Television Rundown: This Blog Post Needs a Facelift! And Other Things, In General

Last night brought us the 100th, and final, episode of one of the best examples of why television dramas should always have end dates. Yes, Nip/Tuck technically died exactly after The Carver sliced Christian Troy at the end of season two. Actually, a better series finale would have been the aforementioned season two episode "Rose and Raven Rosenberg". And while the finale wasn't the total trainwreck the series was had been at times after the second season (wait, why did I keep watching?), it was in some ways a more modest version of that episode. This final season did have a few very nice moments, but in general it was OK to see it finally go bye-bye, despite there not really being anything else on TV that has the same feel to it (other than Ryan Murphy's new show, Glee, which, if it goes Bigger and Badder as quickly as Nip/Tuck did, is definitely doomed to fizzle out quickly...) It will be nice to save room on the DVR for the following current and future series...

Parenthood: What if Brigitte (out of commission tonight, feel better, babydoll!) created Fan Fiction as her thesis to her upcoming Ph.D. program? It might come out a little bit like Parenthood, the new NBC series based on the 1989 movie with Steve Martin, Rick Moranis, Dianne Wiest, and a plethora of other "hey, I know that person" people. So, Brigitte's fan fiction is like, totally "Gilmore Girls meets the Handsome, Not Gay Brother of the Fischer Family of Six Feet Under" seeing that the two leads are Lauren Graham and Peter Krause. Also, with the other stars in the show, Brigitte could say that it's kind of a mash-up of Gilmore Girls, Six Feet Under, Coach, Arrested Development, Patch Adams, Punk'd, the movie Swimfan, (Graham, Krause, Craig T. Nelson, Mae Whitman ("Anne" from ArrDev), Monica Potter, Dax Shephard, Erika Christensen), mixed with a garnish of The Family Stone minus the unbearable We're-So-Accepting-Of-Others vibe of that movie and a dollop of grown-up heartstring-pulling that doesn't feel too cloying (yet). All of which is a really long-winded way of saying, this is a show that is pretty much impossible not to like. Welcome to the DVR archives, Parenthood.

The Life and Times of Tim: I'm doing something on The Blogutwitter (pimpin' our Twitter feed: twitter.com/theblogulator ... also see the sidebar down on the right) lately -- posting my fave quotes from the latest episodes of the new season of HBO's increasingly hilarious The Life and Times of Tim. It took me the whole first season to truly decide I liked this, then marinated over the year and a half it took to get a new season going, but Tim's world is getting to be pretty, pretty hilarious. "I'm Aimee with two E's and TWO DOUBLE D'S!!!" "The sin is in the meat." "W..T..Fuck?" Also anything The Boss says to Tim is hilarious. By all accounts the ratings to this series are not great, and not that HBO necessarily gives a crap about ratings, but the "save this show" formula is somewhere in "Ratings + Critical Acclaim + Buzz - Cost", so please do your part to keep that formula strong. Also here's the first episode of the new season below:

Lost: Duh.

And, some series coming soon...

Justified (FX): I already have a pretty big mancrush on Timothy Olyphant, almost so much so that I would have gone to see The Crazies and probably convinced Chris to drag along with me, despite his low "Will I See It?" percentage from last month. So, when it came out that Olyphant was gonna star on a new show from FX, aka Lifetime For Dudes, based on an Elmore Leonard short story and he was GOING TO WEAR A COWBOY HAT AND DO THE SETH BULLOCK WALK IN THE MODERN TIMES...well, you got me there, FX. And even better news -- respected TV bloggers Alan Sepinwall and Jace Lacob have already supplied their praises. Yep, I'm there. (Tuesday, March 16, 9 pm CST.)

The Pacific: The last time I tried getting The Blogulator + More Friends together to watch a historical epic HBO miniseries was their John Adams miniseries, in which I served meatloaf and mashed potatoes and Jerksica, Lady Amy, and Brigitte all thought it would be more fun to sing songs from the musical 1776 than to pay attention to the stirring dialogue and historically accurate costumes worn by Paul Giammati and Laura Linney, and naturally that didn't work out so well cuz I was the only one still watching at the end. The Pacific, however, I feel, will be a different story. Those who have no interest have already opted out of watching it at our place, and the previews for this one seem to suggest it will be less of a snoozefest than the aforementioned Adams (hey! I like snoozefests like that!) And we're gonna be pairing this with the other 10-part HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, calling our 10-week excursion War-Torn Sundays. TV Guide critic, in an exclusive conversation conducted via Twitter, suggested that The Blogulator "Bring aspirin". It's gonna be a paaaar-tay.

And finally...: HBO has greenlit one show and cast for another show that leave me feeling very, very excited. Game of Thrones has been greenlit to series, based on the fantasy Song of Fire and Ice book series that Little Qualler (LQ) keeps telling me to read. Considering I've not read a good old fashioned book series like that since The Dark Tower, it's next on my to-read list (after Blogulator friend Anna Jarzab's All Unquiet Things, natch) I'm definitely gonna read that and then enjoy the ess out of the TV series. And, Luck, the new David Milch (Deadwood, NYPD Blue, Philly) series about horserace gambling, has a new leading man, Dustin Hoffman, and a second banana, Dennis Farina. Oh man, hearing them walk around on horseracing tracks and using the word "fuck" 142 times per episode is going to be absolutely beautiful.

This entry was posted by Unknown, on Thursday, March 04, 2010. You can leave your response.