Drama

Channel Surfing #4: My Week in TV – Gravity Falls, Sharon Van Etten, Reign

/ kwoloszyn / Leave a comment

A quick collection of things that I’m finding fascinating, frustrating and fun on TV this past week. 

What’s happening on Gravity Falls?

Normally, when I do a round of Channel Surfing, I start by bemoaning that a once loved show has started showing signs of decay. This time I’m going to start by celebrating an already delightful show for steadily improving from its first season to its second. Gravity Falls is an animated series created by Alex Hirsch that airs on the Disney Channel (or Disney XD – the Disney conglomerate has a weird way of airing TV shows, sometimes months will go by without new episodes airing at all and sometimes an episode airs on one channel and then the next episode airs on the other – but I digress). Yes, it’s a kid’s show but it’s a kid’s show that has been heavily inspired by adult material: The Simpsons (most notably and obviously), Twin Peaks, The X-Files, old B-movies, among others. The show surrounds the Pines twins, Dipper and Mabel, who have come to stay with their old, bitter great-uncle, Grunkle Stan. Grunkle Stan owns and operates a tourist destination/hall of oddities called The Mystery Shack. You see, lots of very strange things happen in the town of Gravity Falls and Grunkle Stan intends to make a few bucks off of all the weirdness. The twins get thrown right into the thick of it, living and working at the Mystery Shack, solving mysteries, happening upon gnomes and monsters and clues and cyphers on an daily basis. The strangeness of Gravity Falls becomes a kind of new normal for the kids and they grow to love the town as much as they grow to love Stan. At the end of season one, they decide to stick around.

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Quiet Moments and Humanity in Season 4 of Homeland

/ Jane Walker / 1 Comment

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*Warning* This article contains spoilers

Claire Danes’ detailed performance on Homeland has been , widely praised, criticized and (hilariously) mocked. While I tend to agree she can go over the top while portraying the more intricate moments of her characters Bipolar disorder and internal struggles, I have always admired the quieter moments in her portrait of Carrie Mathison. Continue reading →

The Truth is Not In Here: Memory on Serial and The Affair

/ kwoloszyn / 1 Comment

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What if memory is a prison? When we think back, we are constantly tripping over our own perception of the truth and circling around what was. What if we are constantly trying to unlock a door that did not exist in the first place? The truth and memory are on two parallel roads. If they intersect it is a miracle. And maybe we don’t want them to.

(A note here about what’s below. I know this is a TV blog but you’ll forgive me for a moment while I discuss a podcast).

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Where Do We Go From Here?: Innovation (and lack thereof) on The Knick

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When I began watching The Knick, Steven Soderbergh’s prestige drama about The Knickerbocker Hospital in 1900’s New York City, I thought it would be the last show that I would be writing about, let alone thinking about on a daily basis. The show was dry, save for the litres of blood and guts spilled during the show’s obligatory operating room scenes (it’s not for the squeamish); the characters were cliché, save the one character, Algernon Edwards, that the audience was bound to love from the start because of his “underdoggedness”; the show was in almost all respects, aside from its beautiful look, cinematography and terrific score (the best on television) boring and bruising, a chore to get through. The Knick is positioned as a traditional hospital drama and it feels like a lot of other hospital dramas, at least early on. But then something strange happened. In episode 4, “Where’s the Dignity”, the show left me transfixed. For all of its “prestige”, for all of the moments that strived to say, “this is IMPORTANT” and “don’t I look beautiful?”, I was able to get a read on what the show was actually about. The Knick – at its bloody beating heart – is a show about the way move forward. It’s about revolution.

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Bearkiller

/ goldenageguest / 1 Comment

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For the past few seasons my wife and I have been subjecting ourselves to Hell on Wheels, an AMC drama about trains (or something) set in the post-Civil War midwestern US. Why we would do this to ourselves is difficult to explain, other than the fact that it is quite literally a slow train wreck and we can’t turn away. I’ve also really enjoyed telling my friends about all the ridiculous things that have happened, and continue to happen, on this show.Inline image 1 Continue reading →

Just One More Thing

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In my vast Canadian cable package, I get excited about the new content that comes in: 5 TSN’s, 3 Much Music’s are all vigorously consumed when they sign-on and then get relegated to a rare viewing. But one old warhorse has piqued my interest as of late, mainly for just one show. Vision TV is one of the originals of “specialty channels”, right up there with YTV and the old Shopping Channel that would just show still pictures rather than video. Mainly it’s the religions channel, not just Christian televangelists – although that is the bulk of their weekend offerings. It’s now run by TV guru Moses Znaimer and is geared towards geezers rather than churchies. “Zoomers” as they call it – baby boomers with “zip”. No moxie allowed. If you have spunk go elsewhere. You have to have zip. It’s now a mix of old British shows, movies, a strange talk show hosted by Conrad Black, and the very nub of my gist: Columbo! It used to be on weekly but now I’ve discovered it almost daily. Even though they are not making new ones – it’s one of the best shows on TV. Stephen Fry said so. So if you want to argue anything artsy or fartsy with him – you have more moxie and spunk than even the zippiest of zoomers.

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Email Roundtable #44 – Summer Television Secret Santa #2

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This week, and for a number of the weeks to follow, we will be doing Summer Television Secret Santa. We each “randomly” chose a name and were given the job of gifting a television show to that person. This week we will be discussing the person we drew, the show we chose for them and why. In the coming weeks we will be pairing down our roundtable to two and interviewing our Secret Santa about the show they were gifted (or forced) to watch. The rules state that you may watch as much or as little of the show as you like and that the gift giver must have seen at least a portion of the show as well. 

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