2 Shows that shouldn't have been cancelled

I dislike shows that are cancelled too soon so I was happy with the effect of the writer's strike because in theory, it was supposed to give freshman shows a better chance to get to a second season with the reasoning that the initial season was cut short and there wasn't enough information to determine if they really were successful or not.

Promising shows like Pushing Daisies, Big Bang Theory and Samantha Who lived to see the light of season 2 but I was hoping for more.

Two shows I was particularly fond of, one a midseason replacement and one a fall debut show have been cancelled and I'm particularly sad to see this news. I'm hoping like the fans of Jerico something could be done with mobilization of fans and letter-writing campaigns, but it's a little too early to tell.

The shows are:
Aliens in America-Think of a more upbeat and self-aware version of the Wonder Years meets Perfect Strangers. Dorky teenager Justin lives in the Midwest with a set of parents who were once the Homecoming Queen and Star Athlete and a sister who is one of the most sought-after girls in school. His mom is desperate for him to fit in with his classmates, so she gets an exchange student for him so he'll have at least one friend, but is thrown for a curveball when she finds out that the exchange student is Pakistani. Justin and Raja end up forming an unexpected bond and he slowly grows on his new family (he has a slightly better work ethic than your average American teenager). Meanwhile everyone in school is in a state of culture shock over the new kid. The show is something different in the high school genre: It is just a little bit smarter and more self-aware of the genre's conventions than other shows are. I also like how it isn't just a parody of high school (I'm a little too far removed from high school to really get into a John Hughes movie, for example) but uses the typical high school awkwardness genre to be somewhat edgy about racial stereotypes and perceptions. Add to that a good odd couple chemistry between the two stars, an equally rewarding odd couple chemistry between the two syblings who enjoy different degrees of popularity, a good dose of warmth and humor and it was a fanstastic show

Miss/Guided-Another show about high school that was more about the teachers than the students. This past year, I've done some substitute teaching and sometimes I'm just in shock and awe to think of the things that have changed in my status as a member of society that now I can go into a high school and go into the teacher's lounge, for example. It is all so very, very cool. In short, teachers, especially the younger ones are overgrown high school students. A better way to put it might be that they're reliving their high school days whenever they're in the classroom.

When I substitute taught fourth grade on my first day, the thought occured to me that I hadn't been in a fourth grade classroom since the fourth grade and it suddenly gave me a very clear memory of what my fourth grade experience was like.

I generally like to teach middle school because I hated middle school and teaching middle school allows me to work out my past middle school experiences and traumas (of course, I'm not teaching as a means of therapy, but it's just an interesting side effect I've noticed), it also allows me to try to ensure that within whatever influence I might be able to have, these kids have a better middle school experience.

Nonetheless, Miss/Guided is a show based on the premise that most high school teachers are overgrown high school students who are carrying the baggage they had with them in middle school. It's a very sweet (or should i use the adjective "cute"?) look at the high school genre, where the dorky student trying to rise up to become mrs. popular, is actually not a student but the school guidance counselor, Becky Freely. She is played by Judy Greer in what might be her first starring role in any movie or tv show, and she is terrific. Freely goes back to her old high school, where she was a big dork, to become a guidance counselor and develops a crush on a teacher. The problem is she has competition: the english teacher who also attended the same high school and was the most popular girl in school. The show is produced by Ashton Kutcher who makes a hillarious guest appearance and which he mocks himself brilliantly.

The mathematics of Guess Who

Guess Who: 2 ½ (2005): 1 ½ stars (out of 4)

Ashton Kutcher meets his future father-in-law (Bernie Mac) for the first time and laughs arise aplenty from the cultural clashes that occur. This film is a remake of a 1960’s social commentary film, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” but it comes across more as a remake of Meet the Parents with black jokes than it does a message picture. This film is so derivative, in fact, that I can actually be summed up in a mathematical formula:


2/3 (Meet the Parents + Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner -1 – Social Significance – Ben Stiller + My Boss’s Daughter’s Ashton Kutcher) + 1/3 (half-hour sitcom of the UPN) = Guess Who.

So that pretty much sums it up right there. Not only is the picture formulaic, but I can give you this picture in an actual mathematical formula and you could probably predict the plot development at any given point:

And here’s a key to how the plot works:
The movie is supposed to be a loose remake of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, a socially conscious picture from the 1960’s about an interracial couple seeking their parents’ approval. The exponent of -1 is because the racial roles in the film are reversed. I also subtract the social significance because in the 1960’s an interracial couple would have have faced threats to their lives as well as discrimination in employment and housing whereas the worst a 2005 interracial couple would have to face would be arguments over whether to watch BET or CBS. There’s also a little bit of My Boss’s Daughter thrown in. In that film, Kutcher also played a young professional trying to impress his love interest’s father, and it was Kutcher’s very last film, so if you’re wondering if anyone’s getting bored of seeing Kutcher in the same role over and over again, well, apparently not Ashton Kutcher.
In the third act of the film, when both Bernie Mac and Ashton Kutcher have made their respective love interests so angry that they leave them, then the two have to team up to get them black and Ashton Kutcher “blacks it up” by singing some Barry White to his fiancée to serenade her back. This part significantly deviates a little from the message-less social significance remake/Meet the Parents hybrid and turns into one of those shows on the now deceased UPN filled with clichés.
But nevertheless, this doesn’t rule out any and all merit to the film (it rules out most of it, though). I’m not that much of a stickler for originality anyway. I ended up judging the picture more as a genre film now, in that I’m seeing how it handles the conventions of this same plot that I’ve see in A Guy Thing, Meet the Parents, The In-Laws, My Boss’s Daughter, etc. So here are my notes:

-Ashton Kutcher and the leading lady have no chemistry whatsoever, if the film is going to earn the right to be a remake of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, that would’ve been key. This same thing happened in the Score with Angela Bassett and Robert De Niro or “Executive Decision” with Kurt Russell and Halle Berry and I have yet to see a film with an interracial couple with any chemistry, although I think Pierce Brosnam and Halle Berry came close.
-Bernie Mac was surprisingly good. Judging by his work in Ocean’s 11, where he’s the stereotypical threatening black guy in Ocean’s 11, or a vice presidential candidate with the potential to make Dan Quayle look like a member of MENSA, I might have expected Mac to cater to negative African-American stereotypes, but I felt like he tight roped a thin line between being humorous and being a dignified father figure
-Ok, Bernie Mac going to sleep with Ashton Kutcher was kind of funny, I will admit and the fact that he didn’t just sleep in his bed the first night but every night thereafter was also pretty funny.
-The sideplot of Ashton Kutcher losing his buiness was more interesting than the main plot, and since this plot is so derivative, I might have preferred to see that as the film in retrospect
-The climactic conversation is funny, I’ll give it that
-An akward attempt at slight commentary here: stereotypes with sports, the “I had a black girlfriend, I’m not racist"
-The advantage is that Bernie Mac can be more corrosive or scary which could lead to more comedic situations

Cheaper by the Dozen I and II

Cheaper by the Dozen (2003) was one of my favorite movies of that year, even though it's just meant as family entertainment. On the DVD commentary, director Shaun Levy spoke of high ambitions he had when making the movieto really try to reinvigorate the classic family comedy with pathos, and I think he succeeded. The movie is actually quite touching and made me reflect on the value of my own family. Other strengths of the movie were a script that catered to Steve Martin's comic gifts and a talented ensemble of younger kids. Here were my reviews of the two films:

Cheaper by the Dozen (2003):
It's true that the fun of having more than two or three kids is cancelled out by the subsequent responsibility and expense of paying for their college, but when we don't have to pay more than the price of a movie ticket to experience a large family, then it's tons of fun. So, first off, yes, I have to admit that the mere fact that the movie centers around a 14-member extended family makes it enjoyable from the start. I was almost instanteously engaged until over halfway through the movie trying to keep track of who was who, and with such a talented and diverse ensemble, I enjoyed watching all of the development, especially Mark (Forest Landiss), the kid who kind of tied the whole story together. They even found room for overrated stars like Ashton Kutcher and Hillary Duff as one-note characters among the others. I also think that underneath all the comedy there was a lot of moral value within the conflicts between Steve Martin and his family and all those people trying to tear it apart (like the coach and his fame-career-driven attitude and Ashton Kuthcer's character and his narcissism and the bullies at school and Paula Marshall and her preppy conformity).

Cheaper by the Dozen II (2005):
Cheaper by the Dozen II like most sequels, wasnt as good as its predecessor but was a safe movie bet, allowing you to fall back into a familiarity of the first and have some more fun with it. It picks up a couple years after the first installment with changes abound as the oldest daughter is now married and pregnant and with everyone growing up, the Bakers plan to vacation one last time at their old summer nesting grounds before sending off newly graduated Lurraine (Hillary Duff) to New York. Ashton Kutchers out of the picture, while Eugene Levy enters the scene as Steve Martins rival, providing some decent comic relief. Knowing full-well, they cant focus on all twelve kids, Tom Wellings newfound romance and rebelliousness are underdeveloped, while the unfortunate mistake is made of shifting the focus to Hillary Duffs character. Duff basically plays a caricature of herself (or at least her public image) as a teenage diva, who only worked in the first movie because she was only added in at small doses. Theres also a side story with one of the younger siblings having her first crush. Like the first film, this installment relies on Martins physical comedy for laughs with some very relatable moments along the way and in the end, the family wins out over all other forces.

Review of Bobby

Emilio Estevez's grandiose ensemble piece takes place at Ambassador Hotel over the course of the day Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. Estevez who wrote and directed the piece is a little too overeager in his attempts to make the film a time capsule of the 60's with sloppily constructed newsreel montages, and references to things like CHADs that have the subtlety of hitting you over the head with a hammer. One of these references is fairly accurate, however: Anthony Hopkins, who plays a veteran of the hotel staff, asks one of the kitchen staff if he's seen the movie Grand Hotel, which is a lot of what the movie feels like. Grand Hotel was a best picture winner from the 1930s that boasted Hollywood's biggest stars (all 5 of them) all in the same picture. Estevez has done an admirable job in assembling his assortment of Hollywood's glitziest and most glamorous stars (preferring the showier Elijah Wood, Ashton Kutcher and Lindsay Lohan to thespians like Haley Joel Osmont, Tobey Maguire and Scarlett Johannson, for example). When stars like Sharon Stone, Anthony Hopkins and Christian Slater pop up without warning, it creates a sort of excitement that isn't usually present. Bobby plays out a lot like Nashville or Kansas City with different story lines going in their own directions and fusing together. Some of the story lines work and some don't but the ones that do are interesting enough to sustain us through the ones that don't. William H. Macy and Sharon Stone shine at the center of the film as the hotel's hard-nosed owner and his all-too-faithful wife, while Freddy Rodriguez, Christain Slater, and Lawrence Fishburne make for an interesting microcosm of racism in the hotel's kitchen. Shia LeBouf and Brian Geraghty provide comic relief as two straight-laced campaign workers discovering LSD and blotching the most important day of their young careers. What unites all the characters together, however, is their place in history when Bobby Kennedy was shot and Estevez's passion for the historic figure and his ideals, which lurk underneath the story lines, really stand out throughout the film.