October 2009

The crux of The Office's emotional resonance has always been its ability to humanize its characters. This means something a little different for each one. Entire seasons have been devoted to cracking Dwight's creepy Teutonic shell and revealing Michael's good qualities despite his obvious flaws. I feel like this season has been spreading into more ambitious territory, such as exposing the ignoble elements of Jim's character and deconstructing the layers of awkwardness that keep Andy not-so-secretly miserable. "Koi Pond" was a funny episode to be sure, but it was also a surprising study of a few characters we've mostly taken for granted.

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When I see episodes of South Park like "Whale Whores" I wonder if Parker and Stone are running out of ideas, or if I'm just out of touch with certain strands of pop culture. Basing an entire episode around The Discovery Channel's Whale Wars TV show was a fairly typical thing to do for this show, but it also wasn't exactly a finger-on-the-pulse moment, either. I've never been a fan of reality shows, so that whole segment of TV is a bit of a blind spot for me, but still I think it's telling that neither I nor anyone I know has ever even heard of Whale Wars. It's possible that a program derivative of The Deadliest Catch may just be the lowest of the low-hanging fruit when it comes to television.

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The addition of some of those Seinfeld characters into the Curb Your Enthusiasm mix has always yielded some mixed results.

During the first season of the Larry David vehicle, Julia Louis-Dreyfus made a few appearances as did Jason Alexander. And while watching the one time George character argue about logistics with Larry was just short of brilliant, other scenes with Alexander and Louis-Dreyfus weren’t always as entertaining. That’s obviously not necessarily the fault of the scene’s participants individually, but could be chalked up to the odd inclusion of their one time script writer.

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This was truly an ill-conceived episode of Californiacation. There can be arguments to mitigate the dreck through which viewers were forced to wade, but that won’t make it all worthwhile.

Despite wrangling a few noteworthy guest spots – the always hilarious, if underemployed Stephen Root makes an appearance as does Kevin Corrigan – this was a pretty atrocious showing. And while that latter actor was more prominently featured, Root’s brief screen time only left a desire for his role to become a reoccurring character. I mean, a wheel chair pervert. Are there better things? Probably not.

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Well, it took six whole episodes but we finally got the buddy comedy HBO promised us in the promos for Bored To Death. Through circumstances that were just outlandish enough to fit on this show, George and Ray got to tag along on one of Jonathan's cases and the results were actually pretty amusing. "The Case of the Beautiful Blackmailer" was like a smarter version of Cheech and Chong, especially with Ted Danson's performance. George is easily the best character on the show and he really got to shine in this episode.

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It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia isn’t known for its nuanced plots. That probably won’t change in the future, but what this week’s episode gave viewers in the form of “The World Series Defense” was a show set-up with a narrative frame looking back at past events.

The literary device, most commonly referenced in film by Citizen Kane, occasionally services television shows well. Pretty frequently, these frames lead up to a series of flashbacks and wind up working as a sort of clip show. “The World Series Defense” does at points seem scattered, but it’s unquestionably all new and (almost) all hilarious.

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One thing I've always admired about South Park is how it's capable of running in a completely absurd direction with a plot and sustaining it for the duration of an entire episode. As cultural commentary, this series has a singular angle on the stuff that fills our TV's, movie theaters and iPods. On any other show, it just wouldn't be possible to spend a solid twenty minutes on what is essentially one joke, and usually a pretty esoteric joke at that. This week's episode turned its sights on the world of professional wrestling, a strand of entertainment that is itself so over the top and absurd that it's practically a punchline in itself. South Park's stab was, however, still pretty unique.

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Here we are, the final episode of Season 1 of Legend of the Seeker. By the end of this article, TV World will be fully caught up on the series and prepared for the Season 2 premiere in just a few weeks. I have to say, "Reckoning" was a lot better than I expected for Seeker. Though this show falls roundly into the "guilty pleasure" category, I'm happy to defend its occasional foray into intellectualism and even artistic cinematography. This finale did a lot of unexpected things and actually answered some of the big questions lurking underneath the standard swords and sorcery action of the series.

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One of the repellent things about Showtime’s Californiacation are the blatant attempts at coolness that the show makes. Hank Moody, while a drunken writerly type, dons a ring on his index finger. Who knows if David Duchovny actually engages in that kinda of nonsense, but his character surely does. And while that’s a pretty minor point to latch on to, the jewelry fails in what its supposed to do.

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Ya know what Heroes needs? More characters and years-old plot points. While this week's episode wasn't even near the pile of unadulterated suck that last week's episode managed to be, it was still the kind of bad that only Heroes can achieve. The difference is that "Tabula Rasa" was a funny kind of bad, a truly astounding display of I-can't-believe-they're-doing-it awfulness that I've come to expect and even look forward to with this show.

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Last week’s episode  - Wee Small Things – found Draper firing one of his employees, Sal. The scenes where the break is detailed didn’t leave the art man looking too foolish, although, what led up to it all was less than auspicious. But for some reason, Sal actually just disappeared. I fully expected for his character to still appear in some sort of ploy for his job. Maybe in the future.

This week in The Color Blue Draper gets some action, Betty gets confused – as does her would-be lover – and the office party is almost in disarray.

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Because Dollhouse is off for the next couple weeks while Fox shows us sci-fi nerds what for with their sports and stuff, I decided now would be a good time to take a look at Stargate: Universe. During its last two seasons, Stargate: SG1 was a guilty pleasure of mine. I originally started watching it for two reasons. First, it aired before Battlestar Galactica on Friday nights so I usually caught it as a kind of science fiction appetizer. Second, the show took on the two actors who played the principle human characters on Farscape and I am a shameless proselytizer of that wonderful little series. While I never really considered myself a true Stargate fan, I appreciated what the show tried to do with its never-too-serious tone and mostly episodic storytelling. I was not, however, so impressed with the first spin-off, Stargate: Atlantis. So, when the newly re-branded SyFy announced yet another series in the franchise, I decided to give it a shot, hoping it would provide something different from its predecessors. So, let's see Stargate: Universe has fared so far.

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Tonight's episode of The Office asked an interesting question. What would happen if both Jim and Pam, the strongest columns in what Oscar dubs "the coalition for reason", were absent for an entire week? Naturally, Michael goes off the deep end in his own personal version of reality. But something unexpected happened along the way: It was actually pretty boring.

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I've always appreciated how South Park manages to take ludicrous turns and run with them. After so many seasons it's practically impossible to be unpredictable, but that's not really what I want from this show anymore. It's been years since South Park shocked me, but it never fails to make me laugh, which is more than I can say for most of the comedies on TV today. The show came back from hiatus last week with an attempted powerhouse send-up of the unusually long list of celebrities who died over the summer. "Dead Celebrities" was hit or miss, not that any of the targets were all that difficult to lampoon. This week's was more of a stand-alone episode that didn't rely on any particular moment in pop culture history, so it fared a little better.

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Here we are, at the penultimate episode of Legend of the Seeker, Season 1. No more gimmick episodes, no more out-of-place comedy. Just lots of action, strong undertones of misanthropy and the specter of doom tempered by a reasonable assurance that the good guys will win, or at least not lose. I really like "Fever" both as a story arc motivator and as a stand-alone episode. It has some really nice action scenes and it gives some necessary, albeit cliche, depth to Darken Rahl.

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Dexter’s become a confusing show to watch over this season’s first three episodes. Having placed the main character inside the role of a normal domestic has some potential. But thus far, it’s only made Dex tired. He still wants to get out there and kill – although he didn’t this week – but there’re just too many different things pulling the character one way or another for any blood to flow.

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Well, readers, I have to admit that Heroes has become something of a vice for me now. I am in awe of how utterly horrible this show manages to be that I can't even feel offended that literally millions of dollars are being dumped into such an obviously lackluster product. I sat watching this week's episode waiting for something, anything to happen and there was nothing. Not a single, solitary thing. It's like a magic trick. Still, I'm glad I've stuck with Heroes as long as I have. To witness the full arc of such a disaster is nothing short of splendor.

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After last week's sitcom-y deviation from the main premise, it was nice to see Bored To Death get back to Jonathan's private detective work. This week's case weaved together with the rest of the story rather well, giving us an even distribution over the supporting cast and some fun moments with the guest star. "Stolen Skateboard" wasn't the funniest episode of the series or the most clever, but it was original and entertaining.

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In this week’s episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, "The Gang Gives Frank an Intervention," Dee, Denis, and Charlie seek the counsel of a professional drug and alcohol therapist. The crew finds the place that Frank has arrived – perpetually, slovenly and drunk – is beyond any sort of acceptable level of intoxication.

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We're living in a postmodern age for entertainment. Our super heroes are flawed and have a lot more in common with the villains they fight, our pop music is nothing if not referential to the decades of pop that came before, and our TV shows, at their best, recognize that every single one of their viewers grew up watching cliches come into being. That's what makes Glee really stand out in episodes like "Vitamin D". None of the themes in the show are all that unique, but the approach is unexpected.

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Outta all the shows that took a break over the summer only to just return in the last few weeks, I missed Dexter – or what I remember about Dexter. ‘Cause after watching the first episode of the season and then this second installment, entitled Remains to be Seen, there seems to be a different tone to the show. And I guess that started during the last season or the end of the second. Either way, the show hasn’t devolved into a typical drama with that one singular caveat – Dex being a killer – separating it from the other nonsense on the screen, but we’re gettin’ ever closer.

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I know I'm not alone when I say that I hope Hiro actually does die relatively soon. His power-induced illness is probably just one big fakeout, but a guy can dream. We waste a good third of tonight's episode watching Hiro try to save a humiliated salary man from suicide just so Hiro can learn yet another valuable lesson about responsibility and how it somehow relates to time travel. Ya know, real down-to-earth wisdom. In fact, this entire episode was about various conflicted characters coming to some sort of epiphany that puts them back on track to engage in things related to super powers, only in a very self-actualization sort of way. Too bad most of it was pretty boring.

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The final episode of Entourage’s sixth season didn’t really have the task of tying up loose ends – a few, for sure, but nothing that would seemingly dictate the happenings of the following season.

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It’s really amazing that Curb Your Enthusiasm and Entourage basically focus on the same town, are involved in explicating the same industry, but only the latter has grown tiresome so quickly. Obviously, comedy is Curb’s focus, whereas an admixture of seriousness gets thrown into Entourage. But regardless of that, the older show remains more vital.

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At the core of all good science fiction is a relatable human story. For example, despite all the lasers, aliens and city-sized space ships in Star Wars, the most iconic bit involves a relatively small family drama. The same could be said for Farscape. It's a weird show full of bizarre beasties and far-out technology, but the core of the story is a troubled romance and an existential crisis. It's an epic about adaptability and moral uncertainty wrapped in all the trappings of cable sci-fi serial.

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While it usually takes between a half and a whole season to determine whether or not a show has any lasting power, it's a lot easier to tell whether or not it's actually entertaining. Community will have to give us a reason to keep tuning in after five or six episodes, but for right now it just needs to convince us that it's funny enough to stay on NBC's powerful Thursday night lineup. I wasn't sure until this week that it had legs, but there were a few moments tonight when I saw evidence of a truly strong half-hour comedy.

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At what point would Larry David angling to get you outta his life become apparent? Is he really so charming that a woman – specifically a beautiful woman – would just go along with random, out of place niceties? I guess so. But it’s fiction and Loretta isn’t real, fortunately or not.

Subsequent to finding out that his live-in girlfriend has cancer, Larry has been preoccupied with figuring a way by which to extricate himself from the relationship. Not necessarily a bad idea, but there’s obviously no way that he’d be perceived as anything less than a scumbag.

Watching Dr. Phil, Larry finds that some new-fangled doctor has come to prescribe leaving a boyfriend/girlfriend or husband/wife if the relationship can’t be seen to aid in recovering from cancer. Sensible enough, but also immediately useful to Larry.

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Television isn’t always artfully done. And it could be argued that Mad Men is only an attempt at this artfulness that so escapes American life. But that’d just be a single perspective. Surely, other television shows have utilized an interesting frame for an episode – the circular: beginning in one spot only to back track in order to conclude an episode where it first started. But this past week’s episode does it well. It’s disjointed at first as viewers see Draper rising from the floor only a moment later to find him grooming for a day at the office as his wife looks up from lounging.

It all ends up making sense. And that might in fact be due to the episode’s focus on only three characters: Draper, his wife and Sally.

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