Sepinwall on TV: Fall TV preview

Over at NJ.com, you can find my annual fall TV preview, such as it is. Because there are so many shows debuting at the start of September, we wanted to run it earlier than usual (in most years past, it ran the day before the official start of the TV season), but because the networks are taking their sweet time in sending out pilots -- or, in the case of "90210," not sending them out at all -- I had to largely work blind. There are also previews of a lot of the returning shows. Click here to read the full post

Burn Notice, "Rough Seas": Come, friends, who plough the sea

Spoilers for last night's "Burn Notice" coming up just as soon as I buy some golf balls...

"Burn Notice" always throws in a good mix of comedy with the spy stuff, but "Rough Seas" was an especially funny episode. We got Michael's disdain for Virgil being around his mom (and Virgil squeezing into his underwear; the second joke this season about middle-aged men with beer guts trying to wear Michael's skinny clothes), Virgil and Michael intimidating the golf/drug store owner, Michael playing at being an asthmatic dweeb, and Michael's deadpan reactions to the spaciness of Seymour the gun dealer (played by Silas Weir Mitchell, aka Haywire from "Prison Break"). I often smile throughout an episode of this show, but "Rough Seas" was one that made me laugh out loud a bunch of times.

I also think they've gotten better this year at the balance between the episodic stories and the ongoing arc. Until late in the first season, the trail to who burned Michael was so cold that the story barely figured into many episodes, and so if the case of the week wasn't that interesting, the episode was a whole would be a dud. Here, we're shifting back and forth so frequently between the two storylines -- and, on occasion, seeing them intersect like they did last week -- that the dull patches don't come up much anymore.

(A rare slow moment in this one: the car chase right before the credits. Nine times out of ten, Michael's narration over a cliched action scene will give it new life -- like his explanation about shooting the gas tank near the episode's end -- but it takes a lot more work to make a car chase interesting these days, and I imagine the "Burn Notice" people don't have that kind of time or money.)

I was glad to see Michael come up with a solution that didn't involve having one bad guy kill another, because they'd been playing that note too much lately, and I continue to enjoy the post-break-up interaction between Michael and Fi far more than when they were together.

One question: can someone who pays closer attention recall roughly how many times we've seen Michael actually accept payment for his services? Seems like he's been doing a lot of pro bono this year, and all those chemicals and other toys he uses, while they may be cheaper than big weapons, still cost a certain amount of coin. So does all that yogurt, for that matter.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

From the archives: 'Raymond' writers' recipe for comedy

Last dip into the archives for the week, with a feature on Phil Rosenthal and the rest of the "Everybody Loves Raymond" writing team, and their obsession with lunch. Click here to read the full post

The Wire, Season 1, Episode 12, "Cleaning Up" (Veterans edition)

Almost to the finish line, and you should know the deal by now: we're going to talk about season one of "The Wire" in two versions: one for viewers new to the show who don't want later events spoiled for them, and one for people who have seen and can talk about everything from first episode to last. This is the latter; scroll down for the newbie-safe version.

Spoilers for the penultimate, Pelecanos-ian episode of season one, "Cleaning Up," coming up just as soon as I find out who makes the best chili dogs in Newark...

"Where's Wallace? Where's the boy at, String?" -D'Angelo Barksdale

This is "The Wire," right here.

"Cleaning Up" is considered by many "Wire" fans to be the series' best -- and most painful -- episode ever, but its genius illustrates why even asking the Best Ever question is besides the point with this series. So much of what makes it great comes from everything we've seen before: our knowledge of the Bodie/Poot/Wallace friendship; of how much work the detail has put into getting Avon and Stringer, of how far Daniels has come from being a company man to being someone who cares about doing good policework, politics be damned; of how much D'Angelo sees of himself in Wallace, and of how he tried desperately to nudge Wallace out of a life he knows himself to be trapped in by circumstance and blood. There are many isolated moments of brilliance, but it's the cumulative effect of having seen every chapter of this novel for television that makes them really powerful.

"Where's Wallace? That's all I want to know."

There are many great tragedies throughout the run of "The Wire," but the death of Wallace is the first and still the one that probably cuts deepest. Yes, this is the life he chose -- and the life he chose to come back to after Lt. Daniels had provided him his escape -- but he was a sweet kid pushed into this life practically from birth (check out how little his mother cares about him), given such a limited understanding of the world that he couldn't fathom any other way to be. Forget being freaked out by living in the country; he's never been out of the West side of town! Yet even within this life, he found ways to rise above, to not grow up too fast and too hard like Bodie (who also got a raw deal from childhood) so eagerly chooses to. Wallace looked after those kids, looked after his friends in The Pit, felt genuine remorse for the role he (somewhat) unwittingly played in Brandon's murder, held onto his childhood as long as he could.

He's not without sin, but this? To be coldly executed by your two best friends while you sob, wet your pants and beg for your life? Just imagine I'm quoting the McNulty/Bunk apartment scene from "Old Cases" right now, because even after all these years, that's how I respond to it. What makes it especially haunting is the interplay between Bodie and Poot. Bodie is acting hard, more than eager to go kill his friend on Stringer's order. He's the one who stands at the top of the stairs and has to urge the reluctant Poot to follow, but when the actual moment comes, he freezes, and it's Poot who has to order him to do it, and who then takes the gun from Bodie's trembling hand and finishes the job. (This is the first of all the many times I've watched the scene, by the way, that I see that Poot's doing it out of compassion for Wallace.)

And then... and then... and then we come to D'Angelo screaming and cussing and demanding that Stringer tell him where Wallace is. As with the famous Bunk/McNulty scene, it's an example of "The Wire" using simple, repeated language to say so many things so well. We've seen D'Angelo struggle all season with his growing guilt about the pointless cycle of violence in the drug game, and the death of this kid, whom D'Angelo believed (wrongly, as it turned out) would never pose a threat to Avon and Stringer, is the straw breaking the camel's back. When he asks, over and over, where Wallace is, what he's really asking is, "Why have I sold out of my future for a couple of remorseless psychopaths like you and my uncle?," "How do you not get that it's the bodies that keep attracting the cops' attention?," "Why does The Game have to play out this way?," "Why should I be loyal to bosses who have no loyalty to their employees?," "Why didn't I just come right out and tell Wallace he was probably going to die if he didn't leave town?," etc., etc. While some "Wire" actors have parlayed their great showcases here into more mainstream work (Tristan Wilds is not only in the new "90210," but canoodling with Dakota Fanning in "The Secret Life of Bees"), it's beyond ridiculous that no one in Hollywood watched the "Where's Wallace?" scene and thought to give Larry Gilliard Jr. an interesting role off of it.

Just as we've watched the journeys of Wallace and D'Angelo, which led one of them to death and the other to jail, we've also watched Cedric Daniels grow from Burrell loyalist to dedicated cop. The motives for the change may on some level be self-serving -- he feels guilt over Brandon's murder, and now for Kima getting shot -- but there's no questioning that his loyalty is now 100 percent to doing this case right, no matter how much it costs him in his quest to climb the ladder. It was pure pleasure to watch him give it to both Burrell and Clay Davis in a way that wasn't insubordinate, or profane, or literally disrespectful, but was so frank and unswerving that it alarmed these two born liars.

And yet, in that "Wire" way, Daniels' triumphant moment (of character, if not of career) has to come in the same episode where we find out that, yes, he was dirty once upon a time and stole money off of drug dealers to help finance the swank lifestyle he has now, with the well-appointed brownstone, the expensive political fundraisers, etc. No one on "The Wire" is ever all good or all bad. (Though some would argue the latter point.) They're just people.

Note how McNulty, our ostensible hero, shows his true colors in the opening scene, when he admits to Daniels that he only cared about Barksdale as an excuse to prove how smart he was. Of course, anyone who's been paying attention all these weeks -- and that includes Daniels himself -- probably figured that out by now, but it's still admirable that the show would be willing to have its main character make such a confession. We've been watching long enough to know that the case does, in fact, matter, but to Jimmy it's just as much of a power trip as it is to Burrell, and Rawls and Avon and Stringer.

Though "Cleaning Up" is the culmination of several months (in real and show time) of investigation by the detail, with the arrests of D'Angelo and Avon, it's also something of an intentional anti-climax. Thanks to the deaths of Wallace and Stinkum, Wee-Bey's escape to Philadelphia and Avon and Stringer constantly changing up, what does the detail have to show for all this work? A murder charge on Bird (that relies on Omar coming back to town and being a credible witness), murder charges for a fugitive (Wee-Bey) and a man they don't know is dead (Little Man), a mid-level drug charge on Avon, and a potentially larger one on D'Angelo. For all the lives this crew has taken, that's it? Really?

Obviously, there's still some string to be played out in the finale, particularly with Lester following the money so closely that he scares the snot out of Clay, Burrell and Ronnie's boss (not to mention Ronnie herself), but I love how even an episode that's this powerful, and that brings together so many storylines from the previous eleven episodes, can be designed in a way that's still vaguely unsatisfying. As McNulty puts it to Daniels before they raid Orlando's, "This isn't as much fun as I thought it would be."

Some other thoughts on "Cleaning Up":

• As he will do in every subsequent season, sometimes as a freelancer, sometimes as a staff writer/producer, novelist George Pelecanos gets the honors of writing the next-to-last episode and playing hatchet man for David Simon. These penultimate chapters tend to be the best part of each season, primarily because the worst things happen in them. Like fellow authors Richard Price and Dennis Lehane, who would join the writing staff in later seasons, Pelecanos is a natural fit with the world of "The Wire." His Washington, D.C.-based crime novels cover much of the same thematic ground about the pointless culture of drug-related violence, the cyclical nature of family relationships, the decay and neglect of American cities, etc. One of his books, "Drama City," might as well be a "Wire" spin-off, and his latest novel, "The Turnaround," is terrific. What are you doing spending all this time watching TV when you can just read a book?

• Whenever a "Wire" character I like gets killed (or suffers a fate that's almost as bad), I like to look back at the elaborate chain of circumstances that has to take place for that to occur. In this case, Omar and Brandon have to rob the Pit stash at a time when Poot's in the room; Poot and Wallace have to be at the Greek's arcade at the same time as Brandon; Poot has to be too afraid to make the call himself (and to talk to Stringer later); Wee-Bey and Bird have to dump the body right in Wallace's backyard; Herc and Carver have to be listening to Poot have phone sex long enough for them to hear him give up the info about Wallace's guilt over Brandon; the Baltimore PD has to have no money for witness protection; Kima has to get shot and distract Daniels from going to pick up Wallace before Wallace goes stir crazy at his grandma's; Burrell has to demand that Daniels raid the main stash, making Stringer and Avon paranoid enough to have Wallace killed, etc. It's never just one action, but a series of little tragedies along the way that lead up to the big ones.

• Though he appeared briefly at the political fundraiser party in "One Arrest," this is the first real showcase for Isiah Whitlock Jr. as Clay Davis. He makes the most of it, demonstrating how quickly Clay can shift from smooth politican to profane street hustler.

• Last week, Maury Levy showed himself to be a great legal attack dog for the Barskdale crew. This week, he reveals himself to be an active co-conspirator in Avon and Stringer's crimes. He may stick to the letter of the law by excusing himself before those two actively begin discussing whom they need to kill, but Maury's the one strongly suggesting they have that conversation in the first place.

• A couple of episodes back, we saw that Shardene wasn't immune to Lester's charms, and here we see that he's more than happy to reciprocate her interest. He bigfoots Sydnor on Shardene's request for coffee (and knows how she takes it!), is the one to comfort her when she freaks out about wearing a wire, and eagerly volunteers to, um, room with her for the duration of the case. Again, Lt. Daniels is an observant man, so he knows what time it is with this.

• More Daniels cleverness: even as he's openly defying Burrell, he still knows how to play the political game when it suits his purposes. When Burrell asks whom Daniels doesn't want to lose from the detail, Daniels knows the best answer is none at all -- that Burrell would no doubt cast away anyone Daniels expressed an interest in protecting -- and is rewarded when Burrell cuts loose the useless Santangelo and the mostly useful Sydnor while "punishing" Daniels by making him keep Lester and Prez, who are by now the heart of the detail.

• Lots of Herc-related hilarity: Herc and Sydnor driving Lester nuts with their chili dog argument, Herc and Sydnor trying really hard not to leer as Ronnie watches them watch Shardene walk with the string around her ankles, and especially Herc's victory dance at finding out his score on the sergeant's exam.

• This episode features the first appearance of Michael Hyatt as D'Angelo's mom, Brianna, and their interaction (and relatively close ages) does create the brief impression, expressed by Wallace, that this is some girlfriend of D's we haven't met yet. Note that their closeness only goes so far: Mama Barksdale will bring her boy some nice take-out fish, but when Avon suggests that D'Angelo will have to go to prison so Brianna can maintain her lifestyle, she seems ready to go along with that.

• Yet another thing that I noticed for the first time watching the episode again this week (it's at least the 10th time I've seen it over the years): Bodie and Poot's moment on the staircase is later mirrored by McNulty and Daniels after the arrest of Avon. This time, it's the man at the bottom of the stairs (Daniels) nodding for the man at the top (McNulty) to join him. And like Poot doesn't want to let go of his friendship with Wallace, McNulty doesn't want to take that step and let go of a chance to take down Stringer.

And now let's talk about how events in this episode foreshadow things coming down the road:

• Simon has said that he introduced the file on Daniels' days in the Eastern knowing (or, rather, hoping) he would one day get to have Burrell actually put into play, which he does by giving it to Nerese Campbell in season five.

• Jimmy's confession about his motives for the Barksdale case will be echoed again in his justification to Bunk for the Marlo/serial killer scam: "He does not get to win! We get to win!" For Jimmy, it's always less about justice than it is about being the smartest guy in the room.

• Bodie will, ironically, be killed for the same reasons as Wallace (albeit in a very different manner, as he goes down fighting). Yet even shortly before his death, he continues to justify Wallace's death in arguments with Poot.

• Just as Santangelo shouldn't be so confident about his job security, Herc shouldn't be counting those sergeant's stripes just yet. It's a good thing he doesn't actually get the promotion until season four; when you see how much damage he did then, imagine how much more he could have caused with two additional years of rank.

• In hindsight, Carver's absence for in-service training -- and Daniels' comment about Burrell not knowing about the bug in Avon's club -- should have been an obvious tip-off about the identity of Burrell's mole. Ah, well. It wasn't the first time I didn't see a "Wire" development coming, nor would it be the last.

• This is the first real interaction between Stringer and Bodie, and the first time Stringer sees some potential in the young man from the Pit. In coming seasons, Bodie will become something of a protege to Stringer, often misunderstanding or disagreeing with the lessons, but paying closer attention than anybody else in the crew.

• Not only is Prez a good code-breaker, he can do somewhat complex math in his head, which will come in handy when he winds up teaching eighth grade math.

• This is the last we'll see of Sydnor for a while, as he's the only surviving season one character of any significance to not appear in season two. (No doubt the racial makeup of the stevedores union made his presence less imperative than when Daniels needed someone to do hand-to-hands on the Barksdale case.)

Coming up next Friday: "Sentencing," the end of season one and the end of this summer flashback.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

The Wire, Season 1, Episode 12, "Cleaning Up" (Newbies edition)

Almost to the finish line, and you should know the deal by now: we're going to talk about season one of "The Wire" in two versions: one for viewers new to the show who don't want later events spoiled for them, and one for people who have seen and can talk about everything from first episode to last. This is the former; scroll up for the veteran-friendly version.

Spoilers for the penultimate, Pelecanos-ian episode of season one, "Cleaning Up," coming up just as soon as I find out who makes the best chili dogs in Newark...

"Where's Wallace? Where's the boy at, String?" -D'Angelo Barksdale

This is "The Wire," right here.

"Cleaning Up" is considered by many "Wire" fans to be the series' best -- and most painful -- episode ever, but its genius illustrates why even asking the Best Ever question is besides the point with this series. So much of what makes it great comes from everything we've seen before: our knowledge of the Bodie/Poot/Wallace friendship; of how much work the detail has put into getting Avon and Stringer, of how far Daniels has come from being a company man to being someone who cares about doing good policework, politics be damned; of how much D'Angelo sees of himself in Wallace, and of how he tried desperately to nudge Wallace out of a life he knows himself to be trapped in by circumstance and blood. There are many isolated moments of brilliance, but it's the cumulative effect of having seen every chapter of this novel for television that makes them really powerful.

"Where's Wallace? That's all I want to know."

There are many great tragedies throughout the run of "The Wire," but the death of Wallace is the first and still the one that probably cuts deepest. Yes, this is the life he chose -- and the life he chose to come back to after Lt. Daniels had provided him his escape -- but he was a sweet kid pushed into this life practically from birth (check out how little his mother cares about him), given such a limited understanding of the world that he couldn't fathom any other way to be. Forget being freaked out by living in the country; he's never been out of the West side of town! Yet even within this life, he found ways to rise above, to not grow up too fast and too hard like Bodie (who also got a raw deal from childhood) so eagerly chooses to. Wallace looked after those kids, looked after his friends in The Pit, felt genuine remorse for the role he (somewhat) unwittingly played in Brandon's murder, held onto his childhood as long as he could.

He's not without sin, but this? To be coldly executed by your two best friends while you sob, wet your pants and beg for your life? Just imagine I'm quoting the McNulty/Bunk apartment scene from "Old Cases" right now, because even after all these years, that's how I respond to it. What makes it especially haunting is the interplay between Bodie and Poot. Bodie is acting hard, more than eager to go kill his friend on Stringer's order. He's the one who stands at the top of the stairs and has to urge the reluctant Poot to follow, but when the actual moment comes, he freezes, and it's Poot who has to order him to do it, and who then takes the gun from Bodie's trembling hand and finishes the job. (This is the first of all the many times I've watched the scene, by the way, that I see that Poot's doing it out of compassion for Wallace.)

And then... and then... and then we come to D'Angelo screaming and cussing and demanding that Stringer tell him where Wallace is. As with the famous Bunk/McNulty scene, it's an example of "The Wire" using simple, repeated language to say so many things so well. We've seen D'Angelo struggle all season with his growing guilt about the pointless cycle of violence in the drug game, and the death of this kid, whom D'Angelo believed (wrongly, as it turned out) would never pose a threat to Avon and Stringer, is the straw breaking the camel's back. When he asks, over and over, where Wallace is, what he's really asking is, "Why have I sold out of my future for a couple of remorseless psychopaths like you and my uncle?," "How do you not get that it's the bodies that keep attracting the cops' attention?," "Why does The Game have to play out this way?," "Why should I be loyal to bosses who have no loyalty to their employees?," "Why didn't I just come right out and tell Wallace he was probably going to die if he didn't leave town?," etc., etc. While some "Wire" actors have parlayed their great showcases here into more mainstream work (Tristan Wilds is not only in the new "90210," but canoodling with Dakota Fanning in "The Secret Life of Bees"), it's beyond ridiculous that no one in Hollywood watched the "Where's Wallace?" scene and thought to give Larry Gilliard Jr. an interesting role off of it.

Just as we've watched the journeys of Wallace and D'Angelo, which led one of them to death and the other to jail, we've also watched Cedric Daniels grow from Burrell loyalist to dedicated cop. The motives for the change may on some level be self-serving -- he feels guilt over Brandon's murder, and now for Kima getting shot -- but there's no questioning that his loyalty is now 100 percent to doing this case right, no matter how much it costs him in his quest to climb the ladder. It was pure pleasure to watch him give it to both Burrell and Clay Davis in a way that wasn't insubordinate, or profane, or literally disrespectful, but was so frank and unswerving that it alarmed these two born liars.

And yet, in that "Wire" way, Daniels' triumphant moment (of character, if not of career) has to come in the same episode where we find out that, yes, he was dirty once upon a time and stole money off of drug dealers to help finance the swank lifestyle he has now, with the well-appointed brownstone, the expensive political fundraisers, etc. No one on "The Wire" is ever all good or all bad. (Though some would argue the latter point.) They're just people.

Note how McNulty, our ostensible hero, shows his true colors in the opening scene, when he admits to Daniels that he only cared about Barksdale as an excuse to prove how smart he was. Of course, anyone who's been paying attention all these weeks -- and that includes Daniels himself -- probably figured that out by now, but it's still admirable that the show would be willing to have its main character make such a confession. We've been watching long enough to know that the case does, in fact, matter, but to Jimmy it's just as much of a power trip as it is to Burrell, and Rawls and Avon and Stringer.

Though "Cleaning Up" is the culmination of several months (in real and show time) of investigation by the detail, with the arrests of D'Angelo and Avon, it's also something of an intentional anti-climax. Thanks to the deaths of Wallace and Stinkum, Wee-Bey's escape to Philadelphia and Avon and Stringer constantly changing up, what does the detail have to show for all this work? A murder charge on Bird (that relies on Omar coming back to town and being a credible witness), murder charges for a fugitive (Wee-Bey) and a man they don't know is dead (Little Man), a mid-level drug charge on Avon, and a potentially larger one on D'Angelo. For all the lives this crew has taken, that's it? Really?

Obviously, there's still some string to be played out in the finale, particularly with Lester following the money so closely that he scares the snot out of Clay, Burrell and Ronnie's boss (not to mention Ronnie herself), but I love how even an episode that's this powerful, and that brings together so many storylines from the previous eleven episodes, can be designed in a way that's still vaguely unsatisfying. As McNulty puts it to Daniels before they raid Orlando's, "This isn't as much fun as I thought it would be."

Some other thoughts on "Cleaning Up":

• As he will do in every subsequent season, sometimes as a freelancer, sometimes as a staff writer/producer, novelist George Pelecanos gets the honors of writing the next-to-last episode and playing hatchet man for David Simon. These penultimate chapters tend to be the best part of each season, primarily because the worst things happen in them. Like fellow authors Richard Price and Dennis Lehane, who would join the writing staff in later seasons, Pelecanos is a natural fit with the world of "The Wire." His Washington, D.C.-based crime novels cover much of the same thematic ground about the pointless culture of drug-related violence, the cyclical nature of family relationships, the decay and neglect of American cities, etc. One of his books, "Drama City," might as well be a "Wire" spin-off, and his latest novel, "The Turnaround," is terrific. What are you doing spending all this time watching TV when you can just read a book?

• Whenever a "Wire" character I like gets killed (or suffers a fate that's almost as bad), I like to look back at the elaborate chain of circumstances that has to take place for that to occur. In this case, Omar and Brandon have to rob the Pit stash at a time when Poot's in the room; Poot and Wallace have to be at the Greek's arcade at the same time as Brandon; Poot has to be too afraid to make the call himself (and to talk to Stringer later); Wee-Bey and Bird have to dump the body right in Wallace's backyard; Herc and Carver have to be listening to Poot have phone sex long enough for them to hear him give up the info about Wallace's guilt over Brandon; the Baltimore PD has to have no money for witness protection; Kima has to get shot and distract Daniels from going to pick up Wallace before Wallace goes stir crazy at his grandma's; Burrell has to demand that Daniels raid the main stash, making Stringer and Avon paranoid enough to have Wallace killed, etc. It's never just one action, but a series of little tragedies along the way that lead up to the big ones.

• Though he appeared briefly at the political fundraiser party in "One Arrest," this is the first real showcase for Isiah Whitlock Jr. as Clay Davis. He makes the most of it, demonstrating how quickly Clay can shift from smooth politican to profane street hustler.

• Last week, Maury Levy showed himself to be a great legal attack dog for the Barskdale crew. This week, he reveals himself to be an active co-conspirator in Avon and Stringer's crimes. He may stick to the letter of the law by excusing himself before those two actively begin discussing whom they need to kill, but Maury's the one strongly suggesting they have that conversation in the first place.

• A couple of episodes back, we saw that Shardene wasn't immune to Lester's charms, and here we see that he's more than happy to reciprocate her interest. He bigfoots Sydnor on Shardene's request for coffee (and knows how she takes it!), is the one to comfort her when she freaks out about wearing a wire, and eagerly volunteers to, um, room with her for the duration of the case. Again, Lt. Daniels is an observant man, so he knows what time it is with this.

• More Daniels cleverness: even as he's openly defying Burrell, he still knows how to play the political game when it suits his purposes. When Burrell asks whom Daniels doesn't want to lose from the detail, Daniels knows the best answer is none at all -- that Burrell would no doubt cast away anyone Daniels expressed an interest in protecting -- and is rewarded when Burrell cuts loose the useless Santangelo and the mostly useful Sydnor while "punishing" Daniels by making him keep Lester and Prez, who are by now the heart of the detail.

• Lots of Herc-related hilarity: Herc and Sydnor driving Lester nuts with their chili dog argument, Herc and Sydnor trying really hard not to leer as Ronnie watches them watch Shardene walk with the string around her ankles, and especially Herc's victory dance at finding out his score on the sergeant's exam.

• This episode features the first appearance of Michael Hyatt as D'Angelo's mom, Brianna, and their interaction (and relatively close ages) does create the brief impression, expressed by Wallace, that this is some girlfriend of D's we haven't met yet. Note that their closeness only goes so far: Mama Barksdale will bring her boy some nice take-out fish, but when Avon suggests that D'Angelo will have to go to prison so Brianna can maintain her lifestyle, she seems ready to go along with that.

• Yet another thing that I noticed for the first time watching the episode again this week (it's at least the 10th time I've seen it over the years): Bodie and Poot's moment on the staircase is later mirrored by McNulty and Daniels after the arrest of Avon. This time, it's the man at the bottom of the stairs (Daniels) nodding for the man at the top (McNulty) to join him. And like Poot doesn't want to let go of his friendship with Wallace, McNulty doesn't want to take that step and let go of a chance to take down Stringer.

Coming up next Friday: "Sentencing," the end of season one and the end of this summer flashback.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

From the archives: Behind the scenes, it's giddyap and go

Another day, another trip back into the pre-blog archives, this time for a profile of David Milch circa the premiere of "Deadwood." Click here to read the full post

In Plain Sight, "Don't Meth With Me": Letters, she gets letters

Finally got to see the "In Plain Sight" finale last night. Belated spoilers coming up just as soon as I get my blood type checked...

Well I'll give them this: for all the griping I did about Mary's family throughout this first season, they at least turned out an interesting family-centric episode at the end. I still don't care if I ever see Brandi or Jinx again, but there were three very strong performances there, and the reactions felt both surprising and real. I like that Jinx obviously cares more about Brandi than about Mary, that Brandi had no interest in anything her dad had to say about her, and that Mary could be so vicious to her mom and sister (albeit with some cause). I also thought it was a nice moment when Mary declined to burden the very drunk Raph with news of her kidnapping and having killed a guy (for the first time, I presume), and the revelation of what happened to the meth was a great capper. (Though I'd be very worried about what happens to the next guy who tries to take a wide-angled, head-first slide into home plate.)

But you know the same old song I've been singing for weeks: when the show comes back for its second season, I want the focus to be on Mary and Marshall and Stan, and on them working the sorts of cases that are unique to the Marshal's office. There are enough strong elements here that I want to like the show a lot more than I do, and if there aren't some tweaks for season two, I doubt I'll stick around long, even in the summer.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

From the archives: Dad's drunk, Mom's a killer. Ha!

Today's flashback column at NJ.com is an interview I did with Christopher Titus before the premiere of "Titus," a sitcom I really loved most of the time. Click here to read the full post

Middleman, "The Vampiric Puppet Lamentation": Noser gets Puppish

Quick spoilers for last night's "The Middleman" coming up just as soon as I hit somebody with a roller skate...

Even though I wasn't crazy about it, an episode like "The Vampiric Puppet Lamentation" makes me appreciate the series all the more, because it shows how hard it is to combine all these random elements into a cohesive whole. An episode that provides us with some Noser backstory, and that features more of the amusingly loathsome Pip, and that has a vampire puppet bad guy sounds like it would be one of the best of the series. Instead, the pieces never quite added up -- we get too much Pip, not enough Noser, pop culture references (like Wendy quoting the "Man, I don't even have an opinion" line from "Pulp Fiction") that called too much attention to themselves, and another climax (like in the Titanic episode) where the bad guy gets taken out way too easily -- and it was a disappointment compared to most of the season.

That said, puppet bad guys are inherently funny. (Is the "Angel" puppet episode Netflix'able? Because I may need to stick it in my queue ASAP.) And the Sexy Bossman/Lacey love story takes an interesting turn when Wendy decides to give Pillow-Lips permission to date her roommate and he admits that he's in love with more than one woman. I'm going to assume he's not talking about Wendy herself, but about the woman who inspired his transformation from profane military badass to squeaky-clean Middleman badass. (At least, that's sort of how I interpreted Javier Grillo-Marxuach's comment about the never-to-be-filmed 13th episode from the end of our interview.)

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

From the archives: The Stein way

Again, slow week and I'm pre-occupied with fall preview stuff, so I'm re-posting some of my favorite stories that I wrote in the pre-blog days. Today, it's about the time I spent a day hanging out with the one, the only, Ben Stein. Click here to read the full post

90210: No pilot for you!

Sigh... now even the pilots that are actually ready to air aren't necessarily being sent out. The following lovely press release from the CW:

"The CW and our studio partner CBS Paramount Network Television have made the strategic marketing decision not to screen "90210" for any media in advance of its premiere. We're not hiding anything . . . simply keeping a lid on 90210 until 9.02, riding the curiosity and anticipation into premiere night, and letting all our constituents see it at the same time."

Now, everybody knows that movie studios don't screen movies that they know stink, and it's long been a tradition for the networks to not send out advance copies of any remotely controversial reality show, but for a network to sit on the pilot of a scripted show, especially one the media had already hyped so much, is a new -- but not necessarily surprising -- one on me.

Like I said last week when the Tori Spelling news came out, I'm beginning to think the new "90210" is going to please neither of its two potential constituencies: not enough old-school characters for the geezers like me, too much (really, any) '90s nostalgia for the younger audience (who allegedly don't watch anything on television anyway, based on the over-the-air ratings for "Gossip Girl"). Given the amount of alleged curiosity about the remake/sequel/whatever, there may be no way "90210" can be helped by going out in advance. (Even positive reviews could be seen as a detriment, based on that whole "Every parent's worst nightmare" campaign for "Gossip Girl.")

But if I'm the CW, a network struggling to justify its existence, and the show that's going to make or break my future is premiering the day after Labor Day, weeks before most people are going to be in the habit of checking out new shows, you'd think getting every bit of potential publicity would be the way to go, no?

Maybe they're banking on people like me being suckers and writing about the show sight unseen. I suppose a blog post like this one (which mentions the show's name several times and refers to the premiere date) suggests that I'm exactly that kind of sucker.

If "90210" does any kind of number when it debuts, I wonder how many other rookies get this treatment. In the meantime, Rich Heldenfels has now done five more recaps of vintage mom-jeans "90210," for episode 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7. Click here to read the full post

It's official: Laurence Fishburne joins 'CSI,' gets frog DNA

CBS just made it official that Laurence Fishburne will be playing the new "CSI" lead, replacing William Petersen (though they'll overlap in a couple of episodes). They're doing a conference call with Morpheus later today, which will go into tomorrow's column.

UPDATE: Column's posted now over at NJ.com, with quotes from Fishburne and the producers.

After the jump, the relevant parts of the press release.

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 18 — Oscar nominee and Emmy and Tony Award winner Laurence Fishburne ("What's Love Got To Do With It," "The Matrix," "Miss Evers' Boys") will join the cast of the CBS Paramount Network Television and Jerry Bruckheimer Television series, CSI: CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION, on the CBS Television Network. His character will debut in this season's ninth episode.

Fishburne will play a former pathologist who is now working as an itinerant college lecturer, teaching a course in criminalistics. His focus is on understanding criminal behavior, how and why people commit acts of violence – tendencies he disturbingly sees within himself. In the course of a murder investigation, he comes into contact with the CSI team and ultimately joins the Las Vegas Crime Lab as a Level-1 CSI.

"CBS asked us, 'Who's at the top of your dream list?' say CSI executive producers Carol Mendelsohn and Naren Shankar. "Without hesitation, we said Laurence Fishburne. He is a powerful and intense actor, with an incredible range. We had the opportunity to see Mr. Fishburne in 'Thurgood' on Broadway a few weeks ago, and it was a truly profound experience. The actor disappeared and Thurgood Marshall was standing there on the stage. Mr. Fishburne is also a talented writer and director. If you distill CSI down to its essence, it's a collaboration—and we are so looking forward to collaborating with Mr. Fishburne. For all of us at CSI, this is truly a dream."

"I am elated and delighted to be joining the cast of CSI," says Fishburne. "I look forward to a wonderful collaboration with the creative and talented team of such a successful and distinguished show," he added.

Click here to read the full post

From the archives: Like back in the day, it's The Cos at The Club

Because this is a relatively slow stretch for television, and because I’m pre-occupied with fall preview material, I’m going to be dipping into the archives this week and posting some of my favorite stories from years past to NJ.com. Today, it’s an interview I did with Bill Cosby when he did a rare nightclub appearance at Cecil’s Jazz Club in West Orange. The story originally ran in The Star-Ledger on November 7, 2003. Click here to read the full post

Mad Men, "Three Sundays": I saw her today at a reception

Spoilers for "Mad Men" season two, episode four coming up just as soon as I call 1-800-MATTRESS...

"Don't you love the chase? Sometimes it doesn't work out. Those are the stakes. But when it does work out, it's like having that first cigarette." -Roger Sterling

There's a lot of chasing and not a lot of catching in "Three Sundays," an episode that's largely about foiled expectations -- for both the characters and the viewer.

Betty's about to get spontaneous, Don-initiated sex when the kids burst in, and her pleas to get Don more involved in disciplining them go largely unanswered. Peggy's hope of finding someone she can relate to in her mother's world gets ruined when her sister Anita blabs about Peggy's "nephew." All that time and effort spent on the American Airlines pitch are wasted after Duck's contact gets fired, and to put us in the characters' heads, writers Andre and Maria Jacquemetton choose not to show us a second of the pitch we've spent so much time preparing for. (For us, seeing a vintage Don pitch is the fulfillment that Sterling Cooper would get from landing the client.)

Really, the only character who catches what he's chasing is Roger, and even there he has to literally pay for it.

Not that there were many blanks left to fill in with the story of Peggy and Pete's baby, but Peggy's budding friendship with Father Gil -- and Anita's jealousy of same -- gives us a better sense of how things went down in the Olson family. Her mother is a devout and very old-fashioned Catholic, the sort who treats the arrival of a priest in her home like she just won a contest to meet her favorite movie star (she even takes a souvenir photo), and the sort who's so strict about tradition that she feels comfortable giving Gil lip when he recites a version of Grace that matches the spirit but not the letter of the law.

Why would such a woman be so tolerant of a daughter who had done what Peggy did? Because she, like everyone in the family but Anita, believe what the shrinks must have told them after Peggy gave birth. They think Peggy had a nervous breakdown -- explaining, in their minds, both her ignorance of the pregnancy and the affair that led to it -- and so they walk on eggshells around her, just pleased when she makes a new friend who didn't know her during all the unpleasantness.

Anita, though, sees Peggy for who she really is: a girl who slept with a married (or, initially, engaged) man without thinking about the consequences, and who seems perfectly happy to use her psychiatric diagnosis as an excuse to avoid future responsibility. What Anita does to Peggy in her confession to Father Gil is awful and manipulative, but I can sympathize with her resentment. Now, in a different time, and/or a time when Peggy wasn't so naive that she didn't recognize what was happening to her body until it was too late, Peggy might have gotten an abortion or arranged to give the kid up for adoption, and it's not like she chose to have the kid placed with her sister. But it's still her son that Anita has to raise, and Peggy does her best to act like that isn't so, and if I was Anita -- the "good" sister who plays by the rules and takes responsibility for the entire family -- it'd drive me a little nuts too, you know? (Especially if I was as devout as Anita and I saw the new priest paying more attention to my wicked sister than to me.)

Father Gil's reaction to this news is interesting (and well-played by Colin Hanks). We learn fairly quickly that he's a progressive priest by 1962 standards, more worldly and more open to new ideas, and while he doesn't shun Peggy upon learning about the baby, he does seem more reserved around her in the episode's final scene. I know Hanks is going to do a few more episodes; I just hope Matt Weiner doesn't try to travel the Carmela/Father Phil route and have Peggy fall in love with her local man of the cloth. She does seem to like him, because he's a nice guy who doesn't fit the mold of either her work or family life, but I don't want to see it go further. There's paying homage to your old show, and then there's copying it wholesale.

Don doesn't get the American Airlines account, nor does he get to see Duck take any kind of punishment for dumping Mohawk on this foolish gamble. (On the other hand, I imagine that Roger and Cooper may listen more closely to Don than Duck in the next argument.) And in his frustration over that disaster, and over having to witness how quick Betty -- whom he views as the ideal mother -- has become to judge the kids as harshly as she can, he explodes. Yet it's a good explosion in the end, because it forces Don to open up to both Bobby and Betty about the son of a bitch who raised him.

Neither Don nor Betty is getting what they want out of this relationship. She's angry, and lonely, and unfulfilled, and she's taking out her frustrations on the kids (especially on Bobby, whose denials about breaking things cut her just as deeply as Don's denials about his cheating). He's entered into this fake ideal of the the perfect marriage and the perfect mother, but he has little use for the kids and isn't really attracted to Betty. They both usually refuse to admit to those feelings, or to open up in any way, but for a brief moment, Don's explosion -- and sweet little Bobby showing how much he loves his daddy -- leads him to drop his guard and talk a little about his horrible childhood. If Betty knew how Don really grew up, who he really was and why he acts the way he does, they might be able to have something resembling a functional relationship. But hopefully this one moment of honesty will lead her to ease up on the kids, and maybe on Don, too. And maybe seeing what a mess Betty's reationship with the kids is will cause Don to be a little more present. This being "Mad Men," though, probably not.

As for Roger, all he wants is the chase. His wife Mona expected happily ever after that wedding day she speaks so glowingly about (to the daughter that Roger feared would never find a man), but instead she found herself married to a man with no use for the sedentary, predictable nature of that. Mona is old business, and if he had ever left her for Joan, Joan would have become old business, too.

At first, I wondered why Roger would feel the need to pay for it, as opposed to dipping into the secretarial pool, or picking up a girl in a bar, or whatever, but then I realized that it's just like him bumming a cigarette off of Ken last week. After his heart attack, Roger made a pledge to change his wicked ways, to cut out the smoking and the whoring and (some of) the drinking, but he's doing that in ways that allow him to deny his own actions. "Oh, I don't carry cigarettes around anymore; I just bummed one off of Cosgrove!" "Oh, I would never have an affair with another woman. This is a hooker! It's not real!"

Some other thoughts on "Three Sundays":

• So much wonderful, largely wordless stuff with the secretaries during the Sunday cram session, whether it was them swooning over the sight of Don bringing his little girl to the office, them gazing with frustration at having to wait their turn at the buffet, or especially them giving former secretary Peggy the stinkeye while she enjoys her dinner.

• Even before his unfortunate defeat with America, Duck turns out to not be the complete villain the earlier episodes this season suggested he might be. Not only does he make sure that the gum-chewing secretary gets to keep her job (Cooper doesn't even notice that she's the one introducing the American contingent), but he shuts down the chimpunks' gripe session about Don, acknowledging that ultimately, Don is more important to the process than he is.

• In yet another time-warp moment, I love how dressy everyone gets for working on a Sunday. Don could probably be one of the more stylish people at your average 21st century office on a weekday, and you just know that Ken or somebody would show up today wearing a throwback basketball jersey and cargo shorts. (Though I suppose Pete's tennis whites were the 1962 equivalent. That boy's like school on Saturday.)

• As I suspected when Melinda McGraw showed up with the regular cast for the Television Critics Association awards, it looks like Bobbie's going to be sticking around for a while. And it looks like those people who suggested last week that Don grabbing her by the "reins" was a move that she had not only invited, but enjoyed, were onto something. That is one seriously damaged woman. I look forward to Joan having to hold her tongue about Bobbie. Also, at first I assumed Bobbie refused Joan's offer to take her coat as some kind of minor power play, but then it turned out she wanted to use it to aid her in finding a way to keep things from getting dull with Don.

• Sally Draper, comedy genius: I can't decide whether the episode's funniest moment was Sally clapping wildly at the end of Don and Betty's argument, or Sally admiring Joan's "big ones" and suggesting that she'll have some too one day. (I guess if she wears a bra like her not-too-busty mother, she can look like she has big ones, too.) Question: between her junior bartending gigs and her sneaking a swig of some leftover SC booze, are they setting up Sally to have some sort of alcohol problem by the end of the series (or, at this rate, season), or is it just a sardonic commentary about how little adults in 1962 worried about kids being around liquor?

• I loved the sequence leading up to the big meeting with American, as the SC people did last-minute fixes, limbered up, etc. It was shot very much like the locker room scene that takes place before the big game in a sports movie -- which only made Duck's announcement and the episode's omission of the stillborn pitch that much more (deliberately) frustrating.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Skins, "Tony" & "Cassie": Horny guy, hungry girl

Spoilers for the first two episodes of "Skins" coming up just as soon as I play with my food...

As I discussed in my column on Friday, I'm really glad I got to see more than the first episode of "Skins," and that BBC America was wise enough to show these two back to back.

By itself, "Tony" suggests a kind of show I'm not sure I would have much patience for, in an old man, "Get off my lawn, ya punks!" sort of way, that it's just going to be another tale of kids gone wild and the adults too clueless to understand or control them. Even though "Cassie" opens up with the kids waking up after a night of unsupervised hedonism, it quickly makes clear that the show doesn't have one specific worldview, or one specific style. The surreal qualities of "Cassie" provide a stark and intriguing contrast to the sniggering farce of sexual manners of "Tony," and made me look back on the first episode in a new light.

Outside of occasional interludes like the guys in the locker room with a naked Angie, "Cassie" is told so clearly from the point of view of its title character that it made me re-examine "Tony" and realize that this must be what life looks like through his eyes. He's young, he's handsome, he's clever and talented and can talk his way out of trouble, and he's got a hot girlfriend whose self-esteem is low enough that he can treat her shabbily (calling her "Nips" over her repeated protests, for instance) and she won't mind. Why wouldn't he view life as a never-ending party? Why wouldn't he assume that every woman, of every age, wants him?

"Cassie," meanwhile, unfolds with the logic of a dream. We don't know what's happened, how Cassie found herself in this place, or, initially, what that gooey substance dripping off her hands is. As often happens on this show, it seems, we're supposed to think of sex first when the real answer is something stranger or more innocent, like a massive food fight. It isn't clear at first that Cassie is hallucinating all those "EAT!" messages, but there comes a point where you begin to question the reality of anything happening here. Is Alan the cab driver even real? If so, is he really so sweet and innocent in his affection for Cassie, or is he a dirty old man and she's too hungry and tired to notice? Are her parents really the oblivious but well-meaning nymphomaniacs we see, or has Cassie chosen to view them entirely through that lens? Does she even really take a bite of that pub burger at the end?

Once I got past the point of view issue, I really grew to like the show's narrative and visual style, and the performances by most of these young actors. (One of the reasons Tony irritates me so much is because Nicholas Hoult is really good at playing that type of boy.) There's a playfulness to it that undercuts all the OMFG/end-times nature of the trouble the kids get into, like the way everybody's busy watching Anwar fail to pee when the car starts rolling into the harbor, or the way the one black student (is he Jal's brother?) shifts back into a proper British accent when none of the kids can decipher his hip-hop patois.

Some people who have seen the entirety of the series claims it falls off in quality after the first few episodes, or after the first season. (BBC America is going to show both seasons consecutively over the next few months.) I don't know -- and, as I did with "Doctor Who," I'm going to ask that nobody discuss or even allude to any plot details from episodes that have yet to air in America, or I'll delete those comments and get very cross -- but I'm intrigued to find out.

Some other thoughts on these two episodes:

• Like I said in the review, the stuff with Mad(ison) Twatter worked largely because the character is so strange and so funny. I sure didn't expect to see him at Cassie's support group, but the guy's so skinny that it makes sense.

• Cassie's demonstration to Sid of how she keeps her parents from noticing that she doesn't eat was both brilliant and terrifying. I feel like I'm going to spend the next 15 years of my daughter's life with my eyes glued to her plate at the dining room table.

• Other than the bleeping and some of the pixellation in scenes like Angie in the locker room, the most obvious difference between the British telecasts and the BBC America versions is that they slap on the subtitles whenever someone's accent gets especially thick. I first remember encountering that technique when I was in college reviewing a British indie film called "Riff-Raff" (with a young Robert Carlyle), and the entire movie had to be subtitled, because even though it was all in English, the distributor feared (in that case, quite rightly) that nobody would understand the dialogue otherwise. I do like how the subtitles here aren't confined to the minority or working-class characters, but that they pop up whenever Tony's around the rich girl from the other school.

• One thing I didn't pay attention to when I watched the original cut of "Tony": the music. Was BBC America able to use the original soundtrack, or did they have to swap out a lot of the tracks?

• It's a good thing Chris has no idea what "Dawson's Creek" is, or else he'd be embarrassed to realize that his crush on Angie is uncomfortably close to the story where Pacey slept with the hot teacher. (But the story works beause, as with Mad, Angie is written almost entirely for laughs.)

• Given my love of "Freaks and Geeks," "Undeclared," Brian Krakow, et al, it should be no surprise that I really enjoyed all the stuff with Sid, and am looking forward to his spotlight episode.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Generation Kill, "Stay Frosty": When Captain America stabs his mighty bayonet...

Brief spoilers for the penultimate episode of "Generation Kill" coming up just as soon as I guzzle a milkshake...

I'll be honest: this is another week where I feel like I'm running out of things to say. Again, I'm enjoying "Generation Kill" enormously, but as I said a few weeks back, each episode is very much of a piece, and I feel like we've hit most of the major themes by now. I imagine I'll be more inspired to write about the seventh and final episode (which I haven't watched yet), given that it covers the Marines' time in Iraq post-"Mission Accomplished," but this week I'm going to keep it brief and just highlight a few things I either liked or was interested in:

• Colbert's brief moment of Zen -- sprinting around camp doing his best impression of a bird in flight -- was beautiful, a moment of pure joy from a guy who usually carries himself like a machine. In particular, I loved how, after he said "Better now," it was like he flipped a switch and turned back into the Iceman.

• Sgt. Major Sixta returns after being absent for several episodes, and his mangled pronunciations and grammar -- "You inappropriating your chemical filtration device by attempting fornication with! Jesus, do I have to tell you not to dee-secretate your mask for perversions!" -- made me giggle like usual.

• For the most part, we've seen Godfather through Fick's eyes, and it hasn't been the most flattering view, as Fick clearly worries that Godfather is putting his men in danger solely to impress General Matis. But Ferrando's conversation with Colbert -- who, like a lot of the other men, really wants another mission and is pleased to hear he might get one -- shows us another angle on the man.

• They certainly haven't held back in showing Captain America's meltdown, have they? When I interviewed the real Kocher before the miniseries debuted, he said that people ask him all the time whether Cap was really that crazy, and he says that both the book and the miniseries leave out a whole lot of other behavior even more bizarre, possibly because no one would believe it.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

At the movies: Pineapple Express

Shocking, I know, but I actually went to a theater to see yet another product from the Judd Apatow comedy factory: "Pineapple Express." (Proof of Apatow's dominance: most of the trailers were for movies Apatow has nothing to do with, but are stuffed with members of the Apatow Family Players, like "Role Models" with Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks and McLovin; and "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist," with Michael Cera, Jay Baruchel and Kat Dennings.) Quick spoilers coming up just as soon as I celebrate my cat's birthday...

Though I enjoyed it, I think I have to put "Pineapple Express" towards the bottom of the Apatow pantheon (said Pantheon is defined as movies either written and/or directed by Apatow himself, or written by alumni of "Freaks and Geeks"). Certainly not as deep as either "40-Year-Old Virgin" or "Knocked Up," or even "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," and slightly less funny on average than "Superbad" (though the laughs were peppered throughout the movie, where "Superbad" tailed off significantly in the second half, especially whenever McLovin was off-screen).

Given that "Midnight Run" is probably my all-time favorite movie, I was pleased when I heard Seth Rogen and company point to that film as a touchstone for "Pineapple Express." But while some of the action parts of the action-comedy worked -- specifically, the car chase, where the application of stoner logic to a cliched scenario made it something special -- all the pieces didn't fit together well. I kept waiting, for instance, for Rogen's process server skills to turn out to be very useful in defeating Gary Cole (who didn't really get anything funny to do), but they just dropped that part of the character. Though I wouldn't want to have missed Ed Begley's cameo, the stuff with the girlfriend went nowhere, too. And I'm still not sure I'm on board with that over-the-top climax, where Rogen suddenly turned bad-ass for no reason. (I think it would have been much funnier if the two of them succeeded in spite of their total ineptness at fighting, shooting, etc.)

All that being said, it's just a pleasure to watch guys like Rogen and Danny McBride and Craig Robinson riff on each other, and I was especially happy to see James Franco remind people that he can, in fact, be funny. (I had to re-watch the entirety of "Freaks and Geeks" to figure that out.) Saul the pot dealer wasn't exactly another Daniel Desario (he's kinder, gentler and less neurotic, plus he has a Bubbe), but he's in the same laid-back vein that drives other characters nuts when things get tense. And the Bill Hader black-and-white teaser was just brilliant, and a reminder that this guy is really underused on "SNL."

Overall, the good parts of "Pineapple Express" outweighed the disappointing ones, and I'm not worried about Apatow overkill yet (I'm looking forward to "Funny People," his next turn as writer/director), but it wasn't as great as I hoped for.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Jerry Krupnick, 1926-2008

Some of you older Star-Ledger readers may remember Jerry Krupnick, my predecessor on the TV beat and a man who covered TV going back to the early '50s. Jerry died yesterday; you can read my obituary at NJ.com. Click here to read the full post

Burn Notice, "Bad Blood": Where my Cheese at?

Very quick spoilers for last night's "Burn Notice" coming up just as soon as I glue some flair to my cell phone...

They're on a nice little roll of late, aren't they? Another strong episode, with a good personal case for Michael (albeit one that could have made more use of Method Man as the murderous hip-hop mogul, and one where Michael's solution again was to set up the bad guy to get killed in his client's place) and some interesting developments on the Carla (and now Victor) front. One of the pleasures of the show is Michael's ability to think, talk or fight his way out of almost any situation; his methods are so varied that his invincibility never gets dull. But it's still nice to see him go up against someone as smart, and talented, and vicious -- not to mention someone who's far better-connected than Michael's little network of himself, Fi and Sam. I never really watched "Stargate," so this is my first real exposure to Michael Shanks, but I thought he did a very nice job as Michael's dark double.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

That's a bad job, Mikey: Mike and the Mad Dog no more

Another day, another discussion of a famous sports-talk duo who won't be working together so much anymore -- or, in this case, at all. After the jump, I lament (but not really) the end of "Mike and the Mad Dog." (For those of you not from around these here parts, they're the most successful sports-talk radio team of all time.)

First, an excerpt from a story I wrote for the Sports section last year about my breaking the addiction to Mike and the Dog:

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing if you want to listen to "Mike and the Mad Dog."

There was a time where my life ticked along to the beat of their WFAN theme song. I nearly got fired from a summer office job because my boss kept catching me listening to Mike and Chris performing their daily inquisition of then Mets manager Jeff Torborg.

But the older I got and the more I attempted to learn about our local teams through resources other than Mike and Chris, the less I could stand listening to them. Because once you realize you know more about a particular subject than they do, they're unbearable.

Their on-screen personas are built on the shaky foundation that they are the all-seeing, all-knowing experts on all matters sports-related. They bully all but the most sycophantic callers, shouting down any attempt to disagree with them. When they do interviews, they don't so much ask questions as make thesis statements for the guests to agree with, as confirmation of Mike and Chris's astute powers of observation.

[...]

I tolerated and at times even enjoyed them when they were the only game in town to get a sports talk fix. But now there's satellite radio, and podcasts, and blogs and message boards and so many other venues for me to learn about, discuss and debate what's happening with the Yankees or Knicks that there's no earthly reason for me to endure their act. I'm no sports expert by any means, but when I make the mistake of tuning into their show for a few minutes while stuck in traffic these days, it feels like the only subjects they have a better command of are the '50s Yanks and the San Francisco Giants' middle relief corps.

And yet, my dislike of them as a team doesn't remotely equal how I feel about them whenever they work solo -- which they will be doing permanently, now that WFAN has severed ties with the Dog.

I feel uncomfortable comparing these two loudmouths to Lennon and McCartney, but in the world of sports-talk, they're essentially The Beatles, and their partnership was one where the whole was far, far greater than the sum of the parts. Just as John made Paul smarter and Paul made John more entertaining, Russo's clowning tempered Mike's arrogance and Mike's knowledge and connections tempered the Dog's more outrageous antics. Working apart, you have a rampaging, unwarranted ego and a cackling idiot whose only skill is agitating his listeners.

Again, I don't listen to them anymore together, and I sure as hell won't listen to either one apart, but for the people who are still fans, this is a lose-lose. Neither will ever be remotely as good on their own as they were as a duo. Click here to read the full post