Brad:

I’ll see your “weird-assed transhumanist cult” and I’ll raise you a “genetically-engineered group of super wingnuts” programmed to take over the entire planet one country at a time with victorious cries of “Onward Christian Soldiers!!”

Oh wait … that’s the present administration.

Oops.

What is this “television” you speak of?

Nope. Never seen it. I don’t watch “those” channels. Lowest number on my favorites is 22 (cspan). Tonight I’ll be watching the tigers try to get right against the evil empire (thanks to zack de la rocha) and then on to the stereo and the bong. But let me know what happens on your sitcom…

mikey

My theory: The sinister leader of the Others turns out to be Gary Ruppert.

The sinister leader of the Others turns out to be Gary Ruppert.

Gary’s not that smart. Try harder.

Hey,

out here in the colonies we’re still trying to come to terms with the shock appearance of the Battlestar Pegasus and it’s torture-lovin’, habeus-corpus-suspendin’ Admiral Cain…

I win! I win! The island is actually a Republican enclave … I’m sure that was Karl Rove trying to fix the plumbing.

I love Lost. It’s on right now. Sawyer’s hot.

whats the point if Walts not on anymor lol

GO OAKLAND

I’m waiting on Lost until I’ve had a chance to watch the first two seasons. For me tonight, there’s a good ol’ recent repeat of House.

It kinda reminds me of the Star Trek episode, The Menagerie.

You people are crazy. Tonight is the Project Runway Renunion. The rest of the TV might as well show a blank screen.

Shorter Lost: Boring

Tigers – Yankees rained out. Straight to the bong and the kitchen. Gonna listen to rock n roll and cook…

mikey

I got lost in east la once. Does that count?

Lost sucked. Nothing was revealed and there were way too many commercials. I’m close to done with it.

The sinister leader of the Others turns out to be Gary Ruppert.

Gary’s not that smart. Try harder.

Gary on the Island would probably result in the other survivors murdering him after the first day. Gary would go “The fact is the Democat party caused the plane crash thanks to Clinton’s military cuts.” He would continue talking about how all this is Clinton’s fault despite the polar bears, magic healing powers, the hatches, the button, the numbers, the Others and the monster.

My guess is that the Island is really Fantasy Island, and the Leader of the Others is Really Ricardo Montalban in a mask or perhaps, Retardeau in a really clever disguise.

Kinda wish I knew what y’all were talking about but I disconnected the cable in 1992 and live in a town where it’s cable or nothing. Lost? That’s me in this thread.

However, I’m totally on board with the Webb thing, so that’s good.

Don’t forget “Jericho”. The series premiere featured the line “you were born on third base and thought you hit a triple” and had characters listening to news broadcasts talking about a president whose overly aggressive policies made the world less safe, not more.

Sawyer’s hot

If you like men that are (as granddad would say) useless as teats on a boarhog.

There’s always been way too many commercials. It’s unwatchable without TiVo or some other DVR type device.

I hate to cross post, but this is kinda important…

check out http://www.worldcantwait.net/ and get involved tomorrow…m’kay…

Sawyers not useless, he got the fish biscuit.

Here’s our jingle for Goldfish
We wrote a song for Goldfish

The wholesome snack that smiles back
until you bite their heads off!

See the fishes swimming…
Oh look the pretzel’s winning…

Didn’t that make you feel good about Goldfish?

Here’s our Jingle for Goldfish
Crunchy little Goldfish

Oh good we’re at the part
Where we show that they’re baked and not fried

Did you know they’re made
with real cheese
Even though they look like fishies

The snack that smiles back Goldfish.

“four hundred dollars for an ounce of schwag? is that a fair price?”

(looking away)
“look, i don’t have to sell the drugs, the drugs’ll sell themselves.”

i love that fat dude. best portrayal of a pot dealer in the history of tv.

I am *so* looking forward to some hot Stockholm Syndrome action.  Who’s with me?

My theory is they’re all dead and living in some limbo afterlife. The boyscout camp people already know they are dead. The newbies whose plane crashed don’t.

If you want to get caught up, or to discuss this or a bunch of other popular-with-smart-people teevee shows, Television without Pity (www.televisionwithoutpity.com) is a deeply enjoyable timesuck of a website. Their recappers are smart and snarky, and the forum mods do an amazing job at keeping out the mouthbreathers and the trolls. I’m not affiliated with the site, but since we don’t have cable I’ve used it to keep up with a lot of water-cooler talk I’d otherwise miss.

And while we’re discussing teevee shows, anybody here got an opinion on HEROES?

If you people are watching this program thinking you will, at the end of it all, finally be told what the fuck is going on, then you do not understand the format of the show.

What’s going to happen is that ABC is going to keep stringing you along until the ratings peter out, and at that point, with no budget left, no decent writers on the team, and the creators and more interesting supporting actors gone for greener pastures, they’re going to barf up an “ending” that a) is in some way a deus ex machina, b) contradicts established continuity, c) doesn’t explain half of the things you want explained, and d) sucks independently of (a) and (b) and (c). And it won’t undo the insultingly bad plot twists and dialog you’ve had to endure during the last season or two of declining ratings, either.

If you’re not watching this with a group of friends because you want to sleep with one of them, you are watching it for the wrong reasons.

If you people are watching this program thinking you will, at the end of it all, finally be told what the fuck is going on, then you do not understand the format of the show.

Kinda like X-Files, huh?

I watch for Hurley. Hurley-less episodes disappoint me. Grrr…

In other news, grampaw was on the record as stating “This Prisoner show is stupid. Ah cain’t figger out what in tarnation Danger Man’s doing there or what in hell’s going on, dagnabbit.”

Seriously, TV is the box in our houses the stupid comes out of. Not sure how revelatory is your assertion that a show that comes out of that box is more than a little stupid. Not all of us read Moliere and watch Fellini and Bergman every day.

Thank you, thank you for telling us what suckers we are. Quite endearing.

Why did some sorta ABC prestige show get Charlie from Party of Five, playing Charlie from Party of Five?

Grampaw, I tend to agree with you. It’s got “The Prisoner” written all over it. I even read somewhere that the producers admitted they’re mostly making it up as they go. Initially they said the “Island” is supposed to be like a character in this show. Uh huh. Now I’m just waiting for the disappointing wretched allegory to begin. And yeah, you gotta time shift this sucker. Otherwise it’s like watching comedy central.

Oh come on Goat Boy, I enjoyed watching “The Prisoner” because it was weird and fun but you’ve got to admit that bullshit allegory ending was just plain the suck. I’m watching Lost because it is an interesting idea. But since it is an “evolving” story, you just know that it’s going to disappoint in the end. It’s a little like an improv that starts with an engaging premise and then finds a few inspired bits in the middle but lacks that Aristotlean end bit. That’s why jazz musicians nearly always recapitulate the head after the solos.

But you enjoyed the series up until the conclusion.

The voyage is its own reward. I’ve enjoyed many novels whose endings surely didn’t pan out. I didn’t feel cheated out of the enjoyment I experienced prior to reaching the conclusion.

Can a self-aware mark still be a sucker?

OMG BTLSTR IS TEH ROXXOR!

I CANT WAIT TO DLOAD THAT !!!

WOOT!!!!1!

What a bunch of big ol’ grouches. Hot people stuck on an island with lots of creepy shit happening. How is that not interesting?

You want tidy resolutions and easily summarized plots, King of Queens is still on the air.

As a television production person, I can honestly say that if you’re watching the television shows for anything more than 48 minutes of light entertainment, then you’re in the wrong medium.

And I agree, WTF is up with the staggering amount of commercials? I guess I’m spoiled by DVD.

That was the last of hour of my life that’ll be lost to “Lost.” An hour of Jack being an ass to find out two peoples’ first names. Wow, that’s entertainment.

I wasn’t thinking of The Prisoner, no. But episodes of The Prisoner are enjoyable individually, as exercises in paranoia, and today as kitch (and at the time, as counterculture). Similarly, The X-Files consisted mostly of stand-alone episodes; it was only in the “arc” episodes that the fans got burned.

Lost, however, is unwatchable if you just pick an episode at random— it’s really just a soap opera, as was J.J. Abrams’ previous effort, the godawful Alias.

There are better ways to do serials, like the risky 5-year plans of Babylon 5 (got burned by loss of an actor) or Arrested Development (fumbled publicity leading to early cancellation), or the less ambitious but safer one-story-per-season system, which works brilliantly for The Wire and, I’m told, for 24, but can be sabotaged by success if the writers weren’t expecting the thing to be renewed, as with Prison Break.

The open-ended “people caught in some mysterious weird secret thing” show is for chumps, unless you’re also getting stand-alone episodes, or something more interesting than bog-standard hollywood cheesecakes sweating at each other in complicated lighting.

“The open-ended “people caught in some mysterious weird secret thingâ€? show is for chumps”

Chumps who are starved for anything remotely novel in series television, that is.

anything remotely novel

If anything, my objection to the format is that we have all seen it before, and know how it is going to end. Lost is certainly not “novel.” True, it is not a police procedural nor a hospital drama, but that doesn’t make it “novel.” The Sopranos was novel. Weeds is novel. The Real World was novel. Lost is Gilligan’s Island with secret mystery secrets instead of jokes. Have fun ogling Ginger and Mary Ann, but don’t think for a minute that you’re seeing anything new.

True, it is not a police procedural nor a hospital drama, but that doesn’t make it “novel.�

Um, let me check the TV Guide…whup, turns out that this alone does indeed make it novel.

“Lost is Gilligan’s Island with secret mystery secrets instead of jokes. Have fun ogling Ginger and Mary Ann, but don’t think for a minute that you’re seeing anything new.”

Yes it is, yes I will and I never did.

Except for “The General” nothing sucked about The Prisoner. Nothing.

Lost is marshmallow fluff. It reminds me of my role playing gamer days, when I would be the game master and just make shit up as I wnet along, but what was important was the mood and the various fun ideas, not the overall campaign or story arc.

Still, Sawyer’s hot.

“Lost is marshmallow fluff. It reminds me of my role playing gamer days, when I would be the game master and just make shit up as I wnet along, but what was important was the mood and the various fun ideas, not the overall campaign or story arc.”

And you played (and GM’ed) because you had such a rotten time playing with the mood and the fun ideas, right?

and annie, Sawyer only wants frozen concentrate out of the likes of you.

A SCENE

Expert On Quality Television: “LOST sucks it. It is stupid and pointless and a soap opera and stupid.”

GoatBoy and His Ilk: “TV is stupid and pointless. LOST is entertaining as far as current network series go.”

EOQT: “I hate it because you just know the finale’s gonna blow. Plus it’s not deep and meaningful and philosophical.”

GB&HI: “Last we checked the finale didn’t air last night. And it’s a TV show, so of course it’s derivative and hackneyed.”

EOQT: “Say it sucks and you suck for liking it. Say it! SAY IT!!”

-END SCENE-

GoatBoy said,

October 6, 2006 at 0:30

A SCENE

Expert On Quality Television: “LOST sucks it. It is stupid and pointless and a soap opera and stupid.�

GoatBoy and His Ilk: “TV is stupid and pointless. LOST is entertaining as far as current network series go.�

EOQT: “I hate it because you just know the finale’s gonna blow. Plus it’s not deep and meaningful and philosophical.�

GB&HI: “Last we checked the finale didn’t air last night. And it’s a TV show, so of course it’s derivative and hackneyed.�

EOQT: “Say it sucks and you suck for liking it. Say it! SAY IT!!�

-END SCENE

[EOQT goes off to support junta. Enjoys murder of ‘commies’ by death squads. Kisses picture of Efrain Rios Montt]

I am still just half-way through season 1 on DVD (I have small children to put to bed each evening, so I have not seen primetime TV since 1996), but the only way the story makes sense is a a ripoff of Gene Wolf’s “Death of Doctor Island”, but with a much larger cast.

Thus, the island is the most important character, and the most inscrutable. The Lost story is just about the murder of some characters in order to heal the psychosis of other characters, with the Island so severely distorting reality that none of the characters can make sense of it.

Warning: Totally unqualified opinion ahead! I may have mentioned I haven’t had TV in my house since the early 1990s and therefore experience its bounty only through the wonder of DVD. Still, I do have an opinion:

GoatBoy and His Ilk: “TV is stupid and pointless. LOST is entertaining as far as current network series go.�

Right there with you, GoatBoy. Although I’ve not yet seen Lost, it’s in my netflix queue along with several other TV series that everyone seems to be talking about. I get them in the mail, I watch them, and the last thing I’m looking for is some deeper philosophical meaning. For that I have many books and some films and plenty of intelligent friends, both live and cyber. TV is for demented, guilt-free, wallow-in-the-schadenfreude fun.

Oh, and Brad? Gavin? Travis? Retardo? Guys? Why can’t we preview our comments anymore? I’m a proofread-and-revise freak, and this is seriously fucking up my chi.

Lost is a good show, Smiley. The show last night sucked hard though.

Even with Sawyer in a cage.

“LOST is entertaining as far as current network series go”

The problem with this otherwise respectable attitude is that when applied to this particular show, it’s flat-out wrong. There are, in fact, at least half a dozen shows on the air with better dialog, better stories, more substantial characters, and more compelling themes:

The Wire
Weeds
Battlestar Galactica
House
Friday Night Lights
Studio 60 o the Sunset Strip
Hell, even Veronica Mars is better than Lost.

If you’re going the DVD route, you can pick up The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Arrested Development, or Deadwood, and enjoy decent writing along with your soapy serial fix.

And if you really can’t handle not knowing whether or not your attractively cast, expensively produced something-weird-going-on drama is going to turn into a turgid, season-after-season drawn-out mystical mystery without any planned conclusion, there’s a whole new crop of serial shows for you to watch: Jericho, Heroes, The Nine, Smith, and I’m sure others I haven’t noticed.

Seems every other new show this season is a suspense serial, and at least with the new shows you don’t necessarily know for a fact that you’re going to keep getting shafted by the producers as long as the ad buys are going for a premium.

But by all means, keep watching Lost. Someone’s got to suck down those SUV spots, and better you than me.

Erm, it looks like I got to hyperventillating there, and in trying to toss in as many negatives as possible with regard to the current crop of suspense serials, wound up implying the opposite of what I intended.

What I was going for there was a more baroque version of the old Mae West chestnut, “when faced with the choice of two evils, I always pick the one I haven’t tried before.”

“Lost” lost me early on, but this new “Heroes” has me intrigued. But it’s still early yet.

“Weeds” has been OK. Don’t get me started on “Corner Gas”, though, or ‘Drawn Together”. yeehaw!

Wow. It obviously means more to you than me, grampaw.

(Don’t have HBO or Showtime. Don’t rent.)

Battlestar? I’m over straight sci fi. Right or wrong, there it is.

House? Monk’s a doctor!

Friday Night Lights? I live in Oklahoma. High school football crazy? Not so glamorous and exotic from here.

Studio 60? Sports Night without sympathetic characters. Also 115% more effective than Ambien.

See? Anyone can do it!

To wrap this up, I’m sure wide swaths of the music you love most in the world is horrible shit. But I guess I’m not wired such that I’d be compelled to say as much and certainly not so persistently and earnestly in a thread called “We Love Horrible Shit Music grampaw Loves.”

Maybe you have a tv review blog address you could paste in the website box when you post? It’d save time.

/g’night

*wide swaths are, of course.

/where’d that preview button go?

24 is pretty cool. I don’t know when it’s going to start again, but it’s an exciting show. I think Weeds is pretentious and stupid and Corner Gas just sucks.

Trailer Park Boys is the best, it won’t start again until spring, but the movie opens tomorrow.

Goatboy – agreed on Battlestar Galactica. I will only add that there is a modicum of suspense in watching it, to see if Edward James Olmos will finally take that shit his face has been saying he’s been trying to do for the past 20 years or so.

Goaty, if y’all didn’t care just as much as I do, you wouldn’t angle for the last word like that. And Battlestar Galactica is “straight sci fi?” Good grief, man, it’s not sci fi at all, it’s the only honest show on TV about the War on Terrah.

Monk is most likely better than Lost, too, from what I’ve heard. Your response to Studio 60 tells me what’s ailing you, though— you don’t like shows where the dialog isn’t telling you what’s going to happen, telling you what is happening, or explaining what just happened.

But yeah, I get it. “Shutupshutupshutup it’sonlyTV stopthinkingaboutitalready.”

Have it your way, Goat. And fly the friendly skies, too. You deserve a break today.

grampaw, it’s waaaaay too early to hold Studio 60 up as much of anything. So far, it’s not been really difficult to tell what’s going to happen in each episode:

Ep 1: Will plucky, smirky Amanda Peet sign smarter-than-thou prodigal sons Chandler and Josh (hitherto known as the Not!Sorkin!Duo!Really!) to save the suspiciously unfunny sketch comedy show? YES!

Ep 2: Will Not!Sorkin!Duo!Really! prevail in battle against uptight Christians and tight-assed Network Suits and mouth-breathing Blog Proles to put own stamp on show? YES!

Ep 3: Will Not!Sorkin!Duo!Really! prevail in battle against uptight Christians and tight-assed Network Suits and disgruntled, not-as-smart Not Not!Sorkins! to put own stamp on show? YES!

Now, I’m watching the show and willing to give it a few more episodes. But I hope the emerging pattern of predictibility doesn’t play out as I fear it might. And the show lacks a stable center, a la Bartlett in the West Wing … that could spell ratings more along the line of Sports Night than Sorkin’s biggest hit.

I do like Sorkin, and often like his dialogue, which you seem to enjoy as well. But let’s admit that his characters often grandstand and retreat into a grating, maudlin earnestness when the chips are down that is made doubly unpleasant by the fact that they are so smug about their own smartness the rest of the time.

Demogenes:

I will readily admit that Sorkin has a tendency to cram the same sorts of lines into all of his actors, and yes, they’re precocious, unrealistic lines. But damnit, they’re interesting lines, for all that. And he does adjust to his actors, if he works with them for a bit.

Does Sorkin moralize? Does he idealize? Hoo boy, does he ever. But he does it in a way that asks a something of his audience, and asks something of his actors, too. Come on, prior to Studio 60, did you think for a minute that Matt Perry could do anything beyond bland sitcom wallpaper?

Ask yourself: What did Martin Sheen do to impress you before The West Wing? You can’t come up with anything other than Wall Street in the past 30 years, can you? OK, now try it with Stockard Channing. See what I mean? Martin Sheen was indeed the stable center of The West Wing, but that wasn’t just the actor’s talent talking, that was the way the show was scripted.

Studio 60 is going to succeed. It’s going to succeed because it’s well-crafted, and because it’s got a fundamental resonance with contemporary culture. In reality-land, Jon Stewart has taken up the standard that SNL once carried. Sorkin is rewriting current events, penning a reemergence of network broadcasting courage, and telling it as if cable didn’t exist at all. It’s wish-fulfillment precisely analogous to the wish-fulfillment he delivered with The West Wing. And it’s rather delicious, if you ask me.

Footnote:

I am ignoring, for the sake of convenience, the fact that Sorkin’s fictional sketches on Studio 60, insofar as we are actually allowed to get a glimpse of them, are jaw-grindingly lame.

“Pimp My Trike,” for example, is shit. If you want a laugh just for the concept, “Pimp My Fucking Jogging Stroller” would work a lot better, though I’ll admit finessing the naughty word would require some sweat.

Then again, a lot of the policy enacted on The West Wing was shit, too, but nobody seemed to mind.

“you don’t like shows where the dialog isn’t telling you what’s going to happen, telling you what is happening, or explaining what just happened.”

Yeah that’s it. Ya caught me. That’s definitely the only reason one could have for not fawning over Sorkin’s recorded bedfarts.

I will readily admit that Sorkin has a tendency to cram the same sorts of lines into all of his actors, and yes, they’re precocious, unrealistic lines. But damnit, they’re interesting lines, for all that. And he does adjust to his actors, if he works with them for a bit.

Hey, I like watching Sorkin’s characters. I loved the bit in Ep. 3 where Chandler takes the two writers from the former regime to task over throwing him under the bus after 9-11. I like that they mention Bill Maher.

I agree that Sorkin puts ideas into his characters’ mouths that just don’t get aired anywhere else on network TV. I put up with the isn’t-it-just-oh-so-smartness of his dialogue – and the attendant descents into moralizing pap – because of this.

But it’s still very, very arrogant of Sorkin to think he can show us a shit-hot, funny, successful sketch comedy show that simultaneously thumbs its finger at network shilling and out-funny’s the admittedly crap SNL (I mean, the latter shouldn’t be tough to do, but what we’ve seen of Studio 60’s sketches so far … well, you sum it up yourself very well – “jaw-grindingly lame”. And “Pimp My Trike” … yeah, I cringed at that too.)

If you haven’t, get the DVD of the first season of the BBC’s ‘The Office’ and watch the extras, which show Ricky Gervais and his co-writer cracking each other up incessantly in the editing room. Then go back to Studio 60 and wonder what compells Sorkin to portray supposedly hilarious comedy writing and rehearsing as anything but fun. This really is a big problem with this series so far, in my opinion. Chris Farley used to squeeze out shits from the 34th floor of the NBC building, fer chrissake. Sorkin doesn’t have to go THAT far to show us what real comedians do when they work together, but still. Show us some fucking fun, please. I can forgive lame sketches, but I cannot look past a presentation of ‘the process’ that is precisely the opposite of how it actually works.

That said, what I want to see developed in this series is the clash between econ and art, that kind of mirrors the West Wing clash between liberalism and conservatism (with cold reality always lurking in the wings).

The difference, though, is that I didn’t mind that, in the West Wing, conservatism was given short shrift and liberalism given all the cool characters and lines. In Studio 60, I feel like I have dogs in both fights – I’m just as interested in the business of entertainment as I am in art for art’s sake (or even, art for truth’s sake). I just hope the econ side of the debate isn’t given as short shrift in Studio 60 as conservatism was given in West Wing.

Martin Sheen was indeed the stable center of The West Wing, but that wasn’t just the actor’s talent talking, that was the way the show was scripted.

That is actually what I was saying. A potential problem with Studio 60, as I see it, is that there is no stable center scripted into it. It may well work with audiences, but I think that one of the big reasons for West Wing’s success was that all the smart, glib, and yes, annoying characters revolved around the solid, down-to-earth Bartlett. Even if he went weeks without being featured, Bartlett was always this reassuring presence in the show. He was a very tangible proof that all the smartness, glibness and annoyingness were there for a purpose far greater than just being smart, glib and annoying for cleverness’ sake.

But Studio 60, so far, doesn’t have such a tangible center which justifies all the sound and noise surrounding it. Instead of an actual person, the center seems to be an idea of some kind. Like, I don’t know, the ‘good fight’ against truth-killing network suits and other assorted Philistines. Or something.

Dunno if audiences are going to want to watch that for very long. But I could be wrong.

Sorkin’s got Tarantinnitis. Every character sounds just like the writer.

Whoever writes Gilmour Girls is even worse, though, GB. It’s like watching a tennis match: Zinger! Zinger! Zing! Between-the-legs … zinger! Can she reach it? Yes! Zing! And now we’ll go to the tiebreaker. Zing!

Ask yourself: What did Martin Sheen do to impress you before The West Wing? You can’t come up with anything other than Wall Street in the past 30 years, can you?

Wall Street, hell. Apocalypse Now. 1979.

If you people are watching this program thinking you will, at the end of it all, finally be told what the fuck is going on, then you do not understand the format of the show…

I’ve noticed they’ve already had to abandon a few plot twists due to people leaving the show (i.e. getting killed off); e.g. the flashback where it was revealed Libby was a patient in the asylum with Hurley.

Did anyone else watch “The 4400”? That show pretty much died the last season because they had to constrain the plots to explain a different cast member bailing in almost every episode.

I’ve noticed they’ve already had to abandon a few plot twists due to people leaving the show (i.e. getting killed off); e.g. the flashback where it was revealed Libby was a patient in the asylum with Hurley.

Libby was connected to several characters. If she isn’t back at least in flashback bits by the end of next season then I’ll be really surprised.