'Top Chef: Las Vegas' review - Sepinwall on TV

In today's column, I review the premiere of "Top Chef: Las Vegas," starting off by comparing the difference between original recipe "Top Chef" and the to-be-completed-tonight "Top Chef Masters," and then randomly veering into a discussion of how Toby Young needs to get his act together this season.

Either way... food, Padma, Colicchio, etc. Enjoy. Click here to read the full post

'Top Chef Masters' review, 'The Shield' season 7 on DVD - Sepinwall on TV

I don't do two-fer columns much anymore, but today I review both the debut of "Top Chef Masters" and "The Shield" season 7 DVD set. Click here to read the full post

Top Chef finale: Casey, Casey, Casey...

Since I wrote a column about it yesterday, might as well way in on the actual results of the "Top Chef" finale, just as soon as I get a golden baby...

Talk about leaving a bad taste in your mouth.

Though my column was largely about how I'd feel unsatisfied if Carla beat Stefan, I still think that result would have been infinitely preferable to what we got with a Hosea victory -- and with the way that Carla lost.

Based on what we were told about the dishes, and on the show's insistence of judging meal-by-meal and not cumulatively, Hosea won fair and square. (When even Fabio is admitting he was better than Stefan, you know he deserved it.) But he was such a smarmy tool in the way he did it -- it takes a real gift to out-smug Stefan(*), you know? -- and he was so mediocre, relative to Carla and Stefan, throughout the season, that it really displeased me to see him get the win.

(*) As sad as Carla's breakdown in front of the judges was, it was nice to see how badly Stefan felt for her, and maybe a sign that a lot of his jerkiness was a persona he created, either to survive in the kitchen or to stand out on the show. Whatever the reason, he showed me something there.

Stefan made some bad choices in conception, letting his ego be his own downfall in the same way that Richard Blais' ambition tripped him up at the end of last season, when he had a million different ideas but couldn't focus on getting a few of them just right (especially once he lost his sous-chef). And that's okay. That feels consistent with his character as portrayed to date, and with the way the show is set up. You're supposed to succeed or fail on your own merits.

Carla, on the other hand, was inadvertently sabotaged by her sous-chef. The two dishes she conceived on her own were adored by the judges. The two that Casey had big input on were flops, and ultimately doomed her. I know it's Carla's fault for listening to her -- especially on the sous vide, since Casey in her season not only had no experience at the technique but didn't seem to like it (it was Hung's deal) -- but in past seasons, the finale sous-chefs were just there to help execute the chef's plan, and it appeared they weren't even allowed to offer their own suggestions. (Casey's sous-chef at the time did a talking head where she claimed she had reservations about Casey's ideas but wasn't supposed to say that to her.)

Either they changed that rule, or it was never a rule but more of an unspoken philosophical thing that Casey simply didn't abide by. Either way, even if Carla let herself be talked into that stuff, it still feels like outside forces played too big a role in her loss, and that leaves me feeling cheated.

Or maybe this gets back to what we were discussing last year, when Lisa went on that cockroach-like streak of being the second-worst chef nearly every single week, that maybe the non-cumulative judging is becoming a problem. I know Colicchio argues that if you go to a restaurant with a great reputation and eat a bad meal there your first time, you're not going to go back, but the judges (the regular ones, anyway) aren't really in the role of first-time diners, and they shouldn't be forced to act like they are. If you go to a restaurant you've previously loved and they serve you something inedible, you're not going to boycott the place; you're just going to assume the kitchen had a bad night, or that one item on the menu isn't for you, but you're probably going to go back for other things on the menu, right?

Maybe Hosea's dishes were so much better than Stefan and Carla's -- or, at least, maybe his mistakes were so much more minor -- that he would have been able to overcome going into the finale at some kind of deficit to the two superior chefs. Maybe not. But seeing the win come down entirely to a slightly above-average chef having a good night at exactly the right time frustrates me.

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

Sepinwall on TV: Edwards returns to 'ER,' 'Top Chef' moves to NY

In today's column, I talk about tomorrow night's Mark Greene resurrection on "ER" and how it does no favors for Angela Bassett, and briefly preview the season premiere of "Top Chef." Click here to read the full post

Remember that time, five minutes ago... ?

Watched the "Top Chef" reunion special in the middle of doing some other work this morning, and wasn't particularly moved. Other than the awkward moment where Jen and Zoi were asked if they had broken up (which, arguably, they brought on themselves by agreeing to go on a reality show together as a couple), and the clear signs that time has healed all wounds except the one between Andrew and Lisa, there wasn't anything all that revelatory about the season contained therein.

So let me ask you this: given that the reunion show is now a staple of most successful reality franchises, what in your mind makes a good one? Is it just the opportunity to again see people you liked who went home early? Are you looking for answers about things that weren't properly explained during the show? Do you want to see the villains apologize for their behavior, and/or get roasted for it?

And who, in your opinion, is an especially good reunion show host? Once upon a time, I would have said Jeff Probst, but my high opinion of his early "Survivor" reunion work was largely a response to the absurdly low bar set by Bryant Gumbel (who couldn't remember people's names and asked tasteless questions like why Mad Dog got so fat or why Amber didn't wear a skimpier bikini) and then Rosie O'Donnell (who talked to five people during the Marquesas reunion and didn't so much ask questions as issue Mike Francesa-style pronouncements about the season). Since at least Vanuatu (if not before), it's become clear that Jeff plays favorites at the reunions and tries to reshape the season's narrative to reflect well on those favorites.

So if not Probst, then who? Thoughts? Click here to read the full post

Top Chef: And the winner is...

Spoilers for the "Top Chef" season 4 finale coming up just as soon as I stock up on liquid nitrogen..

Stephanie. Okay. I'm fine with that. She was easily one of the best chefs this season, and based on the events of the finale, she was really the only choice.

I don't care how good Lisa's finale dishes were -- and there was so much praise for them that I started to get worried -- because she was such a toxic nightmare throughout the season that it would have been a black mark on the show for her to win. This wasn't like season 3 Dale, where he was only occasionally impressive pre-finale but was usually at least competent; Lisa survived week after week by being the second-worst, and it would reflect really badly on the franchise to have her as the winner.

Richard, meanwhile, presented the opposite problem: he had been up there with Stephanie (and, to a lesser degree, Dale and Antonia) as the best chefs of the season, but, like Casey last year, he choked at the end. He got too caught up in technique over flavor, and even he couldn't really defend his dishes.

And so Stephanie had to be the winner, almost by default, even though the only one of her finale dishes that seemed to get universal praise was her third course. As Ted Allen noted, of course, there's the matter of "better" versus "how much better," and it's possible that Stephanie's meat course was so much better than any dish of the evening that she deserved the win. Still, the editing didn't make her seem that impressive, and it's unclear if that was just to maintain suspense until the ending or if that was an accurate reflection of how the judges reacted to all the dishes.

Anyway, I'm glad with the final result and yet not that excited about it. Seems kind of an appropriate ending for this season, which had so much talent and promise but rarely made my mouth water.

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

Top Chef: That's not kosher

Brief thoughts on the "Top Chef" season finale, part the first, coming up just as soon as I congratulate someone I despise...

I thought of titling this post "The Kosher Cockroach" but worried that it would be too big a spoiler. I am appalled that Lisa has made it this far, and her continued survival illustrates a fundamental flaw in the "Top Chef" judging system.

We're told over and over that the judging is not cumulative, that the eliminations are based entirely on who performed the worst in that week's challenge. In theory, it's a nice idea. It allows the guest judge (who has no idea how things have been going all season) to fully participate in the choice, and it prevents the judges from playing favorites if someone makes a dish that's really egregious. (Anthony Bourdain described the dish that got Dale booted as " the only time on Top Chef that I literally could not take another bite.")

But in practice, it's led to a situation where Lisa has made it all the way to the top three largely by being the second-worst contestant most weeks, just Not-Bad enough to skate by better chefs who had worse days. On a case-by-case basis, you can see why the judges preferred Lisa slightly to whoever got knifed -- last night, Antonia had several more obvious mistakes, while Lisa's stuff seemed at least competent, if not in the ballpark with Richard and Stephanie's dishes -- but there has to come a point where Colicchio or Gail or Ted can just call time out and ask the producers if they can finally send the sourpuss home.

Next season, I'd like to see a slight change to the rules, something that gives the judges latitude to consider past performance -- if and only if the bottom two or three chefs are relatively close in that week's challenge. It wouldn't have saved Dale during Restaurant Wars, but it might have sent Lisa home over somebody else. (Jen, maybe?)

Lisa's survival did lead to that one jaw-dropping moment where she demanded congratulations from Stephanie and Richard, which led to the classic Richard talking head sound byte: "You won the f---ing bronze medal. Congratulations. There you go."

As for the rest of the episode, it was as bland as much of the season has been. I would be annoyed that Dale essentially carried Stephanie this week, except of course he had to do that to make up for his colossal screw-up of leaving the dish out of the fridge all night.

So how do you handicap the finals? Based on everything we've seen to date, Lisa should be a non-factor, as it's now not about who doesn't go home, but who wins. But I think back to last season, when everyone assumed it was going to be all about Hung vs. Casey, and instead Casey imploded and season 3 Dale cooked on a level he had never approached in previous weeks, nearly beating Hung. I'd say Richard has cooked the most impressive dishes this season, but Stephanie's been a little more consistent -- and doesn't have a restaurant of her own to go back to, and therefore might push herself harder than Richard -- and of course there's the conspiracy theory that Bravo wants a woman to win this time.

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

Top Chef: If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any peanut butter mashed!

Haven't written about "Top Chef" in quite some time, but seeing as we're almost to the end of this oddly unsatisfying season, I'll offer up some spoilers just as soon as I pat down my scallops...

So why hasn't this season been doing it for me? The chefs have, for the most part, seemed quite talented, and other than the continued, cockroach-like presence of Lisa, the top 4 contains the people you would have expected to make it there all along. (In fairness to Lisa, Spike absolutely deserved to go home last night; it's just that there were so many other times where Lisa should have been gone, notably last week when she was at least as bad as Dale and didn't have his prior record of impressive challenge performances to serve as a tie-breaker.) As a believer in meritocracy, I should be okay with how this has all played out, but instead, I'm watching out of habit. Among my complaints with this year:

• 7 out of the 12 elimination challenges have involved people working in teams, or at least in pairs. I haven't gone back to previous episodes to break down whether the total was roughly the same, but it's certainly felt like there have been fewer opportunities for the chefs to shine individually than there were, say, last season. Not only has that led to people succeeding or failing based on the work of others (again, see Dale getting knifed because he was executive chef on a lousy team), but it's prevented the chefs from really standing out on their own. I get that Stephanie's clearly been one of the best chefs, for instance, but I really have no sense of what kind of food she likes to make.
• Along similar lines, these chefs haven't taken a lot of chances. There haven't been many spectacular failures or amazing successes. When they fail, it's usually a matter of poor execution than someone's ambition exceeding their abilities, and when they succeed, it's usually a matter of them executing a recipe they're already familiar with. Richard's gadgeteering is the closest we've come to something really memorable either way, but he hasn't used the gizmos in quite some time (mainly because they didn't always work well), and you got the sense that he was using them in ways he had used them plenty of times in his own restaurant.
• Not a lot of interesting interpersonal dynamics among the chefs. Having the lesbian couple in the house together didn't amount to much because neither of them was very good. The frat guy bonding of the Spike/Andrew/Mark triumverate was briefly amusing, but beyond that, most of the relationship stuff we saw was of the more sour personalities (primarily Dale and Lisa) cursing each other out with such venom that it was just unpleasant rather than entertaining.
• Tom Colicchio seems to be mailing it in. Too many weeks, Chef Tom gives off the impression that he doesn't really want to be judging these same challenges again, doesn't want to have to listen to Padma try to appropriate the other judges' opinions and make them sound like things she thought up on her own, etc. Sometimes, that leads to him seeming bored; other times, he comes across as excessively nitpicky with his complaints. (There are Judges Table interrogations where you can tell he's going to jump down the chef's throat no matter what answer s/he gives, and no matter which of two bad options s/he had to choose during the course of the challenge.)

Still, I'm hopeful for the finale, because the top 4 will have been away from the hamster cage for a while and should have their creative batteries recharged. (See how much better Dale was in the season 3 finale than he had been at any point during that season.) I'm assuming the winner's going to be one of Stephanie or Antonia, both because they've clearly been two of the season's three strongest contestants and because it would allow Bravo to put that "Can a woman win Top Chef?" question to bed, but Richard could smoke up some plate so amazing that he'd make it impossible for the judges and producers to stick to what I assume is the script.

What does everybody else think? Has this season been more appetizing to you? Who are you pulling for in the finale?

Click here to read the full post

Top Chef: The missing ingredient?

I haven't blogged on "Top Chef" at all this season, even though I've watched every episode. Mainly that's because, though the show still succeeds in making me hungry at 10:30 at night each week (particularly during last week's tailgating challenge), the contestants and the drama haven't really engaged me. This is only the second season I've watched, so I thought I'd ask the more veteran "Chef" fans: is it just me, or has this season been pretty bland? And what do you think the difference is between this one and one of the better earlier seasons? Click here to read the full post

How twee it is

Sometimes, I try to have a common theme when I do multiple shows in one post. Today's theme is a simple one: Stuff I Either Watched In Advance Or Got Through Before Falling Asleep On Wednesday Night, Plus "Cavemen." (Got all that?) Unconnected spoilers of varying lengths for, in order, "Pushing Daisies," "Cavemen," "Life," "Private Practice," "America's Next Top Model" and the "Top Chef" finale coming up just as soon as I try to figure out when I'll have time on Thursday to watch all the other stuff that was on...

The "Pushing Daisies" column review presented most of my thoughts on the show. Loved the look, love Jim Dale (even though his narration is the twee-est thing about the whole thing), liked Lee Pace and Anna Friel's chemistry, like the cynical note provided by Chi McBride (whose "Bitch, I was in the proximity" compensated for at least 20 minutes worth of twee)... I just want to see a second episode until I make up my mind. (Technically, I want to see a third episode, as I believe Sonnenfeld directed the second one before the studio banned him for going over budget.) I just worry that a little of this level of concentrated preciousness goes a very long way.

Because (some of) you demanded it, I should say a few words about "Cavemen." A lot of other critics have already beaten me to the one-word review joke ("Ugh"), but my buddy Fienberg summed it up best in an e-mail shortly after it aired: "They made Cavemen less offensive... And somehow less funny... How is this possible?" The version I saw in June -- the one that led to one of the more savage press conferences I've ever attended -- was far more overt with the racial allegory stuff. I think we scared the creators away from that angle, so all that's left is a lame buddy comedy that could very well have been someone's unused script for a late '90s NBC sitcom, modified slightly to fit the cavemen in. Flat, smug and just not good. My kingdom for "I'm a Mac. And I'm a PC: The Series!"

I saw the second episode of "Life" a few weeks back, and while I was glad they dialed down the "Crews is amazed by modern technology!" gags (which, for the most part, called to mind Phil Hartman's Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer, each sketch of which was a thousand times funnier than "Cavemen"), but the fruit and zen aspects of the character still feel like the writers are trying too hard. And Crews is far too pleased with himself at all times, which is an attitude I'll accept from House because House is funny, where Crews is just an oddball who sometimes has good hunches. The case was boring again (and one of those Law of Economy of Casting things where the most recognizable guest star was the perp), but at least there were some interesting things going on with Crews' ex-partner and the start of his search for the real killers. Gets another week or two out of Damian Lewis loyalty, I guess.

This episode of "Private Practice" was supposed to be the fourth one, but it got pushed up because ABC thought the baby swap storyline would really resonate with viewers. I don't know that it's a good sign that a new show that's so much about showing developing relationships can shift episodes around without it even being noticeable, though. Shouldn't Addison's bond with each of her new co-workers be different in episode four than it's going to seem in episode two? Then again, Addison was largely a spectator this week, as the focus shifted to Sam, Naomi, Violet and, to a lesser extent, Cooper. The house calls idea, while I'm sure it seems cute and another obvious way to show how Oceanside Wellness does things differently (from both Seattle Grace and standard medical shows), didn't really work here, because what little we've seen of the clinic suggests it's a boutique for very rich people, and Sam's drunk patient was very blue collar. I'll give Shonda and company that the scene where the two moms shared the kind of details only those babies' mothers would know (though why can't the women be in each other's lives for a while? what would be wrong with that?), but most of the hour was forgettable.

I've watched previous "America's Next Top Model" seasons sporadically, but even I know that Tyra wouldn't get rid of a vintage bitch like Bianca this early in the competition, especially since she and Heather have gotten by far the most screen time thus far. (And, interestingly, Bianca seems okay with Heather. Her comment about having to get rid of her before she becomes too hard to beat was a kind of bizarre triumph of equal opportunity for people with disabilities, wasn't it?) Kimberly was, I believe, the one who gave that vile talking head last week about how "people like (Heather) cling" to you if you're nice, so she was already dead to me. Good riddance. Makeovers come next week, and that's usually when the real fun begins. Anyone want to predict which girl Tyra gives the semi-annual, tear-inducing short haircut to? I had figured it would be Kimberly, actually, and now she's gone.

Finally, the "Top Chef" finale threw in a wrinkle of sorts. After spending weeks of the show establishing the Hung vs. Casey/technical brilliance vs. "soul" dynamic, Casey performed terribly -- falling prey, oddly, to Dale's usual trap of making things up on the fly and not having a backup plan in place for when things went awry -- and the actual decision came down to Hung vs. Dale. Based on consistency throughout the season, Hung was the obvious choice. Based solely on the final meal, it gets more interesting. I'm waffling on whether I'm with Colicchio (that Dale shouldn't win because he made the worst meal of the night) or Gail (that Dale should be forgiven, because he was more ambitious, whereas Hung played it ultra-conservative with his chocolate cake). In the end, though, I think they made the right choice. Admittedly, I'm a newcomer to the Magical Elves family of shows, but it's been a while since I watched a reality competition series where the right guy won.

I'm sleepy now. What did everybody else think about any or all of the above? Click here to read the full post

It's not easy being green

And now for the shows I actually watched live (or close to it) last night. Spoilers for, in order, "America's Next Top Model," "Kid Nation," "Gossip Girl" and "Top Chef" coming up just as soon as I pretend to get a tracheotomy...

I'm in general an "America's Next Top Model" agnostic, tuning in a few times a cycle to laugh at the models being stupid and/or the photo shoots being creepy (crime scene photos! gender-bending!) but never caring enough to make it appointment viewing. But dammit, stupid Tyra Banks has made me care by casting Heather, the girl with Asperger's. I know enough people with various degrees of Asperger's that I want to see how she does, even though I could easily predict everything that's happened to her so far: from the other girls being that ignorant and mean about it (particularly the one who whined that she wouldn't want Heather to "cling" to her, which misses the entire point of Asperger's) to the fact that Tyra's going to keep her around for a while for uplift purposes. Still, getting the first photo callout (and the other girls' reaction to same) was a nice touch, and while I don't expect her to win, she does take a good picture and I guess I'm around as long as she is. (Prettiest/most model-y girl by far? Lisa, but, like that awful one with the purple weave said, is Tyra -- sanctimonious, Oprah wannabe Tyra -- really going to pick an ex-stripper?)

And I think I've seen all of "Kid Nation" that I need to. It's kiddie "Survivor," and while the To Eat Or Not To Eat dilemma plays out a bit differently with kids than it did between, say, Kimmi and Alicia, the show's neither appalling nor exciting enough to be appointment viewing.

I'm not at the quits stage yet with "Gossip Girl," but my feelings remain the same as they did after the pilot: it's a very well-executed teen soap with almost no adult appeal. For me, most of the fun comes from noting the minute variations between it and "The O.C.," like how the brunchers were all agog at Dan simply shoving Chuck, when the Newpsies would have needed Ryan in a full-out brawl to grind to such a disapproving halt; or (as Fienberg noted when we talked) how Penn Badgley makes a much less amusing Adam Brody substitute than Zachary Levi on "Chuck." (Also, I like how Dan's hair grew eight inches since the pilot, which took place the night before.) I continue to suspect that Chuck is going to get the Luke treatment and be portrayed as not such a bad guy (for a date rapist, anyway) by mid-season, but I don't know that I'll still be around by then.

Finally, "Top Chef" winds up with what most of us assumed would be the top three (since Tre went home, anyway), but with some curveballs along the way. Casey had been edited as co-frontrunner with Hung for a while, but the comments about her elk being too rare seemed like the closest thing to a harsh criticism any of the Elimination dishes got, and I briefly thought she would go home instead of Brian "Elk isn't seafood" Malarkey. And what's up with a challenge like this so late in the competition? It felt like last week's challenges signaled a move away from the gimmicks and towards some serious kitchen artistry now that we were close to the finale, but now we're back to things like cooking fish next to a river or trying to please a bunch of rodeo types with game? (Also, way to complain about Hung's lack of Vietnamese cooking during an Elk challenge, Colicchio. Are you going to spend next week whining that Casey shouldn't cook pan-Asian because she's a white chick from Dallas?) Dale acquitted himself well with his Plan B, but the editing has been hammering home the Hung's technique vs. Casey's artistry for so long that I can't see him being a factor next week.

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

Top Chef: He cooked an itsy-bitsy, teeney-weenie, unappealing broccolini

Spoilers for the latest "Top Chef" coming up just as soon as I make peace with my inability to use "Snacks on a Plane" as a subject line because the Bravo people beat me to it...

Who woulda thunk that all of a sudden Casey would be our frontrunner? She's won two Elimination Challenges in a row, and Colicchio and Bourdain have gone out of their way (on the show and in their blogs) to rave about her sophisticated palate. Bourdain's Top Cook vs. Top Chef thing sure sounded like him annointing his chosen one.

And yet Casey (as even she admitted) was agressively mediocre for the first two-thirds of the season, doing just enough to get by while more disastrous chefs/dishes took the hits. Of course, that's a description that could be applied to anyone left not named Hung (when Brian started talking about how the top six are there because they brought their A game every time, I had to wonder if there was some other top six he was referring to). I'm in general not a fan of Fly Under the Radar players on Survivor and I'm not crazy about contestants on shows like this aiming for the middle ground for as long as possible. So I guess that means I'm rooting for Hung to edge out Casey (or maybe Dale) in the final, I suppose.

(And speaking of Casey, was this the first time we saw her hair down in a very close approximation of The Rachel?)

After having some issues with both of last week's challenges, I liked these quite a bit. The Quickfire was a good chance to show off, with only time and the meal type as constraints, and the Elimination was a good balance of real cooking and made-for-TV complications. Ordinarily, I'd get my state pride backbone up after all the grousing about being stuck in Jersey, but I have to say that Newark Airport and its immediate surroundings create one of the most depressing places in the continental United States. (I've picked people up at those hotels around the airport; I'm sure most of them have to have suicide stops on the windows.)

Always good to have Bourdain around, as he manages to be cranky and highly critical in an entertaining way, where Colicchio often (this season, anyway) just seems like this is all beneath him.

What did everybody else think? Is it too early to be predicting the winner and runner-up? Click here to read the full post

Top Chef: And in such small portions

So, having blogged about the last episode of "Top Chef" (what feels like months ago), might as well try to keep weighing in for the rest of the season. Spoilers coming up just as soon as I get an aerial view...

Good riddance to Howie, who twice in one episode tried to pull the "You can't fire me because I quit!" tactic. For a second there, I was worried that Padma's haughty line about the judges deciding who goes meant they were going to keep Howie to spite him and prove who's boss, but they sent home the right guy. In fairness to Howie, he had tried to play well with others the last few episodes, and his talking head about shopping at Target was the most likable he's been all season, but it was time for him to go.

I'm of two minds about the challenges this week. On the one hand, I like the idea of forcing the chefs to be creative by putting some significant restraints on what they can do. (I remember surfing past the first season episode where they had to shop at a gas station and thinking, "That's kinda cool" before surfing on to the Yankee game.) And, as a few people showed in each challenge (Brian and Casey in the Quickfire, Casey and Sarah in the Elimination), it was possible to make good food under those constraints, and even to be a little creative. (Though the most creative dish of the night was Hung's sugar cereal diorama; if you're doomed to fail, at least fail funny. Nicely done.)

But the Elimination Challenge in particular felt more like something out of "Hell's Kitchen," something so ridiculous to pull off on its face that it was really just an excuse for the judges to yell at the contestants. The thing that's supposed to separate "Top Chef" and "Project Runway" from the other competition shows is that they're a celebration of talent, and they try to put their contestants in positions where they can show off that talent. Maybe this is just an unremarkable group of chefs, I don't know, but this late in what feels like a very long season, I'd rather see people be able to show off to their best abilities, rather than (as Hung admittedly did in both challenges) just try to make the best of a bad situation.

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

Hairy situations

Cable catch-up time, with spoilers on, in order, "Californication," "Saving Grace," "My Boys," "The Bronx Is Burning" and, as promised long ago without fulfillment, "Top Chef," coming up just as soon as I get a plastic surgery consultation...

After last week's kerfuffle over my pan of the "Californication" pilot, I decided to give the show at least one more episode to prove me wrong. Sorry to say, Duchovny fans, but I'm out. This was a retread of all the things I disliked about the pilot (women throwing themselves at Hank with little provocation, Hank acting like a 12-year-old boy in a way we're obviously meant to find charming, an unexpected ongoing focus on pubic hair), and now we've added in the "Studio 60" Problem: we're told Hank's this brilliant writer, but his first blog entry (penned in an Apple product placement scene that makes all the Mac love on HBO seem tasteful and subdued) was a smarmy cliche-fest. I'm glad for showkiller Paula Marshall that she's kept herself in such good shape, but I don't think I need to see any more "Californication." I think it would be a badly-written show with any leading man, but maybe a different actor would be able to find the appealing side of Hank instead of playing him as a one-note, self-satisfied douche. I really like the actress who plays his daughter and look forward to her popping up in something else.

As a counterexample to Duchovny on "Californication," I give you Holly Hunter on "Saving Grace." Here's another self-destructive, substance-abusing, middle-aged person who sublimates her pain by having lots of sex with her many willing suitors, but I both like her and understand her appeal to the opposite sex (even though Holly Hunter herself needs to spend a few weeks following Dr. Nick's steady gorging process, combined with assal horizontology). That's a credit to Hunter's performance. There's a thin line between charming rogue and irritating jerk; she stays on the right side of it in a way that Duchovny can't or won't.

That said, I'm falling out of love with "Saving Grace" as a whole, thanks to the police stuff. There's a weird epidemic going on in TV right now -- both with current series and a lot of the fall pilots -- of cop shows with interesting, original leads and completely uninspired procedural stories. I understand that cop shows are more instantly commercial, which is why Grace or, say, that immortal guy from "New Amsterdam" carry a badge and gun, but the genre's so oversaturated right now that almost no one can find anything original to do with the cases. The Oklahoma setting provides a small amount of novelty -- not going to see a story about bull seed on "Cold Case," I don't think -- but not enough to keep me from zoning out until Grace heads to the bar or her love shack.

Good casting in the latest episode of Frances Fisher as the cool aunt Grace has modeled herself after, but did I miss a previous reference to her father having died in the Oklahoma City bombing? I know she lost her sister (or sister-in-law?), but this seemed like new info.

Speaking of potentially new info (or yet another example of how I need to pay closer attention), "My Boys" revealed for the first time (maybe) that Kenny runs a sports memorabilia shop, which answers the final question of how PJ knows all her boys. (Andy's her brother, Brendan and Stephanie went to school with her, Bobby's a rival beat writer and Mike used to work for the Cubs.) Mike and Kenny are funny as usual together, and the "negotiation" at the bar managed to work Gaffigan into their dynamic nicely. Didn't care much about the Jeremy Sisto romance subplot (though it did make me listen to a sample of "The Wrong Girl" just because it was on a mix tape between my beloved Fountains of Wayne and the Flaming Lips), and we the beginnings of the douchey Brendan storyline that's going to pay off nicely next week.

The writers of "The Bronx Is Burning" are lucky the cops caught Son of Sam as relatively early as they did, since it gave them an excuse to dump that subplot with a few episodes of the miniseries left. The show works much better as an all-baseball affair (like I said at the start, either they needed to cover all the stuff from Mahler's book or just the Bombers), even if the Reggie/Billy/George dynamic is feeling repetitive by this point. Two complaints about the first World Series episode: 1)I love "Blitzkrieg Bop" as much as the next guy, but it feels like they've already played it 57 times so far. The Ramones' catalog is consistent (simplistic?) enough that you can substitute a lot of other songs and get the same effect. 2)How in the world do you incorporate so much of the Howard Cosell/Keith Jackson telecast of game two and not include Cosell saying "Ladies and gentleman, the Bronx is Burning"?

Finally, I've been watching "Top Chef" all season, but often so many days late that a blog entry has seemed beside the point. (A big part of the problem: the show inevitably makes me very hungry, and I don't want to be snacking at 10:30 at night, so I have to wait until I can see each show close to a mealtime.) I've been enjoying it a lot and wish I had started with the franchise sooner. (Though I hear season two was very skippable.) All the "Bizarro Apprentice" stuff I admire about franchise sibling "Project Runway" (competent contestants, creative challenges, rational judges), only with a subject I care about.

That said, this show tends to telegraph its exits even more blatantly than latter-day "Survivor." Anytime two contestants declare their undying friendship (in this case, Casey and Tre), you know one of them's out. Tre compounded the sledgehammer foreshadowing with all his overconfidence, and by the time we were halfway through the judges' visit to Restaurant April, I knew he was done. He had been the obvious frontrunner early on, but he'd been through a lot of ups and downs and was clearly the main reason for this loss. If, as the judges have said elsewhere, the judging isn't supposed to be cumulative, he was the right choice. (If not, CJ should have been tossed.) It's interesting, though, that the remaining field includes a few people who have consistently been either brilliant or awful (Hung, to a lesser extent Howie) and then a bunch of people who have had some good moments and some bad ones, but nothing really remarkable on either end. Usually in this kind of show, there's a more obvious pecking order by this stage, and I honestly can't tell who's going to win, or who should.

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