30 Rock: Writing Derrty

Yeah, I know 30 Rock was a rerun tonight, but the absence of anything new to write about has allowed me to rummage through the heaps of TV on the INTERNETS notes I have scrawled on the backs of "Business Reply Mail" cards that have fallen out of my sister's past issues of People and pick a bone that has for too long gone, you know, not picked. 30. Rock. Is. Stealing. Jokes.

Yup, I said it, and I'll step back, appreciate it and repeat it. 30 Rock is writing derrrty. Cheyeah.

Now I'm well aware that the standards of ethical argumentation normally require at least 3 supporting pieces of evidence for each supposition, but I only have two right now and hopefully a third will strike me by the end of this post.

First example of punch line plagiarism - tonight's repeated episode "Jack-Tor," in which, according to the info on my sister's DVR:

Liz integrates Jack into a sketch; Frank and Toofer trick Jenna into fearing for her job; Liz wonders if Tracy is faking illiteracy to skip rehearsals. Rated TV-24. Program Type: Series/Sitcom. Letterbox. Repeat.

I forget when exactly this episode aired, but it was relatively early in the season, as the show was first finding its legs, and served as one of the flash points that ignited attention for both Alec Baldwin and the show (as well as star and head-writer Tina Fey) as something more than just Suddenly Susan where the new Susan suddenly has bigger boobs and no Judd Nelson. In fact, it was a fellow TV blogger I believe, who raved about the episode's Snapple Placement scene during which the writing staff of the fictional Girlie Show criticize Alec Baldwin's character for encouraging product placement while they simultaneously throw in non-sequiturs praising Diet Snapple and its Plumagranite flavor. Yeah, we get it, it's WAY meta on like SO many levels except, wait a minute, Wayne's World did it like 15 years ago.



Second example - the episode which aired about two weeks ago that featured the debut of the Tracy Jordan Meat Machine. An obvious parody of the George Foreman Grill, the Tracy Jordan Meat Machine also mimicked the George Bluth Cornholer from Arrested Development in its dangerous shortcoming of scalding its users with burning grease.

The similarities between the shows don't stop there. Both 30 Rock and Arrested Development fall into the category of, dare I say it, post-post-modern sitcoms (in other words - sitcoms written after and with the full understanding of the paradigm shift created by '80s and '90s institutions The Simpsons and Seinfeld) that not only break the use of the 3 camera system but also find jokes in the deconstruction of language and TV-reality interplay.

For the humor found in deconstructing language one need only to look at any scene involving David Cross in Arrested Development (ex, Psychoanalyst + Therapist = Analrapist) or the Colbert Report's "The Word" segment. As for TV-reality interplay, both Arrested Development and 30 Rock rely heavily on recreating the humor of real life by inviting the audience into the world of the show's characters and making them privy to inside jokes. How many times did Arrested Development quickly toss out a self-referential joke like "hermano"? Even 30 Rock created an alternative world where jokes transcend punch lines and one liners (the kind of sitcom bricks that still form the foundation for more "traditional" fare such as Two and a Half Men or The New Adventures of Old Christine) and involve situations of shared experience like Jenna's "Rural Juror." Even Alec Baldwin's character in the episode cops to it when asked to play a GE exec in a sketch mocking GE execs:

Oh I get it. The whole self-referential thing. Letterman hates the suits. Stern yells at his boss. Nixon's sock-it-to-me on Laugh In. Yeah, hippy humor.

In my opinion, 30 Rock is still the best new sitcom of the 2006 - 2007 season and has proven for many critics that the sitcom is no longer a moribund genre. However, it's important to realize originality is still the basis of creativity and without it you're just writing derrrty.

I know that's not a third supporting piece of evidence for my original argument but that's all I have written on my "Business Reply Mail Notes" I've scrounged up off the floor among old Chipotle wrappers. Cheyeah.

Studio 60 Continues Not Sucking Streak

Until I learn the purpose of the TV blog "recaplet" and how to successfully write a good one this will be how I shall address the airings of most recent episodes.

Show: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
Air Date: Monday, January 22, 2007
Title: Monday
Writer: Aaron Sorkin *

Commentary: Without completely losing the Religious Right critique he's been using as the moral center of the show, a schtick a lot of viewers have grown tired of, Sorkin kicked off the second half of the show's first season with a strong story incorporating the finer aspects of his past work: intriguing overarching plot points, richly written women characters and the painful tenderness of unrequited love.

One interesting thing to take away from Monday's episode is Sorkin's maturing exploration of race. Predominantly a non-issue in Sports Night, race became an awkward scepter of self-righteousness which Sorkin used to pat his own back in certain episodes of the West Wing. In Monday's Studio 60, however, the developing story line of Simon Stiles, his race and his relationship with a young, black writer introduces a topic often noticed but rarely discussed - the black identity within the history of American comedy.

Perhaps it was of no oversight of his own that Sorkin wrote the scene between Simon Stiles and the new, black writer for an episode to air 30 years after the premier of that other great institution of American television, Roots.

Maybe the improbable is possible; Sorkin can be topical without being pedantic; maybe someday I'll learn to write a recaplet.

*Sorkin only gets a "created by" credit not a "teleplay by."

Colts 40 Share

Sunday's AFC Championship game between the Indianapolis Colts and the New England Patriots was the most watched television event of the season, surpassing even the 2007 premier of American Idol.

Despite the game's last-second tension, a majority of viewers most likely tuned in to decide for themselves if Peyton Manning was indeed the illegitimate spawn of a wild night threesome way back when between his father Archie Manning (left), Howard Dean and Timothy Busfield.

Potato Chip Company Makes Ad For What Looks Like Prescription Allergy Medication Featuring Music of UK Indie Band to Effect of Promoting Sun Flowers

It's the question that's on the tip of everyone's fingers in potato chip chat rooms all across the internets, who sings that song in the Lays commercial and why do they sound like an early Wilco cover band?

Probably because they're British and their name is The Candyskins. Are they any good? I don't know, you tell me. My musical standards tend to be more Zach Braff than Ziggy Stardust. Less Ruffles and more Lays.

Celebrity Dopplegangers: Jandy Charmberg

With another Sunday my Samberg complex continues to grow despite last night's mediocre Saturday Night Live with Jeremy Piven. A few strong sketches did air, however. First there was the serial sketch "Macgruber" with SNL sleeper Will Forte and second, another installment of Samberg's "Blizzard Man." Was it really that funny? Probably not, but credit is definitely warranted to the SNL wig department for successfully making Samberg look like that other hero of my heart, Sports Night's Dan Rydell, whom you may better know as Agent Barker in Muppets From Space.

Daughtry Rawks Oh So Soft

Come Monday morning will Chris Daughtry attribute the lone, heroic tear that fell from his right eye during his rendition of the National Anthem at Sunday's NFC Championship game to the deep empathy he feels for America and those who defend its liberties or that cold Chicago wind that skips off Lake Michigan?

Prognostication: Neither. Daughtry cries for the low box office receipts of Rock Star and the hollow realization that the movie of his life has already been made, was bad but based on a band that was better than his.

Van Milder: The Edgeless Edge of Kal Penn

It's been a busy week for Kal Penn. When not losing life on 24 he was taking it on Tuesday's Law and Order: SVU. Playing the Indian kid with daddy issues, Penn successfully executed the difficult task of overacting understated. Still, for too few legitimate reasons, touted as a film star, Penn underwhelmed TWICE this week on network prime time, doing little to strengthen the occasionally whispered argument that Van Wilder II failed because of residual imperialist attitudes of the West and not because, you know, the incredulity of Kal Penn as a hetero player.

3 quick notes to the producers of Law and Order: SVU:

1) Change your name to Order: SVU. There's no law in your story lines. There's a sex crime, an unfortunate similarity between a victim and a real person, the chase of a wrong lead, the introduction of the actual culprit as a character peripherally related to the initial suspect, the scene where "remand" is denied and bail is set at $1 million, the capture of the reprobate who actually turned out to be a flight risk, the killer rapist's confession of the crime brought about by Freudian interrogation, and, finally, an uncomfortable ending during which Elliot, Mariska or Ice T realize justice served can never undo the scars of a crime already committed.

2) On a related note, Order: SVU, plot twists and guest stars don't really go hand in hand. If you paid for Kal Penn's SAG fee then he's probably going to be the killer.

3) Order: SVU, be more like this:

Golden Globes / Golden Showers

Most recently epitomized by The Aviator's victory for Best Picture however many years ago, the Golden Globes have repeatedly reinforced in the eyes of the critical populace its image as a booze-fueled hand-job for Hollywood that serves as the shaggy-haired roadie one has to get through to make it to the Academy Awards. The most valuable barometer to use to predict whom the Hollywood Foreign Press will choose as its winners is the institution's obsession with the "golden age of Hollywood." It's "Inside the Beltway" politics for the Holiday Hills resulting in a pretty alienating experience for the rest of us. Except when stars get drunk, jokes get crass and the pomp and circumstance of the Oscars is eschewed instead for an atmosphere reminiscent of a French Pot Luck - you can almost smell the smoke and feel the sticky heat of George Clooney's gin sweats through the television.

The HFPA's obsession with all things, well, Hollywood as well as the Golden Globes' role as a prelude to the Oscars, make the Hollywood Foreign Press' film picks inherently political and a little too up-it's-own-butt. It's TV picks, however, are usually more deserving than the Emmy's, caught up in its own degree of self-importance, and serve as the strongest statement of the year of what's been the best in TV Land in the past year (See Mary Louise Parker's win for Weeds in 2006 and her subsequent loss to a Seinfeld Curse Breaker at the Emmy's that same year).

So without further stream of consciousness verbosity, my Golden Globe TV picks for 2007.

Best Television Series - Drama

24 (FOX)
Real Time Productions/Imagine Television/Twentieth Century Fox Television; FOX

Big Love (HBO)
Anima Sola/Playtone Productions/HBO Entertainment; HBO

Grey's Anatomy (ABC)
Touchstone Television; ABC

Heroes (NBC)
NBC Universal Television Studio/Tailwind Productions; NBC

Lost (ABC)
Touchstone Television; ABC

Pick: Grey's Anatomy
Why: Last year's winner, Lost, fell off in the middle of season 2 and has suffered serious momentum challenges by its extended hiatus schedule and fan reactions to too few sequential new episodes. Grey's Anatomy developed into a true blockbuster series during its second season with an enormous post-Super Bowl episode that literally exploded the show out of the shadow of its Desperate Housewives lead-in. Season 2 gave no less than 3 memorable episodes that delivered the suspense of mid-90's ER and the emotional drama of a great evening soap. It's irreverent attitude and impetuous sexiness forged a new voice in prime-time TV that resonated with an audience no show has found since HBO's Sex and the City. Big competition from FOX's 24, however, which beat out Grey's for the Best Drama Emmy in '06.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Drama

Patricia Arquette – Medium (NBC)

Edie Falco – The Sopranos (HBO)

Evangeline Lilly – Lost (ABC)

Ellen Pompeo – Grey's Anatomy (ABC)

Kyra Sedgwick – The Closer (TNT)

Pick: Kyra Sedgwick
Why: I've never seen The Closer but all those reviews make it sound like Kyra Sedgwick's southern accent makes Matthew Mcgonnagay sound like he's from Hoboken. Don't be surprised by a win for Edie Falco, though, for a Sopranos farewell, and there's always that whole HBO lobby...

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Drama

Patrick Dempsey – Grey's Anatomy (ABC)

Michael C. Hall – Dexter (SHOWTIME)

Hugh Laurie – House (FOX)

Bill Paxton – Big Love (HBO)

Kiefer Sutherland – 24 (FOX)

Pick: Michael C. Hall
Why: Laurie won last year. Kiefer won the Emmy. Dempsey's character doesn't demand enough range. Michael C. Hall's the shit. And kinda so is Showtime.

Best Television Series - Musical or Comedy

Desperate Housewives (ABC)
Touchstone Television; ABC

Entourage (HBO)
Leverage/Closest to the Hole/HBO Entertainment; HBO

The Office (NBC)
Deedle Dee Productions/Reveille/NBC Universal Television Studio; NBC

Ugly Betty (ABC)
Touchstone Television; ABC

Weeds (SHOWTIME)
Showtime/Lionsgate Television/Tilted Productions, Inc.; SHOWTIME

Pick: Weeds
Why: Not even nominated last year, The Office could follow up its '06 Emmy win with this year's Golden Globe. Midway through season 2, however, The (American) Office made it very clear that when not adapting story lines from the British original it mired itself in overwrought plot and excessive pop culture references so thin they date themselves during the time between production and broadcast (Lazy Scranton?). Last year's winner, Desperate Housewives, is a critical non-entity this year serving as the osteoperatic backbone for ABC's flaccid Sunday lineup. Showtime's Weeds, on the other hand, rose to a new level in its second season, sharpening its banter and executing a smart, well-developed story that was both hilarious and surprisingly touching. Oh, and did I mention Showtime's the shit?

Best Performance By an Actress in a Series - Musical or Comedy

Marcia Cross – Desperate Housewives (ABC)

America Ferrera – Ugly Betty (ABC)

Felicity Huffman – Desperate Housewives (ABC)

Julia Louis-Dreyfus – The New Adventures Of Old Christine (CBS)

Mary-Louise Parker – Weeds (SHOWTIME)

Pick: America Ferrera
Why: I can't watch the show but everyone seems to love American Ferrera, and I have to admit, it would feel kind of warm in the chest if a fat, little dark girl won an award. Also, MLP won last year yet JLD took home the Emmy. Why should the HFPA pick sides between the two when it can reward someone young and new and also say fuck you to two white chicks that, in the end, kinda look the same but aren't cumulatively hotter than Sigourney Weaver's Key Master in Ghostbusters 1?

Best Performance By an Actor in a Television Series - Musical or Comedy

Alec Baldwin – 30 Rock (NBC)

Zach Braff – Scrubs (NBC)

Steve Carell – The Office (NBC)

Jason Lee – My Name Is Earl (NBC)

Tony Shalhoub – Monk (USA)

Pick: Alec Baldwin
Why: Duh. I mean Carell's acceptance speech was funny enough last year for NBC to use it as a promo for this year's airing, but Baldwin? C'mon. And Tony Shalhoub has been consistently condescending in his speeches toward those he's beaten like six times, so Baldwin? Duh.

Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV

Bleak House (PBS)
Masterpiece Theatre/BBC/WGBH Boston/Deep Indigo; PBS

Broken Trail (AMC)
Butchers Run Films/Once Upon a Time Films/Sony Pictures Television; AMC

Elizabeth I (HBO)
Company Pictures/channel 4/HBO Films; HBO

Mrs. Harris (HBO)
Killer Films/Number 9 Films/John Wells Productions/HBO Films; HBO

Prime Suspect: The Final Act (PBS)
Masterpiece Theatre/Granada/WGBH Boston; PBS

Pick: Bleak House
Why: Yeah, I know it's risky to bet against anything backed by Killer Films, John Wells and HBO, but everyone's been sweating the PBS adaptation of Dickens without having sat through it so why can't I?

Best Performance By an Actress in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV

Gillian Anderson – Bleak House (PBS)

Annette Bening – Mrs. Harris (HBO)

Helen Mirren – Elizabeth I (HBO)

Helen Mirren – Prime Suspect: The Final Act (PBS)

Sophie Okonedo – Tsunami, The Aftermath (HBO)

Pick: Gillian Anderson
Why: Let Helen Mirren win for The Queen. Annette's got her nom for Running With Scissors. And Gillian's just always been awesome from The X-Files to The House of Mirth to, apparently, PBS' Bleak House.

Best Performance By an Actor in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV

André Braugher – Thief (FX)

Robert Duvall – Broken Trail (AMC)

Michael Ealy – Sleeper Cell: American Terror (SHOWTIME)

Chiwetel Ejiofor – Tsunami, The Aftermath (HBO)

Ben Kingsley – Mrs. Harris (HBO)

Bill Nighy – Gideon's Daughter (BBC)

Matthew Perry – The Ron Clark Story (TNT)

Pick: André Braugher
Why: It's been Bill Nighy's millennium, but he couldn't bring the Globe home last year for The Girl in the Cafe, which means a) he's out this year b) Ejiofor's out as well since HBO doesn't seem to be too favored and c) FX had the balls to re-brand a canceled show as a mini-series and that deserves the pilfering of some serious hardware.

Best Supporting Actress in ANYTHING on TV

Emily Blunt – Gideon's Daughter (BBC)

Toni Collette – Tsunami, The Aftermath (HBO)

Katherine Heigl – Grey's Anatomy (ABC)

Sarah Paulson – Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip (NBC)

Elizabeth Perkins – Weeds (SHOWTIME)

Pick: Elizabeth Perkins
Why: Sandra Oh won it last year for Grey's, somewhat deservedly, but Heigl's emotional basket case, Izzie, was more difficult to watch than Isiah Washington and Patrick Dempsey on Oprah. Perkins' Celia Hodes character in Weeds, however, develops her own strong storyline in season 2 that Perkins plays with a wry disgust that somehow becomes fragile and endearing.

Best Supporting Actor

Thomas Haden Church – Broken Trail (AMC)

Jeremy Irons – Elizabeth I (HBO)

Justin Kirk – Weeds (SHOWTIME)

Masi Oka – Heroes (NBC)

Jeremy Piven – Entourage (HBO)

Pick: Justin Kirk
Why: Justin Kirk's character in Weeds is hilarious and is dating Kate Walsh. Jeremy Piven's character in Entourage is brilliant but he's fighting with John Cusack. Piven won the Emmy, but he also wore an ascot. Kirk is every much an "actor's actor" as piven but may, in real life, actually have a sense of humor, which Piven, obvious to anyone who saw his MTV sponsored trip to India, may actually lack.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Family (Grey) Matters

I'll leave the recaplets and reviews to the other TV blogs out there. Does this show suck? Probably. Do I watch it reluctantly? Maybe. Do people fucking love it? Yup.

Despite the questionable casting call of enlisting the twins from VH1's Best Week Ever as conjoined adults, people love their Grey's Anatomy. First time writer for the show Carolina Paiz brought it with the script and veteran cinematographers Adam Kane (Boondock Saints, Heroes, episode 1) and Tim Suhrstedt (everything) delivered with compelling cinematography. But the real stars of the show? Ah, those endearing themes.

With the title "Don't Stand So Close to Me" and story lines revolving around dependence, independence, reliance and, um, science Thursday's episode brought the issue of family to the fore. Mom rejects daughter; daughter rejects half-sister; McHomophobe rejects McDreamy; and Meredith needs Christina like Kathy Lee needs Regis. Since the characters of Grey's are so amorous with each other, why the viewers gotta be so irate?

Seems like the soapy nature of Grey's Season 3 sullied up the previous go to forum for GA fans:

Could it be that the inane, childish, kindergarten mentality of the majority of the posts have driven the moderators to hide away and wait for you guys to GROW UP!

Who's sexier? Who's cuter? Who's dress was ugly? I think Mer is a whore!

I think that what we need is a board exclusively for people who use OMG! as a regular preamble to their posts, who start polls on sexiness etc.

SERIOUSLY, I don't even like coming on here anymore, and I am probably the only moderator you have left

So where have they all gone?

Members of GA Online have MOVED
Hi. I'm just making yet another topic about the new forum. I just want you guys to know about it, in case some have not heard. A lot of us have moved to a new board, First Cut. The mods and admin on this board are no longer active, and it has become flooded with spam. This was the main reason for the change.

So if you would like to join us at the new forum here is the link.

http://thefirstcut.proboards105.com/index.cgi *

So, you know, check it out. And don't forget the official Grey's Anatomy writers blog. See what Carolina Paiz has to say and show the family some love.

* Editors note: be ready for portmanteaus galore including Mer/Der, Lexzie...I'll stop there.

The Freshman 13

Obviously my brandished (s)Words of Wit have compelled NBC to listen to the silent majority and issue six more scripts for this season's best new comedy, "30 Rock." Like seriously. Watch this shit from the second episode and tell me if you've ever laughed out loud to something that in any other situation would be construed as racial solidarity.



So, you know, stay snarky, San Diego.

In related though less triumphant news, ABC has decided to pull "The Nine" and let its unresolved though melodramatic story unfold over the remaining 13 episodes to air later next year. With The Nine's cancellation, we will no longer see Tim Daly's familiar mug on the screen (unless USA cowers to TV on the Internets like NBC and brings back reruns of Wings) leaving the public with only one remaining Wings cast member, Steven Weber on Studio 60, standing. Okay, that's not true. Shalhoub's still on Monk. But seriously. That's Monk. And USA. The Aeropostale of cable.

TV on the Internets is still awaiting a response from two girls that went to college with some chick on The Nine and told me this show would be one to watch.

Hustler's R.O.M.E.

No, that graffiti on that poster isn't an ad for the new Jim Jones record. It's just HBO keeping it rilllllll.

The comment battles of course rage on like Antony and Cassius in the Forum. That is if Cassius was an incestual HBO message board with far too many homoerotic puns involving "phalynx" on a self-moderated "I would do him" list.