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Mmmmmm… pie.

Now, there is nothing funny intrinsically funny about eating disorders, but the sight of Blair grabbing that enormous apple pie was hilarious. That she did so after being more or less dared by her mother makes everything that much more ridiculous and by extension awesome. I hate to be crass but there is an unmistakable comedic brilliance in anyone holding a giant pie with a pouty face. The following binge/montage (including the knowing-look from the kind Russian maid) was so over-the-top it was hard not to smile at this poor girl’s struggle. More after the jump…

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Pic via MTV.com

Remember back when The Hills was just a whimsical digression? Somewhere along the way things got murky. They seemed to be trying a lot harder. It probably had a lot to do with the fact that the series has turned into two completely different shows, “Engaged and Enraged with Heidi and Spencer” and “The Fabulously Boring Life of Lauren Conrad.” Attempts were made for inner-series crossovers, but those never work out. Now we’re left with a product that isn’t even attempting to keep up the guise of “reality” and because of this we start noticing things like “acting ability” or “dialogue” and like Mayor Royce after attempting to put a positive spin on legalized drugs, I’ve found myself taking a step back, throwing my hands up and saying, “What was I thinking?” More after the jump…

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Up against the wall.

Before reaching the rather awesome, rather “yikes, how the hell does he get out of this one” conclusion to last night’s episode I was thinking to myself about the series’ strengths. One thing this show does so well is making Dexter’s escape from justice more about the particular situation, not about the actual ins and outs of the police work (or luck) that keep him from capture. More on what I mean after the jump…

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Apparently a “nimrod” is a hunter. I always just thought a “nimrod” was an idiot. Shows how much I know.

Tonight on the Sundance Channel a new eight-part documentary series is premiering entitled Nimrod Nation (9:00pm with a second episode at 9:30). Produced by Brett Morgan (”The Kid Stays In the Picture”) the series follows the small, rural town of Watersmeet, Michigan, as the locals root on their beloved high school basketball team, the Nimrods. Riding the Friday Night Lights train of sympathetic small town life and allegiances, Nimrod Nation trades in pads and helmets for hard courts and the round ball, and substitutes the Texas heat for Upper Peninsula cold and snow. The personalities interestingly enough, are much the same, though only in the way all of us, wherever we may live, work and have fun are technically the same. More after the jump…

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What ever happens, don’t stare directly at the fashion icon.

Here are some brief and belated thoughts on last Wednesday’s Project Runway, strategically marinated like many a Thanksgiving turkey. The big news was that the celebrity judge, billed as a “fashion icon” was none other than Ms. Carrie Bradshaw herself, Sarah Jessica Parker. Initially I thought this was an ironic choice, meant as something of a wink or nudge to those of us raised on television and well aware that she was most often seen on Sex and the City wearing what one could only really describe as various degrees of Swan Lake. It turns out this wasn’t the case as her first appearance though the doors at Parson’s elicited what felt like hours of praise gushed out by the contestants. More after the jump…

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It’s Thanksgiving (at least it was an hour and twenty minutes ago) and I’ve been wracking my brain all day about something I could be thankful for this fall in the television universe. The fact of the matter is there’s nothing there, so I was just going to forgo it.

Then I got off work (yeah, I had to work… blarg!) and went over to a friend’s place to drink pumpkin ale. While we surfed the channel guide looking for something to watch we ended up on HBO On-Demand (a place a lot of us end up when we are confused and in need of comfort) and as most voyages to this, the queen-bee of the instant-access universe, end we settled on watching The Wire — season three to be specific.

I’m going to keep this short: The Wire season three is THE SINGLE GREATEST SEASON OF TELEVISION EVER. We watched three episodes, each better than the previous. As I watched I tried to figure why this show was so much better than everything else. My conclusion was in the obvious stuff (the characters are brilliantly written and fun to watch, the arcs are subtle but important and long-running, the plotting is brilliant and plays better with each viewing), but also in the fact that each season of The Wire, while all set within the same universe, is completely different from the previous season. A character that may have been a supporting role in season two might be the primary focus of season four. Great dramas on the networks, like Friday Night Lights, have had brilliant first seasons but then had no where left to go. The Wire is one of the few shows ever that has realized there can be dramatic success built around original plot, not simply character and repetition. Less than two months left until season five!

Two great scenes from season three:
A forty degree day
The brown paper bag

My name is William and I make people uneasy in my presence.

There were two priceless moments in this the penultimate Beauty and the Geek. But before I get to them a brief word on William. What’s interesting about this show is the differences amongst the geeks are as vast as themselves and the beauties. You can be a geek and also a moron. You can be socially well-adjusted and yet have no sense of style or coordination. Because of the way the show is presented we’re led to believe that all of the “geeks” are sympathetic figures who just need a little nudge in the right direction. This is not the case for William, who always looks like he’s on the verge of violent rage. More after the jump…

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What’s more awkward than a first date? How about watching someone else’s first date? This week Whitney, who is quickly becoming my favorite of The Hills clan, went out with Jarett, her personal trainer. Watching their date was kind of like watching a fever dream of every first date went on in the history of modern romance over a span of three minutes. Jarett, who seemed to be trying to hard wouldn’t let her finish a thought before asking a new questions, even dipping into the “What’s you sign… I actually don’t know what that means” back of post-modern date-lines. More after the jump…

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Better to burn out or to fade away?

This thing is killing me. We all knew the writers’ strike was going to be a major inconvenience, but I never suspected it would have the effect it’s currently having on my psyche. Ever since the writers took to the picket line three weeks ago, television has kind of sucked, and not just because my beloved late-night shows immediately went into reruns. Despite the fact that we’ve still been getting new scripted episodes these past few weeks, the strike has, in a way, highlighted just how solidly mediocre this fall has been. The new series, while marked by very few cancellations (honestly, who would have thought Cavemen would still be airing new episodes three weeks into November?), have generated no significant hits (with the exception of Samantha Who?, but it’s hard to say if it is the show that is successful or its Dancing With the Stars lead-in) while our favorite returning series from years past have either been wildly inconsistent (How I Met Your Mother), shockingly awful (Weeds) or just kind of a mess (Friday Night Lights). To top it all off the two series that have been consistantly good and occasionally great in The Office and 30 Rock are the first to run out of episodes. The whole mess can put your average television viewer into something of an existential conundrum: if interesting stories can vanish as quickly as they appear, what’s the point of it all? More after the jump…

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Was once a geek?

Thursday evening I visited my alma mater with some college friends to see old professors, walk around campus a bit, and catch a student performance. Being there, of course, brought back memories, and I spent most of the evening telling stories over pitchers of beer at the local bar. While I had some of the best four years of my life in college, it’s nice not to live in that world everyday. (That’s a lie; I do miss my daily wardrobe of sweatpants, jeans, and hoodies.) But what about the hot doctors of Grey’s Anatomy, I wonder how they spent their undergrad years, or even med school? More after the jump…

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I’m new to Project Runway. For the past five or six years I’ve mostly avoided reality fare based on some high-falutin assumption that the entire genre is dreck and does little outside of taking up a timeslot that could have otherwise gone to scripted show that I would love (but which would ultimately be cancelled). I held out for as long as I could, but let’s be honest, reality isn’t going anywhere (and given the current WGA strike will only get more plentiful in the coming months). Plus, what makes me so damn high and mighty? Thanks to Top Chef I learned that reality can be more than idiots eating testicals for money — those testicals could be braised in a white wine sauce and served with shallots. Project Runway is as awesome as Top Chef but with the personality quotient amped up about 300%. I had only watched the series’ fourth season premiere for seven minutes before someone was crying. Sign me up! More after the jump…

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Wow, that is so embarrassing for you.

Here’s a life lesson for all of us: while Guitar Hero is extremely cool, and girls who play Guitar Hero instantaneously become four times more attractive (that number shoots to eight if it’s a real guitar), and performing admirably on “Free Bird” at the expert setting is certainly cool in and of itself and reason for boasting, and having Guitar Hero set up at a Super Sweet Seventeen party is a nice touch… while all of this is true we should never overlook the fact that no one (NO ONE!) looks cool playing Guitar Hero. It is physically impossible, because no matter how hard you are rocking all anyone sees is some idiot prancing around with a tiny plastic guitar strapped to their stomach, and not even the hotness of Serena van der Woodsen can make us forget this. More after the jump…

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I’m not sure how they manage it, but it seems that Heroes has now built a successful history of having great episodes after really picking up the pace and then setting that progress aside with a flashback/flashforward episode the next week. Last year the story had moved ahead near the end of the season, and they left us on a big cliffhanger, only to keep us waiting on the resolution for two weeks, by setting the next episode five years in the future. Despite how worried I was that this would interrupt the rapid-fire pacing that they had built up over the previous few shows, I was captivated for the entire hour of the “Five Years Gone” episode, and would totally rank it as the best episode of the show, only slightly above “Company Man”. I think it’s safe to say the same thing happened this past week. More after the jump…

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Pic via Flickr

I’m going to forgo the usual episode recaps today as I 1) haven’t actually watched anything from last night and 2) feel like dedicating some space to the WGA strike as tomorrow night will mark the first significant casualty of the work-stoppage. Thursday’s episode of The Office entitle “The Deposition” will be the last new episode we can expect from the show until the strike ends. The Office was one of the first series to close up shop due in large part to the fact that a good chunk of the cast happens to also write for the show.

The Futon Critic has a really handy guide with the amount of episodes each show has left to air before going dark. Most of the networks biggest series will have trouble making it past the first week in December (which, luckily for them, is traditionally dark). We should expect little (if any) scripted programming come 2008.

In the meantime, treat yourself to the endless supply of strike blogs popping up on the internet, the most informative being the guild’s official blog United Hollywood. Here are some others:

Late Show Writers on Strike
Scribe Vibe (Variety)
Show Tracker (LA Times)

One last note: since the major sticking point for this strike is writer’s compensation for ad-supported material posted on the web, I would encourage everyone to avoid using the networks’ video services until a deal is made.

It isn’t, not, funny!

The Hills can be one of the biggest teases on television. Each week we think we’re going to witness the ultimate smack-down and nine times out of ten we’re left wondering how the producers managed to create a show where so little can consistently happen week in and week out and somehow make it suspenseful. Of course every now and then we’re given the claws and hissing and knives-in-backs we have been craving all along — that said emotional explosions rarely live up to the hype is besides the point, but what good is a show about catty twenty-one-year-olds living it up in Hollywood without the occasional throw down? This week our two anti-heroes squared off. More after the jump…

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