Friday, September 28, 2007 Rant Archive
When we last saw Earl Hickey (Jason Lee) he was exercising his Hooker with a Heart of Gold syndrome by taking the rap for Joy (Jamie Pressly), his ex-wife, to keep her out of clink and taking care of her family. This season we are confronted with the fact that every last one of Earl’s efforts to rebuild his grownup life has crumbled since he’s been sentenced to serve two years in state prison. Boo hoo, someone tell the producers to stop playing the world’s smallest violin—we get it, Earl is the everyday anti-hero, a model martyr to losers everywhere that have the gumption to change.
His name is Inmate 28301-16 and the episode begins with Earl acknowledging his luck at sharing a cell with fellow inmate & friend Ralph Mariano (Giovanni Ribisi). In a cleverly paid homage to the 1994 film, Shawshank Redemption, Ralph escapes during the night from a hole hidden behind his Dolly Parton poster. Earl discovers Ralph’s busted out of the joint when a watermelon falls from the top bunk and he sees Ralph’s parting note.
At any rate, due to Ralph’s untimely escape Earl’s forced into the general population, which is described as a 2-year slumber party with murderers and rapists. That sounds like a two-year slumber party I’d want to attend! Immediately, Earl starts to adjust to prison, explaining the monotony his daily life. Things are not going well for Earl, but what can you expect, no one ever said doing hard time would be a walk in the park.
Once you get into it, MAD MEN may just be one of the best shows on TV right now. Just as none of the characters are comfortable in their own skin, the show never lets you get comfortable next to it. There is hidden meaning in everything, even something as fundamentally dramatic as a heart attack. Everyone is wrestling with who they are, and who they are supposed to be.
I was a little surprised that tonight’s episode didn’t begin with Betty Draper getting carted off to the insane asylum, where she belongs. Last we saw her she was shooting her neighbor’s passenger pigeons out of the air with a rifle in her bathrobe. At the start tonight I saw the suitcases, and thought “Ah!” They’ve finally realized that she is batshit crazy! But no, she’s off to the beach for the weekend with her father and his new special lady friend. Betty could not be less approving. Don talks her off a ledge.
This being MAD MEN, nothing goes how you think it’s going to. Don’s now got a night in the city, which on MAD MEN is an excuse for bad behavior. Roger, who never disappoints, corrals him into picking up some models; twins, Max. They retire to Roger’s office for cocktails and seduction. Don is clearly uncomfortable in the situation. Not that he has any scruples about infidelity; I just think Don doesn’t want any thing that’s too easy. Both his mistresses are modern and brunette. One’s an artist in Greenwich Village, the other is a scion of a department store fortune, and actually holds a high-powered job. They are as far from Betty, his prattling crazy blond wife as you can get.
Seems like it was just last season when Clark Kent (Tom Welling) was just a high school lad, dreaming of the prettiest girl in school (Kristin Kreuk) and marveling at his good luck in befriending people skill-challenged billionaire Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum). Actually, that would have been a relief to Clark; last season was spent hunting super-powered criminals from the Phantom Zone, while the love of his life married his new best enemy, who is busily whipping up his own army of kryptonite-powered mutants.
By the finale, viewers had met the Martian Manhunter (Phil Morris), and seen the nascent Justice League globe-trotting in an attempt to take out 33.1, Chloe (Allison Mack) using some krypto-power to swap health conditions with her dying cousin Lois Lane (Erica Durance), Lana apparently dying in a fiery car explosion, and Clark running into the last of the Zoners, a body-jumping cloud with the power of imperfect cloning. Just before the end credits, we saw the Zoner slap Clark around, then fly off just before his face went all gray and angular. Plus, Martha Kent (Annette O’Toole) exited the show as a U.S. Senator, and Lex got arrested. Damn, that’s a lot of plot.
If you haven’t heard of THE OFFICE, I really have no sympathy for you. Thursday marked the season premiere of season four with an hour-long episode of the show, which airs at 9 on NBC. It’s your own fault for not knowing that. I understand, however, that we don’t always get around to watching even the good ones, so here’s a quick shot at getting you up to speed on the best comedy on television.
The show follows the model of a British show of the same name that aired for a couple seasons a few years back. The show follows a documentary format that interjects the plot with interviews with the staff. Michael Scott (Carell) is the regional manager of the Scranton, Penn., branch of Dunder-Mifflin, a paper company. Under his watchful eye are twelve employees, most important of whom are salesman Jim Halpert (Krasinski) and receptionist Pam Beasley (Fischer). Most of the drama comes from the relationship between these two, who never seem to overcome the obstacles between them and get together. The series began with Pam engaged, and in season two’s finale – within weeks of Pam’s marriage to warehouse worker Roy – Jim admitted his love for her. The series picked up in the third season with Pam having broken off her engagement with Roy but not before rejecting Jim as well. During season three, it was Jim’s turn to be in a relationship, but during the finale we were left with much the same situation: Jim ending his relationship and asking Pam out.
The biggest problem with GREY’S ANATOMY is that the writers feel like they constantly need to one-up themselves. For example, last season, George lost his father, slept with Izzie, and failed his intern exam. Meredith, the Grey of the title, not only lost her mother AND her stepmother, she almost died herself. And Burke ran out on Yang. And Karev fell in love with a pregnant amnesiac. Yeah, that’s a lot of lost parents even in a world of constantly heightened reality.
But one-upping, whether it be in the strangeness of the medical cases or in the interpersonal melodrama, does not necessarily make for better or more interesting television. The beauty of the show the first season was that it moved rather slowly, at least compared to now. The characters are all so self aware that when they sat around navel gazing it felt a little like real life. Add a dash of soapy surprise, like a never mentioned ex-wife, and you’ve got yourself a hit.
In the classic archetype of “Goofus and Gallant,” SURVIVOR has done its part to add this dynamic to popular culture. Author Tami Cowden tells us, “The word "archetype" was coined by Carl Jung, who theorized that humans have a collective unconscious, "deposits of the constantly repeated experiences of humanity.... a kind of readiness to reproduce over and over again the same or similar mythical ideas....”
With that in mind, it seems that each season of SURVIVOR has one chugging team; a group that fights and churns and works and, most importantly, wins. And then there is the other team that can’t help but defecate in their crosstrainers while their fire burns out as they lose reward and immunity challenge after reward and immunity challenge.
So has it been, so is it now, so shall it be.
After booting “Chicken” last week for having not just a stupid nickname but a dull one, team Zhan Hu needed a leader. Former model turned flabby control freak Dave stepped forward. His reign was peaceful and prosperous for all of twenty three minutes. That’s when he decided the team should spend three days building a fire pit instead of eating or sleeping dryly.
Shhh. Listen carefully. If you hear something that sounds like a gunshot, it’s okay. It’s probably Charles Baxter doing the only honorable thing left to him.
Baxter wrote FEAST OF LOVE, a novel that was nominated for a National Book Award. This is a major accomplishment in the world of literature, somewhere between an Emmy and a Nobel Prize. He sold the rights to the film, and has probably just seen the finished product. Hence the hari-kari. It’s not like he had a choice. Let me put it simply. FEAST OF LOVE left me hungry. For less.
I understand that novels and films are two different media. I know that translating one into the other is difficult and frequently requires significant changes and even compromise. So this review is not negative because the film is a significant disservice to a very good book. No, in this case, the film is bad on its own merits.
Moreover, it is especially disappointing because its director is Robert Benton, who has (on the subject of awards) two Oscars for screenplays (BONNIE AND CLYDE, PLACES OF THE HEART) to his credit as well as another for directing KRAMER VS. KRAMER. When you go into one of his films, you have the right to expect more. I can’t imagine he saw this screenplay by Allison Burnett and said, “Hey this is good.”
FEAST OF LOVE’s problem is character development – or, more accurately, lack of it. Most of the main players’s actions seem to be designed to move the plot forward rather than being a natural outgrowth of the plot.
Harry Stevenson (Morgan Freeman) is a teacher at a Portland college, apparently a professor of wisdom. Ask him anything, and he has what turns out to be the correct answer. Then the question becomes are you smart enough to take the advice you asked for?
It is as viscerally exciting as the spy thriller with the added bonus of ripped-from-the headlines veracity. Director Peter Berg has done a remarkable job filming a series of action sequences and explosions; the process was made all the more difficult because it was shot in desert heat, in America’s southwest and the United Arab Emirates.
Special kudos are also due Jamie Foxx, who plays FBI agent Ronald Fleury and once again reveals his remarkable range. It seems Foxx has come out of no where to become one of the country’s pre-eminent actors.
THE KINGDOM, of course, is Saudi Arabia, where a group of fundamentalists evade security, get into an American oil company compound and in a well thought out series of attacks and bombings kill over 100 American men, women and children, and wounding more than twice that.
On the one hand, this is a story about pig-headed, stupid politicos. The FBI is charged with investigating the homicides of Americans on foreign soil. Fleury is especially anxious to get involved in this case because a close friend and fellow agent was killed in the terror attack. But of course our government won’t allow that – we don’t want to risk offending the Saudis, do we – and the Saudi military and police ranks are filled with incompetents concerned only with protecting their turf.
It is down to the wire on TOP CHEF, as four of the best cooks around battle it out for the grand prize. Tonight was part 1 of a two-part finale, and I’m chomping at the bit to find out who will win. There’s a lot at stake for these ambitious professionals, and I can feel the stress right through my TV screen. I can’t even imagine what it was like for them. But that’s one of the reasons this show is so compelling. Watching truly talented people sweat it out for their craft is so much more fulfilling than watching somebody win a Reality TV show because they were meaner than everybody else. Of course, I watch all those shows as well; it’s just that this type of competition requires some actual talent. Not only do we get the pleasure of watching the whole thing play out, on TOP CHEF you can even learn a thing or two, as the website provides the recipes of the food the chef-testants have cooked. Food and entertainment, come on it doesn’t get any better than that … right?
We are down to the fantastic four, Casey, Hung, Dale and Brian. And for the first part of the finale, they were sent off to Aspen, Colorado. But this trip wasn’t all fun and games; we still have a winner to crown. To kick things off, the chef-testants were given a Quickfire Challenge judged by famous seafood chef, Eric Ripert. The goal of this challenge was to take freshly caught fish, and I do mean fresh, as they competed by the side of a babbling brook, and prepare it with the most basic of ingredients on a makeshift stove. Surprisingly, Brian – who is known for his creative seafood dishes – seemed to falter on this one. All things considered, the dishes looked pretty good. Of course I don’t know how they tasted, and that’s really the key to any of these challenges. But in the end, it was my girl Casey who came out on top. That gives me hope that this will be the women’s year to take the title home. That’s if she can pull through the elimination round.
Tonight we get to see Chef Ramsay bring a funky, dirty and utterly unorganized Indian restaurant called, Dillons, back to life. At this point I think most of us realize that Gordon can turn just about any disaster around, as long as the owners are able to withstand his constant demands. And demanding he is, but it’s worth putting up with because this man knows what he’s doing. Gordon Ramsay is a chef through and through, but even more than that, he knows what it takes to run a successful and profitable restaurant. That’s really the point of KITCHEN NIGHTMARES, learning how to run a business. Sure there are many examples of bad cooking and filthy cleansing habits, but those problems are easier to fix than trying to teach an unwilling or stubborn person how to run a business. Herein lies the difference between this show and HELLS KITCHEN. In the latter, Gordon teaches aspiring chefs how to run a kitchen, but the stakes are much higher in the former.
Tonight’s episode opens up focusing on the three – yes count them, three – managers. Don’t ask me what each of them is in charge of because I can’t figure that out. Apparently, neither can any of the staff. But, perhaps, the worst of the three is Martin, who introduces Dillons as an American, Irish restaurant with an Indian flare … huh? Not being able to focus on the exact direction of the restaurant is just the tip of the iceberg. There are flies roaming around the dinning room and the customer’s food, and there are myriad of cooks from several different countries who can’t even communicate with each other – or most of the staff. At least operations manager, Andrew, has the good sense to be mortified. Martin believes serving Chef Ramsey a piece of lamb in his vegetarian plate is the worst of things. Wow, talk about living in a dream world. I can see why the business is losing 20 to 30 thousand dollars a month!
After watching KID NATION last week, my opinion has softened a bit. When I first starting hearing about this new Reality TV show, I was horrified at the thought of 40 children being dropped into a ghost town to fend for themselves. But I don’t think many of us were giving these kids enough credit. Granted, there were some tears and homesickness to contend with – one little boy did end up going home – but that’s to be expected. I mean we send our kids to summer camp and their initial reaction is usually the same. However, I do still have some reservations about the business end of the whole thing. If the show becomes a hit – and based on the rating of the premiere that is highly likely – there will be millions of dollars made. Because it’s a reality show, the kids won’t see much of that, but they do get the chance to win $20.000 a week, so they’re better off than a lot of other contestants flooding our TV landscape.
There are emotional issues the children must contend with as well as physical ones, and tonight they had to decide whether or not to kill a chicken. I know I’d be a basket case faced with that option, and some of the kids were as well. And now that I think about it, pressuring children to make that kind of decision is just the thing people were complaining about. Does an 8-year-old from the city really need to be indoctrinated into the farm life this way? My answer is no, but then again I am from a big city, so I’m sure there are others who will disagree with me. And why doesn’t it surprise me that Greg has experience in slaughtering animals? I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he has worked with a butcher for the past year, and something tells me the producers were fully aware of that fact before the chicken debacle.
I just don’t know who to believe. DIRTY SEXY MONEY, the new ABC drama featuring an All-Star cast that includes Donal Sutherland and one of the Baldwin brothers (it’s Billy, I think), was heralded as one of the top shows coming into the new season.
But that was before anyone actually saw it. Now the actual reviews are coming in, and it ain’t pretty. In fact, the Chicago Sun-Times went so far as to give it zero stars. Zero. Zilch. Zip. I mean, how can you not even get a half a star? That’s bad news.
Now the first episode is out, and John Q. Public can decide for themselves. And I can unequivocally and wholeheartedly say that … well, it’s not bad.
We’ll just get into a quick synopsis here, since we have all season to delve into the finer nuances of the characters – and there’s a lot of ‘em. The show is basically about the Darlings, a severely dysfunctional New York family that has more money than God himself, and isn’t afraid to spend it. They had been represented by lawyer Dublin George – until his recent demise in a freak plane accident.
Once upon a time, in the land of TV show rehashes and reimaginings, there was a pretty young bartender named Jaime Sommers (Michelle Ryan). Her life was not a luxurious one, but it had its upsides, such as dating handsome professor and surgeon Will Anthros (Chris Bowers). Things change quickly, though. Soon after discovering she was pregnant, Jaime and her beau were hit by a truck, driven by a homicidal blonde with some aftermarket modifications named Sarah Corvus (Katee Sackhoff, biding her time until BATTLESTAR GALACTICA starts up again).
This is where Jaime discovers that her boyfriend is involved in bleeding-edge nanotech body augmentation, a discovery she makes when, in order to save her life, Dr. Anthros replaces her legs, right arm, ear and eye with bionic prosthetics, not to mention replacing a significant percentage of her blood cells with nanomachines. The fact that these bionics grant Jaime radically enhanced strength, reflexes, speed, stamina and scanning capabilities turn out to be little compensation for the interruption of her life, a fact she makes immediately clear by skedaddling from the high-tech medical facility where she’d been rebuilt.