Bored to Death's detective hero had his fair share of hipster noir struggles in the latest episode, "The Gowanus Canal Has Gonorrhea!" After his co-op employee girlfriend dumped him, the mop-topped Jonathan Ames was kidnapped by two criminals in a zip car, and because this was Bored to Death, Jonathan's captors provided witty banter and a shoulder to cry. See how these moments affected this week's Bored to Death Hipster Quotient and remember, this week's unit of measure are hand held marijuana vaporizers.
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God, whatever happened to the good old innocent days of smoking, drinking, philandering and account steamrolling we were once so accustomed to on Mad Men? When did all the sexy beatniks turn into junkies? When did cigarettes become so unfashionable? When did adorable Baby Gene turn into a spoon-banging little creep? When did Don Draper turn into Jerry Maguire? Where did my favorite TV show go?
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The Amazing Race's cast is always a melting pot of my least favorite qualities: aggression, unscrupulousness, and phoniness. But this season, a new characteristic has emerged that makes me just as queasy: a cappella singing. Oh no, lambs. It might be the worst of all. Connor and Jonathan, the Ivy League a cappella singers who've zoomed ahead as the team to beat, are so harmonized (if you will) that you may even wonder how the other teams can keep up. Let's break down their magic together.
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As some of you have learned from Rubicon, judging a series based on its first three episodes is a fools errand. There are few exceptions -- the incubating stages of Mad Men, Lost and 30 Rock come to mind -- but there is no way to completely know what kind of series you've signed up for until you get one of those episodes. For Boardwalk Empire, "Anastasia" was one of those episodes. But was it good enough?
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Last week, Movieline introduced the Eastbound & Down moral compass: the only regular feature on the internet that gauges Kenny Powers' moral direction. When we last consulted the E&DMC, the washed up baseball pitcher was headed straight to a locker room in hell after spending $22,000 of his assistant's savings on magnum condoms and whip-its, making provocative hand gestures under an American flag and doing a few key bumps of coke during baseball practice. Let's see if K F*ckin' P fared better in this week's episode, Chapter 209.
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This is what happens when you let the British Street artist who re-created images from Guantanamo Bay at Disneyland storyboard the intro to your series. Banksy's re-imagining of The Simpsons theme song goes for the throat. It's probably the sharpest, darkest satire the show has featured... maybe ever. It starts out with cute touches and more slapstick humor than usual, but things get serious after the family sits on the couch. In an imaginative nightmare-meets-satire sequence, the provocateur takes direct aim at outsourcing and working conditions for The Simpsons and 20th Century Fox itself. Many are understandably wondering, "How the hell did the network let this air?" Well to quote Homer Simpson, the network is "stupid... like a Fox!"
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This is the kind of Sunday morning that really pisses me off. When Saturday Night Live announces a host that particularly piques my interest, one that I just know is absolutely perfect for the live sketch-comedy format, like Jane Lynch, I can't help but get my hopes up. Then Saturday night actually rolls around and reality sets in: We get a "Gilly" sketch. Christ.
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In this week's "Worst TV Stereotypes of the Week: My Generation Edition," Movieline pays tribute to ABC's most offensive generalizations in its recently canceled mockumentary series before moving onto 30-year-old virgins and self-absorbed homosexuals.
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In a form of playful torture, Heidi Klum made herself the client on this week's Project Runway. Terror! She told the designers to make "active wear" that you can wear on a trampoline, at work, and at a haute couture dinner party with Karl Lagerfeld, Prince Charles, and Versaces you aren't even allowed to know about. Seriously, this challenge was a riddle wrapped in a wrap dress. Let's make fun of everybody involved!
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Christopher Collins, Project Runway's resident nice guy and tanktop connoisseur this season, failed to ignite the judges on last night's episode and was sent home in sixth place. We talked to the 30-year-old San Francisco designer this morning about Heidi's confounding instructions, Nina Garcia's own "execution" issues, and why he "adores" Ivy.
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Jersey Shore treated us to romance and rumbles last night, making Vinny smushy with affection and Snooki sassy with stankface. But how did our guidos and guidettes fare in terms of Fresh-to-Deathness? Join us for the grades after the jump, and note that one of our students has risen -- almost untouchably -- to the top of her class.
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What do you get when you combine a 28-year-old virgin, a joke about Brett Favre and a Treeman? Last night's traumatizing Grey's Anatomy crossover episode. In case you haven't seen that one unsettling episode of My Shocking Story on Discovery Health, Treemanism (not the scientific term) is an extremely rare skin disorder caused by an HPV infection that causes huge, unsightly warts to grow all over your body and your limbs to gnarl like tree limbs. One of these cases wandered into Seattle Grace last night and was greeted with the utmost professionalism abject horror like the unfortunate human being monster he was. So go ahead and grab your bottle of Extra Strength Tylenol and join Movieline as we relive each pang and crippling psychological trauma caused by Shonda Rhimes in last night's episode, titled with absolute political correctness, "Superfreak."
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Look, I gave up on this show, too. I mean, the original showrunner gave up on this show for "creative differences." That's a pretty terrible sign. I was actually supposed to cover Rubicon on a weekly basis, but I didn't particularly care for the first episode (though, that train wreck was certainly cool!) and the show, after one recap, became an afterthought. I even went as far to remove it from my DVR queue (which is rare considering that I still have something called The Loop, which hasn't been on the air since 2007, on my DVR queue). A funny thing happened: AMC kept sending me early screeners and, eventually, I could no longer keep staring at poor James Badge Dale on the cover of the DVD, running toward me, begging me to watch. So I started watching. I watched as far as the episode that's airing this coming Sunday. My reaction: Holy hell, this has become a really good show.
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Start worrying. Last night's excellent episode of Community was watched by only 4.29 million viewers last night, a mere 90,000 more than tuned in for a repeat of Grey's Anatomy on ABC at 8 p.m. In the coveted 18-49 demographic, Community fell from a 1.9 rating to a 1.7; for reference, the tumbling Outsourced pulled in a 2.5 rating in that same demo. Yikes. [TV by the Numbers]
30 Rock has been on fire this season, jumping from Jack's paternal woes to Liz's harried ventures to Kabletown's stupidity with elan. But last night, Queen Latifah's guest appearance as congresswoman Regina Bookman felt odd. While the rest of the cast gave us an incredible episode, was Latifah living single as the night's missed opportunity?
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