December 2009

Two years ago when the folks over at Family Guy decided to take pop culture riffing to a whole new level for the Season 7 finale, they produced "Blue Harvest", a surprisingly clever, loving parody of Star Wars. From its closing moments it was apparent that a sequel would be inevitable. "Something Something Something Dark Side", the hour-long episode riffing on The Empire Strikes Back was originally supposed to air in 2008, but it got pushed back until just a couple days ago when it was released on DVD. So, how did this parody fair both on its own and compared to "Blue Harvest"?

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When it comes to shows like Better Off Ted I don't really require character development to enjoy my viewing experience, but it sure is nice when it happens. That's why tonight's episode was so enjoyable. I worried at the beginning of Season One that goofy scientists Phil and Lem would quickly be relegated to the Land of Inconsequential B-Plots, never to return or ever be more than cartoony distractions from the center-stage concerns of the prettier people upstairs. The show has done a really nice job of deepening Phil and Lem in ways that are both meaningful and entertaining. For a while now we've heard references to Lem's stunning parentage. His father was the first male supermodel and also a heroic firefighter who died saving lives. Tonight we learned more about his mom, a world-renowned scientific genius who casts the longest possible shadow over her son's more corporate-style smarts.

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December 18, round 2. I'm not usually a fan of dream episodes. They're usually too self-serious and eager to convince the audience that wanton weirdness can somehow fit into the tone of the show. Some of the most egregious offenders were the few dream-centered episodes of The Sopranos. What was otherwise an excellent series ground to an inexplicable halt whenever Tony had surreal, symbolic experiences in his own head. Not coincidentally, the only dream episode I can think of that I genuinely enjoyed was from another Joss Whedon show, the excellent Buffy The Vampire Slayer closer to Season 4, "Restless". I don't necessarily think there's something inherent to Whedon's style that lends itself to depictions of dreams, merely that "Restless" and tonight's "The Attic" use their respective shows' standing atmospheres within the dreams as opposed to employing dreams as some sort of prophetic device. Dollhouse is already kind of a mindscrew, so dream logic isn't a huge leap.

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Since we're heading into the thick of the holiday season when the majority of regular TV shows are on break, I thought now would be a good time to revisit a slightly smaller version of TV World's summer series, Catching Up. My first selection is a bizarre sci-fi series from the late 1990's called Lexx. When Lexx first came to the United States it wasn't exactly in its original form, in a lot of different ways, too. The Sci-Fi Channel (now Syfy) bought the US rights to the show in 2000 but only ended up airing edited versions of Season Two episodes. This was mostly because Season One consisted of four contiguous movies rather than a series of stand-alone episodes, but also because Season Two has a plot that was relatively friendly to the tone of Sci-Fi viewers at the time. Lexx is a controversial show, with some people lauding its weirdness and others calling it a fiasco. I'm going to be watching Season One in its entirety and I'll come to a conclusion later about whether or not to follow the rest of the series.

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The concluding episode of Dexter’s season four had a great deal to work through. There were substantial loose ends floating around and as one would have hoped, “The Getaway” took care of most of them with enough time to toss in one of the most unexpected endings to any season in recent memory.

The Trinity Killer’s still running around all willy-nilly after having confronted Dexter at his place of business – which is how last week’s episode concluded and this week’s show begins. It seems as if the jig is up, as it were. Arthur has proven a pretty worthy nemesis despite the fact that it’s clear that Dexter reveres him in some odd way even as the internal dialogues focus on how awful the elder killer appears to be.

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A few months ago, the recently re-branded Syfy Channel released the pilot mini-movie of the Battlestar Galactica prequel series Caprica and now, in anticipation of the show's premiere on January 22nd, an extended cut of the pilot is currently being hosted on Hulu and on Syfy's own streaming site. With a number of new shows launching in January and February of 2010, now would be a good time to see if Caprica has what it takes to give BSG junkies a reason to tune in.

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Welcome to part 2 of this week's Dollhouse coverage, and boy what an episode it was. Bad guys got badder, a main character got deader and plans generally fell apart. What's ended up being most impressive about this show is how it can so easily contain both elements of standard TV action/suspense and heady, dramatic contemplations of major philosophical ideas. Dollhouse is a show about existential crisis and moral relativism, but also explosions and kicks to the face. "Stop-Loss" had plenty of all these things and more.

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What’s alternately endearing and disgusting about It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is the juvenile crap that either weights down an episode or makes it hilarious. Each character is perpetually eleven years old, which is fine except for when their personalities wind up making a scene or episode completely unbelievable. But then again, maybe we should just accept whatever’s dished out as the gospel of comedy and suspend reality for twenty two minutes a week. That’s probably the best idea.

This week, though, on “The Gang Reignites the Rivalry,” the plot swings wildly from the onset to the tail end of the show. It’s not disjointed, but the episode ends up being more about competing with frat guys then the rivalry with another bar.

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It's almost adorable when TV networks arbitrarily introduce new terms into the viewing vocabulary. Really, they're just euphemisms. In the 80's “A Very Special” was a modifying term attached to episodes of any given show that was going to feature some soft, moralistic message about drugs, gun safety or teen pregnancy, while “Must See” quickly became 90's vernacular for “Doesn't Suck”. In these last days of 2009, the networks are trying to pretend that “Fall Finale” has always been part of the scheduling system and not just a bizarre artifact of staggered programming resulting from a writers' strike and an unusual string of successful shows the networks seemed desperate to kill. Because of that unique set of circumstances and the meaningless but customary programming blackout of the holiday season, shows like Glee will be vanishing for a little while as if buried by snow. Glee in particular won't be airing again until Spring, unlike a lot of “Fall Finale” shows that will be rising from hibernation in fits and starts throughout January and February. So, for all intents and purposes tonight's episode of Glee was a chapter-ending hour. Naturally, it didn't really feel like a finale so much as the end of a set of plots and the setup of those that will carry the rest of the season.

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It’s actually been a pretty surprising couple of weeks on Dexter. I’d come to the conclusion that most television show plots were easily figured weeks in advance. And while that might still be broadly applicable elsewhere, this particular Showtime program has skirted the problem. Bully for all involved.

There’re some emotional moments here. And of course, since the season is drawing to a close, there’re a lot of loose ends to tie up.

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There is most certainly a line that can be drawn between sitcoms and plain old fantasy styled television.

In this past week’s Californiacation, entitled “Comings & Goings,” there’s no shortage of imagination exerted on the part of the writing staff over there at Showtime, but there is some detachment from any sort of sensibility.

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Zedd is pretty much designed to be everybody's favorite character on Legend of the Seeker. He's funny, has cool powers and knows everything worth knowing. It was only a matter of time before he got his very own episode. Too bad for us a Zedd-centric episode doesn't necessarily have to feature Bruce Spence for very long. Sometimes it seems that the writers of this show want to take Spence off the screen as much as possible. There were large blocks of time, sometimes whole episodes, from Season 1 when Zedd wasn't even part of the plot and this week they came up with a magical excuse to replace him with a different actor altogether. The results were still entertaining, but Legend of the Seeker is already so short on capable performers that it always suffers when one of them is taken out of the equation.

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This week’s episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia – “Mac and Charlie Write a Movie” – felt drastically different than the last few weeks. In part that has to do with there being a new backdrop to the gang’s shenanigans. But in its appropriation of a film set, IASiP maintained its ability to lampoon not just its characters, but most of American society and certainly the entertainment industry that each actor, writer and producer has been necessitated to navigate over one’s career.

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A half hour into tonight's episode of Glee I started to get worried. It took twenty minutes to get to the episode's first song, the plot did little more than meander and none of the characters were really doing anything except playing to type. And then the show took a hard turn into unexpected and much-needed drama. Once again, Ryan Murphy carries the Glee flag into its potential as the most surprising show on network television. By the end of "Mattress" everything was sharper, clearer and more emotionally resonant than it was at the beginning. That's a good use of an hour of television.

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