Grid Effect

Well, I’m glad I could get this out for my readers* a solid hour and a half before the series’ following episode. If you want an excuse, it’s been a long day and a long week, and we are more than content to finish mailing in the rest of the day, regardless of how late it is.

(*=Presuming I have any)

This was an entirely watchable episode, despite the numerous cliches jam packed into the hour. Really, I we didn’t think it was even an achievable task to cram in as many as they did. Frankly, we’re kind of impressed. But the thing about formulaic storytelling, especially in TV or film, is that if the dialog and acting is credible, it can still work. Particularly if the cliches at hand are plausible scenarios.

We had numerous examples of this. Including Julie’s a little too familiar relationship with her plot device of a charismatic new teacher, Noah. So long as nothing untoward takes place, we thought the arc was handled with the right amount of suspicion and harmlessness. As in, it seems harmless enough at the moment, but we can all certainly understand Tami’s trepidation. As far as we know, Eric Taylor is in the dark about the most recent development in his daughter’s life, we hop to God there is never anything for him to find out, this show has already pushed the envelope enough for one season. Anyhow, we’re certain he’ll find out about any shady behavior when Julie’s assignment coincides with his new title as athletic director.

On the other hand, we got the Lyla-Tyra storyline, which just didn’t have the same credibility. And given the issue of being an accomplice to murder an all, it just doesn’t seem believable that Tyra would be able to function as the provocative young vixen coercing all the boys into whatever she wants to coerce them into and still have a soul. Of course, that might be a little hyperbole, but you see my point. Tyra’s never exactly been an emotionally stable character, so we see no reason why she would be so stoic now.

The Riggins plot continues to flourish, and his whole displaced high schooler thing seems a lot more commonplace than Santiago’s (though we enjoyed that as well, and are hoping for a little Buddy Garrity redemption). Him walking into that falling down abode while its creepy inhabitant eyed him up and down was a little too much, but it really seemed well within Riggins’ character to be so stubborn. Here’s hoping his whore neighbor is pulled off by the local authorities for turning tricks at some point.

Smash is still in fine form, defying anyone and everyone for what seems practical but is also corrupt and ill-advised. But lets be honest, there would be no reason for Smash to even consider attending Whitmore. Of course, this series still tries to invoke idealism here and there, and likes to think someone like Smash should actually prioritize academics over athletics…but that’s preposterous. Clearly he’s looking at the school Owen Davenport is currently attending, with assistance from Owen’s younger sister, and this all seems so random. Where’s Waverly? Psych ward?

Anything else? Oh, Saracen is still seeing the perky little cheerleader (PLC) that highlights all of Julie’s insecurities. PLC helps him buy a car, not through blatant flirtation but actual persuasion, which she still probably thinks has nothing to do with how she looks.

Solid episode, again, but nothing harking back to season one. Tonight, as NBC so unabashedly promoted, is Landry’s big confession. I guess it’s more about the adventure than the actual destination, but it would have sufficed to avoid advertising it for the past two weeks. We’re hoping for some Street tonight, but as the say in The Wire, he’s out the game.

That’s it until Monday, we’re actually rooting for the Big XII south team in the conference title game, so we’ll be in a bit of a daze until Sunday. Enjoy the weekend.

Haven’t yet watched FNL, so we can’t really recap that. Survivor last night proved to spark a bit of intrigue (for once), as we speculated, but it was entirely predictable based on the previews. Which we’re sure the producers probably felt compelled to produce to reassure us this season will eventually have a pulse. Oh, and also, that post-tribal “twist”, turned out to be a reward challenge, yeah, a little disappointing.

But unless the incredibly apathetic group remaining drinks a case of red bull, we might see Amanda end up winning this thing. Which, whatever. She might have to cross a slew of people to get there, costing her jury votes, so maybe not. But as of now it’s down to her an Todd, and she gets the edge because Todd has been perceived as the ring leader up until now, which people tend to resent this late in the game. Essentially, Todd’s done all the dirty work with her behind the scenes, and Amanda’s discretion all season will pay off in the waning weeks.

But yeah, it’s a really slow fucking news day today. It’s all strike oriented, and the basic theme seems to be that there has been virtually no progress since talks began on Monday. Shocking, I know. You would think that people in Hollywood would easily reach a compromise over an entirely fixable situation. Other actors to weigh in have been Edie Falco, Christina Applegate, the lead stoner from Freaks and Geeks and the brunette from That 70’s Show, a UCLA economist and gay writing protesters.

Sue Ellen Crandell demands you end the writer’s strike.

Now that we’ve confirmed everyone has an opinion, lets just set them aside and negotiate a deal. Because honestly, this site is becoming unmanageable without some material.

My apologies for mailing this in, FNL recap later today.

Well, we’d like to cordially disagree with that title. As this has been the worst Survivor season we have partaken in since we adopted it as appointment television. And that in part, is why we never rewatched the clip show. Yes, sorry to break it to those who may have enjoyed it, but the season has been to bland to do any more reminiscing.

If you want the short end of what it consisted of: Todd and Amanda had a previous off-camera agreement to align, though we kind of gathered that much on our own. James was always something of a forceful prick, despite the earlier favorable editing. Courtney was always insufferable…and there have never been any exceptions to that rule. And people ate weird things (namely JR) in the throws of desperation. Ultimately, the only thing we really enjoyed was Todd’s impersonations of several of his fellow castaways, but even that came with the additive sting of being from Todd.

This guy, I swear to God, was a contestant on this show.

Really, this clip show probably wasn’t worst than any of its predecessors. But this season has been like an interpretive display of Sopranos subtext. In other words, shit happens, both good and bad, yet nobody and nothing changes. Virtually every contestant sans Todd, Amanda and James has had valid reason to jump ship and has failed to follow through (there are entirely too many examples to run through). We still have the same nonsensical alliances and the same patsies obliging the same power players, with really neither rhyme nor reason. And at this point, it’s just redundant.

We’re (obviously) going to see this one to the bitter end, but we only have four more eliminations left, James still has both idols, and everyone still checks with Todd about everything. According to the previews, Amanda might shake things up a bit, but we’re still skeptical. Oh, and we’ve now had three weeks of previews (the week before this TC, the week of it, and the week of the clip show) for this “twist” at tribal council. Three weeks. Unless someone wrestles a panda bear to the ground and eats it, I have to say that the hype was vehemently unwarranted.

So brace yourselves, for one of three series’ this website still follows (the other two being Nip Tuck and FNL). If things aren’t redirected tonight — given that right now, the alliance with an alliance is three members strong, and one more booted contestant brings us to six left, taking away the majority vote — we’re expecting a wholly unsatisfying ending, with either Todd or James being rewarded the million. And really, that isn’t the worst thing that could happen, that honor belongs to Courtney going home with seven figures before taxes. As of now, the only actual likable remaining contestant is Erik, and he’s a long shot at the moment, so we’re probably going to bitch regardless.

Happy viewing, everyone.

The Wire, as many regular readers have probably figured out, is something of an obsession around these parts. We spend hours watching it, discussing it, recommending it, contemplating the social ramifications, reading David Simon books, and getting flippant when people refuse to watch it (this is probably counterproductive) or misunderstand its intentions (it is quite fashionable for much of the series’ audience to misinterpret the show as some sort of glamorization of drug dealers…it’s not Scarface, assholes).

If you’re unaware of who they are, rest assured this is not a book club.

In short, it keeps us up at night. So when we arrived at work this morning and discovered they’ve released promotional trailers for the final season, our immediate reaction was regretting not having audio on our computer at work. But regardless of how tedious and obnoxious and unhealthy as it may seem, we’re going to link and devote a post to them. Yes, trailers. Mainly because we can’t think about anything else right now, but also, we don’t want to wing a recap of the ungodly Survivor clip show that almost made us quit reality television altogether.

So, without further ado, here are links to the following trailers. One for McNulty, Carcetti, Marlo and Omar. The last of which is probably the biggest tease of all. Particularly if you’re an Omar fan, and you we’re hoping to hear words come out of his mouth. Well, maybe they do, like we said, we don’t have any audio, but not much can really be said in twenty seconds anyways. In addition to the character specific promos, here’s a “from the set” clip that really wets our whistle. There are a lot of allegations and non-spoilers from the actors/show creators.

Honest to God, we think the release of these trailers are a good indication that we need to develop more of a social life, because while they aren’t the most exciting thing to happen to us in the past month, they are certainly on a short list. Whatever, we think there are worse ways to occupy our time.

Back with a recap of the pointless/asinine Survivor clip show after lunch.

A possibly redeeming episode of Nip Tuck last night, we’ll have to think about it over the course of the following week. We will say this: On a trash TV level, which is the only level the series has ever been enjoyable on, last night’s episode worked.

We’ll get to it in detail next Tuesday, onto the links…

Sounds like everyone approached yesterday’s strike negotiations with a level-head. This is huge, since the Hollywood crowd is seldom reasonable about anything. I envisioned more of a Larry David-Alan Wasserman type scenario.

In lieu of writers? Simple, bring back American Gladiators. I wonder if they’ll have any sort of reunion show, with all the original gladiators, Joe Theismann and the quintessential Italian stereotype in the jumpsuit explaining the nuance of the eliminator to us? Seriously, that guy with the slicked back hair has done more harm to the Italian/American perception than anything that ever happened on The Sopranos.

There better be a reincarnation of the game, preferably on the Wii.

Maybe you haven’t heard, but NBC has picked up Chuck and Life for full seasons. We watched about twenty minutes of the former since the pilot, and it consisted of Chuck and his friend acting completely pathetic with the female lead and some really bad actress brought in as one of the female lead’s coworkers (the names escape me). We don’t want to rush to judgment, so we’ll ask, has it gotten any better? Or has it at least improved within its own genre? We never watched Life but hear good things. Of course, those who watch Chuck have many laudatory comments as well, so read into that how you will.

The presidential hopefuls list their favorite series’ on television. Not sure who I’m voting for yet, but if I go blue the fact that Barack Obama is the only candidate who watches The Wire certainly doesn’t hurt his cause. We’ve always said that if Carcetti reminds us of anyone, it’s Obama. Given Obama is operating on a much larger scale, but the young, upstart politician giving all the veterans the business is essentially what the fictional Carcetti and non-fictional Obama have set out to do. Assuming the parallel is consistent, it’s only a matter of time before the windy city native is swallowed up by the dark side.

Just to illustrate how there is no rhyme or reason to the television industry, HBO grew in popularity after The Sopranos finale. Is it because Curb returned after a two year hiatus? We’re John From Cincinnati’s ratings misleading? Were people not aware that “Made In America” was David Chase’s series finale? No idea, but only the former makes an iota of sense.

We actually saw this live last Friday, and while we we’re amused by it, we found it surprising that the University of Colorado would be self-deprecating to the point of having Cartman mock their politics, which Trey Parker and Matt Stone have done several times on their series. If you include the win that afternoon, it was a great day for the people in Boulder.

And finally, has there ever been more in production banter about a movie than we’re experiencing with the Sex and the City theatrical debut? Honestly, they’re going to flame out with all the over-saturation.

Well, no one ever said Nip Tuck was about subtlety, and this episode just wanted to make their intentions clear. Hence, the topical in your face title, the overtly sexual Eden and the nun wanting the breast reduction all being packed into one episode.

Remember this is episode two in the three part litmus test for this series, and right now we’re leaning towards axing it. As of now, if we do end up keeping recaps around, the reason will be two-fold: the strike is keeping everything else off the air, and/or the episode next week is somewhat mind-blowing.

The pacing is probably my biggest issue with the series. In a two episode span, Christian has gone from the onset stages of a mid-life crisis, to falling in love with his best friend’s ex-wife, to whoring, to embracing religion. Shit doesn’t need to be happening all the time. At this rate, Christian will have fought in a war, cured cancer and learned to fly before the season is out.

And the turning point from his whoring to his epiphany was remarkably predictable. You mean to tell me that the lecture from the nun was going to coincide with the woman who likes to be fucked back to life subplot? Well I’ll be. Both actions seem fairly harmless and completely unrelated.

This guy is looking commonplace in the mainstream compared to this season’s nonsense.

Sean’s moral crises seem real and much more palpable. The young temptress Eden would be somewhat impossible to deal with, and his solution to marry the hysterical actress (Nip Tuck is really hammering home the point that there are no sane women in SoCal this season) as means to avoid temptation seems like something he would irrationally do. But the plot holes and leaps of logic are just absurd.

For instance, if Eden is regularly sending him provocative text messages, that would serve as more proof than is necessary to condemn her to at least Julia, and they could save their daughter from Eden’s evil clutches. And honestly, how can I still respect Julia or take Olivia seriously if they aren’t taking into consideration the incredibly coincidental timing of Anne’s transformation and self-loathing. The constant speeches from Olivia about the virtue and sincerity of her daughter are impossible to listen to. Just look at Eden’s shrill demeanor in everything she does, that would obviously precede any maternal sensibilities Olivia may have. It would be tolerable if the series presented Olivia’s arguments as blind and unbearable instead of justified or reasonable. But that is what they are doing right now, and it’s almost beyond redemption.

As for Rosie O’Donnell’s return, well, it’s preferable to the role she was rumored to take as the cliched title IX faring high school soccer coach, but it wasn’t what she was last season (I think her episodes are the reason we’re still watching this series). Her hang-gliding accident was shot with all the realism of the Mad Men dog attack on the neighbor’s pigeon. And she just wasn’t as acid-tongued as she was in season four. Not sure if it was intentional, or if I’ve evolved or devolved in the past nine months, but either way, the character just wasn’t as enjoyable. Oliver Platt seemed to replace her as the quirky deliverer of punch lines.

All in all, not their best work. I’m not touching the fake rogue doctor subplot, because it is too absurd for comment. But I will say that it was introduced well. More as a peripheral issue than a predominating one (which it surely will become). For better or worse, it’s about a 1/5 shot that we actually keep this series around.

Tonight: Someone is engaging in more masochistic sex, leading to more re-constructive surgery hijinks. Kimber is back and is still a crack head, no word as to whether or not she’s still a scientologist, I’m guessing no. We preferred it when she was a porn star, as opposed to a manipulative, crack-addled mother.

The man is exceptionally brilliant, so we probably shouldn’t be terribly surprised that he convinced his former employer, The Baltimore Sun, to offer their name as the paper depicted in The Wire’s fifth and final season. Naturally, he gives credit to the publication, calling them “ballsy”, which couldn’t be more fitting.

I, much like every other fan of the series, am glad to see The Wire land the actual Baltimore city paper. The series is founded in gritty, cynical realism; for that reason alone I want to see them stay consistent and not be forced into conjuring up some generic fake name. But because of those qualities I’m surprised The Sun was so eager to loan their name for a very brutal critique. I mean, if they thought an attack from Bill O’Reilly was harsh, they’re about to have ten hours of critical analysis thrown their way. Regardless of how justified, it seems like an ill-advised business practice, to say the least.

But maybe they’re applying the old adage: “all publicity is good publicity” to the decision made here. Still, when we’re in episode six and an editor is forcing someone in middle management to cover the local crab cake cook-off over a triple homicide in the western…well, the people at The Sun won’t be able to plead ignorance.

Welcome back to the work week. Thanksgiving was time consuming and trying, and it doesn’t make matters any better when you’re under the weather and traveling. None the less we’re back, albeit late and unceremoniously, given that it’s has been an understandably slow news week in TV Land.

A couple links for you to kick off the week: First, here’s an array of photos from the strike, featuring some recognizable faces. If you don’t have nay idea what the scene is like out in Hollywood, this is the best illustration via still shots we can find. Larry David, as usual, looks unimpressed and indifferent, but I guess by virtue of being there he actually has a stake in this. But, for the most part, it’s a gathering of unrecognizable faces holding up signs with hyperbolic statements and quotes from historical figures about the importance of the union. Such as the one below.

Seems like a fair request.

Also, if those pictures are any indication, Alicia Keys performed at this thing, making it not a strike but a writer’s Woodstock. Which, given the mindset of most of the writers I know, seems like an appropriate form of work stoppage.

In other strike related news, it’s estimated, and I have no idea how this number is drummed up, that the strike is costing the city $21.3 million a day. So, for those who think the writers are a mere commodity that should be thankful for the scraps they get: please gracefully remove your head from your ass while you still can. They’re the backbone and the brain of Hollywood, not some disposable nuisance that everyone just has to “deal with”.

Sorry for the late, underwhelming, non-insightful post, but its the best we can come across in these turbulent times. Back with more as soon as we find the time. More on the strike can be found here.

We’re preempting the Survivor recap by a day and forgoing the links this week. It seems like a good way to kill two birds with one stone: We avoid working on Thanksgiving and we stay up to date on the only series airing a new episode this week. So with that said, onto the recap…

Pre-credits scene, James is still reflecting on his near outing and obnoxiously waking everyone up. See, if JR had done something similar, they’d be lamenting his existence. It’s James? Well, he’s sort of non-anti-social, he gets a pass. Denise is somewhat perturbed that she wasn’t clued in on the voting, and tell James that she feels like an idiot for being the lone vote cast for PG, she ultimately decides to stay with James because of the weight he carries with the immunity idols. I’m afraid I don’t understand this logic. Is it to hope he gives you one?

Credits.

At Hae Da Fung, PG doesn’t seem to have even any casual friends, and just makes a few pointers to James about the fire, which James and Todd clearly overreact to, and describe an innocent suggestion as “micromanaging” and “annoying”. Those are some thin-skinned cats. Todd, naturally is worried about Courtney flipping. And hey, if you can’t keep Courtney on the straight-and-narrow, then you might be in over your head.

At RC, PG and Erik are picking teams. It’s a balancing and coordination challenge, and PG, much like the idiot she probably is, doesn’t hesitate to take James. Really? The muscle bound meathead is still the consensus number one? I’d probably have gone with the nubile, agile Frosti, whom Erik takes second.

The teams shake up like this: Erik, Frosti, Amanda and Courtney vs. PG, James, Todd and Denise. The former wins in an absolute landslide. And back at camp James and PG get in a bit of a tiff about throwing challenges and whatnot. James is absolutely flummoxed that someone could blame him (James!) for a loss, PG admits she is just sour grapes because her wins have been few and far between. I really have a difficult time sympathizing with any of these people. Sure PG was projecting a little, but does James have to be such a smug prick about it? It’s rhetorical.

Nothing about this looks comfortable.

At the reward, they’re on this vintage yet contemporary cruise “ship” floating along the Lee River. Erik is quite successful at bonding with Amanda and Courtney, to which Frosti gets a little insecure about, being that he’s quite close with Courtney. He refers to her as “out of my league”, she does probably prefer the other translucents, so he might be right, but not in a standard social/dating type hieracrchy sense. Grotsequely skinny people are like vampires from what I hear, they like to stick to their own and critique each other’s visible skeleton. Also, Courtney probably has one of the more grating “baby voices” I’ve heard, and I’ve heard more than my fair share.

Mind you, the four of them are feasting, better than I have since last Thanksgiving, and when they go to IC, Courtney still elects to sit out the challenge and eat burgers.

When they return to camp, the four of them play down the details of the reward, to keep everyone’s envy at bay. Probably the smartest thing anyone has done on this season.

In the water Todd is giving a skewed tangent about what actually took place between PG and James after RC. They giggle over his transparency, but for all the wrong reasons.

As mentioned above, they’re tempted with either food or actually competing in the challenge at IC. Courtney, Todd, James and Denise all opt to eat. Frosti, PG, Erik (all three on outside the core alliance) and Amanda all compete. Erik goes out immediately on a really simple memory challenge, though I’m not all malnourished, though neither is he considering the meal he just had.

Anyhow, long story short: Amanda goes out next. PG and Frosti go two more rounds, proving that Asians are our intellectual overlords, before PG wins the elusive immunity.

Back at camp, Frosti is somewhat bitter, and laments the injustice of competing over eating and having nothing to show for it, Erik consoles him a little too intimately. Erik and Frosti are both uneasy about their standing, and I can’t stand why there isn’t any maneuvering amongst the outsiders. If Frosti and Erik sided with PG then roped in Courtney and Amanda (or Denise?!), that’s a 5-3 majority. I’m not certain Amanda or Courtney would go for it, given there relatively comfortable standing, but a semblance of an effort would be appreciated here, as opposed to fucking mayor of munchkin land Todd picking and choosing who stays and who goes with impunity. God is that kid unintimidating.

Also, Courtney is really condescending when speaking about Frosti. And really, he enables her to do it, but if there is anyone I’m aware of in this universe that I couldn’t tolerate talking down to me, it’s Courtney.

At TC, Todd and James explain their reasoning for opting for food over the challenge, and Frosti explains his reason for the inverse. None of the three are terribly compelling, in fact they’re just as dissmissable as I’m making them sound right now. Probst, God bless him, is doing everything he can to make these disinteresting people interesting, but it’s a hopeless cause. We go to the vote. Frosti votes for Erik, Erik returns the favor. The votes read as such:
Frosti
Erik
Frosti
Frosti
Frosti
Frosti
Alright, it was obvious after the second vote cast for him. Frosti goes home, bitching about them eating cheeseburgers instead of competing at IC. That will probably be the determining factor in his jury vote, should it come down to that. Probst announces that they aren’t free to leave Tribal…and they cue up the credits.

So the cliffhanger in the previews last week is the same cliffhanger at the conclusion of this episode? Seems unfair.

In his parting words, Frosti is a bit dishevelled about losing to the “sassy New York waitress” and “the lady with the mullet” but isn’t ashamed. He also breaks the streak of self-congratulatory parting words segments in which the bootee refers to him/herself as the “biggest threat in the game”.

Tonight: James is no longer tolerating lethargy at camp, and Todd presumably confronts him about his confrontation. Yawn, that tryptophan might not be necessary this year.

We are extraordinarily busy this week trying to preempt everything for a trip to North Carolina for Thanksgiving, so we didn’t have time to rewatch this episode, nor did we have time this morning to get the post out before noon. So, we apologize, again, for our disregard.

This episode was highly forgettable. Remember when I said all we need to just have a transplanted carbon copy season of this series was to have Matt make a reappearance? Well, he did. And he’s smoking crack. But not only is he smoking crack, he’s guilt-tripping and manipulating Sean and Christian into giving him money to feed his habit that they don’t know about. It’s good to see Scientology has steered him and Kimber (whom Sean and Christian think left him and gave all his money to the church, but in actuality she’s strung out on her kitchen floor) on the road to salvation.

Really, what was the point of moving the series to LA? They could have found a generic head case model girlfriend for Sean, and Julia still could have gone to New York to discover she is a lesbian, only to come back and sleep with Christian to “get it out of her system”. See what I mean? It’s the same exact plot lines, just taking place in a different time zone. All of these characters are tired sans Christian and Matt who seem to have a bit of complexity to them, as opposed to the rest of Sean’s family, who does nothing but bitch, moan and deceive.

Crack will make you do some craaaazzzy things.

In all fairness, they did offer us one new subplot involving Olivia’s (Julia’s girlfriend) daughter: Eden. Oooh, subtle biblical reference. She is clearly a demonic little witch attending catholic school (I don’t have a problem with it or anything, but is it exactly commonplace for openly lesbian couples to send their kids to catholic school?) and now has Annie under her wing. Eden is already seen making discouraging remarks to Annie, has attempted to seduce Sean (which he can’t seem to shake), and yet Julia and Olivia both defend her. It’s writing like this that makes this series indefensible. On what planet does Sean not tell Olivia and Julia about Eden’s misdeeds? And in what stratosphere is someone like Olivia defending her daughter after she went behind her back for elective surgery (I’m not even going to get into details)?

Christian is having a rough go about things. After being used by Julia (again), he decides to turn into a male escort after a case of mistaken identity. I guess it’s this series’ way of saying that Christian has low self-esteem, but he’s had low self-esteem for over four seasons now, and its been rehashed, retold and redistributed a hundred times over. I can’t really remember who this episode is named after, but my best guess is that Everett Poe is Christian’s gigolo alias.

This seems like a decent place to stop. And to be honest, this isn’t exactly scoring high marks in the series’ chance at longevity on this site. It has amazingly become even more repetitive with the move to LA. One down, two to go.

Tonight: Rosie O’Donnell makes her triumphant return as Dawn Budge.

We’ll try to get some links up tomorrow before we head South, but we’re making no promises.

Well, in a just world, backing from the Mad Men cast would spell an end to the writer’s strike. But in the world we live in, it’s just a youtube clip uploaded on an obscure website.

Two thoughts: One, Vincent Kartheiser is clearly stoned. And we don’t smoke anymore, but if we still did, it would certainly be before attending something like this. So we can certainly understand. Also, it’s refreshing to see he isn’t playing himself.

And two, neither of these guys look anything like their characters, which is a credit to the makeup department. Kartheiser is on the right and doesn’t look (or sound or pontificate for that matter) nearly as smarmily as Pete Campbell. The guy on the left is Rich Sommer…he’s barely recognizable as Harry. And here we thought that Elizabeth Moss was the only beneficiary.

This entire change in format didn’t really go as planned. We aspired to get 6-7 posts done at work, and only got through three, then guiltly mailed in this last one when we got home. For the most part, it’s the mold we want to follow, just at a higher frequency of posts. We’ll try to up our game come next Monday.

The first of what’s possibly our last three Nip Tuck posts coming tomorrow.

According to this article, ABC has loaded its Thursday night lineup with emasculated men and ball-breaking women. While we can’t really attest to the two shows the article discusses in detail (Grey’s Anatomy and Big Shots), we do have one question with the article: are they certain it’s only Thursday nights?

I mean, this website’s disdain for ABC is well documented (and this is hardly the sole reason, trust me), so it’s not like we would be watching any of these series’ anyways. But isn’t the “alpha woman walking all over every guy in her path” shtick sort of ABC’s moniker? If you run down their schedule, it kind of sounds like that, a good 30%-40% of their original series’ seem to be overran with at least a semblance of this premise. That’s hardly a one night a week aberration.

The writer of the article seems to take the whole concept a little more seriously than we do. If it attracts an audience then we can’t fault ABC for doing it. Considering a predominant amount of prime time TV watchers are female, then that’s probably the motivation. But we certainly do not engage in such viewing. In the interest of full disclosure, we did watch an episode of What About Brian? (it has since been canceled) in the earlier stages of this website, and it did seem steadfastly committed to the generic and consistently overplayed beta male-alpha female relationship theme, and we didn’t really rip the series for that, but rather for it’s melodrama, god awful dialog and predictability.

I suppose the point is, while it’s easy to call out ABC on their gender-baiting, it’s far easier to bash them for their quality of programming. The latter just seems far less argumentative.

Studios and the writer’s union have agreed to talk. Ummm, does that mean that beforehand they weren’t on speaking terms? Come on, that seems a bit harsh, union. While you were together the studios paid for all your meals and whatnot. There were some good times, it wasn’t all bad.

The union, though, is hammering home the point that it is no cheap date. They’re still going to picket, even during negotiations. And while we staunchly support the union in their endeavors here, a little less militancy might be necessary in order to come to an agreement. But, still, I can understand them wanting to demonstrate their inflexibility, and if it’s necessary to get what they want/need, then so be it.

Still, there are some extenuating circumstances here that are rarely brought into question. For example, how do the studios come together on this? Since they have a tendency to out-maneuver, steal, and back stab one another, how do they come to an agreement to come to an agreement with the union? Is that possibly the crux of the problem? That the de-facto “studio union” doesn’t know what they want or what they are willing to offer? If not, it certainly seems like it could be an issue.

$500 million is how much the studios lost during the last strike. It was in 1988, lasted 22 weeks and commenced during the summer. This current strike is in the middle of TV season and could presumably effect the summer blockbusters, combine that and adjust for inflation, Hollywood is looking at a potential a billion dollar loss and an infinite amount of jobs lost. This thing desperately needs to be resolved.

Welcome back to the wheel wagon, hope everyone had a decent weekend, aside from being sick throughout it was pretty decent for us. We saw OSU beat Michigan for the fourth straight year and for the sixth time in seven years, and in the process kept them in the national title hunt (which, in the interest of objectivity, if OSU makes the national title game after being idle for two weeks, that is just the height of inequity, and the BCS needs to be banished, in fact, just the notion that it could happen should lead to the banishment of this post season format). That alone made our weekend, and seeing the tears stream down the faces of UM fans over a game they had nothing to do with, just made it all the more satisfying. Yes, nothing like a bit of schaudenfreude to really make a weekend worthwhile.

Anyhow, back on topic…

You may have remembered from last week, that we decided to change the format here on Mondays in lieu of any good series’ to discuss. So, this is the inaugural Monday where we try to adhere to a “traditional” blog format, in which we have multiple succinct posts, as opposed to one (or on a busy day, two) extended posts. So, with that in mind…

It appears that Dirty Sexy Money was dirty and sexy enough to be extended for a full first season. This might seem premature, since they aren’t even close to a resolution on the writer’s strike, but if the series is showing that much promise commercially, we’re not terribly surprised that ABC would want to lock it in. After all, Michael Wilbon endorses the series. Then again, he heavily endorses Boston Legal, which is mediocre and formulaic at best, and is also on ABC… Wait! Wilbon is employed by ESPN…Disney owns ESPN…Disney owns ABC…Well, you have to at least give them points for subtlety.

Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s important.

We said awhile back that we would watch and review the series for a few episodes, and make a determination as to whether or not we wanted to recap the series regularly. Well, we’re going to level with you: that never happened. We watched about twenty minutes of the second episode, and it had this glossy, generic, “ripped from the headlines” predictability about it. It wasn’t terrible, just not for this site.

We can understand it getting a guaranteed full season though. Star studded cast, heavily marketed, great lead-ins. But we’re almost certain Donald Sutherland’s character will be dead by season’s end, and we’re haunted by how much better this show could be if not confined to the limitations of ABC and the FCC. In other words: We might watch the series if it was on a cable network.

Still, congrats to DSM, and if the back end of your pilot season airs before 2009, then all the more power to you. We’ll probably just be caught up in watching fifth season Wire episodes for the tenth time before we get around to catching any of your work. Sorry.

We’re watching two dachshunds for the next few days, and the roommates shiba-inu is making things really difficult. So in the interest of keeping them all alive, we’re going to keep this much, much shorter than usual, which is a shame because I really enjoyed this episode.

-The Landry subplot continues to distract, though the actor playing Chad (Landry’s father) really makes it tolerable. I don’t know where half these actors on this series come from, but the casting supervisors and such are doing more than their part.

-Riggins’ sulking was entirely predictable from the previews showing him getting 86′d from the team. Not sure if I can get on board with the juvy subplot, but it has some promise. I really hope they make Riggins’ path back to the team as arduous as coach Taylor is threatening. Oh, and it seems to be widespread to ask why no one explained to coach Taylor what Riggins was doing in Mexico, since it a valid reason like the one he ended up having would get him back on the team. For starters, that wasn’t why he initially went down there, or it was at least it was never explained to us. Maybe he thought Street wouldn’t actually go through with the procedure. Either way, he went to Mexico for booze and prostitution. Secondly, I can’t imagine Street wanting everyone knowing why he traveled to Mexico, if anything he was doing it for his friend.

-Saracen with the cheerleader was long overdue, she certainly laid it on pretty thick but it seemed like that was the only our resident “shy guy” was going to come out of his shell. Almost starting to feel bad, for emotionally overwhelmed Julie. At least she doesn’t have to lookout for Grandma Saracen any further, though she probably would in a heartbeat now.

-The Street storyline is probably the most eloquent acting and writing this season has had to offer. All of his scenes with Coach Taylor felt natural, and honest. And even for all the emotional resonance in these scenes, the one that stood out the most was Street’s epiphany coming full circle as he was shouting out directives at practice. Also, that birthday “party” scene was brutal, and I’ve never been more contemptuous with a character on this series than I was with Buddy’s “Lyla would’ve been rich” line, but Riggins actually played the mature one here since none of the adults were willing to do so.

-We find the “crazy aunt” plot a little tired around here, but the woman playing the AIDS stricken nympho from Nip Tuck sold it well, and the acting was top notch as always. But haven’t we touched on the Tami might have some regrets about her life choices? According to Hollywood, there isn’t a woman alive who was happy to get married and have kids.

-Finally, the two best scenes of the best episode of the season (I feel like I keep saying this after every episode, which is a positive) was the one with them playing football at the end, and coach Taylor expressing his approval as the plane flew overhead. The significance of the plane tying in directly to the theme of Dillon being an isolated hub from the rest of existence (the predominant theme of the episode, very Sopranos and Wire-ian).

-And the second scene being the one with Smash and Riggins first at Riggins’ house, then at Smash’s for dinner and a frank discussion about Riggins’ shortcomings as a leader on the team (we can’t recall if he’s a captain or not, we’re guessing no). It was just pitch perfect and comical in its own simple way, an understanding of the characters is probably necessary to find this scene funny.

Great episode, the season keeps gaining steam and we’re looking forward to tonight’s episode. Have a great weekend. And just so we’re on record:
OSU: 38
Michigan: 20