Shiny Things
By BOP Staff
June 27, 2005
Welcome to Shiny Things, where the BOP staff members take a little time to let readers know what's catching our attention this week. Whether it's film-related, a new musical group or a great book, we've got such an eclectic group that you're almost certain to find something that also suits your fancy.
Entourage
The wonder of the digital era is that a person can go from having never watched an episode of a show to being completely caught up in the span of a couple of days. Entourage is a show that summarizes this new age of entertainment. The eight episode arc that comprises season one is available on DVD, and it will take roughly three hours for the viewer to watch it all. What they will discover is a clever spin on the nature of celebrity as well as a glimpse into what it's like to be the Next Big Thing in Hollywood.
Executive producer Mark Wahlberg might be known for an impressive prosthetic device and a hit single, but with Entourage, he is able to demonstrate a different part of his background. The show revolves a quartet of guys, one of whom happens to be the It Actor of the moment. The simple concept here is to exhibit how one man's celebrity impacts his core group of friends. Their symbiotic relationship gives that character, Vince Chase, an emotional center as he attempts to conquer Hollywood.
The genius of the show, however, is that the ostebsible star is not the crux of the show. Instead, it's his best friend/de facto manager Eric whose life is dutifully tracked. The young man struggles with coming to terms with the fact that the whole world knows who his best friend is while he is seen as a hanger-on. The interplay between the two leads to some of the finest jocular guy television since Miami Vice went off the air.
Meanwhile, a symmetrical lower-tier relationship exists between the other two leads, Drama and Turtle. Drama is the older brother of Vince who has done some B-level work as an actor, but who clings to the hope that he might one day discover his brother's degree of celebrity. That the character is played by Kevin Dillon, Matt's brother, is something of a masterstroke.
He has an unfortunate degree of familiarity with such a situation. And he uses this to maximum advantage as Drama is consistently undermined and humiliated while his mini-Eric, Turtle, looks on bemusedly.
Entourage's second season has recently started on HBO. The beauty of it is that the high-minded Vince is forced to take a shamelessly commercial studio picture, none other than Aquaman. If you have ever wondered how someone winds up in a film like Elektra, the comedic potential afforded in showing how a rising talent gets stuck taking parts such as this is too tantalizing to miss. Entourage is the perfect blend of popcorn television because the episodes are fast-paced and quickly consumed. And a dozen episodes from now, you will be completely caught up. (David Mumpower/BOP)
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30 Days
In 2004, documentary director Morgan Spurlock created a sensation as he produced a film that saw him go 30 days eating nothing except food from the McDonald's menu and shunning all exercise whatsoever. That movie was Super Size Me, and ultimately gave Spurlock an Academy Award nomination and was one of the key breakout films in the nonfiction genre. Now, he has expanded the concept to a television series that sees participants spend 30 days doing something extraordinary and out of their element.
The first show in the series features Spurlock and his fiancée Alex as they leave the comfort of their everyday lives and spend 30 days working at a minimum wage job. The couple went into their adventure with absolutely no cash and left behind all their credit cards, making it a rule that the only money they would use for the next month would be that which they earned in their new jobs. Spurlock takes work through a temp agency, where he does stuff that varies from construction work to landscaping, while Alex finds work at a local coffee shop. They quickly learn how far a dollar goes, as both of them have to go to the emergency room during this time span.
After the debut episode, the second show had a 34-year-old man who sought to find the fountain of youth via injections of steroids and Human Growth Hormone. Upcoming episodes will have a Christian living for a month among a large Muslim community, a homophobe traveling to San Francisco to live in what is known as one of the most predominantly gay areas of the country, and a mother who is concerned about her daughter's drinking who agrees to binge drink for 30 days herself. The series is funny when appropriate, serious when it needs to be, and definitely gives the viewer food for thought. (Kim Hollis/BOP)
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Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law
Harvey Birdman, from Cartoon Network's Adult Swim and now with Volume 1 available on DVD, is a delightful series of short animated tales about a noble superhero who now spends his time defending a wide variety of wacky clients from the animated world of Hanna Barbera. It uses some old footage with a healthy dose of new animation to tell the sometimes risque stories of the attorney and his sordid clientele. In one uproarious episode, Birdman defends Shaggy and Scooby Doo (of Mystery Inc.) on some serious charges (I think you can guess what). The best part is the COPS-style send up of their arrest. In another great episode, he defends one Fred Flintstone on racketeering charges in a nice spoof of The Sopranos - with some of The Godfather thrown in for good measure. Other clients include Speed Buggy, Boo Boo Bear, and The Jetsons. Some of the secondary characters are quite unusual too, especially the far out judges Mightor and Mentok. Gary Cole (perhaps now best known as the great Lumberg in Office Space) is perfect as the title character. This show isn't for everyone; some of the jokes will fly right by if you aren't familiar with the source material. But you should definitely give it a try. (Michael Bentley/BOP)
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Animal Face-Off
Everyone likes nature shows, and everyone likes game shows. And we all have at least a bit of that morbid curiosity that causes us to look, however briefly, upon scenes of carnage we encounter in life. So what if someone could combine all those elements and create a show about animals fighting to the death without pissing off the folks over at PETA?
Enter Animal Planet’s latest original series, Animal Face-Off. The concept is simple: two animals of different species enter the arena, and only one leaves. Except the arena and the contestants are computer-generated, so you’ve got all the carnage you could want with none of the danger, either to the people arranging the fight or for the animal combatants.
Of course, what I’ve just described would take all of about five minutes of screen time, so how do they come up with enough material to make even a 30-minute, much less a 60-minute show, sans the ever-present commercials?
This is where the nature show part of the equation comes in, accompanied by something for the engineering geeks. In order to make their virtual fights as close to reality as possible, Animal Face-Off brings in two experts, one for each of the contestants, to provide basic information about the animals. Then a group of data analysts and biomechanical and animatronic engineers set about building biometric stand-ins for the beasts. These stand-ins are then put through their paces to capture accurate data on such things as bite force, paw strike speed, and such little eccentricities as the power of a crocodile’s death roll or how much added force the top speed of a predator’s chase provides to the bite.
Now that sounds kind of dry, but it is anything but, because the mechanical beasties that get built are way cool-looking. They’re all gleaming metal and hydraulics, with photo-electric red eyes glowing and aluminum teeth looking mighty vicious indeed. And while the show goes a bit heavy on the “These tests would be too dangerous to do in the wild” anvils - especially in the first couple of episodes - the actual building of the biometric animals and the tests never fails to fascinate. For instance, I never tire of hearing how the skulls are made in the foundry. Others may have their own favorite moments, but that’s a scene I could watch on a five-hour loop and still want more.
As the animals are built and tested, the experts provide the educational value. Such traits as how a jaguar prefers to kill its prey, or why a wolf would win on endurance over a cougar’s rapid-fire leap, are described as the mechanical beasties are put through their paces. We come away knowing that, for instance, hippos kill more humans in Africa than any other animal, or polar bears working in concert can drag a killer whale out of the ice. Weaknesses and defenses are also covered, so while you would think the grizzly bear would be at a decided disadvantage against an alligator because of the thick, impenetrable hide, you also learn there’s always that soft underbelly that the alligator unwisely exposes in the midst of its death roll.
You come away from an episode of Animal Face-Off not only knowing more about the animals involved than you did before, but also having learned a bit about math and engineering. And the sight of those huge metal beasties rolling around on earthmovers, powered by hydraulics and looking mean as hell, provides those gee-whiz moments that come less often once we’ve reached the age of majority. And you can never predict the outcome with any certainty, which adds to the fun.
Plus, in the course of testing the bite force of these mechanical beasties, lots of stuff gets crushed and mangled and sliced. Great TV, indeed. (Stephanie Star Smith/BOP)
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The 4400
Planned as a five episode mini-series, USA had no idea what they had when they premiered The 4400 on July 11, 2004. They realized pretty quickly that what they had was the highest rated premiere in the history of cable television. What they had was one of the most gripping mini-series ever on television. What they had was lightning in a bottle. And they caught it. Shortly after The 4400 premiered, USA did the smart thing and ordered up 13 more episodes of the Sci-Fi hit and added it to their Summer Season schedule.
The premise of The 4400 is pretty simple. A comet is discovered heading straight for the Earth. Apparently Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck were busy that day and all the world could do was watch what could very well be the end of the world. All of a sudden, the comet starting slowing down, until it came to a complete stop just feet from the ground somewhere near Seattle. When the bright light disappeared, several people...4400 people, to be exact...were milling about looking dazed and confused.
These people are put into the custody of Homeland Security and it is discovered that every one of them had been reported missing anywhere from a few months ago to 50 years ago. And amazingly enough, none of them have aged a minute since they were last seen and none of them have any memory of what had happened to them. Homeland Security officers Tom Bishop (Joel Gretsch) and Diana Skouris (Jaqueline McKenzie) are assigned to unravel the mystery of The 4400.
As The 4400 assimilate into life again, it's not long before we find that they all seem to be "improved," from seeing the future to rage that can destroy buildings to a woman who was returned pregnant with a very opinionated fetus. I won't go into any more detail, because I don't want to spoil it for anyone.
Last Sunday was the two-hour premiere of the second season of The 4400. Do yourself a favor...set your TiVo to catch one of the gazillion replays of the premiere and set it to catch this Sunday's episode. Then, get your butt to either Netflix or Amazon (special price of $11.99) and pick up the DVD of the first season. Again, it was only five episodes (with a two hour premiere), so it's only six hours of content to catch up on. Those six hours will be well worth it. Be sure to drop me a line when you catch up with the new season and let me know what you think. (Jim Van Nest/BOP)
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Mythbusters
Urban legends and myths have taken on renewed life in the age of the Information Superhighway. Seems like nary a week goes by when one doesn’t receive at least one forwarded e-mail from a well-meaning friend or relative telling of the dangers of licking envelopes, telling us about the latest Darwin Awards or telling about a sure-fire way to beat the radar guns.
And while we mostly know these tales are made from whole cloth, sometimes we wonder. Is it possible that some poor scuba diver got sucked up by a water-dropping helicopter and deposited into the middle of a forest fire? Was there really a Darwin Awards guy who mounted a jet engine on his ’67 Chevy and ended up crashing into a mountainside, causing consternation amongst various law-enforcement agencies trying to determine how a plane nobody knew existed crashed?
Enter Discovery Channel’s series Mythbusters. Its hosts, Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, have years of experience creating specialized F/X for movies and television, and as the show’s voiceover tells us each episode, “They don’t just tell the myths, they test them.” Although they mostly steer away from what Adam calls “oogie-boogie” myths - such as the recent test of the purported power of pyramids - any other possibly-tall tale gets put under the bright spotlight of science to see if it really could have happened.
What’s fun here is that Adam and Jamie have so much fun testing these myths. The show’s dialogue is ad-libbed, but the testing of the myths is meticulous, with the Rube Goldberg gizmos required being created by the hosts and the build team. A helpful announcer keeps the audience informed of what’s being done, by whom and why. The myth is tested - and it won’t spoil anything, nor likely surprise anyone, to learn that most myths are busted - and then generally Adam and Jamie will go outside the parameters provided in the myth in order to recreate the intended result.
Especially if it involves blowing things up.
The show is a lot of fun to watch, as well as being educational. No, really. Adam and Jamie are obviously having a blast, and as the series has gone on, the build team has become a more visible part of the show, both assisting Adam and Jamie and in testing myths themselves. But Adam and Jamie remain the focus, and they never fail to make you laugh at least once a show, if only from some of the pratfalls and the silly situations they find themselves in all in the name of science. There’s a nice little geek touch in the name of the workshop where the building takes place - M5 - and the show is quite quotable at times. In fact, my new favorite quote came courtesy of Adam during the testing of the American Graffiti stunt of pulling a car off its axle by putting a cable around the rear wheel bar and tying the other end to a telephone pole: “I reject your reality and substitute my own.”
Plus, stuff blows up real good. Can’t be bad. (Stephanie Star Smith/BOP)
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Rescue Me
Setting a series in a New York City firehouse, specifically in the context of post September 11th, is definitely a tricky proposition. Events of that day shone a particular light on the job that firefighters do and the heroic acts they sometimes must perform. While FX's Rescue Me does portray the bravery of firemen, it takes pains not to mythologize them. Often, the show seems to go to great lengths to dare you to not like the characters. The firefighters of Ladder 62 are often politically incorrect at best, if not downright bigoted or misogynistic on occasion, but they will also risk their life to run into a burning building to save someone trapped inside.
The cast is led by Denis Leary (who also serves as an executive producer and creator of the series), and the strong ensemble is perhaps the show's greatest asset. To keep an audience on board with a character even when they occasionally commit some fairly despicable acts is certainly a challenge, and the writers make good use of their talented cast. Personal favorites include the chemistry between firehouse stud, Franco (Daniel Sunjata) and the not too bright Sean (Steven Pasquale) as well as the probationary firefighter (or Probie), Mike (Michael Lombardi) who has come off as the most interesting and hard to read character thus far. With such a large group of characters, the show does a great job of developing them over the course of a season, revealing each of them slowly and surprising you with the deviations from the stock characters they appear to be initially.
Of course, no show is perfect, and there is a minor quibble. The universe of Rescue Me is basically an absurd reality, and while that tone is generally a strength, there is a tendency to take it too far at times. With Season 1 recently released on DVD and Season 2 having recently started on June 21st, now is the perfect time to be rescued from drab summer television. (Dan Krovich/BOP)
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Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
Just as the original CSI spawned 479 offspring, so has the venerable - 15 seasons and counting! - Law & Order begat 752. And much as the spin-offs from the CSI franchise vary widely in quality, so too do the other members of the L&O family (with the most recent being stillborn).
But of all the Law & Order offshoots, the most successful, and arguably the one that has maintained the high quality of the surprisingly long-lived original, is its first progeny, SVU. Just as its parent, which took place in the homicide division of the NYPD, SVU follows the activities of the detectives in the sex crimes unit. What SVU has done that its two cousins, Criminal Intent and Trial by Jury, never quite achieved was to keep up the attention to detail in the case investigation and complexity of the characters of its detectives.
Anchored by Dann Florek’s Captain Donald Cragen - transferred from the homicide division of the parent series and utilized to a much more effective degree here - the unit has four main detectives: the featured pair of Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) and Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), and their satellite pair of Homicide: Life in the Streets transplant John Munch (Richard Belzer) and Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T). The detectives are backed up by an ADA specifically assigned to the unit, currently ADA Casey Novak (Diane Neal), and Dr George Huang (B.D. Wong), an FBI psychiatrist/criminologist who is a frequent consultant. But even though much of each investigation centers on Stabler and Benson, Munch and Fin aren’t simply the second-banana pair of cops, nor is Cragen consigned, as he was much of the time during his stint on L&O, to handing out assignments and disappearing into his office. Everyone takes part in each case, and there are cases that focus more on Munch and/or Fin, cases that see the usual parings mixed-and-matched, and cases where Cragen takes a frontlines role. And as with its parent, we learn about the personal lives of the SVU crew; we learn what makes them tick, we learn about their families; we see them going through all the life changes that would be expected in the course of, at this point, six years.
The stories are still as tightly plotted in the sixth season as they were in the first, and though these folks deal with some of the most heinous crimes that can be committed, and often with the most innocent of victims, the show is never so graphic as to make adult viewers - defined in this case by mental maturity rather than chronological criteria - uncomfortable, nor is it so sugar-coated as to seemingly be taking place in Fantasyland. And just like in real police work, neither you nor the detectives know quite where a case is headed. There are leads that go nowhere; innocent people who turn out to be guilty and vice-versa; mistakes made and clues that lead to dead-ends; trails that go cold, and trials that don't always see justice done. In fact, there’s many a time when you, along with the squad, will only know exactly what has happened and/or who was responsible just moments before that black screen with the “Executive Producer Dick Wolf” chyron appears, signaling the end of the episode.
But perhaps the thing that draws the viewers in and keeps them coming back each week is the interaction between the main characters, both within their separate partnerships and with the others on the squad and the ADA. In particular, Munch and Fin seem to be the perfect odd couple; their chemistry is every bit as endlessly fascinating as any of the cases the squad works, and they’ve got a finely-honed sense of comic timing that is as much fun to watch as it appears to be to play.
SVU is not only that rare spin-off that is every bit as good as its progenitor - and sometimes even better - but a series that keeps improving with age. If you’ve never checked it out, you should give it a look. At the very least, you’ll come away knowing you’ve seen a well-written, well-acted drama, something you don’t often find on network television these days.
But don’t be surprised if you find yourself looking through TV Guide for the next episode, or setting up a TiVo Season Pass to catch you up on this compelling hour of TV. (Stephanie Star Smith/BOP)
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Pardon the Interruption
This week, Tucker Carlson debuted his new show, The Situation, on MSNBC. The format, as several news articles noted, was based on that of ESPN's Pardon the Interruption. It's pretty amazing that Carlson, in his attempt to regain some of the respectability torn away from him by Jon Stewart last fall, has turned to a talk show format popularized by a couple of guys squawking about everything from Tiger Woods to Britney Spears. The funny thing about any of these discussion shows, whether they deal with politics or sports, is that despite whatever gimmicks they choose to employ, they all boil down to a couple of guys "yapping" (to use one of Tony Kornheiser's favorite words) about a bunch of different topics. Somehow, though, PTI seems different. Often imitated but never duplicated, Pardon the Interruption remains, even after three and a half years on the air, the most consistently engaging sports talk show I have ever seen. Its hosts, the aforementioned Kornheiser, as well as his Washington Post colleague, Michael Wilbon, have a brilliant chemistry together; though their back-and-forth banter can admittedly be just as loud and overly opinionated as that of any obnoxiously pompous pundit on CNN or Fox News, there is something about their style - perhaps the fact that, despite the two hosts' constant disagreements, the viewer can immediately tell that Kornheiser and Wilbon have a genuine respect for each other - that keeps the show from veering into the quickreachforthemutebutton territory of Crossfire. No matter how many times ESPN tries to replicate PTI's success - and try it does, with no less than three PTI clones airing every afternoon in the 90 minutes preceding the show - it's hard to imagine any other similarly-themed program being nearly as enjoyable. When either of the two men is on vacation, the presence is sorely missed, and the show is not nearly as entertaining without them. Try as he might to duplicate the success of PTI in the world of news, Tucker Carlson would do well to remember that his show will never be nearly as popular if it can't replicate PTI's most crucial element: the fantastic chemistry between its hosts.
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Battlestar Galactica
As you know, the Sci-Fi Network, risk takers that they are, have decided to restore the glory of a faded, quasi-futuristic 1970s television show. What you might not realize is that the update is not a celebration of cheesy sci-fi. Instead, they have created a damn good program. No, we're not kidding.
The Battlestar Galactica remake takes the identities of several of the characters from the original series and reinvents them. Boomer and Starbuck don't just get facelifts but also sexlifts. Meanwhile, Apollo and Adama return as a father/son tandem with Edward James Olmos taking on the infamous Lorne Greene role ("Best. Death. Ever.").
The trick this time out is that veteran Star Trek sci-fi writer Ronald D. Moore has skillfully placed all of the potential landmines for the show's characters in plain sight. The evil robot race, the Cylons, have developed technology allowing them to mimic humans in every capacity. This doppleganger technique has given them the ability to place sleeper agents on the last remaining ship protecting mankind. Meanwhile, an attempt to exterminate the human race has largely succeeded, leaving less than 50,000 in our species fruitlessly attempting to re-discover Earth.
The most captivating character on this show is Boomer as played by Grace Park. As a Cylon masquerading as a human, she is asked to portray the role in multiple manners depending on which of the Boomer clones is onscreen at the moment. Similarly, Tricia Helfer is cast as the face of evil for the series or, in The Matrix terminology, the girl in the red dress. She methodically attempts to execute the last vestiges of mankind, all the while drawn to an attempt to understand what it means to be human. She comes across as equal parts Borg disciple 7 of 9 and Data's evil clone, Lore.
If nothing else, Battlestar Galactica affords viewers the heretofore unknown opportunity to either witness a character have imaginary sex in front of his co-workers or become the first successful wi-fi sexual favors recipient outside of Microsoft's r&d department. Dr. Gaius is far and away the most bizarre character in recent science-fiction television. All you have to do in order to enjoy his groundbreaking performance is get past his astounding physical resemblance to Star Trek: Deep Space 9's Dr. Julian Bashir and overcome the natural instinct of a Simpsons fan to start humming, "Dr. Gaius! Dr. Gaius!"
Re-runs of season one are currently airing on Sci-Fi, and they will culminate in the start of the new season in July. The show is quite challenging by television standards, so it wouldn't hurt to get a jump on season two by watching the rest of this year. Sci-Fi has conveniently obliged us by offering a marathon on July 6th. Set your TiVos, people! Also, the three hour mini-series available on DVD is highly recommended. (David Mumpower/BOP)
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