July 2006 Archives

TeeVee Podcast Pilot (7.8 MB AAC audio, 32:44)

Let the bandwidth charges begin! TeeVee's inaugural podcast is just as shaky and uncomfortable as any pilot episode. It stars Philip Michaels, Lisa Schmeiser, and Jason Snell -- one of whom will likely be replaced by Heather Locklear if the podcast gets picked up as a series.

This episode's topics include: "Miami Vice" and other TV shows destined to be lousy movies; Steve Carell reads TV critics the collected works of Pete Ko; Vidiots share beefs about "Monk," "Rock Star," and "Without a Trace"; ways to improve "Scrubs."

If we ever do another one of these things, you can get it by subscribing to our podcast feed or subscribing via iTunes. (The feed might not work right now, but we promise to fix it before we record another podcast.)

Philip Michaels on Television Without Pity:

Miami Vice was a fantastic TV show, full of action, unintentional comedy, and stylish Italian footwear. It deserves its place in the television pantheon alongside other shows that helped define their era -- your Seinfelds, your All in the Families, your Beverly Hills 90210s. So let us go back to a simpler time -- a time when USA Today used to print what songs would be featured on Miami Vice in its Friday editions, when Don Johnson called people "pal" indiscriminately, when Philip Michael Thomas...respired. Let's hop in the WayBack machine and head to 1986...

You owe it to yourself to read the whole thing.

Writing for TeeVee has done something horrible to me: I'm now actively disappointed when I find a new show that isn't utterly godawful. It's just so much fun to give lousy shows the evisceration they so richly deserve. In that respect, the SciFi Channel's new summer series Eureka let me down. It is, I'm sad to report, actually sort of good.

Don't get me wrong -- it's not a patch on the new Battlestar Galactica, a series so ridiculously awesome, especially by SciFi's increasingly lowered standards, that its continued presence on the channel's lineup suggests either bribery, sudden head injuries among the network's executives, or sudden recovery from head injuries among those same executives. Fans of embittered television criticism may also be pleased to hear that it has some decidedly weak, insult-worthy elements. But on the whole, it's a surprisingly amiable, amusing, and even sporadically touching series.

As federal marshall turned new town sherriff Jack Carter -- seriously, why do all square-jawed TV law enforcement types have to be named Jack these days? -- Colin Ferguson is the show's biggest asset. He's funny, charismatic, and entirely willing to let himself look like an idiot -- the latter of which may stem from his previous stint as a cast member on NBC's ill-fated remake of Coupling. The writers do a decent job establishing Carter as a capable, likeable guy, and they've given him a pleasantly combative rapport with his troublesome daughter Zoe (Jordan Hinson), but in the end, Ferguson's performance makes the character -- and at least in the early episodes, the series -- shine.

Other standouts among the cast include the always-good Joe Morton as Henry, the town auto mechanic and jack-of-all-trades, who manages to shine despite a set of nubby middle-aged-man dreadlocks that do no one involved any favors. Neil Grayston is appealingly twitchy as Fargo, a creepy-funny ubernerd working for the think tank that employs most of the townspeople. Debra Farentino, who I remember best from EZ Streets, still makes a heck of an impression as a slinky, manipulative shrink who's actually some sort of traitor in Eureka's midst. Last but not least, there's the absurdly hot Erica Cerra, deadpanning wonderfully as Carter's hardassed, unflappable deputy. (SciFi's Web site tells me that Cerra previously appeared on The L Word. I have never wanted to watch Showtime more in my life.)

In addition, the writing -- while nothing you'd be tempted to write the Emmy committee about -- has some welcome meat to it. I was pleasantly surprised when the second episode followed up on some dangling plot threads from the pilot (available for online viewing), using one character's unresolved fate to drive a surprisingly poignant tale of loss and reconciliation. The whole business about Farentino's character, with her sinister agenda and unknown bosses, also seems promising.

So what doesn't work? Well, for starters, I wish the series would stop being so damn scared of its own concept. Despite taking place in a town full of superscientists, the show's science-fiction elements seem confined entirely to Star Trek-style technobabble and a few briefly glimpsed wacky gadgets. I suspect this may be the work of SciFi executives, who have grown notoriously terrified of anything resembling actual science fiction on their network, lest the Joe and Jane Sixpacks of the world grow confused by too many polysyllabic words. Maybe I'm just a nerd, but I'd be surprised if a few smart writers couldn't work the science aspect more fruitfully into Eureka's storylines without requiring viewers to lunge for a textbook. The "smart house" that bedevils Carter with its passive-agressive sulkiness is an admittedly good start -- here's hoping we see more as the series continues.

There's also a painfully contrived love interest in the form of government agent Alison Blake (Salli Richardson-Whitfield); the character's stiff and boring, and the actress has absolutely zero chemistry with Ferguson, despite the producers' awkwardly obvious attempts to shove them at one another. The boss of the think tank, Blake's estranged husband, is also a blank -- he's got the smug oiliness of Lois and Clark-era Dean Cain, crossed with the truly unfortunate facial stubble of classic Ron Silver. (I regret to report that he's also named Nathan. Thanks, Eureka producers. Thanks ever so much.)

In addition, Matt Frewer keeps showing up for some reason as the town dogcatcher, a role not exactly destined to rank among his best. Think the Reverend Jim from Taxi, crossed with Jim Carrey as Ace Ventura, then add the worst Australian accent ever to assault the ears of mankind. On second thought, don't.

I'm not sure if it's a credit to Eureka, or merely a commentary on the rest of the summer TV lineup, that I like the show despite its flaws. For a town beset by black holes, frequent explosions, and the occasional affront to the laws of physics, it's actually a fun place to spend an hour or so every week. You can see for yourself Tuesdays at 9/8 CT on SciFi. Do yourself a favor and keep one finger on the mute button, though -- just in case Frewer shows up.

Let's get this out of the way quickly: Life on Mars, airing Mondays on BBC America, is (despite the title) not remotely a sci-fi show. It's a cop show with a fantastic twist, but at its heart it's a cop show.

The premise, simplified: A modern-day police inspector named Sam Tyler (the excellent John Simm) is hit by a car and wakes up to discover himself... in 1973. He's still the same age he was, still carries a badge, but now he's wearing groovy threads and driving a 70s-era car. While trying to come to grips with the impossible situation he's found himself in, he's also got to do police work.

It's all a clever way to pit modern, politically-correct and CSI-influenced police work against the way it was done in old-school crime dramas. Tyler clashes with his boss, Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister) in just about every imaginable way, including several exchanges of punches. But neither of them is right all the time, and they slowly forge an odd synthesis of modern logical technique and old-school "rough 'em up a bit and then they'll talk" police work.

It's a premise like no other, but at its core it's still a fun '70s police drama, the likes of which we haven't seen since you-know-when. Although Sam continues to hear snatches of conversation that indicate that he might still be in a coma in the present day, that part of the premise never mutes or invalidates what's happening in the "real world" of 1973.

Life on Mars is one of the best police dramas to come along in years. Spend even ten minutes with it and you'll come to understand how lifeless, listless, and soulless shows like CSI and Law & Order are.

So at yesterday's Television Critics Association award ceremony, Steve Carell of The Office quite rightly won the award for best actor in a comedy.

That's not the weird part. The weird part is that in his acceptance speech, he quoted our own Peter Ko:

I have stood in a freezer full of dead people at the morgue. I have seen a man's scalp pulled back over his nose. I've even seen 35 minutes of Ellen DeGeneres's "Mr. Wrong." But I can now honestly say that until Steve Carell's turn in the premiere of Over the Top, I have never known true horror.

We love you, Steve. We loved you on The Daily Show. We love The Office. "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," which you wrote with another one of our faves, Judd Apatow? Digged it.

So we're glad you can laugh about Over the Top, now that it's in your rear-view mirror. As for our review, we think it's still pretty damned funny. Funnier than Over the Top, that's for sure.

Why, come to think of it, at the time your colleague Stephen Colbert wrote to us to say, "I would like to congratulate you on your Review of Over the Top. That is some good writing." High praise. And as we all know, Colbert's not one to say things he doesn't truly believe.

The people who make TV comercials confuse and disturb me. Take the folks behind the long running Carl's Jr. campaign, for example. What makes them believe that they can entice me into purchasing a delicious flame-broiled burger by showing me hairy truckers dribbling barbeque sauce down their stubbly chins? To my mind, that's the sort of imagery that should be hidden away in a dark corner of a web site somewhere, accessible for a nominal $5.99 charge on your major credit card; not thrust unceremoniously upon you during a Full House rerun. At any rate, it doesn't make me want to eat. The polar opposite, in fact.

My most recent source of bemusement is the series of AM/PM Mini Mart spots with which I am frequently bombared while watching the San Diego Padres lose. The ads seem to suggest that one of the primary draws of AM/PM -- coming in just after the scabby, yellow hamburgers and perpetually broken Icee machines -- is the host of colorful characters that frequent their many locations.

Come on in to an AM/PM near you, they beckon. If you do, you just might get the chance to:

• Be schooled on nerd etymology by some dork in a jeans jacket.


• Have a deranged bag lady jump up and cling to your chest like a baby gibbon because she approves of your soda selection.


• Watch a shrimpy guy with a speech impediment demonstrate the perils of venereal disease using a corn dog and a bag full of mustard. Oh, he calls it a "condiment cozy", but I know the standard, Army-issue Thai hooker lecture when I see it.

It's not that such freakish examples of the species don't exist. Likewise, it's not unusual to run across several of them at a convenience store at any given moment. I'm just not sure how calling attention to that fact is supposed make me want to run out and buy a Slim Jim.

Still, you have to give them points for their refreshing honesty. And I must admit that I'm looking forward to future ads so that I can see some of the other pals that I've met at AM/PM over the years, such as:

• The haggard man with the hollow eyes who just stands at the magazine rack and stares at the discretely covered Hustlers. Doesn't leaf through them. Doesn't even pick them up. Just stares and stares. And smells like feet.


• The kid with some foul bacterial infection that causes mucus to ooze from his very pores, who dips his snot-encrusted mitt directly into the nacho cheese vat while his clueless fat Mom loads up her chili dog.


• The friendly fellow who insists on explaining to you the fundamental differences between Screaming Yellow Zonkers and Fiddle Faddle, even though you're there to buy Hostess Donette Gems. You don't think he works there or anything, but he's there every time you go. Every time. Oh, and he also smells like feet.


• The asshole Russian clerk who would not sell me a twelver of Bud Light even though his own damned watch clearly showed that it was only 1:58 AM!

Bored with summer TV? Listless in the absence of your favorite shows? Posessed by the distinct sensation that there simply aren't a sufficient number of gun-toting chimpanzees in your life? Then by all means, make haste with great speed to the SciFi Channel's Web site, where you can watch the insanely wonderful new pilot, The Amazing Screw-On Head.

Born from an oddball single-issue comic book by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola -- who confessed at the time that he mainly did it to goof around and have a bit of fun -- and brought to the screen by Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me mastermind Bryan Fuller, Screw-On Head is a welcome blast of goofy, spooky fun. Imagine Monty Python and H.P. Lovecraft collaborating on a Raiders of the Lost Ark-type adventure, and you've got the general idea.

The title character, enthusiastically voiced by Paul Giamatti, is an intrepid robot secret agent who can fasten his head to a series of interchangeable bodies. Together with his manservant Mr. Groin (Patton Oswalt) and his loyal canine ally Mr. Dog, Screw-On Head battles the forces of evil at the behest of President Abraham Lincoln. In the pilot, faithfully adapted from the comic, that means preventing the nefarious Emperor Zombie (David Hyde-Pierce) and his vampiric lost love Patience (Molly Shannon) from unleashing a reptilian demigod to wreak endless horror upon the United States.

I'll pause for a moment here while you try to make sense of any of that. (Good luck.)

Coherent? Not in the least. Entertaining? Oh, indeed. The show captures Mignola's shadowy, angular art style in striking fashion. And Fuller, whose snarky sense of humor couldn't be a better fit for the project, expands upon Mignola's funny asides and bizarre concepts with relish. Giamatti reads his lines with a charmingly hammy earnestness, while Hyde-Pierce makes Emperor Zombie a cheery academic whose area of interest just happens to involve hideous monstrosities unfit for the eyes of mortal men. (Which is fine by him, since he isn't mortal and doesn't have eyes.) Even Shannon, who I found skin-crawlingly horrible during her approximately 500 years on Saturday Night Live, is actually pretty good here. And did I mention there's a chimp with a machine gun?

Best of all, Screw-On Head's online debut represents a startlingly smart move for a TV network I've only recently and grudgingly stopped loathing. SciFi, perhaps realizing that this series is nearly impossible to market in any conventional fashion, is actually soliciting viewers' opinions about the show through an online survey. Presumably, if enough viewers respond favorably, we'll get more ludicrously entertaining adventures of the Amazing Screw-On Head. I, for one, can only hope we do.

So I've got this theory that part of the reason that TV fandom acts so entitled ("I demand that these two characters get together romantically, while that other character gets written off the show. Also, that character should go to college, majoring in Communication. And this other character should get a pony") is the mainstreaming of fan fiction.

In the Good Old Days, people used to just shut up and take whatever the writer shoved at them. And I think that's a good thing, since in my experience, we should leave the crafting of compelling plots and characters to the professionals. But these days, everyone wants their personal favorite character to get elected prom queen every episode. And not only that, they have online petitions and probably clever rhyming slogans.

Now, I was going to elaborate on this theory by using examples, but it turns out that the example I was going to use involves a spoiler for a popular television show, and some people get mad when I cheerfully spread spoilers about the internet. So instead of ruining the surprise for everyone, I've decided to resort to a timeworn comedic premise such as you might see in the pages of MAD Magazine:

What the Comic Strip Peanuts Would Be Like If Fandom Was Always Like This

1957: Charlie Brown successfully kicks the football for the first time.

1962: A newspaper editorial calls Charles Schulz "history's greatest monster" for not letting Schroeder and Lucy get together.

1964: A newspaper editorial calls Charles Schulz "history's greatest monster" for letting Schroeder and Lucy get together.

1966: Fans get impatient with the Red-Haired Girl plotline, declare that she's not worthy of Charlie Brown, and get 10,000 signatures on a petition for Charlie Brown to get a new girlfriend, one who knows magic. And rides a flying unicorn.

1971: Insert standard "Peppermint Patty and Marcie" joke.

1983: Fans with long memories insit that Shermy has gotten "short shrift" from Schulz, since he hasn't actually appeared in the strip since 1952.

1985: An unexpectedly large group of German fans with large white mustaches insists that the Red Baron kill Snoopy.

February 10, 2000: Charles Schulz dies -- TWO DAYS EARLIER than he did in real life.