Cupid 2.0

So, do you remember that really awesome show from the late 90s called Cupid that was on ABC? You don't? Huh. Neither do most people. It was a great romantic dramedy starring Jeremy Piven and Paula Marshall as a nutso (or is he?) guy named Trevor who claims to be a banished Cupid and his therapist, respectively. Trevor/Cupid has to match 100 couples before he can return to Olympus, but is he crazy, or is he really Cupid? It was AWESOME, I tell you. Whatever, ABC used to be cancel-happy back in the day, so it was toast.

A few days ago, The Hollywood Reporter reported that ABC has seen the error of their ways (plus, now that creator Rob Thomas, one of the most AWESOMEST people EVER, creator of one of my favoritest, if not my favoritest, TV show EVER, Veronica Mars, is famous within the industry because of said amazing show) and has greenlit a new version of Cupid. What the hell? I'm not going to lie... I am both nervous and excited about it. Believe me that I am going to be keeping an eye on this project until its fruition.

Needless to say, both original stars will not be involved. Jeremy Piven is now a multiple Emmy winner for his role as frenetic superagent Ari Gold on Entourage, and Paula Marshall, a Thomas stalwart (from Cupid to the David E. Kelley-created/Thomas-helmed Snoops to a recurring role as guidance counselor Rebecca James on Veronica Mars), has made some slightly frightening guest spots on shows in the last season - from vomitting on Californication to shitting on Nip/Tuck. Yes, you read that right.

So, Cupid, huh? I'm not going to lie... a resurrection of Veronica Mars would have been more welcome. But I'll take take this for now.

Lauren Reed: Alias Annoying?

IGN.com has a thing they do called the Annoying Character of the Day, and unfortunately, a character, a Big Bad matter-of-fact, on one of my favorite TV shows of ALL TIME has been named an Annoying Character of the Day. That show? Alias. The character? Lauren Reed.

Lauren Reed totally got short-ended in the grand scheme of things. When she was brought on in Season Three, she was the other woman in the relationship between heroine Sydney Bristow and her CIA partner/handler (in more ways than one) Michael Vaughn - when Sydney wakes up after a crazy battle with an evil clone at the end of Season Two, Vaughn informs her that she's been missing for two years... oh, and that he's married. To Lauren. Fans automatically hated her from the second she stepped on screen, which sucks because I was personally excited to see Melissa George on the show after making such an impression on me in Mulholland Drive.

Then, the inevitable evil in Lauren comes out, creating an interesting storyline that totally parallels the past with how Jack and Irina lived together as a married couple with Jack not knowing that his wife was evil. However, fans out there were just itching for Sydney to off her. True, Lauren was a letdown as a Big Bad after the badass Irina Derevko in Season Two, but she still held her own in the ensemble and did some pretty cold-blooded shit against the Alias Scooby Gang.

Ultimately, the grumblings of some idiotic fans led the writers to off Lauren in the Season Three finale, a tragic example of wishy-washy fans affecting the outcome of a story that could have gone in amazing new directions. And, forever more, Lauren is viewed at as one of the worst characters ever to grace the Alias-verse, an honor that was very unfairly bestowed upon her.

As for Melissa George, I wouldn't mourn for her. She's doing excellently in the amazing HBO series In Treatment, where unfortunately, fans still carry rancor for Lauren. Now, that's some cold-blooded shit itself. She's just a character, people!

From Big Brother to Porn!

I have a secret shame. Well, rather, two shames:

1. I watch (well, before this insipid "Til Death Do Us Part" season) Big Brother on CBS.
2. I watch a bizarre amount of softcore porn on Skinemax.

Whatever this says about me psychologically is completely immaterial - besides, I like to think of the second shame as a habit I can't break from my younger days. Whatever.

The point is: I'm watching (not really, more as background noise than anything else) an episode of Hollywood Sexcapades when who do I see in a bit part working to get his SAG card than Miss Bitch himself, Marcellas from Season Three and All-Stars as a waiter dealing with the couple pre-coitus. Ha! Seems like all your reality cred sure helped you out, huh, Marcellas?

I guess it could have been worse: He could have become a legit porn star like some TV stars who turned to eating tube on the tube to make ends meet.

Or I could have totally admitted that I'm a porn-addicted fan of Big Brother.

Oh. Wait. Awkward.

No Country for Old Douches

So, let me get this straight: Ryan Seacrest has had a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for basically being a well-manicured douche, but Sherwood Schwartz, creator of two of the greatest sitcoms of all time, Gilligan's Island and, one of my personal favorites, The Brady Bunch, is just getting his star today? Well, at least the universe attempted to right itself today when he was awarded this honor too many years too late.

Schwartz, a tough bastard at 91-years-old, thanked Carol Brady and Mary Ann (okay, okay, whatever, Florence Henderson and Dawn Wells, for all you nitpickers) for being the leading ladies of his two creations. He also said, "The title of the winning film at the Oscars this year was wrong. Who says this is 'No Country for Old Men'?" Hee!

So, Mr. Schwartz, we salute you!

Toe Pick!

Last night's Law and Order guest-starred Moira Kelly as a kinda insane woman who shoots her psychiatrist husband dead. So? Who cares? Well, all I know is that I'm glad that I'm not the only one who thinks of the phrase "Toe pick!" every time I see her. It was tough to get through Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me when I realized that Miss Kelly had replaced Lara Flynn Boyle in playing heroine Donna Hayward. It would have been awkward to yell out "Toe pick!" during this scene.

So, combine that with the fact that D.B. Sweeney is a villain on Jericho and the awesome Terry O'Quinn tearing it up over on Lost (with an Emmy to boot, bitches!), it's like The Cutting Edge is taking over TV! How much longer til this dude shows up on CSI or something?

Toe pick!

Friday Night Lights For the Save...?

I am desperately hoping that NBC has pulled their heads out of their asses because I just read over at my good friend Ausiello's blog that NBC has practically brokered a deal to renew the amazing Friday Night Lights for a third season.

Basically, a rumor popped up on Deadline Hollywood Daily that stated that NBC had made a deal with DirecTV to air first-run episodes of Season Three on one of their gazillion channels and then have the reruns on NBC. Ausiello hasn't been able to confirm at NBC, but it looks like this is what's happening - lots of positive buzz here. Which is absolutely delightful because, let's not lie, Friday Night Lights is a brilliant show.

I realize, ultimately, that Friday Night Lights is a show that belongs squarely in the annals of shows that live on borrowed time despite being one of the most brilliant shows on TV. These shows (among them Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared, My So-Called Life, Wonderfalls, etc.) suffer at the hands of incompetent scheduling, bizarre (non)marketing, or the fact that the premise of the show might be considered to be too "niche" for a mainstream audience. Which is tragic, ultimately.

And thinking about this pattern of events, it might be time to realize that this third season might be the final season for Friday Night Lights. The longest that a "bubble show" has lived is three seasons - both Arrested Development and Veronica Mars only survived three seasons, both of which had truncated final seasons. If FNL survives a third season, maybe all is in the clear.

I know I can't celebrate until it's official. But I really want to. And, come on, just look at Lyla Garrity in the picture there. She is downright ecstatic.

I Totally Wrote October Road. Agent, Anyone?

So, on this week's hideous October Road (why do I keep watching this show? I don't want to answer... the answer might put me in a straitjacket), we see some schmaltzy sepia-toned flashbacks involving our Gang of Five as ten-year-olds embarking on a Stand By Me-bogarted trek across sun-drenched fields to the birthday party of a girl they were all in love with. In the present, they discover the girl has died in a car crash and they all attend her funeral, during which they mend up some old wounds amongst them.

Last week, I decided to start writing my five-year-old play Three People in One Bed as a screenplay (just for fun and, you know, winning an Oscar and becoming Diablo Cody's best friend), and, because I do this every year or so, I decided to switch up the story focus again and make it about how our two leads, Leo and Marty, who were best friends as kids (totally inspired by Stand By Me), lose touch and reconnect at the funeral of the girl they were both in love with.

Coincidence? I think not.

This means one of two things: 1) The creators of October Road have an information-stealing virus on my laptop and are stealing away my writing and excessive amount of porn; or 2) I have a future as a writer for October Road.

Good God, let it be the former.

quarterlife: Please, don't capitalize the "Q"

"My name is Dylan. Krieger. My... my name. Ummm..." Okay, whatever, Dylan, that type of speak may work in Neil LaBute plays, but on pretentious webseries about twenty-somethings written by fifty-somethings, this type of stylized speech does not work.

Okay, let's go back to my association with the wonderful webseries/NBC-wrecker known as quarterlife:

A few weeks ago, my friend Brian emailed me, telling me that he and a few associates are starting an internet production company that would specialize in webseries and that they didn't really have any webseries that specialized in the young adult genre, and who better to write about young people and their problems than me? Indeed. I was totally stoked that this was offered to me (even though, he stressed, it wasn't a guaranteed thing - it would have to be decided on by the other producers, whatever), but I had really no previous experience with webseries per se. So, in my research, I decided the best webseries to get into was quarterlife, because it was about young people and their problems. And, as an LA Times article about quarterlife's role in the new internet TV boom put it: "'Quarterlife' is about kids a few years out of college trying to find their way in the real world. It hopes to speak to college kids, in their own language and in a medium they can relate to." Awesome blossom, right?

Wrong!

What I was treated to was an hour and a half (I decided to bulk up in the q (NOT capitalized, Godforbid, because young people are too hip to use proper grammar... well, I guess judging from AIM-speak, it would seem that way) and watch something like 20 ten-minute episodes) of unrealistic life - six impossibly beautiful (yet appropriately emo/indie'd out) twentysomethings who are "struggling" artists and trying to make their way through romantic upheavals and work struggles in Chicago. My list of greivances with this show is endless, but the biggest things are:

1. Struggling my ass! I don't know any people my age who live in such beautiful spacious apartments and don't worry about money. Ever. Please. In my experience, all of my friends who have graduated from college in the last few years are all in the same predicament financially: paycheck to paycheck. Or, if they are okay for the moment with their rent, they are working on paying off student debts. The kids on this show? Nothing. No money issues. Great apartments. Great! And they're struggling. In Chicago. Which totally looks like L.A., what with the constant sunshine and palm trees. Whatevs.

2. Dylan, our whiny lead who obviously is the poster-child for the girls-who-are-pretty-but-obviously-don't-know-it-because-she's-smart, whines about wanting to be a writer "Oh, I want to be a writer, but I'm stuck at this magazine job" and it's like, Bitch? You work at a fucking magazine. Shut the fuck up already! You have a job that's in your field and, sure, you're just fetching coffee now, but you're just starting. There are tons of us who have four-year degrees in various fields, but are all competing to get this one crappy receptionist job at a crappy office that's been posted on Craigslist, so shut the fuck up because, in the grand scheme of things, you have a glamorous job. Stop whining into your vlog about it.

3. The indie rock-sounding soundtrack. Because nothing says "recent college graduates" like fake indie rock.

4. While I agree that romantic entanglements are a part of our lives, they're not the only thing in our lives. Dylan and Co. only whine about not being able to do what they want and cry about not being with the person they want. They have no sense of humor, when in fact, real people are funny. These, however? Melodramatic.

5. Why is it that on this show, the only character who drinks and gets drunk is an alcoholic?

Ugh! I'm getting all worked up thinking about this show in depth. Is it terrible that I'm secretly glad that it tanked in the ratings (the lowest NBC has experienced in 17 seasons... hence, NBC, you shouldn't cancel Friday Night Lights) and has been banished to Bravo? It probably is.

The good thing I've grabbed from this is what not to make my potential internet TV pilot look like. I've written a first draft of it (think quarterlife as written by Diablo Cody), but I still need to refine it. I've also discovered a new realm of TV to watch on the internet - my personal favorite is the delightful Clark and Michael.

Or maybe I'm being too harsh. Maybe I'll understand this in a few months when I turn twenty-five. What a difference in wisdom four months makes.

Television Geek: Season 2

It's almost been a year since I've written in this, and like Dirt is doing for their second season, I am revamping this blog for mine!

Initially, I had wanted to make a blogger's version of Television Without Pity, including snarky recaps of every television show I watch. That was a stupid, ambitious idea for me to perform because: a website whose basic premise I bogarted is doing it much, much better than I ever could, A. B) I watch way too many shows for me to do timely recaps for all of them alone. So... I am going to relaunch this blog a bit differently.

I've decided that I'm just going to write about whatever I feel in regards to TV, and with the strike being over and TV beginning to rise up from the mess that was 100 days of no work for the writers, there are plenty of things going on without recapping every hour of television that is downloaded into my brain.

And so it begins (incidentally, the titles of both the second-ever episode of Alias and the final mobisode of Lost). Let's have fun this time, people.