Arrested for good

Fox has announced the cancellation of Arrested Development. This comes as a shock to no one, as it was always a show far more respected than watched. And while it is a bit of a downer (I will certainly miss the half hour I spent each week with the Bluths, people I would never want to meet in real life), it’s not a tragedy. It’s not a show that needed to grow. The show said what it had to say, did what it needed to do. By the end, there will be 53 episodes if my count is correct, and that’s a lot of entertainment. They still have episodes left to bring things to some sort of conclusion (I will bet that the house finally collapses. The first two seasons are available on DVD, and the third will almost certainly be offered. And with its respect, it will almost certainly be rerun… if perhaps, after a while, only on festivals of artistic television.

So I’m not so much sad that it’s going as I am glad it was ever there.

(And now I’ll be able to say that Veronica Mars is the best thing on TV without any disclaimers!)

Minor celebrity run-in

I hit the live theater version of What’s My Line last night. The Mystery Guest was The Love Boat‘s Ted Lange, an amiable fellow. But the cheap thrill for me was seeing Lisa Waltz. This attractive and talented actress pops up regularly, but the most important thing for me is her role as Hollie Lowenthal on My So-Called Life. (She was the lady who spported Angela’s dad’s restaurant venture.)

And hey, as long as I’m making a post… I see that Medium (that morally-reprehensible drama) is touting a 3-D episode. I wonder how many folks recall that the same series creator’s previous hit series, Moonlighting, announced just such an episode over 17 years ago. Thing was, it never came to pass. The glasses were distributed for it, but they ended up being used (not very effectively) for a halftime show during the 1988 Super Bowl.

Report on the Report

Well, a couple weeks in to The Colbert Report, and I’m liking it better than I feared I might. It is just goofy, doesn’t really have any insight into what it’s talking about… but I suppose that goes with the parody, making fun of political commentary shows that are all heat, no light. It ain’t The Daily Show. At base, it’s just jokes, but the jokes are sometimes pretty good.

Still, there are some rough spots. There’s an interview segment, and it constantly breaks down to some mixture of:

1. interviewee playing along the with the joke
2. interviewee not quite getting the joke
3. interviewee trying to slip in his serious point

Generally speaking, it gets awkward or embarrassing to watch.

I’m still not sure it won’t run dry pretty fast, but for now, it’s watchable, although not a panic-if-you-miss-it event.

(And if anyone’s waiting for my review of The Boondocks, I forgot and missed the first episode. I’ll catch the next one.)

The true cost of canceling American Dreams

The guy who was playing the annoying bad boy that the lead character inexlicably liked on American Dreams is now freed up and back tainting The Gilmore Girls in basically the same role. Sigh.

Father like Son

The casting of Martin Sheen as Charlie Sheen’s stalker’s father on Two and a Half Men at first seemed wrong. The two of them look too much alike to not be directly related, noted Mrs. Nat’s TV. But then, thinking about it, it made sense. Who would Rose be attracted to more than someone who would remind her that much of her daddy?

I’m not sure he settled well into the part. Perhaps The West Wing has left him with cumbersome pseudo-gravitas that makes it hard to be loose.

(It is worth noting that the show immediately after that was Out of Practice, featuring Sheen’s West Wing wife. It may not be a small world, but it’s a small TV set.)