Logopolis

Pirates and Pills

Last night at the monthly Midwest Independent Film Festival, the program started with a lovely short film starring a great mother and daughter, and I didn't realize until the end credits why I recognized the mom.

Fellow Knox alums will do the same:

Pirates & Pills from erin e. cantelo on Vimeo.

Logopolis Fall TV Spectactular - Tuesday

And now we continue the Logopolis Fall TV 2010 review, I've completed the fall schedule.

For your own ease and viewing pleasure, you can download a schedule to make your own plans here -- and you don't even have to buy a TV Guide. And here's my thoughts on Tuesday nights, again complete with unnecessary footnotes.

You're welcome.

---

Tuesday Spotlight

Countless reviews have called No Ordinary Family "Heroes meets The Incredibles" but anybody who thinks about it for a couple of seconds (and anyone who was seven years old in 1981) realizes its truly The Incredibles meets The Greatest American Hero, which is much more awesome -- especially if you were seven years old in 1981.

In fact, I've started writing them a theme song with the same tune, in case they need it:

Look at what's on ABC
I can't believe it myself
The Commish and his family, they got them some powers
Superheroes on TV for more hours

Believe it or not,
Heroes didn't kill the genre...

Okay, so that's all I've got. I'm quitting while I'm only really behind. And there's no way I'm going to get a rhyme for 'genre.'

Speaking of genres, what we're dealing with in No Ordinary Family is different than Heroes. It's the hour long superhero dramedy genre making a comeback not seen since The Greatest American Hero and... well, I guess that's it.

I'm surprised there haven't been more attempts, based on its popularity. Then again, the popularity I'm basing it on is my brother and I, who weren't television executives when we were seven and four years old, and we aren't now.

But even the tag line talks about new powers and no instruction manual, just like when Ralph Hinckley² received the Suit from Venus. I'll probably give No Ordinary Family a chance; early reviews of its pilot script were lukewarm to good, and the pilot itself received some praise. I've liked superheroes long before Heroes fucked them up, and I'll like them for a long time after. And no matter what, it's almost guaranteed to be the third best superhero project involving Michael Chiklis

---

Other Tuesday Highlights

Last year, I had written a very detailed article in my head titled "Why It's Okay to Hate Glee" -- subtitled 'And why doing so doesn't make you homophobic.' But months later and having finally watched the final couple of episodes last week, I don't really care about what my main points were.³ As they say, haters gonna hate, but it's a fun show and there's lots worse things in the world for the kids to like than this show.

Hell, there's a much worse show focusing on teenagers singing pop hits on this very network, sometimes on the same night.

---

While I've only seen a few episodes of The Good Wife, in my mind, it's comprised of two different shows, which we'll call for simplcity's sake: The Good and The Wife. The Good is the legal drama starring Julianna Margulies, as a junior member of a firm and shows them work for clients in somewhat different ways than most legal dramas. They don't necessarily go from crime to trial to decision all in one episode in the time span of a week. They show what the lawyer does before their client gets arrested (and how that might be most important, especially if the client isn't guilty) or the appeal. While I'm sure it's probably not much more realistic, it tries different stuff and does it well with an interesting cast.

But then there's The Wife. And while I'm not comforable with the implied misogyny in labeling the bad portion The Wife, it fits. The original hook of the drama - the ongoing legal troubles of Chris Noth - a weird combination of Rod Blagojevich and Eliot Spitzer - and the conspiracy behind it - always seems, from somebody who only gets it in bits and pieces, ridiculous and contrived. And though those of us in Chicago and Illinois are painfully aware that these dramas can play out forever, from my perspective, it drags the rest of the show down.

---

I'm sure Parenthood would have been a good show had Maura Tierny not had to bow out of it for health reasons and Lauren Graham not taken over her role? But would I care about the show?  No offense to Tierny, but probably not. Lauren Graham is the greatest part of a great cast and though the show can be torture as it sets up an uncomfortable family scene and spikes it into your face, it's still good stuff in a classic family drama sense. If you used to like Brothers and Sisters but don't anymore⁴, watch this.

---

Also New

Raising Hope

Actual conversation held this evening:

PunkAndy: So did you know that Martha Plimpton isn't a contemporary of the kid on that new show...

LogopolisMike: Yes...

PunkAndy: That's she's the mom?

LogopolisMike: Yes...

PunkAndy: So she's the grandmother of the baby.

LogopolisMike: Yes.

(Our heroes are stunned with oldness....And scene)

Yes, I know that their supposed to be a dysfunctional family and a teenage parent. But still. Creak goes the bones.

The commercials for this seemed intriguingly sweet, and when I realized

1. it was a 30 minute sitcom, not the dramedy I feared and
2. that Greg Garcia, from My Name is Earl, was behind it (nobody does sweet trashy family comedies better)

I was sold.

A more easy sell was Running Wilde, which had me at the commercial:

Gob and Felicty meet cute. Yes, please.

I actually know nothing about this series except that it apparently has a Arrested Development pedigree beyond Wil Arnett, so I'm in -- if only because, again, 30 minutes via TiVo is a really easy committment. But I have to say I find it rather ironic that Fox is selling Will Arnett so hard since they weren't AD's biggest fans. TV promoters are like cats -- so weird.

I know even less about Detroit 187, except leave it to CBS to have an hour long drama with inexplicable numbers and letters. Longtime Logopolis fans know I'm not your go to guy for cop shows that aren't The Wire. Some quick research shows that it used to have a mock-documentary conceit -- how original -- but they got rid of it in the pilot and reshot it, which means many scenes with people talking to each other seem like they should be confessing to a camera. So if you like to watch failure happen, I recommend Detroit 187. Maybe that's not fair, but neither is much about Detroit.  How's that for biting political commentary along with your TV preview. 

You're welcome.

---

¹ Actually in the age of Google, there's often such things as 'countless'; in fact 'Heroes meets The Incredibles' returns 517 results, all on the first page describing No Ordinary Family. As of right now, "The Incredibles meets The Greatest American Hero" returns nothing. So maybe it's not as obvious as I thought.

² Most may know that William Katt's character, Ralph Hinkley's name was changed because 12 days after the pilot of The Greatest American Hero aired, John Hinckley Jr. went and ruined the name.  What's odd is that the creators of No Ordinary Family had originally named the patriarch of the heroic family Sirhan Sirhan before deciding against it.⁵

³ If I recall, they were "Little to no character development; characters do things that make no sense based on what we've learned before only because the plot -- or worse the song -- demands it, even though it's supposed to be a serial drama. Also, despite a great performance by the actor who plays him, Kurt is the biggest Mary Sue ever and they never really show you that just because you're the put-upon Homosexual with a capital H, you shouldn't get away with being a dick. But yeah, I don't recall exactly what bugged me.

⁴ It's like Brothers and Sisters used to be with 100% less gay and 100% more autism.

⁵ Okay, not really.

Logopolis Fall TV Spectactular - Monday

Tonight¹ after How I Met Your Mother, CBS aired a Fall Preview Special. It felt like a weird throwback in this age of network websites and on-demand viewing and YouTube for a network to take 30 minutes of prime time programming to show what are essentially long commercials advertising their fall program schedules. It was horribly cheesy and horribly hosted by Jim Belushi and Jerry Romijn (née O'Connell), two actors who, no matter what your opinion of some of their work, you have to actually try to make not charming. But this thirty minutes really did that.

However, the special was helpful in that it made me realize

1. it was time for me to put out the Logopolis Fall TV Guide and
2. how much I have loved television promotional crap in the past.

Back when networks and fall schedules meant something, I used to love the TV Guide(s) that covered the returning and new shows. I'd read them cover-to-cover. (Okay, I did that will all TV Guides I could get my hands on, but these were extra special.) Those same issues, if I had saved them, would probably be remarkable graveyards of ideas half-formed and brilliance that never saw the light of day.

I don't remember Fall Preview Specials from the television of my youth, except for the specials, usually run on a Friday night, that promoted each networks fall cartoon line-up. You see, kids, once upon a time, each network showed cartoons all morning on Saturday mornings, and they promoted the fuck out of them in the summer leading up to it. And it. was. AWESOME!

If you look through the Internet Archive and YouTube you can find that networks have been doing specials like these forever In fact, here's CBS's own 1968 special.

As you can see, if you watch it, there was this little show with an awesome theme song that was premiering back in 1968. Hawaii 5-O. And as they say, the more things change...

Monday Spotlight

The CBS promotional clips of the new Hawaii 5-0² made it look a whole lot better than I figured it would. Good for them -- if a show like this doesn't win you over by its style, it's sunk.

For one, any show where Scott Caan (the Danno who will be booking 'em) is possibly the third most attractive male lead is a show with lots of style points.³

But they try for a little substance too. In this version, McGarrett is a former military man (as he must be to be a lead male character on a CBS drama - I think it's a hidden passage in the PATRIOT Act) haunted by a past in which his father was killed by international drug lords in a weird scene in South Korea (looking suspiciously like Hawaii and/or the island from Lost.) Soon after, the governor of Hawaii is setting up a task force to fight international criminals in Hawaii. Hmmmm...

McGarret is played by Alex O'Laughlin, that guy from that CBS vampire show that bombed (probably because the vampire wasn't a Navy captain), and he likes to surf, which is a good thing...

It's established in the promo that Danno, despite having moved to Hawaii, doesn't like the beach, which seems like, a mistake to me, considering the short Mr. Caan's love of the surf and... well...

Then again, I may not be the target demo. 

Hawaii 5-O, Part Two: Less Hula But More Skin also stars Jin from Lost as a local cop and Grace Park as his rookie cop cousin who may or may not spend the entire pilot in a bikini. 

Other Monday highlights

90210: Andrea Zuckerman Doesn't Live Here Anymore rolls into its third season with more skanks, psychos, and homosexuals than you can throw a stick at. Last season, before she became a budding pop star, one of the girls kissed Rumer Willis, and she liked it. This year, tennis player and player player Teddy Montgomery realizes he's gay. Which is great because, really, the actor who plays him, Trevor Donavan, has always reminded me of a gay porn star circa 1996. Fun fact, and speaking of Andrea Zuckerman, despite now playing a high school junior, Donavan would have been legal to be doing porn in 1996, since he'll turn 32 this year.

Nu-90210 is actually an entertaining little program by CW standards, as they've shed all the dead weight that was the original cast's haunting West Beverly and focus on the students -- all of whom think they are good people but are mostly, well, not. And the season finale ended with quite possibly the worst 'girl who cried wolf' turnaround ever when Naomi seemed like she might be getting raped by the teacher she falsely accused of sexual harassment.  Also, there was a tribute to Emily Valentine, when crazy-ass Jasper burnt a boat that Liam had made. By hand. No weak-ass Homecoming Floats here. What I'm saying is: it takes little to please me.

Also, Gossip Girl is still happening in televisual form. And despite main characters finally losing their virginity/finally getting shot while being a gross sex tourist, I manage to not care and care a surprisingly similar amount --  so much that I really can't tell you what's happening on the show (Final half of season summary: Somebody old had a rare soap opera disease that could only be cured by a doctor who doesn't seem to practice much medicine and Jenny was horrid) and that I will probably watch it.

How I Met Your Mother chugged along nicely last year, even though it's rabid fan-base (that, yes, actually exists) thought it sucked. I'm ready for it to live up to its title, though. I realized last night, when watching Rachel Bilson as the roommate of the heretofore unseen mother, they've really blown it by not having Sarah Chalke and/or Bilson being the mom. I really don't think we can ever meet the character because she's got such a mythical status. (Also, since Ted is the new Ross Gellar, his dream girl is bound to be super fucking annoying.)  I think that'd be a fine way to end the show, literally ending the show at the moment he meets the mother. But if so, they need to just never mention the title of the show again until that episode.

Every summer I somehow accidentally start watching a show that I've never even known was on and then end up secretly setting up a Season Pass for it. This summer it was CBS's Rules of Engagement. Yes, really. I always thought it was just going to be the same "pretty women nag stupid guys" sit-com with an extra annoying dose of David Spade thrown in. And I guess, now that I describe it, that's exactly what it is. But it makes me laugh. And Megyn Price is very funny. And it's fun to imagine that Patrick Warburton is actually dressed as the Tick the whole time.

And it also has my favorite new trope: stupid guy with hot wife... wait, you say, that's not new. In fact, that's what we've been complaining about for years. But no, see, in this new trend, the stupid guy with the hot wife is actually hotter than his wife. (Oliver Hudson, above) So it's not exactly a long way, baby, but it's progress.

Happy 90210 Day (for some of us)

So there are plenty of reasons not to like the new 90210.  Some of the kids look older than me.  Heck, some of them look older than Andrea Zuckerman looks now. 

But the real reason to now watch this CW show (and not because we were supposed to boycott the CW three years ago) is because they weren't smart enough to schedule the Season 3 premiere for today.

Typing 90210 memories into Google, got this grinchy blog post from Paul McNamara (no relation) at NetworkWorld, which I was amused by, in a "every parade can be rained on" sort of way.

I'm going to venture a guess that there are software developers shaking their heads (not to mention Europeans) who remember the genesis of a another 1990's phenomenon: The dreaded Y2K problem, i.e. software glitches - both real and ultimately exaggerated - brought about by earlier coding that failed to account for the inevitability of 1999 passing into 2000.

For those who were there, today is 09/02/2010, TV show or no TV show.

On a more celebratory note, the ladies at GoFugYourself are hilariously marking the day, discussing Donna's virginity and hair mistakes and David Silver's blouses.

Like the original cast of 90210, I gradated in 1993. When I first moved to Chicago to live for the summer with a friend from high school, she was the tortured artist poet and I was the same but gay male version. We lived in Rogers Park and went to an Open Mic most Wednesday nights for her to read, and for me to support her play the "guess the bad rhyme" poetry listener. But we had a secret shame: we had to book it to the cafe (No Exit) because sign-up started at 8 but 90210 didn't end until then.

Also: