Friday, October 12, 2007 Rant Archive
30 ROCK’s season premiere last week did okay in the ratings – up slightly from its 2006 debut. But it still finished third in its time slot. So let me make something clear before it’s too late and we have to start some stupid Jericho-like publicity campaign to bring the show back:
This has got to stop. I’m talking especially now to you Nielsen families. If you must watch Survivor, if your week is incomplete without Ugly Betty, fine, DVR them and watch 30 ROCK live so it will register on your Nielsen meter. We – and by we I mean Tina Fey and I – need better ratings.
Look at this way. Get on the 30 ROCK bandwagon now, before it becomes fashionable and you have the cachet of cool. Otherwise you’re just another sheep in the heard. Don’t wait too long, because there is a lot going on:
Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski) is still overweight as a result of her brief Broadway run in Mystic Pizza: The Musical. So she tries a new diet. “I only eat paper, but I can eat all the paper I want.”
Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) gets her an appointment with his always sympathetic physician, Dr. Spaceman. “Your height and weight,” he tells Jenna, “puts you in the disgusting category. Have you tried crystal meth?”
If the production notes to WE OWN THE NIGHT are to be believed, the idea for the film started with a studio executive who suggested that director John Gray write “a cop movie with a car chase.”
It’s a typical Hollywood suit idea that drives anyone with an ounce of creativity in his or her body insane. On the plus side, it creates a scenario ripe for satire. He could easily have suggested: “Hey, do a Western, and put in a stagecoach.” Or if he was really on his game, he might have said: “Do a horror movie, and put in a guy with an axe.” That’s why they make the big bucks, because they are so, how to put this, inspirational.
I could be having so much fun with this, but Gray had to go off and spoil it for me. He actually did what the suit asked. He wrote a cop movie with a car chase scene and made it suspenseful. He also gave it a plot driven forward as much by its characters as by its exciting shoot-‘em-up scenes. And he took some familiar elements from other movies and blended them into what is the nail-biting, arm-rest-holding hit of the year.
It is a classical story, in some ways biblical – Cane vs. Able, good brother vs. evil. The bad seed is Bobby Green (Joaquin Phoenix). His father Burt Grusinsky (Robert Duvall) is a deputy chief of the NYPD and his brother Joseph (Mark Wahlberg) is a captain just named head of a narcotics task force.
The situation is rife with familial jealousies and tensions. Because he didn’t go into the family business, Green is a disappointment to his dad. Instead, Bobby (who changed his name to avoid association with the two cops) manages El Caribe, a Brooklyn nightclub along the lines of Studio 54, a drug-filled haven for the hedonistic. It’s 1988 and sections of the Big Apple rotten to the core. El Caribe is owned by a grandfatherly Russian immigrant, Marat Buzhayev (Moni Moshonov), who imports furs for a living and thinks of Bobby as family.
Welcome to the continuing saga that is UGLY BETTY this week producers have more in store for viewers in the form of odd plot twists, gratuitous nudity & lies! Could we expect any less from prime time television and a highly hailed comedy? I think not. Moving right along, when we left dear Betty (America Ferrera) last week Henry had shown up at her door telling her Christina informed him of Charlie’s tryst with the dentist. Now that Henry is unsure of the unborn child’s paternity he tells Betty they can be together. Too bad Henry, but Betty has cleansed herself from your hold last week and she tells you that you have to wait and see what the outcome will be before the two of you can be together. HOT! It’s about time that little chunkster starts taking up for herself in the form of good old self confidence and not having to fall back in the arms of her former beau.
Amanda on the other hand is having some man problems of her own. She’s got the paternity results back from the lab and she tells Daniel there’s a possibility they could be half brother and sister. If Bedford really is Amanda’s father they’re half brother and sister that have been sleeping together for the better part of their working relationship. Gross. The two talk it over and finally Amanda rips open the envelope and reveals that Bradford is not her father. WHERE IS MAURY POVICH WHEN YOU NEED HIM? Amanda jumps into the wheelchair ridden lap of Daniel and the two kiss.
One of the hallmarks of great drama, whether it be a film, a play, a novel or a T.V. show is that revelations often lead to more mysteries. A good revelation is at once satisfying and thought provoking. This is certainly the case with MAD MEN. The more we find out about the enigmatic lead character Donald Draper, played perfectly by Jon Hamm, the less we know, and more we want to find out. Who is this guy?
Tonight we learn something huge. Donald Draper was originally a Lieutenant in the Korean War. A different Don Draper then ours. He was a certain Private Dick Whitman’s Lieutenant and was killed when Dick dropped his Zippo lighter on gas. Bam! Blown to bits. Dick switches the dog tags with the corpse, becomes Lt. Draper and gets a new life.
Pete Campbell discovers Don’s charade after stealing a box from Don’s office, and tries to blackmail him. Don denies everything. Then, feeling trapped like a fox, he runs to a lover and tries to get her to leave with him, forever. She calls him on his cowardice, without fully knowing the circumstances that brought him to this. Watching Don struggle with himself is absorbing. He pulls himself together, and like a man, calls Campbell’s bluff. And when Campbell turns out not to be bluffing and tells Bert Cooper what he knows, Don gets his reward. Silence is a powerful device not much seen on T.V. these days, what with the nattering doctors of GREY’S ANATOMY, and the chatty terrorists on 24. Heck there’s even a show about talking, called GOSSIP GIRLS. Don keeps silent as Bert thinks. Bert’s verdict is astonishing: “Who cares?” He asks. It doesn’t matter who Don is as long as money is made. Brilliant.
For a show about to get cancelled I cannot see why I’m even writing reviews for it anymore. If BIG SHOTS gets the green light for another season, I’ll give up completely, turn into Mary Sunshine & join a convent. Since I know none of this is a possibility I am not going to bother even breaking into a sweat over anything. I guess we should get up-to-date with these four sissies and their lame personal dramas.
Duncan (Dylan McDermott) brings more heat to the fearful foursome as Dontrelle’s address book was confiscated by the police after he/she was arrested. The thing that Duncan hasn’t told anyone yet is the name he gave Dontrelle when he met him/her in the bathroom stall in Yonkers, was that he gave out Brody’s (Christopher Titus) name. If that black book comes to light Duncan isn’t going to be the only one with a shattered career. I mean, if you’re going down in a blaze of transsexual glory you might as well take as many of your friends down with you. Brody uses a contact in the police station to try and get the address book out of police custody. The cop agrees to get that black book in exchange for his daughter becoming the new face of Duncan’s cosmetic line. Too bad this girl makes Ugly Betty look glamorous. If that isn’t enough Duncan decides that he’s still in love with Lizabeth, his ex-wife and he wants to try dating her again.
I guess time doesn’t fly while you’re hanging out in prison, even if your brother’s now employed as a prison guard. Even though Earl (Jason Lee) is making the most of his jail time experience he’s still locked up and that sucks. The first person to admit this is Joy (Jamie Pressly), Earl’s ex-wife and the reason he’s in jail. During her visit this week Earl tells her that she has got to stop feeling badly about the fact that he’s doing hard time so she wouldn’t have to. While Joy’s explaining that she’s feeling “more and more terribler” each day that goes by and Earl is still in jail with the sorts of fellows that could slit his throat if he looks at them wrong she notices another inmate she knows, Frank (Michael Rapaport) & Earl knows him pretty well too.
Turns out about seven years prior, Earl & Randy’s (Ethan Suplee) parents kicked them out of the house & they spent the better part of a week looking for a place to live. Behind a flyer on a telephone pole Earl notices a poster saying there’s a room for rent. This room is the kitchen in Frank’s house. Frank is both the brother’s roommate and their landlord as they shared the trailer space along with one other man, Paco who rents the living room.
Meanwhile, Joy’s in deep trouble of her own. After a one night stand with an anonymous stranger she ends up pregnant. Once she starts to show her parents kick her out prompting her to yell at them “YOU’LL BE SORRY IF THIS IS THE BABY JESUS OR A TUMOR!” Damn straight they’ll be sorry, if that was the case there’d be money made in selling her story to the press. So Joy packs her things and moves into the motel in Camden. She realizes she’s got to nab a man to help her raise this baby so she sets into action.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think I’m actually (kinda, sorta, just a teensy-weensy bit) starting to like the Darling family. God, I feel dirty just writing that, but I just can’t help it. The soap-opera story lines of the richest family in town are tawdry, cliché and … I can’t get enough of them.
This week, we focus on Patrick’s (Billy Baldwin) campaign for Senate, which he plans to announce at a big fundraising party. Chaos of course ensues before the event, as someone tries to blackmail the family with a sex tape; Natalie – Juliet’s sworn enemy and Jeremy’s secret love affair – crashes the party and gets in a catfight on the red carpet with Juliet; and Patrick himself gets wasted and arrested hours before giving his speech because he has to break up with his tranny boy/girlfriend.
Oh, and Nick (Peter Krause) the family lawyer continues to search for his father’s killer – which is kind of the whole point of the show, but I could kind of care less about any of that crap.
Jeez, I can’t believe I prefaced all of that schlocky-bad TV plotline with saying I liked the show, but what are ya gonna do?
As Doctor Karev inserted a needle into a patient’s eye on tonight’s episode of GREY’S ANATOMY, I couldn’t help wishing that I were in the patient’s shoes. A needle to the eye would have been preferable to sitting through the goopy whimsy of most of tonight’s episode.
It wasn’t all bad, so let me start with the good. Sandra Oh must be popular in the writers’ room; they really do give her the best stuff. Tonight she realizes that M. Grey is sleeping with Shepard again (although I find it hard to believe that she had thought they had ever stopped sleeping together.) This annoys Yang, because she realizes Meredith didn’t tell her to protect her feeling. So as revenge she pretends to be sad and steals Meredith’s surgery. Well played Yang. She also gets a good punch at Izzy in. Declaring that she was getting over Burke her way, she says “I’m not going to lie on the bathroom floor all day, I’m not Izzy.”
The other good part of tonight’s episode was Meredith Grey. In season’s past she has been the most annoying part of the show. But this season things are really coming together for her. Her plotlines aren’t quite so ridiculous and sentimental. And Ellen Pompeo is playing her with a streak of “no nonsense” a mile wide. I like the less maudlin Meredith- the one who deals with what others throw at her, instead of throwing things at people. Things come to a head with her sister Lexie, tonight, and after some strong words from Bailey, she does the right thing. She sits Lexie down and goes over the evens the preceded Lexie’s mother’s death, calmly and honestly. There’s no fake tear when she tells her half-sister that she was “very fond” of her mother.
Once again we’re confronted with the fact that Dean’s sold his soul to a demon and he’s got less than a year to live. Dean (Jensen Ackles) immediately brings this up at the start of the episode exclaiming that he wants to go check out a case & make a pit stop to see a woman he had a wild night with eight years prior. Sam (Jared Padalecki) tries to talk Dean out of it, but Dean wins this round by throwing his impending doom in Sam’s face. Once the duo gets to Indiana, Dean tells Sam not to wait around for him and he heads on over to visit his former flame, Lisa Braden.
When Dean gets to Lisa’s house she accepts the unannounced arrival with a slow sense of shock and tells him she’s having a party and not just any party, but a children’s party for her 8-year-old son, Ben. Let me tell you something about this kid Ben, he is the miniature version of Dean. The 8-year-old version of me is totally pining over him right now. And now that I sound like Mary Kaye Letourneau I guess I will continue with the review. While at this party Dean notices that something is not right with the children of Cisero, Indiana. He leaves there questioning if Ben is a Winchester & trying to figure out what’s wrong with these children.
While Dean’s trying to figure out what’s going on with Lisa, Ben and the strange children of Cisero, Sam receives a visit from the mysterious blonde that saved him from the sinful demons of last week. She tells him to dig deeper into his past, and the past of his mother. It turns out anyone in contact with his mother, before her death, is now dead. When the mysterious girl shows up again later on, Sam demands she tell him who she is, so she flashes her demon eyes at him. Sam goes bizerk and the girl tells him that she has an invested interest in figuring out why Sam was so important to the Yellow Eyed Demon. Sam runs to get holy water to use against her, but the girl tells him that she can help him undo the agreement Dean made that will take his life in less than a year if he works with her. Sam is now working with a demon. Good help’s so hard to find, you know?
All right, wrap your head around this. Imagine you’re a foxy blonde Kryptonian named Kara (Laura Vandervoort), who’s been sent to a planet upon which, thanks to the yellow sun, you have extraordinary powers. Reunited with your cousin and only living relative Clark (Tom Welling), what would you do? Use your powers for good? Take over the world? Decide to get involved in a farm town pageant and fall in love at first sight with geeky photographer Jimmy Olson (Aaron Ashmore)? Guess which one the writers of SMALLVILLE picked.
Oh, and Lana (Kristin Kreuk) returns. That’s a pretty minor plot point, I know, but it seems only fair to mention it. Anyway, back to the important stuff: Kara decides she wants to fit in to Earth society, and feels that competing in the Miss Sweet Corn Pageant is the best way to go about it. Clark is understandably concerned about this, as the number of ways in which their cover could get blown and thus draw unwanted attention is mind-boggling. However, the Man of Steel also knows bone-stubborn when he sees it (which will serve him well when he finally meets Batman), and reluctantly decides to stand aside. This in turn allows Kara to run afoul of three fellow competitors cruising through life at bitch factor nine, at least one of whom is packing an extra-special power that goes with her winning personality.
Thursday’s episode was probably originally conceived of as two separate normal length episodes. Ryan, back at his office in New York, sends notice to the regional offices that there will be a Web site launch party that night. The satellite offices (Scranton included) will broadcast via webcam to the main event in the city. He ends with a positive note that the Web site will definitely be the company’s best salesman in no time at all. Dwight, having won salesman of the month 13 times in the past 12 months (he was given two plaques back in February in lieu of a pay raise, he explains) takes Ryan’s assertion as a challenge. The first half of the episode spans the workday as Dwight struggles to outsell the computer; the second half is the launch party. THE OFFICE is becoming a darker place as conflicts seem to bring morale to an all-time low. Even in an episode about a party, one Jim and Pam seem to be having any fun.
In keeping with one of the most beloved mainstays of the series, Jim and Pam team up to convince Dwight via instant messenger that the Web site has become self-aware and omniscient. He takes the development in stride, explaining that from time to time robots and computers spontaneously gain intelligence. The competition quickly heats up, much to the annoyance of the other Scrantonites, who have to listen to Andy blow an airhorn every time Dwight scores a sale. This is Dwight’s latest attempt to win back Angela, who by all appearances is very much over him. Meanwhile, Michael gears up to attend the main party in the city. He changes into a tight shiny shirt and brags to his unders about his special VIP invitation. He calls up his girlfriend Jan, who used to hold Ryan’s job before she was fired. Jan, now unemployed and spending most of her days in Michael’s condo, refuses to join him among the people that got rid of her. Jim ends up getting stuck going along.
Last week the Fei Long tribe considered three members to be voted off… well, since it’s China this year I guess they get voted off the mainland. Leslie, the Christian Radio talkshow host got the heave-ho while Courtney the waif and poker player Jean-Robert got warning shots. Courtney answered this by whining while Jean-Reptile said this was key to his strategy- if you start in last place, you have no where to go but up. He is clearly smarter and more devious than anybody else in the game. The question on whether he survives falls more to if his tribe can pick up on this or not. Courtney said of him, “He sucks soo bad.” There you go.
The loser this week on SURVIVOR was actually the English language. I don’t know what English did to these people but they apparently hate it. Why else would they beat it so mercilessly?
At the Zhan Hu tribe, over-expressive leader Dave pushes Elementary Teacher Sherea to her limit. He just bugs her so she throws away his keepsake clam shells that he was saving for his mother. Dave’s sense of leadership consists of correcting people, giving orders and rolling his eyes when his tribe doesn’t do WHAT HE TELLS THEM TO!
Despite the fact that this weeks episode of LIFE was sort of a boring let down I continue to campaign in the favor of this show, probably because the Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis) is really super cute to me. Also, I guess the storyline is pretty good also. Charlie & Dani (Sarah Shahi) are sent to investigate a murder that occurred during a car jacking. The case itself seems super simple from the get go. A husband and wife are car jacked while at a gas station, the wife is shot and subsequently killed. The husband is devastated, but seemingly incapable of identifying a suspect. Charlie and Dani find this to be odd so they start to investigate further.
In the meantime, Charlie gets more and more involved in the minutia of his own closed case. He takes it into his own hands to violate the terms of his settlement and visit the retired detective that worked the case. Charlie shows up at the bar the detective frequents and tells him that he’s sure the victim’s daughter was in the house during the murder. Charlie is sort of going insane and acting the fool and I like his character even more for it. Regular people lose their marbles when they’re wrongly imprisoned for 12 years thank god the brains behind this show realize this.
Charlie and Dani visit the gas station the hijacked couple was at before the incident occurred. By speaking to the attendant on duty they get information and a video ID of a GIANT “Hispanic man” later identified as a Samoan fellow with a lengthy criminal record. They visit a garage where Charlie finds a super hot ride to replace the Bentley destroyed by a tractor two episodes ago. Having killed two birds with one stone Dani & Charlie apprehend the Samoan and take him into custody. After bringing in the widower they still cannot get him to positively identify the Samoan as the hijacker/killer. Something is rotten in Denmark.
It’s like I’m starting to live my Wednesday evenings with the hopes that I’ll turn on the television and realize this crummy show has finally been cancelled. Does anyone else feel like this? It’s like producers are not even sure what to do with Addison (Kate Walsh) anymore. Is she a horrible control freak obsessed wither job, or is she the medical group minx? It would probably help a lot if producers knew what was going on cause then the entire show would start making sense and stop being a giant pile of poorly executed lines. Besides, is it just me or does Addison & Pete (Tim Daly) have one of the worst meet-cute relationships of all time? Are they going to flirt or are they going to feel sorry for themselves? I am losing track of what’s going on.
So this week our boring, self involved doctors at Oceanside Wellness Group have a lot of problematic patients—why am I not surprised. Dr. Addison Montgomery, M.D./Vaginacologist—she’s got a newlywed patient that has never had sex and is begging her to figure out what is wrong with her hooha so she can consummate her relationship with her husband. This brings Addison to talk a lot about magic pertaining to sex and the feeling you have when it is “special” or something. Addison is sure she can fix this lady’s broken girly bits because she is a specialist and the best in her field. Naomi recommends sending the couple to do guided meditation with Pete, but Addison laughs in the face of that suggestion.