Fumarama

From the the TV column on Oprah's interview with Madonna.

"I was just asking the audience whether this merits headline news with all the other real atrocities going on in the world and all of this attention being focused on you," Oprah continued. Grievously, she never revealed the studio audience's answer. "When did you realize that it's becoming this big of a deal?"

Madonna patiently explained that she does not read newspapers or watch television, so she did not realize the adoption of a motherless child from an orphanage in the tiny African country was controversial until she returned to England and "there was a million film crews in the airport and press camped outside my door." Apparently, her publicist, director husband Guy Ritchie and the rest of her entourage were not allowed to bring her up to date. Or they hadn't the nerve.

I bet that back when Madonna was culturally relevant she totally read the newspaper and watched tv.

That was refreshing. I only say that because for the past 4 weeks I have been weighed down by the heavy-handedness and pretentiousness of Studio 60. I am yet to write on Studio 60 because it has been too upsetting to me how little I like the show. But 30 Rock is just a show about a show. The show within the show does not claim to be a groundbreaking television show, and none of the writers claim to be geniuses. It is just a show, i am not even sure if the Girlie show is supposed to be particularly good. But best of all, not all the hopes of the network are pinned on this Girlie Show. God, there is something so unbearable about how important Sorkin thinks his Studio 60 is. Tiny Fey has more perspective.

All that being said, it is not something i will watch again. I don't watch all that many sitcoms, and this is no scrubs or arrested development.

ok, so if i was Will (Leonardo Dicaprio), when Matt Damon brought me into the police station, I would have just taken the money and my identity and left and gone and lived my life, perhaps convincing the pretty shrink to come with me. Even after i found out that Matt Damon was the rat, I still would have done the same. There are two possible reasons for Leo DiCaprio to try and bring Matt Damon to Justice.

1. He feels like he has not quite finished the job. But here is the thing. Costello is dead. His whole crew is dead. And without them, Matt Damon is completely neutered. He would probably just go ahead and become a regular old cop and a pretty good one at that. So really neutoring Damon without killing him is doing the city of Boston a favor. But even if that is wrong, and there are still plenty mobsters out there that Damon can rat for, then the mob problem in Boston is so big that taking Damon out is pointless. If it can go on after Costello dies, then it sure as hell can go on after Damon dies. DiCaprio won't solve all the crime. He did his bit. Take the money and leave.

2. He has some sort of sense of justice, Damon is a bad guy, he must be punished. I am not much of retributivist so the argument does not have much emotional resonance with me. But it was pointed out to me that going after Damon proves that DiCaprio was not in it for the money, he was in it for to help the commonwealth of Massachusetts. Ok, I am willing to buy this as motivations, but then there are two subproblems with the movie.

a. What are Damon's motivations for joining the Mass state police. I mean as Dingle points out at the beginning of the movie, DiCaprio is not very good at it, but it seems clear that he is very smart and would be good at other things. But we never really get an explanation as to why DiCaprio does what he does. Sure, you can venture to guess based on your own assumptions as to why people join police officers. But it is an aspect of this character not the least bit developed.

b. Why is Matt Damon such a bad guy? It seems really unfair to demonize him. It is a poor kid for the South Side of Boston. The first scene of the movie makes it clear that people were terrified of Costello. If Costello took interest in a poor boy like Damon (sullivan) do you think that Sulivan could really stay away without serious reprecussions. And if Costello asked Sullivan to join the police force and be a rat, could Sullivan really say no without being killed? So really Damon is a victim here at much as anything. Plus, he never showed any inclination for violence or cruelty, except the fact that he worked for Costello. I bet if out from under the thumb of the mobster, he could be a good cop. Point is, no reason to kill him

So I watched what was the third episode of heroes last night. So when I first heard of heroes last spring, for some reason I thought it was going to be a whimsical show about these folks who find out they have superpowers and how they learn to adjust to society and form relationships and stuff like that. I had no reason to believe this, I think I just imagined the show I actually wanted on tv. Anyway, heroes is not that at all. It definately is not whimsical. Basically, there is some terrible, unexplained danger in the world, and these people with the superpowers have the special role of stopping it.

As I explained in my Vanished post, I like mysteries, because I really want to know what the deal is. I want to know who this wierd murderer is (I think he is named Sylar or something). why these people suddenly have superpowers. what does this all mean. In other words, I want answers. But here is the thing, I don't think there are answers. I think the writers have no idea where this is going. This was always my problem with Alias (and part of the reason I don't watch Lost), they would not give many explanations and when they did, it was always like "what the fuck?" in a bad, this does not make any sense way. It is cause they have to keep the mystery going in order to get people to keep watching, but then they have to have storylines too, so everything gets more and more mysterious and wierd, and eventually it reaches absurdity. I think heroes is the same way. And I refuse to commit to a show that won't give me satisfying explanations.

The Nine, on the other hard, is a show that I think will eventually have answers. But I am taking a cautiously optimistic, wait and see approach. If I find out that it gives the viewers a satisfying resolution to the whole thing, I will rent the dvds.

I love sports movies. I love the way there is a clear climax where all the drama can be worked out in single scene. And I love the scene itself, because sports are so physical, and the climax is the physical manifistation of all that has happened in the story. It is also kind of like the final confrontation in a thriller but minus the violence, and violence in not my thing. (I saw the Departed this weekend, and i conveniently brought a sweater that covered my eyes for much of the movie but more on that in another Departed specific post.) I also just love sports generally. So needless to say, I loved Friday Night Lights. I mean football...in Texas, what could be wrong with it? For me, the show has only one flaw. Namely, I cannot see why I am supposed to like the coach. Kyle Chandler seems nice enough, but there was nothing about him to make me care.

Sadly, the show did terribly in the ratings. It was the worst rated drama premiere of the 2006-2007 season. From the tv column:

NBC noted that its football drama finished first in its 8 p.m. hour among young men. But, in truth, more 18-to-34-year-old males were attracted to the combo of ABC's ballroom dancing and the CW's "Gilmore Girls."

In its review, trade paper Variety, which tends to review TV shows based not only on aesthetics but also on commercial viability, speculated that " 'Friday Night Lights' ultimately feels like one of those family programs middle America and conservatives pine for that too few of them actually bother to watch -- a portrait of decent, God-fearing folks wringing joy from America's game as an escape from their hardscrabble lives."

It is still going to be broadcast tomorrow. But after that it might very well get cancelled. So you know catch it before it is gone.

In other news, Smith has basically been cancelled. Good think I saw and did not like it before this happened.

It was alright. I mean really just alright. But the characters just fell kind of flat for me or something. They are all sad...but not just sad, since sad can make for great drama, but also kind of overly serious and lifeless. All their problems are kind of typical and predictible. The whole show lacks a sort of energy that makes television the escapist entertainment that it is supposed to be.

Rachel Griffiths encapsulates the problem for me. She is very pretty, but no matter what seen she is in and no matter what her character is supposed to be doing looks like she is about to cry. She just walks around morose in different situations. I don't know if it is a result of some awful plastic surgery or maybe just left over continuous sadness from Six Feet Under, but it is really not interesting or enjoyable to watch.

All this being said: Greg Berlianti was brought onto the show last minute. Yes, we are talking about the mind behind Everwood. So there is hope. Maybe if he starts showrunning, everything will turn around.