Tag Archives: Television

September 15, 2009 · 12:09 am

The Dichotomy of Spontaneous Familiarity: Reviewing The Jay Leno Show

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The Dichotomy of Spontaneous Familiarity

Reviewing The Jay Leno Show

Spontaneity is not Jay Leno’s forte.

That’s really the whole point of Leno’s appeal, at the end of the day – people tuned in at 11:30 at alarming rates because of what they deemed his charming nature, making him like just another part of your nightly tradition. But in relaunching himself as part of the Jay Leno Show, which started tonight on NBC and which will air five nights a week until…well, we don’t quite know.

See, what’s strange about The Jay Leno Show is that they want it to seem spontaneous. They want it to seem like an old variety show, with special guests and different bits and no stuffy desk. So when Leno walks out to his new set, a group of people “spontaneously” rush the stage and crowd around to high five their favourite talk show host for a set period of time. It is true that the crowd seems to enjoy having Jay back, but he’s stuck in a really weird place: he has to appeal to those same viewers while enticing entirely new demographics (who weren’t watching his show before) to tune in. As such, he needs to be appear spontaneous in order to broaden his appeal, and yet at the same time not actually be spontaneous at all so as to appease the crowd who watched him so religiously and who will soon have other options (like CBS’ crime shows, which tend to appeal to the same crowd).

In the end, as a hardened critic who’s on the lower end of the key demographic and who has never particularly enjoyed Leno’s brand of comedy, I wasn’t a fan. However, the problem with the show is that it seemed desperate to try to make me into a fan, a position which was neither spontaneous nor charming, and as such my verdict is clear: on every measurable scale of subjective observation, the Jay Leno Show is an egotistical failure.

But if it turns into an economic success, trust that we’ll be dealing with it for a while.

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September 14, 2009 · 11:10 pm

Season Premiere: Gossip Girl – “Reversals of Fortune”

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“Reversals of Fortune”

September 14th, 2009

There is no question, whatsoever, that Gossip Girl is a flawed show which only on occasion finds its true potential. That potential is most often bottled  when we get the opportunity to see Chuck Bass and Blair Waldorf together, trading barbs and turning what is often a depressing melodrama that fails to capture the potential of this concept. By so isolating the show’s universe in a small collection of characters (many of whom I, you know, don’t like), the show has become less about teenagers and their wily ways and more about these individual characters repeating the same cycles over and over again. For Chuck and Blair, this has weakened their appeal: for Dan and Serena, it’s eliminated it altogether.

So why do I keep watching? I think part of me wants to be able to say that I’ve still got a less than critically fascinating series on my schedule, but at least some part of me wants to see how the show handles itself as the teen soap of its generation. There is something about Gossip Girl’s bizarre dichotomy between cultural awareness and actual ratings/quality which says something about this generation of television viewers, and Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage are not slouches behind the scenes.

“Reversals of Fortune” does what every Gossip Girl premiere does, playing off of the uncertainty of what happened in the past summer and the kind of mistakes and ill fortunes that the characters find themselves in as a new year begins. It’s the same formula the show has used numerous times before, but it also still works, in particular this time around as the show resists turning Dan and Serena to the forefront and lets Blair and Chuck’s relationship keep its spark by playing with expectations.

It’s not high drama, but it’s the right kind of premiere for the series.

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September 14, 2009 · 2:57 pm

Mad Men – “The Fog”

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“The Fog”

September 13th, 2009

“He’s never where you expect him to be.”

When it comes to Mad Men, titles are often a sign of a major theme in an episode, often the only real quality an episode has (with most remaining light on plot in favour of atmosphere or thematic importance). But I don’t think there’s been a title in a while that has seemed so expansive, so all-encompassing. “The Fog” could mean any multitude of things both in terms of what we already know about character relationships and in terms of new develops in the span of the episode, which leaves us critics fumbling to decide just what direction we’re going to take it in.

For me, I think the moment where the title really connected with me was when Don was chatting with his prison guard friend in the Solarium and tells him an anecdote that a nurse told him when Sally was being born. “Your wife’s on the boat, and you’re on the shore.” And while it was never explicitly stated, there’s a fog between those two locations, and Mad Men is essentially a show without a lighthouse. Betty, stranded out on that boat and struggling through a difficult birthing process, comments in her crazed state that Don isn’t where you expect him to be, that once the fog lifts he’s disappeared or gone off somewhere else. While she views this in some ways as an abandonment, for Don it’s about being restless.

Much of “The Fog” is about Don Draper’s own self-awareness or lack thereof, finally admitting to himself that for all of his problems in the past he is the one on solid ground while Betty, and Peggy, and Sally are out on boats struggling to maintain course in the midst of a growing storm. He’s the one who has everything and who can help guide them safely into the years ahead, but the problem is that he is distracted: by women, by his job, and by his own insecurities buried deep beneath the surface. If he is the one in charge of climbing up the lighthouse steps to break through the fog and win the day, the boats are going to crash on the rocks.

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September 14, 2009 · 9:00 am

Predicting the 2009 Emmys: Supporting Actress in a Drama Series

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Supporting Actress in a Drama Series

Predicting the 2009 Emmys

And the nominees are…

  • Rose Byrne (Damages)
  • Hope Davis (In Treatment)
  • Dianne Wiest (In Treatment)
  • Cherry Jones (24)
  • Sandra Oh (Grey’s Anatomy)
  • Chandra Wilson (Grey’s Anatomy)

In some ways, this year’s Supporting Actress category on the drama side of things lets us play the prediction game we thought we would be playing last year. Rose Byrne, nominated here for her role on Damages, is more of a Lead Actress on that show than Glenn Close is on most occasions, and while she’s solid in the role it isn’t exactly a mind-blowing dramatic onslaught. However, he screentime alone gives her a huge headstart on her competitors, something that will also benefit both Hope Davis and Dianne Wiest who by design are in every minute of their respective episodes that will be screened for critics.

On that front, it does feel like it is those three who this will come down to, and picking between them isn’t easy. Dianne Wiest won last year, and considering both her name recognition and the power she brings to her role as the therapist’s therapist there’s every chance she could walk away with another one. Hope Davis was just nominated for a Tony earlier this year, and she is also quite well respected: combine with a more vulnerable performance as a patient, and you have another strong contenders from the HBO series. While I think Byrne has a shot at this, I think that for all of her screentime she’s still going to be outperformed by Glenn Close, and it’s not as if Wiest and Davis don’t have Gabriel Byrne to boost their performances in kind.

The only spoiler here, I feel, is Cherry Jones. I didn’t keep watching 24 this year, but all seemed to agree that she was the best thing about it, and the fact that she managed to get nominated when both Kiefer Sutherland and the show were snubbed goes to show you that voters felt the same way. Being a strong presidential figure will help her, but I remain convinced that if neither Gregory Itzin nor Jean Smart managed to secure a win for 24 then it isn’t going to happen no matter how much the season around them makes them look amazing. As for Oh and Wilson, I think that they’re going to struggle to compete with the screentime and stature of the other performers, although both put in good seasons on Grey’s.

Predicted Winner: Hope Davis (In Treatment)

I think voters will want to keep it in the family for In Treatment, and Davis seems like the right choice so as to avoid Wiest dominating the category.

Dark Horse: Cherry Jones (24)

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September 14, 2009 · 12:34 am

Season Finale: Hung – “A Dick and a Dream or Fight the Honey”

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“A Dick and a Dream or Fight the Honey”

September 13th, 2009

While we can argue back and forth on whether Hung’s ensemble were used to the degree that Nurse Jackie’s, or whether Thomas Jane could possibly stand up to Edie Falco in a direct comparison, I don’t think there’s any question that Hung had a far clearer sense of its own identity in its freshman season.

From beginning the end, the show was an investigation of these economic times we live in, portraying a potentially farcical concept (high school teacher turns prostitute) in a starkly realistic context. When we learn in the finale that 70% of the teachers at Ray’s school are getting laid off, only so that they can then re-apply and be denied the benefits they currently have, it feels like another drop in the bucket, and that’s the point: it’s not going to stop anytime soon, and whatever you can do to stay afloat is understandable if not particularly ethical.

As such, we find a finale where every single character is forced to make adjustments to who they believe they are in an effort to maintain this screwed up status quo, this realistic scenario wherein a poet becomes a pimp. Tying together quite marvelously nearly every single character, the finale depicts those moments where your attempts to alter your identity run head first into a brick wall, and how each character works to climb over top of it into a new stage in their life.

For some it’s almost too easy, and for others it’s going to prove a comic, dramatic, and engaging challenge.

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September 13, 2009 · 2:07 pm

Predicting the 2009 Emmys: Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series

Emmy2009Title

Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series

Predicting the 2009 Emmys

And the Nominees are…

  • Kevin Dillon (Entourage)
  • Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother)
  • Rainn Wilson (The Office)
  • Tracy Morgan (30 Rock)
  • Jack McBrayer (30 Rock)
  • Jon Cryer (Two and a Half Men)

The absence of Jeremy Piven really makes this category a particularly difficult one to really “predict” in a traditional fashion. It means that rather than the Academy looking for a change (which I feel would have happened if Piven had been nominated), they don’t even have a choice in the matter, which means their minds could go to any number of candidates as opposed to one logical non-Piven contender.

The logical choice would be Neil Patrick Harris, who I feel will win (and who would have won this award by a hair even if Piven had been nominated). He’s been big in the news with his stint hosting the Tony Awards, and he is also hosting this year’s Emmy ceremony. It’s an example of an actor who people in Hollywood generally like, giving a performance that has been consistently great since his first nomination for the show’s second season. He’s due for a win, and with Piven out of the way this award is most likely to go to NPH.

However, because of the openness of the category, there may be a sense that someone like Rainn Wilson (who like Harris has been nominated multiple times during the Piven era) could be as worthy a candidate. Dwight hasn’t stopped being a funny character between now and Wilson’s first nomination, and that consistency could be his ticket to an Emmy. The supporting categories are always the toughest to predict, and it’s difficult to be able to know how good the memories of voters are, and to what degree they see NPH’s stardom as his ticket over Wilson’s lesser profile.

And that doesn’t even take into account the elephant in the room, mainly the sheer power of 30 Rock in terms of the other awards. Its staggering number of nominations and its sweep of last year’s awards (with Alec Baldwin, Tina Fey and the show all winning) shows that the show holds a lot of support among voters, which brings both McBrayer and Morgan into the fray. I think vote-splitting is likely to hurt them, but there’s always that chance.

As for Dillon and Cryer, I think they’re out of the game: Cryer’s show didn’t even grab a series nod so he won’t have the support to beat buzz-worthy contenders, and Dillon’s time to contend for an Emmy is long gone (although I’ve felt his worth in Season Six of Entourage has been an improvement over Season Five).

Predicted Winner: Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother)

He’s the one contender who has a lot of buzz around him, and submitted a strong performance that highlights the emotional complexity of a character who’s at his best when he appears vulnerable but remains hilarious.

Dark Horse: Rainn Wilson (The Office)

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September 12, 2009 · 11:02 pm

The Cancelled and the Underrepresented: The 2009 Creative Arts Emmy Awards

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The Cancelled and the Underrepresented

The 2009 Creative Arts Emmy Awards

For those who aren’t particularly interested in the seedy underbelly of the Emmy Awards process, the Creative Arts Emmys aren’t particularly interesting. Generally, the awards tend to be a bit more scattershot than the main awards, meaning that few “favourite” shows take victories and thus there isn’t a lot of mainstream attention generated by them. However, more and more each year there’s interest in terms of smaller shows getting a chance to shine in awards not deemed worthy for network television consumption, and more importantly for us pundits there’s a chance to see if there are any trends emerging (as tenuous as any trend can be when different voting bodies determine each set of awards).

Complete Winners List – 2009 Creative Arts Emmys

This year, through the joys of Twitter, I was able to both share the news of various winners and be able to get some response (from Todd VanDerWerff, Alan Sepinwall, and in particular Jaime Weinman), which resulted in some interesting discussion. So, to kind of pick up on that, here’s a few of the key areas of interest from the awards that made me pause either out of interest, excitement or concern.

Pushing Daisies wins Big, Still Cancelled

The Emmys were never Pushing Daisies’ problem: although the show wasn’t able to garner a nomination as a series in its first season, it did grab nominations for Lee Pace and Kristin Chenoweth, as well as some attention in the creative arts categories. This year, though, the show received a really fitting swan song as it picked up three awards (art direction, costumes and makeup), showing that even in an ill-fated and shortened season the show was noticed by voters in terms of its craftsmanship. The show has now won six Emmys total (picking up trophies for Directing, Music Composition and Editing last year), which helps cement the show’s legacy as a wonderful if tragic moment in television history.

Battlestar Galactica finds Mixed Bag in Final Year

After two back to back wins in Visual Effects, and a hugely effects-driven finale, one would have expected the show to dominate in that category. However, to my shock at least, Heroes picked up the Special Visual Effects award for the first time, although BSG didn’t go home empty handed. Spreading the love around, the show picked up the award for sound editing, which is well deserved if not quite the award one would have expected them to be contending as closely for. Either way, it’s great to see another part of the show’s great team behind the scenes pick up an award, and its unfortunate that areas where the show should have contended (See: Bear McCreary’s amazing scoring work) were uncontested.

Changes Wreak Havoc on Comedy Guest Acting

Of the changes made to the Emmys this year, the one that sort of slipped under the radar (and didn’t face a lot of pressure from any particular group) is the elimination of the individual performance in a variety/comedy/music special/series. This was the category that Stephen Colbert infamously lost to Barry Manilow, and in which musical performers, talk show hosts, and (most interesting for our purposes) Saturday Night Live hosts contended.

This year, both Tina Fey and Justin Timberlake won awards for their appearances on Saturday Night Live, and in both instances it raises some really interesting questions. Now, in Fey’s case, this actually was a guest performance: she wasn’t the host in that episode, and her stint as Sarah Palin really was a guest spot (albeit in the really strange variety show format, which would have put her in the old category especially since they submitted a clip show of ALL of her appearances). However, Timberlake’s win is an example of something that would certainly have remained in the Variety Performance award, which makes for an interesting test case. Considering how much of each individual episode an SNL host is in, I think it’s a strange comparison with other guest stars, and I can see why voters would lean towards Timberlake in comparison with the other contenders.

It just raises the question of whether the loss of that category has now opened the door for the more showy SNL roles to elbow out some more complex supporting work on the comedy side of things…although, realistically, they probably would have given it to the oldest possible nominee if not to them, so I’d still be complaining. Although, what else is new?

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September 11, 2009 · 7:38 pm

Warehouse 13 – “Breakdown”

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“Breakdown”

September 8th, 2009

It may seem weird to a few days out be blogging about a show that’s pretty unheralded in terms of critical analysis, but there were some observations I wanted to make that wouldn’t quite fit into a Twitter comment and so here we are discussing “Breakdown,” what’s really the last “minor” episode of Warehouse 13 before the Michael Hogan guest spot next week and the finale the week after.

One of the things that I’ve discussed about Warehouse 13 is a rather annoying trope wherein the people attempting to solve the mystery (so to speak) end up getting personally tied up in it. Take, for example, a while ago when the life-draining Spine of Saracen latched itself onto Pete as they attempted to solve its various properties. I liked the story itself, bringing in past agents and kind of offering a sense of the self-sacrifice which can be involved in the job, but by placing Pete at the center of the conflict it meant there was only one conclusion: we know Pete is going to be fine, so the threat of his death is a false one. If it were on someone else (say, the female former Warehouse agent), there’s some semblance of uncertainty, and a chance for the show to head into some darker territory.

But the last couple of weeks have demonstrated that there is value to this kind of structure so long as it is handled in the proper fashion. Last week’s “Homicidal Prison” was an example of the show dealing with a couple of lingering story beats (Myka’s boyfriend dying in Dallas and Pete ignoring his second sight (of sorts) and not warning his father against going to that fire) in the midst of a fairly interesting story. It wasn’t that we ever thought Pete or Myka were going to kill themselves, but rather that we needed to see them face off with those struggles. In that context, placing them in the center of everything worked, and the episode felt stronger because of it.

In “Breakdown,” meanwhile, Pete and Myka are once again at the mercy of various artifacts, but in a way that didn’t feel like a forced ramping up of tension, and that captured the fun and enjoyable side of the show without necessarily foregoing the more suspenseful moments. It wasn’t the deepest episode of the show yet, but it showed the kind of potential behind having the show’s leads front and center in the battle between free will and artifacts, and that the producers know what they’re doing heading into the finale.

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September 11, 2009 · 5:08 pm

Project Runway Season 6 – “What a Woman Wants”

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“What a Woman Wants”

September 10th, 2009

Just as I checked in on Top Chef yesterday, I figured it’s about time to revisit the sixth season of Project Runway currently airing on Lifetime. After much hullaballoo about the move to a new network, this season has been the precise opposite of noteworthy: there’s no real standout personalities, and to be honest no one is really setting the fashion world on fire either. There just hasn’t been a real sense of innovation at play, and the design aesthetics in that work room are not standing out as they’re supposed to in a competition like this.

There’s a few reasons the show has been lacklustre this season, and in some ways I thought “What a Woman Wants” helped things at least to some degree. We got to see contestants handle a challenge that combines the client-designer relationship (always good for bringing out the best/worst in designers) and a chance for them to test their own aesthetic in terms of presenting something the judges are going to enjoy and also please their clients.

At the same time, it also highlighted why I think the season is ultimately struggling. While I think there were some issues with casting, I think the real problem is that the show seems to be finding more personality in its models than it does in its designers, and even in their guest judges more than their normal ones. I actually like what these changes have done to the show in some ways, but it seems as if they’ve diverted our (and the producers’ attention) away from the designers themselves and onto elements of the game. They came into this season with the challenge of distracting us from the lawsuits and production changes, and yet the problem is that they’re ignoring the designers themselves.

Which, you know, is deserved in some cases, but needs to be handled a bit more carefully.

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September 10, 2009 · 10:39 pm

Top Chef Las Vegas – “Vivre Las Vegas”

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“Vivre Las Vegas”

September 9th, 2009

I think I’ve discovered the effect of watching Top Chef week by week.

As particularly obsessive readers of the blog might know, I went through the first five seasons of Top Chef at a pace of about two a week (that’s seasons, not episodes) over a period this summer, and obviously got a little bit addicted to the show. I was curious to see just how I’d react to not being able to turn on the next episode as soon as a chef got sent to pack up their knives.

What I’ve discovered is that it’s made me really impatient, although in a way that really defines how the sixth season is thus far progressing. There is some amazing talent in this year’s cast, and I think that’s the problem: the sheer gulf between those individuals and the rest of the field is so large that I want to be able to watch the next episode not because I’m desperate for more Top Chef but because I want them to cull the herd as quickly as possible so we can see that core group go head to head in what could be one of the most competitive Top Chef finales ever.

For this reason, I was quite pleased to see “Vivre Las Vegas” eliminate two chefs who were pretty well dead weight, as it means we’re that much closer to really getting down to business in Vegas.

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