May 2010

In 2020, Dr. Nasreen Chaudry leads the deepest mining operation in human history, but she unwittingly awakens some old friends of the Doctor's. Retaliating, they capture Amy Pond and two others, and the Doctor finds more than he bargained for, as an ancient civilization awakens in "The Hungry Earth", the eighth episode of the 2010 series of Doctor Who.

 Following a cold open so predictable that it could only be Doctor Who, the Doctor, Rory and Amy find themselves in a small Welsh village, where Dr. Chaudry (Meera Syal) and Tom Mack (Robert Pugh) oversee a drilling procedure that burrows 21 kilometers (13 miles) into the Earth. But one of their workers, Mo Northover (Alun Raglan), has gone missing, and there's a mysterious hole in the floor of the drilling station. As the drill operations restart, an earthquake causes large, steamy cracks to open in the ground. While trying to help Tom escape, Amy is pulled through one of the cracks and into the Earth.

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These days, I wonder how anyone manages to sell a long arc TV series to network executives. We seem to be past the age when networks are willing to invest in shows that are designed from the beginning to last several seasons. ABC's failed science fiction experiment FlashForward got its walking papers approximately two weeks before it closed out its first and only season, which means that tonight's requisite cliffhanger finale did little more than tease what few remaining viewers it had with several seasons' worth of story that will never air. Given the show's abysmal ratings, the only consolation is that not that many people care.

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Radio and TV personality Art Linkletter, a fixture of early television died today, Wednesday, at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. He was 97. He is being remembered as the popular host of two running shows, in the 1950 and 1960s, “People Are Funny” and the afternoon daily show “House Party.”

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The history of racist music includes a huge list of names. This particular entry into the Boondocks’ cannon focuses on Jimmy Rebel, a sort of hillbilly outlaw. And yeah, his lyrics are given over to overtly racist stuff, but honestly, if you like country music, you’d probably like his discography.

None of the following is meant to sanction music purveying a racist message, that’d be ignorant. But there are a few issues that need to be addressed. Firstly, there’s unquestionably some anti-white sentiment in rap music. It’s not pervasive by any means. And of course, Tipper Gore’s cohort would be up in arms after listening to some Brand Nubian tracks, but it’s worth noting the existence of the form.

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Aside from a few low-wattage genre series, summer is a time when television networks let reruns, old licensed material and unscripted shows dominate their schedules. This used to be a pretty dire situation prior to the advent of the DVD box set, but these days TV fans have made it a habit to fill those content-deprived summer weeks with back logs of shows they always intended on watching but never had the time to. TV World adopted this tradition last summer in a special column called Catching Up. 2009's lineup included Mitch Hurwitz's cult comedy Arrested Development, Rockne S. O'Bannon's science fiction masterpiece Farscape and the first season of the fun but ill-fated Legend of the Seeker. This year we're coming back starting in June with an entirely new set of recent classics. Here's the Catching Up 2010 roster.

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Five years after parting ways, the Doctor visits Rory and his very-pregnant wife Amy - or does he? The trio wake up in the TARDIS, confused and disoriented, but remembering every detail of their dream - or do they? Amy must make the choice in the seventh episode of the 2010 series of Doctor Who, as the Doctor confronts a deadly danger in both the dream world and the real world.

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Three years ago, the then-named Sci-Fi Channel's most critically acclaimed series was Battlestar Galactica while Stargate SG-1 was at the top of the network's ratings. When the newly re-branded Syfy launched Stargate Universe it seemed like they were attaching the name of their most profitable franchise to the sensibilities of their most respected. For the majority of its run, SGU has felt like the product of such an arrangement. Any relation it had to the Stargate franchise has been nearly negligible, adopting a few of the cosmetic elements of previous series while taking the tone, characterization and themes in an entirely different direction. Gone were the Goa'uld, the quasi-magical gadgets and the lighthearted banter. Viewers could come to SGU with almost no functional knowledge of the extensive Stargate mythology. It was a risk that ultimately paid off. That's why this week's half of the season finale (which is taking a week off in between segments) was so conflicting. All of a sudden, SGU has started to depend on several years' worth of backstory that, exciting as it is, feels like a huge diversion from what has made this show so interesting.

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It's probably just an old habit picked up from our days as school kids, but we Americans by and large prefer fun, brainless entertainment in the summer. I can respect that sentiment and I'm glad that it has finally started to translate to television. Networks haven't put as much energy into summer series as they probably should have, but they're starting to reverse that trend. Apparently someone finally told a few key TV executives that people still like to watch new shows between June and September. To that end, Fox has decided to take a chance on a nothing-but-fun cop show called The Good Guys. Tonight the pilot aired and the regular season is set to begin on June 7th. If the remaining 19 episodes of the series can keep pace with the pilot, The Good Guys will be a welcome midweek distraction during the hot months.

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Real disappointment is actually fairly rare. It requires high expectations and the slow build of anticipating elation, only to have everything dashed at the last moment. That said, I didn't really have high expectations for the finale of this season of House. The show has hovered between mediocre and bad for the entire season and it didn't really have anywhere else to go with its plot or characters. Even the titular protagonist, the only reason the show has lasted as long as it has, stopped being interesting and started being a source of irritation, especially over the last month or so. I wanted House to go out with an appropriate whimper, but instead it managed a bang that fizzled out at the last minute. As the episode closed, I had to ask myself: How can a team of writers create such a compelling hour of television with such a tremendously stupid ending?

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After the first few episodes of the Boondocks this season almost completely focused on deep political and social concerns, it couldn’t have been too long before the show’s creator, Aaron McGruder, endeavored to write up a slightly less pedantic offering.

That might be a bit misleading seeing as “The Red Ball” still retains enough cultural critique to pass it off as almost political, but framing the entire thing within the realm of kick ball was a wise move, even if some folks didn’t particularly care for the episode.

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Prophecy is a funny thing. There's a false assumption in many prophecy-driven stories that the outcome foreseen by whatever mystical force does the divining is the best of all possible conclusions, not just whatever reality is destined to happen. Look back at any given concept of prophecy from the ancient world and it's clear that justice, happiness or any other positive outcome isn't necessarily tied to fate. In the case of the series-long arc of Legend of the Seeker, the various prophecies surrounding Richard have only seemed positive or negative because of their immediate implications for the protagonists. As we've seen (and as many characters throughout Season 2 have been quick to point out), the prophecy from Season 1 did indeed come true and it also resulted in circumstances that are infinitely worse than the continued rule of Darken Rahl. Meanwhile, the comparatively foreboding prophecy from Season 2 has certainly sounded pretty bad, but it has also been cryptic enough to not necessarily indicate the end of the world. With that complex relativism in mind, I'm actually pretty glad the first half of the season and series finale of Legend of the Seeker took some time to explore what Season 1 posited as the best immediate outcome.

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Stories about space travel have always had an existential bent to them. Ask a person to imagine floating through a void and their first instinct is to turn their gaze inward. In watching the first season of Stargate Universe I've tried to figure out what this show is supposed to be about. I don't think the writers have completely settled on a theme, but they've spent more time exploring what their characters left behind on Earth than saying anything about what they find in distant galaxies. SGU is frequently a show about the difficulties of being human. The space ships, aliens and weird science are only incidental to the setting.

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After battling Weeping Angels in the 51st century, the Doctor, Amy and Rory go to 16th century Venice - a wedding present from the Doctor, who is all too aware that traveling with him destroys relationships and lives. But there's danger afoot - before they can even ride in a gondola, the Doctor encounters "pale, creepy girls who don't like sunlight". Something strange is going on in the House of Calvierri, and whatever is in the water is very, very hungry. Doctor Who returns  in "The Vampires of Venice", the sixth episode of the 2010 series.

 The Doctor crashes Rory's (Arthur Darvill) stag party to repair the damage caused by Amy's kiss at the end of last week's "Flesh and Stone". Any ideas of a Venetian romance are put on hold when the trio notice Guido (Lucian Msamati) desperately trying to find his daughter among a cabal of veiled girls from the House of Calvierri. Guido tells the Doctor that he entered his daughter Isabella (Alisha Bailey) into the secretive school run by Signora Rosanna Calvierri (Helen McCrory), but "something evil" has happened: Isabella no longer recognizes her father, and one of the other girls barred her fang-like teeth at Guido to scare him off. Sneaking into the school, the Doctor discovers that not only do the girls have fangs, they have no reflections.

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The fact that Aaron McGruder hasn’t been assaulted at this point is kinda surprising. He should obviously be granted a free hand to do whatever he finds funny – which might have had something to do with Boondocks’ extended break from action. But really, the number of people satirized over the course of the show’s few seasons is pretty staggering. This last episode, entitled "Bitches to Rags," doesn’t work to mitigate the embarrassment levied on some real life people either.

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After what seemed like an interminable break, Aaron McGruder and company returned last week with the first installment of Boondocks’ third season. Over the last few years, there’d been various speculation as to why the show’d gotten wayleighed, and maybe this first episode is part of the reason why. Whatever the actual issue was, it all seemed to be worth the wait. Of course, some folks are always going to take issued with the topics broached on this show – a cartoon attempting to be not only politically relevant, but simultaneously cool, a Daily Show for the cartoon enthusiast – but that only makes it worth watching.

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So, I have a theory about the second season of Legend of the Seeker. Whether because the production staff stumbled onto a particularly strong actor or because the writers themselves grew more interested in a supporting character than they were in their leads, Season 2 has really been about Cara. She has arguably featured more prevalently in the past twenty episodes than the guy who is ostensibly the hero of the story. Before the main quest got underway they even devoted an entire episode to filling in Cara's backstory in a way that made her both instantly sympathetic and complex enough to carry multiple storylines. It wouldn't be the last time Cara was at the center of an episode. She was the impetus for the episode "Resurrection", she carried half of the pivotal "Perdition" with a romance plot, "Hunger" was nothing if not a dramatic showcase for Tabrett Bethell just as the following episode "Princess" was her comedic exhibition. In this last stretch, "Desecrated", "Vengeance" and this week's "Eternity" have mostly hinged on deconstructing the last bits of Cara's character development. To summarize, Cara has been the fulcrum of a third of all the Season 2 episodes of Legend of the Seeker. In a show that has more or less become a philosophical treatise on the application of moral relativism, it's only appropriate that the true protagonist is an evil soul in the midst of reform.

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I cannot overstate how much I wanted the crew on Destiny to get their very own fat guy scientist navigation computer. Things were looking good in that direction for a while in the climactic escape scene in "Sabotage" but alas, the prospective FGSNC disappeared into the ether. Oh, well. Perhaps we'll have to settle for a virtual fat guy scientist navigation computer instead. Only future episodes will tell, but considering how long fat guy scientist was out of the picture it may be well into Season 2 before we find out. In the meantime, we have an whole new galaxy to explore.

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Since the beginning of every television show being issued on DVD, I’ve been eagerly awaiting a slew of stuff that I’ve not thought of in close to a decade. The Critic made it through to the other side – and has oddly enough aged pretty well. The animation isn’t all too impressive, but the truncated series still resonates today as the media occupies an ever increasing place in people’s perception of art and entertainment. And maybe it’s because of its focus on a detective that Duckman doesn’t hold the same allure as that other cartoon.

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Elizabeth Hasselbeck

Elizabeth Hasselbeck is a co-host of ABC's ladies mid-morning talk show 'The View," that has four thoughtful ladies, Barbara Walters, Whoopi Goldberg, Sherri Shepherd, Joy Behar and one airhead. The airhead is Elizabeth Hasselbeck. Not a day goes by that Ms. Hasselbeck doesn't provide proof to America that the composition of the space between her ears is air. 

Well, the other day, Ms. Airhead made a nasty remark about ESPN broadcaster Erin Andrews, who has been the victim of a stalker and the target of death threats. The stalker is in federal prison for videotaping Ms. Andrews  through a hotel  peephole nude. Ms Airhead blamed Ms. Andrews for being stalked, implying that the clothes she wore invited stalkers. Yes, Ms. Airhead blamed the victim for being victimized. Anyway, the airhead makes a tearful apology on air to Ms. Andrews.

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So, here's the dilemma. In every objective way, tonight's episode of House was one of the most proficient of the season. The patient was interesting, the dialogue alternated between economically dramatic and funny, and the acting was good. Still, I couldn't help but feel bored. Even more than that, it felt like everybody on the show itself was bored. In the middle of the episode, there was a scene in which House, Foreman and Chase performed a surprisingly competent karaoke routine. Sure, it mostly fit in with the night's B-plot, but it also seemed like everyone was saying, "Yeah, why the hell not? Let's do a minor song and dance routine, you know, for fun." At a certain point, proficient just doesn't cut it anymore.

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World War II buffs and military historians alike knew the name John Basilone long before HBO gave him his moment of glory. His name is all over the US Marine Corps and Navy. Hell, there was a battleship named after him. For those of us watching The Pacific, Basilone has come to represent something other than heroism and military ideals. From start to finish, he's been something of a cautionary tale about the myth of the great warrior.

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