MagneticMediaFed

“Sex sells.”
“Says who?”

Mad Men is back with a vengeance and (at least after one episode) hasn’t missed a step. You know you’re watching a great television program when a season gets underway without spelling out exactly what had transpired in the interim. Here, we’re (possibly) years in the future (er, past) and just flung back into these characters lives, having to a do a lot of the between-season leg-work ourselves. The show is so character based, now that we know the players the series’ creators have almost limitless room to explore.

It appears that the chief explorations this season are 1) the notion that Sterling-Cooper is slowly, steadily, becoming obsolete as new, younger, talent starts making waves in the industry and 2) Betty (and by extension Peggy) have a new sense of empowerment.

Brilliant, brilliant stuff.

Well, the nominations are out and The Wire failed to get even the obligatory “final season” nod. Even if it wasn’t their strongest, I still don’t understand how the actors continue to be ignored. Isiah Whitlock Jr’s Clay Davis? C’mon. Simon and Burns did get a writing nod for the finale.

That being said, both Mad Men and Damages were nominated for Best Drama, which is pretty damn cool — especially since this is the first time a basic cable show has been up for said award. The rest of the list you can probably predict. (HBO nominated for a miniseries? Now I’ve heard everything!)

Full list can be found here.

NPH: Evil Mastermind… or is he?

The first act of Joss Whedon’s three act web-series “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” has been posted via Hulu and available for download on iTunes. The trailer has been making the rounds for a couple weeks, though aside from glimpses of Neil Patrick Harris and the should-be leading man Nathan Fillion it gave very few clues as to what we could expect.

Having seen the first episode, now, apparently it was all in the title. There’s Dr. Horrible (Harris), he has a blog, and there is singing. Really, it’s the singing that kicks things into high gear (well, that and Fillion’s pompous super-hero character). Harris is, as expected, hilarious. It’s hardly worth mentioning the plot, but it involves super-villainy, laundry and a love triangle.

The next two acts are released on July 15th and July 17th — no need to drag things out, right?

UPDATE: Flood of Fans Crashes Dr. Horrible Website - [Wired]

Glenn Close, Ted Danson, William Hurt, Timothy Olyphant, UPDATE!: Marcia Gay Harden, etc.

The first season of Damages was one of the biggest surprises of last year, helped in large part by the strength of the cast (and the tightness of the mystery). I keep thinking there is no way the second season (which doesn’t get underway until 2009) could possibly be as good, but they keep adding A-listers to the cast making me believe otherwise.

Read the whole story over at Zap2It! (UPDATE!) …And hit up the comments with shows whose cast you feel is superior.

*On television

Almost Famous

With the exception of Venture Brothers there hasn’t been a single thing on television this summer worth mentioning — until, that is, now. Generation Kill, the new miniseries by David Simon and Ed Burns (of The Wire) has yet to show us much of anything we haven’t already seen in the likes of Jarhead (young kids with itchy trigger fingers unable to act), Three Kings (military-civilian relations) or even The Wire (chain-of-command nonsense and the failure of institutions) but we’ve really only scratched the surface of the program’s seven-plus hours. It doesn’t hurt that proceedings are nevertheless incredibly watchable and (dare I say it) actually kind of fun (racism, sexism, and homophobia aside) — though knowing Simon and Burns oeuvre I’m sure they’re setting me up for devastation.

Plus, it looks great as this is the first time their canvas is in high-definition.

It’s a bit early to get too emotionally involved. One of the problems with movies or series like this is that when all of your characters are more or less wearing the exact same thing (and when that thing happens to be several pounds of camo and armor) it can be difficult to grab a hold of individual personalities. Perhaps that is why most of the cast is packed with That One Guys and The Dude From The Things.

Until Mad Men gets underway at the end of the month, Generation Kill is the only show on television that actually feels important.

missy aggravation / some sacred questions

BENTHAM!! Wait. Who?.. Why? (Spoiler-riddled Lost thoughts after the jump…)

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Chances are no one is watching this show. Chances are the damage is already done. When there is the option of watching a group of rich, petty, semi-alcoholic non-actors bounce throughout the “hottest” clubs in southern California or seeing a collection of future Darwin Award winners vie for the love and admiration of a bisexual, anorexic* stripper, it’s probably pretty hard to care much about a collection of wholly average white kids attempting to put out a school paper. And that’s too bad, because MTV’s The Paper is not just solidly entertaining but paints one of the most realistic portraits of suburban high school ambition this side of Tracy Flick.

It’s the type of show MTV should have been making all along. Like the first incarnations of The Real World, The Paper doesn’t seem particularly interested in “producing-up” the action, and instead does what the reality genre was suppose to always be: documentaries with a hyper-kinetic visual style. That being said, this shouldn’t be mistaken for the early 90s alterna-rock-pesimsm from days of yore. The series is Gen-Y to the max, and perhaps that is also what makes it so relentlessly watchable. The tone of the show is super-upbeat, but the characters are just vicious. It’s packed with eye-rolls and secret-laughs and plotting and back-stabbing and ad sales and layout and editorials and sports coverage. I guess in other words, it’s just like a high school.

Check out the show while you can (there are still two episodes left and the first six are available online). Future seasons will suffer from the kids having seen the previous slowly morphing the drama from reality to “Reality.”

*speculative

One year ago I spent the entire upfronts week feverishly clicking my refresh button looking for the latest information on the coming fall television season. What a difference a year makes. After the 100-day writer’s strike left most of the network’s schedules flopping on the dock like a hooked but forgotten flounder, no one (not the advertisers, not the networks, and certainly not the audience) seems particularly thrilled about the network announcements (or lack of announcements) for their future plans. This week is, after all, FOR the advertisers, and since network television is no longer viewed as being all that lucrative those advertising dollars are looking for something more than the typical slate of potential prime-time disasters. Take ABC, for example. The network plans on adding a whopping TWO new programs to its fall prime-time line-up, choosing instead to bring back almost all of it’s fall ‘08 slate (minus, Carpoolers, Cavemen and October Road). But who cares, especially this early in the process? More after the jump…

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Am I the only person who isn’t particularly offended by the news Jimmy Fallon will be taking over Late Night next summer? This isn’t to say I’ll be watching, but as a strategic move in chess game of late night programming, it makes perfect sense. Let us not forget the genre is clearly in its waning years. Really, network television, like newspapers, aren’t a particularly sound investment right now. That being said, the transition from where we are now to where we will eventually be isn’t going to be immediate, and frankly, we probably won’t see it happening. One day we’ll just wake up, go to work, stumble over to the water cooler and say to whomever is standing there, “Hey, did you watch Letterman last night?” To which they will undoubtedly respond, “What’s a letterman?” And then you will realize that they don’t even have televisions at the nursing home and that you haven’t gone to work in 23 years. More after the jump…

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I’m trying to adjust to a new work schedule and so my daily television regiment has been thrown for a loop. (Eight to five? Have to wear a tie? What kind of madness is this?) And since I currently don’t own an actual set and have to wait for content to be loaded online I’ve been at least a day behind on everything. That being said, I wanted to make sure I hit a few points before the weekend:

• Gossip Girl — OMFG. There are cliffhangers, and then there are CLIFFHANGERS. In a way I’m surprised this wasn’t the season finale, but I’m also completely relieved. Since the strike-break, this show has gone from being more or less awesome to unquestionably fantastic.
• Reaper — Speaking of a post-strike resurgence, this show has completely solved its problem with being wildly inconsistent (and sadly predictable) in terms of storytelling and it doesn’t hurt that its also funnier than its ever been.
• Top Chef — Love Stephaine. Love Richard (which is odd since I used to hate Richard… though I still find his hair objectionable on every level. Love Andrew. Like Spike. Like Antonia. Dale? Well Dale is in a gotsa-go situation. I mean Jesus Christ man, RELAX!
• 30 Rock — The Jack in Washington plot line was perhaps the funniest thing that show has ever done. (The rest of the episode wasn’t so bad either.) “It’s not a leak, you can see the report.”

I’ve listened to This American Life on NRP (or PRI, or whatever) here and there since I started obsessing over talk-radio back in the fall of 1999, but it wasn’t until their Showtime program began last spring that I really became a fan. Before that I don’t think I really “got it.” The pacing is such that you really have to give it some time before you get sucked in (not unlike a really great television show) and if the first story doesn’t happen to grab your attention during the dial can be awfully easy. But the series changed all that. Maybe it’s because I was already spending so much time parked in front of the television. Perhaps it was bound to happen. All I know is the storytelling was remarkable, the visual style felt unprecedented in its richness and by the time the six episode had aired I had become a vegetarian (which lasted through the summer).

So when some friends told me about a live This American Life stage show that would be put on in New York City and then broadcast live to movie theaters across the country, I felt that it was something I should certainly attend. I’ll tell you about it after the jump…

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If you head over to Nick.com you can check out a few full-length episodes (about 12 minutes each) of their new Saturday morning cartoon* The Mighty B!. The reason I took note of the series, about an overachieving Honeybee scout attempting to earn every last Bee Badge, is because of the voice talent involved. Amy Poehler voices Bessie, our fearless heroine, and I believe also writes for the series. In “Sweet Sixteenth,” the episode I checked out, Andy Richter was the voice of her brother and the roller-coaster operator was voiced by Brian Posehn. Now, if countless horrid Dreamworks CGI features have taught us anything it is that an all-start cast does not make good animation. However, The Mighty B! succeeds, in my opinion, because the voice talent, specifically Ms. Poehler’s, is so expressive. The character is essentially her Kaitlin role from SNL (”RICK! RICK! RICK!”), already one dimension shy of cartoon.

I have very little else on which to judge the show as my diet of kiddie-cartoons has seriously ebbed since turning *eh-hem* twenty-seven. Though comparing it to the last adult-icon-meets-kids-show I watched, Class of 3000, I’d have to say it surpasses the latter in terms of laughs but falls considerably short when it comes to creativity (both in the subject matter and in the animation style). In storied history of Warner Brothers, Tex Avery and even Goofy there isn’t a whole lot of ground being broken here — perhaps Andre 3000 set the bar a tad high with the lofty goal of having an original song in each episode. As a comic distraction for the kids (or those of us who sometimes still feel like kids) we could probably do a lot worse.

*Apparently there are still Saturday morning cartoons. Who knew?

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?

Last week I said that Stephanie was pick to win this season’s Top Chef, a decision that I’m OK with even though I now realize it should probably be Spike, and not because he seems to have the best assortment of hats. Plus, when you see your pick sitting there on the chopping block you can’t help but feel a little squeamish.

But that is not what I wanted to say this week. No, I wanted to take this particular post to say — for the record — that I HATE Lisa. I hate her stupid eyebrow ring. I hate her Complainy McComplainerson disposition. I hate how dismissive she was of Polish Sausage. I’m sorry, but this is the way I feel.

It should also be noted that I no longer hate Richard because despite his obvious superiority to everyone else in the competition and his desire to often remind us of all of this you have to kind of like a guy who is willing to do a bad Seinfeld impression. Right? Well, maybe. Still, he isn’t as bad as Lisa. She has GOT to go.

Last, I want to let it be known that this week’s episode might be in my top five. It seemed to have everything: twists, turns, deadpan line readings by the Kiwi, more than one team that excelled and teams on the bottom that were equally at fault but for completely different reasons. All that was missing was a Tony Bourdain guest-spot and some general inter-group screaming.

Updated after the jump…

Since Reaper premiered on The CW last fall it’s been on of those series with enough kinetic energy to really become something memorable, but simply without the tools needed to really pull it off. At first it was too formulaic, trying to be an ultra-rigid monster-of-the-week series when its target audience (young people) has begun to demand at least some serialization (something even CSI has acknowledged). By the time the strike rolled around Reaper had found itself in my not-so-important pile, where episodes would sit around on my hard drive or DVR for weeks before I’d get around to watching them.

However, once the show returned in Mid-March it seemed to have found a solution in the form of Ken Marino and Michael Ian Black as two gay, demons living next to Sam and his friends in a lush high-rise apartment. This week’s episode initially seemed to raise the stakes by having the two of them recruit Sam in an effort to overthrow Satan himself. I loved the long-term possibilities of this. I could their plan being carried out over entire seasons. So needless to say I was disappointed when the whole thing appeared to have burnt itself up over the course of one single episode. More after the jump…

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