From The Onion....
BURBANK, CA — Executives at ABC announced Monday that the network will premier a new Lost spin-off series this fall based around that show's popular smoke monster character.
The new series, a half-hour family-oriented comedy called Where There's Smoke, is touted by ABC as the new anchor of its Thursday-night lineup.
"Somewhere between the smoke monster's first appearance on Lost— when it was depicted as a strange unseen force uprooting trees—and that episode in season three where it grabbed Mr. Eko and smashed him against the ground until he was dead, this character became the breakout star of the show," said Stephen McPherson, president of ABC Entertainment. "And that's exactly why we're so excited about Where There's Smoke. We get to see the monster's light comedic side in a show about life, love, and good friends having good times."
"Because after all, Where There's Smoke, there's laughter," McPherson added.
ABC sources reported that the series will transplant the evil black cloud from the island of Lost to the suburbs of Chicago, where it works as a sports radio host, surrounded by "a whole new group of crazy characters." Actress Lea Thompson has signed on to play the monster's long-suffering wife, who must put up with her husband's screwball antics while raising the couple's two rambunctious children, Tanner and Smoky, Jr.
Veteran TV producer Chuck Lorre, of Dharma & Greg and The Big Bang Theory fame, will helm the show, which he said will focus mainly on the deadly creature's adjustments to suburbia and fatherhood, and its comically contentious relationship with its boss, a fussy radio station manager played by Richard Kind.
"The whole concept began with us asking, 'So what happens to the monster after it kills somebody and disappears down that ancient temple vent? What kind of life might it have?'" Lorre said. "And what we realized is that audiences really relate to this character and would like to see it in everyday situations, shooting the breeze with buddies at a local watering hole or murdering its son's soccer coach and depositing his lifeless body in a tree."
"And of course, you'll be hearing lots of its classic catchphrase, 'Brrrrr, chk-chk-chk-chk, muuuuuuuuuuuuaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrhhh,'" Lorre added.
Lost producer Jack Bender has confirmed that the smoke monster will no longer be part of his show's regular cast. However, ABC has promised that Where There's Smoke will feature a number of guest appearances from Lost regulars. Sources said the pilot episode will feature an appearance by actor Michael Emerson as a slobby houseguest named Benjamin Linus who overstays his welcome, much to the chagrin of the smoke monster's wife.
Though the project has been in development for almost a year, negotiations reached a standstill last winter when representatives for the mysterious, billowing actor expressed concern that their client would risk being typecast as "just a smoke monster" if the role were carried into a new series.
"We're always sensitive to these kinds of things, but we actually think this new vehicle will make people realize [the monster] is a sophisticated actor with a great deal of range," said McPherson, who agreed to pay the show's star $2 million per episode after scenes between the smoke monster and a nosy, ethnic next-door neighbor tested well with audiences. "People love the smoke monster, and people love to laugh. This series is a can't-miss."
Added McPherson, "And I'm not just blowing smoke here."
Friday, July 10, 2009
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Random Sports Stuff (plus UFC 100 picks)
I'm sure everyone has been this by now, but if you haven't, check out this amazing remix featuring some of the great sports press conference moments of all time. Even if you've never seen any of these original moments before, this is still worth watching because it's such a catchy tune. Let me just throw it out there right now: DJ Steve Porter is the next Moby. Or at least the equivalent of the guy who mixed the beats for Organized Rhyme.
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Mark's Top Ten Pro Wrestling Tag Teams of ALL TIME
10. The Heavenly Bodies (Gigolo Jimmy Delrey, "The Doctor Of Desire" Tom Pritchard)
9. The Natural Disasters (Earthquake and Typhoon)
8. Demolition (Ax and Smash)
7. The Hardy Brothers (Jeff Hardy, Matt Hardy)
6. The Steiner Brothers (Rick Steiner, Scott Steiner)
5. Edge and Christian
4. The Quebecers (Jacques Rougeau, Carl Ouelette)
3. The Hollywood Blonds (Stunning Steve Austin, Flyin' Brian Pillman)
2. The Midnight Express (Beautiful Bobby Eaton, Sweet Stan Lane)
1. The Hart Foundation (Bret 'Hitman' Hart, Jim 'The Anvil' Neidhart)
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Put it this way. If you're a retired and/or washed-up hockey player and you haven't been on Off The Record at some point, you're doing something wrong.
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UFC 100 picks!
* Jon Fitch over Paulo Thiago, decision
Thiago is the guy who one-punched Josh Koscheck into oblivion last winter, thus leading to this follow-up match against the second-best welterweight in the world. Given that Kos was dominating Thiago before the surprise KO, I'm going to go ahead and call Thiago's win a solid 0.6 on the Matt Serra Upset Scale. Fitch should dominate the Brazilian en route to another decision win, since Fitch never finishes anybody.
* Alan Belcher over Yoshihiro Akiyama, knockout, R2
Akiyama is a high-priced import from Japan who is known for his flashy entrances and all sorts of controversial finishes. As much as the UFC would love to see Akiyama become their big star to market to Japanese fans, I'm sticking with the tried and true rule that newcomers from abroad lose their first UFC fights. 'Alan The Talent,' stupid nickname and hilariously ugly Johnny Cash tattoo aside, is a tough fighter and a good gatekeeper in the division. I'm looking at another Belcher win that earns him a shot at a solid middleweight contender.
* Dan Henderson over Michael Bisping, chokeout, R2
I've said it before and I'll say it again --- I don't know if Michael Bisping sucks or not. The UFC has done such a good job of protecting their British marketing golden boy that this Henderson bout is his first defining challenge in a three-year career. Even when Bisping lost to Rashad Evans, he had the out that his ideal division was at middleweight. But if Bisping loses here, then we'll finally see that the emperor (or, the Count) has no clothes. Frankly, I think this is going to happen. Dan Henderson is a world-class middleweight and I think he'll wrestle Bisping down and pound his cocky ass out.
* Georges St. Pierre over Thiago Alves, TKO, R2
GSP had this fight won last February. When Alves came into the ring for the traditional 'next challenger congratulates the champ' meeting following St. Pierre's destruction of BJ Penn, Alves had his head down, mumbled his congratulations and had a look on his face similar to that on the look on Dan Aykroyd's face when the Marshmallow Man showed up. I don't think there's anything that Alves can do to top what St. Pierre brings to the table, so the only question here will be if GSP remains in the welterweight division (to defend against the winner of the Mike Swick/Martin Kampmann fight in September?) or if he moves on to a superfight against Anderson Silva.
* Brock Lesnar over Frank Mir, TKO, R1
Over a year after their first encounter, this match will decide the undisputed heavyweight title and (the UFC hopes) will establish Lesnar as the top drawing card in MMA. A Lesnar victory turns the heavyweight division into a headline attraction that it hasn't been without Randy Couture holding the belt. The playbook is simple; Lesnar must avoid the Mir submissions that caught him in their first fight, and Mir has to try and withstand the initial Lesnar onslaught and wrestling attack to catch him in a hold when they're on the ground. Mir's upset win over AR Nogueira last winter, however, might be his downfall. Mir won that match by outstriking Nog, and thus in classic MMA fashion, Mir probably now considers himself hot shit on his feet. Though it's obvious to anyone with brain that the only way he can beat Lesnar is via submissions, Mir will probably try to show his balls by engaging in a striking battle with Lesnar early. My guess is, this will end horribly for Mir. Brock wins, Dana White needs a change of pants, and Fedor loses not even a minute of sleep.
Undercard matches....
* Stephan Bonnar over Mark Coleman, TKO, R1. Good lord, why is Mark Coleman getting another match? He literally almost died in the ring last January, and now he's fighting a solid striker in Bonnar? Stop the madness!
* Matt Grice over Shannon Gugerty, decision. Yep, don't care about this fight whatsoever.
* TJ Grant over Dong Hyun Kim, decision. Kim probably should win, all things being equal, but I'm being a homer for Canadian TJ Grant. Grant beat Ryo Chonan in his UFC debut, so I'm just presuming that Grant is unbeatable against all Asian fighters. This is the kind of high-powered analysis you'll get from me, folks.
* Jim Miller over Mac Danzig, decision. Another loss will knock Mac out of the UFC, and unfortunately, his deciding fight is up against a tough guy in Miller. His only loss came to lightweight powerhouse Gray Maynard, and thus I think Miller has enough to send Mac out of the UFC quicker than a hummingbird can fly.
* Jon Jones over Jake O'Brien, TKO, R2. O'Brien is a smothering wrestler known for being, uh, let's say 'methodical' (read: boring as hell), while Jones is arguably the most exciting prospect in the light-heavyweight division. I'm dearly hoping that Jones takes this one and continues his ascent up the ladder, and I suspect he'll bust out yet another wacky move to counter O'Brien's wrestling.
* CB Dollaway over Tom Lawlor, TKO, R1. Dollaway is another guy that the UFC is babying and bringing along slowly, ergo why he's being matched up against this stiff Lawlor. You may recall Lawlor as the guy who knocked out a drunken Dave Kaplan on The Ultimate Fighter. This is his only highlight.
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Mark's Top Ten Pro Wrestling Tag Teams of ALL TIME
10. The Heavenly Bodies (Gigolo Jimmy Delrey, "The Doctor Of Desire" Tom Pritchard)
9. The Natural Disasters (Earthquake and Typhoon)
8. Demolition (Ax and Smash)
7. The Hardy Brothers (Jeff Hardy, Matt Hardy)
6. The Steiner Brothers (Rick Steiner, Scott Steiner)
5. Edge and Christian
4. The Quebecers (Jacques Rougeau, Carl Ouelette)
3. The Hollywood Blonds (Stunning Steve Austin, Flyin' Brian Pillman)
2. The Midnight Express (Beautiful Bobby Eaton, Sweet Stan Lane)
1. The Hart Foundation (Bret 'Hitman' Hart, Jim 'The Anvil' Neidhart)
-------------------------------------------------------------
Put it this way. If you're a retired and/or washed-up hockey player and you haven't been on Off The Record at some point, you're doing something wrong.
-------------------------------------------------
UFC 100 picks!
* Jon Fitch over Paulo Thiago, decision
Thiago is the guy who one-punched Josh Koscheck into oblivion last winter, thus leading to this follow-up match against the second-best welterweight in the world. Given that Kos was dominating Thiago before the surprise KO, I'm going to go ahead and call Thiago's win a solid 0.6 on the Matt Serra Upset Scale. Fitch should dominate the Brazilian en route to another decision win, since Fitch never finishes anybody.
* Alan Belcher over Yoshihiro Akiyama, knockout, R2
Akiyama is a high-priced import from Japan who is known for his flashy entrances and all sorts of controversial finishes. As much as the UFC would love to see Akiyama become their big star to market to Japanese fans, I'm sticking with the tried and true rule that newcomers from abroad lose their first UFC fights. 'Alan The Talent,' stupid nickname and hilariously ugly Johnny Cash tattoo aside, is a tough fighter and a good gatekeeper in the division. I'm looking at another Belcher win that earns him a shot at a solid middleweight contender.
* Dan Henderson over Michael Bisping, chokeout, R2
I've said it before and I'll say it again --- I don't know if Michael Bisping sucks or not. The UFC has done such a good job of protecting their British marketing golden boy that this Henderson bout is his first defining challenge in a three-year career. Even when Bisping lost to Rashad Evans, he had the out that his ideal division was at middleweight. But if Bisping loses here, then we'll finally see that the emperor (or, the Count) has no clothes. Frankly, I think this is going to happen. Dan Henderson is a world-class middleweight and I think he'll wrestle Bisping down and pound his cocky ass out.
* Georges St. Pierre over Thiago Alves, TKO, R2
GSP had this fight won last February. When Alves came into the ring for the traditional 'next challenger congratulates the champ' meeting following St. Pierre's destruction of BJ Penn, Alves had his head down, mumbled his congratulations and had a look on his face similar to that on the look on Dan Aykroyd's face when the Marshmallow Man showed up. I don't think there's anything that Alves can do to top what St. Pierre brings to the table, so the only question here will be if GSP remains in the welterweight division (to defend against the winner of the Mike Swick/Martin Kampmann fight in September?) or if he moves on to a superfight against Anderson Silva.
* Brock Lesnar over Frank Mir, TKO, R1
Over a year after their first encounter, this match will decide the undisputed heavyweight title and (the UFC hopes) will establish Lesnar as the top drawing card in MMA. A Lesnar victory turns the heavyweight division into a headline attraction that it hasn't been without Randy Couture holding the belt. The playbook is simple; Lesnar must avoid the Mir submissions that caught him in their first fight, and Mir has to try and withstand the initial Lesnar onslaught and wrestling attack to catch him in a hold when they're on the ground. Mir's upset win over AR Nogueira last winter, however, might be his downfall. Mir won that match by outstriking Nog, and thus in classic MMA fashion, Mir probably now considers himself hot shit on his feet. Though it's obvious to anyone with brain that the only way he can beat Lesnar is via submissions, Mir will probably try to show his balls by engaging in a striking battle with Lesnar early. My guess is, this will end horribly for Mir. Brock wins, Dana White needs a change of pants, and Fedor loses not even a minute of sleep.
Undercard matches....
* Stephan Bonnar over Mark Coleman, TKO, R1. Good lord, why is Mark Coleman getting another match? He literally almost died in the ring last January, and now he's fighting a solid striker in Bonnar? Stop the madness!
* Matt Grice over Shannon Gugerty, decision. Yep, don't care about this fight whatsoever.
* TJ Grant over Dong Hyun Kim, decision. Kim probably should win, all things being equal, but I'm being a homer for Canadian TJ Grant. Grant beat Ryo Chonan in his UFC debut, so I'm just presuming that Grant is unbeatable against all Asian fighters. This is the kind of high-powered analysis you'll get from me, folks.
* Jim Miller over Mac Danzig, decision. Another loss will knock Mac out of the UFC, and unfortunately, his deciding fight is up against a tough guy in Miller. His only loss came to lightweight powerhouse Gray Maynard, and thus I think Miller has enough to send Mac out of the UFC quicker than a hummingbird can fly.
* Jon Jones over Jake O'Brien, TKO, R2. O'Brien is a smothering wrestler known for being, uh, let's say 'methodical' (read: boring as hell), while Jones is arguably the most exciting prospect in the light-heavyweight division. I'm dearly hoping that Jones takes this one and continues his ascent up the ladder, and I suspect he'll bust out yet another wacky move to counter O'Brien's wrestling.
* CB Dollaway over Tom Lawlor, TKO, R1. Dollaway is another guy that the UFC is babying and bringing along slowly, ergo why he's being matched up against this stiff Lawlor. You may recall Lawlor as the guy who knocked out a drunken Dave Kaplan on The Ultimate Fighter. This is his only highlight.
Friday, July 03, 2009
My All-Star Ballot
With the All-Star Game next week, here is what my ideal rosters would look like --- forget fan and player voting, just my picks, 30-man rosters, at least one player represented per team and injuries are taken into consideration.
AMERICAN LEAGUE
C Joe Mauer, Minnesota
1B Justin Morneau, Minnesota
2B Ian Kinsler, Texas
3B Evan Longoria, Tampa Bay
SS Marco Scutaro, Toronto
OF Jason Bay, Boston
OF Torii Hunter, Los Angeles
OF Carl Crawford, Tampa Bay
SP Roy Halladay, Toronto
SP Zach Greinke, Kansas City
SP Felix Hernandez, Seattle
SP Justin Verlander, Detroit
SP Edwin Jackson, Detroit
SP Jered Weaver, Los Angeles
SP Mark Buehrle, Chicago
RP George Sherrill, Baltimore
RP Mariano Rivera, New York
RP Joe Nathan, Minnesota
RP Jonathan Papelbon, Boston
RP Andrew Bailey, Oakland
Bench C Victor Martinez, Cleveland
Bench SS Derek Jeter, New York
Bench 3B Chone Figgins, Los Angeles
Bench 2B Aaron Hill, Toronto
Bench OF Shin-Soo Choo, Cleveland
Bench 1B Miguel Cabrera, Detroit
Bench 1B/3B Kevin Youkilis, Boston
Bench OF Nelson Cruz, Texas
Bench OF Adam Lind, Toronto
Bench OF Ichiro Suzuki, Seattle
NATIONAL LEAGUE
C Brian McCann, Atlanta
1B Albert Pujols, St. Louis
2B Chase Utley, Philadelphia
3B Mark Reynolds, Arizona
SS Hanley Ramirez, Florida
OF Brad Hawpe, Colorado
OF Justin Upton, Arizona
OF Ryan Braun, Milwaukee
SP Dan Haren, Arizona
SP Tim Lincecum, San Francisco
SP Chad Billingsley, Los Angeles
SP Yovani Gallardo, Milwaukee
SP Josh Johnson, Florida
SP Randy Wells, Chicago
RP Jonathan Broxton, Los Angeles
RP Heath Bell, San Diego
RP Francisco Rodriguez, New York
RP Francisco Cordero, Cincinnati
RP Ryan Franklin, St. Louis
RP Trevor Hoffman, Milwaukee
Bench C/3B Pablo Sandoval, San Francisco
Bench 1B Prince Fielder, Milwaukee
Bench SS Miguel Tejada, Houston
Bench 3B Ryan Zimmerman, Washington
Bench 3B David Wright, New York
Bench 2B Freddy Sanchez, Pittsburgh
Bench OF Raul Ibanez, Philadelphia
Bench OF Shane Victorino, Philadelphia
Bench OF Matt Kemp, Los Angeles
Bench 1B Adrian Gonzalez, San Diego
AMERICAN LEAGUE
C Joe Mauer, Minnesota
1B Justin Morneau, Minnesota
2B Ian Kinsler, Texas
3B Evan Longoria, Tampa Bay
SS Marco Scutaro, Toronto
OF Jason Bay, Boston
OF Torii Hunter, Los Angeles
OF Carl Crawford, Tampa Bay
SP Roy Halladay, Toronto
SP Zach Greinke, Kansas City
SP Felix Hernandez, Seattle
SP Justin Verlander, Detroit
SP Edwin Jackson, Detroit
SP Jered Weaver, Los Angeles
SP Mark Buehrle, Chicago
RP George Sherrill, Baltimore
RP Mariano Rivera, New York
RP Joe Nathan, Minnesota
RP Jonathan Papelbon, Boston
RP Andrew Bailey, Oakland
Bench C Victor Martinez, Cleveland
Bench SS Derek Jeter, New York
Bench 3B Chone Figgins, Los Angeles
Bench 2B Aaron Hill, Toronto
Bench OF Shin-Soo Choo, Cleveland
Bench 1B Miguel Cabrera, Detroit
Bench 1B/3B Kevin Youkilis, Boston
Bench OF Nelson Cruz, Texas
Bench OF Adam Lind, Toronto
Bench OF Ichiro Suzuki, Seattle
NATIONAL LEAGUE
C Brian McCann, Atlanta
1B Albert Pujols, St. Louis
2B Chase Utley, Philadelphia
3B Mark Reynolds, Arizona
SS Hanley Ramirez, Florida
OF Brad Hawpe, Colorado
OF Justin Upton, Arizona
OF Ryan Braun, Milwaukee
SP Dan Haren, Arizona
SP Tim Lincecum, San Francisco
SP Chad Billingsley, Los Angeles
SP Yovani Gallardo, Milwaukee
SP Josh Johnson, Florida
SP Randy Wells, Chicago
RP Jonathan Broxton, Los Angeles
RP Heath Bell, San Diego
RP Francisco Rodriguez, New York
RP Francisco Cordero, Cincinnati
RP Ryan Franklin, St. Louis
RP Trevor Hoffman, Milwaukee
Bench C/3B Pablo Sandoval, San Francisco
Bench 1B Prince Fielder, Milwaukee
Bench SS Miguel Tejada, Houston
Bench 3B Ryan Zimmerman, Washington
Bench 3B David Wright, New York
Bench 2B Freddy Sanchez, Pittsburgh
Bench OF Raul Ibanez, Philadelphia
Bench OF Shane Victorino, Philadelphia
Bench OF Matt Kemp, Los Angeles
Bench 1B Adrian Gonzalez, San Diego
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Movie Reviews
TRANSFORMERS 2
Meh.
WHATEVER WORKS
I could've done without Evan Rachel Wood's line about always carrying around Viagra, or with Larry David's throwaway line about how he has learned to enjoy sex since his marriage. Without those two bits of dialogue, I could've persisted in the fantasy that the David/Wood marriage was merely just an advanced platonic friendship, since that's what the two actors played it as and didn't go for any kind of romantic chemistry. (Nor should there have been any such chemistry, since it's frickin' Larry David and Evan Rachel Wood.) So overall, this was actually perhaps the most tolerable of the old man/young woman relationships that always creepily pop up in Woody Allen movies. Larry David is about as close to asexual as a human being can get, so it's not you're constantly reminded of the image of his old balls (tm Adam Sandler) slapping up against ERW's backside or anything. It's just Larry David being Larry David with a pinch of being Woody Allen thrown in there, acting as a mentor/father figure to the cute-as-a-button ERW and working together just well enough to carry what is a pretty middling entry in the Woody Allen oeuvre. 'Whatever Works' is a nice enough flick with some quality laughs, but there's nothing in this movie that Woody hasn't brought to the table in a dozen other films. The always dependable Patricia Clarkson and Ed Begley Jr. are good in supporting roles and, it bears mentioning again, Wood is tremendous. Her character is a horrific cliche on paper, but she breathes life into it by sheer force of perky charm. Thank the lord that Woody cast her instead of his other young muse, Scarlett Johansson, since the sight of Scarlett trying to act perky (or, let's face it, just act) would've turned this movie into a parody.
YEAR ONE
Yikes, this sucked. No movie with a cast and creative team like this should be this unfunny. This was basically like if someone took this SNL skit and stretched it out over 90 minutes. Very much a homeless man's version of Life Of Brian.
THE HANGOVER
LAND OF THE LOST
I'm slotting these two together because I saw them on the same day, and because they both hold special places in this year's pantheon of summer movies. Hangover, of course, is the massive hit, the word-of-mouth phenomenon that has already made hundreds of millions of dollars and turned, of all people, Zach Galifianakis into a household name. LOTL, of course, is the huge bomb that seemed to confuse audiences that didn't know if it was a comedy or an action movie, and has led to whispers that Will Ferrell's days as a major box office draw are numbered, if not already over.
The weird thing is, I liked both movie about equally. LOTL is an intentionally goofy homage to what was apparently a pretty goofy show back in the 60's. Any flick that features Ferrell and Danny McBridge bantering for 90 minutes is good in my books; what's the over/under on how much of their dialogue was improvised? Sixty percent? Seventy? It's also fun to actually hear Anna Friel's British accent, which takes her sexiness to off-the-charts heights. Fun fact: the ape-man Chaka is played by Jorma Taccone, perhaps best known as the other 'Jizz In My Pants' guy along with Andy Samberg on SNL and in the Lonely Island comedy group.
As for Hangover, yeah, it's funny, but I dunno if I'd go ape over it like others have. I think it was the expectations game --- I went into LOTL expecting nothing, and was pleasantly surprised. I went into Hangover expecting a "first 45 minutes of Wedding Crashers" level of comedy and didn't get it. The film also suffered from a common affliction that besets summer movies; too many commercials. The tiger, Mike Tyson, Ed Helms marrying a stripper, the guys being tasered, stealing the cop car....by the time I saw these scenes in the film, I had already seen them a hundred times on TV. The only thing that the ads didn't reveal was the large dose of Galifianakis-style humor, which was great and definitely the highlight of the film. And the movie did have a tight script that explained everything in a clever way, capped off by the brilliant photo montage over the end credits. Enough care went into making this a dumb movie with a brain that I'm already intrigued to see what they'll do for the inevitable sequel. I'm presuming it'll be a bit more than, "Hey guys, Alan drugged our booze AGAIN and we can't remember what we did last night ONCE AGAIN! And this time we're in Miami!"
THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123
Meh part two. Tony Scott, the Diet Coke to his brother Ridley's Coke, makes another action movie that I'll completely forget about within a week or two. Denzel and Travolta must've figured that since their characters talk on the phone with each other for three-quarters of the movie, they could just go ahead and phone in their performances too. Again, not a bad movie, and more enjoyable overall than generic summer nonsense like Transformers 2, but nothing special. My biggest problem was that Travolta's crew's heist wasn't ingenious. If you're going to have a movie about a criminal mastermind carrying out a massive crime, there have to be a few more surprises within the mastermind's plan. Ocean's Eleven would've been a lot less interesting had George Clooney just rounded up 10 thugs and had them take Andy Garcia's wallet.
AWAY WE GO
The movie isn't nearly as entertaining as the vitriol it has spawned in film reviews. A.O. Scott of the New York Times claimed that "this movie does not like you," in a review that seemed to be more about Scott's beefs with director Sam Mendes and, by extension, screenwriters Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida than it did about the film itself. Roger Ebert, meanwhile, wrote a review that spent two paragraphs detailing Eggers and Vida's awesome hipster lives and concluded that, amusingly, maybe the characters seem 'smug' because they actually are better than you. Fellas, fellas, stop swinging the handbags. The movie itself seems to have been somewhat lost amidst all of this banter, which might be because 'Away We Go' is a good, but ultimately rather forgettable, little road movie. It's easy to focus on Eggers and Vida since John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph are basically playing them within the film, and Mendes (who usually does big-ticket movies like Road To Perdition, American Beauty or Revolutionary Road) is an easy target since he is only a Philip Seymour Hoffman or Dylan Baker cameo away from a perfect score on his Make An Indie Movie Bingo card.
Krasinski and Rudolph go from place to place trying to find the perfect home for their impending child, and they meet a motley crew of friends and acquaintances along the way. Scott's big beef with this plot was that K&R are so tweely conceived that the whole point of the film seemed to be 'oh look at how much cooler these hipster parents are than the rest of America.' Um, doesn't every road movie feature the protagonists meeting a bunch of bizarre folks along the way? Maybe I should check some of other A.O. Scott reviews to see if he just has an issue with road movies in general. "The way that Harold and Kumar look down on Freakshow is just appalling! He can't help his bleeding pustules!" K&R are supposed to be the straight men to the likes of Maggie Gyllenhaal, Allison Janney, Jim Gaffigan and other representations of parenthood and family life that they meet across the US and Canada. What hurt the movie for me was that I never quite got past the fact that it was Jim from the Office and on-SNL-too-long Maya Rudolph, rather than being fully absorbed by the characters. You can also see the ending coming from space, so there isn't exactly a lot of tension. But yeah, overall, not a bad movie.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Musing About Schwarzenegger
What will Arnold Schwarzenegger do after his governorship is finished? The answer is simple. Pitchman for Canadian discount grocery stores.
SCENE: A thirtysomething couple is standing in a supermarket aisle, holding various boxes and looking perturbed.
Wife: Look at these prices!
Husband: Times are tight, but we should still be able to afford food!
Wife: That's what we get for shopping at a big chain!
SUDDENLY, Arnold Schwarzenegger walks down the aisle pushing an empty cart.
Arnold: Maybe I kin help.
Husband and Wife: Arnold Schwarzenegger!
Arnold: Come with me if you want to save!
CUT TO the same couple, standing at a Price Chopper checkout aisle, happily setting groceries from their full cart onto the conveyor. Arnold is standing behind the smiling clerk.
Husband: Wow, Price Chopper has all of the foods we need, at low prices!
Arnold: Don't put up with dose mayjah chains and their exorbitahnt prices. Price Choppah has all you need and mo-ah!
Wife: Thanks, Arnold!
Voiceover: Price Chopper, for all your shopping needs!
Arnold: Get to de choppah! *thumbs up*
* I was watching 'Predator' tonight on TLN, and I had forgotten about two unintentionally hilarious moments at the end of the movie. First, the Predator's laugh at the end of the movie, when he suddenly starts cackling like the Joker after setting the bomb in a last-ditch suicide attempt to kill Arnold. I guess even alien bounty hunters descend into crazed super-villainy every now and then. Was the Predator played by Vincent Price? The other funny part comes during the credits. Arnold is on the helicopter, looking solemn, and the film ends with a grim final note on the score. Then it suddenly cuts to medium shots of each main character, all smiling and acting like they're having the time of their lives. Even Sonny Landham, whose whole character trait is that he's stone-faced, is seen laughing. It was as out of place as if "Schindler's List" had immediately cut to credits showing Ralph Fiennes doing a 'this is my friend Bonesy' ventriloquist act with a plastic skull.
* Not Arnold-related at all, but hey, he's a fan of breasts (and, allegedly, groping them without permission) so he might be interested. TLN has a show called "Without Breasts There Is No Paradise." It's true. I saw the ad for it during Predator. The plot seems to revolve around women in bikinis running around a pool, and smugglers are involved. I don't even have a joke here. Even better, it's being adapted into English language version by NBC. If nothing else, this series will let us know once and for all if Ben Silverman is the worst network executive of all time. (My money is on yes.)
* LISTAMANIA! The Top Ten Arnold Schwarzenegger Films!
10. Raw Deal....."She was molested, mutilated and murdered!" shouldn't be a hilarious line, but imagine Arnold saying it and struggling mightily with all of the M's.
9. The Terminator.....Bad news folks, the original is becoming more dated by the day. The special effects in the ending scene when the top half of the Terminator is going after Sarah are just too '1984' to be believable. (Not an Orwell reference, but T1 literally came out in 1984.)
8. The Sixth Day.....Goofy all-around, but not a bad movie. Notable due to the hilarious face-first plummet of the villain, nicknamed 'Goo Boy' by my friends due to the eventual sad shape of his face.
7. Terminator 3.....The largely shite new Terminator movie with Christian Bale underscores just how necessary Arnold was to the series. His presence added a bit of levity to the proceedings, whereas Bale/Sam Worthington were just too dour. When CGI Arnold appears in T4, the theatre audience I was part of literally cheered. T3 is one of those movies that was kind of scorned at the time, but given how T4 crapped the bed, it's looking a lot better in retrospect. I just wish that they had brought Robert Patrick back to team up with Arnold against the TX robot, since it makes little sense that future John Connor would send back such an outmoded model on its own to take down the cutting-edge new Terminator.
6. True Lies.....The real tragedy is that Bill Paxton's hilarious sleazy car salesman wasn't spun off into his own movie. Or wait, is this the premise behind Big Love? Is Paxton's character just pretending to be Mormon like he was pretending to be a secret agent, and his lie just spun out of control not once, not twice, but thrice?
5. Total Recall.....A former classmate of mine once had me proofread a very interesting paper they had written about identity in Schwarzenegger films. I'd cite that classmate here, but uh, I'm totally blanking on his name. If you're reading this, pleasant brown-haired dude from third-year American Film with Mike Zryd, please don't be offended. I guess you could say I don't have total recall of names. *self high-five*
4. The Running Man....Richard Dawson, in all seriousness, deserved an Oscar nomination for his role. I talked the movie up a bit more in this post about fictional games that should become real sports, but suffice it to say, I would watch a Running Man show every week.
3. Predator....One of the best 'Arrested Development' sight gags ever was, when they were introducing Carl Weathers, they cut to the clip from this movie of him getting his arm blown off. Good times. Baby, you got a stew goin'!
2. Dave....Ok, technically not a 'Schwarzenegger movie,' but he has a cameo. Also, I love this movie and will mention it at every opportunity.
1. Terminator 2....Almost 20 years later, and this one still holds up as if it had been released yesterday. On the short list of the best action movies ever made. "She's not my mother, TODD." And then the little 'yeah!' and the fist in the air from John Connor's mulleted punk friend. Good times.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Livin' In Stinktown
Of course, this public workers' strike has to start on the hottest, muggiest week of the year so far. I've written about the Day Of Days before, but its polar opposite is the day when the first wave of oppressive humidity sweeps over the city. Call it the Day Of Back Sweat. So when you add a few thousand metric pounds of trash to the equation, it doesn't take long for the situation to reach critical mass. It seems as if every year the humid weather coincides with some foul waste-related mishap in my living quarters. In 2006, I returned home from a sticky night at a baseball game wanting nothing more than a cool shower, only to accidentally flood the bathroom due to a busted gizmo in the back of the toilet. This was on the same day that a new roommate moved in, so his first sight of me was frantically mopping the floor and cursing like a sailor on leave. In 2007, a raccoon got into our bin and left piles of trash strewn around our back deck. (This was on the same day, naturally, that my parents were up for a visit, so they left town thinking their eldest son was living in squalor.)
The nastiness started on Wednesday evening. I was leaving for the soccer game and went behind my apartment to get to my car. Virtually everyone on my block stores their trash in a shed or bin in the alley behind all of our buildings, and even in the twenty-second stroll between my back door and my car door, the smell was pretty freakin' noticeable. Our regularly scheduled trash pickup day was on Tuesday, so Wednesday was technically day one of the great wait, and we were already losing the battle. My roommate and I have already taken the step of moving a green bin out on our balcony, so in case of overflow (since we'll have to pack every ounce of trash possible in that bad boy) it won't turn our kitchen into a haven for fruit flies.
If worst comes to worst, of course, we can just throw some trash into my trunk and drive it down to one of the dumping sites that the city has set up, but then we'd have to deal with another problem --- the striking city workers picketing the sites and letting roughly one car into the site per five minutes. You know what, sanitation workers? I get why you're striking, and you guys certainly deserve extra consideration from the city given what (literal) crap you put up on a daily basis. Talk about an essential service. But picketing a dump site and inconveniencing TO residents who are already going out of their way to dump their trash on their own? That's just a dick move. That will net you exactly zero public sympathy. It's one thing if a piano-tuners union goes on strike and pickets a city-run string-straightening venture, but people don't need to have their pianos tuned at all times. Little Gregory's scales can be a bit flat, and everyone at the recital will understand given the circumstances. But people NEED to dispose of their trash somewhere. Otherwise, we'll be on the fast track to huge mountains of trash straight out of Idiocracy or Wall*E. I don't want to see President Dwayne Camacho in my lifetime, people.
The nastiness started on Wednesday evening. I was leaving for the soccer game and went behind my apartment to get to my car. Virtually everyone on my block stores their trash in a shed or bin in the alley behind all of our buildings, and even in the twenty-second stroll between my back door and my car door, the smell was pretty freakin' noticeable. Our regularly scheduled trash pickup day was on Tuesday, so Wednesday was technically day one of the great wait, and we were already losing the battle. My roommate and I have already taken the step of moving a green bin out on our balcony, so in case of overflow (since we'll have to pack every ounce of trash possible in that bad boy) it won't turn our kitchen into a haven for fruit flies.
If worst comes to worst, of course, we can just throw some trash into my trunk and drive it down to one of the dumping sites that the city has set up, but then we'd have to deal with another problem --- the striking city workers picketing the sites and letting roughly one car into the site per five minutes. You know what, sanitation workers? I get why you're striking, and you guys certainly deserve extra consideration from the city given what (literal) crap you put up on a daily basis. Talk about an essential service. But picketing a dump site and inconveniencing TO residents who are already going out of their way to dump their trash on their own? That's just a dick move. That will net you exactly zero public sympathy. It's one thing if a piano-tuners union goes on strike and pickets a city-run string-straightening venture, but people don't need to have their pianos tuned at all times. Little Gregory's scales can be a bit flat, and everyone at the recital will understand given the circumstances. But people NEED to dispose of their trash somewhere. Otherwise, we'll be on the fast track to huge mountains of trash straight out of Idiocracy or Wall*E. I don't want to see President Dwayne Camacho in my lifetime, people.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Your One-Stop Shop For Michael Jackson Jokes!
10. How ironic that MJ's heart didn't beat it
9. Reports are coming in that numerous little boys are extremely touched by the tragedy (this one courtesy of Matt Cloutier)
8. 6/25/09 seems to be 'Make Your Facebook Status A Tribute To A Child Molester' Day
7. "Aha! No more arguing! The doggone girl is certainly mine now!" -- Sir Paul McCartney
6. The O2 Arena's events booker is the most frustrated man in the world right now
5. If only Bubbles had been taught CPR
4. Breaking news: the Elephant Man's family put in a bid to buy MJ's skeleton
3. Jacko is on his backo
2. Leon Kompowsky, it's your time to shine!
1. I'm making jokes now, but I won't be laughing when MJ returns with his army of dancing zombies
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
TV Year In Review, Part Four
Part One (relatively spoiler-heavy)
Part Two: LOST (very, very spoiler-heavy)
Part Three: Reality Shows (pretty spoiler-heavy, given that I openly discuss who won the bloody shows)
I tried to keep this one with as few spoilers as possible, though in some cases (coughcoughOfficecough) it's kind of hard. The rule of thumb is that if you haven't seen one of the shows and ever intend to, you might want to skip over the section. You could always come back to the post later....it's not like my writing will get any less brilliant or anything.
AMERICAN DAD
At the risk of parroting my TV year-in-review from last year, this is the funniest animated show on TV. Twenty more hilarious episodes did nothing but reinforce this fact. In fact, I can't even pick a favourite episode since almost all were top-notch. If I had to pick a top moment at gunpoint --- a common scenario amongst animation-loving NRA members like myself --- I'd go with Roger and Hayley's rapid-fire costume changes to try and trick the other into staying employed and signing a work release form, respectively. If I had to nitpick, it seems like the show is getting just a wee bit too centered around Stan and Roger, but then again, there were also episodes like 'Escape From Pearl Bailey' that were almost entirely based around Steve. Another nitpick: no continuation of the golden turd storyline? Come on! On the other hand, we instead got the recurring story of Reginald, the homeless man whose mind was implanted into that of a koala and is now a CIA operative. Win-win.
BREAKING BAD
Everyone knows how totally in the tank I am for LOST, but pound-for-pound, Breaking Bad was the best show on television this season. The first season, okay, it's a good show about a cancer-ridden chemistry teacher turned meth dealer, it's a dark comedy, hah hah, I get it, it's like a male version of Weeds. The second season....holy shit, son. It was about 95 percent dark, five percent comedy as Walter White continued his transformation from desperate teacher in over his head to being an increasingly sociopathic drug kingpin. Wait, the word 'transformation' is wrong. The brilliance of the show and Bryan Cranston's portrayal is that Walt isn't just breaking bad; it's just that cooking meth has given him an outlet for the cruelty (and, dare I say, actual evil) there's been there all along. Cranston needs to win, like, 15 Emmys for this role. They need to start making up new categories just to honor him further. Best Performance By A Mustached Actor, perhaps. Best Delivery Of The Line 'Fuck You' (though if Deadwood was still on the air, Ian McShane would be a strong contender). It's not just Cranston either, as Jesse Paul, Anna Gunn, and Dean Norris all elevated their games this season, Paul especially. I also can't wait to see more of the great Bob Odenkirk as Walt's sleazy lawyer and Giancarlo Esposito as the respectable, chicken restaurant-owning established druglord. If you haven't seen any of Breaking Bad, track down the DVDs post-haste. There are only 19 episodes in total over the first two seasons, so you can catch up within a week. It is as addictive as....well, actual meth, ironically enough.
DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES
I was pleased to find a picture of the Lily Tomlin/Kathryn Joosten pairing that was the unquestioned highlight of this season of 'Desperate Housewives.' They were so good together that I wanted DH to shut down production immediately and devote all of ABC's resources towards a show about these two hard-living old broads solving crimes. That would've been far more entertaining than the season's actual mystery, which was predictable by roughly the third episode and made little use of the usually reliable Neal McDonough. The five-years-forward jump from last year's finale brought a bit of new life into the show, but by season's end it had fallen back into its old habits of Susan-and-Mike drama, and domestic problems in the Scavo household. If any show is close to being cut from my viewing schedule next year, it's this one.
FAMILY GUY
I think I only really laughed hard twice during this season of FG. The first was one opening act where Quagmire bought a cat and suddenly devolved into a schmoopy pet owner, which I just found hilarious for some reason. And the second was the already immortal episode where Peter spends a good half of the show singing 'Bird Is The Word.' Honestly, the whole Jesus subplot that was the 'real' story of the episode didn't need to happen. I would've been more than satisfied to see Family Guy finally take one of its elongated jokes to its natural extreme and just do a full 22-minute running gag. Other than those two moments/segments, this show is losing its fastball in a major way. Someone needs to tell Seth Macfarlane that his political-themed episodes reached an 0.8 on the Moore Scale for hitting the audience over the head without actually being funny. (Ironically, Moore was a central character in one such episode, yet another example of Family Guy being a day late and a dollar short with its pop culture references when it actually tries to be 'topical' and not just doing a cutaway joke about, say, Three's Company.)
HARPER'S ISLAND
Not to be confused with Stephen Harper's Island, where the PM sends people that don't agree with his policies, this show is actually the reason why this TV year in review is so damn late. I thought about waiting until Harper's Island was done its run so I could comment on it fully, but given now we're already in late June, I might as well get it over with. Harper's Island became a lot more enjoyable when a) the characters finally realized that a series of murders were happening on the island, since then things kicked into high gear and b) when I myself realized that this wasn't going to be the labyrinthine Agatha Christie-esque mystery I was led to believe it would be from the pre-show publicity. If anything, it's more of a slasher movie. Now don't get me wrong, it's a well-done slasher movie that has just enough plot and wide variety of characters (a cast of over 30, with at least one of them murdered every single week) to keep things interesting. But the show has enough little 'hints' to the 'solution' of who the 'killer' is that I'm worried that the final episode will try to impress us by trying to wrap this thing up and pretend it makes some coherent sense. Hey, I'll happily eat my words if the finale reveals a massively intricate LOST-esque plot, but at this point, I'll just be happy if they find Cousin Ben's severed head hanging from the bottom of the boat.
HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER
In all honesty, probably the weakest HIMYM season, given that the whole Stella storyline didn't really go anywhere and the show's terrific group dynamic missed Alyson Hannigan when she missed a few episodes due to pregnancy. That said, even a weak HIMYM season is still one of the funniest things on television. I enjoy that the writers are taking full advantage of the fact that Ted is much funnier when he's pretentious than when he's a lovesick romantic, thus leading to the very funny mini-arc of him dating his horrible ex-girlfriend from college (Laura Prepon, who it turns out isn't an entirely worthless actress). Fun fact: if you get any of your friends to watch HIMYM, they will become instantly hooked. Forget Breaking Bad, this is the show that is truly like a drug. I've had no less than a half-dozen people start watching in the last few months alone, and already they've plowed through the first three seasons.
MY NAME IS EARL
Kind of an average season for Earl, as the show returned to the basic 'one list item per week' format of Season One. The only thing that really stood out was the hilarious episode featuring Erik Estrada hosting a challenge-reality show called Estrada Or Nada? MNIE's biggest news came at the end of the year when it was revealed that NBC is canceling the show. WTF, NBC? Got to make way for more reality shows with Spencer Pratt, I guess. Frankly, I'd rather see a real-life Estrada Or Nada. Anyway, the bright side for 'Earl' fans is that there's a chance the show will be picked up by FOX, ABC or even Peachtree TV, so we'll get to see the conclusion to the twin cliffhangers of who the two fathers of Joyce's kids are.
THE OFFICE
The best season of The Office since the legendary S2 was propped up by two major storylines --- the saga of Michael and Holly and the birth of the Michael Scott Paper Company. I'm hoping that Amy Ryan was in enough episodes to qualify for supporting actress honors under the byzantine Emmy rules, since she was perfect as a woman who could believably fall for Michael and yet still seem to function as a normal human being. Really, is there a reason she couldn't be on the show full-time? Amy Ryan wants to do movies? Pfft, she was in Changeling for about 10 minutes, she can do better than that on the small screen. Then, later in the season, the MSPC provided a great storyline for Pam as she ascended to a sales role, and also led to that astoundingly funny episode where Michael and Dwight competed against each other for customers. After five seasons, it's obvious that enough thought and care goes into these characters that I'm not in the least bit worried that Pam's pregnancy will be a shark-jump moment.
PARKS AND RECREATION
My opinion from two months ago hasn't really changed, except I'll say this: the finale was by far the best episode of the series and it gives me hope that the show can evolve upward next year. Two key character shifts may prove to be the trick. First, Paul Schneider's character went from being a poor man's Jim Halpert to actually being kind of a dick, which makes his role as Leslie's apparent love interest more complicated. And secondly, Amy Poehler's Leslie character took a step back from being the poor man's Michael Scott to sort of wide-eyed optimist type. I hate to keep using Office comparisons since it's not really fair to P&R, but if the new angle on Leslie is that she combines Pam's desire for small victories with naked political ambition, then that's an interesting character that would conceivably headline a sitcom. It also helps that Roy Swanson (the Libertarian city hall supervisor) is well on his way to becoming a breakout character. Between showing up on a date with his ex-wife's more attractive half-sister and delivering a banquet awards speech comprised only of factually accurate statements ("You are receiving an award tonight," etc.), I want to see a lot more Ron in the second season. "I enjoy government functions like I enjoy getting kicked in the nuggets with a steel-toed boot. But this hotel always served bacon wrapped shrimp. I’d go to a banquet in honor of those Somali pirates if they served bacon wrapped shrimp."
PARTY DOWN
Probably the winner of the 'best show you've never heard of' award for the year, given that it airs on the virtually unwatched Starz channel and ran just 10 episodes in its first season. Basically you've got a collection of "hey, it's that hilarious supporting player in that comedy I liked" actors like Adam Scott, Jane Lynch and Ken Marino, combined with half the cast and crew of Veronica Mars for a show about struggling/wannabe actors who work for a catering company and basically just laze and bullshit their way through the various functions they're called upon to cater. I'd compare it to the British version of the Office in terms of overall tone, if not quite there yet in quality, given that the show doesn't hold any illusion that its characters are anything but varying degrees of delusional about their career prospects. A second season is apparently in the cards, albeit minus Jane Lynch.
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE
It was an election year, so it was once again time for the media to trot out its usual "Saturday Night Live's election spoofs have breathed new life into the show!" meme. It's never true --- the election just gave SNL a sharper focus for a few political sketches, which they by and large deliver on every four years. The other 80 minutes of the show was the same up-and-down level of quality that SNL has been for, with a few exceptions, its entire 34-year run. Now, this season was a bit of an outlier given that it's not every election cycle that a major party nominates a VP candidate who a) is a dead ringer for one of SNL's most famous stars and b) is such a living joke that she is a perfect candidate for satire. Three of the show's best sketches of the season were the VP debate ("I believe marriage is meant to be a sacred institution between two unwilling teenagers"), McCain trying to avoid a Bush endorsement and the whole SNL take on the Palin-Katie Couric interview, which was 50 percent word-for-word the actual crazy bullshit that Palin actually said on '60 Minutes.'
The best episode of the season, imo, was probably the Jon Hamm-hosted edition in October, with Hamm, Anne Hathaway, Neil Patrick Harris and Anna Faris standing out amongst the first-time hosts, whereas hosting veterans Will Ferrell, Justin Timberlake and Dwayne Johnson also had great shows. The best musical guests were probably Phoenix, an unknown band who were so amazing in rehearsals during the week that they ended up getting the rare 'third song' honor that is usually saved for heavyweights like U2 or Paul Simon. Best skit? Either the return of Celebrity Jeopardy or (here's an odd choice) the one from the Rock's episode about the sports talk show co-hosted by an alien. Best recurring skit? At the risk of saying 'every Digital Short,' I still crack up at the sketch about the buddies who get nostalgic listening to a song, and then reveal horrific events from their past.
THE SIMPSONS
So for years, Simpsons writers and producers attributed (such a nicer word than 'blamed') the show's decline in quality over the fact that they were all dealing with the extra burden of making The Simpsons Movie. I laughed at this feeble excuse given that roughly five thousand people write for the show, and surely that's enough people to manage both a show and a film at the same time. But, sure enough, since The Simpsons Movie came and went, the show has had a sharp upturn in quality. It seemed to kick into another gear after the switch to HD animation, which also looked beautiful by the way. The highlights were "Gone Maggie Gone" and its labyrinthine plot and great spoof of the 'get these items across the river' riddle, and "In The Name Of The Grandfather," which was probably the best of the "The Simpsons Are Going To ____!" after the legendary Australian one.
SIT DOWN, SHUT UP
So, am I the only person in the world that actually liked it? Critics fell all over themselves slamming the show for not being the next Arrested Development just because Hurwitz, Bateman and Arnett were involved, but c'mon, did you really expect lightning to strike twice? You have to love a show where the characters try to have a 'hey, remember when we....?' style clip show in the opening minutes of the third episode.
30 ROCK
Ok, so, that five funniest shows on TV list I promised way back in the 'American Dad' section.
5. How I Met Your Mother
4. The Office
3. American Dad
2. Flight Of The Conchords
....and number one, somewhat predictably, is 30 Rock, since otherwise the top five list would really just be out of place in this paragraph. '30 Rock' has now gotten to the point where I'm seriously considering doing a 30 Rock vs. Arrested Development post in order to determine the best sitcom of the decade. Amongst all of the legendary moments of this season (Baldwin as the Generalissimo, Baldwin saying the words 'Jackie Jormp-Jomp,' Liz trying to get out of jury duty, WORD PLAY!, Kenneth's view of the world as Muppets, Liz actually walking like a muppet, anything involving Dr. Spaceman, Jon Hamm's impossibly bitchy daughter, Steve Martin's allegedly agoraphobic businessman, Tracy reuniting the cast of Night Court for Kenneth, Tracy's illegitimate son, Liz's phone sex ad, the shocking sight of Frank cleaned up and looking respectable), I think the line that actually cracked me up the most was Kenneth cheering Jenna up by telling her that she is what he pictures the Virgin Mary as looking like, and then cheerfully turning to Pete and telling him that he is his picture of Judas.
24
The season more or less followed through on my cautious optimism after the first four episodes, though Day Seven kind of ran out of steam with maybe four hours left. It's hard to top Jon Voight when it comes to raving mad man villains, and even the last-minute heel turn from Tony didn't really shake things up all that much. I also didn't care for the weird attempt at making Alan Wilson into The Big Bad Villain Behind Everything Bad That Ever Happened On 24, given that we had known the guy for, like, three episodes and hadn't seen him do anything more threatening than talk on the phone. And most of the White House drama with the president's daughter was kind of stupid. And, let's be honest, sidelining Jack for most of the last half of the season didn't really work either, since he all knew he wasn't going to die and all of his time spent recuperating at FBI headquarters was time that he could've spent kicking ass. So yeah, it wasn't a perfect 24 season by any stretch, but on the other hand, they also added an ass-kicking hot redhead. Call it a push. I did appreciate the attempts at fleshing Jack out a bit more, probably as a response to criticisms of the show that describe it as right-wing torture porn. The scene between Jack and Senator Blaine (played by the always-great Kurtwood Smith) in the senator's house was probably the best character scene Kiefer Sutherland has had in at least five years. Given the introduction of the Muslim religious leader at Jack's ostensible deathbed, I would crack up if Day Eight began with Jack changing his name to Kareem Abdul-Bauer and converting to Islam. That would explode so many heads at Fox News that you'd think it was a scene from Scanners.
Part Two: LOST (very, very spoiler-heavy)
Part Three: Reality Shows (pretty spoiler-heavy, given that I openly discuss who won the bloody shows)
I tried to keep this one with as few spoilers as possible, though in some cases (coughcoughOfficecough) it's kind of hard. The rule of thumb is that if you haven't seen one of the shows and ever intend to, you might want to skip over the section. You could always come back to the post later....it's not like my writing will get any less brilliant or anything.
At the risk of parroting my TV year-in-review from last year, this is the funniest animated show on TV. Twenty more hilarious episodes did nothing but reinforce this fact. In fact, I can't even pick a favourite episode since almost all were top-notch. If I had to pick a top moment at gunpoint --- a common scenario amongst animation-loving NRA members like myself --- I'd go with Roger and Hayley's rapid-fire costume changes to try and trick the other into staying employed and signing a work release form, respectively. If I had to nitpick, it seems like the show is getting just a wee bit too centered around Stan and Roger, but then again, there were also episodes like 'Escape From Pearl Bailey' that were almost entirely based around Steve. Another nitpick: no continuation of the golden turd storyline? Come on! On the other hand, we instead got the recurring story of Reginald, the homeless man whose mind was implanted into that of a koala and is now a CIA operative. Win-win.
Everyone knows how totally in the tank I am for LOST, but pound-for-pound, Breaking Bad was the best show on television this season. The first season, okay, it's a good show about a cancer-ridden chemistry teacher turned meth dealer, it's a dark comedy, hah hah, I get it, it's like a male version of Weeds. The second season....holy shit, son. It was about 95 percent dark, five percent comedy as Walter White continued his transformation from desperate teacher in over his head to being an increasingly sociopathic drug kingpin. Wait, the word 'transformation' is wrong. The brilliance of the show and Bryan Cranston's portrayal is that Walt isn't just breaking bad; it's just that cooking meth has given him an outlet for the cruelty (and, dare I say, actual evil) there's been there all along. Cranston needs to win, like, 15 Emmys for this role. They need to start making up new categories just to honor him further. Best Performance By A Mustached Actor, perhaps. Best Delivery Of The Line 'Fuck You' (though if Deadwood was still on the air, Ian McShane would be a strong contender). It's not just Cranston either, as Jesse Paul, Anna Gunn, and Dean Norris all elevated their games this season, Paul especially. I also can't wait to see more of the great Bob Odenkirk as Walt's sleazy lawyer and Giancarlo Esposito as the respectable, chicken restaurant-owning established druglord. If you haven't seen any of Breaking Bad, track down the DVDs post-haste. There are only 19 episodes in total over the first two seasons, so you can catch up within a week. It is as addictive as....well, actual meth, ironically enough.
I was pleased to find a picture of the Lily Tomlin/Kathryn Joosten pairing that was the unquestioned highlight of this season of 'Desperate Housewives.' They were so good together that I wanted DH to shut down production immediately and devote all of ABC's resources towards a show about these two hard-living old broads solving crimes. That would've been far more entertaining than the season's actual mystery, which was predictable by roughly the third episode and made little use of the usually reliable Neal McDonough. The five-years-forward jump from last year's finale brought a bit of new life into the show, but by season's end it had fallen back into its old habits of Susan-and-Mike drama, and domestic problems in the Scavo household. If any show is close to being cut from my viewing schedule next year, it's this one.
I think I only really laughed hard twice during this season of FG. The first was one opening act where Quagmire bought a cat and suddenly devolved into a schmoopy pet owner, which I just found hilarious for some reason. And the second was the already immortal episode where Peter spends a good half of the show singing 'Bird Is The Word.' Honestly, the whole Jesus subplot that was the 'real' story of the episode didn't need to happen. I would've been more than satisfied to see Family Guy finally take one of its elongated jokes to its natural extreme and just do a full 22-minute running gag. Other than those two moments/segments, this show is losing its fastball in a major way. Someone needs to tell Seth Macfarlane that his political-themed episodes reached an 0.8 on the Moore Scale for hitting the audience over the head without actually being funny. (Ironically, Moore was a central character in one such episode, yet another example of Family Guy being a day late and a dollar short with its pop culture references when it actually tries to be 'topical' and not just doing a cutaway joke about, say, Three's Company.)
Not to be confused with Stephen Harper's Island, where the PM sends people that don't agree with his policies, this show is actually the reason why this TV year in review is so damn late. I thought about waiting until Harper's Island was done its run so I could comment on it fully, but given now we're already in late June, I might as well get it over with. Harper's Island became a lot more enjoyable when a) the characters finally realized that a series of murders were happening on the island, since then things kicked into high gear and b) when I myself realized that this wasn't going to be the labyrinthine Agatha Christie-esque mystery I was led to believe it would be from the pre-show publicity. If anything, it's more of a slasher movie. Now don't get me wrong, it's a well-done slasher movie that has just enough plot and wide variety of characters (a cast of over 30, with at least one of them murdered every single week) to keep things interesting. But the show has enough little 'hints' to the 'solution' of who the 'killer' is that I'm worried that the final episode will try to impress us by trying to wrap this thing up and pretend it makes some coherent sense. Hey, I'll happily eat my words if the finale reveals a massively intricate LOST-esque plot, but at this point, I'll just be happy if they find Cousin Ben's severed head hanging from the bottom of the boat.
In all honesty, probably the weakest HIMYM season, given that the whole Stella storyline didn't really go anywhere and the show's terrific group dynamic missed Alyson Hannigan when she missed a few episodes due to pregnancy. That said, even a weak HIMYM season is still one of the funniest things on television. I enjoy that the writers are taking full advantage of the fact that Ted is much funnier when he's pretentious than when he's a lovesick romantic, thus leading to the very funny mini-arc of him dating his horrible ex-girlfriend from college (Laura Prepon, who it turns out isn't an entirely worthless actress). Fun fact: if you get any of your friends to watch HIMYM, they will become instantly hooked. Forget Breaking Bad, this is the show that is truly like a drug. I've had no less than a half-dozen people start watching in the last few months alone, and already they've plowed through the first three seasons.
Kind of an average season for Earl, as the show returned to the basic 'one list item per week' format of Season One. The only thing that really stood out was the hilarious episode featuring Erik Estrada hosting a challenge-reality show called Estrada Or Nada? MNIE's biggest news came at the end of the year when it was revealed that NBC is canceling the show. WTF, NBC? Got to make way for more reality shows with Spencer Pratt, I guess. Frankly, I'd rather see a real-life Estrada Or Nada. Anyway, the bright side for 'Earl' fans is that there's a chance the show will be picked up by FOX, ABC or even Peachtree TV, so we'll get to see the conclusion to the twin cliffhangers of who the two fathers of Joyce's kids are.
The best season of The Office since the legendary S2 was propped up by two major storylines --- the saga of Michael and Holly and the birth of the Michael Scott Paper Company. I'm hoping that Amy Ryan was in enough episodes to qualify for supporting actress honors under the byzantine Emmy rules, since she was perfect as a woman who could believably fall for Michael and yet still seem to function as a normal human being. Really, is there a reason she couldn't be on the show full-time? Amy Ryan wants to do movies? Pfft, she was in Changeling for about 10 minutes, she can do better than that on the small screen. Then, later in the season, the MSPC provided a great storyline for Pam as she ascended to a sales role, and also led to that astoundingly funny episode where Michael and Dwight competed against each other for customers. After five seasons, it's obvious that enough thought and care goes into these characters that I'm not in the least bit worried that Pam's pregnancy will be a shark-jump moment.
My opinion from two months ago hasn't really changed, except I'll say this: the finale was by far the best episode of the series and it gives me hope that the show can evolve upward next year. Two key character shifts may prove to be the trick. First, Paul Schneider's character went from being a poor man's Jim Halpert to actually being kind of a dick, which makes his role as Leslie's apparent love interest more complicated. And secondly, Amy Poehler's Leslie character took a step back from being the poor man's Michael Scott to sort of wide-eyed optimist type. I hate to keep using Office comparisons since it's not really fair to P&R, but if the new angle on Leslie is that she combines Pam's desire for small victories with naked political ambition, then that's an interesting character that would conceivably headline a sitcom. It also helps that Roy Swanson (the Libertarian city hall supervisor) is well on his way to becoming a breakout character. Between showing up on a date with his ex-wife's more attractive half-sister and delivering a banquet awards speech comprised only of factually accurate statements ("You are receiving an award tonight," etc.), I want to see a lot more Ron in the second season. "I enjoy government functions like I enjoy getting kicked in the nuggets with a steel-toed boot. But this hotel always served bacon wrapped shrimp. I’d go to a banquet in honor of those Somali pirates if they served bacon wrapped shrimp."
Probably the winner of the 'best show you've never heard of' award for the year, given that it airs on the virtually unwatched Starz channel and ran just 10 episodes in its first season. Basically you've got a collection of "hey, it's that hilarious supporting player in that comedy I liked" actors like Adam Scott, Jane Lynch and Ken Marino, combined with half the cast and crew of Veronica Mars for a show about struggling/wannabe actors who work for a catering company and basically just laze and bullshit their way through the various functions they're called upon to cater. I'd compare it to the British version of the Office in terms of overall tone, if not quite there yet in quality, given that the show doesn't hold any illusion that its characters are anything but varying degrees of delusional about their career prospects. A second season is apparently in the cards, albeit minus Jane Lynch.
It was an election year, so it was once again time for the media to trot out its usual "Saturday Night Live's election spoofs have breathed new life into the show!" meme. It's never true --- the election just gave SNL a sharper focus for a few political sketches, which they by and large deliver on every four years. The other 80 minutes of the show was the same up-and-down level of quality that SNL has been for, with a few exceptions, its entire 34-year run. Now, this season was a bit of an outlier given that it's not every election cycle that a major party nominates a VP candidate who a) is a dead ringer for one of SNL's most famous stars and b) is such a living joke that she is a perfect candidate for satire. Three of the show's best sketches of the season were the VP debate ("I believe marriage is meant to be a sacred institution between two unwilling teenagers"), McCain trying to avoid a Bush endorsement and the whole SNL take on the Palin-Katie Couric interview, which was 50 percent word-for-word the actual crazy bullshit that Palin actually said on '60 Minutes.'
The best episode of the season, imo, was probably the Jon Hamm-hosted edition in October, with Hamm, Anne Hathaway, Neil Patrick Harris and Anna Faris standing out amongst the first-time hosts, whereas hosting veterans Will Ferrell, Justin Timberlake and Dwayne Johnson also had great shows. The best musical guests were probably Phoenix, an unknown band who were so amazing in rehearsals during the week that they ended up getting the rare 'third song' honor that is usually saved for heavyweights like U2 or Paul Simon. Best skit? Either the return of Celebrity Jeopardy or (here's an odd choice) the one from the Rock's episode about the sports talk show co-hosted by an alien. Best recurring skit? At the risk of saying 'every Digital Short,' I still crack up at the sketch about the buddies who get nostalgic listening to a song, and then reveal horrific events from their past.
So for years, Simpsons writers and producers attributed (such a nicer word than 'blamed') the show's decline in quality over the fact that they were all dealing with the extra burden of making The Simpsons Movie. I laughed at this feeble excuse given that roughly five thousand people write for the show, and surely that's enough people to manage both a show and a film at the same time. But, sure enough, since The Simpsons Movie came and went, the show has had a sharp upturn in quality. It seemed to kick into another gear after the switch to HD animation, which also looked beautiful by the way. The highlights were "Gone Maggie Gone" and its labyrinthine plot and great spoof of the 'get these items across the river' riddle, and "In The Name Of The Grandfather," which was probably the best of the "The Simpsons Are Going To ____!" after the legendary Australian one.
So, am I the only person in the world that actually liked it? Critics fell all over themselves slamming the show for not being the next Arrested Development just because Hurwitz, Bateman and Arnett were involved, but c'mon, did you really expect lightning to strike twice? You have to love a show where the characters try to have a 'hey, remember when we....?' style clip show in the opening minutes of the third episode.
Ok, so, that five funniest shows on TV list I promised way back in the 'American Dad' section.
5. How I Met Your Mother
4. The Office
3. American Dad
2. Flight Of The Conchords
....and number one, somewhat predictably, is 30 Rock, since otherwise the top five list would really just be out of place in this paragraph. '30 Rock' has now gotten to the point where I'm seriously considering doing a 30 Rock vs. Arrested Development post in order to determine the best sitcom of the decade. Amongst all of the legendary moments of this season (Baldwin as the Generalissimo, Baldwin saying the words 'Jackie Jormp-Jomp,' Liz trying to get out of jury duty, WORD PLAY!, Kenneth's view of the world as Muppets, Liz actually walking like a muppet, anything involving Dr. Spaceman, Jon Hamm's impossibly bitchy daughter, Steve Martin's allegedly agoraphobic businessman, Tracy reuniting the cast of Night Court for Kenneth, Tracy's illegitimate son, Liz's phone sex ad, the shocking sight of Frank cleaned up and looking respectable), I think the line that actually cracked me up the most was Kenneth cheering Jenna up by telling her that she is what he pictures the Virgin Mary as looking like, and then cheerfully turning to Pete and telling him that he is his picture of Judas.
The season more or less followed through on my cautious optimism after the first four episodes, though Day Seven kind of ran out of steam with maybe four hours left. It's hard to top Jon Voight when it comes to raving mad man villains, and even the last-minute heel turn from Tony didn't really shake things up all that much. I also didn't care for the weird attempt at making Alan Wilson into The Big Bad Villain Behind Everything Bad That Ever Happened On 24, given that we had known the guy for, like, three episodes and hadn't seen him do anything more threatening than talk on the phone. And most of the White House drama with the president's daughter was kind of stupid. And, let's be honest, sidelining Jack for most of the last half of the season didn't really work either, since he all knew he wasn't going to die and all of his time spent recuperating at FBI headquarters was time that he could've spent kicking ass. So yeah, it wasn't a perfect 24 season by any stretch, but on the other hand, they also added an ass-kicking hot redhead. Call it a push. I did appreciate the attempts at fleshing Jack out a bit more, probably as a response to criticisms of the show that describe it as right-wing torture porn. The scene between Jack and Senator Blaine (played by the always-great Kurtwood Smith) in the senator's house was probably the best character scene Kiefer Sutherland has had in at least five years. Given the introduction of the Muslim religious leader at Jack's ostensible deathbed, I would crack up if Day Eight began with Jack changing his name to Kareem Abdul-Bauer and converting to Islam. That would explode so many heads at Fox News that you'd think it was a scene from Scanners.
Monday, June 22, 2009
ACTING poll
So I came up with a lazy "who's the best actor in the world" poll without really thinking it through. I threw in as many great actors as I could think of off the top of my head, but given the existence of three 'other' votes already, it's obvious I made a few omissions. I'm opening this up to my Facebook readers as well since.....well, that's the larger audience, let's face it.
I'll keep the poll up for a few more days to provide a fair ballot period. If you're one of the 'Other' voters, please note your choice here. Suckas got to know!
I'll keep the poll up for a few more days to provide a fair ballot period. If you're one of the 'Other' voters, please note your choice here. Suckas got to know!
Saturday, June 20, 2009
The Best TV Of The 1980's
We've gone through the 2000's and the 1990's, so now it's time to hey, remember the 80's? Top tens in each category, best years of the series had to take place in the 80's, blah blah blah. Go!
SERIES
Blackadder.....Technically, each Blackadder series was its own stand-alone entity, but I'll just list the overall franchise as a series unto itself. It's a shame that everyone involved in Blackadder went onto larger fame and fortune, since the concept would've continued on for years. Imagine Blackadder in the 50's, or dealing with Margaret Thatcher in the 80's --- Miranda Richardson could've played 'Margie.' If you know Hugh Laurie only from House, you owe it to yourself to check out Blackadder. You will not believe it's the same guy.
Cheers.....No-brainer. If you had to pick one series to define the 1980's, Cheers would get a ton of votes. It managed to overcome two major cast changes (Coach to Woody and Diane to Rebecca), and still remain funny and relevant up until its last episode. Fun fact: the actual 'Cheers' bar in Boston is actually called the Bull & Finch pub, and its owners opened another location in Boston with an interior that actually matches the TV set. They did this to appease tourists who came into the Bull & Finch and were disappointed that it wasn't a dead ringer for the interior of the show.
The Golden Girls.....Can you imagine someone trying to pitch a show like Golden Girls today? "Ok, it's a sitcom about four old ladies down in Miami, and they spend about half of each episode just kibbitzing about their sex lives." Man, network TV today sucks.
Married With Children.....The last, oh, six years of the show were all just cartoonish nonsense, but those were all in the 90's anyway. The first few years of MWC were genuinely hilarious. Still cartoonish (i.e. the legendary episode where Al keeps falling off the roof) but cartoonish in a realistic way, if that makes any sense. The original casting idea for Al and Peg Bundy was Sam Kinison and Roseanne, which would've been.....AWFUL.
The Price Is Right.....I don't remember much about our old house on Millbank Drive (we moved when I was four), but I specifically recall sitting in the basement watching TPIR and eating Arrowroot cookies. 'The Price Is Right' might have very well been my first "favourite show." I even remember back when Bob Barker had black hair. Surely, no two-year-old in the world had as much knowledge about the costs of household items as I did. You could've let me loose in a Woolco and I would've come back with a week's worth of groceries.
The Real Ghostbusters.....In my 90's article, I believe I cited Batman: The Animated Series as the best cartoon of all time. I heartily withdraw that endorsement. I am only slightly exaggerating when I say that my life revolved around this cartoon from roughly age six to age nine. If you ask a number of people from my grade school, I'm sure I'm still remembered as 'the Ghostbusters kid.' It all thanks to this literate, funny, and incredibly well-made series. I've said it before and I'll say it again, a live-action weekly hour-long Ghostbusters dramedy would be a monster, monster hit if done in the right hands (i.e. mine).
SCTV.....Best sketch comedy cast of all time? Yep. Even in the best SNL casts, there are always a few pieces of dead weight carrying things down. Who was the weak link in the SCTV crew? Andrea Martin? Hell, she was awesome. If Andrea Martin is on SNL, she goes down as one of the five best female cast members ever. This show had too many amazing sketches and characters to recount, but my god...the McKenzie brothers, Earl Camembert and SCTV News, theoretically-paralyzed station owner Guy Caballero, Molly Earle, Count Floyd, Tex and Edna's Organ Emporium, Mel's Rock Pile, Johnny LaRue, the Sammy Maudlin Show....the list goes on and on.
Soap.....An old series that is perhaps best remembered today only as Billy Crystal's breakout role, 'Soap' was basically a spoof of soap operas in sitcom form. An enormous cast (like, 20 actors) filled out the two central families and over four seasons they handled everything from kidnappings to murders to evil twins to love affairs and even to alien abduction. I couldn't find a space for him in my list of actors, but Richard "King of Reaction Shots" Mulligan just about stole this whole show.
WKRP In Cincinnati.....My buddies and I are going to Cincy this year for our annual baseball road trip, and '14' is the current over-under on the number of times I sing the WKRP theme song during our three days away. I may top that just on the drive down. Besides the great theme song, WKRP was a classic workplace comedy featuring the wacky Herb Tarlek, Les Nessman, Johnny Fever and Arthur Carlson bouncing nicely off of the straight men rest of the cast. Also notable for being one of the all-time "who's hotter?" debates in TV sitcom history between Jennifer (Loni Anderson) and Bailey (Jan Smithers). Interestingly enough, literally everyone would pick Bailey in this debate and then get all smug about it since Bailey was supposed to be the mousier of the two. I mean come on fellas, I'd pick Bailey too, but Loni Anderson back in her prime wasn't exactly chopped liver. (NB Some might argue that WKRP's best years were in the 70's, and you might be right, except I'm not planning on doing a 70's list and I wanted to talk about the series here. So there.)
You Can't Do That On Television....Oh man, I'm getting flashbacks to switching the channel to YTV every weeknight at 7 PM. A great, great kids' show. Christine, Lisa, Alastair, that one kid whose name is escaping me but he went on to star in Future Shop ads, Alanis Morissette....truly a legendary cast. You know who the real unsung heroes of this show were? The two adults who played about 30 different roles each over the course of the series. And all they ever got for their hard work was the occasional green slime shower. (Well, and money. Presumably YTV wasn't into indentured servitude.)
ACTRESS
Bea Arthur/Estelle Getty/Rue McClanahan/Betty White, The Golden Girls.....The Golden Girls were so awesome that I'm just going to throw out the alphabetical ordering and praise them all in one paragraph. If you want to talk about the best-cast TV shows in history, Golden Girls has to be in the discussion.
Julia Duffy, Newhart.....I wish I had seen more episodes of Newhart, since I think it would've taken up a more prominent place on the list if I had. Duffy played another one of those great asshole characters that I enjoy so much, a self-absorbed yuppie who was for some reason working at Bob Newhart's inn. Her equally yuppie husband Peter Scolari was at least well-meaning, but she was just a straight-up bitch all the way. Though, in fairness, if you believe some tabloid scuttlebutt, Duffy might not have been acting all that much.
Angela Lansbury, Murder She Wrote.....If you're going to have a formulaic mystery series, you need to have a very strong lead to carry it. Mission accomplished. "Hey, why do people hang around with Jessica Fletcher? Her friends always end up dead or accused of murder! Where's the upside in that?" --- taken from every 1980's stand-up comedian's act. The 'Jessica Fletcher = death" bit usually fell somewhere between the jokes about airplane food and how the whole plane should be made of whatever they use to make the black box.
Shelley Long, Cheers.....I'm firmly in the "Cheers was better when Diane was on the show" camp. Bill Simmons once made a good observation that Cheers was a good sitcom after Nicolas Colasanto died, but it was a good show beforehand. I think the real demarcation date was when Shelley Long left the cast, since the Sam/Diane relationship was such a driving force of the entire series that her departure really shifted the focus to being on the overall cast of characters in the bar, rather than just the happy couple. Nothing against Kirstie Alley, but man, seriously? Kirstie Alley? Rebecca pining over marrying a rich guy got old after about 10 episodes.
Andrea Martin/Catherine O'Hara, SCTV.....Another dual entry, though this one is alphabetically-fitting. Yeah, these two were awesome. Whereas SNL could never help itself from casting at least one total dead-weight female castmember at a time, that's not how Second City rolled. Like Short, I get the feeling that Andrea Martin's ideal role is as a member of a sketch ensemble, and she hasn't been able to really find another niche since. O'Hara is an actual good actress, as shown by her dozens of roles in the last 20 years, and if anyone ever gets an Oscar nomination from a Christopher Guest movie, my money is on her.
Katey Sagal, Married With Children.....Seriously, Roseanne?! Good lord. That would've been a train wreck. Needless to say, Katey Sagal was an infinitely better choice. She had a difficult line to tread; if Peg had been too shrewish or domineering, Al would've come off as too sympathetic. Sagal found the right tone to make Peg bitchy, but likable enough that the audience still saw Al in his more fitting role as a lovable buffoon. Fun fact: a guy on trial for killing his buddy in the early 90's said that the murder took place when an argument between the two about who was better-looking between Katey Sagal and Christina Applegate got out of hand.
ACTOR
Rowan Atkinson, Blackadder.....Biggest no-brainer pick on a strong men's side. As mentioned in the Julia Duffy section and throughout these lists, I'm a sucker for a great venal character, and few approach the rotter levels of the Blackadder family tree. In a way it's a shame that Atkinson is known primarily today as Mr. Bean (not that there's anything wrong with Mr. Bean), when Edmund Blackadder was a far more ingenious creation.
Ted Danson, Cheers.....If you're one of the eight or nine people that has never seen Cheers before, here's a quick retrospective of Sam "Mayday" Malone's baseball career, courtesy of Sports Illustrated. It's hard to find a cooler guy than ol' Sammy. Former ballplayer, owned a bar, huge ladies' man, mopped up Norm Peterson's vomit (this last point is conjecture, but c'mon, it had to have happened at least once)....Sam was a cool cat all-around. Ted Danson's natural charm helped smooth over some of Sam's perhaps more dickish tendencies, and helped convince America that Sam Malone was actually a major playa in spite of the fact that Danson himself had a bit of the John Kerry craggy face going.
Larry Hagman, Dallas.....JR was such an asshole. Nuff said.
Eugene Levy, SCTV.....Tough pick amongst all of the great SCTV men (though there's one more to come), but Levy had the bonus of playing probably my favourite SCTV character of all, Earl Camembert. Earl's finest moment; he introduced a clip on SCTV news, but the clip never started up. So Earl sits there with a pleasant smile on his face that gradually grows more strained, as he nervously looks off-screen a few times, and then just becomes flat-out upset while still trying to keep his smile for the camera. This goes on for about two minutes before Joe Flaherty finally jumps in with a perfectly-timed angry cry of 'EARL!' just before Levy finally breaks. Just a masterpiece of face acting. Fun fact: my buddy Trev's dad, he of the infamous Buffy book story from my 90's TV post, bears a striking resemblance to both Eugene Levy and Max Weinberg. So if it helps make that story funnier, just imagine Eugene Levy angrily stalking out of a Chapters for not having a Buffy episode guide in stock.
Eddie Murphy, Saturday Night Live.....Not only is Murphy undisputedly one of the three or four best cast members in SNL history, he's also probably the most important. If it wasn't for Murphy's popularity, talent and charisma keeping the show afloat in the early 80's after the original cast left, SNL probably gets canceled. It's as simple as that. It's too bad that Murphy's grudge against the show hasn't cooled over time, since a Murphy-hosted SNL would even today be unbelievably good. Honorable mention goes to Murphy's castmate Joe Piscopo, who has become kind of a living joke over the years but was also outstanding on SNL, certainly an all-time top-20 cast member.
Ed O'Neill, Married With Children.....Ernie Nevers, Dub Jones and Gale Sayers hold the NFL record for single-game touchdowns with six, but any player who ever scores four in a game will be said to have scored 'the Bundy.' Again, what made the early seasons of MWC work so well was that the whole cast were actually good-to-very good actors, which grounded the at times goofy material. With, say, Sam Kinison in the role, Al Bundy is just a screaming dunderhead. With Ed O'Neill at the wheel, Al Bundy becomes a classic TV icon and the poster boy for losers everywhere.
Paul Reubens, Pee Wee's Playhouse.....Pee Wee's Playhouse was less a show than it was a fevered crack-dream, but I can safely say that we'll never see another show like it in our lifetime. You've got to give credit to Reubens for staying in character as Pee-Wee for a Kaufman-esque seven years during all public appearances. And, really, if you're going to get busted for public masturbation, the only somewhat non-objectionable place to do it would be at a porno theatre. In summation, mecka lecka hi, mecka hiney ho.
Richard Sanders, WKRP In Cincinnati....."It's a helicopter, and it's coming this way. It's flying something behind it, I can't quite make it out, it's a large banner and it says, "Happy...Thaaaaanksss...giving! ... From ... W ... K ... R... P!" No parachutes yet. Can't be skydivers.... I can't tell just yet what they are, but...Oh my God, they're turkeys!! Johnny, can you get this? Oh, they're plunging to the earth right in front of our eyes! One just went through the windshield of a parked car! Oh, the humanity! The turkeys are hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement! Not since the Hindenburg tragedy has there been anything like this!"
Martin Short, SCTV/Saturday Night Live.....It's too bad about Martin Short, a genuinely talented guy who never quite found his niche. Well, wait, I should qualify that by saying that he did find his niche (sketch comedy), but this was back in the day when you couldn't be on SNL for eight or nine years like half their current cast. Short was arguably the most notable member of the legendary 84-85 SNL cast that was populated solely of experienced comedians like Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, Billy Crystal, etc. in a reversal of the show's usual policy of casting unknowns. The result was one of the best SNL seasons ever (arguably the best ever). My favourite Short bit was his hysterically funny/accurate impression of Katherine Hepburn, which was literally 100 times better than the piss-poor job that Cate Blanchett did in 'Aviator' that somehow won her an Oscar.
Patrick Stewart, Star Trek: The Next Generation.....One of my idols of baldness! You've got to hand it to Gene Roddenberry, it took some balls to follow up alpha male Jim Kirk with an intellectual Frenchman as the new Enterprise captain, but Roddenberry obviously knew what he had in Stewart. It also helps that Stewart seems like one of the coolest, most self-deprecating guys in world. Is this an excuse to once again link to his immortal guest appearance on 'Extras'? Hell yes! Stewart is also behind the funniest line in American Dad's history: "Do you have any Gatorade, Smith? I seem to have left my electrolytes in your daughter."
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