Comedy

How I Spent My Women’s Prison Vacation: The First Season of Orange is the New Black

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Few “pilot” episodes of a TV show have ever made me cry. The problem with pilots is that they are supposed to cram a whole pile of information into 22 minutes or 42 minutes and don’t usually do a very good job of developing characters. I can think of three shows where the pilot made me weep: Freaks and Geeks, Enlightened and now Orange is the New Black. These three shows actually have quite a bit in common, but their biggest common element is that the pilot episode spends a lot of time introducing and then developing their central character: a nice, young, white woman who seems to have her shit together but doesn’t. I have to say after watching the whole season, I feel like I was duped in that first episode, and I’m all the happier for it.

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BritFlix: British Television on Netflix to Accompany Your Tea and Crumpets

/ goldenageguest / 2 Comments

by Rob Ross

I love British television. Being weened as a child on Faulty Towers and Are You Being Served? has left me predisposed to favour the humour of our once imperial overlords. Nowadays, itʼs not so much the antics of John Cleese that have me returning to the annals of BBC as it is the distinctly un-North American approach to violence and sexuality (aka: less of the former, more of the latter). Lucky for us in Canuckia, Netflix is a trove of British programs and mini-series. While Peep Show and Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace arenʼt available (to my fist-shaking chagrin), there is still good many shows from which to choose. Let the secret Union Jacks of your hearts merrily flap in the flatulent winds of this beans-for-breakfast culture.

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Boy vs Girls

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girls-600x450The great thing about Canadian TV is its pilfering of American shows I haven’t seen. The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, even going back to Dennis Miller Live and Dream On, I did not get to see on their first run. Canadian TV lifts them up so I don’t have to get HBO. I really should, but I like TV and HBO says they are not TV, so here we are. Continue reading →

Man Gobsmacked by GOB’s man

/ Katie Man / 2 Comments

This was originally going to be a blog entry declaring that the best episodes of Season 4 of Arrested Development were the ones that featured GOB Bluth, namely “Colony Collapse” and “A New Attitude.” While I still feel that these episodes are great and hilarious (and plan to tell you why I liked these episodes so much), I don’t feel confident in declaring them the best episodes of the season. Here’s why: upon re-watching these two episodes in preparation for writing this entry, I realized that I hadn’t really seen the season. Yes, I watched it (in a week-long binge) but I didn’t really remember which episodes were good and bad. In my memory, the whole season was all a long string of jokes and repetition, leaving me with the impression that the season wasn’t so great. I frequently smiled, but I didn’t laugh out loud. It was a slog. Or a bog. Or something else that kinda makes a pun with “GOB” as a I was trying to think of a witty title for this article. (ie. “GOB a jewel in the bog”)

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I’ve been watching a lot of New Girl

/ Katie Man / Leave a comment

I am relatively new to the New Girl fan base. I started watching weekly in the early part of season two, on a whim. Week by week, New Girl became the show I looked forward to watching the most. And it was all because of a kiss.

But a bit of background on the show, if you haven’t seen it. New Girl is a half-hour sitcom that stars Zooey Deschanel as the one woman who lives in a loft with three dudes. Think Friends but without the hallway separating everyone.

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Community: #3SeasonsandSomeOtherStuff

/ Jane Walker / Leave a comment

250px-Community_title

It was just revealed (to the surprise of many) that Community would be renewed for a 5th season. For me this news was a huge disappointment  After creator and show runner Dan Harmon left at the end of Season 3, Community has become a watered down version of a once great half hour of television. Seasons 1 – 3 of Community were not always perfect but they were consistently ambitious, wildly imaginative and most importantly, they had heart. Continue reading →

Growing in Circles: Why Enlightened is a lot like high school

/ kwoloszyn / Leave a comment

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The problem with having so much good television on at the same time is that we are all bound to miss something truly special, something that seems made just for us and our personal tastes. True, we all have PVRs and television on Netflix and DVD but there are still plenty of shows that need our help to survive by watching them as they air.

I missed Enlightened while it was airing, and it seems that everyone else did too, because the show is now cancelled. But, if you have the chance to catch up with it, I promise you will not be disappointed unless you don’t like slow-moving character studies with bits of “magic realism” and poetic monologues thrown in sporadically. I suspect many people don’t so that’s why I want to tell you what Enlightened really is (and what I think many more people will care for): a high school drama in disguise. Continue reading →

Speculation of Late

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The_Late_Show

The much ballyhoo about NBC’s recent late night kafuffle is in stark contrast to the eerie calm-before-the-storm over at CBS. There are no plans for who will take over from David Letterman. I’ve been a fan of Dave my whole life. To me he is the root of modern TV. The godfather of post-modern ironic snark. Being clever enough to do stupid stuff, his show in the 80’s was an assault on TV itself. I got into him more during the CBS run. By that time Letterman clones and devotees were all over the entertainment landscape; snark sort of seeped into the cultural milieu. He is also the best late night interviewer. Continue reading →

Unimpressed by Derek

/ Katie Man / 2 Comments

I hated the finale of Derek. It made me angry. I was so angry that I fumed around my apartment for several minutes cursing Ricky Gervais. TV shows don’t usually inflict me with anger, but after I had a chance to calm myself down I realized what made me so mad: after watching the first three episodes of Derek (which I had been heartily impressed by), I had expected the conclusion of the show to be so much better. It easily could have been, but Ricky Gervais made some poor choices. Continue reading →

Email Roundtable #18 – Location, Location, Location

/ kwoloszyn / Leave a comment

abandoned house

The living room on The Simpsons, Cheers the bar, Baltimore on The Wire. Settings are important on any television show. In this edition of the Email Roundtable we attempt to discuss different kinds of television settings. And because I think this is awfully cool and somewhat relevant there’s this. 

What is the television setting you find the most comforting/would like to live in?: 

Kerri: This one was actually the most difficult for me to figure out. I decided to think about the shows that I find most comforting and work from there. My comfort show is always Freaks and Geeks and I thought about talking about the Weir’s house which is sort of cave-like, with earth-tones and looks a lot like the childhood home that I and a lot of my friends grew up in. Continue reading →