Television Of The Weak: Your C4 Is Strong, But My Crack Fox Is Voracious

This week we've got 24, The Mighty Boosh, Lost, Survivor Tocantins & American Idol

24: "2:00AM - 3:00AM"

Not having a firm grip on biology is making the recent "Kim Bauer's innards can save Jack" subplot into the finest part of the season. If Jack just wanders around with a foot long piece of his daughter's lower intestine in his mouth, will that make him okay again? Would her optic nerve work? Does it have to be a reproductive organ? (Actually, if 24 had the crazy to go full Sopranos/Deadwood direction and make Jack Bauer into that one thing Fox will never allow, a true anti-hero of demonic proportions, the best solution would be one where they vivisect his grandkid--introduced this episode--because only Jack and his creepy scars can save the day. It's gross, but don't doubt for a second that Al Swearengen would've killed and eaten his way through an orphanage for a 4% discount on whiskey.)

Whatever trick is required to bring Jack back to fighting strength, it looks like it's time to take the plunge, as this episode ended with Keifer doing his worst imitation of Lamaze breathing in an attempt to deliver the message that's been pounded like a drum for the last few hours: Jack Bauer Is Dying, People, Oh Gosh Aren't You Tense And Upset. The deafening answer has been "No, of course not", but hey, the writers put themselves in this corner--good luck finding a plausible way out. Either way, Jack's "i'm so puffy and weird" shit doesn't get in the way of another Tony 2.0 show, wherein our new anti-hero reveals that he was working for the Forces of Evil all along, and all that jazzy razzy matazzy about America? Suck it. You killed Michelle Dessler, America: Almaeda is going to make you pay, and if that means setting up a bunch of stock FBI agents for a fiery doom, all the better. (It's actually a pretty good business decision, if you look at it from Tony's point of view: a horrible tragedy is what turned him into a gun-for-hire, so why not put as many government gun-toters in similar situations? Eventually somebody is going to ask for an interview.)

Of course, just like everybody else on this show eventually learns, and the one lesson that Tony 2.0 already knows: never try to float Jack Bauer down the same bullshit river that non-Bauer types happily dive into. Sick or no, Jack will always figure out your gameplan, no matter how much your scowl and mutter. Considering that the final four hours are only one episode away, expect next week to be when they figure out the whole "terminal incurable disease" thing. 

After that? It's time to start shooting your friends in the face.

The Mighty Boosh: "The Strange Tale of Crack Fox" by Sean Witzke

This week's episode Vince and Howard fight with a crack-addicted fox who lives in the mountain of trash bags in their back yard. This is the first episode where the US version hasn't had the animation sequence cut out. So yeah, meet Dante the Racist Badger, America. You didn't get Peacock Dreams, and you'll never get to hear the story of Rick Wakeman and The Funk, but you do get Dante the Racist Badger.

The Crack Fox is probably the most awful character that's ever appeared on television, and not in the cool "hateful bastard" category. No, I love those people. Actually, the Crack Fox is disgusting to look at, all covered in duct tape and with syringes for fingers. He speaks in a high, pointed voice and says cute, brain-damaged things. You know, like a crack addict. (The funny ones, not the Bubbles ones.) And then he pretty much says he's going to rape Vince. There's actually precedent of antagonists attempted to sex on Vince in this show, believe it or not, although it's normally by way of Rich Fulcher. But gutturally saying "I'm gonna put a dress on you and hurt you real bad" is a little more disturbing for some reason.

The magician's council puts Naboo to death after the Crack Fox steals his Shaman Juice, which gives them their powers. But for the entire scene they argue over who can handle their drugs the best, which is the best stuff of the episode. Tony Harrison the ball man is (literally Noel Feilding's head with a pair of balls and tentacles) always genius, yelling "When I go, I go large!" about doing poppers at Glastonbury. But Kirk's the best damn part. Whenever they show Kirk, it just gets funnier and funnier, especially when he's high. A small child getting far more high than a council of heavily-drug-abusing mystical weirdos, that shit is funny. "He's off his tits!"

Naboo going "I'm gonna have to turn my back on you" is here as well, clearly the character's finest hour. All in all it's actually hard to remember what they cut out this week, and that's a first. Mostly it's just the opening exposition scene with Fielding doing his best Tim Westwood. Hey, they didn't butcher this one! How screwed up is that? The most blatantly alienating episode is the one they leave alone. I don't care, it's still arrived on our shores relatively unscathed and that's a minor miracle. The next episode is the party, which is so windows-to-the-walls great they're going to have to cut something brilliant out of it. So in case they ruin it "TUSK, IN IT'S ENTIRETY, WITH THE PAUSES, LIKE LINDSAY BUCKINGHAM INTENDED!".

American Idol: "Top 7 2.0"

So, yo, check it out, baby: America still doesn’t like people of color. And it’s not so hot on women, either. Not much else could explain the elimination of Lil Rounds and Anoop Desai, and the bottom three placement of Allison Iraheta this week. Lil Rounds gave the weakest performance of the night, sure. Anoop gave an aiight performance, but one less awkward than Danny Gokey’s “September” or Matt Giraud’s “Stayin’ Alive”—both of which came off as whiiiiite ass versions of songs with a decent amount of the whiteness in them to begin with. Allison straight-up killed it with her rock monster version of “Hot Stuff,” and, again, none of the actual voters cared. Outside of the context of American Idol, Adam Lambert’s “If I Can’t Have You” and Kris Johnson/Smith/Whatever the hell his last name is’s “She Works Hard For the Money” (which, he took the time to explain before singing, “is about a woman”) were probably horrendous; in it, they were relatively satisfying. You can’t really win with Disco Week. Either the songs are going to sound kitschy and dated—because most of the hits that contestants would pick ARE kitschy and dated—or the singers are going to make their own arrangements of the songs in which they seek the deep meanings behind Donna Summer’s lyrics. I would like to see House Music Week, where contestants just repeat the same phrases over and over again, and then their eyes roll into the back of their heads, and someone has to drag them into the chill out room.

Survivor Tocantins: "The Biggest Fraud in the Game"

Remember a couple of weeks ago, when we were all like, “Survivor is awesome, but it’s a little too boring this season to write about”? Well, it looked like Survivor: Tocantins would continue to prove us right, as the next episode contained a tribal merge and a lot of strategy talk, but no tribal council and no one getting voted off—as one of the competitors, Joe, got Medevaced out of the competition with an infected injury on his knee. All season long, it seems like the producers and editors have had a ton of plot that sounds exciting—blindsides, colorful casting, cross-tribal alliances—but have had little to no idea of how to make it translate to actual exciting television. Now, it looks like the editors are interested in simply letting some of the bizarre characters and situations do most of the work for them, turning the show more into a character sketch than a game show. Momentarily, it’s working.

There’s an interesting phenomenon happening, where every single player in the game has fallen in love with JT, the cattle rancher from Alabama. One guy, Brendon, is so smitten with JT that he’s willing to lose the game in order to let JT win it. At one point, he confesses, “I stayed up all night. I sat in that shelter and did not sleep at all, just running through all the different scenarios about how do I get JT to the finals.” Either Brenden was a little maladjusted before showing up to compete on Survivor: Tocantins, or the twenty-some days in the jungle have seriously taken a toll on him. Fittingly, he’s voted off at the end of the episode—and, face it, when you start staying up all night trying to figure out how to get someone else to win, you should be—in favor of the tribe’s keeping the person that has emerged as the show’s star: Coach.

The editors have taken to just putting Coach on camera and letting him fly. He starts off the episode with a little advice: “No matter how bad it gets in your life, there’s always something that’s going to make it much worse.” Later, in the episodes best moment, the players are competing in teams of three in a reward challenge, the object of which is to hurl a rock at an opposing team’s colored tile in order to break it. The first team that breaks all of the opposing teams’ tiles wins. Brendan, explaining why his team does not have an advantage, says, “We’re throwing underhand, breaking tiles. None of us have ever done this in our lives.” Coach raises his hand and says, “I have.” But the thing that will probably go down as one of the best moments of Survivor: Tocantins is when the editors simply let Coach tell a long story at the top of the show. In the spirit of the episode, we’ll just print that story verbatim:

“I want you guys to know that there are three people in the world that know this story. I was airlifted in [to the Amazon]. I had a military helicopter drop, actually drop me off a couple of feet from the ground, up in the Peruvian border, where the Amazon supposedly starts, and it was real rapidy. I had an eighteen foot kayak. I was paddling early one morning, and I just felt like, ‘I’m being watched.’ I look over and I think I see some indigenous people that are sitting there creeping through the bush. At first I counted six or seven of them. They’re probably four, four and a half feet tall, and they’ve got their arrows… they’ve got their bow and arrows drawn. They jerk me out of the kayak, they tie me up, they tie my hands behind my back, they tie my feet, they drag me into this hut, they tie me to this stake, and they take turns beating me with a club. I don’t know how long it lasted. Sometimes I blacked out. Sometimes I just went to a faraway place. I knew they were about ready to kill me. I finally wore through that rope and I slipped out the back. I got in the kayak and I dipped it in the water, and I paddled like hell. And I paddled so hard that my hands started bleeding. I just can’t describe the feeling of being stalked by another human being.”

Lost: "Some Like It Hoth" by Zeb L. West

“Do you know what lies in the shadow of the statue?” This is the second time this cryptic spy-check question has gone unanswered, and the Lost community is a abuzz with speculation. Here at TFO headquarters, the Fax machine has been cranking out page after page of conspiracy theories from rabid fans who insist that “the well” (home of the icy crank) is the answer, because the statue’s back is visible when the Dharma bums briefly visit the ancient past. At this point it’s tough to speculate, but I’m open to kickass guesses in the comments section!

This week’s episode focused on the heretofore elusive Miles, and the Producers have once again called upon the Creepy Kid Talent Agency, INC to provide another nightmare-inducing child actor to play the young ghost whisperer. In case your sleepless nights haven’t already been plagued by images of young Aaron or Ben, we now have the tortured adolescent Miles, who in his teens turns to lip piercings and grunge to stave off the burdens of being a reluctant Medium. More straight-man/funny-man hijinks ensues between Miles and Hurley, but the biggest laughs came when uptight Dr. Chang joins the scene, un-ironically professing his love of Country music. I found it a bit rote that Miles is the all-too-familiar psychic who chooses to be a con man, but I’m holding out for an interesting WHY. With Lost’s recent turn toward filling in gaps, it’s easy to get distracted by additional back-story, but the real trick will be in learning WHY all these things tie together.

I would be remiss in my duties if I did not snark a little on the lame revelation that Hurley’s secret journaling has really been an attempt to re-write The Empire Strikes Back. In some bizarre attempt to both glad-hand and totally insult the loyal hordes of geeks who love Lost, the writers decided Hurley should misremember the famous “I am your father” scene from Empire, which he drums up to convince Miles to reconcile with Dr. Chang. Hurley compares Miles’ reaction to Luke’s, who “found out Vader was his father…overreacted, and got his hand cut off.” If the writers are going to claim Hurley has seen Empire “like 200 times” then they should at least have him remember those events in the right order.

 

I only point this out because it pains me to see my man Hurley, who is usually a reliable pop-culturist, look like a n00b. And because they were so proud of their cute little Star Wars references that they titled the episode “Some Like it Hoth.” (If there’s a connection to Marilyn Monroe or supergroup Power Station’s 80s hit somewhere in there that makes this title clever, I didn’t catch it.)

We round out the episode by finally learning the whereabouts of Daniel Faraday, who we last saw babbling incoherently as he lamented the death of his last-minute love Charlotte. As it turns out, the physicist has been breaking one of the main ‘rules’ of the island - by leaving! Granted, these rules may only apply to the hostiles, who build strange Egyptian-esque temples, have a good rapport with the black smoke, drink tea with Jacob and probably know the lay of the statue’s shadow like the back of their collective hands. But still, the fact remains that a perfectly sane Farady has been gallivanting in the 70s doing lord-knows-what!

My guess: He was out in Hollywood, coaching a young George Lucas in the delicate art of crafting a space opera.

-Sean Witzke, Martin Brown & Tucker Stone, 2009

Comments

[Matthew J. Brady]

I don't watch survivor, so I know nothing about this Coach fellow, but his story sounds pretty unbelievable. Is there a chance that it's true, or is he a bullshit artist like it seems? Because it sounds totally made up, at least from reading the transcript. Eh, screw it; I'll just keep an image in my head of an annoying guy spouting ridiculous stories about idiotic adventures.

[Sean Witzke]

Hey Matthew, was Dollhouse canceled this week? Or is fox just moving it around now that they know it's not coming back?

[Marty]

Not only did the producers and everyone that was there know he was full of shit, but they just let him go, and aired it practically uncut. Coach is totally an annoying guy, but he's easily the best thing this season has going for it.

[seth hurley]

I hope Voight pulls through, only so he can purse those wet, wet, Midnight Cowboy lips together when Jack's dad shows up as the Master-mastermind.

You know he will, now that there is another Bauer grandchild in the mix. Kim named the kid Teri? In honor of her mom that was pregnant when she was killed by her father's traitor mistress, spending the last 12 hours of her life suffering amnesia while looking for her spoiled runaway daughter?

those will be some awkward Thanksgiving dinners.

[Tucker Stone]

Hey Sean, they just didn't show new Dollhouse this week, that's all.

Oh god, I don't think I could handle more James Cromwell. I wish they'd recast Jack's dad to be James Garner. That would be fun.

[Mr. Rendon]

Maybe Hurley has the order wrong because that was the version he saw and the ending we know is the one in the journal he is writing. This would be an awesome idea if they didn't already state that the past cannot be changed. Maybe he gets Desmond, who is immune to the plot-rule, to do it.

[Matthew J. Brady]

What Tucker said. I thought about writing about Fringe, but that show isn't inspiring much from me lately beyond barely being able to stay awake.

[Squidhelmet]

@Mr. Rendon - That's an incredibly clever counter-theory and if you hadn't poked a hole in it yourself, I probably could have been convinced! :)

And if Faraday's new attitude is any indication, even that rule might be reversed!