I love cooking competition shows. There is something irresistible about giving a group of talented chefs a stocked pantry, 20 minutes (or so) on the clock and (of course) some kind of fun twist. I love to watch their adrenalin kick their creativity into overdrive as they rush around the kitchen chopping veggies, cleaning fish and making sauces. Continue reading
We are currently 8 episodes into Season 27(!!!) of Survivor. This season, called Blood Vs. Water, includes returning players and their loved ones competing for the million bucks. The GAOTV gang thought we’d chat about the most recent episode, “Skin of My Teeth” and the season as a whole. Continue reading
What the heck is happening on Homeland?
I am a fickle and high maintenance beast when it comes to television shows, it seems. When something is exciting and new I am all over it but when it gets a little stale I almost immediately stop caring. I demand my entertainment to be ever entertaining and constantly shifting. I never want a show to become predictable comfort food. But, at the same time, I rarely want a show I have come to love to become something altogether different from what it was when that love-affair began. I want the shiny new boyfriend and the husband that cooks and cleans all at the same time. And so, I am in a really, really weird spot with Homeland. I’m not receiving anything exciting and new from the show and it also isn’t, fundamentally, the show that I used to love anymore. Continue reading
Jane: This week on the roundtable we continue with our Fall Television Secret Santa. Jane gifted Katie the first Season of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. Twin Peaks is about a lot of things, but basically, it is the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer.
Katie, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your viewing experience.
Katie: Well, let me start off by saying that I respect that Twin Peaks is a favourite of yours and Kerri’s but I just hated it. The pilot took me a week to watch (in 5 minute increments.) Continue reading
Just a little peek behind the curtain/a bit of fourth wall breakage to let you know how the blognificent elves and fairies of blogsburgh blog it up, bloggy style. Basically it’s a big smoke filled room with lots of clunky desks. Lots of coffee-stained mugs next to half eaten halves of coffee cake. Katie is dry for ideas and chugging a bottle of liquid antacid. Jane is scurrying around taking orders for the midnight run at the delicatessen that sits across the six lane highway. I sit with my cowboy boots on the desk trying to recall the two night stand Trapper John had in the Adam’s Rib episode of MASH (Merideth… Margie… Mildred…Mildred!) with a bank of clocks set to the times of world capitals behind me. Kerri stews in the big corner office chewing out an intern, who leaves weeping and is replaced with the indispensability and efficiency of a Kleenex box. Jane returns telling Katie that a turkey Reuben is not a Reuben and is just “pregnant lady food”; my veal parmesan has somehow become an eggplant parm. Kerri is furious – “I said a chicken salad, not chicken salad, oyoyoy”. Kerri calls me into her office (aka Kerri’s Lair-ee) to tell me she’s spiking my tribute to Yasmine Bleeth article. “She ruined seasons 4 and 5 of Nash Bridges and she’s not going to ruin me. Write what you know! In an hour….” This process happens constantly with ulcers for all and justice for none. Continue reading
Yesterday, Sarah Silverman posted the pilot episode of Susan 313 to her Youtube page. The pilot was made for NBC, but they didn’t pick it up. I was a big fan of The Sarah Silverman Program, so I may be biased but I was quite impressed by Susan 313. The show would have been about a woman in her late ’30s, who returns to her old apartment when she leaves an extremely codependent relationship. The big triumph in the episodes occurs when Susan figures out how to fix the water at her place (by calling the super.) Continue reading
This week on the roundtable we continue with our Fall Television Secret Santa. Katie gifted Kerri the British comedy from 1999, Spaced. Below is their conversation about the show.
Katie: Well Kerri, was I right or was I right? Daisy is the best.
Kerri: You were so, so, so right. Not only is Daisy the best character on Spaced but she’s also now one of my favourite female TV characters of all time. She’s right up there with Liz Lemon in my books.
Katie: And Peggy Olson!
Before we get too far into details, want to give a brief description of Spaced for our lovely readers?
Kerri: Spaced is a show about two friends, Tim Bisley (Simon Pegg) and Daisy Steiner (Jessica Hynes, nee Stevenson), that pretend to be a couple in order to rent a flat. Once they successfully rent the apartment, they find that it is populated by a hilarious mishmash of characters, like the constantly drunk building owner, Marsha, and the disturbed artist, Brian. The show plays around with genre convention and there are an abundance of pop-culture references.
A few months ago at the height of my love affair with Damages I proclaimed that “the first five minutes of [its] pilot episode are as good as any television pilot I’ve seen.” While Damages is darn good TV and its opening is stylish and well shot, I was completely wrong. After some distance and an obviously much needed cooling off period, I came back to my senses. I now proclaim that the first five minutes of Freaks and Geeks and The Wire are the among very best minutes that TV has to offer. For real this time. Continue reading
This week on the roundtable we continue with our Fall Television Secret Santa. Kerri gifted Jane the British mystery/procedural drama Broadchurch. Below is their conversation about the show.
(If you haven’t seen Broadchurch and are worried about spoilers you need not fear. Somehow Jane and Kerri managed to keep this a spoiler free zone).
So, Breaking Bad has been over for more than a week now and you are still huddled in the fetal position in some corner somewhere, blinds closed, shut out to the rest of the world, quietly sobbing, pondering if you will ever find a show that made you feel so much ever again. I am not going to pretend to have the miracle cure for what ails you but perhaps as a salve I can suggest a show that has some similarities so Breaking Bad, albeit with a lot less violence and a lot more sex: That show is Masters of Sex on Showtime, the true story of the revolutionary sex study by Masters and Johnson in the 1950s.
The Golden Age of Television 