MagneticMediaFed

Don’t buy it, but love it.

Yesterday afternoon, while watching the second season premiere of The Riches I began to think about the general improbability of the action on the show — how the set-up is so inherently ridiculous I’m astonished that they’ve already gotten an entire season under their belts and can hardly fathom the creators putting out at least another half-dozen this spring. I mean, how have these characters not been caught yet? But the thing is, the show works. I mean really works, like way better than a lot of those series that actually have believable plot lines. I started to think about which method makes for a better television experience. The short answer is its all about execution. The longer answer is 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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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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For the nine people that care (eight besides myself), Damages has been extended for TWO (2!) more seasons. I haven’t the slightest idea how they’ll keep up the good thing they had going this past summer or if the show can possibly succeed without Danson (assuming he doesn’t come back… hopefully he will) but its welcome news nonetheless. If anything it’s an excuse for everyone to catch up when the DVD comes out in a couple months. It’ll be well worth your time.

READ

This show is crazy. Crazy good. Well, at least crazy good-ish. While this is only the second episode I’ve ever seen, I’m immediately drawn to the relationship at the core of the series, that of the strangely hostile give and take between McNamara and Troy. For two best friends they seem endlessly ready to destroy the life of the other, and yet right there under the surface is the whiff of homoeroticism. They’re first in love with themselves, then in love with each other. Everything else, I suppose, is icing. More after the jump…

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What are you doing to her Lady Cha-Cha?

I had never seen an episode of Nip/Tuck until I watched Tuesday’s fifth season premiere. The series has gone under a bit of an overhaul, relocating the two star doctors McNamara and Troy from Miami to Los Angeles. It was a move that made perfect sense as setting a series about superficiality in Los Angeles is a peanut-butter/chocolate type of relationship. It also provided an especially easy jump-on point for someone who has always wanted to watch the show but not enough to catch up on previous season’s worth of episodes. Based on that episode, it looks like I’ll be watching Nip/Tuck in the weeks to come. The series is dark, funny, well acted, competently written and (this season) features Oliver Platt and Bradley Cooper, whose roles in this first episode were blisteringly funny. More after the jump…

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It’s been a month since new shows started popping up and my god has it been a rough ride. I was able to keep for the better part of two weeks, but lately I’ve had to throw my hands up and declare that once again, the television has won. Part of the problem, for me at least, is this fall seems to have more decent shows than season’s past. There are always one or two really good new programs, but typically the rest of it is just dreck. This year there have only been a small handful of shows I would consider abdominal, but with an unusually large amount resting somewhere in the middle. But how does one justify sticking with a series that is at its very best just OK. I think now would be as good a time as any to look at where we are and decide how to move forward.

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Sunday marked the season finale of Deadwood. It also happened to be the series finale, kind of. David Milch, the show’s creator desperately wanted a fourth season to finish telling his story, but HBO balked. They said he could only have six episodes. In what initially seems like a completely backwards decision, they reached a compromise where the show would instead come back as two, two-hour movies for the network. If you do the math you’re left thinking, “Wait a minute. That’s four hours instead of a promised six? WTF, Mr. Milch?” I thought the same thing, but in an interview with Brian Cox on NPR’s FreshAir Mr. Cox made the point that a “movie” would actually allow Mr. Milch to work outside of the perameters he had already constructed. There’s more by clicking below…

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• Real Sports on HBO did a great piece on Dick Ebersol, television-sports-producer extraordinaire, which went over not only his tenure at NBC and their recent aquisition of the NFL, but also on the tragic plane crash the claimed the life of his son. It’s a really well put together piece.
• The end of last night’s Rescue Me, the next-to-last episode of the season, should have been way more obvious to me than it was at the time. Basically, the episode was curiously hillarious. Lots of laughs. Lots of people not experiencing horrible tragic circumstances ALL THE TIME. And then it suckerpunches you right in the jaw– not unlike the same episode last season. If you watch the show, leave a comment and let me know what you thought.
• DON’T FORGET! THE DEADLINE TO JOIN THE FALL FANTASY TELEVISION LEAGUE IS THIS FRIDAY. THERE ARE REALLY GOOD FRIENDS OF MINE WHO REALLY LIKE TELEVISION WHO HAVE NOT SIGNED UP. I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

When 30 Days premiered on FX last summer, I tuned in and loved it. And yet for some reason, I only watched three of the series six episodes. This wasn’t because it became worse over time (if anything, the opposite was true), but more due to the fact that the show aired its “hook” episode right off the bat leaving the casual viewer little reason to remember to tune back in– which is exactly what happened, I just forgot to tune in. Morgan Spurlock, creator of the series (based not so far from his highly entertaining documentary Super Size Me) takes part in one of the episodes each season. Last year he and his girlfriend lived on minimum wage, this season he goes to prison. The big difference (aside from the possible anal rape) is that his episode is airing last this season. This slight programming adjustment has no impact on how good or bad this series is, but it does do a better job of holding the viewers– especially since the other five episodes may not be as entertaining as Spurlock’s but they’re certainly more important socially. But wait, there’s more (click below)…

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Maybe its because I watched it at 4:30 in the morning after having walked four miles, inexplicably, following a midnight showing of Pirates of the Caribbean (wayyyy too long), but the two epsides* of IASIP that aired last night on FX (”Denis and Dee Go On Welfare” and “Mac Bangs Denis’ Mom”) were easily the funniest things I’d seen anywhere in months. And not just “funny” but “twisted funny.” Especially the second episode. Its ending, which could rival that of the best Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes produced, wasn’t just hilarious, but surprisingly unsettling. As the action was finally shaping up for a character to get “a win” the rug wasn’t just pulled from under his feet, but he was rolled in it and beaten with clubs (metaphorically, of course). There can’t be wins in this show, however, as these characters are pure evil. But god damn if it isn’t funny.

*FX has been airing 2 episodes back to back these first two weeks.  I hope this doesn’t continue as the run will be over in a month if it does.  Though it does raise an interesting question about what’s better: getting a show all at once and then watching at your own convenience or getting it in installments.