Thursday television traffic(jam)

I hate traffic. Mostly in real life, because it's usually for the stupidest, inane reasons.

A traffic jam on tv is not quite as irritating, in that I don't want to scream obscenities (usually) and I don't want to pull someone's hair and scratch their eyes out (for the most part), but why does every single network have to program their best shows on the same night?? My DVR can only record 2 shows at once! And will be doing so tonight from 8-11.

So on tonight's Thursday Television Trafficjam, here's what you can expect (maybe it won't be so terrible for you...maybe you are actually a more discerning television viewer who can limit what you watch. In which case, why are you here?? This blog ain't for you! :)):

8-9 pm
Bones (Fox) - not a must watch. It got kinda silly at the end of last season, but I do enjoy many of the episodes and the playful-protective relationship between Bones (Emily Deschanel, who I really like) and Booth (David Boreanaz, who I love love love!)...
The Vampire Diaries (CW)- as we've already established, my new guilty pleasure
Parks and Recreation (NBC) - didn't love it last season, but I adore Amy Poehler and I see potential...still giving it a shot to find it's footing.

9-10 pm
Fringe (Fox) - I have yet to get into this show. I want to like it. I have liked the episodes I've seen. Plus, Josh Jackson? Delish. Season premiere would be a logical place to try to pick it up again.
The Office (NBC) - very excited for the new season. I love and have missed my Dunder Mifflin gang.
Community (NBC) - new show, have already watched the pilot and enjoyed it.

10-11 pm
Project Runway (Lifetime) - you're either in or you're out, and Project Runway is in...
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (FX) - somehow this show just gets funnier and funnier. I think the actors know their characters now and I never get tired of seeing the gang try to act smart and failing miserably.

So as you can see, a few of the hours have three shows crammed into where only two shows can be recorded. Grey's Anatomy hasn't even premiered yet, which will add to the glut. New 30 Rock episodes haven't begun yet, which will add to the glut. Baseball is still on, which will add to the glut. Those shows that don't get recorded will have to be watched on the computer (thank God most networks have jumped on the video-posting bandwagon!), but that's still at least five hours of television I need to keep up on. Thank God nothing good comes on on Saturdays. That's how long it usually takes me til to catch up on all my Thursday shows. At least it's a traffic jam of shows I like. If only traffic in real life were that much fun...

Top Chef: Team Voltaggio for the win!!

I don't watch a lot of reality tv. I did watch the first season of Survivor. I tuned into a couple of seasons of Real World.

But shows wear people eat gross things and cover themselves in spiders for money? Not interested.

Shows where women (or men) compete and degrade and humiliate themselves on national television to "win" the "love" of someone? Just makes me angry.

Shows where people sit around and do nothing except drink and fight and get it on and we get to indulge our voyeuristic curiosity? Makes me want to give up any hope of there being anything good and creative and purposeful and redemptive about television...

But as someone who has always been anti reality tv, I will recant and concede that there is a whole other genre of reality tv, embodied in my tv-watching repertoire by Project Runway and Top Chef, where like Survivor or The Bachelor, it's a competition for a prize, but where the winner is putting to use a skill that they have or pursuing a passion of theirs to win a prize to help them achieve a dream and a goal related to said skill. Winners are (for the most part) chosen on merit and effort. That kind of reality tv I can get behind.

Anyway, the latest seasons of Project Runway and Top Chef are currently airing, on Lifetime and Bravo, respectively. I started watching Top Chef during the middle of the second season and was immediately hooked. It's interesting, because I don't cook. Mostly because I can't cook. So while I am easily impressed by someone who can, say, simply whip up a tomato sauce from scratch, I am blown away by people who can conceive and execute anything even more complex than that, figuring out flavors and textures and how they'll work together and how to coordinate what needs to be cooked when and how to do it and just, all that jazz. Cooking like that is an art.

Of course, it's also interesting that I enjoy this show because I have a very unsophisticated palate. If you told me I could only eat one thing for the rest of my life, if it's something I like, I wouldn't mind. When foods get too fancy, I get annoyed. Just ask my father. At Thanksgiving, he has to make two sides of stuffing - fancy cornbread stuffing with raisins and nuts and all sorts of other experimental flavors and additions for the group and then also normal, regular stuffing. For me. I am very picky and particular about my food in that I like things plain and simple. My favorite cereal is Cheerios. Plain Cheerios. So I would never be able to create the dishes these chefs create and I could definitely never be a Top Chef judge. Also, unlike on Project Runway, where you can see what the designers have created, its hard as a viewer of Top Chef to really judge the winning and losing dishes because we can't actually taste it, but we can see if it looks good, and for the most part, the judges do a pretty good job of describing why a dish did or didn't work.

Anyway, I have completely digressed from the exact topic of this post, which is Team Voltaggio, of which I am captain. Every season, top contenders start to emerge, and while one or two dark horses might make it to the final four, two or three are usually no surprises, being consistently good throughout the competition. This season, that emergence has appeared much more quickly in the form of contestants Kevin, Jen, and the Voltaggio brothers, Bryan and Michael. Every week I expect all four of these chefs to do well, and every week, they do. In fact, Bryan has already won three elimination challenges. And while in past seasons certain top contenders have annoyed me to no end (yes, I'm looking at you, Hung), I would be perfectly happy to see all four of these chefs in the final four. It's easy to root for people who are not only talented but who seem like people you could be friends with. Or at least don't want to kick in the shins.

And while I enjoy seeing all of them do well, I have a special fondness in my heart for (translation: I am totally crushing on) the brothers Voltaggio, and I've been enjoying not only watching them cook but watching their playful and competitive sibling rivalry as they both support and root for each other to do well but also as they try to one-up each other in every competition.

I am looking forward to the rest of the season playing out (although I am not looking forward to the return of awful, annoying guest judge Toby Young) and with finding out which, if any, of my friends would be into wearing matching Team Voltaggio t-shirts whilst watching the show together.

I leave you with my TV Crush(es) of the Day:

Bryan Voltaggio



Michael Voltaggio

Mad Men...watch it!

If you've been following this blog, then you already know the love I have for Mad Men. I'm the first to admit that at least half of the shows I watch on tv, if not moreso, are all about the entertainment factor, about removing myself from reality and just having a laugh...most of my shows are comedies, for the reason that there's too much reality in my life and I need an escape. Even the dramas I love, like Buffy and Angel, are also excellent at bringing the humor.

So, how does a self described comedy whore like myself fall for a show like Mad Men?

Mad Men is not a comedy. Sometimes characters say funny things, but situations are not played for laughs. Characters don't normally crack jokes.

And those shows that I enjoy that don't make me laugh tend toward being action-packed and fast-paced. Mad Men is not one of these shows either.

Mad Men is about the words. It is about the silent moments in between those well chosen words. Mad Men is slow and deliberate and the carefully crafted mise en scene, that is, everything within the frame of every shot. It's about the feelings evoked and the nostalgia and the universal themes being acted out before us.

I've written about this before, so excuse me for the repetition, but in college, I wrote my senior thesis on how television can be considered a modern art form, using an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer as an example. I almost consider myself lucky that Mad Men was not on the air back then, as I would have been overwhelmed by the material available to me for my thesis. Because that's what Mad Men is - it's art. There are shows you watch to be scared or to feel good about your own life by making or just to laugh, but Mad Men is a show you watch and then think about and then talk about and then watch again and then analyze. Mad Men is the kind of show you want to dissect and try to understand and that you want to write a thesis paper about.

Yeah, it's sickening. And so very exciting. Shows like Mad Men are what make me fall in love all over again with both writing and television.

Mad Men, tonight, AMC, 10 pm...ya dig? :)

This vampire groupie talks about The Vampire Diaries

Ok, so this is where my inner geek is going to shine through as I wax poetic about a new show on The CW, The Vampire Diaries.

Is it great art, like Mad Men? No.
Is it comedic genius, like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia? Hardly.
Is it just another Twilight clone, jumping on the hugely popular vampire bandwagon? Not even.

The Vampire Diaries is based on a series of books that came out in the early 1990s and which I devoured over and over again when I was in junior high, so really, you could make a better argument that the books started the current vampire trend than you could that the show is following it. Anyway, when I found out last spring that they were turning the books into a tv show, I think I literally squealed with excitement. There has been a serious vampire void in my life since first Buffy and then Angel went off the air. I don't watch True Blood, I'm not sure why not, and both Twilight the book and the movie just didn't cut it.

So, did the premiere last night cut it?

I think I'm hooked. Some characters and storylines have been tweaked, but the important parts are pretty faithful to the books. It wasn't corny or cheesy, which I was worried about, the music was good, the acting pretty decent, and most importantly, Stefan and Damon, the vampire brothers who were two of my first literary crushes, as portrayed by Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder respectively, look and act exactly as I pictured them.

All in all, I'm very excited about this show!

How I fell in love with How I Met Your Mother

If you've never watched How I Met Your Mother, it's way past time that you start.

If you started but stopped, it's way past time you kiss and make up and start watching again.

And if I'm preaching to the choir, then can I hear an "Amen"?

Season 5 of How I Met Your Mother kicks off on CBS in just a couple of weeks, and I am preparing by watching this show on DVD, from the very beginning. Every new television season, I have the intention of giving most, if not all, new shows, a two shot deal - a good pilot is tricky and isn't always indicative of the what the show will become, but at the very least, I do try to catch most pilots, unless just absolutely nothing about the premise grabs me whatsoever. So, in 2005, 2 shows premiering caught my attention in particular - Kitchen Confidential and How I Met Your Mother, the former because it starred Bradley Cooper aka Scruffy Will from "Alias" as well as Nicholas Brendon and the latter because it starred Alyson Hannigan. Now, Nick Brendon and Aly Hannigan are both alumni of my all time favorite show of shows, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is what boosted the appeal of these two new series. To be honest, there wasn't much else about them that really made me feel compelled to watch. Kitchen Confidential never even made it through the first season, and though I have that season on DVD and love to bits many of the players, I don't think I watched beyond the first three episodes.

How I Met Your Mother had me hooked from the beginning.

As I said before, I usually give shows I think might possibly interest me a two-to-three show leeway. Pilots have too much to establish and introduce to really give you a feel for what the show is offering, but from that very first episode, I never stopped watching. And the funniest part? Alyson Hannigan was my least favorite part of the pilot. In the four seasons since, I have grown to love her again as Lily Aldrin rather than as Willow Rosenberg, but it's an ensemble show about friends that kinda filled the void of Friends...and then went beyond. Talking about the exact parts and pieces of this show that make me love it is a whole other post, but I just thought it appropriate to highlight this quirky, hilarious, moving, and very real comedy in a year when it has actually garnered an Emmy nod for Best Comedy...Neil Patrick Harris is the standout actor and Barney Stinson is the standout character, but when I watch this show about 20 and 30 something friends living in New York, their interactions and actions and feelings and the things they say are the perfect representation of me and my friends, 20 and 30 somethings living in New York (and I'm sure it translates, even if you're not a New Yorker - one of the main characters is Canadian, and the resulting Canadian jokes are half the fun - sorry, Jonathan (my Canadian friend)! I love you!!)

The point is, How I Met Your Mother is one of the funniest, heartwarming, and real shows on tv right now. Its Emmy nod is overdue and well deserved. And I can't wait for the next season to begin.

Suit up! :)

It's gonna be legen- wait for it! - dary!

Television is an art...but sometimes it's just a business

There are times when I think television is one of the best media for artistic and creative expression. And there are times, like right now, when I read that ABC has decided not to order the back 9 episodes on 3 of its sophomore shows that I remember that television is just a business. The people in charge? They don't want to inspire people. They don't want to make people laugh. They don't want to make people see things from a different perspective. They don't want to fuel people's imaginations. They just want to make money. Television is about ratings and selling ads and yes, there are some commercials that have become more entertaining, sophisticated, and artistic over the years, but for the most part I do not watch tv for the commercials.

Dirty Sexy Money, I think, was a lost cause anyway. There were flickers of my old show - Brian always represented season one well, and even Tripp had a moment of vulnerability and humanity in this week's otherwise over the top episode that was an example of soap at it's best (and by best, I mean worst). They changed the show to get more viewers and it backfired. This show was already pretty much dead to me, so it's probable cancellation is no great loss.

Pushing Daisies and Eli Stone, however, were two of the best shows on. In a way, though they could both be dark and depressing, they were both also incredibly feel good and inspiring and original, something that's hard to come by in a television landscape riddled with shows that are mediocre, derivative, and sometimes just craptastic. I think they both had shaky first abbreviated seasons, but I think they were both starting to come into their own this year, especially Pushing Daisies, which left me in tears this week (I do not exaggerate) what with Ned embracing his newly found half-brothers and dealing together with their father abandonment issues to Chuck getting to "speak" to her newly found mother and ask her all the questions she never got to ask when she was alive. On top of which, Fred Willard was also in the episode. I love Fred Willard!

And now my favorite corporate shark turned do-gooder who is trying to save the world one person in need at a time, Eli Stone, is out of a job. As is my favorite piemaker who is learning to love and be loved. Shows like these allow me to believe, if only for a little while, that people are basically good and want to help their fellow humankind. And that true love exists. But the fact that gems like these get the boot while dreck like Private Practice (sorry, Taye Diggs), Kath and Kim, or that 90210 remake get to live to see another episode? That's the real slap in the face.

Bizarro world, or maybe I don't know good tv after all...

Um, I think I may be cracking up. Because I think I just read that Kath & Kim received a full-season pick-up. And I know that can't possibly be true. Because that would mean there are actually people out there who like this show. Even if it's just the execs who ordered an entire season. It's maddening. I like Molly Shannon. I think she's very funny. But she seems to have only two switches: over the top or manic beyond belief. Both of which, like I said, can be funny. But usually in small doses. I think I saw one scene where she acted like an adult and put her daughter ahead of her own happiness and even got exasperated with Kim at one point, but then two seconds later, it disappears and they're bonding over something shallow and moronic. I think Kath can be worked with, if the writers wanted to. Her fiance doesn't bother me so much. I think really it's just Kim and her husband that make this quite possibly the worst show on television ever. Kim has no redeeming qualities. I love a good villain as much as the next girl. I love characters you just love to hate. But Kim is selfish and stupid and shallow with not a shred of self-awareness. And the worst part is that it's not being done in an ironic kind of way; it doesn't seem to be trying to comment on society or whatever. Apparently the writers just think we're supposed to find it funny that Kim dresses like a hooker and acts like a spoiled five year old and doesn't care at all about her mother or her husband, the two people who love her. And yes, we get it, Kim's husband is stupid, but just how stupid are we supposed to believe he is? What does he see in Kim? For that matter, what does Kim see in him? He's not rich. He doesn't cater to her every whim. Maybe I'm just expecting a little too much from television to ask that there be some motivation behind a character's actions, or for a character to have layers (even two would be better than one), or for the humor to be subtle or at the very least funny. I guess maybe I'm just a little too high-maintenance when it comes to being a television viewer.