Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Douche Bags of the Week


The cast of MTV's Entourage reality show - TwentyFourSeven. I haven't watched nearly enough to mount an appropriate critique but it's definitely not as good as Rob & Big.

Meta Tarses

I'm home for the holidays in the Midwest and my dad's refusing to give me any wine because I've already taken 2 Sudafed pills for a cold he's probably responsible for by voting Republican then refusing to turn on the heat because of high oil prices. In my alcohol-less stupor I've been relegated to watching My Boys on the plasma wrapped in an afghan on a leather chair that awkwardly matches my skin tone.

As my thighs started to congeal to my track pants under the intense heat generated by my immobility I noticed an awkward screenshot of the Match.com homepage during a scene of My Boys that had really nothing to do with the episode's overarching narrative. Some google-ing later I found that I was probably the last TV blogger this side of Taipei to know about the groundbreaking deal struck between Match.com and TBS for full sponsorship of the freshman series. Needless to say, an angry phone call to the TV on the INTERN back in New York ensued, which is when I heard that according to the New York Times:

“It’s a fully integrated campaign that feels less like a sponsorship or advertisement and more like a part of the program,” he added.

In threading Match.com through the episodes of “My Boys,” Mr. Safka said, “it has to feel seamless and natural,” otherwise it could annoy or even alienate viewers.

Now, I don't know if a random screenshot constitutes either seamless or natural, but the new media side of me kind of smiles at the notion of TV advertising taking risks on original programming on basic cable channels. You go, TBS. You go, Match.com. And you know what? You fucking go too, Dr. Phil.

On a related note, the fucking NYT also had to be the one to break to me that My Boys executive producer Jamie Tarses was the inspiration for Jordan McDeere, the Amanda Peet character on Studio 60 and the Sunset Strip. Born in 1964, she was the youngest creative exec at ABC in the mid '90s, and I as I sit on this mocha colored couch watching faux Chicago sitcoms sweating through my Sudafed-induced haze and City Sports track pants, I realize, branded entertainment isn't the worst thing in the world and I could use people like Jamie Tarses as role-models in my life because I'm in the Midwest, watching TBS, with a cold because of the Republicans.

AOTC: Rolling Stones Gather No Cred

Back in November I posted a meandering manifesto on why NBC's "Heroes" sucks. Three weeks later Lesley Savage wrote in the December 14th issue of Rolling Stone what could be considered an anachronistic rebuttal. You know, three weeks before she made her points I countered them on this blog thereby subverting some sort of logical temporal relationship between point/counter-point argumentation. For instance:

I said:

[Heroes] is written by Tim Kring, a gentleman (who knows, he might be an asshole) whose past television and writing credits offer nothing to intimate an organic familiarity with comic books or the aesthetic of comic lore.

Lesley said:

"...Heroes transcends sci-fi-loving nerds. 'We wanted to make sure that we weren't just a genre-based show,' says Kring, who never reads comic books.'" (my emphasis)

Translation = let's embrace Heroes as watered-down comic book fiction even though it performs the same function as a Jessica Simpson cover of a classic rock song - all tits, no authentic connection to the material.

I said:

It's just not geeky enough.

Lesley said:

"IT'S NOT TOO GEEKY" (her emphasis, not mine)

Translation = not geeky means not detailed and nuanced which means cheesy which means perfect for white chicks named Lesley.

I said:

It is a soap opera with lazy dramatic writing techniques to mask the holes in its supposed mystery.

Lesley said:

(quoting Kring) "We're just the opposite of most shows...It's not like a tank of gas that runs out. We generate more twists and turns the more we reveal...If you're positing that there are people all over the world with powers, it's an endless supply."

Translation = We make the show up as we go; there is no long term plot structure and we're going to keep stretching things out as long as the sponsors ask.

I said:

Third, and most importantly, where's the show's overarching metaphor? Heroes is nothing without its Christ figure. Nothing without its Holocaust themes. Nothing without the political subtext necessary to make a comic book the innocent representation of the ugly truths adults rationalize with the principles of capitalism, realism, safety and pragmatism.

Lesley said:

"While the show works as fantasy, it also reflects the world we live in...In times of war, superhero movies do well because we need a break from grim reality."

Translation = Hm, I have no capacity to critically interpret the events of history and therefore must rely on contrived analyses of current events to establish a metaphor for my show. Sorry, Kring and Savage, but that bullshit figurative speech could be said about anything from why people like Two and A Half Men (buddy comedies reinforce the importance of friendship in these trying times of alienation and anxiety) to 24 (contemporary Westerns allow viewers to sublimate their fears of Arabs in the gunslinger ethos of a man who's more Cowboy than our current jingoist President).

Sorry, Lesley. Consider yourself re-rebutted.

Kennedy Center Boners


For any of you wondering who that fine looking lady sitting next to Condoleezza Rice was during Tuesday's Kennedy Center Honors tribute, I did a little research and found out it was not the Secretary of State's secret hot sister but rather Smokey Robinsons' probably not that hot in real life wife, Frances Robinson.

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Model Minority Report

One of the primary purposes of this site, in addition to complaining about excessive recaps of Veronica Mars and Eureka episodes on other TV blogs, is to extol the successes of South Asians in the fields of media and entertainment. Yeah, I know. Mad cliche, you're thinking. This Indian dude sweats other Indians who've actually made it in the biz with the hopes that one of them will solicit a spec script or at least introduce him to Sarita Chowdhury's breasts. Yeah, that's about right on the money.

Indians are like kinda almost something of anything in the 'Wood.

To honor my intentions of South Asian solidarity, I pause before commenting on the Writer's Guild Award nominations to draw individual attention to a couple South Asians who scored big in '06.

EPISODIC COMEDY — any length — one airing time

Jump for Joy (My Name is Earl), Written by Vali Chandrasekaran; NBC

COMEDY SERIES

The Office, Written by Steve Carell, Jennifer Celotta, Greg Daniels, Lee Eisenberg, Brent Forrester, Ricky Gervais, Mindy Kaling, Paul Lieberstein, Stephen Merchant, B.J. Novak, Michael Schur, Justin Spitzer, Gene Stupnitsky; NBC

Yeah, we all know about Mindy Kaling. That chick from Curb and 40YOV who sold all those scripts to like Search Light or something, but she's no Tina Fey so I'm not really going to worry about it. Check out Vali's blog, however, maybe find your way to his McSweeney's posts, his Crimson columns, and make up your mind for yourself whether he's the real deal or just some financial consultant who got bored with his job in San Fran and decided to try his hand at this whole being funny thing.

Monday, December 25, 2006

TVnasty

Since I got into the TV blogging business I've fielded many questions in cars, coffee shops and chat rooms about why anyone in their right mind would want to get into the sordid world of infrequently updated posts on reality TV and quirky cult wonders with sapphic subtexts. Truth is the world's not all that sordid - mostly just exasperating and overrun by loud chicks who spend commercial breaks bedazzling their mouse pads.

Take, for instance, Exhibit number A. The TVnista blog at TVguide.com. From what I gather from her posts, she's 25. How do I know this? Because her favorite show until this year was A Different World. Now, it's The Wire. Seriously. And what makes this Quarter-Lifer worth listening to when it comes to analysis and critique of mass media? Obviously her uncanny ability to feign total retardation as well as regurgitate shit she's read elsewhere to affect an aura of, "I know what the fuck I'm talking about."

TVnista on "The Best Returning Show of the Season: The Wire"

This gritty drama makes you flinch, but for good reasons, by turning a camera on the urban realities so many people live in quiet desperation. Often I have to pinch myself to remind myself that I’m not watching a documentary, but instead, a work of fiction.
Ah yes, what would a review of The Wire be without a totally unnecessary and unoriginal allusion to a classic piece of literature. Do me a favor and don't tell TVnista that The Wire actually developed out of the HBO miniseries "The Corner," a veritable documentary of what David Simon saw as a beat reporter for the Baltimore Sun.

TVnista goes on to list her second favorite "Breakout Hit of the Season: Friday Night Lights." And here, friends, is why I got into the TV blogging bidness. Because comments like this:

Here’s another show, like The Wire, that can often feel like a documentary. It does have a film-like quality, but I could do without the shaky camera. It makes me a bit nauseous.
...by people like TVnista, in this age of YOU are the PERSON of the Year, may actually have some sort of affect on the shows normal people reasonably enjoy. New Media may be the future but it also threatens to dismantle the institutions we have, over the years, come to embrace as immutable. Yeah, I got into the TV Blog scene mostly to score a free Lost t-shirt, but what started as a campaign for J.J. Abrams e-bay fodder has become an (j)E-had for taking TV back from the TVnistas, starting in the nearest car, coffee shop and chat room I can find.

The Wire: Sucking Dickens

Yeah, muthafucka; this shit's muthafuckin' good! Where the fuck you been? You some muthafuckin' Phillistine, muthafucka?

It's the end of the year, and every critic vying for a Best Week Ever Pundit Spot is tallying their own Big in '06 list. Peter Traverse is doing it. Matt Rousch is doing it. Shit, I'm sure some white chick in flannel PJ's in Ames, IA with a dog named Paul Anka is doing it on her very own web log right now.

Despite the numerous perspectives and impassioned testimonials for shows that lost their oxen while trying to ford the mainstream, somehow all these litanies of taste have way more in common than the inherent individuality of personal preference should allow. Number 9 - let me guess, um, Heroes? Number 6 - Battlestar Galactica? No shit. Number 2 - The Office. Number 4 - Weeds. Word. And number 1? Who gets to unanimously claim the sweet, satisfying, sprawling, superior, smart, smug Number 1 Spot? Yeah, muthafucka, The muthafuckin' Wire.

No other show this season has garnered as much pretentious critical acclaim as HBO's serialized drama about the city of Baltimore and the cops, hustlers, corner kids and hatchet men that make the city's streets teem more seamy than Ann Petry's The Narrows.

And there, my readers, lay the problem. Is it possible, I ask you, to critique The Wire as just a television show and not a modern literary masterpiece? What is it about David Simon's "searing indictment" of "race, class, poverty and power" in a "contemporary urban landscape" that gives critics the license to wax poetic like the obsequious interns of Stanley Edgar Hyman.

Examples of overwrought literary similes:

This is TV as great modern literature, a shattering and heartbreaking urban epic about a city (Baltimore) rotting from within.
- Matt Rousch, TV Guide

…an astonishing display of writing, acting and storytelling that must be considered alongside the best literature and filmmaking in the modern era.
- Tim Goodman, San Francisco Chronicle

A vibrant, masterful work of art, HBO’s novelistic urban saga The Wire is the best show on television.
- Robert Abele, LA Weekly

"The Wire" is as complex a picaresque as one is likely to find this side of Dickens.
- Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post Gazette


Oh, and how about gratuitous references to Charles Dickens that wear off as effective descriptions when overused as adjectives like "Dickensian?"

"...sprawling and justifiably lauded Dickensian crawl through its web of stories centering on the inner Baltimore drug trade"
- Filmcritic.com

"[The Wire] is constructed like a great novel … so far, we’ve had 50 chapters … with lots of characters (it’s Dickensian that way), with lots of plot threads."
- Some dude named Stephen

"each 12- or 13-episode season attains a breadth and attention to detail like one of those Dickensian social realist novels championed by Tom Wolfe."
- Curt Holman, Creative Loafing.com


So there you have it. Apparently The Wire is not only the best show on TV, but it's also literary, Dickensian and downright, motherfucking awesome.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Sexter

In October Showtime premiered its latest original series "Dexter" starring Michael C. Hall. Based on the serial-killer novels by Jeff Lindsay, Dexter has so far fulfilled the fucked up promises it extended to viewers through You Tube videos of mutilated corpses and insousciant poster art of disembodied arms.

What's most disturbing about this series, however, are not the dead hookers and ice truck killers but the pornographic tone that bleeds through all the violence. I know Showtime's going to be forever known as the home of Red Shoe Diaries, Queer as Folk and the L Word, but not ALL of their original shows need to be metaphors for sexual "dysfunction" do they?



Apparently. As the above clip shows, Dexter the series, at its core, seems to be the story of an emotionally, sexually repressed man who chooses to sublimate his sexuality through the transferred pleasure of violence. No, Dexter himself does not kill indiscriminately to satisfy prurient passions, but his awkward relationship with sister Deb's boyfriend and the inescapable aura of M.C. Hall as that guy from Six Feet Under (even Eric King's character in Dexter bears an uncanny resemblance to Hall's first season lover from SFU) do nothing to dispell Dexter the series' overall tone of homo-erotic snuff.

I didn't actually read Michael Warner's "The Trouble With Normal" but I knew some kids that did and eeked through enough Gender Studies classes myself during undergrad to assume that Warner's jist was normalcy as a social desirable served as a weapon to alienate and other homosexuals. Normalcy is nothing to aspire to, he probably argues, but something to reject as an overbearing and totalizing institutional power.

Dexter is not normal but makes his life work trying to be. The most subversive part of the show? Dexter working to uphold the law and compensate for its shortcomings instead of tearing that shit down. Or maybe that's where Dexter fails.

L.Y.L.A.S.

Ladies, you love Aaron Sorkin. And he loves you too. He may be the unanimous King of the TV drama over the past 8 years, inheriting the throne from such heavy weights as Dick Wolfe, Steven Bochco and David Milch, but Aaron Sorkin, as sm-ugly as he probably is, knows how to do the ladies. Between Amanda Peet's current character on Studio 60, Mary Louise Parker's feisty feminist on The West Wing and Felicity Huffman's TV sexecutive on Sports Night*, the Sorking has figured out how to write the sweet, rose-smelling shit out of his female characters.

In an industry continually blamed for propagating images of sexy bitches clamoring for the man and neurotic, single 30-somethings stressing over spinsterhood, Sorkin's mature, smart and sassy treatment of the women who populate his pages has become an indelible mark of his work. From Demi Moore in A Few Good Men to Annette Benning in The American President. From Stockard Channing to Allison Janney. From Anne Deavere Smith to that blubbering bitch Sam Seaborne. The verdict is clear like a mistrial against Colonel Jessup. Ladies Love A.S., and deep down in places you don't like to talk about at parties, you do too.

Yes, he's a smug ass-hole whose pedanticism rides that fine iline between intelligent and arrogant. Yes, his characters place far too much emphasis on institutionalized education (Simon Stiles went to Yale Drama School!), standardized test scores (Josh Lyman got a 760 on his SAT verbal!) and bourgeois tradition (Leo drinks Scotch!). Yes, Matt Albee is probably named after that dude who wrote "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." But when Aaron Sorkin does Aaron Sorkin right he's the man who writes Josiah Bartlett's speeches, Lt. Kaffee's cross examinations and, most recently, this past Monday's Holiday episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

I'll admit I criticized the first leg of his foray back into television. But can you blame me? Crazy Christians this. Jerry Falwell that. Matthew Albee as an avatar of me implies I not only got laid a lot but was probably high when I won my Emmies. That shit can get grating like Debra Messing doing arias.

But now everything seems to be falling into place. Monday night's episode saw deft story-telling married with that staple of Sorkin sensibilities - sincerity. We love you the most, Aaron, not when you're cynical characters lambaste the Christian right, but when you make us believe in the better side of hetero male partnerships, corporate responsibility, federal machinations and strong, independent women who still want to get down. I hate to say it, Aaron, but we Love You Like A Sis.

*TV on the INTERNETS couldn't think of a gratuitous pun to describe how awesome C.J. Craig as press secretary was but "sexretary" was briefly considered. Briefly.