A Bit of (Out of Context) Levity

Insane Dialogue + Hilarious Line Reading SMACKDOWN! (Fall 2011 New TV Edition)

Baking: Celebration/Consolation Cake

On Friday, the combination of the end of classes for this semester and watching Bridesmaids lead me to want to bake a cake for myself. (That whole "baking a single cupcake for myself as a perfect representation of my deep loneliness and mixed feelings about my baking career" deal from the movie just seems a little too savant-esque for me. How on earth do you figure out the proportions of ingredients for one cupcake?) I've spent the semester baking treats for my students - now I wanted to make something just for me.

Devil's Food Cake with Milk Chocolate Frosting from Martha Stewart (a recipe that's becoming one of my favorites, though I also chose it because I have sour cream on hand, but no whole milk). I halved the recipe because there's only so much personal gluttony I'm willing to rationalize.

I'm dually naming the cake for my mixed feelings about the conclusion of my first teaching experience. I'm happy to not have to get up for class three days a week, because I'm still not a morning person in any way, shape or form. But I'm also bummed that I won't see my students every week. Sixteen kids with a decent percentage of thoughtful contributors to discussions and no jerks? I'm just hoping I wasn't spoiled for future classes.

Mood Music LXV

Apparently I'm feeling totally cheesy about the onset of the holiday season.

Random TV Love

I'm slightly obsessed with this clip. Somebody needs to give that lady an Emmy. And get me my own Ben Wyatt analogue.

Mood Music LXIV

Random Movie Love

I love this overstuffed title sequence. I can't even pick a favorite part. The Growing Pains-style baby photo montage of Astaire and Kelly? The scroll of names getting lit on fire? The falling dominoes spelling out "LASSIE"? (What ever happened to that effect? I feel like I used to see dominoes all the time and never do anymore.) The giant gong? Part I may have awesome stuff like the decrepit MGM lot and glorious co-hosts implying that life under contract at MGM in "the good old days" was a personal hell, the specifics of which they can't quite articulate, but Part II definitely wins in the opening credits department.

Mood Music LXIII

The lyric "I am the eggman" coming on while I was actually physically separating eggs made me giggle. Some days you have to take your levity wherever you find it.

Movie Stuff Release Valve

I feel like I need a repository for the things that I find that are tangentially related to the class for which I'm currently a TA (tangentially mainly because the class ends in 1960, so similar topics but 2011 examples) because it seems like a decent percentage of the job of leading a discussion section is trying to actively resist the group's impulse to wander off on marginally relevant tangents.

Last week we learned about the introduction of Technicolor and the different processes and changes in filmmaking involved in its inception, an evolution that starts to feel sort of cyclical when you watch the discussions here of what goes into a full-scale implementation of 3-D:

An interesting HitFix piece from Drew McWeeny about the MPAA's ratings system and his opinion of its general uselessness.

And, because the class discussion of the Production Code and its tenets reminded me of it: Freakazoid's take on the ratings system.

Guest Starring Role Realness

Between this and Terriers last season, I'm trying to decide what the third show is that Shangela needs to appear on to complete a Cult Television Trifecta.

Week in TV: October 30-November 5

Boardwalk Empire, 2.6: "The Age of Reason"

- There have been a lot of quiet scenes of serious, bone-deep loneliness this season - Richard's scrapbook, the stilted conversations of the Van Aldens - but nothing compares to the heartbreaking sequence of Lucy realizing what was happening and then gathering herself together to give birth alone. It seemed like the show relied a lot on Paz de la Huerta's established persona to build Lucy's character in the first season, but I think she's really done a great job with the more subdued material of this storyline.

- It's a small role, but I really like the performance Anatol Yusef is giving as Meyer Lansky. To the extent that BE ever functions as a sort of a biopic, it's what I think of as the ideal biopic performance - aware of the mythos without being overly reliant on it. There are just brief flashes here and there where you can say, "Oh, yeah, I can totally see this guy being a major player in revolutionizing American organized crime," but I never feel beaten over the head with it.

Sons of Anarchy, 4.9: "Kiss"

I know it's not really a flashback kind of a show, but I'd really love to see SOA take a look back at the early years of the Gemma-Unser relationship. (I'm sort of envisioning a West Wing "Two Cathedrals"-style setup.) What kinds of interactions did the cop and the wild daughter of Charming have back in the day that earned her such enduring devotion from him?

Revenge, 1.7: "Charade"

- I don't envy the people working on the upcoming Dallas reboot for TNT - Revenge has been bringing the primetime soap back with a vengeance (heh, no wordplay intended) and even if New Dallas is amazing, it seems likely that Revenge will totally steal their thunder. The introduction of Stripper Emily and the Nolan-Tyler blackmail hookup collectively showed that the show has transcended the pseudo-procedural revenge-of-the-week setup in only a few episodes.

- I know it's still a bit of a ways off, but what happens when the summer is over? The Graysons aren't year-round Hamptons residents, right? I'd like to think that the show will just continue on to other locales where the wealthy vacation - a season in Aspen or Palm Springs or wherever - but who knows?

American Horror Story, 1.5: "Halloween, Part 2"

- Finally, finally, a ghost tells one of the Harmons directly that they need to do some research. (In this case, one of Tate's apparent victims incredulous at Violet's ignorance of the situation.) The most frustrating thing about this show to me so far has been the Harmons' bizarre lack of curiosity regarding the house and its sordid history. If I was considering moving into a house and the realtor told me the previous tenants had died in a murder-suicide, I would Google That Business. Immediately. The further incidents of a) a stranger claiming to have burned his family to death in said house, b) a home invasion based around recreating events of a famous dual murder in said house and c) the Murder Tour of Los Angeles bus pointedly making a stop IN FRONT OF SAID HOUSE would prompt me to, again, Google That Business. Maybe take a trip to the library and spend some quality time with the Los Angeles Times on microfiche. It's difficult to feel bad about any of the terrible things happening to the protagonists when they seem so determined to face it all with as little helpful information as possible.

- Okay, so it's a major part of the story that the family doesn't have enough money to move, right? Then how do they have enough to afford that tricked-out security system with the prompt, personalized service?

- Interesting to see that Tim Minear wrote this episode - something about the tone reminded me a bit of his Angel episode "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been." Indeed, he wrote some of the most interesting flashback-based episodes under the Mutant Enemy banner - "Darla" for Angel, "Out of Gas" for Firefly and "Omega" for Dollhouse - which suggest that he's got a skill set well-suited to this show's particular universe and mode of storytelling. It wasn't the most suspenseful of the episodes that have aired thus far, but it was the first that made me curious to learn more about any of the characters (as opposed to previous episodes, which made me curious to see what sort of random insanity would get thrown up on screen the following week).

Miscellaneous Links:

- Shout-out to this week's A.V. Club Inventory on unexpectedly scary episodes of generally non-scary shows for including the episode that most readily came to mind for me: the Scream-based episode of Boy Meets World. (#10 on the list) "And Then There Was Shawn" is one of my all-time most memorable television-watching experiences, because it scared the ever-loving crap out of me. I was over at a friend's house when I saw it, and it marks the only time I can remember having to call home to be brought back from a sleepover during the night. I was wracked with paranoia for months afterward - I constantly checked behind doors to make sure no slashers were lurking and every time I got left alone at home I would just sit tensely in my room, jumping at every little creak, convinced that I was mere moments away from being murdered. Honestly, even though I've gotten older (and at this point, actually watched the real Scream without incident) and accumulated more experience with genre fiction, I'm still wigging a little bit just thinking about it.

Week(s) in TV: Miscellaneous Links

- Not really about TV, per se, but I liked the excerpt the New Yorker posted from Mindy Kaling's upcoming book.

- Called it!

- Normally, I try not to get too worked up about announcements of development deals for pilots - so many pilots get made that never make it onto the official TV schedule. But I couldn't help but let out a squeal at the news of Lee Daniels working on a series based on Valley of the Dolls. a) Valley of the Dolls is pure campy awesomeness, and while I haven't seen any of the adaptations besides the 1960s film version with Patty Duke and Sharon Tate, that movie doesn't touch on half of what's in the book; b) the book could easily serve as the basis for a television series - it spans a decade or so and actually paints an interesting portrait of postwar New York and the entertainment world, touching on theater, movies and television; if shows like Playboy Club and Pan Am are any indication, a central character like Anne is exactly what the networks are looking for; c) Daniels, at least in his first film Shadowboxer, has shown a distinct flair for bringing balls-out craziness to the screen, which I think is really key to adapting VotD faithfully.

- Another interesting announcement came in the buzz around producers working on pulling together a black-cast Steel Magnolias for Lifetime. It was clear fairly shortly into The Help's run in the theaters that it would be the kind of project studios would try to imitate or replicate for their own profit, and at least on its face, this seems like an inspired tack to take. If they can get the kind of cast they want for the project, it will get awards attention and could be a game-changer for Lifetime's image.

Week in TV: October 23-29

Boardwalk Empire, 2.5: "Gimcrack and Bunkum"

- In a media landscape that's often lacking in diversity, I feel like BE deserves props for making the cabal of Atlantic City elders backing the Commodore feel like the oldest, whitest group of old white men anywhere on television. Truly an accomplishment among stiff competition.

- Great interview with Jack Huston from The Daily Beast; the work he's been doing this season is mesmerizing, and really showcases BE at its best.

Revenge, 1.6: "Intrigue"

There are many things to enjoy about this show, but I'm currently really digging Ashton Holmes, Tyler's weird creepiness, and the fact that they've kept his motives fairly oblique; does he want to bang Daniel, replace him in the Grayson family, or murder him and wear his skin? (Maybe all three, not necessarily in that order?) Love it. I was kind of convinced that the shooting that opened the pilot is actually connected to the mentioned-infrequently-but-just-frequently-enough-to-clearly-be-relevant waitress relationship gone bad rather than Emily's revenge plot, but I'm willing to give a percentage of that theorizing over to "Tyler finally snaps." Good stuff.

American Horror Story, 1.4: "Halloween, Part 1"

I think this week really highlighted a central flaw in the show, particularly if the plot heads where it appears to be heading: the most interesting people in any given episode tend to be the former residents/current ghosts. If the seemingly inevitable horrific murder (murder-suicide?) of the Harmons comes to pass, they aren't currently compelling enough for their potential future haunting to seem like an interesting prospect. At the end of the episode, I wasn't concerned about the ostensible protagonists. I was thinking, "Damn, I hope we get some sort of cross-era ghost interaction so there are at least a few scenes of Zachary Quinto and Lily Rabe going crazy on each other, over-the-top Tennessee Williams-style."

Once Upon a Time, "Pilot"

Grimm, "Pilot"

Two takes on fairy tales, neither of which grabbed me right out of the gate. I preferred Grimm's darker take on the material, just because it seemed to owe more to the gorier original stories as opposed to the more clearly Disney-influenced versions in Once Upon a Time (and, honestly, when you're introducing a show like this in 2011, I think you need at least a dash of that kind of self-awareness and to contend with your source material in as nuanced a manner as possible), but I don't think I'm up for what looks to be a more procedural structure in the less whimsical show. I'm more curious to see where Once Upon a Time goes for a while, particularly whether the flashback structure holds up, and whether a long-term strategy for sustaining compelling storytelling emerges. The stated goal of Emma ultimately defeating the Queen and breaking the curse seems like a decent endpoint, but only if there's as little wheel-spinning as possible in the journey to get there.

Random TV Love

How did I not realize sooner that Skins was on Hulu (now through the fourth series), and therefore available for me to excerpt and embed scenes like the following selection from the second episode that essentially marks the exact point where I became totally obsessed with the show?:

Look out, world. There's totally a "My 10 15 20 Favorite Things from Skins" post coming at you.

Mood Music LXII

Trailer Thoughts

I was excited about this movie anyway, but this trailer just kicked that excitement up tenfold. A significant part of that initial excitement came from my own pre-existing affection for Juno, but I like that the trailer doesn't oversell any commonalities this might have with any of Reitman or Cody's prior work. The use of "Queen Bitch" is just perfection. And there's something I absolutely love about that Diet Coke she's holding in the scene in the Macy's - like, that's the little touch that really says "full-tilt public breakdown."