New TV Guy I'm following: Jorma Taccone

Anyone who ever followed The Lonely Island before they hit SNL (in other words, if you're me and my friend, Kristen -- hi Kristen!), you remember Jorma Taccone. On SNL he's a bit player in the Digital Shorts, always being upstaged by the okay-I-like-him-too Andy Samberg. But now it looks like he has a recurring role as a cocky, bad-boy artist type on Girls. Here, he's not playing a man-boy but a manly-man.... Either way, I'm a fan.

Glad to see Jorma is getting his own time to shine!


It was my favorite episode thus far, I'll admit... stuff might actually start to happen on this show! That is not to say that it was impeccable. Hannah's homophobic reaming-out of her out-of-the-closet ex was cringe-worthy to say the least. (At times, Lena's character is the hardest to like (even as people keep telling me that she reminds them of me... hmmm.))

Go On... Or Don't.

Apparently, Matthew Perry has a new show lined up for next season.


Entitled "Go On," this show will star "Perry... as a cheeky sportscaster who tries to move on from loss and finds comfort from the members of his mandatory group-therapy sessions."


A cranky professional in the media industry? You mean, like Studio 60? Oh no no no you mean like Mr. Sunshine?


Matthew Perry, I'm rooting for you, but stop playing the same role. Especially if that same role hasn't meant a hit show since Friends (in which you weren't even that ornery, except for sometimes, like a normal person). Think differently. Play someone else. Do a drama. Play a really cheerful person. Do. Something. Fresh. People didn't want to see Matt LeBlanc beat the Joey character into the ground, but he just won a Golden Globe for his role in the British show, "Episodes"! In which he played itself? Maybe a bad example. I haven't seen Episodes though... maybe LeBlanc plays himself... but differently. Oh, I don't know.


The point is: Matthew Perry, I want to see your range! I find you endearing, and I'm rooting for you, but I will not watch you play the same character over and over... unless you find a really killer vehicle. 


Like, why doesn't NBC just put you in BFF? Best Friends Forever! I can't believe you are canceling it, NBC! I'm still so mad at you. 

Save BFF!

I cannot believe my favorite new sitcom, Best Friends Forever, is being cancelled! For those of you who are not watching it: you should. If you like women. And comedy. And brilliance. Watchitwatchitwatchit. It's online. Lennon Parham and Jessica St. Clair write and star in this incredible show. It has the fast pace of "Happy Endings," and, I would argue, even more heart with its snappy repartee.

That said, it won't do any good to just watch it online. If you haven't watched it, first do that, so that you can get behind me on this. I have two ideas right now:

1. We should bombard NBC with stuff. Like how they sent peanuts to save that show, Jericho. (Wasn't it Jericho?) We could send... I have no idea what we'd send. Steel Magnolias DVDs? Best Friend bracelet charms? Ooh that second one could be cute.

2. Tina Fey, Whitney Cummings, any women TV powerhouses/showrunners out there: help your sisters out! This is a great show, and y'all need to support each other, please!

BFF depicts female friendships in a way that is both startlingly honest and really, really funny. So support it, watch it, complain about how it was cancelled, and maybe it'll come back...? Wishful thinking?

Who Run HBO? Girls.

Judging from only the pilot, "Veep" is shaping up to be one of my favorite new shows. It reminds me of vintage "Office" but without all the cringing. The dialogue is snappy and quite funny, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (who I already love from "Seinfeld" and "New Adventures of Old Christine") kills as VP Selina Myers. Louis-Dreyfus is clearly an intelligent performer, and it is a delight to watch her play an intelligent and capable woman. I mean, granted, she makes a lot of goofy gaffes, and this is only episode 1, but Selina must be a pretty smart cookie to have gotten to be VP, right? Anna Chlumsky (welcome back!), Tony Hale (playing a spin-off of Buster Bluth?), and Matt Walsh round out this fabulous cast. It's a sharp and fast-paced political spoof -- how can you say no? I'll keep you posted on this show as it develops... ha that makes me sound like a news anchor, huh?

But, ahem, speaking of parodies, I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out what to say about the new show, "Girls." This show was clearly written for "me" -- it is supposed to be about "me," right? An over-educated twenty-something white New Yorker with writing aspirations... check, check, and check. (To think, if only I'd known people cared about my friends and their dumb problems, I could have sold this to HBO YEARS AGO.) Is this show for "us," as critic Emily Nussbaum? And if so, is "us" a bunch of entitled, obliquely-racist brats? What am I supposed to make of this show? Internet, tell me what to think and feel!

Having watched the second episode, I think my relationship with "Girls" is not as "complicated." In the pilot, I felt a bit as if I was hanging out with someone else's friends. I got the jokes, I just didn't like them enough to find the jokes even funnier than they actually are. Now, I have come to a conclusion that was partially aided by having watched "Veep." It's this:

I think "Girls" might be a parody.

Now, I'm a bit of an outsider in this Brooklyn hipster culture, I'll admit. I'm not proud of it, but I'm not ashamed either. I watch Nicholas Sparks movies without irony, and while sincerity is an underrated virtue, let's face it: I'm watching Nicholas Freakin' Sparks. Nobody should or would give me a medal for that. When I lived uptown, the biggest punishment I could be issued on a Saturday night would be getting dragged to Brooklyn for a "show." And not even a puppet show or a dog-and-pony show, mind you -- nothing as much fun as that! (Has anyone ever been to a dog and pony show? What is that? What is that like? Do the dog and pony fight? Do the dog and pony play in an emo band? What happens?)

Having conceded I'm not a Brooklyn hipster myself, this show felt like an exaggeration of what I see of these kids and also of my experiences. Protagonist Hannah (played by show creator Lena Dunham) is just a little too entitled, just a little too socially awkward in professional situations, to be really-real. Hannah's hook-up buddy, Adam, is an amalgam of every awful guy you and your friends have ever dated, lived down the hall from, or heard horror stories about. Hannah's best friend, who has it all together from the outside (which probably means she is a mess), makes ridiculous statements about sex and relationships that sound like exaggerations of real advice or self-disclosures.

Is this parodic strain going to persist? And how might the genre of the satire make us think differently about this program? Any differently at all, in fact?

Fill This Niche, TV Execs!

I'm a huge, HUGE Parks and Recreation fan, and if you are too, you may have heard of "Philly Justice." Paul Rudd and Kathryn Hahn (who I may bring up at a later date, because I love her) are both recurring guest stars on Parks, as Rudd is playing Leslie Knope (Poehler)'s political rival, with Hahn as his cut-throat campaign manager. The three regular cast-members and the two guest actors all posed, as a goof, for this photograph and made up a story about how it was from a lost 2003 pilot for a police procedural called "Philly Justice."

Poehler can explain it better than I can. If you think this might be even a little funny, watch this. And then you will find it hilarious.

Anyway, "Philly Justice" has gotten me to thinking a number of things, one of them being that Adam Scott's role in this endeavor tickles me so much that I might be able to forgive him for Friends With Kids. Might. Also, again, how I love Kathryn Hahn, because she would clearly be the ball-bustiest of these ball-busting law-and-orderesses.

But here's my big, hefty question of the day: Why hasn't anyone made Philly Justice yet?!? And I don't mean, why hasn't someone made a forgettable, cliched show about cops and/or lawyers? (Check!) I mean, why hasn't anyone made a long-form TV parody? Like, a modern-day "Get Smart," but instead of spoofying the spy genre, look at cop/law shows!

I would argue that, even if you don't watch "Law & Order" or "Rookie Blue," you would recognize a parody of the police procedural if you saw it. The melodrama, the jargon, how moral dilemmas make prosecutors' faces get all squinty and pinched...

At the very least, I'm surprised the people who brought you "Children's Hospital" on Adult Swim haven't taken on the genre in their absurd way that I sometimes like.


Am I forgetting a "Philly Justice"-esque comedy TV project from the past or in the present? Please no one tell me about the Cops musical, because yes, I've heard of it, and no, it doesn't "count."

AND this is why I never watched LOST...

I feel like I need to come out of the closet on this point: I hate mind-f*** movies. Shows. Anything. That doesn't mean I'm hostile to plot twists -- I have no problem with The Sixth Sense or Fight Club (semi-spoiler alert?). I'll have you know that I wrote a story in 1st grade entitled "The Snowman," and that had a mighty fine twist at the finish. (It was all a dream, OR WAS IT?)

But one twist, that's all I'll grant you.

And these absolutely inscrutable set-ups for movies and television shows really piss me off. I'm thinking specifically of Christopher Nolan's Inception, which seriously made no sense, you guys. I don't have to understand why it makes no sense to know that it's all poppycock and nonsense. (This parody says it best: "The complexity is what makes it all so brilliant!" "Does it though?")

So here's the trailer for Looper, and I'm so disappointed that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is playing a time-travelling assassin hired to kill... himself (as played by Bruce Willis). What? Why doesn't he just put the gun to his head? His being JGL. Because BW keeps trying to run away. Why doesn't my way work? How, HOW, is this a movie?

JGL, you are on Ukelele Duty until further notice.

Wanted: A Sweet Blonde Bestie

So I just watched the pilot for "Don't Trust the B- in Apt 23" online... and it debuted a few days ago on television, if I'm not mistaken. It certainly exceeded my expectations, but it's always kind of odd and a little deflating to watch network television go "mean." It's never that mean. It's never FX's "Always Sunny" mean, or (heaven forbid), Premium Channel-level mean! It's more mean, like, when your nicest friend is trying to be mean but she fails. Her "mean" is most people's "one glass of wine into Friday night." And so it goes with network television.

Plus, a show like this really needs more profanity than ABC could ever swing. That said, I will watch a few more episodes. Krysten Ritter is a stone-cold scene stealer, and I was a Dawson's Creek fan back in the day, so it's pretty gratifying to watch Van Der Beek a douchey version of himself.

It's shaping up to be a better show than 2 Broke Girls, a show that I've seen more episodes that I care to admit. Kat Denning is a charmless charmer, meaning she charms me with her blunt charmlessness. It's kind of her schtick. But the show is more than a little racially insensitive -- it's equal opportunity, maybe, but not in a good way. It's especially not good to be Asian... Whitney Cummings and Michael Patrick King, WHAT have you got against Asian people?

(Incidentally, I never was a huge fan of Cummings, but having watched a number of episodes of Whitney, I realize that she sells this kind of humor way better than the girls on 2 Broke Girls... even, I would say, better than Sarah Silverman. Whitney Cummings is like Sarah Silverman without the baby voice and the try-hard Converse sneakers.)

So: blonde sweetheart, brunette bitch... that's a thing now? It's even in the 2006 movie Failure to Launch, which, yes, I've seen, but only once. I'll try any romantic comedy once. Sarah Jessica Parker plays the leading lady, Zooey Deschanel her crabby brunette friend. Deschanel's crabby is pretty darn cute, surprise surprise.

I'm a brunette, and it's gotten me to thinking that I need a mild-mannered blonde sidekick to make me seem, by contrast, tough, sassy, and sexy. Here are some of my qualifications:

-Be my physical opposite in all ways: tall where I am short and lanky where I am compact, with a light, airy voice to contrast with the Elaine Stritch voice that I am cultivating for these purposes

-Be not even a little as funny as me

-Come from the Midwest -- if possible, have never met a Jew before, so that the culture shock can really resonate

-Have a dull boyfriend or no love life to speak of, so that I can draw you out and be your mouthy wing-woman

I smell mid-season replacement show, huh? Huh?

Good Evening

This is my television blog: old shows, new shows, shows that I wish were on television but aren't yet, shows in the digital age. Sitcoms, melodramas, miniseries... even a little reality programming may find itself in the mix. I'm a PhD in American Studies and Film Studies, and while cinema may be my wife, TV is definitely my girlfriend on the side. And this blog is my shag-carpeted pied-a-terre. Let's keep this on the Q-T, shall we?