April 11th, 2008 at 10:58 am by Bob Weber (TV, Laugh Stupid)
Last night marked the return of The Office.
Honestly, I’ve got to hand it to the writers of the show. This was one of the funniest episodes yet. I particularly like the dynamic with Jim and Pam. As we all know, two main characters hooking up often kills the show. The sexual tension drains out and takes most of the comedy with it. Not so with The Office. I think Jim and Pam are funnier and better as a couple than they were individually.
The best scene in last night’s show was when Jim tried to fake a call from his landlord, ditch Michael’s dinner party and ultimately ditch Pam:
Jim Halpert: You’ll never guess. I just got a message from my landlord. Apparently my apartment flooded. Something with the sprinklers.
Jan: Oh no!
Jim Halpert: Pam we should probably get going to see the damage.
Michael Scott: Well you don’t need two of you to do that.
Jim Halpert: [pause] That’s… true, um. [pause] Dinner sounded delicious. Pam, see you at home? Thank you so much.
Pam Beesly: Oh Jim I don’t think you’re going to abandon this party here all by itself.
Jim Halpert: No, ’cause everything I own is there.
Pam Beesly: You can buy new stuff but you can’t buy a new party!
Michael Scott: That’s true! That is a great point. Come on down here. Sit down, on the couch. We’re your friends and we’re not going to let you think about all your stuff being destroyed alright?
Wish I could find a youtube clip of that scene, it was classic. The look on Jim’s (John Krasinski) face when he decided to bail on Pam (Jenna Fischer) was classic. Her comeback was even better. “You can buy new stuff, but you can’t buy a new party!” is going to be a catch phrase for a long time.
If you want to read more quotes from last night shows, www.theofficequotes.com is a site dedicated to just that.
Sounds like most of our shows won’t be back. Chuck, the awesomest new show in 5 years, probably won’t be back until fall. 24, the awesomest show EVER, may miss the 2008 season completely. At least Leno will have better jokes, and Conan won’t be doing any more ring spinning. I guess that’s something.
NBC is bringing back the classic 70’s TV show, The Bionic Woman. For those of you too young to remember, the Bionic Woman was a spinoff of the AWESOME Six Million Dollar Man starring Lee Majors (one time husband of the AWESOME Farrah Fawcett) as Steve Austin. The Bionic Woman was a creepy, dark, angst driven 70’s series, more about the independent feminist Jamie Somers (played by Lindsay Wagner) than it was about the cool gadgets she had. My memories of that series consist of inside shots of Jamie in her Ojai, California home, the super scary Fembots and the ultra cool Oscar Goldman.
Anyway, the new series looks to be much more fun, except for the annoying deaf sister angle. Here is a trailer, but a spoiler warning, this appears to comprise most of the pilot episode.
For those of you not familiar with the show, Jake’s grandfather told him a WWII war story where the Allied General in a hopeless situation was offered surrender by the Germans. Rather than surrender, the General sent back a one word reply - NUTS. Jake then used the same response to the leader of a neighboring town that invades Jericho in the final episode of the season (series).
Looks like Jericho fans want to use the same message on CBS and are sending nuts to the programming execs.
As a side note, I found out about this from a post on Quiet Earth - a blog, apparently based right here in Northern Colorado, largely dedicated to Post Apocalyptic fiction.
I have to admit, I am a sucker for serial dramas, especially those with a supernatural/sci-fi slant, post-apocalyptic environments, strange islands, nuclear bombs or hot young college coeds. I guess that’s OK, I know people that like reality shows too… I guess we all have our guilty pleasures.
Today I was dealt a double blow by learning about the demise of both Veronica Mars and Jericho. Sure, Veronica slipped a little this year with the changing of the theme song and the absorption of the WB into the CW. It seems the show had lost some steam and ‘Mars - the College Years’ wasn’t going so great, especially after the amazing bus crash story line last year. I’m still sorry to see it go.
Jericho, on the other hand, was just starting to get interesting. Hawkins was turning out to be a hero. Heather and Emily were about to be in a catfight, and Jake was going to avenge his father. The only downside was the untimely (and a bit cheesy) death of Gerald McRaney’s (Simon & Simon, Major Dad) character - Johnston Green.
The real problem with networks cancelling serialized drama is the lack of closure. The Mars writers typically do a good job of making the story lines wrap up at the end of the season. Jericho didn’t give us that at all. In fact, we will never learn who the evil homeland security guy is, why he set off the nukes, what will happen to the town, the story is just over - right in the middle.
I think there should be a law. Networks are not allowed to cancel shows without finishing the story. If this means that they have to buy a whole new season, so be it. The FCC needs to quit worrying so much about wardrobe malfunctions and start protecting all of us invest time in stories, just to be dissappointed. Come on, think of the children!
The official story is that she couldn’t come to terms with ABC on a contract, but we all know better.
Not that I actually care. The only time I have EVER watched the view was when some brain-dead moron at ABC decided it would be a good pre-game show for the Super Bowl.
Sadly, I’m guessing Rosie isn’t actually going away and will still make annoying headlines…
ABC president Steve McPherson revealed that fans of the serialized drama — which was pulled from the air after five weeks — may find some closure as the remaining episodes will be placed on the company’s website by February’s end.
Serials are the new fad in US TV. Fox experimented with Fashion House and Desire a few months ago and ABC launched Day Break during Lost’s mid-season break.
Now normally I have a rule. I don’t get involved in a TV series until AT LEAST the first season is over. That way, if they cancel the show I’m not writhing in mental torment.
For Day Break I decided to make an exception to my rule. ABC ran promos for the show stating (or implying - I don’t remember the spots too clearly) that the show would run the full story in 13 weeks - until the return of Lost. I thought this would be great. The story looked interesting. No spoilers, but Digg’s character is stuck in a time loop. One day keeps repeating as he works to solve the mystery.
Honestly, I thought it was a great show. Kind of a sci-fi twist on a 24 type show. The cast was good and the story was engaging. Best of all it was a serial, each episode built on the previous (like 24).
Problem is, ABC wasn’t getting the ratings it wanted, so they canceled the show after the sixth episode. I didn’t even know about this until last week since my trusty dusty Tivo was setup to record Day Break automatically. I thought it had been a few weeks since I had seen an episode and when I checked on it there were no upcoming shows scheduled. After a bit of research I found that the show was canceled in favor of reruns of George Lopez and According to Jim. ABC promised to put the remaining episodes on their website, but there has been some snafu there with music licensing and they haven’t appeared there yet either.
I have to say, I’m considering a class action lawsuit for mental anguish. I have invested 6 hours in this show and now I have to wait for them to sell the syndication rights before I can find out how the story ends. That’s just mean.
How does this make sense to the network? How can leaving the remaining episodes unaired improve ABC’s financial position? Are George Lopez reruns really getting a bigger market share than this show was? Even if it was, was it worth angering 3 million viewers to pull the show? It must have been, but I for one won’t be watching any new ABC shows any time soon. I’ve learned my lesson.
I’ve Tivoing and watching Scrubs lately. It wasn’t that I avoided it before, just wasn’t part of my standard TV viewing.
Zach Braff has been catching a lot of flack from the Indie music crowd. Appearantly, since The Postal Service got such great exposure in Garden State, some people are lumping Zach’s work in with The OC for promoting indie music. Of course the ultra-music-snobs don’t like this, or something. Personally I couldn’t care less, but the commentary did get me interested in more of Braff’s work.
While Zach’s combination of physical comedy and dry wit in Scrubs is enjoyable I think The Janitor, Neil Flynn, has the best role. The part is so well written and his delivery is perfect every time.
You Tube is full of Janitor clips, here is one of my favorites…
