…I’d be remiss if I didn’t offer you the opportunity to check out Triumph the Insult Comic Dog’s experiences at Comic-Con 2008, which prove at least as hilarious as the shots he’s taken at sci-fi geeks in the past.
Category: TV Comedies (Page 91 of 154)
Coming to DVD on October 14th: “Quark.”
Don’t remember it? That’s easy enough to believe. The show appeared on NBC in the midst of “Star Wars” mania, but it only lasted for eight episodes. Nonetheless, it made a possibly too-substantial impact on a young lad in Chesapeake, VA. That lad, of course, was me, and although I could be wrong about this, I have always suspected that I was one of only a handful of kids in America who actually wanted to play “Quark” on the elementary school playground instead of “Star Wars.” (“Okay, guys, I’ll be Commander Quark! Now, who wants to be Andy the Robot? Guys…? Hey, stop punching me!”) Now, granted, I’ve been disappointed enough in my time to consider that it may not have aged well, but when I consider that it was created by Buck Henry, starred Richard Benjamin, Tim Thomerson, and Conrad Janis, and took the piss out of most of the popular sci-fi films and TV series of the day, I have to believe that it’s still going to be a joy to watch it again.
You can get the details about this impending release from TVShowsOnDVD.com by clicking on the below photo (which, by the way, is only preliminary artwork)…
…but I will tell you that I have already set up an interview with Mr. Janis to discuss the series (and, of course, his other work with aliens over the years, including a certain Orkan), have put out feelers to chat with both Mr. Benjamin and Mr. Thomerson, and am keeping my fingers crossed that Mr. Henry will prove agreeable at the suggestion that we chat. In other words, stay tuned for a feature-length piece entitled “Excavating the Lost Cult of ‘Quark.'”
Yes, I know: I’m totally geeking out…and it feels good.
As Season One nears the finish line, Belle/Hannah (Billie Piper) takes a big step with Ben (Iddo Goldberg) – or perhaps it’s the other way around. In any case, their relationship isn’t going to be the same after this week. It begins quickly and with almost no setup. The two friends walk down the street with Ben begging to join Belle in a foursome. She of course says no. Her clients are a married couple and she’s short one man. Ben insists he’s the man for the job, but Hannah just doesn’t see it. She claims he doesn’t know how to have sex “professionally.” After she scours various websites and is unable to come up with a suitable partner, she decides to give Ben a chance – despite the fact he’s getting married soon. After all, he claims he’s “always been good at separating emotion from sex.”
After Belle gives Ben a few pointers – as well as a little blue pill – the couple arrive. Kate (Heather Bleasdale) and Liam (Jonathan Phillips) have been married for fifteen years and they’ve been together twenty. The plan is for a straight swap…and maybe a little lesbian action as well. (Forgive the urban slang…at least I didn’t say lesbo or lezzie.) Good, clean fun to spice up their sex life and celebrate their union. But almost as soon as the foursome climb into bed, the couple is only interested in each other, much to Ben’s disappointment and our amazement; the shot of Liam casually pushing Belle aside to go jump on his wife is a great one, because Piper has never looked hotter in the series than she does in this scene. There’s a great montage sequence of the couple going at it while Hannah/Belle and Ben stare in amazement. The couple looks over and asks if their hosts are having fun. Sure! This leads to some minor kissing between our leads, and then Ben looks deeply into Hannah/Belle. In the ultimate scene showing the duality of her character, he calls her Hannah, and she tersely corrects him. “It’s Belle.” She becomes uncomfortable and pulls away, but it’s unclear why. There could be half a dozen reasons at this point.
The episode ends almost as casually as it began, with Hannah and Ben bidding adieu to the couple and then to each other. After everyone leaves, Hannah admits to the camera, “For me the hardest numbers have always been one plus one. I can never seem to make them add up.” It almost seems as if nothing has changed between the two, but the beauty of this episode was the mixture of the said and unsaid. As the final shot fades, you can clearly see that Hannah’s in deep thought, and that her friendship with Ben has changed, and hopefully for the better. For the first time in the series, Ben is not relegated to a couple brief scenes – he’s in every scene, save for the few brief shots of Belle trying to find a “fourth” at the beginning. Piper has been great since the word go, but due to his limited screentime, it’s been tough to get a grasp on Iddo Goldberg’s talents in this series. This material showed exactly why he was cast in this pivotal role, and he and Piper have amazing chemistry. The bulk of the story is interplay between the two. Some is fun, and some serious – but all of it’s great. It makes me really want to see a Season Two that delves much deeper into their complex relationship, instead of it just being the sordid-yet-palatable adventures of Belle. Far and away, this is the best episode of the season and it’s material that takes the show into a whole different arena. Next week, however, is the season finale. Can it possibly top this?
As mentioned near the start of this panel, “The Simpsons” has pretty much beat every other prime-time television show in terms of longevity, number of episodes, etc. — except for “Gunsmoke” and “Lassie,” which also makes it the all-time king of sitcoms with a reservoir of goodwill able to withstand more than one below-par season. This appearance by the show’s main creative team was a predictably relaxed and mirthful affair in which creator Matt Groening and writers Al Jean and Matt Selman did most of the talking — quieter panelists included director David Silverman, who helmed “The Simpsons Movie,” and writer Carolyn Omine.
Before the official start of the panel, Groening introduced some clips from next Fall’s “Treehouse of Horror” episode, including a brief segment involving Homer Simpson and a particularly violent form of vote rigging that goes well beyond the worst imagingings of Diebold-fearing liberals, as well as a spot on parody of “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” with a Linus-like Milhouse accidentally tricking the supernatural pumpkin into a form of vegetarian cannibalism. (It’s complicated.)
Wasting no time, the event was immediately thrown open to questions. The first young questioner asked if the long-suffering Marge Simpson, tiring from her numerous attempts to get the permanently obese Homer to lose weight, would start gaining weight herself. The writers’
response was they would promptly steal the idea and that it would likely show up in a Simpsons comic book, if not the actual show.
Another question referred to a recent episode parodying the comic book world featuring an appearance by mad comic writing genius Alan Moore (“Watchmen,” “V for Vendetta,” “From Hell”) and a joke about an animated “Watchmen Babies” series. Writer Matt Selman expressed his own intimidation at working with the artistically and personally imposing Moore, who apparently got the joke but also stipulated that the gag itself was also an example of an evil corporation (this is Fox, after all) debasing one of Moore’s creations.
Belle/Hannah (Billie Piper) goes for a meeting with Stephanie (Cherie Lunghi) at a swank-looking restaurant, and notices some of the other girls are giggling at a laptop screen. Turns out Belle has been given a terrible online review by a client – a review that ends with “the word frigid comes to mind.” She laughs uncomfortably and says “Who listens to the critics anyway?” But then she nervously looks at the viewer, which seems to tell us something else. Sure enough, her business begins to suffer, which results in Stephanie sending her a rather odd client late one night.
At first Lewis (Kevin Doyle) seems fairly normal, but almost as soon as Belle closes the door, he begins acting strange. When she goes to make a usual business call to Stephanie, he becomes cold and demanding. It’s a very strange scene for this series, but realistically isn’t at all out of place. It almost looks as if things could get violent when Belle all but throws him out of her apartment. She’s left alone, shaken and confused. Who else can she turns to but buddy Ben (Iddo Goldberg)? He’s closing up the bar where he works when she shows up. He rambles on about his upcoming wedding to Vanessa and her insistence that the napkins should look like doves before even noticing that something might be wrong with Hannah. She tells him what just happened with the client and he, of course, becomes immediately overprotective. Stephanie calls and Hannah goes off on her, questioning why she would send her such a client. Turns out, he’s someone that another girl no longer wanted to deal with and she thought Belle could “handle it.” Belle accuses her of being nothing more than a pimp these days and hangs up. Then to the audience she says, “What a difference a year makes.”
Flashback to her first meeting with Stephanie. The woman asks her about her A-levels, and Hannah rattles off a list of her scholastic achievements, and Stephanie replies, “What I meant was, do you do anal?” Groan! What a godawful joke. Would anybody actually ask such a question using the phrase A-levels? Stephanie tells her, “I’m going to keep you safe. I’m going to be your best friend Hannah – a best friend who takes 40% and doesn’t tell you her real name.” Back in the here and now, Ben suggests that maybe she should take a break from her job – just for a while. In fact, he bets her that she won’t miss the job.
Apparently taking a break from being a whore means spending your days sitting on park benches watching “normal” people live their lives – as if Hannah never noticed what other people do before now. All the while some really goofy music plays in the background. Go figure. Of course, out of boredom she calls Ben for lunch – a repetitive moment that again exposes how few people Hannah has in her life on this show. Hopefully next season the show writes a few more characters into the mix. Anyway, Ben cannot meet her since he’s consumed with work and wedding planning. She decides to take the opportunity to go shopping for a wedding present and meets a clerk named Tim (Matt Smith). She takes a sort of liking to him and ends up bringing him back to her place and sleeping with him, and then he simply won’t go away. Hannah’s not used to people not going away. At one point he discovers her collection of oils and such in the bathroom, and deduces that she must be a masseuse. She awkwardly says that she doesn’t like telling people because most assume a masseuse is also a whore (a word she cannot bring herself to use…ha, ha.) Eventually Ben comes over claiming to be her fiancé and the guy quickly exits. The two friends converse and she insists that she won the bet. Being “normal” just isn’t her thing. He says that the least normal thing about her is her love for marmite(!). For the record, marmite, a yeast extract the Brits spread on toast, is actually pretty tasty.
Belle gets a call from Stephanie saying she’s once again in demand as someone wrote a sparkling review of her online. She tells the agent she’s ready to go back to work, but more or less threatens her business if she ever pulls anything like that again. (Could Belle ever really be a threat to Stephanie?) As the episode draws to a close, we see it was Ben who wrote the review for Belle, a scene that brings to the forefront the biggest problem with this episode: Why didn’t Belle just get online a write a new review (or even several) after the bad one? The answer is that we then wouldn’t have an episode, or at least we wouldn’t have this episode. Overall, this really seems to be the weakest entry thus far and it really doesn’t do much of anything other than further strengthen the friendship between Hannah and Ben, which could’ve been done dozens of other ways. The rest of it, Belle embracing her inner Hannah was really pretty weak, unless the goal was to show that there no longer is a Belle and a Hannah, but just one woman. Maybe that was the point, and maybe I missed it. (Or not, since I just mentioned it.) In any case, the tone was all over the place, going from dark and disturbing to light and airy. If someone tuned in to the show for the first time and saw this, they likely wouldn’t tune in again.
(This recap was very late. Apologies to regular readers, but the good thing about Showtime is that this series plays over and over throughout the week…and then there’s always Showtime On Demand. In fact, as I type there’s a “Call Girl” marathon going on on one of the Showtimes!)
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