BLOGS
August 2010 Archives
This season has lacked a little bit of the drama since Taylor has left, but honestly, I kind of like it that way. Normally, I love when there's a crazy person on a reality TV show, but Taylor was just so mopey and miserable all the time that it sucked the joy out of watching this show about fashion.
I know what you're thinking: "Since when has TWoP cared about wrestling?" Well, we care when the flagship program of the premiere wrestling organization in the world reaches its 900th episode. That's right, Monday Night Raw is now the longest-running weekly, episodic primetime show in TV history, having been on the air since 1993. It's broadcast in 30 languages in more than 145 countries -- this Boston show actually follows a tour of Japan and China -- and the number of Raw stars who have gone on to have film careers (The Rock, Triple H, Steve Austin, etc.) is pretty impressive. So, credit where credit is due, this scripted sports soap opera is a pretty big deal.
It's time for the Emmy Awards, when the industry pats itself on the back in a televised manner for a job mostly well done. We've already come up with our predictions for who will get shiny trophies. But really, we mostly just watch to see how everyone looks in their dresses and to see who makes bumbling speeches and on the off chance that a big upset is pulled off.
We're still on the fence about this show. While we love Stephen King, and we've been known to be both up and down on any show that has a "freak of the week" pattern, the catch-all nature of Haven leaves us meh. We get it, the town has a lot of crazy stuff going on in it, which is why an FBI agent is on loan there, looking into stuff with her local cop partner, but what does it all mean? What's the point? Is there a point? Is Eric Balfour as good as this cast is going to get, acting-wise? Because sometimes it seems that way. And when both main characters speak in a monotone and the show's biggest threats are called "The Troubles," it doesn't make for a very exciting show. But at least tonight's episode has ghosts stabbing people.
I am probably the one of the few people who is genuinely sad that Stan Lee is no longer looking for a costumed superhero to help save the world from crime. I loved Fat Momma, who harnessed the power of donuts or something. Anyway, Who Wants to Be a Superhero? is over, and the comic legend is now putting his stamp on this show where host Daniel Browning Smith (a man who can contort himself into some of the most disgusting and uncomfortable positions) is looking for people with actual super powers.
They're hysterical, they take up most of your free time during the day (and some of your work time) and it seems like there's always a new one to watch. They're viral internet videos, and, like Pokemon, you've gotta catch them all in order to be truly up-to-date with the State of The Internet. Luckily, every week Daniel Tosh sits us down for a little fireside chat and tells us what the Internet is doing. He also catches us up with an older video we may have forgotten about in his Web Redemption, and this week's is a doozy: the American Idol girls.
Has it been ten episodes already? It seems like we were just celebrating the debut of the TNT series starring Jason Lee as a quirky Memphis cop who takes music very seriously, and here it is, the finale! In the last episode of the season, Detective Hendricks investigates a man found with a bullet wound in a rough part of town who may be connected to a three-year-old case involving the beating death of a little girl. Yikes. Considering that the first episode started with the beating of an old woman, that's a hell of a way to bookend the series.
Tonight is the big finale. How I hope that Caroline pulls some more of Danielle's hair extensions out. Or that a table gets flipped. Something. There has been a bit of drama over the season, but in the last few weeks Danielle has been out of the loop while the rest of the ladies were off globe trotting in Italy and giving Americans a bad name. Here Caroline has decided to confront the drama queen in what could be Danielle's last episode (if you believe those rumors, but frankly I can't imagine this show without her).
With Scrubs finally gone -- seriously, it took long enough; we thought we were going to have to put a stake in its heart -- the medical drama world is ready for a new, funnier take on the genre. Luckily, the Internet has provided. Adult Swim has already run the first five-episode season of Childrens Hospital, but it was made up of ten hammered-together Webisodes; Season 2, which starts tonight, is all-new, with a few new cast members, not that there was anything wrong with the old ones.
A lot can be said about Saturday Night Live's inconsistency, but it should be remembered that Lorne Michaels produced a sketch comedy show for five seasons that was consistently brilliant: the Canadian series The Kids in the Hall. Full of ridiculously surreal characters and more cross-dressing than an episode of Monty Python, the show was arguably brilliant from beginning to end. After it ended, the Kids made one movie, Brain Candy, then dispersed to do their own projects, but they would reunite to tour, and now they've reunited to do a mini-series, which aired on Canadian television earlier this year. And while a certain amount of dread comes with any reunion of once-funny performers, the mini-series is pretty damn funny -- possibly as good as anything they've ever done.