MagneticMediaFed

Look, I have no idea if Pitchfork Media is still the indie-rock behemoth it once was. Maybe it’s bigger. Either way it is an unmistakable brand and is one of the few sites formed in the 90s that hasn’t either dissolved or been purchased by some major media conglomerate, so love it or hate it, accolades should be given. Monday, the site launched a spin-off called Pitchfork.tv with the stated goal of creating the first television channel to exclusively showcase independent music. On face value it seems like yet another web-video portal of the YouTube age — something akin to Funny Or Die. To my great pleasure, it isn’t anything like that, and in fact works so well because it just may be the first website that actually reproduces a reasonable facsimile of what watching television is actually like.

There is no user-submitter material here, and thank god. If I’m tired of anything in the web-video revolution it’s trolling through piles and piles of crap looking for the one or two gems. Web-video needs programmers, and this site is meticulously programmed. It’s broken down into sections labeled, Featured, Shows, Pitchfork Live, One Week Only and Music Video, each category with a small collections of video clips to be played one after another or on demand (one especially cool feature is that if a video ends the next one in sequence is cued up immediately and played).

As for what those videos are, there is a pretty even collection of repurposed material and exclusive content — right now the feature-length documentary LoudQUIETLoud: A Film About the Pixies is being show in the “One Week Only” category in its entirety.

The big question is where advertisements eventually fit into the equation. Right now there isn’t a single sponsored frame on the site (it’s like in high school when a new FM station used to launch and would be wall-to-wall music for the first week), but one has to imagine this will change — probably sooner than later. I’m guessing it will be a mix of banner ads and video spots though the site is so expertly crafted, I’m hoping they’ve found a way to make their business model just as seamless.

Being an independently-operated shop probably makes all of this a lot easier on their part in terms of rights acquisition and reason enough to suspect it may be some time before more “web TV channels” start popping up, but it is an optimistic sign of things to come.

I’m not usually a South Park watcher, not because I have anything against the show but because it’s one of those programs that is just never really on my radar. Still, every now and then someone says to me, “Hey, try to see last night’s South Park” and I usually will make the effort. This week was one of those times. I’m glad I pulled it up. The title, “Canada On Strike,” kind of sums up the plot: Canada goes on strike in an attempt to get “some of that internet money.” Canada is, of course, a stand-in for the writer’s guild. Over the course of the episode Canada’s initial, simple plan for more cash is thwarted when they realize they don’t really have any leverage — and then their people start starving to death, buddy. The B-Story involves the boys trying to get some money to pay Canada so as to end the reruns of Terrance and Philip. Their plan involves posting a viral video and ultimately squaring off against the Star Wars Kid, Chris Crocker and a sneezing panda.

The episode was seldom LOL-funny, but it was extremely sharp in its satire. South Park has the enviable position of being the one narrative program on television that can actually remain somewhat current because their typical episode production schedule is something like six days. This is in comparison to The Simpsons where an episode takes six months. By the time they get their strike response on the air next October, I’m sure the laughs will be bigger, but the points will be far less piercing.

This would also be a good time to point out that a new website, South Park Zone, offers every single episode of South Park ever produced for free… and legal.

Watch Canada on Strike.

Whomever or whoever? Enjoy this awesome clip from perhaps my favorite episode of The Office ever, “Money,” courtesy of Hulu.

Living in something of a television black-hole with almost obscene amounts of free-time, I’ve frequently found myself over at the NBC/FOX video-joint Hulu, which just went public a few weeks back. As far as sanctioned video is concerned, there might not be a better destination online (though I will also add that the revamped Daily Show website is wholly usable). So far I’ve re-watched the first half of this season’s episodes of The Office, more than a few 30 Rocks, The Jerk, The Three Amigos and (strangely?) Dude, Where’s My Car. The experience, which is where any video-based website lives and dies, is so good I almost want to classify it as “feel-good.” There’s something almost novel about the notion of getting content that for so long has been on the fringes of legality now packaged in a super-slick wrapper sanctioned by all of the powers that be (including our once-short-shrifted writers). More after the jump…

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I just finished part one of Frontline’s two-part documentary series, Bush’s War, about the administrations lead-up to the Iraq war and how it has been fought since. Frankly, I can not wait to get to part two. If you’ve already seen the second half, please don’t spoil it in the comments for everyone else. Suffice to say, I’m betting that all of those guys get sent to prison, or are, at the very least, impeached. There is just no way that they skate on this. Talk about your cliffhangers!

Stunt casting!

Kind of a perfect episode last night on the HIMYM front, no? What worked so well with the Britney stunt-casting was how her roll was so easily replaceable. It worked because she didn’t need to be there and was utterly forgettable. Had things been reversed and she played the Sarah Chalke character it would have been an unmitigated disaster for reasons aside from the fact that she is clearly a horrible actor. Most sitcoms put the guest star front and center. I respect HIMYM for dropping her into the background (to and extent).

But that is not the most interesting thing about Monday’s episode. Clearly the noteworthy addition was the fact that we might have “met the mother.” There were certainly a few clues, the most significant being Stella’s declaration that she “went out on St. Patrick’s Day,” where we, the audience, know the mother happened to be. What is interesting about all of this is the fail-safe the series’ creators have build into the show. As of right now they don’t if they are coming back next season. If Moonves decides to pull the plug in a month or so, all of the groundwork is laid for an easy wrap-up. Now, if things get carried out for another season (or even another two) they are also in great shape because nothing is in stone, it can all just be written off as coincidence.

If you have the time I encourage you to check out Whitney Matheson’s Pop Candy Podcast from two weeks back where she talks with series co-creator Carter Bays about the show’s future and plans on how they hope to reveal “the mother” (with varying degrees of vague response).

EVIL!

Cartoon Network banned the last two episodes of the brilliantly sharp The Boondocks second season because the episodes took square aim at BET. It seems in the current age of mega-media conglomerates what is off-limits is taking shots at the boys club. BET and Cartoon Network are not owned by the same companies (Viacom owns BET and Time Warner owns Cartoon Network) though it is apparent that these companies want absolutely no ill between them, as you never know when one will try to join forces (or buy) the other. (A less speculative report of the story via the Canadian Press.)

It’s our loss, as those two episodes, entitled “The Hunger Strike” and “The Uncle Ruckus Reality Show,” are brutal in their pointedness and hilariously funny. The first episode follows Huey as he stages a hunger strike until BET is taken off the air, its office’s shut down and “all of its top executives commit Japanese ritualistic suicide.” In the second episode BET gives Uncle Ruckus a reality show (Uncle Ruckus being a recurring older, black character who hates black people). The framework for both of these episodes is a super-villain-like boardroom at the BET headquarters where they attempt to execute their master plan: the destruction of all black people.

The episodes did air in Canada, because… well, what the hell do they care? This means they are readily available on the torrent sites (look for episode numbers 214 and 215). Unfortunately for our law-abiding friends, The Boondocks is not readily available for consumption online. Adultswim.com seems to have clips, but not whole episodes and the show isn’t on iTunes. The best we can do is dig through YouTube looking for soon-to-be deleted episodes.

I was able to find the completely unedited opening to “The Hunger Strike” on HipHopDX.com. NSFW (especially if you work for BET)

Uh… daddy issues?

Last November when the WGA strike kicked off, word was that the as-of-that-moment eight completed LOST episodes were going to end on a cliffhanger that — if the strike ended up putting a premature end to the season — would drive the audience crazy. Show-runners Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof suspected that if episode #408 were to air with no follow-up for six to eight months there would be riots, a mass exodus of viewers from the show, the streets would run red with the blood of infidels — you get the idea, people would be pissed.

It turns out they were more or less right. Thursday’s episode, another solid entry into the season 4 canon, ended with not just one possibly-infuriating cliffhangers, but two. Sayid gives up Michael/Kevin Johnson to the Widmore crew, an act that may or may not be the right thing to do depending on whose team on which you think everyone is playing. Then back on the island Ben tells Alex, Rousseau and Carl to head for “the sanctuary” where two of the three ultimately get gunned down. Then the episode ends. Knowing that this will be resolved in a couple week (there are five more episodes slated for this spring) makes this ending OK. If this were it, however, frankly, I’d be rather annoyed. So annoyed, that I probably would have stormed the AMPTP headquarters with a large mallet and wrecked havoc until the strike ended. Luckily for all of us, that will not have to be done.

Otherwise I’m giving the first two acts of season four Lost 4 out of 5 Flaming MagneticMediaFed Television Icons.

LOST returns on April 24th

I don’t have a lot to say about the current season of Top Chef as we’re still in that awkward stage when there are far too many contestants to get attached to any one in particular (unless we’re talking about Andrew, who I see as a *slightly* more profane version of myself, except that he can apparently, y’know, cook), but I absolutely had to use this screen-grab of the preposterously hot Padma Lakshmi.

As for the show itself I do feel like we’re in for a potentially great season as the cast has a hellova lot going for it (and Chicago just strikes me as a better food city than Miami). For starters the producers seem to have cast not just one token asshole, but several. I guess I shouldn’t say “asshole” but instead “super-competitive.” My favorite characters to root against are the ones who get overly into the whole “I’m better than you so get the frak out of my way” game show mentality. Let’s think about this. If the show is essentially a series about picking the head of a new restaurant its really much more about finding someone who you’d actually want to work for than just whoever can cook the best tartare. So yeah, there are a lot of them. As we start burning through contestants I suspect that things will really amp up in the drama department (which I felt was missing from much of last season).

And of course there’s Padma, and the increasingly likelihood of Chef Tom wearing a beret.

The Wire comes to a brilliant conclusion.

Series finales are always cursed with high expectations. Fans of any show luckily enough to meet its natural conclusion can attest to this. Sure, there have been some great ones, but for every Newhart there are dozens of Seinfelds (unless you subscribe to the theory that the Seinfeld conclusions was more of a post-modernist joke, but for the sake of this discussion let’s say it wasn’t). The Wire, the greatest dramatic series in television history, whose finale aired Sunday night, was note perfect from the first frame to the last. More after the jump…

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I wasn’t going to blog anymore until my relocation to Nashville was complete but after rewatching last night’s penultimate episode of The Wire, I’ve got to say something. First and foremost, for a show whose bread and butter is unavoidable despair, I found this episode particularly sad. Well, maybe that isn’t entirely true. One of the times when I almost broke down in tears was a positive reaction to Bubbles’ sobriety. (Honestly, I never thought he’d make it out of this series alive. I’m happy to be proven wrong.) But Michael and Snoop and then Michael and Dukie? That is some bleak, dreadful shit, and so it goes that as Bubbles is freed Dukie is enslaved, now on a trajectory to fill that role.

The rest of the episode — the nuts and bolts that will eventually reveal who the leak is in the DA’s office (Is it Rhonda? Is it the judge who started this whole thing off back at the beginning of season 1?), how McNulty does or doesn’t make it out of this intact, how Levy again skirts the law and how Marlo and co. will inevitably go free — was just as brilliant. Crime writer supreme, George Pelecanos filled the episode with so many hard-boiled detective scenes (Lester and Clay Davis at the bar, Gus and the vet at Walter Reed) the story moved with a breakneck pace and was loaded with dialogue so rich all I could do was think about rolling in it. And of course there was the prison scene where for the first time ever we see why Marlo is Marlo. Terrifying.

One week to go.

NOTE: I just called Comcast in Nashville and found out that I won’t be getting my cable until March 11th. So my series wrap-up won’t be published until at least the 12th. Sorry.

88 MPH

First, a bit of housekeeping: as you may or may not have noticed, I haven’t been blogging much these days. This is almost exclusively due to the fact that I am in the process of moving from New York City to Nashville, Tennessee, and frankly haven’t had time to watch much television (aside from Lost and The Wire), let alone formulate thoughts on said television and then actually type those thoughts out and click “publish.” This pattern of non-activity will likely continue for the next two or three weeks as I get situated in my new city. Feel free to track my progress on my personal site, as I set-up shop.

OK. With that out of the way, how great has Lost been these past five weeks? SPOILERS: It’s been really great. More on the “why” after the jump…

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Picture via Doug Mills/New York Times

First: sorry for the untimeliness in this post, but I’ve been busy working on the site’s redesign which you may or may not have noticed. Moving on.

FOX’s broadcast of Super Bowl XLII (that’s “42″ for those that don’t read Roman) was the second highest rated television program of all time coming in behind the finale for M*A*S*H. The game was seen by an estimated 97.5 million people (M*A*S*H reached 106 million people, though at a time when most people only had access to a handful of channels). I find this to be more or less astounding. Much of what contemporary culture is based on is the notion that there are very few things rallied around by everyone, and the steady decline in network television ratings is perhaps biggest example of this (followed closely by the lack of America’s appetite to consume large quantities of popular music). To see a singular event grab such a large percentage of our collective attention spans speaks highly about the event itself as well as providing a bit of reassurance to the networks that people will turn out en mass if there’s something actually worth checking out. But what is the subtext of these numbers? Do they suggest that the solution to the network’s audience migration problem lies solely in their ability to deliver something worth seeing (because there is a lot of television worth seeing that most audiences could care less about)? Or should we read into this that the magic lies in the very scarcity of the event itself? After all, what are the odds of getting a Super Bowl where the actual game was that good? More after the jump…

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Picture via NYTimes.com

I have to make this super-quick as I have to catch a flight in a few hours and could use a little sleep. Join me after the jump for some parting words for HBO and the BBC’s Extras…

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The daily routine.

And so another mostly successful season comes to a close for America’s favorite (?) serial killer, Dexter Morgan. Good times were had, capture was evaded, blood was spilled, and all with a catchy Latin beat! I’ll slice and dice the details after the jump…

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Pee-Wee’s other playhouse.

So we have Oscar Vibenius played with an odd subtlety by the awesome Paul Reubens as well as that creepy neighbor kid from Mad Men both having hair fetishes. In the series each character gets his dream to come true when the female lead snips off a small lock as a souvenir. All we need is one more character on one more program and I suppose it becomes a trend. C’mon, Hollywood, don’t let us down now. More after the jump…

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