Premieres and Notables: July 18-24, 2011

Monday, 7/18

Hell's Kitchen; Fox. 7 pm CST. Season Premiere.

Giuliana & Bill; Style. 7 pm CST. 4th Season Premiere.

Degrassi; Teen Nick.  8 pm CST. 11th Season Premiere.

Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel; HBO. 9 pm CST. Season Premiere.
I'm not sure how a once-a-month show can have a season premiere, but I'll take any opportunity to mention it.  This is a fantastic show, and if you need a "season premiere" to start watching then this is the right month for you.


Tuesday, 7/19

It's Worth What?; NBC. 7 pm CST. Series Premiere.
Cedric the Entertainer hosts this new game show where contestants guess how much various items cost.

Ludo Bites America; Sundance. 8 pm CST. Series Premiere.
Intense chef Ludo Lefebvre and his wife travel across America and open one-night-only restaurants every week.

Gene Simmons Family Jewels (A&E; 9 pm CST). Season Finale.

Web Therapy; Showtime. 10 pm CST. Series premiere.
Lisa Kudrow brings her Web series about an online therapist to TV .


Wednesday, 7/20

Storage Wars; A&E. 9 pm CST. Season Premiere.

Deadliest Warrior; Spike. 9 pm CST. Season Premiere.

South Beach Tow; truTV. 9 pm CST. Series Premiere.
This reality show follows a Miami towing company. exciting.


Friday, 7/22

Heat Seekers; Food Network.  9 pm CST. Series Premiere.
Chefs Aaron Sanchez and Roger Mooking travel the country, trying the hottest foods they come across.


Sunday, 7/24

Same Name; CBS. 8 pm CST. Series Premiere.
Celebs change "lives" with average people with their names.
In the pilot, actor David Hasselhoff lives as landscaper David Hasselhoff-- and vice versa.

I Do Over; WEtv. 9 pm CST. Series Premiere.
Couples get a second chance to have their dream wedding.

Entourage; HBO. 9:30 pm CST. 8th Season Premiere.
The final season begins as Vince gets out of rehab.

Rollercoaster Safety With Patrick Warburton

Because who else would you trust with your rollercoaster safety?

I can't embed it, so here's the link:

http://youtu.be/i3Co3c2Ydqo

Most Epic Beer Commercial Ever

How to get fired via YouTube

First: check out this parody of the NFL CBA using a common clip from the film "Downfall":



Awesome right?

--It was created by Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe.

So, yeah-- I'm curious to know the NFL's reaction. (<--and what I meant in the title)
Heck, I'm curious to know what his union thinks of this...

Funny.
Ballsy.
Love it.

This is what happens when those guys don't have enough to do. Time to make the deal and get them back to work.

Mr. Face tries a Mamet play

Mr. Face tries acting in productions not endorsed by Nick Jr.

"Bigfoot" is Coming...

Sextape-- The View-- Remix

One of the most bizarre things I've ever watched...

Space Movies with Big Brother Thunder

So bad (cheesy) it's good.

Mellow Brick Road

All sounds came from the movie-- just remixed.  Cool in and of itself-- but we also get great animation to go with it (the effectiveness-- and simplicity-- of the design is amazing).

Premieres and Notables: July 11-17 3, 2011

Monday, 7/11

Adventure Time; Cartoon Network. 7 pm CST. Season Premiere.

Eureka; Syfy. 7 pm CST. Mid-season Premiere.

The Closer; TNT. 8 pm CST. 8th Season Premiere.
The final season begins...

HGTV Design Star; HGTV. 8 pm CST. Season Premiere.

Alphas; Syfy. 9 pm CST. Series Premiere.
David Strathairn leads a group of extra-powered people as they fight crime.

Surprise Homecoming; TLC. 9 pm CST. Series Premiere.
Billy Ray Cyrus hosts this show that reunites people with their military family members who had been serving overseas.


Tuesday, 7/12

It's Worth What? NBC. 7 pm CST. Season Premiere.

Food(ography); Cooking. 8 pm CST. Season Premiere.

How the States Got Their Shapes (History; 9 pm CST.) Season Finale.


Wednesday, 7/13

Damages; DirecTV. 9 pm CST. 4th Season Premiere.

Rescue me; FX. 9 pm CST. 7th Season Premiere.
The final eps begin tonight.

Roseanne's Nuts; Lifetime. 8:30 pm CST. Series Premiere.
Roseanne Barr moves to Hawaii, takes up a macadamia farm, and invites camera crews to film it.

The Franchise: A Season With the San Francisco Giants; Showtime. 9 pm CST. Season Premiere.

Dance Mom; Lifetime. 9 pm CST. Series Premiere.

Who the [Bleep] Did I Marry? Investigation Discovery. 9 pm CST. Season Premiere.

I Married a Mobster; Investigation Discovery. 9:30 pm CST. Series Premiere.


Thursday, 7/14

Sweet Home Alabama; CMT. 8 pm CST. Series Premiere.
A woman from Alabama has ten city boys and ten country boys to choose from in this dating competition.

Texas Women; CMT. 9 pm CST.  Series Premiere.
Four Texas women's lives are chronicled in this reality series.

The Green Room With Paul Provenza; Showtime. 10 pm CST. Season Premiere.


Friday, 7/15

Friday Night Lights (NBC; 7 pm CST). Series Finale (on NBC).
If you missed The End on DirecTV earlier this year-- or just want to experience it all again-- here it is.

PrankStars; Disney Channel. 7 pm CST. Series Premiere.
It's Punk'd for the Disney crowd.

Haven; Syfy. 9 pm CST. 2nd Season Premiere.


Saturday, 7/16

Pit Boss; Animal Planet. 9 pm CST. Season Premiere.


Sunday, 7/17

Big Rich Texas; Style. 8 pm CST. Series Premiere.
Five pairs of mothers and daughters are followed in this reality series.

Breaking Bad; AMC. 9 pm CST. 4th Season Premiere.

Bar Rescue; Spike. 9 pm CST. Series Premiere.
A bar consultant tries to help bar owners get their clientele drinking again.

Banana Attacks Gorilla

Flamethrowing Trombone

Star Wars Regret

Love this one...

Some Unnecessary Censorship from 2009

Obama must have been at a Tea Party rally...

TV Season 2010-2011: Top Ten Pt 2

Justified.  I was a bit disappointed to not see the fantastic interplay between Raylan and his boss as often as in Season One, but Raylan had other things occupying his time.  And how do you try to follow Boyd and Beau Crowder?  Why, you introduce Mags Bennett and her sons, who proved to be just as dangerous—and much more under-the-table with their crimes. 

I will admit to being a little disappointed in the new love combinations this season. Seeing Raylan go backwards in his relationship was a bit too “easy”, but you can’t turn down Natalie Zea, I guess.  Ava’s new interest came out of left-field, though, and because she was seen so little this year, it was hard to see why she went the direction she did.

 

Modern Family.  This show is so consistently good—and yet so NOT showy—it’s easy to forget just how great it truly is.  But, looking at it with a critical eye, it’s nearly flawless.  The writing is spot-on and the characters and situations always fit together.  The six adult actors are masters of their crafts and their characters.  And the younger actors must be learning something from them because I can’t faults with their work either—and this show doesn’t hide them off-screen; very often, they are the main parts of the side-plots.  These characters are all very real, and that’s incredibly rare.

           

Something else I enjoy about the show is: it’s not cynical or mean-spirited.  Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE that type of humor—but I can also appreciate a show that gets by on not having it (other than a playful “jab” at a husband or a sister).  This is a show that is based completely on love and mutual respect, and it’s very very rare to see a movie, let alone a continuing TV series pull it off.

And it’s funny.  Always funny.

 

Raising Hope.  Like the above, this show is also based on love—but there is a heck of a lot of cynicism in it as well.  Like My Name is Earl, this show tries to prove even the “worst”, most selfish people can be good.  There is some crazy and wicked behavior going on, but the base of the entire show is this extended family that is trying to make the world a little better for the baby of the family.  And they have a tough time of it with all the kooks and oddballs that live in their little neighborhood.

           

I have to say I probably laughed out loud more watching this show than any other this season.

The Walking Dead.  I’ll admit this wasn’t the best show I watched this year, but I loved the ambitiousness of it.  The creators and actors are going “all in” with this show.  From great zombie effects to the pure “real-people” nature of the characters, this show is worth keeping your eyes on.  Yeah, some of the lines are hokey, some of the plots are littered with holes, and the blood and explosion CGI effects are cringe-worthy, but I consider those aberrations to what the show is trying to accomplish, which is to show what would really happen if the people around you died and then came back, wanting to eat you.      

This show can and does surprise on a weekly basis (and I’ve read the comics the series is based on).  I have a feeling season two will continue to blow-up expectations—and it’ll settle into an amazing look at the nature of humanity.  All while dodging creatures that crave eating human flesh…

Torchwood.  At first, I was a bit jarred to see this show that spun-off of the kid-friendly Doctor Who be as raw as it is (definitely couldn’t be a network series in America), but that rawness allowed it to tell stories in ways I have never seen before.  Captain Jack Harkness leads a small group of humans in their efforts to control the alien technology that keeps popping-up on Earth.  Jack (an immortal time-traveler) also knows something big is coming, so his little band of heroes is also supposed to lead the charge against an upcoming alien invasion (another reason they are collecting all these alien artifacts and weapons they find).

This is a show for grown-ups because of the frank sexuality and violent nature of some of their cases.  The protagonists are also only “heroes” in the sense that they usually do the right thing.  But not always.  They all have their pasts.  They are all petty at times and lustful at others.  It reminds me a lot of one of my favorite shows, Angel, which followed less-than-perfect characters trying to do the right thing.  In many ways, these characters, who deal with aliens, and demons, and other supernatural things, are more real than most other characters you’d find in TV and movies because they have realistic foibles. 

I also find the “omnisexual” (man, woman, alien, whatever) nature of Captain Jack interesting.  One of my favorite “love stories” on TV or film—ever-- was contained in a truly heartbreaking episode that showed a love from Jack’s past, an American soldier in World War II.  It was very sweet, and very real, and the fact that it was between two men made no difference on its impact.  What’s interesting is that it isn’t pointed out.  There are no “very special episodes” dealing with whom Jack gets involved with.  He just finds someone he’s attracted to, and goes for it.

This show isn’t for everyone, but if you like very grounded science-fiction on your TV with sophisticated characters and backstories, and can handle some sex, violence, and vulgarity, give it a look.

Chickenfoot is Coming

Even with new Van Halen (supposedly) on the horizon, I'm pumped as Hell for this.

It's gonna rock...

Popular Science Blows stuff up

Slo-mo, Hi-Def footgae of fireworks in action

TV Season 2010-2011: Top Ten Pt 1

The first half.  Some I had lots to write about, others I didn't.  Doesn't mean anything other than: some I had lots to write about, and some I didn't.

Archer.  This is a show I was consistently entertained by, even though I can’t always pin-down what happened.  I just know I always laughed. I hate knowing who the voice actors are on most shows and movies, but it’s really hard not to acknowledge the great work by H Jon Benjamin and Aisha Tyler.  I, seriously, can’t picture anyone else doing those voices.  And that’s not to say Chris Parnell, Judy Greer, Amber Nash, and Jessica Walter don’t deserve props, but I can’t even imagine not hearing the cocky, sarcastic, yet borderline whiny Benjamin—and NO ONE can say one word (“Yep”) that says as much as Tyler can.  

Unlike last year, when the supporting characters “made” this show for me, this year, it was Sterling Archer himself.  He’s still a complete dick, but the people around him let all their quirks out, so Archer was actually the stable one of the show.  If you watched the first season, your eyebrows should have raised with that comment…

Community.  Definitely a show that’s too quirky for everyone, but that quirkiness is also the largest part of its charm.  This show can tell any type of story on any subject and completely break down the walls of what is expected.  A zombie story for Halloween that was outrageous (but held together by a loose plot that “could be” real), Abed’s whacked-out Claymation Christmas dream, a episode revolving around a game of Dungeons and Dragons that had more character development than most shows do in a season, and an anti-drug skit that was increasingly outrageous—and hilarious.  As well as an episode that was heading toward one parody/homage and completely flipped into another.  This show can do just about anything, and that’s one of the joys of tuning in every week.

Another fun part is how the show is becoming more and more meta.  Little things from past episodes pop up in the background of new episodes.  It’s becoming quite a bit like Arrested Development in the shout-outs to past things (on-screen and off-screen; another fine development is that these characters have lives we don’t always see on the show).  But the show does not feel as insular as AD, and the plots are very new-viewer friendly.

Doctor Who.  I feel I’ve written most of this before, but I couldn’t find that I wrote it in last year’s TV “wrap-up”, so who knows? 

The Eleventh Doctor (played wonderfully by Matt Smith) blows onto the scene and turns away an alien invasion with only the mention that he is The Doctor in his very first episode.  This guy is different than the last two Doctors I’ve been exposed to.  A little bit goofy, not as “hard” as the Ninth Doctor, and not as mentally adept as the Tenth Doctor—but he now flaunts his rep and sometimes that’s all he needs to solve his problem. 

Smith stepped into an impossible situation by replacing the beloved David Tennant as The Doctor. Showrunner/head writer Steven Moffat stepped into an impossible situation by replacing Russell T. Davies, who reinvented the series for the current times and made the show a monster success across the pond.  But they both pulled it off.  Smith, by not aping Tennant’s style, and Moffatt by not aping the tone that Davies did so well.  They both did their own thing—but very much as what one can expect from both Doctor Who, the character, and Doctor Who, the series.

But even though they both did their things, it was still refreshing to see them hold to what came before.  I loved that they went in new directions, yet still brought back some old characters and enemies.  And I really appreciate that one episode that season hit me in the gut just like at least one episode did in each of the previous four seasons.  Knowing you can introduce a character and make us love him/her so much in a single hour is a monster achievement.  (I’m thinking specifically about episode 10: “Vince and The Doctor”).

And of course I‘d be remiss to not mention that Karen Gillian’s role as Amy Pond also continues the winning streak the show has had when it comes to The Doctor’s companions.  Pond is an integral character to the show, and can be whatever is needed: scared, heroic, strong, funny… Everything a companion needs to be.  But she also brings a few new things that other companions didn’t necessarily have: a secret (she’s engaged), a longing for The Doctor (who she met as a young girl and couldn’t forget), and a little sexy (not that the others weren’t; but Amy is slightly more intended to be—as least as sexy as one can be on what is, at heart, a children’s show).

Episodes.  The very British-humor type series took a while to get going, but when it did, it was really good.  First-off, it featured two of my favorite British actors (from my favorite British show: Green Wing) as writers brought to America to adapt their highly-acclaimed comedy to an American audience.  Sounds great.  But you know how so many adaptations of successful shows/movies or books get somehow screwed-up beyond recognition?  This series shows you how it happens. 

The writers meet a producer who LOVES their award-winning show and wants it to be adapted for America.  The writers move to L.A. to begin production and then it’s revealed the producer has never watched an episode of the original.  Then the older actor who runs the school the show is based on is replaced for the “better” Matt LeBlanc (neither a gentleman—as portrayed in this series—or an old man).  More “wouldn’t it be better if…”s like “how about the main character be a hockey coach instead of the head of the school?” and “How about the hot lesbian (and thus unattainable as a romantic partner for LeBlanc’s character) librarian not be a lesbian” (and attainable as a romantic partner for LeBlanc’s character)? are added to the adaptation, and eventually it looks nothing like the original.  And not a single change makes the show better.  But we get to see how it happens.  I found it completely realistic because I’ve read many stories where the best of intentions to make a really great project amounted in a result that was a mess at best and a travesty at worst.  I mean, how do great actors get roped into shitty movies that aren’t about the paycheck?  Because the movies don’t end up being what they signed-on for.

I find the whole creative process fascinating.  How does a germ of an idea get to be a movie? How does a TV show get made?  What “pains” does a band go through to create an album?  How does an injury screw up a team/company’s plans for the rest of the year?  Hollywood is full of bullshit, and it was fun to watch it go on around these characters.

I also have to give a lot of credit to Matt LeBlanc, who was not really the main character of this series but was expected to carry it.  He played a version of himself (a little dumber, a little cockier, a little more egocentric than he really is—but he is also “blessed” with a huge schwing-schwang on the show, so the exaggerations were not all bad) and while you’d think that’d be easy, it probably wasn’t because the “Matt LeBlanc” of this series is pretty unlikeable.  It’s one thing for Larry David to be an ass on his own show, but LeBlanc was an actor and not a creator on this one, so he stuck his neck out on it to tweak the fan expectations of what “Matt LeBlanc” is really like (after assuming he’s quite a bit like Joey from Friends).  But it worked.

How I Met Your Mother.  Not the funniest or most clever season this show has had, but I loved how they are changing the characters subtly.  The ongoing arc of one character dealing with a death was very poignant while another dealt with a father s/he didn’t know.  These characters are growing up, and it’s nice to see them not repeat the same patterns as in previous seasons.  After six years, you should expect people of that age to experience growth—and loss.  This show is no longer constantly “on the bubble”, so they’re able to unfold storylines that they know they can spread out a bit, instead of just teasing us about getting close to answering the titular question.

Furniture Fix Dub

A few F-bombs here...

TV Season 2010-2011: Honorable Mentions

When you watch ninety-some shows, it's hard to narrow it down to the best ten-- so I'm gonna knock-out a few honorable mentions that just missed the cut.

Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel.  Still one of the best news shows I’ve ever seen.  It can take a subject I have only a mild interest in—sports—and give a human quality to their subjects that is better than anything that can be made up.  Pure brilliance and purely enthralling.

Terriers.  This show was very well put-together, but I never really fell in love with it like I had hoped to.  I’ll be happy with the one season we got—and I’ll probably pick it up on DVD if it’s ever released.  But I am not aching to have a second season (even with the “cliffhanger” ending).

The Good Guys.  I found this show to be much more hilarious than it probably was, but Bradley Whitford cracked me up every time he was on screen.  One of the best characters I’ve seen on TV.  And I loved the way the episodes moved forward and back through time to be brought full-circle by the end credits.

The League.  Not a great show, but much better than the spotty first season.  I really grew to looking forward to this show every Thursday.  Some outrageous moments and some laugh-out-loud moments as well.  Hopefully It’s Sunny in Philadelphia was watching because that show used to be this funny and outrageous.

The Soup.  No show I watch is more snarky—or spotlights the blatant stupidity-- of reality/talk shows (and some “soap opera” moments on scripted shows).  In a world where every entertainment “news” show basically hand-jobs these reality shows, The Soup is a breath of fresh reality. And it’s very witty, which is something I always enjoy.