TV Diary
Friday, July 29, 2011
a) "Famous Food"
This is a new nadir (or zenith) of pointless VH1 reality shows, with Three 6 Mafia, Big Pussy from "The Sopranos" and a bunch of people from other reality shows competing to open a shitty restaurant or something. I watched this for a few minutes and saw DJ Paul yelling at Elliot Spitzer's hooker while the pilot guy from "The Bachelor" referred to him like his first name is "DJ."
b) "Roseanne's Nuts"
"Roseanne" is a classic show and Roseanne is in some ways still kind of a cool old broad, but even that recent New York magazine piece she wrote that was surprisingly level-headed and humble still had these weird off-putting moments of self-aggrandizing and paranoia. So a Roseanne reality show has pretty even odds of being entertaining or terrible, and what little I watched was both dull and obviously staged, much in the same way as that stupid Gene Simmons show.
c) "NTSF:SD:SUV::"
After "Children's Hospital" and "Eagleheart," this is now the third live action Adult Swim show that is basically a broad parody of a hoary genre of primetime TV drama, and making fun of "CSI Miami" is almost as played out as "CSI Miami" at this point. But hey, it works, I laughed, especially when J.K. Simmons showed up.
d) "Web Therapy"
Lisa Kudrow is undeniably funny and has carved out a pretty decent niche as a character actor post-"Friends," but sometimes in starring vehicles like "The Comeback" I feel like she can very easily veer into a kind of default Kudrow brand of funny that's not necessarily very funny, just kind of quirky or uncomfortable. This has some symptoms of that kind of thing, but feels like it has the potential to be something more, partly from the improvised nature of the show and partly because they've set up all these weird little subtle bits of plotting into the arguments that kind of keep you watching and not just waiting for the next laugh.
e) There's Something Wrong With Aunt Diane
Very disturbing and fascinating HBO documentary about this woman who drove the wrong way on a freeway with five kids in the car and had a head-on collision under mysterious circumstances a couple years ago. Being a parent now just makes me more horrified and obsessed with stuff like this.
f) "Alphas"
A new SyFy show that I vaguely want to get into, but the pilot just really didn't hold my attention at all, and it was an hour and a half long.
g) "Necessary Roughness"
Little by little USA is pulling me into their vortex of slight, cute shows -- this year alone I've gotten hooked on "Fairly Legal," "Suits" and now this. I don't like this one as much as the other two, but it's got potential.
h) A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner!
My wife has been watching "Fairly OddParents" for years and I've found it an intermittently entertaining but also kind of annoying show. But I felt really bad for the show seeing this awful garish live action movie version, and then really depressed when I found out that Savage Steve Holland of Better Off Dead fame directed this.
i) "Hollywood Treasure"
I thought the idea of a show about selling movie memorabilia could be interesting, but maybe they just haven't had any item I've cared about at all when I've tried to watch this.
j) "Young, Broke & Beautiful"
This show on IFC, basically a travel show about the hip 'underground' culture of every city it visits, isn't such a bad idea in and of itself, but it's really hard to stomach a host who calls himself Broke-Ass Stuart and keeps using "broke-ass" as a prefix for everything he possibly can. I watched this mainly for the Baltimore episode, which featured plenty of people and places I love and plenty I hate, but it was neither embarrassing nor particularly exciting to see, aside from the usual novelty of seeing local spots on TV.
k) "Happily Divorced"
John Michael Higgins is such a talented guy, it's a little sad to see him saddled with a show on TV Land playing second banana to Fran Drescher. But at the same time, Drescher is genuinely pretty funny, he could've done worse.
l) "The Artist Toolbox"
I chanced upon an episode of this show on PBS that was profiling John Legend, and found it really interesting, good relaxed in depth kind of interview show. But then, it looks like few of the episodes of this show are about musicians or even artists I've actually heard of, so I doubt I'll watch much more of this.
m) "Melissa & Joey"
I'm not sure why I'm still watching this show, it does have its moments of being funny, if in a very TGIF way. Also Taylor Spreitler is pretty cute.
n) "Talking To Strangers with Cee-Lo Green"
I loved this show when it premiered last year under the title "Lay It Down" and featured fantastic, casual, in depth interviews with people Cee-Lo had a genuine rapport with like Ludacris, Public Enemy, and Pharrell. This retooled version is much the same, but with a different title, an annoying theme song, a goofy-looking Cee-Lo puppet, and overall much less interesting interviews with less interesting subjects -- seriously, Grace Potter & The Nocturnals? Even when he got a decent guest in Keri Hilson, Cee-Lo mostly wanted to just flirt and make dirty jokes (which, hey, I can't really blame him, Keri looked incredible).
o) "The Marriage Ref"
Another show I enjoyed last year that has recently been retooled in a lot of small but unnecessary and annoying ways -- now there's a winner out of all the winners of arguments at the end of each episode? Just stupid. I'm glad they have the couples actually onstage now, it seemed a tad pointless to have a whole satellite linkup to their house.
p) "The Green Room With Paul Provenza"
I loved this show last year, with all the documentaries and podcasts about comedians discussing their craft out these days, this is easily one of my favorites because it's just so blue and spontaneous. The first new episode had a great lineup with Garry Shandling and Judd Apatow and Marc Maron and Ray Romano, but then they kinda screwed it up by having Bo Burnham there too and actually treating him with totally unwarranted respect and letting him sing one of his awful songs.
q) "Rizzoli & Isles"
Oh Rizzoli, oh Isles, I really enjoy this show more than I should admit. Even the fairly boilerplate dynamic of the tomboy and the girly one is played for laughs really well.
r) "Haven"
I'm way more excited about Stephen McHattie being on this show now that I've seen Pontypool -- still not a totally top notch show but definitely one of SyFy's best, some really nice eerie atmosphere.
s) "Warehouse 13"
Another not great but consistently good SyFy show, I feel like they've gelled into some pretty genuine comedic chemistry with this cast, as opposed to just trying to be lighthearted and funny.
t) "The Colony"
I feel like the neat thing about this show is that you could learn something from it, even if just theoretically what to do in a post-apocalyptic survival scenario, and hey, couldn't hurt to have an idea what to do in that situation if it ever comes up. They're not really good at maximizing the entertainment value of the show.
u) "Breaking Bad"
I binged on the third season of "Breaking Bad" all in one weekend in order to be caught up in time for the new season, and I almost went through it too fast to really be sure what I thought about it, but it didn't piss me off as much as the second season did. I'm not sure where they're going with the new episodes but I kind of hope it stops being these constant out of the frying pan and into the fire scenarios and settles into something a bit less over-the-top along the lines of the first season.
This is a new nadir (or zenith) of pointless VH1 reality shows, with Three 6 Mafia, Big Pussy from "The Sopranos" and a bunch of people from other reality shows competing to open a shitty restaurant or something. I watched this for a few minutes and saw DJ Paul yelling at Elliot Spitzer's hooker while the pilot guy from "The Bachelor" referred to him like his first name is "DJ."
b) "Roseanne's Nuts"
"Roseanne" is a classic show and Roseanne is in some ways still kind of a cool old broad, but even that recent New York magazine piece she wrote that was surprisingly level-headed and humble still had these weird off-putting moments of self-aggrandizing and paranoia. So a Roseanne reality show has pretty even odds of being entertaining or terrible, and what little I watched was both dull and obviously staged, much in the same way as that stupid Gene Simmons show.
c) "NTSF:SD:SUV::"
After "Children's Hospital" and "Eagleheart," this is now the third live action Adult Swim show that is basically a broad parody of a hoary genre of primetime TV drama, and making fun of "CSI Miami" is almost as played out as "CSI Miami" at this point. But hey, it works, I laughed, especially when J.K. Simmons showed up.
d) "Web Therapy"
Lisa Kudrow is undeniably funny and has carved out a pretty decent niche as a character actor post-"Friends," but sometimes in starring vehicles like "The Comeback" I feel like she can very easily veer into a kind of default Kudrow brand of funny that's not necessarily very funny, just kind of quirky or uncomfortable. This has some symptoms of that kind of thing, but feels like it has the potential to be something more, partly from the improvised nature of the show and partly because they've set up all these weird little subtle bits of plotting into the arguments that kind of keep you watching and not just waiting for the next laugh.
e) There's Something Wrong With Aunt Diane
Very disturbing and fascinating HBO documentary about this woman who drove the wrong way on a freeway with five kids in the car and had a head-on collision under mysterious circumstances a couple years ago. Being a parent now just makes me more horrified and obsessed with stuff like this.
f) "Alphas"
A new SyFy show that I vaguely want to get into, but the pilot just really didn't hold my attention at all, and it was an hour and a half long.
g) "Necessary Roughness"
Little by little USA is pulling me into their vortex of slight, cute shows -- this year alone I've gotten hooked on "Fairly Legal," "Suits" and now this. I don't like this one as much as the other two, but it's got potential.
h) A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner!
My wife has been watching "Fairly OddParents" for years and I've found it an intermittently entertaining but also kind of annoying show. But I felt really bad for the show seeing this awful garish live action movie version, and then really depressed when I found out that Savage Steve Holland of Better Off Dead fame directed this.
i) "Hollywood Treasure"
I thought the idea of a show about selling movie memorabilia could be interesting, but maybe they just haven't had any item I've cared about at all when I've tried to watch this.
j) "Young, Broke & Beautiful"
This show on IFC, basically a travel show about the hip 'underground' culture of every city it visits, isn't such a bad idea in and of itself, but it's really hard to stomach a host who calls himself Broke-Ass Stuart and keeps using "broke-ass" as a prefix for everything he possibly can. I watched this mainly for the Baltimore episode, which featured plenty of people and places I love and plenty I hate, but it was neither embarrassing nor particularly exciting to see, aside from the usual novelty of seeing local spots on TV.
k) "Happily Divorced"
John Michael Higgins is such a talented guy, it's a little sad to see him saddled with a show on TV Land playing second banana to Fran Drescher. But at the same time, Drescher is genuinely pretty funny, he could've done worse.
l) "The Artist Toolbox"
I chanced upon an episode of this show on PBS that was profiling John Legend, and found it really interesting, good relaxed in depth kind of interview show. But then, it looks like few of the episodes of this show are about musicians or even artists I've actually heard of, so I doubt I'll watch much more of this.
m) "Melissa & Joey"
I'm not sure why I'm still watching this show, it does have its moments of being funny, if in a very TGIF way. Also Taylor Spreitler is pretty cute.
n) "Talking To Strangers with Cee-Lo Green"
I loved this show when it premiered last year under the title "Lay It Down" and featured fantastic, casual, in depth interviews with people Cee-Lo had a genuine rapport with like Ludacris, Public Enemy, and Pharrell. This retooled version is much the same, but with a different title, an annoying theme song, a goofy-looking Cee-Lo puppet, and overall much less interesting interviews with less interesting subjects -- seriously, Grace Potter & The Nocturnals? Even when he got a decent guest in Keri Hilson, Cee-Lo mostly wanted to just flirt and make dirty jokes (which, hey, I can't really blame him, Keri looked incredible).
o) "The Marriage Ref"
Another show I enjoyed last year that has recently been retooled in a lot of small but unnecessary and annoying ways -- now there's a winner out of all the winners of arguments at the end of each episode? Just stupid. I'm glad they have the couples actually onstage now, it seemed a tad pointless to have a whole satellite linkup to their house.
p) "The Green Room With Paul Provenza"
I loved this show last year, with all the documentaries and podcasts about comedians discussing their craft out these days, this is easily one of my favorites because it's just so blue and spontaneous. The first new episode had a great lineup with Garry Shandling and Judd Apatow and Marc Maron and Ray Romano, but then they kinda screwed it up by having Bo Burnham there too and actually treating him with totally unwarranted respect and letting him sing one of his awful songs.
q) "Rizzoli & Isles"
Oh Rizzoli, oh Isles, I really enjoy this show more than I should admit. Even the fairly boilerplate dynamic of the tomboy and the girly one is played for laughs really well.
r) "Haven"
I'm way more excited about Stephen McHattie being on this show now that I've seen Pontypool -- still not a totally top notch show but definitely one of SyFy's best, some really nice eerie atmosphere.
s) "Warehouse 13"
Another not great but consistently good SyFy show, I feel like they've gelled into some pretty genuine comedic chemistry with this cast, as opposed to just trying to be lighthearted and funny.
t) "The Colony"
I feel like the neat thing about this show is that you could learn something from it, even if just theoretically what to do in a post-apocalyptic survival scenario, and hey, couldn't hurt to have an idea what to do in that situation if it ever comes up. They're not really good at maximizing the entertainment value of the show.
u) "Breaking Bad"
I binged on the third season of "Breaking Bad" all in one weekend in order to be caught up in time for the new season, and I almost went through it too fast to really be sure what I thought about it, but it didn't piss me off as much as the second season did. I'm not sure where they're going with the new episodes but I kind of hope it stops being these constant out of the frying pan and into the fire scenarios and settles into something a bit less over-the-top along the lines of the first season.
