10:55 PM

I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means

Posted by Elizabeth | Labels: , , , , , , , , ,



You’ve been there. You’re at a party, someone says something outrageous, and before you can clamp the imaginary hand over your mouth, you say, “Inconceivable!” Before you know it, you’ve started off a chain of Princess Bride quoting and nostalgia. After about three hours of this, you being to sympathize with Oppenheimer and think--“What have I done?” The truth of the matter is that mass media has forever tainted words and phrases, forcing your mind to make the connection almost against your will. This is our ever growing list of words we can’t say.

“Run” Glee may have little to no artistic value, but damn can it churn out a catchy cover. In the episode “Bad Reputation,” several of the characters try act differently than they usually do (you know, in their previous, totally consistent characterizations). For some reason, this involves singing a terrible, terrible hit from 1975--“Run, Joey, Run.” But now in the Schmitfer house, every time someone says “run,” this song must immediately be sung. Mulder’s getting backed into a dark alley by Krycek? “Run, Mulder, run!” Low on Hit Points in a video game? “Run, Shepard, run!” Accidentally turn on an episode of Glee? “Run, everyone, run!”

“Eagle” This one can be really annoying--especially because it’s one of those references that a lot of people may not know. Zach Braff’s “Eeeeeagle” can ruin a movie (like the new Channing Tatum movie that we weren’t planning to see but we could never actually see because every time they said “Eagle!” we would laugh), a scientific discussion about our national bird, or a car trip when one happens to see a bird out of the window that could possibly look a little bit like an eagle. We have yet to go the distance and actually do the Turk and JD routine, but it’s probably one of the greatest running gags on Scrubs.

“Maybe” As indecisive people, we say “maybe” a lot. And every time, this excellent Flight of the Conchords song must be sung.

“We’ll do that!”  from one of the greatest Star Trek films ever made, Galaxy Quest. This narrowly beats out, “Miners, not minors!”--what can we say, it’s a quotable film. But for sheer frequency, “We’ll do that!” wins. We say it any time we make a plan…or decide what to have for dinner.

“Delete” “Exterminate” “Assimilate” Damn Daleks, Cybermen, and Borg. If you guys ever got together, you could rule the world. And our vocabulary.

“3PO?!? Where could he be?!?!?!?” Ah, the dulcet whine of Luck Skywalker. This phrase has only increased in usage after Elizabeth named her Droid Incredible “C-3P0.” Whenever he gets lost, out pops an inevitable Mark Hamill impression. (BTW, yes, we name our inanimate objects. Deal with it.)

“Would You Kindly” Just the mention of this phrase gives us the shivers. We wouldn’t dare spoil this for anyone who hasn’t played the game, but Bioshock will forever ruin this phrase. And 50s music.

“…in the world.” Oh, Jeremy Clarkson. Need to comically overemphasize the greatness of something you love? Just tack on this phrase to your favorite superlative, and you’re good to go.

“Stop.  Pooping.” From Parks & Recreation’s “The Flu.” Now, whenever we look at Rob Lowe, that line is all that we can hear. This should make for interesting future West Wing viewing. “Mr. President: Stop. Pooping.”

“Blondie.” What’s wrong with a mildly amusing strip from the Sunday funnies, you ask? Oh, no, no, no. Every time we hear it, we think “Kiss me, James” from the Lost finale. It makes us cry. Every single time. Curse you Darlton.

“Doctor!” No, not a physician, THE Doctor. This moment in Doctor Who history lives in all fans heart as the time when John Barrowman could just not keep a straight face. The over-the-top ending to an otherwise pretty excellent season is more then a little groan-worthy, and tarnishes perhaps the best acting David Tennant does in the entire series five minutes later. The fact that Barrowman must have thought the same makes us smile every time the word comes up. BARROWMAN!!!

Bonus Word: Epidemic. ’Nuff said.

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1:38 PM

Square One

Posted by Rebecca | Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Every year or so, I suddenly get the urge to watch Scrubs. When and why this happens is unexplainable, but in any case I’ve been watching a lot of it the last couple of days. And, as I’ve been skipping around from season to season to episodes that I don’t remember that well, I realized how much I wish I could watch the entire series over again for the first time. When it originally aired on television, I would watch an episode here or there, or I may even have tuned in for a couple of weeks running. But my Scrubs watching was sporadic to say the least. Even when I started to watch it through on DVD, I inevitably ran into a patch of episodes I had seen, got bored, and stopped.


Looking back on it, Scrubs deserved better from me, a television viewer. Sure, it’s far from the best show in history. The insecurities of Elliot and her annoying boyfriends get boring and may or may not make you nauseas. Jordan has more bad moments than good, Carla get’s a little controlling, and sometimes you just wish that J.D and Turk would spin-off onto a different show. But the series can surprise you. What Scrubs is good at, and which gets perfected in later series (like Community) is showing that sometimes you can’t have comedy without a little bit of tragedy. For example, I will always remember The Fray’s “How To Save a Life” not for the Grey’s Anatomy moment, but for that great scene when Cox almost gives up on medicine. The series finale (that is the real finale. I have chosen to believe that that one season when Sacred Heart was a strange med school didn’t actually happen) was beautiful and poignant for all the right reasons.

The same goes for Alias. I think I missed the majority of the first season, and then expected that if I started the second season I would eventually figure it all out. I kept hoping that this would happen for the rest of the series. Add to this the fact that I think I may have missed quite a few episodes here and there, and that this was in the days before I had a DVR, Netflix, or easy access to the Internet, and you eventually get to a finale that I mostly got but not really. To be fair to me, however, I think that there are more than a couple of problems with the series as a whole and J.J obviously could have used a little Darlton help. Although I believe a show should challenge and surprise, a show should never be a mess of confusing names and impossible mythology that, let‘s just admit it, doesn‘t actually work. I knew enough about the characters to be more than a little disappointed at what they all became by the last season. All this being said, I know my experience with the series would be better if I could go back and watch more of that first season, and I know I would have loved the series instead of just liking it.

As I was running through the before-mentioned clips of Scrubs, I took a break to look at clips of Gillian Anderson, X-Files, and David “I-Never-Look-Ugly-Even-When-I’m-Crying” Duchovny winning Golden Globes, SAGS, and Emmys. Hearing the nominees for each category, I was shocked at how few of these 90’s actresses/actors I knew and also about how many of the nominations were for E.R. Although I think we can all admit that E.R was dead long before it was given a proper funeral, I think that what it became has overshadowed those first seasons when it was actually really good. E.R is another one of those shows that I caught every so often, and I actually have no memory of the first two seasons. But believe it or not, this is where George Clooney really made his first mark on the entertainment business and this is where Julianna Margulies spent all that time before she showed up on The Good Wife. The show quickly went downhill after Clooney, Margulies, Anthony Edwards, and eventually Noah Wyle left the series, but when they all existed all the screen at the same time, there were some incredible episodes. Season six’s two-parter “Be Still My Heart” and “All in the Family,” for example, still ranks up there as some of the greatest episodes of television I’ve ever watched. That, and I still can’t hear “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” without crying.

Lost/Firefly/BattlestarGalactica/Doctor Who/The West Wing. I admit that these are all cheats. I’ve seen every episode, loved all of them* and count them all as my collective favorite television series of all time. It’s not that I regret watching them when I did, but more that I wish that I could have all those moments of shock, awe, horror, surprise, etc. back again. I don’t want to know anything about the Island, want to believe that more episodes of Firefly will eventually happen, agonize over the identity of the Final Five (I swear--it’s the ship.), cry for the entire last portion of “Doomsday,” and smile at the brilliance of Aaron Sorkin. I want the experience of watching these shows for the first time back again.

*Jack goes on vacation, “Black Market,” “Daleks of Manhattan,” and the latter portion of The West Wing being the exception that proves the rule. Firefly, however, is perfect…except for the lack of more episodes.

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2:08 PM

A Pilot Run

Posted by Rebecca | Labels: , , , , ,

There are a great multitude of television shows that I know that I should watch, but I’ve never actually gotten around to watching. Be it a general disinterest, a lack of cable, or college papers, I’ve missed a lot of television. So, in the midst of what me and my friends lovingly call “funemployment,” I sat down and watched three pilots from series I’ve heard a lot about, but never actually watched.


First…
Big Love. To be honest, my opinion of this series opener was doomed from the start. Bill Paxton, the show’s main character, is one of the people on my list of “Actors That I Don’t Like But Have No Real Reason For Not Liking.” Nothing in the world would compel me to watch an entire se
ries (of five seasons no less) that would force me to watch Bill Paxton each episode. However, I remembered the show getting some buzz way back when it started and it’s in the midst of its swan song so I thought that I would put all prejudices aside and watch it.

I was not impressed. Sure, 90% of this may have been my failure to put my aforementioned thoughts about Bill Paxton aside, but the other 10% is entirely rational. The general premise is the life of a polygamist, Bill Hendrickson, and his three wives. As one would imagine, the politics of handling three different families is not only psychologically stressful, but also financially troublesome.

Each wife has their own problems and each want to believe that Bill loves them the most. Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin) is the newest, youngest wife who actually comes from outside of the religious community that the rest of the family comes from. She’s barely treading water trying to live up to everyone’s expectations. The least sympathetic wife, Nicky (Chloe Sevigny) likes to online shop and is stealing money from the family’s general fund to fuel her addiction. The most sympathetic wife, Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn who has the greatest last name of all time) was married to Bill for more than a decade before he married Nicky and is perhaps the only sympathetic and interesting character in the pilot. Halfway through the episode, I was screaming at Barb to leave this man and go and be incredible somewhere else. She has a job, she has her children, get out and get out fast. But, of course, she didn’t listen and I was left frustrated.

Perhaps it was the overly long opening credits that actually make-no-sense (I mean, the Beatles?), or perhaps it was boring religious stuff that I confess I didn’t really care about, or perhaps it was that troublesome Paxton, but this just isn’t a world that I want to re-visit. When I wasn’t bored or disinterested, I was angry and frustrated.

Speaking of frustration….

Ugly Betty. Second confession: I didn’t actually make it through the pilot. In my defense, I almost made it to the end and I knew how it was going to end anyways because the plot was that predictable and boring. Oh my goodness, she’s ‘ugly” (more like gorgeous under some uglyclothes) and she’s going to work in the fashion industry? Can this work? HIGHGINKS!!

I can see the feel that the show was going for. Very like Pushing Daisies, the show is supposedly set in a “real world,” but it has a very Alice In Wonderland-esque quality to it. The easiest I can describe it actually comes out sounding sort of creepy but here it goes--it looks like everything is in a way magically edible. Far from a dark realistic world like in, say, Damages, there is something very fantastical about the world of Ugly Betty and, although you know that the setting doesn’t actually exist in the real world, you continue to want to search for it. For a further example, I believe that somewhere, out there, there is a pie store that has Lee Pace behind the counter. One day, I will find it.

Where it succeeds with art direction, Ugly Betty fails in characters. With ten minutes or so left in the show, I suddenly came to the startling conclusion that I didn’t care about what happened to any character the last thirty minutes had spent time on. Sure, you’re supposed to care for Betty (America Ferrara) but I guiltily found that I thought she was pretty dumb. I understand having your own style, but all she needed to do was put on a suit and all her problems would be solved. She’s smart enough to realize that. And then everyone else is so over-actingly horrible that you don’t bother to learn their names or pay attention to what they’re saying because they bother you so much.

I couldn’t bare another minute of it so I turned off the television and re-watched clips from Pushing Daisies.

Which leaves us with…..

Damages. This has been sitting on my Netflix Instant Queue for something nearing four months; however, because Elizabeth swore that I would never get around to watching the series, I stubbornly sat down and watched the pilot episode. “Get Me A Lawyer” swiftly puts to shame the writing and artistic direction of Big Love and, without even really trying, creates more compelling and sympathetic characters than Ugly Betty could ever hope for.

However unlike these other two pilots, it seems like a disservice to try to lay out the plot of such a complex show in a short summary and to then go into a short discussion on how cool and cinematic the whole episode felt. It would be like trying to describe “Pilot: Parts One and Two” of Lost and capture the brilliance of the opening episodes. In fact, Lost may be the easiest thing to compare to Damages. Sure, one is about a cut-throat lawyer and a new, young associate who becomes caught up in a bloodthirsty, cruel world and the other is about (insert long discussion about the brilliance of Darlton and how their show is “about” something different for every viewer here). But “Get Me A Lawyer” utilizes the same flashback techniques as the ABC show, and has its own sense of cinematic style that makes the pilot seem like it is the opening act of a thirteen-part movie.

Damages falls short of Lost as the big mystery is more or less announced at the end of the pilot episode. The twists are a little too easy to figure out for avid television viewers, and “Get Me A Lawyer” lacks the complexities of Darlton’s shows. However, there is a point where the comparisons to perhaps the greatest television show since forever and Damages becomes unfair. Glenn Close’s Patty Hewes is no Ben Linus, but that doesn’t mean that she isn’t a compelling villain and that Glenn Close doesn’t act the frak out of the part. The plot points aren’t as surprising, but when (my one spoiler) that dog died and the murderer isn’t who we think it is, I may have smiled a little and said, “Nicely played, Damages, nicely played.”

I have a feeling that Damages isn’t the type of show that I’m going to want to marathon. It may actually take me a while to get through the series. But unlike Big Love and Ugly Betty, I’m pretty sure that I’m going to continue watching it. This, for a viewer that has perhaps the shortest attention span ever, is saying something.

Series to Watch: Pushing Daisies and Lost

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