Category: External TV (Page 206 of 419)

‘Til Death: The Complete Second Season

February 16, 2009 /

When I think of Fox’s “‘Til Death,” I always think of Philip Baker Hall. When he and I discussed how his series, “The Loop,” never had a fighting chance with its second season, Hall groused about how Fox head Peter Ligouri threw all his energy into keeping “‘Til Death” on the air, “in spite of the fact that its numbers are among the lowest in the history of TV. He’s just pushed the hell out of that show, he just can’t stop talking about how great it is and how funny it is, and he can’t stop pouring money into it. He can’t stop taking whole sections of the newspaper as ads! But the fact is that the numbers are really bad…and he’s still pushing it!” Perhaps these comments from Mr. Hall colored my opinion as I sat down to watch “‘Til Death: The Complete Second Season,” but after screening the set, I was left wondering why Ligouri has battled so hard to keep the series on the air. It’s not bad, but it’s certainly not worth waging a war to save.

When Season 2 of the series begins, the premise has not changed appreciably: Eddie and Joy Stark (Brad Garrett and Joely Fisher) are a long-married couple who live next door to Jeff and Steph Woodcock (Eddie Kaye Thomas and Kat Foster), a pair of newlyweds. In addition to the various lessons about marriage that the naive Woodcocks learn from the jaded Starks, Eddie and Jeff both work at the same high school, though the only time their employment really comes into play is when Jeff gets a temporary promotion to principal and suspends Eddie for a few days for inappropriate behavior. In what can only be viewed as a desperate attempt to figure out how to bring new viewers into the show, the halfway point of the season finds the show adding a new character: Kenny Westchester (J.B. Smoove), a recent divorcee who, due to some clerical error, is selected as Eddie’s “little brother” when he joins a “Big Brother” program. Married couples will certainly recognize a lot of their more cynical moments in the adventures of the Starks, but the problem with “‘Til Death” has always been its interest in going unnecessarily lowbrow, and that remains the primary issue. You’ll laugh, to be sure, but at least half the time, you’ll feel guilty about it.

Click to buy “‘Til Death: The Complete Second Season”

Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External TV, Reviews, TV, TV Comedies, TV DVD Quicktakes, TV DVDs

Greetings to the New Show: “Eastbound and Down”

February 15, 2009 /

I’ve never actually seen “The Foot Fist Way,” the motion picture which really served to bring Danny McBride to prominence (he wrote and starred in the film), but when a review written by someone whose opinion you trust opens with the lines, “The first 30 minutes of ‘The Foot Fist Way’ are as intolerable as anything released in the last ten years,” it’s the kind of sentiment that keeps a movie from working its way up the hierarchy of your Netflix queue. I have, however, seen and loved “Tropic Thunder,” and I’ve heard a lot of good things about “Pineapple Express,” so I do still have a certain degree of respect for Mr. McBride. Therefore, when I heard that he was going to be starring in a new series for HBO that would be executive-produced by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, the duo who have brought us “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy,” “Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,” and “Stepbrothers,” there was every reason to believe that the combination would prove to be a successful one.

“Eastbound and Down” certainly starts promisingly, with a flashback laying out the career of Kenny Powers, a major-league baseball player who has seen the highest heights one can reach in the sport, including cover stories for every magazine from Highlights to Cat Fancy to American Woodworker. “Everyone wanted a piece of my shit,” says Powers, in a voiceover, describing himself as a man with “an arm like a fucking cannon.” Unfortunately, as with so many athletes who get a taste of glory and then dive headlong into the trough, Powers’ ego expands to a size far larger than his home state of North Carolina. He begins to blame his failures on his team, so he leaves Atlanta, becomes a free agent, and starts a career freefall which seems him moving from New York (“You mean Jew York?”), Baltimore and San Francisco (“I gotta tell ya, I thought the blacks in Baltimore were bad, but it turns out they’re nothing compared to these fags they got in San Francisco”), Boston, and Seattle.

Seattle, however, proved too much for the man, and after proving directly responsible for the team’s devastating loss against Los Angeles, things fade to black for Powers, and after a caption which reads, “Several shitty years later,” he find that he’s now out of baseball and has carried his remaining belongings back home to the state known as North Kakalaki to work as a middle-school substitute teacher…and it’s at this point that feelings about “Eastbound and Down” will begin to vary wildly.

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Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External TV, Pilots, TV, TV Comedies

Battlestar Galactica: No Exit

February 14, 2009 /

Wowsers. With Sam doing his little I’ve-got-a-lot-to-tell-you bit, this had to be one of the most informative episodes of the entire series. Let me run down what I think we know at this point…

– Those that are still holding out hope that Ellen wasn’t the fifth Cylon can stop – she is. She was resurrected 18 months ago and is considered to be the “mother” of all the skinjobs. The Ones (or one one in particular) seem to have a major problem with the fact that she made them (somewhat) human. By the end of the episode, the Ones were ready to open up her brain to find the secret of resurrection, but Boomer snuck her off to parts unknown. I’m not clear on when this escape coincides with current events, so if anyone has a clue, be sure to comment.

– Ellen still likes to drink, even after resurrection.

– The final five were living on Earth and they reinvented resurrection. Tyrol was credited for having done a ton of work towards this end, but Ellen was the one that made the final leap to make resurrection possible again. For whatever reason, they had a ship in orbit, waiting for Earth to be destroyed. (And, as far as I know, we still don’t know why Earth was destroyed.) The Cylons living on Earth were able to procreate, which is why they did away with resurrection in the first place. I believe that the implication is that all Earthlings are actually Cylons. That’s good to know.

– Once Earth was destroyed, the final five started off to the 12 colonies to warn them about creating Cylons (and/or treating them badly). They were not able to make jumps, so the travel was very slow, which is what accounts for the 2,000-year difference between Earth’s destruction and when the fleet fled the colonies.

– The final five found that the centurions had a belief in one true God, and that they were experimenting with making hybrids, but nothing would live yet. The cylons were at war with the colonies, so the final five made a deal with them that if they ended the war, they would show them how to make skinjobs. This is why the Cylons went away for a while.

– They made eight models, but the Sevens (Daniel) were apparently killed by the Ones, due to jealousy over Ellen’s favoritism towards the Sevens. Cavil was also the one that took Tigh’s eye.

– Cavil also banished the final five, stripping them of their memories and sending them off to live with the humans not knowing that they were in fact Cylons until a certain point in time. (We do not know why he did this. It would seem to work against his goals to place the five within the human fleet where they could eventually help the humans find a new home.)

A few other notes about this episode…

– The ship is falling apart and Bill had to make the tough decision to use Cylon technology to fix the hidden fractures throughout the ship. Between this and the Cylon FTL upgrades, if the fleet does in fact find a new home, they’ll have the Cylons to thank.

– Tigh had a great line – “Yeah, you point a finger back far enough and some germ gets blamed for splitting in two. No!”

– Cavil said to Ellen, “They destroyed the hub but they don’t know about the colony.” He’s referring to Earth, right? For that to be the case, this conversation had to take place after the hub was destroyed but before the fleet found Earth.

– Roslin passed the torch to Lee. Now he could become the “dying leader” that takes the fleet to find a new home.

– He did a great job as the “brain guy,” but it was a little distracting to see The Daily Show’s John Hodgman (a.k.a. “PC” from the Mac commercials). That guy is soooooooo funny.

– Even though the operation was a success, Sam is apparently brain dead. Hey, if he stays that way, at least he went out with a bang.

Awesome episode.

Battlestar Galactica, External Entertainment, External TV, TV, TV Action, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

Greetings to the New Show: Dollhouse

February 13, 2009 /

“Hi, I’m Joss Whedon. You may remember me from such shows as ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,’ ‘Angel,’ and ‘Firefly.’ Or perhaps my internet sensation, ‘Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.’ Or, of course, my role as Douglas the car rental clerk in the famous ‘Rat Saw God’ episode of ‘Veronica Mars.’ And let’s not forget that I also wrote the screenplay for ‘Toy Story.’ Basically, what I’m trying to say is that I’m awesome, and you should watch my new show, ‘Dollhouse,’ because I created it, and everything I create is genius. And also because Eliza Dushku is hot.”

The above is, in fact, not an actual quote from Joss Whedon. It is, however, a nice summation of the things that Fox is hoping you’ll remember and keep in mind when tuning into “Dollhouse.” There are a lot of rumblings about how the show is only “meh,” and how if it was by anyone else, it wouldn’t inspire anyone to watch beyond the pilot episode. I’m here to tell you that this isn’t…well, okay, I can’t say it’s completely untrue. In fact, there’s some stuff that goes down during the first 15 minutes of the episode that will make you feel like you’re being hit over the head with a hammer, so obvious is it attempting to set up the show. Survive beyond that, however, and you’ll probably find yourself intrigued enough to come back next week.

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Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External TV, Pilots, TV, TV Action, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

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