20-and-a-Half Good Man-Years

Success brings imitiation, and the success of Two-and-a-Half Men has apparently brought us 20 Good Years. Not that the odd couple concept is new (it goes back at last as far as The Odd Couple, of course), but 20 Good Years is more of the moment than feeling versed in a classic study of sitcommery. John Lithgow plays an overconfident, egotistical doctor forced into semiretirement (giving him a life of semileisure a la the Charlie Sheen 2.5 Men character) while Jeffrey Tambor, playing a judge (as he did in his Hill Street Blues days, although dressed differently this time), is the nebbish who by the end of the first episode has gone through a major break-up (like the events that brought Jon Cryer into Sheen’s life… or brought Felix Unger into Oscar Madison’s life, for that matter.) And they realize that their years are running out, and they are off to have adventures.

This is not a show of subtlety, this is a show where emotional realism is set aside in order to play to the humor… which isn’t particularly funny. The talented Lithgow has free range, going broad, but has not much to bounce off, no one to react to. Tambor, who has done beautiful smooth jobs before in characters like Hank Kingsley and George Bluth, is pulled so inward on this character that there’s no place to bounce, nothing for him to show.

There are some people who judge works on how they think they’ll do businesswise, and I try not to be one of those… but I am left curious. What was the goal here? Who is supposed to watch this? It’s combinations of retirement themes  for it’s 60-something year old stars with brainless comedy like one ould usually aim a younger crowd leaves me mystified by this show as a business move.

30Rock

Both of the behind-the-scenes-at-Saturday-Night-Live shows launching this season are taking strong steps to make sure you don’t think it’s actually Saturday Night Live. On Studio 60, they’ve been mentioning SNL as a competing show early in each episode (except the first, where they avoided mentioning it at all.) On 30 Rock, they’re making the sketch comedy show a specifically girlie sketch comedy show by calling it The Girlie Show.

This new sitcom is striving for its own feel. Shot on film, it’s got a bunch of characters bringing their own spirit, with roles clearly built around the actors… for good and for bad, because the characters do not seem to quite integrate into the same reality. Alec Baldwin is bringing much the same performance that he brought to his Will & Grace appearances, playing the freight train of an exec who tries to dictate reality more than deal with it. Tina Fey, creator of the series, brings her attractive intelligence to the role of the show runner; she seems to have idolized herself my making he character smart, capable, and kindly. Tracy Morgan plays the overblown, not-quite-sane movie star joining The Girlie Show, and in many ways he presents the same challenge as the Baldwin character, stampeding in his own self-focused reality.

Which really gets to the heart of the problem with this show. It has these showy characters, and Tina’s character, who is supposed to be central here, is largely lost. They should be forces battering the central hero, more important in their effect than their existence. But despite the fact that some effort was put into trying to get us on her side, we don’t identify with her, and the effect is lost. (Contrast the handling here with Rob Petrie, the central character on the Dick Van Dyke Show. He was often driven by the egomanical efforts of Alan Brady (who, as producer/star of the show-within-a-show that Petrie was head writer for was a combination of the Baldwin and Morgan roles), and it all worked fine despite the fact that we didn’t see Brady’s face for years of the show.

There are pieces here that can work, but they’ll have to do some serious work on the show chemistry. I wanted to like this, I expected to like this, but the first episode at least was a well-intentioned mess.

And now to note something that did work, something which I didn’t see mentioned in the various (generally strongly positive) reviews I’ve seen of this show – Jane Krakowski. Yes, yes, I’ve had a wee bit of a thing for her since the first episode of Ally McBeal. But then, I’ve also had a bit of a thing for Tina Fey, and I’m not singling her out here. Krakowski plays the only one of The Girlie Show’s performers who we get to know, and her backstage moments feel real,

News spinning

CNN has an article entitled “Disputed study claims 655,000 Iraqi deaths” in which they contrast that number with what they refer to as a respected source’s rough estimate of closer to 50,000.

Thing is, it’s not the people at the respected source who are disputing the figure. You see, the Iraq Body Count isn’t an estimate, it’s a lowball count, covering only deaths that are cited in multiple independent press reports. It’s not an estimate of the entire deaths, merely a “we have strong proof” minimum.

About the only other basis given for dispute in the article is that this information is not convenient (or that it’s release time is too convenient… which would cover just about any moment when politics are going on.)

But unlike the statements that got us into this war, CNN feels the need to not just say that this statement was made, but to undermine the statement with the claim of dispute in the headline itself.

Added later: Interesting. Between 2-something AM and 9-something AM, they pulled the Disputed from the headline and added comments that experts support the methodology used. At the moment, both versions are listed as separate articles on the RSS feed. I’m not sure if the earlier version will disappear from the system.

The Game

The Game was launched as a backdoor pilot on Girlfriends. That’s a show that I do not watch, and now that I’ve seen The Game, this is another show which I shall not watch. About a young third-string pro football player and his live-in med student girlfriend, it is not particularly well made, well acted, or (most importantly) funny. And nothing calls on me to offer more depth than that.

The Nine

The Nine opens with situations leading into a hostage crisis, and then leaps ahead to the end of the ordeal and follows the hostages on with their lives. It is at heart a mystery story, because it becomes quickly clear that a lot of Interesting Things happened during the crisis, and that there’s More To This Than Meets The Eye. The series will be in good part about unveiling those mysteries.
Which is the problem.
I’m not saying I’m not at all curious about what happened, but I’m certainly not sufficiently curious to invest my time in watching this for seasons, or hoping it avoids cancellation long enough to reveal significant secrets. The journey is not that enjoyable.

Friday Night Lights

I’m not a football watcher, really. The Super Bowl, that’s it. And I didn’t see the film Friday Night Lights. But the new TV show version, well, my plan not to watch everything this year seems to have fallen through. It’s all been watched or at least recorded. Well, except the new sitcom The Game, I think I missed its premiere. But I digress.

Anyway, it was one of th shows with the best reviewer buzz, and I can certainly see why. It drips production value and verisimilitude. Set in a Texas town that hangs entirely on the high school football team, it’s a shot of a culture that is different from what I’ve lived. Not a culture that I as a non-sports fan would choose (or fully respect, to be honet, with the pressure that it puts on the kids on the team and the sense of importance granted to something so fleeting), but one which obviously works in its own way.

The events of episode 1 are a bit manipulative, but that sets them up to roll in various directions from there. The key point in the episdoe is the big game, which is tricky enough to pull off in a movie and will be hard to rely on if they do it episode after episode.

But part of me worries that if I watch it too long, it will be a bit likely watching a horror movie. I’ll find myself screaming at the screen the high school football equivalent of “just get out of the house!”, which is “just drop the team and build a life!”

Ah well. I heard ratings were disasterous for the first episode, so I guess I won’t have to worry about it long. I’ll record it, and possibly get around to watching it.

Why grampa's gone to pot

Remember that saying that “those who can remember the ’60s weren’t really there”?

Apparently, that’s exactly backwards.

George Clooney's crafty plan.

CNN.com – Clooney plan: Date many, mess with photogs – Oct 3, 2006

“Here is my theory on debunking photographs in magazines, you know, the paparazzi photographs,” Clooney says in the November issue of Vanity Fair, on newsstands October 10. “I want to spend every single night for three months going out with a different famous actress. You know, Halle Berry one night, Salma Hayek the next, and then walk on the beach holding hands with Leonardo DiCaprio.”

Funny, except fro the DiCaprio part, that’s my plan as well. We’ll see if it works better for him than for me.

I'm a writer

I’m a writer at heart. But I’m not doing that much writing these days. For years, I had the day alone, and would spend hours seeming not to do much, then get rolling in the late morning through mid afternoon, and write for hours. But now, I’m a dad. I can’t let my brain hang loose until it’s cleared for work.
Stephen King has a good piece at washingtonpost.com talking about what writing is like, and while I cannot say that the truths he speaks are universal, I can say that he gets it right for me. He’s hit it for why writing (particularly fiction) is boring on the outside and scary and thrilling on the inside.

(And don’t worry, I’ve not given up writing altogether. Just doing less of it… and working on a graphic novel pitch with a respected artist that would likely let me get some day care for Allison and thus get the writing done if it sells.)

Runaway

There’s a good series about a man on the run, falsely accused of murder and trying to figure out who really did it while fleeing from the law. It’s called The Fugitive, and it was cancelled more than three decades ago.

Runaway, on  the other hand, is about a man on who has dragged his family along on the lam. Actually, it’s more about his two teenage kids dealing with their hormones while on the run, with occassional breaks for flashbacks on how dad was framed. It’s a respectable cast… or at least cast that has been on respectable shows… but it comes across as yet another Big Mystery Storyline that will probably never reach a conclusion. Best not to start it.