Central Village

MTV and MIA

I watch videos on MTV in the morning sometimes. Recently, they've been picking a lesser-known, or "indie" band to feature during the commercial breaks.Live clips, video bits, interviews, etc. This week is apparently MIA week, and they seem to have kicked up the in-between band exposure quite a bit. So far I've been watching for 15 minutes, and it's gone like this: Fergie video -> 20 second MIA spot-> Cribs ad Featuring MIA -> a couple other ads -> 20 second MIA spot -> Daughtry Video -> 20 second MIA spot, and on. It's a lot of MIA, is all! Basically they're running 2 MIA segments for every video played, plus incorporating her into all the Network ads. She's getting far more exposure this week than any of the major mainstream artists that are getting their video played. Weird, huh?

Oh, and Rilo Kiley and Lupe Fiasco are right up there next to the T-Pains and Linkin Parks in the video rotation these days. Just saying...the line between Hype Machine and MTV just isn't all that thick anymore.

Project Runway! (and more Knicks)

First off, back to Marbury. So the Daily News reported a lot of shit the other day on Marbury. And we all ate it up cause it was scandalous and fun. But all of these reports, including the fine, the blackmail threats, the fistfight have a high chance of being a good amount bullshit. The NY Times had an article, on the other hand, about a Coney Island basketball mentor, who suddenly died the other day. There was a Memorial service the night Marbury went AWOL. I'm not saying Steph isn't a bit unhinged, or that he handled this well or that it's the only reason he left, but it should factor into what actually happened. Read it here. Update: Nevermind.

Last night's game was a really tough one. The 3rd Quarter was miserable. Just really depressing. This Clips team, despite their record, he AWFUL. The Knicks aren't that great, and they could and should have blown them out of the water. In contrast to the 3rd, the 4th quarter (which started at like 12:30 AM, so likely most of the local fans missed,) was really impressive. Curry was a beast on the boards, Randolph as well. They were playing GREAT D, stopping almost every possession, forcing turnovers, and seemingly scoring at will. In the end, they just couldn't get it done. A wide open 3 Marbury missed down the stretch, one big basket by the Clips, and a good look by Crawford that didn't fall was the final dif. Obviously, scoring like 3 points, missing 17 straight FGs in the 3rd was the real problem. Gotta blame Isiah for not breaking up that drought somehow, right? Couple more timeouts, fresh legs, something? That was depressing. Anyway...

Earlier watched the Runway Premiere. Thought that challenge was the perfect way to weed out the hacks. That chick who made that busted, half finished dress deserved to go. The crazy chick with the busted train thing has to stick around because she's batshit crazy and the show wouldn't give up on someone like that so easy. The early CV favorite is that Oliver Twist-looking guy Marion, who seemed all bashful and quiet, then busted out this HOT, sleek dark dress that was my fav (note: looked better in motion than it does above.) Nothing against Rami either, tho his dress looked much better on the mannequin than on that...unflattering model.

DoWiSeTrePla

Great, great HIMYMother last night. The best of the new season so far. First off, loved how, since the narrator is talking from the future, his whole tone is that real estate would no longer be such a surefire investment. It was a great, subtle tone...never explained, just stated as future fact. Perfect. Second, Barney was in PURE FORM last night...absolutely at his most awful. The level that he took to duping that poor girl was a new low. Just wow. Then the rest...the explanation of DoWiSeTrePla at the end, Mosby Detective agency, even the whole "what they should have said" bit. Just good TV. Wondering how many more episodes they've got in the can before the strike effects them. I read multi-camera comedies are on a shorter production cycle and will get hit sooner than dramas and shows like the Office, so we will see.

Nothing...Can Compare

I'm quite sure that I'm the only person still watching Chuck, and that's mostly understandable since the show hasn't gone anywhere since episode 3, but take my word for it when I say that there was a perfect OC parody/homage/whathaveyou last night of the scene below. This show has been good for exactly 2 great moments every week and not much else, and this was one of them.

Also, watching this clip again for the first time in years, is Spencer Pratt is trying to be Oliver?

The Office is Terrible

The office is SO BAD. How did they screw this up?? The hour long thing was an awful, awful idea. The last two episodes started ok, then Michael starts acting craaaazy, Dwight tags along, then all the rest fall into stereotypes of themselves. God. I feel like the writers were only paid for 30 minutes of show, and the rest was put together with submissions from an online contest or something.

What made this show so great was the depth of the characters personalities. Michael isn't just an irrational goofball, but he's actually a talented salesman and genuine human being at his core who means well. Jim and Pam are more than just relationship people. Dwight it nuts, but there are limitations to his personality. All the rest of the side characters need to stop being so predictable. The only person really making it work this season is Kelly Kappour, who seems to nail every scene she's in.

So NBC has screwed up Heroes, Friday Night Lights and The Office. So far. What is the explanation for this??

UPDATE: One moment from last night's episode that is still sitting with me. Kevin is getting a "confessional" interview, talking about the quality of the pizza place Michael ordered from by mistake. There was an amusing bit about ordering from the wrong place with the similar name, etc. Ok so far. Then they cut to Kevin, and he is all set up to knock this bit out of the park. Deliver one great one-liner and keep it going. The he says, "(The pizza) Tastes like...a circle of garbage." A circle of garbage?!? What the hell is that?? That's the best you can come up with? There are half a million things funnier than a circle of garbage. That's just lazy writing. FWIW, the episode dropped steeply downhill from there. I'm losing hope it will ever recover.

Focus, Heroes

Just focus. Take a deep breath and relax. This is getting a bit out of control.

Note to NBC, half your mealticket AAA primetime drama is now in subtitles. Think that's a problem? Maybe?

Reel it back in. This is a good show with great promise and great concepts. Don't lose it.

Thanks.

The Friday Night Lights Season 2 Premiere

Thanks to Heart on a Stick's heads up, I've just watched the season premiere of Friday Night Lights. It's streaming on Yahoo right now through the end of the weekend. INTENSE, to say the least. Tho I'm not quite sure if it's going in the right direction. Thoughts after the jump (SPOILERS!!! DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER UNLESS YOU'VE SEEN THE EPISODE!). My thoughts on Gossip Girl can wait for another day... (pic via)

30 Rock and beyond

I started watching the DVDs of 30 rock this morning. After going all the way through the entire series of Saved by the Bell twice, I needed to mix it up a little in the AM. Problem is, at only 21 20-minute episodes, I'm gonna be done with it by the end of the week. You really take for granted what you can do with 2 hours of unobstructed TV watching. So I need a new show. Perferebly something lighthearted and with multiple seasons available on Netflix. Also wanna keep it to 30 minute-or-less episodes. Thoughts? I got excited for a second about watching the complete Charles in Charge series, but they only have Season One on DVD and it's the Penbroke years, which are completely irrelevant. I'm thinking the 4 disk best-of Larry Sanders show maybe? That'd be good for a week or two. Anything else out there? I've already watched Sportsnight all the way through twice. I'm open to suggestions.

Friday Night Lights: Season 1 on DVD today

I need to urge anyone left reading this blog who did not watch Season One of Friday Night Lights last year to pick up the DVD set today. It's only $20 at Amazon for the 5-disc set, and it will not disappoint. In fact, if you don't like it, they'll give you your money back. Seriously! If you're staring down the television barrel of another month of The Two Coreys and CSI re-runs, this is a no-brainier. A few points...

No, it's not really all that much about football. You hear that so much that it's almost become the show's unofficial tag-line, but it's for the most part true. It's about people living in a town where High School Football is the most important thing going. It's an ensemble cast that focuses around the Head Coach's family, but spreads out to the families of several of the players on the team. But yeah...it's really about the families, not the athletes or the cheerleaders. Every character has to make tough decisions to balance their personal life and their football "career". Nobody has it easy. It's all quite gripping.

This is not an easy show to watch! These people, generally, have really tough lives. Like "holy shit how can they deal" lives. Every time someone catches a break, something else goes wrong. One example, a character gets thrust into a more prominent role on the team while balancing a minimum wage job and trying to take care of his senile grandmother by himself cause his Mom left them and his dad is fighting in Iraq. Yikes.

The football scenes are really good. Quite real. There were several times where they shoot a wide shot of a play developing and it looks like an actual game. I was literally on my feet in anticipation for these games, cheering along. I certainly care more about these scripted sequences than I will about this upcoming Giants season. It's almost acceptable practice to make sports laughably bad on TV dramas, and the extent they go to make these games feel perfect is quite remarkable.

Patton Oswalt recently praised the show on Pitchfork, putting it much better than I ever could. Read his comments if you're still not convinced. Everybody who watches this show not only loves it, but feels the need to get everyone else they know to watch it to share the brilliance. It's that kind of good.

The music on the show is really spot on. Aside from the regular Explosions in the Sky soundtrack playing throughout, the song selection is great. Gripping alt-emo-country stuff. The kind of songs you wish these characters would listen to when they're not on camera. Hearing these songs over the summer made me wanna watch the show again so bad. Some examples...

Ryan Adams - Political Scientist (mp3)

Bright Eyes (with Nick Zinner) - Devil Town (mp3)

Brand New - Jesus Christ (mp3)

The Hills is pretty awful this season

The fun of these shows used to be a bit more innocent. Watching attractive, relatively unassuming kids acting rich and spoiled and above their head was kinda cheeky and fun. Now that they're actually the c-list celebrities they once were trying to emulate, it's just kinda sad and boring. Everything seems even more set up than ever. LC even said it herself. She has her Roommate friend (formerly Heidi, now Adi) her home friend (LO) and her "work" friend Whitney. The problem is they're pretty much ditched the whole job angle completely, and "going to work" is really just a device for LC to hang out with Whitney (who seems remarkably tolerable until you realize she was literally an actor hired to be LCs friend in the first season.)

Back when they were on Laguna, believe it or not their lives seemed more real. Most of all, what you were seeing was more or less representative of their actual life. They were real high school students who where all living in the same town and going through the motions of late adolescence. No matter how fixed or rigged everything seemed, at least they were acting to be more interesting versions of themselves. At this point on The Hills, the show is still supposed to be about young people trying to make it in LA, except they're no longer "struggling" to make it. And everyone knows it. But they still play that role. So now, no longer are the conversation and the plot lines rigged and forced, but their entire existence is. Not as much fun.

As usual, the only person who is even remotely representing herself honestly is Heidi, who this season looks like she was dipped in plastic from head to toe and acts oblivious to the entire world. She IS C-list. And she's either too dumb to act otherwise or just doesn't care. Just looking at her makes you shake your head. Disfigured and dyed at 20 years old, going to some party or another every night, clinging to her PURE EVIL boyfriend who she is convinced she has to stay with else her life would fall apart. I can't even get into Spencer right now, who is probably the greatest modern era villain since Voldemort. I predict tho that when this show finally runs its course, he will change we way we perceive humanity as a whole. You know when there are those horror movies where the killer is never caught, so you're supposed to be scared forever that he'll pop up in real life? Well Spencer IS real life. He's out there, just lurking in the shadows at the club, waiting to get your daughter addicted to coke so he can blackmail her into having sex on camera with him. Be afraid.

So the show is pretty hopeless. I'll probably watch here and there, but I'm not going out of my way anymore. Where have you gone, Kristin Cavallari? How can you sit back and let LC get away with this??? I expected more from you.

At least J-Wahl is coming back. That guy...I dunno. I just hope MTV pitches in a bit for his legal fees.