The 2008-2009 Caruso Awards: The Worst New Characters Of The Year

Posted on September 18, 2009 by admiralneck

Long-time readers of Shades of Caruso will be well aware of the concept of The Gupta, but I must admit to being concerned that new readers have come across this post and are wondering why I sound like an enormous racist. Here is the long version if you want a proper explanation, but if you don’t want to check that out, here is a short version. Spielberg’s The Terminal features a deeply unlikeable character who seems to be awful to everyone around him for no apparent logical reason. Gupta, played by Kumar Pallana from Wes Anderson’s troupe of supporting players, is a total schmuck, and every scene with him in drove Canyon and me into fits of apoplectic fury. This is not — I repeat, NOT — a comment on Kumar Pallana, who is delightful in his other roles. The problem lies with the character of Gupta, not the performer. Why writers Andrew Niccol, Sacha Gervasi and Jeff Nathanson thought this odious little sprite was a good idea is beyond me, and Spielberg’s motives are similarly unclear. Is he some form of trickster demon? An experiment in audience sympathy? I am still perplexed by this.

Nevertheless, after seeing it, me and Canyon came up with the theory that every show or film features a Gupta, some character who annoys us, or has seemingly no purpose, or fails to do what they are supposed to do (i.e. be charming, coming off instead as a bit of a dick). This is never a knock on the actor, who might be perfectly fine when not playing this poorly designed character, and it’s not objective (these things never are). It is also not a racist comment, for the millionth time. If the original Gupta from The Terminal had been, say, a bespectacled nerd from the West Midlands called John who had a weird compulsion to leave large wet patches on slippery floors to make Catherine Zeta-Jones fall over, we would be talking about the John of the show. Gupta was just the character that inspired the observation, and has now been immortalised. It is more than the character deserves, to be honest.

So anyway, here are the ten new Guptas from shows seen over the period from September 2008 to September 2009. Remember, this is not a comment on the actors, though if they have in any way contributed to the Guptocity of the characters they are playing, we will have to cry foul. Sorry, potentially lovely people who have been unfortunate enough to get work playing douchebags.

10. Kimmie Keegan - Ugly Betty

The obnoxious stunt-casting of Lindsay Lohan can be forgiven. The increasingly desperate Ugly Betty needed to do something to draw attention to itself now that the glowing articles from EW and Salon have dried up, and the former interest in presenting a candy-coloured and energetic vision of a tolerant world has given way to a tiresome soap opera pastiche that lies dead on the screen like something that gets lampooned by Joel McHale on The Soup. Nevertheless, Lohan’s character — Kimmie Keegan — was a misfire from the first second. Played as a spiteful figure from Betty’s past, she was used to make our heroine feel even more insecure at work than ever, but as this season was scattershot and poorly organised, this long long set-up of Kimmie as a supervillainous foil paid off far too quickly to have any impact. Yet another waste of our time from a once-great show. Lohan’s listless and unfocused performance didn’t help either.

Worst Moment: Dissing Marc and Amanda in the Mode cafeteria. Yes, we get that her arrival has turned the office into a kind of surrogate for school, and they’re playing with those uncomfortable moments from our past, but there is no way she would turn them away. They have too much accumulated power between them. The grinding gears of the plot were deafening.

9. Emile Danko - Heroes

As I said above, the appearance of a character on the Gupta list is not a knock on the actor. Indeed, Željko Ivanek is a terrific character actor who has given numerous super performances in the past. We were lucky enough to see him at the Edwin Booth Theatre in Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman, opposite Jeff Goldblum and Billy Crudup, and he was superb. Heroes is possibly the polar opposite of an acclaimed play by an award-winning playwright. Here, Ivanek is forced to play a deadly hunter required to hunt powered individuals, operating with staggering ineptitude and making all sorts of baffling and ridiculous double-deals, all the while letting people off the hook whenever the abysmal scripts require it. There is almost certainly a way to make the character work, but when he is written in such a way as to have no coherent arc or soul, there is no way to invest in him or his goals. No, we don’t add characters to the Gupta list because we hate the actors, but we can add a character to the Gupta list if we love the actor. Seeing Ivanek in the middle of this mess was a dispiriting experience.

Worst Moment: After making a million comments about how he will show no mercy to any powered individuals, he promptly teams up with Sylar. Eventually he betrays him, just as he reflexively betrays everyone in the show at some point or another, but he still allows him to go around absorbing powers while he is his “partner”. Dear God, this series is beyond awful.

8. Lucas Douglas - House

In his first appearance in House, hired by the titular character to spy on his team and friends, Lucas Douglas is very funny and charming. He’s a bit inept, and makes numerous social faux-pas that endear him to people around him enough that they open up to him. It was an amusing take on the private detective role. And then he crops up again the following week, acting like he has known all of the characters for months and starts hanging out with House at his home. And then he turns up for a third week and he’s coming onto Cuddy, and she seems to be responding to it. That was enough for us. David Shore has said that Douglas was meant to get his own show, meaning his appearance in House was a dry run for that show, though now it appears not to be going ahead. A shame, as I would happily have watched him in his own show, which would have had a chance to grow organically with new characters and situations. Having him hang out with well-established characters like some kind of misguided Gary-Stu? Thanks, but no thanks. And he’s coming back in season six. Let’s hope they get him right this time.

Worst Moment: Seeing him hanging out at House’s apartment, jamming on a piano and chatting away with the long-time misanthrope and professional asshole, was the first inkling that something had gone wrong with the show. Has the example of Poochy taught us nothing?

7. Captain David Shepherd - Kings

Kings cannot help but be dominated by the incredible power of Ian Mc-Fucking-Shane as King Silas Benjamin, with that rich, booming voice resonating through the cavernous locations and sets like the word of God. The only actor on the show who can stand up to that is Brian Cox as Vesper Abedon, the former king of Carmel, and we sadly don’t get to see much of that. (I’m not counting Dylan Baker’s William Cross, as he is a sneaky toad who conspires against his king behind his back, meaning he rarely has to go toe-to-toe with Benjamin). So who do they get as the potential usurper, the future King David to Benjamin’s defeated King Saul? A hick soldier who gets lucky against a tank one time, looks terrified throughout, and seems to have “Crying about how horrible the world is” listed as a hobby. Christopher Egan should feel no shame for being outclassed by McShane; other than Cox, everyone on the show is, including such fine actors as Dylan Baker, Eamonn Walker, and Wes Studi. What can’t be avoided, though, is that David Shepherd, as conceived here, is a whiny loser. I don’t care how many butterflies hover around his head (this is a plot point, not a weird metaphor). He looks completely wrong sharing the screen with King Silas Benjamin. It’s like watching Milhouse Van Houten facing off against Charlton Heston as Moses.

Worst Moment: In The Sabbath Queen, a flashback shows King Silas Benjamin visiting his dying daughter in hospital. In the atrium of the building we get to see David before he becomes the soldier that destroys the Goliath tank. He is crying. Of course. Cowboy up, you wimp!

6. Martha Rodgers - Castle

Castle is a star vehicle, no doubt about it. Other than the dashing, hilarious charmster Mr. Nathan Fillion Esq., there is very little going on to make Castle appointment TV. We only watched a few episodes, waiting for a moment when Fillion would get a chance to inject some unpredictability into the show, while the supporting cast did stuff in the background. I think they were police detectives or something. We couldn’t tell the difference between them, to be honest. One of them was a woman, right? She was in The Spirit, chewing the scenery? Whatever. When Fillion was onscreen, all was right with the world, but sadly he also had to interact with his character’s mother, played by Susan “Falcon Crest” Sullivan. Hamming it up as an actress and socialite, she has little to do other than chide Castle constantly. That’s it. She’s an old show-off who moans a lot, sucking the energy out of Fillion’s scenes. There’s nothing there for Sullivan to do, and she’s never given anything funny to say. When Tracy Jordan yelled “Banter!” on 30 Rock that one time, he was expending more effort than the Castle writers did cranking out this tired repartee. Sometimes, being a Gupta is a case of just not being properly thought through.

Worst Moment: In A Death In The Family (which regrettably has nothing to do with the murder of Jason Todd), Fillion does a pretty good impression of Christopher Walken. It’s not quite as good as Kevin Spacey’s, but it’s still funny. Martha is required to point out how terrible it is, but the complaint just doesn’t fly because it is a good impression. Also, earlier in the episode, she calls Robert Picardo “Doctor Death”. It’s like she’s just trying to annoy me personally.

5. Eli Loker - Lie To Me

Lie To Me seemed, in early episodes, to be a concept with very little room for expansion. With the main characters able to detect lies, the possibilities for crime-solving seemed set in stone: watch person twitch, explain meaning of twitch, clap said twitchy person in irons. Next case. Eventually it broadened its parameters and introduced new characters to play off Dr. Cal Lightman, but in its early stages it seemed like the show would revolve around truth and dishonesty to the exclusion of all else. As an avatar to explore these themes, one Lightman Group worker — Eli Loker, played by Brendan Hines — refuses to lie, and spends much of his time saying the most outrageous things to people in the interests of maintaining this self-imposed philosophy of perpetual honesty. In the context of Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson’s forthcoming The Invention of Lying, I’m sure that conceit will play out in various interesting and amusing ways. Here it’s used to give Loker an opportunity to sexually harass his colleague Ria Torres by pointing out how much he wants to sleep with her all the time. Is he meant to be charming or creepy? If it’s the latter, thumbs up. Oh, and forgive my irrationality, but I hate his fucking floppy hair too. I want it to get caught in an escalator or something.

Worst Moment: After taking the moral high ground all season, in the episode Depraved Hearts he decides to rat out a businesswoman who has done a Bernie Madoff with a ton of money. This sabotages a deal with her father, leading to innocent shareholders losing out on fiscal reparations, just so he could feel better about himself. Then, when it becomes apparent he has humiliated team leader Dr. Gillian Foster, he implicates Torres. We prayed for him to get fired, but sadly he’s just demoted to intern-status and asked to give up his paycheck. Apparently he can still afford product for that shitty hair, though.

4. Stuart Radzinsky - Lost

As our heroes became trapped in a terrible decade and forced to wear unflattering jumpsuits, my love of Lost palled ever-so-slightly, mostly because I thought I knew exactly where the show was going. How much could it surprise us when we knew that there was going to be an Incident at the Swan Station building site, and a Purge instigated by Richard Alpert and hastened by Ben Linus? With the future seemingly set in stone, I thought the fifth season was just putting pieces into place, not realising we were being set up for what might be a temporal reboot in one of the most thrilling episodes of TV I have ever been lucky enough to see. Nevertheless, that frustration remained for the last seven episodes, ruining my enjoyment of my favourite show. However, that cloud had one silver lining. I knew that Stuart Radzinsky, paranoid one-note jerk, was going to die by his own hand, blowing his brains out and leaving a stain on the ceiling of the Swan Station. For the latter half of the season he alienates the audience with a seemingly never-ending stream of shrill complaints about interlopers, bitching about security at his beloved station, and then, for good measure, risking the entire planet just so he can drill into the exotic matter at the heart of the island and complete his precious experiment. In a show as carefully constructed as this, it is surprising to see the writers find nothing for Radzinsky to do other than moan and moan and moan. Good riddance to bad scientist rubbish.

Worst Moment: Taking over every group he is a part of just by bleating louder than everyone else is his modus operandi, but his behaviour at the end of season low-point He’s Our You — voting to kill Sayid and strong-arming Horace with the threat of bringing Dharma HQ into the equation — was the bottom of the barrel. I’ve met guys like this. They were assholes too.

3. Clement McDonald - Torchwood: Children of Earth

The glitchy, unhinged character who has some kind of weird insight has become an overused cliche of modern SF or fantasy TV. Was it Whedon who first introduced us to annoying stream-of-consciousness blitherings from those who have been touched by madness or revelation? If so, consider it a black mark on his otherwise spotless résumé. Even so, he still managed to do it better than most. Drusilla could be funny, and River Tam was okay, though crazy season seven Spike was relentlessly annoying. That’s a better run than Russell T. Davies, who has stolen this most irksome of writerly tics for use in his own shows. Doctor Who had all sorts of chattery psychic grandmothers or mad Daleks talking about space beyond time and dancing in the lonely places blah blah. It was supremely silly and leached all drama from their scenes. His attempts to turn Torchwood into a cross between State of Play and Quatermass were scuppered by a vast and embarrassing number of plot inconsistencies, absurd melodramatics, and shaky performances (all Torchwood trademarks), but he did himself no favours by introducing a man who can smell aliens as a vital plot device. As with Heroes and the Incredible Mister Sniff (as played by Jamie Hector from The Wire), the sight of a person snuffling as hard as they can while trying to look intense is the silliest thing an actor can do. It’s impossible to take this seriously, and to have so much of the drama of Torchwood: We’re Very Serious And Adult This Time hinge on a man who keeps punctuating his ramblings with repeated bursts of “Isn’t it? Isn’t it?” and then smelling the air around him with a look of terror on his face is a disaster waiting to happen. Paul Copley’s unfortunate performance was not the only thing that didn’t work in this noble failure, but it was the thing that made me shout “OH DO SHUT UP!” at the screen whenever his tics kicked off.

Worst Moment: As all he did was sniff and panic, there wasn’t really a single moment that stood out. Perhaps his death annoyed me the most, as it seemed added to the story only so that Captain Jack could then use that most scientific of solutions — a frequency with the things reversed or something! — to defeat the junkie snotmonsters from planet Zorb or whatever they were supposed to be. If it were up to me, he would have gone out like the young woman in Quatermass — levitating and then blowing up in a hospital. They really don’t make ‘em like they used to.

2. Topher Brink - Dollhouse

Actually, I was wrong. Whedon’s penchant for mad characters and their crazy chatter is not the only bad mark on his report card. He also created Topher Brink, who was very nearly the number one Gupta of the decade. Perhaps it’s because of the moral ambiguity running through the show, but Topher’s alignment with the ethically dubious Dollhouse makes it hard to get a bead on his character. Is he meant to be funny? Is he a surrogate for the nerds watching at home? Is he Xander gone wrong? Is he Warren gone right? Perhaps he is meant to be thoroughly, irredeemably unlikeable, which would at least explain why he is thoroughly, irredeemably unlikeable. That would give us the hope that he turned out exactly as planned and isn’t a failed attempt at something more nuanced. However, we also see Adele feeling sorry for him for not having friends. Surely this would be an impossibility anyway. The universe wouldn’t let it happen. We also see a tragic Topher of the future, broken by the realisation that his inventions have brought about the end of civilisation, not to mention the concepts of individuality and consistency of self. So what? We’re meant to think poor Topher? Fuck Topher. When it comes down to it, I can commend the Dollhouse crew for creating yet another complex and mystifying character, beautifully shaded in such a way as to generate any number of interpretations as to his true personality by the audience. Unfortunately, he’s also unwatchably smug, grating, and unfunny. How much of that is the fault of Fran Kranz’ interpretation of what Topher should be or Whedon’s initial conception of the character will remain a mystery for now.

Worst Moment: It was painful to see the cast having to goof around in the disappointing comedy episode Echoes, but having the already unfunny Topher become even more unfunny by an order of magnitude was torture. Coming after the brilliance of Whedon’s mid-season “revamp” Man on the Street, it was even more aggravating.

1. Zoe Chae - Knight Rider

One reader of Shades of Caruso recently caught up with Dollhouse and asked me, via Twitter, whether Topher was going to be the Gupta of the Year. She was amazed when I said no. The same thing happened with Canyon, who was convinced there could be no other candidate. Both of these people did not sit through almost the entire season of Knight Rider (a confession: I stuck with it until the mid-season reboot and when it was obvious the changes didn’t improve the show, I finally bailed). From the very first moment Zoe Chae appears onscreen, smiling with galactic-levels of self-satisfaction at the prospect of her team-mates being cooked to death inside a napalm-coated sentient car, I knew there would be no competition for the top spot. The point of Topher remains a mystery to me, but while I find the character insufferable, I also trust that Whedon has a plan for him, and that one day there will be some revelation or adjustment that makes him at least tolerable. Zoe, on the other hand, was always just a callous rotter and nothing more, and I can see absolutely no reason for it. It’s not entertaining or funny to see her belittling her colleagues, revelling in the thought that they are facing death, sexually harassing them or playing mindgames with them. There is zero devilish charm there. She is dedicated to making her colleague Billy as miserable as humanly possible, flirting with him until he makes an sexual overture in return before dashing his hopes with an evil smile and a flick of her hair. She’s a menace.

That, however, is not the worst thing about her. When I look deep into my soul to try to figure out why my dislike of this most reprehensible of characters is so visceral, I realise it’s because I have a sneaking suspicion that this character has a huge and passionate fanbase, which might explain why she survived the mid-season cull that removed Bruce Davison, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, and Yancey Arias. Perhaps Zoe, whose creation seems to me to be a colossal miscalculation on the part of the inept showrunners, is actually the pinnacle of cookie-cutter, focus-group created fictional beings. The thought that this nasty piece-of-work is actually widely adored and admired for her no-nonsense attitude and Chaotic-Neutral alignment is so upsetting to me that I can’t bring myself to Google her name just in case I stumble across dozens of fansites filled with accounts of how her fans have been spreading the word of Zoe throughout the land by insulting their loved ones and then grinning inanely as they weep.

I am terrified by the possibility that, somehow, the world has become so broken, so mean-spirited and narcissistic, that Zoe Chae, a woman who reacts to the imminent death of her friends with the word, “Awesome!”, is actually the poster child for a new generation of nihilistic, hedonistic, self-centred motherfuckers, and we can just kiss the concepts of civility and brotherhood goodbye as our kids sashay through life with no thought for their fellow man. Of all the characters I have selected as Show Gupta in the past, no other one has made me despair of the damage done to the human condition like Zoe. In the mind’s eye of the most paranoid Daily Mail reader is an image of a heartless youth whose emotional responses to the people around them seem utterly detached from those you would express if motivated by empathy and compassion. That is how I felt watching Knight Rider. The Awful Adventures of Zoe Chae actually managed to depress me. Topher’s annoying tics are nothing compared to that.

Worst Moment: Given a chance to go on a secret mission with Michael “Le” Knight (née Michael “Le” Traceur), Zoe spends the majority of the mission trying desperately to get into bed with him even though she knows he still holds a torch for his former lover Sarah Graiman, and that Sarah, who will doubtless be watching, feels the same way about him. She also knows Billy, the poor besotted fool, will be watching too. If she could have figured out a way to break the hearts of the rest of the Knight Industries team, I’m sure she would have done it. KIDS TODAY!!!!

Right, much as that seems like I’ve covered most bases, there will be more to come in a few days time, mopping up the last few traces of TV observation from the past year. Remember, kids: don’t play with the feelings of your loved ones. Just because Zoe Chae does it doesn’t mean it’s cool.

The 2008-2009 Caruso Awards: The Worst Episodes of the Year

Posted on September 15, 2009 by admiralneck

As with the list of best episodes, we’re operating on a strict timeline, meaning some shows that would normally appear here, won’t. Luckily, as the summer sees less non-reality shows aired, I’m exposed to less dross. Of the shows I’ve seen over the past couple of months, only one would potentially qualify for this list, i.e. ABC’s dripping wet space soap Defying Gravity. I cannot believe showrunner James Parriott not only aimed to make a show that he has described as “Grey’s Anatomy in space”, but managed to find a lead actor even less appealing than Patrick “Oily Void” Dempsey (Ron “Acting Lessons” Livingston, if you were curious). Anyway, that will have to wait until next year, as the show is still on, inexplicably. Now, I shall let my anger flow from me like sewage from a pipe. Apologies for the inevitable mean-spiritedness…

10. Battlestar Galactica – Daybreak

As was said in the previous post, ending a long-running series is a fraught proposition, almost guaranteed to disappoint some fan somewhere. The trick is to make sure that at least the core questions or dilemmas of the show are addressed and resolved, and to pay off longrunning character arcs in a way that show consideration for continuity and human behaviour. No mean feat. It’s unfair to criticise showrunners for not getting a finale 100% right, but if Shawn Ryan could get it 99.999% right with The Shield, we now know it can be done to a very high degree of viewer satisfaction. Daybreak tried to resolve all of the unanswered questions posed by four seasons ofBattlestar Galactica, but in the laziest manner possible. Attributing all kinds of mysterious happenings to a unknown force that is never named or explained or given any kind of motivation rendered the whole tale pointless. As wishy-washy as the nebulous thought processes of the worst kind of woolly-headed fantasist, Daybreak resolved barely anything, with characters making illogical and suicidal choices for no reason other than that it was the last episode, and it needed to end before the final credits. The puddle-deep enquiry into AI ethics was the killing blow (Hug A Robot Today, So They Don’t Nuke Us Tomorrow!). So why is it not higher in this list? Because the first hour was fantastic, Boomer’s redemption was beautiful, and it featured some of the best performances of the year (Callis, Olmos, McDonnell: take a bow). Shame it didn’t follow through properly. Or at all. (For more whining about how disappointing this episode was, here is my original post following the broadcast of the finale.)

9. Dollhouse – Stage Fright

It’s tempting to be forgiving of the first half of Dollhouse‘s first season. Thousands of words have been written about how Joss Whedon’s incredible new show had its wings clipped by the evil suits at Fox, who either couldn’t understand the high concept or thought no audience could, and thus tried to force the show into a poorly fitting mission-of-the-week format. Until, that is, they suddenly stopped being evil suits and let Whedon go crazy with ideas and talking and audience-alienating character arcs like Ballard’s descent into self-loathing and unpleasant hate-fucking or Adele’s surprising ethical lapses with Victor. Let’s not forget, as shaky as the first half of the season was, it also laid the groundwork for the miraculous TV that was to come. And yet, even taking that into account, Stage Fright was a desperate failure, more Bionical Woman meets Josie and the Pussycats than Alias meets Buffy, with Echo imprinted with the personality of a pompous backing singer for a superstar, and Sierra mugging for the camera as an adoring fan. The final dramatic scenes were like out-takes from Wayne’s World. It’s not so bad, though. The team responsible for this episode (David Solomon, Maurissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon) also gave us the phenomenal Epitaph One. For this mis-step, they’re super-totally forgiven, and then some.

8. Dexter – Turning Biminese

As I’ve complained before, the popular and critical adoration of Dexter has baffled me for years. What strikes me as overdirected, poorly acted, clangingly obvious and desperately patronising drives millions of viewers into paroxysms of joy. Fair enough. Shades of Caruso keeps giving it chances, especially when Shield producer Charles Eglee steps in, and that patience was rewarded with the most pacey and entertaining season yet. However, it’s still overdirected, poorly acted, clangingly obvious and desperately patronising. While most episodes this year were just average (and one, Sí Se Puede, was actually very entertaining, even to this Dexter hater), some were just dire. Turning Biminese was the worst of the bunch, featuring yet more obvious metaphors, tedious sub-plots for the dreary cops in what can only be described as the world’s most inept police department, and a cringe-inducing, desperately unfunny rant from forensic photographer and obnoxious foul-mouth Matsuka, in a scene that sounded as if it had been written by an enraged adolescent Ain’t It Cool talkbacker who had just been told that the star of his favourite TV show was gay. The episode’s worst crime? After realising that Dexter is a vigilante with a murderous MO, season three Big Bad Miguel Prado (played with scenery-devouring enthusiasm by Jimmy Smits) actually says “Dexter, you and I, we’re the same!”. Instant, irrevocable FAIL.

7. Torchwood: Children of Earth – Day 2

It’s not a Worst Episode of the Year list without an appearance from the Torchwood team, ineptly going where no one should ever have gone before. Or after, for that matter. But what is this? Not the worst hour of the year? How could this be? For a start, having Russell T. Davies give his full attention to the show instantly raised the quality level, after two years of neglect from the hapless Chris Chibnall. A greater focus and a willingness to do the unthinkable to the core team of characters gave it a boost of credibility and power that even a hater such as myself cannot deny. After two years of staggering awfulness, the first episode of the mini-series Children Of Earth was a huge and pleasant surprise. Dialogue fizzed, action zoomed along with actual momentum, and drama happened without becoming instantly ridiculous. It was enough to make me tuck into a large slice of Humble Pie.

And then, almost as soon as it had promised so much, the show fell flat on its face and stayed there. While fans and critics lined up to praise the show for its bold plot twists and dark subject matter, it became apparent that the most startling dramatic moments — the horrible fate of the children taken by the 456, the various depressing deaths, the commentary about the venality of politicians — were jotted down as essential touchstones early on in the scripting process, with little idea of how to create the connective tissue necessary to make these moments work, let alone create characters who act like recognisable human beings (the ridiculous — and easily avoidable — fate of John Frobisher sticks in the craw most of all). The moral conundrum at the heart of the show fails too. The threat facing humanity is never fully explained, so every terrible choice is undermined by the suspicion that there might have been a way to avoid doing such terrible things, but those possible solutions are being rushed past in the hope that the viewer won’t notice. Plot holes and longeurs abound, and the usual failings of this most ridiculous show rear up once more (poorly executed action, terrible performances, po-faced melodrama). Day 2 makes the list for quickly ruining the promise of the opener. Easily the most over-rated TV event of the year.

6. Fringe – The Cure

By the time season one of Fringe reached episode six, the show was wobbling between two states: pointless, boring misfire, or insane, ambitious curio. We’d been given an overlong and dull pilot, several minutes of unexciting chase sequences, and oh God so much witless exposition from Peter Bishop. We had also been given mad ray-guns, Warren-Ellisian techno-telepathy, burrowing missiles, various fun Easter Eggs and, best of all, The Observer. Just as the show had begun to show promise, the tinkering of the showrunners threw a frustrating spanner in the works by revamping lead character Olivia Dunham. As she had done nothing particularly interesting for the five previous weeks, it was a necessary move, but there are ways to do it right. Thrust into an adventure featuring super-evil brain scientists and their sexy lab assistants, Olivia cast off her passive demeanour and transformed into an ill-judged avenger, stepping on toes, cracking skulls, and “flirting” with her nemesis. Anna Torv relaxed into her role by the end of the season, but here she was way out of her depth, mugging and shouting and overplaying most dramatic moments. If the episode had been better it wouldn’t have mattered, but even Walter seemed out of sorts. The fingerprints of concerned and interfering Fox executives were all over the place. It would be weeks before Fringe recaptured that exciting post-Observer momentum.

5. Ugly Betty – Ugly Berry

Once a vibrant and lovable diversion with hidden brains and a commendable commitment to showing racial and sexual diversity, Ugly Betty is now a shadow of its former crazy self. After some of the best writers and directors on the show were sacked midway through the second season, the quality dropped noticeably, and Shades of Caruso’s interest dropped even further. Early struggles to keep up with the lacklustre third season faltered with the stunt casting of Lindsay Lohan as Betty’s nemesis Kimmie Keegan, but it was the appalling Ugly Berry that killed our interest altogether. Jokes fell flat, potentially long-running arcs were cut short (Lohan’s departure has been blamed on her dreadful behaviour, but who knows — or cares — what the real reason was), and new arcs came and fizzled with distressing regularity. That crazy energy had turned to depressing inertia. Even though it features three of the most entertaining actors on TV (America Ferrera, Michael Urie, and the amazing Becky Newton), enough was enough. So sad to see a once great show go the way of last season’s fashions.

4. Eleventh Hour – Agro

ITV’s failed Doctor-Who-killer, Eleventh Hour, was improbably picked up by Jerry Bruckheimer, possibly while the writers’ strike kept his brain-trust out of commission for months. Good for the UK, I guess, especially with Brit actor Rufus Sewell taking over from previous star Patrick Stewart and heading up this expensive show. Avoiding the crazy superscience of Fox’s Fringe, Eleventh Hour seemed to want to explore actual moral questions about modern advances, soberly showing exaggerations of real world dangers and asking whether the men and women of science were capable of reining in their worst impulses in order to help mankind. Well, if you can call portraying most of the scientists on the show as demented, power-crazed idiots “sober”. The show was arguably more ridiculous than Fringe by pretending to be more responsible with its plots, while throwing logic, reason, and recognisable scientific theory out of the window on a week to week basis. To make things worse, at least Fringe was fun. Eleventh Hour was the dreariest show on TV, a seemingly never-ending chain of cliches, moodily-lit close-ups of slightly worried faces, and undramatic soap operatics staged with all the half-arsed energy of a commercial for boil-in-the-bag rice. Of those eighteen tedious hours, the most exasperating might have been Agro, during which Dr. Jacob Hood matches a DNA sequence to that of a dangerous fungus by looking at twelve base pairs on a blackboard. Obviously they were the most distinctive twelve pairs out of the possible 12,495,682 that could have been on the board (and that’s if it was merely yeast). That kind of stupidity kills shows dead, you know.

3. The Mentalist – Russet Potatoes

When describing The Mentalist, Shades of Caruso has found itself using words like “pleasant”, “diverting”, “watchable”. Even in the grip of an absinthe hallucination, it would be an impossibility to make a claim that The Mentalist is great TV. Nevertheless, it did approach an unexpected intensity in its very entertaining season closer Red John’s Footsteps, and its genial tone was often a nice contrast to the humourlessness of a lot of TV procedurals. Sadly, when it went wrong, it went memorably wrong. Russet Potatoes introduced hypnotism into the mix, pitting Patrick Jane against mesmerists of such great power that they can create murderous minions at the drop of a hat. One of the CBI team — the gloriously named Rigsby — is turned into little more than a dopey puppet, macking on his colleagues and trying to kill our be-vested hero. Hypnotism could never achieve the results seen here, which wouldn’t be a problem if the rest of the series hadn’t shown such an admirable commitment to portraying the acts of flim-flam artists and fake spiritualists in a realistic light. The show’s IQ level dropped precipitously early in the episode as every character seemed to be hypnotising someone else, and that level kept plummeting, culminating in a rooftop showdown that looked like something out of a Wayans Brothers movie. One of their really bad ones. One without Anna Faris in it.

2. Knight Rider – A Knight in Shining Armor

Glen A. Larson is a TV legend. He made almost all of my favourite TV shows back when I was a discerning pre-teen. The original Battlestar Galactica, BJ and the Bear, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Galactica 1980, Magnum P.I. (co-created with fellow TV legend Donald P. Bellisario, creator of numerous shows with titles that are just assortments of letters), Manimal, Automan… What an exciting time it was. Riding high above them all in a leather jacket and white man’s afro was David Hasselhoff, playing the heroic archetype Michael Knight (the inspiration for Joseph Campell’s Hero With A Thousand Faces, though the show was cancelled before Michael got to progress any further than his second face). Knight Rider. One man, one car, an infinite number of exciting challenges that can be resolved with little more than a bit of talking-car sass and a Turbo-Boost. It was a show so complex, so daring, so groundbreaking, that even the shows that ripped it off (such as Streethawk, featuring a very fast motorbike that, sadly, didn’t talk) were incredible just by borrowing a little of its brilliance.

Perhaps the new Knight Rider can’t be blamed for not living up to that original, but when it actually manages to be worse than last year’s pathetic reboot of Bionical Woman, the show is pretty much the same as an asteroid made of fossilised alien-shit caught in the gravity well of the nearest sun. Actually, that doesn’t even cover the extent to which this was bad. It was like a cross between a Sci Fi original movie and a Girls Gone Wild video. In many episodes, Michael “Le” Traceur (who becomes Michael Knight early on in the season) is required to find information from a pool-side bikini party, during which he uses KITT’s space-age satellite hacking technology to zoom in on some poor lady’s bosoms. Rowr rowr! Often, he is also required to meet an old friend who is now a terrorist of some kind because of Reason X. Once or twice he is sexually harassed by his female colleagues. The majority of his enemies, when they’re not former friends who have gone insane, are either young, blonde females in leather catsuits, or young, brunette females in leather catsuits. His colleagues are either angry bureaucrats or lust-addled twenty-somethings who make nerdy references. In one episode Billy — played by Paul “Billy from Battlestar Galactica” Campbell — dresses up as Captain Jack Harkness and goes on about how much he loves Torchwood. The convergent awfulness of the moment was like having a bucket of boxer’s spit emptied over my head.

Most of the time KITT does little other than sit there like a big piece of talking product placement, with Val Kilmer mistakenly portraying the formerly lovable car as a relative of HAL, instead of a fussy, pedantic middle-class nerd, which is what the wonderful William Daniels did in the original series. The rest of the time, it’s a plot-resolution device, with what amounts to a Star Trek replicator in the glove compartment which is used to solve every problem that comes their way. Handy. Later in the series the show turns into Transformers for five minutes, with one main character becoming super-evil before being eaten by a giant robot, which is then defeated with a Turbo-Boost. Even the most undemanding teenager would have been affronted by the cynicism of the enterprise. So why pick this episode? Because it managed to be even stupider than any of the other episodes, as well as for setting up a template so ill-conceived that the show had to jettison most of the characters in a mid-season revamp of hilarious ruthlessness. For its gratuitous semi-nudity, illogical science, and shoddy production values, it is a prime example of how unforgivably ill-conceived the whole thing was. It will not be missed.

1. Heroes – The Entire Third Season

I tried. I really really tried so hard to pare this down to a single episode. Before watching the second half of the season, with the “Heroes” on the run from Nathan — who has gone from thinking everyone should have powers to thinking no one should have powers because of some mental conversion moment that has skipped out of my memory — I was certain the woeful Knight Rider episode was bound to top this list. After three very depressing days watching the last eleven episodes of Heroes season three back to back, it was obvious that not only was this show a more catastrophic failure than the now-cancelled swimsuit-and-car showcase, there was no way one episode could ever be singled out. The things that make Heroes the stupidest, most broken and ill-conceived show on network TV are now systemic. It’s like the opposite of a synecdoche. The whole must speak for the part.

The perfect example of a rudderless ship, Heroes has ceased to make any sense from scene to scene, let alone week to week. Early attempts to explore some kind of moral complexity — by having some of the “Heroes” flirt with doing bad things and the one true villain do good things — never disappeared, but instead became the raison d’être of the entire show. With no fresh ideas coming out of the writers’ room, each season sees the same things happening: the world is revealed to be facing a cataclysm, Sylar will try to become the President of the United States (who needs what amounts to omnipotence when you can waste years trying to pass legislation to regulate hazardous emissions from small businesses?), and all of the characters change alignments at the drop of a hat.

deadlytracy By now, we’ve seen all of the main characters in both hero and villain format, either with a time travel or premonition cop-out or with an insta-retcon plot-knot dropped into an episode with no warning or reason. Heroes have had evil scars (Peter), evil long coats (Hiro), or evil black hair (Claire). Villains have worn Spectacles of Virtue (Sylar) or Sensible Bobs of Benevolence (Daphne). This is what passes for character growth in the Heroes universe. In one episode I’m sure Noah Bennett started out evil, became good, turned evil again, and then by the end was double-crossing Nathan, triple-crossing Danko, and quadruple-crossing himself. Do the actors realise what a joke their characters have become? Why did we spend the first half of the season watching Sylar become good just for him to become evil again one episode later? How can we be expected to find any of this meaningful? And do we really need to have entire episodes taken up with Claire tearfully betraying or leaving her father, just for them to be reunited a week later? And why, part of the way through Chapter Four, did Tracy Strauss kill an innocent person, thus wrecking her chance to escape from Danko? Just to have a cool visual? This isn’t any kind of human (or even metahuman) behaviour I know. Frankly, the whole farrago is insulting.

Ah, but the writers’ room has been cleansed! Goodbye Jeph Loeb and Jesse Alexander! Hello Bryan Fuller! Surely this is good news. Well, yes, the single Fuller-written episode of the season, Cold Snap, featured the most natural dialogue Heroes has had for a while, had a pleasing structure, and a coherence lacking anywhere else in the seemingly endless twenty-five episode run. It was poetic, and kinda moving, if you look past some shaky performances. Swoozie Kurtz was in it too, for bonus YAY points. However, it not only showed up the surrounding episodes for the epic disasters they were, it failed on its own terms too. Parkman’s weird obsession with Daphne, based on a premonition that obviously was never going to come true (like most of them, as plotlines are abandoned willy-nilly), made a mockery of his previous infatuation with his suspicious wife. Fair enough. A lot of screentime was used up explaining how they had fallen out really badly, meaning he left his child just to go hang out with Suresh, because there ain’t no party like a Mohinder party (it involves a lot of intense teeth-gritting and nonsensical voiceovers about destiny and heroism and how up can be down if you squint really hard).

So, fair enough, Matt saves a gravely ill Daphne, and uses his Amazing Powers of the Brain to bamboozle the mortally wounded speedster into thinking he can fly her to the moon. So romantic. Compared to her previous death scene — which lasted three seconds and almost turned Matt temporarily evil for an episode before he thought better of it — it was a nice finale for possibly the only entertaining character introduced since season one. What happens as soon as Fuller hands over scripting duties to the rest of the team? Matt turns temporarily evil for an episode, thinks better of it upon confronting Danko, is reunited with his wife and son, and decides to stay with them. For ten minutes. Then he decides (with no prompting) that he has to fight the good fight against Danko. For Daphne? For justice? Because he can’t stand the sight of a full diaper? Who knows? The showrunners can’t have him written out, though. Who was he upset about earlier? Fucked if I know. Some woman. Denise? Can’t have been important. Quickly! Onto the next scene! Hiro is walking into a wall or something while Ando pouts about not being taken seriously. Everyone loves Hiro!

Fuller left not long after, and though I’m sure there were numerous logical reasons for his departure, part of me likes to think he realised how impossible it will be to sort out this Briar-Patch continuity. It can’t have helped that his good work trying to nail down even just one character (Matt) was undone almost immediately, and for no apparent benefit, nor that getting rid of Loeb and Alexander means much when you have Joe Pokaski and Aron Eli Coliete around. Maybe it was the jawdropping awfulness of the season finale, with Nathan killed and Sylar tricked into turning into him and having his memories replaced, just so that Angela doesn’t lose the son she never even seemed to like that much even though that means she’s hanging around with the man who actually killed the loved one he is now impersonating. Of all the rank stupidity and poor storytelling I have seen this year, nothing approaches the staggering wrongness of that moment. If I were Fuller and Tim Kring came to me with that idea, I’d walk out of the door and never look back. Who knows? Maybe Fuller came up with that idea? Maybe he was responsible for all of Matt’s behaviour and dialogue, even the really really stupid stuff that contradicts everything that happened in Cold Snap. Unless someone is willing to spill the beans, we’ll just have to hope it’s not the man who once made me think this show could be something truly special by writing something as wonderful as Company Man.

This post could go on forever. This piss-poor excuse for a show, which is — never forget — NBC’s most watched dramatic series, has become a joke. Every episode features nine or ten moments of laughable error, poor storytelling, inconsistent continuity, unbelievable behaviour, or ungrammatical dialogue. The crux of the matter, the killing blow to the credibility of this haphazard, chaotic mess is that it is now, after three years, less coherent than either the Marvel or DC comic universes. Yes, the DC universe, which has been rebooted numerous times and features 52 divergent universes with a multitude of characters, is more coherent and digestible and — most importantly of all — far more entertaining. If Lost‘s continuity could be seen as a series of lines linked together to make a starkly beautiful web of meaningful interconnections, Heroes would look more like a box of toothpicks dropped onto the ground in the middle of a sandstorm. As the talking fox from Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist says, “Chaos reigns”. This is not something to be proud of. NBC, a network that cancelled Journeyman just as it was beginning to attract plaudits, and shunted its most promising new show — Kings — into a summer season with a two month gap wrecking all storytelling momentum, has kept this on the air. The network recently gave up the ghost and stuck Leno on every night instead of commissioning new shows. That was the actual surrender. Keeping this on the air was the white flag that preceded it. Something tells me it won’t get another reprieve after this year, from NBC or from the viewers. There’s only so much patience in the world.

Dishonourable Mentions:

The Unusuals – Boorland Day: Great character actors are not enough to save a misconceived project, and this formless bag of quirky tics disguised as character traits, bolted onto the most formulaic of cop plots, was as misconceived and unimaginative as anything shown on network TV this year. As the pilot was directed by Stephen Hopkins, the show could only improve. This second episode showed it couldn’t improve enough. Sometimes, a flawed premise is just a flawed premise.

House – Last Resort: Other than his brief appearance in Big Love, Željko Ivanek has had a really bad year. Looking lost as a gun-toting villain in Heroes was one thing, but he also played a gun-toting villain in House, harassing our hero and a bunch of annoying patients for an hour, which is no way to use someone who just won an Emmy. If there’s a plot I would happily remove from modern TV, it would be the hostage situation…

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation – No Way Out: …because with Last Resort and this feeble effort from the usually dependable CSI team, it’s gone beyond played-out. The hostage situation here seems to have been used as a clumsy way to force two new characters (the excellent Dr. Raymond Langston and the practically invisible Riley Adams) into the limelight, but we find out nothing new about them other than that they cope well under pressure. Well, duh.

Parks and Recreation – Canvassing: Humour is a subjective thing, obviously, but sometimes a show comes along that seems to actually completely lack jokes. It’s not like Family Guy, where there are lots of jokes but they’re all really stupid and poorly timed. Parks and Recreation just doesn’t seem to be a comedy, except that Amy Poehler is in it. This was a particularly annoying episode, with some unlikeable people doing boring things. It can only improve.

The Office – Employee Transfer: Perhaps I’m mad at Parks and Recreation for distracting the showrunners of The Office. A generally underwhelming fifth season still had a few big laughs and upsetting drama, but one episode was a perplexing laugh-free half-hour, misjudging the balance between comedy and tragedy in a way that was shocking coming from a show that gave us last year’s brilliant Dinner Party. Plus, Amy Ryan left the show. Fuck that shit.

It feels better getting that all off my chest. Tomorrow, or the day after that, my ten favourite new characters of the year. There is no one from Heroes in that list.

That Week In TV Year II (Week 8)

Posted on November 25, 2008 by admiralneck

While life gets tied up in elections, work disasters (boy, I really don’t want to talk about that), Civilisation Revolution benders, and other distracting miscellany, TV marches on like a flickering, gaudy, hypnotic glacier, only slightly dented by by the unavoidable scheduling obstructions of the last couple of Obamariffic weeks. We totally took our eye off the ball, but then fatigue has begun to set in. I’m almost totally disillusioned by Ugly Betty even though Canyon is sticking with it, she has escaped the gluetrap that is Heroes while I remain hooked even in the face of cortex-wrecking stupidity, and both of us have lost interest in Pushing Daisies. That’s especially galling for me as I really like it, but as with the cruelly cancelled Journeyman last year, watching a show that smells of death is a dispiriting experience. I’m sure I’ll get around to it eventually, but it will be bittersweet.

So, I intend to rush through the three-to-four weeks since our last Week in TV, seeing as how those weeks ended up being fairly similar in terms of what rocked and what sucked. Here is a rundown of what we watched:

Week 8 (27 Oct – 2 Nov):

The Shield 7:09 – Moving Day
Friday Night Lights 3:05 – Every Rose Has Its Thorn
America’s Next Top Model 11:10 – Planes, Trains, and Slow Automobiles
CSI 9:04 – Let It Bleed
The Office 5:05 – Employee Transfer
House 5:06 – Joy
The Mentalist 1:05 – Redwood
Heroes 3:07- Eris Quod Sum
30 Rock 3:01 – Do-over
Ugly Betty 3:06 – Ugly Berry

If I don’t mention the show now, I might in subsequent posts, when an episode worth chatting about crops up.

Highlight of the Week(s):

With a ninety-minute finale set to air tonight that will finally tell us whether Vic kills Shane / Shane kills Vic / Ronnie kills Mara and Corrine / Dutch kills Beaver Casablanca / Julien kills some time by doing nothing interesting / Tina kills everyone through outrageous negligence (delete as applicable), The Shield is almost at the end of a final sprint of astonishing and thrilling brilliance. If only every show could end with this amount of confidence and nerve-annihilating daring. Though we have rushed through all six and a bit seasons in almost no time, I can imagine fans who have been with it since the beginning must feel totally vindicated in their patience, as the knot of plotlines gets tighter and tighter. It sounds like hyperbole when I write it down, but I feel privileged to have been able to take this narrative trip.

Non-Shield Highlight of the Week:

The third season of Friday Night Lights already hitting absurdly high new highs at the moment, and Every Rose Has Its Thorn might well be the best of the year. It was certainly the best thing on air this week that didn’t feature Michael Chiklis doing his angry face. Opening on a fraught football game, with Coach gambling on a crazy plan which entails switching between two offensive teams headed by Matt and new QB JD McCoy, we see the changing of the guard as dependable Matt wins the game at the last minute but is effectively ignored by the town, who embrace the new quarterback. It was nerve-wracking and sad and beautifully filmed, with its position right at the start of the episode a masterstroke.

Even better, this week saw the return of Jason Street, desperately trying to save his relationship with the mother of his child by getting involved in a half-arsed house-restoration deal with the Riggins brothers and the ever-belligerent Herc. As I love all of these characters, seeing the four of them bickering over even the smallest things was TV heaven.

In particular it showed how hollow Street’s inspirational chatter can be when aimed at the wrong people, doing little to keep his quartet together (hilariously it’s Riggins’ appropriation of some bullshit salesman speak from Buddy Garrity that makes the difference), and failing to convince Erin to stay with him, while at the same time showing how he can trade on his pre-paralysis reputation in convincing Buddy to sell his house to him. His options are beginning to shrink within Dillon, which is a great set up for later episodes.

Nothing was extraneous. Tyra’s Bueller-esque day off to hang with her pill-popping hottie boyfriend has an air of tragedy following her earlier scenes with Tami, where she gives up her college dreams just to shack up with some guy even though this is exactly what doomed her mother and sister, Matt’s demotion brings about a reconciliation with his mother and gives Coach reason for some intense soul-searching as he gambles on a 15 year old quarterback, and even the unpromising thread with Julie’s tattoo was filled with beautifully realised character moments, jokes, and touching speeches. It was a total triumph from beginning to end. Here is a visual representation of how happy it made me.

Lowlight of the Week:

Much as I hate to beat on a show I once loved, but Ugly Betty‘s unfortunate run of sub-par episodes now seems to be the default setting, with only the slim chance of temporary improvement. After enduring another depressingly mirthless episode, Ugly Berry, which revolved around the repellent Kimmy Keegan, played with her now-permanent lack of enthusiasm by Lindsay Lohan, I realised that I had no desire to watch another episode (though thankfully I did; see below). As Canyon intends to stick with it there’s a good chance I will see it through to the end, and I do enjoy Marc and Amanda a lot, so much so that I wish they would get a spin-off to themselves. However, Canyon hit the nail on the head when she said about Ugly Berry, “It’s just not funny any more.”

Yes, Marc and Amanda make us laugh, but Michael Urie and Becki Newton are gifted comic actors and could probably make even the worst joke in the world work. What’s worrying about that is that during the past twelve episodes or so there’s a good chance they have been given the worst joke in the history of the world but we didn’t notice thanks to them. I wouldn’t put it past the current writing team to have stooped that low, as they are content to rest their show on tired pop culture references, farcical misunderstandings, and pratfalls, not to mention a Get Out The Vote PSA of episode-hobbling awfulness. It made the Wicked episode look subtle.

My distrust of the showrunners is not just paranoia either. Little did we know last season, as things started to go awry, that five writers, two producers (and one director) were let go from the show, all of whom had provided memorable episodes in the first season. Whether this had something to do with the strike or the imminent relocation of the show to New York, I don’t know. It surely isn’t a coincidence that the quality of the show dropped at that point and never returned to normal.

I will admit, the episode Granny Pants, in which Kimmy begs Betty for a job, was passable, but the script was credited to Sheila Laurence, one of the old guard of writers who has contributed a number of above average episodes, and the following episode written by Ugly Betty ace writers Poust and Kinneally (who are both still in the credits as producers) was a very entertaining hour, with some humanity instead of the empty farce of the rest of the season, but I can’t help but feel the show is now broken, and has been for even longer than I had suspected.

Gay Event of the Week:

Analeigh, Marjorie the timid mouse, and Elina and her Face of Stone decided to annoy the rest of the surviving models with hott bathtub action at all hours.

Though there was probably nothing to it all, Samantha deemed it gay. She, of course, would know all about that (scroll down). The increasingly annoying McKey complained the most, which leads me to believe the potentially Sapphic trio should make sure to distract her before embarking on further bathtub parties. All they need to do is punch a wasp in the face and she’ll be out of their hair for hours nursing it back to health. Either that or they can try to rust her ridiculous chainmail outfit until she can’t use it any more.

Shockingly Ill-Judged Direction of the Week:

Joy, the episode of House featuring THAT KISS featured some of the best writing of the season, with Cuddy getting more screentime than is usual as she deals with an antagonistic pregnant woman whose child she hopes to adopt.

The disease of the week plot was fascinating too, as a father and his daughter sleepwalk through their lives without realising it, thinking they are blacking out when in fact they are living a phantom life, which neatly matches their secret life as Arab-Americans disguised as caucasians. The problem with the episode was that director Deran Serafian, whose work on House and CSI is usually very good, went nuts, turning the sleepwalking events into surreal nightmares…

…filming many of the main cast in exxxtreme close-up…

…or staring at the camera…

…and hilariously shaking the camera a bit during a drug buy, in feeble imitation of grittier fare such as The Mighty Shield.

This overdirection from the man who brought us the admirably economical Terminal Velocity (written by Riddick helmer and ace screenwriter David Twohy). It was utterly perplexing, as his work is usually flashy enough to be interesting but not so much that it distracts from the show. This week he got the balance all wrong. I get the feeling the credits got mixed up with the following episode (more on that in a subsequent post).

We Need An Acting Coach, Stat! Performance of the Week:

It’s hard to get a bead on new Ugly Betty non-Gio-therefore-non-interesting love interest Val Emmich, who appears to be killing time in acting (notably on 30 Rock) while waiting for his music career to take off.

I hope it does, just so his depressingly flat line readings never happen again. He gives somnambulism a bad name. Quick! Everyone buy dozens of copies of his album!

Creepy Assault of the Week:

Poor Samantha just can’t seem to sort out her panel outfit, a cardinal sin in a show as shallow as this one. After turning up looking like a white-trash Barbie yet again, Tyra (who professed to love McKey’s ridiculous Aragorn-esque battletop) took matters into her own hands, launching herself at the poor girl and proceeding to wreck her top before yanking at her skirt.

To make things worse, she even patted Samantha on the butt at the end of it all.

Boundaries, Tyra! Respect them!

Shortest Amount of Time Spent Watching a New Show:

Okay, Gordon Ramsay’s Cookalong first aired in the previous week, but I need to address it. Over the past year or so, I have tried many new shows, but have been forced to bail from some due to sheer awfulness or boredom. Here is a rough list:

Chuck: 7 episodes
John From Cincinnati: 6 episodes
Dirty Sexy Money: 4 episodes
Drive: 3 episodes
Knight Rider: 1 episode

Canyon is a fan of Gordon Ramsay, while I think he’s one of many member of the Cult of Gratuitous Shittiness, a witless bully with more talent than most hidden behind a formica veneer of despicable attitude, false bravado, and relentless, embarrassing star-fuckery. It’s that talent that makes the whole thing tragic. The man obviously know his shit (and then some) but I just cannot watch the man. So his new live show, Gordon Ramsay: Expletive Explosion LIVE! or whatever it was called?

1 minute 30.

I’m a nervous guy, and maybe too empathic for his own good, so it’s hell on my sanity when I see something epitomise fat honking FAIL within seconds of beginning, as a live link-up immediately went haywire, and Ramsay’s cocky bellowing gave way to that weird chittery laugh he does when he’s nervously waiting for his over-encumbered brain to kick in and fill the emptiness with the usual profanity or exclamations (like when he had Meat Loaf in his kitchen on The F Word that one time. In the youth parlance, I have to say, “Bitch crazy!”).

I might have been feeling bad, but the resident Ramsay fan sitting next to me started howling, “No! OH GOD NO I can’t take it!?” and switched it off before it got any worse. This is without considering that he’s trying to get people at home to “cookalong” with him at 21:00 on a Friday night, which is surely a terrible idea. If a show makes you wish Homo Sapiens had evolved with an enormous shell on its back so you could crawl into it just to escape the misery, then it’s not going well. Still, our empathic cringe is not the worst thing that’s happened to Ramsay in recent times. As I’m sure he said when this happened, DONE ~~up like a kipper~~!!!

Least Sexy Kiss of the Week:

House taking advantage of a heartbroken Cuddy was depressing on a number of levels, perhaps most importantly that he might not have been taking advantage of her and they both wanted this somehow. Yuk.

Like catching mom and dad snogging. Please let it never happen again.

This Week In TV Year II (Week 7)

Posted on October 28, 2008 by admiralneck

As I have already said, I’ve been taking my time on this one for several reasons, but one of the most important ones is that The Shield was so great last week it overwhelmed my brain in much the same way that Lost does when it’s on. Except for one notable exception, this week was pretty poor, and my enthusiasm for some shows is waning. It doesn’t help that I started writing this while the wonderful In The Name of the Father was on Sky Movies, distracting me even more (and holy shit, Mark Sheppard plays one of the Guildford Four!), and tried to finish it while The Incredibles was on. That’s my favourite film of the decade we’re talking about. How could I not get distracted?

Non-Shield Highlight of the Week:

As this week’s Friday Night Lights ended, and the final slow-motion shot of “Smash” Williams faded to black, Canyon said, “My God, it really is back on form.” I couldn’t agree more. Though we enjoyed the second season more than many, this third season has been exceptional even by this show’s high standards. The latest episode was just about perfect, and was filled with examples of how the showrunners have upped their game this year.

Part of it is the shorter season. This time there won’t be any Carlotta missteps, or new characters not given a full arc (I’m still upset at how Santiago was treated). Sticking with the core characters and seeking to build upon old tensions rather than introduce new ones, the show has done the miraculous and made a season that feels like the first season while telling stories that are new enough to feel fresh but have expanded from previous concerns. The best example of that is Matt Saracen’s relationship with his grandmother. Though his position as QB1 is now endangered, and has generated a great deal of turmoil for himself, Coach, and the Dillon fanbase (who are jerks, let’s be honest), we still have the old, unresolved arc featuring his grandmother’s illness informing his every choice.

That story should have become boring a long time ago, but while season two featured that awful Carlotta plot, this season sees Matt reaching out to his mother in an act of desperation, and from there we find out more about him, his family, his capacity for forgiveness, etc. Carlotta told us nothing other than how teenage boys get horny and make mistakes. This new plot has been a revelation in more ways than one. Most importantly, it’s given Zack Gilford a chance to show what he’s capable of, which seems only fair after season two gave Taylor Kitsch numerous opportunities to shine. His scenes with his mother, played by the ever-excellent Kim Dickens, were a joy to behold. I’m glad the showrunners got around to giving Gilford a shot at the prize.

Another consequence of the shorter season is the chance to finish arcs conclusively. Next week we’ll find out what Jason Street has been up to, but for the first four episodes we saw Smash get a second chance to get into college. Last week I admitted I was getting a bit sick of the constant doubts Smash had, but luckily this frustration was assuaged by this week’s conclusion. By the time Smash gets his phonecall of acceptance, he’s really earned it, having faced down every obstacle going. If he didn’t make it, it might have been “realistic”, but it would also have been wrong.

The whole point of Coach’s philosophy, and Smash’s confidence, is that hard work and dedication bring you what you want, and this was the perfect dramatisation of that. My misgivings faded as Coach delivered yet more stirring speeches about living up to his promise, and the last five minutes of the show were viewed from behind a veil of happy tears. It was exactly the ending we had hoped for, and justified everything Smash has gone through. If only all TV could be like this.

What the Hell Just Happened? Disaster of the Week:

As this season has progressed, you’ll note that my fondness for Fringe has increased from my initial position of slightly optimistic reticence, with much of that interest based around Dr. Walter Bishop and The Observer, that bald Easter Egg I love so much. In the first season of Alias, created by J.J. Abrams and often written by Fringe creators Kurtzman and Orci, I remember the pilot episode being one of the strongest hours of TV I’ve seen, and that first season containing pretty much no clunkers, so confident was the showrunning team. Though the Fringe pilot was nowhere near as good as the first hour of Alias, it was still compelling, and the premise grew to be more interesting than I had first thought by the time The Observer showed up. So how the hell did last week’s episode turn out to be so feeble, even though it opened with such nasty events as brain-cooking and blood tears?

Much of it comes down to a truly crappy script, which was little more than a list of cliches of forehead-slapping overuse, with serious misjudgements throughout. I’m not sure which was worse: the scientist who, when rumbled, shoots himself in the head; Olivia’s rogue investigation and sudden random and hilarious aggressiveness; the race against time kidnap plot (also used this week in CSI), and much more. Perhaps the worst crime was sticking Lance “Intensity” Reddick with some dialogue of look-away-it’s-so-awful clunkiness.

There were other problems, though. One scene at a horseriding club was lit so badly you could see shadows on the floor even though it was supposed to be filmed during late-afternoon, and other scenes were blocked terribly, with characters pulling guns on each other in a room so small the camera almost gets in the way. I understand that the show has to make the most of its budget, and the shooting schedule is tight, especially as development on the show would have been affected by the writers’ strike, but it still seemed amateurish. These egregious errors are above and beyond the main problems; that it was sluggish, boring, silly, littered with tonal errors (having a main villain played, by Canyon’s least favourite actor Chris Eigemann, with outrageous mustache-twirling evilness), and criminally over-writing Walter so that he is almost annoying. Almost. I’m sorry, but even though he went a bit far, having him get upset over microwaving a papaya to death because it’s the friendliest of fruits made me laugh too much to get angry at him.

Fringe is away for three weeks, what with sport and elections and whathaveyou. It’s a good job the fourth episode was so freakydeaky, because otherwise I would be walking away after this. It wasn’t as bad as Knight Rider (surely impossible), but maybe it was approaching Flash Gordon levels of awfulness. It gives me no pleasure to say that, and the only thing that makes me feel better about that judgement is that I refuse to believe the show is going to sink. Surely this is an anomaly. I’m just hoping the number of bad episodes don’t end up outweighing the good.

Slowly Improving Show of the Week:

As I had hoped, this week’s Mentalist was definitely organised around a central location, a sort of bland office complex that featured last week without being named as the CBI HQ.

Other notable features of the episode included more screen time for Gregory Itzin (working as the pencil-pushing jerk I had hoped he would be), more panicky reactions from Patrick Jane upon being confronted with a gun, and some humour. It’s babysteps, but the hour went much quicker than some of the other shows we watched this week. Spotting some of Derren Brown’s techniques helped (the fumbling disarming of a gun-toting Eastern European was particularly welcome), and I hope we see more of his team using elaborate lies to fool the criminals into giving themselves up. That said, I still don’t think I’d recommend it to anyone who’s not a huge fan of procedurals, though. It’s still not quite there yet, but it’s a little victory that, five episodes in, it’s managed to create an episode that is arguably more entertaining (if less well constructed) than this week’s episodes of House (not as bad as I had feared, but a little dull) and CSI (would have been better if the serial killer introduced this week didn’t get arrested at the end).

Heartbreak of the Week:

Oh Friday Night Lights, how you torture us. Tyra and Landry’s ill-fated love was never meant to be, only beginning because of the murder/rape plot that annoyed the fanbase so much. This week, Tyra definitively moved on, leaving a heartbroken Landry behind with nothing but his slowly weeping guitar for solace.

Yes, the murder plot might have been handled well but was not welcome on the show. Yes, it was a contrived way to get Tyra and Landry together when in real life there is no way she would ever want to be with him. But who cares about that when we get to see acting of the calibre displayed by Adrianne Palicki and Jesse Plemons? Fuck it, they could have been abducted by aliens for all I care. Seeing Landry’s heartache and Tyra’s sadness over the consequences of her decision was one of the acting highlights of the season so far.

Your Sex Is On Fire of the Week:

And so were the words to transpire, whatever that means. Yes, this week House finally had bisexual Thirteen have some gay sex, because in TV land, as Canyon pointed out during the hectic sex scene (which was as hot as a fever), bisexual means lesbian, but a lesbian that the male viewers have a chance with. I really doubt that having lesbian smooching and the attendant rattling bones hinted at in trailers means twenty million more viewers tune in, but even if the opening felt unusually exploitative for the show, it kinda matched Thirteen’s desperate effort to live her life to the full before she dies. Sort of. Well, it was edited really frantically. Luckily, it’s not forever, but it’s just tonight, oh we’re still the greatest. The greatest! The greatest! And YEEEAAAAHH Yo’ sex is on fiyah!

Yeah, you know Kings of Leon are the shit.

Actor We Love of the Week:

Lee Pace is always great on Pushing Daisies, but we want to give him a shout out this week, just cuz.

Actually, it’s more that we just saw him in The Fall (directed, of course, by… TARSEM!), and he is unnaturally great in it. Let’s hope that the imminent cancellation of this lovely show frees him up for more great work. For instance, the West End loves American actors lately, Mr. Pace. Some are very close to pie shops. Plus, you can stay at our house while you are here. We have a very small bed that only slightly smells like cat vom. You’ll love it.

Improbably Attractive Biologist of the Week:

Evil David Esterbrook, evil CEO of evil pharmaceutical company Intrepus, is more than happy to hang around while a woman is injected with a compound that will turn the strontium capsules in her head into a weapon, but he won’t be doing any of the injecting himself. Instead, he has an improbably attractive biologist to help him out.

As you can seen, the improbably attractive biologist is wearing a HazMat suit, and if you think she took off the helmet and shook her long black hair out like the stereotypical sexy librarian who lets her hair down to the amazement of all the horny chaps nearby, you would be right.

Sudden Romantic of the Week:

Though Landry and Tyra get the award for most heartbreaking relationship failure of the week, Dwight Schrute’s agony over the imminent marriage of Angela and Andy came a close second.

That he kept undercutting that pain with such horrible treatment of Phyllis was perfect, but even better was his pathetic but noble attempt to make it up to her at the end.

Of course, there were other romantic developments in this episode, but this was the one that seemed to get forgotten in the rush to squeal with delight over the other stuff.

Worst Performance of the Week:

I’m beginning to think that the Fringe showrunners made a huge mistake in casting Anna Torv to head their new show. Though all of my affection for the show rests with either John Noble or Lance “Intensity” Reddick, I’m willing to open my arms to allow others in. No one has stepped up yet. Kirk Acevedo’s tics irk me, Blair Brown is as shaky as she was during Altered States, and even though I thought he was okay opposite Patrick Stewart in Mamet’s A Life In The Theatre, I’m otherwise baffled by the appeal of Joshua Jackson, especially in a role as poorly written as this one.

Torv, on the other hand, has shown little spark of life in Fringe, which we attributed to the lifeless role of Olivia, who has been asked to swallow her grief over her lover’s death and possible betrayal (and, you know, the fact that his consciousness is living inside her brain or something). This week, however, Olivia has been re-written as an angry young lady, all guns drawn and snarly, telling tales of her evil step-dad and going after nasty pharma-jerks who abduct women to make their brains a big radioactive weapon, or somesuch. (Check out this week’s appearance of The Observer, who seems to find Olivia’s inept flirting more interesting than someone’s head exploding in the opening scene. He truly is inhuman!)

While I would definitely say Olivia needed a revamp, and pronto, and while I would accept a mid-flow personality change as a quick fix to what must have been an obvious problem with the template for the show, did the showrunners realise that Anna Torv can’t really pull it off? With the whole episode revolving around her dangerous past and sudden no-nonsense attitude, her acting quirks were on full display, and warning bells sounded throughout.

While I’m not able to discuss her acting technique using technical terms, and though a lot of what was wrong with that episode is down to the shockingly poor script, it was still a dispiriting display of faux-rage and stroppy, confrontational bluster, none of which convinced. Though Torv’s voice is possibly the most soothing thing currently on TV, hearing her spit sarcastic and furious lines at her co-stars just made us laugh in incredulity. Her goofy reaction to the scientist’s suicide was amusing too; this picture does not do justice to the WTFness of it.

In other venues, I’m sure Ms. Torv is just fine, and she must have done something right to get the job, but so far this role seems like a bad fit. Perhaps it’s unfair to compare her to Jennifer Garner, whose work on Alias was so consistently impressive (shut it, haters), but she had some warmth or lightness that Torv desperately needs. Of course, perhaps she is not meant to portray that, in which case the character needs to be rethought, as she can’t do tough guy, so it’s going to be a problem if Olivia 2.0 is meant to go all Horatio Caine week after week. Nevertheless, Torv is on probation until there is another change, because right now, Angry Olivia is still good for a few laughs, which harms the show’s atmosphere, but holds our attention more.

Magnificent Insanity of the Week:

It’s official: America’s Next Top Model has lost its mind. Words cannot describe the lunacy on display. I’ll let this photo montage do the explaining for me.

There really is nothing else to add.

Troubling Development of the Week:

We’ve been thinking it for a while now, and this week might have set our opinion in stone: Ugly Betty is now officially boring. While we’re a week behind on Pushing Daisies out of regrettable error, we’re not up to speed with Betty mostly because we just don’t care about the majority of the storylines currently running. While Claire Meade’s incarceration was amusing, this week’s prison sub-plot just made me wish I was rewatching Arrested Development, an urge more pronounced after Jeffrey Tambor turned up on CSI the following week.

The biggest problem the show has this season is that there is very little it can do that it hasn’t done before. The O.C. had a similar problem in its middle two seasons, after the crazed first burned through major arcs in the space of a couple of episodes. Eventually the show had nowhere to go, and the penultimate season ended up filled with clanging plot failures like Sandy’s descent into evil, Marissa’s infinitely boring friendship with the world’s most depressed surfer, and Ryan’s war with the adorably named Volchok. Ugly Betty is in similar trouble. Other than the attempted murder of Christine, which was done and dusted in two and a bit episodes, we’ve wasted hours (or thereabouts) on Hilda’s affair and Daniel’s son, both of which are the most tedious sub-plots of the year so far.

A large proportion of each episode is now given over to stories that don’t go anywhere, merely offering cloying moments of grief from minor characters who are unhappy over events that don’t really matter. Don’t believe me? Watch how often Daniel mentions his son over the rest of the season. Also, Hilda made her true love go back to his wife to try to make it work out? Yeah, I’m sure that the guy who was crazy about you and didn’t want to be with his wife any more is real happy about that decision. It was all so dull that even her son looks like he wishes he was on Heroes or something.

Of course, while The O.C. had a similar quality dip, it found its feet again for a mostly entertaining fourth season, but that was by ditching the dark plots and going all out with the weird (alternate realities?), which might have annoyed the purists (if there is such a thing as an O.C. purist) but kept us happy. How can Ugly Betty go that route? It’s already cartoony, and until now has worked by maintaining that slightly hysterical soapy semi-dramatic tone. Turning it into an out-and-out comedy might make it more fun in the short term, but it might finish the whole thing off as well. It’s worth a try, though. Even the happy-making return of Gio became a meta-comment on how much the show has begun to annoy us.

My suggestion is the same as I’ve been saying for a while now. Give Marc and Amanda more to do. Make Claire Meade a catty matriarch again. Give Wilhelmina something else to do other than plot to takeover Meade Publications every week. Betty’s fine for now, but her family is dragging the show down (plus, Justin is realistically snotty as a teenager, but he’s also zero fun). Give Daniel a victory or two, or bring back his tacky lad’s mag (dozens of story possibilities flew out the window with that decision). Most importantly, make it funny again. Jokes are flopping lifelessly to the ground with depressing regularity, and it’s making the show a chore to watch. I’m not sure how much longer we’re going to stick with this, and I bet we’re not the only ones.

Shurely Shome Mishtake Moment of the Week:

Olivia Dunham spends much of last week’s Fringe being grumpy about her birthday, which is later explained away as a consequence of her abusive stepfather beating up her mother so much that Olivia ends up shooting him. He nearly dies but somehow survives (is Mad Science responsible??!?!?!?), before disappearing. His only contact with Olivia is sending her a birthday card every year since. That the whole speech was only lacking a reference to the screaming of the lambs was not the worst thing about it, nor was the cliche of Olivia transferring her anger of her stepfather over to her investigation of Evil David Esterbrook. It was the fact that she shot someone when she was nine and grew up to become an FBI agent.

Oh sure, she did it in self-defence, but surely there has to be some rule that someone who once tried to kill someone else, no matter what the circumstances, should not rise through the ranks of the FBI to become an agent. It just strikes me as being highly unlikely. No doubt someone somewhere knows that it’s actually mandatory or something, but until then, I call bullshit.

Gratifying Performance of the Week:

We’re a week behind on Pushing Daisies, and rumours of its imminent cancellation are sapping our enthusiasm, but that doesn’t mean we’re not getting any pleasure out of it. The episode from two weeks ago, with Ned, Chuck and Emerson visiting Olive’s convent featured many amusing moments, but most pleasingly it gave Anna Friel a chance to show off her acting skillz. Wracked with doubt about her place in the world, and whether or not she should have received a second chance at life, she is saved from a potentially terminal depression by the news that Aunt Lily is actually her mother. Her tear-soaked reaction was almost enough to set me off.

I’ve been waiting for years for Friel to live up to the promise of her Brookside performances, and regrettably she’s not had any roles good enough to give her a chance to show off what she can do, but Chuck is perfect for her. I especially like that even though she is becoming more unhappy as the show progresses, she is still cheery enough to hide it convincingly. Plus, the way she keeps waving at Olive is adorable.

Here’s hoping we get to see a full season of endearing character moments like this.

Distracting Embonpoint of the Week:

It is my sincere wish to be as progressive about gender politics, the insidious male gaze, and the negative impact of the objectification of women as possible, but Catherine Willows’ breastal area seemed way way larger than usual this week, causing me to lose focus on the plot.

This, in turn, made me feel like a lecherous wanker for getting so distracted. Was I being irrational? Am I no better than some Daily Star-reading creep whose favourite word is PHWOAR? Surely I’m better than this, I thought as I rewound subsequent scenes several times because I had become so anxious about my distraction and the psychological consequences of my sudden fascination with the boobs. It was upsetting me so much I had to blurt out my suspicions about a size increase to Canyon, who, thankfully, had been thinking the same thing. Not that I’m saying, “It’s okay for me to be staring at boobs because my wife was as well,” but it did make me think I was onto something with my suspicions. And I’m not judging Marg Helgenberger if she has indeed had cosmetic surgery. That’s her choice, and more power to her for doing it. Good on her. Not “Good on her for having bigger boobs. Or not, if she’s not done anything and I’ve made a mistake.” Just, you know, good on her for doing what she wants to do. If it is what happened. I’m not saying it definitely is. I’m not the kind of guy who gets obsessed with these things. It’s just idle curiosity. So, what happened? Cosmetic surgery (not that there’s anything wrong with that)? Or just that top she is wearing? It could just be shadows. Not that I’m insinuating she has small boobs normally. I’ve never really thought about it one way or the other, to be honest. They just caught my eye this week, which is unusual. It’s almost aberrant, you could say. Me noticing her boobs, that is, not the boobs themselves. I’m sure they’re as great now as they have always been. Though of course I don’t go around saying, you know, “Hey, boobs are great! Yowsa boobs!” And I certainly don’t think women are expected to have cosmetic surgery done. It’s totally their choice and it’s none of my business. Of course, I also think that wanting to enhance boobs is totally acceptable, and I would never suggest otherwise. And it’s not just for women either, or wymyn, should I say. Men can have them too, if that’s what they want, certainly if they are intending to change gender, which, again, is supercool with me, and I would never think to make any disparaging comments about that either. Which is getting me away from my question about Catherine. Now that I think about it, I’m fairly sure it’s an optical illusion or something to do with the lighting, and I’m reading too much into things, which is more than likely. It’s the culture we live in, you know, obsessed with body image and looks and what-have-you, reducing people to their parts instead of dealing with them as a whole. It’s so terrible. I never ever do that. Except this one time. And earlier on when I was going on about all of the hott gay sex in House. But that was just me pointing out the show using sex as a ratings winner, in an exploitative manner, otherwise I wouldn’t have mentioned it at all, because of course I don’t want to seem like I watch TV just to ogle anyone, because I totally don’t. So, we’re settled with this, right? It’s just a very nice top she is wearing, and I should be ashamed of myself for being so interested in it. Good. Glad we’re clear on that. [/torrential flopsweat]

Distracting Groin of the Week:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Holy shit! Don Draper is 150% more man than most! (Believe me, that bulge next to the AMC sign is not the pleats.)

He could appear in the porn version of this show. As Dong Draper.

Inaccurate Depiction of Bloggers of the Week:

CSI wandered into dangerously luddite CSI: Miami territory last week, with our heroes hingeing their investigation on the comments section of an art blog. While a serial killer left macabre posed corpses around Las Vegas, an immoral blogger (seen below, with more hair than is usual for bloggers) made vodcasts about the project, leading the killer to post comments about how awesome he was.

I say the blogger was immoral because, in a bit of judgemental stereotyping, the blogger was more concerned with the statement than the crime, though he got the message after being pulled in to lay a trap for the killer. If this was CSI: Miami the blogger would have been the killer, and he would have broadcast the murders on The YourTube, the sick bastard. He would also have been a pedophile. And a terrorist. CSI: Classic was not as bad as that, but it still chafed.

Still, the thought that the police were going to trace the IP addresses of the commenters in order to find the killer must have made the hearts of many bloggers soar in much the same way that the end of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back did, with fantasies of finding abusive jerkoffs and making them apologise for being douchey. Ah, how lovely the internet would be if everyone had some goddamn manners.

Shock of the Week:

Hard to believe, but last week’s Heroes did not totally suck. I’m not saying it qualifies as good, but it was intentionally amusing at times (as well as unintentionally), and contained some surprises that actually worked until you thought about them for a moment, instead of seeming like contrived nonsense right off the bat. I have no idea what last night’s episode was like (I intended to get this finished before it aired, but I’m still feeling super-rough), but this episode managed to be flawed but fun. Things to like: Hiro’s tantrum after getting hit over the head with a shovel for the second time…

…Daphne trying to ignore the power of Parkman’s turtle totem…

…Pops Petrelli’s power being a new variant on Peter and Sylar’s power absorption, and best of all, Peter going down like a punk in the final scene.

Things not to like: Daphne wondering how Parkman could know so much about her which is stupid as, even though it’s not the reason for his knowledge, she has just read a folder on him pointing out he is telepathic; Adam also going out like a punk, with much crying and whining and dessicating…

…Peter not reading his dad’s mind before getting powersucked; the utter lameness of Pops Petrelli’s Association of Evil Individuals…

…Hiro’s power suddenly freezing Daphne, even though it has been established that he can’t, which also means that last week’s fake-out murder of Ando was just as stupid as expected…

…all of the deeply boring Puppet Man plot, especially finding out that Meredith went after him even though she knew he could control her body…

…and everything involving Tracy, Nathan and Suresh, who are an Unholy Trinity of boring stupidity.

Still, that’s a lot more in column one than in recent weeks. I strongly doubt the show is ever going to be what we hoped it would be, and some viewers are never going to warm to it, such as a disgusted Canyon, who barely made it through this installment, but it might get to the point where it makes sense once in a while, something the second season seemed to render impossible.

Guest Stars of the Week:

Just recently I made a comment about how CSI often blows the mystery of the week by casting guest stars who are obviously going to be the killer, but this week convention was shirked, meaning Alex Kingston really was a grief counsellor, and Jeffrey Tambor really was just a snotty artist. The killer turned out to be just some guy doing a weak Kevin-Spacey-in-Seven impression.

Tambor is one of those rare Scientologists its okay to like, such as Beck, Chick Corea, and mid-to-late 90s Travolta. It’s always a treat to see him on TV, and he was lots of fun here. Kingston did an equally good job as the counsellor who ends up facing off against Gil following a misunderstanding, but even so I was worried that the show was suddenly employing two guest stars.

It’s a bit of overkill that suggests the showrunners were eager to distract the viewer from the new character, who would otherwise be the biggest deal in the episode. Speaking of which…

Unorthodox Introduction of the Week:

…new character Riley Adams, played by Lauren Lee Smith, arrived at CSI HQ with an aggressive attitude and a malfunctioning sense of humour. As Lee Smith appeared in the credits, replacing Gary Dourdan, we discussed how difficult it would be for her to fit in with the fanbase’s expectations, who treat in-show change with a range of emotions running the gamut from thwarted yet undeserved entitlement to seething indignant rage.

Perhaps the CSI showrunners realised that, and didn’t bother creating a likeable character, knowing it would all be for naught. Better to just alienate the audience on purpose and win them over in the long term (I wonder if naming her after a famously unpopular character who joined a show late in its run was part of the plan). Also, I noted that Riley is the first permanent team member added since Holly Griggs (not counting Greg, who was promoted. Griggs, of course, was murdered in the pilot due to Warrick’s negligence. So far Riley is the total opposite of Griggs, which makes the whole thing nicely symbolic. Or cyclical. There’s a point being made here, but sadly the grogginess is making it hard to find.

Model of the Week:

We’ve decided on our favourite for this cycle. I had been convinced that Lauren Brie was going to win for sure, despite being partially covered in an almost inedible rind, but it was not to be. As is now the way with ANTM, we got to see her being a big bitch two weeks ago, and not long after she was SENT! HOME! Unfortuately the same happened to the awesome Joslyn, leaving us kinda bereft. Now, we’re not sure she can pull it off, but we’re totally rooting for Analeigh, who has been adorable and is getting better every week.

Her CoverGirl ad this week was possibly the best in the show’s history, and her in-house diplomacy has been a refreshing change from the usual catty shenanigans (Marjorie and Samantha have been moved to our Shut-The-Fuck-Up Corner). Of course, Elina will probably win now that Tyra has made it her mission to break her spirit and mold her into something else as if she were V and Elina were Evie, but we’re hoping Analeigh (and therefore justice) will win out.

Grisly Moment of the Week:

Was it Pops Petrelli yanking a tube out of his throat after absorbing Adam’s power?

Or Fringe Mysteriously Experimented-Upon-Person Emily Kramer after her head exploded due to some particularly Mad Science involving Strontium or something?

Or the eerie image, from CSI, of a child suspended in a tank filled with carbon monoxide?

That wasn’t gross, but it was deeply unnerving, especially as it brought back uncomfortable memories of Vincent D’Onofrio’s elaborate murders in The Cell, which was, of course, directed by… TARSEM!

Silly Bet of the Week:

Not only does he have a name guaranteed to make Brits laugh for all the wrong reasons, Wayne Rigsby (played by Owain Yeoman) bets Mentalist Patrick Jane that he can’t seduce the widow at the funeral they are staking out. For crying out loud, not only is he The Mentalist, but he’s played by Simon Baker.

Yum! He’s such a mischievous hottie. No woman could resist his Amazing Powers of the Brain and his sexxy waistcoat. Bet lost. (Actually, Rigsby kinda wins, but only because the widow is a murderous psycho and Jane has to put her away using psychology and subterfuge. Bad luck, Mentalist.)

Hitchcock Reference of the Week:

Having an obvious but non-showy Vertigo reference in Pushing Daisies was very welcome.

You see, later that week we watched Eagle Eye, and the hamfisted way D.J. Caruso visualised his rip-off of the big finish of The Man Who Knew Too Much, with a CG overlay of a sheet of music with a big note sticking up where the bomb is going to go off, was just horrid. Just showing the tower, identical to the one in Vertigo, is the way to go.

Intensity of the Week:

Even from a distance…

…Lance Reddick brings it.

I’m really startled by how much this week has disappointed me, stripping me of all of my enthusiasm for this project. It’s not just me, either. Brian Michael Bendoom was harder to track down for comment, but after leaving numerous messages for him, he got back to me to say…

…and to be honest, I think he’s being generous. Be better this week, TV!

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

Posted on October 23, 2008 by admiralneck

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.)

These Weeks In TV Year II (Weeks 4-5) Part 3

Posted on October 13, 2008 by admiralneck

I swear, these post titles are beginning to look like quadratic equations.

Tear-Jerking Moment of the Week(s):

Goddamn Coach Taylor! Considering his default personality is “very pissed off”, his farewell to Jason Street in the second season of Friday Night Lights made me blub like a baby, and in this season opener his vow to help Smash Williams get the scholarship he has always wanted made me shed multiple tears.

Oh man, it’s so good to have this back.

Runner-Up:

The return of CSI was a muted affair, dealing with the aftermath of Warrick’s shooting by the dastardly Undersheriff McKeen. Opening on Warrick’s death in Gil Grissom’s arms, a large part of the show showed the CSI team dealing with his death, with Gil, Catherine and Nick taking it hardest.

While I had problems with the crime-solving aspect of the episode (how great it would have been to have kept Undersheriff McKeen around, knowing he was the bastard who killed Warrick), the rest of the episode was terrific, and when the usually stoic Gil breaks down during the eulogy to his friend, I lost it.

I guess this is where we start to see Gil get ready to leave the team, prior to the heavily-anticipated arrival of Morpheus. I don’t think he’ll be crying at any funerals.

Mentalist of the Week(s):

CBS has an honest to God hit on its hands with The Mentalist, which surprises me. While a lot of serialised or complex shows appear to have hit the buffers, procedurals seem to be doing well. The Patinkin-less Criminal Minds is doing great, the CSI opener had the highest ratings of the season so far, and Crime-Fighting Derren Brown is surprising everybody. We thought the second episode was passable at best, but it didn’t help that we saw it right after watching the special features for Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which included multiple unused clips from the made-up in-film procedural Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime, and lots of extra previews for Sarah Marshall’s next show with Jason Bateman (including Divine Justice and Jesus H. Cop). As a result, The Mentalist looked like another spoof, so closely did it hew to a procedural formula.

Still, that formula is subverted a bit. The main character, Patrick Jane, is still disliked by his whole team, and does not do well in action situations: he gets bailed out twice this week, and his plan goes wrong in the final act, leaving him at the mercy of two murderers.

Luckily, even though he’s impetuous he’s still smarter than everyone else, and solves cases while the rest of the team chase their tails (which is a format convention similar to House’s weekly misdiagnosis of a patient and his or her subsequent respiratory arrest/cardiac arrest/anaphylactic shock). Nevertheless, so far we’ve seen three people get shot because of his intervention, and we’re only two episodes in. No wonder no one likes him.

We’ll probably stick with the show for a while longer, while it finds its feet, but it occurred to me that I’m already impatient for Jane to use his Amazing Powers of the Brain throughout, getting restless when the show falls back on the usual procedural nonsense (evidence logging, interrogations, mobile phone calls, rap sheets, etc.). It reminded me of being a kid and watching dreck like Knight Rider (original flavour) or Airwolf. I couldn’t give a shit about the talky bits. I just wanted to see KITT leap over a hedge or Streethawk use his beam weapon or BA Baracus throw a stick of dynamite at someone. Same here. All I want is The Mentalist hypnotising people and winning rock, paper, scissors competitions. That’s the fun stuff. And when is Derren Brown getting a guest spot?

Fashion Faux-Pas of the Week(s):

Even the all-black, all-the-time stylings of the Future Heroes can’t top this cringe-inducing ensemble from Don Draper.

His pants/trousers are sort of beige as well. It was a nauseating sight. All he needed to complete it was a pipe and he would have looked like the deluded 50s dad from Ren and Stimpy. The only thing that came close was Maya, again forced to totter around in high-heels and cleavage-tastic dress on account of how hot she is for Suresh, not realising he’s all wrong on a genetic level.

Poor Dania Ramirez. I gather her power was going to be used to kill the Shanti virus in season two, but that plan got cancelled when the writer’s strike killed the season early. From saviour of the world to hott, scantily-clad babe making failed booty calls to a mad scientist. She needs a better agent.

Still, at least the clothes, horrible though they are, look good on her. These pants, worn by Anna Friel on Pushing Daisies, do not flatter her at all.

And this combo not only features much heinous plaid (or tartan or something ugly), but also a daring top.

When I say daring, I mean, “Why is she exposing that much skin around a guy whose touch could instantly kill her?” It’s not the style that bothers me, it’s the risk of doom. I really get conniptions when I see them together. Love the show though I do, it really stresses me out.

“Where The Hell Did That Plotline Come From?” of the Week(s):

At the end of a fluffy Ugly Betty, someone pushes Christina down a flight of stairs.

Harsh. I know I’m no fan of Ashley Jensen’s mugging, but I don’t want her character to actually get mugged. What was great was that the episode had set this up with some stealth, with her former husband and Claire Meade set up as possible suspects. It was especially welcome as the following week brought us the best Ugly Betty episode in some time, overcoming some dreary structural tricks (flashbacks and police interrogations again?) with much humour, silliness, and an almost surprising denouement. I say almost, but the reveal of the attacker would have been more surprising were it not for Rebecca Romijn’s obvious pregnancy.

They obviously needed an excuse to lose Alexis for a while, but at least they used her real-world situation in this way, resolving the attacker plot without pinning it on some hastily introduced patsy. This way the assault has some real consequences.

Uncomfortable Scene of the Week(s):

Seeing Paul Kinsey attempt to weasel out of travelling to civil rights battleground Mississippi with his girlfriend Sheila was hard to watch, as Paul’s hipster liberalism is punctured in front of the Sterling Cooper bellhop, Hollis, he has just made an effort to greet as an equal.

Liberal white guilt, fractious race relations, relationship strife, the civil rights movement: all commented on in just one minute of screentime. ::doffs cap::

Bravery of the Week(s):

As much as I’m utterly uninterested in any of the characters played by Ali Larter on Heroes, kudos to her for allowing the showrunners to use this photo from her youth.

Humiliating Scene of the Week(s):

This is a personal one. Earlier in the week an attempt at defrosting our fridge cost me a rather large amount of money thanks to some less than clever (i.e. unbelievably fucking stupid) and very impatient behaviour. I don’t want to go into it too much, as I’m utterly embarrassed about it and really furious at myself, but let’s just say that this moment…

…with Betty defrosting a fridge using a bowl of hot water and not a knife and meat tenderiser combo would have been rather helpful if I’d watched it two days earlier. At least our new fridge doesn’t smell weird and can’t be dismantled by our cat Sydney, I guess.

Asshole of the Week(s):

We love Buddy Garrity from Friday Night Lights, with his bumbling ineptitude and endless enthusiasm.

In the first two episodes of the third season, however, he crossed a line into pure asshole-dom, scheming against Tami over her decision to divert his Jumbotron money into funding the school, and threatening Riggins prior to dinner.

Sure, he’s onto something in his distrust of Riggins, and most parents would probably agree, but by not trusting Lila’s judgement and ability to understand her boyfriend’s childish impulses, he just makes things worse for everyone.

Soundtrack of the Week(s):

The CSI season opener was, as mentioned before, more contemplative than usual, and part of the reason was the lovely ambient soundtrack by John M. Keane, channelling The Mighty Eno or Cliff Martinez. While Forgetting Sarah Marshall writer Jason Segal is onto something when he criticises procedural soundtracks as being little more than ominous tones and atmospherics (Mark Snow, I’m looking at you), this week CSI proved him wrong. It was a joy to listen to, and increased the emotional impact considerably.

Accidental Political Satire of the Week(s):

Obviously Friday Night Lights was filmed a little while back, but surprisingly they still managed to comment on the Sarah Palin vice-presidential debacle with a sub-plot about Tyra Collette trying to win an election by appealing to the groins of intellectually stunted morons, with sassiness, broadly caricatured feminine wiles, and mean-spirited insults.

It’s as if the writers have precognition or something.

Best Nerd Reference Scene of the Week(s):

Jim’s torture of Dwight, recasting Battlestar Galactica as Dumbledore Calrissian’s quest to return the Ring to Mordor, made my hair stand on end.

I’m sure many shared our pain.

Facial Expression of the Week(s):

Is it Noah Bennett donning his famous horn-rimmed glasses?

Olive reacting to a dishonesty overdose?

A rare smile from Stanley, who is only happy when food comes into the equation?

The mysterious Dr. Zimmerman (regrettably not played by the world’s best Zimmerman) getting accidentally frozen by Tracy Strauzzzzz?

Tyra Collette moments after her stripper sister gets engaged to Riggins the Elder?

Lily Charles, as a nun, trying to reassure Olive?

Peter Petrelli using Jesse’s “sound manipulation” superpower (which, it turns out, is thankfully more like Banshee from X-Men than Michael Winslow from Police Academy)?

Tami Taylor reacting to the political corruption of ~~Sarah Palin~~ Tyra?

Most Insane Televisual Event of the ~~Week(s)~~ ~~Year~~ Decade:

We’ve almost caught up with America’s Next Top Model (it’s delayed by about a year in the UK), having just started Cycle 11 after a mostly pleasing Cycle 10 (I’ll be getting to that soon, hopefully). Yes yes, this aired a few weeks back, but it’s been a busy period in our lives. God! Anyway, within minutes of this ~~cycle~~ season beginning, we were overjoyed at the shambolic and relentless insanity unfolding on our TV. The futuristic theme for the premiere and auditions was the greatest stroke of genius in the show’s history, and almost killed us from the laughter. I don’t know what I loved most. It was a battle between Alpha and Beta Jay (with Alpha Jay looking utterly mortified by his silver get-up)…

…the laser scanning of the catsuit-clad model-wannabees…

…the ~~Orgasmatron~~ Glaminator 11.0 (what does that even mean?)…

…The Tyrabot (for crying out loud)…

…the three hosts beaming up “fiercely” (which almost gave me a hernia from the laughter)…

…and the entrance of Noted Fashion Photographer Mr. Nigel Barker later in the premiere, this time from a magician’s cabinet.

This pleased me greatly. Almost as much as the delicious schadenfreude of vicious bigot Sharaun getting kicked out in the first week. Usually the out-and-out bitches hang around for a few weeks, or right until the end (cat-human hybrid Dominique and the amazing Jade spring to mind), but this time there are so many nasty women in the house that they could sacrifice one straight away and not bore-ify the show later.

Intensity of the Week(s):

For once, there’s a challenge to Lance “Intensity” Reddick’s Crown of Intensity. In a welcome return to the show, The Haitian, aka Jimmy Jean Louis, has enough dignity left over after getting knocked out by both Ando and Peter (embarrassing) to deliver some awesome intensity.

Still, even that attempt is crushed by the effortless intensity of my man Reddick, here reacting to the news that Olivia has discovered the presence of The Observer.

It strikes me that what we’re seeing here is a case of White Men Can’t Do Intensity. It could be argued that Don Draper’s reaction to the appearance of Jimmy Barrett is a sure-fire winner…

…but I’m not sure that that doesn’t count as psychosis rather than intensity. Removing that candidate leaves us with this.

It’s just pathetic, really.

Holy shit I’ve finished! I feel like I’ve been writing this since February. In summation, not bad stuff, with some great returning shows and the smart move of avoiding new shows and things that are proven to be terrible (Knight Rider). I asked Brian Michael Bendoom what he thought, and…

…I think that’s good? [/old man]

These Weeks In TV Year II (Weeks 4-5) Part 2

Posted on October 12, 2008 by admiralneck

Much as I don’t want to derail this post with talk about a quality movie (i.e. Hairspray), I suppose I can make it more TV related by carping about Sky. Hairspray was as entertaining as expected (and ten million times the movie Dreamgirls was), though it was hard to tell thanks to the botched broadcast on both Sky Movies and Sky Anytime, which filled the film with so many glitches and bloops that it sounded as if it had been remixed by Aphex Twin. It was taken down from Anytime last night, as was Breach (which comes highly recommended solely on the basis of Chris Cooper’s awe-inspiring performance). If Sky’s technology is getting hinky, it’s a bad sign. I’ve already had trouble with their Box Office downloads disappearing, and our Sky+ box has taken to crashing every Sunday morning. Is it our machine, or is there trouble at their end?

That’s neither here nor there, especially as I’m here to make fun of Heroes and say good things about Mad Men.

Most Boring Side-Plot of the Week(s):

Is it Hilda Suarez’s adulterous love affair with Eddie Cibrian?

Or Taub’s mysterious relationship problems with his wife?

Or Daniel Meade’s battle to keep his hideous son in America?

Or Matt Saracen and Julie Taylor possibly getting back together?

At least Daniel’s son turned out not to be his son (a real shock), and Hilda’s relationship meant we got to see Marc and Amanda losing their composure.

The other plots are just mogadon.

Biggest Badass of the ~~Week(s)~~ Century:

Check out The German. Last week on Heroes he totally staked his claim to being the most awesome villain since Kang the Conqueror, who, never forget, once destroyed Washington DC, an act so heinous it actually made Thor cry! First The German used his magnetic powers to draw some blinds. Just moments later, while we were still catching our breath, he cracked a safe, using those same magnetic powers to turn the dial instead of using his hands!

Ho. Lee. SHIT! Fuck you, Polaris! Eat donkey shit, Magneto. What have you ever done ~~besides reversing the poles and other miscellaneous acts of supervillainy~~?

Even better, a little while later he totally neglected to use his powers to protect himself against a deadly superpowered punch!

Just amazing. I hope current X-Men writers Mike Carey, Chris Yost, Warren Ellis, and Ed Brubaker are taking notes.

Thematic Coherence of the Week(s):

The tenth episode of Mad Men, while maybe not as entertaining as the previous one, was still excellent, mostly because of the beautifully sustained theme of lost or recaptured youth and adolescence. Early on we see Betty’s father recovering from a stroke, seemingly senile and prone to confusion. He mistakes Betty for his first wife, which upsets her enough to drive her into Don’s arms, as she humps him on the floor like teenagers trying to elude their parents.

Her father, now trapped in his own adolescent state, threatens Don and makes a pass at his own daughter, which is surely the most shocking moment of the episode, if not the season, and beautifully played by everyone. This distresses Betty further, and she seeks solace in the arms of her old nanny.

Upon returning home she kicks Don out again, and then hangs out with that creepy-ass kid from the first season. Using his presence as an excuse to regress even further, she chills out with some Bob Kanigher madness…

…and watches cartoons while sipping on soda like a kid.

Of course, her new friend might only be a kid, but he thinks he’s an adult, visually represented by the t-shirt he wears, covered with Don Draper pheromones (which overpower every woman in the room, obviously). His creepy-ass desire for Betty shocks her back to herself, and she snitches on him to his mother, filled with regret at the loss of her fantasy. It could be worse, of course. She could be made to wear a bonnet.

Good stuff. It also made me realise that the theme of the entire season was youth (and young manhood) all along, with the odd dabble in cultural awakenings, which is what the 60s are remembered for. Perhaps there will be more of that in later seasons (I look forward to Don hearing Are You Experienced? for the first time). This year, though, we’ve already seen the introduction of Sterling Cooper’s first youth consultants, Roger trying to recapture his youth by running off with Jane the Scheming Secretary, Freddy peeing his pants, Pete hiding from his adult responsibilities, and Jimmy Barrett being an impulsive brat (though that hides a calculating mind). Though we’re not yet sure what a toll this disconnect will take on any of them, it’s fair to say that it’s not just Don’s infidelity that has made the normally pristine Betty end up looking like this.

All of this childishness throws Don’s behaviour into stark relief. Along with Peggy, he is more responsible and “adult” than almost everyone else on the show; they all think they’re mature but they act like kids. Don is the alpha male (and alpha character) because he observes everyone else in the playpen from a position of behavioral superiority and relentless Draper-esque fury. The irony, of course, is that he never got to have a childhood, and is either angry at those who surround him because he is jealous of them for having that, or because their behaviour is totally alien to him, creating a confusion that fuels his rage. All this time Don is searching for who he really is, but maybe there’s nothing to find.

Mysterious Theme of the Week(s):

While Mad Men brilliantly visualised the infantilisation theme in The Inheritance, Six Month Leave featured a curious motif that I really didn’t get. Many of the main characters started their scenes lying down.

There’s a possibility this had something to do with Marilyn Monroe’s death, referenced at the start to the show…

…which would suggest that the characters are, thematically, being killed by the times they are living in (certainly Joan’s repose is deathly, turning Roger’s office into a tomb).

Also, there was a blood drive subplot, which could be a hint that all of the characters shown lying down are bleeding out, that their souls are grievously wounded.

Or they’re just lazy.

Best of them was Betty’s faceplant.

Oh Betty, if only I could send some Prozac back in time for you!

TV Return of the Week:

So great to see Francis Capra on TV again, after illness made his appearances on Veronica Mars sporadic.

He did a great job on that show, mixing youthful cockiness, insecurity, and machismo. Hopefully he’ll get a chance to do the same on Heroes.

::sigh:: Never mind.

TV Return of the Week(s) That Didn’t Involve Getting Killed Like A Totally Lame Punkass Bitch:

Xander Berkeley, a character actor I’m immensely fond of, appeared in The Mentalist as a folksy cop who helps our team track down the Redhead Killer, as well as becoming a suspect towards the end. Here he is being a big red herring while talking to Amanda Righetti, formerly Hailey Nichol on The O.C.

If this had been CSI, the killer would have been Berkeley, as the guest star is always the killer. CSI might be the superior show, but it does keep making that mistake. Ten points to The Mentalist, but if it really wants to totally win me over, it can come up with some complicated way to make Berkeley a regular. Automatic 10,000-point George Mason bonus.

Runner-Up:

Look! It’s Sara Sidle, come back to Las Vegas to attend Warrick’s funeral!

I see Jorja Fox is rocking the late-80s Ally Sheedy look. Shame it doesn’t suit her, because otherwise my late-80s smitten-adolescent self would heartily approve.

Beautiful Visual of the Week(s):

Ned bringing hundreds of bees back to life with the help of Chuck was the most memorable visual of the last couple of weeks.

I can imagine that the ladies who love Lee Pace (LL Lee P) would also agree.

Clever Visual of the Week(s):

House guest star Breckin Meyer, playing a crappy artist, is exhibiting symptoms of visual agnosia, which means his perception is distorted though he doesn’t realize it, leading to a clever cold open featuring a hideous portrait that he sees as normal. Later in the episode he is visited by two strange doctors…

…but they are actually Taub and Thirteen, their identities obscured by his ailment.

It’s not much to rave about, but in a mostly underwhelming episode, I was taking what I could get.

Ridiculous Visual of the Week(s):

Was it the sight of supervillain Knox activating his super strength by sniffing very hard?

Or unpowered Daphne being revealed to have a flappy-arms dash that does not scream Wally West so much as Dean and Hank Venture’s various “Super Run Away!” moments?

Maybe it was the moment it was revealed she was running at superspeed in high heels.

Could it be the pirouetting Wall Street traders flying off in a scene that would otherwise have been supercool (a New York populated by flying people and speedsters)?

Or the ludicrous Men in Black stylings of Agent Glasses and Agent Sylar?

How about Suresh the Super Hoodie scuttling around his future lab like a verbose Phantom of the Opera?

Or maybe it was domesticated Sylar (sorry, Gabriel) hanging out with some kid named Noah and Mr. Fucking Muggles, who is apparently immortal?

Perhaps it’s the future of fashion, which, to the horror of designers everywhere, appears to be lots of black…

…with black dyed hair a la Al Pacino…

…or,if that’s not an option, the Young Republican look (thanks to Heroes semi-fan Diane Court for that observation).

Surely the strongest contender has to be Matt following his animal totem, a turtle (which seems to at least be intentionally funny, and an obvious way to keep him out of the way for a week or so).

I think by now you get my point.

Psyche-Tearing Visual of the Week(s):

It’s either the removal of a drug-filled bezoar from Breckin Meyer’s stomach…

…Meyer’s grotesque swelling caused by anaphylactic shock…

…or this nightmarish image from Pushing Daisies, as a bee-coated assassin menaces Chuck.

A nice reverse of the final scenes of The Wicker Man, where, as everyone knows, bees will go for THE EYES! NO, NOT THE BEES! MY EYES!!!

And yes, there is still more to come (and I will happily admit I’m milking this to make it look like I’m posting more).

These Weeks In TV Year II (Weeks 4-5) Part 1

Posted on October 11, 2008 by admiralneck

We went on holiday! To Italy! And when we got back we had about one million TV shows to watch (and had missed some movies at the cinema, such as ::choke:: Appaloosa). It was a lovely trip, but it meant I have been avoiding blogging (thanks to Masticator for holding the fort with his defense of Jersey Girl). So, here is a bunch of whining about everything we’ve spent the last few days slogging through, with some omissions. I’m considering saving my soul by not watching Knight Rider anymore, have not seen this week’s installment of Pushing Daisies yet, and haven’t tried out Eleventh Hour and Life on Mars, though that’s partially because I’ve not yet watched the originals either. So, bear in mind there are some episodes missing, but otherwise, this is a lot of stuff from the past two weeks.

Triumphant Return of the Week(s):

Saved from cancellation by a weird deal between parent network NBC and DirecTV, Friday Night Lights, the best non-Lost network show on TV, returned with a long stretch of time left unvisited, which is an unfortunate side-effect of the unfairly truncated second season. After a burst of exposition for the benefit of any new viewers (oh please let there be a few million when it returns to NBC!), the show fit right back into its groove as if it had never been away.

Show highlights included Tyra’s existential panic, Buddy and his beloved Jumbotron, the uncertain relationship between Lila and Riggins, and Matt Saracen’s imminent retirement due to the arrival of hotshot QB J.D. McCoy and his scheming dad. To be honest, it was so great there’s little to say about it other than OMG IT WAS SO GREAT and so was the second episode OMG! But perhaps that’s enough.

Most Hectic Hour of the Week(s):

The return of Pushing Daisies was overwhelming even for someone who has been following it since the pilot, so God knows how it was received by any new viewers (of which there were probably none, considering its disastrous viewing figures). With two guest stars (Missi Pyle and French Stewart), the usual murder mystery, Chuck and Ned’s estrangement and reconciliation, and Olive’s departure from The Pie Hole (not to mention her nunnery subplot and Emerson’s pop-up book project), it was perhaps too busy, but it was at least funny and smart and original.

The script was beautifully constructed and satisfying as well. Moaning about it all makes me feel like an awful misery-guts, you know.

Non-Returning Highlight of the Week(s):

My love for Mad Men now solidified, I can get on with enjoying the show instead of getting annoyed by the odd flaw. Of the two episodes we saw during this fortnight (Sixth Month Leave and The Inheritance), perhaps the second was more cohesive on a thematic level (see future Weeks 4-5 posts), but the first episode, dealing with Freddy Rumsen’s sacking, was more fun.

Highlights included Freddy peeing his pants (kudos to the foley artist who captured the sound of his shoes squishing as he leaves the office), Pete and Peggy facing off over her promotion, Don crushing the juvenile idiots working under him like the unworthy scum they are, and of course the out-of-the-blue revelation that Roger Sterling was leaving his loyal wife for that overconfident floozy Jane.

My favourite thing, though, was the long sequence where Don and Roger take Freddy out and let him know, through glaringly obvious doubletalk, that he’s being let go. The pace of the show is always a marvel, and here it allows the show to take a long detour as they wine and dine their friend, who is smart enough to know what they are doing but not smart enough to know what he should do next.

Joel Murray gives a terrific performance as Freddy, a dopey but genial executive who has come to the end of the line and accepts it with a mixture of resignation and fear. These long scenes were a total joy to watch, taking their time to tell a dozen stories in a way a network show would never be able to.

Alarming Failrate of the Week(s):

Heroes really is screwed, isn’t it. I mean, we had a great time watching the last two episodes back to back, cracking up every few minutes at some dreadful staging or silly dialogue: we had great fun with Suresh and his terrible rash, which made us think all those geneticist brane-smarts mean nothing if he doesn’t think to wear a condom while ravishing hott babes (sorry for the insinuation, Maya!). By now the disastrous writing, all speechifying and incomprehensible plot twists, is not the worst of it. It’s full of errors, perhaps most visibly the self-plagiarism. When Usutu revealed his gallery of predictive paintings, we growned aloud.

It’s becoming apparent that the powers are being spread between characters (Usutu and Isaac, Nathan and West, Claire and Adam, Future Ando and Elle, Claire’s mom Meredith and Pyrokinetic Man etc.), and this will almost certainly be explained by the utterly dreary plot about the lineage of all of the Heroes (as soon as Angela Petrelli appears I totally tune out). Nevertheless, it still means the narrative is eating itself. Another apocalypse, another series of predictions, more time travel, more Company shenanigans, and on and on and on. If the characters were written better, this wouldn’t be a problem, but they seem to have no fixed identity at all. Nothing is set in stone, and nothing matters.

Even on a surface level the show can’t keep itself straight for two seconds. Early in the fourth episode, Suresh kicks Maya out of his lab and blathers on about fate and valour and DNA or something (I tuned out again), and then he sets his recording doohickey down onto a table. Time passes, and we’re in the future, as shown by the recorder being covered with dust and cockroaches.

Immediately Canyon said, “He never picked it up again? Bullshit. He’ll use it again later in the episode.” Of course, she was totally right.

And are we supposed to believe this is a real headline? Any self-respecting editor would off him or herself if they let this go to print.

If the showrunners think none of this matters, they’re horribly wrong. The amateurishness and silliness have reached epidemic levels, and viewers are deserting in droves. Not us, of course. If we’re going to watch Car Crash TV, this is at least less painful to watch than Knight Rider.

Show Change of the Week(s):

Doug Petrie always seemed to be an odd choice for CSI producer/writer, not because he isn’t talented (he is), but because his work on Buffy was leagues away from the tone needed for a gritty procedural. Many of his episodes were quirky, much as expected (especially Toe Tags, with the talking corpses), but he was able to come up with the expected grimness when necessary (he is credited with co-writing my favourite CSI episode ever, Monster In The Box).

It was never a problem that he was on the show, especially as it’s always good to see Mutant Enemy writers doing well (see also: Marti Noxon on Mad Men, which is a hell of a step-up from Point Pleasant). However, nice though it was to have a writer we like work on a hugely successful show, seeing that he has jumped over to Pushing Daisies really cheered us up. His writing is perfectly suited to Daisies, and the only thing that sours that news is that Daisies is doing so badly in the ratings that it might get cancelled before he gets to write an episode. ::is sad::

Unexpected Cameo of the Week(s):

Holy shit! Betty Draper’s dad is played by John McCain!

He was perfectly cast as well. Belligerent, lying to himself and others to cover up his confusion, and so overcome with attraction to hot females that he loses his composure.

Steady on, fella! That’s no way to treat a vice-presidential candidate. Hehhhhh? Hehhhhh?

Second Most Unexpected Cameo of the Week(s):

This is Betty Draper’s brother.

How did they de-age Robert Englund?

Opinion Reversal of the Week(s):

How quickly I have soured on Lucas the hapless PI in House. Individual moments were still funny, such as his appearance in House’s closet, but the desperate attempts to create an audience for his forthcoming spin-off are embarrassing and distracting.

The stalking and subsequent courting of Cuddy has the potential to ruin her character forever, and the temporary suspension of House’s usual disdain for any and all people in his sphere looks idiotic and transparently calculated.

A narrative decision this blatantly cynical could backfire horribly. David Chase should have thought twice.

Funniest Joke of the Week(s):

This rendered us helpless this week (it’s between 7:30 and 8:30, but you should watch the whole thing.

Infantile genius.

Punch of the Week(s):

Don Draper clocks Jimmy Barrett, and it is beautiful.

The best part of that is that even though I enjoyed seeing Don batter that obnoxious jerk, I also really enjoyed the scene from a few weeks ago when Jimmy humiliated Don by revealing he knew all about the affair with Bobbie. This is the show that gives and gives and then gives some more. Such brilliance is hard to achieve. Compare Don’s effortless cool with Daphne’s speedpunching, a supercool Flash trick rendered ugly by some dire effects on Heroes.

I’m really bitching about Daphne, which is not really representative of my opinion. You’ve got to love a snarky speedster, and she goes well with Hiro and Ando.

I just think her superpower pales into insignificance compared to the fearsome might of Don Draper.

Easter Egg of the ~~Week(s)~~ Month:

It took very little time for me to fall for the new nerd-baiting mystery man The Observer, who arrived in the latest episode of Fringe in an explosion of debris, flame, quirky tics, and hot peppers. Even though it was obvious to me that he is little more than a grab-bag of weirdness calculated to appeal to the nerd fanbase, I immediately became enamoured of him, partially because he is bald and loves jalapenos (we’re like brothers!), but mostly because he has driven the show headlong in an even stranger direction than I thought it would. What I had assumed was going to be a mildly diverting Alias-meets-X-Files procedural looks now to be a batshit curio that will split the audience into opposing groups of rabid fans and exasperated haters to such an extent it will make the Lost Talkback Wars look like a love-in.

It could have gone the other way, though. Midway through the episode, upon being confronted by Anna “Vanatron” Torv, Lance “Intensity” Reddick reveals that he has been seen numerous times at Pattern events, including the hospital in which the grisly birth scene from the second episode occurred. A photo is produced, showing The Observer, which offended me greatly. A blatant piece of ret-conning, it made the show look amateurish and desperate, trying to convince the audience that the show mythology had been planned in advance but instead making it look like it was being made up as it goes along (just like haters think is happening with Lost). Just to prove this, I went back to the second episode, hoping the hospital scenes would be Observer-free. Well, I’m not too proud to admit I was horribly wrong.

How cool is that? He’s so fucking creepy. Thrilled by the knowledge that the Fringe team are trying to generate a plan for the show with seeded cameos and whatnot, I checked the net for more news about The Observer, and whaddaya know, he’s been in all four episodes so far, with a Hitchcockian cameo walking past MASSive Dynamic in the pilot, and an eerie stalker moment on a train in the third episode.

Even better, it’s obvious the show has been designed to appeal to those of us whose idea of a good time is to waste hours clicking through Lostpedia or play ARGs like the current Dharma Initiative Initiation game. As you can see here, there have been Easter Eggs throughout the series (The Observer was namechecked in the pilot title sequence), either feeding into the mythology or giving ARG hints. It’s all very entertaining.

In fact, I find the promise of a new sci fi mythology more exciting than the actual show, which, despite the introduction of nose torture, glowing subterranean torpedoes, and crazy 50s rayguns, still kinda bores me whenever Dr. Walter Bishop is not onscreen. Hints that Peter and Olivia have a secret Pattern-influenced past might make them more interesting, but right now I’m not interested in them at all. And yet I can’t wait for the next episode. I’m such a sucker for big mythologies. It’s actually really embarrassing.

Well-Used Secondary Character of the Week(s):

I keep on about it, but it needs to be shouted from the rooftops of New York; Marc and Amanda are the best things about Ugly Betty, but are sorely underused. Amanda is getting about two lines an episode right now, though thankfully she is talented and funny enough that she at least knows how to make those lines count.

Marc, on the other hand, was given a juicier plot than usual, scheming to get Wilhelmina demoted from her new position as Mode editor-in-chief just to keep her all to himself. This angered Canyon, who was disgusted to see the status quo returned after a long period introducing numerous story opportunities that ranged in potential from promising to almost certainly a dead end. She has a very good point. Still, there is the short term gain that Marc got to show a new, Macchiavellian side. It ain’t much, but it meant I laughed a lot, and sometimes that’s enough.

How To Ruin a Character Recipe of the Week(s):

Add one book…

…Stir in one genetically engineered triplet damsel in distress…

…Sprinkle with liberal amounts of an invisible old man who probably never shuts up about working with Kubrick and Lindsay Anderson between takes…

…And you end up with a hyper-lame loser who can only get about four people to attend his press conference about a catastrophic disaster that kills hundreds of thousands of people.

Nice Jackie O glasses there, Tracey.

And now, I shall stop there, so that I can finally watch Hairspray (remake). More to come, peeps.

This Week In TV Year II (Week 3, cont.)

Posted on September 28, 2008 by admiralneck

As promised yesterday, more of the same.

Potential Plagiarism of the Week:

This week’s big scientifical revelation in Fringe, that some ill-defined bad guys are using a mode of tech-lepathy called The Ghost Network, sounds awfully like something Warren Ellis would cook up, right down to the cyber-hip name. It sounds so much like one of his ideas that it gave me deja vu that persists days later. Has Ellis come up with this concept before? Did they rip him off? He’s so prolific that can’t keep track of every mad thing he has come up with, so until someone sets me right, I’m going to fret about it.

Actual Plagiarism of the Week:

Tim Kring has been eager to stress that he doesn’t read comics, thus making any similarities between the show and anything in any comic ever a total coincidence. So does this mean he’s now going to say in interviews that he’s never seen Cronenberg’s The Fly?

Our jaws dropped at the shockingly obvious plagiarism of Suresh’s transformation into a wall-climbing superhuman shag-beast whose body is turning into something slimy and unpleasant (much like his original personality). It was just like the movie, even down to the shots of him staring into a mirror in horror, and scaling the walls of his loft before ravishing the nearest hott woman.

Still, even though this means, as Canyon pointed out, we’ve had to put up with way too many shots of Suresh coated in lard, it does mean we’ll get to see him pontificate on insect politics before having his head blown off by a sobbing Maya. I’ll get the popcorn ready for that turn of events.

Self-Plagiarism of the Week:

Announcing the season arc for Heroes with a flourish of impressive special effects, we were unfortunately treated to some not ao impressive ideas. Just like the first season, Hiro travels into the future and sees a city (this time Tokyo) destroyed by an enormous explosion.

I mean, this is a joke, right? Or there’s more to it. There has to be. Maybe it’s a bomb that has the Shanti virus in it, just to rip off the second season as well.

Fashion Faux-Pas of the Week:

Outside the Heroesverse it was either the new, relaxed Daniel Meade, who is only a backwards baseball cap away from total Durst-ocity…

…or Michael Le Traceur and his military beret that looks way too much like a moob stuck to his scalp.

Inside the Heroesverse it was either the futuristic angry garb of Peter “Greaser” Petrelli…

…or Maya Goopez who, as a Hispanic woman, is obviously required by TV law to dress like Hilda Suarez from Ugly Betty.

The costume department couldn’t think of any other way to dress her? I guess part of it was so that BrundleSuresh could yank her clothes off and have his way with her at a moment’s notice, but otherwise, it’s unimaginative and a bit insulting.

Bitchface of the Week:

Robin Tunney spent most of the running time of The Mentalist rolling her eyes and looking really hacked off.

Whereas House’s antics exasperate those around him, they still respect him and his intelligence. The cops that work with Patrick Jane, aka The Mentalist, seem to just hate him, and barely even appreciate his Amazing Powers of the Brain. It’s enough of a difference to make the formula work without seeming to be more of the same.

Mystery of the Week:

That subtitle makes it seem like I’m really fascinated by the big mystery in Fringe, i.e. who or what is the CEO of Massive Dynamics, what is his connection to Dr. Walter Bishop, and should the company’s name be spoken a la Alan Partridge, with the emphasis heavily on the MASSive? To be honest, I’m only mildly intrigued by this (and what The Pattern is), especially when compared to the WTFness of Lost‘s pilot, with its many fascinating mysteries. However, the Fringe questions are definitely interesting enough to keep me tuning in, and that’s before we get to Dr. Walter Bishop and the soothing voice of Anna “Vanatron” Torv. So, here are my guesses for who William Bell, CEO of MASSive Dynamics, is.

The clone of Dr. Walter Bishop (this is a popular theory on the internets).

The male clone of Olivia Dunham.

A miniaturised man operating Nina Sharp’s arm from a little operating booth within said arm, as a homage to box office titan Meet Dave.

The Fringe universe itself (with the various characters representing different aspects of his personality).

A steam-powered clockwork robot constructed by Alexander Graham Bell, Charles Babbage, and Michael Faraday.

A swarm of black nanobots that can be repelled by a sonic fence.

Doktor Sleepless.

Albert Einstein after drinking from the Fountain of Youth.

A heckuva guy!!!

A cloud of living thoughts in a jar, made crazy in isolation and now plotting revenge.

The secret child of Rock Hudson and Doris Day, conceived at the behest of a cabal of Cthulhu-worshippers, and fated to bring about the return of the Elder Gods, Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!

An unholy genetic hybrid of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Rupert Murdoch, Masaru Ibuka, and Andy Dick.

Keyser Soze.

I demand prizes if any of these is right.

Passive Aggressive Jerk of the Week:

Upon being confronted by his annoying mother about being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Greaser Petrelli snaps, “Sorry mom, I’m too busy saving the world right now.”

We were hoping he would follow that up by saying, “Saving it with string, mom. String!”

Unedifying Sight of the Week:

Paula Garces, who spent a period on The Shield being unbearably snotty and unprofessional to everyone else working at The Barn while being groomed by Dutch Wagenbach in a particularly depressing subplot, has taken a break from appearing in televisual excellence to be treated like a big sexpot on Knight Rider. Seeing her disembark from a car with gullwing doors from a seat that is way too low was utterly depressing. It’s not her fault, obviously, but did no one realise that showing a hott spy struggling to get out of a car had the opposite effect of that intended, i.e. to get the teenage boys at home all excited?

The series of pictures above range across about five minutes of screentime. (This is a lie.) If you could see it in motion you’d understand why it’s so awful. Poor Paula Garces, forced to dress like someone from an Austin Powers movie.

Still, at least she inspired Jerell when coming up with a pop-style outfit for the odious and bratty Kenley on this week’s Project Runway.

Lose, you whiny brat, LOSE!

Career Move of the Week:

An end to our pain…

Run, Stephen Tobolowsky! Run for the hills! And if they want you back for a flashback or dream sequence, just say no.

Gupta of the Week:

Zoe, the button-pusher in Knight Rider, is so ill-conceived, mean, and relentlessly smug, that it shows up the entire awful show for the mistake that it is. There is no charm here, no humour, no excuse. Lowlights include:

Reacting to the imminent fiery death of Michael Le Traceur and Sarah Blandhott by sleazily delivering the line, “This just got interesting.”

Reacting to the lucky escape everyone gets from being killed by a napalm-coated morphing supercar crashing into a closed door by saying, “That was awesome.” She trots out another awesome when her colleague, Billy, “comically” passes out.

Saying “Owned!” to Billy after KITT chides him in Kilmeresque monotone. That one was for the kidz!

Sneering at a highly stressed Billy that, “You’d better hope this works, because if it doesn’t…” meaning, “…our two colleagues will burn to death,” all the while smiling at some fixed point off camera, which is the least inspiring comment ever given to a rapidly-typing computer nerd during an emergency.

Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to put a catty bitch in this cast? Is she meant to be funny? Sassy? All she is is a skinny burr under our mind-saddle. It’s like someone wandered into the Knight Rider HQ from an America’s Next Top Model photoshoot. There is no scenario conceivable that makes this decision work.

Silliest Exposition of the Week:

While going through a list of supervillains, Noah Bennett tells newly glum daughter Claire what each of their superpowers are. The German is Magneto, Pyrokinetic Man is Pyro, and Jesse… Well, you don’t want to know! Except that anyone with the superpower of being able to read can see that his superpower doesn’t sound so bad.

So, basically he’s Paul Oakenfold.

I’m shaking in my boots.

Over-Used Plot Device of the Week:

Brain surgery! It’s grisly, it’s scary, it’s slowly becoming boring. If it’s not Chase the Moron poking around in Felicia Day’s medulla oblongata…

…it’s Dr. Walter Bishop moving a blob of liquid metal around Bill Hicks-lookalike Zac Orth’s visual and auditory centres…

…or it’s Sylar doing… well, something nasty to Claire’s brain.

I love that Tim Kring said we would get an answer to the question of what Sylar does to brains in order to acquire powers. Well, now we know. He does something nasty. Thanks Tim!

Improbable Transformation of the Week:

After an act of stupidity so profound that it drove Canyon into a fit of rage, Betty ends up renting the worst apartment ever without viewing it first because of an attack of plot-contrivitis.

As if that wasn’t annoying enough, in the final scenes Hilda, Justin and Ignacio save the day with about eight hours of decorating, leaving the apartment looking so good Betty and her heinous stockings have a little dance to celebrate.

I have to keep reminding myself that this is a fairytale, and that in the Ugly Bettyverse, nothing can trump The Power of Family. Still, though.

Intensity of the Week:

It almost burns, the intensity.

So, a busier week than I expected, but with a bit of actual entertainment, a promising new show, and lots of unintentional humour. So what does Brian Michael Bendoom think?

That’s some dastardly indifference right there.

This Week In TV Year II (Week 3)

Posted on September 27, 2008 by admiralneck

Shades of Caruso

Circuit interruptus.

Category Archives: Ugly Betty