Monthly Archives: June 2012
Previewing ABC’s Fall Season-Part 1
Lately, ABC tends heavily on its existing lineup. The network may struggle now that Desperate Housewives is gone and Grey’s Anatomy seems past its prime. Recently, ABC’s new shows have caused many midseason replacements to be placed on the schedule early in the season. Many of the replacements were also unsuccessful. The network has added 10 shows to its lineup with 5 debuting in the fall. The other 5 shows will be midseason replacements.
The Neighbors
The Neighbors is a “comedy” that revolves around a suburban family moving into a gated community that turns out to be inhabited by aliens. The show sounds absurd and profoundly stupid to the point that I refuse to believe it is real. No viewer will be able to identify with it and the acting seems sub-par.
Choose Not to Watch The Choice
I wanted to like The Choice in a charmingly absurd kind of way. The premise of the show revolves around celebrities choosing dates based only on the sound of a suitor’s voice. The title is clearly a derivation of NBC’s singing competition show The Voice and this show seems to be trying to gain popularity based on viewers being familiar with the NBC show. That was really the main reason I was interested in watching it. I knew it wasn’t going to be “quality” television, but I still thought it was going to be enjoyable. I was mostly wrong.
The show opened with introducing the celebrities. They included recording artist, Romeo, Olympic athlete Jeremy Bloom, Jersey Shore cast member DJ Pauly D, and General Hospital star Jason Cook. None of these celebrities really interested me. Most of them are not really that famous. Of course, much like Dancing With The Stars, hiring low caliber “stars” is a common problem. I understand that most of the bigger “stars” already have their relationships constantly in the media or do not need the publicity, but the selection of celebrities was still a weak point for the show.
TV Shows You Should Know: Match Game
This is our tribute to Richard Dawson, who was a regular panelist from 1973 to 1978 and died last weekend.
The Match Game aired from 1962-1969 on NBC, but is not the version that everyone remembers due to its much bawdier remake that aired through the 70s and into the 80s on CBS. Gene Rayburn both the original Match Game and all of Match Game 7x (The x represents every year from 1973 to 1979 name of the show changed every year. Once 1980 came around the show dropped the year.)
Match Game had six celebrity panelists and two contestants. The winner would be the contestant who matched the most celebrities in two rounds. That person would go on to the Super Match for the chance to win up to 5,000 dollars (10,000 dollars in the nighttime version.). The permanent panelists for most of the show’s run were Richard Dawson, Brett Somers, and Charles Nelson Reilly. Other frequent panelists include: Betty White, her husband and Password host Allen Ludden, writer Fanny Flag, Gary Burghoff, and Nipsey Russell.
Disney’s Banning Junk Food
Recently, Disney announced its television networks and radio stations will be banning advertisements featuring junk food. The official move won’t take effect until 2015. However, it still concerns me because the ban could be a very bad idea.
What does Disney think this is going to achieve? It is not a health advocacy organization. It specializes in family entertainment. The only people the ban is going to please is the parents. For now, anyway.
The effects could be much worse in the long run. Not exposing kids to certain things that might be bad for them, it heightens their curiosity because it seems forbidden. Even if they don’t see junk food on TV, they are certainly going to see it elsewhere. Kids are going to find junk food more intriguing than if they saw commercials for it every day. Certain foods are simply more appealing. Not presenting those foods are only going to make them more coveted and attractive. It is also not going to prevent other parents from buying junk food. When the obesity levels don’t go down and kids are still eating junk food, who will the parents have to blame?
Another Reality Show, Another Liar
Monday’s America’s Got Talent introduced America to Timothy Michael Poe. He appeared to be the embodiment of patriotism: a southern cowboy injured during his military service who overcame his injuries to fulfill his dreams. Everyone wanted to believe him. For a day, we did. Now, the Associated Press reports that Poe probably lied about his injuries.
Poe did not lie about his service in Afghanistan, but he was not injured there. He did not need to lie, especially since he is talented. Poe would have been considered a hero just for serving a month in Afghanistan or any time in the military. However, Poe’s lied completely destroyed any respect America had for him.
As Howard Stern said,
“You could be the most f—ked-up liar on the planet, but you never lie about military service. This lie is so wrong on so many levels.”
America’s Got Talent Goes Goth
Andrew De Leon
Last night America’s Got Talent was a little light on the entertainment again. NBC is killing the show. Each week, viewers only get two hours of new acts followed by several repeats throughout the week. In the past, we saw three to four hours of new acts and they were repeated once. It doesn’t help that each hour only has 5 full performances and four short ones mixed in with a bunch of boring montages consisting of people kissing or people with pets or some other boring activity the producers think will make the audience go “awwwww.”
On Tuesday, AGT was still in Austin. I think this is the first week NBC has aired both parts of a city’s auditions back to back, which helped with understanding Howie Mandel, Sharon Osbourne, and Howard Stern in the Snapple Chat.
The first act was the Aurora Light Painters. They painted with light. I really don’t know how to describe what they did without being captain obvious. The Aurora Light Painters somehow manipulated light and took advantage of a cameras light sensitivity to put on an interesting show. It wasn’t one of my favorites, but the judges loved it. (If anyone knows how the Aurora Light Painters performance works, please leave a comment. My head hurts just trying to figure it out.)
Push Girls Needs to Be Pushed Off Television
Even before I started watching the Sundance Channel’s Push Girls, I knew I was going to be very critical of it. I was right. I didn’t expect it to be anything I could consider “good television”. There were parts of it that I found profoundly irritating and even offensive. The reality series, revolving around four women who use wheelchairs, opened with two episodes on Monday night. The entire goal of the show seems to be to inspire a viewer to believe that they can achieve anything in life regardless of obstacles. It is a very repetitive and uninteresting message. The message starts to sound sickening when you realize that none of the women have lives that are particularly impressive.
The tagline for the series is “If you can’t stand up, stand out.” This annoying because it tries too hard to be cute. It wouldn’t have been as bad if it was accurate for any of these women. It seems not to be. They just don’t seem that special. While their situations certainly took perseverance to overcome, it seemed that Tiphany, Angela, Mia and Auti were simply women who left me wondering why they got a show.
America’s Got Talent Goes to Austin
America’s Got Talent held auditions Austin, Texas. The first thing that struck me was that there were very few dance acts and that this season seems to be more positive than past ones.
Sebastian De la Cruz and his mariachi band were the first act of the night. Despite only being 10-years-old, De la Cruz was charming and a perfect gentleman as well as extremely talented. He also dressed the part, which only added to his preciousness. (Seriously, the number of times Sharon Osbourne and the Internet have used that word to describe De la Cruz is not going to do him any favors in high school.)
Time for the bad act montage! That would be great if any of the acts were remotely memorable. There was a sideshow act, which I barely remember because all sideshow acts make me sick. Well, except this one. The Tinderbox Circus Sideshow appeared to solely exist so that the members can staple paper to each others chests. It was very tame compared to the sideshow from earlier in the season that had one of its members pick up a brick with his eye sockets.
Weekly TV Update: June 4
Each week we bring you stories from around the Internet that you might have missed.
Rolling Stone has a recap of Sunday’s episode of Mad Men.
Are you a fan of Game of Thrones? The Los Angeles Times has you covered in the recap department.
E! has a list of crazy moments that happened at the MTV Movie Awards yesterday.
Richard Dawson, the original host of Family Feud, died on Saturday.
The voice of Gumby also died last week.
TV Shows Get Meta on Facebook
Some really loyal fans of classic shows like Hogan’s Heroes, Mash, Bonanza, and Highway to Heaven made Facebook accounts that are written as though the fictional characters are real people. It gets bizarre, but is also really funny at times.
On Colonel Robert E. Hogan, the following message was posted today.
“Newkirk just told me that the actor who portrayed him on the show about our missions, Richard Dawson, passed away yesterday at the age of 79. R.I.P Mr. Richard Dawson. A truly great actor.”
Don’t think about how meta that is because your brain will hurt. However, I will miss Richard Dawson. He was in a lot of things I grew up watching in reruns, but I digress.
So far Corporal Peter Newkirk is the only other Hogan’s Heroes character that has a page. Other characters that have pages are: (Those with asterisks are regularly updated as are Hogan’s page and Newkirk’s page.)
From M*A*S*H:
*Capt. Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce
From Bonanza:
Joe Cartwright
Carmen Sierra Cartwright
From Highway to Heaven:
*Jonathan Smith
Wait! What's A Dial? 