Category: TV (Page 52 of 595)

Sons of Anarchy 3.5 – Turning and Turning

October 5, 2010 / Jason Zingale

There’s been a lot of debate recently over the validity of Father Ashby’s conduct regarding baby Abel, but if he truly is planning on using the kidnapping as a way to get rid of Jimmy O, then the pieces are starting to fall into place. Maureen’s phone call to Gemma has already stirred the pot, and although Jimmy’s right-hand man, Luke, ensures the club that Abel isn’t in Belfast, Jax promises him that if he’s lying, he’s going to personally track down Jimmy and beat the truth out of him. And if I were Jimmy, I’d probably start looking for a good place to hide, because it isn’t long because Jax hears back from Maureen confirming that Abel is in Belfast.

On a side note, I’m really curious to learn more about Maureen in these coming weeks. Though she has obvious ties to the IRA due to her brother’s involvement, her loyalties seem to lie more with SAMCRO – not only because she’s married to the Belfast chapter president (McGee, who might just have the coolest beard on TV), but also because she seems to have a secret history with John Teller. When Jax first brought up Maureen’s name at the hospital, Gemma and Clay shared this telling look of concern. And then, after he had left the room, Gemma declared her apprehensions about Jax going to Belfast because “stones [would] get unturned.” Or in other words, Jax would learn something that Gemma doesn’t want him to know.

Unfortunately, Gemma can’t do much to stop him as she’s currently stuck in the hospital recovering – not from a heart attack, but her arrhythmia. Plus, she’s under the custody of the Feds after she agreed to turn herself in to Agent Stahl in exchange for a deal that would remove the death sentence from the table and give her weekly visits. But when Stahl informs her that the deal has been denied due to some silly technicality, Gemma’s future seems even more uncertain than everyone thought. And to make matters worse, she blames Tara for Abel’s kidnapping, claiming that she didn’t do enough to save him because he wasn’t her child. It’s a pretty cruel thing to say to anyone, and I don’t think she would have said it were it not meant to transition into one of the night’s big reveals: Tara is six weeks pregnant, and she’s keeping it a secret from everyone, including Jax. How Gemma knew is beyond me, but I guess we can chalk it up to mother’s intuition.

Gemma may know about Tara’s pregnancy, but she has no idea what Jax is about to do to save her from going to prison. And if anyone at the club finds out, they’re not going to be too happy about it, either. This isn’t the first time that Jax has considered turning rat in order to save the club, but now that the deck is so stacked against him and his family, he really has no other choice. It’s a pretty good deal too: Jax gives Stahl the bust of a lifetime by informing on major players in the IRA, and Gemma gets her name cleared and SAMCRO is given a reduced sentence on the assault charges. And as a sign of good faith, Jax has even delivered Luke and a van full of illegal guns on a silver platter to prove that he’s serious. It’s the kind of game changer that not only affects this season, but will have long-term ramifications on the series as a whole, and I just hope it doesn’t prove to be too much of an obstacle for the writers, because it’s risky storytelling like this that makes “SOA” one of the best shows on television.

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Mad Men 4.11 – Too Little, Too Late

October 4, 2010 / Will Harris

When I saw that this week’s episode was entitled “Chinese Wall,” I found myself overwhelmed by a sudden wave of deja vu. “Now, wait a minute,” I thought. “I know damned well that phrase has been utilized before, because I posted the video for Philip Bailey’s ‘Walking on a Chinese Wall’ when it happened.” And, indeed, that was true: Faye made the reference back in Episode 4.9.

If you’re not familiar with the term, it’s an expression which, according to the never-fallible Wikipedia, means “an information barrier implemented within a firm to separate and isolate persons who make investment decisions from persons who are privy to undisclosed material information which may influence those decisions.” In this case, the wall in question has been constructed by Roger, and he’s put everyone else on the other side of it.

And, now, on with the episode!

Hey, look, Peggy’s hanging with the lesbian from Life and her pals, including the guy who pissed her off with his writings a few episodes back. I guess all is forgiven now that he’s asking permission to quote her, since she immediately brings him back to her pad (I was disappointed, though, that Peggy’s reference to her roommate didn’t result in an appearance from Carla Gallo), and a good night evolves into an even better morning. We’re seeing a whole new Peggy, people!

Ray Wise in the house! Ken Cosgrove and his fiancee are having dinner with her parents – yep, Mr. Wise is her dad – when he gets word that Lucky Strike is moving out of business with Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. As you can imagine, this information scares the heck out of him…so much so, in fact, that he rushes out of dinner and into the waiting room at the maternity ward, where Pete is waiting for Trudy to have their baby. Pete’s immediately on the phone to Don, and although he interrupts his makeout session with Faye to take the call, the topic of conversation instantly puts a damper on his libido. The next thing you know, everyone who’s anyone – minus Lane, of course, though it’s acknowledged that he’s been duly informed – is at the office, ready to pounce on Roger the second he walks in. He claims it’s an impossibility and immediately calls Lee, except we know from his comments that he’s clearly not talking to him.

Don heads back to his place and immediately starts drinking, and you know that ain’t a good sign. He acknowledges that he’s more or less dreaded this possibility for quite some time, but although Faye tries to remind him of how valuable a player he is, Don dismisses her level of concern, saying, “I’m not at that point yet.” Clearly, he’s not going to go down without a fight. Pete’s father-in-law, meanwhile, is almost immediately dismissive of any chance of the firm’s survival, basically saying, “Ah, well, you had your fun, now back to the real world.”

Should I feel sympathetic for Roger? Well, I did, at least a little bit. It’s not his fault that Lucky Strike decided to pull out, and I can’t blame him for not wanting to admit the loss to the firm, but at the same time, he’s clearly getting in over his head with this chicanery, getting a highly warranted smackdown from Joan for keeping his mouth shut when something could’ve been done to save the situation. After she once again relents and lets him swing by her pad, they share a sweet embrace, but even though he’s pretty pitiful when he departs from the premises, she’s seriously disappointed the next day by the fact that he’s continuing to weave his web of lies, and the awkwardness between them is palpable. I don’t think she’d betray him to them, mostly because it’s not like they could save the account at this point, anyway, but his actions are putting her job in jeopardy, too, and I think it’s pretty well established how much she enjoys her niche at the firm. For his part, Roger seems to have been temporarily swayed by the arrival of his book. Maybe he’ll be inspired to become the ad man he once was…?

After Bert and Don give the State of the Union address, the feeling on the floor is that everything’s more or less under control, but Don’s not pulling any punches when he sits his team down. The best moment, though, came when it was just him and Peggy. They’ve definitely got their own special relationship now…if, uh, not quite as special as the one she had last night, which has put her in a stellar mood. Unfortunately, it’s pretty transparent to everyone around her, which results in Stan being an Alpha Male to the Nth degree. What a jackass that guy is. Still, even his minor-league attempt at getting revenge on her for her rebuffing of his advances didn’t do any damage: it takes more than a little lipstick on the teeth to stop the creative force that is Peggy Olson!

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Boardwalk Empire 1.3 – Feet of Clay

October 3, 2010 / Will Harris

So where were we? Oh, right: the blood-covered guy in the woods.

The lone gunshot victim is being hustled into the emergency room, having somehow managed to survive for several days in the woods. How he managed to do this, however, remains a mystery…or, at least, it does to Eli, anyway. “He’s fat?” suggests Eli. “He’s insulated? I don’t know. How should I know? I’m not a doctor.” Nucky’s pissed off about the whole situation, but he’s particularly angry at Jimmy…and, really, can you blame him? Nucky tells Eli to take care of the situation, and he certainly gives it his best shot, but attempts to smother the poor bastard with a pillow fail, though it’s not clear whether it’s because Eli’s a bad smotherer or if the guy just has really good lungs. Either way, it’s a minor miracle that Eli manages to quickly set aside the pillow just before Van Alden and his boys swing in to the question the fellow.

Catching the tail end of Nucky’s charitable phone call served as yet another piece of evidence that he’s had his own issues with a child at some point in his past. As ever, it was nice to see as much of Lucy’s body as possible – little did we know how much more we’d be getting later – but when she started talking about the possibility of having a baby, I thought the way she said “mommy” was highly disconcerting. I know some guys get off on baby talk, but hearing her talk that way while half naked and seconds away from giving a blow job, all I could say was, “Ew.”

Wow, I knew Nucky was a big shot, but when you’re big enough to get Eddie Cantor to play your private party, you’re really something. Eli pops ’round to tell Nucky about the situation at the hospital, but when Nucky tries to give him shit for not having stayed at the hospital to protect their patient, Eli – otherwise distracted by Cantor’s goo-goo-googly eyes, basically says, “This ain’t my problem, go be pissed at Jimmy,” and to echo my statement from a few paragraphs back, can you really blame him?

Speaking of Jimmy, when they put the focus on his fascination with how his wife could keep their son still long enough to take his picture, followed by him flipping through the photo album, I thought it was simply to offer a sense of how depressed he was with the lost time between him and his family and how different he and his wife have become. I didn’t anticipate that it would lead to that scene with Jimmy and Tommy ending up at the photographer’s studio. I can see why he would’ve been suspicious of the photographer at first, based on the scandalous shot of his wife baring her shoulder, but once Jimmy had met the man and his wife and seen how comfortable Tommy was around both of them…I dunno, I guess I just thought it would dissipate somewhat. Instead, he seemed to get even more jealous, though part of that could simply be because he’s dealing with so many emotions that he just doesn’t know what to feel.

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Bob & David: will there be a tour?

October 2, 2010 / Will Harris

During the Winter TCA Tour in January 2010, I had a chance to talk to Bob Odenkirk about his work on “Breaking Bad,” but before our conversation was over, I had to ask the question that I knew “Mr. Show” fans – and I include myself in that number – were chomping at the bit to have answered: is there still a chance that Bob and his longtime cohort David Cross would work together again.

“Oh, yeah, we’re going to do something together,” Bob assured me. “Absolutely. There is no question. We started writing a live show two weeks ago when he was here. We want to do another live show. Maybe in a year or a year and a half. My kids are older now so I can leave, so we can do a live tour. It’ll be really fun, yeah.”

In early August, during the Summer TCA Tour, I was fortunate enough to run into David, busy promoting his new IFC series, “The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret.” Not one to miss a chance for an update, I told him what Bob had said in January, and I asked for an update.

“See, I have very little responsibilities outside of a dog,” explained David. “But (Bob) has two kids and a wife. And, also, he has no balls. So when you combine all those things, it’s not good. But I put together a calendar for a way we could do a tour in which he would make money, he would be able to go home…I can’t remember offhand, but I think he would be able to go home for four days every ten days, or something like that.

“It would be a six-week tour, and I said, ‘Here, present this to whoever needs to sign off on it.’ I was, like, ‘You can’t ask for better than this. We’re going to suffer. We’re not going to make as much money, and we’re going to be away longer than we normally would be, but it’s in order to make it so that you can go home and so that these things that you need to address are addressed satisfactorily.’ I would love to do it. I am not the guy holding up the tour. It’s not me.”

So if David’s not the problem, then the problem must be Bob, right?

Time to drop a line back to the Odenkirk camp.

“I love David Cross,” Bob assured me by E-mail once he’d read David’s comments. “I think he’s funny and I consider him one of my best friends. But, sadly, he’s a liar. He is the one with family…two of ’em – but don’t tell either about the other!

“Plus, he claims to have Philatellaphobia – the fear of collecting stamps, which he claims keeps him stuck in the basement of his house, quaking and pooping. I would love to tour. I am standing outside my bachelor condo right now with a packed bag and a stash bag for my cocaine fixes. Oh, and I have no balls.”

So if both Bob and David are both claiming to be ready, does that mean that the tour is a go?

Hell, your guess is as good as mine. But at the very least, we’re getting some good comedy out of the discussion process.

In the meantime, though, enjoy this look back at the Bob and David experience before there even was a “Mr. Show,” and let us keep our fingers crossed that we’ll see them on a stage again in the very near future.

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The 10 Most Memorable Reasons to Mourn Stephen J. Cannell

October 1, 2010 / Will Harris

I had thought about suggesting that TV fans turn their sets off for an hour tonight as a tribute to the legacy of Stephen J. Cannell, who passed away yesterday as a result of complications associated with melanoma, but since I don’t think it’s possible for an hour to go by without one of his shows airing somewhere on your dial, I’m sure he’d much rather you watch his work than mourn his loss. It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I sat back and took stock of just how much Cannell had contributed both to my childhood and my teenage years. I mean, my God, you hate to overuse the word “ubiquitous,” but if you look at how many times his name turns up in the credits of series which are considered to be staples of the 1970s and 1980s, you realize that you couldn’t turn around without hitting a series that he had either created or co-created.

Here are the 10 series from Stephen J. Cannell’s body of work that I’ll continue to enjoy ’til…well, ’til I join Stephen J. Cannell. If I’ve left out one of your favorites, be sure to cite it in the comments section.

10. Baa Baa Black Sheep (1976 – 1978): Based on the experiences of USMC flyboy Pappy Boyington and his “Black Sheep Squadron” during World War II, I couldn’t have cared less about this series when it was originally on the air, but it was required viewing for my father. Later, I realized that the man who played Pappy was the same guy who’d been kicking ass as James T. West on “The Wild Wild West” – Robert Conrad – and decided to give the show a chance. I don’t know if it was as historically accurate as it was probably supposed to be, but it proved that Conrad could even make WWII cool.

9. Baretta (1975 – 1978): Obviously, Robert Blake’s subsequent shenanigans in his personal life has tarnished his reputation as an actor, especially since there’s now an entire generation who only knows him for his work on Court TV, but in his day, Baretta was a full-fledged bad-ass…and so, for that matter, was his theme song.

8. Hardcastle and McCormick (1983 – 1986): The only thing that screams “the ’80s” more than McCormick’s car is the theme song, but Brian Keith and Daniel Hugh Kelly had good chemistry, and Keith helped set the decade’s industry standard for curmudgeonly characters.

7. Tenspeed and Brownshoe (1980): So, wait, which one’s Brownshoe again? You won’t believe how young Jeff Goldblum looks in this show, but if you’ve ever wondered where he honed the neurotic characteristics that have come to define his performances, look no further. Again, Cannell had an eye for chemistry. Who else would’ve imagined that Goldblum and Ben Vereen would work so well together?

6. Riptide (1983 – 1986): It’s the robot, right? Chicks dig the robot. Cody and Nick were cool, sure, but looking back on the show now, Tom Bray’s performance as Boz helped to define the concept of “geek chic.”

5. 21 Jump Street (1987 – 1991): A lot of people only think of “Jump Street” in terms of having been the show that really gave Johnny Depp his start, but let us not forget that, thanks to Richard Grieco, we were also blessed with the awesomeness that is “Booker.” Okay, actually, maybe we should just focus on Johnny Depp.

4. Wiseguy (1987 – 1990): The first season is nearly untouchable. Too bad we’ll probably never get the opportunity enjoy a non-bootleg version of Season 2’s “Dead Dog Records” storyline, which featured Tim Curry, Debbie Harry, and Glenn Frey. Damned music rights…

3. The Greatest American Hero (1981 – 1983): God bless William Katt, but the real heroes of this show were Robert Culp – Bill Maxwell is the FBI agent that actual FBI agents wish they could act like – and Joey Scarbury, who crooned the most insidiously catchy theme song of the decade.

2. The A-Team (1983 – 1987): Personally, I kinda liked the movie. But you can’t go wrong with the unbridled cheesy action of the original series.

1. The Rockford Files (1974 – 1980): Half-credit, of course, goes to co-creator Roy Huggins, whose success with James Garner on “Maverick” no doubt helped convince him to do the series in the first place, but there are virtually no one-man detective series on television today that don’t owe some degree of their success to the road paved by Jim Rockford. It might not be the single best show of the 1970s, but there are precious few from the decade that hold up as well.