TV

Email Roundtable #20 – “I Take Thee, Rachel”: Our Favorite TV Weddings

/ kwoloszyn / 1 Comment

flowers

Our wonderful friends (and blog superstars) Jane and Ivan are getting married. In their honour we attempt to discuss our favorite television weddings. Congrats you crazy kids!

Kerri: This question was really tricky for me because I mostly hate weddings on TV shows (please note that I love weddings in real life because dancing and booze!). They usually serve to end whatever was interesting about a romantic relationship on a show, which is almost always the “getting there” part. There is no more will they/won’t they because the answer is “they will”. The two weddings that somewhat recently happened on Parks and Recreation are exceptions to this rule (see Katie’s post below for more on this). I found them charming and sweet and in keeping with the characters on the show without ruining any of the charm of the characters themselves. Because guess what, I love Leslie Knope without Ben. It’s kinda like that horrible saying about loving yourself before other people can love you. A fully realized character is and should be interesting in or out of a relationship. Continue reading →

Leave Dana Brody Alone!

/ Jane Walker / 2 Comments

homeland-finale

Warning: Contains spoilers

According to many sources on the internet, Homeland’s Dana Brody is one of television’s most hated characters.  There are numerous Dana Brody “hate sites” out there exploring topics such as “If I were Dana Brody from Homeland, I would have every reason to decapitate myself” or “I think we can all agree that Dana Brody should be blown up.” There are sites dedicated to hating on everything from the characters “annoying face” to the fact that “she only wears one pair of boots”. Why so much hate for the moral centre of one of television’s most loved shows? I don’t get it. Continue reading →

Television: An Apology

/ ivanhenwood / Leave a comment

I watch a lot of television—by my calculations too much. This wasn’t always the case. For the majority of the last 15 years I did not own a television. That all changed two years ago when my fiancée and I bought a nice big television. We bought the television because, well, it would be a hell of a lot nicer to watch than the both of us trying to cram in front of the laptop. This is not to say that I did not watch TV for fifteen years, only most of my TV viewing was restricted to what I could rent at the video store or download or stream when it became more prevalent. “So what’s the problem?” you may ask yourselves. If the existence of this blog is any indication, we live in an era when some of the best TV shows in history are being made.  I strongly believe this to be true. We also, however, live in an era when more TV shows are being made than in any time in the past. For every Girls there is a Honey Boo-Boo; every Treme a Pawn Stars. The problem becomes, not that I now own a television but rather, that I now have cable to go along with the television—and extremely shitty viewing habits. Continue reading →

Girls Season Two Premiere: Cleansing Rituals, Unsexy Sex and Donald Glover!!

/ Jane Walker / 1 Comment

The last time I wrote about Girls I wondered and hoped that the series would prove to be more self-aware than its characters. It did. After watching season 1 (twice) I can say, cautiously, that I am a fan of these ladies. I say cautiously because I constantly go back and forth between my love and hate of the characters. Currently, I love most of them but I will get into that later. Creator, writer, director, producer and actor Lena Dunham presents her four leads in all their flawed glory. She doesn’t demand that we empathise with them and she doesn’t demand that we condemn them either. She asks that we look at them as real humans and that includes ugly moments like Marnie dumping Charlie mid-sex, Jessa seducing her ex out of spite because he was happy with someone else and Hannah’s realization that her fear of aids might actually be a secret desire to contract the disease. Continue reading →

Email Roundtable #9 – A Few of Our Favorite Things of 2012 – Part 1

/ kwoloszyn / Leave a comment

In the interest of it being a particularly busy time of the year and because it is also the time of year for lists we thought we would forego our regularly scheduled Email Roundtable. Instead, we have each asked each other about a few of our favourite things from 2012. We attempt to discuss those things here. **Warning: this article probably contains spoilers**

What this exercise taught us, is that we all love Christina Hendricks.

What this exercise taught us is that we all love Christina Hendricks.

Katie asks Kerri: What was your favorite episode from any TV show? (pt. 2, what were you doing while watching it?)

I’m going to cheat a bit answering my questions so please bear with me (and I plan to discuss more of my favorite episodes and moments in my next blog post). The sexy answer to this question is “Christmas Waltz, an episode of Mad Men that includes one of my favorite scenes in an episode of TV this year: the one with Don and Joan at the bar. Continue reading →

Email Roundtable #8 – Treme – The “Belly Full O’ Gin” Edition

/ kwoloszyn / Leave a comment

Because of the relative (and I mean very relative) popularity of our last Treme Roundtable we thought we would take a look at the Season Finale, “Tipitina”, as well as the season as a whole and where the show might be headed. 

Photo by MichaelTutton. 2012.

Photo by MichaelTutton. 2012.

Kerri: I’d like to say that I really enjoyed this episode. Although, there were times when I was pulled out of the episode by its, sometimes, technical showiness I found myself genuinely moved throughout.

I’m thinking, specifically of, in no particular order: The scenes with Toni and Terry, the final shot of Albert and the beautiful scene at the Bar Mitzvah.

Jane: I enjoyed this episode by the end. The montage gave me joy and hope, which I felt has been missing from later episodes this season. I had some issues with the episode as a whole, but as always, the powerhouse performances were enough to keep me interested.

Kerri: I always love a good David Simon finale montage, Jane. What were your issues with the episode as a whole?

Katie: I found the episode to be a touch didactic – but there were moments that transcended my general feelings of “meh-ness.”
Continue reading →

Food on TV, and a love letter to Alton Brown

/ Katie Man / 3 Comments

While watching my fiftieth or so episode of Good Eats, I realized that I had never once prepared a recipe shown on the show. Same for Chef at Home, Top Chef, Iron Chef America…  It was delicious entertainment. But I felt guilty. Should I be cooking along? Or is it okay to sit back and enjoy the view?

For me, the pleasure I get from watching cooking shows is watching a professional create something beautiful from something simple. The chef takes ingredients and procedures that I understand, and from those known elements the chef produces a dish I don’t quite understand. Yeah, I “understand” how to brown butter for a sauce, but I don’t get why it’s so goddamn delicious.

It’s magic as far as I know. I have proof that it’s magic, as I have watched on multiple occasion my brother, a chef, create the same delicious sorcery in plain view. I see what’s happening but don’t quite “get it.” This experience is replicated daily in the relationship between television chef and home cook.

Continue reading →

Party at The Gute’s: My Favorite Episode of Party Down

/ Jane Walker / Leave a comment

Best Episodes

We investigate our favorite episodes of our favorite TV shows. Be warned: these articles will contain spoilers!

At its core Party Down is about dreamers. I think that’s why I love the show so much. Sure, it is hilarious and cynical but it also has heart. My favorite episode of the series is from Season 2, Episode 5: Steve Guttenberg’s Birthday.

The episode deviates from Party Down’s typical structure. Normally the story focuses on the group trying to make it through a catering gig without the event ending in total disaster. This time, at guest star Steve Guttenberg’s insistence, the waiters become the party guests. Steve forgot to cancel his Birthday catering service and hates to waste food and since he is such a swell guy he invites the gang inside to have a party of their own. The atmosphere of this set up is more casual, allowing for longer and more developed character interactions. Instead of concentrating on workplace mishaps, they are given a chance to focus on each other.  Continue reading →

Survivor: Philippines

/ kwoloszyn / Leave a comment

If you haven’t seen Survivor this season but plan to (and you should!), you probably want to avoid this post!

Full disclosure: I’ve been in a committed relationship with Survivor for 25 Seasons. After years and years of the same or similar scenarios with less and less interesting contestants, I must admit I was getting a little bored and started looking around at flashier, sexier reality show options. Any relationship that lasts that long is bound to go through some ups and downs. But I have stuck with it (I’ve seen every episode and I’m not saying that because I think I deserve any credit but, on the other hand, I deserve credit) and I must tell you that right now me and Survivor are in a really good place: comfortable, yes, but still surprising.

And I’m just going to go ahead and say it: this season of Survivor (Philippines) is turning out to be one of my favourites. In order to keep things relatively fresh, every 2 seasons of the show in recent years has included some kind of gimmick (think “Redemption Island”). This season has included gimmicks to be sure but instead of messing with the natural flow of the game, these changes and alterations have been clearly calculated and mapped out ahead of time in the way that only the best kinds of games are. Here are some of the reasons for my current enjoyment:

Continue reading →