12 posts tagged “television”

"Look at that carnage... we're worse than the ancient Romans."

"What that strange feeling... ahhhh... it's of accomplishment."

"I'm terribly sorry... I thought I heard the sound of a woman measuring."

"Why did my hypothetical scenario scare you so much?"

"You provide food and sexual release for your handy husband."

"This is not going to end well."

"We need to replace them with kick ass going down parts."

"I do not know whether to laugh or cry at your ignornance."

"I'd like a daddy who lives in the real world."

"You may wondering what I'm doing with this hat full of maggots."

Not bad... I"m not sure I'm ready to call this season a comeback, but there's signs of life in the franchise.

For the past ten years (as long as I can remember) we've had to wait until November (aka fall sweeps) for the season premiere of the Simpsons-in fact, usually the Treehouse of Horror episode is the first new one aired, though not technically considered the "season premiere." However, this year the first episode of the season is in early September-tonight in fact.

Why is this? Is Fox rewarding the Simpsons's long-time fans by not making them wait until November sweeps for new 'sodes?

hahahahahahahahahaha

Everyone laugh at the funny joke. I'll be right back with the real reason. Which is: today is the first week of the NFL regular season, and thus the premiere for the new NBC "Sunday Night Football" featuring John Madden. Since NBC's re-entry into broadcasting football is squarely aimed at Fox's dominance on Sunday nights in the highly valued 18-35 male demographic, Fox is reminding everyone who's the real big dog on Sunday nights. (At least with the guys-ABC rules the fairer sex with their chickotastic double play of Grey's Anatomy and Desperate Housewives.)

Anyhoo, this CNN article describes tonight's episode thusly:

Sunday's season opener (8 p.m. EDT) revolves around Homer's brush with mob life and includes Joe Mantegna as Springfield's big boss Fat Tony and Michael Imperioli and Joe Pantoliano of "The Sopranos."

The article also has some news about other forthcoming episodes, including one I hadn't heard about yet, a parody of Fox's "24":

In a September 17 episode with the White Stripes rock band, Bart is injured by a tiger that Lisa rescued and organizes a benefit concert to help pay for an operation on his drumming arm.

The landmark 400th half-hour, due to air next May, is a spoof of Fox's "24" that's titled "24 Minutes" and features the drama's Kiefer Sutherland and Mary Lynn Rajskub as their characters.

Also tonight are season premieres of "Family Guy" and "American Dad" for those of you who like that sort of thing. (Okay, I like Family Guy-I'm not a snob.)

I'm moderately optimistic about the episode tonight-usually the 'sodes featuring Fat Tony are good ones, and it's hard to go wrong with the Simpsons doing the Sopranos (which they've parodies once previously-can you name the episode?) Sure, the Simpsons hasn't really been at the top of their game the past three or fours years, but as Hans Sprungfeld might have said, "a sense of hope embiggens even the smallest man."

Who's your favorite movie villain?

Since I already answered this for movies, I thought maybe I'd pretend the question is "who's your favorite TV villain"?

There are so many good choices: Mr. Burns, the boss on either the US or UK versions of "The Office," Baltar or Number 6 on "Battlestar Galactica." However, I've been watching the first season of The Sopranos recently, and marveling at the monstrous awfulness of Tony Soprano's mother, Livia.

David Chase does a great job of creating sympathy for Tony through his interactions with his mother, without really excusing the bad things he does. A great example of non-teleological story-telling.

I came up with these last weekend. I have no idea how many of these I'll actually use, but it's sort of entertaining to try to reverse engineer the plot of the season just by reading the titles. "The Simpsons" and "Veronica Mars" were major influences on my titling scheme, since many of them are paradoc references to movie or song titles.

Episode 1: 8am-9am "Pilot"*
Episode 2: 9am-10am "Move Out"
Episode 3: 10am-11am "Java the Slut"
Episode 4: 11am-12pm "Nixed Emotions"
Episode 5: 12pm-1pm "Jonesin'"
Episode 6: 1pm-2pm "Big Ole But"
Episode 7: 2pm-3pm "Tim and April's Quest For Ice"
Episode 8: 3pm-4pm "Fired Woman"
Episode 9: 4pm-5pm "Stealing Is Wrong"
Episode 10: 5pm-6pm "Police & Thieves & Shoes"
Episode 11: 6pm-7pm "Tim and April's Quest For Weed"
Episode 12: 7pm-8pm "Breaking Up Is Hard to Hear"
Episode 13: 8pm-9pm "The Drunk Meets the Odd Mother"
Episode 14: 9pm-10pm "Tango and Stash"
Episode 15: 10pm-11pm "Hey... Ladies?"
Episode 16: 11pm-12am "Blown Away"
Episode 17: 12am-1am "That Type of Guy"
Episode 18: 1am-2am "Tim's Zeppelin Rules"
Episode 19: 2am-3am "Tim and April's Quest For a Place to... Well, You Know"
Episode 20: 3am-4am "Beat-down By the Seaside"
Episode 21: 4am-5am "Epic"

* by convention, all first episodes of television shows are called "Pilot." The producers of "Lost" had the best response to this-the first episode of that series was titled "Pilot" but it actually made sense because the episode dealt with, among other things, the pilot of the doomed Oceanic Airlines flight.

For the Simpsons Season 8 box set. One of the best seasons ever, featuring two of my favorite 'sodes of all time "Hurricane Neddy" (in which we learn the dark story behind Ned Flanders penchant for sing-songny nonsense phrases) and "El Viaje de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer)" featuring Johnny Cash as a talking coyote who accompanies Homer on a Guatemalan insanity pepper triggered dreamquest.

Complete episode list

Treehouse of Horror VII
You Only Move Twice
The Homer They Fall
Burns, Baby Burns
Bart After Dark
A Milhouse Divided
Lisa's Date With Density
Hurricane Neddy
El Viaje de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer)
The Springfield Files
The Twisted World of Marge Simpson
Mountain of Madness
Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala (Annoyed Grunt) cious
The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show
Homer's Phobia
Brother From Another Series
My Sister, My Sitter
Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment
Grade School Confidential
The Canine Mutiny
The Old Man and Lisa
In Marge We Trust
Homer's Enemy
The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase
The Secret War of Lisa Simpson

Comes out August 15th.

I think the two TV shows in my life I was most bummed out about being canceled were Police Squad and My So-Called Life.

It's a blog post about Veronica Mars and other televison blogging. Blogging about blogging. It's like a pyramid scheme... only no one gets hurt. Until the bubble bursts of course. Can the attention economy have meme bubbles? And if so, when a meme bubble bursts, what are the consequences? An empty feeling of having wasted one's life?

Anyway until that day comes, I will continue priming the pump of the Veronica Mars meme. To wit, this article about UPN hosting a Veronica Mars bloggers' day, and how involved the shows' producers, especially Rob Thomas, are with the online community.

I thought this qutoe was interesting, in how being able to connect online with other fans can actually change the experience of "watching" a TV show.

“Movies are more of a one-time thing, and they don't allow for the kind of speculation that TV does,” said Kathie Skerry, a Boston-based blogger whose detailed “Veronica” reports on givememyremote.com got her an invite to the press-day event. “Logan (Echolls) can make some snide comment, and there are 15 different ways you can look at it. When things like that happen, people want to discuss what they see and what it means for the future episodes of the show.

“Since I started blogging, the way I view TV has changed. I feel like it's a whole different experience watching a show knowing that as soon as it's over, I can get online and talk about it.”

This made me think about my earlier post, where I speculated that TV shows were able to push the envelope of narrative complexity precisely because there are so many resources available to fans to keep track of it all. In a sense, one of the big distinctions between print and moving picture media, that with a novel (for example) you can leaf back in the pages and refer to something if you lose your place, but in a movie or TV show you can't do that, you can only go forward as fast as the creator wants you to-is no longer true. Remember Jane Austen's famous quote about the "tell-tale compression of the pages" at the end of Northanger Abbey? Now it's a progress bar in iTunes.

Add television to the list of industries that Apple has reformated (computers, publishing, video production, music.) I just bought my first "Season Pass" for an ITMS (iTunes Music Store) distributed show-season 10 of South Park . I had been wondering why they were only selling the first two seasons of SP when it seemed like such an obvious candidate for iTunes distribution, demographically and otherwise. It will be interesting to see what the user experience is like for the season pass.

Last night I tried using a Microsoft "Media Center PC" hooked up to DirectTV and by the end of trying to use, I was almost in tears. It's beyond the scope of this entry to explain why Apple gets it and Microsoft doesn't, but I think it has something to do with power and how its distributed at the two companies. I'm sorry to say, but I don't think great products are made democratically. Call it the Nietzchean superman theory of product development.