The Wire, "Boys of Summer": Nailed shut

Spoilers for "The Wire" fourth season premiere immediately following this...

That nail gun. That goddamn nail gun.

I'm placed in an unusual situation in doing these recaps, since I've seen the entire season in its entirety. On the one hand, that means I can point out things people may not have realized they should be paying attention to, or help differentiate all the new characters during those first three or four weeks it usually takes to learn everybody's name. But it also means that I have to be very careful to not let my knowledge of what's to come -- for the Major Crimes Unit, for the election, for the middle school kids, Bubbs, Omar, etc. -- turn my analysis into unconscious spoilers. I'm going to try my damndest, but if at any point in this 13-week journey you think I'm talking about things that haven't happened yet, let me know and I'll do what I can to get that under control.

In particular, it's hard for me to delicately convey the horrors that will be perpetrated all because that helpful Hardware Barn employee pointed Snoop towards that nail gun, but I'll try. You already get a sense of it in the scene where Chris and Snoop, with absolute calm and care, kill that guy in the vacants, cover their tracks and board him up in one of Baltimore's hundreds (or is it thousands?) of vacant, condemned row houses. When Bunk, Lester and Norris are wondering why they haven't seen any bodies from Marlo's takeover of the west side, this is why. Chris and Snoop are putting the bodies in places no one would ever think to look, so rotten that the smell of decomposition will mingle in with several dozen other unpleasant odors -- and if, on the offchance, some citizen or junkie is looking for a place to squat, they won't be able to easily get into those particular houses because the boards are nailed tight.

The opening scene of each season has presented that year's key themes. In year two, for instance, we open with McNulty on harbor patrol, eyeing the decayed factories along the harbor (signposts of the death of blue-collar America that we'll see played out with the Sobotkas) before he and his partner have to give a tow to a party boat full of rich assholes (dilettantes turning what was once a thriving site of commerce into yet another place for them to party and enjoy their wealth). By putting that scene on Felicia Pearson, an untrained performer whose speech is hard to understand on a good day, David Simon's taking a chance on his message not getting across. But I've watched that sequence a half-dozen times and thought about it a lot as I watched the other 12 episodes, and I have several theories, any and all of which could be right or wrong:

• Worlds passing in the night: There are two Baltimores (two Americas, if you want to get really poetic): the one the Hardware Barn salesman lives in, and the one Snoop lives in. Snoop may have been briefly raised in the salesman's world and the salesman may have heard of Snoop's on the news, but they have no common frame of reference beyond that. The salesman looks at the nail gun as a tool for building something; Snoop looks at it as a tool for destroying something (or, at least, covering up evidence of that destruction). A lot of this season's political storylines will deal with Carcetti and Royce and Tony Gray trying to raise up Snoop's Baltimore without ruining the salesman's in the process.
  
• Teaching one thing, learning another: Education is the dominant theme this year. Whether it's Prez at the middle school, Cutty at his gym or Marlo on the street, you're going to see a lot of attempts at educating kids, but what they take out of those lessons isn't always what's intended. Again, the salesman is trying to teach Snoop how to use the nail gun for one thing, and she's going to use it for something else entirely. And when she comes out to show her new prize to Chris, she tells him, "I'm in school, dawg" (or, possibly, "I been schooled, dawg" -- like I said, with Felicia Pearson, it's hard to say).
  
• The right tool for the job: We all know David Simon's theories about flawed institutions, and how The System is now too large, old and unswerving to fix all the problems it's supposed to. Time after time, we've seen and will continue to see cops and politicans and other well-meaning types try to do good and fail because of a bureaucratic snafu or some other chink in The System. But with our expanded look at Marlo's operation, we're seeing a perfect opposite to The System. Marlo is focused on one thing and one thing only: staying the strongest, baddest slinger on the West side. And he will do whatever it takes to hold onto that, in the most cold-hearted, efficient way possible. In that way, he's even better than Avon and Stringer, because Avon's pride and Stringer's desire for upward mobility created chinks in their armor. Marlo, with the help of Snoop and Chris and that nail gun, doesn't appear to have any weak spots. You're going to see a lot of people get boarded up into vacants for sins a lot smaller than Lex killing Fruit, but in Marlo's eyes, those people are potential problems, and this is the simplest way to be rid of them. No fuss, no agonizing, nothing: just kill 'em and nail 'em up in a place nobody's ever likely to look.
  

Those are just a few ideas. Now, howzabout the other 55 minutes of the premiere? Obviously, the most important element is the introduction of the four kids who are going to be our new main characters (and it's to Simon and company's credit that they're able to keep almost everyone else in play while shifting the dominant POV so significantly). For the benefit of those having trouble keeping track of who's who at this early stage:

• Namond: He's the one with the ponytail who works (if you can call it that) for Bodie. His father is someone you'll be familiar with when you meet him. He's all talk and no action; when he picks the fight with Dookie about the pigeons, you can tell he's hoping someone will break it up, and when he spots Michael in trouble with the Terrace kids, he cuts and runs.
  
• Randy: He's the kid with the cornrows and the huge smile, and the one who gets tricked into sending Lex to his death. He's the hustler and idea man of the group, as evidenced by his scheme with the urine-filled balloons and the glimpse we get of his candy-selling business. Has the healthiest home life of the four, thanks to a foster mother with a firm but caring hand.
  
• Michael: The leader and the muscle; he's the one who baits the Terrace boys and (proudly) takes the biggest beating. He has enough sway over the others that he can shame Namond into buying Dookie an ice cream.
  
• Dookie: Real name Duquan, he lives with a family of junkies, which is why he always smells bad and is made fun of by the other kids. Too smart to be stuck in such an awful existence.

At this stage, my favorite was Randy, probably just for that smile of his. Maestro Harrell has been performing professionally since he was six or seven years old (his first credit on IMDb is an episode of "Meego"), but he doesn't have that annoying narcissistic quality that plagues a lot of child actors; he's going to play a lot of happy and a lot of sad scenes over the next dozen weeks, and, as you already saw with him in the water balloon scene (happy) and then the bit where Little Kevin explains Lex's death to him (sad), he shoulders it all brilliantly.

You'll learn a whole lot more about all four of the boys as the weeks go along, a lot of it in their interaction with Prez, whose entrance actually made me yell out, "PREZ!" Now we know why Simon spent so much time late last season on the end of Prez's police career, at a time when it didn't seem to fit with the rest of the stories: he was laying the groundwork for Lester's protege, the code-breaking savant who knows all the words to "Brown Sugar," to move into a new career as one of the key figures of season four. Jim True-Frost is up to the added workload, and he has a really nice scene here in the premiere where the Vice-Principal (love her accent) shows him his classroom. ("So, this is me?" "This is you.") As we're seeing already, in that great cross-cut sequence where both the teachers and the Western cops have to listen to pointless speeches that have no practical application to their work, the two groups have more in common than being underpaid civil servants.

And speaking of the cops, get used to this amount of McNulty per episode, if not less. Dominic West was feeling burnt-out on the role, and even Simon felt the show would get stale if McNulty was the central character every year, so he's only in about half the episodes, usually as briefly as this. But there's a point to this new, well-adjusted Jimmy, and if HBO actually orders the fifth season, it will all pay off nicely next year.

Lester, of course, is up to his old tricks, finally issuing those subpoenas for the Barksdale property, taking advantage of his oblivious new boss to stir up trouble. What interested me more was our glimpse of a Carver who seems to have actually learned a thing or twelve from Bunny Colvin last year. He knows the names, job descriptions and personal foibles of Bodie's entire crew, and he understands that knocking heads isn't always, or even usually, the solution to anything. While characters like Lester and The Bunk and Omar (whom you'll see again in a few weeks) remain gloriously the same, I also appreciate that the show has charted the growth of people like Prez and Carver and even McNulty.

The election storyline is just warming up, but I love the sequence of Carcetti killing time instead of soliciting donations. Hard to have to spend that much time and energy on what obviously looks like a lost cause.

Since a lot of this is setting up things I'm hesitant to discuss yet, let's move on to some other random thoughts:

• Last year, the popular brand of dope was WMD, which matched the Iraq war parallels of the Avon/Marlo war. This year, Bodie's people are pushing Pandemic. Not sure which name is more accurate in describing the effect dope has on these neighborhoods.
• Did you catch Herc getting uptight when his new partner suggests a willingness to sleep with a man in order to have sex with the city council president? Methinks someone's still smarting from the Gus Triandos fiasco from last year. (Remember, Carver baited him into picking a man he would sleep with to gain the right to nail the Olsen twins, and he picked ol' Gus.) Chauffering Royce seems about the right level of responsibility for Herc, doesn't it?
  
• RIP, Fruit. Since Cutty will be more of a factor this year, I was expecting to see another confrontation between them, what with Fruit having ripped off Cutty and then Cutty sparing Fruit's life. C'est la vie; you don't always get closure on this show.
• Three of the four season premieres have now closed with discovery of a murder: D'Angelo finding out that Avon had the witness against him killed in season one, Bea Russell finding the Russian girls in the can in season two, and now Randy finding out about Lex.
  
• Am I remembering right that the official name for the low-rises where D'Angelo, Bodie, Poot and Wallace slung was the Terrace? If so, that's where the kids who beat up Dookie came from.
• Nice to see another face from "The Corner" turn up, with Reg E. Cathey joining the cast as Carcetti's #2 aide, Norman, who last voted for a white guy when Bobby Kennedy was alive. Or maybe not -- Cathey was 10 at the time of the RFK assassination, and he doesn't appear to be playing older. Side note: both Cathey and Larry Cedar, who plays Leon on "Deadwood," first came to my attention as castmembers on PBS' "Square One." Is Beverly Leech (aka Kate Monday) going to pop up on "John from Cincinatti" or the final "Sopranos" season or something?
  
• This season's version of "Way Down in the Hole" is sung, I believe, by a bunch of Baltimore schoolkids, which fits the education theme. As always, the editing on the main titles is awesome, and I love the kaleidoscope of circular images at the end (the convenience store lazy susan, the spare tire, the kid playing with the tire, etc.).
  

Lines of the week:

• School receptionist re: Prez's full name: "You say it, 'cause I ain't even gonna try it."
  
• Carver to Bodie: "Where's the love, Bodie? Where is the motherfuckin' love?"
  
• The Bunk, re: his true relationship with Lester: "To hell with Norris, Lester. You my real partner. My life partner." & "Look at that bow-legged motherfucker. I made him walk like that."

So, for those of you who made it to the end of this, what did you think? And, to repeat a question from earlier in the week, how many of you watched it for the first time tonight, and how many had already watched it with On Demand? As of now, my plan is to post these reviews on Sunday nights after the HBO premiere, but if I get a sense that the majority of you are seeing the shows earlier -- and if I can swing it -- I might move up the schedule.

Click here to read the full post

The new season: best of the best

Final versions of pilots are rolling in, and with the official launch of the season a week away, the number of questions I've gotten about what shows are good this year has increased to the point where it's time to break down my top 10, plus a few extras.

The good news is that, with the exception of Fox's already-debuted line-up, this year's rookies are, across the board, much better than any development season I can remember. (Even 04/05, which gave us "Lost," "House," "Grey's," "Veronica Mars" and "Housewives," wasn't this deep, though the best pilots were better than all but a handful of what I've seen this year.) But here are my favorites...

"The Nine" (ABC, Wednesdays at 10)
Premise: Nine strangers who survived a 52-hour bank hostage crisis discover that they can't relate to anyone in their lives except each other.
Have I seen a final pilot yet?: No.
Why I like it: Purely on a visceral level, I reacted more strongly to this pilot than any other. I still smile when I think of the moment when the pilot cut from the beginning of the crisis straight to the end, leaving the blanks to be filled in later. A solid ensemble in a season full of them, notably Tim Daly as a cop with a gambling problem and an unrecognizable Chi McBride as the bank manager.
Why I'm worried: Don't know if there's a series here. The writers talked at press tour about following a sort of "Lost" model, where each week we have a flashback to something that happened in the bank that's tied in to events in the present; what if their version of what happened in there is less interesting than the one my mind created? Still, after that pilot, I'm going to give it a long, long leash.

"Ugly Betty" (ABC, Thursdays at 8)
Premise: A young woman (America Ferrera) with braces and absolutely no sense of style gets a job at a fashion magazine, where her brains and work ethic don't seem to matter as much as her wardrobe. Adaptation of the world's most popular telenovela.
Have I seen a final pilot yet?: No, but I have copies of it and the second episode ready to queue up in the next day or two. If there's a significant drop in quality for show two, I'll come back and note it here.
Why I like it: America Ferrera, decidedly not ugly in real life, is fearless and funny and likable as Betty. Vanessa Williams has a nice Joan Collins/Heather Locklear turn as the diva who's trying to take over the magazine, and I liked Eric Mabius as Betty's spineless boss, even though he usually annoys me. Campy and yet self-aware and smart is a hard combo to pull off, but this show does it.
Why I'm worried: Really, just waiting on episode two to be sure they don't screw it up. In theory, I'm the wrong gender to be a fan, but as with "Grey's Anatomy" and "Gilmore Girls," quality transcends the whole boy/girl thing.

"Friday Night Lights" (NBC, Tuesdays at 8)
Premise: Like the movie, an adaptation of Buzz Bissinger's book about a Texas high school football team, with Kyle Chandler as the coach, Connie Britton as his wife and a cast of unknowns as the players, cheerleaders and other hangers-on.
Have I seen a final pilot yet?: No.
Why I like it: I'm a sports movie nut, and this one checks all the requisite boxes. Chandler's a nice fit as the coach (and a more plausible husband for Britton than Billy Bob was in the movie), and writer/director Peter Berg manages to find the balance between making the football scenes exciting and suggesting that the town goes way too overboard about their team.
Why I'm worried: No problems on my end, but I have blinders on for this kind of material. For all I know, no sports types will spend the entire hour picking it apart the same way I did the "Men in Trees" pilot.

"Heroes" (NBC, Mondays at 9)
Premise: Ordinary people around the world begin developing super powers -- including an indestructible cheerleader, a stripper with an evil mirror image and a Japanese cubicle drone who can bend space and time to his will -- in advance of an apocalypse.
Have I seen a final pilot yet?: Yes, and a second episode is supposed to arrive sometime this week.
Why I like it: Cool, simple idea -- superheroes without costumes, codenames or most of the other tropes -- told well, with equal parts gravity (dark narration, murders) and humor (pretty much any scene with Masi Oka as the aptly-named Hiro). Creator Tim Kring says he's not much of a comic book fan, which means he can approach a lot of the basics with fresh eyes.
Why I'm worried: As the closest thing "Heroes" has to a lead, Milo Ventimiglia is pretty much a blank; at least when he as annoying me on WB shows, he made an impression. I worry that the balance will tip more and more towards the dark, self-important tone than the more whimsical moments, and Kring's superhero ignorance has a downside: he may think some idea of his is bold and original when it's been done dozens of times since "Watchmen" was published in '85. But that's only if I'm looking for something to worry about.

"Kidnapped" (NBC, Wednesdays at 10)
Premise: When the son of a wealthy Central Park West couple (Timothy Hutton, Dana Delany) is abducted, a kidnap and ransom specialist (Jeremy Sisto) is hired to bring him back, while an FBI agent on the verge of retirement (Delroy Lindo) tries to insert himself into the case.
Have I seen a final pilot yet?: Yes, and a second episode, too.
Why I like it: Because it gets virtually everything right that "Vanished" got wrong: strong actors playing well-defined characters, an acute sense of place with New York locations, exciting action pieces, snappy dialogue, a kidnapping victim you actually care about, and no silly conspiracy theories to pretend the main story is more interesting than it is on its own.
Why I'm worried: Seeing the second episode calmed a lot of concerns. I still don't know if there's 20 more episodes worth of story here (if the show goes to season two, Sisto and Lindo would move on to a new case and almost everyone else would leave), but I'm here for a while.

"Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" (NBC, Mondays at 10)
Premise: The behind-the-scenes at "SNL" show with Aaron Sorkin, Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford.
Have I seen a final pilot yet?: No.
Why I like it: Sorkin is writing, Tommy Schlamme is directing, Perry and Whitford play off each other nicely, and there's a good supporting cast (notably Amanda Peet as the most likable TV exec of all time, Tim Busfield as a loyal director, and, in a cameo, Judd Hirsch as Lorne Michaels having a meltdown).
Why I'm worried: I love the talent involved and their track record a lot more than the pilot itself, which felt too self-congratulatory and too much like fanfiction. Maybe if I had seen the pilot without having read the script months earlier, or if I didn't know the TV business well enough to recognize that Perry's playing Sorkin, Peet's Jamie Tarses, Sarah Paulson is Kristin Chenoweth, etc., I might have felt more engaged by it. But because it is Sorkin and Schlamme -- and because certain moments in the pilot work so well -- I'm not ready to dismiss it quite yet.

"Jericho" (CBS, Wednesdays at 8)
Premise: It's the end of the world as we know it (maybe), and the citizens of a Kansas town that survived the nuclear attacks feel fine.
Have I seen a final pilot yet?: Yes, and a second episode.
Why I like it: Though it's been compared to "Lost" (and airs in the original "Lost" timeslot), it's much more straightforward: no monsters, no cursed numbers, no elaborate clues that seem much more significant than they will turn out to be and, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, no obvious "mythology." Instead, the show focuses on the reality of what might happen in such a nightmare scenario, and it seems well built for the long haul.
Why I'm worried: Still not sold on Skeet Ulrich as a leading man, and there's a development in episode two that suggests Gerald McRaney (who gets a lifetime pass from me after playing George Hearst on "Deadwood") may not be as central to the action as I had hoped. Not that visually exciting; where a lot of the NBC and ABC dramas are going for a theatrical film look, "Jericho" looks 100% like a TV show.

"The Knights of Prosperity" (ABC, Tuesdays at 9)
Premise: A blue-collar loser (Donal Logue) recruits a bunch of fellow losers in an attempt to rob Mick Jagger's apartment.
Have I seen a final pilot yet?: No.
Why I like it: Jagger is hysterical playing himself as a completely self-absorbed celebrity man-child. I also like Logue and his wacky sidekicks (including a cab driver, a hot waitress and an intern who thinks they're planning a heist movie shoot) and the various weird coloring in the margins done by writers Rob Burnett and Jon Beckerman, the team responsible for "Ed."
Why I'm worried: Well, for starters, there was this story suggesting that Jagger may have bailed on the project, and if that's the case, they're really up the creek. Do they recast at the very last minute and risk finding a celebrity who's not remotely as good as Mick? Or do they attempt to tread water until Mick changes his mind? I know Burnett and Beckerman have said that the show's not really about Mick, but when he's getting all of the biggest laughs in the pilot, his potential loss is a very big deal. Also, a horrible title, and we're getting dangerously close to it being too late to think of a better one.

"The Class" (CBS, Mondays at 8)
Premise: Former third-grade classmates re-enter each other's lives at a party, sparking new relationships.
Have I seen a final pilot yet?: Yes, and episodes two and three.
Why I like it: Because I've seen episodes two and three. The pilot was too broad and not funny enough, but I liked the later episodes much better. In particular, there's good stuff involving Jesse Tyler Ferguson as a semi-suicidal loser, Jason Ritter's uptight doctor dealing with Lizzie Caplan's abrasive photographer, and Jon Bernthal as the failure to launch case who still lives with his mom. In particular, Bernthal's delivery of the line "This place is not well built!" in episode two has replaced "Is that something you might be interested in?" as the reigning non seuitur quote in my house. After the pilot, I was ready to skip it; after the next two episodes, it's Season Pass material.
Why I'm worried: There's a lame running joke about a character who doesn't realize her husband is gay, even though he's so over-the-top flaming that the top is no longer visible without an observatory-size telescope, and it puts a major drag on any scenes involving that character and her sub-group. (For now, the show seems to have split the eight regulars and their hangers-on into three separate groupings, and one of those groupings is unwatchable.) Has all the setup/joke rhythms of a three-camera sitcom, and even though co-creator David Crane ("Friends") is one of the better setup/joke men in the business, if you're sick of the form this won't change your mind.

"30 Rock" (NBC, Wednesdays at 8)
Premise: This is the behind-the-scenes at "SNL" show with Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin.
Have I seen a final pilot yet?: No, and judging by the Rachel Dratch/Jane Krakowski switcheroo, sounds like there will be significant changes.
Why I like it: Alec Baldwin, who kicks into some kind of higher comedy gear whenever he's around Lorne Michaels, is great as the NBC executive whom Fey fears is trying to ruin her new sketch comedy show. Tracy Morgan does a nice impression of Martin Lawrence by way of Kit Ramsey and Tracy Morgan, and the Jay Leno/Ray Romano impression bit that's in all the commercials remains funny three months after I first saw it.
Why I'm worried: I didn't like the glimpses we got of the show-within-the-show in the pilot, which got in the way of the notion that Baldwin was wrong to want to come in and change things. It sounds like the final version of the series will feature little, if any, of "The Girlie Show," which is probably for the best.

Also worth considering:

• "Smith" (CBS, Tuesdays at 10): Arguably the deepest cast in a season full of them (Ray Liotta, Virginia Madsen, Simon Baker, Amy Smart, etc.), good production values, some fun moments with Baker as a charming sociopath, but the pilot's a bit too far on the glum side without adding the style (ala Michael Mann) to match.
  
• "Help Me Help You" (ABC, Tuesdays at 9:30): Ted Danson as a pompous group therapist undergoing a midlife crisis. Pilot wasn't as funny as some of the comedies listed above, but I liked it.
  
• "Six Degrees" (ABC, Thursdays at 10): Another show where the pedigree of the people involved (Hope Davis, Campbell Scott, Erika Christensen, Jay Hernandez, Bridget Moynahan, plus J.J. Abrams as a hands-off producer) is a lot more interesting than the pilot itself. Seems like a gimmick in search of an interesting story and characters. But if the other choices are "ER" and "Shark," I'll give it a week or two.
  
• "Shark" (CBS, Thursdays at 10): James Woods chewing scenery for an hour as a slightly nicer legal version of "House." Woods is great, but the writing doesn't live up to his performance the way the "House" writers do for Hugh Laurie.
  
• "20 Good Years" (NBC, Wednesdays at 8:30): I appear to be in the minority with my continued affection for John Lithgow's shameless hamminess, but the pilot gets points for putting the man in a banana hammock on two separate occasions. Like "'Til Death" on Fox, it's a case of some veteran comedians (Lithgow and Jeffrey Tambor) holding very weak material aloft.
  

So, any rookies I left off that you're interested in? What are you most looking forward to? Click here to read the full post

Here come the weekend

No new column today, as I'm getting hard-core into watching final versions of pilots and, in some cases, second episodes. (For "The Class," which took a significant leap forward in episode two, this was a good call by CBS.)

"Wire"-heads should look for my review to be posted promptly at 10 p.m. on Sunday, and I also hope to do one final round-up of my favorite new shows by sometime early next week.

In the meantime, did anybody subject themselves to the two new Fox comedies? Click here to read the full post

Make 'em laugh?

My favorite passage from today's other column, which deals with Fox's new comedies, "'Til Death" and "Happy Hour":

Early in the pilot episode of Fox's other new sitcom, "Happy Hour" (8:30 p.m., Ch. 5), Amanda, a pretty bank manager played by Beth Lacke, eats an entire deep-dish pizza to punish herself for not fitting into her favorite pair of jeans.

This is notable for two reasons: First, because it's so rare to see an actress on Fox convincingly eat anything, let alone something so obviously fattening; and second, because the pizza scene is the highlight of the inaccurately titled "Happy Hour."

My second favorite passage, David Simon talking about "The Wire":

In preparing that August magnum opus on why "The Wire" is the best drama in HBO's history, I did a lengthy interview with Simon and producer Ed Burns, then did several e-mail follow-ups with Simon. In one of those, I asked for his reaction to a New York Times story from early last year about a Queens drug crew that allegedly picked up counter-surveillance tips from watching "The Wire." Having seen that, I asked Simon, did he ever have concerns that he was helping to create smarter criminals?

"I have no reaction to the story," he wrote, "except to say that everything we are depicting on 'The Wire' is common knowledge among professional drug traffickers in and around Baltimore, Md. If someone in Queens, N.Y., needed an HBO drama to bring them up to speed on basic counter-surveillance techniques, it speaks poorly as to the industry standard in that city."

To read the full column, click here. Click here to read the full post

18 good years

From the first of today's two columns, re: "The Simpsons":

SO I'M sitting with Al Jean, longtime "Simpsons" showrunner and a writer on the show dating back almost to the beginning, listening to him describe some of the plots for the new season.

"All due respect," I say, after listening to him describe episodes where Homer joins the military and Bart gets a driver's license, "but at least half of those sound like plots you've done before, if not more than once."

"We've done every plot in the history of plots," Jean admits, "so everything we've done before is similar to something we're doing now."

This is the 18th season for "The Simpsons." In a business where most shows don't last 18 weeks, that is a ridiculous tenure, one that will see the show airing its 400th episode next May, followed by the long-rumored "Simpsons" feature film, being written by Jean, Matt Groening, James L. Brooks and eight other veterans. So Jean rightfully feels he needs some slack when it comes to storytelling deja vu.

To read the rest -- including Jean's list of the various things he does to annoy the fans -- click here. Click here to read the full post

Rock Star: Clear skies?

"Rock Star" elimination spoilers, post-haste...

Well, nertz. It's not exactly a secret who I've been pulling for, and I had resigned myself to her going home last week or tonight at the latest, and then Storm had to go and just blow up all over the stage and screen last night and fool me into thinking she would be around to the final week.

Instead, she goes home, but at least she got one hell of a three-song, two-night farewell: one of the most energetic covers of the season with "Sufragette City," a balls-out original with "Ladylike," and then a lovely tearjerker (it even had stone-faced Jason Newsted wiping 'em away) with "Wish You Were Here." At first, I was surprised she would go back to a ballad after regaining the ability to rock with "Helter Skelter," but you got the feeling she went into this evening knowing it was over -- and if she didn't at the start, she did once Magni got to sing the latest generic Supernova song instead of her. So she got to show one last color, and to sing goodbye to her late, mentally-ill mom. Then she got the nicest send-off I've ever seen for an eliminated reality contestant, up to Dave and Tommy and Jason all volunteering to play on her recorded version of "Ladylike." All in all, not a bad way to go out.

As someone pointed out over on Throwing Things, it's ironic that they all want to be in her band but none of them want her in their band, but she clearly doesn't fit into whatever the hell it is that Supernova is doing, so that's cool. It's late in the game, but maybe she'll get enough text messages to show up for the encore next week. And I know I'll be ordering a copy of Storm & The Balls' "Blue" CD whenever it comes out.

Time to rank the contenders one last time, I suppose. At the start of the season, there seemed to be a clear Big Four of Dilana, Storm, Lukas and Toby, and Magni has slipped in there instead. From least likely to win to most:

4. Dilana: I love Cheap Trick. Most of the new music I buy is from garage bands who are ripping off Cheap Trick. But when have they ever been confused with a punk band? It didn't sound so much like Dilana re-arranged "I Want You To Want Me" (yet another on-the-nose song choice) into a punk song as she just sang it at a completely different tempo from the band, all while flopping the lyrics around. There are times when she's a very cool cover singer, and her "Lithium," "Ring of Fire" and "Zombie" were three of the season's top 10 (if not top 5) performances, but whatever spell she had on me has been lost, and she's obviously way too high maintenance even for a short-term gig like this. I wouldn't be stunned if she survives the first elimination, or even the second, just so the band can maintain the fiction that they would consider a frontwoman, but no way is she winning.

3. Magni: Macro engaged: nice guy, total pro, fine voice, probably a better guitar player than Gilby, yet doesn't really bring that much to the table by himself. Lukas and Toby would have to basically threaten to rape Tommy on live TV for Magni to have a shot at beating them.

2. Lukas: I go back and forth on this. Apparently, during the performance show taping, Tommy gave some big emotional speech after Lukas performed about how he'd spent his whole life dreaming of being in a band with a guy who could make him feel the way Lukas made him feel after "Headspin." No doubt they cut it from the broadcast because it made it sound like Lukas had the gig won and no one needed to tune in for the next week and a half. But I just don't see the guy as a match for the T. Rex-style generic party rock that we've heard out of the band for the last four weeks. They pick him if they care about being around for more than one tour and one album and want to make their sound more modern; if they just want to cash in and go back to their day jobs, he's not the right fit.

1. Toby: He's the least interesting of these four, yet he's the perfect match for Supernova. I think that just about says it all about this season. Someone want to call Eddie Van Halen to see if he's changed his mind for season three?

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

Rock Star: The originals

Spoilers for the best "Rock Star" episode of the season after this...

Dilana, "Behind Blue Eyes" & "Supersoul": Hard to tell how much of Dilana's recent portrayal is a genuine meltdown and how much is the Burnett editing team needing a villain, but she is not coming off well at all. Crying jags two weeks in a row, followed by her writing a lame-ass song telling the fans to F-off (and that actually contained "Control-Alt-Delete" as a lyric), followed by her singing two sings here about how misunderstood she is and how all this suffering is only going to make her stronger. She's like GOB Bluth in that "Arrested Development" where he goes to work for Stan Sitwell and keeps coming up with variations on the same idea ("I call it 'Swing City'"... "I call it 'Fuck City'"...) Everyone seems to have gotten over the whole Interview-gate except Dilana, and when you couple that with her penchant for writing lyrics that are always way too on the nose (in an earlier webisode-only songwriting clinic, her song topic? why, the experience of being on "Rock Star," of course), and you have somebody who's gone from the runaway winner (when she sang the first Supernova song) to the most obvious potential boot in less than a month.

Whatever her personal issues may be, I really enjoyed her "Behind Blue Eyes" up until she had to, again, make the song all about her and her woe-is-me situation by flipping the gender at the end for the two people who already didn't get the point. She has a great voice and commands the stage and camera; I can't think of anybody else left who could have moshed as well while sitting on a stool. But she no longer has any shot at winning and her exit tomorrow wouldn't stun me in the least.

Magni, "Back in the U.S.S.R." & "When the Time Comes": I think I need a Magni macro at this point: strong voice, interacts well with the band, great energy and passion, throbbing vein, solid but extremely faithful cover, etc. Even Tommy, in his usual numbskull way, noticed this. I think Magni did himself a great disservice by not playing lead guitar on "When the Time Comes." From what we've seen to date, he's far and away the best musician left, the song's strongest attribute is that guitar riff, and Supernova arguably needs a second ax man. Magni's problem at this point is that he's solid in every area but not exceptional in any -- consistent but not creative -- so why not let it rip with the guitar to remind the band and the voters the one area in which he clearly excels over the competition? If Dilana isn't going home, he is, barring some fluke where neither is in the bottom three.

Storm, "Sufragette City" & "Ladylike": Ho. Ly. Crap. That was amazing, and I don't think it's just my gushing Storm fanboy speaking here. First of all, even if Dave's cameo on guitar wasn't a surprise, he and Storm interacted perfectly, and if she really didn't know he was doing it, then she improvised like a champ (loved the "Oh, David!" as he launched into the solo). Throughout the competition, Storm has seemed to sway between performances that were maybe too manic by a third to a half and quiet, solid but uninspiring ballads. Here, she finally put together the vocals and the energy, larger than life but in control of it. Maybe she needs to do an entire show of Bowie covers or something, but that "Sufragette City" was great...

...and so was the PG version of "Ladylike." The song suffers a little with "what" replacing "fuck" (as well as her having to lose the "Hey, motherfucker!" near the end, which you can hear properly here), but the passion made up for the lack of profanity. So glad she got to stick around long enough to sing this song on national TV -- and it, coupled with "Sufragette City," all but guarantee that she'll be on that stage next week. I don't think she's a good match with Supernova, nor do I think she really wants the job, but she's going to get what I'm sure she really wanted out of all of this: a full summer of exposure so she and her band can keep doing what they've been doing, just on a bigger, better-paying scale.

Lukas, "Living on a Prayer" & "Headspin": Lukas is essentially the un-Magni, polarizing where the Iceman is universally-liked (but not necessarily loved), risk-taking where Magni plays it down the middle, probably a pain in the ass on the road and in the studio where Magni's a pro. I don't know that I would want to pay money for a Lukas Rossi album (with or without Supernova), but I understand why the people who love the guy really love him and why the band is so into him.

I may not have been able to decipher all, or even most, of the words to "Headspin" (or "Living on a Prayer," but as a Jersey boy I know those by heart, like it or not), but the man has charisma, he does interesting arrangements (he completely changed the tone of the Bon Jovi song without subverting its meaning), and he's one of the more interesting songwriters (even when I can't make out the lyrics, I appreciate the tunes).

Toby, "Mr. Brightside" & "Throw It Away": On the other hand, you have Toby as sort of the perfect blending of Lukas and Magni: nice guy who won't overshadow the band but does have a certain spark, creative without being so adventurous as to alienate a lot of fans, etc. I thought his voice sounded a little too high and thin on "Mr. Brightside," and the attempt to get the crowd to sing along didn't really work. At first, I thought it was just a case of the studio audience not being properly mic'ed (ditto Storm trying to involve the crowd with the second "Ladylike" chorus, or Magni on "Satisfaction" way back in the premiere), but then you could very clearly hear them on the "oh oh oh oh oh oh" during "Throw It Away." (And stop being so impressed by how quickly the audience picked that up, Navarro: it's six "oh"s in a row, repeated frequently.) Even though he apparently wrote it a while ago (you can hear the original version on his band's MySpace), that song sure as hell sounds like it would fit in on a Supernova album, for good or for ill.

What it comes down to, I think, is the difference between a frontman (or woman) and a lead singer. When Storm and Lukas perform, it's in a very Storm and Lukas way; when Toby does it, I could see him singing for any number of bands, including this one.

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

The running man

Spoilers for "House" and "Standoff" in a jiffy...

"Tell Cuddy I want Ketamine..." Ever since the good doc said those words in the finale, it was clear that the writers were going to explore life without limping -- and David Shore and Katie Jacobs confirmed that in separate interviews I did over the summer -- but I still wasn't quite prepared for the image of House running like a mad fiend, or of him doing the Joel Goodson slide into a patient's room.

So I suppose it's appropriate that, just as House is regaining his mobility, he deals with two patients who have lost theirs -- and more severely than he ever did. And because irony isn't dead, no matter what we were told five years ago, the cures for "Stephen Hawking" and Yoga Girl will no doubt hold much longer than House's.

(Stephen Hawking's miracle recovery was corny as hell... and I was close to reaching for the Kleenex about four times during that scene, pretty much from the moment Cuddy decided not to potentially prolong the guy's suffering just to teach House a lesson. Nicely shot, scored, and played by Lisa Edelstein and Kathleen Quinlan as the wife.)

The idea that it wasn't the cane or the pain that made House cranky was broached pretty thoroughly in the finale, but as we all know, all but the first and last scene of that were a dream, and it was good to see it play out in something resembling the real world. Even if the writers try to do Hugh Laurie's spinal column a favor by keeping the limp away but bringing back the leg pain on occasion, we know that emotionally, House isn't going to change.

Nor would I want him to, not if it would mean the loss of bits like him throwing food at the janitor and blaming it on Wilson, or randomly setting fire to a patient's foot to prove a theory.

Very, very strong premiere, even if the scene with Cuddy and Wilson discussing which case House should deal with in his return from hiatus ("It's a great visual, but it's diagnostically boring") was a bit too meta for me.

As for "Standoff," don't have a lot to say beyond what was in my review on Monday: I like Ron Livingston, like Rosemarie DeWitt, and like them both together, but I think the show bungled big-time by starting the relationship in media res. I just didn't care that they were on the verge of breaking up when I wasn't given any time to invest in them being a couple. Plus, I want Gina Torres to have a lot more to do than play TV's 10,000th Disapproving Ethnically-Diverse Law-Enforcement Boss, and every time I look at Michael Cudlitz in that sniper uniform, all I can think is "I want Chris Sabian!" ("Chris Sabian?" "Who's Chris Sabian?" "I want this Chris Sabian here right now!" "Does anyone know where Chris Sabian lives?" "I think I've been to Chris Sabian's house once or twice!") Cudlitz was actually quite awesome in "Band of Brothers," even though he and Livingston didn't have many scenes together, so I'm hopeful that relationship will be interesting, too.

Based on the actors, it's going to get a much longer leash from me than, say, "Vanished" got, but not a great start.

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

Quick "Wire" question

How many people here, if any, are going to be watching each episode a week early via HBO On-Demand? (The season premiere is already available there.) I had planned, like Matt, to run my reviews on the night of the first HBO broadcast, but I want to at least consider the possibility that a lot of people will have seen the shows days earlier. Click here to read the full post

A (be)labored point

Why does it always feel like, at the end of a three-day weekend, you need an extra day off just to recover? (Or, in my case, to clean.) But back to the salt mines we shall go, and that includes reviewing.

After dealing with "Standoff" and MyNetwork TV in yesterday's column, today offers a preview of the new seasons of "House" (which will, of course, be back in the review rotation) and "Nip/Tuck" (which may pop up on occasion, but isn't a show I care about enough to consistently watch). In trying to get the column done in time for the holiday deadlines, I may have gone off too far on a tangent about trying to balance fans' desires with what's best for a show, but the key points are this: After last year's Carver detour, "Nip/Tuck" is back to being "Nip/Tuck" again, while "House" is doing something very interesting with the aftermath of the shooting in the finale.

A solid "Prison Break," up until the cop-out ending. Maybe if the producers hadn't done several interviews where they proudly announced their intention to kill a lot of characters this year, I would have assumed it was a feint much sooner and accepted it as the conventions of network series TV. But put your money where your mouth is, guys.

A few other points:

• Really, what's the value of the tattoos, except as a neat visual device? At least half of them contain information that super-genius Michael already seems to know or doesn't need to remember exactly (the names of the streets surrounding the prison, the station the car radio would reach to trigger the explosives). All they're doing is giving Mahone an easier means of following them.
  
• Another super-genius quibble: the man with backup plans within his backup plans keeps all their useful documentation in one backpack? He'd better have another set buried someplace en route to Mexico.
  
• So how does Sucre get from a Midwest cornfield to a Bed-Stuy apartment in, like, a day? If nothing else, how does he get into and around New York without any money? I'm sure he stole stuff at some point, but one of the elements I've been enjoying about the fugitive storylines are the details of everything they have to do to stay free and unnoticed. I'm not saying I want to see how C-Note is scrounging for each meal or anything, but the cornfield-->Brooklyn journey could have been fun if shown in more detail.
• Speaking of C-Note, man's got no one but himself to blame for his wife betraying him. If he had just told her the truth about his discharge, she'd be more willing to trust him now (not to mention, he probably wouldn't have been forced to participate in the robbery that put him away). Pride goeth before a jail stint.

And this morning's "The Wire" post over at The House: Dan Jardine on Bubbles. Click here to read the full post

The man, they myth, the shotgun

As they did in the build-up to the "Deadwood" premiere, Matt and his sidekicks at The House Next Door are devoting an entire week to "The Wire." First up: Edward Copeland on my personal favorite character (though isn't he everyone's favorite, really?), Omar. Click here to read the full post

Will they or won't... oh, wait a minute

On Fox's "Standoff," which debuts tomorrow night:

I'M ALL IN FAVOR of TV shows that dispense with the tired-to-the-point-of-comatose "will they or won't they?" Unresolved Sexual Tension gimmick, but the new Fox drama "Standoff" (tomorrow, 9 p.m., Ch. 5) goes even a step further than I would.

The story of two FBI hostage negotiators whose secret romance gets outed to complicate their work life, "Standoff" doesn't even bother to draw out the secret for more than three minutes, and skips past the start of the relationship. Forget "will they or won't they?" Here, it's "when exactly did they?"

Ron Livingston, the immensely likable regular guy actor from "Office Space" and "Band of Brothers," plays Matt Flannery, who in attempting to defuse a hostage crisis in the show's opening scene, admits over an open radio channel that he's been sleeping with partner Emily Lehman (Jersey native Rosemarie DeWitt, granddaughter of "Cinderella Man" hero James Braddock) for the last three months, against Bureau protocol. The crisis is resolved without anybody dying, and Matt, greeted with eye-daggers from Emily, shrugs and says, "What!"

This is followed by some harrumphing from their boss (and Matt's ex-partner), Cheryl Carrera (Gina Torres from "Firefly," wasted as the stock Disapproving Minority Captain), some ribbing by gung-ho tactical team leader Frank Perry (Michael Cudlitz), and bickering between Matt and Emily over whether they should stay partners, lovers, both or neither.

Problem is, while Livingston and DeWitt have nice chemistry together, it's hard to shake the feeling that this should have all happened in the second episode, or the sixth, both to have some fun with how they decided to dip their pens in the company ink and to give us a foundation to actually care about whether or not they break up.

To read the full column (which also includes a dissection of the inaugural MyNetwork TV offerings and whether they achieve "so bad it's good" status), click here. Happy Labor Day. Off to throw my daughter the best (albeit only) three-year-old birthday party she's ever had. Click here to read the full post

In 'Justice'

Another night, another new show: I weighed in on "Justice" a couple of days ago, but I'm curious if anyone bothered to watch and what they thought.

I'll say that I thought it was a cop-out that the client in the very first episode had to be innocent, even though the producer insists they will sometimes defend guilty clients, but I liked a lot of the little touches like Victor Garber's bit about kicking the table forward. ("Hey, every little bit helps.") Click here to read the full post

Rock Star: Do you remember how to mosh?

"Rock Star" results, PDQ...

Big, big, BIG sigh of relief from this Storm fan at the moment. She dodged a bullet, and deservedly so. But we'll go in performance order, since everybody but Magni got to sing.

Lukas, "Crap-Ass Supernova Song #3": You know, it's getting to the point where I can't imagine a scenario where Toby doesn't win. The two front-runners, Dilana and Lukas, have both sounded either ordinary (Dilana) or incoherent (Lukas) while playing with the band, and neither has really seemed to fit, whereas Toby, while unspectacular, at least had some on-stage chemistry with the guys and seemed to match the tone they were going for. Plus, he's not high-maintenance like the other two, and even if this is going to be a two-month tour (as opposed to a twenty year run with the band -- RYAN), who wants the headaches? Not good at all for Lukas, and I actually had Toby's "Hey hey hey"s and "Ho ho ho"s running through my head throughout it.

Toby, "Rebel Yell": Not as good as last night, but still fun, and I like that he went all the way back to the bleachers (which is where I had to sit for my taping). Looks like he's replacing Ryan as the teacher's pet.

Ryan, "Baba O'Riley": I'll admit it: I looked at some spoiler boards this afternoon to prepare myself for the inevitable disappointment of Storm's exit. And after doing a fist-pump over news of her survival, I was surprised to read several accounts that said Ryan got the biggest crowd reaction in the show's history and that everyone was going nuts when he was sent home. I can see how that might have played well to the crowd, what with the running and the jumping and the two or three other tricks in Ryan's bag -- not to mention the House Band outdoing its usual genius at playing The Who (this was maybe the best I've ever heard them) -- but the actual vocals were screechy as hell, he mangled a bunch of the lyrics, and the jumping off of stuff had devolved into self-parody even before they showed that "Ryan jumps off of stuff" montage during his biographical package last night. And again, 20 years? Really? Really? This band isn't going to be together for 20 months, maybe not even 20 weeks. Definitely the angriest exit we've had this season.

Storm, "Helter Skelter": Well, now I can see why she's been itching to perform on elimination night, because that was all kinds of cool and a badly-needed return to Crazy Punk Storm instead of Selfless Balladeer Storm. And, yeah, she was screaming too, but this is a song designed for it. (I'd argue that it was the first heavy metal song rather than the first punk song, but she sure as hell made a punk song out of it.) Would've liked to see the crowd actually mosh, but it's not that kind of crowd (and the paid hotties downstage sure as hell weren't going to do it). Lots of energy -- even some crowd-surfing -- but energy that felt spontaneous. I still fear that she's gone next week, but that's only one week short of the finals, and at least she got a chance to remind the band and the audience that she's not just a cabaret act.

Dilana, "Psycho Killer": Wow, this was just a complete disaster. I'm not sure how this is possible, but her energy level was really low, even though she was screaming and jumping up and down the whole time. I think the criticism of the last two weeks and now being in the bottom three has really thrown her for a loop, and she can't handle it. Which is a shame, because she was far and away my favorite performer for quite a while, and it feels like she's imploding. Also, am I going crazy, or was she yodeling at a few spots?

I'm hoping that we actually get to hear the original songs on the show next Tuesday, since the last time they did a songwriting clinic, it was confined to the webisode. And shame on the producers if they don't let everybody sing twice. Even "Idol" isn't shameless enough to try to stretch out five songs over a whole hour. Also, with Zoolander gone, Magni and Storm are the only ones who haven't performed with the band, or even one member of the band. Unless they're going to let both of them play with Supernova at the start of next Wednesday's show, it's pretty obvious that whoever doesn't get to is the one going home, no?

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

Big screen, small screen

Today's column deals with the staggering number of familiar movie actors who are on new shows this year:

BACK DURING Virginia Madsen's first stint on the A-list, when she was an in-demand young starlet, a script crossed her desk called "Long Gone," a movie about minor league baseball in the Jim Crow South. She loved the story, loved her potential role as a groupie with brains and sex appeal -- basically, the Susan Sarandon character from "Bull Durham," but a year earlier. It was a great part, one of the best she would ever play -- and everyone she knew was telling her not to do it.

Why? Because "Long Gone" was being produced for HBO, which in 1987 was the acting equivalent of being sent to the low minors.

"(It) was thought to have been a huge mistake, a huge step down to go for that cable channel," Madsen says now. "I loved the story, but it did some damage to my career."

Jump ahead a couple of decades, and her Oscar nomination for "Sideways" has Madsen back on the A-list again, getting significant movie offers again. And yet here she is doing TV again, playing Ray Liotta's wife on CBS' upcoming heist drama "Smith."

To read the rest of the column, click here.

And speaking of celebrity crossovers, I did my professional duty and watched about 15 minutes of "Celebrity Duets" before switching over to "Rock Star." All I saw were two of the people with musical theater experience (Lucy Lawless and Alfonso Ribeiro) sounding fine and the Olympic gymnast, not surprisingly, not. Unless it turns into a "Dancing with the Stars"-level ratings phenom, I don't think I need to come back. Anybody else watch? Click here to read the full post

Rescue Me: Burnin' love

"Rescue Me" spoilers start immediately after this...

As I was watching the finale, I was taking notes on my computer, and here is exactly what I typed as Sheila went into the kitchen to fix Tommy another drink:

Oh, God, she's again crushing the roofies into his drink? NO! NO! NO! NO!

Dammit, not even "Grey's Anatomy" or David E. Kelley have the ability to make me as angry at a show I otherwise love. How can they be as brilliant as they are in moments like Tommy telling Stack to let go or the visit to the 9/11 memorial tonight and then do stupid shit like having Sheila go for the RoHypnol AGAIN? And to trot out a cliffhanger that, while it fits as a bookend with Tommy's dream in the season premiere, is a classically phony Hero in Jeopardy stunt that even Leary and Tolan admitted the audience would see through. A conference call excerpt, after a reporter asked why they would do that if the audience knows Tommy won't die:

LEARY: "Because it's television."

TOLAN: "There's always an element of false jeopardy in a cliffhanger because you know we're not going to kill Tommy -- probably. But the question is, 'What is it going to get you for next season?' And we thought about this, and we're going to have a lot of fun with what gives us."

LEARY: "Don't forget: when a person on this show dies, their part only gets bigger."

Look, you drug Franco or Garrity or even, God help us, Lou, and trap them in a burning beach house, and I can picture the possibility that they could die, or get scarred or crippled or whatever. But Tommy's going to emerge physically unscathed -- how is he going to maintain his supernatural ability to bag hot women otherwise? -- and even if Sheila dies, I won't exactly mourn the loss of the poster girl for how horribly this show usually writes women.

And yet the show that can be so predictable -- they barely even bothered with the pretense that the squad was going to break up -- and annoying and self-indulgent at times can also give us bits like:

• The entire flashback sequence, which was done so slyly (with Tommy staying in modern costume and there never being an obvious edit) that at first I thought Reilly was going senile when he was calling Franco "Probie" (it wasn't until Jimmy and Lou's Red Sox argument that I figured it out);
  
• Chief Pecher (nicely played by Tolan) walking in on Garrity and Maggie humping away in his office ("I had a magazine..."), and also his random singing of "Poor Wandering One" from "Pirates of Penzance";
  
• Tommy's rant about his sperm having "ant strength";
  
• Mike's "Guys, I think I'm not bi anymore" (predictable, but the way the camera framed it was hysterical);
• Lou's sadness at seeing Reilly show up at the station in his hospital gown;
• Lou crawling around on the docks;
• The entire 9/11 memorial scene, even if, like the scene in the season two finale where they're looking at the skyline, the actors were clearly talking as much to the audience as each other;
  
• The whole "Don't look at me, I'm the dead guy" shrug Jimmy gives Tommy before quickly exiting what he knows is going to be a hellacious argument between his best friend and his widow.

I'm not even sure what the origin of the old "girl with the curl" cliche is, but if ever a show fit that description, it's "Rescue Me." When it's good, it's very, very good. And when it's bad, I have to ask myself why I'm even still watching.

Some other quick thoughts and notes:

• On the call, Leary also said that Tommy's karmic payback for The Incident (or, as Tolan described it, "Tommy's thing with Janet") wasn't Sheila raping him, or Johnny's death, or even him getting trapped in the fire. "It doesn't happen until sometime in the middle of season four, but it's coming." I dunno; I have a feeling that Sheila raping him was intended to be the payback, and when the audience didn't buy into it, they changed their story.
  
• Even after all the contortions to keep the rest of the guys in the house, is there any chance they might actually follow through with that Chief/Lou scene and get rid of Jack McGee next year? And, if so, what type of character might you like to see as the new chief, since I know Tolan's not moving to New York full time to play Pecher? Also, since they've talked about adding a new Probie, what kind of character do you want to see there? (I liked Tolan's suggestion in our interview of it being a super-capable woman -- straight or lesbian, I don't care -- who forces the guys to reassess a lot of the macho BS that chased away the Diane Farr character.)
• I wasn't really feeling either of the precocious kid scenes, whether it was Katie playing with Tommy on the definition of sperm or Keelah's "Did you try your best?" speech to Franco. I don't know about Tolan, but I know Leary has two kids, and those two scenes felt off to me.
• Where does Jimmy get off calling Tommy's 5'2" conquest a midget when Sheila's lucky she's that tall in heels?

And that's it for me on this show this season. I can only hope the good "Rescue Me" outweighs the bad again next summer, but I know I'm going to be there, regardless.

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

Rock Star: Impending doom?

First of all, can I give a resounding "Boo!" to the "Rock Star" producers for padding the hell out of what could have been an awesome show. You're down to six contestants. You've squeezed as many as 14 performances into an hour; why not let everybody go twice, once with the Fan's Choice and once with their own (whether an original or something from a list of covers)? I didn't need the biographical clips.

Also, the Fan's Choice gimmick was pretty lame. Every contestant had four choices: three songs they did before, and a Wild Card that another contestant (or, in the case of "Bring Me to Life," two contestants) had done. Of course everybody was going to pick the Wild Card, even if the song wasn't really a good fit for the contestant, simply because it would be new for them. It really feels like the music budget has been drastically lowered from season to season, or am I remembering year one's musical diversity a little too fondly?

Anyway, on to the performance-by-performance breakdown:

Lukas, "Lithium": In the webisode, he complained about not knowing the song and not even liking Nirvana (another lame element of the Fan's Choice, since "Mother, Mother" is something Dilana has done in her stage shows for years, whereas Lukas, Ryan and Storm all got stuck with songs they barely knew), but I think that worked for him in coming up with a very tight new arrangement. He made the verses plaintive rather than frustrated and angry, then brought the energy on the chorus before shifting gears back for the next verse. I don't know if this was Lukas' best performance, but it was up there.

Magni, "I Alone": I'm not sure his vein has ever throbbed this much, and I'm starting to worry; I want the baby to grow up with a father, you know? This was very typical Magni: great energy, great vocals, and 100% faithful to the original version. I like the guy a lot (he and Storm are easily the most appealing personalities left), but I want to see him mix a song up, just once, to show there's some creativity to go with the singing and guitar-playing talent. Also, I don't know what Gilby's talking about in terms of Magni suddenly displaying star quality, as I can think of at least three other performances of his that were at least this good, if not better.

Ryan, "Clocks": I want him gone, not just because I dislike him personally (I love how all of a sudden he's so sensitive about being slagged by Dilana when he was ripping the hell out of Dana and Patrice in the early weeks), but because he feels so practiced and phony. Even as he was kicking out the piano stool and doing his Luke Duke slide across the hood or busting out his Michelle Pfeiffer in "Fabulous Baker Boys" impression (minus the red dress, sadly), I can't shake the feeling that it's all been calculated to within an inch of its life. And I'm sure somebody like Lukas spends just as much time rehearsing every lurch and stagger and lip quiver, and yet it feels natural when he does it most of the time. Plus, Ryan's performance style is so humorless and doesn't feel like a good match for the band.

Storm, "Bring Me to Life": Oh, Stormy, I have a very bad feeling about this. First, where everybody else gets a biographical clip about how swell they are (or, in Dilana's case, about how determined she is to atone for her mistakes), hers is all about her struggles with this song. Second, it's, I think, her fifth ballad in a row at a time when she desperately needed to do something up-tempo and rocking, ala "Anything Anything" or "Surrender." Third, the band's clearly losing interest in her, as evidenced first by the "I Will Survive" pile-on and now Gilby's "I won't remember that tomorrow" slam. Even if she kills it in the bottom three tomorrow (and here's where not having been bottom three the last two weeks -- when she could have kicked ass on a song of her own choice and would have been safe because Zayra and Patrice were still around as cannon fodder -- is going to hurt her), I think they've already made up their minds about her. Which is a shame, both because I thought she sang the hell out of the song even when you factor in the degree of difficulty -- and her voice blended really well with Toby's -- and because I just enjoy watching her, and not just from a lecherous standpoint. I don't care if she wins -- I don't care if any of them win -- but I would have liked to see her make it to that final night. Ah, well. Maybe she'll at least get to sing with the band tomorr -- ah, who am I kidding? Sigh...

Toby, "Rebel Yell": Has he displayed this lower register before and I just missed it? Because he sounded great here with the deeper voice, and was really in command of the stage, even before he pulled a Springsteen and started pulling the paid dancing babes out of the front of the audience. After last week's jam with the band and tonight, I can genuinely see a scenario where he could win this. Given what little we've heard of Supernova, he seems like a better stylistic fit than either Lukas or Dilana, plus he'd be an easier guy to deal with on the road and would help these four middle-aged guys attract a younger female crowd.

Dilana, "Mother, Mother": This was the best I'd heard Dilana in weeks (and it oughta be, given how well she knows the song), but WTF with Navarro's comment that it was the best performance of the two seasons? Hell, it probably wasn't even the best of the night (I'd give that honor to either Lukas or Toby). Still, the angry song fit her like a glove and allowed her to display a more powerful, less raw side of her voice on the verses. And, of course, it neatly concluded the whole Fall and Rise of Dilana storyline that the producers have been working so hard the last two weeks.

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

Let me stand next to your fired agent

Blogger somehow ate an entire post, which contained thoughts on the "Entourage" season finale and the new episodes of "Prison Break" and "Vanished," and I'm on deadline for tomorrow's column, so I don't have time to recreate it all. Short versions:

"Entourage": A mediocre conclusion to an up-and-down season. I've always wavered on how much, if at all, I like Vince, and his refusal to acknowledge even a tiny bit of responsibility for his current predicament -- throughout the series, and this season in particular, he goes out of his way to jeopardize his career, often against Ari's advice -- really turned me against him again. On top of that, I don't buy that Ari would be so stupid as to give the exact same hackneyed branding speech to Vince -- especially since, as Rich Heldenfels pointed out to me, he knows Josh Weinstein's M.O.

I'm also disappointed that they got rid of Bob Ryan so quickly. I would have loved spending some time actually watching Vince make a movie for once, both to see whether he's just as big a flake on company time and to see Bob attempt to fit into modern Hollywood outside the cutthroat deal-making.

The season wasn't a total loss -- the trip to the Valley, Eric's threeway, Drama in Vegas and the introduction of Bob made it worth sitting through the episodes that dragged -- but it feels like the writers aren't sure what to do now that the show is becoming more popular (at least in Hollywood, if not the rest of the country). They spent large chunks of an episode on Vince buying Turtle a pair of $20,000 sneakers, for God's sake. I'm hoping the spring episodes with Carla Gugino are an improvement.

"Prison Break": A strong second episode, highlighted by Pope taking a stand for his guy (even though Bellick deserved to be fired) and Linc improvising a rescue attempt for LJ (including the first of what I'm sure will be many face-to-face encounters between Mahone and Michael). On the other hand, the bit with T-Bag preparing to kill the poor veteranarian made me uncomfortable. I'm glad the writers aren't trying to soften the character now that they know he's a fan favorite, and I completely believe he would kill the guy under these circumstances. But it felt like the show reveled in T-Bag's sickness more than it needed to in that scene with the vet taped to the table, begging for his life. Is it just me?

"Vanished": Placed in the Life's Too Short file after an unimpressive second episode. I don't have time to detail all that's wrong, so go read Fienberg saying almost everything I would.

Today's column mostly deals with "Justice," a pilot I dismissed back in June, but which grew on me in second viewing, mostly in the little details I didn't pay much attention to during my pilot marathon. I don't know that I'll feel compelled to watch it again, but that has to do with my own personal burn-out on the Bruckheimer formula than the show's actual merits, which aren't half-bad. Victor Garber fans will enjoy watching their guy play a cheerful bastard. Click here to read the full post

How race made its way onto the island

In a story that was originally planned for the Friday paper, then the Saturday, then the Sunday, and which finally wound up sitting right next to my Emmy column today, I talked to Jeff Probst and several "Survivor" experts about the segregation gimmick. Given some of the speculation, I figured I'd excerpt this quote from Probst:

"I think the notion of how long we keep them divided is a fair question," said Probst, "and I would say to that, you have to remember that there is a show we are putting together. If we leave people in the same tribes for a long time, they become so entrenched that there's no way they're ever going to leave their tribe, and that makes for boring television. We're already putting people in strong groups, you can't have much stronger an identification than your own ethnicity. We have strong tribes that are going to be aligned together from the beginning, we're not going to leave them like that forever."

To read the rest, click here. Click here to read the full post

The morning after

On the Emmys:

If the Emmy officials couldn't apologize for this year's nominees, then at least the winners could.

For virtually the entire three-hour telecast -- really, up until "24" and "The Office" became first-time winners in the drama and comedy series awards, respectively -- winner after winner greeted news of their victory with some combination of astonishment and shame.

Both Jon Stewart and Tony Shalhoub used the phrase "terrible mistake" while picking up awards (Stewart for the fourth consecutive "Daily Show" win for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series; "Monk" star Shalhoub for his third win in fourth years as lead comedy actor).

"It's not supposed to work this way, is it?" said a stunned Blythe Danner after winning for her supporting role on Showtime's defunct "Huff."

Danner was also one of four actors to win for shows that had been canceled, an awkward roster that also included Megan Mullally for "Will & Grace," Alan Alda for "The West Wing" and Andre Braugher for "Thief," a drama that was only dubbed a miniseries after FX failed to renew it for a second season.

Four of the five lead comedy actress nominees were from canceled shows; in a stunner, the winner was the fifth, Julia Louis-Dreyfus from CBS' "The New Adventures of Old Christine."

"Well, I'm not somebody who really believes in curses," she said, referencing the bogus "Seinfeld" Curse, "but curse this, baby!"

Maybe the signature moment of the night was when Jeremy Irons, winner for his supporting role in HBO's "Elizabeth I," made a beeline for the podium, not bothering to even pick up the Emmy itself. (He was briefly rendered speechless when someone shoved the statuette into his hands.)

To read the rest (much of it in praise of Conan O'Brien for saving what would have otherwise been a gruesome three hours), click here. Click here to read the full post

Deadwood: Final curtain

When I got done watching the "Deadwood" finale, my initial thought was "good season finale, an absolute joke of a series finale." The more I thought of it, though, the more I realized that maybe there was more closure than Milch intended. Either way, I'm depressed that one of the best TV shows of my lifetime is over, probably never to return. (I believe the movies will happen the same way I believe Isiah Thomas is building a championship contender at MSG.) More after the jump...

So let's see: Hearst is gone, the camp is spared destruction by the Pinkertons, Alma sold her mine so she could stay in camp, and Seth is going to lose his badge thanks to Hearst and Jarry's vote-tampering. That's a fair amount of significant threads tied up, albeit many of them happening in the last 15 minutes or so. So what was left unresolved, and what were the odds Milch was going to deal with them in the mythical season four? In no particular order:

• Where is Joanie and Jane's relationship going? The whole thing was both slow-building and sudden (took Milch forever to inch up to it, and then when he did it was quickly a full-on romance, or the closest thing Jane is capable of), and while they ended the season on a relatively happy note, I think there were interesting roads this could have traveled. Would Milch have eventually gone back to the history books and had Jane become a whore, possibly to spite Joanie? How would Joanie manage to stay out of the legend of Calamity Jane? Etc. (On a side point, Charlie giving Joanie Bill's coat for "you and the other one" answers my question from earlier the season about whether he knew Joanie was a lesbian.)
  
• Why oh why oh why did we spend so much time with Langrishe and his theater company? You could argue that Milch was setting the stage for a lot of more significant theater stuff in year four, but I'm not so sure. That scene with Jack and Claudia where he lamented an actor's usefulness in the midst of such real-life drama as the camp was facing sure sounded to me like a meta comment on the value (or lack thereof) of these new characters. Then again, Milch rarely seems interested in going meta, so maybe not. Frankly, losing the chance to find out what's up with Jack, Claudia and the two mystery women won't be keeping me up at night.
  
• What's eating Cy Tolliver? Okay, in this particular case, it was pretty clear: he was hoping his partnership with Hearst would lead to lavish criminal endeavors and the chance to kill or crush his enemies, and instead he became just another cog in the mining operation. Still, it felt like Cy outlived his usefulness a long time ago -- maybe not a surprise, since the character only existed because Milch felt bad that Powers Boothe was too sick to play Swearengen when the pilot was filmed -- and he spent most of his seasons being irritated at how marginal he had become. Hell, maybe Milch really does like writing meta, after all.
  
• Odell's death and the Earps, two plots that popped up mid-season, didn't really go anywhere and then stopped abruptly. I doubt we would have seen Wyatt and Morgan again, and with Hearst on his way to Montana, would Aunt Lou be following, or would she be one of the people Hearst left behind to keep an eye on his interests (in this case, how E.B. runs the Grand Central)? And would she even be willing to work for him anymore? I suppose Lou might have become yet another member of this sprawling supporting cast in season four, because the show already didn't have enough characters to service. But I doubt we ever would have found out what Odell's game was, any more than we found out what Wyatt's genius plan was.
  
• Is the Doc really dying, or is he just a hypochondriac with a bad cough? Not sure if Brad Dourif had other commitments that kept him away from the set a lot this season, but I felt like Doc, Sol and Adams suffered the most in terms of screen time sacrificed to new characters and concerns. I can only hope Al's "Get busy living or get busy dying" speech would have continued to keep Doc upright and active through the final season.
  
• What does Ellsworth's death mean for Seth and Alma -- and, of course, Martha? This could have been one of season four's most interesting subplots: how does Martha balance her innate decency and selflessness with the knowledge that her husband is spending more time with his ex-mistress?
  
• Whither The General and Steve? Ehhh... I love Franklin Ajaye in this role but could live without more of this odd couple.
  
• What will Harry Manning be like as sherriff? I actually find it a bit sad that he won, not because Seth is out of a job that he didn't really want, but because the only reason Harry ran was to get enough attention to become a fireman. Tom went and bought the firefighting equipment, and now Harry's going to be stuck policing the camp when he'd rather be polishing the fire wagon. Still, I think I'm okay not seeing where this goes.

The most important question: what did the future hold for Al, Seth, The Gem, Sol, etc.? Well, you can find out the reality of what happened to most of the major figures here, and I suppose if the movies actually do happen, they would tackle a lot of this. But even though the fire was technically the end of the camp, I feel like we reached a good thematic end with Hearst's arrival and departure. After all, the show has always been about how civilization is born of chaos. We've seen the imposition of law & order and with the successful (albeit rigged) elections, the camp's assimilation into the United States is a fait accompli. And once you bring order to a lawless place, all that's left is for those with the most money to start swinging their weight around to prove that the law doesn't apply to everyone equally.

So we have greed and wealth (Hearst) triumphing over the rule of law (Bullock), common decency (Ellsworth) and even our famous Yankee cunning and know-how (Swearengen). (Warning: liberal political commentary ahead; skip to the next paragraph if you think I'm a commie pinko.) I know Milch and our Commander-in-Chief were frat brothers, but this scenario feels eerily relevant to our current socio-political situation. As David Simon from "The Wire" likes to say, unfettered capitalism is not a social program, and Hearst represents capitalism in its purest, bleakest form.

We all knew that evil was going to triumph to some degree, in that Hearst's survival and later ascendancy to the U.S. Senate is the kind of historical fact that Milch wouldn't fudge (as opposed to, say, Bullock's family situation), but what was surprising was what a rout evil accomplished. For all of Al's plotting and maneuvering over the last half season -- the stuff with Wu and Hawkeye and the editorial and even Alma's walk to the bank -- Hearst got virtually everything he wanted. Ellsworth is dead, Bullock is out of a job and all of Deadwood's gold claims belong to him. I've said that I wasn't expecting any significant gunplay, but at the end all of Al's scheming feels like just another narrative dead end like Odell and the Earps. Really, the only thing Al accomplished was preventing his people from giving Hearst any justification to have his men start a massacre and burn the camp to the ground. And even that came with the pricetag of two bodies: Ellsworth and Jen.

When Matt's review is up, I'll post a link to it here, but he had a big problem with the death of Jen -- or, rather, the lack of any opposition to it besides Johnny. I can see how even Bullock would be conflicted about the choice between an unknown innocent whore and his best friend's guilty woman, but I would have liked to see some arguments about it, or at least some more obvious internal wrestling by some of the "good" guys (if that term fits any living character on this show) than this. It also would have helped if Jen had been more of a known entity to us. I can barely remember her outside the incident with her and Morgan Earp, which in retrospect was supposed to be a hint that Johnny was sweet on her but at the time just seemed like a sign that Johnny was growing up into a true henchman like Dan.

But even within the all the bumps and wrong turns and whozawhuzzahowzahuh? moments, there was still plenty of room for reminders of the genius that's kept us all so riveted to this show for the last three years: Johnny explaining the meaning of the wall to Jen; Farnum's rant about Hearst and "oozing, gruesome goo!"; the look on Harry's face when Tom shows him the crate; Aunt Lou helping Richardson get dressed to cast a spite vote against Hearst; the troublemaking drunk from the No. 10 quoting the 15th Amendment at the Pinkertons; Al's "Play the lie as mine, knowing I speak of you in Heaven" speech to the troops; every word, look and gesture to come from both Gerald McRaney and Ian McShane; and, of course, one final shot of Al scrubbing blood (the symbol of how, yet again, civilization is built on acts of violence) off his floor.

If that's not the most fitting image to end the series on, I don't know what is.

For the last time (sigh...), the lines of the week:

• Charlie to Hearst: "I'm the guy that, the next time you see me, you better take a different fucking tone with."
• Hawkeye to Adams: "I came to camp to tell you, but I fell one saloon short."
• Hearst to Seth: "You mistake for fear, Mr. Bullock, what is, in fact, a preoccupation. I'm having a conversation you cannot hear."
• Con to Joanie: "I got 'stay the fuck out' written on a stone tablet in my bedroom"
• Johnny to Jen: "On the surface, yes, it is (a wall). But inside, many creatures go about their lives, such as ants. They got a whole operation going. Soldier ants and worker ants and whore ants to fuck the soldiers and the workers. Right inside that wall, baby ants. Everybody's got a task to hew to, Jen. You understand me? Jesus Christ, fucking sake. We'll talk about this later."
• Charlie to a Pinkerton: "If he don't make it, you'll be eating your spuds running till I hunt you the fuck down."
• Al delivering the final line: ""Wants me to tell him something pretty."

And, finally, because it wouldn't be a "Deadwood" farewell without it: cocksuckers! Click here to read the full post

Not that anybody should care...

... but the Emmys are on tonight. In today's column, I rant about the lameness of this year's nominations, talk about who got snubbed and who among the actual nominees deserves anything. Click here to read the full post

Rescue Me: Love and death

Finally got to "Rescue Me" last night and started writing my review before fatigue set in. And before I was coherent enough to start writing this morning, I skimmed a couple of blogs and message boards, plus my in-box, and was surprised to see so much vitriol directed at what, to me, was the best episode of the season and one of the better (albeit stranger) hours this show has ever done. More after the jump...

Understated isn't a word you often associate with Denis Leary, or with anyone who works on the show, but I thought this week's episode was superb because it had so many opportunities to go over the top and almost never did. Even the opening sequence, with Tommy and then Janet and the girls finding out about Johnny was done with the music overriding any sounds of weeping or wailing. And Tommy's confrontation with the shooter could have gone in all kinds of obvious and/or cheesey directions -- Tommy kicking the guy's ass, Tommy yelling at the guy, Tommy trying to make the guy feel guilty, etc. -- but instead Tommy realized there was no point to doing anything (save the prepare-to-be-a-prag bit at the end). He arranged for the death of the drunk driver who killed Connor, and it gave him no peace.

The two highlights of the less-is-more approach: Tommy's Dad excusing himself and then struggling with the bathroom door (Charles Durning absolutely destroyed me, both in that scene and the one where he apologized to Rosemary), and Tommy and Lou silently working in the kitchen as they listened to the answering machine messages -- and everyone who saw a message from Johnny coming, move straight to the head of the class. (Someone on TWoP raised an interesting question: is the fact that both Gavin brothers left each other apologetic voicemails around the same time a corny coincidence, or did Tommy send his after Johnny died as a ploy to get Janet's attention? Would explain why Tommy imagined Johnny's eyes opening wide when he mentioned the message.) And, as always, I got chills by the casual appearance of the ghosts, especially Jimmy taking Connor under his wing (in a better way than Tommy's done with Damian).

(UPDATE: Vis a vis the chronology of exactly when Tommy left that voicemail message, I asked Leary and Tolan about it on a conference call, and Denis said, "We, I think, would prefer to leave that to next season." Hmm...)

The beef people seem to have is with Maggie and Sean's wedding -- not only the fact that the priest would agree to do it, but that the entire crowd of mourners would stick around and be enthusiastic about it. But it worked for me, because it seemed to fit into Tommy's Dad's request for a celebration instead of a sad day. Everyone on this show has been through so much horror; why wouldn't they want to find some excuse to be happy, even if it's wildly inappropriate?

I've been waiting long enough to post this, and I have a screener of the season finale I want to get to, so on to the quick hits:

• Sue Thomas, F.B.Eye is a Gavin? Another gem observation, courtesy of TWoP (really, I have no insights of my own when it comes down to it): the Gavins, like the Kennedys, are an Irish clan where the men have a habit of dying tragically young, and like the Kennedys, there's a sister named Rosemary who was shunned for having a disability. No way that's not intentional.
• Not sure which was the funnier part of Sean and Maggie's marriage: "Mr. and Mrs. Gavity" or the two of them consummating the marriage in the bottom bunk bed.
• Noticeably absent from the funeral: Marisa Tomei as Johnny's ex and James Badge Dale as Timo, the cop brother who popped up a few times near the end of season one when Dean Winters wasn't available. Cable drama budgets being what they are, I understand not being able to get Tomei to do a wordless cameo, but what's Chase from "24" doing to keep him away?
• Did I miss an episode? When did Mike go from being conflicted, if not in outright denial, about his interest in men, to gleefully hitting on that brother and sister?
• It hadn't even occurred to me that Franco's girlfriend looked like Keelah, but now I can't not see it. They say that women tend to marry men like their father, but this reversal is skeevy.
• Doesn't seem much point to Lou and the nun, save that it's creating even more promise of his life that will no doubt be dashed when he and Tommy wind up staying in the firehouse for some reason.
• Good to see Chief Reilly's son again.
• Bored with Teddy and Patti D'Arbanville. Not that I would trade Scurti or McGee for Lenny Clarke (who was, I believe, supposed to play either Lou or Jerry but had another commitment), but I really wish he could be in the firehouse (ala "The Job") instead of off in his own pointless subplots.

Off to watch the finale, to be followed tomorrow afternoon by a Leary/Tolan conference call. Can Leary injure me through the phone? Click here to read the full post

Everyone's (still) a little bit racist?

So after thinking about it for a while, I decided to devote today's column to "Survivor" segregation. Here's an excerpt:

At first glance, the idea's appalling, but there might be some genuine merit in it. If nothing else, after years of casting only one or two minority tokens each season, Burnett finally has a cast that resembles the population of America.

Previous contestants of color -- Gervase the loafer, Clarence the bean-stealer, Sean and his cries of slavery -- had to carry the banner for an entire race. When the show casts its latest blonde princess, no one cries sexism because there are a half-dozen or more other white women of various personalities and work ethics.

"It's just unfortunate that there aren't more minorities on the show," Gervase Peterson told me four years ago, while acknowledging that the show's applicants are overwhelmingly white. (Burnett and company made an extra effort to find minority contestants this time.) "If there were, you would get a totally different mix of people. You would have people who would totally reinforce good stereotypes of black people, Asians, Puerto Ricans, and you'd get people who reinforce the negative stereotypes. When the pickings are slim, this is what you're getting."

By the very nature of boxing's demographics, the contestants on Burnett's "The Contender" have been mostly black and Latino, and they run the emotional gamut, from cocky to humble, from hotheaded to thoughtful.

And by segregating the contestants, even if only for a few episodes, the show may be able to deal with another minority contestant complaint: that being surrounded by nothing but white people either altered their own behavior or caused it to be misinterpreted.

To read the full column, click here. Click here to read the full post

Rock Star: Hero(ine) takes a fall

Since everyone in the world including Patrice knew that she was going home from "Rock Star" tonight, the most interesting part of the elimination show wasn't the debut of Supernova's second song (though it was slightly catchier) or the presence of Toby in the bottom three only a few minutes after he sang with Supernova. It was Dilana, the clear front-runner from week one, taking a couple of image hits. (According to people in the taping, the bit about talking to reporters went on for more than a half-hour, with Dave and the band all savaging her.)

The honest to the point of rude side of Dilana isn't a surprise to me -- even back in week three, she was dogging all the male contestants to any reporter who asked -- but the double pile-0n was. Maybe the producers felt they had to do damage control after everyone said that her singing with the band last week made the rest of the season a waste of time, or maybe she really is getting on everybody's nerves and they need to start laying the groundwork for her eventual defeat.

I still think the final two comes down to Dilana vs. Lukas, but for argument's sake, let's look at the chances of each remaining contender after the jump...

THE FAVORITES: Dilana and Lukas
"Lithium" and "Zombie" established Dilana as the most original, compelling contestant this season, and she's looked pretty comfortable jamming with both Gilby and the entire band. Working against her are an apparently abrasive personality (though that didn't exactly hurt J.D. last season) and the fact that, as Magni pointed out in the Mansion segment, she's really plateaued. Feels like it's been a month since her last really memorable performance ("Time After Time"?).

And speaking of J.D., we have Lukas as this year's token homeless Canadian assclown, the polarizing figure whom you either love or despise. He definitely has the stage presence down, and he's shown on a few songs like "Creep" that he can really sing when he wants to. Plus, Tommy digs him and Jason seems to view him as a pet project. On the downside, his "Celebrity Skin" was by far the worst performance by any of the remaining contenders, and the producers may try to nudge Supernova away from picking him to avoid making this season feel like a rerun of year one.

THE SAFE CHOICE: Magni
He and Storm are the sanest, most professional people left, as well as the best pure singers. He's also a good guitar player (though not in the class of the guy from the House Band, who was amazing on "Fire" and has repeatedly outclassed Gilby by an order of 10). Plus, Newsted loves him. Pick him, and you don't have to worry about headaches on the road and in the studio -- or about being upstaged by a singer who's too charismatic or distinctive. But by the same token, he only occasionally comes off like a bonafide rock star ("Fire" being one of those rare occasions). If they're expecting the frontman or woman to actually draw in a significant audience, I don't know that he's the guy.

THE DARK HORSES: Ryan and Toby
I've been pretty clear about my boredom with Ryan, but the band doesn't seem to feel the same way. Of the three originals that have been performed so far, "Back of Your Car" sounded most like something Supernova might actually play. Toby, meanwhile, can sing, had nice on-stage chemistry with the band, and will arguably have the most female appeal of any of the remaining men. The fact that he was chosen second to play with the band suggests they're taking him more seriously than I have. (That, or, again, reaction to Dilana with them last week scared them and the producers into picking someone who obviously isn't going to win.)

ON THE SPOT: Storm
It pains me to say this, since she's my favorite, but if Storm is in the bottom three next week, I think she goes home. Again, she's a mature, talented pro -- and, judging by her interactions with Navarro and the band, she'd be a lot of fun to have on the road -- but she's only knocked one song out of the park ("Anything, Anything") and has spent every week since singing songs that aren't remotely the sort of thing this band is going to do. She has to absolutely kill it next time, and if they're only singing one song each on Viewer's Choice week (last year, I vaguely recall that everyone got to do two, one chosen by viewers, one an original), she could be in trouble, because two of the choices ("Changes," "We Are the Champions") are ballads, one ("Bring Me To Life") has been done, like, 12 times already this season, and the fourth ("Anything, Anything") is something she's already done twice. If a second song is on the table, she needs to fight, shove, bully, whatever to either do an original or play with someone in Supernova.

What does everybody else think? Are my rankings way off? If you were one of the three chuckleheads in Supernova and you had to make the choice right now, who would you pick? Click here to read the full post

Everyone's a little bit racist?

Thoughts on the new "Survivor" twist of dividing up the teams by race? Given the show's queasy history with minority casting and portrayal, I'm having a hard time seeing an upside. Click here to read the full post