Blog

  • Friday Night Lights: “Tomorrow Blues”

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    Y’all have had a really nice relationship and you don’t know what’s going to happen after that. If you and Matt are meant to be together you’ll be together. And if you’re not, there’s going to be someone else special for you.

    And so the long ride comes to a close. We diehards hold out hope that the weird admixture of DirecTV ratings plus the upcoming NBC run of these 13 episodes will earn another season, but if it doesn’t this was an okay way to say goodbye. If we’re meant to be together, we’ll be together.

    Jumping five months from last week’s title game, it’s time for the seniors to say goodbye to Dillon High and put away their childish things. Soon. Anytime now. But first, Matt’s got to fight with Grandma about how many dresses she needs to bring to the assisted living facility. And Tim’s got to convince Billy he needs a steer. And Joe McCoy – never anything but a childish bully – has to push Eric out of his job.

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  • Trust Me: Why I won’t quite miss you

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    I really wanted to like TNT’s Trust Me, thinking that a lighter, modern take on the advertising business would be a nice counterpoint to Mad Men‘s meditation on mid-century America. With a cast mostly populated by actors I’ve liked before and the cushion of working for a cable network willing to give shows room to breathe and find their own way, Trust Me looked like a shoo-in on paper.

    But no matter how many checkboxes get filled in, it’s the execution that matters.

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  • Friday Night Lights: “Underdogs”

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    Living in Dillon is certainly handicap enough to make anyone an underdog. Almost as much a handicap as a show airing exclusively on DirecTV before returning to the broadcast airwaves. All underdogs can do is push, strive, and keep trying against overwhelming odds and insurmountable forces.

    Would the Panthers find the hearts of champions within to beat the South Texas Titans? Would Tyra find the essay within to beat down the doors of college? Would Landry find the field before game time?

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  • Cupid: Where’s Jar Jar?

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    Sigh.

    No, that wasn’t a happy sigh. It wasn’t a sigh of contentment. It was disappointment and disillusionment and disgust. It was lamentation of the fact that Rob Thomas has trodden on his own creation with the same ham-handed, tin-eared lack of grace George Lucas demonstrated with Phantom Menace. It was just a sigh.

    Cupid, for the many who don’t remember it, was a short-lived ABC romcom from the ’98-’99 season. It starred Jeremy Piven as the titular god of love (maybe) and Paula Marshall as the cynical, down to Earth psychiatrist assigned to cure his insanity (or was it?) It ran for only 15 episodes with a few mediocre, a few pretty bad, and one or two absolute gems. I challenge anyone to watch the episode “Heart of the Matter” and not find the room getting dusty.

    So a couple of years back, Rob Thomas was talking with ABC trying to come up with a new show that incorporated some of the same themes and motifs and eventually both sides decided he should just redo Cupid. After all, this isn’t the ABC of the late ’90s; today’s ABC could easily find a place to slot in a romcom. So remake and redo they did.

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  • Friday Night Lights: “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”

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    In Mo Ryan’s recap/preview of FNL’s third season she pointed out how much this season has replayed the greatest hits of season one. ((And fortunately did NOT put any dead bodies in the trunks of cars.)) That’s certainly true, but is to be expected to a certain extent in a show about teenagers. After all, while it feels horribly unique and unprecedented when you’re living through it, age and perspective show us that the teenage experience is common across the generations.

    Fathers and sons fight. Daughters grow into women. Our parents and grandparents grow smaller and feebler before our eyes.

    But while I’m all for some repetition of themes and motifs, tonight actually irritated me. Tell me if any of this sounds familiar to you:

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  • Beth Riesgraf fixes the writing on Leverage

    I am really excited for the second season of Leverage. Sharker is going to ROCK!

  • Battlestar Galactica: “Daybreak”

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    Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence.

    God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways.

    So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.”
    Genesis 6:11-13

    Frak. Frak, frak, frak!

    Now, that was something.

    But before we get into the discussion, let’s get this out of the way first: I’m not surprised by the polarizing nature of this finale, but I am a bit shocked by the number of people with tin ears and tunnel vision who object to the presence of God and angels. I’m not sure what show those people have been watching for four seasons, but it wasn’t Battlestar Galactica.

    Let me clarify that:

    Nerds? Shut the fuck up.

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  • Friday Night Lights: “The Giving Tree”

    Money comes and goes, yeah? These kids of ours, that’s a one-time deal.

    “The Giving Tree” is one of Shel Silverstein’s finest works, and while Landry’s right that his relationship with Tyra superficially resembles it, the story is about parents and children. The give us life, nurture and support us. They feed us, clothe us, give us shelter and succor. They keep us warm and dry and safe. They teach us to play and teach us to become men and women. In the end, we survive our parents. We are their lives’ work and when they finish, when we finally say our goodbyes, it is with love and debt for all they’ve done.

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  • Party Down preview

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    Rob Thomas makes his return to television, not with the much (un)anticipated rehash of Cupid, but with an original half-hour comedy on Starz.

    Party Down premieres this Friday at 10:30 EDT on Starz. There will of course be multiple showings, which reduces the conflict pressure for those watching the BSG finale. It’s also nice to see Starz planned ahead and scheduled a free weekend for customers of DirecTV, so fans of wry, uncomfortable humor will have an opportunity to check the show out for free.

    My thoughts below the fold.

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  • Kings premieres. Does anyone care?

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    I don’t have a lot to say about the premiere of Kings right yet; it was ambitious and interesting and I’ve saved a season pass for it, but I don’t really know what to think. It could easily degrade into a soapy mess, more 90210 than The West Wing, but Michael Green’s pilot managed to hold the line. It certainly doesn’t hurt that he’s got Ian McShane and Eamonn Walker around to recite some of his Jacobean dialog. And it doesn’t hurt that he’s willing to write such stylized dialog.

    Unfortunately the ratings were…poor. Which is a shame, because unlike other high-profile, heavily hyped shows that have premiered lately (*cough* Dollhouse *cough*) this one deserves a chance to fly on its butterfly wings. Sad that someone who played Vamp #3 in some episode of BtVS or another didn’t make an appearance. Maybe the Whedonverse faithful would have tuned it to this with some of the passion they’ve been wasting on that Friday night abortion.

    If you didn’t watch the pilot, go online and give it a chance. It’s available on the NBC website and Hulu. If you did watch, pipe in below with your opinion/thoughts on the episode. Did you like it? Will you be giving it a chance? Should we be reviewing it?