That Not So Fresh Feeling

Scrubs is hands down the best show on television. Tonight’s episode was just absolutely pitch-perfect. From the ridiculous humor (”We should have sex sometime”) to the absolute gut-wrenching low that ended the show, every note was played perfectly.

I’m not kidding. I’ll fight you if you disagree. Punch you right in your stupid face.

I just finished watching Season One of The Adventures of Pete and Pete which arrived from Netflix a week or so ago. If you’ve never seen Pete and Pete, it’s a show that aired on Nickelodeon in the early-to-mid 90s about two brothers named … Pete. The show started out as some 60 second shorts, which were popular, so Nick said “here’s more money, make some 30 minute specials,” which were more popular, which lead to Nick saying “just make us lots of shows.” And they did, and it rocked.

It rocked because it was this surrealist, absurdist kid’s show, teaching a moral in each episode, but doing it in a style that was edgy for the time (and holds up surprisingly well 10 years later). Topping it off, the creators/writers (who’ve gone onto stuff like Newsradio, Shrek, King of the Hill, and Buffy) worked in as many pop culture references and jokes as they could. What other show would have Juliana Hatfield as a cafeteria worker, Steve Buscemi as a nerdy dad, and Iggy Pop with a recurring role as a dad who acts remarkably like Iggy Pop. It’s the type of show where the family finds a car buried at the sand in the beach, uncovers it, and drives it home … like it’s completely normal.

Watching it now it reminds me a lot of Scrubs. So much so that I don’t think it’s possible to say that Scrubs wasn’t at least partially influenced by Pete and Pete. Both shows about a nerdy character who narrates the show, with a dizzying array of transitions into fantasy/surreal situations, that play as if they’re completely common place. Both shows featuring a soundtrack of the “indie” rock sound of the time, and playing basically with the single camera format.
All of this made me think about how cool it is that a show like this can survive and live on in DVD format. Poking around this weekend, I found that there’s two really cool video podcasts on iTunes that send out an old cartoon that has entered the public domain a few times a week. The coolest one is ReFrederator. A few times a week you download a 5-10 minute cartoon of Bugs or Daffy or Mighty Mouse. It’s insanely cool and a wonderful way to keep those old cartoons fresh. The same idea is done by Vintage Tooncast, though they seem to be focused more on showing things that you wouldn’t see today (because of the racial and cultural sterotypes that were so pervasive). It’s an ingenious use of syndication technology.
It also made me think about how cool it would be if networks did this with more content. Sure, the big networks are putting there shows on iTunes for 99 cents a pop. And Fox has talked about putting shows online with ads for free. All fantastic stuff. However, wouldn’t it be great if networks (especially networks that own most of their own content) put up old shows on iTunes? NBC has done this with some stuff, but I’d love if Nickelodeon let me grab an episode of Welcome Freshmen or Disney let me grab an episode of Duck Tales at my leisure. Pay them $30 and get a weekly podcast of shows automagically downloaded to your computer until they ran out of shows. Or pay the 99 cents to get the ones you want.

Outside of content clearances and figuring out how royalties and whatnot are paid out, there’s not a legitimate reason not to do this. Well, other than fracturing an already fragile television landscape. The first network to really embrace this is going to make lots of money (assuming they do it right).

It’s been a while since I rambled on about TV. Given that this season is almost over, seems like a good time to ramble anew …

Lost has been good. But, as much as the writers said “no no, we won’t be the X-Files, we won’t drag things out”, this has been a season of lots of reveals amounting to nothing. The structure of the show is still fun, with the backstories mixed with the island, but they’ve gone to the well a few too many times with some of these characters. Topping it off, the rhythm of the show has become utterly predictable. Outside of the map on the blast door, I don’t think I’ve had a real “OMG! LOST ROOOLZ” moment in a long while.

On the other hand, Veronica Mars has been fantastic, and I think has moved into #1 on the “best hour-long on tv” list. Each twist of the bus crash mystery, each reveal of a hidden character motivation fills in some gaps and sheds a new light on the mystery. No, we don’t really know much more about who caused the crash than we did at the beginning of the season. But it feels like we do. And that’s something that Lost hasn’t been able to replicate. Plus, the show has continually brought the funny.

It’s very possible that The West Wing has also surpassed Lost this year. The final season is certainly the best season since Aaron Sorkin left, and might even be better than Sorkin’s final season. It’s the whole “Luke becoming a Jedi” arc with Josh Lyman’s character as Luke, and it really has offered a nice closure to the whole series.

Want to talk about two hour-longs that haven’t been great? How about The O.C. and Gilmore Girls? The two shows that have fallen further in one season than anything I can remember. The O.C. has reached the point where I can’t even really watch it. I TiVo it and then do 30 second skip through the whole show (stopping at Seth/Summer stuff, skipping past anything with Marissa). Seriously, this show spent the season on Johnny and Marissa’s sister and Seth the pothead and Marissa being a giant bowl of douche? Ugh. I’m pretty sure I won’t be watching this show next season unless they kill off Marissa. She sucks, and sucks, and sucks some more. The Girls haven’t been nearly as bad as the Marissa-suck-fest, but I don’t think there’s been a less fun season. It feels like an entirely new writing staff took over and decided that the characters should act completely different. There was a moment when it looked like the season was turning around (Rory ditching Logan and Luke/Lorelai on a happy path) but they’ve decided to revert to the prior stories of super-intelligent Rory being the dumbest girl on earth, and the L&L tandem being the dumbest couple on earth. Blah.

Five shows. One going out on top. One being so good that it inevitably will get cancelled. One desperately needing to get on with it. One sucking bad enough that I probably won’t watch it next season. One needing to wrap some storylines up so they can get back on with doing things that people like to watch.

And this is just the hour-longs. Haven’t even talked about the greatness of The Office and Scrubs and the utter shite that is Family Guy.

It’s possible I watch too much TV.

• The Super Bowl = Super Blow. Poor officiating, ridiculously poor coaching on both sides, and two teams who decided to play about as generic a game as they could. Bravo.
• The Super Bowl Ads sucked. Except for 2. The two Sprint ads. The first one, with the guy throwing his phone at the other guy as a “crime deterrent” was only mildly funny until he hit him a second time. Then it became really funny. It became a classic when the Sprint splash screen after that actually listed “crime deterrent” as a feature. The second Sprint ad was funny the moment they played “Baby Come Back”, and became hysterical when they broke out the Benny Hill-reference. They both can be viewed at Sprinttvads.com.
• My friend Alex pointed out to me that the founder of the first company I worked for (and one of the smartest people I’ve ever met), has a blog detailing the construction of his gigantic timberframe house. That’s a serious project.

Albums bought recently:
Jenny Lewis and The Watson Twins — Rabbit Fur Coat
Roger Clyne and The Peacemakers — Live at Billy Bob’s Texas
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah — Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

I TiVo The Colbert Report every day, generally not watching them until the weekend. The show is quite funny. Yeah, it’s a one note gag (making fun of Bill O’Reilly), but it’s a funny gag nonetheless. Almost without fail, the best moment of the show is “The Word” — The Colbert Report parody of O’Reilly’s “Talking Points Memo.”

Last weekend, I was chugging through episodes when I watched the episode from December 7th. Colbert was talking about the Hugo Chavez offer of cheap heating oil to a handful of US cities (Boston, New York). Colbert’s O’Reilly-like take was that the cities should tell Chavez to screw.

Honestly, words can’t do the bit justice. So, I’ve encoded a video of it. And now that YouTube is huge, I’ve replaced my video with a YouTube link.
Watch “The Word” from the 12/7 episode of The Colbert Report.

Last night, as I was heading to sleep, I flipped around the TV looking for something to watch. I don’t generally watch a lot of random TV, as TiVo has kind of removed that from my life. But there I was, flipping from channel to channel, looking for inspiration and entertainment.

First I stumbled upon this wonderful little informercial for Sea Vegg, pills that contain sea weed/kelp. According to the creator of the product (Scott Kennedy), eating kelp is the reason that Japan is kicking our ass in math and science. Really. Kelp is the reason that all Asian people live so long! Here’s the hook:

Humans cannot consume the seven rays of sunlight energy. Due to the miracle of photosynthesis, ocean plants consume both the Sun and the Sea. Healthy humans can then consume these powerfully potent plants which concentrate chemical energy from the Sun and the Sea. With Sea Vegg ™, you can feed your cells the most nutritionally potent and mineral rich family of plants on Earth.

See, we can’t absorb the seven rays of sunlight energy! I’m assuming they mean the seven colors of the visible light spectrum, but, if i remember my science correctly, there’s not really 7 “rays” — it is a spectrum of wavelengths that changes gradually. So there’s actually infinite rays! Where are my extra rays? Why do I get only 7? What a rip off!

Now, it’s not to say there’s not possible health benefits from eating kelp, just like eating any plant. It’s quite possible that kelp’s environment does give it certain benefits. But I just wanted to make fun of the informercial, as the guy came across as a borderline racist (”seaweed is why all Asian people look young … it’s a fact!”) and I like to make fun of pseudoscience. Plus, when I tried to find any reviews of the product, everything I came across was written by either whack job super-hippies who claimed that it changed their lives, or by whack job religious nuts who didn’t care what the science said, they’d seen it work first hand.

I think I’ll conclude that Sea Vegg is a crock of shit.

Moving on, a couple of channels up the dial (ahh .. old timey TV vernacular) was Dr. Ho and his miracle massage system. Awesome, Dr.Ho! First, that’s a pretty great name. Second, I love informercials when they get doctors on, as it’s fun to guess what they are a doctor of and where they got the doctorate from. In this case, Dr. Ho is a Doctor of Chiropractic and Acupuncture. Rock on! So not really a doctor at all!

Now, I’m not going to knock massages or acupuncture. I love me a good massage, and I have no doubt they are helpful in making folks feel better. I know some people who swear that acupuncture works — and it’s possible that it does help in releasing tension in the same way a massage does. But as a health cure? Ehh .. the jury’s kind of out.

I don’t have as much contempt for Dr. Ho. He seemed like a nice guy. And he’s Asian and looks really young, so he must eat kelp. That means he must be a genius! I take it back, I’m going to order me a double massage chair.

One last thing. On Dr. Ho’s site, there’s a link to testimonials, the usual “Nothing else worked, but oh lordy, your stuff makes me feel like a young hippie again.” My favorite is this one though:

I want you to know I tried other massages with six electrodes thinking that six was better than two and nine volt batteries would last longer than the two “AAA” batteries. I bought the six electrode massage and tryed it,l was shock by the massager and put it in the return to sender box. l saw the DR-HO’S massager on MSN and I bought one to try because my kids started charging me for massages. WOW! I am hook on the feeling my DR-HO’S massager gives me. My kids have meet their match and I save money which gives me less stress. l bought the double massager so I would double my pleasure.The features I like the best are the Pocketsize, how long the batteries last,the timer,the massage modes,the electrodes are not in your way,the carring case,the relief I get from all and any pain I feel!!!

Glenn Contreras, Garyville, LA, USA

You know … if I didn’t already know what this person was talking about, I’d definitely think they were talking about a different kind of massager. Which makes the comment in the middle about the kids charging for massages make sooo much more sense.

In conclusion:

Thumbs Up!

Thumbs Down!

Over at Mike Meiser’s blog, he’s got a post up commenting on a clip from the Arrested Development Season 2 DVDs (which I’ve mirrored here) with David Cross just railing on the Fox marketing team for being unable to bring viewers to a show that’s won numerous awards. Mike then goes on to discuss the possibility of Arrested Development continuing on as an internet show (with iTunes possibly being one delivery mechanism … but there are a billion ways to deliver television over the internet).

The point I wanted to make is that David Cross is right. How hard is it to get people to watch a show that has basically been called the greatest show on TV? How difficult is it to market something that is that successful? Just put it after The Simpsons and before Family Guy and let it be the funniest 90 minutes on TV. This isn’t a failure of the show, it’s a failure of Fox marketing (and a failure of the stupid people in America watching tripe like Nanny 911 and Trading Moms for Goats or whatever that show is.

It reminds me of the absolutely fantastic line that Aaron Sorkin put in the final episode of Sports Night. The storyline as the show ended vaguely mirrored real life, as Sports Night — the critically acclaimed SportsCenter-type show running in 3rd place amongst sports networks — was being sold by the network that owned it, much like the critically acclaimed Sports Night on ABC was running behind in the ratings and was in danger of being cancelled. The buyer of Sports Night, commenting on the show, said “Anyone who can’t make money off of Sports Night should get out of the money-making business,” an obvious shot at ABC for being unable to get the well written, well acted show, any traction.

Anyone who can’t make money off of Arrested Development should get out of the money-making business.

I’m trying. Really, I am. Invasion, the show that airs after Lost, has a decent premise, some moderately interesting characters, and ok writing.

But the show is moving so damn slowly that I can’t even get excited to watch it. Each week, you hope they’re going to shine some light on the main mystery.

“Maybe we’ll find out if there really are aliens this time!”

“Maybe we’ll find out what the ultimate objective is!”

42 minutes later, the credits are rolling and the storyline has managed to double back on you, putting you right back where you started. It’s not following the Lost/X-Files “answer some questions, only to open up brand new questions” model of storytelling. It’s just not answering any questions, period.

Each week, I say to myself “I’ll give it one more week.”

I think this time I mean it. Invasion, you’ve got one more week.