Tag Archives: Television

April 15, 2008 · 1:59 am

Greek – “War & Peace”

“War & Peace”

April 14th, 2008

If there’s anything we know about ABC Family’s Greek, it’s that it rarely becomes heavy-handed. In some cases, such as Cappie’s charming Southern-general act, this is an ideal development that heightens my enjoyment of the series. In other cases, however, there are moments where you wonder whether the light-hearted solution to, say, Casey’s affair with a 16-year old doesn’t cheapen the whole thing.

Her young beau didn’t get a mention this time around, and in many ways the episode cleared the air of a lot of broad conflicts in favour of emphasizing smaller ones. The rivalry between our two central fraternities and the struggle between the ZBZ leadership and their National-appointed nuisance Lizzie both disappear in this episode, at least temporarily, which means we’re left with the broader interpersonal questions.

I think that this is perhaps the show’s most difficult balance to strike, defining interpersonal relationships in a world where broad stereotypes define most social interaction. I don’t quite know if it has the balance, considering it had to dump a fair few of its supporting players to make it work, but I definitely don’t think it was a failed exercise.

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April 14, 2008 · 9:36 pm

How I Met Your Mother – “The Chain of Screaming”

“The Chain of Screaming”

April 14th, 2008

Like last week’s episode of 30 Rock, I felt as if “The Chain of Screaming” was trying too hard to follow the checklist of HIMYM’s most successful elements as opposed to actually creating a strong episode of television. Barney’s titular catchphrase never quite gelled, even if it was the episode’s best element, and everything just felt extremely slow – the central point was there, but I wasn’t feeling the flow I’ve come to expect.

My thoughts were the same on 30 Rock, but on second viewing I enjoyed it more – perhaps tomorrow I will feel the same about this one, but I really just wasn’t on board from day one. I’m not necessarily against Marshall and Lily stories, our first in quite some time, but their side of the series has been floundering ever since they bought the crooked apartment. After two episodes focusing on Barney and Ted, clearly at this point the show’s most interesting character studies, heading back into the working life of Marshall seems, ultimately, uninteresting.

This isn’t to say that it was all bad, but rather felt more inconsequential compared to how it feels like it wanted to feel.

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April 13, 2008 · 12:39 am

Late to the (Frat) Party: ABC Family’s ‘Greek’

Let’s chalk it up to a tad bit of nostalgia and a healthy dose of reflection.

I wasn’t exactly desperate for a new show – I had gone most of the strike-forced hiatuses for my favourite shows without getting hooked on much new material, so surely I could last a weekend. However, perhaps it was the return of The Office and 30 Rock that sparked it; they were a high from which I would surely crash during the normal Friday Night doldrums, and I gave in to temptation.

However, the choice of temptation was all of the above – as I prepare to complete my undergraduate university education, it’s a time to reflect back on the university experience. And, coincidentally, I sat down and watched Greek, ABC Family’s college dramedy sat in the Greek system. And, well, I really enjoyed it.

And that might not just be the reflection talking.

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April 11, 2008 · 11:39 pm

Battlestar Galactica – “Six of One”

“Six of One”

April 12th, 2008

With a gun in her hands, and a suicidal Kara Thrace in front of her, Laura Roslin pulls the trigger – she misses, and while we ponder how she did so at such close range we notice something: what she shot was a photograph of Adama and Roslin, together. If that’s not an omen, I don’t know what is.

If last week’s premiere was perhaps a symbol that the show was starting off on a slightly different trajectory than the third season, then this week’s episode solidified our point of reference: this is season two all over again.

We have questions of faith, the schism between our two leaders, and even the same people in positions of personal crisis. I don’t say this as if it is derivative, but rather that it is a strong return to form – it may not be the 0 to 60 we saw last season, but it is a strong mythology turn that will serve the show well.

Read on to learn while Starbuck is in a cell, parts of her are all throughout the ship.

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April 10, 2008 · 10:03 pm

The Office – “Dinner Party”

“Dinner Party”

April 10th, 2008

Although I don’t particularly want to watch last night’s episode of 30 Rock again before writing a review, I’m going to have to in order to find at least one good thing to say about it. In the meantime, however, the more positive note of the evening (outside of the Montreal Canadiens’ 4-1 victory – woot) is the return of The Office with a difficult task: how does one live up to what was finally the first home run of the season, the pre-strike finale featuring Michael and Jan’s boardroom standoff?

You could tell that they were returning from the Strike – there wasn’t a great sense of time, and the events of the boardroom were only vaguely mentioned. That is the real struggle of the strike, a loss of momentum amongst the storylines that often tie the series together. There was one area where they picked up the slack, though, which I’ll get to after the jump.

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April 4, 2008 · 11:32 pm

Season Premiere – Battlestar Galactica Season Four – “He That Believeth In Me”

“He That Believeth In Me”

April 4th, 2008

I had said earlier this week that I was going to spend copious amounts of time analyzing the third season of Battlestar Galactica…and then proceeded to spend copious amounts of time watching it instead. As a result, I expected to enter into this episode ready to compare it to the season which preceded it.

Instead, I’m comparing it to Lost.

Like any good serialized show of this nature, Ronald D. Moore and Co. ended last season on a cliffhanger, something it has done in past seasons. However, something was different this time around: I don’t know if it is that the stakes are lower, or the action slower, but something has changed. My point of comparison is this season’s Lost premiere: we had the revelation in the previous Finale, so the premiere will pale by comparison.

I think, in this case, I had already watched this episode in my head: the new Cylons happening to stumble into scenarios where people question their humanity unknowingly, Starbuck struggling to return to the real world after her absence, and everything being very bizarre for Gaius Baltar. I think the problem was that the episode never went beyond that: it was great for what it was, but having already deduced much of this myself I was sort of behind.

I actually quite loved the episode: laughed out loud, gasped in horror, loved the acting, etc. It’s just that after such a huge revelation, what was put on the screen was everything we had already imagined as fans of the series dealing with a year-long hiatus. And, well, that’s kind of a let down. But, let’s discuss further.

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April 2, 2008 · 3:25 pm

An Open Letter to NBC, Re: Fall 2008 Schedule

Dearest NBC,

According to the trades, you have revealed your Fall schedule, which is one of those times when I head off to Variety to ponder what kind of stupid decisions you’ve made. Now, you’re right – you have occasionally made some good decisions, and there are some of them found within this year’s announcement. However, at the same time, there are some which frustrate me to no end, and which need to be discussed.

First, let’s discuss the good:

  • Friday Night Lights is definitely coming back, although not until the Winter. Through some sort of cost-saving measure (Hopefully not cutting out parts of the ensemble, although I could do with less Lyla in general), the show has been saved – long live quality television.
  • On the same front, unsurprising considering its buzz in critical circles, 30 Rock is returning for a third season. After such a creative push pre-strike, it should be interesting to see how it does in the post-strike period. Hopefully, like How I Met Your Mother, it will see a boost.
  • A smart network, “Thursday Night Live” will air for four weeks leading up to the Presidential Election following The Office on Thursday Night. This shall offer some strong comedy, which excites me.
  • NBC is officially not picking up Scrubs, a great decision in my books. Too bad ABC wishes to flog the dead horse a while longer.
  • Critical hit Life, even with low ratings, is renewed as previously announced, but might struggle for viewers on Friday nights in the Winter.

Now, based on this you’d think that I was happy with this upfront, that I wouldd have just posted about how great you were, NBC, and move on with my life. Well, let’s just say that I have some other issues – I won’t get into your new shows (Not much information is available, and what little there is doesn’t tickle my fancy to be honest), but there are a few decisions you’ve made that are potentially awful:

  • Airing after the Super Bowl, NBC is officially launching a spinoff of The Office. Now, this is only a potential evil: I haven’t seen the show, and no details are available as of this time. However, I’ll have more thoughts throughout the week on why I think this is a fairly volatile idea.
  • However, that’s not even the biggest concern with the Office – that belongs to the idiotic return to one-hour episodes in the Fall. I’ll rant more about this later too, but do we not remember those episodes? And how they were not up to the standards of the half-hours which proceeded? Did no one at NBC pay attention to the quality of the show in this decision? Clearly, they did not.

What these decisions represent to be is a shameless milking, a milking that goes against the quality of a television program. I think there is potential for an Office spinoff (I vote for Daryl, personally), but I don’t know if the show proper is at a place creatively where it will be able to excise part of itself. I guess that your confidence in The Office financially doesn’t quite jive with my own views of its relative quality this season, which is fine…I just wish you’d just kept it at a half hour. I could deal with spinoff, but the two combined just angers me.

I shall vent more anger tomorrow, so stay tuned. Plus, knowing you, you’ll have changed this schedule by then.

Sincerely,

Myles

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April 1, 2008 · 12:42 am

Signposts to Battlestar Galactica Season Four: Occupation/Precipice

[With Battlestar Galactica’s 4th Season starting on Friday night, it’s time to take a look back at some of the important parts of the 3rd Season as I rewatch it in preparation of the premiere. We’ll start with the opening two episodes, and progress with four more signposts from there.]

When I finished watching Season Two of Battlestar Galactica, my response was quite simple: “That was ballsy.” Jumping forward over a year in time created a lot more questions than answers, and if I learned anything from Alias it was that sometimes you risk overwhelming your audience. And, inevitably, what Ronald D. Moore did was, in fact overwhelming…but for all the right reasons.

The occupation of New Caprica by the Cylons was supposed to be overwhelming, both on a visual and intellectual level. When Col. Tigh emerges from the Cylon prison missing an eye, you get a sense that bad things are happening, and that there isn’t going to be an easy out from this scenario. We’re stuck in this occupation, as the viewer, but can escape to Galactica and avoid the struggle directly.

The result is an opening to a season perhaps amongst the best in television, the intellectual equivalent of 24’s four-hour openings of the middle seasons. It wasn’t action-packed in a traditional sense, rather using dense plotting and challenging situations to interrogate our understanding of our own lives and of the lives of these characters.

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March 25, 2008 · 11:29 pm

Series Finale – Jericho – “Patriots and Tyrants”

“Patriots and Tyrants”

March 25th, 2008

You know, say what you will about Jericho, but I have to point out how frustrating the title of this finale is. By the end of the show’s short second season, there is no questions – the world can be boiled down simply to patriots and tyrants in the world of Jericho, as we saw as the Cheyenne government’s days are coming to an end while we leave Jake and Hawkins on their way to finish saving the world.

This episode was always bound to be a disappointment due to the circumstances of the show’s cancellation, but for the most part it was a dramatic failure less due to its own accord and more due to the short season. There were arcs being resolved in this episode that were never given adequate time to develop. Would we not have been more involved with storylines like Beck’s redemption if, in fact, we had spent time in an episode examining his back story with his family? And wouldn’t we care somewhat more about Cheyenne being bombed if we knew anyone who lived in the city other than the evil Jennings & Rall? Wouldn’t we have wanted to spend more time with John Smith, or examining the nature of diplomacy in this new America?

The answer to all of these questions is an emphatic yes, which means that I left this finale wondering just how much dramatic potential had been by necessity left on the table. It’s never good when you’re thinking about what’s not there, as opposed to what it is, but thus is the nature of the only vaguely satisfactory series finale.

However, let’s take a look at what the episode brought, how it ended, and why the show’s chances of being picked up by another network are now even more slim.

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March 25, 2008 · 8:00 am

Jericho: A Question of Blame, a Legacy of Fandom

Tonight, March 25th, Jericho airs its series finale…well, it’s second one, in a way. When the series ended its first season on a cliffhanger, few expected that ten months later we’d be once again sending Jericho into the horizon. It was a bubble show then, but today it is official – Jericho is gone.

Here at Cultural Learnings, we spent a lot of time on the nature of the fan movement to save the series, as people bombarded CBS with Nuts until they cried mercy. Fans hoped in that moment, when CBS renewed the series for seven episodes, that it signaled CBS turning a leaf. That Nina Tassler, in all of her kindness she displayed in this scenario, would be there for Jericho all summer and fall long, making sure that the buzz surrounding nuts would not die down easily. Obviously, as we can see, it did.

I think that one of the things that I find most fascinating about all of this is the concept of a relationship between viewer and network. As we see  more and more producers of individual series engaging with their audience through podcasts or blogs, it seems as if the networks themselves are incapable of grasping the idea of some sort of unspoken contract between the two sides when it comes to struggling shows.

I think this is unfortunate, but I think it allows us to extend this idea of a contract of sorts further. There are many parties who eventually help make up the decisions, and the problem is that they’re all looking out for different interests.

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