TV Diary
1. "The Venture Bros."
The premiere of the 3rd season was pretty much my second most anticipated televion event of the year (after the 5th season of "The Wire"), especially after I got the first two on DVD and realized this show's insane replay value. So with those lofty expectations in place, I'm still holding my breath a little bit even 4 episodes in now, not trying to worry about whether these new episodes are up there in the pantheon or not (and again, so much of the best stuff doesn't hit until repeat viewings that it's best not to invest too much in the first airing). And aside from the fact that 2 of the first 3 episodes went a little heavy on retconning and exposition, which was apparently an unintended side effect of another episode having animation problems and being moved back a bit in the season, it's been a strong start. I'm not a huge fan of the currently popular school self-referential comic/cartoon satire, or the whole nerd-baiting [adult swim] culture in general, but "Venture Bros." transcends a lot of the trends it belongs to by virtue of insanely dense plotting and wit.
2. "FNMTV"
Of course I was skeptical when I found out Pete Wentz and MTV would be joining forces for a new video show, but I really had no idea what a useless trainwreck this would be. It's like they decided "TRL" wasn't quite tedious enough, and added the overblown production values of the VMA's, and threw in a host who became a teen idol by looking cute playing bass and saying 2 lines of dialogue per video, but has absolutely no business holding a microphone and trying to read off a teleprompter. The dude makes even the channel's most vacuous VJ's look like seasoned pros by comparison. I remember "Hangin' w/MTV," and this is actually worse. But then, I have a cable package with MTV Hits and MTV Jams, so I don't really give a shit about whether regular MTV doesn't play videos.
3. "Good News Week"
When we went to Australia on our honeymoon last month, J.G. and I spent a fair amount of time in hotel rooms watching TV, but aside from news and morning shows most of the TV we saw was reruns of American shows. But this was by far the best find of the native programming, a weird quiz show thing with comedians riffing on current events, but more hard news-oriented than something like "Best Week Ever," and live and lose like "Whose Line" or "Politically Incorrect." If anyone knows somewhere I can watch this regularly online let me know, because we totally would.
The premiere of the 3rd season was pretty much my second most anticipated televion event of the year (after the 5th season of "The Wire"), especially after I got the first two on DVD and realized this show's insane replay value. So with those lofty expectations in place, I'm still holding my breath a little bit even 4 episodes in now, not trying to worry about whether these new episodes are up there in the pantheon or not (and again, so much of the best stuff doesn't hit until repeat viewings that it's best not to invest too much in the first airing). And aside from the fact that 2 of the first 3 episodes went a little heavy on retconning and exposition, which was apparently an unintended side effect of another episode having animation problems and being moved back a bit in the season, it's been a strong start. I'm not a huge fan of the currently popular school self-referential comic/cartoon satire, or the whole nerd-baiting [adult swim] culture in general, but "Venture Bros." transcends a lot of the trends it belongs to by virtue of insanely dense plotting and wit.
2. "FNMTV"
Of course I was skeptical when I found out Pete Wentz and MTV would be joining forces for a new video show, but I really had no idea what a useless trainwreck this would be. It's like they decided "TRL" wasn't quite tedious enough, and added the overblown production values of the VMA's, and threw in a host who became a teen idol by looking cute playing bass and saying 2 lines of dialogue per video, but has absolutely no business holding a microphone and trying to read off a teleprompter. The dude makes even the channel's most vacuous VJ's look like seasoned pros by comparison. I remember "Hangin' w/MTV," and this is actually worse. But then, I have a cable package with MTV Hits and MTV Jams, so I don't really give a shit about whether regular MTV doesn't play videos.
3. "Good News Week"
When we went to Australia on our honeymoon last month, J.G. and I spent a fair amount of time in hotel rooms watching TV, but aside from news and morning shows most of the TV we saw was reruns of American shows. But this was by far the best find of the native programming, a weird quiz show thing with comedians riffing on current events, but more hard news-oriented than something like "Best Week Ever," and live and lose like "Whose Line" or "Politically Incorrect." If anyone knows somewhere I can watch this regularly online let me know, because we totally would.
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on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 at 11:41 AM.
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Shaheem Reid pretending to be cool in the beginning of the Mixtape Monday segments are simply an atrocity.