Brace yourselves, because I’m about to get extra-nostalgic. I remember stumbling out of the theater one afternoon in September of 2004, feeling more excited and wired than I thought humanly possible, not because I had just went to my first rated R movie, but because every part of Shaun of the Dead still rattled in my brain. In the ensuing days, I had to learn everything I could about the creative team behind the film, and one of the things that kept popping up in my endless research was a British comedy called Spaced. Mind you, this was in the age before YouTube, so it’s not like I could just hop online and check out a clip.

For the purposes of this post, I delved back into my high school blog and I see that I made a point of celebrating that Trio had decided to start airing Spaced in conjunction with Shaun’s release. I also see that past-me was so goddamn hooked on Spaced that, two episodes in, she (I?) had already got it in her head to buy the DVD box set. And a region-free player to play said DVD box set.

Needless to say, I really freaking love Spaced. And I want you to love it too.

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I’ve been thinking back, yet again, to the days of old. So many shows that have joined the annals of television history, some good, most bad. Actually, an overwhelming number of shows that have seen life have been bad. Yet in the totality of things, every network can boast at least one lineup of historical successes per night.

Or so I’m out to prove. Or disprove. Well, really, all I’m out to do is schedule the ultimate in television experiences for a week. If I can ever make it that far. Many months ago, I talked about my ultimate in NBC Thursdays. Then, more recently, I moved on to Sundays on FOX. The goal is to find one perfect week of TV, but that’s many posts away. So for now, let’s deal with the challenge at hand: Tuesday nights on ABC. Ah, the memories. Read the rest of this entry »

There are two points of interest that pop up when you view the contents of Blackadder Remastered: The Ultimate Collection DVD box set. The first is the amount of talent that appeared in the four Blackadder series and subsequent specials.

Aside from star Rowan Atkinson, who went on to become the internationally popular (or hated, depending on who you talk to) Mr. Bean, the series featured Tony Robinson, who went on to numerous television and political projects in the UK; Miranda Richardson, who went on to star in a number of well-known television series and movies (including a role as Rita Skeeter in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire); Stephen Fry, who has popped up in pretty much everything, including a recurring role on Bones; and, of course, Hugh Laurie, who appears in some small American television series about an acerbic doctor.

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Or, put another way, is there only so much funny out there in TV land that if another success story shows up, or something already on the air gets better, everything else is destined to get worse?

Maybe it’s that as individual viewers we’re only allotted so much laughing in a week. I don’t know which is the case … all I know is that, week in and week out, some of my favorite sitcoms are consistently falling flat. Read the rest of this entry »

“Dude. I’m Chuck Bass. Even Europeans must know what that means.”

Chuck was sadly underused in this episode, but really, that line made up for all of it. In fact, that one line was so perfect, that it’s not even worth sullying it by talking about the beyond-boring Jenny storyline in which it appeared. Jenny Humphrey is not, nor has she ever been, an interesting character. If they insist on putting her in every episode, they should at least put her in school so we can see Constance 2.0 in action. Otherwise, more Chuck time, please.

Here’s my new theory after watching this episode: Serena is a sociopath. Doesn’t it explain her behavior over the past three seasons? Her inability to maintain social relationships for more than a handful of episodes, her robot-like demeanor, her ability to shift from one “emotion” to the next without so much of a blink? I hope that my theory is correct, or Serena van der Woodsen may just bore me straight to death.

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I had high hopes for AMC’s reboot of The Prisoner. In hindsight, I guess it’s a bit silly to call this a “reboot” and not something else, since it only took up six hours of my life and didn’t attempt to keep the story going beyond that. I’m going to try to save a bunch of you from wasting any more hours on this mini-series, because it’s just not worth it.

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Sometimes Community gets so meta it makes my head spin. Ever since the pilot, Community has seemed very aware of the fact that it is a television comedy, complete with familiar sitcom characters. In this episode, Abed (who is the character who breaks down the fourth wall on a regular basis) basically says, “You guys, we are nothing more than tried and true archetypes molded and evolved on sitcoms over the past 50 years. Let me show u it.”

So in addition to seeing that Abed can predict everything his fellow characters say and do, we have Chevy Chase doing what Chevy Chase does best: pratfalls. Pratfalls made him famous, so the only thing surprising about having him fall over his drum kit in this episode is that it took them so long to do it.

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