on.
7. My wildest prediction, most likely to be wrong — Dai will have at least three whole lines. You heard it here first.

“Bunheads” 8/13/2012: Why Michelle Hates Kids and Ducks

August 14, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in TV/DVD Tags: ABC Family, Bailey Buntain, ballet, Bunheads, Casey J. Adler, Emma Dumont, entertainment, Julia Goldani Telles, Kaitlyn Jenkins, No One Takes Khaleesi's Dragons, recap, Sutton Foster, TAFT-POKI-RIP, television, The Association For The Preservation Of Keeping it Real In Paradise, tv 4 Comments

If I could count the number of times that a small-town teen was suckered by a charlatan promising a “Sound of Music” singalong…

Despite Michelle’s hollow promises, tonight’s new Bunheads episode “No One Takes Khaleesi’s Dragons” featured no bris, no Hugh Jackman on Skype, no free puppies, and no Sound of Music singalong (sorry, “Brigitta”). Sadly, Our Heroines were denied those things, any other Game of Thrones references, and ever so much more, thanks to the triple tag-team menace of whirlwind emotions, unconscious rivalry, and a Nutcracker production that threatens to crash and burn harder than a rafter full of Spider-Man doubles.

For a change, some of this was Boo’s fault. Last week she failed to stand up against Ginny and Melanie when their words tore like harpies’ claws into the fragile ego of dashing Carl Cramer, her Astaire/Rogers tribute partner and would-be soulmate. This week her courage and determination overcame that failure and allowed them to connect them both for several happily-ever-after seconds, until Ginny’s subplot careened into hers. The resulting collision induced temporary amnesia into Boo, who reverted to a previous mental state and convinced herself she liked Melanie’s icky brother Charlie again. It was just like The Vow, except I’d suspect that no woman on Earth would choose Charlie over Channing Tatum.

Ginny wasn’t in the best of mental states herself. Now that Charlie has set aside his Boo-using habit in favor of simpleminded flirting with Ginny instead, her body is resorting to new defense mechanisms such as high-strung responses, flat rejection of all comestibles, bleacher-diving into hapless basketball fans, and making short jokes about other people her own height. Too bad for Ginny that she shares Boo’s inexplicable weakness for icky brothers. Thankfully social taboo affords Melanie total immunity from Charlie-crushing, but her stern reminders about the Bra Code are useless against this grave, seemingly incurable contagion. Perhaps a fundraiser is in order, if only enough top-40 musicians could be enlisted to participate in a “USA Against Charlie” benefit single.

Alas, Michelle was preoccupied elsewhere. Her attempts at simple coffee-drinking are stymied by the eccentric perfectionism of the barista Bash (Gilmore Girls vet Sean Gunn), who has peculiar ideas about buyer/seller power dynamics and who may or may not have won competitions against an actual guy from Seattle, if you can believe the stories. Then she learns that Boo and Carl’s important, relationship-making performance at the opening of a premier supermarket is threatened by the Association for the Preservation of Keeping it Real in Paradise, local busybodies who oppose such everyday pleasantries as child slavery, environmental destruction, and duck genocide.

Michelle decides the best course of action is throw caution and fact-checking to the wind, and become Paradise’s first staunch supporter of their upcoming generic-brand Super Wal*Mart. Thus she recruits Godot the potential-love-interest bartender to her cause and stages an ambush on her opponents in the Axis of Real-Keeping — tap-dance student Sam (Gilmore Girls vet Rose Abdoo), Joe who owns Joe’s Market (conflict of what, now?), and Jon Polito from Homicide: Life on the Street. Somehow the forbidden love between Boo and Carl is not enough motivation for the hearts of TAFT-POKI-RIP to grow three sizes too big and extend an open invitation to Evil Foods and their Evil Grey Poupon. Is the Astaire/Rogers show-stopper doomed before its debut? Were Boo and Carl simply not meant to be? Will his Stewie Griffin impression remain repressed forever?

Not even Fanny is in a position to assist, as her participation in Our Heroines’ lives is minimized while she concentrates on whipping numerous inadequate extras into shape to populate next week’s Nutcracker extravaganza, which require her to bark lines such as, “ARABESQUE, MATISSE!” with contemptuous desperation. Why wasn’t Truly’s witches’ brew of pumpkin-pie candles and fresh-cut flowers potent enough to course-correct such disappointing rehearsals? Would cupcakes help?

Not all subplot roads lead to more ruin, however. Sasha plumbs the very depths of her soul and her brain, only to realize that cheerleading may just be beneath her. Her kicks are too emphatic; her school pride is tainted by her belief that high school athletics are a leading cause of adult career dysfunction and midlife crisis; and her cheers are fatally insincere. Every time she lifts a pom-pom, a Spartan Spirit dies. She took the easy road out from under Fanny’s perceived oppression, only to realize that the easy road is a pretty boring drive. Two barriers now stand between the prodigal daughter and her return to ballet life: Fanny’s demand for an apology, and her own youthful stubbornness. Can she and Fanny reconcile in time to save Nutcracker and the entire school? Does the school’s fate even hinge on this performance? Should we expect scary bulldozers at Fanny’s door next week?

Hopefully next Monday’s season finale will answer these questions and more. The next-episode promo already spoiled how “one moment will change everything”, which means we’re guaranteed at least one genuine Moment. Until then, you’ll have time to let Bash design you at least one complete drink, read further into your trigonometry textbook, sculpt whipped-cream replicas of Simon LeBon’s face, locate at least one Starbucks that doesn’t play world music, frost your cookies with cookie dough, reflect on your own “commitment to the sulk”, and lift your spirits higher and higher by repeating Sasha’s best cheer before every meal:

o/~
Stay in school!
Learn algebra!
You have no future in sports!
Hey-hey!
o/~

…or you can load your copy of The Sound of Music and sing along to “My Favorite Things” instead.

“Bunheads” 8/6/2012: No Love for Cheerleaders or Undertall Leading Men

August 7, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in TV/DVD Tags: Blank Up It's Time, Bunheads, Carl Cramer, Casey J. Adler, Craig Eigeman, entertainment, Kaitlyn Jenkins, Kelly Bishop, Kent Boyd, recap, Sutton Foster, television, tv 4 Comments

In spite of the scene near the end where two of our cast members turned into heartless teenage monsters, I heartily welcomed the arrival of Casey J. Adler as Carl Cramer, the young dynamo introduced in tonight’s new episode of Bunheads. With a song in his heart and a dream of his hundredth viewing of That’s Entertainment! lifting his spirits, the new lead in the dance school’s Rogers/Astaire tribute sought to leap, waltz, and charm his way into Boo’s good graces when cast as her leading man. With his predecessor out of the picture (special guest Kent Boyd from So You Think You Can Dance, a.k.a. SYTYCD, which I think is pronounced “sit-icked”) and Sasha sidelined due to forbidden suntanning, can this odd couple share a dance number without driving each other crazy?

This struggle was, for me, the most interesting part of tonight’s episode, “Blank Up, It’s Time”. (Despite Michelle’s consternation, the title of the play-within-an-episode makes sense to me. Every morning for me, “wake” is a four-letter word.) Carl and Boo were only one of three new couples featured. First, Fannie introduced us to her heretofore unknown troubadour amour Michael (character actor Richard Gant, whom you probably saw in this one thing, and you’re absolutely sure of it, but for the life of you, you can’t remember it, can you?). Later in the episode, while attending an amateurish performance of Blank Up, It’s Time with Fannie, Michelle makes a new friend in the play’s director, Conor (Chris Eigeman, best known to me as Malcolm’s obnoxious teacher on Malcolm in the Middle). I’m generally not interested when shows delve into sex lives, but the rapid-fire chemistry between Michelle and Conor was fun to behold, especially as they’re comparing notes on how badly his play is going (Conor surveying the unresponsive audience: “I count eight asleep, three dead”).

Random thoughts from tonight:

* When noting in old film dialogue that, “It’s funnier when it’s faster,” Ginny discovers the secret that has driven the careers of Amy Sherman-Palladino and Aaron Sorkin.

* I spent the second half of the episode fairly irked. Michelle’s haranguing of the buffalo-legged lady struck a little too close to home for me, someone who’s self-conscious about how much space he takes up in auditorium seating. Granted, the lady’s stubbornness was the more annoying obstacle, but most of the snark was at the expense of her weight, not her obstinacy. If that wasn’t enough lowbrow mockery, then came the short jokes about poor, effervescent Carl. I appreciated Fannie’s sobering moment with not-small-boned Boo when she subtly hints that sometimes it’s to our benefit when people overlook those of unusual size (a fitting callback to Boo’s own hard-won acceptance into ballet school). I less appreciated her summation of Carl: “What he lacks in everything, he makes up in enthusiasm.” Then again, that’s only slightly less backhanded than most of her quote-unquote “compliments”.

* Favorite scene: Fannie’s tantrum over the Arroyo Grande beach party’s decision to forgo ballet in favor of cheerleaders this year. (Maybe in their world, yodeling and plate-spinning are sports, Fannie! Not nice to judge.)

* It was hard to be shocked at Sasha’s continuing downward spiral into “DEFCON Swan”. After the forbidden suntan, then her dramatic act of wanton, reckless rebellion…was to try out for the cheerleader squad? For a brief moment the ending felt straight out of Bizarro World. If Carl sticks around for future seasons, expect his disenchantment with his parents’ marital issues to lead him into a street gang whose members are all on the chess team.

* I do not want to see Michelle’s one commercial gig. Please do not show us Michelle’s one commercial gig. I will die of male horror if I have to watch Michelle’s one commercial gig.

* I bet Conor would’ve made a fantastic murder victim on Law & Order: Parental Neglect. Dick Wolf’s people clearly just didn’t get him.

Regardless of all of the above, tonight’s real star was — that name again — Carl Cramer, the long-lost son of Mad Men‘s Michael Ginsberg. Once more with feeling, here was my second favorite scene (posted officially by ABC Family, so no pesky C-&-D order to disrupt transmission this time), in which Carl’s stalker-ish tendencies show just a little before he reins them in and ends on a note of gentlemanly class…and then undermines it all with a coda threatening to do impressions. Maybe should’ve stopped one sentence sooner, Carl.

(If you’re dying to see Kent Boyd’s musical number, that’s online, too. I don’t watch reality shows, but he does seem talented.)

“Bunheads” 7/30/2012: I’ve Seen “Heathers”, but My Broadway Scorecard is Lacking…

July 30, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in TV/DVD Tags: ABC Family, Bailey Buntain, Bunheads, Desire, entertainment, Heathers, Mates of State, music, recap, Stacey Oristano, Sutton Foster, television, tv, What's Your Damage Heather? 4 Comments

I never intended to dedicate a weekly spot to any given TV show, but the sheer density of dialogue, references, and character momentum packed into every episode of Bunheads keep driving me to take notes while watching for later musing and reliving. Tonight’s episode, “What’s Your Damage, Heather?”, was darker-edged than last week’s movie-truck escapade, with Michelle confirming the hard way what she’d already assumed deep-down, long before Fannie’s surprise vacation forced her into the substitute role: that teaching is hard, and role-modeling is even harder.

(Courtesy Spoiler Alert goes here. Bail out now if you’re planning to view the episode later this week on the ABC Family official site. This was no fluffy, inconsequential episode like “Movie Truck” was.)

As a consequence of Michelle’s carefree recollections of her life as a free-wheeling teen who received next to no moral guidance from her “Deb”, Ginny and Josh ended their aww-cute/uhh-weird eight-year relationship because Ginny (taking center stage for once) now feels inspired to play the field. The resulting domino effect emboldened Melanie’s icky brother Charlie to use poor lovelorn Boo as a potential inroad to now-unattached Ginny, to Boo’s humiliation and budding ire toward Michelle.

On the adult front, Truly remains on a roll from last week’s wild night and finds herself inexplicably drawn to one-eyed David the bad plumber. When Michelle isn’t upsetting the delicate fabric of the Paradise romantic scene, she’s busy bristling and fuming when Sasha acts up and all but demands a dressing-down from a capable adult. Meanwhile, Boo’s mom Nanette brings the gift of snacks, but seemed a little jealous of Michelle’s influence on Boo. Worst of all, now Ginny’s mom Claire will have to take out her own trash whenever she’s not busy shoving a real-estate pitch down someone’s throat. Oh, the horror and effort of it all. Tonight was just not Michelle’s finest hour.

Other random thoughts from tonight:

* The Heathers reference in the title was apt, though the callback to Winona Ryder’s one-time shoplifting incident seemed more than a little dated, even by the standards of a show that’s previously name-checked Girl, Interrupted. Also, though the “Heather” line is easy to remember if you’ve seen the film, Sasha reminds me more of Shannen Doherty’s Heather than Ryder’s Veronica. Differently apropos: when Charlie once again treated Boo like a doormat, I couldn’t help being reminded of poor, downtrodden Martha Dumptruck (in terms of status, not figure).

* Back in the days when I had enough hair to keep it shaggy and necessitate the use of a hair dryer, I recall many a time having them overheat and conk out after three or four minutes. How did Our Heroines manage to keep their dryers functional for three straight hours? Has the technology improved that much over the past decade? Do teams of Conair scientists work ’round the clock infusing their products with state-of-the-art upgrades?

* Are there reasons to hate Guys and Dolls? I’ve never seen it. Also to my shameful ignorance, I’ve never seen a single version of Les Miserables. Is this (a) a minor oversight; (b) a major oversight; or (c) a crime against art on my part? (If it helps, I promise to see the upcoming Hugh Jackman version as soon as it’s ready for me.)

* They mentioned a food truck fair! Finally, they cited an event we actually have in Indianapolis. I feel so hip and modern now.

* Fries on salad: worth trying or not worth trying?

* Sasha may be the first character under age 30 in recorded history to recite a snappy comeback using the word “shtetl”. Can someone verify that? Have pop-culture punchlines been sufficiently documented up to this point in time?

* Using “hip-hop line dancing” as an ostensibly made-up punchline isn’t half as funny if you’ve attended a company holiday party that endured a four-minute interruption by “The Cha-Cha Slide”. It’s not hip-hop, but I don’t appreciate that Michelle’s off-the-cuff wisecrack somehow brought it to mind anyway and now it won’t leave my head. (“Everybody clap your hands! CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP” AAAAAAAUGH.)

* Perhaps I’m too finicky, but ending a downer of an episode with pumpkin chocolate-chip cookies and a grape juice box isn’t nearly as tempting as the cheesecake breaks that used to punctuate every other episode of The Golden Girls.

* Alas, no use of They Might Be Giants this week. I was rather hoping for a brisk interlude set to “The Mesopotamians” or even “Boat of Car” (good luck choreographing that one). For the curious, the song of the night was briefly brought to you by Mates of State, before being interrupted by the wall-punching incompetence of David the pirate plumber.

Today’s Unrelated Things: Joss Whedon, Action Hero; and “The Killing”, Inaction Victim

July 29, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in Misc. Media, TV/DVD Tags: AMC, cancelled, Dave Foley, entertainment, Joss Whedon, Kate Micucci, Rosie Larsen, Scary Smash, television, The Killing, tv, unrelated things, Written by a Kid Leave a comment

For Rosie Larsen, justice was served far, far too late.

Last Friday AMC announced their cancellation of The Killing after two controversial seasons. What launched as a grim-‘n’-gritty crime drama with a unique tone and a promising premise strained to sustain viewer patience, culminating in a season-one finale that launched a thousand ‘Net-fits when it ended To Be Continued. TV fans raised on the complete, self-contained, season-long arcs of superior shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Veronica Mars were unaware that any showrunners in this age would still rely on the ancient TV model of ending a season with a DVD-boxed-set-ruining cliffhanger. We former might have been more forgiving if the season had been more satisfying. Alas, ’twas not the case here.

Before season two premiered, my half of a conversation with a friend digressed into a diatribe about my discontent with the show and my bold plan not to watch a single episode of season two, despite the thirteen hours of my time already invested without benefit of closure. My tantrum went like so:

I patiently allowed myself to be strung along for thirteen hours’ worth of watching one truly original character, several mopey characters, and one aggravatingly incompetent protagonist. I labored under the delustion that the season would be a fulfilling story in and of itself. I waited it out through thin and thinner, enduring unbelievable acts of stupidity committed in extreme slow motion by characters that would’ve been fired or murdered long ago if the same had happened in real life, under the expectation (fostered by precedents set by other, better shows, not to mention 99% of all other whodunits throughout recorded entertainment history) that closure for the simple question of “Who Killed Rosie Larsen?” would be forthcoming in a timely manner.

When the show revealed itself to be an extended tease for a resolution that might or might not occur in some future season, unless they decide never to solve it, which they totally could if they wanted to, meaningless press releases in recent months notwithstanding, and when showrunner Veena Sud confirmed that they never intended to solve the mystery in season 1…I was not remotely happy.

And it wasn’t just for my own sake, but for my wife’s, whose reaction was even more vehement and scary than mine. She and I rarely watch any new TV shows together, but just this once she had trusted my recommendation and given The Killing a shot. It was fun to watch the show together, to compare our notes and thoughts on a shared experience.

So that blew up in my face. When the finale ended with the complete non-solution and the one original character betraying us, she instantly swore off the show, and she’s not fully trusted a TV recommendation of mine ever since.

So thank you, Veena Sud, for helping me not spend more time with my wife. I’ve never been this excited about not watching a TV show, but now I’m zealously anticipating any and all Schadenfreude I can derive at your show’s expense.

…but I’m feeling much better now. I honestly expected this to be a minority opinion that would long forgotten somewhere around the show’s fifth season. Apparently I wasn’t the only upset customer who upheld their promise, refused to tune in again, and passed the time until the finale aired and online news sites reported the mystery’s solution.

For what it’s worth, my wife bought me season one of Sherlock for our eighth anniversary a couple of weeks ago, in hopes that we’ll have time to enjoy it together. Neither of us has seen an episode yet (I’ve watched one brilliant scene online, under the title “Sherlock Holmes, Grammar Nazi”), but trustworthy people keep recommending it. Here’s hoping.

* * * * *

Since I’m not really in the mood for a complete downer of an entry, enclosed below is something completely different. If you’ve already seen it six times in the last week because your friends flooded all your Internet inboxes with links to it, I’ll understand if you groan and fire up your escape pod now.

From the producers of The Guild, a new Web series called Written by a Kid springboards from simple storytelling segments with children ages four to nine, who still say the darnedest things after all these years. Whereas Bill Cosby would only allow each of his interviewees a brief moment in the spotlight, Written by a Kid moves one step beyond and turns each child’s improv short-story into an animated tale of whimsy and wonder.

Episode one is called “Scary Smash”, about a one-eyed monster on a milkman-murdering rampage and the SQUAT team captain that takes seven days to stop him. Starring Dave Foley (Kids in the Hall, NewsRadio, A Bug’s Life) as the dead milkman, Kate Micucci (stuff I’ve never seen) as a latecomer to the war, and, in his first starring action role, TV’s Joss Whedon (TV’s Angel, TV’s Firefly) as that steadfast captain, Gerald by name, who wields a sword and a shield and a gun and a small gun.

…and now you know how to count to ten hundred.

If you watch as many YouTube shows as my son does, you may also recognize some of Gerald’s poor, ineffective soldiers in split-second cameos, including YouTube stars Rhett and Link, and executive producer Felicia Day herself.

For a first effort, it’s not bad. It may be the last time in this kid’s life that he will know the joy of having a script produced without a rewrite by a meddling studio hack.

Y’know what I liked best about it? It told a complete story in four minutes flat.

They Might Be Giants Dance Number on “Bunheads” Wins My TV Week, and It’s Only Monday

July 23, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in Misc. Media, TV/DVD Tags: Bunheads, entertainment, Istanbul (Not Constantinople), Julia Goldani Telles, movie truck, music, recap, Stacey Oristano, Sutton Foster, television, They Might Be Giants, tv 10 Comments

Apparently because the showrunners can peer inside my mind and divine all the right ways to earn an instant thumbs-up, tonight’s episode of Bunheads concluded with Sasha (played by Julia Goldani Telles — in Archie Comics terms, she’s the Reggie of our four teen heroines) and two backup dancers performing a routine set to They Might Be Giants’ classic “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)”. It pains me to realize their version of the song is now over twenty years old and therefore qualified for “classic” status on age alone, despite complete lack of Top-40 love or common-man opinion, but there it is. I owned a copy of Flood long before the song was famously featured in an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures.

Their Malcolm in the Middle theme notwithstanding, any other chance to hear TMBG tunes outside the Internet or my CD collection is a rare major event in my life. I have zero (0) local friends who get them, not even my own family. In all their years of existence I’ve heard Indianapolis radio play exactly one TMBG song exactly one time, and why that honor went to a single rotation of “AKA Driver” I cannot even begin to speculate. I’ve seen them twice in concert — once at the now-defunct Music Mill and once at the Vogue — and in both cases I had to attend alone. Hence their headline status tonight. For me this is huge, even if it’s just for me and only me.

To the show’s credit, tonight’s episode was full of fun concepts even before the epilogue. Concept #1 provided the episode title, “Movie Truck”. Our main characters spend an evening grouped separately by age inside a full-on movie truck, which I gathered from the background glimpses is like Indianapolis’ own food trucks, except instead of food they serve a cinema inside a truck, walled with gypsy quilts and furnished with interior seating for a fair crowd. Someone must invent this if they haven’t already.

Trendsetting concept #2 in dire need of widespread acceptance and franchising: the cupcake ATM. When Michelle’s birthday night-on-the-town threatens to end before dawn because of Paradise’s small-town closing hours (I’ve known this pain, albeit without Michelle’s love of alcohol), a blessedly sober Truly is still enthralled by night-on-the-town fever (in an increasingly bubblier performance by Stacey Oristano as a meek-girl-gone-slightly-less-mild) and offers to drive them out to a rumored 24-hour cupcake ATM over in L.A. One scene later it’s dawn, they’re still awake but a little less toasted, and they have cupcakes thanks to the invention of a Redbox stocked with snacks instead of flicks. I can only hope the contents of this magical bakery-vending machine aren’t facilitated by an evil preservative formula that maintains freshness from within the product, like a reverse Hostess wrapper.

I hastily researched but couldn’t confirm the existence of a movie truck in real life (yet). To prove Bunheads isn’t secretly a science fiction show, I did find the following evidence of an alleged cupcake ATM sighting that doesn’t appear to be an SNL Digital Short or College Humor offering:

Concept #3 wouldn’t be my thing if it were real, but I won’t be surprised to see it exist within a year: Mountain of Arms, the R-rated movie-within-the-episode that I assume is like The Crawling Hand crossed with The Human Centipede. Our Four Teen Heroines obtain movie-truck passes and sneak out to see this future Criterion Collection classic without permission, all the better to escape an unfortunately epic rumble between Sasha’s troubled parents. I never had the wherewithal to pull such a stunt when I was a teen, but there was the time when I was eleven and snuck over to my friends’ house to watch Friday the 13th parts 1 and 3 on a surprise snow day when parents had to work. I recognize this ritual even if I naturally don’t condone it as an adult. (The moral: kids, do as I say now and not as I did then. And that’s…one to grow on.)

Between the majority of the above and an amusing sequence of movie-truck musical chairs, I found this a great character-building episode tonight (and I think I finally have all four girls’ names memorized now), even if it ended on a downer of a note, as relations between Sasha’s parents hit a new low, and a fateful letter in the wake of last week’s Joffrey Ballet auditions brings rewarding news that threatens to separate one of our lucky heroines from her best friends. I’m not sure which part of that is meant to be symbolized by Sasha’s non sequitur “Istanbul” set. Some deep thinking might be in order.

ABC Family will post the episode for online viewing on Tuesday, so another run-through of Flood will have to do until then.

* * * * *

Updated 7/24/2012, 7:30 EDT: Someone’s posted the “Istanbul” segment online! Enjoy before Disney or ABC Family shoot it down:

Updated 8/2/2012, 8:05 EDT: As expected, the YouTube user took it down days ago. I’ve left it up for posterity because I hate being too much of a George Lucas with my old posts.

Updated 12/9/2012, 7:00 EST: Oh, what the heck — here it is anyway:

Midlife Crisis Crossover!

Viewing the non-geek world through geek lenses. And sometimes vice versa.

Category Archives: TV/DVD

“Revolution” 10/22/2012 Imaginary Episode 5½: Charlie vs. the Presidential Debate

“Community” Fans Deprived of Season Premiere Search Skies, Streets, Hearts for the Elusive REAL October 19th

“Revolution” 10/15/2012 (spoilers): Charlie vs. Choo-Choo and the Philly Flash

“Revolution” 10/8/2012 (spoilers): Charlie vs. Old Man Witherby at the Abandoned Amusement Park

MCC Request Line #1: “New Girl”

“Revolution” 10/1/2012 (spoilers): Educating Charlie, the Secret of Miles, and 10,000 Sniper Bullets

Driveway Tunnelers Fail to Find Hoffa, But Recover My Lost “Cabin in the Woods” Review

Ranking the Six “Sherlock” Episodes While Waiting to Judge “Elementary”

“Revolution” 9/24/2012 (spoilers): Mitigating Morality and Fussing Over Flags

My Geek Demerits #4: Not Watching “The Big Bang Theory”

“Revolution” Pilot: From Slow Burn to Swashbuckling

The Fall 2012 TV Season: Which New Shows Can I Kill Just By Watching Them?

Can the Final Season of “The Office” Out-Excruciate Season 8?

“Bunheads” 8/20/2012: the Ringer Twirls While the Ballerinas Burn

The “Falling Skies” Season 2 Finales You Won’t See on TV in Our Reality

“Bunheads” 8/13/2012: Why Michelle Hates Kids and Ducks

“Bunheads” 8/6/2012: No Love for Cheerleaders or Undertall Leading Men

“Bunheads” 7/30/2012: I’ve Seen “Heathers”, but My Broadway Scorecard is Lacking…

Today’s Unrelated Things: Joss Whedon, Action Hero; and “The Killing”, Inaction Victim

They Might Be Giants Dance Number on “Bunheads” Wins My TV Week, and It’s Only Monday

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