I’m in the middle of watching the PBS miniseries, “Pioneers of Television,” and in the middle of the episode which focuses on the variety show, I was thrilled to see an appearance from what has always been my favorite moment from “The Carol Burnett Show.” It always shows up on blooper specials, but you know how that series was: if they’d yanked every moment from the show where they were cracking up, you wouldn’t have had a show.
Anyway, sit back and enjoy as Tim Conway goes out of his way to completely destroy the composure of his co-stars…
Hot off her guest stint on NBC’s “Chuck,” and out promoting her new film “Jumper,” Rachel Bilson has come a long way since her debut on the teen soap opera “The OC.” Looking to break (or at least bend) her girl-next-door image, Rachel is the latest beauty to grace the covers of GQ.
In the upcoming February 2008 issue, the actress spills the beans on how she got her latest job, why the “H” on her heart-shaped locket may or may not have significance, and why being thrown into a wall by Samuel L. Jackson is awesome. Of yeah, and she shot a bunch of sexy pictures that are not to be missed.
To view the full slideshow, watch video coverage of the shoot, or read more about Rachel’s experience working with Jackson, Hayden Christensen and Doug Liman, click here.
So The CW provided critics with the first part of the 2-hour 5th season premiere of “One Tree Hill,” which picks up four years, six months, and two days after the 4th season finale…and although I have never before seen an episode of the show, I know this to be true because, well, the episode is entitled “4 Years, 6 Months, 2 Days.”
It’s a leap of faith I’m taking, I realize, but, dammit, I’m confident that I’m right about this.
In addition to the screener of the episode, however, critics were also given a pleasantly threatening note, which begins with the line, “Please Do Not Reveal the following information in your reviews, features, etc,” then goes on to offer up five bullet points that, obviously, I won’t be offering up for your reading enjoyment.
Well, okay, I will list them…but so as not to upset anyone at The CW, I’ll have to put in blanks where the crucial information is. If you’re a real fan of the show, though, I’m sure you’ll be able to solve the mysteries.
* Do not reveal (PERSON) is in a (THING). * Do not reveal (PERSON) as (PERSON)’s (GENDER)friend. * Do not reveal (PERSON) is in (PLACE). * Do not reveal (PERSON)’s and (PERSON)’s reunion. * Do not reveal (PERSON)’s (EVENT).
See what I mean? Easy peasy.
The truth of the matter, however, is that my never having seen a single episode of “One Tree Hill” in no way affects my ability to offer this heartfelt opinion of the proceedings: if you’d told me that the script had been written by Chester Cheetah, I would’ve said, “Wow, that sure is eerily appropriate, as I was just thinking how that’s the only possible excuse I would’ve accepted for why it’s so cheesy.”
Yeah, yeah, that’s right, the guy who doesn’t know anything about the show takes a cheap shot, thereby proving that he’s a complete asshole, which is what you already suspected, anyway. Look, I absolutely applaud a show for taking a risk in an attempt to shake up the status quo (as I just did that yesterday with”Medium,” in fact), but this thing plays less like a new season of a show than one of those TV reunion movies, like “An Eight Is Enough Wedding,” or even worse, like that updated hour-long version of “The Brady Bunch” that ran in the ’80s: “The Bradys.”
In fact, can I get a clip for that, please, just to refresh your memories…?
Awesome, thanks.
Man, that sure was awful, wasn’t it, folks? And, sadly, that’s how this new season of “One Tree Hill” is looking. It’s, like, “Hey, look, the kids are all grown up and living awesome new adult lives!”
So what can I tell you that hasn’t been put on the do-not-reveal-under-penalty-of-getting-your-ass-kicked list?
* Brooke (Sophia Bush) is a veritable fashion mogul, now that her design company – Clothes Over Bro’s – has skyrocketed her to fame and fortune. * The music-loving Peyton (Hilarie Burton) is working at a record label. * Lucas (Chad Michael Murray) has published his first novel and is scoring critical acclaim. * Marvin the Mouth (Lee Norris) is looking for the elusive job as a sportscaster. * Haley (Bethany Joy Galeotti) is just finishing her student teaching. * And Nathan (James Lafferty) is…well, Nathan’s fate no doubt has the producers rubbing their hands together in glee at the thought of what kind of reactions they’re going to get from the fans, which is why I can’t reveal it to you. I’m guessing, though, that the writers came up with it by asking, “Short of death, what’s the most unfortunate fate that could befall the show’s resident basketball star?”
The only real good news is that Daphne Zuniga, late of “Melrose Place,” has been added to the cast as a hard-ass businesswoman who works for Clothes Over Bro’s, providing a reminder of how much fun melodrama can be when the right person is reading the lines. There are also a few entertaining sequences with the less grown-up members of the ensemble as they play basketball, video games, and basically act like real people in their early 20s. Otherwise, we’re given a non-stop run of plot threads and cliches that feel rehashed from Lifetime movies or ABC Family Channel flicks. In particular, the sequences with Peyton at the record label would be hard-pressed to play more unrealistically.
Boss: How long have you been in Los Angeles, Peyton, from… Peyton: …from Tree Hill, North Carolina. Four years. Boss: Four years. Why’d you come? Peyton: I wanted to discover and sign bands that could change someone’s life, like the band’s that changed mine. Boss: I figured you were one of them. I used to be, too. Then I figured it out: it’s called show business for a reason. We’re here to make money. Peyton: Even if the product sucks. Boss: Especially if the product sucks. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but rock and roll can’t actually save the world. Peyton: See, i disagree. Walk into any club on the strip tonight and just look at the kids. Look into their eyes. I mean, they’re all looking for something to believe in, and I think that music can be the thing that changes their world.
Aaaaaaarrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhh…
Okay, fair enough, I’m not a fan of the show, so you can discount my opinion completely. But I’ll close with this: my wife was a huge “Dawson’s Creek” fan, and she still watches the reruns on occasion, but she watched “One Tree Hill” with me last night, and not only did she declare it awful, but she also actually regretted that she’d never get back those 42 minutes of her life.
…but as long as there aren’t any new episodes of the show floating around out there, anyway, I have to say that I’m really psyched for the new season of “Medium,” which premieres tonight at 10 PM on NBC, in the slot that once housed our current favorite time-travel drama.
I’ve long been on record as admitting that, for as much as I’ve loved each of the three seasons of “Medium” that have been released on DVD – and for the obligatory plug, you can find those here, here, and here – but I’ve never followed the show from week to week. I don’t even really have a good excuse for it; it’s just one of those cases where either it was up against a show I was already addicted to or, more likely, I just plain forgot when it was on. (So sue me: I’ve got a two-year-old, and my concentration ain’t what it used to be.) But after thrilling to Season 3, which ended by changing the dynamic of the series that felt realistic rather than an attempt at bringing in new viewers, I can honestly say that even if there wasn’t a writer’s strike and even if I wasn’t starved for new scripted programming, I’d still be tuning in to Season 4 of “Medium.”
Quick catch-up: Alison DuBois (Patricia Arquette) is a happily married mother of three little girls who went to school to study law before real life got in the way, so now she works part-time for the District Attorney of Phoenix, Arizona, and…oh, right, she has dreams and visions where she communicates with the dead – or vice versa, as the case may be – and uses the information she receives to solve crimes. Yeah, yeah, I know, it sounds like the makings of a show that’d be front and center on the Lifetime network…and the fact that the show’s reruns actually air on Lifetime makes it hard to disagree with that suggestion. But in addition to “Medium” containing one of the most realistic television marriages ever (thanks to the great chemistry between Arquette and her TV husband, Jake Weber) and some of the better child actors in recent memory (particularly Sofia Vassilieva as the teenaged Ariel), the show is also home to some of the creepiest shit this side of a Stephen King novel.
When Season 3 ended, the DuBois family was dealing with some serious issues. Alison’s abilities, which had always been kept under wraps by D.A. Manuel Devalos (Miguel Sandoval), were revealed by a very skeptical journalist – a deliciously sleazy turn from Neve Campbell – and resulted in Devalos being “given” a leave of absence and Alison being let go from the department and becoming persona non grata to everyone with whom she’d previously worked, including Detective Lee Scanlon (David Cubitt). And as if that didn’t shrinking the family income enough, Joe (Weber) ended up losing his job following a work-related hostage incident, due to corporate insurance concerns about his psychological well-being and his wife’s newfound reputation as a crackpot.
So now what?
Enter Anjelica Huston. Still having visions and dreams but unable to do anything with the information she’s receiving about a little boy who’s been kidnapped, Alison contacts Ameritips, an organization that’s been trying to solve the case, and meets with Cynthia Keener (Huston), an investigator with the group. Keener is decidedly skeptical when Alison explains how she came about her information, but she suggests that Keener Google her, and – no surprise – she soon gets a callback. Keener is still skeptical, but she’s willing to take Alison’s information with a grain of salt. The eventual result is a new, if uneasy, alliance between the two…and, more importantly, a paycheck coming into the Dubois’ bank account.
A word of warning: there’s a shot in tonight’s episode that is so downright disconcerting that it actually took my breath away for a second. It’s not really a spoiler to suggest that it involves the kidnapped boy, since it’s a longstanding tradition with “Medium” that Alison’s visions don’t always come to pass, but I’ll just say that if you’re a parent and you’ve ever even briefly allowed yourself to fear what could happen in that moment when you realize you don’t know where your kid’s run off to, it’ll make your blood run cold.
I’ve also seen next week’s episode, and while I’ll save most of my observations about that for next Monday, I will say that it’s also really good and, as with the upcoming new season of “Jericho,” I can’t help but think that the writer’s strike might actually pay off for “Medium.” People want new stuff to watch, they’re willing to consider shows that they might not ordinarily watch, and based on what I’m seeing so far, “Medium” – like fellow NBC show “Law & Order” – is starting so damned strong with its new episodes that it might just find a resurgence in popularity that it hasn’t seen in quite some time.
Y’know, it’s a good thing I checked out those two episodes of “Gossip Girl” before I checked out the next two episodes of “Friday Night Lights.” If I’d seen the latter first, I’d’ve probably used the former as a point of comparison for how impossible it is for the average kid to relate to most characters on TV; the latter, however, is about as real as any show this side of…well, actually, I don’t even have a ready point of comparison. That’s how realistic they feel to me…though I’m willing to concede that maybe it’s just the handheld camerawork that makes it feel more real. (At the very least, it gives the show a look that’s unique to most anything else on the air at the moment.)
My opinion on “FNL” can’t be trusted as much as our dedicated blogger, Mr. John Paulsen, who’s been in the show’s camp from the beginning, but I’ll just say that these two episodes – tonight’s and next week’s – made for great viewing, with both the teen and adult storylines unfolding in a manner that was consistently enthralling, both in the dramatic and the comedic sides of things. The teen characters have the kind of problems that adults will remember from their own youth, such as a girl trying to accept that the best person for her isn’t necessarily the school matinee idol, and the adult issues – like, for instance, Coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler) and his wife, Tami (Connie Britton), dealing with her sister’s refusal to realize that she’s being a nuisance of a houseguest – are pretty damned familiar, too. And damned if it isn’t true what people have been telling me all along: there’s precious little football in “Friday Night Lights.” And when there finally is a big game, which happens in next week’s episode, it brings with it one of those great “oh, shit!” moments that you don’t need to be a sports fan to appreciate.
Hmmm…looks like Season 1 of the show is only $18.99 over at Amazon. Maybe it’s time to finally take the plunge and get the full experience of what everyone’s been telling me is one of the best shows on TV…?
