Television
My sister knows pop culture
11/01/12 17:41
Of course, that LP turned out to be U2’s first big album, “Boy”, and became my favourite album of the early-80s period. I listened to it so often I came to know every drum beat, every guitar riff, every tremolo in Bono’s vocals.
So I guess I should have trusted my sister when, a couple of years ago, she told me I should be tuning into a new sit-com called “Modern Family”. “It’s our new favourite,” she told me. “It’s hilarious.”
Well, I had seen part of an episode of “Modern Family” already and I had been turned off it by the presence of Al Bundy (Ed O’Neill) from the revolting television hit “Married… With Children” in a lead role. No show with Al Bundy could be good.
So I resisted once again my sister’s advice and ignored “Modern Family” for two years.
It took my partner to convince me to give the show a chance. She began watching this past fall and was soon hectoring me to catch an episode with her. Since we only have one TV and she was committed to watching, I kind of had no choice.
It didn’t take me long to become a fan and “Modern Family” now competes with “Big Bang Theory” for the coveted position of My Favourite Show Now on TV.
That’s what makes it so great that my sister-in-law and her family sent us the first season of “Modern Family” on DVD for Christmas this year. These are the original episodes that we missed, due mostly to my unwillingness to trust the advice of my oh-so-wise-and-with-it sister and my distaste for anything even remotely related to “Married With Children”.
We watched the first three episodes last night. The pilot, especially, is a comedy classic. Not since “Frasier” have I encountered a sit-com that was so fully and perfectly developed from day one, with great characters established from the outset, relationships already well on their way and plot lines that were both funny and warm.
We “busted a gut” watching that first episode. The idea of putting “Shoot Luke” on the family calendar just killed me and the fast-paced disintegration of the situation was nothing short of spectacular.
I’m impressed with the casting and the acting, particularly of Ty Burrell (Phil Dunphy), Julie Bowen (Clare Dunphy), Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Mitchell Pritchett), and yes, even Ed O’Neill (Jay Pritchett).
In fact, the fact that I like and admire Ed O’Neill so much in this role forces me to re-evaluate his work in “Married… With Children”. Oh yes, I still despise Al Bundy. But it takes a pretty great actor to make me despise one character so strongly while liking another so much.
We PVR the new episodes of “Modern Family” each week but now we realize we need to make watching the earlier episodes (missed because of my own silly preconceptions) a priority.
Today's Photo: Quebec City and the Chateau.
Fibre Op doesn't undermine Springsteen's wisdom
04/09/11 21:30
It's been quite nice, actually.
Then along came fibre optics. Bell Aliant out here in Atlantic Canada is really pushing "Fibre Op" as the next great thing in television and internet. And they've been offering great deals, including Free Installation, Free Personal Video Recorder (PVR) and reduced pricing. What really sold us, though, was when people whose opinion we respect and rely on with regard to all things technical and electronic said they'd get fibre op if it were available in their areas.
Okay. We decided to dive in.
We had the fibre op installer (Phil, a really nice guy) at the house on Saturday and, despite some pretty scary stories we'd heard about how long installation can take and how much damage it can do to your house, our install was actually pretty simple. Phil had it done in an hour, with very little impact on the state of our home. And it's working really well.
We opted for the best package available, mainly because all three packages are the same price for three months and you're allowed, before the price increases, to step your service down to one of the lower packages. We've got zippy internet (with really fast uploads, which has helped my photo blog immensely) and a state of the art television service in high def, complete with the PVR.
There are only two things that bother me. First, Springsteen had it right when he sang, "Fifty-seven channels and nothing on". Only now it's 200 channels and nothing on. I know, that's a bit of a stretch. So far, I've enjoyed brief glimpses of a Blue Jays game, U.S. Open Tennis and a CFL tilt, all in HD. That's really cool. But, when you scroll through the "Guide" function on the service, you honestly do find that those 200 channels offer up a lot of crap. One channel was showing "Entourage" continuously. Several others didn't seem to have any programming, just paid advertising shows. The new Oprah network appears to the be the new "All Yoga" channel. It's kind of sad.
And, speaking of the Guide function, that's my second pet peeve. The Guide includes every channel that you could possibly have purchased from Bell Aliant, even if you didn't purchase them. We have 200 channels but our Guide function makes us scroll through about 600 anyway. So I had to set up my own "Favourites" listing, which just included the channels we actually get. Then I realised that even that list was almost 300 channels and impossible to flip through, mostly because about 50 of the channels we get occupy two or three different slots in the guide.
Often, it's the digital version first and then, further up the list, the high-definition version of the same channel. Sometimes, the high-def version appears more than once as the service provider groups them into the bundles they try to sell you. If the same high-def channel appears in two or more bundles, it shows up two or three times on the listings.
So I spent some more time deleting the duplicated channels. Ugh. Why can't they just set it so that you get every channel only once (the high-def version if you have high-def service) and so that the "Guide" function only shows the stations you get?
Still, I am quite excited about watching tomorrow's TiCat-Alouette game in high def, in my own home, the first CFL game I'll watch all season!
Today's Photograph: A lovely flower on a tree hanging over a bike part in Fredericton. I'm quite happy with this photo!
Tina Fey is becoming a household favourite
12/08/11 22:23
We've become Tina Fey fans of late.
First it was her dead-on Sarah Palin imitation on SNL. Next, it was an article on having a second child that Fey wrote in The New Yorker. Then came Date Night, a clever, very funny movie that surprised us. Then, Patti was given BossyPants for her birthday. I haven't been allowed to read it yet (Patti's still laughing her way through it) but I'm looking forward to it. And now we've picked up the first season of 30 Rock, the sit com that is all Tina Fey. She writes it, produces it and plays the lead role, Liz Lemon.
And we're loving it. We've watched the first eight episodes in a matter of just three days. That's a consumption rate that far outstrips The Big Bang Theory and we love that show.
Fey's Liz Lemon is a classic character and her relationship with her new boss (played by Alec Baldwin) is just great. The writing is strong and Fey manages to pull all the disparate characters together into a cohesive unit.
There's something really endearing about Fey and the character she plays on this show. Fey is a very successful entertainer yet seems to be able to maintain her balance, her sense of self and of perspective. In spite of her success, she comes across as being amazingly well grounded and thoughtful, a moral, honest person with little ego and a real sense of her responsibilities to others.
And I am impressed with the way 30 Rock as a whole approaches comedy. It's hip and strange and willing to take chances. The actors all seem willing to risk looking stupid or undignified, in order to make the comedy work. And it's clever too. There's a bit about product placement in an early episode that just killed us.
One of the strongest points of the show, however, is its willingness to give a joke the time it needs to be really funny. Where other sit coms would have already moved on to the next punch line, 30 Rock rides the last one, plays it over again, stretches the moment, usually with hilarious results. In that same episode, for example, they let one of Baldwin's bits go on for several minutes and, by the end, you're choking with laughter.
I don't hear a lot of buzz about this show, not like the buzz Modern Family or Big Bang Theory have received, but so far we're really impressed with 30 Rock and its creator, writer, producer and star, Tina Fey.
First it was her dead-on Sarah Palin imitation on SNL. Next, it was an article on having a second child that Fey wrote in The New Yorker. Then came Date Night, a clever, very funny movie that surprised us. Then, Patti was given BossyPants for her birthday. I haven't been allowed to read it yet (Patti's still laughing her way through it) but I'm looking forward to it. And now we've picked up the first season of 30 Rock, the sit com that is all Tina Fey. She writes it, produces it and plays the lead role, Liz Lemon.
And we're loving it. We've watched the first eight episodes in a matter of just three days. That's a consumption rate that far outstrips The Big Bang Theory and we love that show.
Fey's Liz Lemon is a classic character and her relationship with her new boss (played by Alec Baldwin) is just great. The writing is strong and Fey manages to pull all the disparate characters together into a cohesive unit.
There's something really endearing about Fey and the character she plays on this show. Fey is a very successful entertainer yet seems to be able to maintain her balance, her sense of self and of perspective. In spite of her success, she comes across as being amazingly well grounded and thoughtful, a moral, honest person with little ego and a real sense of her responsibilities to others.
And I am impressed with the way 30 Rock as a whole approaches comedy. It's hip and strange and willing to take chances. The actors all seem willing to risk looking stupid or undignified, in order to make the comedy work. And it's clever too. There's a bit about product placement in an early episode that just killed us.
One of the strongest points of the show, however, is its willingness to give a joke the time it needs to be really funny. Where other sit coms would have already moved on to the next punch line, 30 Rock rides the last one, plays it over again, stretches the moment, usually with hilarious results. In that same episode, for example, they let one of Baldwin's bits go on for several minutes and, by the end, you're choking with laughter.
I don't hear a lot of buzz about this show, not like the buzz Modern Family or Big Bang Theory have received, but so far we're really impressed with 30 Rock and its creator, writer, producer and star, Tina Fey.
Getting a Big Bang out of Frasier
21/06/11 22:15
We got rid of our television service recently. We'd
been paying almost $50 per month for absolute garbage
from Bell ExpressVu so we just decided: Enough, we'll
go without it.
A bold move, especially for me, as I was raised on TV and have always liked to flop down in front of the "box" of an evening to watch whatever was on.
So far, it's not been so bad. We have plenty of TV shows and movies on DVD and video so we've been working our way through our collection. We watched the first three seasons of Big Bang Theory, then moved on to Corner Gas and, believe it or not, Frasier. For some reason, P put the first disk of the seventh season of Frasier in the player the other day and we were hooked.
I think the first half of that seventh season offers some of the best situation comedy in history. Too bad the second half of the season had to come along and ruin it all.
Which gets me thinking: what is it that makes one sit-com work and another fail miserably? What happens when a successful situation comedy "jumps the shark" and suddenly starts the rapid descent into cancellation?
My friend Rob and I have had many a conversation on these very topics for the past, oh, 30 years and I'm not sure we've really figured it all out.
But I am seeing some parallels between Big Bang (our current favourite) and Frasier, one of our faves from the 1990s. Both feature brilliant main characters with successful careers and just a little too much self-assurance. Both surround that character with an interesting supporting cast, including a brother-figure with a crush on an unattainable woman, a horny close colleague and the odd-man out, either because of age or race.
So I think Big Bang and its writers should learn some lessons from their predecessors, including the biggest one of all: nothing is more important than maintaining the status and dignity of your main character in his professional or personal life. He will successfully entertain us (and we will put up with his pomposity) as long as we have strong evidence that his self-assurance is well-founded. If you make him a buffoon, you lose us.
The producers of Frasier walked a fine line on this issue and, all too often, fell to the side of buffoonery. In my humble opinion, the weakest episodes they made almost always involved the main character playing the fool, without dignity. I hope the producers of Big Bang will make sure that they never do the same to Sheldon.
A bold move, especially for me, as I was raised on TV and have always liked to flop down in front of the "box" of an evening to watch whatever was on.
So far, it's not been so bad. We have plenty of TV shows and movies on DVD and video so we've been working our way through our collection. We watched the first three seasons of Big Bang Theory, then moved on to Corner Gas and, believe it or not, Frasier. For some reason, P put the first disk of the seventh season of Frasier in the player the other day and we were hooked.
I think the first half of that seventh season offers some of the best situation comedy in history. Too bad the second half of the season had to come along and ruin it all.
Which gets me thinking: what is it that makes one sit-com work and another fail miserably? What happens when a successful situation comedy "jumps the shark" and suddenly starts the rapid descent into cancellation?
My friend Rob and I have had many a conversation on these very topics for the past, oh, 30 years and I'm not sure we've really figured it all out.
But I am seeing some parallels between Big Bang (our current favourite) and Frasier, one of our faves from the 1990s. Both feature brilliant main characters with successful careers and just a little too much self-assurance. Both surround that character with an interesting supporting cast, including a brother-figure with a crush on an unattainable woman, a horny close colleague and the odd-man out, either because of age or race.
So I think Big Bang and its writers should learn some lessons from their predecessors, including the biggest one of all: nothing is more important than maintaining the status and dignity of your main character in his professional or personal life. He will successfully entertain us (and we will put up with his pomposity) as long as we have strong evidence that his self-assurance is well-founded. If you make him a buffoon, you lose us.
The producers of Frasier walked a fine line on this issue and, all too often, fell to the side of buffoonery. In my humble opinion, the weakest episodes they made almost always involved the main character playing the fool, without dignity. I hope the producers of Big Bang will make sure that they never do the same to Sheldon.
Something About Sorkin
24/03/11 23:27
So help me out with this. A short while ago, I write
an impassioned plea for Studio 60 on the Sunset
Strip, Aaron Sorkin's dramedy from five years
ago, suggesting it's the best thing he's ever done
and wondering if we can convince the network to bring
it back.
I even got a couple of friends to start watching the first and only season of this intense series with me, a couple of episodes a week.
Now Sorkin himself is on 30 Rock, cracking wise with Tina Fey (one of my favourites, by the way) including taking shots at Studio 60? As if it is something Sorkin should be embarrassed about?
What a sad day. For me and for him.
Maybe I really am so out of touch with what's good and what's bad that I don't know what the heck I'm talking about. But I'm feeling a little bit like Star Trek fans must have felt when William Shatner went on Saturday Night Live and told all the Trek fans to "get a life".
I even got a couple of friends to start watching the first and only season of this intense series with me, a couple of episodes a week.
Now Sorkin himself is on 30 Rock, cracking wise with Tina Fey (one of my favourites, by the way) including taking shots at Studio 60? As if it is something Sorkin should be embarrassed about?
What a sad day. For me and for him.
Maybe I really am so out of touch with what's good and what's bad that I don't know what the heck I'm talking about. But I'm feeling a little bit like Star Trek fans must have felt when William Shatner went on Saturday Night Live and told all the Trek fans to "get a life".
Sorkin's Best Died A Quick Death
06/03/11 21:38
Five years ago, I got hooked on a new show called
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. I think I
watched it because Matthew Perry, Chandler from
Friends, was one of the stars. Maybe Amanda
Peet caught my eye. I don't know. But I started
watching it early on in its first season and I got
hooked. Patti, my partner, did too.
Studio 60 became, if you'll pardon the
expression, must see TV. Right up there with Six
Feet Under. But better. Slicker. Faster.
Funnier.
I had no idea who Aaron Sorkin, the show's creator, was at the time. I didn't watch The West Wing. I'd never seen anything else he'd done. But Studio 60 jumped off the screen at me and I was rivetted. The show told the back-stage story of a live sketch-comedy show being broadcast out of an old Hollywood theatre. Perry played a hepped-up hot-shot writer (a fictionalized Sorkin himself, maybe) who enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with his director (his counter-balance, really) played by Bradley Whitford. Their relationship was one for the ages and Perry, ahhh Matthew Perry, made that character simply electric.
It was by far the best thing I'd seen on TV in years. It pushed the envelope, stretched the boundaries, took risks and challenged the status quo. So, not surprisingly, I guess, it got gassed after one season.
I bring this up because the other day I found a "previously viewed" boxed set of all 22 episodes of Studio 60 in the final-sale bin at my local Co-Op store. Patti and I just watched the pilot. Amazingly, we'd never seen it before. We missed it when it first came out.
And it is something special. The writing zings, the acting is deadly and the tension and the humour both sizzle out of the box at you. We watched it and kept shaking our heads: "I can't believe this show got cancelled," we kept saying to each other.
Aaron Sorkin is better known for The West Wing. And maybe his recent Academy Award for The Social Network has further enhanced his reputation. But the best work he has ever done died before it even got started. Studio 60 is a masterpiece. Sorkin's masterpiece. The best thing he's ever done and possibly the least successful.
Pick it up if you can find it. Watch it, enjoy it, then tell your friends about it. Maybe if enough of us get behind it, someone in Hollywood will realise what a mistake it was to cancel Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. And maybe they'll bring it back. They did it with Star Trek.
I had no idea who Aaron Sorkin, the show's creator, was at the time. I didn't watch The West Wing. I'd never seen anything else he'd done. But Studio 60 jumped off the screen at me and I was rivetted. The show told the back-stage story of a live sketch-comedy show being broadcast out of an old Hollywood theatre. Perry played a hepped-up hot-shot writer (a fictionalized Sorkin himself, maybe) who enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with his director (his counter-balance, really) played by Bradley Whitford. Their relationship was one for the ages and Perry, ahhh Matthew Perry, made that character simply electric.
It was by far the best thing I'd seen on TV in years. It pushed the envelope, stretched the boundaries, took risks and challenged the status quo. So, not surprisingly, I guess, it got gassed after one season.
I bring this up because the other day I found a "previously viewed" boxed set of all 22 episodes of Studio 60 in the final-sale bin at my local Co-Op store. Patti and I just watched the pilot. Amazingly, we'd never seen it before. We missed it when it first came out.
And it is something special. The writing zings, the acting is deadly and the tension and the humour both sizzle out of the box at you. We watched it and kept shaking our heads: "I can't believe this show got cancelled," we kept saying to each other.
Aaron Sorkin is better known for The West Wing. And maybe his recent Academy Award for The Social Network has further enhanced his reputation. But the best work he has ever done died before it even got started. Studio 60 is a masterpiece. Sorkin's masterpiece. The best thing he's ever done and possibly the least successful.
Pick it up if you can find it. Watch it, enjoy it, then tell your friends about it. Maybe if enough of us get behind it, someone in Hollywood will realise what a mistake it was to cancel Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. And maybe they'll bring it back. They did it with Star Trek.