Grid Effect

I have some good news, folks. We finally watched about three hours of television last night. One of which was a documentary, but still, it definitely warrants mentioning. For those of you who may have seen the hour long special on HBO covering the history and relevance of the OSU-Michigan rivalry and enjoyed it, this is in a similar vein and might be up your alley: It’s also from HBO and entitled Breaking The Huddle: The Integration of College Football. You’ll never be able to guess what it’s about.

It focuses mainly on the Southeastern (SEC) and Southwestern (If it has a modern day counterpart, the Big 12) conferences through the 50’s and 60’s and cross-sects the civil rights movement in the south with the effort and need to integrate college football teams in the confederate states. One would think this would be some hyperbolic nonsense with athletics once again giving themselves too much credit for much more imperative issues, but in fact it was just the opposite: detailing how counter-intuitive racial prejudice and bigotry actually are. Obviously everyone attending and living around these universities wants to see the football teams perform well, and when you irrationally diminish your recruiting pool via blind hate, you’re already putting yourself at a disadvantage. In other words, some of the stock footage is remarkable.

It is also insightful. It delves into personal and socio-political stories that if you hadn’t lived it, you would have to major in something similar to fully understand. The documentary straddles Bear Bryant’s college tour before landing at Alabama, and essentially ends on the 1970 Alabama-USC game in which The Trojans (led by Sam Cunningham) curb-stomped the Tide in their own stadium, much to the dismay of the sea of white faces who actually believed there own contrived bullshit. Along the way we hear a multitude of stories from (among others) the likes of Bubba Smith, Wilbur Hackett, Darryl Hill and John Mitchell.

So if you’re looking for an hour long episode of television that goes into great detail about how disgusting people are and tug at your heartstrings all while informing you on a pivotal aspect of the civil rights movement in the south? Look no further. This will keep you enthralled, sickened and inspired all at the same time.

The other two hours were the Costas Now year in review retrospective that he does so brilliantly every December. In year’s past it has been scaled down to a smaller studio but was always meticulously thorough and original. But given the recent success of his new town-hall style presentation, the buzz on the Sports In The Media segment from a few months back, not to mention that 2008 was a fairly exceptional year for sports in America,  Costas and HBO expanded the retrospective to two hours and kept the live audience.

There were a lot of victims that night. None of which were Bob Costas.

If you do a quick overview of everything that transpired in 2008 you’d probably assume they could fill up four hours and still be asking for more time on the clock. And you would probably be right. Between the Superbowl, the US Open, the Olympics (all three of which got their own segments), a Celtics-Lakers final, an overtime NCAA championship game final, Stephen Curry, the Nadal-Federer match that I believe was at Wimbeldon but is alluding me at the moment, plus a fairly dramatic world series win for the city of Philadelphia, and they could fill an entire day with discussion and analysis. But they gave everything that wasn’t the three former events lip-service, because they had to pick and choose.

Anyhow, I’m pretty sure Costas could have gotten Barack Obama and the Pope to attend this thing based on the guest list he already had: Tiger Woods, Rocko Mediate, Michael Phelps, David Tyree, Rodney Harrison, Michael Strahan, and Osi Umiynora. Basically, anyone who was relevant to any of the events mentioned above. Not to mention Charles Barkley and John McEnroe to cover everything else. Why John McEnroe? I’m not sure, but he’s integral to the only funny scene in Mr. Deeds, and it is damn funny. So I suppose I do not much care.

Anyhow, this is the best we could come up with. I’m afraid that until Flight Of The Conchords comes back (which it does on January 18th, with a bang I might add), we’re going to be stretching for things like this. We might even be reduced to a Superbowl commercials post if we don’t make more of an effort.

Maybe some links later today.

I should probably give the sixth season premiere to the best consistent comedy on television its own post, but if you want your own post, then don’t schedule your return from a two year hiatus on the same day the NFL returns and the horrific VMA’s.

In the interest of full disclosure, outside of Curb, football took precedent last night. I was advocating for HBO programming as my fantasy matchup was essentially already determined, but you try to presuade three testosterone induced twenty-something males to flip from an NFL game that is quenching their thirst for blood to a show called Tell Me You Love Me and we’ll see how you do. Once you succeed then you can give me shit about it.

Despite being overruled at that moment, I attempted to watch the pilot after the game and nodded off about twenty minutes into it. In that twenty minutes, however, I saw several pretentious arguments, a man have the most narcissistic jerk-off session in the history of television (seriously, he might as well have been looking at his reflection in a mirror) while his wife peered nervously out the bathroom door at him (are married women really naive enough to believe their spouses never pound one out?), two sets of external genitals and really nothing all that enlightening or interesting. Also, given that I’m something of an insomniac, it’s probably a bad sign that this put me to sleep.

The basic premise is we are introduced to three couples each respectively in their 40’s, 30’s and 20’s all struggling with different aspects of their relationships. They all separately decide to see a senior-aged psychiatrist and we are privy to her private life as well. Beyond that, going into details seems somewhat pointless because we’re not planning on following this series. Sorry. If it gets any better then tip us off and we’ll give it another viewing.

Curb, on the other hand, got started off on the right foot. This season’s plot revolves around Larry and Cheryl taking in a displaced African/American family after their city was ravaged by hurricane Edna (not Katrina). And this is what makes this series better than any other comedy out there: every plot advancement is a joke, or at least comedically situational. Everything in the show targets laughs and ignores melodrama. Why does this seem so rare nowadays?

Larry agrees to this after answering honestly in the newlywed game that he wants to sleep with Richard Lewis’ girlfriend, Cha-Cha, (or he would prefer to over any of his other friends wives/girlfriends), when apparently you’re supposed to simply say your wife. Funkhauser went before him and acted accordingly because he’s a tool, and Larry went before Jeff, who was never backed into the same corner.

Even beforehand, Larry decided to subsequently inoculate himself of any blame from skipping parties by showing up the next day, pretending that he got the date mixed up. In addition to this we got a penis cake, about five minutes of Lewis-David banter, a disparagement of golf, Ted Danson and a Mary Steenburgen who looks younger now than she did in Back to The Future III.

A few qualms, that in no way effected my overall enjoyment of the episode: It’s obvious they’re setting up Larry to clash with the new family he brought in, especially Vivica A. Fox, who upon being asked not to smoke in the house, put the cigarette out in the penis cake that Larry was enjoying. Something about it seemed overly harsh and confrontational. I mean, he is helping your family recover from the unthinkable, being asked to take the cancer stick outside seems like a reasonable request. It wasn’t him that exposed your kids to the penis cake.

Also, when Ted Danson arrived at Larry’s house the day after their party, claiming to have gotten the dates confused, it didn’t really jive, considering Larry’s house was being cleaned out in the morning, after the fire, and it was presumed that their party was scheduled for the evening, or at least the afternoon, not first thing in the morning.

Still, a great episode with several memorable lines (”Your last name is black, that would be like if my last name were Jew”) and a great concept for the remaining nine episodes. It has been almost two years since their last season, so anything less would have been surprising.

Just a quick note, and this transition is as odd as the one last night (going from Curb Your Enthusiasm to interviews with Iraq war veterans), but if you want to see the actual sacrifice of this war, one that most of us are unfamiliar with, watch Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq, as James Gandolfini interviews ten permanently injured soldiers as they share their stories. Their injuries range from amputations to brain trauma to blindness, and while it’s a difficult, and thankfully apolitical hour, it is well executed and provides more perspective than all the Bush is evil/Bush is a saint documentaries currently available.

My apologies for the last paragraph, I’ll never do that again, but it really is a dramatic, moving hour of television that should be acknowledged.