MagneticMediaFed

So funny.

Look, I have nothing profound to say about Thursday’s episode of The Office aside from the fact that I think it is safe to say at this point that Mindy Kaling writes the best laugh-out-loud (that’s LOL for the kids) episodes of their whole staff. Here are things that I loved from “Night Out”:

• Ryan on drugs with his “half-beard”
• Jim screwing things up
• Pam throwing a football in Meridith’s face
• Dwight’s ability to attract hot women and then reject them
• Michael’s explanation of what to do if a friend tells you he has a drug problem, and then saying “I’ve been watching The Wire. I don’t understand a word of it!”
• The poor security guard
• AND PERHAPS the single funniest thing I have seen in 2008: Toby saying that he is going to move to Costa Rica and that he is now going to leave and jump the fence, followed by him running out the door and jumping the fence. This made me laugh so hard I had to pause the video — God, I hope he doesn’t really leave the show.
• And the little guy… I’m sorry, I feel bad… but seriously, goofiest looking guy ever? Perhaps.
• This isn’t a funny thing per se, but since I’m from Omaha I enjoyed that the club in New York was playing “Worked Up So Sexual” by The Faint.

What did I forget?

See, this is what I’m talking about! Tonight’s 30 Rock was hilarious, as it always is, and even featured the real-life mayor of the great city of New York Michael R. Bloomberg but seriously, what the hell was Tim Conway doing there? His story had absolutely nothing to do with anything! Why even have it? Blarg, indeed!

Um. That was excruciating. I almost had to turn it off. But does that make it good? Thoughts? I’m kind of at a loss.

Really?

30 Rock might be the smartest and funniest comedy currently on television. It’s certainly in the top three. That being said, can we really heap upon it praise after praise when it consistently delivers the most uninspired B-stories this side of Full House. For as sharp as this show’s writing can be, I simply don’t understand why every episode tends to have a secondary arc (usually involving Pete) rife with cliché. I mean, really? Pete get’s his hand stuck in a vending machine?

This has made me realize that 30 Rock is perhaps too tight for its own good. Take away these completely idiotic and disjointed B-stories and do you know what you’re left with? A fifteen minute show. They might as well cut it down and just put it on after Aqua Teen on Adult Swim (making it without a doubt the most expensive 15 minutes on television).

Though perhaps the lameness of these stories is the joke. Maybe they’re a parody of the type of sitcom fare that usually gets an audience to respond. That has to be the case, right? A show this funny wouldn’t produce material so tepid otherwise, right?

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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I love making end of the year top ten lists. Sometimes I think it’s the only reason I put up with the fifty weeks of mediocre nonsense (but then I take my antidepressants and go back to playing with that shiny piece of foil). The problem with having television as your medium of choice is that the television schedule doesn’t fit nicely into the Gregorian calendar. Typical seasons on the networks run from September to May, while cable tends to stick closer to the actual climatological patterns of the earth. It’s easy to say that first season Friday Night Lights was the best thing of 2007 except for the fact that half of the season landed squarely in 2006. MagneticMediaFed has figured out the solution to all of this: EPISODES. Episodes are what make television TELEVISION. A good episode keeps you glued to the screen for the full hour (or half hour), it tells a complete story while adding significantly to the series as a whole, it shows you something you didn’t think you’d see or makes you laugh in ways you didn’t think were possible.

I’ve spent a good chunk of the past couple weeks culling over the MMF-archives reminding myself of those episodes that I thought really stuck out. I watch a lot of television, though I don’t purport to watch all television (anyone who does should be shunned and bathed — not necessarily in that order). Because of this, my list only includes the shows that I regularly watch and is missing some obvious gems that I simply don’t know/care about (i.e. Battlestar Galactica, A Shot At Love with Tila Tequila). Still, I think most of the bases are covered. If there was a fantastic episode you remember from this past calendar year, please let us know in the comments. The full list, available right after the jump…

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I’ve gotta say, it’s a hell of a relief to know that Friday Night Lights will be off the air for a good month or so. It’s going to need the time to let the bad taste from these past nine episodes dissipate from our collective mouth. Still, I gotta say as far as a “let’s do everything in our power to wipe the slate clean” sort of episode, there was some good stuff in there. There was some god-awful stuff as well, but it certainly wasn’t the soul-crushing hour I was expecting (part of the reason I put off watching it as long as I did). More after the jump…

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I’m sorry, what show is this?

This show – this once amazing, realistic, funny, sad, visceral, captivating show – has turned into a complete and utter disaster. Believe me, it hurts to say it, but it’s true. More after the jump…

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One-Armed Mermaid That’s Part Unicorn with Bigfoot

Woah, a new episode of 30 Rock! Who knew? Being fairly preoccupied this month I had just assumed that the show ran out of new episodes when The Office dried up the week after the strike started. Needless to say it was a pip to see a fresh episode waiting for me on the DVR Thursday night. That the episode also happened to be laugh-out-loud funny was an added bonus. Funny aside, I did have some problems with the episode which I will detail after the jump…

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Mmmmmmmmm…

My apologies for missing my last post. I’ve been incredibly pre-occupied with the holiday and some other things as of late. The Heroes episode from over a week ago probably ranked as the best of the season, even though that isn’t saying too much. The stories were focused, the acting was great for the most part, the plot moved ahead, and the dialogue was actually pretty good, instead of the usual cliché-ridden stuff they’ve thrown out this year. What made it stand above all the rest though was that it actually had a deeper theme running through it, how the actions of the parents affect the lives of their children. The comparisons and contrasts between the relationships of Noah/Claire and Bob/Elle were the strongest points of the episode. Parkman starting down the dark road to becoming like his dad and Hiro’s story with his father also played on this theme and had something to say about it, without having to unnaturally go into philosophical debate like the scene earlier this year with Noah and Claire at the office supply store. There was finally some real emotional and dramatic build-up and payoff with the characters, and even though you could probably guess where the whole thing was going, it was very easy to actually get wrapped up in it. 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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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.

What’s in the box?

We are so close. Every week the show has improved on the previous episode, inching ever so slowly to its former greatness, but it just isn’t there yet. There were far more problems with this season besides the god-awful murder plotline and most of them have been course-corrected except for that damn murder. Why, Landry? Why couldn’t you have just gone to the cops? I mean, it only makes sense, right? More after the jump…

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“I fashioned my hat back into my pants.”

Steve Carell gets Michael Scott. I mean, really understands the man. Since he also happens to play Michael Scott it is expected that his level of understanding should, in fact, be a tad deeper than most, so perhaps I shouldn’t be as surprised as I am by how well he writes Michael Scott. Carell, who penned Thursday’s episode, captures like few can the duality of Michael Scott’s idiocy and humanity — how the character can be so overcome with jealousy he (pardon the expression) can’t see the forest for the trees, and yet can snap back to reality at a moments notice. More after the jump…

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