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.
Cool TV Video of the Day: The Theme to the Poor Man’s Gilligan’s Island
No one thinks Gilligan’s Island was a brilliant television show, so it may come as a surprise that it has a sister show called It’s About Time. Sherwood Schwartz created and produced both shows. The two shows also share similar fish out of water scenarios and expository theme songs. However, It’s About Time lasted only 26 episodes and was soon forgotten because it was repetitive and hard to watch, whereas Gilligan went on to become iconic. Instead of explaining the premise of It’s About Time, since it is all right their in the show’s lyrics, I’ll just let you have a listen.
The lyrics are after the jump.
Sullivan & Son: Online Dating
Sullivan & Son has been guilty of cringe comedy and an inability to move the story forward. Jokes that make the audience cringe aren’t always funny as much as they are offensive. Cringe comedy is very hard to execute, which it has for Sullivan & Son. Viewers may be too distracted by the subject matter to laugh. With a lack of movement or action in most of the episodes of Sullivan & Son, there is very little room for distraction. Luckily, on Thursday’s episode, the subject manner and themes were rather pleasant and still funny. The story is still slow, but that is the nature of the show, but yesterday’s episode seemed to take advantage of its limited setting.
The episode opened with Steve’s mother, Ok Cha showing Steve a picture of a Korean woman named Grace Kim online. She then says that she set up an online dating profile for Steve and that the woman wants to meet him. Of course, Steve is upset that his mom took control of his personal life. The dynamic between Steve and his mother can get a little old. Ok Cha likes to think Steve can’t take control of his life when he clearly can. That being said, the measures that Ok Cha took could be construed as so annoying that they are funny. She asserts that she didn’t pretend to be Steve, but she pretended to better than Steve. Steve protests that he does not want to meet Grace, but Grace was coming to the bar anyway.
AGT Results Recap: August 22nd
Carly Rae Jepsen
Tuesday night’s wildcard edition of America’s Got Talent was one of the few times this season that the show wasn’t a complete disappointment. The talent wasn’t overwhelming, but at least the night had a more competitive atmosphere. The results were not completely obvious, but there were some clear standouts who seemed destined to take spots. It would have been a perfectly adequate week, if America voted correctly. Instead, Wednesday’s results show was a letdown.
The first result was between Ben Blaque, Sebastian “El Charro De Orro,” and the Bandbaz Brothers. None of these acts completely deserved to advance, but they all had the same basic skill levels as performers. That being said, it wasn’t surprising that Sebastian made it through to the semifinals. He won’t win the competition, but he is reasonably talented.
After Sebastian advanced, it was time for a performance by the cast of a Broadway musical version of Bring It On. The performance was average. It certainly wasn’t amazing, but it was a good time filler.
Cool TV Video of the Day: Alex Trebek Gives Some Naughty Clues
Alex Trebek is best known as the host of Jeopardy. However, he hosted quite a few other game shows before landing that gig. In these two clips from the final episodes of Double Dare (No, not Nickelodeon’s Double Dare. That’s something quite different. This one aired on CBS.), Trebek gives a few suggestive clues. While the show only lasted 5 months, the boomerang clues always pop up on outrageous game show moment compilations.
The video after the jump features risque clues for a tobacco pipe.
Jimmy Kimmel Will Air at 11:35pm
Starting in January, ABC will push Nightline back an hour, so that Jimmy Kimmel Live can be a direct competitor to the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and The Late Show with David Letterman. This does not make sense. ABC already wins the 11:35pm late night ratings race against Leno and Letterman with Nightline, which averages 3.8 million viewers. However, ABC loses the ratings race a half hour later because Kimmel averages 1.8 million viewers to Leno’s 3.71 million viewers and Letterman’s 3.22 million viewers. Kimmel also receives the fewest number of viewers among the 3 hosts in the coveted 19-49 demographic.
Cool TV Video Of The Day: Hugh Laurie On Friends
Most American television viewers know Hugh Laurie as Dr. Gregory House. However, in 1998, Laurie made a guest appearance on Friends as a very sardonic airplane passenger who tries to reason with Jennifer Aniston’s character, Rachel, about going to London to stop a wedding. Laurie may have had a small role on Friends, but it’s easy to see why he deserved a big break in America a few years later.
Wait! What's A Dial? 