Tag Archives: Television

October 4, 2007 · 9:03 pm

Season Premiere: 30 Rock – “Seinfeld Vision”

“Seinfeld Vision”

October 4th, 2007

What is Seinfeld Vision, you ask? Well, it’s Jack’s plan to digitally capture Jerry Seinfeld and place him in all of their primetime shows in October. And Liz, freshly single and quilting, returns to Jack’s master scheme with a fresh outlook on life. Meanwhile, Tracy has marital problems while Jenna got fat starring in Mystic Pizza: The Musical on broadway. Welcome back, 30 Rock. I missed you ever so much, Seinfeld or no Seinfeld.

There’s a lot to like about the return of 30 Rock: Kenneth as Tracy’s Office Wife, Kenneth in an elevator with Jerry Seinfeld, Kenneth making Seinfeld sound effects, Kenneth in general…did I mention Kenneth?

To be serious, the show properly dealt with the show’s best elements: Jack’s big business schemes, Liz’s relationship insecurities, Tracy’s life problems, and Kenneth’s awesomeness. Adding Jerry Seinfeld to the equation doesn’t change the solid structure the series has established. The problem with the premiere is that it has to handle all of these elements, unlike other episodes which can focus on one or the other. Still, I’ll say it: the best comedy on television is back.

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October 4, 2007 · 8:04 pm

The Office – “Dunder Mifflin Infinity”

“Dunder Mifflin Infinity”

October 4th, 2007

Dwight thinks they could do better, Angela thinks it’s fitting since Pam’s the office “mattress”, Andy’s happy to be the sexiest single guy in the office, and Michael thinks it is a life-changing event. The Jim and Pam union is officially known to the office, and the office reaction is clear. However, they continue to take a backseat to other focuses: Ryan’s return to the office is the big story this week, and I couldn’t be happier.

Why? Because Ryan dealing with an obvious lack of authority within the Scranton environment is a unique and new situation for the series. The transition from office temp to corporate boss, having to present a new-age Dunder Mifflin Infinity internet overhaul (NBC’s Meta site can be found at DunderMifflinInfinity.com), is an incredibly tough sell when you have Kelly dressing scantily, Creed feeling pushed out, and the pita fire still haunting his past. The theme of the week is change, and it leads to an episode that feels more integrated and natural than last week’s…until its conclusion.

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October 4, 2007 · 12:21 pm

Bionic Woman – “Paradise Lost”

“Paradise Lost”

October 3rd, 2007 

David Eick, executive producer on Bionic Woman, is also an exec on Battlestar Galactica (Which appeared on the television in Paradise). That show had an unfair advantage when it came to building the show’s concept: a lengthy miniseries in which the characters and plot were established. This allowed it to balance setup and action in a realistic fashion, and made for an absolutely fabulous episode to follow. ’33’ was a gritty realization of the show’s “Humanity on the Run” hook, and was a fantastic hour of television earned through an extensive pilot.

Bionic Woman, unfortunately, wasn’t quite as lucky. They had a clunky opening hour that while, containing potential, struggled with exposition and action and never really created a foundation for the future episodes to follow. As a result, “Paradise Lost” felt like yet another necessarily slow step in the future of the series. And while I don’t think I’m willing to claim the series has no potential, this particular hour did nothing to speed up the process.

After last week’s exposition and actionfest, this week proved two things: the action was non-representative and the exposition just wasn’t enough. We spend a lot of time learning about how this organization works, how their inner structure develops, and not nearly enough time on compelling drama or character development. At one point, a young girl asks Jamie “Who are you?” and I want an answer as well. This episode, very simply, didn’t offer anything to change what was already a problem with the series…but it didn’t add any problems either.

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September 30, 2007 · 7:29 am

Saturday Night Live (September 29th, 2007): Lebron James and Kanye West

Through the joys of YouTube, but perhaps not for long, I’ve been able to get a glimpse at what Saturday Night Live brought to the table in their season premiere. The episode always presents the show’s biggest challenge, in that the quality of the season to come will be judged based on this hour and a half. This year, it will be judged based on three qualities: its cultural relevance, its musical guest and, of course, its Digital Short.

Kanye West

Champion/Everything I Am

Stronger/The Good Life

Skit: Kanye West the Awards Crybaby

Ummm…why didn’t Kanye West host the show? Based on this clip, he is infinitely funnier than Lebron James. I’m guessing it was probably a time commitment issue, which kind of sucks, but Kanye West is a funny, funny guy. And the performances are good…the freestyle is a little bit off, as I prefer the actual lyrics of Everything I Am, but what can you do? In other news: “Give a black man…give a SHORT black man a chance” from the skit is pretty well hilarious.

Pop Culture Sendoff 

SNL does High School Musical [YouTube Link]

Ummm…this is not funny. It’s clear that Andy Samberg is being treated like the star of SNL now, but James is rather unfortunately unable to embrace the skit’s real comedy. It’s a rather lazy High School Musical parody that, even with a strong performance from Samberg, never feels like biting satire. In other words, Mad TV could have done this sketch. That’s not a compliment.

The Digital Short 

SNL Digital Short: “Iran f. Adam Levine” [Youtube Link]

A sendoff of Mahmoud, the lovable president of Iran, this digital short is something that many of them have not been: genuinely well-produced and going for a fairly subtle form of comedy. The song is actually fairly catchy, especially with Levine doing the chorus, and the piano riff is apparently from Aphex Twin’s Avril 14th.

And the skit is funny! Mahmoud is performed wonderfully by Fred Armisen, the Jame Gyllenhal cameo is great, and it’s just a very enjoyable piece of comedy. I don’t expect a viral sensation, but I certainly enjoyed it.

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September 29, 2007 · 5:14 pm

One Week Later: Hey! Nielsen Reflections

Okay, so this is jumping the gun on the week part a little, but the television week has essentially come to a close as of today. With it comes the end of a hectic and exciting public beta launch of Hey! Nielsen, where Television, Movies, Internet Sites and Celebrities are lauded, criticized and given a rating defining their popularity. It has been a week of growing pains, “spamming,” and a whole host of issues (good and bad) rising to the surface.

First, I want to thank the crew behind Hey! Nielsen for being quick to answer queries, easy to relate to, and willing to engage their audience. The future of the site hinges on a combination of our feedback and your willingness to accept it, and I have been wholly impressed on this front, as has been reflective of the coverage here at Cultural Learnings.

Cultural Learnings’ Hey! Nielsen Coverage

That being said, I want to address some of the issues that have popped up. And no, this isn’t me complaining about the lack of love for Cultural Learnings’ own entry: I’d like to thank everyone who has voted or commented, I really appreciate it. However, Rich over at Copywrite Ink. has written a very insightful piece about the problems the site is currently facing, and I want to refer to and expand on his argument:

“It took less than a day for fans to see what Hey! Nielsen really is — a social network that asks “users” (a word that is well past its prime) to pile into the school gymnasium and have a shouting match. Those with the biggest lungs win. And those with the most outrageous comments get the most attention.”

The distinction I want to make here is that what Rich says here is an accurate description of the way Hey! Nielsen is currently operating…but this is not how it has been designed. I think that the problems Hey! Nielsen is currently facing are due to the fundamental difference between how they imagined the system being used and how it is actually being used.

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September 27, 2007 · 11:48 pm

Season Premiere: The Office – “Fun Run”

“Fun Run”

September 27th, 2007

I would like to make two observations about this highly anticipated fourth season premiere of The Office. First, I would argue that “fun” is not a proper descriptor for the episode’s events: while certainly with its funny moments, it felt overlong and tired compared to some of the show’s more engaging and classic episodes. The second is that despite this fact, millions of viewers are likely to be so satisfied by the “Jam” (Or PB&J as Kevin calls them) developments that none of that will matter.

I’m far too cynical to avoid pointing out the episode’s issues, but can we talk about how adorable Pam and Jim were in this episode? Whether it’s their secret glances, their secret rendezvous or their secret estate-sale browsing, their secret affair was the part of the episode that felt most fresh and, importantly, interesting. I care about these two people, as irrational as that may be, and I liked that the show used its documentary format to slowly reveal the relationship through the hour.

But there were other story threads I was interested in following following the show’s third season premiere. I wanted to see how newly unemployed and psychotic Jan changed Michael’s life, and how newly promoted Ryan would play a role in the affairs of The Office. I was also curious to see how Karen’s reaction to Jim’s post-New York singlehood would affect the show’s core relationships. However, this hour barely touched on these issues, focusing instead on hijinx and another key relationship.

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September 27, 2007 · 11:02 am

Series Premiere – Bionic Woman – “Pilot”

“Pilot”

September 26th, 2007

I’ve been in possession of the original pilot for Bionic Woman for quite some time, but I decided against watching it. With recasting and fine tuning being considerable (Deaf sister turns to decidedly not deaf sister), and talks of producer issues, the series is perhaps the second most troubled of the fall season (Next to CBS’ Moonlight). It is perhaps surprising, then, that I found the pilot to be about as good of an introduction to this series as I could expect.

There were certainly problems: some dialogue issues reared their ugly head, specifically the feminist rhetoric coming from a seven year old (Feminist rhetoric? Fine. From someone who would never actually say that? Not fine), and there were certainly certain characters that…well, never became characters. However, the pilot’s focus was not in making us like or dislike these characters, but rather that we could get caught up in this world.

Now, mind you, this is a flawed way of going about things: a general apathy towards a show’s characters is generally a barrier to enjoying the series as a whole. This is why a lot of the pilot’s goodwill comes via Katee Sackhoff, Battlestar Galactica’s Starbuck, whose presence immediately elevates Bionic Woman amongst die hard fans of that series (myself included). More importantly, however, is that Sarah Corvus is a character who has history, motive and gravitas; these are traits we are missing for our titular heroine, portrayed by Michelle Ryan.

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September 25, 2007 · 10:22 pm

Season Premiere: House – “Alone”

“Alone”

September 25th, 2007

House is a series that is always good at two things: finales and premieres. As a procedural drama, the rest of the time is spent meandering through repetitive and predictable medical cases, but it is at these moments of ending and beginning that House becomes a well-written and engaging character drama. After a finale that left everything in upheaval, “Alone” fast-forwards only two weeks as House tries to set out on his lonesome to prove that he doesn’t need a team.

Mind you, the series hinges on House’s interactions with his “Cottages,” so we know that this isn’t going to last long. This particular episode, however, benefited from the lack of added weight: it was, for the first time in a long time, House being House. Whether it was interactions with Wilson, Cuddy or Dr. Buffer (A Janitor turned Fellow), House was at his Tuesday best tonight. And, even if it didn’t answer all of our questions, I’d say that you can call this case a success.

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September 25, 2007 · 7:28 pm

Gossip Girl – “The Wild Brunch”

“The Wild Brunch”

September 25th, 2007

Truth be told, I missed the first fifteen minutes of Gossip Girl’s second episode. And yet, I feel entirely able to provide my opinion of tonight’s sophomore episode of the drama series, which is not a good sign. Suffering from a case of the post-pilot doldrums, “The Wild Brunch” was not quite as wild as we could be expecting, although the brunch was supposedly excellent.

[Edit: I have since watched the opening minutes (Which was not 15, the episode was extremely short), but I was impressed by what we saw of Dan/Jenny’s simpler life and the entire post-date wave sequence. It was charming, although the lack of charm in the rest of the episode is still an issue stepping forward. Amber over at The Gall of It All has her own snarky observations, including ones on fashion which I clearly can’t speak to.]

The problem with the episode is that there wasn’t any real advancement of the characters within the story. Jenny remained a young girl trying to break into the it crowd, Dan remained a smitten male unable to fit in with Serena’s friends, and the Blair/Serena war remained as one-dimensional as it was last week. It was everything you could assume would happen after last week’s premiere without any element of surprise.

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September 25, 2007 · 1:02 pm

A Friendly Warning to Supernatural and Jericho Fans Re: Hey! Nielsen

Over the first day of the public beta stage of Hey! Nielsen, the ratings company’s new online social networking site, there emerged a trend of sorts: mainly, two TV Series emerging from the pack to dominate the popularity charts. Those two series? Supernatural and Jericho.

In the case of Supernatural, the series has performed admirably in the toughest timeslot on television (Thursdays at 9pm), but is facing a new challenge this year: it is now in direct competition with NBC’s The Office, a huge hit amongst younger viewers. Perhaps anticipating this move, fans are banding together with sites like Supernatural Underground to make sure that their show gets the appreciation they believe it observes.

Jericho fans, as I’ve documented in the past, are fighting to keep the promotion of their series going while its 7-episode order awaits a spot on CBS’ schedule. They’re currently dealing with some internal struggles, but there remains a group devoted to promoting the show to new fans and ensuring that the series has a future on television.

And the devotion of both of these fan groups is palpable: they are #1 and #2 respectively on the Hey! Nielsen website. However, as much as I respect and honour the dedication of these groups of fans, I want to warn them that as with any other social networking there is a distinct possibility that some of this support may backfire. And, although I would never attempt to tell anyone what to do, I want to make a suggestion.

On a message board, there’s a general rule that if there’s a thread of discussion open about something, you should comment there as opposed to starting your own. This becomes more subjective when it comes to “Opinions” as Hey! Nielsen labels them, but I think it applies in this instance as well. Within both of the above camps there has been opinions which are nearly identical, but are posted separately.

This creates more opinions, yes, but also more backlash from the outside community: there are people who are deliberately going into opinions about these two shows and reacting negatively against them purely due to volume. There’s even an opinion on the subject from someone who enjoys the show (And has been involved in developing the site) regarding the overpopulation of Jericho Opinions.

Can Jericho Fans Talk About Anything Else? – Hey! Nielsen

And while I think that the point could have been made in a slightly less antagonistic fashion, I agree with her: I think there are too many opinions about Jericho, and Supernatural for that matter. This is supposed to be about promotion, but it is losing the key aspects of a strong promotional drive.

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