Category Archives: John Hodgman

The 2010-2011 Caruso Awards: The Best Episodes of the Year (30-21)

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In a previous post I remarked that I wouldn’t be able to write about Spartacus: Gods of the Arena as I hadn’t seen it; a terrible oversight partially explainable as discomfort following on from the tragic fate of star Andy Whitfield. Mostly it was down to altered priorities throughout the year. We had to catch up on Parks and Recreation and The Good Wife, which took up a fair amount of our allocated TV watching time. Work comes first, after all, with Twitter checking in second place, I’m ashamed to say.

Parks and Recreation was once dismissed by us at length, and The Good Wife never seemed to be something we would be interested in, but the critics urging the audience to give them a chance are 100% correct; both shows are magnificent, and well worth your time if you don’t already watch them. To be honest, I think The Good Wife could be marketed better; there’s an audience waiting out there for something this sophisticated, but they might be put off by publicity that makes it look like some kind of soapy fluff about working moms. FFS, this is the most intelligent show on network TV, a genuine marvel. It should be watched by anyone with an interest in the modern world; no other show feels as much of its time as this one.

As for our previous damning criticisms of Parks and Recreation, I’d just like to say even though that first season was pretty weak, my immediate dismissal of it — considering that even at its worst it was never even a fraction as bad as the truly odious Modern Family — still stands as the greatest mistake this blogger has ever made, at least until I decided to finish this blogpost in the KFC in Leicester Square, just because it had free wi-fi. Doesn’t anyone on this planet know how to chew with their mouths shut? I’m forming Misophonics Anonymous tomorrow. [/intolerant asshole]

Anyway, Spartacus: Gods of the Arena doesn’t feature in the 30-21 list; it’s much better than that. Which is not to denigrate the following ten shows; they’re all wonderful in their own right. #arsecovering

30: The Trip – Hipping Hall

Shades of Caruso was bound to enjoy Michael Winterbottom’s navel-gazing curio just for the scenery; a recent holiday has made us very pro-Lake District, and seeing its breathtaking beauty again was a real treat. The short series works well as a whole; the differences from one week to the next are negligible but when seen as a single entity, the growing loneliness of “Steve Coogan” and the contented obliviousness of “Rob Brydon” are obvious. The fourth week, however, gave us a new take on their tiresome games of one-upmanship, as the two comedic actors are joined for dinner by assistant Emma and photographer Yolanda. The most excruciating scene of the year sees “Rob” unleash a slew of bad impressions, while “Steve” shrinks on horror before joining in, unable to let his companion be the centre of attention. Meanwhile, Emma and Yolanda’s laughter becomes more and more forced, and the comedians’ banter becomes crueller. It also sees “Rob” step out of character and make an ill-advised, almost unwatchable move on Emma, a plot development that the real Rob Brydon asked Winterbottom to remove from the truncated movie version. Sorry Rob, that was a great scene, and your discomfort ensures this episode’s place on this list.

29: Bored to Death – I’ve Been Living Like A Demented God!

It’s easy to dismiss HBO’s light comedy about mildly disaffected middle-class New Yorkers as nothing but froth, but if it had more bite, it wouldn’t work at all. As such, it’s content to be an endearing diversion with the occasional very good joke about how useless and self-absorbed the intelligentsia of the East Coast are. It’s a slight Woody Allen-esque sitcom, back when Woody Allen was still funny and had something to say. This episode is the highlight of its second year, bringing about the return of Kristin Wiig and John Hodgman. Wiig has little to do other than play a femme fatale pick-up for Zack Galafianakis’ suddenly virile Ray, but John Hodgman gets to do all sorts of amusing things, and takes to physical comedy with gusto as he rolls around in dirt while trying to avoid a group of angry (but not too angry; this is mild comedy, after all) drug dealers. We also get to see poor George dealing with his prostate cancer diagnosis and his hilarious response to a mandatory drug test at work; his frantic but composed pantomime of panic when trying to tamper with his urine sample is a little gem. Even better, his final scene with a very enthusiastic Jonathan is incredibly sweet; a perfect encapsulation of what makes this show so lovable.

28: Luther – Episode 3

Last year Shades of Caruso took great pleasure in deriding the BBC’s hysterically overwrought serial killer drama Loofah, with its needlessly flashy compositions, poorly judged performances, incoherent plotting and modish “edginess”. This year, SoC scratches its head, staring in bemusement at the four episodes that exploded into the Beeb’s schedule like a not-terrible howitzer shell of semi-competence. Connected by one plot-thread – albeit a not-particularly great one – the two two-parters offered more fun and more purposeful storytelling than was expected. Many of the old problems remained, but with a modicum of restraint Loofah became far more compelling, with our apocalyptically glum hero now approaching iconic status as London’s tortured protector. This episode was the best of the quartet, mostly for the two main setpieces depicting the Dice Killer impassively going about his murderous business; director Sam Miller brilliantly keeps the action simple, and the effect is unforgettable. Much of that is down to the bold use of London locations; when the killer walks calmly through Liverpool Street station in the cliffhanger ending, the effect is one of absolute terror. The gloves came off this year; the flaws mean so little when they’re part of something as scary and confident as this.

27: Psychoville – Sunnyvale

Shades of Caruso foolishly missed the first season of this exceptional horror-comedy when it originally aired, meaning 2009′s awards didn’t include praise for “David and Maureen”, the “one-shot” homage to Rope that could be the best thing produced by the BBC in the last decade. It’s hard to pick a stand-out episode from Psychoville‘s second season when each episode is as good as every other, but this half-hour probably wins out, and again Hitchcock is at the heart of it. The main setpiece, a play on Strangers on a Train set in an old folks home, is a comedic delight, powered by the interplay between the delightful double-act of Mr. Jelly and Claudia Wren. On top of that we find out the dark secret behind Ravenhill Psychiatric Hospital, and Mrs. Kenchington’s familial history. It also stands as one of the purest expressions of Shearsmith and Pemberton’s vision of England’s contradictory nature; that cheery surface hiding a dark core, perfectly visualised here with the image of a stash of Nazi memorabilia hidden under a collectible toy shop. (Confession: one of the main reasons this episode deserves a place on the list is for the joke about the Nazi memorabilia website NaziBay.)

26: Doctor Who – A Good Man Goes To War

Rumours of strife on set and within the show’s production staff appeared in Private Eye several weeks after this season took a break, but it could be argued that the wildly variable quality of the episodes was a sign that something was up. The previous season was patchy, but this was on a different level. Part of that was showrunner Steven Moffat’s obvious ambition; numerous plot threads had been introduced that were waiting to be tied up, meaning audience members who were not in the show’s thrall would likely end up being frustrated. Thank the Heavens for this memorable mid-season finale, which saw the show firing on all cylinders once more. With a cast of previously introduced minor characters returning to help the Doctor rescue Amy and her soon-to-be-born baby (whose identity is sadly signposted with obnoxious obviousness in the episode’s opening moments), the show’s energy returned with a vengeance. Despite budgetary restraints, Who felt epic once more, with Matt Smith on scorching form, doing justice to Moffat’s riotous inventions and crazed plotting. This is what the show should be every week; a madcap, exhilarating blast of imagination, powered by sheer force of will.

25. The Office – Garage Sale

After what feels like a million seasons of increasingly depressing shenanigans in Dundler Mifflin’s despair-pit, it was time for Steve Carell to detach the chains around his ankles and escape the show that had helped carry him to stardom. Much of the season was spent waiting for him to leave the office, with the only drama derived from speculating about how it would happen. Thankfully, while those episodes had only glimmers of the show’s previous genius, the final five minutes of this Carell-written episode provided a genuinely magical moment. Cleverly set up as an imminent disaster, Michael Scott’s marriage proposal to Holly is instead a gloriously sentimental and moving triumph that pays tribute to Scott’s relationship with the core cast, leads to a well-judged mood-puncturing joke, and ends on an out-of-the-blue declaration of our hero’s intention to leave. It’s possibly the most simultaneously surprising and unsurprising character note in the history of the show, and it worked like gangbusters. Tears flowed like the water from the Scranton branch’s sprinklers.

24: Louie – Subway / Pamela

The first segment of this episode is almost wordless; it’s a beautifully shot, almost poetic sequence with Louie taking a trip on a subway, encountering great beauty and terrible poverty in a single moment, observing the patter of a young boy with great astonishment, and then imagining himself as the feted hero of his carriage by mopping up a noxious brown liquid. The words come later, as Louie spending an afternoon with his friend Pamela. What starts as a loose segment with our dopey hero hanging out with the ever-acidic Pamela shifts into mortifying comedy territory as Louie goes for broke and professes his undying love; it’s a long, beautiful, uncynical speech. It would be a joy to listen to if it weren’t for the knowledge that Pamela is never going to be won over. The result is a growing sense of doom; anyone who has ever harbored a crush on someone who has no interest will tear off their ears and poke out their eyes at the miserable truth presented here. It’s not all bad, though. The punchline, in the final shot, is a cracker. Good final monologue too, if depressing. But it’s the good kind of depressing; a perfect description of the show.

23. Alphas - Blind Spot

In the unexpectedly long run of NBC’s dire Heroes, there were moments of brightness that never truly removed the murk. Company Man in the first season was easily the highlight, combining spectacle and character drama in a way it never managed again. In a shorter space of time, Syfy’s Alphas reached a point where its massive ambition led to this mini-action epic; a perfectly constructed action TV classic that evoked happy memories of the first two X-Men movies. The irony that the show was co-created by Zak Penn, writer of the despised third X-Men movie, is not lost on me. Ira Steven Behr’s clever script puts the ramshackle Alpha team in the position of questioning Dr. Graham Kern (a brilliantly menacing Brent Spiner) in their base, smugly assuming they were in control. As the perfectly paced episode progresses, they come to realise they’re actually at the mercy of not one but two antagonistic forces powerful enough to kill them all. This was where Alphas began to prove it belonged in the top tier of this year’s new shows, packing in a decent amount of low-cost action, setting a light under the season-long Red Flag arc, and tying off some loose threads into the bargain. And the best thing about it? Two episodes later we were given a satisfying, exciting, and emotionally wrenching finale better than anything Heroes could ever have managed. This is how you do superhero TV.

22: 30 Rock – Double-Edged Sword

For a couple of years SoC has railed against the 30 Rock backlash, as fans complained that the show had lost its freshness and had become mired in self-referential games. We argued that it remained fresh and funny, that the post-modern games were smart enough to render the criticisms redundant, and that the show still had some life. This year, we caved. Fatigue seemed to infect what was once the wittiest show on TV, not helped by the ascendence of Community and Parks and Recreation to the position of sitcom superiority. Still, all was not lost; Double-Edged Sword was as sharp as 30 Rock‘s best, partially because there seemed to be things at stake within the show. Jack and Avery’s mad-dash out of Canada before their child is born, Tracy’s realisation that his EGOT is more a curse than a blessing, and Liz’ sad epiphany that a comfortable relationship is just as untenable as a fraught one; not only all thematically linked (the double-edged sword from the title) but present to enable the show to make a self-referential joke about thematic linking in sitcoms. Sad that the show had to make a sacrifice to regain its mojo; the loss of Matt Damon’s brilliantly realised Carol at least gives us a superb sub-plot about the petty tyranny of pilots, and a running joke that SoC is very grateful for, concerning that stupid-ass owl movie Legends of the Guardians.

21: The Venture Brothers – Assisted Suicide

Mid-season breaks are usually a great help for creative teams facing deadlines, especially when the show in question is animated, but for the audience it can often be a mixed blessing, Though the wait for the fourth season might have been unbearable without it, the break robbed the show of its momentum. It wasn’t until this triumphant episode that the fourth season lived up to previous seasons, as The Monarch invades Rusty Venture’s mind to wreak havoc. Only Doctor Orpheus can save him, leading to encounters with Rusty’s id, ego and superego; a hysterically funny adventure on first viewing, but a revealing and sad peek into Rusty’s psyche when watched again. All of his motivations are laid bare; thankfully this is a show that has no interest in curing Rusty, though there is a touching grace note in the final scene in which Rusty relates an anecdote about his awful childhood; yet more proof that this exceptional show is more humane than anything else on Adult Swim. Also great: Brock Sampson and Sergeant Hatred’s battle for the Venture Brothers’ affections, more Shore Leave excellence, and the long-awaited kiss between 21 and Dr. Mrs. The Monarch. An instant classic.

More tomorrow. I promise I won’t keep bringing up how much I hate Modern Family. Even though it’s abysmal.

All Hail the Fingers Of Fury!

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If a writer has writers’ block, then a blogger will suffer from Blogger Clog, and that’s certainly the case here. There are numerous reasons for my infrequent posting, perhaps most importantly this goddamn illness, which, while little more than a cold, has been hanging around for weeks. Hard to be prolific when one side of my head feels heavier than the other. On top of that is a much busier than usual week at work which has drained me of much energy, and oh God this election this fucking election it’s driving my brain crazy with the excessive checking of the politiblogs, so much so that, even though I’ve been enjoying his updates, if Andrew Sullivan writes “know hope” one more time I’ll either turn violent or cry or cry violently. It’s the classic split between his faith and my atheism; he can know hope all he likes, but I’ll not relax until Obama’s inauguration. People who know me will be very familiar with my fatalistic tendencies. ::takes break from hard minute’s blogging to check fivethirtyeight.com::

Another reason, which is probably the main one if I was willing to sit and poke at my ossified brain in order to find out, is my attempt to finish reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Though I’m wary of saying anything about it for fear of angering her many many fans/followers/cultists, I have to say it is about to defeat me. No, Randian visitors, her worldview has not dominated mine, as if it had been dismantled and bested by a philosophy of vast strength and power, like the machines that conquer and crush the rocks and mountains of the earth. I’m just, well, really really really fucking bored by now. Her insanely florid prose might have amused me before, but by now, after being shouted at in a self-pitying and mean-spirited tone for 700 pages, I might not be able to make it. But I must! For am I not a human being? Is not my mind the Alpha and Omega, the force that can harness nature and bend it to my will, able to withstand this mighty onslaught, bearing the winds and rains of her ideas and rising, triumphant, like a Titan, like the owner of himself and his destiny, masterful and immortal? Fuck you, book! You shall never defeat me!

However, I do just want to get it over and done with by now, if only because I need a break from it. I’m glad I’m reading it, especially at a time like this, when one presidential candidate is bellowing “Socialist!” and running from person to person like Kevin McCarthy in the first two versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and the world’s most powerful Objectivist, Alan Greenspan, is talking about how there is a flaw in the world that makes his free market ideals untenable (I’m totally paraphrasing; please don’t correct me, people). Before reading Atlas Shrugged I would have thought his comment rather cheeky, blaming people for the market disaster and not The Market itself, but now I see his point (though I don’t necessarily agree with it). If I’m reading Atlas Shrugged right (again, don’t comment, I don’t need clarification just yet), the Objectivist creed would work just fine as long as everyone was “moral” by Rand’s code, but after many many years Greenspan has apparently discovered that people (i.e. traders and bankers and economists and anyone who deals with money anywhere in the world ever) won’t abide by that code of behaviour, and will in fact take as many short cuts as possible to fill their pockets with as much Fat Bank as they can. I see where he’s coming from. I think he’s a bit tapped to be suddenly saying, “Oh, it’s humanity’s fault for this and not mine for coming up with a system of economics that doesn’t take into account actual human behaviour as it really actually exists for reals, but instead bases its assumptions about what people are like on the idealised ramblings of a writer from the 50s who had a weird thing for dominatory industrialists and smokestacks and trains going into tunnels and which therefore cannot possibly work,” but I do see where he’s coming from. Thanks for the recession, jerkwad.

So yeah, it’s been interesting to listen to Republican and conservative thought with a new, deeper understanding of where it’s coming from, and to finally comprehend why followers of that creed hate taxation as much as they do even though I think they’re wrong, and so I do owe a debt of thanks to Ayn Rand for giving me such a long-winded peek into that mindset. Sadly, my brain is dying from the melodrama and the hate and the victimhood, and I just want to get it over with so I can move onto something fun (I got John Hodgman’s new book two days ago and it’s begging to be read). Until then, time I would devote to blogging is being taken up with enduring the endless Rand-ting, so it’s like another blog slowdown, and one I really don’t want to endure but will because I’m stubborn like that and hate leaving books unfinished (especially when I’m 700 pages in). I will get back to the planned post about Mad Men, and some Face/Offs I’ve been looking forward to as soon as I can, but for now, I must complete this mammoth task.

In the meantime, here is the other thing that has totally possessed my mind over the last week, but luckily it’s a thing that is making the brain very very happy. Marnie Stern, super-genius guitarist, has just appeared on my Radar of Unbelievable Awesomeness with her new album This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That (which is a phrase attributed to Zen philosopher Alan Watts, according to AV Club). It is absolutely incredible, easily on my 2008 best list along with Re-Arrange Us by Mates of State and The Family Afloat by Bound Stems and several other lovely works. Stern’s guitar playing is unlike anything I’ve heard before, and strumming along to it would be the most insane Rock Band challenge ever (especially as Zach Hill’s drumming is almost as complex and frenetic). This is her new single, Transformer, and it should be number one across the planet.

Even better is her song Ruler, which you can find on her MySpace page. Thank you for keeping the book cooties from smothering my brain, Marnie Stern.

This Week In TV Special: Vic and Ronnie vs. Shane

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Knowing that any weekend posts about this week in TV would be completely derailed by the gut-wrenching hour of TV we saw last night, I thought I would get some of my feelings out here to save me time later. Though this week’s Mad Men, which we have yet to watch, is reportedly horrifying and gripping and brilliant, and I’m sure something we watch regularly will impress us (or disappoint us ::aims stinkeye at Ugly Betty::), there is no way, and I really really mean NO WAY, that anything will wrench the Highlight of the Week mantle from this week’s episode of The Shield, Parricide. The only episode of this magnificent show that is more upsetting, shocking, template-destroying, and beautifully made is the season five finale, Postpartum, an hour of TV that almost made me vomit, if it’s possible to vomit while sobbing uncontrollably and wailing the odd exhortation to God or Crom or Neo or whoever.

——–Beware Shield spoilers if you have yet to watch it, which, really, is kinda unforgivable——–

Over the last couple of months, we have sped through six seasons of the show, hooked by the moral quandaries and thrilled by the efforts of lovable thug Vic Mackey and his Strike Team to escape the mistakes of the past with their souls and families intact. Of the many things to praise, perhaps the thing that excites me most is the show’s willingness to take its format to the brink of destruction as often as possible and reel it back without removing consequences for its characters. It’s not just splitting the Strike Team up at the end of season three and figuring out a way to realistically bring them together again midway through the next season — it’s having one of the team killed in the most heart-rending way at the end of Postpartum and still keeping the show running even though some of the characters have been transformed into psychotic versions of their former selves. Most of that is due to the superb writing staff and the sure hand of showrunner Shawn Ryan, but it’s also a function of that format. The setting (The Barn and Farmington), the set of characters (the police force of The Barn, including the Strike Team), and the antagonists (the various gangs and their bosses) remain unchanged from season to season, but the cast and the scope of the show expands while the morality of all the characters contract, becoming touched more and more by Mackey’s crimes, and the compromises everyone has to make to do their jobs and survive. Episode to episode the show looks the same, but the format is not “See what scrapes Vic gets into this week”; it’s “When will Vic pay for his moral failure?”, as the show is all about Vic’s long arc from cop-killing crook to desperate do-gooder trying to atone for his multitude of sins, all the while corrupting everything he touches in barely perceptible increments. As a result, even though an occasional observer might think the show is static, it’s always changing, always travelling toward a core of darkness.


This final season shows that better than most, with Vic’s efforts to save his soul and his link to his estranged family overshadowed by the consequences of his murder of Terry Crowley, the Armenian Money Train heist, Lem’s death and, most recently, Vic’s failed attempt to set up his former best friend, Shane. Most of the season has been about moving pieces into place, such as pushing Shane so far that his only hope of survival is to kill his former Strike Team partners, though his traditional ineptitude means the plan fails. This week’s episode featured a bravura moment of drama, as Shane watches his reluctant accomplice, Two Man, cave under pressure, revealing Shane’s part in that murder plot. If the show has pushed itself almost to destruction many times before, in that incredible moment The Shield as we know it fell apart (or, to be more exact, exploded), and yet we still have five episodes left to go.

Watching the whole beautifully choreographed mess unfold, we kept trying to predict what was going to happen. Shane’s gonna kill Ronnie! Ronnie’s totally gonna murder Shane! Vic’s gonna snap and kill Ronnie to save Shane even though Shane is totally off the chain! And yet we were wrong. A colleague recently praised The Wire by saying that when a plot line kicks in, surprising you completely, in retrospect you realise there was no other way it could have come down, and The Shield does that too, but perhaps no better than it did in this incredible hour. Thinking there were only one or two ways the episode could unfold — with murders and cover-ups — we couldn’t see this grand surprise coming, as it changes the show utterly. Of course, as The Shield reaches the end of its life, it can afford to do something like this, but still, watching it happen was a thrilling experience.


Of all the things to love it for, though, best of all is the performance of Walton Goggins, which deserves award recognition next year. Seeing his mask of bravado and overconfidence slowly crumble as his cover-up falls apart was entertaining enough, but the final moment — as he watched his goon, Two Man, weigh up his options, and realised that his career and friendships and possibly life are finally all over — was on a par with Michael Emerson’s performance as Ben Linus in The Shape of Things to Come, which, for me, is the highest praise I can give. It was heartbreaking and darkly funny and thrilling and a million other things. It’s the sort of performance that signals the arrival of an actor that people follow from project to project for the rest of their career, and the sad thing about it is that Shield fans have already seen him give a performance that is just as amazing, in his final scene with Lem, and yet he has not been given a multicoloured coat like that Joseph guy, except with dozens of reinforced pockets to hold all of the awards he deserves. That’s the sort of crime that should be investigated by the Strike Team, with all of the door-smashing, body-blocks, and threats that the award judges deserve.

Okay, enthusiasm purge over. That is all. (Canyon just told me that genius humorist John Hodgman’s third book is going to be callled That Is All. It’s the little things that make life worth living.)

Things That Have Occurred To Us While Watching Season Five Of 24 (2 – 4)

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Our headlong rush through the fifth season of 24 has been partially curtailed now shows are returning to air (CSI, The Office, 30 Rock, and Battlestar Galactica are all back), but we’re still watching it and still loving it. More observations follow thusly…

2. Curtis is the black David Puddy.

With Tony out of action and Jack having to deal with the usual bureaucratic nonsense, the role of second-stringer grunt goes to Curtis Manning, played by Roger R. Cross. As far as we’ve seen in season five he hasn’t had much to do other than run around with a nerve gas canister and arrest jerkoff hobbit/bureaucrat Lynn McGill. However, it was at the moment that he was asked to do that by Audrey Raines that we realised that his peculiar stilted line readings and intense facial expressions reminded us of David Puddy from Seinfeld. He has the same build, the same monolithic presence; he even talks in monosyllables!



You got a question…you ask the 8-ball!

3. I dread the non-existent tolling of the silent clock.

I couldn’t care less about Edgar. We already have Chloe, who is one of the ten best characters on TV right now, so why have someone else as socially inept as Chloe, except not as good at his job as she is, not to mention far less entertaining? It was a total waste of a spot on the regular cast, and I couldn’t understand why he was such a popular character.

In season five Edgar is killed in the middle of a nerve gas attack on CTU headquarters (which is possibly the most vulnerable place on earth, having been breached numerous times by now, not to mention employing more moles and terrorists than the International College of Terroristics and Molery at the height of its popularity). This plot development was no surprise. I knew about Edgar’s death on the day after it originally aired in the US as Yahoo! News had a big feature on their front page about it. I couldn’t believe there was such an outcry over a character that had never seemed that important or popular, but apparently people were really shocked by it.

Of course, when I saw it, my cynicism evaporated. His death was horrible, and I was a bit peeved about it, but the silent clock at the end got to me anyway. It did when Teri Bauer died, and when Ryan Chappelle died, and it happened again here. I totally didn’t cry, though! I just got all choked up and sad, that’s all. It’s totally different!

That said, if Miles Papazian, backboneless hyper-bureaucrat, weaselly tattle-tale, and pencil-pushing world champion were to die heroically and get the silent clock treatment (doubtful, as he is to heroism what Jack Bauer is to risk-averse middle-management), I would use those few seconds to dance a jig in honour of his long-delayed demise. Die, you feeble unpopular geek, die!!!

4. Was the existence of Tony’s soul patch a directive from former producer Joel Surnow?

One of the many many reasons for Canyon’s apathy toward the magnificent he-man known as the Tonytron 5000 Heroismbot is the existence of the soul patch, which appeared on and off over the past few seasons. But why is it there at all? What was the inspiration? Maybe show creator Joel Surnow knows.

Surnow is, of course, the man responsible for creating the polar opposite of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, in that it was right-wing, unfunny, mean-spirited, lifeless, desperate, and a blatant propaganda tool borne of the paranoid, ossified, humanity-hating, addled mindset of the extremist conservative anti-democratic media machine that is Fox News, whereas The Daily Show has Rob Riggle, John Hodgman and Samantha Bea and therefore wins booyah! That show, The ½ Hour News Hour, failed. Badly. Any Conservatives or Republicans who stumble across this blog will be incensed by this, and might insult us in comments and then obsessively come back over and over and over to check to see if we’ve taken the bait, but humour is subjective, and subjectively (in other words, in my humble opinion) this show sucked. Actually, if I’m being honest, it sucked objectively as well. There’s an equation that proves it. The ½ Hour News Hour is the Platonic ideal of suckage that casts the shadow onto the wall of the cave that we recognise as the watered-down version of suckage that we use to describe things like Rob Cohen movies or Judd Winick comics.

What has this bitchery to do with 24 and the soul patch? Nothing. I just like remembering that Fox News tried to be funny and didn’t even understand the concept. Don’t believe me? Watch this, if you can get past the opening crawl, which screams, “IMMINENT, CATACLYSMIC ÜBER-FAIL FOR THE AGES!” so powerfully it throbs like an absess under a wisdom tooth.

Anyway, enough of the schadenfreude. I will add that Surnow has left 24 in the hands of Howard Gordon (and probably David Fury), so we don’t have to think about him anymore, unless he creates another compelling action show (that features a lot less torture, please). Bye Surnow. Don’t let the nerve gas canister hit you in the ass on the way out.

So, we’re still making our way through, and there are more things occurring to me as we go along. This will predictably involve Robocop references. Prepare yourselves.