Steve Lutz on the merits of watching and skipping commercials; Six Angry Vidiots discuss the Emmys, the new fall season, TV on DVD, "Rescue Me," "The Amazing Race," and... Angela Lansbury?
Want more? You can subscribe to our podcast feed or subscribe via iTunes.
The most recent episode of Rescue Me was totally awful. It sucked so mightily, I cannot even describe its sucking. Put everything bad about the show into one episode, and you've got it.
Spoilers follow. (In case anyone's still watching.)
There comes a point in some shows where I start to feel that the writers are just torturing the characters for fun. Maybe they've been on the show for so long they hate the characters and want them to suffer. Maybe they think by making the characters miserable, the actors and writers will garner award nominations. It worked for Rescue Me, where Denis Leary got himself nominated for best actor in a drama. Drama? Is this a drama now? Did someone tell, um, anyone involved with the show? Because it's been a lot more like a comedy -- at least the good parts.
But the most recent episode, no, that was a bad comedy.
Last season when Tommy's son was killed by a drunk driver, okay, the writers were toying with the character of Tommy. Making his life lousy (or lousier) just to put him through the wringer. But I was willing to go along with it because, hey, sometimes bad things happen.
This season when Tommy's brother was killed, that was too much. That right there is simply the writers fucking with Tommy. I mean, yes, firefighters die. Police officers die. Kids are killed by drunk drivers. But all in the same family? All at once? Maybe in real life something that awful could happen to someone. Sure. But I'm figuring Tommy's wondering why his life seems to go down the shitter every 12 episodes.
Tommy's brother dying is supposed to be a big deal, even if a season or two ago a totally different actor played him for half the season and no one noticed. Okay. I'll play along. It's gratuitous, it's unnecessary. It's dumb. But I'll go along just this far, until...
Until the funeral, where the never-before-mentioned deaf sister shows up and it turns out half the cast knows sign language to communicate with her. There was actually about ten minutes of expository dialogue amongst the various characters just to explain how all of this happened. And then on top of that, Tommy's sister decides to get married in the graveyard in the least believable marriage scene in the history of moving pictures.
I sat there, watching this, asking if there was some point earlier in the season where Tommy got hit on the head, because I was sure he was going to wake up and find the third season had all been a dream.
In fact, that would have been preferable to finding everyone trying to play this crap straight.
My only guess is, Rescue Me isn't coming back. And the producers only just got word of it. So they're trying to wrap up the series in two episodes by throwing everything they've got at it.
Except, you know, good writing. Which I guess they ran out of.
For me, midnight is the cruelest hour.
At midnight, the wife and daughter have already been asleep for a couple of hours, and a decidedly peaceful mood has settled over the house. Not a creature stirs, not even the morbidly obese cat splayed out immodestly at my feet, and I am free to sit and absorb the silence in solitude. All is calm, and then... gradually, into that quiet reflection creeps the uncomfortable feeling that something is missing. And my mind invariably turns to remembrances of my wilder, younger days.
Ah, the bachelor years. The blatant disregard for liver health and personal hygiene! The carefree liberty of the squalid rental unit, coated in a quarter-inch thick layer of dust and filled with the delightful aroma of socks 'n' flatulence! The bountiful cornucopia of the hand-me-down refrigerator, filled to brimming with Jeno's Pizza Rolls and half-empty pouches of Buddig shaved lunch meats! The ever-present and totally undelivered-upon promise of wanton sex with assorted, nubile bachelorettes, most of whom were still bachelorettes for very good reasons!
Yeah, well, I don't miss any of that. Miserable cesspit of an existence, that was. I'd sooner staple my scrotum to a barrel cactus than think back fondly on that horrible, horrible time.
Except at midnight, when I miss Mystery Science Theater 3000.
For the daily midnight airing of MST3K was as constant and beloved a presence during my college years as the mysterious thing in the orange Tupperware container at the back of the fridge that had once been an enchilada but had since grown gills and was rapidly attaining sentience.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 was ostensibly a show about a stoned guy and two very cheap looking robots who are marooned in space and forced to endure terrible B-movies as part of a mad scientist's experiment. On a deeper level, it was really about the dark, frozen winters of Minnesota, and how the geeks of that great state occupy those months when they don't care much for Vikings football. These particular geeks evidently chose to watch a lot of very bad movies and make fun of them vocally, and they became so very, very good at it that somebody gave them their own two hour slice of airtime with which to despoil crappy films for a national audience.
The show was funnier than hell, and unexpectedly popular. In fact, MST3K was largely responsible for keep the fledgling Comedy Channel afloat through its early growing pains so that now, as Comedy Central, it may bring you such uproarious fare as Mind of Mencia, episodes of Mad TV from 1996, and this week's seventeenth feature film presentation of "Half-Baked". So strong was MST that it even weathered an eighth-season move to the Sci-Fi Network, where repeated attempts to turn the show awful still could not bring it down to the unwatchable level of the network's other programming.
Like that thing in the refrigerator, MST just disappeared one day. Oh, we hadn't watched either of them for years, but it was somehow comforting to know that they were still around. Then, in the blink of an eye, they were both gone. MST3K vanished from the airwaves, leaving a legacy of ten hilarious seasons worth of great movie riffing. Soon after, the Tupperware thing vanished from the fridge, leaving only a faint medicinal odor and a note reading, "Moving to Bozeman to be with Jeanette. Don't try to follow me." (We didn't.)
So Mystery Science Theater, like those ghastly years that harbored it, is but a distant memory. But while I eventually grew up, met a nice girl, and started wearing pants around the house on a more regular basis, I never got completely over the show's loss. Sometimes, in those quiet spaces in the night, I swear I can still hear a soft "Hi-Keeba!" whispered on the breeze.
Thank goodness, then, that I can now revisit those days of vomitous debauch and great comedy with Mike Nelson's RiffTrax.
Casual fans of MST3K might only recognize Nelson as the guy who took over hosting duties when Joel Hodgson left the show. But even while Joel was around, Mike was always there behind the scenes acting as Head Writer; the "fourth puppeteer," if you will. As a result, Mike has probably spent more time making up funny things to say about dismal movies than anybody else on the planet. And apparently it's either a pretty great gig, or that's his only marketable skill, because he's back at it once again.
Actually, he never really stopped. In the time since MST3K hit the skids, Mike has been retained to do a couple of DVD commentaries, most notably for the recent re-release of "Reefer Madness." The problem is, for some reason certain humorless movie studio executives aren't too keen on paying some guy to eviscerate their films. So Mike decided to work around the issue by releasing his own commentary tracks via the web. This allows him to shift his focus from shaking down important Hollywood types -- which is difficult -- to shaking down common folk such as you and me -- which is both easy and rewarding.
So here's how this thing works. You go to the RiffTrax site and shell out an exceedingly reasonably $1.99 via your PayPal account or major credit card. This enables you to download the MP3 of the commentary track. You then transfer the track to your handy-dandy portable MP3 player, or burn it to a CD, or whatever.
(In my case, I watched the movie with WinDVD, and played the commentary track in Windows Media Player, which worked out nicely because I could use the equalizer in WiMP to change the commentary volume relative to the movie audio. I'm not sure how you Mac people would go about setting things up, but you probably have some built-in, much easier-to-use application that does everything automatically and comes in seven designer pastels. You smug, stylish bastards.)
Finally, you pop your DVD into your player, follow the simple audio instructions to synch the commentary to the DVD, and you're off and running.
Or, if you're an anal obsessive like myself, you're off and spending the next 45 minutes attempting to get an absolutely perfect synch between the two tracks. In order to make them match up properly, Mike tells you to pause the commentary, then unpause it when the MGM lion finishes his first roar. But the inconsiderate lion never goes silent after his first roar, instead dropping to a quiet, rolling belch before launching into the second roar.
There really aren't any places in the commentary where the synch has to be perfectly timed, so this will probably not present a problem for less freakish folk than myself. Because that describes virtually everyone, I will spare you from reading about the machinations I had to go through to re-synch things every time I got up to take a leak. Suffice it to say that OCD-sufferers would do well to invest in a pack of Depends before launching into this endeavor.
The first RiffTrax is a long overdue tongue-lashing of the Patrick Swayze clunker, "Road House". The upside is that this is a truly horrible movie, ripe for the riffing. The downside is that you will have to have a copy of "Road House" in order to enjoy it. Worse still, if you don't already own "Road House" you will have to rent or buy a copy, and there's a good chance you may be seen. Don't think you can avoid embarrassment by renting from NetFlix, either. That stuff all ends up in a big database, you know, only to resurface years later when you try to run for public office.
By the way, if you're wondering where the hell one might buy a copy of an awful 17-year old movie about a legendary bouncer who's bustin' heads and breakin' hearts in a town full of rednecks, I have two words for you: Wal. Mart. In fact, many Wal-Mart locations have a conspicuously placed sign out front, reading either, "Yes, we have Road House!" or, "Next shipment of Road House due in 3 days. Form line here."
As for the commentary track itself, it's suitably hilarious. The riffs are somewhat sparse by late-season MST standards, but that's probably necessary due to the uncertainty of the commentary's timing. It's a definite treat to finally get to enjoy Mike's wit alongside a film that was not edited for television (read: "Boobies!"), just as it's oddly invigorating to finally hear him curse. Overall it's a solid first effort for his new venture, and I expect the tracks will only improve as he figures out what works and doesn't, and comes up with new ideas for the format.
One word of caution: Avoid listening to the commentary track by itself. Apparently Mike bought a pretty sweet microphone, because the thing picks up all of his unsavory mouth sounds, from lip licking to the soft clack of his fillings conking together. If you listen to the commentary in isolation on headphones, you will hear all of this up close and in stereo. It's not unlike having a tiny little man inside your ear, feverishly trying to dig a chunk of spinach out of your cochlea with his tongue. That's not nearly as hot as it sounds.
Apart from that, my only criticism is that it takes a lot of getting used to having just Mike Nelson doing the riffing. In MST3K, the presence of the 'bots allowed for three riffers to play off of each other. This made for lots of funny, sometimes off-the-cuff banter, and it gave the show the feel of a bunch of good friends just sitting around and cracking wise. For this solo commentary, apart from the rare bit of back-and-forth with the "Disembaudio", Mike is entirely on his own, and it initially comes off as a bit strained. In spite of myself, a couple of times in the first few minutes I caught myself thinking, "Is this jackass behind me going to talk through the whole show?" I got over that pretty quickly, but it definitely seems like Mike's commentaries would get a big boost with the addition of another voice or two.
Fortunately, it looks like Mike's already had that idea, since the just-released commentary track for "Star Trek V" also features the vocal stylings of none other than Kevin Murphy, the long-time voice of Tom Servo, himself. Apparently, Mr. Murphy has finished traipsing around the globe watching movies with Bushmen and such. He also apparently is not above making himself available for a mere dollar increase in track price -- nearly 50% less than Nelson charges for his own presence, I might add -- a typically humble move for which I salute him.
(UPDATE: Since posting this review, I have discovered that the cost increase to $2.99 is the result of the site moving out of beta status. So it turns out that Mr. Murphy is being thrown in at no additional cost to you. What a bargain!)
Since I suffered through "Road House", Mike has also recorded tracks for "The Fifth Element" and the aforementioned "Star Trek V", and has made available for download three of the previous tracks that he recorded for DVD releases. This all happened in the space of a couple of weeks, so you can likely expect a vigorous release schedule, assuming that he actually sells a couple of these things.
So whether you're a recovering MST3K addict, or just want to re-connect with your inner drunken slob, I heartily endorse RiffTrax. Sure, you could watch execrable Patrick Swayze films without it, but I wouldn't recommend it.
There's an easy way to spot the masters of any given creative art. They're the ones who can totally phone it in, skating by for the sake of a paycheck, and still turn out something better than a good 95 percent of their peers. Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing (or as I like to think of it, Magical President Jed Bartlett and His Fightin' Liberal Awesomeness Brigade), is one of those guys. He could write damn good television blindfolded, with one hand behind his back, while fast asleep. Which is pretty much what he's done with his new NBC drama, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.
Don't get me wrong -- Studio 60 has that signature zing that makes Sorkin's TV work so marvelously watchable. There are several lines in the Studio 60 pilot (helpfully obtained from Netflix) that made me laugh out loud, including one that absolutely kills. And Sorkin knows how to pace and structure a scene, how to enter and exit it at precisely the right moments, how to introduce characters in memorable and delightful ways, like no one else in the business. Sorkin's longtime pal and director Thomas Schlamme is also in fine form, getting lively performances from the cast and roving his camera through the show's cleverly designed and detailed sets with restless energy. Studio 60 has just one problem: There's nothing here, not one blip, that we haven't seen from Sorkin before.
Good guys and bad guys so clearly delineated that they can be seen from space with the naked eye? Studio 60's got 'em. Steven Weber's loathsome, corpselike automaton of a network suit -- and I intend that description as a sincere compliment to his performance -- and his slimy standards-and-practices lackey both might as well have big flashing "EVIL!" signs over their heads. Manly camaraderie between smart guys in rumpled formalwear? Present and accounted for. Long stretches of dialogue where characterization is blatantly hijacked so that Sorkin can make points of varying accuracy and importance about things that bother him? Twice. (Once about the increasing awfulness of television, and once about, uh, why filming in Vancouver is dumb. One of these things is not like the other, Mr. Sorkin.)
Heck, there's even another president whose awesomeness verges on science fiction, albeit in the decidedly non-Martin-Sheenish person of Amanda Peet. As Jordan McDeere, Peet is the prettiest, most bestest TV network president ever, brimming with guts and integrity and gee-golly Frank Capra grins. Also, we are told flat-out that everyone in Hollywood wants to sleep with her, which is admittedly not beyond the realm of possibility. At one point, she tells two of the other characters, "You don't know it, but I'm gonna be your dream come true." Gee, you think? There's nothing wrong with Peet's performance, but Sorkin's lazy writing undercuts her by never letting the viewer feel like Jordan is facing a challenge or taking a real risk, no matter how supposedly brave and radical her actions. Sorkin's made her too awesome and pretty and good to ever lose.
Matthew Perry, finding it safe to return to TV now that Joey is dead, and Bradley Whitford, fresh from seven years of peerless jackassitude and Donna abuse on The West Wing, are the pilot's greatest strengths. They play Matt and Danny, former writers tapped to return to the show from whence they were exiled after their Lorne Michaels-ish mentor nukes his career with an on-air jeremiad against the evils of modern TV. You can effortlessly believe that these are smart guys and loyal friends, and when it turns out that Danny's recently fallen off the wagon after 11 cocaine-free years, Whitford conveys his humiliation -- and haunted temptation -- with conviction. It doesn't hurt that their characters are likely the closest to Sorkin's actual experience, nor that Perry, in what was doubtlessly a huge stretch for his acting abilities, gets to play his character loaded to the gills with painkillers for the entire pilot.
We can only hope that the rest of the cast gets rounded out as well as Matt and Danny in future episodes. In the pilot, we're given glimpses of Timothy Busfield's nice-guy director, as well as the "Big Three" stars of the sketch comedy show-within-a show, but Sorkin's too busy with Matt, Danny, and Jordan McDeere, Wonder Executive, to give us much of a feel for any of the rest of them. Sarah Paulsen, as star comedienne Harriet Hayes, comes closest, and it's nice to see her get more of the spotlight after small but terrific turns in films like Down With Love and Serenity. But even Harriet's a rose-colored Sorkinism -- a devout Christian for all the right reasons, possessed of an open mind and a sense of humor despite the depth of her faith. I guess her character's meant to be a radical departure from the way mainstream TV usually portrays religious types, but again, Sorkin gives us nothing challenging about her.
(As for the other two members of the supposed Big Three, D.L. Hughley so far seems to be standing very, very still, and hoping no one will recognize that he used to be on a terrible sitcom. Nathan Corddry of The Daily Show rounds out the trio as its Jimmy Fallon-ish youngster, and while I've got nothing against him, there's already one Jimmy Fallon too many on TV, thank you.)
There's one more huge, glaring flaw -- the only one dangerous enough to risk sinking the series. On The West Wing, Sorkin could get away with an amped-up sense of dramatic, because he was dealing with The Big Issues: civics, patriotism, world events. But Studio 60 trades the White House for, well, TV sketch comedy. (Admittedly, that may not be much of a leap these days.) Studio 60's subject matter lacks The West Wing's innate gravitas, and when Sorkin tries to use his new show as a soapbox for free speech or whatever he's all fired up about, it threatens to get downright silly.
Am I gonna watch Studio 60? Of course. Even on autopilot, Aaron Sorkin makes fun, compelling TV, and Studio 60 is no exception. I just wish he'd wake up, take off the blindfold, untie that one hand and do something mind-blowingly awesome with his considerable talent, instead of something that's merely good. As it is, his attacks against complacent, gutless TV start to ring hollow when it turns out that Sorkin himself is cranking out a calculated, risk-free pastiche of his own greatest hits.
To: teevee@teevee.org
Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2006 14:30:36 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: "AMERICA'S GOT TALENT" TO SHOWCASE A TRUE VARIETY OF SPECIAL PERFORMANCES DURING THURSDAY'S LIVE-RESULTS SHOW
AMERICA STARES LISTLESSLY AT ITS TELEVISION
"America's Got Talent" Judge David Hasselhoff To Sing "Jump In My Car," Cirque du Soleil to Perform "ZUMANITY" and Talk Show Host/Comedian Tom Green To Make A Daring Attempt
America sobs quietly to itself.
"America's Got Talent" judge David Hasselhoff will sing his European single, "Jump in My Car" with his former "Knight Rider" co-star, "K.I.T.T." making a special appearance as well.
America, not so much in a fit of despair, but bowing to what it realizes is an inevitability, gets the gun down from the closet and puts it in its mouth.
Arguably the most daring celebrity act in tomorrow night's lineup, talk show host and comedian Tom Green will make an attempt to skate board through a ring of fire.
America blows its fucking brains out, and is at peace in the glorious silence and remove.
I ranked the first two episodes of the SciFi Channel's Eureka as "mildly amusing, does not suck." But last night's episode was quietly and surprisingly awesome.
Written for the screen by John Rogers of Global Frequency, the episode dealt with a creep of a scientist using a memory-wiping device to blank other his colleagues' memories and steal their discoveries. Watching the characters repeatedly lose their short-term recollections thanks to him, and piece together the mystery several times over, was fun enough.
But the episode took a huge leap in quality when the scientist's also-brilliant wife began to question whether he'd used the device on her: to keep her from leaving him, to take credit for all the advances she'd actually come up with, and even possibly to erase all the memories she had of her one true love. To its credit, Rogers' script deliberately left those unsettling questions unanswered. It was all written subtly and intelligently, deftly working in the theme of memory throughout the episode, and sold with some really strong and moving performances by the series regulars and guest star (and possibly new recurring character) Tamlyn Tomita.
Plus, they had a 12-year-old Warholesque theater impressario, more of the increasingly funny smart house, none of Matt Frewer the crazy dogcatcher, and a high-school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream with Barbarella-style costumes and functioning jetpacks, which, well, you can't go wrong there.
I'm hoping this episode was less of a one-off fluke, and more an indication of a series finding its footing. (Angel vet David Greenwalt's presence as Eureka's consulting producer happily suggests the latter.) The series is still no Battlestar Galactica, but this week's show was smarter, more entertaining, and more honestly touching than large chunks of the most recent season of Lost.
