Archive for October, 2006
Blondes Wreck Television
I’m ditching two fall shows completely: Heroes and Smith.
I couldn’t make it through the first 20 minutes of the second episode of Heroes. Yes, I understand it had an intriguing ending, but getting there was… just… so… slow. Plus I can’t stand Ali Larter, nor can I stand her character. Congrats on getting a full season commitment Heroes. Continue on without me though.
And Smith? Every single character on the show is worthless. There’s nothing that makes these people interesting. What’s the difference between this show and something like The Sopranos, you ask? Well, The Sopranos is hilarious. I don’t condone the actions of the characters in that show but I laugh 20 times easily during any given episode. Smith is just there, on screen, not doing anything interesting at all. You mean one bad guy might find and kill one of the other bad guys? Who gives a crap. And while I don’t mind Amy Smart, I HATE her character in this show.
Unlike the lead character, I know when to call it quits.
Monday I’ll have my thoughts on the season premieres of Lost and South Park, the series premiere of The Nine, and new episodes of Studio 60, Jericho and Shark. There might be more live blogging of SNL this weekend as well. See ya then.
It’s a YouTube Kinda Day
Bored at work? Kids driving you mad? Spouse nagging you to do stuff and you want to drown out the noise? The Watercooler will make it all better with this collection of recommended haha things that’ll make you LOL and whatnot.
* Norm MacDonald made it to the $1 million
question on the celebrity comedian version of ABC’S ‘Who Wants to be a
Millionaire’. He guessed twice on the $250,000 and 500,000 question and
got them both right. But realizing his luck might have been run dry, he
decided to stop at $500,000. His guess on the last question was later
revealed to have been correct, so he would have won the million if he
hadn’t stopped. Part 1 (10:47), Part 2 (9:44), Part 3 (6:13).
* Imagine for a moment that you’re a cute puppy dog. You’re just doing your thing, being cute, being a dog, when all of a sudden out of nowhere two mean boys show up and start booing you. You’d be pretty crushed wouldn’t you? Or would you take it all in stride? Well, find out what this one puppy dog does when this very issue presents itself. Note: I may or may not be in this particular video. Inappropriate Booing 2: Boo Harder (0:33).
* Thomas F. Wilson is a stand up comedian and actor, and is probably best known as Biff from the Back to the Future trilogy. One would imagine that he hears a lot of questions from the people he meets in his travels, and has probably heard some of them quite a few times. Instead of being a dick about it, he’s written a little song that everyone should pay attention to. Hopefully you’ll be able to learn from it, and then think of new irritating questions for when you see Tom at your local Chuckle Hut. Biff’s Question Song (1:52).
* There’s an epidemic of videos on YouTube featuring doofus knuckleheads applying either Ben Gay or Icy Hot to their, well… nether regions. Our runaway favorite is Icy Hot Brian. Brian is from California, and he and his friends were bored. He decided to apply some, to see what it feels like. Well, he certainly finds out, and also might have found religion during the ordeal as well. Icy Hot Brian (4:49).
Random Wednesdays No More
That’s right, I’m killing off the Random Wednesday feature here at The Watercooler. Why? Well, I’ll tell you why. Just calm down and get off my back. Sheesh.
I first decided to do Random Wednesdays because I thought I had a bunch of ideas that weren’t worthy of an entire post, and so I’d lump them all together into one weekly thing. There are several flaws in that logic. First, even if I wrote a two sentence post about backgammon you people would be thrilled that it wasn’t in any way associated with a YouTube video. Secondly, in the struggle to come up with things to talk about every day, Wednesdays now demanded that I think up two or three topics. Well that just doesn’t make any sense now does it?
So it’s gone. Outta here. Viva la bye bye. It’ll be replaced with Focused, One-Topic Wednesdays, which from here on out will be known as Wednesdays. Enjoy.
Well, enjoy it next week that is. This is all there is for this Wednesday. Sorry.
What in the World (Market)?
Despite all the setbacks I’ve had along the way in this crazy journey called… called… okay, however the rest of that thing goes, I’ve managed to remain an optimist. A somewhat bitter optimist, but an optimist nonetheless.
That’s why on a hot and happenin’ Friday night I didn’t sink completely into the depths of despair when I saw that we were heading into some fruity looking store called World Market.
Oh sure, I wanted to put the brakes on and fake an incoming phone call so I could remain outside for the duration of the visit. But I’m a trooper. An optimistic trooper. So I walked into that so-called store and managed to keep my dinner down as knick-knacks of all shapes and sizes were admired and pawed at.
But then we got to the back of the store, where knick-knacks were replaced by classic candy and foods from around the world (hence the name of the store, I would imagine). This was moderately entertaining, and made the trip somewhat tolerable.
Everything changed for the better though once I looked down into a basket that was next to me.
Last Week in TV
Here’s a quick wrapup of my thoughts on last week’s shows:
Heroes (NBC): I had this on while I was doing much more important things, but every time I looked up it seemed like it was yet another moment from the five minutes worth of previews NBC aired repeatedly over the summer. I’ll give it a second week, but again I won’t be entirely focused on it. Can this series go any way other than eventually there’ll be a group of superheroes and a group of supervillains?
Studio 60 (NBC): Continues to be the best new show of the season. It irked me only once. A conversation the cast was having at one point was much too smart, as if everyone in the show’s fictional cast was a literary and philosophical genius. I’m all for having intelligent characters on television, but this kind of meaningless, throwaway dialogue is just going to turn audience members off.
Also, it was a little weird that there were two mentions of Saturday Night Live during the show. Since we’ve now established that SNL exists in this fantasy world, that makes Studio 60 into this universe’s version of Fridays. Until that gets mentioned.
And I find it outstanding that on message boards everywhere, from here on it seems like whenever there’s a bad SNL sketch the de facto standard credit will go to "Ricky & Ron".
Smith (CBS): The show looks expensive. The direction and production values are slick and top-notch. The story however is going to be the death of this show. I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be sticking with this one. One more week, maybe.
Jericho (CBS): How can this season’s best premise be such a badly written show? Out of that entire hour, only the last 45 seconds of the show will have any storyline meaning in the future, and that’s annoying. Plus, most of the people in this town aren’t worth a damn anyway. "Who cares if there was a nuclear attack and deadly rain is coming, we’re playing pool here!" That bunch and the stupid teenage girl who was wooed by a can of soda needed to be at ground zero of the blast.
However, I’m sticking with this one because another website that I read frequently is written by the brother of one of the show’s writers. After the first episode, he wrote this blurb in one of his updates: "We just ask your patience with the first 4-5 episodes, since that’s how long it took for the CBS Executive Monkeys to stop trying to ruin the show and let the writers unkill Major Dad so he’d be around for the full season, and stuff like that. But I’ve been assured that it gets good by November Sweeps, so we just need to get it there."
Shark (CBS): Drastic improvement over the pilot, which I guess just shows that Spike Lee can’t direct television. After that pilot, my interest in this one was on life support. This second episode was pretty good however, and let Woods cut loose a little more. I’ll stick with it.
This week I’ll be returning to Lost, and might consider the new following-Lost series The Nine. Next week I’ll give 30 Rock a chance so I can say I saw it before it was cancelled.
SNL Season Premiere: Dane Cook/The Killers
The 32nd season of Saturday Night Live begins tonight with stand-up comedian/Myspace darling Dane Cook (meh) returning to host, and The Killers (yay!) returning as tonight’s musical guest.
Isn’t it a bit sad that in all these years, SNL still hasn’t elevated its status enough to be BIGGER than stand-up comedians? Stand-ups should be begging to be CAST MEMBERS of this show, not showcased as hosts. I understand in the classic days it was necessary to have stand-ups like Richard Pryor, George Carlin and Billy Crystal on as hosts… but it’s been 31 years now. It says a lot that SNL is still not the most elite place for comedy.
The show is five cast members short this year, as budget cuts and sitcom deals have seen Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch, Horatio Sanz, Finesse Mitchell and Chris Parnell exit the building. Hopefully a smaller cast can produce bigger laughs.
Anyway, let’s get to the recappin’…
Cold Open: Aww hell, I was hoping they’d be smarter than to open with Will Forte’s weak President Bush impression. The writing for these skits is lazy and unmemorable. However, I will give them credit for the line "The Saints are 3-0. So it’s official, New Orleans has recovered."
Credits: Wow Tiny E, those credits are huge. Seriously, I wonder if there was a production meeting where someone said "Hell, if we can’t make the show funnier I want those credits to be freakin’ gigantic!"
Monologue: LDC asks "What’s he famous for?" I let her know that he’s a stand up and he’s in that Jessica Simpson movie. LDC says "Oh that’s right, he boinked her."
I like when stand-ups just go right into their comedy routines in the monologue and won’t play the writers’ little reindeer games. LDC: "I’m sorry, is he funny?" Not so far.
Okay, the YouTube bit is both funny and timely. LDC agrees. However, in five years when this repeats on E!, it’ll be so dated.
Commerical Parody: There isn’t one. The hell? Commerical parody after the monologue. Now I’m all discombobulated. I don’t know if I can go on.
Stupid Airport Security: I laughed a bit during this one. But I’ve also been drinking. So I’m not sure if it was really funny or not. I’m glad Kenan got to stay on the show though. I love Kenan. I also seem to love booze.
Next Week: Jaime Pressly and Corinne Bailey Rae. I don’t know who the hell the latter is, and I hope the former is in as many skimpy outfits as possible.
Hugo Chavez Political Roundup: Chavez talks with his hands a lot. That seems to be the jist of this one. LDC: "Timely, yes. Funny, no."
Digital Short "Cubicle Fight": The premise doesn’t even make sense.
Al Pacino Checks His Bank Balance: So they let Bill Hader do his Pacino impression once a year and it KILLS. Perhaps they should let him do it a couple more times. LDC: "That’s the best damn skit they’ve done all night."
The Killers "When We Were Young": Now I love The Killers and I’m really looking forward to their new album. But this song just never seems to take off. It mulls around in this middle area and just never builds or rocks. Add to it that their performance of it here was not done very well at all, and, well… I just miss those well dressed lads from a few seasons back. I don’t dig this new look.
Weekend Update: Brian Williams makes a cameo and the crowd goes APESHIT. It’s Brian Williams people. Wait, what the hell? That was a teaser skit for Weekend Update?
The Real Weekend Update: Seth Meyers replaces Tina Fey. I’m sad that this essentially means we’ll never see the skit Spyglass again. LDC: "I love, love, love Hammond’s Bill Clinton, but that felt forced." The whole WU felt forced.
Boning the Lady: Someone was high when this was written…
The Killers "Some Other Song From Their New Album": I’m very disappointed in these fellows. Why has the lead singer added a Tiny Tim voice inflection to his singing?
Farrah Fawcett: That had potential, but then there was a weird link into…
Closing Time: In this sketch, people are told to leave a bar because it is closing. Amy Poehler continues her Farrah Fawcett character in the sketch’s only brief moment of humor.
Geico Commercial Parody: That would have been better on tape.
The end. No closing credits? No taped commercial parody? Wow, how daring! You just can’t predict that Saturday Night Live… they may or may not air the one consistantly entertaining portion of the entire show! It’s crazy and unpredictable!
I asked for LDC’s opinion on tonight’s show. LDC: "I’m going to bed."