I’m not a big watcher of the network late night talk shows. Years ago, when David Letterman was shifting from being the late-late night guy to being the late night guy, I had a conversation where I expressed some uncertainty of his success in the new time slot. “Some things become funny at 1 AM that weren’t funny at 11:30″ was my logic.
As it turned out, that wasn’t a problem. Mr. Letterman has been quite successful inthat time slot. His old timeslot was filled by Conan, who apparently does a good job of making things funny at 1 AM. And he’s the big executive producer name behind Andy Barker, PI, starring his former sidekick Andy Richter. It’s a textured work, full of intent… and it probably would be funny at 1 AM.
Andy plays (and Andy is) an accountant, a stereotyped account – a mild man who gets what little thrills he gets from accountancy. When he finds himself mistaken for a detective, he gets pulled into a world of noirish adventure. And that’s a reasonable comedy base – The Great Lebowski (a noir adventure built around a bowler instead of a detective) is a prime example of that. But despite the fact that a lot of effort was clearly put into this stylized piece, what you end up seeing is effort. Here’s the video store owner that is all about being a movie expert and passing judgment, rather than being a good businessman. Here’s an business-owning arab who goes overboard in displaying American patriotism. Look, he has a bust of Nixon! No, loooook, it’s funny, we put a lot of effort into coming up with stuff like this.
Could it end up being better than this pilot suggest? Sure. There are some good folks involved in this. But I’m not in a rush to view the rest, despite the fact that the entire first season is already available for legal viewing online.
A.B.CPA
Self-censoring Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated made the paternalistic decision to withhold their swimsuit issue from some of their subscribers. Who?
How about their most organized, most carefully tracking, and best-funded set of subscribers?
Oops.
All of Southern California in a single image
The other day, I was driving up the 101 freeway when I came upon an old school bus that had been repainted with great pictures of animals — see turtles and jungle creatures and other such symbols of the beloved wild. Wording on the bus indicated that it was from commonvision.org, and that it had been converted to run on free recycled vegetable oil. On the roof of the bus were a bunch of bicycles and other supplies for an eco-loving crew.
As I came around it, I saw that the bus was in the midst of passing a white Hummer stretch limousine.
Obvious campaign footage
Fred Dalton Thompson, the actor, is considering a run for the White House. And in these days of online viral video, I wonder how long we’d have to wait until someone put together some rather nasty-looking footage of him. I don’t mean his political statements (although he is someone whose politics don’t concur with mine, if memory serves.) I mean from his acting work – before being part of the Law & Order cast (and before his political career), he often played some dislikable folk – probably most seen as a boss on Roseanne, but his work as white supremacist leader Knox Pooli on Wiseguy should be a video gold mine.
John Inman dies
Gay.com reports the death of John Inman, who played the funny gay Grace Brothers clerk on Are You Being Served?
The character was a flamboyant and friendly fellow at a time when there weren’t many homosexuals regularly on TV (certainly not in the US; I cannot speak with as much conviction on the British scene.) And it’s easy to see his take as being mere conforming to (and thus reinforcing of) a stereotype.
It seems to me that whenever you have a group that has not been portrayed in the media before, you end up with one of two types of portrayal — either thoroughly stereotyped, or so noble and bland that they cannot be recognized as a member of the group. The first is a cheap shortcut, the latter places respectability above both entertainment and realism. Neither is ultimately good for the culture… but they are necessary steps to go through before creators are free to create (and viewers are able to understand) members of the group as diverse and the individual characters as nuanced. At the very least, one character isn’t supposed to represent the group as a whole; Will Truman’s existence makes Jack McFarland permissible.
And one of the nice things is that once we’ve passed through the phase, we can watch the early work differently. When we can see Inman’s Mr. Humphries as a gay character from the fluffier/effeminate end of the spectrum, and not as the gay character, then we may feel more comfortable laughing.
And laugh we shall… because no matter what else one might say, no matter how much one might feel that it’s not sufficiently redemptive, Inman could be damn funny in the role.
The Winner: Fox places a show about a loser
Fox may have erred in running two episodes of The Winner last night. This new show stars Rob Corddry as a loser man-child still living “at home” in his thirties (has anyone noticed the tendency of The Daily Show alumni to play losers? I think the ability to project confidence in contrast with what one is saying plays to that. I forsee Samantha Bee starring in Bee Minus any day now). Inspired by the return of an adolescent love interest to the neighborhood, he strives to improve his standing in life in the most incompetent of ways (while a purposely Wonder Years-like voiceover tells us that this he becomes a millionaire in the decade-and-change since the show’s 1994 setting.)
When I saw this announced, I didn’t have much hope for it; it was touted as being by Seth McFarland, whose previous efforts (The Family Guy, American Dad) leave me cold. And indeed, the show has a lot of weak points; only two of the characters show any richness, the others are all either defined solely in their terms of impact on the main character (coddling mom, disapproving dad, desirable object of affection) or through some other form of flatness (the video store manager – he’s gay!) They’re willing to throw in humor that doesn’t build or even reflect the character, because they have something that shorn of context might be funny, and that keeps the viewer from getting involved. There are a lot of signs of basic crappy Fox sitcomness (which should not be considered a description of all Fox sitcoms; “low trash” is a subcategory thereof, but that hardly describes The Simpsons or Arrested Development.)
But what works in the pilot is the relationship between our manchild and the geeky adolescent son of the woman he’s chasing after. The two give each other support and life lessons as they try to grow up. It has some charm that forces its way through the crammed attempts at comedy.
Sadly, by airing the second episode as well last night, they quickly demonstrated that they didn’t have a strong handle on what worked and what didn’t in the pilot. The weak points were more in evidence, the strong ones less so. There is some meat to build things on here (and Corddry has some natural charm even though he seems to have problem building an intensity through the show rather than going moment-to-moment), so I’ll be trying at least one more week of the show’s three-weeks-of-two-episodes schedule.
Curious Frank
Allison’s been grooving on Curious George lately — not so much the books (which are bizarre on some level, but charmingly illustrated), but on the animated PBS series currently running. Heck, I’ve been grooving on it a bit myself.
So we were both amused to find, courtesy of Mark Evanier’s blog, this video of actor Frank Welker providing George’s voice. A man clearly doing what he does well, and enjoying it.
Are you smarter than a Fox TV executive?
If you would have turned down a game show in which adults had to prove they could answer non-trivial questions that fifth graders can answer, then no, you’re not as smart as they are.
This show is charming. Asking questions taken from school textbooks, it serves on one level to remind us all of how things of genuine interest or usefulness can slip from our minds. It is done in a way that never humiliates the team of kids involved (it is never a goal to beat the kids) and faces the losses of the adults with a wry sense of humor.
I’m not saying that I want to watch this every episode forever, but I enjoyed the two episodes I’ve already seen. (But then, so far I’m proving myself consistently as smart as a fifth grader!)
And it’s a case where they don’t have to feel guilty for chosing fairly average people for a quiz program. (It does have the slow pacing of the modern prime-time game show; Jeopardy goes through more questions in 3 minutes than these guys use in 30, I estimate.)
MyUnplannedTV
MyNetworkTV is dumping all scripted programs, and thus not likely to get another look from me (not that they were aiming for me anyway.) But I would really be curious how their work does on the aftermarket. With the DVD growth, will there be ever more a market for the complete tale (as cheesy as theirs were)? Will miniseries that have the advantage of still being recent in memory be a business for the future?
