Blog Archives
Go On Will Go On
NBC hit a home run with Go On. The show stars Matthew Perry as sportscaster Ryan King, whose boss forces him to join the Transitions therapy group. Of course, Ryan feels that he does not need therapy and any attempt to convince people to agree with him fails because he keeps lashing out at everyone. For those who insist on making Friends comparisons, Ryan is Chandler Bing, if Chandler Bing suffered from clinical depression and was constantly sardonic. It is a little jarring at first, since Friends is still being rerun continually, but it works.
Ryan’s first Transitions’ meeting makes up a big part of the pilot episode. When he first arrives, Ryan takes his place in the circle and listens briefly to some of his fellow group members’ problems. He quickly gets fed up with the wallowing because everything in his life is a competition. Deciding to do something about this, Ryan pulls out a whiteboard and starts making a bracket that one of the group members dubs “March Sadness.” For someone to progress in “March Sadness,” they have to tell their sob story in 5 seconds and it has to be more depressing than their competitors. It is twisted that Ryan turns suffering into a competition, but for some reason it does seem like a feasible way to move on in one’s life. The winner was a Fausta, a woman who spoke mostly Spanish and lost both her husband and her son. As the winner, Ryan crowned Fausta with a pastry box that she now cherishes.
Sullivan & Son: Crass, but Pretty Funny
The promos for TBS’s new sitcom, Sullivan & Son seemed crass, stereotypical, and at times cringe worthy. There was very little context, so I really wasn’t sure if I was going to like this or be offended by it. There is a lot of shock value in the show. It is crass, stereotypical, and cringe worthy. It just also happens to be pretty funny. The series opened with two episodes last night that both showed potential.
Steve Sullivan is the son. He is a workaholic corporate attorney on Wall Street who is visiting his family in Pittsburgh for his father’s birthday party. The party is being held at Sullivan & Son, a bar that the Sullivan family has owned for generations. Steve is bringing his girlfriend of 8 months to the party. It is his first time back home since they started dating and she is obviously more serious than he is about the relationship. This type of dynamic seems to really establish Sullivan’s character from the get-go. Steve is portrayed by showrunner and comic Steve Byrne. He is a man who is simply going through the motions of life. He has a “big and important” job (which he has to describe several times throughout the show) and a girlfriend who assumes they are going to move in together. He is following a safe and conventional path, but that isn’t what he wants. In this sense, Steve’s character seems very real as he struggles to grow.
The Newsroom Needs a Newsflash
Last night, after much anticipation, Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom finally debuted on HBO. I really wanted to like this show because, even though I know he can be preachy, I like Aaron Sorkin and his previous two shows about the behind-the-scenes of television. Both Sports Night and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip were their own shows, The Newsroom appears to be a rehash of Studio 60 with the only difference being the former takes place in a newsroom and the latter is about a late night sketch comedy show a la Saturday Night Live.
If I had never seen Studio 60, I would probably love The Newsroom. Instead, I spent all hour and fifteen minutes of the first episode wishing people would stop comparing everyone they find bland to Jay Leno, thinking Sam Waterston needs a hair cut and makes an awkward drunk, and searching for anachronisms and incorrect facts. Seriously, I was trying to determine if the cell phones used in the show were actually available in 2010 because the show lost my interest within the first 15 minutes.
An Anime Review: One Piece
It was hard to decide what my first topic of review should be. I’ve been asked to review different anime for this blog, but the truth is I’ve never reviewed anything before. Being an amateur, I decided my first anime review should be on something mainstream and easy to find. However, I find that reviews of the two biggest mainstream anime in the US, Naruto and Bleach, to be overdone and common. Even as a beginner, I wish to at least slightly stand out from the norms. Thus, this shall be a review of one of the most popular mainstream animes running in Japan, One Piece.
One Piece is one of the biggest mainstream animes in Japan. It started as a manga written by Eichiro Oda and serialized by Shonen Jump. Since 1997, the anime has been in production by Fuji TV and Toei since 1999. It currently has well over 500 episodes and sells all kinds of merchandise throughout Japanese malls.
The world of One Piece is a world ruled by the seas. The vast array of countries and terrains are merely islands across the globe. The backstory is that long ago the famous pirate Gold Roger traveled the world and collected a vast treasure. Before Gold Roger’s eventual capture and execution, he hid his fantastic treasure somewhere within a strip of sea known as the Grand Line. This legendary man is known as “king of the pirates” and pirates around the world strive to obtain his fabled treasure.
The story in One Piece follows Monkey D. Luffy, a strange young man who has only one goal in life: to be king of the pirates. Luffy’s dream seems to be rather farfetched at first, since first meet him with no ship or crew. He’s light-hearted, fun-loving, easily impressed with others, and not quite what you’d expect when you think of a pirate, but it’s his strange personality that attracts the crew members that eventually come to follow him.
America’s Got Talent Visits St. Louis
Issac Brian Brown
I had some faith that Tuesday’s episode of AGT would be better than Monday night’s, simply because the odds are they would start to find better talent. I was mostly right. They had never visited St. Louis prior to this season, which sort of surprised me. Regardless, St. Louis’ first audition show two weeks ago was also a good showing. It makes some sense that this show would be good too.
America’s Got Talent begins every episode with a feature story. It’s normally a tossup as to whether it would be a terrible act that happens to be entertaining or an act of genuine talent. When “Imagination” from “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” started playing at the beginning of the guy’s feature, I knew that this wasn’t going to be a good act. When the contestant said he was a puppeteer, I was positive it wasn’t going to be good. Aside from the fact that this type of act is immensely unlikely to be worthy of 1 million dollars, the viewer quickly discovered he wasn’t even a good puppeteer. Nick Cannon promptly turned to the camera with a sock puppet in his hand and said, “I’m a better puppeteer than this dude.” Despite the complete lack of potential this act had, I was still entertained. The contestant had very high energy and the judges’ spirits seemed very high. This was going to be a captivating hour.
America’s Got Talent: Not that Inspiring
This early in the season, there’s a lot of novelty in America’s Got Talent. I try to look at these acts with a critical eye and not simply take pleasure in America’s failure. During the show’s tenure, there has been a lack of success in finding a sustainable “star.” There could be many reasons for this, but AGT is a talent show with absolutely no parameters. Perhaps, it’s got to come to terms with the fact that America hasn’t been that good. There’s still plenty of audition shows left, but the country has a lot to prove.
Monday’s episode was enjoyable, but not overly impressive. Some acts were good, but I sincerely doubt I saw one with a serious shot at winning the competition. Conversely, some acts were bad, but I don’t think the public will be talking about them or that their performances will spread around YouTube for the sake of hilarity. It was just an hour that did an adequate job of holding my attention.
This episode opened with a singing and dancing troupe called Inspired, which is also a non-profit organization with a focus on the inner-cities. They told the judges they have been referred to as “the urban Glee.”
As cynical as this sounds, it is at this point where the show gets less entertaining. I’m all for sentimentality, but one would expect that at least one act with a troubling or “inspiring” background would not make it to the next round because they just aren’t talented enough. I do not remember a single instance of that happening in any competition show, especially AGT. I suppose, on shows like AGT, everyone needs a good story, but I didn’t appreciate knowing that Inspired would go through before I saw them perform. They inevitably were voted through to Las Vegas. I would tolerate this better if they were a spectacular act, but their rendition of “Lean On Me” wasn’t anything exciting.
Reviewing TBS’s Men at Work
TBS is one of my favorite channels, but it’s one of the last places I would think of to have a quality first-run show. I’ll watch endless reruns of Friends or Seinfeld, but that’s what TBS is best at: reruns. Though, when I saw so many ads for Men at Work during multiple two hour marathons of Friends, I wanted to give it a chance. I have been a fan of Breckin Meyer ever since I saw him star in Rat Race in 2001, so I was curious about how well he would do as a showrunner. I’ve also been a fan of Danny Masterson for a while. I knew this new role wouldn’t be as enjoyable as when he was Hyde in That 70s Show, but I still wanted him to succeed.
The style of the show wasn’t going to suit me, since I have an aversion to multi-camera shows with a laugh track. While there are a few notable exceptions, the overwhelmingly deliberate delivery of punchline and prompting for the viewer to laugh turns me off. Also, the camera set up seems to compromise individual character focus. The premise of this show was respectable, but not very unique. Four men living, working and dating in New York. The series opened with two episodes on Thursday night, and while I chuckled a few times during both of them, I wasn’t impressed.
Brandon Tartikoff’s Last Great Ride
Brandon Tartikoff was NBC’s entertainment president from 1980 to 1991. This is a book review of his memoir The Last Great Ride, which was published in 1992.
During the 1980 and early 1990s, NBC was “Must See TV”. It was also a time, as Brandon Tartikoff points out in his memoir, where a “27 share was the dividing line between renewal and cancellation.” Nowadays, the highest rated show on television, American Idol, does not even get close to a 27 share. American Idol only gets a 14 share due to the increasing number of niche audience, the fact that most homes have more than one television, and everyone can watch almost anything whenever and wherever they want. Brandon Tartikoff knew this in 1992, which was the year his book The Last Great Ride was published and VCRs were the only commonly found television-recording devices.
Wait! What's A Dial? 