Jay & Bronwen Watch TV!

LOSTies with Jed & Cara: LOSTies Moment FORD & STRAUME...

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 09:28:54 -0700

LOSTies with Jed & Cara: LOSTies Moment FORD & STRAUME Opening Credits

Inspired by the brilliance of Ford & Straume, and the notional Terry O’Quinn/Michael Emerson suburban hitmen vehicle, we’re starting to plan out an entire ABC slate of shows featuring Lost characters and actors. Call it After-L*O*S*T.

Other shows in development include:

Untitled Garcia/Andrews Project: A modern fable drawing elements from Of Mice and Men, Rainman and Kung Fu. Garcia plays a drifter with a strange facility with information. Andrews plays the ex-cop who protects him as they journey from town to town, getting in adventures and helping people.

Marvin Candle, Medical Examiner: Dr. Candle solves murders with his artificial hand, a super-8 camera and his knowledge of magnetism.

What else should ABC consider for their After-L*O*S*T programming block?

My favorite part of this week’s Lost. Chip Lowell is all...

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:36:56 -0700

My favorite part of this week’s Lost. Chip Lowell is all grown up and he’s packing some serious heat.

Rob Lowe was wearing this great shirt on the Tonight Show a few...

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 22:39:54 -0800

Rob Lowe was wearing this great shirt on the Tonight Show a few nights ago. It’s a riff on the famous Benjamin Franklin Join Or Die engraving from the American Revolution, but instead of the individual segments of the snake being the colonies, they are the boroughs of Manhattan. If you embiggen the photo, you can clearly see the B.X. for the Bronx, Q.N. for Queens and M. for Manhattan, with the obscured head and tail as Brooklyn and Staten Island.

I want one, but I can’t find this shirt online anywhere. We must band together to find it - we must Join, Or Die. The t-shirt quest I mean. Join the t-shirt quest. Or, um, die. OK, I’ve strained the metaphor.

P.S. Most of the chatter online I’ve found about the shirt seem to assume it’s a demonstration of right-wing support. It’s obviously not. So all the wingnuts who got excited and thought Sam Frickin’ Seaborn was with them should pipe down.

Anybody wanna buy a talk show?

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 10:39:20 -0800

Anybody wanna buy a talk show?

"…no critic was prepared for “West Wing” alum Bradley Whitford to turn up onstage for Fox’s..."

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 12:13:34 -0800

“

…no critic was prepared for “West Wing” alum Bradley Whitford to turn up onstage for Fox’s upcoming buddy cop show “Code 58” wearing a classic ’70s push-broom on his upper lip.

Whitford, who grew the ’stache to capture his character’s retro approach to crime-solving, said the facial hair has been a cross to bear.

“Women are fascinated and creeped out,” he said, “and I always get this reaction which is, ‘Oh, are you growing that for a part?’ A kind of disgusted, creeped-out thing. And my kids hate it.”

But he did feel he deserved some credit for the personal transformation: “My growing this mustache, I gotta say, it reminds me of a lot of the work De Niro did in ‘Raging Bull.’ ”

”

- More on Bradley Whitford and ‘Stache-gate | Alan Sepinwall on TV

Bradley Whitford’s Cop ‘Stache Cannot wait for Code 58. Action...

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:25:09 -0800

Bradley Whitford’s Cop ‘Stache

Cannot wait for Code 58. Action Lymon!

Our next t-shirt offering, from The Organization of...

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 22:02:35 -0800

Our next t-shirt offering, from The Organization of Cartographers for Social Equality.

Inspired by everybody’s favorite Big Block of Cheese Day.

"Now, the thing that has been exalted and the thing that American entertainment is consumed with is..."

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 11:34:34 -0800

“Now, the thing that has been exalted and the thing that American entertainment is consumed with is the individual being bigger than the institution. How many frickin’ times are we gonna watch a story where somebody [Rises up against the odds?] “You can’t do that.” “Yes, I can.” “No, you can’t.” “I’ll show you, see?” And in the end he’s recognized as just a goodhearted rebel with right on his side, and eventually the town realizes that dancing’s not so bad. I can make up a million of ’em. That’s the story we want to be told over and over again. And you know why? Because in our heart of hearts what we know about the 21st century is that every day we’re going to be worth less and less, not more and more.”

- DAVID SIMON - Vice Magazine

Twitter / Jay Bushman: @bronwensaurus and I have ...

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:39:47 -0800

Twitter / Jay Bushman: @bronwensaurus and I have ...

Dear AMC

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:47:57 -0800

I’m through 5 out of 6 episodes of your remake of the Prisoner. Still formulating my thoughts on it, but I have one question:

What on Earth possessed you to show it 2 at a time over 3 consecutive nights? Who’s got time to devote that much attention over such a short span? It definitely diminishes the viewing experience. I’d have much rather had 6 consecutive weeks.

Or do you agree with most of the public opinion that it’s not very good, and was this a way to dump it as quickly as possible?

From the annals of unconvincing world-building

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:41:41 -0800

I wince every time I hear the Visitors called “Vees.” The V spray paint logo is a resistance sign. And “Visitors” is already a euphemism - no need to shorten it to the awkward-sounding “Vees.”

And Fifth Column is a reference to the Spanish Civil War. In the original, the rebel Visitors were initially described by Martin a “a Fifth Column” and took their name from there. But on the new show, they seem to have named themselves “The Fifth Column.” Those rebel Visitors must be history buffs. Or maybe they’ve been around Earth long enough to have fought against Franco.

Bronwen hearts the Ood.

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:47:02 -0800

Bronwen *hearts* the Ood.

West Wing Creator Aaron Sorkin to Return to TV

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:42:07 -0800

West Wing Creator Aaron Sorkin to Return to TV:

Cue the Hallelujah chorus!

Dear Saturday Night Live: WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU...

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:42:06 -0800

Dear Saturday Night Live: WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?! Please, please, please, STOP.

"You were abducted, of course you need crepes."

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:58:30 -0800

“You were abducted, of course you need crepes.”

- Walter, in Fringe s2e07. This kind of stuff is why I keep watching this show.

Pilot Watch/Flup: Wackiness Doth Ensue & We're Only Still Casting

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:28:40 -0800

To follow-up on my earlier post about David Tennant starring in NBC’s awful sounding pilot Rex Is Not Your Lawyer, I would like to point out that Jeffrey Tambor has joined the cast. Per THR, Tambor will play “Rex’s psychiatrist, a specialist in anxiety disorders who himself suffers from them and who also becomes romantically involved with Rex’s mother.” Two bucks on Jean Smart as the mama.

PSA: AMC HD Available Early on TWC in Our Hood

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:59:20 -0800

We subscribe to Time Warner Cable. A couple of weeks ago we received a letter stating that we’d finally get AMC in HD mid-December. Jay’s comment at the time was, “Great. Just in time for me to not be watching Mad Men.” Kid’s got a point there, Valerie.

AMC’s re-Prisonering starts Sunday. I started scrolling through channels to see if by chance AMC HD happened to us sooner than expected. IT DID. It’s #479 on our lineup in downtown Los Angeles. Here endeth the public service announcement.

Sayonara, Dollhouse

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:48:24 -0800

(Note: This post is a little late, since I’m mired in the grips of #DeathKold09. Any incoherence is strictly the provenance of the virus taking residence in my sinuses. Sincerely, the Mgmt.)

OK, a little backstory here. I was ignorant of the Whedon-verse before Bronwen introduced me to it. One of my labours when I went a-courting was to watch all seven seasons of Buffy, plus season five of Angel. And I enjoyed a lot of it. (Especially “The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco”.)

Then we moved on to Firefly. *sigh* I miss Firefly. I’m still pissed that we never learned about Shepherd Book’s backstory.

So, yeah, I wouldn’t describe myself as a rabid Whedonist, but I’ve seen Serenity more than once in the theater. I’ve been to a “Once More With Feeling” sing-a-long. I was looking forward to Dollhouse. Now that it’s cancelled, I’ll watch the rest of the episodes, but I won’t miss it when it’s gone.

The show never quite worked for me. From the start, I felt like the dolls should not have been the protagonists. Their changeability and their blankness rendered most of the engagement-of-the-week plots meaningless for me. Their small changes, flashes of awareness and slow development would have worked much better if they were relieved of the focus. I’d have been much more interested in having the handlers and employees as the protagonists, with the dolls always tantalizingly out of reach. Is Echo more aware or isn’t she? What’s really going on in her head? The dolls are objectified; they should have been the story objects, not subjects. For example, see the work of Summer Glau on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Now, you could say that one of the points of Dollhouse was to deal with that inversion. And I’ll grant that it’s an interesting premise. But premise is nothing without execution. I’m never comfortable saying that a performer or artist is incapable of doing something; doesn’t possess the talent or ability. I’m not interested in discussing whether or not someone has the ability to do something, only what they did and how they did it. But it’s fairly clear that Eliza Dushku did not pull it off. If Amy Acker had been in the lead role, who knows if it would have worked any better? It still wouldn’t have changed some things.

I’m one of the few people who thought Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was a really good show, and would have happily watched it for many seasons. But in the face of its persistent difficulties, I accepted that the thing to do was just wrap it up and let all the talented people move on to their next thing. And so in the end, that’s my epitaph (har-har) for Dollhouse. Let’s just let it go, and allow all of the talented artists move on to the next project. Which will hopefully be free of all the angst and controversy.

"These are those four outlines submitted by Universal for an hour series. You needn’t bother to..."

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:56:33 -0800

“These are those four outlines submitted by Universal for an hour series. You needn’t bother to read them; I’ll tell them to you. The first one is set at a large Eastern law school, presumably Harvard. The series is irresistibly entitled “The New Lawyers.” The running characters are a crusty-but-benign ex-Supreme Court justice, presumably Oliver Wendell Holmes by way of Dr. Zorba; there’s a beautiful girl graduate student; and the local district attorney who is brilliant and sometimes cuts corners. The second one is called “The Amazon Squad.” The running characters include a crusty-but-benign police lieutenant who’s always getting heat from the commissioner; a hard-nosed, hard-drinking detective who thinks women belong in the kitchen; and the brilliant and beautiful young girl cop who’s fighting the feminist battle on the force. Up next is another one of those investigative reporter shows. A crusty-but-benign managing editor who’s always gett…”

- from Network written by Paddy Chayefsky. To answer to why the Gattaca series will be a cop show.

Pilot Watch: Will Gattaca Miss the Point?

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:54:00 -0800

There was this ridiculously long article about Denis Leary’s post-Rescue Me plans in Variety two weeks ago. Buried down at the bottom was word that Leary’s production company has the rights to redevelop Gattaca as a TV series.

(Side rant: Did you miss that news? Don’t feel badly! Variety can’t spell. Apparently they missed that whole obvs part of the movie where the title was based off the four bases of DNA and stuff, hi, whatever. Spell things right, losers!)

I loved Gattaca. I refuse to explain the plot of the film because you should have seen it. And while I haven’t seen the movie in a while, I remember the following bits as being particularly interesting:

the fantastic 40s/50s-modern set and costume design and general film noir feel
nature - so to speak - vs. nurture
Uma’s character’s self-loathing because she couldn’t perfect herself
liberal eugenics rather than total government control: parents with financial means opt-in to the system, but the system is set up to favor those who opt-in

MTV published an interview with Gil Grant, who’s writing the Gattaca pilot for Leary’s Apostle Films. Grant is writing the pilot as a police procedural set in the future. Here’s how Grant got there:

[The NASA-ish space travel] facility was so specific, so narrow in its focus. It worked for [the movie’s] story, but if you open it up and go outside that world, you can see a broader canvas there,” Grant explained. The idea of a police procedural evolved naturally from there, both as a source of compelling weekly stories and as a portrait of the issues facing a society which has embraced eugenics.

Sure. Naturally. The only thing natural about turning any good concept into a procedural is that people are naturally lazy. But then you know my thoughts on procedurals.

Grant’s timeframe for his Gattaca pilot seems to be after the events of the movie. He says, “I came up with a world which is populated with Valids and Invalids, the same premise [as the movie], but taken into a police department where we’re… integrating, using the analogy of the ‘60s Civil Rights struggle.” He goes on:

Even though it’s technically illegal to discriminate against Invalids, just like in the ‘60s people did. So it’s come to pass that [the government has] ordered the police department to hire their first token Invalid into the detective department. What we’re doing is we’re taking an Invalid and teaming him up with a Valid, a seasoned officer. You know, it’s oil and water.

So it’s like if Elizabeth Mitchell had known Alan Tudyk was a Visitor and she had to be cool with it, and like, they went out on patrol and all, but she made occasional jokes about somebody needing some Lubriderm?

There were two crazy central conceits to Gattaca the movie that made it work and made audiences feel:

Fear and looming threats of being found out that you weren’t perfect
Ethan Hawke’s character’s dream of wanting to go to space embodied the sort of pure yearning quest that just about everyone can identify with, and his any means necessary approach makes him the underdog for whom you totes root instead of the underdog to whom you say meh.

Now, I’m not saying that the Gattaca TV series won’t figure out how to be good or interesting or even merely watchable, but - If the Invalids are already being accepted into society, where’s the tension? And if the show actually revolves around police officers, where’s the hope? It’s hard to see where this might go beyond a Season 3/4 Battlestar Galactica - and what looks to be every episode of V - old fashioned “hey gang, let’s smoke out the Others” witch hunt.

And frankly, if Gattaca wasn’t the property the Apostle Films guys were touching, I wouldn’t care. I do a great job of ignoring procedurals on a daily basis. But Gattaca was a really special moment in scifi, so don’t fuck it up, kids!

P.S. Grant has been a writer & producer for NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles & 24. So, um, at least there might be pithy one-note, one-line jokes and very, very hard perimeters.