I DEFY You to Be More Boring

Not a bold statement to say I like to be caught up on entertainment news. TV Guide, Entertainment Weekly, the usual stuff. And so I can speak with some authority when I say I have found The Most Boring Entertainment News Headline of All Time:

"George Eads to Cameo on 'Two and a Half Men.' "

I read that and thought, "Wow. It is not possible for me to care less about any aspect of this headline."

And then I thought, "There's someone out there reading this, and getting really excited."

This is why I Speak TV exists: To keep you from turning into them.

The Doctor Has Lovely Comedic Timing

Okay, before I get into specifics, I offer a quick description of “Doctor Who,” because I feel like there’s always someone who has no idea what I’m talking about ("Wasn't he a curly-haired dude with a long scarf?") when I mention the very, veeeerrry long-running BBC series:

“Doctor Who” is about a bright, eccentric, long-lived alien traveling space and time looking for adventure, while holding a deep, if sometimes frustrated, admiration for humanity and its potential. He travels with companions, people he encounters who want to see the universe along with him. After a lengthy hiatus, The Doctor returned a few years back, first as the gruff Christopher Eccleston, and the in his current incarnation ( the 10th so far - with each mortal wound, The Doctor "regenerates" as a new actor, which started mostly as a means of recasting the part without a lot of complaints) as David Tennant, whose chatty enthusiasm belies a lonely heart.

Now then, everyone caught up? Good, because “Doctor Who” returns to the Sci-Fi Channel tonight at 9 PM. Yes, yes, last week it belatedly aired the 2007 Christmas special, but, y’know. That was Christmas. What has “Doctor Who” done for us lately?

It brought Catherine Tate back is what.

Tate was the titular character in the 2006 special “The Runaway Bride,” where she had two settings: loud/angry, and loud/sad. This is not a complaint, mind you, just an observation – Tate’s Donna Noble character was designed as something of a palate-cleanser to get audiences used to the loss of Rose Tyler, before introducing new companion Martha Jones.

Well now they’re both gone, so it’s time to introduce a new companion for The Doctor. Rather than go the previous route – young women attracted to The Doctor (and let’s face it, who could blame them, Tennant’s adorable!) – the producers decided to introduce a character who could not possibly be less interested in him In That Way. When he fumblingly admits that he doesn’t want any romantic awkwardness for a change, blurting, “I just…I just want a mate,” she mishears his genuinely vulnerable plea for, well, a buddy, and disgustedly assumes that this twiggy alien “wants to mate.”

This is after an opening half-hour that doles out a lot of just-missed-each-other physical comedy.
So this season looks to be a little heavier on the comedic aspects available to both the actors and the show, while giving the lead a good foil, a friend who's willing to occasionally kick him in the ass for a change. If what I’ve read is true, this might just be to soften us up before bringing back all the current run's ersatz companions (Rose, Martha, and Captain Jack Harkness).

With this many former cast members in place, fans can assume we’re heading into a seriously apocalyptic season-ender. Well, okay, another seriously apocalyptic season-ender.

“Doctor Who” does some heartbreakingly great finales. Because they all signify some kind of loss for the series (first Eccleston, then Rose, then Martha). If the rumors are true, this one might just culminate with the loss of David Tennant, as he regenerates into his 11th incarnation (possibly Robert Carlyle, an interesting choice).

Coping with change is a pet theme of "Doctor Who," but still, I’d really miss David Tennant. The old saw goes that everyone has “their” Doctor – the one they get attached to, because he’s the one they meet first. Eccleston was my Doctor, but Tennant by the beginning of season 3 had really made the role his own, and so now when I think of the character, his is the version that springs to mind. So if this season is going to be his swan song, I hope to hell they can avoid too many crap middle episodes (every season starts and ends spectacularly, but inbetween, hoo-boy, does quality vary).

But that's all for later. But not much later, which is nice. For once, Sci-Fi is airing the episodes only a month after their BBC premieres, so I won’t feel four months behind for a change.

Nobody Watched It But Me: "Threshold"

The Show:

"Threshold" (CBS, 2005)

The Premise:
Alien colonization via mathematical patterning and sub-audio signals is opposed by a Red Team of misfit scientists.

What Made It Special:
Aside from the nicely modern take on an invasion (echoing an issue of Warren Ellis's "Global Frequency"), the main draw was the top-to-bottom excellent cast. Carla Gugino plays intelligent and career-minded without ever going for the hard-ass-woman cliché; Brent Spiner's doctor seems to genuinely dislike his circumstances and the people around him; Peter Dinklage gives a blithe perviness to his self-destructive linguist.
But maybe the best surprise is Brian Van Holt (who, god bless him, went on to “John From Cincinnati,” potentially a future “Nobody Watched It But Me” entry) as the reserved black ops agent assigned to the group. Initially I thought he was too bland to deliver on the quiet menace I thought the character should have, but eventually it dawned on me that they were playing him like a lot of cops and criminals talk about the toughest guys they know: because he IS a badass, he has no need for grandstanding or bravado.
He gets the series’ best moment, too. After successfully defusing an armed standoff with a bunch of kids by using WORDS AND LOGIC, he puts down his rifle and, in lieu of any line of dialogue to cap off the tense scene, just sort of exhaustedly breathes out, “Pfffhhhh.”

Signs It Was Going Somewhere/Signs of Wear and Tear:
Usually this is easy to divide into two sections. But this show could be so frustratingly uneven that its good and bad blur together.
For instance, ignoring the amazing pilot (on which it appears they spent all of the budget meant for the rest of the series), week-to-week it would be a mediocre-to-just-above-average series. No visual style, dialogue mostly made up of these very smart people explaining things to each other that they already know, and great plot ideas that are pretty dully executed.
So yes, mediocre shows – that is, until the last five minutes of most every episode, which would usually end with either a pathetically minor victory, or a catastrophic revelation, both of which regularly implied that the Red Team was LOSING (example: one episode ends with Spiner realizing, "They've gotten into the food supply," which is NOT followed by, "To Be Continued").
(According to exec producer David Goyer, this wasn't accidental – their three-year plan would have seen Gugino's "Threshold" protocol escalate to "Foothold," and finally "Stranglehold," as the alien threat became overwhelming.)
This sense of losing ground on the battle escalated with every episode, but by the time it became apparent that that was part of the overall design, the show had been canned – before the last four episodes even aired.

Why No One Watched:
This was the year after "Lost" landed, and every network excitedly tried its hand at a sci-fi show. All of them crashed and burned, after which networks figured maybe people enjoyed the serialized aspect of "Lost" (a theory they watched fail the next pilot season). It didn't help that what was essentially a horror/sci-fi hybrid was sitting on CBS's normally soft-touch Friday night lineup (currently home to the reasonably successful "Ghost Whisperer," so there you are).

Where You Can Catch It:
The Sci-Fi Channel and the digital Universal Channel periodically offer reruns, but you can catch it most easily by Netflixing the DVD release.

Where You've Seen It Since:
If you check out Wikipedia, apparently it's been seen even earlier, as a reminiscent BBC series called "UFO." But since then, aliens haven't been too popular on TV or in film – the Nicole Kidman Body-Snatchers remake tanked horribly, if I recall.
Other than “Lost,” the only sci-fi TV shows with any presence – “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” (which is likely picked up for a second season), and “Battlestar: Galactica” - are about robots who want to destroy us all.
I wonder if that's a sign of something. I'm no sociologist, but what does it say when we can hack apocalyptic robots, but don't really want aliens in our pop culture anymore?

OMG You Guys Jim and Pam Squeeeeee!!!!

When the American version of the British series "The Office" was concocted, I wasn't terribly optimistic at the notion of NBC developing a show that was so...British...in tone. When I say "British," I think I mean "soul-crushingly hopeless." Check your thesaurus.


The BBC "Office" was more tragedy than comedy. It mined its jokes from the exhausting futility of day-to-day existence. No good deed went unpunished, no character ever really won. For example, when Tim (Jim here in the states) professed his love to Dawn (Pam - but you probably figured that out) in the series finale, she shot him down. It was only in the concluding Christmas special that they threw fans a bone by getting them together.


How to get romantic leads together without killing dramatic tension has plagued TV writers since "Moonlighting." This season, the American "Office" seems to have found the answer: shift the focus away from the romantic leads, onto the unspoken agony that is Michael Scott's life.


This is the first time since the opening six-episode season that the series has summoned up the bleak nature of the original. Now that Jim and Pam are together, we don't really have to worry about them - we can look at other things. Particularly, how fucking awful it is to be Michael Scott. Meaningless job, cruel lunatic girlfriend, and the inability to really make it better, because despite his best efforts, he has no idea how to effectively interact with other people.


Some of the most recent episodes have been the darkest in tone, but not just because they showed how bad Michael's corporate and work lives have gotten. They also showed that just because Jim Got The Girl, didn't mean his life was automatically great. His stint as substitute boss in "Survivorman" implied that without a certain level of self-awareness, he actually could become Michael. And in "Dinner Party," when he seriously pondered abandoning Pam at Michael and Jan's psychodrama of a get-together, 'shippers everywhere got a sign that Jim might not be the perfect boyfriend.


But it also made the couple that much more realistic.


If this were a shitty TV show, Jim would be in the doghouse with Pam and have to make a grand gesture to win back her trust. But it's not. At its best, "The Office" does its best to mirror reality, and so we saw that the two worked it out like they actually would - through playful ribbing, rather than a Big Important Fight.


And yet this past episode, "The Chairmodel," where Jim revealed that he bought an engagement ring "the week [they] started dating," all I could think was, "Oh fuck, they're going to break them up." This is Ross-and-Rachel disease - the (often network-generated) notion that to keep the high drama going, you need more ups and downs in the relationship.


But "The Office" isn't about high drama. It's about little victories, a series theme echoed in the last episode by Kevin - who had recently been dumped by his fiancee (off-screen, which should piss him off, considering all the time the documentary crew devotes to Jim and Pam) - successfully reclaimed the staff's parking spaces, and sheepishly admitted, "It's nice to win one."


So I'm really hoping that the writers think of Pam and Jim together as just a little victory. It won't change the world, or even their workplace, but it would be a rare case of something going right for a change. Like Kevin said. It'd be nice to win one.

Stop Laughing, Laff-Bot!

Okay, Lewis Black's "Root of All Evil" has been on enough weeks for me to make an absolute judgement.

This show kinda sucks. But not for the reasons I expected.

The first problem is that Lewis Black is very funny when his stand-up routines are filmed. There is no doubt. I have seen him taped, I've seen him live, and he's a funny guy. But the minute the scent of a script whiffs off him, all humor evaporates.

(For instance: the funniest parts of "Accepted," a generally enjoyable film in which Black plays the counterfeit dean of a fake college, actually occurs during the bloopers, where Black tries like hell to get through a scene without cursing - which was apparently quite difficult.)

But that's actually okay, when you compare it to the worst part: the LaffTrack2000.

It's depressing. Because these are professional comedians, and they know their business quite well. We're talking about Greg Giraldo, Andy Kindler, and Patton Oswalt (who fares the best, but I am biased because he's my favorite comedian). They know how to get laughs out of people. But at some point during the filming of this show, the producers apparently decided the audience laughs needed "punching up."

Except they didn't seem to have much money, because it seems like it's the same guy laughing raucously at any joke Oswalt delivers.

I love Patton Oswalt. And that's why it really pisses me off to hear a robot laughing randomly at his jokes.

So...go watch one of Patton Oswalt's comedy specials, available on Netflix. Otherwise, simply avoid watching robo-laff-bot-2000 patronize the comedians on "Lewis Black's 'Root of All Evil'."

+++++

Meanwhile, I'm not exactly one to talk shit on "The Daily Show." Love it. Get most of my daily news from there. I won't lie. The writer's strike hurt a lot of us, in a lot of different ways.

But does it seem like lately, the show is at its least effective when they do their little pre-taped skits (which always feels like a "Here's why we employ writers!" kind of forced bit)?

But they're at their best when don't do anything more ambitious than compiling a montage of horrendous CNN footage that shows cable news networks to be, at best, retarded and irresponsible, and at worst, the real Root of All Evil that Lewis Black can't even get to because he's too busy trying Paris Hilton against Dick Cheney?