Time Magazine has published their Top 10 Everything lists for 2008.

Their television list is gorgeous.  Rare is the top-ten list that neither panders to pop nor eschews favorites just to feel more artsy.  I thought my favorites this year were pretty esoteric, so I was greatly pleased to see how much they agreed with the way I spent my television-watching hours:

Read the rest of this entry »

Tuesday night saw the series finale of The Shield.  It’s place among my top five television shows is secure for a very long time.

The pilot episode of The Shield was magnificent.  Following that mighty start, the conclusion of just about ever season (number six being the exception, due to interruption from the writers’ strike) had me enthralled.  The creatives built a complex, compelling, charismatic anti-hero for us to root for/against.  They populated his world with characters we cared about, each occupying a shade of grey.  Then they threw one intense conflict after another at those characters.  Good things happened to bad people, bad things happened to good people, and everything in between.

Through it all, I wondered how it would ever be possible for this show to end.  No conclusion would satisfy if there wasn’t collateral damage.  The man we wanted to see come out on top didn’t deserve to.  And yet, they pulled it off.

Bravo.

Samantha Who? becomes appointment television. Until recently, my opinion has been that Samantha Who? functions primarily off of the charm of Christina Applegate.  I’m only up to the third episode in the second season, but that third episode, “The Pill” was fantastic television.   Finally the show included some real chemistry between Samantha and her supposed leading man, complete with a back story that made us care.  If there are more episodes like this coming, I’ll stay tuned in

Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles gets dropped completely. I liked last year’s half-season.  Summer Glau’s character was a fun exploration of non-humanity, therefore of course being an exploration of humanity.  This year, however, we have robots and running from robots and not a lot of intrigue.  Normally I’ll lower the bar to get my sci-fi fix, but this show can’t seem to hold my interest.

Fringe gets dropped completely. Speaking of sci-fi that isn’t working for me, I can’t find a foothold in Fringe.  It ought to X-files told Alias-style, but those expectations are not met.  Jennifer Garner was key to the success of Alias, and I don’t get that charisma from Anna Torv.  While the world feels unique, the intrigue of each week’s government secret having a distinct bioterror feel, the tone is somehow not right.  I’m guessing J.J. Abrams has his attention focused on Star Trek.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia moves from appointment TV to homework TV. I caught up with this show via hulu.com recently, and loved just about every minute of the first three seasons.  Here was a fresh offering to comedy, featuring a group of players with fantastic chemistry and timing.  Something is missing in season four, however.  (The plotting and counter-plotting, I suspect.)  I thought things hit bottom in episode 7, “Who Pooped the Bed?”  I had hopes that the season finale would reinspire, especially since the “Night Man” song was getting turned into a musical, but in the end one of the better episodes of the season nonetheless fell flat.

So I just gained two hours of life back each week.  Maybe that means I’ll blog more.

If you’re like me, the end of the summer has you itching to know when the magic box will start bringing stories again. To maximize your watching efficiency, here’s a list of this year’s premieres of returning and new shows, by date.

September 9th (Sunday)…
9:00—Tell Me You Love Me, HBO
10:00–Curb Your Enthusiasm, HBO

September 17th (Monday)…
8:00—Prison Break, FOX
9:00—K-Ville, FOX

September 19th (Wednesday)…
8:00—Back to You, FOX
8:30—‘Til Death, FOX
9:00—Gossip Girl, CW

Read the rest of this entry »

This little trailer has me so excited for The Office to come back. It encapsulates everything that is fantastic about the show.

I love when the premiere of a show just has good written all over it. You know, not the kind where you feel like it has potential and you’ll give it another shot, but the kind where you can’t wait to see the next episode. Studio 60, maybe The Riches, last forced onto my watchlist so decisively. Last night’s debut of Californication may have trumped those debuts.

Californication is a great marriage of premise and character into a show that is willing to be funny without taking itself lightly. Also, in the hooray-for-boobies category, David Duchovny has found himself a magical project. Excluding a ménage à trois he breaks up, I counted four scenes with Duchovny and a different naked woman. In a half-hour show. That’s good work if you can get it. Better though, it was that most rare of creatures: non-gratuitous nudity.  Each occurrence was important to the story, and usually undercut in a fun, character-relevant way.

So color me interested. And here’s hoping that, unlike Studio 60 or The Riches, Californication won’t let me down.

I didn’t get into Big Love when it first came out. I tried watching the pilot a couple of times, but didn’t connect with it. Then a couple of weeks ago my housemate started renting the first season. By about episode five, I was hooked.

I guess it’s fair that the show would need some time to build, given the need to develop their protagonist’s romantic life thrice over.

We ate through the first season, then watched the backlog of season two from the DVR, and finally tonight I caught up. While Big Love may never be my favorite, it has to be just about the strongest character-driven show on television today, and grows richer with every episode. Certainly it’s the sharpest summer fare available.

Without spoiling, let me just say that this week’s episode, in particular, was stellar. The writers explored the dynamics of Bill’s marriages, highlighting the subtle and not-so-subtle differences between his wives, better than they’ve ever done.  And this was while examining his relationships with his two oldest children to great effect, all set against an ultimate political power struggle in the polygamist community. Big Love is definitely a show worth considering for your watchlist. Through polygamy it contemplates family, love, and relationship of all kinds.

Meanwhile, Entourage has been delivering as well. I’ve enjoyed this latest season as much as I ever have, and this week was a classic. (It was written by show creator Doug Ellin, so maybe there’s a reason it so effectively got to the core of each of the characters.) Turtle in a bunny suit, combined with Drama’s last-minute decision… It was a funny, ribald one-off episode that made me really glad our HBO free trial was extended, thanks to poor service from a certain cable company serving the L.A. area.

HBO brings the goods. I was trying to think of an original program they’ve offered that I didn’t like, and I couldn’t. Of course other networks provide quality programming. NBC gets credit, in my mind, for sticking with shows like Friday Night Lights and 30 Rock. I have to admit, I would have given Tina Fey’s sitcom the axe, but it pulled through, so kudos to NBC. (One wonders if FOX will become the network that gives shows a chance, with Kevin Reilly now situated there; it may have been something he could only afford to do from atop the 4th place network.) FX earns my esteem with The Shield and The Riches, and I hear great things about Nip/Tuck. Still, edgy as FX is, to me they don’t compare with HBO. A show like the new Damages is quality, but derivative. It felt like Devil Wears Prada told as a (predictable) John Grisham novel. HBO seems to generate the truly original, and be consistent in delivering it.

Now if someone could help me appreciate Flight of the Conchords to me, I would be all set.

There’s a rule of thumb in which I’ve always believed:  if you are writing a story in which a protagonist is an artist (of any kind,) you should never ever show the artwork your character is making.  Maybe, if the artist is supposed to be bad, you show a sample of his work, probably as a joke.  Maybe you show tiny pieces of a good artist’s work, but not the complete artwork.  The moment we see that charcoal sketch our artist has been creating (on which the artist no doubt is sketching a few last lines, without making any marks) the illusion is over.  But if the story calls for an artist’s work to be genuinely good, the characters will say so, and our imaginations will do a better job of filling in the blanks than showing us could have done.

It’s the one thing in a script you talk about, instead of showing.

So when the last episode of Entourage included a trailer for the fake Medellin movie, my instincts screamed, “bad idea!”  This was especially so given that this season’s story promises that the trailer is good enough to sell the movie, all by itself.  Heck, they already broke their illusion for me a little bit by showing Vinnie Chase acting.  When everyone SAID he was a great star, I believed it.  When Adrien Grenier assumed the role of Pablo Escobar, my belief was hurt a bit.

In the end though, it was a great trailer.  It actually made me want to see the movie.  I guess every rule is meant to be broken.

Also, bonus points to the show’s creatives for naming the site medellinthefilm, as opposed to medllinthemovie