Catching Up on TV 9/16-9/23

So I’ve decided for the sake of my time/sanity it will be easiest for me to write weekly updates on the TV shows I’m keeping track of rather than doing reviews of every single show. I tried that, didn’t like what I wrote, and then realized there’s a reason The A.V. Club has a whole staff doing those. So, the format being established, onto the new season of television!

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

            Sunny was the first of my shows to premiere this Fall (for some reason the networks rolled out their shows a week later than they did last year), kicking its sixth season off with a two-parter that they did not officially categorize as a two-parter. Weird, but there it is. The plot, loose as it often is on Sunny involved the gang getting involved in some wedding shenanigans. Mac kicks it off by storming into Paddy’s with the news that the tranny he used to bang has not only had the long-promised sex change operation, but has gotten married (to the Miller High Life guys no less!). In his infinite childishness, Mac decides this is a gay marriage and an abomination before God. This outburst reminds Dennis that he always thought he would be married by this point in his life, so he contacts his high school girlfriend with a dead tooth Maureen Ponderosa, whom he marries almost instantly, because of course.  Dee accompanies Dennis on his visit with Maureen in the hopes of seeing her once hot brother, who has spent the last two decades having kids and going to seed, not that that will stop her from sleeping with him after the initial repulsion wears off. Seeing all of this leads Charlie to convince Frank that their longstanding roommate relationship should become a domestic partnership.

            All of this goes pretty much as we would expect over the two episodes. Mac acts like an idiot and kind of gets awakened to his latent homosexuality. Dennis immediately regrets his marriage, taking notice of Maureen’s smelly mouth, weird thing for kitten sweaters, and general neediness. Dee is repulsed by her new lover, but is willing to put up with him as long as he provides her with a new car. The storyline that I thought held the most promise: Frank and Charlie getting married just kind of meanders along, with Frank protesting because he doesn’t know who would be the woman and bellyaching after they are married because Charlie doesn’t pitch in enough money. In a lot of ways, I wish these plotlines would have been handled differently. There are a lot of funny ideas here, but stretching them to two episodes strained them a bit and often lent the scenes in the second episode a bit of listlessness. That being said, it would have been next to impossible to fit all of this into one episode, so maybe a plotline like Frank and Charlie’s marriage could have turned into a season-long arc. Anyway, grading both episodes together Sunny gets a:

B-

Boardwalk Empire

            Boardwalk Empire is, at this point, the only new series that I am watching this year. I may yet tune in to something like Terriers, Lone Star, or Running Wilde, but for now this big HBO epic is it. Not that Boardwalk Empire leaves me very hungry for more television, even in its pilot this series is a feast unto itself (weird metaphor, I know, but I’m rolling with it). As you probably know from the breathless hype it has been receiving Boardwalk Empire is the creation of Terrence Winter, one of the key writers on The Sopranos, and Martin Scorsese, who needs no introduction. The series tells the story of Atlanitc City at the dawn of the Prohibition Era, when the federal prohibition of liquor spawned the creation of the Mafia as we know it.

            The pilot is littered with famous names of the period from Arnold Rothstein (A Serious Man’s Michael Sthulbarg) to Lucky Luciano (Vincent Piazza), but the series is centered around Enoch ‘Nucky’ Thompson (Steve Buscemi), the County Treasurer that runs the political machine in Atlantic City and is trying to establish himself at the top of the quickly emerging liquor racket. I will refrain from diving too far into the plot machinations, partly because it would take a lot ot unwind all the various plot strands, and partly because I get the feeling that Boardwalk Empire is still in the process of setting itself up, using the pilot and the first few episodes to establish its characters and their respective archetypes before beginning the long process of exploring and undoing those archetypes ala Deadwood. Suffice to say, if you are interested in TV as an artistic medium you owe it to yourself to be watching Boardwalk Empire. 

A

How I Met Your Mother

            After an up and down fifth season I was really nervous/excited about where HIMYM was going to head this year. Last year had its wonderful moments (especially the 100^th episode spectacular), but after the excellent premiere it was hard to figure out what the unifying thread is. The creators seemed to have let old Ted wander off into a season-long digression in his master romantic narrative, and the show suffered for it. So I’m happy to report that HIMYM is, at the very least, back to its gratifyingly teasing ways. Last Monday’s premiere begins with Ted sitting outside a church in a tuxedo, swilling a beer that Marshall offers him in order to calm  his nerves. After all the hints and glimpses of the Mother, were we suddenly jumping right to the climax of the series? And if so, after all this time, who is the bleeping mother?

            I should not have been surprised that this set-up turns out to be yet another head fake by the series (Ted is the best man at this particular wedding, and old Ted tells us that he met the Mother at the ceremony), but it was a good one, and it reaffirms my faith that the show still knows where it’s going. The rest of the episode was a fun, if a bit familiar; Ted thinks that an ex is setting him up with the hot girl at the bar, which leads to an unexpectedly Sapphic conclusion. Robin takes a lot of heat from Barney for wallowing in misery following her breakup in last year’s finale before going upstairs to instantly transform into the gorgeous creature the gang knows she is. Marshall and Lily have a stale fight about his dad intruding too much into their lives, especially as they start trying to have a baby. It’s certainly not groundbreaking narratives, but it doesn’t really matter to me right now, I was sold on this from that tease that started the episode.  

B+

Modern Family

            For a while last season I thought I had missed the bus on Modern Family. Having dismissed it as amusing and promising, but not quite worth my time when it debuted last fall I was even a little irked when its acclaim and popularity rose throughout the season. So sometime around last February I decided to give it another try, see what I had been missing, and lo and behold Modern Family was fantastic. Sure, the C plot could feel undercooked sometimes, and the ending narration seemed superfluous at best, but those small shortcomings didn’t obscure the fact that this was just an expertly constructed sitcom. Indeed, despite my initial ‘meh’ it was my favorite of the nominees for Best Comedy Series at the Emmys last month, though that a lot of that had to do with the Emmys ignoring almost all of my favorite comedies from last year.

            Anyway, Modern Family is back and facing the daunting task of living up to a first season that won the Emmy. Happily, based on the first episode of Season Two, the show seems to be handling that stress as well as the last two sitcoms to face that situation (Arrested Development and 30 Rock). Now, the second season of those series were phenomenal, some of the best TV comedy from the past decade, so Modern Family probably won’t reach quite that plateau, but it seems to be in fine form at this early point. I’ve probably rambled on too much to spend time hashing out the plot of last week’s episode, so I will simply say that the two main comic set-pieces of the episode (the Dunphy’s car ride and Mitchell’s construction efforts) were astoundingly funny. I wish all TV could be so successful. 

A

Community

            My relationship to Community last year was basically the inverse of Modern Family. Where I abandoned MF early because I misdiagnosed early growing pains that weren’t worth watching, I was hooked by Community from the pilot, despite the show’s very apparent shakiness as it founds it comic voice. The cast and crew of Community did not let me down last year, turning in what I thought was one of the three or four best shows of the year by the time the season ended last May. Indeed, the only episode that I had misgivings about after Community hit its stride around Halloween was the finale. It was certainly funny, but it also veered into some earnest soap opera-style plotting that the series had been clever enough to avoid to that point.

            Last week’s premiere responded to the earnest note last season had ended on by skewering itself, creating a gem of an episode in the process. The episode opens with a wonderful Wes Anderson inspired montage, the camera tracking across each of the characters’ bedrooms as they prepare for the first day of Year Two at Greendale. It’s a nice cinematic touch, filled with jokes (Donald Glover as Spider-Man) and nice character moments (Shirley rolling around in bed with her boys), and it gets us right into the action of knowing these characters better through their comic personas. The episode’s plot revolves around Britta’s newfound fame for being so publicly spurned by Jeff in last year’s finale, ultimately winding its way towards a classic study room scene where all of the show’s sins are called out and turned into humor. Plus Betty White was on hand to shoot a blowdart into Starburns’ namesake. That’s just a recipe for an...

 

A.

30 Rock/The Office

            I did not much get along with 30 Rock last year. It got off to a shaky start, with jokes that once might have been clever or meta falling flat because they had become too familiar or on the nose. Then that awful Stone Mountain episode happen and I wanted to beat up the few defenders the show still had on the Internet. The series hobbled along from there, amusing me occasionally, but mostly existing as a moribund reminder of how good it once was. So color me surprised when this season’s premiere, while still a little dodgy here and there, was something of a return to form. I won’t even bother to describe the plot of this, since that has always been a background to the jokes. But suffice to say the jokes were there and I was pleased. Here’s hoping it continues. 

B+

            I’m including The Office with 30 Rock here since I’ve been thinking of these shows as peas in a pod for a year or so now. They are former sitcoms all-stars who have gotten a little long in the tooth, but can still get by on their charms and residual goodwill. The Office has certainly been the more consistent of the two, but its shine really started to fade last year, especially in comparison to its sibling show Parks and Recreation, which was nothing short of phenomenal. The Office is also facing down some uncertainty over its future, since star Steve Carell has stated he will be leaving the show when his contract runs out at the end of this season. So do we see hints of this in the premiere? Any anxiety because of impending change or punched-up narrative and humor because friendly competition? No, not really. This was an episode of The Office that was…fine. The opening lip dub (an Internet phenom I have missed out on apparently) was very fun and a nice reminder of the series’ unique charms, but the rest of the episode was more or less rote, with few surprises or laugh out loud moments. Which, strangely, is about what I expect at this point. Oh well.

B/B-

Zombie Comedy Gold: The Lost Episodes of Better Off Ted

For those of you that saw the title and assumed this post had anything whatsoever to do with zombies or Shaun of the Dead or anything else like that I apologize. There will be no zombies here, and not just because I find myself rather impervious to the zombies and vampires fad that is so omnipresent these days. But, to those same people who might have thought this was about zombies I have a question: Did you watch Better Off Ted during its run on ABC? No? Shame on you and, in fact, you can consider that earlier apology rescinded, because you failed to embrace (or, likely, even be aware of) one of the great sitcoms of the decade.

Now, those may sound like big words, and, well, they are. But Better Off Ted deserves such hyperbole. The show centered around the titular Ted (Jay Harrington), a Research and Development whiz at a large international corporation called Veridian Dynamics. Ted's work life, and thus the show's narrative, revolved around his interactions with four uniquely crazy co-workers. His boss, Veronica (Portia DeRossi), a woman so deeply committed to her work that her personality is as sociopathic as the company she works for, Ted's sometimes crush, Linda (Andrea Anders), a product tester so beaten down by corporate life that she takes to ventures like stealing coffee creamer to assert her individuality, & Phil and Lem, a pair of R&D scientists utterly devoid of self-confidence. The series flung these characters into contact with a variety of loopy situations (naturally incandescent squirrels anyone?) and even more zany characters (my particular favorite being Dr. Bamba, a scientist with the personality of a Bond villain), but what really set the show apart was its peerless writing. Marked by the same mix of verbal play and social satire that made Arrested Development so successful, Better Off Ted's episodes were master classes in humor, with killer jokes and side-splitting exchanges that were as hilarious as they were plentiful.

Aired at odd times for two brief seasons on ABC, Better Off Ted was never given much of a chance by the network, which thought so little of its commercial prospects that the second season was burned off two episodes at a time last winter. What's worse, ABC pulled Better Off Ted from the air with two episodes to go before the second season ended. It had planned to burn these off in June, but the NBA Finals went to seven games (Damn you, Kobe Bryant!), bumping the lost episodes off the docket and apparently ending any hopes that they might see the air.

Surprisingly, there is something of a happy ending here for myself and other Ted cultists. The recently released DVDs of Better Off Ted's second season contain those lost episodes, and so, through the magic of Netflix Instant Watch, I am here to review them for you.

The first episode, "Swag the Dog," finds Ted placed in charge of another of Veridian’s plots to increase their workers’ productivity while the board of directors are in town. This time Ted is tasked with running a giveaway of company swag, useless knick-knacks like sweatshirts, water bottle holders, and the like. The employees get tickets for doing a good job, which leads to accusations of favoritism, and sexual liaisons, when Ted gives Linda more tickets than the others (and affectionately strokes her hair). Of course, Ted freaks out at the accusations, insulting Linda in the process and countering the rumors by stroking the hair of everyone he encounters in the hallway.

Phil and Lem seize upon the swag as a way to increase the amount of respect they receive in the office. They scheme to print counterfeit tickets so that they can buy matching Veridian Dynamics belt buckles. Phil and Lem being Phil and Lem their scheme soon explodes in a bonanza of fake tickets and faker hillbilly teeth. A situation like this would normally be cleaned up by Veronica, but she spends much of the episode wandering through the bowels of the Veridian building babysitting a former CEO out to find some long-lost documents that could shame the company.

There are some eminently quotable lines in “Swag the Dog,” and the payoff for some of the scenarios is priceless (namely Phil and Lem strutting down the hallway with large “VD” belt buckles, but the whole thing doesn’t hang together quite as well as most Ted episodes. The main plotline with the swag is only a slight variation on other plotlines the series has tackled before, and the Veronica storyline never really goes anywhere, though it does feature a pretty funny fight between and old man and a very skinny woman. The episode’s redemption comes at the end of the Ted/Linda plotline, which finally lets the characters play out all the simmering attraction and sexual tension they’ve built up and pushed down inside since the pilot. For someone who has seen every episode multiple times, it was a nice moment.

Our other zombie episode, “It’s My Party and I’ll Lie If I Want To” pares down the number of plotlines, essentially giving us dueling A stories. They are tied together by one of the show’s best gags, a machine that can detect lies based on the stress that telling a lie puts into the speaker’s voice. The buzz it emits when a lie is told leads to several scenes of wonderful farce, highlighted by Phil screaming after admitting that he is crippled by fear every moment of every day (Buzz, damn you!) and Veronica’s wonderful lies that are an “alarming mixture of sex and death” that the machine cannot pick up on.
In the first plotline Veronica gets annoyed by Ted’s recent bonding with smarmy executive Chet because their daughters have become friends in Veridian’s daycare center.  The Crisps go on a putt-putt date with Chet and his daughter Olivia, which results in Ted getting invited to join a prestigious new project, but also leads Rose to discover that she dislikes being made to lose at put-putt so her dad’s career can advance. Hearing these developments Veronica starts trying to muscle her way into the “Kid Mafia” by bringing her niece to the company’s daycare as a means of ingratiation.

The second plot tracks Phil and Lem’s attempts to become better friends with Linda after overhearing her place a stressed phone call. They invite her to join their Saturday night ritual of “Nachos and Bowling,” where they get trashed if their bowling score is higher than the percent of actual cheese in the nacho dip. Linda demurs, claiming heavy work responsibilities, but the lie detector’s buzzing reveals some hidden duplicity. The less-than dynamic duo overhear another of Linda’s phone conversations, listening in on what certainly sounds like a party invitation (“Oh yeah, everything, beer, hard liquor, everything, even strippers!”


Two separate parties help tie up the episode (and, sadly, the series). At Olivia’s birthday party Ted shows up sans Rose, who refuses to attend, and Veronica shows up with her neighbor’s daughter because her niece has not been allowed to attend (“My sister…thought I had developed a genuine interest in the child. What really hurts in all this is how little my sister knows me.”) Eventually Olivia gets wise to Rose’s absence, proffering the advice that she’s probably been murdered. This leads to a Chuck-E-Cheese-wide meltdown, which exposes both Ted and Veronica’s ruse. Across town Phil and Lem show up hammered to crash what they think is Linda’s party, only to discover that it’s an intervention for Linda’a alcoholic brother. Despite some initial incredulousness (“Oh, come on, peanuts, people crying, a priest…that’s a party!”) they quickly realize their crushing mistake and flee the scene, leaving the booze they brought with Linda’s flabbergasted brother.
The two plots reunite in a meeting room where the lie detector clears the air, buzzing when Linda feigns continued anger at Phil and Lem and not buzzing when Linda says she wants Ted to succeed but doesn’t want to be left behind by him. It’s a scene that seems purely BoT, peppered with humor (Phil and Lem’s “awwwwwwwwwwww” when they realize Linda still likes them) and using that humor to set up a nice bit of resolution for Ted and Veronica.

In all honesty, the “Kid Mafia” plotline didn’t do much for me. Chet is a wonderful throwaway character, showing up to insert some hilarious smarm once or twice an episode, but centering a whole story around him felt a bit labored. Even in the absurdist world of Better Off Ted he seemed somehow too much.  That being said, even if I wouldn’t call “It’s My Party and I’ll Lie If I Want To” one of Better of Ted’s better episodes , it’s a nice send-off for the series. It seems like the team behind Ted knew they weren’t long for this broadcast world, so they included some nice touches like Ted and Veronica’s non-confession confessions of solidarity and the three-way dance party in the lab that ends the episode and, thus, the series. If I were to try and sell someone on Better Off Ted I would not choose either of these episodes (Racial Sensitivity and Lust in Translation are my favorites), it’s still wonderful to see them eight months after the last new episodes were aired. I just wish I had more episodes to look forward to.

Episode grades: B/B+

Bits and Pieces (funny quotes or stuff worth commenting on that wasn’t in the reviews):

-          Extra oxygen to boost worker productivity is a sublimely wonderful gag.

-          “Drinking keeps me warm and approachable.”

-          “Apparently I’m the hot cup of sex you dip your strange and circular stuff into.”

-          “I see where this is going, Ted, and I’m not giving you a firm no.”

-          “I didn’t call you hideous. I called you repulsive”

-          “The jewelry, clothes, cattle. Cattle? Yes, cattle!”

-          “ ‘Thanks, Linda. You really are a girl.’ ‘Yes, I am, and it’s not just the genitals, it’s a whole lifestyle.’ ”

-          “I wish there was a third gender, something with boobs that was incapable of judging.”

-          Take it off, Father Sexy!”

-          No trademark Veridian commercial in “Swag the Dog,” which is too bad, those were often one of the show’s funniest segments

-          If you haven’t seen Better Off Ted the whole series (all of 26 episodes) is available with Netflix on Demand, so you can jump onto your computer/Xbox/whatever and watch the whole series. Do it. Right now. Seriously, don’t even think about it.

A Small-Scale Success in a Genre of General Gangrene

Going the Distance is certainly not a tremendous cinema experience. Its studio, Warner Bros, seems to agree, plopped into the late summer/early fall with little fanfare and very few expectations. And yet, I found this to be one of the most effortlessly successful films I've seen lately. That it is so winning is a testament to what would seem to be a very simple formula: charming, likable leads, a story that could easily have been lifted from a real person's life, and enough actual jokes to make the comedy part of the genre more than empty nomenclature. To see it succeed makes one wonder why so many other films of its type so often fail so miserably (usually  before they even begin).

To summarize for any that don't know, Going the Distance spins the story of Derrick (Justin Long) and Erin (Drew Barrymore), a couple that spends six blissful weeks together in New York before she has to jet back to the San Francisco Bay area to finish her graduate degree program. They spend the better part of the year that follows fighting to maintain their connection despite the continent separating them, an ordeal that leads to scenes of great humor and small (if effective) pathos. This is hardly revolutionary material, but its done with a sweetness and humor that make it entirely winning. In short, it's an excellent Saturday night date movie, especially if one is apt to bellow with laughter at Charlie Day (of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) doing his Charlie Chaplin impersonation in a bar populated by angry Jews.

 In thinking about Going the Distance I couldn't help but wonder why a movie like this is such a rarity. It seems like the Romantic Comedy genre (one I am probably prone to love due to my fondness for sitcom's predictable comforts) is far too often filled with films that cannot provide even the cursory satisfactions that are within easy reach. Look for example at a few such films from earlier this year like Leap Year with Amy Adams, The Back-Up Plan with Jeniffer Lopez, or The Switch with Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman. All of those films had attractive or charismatic leads who could have easily pulled off a funny date night movie. Yet they all got bogged down in ridiculous plot machinations and high-concept nonsense instead of settling down and telling a sweet, simple, funny story. It's a frustrating trend, especially if one is apt to trolling through cable looking for something easy to watch. Certainly I do not expect or even want every Romantic Comedy to be along the lines of Woody Allen's Annie Hall, but would it be so hard for Hollywood to create more films like Going the Distance? They would certainly be getting a bit more business from my fiance and I.

What To Watch (So You'll Know What I'm Writing About)

It's been nearly an hour (a whole hour!) since this blog's first ever post, so it's high time for there to be more content. What I'm going to put together here is a list of TV shows that I will be keeping track of this Fall, so if you're interested in reading what I have to say about them, well you should watch them too.

In no particular order:

Community
The Office
30 Rock
Modern Family
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
How I Met Your Mother
American Dad
Bones (occasionally)
Castle (it's like Bones on another network and with a different cast!...also only on occasion)
Parks and Recreation (whenever NBC puts it back on the air)
Boardwalk Empire (probably, maybe, depending on how frequently I have access to it)

I think that's about everything, though I have my eye on a few new shows (like FX's Terriers) that could work their way into the rotation. Don't be surprised if series like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, South Park, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, The Soup, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, or Conan's new thing with TBS show up here as well. I like all of them, but they don't all lend themselves to the kind of weekly reviews you'll be seeing from my listed shows. Oh, and since we're already like halfway through Mad Men's fourth season I'll just save all my thoughts on that for after its finale.

But before we get into the Fall TV season we still have to get out of the Summer, so look for a post that wraps up what was good (or at least watchable) on TV these past few months.

Hello

Hello, world, and welcome to the inaugural post on Midwestern Media Musings. My name is Alex Bean, and I will be your blogger. As you may have guessed from the title I am a Midwesterner through and through; born, raised, and lived my entire life within 40 miles of one of the Great Lakes in fact. I'm a voracious media consumer, analyst, and burgeoning critic, so most of what you'll see on here are my thoughts on whatever media products or issues are foremost in my mind. We may also dip into a little bit of college football, because, well, I'm from the Midwest and I can't help it. But that will be but a small part of what you'll be reading here! For the most part this will consist of reviews of current films, thoughts on new TV series (I'm a huge fan of sitcoms, so be prepared for that), and some longer features on those topics and more. Hope you enjoy it!