Community (2009) D
After the season premiere of “The Office” last week, NBC debuted a new show called “Community” which centers around a lawyer named Jeff Winger (Joel Mchale) who must attend community college to avoid being disbarred. Sure enough, he is a lying, self serving smart-ass and the student body of the community college is a group of off-beat, socially awkward characters. This show is very predictable, and just not that funny. The only actor of note on the show is Chevy Chase who plays, that’s right, an aging actor. In the pilot episode, Winger fabricates a fake Spanish 101 study group in order to try to get close to a woman in his class, Britta (Gillian Jacobs). Another classmate, Abed (Danny Pudi), finds out and, assuming the study group is real, invites Pierce (Chevy Chase), Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown), Annie (Alison Brie), and Troy (Donald Glover). Winger successfully attempts to turn them all against each other in order to get Britta alone but she realizes what he is doing and tells him off. I loathe to write off a show after only watching the pilot, so I may very well watch a couple more episodes. But that doesn’t mean you should.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
Glee
Glee (2009) C+
Glee is tough to define. It’s neither a straight comedy nor a musical series, though it contains aspects of both. The show airs on FOX. The lead-in is American Idol (which I give an F-, fyi) but its quirky, sometimes crude sense of humor might alienate some viewers from that set. I was touch-and-go on it to begin with, but it has grown on me.
The show centers around a high school glee club (or “show choir”) that is taken over by a dorky Spanish teacher named Will Scheuster (Matthew Morrison), who is a glee club alum himself. He takes on the club to try to regain his passion for performing. His wife, Terri (Jessalyn Gilsig) is a cold, spoiled woman who treats him like dirt, but he takes it with a smile. The other faculty are strange characters; The Guidance Counselor Emma Pillsbury (Jayma Mays) has pretty extreme OCD (her character is seen on one episode individually disinfecting grapes before eating them), and is head over heels in love with Will. Principal Figgins (Iqbal Theba) is a money-grubbing bureaucrat who only cares about keeping parents from complaining. Of all the faculty, there is none more out there than the cheer coach, Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch). She is a veritable drill sergeant (apparently she was a part of the strike force who took out Noriega!) who has a vendetta against the glee club for taking away from her budget. In her first appearance in the pilot, she is seen shouting at her cheerleaders; “You think this is hard? Try being water boarded, that’s hard!” This quote perfectly exemplifies the irreverent sense of humor of this show. The kids in the glee club are the best, however. Rachel Berry (Lea Michele) is an overachieving outcast who believes the ultimate goal of anyone in our society is to become a celebrity. She has a crush on the jock member of the group, Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith). Hudson is a football player who joins the club after Mr. Sheuster hears him singing in the gym showers and tells him to join if he wants to pass Spanish class. He realizes that glee club makes him happy and decides to keep his spot on the football team and the glee club, defying the wishes of his stereotypic jock friends. The other spots on the team are filled by Mercedes Jones (Amber Riley), a spunky girl with an incredible voice, Artie Abrams (Kevin McHale), a paraplegic student, Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer), a flaming closet case, and Tina Cohen-Chang (Jenna Ushkowitz), a goth-y teen.
Glee is a fun show, but I have some reservations about where they are taking the series. The plotline between Will Scheuster and his wife has just made me lose respect for his character for not standing up to his shrewish wife, and Mrs. Scheuster is completely not relatable, I just hate the character, and not in a “love to hate” kind of way. The musical numbers are fun, but if they keep moving towards poppier music, they may just lose me. However, I do recommend we give this show a chance, the quirky humor is something not very common on television today.
Glee is tough to define. It’s neither a straight comedy nor a musical series, though it contains aspects of both. The show airs on FOX. The lead-in is American Idol (which I give an F-, fyi) but its quirky, sometimes crude sense of humor might alienate some viewers from that set. I was touch-and-go on it to begin with, but it has grown on me.
The show centers around a high school glee club (or “show choir”) that is taken over by a dorky Spanish teacher named Will Scheuster (Matthew Morrison), who is a glee club alum himself. He takes on the club to try to regain his passion for performing. His wife, Terri (Jessalyn Gilsig) is a cold, spoiled woman who treats him like dirt, but he takes it with a smile. The other faculty are strange characters; The Guidance Counselor Emma Pillsbury (Jayma Mays) has pretty extreme OCD (her character is seen on one episode individually disinfecting grapes before eating them), and is head over heels in love with Will. Principal Figgins (Iqbal Theba) is a money-grubbing bureaucrat who only cares about keeping parents from complaining. Of all the faculty, there is none more out there than the cheer coach, Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch). She is a veritable drill sergeant (apparently she was a part of the strike force who took out Noriega!) who has a vendetta against the glee club for taking away from her budget. In her first appearance in the pilot, she is seen shouting at her cheerleaders; “You think this is hard? Try being water boarded, that’s hard!” This quote perfectly exemplifies the irreverent sense of humor of this show. The kids in the glee club are the best, however. Rachel Berry (Lea Michele) is an overachieving outcast who believes the ultimate goal of anyone in our society is to become a celebrity. She has a crush on the jock member of the group, Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith). Hudson is a football player who joins the club after Mr. Sheuster hears him singing in the gym showers and tells him to join if he wants to pass Spanish class. He realizes that glee club makes him happy and decides to keep his spot on the football team and the glee club, defying the wishes of his stereotypic jock friends. The other spots on the team are filled by Mercedes Jones (Amber Riley), a spunky girl with an incredible voice, Artie Abrams (Kevin McHale), a paraplegic student, Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer), a flaming closet case, and Tina Cohen-Chang (Jenna Ushkowitz), a goth-y teen.
Glee is a fun show, but I have some reservations about where they are taking the series. The plotline between Will Scheuster and his wife has just made me lose respect for his character for not standing up to his shrewish wife, and Mrs. Scheuster is completely not relatable, I just hate the character, and not in a “love to hate” kind of way. The musical numbers are fun, but if they keep moving towards poppier music, they may just lose me. However, I do recommend we give this show a chance, the quirky humor is something not very common on television today.
Friday, September 18, 2009
The Return of The Office!
The Office, Season 6 (2009) B (SPOILER ALERT!!)
What can I say about The Office? Definitely one of my favorite shows, it's well written, everyone on the cast is hilarious, and it has been too long since we got a new episode.
This season starts with Michael getting caught up in office gossip. He finds out that Stanley is having an affair, and tells everyone about it. After Jim informs him that what he is doing could mess up Stanley's life, he then tries to cover it up by spreading lies about every single person in the office so no one knows which rumor is true. One of the "lies" is that Pam is pregnant (which she is) and Jim takes the pressure off of Stanley by telling the office about it.
I had many laugh out loud moments in this episode, but I worry about Michael's character becoming more and more one-dimensional as the show goes on. Either way, I will keep watching and laughing. This is a must-see show, check it out on TV and Hulu throughout the fall!
What can I say about The Office? Definitely one of my favorite shows, it's well written, everyone on the cast is hilarious, and it has been too long since we got a new episode.
This season starts with Michael getting caught up in office gossip. He finds out that Stanley is having an affair, and tells everyone about it. After Jim informs him that what he is doing could mess up Stanley's life, he then tries to cover it up by spreading lies about every single person in the office so no one knows which rumor is true. One of the "lies" is that Pam is pregnant (which she is) and Jim takes the pressure off of Stanley by telling the office about it.
I had many laugh out loud moments in this episode, but I worry about Michael's character becoming more and more one-dimensional as the show goes on. Either way, I will keep watching and laughing. This is a must-see show, check it out on TV and Hulu throughout the fall!
True Blood
True Blood (2008) B+
True Blood is a supernatural drama which airs on HBO. When I first heard of this show I was very skeptical. Being a fan of vampire stories, the Twilight phenomenon had soured me on Hollywood depictions and I did not give the show a second thought. A year later, since the show is still going with a large following, I decided to give it a shot. It’s no Twilight, and that’s just the way I like it.
The show is set in a world where vampires have recently “come out of the coffin” and announced their presence to the human world. The driving force behind this decision was the invention of a synthetic blood (Tru Blood) that can keep vampires alive without having to feed on humans (Whether they all want to live on it is a whole other issue). The show revolves around a young woman named Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) who works as a waitress at a bar in a small town called Bon Temps. Sookie has latent telepathic abilities, and she must concentrate hard in order to block out the thoughts of others. Over the first two seasons Sookie begins to realize that her strange abilities make her something other than human and she must come to grips with that fact. Sookie’s introduction was one of the many things in the first episode that really caught me, they perfectly displayed Sookie’s power in a way you could understand without using a single line of dialogue, it was very well done. The sleepy Louisiana town gets its first vampire since they revealed themselves, a civil war vet named Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) who has come to claim his family’s ancestral home. Sookie is instantly drawn to him because he is the first person she has ever met whose thoughts she can’t read. The bar Sookie works in is owned by a man named Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammel), who has a strange secret. Sookie’s best friend Tara (Rutina Wesley) comes to work at the bar with her as well, they grew up together and are as close as sisters. Sookie’s other coworkers are a colorful bunch- their various soap opera-esque interactions are best left to be explained by the show itself. Various supernatural beings make appearances in this sleepy little town, and I am excited to see where they take this series.
(Beware the spoilers!)
True Blood delivers the blood and sex on expects from a good vampire story. The storylines throughout the first and second season were a lot of fun. Lafayette being kidnapped for selling vampire blood, Rene is really the killer, Eric becoming obsessed with Sookie and tricking her into drinking his blood, Bill’s fledgling (the absolutely gorgeous Deborah Ann Woll), Eric’s sire Godric ending his life, and many more. This is a very involved show, so anyone who balks at the idea of watching every single episode to be filled in all of the interwoven storylines may be turned off.
It’s worth noting that though the character development throughout the second season is prime, the finale was quite a let down. The corny dance scene with Bill and Sookie was a bit too much. Killing off characters is just lazy writing, plain and simple. Also, the entire town just lets it go that they have forgotten the past couple of days and came to half naked next to a meat-tree thing? No one asks what happened to Maryann? The season 2 finale could have been much, much better. I wonder how closely the seasons follow the book series, could that explain the lame ending? While I do intend to continue following the series when it returns from hiatus, they better step up the storylines or they may lose me.
True Blood is a supernatural drama which airs on HBO. When I first heard of this show I was very skeptical. Being a fan of vampire stories, the Twilight phenomenon had soured me on Hollywood depictions and I did not give the show a second thought. A year later, since the show is still going with a large following, I decided to give it a shot. It’s no Twilight, and that’s just the way I like it.
The show is set in a world where vampires have recently “come out of the coffin” and announced their presence to the human world. The driving force behind this decision was the invention of a synthetic blood (Tru Blood) that can keep vampires alive without having to feed on humans (Whether they all want to live on it is a whole other issue). The show revolves around a young woman named Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) who works as a waitress at a bar in a small town called Bon Temps. Sookie has latent telepathic abilities, and she must concentrate hard in order to block out the thoughts of others. Over the first two seasons Sookie begins to realize that her strange abilities make her something other than human and she must come to grips with that fact. Sookie’s introduction was one of the many things in the first episode that really caught me, they perfectly displayed Sookie’s power in a way you could understand without using a single line of dialogue, it was very well done. The sleepy Louisiana town gets its first vampire since they revealed themselves, a civil war vet named Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) who has come to claim his family’s ancestral home. Sookie is instantly drawn to him because he is the first person she has ever met whose thoughts she can’t read. The bar Sookie works in is owned by a man named Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammel), who has a strange secret. Sookie’s best friend Tara (Rutina Wesley) comes to work at the bar with her as well, they grew up together and are as close as sisters. Sookie’s other coworkers are a colorful bunch- their various soap opera-esque interactions are best left to be explained by the show itself. Various supernatural beings make appearances in this sleepy little town, and I am excited to see where they take this series.
(Beware the spoilers!)
True Blood delivers the blood and sex on expects from a good vampire story. The storylines throughout the first and second season were a lot of fun. Lafayette being kidnapped for selling vampire blood, Rene is really the killer, Eric becoming obsessed with Sookie and tricking her into drinking his blood, Bill’s fledgling (the absolutely gorgeous Deborah Ann Woll), Eric’s sire Godric ending his life, and many more. This is a very involved show, so anyone who balks at the idea of watching every single episode to be filled in all of the interwoven storylines may be turned off.
It’s worth noting that though the character development throughout the second season is prime, the finale was quite a let down. The corny dance scene with Bill and Sookie was a bit too much. Killing off characters is just lazy writing, plain and simple. Also, the entire town just lets it go that they have forgotten the past couple of days and came to half naked next to a meat-tree thing? No one asks what happened to Maryann? The season 2 finale could have been much, much better. I wonder how closely the seasons follow the book series, could that explain the lame ending? While I do intend to continue following the series when it returns from hiatus, they better step up the storylines or they may lose me.
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