Grid Effect

A few more links to close out the week. It’s kind of absurd how top-heavy our TV viewing is: Two series’ on Sunday, one on Monday and one on Tuesday, then nothing Wednesday-Saturday; and that’s likely not going to change anytime soon. I hate the site being so monolithic and then just changing pace for the second half of the week, but we’re not dictating the terms ’round here. Unless something unusual arises, expect this pace on Grid Effect to continue until It’s Always Sunny starts up.

Onto some links…

Here’s Jeremy Piven saying “fuck” on CNN’s web site. Oh no, someone cursed on the interwebs? What’s happened to us?! Anyways, I’d expect a media shitstorm over this if he had been on, say, Larry King or something equally reputable; because he’s Jeremy Piven and everyone hates his guts these days. But not even the most sanctimonious prick can get worked up about someone cursing on a streaming internet video. Please tell me I’m right about this.

Big news coming out of HBO’s media day or whatever it’s called in television. To summarize, Hung, True Blood and Entourage were all renewed (no surprise considering that all three of them are dramatically moving the dial), Treme isn’t going to premiere until August, and a second season of Life and Times of Tim is in production stages but they haven’t decided where to schedule it. The two series’ that are still waiting to hear where they stand: The Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency and Flight of The Conchords.

The latter of which is likely to come back for a third season, though I didn’t even realize they were seeking a renewal. Last I heard, –and kind of just assumed because the series ended with Bret and Jemaine doing a “Stomp” like rendition in New Zealand– they were undecided if they wanted to do a third season, since I don’t think they ever regarded themselves as TV people, as evidenced by Bret Mackenzie’s non-satirical band, The Black Seeds. At least I think it isn’t satire.

Heard this in Breaking Bad episode, “4 Days Out”; season two, episode nine. Turns out it goes well with a montage for cooking meth.

For those who actually give a shit (read: the pitiable and disenfranchised), John and Kate return next week, and Kate’s going to don a bikini at some point. Great! Even more reason not to watch. They need to make more of an effort to render this show unwatchable, if just to save us from Satan’s embrace.

Larry David said that the Seinfeld cast members will appear sporadically throughout the upcoming season, scheduled to premiere on September 20th. He said it’s possible that they’ll touch on Michael Richards’…incident at The Laugh Factory from a couple years ago. I don’t really see how they can miss an opportunity like this if Larry is still living with the Blacks. It was almost tailer-made for him to put into a television show.

Here’s a study profiling average usage in cable, and reportedly 22% of us are substituting online viewing for it, either cutting back on costs or canceling it altogether. What a revelation. I never would have thought that when you made the exact same viewing experience available through other mediums at a discounted rate, people would actually take advantage of it.

And finally, it has been reported…I don’t know how many times, but I can’t recall if we ever brought it up or not: you will not see fictional Ray Drecker’s fictional penis anytime soon on Hung. I understand this is a big disappointment or relief for a lot of you, and to both parties I would like to say that you’re the reason I never feel bad when I don’t leave my house all weekend. I guess I should thank you for the excuse.

Have a good weekend, we’ll be back on Monday with the standard recaps.

Alright, we promised nightly previews last week, but upon further review of the television schedule, several new series’ aren’t returning until next week. So if you can wait just seven more days we’ll eventually get around to that. I know how hard it is to find out what’s on. You have digital cable guides, TV guide, local newspaper guides, the network websites and word of mouth; but that’s it. If these outlets aren’t available to you, then you have us to fall back on. It’s quite the service we’re providing here. When you sit back and think about it, it can all be a little overwhelming.

Anyhow, now that the Golden Globes are over and we can hopefully stop fawning over every word that comes out of Tina Fey’s mouth, some HBO newsbits to celebrate their annual night of cleaning up at a for sale awards show:

-Well I’ll be. The pay cable network has ordered a second season of Life and Times of Tim. I can’t imagine why. The series generated no buzz, no critical acclaim, no ratings and no awards. Other than an extremely funny first half of their pilot season, the series has virtually no qualities that a network would consider redeeming. I guess it tells us something about the semi-dire state of HBO. Or maybe something about the economy, because the only way I can understand them welcoming back Life and Times is if the crew for the series agreed to be paid in Rubles.

-Sheila Dixon, the inspiration for Narese Campbell on The Wire who doubles as the mayor of Baltimore is being indicted on charges ranging from fraud to greater fraud. Jesus, you can usually tell when a politician is corrupt in some way, but if you’re persona is so questionable that you serve as the inspiration for one of the more villainous public officials ever on televisions for two full seasons, then you might need to find a new line of work.

I hope that like Nerese, Shiela has her looks to fall back on.

-The Sopranos turned ten years old on Saturday, and this is news for people who are completely incapable of moving on like your humble orator. I celebrated by waking up at noon, watching Master & Commander on Blu-Ray and NFL playoffs shortly thereafter. It was as great of a birthday party as I have ever been too.

-To cater to the infantismal lack of patience that internet pop-culture dwellers are infamous for and Flight of The Conchords fans are essentially a subgroup of, the New Zealand comedic musical act will be selling selling the songs from their episodes the day after they air. So if you’re partial to misplaced lyrics over an ironic melody, this is ideal for you.

Alright, that’s it for now. Back later with something non-HBO related. This is going to be hard.

I don’t know about anyone else, but that was a pretty eventful weekend. It’s amazing how much more active you feel when you’re sitting on your fat ass at a multiplex instead of at your house watching moving images on a screen. Seriously, it really felt like I was accomplishing something by going to three movies in two days, in addition to watching football in a bar instead of at mine or a friend’s house.

Yes, I am aware that this is basically what I've turned into. And I'm OK with that.

But anyhow, here are the five best shows from 2008. We will have left several off of here for various reasons, of which we’ll explain after we post.

5) The Office

It feels like this series has run its course at the end of every calendar year, yet it manages to sneak into our top five regardless. More so than any other series, The Office was a victim of the strike (having the biggest gap in between a single season). But they managed to handle it better than anyone else, providing great story arcs and quality episodes after the strike, that didn’t feel hastily put together or contrived (like so many of their counterparts). The first half of season five has been predominately successful, with obviously a few exceptions. Still, you’re not going to find a better comedy for your time and money on television right now.

4) The Shield

Yeah, we’ve stated a number of times that we haven’t watched this series, at least not on a regular basis. But the final season sounded like a rewarding one for its audience and a devastating one for it’s anti-hero Vic Mackey. It sounded as if the Tony Soprano of police departments finally got his comeuppance (something Tony himself never encountered, at least not in any tangible way), and that in itself makes this critically acclaimed series worth watching. We will get around to it at some point (potentially this summer), but for right now all we can do is assume that The Shield lived up to expectations and trust the opinions of critics we’ve found to be reliable in the past.

3) Mad Men

During any other year that was absent a Sopranos or Wire season, this would have been in the top spot. The atypical story of a 1960’s Madison Avenue executive struggling with identity and life in an ever-changing and hostile world, only improved on its debut season. Mad Men, a show that has gained notoriety through style more so than substance, is chock full of the latter. Season two managed to encompass every imaginable reaction to the turbulent beginning to the 1960’s. There are those that adapt accordingly (Don, Peggy), those who desire to but are unable because of either forces beyond their control or stubbornness (Salvatore, Pete Campbell, Joan Holloway) and those who are reluctant to accept it at all (Roger, Harry, Paul); All while everyone copes with the turmoil of their own lives. Mad Men has always been an atmospheric and a successful one at that, but when the narrative turned into the best thing on television for the second half of the year, this has officially taken the crown from recently retired series as the best show on television.

2) Generation Kill

We might be cheating with this a little, because it’s a miniseries with a completely different scale and much tighter focus. Unfortunately, we do not give a shit. The show adapted from the Evan Wright novel of the same name gave us layman a factual and (mostly) unbiased and honest look at the Iraq war and those engaging in it on our behalf. Was it critical? Yes. But it also portrayed the majority of those on the front lines with a degree of affection, that lent you to believe that it wasn’t personal, just frustrated. David Simon’s follow up to his magnum opus basically took the rank and file of the streets of Baltimore and placed it in Iraq with the US military and gave you a dramatized look at the inner-workings of these men’s experience, and all that entailed. The good and the bad.

1) The Wire

Was the serial killer storyline far and away the most sensational story this series has ever done? Absolutely (and don’t give me Hamsterdam as a counterpoint, because it’s not even close). Did the addition of the Sun to the cast feel hammed up and suffering from tunnel vision about fabulists whoring themselves out for pulitzers? At times, definitely. But this is The Wire we’re talking about. For whatever complaints you may have had about how they handled their final season, their was still plenty of subtext about the corrosion of the American city. Not to mention what most people are primarily concerned with: We got closure and a relatively happy ending for the characters we’ve grown so fond of over the past five seasons. I’m on record as saying this was my least favorite season from David Simon, but it was still better than anything else we watched in 2008.

As for series’ that didn’t make the cut:

-Entourage: For a series that prides itself on the number of insider jokes they churn out in a given episode, they didn’t really seem to apply the nature of Hollywood to it’s protagonist Vince Chase. We don’t believe for a second that any “star” of his caliber would be shunned from the industry after one bad showing at an film festival. But when they decided to go in that direction, it really felt like they had to stick with it and not redeem his entire career in the closing minutes of the season. We always say with comedies that as long as we’re genuinely laughing at what’s taking place, then we’re content with the effort. Problem being, Entourage wasn’t terribly funny in 2008, either.

Rescue Me, Damages, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Flight of The Conchords: Did not air any new episodes in 2008.

The Life and Times of Tim: We would have put the first half of the season at #5 or #6, but was bored senseless in the second half, to the point we opted to keep it off the top ten altogether for those that exhibited a little more consistency.
Probably it for today, and potentially the rest of the week. We’ll post again if anything comes across the wire but most only pretend to work in the final months of each year, those in the television industry are no different. Have a happy new years if you don’t hear from us again in 2008.

We’re a day late and a dollar short with this, but it is tough to argue that the season finale of this series deserves much more. Maybe it was our short attention span, maybe it was the series itself, but for whatever reason we quickly lost interest in The Life and Times of Tim. The effort was there for the first half of the season, and maybe Steve Dildarian, given that he comes from advertising, would assume that based on the strength of the first five episodes that we wouldn’t notice the relative weakness of the second five. Well, he was wrong.

For those who have never seen the show, this is pretty much the cast of characters.

The first half, “Theo Strikes Back” was set up perfectly. A needlessly pissed off coworker playing an over the top prank on Tim that spiraled out of control, but it felt like it ended right before the punchline, with Tim standing in his bosses living room sporting his pants around his ankles waiting to fuck his wife. It’s not like I wanted to see this in explicit detail, but I did want to see Tim’s boss jump in and catch them in the act. You know, “Right when it started to get really dirty”.

The second half, “Amy Gets Wasted”, felt like a failed effort from the beginning. Amy’s drunken description of Stu was comical, but beyond that the entire bar scene fell kind of flat. This episode was rife with good comedic bits: Tim’s exacting revenge, Stu showing Tim the pictures from the bachelorette party, Tim propositioning Amy’s sister and the biker. But much like “Theo Strikes Back”, it felt like it ended in the middle of the arc.

All of these tend to end abruptly (after all, each segment is roughly 12-13 minutes long), but for the twenty they’ve shown, about fifteen have demonstrated  some finality. Like, a point in the story that feels like a logical conclusion, not just a random spot where they run out of material. Maybe with “Amy Gets Wasted”, if they’re planning a second season that was supposed to be some sort of cliffhanger. But that isn’t why we watch this series, that isn’t really how the series has been designed, and even if they are planning a second season they have about a 2,000/1 shot of getting it. I’ve never seen an HBO series generate so little buzz. Fucking K Street was more notarized than this.

With all this said, we’d give a second season a chance, but if it continued down this same path of implausibility and staggering predictability we’ll jump ship after two or three episodes. It’s amazing that at one point we were reacting to the series like this, and now we’re here. Pretty much indifferent to its conclusion. We’ll keep you posted if we hear anything about a second season. But outside of HBO promos, we’ve barely heard anything about a first, so I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Maybe some links later.

Nine episode in and I think we’ve already ran our course. Not to say this episode was completely devoid of any humor, but it was as close as it could be considering their is no plot, drama, character development or anything else that they attempt to hang their hat on. This series throws all other concerns out the door in an attempt to make us laugh. Which I like in theory, but with only one episode left this upcoming Sunday, unless they close strong we’d be satisfied if this was a one and done series.

Sunday’s episode sort of devolved into what several reviewers claimed it was in the first two episodes (or however many episodes critics get to review): a meathead comedy for frat boys. A television adaptation of your garden variety national lampoon movie. We didn’t see it earlier in the series because it wasn’t there, this was a comedy revolving around a tepid, shy, entry level employee finding himself in precarious positions that were partly self-induced but mostly brought upon him by the indifference or callousness of those around him.

Sunday went straight for the cheap laugh, with one episode having Tim befriend a mugger with virtually no successful comedic dialogue (sans the “I don’t know how to pay you back” exchange) or an unpredictable punchline. It was just onscreen and had the protagonist stuttering and stammering in an attempt to turn the life of his mugger around. It didn’t offer any new takes on what’s a fairly overused premise, nor was it effective in rehashing the same perspective. It was only about ten minutes long and even then it felt like they were stretching it thin.

The second half with Tim on the road featuring what’s easily the worst peripheral character they’ve introduced was an improvement, but only marginally. What’s his face basically spent all six minutes he was onscreen ranting about either alcohol, illegal drugs or hookers; which can be funny but it never offered a punchline. It was him just invoking one or all of the aforementioned vices, and just by virtue I guess it was supposed to be humorous? I have no idea. But it was basically like watching Two and A Half Men.

Anyhow, we are actually expecting them to finish strong despite four weeks of remarkable averageness. If we were to say that we’d still recap this series had they flipped the order they aired them around, we’d be lying. Which is disappointing to say for a series that started so strong. We’ll recap the season finale and any season from here on out, but I can’t say we’re optimistic that we’ll see anything beyond this Sunday or that we’ll even enjoy it.

Links tomorow.

Fuck me. I did it again. Well, the 17 avid readers of this site can probably tell you that when I say something is coming later, it usually means the following day. I’m creative like that.

When we looked at the title of the two installments for this episode, we were mightily intrigued. One was obviously pertaining to video games and the other we figured would be akin to Tim boxing the old man, which we enjoyed quite a bit. Both had their moments but neither lived up to expectations. We are still waiting on the magic from the first five episodes to return, but sadly I think it may have left permanently.

The first half, entitled “Insurmountable High Score” , Tim manages to incidentally crush the spirit of a recovering alcoholic when he breaks his pinball record without so much as even touching the flappers on the machine. It leads to Tim being ridiculed for being heartless and inconsiderate for pretty much the entire episode, despite their not being anything he could have done about it sans unplugging or breaking the machine. Never the less, in standard Tim form, he ends up attempting to reconcile and only makes matters worse. Eventually driving the man and his girlfriend to homelessness after costing him his job and throwing a dart in the woman’s eye.

Only on this series could pinball be the primary source of so much misery.

Not to say it didn’t have its moments, particularly in the opening moments of the episode where Tim was semi-intentionally interrupting the mailman during his speech. But it lacked a certain plausibility that the earlier episodes had the benefit of. No one would blame Tim for the bosses replacing him with cubby holes, and no one would hold him responsible for the ridiculous scene with the Pinball machine either. Everything was put into place just to drum up a comedic tone, and none of if even felt like it would have been that difficult to explain. That is where this episode fell flat and some of their better efforts worked.

In the second half of the episode, “Tim Vs. The Baby”, we thought he would end up literally losing to a toddler in something. Instead it was him getting berated by several new mothers, his girlfriend, Stu…pretty much anyone who made an appearance in the episode except for Rodney and his real-estate agent Brooklyn caricature of a friend.  This episode, showed a little more originality for a series that is starting to look more and more like a one trick pony. We hope to see a resurgence with what few episodes they have left (we actually have no idea and wouldn’t be surprised if this season ended next week along with Entourage).

In short, better than past two weeks but certainly not their magnum opus. We expect better from a series that has shown so much potential over the past couple months. We expect they’ll get back on track before season’s (series’?) end, whenever that may be.

Links later. I promise.

My apologies for getting to this a day later than usual, but we have plenty of excuses, Like laziness and Monday Night Football and preparing to travel to Virginia Beach to visit friends and such. Anyhow, here it is, for all eleven of you that actually watch this series. Have a fucking ball.

That’s two episodes in a row now with little to no clever scenarios or witty lines. And lets face it, when you get down to brass tax, that is really all Life and Times of Tim is offering its audience. Without that, you’re basically watching boring people in lazy animation miscommunicate. Not exactly worth the $15 a month or whatever I’m paying for HBO.

In the first segment, “”Hottest Babes On The Planet”, it was the first time we can recall Tim acting more like an asshole than just a well-intentioned, misunderstood prototypical “nice guy”. The insistence to read Maxim to a group of church kids clearly wasn’t his only recourse and I could think of about 3,428 alternatives to the direction he took. I’m not angry or offended or anything, but when the entire premise for the comedy relies on Tim being able to justify his behavior one way or the other and that justification is non-existent, then there is nothing to fall back on. About the only thing redeeming this episode was Tim’s assessment of Natalie Portman (and his dropping that online short she was in), which we wholeheartedly agreed with. Everything else felt like it was taking place on another planet.

After this post, we'll try not to escalate the vulgarity of these pictures.

In “Suck It Philly”, they brought back Amy’s dad who’s supposed to be a permanent foil, but when everything is going to predictably go terribly, bringing him into the foray for a third time isn’t really necessary. We liked the premise — it had to have been planned to air the episode on not only the same day, but also at the same time the Eagles were playing the Giants on NBC — but they didn’t do much with it. In fact, when the punchline is a stadium of drunken louts screaming “suck it, philly”, then I would say that you failed before you even started.

Bringing in Jeff Garlin was…distinguishable. I don’t know if there is another half-actor out there like Garlin who could attach himself to a project like this and manage to stick out like a sore fucking thumb. It might say something about Garlin’s character on Curb that he is so noticeable on this show while screaming obscenities at a football game. Despite this episode’s obvious flaws, I’m not the least bit surprised that Garlin sees the potential in it. Given that they can only be paying him so much money, it was either a favor for a friend (given the background of the series creator, I kind of doubt that), or he actually considers it the group behind this series a talented bunch and wanted to get his hat in early.

We aren’t completely sold on the notion that the series will run its course prematurely due to laziness and an abandonment of any sort of continuity. But it’s basically the same thirteen minute intervaled story twice an episode with a different setup and the same exact payoff: Tim embarrasses himself without an explanation anyone would have the tolerance to listen to, *close curtains*. If this is always going to be the formula, then it has to be executed perfectly everytime or its slim chances of making a second season are even slimmer.

Nightly preview later.

Whew, now that, was a long fucking day. Long, but at least rewarding. We have virtually nothing to do at work tomorrow, we voted and we ate a grilled cheese with bacon sandwich for lunch. Truly a day for the ages. This first Tuesday every four years in November we actually exhibit a shred of optimism, even after seeing five seasons of The Wire.

I don’t know why we procrastinated taking so long to post this, coming up with all those convoluted lies as to why we haven’t posted anything yet. It was fucking pointless. We really have nothing to say about this episode. It had its moments, particularly in “Bashko’s Hairy Daughter”: when Tim is forced to clean the abrasive executive’s spilled burrito, the same guy Tim attempted to intimidate in “Mad Dog Tim“; and the entire exchange about Tim being an idiot with The Boss. Blobsnark (which my firefox doesn’t recognize as a mispelling) was a good character, and the scenes at the strip club were pretty solid, but everything about Tim’s job being worse than that of a stripper or janitor felt like it had been done before. Like, say, when prison was considered better than Dunder Mifflin on The Office.

The second episode, “Tim’s Not Singing”, was fairly eventless. Outside of Tim deadpanning, “Free robe” and Tim’s protestations about the validity of singing happy birthday for a deaf woman…we can’t recall laughing at much of anything. Maybe it was the daylight savings and a lack of sleep, but our first viewing of “Tim’s Not Singing” didn’t really accomplish anything for us.

Part of the issue is this episode again conjured up the notion that this series might grow stale sooner rather than later. (though not really), and another part is we don’t much care for the Debbie character. She kind of peaked at “That is unmistakably Maurice” in the premiere episode “Angry Unpaid Hooker“. Ever since then its been Tim unexplainably taking bad advice from her and bringing her to events with inappropriate attire. It was funny for a couple episodes, but we would prefer to see more of Blobshnark or The Priest or some of the other peripheral characters.

One misstep in six isn’t bad, especially for a comedy. We are still really high on this series, its just if you are being introduced or introducing someone else to this series, do not let this be the first episode you or them see.

Wednesday night preview tomorrow.

Another Sunday, another home run from this young series. We really can’t think of anything other than Mad Men operating at the same level that never disappoints. And even Mad Men didn’t knock it out of the park last night (I know I’m in the minority on that, more on that later this week). I still have yet to feel like an episode of Life and TImes Of Tim failed to deliver.

At first we weren’t too enamored with “Tim, Stu & Marie”, though we love the opening dinner scene (”You ready to be stewed…My name is Stu, by the way), in between that and the video Marie made of the incident followed by Tim’s reaction to it, we weren’t getting many laughs out of the episode. But the outrage to the production quality really was the first thing we noticed as well, so maybe it was self-important of us to be so amused. But I can’t help it.

In “Miss February”, we got more Aimee than ever before and it wasn’t anything to scoff at like we expected it to be. Usually when they bring in a girlfriend on a series of this type, she doesn’t provide anything more than the proverbial wet blanket. Not to say Aimee isn’t a wet blanket. In fact, she might be the largest, wettest blanket we’ve ever seen in pop culture. At the same time, however, she has more than enough reason to be pissed off given Tim’s questionable judgement and passivity (as opposed to standard sitcoms in which the wife is just a pain in the ass for no reason), and she is actually given great lines as opposed to the standard judge jury and executioner role that the girlfriend/wife usually plays.

Dysfunction Personified.

In fact she has so much to be livid and disgruntled about that we wonder why she is actually dating him. But this is a situational comedy with absolutely no importance placed on character development, so we won’t dwell on it too much. Wondering why she is dating him is like wondering why Jesus has a talk show on South Park. This episode brought too many memorable scenes to contemplate the nature of Tim’s relationship with Aimee.

We absolutely loved when the bus boy intervening in the debate over what constitutes a restaurant versus a pizza joint. Between him running a mop over Aimee’s feet, the counter boy’s demanding to “make those fucking calzone’s already” and the frequency wih which Tim patronized the place, we probably didn’t stop laughing throughout the five minutes of the scene.

Which brings us to our only issue with the series, that everyone in the series sans the priest, the boss & Marie is so quiet and soft-spoken that when you laugh out loud at something, it is absolutely impossible to hear the exchange in its entirety. This is obviously an issue with other good comedies and always will be, but it is exceptional with this show because it is abnormally funny and comparatively quiet to everything else.

A minor nitpick, and not relally any fault of the series other than my gregarious enthusiasm for it. Again, tell your friends, your family, your dog, about this series and adamantly recommend they watch it. With the way It’s Always Sunny and Entourage is going, this series is handily the second best comedy after The Office. We’ve made clear our current infatuation with that series, but for pure comedy’s sake we actually get more laughs out of this than anything Michael Scott & Co. is currently producing.

Back with Links tomorrow.

We forgot to mention this in the Entourage post and it bears mentioning, that last night was an amazing night of television. All three series (including Mad Men) manage to pull off their finest work of the season to date. This more than makes up for the crapfest of good series’ we saw last Thursday, especially since we were still hungover when 10pm rolled around.

But enough semantics and self-importance, that was a damn funny episode of television last night. We have nothing bad to say about it or what it could entail for the future of the series. The first half, “Mad Dog Tim” was probably the funniest 12 minutes of television I have seen this season. Everything from the boss not asking, but rather expecting Tim to cop to the dog’s actions, to how the dog looks to all of Tim’s reactions and the scene in which he confided to Stu, we were laughing hysterically.

In probably one of the more obscene misunderstanding this series has portrayed (the dog taking a shit in the lobby, followed by Tim trying to own up to it while not looking bad), the series seems to hit on the awkwardness yet realistic reaction an office would have if someone claimed to such an act. There wouldn’t be any outrage or vitriol, just a lot of shell shocked expressions. Sure, TIm would have probably been fired and everything else, but in that instant, when he first made the announcement, everyone would just be kind of weirded out.

Clearly the problem is he is just so flashy.

In the second half of the episode, Monday Night Confession, the series revisited the priest since his leaving the convent, and it was about as depraved as one would imagine. One thing we like about the priest is the way he speaks with such self-assurance all while being completely misguided, even though you can understand why and how he arrives at the conclusions he does. Occasionally he lies to everyone for his own benefit (like the notion of pounding a sixer being in the bible), but he has a swagger about him that makes his idiocy all the more enjoyable. He’s like the GOB Bluth of the animated world.

But the escalating confessions followed by Tim’s which actually seemed mildly tame in comparison (even with the extremity of it) might be our new leader for best scene in one of these to date. The high five, the stunned reaction after the priest’s girlfriend announced she sold all of his bible’s for coke money and the debate on what quantifies being at church where comedic gems that we hope continue on for the rest of this most likely short lived series. Our only issue would be that we didn’t get to see Amy’s family’s reaction to Tim’s confession.

But if this series is indeed short-lived, which it probably will be because HBO has done virtually nothing in way of marketing it, this could really go the way of Family Guy and either be brought back to HBO after an influx of DVD sales or land on another cable network looking for something affordable in its prime time lineup. Because this series is simply too funny for it to not have a home.

Best. Episode. Ever. I can’t believe how little traction this series is getting. I haven’t seen one recommendation for it, one review, one trashing. It seems to exist in a vacuum but I know for a fact it is on HBO, a network once so prominent it managed to attract attention for a show about a traveling carnival. Now, you throw in a uproariously funny animated sitcom in their Sunday night lineup and it doesn’t even register a blip on the radar. We did a google image search for “life and times of tim hbo”, and this was the first thing that came up. Followed by absolutely nothing else related to the show:

The face of obscurity.

Lack of publicity and all, that was probably the most frequent and hardest laughs we’ve gotten from a half hour of television in quite some time. I’m not sure exactly how many more side characters they are going to bring in, but everytime they introduce someone new it turns out to pay dividends. Besides, when just the premises alone are hysterical, and with a writer(s) that know how to capitalize, we knew we were in for something memorable.

The first half of last night’s episode, “Senior Prom”, Tim inquires the boss who apparently doesn’t even know his name about a raise. And despite not knowing who he is, agrees to the terms under the condition that he escort his daughter to her prom. We loved the depiction of the spoiled, MTV polluted teenage girl brain and every single one of Tim’s reactions to her (”stuttering turns you on, huh?…Well, that was easy”). When he finally complies to her it naturally turns into a public spectacle, and the principals reaction to it was probably the funniest thing we’ve heard in this television season: “Look at the meat hooks on this creep”, followed by Tim holding his hand out to verify his hands are of normal size.

We thought that couldn’t possibly be topped, then we were privy to Tim in a predicament in which he was cornered into fighting an elderly man whom he offered his subway seat to, twice. The entire subway scene was so Curb-like that we would have thought we were watching Larry David if they weren’t on a subway. Oh, and the whole animation thing kind of tipped us off as well.

That isn’t to say it followed exactly the model of Curb, when the old guy smacked him in the face about thirty times that was certainly a style specific to this series. Usually we would think such a tactic is exaggerated to an obnoxious degree, but for whatever reason it didn’t tire. It was probably the reaction he had to the ordeal, “this is not how I expected this to go”.

Really, and we cannot stress this enough, if you are a fan of any comedy we recap on this website then we wholeheartedly suggest that you tune into this at least once. Hopefully it will be more like this or the pilot than last week, but even then you are still getting more out of your half hour with that than you are out of virtually every other series on television. Three episodes in, this much we can assure you.

Links or something later. Maybe about twenty hours or so.

Well, there isn’t a whole lot of news to pass along, and we still haven’t watched any television since Life and Times of Tim on Sunday night, so here are a few random thoughts on the state of television.

-A new South Park is on tonight, and my guess is Parker and Stone are going to have a field day with the country’s and world’s abject misery, as those guys are two of the more clever satirists on the planet. They are notoriously secretive with their episode plots before a season starts. You know who is dropping the ball though, is Time Warner. Who probably doesn’t put a description of the new South Park episode under the 10pm EST. listing in their guide per Comedy Central’s request, but doesn’t remember to delete it for the midnight replay, that’s why we can tell you tonight’s episode is about China. Unless the whole thing is a giant ruse to throw off curious fucks like myself, that looks like a terribly stupid oversight. I can’t wait for yet another series to be exclusive to DirectTV customers.

-In case you haven’t noticed: Somehow, someway, every single television series we review on this site has migrated closer and closer to the same day. And we are now at a point where every series we enjoy and write about airs on either Sunday or Thursday night. Every single one (unless you count Friday Night Lights, which airs on Wednesdays in a far off world where people pay for DirectTV). So when the new fall season was rolling around we did a quick overview of what was coming back, what was canceled and what was new. The former didn’t surprise us in any way. Generally you can determine what will get renewed based on the title of a series, word of mouth and what night it airs on. The latter presented two intriguing possibilities: The Life and Times of Tim and a series premiering this Thursday on ABC called Life On Mars.

Apparently this is a remake from a popular BBC show...so this is a picture of their cast. It's semi-related.

Now, we were fully intent on reviewing both of these series, giving each one a fair shake as they looked promising relative to anything else the networks were hammering down our throats during football coverage. Then we found out they were both on already busy nights, and made room for Life and Times of Tim since it is only a half hour and when an HBO series looks like something we might enjoy, we make a point to squeeze it in. But Life On Mars, on the other hand, is a broadcast network cop drama on our most hated channel (ABC) that really only has one good thing going for it: the cast.

It stars Michael Imperioli, Harvey Keitel, Dean Winters (Oz and Rescue Me), Gretchen Mol and Lisa Bonet (The singer from High Fidelity). That was enough reason for us to look the other way on all the other intangibles that would steer us away from such a series. But since it is on a Thursday night, we regret to inform you that we are not going to be recapping it. We’ll link to some reviews or something, but we already do recaps for three series’ on Friday (Mad Men, It’s Always Sunny & The Office), we don’t need a fourth.

-Is there anyone watching the presidential debates anymore hoping to see anything other than one of the candidates humiliate himself? Daily Show clearly doesn’t think so, and their coverage has been unparalleled for the past few months. We definitely recommend tuning in if you can look at the humorous and pathetic side of the fall of the industrialized world. Yes, they do tend to focus on the follies of the right wing, and it is a close race, but the conservative end of the political sphere has taken the prize for ridiculousness this political season. We tend to notice that is true for whichever party is on their heels.

Anyhow, my point is, does every fucking network have to air the political debate? Especially FOX and NBC, who have their own news channels that virtually every household in America has access too? It really isn’t a big deal, its not like we would watch whatever they would regularly air, but when you bring up your cable guide and the first five channels are all airing the same thing, it’s a little monolithic. Just once I would like to see a network say “fuck you, dysfunctional American politics, we’re airing Deal or No Deal“.

That’s it. That is all we’ve got. Back with a South Park recap tomorrow.

The follow up wasn’t as strong as the pilot, but it still delivered what we like to see from a comedy. One thing we didn’t question about this series in last week’s review is the potential long-term issues they may have. For one thing, how many awkward scenarios are you going to be able to create for Tim to find himself in, with it still seeming at least plausible enough that the audience will be able to suspend disbelief and still find it enjoyable. This dawned on me last night when they aired an episode in which Tim passed for Latino for the first ten minutes of it. And when I watched a video online where he had to armwrestle an old woman to sit next to an emergency exit on a plane.

But, in its current state, Life and Times of Tim is a top three comedy on television for us (after Office and It’s Always Sunny). In the first installment, “Latino Tim”, Tim’s boss needed to prove OMNICorp was meeting its affirmative action quotas, and demanded Tim pretend to be Latino, and was able to leverage him with the offer of a promotion. Tim, of course, begrudgingly went along with the plan because while you are capable of saying “no” in this universe, you are ultimately incapable of refusing outlandish requests (”Are you sure that’s a small request”).

Did we ever mention how much we enjoy the intro music for this series?

So in the course of fifteen minutes, Tim gave a speech at a minorities in the corporate world convention (I can’t remember the exact title for it, but the acronym was NAMBLA), subjected his girlfriend to being spat on, and made a spectacle out of The Big Idea With Donny Deutsch where he invited the prostitute from last week’s episode to pose as his latino wife. All of this was naturally hilarious. But we can’t help but wonder how long we will continue to find this amusing. The series jumped unforgivingly from a meeting with his numbskull boss (who’s probably the best character they have to offer) to airing on a national news show. While the material itself is funny, it is a lot to ask of an audience to simply gloss over the inconceivable nature of just about everything that happened.

The second half of last night’s episode, “The Priest Is Drunk”, Tim attended the wedding of his girlfriend’s sister and managed to be blamed for every insubordinate act the priest was responsible for, before being caught massaging his girlfriend’s grandmother’s breast per the grandmother’s request.

In short, it was the better of the two, and probably because it was the more grounded of the two. Don’t get me wrong, everything that happens in “The Priest Is Drunk” is improbable at best. But it isn’t set in an alternate universe like ‘Latino Tim” is. Both were good and had their own style, however the latter half simply provided more memorable scenes.

Both had callbacks to episode one, so it doesn’t look like the series will lack continuity like we originally thought, which ironically will hurt its chances for renewal. Something they probably won’t have to worry about anyways if the dismally low response on TWoP is any indication. But we got the return of the prostitute in “Latino Tim”, and Tim’s girlfriend referencing said incident in “The Priest Is Drunk”. If we keep getting episodes like this, we will continue to recommend and enjoy them, but we aren’t sure if that is going to help their cause.

In what will probably be our favorite new show of the fall season, The Life and TImes of Tim offers a new approach and refreshing format to the adult comedy cartoon. In other words, it will probably be canceled after its first season (I’m assuming they want a second one).

It doesn’t follow the traditional mold of any other late night cartoon before it, and instead of offering a traditional half hour episode with three acts, it is broken down into two vignettes that offer nothing in terms of continuity, in fact the only thing the two shorts had in common were Tim being the focus of both of them. But they were are chock full of precarious situations and numerous laughs. One would think this would cater to America’s five second attention span, but it doesn’t cater to America’s disdain for subtlety and nuance, so when it is canceled we can point to this as the reason why.

The humor in it isn’t going to be for everyone, and not liking it doesn’t necessarily make you an idiot, but it makes you suspicious of being one. There isn’t a lot of heated confrontation, in that respect it is like the exact opposite of It’s Always Sunny, but it is like the FX series in that the comedy doesn’t always smack you in the face with its obviousness. Sure, they do that on It’s Always Sunny, but some of the funnier aspects to that series are the moments in between the racuous exchanges.

Our hapless protagonist.

In the first half of the episode entitled “Angry Unpaid Prostitute”, the premise is simple: Tim called a plumber and accidentally ended up dialing an escort agency for a house call, and this coincides with the first meeting of his girlfriends parents arrival. That is pretty much it: Tim, his girlfriend, her parents and a prostitute conversing over the peculiarity of their situation. The setup is simple and almost overused, but the payoff is original. The difference being, there never is any great climax that the short builds to. Everything happens and ends with Tim getting out of the situation by offering the pimp the clothes off his back and fashion advice.

Also, when you laugh you’re not laughing at jokes persay, so much as you are laughing at the interaction. For example, It is similar to The Office, but even more subdued. For instance, when the prostitutes pimp arrives, he buzzes up to his apartment:

Pimp: Let me up or I’m going to shove your head up your asshole.

Tim (To prostitute): ….Am I to assume that’s Maurice?

Prostitute: That is unmistakably Maurice.

Tim: That’s classic Maurice, huh?

The tone and tenor of this episode was much the same that it was in the second. Little to no enthusiasm, a dry sense of sarcasm with virtually no scathing confrontation like every other comedy we watch on this site. In the second short, “Rodney’s Bachelor Party”, a coworker of his throws a bachelor party and only Rodney, Tim and one other coworker show up. So in order to uphold Rodney’s image, they come up with stories for their other coworkers who neglected to attend.

In short, Rodney tells their boss that Tim was raped by a homeless man when he left early. Again, the situation goes to from simple misunderstanding to outrageous but we never get an outraged confrontation or hysterical behavior. The mood and behaviors of the characters indicate that they recognize the absurdity of the ordeal, but they seldom react to it like one would expect.

Explaining humor is tedious and no one is ever interested in it, but if you do tune in, do not expect something like Two and Half Men or even something we generally watch like Curb Your Enthusiasm. The humor in it is depraved and immoral in the classical sense, but more so than any other show, The Life and Times of Tim is okay with that.

Links or something tomorrow morning.