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:

The 2011-2012 Emmy Nominations That Actually Noticed My Shows, Great or Small

July 19, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in TV/DVD Tags: Academy Awards, Community, Emmy Awards, entertainment, Futurama, Mad Men, oscars, Parks & Recreation, televison, The Simpsons, tv 2 Comments

I’ve never watched a complete Emmy Awards ceremony. I follow several different TV shows each season, but I don’t watch nearly enough of the “right” shows to have a sizable stake in the proceedings. It’s with good reason that I don’t write about television seven days a week.

For fun, though, I decided for my very first time ever to read through today’s nominations and see if anything I watched in the 2011-2012 season qualified for honors. Any and all of them. The official Emmys site has a link to a handy PDF summarizing every single category and nominee for the media or obsessive TV stalkers to peruse at will. I encountered two surprises:

Continue reading →

“Falling Skies” Fans Count Down to Season 2 Premiere, Desperately Try to Remember Character Names

June 16, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in TV/DVD Tags: characters, entertainment, Falling Skies, humor, Noah Wyle, season 2, season premiere, TNT, tv Leave a comment

After an extended absence from Earth’s airwaves, the post-invasion saga Falling Skies returns to TNT with a two-hour season premiere Sunday, June 17th, at 9 p.m. EDT. Viewers like me were pleasantly surprised to watch a series containing the phrase “Executive Producer Steven Spielberg” that wasn’t canceled at the end of season one. Yes, I’m still bitter about the others, but I’m grateful that one made the grade with the Nielsen commoners.

Ten months have now passed since I saw the season 1 finale as it aired. I didn’t buy the DVD set and rarely watch reruns of any show, well-liked or not. Obviously I’ve slept since August 2011 and have had plenty of other shows, movies, and comics to preoccupy me in the meantime. I have less than 24 hours to remember where we left off without resorting to cheating, by which I mean paying any attention to the current marketing onslaught or reviewing its WikiPedia pages.

So far I recall the following cast of characters:

Noah Wyle as not exactly Dr. John Carter, M.D.: Our intrepid main character is a former Massachusetts history teacher who role-models bravely for his three sons while downplaying a modest drive for vengeance for the death of his wife. When last we saw him, he had agreed under duress to fly off into space with our alien overlords. I’d like to think the first scene in the premiere will be an intricately choreographed wire-fu sequence aboard the mothership that ends with him defenestrating all the aliens and piloting their craft back to Earth with their speakers blaring a classic-rawk station cranked up to 11.

Son 1, Son 2, and Son 3: Like their dad, whatever his real first name is, all their names, whatever they are, are short. Main characters never have lengthy names like Mortimer, Cordwainer, or Buckminster. I think the middle son, the implant survivor whose symbio-ectomy left him imbued with useful super-powers, was named Ben. The oldest son knew how to use guns and ride a motorcycle, and was well on his way to being treated by his dad as an official, independent, adult male. He was much more mature and less disappointing than the oldest child on Executive Producer Steven Spielberg’s Terra Nova. The littlest son was very little and may grow up to be a tech whiz if he’s not endangered too often. Repeated exposure to such nightmarish situations is likely to turn him into Carl from The Walking Dead. No one wants that.

Lourdes, the overtly devoutly religious helper girl: At last, a character who can believe in God, openly display that she does, exude actual signs of hope and faith, and even pray (*gasp!*) without being secretly evil, mocked by the other characters, mocked by the showrunners, taught a very special lesson about Tolerance, or murdered as a cheap plot stunt. Yet. If the showrunners ever leave, odds are she’ll be the first character thrown under the bus. I’m trying not to mourn her loss in advance, but the track record for this sort of character has been exasperatingly dismal ever since Little House on the Prairie ended. I’d buy posters and any ancillary merchandise of her if I thought it would improve her chances of remaining on the show till the very end, and if it wouldn’t make me seem like a creepy old man.

Doctor Moon Bloodgood: You don’t forget a name like that, even when you forget a name like her character’s. Since chances of a sequel to Terminator Salvation are nil, she’ll have to accept her destiny to become Mrs. John Carter someday. For now, she’s a doctor with more resources and spine than some of her male associates, but without being hatefully offputting. Kudos!

Will Patton as Commander Gruff McPonytail: He barked orders, he disagreed with Noah Wyle every ten minutes, he struggled with his faith, he lost his marbles for a while, and then he was back in the saddle, still barking and wounding the enemy with his permanent stubbble.

Silent Dai, the only Asian around for miles: I was disappointed when he missed out on several important maneuvers due to combat injuries. Then again, there was no reason to expect him to defeat his opponents with the brutal beatdown techniques of an amazing ninja warrior. That’s racist. A missed opportunity, but still racist.

Commander Dale Dye: My eyes nearly popped out of my head when the famous TV/movie military technical advisor guest-starred last season. My heart sank when we were told he died. Offscreen, no less. I can only hope this intel was flawed and we’ll see Dye return with an alien harness and a really big gun.

Nina Sharp of Massive Dynamic: It’s hard to forget the episode where Blair Brown played a kindly old lady with lovely tea service and a penchant for selling out to the aliens. When Fringe concludes next season, Falling Skies would do well to invite her back.

Long-hair biker gangster who evolved from evil to just really, really selfish: He’s least likely to do the right thing and gets all the funniest lines. He’s the Jonathan Harris of a new generation. His saving grace is his mad cooking skills, an Iron Chef by way of MacGyver, making the most of his limited ingredients in an impoverished world where the overlords bombed all the really good restaurants out of business. I’m sure several thousand impervious Subway franchises still thrive, but who cares.

Maggie, forced biker moll no more: Understandably edgy and voted Most Likely to Put a Bullet in Chef Biker’s Head if he keeps misbehaving.

Another blond teen: I do recall there was one. She distracted Son #1 from Lourdes. Then something bad happened to her. That’ll teach her.

Young, goofy, trigger-shy Jimmy: How many more allies must be jeopardized or gravely injured before he catches up with the other quickly maturing teens and finally holds his own without crying and hiding? My guess is 72.

Ben’s black friend who loved being a slave: I couldn’t help thinking there was something very wrong about that. Proof positive that the enemy is evil.

The skitters: I can’t wait for one of them to have a personality or a name. Just one would go such a long way. Hopefully their newly revealed supervisors have surprises and identities in store.

I can only imagine how many memory holes I haven’t uncovered yet, but I trust sufficient expository reminders and recaps are forthcoming. If they fail, I’ll make up my own names for everybody and enjoy the show anyway. In this scenario the three sons will be named Morty, Cordy, and Bucky.

My “Mad Men” Season 5 Finale Predictions, 100% Accurate on Some Alternate Earth

June 4, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in TV/DVD Tags: AMC, Don Draper, entertainment, Mad Men, Pete Campbell, predictions, Season 5, season finale, spoilers, The Phantom, tv 2 Comments

Mad Men has already thrown a plethora of unexpected twists and pivots at us this year, but has one more hour at its disposal to see if it can top itself even more outlandishly. One can only hope the season 5 finale, “The Phantom”, will join the ranks of “The Wheel” and “Shut the Door. Have a Seat” as another finale to end all finales.

I’m terrible at guessing what happens next in any given show. Like all other failed prognosticators, that never stops me from trying. I may look weird keeping a book by my side while I watch, for something to occupy my time during commercials or sex scenes, but rest assured I’m otherwise paying attention, keeping mental tabs as best I can with my aging memory, and harboring my own half-baked theories about what ought to happen next. Fortunately, whatever happens is usually much more stunning.

Momentary pause here for courtesy spoiler alert before I proceed. If you’re not caught up through the June 3rd episode “Commissions and Fees”, or if you just don’t care, your exit strategy should be executed right about now. Please allow me to have you escorted to safety by this authentic 1960s artifact, and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

The Ghost of DC Movies Past, Present, and Yet to Come.

And now, on with my false prophecies about “The Phantom”:

* With Mrs. Pryce left behind in surprise financial dire straits, Pete offers to buy her green Jaguar as a gesture of charity, albeit for a song. For some reason the car starts just fine for him. Pete spends his long drive back to the suburbs with all the windows down, the radio cranked up, and imagining himself a Real Man. Halfway home he’s pulled over for doing 80 in a 25 MPH zone. The Jaguar is impounded. Pete is not happy.

* The funeral is a somber yet extravagant affair. With Lane’s overseas colleagues all declining to attend and Mrs. Pryce unable to speak, Don steps to the podium and delivers a eulogy that was written by Megan in about six minutes on the back of a funeral program. It is the Greatest Eulogy of All Time. Pete fumes with envy.

* A suddenly lucid and desperate Roger proposes to six different women: the twin models who witnessed his heart attack, Peggy’s brash friend Joyce, Don’s receptionist Dawn, his ex-wife Mona, and li’l Sally. We have to wait until next season to find out which one said yes. Pete overhears Roger’s end of the phone conversation, then stomps away muttering like an angry child about how he wishes he could go out and remarry every two years.

* Two months into her new job, Peggy is flourishing as a creative force at Cutler, Gleason & Chaough. Shockingly, Ted Chaough has proven not to be a lech. She later attends a business mixer with one of CGC’s major clients, the life insurance company that employs Pete’s commuter buddy. She has a chance encounter with Pete’s one-time fling, Mrs. Commuter Buddy, who’s attending the party dutifully with her husband. Casual small talk escalates into a tearful confession. Peggy somehow puts two and two together from the scant clues, makes a beeline for her old offices, kicks Pete right in his Campbell Soup Cans, and exchanges strained pleasantries with Don on her way out. Pete cannot breathe for the rest of the day.

* Don rehires previously laid-off copywriter Danny Siegel (Danny Strong) to handle the Jaguar account for him while he himself, emboldened by the Dow deal, decides go after a bigger fish than Jaguar: the great and powerful Rolls Royce. Don is convinced that their Phantom series (we have episode title!) is Where It’s At. By episode’s end, Don can’t close the deal without Megan’s help, but she refuses because of auditions and ambitions and such. The chase proves to be just another Dulcinea that teaches us the real “phantom” is the fleeting nature of happiness or business success or absolute manhood or whatever. Pete’s only moment of joy in the episode occurs when he realizes Danny is the first adult male he’s ever met who’s punier than he is.

* Betty and Henry have a mild argument or something. No one cares.

* Ed “the Devil from Reaper” Baxter calls Don, tells him he has some nerve!, and awards him with Dow’s business. All of it. After a series of fake meetings and fake intense arguments, Roger formally announces Ken will be handling the account under extreme duress, but totally solo due to fictional client mandates. Pete’s blood boils.

* The bigwigs at Heinz announce they’re so in love with the work that Michael Ginsberg and Stan Rizzo have done for their baked bean ads, they’re moving all of Heinz’ other accounts to the firm, including Big Catsup. Pete finds an excuse to leave the meeting abruptly with his face red and hot steam whistling out his ears, even though this subplot has virtually nothing to do with him.

* Trudy puts on the frumpiest dress she owns and announces she’s pregnant again. She wonders if perhaps they’ll need to move into a larger house even farther away from Manhattan, possibly as far as western New Jersey. Pete responds by climbing to the top of a water tower, wielding the trusty rifle that he obtained years ago in exchange for a duplicate chip-‘n’-dip set, and begins firing indiscriminately at innocent passersby. He doesn’t hit a single live target, but shatters the window of a beauty shop, where the bullet destroys a Clearasil display. Pete’s father-in-law is not happy. After he runs out of ammo, Pete throws his emptied gun at Trudy (missing by a wide margin), slips off his perch and onto the ground. The authorities toss him into a paddy wagon and wave him off. Our last sight of Pete is him clawing at the windows and frothing at the mouth. Trudy is later consoled by her new neighbors, Troy and Abed.

* The firm name is changed to Draper Sterling Cooper Harris. Pete’s head explodes.

CBS’ “Elementary” to Introduce Sherlock Holmes of Earth-2, Possibly Precipitate “Sherlock War” Crossover

May 31, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in TV/DVD Tags: CBS, Elementary, entertainment, Jonny Lee Miller, Sherlock, Sherlock Crisis, Sherlock Holmes, Trailer, tv 4 Comments

Despite the objections of BBC fans, this fall CBS plans to air their own Sherlock Holmes series, Elementary. Starring Jonny Lee Miller as Our Hero and Lucy Liu as mandatory progressive Dr. Watson, the show promises some or all of the following:

The last time I watched a detective show with a British counterpart, whose American version was antsy and not entirely stable, it was Robert Pastorelli in Cracker. Other than introducing the world to young Josh Hartnett’s unkempt hair, it didn’t go over well. I’m curious enough that I might tune in for the pilot. I’m a fan of unlikely heroes with too much nervous energy to spare, but I hope the rest of the cast is given more to do than simply standing around slack-jawed and watching him do all the overacting.

Shocking confession time: despite recommendations from many smart people, I have yet to watch a single episode of the BBC’s renowned Sherlock. My wife and I keep forgetting we have BBC America, and I keep forgetting that season 1 is on DVD. The only excerpt I’ve watched in full is this one:

Frankly, I’m sold. I wish I could say I’m making an Amazon one-click purchase right now, but I have a vacation in two months that needs funded first, and my pre-existing backlog of unwatched DVDs weighs upon me with some shame. Maybe I can rank it at the top of my Christmas list.

Sherman-Palladino’s “Bunheads” Does Ballet with Sharper Wit, Less Trauma Than “Black Swan”

May 29, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in TV/DVD Tags: ABC Family, Alan Ruck, Amy Sherman-Palladino, ballet, Bunheads, entertainment, Kelly Bishop, pilot, Stacey Oristano, Sutton Foster, tv Leave a comment

I don’t normally tune in to TV shows in which the women outnumber the men by a wide margin. I’ve seen multiple episodes of The Golden Girls and Designing Women only because they aired during my childhood, when I had no say in what shows our family watched. As far as more recent years go, let it be noted for the record that the gender margin on Buffy was by no means wide.

I never brake for ballet. I was once forced at too young an age to sit through a Dance Kaleidoscope performance of The Nutcracker that scarred me with boredom for decades. I’ve never seen Billy Elliott or The Red Shoes. I only endured Black Swan because my annual fanatical Oscar completism required it. Even ballet episodes of The Simpsons aren’t my cup of tea, except for any scene involving Lugash.

I’ve never even watched an ABC Family series, unless you count a few guilty-pleasure reruns of America’s Funniest Home Videos. I try (and fail) to justify that by citing the members of its writing staff who hailed from the great and powerful Mystery Science Theater 3000. I also secretly think Tom Bergeron is underrated, but you didn’t hear it from me.

And no, sadly, I never saw a complete episode of Gilmore Girls. Nothing about “women’s drama on the WB” sounded like a draw for me. Admittedly, occasional snippets and reviews I caught in later seasons gave me the impression that I might like it if I tried it, but by then it was too late.

Today Entertainment Weekly gave subscribers access to a sneak preview of the entire first episode of the upcoming ABC Family series Bunheads, a ballet drama created by Amy Sherman-Palladino, the creator and voice behind Gilmore Girls. The last time EW sent me a sneak-preview link, that particular free sample lasted all of four minutes before I rolled my eyes at the show in question, closed the browser window, and thanked them for thinking of me.

Given all of this, I had no reason to expect that Bunheads would beat the previous four-minute record. I rolled the dice and gave it a go anyway.

The first minute wasn’t encouraging– a kickline of Vegas showgirls doing their onstage frilly thing for the men, only to be pushed aside by the even less clothed real stars of their stage. The camera switches focus to two girls in the back row, exchanging catty remarks about why they don’t qualify for front row. From there the pace picks up as we move backstage and introduce a very special guest star: Alan Ruck, known to many as spineless sidekick Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but dearer to me as Captain Harriman, the schlub who helped Captain Kirk get dead in Star Trek: Generations.

Ruck’s presence as a stubborn, clueless suitor bought the pilot ten minutes of my time. Fair exchange, I figured. I’ve never seen him misused.

The next time I remembered to check the timecode, fifteen minutes had gone by. From there the scene abruptly changed, new characters entered and marked their positions, and the momentum wouldn’t stop. Next thing I knew, the full 45-minute episode had flown by and ended with a precipitous cliffhanger that left me wanting to know what happens next.

In my book, that’s unconscious high praise.

The premise, since it matters: Michelle (Tony nominee Sutton Foster, razor-sharp and Sorkin-film-ready) is a trained dancer turned hopeless Vegas eye candy who impulse-marries Captain Harriman in a rock-bottom moment of weakness and agrees to move into his mammoth abode in a faraway, cozy, everybody-knows-your-name small town called Paradise, a name well chosen from the approved list of ironic names for TV small towns. Everyone except Harriman hates her, especially his ex-girlfriend Truly (Friday Night Lights‘ Stacey Oristano, who steals every scene with pitiful comedy tears), and doubly especially Harriman’s mom (Kelly Bishop, also formerly of Gilmore Girls, playing far from caricature), who is stern and offended at the tawdry acquisition of a surprise daughter-in-law. She lives in Harriman’s home, just as you’d expect from a sitcom aiming for wacky hijinks. Michelle’s in luck, though — hubby’s mansion also houses mother-in-law’s ballet school.

You can imagine the culture clashes. You can imagine the possibilities for the two adversaries bonding over ballet despite having little else in common. You can imagine there are at least four young students with singular character traits who are only a pirouette away from being labeled the Bad News Bears of ballet.

What holds it together and makes it zing are Sherman-Palladino’s ear for dialogue that’s not cribbed from other TV shows; the immediate, surprising depth of the awkward quote-unquote “relationship” between newlyweds Michelle (who’s well aware that her actions don’t speak well of her) and Captain Harriman (who we learn isn’t as dense about their situation as he seems); and a few moments of gravity struck in just the right places that lift this pilot several planes above the level of chick-flick flight-of-fancy. I sincerely apologize for expecting no more than that going into it.

The premiere airs Monday, June 11th, on ABC Family at 9 p.m. EDT. The official site has plenty of preview material and freebies for the curious. I’ve clicked on none of them because I’m giving serious consideration to catching episode two the following week and would prefer to avoid spoilers. Also, if future episodes aim more for the ABC Family young-girl audience and not so much on a level for me, the complete opposite of their target demographic, then I’d prefer not to find out yet.

(I’m thankful the show isn’t aiming for a prurient tone — setting aside that fleeting opening scene — so I can explain to my wife why I think the show might be worthwhile without looking like a dirty old man. It also helps my case that I find her 200% more attractive than any ballet dancer. Yes, really. Don’t give me that look.)

Enclosed below is a two-minute fraction of the episode I watched of The Show I Couldn’t Possibly Like. Enjoy! I’ll just be over here remembering what owning a Man Card once felt like.

(If I could make just one suggestion: is it too late to change the title to, say, Dances in Paradise? Bunheads sounds like an Adult Swim show about animated foul-mouthed pastries.)

NBC Keeps “Community” Because Torturing Beloved Show More Fun Than Canceling It

May 19, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in TV/DVD Tags: 13 episodes, Community, Dan Harmon, Dan Harmon fired, entertainment, Fridays, NBC, renewed, tv, Whitney 1 Comment

Like most of ugly America, I initially, unfairly wrote off Community sight unseen as another generic ensemble comedy. Their first paintball episode changed my mind before the third act. A few reruns later, it earned the designation of My New Favorite Show. After a Season 1 DVD viewing binge and an iTunes shopping spree for the first several episodes of season 2, I caught up to the present and proudly stuck around ever after. Not since Futurama has a show mined geek culture so efficiently for so many comedy diamonds. The quick yet incisive character moments and off-the-cuff references fly past the viewer at an Aaron Sorkin fever pitch. The complicated emotional core keeps the study group grounded and bonded without reducing them to typical sitcom caricatures. It’s dense, razor-sharp, off-the-wall, and heartfelt all at once.

Like other fans, I winced and fretted throughout season 3 as it was trounced every week in the ratings by other, inferior, even loathsome shows. My attempts to convince friends of its worth had limited success. A few Internet acquaintances hopped aboard. Some sided with its competition, particularly CBS’ loathsome antithesis, and basically punched me in the heart. I even tried telling family members, but the conversation would have the same disappointing turnout every time. I would mention the show; they would confess they’d never heard of it; I would describe it to them in so many words (neither too many nor too few); they would nod and agree that they should try it sometime; and three minutes later they would forget we had ever spoken.

I was amazed when NBC announced its renewal. My low-rated favorite shows rarely receive a stay of execution. Sometimes a merciful renewal can be a good thing, as when Dollhouse used its season 2 to ratchet everything up several notches and ended with explosive closure. Sometimes it’s a bad thing, as when Veronica Mars used its season 3 to jump every shark in sight (new setting! new characters! loss of old characters! Logan turns to the dark side!) and ended on a despondent cliffhanger.

I had faith that Community would aim for the former over the latter. Of late, NBC has been doling out hints to the contrary, one lamentable update at a time. With that renewal announcement, we were informed the season 4 order would be only thirteen episodes. That’s no guarantee of eventual cancellation, merely a sign they’re proceeding with caution before making a final decision about whether or not to pick up the back nine. Given its underwhelming ratings performance with the all-powerful Nielsen commoners, their reticence is understandable if discouraging.

Later we were told the show would move to Fridays. On Fox this is an unqualified death sentence, especially for a sci-fi show. Community isn’t sci-fi every week, but contains elements. NBC may not be a juggernaut on Fridays, but at least they’re not Fox. Grimm survived its freshman year on Fridays. It can be done.

In that same announcement, we were told its Friday slot will be 8:30 after Whitney. When NBC first aired Whitney on Thursdays after The Office, I don’t recall its ratings topping those of its three lead-ins. After sampling two failed minutes of an unmarried couple communicating entirely through unfunny sex jokes, our household unanimously decided that on every Thursday, 9:30 would conclude our broadcast day. I would hum “The Star-Spangled Banner” in my head and turn the TV off. I am unable to imagine a scenario in which leading off primetime with Whitney will result in Community converting more viewers and surging in popularity.

I’ve had a few days now to convince myself that, short of NBC reversing its decision and axing Community after all, things shouldn’t get any worse.

Today ruined all that when I learned creator Dan Harmon was fired as showrunner:

Just a day after it was announced former Happy Endings writers David Guarascio and Moses Port would take over the Community creator’s showrunner position, Harmon took to his Tumblr page to sound off…

To recap: next season the show will air thirteen episodes on Fridays after Whitney with its creator no longer in charge.

I now wait with bated breath for the next deathly announcement to drop. Will Greendale Community College be replaced with a wacky coffee shop? Will Joel McHale be replaced by Tony Danza? Will Annie turn to the dark side? Will the cast now communicate entirely through unfunny sex jokes? Will Chevy Chase begin receiving an Executive Producer credit? What can go wrong next?

I can count the reasons I should stay. Please tell me, one by one, they all won’t fade away. Pretty please?

2011-2012 TV Cancellations Announced, All My Favorite Shows Spared

May 13, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in TV/DVD Tags: 2011-2012 season, Awake, canceled shows, Terra Nova, tv, TV cancellations, TV networks, upfronts Leave a comment

The week of May 14th-18th will be the annual TV network upfronts, in which America’s least predictable executives present their next fall’s schedule to advertisers in hopes of fostering viewer anticipation and large sacks of money. These mostly finalized lists provide us with the best possible confirmation of renewals, cancellations, midseason postponements, and symptoms of executive dysfunction. Thanks to the last two days’ deluge of announcements from Entertainment Weekly and other sources, 2012’s final results are mostly in ahead of schedule.

Several shows were already canceled in previous months; some of them, mere minutes after their second episodes ended. Some crews have been notified of their loss within the past 48 hours and are still working through the Five Stages. For me the casualties of the 2011-2012 season fall into five categories.

(Please note: I am far from completist on this. No doubt we’ll receive solemn notice of more victims shortly. Let it be known I pay no heed to reality-show obituaries at all. Or reality shows in general, for that matter.)

Shows I watched at least once:
Alcatraz
Awake
Prime Suspect
Terra Nova

Ten minutes of Prime Suspect was enough for me. I no longer remember why, though I recall the hat didn’t help. I lasted through the full two-hour premiere of Alcatraz but couldn’t forgive Sam Neill’s stern appropriation of Dr. Evil’s cocked eyebrow. Awake started strong, but I bowed out after four episodes, once it lapsed into its own unique but grating formula that required the exact same scene twice every week:

“Let’s go check out this completely irrelevant thing! It’s extremely important to our case!”
“What? Why? It has nothing to do with anything.”
“Uhhhhhhhhhhhh…magical hunch?”
“That’s utterly stupid. Let’s roll.”

Terra Nova, on the other hand, I followed from start to finish. For the first several episodes, I had little love for any of the Shannon kids (mandatory cutie-pie Zoe, lovestruck rebel/dork Josh, and Not Quite Jan Brady), but by the end their family was functioning much better as a unit and had developed a rudimentary foundation of supporting characters that could be built upward in future seasons. Sometimes there were even dinosaurs. My son appreciated that every episode had a one-dinosaur-head minimum. The cliffhanger finale hinted at interesting new directions in the days ahead, but the showrunners’ imaginations wrote checks that their advertising income couldn’t cash. I had hoped for a second season with downgraded expectations (say, CG supplanted by sock puppetry), but I’ve had to let that go.

Shows I never tried, but bear no ill will:
The Finder
The Firm
A Gifted Man
Harry’s Law
Ringer
The River
Secret Circle

If someone bought me a Complete Series set as a gift, I wouldn’t sneer and toss it in the Goodwill bag, but it might be several years before I find time to sample episode one.

Shows you could pay me to watch once, but no one ever did:
Allen Gregory
Are You There, Chelsea?
Breaking In
Charlie’s Angels
Free Agents
H8R
How to Be a Gentleman
I Hate My Teenage Daughter
Man Up!
Missing

Some shows I look at and say, “Why?” TV execs look at them and say, “Why not?” I await their cancellations and say, “That’s why.” Many shows have outlived my expectations. None of these did.

Shows you couldn’t pay me to watch because of, shall we say, scruples:
GCB
Pan Am
The Playboy Club

Shows 100% unfamiliar to me:
Bent
Best Friends Forever

I first learned about the existence of these two shows in this week’s headlines. I think I blinked at just the wrong month.

I was pleasantly stunned, however, at some of the renewals. As a past viewer of Firefly, FlashForward, Persons Unknown, Brimstone, and other unplanned fatalities, I’ve come to expect most of my shows to vaporize every year as a tradition. My TV habits dwell in a Hunger Games world where Grey’s Anatomy and Two-and-a-Half Men are Career Tributes and my favorite scripted shows are the carcasses that fertilize the field around the Cornucopia.

Surprise twist for me, then: other than Terra Nova, all my shows will return next season, even NBC’s widely shunned Thursday lineup. I’m grateful to those responsible for granting stays of execution for my unfairly unwatched shows this year, despite attempts by those nefarious Nielsen families to ignore them into oblivion.

For once, the day is saved thanks to…TV executives!

Midlife Crisis Crossover!

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

Tag Archives: tv

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

The 2011-2012 Emmy Nominations That Actually Noticed My Shows, Great or Small

“Falling Skies” Fans Count Down to Season 2 Premiere, Desperately Try to Remember Character Names

My “Mad Men” Season 5 Finale Predictions, 100% Accurate on Some Alternate Earth

CBS’ “Elementary” to Introduce Sherlock Holmes of Earth-2, Possibly Precipitate “Sherlock War” Crossover

Sherman-Palladino’s “Bunheads” Does Ballet with Sharper Wit, Less Trauma Than “Black Swan”

NBC Keeps “Community” Because Torturing Beloved Show More Fun Than Canceling It

2011-2012 TV Cancellations Announced, All My Favorite Shows Spared

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