a) "Hung"
Premium cable is full of mildly titillating comedy series like "Californication" and "Dream On" that are better about consistently featuring female nudity than actually writing funny scripts, which is what I was kinda what I half-expected when I heard that HBO was doing a show about a manwhore titled "Hung." Hopefully this show won't end up like creator Dmitry Lipkin's previous series, "The Riches," which also started out with a strong cast and premise, before gradually going down such a rabbit hole of pointless plot twists that I was ultimately relieved when it was cancelled after its 2nd season. The Alexander Payne-directed pilot was hysterical and very much reminiscent of Election, and subsequent episodes haven't been quite as funny but have settled into an interesting groove and taken the story in promising directions. Thomas Jane, who I'd previously only ever seen in really poor Stephen King adaptations, turns out to be perfect here, sometimes a bit too broad but never without payoff.

b) "Entourage"
Although it was actually funny and entertaining for the first couple seasons, "Entourage" has gradually become one of the shows described above, as it's kind of ceased to offer any laughs at all, and mainly so far this year has only really been watchable for Emmanuelle Chriqui lookin' totally ridiculous. That's kind of negated by E's new girlfriend being really creepy-looking, though.

c) "Michael & Michael Have Issues"
I kinda feel like these dudes weren't sure what kind of show they wanted to make, or kept retooling it in search of something, and now it's this jumbled multi-format thing where sometimes they're hosts, sometimes they're sketch actors, sometimes they're playing themselves as characters in broad situations. Maybe because I didn't see the first episode I just missed the concept, but I found this really hard to watch, and not particularly funny in any one of its forms.

d) "Daisy Of Love"
It was horrifying enough that this Daisy person even got to be a contestant on the freakshow that is "Rock Of Love" in the first person, so it's completely bizarre that she got her own dating show. But I'm glad she did, because they really assembled a fascinating rogue's gallery; my favorite was Fox. I kinda feel like now they should just use this show as the front with which to cast the next season of "Tool Academy," or just merge the two shows together. Also this is the only entertaining thing I have ever seen on the IMDb boards.

e) "Samantha Who?"
Man, this show was so good, I'm not surprised to see it cancelled, but I didn't really have a sense that it was on the bubble and was hopeful that it would keep going a couple more years. The last episode was good, at least.

f) "1000 Ways To Die"
I keep wanting this show to be engrossing and awesome, but the reenactments and cheesy tone of the whole thing make even the really interesting or horrifying stories seem fake and corny.

g) "The Tonight Show With Conan O'Brien"
God I fucking love Twitter Tracker.

h) Jessica The Hippo
I have a little bit of an inner Timothy Treadwell, who goes to the zoo and thinks about how awesome it would be to chill out with a bear or a lion or a rhino or something, so I always appreciate being able to watch Animal Planet shows that both allow me to indulge in that fantasy, and constantly remind me that, yes, these are huge dangerous animals that would inevitably kill me if I spent a lot of time around them unprotected. So it was kind of weird to watch one such special about a domesticated hippo that didn't have any kind of grim lesson like that, especially considering that hippos actually do kill a pretty large number of people in the wild every year. And the fact that John Waters narrated this made it all the more charming and surreal.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 03, 2009 at 10:51 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.