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Ranking the Show I Watch – 16: Curb Your Enthusiasm

6 Oct

(Note:  This was mostly written before this past season, and the sentiment is pretty much the same but I added an additional best episode at the end)

This awkwardness factor in this occasionally makes the Office look like a comfortable place to work.  It’s another unique show – although I don’t have any proof of this, I would wager there’s more improvisation in this show than in any other that I watch, and that’s not necessarily a good or bad thing but it works for this show.

I can’t think of any other popular show, or show that I watch anyway, that is driven by a single person as much as Curb.  It lives and dies by Larry – he’s in almost every scene and he’s far and away the most important character.  His wife, who would be second, is not even with him during the seventh season, and Jeff, the third most, is here and there.  I’m particularly not a huge fan of Susie – her schtick of cursing a lot and banning Larry from their house gets old very quickly.  The show works through the idea (like in Seinfeld) that Larry (and his friends Jeff and Richard Lewis) are immature and inappropriate and say the things we all think but don’t say, and even a bunch of the things we don’t even think.

Each season has an extremely loose running plot, and last season’s featured Larry trying to put together a Seinfeld reunion so he could cast his wife, spend time with her, and get back together.  The Seinfeld reunion I think was one of the better running plots and I thoroughly enjoyed Jerry himself being in about half the episodes of the season – it reminded me why I like Seinfeld a little bit better than curb – the addition of a straight man within the show really does help.

As further part of my rediscovery that in the right instance the catch phrase can become a potent weapon rather than a silly crutch, I’ve been able to identify three or four signature Larry quotes and actions that are fantastic.  Classics include his long and probing stare at someone who he thinks is bullshitting him, his semi-sarcastic prett-ay good, prett-ay good, and his, before asking an inappropriate or inane question, “Let me ask you something” – one of my favorite uses of this is in one of my favorite scenes in the series, when Larry, masquerading as a limo driver asks John McEnroe a series of ridiculous questions – “you have allergies?,” “ you believe in a god of some kind?,” “you like life?,” “do you garden?”


What It’s This High:  Seinfeld 2.0 more or less – the neurosis, the common every day situations spelled out, continuation of a successful formula

Why It’s Not Higher:  Slightly more less than more Seinfeld 2.0 – I love it, but yeah, sometimes I just want to shake Larry and tell him to give it a break, and the situations are relatable a little less often than in Seinfeld

Best episode of the most recent season:  Even though it doesn’t have Seinfeld in it, “Vehicular Fellatio” which contains of the funniest scenes of the season when Larry David, who wants to break up with his girlfriend, portrayed by Vivica A. Fox, but feels he can’t because she has cancer, tries to get her to break up with him by bringing her to a doctor notorious for advising women to dump men, and trying to act as stupid as humanly possible – Larry, after braying like a horse – “horses do it – and I can see why they do it – it feels good”

For the most recent season now, I’ll pick “The Bi-Sexual” mainly because it has the single funniest scene in the season, shown below.

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Ranking the Shows That I Watch – 17: 30 Rock

4 Oct

You know the Thursday NBC line up is coming up through this list (and if you didn’t, well, you know now).  30 Rock might be many people’s top of the line up, but it’s my bottom, but that’s really no disrespect – it’s the best single network night on tv.

I do always feel a little bit mystified by this weird consensus that had formed around the show as the best on TV, though I think that’s faded a bit in the past year or two, as the mainstream Emmy voters throw their love towards Modern Family, and the more edgy writers towards Parks and Recreation and Community.  In hindsight, I suppose I’m glad it has its time ; it would be foolish for me to spend more time talking about how it’s a little bit overrated than on how it’s actually a very good and very funny show.

The past season had some excellent plots and parts and some exceptionally strange ones as well.  In the strange category, some of the leading candidates offhand might be the scam pulled with Jenna, Kenneth and Kelsey Grammar  involving ice cream cakes, Jack’s wife being kidnapped by the North Koreans (is this really a permanent exit for her on the show?  Seriously?) and Jack using Kenneth to fill in for his wife, after her disappearance in the last episode, featuring one of the simplest yet funniest lines uttered by Kenneth, as he says grace at the table with Jack (it’s not going to work as well written, but I’m still writing it), “Dear God, thank you for this venison. Onion god, thank you for these onions.”

Another highlight of the season for me was Jack’s competition with his boss’s granddaughter, portrayed by Chloe Moretz for future control of the company; hopefully we’ll see their rivalry again in future seasons.

It’s worth making a comment about the live episode 30 Rock aired towards the beginning of the season.  The episode had plenty of laughs, as any episode of 30 Rock does, but it felt awfully unnecessary, and although I understand the idea, it’s very hard for a live episode to not seem gimmicky for me.  Only once or twice did the episode take advantage of the fact that it was live for comedic purposes (a flashback with Julia Louis-Dreyfuss portraying Liz).

About the cast as well, all of them are funny when put in the right positions, but it feels like Kenneth and Jenna (and sometimes Tracy) are overused a little bit, at the expense of the writers (Judah Friedlander, Toofer, et al), who certainly don’t need to be elevated hugely, but in some episodes don’t even get more than one or two lines.  It all comes back to Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin at the show’s heart, with the other characters there to provide absurd b-plots, and I think the show realizes that.

Why It’s This High:  Alec Baldwin is truly masterful, and the scenes with him and Tina Fey are the essence of the show and the best part

Why it’s not higher:  The supporting cast is not nearly as strong as the two stars

Best episode of the most recent season:  “Queen of Jordan” – the entire episode is shot as a reality show starting Tracy Jordan’s wife and her entourage and it is a gimmick that actually does work, and contains another great 30 Rock wordplay joke – the promotion celebration that Mrs. Jordan’s single “My Single is Dropping” is dropping.

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Ranking the Shows I Watch – 18: Dexter

29 Sep

Dexter is a show that more than any other show I watch is season-based.  What I mean is that, within each season, the show is entirely serial – watching episode 6 in any season out of context would be absolutely useless (although Dexter has the longest “previously on” catch ups of any show I’ve ever seen – maybe this is why), but you could more or less, with a short catch up, watching season 3 without having seen the first two.   Each season has a very distinct set up – Dexter, serial killer of other serial killers and police blood spatter expert, goes tet a tet with a major villain of the season, who causes Dexter to look inside and deal with who he is to successfully deal with the villain.  Each season also has a primary serial killer, which the entire police force is dealing with, which, depending on the season may or may not be Dexter’s villain.

This past season a lot of people were disappointed with the show, feeling either that it was a pale imitation of the internal battles for Dexter’s soul of earlier seasons and/or they didn’t buy this new relationship Dexter was developing, particularly with Julia Stiles.  Personally, I felt that the show was still good and compelling, but that it was definitely also the weakest season yet and it made me continue to wonder about the writers’ ability to keep coming up with new ideas.  Dexter’s internal battle was the weakest of the seasons and the season kind of felt more written by numbers.  That said, there were absolutely some good points.  Johnny Lee Miller was a definitely highlight of the season, as the sociopathic leader of a group of childhood friends who torture and kill attractive young woman, who also doubles as a hugely successful motivation speaker (Jordan Chase’s (Miller’s character) constant refrain of “Take it now!” was easily the most repeated line from Dexter amongst my friends).  Another was Peter Weller as the sleazebag suspicious detective Quinn hires to go after Dexter, but who goes rogue after Quinn attempts to fire him.  Weller was delightfully despicable, but the way they wrapped up his plotline was rather unsatisfying and felt too easy.

Of course, what always prevents Dexter from being quite as great as it could be is that when he’s not on screen, the show often takes a step down.  Particularly the boring, frustrating and pointless feeling relationship battles between Angel and Maria laGuerta, which cause my brother, when watching the show to literally just skip them, are just not up to par.

Why It’s This High:  Michael C Hall is fantastic, as is the Dexter character, and the show, based on its premise should be way more repetitive than it somehow manages to be

Why It’s Not Higher:  It’s hard to prevent it from getting at least a little bit repetitive, also Dexter is great, the rest of the characters are just okay

Best Episode of the Most Recent Season:  I wish I remembered the episodes a little bit better, but we’ll say “Take It” in which Dexter and Julia Stiles track one of her attackers at one of Jordan Chase’s seminars

Ranking the Shows I Watch – 19: Friday Night Lights

27 Sep

I don’t compliment my brother all that often, but there is absolutely no denying he does a wonderful impression of Coach Eric Taylor giving an inspirational speech to a player, family member, or random Dillon resident.  I wish I could somehow textually demonstrate his not great but still enjoyable fake southern twang and repeat his impressions word for word, but the crux of it is that Coach Taylor will tell this person, who has asked him for advice, or come to him with a problem, something like, “I can’t tell you how …(fill in the blank with whatever the person needs help doing),” implying that he is unqualified to give advice on said topic.  After a breath, though, he comes in with a “but I can tell you this” and precedes to dish out some fairly generic speech which leaves the target invigorated, recharged and/or inspired.  This really encapsulates everything about the show.  It’s essentially a soap, but one that instead of being designed to be trashy and low-brow, is designed to make you feel good and that through everything people are innately good, and that all is right with the world (though they did make just about all the woman extremely attractive – they’re not crazy).  Although it’s by no means a religious show, if you had to convince someone who had been isolated away from humanity of the essential good of humankind, I can think of no better programming to send that message than Friday Night Lights (though you best show them whole seasons – things can get a little morally stickier in the cliffhangers).

What’s possibly more impressive by my standards, is that, while pushing this story that has a man-is-generally-good feel and with ridiculous inspirational dialogue happening in nearly episode that people don’t say in real life, or certainly not that often (to be fair, sports is one of the places where it happens, but at least half of the inspirational dialogue on the show has nothing to do with football), it seems neither righteous nor cloying.  Righteousness probably drives me crazy as much if not more than almost any other quality, and my nose for it usually picks it up if I think there are even the slightest traces left at the scene.  Yet, I don’t really feel it here.  A lot of things about the show aren’t perfect – the plots certainly aren’t the most original or interesting and I’m probably a little biased because subjectively it doesn’t have the feel I prefer in a show.  I can’t think of another show that pulls off what it does well though, and it’s watching for that alone if for nothing else.

Why It’s This High:  Kyle Chandler rules as does Connie Britton, and the heart the series shows should feel cheesy but always feel authentic

Why It’s Not Higher:  The show has great heart, but the plots can be incredibly simple and the dialogue, although feel good, is unmemorable

Best Episode of the Most Recent Season:  I’m not fully caught up yet so I’m limited, but “Kingdom” – the road trip was fun and heartwarming which is what the show does best, and watching coach get frustrated playing cards with the fellow coaches was fantastic

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Ranking the Shows I Watch – 20: Boardwalk Empire

22 Sep

I have mixed feelings about Boardwalk Empire.  First of all, this is certainly not the  most important facet to me of a television show, but it bears saying that Boardwalk Empire looks fantastic.  HBO should be commended for paying for such great production values for their dramas and Boardwalk is no exception.

Both superficially and not so superficially, Boardwalk has a lot in common with creator Terrence Winter’s old employer, The Sopranos.  The main character, Steve Buscemi’s Nucky Thompson, is a man-who-runs-town figure who is also the head of his town’s (Atlantic City) organized crime family in 1920 as prohibition is about to begin.  As in Sopranos, he is thoroughly trained in the old school, but he on the brink of a new order, as prohibition means great opportunity for organized crime, but also allows for the quicker rise for a younger generation of mobsters who play by a different set of rules.  Micheal Pitt’s Jimmy Darmody, who was close to Nucky for years, plays what seems to be the Chris Multisanti role (thoroughly less insane, at least so far, and more serious, but bear with me).  Nucky, like Tony Soprano, struggles to bend and not break while melding some of the old school with some of the new, with plenty of even more conservative associates on one side threatening to end him if he moves too much in one direction, and younger change-oriented associates, like Jimmy, threatening over overtake him if he doesn’t, all while rival organized crime organizations smell blood.

One of the stranger aspects of the show is that a handful of major characters are real people, while the rest aren’t.  This gives Boardwalk a weird amalgam between real and invented, and we know a few things that have to happen – Al Capone is going to rise up in power, and should the show continue to run through prohibition, Arnold Rothstein will be murdered in 1928.  A mafia history devotee could have called ahead of time that Big Jim Colosimo would die, at the hands of Johnny Torrio.

The show is solid but it just isn’t seriously top tier.  It’s main problem might be that it’s not a lot of fun.  It’s a little bit stilted, and even though formula is all there, I just don’t get the unbridled joy and rush of excitement I do from watching a Breaking Bad or a Game of Thrones.  This could change of course, but, and I know I keep comparing it to Sopranos, but it really is a fairly apt analogue, as deadly serious as Sopranos could be, it was also often fun, and that aspect seems sapped from Boardwalk.  Maybe the lack of a Chris, or a Paulie Walnuts, or a Roger Sterling from Mad Men, hurts that, and maybe it’s just the feel of the show and that’s how the creators wanted it to be the whole time.  I wouldn’t mind it loosening up a little bit though.

Why it’s this high:  It’s high time Steve Buscemi got to star in his own show, and the production is beauitful

Why it’s not this high:  Try as it might, it’s not quite Sopranos, and it’s a little bit wooden – it feels almost like someone tried to create a color-by-numbers show in the mold of Sopranos

Best episode of most recent season:  I don’t remember a clear standout but “Hold Me In Paradise” because I’m a sucker for history and this is probably the strangest and most thorough crossover into historical fiction – parts of it take place at the Republican National Convention, particularly talking about the redoubtable Warren G. Harding, and Arnold Rothstein deals with fallout of the Black Sox scandal.

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Ranking the Shows I Watch – 21: White Collar

20 Sep

USA is showing up all over this list, but I believe this is its last appearance.  White Collar is a USA-style show about a federal agent and his partner, an ex-con who is helping out the FBI as part of a crazy special deal to suspend his sentence.  Basically, Neal Cafferty, a top class white collar criminal, master of cons, burglaries, forgeries and art theft among others, was a fugitive who top class FBI white collar agent Peter Burke chased after for years, before the show’s beginning.  Burke was the Tommy Lee Jones to Cafferty’s Harrison Ford.  Eventually, Burke gets his man, and due to a number of circumstances not worth explaining here, a unique Mod Squad like bargain is struck in which Cafferty will work for the FBI with an anklet around his, well, ankle, letting the feds know his location in case he leaves a set radius outside of the FBI office.  The two team up to solve all sorts of while collar crimes using Caffery’s knowledge and con-artist skills and Burke hard-nosed disciplined attitude, along with the help of Neil’s best friend, the eccentric Mozzie, who seems to be a bit of an expert on everything.

I love a good grift show. (who doesn’t?)  I’ve watched a good deal of Leverage, and a couple of Breakout Kings, but just short of the amount I’ve required to give either a spot on this list.  That said, White Collar is light and fluffy for a show about federal agents, but it’s a little bit more serious than some of USA’s shows, like Royals Pains or Psych, and it’s very well executed considering its set USA network limitations.  Individual episode plots are just about always nicely wrapped up in neat little packages, with, in USA fashion, little bits of continuing storyline slowly advanced throughout a season.

I couldn’t finish this article without noting one of the scene tropes I most enjoy in White Collar.  Occasionally, Neil and partner-in-crime (quite literally) Mozzie need to employ a grift for whatever end.  They talk about it, and rattle off a bunch or ridiculous names of grifts, such as the “Cannonball” or the “Lazy Susan,” which apparently any grifter worth his salt knows by name, and then one or the other will explain why that’s not suitable with a small snippet like , “too crowded,” or “don’t have a dog.”, before one of them will pick one and explain why it just might work.  It’s an exceptionally silly segment if you step back from it but also quite enjoyable in the moment.

Why It’s This High:  It’s probably the best USA show – it’s enjoyable every week, fun to watch, the chemistry between the two main characters is great, and as I said above, I love a good grift.

Why it’s not higher:  Some of the same factors that make USA shows have a floor of enjoyability, also give them a low ceiling – they’re fun to watch, but don’t have the depth required for greatness

Best Episode of Most Recent Seasons:   We’ll go with “Burke’s Seven” – It contains a couple of the great grifting tropes – a team – rather than the usual two man cons run on the show, and a character, FBI employee Peter, having to prove himself innocent of a frame job, through con – figuring out how a criminal stole Peter’s fingerprints to put them inside a gun which shot Mozzie so our heroes can clear his name to Peter’s boss, the always wonderful James Rebhorne.

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Ranking the Shows I Watch – 22: Workaholics

15 Sep

Comedy Central runs through shows faster than well, choose your own analogy. Fast is the point.  If you’re not the Daily Show, Colbert Report or South Park, and you’re on Comedy Central, you probably won’t be next year.  I’ve tuned in here and there, but I try not to get too attached, because I know whatever show I’m watching won’t be around.  It’s usually not difficult because most of them are terrible or at least forgettably mediocre.  Dog Bites Man?  Remember that one?  Halfway Home, the prison-meets-real-world premise with Oscar from The Office.  Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire?  The only point of that show was that I had a new nickname for Frankie Rodriguez.  For this reason, it was hard to get too excited about Workaholics as the season progressed, marching towards its probable inevitable Comedy Central doom.  It was a sign though, that it wasn’t just me, when some executives there deemed Workaholics worthy of receiving the coveted second season.

I feel like this is true for about third of this list, but I started watching the show at least partially ironically.  Not ironically in the sense that I thought it would be horrible, more in a way that was several layers of anti-humor away ironically in that, upon the appearance of Workaholics commercials it was pretty much decided I was watching whether it ended up being good or not.  One such commercial featured a character asks one of the main characters, named Anders, if his name is Finnish, to which he replies, “No, sir – I’m just getting started.”  Not brilliant stuff, I know.  But it’s kind of funny.

Luckily, it actually ended up being pretty good, or at least there were funny parts in the first few episodes, enough so to keep me watching.  It’s not a sketch show, but it has some of a sketch show feel (think Michael and Michael Have Issues if you actually remember that Comedy Central show). There are three main characters and they work in a call center and do a bunch of stupid and/or ridiculous things in every episode.  Even better, as the season went forward, the episodes actually got significantly stronger – the consistency rate of laughs was higher.  The characters got themselves into sticky situations, such as ending up at a meeting of the Juggalos, and, to their advantage, unlike what happens in some sketch shows where the emphasis is on wacky plots and not characterization (as it should be, for the most part), the characters feel at least a little bit different.   You couldn’t simply switch their plots around in every episode.

Why it’s this high:  When it hits, it captures dumb funny as good as any show on TV – best moment perhaps – one character threatening a larger guy invading a party –  he says, “If we do this there’ll be two hits… me punching you in the face. and Kid Rock’s Bawitdaba playing in the background”

Why it’s not higher:  It’s tough on sketch-type shows – you get your hit and your occasional miss.

Best episode of most recent season:  “To Friend a Predator”  – just the premise alone is darkly funny and the episode delivers on it – the guys take it upon themselves to bait and take down a local child molester, only to find out he’s a really cool guy to hang out with.

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Ranking the Shows That I Watch – 23: The Killing

13 Sep

The Killing and Game of Thrones started around the same time, and Sundays became a day of excitement.  I started off liking them both the same, but that changed dramatically over time as Game of Thrones went up and up and The Killing went a little bit downward each episode.

The Killing is about a detective trying to solve the murder of a teenage girl in Washington.  For this short description, it drew instant comparisons to Twin Peaks, and though embarrassingly, I haven’t seen all that much of Twin Peaks, I think the differences don’t stop there, but they certainly slow.  There’s no absurdity or essential weirdness that is at the heart of most David Lynch works.  It’s played fairly real, and coupled with a plot about a mayoral candidate that may or may not be somehow involved in the murder, and a plot about the mourning parents and family that can be deeply difficult to watch at times, which is both a tribute to the writers and actors, and something that sometimes I don’t actually want to see.  The show’s city of Seattle provides a suitably dreary, ominous, and rainy mood, which fits the show like a glove (and not one of those ill-fitting one-size fits all gloves).

I must say I’m in a particularly sore mood, because, as I write this, I have most recently seen the third to last episode (though I’ll done with the first season by the time you read this) and it was truly one of the worst this-close-to-end-of-season episodes of a serial show I have ever seen.   Basically, the whole episode was devoted to the random disappearance of her son, who had never been an important part of the plot, and the other two, albeit less interesting over the course of the series, character sets – the grieving family of dead teen Rosie Larson and the mayoral campaign of high-minded candidate Darren Richmond weren’t even shown.  Instead of actually doing their jobs working on the murder case, the two main detectives search around town for her son. Um, there’s a teenage girl’s murder to be solved?  One in which the victim, maybe, didn’t do anything to cause it?  Oh, and POINTLESS SPOILER ALERT (I’m going to make an effort to use this again – spoilers that are so irrelevant that ruining them is not only pointless but makes your realize how stupid the spoilers were) – her son was with his dad the whole time (the first time I typed dad, I accidentally typed ‘dead” – coincidence?  Ominous)!  Oh, the same dad who has maybe been mentioned once offhand in passing in the entire fucking show.  Wow, that was ridiculous.

But yeah, that’s harsh.  The show has probably done more good things than bad, and I enjoy Billy Campbell as the candidate as well as the Swedish guy as the cop with an undecipherable American accent that comes from no real locale.

MEGASPOILER ALERT

I wrote most of this before the last episode of the show – but boy, after watching that finale, what the FUCK?  Holder’s evil?  So it’s the councilman, but it’s not, it’s a framejob by some mysterious person who we may or may not have ever met?  This show just changed entirely what type of show it is, and not for the better I think.  It was a slow, plodding, dark, dreary police investigation slowly leading to a hopefully tense and climactic solution.  What it is now is hard to say, but at the least, it’s no longer a police investigation – it’s a massive conspiracy that no longer allows us to even believe this could be something real.  It’s more into Rubicon territory. I’m not saying that this type of show has to be bad by any means, but I feel lied to and betrayed a bit.

MEGASPOILER OVER

Why it’s this high:  The show has a great feel, and when it’s at its best, the same deliberate pace, which I will decry in the next part, feels natural instead of slow

Why it’s not higher:  Sense of pacing is awful, the plot sort of got out of hand, and yeah, the last episode kind of changed entirely the type of show it is

Best episode of the most recent season:  “Pilot” – it might tell you something about a show when one picks the pilot as the best episode, and if it does say something, it says it here – everything was set up beautifully – a great beginning just to unravel slowly over the course of the season

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Ranking the Shows That I Watch – 24: Top Chef

8 Sep

I love Top Chef.  It’s the only weekly airing non-scripted show I watch (exceptions made here for Daily Show and Colbert Report) regularly (I’m a sucker for the occasional Pawn Stars and I love No Reservations but don’t watch it weekly) and that says a lot about how compelling it is.  It’s kind of like a sporting event, if sporting events were judged by people who usually are but don’t have to be experts (does Lorraine Bracco have that much expertise in food tastery?) and there was no way you could tell how the players did from home except for by what the judges said.  (Imagine a player hits a ball somewhere on baseball field that no one can see, and then umpire says it’s a double because he feels like that’s what it would be using his expertise and there’s no way can verify that but you just have to go with it).

Top Chef, though, like individual sports more than team sports, is all about a combination between personalities and winning.  Some of the best contestants are the most cocky, like Stefan in season 5, but he was able to back up his cockiness with wins.

Season 6 was indisputably my favorite season – it contained four chefs I pegged as the best from right from the beginning, I really really liked all four, and they all made it to the final, the season playing out exactly as it should.  There’s not much joy in Top Chef upsets generally, as it just means weaker contestants get lucky because of a fluky week.

There was something really gratifying when Richard Blais won Top Chef All Stars last season.  It was one of the moments that happen in sports all the time, when you can’t believe how strong you’re rooting for someone until the event actually happens and you’re excited and anxious and, for me, loud.  I would do weekly Top Chef Thursday morning quarter backing (can’t think of a proper equivalent for cooking quickly) with my friend and we would discuss both how we thought the results should have gone, as well as our continued praise for Richard.  It’s interesting to me because in Season 4, the first season of Top Chef I really watched as it was on and became engrossed in, I definitely didn’t feel the same way about Richard, and watching All Stars, I have absolutely no idea why.  Maybe it was because I have an unfair bias against the south; I must not have known he was originally from Long Island.  Either way it’s unforgivable in hindsight because Richard is by far the most similar to me of any contestant I can recall on Top Chef.  Most contestants are either really cocky, or really schmoozy, or really insecure, but Richard is none of these.  He expects to win every challenge, is severely disappointed if he doesn’t, but doesn’t maintain an attitude of arrogance around the other contestants, just a nervously chatty relatively honest analysis of how he feels.  He is harsh on himself when he disappoints, not always agreeing with the judges, but not always disagreeing with them either, which makes it seem more believable when he does disagree.  Immediately after he cooks, he thinks everything he makes is crap and he is petrifyingly nervous after every challenge until the results are given.  This guy is my hero.

Why It’s This High:  It combines the addictiveness and competitiveness of a sporting tournament with glorious food porn

Why It’s Not Higher:  I can’t have an unscripted show go higher – part of what I love about good TV is how intricately it’s crafted, and you can’t craft something like this, which means you get some flops – lack of script is for sports

Best episode of the most recent season:  “Restaurant Wars – One Night Only” – it feels weird to pick top episodes for a reality show, but did any Top Chef fan have any doubt that I’d pick restaurant wars, everyone’s favorite Top Chef challenge (it was either that or the finale), especially when Richard and Dale’s team put up one of the best restaurants ever seen in the show

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Ranking the Shows That I Watch – 25: Entourage

6 Sep

Here’s the funny thing about Entourage. It’s not the best show in the world; there aren’t a whole lot of levels, there isn’t much subtlety, and you’re not going to get layers of deeper meaning on every subsequent viewing (not that these are things you need to be a great show, just some possibilities).  However, I enjoy watching it more than I sometimes enjoy watching shows I think are better.  Now, I admit that sounds wrong at first, and if I always liked watching it more then, well, it probably is better.  Still, I always look forward to a new Entourage.  In today’s world of super awkward comedy and tension filled dramas, there’s room in my life for some popcorn, for a show that, even in the depressing and dark last season is still a total relative joy to watch.  Call it hanging out with the boys, if you will.

If Entourage truly had fallen off, and I think that’s mostly debatable, (I’d say it’s a lot more repetitive than it ever was bad) it had a bit of a boost last season, oddly due to its dark direction for Vince.  If you explained to me that things would go downhill, and not just career-wise but personally and with a drug addiction and all that, I probably would have thought that it would be a bad idea because it would involve taking from Entourage its essence, that it’s an escapist show about fun and good times.  I would have been completely incorrect though. Watching the downward spiral was not just good television, but it was surprisingly watchable for such a objectively depressing situation.  There were a couple of legitimately brutal scenes, including one where Vince hits on Minka Kelly and gets his ass kicked by a couple of NBA players at a party, but for the most part I still got a sense of enjoyment while also treading over ground Entourage hadn’t crossed before.

One note:  Entourage contains an example of a trap that television and movies often fall into when coming up with fictional content.  In the last season, formerly rogue drugged out director Billy Walsh conceives of a cartoon project for Johnny Drama, as a monkey who doesn’t fit in with the world.  In the world of Entourage, everyone absolutely loves this idea, and thinks it’s brilliant.  However, it seems terrible from the little bits that we see.  If you can’t make fictional content good, just never show it.  It’s not that hard.

Also worth saying:  Entourage may do the best job of celebrity cameos of any show around.  Obviously, it has more opportunity than most shows – why would celebrities be roaming around say, Scranton, Pennsylania, or Pawnee, Indiana? (though they manage to grab Detlef Schrempf twice which is super laudable)  Entourage takes advantage of this opportunity and does it well, having celebrities play outsized versions of themselves, or just invented absurd versions, proving to America that they don’t take themselves too seriously – such as Jeffery Tambor as an especially needy client of Ari’s, or John Stamos as so competitive that he can’t accept losing to Johnny Drama in ping pong.

Why it’s this high:  I really enjoy watching episodes of Entourage

Why it’s not higher:  I really do enjoy it, but I don’t crave it, pore over it endlessly, quote it (aside from “I am Queens Boulevard”) or laugh out loud watching it

Best episode from the most recent season:  How about “Bottoms Up” – Vince hooks up with Sasha Grey and begins becoming full-fledged down the vicious cycle that will be seventh season (man, this show has been on a long time) for him, resulting in awkward humor when he brings her to a meeting with Stan Lee.

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