Grid Effect

A few more links to close out the day. We’re not trying to say that we are beholden to the concept, in fact more than anything else in the world we would like to distance ourselves from the posting format. But, even though we’re elated it’s 4th of July weekend, it doesn’t make us anymore creative. As Stringer Bell might say, same as it ever was.

You’re not going to believe this, but studies indicate that women comprise 85% of ABC’s online viewing audience. And here I was all this time, thinking the traditional alpha male fell in love with shows like October Road, Eli Stone & Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. The times they are a changin’, indeed.

Denis Leary, Elaine Benes & Marc Cuban will be three of many that donate their voices to this upcoming season of The Simpsons, increasing the popularity of the historic show’s irrelevance. Their was about a five year stretch wherein The Simpsons was the premiere comedy on television, but for the past eight years or so it has been dying the slowest death imaginable. Just imagine if Seinfeld was still making new episodes how tired they would seem, then multiply it by ten. That’s where we’re at with The Simpsons. God, this is just depressing, moving on.

Hey, you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes of bizarre, repetitive though I’m sure technically sound episode of South Park? Well, wait no longer my belabored friend, the feature is now available on their website with the episode “Major Boobage“. We weren’t particularly fond of the episode, but its worth a look never the less.

Finally, there will be some reasonable conflict on Entourage. It appears the high life the four protagonists have been living for four seasons will be deflated a tad as they struggle to make a lavish living. Given, its not The Wire, we don’t have people struggling with heroin addiction or anything. But if the series is going to stay on the air, we appreciate the minor alteration.

If you haven’t seen any Mad Men episodes and yearn to potentially help boost their DVD revenue, you can watch the pilot episode online. We would highly recommend this, but without an outlet to watch the rest of the series, if you’re not into buying DVD’s there isn’t much point. If you need a superficial reason to watch, an entire episode could be Christina Hendricks washing her car and we’d be sufficiently entertained.

Speaking of which, its almost imperative to the future of AMC that you buy the DVD, since they dropped $25 million promoting the second season. “We’re treating this like a movie opening” says the marketing president for the network. And I could see the benefits of that, but do most movies spend $25 million in promotions?

And finally, fresh off his oddly miscast role as Abomination or whatever the guy’s name was in The Hulk, Tim Roth is heading to the small screen with the FOX pilot Lie To Me, in which he plays a “human lie detector”. Simply put, this will probably be melodramatic tripe. My question is, whose decision was it to cast the bellboy from Four Rooms as a martial arts expert in the military, because it was surreal.

That’s it until Monday, have a great fourth. We recommend celebrating your country’s independence by blowing up a small piece of it.

Considering we’re not posting anything for tomorrow, we’re going to try an keep things light and optimistic around here. Meaning, most of the news will be good news, and if it’s bad, we’ll try to keep it in good humor to compensate. This is generally what we always do, but the goal is to accentuate the positive heading into the glorious three day weekend that is the 4th of July.

Mainly we wanted to comment on the Rescue Me mini-episodes (I’d rather be drenched in honey and eaten alive by fire ants than use the phrase “minisode” without at least sarcastic quotations). While they’ve been funny at moments, it really is too much of a tease as well as something of a nuisance. I mean, I don’t watch TV really, so there is never anything on Tuesday nights at 10pm that I want to see. But if there were and I still don’t have a recorder of some sort, then I have to cut into the show I planned on watching for five minutes of witty banter.

On top of that, you barely have time to assimilate yourself to the show and soak in the characters before they roll the “mini-credits”. The whole thing is like a lap-dance from a woman you have absolutely no chance with. Never the less, if my ringing endorsement is enough to draw you in, the installments can actually be watched here should you decide this is worth your time.

With the second season of Mad Men less than a month away, we went ahead and pre-ordered the first season DVD’s (actually arrived a day before the official release), and let me just say that the packaging alone on this set is creative enough that it’s like the Helena of Troy of DVD seasons. That’s right, it has the potential to start wars. One of our favorite TV critics actually criticized the set for excessive episode commentaries (it would appear the talent is a little too pleased with themselves). We haven’t gotten around to watching any of the extras on the DVD, though we did see a “Best of Mad Men” half hour special during lunch a few days ago. It was enough to keep us out of work for twenty minutes longer than is necessary and make us pine for the free time to peruse such features on the DVD.

Suddenly I find I’m fending off the urge to smoke. It’s even prettier than the below picture.

Speaking of DVD’s, I have some bad news for all Sopranos fans who have made a point to buy every season on DVD. David Chase and the fine blood-sucking folks over at HBO have opted to release a box set of epic proportions. Now, usually when this is the case, in which something is repackaged and upgraded to be considered the “ultimate” collectors item, I tend to wipe my ass with the shameless capitalism and manipulation. The bonuses that vary from one DVD set to the next tend to be something along the lines of a gag reel and a folded up, crinkled poster they cram inside the box.

But with this new Sopranos incarnation, I think I’m going to have to buy it at its outrageous $400 price tag (The Sopranos first season was the first season of television I ever bought on DVD, and I fully expected every season of every show to run me somewhere in between $60 and $80, so I was delighted when I could get The Wire, FNL, Curb & Mad Men all for under $40). Literally, it has everything that the individual seasons did not: alternate endings, deleted scenes, lost scenes (shit that happened off camera that was in the series), actor, director, writer interviews, three soundtrack discs and even an interview with David Chase by Alec Baldwin (what?). This is like if I was seven years old again, and it had suddenly begun to rain candy like I had always hoped.

The only dilemma is they are planning on doing something similar with The Wire now because HBO is dead set on seeing me live beyond my means. Their plans are a little less polished than those for The Sopranos, because the mafia hit will be an enormous pay day for everyone involved. But with the pending release of the fifth season, do I bite the bullet and purchase it, or do I wait until the probable December release of the box set (mind you, I’m selling all my seasons for both series’ if I invest in the box sets)? This is truly a test of wills for over-privileged fucks like myself.

Back with a couple more random posts today.

I come from a rather tolling weekend as the bearer of good news: in only one week we’ll actually have a television series to discuss. Well, eight days. Weeds’ 4th season premiere airs a week from today, given us fodder for Tuesday’s post. The at times unbearably self-satisfied and unapologetically liberal series just might be the saving grace for this blog. It’s a shame we’ve had to lower our standards so, but it is what it is.

In the meantime, we will, of course, be offering more of the same. Here are some links to kick off your work week. We might take a break from this and do a list of some sort before the week is out.

New York Magazine wonders what is up with all these crazy women on reality television? Because apparently NYM has never understood the concept of ratings. It’s not like a One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest type of situation. Either these women are hamming it up for attention or they were borderline dysfunctional/certifiable long before they were cast on some reality series, and that is why they were cast on some reality series. You could just as easily make one of these lists for male reality stars, particularly Real World cast members.

Jimmy Kimmel is only slightly slagging in ratings behind Conan O’Brien, who is now looking like a suspicious candidate to replace Leno. Say what you will about Leno, we certainly have, but he’s a surefire ratings cannon. Maybe some of O’Brien’s viewership is falling off because they are waiting for him to be bumped up an hour? But while we’ve defended him in the past, losing nights to Craig Ferguson and Kimmel now being viable competition, it stands to wonder if this isn’t a sign of things to come. It is almost like jumping in front of a camera and making cat noises doesn’t have any staying power.

Some writer for some shitty newspaper believes the problem with the Obama imitation on Saturday Night Live isn’t that Fred Armisen is white, but rather that he doesn’t capture Obama’s charisma. Yeah, because mocking imitations for comedic effect only work when they are extremely flattering. Norm McDonald really personified a realistic and fair minded portrayal of Bob Dole, that’s what made it one of the better impersonations in the show’s history. Its accuracy.

If only they gave him more credit for being affable, this would be hilarious.

Survivor: Gabon is behind schedule. Apparently shipping has turned into something of a hassle, and makes it all the more clear why disaster relief is so wildly inefficient in this country and around the world. A private company can’t even supply a TV show with enough goods to film for thirty-nine days, what chance does anyone have in the wake of tragedy?

Semi-related, John Slattery admits to watching Progect Runway, and takes a shot at Survivor while doing so, “What I like is the show is about the creativity, not just, ‘Let’s vote the biggest asshole off the island.’” You take it back John Slattery, how dare you trivialize our guilty pleasure to compliment your guilty pleasure. Why can’t you be more like Vincent Kartheiser and simply say the show you like, then fail to offer an explanation for why you would like something so tedious and trite.

HBO forced a local Baltimore purse shop to change its name from “Handbags In The City” to “Handbags and The City”. I’m just glad to see they’re not picking on the little guy. That store was profiting marginally from using a ridiculously stupid pun on one of their show titles that hasn’t been on the air for four years without proper copyright access. Damn right they have to change that sentence connector. No free passes when it comes to similar language.

And finally, if you’re all clamoring to know what John Stamos has been up to — Like all of us — well, here is your answer. I couldn’t read the article, I fell into mild paralysis with elation that Jesse does indeed have more projects on the way.

That’s all we’ve got, I hope your day goes as quick as mine will slow.

What makes a Thursday morning better than average? When you can return to writing the same tired useless bullshit that you always did, without feeling guilty because you never tried anything new. No, instead you get to feel guilty because you tried and it failed miserably. Your welcome, 451 press!

So here are some links to help tide you over while we wait patiently for Weeds to kick off its fourth season. But even then our expectations are nil after the most recent effort. We have some issues with that series that we’ll address in our season three recap that will be posted sometime late next week before the June 16th premiere. In the meantime, enjoy reading whatever I can trudge up here.

Alan Sepinwall, probably one of the better TV critics around, only had his blog for the last two seasons of The Wire, of which he wrote detailed recaps for every episode. So instead of letting all reasonable obligations end like that, he’s going back to the pilot episode, and writing a weekly recap for every episode in the first season. Not only that, but he’s doing two separate recaps for each episode, one for people who have seen the entire series, and one for people just tuning in. This is something we would contemplate doing if we had the time, patience, interest or resources to actually see it through.

Here are your top ten series’ with opening credit narrations. It’s tedious, pointless and ultimately kind of idiotic, but we read and enjoyed it anyways. Who doesn’t love a good list?

Mad Men will have moved forward past Don Draper sitting on his steps alone for Thanksgiving for the start of the second season. It didn’t end the first season with the characters in peril, and the season two premiere won’t pick up with them in the same exact scene. In other words, it isn’t Weeds. For which we can all be thankful.

The quintessential American romance.

Comparing and contrasting the strengths and weaknesses of the American and British versions of The Office. Seems like apples and oranges at this point. I mean, the American version has had four seasons, three of which are longer than the entire series of its British predecessor. Next week, I’m writing a post about the dichotomy between The Critic and South Park, mainly because they’re both animated.

Speaking of which, South Park will be available on HD for DirectTV subscribers. It’s a widely known fact that watching comedy in HD makes everything exponentially funnier. Its like being stoned, but on technological advancement.

Rescue Me “minisodes” will debut on June 24th, we might have mentioned that on this site. I know we mentioned the eventual existence of them, but no confident that we had a date. Either way, here it is. I, for one, am tickled to see what exactly a minisode is, other than a thematic commercial.

What a surprise, Mad Men and The Wire lead the way in nominations at the Critic’s Awards. Really, there is nothing comparable in quality, originality and style to these series’ on television. Lost can go fuck itself.

And finally, our other national nightmare might come to an end. Eventually. The Simpsons is guaranteed at least a total of twenty seasons, but for some reason it is speculated that after that 20th season, the series will come to an end. We’d be elated, but we’ll believe it when we see it. The show is an institution, but a crumbling one that needs to go away.

That’s it for today, expect a nightly preview tomorrow.

Technical difficulties have afflicted Grid Effect, and while we are more inclined to neglect the site altogether and call it a wash, it’s unspeakably boring at work. So we’re more than happy to contribute to the mass of worthless information that comprises most of the internets. Here are some links, enjoy.

Mad Men’s official second season debut has been scheduled for Sunday, July 27th at 10pm est. Hopefully Pete Campbell hasn’t killed his bastard child by then. This, compounded with Generation Kill and Weeds (a coworker recently dropped HBO in favor of Showtime & Starz for the same price, I’m sensing an oncoming trend), should make July an unusually good TV month.

It looks like Jericho fans are just as insufferable as Friday Night Lights fans, except only for a far inferior television series. Still, best of luck to them and all their future endeavors, with any luck they’ll get Quantum Leap back on the air as well.

A preview of season four of Weeds. We haven’t seen the third season yet (starting tonight, actually), but we’ll just say that after the first two seasons, we’re kind of hoping either Nancy Botwin redeems herself in some way or else she experiences some comeuppance. A little too reckless/negligent for us to always want to see her succeed.

Tivo will have an option to record all the series’ recommended by the Chicago Tribune’s Maureen Ryan (see Mad Men link). We enjoy Miss Ryan’s prose, but why she was chosen over the thousands of TV critics in the country, we’ll never understand. Anyway, don’t be surprised if you select this option, only to see your Tivo overloaded with Friday Night Lights reruns.

MTV will have cameras follow rapper/wannabe actor TI around while he completes his court ordered 1,000 hours of community service. It’s like a Scared Straight for those with penchants of loitering and starting bar fights. TI was found guilty of much heavier charges, but he’s a celebrity. And it’s a widely known fact that celebrities are better than regular people, thus receive lighter sentences. If for whatever reason (we can’t think of one) this doesn’t sound like its for you, don’t worry; I’m sure MTV will manage to condense the 1,000 into about 180 minutes.

The Hills goes out of their way to illustrate their “personalities” as non-celebrities so as to make it still seem relatable, because they know that no other media exists in the entire world, and no one could figure this out for themselves. Said MTV programming head, Tony DiSanto: “It’s not a documentary about Lauren who is a star because she’s on a show called ‘The Hills.” He followed that up with, “I don’t give a shit what you fucking muts say, MTV has programming standards, and we will not lower our brow for any of you unless you can guarantee us higher ratings”.*

I just can’t place why this show is popular.

Terrence Winter is working on a new project with HBO, and reflects fondly on working with Sydney Pollack. If you don’t know who Terrence Winter is, then go look it up because we’ve mentioned his accolades enough on this website. We’ll just link to his IMDB page to make it easier…This guy loves the northeast, apparently.

Speaking of which, if you’re looking for an overpriced, (most likely) oversized suit, then look no further: James Gandolfini is auctioning off twenty-four of the suits he wore as Tony Soprano. A couple questions: First, he got to keep those fucking suits? All of Them? Did he ever wear the same suit twice? Or just one an episode? I’d be looking to hawk some of those as well. Second, does it come with his chronic wheezing? I don’t want the suit unless respiratory disease is promised.

I love that we live in a world where Ashton Kutcher is now in a position to hire Kelsey Grammar and not the other way around. We have no idea what for and we’re already disinterested.

Reynoldsburg, Ohio native “Bow Wow” has joined the cast of Entourage. One of the five characters (likely Turtle) will almost certainly call him “dog” in some lame attempt at a pun, and everyone in the scene will laugh…this show needs to end.

Drea De Matteo is getting the Michael Richards treatment after her asinine decision to leave The Sopranos in favor of a spinoff sitcom on NBC. We said at the time it was probably the smart move since she was going to be killed off regardless, but we’ve heard contradicting reports. If in fact she opted to leave before discovering she would be killed off instead of as a result of it, then this website has little sympathy for her. At the same time, the failures of Joey had little to do with Matteo’s acting, and what little success they did have you could attribute at least 40% to her looks. True story.

Finally,HBO is set to air Bad Girls, a women’s prison drama that’s going to ruin all of our lesbian fantasies. Or maybe enhance them, who knows? If there is anyone that dreams of men hooking up with each other at a fervent pace, Oz most likely fulfilled those. Unless you like to live through your sexual encounters, then probably not. Seriously though, it looks great!

Have a thoroughly rewarding weekend.

Still haven’t watched anything all that riveting. We shamefully tuned into Beauty and The Geek last night and it was essentially an hour long string of people crying, so we’ll probably steer clear of that unless it picks up its game. So, when in doubt, here are some links (as is our montra).

Jay Leno was forced to apologize for his persistent gay jokes while McCain hassles Letterman for regularly mocking his age. To avoid any scarring anyone deeply, eventually these guys will be forced to stand on stage in a nondescript full body suit and mutter to themselves while staring at the ground. I think this is where we are ultimately heading.

For whatever reason, Britain is importing The Hills, probably to indoctrinate their youth with conspicuous consumption. I don’t know. It’s beyond me why anyone would want to their own version of the worst aspects of American pop culture, but at least Kevin Spacey has a legitimate cause now.

Hey, speaking of conspicuous consumption, the series that sort of popularized it is now responsible for establishing a $24,000 NYC tour. That’s right, a tour company will show you New York the same way you saw it on Sex and The City. If I lived in such a fantasy world, I always imagined myself going on a murderous rampage. Can I be held responsible for my actions should I choose to take this tour? I think not. Not for twenty-four large.

Don Draper, mingling with the Bohemian set.

Some great news for this website, Mad Men is slated for DVD release on July 1st. This way the boomers can relive their horrifying childhood’s over and over again. Seriously, it must be a nice retrospective for them, because it is for me and I wasn’t alive until twenty-five years after the fact. I need to know when they are coming back for a second season. With virtually all good dramatic television off the airwaves right now, this is more anticipated than ever.

And finally, here’s wishing Roger Ebert the best of luck. After three surgeries he still hasn’t regained his voice thus unable to do his review show with Richard Roeper, but is set to return to written reviews. We will most certainly be reading.

Survivor and South Park recaps tomorrow. Yay substance!

This is what happens when you rewatch an academy award winning movie instead of one of the more anticipated miniseries’ in about a decade, you have nothing to write on your website about. We saw like the first thirty minutes of it, but it was on mute as not to distract us from the riveting phone conversation we were engaged in. Anyhow, it looked stylistic if somewhat fake, and Giamatti — even with being the title character — is on screen entirely too much.

So yeah, outside of the selection show that is our weekend in a nutshell: we didn’t watch John Adams. Enthralling. We did, however, watch No Country For Old Men last night, and this is on the heels of seeing 3:10 To Yuma earlier in the week, all that is really comparable about the two is the villains. And after seeing No Country again, Antoine Chigurh makes Bud West looks like an OZ prag.

See, clearly Giamatti wasn’t that much of a miscast.

It appears not everyone is immediately giving John Adams a rave review like is usually done. This one is particularly soulless towards Giamatti, whose stock has been plummeting ever since he was integral to that Lady In The Water movie.

But hey, HBO only shelled out $100 million to see this project made, that’s hardly even considered a significant investment for a pay channel. Can someone explain the logic for HBO to invest this heavily in something when they are reliant on subscribers? Few to no people are actually going to pay for HBO as a result of a miniseries, and even if they do, conventional wisdom would suggest that it’ll be canceled two months from now when the series is done. So I guess the incentive is that those people, after being exposed to the majesty that is HBO, will have no choice but to keep the pay network, or be to lazy to cancel it, or maybe its DVD sales and awards are the motivators. Either way, I need an explanation.

If this guy’s opinion counts for anything at all, it looks like Mad Men will go over well with the Brits. There seems to be a proclivity on the other side of the pond for watching Americans wallow in despair. From what I can gather, The Wire has a pretty strong following as well. Of course, I enjoy watching both series’, which I guess would make me a self-loathing patriot. Whatever, I’m not watching 24.

The gang from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia is bringing their act to FOX in a new sitcom deal. Or rather, a portion of their act, were not certain FCC guidelines allow for a comedy about finding a dumpster baby. On the other hand, they do allow people to wreck their lives on reality television, so the excessive degree of lewdness could go either way.

To send you out on this Monday morning on a high note, it appears FNL is getting closer and closer to a deal. Good, we don’t want our Crucifictorious t-shirt to be dated before we ever wear it in public. Besides, what is Minka Kelly going to do should this series go off the air.

Slow day, back with more tomorrow.

After staying up until 2am waiting for HBO to post the new Wire episode on demand, we called it a night. Problem being, we are dead tired and keep drifting off at work, so we’re sorry if this post doesn’t thrill and amuse.

Two series’ this website is incredibly favorable of, Weeds and Mad Men, have both received exemptions from the writer’s strike. Supposedly they cut a deal with their respective production companies or something? I don’t know, I wouldn’t be surprised if enough high ranking members of the WGA liked these two shows enough that they decided to let it slide.

Nielsen ratings for The Wire continue to fall, and I have one question for those who may be concerned with this, does it really seem like fewer people are watching the show than at the end of the fourth season? All the people I know who watched it still do, and all the blogs, websites, message boards, etc. I visit all have the same frequency of posts/comments. Does anyone know if DVR/Tivo recordings and On Demand views are factored into these ratings? I sincerely doubt it. Also, some dickhead leaked the first seven episodes online, so several loyalists aren’t even using HBO to watch the episodes.

Let me extrapolate on this point to vent, I like that the episodes are posted earlier On Demand, but between that, the online availability of episodes that have yet to air, and the regular showing on Sunday nights, it makes the series impossible to talk about with other fans. If you talk to seven people, they’re at six different stages in the season, so every conversation is bogged down in a series of qualifiers such as, “well, have you gotten to (fill in this scene here, and just asking about it spoils the series)?”, and “I know you’re not up to this point, but…”. For someone who likes to dissect every facet of every episode, I’d probably simply prefer it if they did away with all the On Demand shenanigans and advanced copies, and force me to watch every Sunday night. If not for myself, then for everyone whose been incidentally spoiled and for the series’ ratings (even though they’re kind of irrelevant now).

Speaking of The Wire, Lance Reddick has gone from the critically acclaimed series, to Oz, to movies that share a name with a Norm McDonald comedy to Mercedes commercials and now to FOX pilots. While we have no doubt this project will sink like a stone, it’s always good to see good actors from legendary series’ get more work. Anyone seen JK Williams (Bodie) sine he was shot dead on his corner? Didn’t think so. That kid should be able to find work solely for his spit takes.

The king stay the king, Bodie. Until he’s murdered, then someone else is the king.

Here’s wishing Roger Ebert all the best after yet another surgery. His Great Movies List has provided me with countless entertainment recommendations for slow weekends over the years, we need to see another hundred added to that list before it’s all said and done. We also hope he regains his voice and makes it back to his show, which has been influencing our theater outings for about seven years now.

So apparently, and this is going to come as a huge surprise, Americans love them some schaudenfruede, as evidenced by 24 million people watching Moment of Truth. If only everyone’s personal and domestic conflicts could be aired on national television, we would all be so happy. Maybe there should be some sort of mandate on this to help pull us out of a looming recession: if you have some deep-seeded secret or revelation you’re planning on making to a family member/close friend, it must be done on Fox, so we can have a cast of judges humiliate you more than you could possibly humiliate yourself. Though I will give the series credit, it takes balls to invite Roger Clemens onto a show with such a premise. There is no telling how that ‘roided up entitled freak will react.

And finally, to send you out of here on a sour (or positive, depending on your perspective) note, ABC has cut a third of their fall pilots for 2008. Not pulling any punches, the network is taking a meat axe to the union, who seems to have gotten in over its head. I think this might mean that the end is nigh for October Road.

Back tomorrow with something other than a Nip Tuck recap tomorrow.

Yeesh, still haven’t gotten around to watching Breaking Bad, but man is the suspense building. We’ll probably watch it on Sunday before the sophomore effort in lieu of any football to consume. We did, however, watch Nip Tuck. And after foregoing all recaps from here on out, we felt validated. That’s all we’ll say.

Also, something we discovered recently, the reason we liked the hideously deformed Rachel Ben Nattan character so much is because she is played by Maggie Siff, the same Maggie Siff who played our favorite female character on Mad Men: Rachel Menken. We never would have guessed that. As little as six months ago we’d never heard of this woman, now she’s playing two of our favorite characters on, two of the, roughly ten, series’ we watch.

It appears the Grammy’s are so innocuous now the WGA isn’t even going to bother to picket them. Either the union is getting apathetic, or this should tell us something about the dire state of the music industry. Or the awards handed out at the Grammy’s aren’t reliant on the WGA for creative council. Whatever, I’m too lazy to read the article.

An article making the case for FNL being a commercial failure because they never marketed their product with additional supplemental products such as toys, lunch boxes, etc. Not sure if I really agree with any of this, the series makes the other peripheral products viable revenue options, not the other way around. This is like saying baseball never would have reached its apex without baseball cards, seems counter-intuitive. And secondly, I have a Crucifictorious t-shirt, so to say they haven’t franchised FNL is essentially a blatant falsehood.

Clearly the problem is the above was never transformed into a Barbie Doll.

In least expected marriage of all time news, Larry Gillard Jr. who played D’Angelo Barksdale on The Wire before his untimely death in the middle of season two, is married to Michelle Paress, aka Alma Gutierrez. Since no one watches The Wire, for you Sopranos fans, this is like Tony Blundetto marrying Meadow.

In one of the more petty, pointless, and ultimately ineffectual moves of all time, the FOX affiliate in Green Bay that airs Seinfeld reruns canceled their syndication for the day Eli Manning would be in town for the playoff game against The Packers. So Jerry Seinfeld sent the wide-eyed quarterback a free box set. It’s a move that almost made me glad the Giants won despite hating the fucking Giants. And the subsequent interference from Seinfeld almost redeems him from the whole cookbook fiasco, despite considering the decision to berate a woman rightfully looking for her fair share on national television to be completely irredeemable. All told, this was quite the enlightening series of events.

And finally, an interview with Linda Cardellini on her stint with the short lived but cult followed and critically praised Freaks and Geeks. We think she’s on ER now or something, but she’ll always be Lindsey Weir to this website. At least until she’s in a Judd Apatow movie, then she’ll be whoever that character is.

Kind of slow ’round these parts. Back with something more invigorating tomorrow.

Great weekend of television. Or rather, a great weekend of football with a couple good series’ on. So many people are skeptical of the McNulty development on The Wire and I’m just not understanding the knee-jerk reactions. We are five minutes into his caper and already people have voiced discontent over its fallacy. How it’s any more farcical than Hamsterdam this website will never understand, but it provides an excellent way for the media to become intrinsically instead of peripherally involved in this season’s arc, and that is what they’ve been so far to the commercial viewer: a distraction to the characters we’ve come to know and love.

Also this weekend Bill Maher’s show returned. This website doesn’t claim any political affiliations in fear of losing half of its already minimal audience, but watching one party set up a forum to verbally berate a single member of the other party is always enjoyable. Maher now brings in some guy from Rolling Stone he refers to as a field reporter or some shit, just to pile on whichever republican has shown up for his medicine. This week it was Tony Snow, who despite still recovering from Chemo treatments stood tall against the semi hate-fueled panel and audience. Seriously, regardless of which side of the aisle you happen to land on, you had to admit being impressed. Then again, debating politics with Marc Cuban probably isn’t a daunting task for a former press secretary. Simply put, if he’s the Dallas Mavericks then Helen Thomas is the San Antonio Spurs.

The Golden Globes took place last night. Not an actual awards show because those who would have scripted it would have been outside protesting its very existence. And since we had absolutely no idea it was taking place, we were surprised to see it being hosted on NBC with two, two person “panels” going back and forth talking vapidly about the winners and nominees in the name of killing time. It was a strange broadcast, and since they were doing much more succinct shows on E! and CNN (NEWS!), we couldn’t really fathom why any one would watch it.

Anyhow, while we were somewhat intrigued by who won, we weren’t too adamant about it since the nominees were so random, at least in the television categories. How can you hold an awards show for television and leave The Sopranos completely off the docket, sans Edie Falco? We have no idea, either. Never the less, it was good to see Mad Men garner recognition for best drama and best actor, for a series that should appeal to everyone with a brain over the age of twenty, maybe it will grow on its already large (cable) audience. Extras taking home best comedy series didn’t come as a surprise since foreign press essentially means European press. But the win was warranted, and we can’t recall Ricky Gervais’ sophomore series being recognized in any awards capacity to date.

Because of the strike, Gervais managed to avoid all public embarrassments.

A few gripes, namely David Duchovony getting the win for best comedic actor when his series is hardly a comedy. This seemed like a novelty to have him nominated in the first place, and I think we all kind of assumed it was Alec Baldwin’s to lose, or even Ricky Gervais or Steve Carell. For a field as loaded as this one was, seeing the guy from The X-Files win because his show is new kind of cheapens the already cheap award show. Also, we were pulling for Mary-Louise Parker (finally saw the third season premiere of Weeds this weekend, it was…chaotic) in the best comedic actress but can’t argue too staunchly against Tina Fey.

That was the weekend in a nutshell. We’ll try and return this afternoon with something worthwhile.

Helluva holiday season this year, we’ve probably been fairly outgoing in the wake of this writer’s strike. And you know what? We don’t like it. Spending time with loved ones, discovering and experiencing new things the world has to offer is overrated if you ask us. Sitting down in front of the television for a five hour binge is generally just as exciting and far more relaxing. Anyhow, onto the rest of the year end review…

5) Extras
Only got better from season one to two and was capped off by an hour and half finale that was as sentimental and introspective as it was hysterical. A sharp turn for a series that’s only dramatic moment beforehand was concluded with a voice mail from Patrick Stewart offering the series’ female lead a role in a soft porn. If Extras taught us anything, it’s that British actors, on a wide scale, are much more self-deprecating than American actors. And that Gervais and Ashley Jensen could both make the transition to dramatic acting and not miss a beat.

4) South Park
Imaginationland! To be frank I couldn’t even remember anything else about the most recent stretch of episodes and had to look it up. There was a King of Kong parody, an oral sex episode that coincided with a mockery of Jesus Camp, a 300 parody, a Guitar Hero episode and several mediocre attempts. But the three part saga that was “Imaginationland” hit on every comedic element possible. From rehashing former characters to absurd scenarios to remarkable likenesses, Trey Parker and Matt Stone proved they still hit more often than they miss.

3) It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia
Sometimes they strive too hard to upset as many people as possible (much like their predecessors at #4) and it cuts into the comedic stylings. But, when it’s working it works better than any other comedy on television. The cast (including Danny DeVito) appears to feed off their apparent synergy more so than any other cast on television since Seinfeld as “the gang” disparages and destroys their lives and the lives of those who dare associate with them. After finishing their third and best season I think this spot is well deserved, if unpopular.

I’d probably rather cross Chris and Snoop.

2) Mad Men
If it wasn’t for the finale of arguably the greatest achievement in television history this probably would have claimed the top spot. Jon Hamm, Vincent Kartheiser and John Slattery (who was briefly in Charlie Wilson’s War getting brow beaten by Philip Seymour Hoffman, by the way) led the helm of an ensemble cast that’s second to none. Every remarkably imperfect character is capable of invoking sympathy at times and hatred at others, including the protagonist Donald Draper, whose mysterious background and unfolded tale kept the summer television season worthwhile. The atmospheric has paved the way for a new style of television as it focuses on every intricate detail of the life during 1960. All we have to say is the editing team is probably underpaid.

1) The Sopranos
What else is there to say that hasn’t been said? The final scene has been rehashed and debated ad nauseum and in some ways diminished the brilliance of the final nine episodes. From a critical standpoint, the concluding half season of this series is probably the best run they produced (we’d still make a case for the fifth season, but that’s a different post) over the eight years it was on and left the series on an ambiguous high note, probably the only appropriate manner for David Chase to end it on.

That’s it for 2007, happy new years!

We’re at work today and not entirely certain if we were supposed to come in. You could hear a pin drop it’s so desolate in here so we’re assuming we could have stayed home. But no matter, when we have a blog to entertain ourselves with.

Between the holiday season and the strike there has been jack shit on television as of late. On Friday night we got one more Wire special. This one entitled “The Last Word”, a sort of overview of what the fifth season themes will be. It was entertaining and insightful without being filled with spoilers, so that was a quality half hour. Other than that, we’ve taken to rewatching the first season of Mad Men and haranguing those who don’t watch it or The Wire (we get very elitist and self-righteous when we’ve been drinking).

So, yeah, it’ll be similar to this until FNL and Nip Tuck return, and even then we’re struggling for material because we’re not really into either of those series’ anymore. Otherwise we’ve got The Wire on January 6th and a strike with no end date in sight. TBS does have their annual 24 hour marathon of A Christmas Story on the horizon here so things could be worse, it could be a days worth of Deck The Halls. See, there’s always a silver lining.

Onto the short but sweet links…

The WGA fully intends to picket the Golden Globes, which will effectively kill the buzzes of everyone in attendance. Nothing like being the scourge of Hollywood I would imagine. Something tells me that if you fuck with George Clooney while he’s getting his drink on, labor strike or no labor strike, there will be repercussions. We cannot even fathom what Sean Penn is capable of (we really liked both Michael Clayton and Into The Wild, by the way).

Dwight Schrute, or Rainn Wilson, or, if you’d like, the store clerk from Juno (tremendously overrated, by the way) will be following in Sarah Silverman’s footsteps to host the Independent Spirit Awards. If it weren’t for their quirky, untraditional choice of hosts, it’s probably the most obscure show during awards season.

Letterman’s sought after exemption was turned down by whichever governing body handles such matters. Not that we’re surprised, it seemed like an odd scheme to actually be able to pull off, especially in the public eye. With labor strikes I doubt its common for someone to be able to work because they were popular.

A rare acknowledgment of American Idol’s existence: Ruben Studdard was recently dropped by his record label. Despite winning the contrived game show, his sales have been poor at best and downright inexcusable at worst. This doesn’t come as a surprise, either, we’re pretty convinced you have to be female to experience any commercial success after Idol. And if there is an exception to this, please let us know.

We’re sensing a trend here.

In the grand tradition of cable channel Christmas marathons for syndicated series’, here’s a comprehensive list of virtually all of them, should you find yourself with nothing to do on the holidays. I, for one, see nothing abnormal or depressing about watching endless hours of Flip That House on TLC.

Denise from Survivor has donated Mark Burnett’s money to an AIDS charity. Regardless of what anyone says, I think this totally redeems her, and I’m not being sarcastic in any way. We’d be happy to donate someone else’s money to needy charities so multi-millionaires can write off the donation.

And finally, we know all of you were concerned about this, but David Chase has won his lawsuit. Yes apparently the courts decided that introducing a series creator to people doesn’t qualify one to receive co-creation credits. Shocking, I know. Anyway, at least now we can all sleep at night.

That’s it until the 26th, merry Christmas (for those easily offended) and happy holidays (also for those easily offended).

We haven’t watched Survivor in enough detail to do a full on, play-by-play recap. And to be honest, we’re really unmotivated to do so, everything about this season is about as spontaneous as an episode of CSI. That is to say, we can see it coming from a mile away. I guess that’s the gamut one runs with reality television, you put a lot of stock in casting and hope it pans out. If it doesn’t then the budget costs were low and they can pump out another season ready for airing in three to six months.

So when in doubt or lethargy, we do how we always do and just doll out some links about nothing in particular and be done with it.

The Golden Globe nominees were announced today, and since this is a TV Blog I’ll try to keep my film critiques at a minimum since it seems like for the most part they got it right. We will say that the bias for late fall/early winter releases is growing tiresome. They gave some love to A Mighty Heart and Eastern Promises, the latter was an alright genre flick. A tad formulaic and didn’t really bring anything new to the table, but certainly engaging, well acted and decently written. But still, it pales in comparison to 3:10 To Yuma and Rescue Dawn. One question though, we haven’t seen it, but is it really appropriate to put Charlie Wilson’s War in the Musical or Comedy category. I guess that “American Pie” song is really influential, even though it is misplaced in this film, considering the song was released in 1971 and the movie is set in 1980. But hey, why worry about semantics, right?

As for the television side of things, no nomination for The Sopranos for Best Drama and Gandolfini for best actor are the most glaring oversights, but as far as everything else is concerned it seems pretty accurate. I have a few nitpicks, such as the actresses on Mad Men (especially Christina Hendricks) getting shut out of all nominations, and Vincent Kartheiser as well. However, the series is nominated for best drama and Jon Hamm got a nomination for best actor, so it all evens out. Sort of. Other complaints like It’s Always Sunny and Curb getting shut out weren’t exactly surprises. The former is probably unknown amongst the international press and the latter wrapped up their worst season to date, despite how great the last two or three episodes were. We try to be realists around here.

In non-award news, Will Arnett is scheduled to be the voice of the car from Knight Rider in an upcoming movie adapted from the laughable classic. He really is just squandering away all that good faith he built up in AD, isn’t he?

Those-were-the-dayyyyysssss.

Reno 911 is bringing in several noteworthy actors and actresses for their fifth season, I won’t even say their names. As a casual viewer of the comedy, am I the only one who sees this as a bad thing? Usually when a successful series starts bringing in bigger, non-traditional names to generate buzz, it’s when the series begins to decline. See 30 Rock this season. Or so I’ve been told.

The union is starting to cave in on itself and is now pointing fingers. This might signify the end of the working millionaire in Hollywood. We kid, but we’re actually pulling for them to stay on track and not lose sight of the bigger picture. That being, while this strike is going on, that’s fewer coked out wannabe actresses they’re coercing into bed with the “promise” of a line in the upcoming Brett Ratner movie.

Also from the LA Times, several of the late show writers want their employers returning to work so they can lobby for them on a national level. Because right now as far as the rest of the country is concerned, though there is a deficit of quality entertainment (not necessarily a bad thing in this country), this is ultimately a regional/local problem. Any change would probably be for the better, because right now they’re looking to be in dire straits.

To anyone who isn’t a total moron, Kiefer Sutherland getting a surplus of fan mail shouldn’t come as a surprise. Does he have priors or something? How is he getting two months in prison and his 20 something, white female counterparts are rarely exceeding a full day? God. If this was a torture camp he got electroshocked in the nuts and they got off with some minimal water-boarding. We guess it pays to be a whorish, non-attractive, untalented celebrity in this country.

ABC brought the ax down on Big Shots, a tale of four emasculated CEO’s and how they manage to be CEO’s while completely stripped of their manhood. Damn, we really thought that would build an audience.

And finally, PBS is getting into the reality game with an academic tinge: they’re following around the student newspaper at Penn State. Speaking from experience, we can assure you that few things are more profoundly uninteresting, subjective and apathetic than a student newspaper. Never the less, it beats the shit out of American Idol.

Back with a Survivor recap later.

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.

You know, I really didn’t think this was the type of series to manipulate its audience with monumental cliffhangers in between seasons, but that is essentially what they did. And, usually I would resent it. But said cliffhangers have been building all season, and if I were to say I wasn’t curious about what direction they were taking, well the dishonesty would be transparent, even through your monitor.

Obviously, Peggy’s baby was the cheapest thing this series has ever done. Last Friday I wrote that I assumed her non-pregnancy a bit prematurely, it appears that was wishful thinking. This series is as much of an atmospheric as anything ever on television, but they showed Peggy going for birth control in the pilot, between that and not even mentioning pregnancy as a possibility, I just assumed her weight gain was either a subconscious decision to be recognized as an equal amongst the men in the office (as opposed to a potential wife), or her over-eating was a crutch for being rejected by Pete.

But no, she was pregnant and didn’t even realize it. For nine months. Obviously I don’t have any experience, and the series is set in 1960, but even in 1960, could a woman be that unaware? I guess she was so consumed with work that it slipped by? I don’t know. Either way, it makes for an exciting second season, Mathew Weiner has said he wanted to make the series run through the 60’s, it will be interesting to see how this effects her integration at Sterling Cooper. According to my mother, it won’t be advantageous.

Pete has probably had the worst two hours of any fictional television character in the history of television that didn’t die. For the most part, it’s deserved. But at this rate, even if he agrees to father Peggy’s child, which we all know he won’t, two years after the fact he’ll discover its not actually his, and that an immaculate conception is responsible for Peggy’s pregnancy.

We’re going to miss those opening credits.

Don teaming Peggy up with Pete for a Clearasil ad campaign is about the least Pete had coming his way from Don, what with attempting to ruin his life and all. If anything he should be thankful he still has a job. Plus, I don’t understand why he’s so bent out of shape about it, he’s still overseeing the project, its not like he has to take orders from her, something Pete just might shoot up the office with that shotgun over. You know you’re in an era of white male privilege when you can sleep with another woman while married, and then feel justified in complaining when the woman you had the tryst with now has to work directly under you.

This episode really focused on its core characters, and Betty was no exception. Really, this is the first episode she’s been in focus since, “Shoot”, where she rejoined the private sector as part of one agency’s courtship of her husband. Her revenge tactic was about the best she could do, take advantage of Don’s misdeeds by throwing them back in his face. Also, what a fantastic twist, one would just assume he would get in touch with Midge by surfing through his wallet, and it ends up being her psychiatrist, who actually took notes for the first time in one of her sessions when she starts spilling guts about his infidelities and whatnot.

This, in yet another cliffhanger, makes for an interesting second season, because Don has no idea that Betty is aware of his collusion with her psychiatrist. For all he knows, and for all we know, for that matter, is that Betty just left for her parents house a little earlier than expected. That’s probably what I would assume, if Betty was going to abandon him, she would have been more confrontational about it. Not pussyfoot around and deliver the message through her shrink. Then again, maybe she would.

Betty finding solace with Glen, the disturbed young man being raised by recently divorced new neighbor Helen, is about the last thing we were expecting, but appropriate, because it would seem that since her mother died, she’s been keeping to herself. Even her therapy was a sham, because she was reluctant to confide in a total stranger. Needless to say, if she did end up leaving Don it wouldn’t be terribly surprising, but given the submissiveness of her character I’d imagine she’d be around. Though a divorce/separation would probably suit both of them well, despite what Don or Betty may tell themselves.

And last but not least, the pitch meeting Don had where he delves into the metaphorical significance of the slide projector being a “time machine” as opposed to a “spaceship” was a great moment of self-reflection for someone whose been almost completely devoid of any altogether. I’m sure his devastation by his brother’s suicide has something to do with that. He is, as we saw last week and in the episode, “5G”, at least partly responsible.

As of now, he’s kind of in the same boat as Betty, with Rachel on a three month cruise and after parting ways with Midge, he has plenty of people he could confine to, but chooses otherwise. And the image of him sitting in his castle, devastated and alone, is a bleak but inevitable conclusion.

This was a fantastic, groundbreaking, television experience AMC has footed the bill for (according to reports it costs $2.4 million an episode to produce, which is an astronomical figure for a cable series), and the fact it’s been renewed really restores my faith in the industry. At least for the cable networks. With Friday Night Lights tanking by the episode, The Office overextending itself and nary a single likable castaway on Survivor, its not an impossibility that we eventually only cover cable series.