The writers' strike seems about wrapped up, as the heads of both the east and west coast WGA accepted a deal, putting it out to vote on Tuesday as showrunners get back to the pain-in-the-ass business of re-establishing everything from producers to actors to craft services.
I'm no labor lawyer, or even what you'd call "all that bright," but the way the copy reads is: Not nearly as good as they were hoping, but hell, it'll do for now.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
"Eli Stone": Receding Hairline Fights Stupidity
What the hell is it about ABC shows? On paper, or even by the pilot, I’m happy enough with them. They’re generally pretty clever, and always well-filmed. I liked “Knights of Prosperity” (liked it a lot more when it was called “Let’s Rob Mick Jagger”). “Dirty Sexy Money” was a clever nighttime soap version of “Arrested Development.” I even gave “The Nine” a chance, mostly because I wanted to see SOMETHING succeed in the post-“Lost” timeslot.
But when it comes to the shows themselves, I just can’t find it in me to care. They lack some essential element that would otherwise make them worth watching. So add to the list “Eli Stone,” which has “Don’t worry, it’ll be cancelled soon” written all over lead actor Johnny Lee Miller’s cleverly hidden receding hairline. Okay, yes, that was mean. I don’t care about the show enough to feel bad.
Miller stars as the eponymous title character, a slick, materialistic lawyer who, after being diagnosed with an inoperable brain aneurism, decides to Become A Better Man. At least, we’re
told he was slick and materialistic, but from the get-go he seems like such a well-meaning doof that it’s hard to buy any of it.
That would be a show telling us, rather than showing us, about its premise. The show pushes this type of lazy writing to its limits. Other featured cliches include Sassy Black Assistant, Most Important Closing Argument of the Attorney’s Life, Misunderstood Father, AND Very Special Case of the week – in a stunningly exploitative move for a pilot, a kid with autism whose mom is suing a pharmaceutical company over additives in its vaccine. (ABC managed to cover its ass with a disclaimer…that ran at the end of the show. Good work, gang.)
And then there is The Whimsy. Oh GOD, The Whimsy. Which I am not against in theory. But in practice, everything here is just a bit too on-the-nose, from the visions of George Michael singing “Faith” to all Eli's other visions being childhood recollections that take on greater importance. The show wants balance quirkiness and realism, but doesn’t really bother thinking either through. After being diagnosed with an aneurism that, medically speaking, WILL cause delusions and hallucinations, Eli is then told by an acupuncturist that he may be some kind of prophet. Uhm…what?
If you have a medical diagnosis that would in fact cause crazy shit to appear before your eyes, then there is no otherworldly mystery. Your brain is just fucking with you. And if you believe some hippy-dippy acupuncturist who tells you you might be a prophet? That’s STILL YOUR BRAIN FUCKING WITH YOU.
I am not against The Whimsy in television. “Wonderfalls” sits on my DVD shelf as an all-time favorite, and “Pushing Daisies” managed to get through my defenses to become the only new show this year that I actively enjoyed. But in “Wonderfalls,” the brusqueness of the lead offset the cuteness of the talking animal dolls that told her what to do. In the other corner, “Pushing Daisies” commits completely to its strange designs in dialogue, costuming, set, and even dialogue.
“Eli Stone” wants to be cute and clever and magical, while also being down-to-earth and everyday. But all it succeeds in doing is making me want to punch Johnny Lee Miller in his receding hairline.
Sorry, that wasn’t necessary. It’s just REALLY distracting to me.
But when it comes to the shows themselves, I just can’t find it in me to care. They lack some essential element that would otherwise make them worth watching. So add to the list “Eli Stone,” which has “Don’t worry, it’ll be cancelled soon” written all over lead actor Johnny Lee Miller’s cleverly hidden receding hairline. Okay, yes, that was mean. I don’t care about the show enough to feel bad.
Miller stars as the eponymous title character, a slick, materialistic lawyer who, after being diagnosed with an inoperable brain aneurism, decides to Become A Better Man. At least, we’re
told he was slick and materialistic, but from the get-go he seems like such a well-meaning doof that it’s hard to buy any of it.That would be a show telling us, rather than showing us, about its premise. The show pushes this type of lazy writing to its limits. Other featured cliches include Sassy Black Assistant, Most Important Closing Argument of the Attorney’s Life, Misunderstood Father, AND Very Special Case of the week – in a stunningly exploitative move for a pilot, a kid with autism whose mom is suing a pharmaceutical company over additives in its vaccine. (ABC managed to cover its ass with a disclaimer…that ran at the end of the show. Good work, gang.)
And then there is The Whimsy. Oh GOD, The Whimsy. Which I am not against in theory. But in practice, everything here is just a bit too on-the-nose, from the visions of George Michael singing “Faith” to all Eli's other visions being childhood recollections that take on greater importance. The show wants balance quirkiness and realism, but doesn’t really bother thinking either through. After being diagnosed with an aneurism that, medically speaking, WILL cause delusions and hallucinations, Eli is then told by an acupuncturist that he may be some kind of prophet. Uhm…what?
If you have a medical diagnosis that would in fact cause crazy shit to appear before your eyes, then there is no otherworldly mystery. Your brain is just fucking with you. And if you believe some hippy-dippy acupuncturist who tells you you might be a prophet? That’s STILL YOUR BRAIN FUCKING WITH YOU.
I am not against The Whimsy in television. “Wonderfalls” sits on my DVD shelf as an all-time favorite, and “Pushing Daisies” managed to get through my defenses to become the only new show this year that I actively enjoyed. But in “Wonderfalls,” the brusqueness of the lead offset the cuteness of the talking animal dolls that told her what to do. In the other corner, “Pushing Daisies” commits completely to its strange designs in dialogue, costuming, set, and even dialogue.
“Eli Stone” wants to be cute and clever and magical, while also being down-to-earth and everyday. But all it succeeds in doing is making me want to punch Johnny Lee Miller in his receding hairline.
Sorry, that wasn’t necessary. It’s just REALLY distracting to me.
The Greatest Moment in All of Superbowl History...
...was watching the Terminator robots beating the shit out of the Fox football robot.
That showboating fucker's had it coming to him for a long time.
That showboating fucker's had it coming to him for a long time.
Fight the Future (No, Wait, That's a Different Sci-Fi Franchise)
(ISTV Archive, originally posted January 23)
Genre television is full of parents screwing up their kids. It could be Jack Bristow on “Alias,” who subjected his daughter to mind-control conditioning as a child so she could withstand brainwashing as an adult. Or it could be Jack Bauer in “24,” mollycoddling Kim to the point that she ended up prey to cougar traps (seriously, this never stops being funny to me). And while the king of lunatic-parenting still belongs to "Dexter" foster-dad Harry Morgan ("Therapy, shmerapy! I can sort out my future serial killing son!"), we’ve got a new contender.
Sarah Connor, eponymous lead of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," does a bang-up job of fucking up her kid (with the best of intentions, of course) by relentlessly drilling into her teenage son's brain mantras like "Nobody is EVER safe!" and "Resist the urge to be seen as special or important!"
Lena Headey's tightly-wound performance in the pilot episode is meant to be viewed as lioness-protective, but mostly all you can think is "Climb down from your crazy tree, stress monkey." Her intensity begs the question: Can you still consider someone dangerously paranoid, even when you know she's being hunted down by killer robots from the future? Answer: Hoo-boy, yeah.
Between Headey's repressed-spaz-attack, her agonizingly ponderous voice-overs, and her teenaged son John whining, "You changed the future, you just didn't change it enough!" - one of many lines that makes you wonder, "Okay, just how much is the time travel aspect of this show going to hurt my brain?" - it's easy to think that maybe this just isn’t the show for you.
And it gets a little worse before it gets better, as good robot Summer Glau (who, between this and "Firefly," has got to be wondering what it is about her that keeps getting her cast as hardcore weirdoes) constructs a time machine to shoot them into 2007. This show wasn't initially meant for midseason, which means even when they jump ahead, they're still six months behind the viewer.
Weird, yes, but no weirder than the logic behind the time-jump, which is, "So the bad robots can't find you here." But...just how much damage did you do to the timestream, lady? Unless you were always supposed to, in which case...wouldn't this missing chunk of John Connor's history be pretty well-known to the bad robots already? And if that’s the case, then….uuuuuuggggghhhh. (That would be the sound that tells you to just stop worrying about logic, lest blood rocket out of your eye-sockets from the stress.)
The real reason, of course, is that otherwise the producers would have to film the show as though it took place in 1999, and who's got the energy for that kind of set-dressing? So here we have an entire episode devoted to clarifying that future episodes will place in the present, so don't ask so many damn questions.
You’ve likely gotten the impression that the pilot didn't exactly floor me. You are astute. But one night later, the strangest thing happened: the second episode was miles ahead of the pilot.
(A strange occurrence, as the general notion is that creators get six months to put together their pilot, but once they get greenlit, they have to slap together a second episode in like three weeks - so the quality usually suffers.)
But here we are, with a second episode that manages to find its footing by loosening up a tad. Headey’s mood drops from panic-mode into darkly-ironic, and future freedom-fighter John tries proving his mettle against that most daunting of stress-tests: high school. Not helping in this case is his robot bodyguard, who is busy learning how to act hoo-man (and seriously, thank god for Summer Glau, because with someone less adept at playing Dangerous Weirdo, this bit could
get pretty obnoxious otherwise).
After three episodes, the show seems to have developed a solid long-form plot goal that doesn’t involve trotting out a Terminator-of-the-week to menace the regulars. Instead, the characters are on a mission to stop the future before it occurs, by tracking down the new potential creators of Skynet and…uhh…
Well, that’s the fun thing. You can’t have Sarah Connor killing everyone she thinks might be a potential threat week after week, because A) that gets boring pretty quick, B) this is a network show, and C) even after a few justified killings, it would become difficult not to question her sanity. So we see the character instead becoming humanly empathetic to these people who clearly don’t mean to bring about an apocalypse, and as a result, finding non-lethal ways to subdue their threat level.
It’s a theme John asserts in the third episode, questioning the point of hiding, denying their own humanity and behaving like robots to stay safe. And it’s a good theme to have. But based on a steady ratings slide since the premier, I’m not sure how much time they’re going to get to explore it. But lone benefit to the writer’s strike is that the show will get the full run of episodes to prove its worth. Hopefully, that will be enough.
Sarah Connor, eponymous lead of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," does a bang-up job of fucking up her kid (with the best of intentions, of course) by relentlessly drilling into her teenage son's brain mantras like "Nobody is EVER safe!" and "Resist the urge to be seen as special or important!"
Lena Headey's tightly-wound performance in the pilot episode is meant to be viewed as lioness-protective, but mostly all you can think is "Climb down from your crazy tree, stress monkey." Her intensity begs the question: Can you still consider someone dangerously paranoid, even when you know she's being hunted down by killer robots from the future? Answer: Hoo-boy, yeah.Between Headey's repressed-spaz-attack, her agonizingly ponderous voice-overs, and her teenaged son John whining, "You changed the future, you just didn't change it enough!" - one of many lines that makes you wonder, "Okay, just how much is the time travel aspect of this show going to hurt my brain?" - it's easy to think that maybe this just isn’t the show for you.
And it gets a little worse before it gets better, as good robot Summer Glau (who, between this and "Firefly," has got to be wondering what it is about her that keeps getting her cast as hardcore weirdoes) constructs a time machine to shoot them into 2007. This show wasn't initially meant for midseason, which means even when they jump ahead, they're still six months behind the viewer.
Weird, yes, but no weirder than the logic behind the time-jump, which is, "So the bad robots can't find you here." But...just how much damage did you do to the timestream, lady? Unless you were always supposed to, in which case...wouldn't this missing chunk of John Connor's history be pretty well-known to the bad robots already? And if that’s the case, then….uuuuuuggggghhhh. (That would be the sound that tells you to just stop worrying about logic, lest blood rocket out of your eye-sockets from the stress.)
The real reason, of course, is that otherwise the producers would have to film the show as though it took place in 1999, and who's got the energy for that kind of set-dressing? So here we have an entire episode devoted to clarifying that future episodes will place in the present, so don't ask so many damn questions.
You’ve likely gotten the impression that the pilot didn't exactly floor me. You are astute. But one night later, the strangest thing happened: the second episode was miles ahead of the pilot.
(A strange occurrence, as the general notion is that creators get six months to put together their pilot, but once they get greenlit, they have to slap together a second episode in like three weeks - so the quality usually suffers.)
But here we are, with a second episode that manages to find its footing by loosening up a tad. Headey’s mood drops from panic-mode into darkly-ironic, and future freedom-fighter John tries proving his mettle against that most daunting of stress-tests: high school. Not helping in this case is his robot bodyguard, who is busy learning how to act hoo-man (and seriously, thank god for Summer Glau, because with someone less adept at playing Dangerous Weirdo, this bit could
get pretty obnoxious otherwise).After three episodes, the show seems to have developed a solid long-form plot goal that doesn’t involve trotting out a Terminator-of-the-week to menace the regulars. Instead, the characters are on a mission to stop the future before it occurs, by tracking down the new potential creators of Skynet and…uhh…
Well, that’s the fun thing. You can’t have Sarah Connor killing everyone she thinks might be a potential threat week after week, because A) that gets boring pretty quick, B) this is a network show, and C) even after a few justified killings, it would become difficult not to question her sanity. So we see the character instead becoming humanly empathetic to these people who clearly don’t mean to bring about an apocalypse, and as a result, finding non-lethal ways to subdue their threat level.
It’s a theme John asserts in the third episode, questioning the point of hiding, denying their own humanity and behaving like robots to stay safe. And it’s a good theme to have. But based on a steady ratings slide since the premier, I’m not sure how much time they’re going to get to explore it. But lone benefit to the writer’s strike is that the show will get the full run of episodes to prove its worth. Hopefully, that will be enough.
Friday, February 1, 2008
New TV? Oh Thank God
“House”
Thanks to Fox hording all their new episodes during the strike, this week we got “A Very House Christmas”! And I don’t mean you see a bit of tinsel or anything. I mean Secret Santa plays heavily into the B-plot, and the whole show ends with the cast socializing warmly at a Christmas party. Held in the lobby.
(I’ll just say this and then we’ll move on: HorseSHIT the Christmas party is held in the lobby. I hate it when shows do this. Last year, the Christmas party at my job was held at Dave and Buster’s. In March.)
Anyway. The closing shot, of House’s old staff meeting his new one, was there to bluntly inform
viewers: “Kutner is your new Chase, Taub is your new Foreman, and 13 is your new Cameron.” To which viewers could be forgiven for wondering, “Why can’t we just keep the old ones?”
Turns out, as much as this show is about maintaining a formula (53 minutes of being frighteningly wrong, followed by a Wilson-induced Epiphany), the supporting characters have actually grown incrementally over three seasons to become capable doctors and more mature human beings – in other words, characters that offer no conflict for House. Whoops.
Weirdly, the show doesn’t quite seem to know what to do with having twice as many cast members, and so far this season, until they work the kinks out, we get a couple of Foreman scenes, and if we’re lucky, one for Chase and one for Cameron. Sometimes we get one or the other. This week, Cameron got as much screen time as a donkey. Possibly less.
If there’s any difference between the new support staff and old, it’s that the newbies seem to lack moments of actively despising their boss, no matter how many quirky insults he tosses their way (and while the plentiful racial jabs don’t seem to bug Foreman or Taub, it’s a little conspicuous that House hasn’t lobbed one playful slur Kal Penn’s way – that’s a good agent you must have there, Kumar).
As a result, House is coming off as little more than a crazy uncle figure. Which is quite a switch-up from last year at this time, when House – sweating, bug-eyed, and out of his mind in need of a Vicodin fix – ripped into Cuddy for what an awful mother he thinks she’d be.
So yes. Enjoy the Christmas episode. Then enjoy the Superbowl episode, which looks to be a slight departure from standard format. And then one more, and then HOPE THE WRITER’S STRIKE ENDS early enough that they can film a few more.
(I’ll just say this and then we’ll move on: HorseSHIT the Christmas party is held in the lobby. I hate it when shows do this. Last year, the Christmas party at my job was held at Dave and Buster’s. In March.)
Anyway. The closing shot, of House’s old staff meeting his new one, was there to bluntly inform
viewers: “Kutner is your new Chase, Taub is your new Foreman, and 13 is your new Cameron.” To which viewers could be forgiven for wondering, “Why can’t we just keep the old ones?”Turns out, as much as this show is about maintaining a formula (53 minutes of being frighteningly wrong, followed by a Wilson-induced Epiphany), the supporting characters have actually grown incrementally over three seasons to become capable doctors and more mature human beings – in other words, characters that offer no conflict for House. Whoops.
Weirdly, the show doesn’t quite seem to know what to do with having twice as many cast members, and so far this season, until they work the kinks out, we get a couple of Foreman scenes, and if we’re lucky, one for Chase and one for Cameron. Sometimes we get one or the other. This week, Cameron got as much screen time as a donkey. Possibly less.
If there’s any difference between the new support staff and old, it’s that the newbies seem to lack moments of actively despising their boss, no matter how many quirky insults he tosses their way (and while the plentiful racial jabs don’t seem to bug Foreman or Taub, it’s a little conspicuous that House hasn’t lobbed one playful slur Kal Penn’s way – that’s a good agent you must have there, Kumar).
As a result, House is coming off as little more than a crazy uncle figure. Which is quite a switch-up from last year at this time, when House – sweating, bug-eyed, and out of his mind in need of a Vicodin fix – ripped into Cuddy for what an awful mother he thinks she’d be.
So yes. Enjoy the Christmas episode. Then enjoy the Superbowl episode, which looks to be a slight departure from standard format. And then one more, and then HOPE THE WRITER’S STRIKE ENDS early enough that they can film a few more.
+++++
“Lost”
General internet reaction to return of “Lost”:
Omigod Hurley is off teh island and is Charlie alive or no whose that black guy did you know his name means like hell place or something omigod peeeeeeeeeeeeeee
My reaction to return of “Lost”:
Okay, seven episodes to go before frustration sets in….
“Lost” is one of those shows I really like, but fucking HATE listening to groups of people talking about it. I think it’s because this show generates speculation from people who aren’t really equipped to do it properly. It leads to left-field guesswork (good for you if you somehow deduced that Jack and Claire are siblings eight episodes into season one), or an attempt to link ideas when there’s simply not enough real information to go on (that goddamned four-toed statue).
Personally, I like to sit back, let the information I’ve received stew in the “Lost” section of my brain, allow it to make a few connections, and accept that some things I will not figure out until I am explicitly told (goddamned four-toed statue…!).
So my feelings are:
- I am glad this show is back on. I hope the strike resolves soon enough that we can get something closer to a full season;
- I am FREAKING ECSTATIC that Lance Reddick is on the show (but seriously, writers, you’re giving him a name that’s Hebrew for “hell”? Why do you have to do that to people?);
- If I have to do any speculating, I will say sure, that could have been Jack’s dad in Jacob’s cabin, since John Terry was listed in the guest starring credits, but didn’t otherwise show up in the episode;
- I am terrified that we’re going to have to sit through another “How’d Jack get that tattoo?” episode, based on a new one Matthew Fox got on his arm for some reason late last season.
Omigod Hurley is off teh island and is Charlie alive or no whose that black guy did you know his name means like hell place or something omigod peeeeeeeeeeeeeee
My reaction to return of “Lost”:
Okay, seven episodes to go before frustration sets in….
“Lost” is one of those shows I really like, but fucking HATE listening to groups of people talking about it. I think it’s because this show generates speculation from people who aren’t really equipped to do it properly. It leads to left-field guesswork (good for you if you somehow deduced that Jack and Claire are siblings eight episodes into season one), or an attempt to link ideas when there’s simply not enough real information to go on (that goddamned four-toed statue).Personally, I like to sit back, let the information I’ve received stew in the “Lost” section of my brain, allow it to make a few connections, and accept that some things I will not figure out until I am explicitly told (goddamned four-toed statue…!).
So my feelings are:
- I am glad this show is back on. I hope the strike resolves soon enough that we can get something closer to a full season;
- I am FREAKING ECSTATIC that Lance Reddick is on the show (but seriously, writers, you’re giving him a name that’s Hebrew for “hell”? Why do you have to do that to people?);
- If I have to do any speculating, I will say sure, that could have been Jack’s dad in Jacob’s cabin, since John Terry was listed in the guest starring credits, but didn’t otherwise show up in the episode;
- I am terrified that we’re going to have to sit through another “How’d Jack get that tattoo?” episode, based on a new one Matthew Fox got on his arm for some reason late last season.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
