Week in TV: July 18-24

True Blood

TB is one of those shows that's difficult to assess mid-season - they keep so many balls in the air at once that it feels premature to comment on any one specific storyline until they conclude. However, two delightful things of note about this episode: Jessica working at Merlotte's and Jason becoming a faux-police officer.

Degrassi: The Heat is On

Simultaneously a solid kick-off to the new summer format and great unofficial sign-off for the remaining members of the show's original cast. Spinner and Emma's sudden Niagara Falls wedding shouldn't have worked nearly as well as it did, but Shane Kippel and Miriam McDonald sold it with an easy chemistry and I think both characters had been sufficiently established over the past decade as a bit impulsive and as serial monogamists in love with love. Also, a new Great Moment in Music Supervision: the choice of Ke$ha's "Your Love is My Drug" as the soundtrack to Fiona's drunken meltdown, like the tacky cherry on the drama sundae of her creepy relationship with her brother.

Degrassi: The Boiling Point

So far, the show seems to be benefitting from the switch to a more serialized format. It makes the ensemble feel more cohesive. After a few years of awkward transition from the original cast, they've finally started to recapture the ethos of Degrassi at its best.

Covert Affairs

So Anne Dudek's character has to turn out evil, right? Like Francie on Alias? They can't just waste such an awesome actress on only being the protagonist's sibling who nags her about balancing her priorities, right? RIGHT?

So You Think You Can Dance

I think when this season concludes, dancer injuries will make it impossible to objectively assess the success or failure of the All-Star format. It remains to be seen in the coming weeks a) whether everyone can stay healthy and b) whether anyone can derail the Kent Boyd Express. It probably says a lot about this season that I'm more interested to see what they do for the remaining "Meet the All-Stars" segments, since no two dancers yet to be profiled have a routine in common. It seems unlikely that they'd bring back Ivan, Sabra, Melissa and Legacy to dance with their former partners, but a fan can dream, right?

Top Chef

It's a little heavy-handed and obviously works best with the whole DC setting, but it's kind of surprising that more reality shows don't use the Cold War as a thematic construct for competitions. Isn't creating paranoia out of thin air what reality contestants are all about?

Friday Night Lights

For never having been a regular cast member, Brad Leland is really an MVP for FNL. Though Buddy sometimes comes across as a buffoon, you could feel the emotion underscoring his conversation with the coach about taking his Panthers ring off. Michael B. Jordan, Matt Lauria and Jurnee Smollett have admirably served the show's new settings, but it's those moments that acknowledge FNL's path over the past few years where it really shines.

Ongoing:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel

- Finished the final season of Buffy and the penultimate season of Angel. I liked Buffy's focus on the Slayer mythology, though its feminism was a bit self-conscious where in the past it felt more effortless. I had some misgivings about the show returning to Sunnydale High, but ultimately it served as an apt setting for the final battle. Angel's fourth season was appealingly dark compared with its predecessor, but I could've done with less cult-y mind control in the run-up to the finale. You know intellectually that the show's not going to end with "And then everyone in the world was in thrall to the villain! The End!" Stories like that just turn into a waiting game.

- Series finales always make me cry. It's probably one of the lamer things about me. Dollhouse being the first Whedon property I watched meant that it was impossible to read any Internet discussion of the show without getting spoiled on practically every major character death for every other show. In this case, though, knowing what to expect didn't really make too much of a difference.

- It seems like Buffy's network switch from the WB to UPN limited the potential for crossovers between the two shows, but I feel like there should be more communication between the two groups of evil-fighters. ("We're totally dealing with an apocalypse here!" "OMG, us too!") This came out glaringly in Faith's exclusion from the Buffy narrative until relatively late in the game. (I'm glad, at least, that Faith points out at the beginning of "Dirty Girls" that being in prison made her less "secure" and more "a sitting duck.") An evil power is trying to wipe out the entire line of Slayers and Watchers - wouldn't the semi-retired Slayer and her ex-Watcher, now with 75% more badassedness, be first on the list to alert about that?

- We seem to be getting to the point where Whedon starts doing a little repertory-building, casting Nathan Fillion and Gina Torres as villains in multi-episode late-season arcs on Buffy and Angel respectively, which must've happened fairly shortly after the cancellation of Firefly.

- I'll probably stick a toe in apiece on the Season Eight comics and the existing academic scholarship on Buffy. (There's a whole online journal! Called Slayage! How could I possibly resist?)

Rewatching:

Freaks and Geeks - "Tricks and Treats"

I flipped to IFC's re-aired episode of Freaks and Geeks after True Blood ended on Sunday. It's a bit odd - they're airing the episodes as they are on the DVDs, so even though it's on TV the act breaks don't lead to commercials. "Tricks and Treats" is probably sort of in the middle of the pack for me if I ranked the episodes of F&G, but I think that even when I'm seventy years old, I will still find Martin Starr in drag as the Bionic Woman hilarious.

Mad Men

Started with "The Fog" and went up through the season finale.

- It's interesting to watch Mad Men again after a season of seeing Alison Brie on Community. Obviously, the styling helps, but Brie also pitches her voice lower and carries herself differently on Mad Men. I love Trudy - she's so clearly determined to make the best of her marriage with Pete, no matter how much of a doofus (or sexual-assaulter-of-neighbors'-au-pairs) he is. He's going to live up to his potential if it kills her.

- Some characters grow on me upon rewatching - I'm genuinely interested to learn more about Henry Francis and Lane's cranky wife - but Suzanne is simply not one of them. The whole "Look at me!/Don't look at me!/How dare you look at me with your lustful thoughts!/Take me, I'm yours!" deal got really tiresome really fast.

- So, Kristoffer Polaha's on Life Unexpected, Anne Dudek's on Covert Affairs, and Betty is presumably moving to Casa Francis, which I assume is somewhere around Albany. Have we seen the end of Francine and Carlton?

- Two all-time favorite moments: Roger's mother calling Jane "Margaret" in "The Color Blue" and Joan breaking the vase over Greg's head in "The Gypsy and the Hobo"

- The "The Gypsy and the Hobo" - "The Grown-ups" - "Shut the Door. Have a Seat." triptych may be my favorite sequence of episodes of the show's entire run. It's much easier to see the plots and characters moving towards the major developments of these episodes when you watch the season back all in one go, but they still feel exciting and revelatory. Perhaps most important, they make you feel like the show's writers have much more to share with its viewers. Starting tonight!

Best of the 00s: One Season Wonders and Other Short-Lived Shows

Freaks and Geeks (NBC, 1999-2000)

Looking back at the decade, I see Freaks and Geeks as a formative show in my media consumer evolution. It was the first show that I loved that wasn't watched by very many people, and the first I watched that was cancelled mid-season. I was a thirteen-year-old eighth grader and I couldn't believe that no one around me was embracing this show I found so amazing. Its cancellation was also the first time that I really thought about the relationship between networks and viewers - I briefly considered boycotting NBC, but realized that the absence of one Nielsen-box-free tween wasn't going to make a bit of difference. Finally, the complete series was also the first DVD box set I bought on my own. I *may* have raised the box over my head and done a celebratory dance in the store - maybe.

Undeclared (Fox, 2001-2002)

Undeclared has never quite received as much press as Freaks and Geeks within the Judd Apatow pantheon, but it deserves to be recognized for a take on college life that was funny and authentic. Jay Baruchel's gangly geekiness may never be better served.

Wonderfalls (Fox, 2004)

One of Bryan Fuller's imaginative spotlights in the decade's TV landscape, Wonderfalls is distinguished by a delightfully cynical heroine - twenty-something slacker Jaye remains rare among young women as depicted on television - and a uniquely quirky concept - Jaye hears what may or may not be the voice of God advising her through inanimate objects.

Reunion (Fox, 2005-2006)

As much flak as Fox gets for quickly canceling underperforming shows, they probably showed the most willingness to give oddball shows a chance of any of the networks over the past decade. Case in point - Reunion. The show was probably too overstuffed, concept-wise, featuring a murder mystery revolving around six high school friends with each episode taking place in a different year beginning in the mid-eighties. In the early episodes, at least, it was just clever enough to be innovative, drawing out the present-day character introductions to gradually sculpt the mystery and featuring some fantastically soapy twists. As cheesy as it could sometimes be, it deserved a full season.

The Black Donnellys (NBC, 2007)

The Black Donnellys may have been better in theory than in execution - the show's mythologizing of the early years of four brothers who it was implied would become well-known criminals always made the show's future seem more interesting than its present. It wasn't helped by the fact that shows on cable had the freedom to display the kind of violence necessary to driving home to consequences of living in a criminal world. Still, it was probably the best that could be done with a modern gangster show on a major network.

Swingtown (CBS, 2008)

When critics talk about Swingtown, they often remark that the show might have been better served had it been picked up by a cable network rather than notoriously stodgy CBS. To me this implies that the show's problem was insufficient salaciousness, but it was always more about the emotional fallout of testing a marriage's sexual boundaries than the act itself. It was pretty much doomed from the start - airing on Friday nights during the summer (remember when there used to be original programming on Saturday nights? That feels like another age entirely) - but the show's central six actors - Jack Davenport, Molly Parker, Josh Hopkins, Miriam Shor, Grant Show, and Lana Parilla - made the material vibrantly heartfelt.

Kings (NBC, 2009)

To return to the previous point, it's easy to see how Kings might have been served by being a cable property rather than a network one, particularly with NBC's fraught relationship with scripted dramas over the past few years. Kings displayed the kind of ambition that is rarely seen in any new shows, modernizing the Biblical story of Saul and David and mixing in grandiose Shakespearean overtones, featuring riveting performances by Ian McShane and Sebastian Stan. All the episodes are on Hulu - I highly recommend it.

Joan of Arcadia (CBS, 2003-2005)

Recently (I want to say New Years Eve or Day) I got sucked into watching a mini-marathon of Joan of Arcadia on SyFy with my sister and mother. I'd forgotten what a warm show JoA was; the "God speaks to teen girl" premise could have been much cheesier than it was - instead it exemplified the best of what "family" television can be. Plus, any show where you can nickname a recurring character "Hot God" definitely merits inclusion on a best-of list.

Dirty Sexy Money (ABC, 2007-2009)

I don't talk about it very often, but I love soaps. The unabashed embrace of melodrama and sense of freedom from conventional narratives often creates thrillingly outlandish TV. In its first season, DSM embraced the ethos of classic primetime soaps like Dallas and Dynasty, particularly aided by great family chemistry among the actors playing the self-absorbed, moneyed Darlings. The show tried to do too much in its post-writers-strike second season, but there was a brief moment when it seemed like it could start a true 80s revival.

Pushing Daisies (ABC, 2007-2009)

Pushing Daisies presented such a vibrant visual world, any attempt at verbal description feels automatically insufficient. Like Bryan Fuller's other shows, Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me, Daisies was so unique that it was almost shocking that it ever made it to air. The show's murder mystery structure kept its bright, inventive universe from veering too far into twee-ness and the central quartet of Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Kristin Chenoweth and Chi McBride were uniformly excellent.

Life (NBC, 2007-2009)

With better ratings, Life should have made Damian Lewis the next Hugh Laurie - that is, a Brit playing a quirky American in a semi-procedural show. I can't say I quite recall how Life's twisty conspiracy ultimately ended, but it offered just enough of a twist on the average cop show to be engaging.

Dollhouse (Fox, 2009-2010)

Sure, Dollhouse hasn't quite ended yet, but it still qualifies with only two thirteen-episode seasons. Dollhouse was a slow starter - Fox executive interference is credited for emphasizing procedural repetition in the early episodes. As the first season came to an end, particularly in the DVD-only finale "Epitaph One," the writers began to explore the darker implications of the show's central identity-wiping technology and made it one of televisions most uniquely compelling hours.

Best of the 00s: Best TV Music Moments

Television offers so many different examples of the rich potential in uniting images and music - both original to the show and previously recorded. This list seems a little intense, but here's my chronologically-ordered rundown of some of my favorite television music moments of the decade:

"Lady" - Styx and Nick Andopolis (Jason Segel), Freaks and Geeks - "Boyfriends and Girlfriends" (1/16/00)

It seems fitting that this particular moment came only a few weeks into the decade, because Freaks and Geeks still feels so formative to me as a television viewer. There isn't much to say about this that I haven't already, but I'll add that I love that nearly a decade later I can still see Jason Segel being goofy on television on a weekly basis.

"Heat Wave" - Martha and the Vandellas, American Dreams - "Pilot" (9/29/02)

A few weeks ago, I was reading a quote from Jon Hamm where he observed that Mad Men is not American Dreams, particularly referring to the latter's featuring black characters within its narrative. The musical moment here, which comes about four minutes into the clip below, highlights the fundamental difference in tone between the decade's two major depictions of 1960s life - while Dreams featured many of the conflicts that defined the 60s, it also placed some value on a sense of warmth and community. The explosive sense of joy that came when "Heat Wave" kicked in, emblematic of the show's use of popular music, made this a truly wonderful pilot.

"Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" - Clay Aiken, American Idol - "Season Two Wild Card Performance Show" (3/4/03)

True Confessions Alert: When the second season of Idol aired, I was sixteen years old and I loved Clay Aiken. I was never one of those fans that was deeply invested in his mythic heterosexuality - I just though he had a beautiful singing voice, and voted for him every single week. There are other performances I could have chosen (this past week's Community reminded me of how much I liked his "Somewhere Out There," and he had one of the few non-terrible finale songs in many seasons of the show) but I went with the wild card performance that got him into the top 12.

"Shakin'" - Rooney, The O.C. - "The Third Wheel" (1/7/04)

Before they added the Bait Shack in Season Two and built performances by popular musicians into the show, the first season episode featuring this performance by Rooney felt novel. (To me - I mean, I wasn't old enough to have seen the same kind of thing on previous teen shows.) It also remains a favorite for introducing me to a band I continue to love.

"If You Leave" - Nada Surf, The O.C. - "The Goodbye Girl" (3/3/04)

Music Supervisor Alexandra Patsavas has been behind several TV music moments that prompted me to then purchase said music - I believe this was the first. She chose several gorgeous covers for moments on The O.C. - Ryan Adams' take on "Wonderwall," Petra Haden's "Yellow" - but this may have been the best. It featured the departure of a great character before that kind of thing took the show downhill, and drew upon the John Hughes music legacy without feeling forced.

"It Ain't Easy Being White" - G.O.B. and Franklin Delano Bluth (Will Arnett), Arrested Development - "Righteous Brothers" (4/16/05)

Was there ever a more perfect representation of G.O.B.'s all-consuming self-absorption than Franklin? This song serves as just one example of what made Arrested Development totally unlike anything else on television.

"Muffin Top" - Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski), 30 Rock - "Jack-Tor" (11/16/06)

I think it says a lot about popular dance music of the decade that this is what a parody of it sounds like. Props to Jane Krakowski for her 100% commitment to Jenna's insanity and total lack of self-knowledge.

Muffin Top - Celebrity bloopers here

"Let's Go to the Mall" - Robin Sparkles (Cobie Smulders), How I Met Your Mother - "Slap Bet" (11/20/06)

I think with How I Met Your Mother, a lot of people can't get past their association of the multi-camera setup and the laugh track as relics of a bygone age of comedy. It's too bad for them, because then they miss awesome stuff like "Let's Go to the Mall," the denouement of perhaps the show's best episode. It is simultaneously hilariously goofy and insanely catchy, making it a winner in every way.

"Open Your Eyes" - Snow Patrol, The Black Donnellys - "Pilot" (2/26/07)

This comes from a time when Snow Patrol seemed to be everywhere, particularly "Chasing Cars." This is an example of a song that I heard previously on another show (Grey's Anatomy in this case) but in this specific circumstance, it made me sit up and pay attention. The cascading notes that close the song, paired with the pilot's framing of the violent origins of a destructive crime family, gave the scene a dire, apocalyptic air that I still remember even though the show was short-lived.

"Wild World" - Cast, Skins - "Everyone" (3/22/07)

To some extent, this moment is emblematic of how significant music can be to a show, and how much can get lost in translation. The music rights for Skins, a British show, don't apply to the U.S. releases of the show, which in most places just means that popular songs get switched out for genre-similar approximations. However, the DVD version of the first season finale cuts out this moment - where members of the cast sing the Cat Stevens classic - out completely, causing a scene jump that makes little narrative sense. On top of that, it's also a unique, beautiful moment that serves as an example of what makes Skins so excellent.

YouTube won't let me embed: Link

"All Along the Watchtower" - Bear McCreary, Battlestar Galactica - "Crossroads, Part Two" (3/25/07)

"Crossroads, Part Two" was the first BSG episode that I ever watched on a television (as opposed to my computer) and the closing moments featuring this song epitomized that increase in quality. The ties between the people BSG depicted and people today was always sketchy - references to "Earth" and Greek gods made it clear that we weren't totally distinct, but bringing in Bob Dylan to *spoiler alert!* introduce four of the final five Cylons was a gamechanger. BSG composer McCreary's take on "Watchtower" is hauntingly beautiful, and though the associated backstory introduced in the show's fourth season never completely worked for me, the closing shot of this episode zooming in on our Earth is one of the show's best.

Someone's super-litigious, as I can't even find the associated clip on YouTube. This is one of many coupling McCreary's take on the song with pictures from the show: Link

"Sweet Dreams" - Eurythmics, So You Think You Can Dance - "Season Three Top Six Performance Show" (8/8/07)

The third season of SYTYCD is still my favorite - I think it was the one group of dancers that had an ideal balance between technical ability, versatility and personality. This is my all-time favorite routine of the show - the moment where Neil does the "plange" (my phonetic spelling) propelling himself up and over Sabra on the table, it felt like time was standing still.

"Hopelessly Devoted to You" - Olive Snook (Kristin Chenoweth), Pushing Daisies - "Dummy" (10/10/07)

There's a moment at the end of the Pushing Daisies pilot where Ned and Chuck hold their hands behind their backs, pretending to be holding each other's hand, where when I originally watched it I thought to myself, "I think I love this show." This moment, from the second episode, is when I thought to myself, "I know I love this show."

"Stripper" - Sohodolls, Gossip Girl - "Victor Victrola" (11/7/07)

From yet another Patsavas-supervised show, this moment functioned as the genesis for a great TV couple in Blair Waldorf and Chuck Bass, and also served notice that Gossip Girl was decidedly departing from its source material.

"Mr. Roboto" - Jeffster (Scott Krinsky and Vik Sahay), Chuck - "Chuck vs. The Ring" (4/27/09)

This moment, from Chuck's second-season finale, represents the kind of go-for-broke spirit that defines the show's tone and makes its fans love it so fervently. That this was written and made it to air well before the creative personnel knew that the show would be renewed for another season just makes it that much better.

"Don't Stop Believin'" - Cast, Glee - "Pilot" (5/19/09)

Just when it starts to feel like network television is stagnating, something like Glee comes along. The pilot builds all the way up to this joyous burst of song, which managed to make "Don't Stop Believin'" feel fresh even at the close of a decade where it appeared regularly across channels and shows.

Time Warp

2000:

2009:

Just for Fun

Not like I forgot, but Jason Segel (as Marshall) mentioning John Bonham on How I Met Your Mother reminded me of how much I love Freaks and Geeks, particularly this scene:

I still think this is one of the funniest things I've ever seen on television. When it first aired, I was rolling on the floor laughing. Even now, approaching ten years from that original airing, I can't help but mimic Nick's gestures every time I hear "Lady." Hilarious.

The Goodwill Index

I'm concerned that my nearly decade-long love of Seth Rogen might be blinding me to the extent of the sexism in Knocked Up, and I don't really know what to do about it. I kept meaning over the summer to write about how freaking excited the popularity of Knocked Up and Superbad made me as someone who has loved the works of Apatow dating back to Freaks and Geeks. I remember trying in vain to find someone else who watched the show when it originally aired when I was in middle school, and I remember the joyous day that I bought my treasured DVD set. No longer having to explain who Seth Rogen is when I talk about him to my friends is a thing of wonder after some eight-odd years. Katherine Heigl's recent remarks on the sexism in Knocked Up, and the resulting reactions to those remarks, have had me thinking as I peruse blog comments. I don't disagree that the male POV is dominant in the movie, which is entirely what I expected as a longtime Apatow/Rogen fan. I just don't see all of the problems that some people find with it. I completely disagree with the idea that the happy ending for Ben and Allison is based upon them ending up together. The wedding is such a noteworthy scene in The Forty-Year-Old Virgin that I firmly believe that if Apatow wanted the audience to think that they got married, he would have shown us that. All the ending really shows us is that they work together as parents, which to me is independent of the outcome of their "romantic" relationship. I just don't know. I mean, I am a feminist. If people who generally hold a similar set of beliefs about the ways that women should be depicted on screen feel so strongly that Knocked Up does a disservice to its female characters, am I missing something?

Anyway, this whole personal crisis had me thinking about what I like to call my "Goodwill Index" - the amount of goodwill for a specific actor or actress that is built up in my mind due to past TV shows or movies. For example, the Wilson brothers have basically an infinite Goodwill Index due to my love of Wes Anderson movies. Where this relates to the above discussion of Knocked Up is when the Goodwill Index comes into conflict with a present-day project that may be completely abhorrent, or at the very least problematic. My sense of Goodwill Indices have given essential free passes to David Anders and Kristen Bell in the past season of Heroes due to their massive stockpiles of Alias and Veronica Mars-related love. Over the past few months, I have been examining and re-examining my feelings about Jason Lee as his predominantly Almost Famous (with some Kevin Smith in there) related Goodwill Index comes in violent conflict with the pure bile that rises within me every time I come in contact with the trailers for Underdog and Alvin and the Chipmunks. I mean, really? Really, Jason Lee? That is a lot of goodwill that's being thrown down the drain. (Alvin and the Chipmunks is a really rough one, because there's also Justin Long (GI from Ed) and Matthew Gray Gubler (GI from being Intern No. 1 in The Life Aquatic) It's like fingernails on a chalkboard, except the chalkboard is MY BRAIN.) I would maybe give Cameron Crowe a call, because I heard that Elizabethtown was not so good, and you both could probably do with an awesomeness-recovering change of pace.