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.

24 6.12: Day 6 - 5:00PM - 6:PM

"Dammit!"

Um... I do believe that this was the first time this season that Jack has uttered his now famous catchphrase. Oh, I remember when the catchphrase was something more creative, like "Today is the longest day of my life" or "Somebody get me a hacksaw!"

Um... I really don't remember much about this episode. That's how memorable it was. I do remember that Jack and Logan travel to the Russian Consulate because Logan is positive that the Consul is connected to the terrorist attacks. Logan has a private meeting with the Consul, who is completely stereotypically over-the-top, so I'll start calling him Boris. Boris is shifty-eyed, and verry verry eeeevil, so he's totally involved. Which he is - he calls Gredenko and is all, "They're heere!" Logan tells Jack that Boris is lying, so Jack breaks back into the Consulate (idiot!) and gets caught (idiot!) and the best part is that this has already happened to him (bigger idiot!). On the plus side of this, Jack tortures Boris and gets pertinent information out of him, and then is caught. Dammit!

Meanwhile, Wayne isn't dead (awww!) and Dr. Bashir is dead (AWWWW!!), so Evil Daniels takes over. Evil Daniels is notified by Logan that Boris knows where Gredenko is, so Evil Daniels has a kinda awkward phone conversation with President Suvarov, promising retalliation or something. I kinda forgot. All I do remember is that Logan realizes that Martha is the only person who can get the Suvarovs to cooperate... with... something. Oh! Giving the okay to barge in on the Consulate. Right. Oh, and all these hours that Karen Hayes has been MIA (supposedly on an airplane to LA), she's really been chilling in the airport, so she's all, "I think I'ma go back to work." Yes.

"Secret Lovers": Reed tells his ONE co-conspirator to let Lennox go, and Lennox agrees to remain silent. Then, he totally turns Reed in, and Reed has the shocked and betrayed look only one wronged lover can give another. But all is right (wrong) with the world when Evil Daniels gives Lennox a Faustian offer: say that Dr. Bashir was behind the assassination attempt, and then Evil Daniels will turn the US into a police state like Lennox wanted. So Lennox's all, "Okay."

Whatever. I was bored. This show is getting boring. Like, yeah, there were explosions and shit because nowadays there are always explosions and shit, but none of it meant anything to me and the story's getting ridiculous. In a bad way. Not even over-the-top melodrama, but just very very VERY sloppily written. Because it's just boring.

Oh! And Sean Callery (the composer) totally ripped off John Williams' JFK score for this episode, and no, that's not cool. Just because the original was a good score doesn't mean you can just take it and put it in your own project when it doesn't have the same context. If Callery had stolen the E.T. theme and put it in a scene with Chloe doing some computer stuff and talking technobabble, people would be making a shit fit. So, I am with this. While in JFK, said piece of music was used when Laurie Metcalfe describes the possibility that Lee Harvey Oswald was a US spy in Russia, here, it's Logan thinking and talking with Jack, very calmly, sans urgency. Whatever.

All in all: C-

Until next time, same bat time, same bat channel.