The Important Question

Wondering when someone is finally going to ask the candidates..."What's on your DVR?"

Loving Radar's guide to Mad Men.

Long time no blog, folks. I suck.

However, I have somehow managed to continue to feed my monster TV habit despite being busier than I've ever been in my life.

A few random thoughts:

-Very excited that Pushing Daisies is back.

-Can't get into Heroes this season. I think it kind of blows.

-Still find Boston Legal both fantastical and funny, but it's always the one thing left on my DVR that I just can't make time to watch when I get too busy.

-Greek is the best show on right now targeted at people 10 years younger than I. Yes, even better than Gossip Girl, which I still unabashedly love for the campiness factor.

-Last weekend, while friends were in town, we discovered Parking Wars on A&E. If you're not familiar, it's pretty much what it sounds like... a reality show that follows the Philly PPA as they boot, ticket and tow around the city. It's both terribly boring and terrifically awesome.

More thoughts on the new "90210"...

So, I caught last night's episode of "90210" and I'm still digging it. Still not up to the status of appointment television, necessarily, but pretty good. Of course, the healthy dose of a Kelly Taylor storyline, complete with Drunk! Mean! Mom!, was helpful. (Interesting sidenote: The actress that plays Kelly's mom had to take a brief break from her day job at the pulpit to come back and play Sloshy McBoozerton.)

The teens are still a little enh. The lead actress is all right, but a little too bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for me. And it's hard to watch the guy who plays her bro, Tristan Wilds, do anything this soap-lite after his superb performance as Michael in "The Wire."

Also, I kind of expect the teen set to be engaging in a bit more, uh, debauchery. I mean, we're two episodes in, and all we've dealt with is some cheating (at least it's among both the kids AND the adults) and one flimsy drug problem (but it's just the annoying theater girl, so I'm not really invested her struggle). More drama! More turmoil! More reasons for parents to not want teens to watch, please! Don't these kids have tons o' money at their disposal? Surely they can get in more trouble than this.

Also, where was Boozy Grandma last night? Jessica Walters is the best (see any episode of "Arrested Development" for reference), and I hope the show uses her to their full advantage.

Nothing Guilty About It

One of my great pleasures in life is TV targeted at teenagers. I love it... pretty much all of it: good, bad, mediocre. One of my current favorites is, of course, "Gossip Girl," which has this great campy, soap opera thing going on. "Greek" is also excellent...like, it's actually pretty well-written and well-acted, and despite the fact I was not a member of the Greek system in college, it just makes me happy. "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" is resoundingly terrible. I mean, it's awful. The acting is mostly bad, the romantic lead looks like a young Bob Saget (I do not consider this a plus) and, coming from the creator of "7th Heaven," it is, not surprisingly, incredibly preachy. But yet, oh yet, I watch. I eat up the terrible plotlines and stilted performances like I'm binge-eating the shitty generic leftover candy the day after Halloween.

So, of course, I was very excited about this week's two-hour premiere of the new "90210." And, as someone who willingly spends my precious few available minutes watching shows like "The Secret Life of the American Teenager," I thought it was pretty good. Perhaps a little light on the angst (other than giving a couple of female characters dyed black hair) but that can be fixed over time. I'm looking forward to checking it again next week before I completely formulate an opinion. But, for a remake, I'm optimistic. It helps that Brenda and Kelly made an appearance in the first episode. Bring back Dylan for a guest spot and I'll be sold.

The things I watch

I don't watch much TV. That's why I'd be a poor choice for the pop culture side of you WBB dynamic blogging duo. However, I watch weird things when I'm traveling for business. For instance, last night, I watched Gossip Girl. And while Loree may burn me at the stake for what I'm about to type, I have to say it.

That's one hour of my life I'll never get back. I'm a little dumber than I was yesterday at this time.

Can anyone explain the fascination with this show to me?

I Didn't Even Know How Much I Missed Mad Men

You know, I love "Mad Men," but I almost forgot the season premiere was coming on last night. And that’s the thing about the show—it tends to move a bit slowly and sometimes it doesn’t feel like much is happening (so it doesn’t create that week-to-week or season-to-season anticipation that other, more action-packed shows do), but when it’s on, I become completely and totally submerged in every gorgeously crafted minute of it.

More on why I like "Mad Men" (and SPOILERS from last night’s episode), after the jump.


1.) The style is nine kinds of fabulous. Yes, it’s obvious, and yes, it’s a common thing that fans love about the show, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth repeating here. Despite the stellar dialogue, I could almost be happy watching the show with the sound off, just to see and observe all the era-appropriate design choices Matt Weiner & Co. make, from the outfits—Betty’s riding outfit last night was stunning—to the furniture and interior design at Sterling Cooper.

2.) This show rewards loyal viewers. It’s weird, but it kind of reminds me of “The Wire,” in the way the show tells its stories. Other, less confident shows, would have made a point of wrapping up last season’s cliffhangers in the first half hour—but Mad Men is so well-paced that it wasn’t until after the show aired that I realized we still didn’t know exactly what happened with Peggy’s baby. And that’s ok. I’m sure they’ll lay it all out for us organically, in a way that’s satisfying to the viewers, in due time. Another example—I think any other show would have made a point of letting us know exactly who Don was sending that book to in the closing scene (probably with a nice, obvious close-up of him writing out there address) just to drive home the point that there’s Trouble Afoot In Paradise. But we don’t know, and who knows when we will? I’m fine with that.

3.) This probably overlaps a bit with 2, but I love the subtlety of the character development between seasons one and two. We know that we’ve moved forward in time, but not so much that anything hugely significant has taken place. But Don has gone from suave and in control to somewhat vulnerable and definitely showing his age. Betty seems to have grown more confident, although she’s still obviously a wee bit nutso (trading on your sexuality late at night on a desolate street for a discount on a fan belt is never a good idea, folks!)… but while there are changes, they’re still the same characters. Those minor tweaks represent growth (either positive or negative) but in a way that’s realistic to the characters we spent the first season getting to know.

A few other things I loved about last night’s show:
-Sal is…married?!
-The Jackie O. tour of the White House
-Peggy dressing down Don’s new secretary the same way Joan did with her last year
-Joan showing Peggy the what’s-what by putting the Xerox in her office
-Roger (he’s always outstanding)

Did you watch? What did you like/dislike? Who do you think Don’s sending the package to? I think the obvious choices are Midge (the mistress from season one) or Rachel, (the head of Menken’s).

UPDATE: EW's TV Watch recap is here. Happy that I'm not the only one seeing the parallels to "The Wire."

It's a little wild and a little strange...when you make your home out on the range

Folks, a year and four months ago, I was living (or more accurately, just kinda, sorta existing) in Texas, shoveling fast food down my gullet and spending an obscene amount of time on the Internet. (Hey, one big change a year ain’t so bad.)

But, most importantly, a year and four months ago, I authored The Most Important Blog Entry Of Our Time, one that my co-blogger Laura tells me is responsible for much of the random traffic our fledgling site gets. The entry, ladies and gents, was about the whereabouts of “Hey Dude’s” Joe Torres (aka Danny Lightfoot). The gist: I tried to get to the bottom of (or, um, searched the web for about 15 minutes in an effort to confirm or dispel) a pervasive Internet rumor that Torres had died in the last few years of kidney failure.

After receiving a random comment on that entry this weekend (said commenter basically asked if I had gotten off my ass and made any effort toward finding Torres…and the short answer is, uh, no), we decided it was time for an update.


As usual, my investigative work is best done from the couch, in my pajamas.

-In 2007, I “reported” that Joe Torres’ Wikipedia entry stated that he was last spotted in a Tucson bar called The Golden Nugget. In the past year and four months, that entry has been edited, and The Golden Nugget sighting is gone. Mysterious.

-Apparently I wasn’t thorough enough in my web research last year to discover that a web effort had formed and was already on the hunt for Torres. In 2006, this dude launched an “official” Where Is Joe Torres? Campaign. I have not seen any updates to the effort since the original post; however, t-shirts are available.

-Another guy posted about the controversy in Nov. 2007 on Yelp. In his post, he notes that Torres' IMDB profile has been edited—a credit for the role of “Drunken Indian” in the film “Hindustani” has been deleted, as well as a note about the rumor of his demise due to kidney failure. Hmm.

-This bizarre, random and totally unsourced page hosted on eBay states that “despite rumors to the contrary, Jose (Joe’s real name) is still alive and well and living in Tucson, Arizona.” And yes, I realized that it points to the Wikipedia page, but that page neither confirms or denies the kidney failure rumor. Ummm…I prefer my unsubstantiated news from Perez Hilton, thanks.

-TV.com still reports that Joe died of kidney failure after living for years on a reservation. BUT! Other reports say that Joe was Mexican-American, not Native American, so that doesn’t really fly for me.

-The Golden Nugget was voted “Best Low Brow Ambience” by Tucson Weekly in 2001. So you know.

Maybe This Will Hold Me Over Until Dollhouse

Joss Whedon fans: Doctor Horrible, Act 1, is up. Check it out here. Then come back so we can all gush about how awesome Nathan Fillion and Neil Patrick Harris are. My opinion: They're pretty awesome.

Any Mad Men fans?

I love the show, and am super-crazy jazzed about it coming back: beautiful writing, beautiful acting, and--most importantly--beautiful clothes.

Something's telling me that Jon Hamm's not going to be hopping on the subway this week, though.

Remembering ReBoot

This is kind of embarrassing, but lately I've found my mind traveling quite a bit to... ReBoot, the computer-animated TV series I was dorkily into in my early teens.



I don't know why it keeps popping into my head. I'm particularly plagued with visions of Hexadecimal, the super-creepy villain that regularly taunted Bob and his cohorts. I'm also pretty sure that, even in the dork universe, fans of ReBoot are possibly considered especially dorky, as I've never heard my husband mention the show once.

So, today, with a bit of time on my hands, I decided to refresh my memory on ReBoot. It has a surprisingly robust Wikipedia page. A few things I learned:

-It's Canadian!
-The show ran from 1994-2001 (mostly in Canada, I think. If I remember correctly, there were only a couple of seasons in my teens.)
-There is an unaired episode. The description, via Wikipedia:

"Fast Forward: The Making of ReBoot" is a 23-minute episode. The title sequence on the sequence says "Date: February 27, 1995", putting its completion date between the first two seasons.

The show begins in Megabyte's lair, where Megabyte has hacked into the principal office and has created a portal into a parallel universe (our universe), taking him into the offices of Mainframe Entertainment. There the producer, writers and animators discuss how the show came about, how it is scripted, voiced, and animated, and what the staff does in its spare time.

-There is a comic
-A trilogy of ReBoot films will be coming to theaters. According to Wikipedia, that little gem was announced June 1. I'm totes there!

Arrested Development Movie! Yay!

I was (and am) a huge, huge fan of Arrested Development, so I'm psyched to see that a movie (finally, possibly, hopefully) is in the works. I think it was pretty much the most groundbreaking, innovative TV comedy ever, so obviously I'm jazzed. Any other AD fans out there?

Another day, another link to Jezebel. This clip they showed today from that great 90's show "Daria" totally made me nostalgic. I vividly remember the episode, which was lampooning "Jane" magazine.

I wish "Daria" was available on DVD, because I would totally snap it up.

Ok, I lied.

I wasn't quite done with the interview when I posted the link. My new favorite excerpt:

AVC: You studied acting in college, and you've had roles in TV and film. Do you think it can be tougher to get a role because of your Soup persona? Like, "No, he's Mr. Snarky Guy. We can't give him that."

JM: I would say possibly, but not nearly as hard as it would be for, like, a registered sex offender. So, you know, happy medium somewhere.

Here's a great intervew with "The Soup" host Joel McHale from The Onion A.V. Club.

My favorite excerpt:

AVC: Do you think the war on stupid culture is unwinnable? Are we headed for Idiocracy?

JM: Oh, that's a good question. I think the smart people will get even smarter, and the dumb people will get even dumber. But I think they all will enjoy A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila, no matter how you slice it.

Wanted: Charlie Sheen's Sperm

I'm baffled by the attention this whole faux scandal involving Denise Richards' "alleged" asking for Charlie Sheen's sperm donation. Denise says she sent no email to Charlie's fiancee asking for the sperm. Charlie issues a statement saying she did. Who really cares?

She was on Larry King Live, The View and the entire morning show circuit discussing this. Have we nothing more interesting to talk about?

And, I had no idea Denise Richards was 37. I thought she was early 30s at the oldest.

On to more pressing matters.

I love many things about Law & Order, but one of my favorite things is the recurring website BeFriends.com, which is obviously the L&O-verse equivalent of MySpace. BeFriends shows up pretty much anytime there's a sordid, seedy, web-based story to be told. In last week's episode, a woman killed her daughter and then used her BeFriends profile to dupe men into falling in love with her and sending her scads of money.

BeFriends, of course, is not to be confused with Another Youniverse, L&O's version of Second Life, which popped up on a recent SVU.

Here's what I think: L&O should get with the program and, like other shows (including "Family Guy" and "How I Met Your Mother") actually buy these domain names and do something with them. I'm on MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter... why not BeFriends?

Yes, I Graduated From The Perez Hilton School Of Graphic Design

I'm probably a bad person, but I was really hoping I would open this story to find out that Dennis Quaid had lost his marbles and consulted Hugh Laurie on his recent family crisis.

Yeah, so I'm the teensiest bit embarrassed to admit it, but I want to see the "Sex and The City" movie. Now, clearly the "in" thing right now is SATC backlash... but, I got to say it, I saw these clips this morning and got damn-near giddy. I just can't stay away. And yes, I still consider myself a Miranda.

Anybody else into TV totally not targeted at their age group? I'm loving "Gossip Girl." Last night's episode, especially, brought the drama. Murder, cocaine, a Lisa Loeb guest spot. Can't wait for the season finale next week.

I'm also looking forward to the new "90210." It's got a few things going for it... one being that the original treatment was written by Rob Thomas (not the Matchbox Twenty guy, but the creator of Veronica Mars), and two, word on the street (or the Internet) is they're bringing back some of the old cast, including Jennie Garth and Tori Spelling. Donna Martin graduates!