Entourage: That's it for me!

"Entourage" has become a kind of no-win show for me. When I criticize it (as I've often done the last few seasons), its fans complain that I'm just watching to pick it apart. On the rare occasions when I praise it, the people who, like me, are still watching for reasons they don't really understand, complain that I'm going too easy on the show. And when I don't bother to write up an episode at all, both sides complain about that, usually by disrupting discussion of other shows.

Having seen the first two episodes of the new season (which begins this Sunday, after a new episode of "Hung"), I realized that I just don't care enough anymore to keep watching, let alone to keep blogging about it. I won't even rehash my usual complaints about the show (if you've been reading me long enough, you know what they are, and if you don't, click on the "Entourage" tag below for some hints).

So, barring something unusual, this will be my last post on the subject, and the only reason I'm doing it is to avoid more "Hey, where's the 'Entourage' post?" comments. For those looking forward to more posts, whether you like the show or hate it but can't stop watching, my apologies. File this under life being too short. Click here to read the full post

Entourage, "Return to Queens Boulevard": Every little thing's gonna be alright

Spoilers for the "Entourage" season five finale coming up just as soon as I buy a bar...

Dammit. Why did "Entourage" have to add Gary Cole to the cast? If it wasn't for him, it would be so easy to pull a "That's it for me!" after that finale, which was a concentrated burst of everything I dislike about the show. But I like Cole enough that I think I'm going to be suckered into watching at least part of next season.

It isn't just that everything always works out for Vince, in this case with a Deus Ex Marty Scorsese. (And was Scorsese watching a completely different set of "Smokejumpers" dailies than we saw? Because the footage they showed in the previous two episodes were a reminder that Vince isn't much of an actor.) I understand that the show is meant to be a fantasy camp. It's that everything always works out in the least interesting, least entertaining way possible. Vince and E have a big blow-up, E decides to explore a life without his meal ticket, and five minutes later, everything's just peachy. It's not dramatically interesting, it's not funny, it's not engaging. It's just... there.

Meanwhile, who wants to join me in filing a class action lawsuit for emotional trauma after witnessing the Turtle/Meadow Soprano phone sex scene? Maybe we could piggyback it onto some kind of suit against Michael Phelps' sponsors; dolphin boy will rue the day he agreed to have the briefest, most pointless cameo in the show's history.

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

Entourage, "Play'n with Fire": Meadow lands Turtle

Brief spoilers for tonight's "Entourage" coming up just as soon as I start my own limo business...

When I initially watched this episode on a review screener, I was under the mistaken assumption that it was the season finale, when in fact we have one episode to go. And I think I liked it more as a finale than I do as a penultimate episode, since I suspect all will somehow be made well by the end of next week's show. (Once again, let me remind you of the spoiler rule: no talk about previews, things you've read, heard, etc., that would give away anything about the next episode.)

Still, the Vince/Verner blow-up played out entertainingly, and if the show manages to pull Vince out of his latest mess, at least it gave us a couple of interesting episodes before it did so.

Turtle and Meadow Soprano? Eh. The sad thing is that Drama has become such a broad, annoying character that I actually prefer a Turtle relationship plot to whatever they would have cooked up for Johnny. "Entourage": exceeding low standards everywhere!

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

Entourage, "Seth Green Day": Short people got good reason to fight

Brief spoilers for last night's "Entourage" coming up just as soon as I tilt my head...

Well, what do you know? That was almost an entire episode of "Entourage" that I found entertaining.

(The one exception: the Ari subplot, which started off promisingly with Ari struggling to follow his daughter's advice to be nice to Beverly D'Angelo, only to have him go back to spewing venom and bile as soon as things went wrong. There are times when I find Ari's hateful rants funny, but this one seemed too easy, and the sort of thing that should have backfired on him.)

But I found the Vince storyline entertaining for the first time in a long time. We've seen very little of Vince at work over the years, and usually it's involved the cartoonish and played-out Billy Walsh. Stellan Skarsgard's Werner seems like a much more plausible kind of dictator, and I liked seeing him completely (and, I think, intentionally) mess with Vince's head about his performance. Five seasons in, I find this stuff a lot more interesting than the deal-making or which hot girl Vince is going to sleep with next. I actually laughed at Vince walking around the cabin with the can on his head, and I can't remember ever finding him intentionally funny in the past.

And Seth Green's hatred of Eric, which E had to indulge this time because another client was involved, remains one of the show's better running gags. I like the idea of Green as an evil version of both E and Vince, and he's of course funnier than both Adrian Grenier and Kevin Connolly combined.

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

Entourage, "Pie": Somebody stole my line!

Brief spoilers for last night's "Entourage" coming up just as soon as I have a seat at the bar...

I suppose "Pie" was a slight improvement over recent episodes, in that showing Vince at work, in a circumstance where he's no longer top dog -- and where the director doesn't seem to have much use for the former Number One Star in the World -- has potential to be interesting, and in that they're introducing the wonderful Gary Cole to the cast. (He'll be a regular next season, which may be the only reason I'd look forward to next season.)

But the Cole story didn't amount to much more than set-up for stuff down the road, and Vince is such a flat and passive character that it's hard to get any comedy out of him, even in situations (like wimping out in Jason Patric's trailer) that might have been funny with a different character (or on a different show).

I continue to be unable to kick the habit -- I guess I need a handful of shows to complain about every year, and "Entourage" provides plenty of fodder for that -- but I'm not enjoying it.

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

Entourage, "Best Lei'd Plans": Let's hear it for the boy

I've had several requests to write about this week's "Entourage," including one from a reader who exclaimed it was "the best episode in AGES." I have to say that I'm still not feeling it, but I'll say a few spoiler-y things after the jump, then open it up to the rest of you masochists...

A lot of things that could have been interesting have happened over the last few episodes, but they've all been executed in the same lazy, status quo-protecting fashion that keeps the "Entourage" engine running somehow. Ari taking over a major movie studio would have been an intriguing departure for the show, whether he succeeded or did a Mike Ovitz-like crash-and-burn. Or, if they didn't want to do that, they could have given us a glimpse of Ari working his deal-making skills like never before to somehow get Dana Gordon the job when Alan Dale seemed so dead-set on hiring an agent to run the place, but instead the show just waved a magic wand and said that it happened. Boring. As with so many things about "Entourage," they spent a whole lot of time and not much effort on getting us back to where we started from.

As for Turtle getting, um, friendly with Meadow Soprano? Snooze... First, I have some plausibility issues. Yes, in life-imitates-art fashion, Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Jerry Ferrara are reportedly dating, but Ferrara's social standing and, hopefully, personality, are a lot higher up than Turtle's. Beyond that, though, it was the same juvenile (and unfunny) snickering the show often gets into when girlfriends are involved, and predictable as hell. Was there any way that Drama's big mouth wasn't going to get the news back to Sigler?

I'm still watching for unknown reasons, but it's same as it ever was.

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

Post-weekend catch-up: Life, ER, Entourage, Crusoe and Easy Money

Time for another ever-unpopular grab-bag post, in which I attempt to briefly address the latest episodes of, in order, "Life," "ER," "Entourage," "Crusoe" and "Easy Money," just as soon as I tear the nameplate off my locker...

Not one of the better "Life"s of the season, I thought. The image of the guy crushed inside the car wasn't as disturbingly pretty as the show usually goes for, and Bethany's lookalike mom (who's also playing a nasty mom on "90210," I believe) was the obvious killer at least 20 minutes before they revealed the truth. Not a very engaging major case, and my interest in the conspiracy isn't very strong at the moment. Other than some isolated moments like Ted's students being impressed by his real resume (which I assumed would have come up back when the class was full of laptop-wielders) or Charlie's ex messing with his head at the storage locker, it was forgettable, and a real comedown after the great Stanford Prison Experiment ep the week before.

I wasn't wild about Maura Tierney's "ER" farewell, either. I've always loved Tierney, though my like for Abby has waxed and waned over the years. The period when she was just a black hole of misery -- I want to say around the time she got beat up by her neighbor and started drinking again, but all the mishaps of that era all blend together, which is part of the problem -- was what led me to kick the "ER" habit for a while. But I recognize that she's a terrific actress, that she has one of the longest tenures in the history of the show (I'm guessing, though I haven't done the math, that only Noah Wyle and Laura Innes put in more time at County) and that, once the writers let Abby smile now and again, she could be a very appealing character.

I just prefer the less-is-more approach to "ER" character exits. I was always fond of the way that Jeannie just walked out of the ER one day, or how what was supposed to be our last glimpse of Peter Benton (until some executive decided to make Eriq La Salle earn every cent of his contract) was him jogging away from Carter after cracking a joke at his protege's expense. For that matter, I really liked the first of the two Mark Greene exits -- Mark's last day in the hospital, which was also Pratt's first day -- and if that had been Anthony Edwards' final appearance (before the flashback he's doing later this season), followed by the episode where the ER got the letter about his death, people might think more fondly on that story arc.

So doing a whole hour of Abby unfiltered, and of every single character getting an individual goodbye scene with her, seemed a bit much. I liked several of them individually -- particularly the bit with Haleh and the nameplates(*) -- but I think the writers needed to pick just one or two and scrap the rest.

(*) If you freeze-framed the nameplates, you'd see not only the name of every former regular character, but most of the show's long-time former producers, like Lydia Woodward and Jack Orman. The entire thing works better as a meta moment than an actual in-character bit -- it's hard to imagine the nurses caring enough to put Dave Malucci's name up there, for instance.

I really don't have anything to say about "Entourage," but I know a lot of you are like me and can't stop watching. Other than being amused that Alan Dale now must play every high-powered CEO on television, there wasn't anything worth laughing at, and Ari's job offer mainly seems like yet another excuse for the writers to put Vince into "Smoke Jumpers" -- which, for some reason, is the only project of interest to him in all of Hollywood.

I also don't have much to say about "Crusoe" other than what was in my initial review, but since I did have a surprising amount of fun watching it -- and since nobody had much to say on the initial post, I thought I'd bring it up here. I can see this one taking a steep dive off a cliff (much like both Crusoe and Friday did at various points in the pilot) starting with episode two, but this one played like a higher-end Robert Halmi production.

Finally, I'm not even sure there's much point about writing about "Easy Money." Even by the historical standards of how both the CW and the WB previously did on Sunday nights, this outsourced lineup is a ratings catastrophe. All the shows are well under a million total viewers, and "Easy Money" got a zero share of the 18-49 demo. Zero. Both "Easy Money" and "Valentine, Inc." have already shut down production in a move that's billed as "temporary." Uh-huh.

But I bring it up because three episodes in, "Easy Money" is one of the few newbies still holding my interest. Laurie Metcalfe is doing really strong work as the conniving Bobette (as soon as the blonde showed up, you just knew Bobette was going to lop off that braid, didn't you?), and this world continues to interest me enough that I'll be disappointed but not surprised when the episodes run out.

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

Entourage, "Redomption": Is that you something you would be interested in?

I actually have very little to say about tonight's "Entourage," save that the ending of Ari's story feels like it's going to be a particularly skeevy way for the show to travel its usual "everything works out just fine for Vince" route. But I had this photo of Martin Landau as Bob Ryan, who reminded me of the days when I really enjoyed the show, and I wanted to use it. But since none of us seems capable of actually not watching it anymore, fire away with your own thoughts. Click here to read the full post

HBO renews Entourage

I don't really have the heart to tear into last night's 'shroom-tacular episode of "Entourage," which was so bad it ruined all the good vibes I had gotten from the previous few episodes, but I bring it up now because HBO just renewed the show for a sixth season. I look forward to Jeremy Piven's eighth acceptance speech at the 2015 Emmys, don't you? Click here to read the full post

Entourage, "The All Out Fall Out": Happy Slapsgiving, Ari

Quick spoilers for tonight's "Entourage" coming up just as soon as I start saving for my daughter's own Sweet 16...

Much more than the previous two episodes, this one gave me some faint hope that "Entourage" might be at least decent again. Several things I liked, some big, some little:

• Vince has to literally sing for his supper (and his rent, etc.) with the humiliating Sweet 16 gig that almost turns out okay until Drama pukes on the cake. If they're going to treat Vince's career struggles as something he can't easily charm his way out of, then they need to up the mortification beyond the notion (from last week) that some hot famous girl would try to pawn him off on her slightly less hot and un-famous friend. Nice use of Kevin Pollak and Fran Drescher as the oblivious parents who are spoiling their daughter rotten.

• Ari's prank war with Adam Davies was actually funny, particularly once Ari went nuclear and slapped Davies in front of his entire agency. Mrs. Ari is a good character, but last season the writers tried too hard to get her involved, which took Ari away from the world where he works best. The prank was was crass and juvenile, but it was very Ari.

• Also funny? TI wanting to star in "Black Sabbath" -- about a black man who has an affair with an older Jewish woman -- with Meryl Streep.

• On a less important note, I liked that there were paparazzi following the guys as they were on their way to a meeting with Vince's business manager. The paps would be an everyday fact of life for a guy like Vince, and yet this show that prides itself on verisimilitude above all else has almost never acknowledged this annoying side of being a celebrity. They didn't need to do a paparazzi-fueled story (and they didn't), but simply showing them in action was a welcome touch.

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

Entourage & True Blood open thread, week two

As I've seen tonight's episodes of "Entourage" and "True Blood" but don't really care enough to say anything about them ("Entourage" didn't really start pleasing me until episode three), time for another post where you can just fire away with your own thoughts. Click here to read the full post

Entourage & True Blood open thread

I don't have much to say about the first episodes of "True Blood" and "Entourage" that I didn't say in either column, but if you want to discuss either or both, fire away here. Click here to read the full post

Sepinwall on TV: 'Entourage' season five review

In today's column, I review the new season of "Entourage" -- and, surprise, surprise, I didn't hate it. It really takes until the third episode to get going comedically, and I still don't know if it's actually, you know, good (not that it ever was, really), but it's a vast improvement on season four.

As with "True Blood," I don't have much more to say about the premiere for a separate blog post, so I'll probably put up some kind of open thread on Sunday night for people to comment on both the HBO shows. Click here to read the full post

Flight of the Conchords: Gotta cut loose

Just got back from a Labor Day weekend full of water, both salty (final summer trip to the beach) and chlorine-y (final day for the year of the town pool). Tomorrow's my daughter's fourth birthday, and I'm in such a good mood thinking about our plans for it that I don't think I'll be able to bring myself to watch "Entourage" for a few more days. (UPDATE: The comments have digressed into an "Entourage" discussion; feel free to keep that going, and if I ever bring myself to watch it, I'll weigh in here.)

In the meantime, spoilers for the "Flight of the Conchords" finale coming up just as soon as I get my key-tar out of hock...

What an odd, silly little ending to this odd, silly little show's first season. Not a single Conchords song (save a few snippets during the dueling concerts), but the entire "Doggy Bounce" video plus two different Bret angry dance montages, the first a hilarious welding of "Flashdance" and "Footloose" (get it? welding? because... sorry, I'm old), the latter a perfect coda to the season. (And not, thankfully, the series, though I imagine the guys had non-renewal in the back of their heads when they wrote/choreographed it.)

Murray has been rather clueless about his responsibilities and powers as the band manager throughout the season, so why shouldn't he decide he has the authority to impose a third member -- a short, bald, dopey leather jacket-wearing, mother-flippin' bongo player, of all things -- on Bret and Jemaine without their permission? The arrival of Todd led to all sorts of genius: the various private band meetings (all interrupting Greg's actual consulate work) Mel finally getting a return on her advances, Bret being oblivious to Jemaine and Todd's ridiculous slap flight, Todd convincing Jemaine during the aforementioned fight to fire Bret instead of him, Jemaine being miserable with Todd's strict-ness, Bret pathetically trying to get back into the band and, especially, the notion that Bret and Jemaine would be far more popular working apart than they ever were together. (Or maybe, as implied by the stadium tour success of the Crazy Dogggz, it's just that Todd and Demetri were so damn cool that they overrode whatever audience-repelling properties Jemaine and Bret possess.)

So here's what I'm wondering: when the show returns next summer (thank God), do they even acknowledge Murray's newfound success, or is a reset button hit? The Crazy Dogggz have crash-and-burn written all over them, and Murray's historically bad with money, so I suppose they could do a reset while still acknowledging what came before. But a part of me almost wants them to ignore it. "Conchords" takes place in a world that's slightly askew to our own, and rules of season-to-season continuity almost seem too mundane to impose upon it.

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

Busting loose

Spoilers for, in order, the "Kill Point" finale, "Flight of the Conchords" and, extremely briefly, "Entourage," coming up just as soon as I swap clothes with somebody who's not really my size...

Not a bad ending to "The Kill Point," I thought. There were some characters and set-ups that never really went anywhere -- Omar the sniper felt particularly wasted, as did the couple locked in the closet -- but there were so much else going on that I felt I got a reasonable amount of pay-offs. Mr. Wolf finally had to step in and deal with one of the psycho brothers (though when did Rabbit start acting crazier than Pig?), the writers faked me out on Cali's reasons for helping the escape (at first I assumed he had realized the only way to save the hostages was to get Wolf away from the other cops), and Leguizamo and Wahlberg got one more strong scene together at the end. I'm not saying it was perfect, but on the miniseries' own modest level, it got the job done.

(Also, for those wondering about the dedication card to the late "Shield" director/producer Scott Brazil, Brazil was supposed to direct most of "Kill Point," but died before production began.)

As I recall, last night's "Flight of the Conchords" was supposed to air sometime earlier in the summer, but it got pushed back to be the season's penultimate episode. As the show doesn't really do ongoing plotlines (when I interviewed them, the guys implied that after the Coco/Sally stuff was over, they were glad to be rid of any arc responsibilities), it's not a big deal, but it does have me thinking about why. As we've discussed before, the plot's kind of besides the point on this show, yet this episode felt a little overwhelmed by its story, which is one of those stock sitcom plots -- The Lie That Goes Too Far -- they've been doing since a few days after Philo T. Farnsworth invented the TV.

As such, this felt the least "Conchord"-y of any episode so far, even though I found it funnier than, say, either of the Sally episodes. I liked both songs, though the ode to Murray was the smarter of the two (the "Lord of the Rings" tune was largely carried by the video elements), and there were the usual brilliant little moments, like Dave's story about the five women who wanted to marry him, Murray not understanding why Mel was speaking Elvish, Murray insisting on calling roll at the impromptu band meeting, or Will Forte turning away from the guys without actually walking away. (His character, by the way, reminded me a bit of an old Alec Baldwin "SNL" sketch called "The Mimic," about a man who can only do three or four voices, all of them terrible.) It was unexpected but not off-key to have Jemaine be the more sensible member of the band for once, and Murray's explosion at learning he had been fooled was great, as was the revelation that he was bottomless for the entire final scene.

Finally (sigh), "Entourage." Well, at least the writers had Vince acknowledge that everything always works out fine for him, but it wasn't funny the way it was when Jerry Seinfeld did it in "The Opposite." Unless the Cannes episode features some amazing uptick in quality -- a practical impossibility, I think, since comedy road trip episodes invariably stink -- I can't imagine wanting to watch this show again next season, even if it's again the lead-in to "Conchords." Life's too short.

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

I'll stop the world and melt with you

Time for a round-up of thematically-unrelated weekend programming. Spoilers for, in order, "Doctor Who," "Kill Point," "Entourage" and "Big Love" coming up just as soon as I play a few rounds of pub trivia...

I realize that the current incarnation of "Doctor Who" has certain episodes it has to do each year: a trip to pre-20th century England, a trip to New Earth, the Daleks show up, etc. I just hadn't realized that "trapped on a spacecraft orbiting a dangerous spatial anomaly while members of the crew become possessed killing machines" was one of them. If "42" wasn't a direct remake of last season's two-parter with the Ood and the Satan pit, it was a little too close for comfort. ("New Earth" and "Gridlock," to pick another pair of same-locale episodes, felt very different.) There were some nice moments here and there -- the Doctor's silent "I will save you!" screams as Martha's pod jettisoned, the Doctor's fear of being possessed (and him trying to explain regeneration to Martha), and Martha finally saving the day and being rewarded with a TARDIS key -- but I like my time and space travel with a touch more variation. (Also, as others have pointed out, watching this one with commercial interruptions wasn't much fun; even though I could fastforward with the DVR, it really interrupted the flow.)


The penultimate "Kill Point" had some problems, notably the cheesey, '80s TV show production quality-level gun battle in the tunnel, where of course the only people who were going to get shot and killed were the two redshirts from the platoon. Can't do with bumping off a significant character before the end game, can we? Also, the razor product placement was one of the clumsier bits of its kind I've seen in a while. (Maybe I just noticed it more because Spike sent out samples of its razors with the original DVD screener; become a TV critic, boys and girls, and you too can live this glamorous lifestyle!) I'll reserve judgment beyond that until we see how the two-hour finale plays out. When you have a show that's almost all plot, the payoff's going to matter a lot more than on, say, "Big Love." All I know is that Omar the Sniper better get involved at some point, because while I won't complain about Michael K. Williams getting a paycheck, I'm going to feel awfully teased by his presence if he's just window-dressing.


After a few weeks of even lamer-than-usual celebrity fantasy camp hijinks, "Entourage" gets back to the business of show, with Ari being directly involved in Vince's career in the first time since forever, E's second client distracting him from his first, Walsh causing headaches for everyone, etc. On paper, that sounds much better, but the execution was as lacking as it's been on everything of late. The plot with E and Anna Farris' boyfriend could have been a great opportunity to show why Eric's useful as a manager beyond being BFFs with Vince, but he was beyond clumsy in solving that problem. Why not show him figuring out how to successfully push the boyfriend's buttons to get him to lay off Anna? Oh, that's right: because the plot isn't really about E the manager at all, but setting up some kind of lame romantic tension between him and Anna by getting the boyfriend out of the picture as quickly and rudely as possible. And for the 7,000th time, Walsh is a complete lunatic and yet everything works out fine for Vince and company. I know it's just masochism to expect anything else from the show by now -- wish-fulfillment is what they do, and the only thing they're interested in doing -- but I'm barely even amused by Ari's plate-spinning anymore because I know nothing's going to get broken.

Speaking of plates being spun, there's quite a lot of china in jeopardy as "Big Love" zooms towards next week's season finale. As I've said before, I find Alby and the rest of the Juniper Creek crew too cartoonish and two-dimensional to make interesting villains, and as with my hopes that Vince and E might lose on occasion are pointless, so too is my hope that this show might ever leave those characters far behind. (I see that Alby's keeping Roman alive, albeit sedated, for reasons unknown. Does he fear eternal punishment should he murder his daddy?) It is what the show is, unfortunately for me.

But stories like last night's wedding scandal are, too, and they're the reason I stick around. (That and my wife's fierce devotion to the show.) It was an outstanding bit of casting (both for acting chops and genetic resemblance) to bring in Ellen Burstyn as Barb's disapproving mom, and I liked watching her presence at the wedding bring up all kinds of wounds from every branch of the family: Margene resents being viewed as a baby-maker by Barb, Nicki resents Barb's constant angling to get out of the principle, Sarah bluntly tells Bill that she will never pay attention to anything he has to say on the subject of relationships, Barb's family judges her left and right, no one seems able to penetrate Ben's two-for-the-price-of-one adolescent horniness. A lot of outstanding performances all around, but particularly by Jeanne Tripplehorn and Amanda Seyfried.

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

Ask, and ye shall receive...

From an HBO press release that just went out:

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 17, 2007 - HBO has renewed the hit comedy series ENTOURAGE for a fifth season and FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS for a second season, it was announced today by Carolyn Strauss, president, HBO Entertainment.
Currently debuting new episodes back-to-back on Sunday night (10:00-11:00 p.m. ET/PT), both series conclude their current season Sept. 2, and will return with new episodes in 2008.

"ENTOURAGE is a full-fledged cultural phenomenon, and FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS has quickly become a show to watch," said Strauss. "I'm delighted that we'll be bringing new seasons of these distinctive series to our subscribers."

Me so happy. Me want to cry. ('Bout the "Conchords" half, anyway; I'll deal with the continuation of "Entourage" if it gives me more Bret and Jemaine.) Click here to read the full post

World tour

Spoilers for, in order, "Doctor Who," "Flight of the Conchords" and, for habit's sake, "Entourage" coming up just as soon as I use soundwaves to reset my DNA...

Sorry for the brief lag in "Doctor Who" postings. The conclusion of the Dalek two-parter was just so underwhelming that, even when I eventually finished it (over several sittings), I didn't have the enthusiasm to write about it. "The Lazarus Experiment" wasn't a masterpiece, either -- outside of the arc stuff with Martha and the mysterious Mr. Saxon, it felt very much like a "Who" spec script, science gone awry creates a monster for the Doctor to stop -- but it worked well as a MacGuffin on which to hang the question of Marth's role in the Doctor's life. (Also, was I the only one who thought all the references to the London Blitz were going to be building up towards some link between Lazarus's experiment and the events of "The Doctor Dances"?) I'm glad Martha forced the issue of being a passenger versus a companion, and the Doctor's clearly developing a real respect for her. (Did he ever let Rose use the sonic screwdriver on her own?)

I can't say much more about the arc elements. Though I've tried to remain unspoiled for all the remaining episodes (save the self-contained "Blink"), forces beyond my control have given me a pretty good idea who this Saxon fellow is. So for the benefit of people who are completely unspoiled about the rest of the season, let's try to contain discussion to this episode.

Not the funniest "Flight of the Conchords" of the season (though, in fairness, fatigue was kicking my ass again; I really ought to just wait to watch this show early Monday nights), but the focus on Murray was welcome, as was the notion of devoting an entire episode to nothing but the band and its struggles. (With a little side dish of Murray's marital strife, I suppose.) The leather suits were a good running gag, though I can't decide which is funnier: that Murray way overcalculated their per diem (per weekem?), or that the shopping in and around the LaGuardia Hotel was so cheap that they could afford three leather suits with their meal money. There are about seven different things that are funny about the concept of the NJU women's water polo team, and I liked how all of Bret's standard behavior suddenly became very expensive, rock 'n roll-seeming behavior once the trio hit the road.

I suppose I should give "Entourage" the same respect (or lack thereof) I do "Rescue Me" and just leave it alone until the end of the season, but I keep watching the damn thing out of laziness, and I can't even blame it on having dipped into Vince's secret stash. Once again, we have one of the boys (this time Turtle) seemingly getting into trouble and then escaping consequence-free, and once again we have Ari operating completely independently of the guys. I like Mrs. Ari to a point, but how does Doug Ellin not recognize that Ari (and the show) is so much funnier when he's running around trying to extinguish the many different fires that Vince is setting to his career? Also, did anyone not see the punchline to the Anna Farris story coming from miles away?

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

French in action

Spoilers for, in order, "Flight of the Conchords," "The Kill Point" and "Entourage" coming up just as soon as I ship out to Iraq...

Continuing my theory that everyone in the TV business is watching "Flight of the Conchords," earlier this week I heard "SportsCenter" anchor Scott Van Pelt, while narrating footage of Ozzie Guillen being ejected from a White Sox-Yankees game, say "Be more constructive with your feedback, please." Renewal can't be too far away; will world domination be next?

Not a great episode last night, and I'm noticing that the show usually stumbles a bit while doing storylines about the guys and their girlfriends. At first I wanted to blame it on Rachel Blanchard, but this one was entirely Blanchard-free and still felt flat, even with the attempt at gender role reversal between Bret and his special lady friend. Even a weak "Conchords" is worth watching, though, because there's always going to be something funny on the margins.

Here I was especially fond of the '60s-style French video (comic fanboy moment: if someone is ever demented enough to make a movie based on Garth Ennis' "Hitman," seeing Bret in that striped shirt convinced me he's the man to play Jean De Baton-Baton) and Dave giving Bret sausage advice. (Dave's a really nice color for the show to use, as he's more worldly than any of the New Zealanders and yet dumber.)

"The Kill Point" continues to intrigue me, especially after I watched last week's first Summer Burn-Off Theatre episode of "The Nine," which was almost entirely about the bank robbery. As I've said, I'm a sucker for bank robbery hostage stories, but with rare exceptions like "Dog Day Afternoon," they work best at a plot-driven, B-movie level. By starting at the end and working our way backwards over 22 episodes, "The Nine" sucked most of the tension out of the format. (There was a sequence in the latest episode where there's supposed to be some suspense about the fate of Scott Wolf's character, only we know he survived the siege intact.) "Kill Point" doesn't have the ambitions of "The Nine," but it's doing a fine job of singing a straightforward, eight-hour version of the old tune. We're halfway through now, and the creators have done a good job of populating their storyline. They can take someone like the real estate developer dad off the board in time -- the Wahlberg character is so smart that it would have gotten frustrating if he hadn't figured this out by now -- and still have the outside ex-military guys floating around to provide the next potential exit strategy.

Finally, I'm running on fumes with "Entourage." Self-contained Ari subplots don't work, even one that's more work-related than the stuff with his kids' private school, Gary Busey was funnier the last time he was on, and once again there's a lot of hand-wringing about the Variety story (which didn't seem particularly unfair to me) and everything works out fine in the end. Meh. M-E-H, meh.

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

Every dragon's a little bit racist

Spoilers for "Flight of the Conchords" and "Entourage" coming up just as soon as I call in tech support...

As I often mention when discussing the problems with the Emmys, people who work in television don't spend much time watching television, yet nearly every TV person I chatted with at press tour asked me what I thought of "Flight of the Conchords" and confessed that the show was really growing on them. I don't know if it'll ever be a mainstream hit, but in terms of industry buzz, it appears to be doing well enough that I can't imagine HBO not renewing it.

And a good thing, too, because I'm not sure I can live without the minds who gave us "Albi the Racist Dragon" (now in Davey and Goliath-Vision!), Murray's lonely ode to the leggy tech support girl (in the most technically impressive video by the show's admittedly modest standards), and, especially, the sequence with Dave teaching the guys how to flip the bird, even as they protest that the gesture seems neither obscene nor appropriately bird-like. (The bird montage, oddly, went on so long that the gesture began to lose all meaning, like that time Jon Lovitz kept saying "Tartlets" on "Friends.")

I do wonder, though, whether the boys will be able to come up with enough new music for a second season, since they told me they'll have used up about 98% of their catalogue by the end of this season. But at the moment, no show makes me happier than "Conchords."

I think "Entourage" made me happy once upon a time, but I'm struggling to remember when or how. I suppose I should be happy we got a break from one-note Billy Walsh, and the scene with Ari attempting to be a good dad was unexpectedly sweet, but I'm going to be scarred for life by Drama having furry sex (and by his reference to the meanest thing he ever did to a girl), and E is just a waste of oxygen and screen time. (The funniest part of the whole episode was the preview for next week, where the lady on the phone pointed out that Eric's job is irrelevant.) This wasn't Worst. Episode. Ever. territory like, say, the trans hooker episode, but I'm just not feeling this show at all anymore.

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