15 April 2009
Written by
mdconnelly (
)
Published on April 15th, 2009 @ 07:04:15 pm, using 143 words, 82 views
As we watch in amazement the latest exemplary tribute to social promotion in school–FOX News’ organizing morons to protest getting a tax cut under Obama’s budget–here’s an example that probably got by you. This review, at TV Squad. A reviewer of “My Boys,” who unintentionally, we presume, reveals far too much about his ability to critique or even judge anything intelligently by claiming that “My Boys,” one of the best sitcoms on right now with the human joy known as Jordana Spiro, isn’t even mediocre. I’m linking to the review not for its wisdom [sic] but to show what every critic should have to go through–the comments that came out full guns to let the guy know he’d be better off tonight teabagging. Well, actually, getting teabagged. But don’t let him know what it means. It will be our surprise.
19 February 2009
Written by
billconnelly1 (
)
Published on February 19th, 2009 @ 05:49:50 pm, using 12 words, 44 views
…thank you, WGN, and thank you, youtubes.
02 February 2009
Written by
billconnelly1 (
)
Published on February 2nd, 2009 @ 06:26:26 am, using 85 words, 35 views
To Pepsi, for showing Bob Dylan passing the torch to…Will.i.am: F—.
To Pepsi, for turning the silliest, most consistently great SNL skit in years (MacGruber), into a Pepsi commercial: A+
To Bruce Springsteen, for managing to actually do a respectable job of compressing three hours of E Street goodness into 12 minutes (and sliding on his knees and plowing into a cameraman): A.
To the NFL, for putting on the second straight super-exciting-down-the-stretch Super Bowl: A.
24 October 2008
Written by
billconnelly1 (
)
Published on October 24th, 2008 @ 09:38:14 am, using 28 words, 59 views
…will always be when Dubya plays with the ball of yarn, but last night’s SNL skit with both Tina “Palin” Fey and Will “Dubya” Ferrell was top notch.
20 May 2008
Written by
mdconnelly (
)
Published on May 20th, 2008 @ 07:36:05 pm, using 1496 words, 104 views
Would I watch “Cheaters” if it weren’t on early in the morning, out of site of impressionable youth, where I live and when I work out? Probably not, mainly because my wife would tell me to turn it off. But I do watch it now and then while exercising, especially if there’s not a good fitness infomercial with lots of lycra and bikinis on. Because, horrendous and trashy or not, it’s amazing, albeit depressing, tv.
The basic premise of the show is this: someone suspects their significant other(s) of cheating on them (I’ll explain the plural below) and contacts “Cheaters” to spy on their SO(s) in return for signing away rights to broadcast. The show starts with the cheatee explaining how much they care for their partner(s), why they think the cheating is happening, and how they just need to know for sure, usually with a choked back tear or at least a depressed catch in the throat. The host is named Joey Greco, which really tells you all you need to know, who wears dark mock turtles over a black sportscoat or leather jacket and has one of those underlip hairy things that pay homage to Maynard G. Krebs.
The range of folks calling for “Cheaters"’s services is truly literary. It’s not just the trusting, loyal spouse you might predict, desperate to know what’s going on, although they do appear (albeit sometimes as obvious tight-asses or workaholics we’d all cheat on). But then you get others, nicely demonstrating “Cheaters"’s commitment to social diversity. There’s the 80+ guy with white spiked hair and Easy Rider gear wondering if the 30-something honey taking care of her retarded male cousin (actually neither retarded nor a cousin) every night is just after his money. (Uh, yeah, you old wrinkled freak. She was also one of the coolest, scariest people I’ve ever seen when confronted with the “Cheaters” film crew.) There’s the apparently normal woman who freaks mightily when she catches her husband with the mesh-hosed, orange-haired dominatrix ("I hinted to you that I need to be submissive, but you wouldn’t listen!!!). There’s the guy who suspects his wife and live-in girlfriend (hence the plural) of cheating on him together. (They were, and in some Cinemax-type scenes with another guy, but, in fairness, the girlfriend was only with the cheatee because she really wanted his wife so, technically, was it cheating?) To further demonstrate forward thinking, there’s the lesbian who catches her beloved (who missed their old “intimacy” so she started up with another woman who couldn’t comment later because her husband wouldn’t let her answer the phone). And did the Hispanic guy really think the illegal who married him and then moved in all her kids was actually taking care of a sick relative night after night? (The first universal sign of cheating, I would think, would be that your loved one is never home at night when you are, but then I don’t have a degree in this.) IOW, “Cheaters” rounds up everyone you would expect to see if aliens came to Earth and started a human zoo.
Having heard from the cheatee, “Cheaters” sends its detectives ("gumshoes") off to spy and film the suspect partner(s). (The “gumshoes” gives you an idea of the whole ’50s noir that the show tries to pull off, usually pretty humorously if you’re in the mood.) Complete with night vision cameras, hidden cameras (planted by the cheatee), and even GPS-tracking (again set up by the cheatee), the gumshoes follow the cheater(s) around, catching them, of course (hence the name of the show). Most of the time, those spied upon get their faces blurred out, which likely means they didn’t sign the release later, not a good sign for an eventual hearts-and-flowers conclusion. An amazing number of the paramours (at least to my mind) do go full-frontal facial, so apparently reputation of good character and possible shame to family can’t overcome whatever “Cheaters” pays them to sign off, no real surprise, I guess. Always thrown in near the end of the spying is a phone call from the cheatee to the cheater while the cheating is going on, cinching the perfidy and betrayal. It’s not needed, of course, but it’s always a nice final nail.
Then they go back to the cheatee to roll the tapes. Sometimes the cheatee is stoic, usually quietly infuriated, plenty of walk-aways for moments of tears, with Joey assiduously respecting their privacy on a nationally syndicated television program. Then Joey gets the cheatee in the “Cheaters” van where he also receives a call from a detective (oddly never “gumshoe” when in earshot of the client) who has tracked the cheater(s) to a place where they can be confronted.
This is the big moment. Joey, the burly crew, and burlier bodyguards follow the cheatee as s/he outs the suspect with the sometimes (but not usually) unsuspecting paramour. (One of the funniest bits ever involved this poor, blurred-out girl in a restaurant booth trying to get up and sneak away while the cheating husband bitched about the intrusion and kept pulling her back into the booth with him over and over. Trust me.) Screaming and yelling, demands to know what’s going on here (from both sides–wouldn’t you want to know if a film crew shows up on you in a bar or a tailgate?), some running away (often literally, cameramen in pursuit), an occasional fight (usually pseudo, although the best was a stepfather whooping his stepson after the latter tried to avenge the former doing the latter’s wife–but the older guy got the worst of it from his wife, the stepson’s mother–got that?), hair-pulling and wrestling by the women (maybe some panties, maybe not, as in NO PANTIES, just another blur), crying, retreating, hands blocking camera, may be one of the “Cheaters” crew getting beat on (we learn later charges are filed, particularly the one where Joey got stabbed). Basically the way you wish “Miss America” would end, just once.
The show concludes with two pieces. One, catching up on old participants–the cheaters’ paramours who claim not to have known and were devastated themselves and certainly learned their lesson, or who find out no one at school will be his friend anymore since he did his best friend’s mom; a cheatee who has moved on, sadder but wiser; a cheater who said she knew what she was getting when she married him, that he couldn’t change, and that he was coming home someday (CHANGE THOSE LOCKS!!!!), the now happily reunited couple insisting that it was ironically all for the good–they’re talking more, loving more, and he’s smiling as sincerely as a used-car salesman or local tv newsreader so you know he’s still got three other women on the side now that he’s dumped her little sister.
The last piece is the immediate participants, occasionally getting back together ("It was all bad communication, we need to talk more, I can’t leave or he’ll go off his meds again"), but usually adamantly going separate ways, the cheater’s paramour most frequently unavailable for comment (although the dominatrix did send a letter insisting that her relationship with the nightgown-clad cheater were purely professional), “Cheaters” offering help if you think your sweetie is cheating on you because “Cheaters” is all about the importance of fidelity, offering counseling services and protecting “your right” to be informed.
Which tells you why you get the cases you do on the show, the black women catching their playas, the pure white trash (DISCLAIMER: as white trash bred to the bone, yes, I am qualified to judge . . . I think some of these people look like my cousins), the people who can’t afford the real gumshoes. Which also tells you why you should be ashamed to watch this show, even if you can’t help yourself, much less admit it on a blog.
But let me try to redeem my virtue a bit. These actually are nice sociological examples if you want to rationalize it and play academic. Clearly, these folks cut across a section of strata of American society engaged in behavior usually seen on tv only in coverage of the Spears family. One thing in particular I’ve learned of actual and disturbing interest is how many of the male cheater types and the paramours of the female ones (not counting the lesbians) are avid students of Charles Darwin–"it’s evolution, men are just made this way, I can’t help it.” Maybe if Chuck had known it would all lead to this, he would have just kept that manuscript hidden. But the major thing, I guess, is that a show like “Cheaters” gives most of us a view of humans usually only experienced by cops, marriage counselors, and drug treatment specialists. It’s a nice tonic to the Oprahs and the “God don’t make no junk” t-shirts. God should watch “Cheaters.” And then maybe recast the molds a little.
13 March 2008
Written by
mdconnelly (
)
Published on March 13th, 2008 @ 06:19:17 pm, using 1309 words, 182 views
You, of course, can’t have revolution with wallflower types. Every revolution, successful or failed, has had to have its share of raging egotists and maniacs who refuse to accept the status quo, by definition, in a big way. That said, some revolutionaries are more raging than others, and such was the case with John Adams, our second President. Nothing I’ve ever read about the man made me think I would appreciate knowing him even though I did appreciate episodes of his physical and moral courage, his knowledge and writing skills, in great moderation. Go back and read his undemocratic, superior, and jejune (the only word whose use defines the one who uses it as jejune) statements and beliefs just in his exchange of letters with an equally unlikeable guy named Jefferson. Go back and see who enforced the Alien and Sedition Acts. Yes, he contributed to this nation’s Founding. OTOH, would the nation have been founded without him? Uh, yeah. The only place he was indispensible was inside his own head, and maybe that of his truly weird little wife whose “romance” astounds and warms many and makes me more than a little icky. (I’ve seen these “great man/combatively supportive wife” in academia and politics too many times in my life to be impressed.)
You get the true sense of the man in this review of the upcoming whitewash of Adams on HBO. After detailing the reality, including Adams’ necessary but not sufficient contribution to the Revolution, the reviewer nails the problem with both the show and the simpering biography written by the omnipotent David McCullough, who contrived successfully a few years back to turn Adams into one as great as Washington and Franklin in many unfortunate readers’ minds. Here’s the key quote: “But the bigger problem is how far the writing has to go to make Adams both more important and more virtuous than everyone around him except his wife, as if to justify his prodigious self-regard and disdain for his contemporaries. Adams didn’t “unite the states of America,” but he accomplished a hell of a lot. He was bold. He was brilliant. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t also a heel.”
Then the reviewer concludes with some excellent examples of why homage is misplaced, focusing on how an historian of the time writing of the Revolution got Adams’ vitriol for not recognizing his greatness in it, ending with this: “Mercy Warren had a response to Adams’s abuse. “Were she to write her History over again, and correct her errors, as you seem to wish her to do,” she answered, what must she write? Adams would obviously be contented only if she told the world that he was free of ambition and vainglory, and that his writings “established the State and Federal Constitutions, and gave the United States all the liberty, republicanism, and independence they enjoy; that his name was always placed at the head of every public commission; that nothing had been done, that nothing could be done, neither in Europe nor America, without his sketching and drafting the business.” Who would believe such silliness? “Mr. Adams might indeed think this a very pleasant portrait, but I doubt whether the world would receive it as a better likeness.” Ah, just give it time, Mrs. Warren. Give it time.
Why focus on this? Two reasons, the first setting up the second. The producer of the HBO series is that well-known “history buff” Tom Hanks who has apparently decided that having relived WWII and Apollo 13 on screen, he, like Ronald Reagan, can be forgiven for detaching history from reality. Listen to his wisdom as he explains his interest in doing this series:
“Unless you’re an American history buff, most people don’t know a whole lot about John Adams,” Hanks says. “That’s the beauty of McCullough’s book. It’s a total surprise. We wanted to bring his work to life in a way that will constantly surprise people.”
Hanks is a history buff whose Playtone Productions made HBO’s Emmy-winning miniseries Band of Brothers and From the Earth to the Moon. He says that as he dived into Adams’ biography, “I was slapping my head, saying ‘I never knew this.’ “
Hmm. “. . . will constantly surprise people.” As in, people who actually ARE history buffs and know this portrayal is full of nonsense. “. . . slapping my head, saying ‘I never knew this.’” As in, gosh, I read one book on a guy so I’ll use my Hollywood influence to create a version of history at best argued heatedly by the people who actually KNOW history and to sell that false view to a gullible audience that wants to feel as gosh-awful-smart as I do now.
Okay, nothing new, what Hollywood’s been doing for years. And Hanks losing IQ points to Forrest Gump won’t cause the world to slow on its axis. But here’s the second, more important reason to get what’s going on here, a point I’ve made before but which this series illustrates. Hanks has another future HBO series in production, one which also accepts as truth a highly argued stance on an important historical event, one also based on one single sensationalistic tome, Vincent Bugliosi’s recent tripe on the JFK assasination. Just like he’s bought this warped portrait of Adams, Hanks has bought the unproven and unprovable assertion that Oswald was the only person involved in that killing.
I’ve made this point in a previous post. The day after Ruby killed Oswald, the White House and the Justice Department decided, and we know this from the actual memo between Bill Moyers and acting AG Katzenbach, that the American people were to be assured that Oswald was the only participant. Not because of a vast government conspiracy but because LBJ and others believed it very possible that the Cubans and maybe even Soviets were behind the killing and feared the destructive path Americans would want to follow were they to believe that a conspiracy of that type had brought Kennedy down. Lose a president or lose a world? Toughie. Hoover, undisposed to quibble, sent his loyal FBI soldiers off in pursuit of that goal, and the opportunity for a real investigation that might have led to real, unscreened and unmolded evidence of what happened was squashed from the beginning. As I said before, anyone who tells you anything authoritatively about that day and its aftermath is as full of crap as John Adams.
Bugliosi, the prosecutor who’s lived for years off the royalties from crime victims’ stories, couldn’t stand the thought that the Warren Report, nothing more than a far-too-typically contrived prosecutor’s brief to get an indictment from an investigative body (as they say, only an incompetent DA can’t get a grand jury to indict a meatloaf sandwich), wasn’t given the full respect it deserved. His short, deceptive treatment of the Moyers memo is classic DA three-card-monty, claiming that those who cite it are claiming the White House was behind the assasination and ignoring the real implications of it. Hanks, a man who only worked in a real bureaucracy in “Joe and the Volcano,” has no clue about what happens when the powerful people at the very top tell you “here’s what you’re going to find.” Just like the Adams’ biography, he’s just sitting there “slapping my head, saying ‘I never knew this.’”
So that’s why this unfortunate series is important. It illustrates the coloring of the truth that powerful artists get to pull and the warping of historical reality. It’s not that big a deal when it has to do with a vain and distasteful little man who should have been happy with the place we’ve actually given him in our history. It IS a big deal when you contribute to an unknowable claim on truth like Bugliosi’s. Keep that in mind if you watch either of these shows.
04 March 2008
Written by
Kevin (
)
Published on March 4th, 2008 @ 11:38:40 am, using 42 words, 111 views
So here’s an update from our friends over at TV.com of the upcoming spring schedule. It encompasses the major networks and a number of other popular shows on cable. Enjoy and be sure to set your DVRs.
Full schedule here
22 February 2008
Written by
Kevin (
)
Published on February 22nd, 2008 @ 11:53:01 am, using 776 words, 143 views
Not exactly breaking news. But some questions still remain. Like, when is there going to be new episodes of my favorite show? Well I’m glad you asked. Via TV.com, I give you the status of most of the shows on the major networks. Check them out after the jump.
SPOILER: It looks grim for Cavemen.
Read more! »
25 January 2008
Written by
Kevin (
)
Published on January 25th, 2008 @ 06:09:29 pm, using 142 words, 71 views
Call me a dork. Say I’m a nerd. I don’t care. Battlestar Galactica is returning for its final season in March. If you think it’s another sci-fi show, you’re wrong. If you think it’s for guy with no life, think again. If you haven’t seen it, get on that. It’s one of the most compelling shows out there. Spectacularly written and wonderfully casted. The storyline draws you in for the get go as humanity is virtually wiped out. It’s “good” vs. “evil”, the struggle for survival, ethics, war, love and everything in-between. Oh, did I mention it’s set in space? Don’t let that scare you. Even if you’re not a sci-fi fan, you’ll get sucked into Battlestar Galactica. I even know a few girls that will back that statement up.
Written by
Kevin (
)
Published on January 25th, 2008 @ 05:44:58 pm, using 236 words, 905 views
I work with a guy from Nova Scotia. We share a lot of interests in movies, hockey and work quite well together as a creative team. He’s been turning me on to all things Canadian recently. Gotta say, for as many jokes as there are about our neighbors to the north, they’ve got some pretty cool stuff. One in particular is Trailer Park Boys. This mockumentary show is similar in style to The Office or Reno 911 but set in a Canadian trailer park. Tell me that’s not an ideal locale for shenanigans. The series follows Julian as he leave prison and returns to the trailer park he calls home. Mix this with a cast of dope smoking, white trash characters you’d expect to find and it’s one of the freshest things I’ve seen on TV lately. I don’t get all the references (didn’t in the British version of The Office either) but I’m becoming a pretty big fan. I hear it’s a huge cult classic up north. They even have a movie (haven’t seen it yet). All in all, I’m pretty into this show right now. I think there are six seasons available in the U.S. right now. I’m half way through season four and can’t get enough – what do you think that’s all aboot?
Start with Season One today!
24 January 2008
Written by
Kevin (
)
Published on January 24th, 2008 @ 02:12:42 pm, using 156 words, 72 views
The writers are still on strike, but that doesn’t mean that good TV isn’t out there. On Feb 12, Jericho is returning to the airwaves after its highly unsuccessful bout of cancellation. A fan backlash led to CBS resurrecting the show for a second season. And the show’s fate is still at the mercy of its fans. Purportedly, there were two different season finales filmed. One if there’s going to be a third season and one if it’s cancelled – again.
If you’re unfamiliar with Jericho, the storyline revolves around the residents of said town, in the aftermath of nuclear attacks on twenty-three major cities in the U.S. It’s not post-apocalyptic Mad Max stuff, but the real down-and-dirty what if…
I’d tell you more, but that would kind of ruin the show. Season one is available on DVD now, if you want to catch up before the big premiere.
14 January 2008
Written by
Kevin (
)
Published on January 14th, 2008 @ 12:49:06 pm, using 76 words, 133 views
Last night I decided to check out the premiere of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I have to say, it might have potential. The series is set between T2 and T3. Still curious to see how things play out. The second half of the premiere is tonight. I’m hoping it’ll set things up nicely, but we’ll see. If you’re not familiar with the Terminator franchise, check them out here (T1, T2, T3).
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