You. Go. Boy-eeeeee. Sitcoms Will Never Be the Same.

It's odd that we've been waiting for our favorite shows (i.e. the few shows that don't completely validate the lifestyles of those hippies that "don't own a TV") to come back for sooo long and yet some of us are still catching up via DVR and DVD on the many much better shows that existed long before anyone ever first mentioned the "S" word. Jerksica and I just finished Season 4 of The Wire, and so we're anxiously waiting for Qualler and Brigitte to catch up so we can watch Season 5, all of which Qualler slyly DVR'd in preparation. We also watch Season 1 of Martin (or as we call it, Mahhhh-in) daily with dinner, which was a half-joke Christmas present. Yeah that's right - December. And we've still got a full disc of that left. Then there's the obligatory 90210 viewings at the Quall-Brig household at the midnight hour, with the requisite accompanying pizza rolls and chocolate milk of course. In fact, we've gotten so wrapped up in all these shows, we totally stopped Nerdflixing Rescue Me a while ago, which was a hardcore favorite of the group's until Denis Leary raped his wife and she liked it (don't ask for details). Oh yeah, and there's also this little show called Lost that I've been watching obsessively on ABC.com - which turns out, really is better than Heroes after all. Whoda thunk. So having one more show to get to on ye olde DVR was probably the last thing we needed to complicate our lives, but nevertheless, we finally got to watching Breaking Bad, which piqued my interest with Pajiba's favorable review. And this was only a few days before The Office and 30 Rock returned to the air after the unexpected hiatus that felt like it went on for three lifetimes and twelve moons' rotations, when in fact it was really only a few months.

Breaking Bad: There was a show called Teachers that was on NBC for about as long as a weakling such as myself could endure Chinese Water Torture, if it were acid instead of water. The protagonist was a crumple-shirted loose-tied Gap jeans-wearing tool whose only redeeming factor was that he supposedly really cared about the kids, though this was only mentioned outside of the classroom in a steamy flirts-o-rama scene with the "well-endowed" female teacher down the hall. The new AMC dramedy Breaking Bad also spotlights a teacher who has few redeeming qualities, but it's actually trying to portray him as such. The dad from Malcolm in the Middle redeems himself from the rubber-man act he used to annoy so many with by taking on a grimmer-than-thou character - a chemistry teacher who finds out he has terminal lung cancer, so he teams up with a former student to start a meth lab (it's called cause and effect, look it up), without telling his family about either of the new developments in his sunny Arizona life. Oh but there's the "-edy" part in "dramedy" - there's obnoxious zany music played at opportune times like when he steals beakers from the high school lab and he disrobes whenever he cooks meth, so hilariousjokes.com/oldnakedsquaredoingillegalthings - you know, the yuujh. Honestly though, despite the comedy bits peaking in their head through in semi-embarrassing ways (maybe I'm too used to the no frills stone cold realism of The Wire?), the dark premise combined with deeply sympathetic everyday characters make for a promising seven episodes to finish. I'm indeed genuinely looking forward to watching the rest of this "periodically." Sorry, I think there was supposed to be a periodic table joke somewhere in there, but I "broke" it "badly." Terrible.

The Return of NBC Thursday Night: My first reaction to tuning in to the return of NBC's Comedy Night Done Decently was, "this looks weird on my new HDTV. I feel uncomfortable seeing Alec Baldwin's face so detailed and porous." Well, my first reaction was really, "oops this is My Name is Earl, quick, back to the HDMI input until 7:30!!!" but you get the idea. I really don't think sitcoms are meant to look so cinematic. They just end up giving you that gross feeling that The Hills or Laguna Beach give you, where it looks so real that the stiltedness and staging of everything just permanently sits under your skin and giggles maniacally as your brain implodes. Regardless, it was joyous to see Tiny Fey and crew back at it again on 30 Rock, even if it was a subpar attempt at meta-referencing a subpar joke from before the hiatus for 22 minutes. As usual, however, many tiny jokes that were not plot-fueled (Battlestar Galactica love!) saved the episode and showed promise that we're just getting back into the swing of things, so I have hope for frakking betterness in the future. Better than a side-plot about a guy getting his hand stuck in a vending machine, anyway.

Well it was still moderately better than the return of The Office, which isn't really much of a surprise. Not liking this show anymore is the new not liking The Simpsons anymore. It's trendy and everyone's slowly jumping on the bandwagon, but it's so deserving it hurts. I feel like I or someone else here has gone off on this before, so let's just focus on the returning episode, which centered around a dinner party at Michael and Jan's condo that Jim and Pam are tricked into going to. (Insert joke about a show called The Condo). The conceit in and of itself screams, "stretch it out, writers, stretch it ouuuuutttt!!!" This is symptomatic of where the show has been going since the end of last season, wishing it had more jokes within its gleefully one trick pony characters than it does. Maybe this is the serial drama fanatic in me letting things get too complicated, but there's only so many times Jan can embarrass Michael and there's only so many times Michael can scream something embarrassing. The problem here isn't that the writers don't know how to round their characters, though. They hint at it with a subplot about Michael lying about his dating history and they've attempted dramatic-ish twists in the past that have worked with varying success. It's just that they don't know how to be consistent. They either work too hard to replicate the irreverent jokes that made their workaday shubs were perfect for in the first two seasons or they dig way too deep into showing how intimate and human their silly characters are. They can be both temperately! Regardless, without over analyzing, the episode was serviceable enough and still caused the chuckles with a semi-return by Jan's assistant Hunter from last season (who became Claire's stupid flying boyfriend in Heroes).

Man I'm a slut, I'll watch anything as long as I don't have to pay for it (who am I kidding, if they charged me five bucks to watch these NBC shows every week, I would - don't get any ideas, execs). I need to watch more Breaking Bad at Qualler and Brigitte's place...whenever they buy more chocolate milk.

P.S. Per our Muxtape discussion yesterday, here are a few for you kind readers to enjoy some great music and feed our indie cred: Muxtape from Chris, Muxtape from Qualler, Muxtape from Nowlikephotographs

This entry was posted by chris, on Thursday, April 10, 2008. You can leave your response.