November 18, 2010 · 9:37 am

From Artifact to Aimlessness: Robin Sparkles in HIMYM’s “Glitter”

From Artifact to Aimlessness: HIMYM’s “Glitter”

November 18th, 2010

I had originally wanted to have this up the day after “Glitter” aired, but I realized that this would be disadvantageous.

Things that are posted immediately after an episode feel like reviews, and I really don’t want to review “Glitter.” It was a pleasant episode of the series, an often silly bit of comedy that I do not consider an affront to my sensibilities or anything. And so, I do not want this sort of in depth analysis into my frustration with the episode to read like a condemnation of the direction the show has taken Robin Sparkles – this is more a consideration of what has happened, and why it moves away from the character’s origin, than any sort of critical evaluation of this strategy (many, after all, seemed to really enjoy it).

What I want to look as is why some people (myself included) felt this was more than a case of diminishing returns. I was underwhelmed by this episode, but it wasn’t because it wasn’t funny. Rather, it was because the elements of satire and parody which defined Robin Sparkles first introduction were entirely absent, both in terms of the kind of humor the episode focused on (the unintended sexual connotation of nearly every comment) and the way in which the character was deployed.

And, as someone who has already written six thousand words on the series’ construction of Canada through Robin’s past, it’s only natural that I’ve got more to say on the issue after this half-hour.

Continue reading →

5 Comments

Filed under How I Met Your Mother

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

November 17, 2010 · 10:49 pm

Modern Family – “Dash, Flash, Crash”

“Dash, Flash, Crash”

November 17th, 2010

Last week I posted about concerns regarding Modern Family’s relationship with questions of race and ethnicity (albeit focused on the former), and over at TV Overmind the commenters were…well, they were angry. My point was not to say that the show is racist, but rather that there are moments when questions relating to sensitive issues are located within the production of the series rather than character actions.

Let’s take, for example, Phil’s “If you ain’t white, you ain’t right” t-shirt which angers an African American taxi cab. It’s highly offensive, sure, but it plays into his cluelessness in ways we recognize. It is the intersection of his inability to realize what his words mean with questions of race in today’s society, and its continued presence (“And this year I predict total White domination!”) makes it seem less like that single flashback is necessary in order to construct the joke. It seems like something Phil would do, makes me laugh, and happens to transition into the best episode since “Fizbo.”

In other words, next time you hear me ragging on Modern Family? Manny’s birthday.

Continue reading →

6 Comments

Filed under Modern Family

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

November 17, 2010 · 2:15 pm

The Recent Proliferation of Off-Site Learnings

So, you may have noticed that posting has slowed around these parts. This actually isn’t particularly bizarre, as the academic term is really kicking into gear, but the fact that I’ve been writing in some new outlets has sort of exaggerated this delay.

I sometimes forget that not everyone who reads the blog doesn’t use Twitter, and so I have been remiss in not making note of these off-site learnings (as I call them) more available to this audience. So, I’ve added buttons to the right hand side of the page, and will contextualize my contributions below (click the buttons to find all of the content discussed).

Antenna

First, I’ve been doing a considerable amount of work at Antenna, which is run out of Media and Cultural Studies here at University of Wisconsin-Madison. It’s a good outlet for topics of more academic consideration, often shorter pieces which identify and explain a concept before opening it up for discussion. It’s been a good exercise in more concise writing, and has led to some great conversations, so I’d definitely be bookmarking the site if you like this sort of discussion (which happens almost daily with the site’s myriad of highly intelligent contributors).

My posts have included two pieces on television showrunners on Twitter, a piece on Halloween episodes, another take on the Mad Men finale, and today’s piece on watching Twin Peaks for the first time as the initial entry in our new “Late to the Party” series.

The A.V. Club

You may know that I’m reviewing The Office for The A.V. Club this year, but this week saw a bit of expansion: I filled in for Zack Handlen on Sons of Anarchy last night, and I also offered my thoughts on Weeds’ sixth season on Monday. I don’t expect a huge expansion of my work for the site in the near future, but I certainly enjoy contributing and taking part in the subsequent discussions, so this is yet another space where you can find my work.

I will continue tweeting when these pieces go up, and may do a weekly roundup should it seem warranted, but the buttons on the sidebar (under “Off-Site Learnings”) will be your best way of finding this content in the future.

6 Comments

Filed under Off-Site Learnings

Tagged as , , , ,

November 16, 2010 · 9:02 pm

Glee – “The Substitute”

“The Substitute”

November 16th, 2010

“Are you on anything? Because this is trippy.”

“The Substitute” is terrible, except that it’s sort of great.

Every moment stands on the precipice of being terrible, predicated on tenuous connections to our reality. And yet, with a willingness to indulge in fantasy the episode achieves something approaching self-actualization, finding the honest moments in storylines that could very easily have been devoid of such honesty. Some moments are worse than the show’s baseline of ridiculousness, while other moments spin that ridiculousness into the kind of character moments that the show often struggles with.

Ian Brennan, returning to the material of “The Rhodes Not Taken,” tells a story about loneliness, albeit in an episode so jam-packed with storylines that the actual feeling of loneliness is largely theoretical. While not quite the series’ best episode, “The Substitute” makes so much with so little that we can’t help but find it admirable.

If, also, a little awful.

Continue reading →

18 Comments

Filed under Glee

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

November 10, 2010 · 8:30 am

The Construction of Race in Modern Family’s Second Season

The Construction of Race in Modern Family’s Second Season

November 10th, 2010

ABC’s Modern Family has always been concerned with questions of race: that Gloria and Manny are Colombian, and that Lily is Vietnamese, were prominent factors in the series’ pilot, so questions of race (and racism) have been evident throughout the series.

And yet, something seems different in the second season. While nothing has been fundamentally changed in terms of questions of race, the show is going to racial humor more often and in a few instances from a different perspective. I would never go so far as to say that the series is racist, but in its desire to increase the amount of racial humor it seems to have forced the issue without allowing it to flow naturally from its characters or even its storylines.

While it is not enough to condemn the series, I would argue that the way race has been presented so far this season shifts ownership of these dynamics to the people behind the scenes as opposed to the characters within the series, creating problematic questions of authorship that threaten both the series’ realism and its complexity.

Continue reading →

20 Comments

Filed under Modern Family

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

November 9, 2010 · 9:01 pm

Glee – “Never Been Kissed”

“Never Been Kissed”

November 9th, 2010

Hype is Glee’s currency of choice, for reasons that make a lot of sense: they want to sell downloads, they want to trend on Twitter, and so I understand why they released the full performances of both “Teenage Dream” and “Start Me Up/Livin’ on a Prayer” ahead of this week’s episode.

And yet, there is something very weird about the hype for “Never Been Kissed,” in that the musical numbers promote joyous musical explosion while the commercials for the episode promote the start of what Chris Colfer refers to as Glee’s “bullying saga” (which each writer will put their stamp on during a three-episode arc). While I talk a lot – probably too much – about the idea of the 3 Glees as it relates to the three writers, there are also ways in which the promotion and hype surrounding the series becomes highly contradictory. It is not that an episode can’t be both of these things, per se, but rather that the promotion works to the much-hyped extremes and fails to properly merge the two modes.

The result is that this episode inspires extreme trepidation: the word saga gives me great pause, and the musical numbers revealed concerns that had me pre-writing my criticism in my head late last week. And while there are parts of “Never Been Kissed” which had the potential to be something of value, the tonal mash-up is so extreme that all we’re left with is…well, nothing of value.

Continue reading →

17 Comments

Filed under Glee

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

November 9, 2010 · 8:28 am

Conan the Morning After: Critics Respond to the Premiere

Conan the Morning After: “Baa Baa Blackmail”

November 9th, 2010

Despite what their titles or tags may say, no one really “reviewed” Conan last night.

While an evaluative measure may have been undertaken by numerous critics, it is always with an asterisk: yes, we all had our opinions following Conan O’Brien’s return to late night television, but making a judgment based on a single episode of a show which plans to air four episodes a week is effectively impossible.

This should not, and did not, stop critics from being critical of his performance or from offering their perspective, but it does limit critics to what I’d consider to be “personal responses.” It becomes about what expectations we had going into the broadcast, and whether or not the “Baa Baa Blackmail” (the premiere’s rather fun “title”) lived up to those expectations depends on what precisely we wanted or expected to see.

By collecting some of these responses, i hope to be able to demonstrate that Conan and late night in general are many things to many critics, and that the show is in many ways “for” the precise opposite audience.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under Conan

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

November 9, 2010 · 12:59 am

Who is Conan‘s Conan?: A Personal Response to TBS’ Conan

Who is Conan‘s Conan?: A Personal Response

November 8th, 2010

Watching Conan was a bit of a bizarre experience. Admittedly, I am not a regular viewer of Late Night, but Conan O’ Brien is probably the host that I enjoy the most, and so I was curious (if not necessarily outright excited) for him to return to the airwaves. And so I tuned into TBS for the debut of his new series, a debut which stems from a ridiculous and controversial transition at NBC, and…it was a bit weird.

It’s especially weird coming out of a period where the idea of Conan O’Brien, which is frankly what I would call myself a fan of, was all we had: with just a Twitter feed to sustain us, the mythology of Conan in the “Team Coco” era actually seemed to get a bit out of control. Once a cult favorite among younger demographics, stuck at 12:30, Conan has become a national symbol of the downtrodden despite becoming filthy rich in the process. As a result, while I am glad that Conan is back on television, I no longer have that sense that he exists as a counter to the establishment, as an odd duck who does what Leno does with a subversive edge that sets him apart.

Instead, Conan’s difference has become a commodity, and the result is a premiere which relies so heavily on recent history that it obscures what precipitated his rise to folk heroism in such a way that boils his act down to the past year of his career.

Which results in a funny hour of late night television, but one which fits more comfortably into broader public discourse than Conan’s history would suggest. The following is not a judgment of the series, impossible since it has aired only a single episode, but an effort to understand why I responded to the premiere in this way.

Continue reading →

6 Comments

Filed under Conan

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

November 8, 2010 · 10:09 pm

House – “Office Politics”

“Office Politics”

November 8th, 2010

To check in on a show you haven’t watched for a while is always a bit disarming, but being as media saturated as I am sort of softens the blow. I think the last time I watched House regularly was early in its fifth season, since then tuning in for special episodes (like “Broken” and “Wilson”) where the internet suggested it would be worth my time.  However, because I spent so much of my time surrounded by people who do keep watching the show, I get bits and pieces: I wasn’t shocked to see Thirteen missing, for example, and I was thankfully prepared for the alarming sight of Cuddy pressing her lips against House’s lips (I think they call it kissing? It was icky).

And yet, the whole point of House is that we’re supposed to be able to jump right in, especially in an instance like “Office Politics” where a new character (and subsequently a slightly new dynamic) is being introduced. Amber Tamblyn’s arrival as Masters, who effectively replaces Thirteen since Olivia Wilde is off becoming a movie star, is not the seismic shift that perhaps the show needs to enter back onto my radar full time, but the episode has just enough dynamism to feel like an event for those of us who appreciate Tamblyn and like to imagine a world where House remains a relevant television program.

Of course, at the same time, the sheer similarity of the formula means that stepping back out is just as easy as one might imagine.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under House

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

November 8, 2010 · 9:32 pm

How I Met Your Mother – “Natural History”

“Natural History”

November 8th, 2010

Always ostensibly interested in the passage of time, “Natural History” has How I Met Your Mother very purposefully digging into both past and future. In fact, the season as a whole is structured around the passage of time: the Arcadian was once a beautiful building, and yet it stands in the way of urban progress and has decayed to the point of ill repute.

Here, through a trip to the Museum of Natural History, that storyline is merged somewhat awkwardly, but ultimately effectively, with two more storylines that deal with memories of the past and their relevance in the present day. It’s one of those rare episodes which in and of itself doesn’t necessarily resonate, but the way in which it consolidates the entirety of the season is a really sharp pivot heading into the remainder of the season.

Continue reading →

7 Comments

Filed under How I Met Your Mother

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,