No One Watched It But Me: "Brimstone"

How can you tell I really love television? Because I keep coming back to it, no matter how many times it breaks my heart. My brain is littered with the memories of TV shows that, for one reason or another, just didn't make it.

Here at the ISTV Global Stronghold, we're preparing for a drought period. The mid-season shows are mostly wrapped up or canceled, and post-strike shows are a few weeks away (but reminder: new "Office" this week). So now feels like a good time to introduce a new semi-regular feature, a trip into a storied past of shows that were well-loved by not very many people, but remembered fondly by all of them. A segment we're calling...

"TV Shows Watched By No One But Me"

The Show:
"Brimstone," Fox, 1998

The Premise:
Dead cop Ezekiel “Zeke” Stone, damned to Hell for murdering his wife's rapist, is recruited by the Devil to capture 113 escaped souls.

What Made It Special:
- First off, it was a good-looking show, employing the washed-out color palette style years before “CSI: NY” did it;
- It featured a lot of sharp, deadpan dialogue, which is easy to do when your second male lead is the Devil (John Glover, using his gleeful malevolence to full effect before “Smallville” made a cartoon out of him);
- It made clever use of the lead character’s natural limitations, such as his lack of funds beyond the daily $33 stipend that was in his pockets when he died; or, thanks to a 15-year culture gap, his burning desire for 1983’s favorite snack treat, a Reggie Bar;
- In one segment, Zeke bounces the show’s plot off hotel manager/aspiring writer Lori Petty; to his chagrin, she immediately reconceives it as “The God Squad,” believing Zeke’s premise to be too much of a downer nobody would be interested in (and I fully believe this was an actual producer's reaction to the show).

Sample Dialogue:
Father Horn: The Devil, he appears to you as a man?
Zeke: Yeah. He looks a lot like a kid I used to beat the crap out of in sixth grade…I’m sure that’s on purpose.

Signs It Was Going Somewhere Good:
With an open-minded priest and Lori Petty's hotel manager, the series kept adding interesting personalities to its supporting cast, smartly recognizing that Zeke would need to talk to someone other than the Devil to get things moving in new directions.

Signs It Might Not Have Been Going Anywhere At All:
About eight episodes in, it was pretty much the same episode every time: Ezekiel has to track down a soul; Ezekiel runs into problems killing it; Ezekiel figures out the trick and kills the soul, and has some wittily bitter banter with the Devil. Roll Credits.

Sign the Producers Knew They Didn’t Have Much Time Left:
Teri Polo's cop/love interest character is quickly and clumsily outed as one of the escaped souls. Really? Devil didn't notice that the detective helping Zeke out might be a little familiar?

Why No One Watched:
It aired on Fridays at 9. (SPOILER: This answer will show up a lot.)

Available on DVD?
Sure, if you search Torrentz and have a DVD burner. (Which I do. I love my "Brimstone" DVDs.)

Where You've Seen It Since:
The plot has been basically recycled – with no visual style, no sense of danger, and a languid sense of humor – as "Reaper," currently not being watched by a whole new generation on the CW.

I Was Watching "How I Met Your Mother" Before It Got All Trendy

Tonight, "How I Met Your Mother" pulled its first major bit of "Will and Grace"-style celebrity stunt-casting, plopping Britney Spears into an extended cameo as a receptionist smitten with Ted.

Holy crap. Two entries mentioning Britney Spears in less than a week.

Something is amiss.

(And no, this isn't an unintentional crossover with Queen of Dirt - though you should be reading that blog, because you'll feel better catching up on celebrity horror than you would "accidentally" perusing TMZ.)

Anyway, for the five minutes of screentime she was given, it was a pretty clever character, with some solid jokes to be delivered. So here it is: Britney Spears wasn't bad. Would've been better if an actual, y'know, actress, had done the part. Someone who was expected to do more than show up on time with her lines memorized, who was maybe counted on to have a sense of comedic timing or something.

But hey, lookit! Britney Spears! (And really, that's the only reaction you can have, anytime she shows up: There is Britney Spears there, on the TV.)

Yeah, I'll admit it, I wasn't all that jazzed at hearing that our girl would be featured on this relatively obscure show. For a moment, I was actually beset upon by Indy Rock Syndrome. You're familiar with it. It's that uneasy feeling you get when new people start listening to a band you've been digging for years because they were featured on some commercial or something. (It is also known as "Pain in the Ass Snob Disorder.")

So yeah, for a little while, I got that irritable feeling that people might not be watching "How I Met Your Mother" for the right reasons. Then I realized that the possibility of introducing audiences to a show I like means it might not get canceled was a GOOD thing, so I unclenched a little.

So for all you out there who tuned in tonight because of a certain pop singer with a recent history of complete mental what-the-fuckness, welcome to "How I Met Your Mother." It's a good show, sometimes a little uneven, but it's got some great characters, strong running gags, and an honest-to-god, character-based premise, which is sort of rare for a sitcom.

Please enjoy it, and don't stop watching just because Britney won't be on every week. It's still good. Also, there's every possibility, based on past episodes, that someone from "Buffy" or "Freaks and Geeks" will show up in a bit part.

What do you MEAN you didn't watch "Buffy" or "Freaks and Geeks"?! Good god, I'm not sure we need your type of "viewer."

Shit! Shit, sorry. There goes the Syndrome again. Sorry. You're welcome here anytime.

Rube.

(Sorry! Really!)

"Lost": Half-Time Analysis

If life here at the ISTV Global Stronghold has taught me anything about sports, it is that real team loyalty is an emotional rollercoaster. The highs are in the stratosphere, and the lows send your heart down to the molten core of the earth (where the Lava Men reside, I assume). Also, there is a LOT of violent cursing at the TV.

So I guess “Lost” is my local sports team. Fortunately for me, they’ve been doing very well this year.

We’re a little past the halfway point of season 4, taking a strike-necessitated break before the next half picks up in late April. So it’s time for an examination.

Last year, frustration had set in when it appeared that the show was seriously lacking in forward momentum. We got an episode showcasing Matthew Fox’s tattoo, and another solely devoted to killing off two unpopular late-entry characters. Rough stuff.

But the show was rejuvenated after that, helped by the announcement of a planned end-date, along with newfound frankness from the producers about the mysteries. Even better, by the start of this season, the overarching plot began to take shape. The audience finally had just enough details to make informed guesses on the real nature of the story.

Turns out, audiences couldn’t have possibly figured out the story, because characters absolutely crucial to the narrative had only barely been introduced 40-odd episodes in.

The Big Picture seems to revolve around a secret war being waged between bastard industrialist Charles Widmore (giant asshole) and island-native-wannabe Ben Linus (skeevy weirdo with possibly noble intentions). And caught in the middle is Desmond Hume, whose desperation to get back to his lost love has begun to form the emotional core of the series.

Desmond’s spotlight episode a few weeks back, “The Constant,” was easily the best of the year so far, and on the short list for best of the series. I won’t lie: Desmond and Penny’s phone conversation at the end was the most heart-wrenching moment of the series for me (the eyes, yes, they got a bit watery). For all the time-jumping and island weirdness and vague answers to straight-forward questions, we got to see what the stakes really are: “Lost” is a star-crossed love story. Romeo and Juliet stuck in “The Tempest.” (Thanks, English degree!)

Thus far, the only real misstep this year was Harold Perrineau’s loudly-announced return, six episodes before his “shocking” actual appearance (which kinda killed a dramatic reveal). But I think that’s offset by the show’s newfound ability to introduce new characters without them feeling tacked on or irrelevant (COUGHAnna-Lucia-Paulo and Nikki-Mr. EkoCOUGH). The squirrelly Jeremy Davies and gruffly languid Jeff Fahey characters have become two of my favorite reasons to watch the show.

So good for you, “Lost.” May you continue on this path to greatness, and not give us any more retarded flashback episodes that don’t mean a good goddamn. I’m rooting for you.

GO TEAM!

Damn, "South Park." I mean...damn.

Well. That was pretty fucked up.

South Park manages to venture into some dark territory on occasion – here I'm thinking of Cartman feeding a boy his own parents and then tasting the kid's tears – but it's usually tempered with a goofy surrealist bent. Last night was a little different.

Last night was an honest-to-god horror story.

Granted, it wasn't an entirely new one, just one that took aspects of "The Lottery," "Wicker Man," and Chuck Pahlniuk's "Diary," but it was one of those rare times where the satire was so bleak and accusing that it was hard to laugh when the jokes occasionally rolled in.

The episode started with an unstable, despondent Britney Spears blowing her head off, and surviving…with three quarters of the head missing. Which stops absolutely no one from remarking how chubby and crazed she looks. When the boys realize that for god's sakes, think we need to leave this one alone, the citizens of South Park calmly reveal the truth: the need Britney to die, as part of a vague, indirect sacrifice. When she finally does die, the epilogue shows the townsfolk happily remarking on what a good corn crop this season has produced. Then they look up at a news story about Miley Cyrus, and sinisterly remark that the next harvest looks like it'll do just fine, too.

Haa…ha?

Rarely does "South Park" go so far into "A Modest Proposal" territory that it loses its humor, but holy crap. That was one grim damn episode.

Maybe I'm just a little touchy because I made that exact observation to someone a few months ago – "She's ours now, and apparently we need her to die," I believe was my remark – and now I feel both prescient and horrible.

So either "South Park," after 11 years, has finally succeeded in offending me...or it's just annoyed me by taking an off-hand sick joke I made and devoting 22 minutes to it.

Either way, as Stan and Kyle often do, I think I learned something today: apparently I just don't find the idea of a nearly-headless Britney Spears attempting to record an album all that funny.

Just to be clear, here:

This...




...does not offend me.

But the nearly-headless Britney sacrifice thing was maybe pushing it.

The First Annual ISTV Gentlemen's Wager

Read this article: "Doc Diagnoses Brain Tumor Based on Handshake"

If this doesn't happen in the first ten minutes of the next "House" season premiere, I owe you all a Coke.

(If it does, you owe me the right to race your first-born for fun and profit. This is the way a gentlemen's wager works at the ISTV Global Stronghold.)