Derry Girls review

Credit: Belfast Telegraph

Debuting on Netflix after a successful run on Britain's Channel, "Derry Girls" piqued my interest because its set in the North Irish town of Derry which I visited in 2000 and the series itself is set in the 1990s. I have also visited Ireland in 2016 and the island is significantly different these days as it moves further away from its North-South conflicts; and since the once-homogoneous island has been infused with Eastern Europeans thanks to the European Union.

Whether a sitcom can only teach you so much cultural history through a sort of narrative osmosis I'm not sure, but this show wouldn't do it for you if the only reason you're watching it is because you want to experience Northern Ireland in the 2000s.

It's also possible that being set in the town of Derry during the 1990s might ve the only truly novel thing about the show since there's such a big littany of influences at play: The free-wheeling character of Michelle feels like "Broad City"'s protagonists at her more extreme but mostly Britt Robertson in "Girl Boss" (and we all know how much of a chance that show was given by Netflix). One might also equate her to the puberty monster in "Big Mouth" in the way she tries to lull her three friends to give into their impulses. There's also a bit of "The Goldbergs" and "Fresh off the Boat" as it waxed nostalgic about the 90s although it doesnt work nearly as well in this nostalgic context since we as Americans have less of a basis of reference. There's also a little bit of "Bunheads" as this fenale quarter representing the four humors continually fall into and out of trouble.

The biggest cultural touchstone that comes to mind here is "Malcolm in the Middle": Through Erin's brutal nostalgia, youth is treated like an inhumane sort of prison where a) you are constantly misunderstood and constrained by your elders, and b) the network of peers, family and school officials you must navigate to keep ypur head above water is a never-ending source of strain.

Another source of this is that the show's humor feels thoroughly steeped in British irony. Dark comedies like "Seinfeld" or less famously "The Life and Times of Tim" (a show whose moral was pretty much "the universe has it out for Tim") come into play, but to this show's credit, "Derry Girls" has a bit more of a classist angle. It's as a direct result of their overextended family and the socio-economic circumstamces that Erin and cousin Orla have a less-than-ideal adolescence.

In addition to the quartet of girls, there is also a wildcard of sorts that adds some of the series' best and most absurd bits of humor: Michelle's cousin James has to go to the same all-girls Catholic school as Erin, Orla, Michelle and Claire because he's British or bullied or just plain unfit for the men's school (or some combination of the three) and he's treated as trash by everyone else on screen. As sociopolitical commentary (presumably because he's British in a pro-Irish town) he's not particularly well-explained but watching him navigate a school that's not designed for him and a family that doesn't want him is hilarious.

New Spring TV Shows

1600 Penn-For a show topic as ambitious as depicting the shenanigans of the President's family, 1600 Penn is pretty lukewarm.

Still, it's a dependable type of lukewarm, which is enough to make my schedule on many an off-night.

Josh Gad (the show's co-creator) plays the lead as first son Skip Gilchrest who lags behind the rest of the family in the smarts department. He's portrayed as a big lug with a heart of gold and an impulse control problem. He's the perfect example of a character too  over-the-top to carry a show as a lead and would best be suited as a sidekick rather than a side character.

Elsewhere in the family, we have Bill Pulliam as President Matt Gilchrest. Pulliam, who played a much better president in "Independence Day", would probably fare about as well as Mitt Romney or John Kerry if he were running in real life. He's got the broad-shouldered sturdy presidential look and sounds presidential but seems kind of bland and uninspiring. As Gillchrest Senior, Pullman's main job is to sigh heavily and look stressed out that of all people in the world, he's the one who has to run the country.

First lady Jenna Elfman is the second wife and stepmom and isn't too much of a deviation from her Dharma character in Dharma and Greg. This isn't that good of a fit considering she's the wife of the President and cracking sarcastic jokes and making all sorts of gaffes. They try to lampshade her lack of presidentialness by having her directly address a visiting schoolgirl's allegations that she's a trophy wife in the pilot episode.

Legit-The show is highly reminiscent of "Wilfred" in that an Australian representing unfettered id teaches an uptight American (or two) to loosen up.

You would think that Legit would pale in comparison considering no one dresses up like a dog, but I found something refreshingly unconventional in this breezy ride about a guy who doesn't take his life too seriously. Comedian Jim Jefferies doesn't have the most unique voice in the world but the series does a good job at being congruent with that voice.

Jefferies basically plays himself: a comedian from Australia who gets his entire income from doing less than five hours of stand-up comedy a week. He uses his free time to go on mundane adventures with his two new roommates: Middle-aged divorcee Steve (Dan Bakkhedal), who gradually becomes more unbalanced as the show wears on, and Steve's paraplegic younger brother Billy (DJ Qualls). The show earns points for treating a handicapped character as if it is a non-issue.

While the show is unapolagetically mundane, there's a slightly deeper subcurrent underneath as Jim and his roommate gradually negotiate how to be good to each other and how to be better people. For the most part, Jim isn't on a mission to better his life, succeed at a career or find true love. That's pretty refreshing.

Its not a ground-breaking show and won't ever reach the pantheon of great TV but its consistent and has a firm idea of its direction. The chemistry of the main trio is strong enough that the characters developed to the point that the season finale was genuinely emotional.

Bates Motel-Vera Farminga is excellent as always as Norma Bates and Freddie Highmore (who played Johnny Depp's nine-year-old muse in "Finding Neverland") plays future mentally off killer Norman Bates in this prequel to "Psycho."

In its efforts to slowly disentangle the "why" and the "who" of Norman Bates, the series is rife with nuggets for a budding psych major to have a field day with. More often that not, however, its just a breezy small-town drama with fascinating characters, most of whom are concealing a dark side.
About a third of the screentime is devoted to the protagonist's experiences navigating high school where he's involved in a love triangle in addition to a relationship with a benevolent English teacher that's rife with sexual tension. These scenes play like "Dawson's Creek" with eerie music.

The main drawback of the series is that, like "American Horror Story Asylum", the writers decided to throw every imaginable form of small-town vice into a hodgepodge to create a muddled portrait of the kind of dark environment Norman grew up with, that led to him turning psycho.
We don't need to have a mom's boyfriend who ended up becoming a sex trafficker, a town gripped with vice, a raping of Norma that Norman personally witnessed, another man (Jere Burns) threatening Norma's life, a father who mysteriously died, a clingy mother who discourages your independence, a brother with potentially violent impulses, AND your teenage crush's father being set on fire while you're waiting for school one day. One or two of these causes are sufficient enough to result in Norman going psycho.

Needlessly creating a scenario where nearly everyone in town turns out to be a vile person with an evil motive brings diminishing returns more than anything else. It's almost as if the writers aren't sure which evil plot to go with so they decided to try a little bit of everything.

On the whole, the quasi-enchanting atmosphere and characters have made Bates Motel a very worthwhile show and the season finale left me hopeful that the writers might have had some grand plan at hand.

The Americans-This is definitely an exciting show that has a lot going for it: historic detail, a cat-and-mouse element, suspense, serialization, and a wonderful performance by Keri Russell that has the potential to reinvent her as the Jennifer Garner of the 2010's.

The plot holes in the premise, however, are enormous. The couple (Russell and Matt Rhys) are a pair of KGB spies who have been married 15 years and they are only now beginning to question issues such as whether they love each other? It also would be difficult for them not to see through
Communist propaganda when they can literally see with their own eyes that the US isn't as much of a proletariat Hell it's been described as. If there was some event that happened while Elizabeth and Phil were in the US to renew their hatred of the mainland or some self-realization that "hey, maybe America's not that bad?" I could better get on board the reality of this series, but the show doesn't do much of either.

If Elizabeth and Phil do have any doubts (the latter does when the prospect of defection money presents itself), it's possible that they would have them 15 years after living in the US, but wouldn't all of Phil and Elizabeth's doubts and internal conflicts be so much easier to swallow if it was just a few years that they'd been in the country.

Another big plot hole: Phil and Elizabeth have two kids who don't know they're spies? How could that have possibly been a good idea. It encourages, or rather requires, intimacy between two people who are supposed to avoid emotional attachments for professional purposes. It takes one of the best female agents in the KGB out of commission for nine months or more. It makes them have to work ten times as hard to keep their cover since they're now under surveillance in their own home every day when their kids come home from school. Lastly, it makes them more entrenched within the American social infrastructure since that's who's raising their kids. Oh yes, and it provides counterspies with instant kidnap bait. All this justifies looking a little less inconspicuous?

Final Verdict: 1600 Penn was cancelled and not surprisingly so.  It was beginning to lose narrative steam. Ill go on record, however, as saying it wasn't completely unwatchable. Legit qualifies as a guilty pleasure. Americans has been the most ambitious and has the most potential for a bright future if it works out some of its kinks. It could potentially gain if it had a fewer quieter episodes like Breaking Bad did with "Fly" The best viewing experience I had among these four was Bates Motel.

No Ordinary Family: "No Ordinary Anniversary" and "No Ordinary Sidekick"

First off, some new articles, I've published out and around:
Which Hollywoodized Verison of Washington suits you best
Morality of the Characters on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
World's Most Dangerous Sports

No Ordinary Family is a show that's been plagued by TGIF-style sappiness when portraying family stories. The dad, awkwardly played by Michael Chiklis, does a lot of preachy moralizing about the importance of family and doing good. There's a slight disconnect between the PG-rated level of talk and the PG-13-rated level of action. Some kids' shows or light-hearted action shows (USA's Monk and NBC's Chuck are two examples off the top of my head) don't really show a lot of murder on screen (Monk does so in the opening credits but no further murder usually takes place. Monk solves the case and the villain surrenders his weapon to an oncoming barrage of cops seconds before anyone's at risk of dying). No Ordinary Family mixes very sappy family melodrama with serious serial drama and the tone is something that needs a little tweaking. I'm starting to think with the last couple episodes, "No Ordinary Anniversary" and this week's episode, the episode is finding its groove a little better.

It's quite possible that the creators of this show now are aware of the sheer corniness of their show, but the episodes were already in the pipeline before the feedback rolled in that would otherwise have made them aware of the problem. Whether that's the case, I knew it was too much to expect that the tone would change significantly over the last couple weeks. The corniness is here to stay and I have to take the good with the bad (I had the same experience with Studio 60). The best I can hope for is minor tweaks and the existing tone fits into better situations.

If the family is melodramatic, it helps if there's a palpable sense of danger. I'd say the looming threat of Katie's new boyfriend (aka The Watcher) certainly raises the drama and the plot escalated in a way that was well-handled. Daphne first suspects something because she can't break into the guy's thoughts. This development simmers for a while before the next inevitable step. Daphne and JJ come to the realization that he took over JJ's dating profile. Before we know it, Daphne finds herself in a very compromising position.

The pacing is really starting to improve on all fronts. Mini-parables of the week are starting to segway to stories with larger themes and the unresolved endings make for a tone that's slightly darker. Previously, Daphne and JJ's stories were as important as the plots involving their parents. Now it seems like, the show knows that the kids' stories are best served as B-plots meant to break up the action. The serial stuff that made shows like Lost and Heroes so popular and with Dr. King and the Watcher, we have two good villains to drive things along. The Watcher is far from the antisocial Skylar-type villain we've seen on these kinds of shows and his charisma works directly on us.

On the subject of action, there's not any improvement in the action scenes. Interactions between people with different powers (i.e. X-Men, Fantastic Four, Heroes) can lend themselves to all sorts of creative chess-type pairings where one person's power cancels out someone else's power but makes him vulnerable to a different type of superhuman. The battles (the fire-shooting villain in the last episode, for example) appear to be checkpoints en route to advancing the plot. I get the sense that the show isn't even interested in the notion that action scenes can be fun and exciting in their own rights.

Lastly, RIP Francis. Sorry to see the poor guy go, considering he was one of the few side characters who wasn't painted with such a broad stroke of cartoonish smugness. Francis practically was marked for death considering he kept involving himself in the middle of things against very powerful people with whom he had no superpowers to defend himself against.

Would love to write on Glee (this week: Sappy and a very blatant excuse to sell a Christmas Album) or Running Wilde (last week: the limitations of the Andy-Emmy-Steve love triangle really started to show and the plot felt entirely gratuitous as a result, this week: considerably more creative with a plot it has told three times already in the last 8 episodes), but must go to bed.

Modern Family review: Bumbling Dads, Comedy of Errors, etc

Last week's episode of "Modern Family" inspired a lot of thoughts in me:

Synopses:
The Dumphy Household plot: Haley and Claire are both sick and spend the day in bed together. Claire dissaproves of Haley's boyfriend and tries to have a mother-to-daughter talk with him about how she might think about pursuing other men and Haley misinterprets this as a candid confession by her mom that her marriage isn't working.
The Jay-Gloria-Manny plot: Jay fires one of his workers for allowing Manny onto a construction crane and driving through a wall. Manny feels guilty and pleads for the worker to have his job back but Jay won't budge. Meanwhile, Jay can't remember the location or occasion for the next of Gloria's anniversary dates because she overcelebrates.
The Cam-Mitchell-Lilly plot: Cam wants to put Lilly in a commercial over Mitch's objecetions

I tend to never be particularly dissatisfied with this show, because I only need one of the three plots to really hit the spot for me. The strength of the characters and general strength of writing alone ensures that an episode subplot will never be truly awful. From that perspective, it’s good that the show’s subplots aren’t usually strongly interconnected.

With that in mind, one of three plots was kind of a dud for me and I feel like the Cam and Mitchell subplots have been consistently weak lately.
I do think that Cam, Mitchell and Lilly are great to watch and I don’t remember any gay couples ever being depicted so richly on broadcast TV. I especially like how their lives aren’t so much shown in the context of the gay community (“Will and Grace” did that and it never interested me) but rather, within the context of how they fit into WASP suburbia and their families. Let’s look at the last three weeks: 1) Mitch and Cam argue about whether to turn Lily into a child actor; 2) Who’s at fault for Mitch bringing a costume to work? 3) Mitch and Cam disagree on where to send their kid to private school. The Mitch-and-Cam plots focus fairly heavily on inter-couple bickering and for the same reason I never got into “Everybody Loves Raymond,” I don’t find bickering couples that much fun to watch. The Halloween costume plot could have been much more entertaining, for example, if it just cut out the bickering and devoted more screen time to how Cam was going to get through the day.

The other two plots both were very strong. The Jay-Manny subplot was at its best when it briefly exited the wackiness of sitcomdom for a moment of realism. Jay put his foot down and refused to let Manny influence his decision over whether to rehire an employee who put Manny in danger. Even more impressive was that the moment was rooted in classic comic wackiness straight out of an episode of “I Love Lucy” and the storyline eventually transitioned back into a comic context by episode’s end. It’s a testament to the show’s richness and consistency in tone that they can merge emotional moments and comedy so well. The story's big emotional reveal- that Jay called Manny his kid for the first time- was not foreshadowable anywhere in the episode so I liked the twist there.

The Haley-Claire subplot was a great comedy of errors: Due to a certain ambiguity in their words, Haley and Claire are drawing two entirely different conclusions from the same conversation. 90% of the plots on “Three’s Company” revolved around this staple, and it’s been used in Dumphy clan storylines before (i.e. the episode about Haley’s diary). This was a good episode for Haley who often sees her parents and siblings as mere impediments to her all-important social life. It was slightly atypical of the show, however, to not have a nice little resolution at episode’s end. Claire still believes that her mother doesn’t really like her father and their marriage is on shaky grounds. For a show that aims for realism, a teenage girl’s response to her parents’ decaying marriage was treated a little too casually.

Other notes:
-It was nice that the Dumphy clan storyline referenced the staggering economy without basing a whole storyline on it.
-I was thinking during this episode about the “bumbling dad” trope that sitcoms mine for humor and how “Modern Family” employs it pretty diversely. “Modern Family” adheres to the stereotype very closely with Phil and subsequently mines a lot of laughs from his bumbling. That’s not entirely the case with Jay. Like Phil and other bumbling dads, Jay often finds himself outmatched by his stepson, but it has less to do with his incompetence and more to do with Manny being a freak of nature in terms of maturity and intelligence. Hence, Jay can do some comic bumbling but it doesn’t detract from our view of him as a very capable family patriarch.

Review of this past Thursday in TV

Originally, this was gonna be the whole past week in television but time constraints prevented that. The five grades are all very high but last week they would have been significantly lower (The Office and Community last week both dissapointed me, for example). Also, every other show I saw this week (Running Wilde, Castle, No Ordinary Family and Modern Family) was a lower grade and I just didn't have time to get to those shows.


30 Rock “Reaganism” A
A-Plot: Jack is having a perfect day and comes up with some ninth-inning challenges he needs to fix (mainly in the form of Liz’s love life) to be able to keep his hot streak rolling
B-Plot: Jenna convinces Kenneth to assist in scamming a Caravel Ice Cream shop and creates a monster in the process (Kelsey Grammar guests here in a wonderful role)
C-Plot: Tracy can’t do a commercial to save his life

The difference between a great 30 Rock episode and the kind of episode that makes you mourn the old days of 30 Rock isn’t much at all. This wasn’t a big gimmicky week like last week’s live show, but they had a pair of solid storylines to start out with and infused them with great anarchic fun. The C-plot of Tracy Jordan messing up a TV commercial was Tracy being unleashed in a way that we haven’t seen him in a while.
Fun fact: Tracy is what tvtropes.org calls a Cloud Cuckoolander

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia “Mac’s Mom Burns the House Down” A-
A-Plot: Charlie and Mac (along with Dennis) try to get their mothers to live together
B-Plot: Dee gets sick. Fearing she won’t take care of him when he gets older, Frank tries to be a good dad and tend to her
Best episode I’ve seen in a while and that was solely on the strength of an exceptionally well-executed A-plot (the B-plot was pretty forgettable). The episode really had some great misdirection. The opening title and the fact that 98% of the show’s episodes don’t end happily led me away from believing that Mrs. Mac and Mrs. Kelly would be able to coexist and that’s where the storyline would end up. You know what? An occasional happy ending not only doesn’t hurt, it was actually very sweet. And as an added bonus, the dog miraculously survived. Just when I thought the show couldn't bring me any more joy. The best part was that they didn’t have to sacrifice the show’s trademark nastiness to accomplish this. I also loved how Charlie and Mac were trying to fit their moms into an episode of Golden Girls.


Community: A-
Plot: Shirley decides to make a Christian film for anthropology class. Abed, the always-entrancing film student decides to one-up her by making an extravagant meta-film on Jesus’ life that’s ridiculously complex, sacreligious on many levels and self-serving (the film’s name is “Abed”). Shirley is infurated

If you’re one of those reviewers that likes using the word “meta” (as in meta-textual or self-referencing) then you are going to have a field day with this episode. It is probably the most “meta” thing ever put on film. It references Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York” so that automatically makes it one meta-level above that. This episode was definitely a thinking man’s episode but in reality it probably didn’t make any sense. It was just complete anarchy. The show ended up just getting profoundly silly in the best of ways because that silliness was built out of this façade of grandeur that was the Abed film. Abed is usually relegated to the sidelines as a sort of zany wild card character who delivers golden little nuggets. When an episode is centered around Abed, it’s always been a more typical sitcomy episode (i.e. Abed’s dad is displeased with his career choice, girl has crush on Abed but maybe he’s too weird to approach her) and the plot tones Abed’s quirkiness down considerably and fortunately, that wasn’t the case here. It was also a good episode for Shirley who I think is the most limited character of the gang. The minus on the A is because the ending seemed like a cop-out.

The Office: “The Sting” B+
Plot: Dunder-Mufflin sets up a surveillance operation to try to learn the secrets of a suave salesman who’s stolen a lot of their clients
B-Plot: Andy decides to form a band. Creative disagreements ensue with Andy and bandmates Kevin and Darryl.
Overarching Plot/Long-Term implications: Dunder-Mifflin hires a new traveling salesman

It was nice to see Jim and Dwight working together like they did in “Traveling Salesman” although they didn’t show much of it. I think, on a larger note, my main problem with the episode came down to timing. They should have ended the episode with the introduction of the new salesman and left the quarrels between Danny and his coworkers for another episode to keep the suspense. It would have also given more time for the hijinks that this episode really thrived on. This episode had a set piece that turned into one of the most memorable scenes “The Office” has done in years: Meredith poses as a manger and as Oscar and Ryan try to intercept her she thwarts each of their plans brilliantly. The show works so well (or at least used to work so well) on awkward tension and that segment of the episode had you glued to your seat. The band subplot was a little cliché and the payoffs weren’t that great but I did like the Andy-Darryl chemistry. In the past, Darryl has been somewhat aggressive (he was downright intimidating and villainous to Michael in the first season’s basketball episode) so I'm glad to see an improvement there.

Outsourced: B+
Plot: Todd is accused of sexual harassment but he doesn’t know by whom

The sexual harassment episode is a staple (and if it isn’t, it should be one) because we’ve all seen that sexual harassment video and giggled at the lame acting. In India, as would be expected, the results were far different. It was pretty admirable to take that shared awkwardness we get when we watch the sexual harassment video and make a pretty solid episode out of it. The episode reminded me of how “Outsourced” isn’t getting the credit it deserves. Todd’s efforts to single out his accuser made for hilarious results that reminded me of actors improvising in an Adam McKay movie. The show’s good characters got better: Rajiv’s passive-aggressiveness was sprinkled in at the right places to punch up the tension with humor and Asha and Todd had some good moments. It’s becoming easy to see why Todd would mistakenly fall for Asha: She’s smart and relatable and to this guy who’s lost in this foreign land, she feels less foreign than anyone else. The lesser characters also had their moments: Gupta was used as a punch line as usual (the joke Manmeet made towards Gupta about him bringing shame to his family was awkward, but I might accept at as a cultural difference) but it ended with Manmeet making a nice gesture which shows that there’s hope for Gupta (at least for the other characters) and the shy girl (Madhuri) was used very well.

How 30 Rock Lost my Dad and the Implications Therein

First off, I finally got around to posting a new column at the examiner where I write about the film industry: Jackass 3-D: A Deserving Box Office Champ or the Decline of Civillization. Do please check it out, because that's my professional outlet and my job is to get readers on that site (not this one, even if I'm spending more time here).

Second, thank you to a number of friends who supported me and expressed interest in me when I told the news that I was being considered for an A.V. Club position.

I recently had the experience of watching 30 Rock a couple weeks ago with a somewhat culturally outdated man (my dad-a guy I love and apologize to in advance for ragging on) who was unaware until then that any good TV has come on the air since "Frasier" and "Seinfeld." His sensibilities were trained for laugh-track TV and I could tell that he was disoriented by the lack of a laugh-track and unprepared to give the show’s funny moments the benefit of the doubt unless something hit him in a familiar way as laugh-out loud funny. The end result was that he laughed less than I thought he would.

It was also a little bit of an off-week. When 30 Rock reverts to the same “Liz’s love life is awry” or “Tracy goes crazy” plots, the humor can get tired and stale. Last night was a better episode. Laughwise, it would have worked on my dad but it also would have worked on me (wait, it didn’t theoretically work on me, it did work on me because I was there. Sorry, getting my tenses confused) and rewarded me more on second-viewing. Last night’s 30 Rock worked in so many ways that it reminded me of that feeling I had in the first two seasons of watching a masterpiece unfold.

In the larger sense, I thought the “Reaganism” analogy was lame but the idea of Jack having a perfect day (without the term “Reaganing it” that they coined for this episode) lent itself to hilarity and two things about the episode felt inspired to me: 1) The way Jack fixed Liz’s psychosexual problem was so bizarre that it was more a satire on psychology than something to be taken at face value. It came off to me as a parody of the Hitchkock movie “Spellbound” but I have a feeling that the writers weren’t even thinking of "Spellbound" and were just going for general zaniness and 2) I loved the idea of rich movie stars jumping on board a scheme to rob Caravel ice cream of hundreds of dollars. It slowly pushed the boundaries of believability until it slid right out from under our feet.

But I want to focus more on the things I got when I viewed the show a second time. Some of those things were:
-“Let’s take a quick 500” which came off another zinger “Scripts get in the way of my process, Shawn. Let’s just shoot 100 of these and see what we get”: There is so much to admire things in these combined three lines. It demonstrates two of Tracy’s character traits extremely well: 1) He’s selfish and is a pain to everyone around him (his director is already bitter at him for messing up his last movie) but he’s oblivious to this trait which makes him likeable and 2) Even though he’s clearly insane, he has a consistency to it (if he needs 100 takes to nail one line, he’s going to also need 500 minutes of rest). I also love the way “quick” proceeds “500” as if there’s any way to “quickly” proceed about a stoppage of work that runs eight hours and fifteen minutes longer than the industry standard.
-“Could you put a human on the phone?” It took me until a second viewing to realize Kenneth was, in fact, talking to an animal. Humor really makes me laugh sometimes by getting me to ask hypotheticals. I’m right now thinking: Exactly how is an animal going to put a human on the phone and will that break Kenneth’s illusion that an animal can listen to him when the animal fails to abide by his request?
-Also on the hypothetical note….this one’s more obvious “You did it sir…a day of perfect problem solving….gifts have been coming in all over” This is funny because your mind goes to so many hypotheticals such as how people can be sending him gifts so quickly, how people can possibly know about his perfect day, etc…..
-“A couple hundred dollars [Is all you need]? I can help you out but first I’m gonna need $50 to get started” –Kelsey Grammar in a wonderful guest role
“Yes, you are the sexual equivalent of a million Hindenburgs, but….”-Jack, on a good day, comforting Liz
-“Forget it, I didn’t have a perfect day” –This wasn’t so much the line itself but the way Alec Baldwin said it with the gravity of Jack Bauer on “24”
-“Slip and falls”: The vernacular for the con-game Jenna and her mom used to play at grocery stores.
-“I don’t understand what you’re saying, but I like that it has the word ‘we’ in it” Evidently, this is all it takes to ask Kenneth to betray a moral code so strong that he was willing to shoot himself rather than adhere to lifeboat ethics.
-“I’ll do stuff with the dog, but I get to pick the dog.”–A soliciting prostitute who has her list of demands.

And most importantly this one because it leads to my next point:
-“I’m a real woman, not some oversexed nympho like those sluts from ‘Everybody Loves Raymond.’” 30 Rock often does this. They take a random sentence in the dialogue, play it entirely straight in delivery and put it in the context of an entire conversation or scene that isn’t particularly humorous except for one single substitution of one thing for another.

It’s almost as if they’re misleading you away from the laugh by stacking that one joke on either side with so much non-funny material. In the episode I saw with my dad, the A-plot was tied together with a dramatic confrontation scene between Jack Donaghy and a Queen Latifah’s congresswoman character. The final third of this line was the only humorous bit in the entire scene: “The first generation works their fingers to the bone making things, the next generation goes to college and innovates new ideas, the third generation snowboards and takes improv classes.” This was one of those things too subtle for my dad to get but I caught it.

This got me thinking: In order for someone like my dad (and he is a very smart guy, I don’t mean to be ragging on him so much) to be on board “30 Rock,” it would help if he got a lot more jokes on first viewing. Why would "30 Rock" want to lead its viewers away from the jokes? A laugh track would guide him towards the funny like a highlighted used-textbook might help a college student study.

Chuck Klosterman’s book “Eating the Dinasour” has an expose in it answering the question about why shows don’t use laugh tracks: It’s condescending to tell the audience when to laugh. It’s considered smarter and more sophisticated and that’s a good convention to follow. Shows that have laugh tracks tend to be “ghettoized” although there is room for a few of them on the schedule because occasionally older viewers (like my dad) like the nostalgic old-timey shows too.

Maybe it's important to consider that it's not pure nostalgia. In the interest of attracting a broad audience, laugh tracks have merit because they ensure that the better jokes hit their targets (AKA my dad). Remember that "30 Rock" is on a network that was so desperate to climb out of 3rd or 4th in the ratings that they displaced a third of their programming last year for a comic who by all accounts is mediocre simply because he attracts a broad audience. Having a comedy line-up entirely devoid of laugh track shows makes the lesser established shows ("Parks and Recreation," "Community," and "Outsourced") hard to distinguish from each other and sometimes invites unnecessary critical comparisons. I am actively rooting for every comedy NBC currently has to stay on the schedule so I'm not advocating going back to the drawing board. I am suggesting, however, that the newer comedies that might not be performing well in a critical or ratings sense, "Parks" and "Outsourced," do face unique challenges which we need to consider. I am also saying in the future: Don't rule out a show with a laugh track.

In Defense of Four New Prime Time Comedies of the 2010 Season

Six new comedies came out on prime time this fall season and I've watched four of them: $#)%* my Dad Says, Outsourced, Raising Hope, and Running Wilde. I like them all and think that the kinks that came with the pilots can be eventually worked out.

The critical consensus is that of disappointment with some, if not, all of these shows. Since I've been liking everything I saw on the comedy front this season, it might look like I'm soft but it's more of an issue of me tuning out the crap. A good amount of TV is derivative and uninspired and I knew fairly early on that "Mike and Molly" and "Better than You" fit that category. The former (premise: fat schlub finds a woman willing to marry him) was also identical in premise to "King of Queens," "According to Jim," or "Still Standing"; the latter (some variation of newlyweds awkwardly adjust to larger social circle) looks indistinguishable from "Worst Week", "Til Death", "For Your Love" or "Everybody Loves Raymond." I was bored before I even tuned in and I'm thankful that only two shows on that level of blandness exist this season.

The other four new comedies each offer something original and for that they deserve our attention and the benefit of the doubt that given time they can grow. This is dually important because unoriginal and uninspired TV still populates the airwaves.

Here are those four shows:
1. Running Wilde on Fox
The Hook (What drew me into thinking that this would more than an ordinary show): Creator Mitch Hurwitz practically reinvented comedy with Arrested Development and Will Arnett and David Cross both excelled under his tutelage. The premise of a rich man who is absurdly out of touch with reality being brought down to Earth by the only woman he's ever had any contact with is certainly unique. On top of that, add in the two obstacles that she's: 1) Already engaged to someone and 2) Is voluntarily on the opposite end of the socio-economic spectrum than him

How the show delivers: The pilot was sluggish but by just the second episode we saw the kind of intricately absurd plotting that made Arrested Development so great. We also saw the complexities of the love triangle once David Cross entered the picture. Also, this show has the same chemistry between Cross and Arnett with a much better framework that pits the two against each other in a way that Arrested Development never did: Cross's character was an asexual outsider without any business accumen, so he never competed with Arnett's the way Arnett and Bateman would compete over girls and status.

What the detractors say: The pilot felt a little sluggish to the reviewers as well but there were other complaints.

Every character on AD was strong but the butler and the secretary characters don't really seem to add anything. Already, TV.com added Mr. Luntz (the secretary) to their list of least likable characters writing that, "He seems to be half-British and also weirdly half-effeminate, but he also has no real point of view."

Three reviews I've come across don't like Will Arnett as a lead character for a sitcom. Ken Levine "does not find him funny for a second", TV Guide says the show delivers "more smarm than charm" (an implication to Arnett who's comic persona is all about smarm) and Time Magazine's James Poniewozik makes the unfavorable comparison of Will Arnett as the lead to Jason Bateman in AD.

My defense: Even though the reviewers only have the pilot to work with, they should be ashamed of themselves for writing off Hurwitz so quickly. Poniewozik is already proclaiming that Hurwitz's talent will shine through eventually but probably not in this series which sounds like he's writing his epitaph. The massive improvement between the pilot and the second episode shows how promising this show can be. Will Arnett was deservedly nominated for a supporting Emmy as Gob and regularly stole the show from an incredibly talented cast. He is more of an extreme than Bateman's Michael Bluth but he's counterbalanced by greater extremes as well and there do exist relatively normal characters in the form of Migo and Puddle.

2. Raising Hope on Fox
The Hook: Just like Running Wilde, my interest in the show comes from the past work of it's creator Greg Garcia who was behind "My Name is Earl."

How the Show Delivers: I'll concede that the show's premise isn't as novel as "My Name is Earl." One show was about a lowlife crook whose winning of the lottery inspires him to make entirely unique life changes for the better and "Raising Hope" is just about a lowlife teenager who knocked up a girl. However, many of the same elements of "My Name is Earl"- characters driven toward unexpected self-improvement; exploring people on the socio-economic fringes of Americana; characters who are endearing in spite of their stupidity; moments that are genuinely touching- are here as well and that's a good reason to invest yourself in this show.

What the detractors say: Of the four TV shows, Raising Hope is getting the most positive reviews even those reviews are pretty cautious. Most have said that the pilot isn't that great but that it shows promise. Looking at a couple of those reviews at Time Magazine and AV Club), there seems to be some criticism of the show treating their characters with contempt as well as the gags being lazy. Former TV scribe Ken Levine, who blogs here wrote "this show felt like all the white trash jokes they couldn’t get to on MY NAME IS EARL they jammed in here."

My response: I am in agreement here that the show's humor is unimpressive early on and coming from desperate places. At the same time, I would expect a low laughs-per-minute ratio on a show like this in comparison to a better sitcom. The humor doesn't come from one-liners but rather our relationships to the characters and those will grow over time. Early on, the change in pace and the general weirdness of "My Name is Earl" meant it took a little while to grow on you as well.


3. #@)$*() My Dad Says on CBS:
Hook: #@$*( My Dad Says comes from a unique source in the form of a guy on Twitter who started blogging funny things his old-fashioned dad was saying. That doesn't necessarily mean the show will be good, but it gets my attention because if the show is created by an outsider, I'll probably get a fresh perspective. Also, it is a perspective that is pretty relatable: Most of us have at least one elderly relative who casually says things in the privacy of their own home that would get us in a lot of trouble if those words came out of our mouths.

How it delivers: William Shatner, who can be easily pigeonholed in our heads as that caricature of his Captain Kirk character he's been doing for years, is delightfully fresh here. Thanks to the writing, his character is a relatively unique comic creation. The show has heart as well. When the father and son are dancing at the end of the pilot, it's an earned moment. The best indication, however, that I wanted to see more is simply that the show made me laugh. Numerous times.

What the detractors say: One reviewer (TV Guide) sees Shatner's character more as a "shallowly conceived grouch belching trite punch lines." Alan Speinwall and Joel Keller of AOL's TV Squad both think Shatner's character is too crude to solicit empathy although Keller thinks Shatner showed potential in one scene. There was also some criticism that the rest of the cast is somewhat weak in comparison to Shatner.

My defense: First off, the cast includes Will Sasso and Nicole Sullivan who might be taking a while to find their chemistry but they certainly have the talent as evidenced by their work on "Mad TV." Jonathan Sadowski was a last-minute replacement and he's the straight man to Shatner's funny man so he doesn't have to be the show's strongest link. The major question here is whether Shatner is convincing and it's just a matter of me buying it whereas others didn't.

Another thing to keep in mind is that this show is on CBS. The network's bread and butter is mediocre middle-of-the-road comedies like "Everybody Loves Raymond" "Yes Dear" and "Two and a Half Men." Admittedly, "Raymond" has more pathos, but none of those shows were innovative in anyway, whatsoever. At best, they were good for a few laughs in a familiar setting. If it can get past the initial torrent of negative reviews and survive its first season, there's no question "#@$* My Dad Says" could at least deliver at the bar set by the other shows on the network.



4. Outsourced on NBC:
The Hook: Outsourcing is interesting. An article on what life is like for an American middle manager transplanted to India would be intriguing so a TV show set in that world would naturally be intriguing as well. It’s not just because I was a geography major in college but because it’s relevant and has affected people I know.

How it delivers: Outsourcing has a natural go-to place for its humor in the form of culture clash jokes and the writing seems competent enough that they know how to mine it. Culture clash humor is going to rely more on the relationships between the characters than the "Hey, you guys are wearing funny hats" type of observational shtick. In that category, potential is developing in the network of relationships that’s being established. The protagonist has an American colleague (Diedrich Baker) who’s kind of boorish, a passive-aggressive assistant manager and a team of subordinates with whom he’s having several awkward Michael-Scott-like moments. There’s also an flirty Australian love interest but she’s been kept in the background so far.

Criticism: Todd van der Werff of the A.V. Club declares this is the end of NBC Thursday night's glory days. According to him, the show's scenes between Americans feel like they're on a different show than the ones portraying American-Indian culture clash and neither are executed particularly well. Some critics found the characters boring like the blogger from Film School Rejects who named this show the failure of the season. James Poniewozik acknowledges "satire is a dangerous zone" but says the show is a disappointment with cheap jokes that insult the audience.

My response: Again, it's a matter of placing too much emphasis on the pilot. Characters might be one-dimensional in the pilot because there's not enough screen time to develop everybody and give exposition in 22 minutes. The show's breakout characters in Parks and Recreation, Ron Swanson and Tom Haverford, seemed like dumb one-note characters in the pilot too. Swanson gave a speech about he preferred Chuck-E-Cheese to government and it seemed like the writers were trying too hard to inject the characters with quirks. Over times, his quirks formed part of a fully-fleshed personality that strengthened because it stayed consistent over several episodes. I could see three or four of these characters as pop culture stalwarts like Ron Swanson or Dwight from "The Office." In addition, there were only a few one-line gags in the pilot which is an indication that the show is going to be going for broader situational laughs.

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Community: Intro to Debate

Intro to Debate…B-

Of the three sub-plots this week, none of them entirely worked out for me so it’s hard to put this anywhere north of the B range. However, the plots collectively the episode had enough moments to invoke a general feeling of gooey goodness in me by episode's end. A lot of it came down to the climax of the debate where the hot shot debater in the wheelchair does something completely unexpected to seemingly win the debate until Annie does something even more unexpected to really win the debate and tie up the B-plot nicely. Tying plot points together in a Seinfeldesque manner like that is always impressive enough to at least partially redeem an episode's lackluster plotting.

In the A-plot, Dean Pelton wants the debate team to do well and Jeff is seen as a prime candidate. He offers a carrot on a stick of sorts to get him to join. This plot’s been used before two or three times but maybe it’s the show’s go-to-move and I’m not supposed to dock it points for unoriginality. Annie wanting to be popular again convinces Jeff to put more effort into what he’s doing. It’s a redo of the episode where Annie bawls her eyes out to get Jeff to attend her Halloween party.

As for the B-plot, I would think it's a little early in the series for Abed’s meta-textual gags to work. Besides, where is he getting the free time and actors to create another TV show? The B-story ties into the A-story because Abed has a strange ability to predict the future and he predicts that Shirley will be chased by a werewolf and that Jeff and Annie will make out. Jeff and Annie start feeling (strangely) unexplained chemistry (kind of abrupt, since they've had zero up to this point). The A.V. Club’s review says that the sudden falling-in-love scene was supposed to be mocking the convention of how the librarian starts becoming sexy once she lets her hair out. Not buying it. The chemistry becomes hastily explained by Shirley telling this week’s will-they-won’t-they pair about Abed’s prediction.

The problems with the debate scenes themselves is symptomatic of one of the show’s main problems: Painted in too broad a stroke. The theme of the debate-within-a-show (that occupies a little too much screen time, in my opinion, btw) is whether man good or evil.

Lastly, the C-story is about Britta trying to quit cigarettes and Pierce volunteering to hypnotize her out of it. I might have missed this: Was he claiming to be an amateur psychologist in addition to being a toastmaster, keyboardist and fashion consultant (as when he designed the mascot) Sometimes it stretches it that Pierce is like the jack-of-all-trades until you remember that he’s not particularly adept at anything. Instead, he’s just that eager beaver who is willing to pick up any extracurricular activity and volunteer for any task because he wants to fit in and be respected so badly. That’s actually a relatable character in any college or group, so I have to give it that.

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Last two weeks of the Office: Murder and Double Date reviews

Murder B
This was a somewhat breezy and inconsequential episode and kind of a pleasant one at that. It showed the staff being themselves and dealing with some typical team situation –the staff forgetting the impending problems of doom and immersing themselves into a board game- in the quirky way that this body of people reacts. They are almost like a large dysfunctional family: Andy and Dwight got really into the game while Angela and Stanley got bored to death and the rest of the crew members fell somewhere in between. Oscar, a more sensible member of the group, insisted on keeping his blackberry throughout because the reason the group was playing this game to forget that the company might be bankrupt.

The show also pitted Michael and Jim against each other in a way that created
meaningful conflict and then simmered the tension down in a realistic way. You have to wonder how the hell Jim can have any credibility telling the group to get back to work knowing he was the goofball for several years up until he realized had a kid and a mortgage to support. Still, the fact that the office calls him out on it is great.

There was also the Erin and Andy subplot and if you don’t like mushy romance, you’ll find this amusing. The plot development between them is straight out of a romantic comedy film but it seemed slightly hipper and done in a way only the Office could pull off.

I gave the show a B, however, because it seemed kind of rushed and not exactly funny.

Oh wait----Just as I concluded on giving the show a B, the show’s closing scene of Pam, Dwight, Andy, and Steve in a show-down put a smile on my face. Ehhh....still a B.



Double Date C-
This left such a bitter taste in my mouth because the Jim and Pam show isn’t that exciting anymore. I feel like Jim’s development as a character has gone in a negative direction and I don’t believe John Krasinski or the writers see the character the way I do. They still think Jim is as likable a guy as he was in the first couple seasons.

In contrast, I think he’s a goofball who suddenly feels holier than thou in relationship to Michael and his other coworkers because he’s got a baby on the way and a mortgage to support and, all of a sudden, he has to be more responsible. I can almost no longer tolerate watching Michael and Jim scenes. There were moments like when Jim says “Stop!” to Michael that I cringe and not in a good way.

In the episode, Michael joins Pam and Jim for a birthday lunch for Mrs. Beasley. The episode started picking up steam when Michael insensitively dumps Pam’s mom (did not see that coming) and Pam gets pissed off. In contrast to Jim, I can still stay on board Pam’s character even if I don’t approve of what Pam is doing. I think Pam is a rational person but she’s just sort of gone nuts and has lost it. We as the audience aren't really supposed to be condoning Pam’s actions as recognizing that Pam is in a Oepedial state of regression at seeing her mother date her boss. I believe the writers are more aware of this.

In the third act, Pam gets pissed off and Michael concedes her a single punch if it will make everything feel better. The episode also showed Toby completely ignoring his HR duties by giving Pam boxing advice. I thought that since the monumental hug, Toby and Michael were getting along better now, especially since that monumental hug. Another problem with this whole thing was that Toby seems too apathetic to want to risk getting himself in trouble over a desire to punch Michael. It's a central trait of Toby that he gets pushed around a lot and he doesn't push back because he's too timid.

The episode builds up to that one punch (or at least the promise of it) and all the hype is a little too hard to deliver. Maybe that was the point?

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Parks and Recreation back log: Greg Pikitis and Kaboom

Greg Pikitis: B
The major strength of this episode was that every character had a moment or two that was funny. The creepy attraction of Tom towards Anne has been played out for laughs from episode one and it’s still effective here. Anne pretty much tolerates Tom but obviously finds him unpleasant and when she throws a Halloween party, she doesn’t want to invite him. I love Tom and find him to be one of my true breakout characters because he thinks he’s so convinced that he’s the life of the party even when he isn’t. Unfortunately, Tom isn’t really the main A or B-story. The A-story mostly centers around Anne worrying that her party is lame. That’s not much of a plot and there’s not too much more excitement out of this than being surprised by people’s Halloween costumes. April’s straight boyfriend’s gay boyfriend wins hands-down for being a straight guy.

The B-plot showed how sweet Leslie’s romance with the cop is because the two are so awkward together. If he wasn’t such a nebbish guy, there’s no way he would put up with too much more of her, but he seems like he’s too shy to ask out more than one person a year and knows it might be a while before the next person comes along who’s willing to go out with him. The B-plot worked slightly better for me. Greg Pikitis gave us more of that normal-crazy dichotomy off of Leslie where he did something that wasn’t that big of a deal but to Leslie, it was the equivalent of a national scandal. The episode was cringe-worthy but was more so predictable. The actor who played Greg nailed his part well and Andy had some very strong moments.

Andy’s best moment and the episode’s best moment came out of an off-screen allusion to him: One of the best moments in the episode was how the nurses appeared to like Andy so much more than Mark. Hillarious.





Kaboom: B+
Part of the theme of small-town comedies and dramedies is that small-towns are one big grown-up version of high school. People have known each other forever and their world seems kind of small by comparison. If this makes sense to you, you might get a Breakfast- Club-kind of joy out of seeing a friendship form between two polar opposites. Andy is the dumb jock who’s not into doing work and Leslie, is the goody two-shoes type. It also indicates in a sweet way that Andy is really coming around and willing to change. Andy develops in a way that doesn’t make him any less dense or dumb.

The show starts out with Leslie getting foolishly inspired by Kaboom (a real organization that in this parallel universe is part of a nonsensical scam) to do something impulsive. In a great Ann-and-Leslie moment (one of the key relationships of the show and the best-developed in my opinion), Leslie hops on board her stupidity and the two fill in the park on their own. Unfortunately, Andy’s still living in the pit (although he claims he isn’t) living in the park and he gets badly injured by a torrent of dirt that a crane drops on him.

Andy then has the choice to sue the city or not and the episode takes a good turn that makes a winner out of both Andy and the Parks department. It’s nice to have a good ending after things usually go so haywire for Leslie. Like Michael Scott’s development, the show isn’t worth rooting for if they don’t make Leslie semi-competent once in a while.

Review of last two Parks and Recreation Episodes

Mural: C+
This week in which both the office and Parks were very slowed-down episodes where nothing really happened in terms of character development (I don’t consider impending bankruptcy much because I don’t believe it will amount to anything serious on the Office). This wasn’t too much of an episode for action. It was just a set piece that let the characters’ quirkiness come out. The plot was that all the characters each had to design a new mural for city hall and the episode’s best strength was how committee members who initially didn’t care about it started getting into the competition. April appeared a little more enthusiastic than usual, Donna (a side character) had the most bizarre entry of the competition, and the other uncredited member of the department Jerry had far and away the best picture but lost points becasue everyone hated him. Tom went from initially disliking the picture he contracted out to an art student becaue it didn't include enough naked ladies on it to loving it because it had shapes. It was a relatively nice way to spend a half-hour but it was mostly forgettable. The episode’s biggest sin was a lack of ambition.
The B-plot was so dumb, I barely can bring myself to repeat it: Ron makes a semi-orgasmic moan while Andy is shining his shoes which embarrasses both of them. Even if you are warming up to this show, you have to take a step back and admit that that was just a misguided idea.


Ron and Tammy: A-
The idea that Leslie Knoepp is crazy and the world just sort of brushes her off as a little overenthusiastic about what she does is fine, but to actually pair her against someone who’s just as crazy was gold. That other person is Megan Mullally who guest stars as Ron Swanson’s bitchy ex-wife, Tammy. The plot is that the parks department needs to fight the library system for the rights to develop the plot and Tammy’s been appointed the new director of the library department.

Up until now, Tammy has only been alluded to and like Maris Crane on Frasier, she’s already been pretty hard to live up to. Megan Mullally pulled it off: She was vindictive and crazy in this episode but only revealed herself to be that way in the third act of the episode. That was the beauty of the whole thing: When Leslie meets Tammy, Tammy seems perfectly pleasant and sweet and tricks Leslie into feeling out of place when she overreacts to a $3 library fine. Tammy generously agrees to give Leslie the plot because, as she says, the two must stick together as women in government. Leslie feels so pleased by Tammy’s offer that she thinks it’s a good idea to get Ron and Tammy on good terms. The two appear to hit it off again immediately, at least on a pure carnal level, but we soon find that Megan has ulterior motives. The other major twist is that Ron isn’t so much hateful of Tammy’s guts so much as he is desperate to resist her charms and too weak to do so. It’s a doozy of an episode and even more so if you love Ron Swanson. For me, he’s never been the most appealing part of the show so others might rate it higher but I did think it was a strong episode overall (and gave it the second highest grade that I gave).

The b-plot was pretty decent and the question of whether Mark is really a jerk was given a satisfiable answer on the basis of how he didn’t try to be a jerk to Andy even though Andy is hilariously dillusional.Also of note: the episode had a GREAT Anne Moment, where Anne is too engrossed into group think to disagree that having a library next to her house would be a bad idea.

A guide to overrated TV shows

To me, TV is a more frustrating and less democratic medium than movies, since it's based on Nielsen ratings which except for a week in my life when I was 6, I have no control over. Variables such as time slots, star power, initial ratings, etc. that have little to do with actual quality are the deciding factors as to what stays and what goes. As a result, I think a lot of crap ends up on the air and runs for several seasons. Here are some shows I find overrated:

Sex and the City-No, it's not anti-feminist to say that I don't want to see a bunch of sexually empowered women talking about their sexual empowerment. I don't want to watch any sexually obsessed characters talking about sex all day, regardless of their gender. So that includes the guys on Entourage, Nancy's brother-in-law on Weeds, John Laroquette's character on "Night Court." These are what we call caricatures, people. I've only seen something like two episodes of "Sex and the City" (I'm sorry, I could not bear to watch any more than that) but those characters are not real people. Real people think about more than just sex and have other concerns in life. One last point: the show is also such a celebration of materialism and wealth, they're always dining in posh establishments and stuff.

Will and Grace: Ok, I'm beginning to sound vehemently anti-gay by bashing Sex and the City AND Will and Grace but still, in order for me to like a show, I have to like at least one character on it. The only characters I like are the gay-friendly guest stars like Alec Baldwin, Woody Harrelson, Michael Douglas, and Jack Black but in terms of the characters: Grace is shrill and annoying. She's dated half the population of New York and still whines about not finding the right man. Megan Mullally plays a funny character who would serve as a good foil to a likable character but she's not really likable herself. Then we have Will and Jack. I wonder why the gay community isn't more up in arms about the portrayal of Jack on the show and how he caters to so many stereotypes? Granted, he did raise that kid with Rosie O'Donnell's character, but he's also incredibly petty, materialistic, and self-involved. Will is seemingly supposed to be the counterexample of gay culture to Jack to show that not all gay people are girly and self-involved. It's as if Will's entire reason for existence is to assure homophobes "don't fear gays, we might not like girls, but we can be funny," and he pushes it way too hard. For the record, I really like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, lest someone thinks I don't like gay-centered TV shows.

Sports Night-Fans of this short-lived show cite this as an example that networks don't know good quality when they see it. I, on the other hand, blame the network for keeping the show on the air as long as they did. The show is written by Aaron Sorkin so every character sounds exactly the same: everyone is incredibly intelligent, yet grounded enough in sports and culture to be able to pick up each other's pop culture references. They also finish each other's sentences and no, it's not adorable. It would be like the fictional TV sports network was staffed entirely by members of MENSA

The Cosby Show-This is a fairly dangerous show to attack because of its popularity. I wouldn't say I dislike the show in its entirety, but my beef with the show is that sometimes comics start out making us laugh and then tend to glide on those mannerisms. Bill Cosby probably was genuinely funny at some point (I'm guessing before I was born or old enough to speak) and he used to make jokes and contort his face and voice in funny ways while telling those jokes. To me, it seems like he got kind of lazy and just started doing those face and voice contortions without the jokes attached. Seriously, tune into an episode of the Bill Cosby show and notice how little about the show is inherently funny.

MASH-As I said in my post comparing MASH the movie to MASH the sitcom, the movie was brilliant in that it mined the inherent humor of the situation without ever telling a joke in the conventional sense. The TV show was all about jokes in the Groucho Marx form: constant one-liners delivered by Alan Alda as if he were part of a vaudeville show. After a while, Alda's wisecracks stripped the show of its gravity.

All in the Family-This show isn't really a rerun favorite, fortunately, so there's little to complain about. I know the show is revolutionary and was a vehicle for social change, but to watch it in retrospect provides virtually no entertainment value whatsoever. Could you imagine if someone pitched this show to ABC in the present day? "Hey, let's make a half-hour sitcom about a racist father, his grown-up kids and their family antics." (on second thought, I think SPIKE or FX would take that).

Roseanne-I think it was more of the revolutionary angle a la All in the Family that rubbed me the wrong way when I watched it from a historical perspective. Besides, Roseanne was just never a bright or charismatic enough personality that you would want to base a TV show around her, and she wasn't a good enough actor to make an unappealing character interesting. I'm certainly not saying that I'd like to see happy and harmonious families like the Brady Bunch or The Partridge Family, but a dysfunctional family like in Arrested Development, Malcolm in the Middle, or It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia has to find the right tone so that you're laughing all the way to the bank, and not just mulling over how dreary these people are.

Survivor-I don't buy that Survivor is the ultimate game. I don't think that putting people on a desert island or a jungle brings out their most competitive instincts. I think, instead, it just brings out a severe sense of discomfort, fear of contracting exotic diseases and hunger pains. A show like Weakest Link where everything happens in less than sixty minutes, brings out all that scheming and competitive instincts of Survivor in a far more compressed time period. Over the course of several days, I think the contestants are going to forget about "strategy" after a while.



Now, to show that I don't just dislike TV period, here are some shows that were that I think deserved the praise they got:
30 Rock
Arrested Development
Family Guy
The Office
The OC
My Name is Earl
Joan of Arcadia
West Wing
Frasier
Friends
Alias
Spin City
Home Improvement
Cheers
Taxi
Beverly Hillbillies
Mary Tyler Moore Show
Twilight Zone
Star Trek
I Love Lucy
Andy Griffith Show

and shows I find underrated:
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Boston Public
Whose Line is it Anyway
Norm
American Dreams
Less than Perfect
Newsradio
3rd Rock from the Sun
Three's Company
Early Edition
Seaquest DSV
Third Watch
Popular
Monk
Futurama
Malcolm and Eddie
The Rockford Files
Murder She Wrote