At the risk of posting two fantasy role-playing entries in a row, I have to admit to having recently discovered and loved the web series The Guild. Seven “webisodes” long so far, The Guild stars and is written and produced by Felicia Day, whose subtle suffering in performance is on par with a Jason Bateman or a Ricky Gervais. Her facial expressions deliver much of the series’ simmering humor.

Besides having been featured in season 7 of Buffy, Felicia’s face is familiar from the current Cheetos commercials in which the protagonist ruins a cranky woman’s laundry with fiery hot cheetos. I find myself, like the character Zaboo in the series, wanting to stalk her. I mean, she’s cute, a ridiculously talented actor who crafts sharp writing, and when building her own creative outlet chooses to tell stories about gaming nerds?! How hot is that?

So it took maybe one second to realize I was far from the target audience for Lipstick Jungle.  We start with shots of women’s calves as their expensive high heels clack down New York sidewalks.  A newscaster tells us that the sets of legs belong to a trio of the most powerful women in the country.  Then, boom, fashion show.  If not self-mandated to review every new show for this site, I might well have hit the remote right there.

However, I liked the show.  Well… at least I liked the structure on which it was built.  With an ensemble of three, LJ had time to explore each character well.  There was strong conflict in each storyline, and the pacing and development for each woman was compelling.  Less appealing was the fact that this sorority of female power elite featured less power and more sorority.  Good storytelling might get me to overlook the lack of subtlety in visiting feminist themes (Career vs. family, marital doldrums, arrogant suitors, boys’ club co-workers, all in the pilot?  Leave yourself some girl-power territory for later!) but I will never love the conversation if it has to happen while shopping for scarves and coconut body oil.  Perhaps the target audience will find this juxtaposition intriguing, but I thought the tone undermined the premise.  Maybe I’m giving the producers too much credit for wanting to create high-status female characters of depth, but the opportunity is undeniable.  Make-up tips in every commercial break don’t help.

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Lost is a really good TV show. Not phenomenal (most of the time, anyway.) Just really good. A-minus. However, one thing we must give Lost is that it is groundbreakingly original in the way it has unfolded its mysterious, occasionally goofy, always compelling story. If you ask me, Lost was spiraling to its creative doom, with ratings following suit, when the creative team made the decision that saved it: to end it. Season one was fresh and intense stuff, season two struggled with its identity, and the first half of season three further failed to deliver. Season three, recall, suffered from a move by network higher-ups to split it into one barrage of new episodes before Thanksgiving, then another nothing-but-new streak when it returned in Feb. ‘07.* Right about then, executives and producers decided to announce that Lost would end after its fifth season. Suddenly, the rest of season three got really good. It’s no coincidence. Remember, Lost has been experimental and risky from inception. The pilot was the most expensive to produce to date by far. (Copycats burst out the following season, with every network willing to inflate the budgets if it meant their own version of the sensation Lost had become. They pretty much all failed. The pendulum swung the other way, to the point that NBC has recently made statements about not wanting to fund pilots at all any more.) The ensemble cast is huge and therefore expensive. (Evidently, when searching for their original cast, they didn’t cast with regard to race at all. Yunjin Kim auditioned for the role of Kate, and they liked her so much, they created the role of Sun around her. And then added a husband, expanding the cast by yet another, meaning everything cost all the more, before they’d shot a frame.) All told, it was a risky package, but a fantastic concept. And then someone found what is the absolute key of Lost’s success: the flashbacks. Each episode would focus on the backstory of one of the characters, intercut with what happens to that character on the island in the present. As Charlie might have said, bloody brilliant. The show would be able to get us off the island, all the while telling us, nay, showing us the inner workings of the people stuck on it. We, unlike their islandmates, would know their secrets. Mix in an uncanny ability to tease us with tiny hints, then big reveals that only ask more questions, and you have a hit.

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Much is made in the television industry lately about the changing face of advertising, and how in our progressively time-shifted world, companies don’t feel comfortable buying television commercials in the ways they once did. After all, <ba-doop badoop badOOP!> and those commercial breaks are over in seconds.

I recall reading about a study showing that consumers remember just as much about commercials when they fast-forward as they do when they watch them at regular speed, but studies don’t often influence the priorities of industry decision makers. For example, the Oberholzer-Gee study of 2004 suggests that file sharing has had little or more likely zero bearing on CD sales, but that certainly hasn’t stopped the music industry, then the movie industry, from raising a ruckus about piracy being the ultimate threat to their existences.

But advertisers are the ones spending the cash, so they get to call the shots. More and more that means product integration into content. For blatant examples, consider the side wall ads in soccer or racing video games. For less blatant but more unignorable examples, consider where the team from The Office holds the Dundees… (Did you say Chili’s? Because they’re banking on the fact that you did…) It’s no coincidence that Michael took a client there before the night he first hooked up with Jan. Meanwhile, who is Dunder-Mifflin’s primary competitor, and where did Dwight go to work when he quit? Ever notice the logo on Stanley’s computer? Or remember what Michael brought to the Christmas white elephant?

For the most part, these placements don’t get in the way of the story or the character, or in fact can even lend a certain authenticity. But this week NBC featured placement in Friday Night Lights that seemed to cross the line between clever producing and crass hucksterism.

(MINOR SPOILER ALERT.)

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If ever there was a sign that today’s youth is in danger of cultural brain rot, the trend in “comedy” that has included Date Movie, Epic Movie, and now Meet the Spartans is it. Fortunately, critics everywhere are jumping at the opportunity to get creative in trashing this film, and that’s got to do at least something to squash its chances. At the moment, there are 15 reviews posted at Rotten Tomatoes, giving MtS a cumulative score of 0%. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie that every single critic gave no right to exist.

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I keep searching for funny comedy out there on the net. It’s surprisingly few and far between. If you’re looking for humor beyond monkeys getting kicked in the nads*, a fuzzy scene stolen from a 1993 episode of SNL, or youtubes of boarding school kids lipsynching to someone else’s youtube, you’re gonna have to search. Short, scripted comedy seems like the non-porn PURPOSE for the internet, and yet…

Anyway, here’s some of my faves lately. Some are new, some just new to me. All are pretty impressive, in my book.

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