MagneticMediaFed

“You weasel!”

Oh television, we barely knew you. Once a bastion of entertainments both important and trivial, this year you were reduced to rubble after the writer’s strike sucked out your very essence — original, scripted programming. And now, you’re dead. But! Could there be a resurrection? Perhaps. It appears the strike could be coming to a close. I fear it is too late. After the jump, please enjoy MagneticMediaFed’s first foray into this whole “web video” sensation everyone has been talking about, as we throw a funeral for television…

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Clark Johnson as Gus Haynes and Michael K. Williams as Omar Little

For those playing the home game, allow me to pass along the following:

• Tuesday Terry Gross interviewed Clark Johnson on Fresh Air. Mr. Johnson plays city editor Gus Haynes of the Baltimore Sun this season. He also directed the pilot episode and will direct the finale in a few weeks.
• This was followed Wednesday by her interview with Michaek K. Williams who plays the exponentially awesome Omar Little.
• A couple weeks ago HBO put out The Wire: All the Pieces Matter, a collection of music from the series as well as Beyond Hamsterdam: Baltimore Tracks From The Wire, a stripped down disc that focuses exclusively on the hip-hop that has come out of the city. The cool kids seem to think the two are a mostly worthy effort.

Yesterday afternoon I enjoyed my day off by watching the fourth episode of The Wire season five on HBO On-Demand. As I was sitting in my living room watching it there seemed to this perfect storm of politics swirling around me as the episode played out. I was home from work for the MLK holiday, which obviously has its own political implications, especially as I enjoyed the comfort of my gentrified New York neighborhood watching a series ostensibly about the progress (or lack thereof) of the African American community in our country’s cities. The best parts of the episode (and I might argue the best parts of the this season as a whole) dealt with the complex maneuvering of political capital by Baltimore’s fictional mayor in order to further his own political ambitions. While watching this and thinking about why I was staying home form work I couldn’t help but also think about the current presidential race that is now going full bore and the disconnect between what I was currently seeing on screen and what the candidates have been screaming about on the stump. More (with very minor spoilers) after the jump…

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Just when you thought the writer’s strike had sucked out the very last drop of interesting scripted television this year, AMC goes ahead and delivers to us Breaking Bad, a new hour-long drama starring Malcolm in the Middle’s Bryan Cranston as a science teacher who starts cooking meth to supliment his income. The network, which was previously known for categorizing “Cat Woman” as an American Movie Classic, now has a lot to live up to after delivering Mad Men to us last summer — one of the best new shows of the decade.

Frankly I don’t know what to expect from Breaking Bad (foolishly, I missed my opportunity to catch a press-preview of the episode earlier this week), but I have to say I’m optimistic. Cranston was great recently in guest spots on How I Met Your Mother and I look forward to seeing him do drama. I’m also hoping the show proves to be a more down-to-earth, less self-destructive version of Weeds. We’ll find out on Sunday.

Breaking Bad starts this Sunday (January 20th) at 10:00pm EST on AMC.

Image via apple.com

Right now we’re mid-cycle when it comes to new and exciting technology. At the Consumer Electronics Show that wrapped up last week in Las Vegas the “sweeping technological innovation” seemed to be ridiculously thin televisions, a product whose actual benefits can be measured with a six-inch plastic ruler. Even my beloved Apple couldn’t find a way to properly dazzle us Tuesday at this year’s Macworld Expo. What was the big product? A thin laptop. Are we really this short on space? (Those who have seen my bedroom… ladies… probably shouldn’t answer.)

Having a couple days to mull it over, I’ve started to realize that the gem of Macworld was not the MacBook Air, but instead the companies revamped Apple TV — a product that still isn’t quite ready for prime time but does give us a very realistic look at how the television experience could change (soon). More after the jump…

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TBS’s 10 Items or Less premiered on the network for five episodes back in December of 2006. The series, which focuses on the employees and perhaps not-too-competent manager of a family-owned grocery store, was co-created by and stars John Lehr. Lehr first showed up on my radar back in the mid-nineties as characters in those first three Noah Baumbach films (Kicking and Screaming, Mr. Jealousy, Highball), and would always be one of those actors who would appear in a series causing me to point at the screen and say, “Oh, hey!” (He played Christina Applegate’s brother on Jesse, hosted ABC’s reality show I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here, and has appeared on Friends and Once & Again amongst others). With 10 Items or Less, which returns to TBS for a second season on Tuesday January 15th, Lehr seems to have found the perfect project to play off of his rather extensive background in improvisation. Last week Lehr took some time to talk with MagneticMediaFed about the show’s second season, why he prefers improv to scripted dialogue and the type of audience he hopes his show will reach. Read the full interview after the jump…

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A spherical head

I suppose this is something of a holdover from Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, but I’ve been thinking about it since the AP called the race for Hillary Clinton. Let me set the scene: My roommate and I are watching MSNBC’s coverage because we’re both hopelessly addicted/in love to/with Tim Russert and I find Keith Olberman fine enough. We’re kind of doing that thing where we’re half watching the slowly creeping numbers of their various on-screen graphics and half making fun of everything on screen despite the fact that not-so-deep-down we clearly love all of this and don’t want it to end. Then the AP calls the race for Hillary Clinton and the night is ostensibly over. But instead of flipping off the television I flip back over to CNN to see what Wolf “They’re so black” Blitzer has to say about things. What they had to say was that CNN “was not prepared to call the race for Mrs. Clinton.” GAME ON! More after the jump…

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Pencils down?

Last night I was watching the return of both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on Comedy Central. Both shows came back without their writers despite desperately trying to make their own deal with the union, and one could tell… kinda. Your typical episode of either of those programs is highly written. Last night it felt like the shows were half-written. The hosts were clearly out there trying to make something out of nothing, but at the same time, there were plenty of well-timed jokes and video pieces and by damn if it didn’t seem like there was at least some sort of script they were going by. Frankly, I found the whole thing very confusing. Was there writing taking place? Is this aloud? Doesn’t even a little writing kind of hurt the writer’s cause? The rules seems so complex. Originally I was thinking these late-night shows were really going to crack this thing wide open and make the AMPTP go back to the table. They would expose the hideousness and hypocrisy of the network stooges, but instead Jay is doing the same show he’s always done, Letterman has the artillery but isn’t turning the screws and now Stewart and Colbert are producing a half-wattage show that appears to neither sting the opposition nor illustrate a world where they simply can’t survive without their writing staff. It’s incredibly frustrating.

Is it wrong to think the shows that were forced back on the air without their writers should be taking a dive — that the hosts should be intentionally tanking to force everyone back to the bargaining table? Oh, I should say here that I am not a professional labor negotiator.

Please enjoy my thoroughly greased biceps!

If you were wondering how many minutes of NBC’s revamped American Gladiators you would have to watch before your overall sense of nostalgia would be dwarfed by your overall sense of shame, well the answer is three. Yes, in three short minutes dreams of Nitro and “The Gauntlet” where murdered at the hands of ridiculous scripted dialogue, cheesy back stories and a James Hatfield circa Ride the Lightening-esque character named Wolf who actually howls when addressed. Most troubling, however, is not the awfulness that is American Gladiators (that was something I’m sure we all could have deduced on our own), but the continued repackaging and marketing of our youth. More after the jump…

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HBO is going to be posting new episodes of The Wire on HBO On-Demand a week before they air. Because of this, and because “seeing them early” doesn’t really mean “seeing them fast” I have watched the season five premiere three (3!) times over the past week. Some would say this may be excessive. Those people are idiots. More after the jump…

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The line for Wednesday’s show, the first in eight weeks.

These are dark times for fans of television. The writers are in the middle of a seemingly endless strike that has effectively wiped original scripted programming from the networks (both broadcast and cable) for the foreseeable future. While there are some new series in the can, only a few have any significant buzz behind them (like, say, half a season of Lost). Two and a half days into 2008 and there are only two television events that I was genuinely excited about. The first is the fifth (and final) season premiere of The Wire this Sunday (an episode which I’ve actually already seen on HBO On-Demand). The second, and dare I say the more culturally significant of the two (at least when it comes to ‘the now’), was Wednesday’s return of the late night talk shows, specifically The Late Show with David Letterman. More after the jump…

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USA Today recently named Britney Spears as “Celebrity of the Year.” If you were unsure up to this point just how awful 2007 was, this should be the last piece of evidence needed. How this decision was reached seems dubious at best and probably should be avoided at all costs. Whatever the methodology, the result is sadly spot-on, and goes to great lengths to not only summarize 2007 but the entire decade.

To really understand why 2007 was the way that it was, and why it is the year that best represents the aughts, we need to revisit the previous decade, some would say the better decade: the nineties. More specifically, we should take the Way-Back Machine to see where our “Celebrity of the Year” was so that we can better understand where she is now and by extension where we are now. If we focus primarily on mass culture, Britney Spear completely embodies what we often think of as being “the nineties” (or at least late-nineties) despite the fact that she didn’t really explode in the music industry until 1999. Because of this we have to acknowledge that cultural eras aren’t particularly concerned with the Gregorian calendar. Need proof, look at that photo of you from 1991. Those tight-rolled jeans and neon bracelets scream 80s far more than grungy 90s. More after the jump…

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