Wax Lion

I hope this is the right place to mention it but I just noticed this year PBS' Christmas special with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir has Santino Fontana and the Muppets of Sesame Street at the guest performers. It's scheduled for next Monday, which should help fill that CXG void (if only just the Santino parts). In the short term, I think the awards helps with Netflix. Shows with critical buzz tend to be more streaming friendly, at least until critics feel the need to turn every episode into an article, because all that buzz turns them into shows people mean to check out... but don't get around to until they've passed the show on Netflix a dozen times.

Last night was a reminder that while I want to like the idea of a filmmaker like Spike Lee, he's frequently unbearable. Using a constantly-raised voice like Hayes were personally attacking him instead of giving him a chance to discuss and respond to critics was one thing but things like "Why would Jennifer Hudson do this?" (I don't know maybe people are complex and have different reactions to things?) were really cheap counter arguments.

I like the more traditional musical numbers but I'm more partial to the pop parodies, maybe because they often deal with the themes I like best on CXG. "The Sexy Getting Ready Song" won me over, especially when it lead to that coda and I think "Sex with a Stranger" was the first time I saw a network show make jokes about worrying you hooked up with a murderer. However, my absoloute favorite is "Face Your Fears" for its wrongness combined with the perfect imitation of an inspirational ballad. Plus the backup choir gets some great lines, "Literally touch a star/Stars aren't that hot" Then again, The Bad Idea Bears gave me the biggest laughs when I saw Avenue Q and that's the song where we learned Donna is Rachel's personal Bad Idea Bear.

That piece on fascism really was great, it was basic without every being patronizing, the kind of thing Rachel does really well.

I had an ex-roommate tell me about how his parents were puzzled by his interest in watching Good Times as a kid, telling him "But you're not black, you don't have any black friends." (Oddly I, too, had to fight with my parents to watch Good Times though I have no idea why since they let me watch the Jeffersons.) Back in the days of Kyle XY, the head of ABC Family talked about how the network (which had just introduced its new motto "A different kind of family") was deliberately pursuing diversity because their target audience grew up with diversity and expected that on their TV. That included PoC characters but also reflecting non-traditional families. The network got increasingly diverse from there and it was quickly beating the CW in the ratings, back when the CW was mostly shows like 90210 and Gossip GIrl. (For a network aimed at young audiences, the CW was always oddly slow to keep up with change. I suspect that the CBS co-ownership.)

It looks like Hulu is going to switch back to featuring the first five episodes. At least, the front page is promoting it, even though the show's page currently has the five most recent episodes. (Sometimes, Hulu's front page is ahead of the rest of the site.) I think it might be available only to Hulu subscribers until next week but here's a chance to try to get your friends to check it out.

With some of the recent controversies about PoC characters being played by white actors (like Emma Stone in Aloha) I'm surprised no one has tried casting someone like Troian Bellasario or Wentworth Miller, a biracial actor who mostly gets cast as white characters. Seems like a simple solution but I guess the directors involved are still too clueless to see the issue, or (probably) to be aware that these actors have a background more complicated than white. This seems a good point to note that Agents of SHIELD did a good job with Chloe Bennett's background.

That interview was amazing. It's a wonder anyone would take the NH Manchester Union Leader seriously with a fact-divorced editor like that. ETA: And an extra set of rolled eyes for using the phrase "crazy ex-girlfriend" in the old, misogynistic way and not ironic or to set up a reference to a Crazy Ex-Girlfriend song.

That Married... with Children status seems off, from what I recall. I thought Sony said that they received a treatment from Faustino but haven't made any further steps with it. It sounds like Faustino is pushing the project (and he has some support from his former cast mates) and Sony isn't sure about this one... which is odd because among all the remakes out there a MWC sequel makes more sense than most.

The next time I'm trying to remember why I tend to give McKay Coppins side-eye, I hope I'll eventually remember how he tried to say Carly Fiorina's insistence that the imaginary anti-Planned Parenthood video in her head really existed was nothing like Donald Trump insisting that something he imagined is also real.

The thing about Fox is they've usually tried to brand themselves as edgy. There are a few years worth ignoring, like the time their new shows were all procedurals (with memorable names like Justice and Standoff) but there's a reason why Fox has so many shows people remember loving and then being frustrated when they were cancelled, they were memorable. Even if Fox mistreated it, I can't imagine Firefly at any other broadcast network (and, at the time, cable couldn't have afforded it). Keeping The X-Files on the air was a huge gamble at the time. Ratings were terrible for it and Brisco County but critics loved both shows. In the end Fox decided to gamble on Scully and Mulder, which really paid of... but it was a gamble at the time. Fox gave Arrested Development three seasons at a time when critics were throwing their hands up in the air about trying to get people to watch a single-cam comedy. In this day, I say they should own it. Do Wonderfalls, Action and Profit reunion shows and play up how they aired those shows even at the risk of audiences rejecting them (as many predicted and audiences did). Better to be the network of The Wedding Belles than the network whose moment of "edgy" was Central Park West.

I'm basically dropping The Good Wife. I watch most of the TV I watch online on Hulu and sometimes forget to visit my cable company's website for it. Before CBS All Access debuted, there would have been most of the current season's episodes available but now they've only got a few weeks, and they next episode I need to see is no longer available. Gives me time for all the other shows I'm trying to get caught up watching. Don't make it hard to keep up with a show.

If so, it's a reflection of the popularity of diverse TV shows since the four shows shown, Empire was a massive ratings hit last year, Quantico has turned out to be the fall's biggest hit, Scream Queens hasn't done great but it came from the creator of two huge hits and The Mindy Project is Hulu's most high-profile original series.

I couldn't tell from the article, which was so short, but it sounded like it might be a series of specials? That might work as a way of modern performers paying homage to their forebears without being opportunistic. Are You Being Served would be incredibly tough to reboot. In general it's a terrible show. When it works it's entirely on the cast and their amazing chemistry. It's like The Nanny, I always found that show terribly predictable but I laughed at every punchline, even though I could see it coming. Ah-ha. According to this article, BBC1 is doing a "Landmark Comedy" series to mark the 60th anniversary of the Britcom. The article is specifically about a special reviving Porridge but the rest of it sounds like it'll fit the "Landmark Comedy" series. The Porridge episode will be a continuation and that doesn't sound too far from what Britcoms often do. Popular shows will sometimes do reunion sketches for Children in Need that work as a short revival, so that kind of thing has more of a history there. I'm guessing it'll be a mix of reboots and revivals. Sadly, Are You Being Served will have to be a reboot or a very sad continuation since the major cast members are dead.

I wanted to see if anyone in this thread has been watching Crazy Ex-Girlfriend which has been amazing. First let's talk about the title and the terrible marketing, which looks like the show is build on a "Bitches be crazy" trope. It's giving me a bad flashback to how all those ads with Maggie Q in something skimpy prompted a lot of people who would have loved Nikita to initially skip it. (Oh, CW, do you have a clue to how to market a show?) There are a few missteps but it's not close to being a misogynistic show. Brilliantly, the first episode included a musical number about the double standards in what we expect out of men and women to keep up their appearances. It gets the message across while being entertaining. Unfortunately, that doesn't include the coda to the episode where Nipsey Hussle goes through his "bitches to apologize to" list. In the second episode, it introduces Valencia, the girlfriend of the guy the lead character uproots her life over. For a single episode, she gets a surprising amount of development. She starts out like a stereotype of the superficial California airhead (except nonwhite) but the show treats her like there's someone worth knowing if you take the time, including a moment when Rebecca tries to get Valencia to realize she was molested by a teacher. (And that scene really managed to be funny even with the dark topic.) Overall, the show is pretty sympathetic to its "crazy ex-girlfriend" character, even while seeing her as someone who has major mental health problems (though everyone is turning out to be their own kind of crazy). It reminds me a bit of Girls, except the terrible behavior doesn't make me hate them all.

I was just coming to bring up Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. That was an amazing excerpt from Rachel Bloom. Earlier she commented on how she wanted her show set in West Covina, it was important to her to, at the least, cast extras with the diversity of the city in mind (and the number of PoC supporting characters is impressive). It's also worth mentioning that, a year after Selfie was cancelled, it's only the second show with an API actor cast as a romantic lead (or co-lead considering that he's in a central love quadrangle?) That's a great point about "dog whistles," a lot of the jokes involving the API characters ring true to someone who grew up in Hawaii, another place with a large API population, I'm thrilled to learn she hired a Filipino writer to have that voice. I guess that explains how this week's episode had a scene about Rebecca going to an Asian grocery story that had just the right tone. Sometimes jokes about a white liberal exoticfying the PoC in her life feels like the writers are having their cake and eating it too, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend got it right.

Tom Brokaw does these weird radio ads where he comments on current events and he constantly sounds like he's looking for a cloud to yell at. They're freaking awful. He just did one on the CNBC debate that was basicalyl a lecture on how the kids in journalism these days suck at being neutral. He's awful.

Was it David Brock? He seriously comes off pretty slimey himself, one of Clinton's slipperiest of supporters, imho. Yeah, if it was Brock, he's a Clinton supporter who really needs to be tightly interviewed. I liked Brock's "Blinded By the Right" but when he's not breaking down right wing lies, I think the Brock who wrote that horrible Anita Hill "expose" comes out. Sadly, it's made me think a little less of Brock, who I used to really like.

It joins Minority Report and Blood and Oil. Creatively, none of these are disappointments. IIRC, Jane the Virgin had terrible ratings but it had critical acclaim so I suspect these are shows that CW really hopes Netflix will pay for. The buzz over Crazy Ex-Girlfriend seems to be starting up. I'm not sure what's worse these days, start small and hope to build and audience or to start huge and hope the week-to-week drops aren't so big.

That was an especially apt question to come from Rachel, who had that memorable rant about Mark Penn where she said that evil had Penn's PR firm on speed dial back in 2009.

Maddow has a history of enjoying disruptors. She likes it when an outsider throws an establishment into chaos. She didn't give Obama that kind of coverage but she was definitely entertained by Ron Paul's campaigns. Similarly, she was definitely entertained by the scramble by the Iowa GOP trying to make Romney the winner and not being able to cover up that he wasn't. Sadly, by the time I watched it there indeed was another shooting. In this current environment, counting the number of times Stewart dinged Republicans and Democrats to determine "bias" is as sensible as counting the number of positive mentions Superman gets vs The Parasite as proof of The Daily Planet's bias.

Phil and Luke Dunphy are different from Ray Barone in that Ray got flandarized while Modern Family has explored these characters further. As the show progressed, the POV is more that they have an unusual approach to the world and sometimes that's what you need. It's kinda like Hayley who started as a superficial dim bulb but they show has shown her thriving in her world. Angel's death wasn't all about her feelings, it was the conclusion to an arc about Angel who was a pretty complicated character at that point. You might argue some of Buffy's other boyfriends were fridged (ones that lasted an episode or two) but Angel is not a fridged character. Plus since he came back pretty quickly he'd fall in the Dead Men Defrosting list. I liked Riley. I thought he could have a Wonder Woman/Steve Trevor dynamic, she may be strong but he's got (pseudo, in Riley's case) military resources and tactics that should have complimented her slayer powers. But I always thought that was the real problem with the relationship. I don't know if the writers are to blame or if it started with the audience but we've gone backwards on the idea of accepting a romance where the man is physically weaker. By now, we're several decades into the idea that the Wonder Woman/Steve Trevor relationship "just doesn't make sense" and shipping her with Superman. It's ridiculous that we still think a man in a relationship with a much stronger woman is emasculated as if physical strength is all he can bring to an opposite-sex relationship.

Well, The CW has grabbed the rights to those books. If they really wanted to be daring they'd say they're making a Cruel Intentions 2 follow-up, since Cruel Intentions 2 was three episodes of a Cruel Intentions TV series that Fox ordered and cancelled before putting on the air. Fox used to have an annual tradition of cancelling one of its new fall shows in the summer... and never airing others, like the Jensen Ackles/Morena Baccarin family drama Still Life. Actually, in these days, I'm surprised I haven't seen Still Life pop up on Hulu or Netflix. It sounded good (though it was mostly discussed by people who wanted Fox to air it) even though it was a Marti Noxon drama with a depressing premise, a full season was made and enough cast members have gone on to bigger things that it's probably somewhat marketable. Then again, even with a dedicated cult following I can't find Wonderfalls anywhere online. So maybe Fox has an ego thing where it limits how many people will discover the series they dumped quickly.

Sheesh, still was in full alternative reality mode in that interview and, even better, getting indignant that people weren't acknowledging his assertion that 2+2=22. Best part: when he yelled about liberals never blaming Bush for 9/11 until now. Dude, do you know anything about Sam Seder's career? I'm sure there's a basic summary of his radio career that mentions how he did ask if the Bush administration was negligent many times. Heck, asking if Bush was negligent was such a common thing that it appeared in Al Franken's book, the guy who spent time establishing that he's a centrist and not one of those crazy lefties until he realized that it was the crazy lefties who were based in reality.

My big hatewatch was the third season of The Big C. I was convinced to finally give the first two seasons a chance and loved it... and then the third season was a mess where the characters all became self-involved, entitled twits. I read that they wanted to go through the stages of grief with the series and that must have been the denial season. I couldn't look away from how such a remarkable, nuanced show could become so terrible so quickly.