This Week we've got Leverage, Entourage, Hung, The Mighty Boosh, True Blood and The Prisoner
Leverage - "The Tap Out Job" by David Brothers
There's a bit late in this episode where one character breathlessly tells another that he has "taken the safety off the gun!" The soundtrack swells, and almost sounds like a tiger growling, right before there is a very clear homage to the Hulk TV show. It was this bit when I decided that, after a solid, but unimpressive, pilot episode, Leverage is back.
This episode has all of the good bits. There's some goofy fun between the cast, a villain that's likeable without being cartoonish, a good swerve, and the Scooby Doo explanation at the end. It's all about MMA this time, which is fine. I'll spend hours on youtube looking at people getting knocked out. It's better when it's free. The villain this time is a sleazy promoter who isn't afraid to drug fighters before they get into the ring just to secure a win and a fat bonus from gambling. The team's hired, they go in, and they make the magic happen.
Part of the fun of Leverage is the seemingly impossible things they get down to doing. Hardison brags about being able to hack the NSA and uses a golfball that he controls with an '80s-era RC car joystick. Nate fast-talks his way into two thousand dollars. Sophie does the slightly naive, slightly immoral businesswoman she's done several times, and Parker is sadly underutilized.
It's the same formula as usual, but it works for a reason. The cast still has great chemistry and the heists are the perfect blend of melodrama and strikingly harmless crime.
Entourage – “One Car, Two Car, Red Car, Blue Car” by Martin Brown
Everybody hates Entourage these days—possibly because there’s, like, a recession, and Entourage is filthy, sexy, celebrity wealth-porn; escapist fantasy, right down to its very fiber, where at its most basic, it’s about a group of dudes who genuinely care about each other. Getting mad at a season of Entourage for lacking dramatic stakes is like getting mad at Three’s Company for running an episode where Jack misinterprets something he hears while hiding in Janet’s bedroom—it’s a show that’s only doing exactly what it was built to do. To that effect, Entourage doesn’t take place in Hollywood; it takes place in your idea of Hollywood, where every luxury is affordable, ladies are available and uncomplicated, and friends will drop everything to help one another. For example, in “One Car, Two Car, Red Car, Blue Car,” on his thirtieth birthday, Turtle gets harangued by his mother for appearing in People Magazine next to Jamie-Lynn Sigler, his girlfriend, wearing a tuxedo and patent leather tennis shoes; he receives a quarter-million dollar blue Ferrari as a gift from Vince, and another one from Jamie-Lynn; and he decides to go to business school. Of all of those things, only the last one is even vaguely realistic, because, in real life, a character like Turtle would actually be silly enough to believe that UCLA extension classes could teach him how to run a business.
However, if Entourage is predicated on giving you exactly what you’d expect from a show about four Queens-born kids trying to make it in the (other) big city, it also breaks that rule in one significant way. Part of the secret genius of Entourage is that Vince, the vacuous movie star at the center of the show, doesn’t get the hottest girls. Eric, his diminutive, awkward manager, does. This is partly because, Vince’s love interests are only day-players on the Entourage set, equally vapid models given a line or two in exchange for partial nudity. Eric’s love interests usually have multiple-episode arcs, and sometimes even dimension. Vince gets Eastern European extras, while E has Ewok-like Alexis Dziena making him coffee on his French press. The side-effect being that Eric plays the role of the audience’s surrogate. Last summer, I had a conversation with three friends about what characters we would be on Entourage (yes, this is exactly what girls do with Sex and the City, but bear with me), and every single one of us imagined himself as Eric (also, for the record, the conversation only lasted about four minutes.) Dudes don’t see themselves as the movie star, they see themselves as the everyman. If the everyman then pulls the hottest girls, as E unfailingly does, so can us all.
Hung – “The Pickle Jar” by Martin Brown
A well-told story can usually overcome even the gimmicky-est of premises. Four episodes into its first season, HBO’s Hung could still go either way. On the positive side, the show has managed to craft three dimensional characters out of its dual protagonists, Thomas Jane’s well-endowed wannabe man whore, Ray Drecker, and Jane Adams’ pimp, Tanya. “The Pickle Jar” opens with a high-school ceremony presenting Drecker, the school’s basketball coach, with a pickle jar full of dollar bills—they held a car wash to raise money to rebuild the house he lost in a fire. As the students talk through a photo slideshow, Jane ranges from apathy to self-aggrandizement (“They left out the best parts”) to almost seeming sincerely touched. That same ambiguity carries over into his habits as a ho. The writers are taking their time launching Drecker into the world of prostitution—it’s episode four, and he finally has his first real client—as well as with the meek and flighty Tanya finding her confidence as she steps up her pimp game. I look forward to the inevitable moment when she becomes violent.
On the other hand, Hung is also spinning its wheels trying to develop character subplots with its mostly uninteresting and sometimes tenuously connected supporting characters. Floyd, the teacher of a self-help business class Ray and Tanya connected through, meets Ray while jogging, and cautions him against working with Tanya, who he took out to dinner in the last episode. Ray’s twin children have some negligible drama. His son is a weepy goth. His daughter just got dumped. Drecker’s first trick, a bitchy scam artist Tanya knew from temping, shows up in a beauty salon sitting next to Ray’s ex-wife, Jessica. Played by Anne Heche, she is the most uninteresting and most tenuously connected of the supporting characters, a crudely drawn sketch of a Botox-shooting, New York-weekending housewife. Jessica’s arc mostly involves her trying to win the love of her children at present, but it’s her presence that points toward one of the series’ inevitable climaxes—when she discovers Ray’s new profession. But given time, and HBO’s track record, Hung could flesh out each of these characters into something compelling. If they do, Hung stands a chance of transcending its pat set-up.
The Mighty Boosh - "Fountain of Youth"/ Late Night w/ Jimmy Fallon 07-23-09 by Sean Witzke
Noel Fielding - "We still make love occasionally."
Julian Barrat - "Yeah, we surprise each other."
Noel Fielding - "I think it's called rape."
The Boosh were on Jimmy Fallon this week, part of their bi-coastal assault on the US which involved a free myspace show at the Bowery Ballroom in NY and an Adult Swim-sponsored trip to Comicon. Any 4th Wave British Invasion theories I have been nursing are dead, killed by their appearance on Jimmy Fallon's show. Remember Jimmy Fallon? He was the jackass who laughed during everyone's sketches on SNL except Tracy Morgan's, because Tracy Morgan threatened to kick his teeth in if he did. Jimmy's got Conan's old time slot, the Roots are his house band, and Morgan Murphy's on his writing staff, and yet? He's still Jimmy Fallon. Fuck him. But the Boosh were on, so I watched it, because Tucker will kick my teeth in if I don't give 110% on these columns. It was kind of brilliant at how much faster they are than Fallon, and how he really couldn't catch up. He even tried to crimp, and, as you would expect him to do, failed miserably. Jimmy played a clip of the show from a region 2 dvd and it didn't fit on the screen. Everybody looked kind of uncomfortable, to be honest. They were still on--they're the fucking Boosh, no questioning that--and I think at this point they've got the skill set to be funny in just about any context, but Fallon's weird sycophantic giggling just made it seem sad. This was their first US TV appearance. Their second was last night's episode of Chelsea Handler.
I hate you for ruining this, America. I hate you so fucking much.
So yeah the episode. This is S204, where we get to see Naboo's home planet. The plot of this episode is simple - In 1974 Naboo is entrusted with a dangerous mystical artifact and forced to flee to earth, where he's spent the intervening time djing and selling drugs. Vince tells Howard his problem is that he doesn't know how to accessorize. Howard is lamenting how old he looks (even though, it's repeatedly said that Vince is the same age), and Bollo lets it slip that the artifact is the key to the Fountain of Youth. Vince's bit about accessorizing actually gives him a theme for the episode, because it saves him more than once. They go through all his shit (which includes "Zombie Sick"), get teleported to Xooberon where they wander around in circles. (Actual circles, because Howard has one leg shorter than the other.) Then they get captured by a blue midget (played by Rich goddamn Fulcher of course) and his tribe of musical blue dudes. Howard and Vince make fun of the short guy's combover, Howard gets beat with a club and Vince is marked as the chosen one, because he's got the amulet. Of course, the amulet doesn't work anymore because the AAs are dead. Vince goes mad with power for about ten minutes, uses that time to treat Howard like crap. Vince then has to use the power of Being Reasonable to fight a sandstorm. It's actually a monster made out of sandpaper, who he defeats by calling a bumbaclot and then giving him his gloves. (Not sure if it's the same "bumbaclot" term that David Chappelle used for his psychic hotline sketch.) Oh, and the gloves are put to use immediately: for vigorous masturbation. An entire episode of vigorous masturbation. Try and cut around that, you fucking Adult Swim pansies! A woman (the only one in the episode) with a german accent convinces Howard to steal Vince's amulet, which she then grabs and then morphs into the Hitcher - who wants to use it to get young again, screw a bunch of ladies and make an army of green guys who do his bidding. Howard and Vince wake up buried up to their necks in sand. Vince is wearing Edgar Winter brand sunscreen, so he doesn't even burn. (They test it on goths and albinos!) Howard's face looks like a burnt plate of duckskin. Naboo and Bollo dig them up, they go find the Fountain of Youth in the woods. It's been converted into a modern bathroom with checkered tile flooring, which I believe is a reference to the Treasure of Sierra Madre. The Hitcher raises an evil tree, which the jerk-happy sandpaper dude saves them from. They kill the Hitcher by flushing the toilet, melting his green ass mid-shower ("I'm a cockney flower, watch me shower"). The crew goes home, Howard and Vince drink the "yoof juice" and turn into babies with facial hair.
It's like an issue of Jim Starlin's Warlock, right? Kinda is! I don't know if the Boosh were taking fistfuls of pills and cranking Hunky Dory while writing this episode. I don't see any evidence that they haven't (Lesser men would have compared it to Douglas Adams. Too easy, I say!)
Music - I LOVE THE CHOSEN ONE! I love him with my heart! I love him with my body parts!
Speaking of deadeyed sycophants like Jimmy Fallon, Fulcher is on fire in this episode as Allan, the tribe leader. He goes into this new realm of felching toadyism that maybe even tops David Spade in Coneheads - actually Coneheads is an apt comparison because Allan is right out of Brendan McCarthy doodles. He's blue, he's horny, he has a two-foot forehead, and he sings off-key. McCarthy would be proud. Him cutting his hand off and giving it to Vince as a gift? That shouldn't be as funny as it is - oh wait, they cut out the bit where he hands him a severed hand in a box. Because they hate joy.
Cut - They didn't cut the cold open! First time ever. Holy shitsauce. It's a little edited down, but it happens. They also cut the King saying "shit." even though it's 1 in the morning and standards and practices have proved not to give a fuck. The first Howard and Vince scene is chopped down as heavily as anything they've put up this season. - they left in the "This is a good look!" "Yeah, for Magnum P.I.!" exchange at least. Howard's Lament is still here in its full 30 seconds. Howard berating Allan the blue midget. The Hitcher and his cockney assistants haggling over how his computer works and what they should have with tea. Vince regaling his tribe with haircare tips. Allan crossing the hero worship of Vince into creepy sexual territory midsentence (he just suddenly jumps into "ooh my lovely lady lumps" which still works). Saying shit is not okay, but beating off is completely okay to leave in? I guess that's what we fought the War for. One of the two Moon clips is gone, though it was the more funny one between the two. An entire exchange between Vince and a blue tribesman who kills himself for disappointing the chosen one, is cut out. So the funniest joke, where the "I LOVE THE CHOSEN ONE" song comes back and the harikari'd tribesman busts out "not as much as me" with his dying breath. Howard and Vince crimping about soup before they die. Bollo not recognizing and then insulting a sun-damaged Howard (Howard and Bollo hate each other, and it's never resolved in any episode. There's really no other sitcom I can think of that does that). The King and Vince exchanging haircare tips.
The dialog is butchered up - nearly every scenes got a line or two cut, it might be the worst hatchet job on a Boosh ep yet. Of course it's airing on the week where they have the highest profile they might ever have. God fucking damn it.
True Blood - "Hard-Hearted Hannah" by Nina Stone
Finally! We're no longer treading whatever. This was one of those episodes that made me wish I was already watching the whole season on DVD, because that way I could have just gone right onto the next episode, and that's exactly what I want to do. I want more!!
I was sure that Sookie's infiltration of the church was going to get stretched out over the course of several episodes, and that we were going to have to endure a Three's Company-like clownish scenario when Sookie meets her brother there. But no! Big surprises! I'm still trying to figure out if Mr. Minister is telepathic or if he just knew who Sookie was. But who saw all that coming? Don't know what I'm talking about? Too bad! I'm not gonna tell you - you'll have to catch up!
Also on the "Finally" front: Daphne shows her true colors. I'm wondering if she's about to vaporize into Maryanne. Like Maryanne vibrated her into creation just to lure and hurt Sam. And oh! How about Tara's guy sort of getting his memory (that we didn't know he'd lost) back? Coming to find that spot where he'd felt he'd been before--a spot where some sort of sacrifice had clearly occurred? Later on, we see the very same scenario taking place via Maryanne in Sookie's backyard (Sookie! Come home!) - and now we're left with a cliffhanger, wondering if Sam is about to be the next sacrifice! Poor Sam - he was just crushed realizing that Daphne's feelings for him weren't real. He really is a little lost puppy dog--Just Like He Is When He Shape Shifts. I mean, it's one thing to realize that you've been lied to and betrayed. It's another entirely when it you discover the betrayal in an attempt to kill you. Jeez!
Oh oh! Wait. I can't wrap up this review without mentioning the historic sequence between Bill and his Maker-chick. Holy evil. That was sexy, and gross, and evil. But it was great television. Really. Maybe it's time for me to read all of those Anne Rice books if that's the way I feel about it. Or watch hardcore pornography while reading Anne Rice books. And then later, when Sookie needs him bad, he's being held down, in Dallas, by her - his maker. Sookie needs him, but we learn right there that no vampire can overpower their maker. And she's struck some sort of arrangement with Eric. So Sookie might be in serious trouble. I'm sure she'll pull through. She won an Oscar when she was a little kid.
The Prisoner - "Arrival" by Tucker Stone
Stuck in a morass of disinterest for the new shows dropping out of the ass end of television's buttercream starfish, but not stuck so deeply that I'll make the mistake of committing to another Apprentice UK: that's the position. So why not continue to delve into the past of the cultish hit?
Of course, The Prisoner ain't no Sandbaggers, New Jersey conventions notwithstanding, as I was reminded when I found the 19 disc box set for the show on clearance by Johnny Hipster of the plastic rims, "The Prisoner! Oh, there's this great book where that got picked as the number one 'hippest' thing in pop culture!" I told him that's what I'd heard as well--not specifically that it had won a strange contest, but that it was much loved--to which he said that he'd never watched it. Not cool enough to watch, but cool enough to judge via competition, apparently. Anyway, there's certainly no lack for internet writing about The Prisoner--from what I've read of the Pop Culture Douchebag Snarkfest Blog Guidebook, one has to post something about the show eventually or you won't get invited to the cool parties, the ones where the B-52's let you shine their shoes--so here we go, que sera sera. 27 dvds to go!
The first thing I noticed about the Prisoner is how dense the whole experience is. There's a massive amount of information and scene-setting doled out in the same length with which Gregory House usually solves one problem, and it's made to feel even more expansive by the liberal use of cutting. I don't think there's a single take in the first 30 minutes that lasts longer than five seconds. It's dynamic stuff, and it helps to obscure the general problem television cinematography has, which is that nobody cares to make anything look good. Even when the takes get extended, the camera is a hyperactive fucker--zooming, panning, flitting around. It's an unusual way to film a show, made even more so by the content. I've been pretty lucky not to have any real knowledge about what's coming--as far as I know, the Prisoner is all about some dude who is totally not a fucking number--but it's already clear that the show is a fist-pumped dedication to the obsessive viewer, 1968's fan-fic writers yet to be born. It's a paean to individuality! To integrity! "To thine own self be true!" Uhhhh--trust no one? That probably helps as well--poor old Number Six gets fooled once, by his old pal Cobb, but other than that, he seems to have figured out pretty quickly that everybody he meets is suspect. My favorite moment of that variety in the whole episode would probably be the part where he stares at the weeping chambermaid, pointing out the ridiculousness of her "they'll let me leave if I get you to talk" argument. From the little I've heard, the Prisoner was more Patrick McGoohan's baby than anyone elses, and it shows--a better director probably could have convinced him to ease up on some of his corkscrew facial expressions--but the Prisoner also operates like the prototypical "autuer" television show; just like David Simon owns the Wire, Shawn Ryan the Shield, Aaron Sorkin Sportsnight, stuff like this--dynamic, frantic and endlessly creative--never escapes from the hivemind writer's room. (Except for the Simpsons.)
Plotwise, "Arrival" is a solid opener--man resigns from something, man is kidnapped, man wakes up in a resort costumed by Willy Wonka and designed by Walt Disney, man attempts to escape--and it's a pretty electrifying setup at that. I'd wager part of the reverence so many television writers have for this show is tangled up in the simplicity with which it deals out the odd--take, for example, what stood out to me as the best line of the episode, after the requisite "Not a number" stuff: "That would be telling." Said by the first Number Two after the giant balloon--seriously, yes, a fucking balloon--kills a shitty actor wearing a striped shirt, it's the same kind of "Trust us" heart that beats inside the creators of shows like Lost & The X-Files. Because, really: it's a balloon. A gigantic balloon. It rolls, and it bounces, and it apparently can kill you--but it's a Mother Fucking Balloon. And yet?
It's a scary goddamn balloon!
The thing is, that balloon can be shot well, and it can do something that looks creepy, but if Number Two had actually explained the balloon--if he'd said "Well, that's our security system" or he'd said "That is the face of ultimate justice", if he'd said anything at all beyond "That would be telling" while smiling like a drunken pixy--it wouldn't be scary at all. It's that commitment, that blinding sincerity that makes this show so unnerving, and it seeps into the entire episode, you can see it happening again and again--"Be seeing you", the words that come out of multiple character's mouths, each time becoming more unsettling, culminating in the moment when Number Six, his eyebrow cocked and his snarl at the ready, spits out the phrase himself, hatred and curiosity dripping off the very words. I have no idea what's coming up in the remainder of these 39 discs, and while I'm only halfway finished decoding the Special Features booklet, I have to say: I am down. Much like a clown.
-Sean Witzke, David Brothers, Martin Brown, Nina & Tucker Stone, 2009
More Prisoner! I've only seem the first 2 or 3 eps, but loved it.
Posted by: DrewT | 2009.07.29 at 13:21
I'm also a hipster failure, because I haven't watched more than a couple clips of The Prisoner. It's one that I'd love to get to at some point. Is it really 20-some discs long? Yikes.
Posted by: Matthew J. Brady | 2009.07.29 at 14:10
Considering there were only 17 episodes, 20 discs is bloody impressive.
Man, I love The Prisoner, but I went through an unfortunate stage of getting drunk every week and watching the final episode over and over again until I could recite the dialogue along with the actors. It was just like the Rocky Horror Picture Show, only much sadder.
And that's pretty fucking sad.
I still sometimes get a bit too pissed and pass out mumbling about regrettable bullets and dem dry bones.
Posted by: Bob Temuka | 2009.07.29 at 23:33
The last episode of the Prisoner always struck me as something Lewis Carroll would write if Lewis Carroll had been a late 60s science fiction TV writer.
Also, the last episode of the Prisoner is much better than Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Posted by: AERose | 2009.07.30 at 02:49
Also! http://www.amctv.com/videos/the-prisoner-1960s-video/ for your Prisoner-watching needs, though I just up and torrented the whole series.
Posted by: AERose | 2009.07.30 at 02:51
Yes! The Prisoner! I will read this whole fucking thing!
Which episode order are you using? Are you getting nerdy enough to use custom episode orders? Because you know about the custom episode orders, right?
The Prisoner! Fucking fuck, yes!
Posted by: moose n squirrel | 2009.07.30 at 08:38
I do know about the custom episode orders, but I was going to try to skip reading anything more about the episodes while watching the show. I'll be watching it in the order that the 40th anniversary way-too-big box set puts them in--not sure whether that's a custom one or not?
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2009.07.30 at 08:50
I have not watched The Prisoner yet and really have no plans to. Do I fail at life?
Posted by: Kenny Cather | 2009.07.30 at 10:57
Just for the record, the episodes - and the chronology - McGoohan considered essential go like this:
Arrival
Dance of the Dead
Free for All
Checkmate
The Chimes of Big Ben
Once Upon a Time
Fall Out
The rest is filler. Good filler more often than not, but filler nonetheless. He wasn't all too happy with most of them. Then again, he wasn't pleased by much.
There's also a comic sequel entitled Shattered Visage, published by Vertigo which he "didn't hate", and that's about as much praise you'd get out of the man. Worth a look too, once you're done.
Peter Chung's Æon Flux's intro is a deliberate riff on The Prisoner's too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UQyPXbjL-A
Posted by: Red Scharlach | 2009.07.30 at 11:12
Tucker - I am entirely on board to hear yr thoughts on the Prisoner. What a goddamn sham-zam-taastic show.
Nina- So true in regards to yer comments on True Blood, and that bedroom flashback scene was truly the bee's knees.
Posted by: Zebtron A. Rama | 2009.07.30 at 15:26
The last episode of the Prisoner is much, much better than Rocky Horror Picture Show, and sometimes I think it's the best thing in the history of everything, but watching it over and over again when you're drunk and on your own is just fucking pathetic.
What's worse is that it took me five goddamned years to work out that women did not find this attractive.
Posted by: Bob Temuka | 2009.07.30 at 15:58
The box set order is weird - if I'm remembering right, they put "The General" after "A, B, and C," when the events of "A, B, and C" pretty clearly show it should be the other way around, for instance. First-time viewers probably won't give a shit either way, though.
That box set is ridiculously overlong - some of those discs have only one episode per, which is criminal.
Posted by: moose n squirrel | 2009.07.30 at 15:59
And while Red's right about McGoohan's "seven essential episodes" thing, I've never heard of anyone who only watches those - it leaves so, so many good ones out. I can't imagine any viewing of The Prisoner that left out "The Schizoid Man," for instance.
Posted by: moose n squirrel | 2009.07.30 at 16:01
Take that up with McGoohan.
I never said the other episodes were bad, either.
Posted by: Red Scharlach | 2009.07.30 at 16:26
"watching it over and over again when you're drunk and on your own is just fucking pathetic.
What's worse is that it took me five goddamned years to work out that women did not find this attractive."
Replace The Prisoner with John Carpenter's The Thing & Jaws. Marriage followed almost immediately, in my experience.
On the Ordering front--i'll probably stick to the box set's numbering, although i'm definitely interested in that "Seven Essential episodes" idea. Not sure if I'm going to do this once a week or more often, it'll depend on the schedule.
Oh, and Kenny: you don't fail at life. But there is a pretty strict rule that blogs have to eventually address things like: The Prisoner, who you would vote for in an election and why everyone is stupid for not agreeing with you, some personal anecdote regarding your relationship with your parents, what kind of music is a "dealbreaker", and, unfortunately, The Crazy Dream You Had Last Night.
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2009.07.30 at 21:07
Oh, shit, I have done at least one "crazy dream" post, but that was back in the early days of my blog when I was stealing all my ideas from Jog (it could be argued that this habit has not changed). If he did it, it couldn't be that terrible.
Posted by: Matthew J. Brady | 2009.07.31 at 15:20