Thursday, May 20, 2010

CBS Moves 'Big Bang,' and New Rivals Feel the Pain

Source: popeater.com

In one fell swoop, CBS has upended Thursday night television by moving the hugely popular 'Big Bang Theory' to 8PM, a decision that has clearly rattled the nerdy show's future time-slot victims rivals.

The brains behind NBC's 'Community' promptly responded to fan concerns that CBS was trying to destroy his lovable-yet-ratings-impaired show. Dan Harmon told his Twitter followers, "Well, if CBS thinks I'm a big enough threat to send a terminator, the least I can do is prove them right."

Harmon later jokingly described 'Big Bang's' move to 8PM as a "bad dream."

Of course, 'Community' isn't the only show that will feel the pain once 'Theory' is fact at 8. 'Bones' creator Hart Hanson has spent years watching his forensic crime drama place second behind 'Survivor,' which is moving to Wednesdays.

"Bones has traded Survivor for Big Bang Theory?" he asked on Twitter. "I have to admit, I find Big Bang much funnier, even during tribal council whatchamahoozies."

Noah Hawley, creator of ABC's new show 'My Generation,' which will make its debut at 8PM on Thursdays, asked his rival producers/writers, "Are you ready to rumble?"

Whether there will be much of a fight remains to be seen, but CBS isn't feeling sorry for its rivals.

"We're not in the charity business," scheduling chief Kelly Kahl told The Live Feed. "The performance of [NBC's] comedies is not something that deterred us. People like those shows, but they're not setting the world on fire ratings wise."

Warner Bros., which produces 'Big Bang,' was equally dismissive of the current Thursday offerings on NBC and beyond.

"I do believe there is a tremendous opportunity in the time period," Peter Roth, president at Warner, told the New York Times. "It's not one of the most competitive time periods; the competition is relatively weak."

'Big Bang' is in its third season and is the highest-rated sitcom on TV among the much-coveted 18-49 demographic. It was recently announced that repeats of the show, about a pair of physicists and their hot neighbor, will air on TBS starting next year.

American Idol Finals Are Set!

Source:eonline




Just think, maybe someday one of the two American Idol finalists can enjoy the same sort of success that has blessed Justin Bieber.

The 16-year-old pop sensation was definitely a highlight (in-studio on March 31, when he taped his "Your Smile"-"Baby" medley, and for the at-home folks tonight) as we waited patiently for Ryan Seacrest to name the two contestants moving on into next week's final round.

Barring a major upset, it certainly seemed as if the field was set long before last night, but America can be unpredictable like that...

Eh, not so much.

Casey James was eliminated and Crystal Bowersox and Lee Dewyze will square off next Tuesday in the hope of being named the next American Idol.

"I can't believe it man," Casey said, when Ryan asked about his experience on the show, which included a trip to his Texas hometown, where he was treated like a hunky king. "I'm so thankful for the opportunity. It's been an amazing journey and I'm just so honored that I'm here."

The 27-year-old, who peaked with "Jealous Guy" during Lennon-McCartney week, had come a long way since being objectified by Kara DioGuardi and Posh Spice during the audition round, but in the end he didn't go quite as far as a certain single mom from Toledo, Ohio, and a paint store employee from Chicago.

Crystal's lost her mojo a bit in recent weeks, but she spent the majority of the season as the frontrunner. Lee, meanwhile, started off as a dark horse but may have won the whole thing already with his rousing performance of "Hallelujah" last night.

Either way, may the best Idol win.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Double Takes: 10 Pairs of TV Doppelgangers

Source by TV.com

A couple months ago, while watching March Madness, it occurred to me that Steve Carell bares an uncanny resemblance to Coach Mike Krzyzewski of Duke. Like, if there is ever a Coach K biopic, Carell could play the starring role. And a couple weeks ago, 30 Rock pointed out that there's some major twinnage happening between Elizabeth Banks and Chelsea Handler.

As it turns out, there are a ton of look-alikes in the celebrity world (Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Javier Bardem, for example, share one body)—and many to take note of in the realm of television. Here are ten current pairs:

Double Takes: 10 Pairs of TV Doppelgangers

10. Accidentally on Purpose's Jon Foster (with Nicolas Wright) and How to Make It in America's Bryan Greenberg (with Victor Rasuk)
Who knew these two could pull off the Timberlake curl and five o'clock shadow so well—and with their dark-haired BFFs in tow?

Double Takes: 10 Pairs of TV Doppelgangers

9. Kiersten Warren (shown here on Desperate Housewives) and Weeds' Mary-Louise Parker
Kiersten Warren has also appeared on Dirty Sexy Money, Nip/Tuck, and Fringe—and all this time I thought MLP was just working overtime.

Double Takes: 10 Pairs of TV Doppelgangers

8. Lost's Nestor Carbonell and The New Adventures of Old Christine's Eric McCormack
Has Will Truman been on the island all along?

Double Takes: 10 Pairs of TV Doppelgangers

7. House's Lisa Edelstein and Rena Sofer (shown here on Bones)
We could have sworn it was Cuddy hitting on Booth (David Boreanaz) earlier this month in Bones's "The Predator in the Pool" and working with Agent Gibbs and company on NCIS.

Double Takes: 10 Pairs of TV Doppelgangers

6. V's Scott Wolf and Michael J. Fox (shown here on Rescue Me)
Oddly enough, Wolf also resembles a young Tom Cruise. And I mean that in the best possible way.

Double Takes: 10 Pairs of TV Doppelgangers

5. Supernatural's Jensen Ackles (with Jared Padalecki) and One Tree Hill's James Lafferty (with Chad Michael Murray)
Both boys are seen here with their slightly-taller, more-attractive TV brothers.

Double Takes: 10 Pairs of TV Doppelgangers

4. House's Olivia Wilde and Chuck's Yvonne Strahovski
Besides the cheekbones and the eyes, these two ladies also have "playing a huge nerd" in common.

Double Takes: 10 Pairs of TV Doppelgangers

3. Human Target's Mark Valley (with Chi McBride) and V's Joel Gretsch (with Morris Chestnut)
Sandy blonde hair? Check. Strong jawline? Check. Beefy black goatee'd sidekick? Check.

Double Takes: 10 Pairs of TV Doppelgangers

2. Gossip Girl's Chace Crawford and The Vampire Diaries' Ian Somerhalder
And Zac Efron could be their little brother.

Double Takes: 10 Pairs of TV Doppelgangers

1. V's Elizabeth Mitchell and FlashForward's Sonya Walger
Both of them were supposedly on Lost, but I don't buy it. THEY'RE THE SAME PERSON.

Despite Jail Term, Reality Teen Claims Innocence in Orlando Bloom Burglary

She's officially a convicted felon for her role in a 2009 heist at Orlando Bloom's home, but Pretty Wild star Alexis Neiers wants to clear her name.

"I didn't do anything wrong," Neiers, 18, tells E! News. "I thought we were going to trial and we had a great shot at this. I had been so confident because I had thought up until this point that I didn't do anything wrong."

In a last-minute plea bargain Monday, Neiers accepted a six-month jail term and three years probation for what her attorney Jeffery Rubenstein called "a limited role" in the caper. Rubenstein has said the plea was due in large part to Bloom's willingness to testify.

Neiers was seen on surveillance video as one of four people entering Bloom's Hollywood Hills home last July, but she previously insisted she was drunk at the time and was unaware that she was involved in a break-in. She begins her jail term on June 24.

"You go into this thinking, 'I may only serve 30 percent of the time,' or whatever, but I could end up serving a full six months. I want to prepare myself mentally as best as I can. I'm going to walk into that courtroom with my head held high and do the right thing."


Over a half-million dollars in artwork, watches and other valuables were stolen from the actor, allegedly by a ring of teenage burglars who committed a year-long crime spree that raided the homes of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Rachel Bilson and other young celebrities that netted more than $3 million in luxury goods.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

'American Idol' Ayla Brown gets 'Early Show' gig -the next Katie Couric

'American Idol' Ayla Brown gets 'Early Show' gig -the next Katie CouricAyla Brown, semi-finalist from "American Idol" and daughter of the newly-elected Republican Senator from Massachusetts Scott Brown, has landed herself a TV gig just weeks before she graduates from Boston College.

The Associated Press is reporting that Brown will be a producer, focusing on producing pieces for a youth audience. The show became interested in her after she appeared on "The Early Show" back in January. Executive Producer David Friedman says, "You can't create the next Katie Couric, you just have to find the talent that you think can develop into something."

Interesting that he cites Katie Couric, the long-time "Today" host. We know she's not on the CBS Evening News, but her morning show roots were at the Peacock and not the Eye. Perhaps Friedman should've said the next Julie Chen?

'The City' Olivia Palermo thinks Whitney Port's line is inconsistent

'The City' Olivia Palermo thinks Whitney Port's line is inconsistent"I'm just gonna pass and that's gonna be it." Power trip much, Olivia?




Every good reality show needs its villain, and Olivia Palermo is doing a wonderful job of filling those shoes in this clip from "The City," courtesy of our good friends at the Los Angeles Times' Show Tracker. Now that she's working for Elle.com instead of as an accessories editor, Olivia intends to blacklist Whitney Port's new line, Whitney Eve, from the site -- despite Erin Kaplan's suggestions.

Olivia says that the line is unfocused. "There's not like a theme, it's sort of all over the place," she says. We're sure that Olivia has a great eye for fashion, but when we saw the Whitney Eve line on the runway in the April 27 episode, it looked consistent to us! Plus, there's no way that Olivia knows better than Kelly Cutrone.

Whitney may get a break from Elle.com after all, though. Later on in the episode, Whitney learns that Elle Magazine nominated her to be included in another site's feature on emerging designers. "I wonder if Olivia has anything to do with it? That's super nice of her," Whitney gushes. We're pretty sure that it wasn't Olivia's doing, though. This one has Erin written all over it.

"The only issue now is that you owe Olivia a favor," Whitney's friend Roxy Olin says. We're sure Olivia will be happy to collect -- whether she had anything to do with Whitney's big break or not.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Bret Michaels 'Remains In Critical Condition'

Bret MichaelsRocker and reality star Bret Michaels is still in critical condition after suffering a massive brain hemorrhage, according to the star's Facebook page.

"There are several incorrect reports on Bret's condition," said a note posted to the star's official page. "Bret remains in critical condition at an undisclosed location. Further tests are being ran and information will be updated in the coming days. Thank you for your support, thoughts & concern."

VIEW THE PHOTOS: Rocker-Turned-Reality Star Bret Michaels Over The Years

On Friday evening, some online reports stated that Bret had stabilized and regained consciousness - and was even talking.

Radar Online reportedly spoke to Bret's father, Wally Sychak, who told the site that he had spoken to his son.

VIEW THE PHOTOS: Hair Metal Mania: All The Bands With Big 80's Hair!

"I talked to him this morning. He sounded upbeat and positive but they had him sedated," Sychak reportedly told Radar Online. "But he's doing good. He sounded like my son."

Bret, a contestant on the current season of NBC's "Celebrity Apprentice," had been blogging for Fancast and sent his latest entry to the site on Wednesday, which was posted on Friday night. In his blog, the singer said he was mid-way on his way to recovery after a serious surgery.

"Hey guys. I wanted to check in again to let you know how things are," he said, referring to his recovery from an emergency appendectomy two weeks earlier. "I'm feeling right about in the middle right now on a scale of 1 to 10. I'm not 100% yet, but I'm sure as hell not where I was when it happened.

VIEW THE PHOTOS: Rock Stars

"When your appendix ruptures if feels like what it would feel if you're on the losing end of a knife fight, so it takes a bit to recover from that," he continued.

The Poison frontman also addressed how his type-1 diabetes, a condition he was diagnosed with at age 6, mixes with his rock star lifestyle.

VIEW THE PHOTOS: Who Will Be Hired? New 2010 'Celebrity Apprentice' Cast

"When I say 'party' and 'let's have fun,' I'm one of those guys that just likes to have a great time," Bret blogged. "I'm not a belligerent drunk. I don't need to drink. But, there's a big misconception about drinking and diabetes, and honestly, drinking an immense amount of alcohol for anybody is bad. Let's get clear about that. But, for a diabetic, it just doesn't work in your diet. It's got so much sugar content."

He added that problems stem from confusion about intoxication vs. blood sugar levels, and not eating right after.

I pick and choose my times when I'm going to have fun," he wrote. "This was a wake up call to be a little bit more diligent on keeping control of my health... It's tricky for me. I need to find something healthier to do on my day off then going out and finding a club to hang out at."

As previously reported on AccessHollywood.com, two weeks removed from an emergency appendectomy, Bret Michaels was rushed to the hospital on Thursday night where it was discovered the rocker had suffered a massive brain hemorrhage, a rep for the rocker confirmed to Access.

Following the news of Bret's hospitalization on Friday, his "Celebrity Apprentice" boss Donald Trump offered his well wishes.

"I am deeply saddened to hear about Bret Michaels and my thoughts and prayers are with him and his family at this time. He's a great competitor and champion and I hope he will be fine."

Copyright 2010 by NBC Universal, Inc. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Related Content from AccessHollywood.com

Ratigan's Financial Reform Honor Roll

Discover which people truly understand how to police Wall Street



OPINION
Dylan Ratigan highlights specific politicians and media personalities who understand, educate and resurrect investor innovator capitalism, aiming to close the government subsidized casino the banking system has become over the years.

NCIS' Sean Murray and Wife Welcome Second Child

NCIS star Sean Murray and his wife, Carrie, have welcomed their second child, People reports.

Son River James Murray was born on April 22 in Los Angeles, weighing in at 7 lbs., 11 oz.

Check Out Photos of Sean Murray

Murray, who plays special agent Timothy McGee on the CBS crime drama, and his wife also have a daughter, Caitlyn.

"Carrie and I are pretty Zen'd out right now," the 32-year-old actor told People. "[But we know] our 3-year-old will bring us back to reality soon enough!"

Murray and his wife, a teacher, have been married since 2005.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Firewall & Iceberg podcast, episode 12: Conan to TBS, Doctor Who, Glee and more

A late night edition of the Firewall & Iceberg podcast this week, and you can find the relevant links, files and running times over at NJ.com. Normal schedule should be restored next week.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Lost, "Everybody Loves Hugo": Throw the Scot down the well

Still off through the end of this week, but I can't help myself from writing about "Lost," so a quick review of tonight's episode (along with some thoughts on where we are in this final season) coming up just as soon as I'm well enough for a fajita field trip...
"Whoa. Dude." -Hurley
Well, we're clearly cooking with gas at this point in the season. Desmond's return has goosed the narrative stakes in both the sideways universe and the real one, two of the three island factions have finally come together(*), stuff blew up left and right(**), Des and Locke are trying to kill each other in the two timelines, and the sideways world again was used well to bring back a character whose time on the show felt like it came to too abrupt an end in the real timeline.

(*) Albeit in an episode that saw the creation of another faction in the Richard/Ben/Miles group, since groups on "Lost" are forever picking sides and walking off, going all the way back to when Jack took half the Oceanic survivors into the caves back in season one.

(**) Albeit with explosions that continued this season's trend of unimpressive CGI work. Whatever cuts ABC's made in the show's budget the last couple of years, the digital FX department has definitely been a big victim.

My fear, though, is that it's taken us too long to get to this point.

In the early years of the show, a "Lost" episode and a "Lost" season tended to be constructed the same way: an exciting beginning, then a lot of narrative throat-cleaning, and then an exciting finish. Once Cuse and Lindelof got permission to set an end date and knew what they were moving towards, seasons 4 and 5 became much denser, both from week to week and over the course of each season. Season 6, on the other hand, has felt like a throwback, not just with the return of old characters like Charlie and Boone and, now, Libby, but with the way that we're heading into the home stretch with material that it feels the show would have been better-served to deal with sooner.

Though some of the early sideways stories were entertaining through the sheer force of personality of the actors/characters being spotlighted (Locke, Ben), there was nothing all that interesting about the sideways world itself until last week. By making Desmond aware of the wrongness of the world - and introducing other characters like Charlie and Faraday who also recognized this - we finally tied that world to the one we care about, and created some urgency to our visits to LA. But I'd have rather see this happen a few weeks into the season and not now, not only because it would have given greater purpose to some of those meandering flash-sideways stories like Jack's son or Jin's amazing adventure in the freezer, but because it feels like now that we have a sideways story arc (Desmond tries to nudge the Oceanic passengers into realizing that this world isn't right), the resolution of it is going to feel rushed.

But Cuse and Lindelof have earned some trust over these past few years. Even if I didn't love a lot of the first half of this season, I want to believe that they know just how much time they need to tell the remaining story, that even if "What Kate Does" hasn't retroactively gotten better, that we're heading towards a finish close to what a series this great deserves. Because I don't want the season to turn into one big dead end like Ilana ultimately was.(***)

(***) Even in death, Ilana amounted to little, as Arzt beat her to that particular punchline by five years. The Ajira crew ultimately added about as much to the series' larger mythos as the tailies - Richard or Jacob's ghost could have very easily explained the candidate thing with just as much detail as Ilana ever offered - and the tailies at least gave us Libby's romance with Hurley and Mr. Eko and his Jesus stick for entertainment value.

And in the meantime, Desmond's actions, as well as the resurrected Libby's awareness of her other too-brief life, gave Hurley's sideways story some juice, along with giving Jorge Garcia another chance to show he has far more to offer the series than comic relief.

In sideways world, Hurley's a man who seemingly has everything (his version of the happy ending deal all the island folk apparently got) but is incredibly lonely. In the real world, he's lost so many people while standing on the sidelines that he once again asserts himself and takes a surprising leadership role on the island. (And Jack, finally after all these years learning that he can't fix everything, seems okay with playing Hurley's sidekick for once, in a nice role reversal and good moment for the character.)

Garcia had a lot of good moments in this one, but my favorite came early on, when he tells Ilana that Libby was "murdered," and this tone of pained disbelief comes into his voice as he says the word. One of Hurley's most recognizable traits is his ability to discuss the most ridiculous events of the series in the most matter-of-fact tone, but with his delivery of that one word, Garcia makes it clear just how much this one particular event continues to rock his world, years later.

Libby's return didn't explain what she was doing in the mental hospital in the real world, and I suppose that's one mystery I can live without them explaining. But I'm hoping we'll get more of Cynthia Watros in the coming weeks, along with more Dominic Monaghan and Jeremy Davies and even Ian Somerhalder. Because if alt-Desmond's mission is to bring an end to sideways world so the real world can be saved, a bunch of people are going to have to accept that they're going to die again, and there's a lot of good material to be mined there - assuming there's both time and available actors for that.

As for the Locke/Desmond mutual attempted murder game going on in both timelines, I'm not assuming either real Des or alt-Locke are dead just yet. Desmond's fall down the electromagnetic well is one of those classic comic book-style "if you don't see a dead body, you don't have a dead character" moments, and alt-Locke is still breathing (and looking remarkably like Locke on the ground after his father threw him out the window in "The Man from Tallahassee"). I am curious, though, if alt-Desmond has a specific reason for targeting our poor, self-actualized substitute teacher - perhaps recognizing that damaging Smokey's host body in the sidways world hurts him in the real one - or if alt-Des is going more by instinct, and somehow knows in his gut that the man with John Locke's face has just tried to hurt him.

Anyway, we'll have more time to speculate on all of that once I'm working full-time again (and less sleep-deprived), so in the meantime, some other thoughts:

• Couple of notable guest stars this week: Samm Levine (from my beloved "Freaks and Geeks" had a brief appearance as the Mr. Cluck's employee who recognizes Hurley (and I thank the "Lost" producers for giving him more dialogue than Quentin Tarantino did in all of "Inglourious Basterds"), Bruce Davison reprises his role from season two's "Dave" as Dr. Brooks.

• So the whispers were the voices of all the souls trapped on the island because of the actions they committed there while alive. On the one hand, that's not a surprising answer; on the other, that's sort of the risk Cuse and Lindelof face in giving us answers to questions like that at this late date. After six years of speculation, of course most of us are going to have come up with an idea like this to describe the whispers, just as I'm sure the identities of Adam and Eve will wind up being something that's already mentioned on Lostpedia. But by tying the answer to a character moment - Michael asking Hurley to apologize to Libby for him - the revelation merited more than a shrug.

• I swear, every time a character with a gun talks about getting in an outrigger (here it was Richard), I turn into Millhouse in "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show" whining, "When are they gonna get to the fireworks factory?!?!?!?!"

• Another possible "Lost" spin-off: a game show called "How Do You Break the Ice with the Smoke Monster, Anyway?"

What did everybody else think?

Justified, "The Lord of War and Thunder": Raylan at the bat

A review of tonight's "Justified" coming up just as soon as I get my dignity back...
"But our stories are our own, huh? We all got our cross to bear." -Arlo Givens
The early episodes of "Justified" dropped so many ominous hints about Raylan's father that the episode introducing Papa Givens was going to have a lot to live up to. Fortunately, "The Lord of War and Thunder" was up to expectations, thanks in part to the casting of ace character actor Raymond J. Barry as Arlo, in part due to Timothy Olyphant putting Raylan's more laid-back qualities aside for an episode and unleashing that anger we all know he plays so well.

In particular, I loved the scene where Raylan goes to Perkins' house and tells the story of his childhood. It wasn't because of the content of the speech, since a lot of the Givens family backstory was already strongly implied (as I've said, Graham Yost characters tend to spell out more than is necessary), but because of how Olyphant played it. In that scene, Raylan wasn't talking to Perkins, and was barely even talking at him. In that moment, Raylan was alone with the ghosts of his childhood, and anyone else in the room was irrelevant, except as someone whose ass Raylan could kick if they were dumb enough to make him.

And it's also a mark of both Olyphant's performance and the way Yost and company have written the character that he did not, in fact, go off on Perkins or his nephews when the opportunity arose. Raylan's angry, but he grew up in the home of a man who couldn't control his anger. And just as Arlo vowed to be the opposite of his own father, Raylan the son of a criminal not only went into the law, but made himself into a man with a tight leash on his own fury. He can let it out when necessary, but usually he does it in a controlled manner. He has his code, and he makes sure his opponents know it; if they follow his rules, they get a pass, and if they don't, he can always tell himself it's their own fault they're dead.

(And, really, can you blame him after seeing the little cemetary outside his childhood home? We all figuratively have a gravestone waiting with our name on it, but Raylan had to grow up looking at a literal one. It'd make any man angry and death-obsessed.)

After the last few episodes were largely self-contained adventures of Raylan and the other Marshals, "The Lord of War and Thunder" suggested that "Justified" may have room for some longer-term storytelling, after all. Not only does Raylan vow to put Arlo back in prison, somehow, but we're reminded that Boyd has a very large family, and most of them - including papa Bo (who will also require great casting, after the build-up here) - aren't too happy with either Raylan or Ava. And I liked the way this episode flipped the format, with the more serialized and personal plots taking the forefront but with an engaging, and brief, episodic story about Raylan playing gardener to catch a fugitive. If the series can be fluid about its format - standalone-only if the story's good enough to carry the hour (like last week's fugitive dentist plot), and a mix when it's not - I'll be very pleased.

A few other thoughts:

• These days, with most shows operating on a tight budget where only a handful of actors are budgeted to appear in every single episode, the idea of who is or isn't a "regular castmember" is less aesthetic than it is contractual. Still, when Winona turned up in the scene where Ava met U.S. Attorney David Vazquez, I shrugged and said, "Oh, yeah, Natalie Zea is on this show." She appeared briefly in the pilot and the second episode, wasn't in episodes 3 and 4 at all, and did a scene and a half here. I like Zea fine, but I enjoy Olyphant's chemistry with Joelle Carter so much that I don't exactly miss her when she's not around.

• Yost brings in another familiar face from a past project, casting Rick Gomez (who was wisecracking George Luz in "Band of Brothers," as well as the older brother of Josh Gomez from "Chuck") as Vazquez. Given all the talk about both the Crowder family and the legal problems that would come from Raylan and Ava having a relationship, I'm expecting/hoping to see a lot more of Gomez down the road.

• Couple other guest stars of note: Eddie Jemison from the "Ocean's Eleven" films (but better known in the Sepinwall household for this series of Bud Light commercials) as Glen Perkins, Linda Gehringer as Raylan's knife-wielding stepmom, and Brent Sexton (Damian Lewis's ex-partner from "Life") as the cop from Raylan's hometown.

What did everybody else think?

30 for 30, "No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson": No definitive answers

"30 for 30" is back on ESPN proper tonight at 8 with Steve James' "No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson." James directed "Hoop Dreams," one of the greatest documentaries ever made (about sports or otherwise), and he and Iverson grew up in the same hometown of Hampton, VA, so I had high expectations for this match of filmmaker and subject. I was not disappointed. A few brief thoughts after the jump...

As the subtitle suggests, "No Crossover" focuses on the bowling alley brawl Iverson was involved in as a 17-year-old. But in a broader sense, the film is about the divide between the black and white populations of Hampton, as seen through the lens of both the trial and James's own upbringing. Some of the film's most affecting moments involve detailing little-known pieces of Iverson's biography, but just as emotional are ones where James talks to his mother, or about his father or, in one case, engages his African-American cameraman in an impromptu dialogue on race. There are documentaries where it feels like the director has inserted himself into the story for the sake of self-promotion, but here the two stories blend together beautifully. (And the whole point of "30 for 30" has been to let the directors tell stories they have a personal stake in, whether they include themselves in the action like James and Peter Berg, or not like Dan Klores.)

For those assuming "No Crossover" will be an apology for Iverson, it is not. Nor is it a condemnation. It looks at the case, and at his life, and lets you choose your own answers about The Answer. Iverson's not always a model citizen (and the film was made before some of the latest bizarre/sad twists in his story), but James tries to place his life and behavior in a greater context, to try to find some truth not only about the bowling alley trial, but so much of AI's story. It's a wonderful film, one of the best of this terrific film series, and I highly recommend it.

Watch it tonight and feel free to discuss it here.

Monday, April 12, 2010

United States of Tara, "You Becoming You": The talking cure

A review of tonight's "United States of Tara" coming up just as soon as I crack the spine...
"Is Joel Gretsch going to be back as Tara's therapist next season?" -Me, August '09
"No, Tara will have a new therapist." -Diablo Cody
"Oh? Who'd you cast?" -Me
"I can't tell you yet. I promise I'll tell you when I can." -Cody

"Back in the summer, you said you couldn't tell me yet who will play Tara's therapist this season." -Me, January '10
"I still can't tell you." -Cody
"Seriously?" -Me
"Nope. I'll tell you when I can." -Cody
For a while, I assumed the mystery surrounding the new therapist was one of those Clooney-returns-to-"ER" deals, where the actor had enough clout (and enough disinterest in hype) to insist his or her casting not be announced in advance. Then I came to the end of "You Becoming You," and I understood exactly why Cody wanted/needed to keep this particular secret: because the "new therapist" was actually Tara's newest alter, Shoshana, modeled on gay neighbor Ted's real therapist Shoshana in New York.

Of course, sometime between January and now, either Cody or someone at Showtime who outranks her decided to not keep it entirely a secret. Shoshana has been in a lot of the promotional art, and after I watched this episode a few weeks back I saw a couple of interviews with other "Tara" producers that gave away some details about the character, but not necessarily that Tara's psyche created her in lieu of finding an actual therapist. Still, I'm glad I got to be fully surprised. I assumed Tara was lying to Max about talking to the real Shoshana, but only to get him off her back after the Pammy fiasco, so I was nicely dumbfounded when Max walked in on the reality of the situation.

But because Shoshana only appears briefly (while I've seen several more episodes), I'm going to set her aside and focus on some other parts of "You Becoming You," other than to say my eyebrows raised very high when I got a good look at the very Alice-like dress and red heels being worn by the woman in Tara's flashback.

Marshall's storyline continues to maybe the show's strongest blend of comedy and angst, and always wonderfully played by Keir Gilchrist. The Gregsons have always treated Marshall's sexuality as something that's understood but never really addressed head-on, and therefore it felt right that he should finally come out of the closet to his dad in the wake of his failed attempt to prove his heterosexuality with Courtney. Max's completely unruffled response to the announcement - "Good. So, you want anything?" - was a very John Corbett moment at a point in the season where Max is becoming less Corbett-like, and it turned out to be exactly the reaction Marshall needed. He needs to be accepted, but he doesn't really want to talk about it, and certainly not with his parents.

Charmaine, meanwhile, is pregnant, and after she and Tara started talking about the date of conception, my first thought was, "So, it's Neil's baby, right?" Whether it is or it isn't, I hope this story leads to more Patton Oswalt. And Kate's car trouble leads to the first of what should (if the writers were paying attention to how good Viola Davis is with what's so far a tiny part) be many meetings between Lynda and Tara.

What did everybody else think?

Why Conan O'Brien's TBS move was the right one: Sepinwall on TV

Just as a Very Desmond Episode of "Lost" briefly pulled me out of my family time cocoon, I couldn't not weigh in on Conan O'Brien's decision to do a talk show for TBS, rather than Fox, starting in November. Click on the previous link to NJ.com and you'll see why I'm with Coco on this decision.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Treme, "Do You Know What It Means": The 'n' is for 'nuance'

I reviewed "Treme" overall in Friday's column. Some thoughts on the pilot episode coming up just as soon as I teach you everything I know about Keynesian economics...
"All you want to do is get high, play some trumpet and barbecue in New Orleans your whole damn life?" -Davis
"That'll work." -Kermit
Just as he did with the pilot for "The Wire," David Simon (there with Ed Burns, here with Eric Overmyer) has no problem plunking his audience down into the middle of what's a foreign country to many of us and assuming we'll pick up the language as we go. So we open with two men (who turn out not to be significant characters) haggling over the fee for the second line parade, and our first familiar face in Wendell Pierce doesn't even turn up for several minutes. We don't get an explanation for what a Mardi Gras Indian is, but instead just see Clarke Peters strutting down an empty street in that amazing yellow feathered costume, looking like a cross between an Indian, an alien and a crazy person. You just go with the music, or you don't.

As I watched the "Treme" pilot, I had enough faith in Simon and company to know that I'd figure things out eventually, and now having seen three episodes, my faith has been rewarded. And because "Treme" is, so far, much more driven by character than plot than "The Wire" was, I had a much stronger sense of the main characters by the end of the pilot than I did about anyone but McNulty by the end of the first "Wire."

It helps that we start off with a somewhat more famous cast this time around. You see, for instance, John Goodman's Creighton going all Walter Sobchek on the British camera crew and you have many of the fine points of that character. (Ultimately, Creighton turns out to be much more refined and sane than Walter; he's just excitable.) And if chatty, hipper-than-thou Davis isn't exactly like other roles Steve Zahn has played, it's in the ballpark enough that all Simon and Overmyer have to do is establish the degree of his quirks. (For instance, that he'll rail against the Tower Records employees about the definition of "consignment," but will largely wimp out on trying to engage Elvis Costello in conversation.)

Clarke Peters played my favorite character on "The Wire," and he quickly establishes Albert as one of the ones to watch closely here. There's that great moment where Albert enters his ruined home and with a few small gestures (a catch of the breath, a change in his eyes), Peters shows you just how much it wrecks him to see that. But then he steps outside, his jaw sets, and he becomes this immovable object - a big chief who isn't going to let his daughter, his son or anyone else stand in the way of his plan to clean out the bar, reassemble his old tribe, and start rehearsing for Carnival. It's a calling he takes so seriously that he won't even let himself break character when his neighbor agrees to haul the junk away from the bar, only allowing himself a little goofy victory dance after the street is completely empty.

We spend a lot of time in the pilot just watching musicians performing their craft. In the same way that "The Wire" would occasionally step back and just let us witness the cops perform their jobs at a high level, the long musical interludes are already revealing things about the characters: that Antoine, for instance, is so desperate for money that he'll perform in a parade he's clearly not in shape for.

We get to meet couples in varying states of their relationship: Creighton and Melissa Leo's Toni as a contented veteran pair who turn out to be a better match than they first seem (as Toni's just as capable of blowing up as her husband), Antoine and Khandi Alexander's Ladonna as exes who haven't lost their old chemistry, and Davis and Kim Dickens' Janette as two people going through the motions because she hasn't found a good enough excuse to kick him to the curb. (And by the end of the pilot, he provides her with one by opening that expensive bottle of wine at a restaurant that can't afford that kind of financial waste.)

And through it all, we see both the heartache and joy of post-Katrina New Orleans. Homes are destroyed, lives are lost or uncertain (like Ladonna's missing brother Daymo), yet there's great music and food and companionship and local pride. There are gigs to hustle for, consignment CDs to be reclaimed, victory dances to do, and money to be played for. It's a place where even the funerals eventually turn into celebrations with dancing and music, and one I look forward to spending a lot of time visiting this season.

Some other thoughts:

• As a lot of you know, a week and a half before the premiere, "Treme" co-executive producer David Mills died unexpectedly after suffering a brain aneurysm on the set. Give his love of music in general and funk in particular, I'm pleased that Davis's old band, whose CDs were being held on consignment by Tower, was named Uncut Funk, which was a fanzine David and his friends used to publish about George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic. (You can hear the music of the real Davis here, by the way.)

• Elvis Costello (who generated my biggest laugh of the pilot with his reaction to Davis's attempt to claim that he taught Kermit Ruffins anything) was one of the first famous musicians to come back to the city after the storm, where he began work on his "River in Reverse" album with Allen Toussaint. And Kermit himself is a local fixture whom Mills once described as "the de facto goodwill ambassador of New Orleans... except he rarely travels to ambassadorize."

• When Creighton declines the lemon ice (out of loyalty to another restaurant that has yet to re-open), the desert that Janette offers to fix for him is a Hubig's fried pie. In his open letter to the city of New Orleans in today's Times-Picayune, Simon cops to the fact that the Hubig's factory didn't reopen for several months after the time period depicted in this episode.

• And speaking of the Times-Picayune, if you like this show, you really owe it to yourself to check out some or all of Dave Walker's exhaustive coverage of the show.

• We don't get an explanation here for Davis's issues with his gay neighbors, but note that he assaults them with the music of New Orleans native Mystikal.

• I found it a nice touch that Toni carries around three giant purses all the time, which is a reminder not only that she has no office to go to because of the flood, but also suggests a character who's always over-extending herself.

• I know it's been 10 years and many films since Rob Brown made his movie debut in "Finding Forrester," but when I saw him as Delmond tearing it up at the Blue Note, I was overcome with the urge to yell out, "You're the man now, dawg!" in a Scottish accent.

What did everybody else think?

Breaking Bad, "Green Light": Half-and-half

A review of tonight's "Breaking Bad" coming up just as soon as I remember that the dude's name was Mel...
"Sometimes, it doesn't hurt to have someone watching your back." -Mike
"Breaking Bad" has tried to walk a fine line between black comedy and straight drama, and as Walt's heart has gotten darker, so has the show. This season has had its funny moments (roof pizza!) and of course promoted Bob Odenkirk to regular cast status, but on the whole it's felt more serious than before - not less interesting, because Cranston, Paul and company play both sides equally well, but with its feet more firmly planted on one side than the other.

With "Green Light," the funny returns in greater doses. Saul is more at the forefront, Walt is more pathetic than monstrous for most of the hour(*), and the comedy duo of White and Pinkman briefly reunited.

(*) I found it a particularly nice touch that we only heard Walt and Skyler's argument as Mike and Saul were listening to the tape of it in Saul's office. Had we watched it unfold in the White family kitchen, it would have been as ugly as much of the Walt/Skyler interaction has been this year. Seen through Saul and Mike's eyes, though, Walt's a clown with no impulse control.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the show took a darker turn after Jesse turned to heroin, not only because there's not a lot that's funny about that situation, but because it drove a wedge between him and Walt. So much of this show's comedy, even in otherwise bleak episodes like the one at Tuco's house or the one in the desert, comes from seeing these two characters drive each other crazy as they try to solve their latest potentially-fatal problem. And since Jane's death, they've been at peace with each other, but that was largely because neither was cooking meth at the time. No professional friction, just a surrogate father-son dynamic - note Walt telling Jesse, "You're good at a lot of things, son" while trying to talk him out of cooking.

But as soon as Jesse takes out that bag of blue Heisenberg meth, all paternal instincts go out the window. Walt the mentor is overtaken by Walt the aggrieved party, the man whose entire life can be blamed on others, whose stubborn pride eventually poisons every part of his life. Walt should have been proud that he had ultimately turned out to be a good teacher to Jesse - that he had taken the idiotic Cap'n Cook and turned him into an effective Heisenberg substitute. But of course he had just blown up his teaching career by hitting on the principal, and all he could see with that blue bag was that Jesse had stolen from him, in the same way that Gretchen and Elliott made their fortune on his work, and it made Walt go ballistic - and very, very funny.

Cranston's comedy bonafides got a workout in this one, not only in arguing with Jesse, but the whole scene outside Ted Beneke's office (where he assures Skyler everything's fine even as he's hunched over the potted plant he's trying to hurl through Ted's window), his lame brawl with Saul (with Mike picking up Walt like a father might pick up a child throwing a tantrum) and his disastrous attempt to seduce Principal Carmen.

But if Walt was a clown in this episode, he was the sad clown. He's lost his marriage, lost his teaching job, alienated the closest thing he has to a friend in Jesse, and even fired his counsel and money launderer. He's got nothing and no one, and something tells me Gus Frings will never have to tell him about the Cousins (even as the Cousins leave another warning on Walt's street) to get him to resume cooking. Heisenberg is the only thing Walt has left.

Jesse, meanwhile, continues to embrace his inner bad guy, potentially ruining the life of that poor girl at the gas station with his testimonial about the awesome splendor of crystal meth, just because he didn't think to check his wallet before filling up the RV. Aaron Paul has been a revelation as this dead-inside, unapologetic villainous Jesse - we knew he could act, but to be able to take the character to such a different place while still seeming clearly Jesse is no small thing.

And the gas station deal (another one of the show's marvelous short-story-as-teasers) looks like it's going to blow back on Jesse after Hank uses the return of the blue meth as an excuse to get out of his terrifying reassignment to El Paso. Hank struts through the episode being just as self-sabotaging as Walt (talking to Gomey in a similar manner to how Walt treats Jesse), because he's been to the border, and south of it, and he can't do that again - just as he can't admit to that until cornered by his boss(**). He doesn't quite wreck his career the way Walt does, but he's killed any real chance of upward mobility. (And, not that Hank realizes it, but catching Heisenberg won't do him much good, since putting the bracelets on the brother-in-law you didn't realize was the area's most notorious supplier isn't a great resume item.)

(**) Loved the moment where Hank's supervisor forces him to leave aside the macho bluster and confess that he can't go back to El Paso... and how, after a moment, Hank's personality reboots and he tries to act like the confession never even happened.

Walt's got no one, Hank's got no future prospects, Jesse's got no soul, and Skyler may as well put on a scarlet letter at Beneke after Walt's outburst. Not a good place for any of these characters to be, even if "Breaking Bad" rediscovered its sick funny bone while putting them all there.

Some other thoughts:

• What a great addition Jonathan Banks has been as Mike, whose loyalty is again confirmed as to Gus first and everyone else a distant second. His unflappable, completely professional demeanor stands in stark contrast to the excitable, bumbling amateurism of Walt, Jesse, and even Saul, who's only slightly less in-over-his-head than his two favorite clients.

• Is it any surprise that Jane's father would attempt suicide after all he's been through (and caused) over the last few months?

• And is it any surprise that, while Mr. Margolis would respond to the Flight 515 tragedy by trying to kill himself, Saul would try to make a buck off of it?

• Very nice transition between Skyler standing over the copy machine, realizing how much all the women at Beneke hate her, followed by the copy machine's whine intersecting with Skyler and Ted's moans during sex as the camera passes over pictures of Ted's kids.

• A mark of how effective the teaser was: I was actually relieved when Hank went to the gas station and it turned out the girl gave the meth away after sampling a little. On the other hand, it does metaphorically take Jesse off the hook for what he just did. If there's one area the series has shied away from, it's showing the effect of Walt and Jesse's product on its users (unless we count Skank and Spooge). We get to see how their behavior destroys the people immediately around them, but are kept from having to confront the broader destruction they cause. The users of the blue meth are as abstract as the people on the plane.

What did everybody else think?

The Pacific, "Part Five": On the beach

A review of "The Pacific" part five coming up just as soon as I spell my last name for you...
"Sid, what's it like?" -Sledge
"I slept with a woman in Melbourne. I'm not bragging. That's at one end, right? And then way down there, as far as you can go, that's what it's like. And that... that you can never imagine." -Phillips
"The Pacific" opened with two episodes packed with action and tension, then took a break in Part Three for the extended stay in Melbourne, then went claustrophobic with a Part Four more concerned with the psychological damage of war than the physical. In Part Five, Eugene Sledge finally arrives in the Pacific, briefly spends time with his buddy Sid Phillips and debates theology with Leckie, and with two central characters in the field again (while Basilone is home selling war bonds and sleeping with movie stars), the series moves on to the jaw-dropping action that will dominate its middle hours, with the Battle of Peleliu.

As Tom Hanks says in the opening documentary, the U.S. expected the conflict on Peleliu to last maybe a few days, when instead it dragged on for more than two months. After Guadalcanal, the Japanese realized that hurling themselves at American machine guns wasn't a viable tactic, and instead realized they could dig in, use the terrain as cover, and go after the Americans in a more protected, more ruthless fashion.

And the Americans were not at all ready for that.

Part One featured a kind of nod and a wink to the Omaha Beach sequence from "Saving Private Ryan," with Leckie and his buddies bracing for a brutal beach assault that never materialized. Here, we finally got the "Private Ryan" level of spectacle, with director Carl Franklin, director of photography Remi Adefarasin and company making like Spielberg to depict the complete hell(*) that Sledge and Leckie and the others experienced as the boats landed on Peleliu.

(*) Interestingly, Adefarasin again went with a kind of heavenly light approach (as he did when Leckie climbed back up onto the ship at the end of Part Two) as the front of Sledge's boat opened up - only here what was visible once Sledge's eyes adjusted was the exact opposite of heavenly.

The danger of Spielberg producing another World War II project, and one that features soldiers/Marines landing on a beach under heavy fire, is that it becomes impossible to not compare it to the earlier work - particularly since Sledge, like Tom Hanks's character, briefly loses his hearing from all the bullets and exploding shells whizzing by. But if parts of it were a bit familiar, even shot in the bright blue pallette of this miniseries versus the desaturated grays of "Private Ryan" and "Band," it was still incredible to look at, and harrowing to watch as the attack kept going and going and going. The scope is much greater than anything we saw in "Band" (which had a lower budget and more primitive computer effects), where even the D-Day jump mainly focused in on what Dick Winters was doing and could see.

But Part Five, written by Lawrence Andries and head writer Bruce McKenna, wisely takes its time getting to Peleliu. We've gotten to know Leckie by now, particularly in the third and fourth hours of the miniseries, and here we get to spend a while with Sledge as he adjusts to being in the theater of operations. As we saw in "Band" when Easy Company's replacements started to arrive, there's this great distance between Eugene and best friend Sid, and between the devout, undamaged Eugene and bitter agnostic Leckie, because they've seen and done things he can't possibly imagine.

The episode closes in a brief moment of calm, as Sledge and his buddies talk about family vacations to distract themselves from the horrors they've witnessed, and the horrors yet to come when the sun rises. One guy quotes his father's opinion about the Grand Canyon: "You have to see it to understand... You have to be there, looking down into it."

Eugene Sledge is on Peleliu now, looking down into the nightmare the 1st Marine Division didn't realize it was walking into. He may not understand everything that Sid and Leckie and the rest have experienced over the past two years, but he's already starting to get a pretty clear, bleak picture.

Some other thoughts:

• There's no record of Leckie and Sledge having met, but McKenna justified the scene by pointing out that Sid (who was educated and liked to read) served with Leckie, and Leckie had a reputation as "the book guy," whom other soldiers would go to see for reading material on Pavuvu. Sid would have told Eugene this, and given Sledge's own love of reading and writing, they could have very easily crossed paths. McKenna: "Do I know that it happened, fact positive? No. But it's very likely."

• I know I complained in episode two that the digressions to see Sledge in America were a bit distracting, but I liked how his basic training scene in last week's episode was used to foreshadow the action here, as Sledge winds up in a combat scenario that's exactly what we saw him training for in Part Four.

• Sledge's arrival brings with it the introduction of a bunch of new supporting characters to keep track of. Three that stood out immediately: Capt. Andrew "Ack-Ack" Haldane (played by Scott Gibson), the officer who cuts Sid and Eugene some slack when he catches them wrestling in the dirt; Gunny Haney (Gary Sweet), the old (Haney was a WWI vet), very tan, very intense guy who yells at the sky when the rain stops in mid-shower, and who can get away with chewing out a lieutenant for poor handling of his weapon; and, especially, Rami Malek as Snafu, Sledge's completely amoral new mentor, who smokes and pukes and likes to extract gold teeth from fallen Japanese soldiers. (This was actually a not-uncommon practice in the Pacific theater.)

• Yes, that's Anna Torv from "Fringe" as actress Virginia Grey, who was at the peak of her box office powers at the time she met and fell for Basilone during their war bond drive together. (Basilone told others that he liked Grey because she cared more about the bond drive than her acting career.) "The Pacific" was actually filmed several years ago, before "Fringe" debuted; Torv at the time was just another Australian actor (who could affect a decent American accent) in a miniseries that hired a lot of them in supporting roles.

• I also thought it was a nice touch to show Basilone not only being uncomfortable with celebrity and being out of action, but with the fear that his brother George might get himself killed trying to live up to John's reputation. Being celebrated as a hero can be a burden, especially when you have a large family with others trying to follow in your footsteps.

• The movie the men are watching is 1943's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" with Ingrid Bergman (uttering the famous line "Where do the noses go?") and Gary Cooper. Hoosier's blunt, R-rated advice for Cooper is one of many reminders throughout the episode of how unfiltered the Marines were.

Okay, once again the goal is to treat the big historical aspects of the war (i.e., we won, Peleliu was brutal) as understood fact, while trying to avoid spoiling the fates of Sledge, Leckie and Basilone. Keeping that in mind, what did everybody else think?

Friday, April 9, 2010

'Treme' review: Sepinwall on TV

In today's column, I review "Treme," the new series about life in post-Katrina New Orleans from David Simon and "The Wire" gang. It's really, really good, but don't go in expecting "The Wire 2: The Squeakquel."

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Firewall & Iceberg podcast, episode 11: Lost, Chuck and Justified

Even during family time, there is occasional down time, and while I sat around waiting for a delivery, Fienberg and I recorded a fast-paced, three-item Firewall & Iceberg podcast episode. Relevant links and whatnot are available at NJ.com. No listener mail this week, but the "Justified" segment is largely inspired by the comments in recent episode discussion here.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Justified, "Long in the Tooth": Don't fear the repo

A review of tonight's "Justified" coming up just as soon as I have the ceviche...

As I've said before, FX sent episodes 1, 2 and 4 out for review while last week's "Fixer" was held due to post-production issues. So since I loved the pilot (which had the Elmore Leonard story to borrow from) and didn't love the second episode, "Long in the Tooth" served as a kind of tie-breaker, and the episode that convinced me that Graham Yost and company can make an Elmore Leonard show even without specific Elmore Leonard source material to lean on.

"Long in the Tooth" had that nice mastery of tones that typifies Leonard (and his literary descendants), with the ability to mix both comic violence like Rolly repossessing the d-bag's fillings with much darker violence like Rolly and Mindy with the coyote, and to mix self-aware pop culture discussion like the hitmen debating "Pulp Fiction"(*) with more iconic uses of pop culture imagery like Raylan's Wild West gunfight with the two hitmen on a lonely desert road.

(*) The reference to the scene where Vincent Vega accidentally shoots Marvin in the face was an amusingly reflexive moment. Leonard characters often talk about pop culture (in part because it gives Leonard an excuse to say what characters look like without using the kind of descriptive language he hates), and that's one of the traits huge Leonard fan Quentin Tarantino incorporated into his own writing, even before Tarantino directly adapted Leonard with "Jackie Brown."

It had my favorite guest performance/character to date with Alan Ruck(**) as Rolly. In "Riverbrook," I got frustrated whenever we cut away from Raylan and back to the bank robber and his motley crew; here, Ruck was as much fun to watch as Tim Olyphant. And Clarence Williams III (who played one of the bad guys in the film version of Leonard's "52 Pick-Up") was amusingly cranky - and racist and sexist and unapologetically offensive in just about every way - as the guy who swapped cars with Rolly.

(**) And even though it's been nearly 25 years since "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," as soon as Rolly sacrificed himself to the sniper's bullet, I said to myself, "He's not dying; he just can't think of anything good to do."

"Long in the Tooth" wasn't perfect. The episode introduced the idea of Raylan having to sit back and let Rachel take lead, then abruptly dropped it halfway through so Raylan could be solo and have his duel in the sun. Raylan having to suppress his innate Raylan-ness for the sake of a higher-ranking, equally competent Marshal actually sounds like a fun idea (albeit the sort of thing that probably plays better as a change-of-pace episode for season two or three), but you either follow through with it and give it a payoff, or you don't do it.

But it was still quite a lot of fun, extremely compelling and hopefully a signpost towards more good things to come.

What did everybody else think?

Lost, "Happily Ever After": Not Desmond's life

Well, a brief window has opened in my family time schedule, and we're about to find out if my brain is operating at enough candlepower to adequately discuss tonight's "Lost." A briefer-than-it-deserves review coming up just as soon as I accost a man in a dressing gown...
"There's always a choice, brother." -Desmond
It's not an epilogue-in-advance.

Clearly.

The whole epilogue theory, which I began noodling with as much so that I could pretend that the flash-sideways meant something as because I believed in the idea, was pretty concretely disproven by "Happily Ever After."

(Apologies if the next few paragraphs read like complete gibberish, but between my recent sleep deprivation and the usual mechanics of a "Lost" story arc, it's inevitable.)

Instead, it appears that some event - perhaps the detonation of Jughead, perhaps something we've yet to see - has rewritten the timeline, in a way that has given nearly every character what someone, somewhere, thought would be a happy ending for them, whether it worked out exactly or not. Locke has the love of Helen, Ben has a relationship with a living Alex, Jack overcomes his daddy issues, etc., etc., etc. The dead rise up and have more palatable existences (Daniel Faraday, pushed by his mother to become the world's greatest doomed physicist becomes Daniel Widmore, pampered by his mother into becoming a musician who wants to combine classical music with the works of Driveshaft). Not all of it quite works out - Sayid is still a soulless killing machine who can't be with Nadia, Kate's still a fugitive (albeit hanging with the mother of her son from the real timeline), Sun's gutshot - but enough of it does to suggest this wasn't designed as a kind of monkey's paw existence.

In fact, everyone is supposed to be so happy in these alternate lives that they'll never notice how much the universe has changed, or the cost that was paid to attain these lives, or what evil - Smokey, presumably - is busy running amok while Jack's busy having a catch with his son and Sawyer and Miles are acting out unproduced "Nash Bridges" scripts.

And while some people are capable of recognizing the artificiality of this other universe (if that's what it is; for all I know, this could be The Matrix, and Jack and the others are all hanging in suspended animation inside a global cloud of black smoke), the only one capable of sharing knowledge between his two lives is Desmond.

Desmond is "special." Desmond knew the universe wanted Charlie dead well before the universe finally won that battle. Desmond can travel back and forth through his own lifetime, "Quantum Leap"-style. Desmond can survive the time travel sickness because he has Penny as his constant, and can alter the timeline when no one else can. He is, in fact, cool enough that for the first time in forever my "Lost" gag reflex didn't rise up when a character was offered an explanation and declined(*).

(*) That's part Desmond coolness, part that Cuse and Lindelof's "Happily Ever After" script pretty strongly implied what was up, particularly in the scene where Desmond comes face to face with Eloise, who in a universe where she didn't kill her own son wound up marrying Widmore and giving his name to their son. In every timeline, she knows more than everybody else, and here she doesn't even have her son's time-looped notebook to explain it all.

So now there are stakes to the sideways stories. Desmond exists in both realities, and is working a plan in both. Now we know that the sideways world is tied to the one we know, and that it needs to be stopped - that, like the Oceanic Six had to go back to the island, all of the important Oceanic 815 passengers have to accept that this is not their beautiful house, their beautiful wife, etc. That knowledge doesn't retroactively improve dull sideways stories like "What Kate Does" or last week's "The Package" in the way that we might have hoped, but it does make the sideways world matter moving forward into this last rush of episodes.

And with Desmond back in action, and working towards a reunion with his beloved Penny in at least one timeline (if not trying to woo her in the other), I'm pumped to see what comes next.

In the interests of my REM cycle, a few other thoughts and then you guys fire away:

• We see Widmore's scientists have a rabbit on hand (named Angstrom, as a tip of the hat to John Updike), just like Dr. Chang did in the infamous Comic-Con video where the island duplicates the rabbit. At first I assumed the idea was that Desmond was the only man who didn't exist in both timelines as separate entities, but perhaps not. Perhaps Darlton just like rabbits, given how many contexts they've place them in.

• I liked how much of Alt-Desmond's life mirrored what we know of him from the real world: still protecting Charlie Pace, still dancing to Charles Widmore's tune (albeit willingly here), and now it's Penny who's running the steps at the stadium. Eloise says "whatever happened, happened" (but says it to the one man on the show who proves that axiom's not always true). And I literally got goosebumps when we flashed from alt-Charlie's hand to the "Not Penny's boat" scene."

• Like Daniel Faraday (and Keamy, and Bakhunin and many others), George Minkowski comes back to life in sideways-ville, here a talkative limo driver instead of a talkative radio operator.

• So is the sound effect used to transition into the sideways world supposed to sound like an MRI machine?

Lots more of the episode to unpack, but I'm losing steam. We'll see what state I'm in next week - and also whether next week's episode inspires me to power through the fatigue the way this one did - but for now, vis a vis "Happily Ever After," what did everybody else think?

Monday, April 5, 2010

United States of Tara, "The Truth Hurts": Chasing Pammy

A review of tonight's "United States of Tara" - plus some guest commentary from Diablo Cody herself - coming up just as soon as my heterosexuality stresses me out...
"What you don't get is, people can have a hard time, and then they turn it around. People can change." -Max
"Yeah, people change. And then they change right back." -Neil
Okay, I have to admit that this one kind of troubled me at first - both that Tara would let Buck's relationship with Pammy run for as long as it did before trying to either stop it or tell Pammy the truth, and that she would then go over to Pammy's apartment in what seemed, based on the earlier scene with Charmaine and Ted talking about gay experiences, like an attempt by Tara to see how the other half lives.

I wrote last week about how I understood Tara's reluctance to tell Max (which predictably blew up in her face here when Pammy made a spectacle of herself at the ice rink), and even to an extent that she wouldn't be able to tell Pammy the whole truth upon finding out. (Pammy understands that Buck's not a man, but not that Buck isn't real.) But to let two weeks go by with Buck in the life of that woman and her daughters, and then to apparently take advantage of Pammy's ignorance to satisfy Tara's own curiosity? To me, when I first watched "The Truth Hurts," that bothered me a lot. Tara's not a perfect person, even when she's herself, but she never struck me as someone who would let others be hurt in this way.

So, since it was bugging me, I decided to go straight to the source and ask "Tara" creator/producer Diablo Cody for her take on the Buck/Pammy/Tara triangle. Here's what she had to say:
The story of Pammy and Buck is meant to illustrate that Tara is becoming increasingly co-conscious with the alters. Last season Tara had to piece together video and stories to figure out what the alters were doing. This season, she's more aware, as illustrated by the way she "fights" with Buck over who gets the body, etc. We thought about how it feels, physiologically, to have an affair with someone. You feel more attractive overall. You feel energized. You feel excited. Even though Tara isn't technically having the affair, she shares a body with Buck, who is. So she's feeling a lot of those warm fuzzies too. And though she knows it's wrong once she realizes what's going on, she's addicted to Pammy in a strange, peripheral way.

A DID patient told us about a time she'd impersonated one of her alters in order to gain more information about what the alter had been doing. So we just thought it would be interesting, dramatically, for Tara to break up with Pammy as Buck as a way of both protecting Pammy and gaining for insight for Tara. Plus, it's really funny when Pammy wails, "I never get the guy!" In this case, it's literal - she wants the guy, and what she gets is a suburban mom in drag.

Pammy is of course, always aware that Tara is biologically female. But Pammy is so damaged and insecure that even a transgendered *representation* of a "strong man" is the most comforting thing she's ever experienced. Real men have never come through for her the way Buck does. If wounded women like Pammy are willing to date ex-cons and abusers (and they are), I'm willing to believe that they would even date a man who wasn't a man at all. Pammy's in as much of a fantasy as Buck is.
As I've said in the past, my understanding of DID comes primarily from this show and a string of "Incredible Hulk" comics circa 1991, so the co-consciousness thing is something I'm learning as I go - and maybe something the show should have been willing to spell out a bit more now that it's starting to drive Tara's actions.

But seen in that context (and understanding that Tara's primary goal in going there dressed as Buck was to break up with Pammy), most of my problems with the episode go away - and, in fact, I start to become intrigued by the possibilities. If Tara starts to become more aware of what the alters are up to, and starts to feel some of what they feel, does that make her more complicit when they do bad things? Or is the opposite the case - that even when Tara is Tara, she's not wholly responsible for her own actions? And how is Max - who's already furious with the return of the alters and with Tara's deception(*) - going to react if the line starts to blur between his wife and the weirdos who regularly hijack her body?

(*) But how does he feel about the affair itself? There was talk last season about Buck having caught crabs from a woman at the bowling alley, and there was an open question as to whether this was just another part of Buck's fantasy life, along with his time in Vietnam. But his success with Pammy suggests that Buck certainly could have had a sex life before now. In which case, was Max - who got mighty peeved when it looked like T might hook up with some random guy - okay with that? Or can he handle it so long as his wife's body is only fooling around with other women?

Max's anger (and his subsequent beat-down of Sully) was a good moment for John Corbett, particularly after the earlier scene where Max tries to convince himself and Neil that everything's all better with Tara. Raised expectations lead to increased disappointment when the reality doesn't match your dreams, but it feels right to see that Max isn't just some smiling, ever-patient saint. He has his limits, and the Pammy thing has pushed beyond them.

Early on, before the spit hits the fan, Tara jokes that Marshall dating a girl makes sense on opposite day, and there's a lot of upside-down behavior in this one (Kate, for once, is the most normal, even if she spends half the episode baked). The Gregsons just want an uncomplicated life, but Tara's condition and the world around them aren't making it easy.

Some other thoughts:

• Even by the standards of both pay cable and this show, "The Truth Hurts" felt very sexually frank. Kate calls Tara "doable" and later explains "dogs in a bathtub" to Marshall (my advice: don't Google it for a fuller explanation). Marshall and Courtney experiment with each other in the rafters (Marshall, nervous and not particularly aroused, tells her, "You're very skilled.") And Tara, Charmaine and the gay neighbors try to coin a new name for the vagina ("cou-ton?").

• Patton Oswalt makes a welcome return as Neil and does a nice job delivering a twist on a familiar joke when he tells Max, "I don't want a terrific woman; I want Charmaine."

• Kate's friendship with Lynda still isn't really going anywhere (though I'm sure some viewers weren't displeased to see Kate dressed as Princess Valhalla Hawkwind), but it does add another interesting actor to the recurring ensemble with Joshua Leonard (from "Humpday" and also HBO's "Hung") as Lynda's trustafarian pal/pot connection Ricky. (Incidentally, who coined "trustafarian"? I first heard it on the short-lived ABC sitcom "It's Like, You Know..." in the late '90s, but I always assumed Peter Mehlman got the term from someplace else.)

• Sorry, Lionel, but I, for one, would rather see a play about a slutty dental hygenist than one about a doctor from olden times.

What did everybody else think?