Tag Archives: Television

April 30, 2009 · 6:56 am

Lost – “The Variable”

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“The Variable”

April 29th, 2009

I will admit right now that I feel sort of like a low rent Daniel Faraday right now, my attempts to put myself on a different sleep schedule in a way not that different from Daniel’s attempt to realign himself with another time. This means that while I had planned on writing this review about five hours ago when I woke up from a short nap designed to prepare me for an eight-hour night shift this evening, instead I’m writing it after six hours of sleep and will have to skip Thursday night television in order to try to find some nap time.

I share this story not just because of my recent tweet about potentially mixing more personal anecdotes with blog posts, but also because it’s an example of providing some greater context to events, which is essentially the point of “The Variable.” The episode really only has two functions: it serves as an escalation of the “plot” (remember that thing?) that has been mostly dormant since our cast ended up in the 1970s, giving us a sense of how the end of the season is going to develop, and it serves as an answer to the question of what Daniel Faraday has been up to since we last saw him trapped in 1974 with everyone else and nobody is really talking about him.

Perhaps it’s the weird sleep schedule, or that I wasn’t feeling great when I watched the episode, but I was kind of disappointed by this, the show’s 100th episode, at least on the latter point. At times feeling like another drop in the “parental neglect” bucket for the show, the tragic journey of Daniel Faraday was strong in isolation and yet when applied to the rest of the episode and the rest of the series felt too inorganic. Yes, I empathize with Daniel, primarily thanks to Jeremy Davies’ strong performance, but at the end of the day it felt as if Faraday’s storyline was tied so closely to the island that his individuality, and its connection to our other characters, was lost in the plot.

I understand that this is the entire “point” of the episode, but I found it a little bit clumsy in its execution even if I feel they’re ramping things up at the right pace as we march towards the finale.

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April 28, 2009 · 12:13 pm

Chuck vs. The Twist vs. Season 3 Renewal

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Chuck vs. the Twist vs. Season 3 Renewal

April 28th, 2009

Perhaps it is just that I wrote considerably less about last night’s Chuck finale than Alan Sepinwall, or perhaps it is just that there has been some extremely stimulating discussion over at NeoGAF that has had me pondering the finale more carefully, but I think that there’s a bit more to say about last night’s season finale (“Chuck vs. the Ring”) as well as what it all means for a potential third season.

First off, in case you were curious, the ratings were exactly what you would expect: consistent with the past two weeks, and at the mediocre but decent levels we’ve been seeing on the mid-range level. The show drew 6.11 Million viewers, and a 2.3 rating in the 18-49 demographic – this is nearly identlcal to last week. However, the Save Chuck campaign was never designed to gain more viewers: yes, getting the word out was a key factor, but suggesting that people watch the S2 finale as their first episode ever is kind of tough, and I think the campaign smartly focused more on showing NBC (and Subway) the power of the existing fans to band together for their show. And, on a note which requires less spin, the time period was chock-full of new episodes from every other network, and Chuck stayed steady despite facing repeats of CBS’ comedies last week – that’s a good thing.

But ignoring ratings for a moment, one of the other things facing a Season 3 renewal for the series it the show’s creative direction, and on NeoGAF and in some other locations there have been some concerns over that final sequence. Last night, in my review of the episode, I was admittedly pretty postive about it, and I find myself remaining fairly close to that initial analysis. However, I think it’s something that deserves some more discussion, and something that I am extremely disappointed was not on Chris Fedak’s list of acceptable topics of discussion in his post-finale interview with Alan Sepinwall.

But where we don’t have definitive answers we have rampant speculation, a tool I shall harness to analyze just what a season three might look like.

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April 28, 2009 · 12:33 am

Season Finale: Chuck – “Chuck vs. the Ring”

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“Chuck vs. the Ring”

April 27th, 2009

“Go with your heart, buddy – our brains only screw things up.”

Wow.

In considering “Chuck vs. the Ring,” a title with two very different meanings, I think it’s important that we acknowledge just how amazing the accomplishment of the Chuck staff is when it comes to pulling off some of the most expansive material for a dramedy of this nature.

The first half of this episode is more or less an episode in its own right, one laden with numerous jokes, an amazing appearance by Jeffster, and what feels like a climax in and of itself. What is interesting is that, by the end of the episode, that storyline felt miles away, overshadowed by an amazingly epic conclusion that potentially changed everything. However, simultaneously, it was highly memorable and containing some of the best jokes in the episode. But when those elements would have felt overbearing, such as during that epic conclusion, they faded effortlessly into the background, never feeling separate but also never feeling like they were fighting in the same space.

It’s such an amazing balancing act, and when everyone in the cast is on fire, and when the writing is off the charts, and when Jeffster soundtracks an entire sequence with “Mr. Roboto,” it’s an example of how Chuck may not aim as high as some of the stronger dramas on television, or embrace absurdity as much as some of the biggest comedies, but in doing what it does I don’t feel there is a single other show that is this capable of executing this level of brilliance.

Forget about save Chuck – let’s praise Chuck for a while, and think with our hearts instead of our brains.

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April 26, 2009 · 10:01 pm

The Amazing Race Season 14 – “Episode 10 (China)”

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“Having a Baby’s Got to Be Easier Than This”

April 26th, 2009

One of my favourite travel stories from my trip to California was that, when I was waiting for a late flight from Toronto to Halifax, I sat down in the departures area to watch the previous night’s episode of The Amazing Race. Now, admittedly, I shouldn’t watch TV in public as a general rule: I tend to be fairly reactive (aren’t we all?), and while an airport creates a cramped space that gives you some pause before overreacting an airport lobby feels open and results in some rather embarassing outbursts of laughter or shock.

However, I should have been doubly aware of this when queuing up last week’s episode of The Amazing Race, which I had no idea featured a spectacular meltdown of epic proportions as Jen and Luke got into TWO consecutive footraces resulting in TWO highly physical confrontations where a combination of aggressiveness and Luke’s sensitivity to physical contact (as he would be unable to hear them coming) created a whole overblown scenario. Killer fatigue playing the role that it does, emotions were high, but I tend to be on the side that Margie crossed a line when she attempted to claim it was deaf-bashing, an argument that felt like a defensive action she had in her pocket the entire race almost searching for an excuse to pull it out. This is a highly competitive race wherein emotions are high, and the best course of action in conflict is to chalk it up to a misunderstanding: lobbing accusations never gets anyone anywhere, except for the Amazing Race editors who got material to make an unsuspenseful episode extremely engaging.

Unfortunately, or fortunately for the racers’ sanity, there is no such event this week, as the teams travel to Beijing for a mostly uninteresting leg that seems almost mean in its efforts to accelerate the teams’ killer fatigue to the point of outright exhaustion. While last week’s episode may have been about personal exhaustion creating drama, I have slightly more of an issue when the producers are outright creating these kinds of reaction.

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April 25, 2009 · 8:22 pm

Save Chuck: A Movement with a Message

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Save Chuck: A Movement with a Message

April 25th, 2009

As some of you may know, I found myself caught up in the whirlwind that was the Save Jericho campaign, where fans went nuts and sent nuts, bringing their canceled show back from the dead. Since that show’s success, there have been numerous campaigns to save other shows, and to be honest I haven’t really got behind any of them. I got behind Jericho because it was a true grassroots movement, an example of the power of the internet, of fans, and of expanding the definition of success from traditional ratings measurements; to be honest, the show never really captured me, but the fact that it captured others so strongly was something worth fighting for.

But I can honestly say that this is the first time that I am entering, albeit late thanks to my vacation, a fan campaign primarily because I love the show involved. Chuck was an engaging series last year, but this year it has elevated itself to an entirely new level: this is not the most intelligent show on television, or the funniest, or the most dramatic, but its ability to combine all of these elements into a single package has created a series that myself and hopefully many, many others view as worthy of our time and energy. Saving Chuck is not just some sort of experiment, but something that is necessary for my faith in NBC as a network, and network television as a medium for high-calibre entertainment, to remain intact.

What I want to discuss is how the campaign is operating, and how there are three keys to its success that have given it a real chance of succeeding: I write this, two days before the show’s season finale, without the intention of placing a (Series?) in that post title, or even considering that possibility, and I honestly feel as if this goes beyond wishful thinking. Based on every piece of evidence before us, the campaign to Save Chuck has all of the momentum to overcome the obstacles facing it and send a message to NBC and all other networks that we’re not ready to let a great show go so easily.

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April 24, 2009 · 1:15 am

Parks and Recreation – “The Reporter” and Other Thoughts

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“The Reporter”

April 26th, 2009

One of the downfalls of my trip to California was that I was away during the period where a number of solid debuts took place: Southland seems like a potential keeper for NBC, The Unusuals is still technically in the mix for ABC, and the long-anticipated Parks and Recreation debuted. So while I took time out of my schedule to take a gander at the first two episodes detailing the adventures of Leslie Knope, I didn’t quite have the time to sit down and wrap my head around what I really thought about it.

“The Reporter,” in many ways, actually makes this out to be a good thing: it isn’t that this week’s episode (the show’s third) was substantially different than the two which preceded it, but it demonstrates that the qualities I saw as potential for the future remain firmly intact, and the ability for the rest of the show to fall in around them remains present. The show’s main problem, that it and its protagonist lean too closely to The Office, isn’t even necessarily a problem as long as the elements it is cribbing from its stepbrother are the ones that you like about the show; for me, thus far at least, this seems to be the case.

In many ways, the show is kind of like the park being proposed within the current main storyline of the series: it has plenty of early media attention, and lots of things going for it, but it needs to keep itself afloat during this key development period in order to survive. And while the verdict may still be “We’ll see,” I think that’s exactly where the show needs to be right now.

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April 23, 2009 · 6:19 pm

PaleyFest 09: The Big Bang Theory – Report and Pictures

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PaleyFest 09: The Big Bang Theory

April 16th, 2009

[I got the chance to report on last Thursday’s The Big Bang Theory Panel for the good folks at HitFix while I was in California, so below is a bit of a teaser, a link to the story, and after the jump some photos from the event. Enjoy!]

In the interest of full disclosure, I had seen two complete episodes of “The Big Bang Theory” before attending Thursday’s panel discussion as part of PaleyFest 09; however, in the same interest, the panel was more than enough to convince me to rectify this particular injustice as soon as possible.

Most of the reason for this lies in Jim Parsons, whose Sheldon is pretty unanimously considered the show’s breakout character and who made a big splash as comic relief throughout both the early screening of the next new episode of the series, “The Vegas Renormalization,” and the panel discussion. Discussing the show’s key dynamic, co-creator Chuck Lorre was pretty clear on one of the writers’ key missions.

To read the rest of the article, head on over to HitFix – to see some pictures from the event, keep reading!

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April 23, 2009 · 5:21 pm

Lost – “Some Like it Hoth”

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“Some Like it Hoth”

April 15th, 2009

There are many things that make “Some Like it Hoth” seem almost nostalgic. First off, it’s perhaps the most simple flashback episode we’ve seen since the second season. And second, said flashbacks felt like they should have come as part of the fourth season, considering that Miles was first introduced there without explanation and that the producers have said they would have liked to have told this story if not for the season being shortened. As a result, “Some Like it Hoth” can’t help but feel like a smaller story against the larger episodes of the year thus far.

At the same time, though, I watched this on the plane on the way back from California, and it was a pleasant surprise: while it was certainly small, it showed that Lost has perfected these particular episodes. The way in which it handles the episode’s smaller moments show both that the series is operating in a good place right now, and that they know how to keep an episode light on mythology from becoming boring with just the right comic touches.

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April 15, 2009 · 1:36 pm

PaleyFest 09: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog – Report and Pictures

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PaleyFest 09: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

April 14th, 2009

[I got the chance to report on last night’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog panel for the good folks at HitFix while I’m here in California, so below is a bit of a teaser, a link to the story, and after the jump some photos from the event. Enjoy!]

There are a lot of firsts surrounding Tuesday’s (April 14) panel discussion of “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” the fourth event at PaleyFest 09: it’s the first time the festival has ever featured an internet series, the first time that Nathan Fillion has ever been part of the festival and the first time that Joss Whedon has been asked about his relationship with FOX (Okay, so the last one is a lie, that happens every single time he speaks).

Regardless, there’s a lot riding on “Dr. Horrible” as a model for future internet success, but what was most interesting about the discussion moderated by Matt Roush was that it wasn’t Whedon who really spoke passionately about this model.

Read the rest of my report at HitFix, or continue reading for some more photos from the event!

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April 10, 2009 · 11:30 am

Lost – “Dead is Dead”

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“Dead is Dead”

April 8th, 2009

Forgiveness is a really interesting emotion, primarily because of how subjective it is. There is a great moment in “Dead is Dead” where Locke suggests that he and Ben discuss the elephant in the room, being the fact that Ben, you know, murdered him, and Ben immediately heads into a long and rambling explanation of how he had to do it, how it was the only way, how he knew he couldn’t leave it to him, etc. Locke, meanwhile, just shrugs: “I was just looking for an apology.”

Locke, of course, has a very different value of forgiveness, having been through so much, and in his new resurrected form Locke is more sure of himself than ever; he forgives Ben because he’s now alive, and he now has purpose, so who is he to really complain?
The problem with the episode is really not a problem at all: Benjamin Linus’ flashbacks are designed specifically to show us those moments where his empathetic nature emerges, some sign of the young boy who went into that Temple returning as part of this new individual. However, in the present day, we see that Ben is still just as much a monster as before, and I think there’s something inherently problematic in the way he treats these situations with such moral dichotomy.

But it’s supposed to be problematic, and Michael Emerson delivers another knockout performance, and “Dead is Dead” succeeds based on the show’s emphasis on his duality.

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