Monthly Archives: August 2012
Cool TV Video of the Day: Late Night with Conan O’Brien’s “You Have Wronged Me!”
Conan O’Brien doesn’t realize the injustice his breakfast has done to a man dressed like Edgar Allan Poe. You can watch the absurd situation below.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqA6ph2aNv8%5D“The Mindy Project” Has Potential
It’s difficult to tell the direction that The Mindy Project is headed in after just one episode, but the show definitely has promise.
The Mindy Project revolves around competent OB-GYN, Dr. Mindy Lahiri, who despite being a very accomplished doctor, has very little else figured out in her life. The episode begins with a voice-over detailing Mindy’s upbringing. She was basically raised on romantic comedies and describes Tom Hanks as her first boyfriend. The highlight of her college life was being able to watch as many romantic comedies as she wanted without supervision. It’s clear that she has a very distorted and unrealistic view of love.
At first, it seems like this show is going to be nothing more than a deconstruction of clichéd romantic comedy plots which seems boring. Then, it is revealed that Mindy is in the middle of a interrogation for public intoxication. Apparently, she did not find this as relevant as detailing her relationship with a handsome oral surgeon that ended badly when he left her to marry someone else. The opening minutes of the show demonstrate well where Mindy’s priorities are, especially since her relationship with the oral surgeon was completely irrelevant and had no bearing on the plot.
AGT Results Recap: August 29th
From Left to Right: Comedian Tom Cottor, Host Nick Cannon, Sand Artist Joe Castillo, and Earth Harpist William Close
Only three acts were eligible to advance to the finals of America’s Got Talent this week. Surprisingly, the competition actually got serious. There were 12 acts performing for a spot in the finals. Certainly more than three of the acts deserved to advance, but the AGT is finally realizing its potential. The tough eliminations made the hour exciting.
The hour opened with an unnecessary commentary on the semifinalists from guest comedian Steve Harvey. Harvey seemed to do a terrible job at crudely connecting the acts to his own personal life. He wasn’t funny at all. On the bright side, he was simply honest when it came time to talk about Tom Cotter, saying that he is pulling for him to win the competition. It’s a nice sentiment, but Harvey’s appearance was still a waste of time.
To make the show last an hour, Nick Cannon told the viewers that the results would be announced differently this week. First, the four acts with the highest vote totals would be announced in no particular order. Then, the three finalists would be revealed. The first grouping was Joe Castillo, Turf, and The Scott Brothers. It was a great performance night Tuesday with all these acts performing reasonably well. However, none of these acts seemed like standouts on Tuesday. That being said, of the three acts, it makes sense that Castillo got one of the Top 4 spots.
Cool TV Video of the Day: Kimmel Mocks Leno To His Face
It’s no secret that Jimmy Kimmel hates Jay Leno. Kimmel takes every opportunity he gets to crack jokes about Leno, which surely will not change now that Kimmel will be in direct competition with the Tonight Show. Since Kimmel has been talking about Leno a lot lately, let’s take a look at Jimmy Kimmel on The Jay Leno Show segment “10 at 10”.
America’s Got Talent: Semifinals Round 1
The Scott Brothers
Overall, this season of America’s Got Talent has been subpar. The live shows started with 48 acts, more than half of whom did not deserve to be seen again. Including the YouTube show, roughly two-thirds of the acts seen on live television have been eliminated. That seems about right, although there are still some acts that shouldn’t have another shot. Only three acts out of the 12 performing are advancing this week.That being said, Tuesday’s show was full of talent. It makes the decision for who advances genuinely difficult for one of the only times in the entire season. However, as with the last quarterfinal performances, it seems too much of the best talent was put on one show.
Andrew De Leon
Andrew De Leon is a talented opera singer. His performance of “Ave Maria” was technically good, but it wasn’t special. There’s no doubt he would be a better singer with training, but, unfortunately, he went from singing in his bedroom straight to the national stage. The crowd seemed a lot less engaged in this performance than last week’s performance. There’s no question De Leon has a lot of natural talent, but he does not have star quality. If he was grouped with other acts or was in another stage of the competition, his performance might have been sufficient. However, it isn’t sufficient this time. De Leon’s time on AGT is most likely over. Read the rest of this entry
Cool TV Video of the Day: Max Headroom Incident
Warning: Today’s video is more like Creepy TV Video of the Day. Despite 25 years passing, The Max Headroom incident is still very unsettling.
In 1987, someone dressed as the 80s television character Max Headroom hijacked the signal of two Chicago television stations, WGN and WTTW. The first incident took place during the sports segment of WGN’s The Nine O’Clock News. WGN’s engineers were able to cut the hijacker’s broadcast short by switching the stations signal to a backup transmitter. A few hours later, the hijackers successfully took over WTTW’s signal for 90 seconds. The PBS affiliate’s engineers tried to stop the intrusion into the Doctor Who episode “Horror of Fang Rock,” but the hijacker’s broadcast was over by the time they started looking into it.
The video below is from the second hijacking.
The Cliched “Ben and Kate”
Ben and Kate is one of those shows that has been done in one form or another a million times. Kate is the responsible sister and single mother, who has settled down with her daughter to live as normal a life as possible. Ben is her annoying brother, who has never grown up and always arrives at Kate’s house unannounced with a problem. The dynamic is not original, but that does not mean the show has to be completely clichéd. The pilot episode seems to forget that even unoriginal concepts can be done in an original way. Anyone who has ever sat through more than one sitcom will be able to spot the obvious jokes before they come out of the characters’ mouths.
The pilot of Ben and Kate starts with a prologue from Kate’s point of view. It basically says what the audience picks up in the first 5 minutes: Kate grew up too fast because she got pregnant at a young age, whereas her brother never grew up and always ruins anything remotely adult. There are times when Ben acts less mature than Kate’s 5-year-old daughter, Maddie.
Kate and her British female friend, BJ, work at Buddy’s Bar & Grill, which is also the place Ben and his friend Tommy hang out. The bar seems to exist solely as a place to set up overdone jokes. Kate walks around wearing a fanny pack, which the guys and BJ hate. This results in a nasty, yet playful, exchange of insults between BJ and Kate. BJ asks her friend, “Do you know what fanny means in my country?” Kate retorts, “Do you know what BJ means in my country?” To which BJ just responds, “Very well, very well, indeed.” Once the girls are away from the boys, Kate refers to her desire to have sex with her boyfriend George as having “the sex” and says guys want to do her all the time. Of course, BJ feels the need to point out they are not going to have sex if Kate keeps on calling it “the sex.”
Episodes’ Season Finale
Jaimie Lapidus
It’s been an intense season of Episodes full of issues that manifested themselves in painful yet hilarious ways. On Sunday’s season finale, all those issues came to a head. The issues are starting to repair themselves in a way that’s very ungraceful, yet very funny. It worked quite well. The episode opened with another one of Beverly and Carole’s exercise running sessions. This time, it wasn’t quite as repetitive, but the dynamic still isn’t very interesting. Nonetheless, it did move the story forward. As Carole is venting about her job offer from Elliot Salad, she starts to realize she could never betray Merc, which doesn’t seem to make much sense considering he does very little to contribute to their relationship and has been a terrible boss.
Over the course of the entire season, Merc wanted to get away with immoral behavior. Carole watched it happen because she loved him. Carole especially laments the fact that he is still married to Jamie, who Carole considers to be a “saint.” Beverly seems hesitant to concur that Jamie is a saint, but then admits that she knows about Jamie’s affair with Matt. The exercise session is a little more interesting than usual at this point. Instead of going over the same issues with Sean and Beverly as they do on every run, the focus shifts to gossip about Jamie and Matt. Now, the viewers have a reason to pay attention. Carole insists that she has to tell Merc about the affair, but Beverly begs her not to for fear of losing her job and Sean. Carole finally agrees to keep quiet after Beverly threatens to tell Merc about Carole’s meeting with Elliot. There was probably a better way to reveal the details of Matt’s affair to Carole. The scene was sloppily written with too much dialogue.
Weekly TV Update: August 27
NBC’s Utah affliate KSL refuses to carry The New Normal.
Last Thursday, Jerry Nelson died at 78 years old. He was the voice of the Count on Sesame Street.
Dancing With the Stars viewers have chosen Sabrina Bryan to be the 13th contestant on that show’s all-star season.
Anthony Bourdain, host of the Travel Channel’s No Reservations, will take his show to CNN after its upcoming season is over.
The former voice of Dora the Explorer, Caitlin Sanchez, attempts to sue Nickelodeon again because she says her lawyer committed fraud. In the original lawsuit, Sanchez claims she was fired for hitting puberty.
More Tribune Stations Go Dark on Cablevison
WGN America and Fox affiliate WTIC in Hartford, Connecticut, two channels previously unaffected by Tribune’s dispute with Cablevision, have gone dark. With the addition of WGN America and WTIC, Cablevision has now lost a total of 6 Tribune stations.
According to Cablevision, 50,000 Cablevision customers’ sole source of Fox programming was WTIC. However, the majority of Connecticut customers still receive New York City’s Fox affliate, WNYW.
Since August 17, Cablevision customers in various parts of the country have been unable to watch WPIX in New York, WPHL in Philadelphia, KWGN in Denver, and WCCT in Connecticut. The former two stations are My Network affiliates, while the latter two are affiliates of the CW. In addition to the main channels, Cablevision customers in the New York City and Philadelphia areas lost Antenna TV.
Wait! What's A Dial? 