Is there a limit to what we must give up?

On the radio last week (or the week before-time moves differently in 2020), I heard a talk show host make the argument that because of racism, white people are just going to have to give up some things.  He was referring specifically to Confederate flags at NASCAR, but it could include the myriad cancelling’s that the Twitter Red Guards have instituted in the past few weeks since George Floyd’s death.  There was some self-canceling as well. Tina Fey, creator of 30 Rock requested that three 30 Rock episodes be removed from streaming because of blackface episodes. The creator of Scrubs also requested that three of their episodes be removed due to blackface episodes.  This of course is as we’ve always suspected; blackface always comes in threes.

These are mini-tragedies since none of these episodes were racist and actually handled the entire blackface issue in show (spoiler-it’s NOT OK!).  But what really got me in the gut was the removal of the “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” episode of Community.

The 21^st Century has not been kind to the venerable television format of the sitcom.  Partially, it’s because the format is just tired.  Since the 1950’s almost every possible permutation has been done; and then done again…and then again, and again, and again.  Also as a general rule, TV writers and creators have not gotten any smarter or more creative. So a show like Community, when it premiered in 2009, was quite a revelation.  Not in ratings of course, but in tight writing, quirky characters, and good laughs.  Think of it, a sitcom that was actually funny.  Believe it or not, that used to actually be a thing.

The actual episode wasn’t of course about race, Advanced Dungeon’s and Dragons, as Wikipedia described the episode, was about…

“The episode is introduced in flashback, narrated by a female narrator who explains the plight of Neil, a student at Greendale who had hoped that the stigma of teasing and name-calling from other schools would not carry over to Greendale. However, he soon became known as “Fat Neil”, causing him to become very depressed. Jeff observed his change and tried to cheer Neil up by feigning interest in Neil’s favorite pastime, Dungeons & Dragons. When Neil gave Jeff all his Dungeons & Dragons books, saying that he didn’t need them any more, Jeff worried that Neil had become suicidal. Jeff worked with the rest of the study group to invite Neil to play a game of Dungeons & Dragons with them to cheer his spirits. The group specifically did not invite “Pierce the Insensitive”, worried that Pierce would tease Neil.”

So it’s an episode about depression, told through the gameplay of Dungeon’s and Dragons, years before shows such as Critical Role began integrating a D & D game into episodic television, and it was done brilliantly, combining both the round-the-table gameplay with the actual story being told through the game.  It was easily in the top 10 Community episodes, and now it’s gone.

But wait you ask, what about the blackface?

Señor Chang (Ken Jeong) shows up dressed as a Drow, or Dark Elf.  Get ready, here it is!

 

So for that, we lose this episode to the memory hole.

So it’s not blackface at all, but a character cosplaying an imaginary species that doesn’t exist. But who has time to figure out what’s offensive and what isn’t?  Ban it all!

Since all of the episode-vanishing, statue vandalizing, history vanquishing, and imaginary noose hysteria has nothing to do racism or solving any racial issue, my prediction is that no racial issue gets solved no matter what you throw off the ship.  Even burning the entire Western canon isn’t going to satisfy a mob, either a real torch bearing one or a twitter one, because a mob can’t be satisfied, they’re a mob.

Rebooting Old TV with Diversity in Mind

In an age when Hollywood has been totally mined out of original ideas for television, but the number of platforms have expanded with room for more and more television, comes the TV answer for zero ideas but lots of airtime to fill: The reboot. But it’s not enough to simply reboot old television shows, they need to be rebooted through a social justice warrior lens to give show concepts like this:

Just before he recently departed ABC Studios to embark on a rich overall deal at Netflix, Black-ish creator Kenya Barris sold one last high-profile project to ABC: Bewitched, a single camera, interracial blended family comedy based on the popular 1960s sitcom of the same name.

In Bewitched, written by Barris and Taylor, Samantha, a hardworking black single mom who happens to be a witch, marries Darren, a white mortal who happens to be a bit of a slacker. They struggle to navigate their differences as she discovers that even when a black girl is literally magic, she’s still not as powerful as a decently tall white man with a full head of hair in America.

This description of the show sounds hilarious for all the wrong reasons.  One would almost think it’s a parody of a socially aware TV reboot but no, it’s serious.  Am I intrigued by the description?  Darn right!  I would definitely sit down and watch a show in which an immortal magician is still under the thumb of Trump’s America.  The possibilities are endless!  I’m sure we can expect to see Samantha pulled over by white cops and she turns them into actual pigs, and she teaches the slacker Darren about hard work by transforming him into a black slave in the 1850’s. Nosy neighbor Gladys Kravitz will be the White Nationalist neighbor across the street, spying on the interracial couple. Uncle Arthur? Played by RuPaul of course!

Just a few weeks prior there was the announcement that Joss Whedon was rebooting Buffy the Vampire Slayer, only this time with a Black Buffy. So everything old can be new again if you diversify it up a smidge.  Never mind that they already had a Black Slayer in the original run of the show…diversity.

I’m not opposed to reboots, reimagining’s, or however you want to describe them, with diversity, but let’s don’t pretend that diversity is actually a new idea. It’s really about saying,” I don’t have any new ideas, and I want approval from twitter.”

I will seriously watch this if it gets through development hell and actually airs somewhere.  Not because I think it will be quality entertainment, but because I expect it will be an entertaining hot mess.

If Christopher Nolan Did Green Arrow…

…you might get something very similar to the CW’s new Arrow.  It’s not surprising that the new show should take a similar path.  Christopher Nolan’s interpretation of Batman was hugely successful, both critically, and financially.  Batman, the Frank Miller inspired version; the obsessed, little-bit psychotic vigilante, fighting his own demons as much as bad guys, translated well onto the screen.  So if you were looking for another DC superhero property to give the same treatment to, there probably isn’t a better choice than the Green Arrow.

The show looks good on the screen, although the foyer of the Queen mansion looks suspiciously like the one in Lex Luthor’s transplanted castle in Smallville.  As much as I enjoy the miracle of CGI and its ability to bring anything that you can imagine to the screen, there is nothing like good old fashioned stunts.  The pilot has lead actor Stephen Amell demonstrating some fairly impressive parkour skills and in fact Amell did train in parkour to prepare for this role, although many of the stunts are done by stunt doubles.  It’s a smooth enough transition that I can’t tell the difference though.  I was watching and it looked like Amell did all of the parkour stunts.

As originally portrayed in the comics, Oliver Queen was a millionaire playboy who also dabbled in crime fighting as the Green Arrow.  He was an expert archer, acquiring those skills while stranded on an island.  His stock in trade was trick arrows that could perform assorted functions.  He was Batman, without the compelling reason to be a Batman.  Eventually the comics provided a reason, having Queen lose his fortune and discovering the living is a lot harder without lots of money to fall back on.  Green Arrow becomes a crusader for social justice as well as the old fashioned kind.

In Arrow, the CW takes those basics and tries to re-imagine a much grittier, edgier version; a Green Arrow to match the edgier Dark Knight version of Batman.  As the pilot episode opens, Oliver Queen is rescued from his island prison after being missing and presumed dead for 5 years.  However this Oliver has a specific agenda, that’s partially revealed in flashbacks to the sinking of his yacht and the death of his father.  If you’ve not seen pilot, I won’t spoil it other than to say the death of his father gives him a very specific list of wrongs to be righted.

This Oliver Queen is rather morally ambiguous.  Is he a good guy?  It’s not so clear cut, and it looks like the show intends to draw that out.  The outing he was on when his yacht sank has him bringing along his then current girlfriend’s sister for a little cheat-o-rama. That girlfriend, Laurel Lance, despises him for her sister’s death although their futures may be linked since careful comic book readers will note that Laurel Lance is the future Black Canary, Green Arrow’s long time girlfriend in the comics.  But cheating on a girlfriend isn’t that edgy or gritty; killing a kidnapper who is helpless is.

In most superhero sagas, guns are never used and killing is strictly forbidden.  However for this show, we have a superhero that does kill, not in self defense, but to protect his secrets.  That ups the ante in the gritty and edgy department.  Without the normal limitations of the superhero genre, who knows where this show will go?

Weaved into the plot is more potential “drama” than you can shake a stick at.  His kid sister is using drugs, there is a new stepfather, and mommy dearest isn’t exactly the June Cleaver type; she has secrets of her own.  Not to mention the local police detective is the father of both Laurel Lance and the sister who died when the Queen yacht sank.  Guess who he blames for his daughter’s death?

And for that, I’m enthusiastic about this take on the Green Arrow story.  Yes, I realize there is the potential to go too far; turning this version of Green Arrow from less like an edgy Batman and more like a rich Dexter.  That would be a mistake, and hopefully the producers will put the brakes on any mass murder spree by a DC superhero.

Still, I like what I see so far and am willing to give this show some long rope to see where it goes.

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The Mindy Project

Women are in this year, and thanks to the wonders of on demand I’ve seen the pilot for the new Fox Mindy Kaling vehicle, The Mindy Project.  The show, which premieres September 25^th, is pretty clearly a show made by, and for, women.  So what am I doing watching it?  Well I’m certainly a fan of Wendy Kaling from her Office days as Kelly Kapoor.  As a writer on The Office, she has certainly earned her reputation as a funny gal, and I, as someone who spent 20 minutes flipping through her book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? in a bookstore without actually buying it,  can attest that she seems to be able to write some amusing anecdotes about her own life as well.

So I felt that was a good enough reason to give her show a try.  But I have to admit, it’s not exactly the type of show I would have bothered with usually.  A female OBGYN; professionally successful but unlucky in love… sound familiar?  It could be a base description of most romantic comedy heroines, and it’s not by coincidence.  Kaling is going for a pseudo romantic comedy vibe as a running theme of her show.  The pilot shows her at various ages, under a voiceover, watching a series of 80’s and 90’s romantic comedies, absorbing their “lessons” to apply to her own romantic life.

Does America really need another romantic comedy sitcom?

We already have Mike & Molly.

Of course, with this romantic comedy, they are taking the long view.  There is no obvious Mr. Right evident the pilot.  The two men in her life in the pilot, Dennis (Ed Helms), the checklist perfect first date and “good” guy, and Jeremy (Ed Weeks), a fellow doctor and “bad” boy.

Guess who she ends up hooking up with?

So give the show some credit for some honesty at least.  Mindy’s weight is mentioned and yes, she is getting chubbier from her Office days.   Also the character is a slut.  That’s a ballsy move in sitcom land.  Yes, sluts are familiar features of situation comedies and TV sitcoms, but as peripheral characters, or “the best friend.”  Not as the main character in the show.  Does America really want to see a chubby slut make stupid personal decisions week after week?  Or do we get enough chubby slut drama at our own workplaces?

Mindy Kaling (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I think the answer is maybe, and I say that as someone who is not sure myself.  Will I get wrapped up in the character and want to keep coming back week after week, or will I just throw up my hands and say she deserves to be alone, start your cat collection now?

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My Netfix Review: Lilyhammer

What happens when you take an average gabba goul eating Goodfella; transport him to Norway, and let him try to blend in with the locals?  Well antics ensue of course, and that’s the premise of the Netflix original series Lilyhammer.  Yes I know it sounds preposterous, but the premise of this limited series seems pretty clearly to have come from some late night drinking.

“We take this mafia guy who joins witness protection, but instead of being relocating to Southern California or someplace, he wants to relocate to… I dunno, Norway?”     

Publicidad de Netflix (Photo credit: Daniel_Afanador)

“Put the bottle down, you’ve had enough.”

It’s interesting that Netflix, for its first original project, chose this idea over what I’m sure were a multitude of others.  I can only assume that someone among Netflix’s higher ups really missed the Sopranos, since this show has all of the markers of a Sopranos’s sequel, Silvio on Ice.

Steven Van Zandt, who played Silvio in The Sopranos, plays much the same character again, only with a different name.  When he suspects (via an attempted hit) that he’s on the outs with the new boss, he decides to turn State’s witness against him in exchange for relocation… to Lillehammer, Norway.  Why Lillehammer?  Eh, he liked the way it looked during the 1994 Olympics.

Really.

It’s a bit of a bizarre fish out of water tale, but this fish actually adapts fairly well into the community, quickly becoming a successful club owner in a country where proper permitting and licenses can take years, Van Zandt’s character manages it in days thanks to his ability to bring his mob business tactics to the rigid Norwegian bureaucracy.  Naturally, he manages to also attract some unwelcome police attention.

Although that’s part of the cross cultural stranger in a strange land story, the way the show handles the language barrier is also unique.  The Norwegians speak Norwegian and Van Zant’s character, Frank Tagliano, speaks English.  The conceit of the show is that Tagliano, shown listening to language tapes on his way to Norway, can understand the language, but can’t speak it.  So he speaks English, the Norwegians speak to him in their language, and he understands.  It’s a weird way to have a conversation, but it mostly seems to work, if you can accept the premise that a guy can understand the language perfectly, but can’t speak a word; so half the show is subtitles.  Now some people just will not accept subtitles (yes I’m referring to my fellow Americans) under any circumstances, so if that applies, this show isn’t for you.

More interesting than the show is the business model that got this show on the…air.  Netflix intends to use original programming to attract subscribers.  Their logic is that the old advertising model that has funded on the air and cable television is on the way out.  The multiplication of TV channels and the alternative options to regular television mean that the audience is getting smaller and smaller for each channel.  The days of getting 106 million viewers for a single show, like the series finale of MASH, are, with the exception of major sports events, gone forever. As the television audience becomes more bifurcated, the revenues these channels can get for advertising shrinks.

Netflix ignores advertisers.  It’s only interested in attracting new subscribers.  Will Lilyhammer help with that?

I’m guessing no.

Although it did garner enough viewers to justify a second season, I doubt the show actually did much to pull in new subscribers to the service.  However for its next show it’s decided to go after an already established fan base.  It’s producing 10 new episodes of the show Arrested Development.  Like Community, which I wrote about here, Arrested Development has an established, loyal fan base that could be tempted to sign up for a Netflix account to view the shows.  Other properties that Netflix was considering, like Terra Nova, did not.  There is even talk about reviving Firefly on Netflix (please oh please!)

When the second season of Lilyhammer comes out next year, I’ll probably watch it.  Hey I’m invested in the story now and want to see where it goes, but I don’t think the potential audience for a show like this is particularly big.

That’s why it’s on Netflix.

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My TV Season Sitcom Wrap Up

Last fall, I wrote about my expectations for the new TV season here and here.  Now that the season finales are all wrapped up I thought I would go over the shows I initially reviewed to see how the shows, and my comments on them, panned out.  I’ll go over the freshman shows at a later date.

The Office:  With the departure of Steve Carrell I still had high hopes that the show would continue putting out the same high quality comedy even though the departure of its main star forced the show to switch gears.  As I said last fall…

Although I have been a loyal Office fan, I admit that my interest has waned a bit the past few seasons.  I mean, how long are they going to film this documentary?  But the addition of James Spader’s Robert California has breathed new life into the show.  Spader showed up in last year’s season finale as an interviewee to replace Michael Scott as Manager.  The couple of minutes of screen time was so compelling, that I would consider it Emmy worthy.  Truly, great acting as Spader’s character shows himself so supremely confident that he intimidates the search committee into selecting him.  As the new season opens Jim’s to-the-camera interview reveals that Robert California immediately drove to Florida and talked the CEO out of her job, a concept that seems totally plausible given how Spader is portraying the character.  I think James Spader is a great addition to the show, and actually may have been the only direction the show could go into that would continue to make The Office worth seeing.

So what happened?  I lost interest.  Spader was not on the show frequently enough to retain my interest, and I stopped making the show a “must see” program.  From what I’ve heard from other Office fans, my opinion is fairly widely shared.  Andy (Ed Helms) taking over as manager struck me as kind of a clunker.  Although the character is entertaining in small bites, I never was enamored with the character and couldn’t care less about his relationship with Erin.  Maybe that’s just me though since the show will be back next fall.  Perhaps my mood will change by then.

The Big Bang Theory:  My theory that Leonard and Penny would get back together panned out, although in extreme slow motion.  I’m not sure a couple who had been together, broke up for over two years, and then got back together would actually get back in such careful, baby steps, and in such a totally unromantic way that these two did, however the romance/non-romance of Leonard and Penny is one of the key building blocks of the show, so if you really want to stretch it out over several episodes, this is the way to do it.

Otherwise the general quality of the show remains strong and entertaining and I’m enjoying the budding romance, if that’s what it is, between Sheldon and Amy Farrah Fowler (Mayim Bialik).  Although they have been technically dating for two seasons, the relationship has only been one of convenience, to keep both of their parents off their backs.  However now Amy Farrah Fowler (for some reason it feels more natural to use her full name) wants to bring that relationship to the next level via B.F. Skinner-like operant conditioning.  I can see that some fans might have some hesitation that a real romantic relationship for Sheldon could change the character, but my gut feeling is that even aspies need love too and a Sheldon romantic relationship could work.  We’ll see how this plays out next season.

Two And a Half Men:      Since I wasn’t a regular viewer of the show, I probably wouldn’t have even commented on it other than the very public mental breakdown (what else would you call it?) by Charlie Sheen, that lead to him being fired from the show.  It was still a popular moneymaker so CBS wanted to continue it, adding Ashton Kutcher to the cast, in what I felt was as TV-plausible way to integrate him into the cast as possible without hiring some prize winning novelists to carefully craft a high concept season opener.  But high concept isn’t what this network show is about.  Still, it’s not the same show, and the ratings for this show have been steadily declining all season.  Not declining so much that this show won’t be back next fall. But I doubt if it can eek out any more seasons after that, and that’s probably for the best.

Community:  Community is of course my absolute favorite sitcom.  It follows in the tradition of Arrested Development in that the show has a sometimes sophisticated and complicated storyline, requiring the viewer to actually pay attention, and has lots of Easter eggs that will pay off several episodes later.  Also, like Arrested Development it suffers from perennially low ratings.  That’s to be expected of course.  A majority of people are not interested in paying close attention to a sitcom.  They’re popping popcorn in the microwave, and fielding homework questions from the kids at the same time.

The low ratings lead to Community being taken off the air in November of last year until finally returning to the schedule in March after a fan protest.  When the show returned in March, it was evident to me that the producers had already decided that they were probably going to be cancelled.  I mean nobody; NO BODY does a parody of Ken Burn’s Civil War unless they know this is their last hurrah.  That episode, awesome as it was, would have been totally impenetrable to an outsider.  And that’s the problem with Community, and similar shows like it.  At a certain point, the inside jokes, self references, and knowledge of the characters become so obtuse that only a hardcore fan would get the jokes.  Any casual user would be flummoxed.  I’m not the only one who’s made this observation.  It’s a real problem for a struggling show trying to attract an audience.  What new audience could sit down to watch an episode like Virtual Systems Analysis, and have any idea of what was going on?  The average guy sitting down on his couch to channel surf would have not understand this episode in the least.  If they were familiar with Star Trek: The Next Generation’s holodeck, they might understand what the Dreamatorium is supposed to be, but the finally detailed psychological profile that the show has built up on Abed for three seasons would be incomprehensible.  And the fantastic acting by Danny Pudi would probably go unnoticed.  Pudi played not only several versions of his own character Abed, but a version of Jeff Winger, not as he was, but as Abed imagines him to be.  That’s not only heavy writing, but heavy acting.  If you know what he was trying to do.

In spite of Community trying to sabotage itself for the last part of the season by doing some of the most brilliant avant garde  comedy on television, it got picked up for another season for a 13 episode order.  How the show can push the envelope any more than it already has I don’t know, but I’m perfectly willing to watch and see.

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Once Upon a Time Season Finale

When the fall season came out with not one, but two TV shows based on fairy tales, I admit I was bit surprised, although I suppose I shouldn’t have been.  Networks tend to poach ideas from each other all the time, so I guess the bigger surprise would have been that there would have been any shows based on fairy tales.   But the one that was promoted the most was NBC’s Grimm.  Grimm was presented as a cop show with fairy tale criminals.  Sort of a Law and Order:  Fairy Land.  I barely caught one or two promos for the competing fairy show, Once Upon a Time.  My only impression from the few promos I saw of that was that it looked stupid and would be cancelled soon.  Still… my wife wanted to give it a try so I committed to watching the show for as long as it lasted, which I assumed would be 6 weeks tops.

Surprisingly, I enjoyed the first episode.  Maybe I shouldn’t say surprisingly, but my expectations were rather limited so I wasn’t jumping up and down excited about watching the show. The basic premise is that the familiar fairy tale characters have, due to the evil queen’s curse, have been transported to small town Maine with fake memories; unaware of their former fairytale existence.    The show has many Lost-like elements, which isn’t much of a surprise considering that Damon Lindelof, former executive producer for Lost, has a producer’s credit for this show.  The show follows the familiar Lost template as well.   Each week’s story highlights the character’s motivations via flashbacks to the fairy tale world.  In the case of this show, the flashbacks really seem necessary to understanding the characters, unlike in Lost in which in many cases it seemed a little gratuitous.

So the season has been a neat little adventure as we the audience has tried to figure out which characters have memories of their past lives (4 by my count through the first season), can the curse be broken, and what happens if it is?

Some of my speculation has already been shot down.  Just throwing this out there, but I already thought ahead to the series finale in which it’s revealed that our “real” world was just created by the curse, and eliminating the curse would eliminate our world and re-establish the real, real world, the fairy tale world.  However the Mad Hatter episode firmly established that our world and the fairy tale world are just separate universes, amongst many alternate universes with differing physical laws.  Magic works in the fairy tale universe, but in our universe not so much.

Intriguingly, our knowledge of the fairy tale stories is explained by the Mad Hatter as creativity being some sort of bleed-over from other universes.  We know the Snow White story because some writer picked up the actual events and thought it was his original idea.  That’s a reverse twist on Robert Heinlein’s The Number of the Beast.  In Heinlein’s book, writers create alternate universes by imagining them.

Well, at least they’ve given us a basic idea of the structure of the Multiverse for this TV show; a necessity that isn’t required for most other shows. It doesn’t matter if Mike and Molly exist within a multiverse or not.

But on to the show (spoilers obviously):  Emma takes Henry to the Hospital where he is in critical condition while Emma is going through Henry’s bag she finds the story book which, upon touching it, unleashes some sort of flashback so that Emma suddenly believes everything Henry has been telling her all season about the fairy story characters and the curse, which, upon that realization, drives Emma bonkers to kill Regina who has just arrived at the hospital to see about Henry until Emma grabs her and starts thrashing her around the supply closet until Regina convinces Emma that Gold can help them save Henry so off they go to Gold’s shop where he is only too glad to help, telling Emma and Regina that he installed a back door to the curse and needs Emma to recover a decanter of True Love that’s in a Faberge egg inside…yes a dragon which is underground beneath a shop that Regina owns in the middle of downtown which has an elevator behind a false wall that leads to the underground lair of the dragon which Emma goes down alone somehow believing that Regina is really going to cut the elevator back on to bring her up so she arrives at the lair with Prince Charming’s (her father’s) sword and when the dragon awakes realizes that a sword doesn’t make much sense against a 40 foot high multi-ton fire breathing dragon so she pulls out her pistol and empties a clip into the dragon which actually makes less sense than the sword, forcing Emma to run around the lair dodging fireballs until she finally decides to pick up the sword again and throw it at the dragon which is naturally lesson number one in dragon fighting school because the dragon goes up in flames leaving the egg behind which Emma grabs and heads up the elevator which stops half way up (as if you couldn’t see that coming) with Mr. Gold’s head poking down the hatch with an honest sounding “just toss it up to me dearie,” which Emma believes because, heh, she didn’t really have any choice but meanwhile back at the hospital Jefferson the Mad Hatter releases Beauty of Beauty and the Beast fame from her cell that Regina had been keeping her in and tells her to go find Mr. Gold, who was the Beast in that particular side story so while Gold is back at his store unpacking the egg he just tricked out of Emma, Beauty walks in all confused since she doesn’t have any memory of Gold, but he sure has a memory of her and takes her out the woods to an old well but meanwhile Emma has untied the tied up and gagged Regina and they both rush back to the hospital only to find out Henry has just died, which causes Emma to go say her goodbyes to Henry by telling him she loves him and kisses him on the forehead which anyone who has been watching this show knows will fix anything and sure enough, with a big swoosh, Henry comes back to life and all over town, part of the curse is lifted as the townsfolk get their old, original memories back, which probably isn’t good news for Regina since now everyone remembers what she did to them so back in the woods Beauty remembers Gold is really Rumplestiltskin, her beast, as Rumpie/Gold tosses the bottle of True Love into the well which unleashes a CGI fog much like the original one that established the curse back in the fairy tale world and when Beauty asks Gold “Hey, whats up,” he replies that magic is power or some such which seems to be a pretty bad omen since Regina, back in her house after apparently losing interest in Henry after he came back to life, which is typical of adoptive parents, stares out the window at the purple CGI fog overtaking the town…

…and smiles.

Whew, out of breath!

So, this episode was not only great, it was a real game changer in at least three different ways.  First, Emma now believes in the fairyland characters, the curse, magic; the whole shebang.  And probably more important, everyone in town does too.  They all now know who they are, and bad for Regina, who she is.  Probably the biggest game changer though is the fog.  It’s not unraveling the curse enough to send everyone back home, but it’s suggestive that Gold referred to magic as power, and Regina smiling when she saw it.  That tells me that the fog is probably restoring magic, at least to a limited degree, to the town, and Regina knows that’s what it’s doing.  That also makes me think the whole dragon egg thing was a set up between Regina and Gold, working together to restore magic.  As the town’s two primary former magic users, they stand to benefit the most from getting magic back.  Why trying to establish magic in our world rather than just going back to their own universe I’m still unclear on.  Maybe they weren’t planning on a second season and that was a last minute re-write?

That being said, I did have some quibbles with the episode. I didn’t think Emma’s sudden belief was well earned at this point.  I’m assuming that touching the book brought some magic epiphany to her, but why now?  She has handled the book before with no effects.  There was nothing in the moment that should cause her to believe since she wasn’t witnessing any magic.  The act that brought her to the hospital could well have been quite a mundane one.  She knew at that point that Regina is not just a bitch, but a killer bitch since she now knows that Regina did poison that apple turnover and meant it for her.  But that’s just normal crazy in Snapped, the Oxygen TV show that has women going nuts and going kill crazy. That doesn’t lead one to think that magic exists.  I guess I’ll just assume it was a magical realization and leave it at that for now.

Secondly, why would Emma think that throwing a sword at a massive dragon would have any effect on the dragon at all?  Presumably Gold told her how to kill the dragon after the scene change, but then, why would she throw down her sword and pull out her pistol?  That pistol was only slightly more effective than throwing a bowl of oatmeal.  I suppose she could have just panicked and dropped the sword but she didn’t make a move again for the sword until she was out of ammo.

As season finales go, this was an extremely satisfying one.  Definitely looking forward to season two next Fall with totally re-ordered power struggle.

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Why is ¡Rob! still on the air?

When I first saw the CBS promos for their new series Rob, my immediate reaction was, “terrible…terrible…”  It looked so bad that I felt I could already predict its future.  Like last season’s ill-fated The Paul Reiser Show I figured the future was two episodes and an apology.  But Reiser’s show (according to the few who watched it) was merely boring and unfunny.  This show looked like a crap sandwich.

So I decided to test it. I decided to watch the first episode.  I figured that if I didn’t see that one, the odds were slim that I would get to watch another.

So I sat down to watch and my suspicions were confirmed, Rob Schneider plays ¡Rob!  An obsessive compulsive in his late 40’s who manages to woo and marry Maggie, an extremely hot model quality chick in her 20’s in just a few short weeks.  Do ruffies last that long?  Forgetting the rest of the show premise for a second, but I just could not buy into this.  And it’s nothing against Rob Schneider.  I don’t have any animus against him.  He’s acted and starred in many successful movies and isn’t an ugly man, but I just wouldn’t believe that someone who looks like him…

…could meet and marry someone who looks like her.

Sorry, I cannot, CAN NOT suspend my disbelief over this.

Television sitcommery has a long history of pairing fat or regular looking guys with super hot wives.  I mean, did anyone really believe these two could be married in real life?

But this is very much a bridge too far.

Now on to the premise.  Maggie’s family is Mexican and the entire hook of the show is Rob’s culture clash with his Mexican in-laws.  Only the most base, narrow, stereotypes are permitted.  Tacos, illegal immigration, guacamole; if it’s simple and stupid, its part of the show.  This show makes Chico and the Man sophisticated.  Come to think of it, Chico and the Man was sophisticated, at least in comparison with its 21^st Century equivalent.

I actually had to force myself to finish the pilot episode of the show.  There was some snow on a non broadcasting channel that was mighty tempting, but I had made a commitment to see how bad this show is, and it’s bad.  But I figured that it would be cancelled soon, everyone involved would be fired, and it would be years before Rob Schneider would be able to get back on series television again.

But weeks went by, and I noticed that CBS was still showing promos for ¡Rob!  It’s not cancelled yet?  So I tuned in again and sure enough, the show is still on.  A quick Google search revealed why.  The ratings for this show are holding up.

I’ll be shocked if this show gets a second season, but I’ve been wrong before (“They’ll never cancel Firefly!”)  Then again, maybe, just maybe, the show will evolve into a watchable show.

And then be cancelled.

New TV Season Review Part Deux

Continuing last week’s look at the new fall season, I start off with what is supposed to be the biggest budget, science fiction blockbuster of the season…

 

The New Shows

Terra Nova:  First the bad.  I’m sick of this same stock scenario showing up in Science Fiction over and over again, only to meet ratings failure.  The scenario?  We’ve destroyed our planet because of our greed, war, overpopulation yada, yada, yada.  Now we need to find someplace else and hopefully do things right this time.  Remember Earth 2?  Probably not.  The BBC took a try with Outcasts last year and meet with the same ratings failure.  Does anyone still think that population is the major danger facing the world?  I don’t think a social meme has been more thoroughly discredited than the thesis of Paul Erlich’s Population Bomb, the 1968 book which painted a Malthusian nightmare for a future United States.  And by future, I mean it predicted mass starvation across the United States in the 1980’s.  Remember those starving times?  Yet Terra Nova’s 2149 Chicago looks identical to the 1973 film Soylent Green’s  New York City of 2022.  Brown skies; and too many people.  People who grew up with those images as the future refuse to shake them, and are as indelible as silver suits, bubble helmets, food pills, and flying cars are for an earlier generation.  The idea of “population police” arresting people who have a third child is an idea that belongs in a 1970’s TV movie.

Or China.

The Good:  However once the action hits the prehistoric era, the show really takes off.  At that point, I didn’t feel like I was engaging in a long set up to some hopefully future story and action.  The action started immediately.  Family conflict, teens sneaking off to drink, hungry dinosaurs, and a mysterious second settlement, who are keeping some big secret as to why they are really there; gave me a satisfying good story and a desire for more.  Of course, the show is gorgeous to look at.  Filmed in Australia, the vista is lush and I admit, is a great contract to 2149 Chicago.  And the special effects, by which I mean dinosaurs, are at least Jurassic Park quality.  Not bad for a TV show.  The history of this genre usually means a show like this will maybe last the season, but won’t be picked up for a second one.  The actual audience versus the production costs will mean that the show won’t be a profitable prospect for Fox, who could probably replace it with a reality show for a tenth of the cost and twice the audience.  However, if the writing can hold up through this season, I hope to enjoy this ride as long as it lasts.

Whitney:  I wanted to like this show, and I do sort of.  For now, I find Whitney Cummings funny and she is kinda hot.  I go through these phases, almost like a comedy crush, in which I can find a certain female comedian funny; against type (because chicks generally are not funny).   But eventually I’ll tire of the humor, get bored and move on.  I think eventually, that is what will happen to me and Whitney Cummings.   It’s not you, it’s me.  I wish you the best in your future endeavors.

But for now I enjoy the show, mainly because I enjoy her and still find her funny.  It doesn’t hurt that her live in boyfriend on the show Alex (Chris D’Elia) is a good fit.  Long term however, everything about the show is same ole, same ole.  A bunch of 20 something urban “friends” getting involved in each other’s lives…  It’s almost the same background to every sitcom since Seinfeld; urban singles making it in the big city by relying on each other.  We don’t need our real families, look we’ve made a brand new one in New York City!  So my interest in this show will last  exactly as long as Whitney Cummings makes me laugh.  When that ends, there will be nothing else of the show to still keep me interested.

The Returning Shows

The Office:  This show could have gone a lot of different directions after the departure of show star Steve Carrell; most of them dead ends.  It’s very difficult to limp along when a major character leaves.  In this case, the departure of the star should have meant a death blow to the show.  But I think the path they’ve chosen may give this show an opportunity for new life.

Although I have been a loyal Office fan, I admit that my interest has waned a bit the past few seasons.  I mean, how long are they going to film this documentary?  But the addition of James Spader’s Robert California has breathed new life into the show.  Spader showed up in last year’s season finale as an interviewee to replace Michael Scott as Manager.  The couple of minutes of screen time was so compelling, that I would consider it Emmy worthy.  Truly, great acting as Spader’s character shows himself so supremely confident that he intimidates the search committee into selecting him.  As the new season opens Jim’s to-the-camera interview reveals that Robert California immediately drove to Florida and talked the CEO out of her job, a concept that seems totally plausible given how Spader is portraying the character.  I think James Spader is a great addition to the show, and actually may have been the only direction the show could go into that would continue to make The Office worth seeing.

The Big Bang Theory:  I would have been looking forward to this show coming back anyway; it’s one of my favorites, but the last season ended with a cliffhanger of sorts.  After a drunken evening, Raj sleeps with Penny… or did he?  That the social awkwardness of the situation could be diffused by the end of the premiere episode should provide its own answer.

So simple plotlines yes, but great characters, also yes.  The show manages to slice and dice the major symptoms of nerddom amongst its four major male leads.  And someone has gotten geek culture down pat.  The constant nerd talk is backed up by solid writing.  The show probably depends on its technical advisors for nerd culture as much as it does for its physics-speak.

And of course, any show that has as its main character someone who displays many of the symptoms of Asperger’s  is  OK in my book.  That’s a hard acting job to pull off and Jim Parson’s does it brilliantly as Dr. Sheldon Cooper.  Hopefully this season will finally get Penny and Leonard back together.  I’ve got bets on this!

 

Reposted from Muchedumbre.com